How will AI shape the future of marketing and advertising? Join us for a thought-provoking discussion with our guest, Isabel Perry, VP of Emerging Technology at DEPT, as we explore the role of AI and its impact on various industries.
Isabel shares valuable insights on how her background in architecture has prepared her for the challenges of working with cutting-edge technology and how DEPT's unique approach helps brands stay ahead of the competition throughout their digital customer journey.
We dive deep into the myths and opportunities surrounding AI, augmented reality's potential societal impacts, and recall's power in AI-driven conversation management. Listen as Isabel discusses the ethical issues related to AI and content creation, the need for industry bodies to assist regulators, and the potential of AI to provide equal advantages for everyone.
Finally, we examine the future of AI in marketing and how individuals and businesses can stay updated with the latest technology. Discover the skills needed for the advertising and marketing intern of the future and the potential of AI tools in streamlining the creative process.
Join us for this enlightening conversation with Isabel Perry that covers everything from AI ethics to the future of marketing.
More on Isabel
Isabel on LinkedIn
DEPT Website
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Actionable Futurist podcast, a
show all about the near-termfuture, with practical and
actionable advice from a rangeof global experts to help you
stay ahead of the curve.
Every episode answers thequestion what's the future on,
with voices and opinions thatneed to be heard.
(00:23):
Your host is internationalkeynote speaker and Actionable
Futurist, andrew Grill.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Artificial intelligence is all over the
news, And so on the podcast.
today, I'm going to dive deeperinto the intersection of AI
with advertising and marketing.
To do this, I'm joined byIsabel Perry, who was the VP of
Emerging Technology atPioneering Technology and
Marketing Services Company Debt.
Welcome, Isabel.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you very much for having me.
Andrew Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Now, this is a hot topic and I'm talking to a
number of experts over the lastfew months about AI and the
intersection with variousmarketing, advertising ethics,
all those sorts of things, But Ihaven't come across Debt.
For those on the podcast whohaven't heard of your
organization, what does Debt doand what do you do at the
company?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Debt is a marketing technology agency.
We are 4,000 people around theworld.
We're in 20 countries acrossfive continents And we are one
of the only agencies the onlyagency which has a true 50-50
split between technology andmarketing And that allows us to
work across the full digitalcustomer journey, from digital
(01:24):
transformation to buildingproducts at the core of your
business, but also through brandcreative and media that brings
those products and brands tomarket.
We're also an agency that haspioneering at the center of our
spirit.
We create first moving digitalproducts, services, campaigns
and help brands stay ahead ofthe competition.
We've been evidenced in thefact that we were the Webby's
(01:49):
agency of the year and networkagent of the year this year and
also network of the year lastyear.
We are an agency that's bigenough to cope.
That's small enough to care.
When you work with us, you'realmost certainly working with a
partner.
There is over 250 people at Debtwho own a part of the company
And that creates a very specificsort of boutique agency culture
, despite the fact that we arenow 4,000 people with a huge
(02:10):
footprint, and we're alsoincredibly proud to be both
Climate Neutral and a B Corpcertified.
My role within that is as VP ofemerging technology.
As we scale, both organicallyand through M&A, we bring on
absolutely incrediblespecialisms within the company
And it's my role to make surethat we are keeping all of those
(02:30):
sort of unique individuals butalso sort of team level offers
connected so that when clientscome to us, we have the most
sort of competitive andcompelling emerging tech offer.
This year I've helped to launchDEPT AI, which is our AI
practice, along with a couple ofcolleagues like Bob Briskey and
Wes Dunno, and really buildingout how we can make AI more
(02:53):
accessible both to Debtsters butalso to our clients through
sort of education, through verysort of specific service
offerings, and it's a prettyincredible year for emerging
technology all in all.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Being AI accessible.
I love that phrase because Ithink things like ChatGPT will
probably come onto that havemade our job a lot easier.
Because if you said a year ago,can you explain how AOA works
to an executive audience?
It's very difficult withoutsome specific use cases.
I have a session next week with16 executives at a Fortune 100
company and I'm going to getthem to do this in pre-work.
I'm going to get them to playwith ChatGPT with some prompts
(03:28):
because I want them to see thepower of it And I think when you
actually see chat interfaceslike ChatGPT allow that very
easily, people go oh wow, i didnot could do that.
So I think emerging technologyis huge.
The other reason I'm excited totalk to you is I am a
technologist at the heart and Igrew up as a marketer.
The intersection of those Ifind really, really fascinating
And I've sort of kept both partsalive.
Obviously, a marketing-ownedbusiness As a futures.
(03:50):
I've got to stay up to datewith all these technologies.
But you have a fascinatingcareer.
You started your career inarchitecture, so how do you go
from architecture to end up inemerging technology and agency?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I'm so glad you asked that because I still feel very
wedded to the world ofarchitecture.
The short answer is that I waslucky enough to present my
architecture portfolio to myfirst boss in the agency world,
who saw parallels betweendesigning buildings and
designing websites.
But I think that the moreinteresting thing to say about
(04:20):
that is actually thatarchitecture is an incredible
training for technology, becauseyou have to be able to have a
sort of greater vision,articulate that to a client
within very, very specificconstraints, but also articulate
that in a great level of detailto builders, slash engineers,
and so there's very few thingsin a way that could set you up
(04:41):
to work in technology so well.
And I also think that there's adiscussion in the world of
architecture at the moment aboutthe death of the architect, and
that is around the fact thatthe role of an architect is
getting more and more narrowedover the course of history.
And I think that historically,and probably still today,
architects are idealists andthey want to affect positive
(05:01):
change in the world.
And actually I think in today'sworld, if you really want to do
that, you work in technology.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I grew up as an engineer so while we didn't have
the creative bent, it was moreof the nuts and bolts.
Engineers are taught to solveproblems from first principles
And so when you go into abusiness environment and someone
says, how do we fix this?
It literally is have you triedturning on and off again?
Have you tried re-seeing thebusiness problem?
So I think you're right thatyou're training.
The training I've done.
It sets you up well and thatintersection then comes together
(05:29):
.
We might even talk about therole of generative AI in
architecture, because it's avery creative tool and wondering
whether that will change.
But we'll park that for themoment.
Emerging technologies is yourbag and, as you say, you're sort
of wrangling all thesedifferent technologies that are
coming at us.
Maybe you could talk about someof the emerging technology you
think will have a significantimpact, importantly on society
in the next five to ten yearsand how they might impact us on
(05:52):
the way we live and work.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
The most important emerging technology this year
and probably for the next fiveyears is, of course, generative
AI.
We're at an inflection pointand that's arisen in the last
maybe six months because peopletruly understand it because of
chat, gpt, but, more broadly,probably in the last 24 months,
is the introduction of largelanguage models or foundational
models that are built withtransformer architecture.
(06:14):
Basically, what that allowsanyone to do is to take these
pre-trained models like GPT-4 orBARD and to fine tune them with
your own data sets to createmodels that are incredibly
powerful for your own businessneeds, and that basically allows
you to skip technologicalgeneration because you can be as
(06:35):
good as your competitors thatwere that have been building
models for the last 20 years.
And that is the game changer,and the impact of it is honestly
quite hard to articulatebecause it's so expensive,
because, basically, the power ofAI is now in the hands of
non-technical people In theworld of marketing.
I'm thinking about it in sixareas at the moment that will
impact our ability to predictwhat will work, our ability to
(06:57):
plan things.
So, whether or not it's usingAI to create personas so that we
can interview our consumers tobuild better products In
production, it's having a hugeimpact and I'm sure we'll come
on to talk about that in moredetail about the creative
process from copywriting tocreating 3D models and so on,
performance, and that's actuallyimpacting websites and products
(07:19):
that we're developing acrosspersonalization and, of course,
process.
But basically AI is going to becompletely transforming the
existing businesses and creatingentirely new ones.
That's definitely interesting,but I think the societal impact
will actually come at theintersection of augmented
reality and AI the release ofapples, mixed reality, augmented
(07:43):
reality headsets.
That will have a much, muchbigger impact than AI on society
because really AI is going toimpact the world of work.
If we suddenly have atechnology which takes us off
our little mobile phones, whichhave literally taken away one
hand, like it's absolutely madthat we're going around with
only one hand available to likeyou live in, because one of them
(08:03):
always have a phone in them,that is going to completely
transform society.
It will usher in the nextcustomer experience, the next
way that we're communicating andinteracting online.
It will mean that we're able togenuinely interact with virtual
objects in the physical world.
That will be the biggest impactin the next decade.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Just touching on that .
So this is not a Metaversepodcast, but we've kind of we've
moved into the Metaverse.
I think one of the issues withthe friction point in Metaversal
and augmented reality adoptionis that friction between the
technology and the real world.
We had a taste with GoogleGlass a few years ago where
there was a limited frictionpoint, but everyone I talked to
that's a game and says look, ican't wear a headset for more
(08:45):
than a couple of hours and itdepends on the type of AR VR
that you're playing with.
That can make you quitedisoriented.
Do you think really, the tippingpoint will be when that
friction is removed?
I love that explanation thatyou've got only got one hand
free at the moment, if we've gotboth hands free, but we can see
what's happening in front of us.
I, as a futurist, i'm going toa blockchain event at EY later
(09:05):
today and I wish I could walkinto the room and scan the room
and technology could tell mewhich corner of the room I
should move to, because they'rethe more interesting people,
because of what it knows aboutme and the other delegates there
, without me having to put myphone up there.
Is it the friction point thatreally is stopping mass adoption
, societal change with theseaugmented technologies?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
The biggest myth about the Metaverse is that it's
virtual reality and it justisn't like.
I think of the Metaverse as 3Dreal time social experiences.
The most important experiencewill be the one where it is that
virtual overlay on the physicalworld which some people will
(09:45):
augment reality, some peoplecall mixed reality.
I love the idea of being ableto walk into a conference room
and be told where to go.
Chatgpt now stores all of yourpast conversations.
You will very quickly end upwith your personal ChatGPT.
It's conceivable that you'llhave that same month, like the
first 30 years of your life.
You'll have 60 years of yourlife and actually you'd walk
into that conference and itwouldn't just tell you where you
(10:07):
should go, to which corner.
Say, you've met these fivepeople before.
This is what you talked about.
this is sort of this is yourschool friend.
He might not recognize thatbecause he haven't seen them for
40 years.
And I think it's just going tobe absolutely extraordinary when
you layer on that AI layer withthe sort of image recognition
into mixed reality experiences.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Well, i must be an AI robot already, because in my
contact system I have about25,000 contacts I've collected
over the years going to allthese events.
I write notes and so there's anote in there about you that
packed me with a podcast today.
So if we catch up in a coupleof years time, oh, isabelle,
you're on my podcast.
And it's happened a couple oftimes that have been quite
arresting where someone has saidliterally do you know who I am?
I said yes, we did a jointlecture at TAFE in Sydney on
(10:48):
this day and he went how did youknow that?
Because I wrote it down.
But it is the power of recall.
I think you're right.
So, yeah, i'd love AI to beable to do that for me rather
than me writing down all hisnotes, but that's a whole other
story.
You mentioned their myths, sowhat's the biggest myth you've
heard about AI?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
AI is such a black box to so many people and so
hard to comprehend until chatTPP made it feel relatable
because it was very good ataddressing whatever you asked it
.
I think there are fewer mythsthan you would expect about AI.
The concept of AI hasn't beendictated by science fiction to
the degree that I think maybethe metaverse has.
(11:22):
The biggest myth, i think,around AI is that it will
replace our jobs in the nearfuture.
There is no doubt that it isgoing to disrupt the specifics
of tasks within a given role.
I think there are a handful ofroles that will be replaced very
quickly, for example, at depth.
(11:43):
I do think that sort of the roleof the QA, for example, is
something that AI will impactrelatively quickly.
It's a bit of a cliche in oursaying this.
I think it is true that youwon't be replaced by AI, but you
probably will be replaced bysomeone using AI.
Those people that learn how todo much better at their jobs
through this incredible newarray of tools are super
(12:05):
employees, and the wonderfulthing is that that is possible
to anyone who is curious or whois creative and who is thinking
with an open mind about how tocombine different applications
at the moment to createsomething and to make their
imagination a reality.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
You talk about curiosity as one of my favourite
subjects.
In fact, i'm writing a book atthe moment called Digitally
Curious, so I'm wondering whatadvice you'd have for people
listening to podcasts to staydigitally curious and lean
forward and understand all thesenew technologies.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I think the first thing to do is you should list
out your role, what you'retrying to achieve, the company
that you work in, and ask chatGPT what chat GPT thinks you
should do.
I listen to a lot of podcasts.
I personally find that you havea much broader reach of
opinions and voices than you dothrough online publications.
(12:55):
The other thing is that youshould be trying at least one
tool a week.
So I actually love GenerativeAI, which is a LinkedIn profile
on LinkedIn.
I think you have to understandhow it impacts your own process
and workflow And I would reallystrongly recommend finding a
partner or someone to work with,mapping out one of your common
(13:19):
workflows.
So, for example, within depth,we create a lot of content.
We've done a number ofworkshops well, we've mapped out
through from taking a brieffrom a client to cost estimates,
to coming up to creating ideas,creating content I'm pushing
that to paid media platforms andunderstanding which parts of
that process are the mostrepetitive and have data sets,
(13:42):
and then you know spending timewith people that are actually
able to automate some of that.
You should be curious withinyour own domain, because that's
what you're an expert in.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So check GPT.
we've mentioned multiple times,so what's the first thing you
asked to GPT?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
The first thing I ever asked to GPT was actually
to summarize a speech I wasgiving on whether or not AI
would replace people's jobs,because I needed a summary of it
for a spiel to introduce thelecture.
I'm sure that I'm not alone.
In the first conversation I hadwith chat to keep, it was about
AI.
What was yours?
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I think I asked asked who I was.
I want to see what I was in thecorpus and it actually said I'd
written two books I haven't andone, two awards that I haven't
either, which I'm very happyabout, but I can't fix it.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Well, there's that saying that, if you want to know
how good chat to you as you askit, something you know a lot
about And you know that's whenthe hallucinations start coming
out.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well, one of the prompts I'm going to be asking
my executives for next week isto ask it who it thinks their
competitors are, because youcould do a Google search, but I
think when you actually see itas if it's someone is typing it,
that's when the power comes,because, again, they all know
all I didn't realize thatcompany was a competitor.
What are the three or fourthings I should ask an executive
audience that have never usedchat GPT before to really see
(14:59):
the power of it?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
They should ask it to write a three year company
vision or strategy for theirindustry, perhaps relating to
how I will distract theirindustry, because I think it's
quite surprising how strategicthat can be.
You also probably want them tounderstand that it's really good
(15:22):
at research and at pointingpeople in the right direction,
and so you could say somethinglike what are the recent
discoveries in my field?
What are their priorityinitiatives within the company?
An example of why this isrelated to my role is I'm at the
moment, overseeing our debtwide global education program.
(15:46):
We're going to be running a lotof master classes.
We're going to be creatingvideos of those.
We need to be storing thosevideos somewhere.
Allowing people to sign up forsessions, allowing people to
give feedback and vote forsessions are important, and
we've been thinking about whereall of that content is held and
where that program is run, andthinking about notion or do we
use the sales force one or do weuse Google Drive?
(16:10):
Anyway, i just asked to have tobe teal us like, and it's
certainly four amazing productsthat Do exactly what we needed
it to do when I gave it a set ofrequirements that I have for
running an education program, soI would ask it to write a three
year vision or strategy fortheir specific industry.
I would ask it to set veryspecific requirements for a
(16:33):
priority initiative that they'rerunning and see what
suggestions chat to you.
And then the other thing that Ithink is so cool and what we do
is you can basically say, right, i am in this industry, this is
my customer, this is varioustraits and then interview, chat
(16:55):
to be teal us though it's yourtarget customer, and then you
get actually like incredibleresponses back that really make
you think about the types ofpriorities that people genuinely
have about your product.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So I want to link it back to advertising and
marketing and this is a linkhere.
so actually one of the promptsI'm going to ask my executives
because one of the businessesthey're involved in is the
retailers for DIY brands I'mgoing to ask them to write some
copy for a lawnmower and I wantthem to see how chat GPT would
actually for a particularlawnmower, to see how they would
sell it.
and so the question I want toask is where are we seeing
(17:27):
generally of AI start to impact?
and you alluded to acopywriting and the whole
process of marketing andadvertising.
Where will it enhance that andwill it be because we can do
multiple versions of copy fordifferent networks, different
channels, different personas,even down to one to one?
I mean, when I did my MBA, thepromise was we'd have one to one
marketing, but you can't docopy that's individualized
(17:48):
easily unless you scale that.
Will we see personalized copyand ads graphics for consumers
in the near future?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Short answer is yes, but we are limited by what the
paid media platform support youwill on own channels.
I'm sure CRM is about to bemassively turned on its head in
that respect and we've got somereally, really awesome cases,
actually in depth already, wherewe've been using GPT three for
(18:17):
the last three years to buildincredible personalization.
So, for example, for one beautyretailer who's been working
with them for the past six years, three years ago we started
introducing GPT three poweredpersonalization for Omni channel
comms It would be at your grill.
He's bought these two products.
we can anticipate that this isthe next product.
We will apply that across everysingle channel and we've drove
(18:39):
485% revenue uplift from email,292% click through rate uplift
from email and 66% row us uplifton social.
So Mad results and only goingto get more powerful.
So, yes, we will see more oneto one marketing.
The limitation will not be thetechnology, it will be.
Is the team ready to adapt toit as a paid media channels
(19:01):
ready to adapt to it?
is it worth the investment?
because actually you're sellinga lawn mower Like there's only
three reasons why you'd buy thatlawn mower you mentioned that
there's some of the roles evenwith your own company may be
disrupted.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
should creatives be afraid of generate AI or should
they learn to embrace it, andhow you seeing the reaction of
creatives in your ownorganization to these new tools?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Of course, i don't think they should be scared of
this and I actually think what'sbeen pretty extraordinary is
creatives and designers haveprobably been the fastest
adopters of AI within depth,because the applications they
use, like Adobe or figure orincreasingly stable diffusion of
the journey In bed AI intotheir workflow in a way which no
(19:44):
one's left wondering what theimpact will be.
and just to give you an exampleat depth, we have already, on
live client work, used it forvisualizing concepts, writing
slogans, identifying insightswhich might make the creating
more interesting, replacing stopimagery, upscaling images,
training models, 3d scripting,gaming mechanics, ai generated
(20:05):
storyboards, text to audio styletransfers, text to video.
I think, in general, everyone'sincredibly excited and has a
huge appetite to learn more.
I would love depth to be knownas a company where AI was really
embedded in the culture of like.
why you joined the company?
because you had the opportunityto learn from the best in the
(20:27):
industry in the generative AIcreative space.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Sounds like from the campaign.
You mentioned the use of AI.
You're the kind of pointy endof where AI can be used in
agencies.
I'm sure there are some peoplelistening today that are in a
more traditional agency andgoing, oh dear, we need to come
up to speed with this.
So how are you upscaling yourpeople?
is it just your role inemerging tech?
you mentioned masterclasses.
How does an organization, howdoes an agency, lift the
(20:51):
awareness of AI, then lift theengagement and the use of the
tools for best effect?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Well, i can only speak for the way depth has done
it, but we've, firstly, we'vetaken it very seriously.
I think we expect that 80% ofall of our roles will be in some
way disrupted by AI within thenext 24 months, and that means
you have to take it veryseriously.
But but that also we don't knowwhat the best use cases of
(21:19):
those will be without getting itin the hands of every role.
So, for example, we might findthat actually, hr is disrupted
by this most, and so we aretaking education incredibly
seriously.
We are rolling out sixinitiatives.
One of them is a series ofmasterclasses My goal is to do
at least 50 this year and makingsure that we have a masterclass
(21:42):
which addresses every singleperson's role.
So, for example, i need to workout what the AI masterclasses
that transforms the way we donew business outreach, for
example.
Right, not just the obvious,what.
How do you choose a model?
or how's copilot going toimpact developing?
And to do that, we have to, andhave identified individuals
(22:05):
across depth, across the fourdifferent crafts we have, so
engineering, growth, creativeand experience who can really be
, i guess, figureheads andleaders within the domain?
So, for example, there's thisincredible guy called Henry
Dahlberg.
As he's based in the US, he isreally leading the way on what
we can do with content creationAnd he has sort of owned what
(22:28):
the creative masterclassschedule looks like initially.
The only way to get a grip onquite how impactful this is is
to split it up into specificareas that people can own,
because otherwise it is totallyoverwhelming, because it's like
that film that won the Oscareverything everywhere all at
once.
So you have to find people thatalready know what they're
(22:50):
talking about and give them theplatform and the task of raising
the general level ofunderstanding and awareness.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
So something I'm writing about at the moment and
speaking to people on podcasts alot about is ethics and AI, and
in fact, this morning I justreleased a podcast which
addresses that subject directly.
So what ethical issues have youcome across already when it
comes to creating content withGenome of AI And what are your
concerns about ethical issuespositive or negative?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Perhaps to start with , what are my concerns?
Commercial companies with thevery best intentions will only
go so far, and that I think thatthe answer to this needs to be
through regulation, and I thinkthat's evidenced in things like
the fact that open AI wasoriginally established as an up
for profit.
If you look at Elon Musk, hefired the head of AI ethics at
(23:35):
Twitter, then wrote a lettersaying we needed to pause AI
development for six monthsbecause we didn't have a grip on
where it was going, and thenfounded an open AI competitor
about three weeks later.
Big picture industry wide.
We have to have governmentregulation and that has to be
multinational effort.
For a company like Debt Ialready mentioned RobiCop I
(23:55):
think we take being a goodcompany very seriously.
We're early on in establishing adigital ethics board.
We have an AI ethics code ofprinciples that addresses things
like what our view is on AI interms of growth, innovation, and
we're also establishingguardrails for the company to
(24:18):
follow across the blurred linesof legal ethics and information
security, and that addressespeople's questions like who owns
the creation of AI?
Can we profit from it?
Do we need to be aware ofnegative bias built into these
AI tools And how can we be awareof it?
What are the image rights So?
for example, can we useartificial images of celebrities
(24:39):
if they're not real photographs?
Do we need to pay someone forthe use of artificial humans in
images?
Do we need to disclose whenwe've used AI to our clients, to
public?
We surveyed all of thedebtsters around what they
thought about this.
People have also askedquestions like if I don't
participate in AI, will I berecommended?
There's a huge number ofethical questions to be
(25:00):
addressed Within depth.
We're trying to establish thoseguardrails.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I think every government around the world is
scrambling to find out how toregulate this, and the challenge
with any emerging technology isthe technology and the
disruptors move fast in theregulators.
I was interested recently theCompetition and Markets
Authority, the CMA, here in theUK.
They look at competitive issuesAre you being anti competitive?
And they put a paper outbasically saying is AI giving
people unfair advantage?
(25:24):
And I read that thinking it's abit like saying years ago, if
you didn't have a website, thenprobably you were disadvantaged
with someone that didn't couldsell products and services.
So how do we help theregulators?
I mean, you're in the marketing, advertising industry.
You have different industrybodies that represent you.
What does a body, does yourindustry, need to do to help the
regulators smooth this?
Because the issues you raisethere image rights, copyright,
(25:47):
using someone else's likenessthey're very, very compelling
issues And their issues I'm sureyou're facing every day as you
create campaigns and content.
How does the industry need toreact to this?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
The first thing, just only a point around does it
give an employer advantage?
I just like to address thatbecause It's not only is it like
having a company with a website, i think actually that's the
whole point And I think that'swhat's most exciting about AI,
and there was a study on theimpact on chat GPT And this is
(26:17):
very much the optimist view ofthis.
But AI will impact people thathave not had the best education
and have a bigger impact on whatthey are able to do.
If you look at it really simply, if English isn't your first
language and you're working in acompany where you're expected
to write fluent English, chatGPT has now completely sold that
(26:38):
for you And I think thatactually AI has given everyone
an equal advantage And that'swhy it's so incredible.
But to address the questionaround regulation I apologize,
this is kind of starting thequestion, but I actually think
I'm not best placed to answerthat, because it's like asking
the people that are pushing atthe bracket to rein themselves
(27:01):
in, and it's really hard to jumpbetween the mindset of how far
do we push this and how far istoo far, and I think that you
need that healthy frictionbetween the sort of the cynical
really prefer how I think are inquestion, and the people that
just want to embrace change.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
So what's the campaign you're most proud of
where you've been involved, andit's involved some sort of AI
technology.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
At depth.
We offer three things in thisspace.
So we build AI, we run AI andwe use AI.
And within building AI, theproject that I think I'm most
proud of from when they're indepth is the project that I
mentioned already, which wasusing personalization to drive
incredible results.
In terms of running AI, whatthat really means is we have ML
(27:48):
Ops teams who sit within clientscompanies and actually enable
them to fine tune their ownmodels or build their own models
from scratch.
We work with some of thelargest tech companies in the
world to do this And, as you canimagine, they are quite
confidential and I'll work withthem, but it's pretty
extraordinary to have helpedsome of the largest tech
(28:10):
companies in the world to alignall of their AI model
development And in terms ofusing AI, what we have done here
is a lot of the creativetechnology work we do So.
For example, we have builtmodels that have steered cargo
ships into dock.
We've built chatbots forFacebook, for business, that
reduce customer service requestsby 80%.
(28:30):
We've reduced the cost ofcreating assets for just by 400%
through automation and nowintegrating AI into QA, for
example, and I think the teamthat I work most closely with in
London has done some reallyincredible AI work, including
driving over 7 billion viewsfrom our AR and for ASOS and
(28:52):
also driving over a millionorders for just eat through AR.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
We've talked a lot about AI.
You're looking at emergingtechnology What's over the
horizon And you can't mentionthe word AI, web three,
metaverse, NFT or crypto.
What's a technology that'semerging that we haven't heard
about yet?
Speaker 2 (29:10):
So this question just makes me realise to what extent
I'm in an echo chamber on those.
I think one of the most amazingtechnological advancements that
I've seen recently and most ofthem are in biotech.
What it's worth is the factthat we're now exploring 3D
printing organs, So 3D printinglungs specifically.
(29:32):
I think there's over 140,000organ transplants a year
globally And that's probablyjust a fraction of the number of
organ transplants that weactually need, And the fact that
we're making such incredibleheadway into growing organs is
absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
How do you keep up to date with all the latest things
that are happening?
There's only so many hours inthe day.
How do you stay up to date withthis compelling, fascinating
world of emerging technology?
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I'm very lucky to work with colleagues who keep me
in check.
I definitely have collectivesthat are groups of people, so
there's about 500 people indifferent AI collectives around
the company where we have areally healthy debate and
culture of sharing inspirationand articles and prototypes.
So that's immensely valuable.
And we've actually built an AItool called Depdaly which
(30:22):
surveys all of the industry newsto send four important updates
every day And that was like anearly use of AI within the
company.
And then in terms of where Iactually read, so to be honest,
i don't have enough sources ofnews, but there's so much out
there that I kind of rely onthings I really trust.
So news articles likeStratekery.
I love Andrew Sthorovitz'scontent.
(30:44):
I really love MIT TechnologyReview because it has a pretty
bleeding edge coverage of thetechnologies which will impact
depth and our industry perhapsin a year or two.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yeah, shout out to MIT Technology Review.
I've been subscribing to thatfor years and it really is.
It's well written.
It's the economist of thetechnology world, I would say.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, it's absolutely phenomenal And they're doing
some really really good coverageon AI and chat GPT, which are
great, because chat GPT isobviously, so I just rate that
they're covering it, even thoughit's almost part of culture now
.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
So if you were someone about to leave school
and wanted to look atadvertising marketing as a
career, i'm sure a few years agoyou and I would have given them
different advice about thosesort of subjects they might want
to study or where they shouldlook.
What's the advertisingmarketing intern executive of
the future?
What skills do they need tocome to depth with, and where
are you seeing that you'resourcing talent from, and are
(31:41):
they AI ready?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I think what AI will do is turn more people into
strategists.
If you look at the role of adeveloper and how that is
changing with AI, it is highlylikely that developers will code
less and act like productmanagers more over the next few
(32:04):
years, because tools likevarious co-pilots will do the
actual programming fordevelopers.
That is probably going to bereflected in a lot of different
roles that you might typicallyfind in the technology and
marketing agency.
So for a creative, actually,you will no longer necessarily
(32:28):
need a designer and a creativeand a copywriter and a motion
designer to work in a small team.
You might have one creativewho's comfortable using a
combination of mid-journey andthe next evolution of chat dpt
to own the full creative process.
And with that in mind, i thinkthat an intern coming into debt
(32:49):
or an entry-level role needs tohave the ability to think
strategically, to be veryautonomous, to be curious in
investigating and experimentingand also, really importantly,
critical thinking, because weare heading into a world where
(33:12):
Genetic AI is basically made anabundance of creativity and it's
important for individuals to beable to assess what the real
value and where the line oftruth lies and to be able to
think critically about that.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
I love talking to my podcast guests because you
always make me think and as youwere talking there, i was
thinking about your answer and Iactually wrote down creative
thinking as a skill.
It sounds like we're going toneed more thinkers and less
doers, because the doing will bedone for us.
That's not such a bad thing,because I would like to think
that AI will remove the moneyuteof some of our roles and we can
think more creatively, but thatmeans we're going to have to
(33:50):
educate, design, promote,encourage people to think
creatively.
I would argue that some of thetools we have today remove that
because it does it for us.
Suzie Allegrae, who was also onthe podcast we need time to
think There, was famous I thinkit was attributed to Steve Jobs
who said that if all thesewebsites and social media
networks were around 30 yearsago, nothing would have been
(34:10):
developed because we've all beendistracted.
I love the link between Suzie'spodcast and yours because we
need the time and the power tothink, because some of the
moneyute will be done for us.
Maybe that's a good thing.
What are you most lookingforward to about AI in the next
five years?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Studio 10, which is IKEA's mini emerging tech think
tank, almost released thisbrilliant video, which
highlighted the fact that we areheading to a period of great
abundance of generation, and intimes of abundance, new forms of
scarcity arise, and their pointwas that creativity is going to
be the most valuable skill setin the next five years.
(34:46):
And they do this brilliantparallel with the introduction
of the camera in sort of the1800s, and how?
because that could capturereality.
It meant that the role of anartist that had basically just
become capable of painting inphotorealistic detail was
(35:06):
completely disrupted and itspawned modern art as we know it
, and I think that we will see asimilar shift with the
introduction of AI, hopefully inthe next five years.
Maybe it'll take a generationwhere the role of a creative is
turned on its head, because wehave those tools at our
(35:27):
fingertips and it's impossibleto say right now what that will
look like.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
So exciting times ahead.
One of our final questionsbefore we go to the quickfire
round What's next for generativeAI in the marketing and
advertising space?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Generative AI is going to completely disrupt our
workflow.
I think I've mentioned alreadyso many different ways in which
it's changing the creativeprocess, but it's also going to
completely disrupt the way thatwe are building websites and
applications and products forconsumers to engage on.
And that is because, withindepth, my colleague, bob Brisky
(36:02):
I mentioned already has coined aterm semantic linking to define
the way we're going to beturning relationships on their
heads in the way that we'rebuilding these things, because
we are no longer buildingproducts that are basically
linked through keywords orthrough hyperlinks.
We can build maps ofunderstanding.
(36:23):
It's going to completelytransform the way we're building
recommendation engines.
It's going to transform the waywe're doing search and
discovery on websites.
It's going to transform the waythat we can build content
marketing understanding thehistory of a customer's
interactions with a given brand.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
So we're almost out of time.
We're now to my favorite partof the show, the quickfire round
, where we learn a little bitmore about our guests.
So are you ready?
Yes, iphone or Android, iphoneWindow or aisle Window In the
room or in the metaverse In theroom.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Sorry, metaverse.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Your biggest hope for this year and next.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
This year I hope that depth becomes known for
cultivating a industry leadingculture for AI education amongst
our depthsters, and next year Ihope that the Apple headset
comes out and transforms the waythat we build applications.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I wish that AI could do all of my laundry.
The app you use most on yourphone.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
WhatsApp.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
The best piece of advice you've ever received.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
People who have incredible attitude and terrible
attitude need all the trainingin the world.
People who have incredibleattitude and attitude need all
the responsibilities in theworld.
And people with incredibleattitude and a terrible attitude
a poison ivy And you just haveto get rid of them on your team.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
What are you reading at the moment?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I've just finished Robert K Massey's Nicholas and
Alexandra, which is a book aboutthe last emperor and empress of
Russia, and I've just startedMiss Pettigrewd's for a day
after a chat.
GPT recommendation based onother books that I like.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Who should I invite next onto the podcast?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
A friend called Marie Yerkovich who is working in
biotech on a team set up byJeffrey von Boltson.
I'm looking into the sort oforal dispensation of medicine.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
And how do you want to be remembered?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
As a really good mum, but also doing things that have
never been done before.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
So, as this is the actionable futures podcast, what
three actionable things shouldour audience do today when it
comes to better understandingthe opportunities and threats
from AI?
Speaker 2 (38:23):
First thing, ask chat GPT the same question with
specifics about your role andthe company that you work in.
Second thing, plot your typicalworkflows and identify the
areas with a lot of data.
Or, even better, ask the mosttechnically minded person in
your company to spend a weekperforming all of the different
roles within that workflow towork out how they could be
(38:44):
automated away, and spend threehours reading about this in a
number of sort of examplewebsites that I've already
mentioned and choosing one toola week to try.
That applies to something thatyou do in your role.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Isabel, a fascinating discussion.
You've got an amazing role.
How can people find out moreabout you and your work?
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Best places to follow me or add me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
Thanks, isabel, great discussion and thanks so much
for your time today.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Thank you so much, Andrew.
Really really lovely to chat.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Thank you for listening to the actionable
futurist podcast.
You can find all of ourprevious shows at
actionablefuturistcom and if youlike what you've heard on the
show, please considersubscribing via your favorite
podcast app so you never miss anepisode.
You can find out more aboutAndrew and how he helps
(39:34):
corporates navigate a disruptivedigital wealth, with keynote
speeches and C-suite workshopsdelivered in person or virtually
at actionablefuturistcom.
Until next time, this has beenthe actionable futurist podcast.
Welcome to the Actionable Futurist podcast, a
show all about the near-termfuture, with practical and
actionable advice from a rangeof global experts to help you
stay ahead of the curve.
Every episode answers thequestion what's the future on,
with voices and opinions thatneed to be heard.
(00:23):
Your host is internationalkeynote speaker and Actionable
Futurist, andrew Grill.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Artificial intelligence is all over the
news, And so on the podcast.
today, I'm going to dive deeperinto the intersection of AI
with advertising and marketing.
To do this, I'm joined byIsabel Perry, who was the VP of
Emerging Technology atPioneering Technology and
Marketing Services Company Debt.
Welcome, Isabel.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you very much for having me.
Andrew Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Now, this is a hot topic and I'm talking to a
number of experts over the lastfew months about AI and the
intersection with variousmarketing, advertising ethics,
all those sorts of things, But Ihaven't come across Debt.
For those on the podcast whohaven't heard of your
organization, what does Debt doand what do you do at the
company?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Debt is a marketing technology agency.
We are 4,000 people around theworld.
We're in 20 countries acrossfive continents And we are one
of the only agencies the onlyagency which has a true 50-50
split between technology andmarketing And that allows us to
work across the full digitalcustomer journey, from digital
(01:24):
transformation to buildingproducts at the core of your
business, but also through brandcreative and media that brings
those products and brands tomarket.
We're also an agency that haspioneering at the center of our
spirit.
We create first moving digitalproducts, services, campaigns
and help brands stay ahead ofthe competition.
We've been evidenced in thefact that we were the Webby's
(01:49):
agency of the year and networkagent of the year this year and
also network of the year lastyear.
We are an agency that's bigenough to cope.
That's small enough to care.
When you work with us, you'realmost certainly working with a
partner.
There is over 250 people at Debtwho own a part of the company
And that creates a very specificsort of boutique agency culture
, despite the fact that we arenow 4,000 people with a huge
(02:10):
footprint, and we're alsoincredibly proud to be both
Climate Neutral and a B Corpcertified.
My role within that is as VP ofemerging technology.
As we scale, both organicallyand through M&A, we bring on
absolutely incrediblespecialisms within the company
And it's my role to make surethat we are keeping all of those
(02:30):
sort of unique individuals butalso sort of team level offers
connected so that when clientscome to us, we have the most
sort of competitive andcompelling emerging tech offer.
This year I've helped to launchDEPT AI, which is our AI
practice, along with a couple ofcolleagues like Bob Briskey and
Wes Dunno, and really buildingout how we can make AI more
(02:53):
accessible both to Debtsters butalso to our clients through
sort of education, through verysort of specific service
offerings, and it's a prettyincredible year for emerging
technology all in all.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Being AI accessible.
I love that phrase because Ithink things like ChatGPT will
probably come onto that havemade our job a lot easier.
Because if you said a year ago,can you explain how AOA works
to an executive audience?
It's very difficult withoutsome specific use cases.
I have a session next week with16 executives at a Fortune 100
company and I'm going to getthem to do this in pre-work.
I'm going to get them to playwith ChatGPT with some prompts
(03:28):
because I want them to see thepower of it And I think when you
actually see chat interfaceslike ChatGPT allow that very
easily, people go oh wow, i didnot could do that.
So I think emerging technologyis huge.
The other reason I'm excited totalk to you is I am a
technologist at the heart and Igrew up as a marketer.
The intersection of those Ifind really, really fascinating
And I've sort of kept both partsalive.
Obviously, a marketing-ownedbusiness As a futures.
(03:50):
I've got to stay up to datewith all these technologies.
But you have a fascinatingcareer.
You started your career inarchitecture, so how do you go
from architecture to end up inemerging technology and agency?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I'm so glad you asked that because I still feel very
wedded to the world ofarchitecture.
The short answer is that I waslucky enough to present my
architecture portfolio to myfirst boss in the agency world,
who saw parallels betweendesigning buildings and
designing websites.
But I think that the moreinteresting thing to say about
(04:20):
that is actually thatarchitecture is an incredible
training for technology, becauseyou have to be able to have a
sort of greater vision,articulate that to a client
within very, very specificconstraints, but also articulate
that in a great level of detailto builders, slash engineers,
and so there's very few thingsin a way that could set you up
(04:41):
to work in technology so well.
And I also think that there's adiscussion in the world of
architecture at the moment aboutthe death of the architect, and
that is around the fact thatthe role of an architect is
getting more and more narrowedover the course of history.
And I think that historically,and probably still today,
architects are idealists andthey want to affect positive
(05:01):
change in the world.
And actually I think in today'sworld, if you really want to do
that, you work in technology.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I grew up as an engineer so while we didn't have
the creative bent, it was moreof the nuts and bolts.
Engineers are taught to solveproblems from first principles
And so when you go into abusiness environment and someone
says, how do we fix this?
It literally is have you triedturning on and off again?
Have you tried re-seeing thebusiness problem?
So I think you're right thatyou're training.
The training I've done.
It sets you up well and thatintersection then comes together
(05:29):
.
We might even talk about therole of generative AI in
architecture, because it's avery creative tool and wondering
whether that will change.
But we'll park that for themoment.
Emerging technologies is yourbag and, as you say, you're sort
of wrangling all thesedifferent technologies that are
coming at us.
Maybe you could talk about someof the emerging technology you
think will have a significantimpact, importantly on society
in the next five to ten yearsand how they might impact us on
(05:52):
the way we live and work.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
The most important emerging technology this year
and probably for the next fiveyears is, of course, generative
AI.
We're at an inflection pointand that's arisen in the last
maybe six months because peopletruly understand it because of
chat, gpt, but, more broadly,probably in the last 24 months,
is the introduction of largelanguage models or foundational
models that are built withtransformer architecture.
(06:14):
Basically, what that allowsanyone to do is to take these
pre-trained models like GPT-4 orBARD and to fine tune them with
your own data sets to createmodels that are incredibly
powerful for your own businessneeds, and that basically allows
you to skip technologicalgeneration because you can be as
(06:35):
good as your competitors thatwere that have been building
models for the last 20 years.
And that is the game changer,and the impact of it is honestly
quite hard to articulatebecause it's so expensive,
because, basically, the power ofAI is now in the hands of
non-technical people In theworld of marketing.
I'm thinking about it in sixareas at the moment that will
impact our ability to predictwhat will work, our ability to
(06:57):
plan things.
So, whether or not it's usingAI to create personas so that we
can interview our consumers tobuild better products In
production, it's having a hugeimpact and I'm sure we'll come
on to talk about that in moredetail about the creative
process from copywriting tocreating 3D models and so on,
performance, and that's actuallyimpacting websites and products
(07:19):
that we're developing acrosspersonalization and, of course,
process.
But basically AI is going to becompletely transforming the
existing businesses and creatingentirely new ones.
That's definitely interesting,but I think the societal impact
will actually come at theintersection of augmented
reality and AI the release ofapples, mixed reality, augmented
(07:43):
reality headsets.
That will have a much, muchbigger impact than AI on society
because really AI is going toimpact the world of work.
If we suddenly have atechnology which takes us off
our little mobile phones, whichhave literally taken away one
hand, like it's absolutely madthat we're going around with
only one hand available to likeyou live in, because one of them
(08:03):
always have a phone in them,that is going to completely
transform society.
It will usher in the nextcustomer experience, the next
way that we're communicating andinteracting online.
It will mean that we're able togenuinely interact with virtual
objects in the physical world.
That will be the biggest impactin the next decade.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Just touching on that .
So this is not a Metaversepodcast, but we've kind of we've
moved into the Metaverse.
I think one of the issues withthe friction point in Metaversal
and augmented reality adoptionis that friction between the
technology and the real world.
We had a taste with GoogleGlass a few years ago where
there was a limited frictionpoint, but everyone I talked to
that's a game and says look, ican't wear a headset for more
(08:45):
than a couple of hours and itdepends on the type of AR VR
that you're playing with.
That can make you quitedisoriented.
Do you think really, the tippingpoint will be when that
friction is removed?
I love that explanation thatyou've got only got one hand
free at the moment, if we've gotboth hands free, but we can see
what's happening in front of us.
I, as a futurist, i'm going toa blockchain event at EY later
(09:05):
today and I wish I could walkinto the room and scan the room
and technology could tell mewhich corner of the room I
should move to, because they'rethe more interesting people,
because of what it knows aboutme and the other delegates there
, without me having to put myphone up there.
Is it the friction point thatreally is stopping mass adoption
, societal change with theseaugmented technologies?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
The biggest myth about the Metaverse is that it's
virtual reality and it justisn't like.
I think of the Metaverse as 3Dreal time social experiences.
The most important experiencewill be the one where it is that
virtual overlay on the physicalworld which some people will
(09:45):
augment reality, some peoplecall mixed reality.
I love the idea of being ableto walk into a conference room
and be told where to go.
Chatgpt now stores all of yourpast conversations.
You will very quickly end upwith your personal ChatGPT.
It's conceivable that you'llhave that same month, like the
first 30 years of your life.
You'll have 60 years of yourlife and actually you'd walk
into that conference and itwouldn't just tell you where you
(10:07):
should go, to which corner.
Say, you've met these fivepeople before.
This is what you talked about.
this is sort of this is yourschool friend.
He might not recognize thatbecause he haven't seen them for
40 years.
And I think it's just going tobe absolutely extraordinary when
you layer on that AI layer withthe sort of image recognition
into mixed reality experiences.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Well, i must be an AI robot already, because in my
contact system I have about25,000 contacts I've collected
over the years going to allthese events.
I write notes and so there's anote in there about you that
packed me with a podcast today.
So if we catch up in a coupleof years time, oh, isabelle,
you're on my podcast.
And it's happened a couple oftimes that have been quite
arresting where someone has saidliterally do you know who I am?
I said yes, we did a jointlecture at TAFE in Sydney on
(10:48):
this day and he went how did youknow that?
Because I wrote it down.
But it is the power of recall.
I think you're right.
So, yeah, i'd love AI to beable to do that for me rather
than me writing down all hisnotes, but that's a whole other
story.
You mentioned their myths, sowhat's the biggest myth you've
heard about AI?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
AI is such a black box to so many people and so
hard to comprehend until chatTPP made it feel relatable
because it was very good ataddressing whatever you asked it
.
I think there are fewer mythsthan you would expect about AI.
The concept of AI hasn't beendictated by science fiction to
the degree that I think maybethe metaverse has.
(11:22):
The biggest myth, i think,around AI is that it will
replace our jobs in the nearfuture.
There is no doubt that it isgoing to disrupt the specifics
of tasks within a given role.
I think there are a handful ofroles that will be replaced very
quickly, for example, at depth.
(11:43):
I do think that sort of the roleof the QA, for example, is
something that AI will impactrelatively quickly.
It's a bit of a cliche in oursaying this.
I think it is true that youwon't be replaced by AI, but you
probably will be replaced bysomeone using AI.
Those people that learn how todo much better at their jobs
through this incredible newarray of tools are super
(12:05):
employees, and the wonderfulthing is that that is possible
to anyone who is curious or whois creative and who is thinking
with an open mind about how tocombine different applications
at the moment to createsomething and to make their
imagination a reality.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
You talk about curiosity as one of my favourite
subjects.
In fact, i'm writing a book atthe moment called Digitally
Curious, so I'm wondering whatadvice you'd have for people
listening to podcasts to staydigitally curious and lean
forward and understand all thesenew technologies.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I think the first thing to do is you should list
out your role, what you'retrying to achieve, the company
that you work in, and ask chatGPT what chat GPT thinks you
should do.
I listen to a lot of podcasts.
I personally find that you havea much broader reach of
opinions and voices than you dothrough online publications.
(12:55):
The other thing is that youshould be trying at least one
tool a week.
So I actually love GenerativeAI, which is a LinkedIn profile
on LinkedIn.
I think you have to understandhow it impacts your own process
and workflow And I would reallystrongly recommend finding a
partner or someone to work with,mapping out one of your common
(13:19):
workflows.
So, for example, within depth,we create a lot of content.
We've done a number ofworkshops well, we've mapped out
through from taking a brieffrom a client to cost estimates,
to coming up to creating ideas,creating content I'm pushing
that to paid media platforms andunderstanding which parts of
that process are the mostrepetitive and have data sets,
(13:42):
and then you know spending timewith people that are actually
able to automate some of that.
You should be curious withinyour own domain, because that's
what you're an expert in.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So check GPT.
we've mentioned multiple times,so what's the first thing you
asked to GPT?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
The first thing I ever asked to GPT was actually
to summarize a speech I wasgiving on whether or not AI
would replace people's jobs,because I needed a summary of it
for a spiel to introduce thelecture.
I'm sure that I'm not alone.
In the first conversation I hadwith chat to keep, it was about
AI.
What was yours?
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I think I asked asked who I was.
I want to see what I was in thecorpus and it actually said I'd
written two books I haven't andone, two awards that I haven't
either, which I'm very happyabout, but I can't fix it.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Well, there's that saying that, if you want to know
how good chat to you as you askit, something you know a lot
about And you know that's whenthe hallucinations start coming
out.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well, one of the prompts I'm going to be asking
my executives for next week isto ask it who it thinks their
competitors are, because youcould do a Google search, but I
think when you actually see itas if it's someone is typing it,
that's when the power comes,because, again, they all know
all I didn't realize thatcompany was a competitor.
What are the three or fourthings I should ask an executive
audience that have never usedchat GPT before to really see
(14:59):
the power of it?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
They should ask it to write a three year company
vision or strategy for theirindustry, perhaps relating to
how I will distract theirindustry, because I think it's
quite surprising how strategicthat can be.
You also probably want them tounderstand that it's really good
(15:22):
at research and at pointingpeople in the right direction,
and so you could say somethinglike what are the recent
discoveries in my field?
What are their priorityinitiatives within the company?
An example of why this isrelated to my role is I'm at the
moment, overseeing our debtwide global education program.
(15:46):
We're going to be running a lotof master classes.
We're going to be creatingvideos of those.
We need to be storing thosevideos somewhere.
Allowing people to sign up forsessions, allowing people to
give feedback and vote forsessions are important, and
we've been thinking about whereall of that content is held and
where that program is run, andthinking about notion or do we
use the sales force one or do weuse Google Drive?
(16:10):
Anyway, i just asked to have tobe teal us like, and it's
certainly four amazing productsthat Do exactly what we needed
it to do when I gave it a set ofrequirements that I have for
running an education program, soI would ask it to write a three
year vision or strategy fortheir specific industry.
I would ask it to set veryspecific requirements for a
(16:33):
priority initiative that they'rerunning and see what
suggestions chat to you.
And then the other thing that Ithink is so cool and what we do
is you can basically say, right, i am in this industry, this is
my customer, this is varioustraits and then interview, chat
(16:55):
to be teal us though it's yourtarget customer, and then you
get actually like incredibleresponses back that really make
you think about the types ofpriorities that people genuinely
have about your product.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So I want to link it back to advertising and
marketing and this is a linkhere.
so actually one of the promptsI'm going to ask my executives
because one of the businessesthey're involved in is the
retailers for DIY brands I'mgoing to ask them to write some
copy for a lawnmower and I wantthem to see how chat GPT would
actually for a particularlawnmower, to see how they would
sell it.
and so the question I want toask is where are we seeing
(17:27):
generally of AI start to impact?
and you alluded to acopywriting and the whole
process of marketing andadvertising.
Where will it enhance that andwill it be because we can do
multiple versions of copy fordifferent networks, different
channels, different personas,even down to one to one?
I mean, when I did my MBA, thepromise was we'd have one to one
marketing, but you can't docopy that's individualized
(17:48):
easily unless you scale that.
Will we see personalized copyand ads graphics for consumers
in the near future?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Short answer is yes, but we are limited by what the
paid media platform support youwill on own channels.
I'm sure CRM is about to bemassively turned on its head in
that respect and we've got somereally, really awesome cases,
actually in depth already, wherewe've been using GPT three for
(18:17):
the last three years to buildincredible personalization.
So, for example, for one beautyretailer who's been working
with them for the past six years, three years ago we started
introducing GPT three poweredpersonalization for Omni channel
comms It would be at your grill.
He's bought these two products.
we can anticipate that this isthe next product.
We will apply that across everysingle channel and we've drove
(18:39):
485% revenue uplift from email,292% click through rate uplift
from email and 66% row us uplifton social.
So Mad results and only goingto get more powerful.
So, yes, we will see more oneto one marketing.
The limitation will not be thetechnology, it will be.
Is the team ready to adapt toit as a paid media channels
(19:01):
ready to adapt to it?
is it worth the investment?
because actually you're sellinga lawn mower Like there's only
three reasons why you'd buy thatlawn mower you mentioned that
there's some of the roles evenwith your own company may be
disrupted.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
should creatives be afraid of generate AI or should
they learn to embrace it, andhow you seeing the reaction of
creatives in your ownorganization to these new tools?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Of course, i don't think they should be scared of
this and I actually think what'sbeen pretty extraordinary is
creatives and designers haveprobably been the fastest
adopters of AI within depth,because the applications they
use, like Adobe or figure orincreasingly stable diffusion of
the journey In bed AI intotheir workflow in a way which no
(19:44):
one's left wondering what theimpact will be.
and just to give you an exampleat depth, we have already, on
live client work, used it forvisualizing concepts, writing
slogans, identifying insightswhich might make the creating
more interesting, replacing stopimagery, upscaling images,
training models, 3d scripting,gaming mechanics, ai generated
(20:05):
storyboards, text to audio styletransfers, text to video.
I think, in general, everyone'sincredibly excited and has a
huge appetite to learn more.
I would love depth to be knownas a company where AI was really
embedded in the culture of like.
why you joined the company?
because you had the opportunityto learn from the best in the
(20:27):
industry in the generative AIcreative space.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Sounds like from the campaign.
You mentioned the use of AI.
You're the kind of pointy endof where AI can be used in
agencies.
I'm sure there are some peoplelistening today that are in a
more traditional agency andgoing, oh dear, we need to come
up to speed with this.
So how are you upscaling yourpeople?
is it just your role inemerging tech?
you mentioned masterclasses.
How does an organization, howdoes an agency, lift the
(20:51):
awareness of AI, then lift theengagement and the use of the
tools for best effect?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Well, i can only speak for the way depth has done
it, but we've, firstly, we'vetaken it very seriously.
I think we expect that 80% ofall of our roles will be in some
way disrupted by AI within thenext 24 months, and that means
you have to take it veryseriously.
But but that also we don't knowwhat the best use cases of
(21:19):
those will be without getting itin the hands of every role.
So, for example, we might findthat actually, hr is disrupted
by this most, and so we aretaking education incredibly
seriously.
We are rolling out sixinitiatives.
One of them is a series ofmasterclasses My goal is to do
at least 50 this year and makingsure that we have a masterclass
(21:42):
which addresses every singleperson's role.
So, for example, i need to workout what the AI masterclasses
that transforms the way we donew business outreach, for
example.
Right, not just the obvious,what.
How do you choose a model?
or how's copilot going toimpact developing?
And to do that, we have to, andhave identified individuals
(22:05):
across depth, across the fourdifferent crafts we have, so
engineering, growth, creativeand experience who can really be
, i guess, figureheads andleaders within the domain?
So, for example, there's thisincredible guy called Henry
Dahlberg.
As he's based in the US, he isreally leading the way on what
we can do with content creationAnd he has sort of owned what
(22:28):
the creative masterclassschedule looks like initially.
The only way to get a grip onquite how impactful this is is
to split it up into specificareas that people can own,
because otherwise it is totallyoverwhelming, because it's like
that film that won the Oscareverything everywhere all at
once.
So you have to find people thatalready know what they're
(22:50):
talking about and give them theplatform and the task of raising
the general level ofunderstanding and awareness.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
So something I'm writing about at the moment and
speaking to people on podcasts alot about is ethics and AI, and
in fact, this morning I justreleased a podcast which
addresses that subject directly.
So what ethical issues have youcome across already when it
comes to creating content withGenome of AI And what are your
concerns about ethical issuespositive or negative?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Perhaps to start with , what are my concerns?
Commercial companies with thevery best intentions will only
go so far, and that I think thatthe answer to this needs to be
through regulation, and I thinkthat's evidenced in things like
the fact that open AI wasoriginally established as an up
for profit.
If you look at Elon Musk, hefired the head of AI ethics at
(23:35):
Twitter, then wrote a lettersaying we needed to pause AI
development for six monthsbecause we didn't have a grip on
where it was going, and thenfounded an open AI competitor
about three weeks later.
Big picture industry wide.
We have to have governmentregulation and that has to be
multinational effort.
For a company like Debt Ialready mentioned RobiCop I
(23:55):
think we take being a goodcompany very seriously.
We're early on in establishing adigital ethics board.
We have an AI ethics code ofprinciples that addresses things
like what our view is on AI interms of growth, innovation, and
we're also establishingguardrails for the company to
(24:18):
follow across the blurred linesof legal ethics and information
security, and that addressespeople's questions like who owns
the creation of AI?
Can we profit from it?
Do we need to be aware ofnegative bias built into these
AI tools And how can we be awareof it?
What are the image rights So?
for example, can we useartificial images of celebrities
(24:39):
if they're not real photographs?
Do we need to pay someone forthe use of artificial humans in
images?
Do we need to disclose whenwe've used AI to our clients, to
public?
We surveyed all of thedebtsters around what they
thought about this.
People have also askedquestions like if I don't
participate in AI, will I berecommended?
There's a huge number ofethical questions to be
(25:00):
addressed Within depth.
We're trying to establish thoseguardrails.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I think every government around the world is
scrambling to find out how toregulate this, and the challenge
with any emerging technology isthe technology and the
disruptors move fast in theregulators.
I was interested recently theCompetition and Markets
Authority, the CMA, here in theUK.
They look at competitive issuesAre you being anti competitive?
And they put a paper outbasically saying is AI giving
people unfair advantage?
(25:24):
And I read that thinking it's abit like saying years ago, if
you didn't have a website, thenprobably you were disadvantaged
with someone that didn't couldsell products and services.
So how do we help theregulators?
I mean, you're in the marketing, advertising industry.
You have different industrybodies that represent you.
What does a body, does yourindustry, need to do to help the
regulators smooth this?
Because the issues you raisethere image rights, copyright,
(25:47):
using someone else's likenessthey're very, very compelling
issues And their issues I'm sureyou're facing every day as you
create campaigns and content.
How does the industry need toreact to this?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
The first thing, just only a point around does it
give an employer advantage?
I just like to address thatbecause It's not only is it like
having a company with a website, i think actually that's the
whole point And I think that'swhat's most exciting about AI,
and there was a study on theimpact on chat GPT And this is
(26:17):
very much the optimist view ofthis.
But AI will impact people thathave not had the best education
and have a bigger impact on whatthey are able to do.
If you look at it really simply, if English isn't your first
language and you're working in acompany where you're expected
to write fluent English, chatGPT has now completely sold that
(26:38):
for you And I think thatactually AI has given everyone
an equal advantage And that'swhy it's so incredible.
But to address the questionaround regulation I apologize,
this is kind of starting thequestion, but I actually think
I'm not best placed to answerthat, because it's like asking
the people that are pushing atthe bracket to rein themselves
(27:01):
in, and it's really hard to jumpbetween the mindset of how far
do we push this and how far istoo far, and I think that you
need that healthy frictionbetween the sort of the cynical
really prefer how I think are inquestion, and the people that
just want to embrace change.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
So what's the campaign you're most proud of
where you've been involved, andit's involved some sort of AI
technology.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
At depth.
We offer three things in thisspace.
So we build AI, we run AI andwe use AI.
And within building AI, theproject that I think I'm most
proud of from when they're indepth is the project that I
mentioned already, which wasusing personalization to drive
incredible results.
In terms of running AI, whatthat really means is we have ML
(27:48):
Ops teams who sit within clientscompanies and actually enable
them to fine tune their ownmodels or build their own models
from scratch.
We work with some of thelargest tech companies in the
world to do this And, as you canimagine, they are quite
confidential and I'll work withthem, but it's pretty
extraordinary to have helpedsome of the largest tech
(28:10):
companies in the world to alignall of their AI model
development And in terms ofusing AI, what we have done here
is a lot of the creativetechnology work we do So.
For example, we have builtmodels that have steered cargo
ships into dock.
We've built chatbots forFacebook, for business, that
reduce customer service requestsby 80%.
(28:30):
We've reduced the cost ofcreating assets for just by 400%
through automation and nowintegrating AI into QA, for
example, and I think the teamthat I work most closely with in
London has done some reallyincredible AI work, including
driving over 7 billion viewsfrom our AR and for ASOS and
(28:52):
also driving over a millionorders for just eat through AR.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
We've talked a lot about AI.
You're looking at emergingtechnology What's over the
horizon And you can't mentionthe word AI, web three,
metaverse, NFT or crypto.
What's a technology that'semerging that we haven't heard
about yet?
Speaker 2 (29:10):
So this question just makes me realise to what extent
I'm in an echo chamber on those.
I think one of the most amazingtechnological advancements that
I've seen recently and most ofthem are in biotech.
What it's worth is the factthat we're now exploring 3D
printing organs, So 3D printinglungs specifically.
(29:32):
I think there's over 140,000organ transplants a year
globally And that's probablyjust a fraction of the number of
organ transplants that weactually need, And the fact that
we're making such incredibleheadway into growing organs is
absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
How do you keep up to date with all the latest things
that are happening?
There's only so many hours inthe day.
How do you stay up to date withthis compelling, fascinating
world of emerging technology?
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I'm very lucky to work with colleagues who keep me
in check.
I definitely have collectivesthat are groups of people, so
there's about 500 people indifferent AI collectives around
the company where we have areally healthy debate and
culture of sharing inspirationand articles and prototypes.
So that's immensely valuable.
And we've actually built an AItool called Depdaly which
(30:22):
surveys all of the industry newsto send four important updates
every day And that was like anearly use of AI within the
company.
And then in terms of where Iactually read, so to be honest,
i don't have enough sources ofnews, but there's so much out
there that I kind of rely onthings I really trust.
So news articles likeStratekery.
I love Andrew Sthorovitz'scontent.
(30:44):
I really love MIT TechnologyReview because it has a pretty
bleeding edge coverage of thetechnologies which will impact
depth and our industry perhapsin a year or two.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yeah, shout out to MIT Technology Review.
I've been subscribing to thatfor years and it really is.
It's well written.
It's the economist of thetechnology world, I would say.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, it's absolutely phenomenal And they're doing
some really really good coverageon AI and chat GPT, which are
great, because chat GPT isobviously, so I just rate that
they're covering it, even thoughit's almost part of culture now
.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
So if you were someone about to leave school
and wanted to look atadvertising marketing as a
career, i'm sure a few years agoyou and I would have given them
different advice about thosesort of subjects they might want
to study or where they shouldlook.
What's the advertisingmarketing intern executive of
the future?
What skills do they need tocome to depth with, and where
are you seeing that you'resourcing talent from, and are
(31:41):
they AI ready?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I think what AI will do is turn more people into
strategists.
If you look at the role of adeveloper and how that is
changing with AI, it is highlylikely that developers will code
less and act like productmanagers more over the next few
(32:04):
years, because tools likevarious co-pilots will do the
actual programming fordevelopers.
That is probably going to bereflected in a lot of different
roles that you might typicallyfind in the technology and
marketing agency.
So for a creative, actually,you will no longer necessarily
(32:28):
need a designer and a creativeand a copywriter and a motion
designer to work in a small team.
You might have one creativewho's comfortable using a
combination of mid-journey andthe next evolution of chat dpt
to own the full creative process.
And with that in mind, i thinkthat an intern coming into debt
(32:49):
or an entry-level role needs tohave the ability to think
strategically, to be veryautonomous, to be curious in
investigating and experimentingand also, really importantly,
critical thinking, because weare heading into a world where
(33:12):
Genetic AI is basically made anabundance of creativity and it's
important for individuals to beable to assess what the real
value and where the line oftruth lies and to be able to
think critically about that.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
I love talking to my podcast guests because you
always make me think and as youwere talking there, i was
thinking about your answer and Iactually wrote down creative
thinking as a skill.
It sounds like we're going toneed more thinkers and less
doers, because the doing will bedone for us.
That's not such a bad thing,because I would like to think
that AI will remove the moneyuteof some of our roles and we can
think more creatively, but thatmeans we're going to have to
(33:50):
educate, design, promote,encourage people to think
creatively.
I would argue that some of thetools we have today remove that
because it does it for us.
Suzie Allegrae, who was also onthe podcast we need time to
think There, was famous I thinkit was attributed to Steve Jobs
who said that if all thesewebsites and social media
networks were around 30 yearsago, nothing would have been
(34:10):
developed because we've all beendistracted.
I love the link between Suzie'spodcast and yours because we
need the time and the power tothink, because some of the
moneyute will be done for us.
Maybe that's a good thing.
What are you most lookingforward to about AI in the next
five years?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Studio 10, which is IKEA's mini emerging tech think
tank, almost released thisbrilliant video, which
highlighted the fact that we areheading to a period of great
abundance of generation, and intimes of abundance, new forms of
scarcity arise, and their pointwas that creativity is going to
be the most valuable skill setin the next five years.
(34:46):
And they do this brilliantparallel with the introduction
of the camera in sort of the1800s, and how?
because that could capturereality.
It meant that the role of anartist that had basically just
become capable of painting inphotorealistic detail was
(35:06):
completely disrupted and itspawned modern art as we know it
, and I think that we will see asimilar shift with the
introduction of AI, hopefully inthe next five years.
Maybe it'll take a generationwhere the role of a creative is
turned on its head, because wehave those tools at our
(35:27):
fingertips and it's impossibleto say right now what that will
look like.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
So exciting times ahead.
One of our final questionsbefore we go to the quickfire
round What's next for generativeAI in the marketing and
advertising space?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Generative AI is going to completely disrupt our
workflow.
I think I've mentioned alreadyso many different ways in which
it's changing the creativeprocess, but it's also going to
completely disrupt the way thatwe are building websites and
applications and products forconsumers to engage on.
And that is because, withindepth, my colleague, bob Brisky
(36:02):
I mentioned already has coined aterm semantic linking to define
the way we're going to beturning relationships on their
heads in the way that we'rebuilding these things, because
we are no longer buildingproducts that are basically
linked through keywords orthrough hyperlinks.
We can build maps ofunderstanding.
(36:23):
It's going to completelytransform the way we're building
recommendation engines.
It's going to transform the waywe're doing search and
discovery on websites.
It's going to transform the waythat we can build content
marketing understanding thehistory of a customer's
interactions with a given brand.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
So we're almost out of time.
We're now to my favorite partof the show, the quickfire round
, where we learn a little bitmore about our guests.
So are you ready?
Yes, iphone or Android, iphoneWindow or aisle Window In the
room or in the metaverse In theroom.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Sorry, metaverse.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Your biggest hope for this year and next.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
This year I hope that depth becomes known for
cultivating a industry leadingculture for AI education amongst
our depthsters, and next year Ihope that the Apple headset
comes out and transforms the waythat we build applications.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I wish that AI could do all of my laundry.
The app you use most on yourphone.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
WhatsApp.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
The best piece of advice you've ever received.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
People who have incredible attitude and terrible
attitude need all the trainingin the world.
People who have incredibleattitude and attitude need all
the responsibilities in theworld.
And people with incredibleattitude and a terrible attitude
a poison ivy And you just haveto get rid of them on your team.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
What are you reading at the moment?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I've just finished Robert K Massey's Nicholas and
Alexandra, which is a book aboutthe last emperor and empress of
Russia, and I've just startedMiss Pettigrewd's for a day
after a chat.
GPT recommendation based onother books that I like.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Who should I invite next onto the podcast?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
A friend called Marie Yerkovich who is working in
biotech on a team set up byJeffrey von Boltson.
I'm looking into the sort oforal dispensation of medicine.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
And how do you want to be remembered?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
As a really good mum, but also doing things that have
never been done before.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
So, as this is the actionable futures podcast, what
three actionable things shouldour audience do today when it
comes to better understandingthe opportunities and threats
from AI?
Speaker 2 (38:23):
First thing, ask chat GPT the same question with
specifics about your role andthe company that you work in.
Second thing, plot your typicalworkflows and identify the
areas with a lot of data.
Or, even better, ask the mosttechnically minded person in
your company to spend a weekperforming all of the different
roles within that workflow towork out how they could be
(38:44):
automated away, and spend threehours reading about this in a
number of sort of examplewebsites that I've already
mentioned and choosing one toola week to try.
That applies to something thatyou do in your role.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Isabel, a fascinating discussion.
You've got an amazing role.
How can people find out moreabout you and your work?
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Best places to follow me or add me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
Thanks, isabel, great discussion and thanks so much
for your time today.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Thank you so much, Andrew.
Really really lovely to chat.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Thank you for listening to the actionable
futurist podcast.
You can find all of ourprevious shows at
actionablefuturistcom and if youlike what you've heard on the
show, please considersubscribing via your favorite
podcast app so you never miss anepisode.
You can find out more aboutAndrew and how he helps
(39:34):
corporates navigate a disruptivedigital wealth, with keynote
speeches and C-suite workshopsdelivered in person or virtually
at actionablefuturistcom.
Until next time, this has beenthe actionable futurist podcast.
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