August 18, 2025 • 42 mins
The game has changed. For over a decade, marketers mastered the art of climbing Google's rankings. But with the rise of AI Overviews and conversational search, the classic "10 blue links" are fading. We're in a new era where answers are synthesized and clicks are no longer the primary goal.
How can brands survive ...and thrive... in this new landscape? Host Nick Brunker welcomes back VML's Chief Discoverability Officer, Heather Physioc, who is on the front lines guiding global brands through this evolution.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- The End of an Era: What Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode mean for the future of search.
- The "Zero-Click" Threat: Why website traffic is declining and how to adapt your measurement strategy when clicks and rankings are no longer the key metrics.
- Becoming the Source: Practical steps to build authority and create content that AI engines will trust and cite.
- The Marketer's Playbook: A three-part plan for what to do immediately, what to test in the near term, and the strategic pivots to plan for long-term success in the age of AI.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nick Brunker (00:02):
Hi, everyone, and welcome to human centered. I'm
Nick Brunker, a managingdirector of experience strategy
at VML and your host for theshow. Thanks for giving us a
listen. Today, we're tacklingone of the biggest shifts in
digital marketing in over adecade, the rise of AI powered
search. For years, we'veunderstood the game.
Create great content, optimizefor keywords, and you'll climb
the rankings. But what happenswhen the game fundamentally
(00:25):
changes? With Google rolling outAI overviews and a new AI mode,
the classic 10 blue links are nolonger the finish line. We're
entering an era ofconversational, synthesized, and
hyper personalized answersdelivered directly on the
results page. This changes thevery definition of what it means
for a brand to be discoverableonline.
(00:46):
To help us navigate this newlandscape, I'm thrilled to
welcome back our good friend andVML's chief discoverability
officer, Heather who is, asalways, on the front lines
guiding global brands throughthis exact evolution. Heather,
welcome back to the show. Greatto see you.
Heather Physioc (01:01):
Hey. Thank you so much for having me back. Good
to be here.
Nick Brunker (01:04):
And you are probably as busy as anybody in
our agency these days. It feelslike this is just a wild time
for all of us, but especiallyfor you. How how has it been
managing the chaos?
Heather Physioc (01:15):
I mean, it's my kind of busy. Right? It's the
best kind of problem to have.You know, our industry, we have
always kind of lived on theedges of the world of AI before
it was cool and so accessible tothe end users. But now that it's
really here, everybody'sknocking on our door, and they
wanna talk about, alright.
Great. How do we navigate thisnew future?
Nick Brunker (01:36):
For marketers and CX pros, this can feel like the
ground shifting beneath ourfeed. I can tell you I'm feeling
that. So let's start there withfundamentals. Google's rolling
out major changes. It's beenhappening pretty regularly over
the last handful of months, ifnot longer.
Specifically things we'rehearing about called AI
overviews, AI mode. For thosethat aren't living and breathing
this every day, can you breakdown what's happening?
Heather Physioc (01:57):
Yeah. Yeah. So I've been doing this since 2008
is when I first started focusingon search in a dedicated way.
And that was right as Google wasbecoming the biggest website on
earth. And it has sustained thatdominance with more than 90% of
global market share for thefifteen, now going on twenty
(02:18):
years that I've been working insearch.
And so in that time, it becamesynonymous with search. But now
with this massive shift in AIand AI search, LLMs, and that
stuff is just coming to life ina way that is not just behind
the scenes and the algorithms,but in a way that the consumers
(02:38):
can touch. Well, you have tofundamentally rethink search and
discoverability at large. It canno longer be synonymous with
Google. So for the first time,and as long as I've been doing
this, Google's dominance isactually under threat in a new
way.
That space is gettingfragmented. There are all these
different platforms that areclaiming to either be search
(02:59):
engines or have better searchfeatures. And in many ways,
that's true. So if I had to boilit down into a nutshell, we're
seeing changes in where peoplesearch, how people search, and
what they expect to receive andexperience when they do. And as
a result, they are permanentlychanging their search habits and
(03:24):
expectations.
Nick Brunker (03:25):
Hit on the user behavior because that's already
changing. You're just, like,pulling on that thread a little
bit. How are people searchingdifferently now that these tools
are available and also, becomingmuch more democratized, as you
mentioned, with othercompetitors coming in? Are they
asking longer, moreconversational questions? Talk
about that behavior.
Heather Physioc (03:43):
Absolutely. So there's a few things that I see
happening here. One is thissearching forward kind of
behavior. If you think about thelast twenty years of search not
having changed very much, youtype something into a box or you
even say something into a box.And you get back 10 blue links,
and you have to go click one,read through it, digest a bit of
(04:04):
information, try to understandit, commit it to memory, maybe
integrate it into whateverproblem you're trying to solve.
And then you have to go back tothe search engine, do it again
Mhmm. For another query, go alittle bit back, forth, back,
forth, back, forth. Right?That's not always the most
efficient, effective way to findthe information that you need or
(04:24):
accomplish the tasks that youneed to accomplish. So we've
always known that people didn'treally want a search engine.
They wanted an answer engine.And now that moment has finally
arrived. So we are changing ourexpectation of what we expect
that search result to do for us.We expect it to solve a lot more
of our problem. And as a result,and as marketers, we're seeing
(04:48):
that discovery to research andcomparison, a lot of that manual
lifting where you saw people goback, forth, back, forth.
They're doing it in a forwardmotion because they can ask all
of those questions at once togive those, AI and LLM search
products a lot of contextupfront and very specific
(05:11):
instructions on what they wannaget back. So it's synthesizing
it, and we are learning toexpect that and demand that of
our search products.
Nick Brunker (05:18):
Let's talk about visibility because clearly
everybody is still wrestlingwith what does it mean. We're
gonna talk about marketer'splaybook in a bit. We'll talk
about the future of of theindustry a little bit more
in-depth in a bit. But I thinkwe'll just start there with this
new AI layer that's starting toat least in Google as kind of
the the main port of call for alot of folks in search. You're
(05:39):
seeing that AI engine, that AIlayer opening up above
traditional results.
What does that mean for brandstrying to get noticed? If is
ranking even still number one,as as a goal? Tell me more about
that.
Heather Physioc (05:50):
Yeah. I really struggle with the idea of of of
rankings as a metric of searchsuccess anymore, at least not
alone and in a silo. Theyshouldn't have been before
anyway. But now I think we needto fundamentally rethink how we
measure search success, whatthat even means. We have to
consider what metrics are partof the impact of discoverability
(06:11):
that perhaps weren't beforealong the full end to end
customer journey.
So before we were focusing oneyeballs, clicks, traffic,
conversions, right? Like thatwas the whole economy of the
web. And now the availability ofthose has decreased. Like far
fewer people are clickingthrough these search results and
(06:35):
these AI answers to thedestination where it consumed
that information.
Nick Brunker (06:42):
Mhmm.
Heather Physioc (06:43):
So if you are only measuring search and
discoverability in the same wayswe used to, you're only thinking
about Google, you're onlythinking about websites, and
you're only thinking aboutclicks. And that is the tiny
fraction of what search lookslike now. So all that traffic,
all that visibility, it lookslike it's tanking for a lot of
brands. Okay, so that's partone. That's the scary part.
(07:06):
What about the good part? Thatalso means this fragmentation,
this changing search landscapewhere people expect to find
information in different formatsof different kinds at different
moments in their journey. Thatmoment's finally here, And that
means there's this wealth of newplaces and real estate and parts
of the discovery experience thatwe can be a part of Mhmm. And
(07:29):
that we can influence and wherewe can help our customers and
serve new needs and meet theirexpectations on a higher level
than we could before. I findthat quite exciting.
I don't know about you, Nick.
Nick Brunker (07:39):
Yeah. And that's I was listening to another podcast
because I know you and I areboth big podcast junkies.
There's a great one, and I haveno connection to them whatsoever
to be completely clear. It'scalled Acquired, and they just
did and most of their episodesare multi hour long episodes,
and they they go deep, they tonsof research. They talk about a
lot of different companies.
Definitely worth a listen if youhaven't. And hopefully, they'll
(08:01):
they'll maybe listening to thisshow. Who knows? Maybe one day.
Get them on the program.
The the thought there is thatthey went into, you know, a deep
history of Google. And as I waslistening to some of the things
that were happening back in the,you know, mid nineties, late
nineties as as really even in aslate as the early two thousands
when it was still just a glimmerin in the two founders eyes,
(08:24):
Some of the things that I'mhearing, I'm I'm almost they're
not one to one exactly withwhat's going on right now, but
I'm like, that sounds verysimilar to a lot of the
wrestling that's happening inthis exact moment, and and you
hit on one that I'm justfascinated by. That's the
concept of zero click searches,which you hit perfectly on the
head. It's terrifying formarketers because it completely
(08:45):
upends a, how we're measuringsuccess, but also then Dave
Altus, who's another friend ofthe show and one of our chief
creatives, he and I spent a apodcast episode talking about,
well, if Google provides or gemGemini in their form or Claude
or any of the other programs assynthesizing the answer, and
there is no incentive or less ofan incentive to click through to
(09:08):
a brand's website, how do wethink about what the role of
that channel is?
And I just find it fascinating.How how do you think, from your
perspective, should we would beshould we be thinking about that
challenge?
Heather Physioc (09:20):
You're right. There are so many similarities
to the beginning of my searchcareer where we're trying to
understand how Google worked andhow Google returned and rewarded
information. And we're seeingthat same sort of exciting Wild
West degree of discoveryhappening right now. And it very
quickly moved into the producingmasses and masses of junk. I
(09:41):
remember that happened fifteen,twenty years ago.
Yeah. And then eventually theplatforms go, okay, if we want
people to keep using us, webetter clean up the mess and
learn how to differ betweenquality experiences or accurate
information and bad experiencesand inaccurate information.
(10:01):
You're seeing that rate ofchange. Exponential right now in
these AI platforms becausethat's the level they're
competing on is to earn the thetrust and adoption of more and
more and more of Google'saudience. Google themselves is
the incumbent trained to competeto retain that that type of
customer.
(10:22):
And the next frontier of this isis trust, is quality, is
accuracy, in my opinion. And soas far as, you know, what is the
role of a website? What is therole of all these things that
we've invested all this time in?Video and and social and email.
What is the value of all thesethings?
Well, all of that is sourcematerial that can be spun up in
(10:45):
real time for any query in anycontext in a hyper personalized
way for any person at any time.That is the source material that
enables those answers. And we'restarting to see more and more
testing in the field. We'regetting more and more access to
information and more will comethat will give us more
intelligence and insight on howto harness this better. But I'm
(11:08):
telling you, the first place Iwould recommend anybody who
cares about this is go talk toyour search team.
They anticipated, and they sawthis moment coming.
Nick Brunker (11:15):
That's where you come in. So now that we
understand the seismic shift,the million dollar question,
what do we actually do about it?And I'm sure you're getting
inundated as we talked about offthe top with questions of
alright. So what does that mean?What do we do?
You're on the front lines ofthis. And the benefit is you
touch some of the biggest brandsin the world as we all do at
VML. You to an even largerextent as a broad leader across
(11:37):
the agency. What are some of thebiggest and most urgent
questions you're getting fromour marketing partners as they
try to evolve this crazylandscape that we're in?
Heather Physioc (11:47):
Yeah. I mean, of the big ones I'm getting
multiple times per week rightnow is, you know, how much
should I be pivoting my SEO ormy, other digital marketing
channels into AI search? Like,how much should I just drop
everything and run-in thedirection of this? Right? And I
say you do absolutely need toactively plan for AI investment.
(12:13):
You do need to anticipate it iscoming whether you like it or
not. The degree to which and themanner in which it affects you
and your business does depend onwhat sector you're in. I think
this is going to affect thehealth care sector where there
is a very critical need fortrust and dependency and
(12:34):
accuracy that is like lifeLiterally. Threatening, if not.
Right?
That is one experience. Butlet's just say you are, an
automotive brand, for example,and that's usually a very long
sales cycle. And there are a lotof very specific criteria that
are unique to your situation andyour household that you need to
(12:55):
consider. And that thattypically used to take a lot of
different steps to to researchthat. But now I can kinda figure
out everything I need and askfor more of my search engine.
Nick Brunker (13:06):
Mhmm.
Heather Physioc (13:06):
And so they're they're gonna be going out to to
find that information for SafeFrance. Okay. So back to the
question of how much should Iinvest in it? Yes, you should.
Don't drop everything because itis still very much a nascent
space.
I kind of advise them to thinkabout take your discoverability
or your organic search budget,bump it up a little and carve
(13:27):
out like 15% of what I wouldcall like a test and learn, AI
search, LLM search, test andlearn budget. So your
discoverability experts can beout there actually trying the
searches that people are likelyto be doing using these tools
and identify where they'regetting that information and how
(13:48):
we can show up there.
Nick Brunker (13:50):
Let's dig into to one of those concerns too that
that you brought up, and that'sthat's content. Because we hear
a lot about the need forcomprehensive content, writing
for AI comprehension. Let's talkabout a couple of things. One,
what does that mean in practice?And two, how is creating content
to be featured in AI summariesdifferent from the classic SEO
(14:12):
model that we you've all beenaccustomed to for all these
years?
Heather Physioc (14:15):
Right now, there are many, many
similarities. It's notidentical, but the overlap, the
intersect's humongous. But thereare kind of a few areas that are
well known to search alreadythat I feel quick and confident
are going to become ofincreasing importance to be able
to perform an AI search. Soregardless of what industry
(14:36):
they're in, when it comes tothat content, it's not just
about answering it really,really well. You know, I think
that's super, super important.
But then there's also you haveto anticipate and answer the
questions they haven't thoughtto ask yet. You have to consider
more of the contextual scenarioswhere customers have problems or
needs or jobs to be done thatyou can address with that
(14:58):
product. That has to comethrough in the content more in
order to be sourced as usableanswers. And then part two of
that is going back to that trustand accuracy and credibility. A
good answer is one thing, but agood answer from a trusted
source, that is going to becomeincreasingly important just
because how hard we're combatingmisinformation and
disinformation and AIhallucination.
(15:20):
The winner of the AI war will bethe one that people can count on
for information that makes themlook good, not makes them look
stupid.
Nick Brunker (15:27):
Right.
Heather Physioc (15:27):
Or that creates a bunch of work that they have
to go research and fact checkfurther because they can't
trust. Those signals of trust,signals of authenticity,
humanity, credibility,reliability, those matter. Those
will matter more.
Nick Brunker (15:40):
Let's talk more about that trust angle. We we've
seen examples where AI,especially lately, is still
working out the kinks for lackof a better word. They're
hallucinating. How can a brandbuild its authority to become
the trusted source for the AIengine? Because under
understandably, just like in theold days, well, how do I rank
number one?
Well, there are a lot of tacticsand sometimes underhanded ones
(16:02):
where they make, you know, textwhite and hidden, but yet it was
being able to be crawled as akeyword. And I'm sure there's a
lot of that that sort of like,you know, experimentation to try
to figure out how can I be thethe answer in AI? What what's
the risk? And clearly, it's highif their brand gets
misrepresented in one of thesesummaries. So really a two
parter there.
(16:22):
How do you become the trustedsource? And if you do it wrong,
what's the risk look like?Because it's gotta be big.
Heather Physioc (16:30):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's bigger for the AI
platforms right now, I think,than the content producers at
the moment. Sure seems likeanyway. But I think that dynamic
will change because theseplatforms will start to correct
for that in order to protecttheir own reputations and
increase adoption of their toolsjust like Google had to compete
with Yahoo and before them, askJeans.
(16:51):
But right now we are entering anew black hat era. We are in
this, again, nascent space wherewe're experimenting. We're
trying stuff. We're tinkeringbehind the scenes and just
seeing what works out there. Andso there's this new wave of
black hat thinkers, some of themnefarious, but many of them just
curious scientists
Nick Brunker (17:11):
Right.
Heather Physioc (17:12):
Who are out there trying to figure out how
the machine works. There's noguidebook to this, just like
Google couldn't just expose thealgorithm. And with good reason,
you know, marketers will go outthere and exploit it instantly.
So we do have to put in morework to better understand how
these things are going work. Andthe only way to really do that
is to get in there and starttrying things and use good sound
(17:33):
judgment like we always had to.
Play the long game, considerwhat it is your customer's
trying to do, try to do theright thing. But you're asking,
well, how do we createcredibility? How do we signal
credibility? And it reminds meof when Google started to
correct for their flood of spamand junk content and white on
white text. And they were like,okay, what does quality mean?
(17:55):
How do we know what should benumber one and what should sink
further down? What were thesignals? You might see things
back then like a .org, a dotdomain is a .gov domain at the
time might have been a signal ofmore credible content. Like
that's a named body that isofficial in some capacity that
(18:19):
in theory has some position ofauthority on the topic. That
might be a signal.
But what about also right now,it's so easy to create these
fake personalities, fake AIpeople, fake voices, fake AI,
everything, and put junk contentand just pretend you're an
expert for eyeballs and clicks.People are having to sift
through that and that's gonnaget old. That's gonna get old
real fast. And so they're gonnabe looking for signs of
humanity. And that means realpeople, real names, real
(18:42):
experts, real credentials,citations.
There should be something expertabout that. And especially, we
were talking about healthearlier, especially in those old
YMYL or your money, your lifeMhmm. Fields that we already
know about from SEO. It's gonnabe health, wealth, and other
(19:05):
important things that, like, ifif they go horribly wrong,
you're really gonna hurtsomebody. Yeah.
Credibility is gonna be at theforefront of those categories in
particular.
Nick Brunker (19:14):
Gosh. It's it's wild. And then you get into the
more nuts and bolts business.We'll just pick on the wealth
example for a minute. But it'sat the business level, a time
where I think perhaps as potentas it has been in in many years,
being able to prove the value ofthe investments that you're
making, whether you're on theagency side like we are, or
(19:36):
whether you're on the clientside trying to, you know,
validate that this investmentthat I'm gonna make is gonna
help the business move forward.
And so I can create a a soundbusiness case for my my
leadership if it goes all theway up through the CFO or
otherwise. And with that comesthe concern of, well,
measurement. Are we actuallyinvesting in things that are
(19:57):
going to drive our business? Andif clicks and rankings are
becoming I don't know if lessreliable is the right word, but
definitely a different sort ofmeasurement framework. How does
success get measured and whatshould be on a marketer's
dashboard today to reallyunderstand the visibility and
the impact that's gonna happenin this new landscape?
Heather Physioc (20:18):
I mean, it's the question we're all probably
asking. And we're, you know,aggressively trying to find that
answer and crafting that answerin real time. You know? But a
few things that we're we'rethinking about as we do this and
help the big brands navigate itis a more just a whole view of
discoverability. So if SEO is 1%of 1% of what discoverability
(20:39):
does, rankings and traffic andeyeballs is 1% of 1% of what we
do.
We need to better articulate thebreadth and depth of what
discoverability really means.Customers are not searching in a
linear fashion. They are notstaying within a single
platform. Discovery organicallyis possible across all of these
(21:02):
searchable surfaces. Ipso facto,Nick.
Ipso facto, like,discoverability used to be a
very conversion focused, lowerfunnel thinking type of thing.
Mhmm. Now discoverability ishappening in the TikToks and
Pinterest of the world all theway down to the Amazons and the
b to b sales of the world. Sodiscoverability is now important
(21:24):
at every stage of a customer'sjourney. And it's
discoverability in whateverplatforms they decide to use
across that journey.
That means that we we can'tafford to ignore it. If they're
like, what do I do I even wannabe doing this for AI? Like,
should I even be playing thisgame? The answer is if you
(21:46):
don't, they will. Like yourcompetitors your competitors
will.
Nick Brunker (21:50):
Yep.
Heather Physioc (21:51):
Just like back in the day on search, it's like,
yeah, you could choose to notexist online, but I'm telling
you, this is where it's going.Discovery is going here. We're
in that same thing in this newera. And I think, again, going
back to customer expectationschanging. They are going to
like, Google's dominance isprojected to continue for the
foreseeable future.
(22:11):
Mhmm. But for the first timeit's under threat, you are going
to see more and more peopleadopt these features and learn
to expect where theirinformation will come from in
these features, these AIoverviews and so on. So if
you're not there, who will be?And the information that shows
up when people ask about yourbrand, is it gonna be what you
(22:32):
would like it to say and reflectabout your brand, or are you
gonna leave that narrative up toeverybody else to
Nick Brunker (22:39):
Mhmm.
Heather Physioc (22:39):
To define?
Nick Brunker (22:40):
No doubt. And another fascinating aspect of
the marketers playbook of todayis around the idea of
personalization, largely drivenby AI in some capacity or
another, or at least that'sthat's the buzzy buzzword of the
day. Going back to search as anexample, what I think you were
pulling on earlier was it'sfascinating. If two people are
(23:01):
gonna ask the exact samequestion into, you know, AI tool
du jour, they may very well getdifferent AI generated answers
based on their history andcontext because as you
mentioned, context is so key. Soas a brand expert, somebody
working to try and help marketproduct services overall
(23:21):
companies and brands.
How can you possibly plan ortrack performance in an
environment where same question,two different people, many
different contexts, andultimately have to solve answers
for both of them and all ofthem?
Heather Physioc (23:35):
Right. It's a bit of an algorithm in itself.
Just compiling like, okay. Theseare the parts of this person's
question. This is what I knowabout this person.
Therefore, I need to grab this,this, this, and this this piece
to be most likely an answer tothat kind of answer. So our job
is to just get really expert tofigure out what the most likely
answer to that question is forevery brand. But I also think
(23:56):
about our search intelligencethinking and why it can't just
be keyword research. We need tocontextualize what we're seeing
in search demand data, not justaround search volume, but when
you map like queries, even whenpeople use different language,
but like queries with similarmeaning or similar intent, can
we understand those human beingsand the scenarios they're in? Or
(24:18):
the use cases that they'reexperiencing or the jobs that
they have to be done?
Can we extract that humanunderstanding from the search
data and consider, like a human,what they would do when they go
to Google? We still have Googledata. Google's data is still
readily available, stilldominant, still tells us a ton.
Google takes the search andreturns the AI overview. That is
(24:41):
important.
That's what starts the dialogue.
Nick Brunker (24:44):
Yeah.
Heather Physioc (24:44):
We can learn so much from it. So really, it's
just understanding theexperiences that they're having
and making sure we serve contentand experiences that meet them
where they are. So that sort ofpiece of this remains true Mhmm.
No matter what technology keepscoming out.
Nick Brunker (24:59):
Right. The human need is is the same. They they
just want the answers to theirquestions and what's the best
method, most effective path forsomebody who's looking for the
answer to get the answer, which,you know, it again, it's why it
always comes back to what's thehuman need in this? Like, how
are you gonna solve what thehuman needs? Which is fun
because it's at a time whereeverybody's trying to figure
(25:20):
out, well, how can we injectthis technology into our our
life versus just saying, well,what's what's the problem you're
actually trying to solve?
I don't need the drill. I needthe hole as the old adage would
go. One of the other things thatcomes up quite a bit in some of
the conversations I'm having,and I think, you know, a lot of
us are probably having cuts ofthe same cloth. When I'm
(25:40):
creating content and oh, let'sjust keep it to websites for
now, but you could argue thatthat it's across the ecosystem.
The juxtaposition of I needed tobe memorable, immersive, and
meaningful, while also beingsuper pragmatic that it's
written in a way or presented ina way that the AI algorithms can
(26:01):
recognize it and ultimately feedit back in their answer keys.
Heather Physioc (26:05):
Yeah. It it's like a major escalation of the
whole inbound outbound dynamicshift. Right? Yeah. You have
your outbound push marketing,cool campaigns, memorable
experiences that you're pushingout to the world, and hopefully
people love them.
I think that still matters.Like, creativity, award winning
creativity, absolute freakinglutely still matters because
however they arrive at yourbrand or your experience or your
(26:29):
creative, that is an interactionpoint with you. That's essential
to get right. It's not alwaysthe discovery mechanism, though.
Sometimes it's the payoff.
So when I think of our role indiscoverability, one, it's to
look at the information and go,okay, what are people searching
for or experiencing that willgive us these moments for that
(26:51):
brilliant creative or campaignto intercept? How do we support
them and augment them, optimizethat creative to be there in the
moment the person searches topay that off? So really, think
if we're looking ahead, iflooking we're into the future,
what does this mean forcreative? What does this mean
for discoverability? What doesthis mean for all of us?
(27:12):
It's time to connect the pipes.It's time to connect those
pipes. These things aren'texisting as separate channels
and silos in the answers. And sothe brands or the agencies that
behave in those silos, thinkwe'll lose. I think the ones who
will compete and stay relevantand be able to play in this
dynamic space are the ones whobehave dynamically and connect
(27:33):
with one another across thesedisciplines to make all of them
work harder together.
Nick Brunker (27:37):
And you're segueing perfectly perfectly to
where I wanted to go next asusual, the future of
discoverability. And we'vecovered a lot of what's going on
right now, talked a little bitabout the near, and love to zoom
out a little bit as much as wecan in a world where it's
seemingly like every weekthere's something new. The
technology is just crazy fast.Looking ahead, we're hearing
(28:01):
things about those more advancedcapabilities that are on the
horizon. Obviously, agents havebecome even more prevalent as
they advance AgenTeq AI, whichis different but similar in some
ways to to agents versus AgenTeqdeep search that can actually
compete tasks for users.
So give us a sneak peek aboutwhat is coming into the pipe and
(28:23):
how that's gonna change the gameeven more.
Heather Physioc (28:24):
Yeah. We are definitely hot on the trail of
agentic search and agentic AIpossibilities. And so that's
next on the horizon for us.We're very excited about the
possibilities of all of this forcontent supply chain, not just
in the, you know, how much morecan we produce, how much faster,
(28:47):
how much better, but also whatit means for the new kinds of
content that we will be able tocreate to be discovered. That's
that's exciting.
Our our nerds, our our algorithmnerds are very excited for all
the new features that they canreverse engineer and test and
experiment with and get techywith. But but I think the real
magic about this is that thiswe're not gonna be experts in,
(29:13):
like, the technical aspects ofoptimizing things to get found.
That's great. That's gonna becontinue to be a tiny fraction
of what we do, the SEO piece ofit Yep. Or GEO, as some are
calling it, generative engineoptimization.
That's that's more like aproduct or or or a service that
we do. I think the real value ofdiscoverability is understanding
(29:36):
that human need and behavior andresponding to it. That inbound
thing where we say, hey, weheard you. We see you. And we're
gonna deliver on that thing thatyou need in the moment that you
need it because we've taken thetime to understand how you're
probably gonna go about findingit.
It should feel like that.
Nick Brunker (29:55):
And I think the other thing that's really
exciting about the space, andI'm sure you're just as excited
as I am about it, it feels evenbigger than SEO evolution at its
core or even the paid searchinitiative as Google really
started to monetize the space.It almost underpins the the
critical importance of havingthis be a team sport literally,
(30:17):
how entire marketingorganizations all have a stake
in this from content strategy tosocial media to creative to
media buying to brand managementthat everybody kind of has a
stake in this game. Not thatthey didn't before with SEO
because they did, but it in somecases, in some organizations,
you kinda felt like SEO wasn'talways, part of the master
(30:39):
discussion. It was like, oh,yeah. We also gotta make sure
it's checking these boxes versusnow it has to be all part of a
much bigger integrated machine.
Right?
Heather Physioc (30:49):
Right. I a thousand percent agree. And we
are working more than possiblyever before in support of our
social media experts, our videoexperts, our our content
creators, our commerce andretailer experts. We're coming
together in ways that I've neverseen before, that are super
(31:09):
duper exciting, and they'rechallenging. And we're learning
new things together.
We are trying to connect thosepipes as we see this massive
opportunity that AI presents forus. And I feel very fortunate,
honestly, that we have thisskill set that is so valuable to
all these people now in thesenew ways. We're just like this
connective tissue that enableseveryone's work to shine and be
(31:33):
discovered. How freaking cool isthat?
Nick Brunker (31:35):
It's the best. I mean and and what I also have
loved about this space inparticular is while we've seen
evolution and, you know,advancements in tech and
advancements in process, wewe're at a time where it is
moving so fast that it's notlike we can really ever, at
least at this point, get to anorm where it's like, okay. This
is the new normal now becausethe the new normal is changing
(31:58):
week to week sometimes, if notfaster. And so I think for both
of us, we're in this freneticyet amazingly exciting new
frontier where what hasseemingly been not possible is
actually not only possible, butwill become a mandate. And and I
I'd love to get your thoughtstoo on if you were advising
marketers, a leader at any leveltoday, what's one thing that you
(32:21):
think they should doimmediately?
One thing they should starttelling and, guiding their teams
to test in the near term, andmaybe one strategic pivot that
they need to be planning for thelong term?
Heather Physioc (32:31):
Right now, I would immediately advise, think
about the best kinds of usecases for AI search technologies
that are relevant to yourcustomers and your brands. So if
you're working on a paint brand,for example, what kinds of
problems are you gonna solve orquestions are those customers
going to ask, and where are theylikely to do it? And conducting
(32:53):
search intelligence and lookingat classic keyword research data
to try to identify those bestuse cases. So that's a lot of
testing and learning. That's alot of searching and data
digging.
But I wouldn't wait to startthat. That's the most insightful
place you can start right now.No blockers. The next thing I
would look ahead to is what wetalked about earlier with those
signs of credibility and trust,authenticity, authority. Think
(33:18):
about what in your industry orin any industry signals to a
customer that you can betrusted.
And then consider how that mightbe translated into something
online that a search engine oran LLM can read and cite to
increase the likelihood that youwill be cited and that someone
(33:38):
will take action if they do goclick through that and you
deliver on that payoff. Longerterm, boy, I wish I could tell
you, but like you said, it'schanging constantly I in real
mean, nimble and be ready toadapt and sort of jump on new
things, but don't over index inwild directions just because
(33:58):
it's the hot new thing. If youalways keep that customer at the
center of your interest and youtry to get in their shoes and
think like them and try to servethem, you will survive no matter
what technology emerges in incoming months, coming years, and
the dust starts to settle.
Nick Brunker (34:13):
No question. Human first always. On the on the flip
side of that, what's the singlebiggest mistake? Or if you can
boil it down to one or you can,you know, a handful too. Do what
are the ones you see brandsmaking right now as they try to
adapt?
If if you were gonna give themadvice to say, ah, don't fall
into that trap, what would thatbe?
Heather Physioc (34:32):
Oh, do I have one for you? Okay. And can I
just say that our performancecontent experts absolutely
called this? They were like,mark my words. And so they were
a thousand percent right.
So a little history lesson thatfifteen, twenty years ago when I
got started in search, and wewere all putting white on white
text, and we were spitting outcontent. We were told that
(34:55):
everybody should be creating 300words of good, unique content
per page, quote unquote. And sothat is what the entire world
did is we all just spun out 300words of good, unique content
for every page, and every pagewas for a specific keyword. And
it was just garbage, and the webjust got flooded with it. It was
the old black hat era.
Nick Brunker (35:16):
Yep.
Heather Physioc (35:16):
That's the time we're in now, where now we have
AI tools that allow us togenerate all this waste. And for
a minute, it is working aspeople are trying to figure out
how the AI search engines work.Eventually, that will start to
dissipate more and we will beable to navigate that with more
trusted and credibility. Butright now, that flow of garbage
(35:39):
exists and it is backfiring onbrands.
Nick Brunker (35:41):
Mhmm.
Heather Physioc (35:43):
That's the part where everybody was like, if
they go too far, you're justgonna have a bunch of junk. And
if it's all junk, how are thoseengines going to know what to
rank number one? That was quick.Like that escalated quickly.
Called it.
Yeah. Yeah. So here they are.Now we actually have more
brands. We have a lot of themcalling, asking, hey, how do we
do more content or achieve moreof our content goals with the
(36:06):
same budget?
Do it faster, do more of it,whatever it is. Love that
thinking. It unlocks so manythings, but we have just as many
brands knocking on our doorgoing, oops, we created a
monster, the content isn'treally performing. We've spent
all this money on content thatisn't really that good and isn't
actually doing anything foranyone. So now it's a sub cost.
Nick Brunker (36:28):
Right. Right.
Heather Physioc (36:29):
That's what that's what we're seeing reports
of in the industry too.
Nick Brunker (36:32):
It's crazy. And that, again, comes back to not
necessarily completely upendingcreativity, but just changing
the way that we attack it. Andmaybe to your point, it actually
could do some I'll just call itgood, but trimming out the fat
and say, do you really needthat? Is that really helpful to
get somebody an answer to whatthey need? Because right now and
(36:54):
I think still to this this day,we're still kind of navigating
with, is this content actuallyperforming?
In some industries, it's mucheasier to say, yep. I can
measure it because they saw it,they clicked it, they converted,
and they bought whatever I wasselling as an example. Very high
level example. Yet, in someindustries, it's much harder to
attribute, oh, yeah. Well, thispicture and this copy put on
(37:15):
this page with this othercontext, like, worked out great,
But it's really squishy.
And I think moving forward,especially as it relates to
content creation, it's going tobe an arms race to leverage this
technology to say, can I even bemore efficient in what type of
content I actually need toproduce versus yeah? That that'd
(37:37):
be cool, but it actually isn'tgonna do us any good. So the
investment is never going toprovide a return. And I I just
think that's it's such afascinating time to be alive. I
just I love it.
I absolutely love it.
Heather Physioc (37:48):
It's a heady question.
Nick Brunker (37:50):
I know. It is. And I mean, inevitably, I think
we're all along for the ride. Somuch like in the old days, I say
old days, but like, you know,turn to the century time where
nobody's really got it figuredout holistically. And we're just
gonna keep cranking andadapting, and thankfully, are
people like yourself and andyour team that are usually, you
(38:10):
know, multiple clicks ahead ofthe curve and are looking ahead
to how brands can can do itbetter.
And I know, you know, obviously,you've got tremendous amount of
work on your plate at VML, butyou also spend a lot of time
outside off the clock speakingand telling other leaders across
different industries kind ofyour best practices and your
thoughts. You're a publishedauthor. You're a photographer.
(38:34):
What you got coming up in thethought leadership pipeline?
Because I bet you you havesomething.
Heather Physioc (38:37):
Yeah. You know, I'm double dipping a little bit,
my friend, because I think youand I have talked about how I
like to get outdoors and hike,and I'm a wildlife photographer.
Nick Brunker (38:44):
Yeah.
Heather Physioc (38:45):
Well, I'm also a member of the Outdoors,
Writers Association of America,and I'll be speaking at their
conference in Chattanooga soon.Chattanooga, Tennessee, y'all.
And I'm gonna talk to a bunch ofoutdoor media and journalists
and creators, publishers,thinkers who are also
experiencing this changingdiscoverability landscape and
(39:06):
what that means for how peoplefind the things that they create
and the content they cover. I'mso excited to be able to blend
these these two worlds. It'sit's gonna be a lot of fun.
So we'll kind of hopefully seesome of your folks in
Chattanooga.
Nick Brunker (39:19):
That'd be amazing.
Heather Physioc (39:21):
You going?
Nick Brunker (39:21):
Let's go. I mean, just book me a ticket now. I'll
be headed down. I would love tohear more about what that kind
of writing goes into that, whatkind of publications. Tell me
the types of folks that are downthere you're gonna be speaking
with.
Heather Physioc (39:33):
Yeah. Well, we see a lot of, travel and tourism
organizations like, destinationmarketing organizations, like,
different, Oregon, Tennessee aregonna be there this time since
we're in Chattanooga this time.
Nick Brunker (39:46):
Cool.
Heather Physioc (39:46):
But also outdoor outfitters, hunters and
anglers, and anything in thatspace. But then magazines and
publications, you'll see Hookand Barrel to Sierra to Nature
Conservancy. It's a greatvariety of people who all just
care about the outdoors andbring that to life through all
(40:07):
different media formats.
Nick Brunker (40:08):
Now pivoting back to your photography, are you
have you, this summer sincewe've been talking or maybe in
the months ahead, have any morereally fun outdoor trips since
you're gonna try to do somephotography?
Heather Physioc (40:20):
Oh, you know it. You know it. Let's see. I
just finished at, I don't knowif you're a national parks guy,
but I just finished atYellowstone, Grand Teton, and
Rocky Mountain in Perfect timeto shoot, you know, new babies
coming on the scene. So I gotsome grizzlies and elk and bison
(40:40):
and bighorns and all sorts ofcool stuff.
So I'm still digging through thephotos. But coming up, we've got
some fun in the PacificNorthwest. We'll see what
critters I can find there.
Nick Brunker (40:49):
Beautiful. You gotta make sure you're sending
them to us so we can post it inour show notes so that You got
it. We can we can spread it. Wecan spread the the love and the
word. I just can't thank youenough for all the time that you
spend, you know, sharing notonly the expertise on the
podcast, but also across theagency.
If somebody's listening to thisshow, not inside VML or perhaps
(41:10):
inside, how did they get aholdof you?
Heather Physioc (41:12):
Let's see. I am at Heather Physioc, p h y s I o
c on all the things. Or if youreally like animals, you can
find my photographs athpconservation.com.
Nick Brunker (41:24):
I love it. I love it. Thanks for the time as
always, and, I I'm sure we'll bedoing this again soon as the
industry continues to evolve.Thanks again for your expertise.
See you soon.
Heather Physioc (41:32):
Thank you,
Nick Brunker (41:33):
Nick. And thanks to you all for listening to
human centered as well. If you'dlike to connect with Heather,
you heard all the details. Wealso will post her LinkedIn
profile and some of those otherhandles in the show notes so you
can sync up with her. She'sgreat.
Gotta do it, just like we didtoday. And you can also learn
more about the great work herteam is doing by visiting us on
the web at vml.com. We'd alsolove to hear your feedback on
(41:54):
the show. Give us a rating andoffer up your thoughts wherever
you listen to your podcasts,including Apple, Spotify,
Stitcher, Amazon, and many more.If you got a topic idea or just
drop us a line, you can connectwith me on x at Nick Brunker, or
just shoot us an email.
The address ishumancentered@dml.com. Thanks
again for listening. We'll seeyou next time.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to human centered. I'm
Nick Brunker, a managingdirector of experience strategy
at VML and your host for theshow. Thanks for giving us a
listen. Today, we're tacklingone of the biggest shifts in
digital marketing in over adecade, the rise of AI powered
search. For years, we'veunderstood the game.
Create great content, optimizefor keywords, and you'll climb
the rankings. But what happenswhen the game fundamentally
(00:25):
changes? With Google rolling outAI overviews and a new AI mode,
the classic 10 blue links are nolonger the finish line. We're
entering an era ofconversational, synthesized, and
hyper personalized answersdelivered directly on the
results page. This changes thevery definition of what it means
for a brand to be discoverableonline.
(00:46):
To help us navigate this newlandscape, I'm thrilled to
welcome back our good friend andVML's chief discoverability
officer, Heather who is, asalways, on the front lines
guiding global brands throughthis exact evolution. Heather,
welcome back to the show. Greatto see you.
Heather Physioc (01:01):
Hey. Thank you so much for having me back. Good
to be here.
Nick Brunker (01:04):
And you are probably as busy as anybody in
our agency these days. It feelslike this is just a wild time
for all of us, but especiallyfor you. How how has it been
managing the chaos?
Heather Physioc (01:15):
I mean, it's my kind of busy. Right? It's the
best kind of problem to have.You know, our industry, we have
always kind of lived on theedges of the world of AI before
it was cool and so accessible tothe end users. But now that it's
really here, everybody'sknocking on our door, and they
wanna talk about, alright.
Great. How do we navigate thisnew future?
Nick Brunker (01:36):
For marketers and CX pros, this can feel like the
ground shifting beneath ourfeed. I can tell you I'm feeling
that. So let's start there withfundamentals. Google's rolling
out major changes. It's beenhappening pretty regularly over
the last handful of months, ifnot longer.
Specifically things we'rehearing about called AI
overviews, AI mode. For thosethat aren't living and breathing
this every day, can you breakdown what's happening?
Heather Physioc (01:57):
Yeah. Yeah. So I've been doing this since 2008
is when I first started focusingon search in a dedicated way.
And that was right as Google wasbecoming the biggest website on
earth. And it has sustained thatdominance with more than 90% of
global market share for thefifteen, now going on twenty
(02:18):
years that I've been working insearch.
And so in that time, it becamesynonymous with search. But now
with this massive shift in AIand AI search, LLMs, and that
stuff is just coming to life ina way that is not just behind
the scenes and the algorithms,but in a way that the consumers
(02:38):
can touch. Well, you have tofundamentally rethink search and
discoverability at large. It canno longer be synonymous with
Google. So for the first time,and as long as I've been doing
this, Google's dominance isactually under threat in a new
way.
That space is gettingfragmented. There are all these
different platforms that areclaiming to either be search
(02:59):
engines or have better searchfeatures. And in many ways,
that's true. So if I had to boilit down into a nutshell, we're
seeing changes in where peoplesearch, how people search, and
what they expect to receive andexperience when they do. And as
a result, they are permanentlychanging their search habits and
(03:24):
expectations.
Nick Brunker (03:25):
Hit on the user behavior because that's already
changing. You're just, like,pulling on that thread a little
bit. How are people searchingdifferently now that these tools
are available and also, becomingmuch more democratized, as you
mentioned, with othercompetitors coming in? Are they
asking longer, moreconversational questions? Talk
about that behavior.
Heather Physioc (03:43):
Absolutely. So there's a few things that I see
happening here. One is thissearching forward kind of
behavior. If you think about thelast twenty years of search not
having changed very much, youtype something into a box or you
even say something into a box.And you get back 10 blue links,
and you have to go click one,read through it, digest a bit of
(04:04):
information, try to understandit, commit it to memory, maybe
integrate it into whateverproblem you're trying to solve.
And then you have to go back tothe search engine, do it again
Mhmm. For another query, go alittle bit back, forth, back,
forth, back, forth. Right?That's not always the most
efficient, effective way to findthe information that you need or
(04:24):
accomplish the tasks that youneed to accomplish. So we've
always known that people didn'treally want a search engine.
They wanted an answer engine.And now that moment has finally
arrived. So we are changing ourexpectation of what we expect
that search result to do for us.We expect it to solve a lot more
of our problem. And as a result,and as marketers, we're seeing
(04:48):
that discovery to research andcomparison, a lot of that manual
lifting where you saw people goback, forth, back, forth.
They're doing it in a forwardmotion because they can ask all
of those questions at once togive those, AI and LLM search
products a lot of contextupfront and very specific
(05:11):
instructions on what they wannaget back. So it's synthesizing
it, and we are learning toexpect that and demand that of
our search products.
Nick Brunker (05:18):
Let's talk about visibility because clearly
everybody is still wrestlingwith what does it mean. We're
gonna talk about marketer'splaybook in a bit. We'll talk
about the future of of theindustry a little bit more
in-depth in a bit. But I thinkwe'll just start there with this
new AI layer that's starting toat least in Google as kind of
the the main port of call for alot of folks in search. You're
(05:39):
seeing that AI engine, that AIlayer opening up above
traditional results.
What does that mean for brandstrying to get noticed? If is
ranking even still number one,as as a goal? Tell me more about
that.
Heather Physioc (05:50):
Yeah. I really struggle with the idea of of of
rankings as a metric of searchsuccess anymore, at least not
alone and in a silo. Theyshouldn't have been before
anyway. But now I think we needto fundamentally rethink how we
measure search success, whatthat even means. We have to
consider what metrics are partof the impact of discoverability
(06:11):
that perhaps weren't beforealong the full end to end
customer journey.
So before we were focusing oneyeballs, clicks, traffic,
conversions, right? Like thatwas the whole economy of the
web. And now the availability ofthose has decreased. Like far
fewer people are clickingthrough these search results and
(06:35):
these AI answers to thedestination where it consumed
that information.
Nick Brunker (06:42):
Mhmm.
Heather Physioc (06:43):
So if you are only measuring search and
discoverability in the same wayswe used to, you're only thinking
about Google, you're onlythinking about websites, and
you're only thinking aboutclicks. And that is the tiny
fraction of what search lookslike now. So all that traffic,
all that visibility, it lookslike it's tanking for a lot of
brands. Okay, so that's partone. That's the scary part.
(07:06):
What about the good part? Thatalso means this fragmentation,
this changing search landscapewhere people expect to find
information in different formatsof different kinds at different
moments in their journey. Thatmoment's finally here, And that
means there's this wealth of newplaces and real estate and parts
of the discovery experience thatwe can be a part of Mhmm. And
(07:29):
that we can influence and wherewe can help our customers and
serve new needs and meet theirexpectations on a higher level
than we could before. I findthat quite exciting.
I don't know about you, Nick.
Nick Brunker (07:39):
Yeah. And that's I was listening to another podcast
because I know you and I areboth big podcast junkies.
There's a great one, and I haveno connection to them whatsoever
to be completely clear. It'scalled Acquired, and they just
did and most of their episodesare multi hour long episodes,
and they they go deep, they tonsof research. They talk about a
lot of different companies.
Definitely worth a listen if youhaven't. And hopefully, they'll
(08:01):
they'll maybe listening to thisshow. Who knows? Maybe one day.
Get them on the program.
The the thought there is thatthey went into, you know, a deep
history of Google. And as I waslistening to some of the things
that were happening back in the,you know, mid nineties, late
nineties as as really even in aslate as the early two thousands
when it was still just a glimmerin in the two founders eyes,
(08:24):
Some of the things that I'mhearing, I'm I'm almost they're
not one to one exactly withwhat's going on right now, but
I'm like, that sounds verysimilar to a lot of the
wrestling that's happening inthis exact moment, and and you
hit on one that I'm justfascinated by. That's the
concept of zero click searches,which you hit perfectly on the
head. It's terrifying formarketers because it completely
(08:45):
upends a, how we're measuringsuccess, but also then Dave
Altus, who's another friend ofthe show and one of our chief
creatives, he and I spent a apodcast episode talking about,
well, if Google provides or gemGemini in their form or Claude
or any of the other programs assynthesizing the answer, and
there is no incentive or less ofan incentive to click through to
(09:08):
a brand's website, how do wethink about what the role of
that channel is?
And I just find it fascinating.How how do you think, from your
perspective, should we would beshould we be thinking about that
challenge?
Heather Physioc (09:20):
You're right. There are so many similarities
to the beginning of my searchcareer where we're trying to
understand how Google worked andhow Google returned and rewarded
information. And we're seeingthat same sort of exciting Wild
West degree of discoveryhappening right now. And it very
quickly moved into the producingmasses and masses of junk. I
(09:41):
remember that happened fifteen,twenty years ago.
Yeah. And then eventually theplatforms go, okay, if we want
people to keep using us, webetter clean up the mess and
learn how to differ betweenquality experiences or accurate
information and bad experiencesand inaccurate information.
(10:01):
You're seeing that rate ofchange. Exponential right now in
these AI platforms becausethat's the level they're
competing on is to earn the thetrust and adoption of more and
more and more of Google'saudience. Google themselves is
the incumbent trained to competeto retain that that type of
customer.
(10:22):
And the next frontier of this isis trust, is quality, is
accuracy, in my opinion. And soas far as, you know, what is the
role of a website? What is therole of all these things that
we've invested all this time in?Video and and social and email.
What is the value of all thesethings?
Well, all of that is sourcematerial that can be spun up in
(10:45):
real time for any query in anycontext in a hyper personalized
way for any person at any time.That is the source material that
enables those answers. And we'restarting to see more and more
testing in the field. We'regetting more and more access to
information and more will comethat will give us more
intelligence and insight on howto harness this better. But I'm
(11:08):
telling you, the first place Iwould recommend anybody who
cares about this is go talk toyour search team.
They anticipated, and they sawthis moment coming.
Nick Brunker (11:15):
That's where you come in. So now that we
understand the seismic shift,the million dollar question,
what do we actually do about it?And I'm sure you're getting
inundated as we talked about offthe top with questions of
alright. So what does that mean?What do we do?
You're on the front lines ofthis. And the benefit is you
touch some of the biggest brandsin the world as we all do at
VML. You to an even largerextent as a broad leader across
(11:37):
the agency. What are some of thebiggest and most urgent
questions you're getting fromour marketing partners as they
try to evolve this crazylandscape that we're in?
Heather Physioc (11:47):
Yeah. I mean, of the big ones I'm getting
multiple times per week rightnow is, you know, how much
should I be pivoting my SEO ormy, other digital marketing
channels into AI search? Like,how much should I just drop
everything and run-in thedirection of this? Right? And I
say you do absolutely need toactively plan for AI investment.
(12:13):
You do need to anticipate it iscoming whether you like it or
not. The degree to which and themanner in which it affects you
and your business does depend onwhat sector you're in. I think
this is going to affect thehealth care sector where there
is a very critical need fortrust and dependency and
(12:34):
accuracy that is like lifeLiterally. Threatening, if not.
Right?
That is one experience. Butlet's just say you are, an
automotive brand, for example,and that's usually a very long
sales cycle. And there are a lotof very specific criteria that
are unique to your situation andyour household that you need to
(12:55):
consider. And that thattypically used to take a lot of
different steps to to researchthat. But now I can kinda figure
out everything I need and askfor more of my search engine.
Nick Brunker (13:06):
Mhmm.
Heather Physioc (13:06):
And so they're they're gonna be going out to to
find that information for SafeFrance. Okay. So back to the
question of how much should Iinvest in it? Yes, you should.
Don't drop everything because itis still very much a nascent
space.
I kind of advise them to thinkabout take your discoverability
or your organic search budget,bump it up a little and carve
(13:27):
out like 15% of what I wouldcall like a test and learn, AI
search, LLM search, test andlearn budget. So your
discoverability experts can beout there actually trying the
searches that people are likelyto be doing using these tools
and identify where they'regetting that information and how
(13:48):
we can show up there.
Nick Brunker (13:50):
Let's dig into to one of those concerns too that
that you brought up, and that'sthat's content. Because we hear
a lot about the need forcomprehensive content, writing
for AI comprehension. Let's talkabout a couple of things. One,
what does that mean in practice?And two, how is creating content
to be featured in AI summariesdifferent from the classic SEO
(14:12):
model that we you've all beenaccustomed to for all these
years?
Heather Physioc (14:15):
Right now, there are many, many
similarities. It's notidentical, but the overlap, the
intersect's humongous. But thereare kind of a few areas that are
well known to search alreadythat I feel quick and confident
are going to become ofincreasing importance to be able
to perform an AI search. Soregardless of what industry
(14:36):
they're in, when it comes tothat content, it's not just
about answering it really,really well. You know, I think
that's super, super important.
But then there's also you haveto anticipate and answer the
questions they haven't thoughtto ask yet. You have to consider
more of the contextual scenarioswhere customers have problems or
needs or jobs to be done thatyou can address with that
(14:58):
product. That has to comethrough in the content more in
order to be sourced as usableanswers. And then part two of
that is going back to that trustand accuracy and credibility. A
good answer is one thing, but agood answer from a trusted
source, that is going to becomeincreasingly important just
because how hard we're combatingmisinformation and
disinformation and AIhallucination.
(15:20):
The winner of the AI war will bethe one that people can count on
for information that makes themlook good, not makes them look
stupid.
Nick Brunker (15:27):
Right.
Heather Physioc (15:27):
Or that creates a bunch of work that they have
to go research and fact checkfurther because they can't
trust. Those signals of trust,signals of authenticity,
humanity, credibility,reliability, those matter. Those
will matter more.
Nick Brunker (15:40):
Let's talk more about that trust angle. We we've
seen examples where AI,especially lately, is still
working out the kinks for lackof a better word. They're
hallucinating. How can a brandbuild its authority to become
the trusted source for the AIengine? Because under
understandably, just like in theold days, well, how do I rank
number one?
Well, there are a lot of tacticsand sometimes underhanded ones
(16:02):
where they make, you know, textwhite and hidden, but yet it was
being able to be crawled as akeyword. And I'm sure there's a
lot of that that sort of like,you know, experimentation to try
to figure out how can I be thethe answer in AI? What what's
the risk? And clearly, it's highif their brand gets
misrepresented in one of thesesummaries. So really a two
parter there.
(16:22):
How do you become the trustedsource? And if you do it wrong,
what's the risk look like?Because it's gotta be big.
Heather Physioc (16:30):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's bigger for the AI
platforms right now, I think,than the content producers at
the moment. Sure seems likeanyway. But I think that dynamic
will change because theseplatforms will start to correct
for that in order to protecttheir own reputations and
increase adoption of their toolsjust like Google had to compete
with Yahoo and before them, askJeans.
(16:51):
But right now we are entering anew black hat era. We are in
this, again, nascent space wherewe're experimenting. We're
trying stuff. We're tinkeringbehind the scenes and just
seeing what works out there. Andso there's this new wave of
black hat thinkers, some of themnefarious, but many of them just
curious scientists
Nick Brunker (17:11):
Right.
Heather Physioc (17:12):
Who are out there trying to figure out how
the machine works. There's noguidebook to this, just like
Google couldn't just expose thealgorithm. And with good reason,
you know, marketers will go outthere and exploit it instantly.
So we do have to put in morework to better understand how
these things are going work. Andthe only way to really do that
is to get in there and starttrying things and use good sound
(17:33):
judgment like we always had to.
Play the long game, considerwhat it is your customer's
trying to do, try to do theright thing. But you're asking,
well, how do we createcredibility? How do we signal
credibility? And it reminds meof when Google started to
correct for their flood of spamand junk content and white on
white text. And they were like,okay, what does quality mean?
(17:55):
How do we know what should benumber one and what should sink
further down? What were thesignals? You might see things
back then like a .org, a dotdomain is a .gov domain at the
time might have been a signal ofmore credible content. Like
that's a named body that isofficial in some capacity that
(18:19):
in theory has some position ofauthority on the topic. That
might be a signal.
But what about also right now,it's so easy to create these
fake personalities, fake AIpeople, fake voices, fake AI,
everything, and put junk contentand just pretend you're an
expert for eyeballs and clicks.People are having to sift
through that and that's gonnaget old. That's gonna get old
real fast. And so they're gonnabe looking for signs of
humanity. And that means realpeople, real names, real
(18:42):
experts, real credentials,citations.
There should be something expertabout that. And especially, we
were talking about healthearlier, especially in those old
YMYL or your money, your lifeMhmm. Fields that we already
know about from SEO. It's gonnabe health, wealth, and other
(19:05):
important things that, like, ifif they go horribly wrong,
you're really gonna hurtsomebody. Yeah.
Credibility is gonna be at theforefront of those categories in
particular.
Nick Brunker (19:14):
Gosh. It's it's wild. And then you get into the
more nuts and bolts business.We'll just pick on the wealth
example for a minute. But it'sat the business level, a time
where I think perhaps as potentas it has been in in many years,
being able to prove the value ofthe investments that you're
making, whether you're on theagency side like we are, or
(19:36):
whether you're on the clientside trying to, you know,
validate that this investmentthat I'm gonna make is gonna
help the business move forward.
And so I can create a a soundbusiness case for my my
leadership if it goes all theway up through the CFO or
otherwise. And with that comesthe concern of, well,
measurement. Are we actuallyinvesting in things that are
(19:57):
going to drive our business? Andif clicks and rankings are
becoming I don't know if lessreliable is the right word, but
definitely a different sort ofmeasurement framework. How does
success get measured and whatshould be on a marketer's
dashboard today to reallyunderstand the visibility and
the impact that's gonna happenin this new landscape?
Heather Physioc (20:18):
I mean, it's the question we're all probably
asking. And we're, you know,aggressively trying to find that
answer and crafting that answerin real time. You know? But a
few things that we're we'rethinking about as we do this and
help the big brands navigate itis a more just a whole view of
discoverability. So if SEO is 1%of 1% of what discoverability
(20:39):
does, rankings and traffic andeyeballs is 1% of 1% of what we
do.
We need to better articulate thebreadth and depth of what
discoverability really means.Customers are not searching in a
linear fashion. They are notstaying within a single
platform. Discovery organicallyis possible across all of these
(21:02):
searchable surfaces. Ipso facto,Nick.
Ipso facto, like,discoverability used to be a
very conversion focused, lowerfunnel thinking type of thing.
Mhmm. Now discoverability ishappening in the TikToks and
Pinterest of the world all theway down to the Amazons and the
b to b sales of the world. Sodiscoverability is now important
(21:24):
at every stage of a customer'sjourney. And it's
discoverability in whateverplatforms they decide to use
across that journey.
That means that we we can'tafford to ignore it. If they're
like, what do I do I even wannabe doing this for AI? Like,
should I even be playing thisgame? The answer is if you
(21:46):
don't, they will. Like yourcompetitors your competitors
will.
Nick Brunker (21:50):
Yep.
Heather Physioc (21:51):
Just like back in the day on search, it's like,
yeah, you could choose to notexist online, but I'm telling
you, this is where it's going.Discovery is going here. We're
in that same thing in this newera. And I think, again, going
back to customer expectationschanging. They are going to
like, Google's dominance isprojected to continue for the
foreseeable future.
(22:11):
Mhmm. But for the first timeit's under threat, you are going
to see more and more peopleadopt these features and learn
to expect where theirinformation will come from in
these features, these AIoverviews and so on. So if
you're not there, who will be?And the information that shows
up when people ask about yourbrand, is it gonna be what you
(22:32):
would like it to say and reflectabout your brand, or are you
gonna leave that narrative up toeverybody else to
Nick Brunker (22:39):
Mhmm.
Heather Physioc (22:39):
To define?
Nick Brunker (22:40):
No doubt. And another fascinating aspect of
the marketers playbook of todayis around the idea of
personalization, largely drivenby AI in some capacity or
another, or at least that'sthat's the buzzy buzzword of the
day. Going back to search as anexample, what I think you were
pulling on earlier was it'sfascinating. If two people are
(23:01):
gonna ask the exact samequestion into, you know, AI tool
du jour, they may very well getdifferent AI generated answers
based on their history andcontext because as you
mentioned, context is so key. Soas a brand expert, somebody
working to try and help marketproduct services overall
(23:21):
companies and brands.
How can you possibly plan ortrack performance in an
environment where same question,two different people, many
different contexts, andultimately have to solve answers
for both of them and all ofthem?
Heather Physioc (23:35):
Right. It's a bit of an algorithm in itself.
Just compiling like, okay. Theseare the parts of this person's
question. This is what I knowabout this person.
Therefore, I need to grab this,this, this, and this this piece
to be most likely an answer tothat kind of answer. So our job
is to just get really expert tofigure out what the most likely
answer to that question is forevery brand. But I also think
(23:56):
about our search intelligencethinking and why it can't just
be keyword research. We need tocontextualize what we're seeing
in search demand data, not justaround search volume, but when
you map like queries, even whenpeople use different language,
but like queries with similarmeaning or similar intent, can
we understand those human beingsand the scenarios they're in? Or
(24:18):
the use cases that they'reexperiencing or the jobs that
they have to be done?
Can we extract that humanunderstanding from the search
data and consider, like a human,what they would do when they go
to Google? We still have Googledata. Google's data is still
readily available, stilldominant, still tells us a ton.
Google takes the search andreturns the AI overview. That is
(24:41):
important.
That's what starts the dialogue.
Nick Brunker (24:44):
Yeah.
Heather Physioc (24:44):
We can learn so much from it. So really, it's
just understanding theexperiences that they're having
and making sure we serve contentand experiences that meet them
where they are. So that sort ofpiece of this remains true Mhmm.
No matter what technology keepscoming out.
Nick Brunker (24:59):
Right. The human need is is the same. They they
just want the answers to theirquestions and what's the best
method, most effective path forsomebody who's looking for the
answer to get the answer, which,you know, it again, it's why it
always comes back to what's thehuman need in this? Like, how
are you gonna solve what thehuman needs? Which is fun
because it's at a time whereeverybody's trying to figure
(25:20):
out, well, how can we injectthis technology into our our
life versus just saying, well,what's what's the problem you're
actually trying to solve?
I don't need the drill. I needthe hole as the old adage would
go. One of the other things thatcomes up quite a bit in some of
the conversations I'm having,and I think, you know, a lot of
us are probably having cuts ofthe same cloth. When I'm
(25:40):
creating content and oh, let'sjust keep it to websites for
now, but you could argue thatthat it's across the ecosystem.
The juxtaposition of I needed tobe memorable, immersive, and
meaningful, while also beingsuper pragmatic that it's
written in a way or presented ina way that the AI algorithms can
(26:01):
recognize it and ultimately feedit back in their answer keys.
Heather Physioc (26:05):
Yeah. It it's like a major escalation of the
whole inbound outbound dynamicshift. Right? Yeah. You have
your outbound push marketing,cool campaigns, memorable
experiences that you're pushingout to the world, and hopefully
people love them.
I think that still matters.Like, creativity, award winning
creativity, absolute freakinglutely still matters because
however they arrive at yourbrand or your experience or your
(26:29):
creative, that is an interactionpoint with you. That's essential
to get right. It's not alwaysthe discovery mechanism, though.
Sometimes it's the payoff.
So when I think of our role indiscoverability, one, it's to
look at the information and go,okay, what are people searching
for or experiencing that willgive us these moments for that
(26:51):
brilliant creative or campaignto intercept? How do we support
them and augment them, optimizethat creative to be there in the
moment the person searches topay that off? So really, think
if we're looking ahead, iflooking we're into the future,
what does this mean forcreative? What does this mean
for discoverability? What doesthis mean for all of us?
(27:12):
It's time to connect the pipes.It's time to connect those
pipes. These things aren'texisting as separate channels
and silos in the answers. And sothe brands or the agencies that
behave in those silos, thinkwe'll lose. I think the ones who
will compete and stay relevantand be able to play in this
dynamic space are the ones whobehave dynamically and connect
(27:33):
with one another across thesedisciplines to make all of them
work harder together.
Nick Brunker (27:37):
And you're segueing perfectly perfectly to
where I wanted to go next asusual, the future of
discoverability. And we'vecovered a lot of what's going on
right now, talked a little bitabout the near, and love to zoom
out a little bit as much as wecan in a world where it's
seemingly like every weekthere's something new. The
technology is just crazy fast.Looking ahead, we're hearing
(28:01):
things about those more advancedcapabilities that are on the
horizon. Obviously, agents havebecome even more prevalent as
they advance AgenTeq AI, whichis different but similar in some
ways to to agents versus AgenTeqdeep search that can actually
compete tasks for users.
So give us a sneak peek aboutwhat is coming into the pipe and
(28:23):
how that's gonna change the gameeven more.
Heather Physioc (28:24):
Yeah. We are definitely hot on the trail of
agentic search and agentic AIpossibilities. And so that's
next on the horizon for us.We're very excited about the
possibilities of all of this forcontent supply chain, not just
in the, you know, how much morecan we produce, how much faster,
(28:47):
how much better, but also whatit means for the new kinds of
content that we will be able tocreate to be discovered. That's
that's exciting.
Our our nerds, our our algorithmnerds are very excited for all
the new features that they canreverse engineer and test and
experiment with and get techywith. But but I think the real
magic about this is that thiswe're not gonna be experts in,
(29:13):
like, the technical aspects ofoptimizing things to get found.
That's great. That's gonna becontinue to be a tiny fraction
of what we do, the SEO piece ofit Yep. Or GEO, as some are
calling it, generative engineoptimization.
That's that's more like aproduct or or or a service that
we do. I think the real value ofdiscoverability is understanding
(29:36):
that human need and behavior andresponding to it. That inbound
thing where we say, hey, weheard you. We see you. And we're
gonna deliver on that thing thatyou need in the moment that you
need it because we've taken thetime to understand how you're
probably gonna go about findingit.
It should feel like that.
Nick Brunker (29:55):
And I think the other thing that's really
exciting about the space, andI'm sure you're just as excited
as I am about it, it feels evenbigger than SEO evolution at its
core or even the paid searchinitiative as Google really
started to monetize the space.It almost underpins the the
critical importance of havingthis be a team sport literally,
(30:17):
how entire marketingorganizations all have a stake
in this from content strategy tosocial media to creative to
media buying to brand managementthat everybody kind of has a
stake in this game. Not thatthey didn't before with SEO
because they did, but it in somecases, in some organizations,
you kinda felt like SEO wasn'talways, part of the master
(30:39):
discussion. It was like, oh,yeah. We also gotta make sure
it's checking these boxes versusnow it has to be all part of a
much bigger integrated machine.
Right?
Heather Physioc (30:49):
Right. I a thousand percent agree. And we
are working more than possiblyever before in support of our
social media experts, our videoexperts, our our content
creators, our commerce andretailer experts. We're coming
together in ways that I've neverseen before, that are super
(31:09):
duper exciting, and they'rechallenging. And we're learning
new things together.
We are trying to connect thosepipes as we see this massive
opportunity that AI presents forus. And I feel very fortunate,
honestly, that we have thisskill set that is so valuable to
all these people now in thesenew ways. We're just like this
connective tissue that enableseveryone's work to shine and be
(31:33):
discovered. How freaking cool isthat?
Nick Brunker (31:35):
It's the best. I mean and and what I also have
loved about this space inparticular is while we've seen
evolution and, you know,advancements in tech and
advancements in process, wewe're at a time where it is
moving so fast that it's notlike we can really ever, at
least at this point, get to anorm where it's like, okay. This
is the new normal now becausethe the new normal is changing
(31:58):
week to week sometimes, if notfaster. And so I think for both
of us, we're in this freneticyet amazingly exciting new
frontier where what hasseemingly been not possible is
actually not only possible, butwill become a mandate. And and I
I'd love to get your thoughtstoo on if you were advising
marketers, a leader at any leveltoday, what's one thing that you
(32:21):
think they should doimmediately?
One thing they should starttelling and, guiding their teams
to test in the near term, andmaybe one strategic pivot that
they need to be planning for thelong term?
Heather Physioc (32:31):
Right now, I would immediately advise, think
about the best kinds of usecases for AI search technologies
that are relevant to yourcustomers and your brands. So if
you're working on a paint brand,for example, what kinds of
problems are you gonna solve orquestions are those customers
going to ask, and where are theylikely to do it? And conducting
(32:53):
search intelligence and lookingat classic keyword research data
to try to identify those bestuse cases. So that's a lot of
testing and learning. That's alot of searching and data
digging.
But I wouldn't wait to startthat. That's the most insightful
place you can start right now.No blockers. The next thing I
would look ahead to is what wetalked about earlier with those
signs of credibility and trust,authenticity, authority. Think
(33:18):
about what in your industry orin any industry signals to a
customer that you can betrusted.
And then consider how that mightbe translated into something
online that a search engine oran LLM can read and cite to
increase the likelihood that youwill be cited and that someone
(33:38):
will take action if they do goclick through that and you
deliver on that payoff. Longerterm, boy, I wish I could tell
you, but like you said, it'schanging constantly I in real
mean, nimble and be ready toadapt and sort of jump on new
things, but don't over index inwild directions just because
(33:58):
it's the hot new thing. If youalways keep that customer at the
center of your interest and youtry to get in their shoes and
think like them and try to servethem, you will survive no matter
what technology emerges in incoming months, coming years, and
the dust starts to settle.
Nick Brunker (34:13):
No question. Human first always. On the on the flip
side of that, what's the singlebiggest mistake? Or if you can
boil it down to one or you can,you know, a handful too. Do what
are the ones you see brandsmaking right now as they try to
adapt?
If if you were gonna give themadvice to say, ah, don't fall
into that trap, what would thatbe?
Heather Physioc (34:32):
Oh, do I have one for you? Okay. And can I
just say that our performancecontent experts absolutely
called this? They were like,mark my words. And so they were
a thousand percent right.
So a little history lesson thatfifteen, twenty years ago when I
got started in search, and wewere all putting white on white
text, and we were spitting outcontent. We were told that
(34:55):
everybody should be creating 300words of good, unique content
per page, quote unquote. And sothat is what the entire world
did is we all just spun out 300words of good, unique content
for every page, and every pagewas for a specific keyword. And
it was just garbage, and the webjust got flooded with it. It was
the old black hat era.
Nick Brunker (35:16):
Yep.
Heather Physioc (35:16):
That's the time we're in now, where now we have
AI tools that allow us togenerate all this waste. And for
a minute, it is working aspeople are trying to figure out
how the AI search engines work.Eventually, that will start to
dissipate more and we will beable to navigate that with more
trusted and credibility. Butright now, that flow of garbage
(35:39):
exists and it is backfiring onbrands.
Nick Brunker (35:41):
Mhmm.
Heather Physioc (35:43):
That's the part where everybody was like, if
they go too far, you're justgonna have a bunch of junk. And
if it's all junk, how are thoseengines going to know what to
rank number one? That was quick.Like that escalated quickly.
Called it.
Yeah. Yeah. So here they are.Now we actually have more
brands. We have a lot of themcalling, asking, hey, how do we
do more content or achieve moreof our content goals with the
(36:06):
same budget?
Do it faster, do more of it,whatever it is. Love that
thinking. It unlocks so manythings, but we have just as many
brands knocking on our doorgoing, oops, we created a
monster, the content isn'treally performing. We've spent
all this money on content thatisn't really that good and isn't
actually doing anything foranyone. So now it's a sub cost.
Nick Brunker (36:28):
Right. Right.
Heather Physioc (36:29):
That's what that's what we're seeing reports
of in the industry too.
Nick Brunker (36:32):
It's crazy. And that, again, comes back to not
necessarily completely upendingcreativity, but just changing
the way that we attack it. Andmaybe to your point, it actually
could do some I'll just call itgood, but trimming out the fat
and say, do you really needthat? Is that really helpful to
get somebody an answer to whatthey need? Because right now and
(36:54):
I think still to this this day,we're still kind of navigating
with, is this content actuallyperforming?
In some industries, it's mucheasier to say, yep. I can
measure it because they saw it,they clicked it, they converted,
and they bought whatever I wasselling as an example. Very high
level example. Yet, in someindustries, it's much harder to
attribute, oh, yeah. Well, thispicture and this copy put on
(37:15):
this page with this othercontext, like, worked out great,
But it's really squishy.
And I think moving forward,especially as it relates to
content creation, it's going tobe an arms race to leverage this
technology to say, can I even bemore efficient in what type of
content I actually need toproduce versus yeah? That that'd
(37:37):
be cool, but it actually isn'tgonna do us any good. So the
investment is never going toprovide a return. And I I just
think that's it's such afascinating time to be alive. I
just I love it.
I absolutely love it.
Heather Physioc (37:48):
It's a heady question.
Nick Brunker (37:50):
I know. It is. And I mean, inevitably, I think
we're all along for the ride. Somuch like in the old days, I say
old days, but like, you know,turn to the century time where
nobody's really got it figuredout holistically. And we're just
gonna keep cranking andadapting, and thankfully, are
people like yourself and andyour team that are usually, you
(38:10):
know, multiple clicks ahead ofthe curve and are looking ahead
to how brands can can do itbetter.
And I know, you know, obviously,you've got tremendous amount of
work on your plate at VML, butyou also spend a lot of time
outside off the clock speakingand telling other leaders across
different industries kind ofyour best practices and your
thoughts. You're a publishedauthor. You're a photographer.
(38:34):
What you got coming up in thethought leadership pipeline?
Because I bet you you havesomething.
Heather Physioc (38:37):
Yeah. You know, I'm double dipping a little bit,
my friend, because I think youand I have talked about how I
like to get outdoors and hike,and I'm a wildlife photographer.
Nick Brunker (38:44):
Yeah.
Heather Physioc (38:45):
Well, I'm also a member of the Outdoors,
Writers Association of America,and I'll be speaking at their
conference in Chattanooga soon.Chattanooga, Tennessee, y'all.
And I'm gonna talk to a bunch ofoutdoor media and journalists
and creators, publishers,thinkers who are also
experiencing this changingdiscoverability landscape and
(39:06):
what that means for how peoplefind the things that they create
and the content they cover. I'mso excited to be able to blend
these these two worlds. It'sit's gonna be a lot of fun.
So we'll kind of hopefully seesome of your folks in
Chattanooga.
Nick Brunker (39:19):
That'd be amazing.
Heather Physioc (39:21):
You going?
Nick Brunker (39:21):
Let's go. I mean, just book me a ticket now. I'll
be headed down. I would love tohear more about what that kind
of writing goes into that, whatkind of publications. Tell me
the types of folks that are downthere you're gonna be speaking
with.
Heather Physioc (39:33):
Yeah. Well, we see a lot of, travel and tourism
organizations like, destinationmarketing organizations, like,
different, Oregon, Tennessee aregonna be there this time since
we're in Chattanooga this time.
Nick Brunker (39:46):
Cool.
Heather Physioc (39:46):
But also outdoor outfitters, hunters and
anglers, and anything in thatspace. But then magazines and
publications, you'll see Hookand Barrel to Sierra to Nature
Conservancy. It's a greatvariety of people who all just
care about the outdoors andbring that to life through all
(40:07):
different media formats.
Nick Brunker (40:08):
Now pivoting back to your photography, are you
have you, this summer sincewe've been talking or maybe in
the months ahead, have any morereally fun outdoor trips since
you're gonna try to do somephotography?
Heather Physioc (40:20):
Oh, you know it. You know it. Let's see. I
just finished at, I don't knowif you're a national parks guy,
but I just finished atYellowstone, Grand Teton, and
Rocky Mountain in Perfect timeto shoot, you know, new babies
coming on the scene. So I gotsome grizzlies and elk and bison
(40:40):
and bighorns and all sorts ofcool stuff.
So I'm still digging through thephotos. But coming up, we've got
some fun in the PacificNorthwest. We'll see what
critters I can find there.
Nick Brunker (40:49):
Beautiful. You gotta make sure you're sending
them to us so we can post it inour show notes so that You got
it. We can we can spread it. Wecan spread the the love and the
word. I just can't thank youenough for all the time that you
spend, you know, sharing notonly the expertise on the
podcast, but also across theagency.
If somebody's listening to thisshow, not inside VML or perhaps
(41:10):
inside, how did they get aholdof you?
Heather Physioc (41:12):
Let's see. I am at Heather Physioc, p h y s I o
c on all the things. Or if youreally like animals, you can
find my photographs athpconservation.com.
Nick Brunker (41:24):
I love it. I love it. Thanks for the time as
always, and, I I'm sure we'll bedoing this again soon as the
industry continues to evolve.Thanks again for your expertise.
See you soon.
Heather Physioc (41:32):
Thank you,
Nick Brunker (41:33):
Nick. And thanks to you all for listening to
human centered as well. If you'dlike to connect with Heather,
you heard all the details. Wealso will post her LinkedIn
profile and some of those otherhandles in the show notes so you
can sync up with her. She'sgreat.
Gotta do it, just like we didtoday. And you can also learn
more about the great work herteam is doing by visiting us on
the web at vml.com. We'd alsolove to hear your feedback on
(41:54):
the show. Give us a rating andoffer up your thoughts wherever
you listen to your podcasts,including Apple, Spotify,
Stitcher, Amazon, and many more.If you got a topic idea or just
drop us a line, you can connectwith me on x at Nick Brunker, or
just shoot us an email.
The address ishumancentered@dml.com. Thanks
again for listening. We'll seeyou next time.
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