June 28, 2023 • 24 mins
This week, we're talking all about Artificial Intelligence– how it's transforming the marketing landscape, and what agencies and brands need to know in order to keep up with these rapidly evolving technologies.
In Part 1 of our two-part exploration of the role of AI in marketing, To help us dive into and explore the new role of AI in marketing, Brett Marshond! speaks with Jeff McDonald and Jason Harris.
Helping us dive into and explore the new role of AI in marketing, are two guests: Jason Harris and Jeff MacDonald.
Jason is the Co-Founder and CEO of the award-winning creative agency Mekanism, and host of the Soul and Science podcast.
Jeff is an AI thought leader, and the Director of Social Strategy at Mekanism. He's been named one to watch in this space by Ad-Age.com.
We'll discuss why AI is such a big thing right now, and how Chat GPT made generative AI something anyone can use. We'll talk about how marketers should be using AI to work not only faster, but smarter. And we'll discuss whether or not AI is coming for your job.
Learn more about Mekanism: https://mekanism.com/
Read Sprout Social’s interview with Jeff MacDonald: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/ai-social-media/
from plus company
In Part 1 of our two-part exploration of the role of AI in marketing, To help us dive into and explore the new role of AI in marketing, Brett Marshond! speaks with Jeff McDonald and Jason Harris.
Helping us dive into and explore the new role of AI in marketing, are two guests: Jason Harris and Jeff MacDonald.
Jason is the Co-Founder and CEO of the award-winning creative agency Mekanism, and host of the Soul and Science podcast.
Jeff is an AI thought leader, and the Director of Social Strategy at Mekanism. He's been named one to watch in this space by Ad-Age.com.
We'll discuss why AI is such a big thing right now, and how Chat GPT made generative AI something anyone can use. We'll talk about how marketers should be using AI to work not only faster, but smarter. And we'll discuss whether or not AI is coming for your job.
Learn more about Mekanism: https://mekanism.com/
Read Sprout Social’s interview with Jeff MacDonald: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/ai-social-media/
from plus company
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
My favorite quote that people are throwingaround is you won't lose your job to
AI. You're going to lose yourjob to somebody using AI. And I
think that's totally truly. In anever changing world, campaigns are all about
collaboration and connection, from an initialbrief to the follow through. What pats
(00:23):
are going to make a campaign successmore than a possibility? Hi, I'm
your host Brett Marshawn, CEO ofPlus Company, Except I'm not actually Brett,
I'm an AI generated version of hisvoice and his partners in Possibility.
Today on the show, we're talkingall about artificial intelligence, how it's transforming
(00:43):
the marketing landscape, and what agenciesand brands need to know in order to
keep up with these rapidly evolving technologies. To help us dive into and explore
the new role of AI in marketingreal life, Brett Marshawn speaks with Jeff
McDonald and Jason Harris. Jason isthe co founder and CEO of the award
winning creative agency Mechanism and host ofthe Soul and Science podcast. Jeff is
(01:04):
an AI thought leader and the directorof Social Strategy at Mechanism. He's been
named one to watch in this spaceby ad Age. Today, in part
one of our two part exploration ofthe role of AI in marketing, we'll
talk about why AI is such abig thing right now and how chat gpteammate
generative AI something anyone could use.We'll talk about how marketers should be using
(01:25):
AI to work not only faster butsmarter, and we'll discuss whether or not
AI is coming for your job.Here is that conversation with Jason and Jeff.
So what did you all think aboutthat voice? Did it sound lifelike
enough for you? It's pretty lifelike. I mean it's close enough. Well,
I mean, as it is withall of us. We never really
(01:47):
know what our own voices sound like. But I don't know, so you
guys are probably better Judge, doesit sound like me? I think that
there's some like cadence things I noticewhen I hear AI generated audio that makes
it seem like it's not a human. But I think it's close enough for
a lot of uses, and soI think that's really exciting to start seeing
(02:08):
the opportunities for us being able tocreate scratch views for commercials or things like
that. It gives us those opportunitiesbut I definitely still think that there's ways
that when we're speaking we add emphasisand we put in emotion that I think
isn't there yet. But I thinkit is only a matter of time for
you to be able to select copyinside of one of these tools and then
(02:30):
be able to drop down to selectsomething like that. Well, welcome,
Jeff and Jason. I'm really excitedabout this episode. It's our fifth episode
of Partners and Possibility, but it'smaybe the most precedent discussion that we're going
to have. Given the AI revolutionand what's going on right now, I
mean, it's on everyone's minds.Maybe we start there, Jeff, why
(02:51):
do you think it's so here andnow and what's really driven it to this
point in the world and in societyon people's minds. Yeah, we've had
AI for a number of years indifferent business applications. The algorithms that you
see, that's a version of artificialintelligence to try to feed you content that
it thinks you want to see tokeep you on platforms. What has really
(03:14):
changed is in generative AI, thetools the capabilities are now democratize. Like
you said, it's ability for anyoneto jump in and create something instantaneously that
they didn't think was possible in thepast. Makes it so that people can
really start to wrap their heads aroundwhat AI possibilities are. The ability for
people to put in any input andany data source and be able to see
(03:37):
it analyzed in real time. That'salso from a business perspective. What is
driven a lot of attractiveness the abilityfor AI now to create images that look
lifelike. Eventually video will get thereas well. I think that also the
tools and the technology have just caughtup, and the user experience is friendly
enough chat GPT just looks like you'rehaving a text message with a conversation with
(03:59):
a friend. That has made itso everywink can get in. And we
saw a generative AI like much earlieron with things like Google's email platform,
right, which would make a suggestionon how to respond to an email.
I mean that. I think thatwas one of the first real versions of
generative AI that people were using ona daily basis. Am I right about
(04:20):
that? That any kind of textprediction, anytime you had an autocomplete happening,
that was it making an inference aboutwhat you thought you wanted the next
word and the next letters to bein a sentence, and so we've been
a part of that. Adobe hadAdobe since with their Adobe Photoshop applications that
allows you to put different filters on. You could turn a photo from summer
(04:42):
to winter. So we've had thesegenerative opportunities, but it's only now that
it really feels like it's photorealistic forimage, for text, it's accurate enough
for makes it feel like it's accurateenough that it feels useful. And then
videos kind of an audio obviously iskind of that next space. It's interesting
because I think there was the chatGPT sort of moment, but the other
(05:06):
moment was when this song came outfrom well from Drake and the Weekend,
which was actually Drake in the Weekend, but it sounded so much like them
and obviously got a huge amount ofdownloads and stuff. And I mean,
Jason, I'm interested in your pointof view on have you and mechanisms seen
it coming for a long time.I'm interested in your point of view as
(05:27):
a as a CEO of an agency. Certainly researched it and thought about it
and knew it was coming. ButI think really the speed and adoption of
chat GPT is unlike anything we've everseen, you know, the fastest platform
to one hundred million users, justa speed. And I think what makes
(05:51):
it really different and why it reallyhas become democratized now is what Jeff mentioned.
It's it's easy enough. I mean, I, I, my my
parents are using it. You know, like it's that easy that if you
if you know how to text ona phone, you can use chat GPT
(06:13):
and obviously you can read articles andget become intermediate level by figuring out the
questions to ask and the prompts.But it really for things to reach critical
mass and have that rate of adoption, they have to have a simple,
clean, easy interface, which isreally what chat GPT allowed to happen.
(06:35):
And it felt like it was overnight, even though it took years and years
obviously to build. So that's reallywhere we are in the revolution, is
that it's reached critical mass. Andthen of course mid Journey is also fairly
simple to use. And I thinkthe difference when when you know, I
(06:55):
always think about it compared to um, you know what's happening with you know,
crypto, and you know, whenwhen coin base came out, everyone
started to understand how they can startto purchase um Crypto because it really takes
(07:18):
that one platform that is simple andeasy that anyone can understand. That's when
the critical mass and adoption happens.And that's really what happened with Chatchie.
Yeah, and with the Drake examplein particular. Like I think what people
notice is they were like, youknow what, And this is a common
theme with all these It's good enough, it's close enough, it sounds close
(07:41):
enough to the actual song that Icould be fooled is a negative term use
for it, but convinced that itis a correct thing. And I think
that's a great example of where weare right now in the technology. It's
convincing. Yeah, it's a verygood point. Just what do you think
are the biggest opportunities both for marketersand for agencies with this AI revolution and
(08:03):
with kind of tools like mid Journeyand chatchypt and many of the others that
are out there. You know,there's so much to explore. What are
the current opportunities, what are thefuture opportunities? And I think the current
opportunities are really in assisting creatives interms of you know, AI has become
(08:24):
the new blank page, right,so you're not you're not starting your you
get a kickstart in your UM youknow, walking or shower concepting where you
know it might it speeds things up. So you know, it's not good
enough that you're using it, butit's good enough that it cracks writer's block
(08:50):
or art director's block. It givesyou something to push off of. And
so that's the current real use isthat it's UM you know, a place
to start, and and that's reallyI think the current benefit is in the
in the creative area. Also inthe production area. It's been very useful
(09:13):
for us in speeding up production timesbecause you can you know, we did
a spot for Cracking that that youknow, you know, Cracking Rum,
which is one of our clients,and when we were thinking about UM storyboards
or doing UM production casting or wardrobethat those tools really helped us speed up
(09:35):
what we were looking for, whichhelped us ultimately in casting. In the
production. It hasn't impacted the endproduction yet, but it helps us speed
up the prep time. And soit's really been useful really in creative and
production thus far. Really internally UMbut no assets that we're using yet externally.
(09:58):
You use mid journey, I thinkgreat to actually show what the casting
would look like in costume, etc. To the clients so that you could
then improve it, do it muchmuch more quickly, I believe, and
then actually go out and do theactual shoot. Right. Yeah, we
use mid journey for the conceptual design. We're gon we're gonna cast people like
(10:20):
this, They're gonna be wearing thistype of wardrobe, where that would have
taken either actual wardrobe prep and andgoing you know, taking pictures in person
to stylize the cast, or youknow, days and days of hunting for
the perfect swipe to show that,but that cut it down to a day
(10:43):
versus a week for example. Sothat's how we used it in pre production.
Something to consider for your next videoshoot. We're going to take a
quick break. When we come back, even more opportunities for using AI to
improve your marketing process and whether ornot AI is coming for your job.
(11:15):
Welcome back to Partners and Possibility.I'm Brett Marshawn. Whether or not you
realize that AI is already impact inyour life. Jason Harris and Jeff McDonald
are using AI in quite a fewinteresting ways that their creative agency mechanism here
is Jeff, I always get thequestion how is mechanism using AI? And
(11:37):
a lot of the times, myanswer is in ways that you'll never see.
A lot of the times when we'reusing AI on the strategy side or
the performance analytics side, we're usingit as a back end tool to help
make our brief stronger so we canquestion on our own thoughts better. We're
using it in a way to analyzedata faster humans. And I'll speak more
to this, I'm sure, buthumans are not great at looking at large
(12:00):
data sets and making inferences very quickly. We take a lot of time to
be trained on that data, tolook through a thousand lines spreadsheet and get
to a specific idea. But computersare really good at that. They're really
good at analyzing really large amounts ofdata. And so one of the things
that we're trying to do inside ofour agency, inside A plus company is
look for opportunities where AI can bebetter at doing computer things and allow us
(12:24):
to have more opportunities for humans todo the things that humans are good at,
like presenting. Yeah, I meantyou co authored a really interesting article,
Jeff, which was about how shouldboard directors look at AI and the
opportunity and I thought that was reallyfascinating. I'd passed it on to my
board because you talked not just aboutcommunication and images and texts, but also
(12:48):
how do you use it to benchmarkyour competition, How do you use it
to get ideas about how to differentiateyour product or your company versus your competitors.
How do you use it to risefinancial results really quickly? So I
thought, you know, we shouldmaybe put a link into that article for
for our listeners because I think thatit was super interesting. Um and again
(13:09):
I thought very thoughtful. One ofthe other things I think on the agency
marketers side, which would be interestedin your comments on, is that.
I mean, obviously, what theInternet and then social media, add all
the apps that are on you know, and mobile on phones, and combine
that with what data can do tocustomize messaging for consumers. Is this put
(13:31):
an immense amount of pressure on theamount of content that we have to produce
and that marketers have to produce,right. I mean, listen, I
was a marketer in the nineties andyou know, if you did twenty things
in a quarter, that was alot. Now people are doing twenty things
a minute. Um, you know, if they're good marketers. So you
know, I presume that's the otherreal benefit of AI here, which is
(13:54):
to allow that a level of contentproduction and reaching out customizing for the end
consumer or viewer with you know,without spending so much time doing that that
you forget about big ideas and howto get the strategy right as you said,
Jeff, etc. In terms oflike versioning, Yeah, versioning,
(14:15):
I guess would be one part ofthat for sure, you know, And
there's versioning customizing it, I thinkfor the end consumer, but there's also
versioning because there's so many different platformsthat you have to produce content on,
right, Yeah, I mean Ithink that cadence in particular, like you're
speaking to, that's what we dealwith every single day with our clients,
is this influx of everything has tobe a video, everything has to be
(14:37):
a tweet in real time. Weneed three hundred and sixty five days of
content constantly on and I think AIonly enables us to make it so that
we're producing the best kind of workat that scale. Right. It allows
us to really scale that work becausewe can go into a tool like Photoshop
and use its generative fill function tobe able to all of a sudden put
(14:58):
our clients product on top of ahill because we want to do something around
summer. Just kickoff to summer andwe don't have to worry about, oh,
well, we can't do that becausewe don't have that asset. We
didn't capture it. Similarly to volumeof tweets, like, we can go
and we can train an algorithm onthree hundred of our top performing tweets and
it can help us write the nextthree hundred top performing tweets, so we
(15:20):
can keep that volume. Let's talkabout some of the opportunities, but also
what does this mean for our peoplefor marketers in general, you know,
because there's obviously a lot of peopletalking about well, just you know,
jobs are going to go away.This is you know, a real threat
to copywriters as an example. Youknow, nobody's going to need copywriters anymore,
(15:43):
which I don't don't agree with,but but let's just start maybe more
mackerel. How do you see AIchanging jobs when it comes to both the
agency and the marketing and client sideof the world. One thing that it's
opening up, and you know,Jeff's a good example is anyone in the
creative services space you need someone whois an expert like Jeff at Mechanism that
(16:11):
is the go to person when youhave questions or can train the entire staff
on how to use those tools.So that's created a new job that didn't
exist before, and that's one waywhere it's changed in terms of replacing jobs.
You know, I'm always optimistic,So I don't think it's going to
replace copywriters or art directors. Forone reason, there's so many uncertain copyright
(16:37):
issues with it, right, Andso if you're putting something out there that's
used to sell an idea before youcreate the idea, you know, that's
totally fine. If you put somethingout there that is up for grabs on
how it was created, it createsa lot of liabilities and legal issues on
the ownership of that. And it'sokay to put a song out Drake if
(17:00):
it's not creating revenue, right,If it's not driving money, if there's
no monetary capitalistic end goal, that'sfine. If you're doing it on the
benefit of a brand or product that'spresumably selling something and benefiting from it,
that becomes a whole other area.So I think it's really going to change
(17:22):
jobs, and that you need aexperts at the company, and you need
to hire people that are trained inhow to use the tools so that they
can work faster, do more ideas, work with presenting that those ideas to
clients. So I think that it'schanged in that you have to be skilled
in AI. That's the immediate changethat I see. If we get to
(17:47):
a point where AI gets us awayfrom computers an hour a day because we're
a little bit more efficient with ourwork, that's a win. That's just
like my overarching theme about how AIcan help humanity, a very good point
to how it will actually impact employersand hiring practices and who should be concerned
(18:08):
about their jobs. I think ifyou're the type of person that doesn't like
to accept new technologies as part ofyour role, then you should be concerned.
But if you have an open mindset, if you're curious, if you
like learning new things and new technologies, then you have nothing to worry about
and you will only be more efficientat your work. You will only be
able to optimize your work better.As these technologies start to come online and
(18:30):
as companies start to figure out waysthat they can implement them correctly and ethically,
then I don't think anyone should beconcerned. My favorite quote that people
are throwing around is you won't loseyour job to AI. You're going to
lose your job to somebody using AI. And I think that's totally true.
With the copywriter example, you havewhen you're a copywriter as a profession you
(18:52):
have that taste, You have thatinnate ability to see something in front of
you and know that's good. AndI don't know if uters know something is
good. They just know that itwas selected over fifty one percent of the
time as the correct answer right,And it doesn't understand why. It just
knows mathematically that's what it should choose. And I think that humans have that
(19:15):
co authoring pickability alongside AI to makeit better, to make it so that
we can still enact the soul sidebehind what's going on in the AI.
And I think that's super important.The taste that we have as professionals in
the in the role that we doevery day is always going to outperform what
a computer can do. Yeah,we even have you know, I know
of some examples within our own agencies, which I think is a good example
(19:40):
of how it actually empowers someone likea copywriter, you know, to do
more effective work like our you know, our citizen group is using AI right
now to actually write posts for clientson places like LinkedIn. That's based on
what is you know in the internetnow, what's in news right now,
(20:00):
and what's relevant to that client andor their products and it you know,
it does the first draft basically,but then you need a writer to actually
look at that draft and say,well, listen, like it. It
really doesn't help that client stand outor have a point of view that's truly
consistent with what their brand or theirvoice is right now because it's just you
(20:22):
know, used what's most interesting onthe Internet. But they can produce ten
times more you know, posts forclients using AI than if they're having to
write from scratch every single one ofthose. And it's much more timely back
to your earlier point, Jeff,because you know, they can all be
done by nine o'clock in the morningand ready to go exactly. Yeah,
I think that's right. Where you'rewhere you're going with it is it's faster,
(20:45):
it saves time, and you cando more volume with it, so
you can do more work for clients, you can take on potentially more clients
because it speeds it up and savestime, but it still needs to be
there, still needs to be thehumanity that makes it ownable and creative.
(21:07):
And without that, it's just,you know, it's just words strung together,
right. You need you become moreof an copywriters, become a little
bit more of editors. They're stilloriginators, but they're also become really good
editors. Yeah. So much ofwhat we do a lot of the times
when we're working on technical clients isgoing through large PDFs or Excel spreadsheets of
(21:33):
data to find the story. AndI think that AI is a perfect example
that gets us, like we weresaying, from that blank page to the
story faster. Why not take afive hundred page PDF on the future of
augmented reality and turn it into somethingthat you can ask questions of? And
there's so many of these tools thatexist right now where you upload a PDF
or a large data set and younow start having a conversation with that document.
(21:56):
You could say, hey, basedon these five hundred pages about augmented
reality, give me five cool LinkedInquizzes. And my audience is this.
There's so many cool opportunities to makeit so that you can be more proficient
with your work so that you cancreate more engaging work and you're still that
you still have that taste, youstill know what good work looks like,
(22:18):
so you're still curating it. Butit gets you to something a little faster
and it makes it so you're notreading a five hundred PAGEPT. It could
be very empowering for younger generations aswell, right because you know, historically,
experience, which had a lot todo with knowledge which you have,
you know, consumed in over time, gave you a you know, an
(22:41):
advantage as a as an older executiveas an example, but in this case
you could actually, you know,younger generations can actually move up the learning
curve much much quicker because they don'thave to know all that stuff. They
can they can ask JET should BTfor some help to get started. So
I think it's it's super I mean, I have a twenty two year old
son to exactly what you said,Jeff, which is like, you better
(23:03):
be ready to use AI because itcould be a huge advantage for you.
And if you don't, I suspectthat it's going to be a tough slogging
for a twenty two year old inthe world right now, So you know,
I think it's it could be superinteresting for younger generations, and we
need them like they're they're not justour future, but they're actually the ones
who are probably going to help ussolve climate change, and you know,
(23:26):
and and racial diversity issues and abunch of other things that are out there
in the market plays and in theworld. That was part one of my
discussion with Jason Harris, co founderand CEO of Mechanism, and director of
Social Strategy Jeff McDonald. Join usnext week for part two, where we
discuss the future of AI, howto establish trust, and where intellectual property
(23:49):
law enters the equation. Thank youfor listening to Partners and Possibility. I
hope you gained valuable insights and inspirationfor your next collaboration.
My favorite quote that people are throwingaround is you won't lose your job to
AI. You're going to lose yourjob to somebody using AI. And I
think that's totally truly. In anever changing world, campaigns are all about
collaboration and connection, from an initialbrief to the follow through. What pats
(00:23):
are going to make a campaign successmore than a possibility? Hi, I'm
your host Brett Marshawn, CEO ofPlus Company, Except I'm not actually Brett,
I'm an AI generated version of hisvoice and his partners in Possibility.
Today on the show, we're talkingall about artificial intelligence, how it's transforming
(00:43):
the marketing landscape, and what agenciesand brands need to know in order to
keep up with these rapidly evolving technologies. To help us dive into and explore
the new role of AI in marketingreal life, Brett Marshawn speaks with Jeff
McDonald and Jason Harris. Jason isthe co founder and CEO of the award
winning creative agency Mechanism and host ofthe Soul and Science podcast. Jeff is
(01:04):
an AI thought leader and the directorof Social Strategy at Mechanism. He's been
named one to watch in this spaceby ad Age. Today, in part
one of our two part exploration ofthe role of AI in marketing, we'll
talk about why AI is such abig thing right now and how chat gpteammate
generative AI something anyone could use.We'll talk about how marketers should be using
(01:25):
AI to work not only faster butsmarter, and we'll discuss whether or not
AI is coming for your job.Here is that conversation with Jason and Jeff.
So what did you all think aboutthat voice? Did it sound lifelike
enough for you? It's pretty lifelike. I mean it's close enough. Well,
I mean, as it is withall of us. We never really
(01:47):
know what our own voices sound like. But I don't know, so you
guys are probably better Judge, doesit sound like me? I think that
there's some like cadence things I noticewhen I hear AI generated audio that makes
it seem like it's not a human. But I think it's close enough for
a lot of uses, and soI think that's really exciting to start seeing
(02:08):
the opportunities for us being able tocreate scratch views for commercials or things like
that. It gives us those opportunitiesbut I definitely still think that there's ways
that when we're speaking we add emphasisand we put in emotion that I think
isn't there yet. But I thinkit is only a matter of time for
you to be able to select copyinside of one of these tools and then
(02:30):
be able to drop down to selectsomething like that. Well, welcome,
Jeff and Jason. I'm really excitedabout this episode. It's our fifth episode
of Partners and Possibility, but it'smaybe the most precedent discussion that we're going
to have. Given the AI revolutionand what's going on right now, I
mean, it's on everyone's minds.Maybe we start there, Jeff, why
(02:51):
do you think it's so here andnow and what's really driven it to this
point in the world and in societyon people's minds. Yeah, we've had
AI for a number of years indifferent business applications. The algorithms that you
see, that's a version of artificialintelligence to try to feed you content that
it thinks you want to see tokeep you on platforms. What has really
(03:14):
changed is in generative AI, thetools the capabilities are now democratize. Like
you said, it's ability for anyoneto jump in and create something instantaneously that
they didn't think was possible in thepast. Makes it so that people can
really start to wrap their heads aroundwhat AI possibilities are. The ability for
people to put in any input andany data source and be able to see
(03:37):
it analyzed in real time. That'salso from a business perspective. What is
driven a lot of attractiveness the abilityfor AI now to create images that look
lifelike. Eventually video will get thereas well. I think that also the
tools and the technology have just caughtup, and the user experience is friendly
enough chat GPT just looks like you'rehaving a text message with a conversation with
(03:59):
a friend. That has made itso everywink can get in. And we
saw a generative AI like much earlieron with things like Google's email platform,
right, which would make a suggestionon how to respond to an email.
I mean that. I think thatwas one of the first real versions of
generative AI that people were using ona daily basis. Am I right about
(04:20):
that? That any kind of textprediction, anytime you had an autocomplete happening,
that was it making an inference aboutwhat you thought you wanted the next
word and the next letters to bein a sentence, and so we've been
a part of that. Adobe hadAdobe since with their Adobe Photoshop applications that
allows you to put different filters on. You could turn a photo from summer
(04:42):
to winter. So we've had thesegenerative opportunities, but it's only now that
it really feels like it's photorealistic forimage, for text, it's accurate enough
for makes it feel like it's accurateenough that it feels useful. And then
videos kind of an audio obviously iskind of that next space. It's interesting
because I think there was the chatGPT sort of moment, but the other
(05:06):
moment was when this song came outfrom well from Drake and the Weekend,
which was actually Drake in the Weekend, but it sounded so much like them
and obviously got a huge amount ofdownloads and stuff. And I mean,
Jason, I'm interested in your pointof view on have you and mechanisms seen
it coming for a long time.I'm interested in your point of view as
(05:27):
a as a CEO of an agency. Certainly researched it and thought about it
and knew it was coming. ButI think really the speed and adoption of
chat GPT is unlike anything we've everseen, you know, the fastest platform
to one hundred million users, justa speed. And I think what makes
(05:51):
it really different and why it reallyhas become democratized now is what Jeff mentioned.
It's it's easy enough. I mean, I, I, my my
parents are using it. You know, like it's that easy that if you
if you know how to text ona phone, you can use chat GPT
(06:13):
and obviously you can read articles andget become intermediate level by figuring out the
questions to ask and the prompts.But it really for things to reach critical
mass and have that rate of adoption, they have to have a simple,
clean, easy interface, which isreally what chat GPT allowed to happen.
(06:35):
And it felt like it was overnight, even though it took years and years
obviously to build. So that's reallywhere we are in the revolution, is
that it's reached critical mass. Andthen of course mid Journey is also fairly
simple to use. And I thinkthe difference when when you know, I
(06:55):
always think about it compared to um, you know what's happening with you know,
crypto, and you know, whenwhen coin base came out, everyone
started to understand how they can startto purchase um Crypto because it really takes
(07:18):
that one platform that is simple andeasy that anyone can understand. That's when
the critical mass and adoption happens.And that's really what happened with Chatchie.
Yeah, and with the Drake examplein particular. Like I think what people
notice is they were like, youknow what, And this is a common
theme with all these It's good enough, it's close enough, it sounds close
(07:41):
enough to the actual song that Icould be fooled is a negative term use
for it, but convinced that itis a correct thing. And I think
that's a great example of where weare right now in the technology. It's
convincing. Yeah, it's a verygood point. Just what do you think
are the biggest opportunities both for marketersand for agencies with this AI revolution and
(08:03):
with kind of tools like mid Journeyand chatchypt and many of the others that
are out there. You know,there's so much to explore. What are
the current opportunities, what are thefuture opportunities? And I think the current
opportunities are really in assisting creatives interms of you know, AI has become
(08:24):
the new blank page, right,so you're not you're not starting your you
get a kickstart in your UM youknow, walking or shower concepting where you
know it might it speeds things up. So you know, it's not good
enough that you're using it, butit's good enough that it cracks writer's block
(08:50):
or art director's block. It givesyou something to push off of. And
so that's the current real use isthat it's UM you know, a place
to start, and and that's reallyI think the current benefit is in the
in the creative area. Also inthe production area. It's been very useful
(09:13):
for us in speeding up production timesbecause you can you know, we did
a spot for Cracking that that youknow, you know, Cracking Rum,
which is one of our clients,and when we were thinking about UM storyboards
or doing UM production casting or wardrobethat those tools really helped us speed up
(09:35):
what we were looking for, whichhelped us ultimately in casting. In the
production. It hasn't impacted the endproduction yet, but it helps us speed
up the prep time. And soit's really been useful really in creative and
production thus far. Really internally UMbut no assets that we're using yet externally.
(09:58):
You use mid journey, I thinkgreat to actually show what the casting
would look like in costume, etc. To the clients so that you could
then improve it, do it muchmuch more quickly, I believe, and
then actually go out and do theactual shoot. Right. Yeah, we
use mid journey for the conceptual design. We're gon we're gonna cast people like
(10:20):
this, They're gonna be wearing thistype of wardrobe, where that would have
taken either actual wardrobe prep and andgoing you know, taking pictures in person
to stylize the cast, or youknow, days and days of hunting for
the perfect swipe to show that,but that cut it down to a day
(10:43):
versus a week for example. Sothat's how we used it in pre production.
Something to consider for your next videoshoot. We're going to take a
quick break. When we come back, even more opportunities for using AI to
improve your marketing process and whether ornot AI is coming for your job.
(11:15):
Welcome back to Partners and Possibility.I'm Brett Marshawn. Whether or not you
realize that AI is already impact inyour life. Jason Harris and Jeff McDonald
are using AI in quite a fewinteresting ways that their creative agency mechanism here
is Jeff, I always get thequestion how is mechanism using AI? And
(11:37):
a lot of the times, myanswer is in ways that you'll never see.
A lot of the times when we'reusing AI on the strategy side or
the performance analytics side, we're usingit as a back end tool to help
make our brief stronger so we canquestion on our own thoughts better. We're
using it in a way to analyzedata faster humans. And I'll speak more
to this, I'm sure, buthumans are not great at looking at large
(12:00):
data sets and making inferences very quickly. We take a lot of time to
be trained on that data, tolook through a thousand lines spreadsheet and get
to a specific idea. But computersare really good at that. They're really
good at analyzing really large amounts ofdata. And so one of the things
that we're trying to do inside ofour agency, inside A plus company is
look for opportunities where AI can bebetter at doing computer things and allow us
(12:24):
to have more opportunities for humans todo the things that humans are good at,
like presenting. Yeah, I meantyou co authored a really interesting article,
Jeff, which was about how shouldboard directors look at AI and the
opportunity and I thought that was reallyfascinating. I'd passed it on to my
board because you talked not just aboutcommunication and images and texts, but also
(12:48):
how do you use it to benchmarkyour competition, How do you use it
to get ideas about how to differentiateyour product or your company versus your competitors.
How do you use it to risefinancial results really quickly? So I
thought, you know, we shouldmaybe put a link into that article for
for our listeners because I think thatit was super interesting. Um and again
(13:09):
I thought very thoughtful. One ofthe other things I think on the agency
marketers side, which would be interestedin your comments on, is that.
I mean, obviously, what theInternet and then social media, add all
the apps that are on you know, and mobile on phones, and combine
that with what data can do tocustomize messaging for consumers. Is this put
(13:31):
an immense amount of pressure on theamount of content that we have to produce
and that marketers have to produce,right. I mean, listen, I
was a marketer in the nineties andyou know, if you did twenty things
in a quarter, that was alot. Now people are doing twenty things
a minute. Um, you know, if they're good marketers. So you
know, I presume that's the otherreal benefit of AI here, which is
(13:54):
to allow that a level of contentproduction and reaching out customizing for the end
consumer or viewer with you know,without spending so much time doing that that
you forget about big ideas and howto get the strategy right as you said,
Jeff, etc. In terms oflike versioning, Yeah, versioning,
(14:15):
I guess would be one part ofthat for sure, you know, And
there's versioning customizing it, I thinkfor the end consumer, but there's also
versioning because there's so many different platformsthat you have to produce content on,
right, Yeah, I mean Ithink that cadence in particular, like you're
speaking to, that's what we dealwith every single day with our clients,
is this influx of everything has tobe a video, everything has to be
(14:37):
a tweet in real time. Weneed three hundred and sixty five days of
content constantly on and I think AIonly enables us to make it so that
we're producing the best kind of workat that scale. Right. It allows
us to really scale that work becausewe can go into a tool like Photoshop
and use its generative fill function tobe able to all of a sudden put
(14:58):
our clients product on top of ahill because we want to do something around
summer. Just kickoff to summer andwe don't have to worry about, oh,
well, we can't do that becausewe don't have that asset. We
didn't capture it. Similarly to volumeof tweets, like, we can go
and we can train an algorithm onthree hundred of our top performing tweets and
it can help us write the nextthree hundred top performing tweets, so we
(15:20):
can keep that volume. Let's talkabout some of the opportunities, but also
what does this mean for our peoplefor marketers in general, you know,
because there's obviously a lot of peopletalking about well, just you know,
jobs are going to go away.This is you know, a real threat
to copywriters as an example. Youknow, nobody's going to need copywriters anymore,
(15:43):
which I don't don't agree with,but but let's just start maybe more
mackerel. How do you see AIchanging jobs when it comes to both the
agency and the marketing and client sideof the world. One thing that it's
opening up, and you know,Jeff's a good example is anyone in the
creative services space you need someone whois an expert like Jeff at Mechanism that
(16:11):
is the go to person when youhave questions or can train the entire staff
on how to use those tools.So that's created a new job that didn't
exist before, and that's one waywhere it's changed in terms of replacing jobs.
You know, I'm always optimistic,So I don't think it's going to
replace copywriters or art directors. Forone reason, there's so many uncertain copyright
(16:37):
issues with it, right, Andso if you're putting something out there that's
used to sell an idea before youcreate the idea, you know, that's
totally fine. If you put somethingout there that is up for grabs on
how it was created, it createsa lot of liabilities and legal issues on
the ownership of that. And it'sokay to put a song out Drake if
(17:00):
it's not creating revenue, right,If it's not driving money, if there's
no monetary capitalistic end goal, that'sfine. If you're doing it on the
benefit of a brand or product that'spresumably selling something and benefiting from it,
that becomes a whole other area.So I think it's really going to change
(17:22):
jobs, and that you need aexperts at the company, and you need
to hire people that are trained inhow to use the tools so that they
can work faster, do more ideas, work with presenting that those ideas to
clients. So I think that it'schanged in that you have to be skilled
in AI. That's the immediate changethat I see. If we get to
(17:47):
a point where AI gets us awayfrom computers an hour a day because we're
a little bit more efficient with ourwork, that's a win. That's just
like my overarching theme about how AIcan help humanity, a very good point
to how it will actually impact employersand hiring practices and who should be concerned
(18:08):
about their jobs. I think ifyou're the type of person that doesn't like
to accept new technologies as part ofyour role, then you should be concerned.
But if you have an open mindset, if you're curious, if you
like learning new things and new technologies, then you have nothing to worry about
and you will only be more efficientat your work. You will only be
able to optimize your work better.As these technologies start to come online and
(18:30):
as companies start to figure out waysthat they can implement them correctly and ethically,
then I don't think anyone should beconcerned. My favorite quote that people
are throwing around is you won't loseyour job to AI. You're going to
lose your job to somebody using AI. And I think that's totally true.
With the copywriter example, you havewhen you're a copywriter as a profession you
(18:52):
have that taste, You have thatinnate ability to see something in front of
you and know that's good. AndI don't know if uters know something is
good. They just know that itwas selected over fifty one percent of the
time as the correct answer right,And it doesn't understand why. It just
knows mathematically that's what it should choose. And I think that humans have that
(19:15):
co authoring pickability alongside AI to makeit better, to make it so that
we can still enact the soul sidebehind what's going on in the AI.
And I think that's super important.The taste that we have as professionals in
the in the role that we doevery day is always going to outperform what
a computer can do. Yeah,we even have you know, I know
of some examples within our own agencies, which I think is a good example
(19:40):
of how it actually empowers someone likea copywriter, you know, to do
more effective work like our you know, our citizen group is using AI right
now to actually write posts for clientson places like LinkedIn. That's based on
what is you know in the internetnow, what's in news right now,
(20:00):
and what's relevant to that client andor their products and it you know,
it does the first draft basically,but then you need a writer to actually
look at that draft and say,well, listen, like it. It
really doesn't help that client stand outor have a point of view that's truly
consistent with what their brand or theirvoice is right now because it's just you
(20:22):
know, used what's most interesting onthe Internet. But they can produce ten
times more you know, posts forclients using AI than if they're having to
write from scratch every single one ofthose. And it's much more timely back
to your earlier point, Jeff,because you know, they can all be
done by nine o'clock in the morningand ready to go exactly. Yeah,
I think that's right. Where you'rewhere you're going with it is it's faster,
(20:45):
it saves time, and you cando more volume with it, so
you can do more work for clients, you can take on potentially more clients
because it speeds it up and savestime, but it still needs to be
there, still needs to be thehumanity that makes it ownable and creative.
(21:07):
And without that, it's just,you know, it's just words strung together,
right. You need you become moreof an copywriters, become a little
bit more of editors. They're stilloriginators, but they're also become really good
editors. Yeah. So much ofwhat we do a lot of the times
when we're working on technical clients isgoing through large PDFs or Excel spreadsheets of
(21:33):
data to find the story. AndI think that AI is a perfect example
that gets us, like we weresaying, from that blank page to the
story faster. Why not take afive hundred page PDF on the future of
augmented reality and turn it into somethingthat you can ask questions of? And
there's so many of these tools thatexist right now where you upload a PDF
or a large data set and younow start having a conversation with that document.
(21:56):
You could say, hey, basedon these five hundred pages about augmented
reality, give me five cool LinkedInquizzes. And my audience is this.
There's so many cool opportunities to makeit so that you can be more proficient
with your work so that you cancreate more engaging work and you're still that
you still have that taste, youstill know what good work looks like,
(22:18):
so you're still curating it. Butit gets you to something a little faster
and it makes it so you're notreading a five hundred PAGEPT. It could
be very empowering for younger generations aswell, right because you know, historically,
experience, which had a lot todo with knowledge which you have,
you know, consumed in over time, gave you a you know, an
(22:41):
advantage as a as an older executiveas an example, but in this case
you could actually, you know,younger generations can actually move up the learning
curve much much quicker because they don'thave to know all that stuff. They
can they can ask JET should BTfor some help to get started. So
I think it's it's super I mean, I have a twenty two year old
son to exactly what you said,Jeff, which is like, you better
(23:03):
be ready to use AI because itcould be a huge advantage for you.
And if you don't, I suspectthat it's going to be a tough slogging
for a twenty two year old inthe world right now, So you know,
I think it's it could be superinteresting for younger generations, and we
need them like they're they're not justour future, but they're actually the ones
who are probably going to help ussolve climate change, and you know,
(23:26):
and and racial diversity issues and abunch of other things that are out there
in the market plays and in theworld. That was part one of my
discussion with Jason Harris, co founderand CEO of Mechanism, and director of
Social Strategy Jeff McDonald. Join usnext week for part two, where we
discuss the future of AI, howto establish trust, and where intellectual property
(23:49):
law enters the equation. Thank youfor listening to Partners and Possibility. I
hope you gained valuable insights and inspirationfor your next collaboration.
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