December 27, 2024 • 59 mins
The episode centers on the evolution of marketing in an AI-dominated landscape, discussing whether traditional marketing roles are becoming irrelevant as organizations shift towards more integrated structures. Key topics include the importance of brand, human relationships, and the challenges of relying on outdated metrics as the industry heads toward 2025.
• Examining concerns around the relevance of marketing in the AI era
• Discussing the blurred lines between marketing and sales roles
• Reflecting on the need for a new definition and strategic role for marketing leaders
• Identifying mistakes in current go-to-market strategies
• Highlighting the significance of building brand awareness and meaningful customer experiences
• Analyzing the implications of AI and future marketing trends
• Exploring innovations in experiential marketing
Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/
Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/
Jon Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/
Abhi Ingle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingle-abhi/
Mike Ni: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelni/
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Producer: Anand Shah & Sandeep Parikh
Technical Director & Sound Designer: Sandeep Parikh, Omar Najam
Executive Producers: Sandeep Parikh & Anand Shah
Associate Producers: Taryn Talley
Editor: Sean Meagher & Aidan McGarvey
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Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/
Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/
Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/
Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
To close out the year, we aredoing a special roundtable
discussion on go-to-market,along with some thoughts and
predictions for 2025 and beyond.
We have three amazing guests,two of whom have already been on
our podcast.
John Miller, who has 25 plusyears experience at the world's
(00:27):
most innovative marketingtechnology platforms.
Currently, john is founder andCEO of a stealth B2B tech
startup.
Maybe he'll reveal what it istoday.
Previously, he was CMO ofDemandbase, which he joined as
part of merging with his startupDemandbase, which he joined as
part of merging with his startup, engagio, and before that he
(00:51):
co-founded Marketo, where he, asthe CMO, brought incredible
thought leadership, drovecategory leadership and adoption
and helped the company gopublic.
And John was our first Spark ofAges episode guest.
Abhi Ingle is a C-suiteexecutive with a proven track
record of success in launchingand growing multi-billion dollar
businesses, with extensiveexperience in go-to-market
strategy, digital transformationand AI, ml, ai and machine
(01:14):
learning.
Abhi has held leadershippositions at AT&T and Qualtrics.
He's currently serving as aboard member, startup advisor,
c-suite consultant and angelinvestor, and he was episode 13.
Mike Nee is the CMO ofOpenPrize.
Mike specializes in drivinggrowth for early stage SaaS
(01:36):
companies and brings expertisein product strategy,
go-to-market execution andRevOps, enabled journey
orchestration, leveraging AI anddata-driven insights to
optimize customer engagement.
Now, since Mike's not been onthe show, I should at least give
you a little bit about hisbackground.
He has the trifecta he's theguy that all moms want to have
their daughters marry, havinggone to MIT, stanford and
(02:00):
Harvard.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
You know, it's just my tagline should be
overeducated, underutilized.
I guess that should just be mytagline going forward.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Mike is the guy that all the Asian kids hated,
because everybody pointed to him.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
It's just mom bragging rights.
That's all I did for mom, justfor mom.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So I'm so glad to have you here.
This is our first format whereI get to have these three
amazing guests who are thoughtleaders and will talk to us all
about AI, marketing, sales, allkinds of good stuff.
So here's the first question Ismarketing becoming irrelevant?
Many B2B organizations aremoving towards this notion of a
(02:39):
unified revenue operationsfunction, with AI taking over
many tactical execution tasks.
Should marketing leadersrebrand themselves, as John
would say, chief market officers, to signal a more strategic
focus, or will the functionpotentially be absorbed by
others?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Marketing is not going to go away is, I think,
the first and the short answer.
But I do think marketing isgoing to change.
I think, as we're going to talkabout on the podcast today, you
know the way what works inmarketing is rapidly changing,
just at the same time as AI ischanging how people can market
and how people can buy, and Ithink the result is that things
(03:20):
like brand and relationships andexperiences are beginning to
become more important than everin marketing, and that's just a
fundamentally differentdiscipline than sales.
So maybe it all rolls up to oneorganization, but I think we
are going to continue to havethe function of marketing that
(03:41):
has a senior, most marketingperson.
I don't think that goes away Now.
Focusing on things like brandand relationship experiences is
not, by the way, giving up onmarketing's impact on revenue
Anything but it's actuallyrecognizing that true,
sustainable, long-term revenuecomes from having those things.
(04:04):
So it's really, more thananything else, a change of the
mindset, of how we think aboutmarketing departments.
It's moving away from what Icall fall machine mentality,
where you think of marketing assimply budgeting MQLs out and is
this like more complex functionthat comes down to really
setting the preconditions forlong-term revenue growth.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Look, I mean I agree with what John said.
Right, marketing as a function,like a role, has not gone away.
The contours of theorganizational structure, which
were very rigid before, withthese deep silos between the
different departments, with itsmarketing, sales, customer
success, you name, whatever thenext stages might be, have by
(04:49):
necessity to actually blur.
And I think as people move tomore digital buying, as other
channels kind of start to takeover how you prosecute your
go-to-market.
You prosecute your go-to-market.
(05:09):
I do agree with John that therecognition or the brand that a
company has is going to play amore important role and, more
importantly, I think it's goingto become more tangibly
measurable as we go forwardbecause of all the technologies
that are going into place, and Ithink the age of AI will also
allow us to bridge some of thosewhat I'll call inefficient
operations functions which usedto kind of separate out the
organizations together, right,plus, of course, software, like
(05:30):
what Mike Neeworks said.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Well, I mean, I hate to make this boring, but it's
hard not to agree with what Johnand Abhi just said.
I think the one thing I wouldpush on John, which is clearly
what Abhi said yes, we need tothink about the overall
experience and how that movesacross the entire buyer journey
and breaks down some of thesilos that are absolutely
already happening, and we seethat in RevOps.
But I actually also want totune in on one thing John said,
(05:54):
which is chief market officer.
I mean, one of the roles I gotpushed into was chief growth
officer and really it was theCEO recognizing that someone has
to be looking at what are thevectors of growth and how do I
think about the long-termstrategy, even as we look at how
do we close and continue tomove revenue.
I think that's anotherdimension that starts looking at
what are the type of skills andtherefore what are the types of
(06:14):
tools or approaches that eachare going to have to bring to
the table to actually thinkabout the full go-to-market
engine.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I think it's an interesting way of putting it
right the notion of it, andwe'll go a little bit off on
this.
How would you define it, mike?
The difference betweenmarketing and growth?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Well, I mean, this is where, when you think about
growth, you're thinking not thisquarter, maybe not the next
quarter.
You think about what marketsare we in, what's the insight
that says where we win, where wewon't, and how are we going to
make money there.
And I think this is wheremarketing is looking at a little
bit earlier.
I mean, it's really whatmarketing should have been doing
, frankly, and I think it's alittle bit of recognition that,
(06:53):
with the set of tools we have,we're actually able to expand
the remit a little bit broaderas well.
I don't know, john, what do youthink?
Am I interpreting a little bitwhat you're saying properly?
Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
What do you think?
Am I interpreting a little bitwhat you were saying properly?
Yeah, maybe to build, you know,to specifically define chief
market officer, because we'vetalked about it but we haven't
defined it.
Yes, right, so if you thinkabout it, marketing is the only
CXO level function that's namedafter the job, the tactical job
function, and not the output,right, we don't have a chief
(07:24):
financing officer or a chiefselling officer, right?
So, you know, effectively, youknow, the question is should the
most senior marketing leader beresponsible for being the voice
of the market?
That's, that's ultimately whatwe're talking about here, you
know, you know, you know, maybeto sort of, you know, you know,
(07:47):
put it in another way, reframingit to focus on the domain and
not the activity of marketing.
But?
But I want to make one otherpoint, which is I don't really
care what you call yourself,Right, like if, if all the CMO
does and say I'm now a chiefmarket officer, yay, you do the
same crap.
Yeah, you fail.
(08:08):
Give me some more MQLs, right?
The only reason to do this isto have the strategic
conversation about what is therole of this department and this
function, you know?
And are we the tactical MQLcreators and party throwers, or
are we actually a strategicdriver of long-term growth by
representing the customer in themarket?
(08:29):
That's the conversation to have.
If the title can just be aforcing function to have the
conversation, then so be it.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
I think this answer does change a little bit
depending on the type ofmarketing organization you're
looking at.
Let's just take, for example,b2b SaaS.
Okay, since we're talking aboutB2B marketing out here, you
know it was an interestingreport that we've all seen here.
But you know Canalys hasrecently said that 50% of all
SaaS sales are going to happenthrough a hyper-placed
(08:59):
marketplace, hyperscalermarketplace, in the next couple
of years, by 2027.
Okay, whether you believe it ornot, whether it's 50% or 40% or
30%, the point is that it's aentirely different type of way
in which you kind of prosecutethat particular journey for a
customer who's looking to buy inthat manner, or how you might
work side by side with thehyperscaler salespeople.
(09:22):
I went through this journey atQuartrix.
You know we are going throughthis journey of the companies
I'm working on and it changesfrom company to company.
So in that particular case, youknow, what role does marketing
play?
That's fundamentally differentthan somebody who might be
actually somebody that you goafter from an outbound
perspective, or somebody whomight be coming directly to your
website, and I think you knowcoming back to your website and
(09:52):
I think you know coming back tohow you face off to the market.
I think it does depend onmeeting the buyer in the
preferred mode of their buyingjourney and where they are.
So I think it's hard to kind ofplace one particular you know
title on that particular is thatmarket?
I'm okay with that if that'swhat John wants to call it.
I don't see any reason why notto.
I like the analogy of the salesofficer not being called a
selling officer, a financeofficer not being called a
financing officer.
But I think that misses thepoint of the fact that you're
(10:13):
going to have to be many thingsto many people in different
channels.
That's not different frombefore, except those channels
actually have gotten incrediblypowerful relative to what is to
exist.
I'd like to see what peoplethink about that.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Actually, I like what you're saying there.
You brought up the notion ofmarketplaces right as a way to
offer your product and in thisworld, and I think one of the
things John recently talkedabout in his latest update about
thoughts about 2024 and what'scoming in 2025 is about the
notion of AI agents that are onthe buying and the selling side.
(10:48):
And then you bring up thenotion of marketplaces right,
these hyperscaler marketplacesthat in many ways resemble like
an Amazon marketplace, but fortech.
So I mean, relate that to howwe, as marketing folks or market
folks, should drive ourgo-to-market strategy?
(11:10):
Are there mistakes we're makingtoday that we ought to think
about, for correcting for thefuture?
How do we think about it?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I mean there are many , many, many mistakes that start
from not understanding thecustomer and not aligning with
sales and a whole bunch ofmistakes.
But I've alluded to where Ithink the most fundamental
mistake comes in, which is inour drive to achieve short-term
metrics like MQLs.
I think we all too often dothings that are not in the
(11:41):
interest of the long-termcustomer relationship.
Things like gating content,things like hiding our pricing,
things like bombarding customerswith lots of emails or bringing
in the sales developmentfunction Just because somebody
attended a webinar, they startgetting put into a sequence with
a whole bunch of emails thatthey don't want to get.
These things don't buildrelationships, they burn them.
And it's that short-termismfocus at the expense of doing
(12:05):
what's right for the customer inthe long term that is hurting
our ability to actually achievethe revenue growth we all want.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, it's reflective of a little bit of how we
measure.
It gets back to what Avi wassaying earlier.
I mean, we've been measured notonly in silos between sales and
marketing, email marketers,events, right, every one of them
had tools that optimized fortheir own set of view, and the
question is, how are we breakingthat?
John, I agree with you.
I mean these are mistakes, butit's buried into the explosion
(12:33):
of RevTech we have and, frankly,the type of data we now have
underneath that, yeah, and, bythe way, I should acknowledge my
role in the current state ofthe situation, right?
Speaker 4 (12:44):
I mean, you know the marketing automation tools of
today.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
You're the sequence king, I mean, you're the email
marketing sequence king.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I wrapped everything around Engageo, just put it that
way.
You know I've always usedeverything.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
you did the marketing automation tools of today are
largely responsible for theshort-term you know, machine
gumball, machine mentality ofmarketing that exists today.
So, yes, the metrics and thetech of today are our fault.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
But I think you've got to look back to where we
were.
I think it's as in all thingsthings swing to the extremes and
then need to be moderated back.
We were at a point in whichmarketing was actually not well
measured.
The rise of digital, the riseof channels like what you know
John pioneered, actually made itvery measurable, okay.
And then when the other extremeof like everything to be
(13:35):
measured you know I was laughingwhen I saw John's prediction of
the gumball machine, you knowbudget in MQ allowed it went to
the point where it's gone theother extreme like, and every
SDR has to follow up, and thenperson must respond to that.
And you know I personally amsick of getting a message from
an SDR saying let's connect formutual benefit.
I'm like I'm sorry there is nomutual benefit.
(13:57):
I've been in the business for30 years.
You guys got out of school 30days ago.
There is no mutual benefit outhere, all right, but it's caused
by the need for them to kind ofget those metrics that John was
talking about, the gumball orwhat Mike was talking about.
And I personally think that youknow this situation is going to
even worse and we'll talk aboutAI in a second.
But if we don't change theprocess, ai is going to make it
(14:20):
easier and easier to hit us alla hundred times over, and then
everything's going to shut down.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Okay, so the process has to change Totally.
I love this because a lot oftimes I'll sit there and talk to
CMOs and, no matter how smartthey are, they'll get back to
well, my organic's doing thisand my email's doing that and my
paid is not working, blah, blah, blah.
So if traditional B2B demandgeneration playbook is failing,
right, so why are so manycompanies clinging to it?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
What's right, and so why are so many companies
clinging to it?
How, what's going to get themto let go?
I think change takes time.
Change is hard.
You know, like, yeah, theproblem is that we've spent 10
years teaching cfos, ceos,private equity investors, that
this is the way you should thinkabout in measure marketing, you
know.
And so it's really hard for acmo.
You know, up to Vista Equitywho says every month, fill out
the sheet of the number of MQLsyou generated and just tell them
yeah, no, I'm not going to dothat because that's bad
(15:12):
marketing.
So this is going to take sometime to change.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yes, well, not only that but, rajiv, you asked what
mistake did marketers make?
We're actually doubling down ona mistake this year.
I mean, if you think about 2024, ai moved from sort of
experimentation and we're reallyexecuting with it now.
But what are we using?
Chachi Petit, jasper, you knowAdobe, sensei, right, we're
starting to power content andcampaigns and predictive
outcomes.
I mean, I remember when webought my first ML market
(15:37):
automation to bolt onto ourproduct 90s right, we've been
doing this for a while, but 90sright, we've been doing this for
a while.
But the problem is, every oneof these things we add, we
actually further silo our data.
Each one of these, everyco-pilot, every tool, is
actually further fragmenting thedata and therefore the
experience for the customers andthe relationship that John is
trying to optimize towards.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, I think, sometimes back to the basics
approach, which goes back towhat are we actually trying to
do fundamentally?
Right, you're trying tobasically engage with a person
who might be interested in yourproduct, hopefully informed with
something that tells you, as wewere saying earlier, who that
ideal customer for your productshould be.
See if they're interested.
(16:17):
If they are interested, getthem the right sets of
information along the way and,when they're ready to engage
with you, have them talk to aperson who might resolve the
issue.
It could be an agent, it couldbe a human being, right, but
that's what we're fundamentallytrying to do.
And going back and remappingthe hash of the tools that are
right now killing you withhyper-fragmented metrics along
(16:41):
the way that John has said hasgotten embedded now in the
private equity playbook and theCFO playbook, makes it very hard
for people to rise about that.
The question is how?
Speaker 4 (16:53):
do we do that?
I think the other thing that wehaven't really talked about why
this is so essential there'sthis rule of thumb, the 95-5
rule, right, that says, at anypoint in time, only about 5% of
your market is in market to buyyour products.
Just to remind everybody, thatis not based on research, that's
(17:13):
just based on a back of theenvelope calculation based on
average sales cycles times.
So whether it's 3% or 5% or 10%, that doesn't matter.
The point is, most of yourtarget market is not looking to
buy right now, and so if youmarket to them as if they are,
you're going to alienate them.
So the first thing we have torecognize is that our goal isn't
(17:34):
necessarily to say, hey, areyou interested?
Do you want a meeting, are youinterested?
Our goal is to start to buildlong-term awareness and
preference, which connects up tothe other stat I want to share.
Sixth Sense recently releasedtheir buyer survey study, which
basically found that 80% of thetime, buyers have already picked
(17:59):
their preferred vendor beforecontacting sales.
So the decisioning is happeningbefore we even think there's a
sales cycle going on.
Trustradius had some research78% of the buyers chose products
that they were aware of beforethey started their research, and
that number goes to 86% forenterprise buyers.
(18:20):
So we're in this interestingconundrum as marketers which is
the traditional marketing oflike hey, are you interested?
Right, doesn't work because italienates them, while at the
exact same time, if we haven'tcreated awareness and preference
for our solution before theystart the buying cycle, we've
basically already lost.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So are you suggesting , then, that one of the metrics
we should be driving for aremuch more brand-centric, much
more like CPG-centric, whereit's about gaining awareness,
delivering content, educatingfolks, but not having those
strict metrics like we typicallyhave?
Speaker 4 (18:56):
A hundred percent.
Awareness and engagement needto sort of become, I think,
top-level CMO metrics that wetalk about, which can be
quantified.
It can be quantified withmarket research, customer
surveys.
I was talking to the CMO of acompany who is primarily a
PLG-oriented company, a B2Cconsumer product, that has been
(19:19):
trying to build their enterprisebusiness and the number one
thing they care about is do youthink of this company as an
enterprise solution?
Right, and so you know what.
They can survey that and theycan measure that quarter over
quarter over quarter.
And the CMO told me I wouldrather spend money on that than
one extra trade show.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
All right, so there's more of your share of voice
kind of metric right, so shareof voice, aided unaided right.
So that's more of a CPG, that'smore of a consumer-based metric
right, and that brings to therise the notion of reaching out
to influencers.
So now, if you're trying toreach out to influencers because
that's how, like you talkedabout John, 80% of people or 70%
of people, or Forrester waslike what 67% of people have
(20:01):
researched about you know aboutyou before they come to you.
So how do you identify them?
How do you engage with them?
How do you create is this a lotabout partnering, not just
doing sponsored content?
Right, but it's a lot aboutpartnering, not just doing
sponsored content right, butit's a lot more than this.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Yeah, we need to think about it, especially going
forward.
We're entering a world where AIis going to be
disintermediating our ability totalk to customers, whether it's
summarizing our inbox orzero-click search, or AI buying
agents that are actually goingout and doing the research.
So, to build this brandawareness, I think it really has
to start with what are thingsthat that AI cannot summarize,
(20:41):
and I think that's going to comedown to a couple of things
Experiences, relationships, andincluded in relationships are
things like partners andinfluencers.
Included in relationships arethings like partners and
influencers.
Put another way, the source ofthe information is going to
become probably more importantthan the actual information.
(21:04):
We already see that in howpeople consume their news, and
it's increasingly going to beimportant in how we consume
information for business.
So you have experiences, youhave relationships, and then I
do think there's going to bestill an opportunity for
communities, which again,frankly, is kind of a form of
(21:24):
relationships and originalcontent.
Content becomes cheap in theage of AI.
Anybody can generate a blogpost, but something that's truly
original and valuable will, Ithink, continue to stand out,
partly because AI can'tsummarize it if it doesn't exist
yet.
This is great.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
I'm going to throw this one to Mike, mike, because
I know you love the engineeringbehind this stuff.
John has proposed and he'sreflecting what he sees AI
buying agents become moreprevalent In a B2B marketing
battle.
Ai buying agents become moreprevalent, right, and so now the
B2B marketing battle is itbecoming a battle for the
algorithm?
So how does it affect contentand messaging?
So I think, john, you talkedabout having two types, a
(22:04):
two-tiered capability.
One is the notion ofmachine-readable AI agent
content, and then you haveexperiences that you're creating
.
So how does this affect contentand messaging in this new type
of environment?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Well, it's interesting because I think
there's data quality overquantity on one side.
I mean, one thing that's goingto happen is you don't know
who's actually on your sitesometimes, and for a period of
time, you don't know what's abot versus a human, and so how
are you actually really startingto delineate these things?
And in third-party data, we knowis getting harder and harder to
differentiate around.
So the question is now, ifyou're going to have the right
(22:38):
ability to not only respond tohumans, to create the right
engagement, as well as torespond to the agents, you
really have to be much moreeffective about your own data
and the quality of that data.
I'm going to parrot Abhi, who Ithink, at the last time I heard
him speak, his rule, or the newgolden rule, is he who has the
data makes the rules, and inthis case, it's not just the
(22:58):
data itself, but think about howyou start capturing the context
around every one of thoseengagements so you can say what
are the algorithms that thebuyer agents are starting to use
that actually are mostrecognizable?
I mean, you're still now havingto do very similar work, but
now you're profiling differenttypes of people and the agent
just becomes another type ofbuyer.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
That's right, can't just use a word.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Tell me, give me an example of context.
Well, you know, clearly there's.
You know, when we think aboutdata, people think about
attribution, but really it'strying to capture all the
context around that touchpoint,whether it was channels, whether
it was around the touchpoints,the preferences that we want to
get to, but also just what youknow, where are they?
Like you said, in the otherthings they're looking at,
(23:42):
because there's so many otherpieces of how the agents are
going to start putting togetherwhat the buyer wants that you
just have to start interpretingas well, and there's going to be
a wide variety of them, justlike there's customers today.
And the question is how do youmake sure you understand one,
who's the agents and who arereal people, and then actually
start to make sure that yourfirst party data is actually
able to be leveraged to be ableto better actually start
(24:03):
understanding that whole journey?
And that is just incredibleamount of data that we're
starting to see people invest in.
I mean, you see the re-rise ofCDPs of last year and a half, or
composable CDPs.
All right, mike, what's a?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
CDP.
Help us with the.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
CDP.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Actually, I'm going to make Avi explain to us what a
CDP is Go for it.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Cdp is a customer data platform.
Look, it's basicallyfundamentally just a way to kind
of understand and compile allthe information about your
customer, how they've interactedwith you, worked with you.
Whether you call it a CDP, youcall it a data lake, you call it
a composable CDP, it doesn'treally matter.
It comes back fundamentally towhat John said.
It's like coming back to basicprinciples about where is that
(24:44):
customer?
I think one of the things youhave to do is something we've
talked about before Rajiv is thesegmentation of intent.
Instead of following themechanistic intent that John
talked about oh, you check thisout, give us a call form, a
meeting, let's go how about youtry and understand Exactly, how
about you try and figure outwhat is that intent?
(25:07):
Sub-segmenting intent into fineslices, by the way, and you can
start doing that based on AIthat is trained to take a look
at the way the person isinteracting with you.
And if it's true, as John saidearlier, that people have
already made a decision beforeand they know who they're going
(25:28):
to buy, then the whole exerciseand exercise in justifying their
buy.
Okay, if that's going to happen, you're going to have two
things.
One is what are the ways inwhich you become that justified
decision beforehand and thesecond side, if you're trying to
break in, is OK.
What are the kind of thingsthat are going to help me break
the incoming assumption thatthat's the buy and all I need to
(25:50):
do is give a bunch of specsthat can against.
Even the notion of RFIs kind ofstarts to kind of break down
right, because an RFI, you cansay, automate the process of RFI
.
That's what people say.
I'm like, why would you have anRFI?
An agent can compile all theelements of an RFI by going out
and collecting what you have.
So the question is, as Johnsaid earlier, like what can you
(26:12):
measure?
What can you not measure?
But the what can you not measuredoes have to break out in a
significantly different way andI think the only way you can
start doing that is throughpartnerships, is through truly
groundbreaking thoughtleadership elements.
That's why he kind of saidbrand-like.
So it's not quite brand, butit's brand-like elements to
establish yourself in thejustified by.
(26:33):
But then you also have to thinkof the counter, which is how do
I break it?
Otherwise you would say, john,if I follow that as natural end,
75% to 80% of the time you haveno chance of winning, because
all they're doing is putting youthrough a song and dance to
justify buying whom they'vealready chosen.
So you really have to focus inon which side of the equation
you might be in right and playthe game both ways.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Okay, so an RFI is a request for information, right?
So, to our listeners, an RFI is, as a company I want to learn
about, I want to.
I'm engaging in an area that Iwant to change as part of my
company.
I want to put in a new system.
I want to put in AI,potentially for my customer
support department.
I'll put out an RFI request forinformation from main vendors
(27:13):
in the industry and ask them tocomment on it.
So maybe that's something thatAI can do for me as an agent
going out and requesting it andI can have receiving agents on
my side that deliver it.
Right, right.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So you can have that, but then that doesn't mean the
agent is going to buy, theagent's only going to collect
information.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
So you still have to get to the buyer?
No, but you can influence, tothe point that Mike made earlier
If you kind of have anunderstanding of intent and if
you know, as John said, if youare in that favored set versus
unfavored set.
You got to figure out whatanswers the agents are
exchanging.
Not that they're not truthful,but the exchange of information
between the agents has to bemanaged in such a way that you
know that which your previouscustomers have told you is
(27:56):
particularly well differentiatedand find a way to land that
with the buying agent.
Okay, your information agent oryour selling agent has to be
very, very, very thoughtfulabout that, and it only comes
through in a deep understandingof your customers and what
really matters to them.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Any examples of that today, like there's AI products
out there today, there'sgo-to-market of those AI
products.
Any examples of this happeningto help?
Speaker 4 (28:22):
our viewers, listeners.
I think it's more coming.
I think I alluded to zero-clicksearch, right?
You know where?
Now you don't have to go clickthrough the website to see.
The AI is going to summarize itfor you.
I think we're going to see thatmore and more in our email
inboxes.
We're like, hey, here's theemails you need to pay attention
(28:44):
to.
I think a full buying agentwhere you just say I'm looking
for a new finance solution.
Go research all the options,talk to the selling agents.
Negotiate'm looking for a newfinance solution.
Go research all the options,talk to the selling agents,
negotiate initial pricing for meand come back with a rankless
recommendations.
That's years away, right, butthe point is it is coming.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, I'm going to argue that it's actually not
going to be that far away,because you're seeing the
composition.
They want to be one agent,right, basically.
Fundamentally, it's going to bea swarm of agents, each of whom
is going to be broken down intolittle pieces.
You're going to have acoordinating agent.
One of person is going to justsay here's your damn template,
(29:22):
go collect all the data.
That basically goes there.
Poof goes the RFI.
By the way, the request forinformation You're not going to
be asked for it.
You better make sure yourwebsite is architected in such a
way, or your information piecearchitected and labeled in such
a way, that you make it supereasy to be gathered.
Ok, the second one might sayhey, here's the criteria, score
everything against the criteriaso that the little information
agent passes that to a scoringagent.
(29:42):
The scoring agents have beentrained by your people.
By the way, that might be justa process where you have a
buying committee and the agentinterviews the buying committee
to actually profile their areas.
And, by the way, I'm sayingsome of this because I have seen
a lot of stealth companies inthis area.
I just can't say who they areand what they're doing, but it's
actually happening right nowand the third one says okay, go
(30:04):
ahead and, based on what youheard from the buying committee,
score all of these people andtell us what the follow-up
questions should be At thatpoint in time.
It's a very different game thatwe're playing right now.
I think this is going to happen, frankly, within the next two,
two and a half years.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
It's not going to be like three years or four years.
I'm going to talk about adifferent type of product,
because there's a spectrum ofproducts here and the level of
definition.
We saw the old marketplacesback in the 90s right, when the
level of specification on steelor other products like that
allows you to have marketplaceswith an interchangeability.
We're talking about differentsolutions now and how do we have
that gradation, which I thinkis somewhere between where John
(30:40):
and you are speaking to, Becauseyou may have a shortlist but
you're still going to need toengage to really understand what
you guys need to use at thenuance with the questions, like
you said that the machines aretelling you what to ask, but the
difference is that the scoringis calculated not by a one
specific, like a simple scoringsheet.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Remember how you had to go fill out those moronic
lists?
It's focused on the intent ofthe buying committee, which the
algorithm has sussed out.
Okay, on that dimension, itcomes back with we think this is
the best matches.
Here's why.
And when it comes to market out, okay, on that dimension, it
comes back with we think this isthe best matches.
Here's why.
And when it comes tomarketplaces, mike, you're right
, marketplaces have alwaysexisted, but when I was talking
about marketplaces and thehyperscaler marketplace, what is
(31:22):
different out here is theseridiculously large commitments
that customers are making tothese buyers, and then you're
getting them to burn down thosecommitments.
That's never existed.
When the budget is alreadyallocated somewhere else, your
budget is allocated to somebodyelse who then needs to release
it on behalf of you.
So there's some slightlydifferent dynamics.
Yes, there's versions of thesethings that have happened in the
(31:43):
past, but they're variants.
You know, that's just myperspective.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I love this.
Okay, in your view, what is themost interesting innovation
outside of AI that you're seeingin go-to-market?
Speaker 4 (32:08):
I think that there are some companies really
starting to experiment withinteresting experiences.
I mean, this is ranging frompeople.
Obviously there's the steakdinner that's been around
forever Omikazi at AJ's house,and then there's fancy versions
of that.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Growth Marketing Summit by.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
Position Squared.
Actually, I think the GrowthMarketing Summit is actually a
really good one to talk about,because, at least the one I went
to, you know, you tookeverybody to salt lake city, you
know, and we basically livedtogether in a house for a couple
days, um, and we did somelearning together, but we also
did some skiing together andhanging out together, you know,
(32:46):
and and I came back from thatevent and I told my friends or
my wife, is it felt as much likehanging out with my friends as
it did going to a workconference, and I think that's
gold.
That's exactly what you want.
You developed an experiencethat AI will never summarize.
B2c companies have spent thelast 10 years investing in
interesting experiences, whetherthey're immersive exhibits and
(33:11):
whatnot.
I think it was one of the emailvendors might have been
mailchimp.
They put together basically aninteractive museum.
You know.
That basically was called likeemail is dead right and it was,
you know, but it was.
It was.
It was like, um, the candymuseum or the ice cream museum,
(33:32):
if you, you go to these placeswhere each room is
Instagrammable and you do stuff.
So that was like a B2B versionof creating an experience.
So I think there's earlyinnovation happening there and I
think there'll be moreinnovation coming.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Well, I think there's always interesting things we
can steal from the B2C side,because they have been thinking
about this for a long time.
I think about Rajiv, like acouple of years ago.
I think there's alwaysinteresting things we can steal
from the B2C side because theyhave been thinking about this
for a long time.
I think about Rajiv, like acouple of years ago.
I think you and I actuallyworked together on the
personalization B2Cpersonalization so we work with
customers like Tiffany's andSaks, as well as Walmart.
So we had the whole spectrum ofhow do you personalize these
(34:10):
experiences at scale, the wholespectrum of how do you
personalize these experiences atscale.
And what's interesting here islike it's like a playbook of you
know how many experiences doyou have available at what stage
of where they are in thejourney and making smart
selections based upon theinformation you have at that
point in time stream-basedarchitectures a lot down
underneath I'm getting a littlegeeky, I apologize.
You're really talking about thiswhole playlist of different
(34:31):
experiences that can be puttogether dynamically based upon
what you detect of where they'reat, and I think that this is
where you see some playerstrying to put together basic
infrastructures to do this inthe B2B world, but the tools
they have today have beenholding them back.
So you know, we've been workingwith folks at Whippling and
they've gone into that wholeScott Brinker architecture.
(34:52):
Frankly, snowflake-based,centralized-based centralized
data.
Openprize is a dataorchestration layer which is
really that automation andreally helping you connect.
Now, best of breed components.
They end up using differenttypes of AI or email engines or
whatnot, so they can craft highvelocity, really different
(35:12):
experiences based upon what theydetect from 20 different
external vendors of data.
And how do you do this at scale?
And you're starting to see realinnovators put together pieces
of the machinery that we sawmore in the B2C world, but for
B2B, and we're going to see, Ithink, more of this as vendors
start coming up with solutionsthat can deliver this out of the
box.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
So, rajiv, like, like people you'd want to be
associated with, right, andthat's what leads to the kind of
experience that John talkedabout, because if you do this
right and you do this in a waythat is not overly geared
towards kind of selling yourproduct, but really create and
curate an experience where birdsof a feather hang, they will
(36:15):
sell each other frankly, okay.
And it happens at a deepemotional level, not just at a
transactional level, which iswhat I think john was
referencing.
The problem is you can't.
You can't manage theseexperiences.
So thinking about how to layerthem down.
So we had those.
You know it was in, of course,it was in park city, it was in
utah right, because I was calledtricks.
But then we had a series ofthese kind of step-down events
(36:37):
that went all the way down,right.
And if you look at, for example,again taking a book or a page
from the consumer side, if youlook at some of the work that
has been done by some of theKorean food companies that are
kind of capitalizing the K-popcraze right now, they've done
some amazing experientialmarketing in the US.
What can we learn from that?
(36:57):
Or take Mike's example youcould have AI.
Just go and say I'll find a wayto bug you even more by having
an automated SDR.
Now I'm like great, perfect.
Instead of like a kid buggingme, now I'm going to have like
an AI agent who never tiresbugging me.
Or you could go down the microute and say hey, let's use the
(37:18):
AI agent to figure out piecesof data, perhaps get into that
fine sub-segment of intent andwhere in that buying journey you
are which is what John wasreferencing and only find a way
to give you that which you needin that process, because you
have such a deep, deep, deepunderstanding of your customer,
what they've done before, howpeople have progressed and where
(37:39):
this particular customer is.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
I'm going to insert myself because I think Abhi hit
something very, very cool, andI'm going to use the example
with Burberry's, which was acustomer of ours, which applies
right, because what they decidedwas friction was good.
Friction was where the brand iscreated.
Friction is good Because if youwant to buy socks, go to Amazon
Frictionless experience.
If you want to create arelationship, if you want to
(38:04):
create brand, it exists in thefriction.
Where do you slow someone down?
So, in terms of Burberry's, dothey get you to a cross-sell,
upsell or do they want you toknow that at this point in time,
this is a point to introducethe weft and the weave, the
history behind the tartan at bar, because then, when you make
the purchase, that experiencehas actually carried you into
now a sustaining customer.
(38:24):
How do you grow with them?
Because they know, they havethe data that if you actually
were educated in certain pointsof the experience, you actually
stuck around and bought more.
The cross.
That was much more natural, andI think this is some of the
experience that John's trying totalk about.
The issue has always been,though, for B2B volume and
actually measuring the brandconnection to how that
(38:44):
contributes to funnel, and Ithink that is the unspoken
question we haven't touched uponhere at all, not to say we'll
get there.
That's a big one, but I thinkthis is where we're starting to
see some really interestinginnovation, and think this is
where we're starting to see somereally interesting innovation
and we're going to see thingslike this, based upon what we're
(39:04):
going to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
All right, we have this really fun section here
where we're going to talk aboutgo-to-market tactics in 2025.
And John Miller, our thoughtleader, has written a great
article on marketing profs.
I'm going to link it to ourshow notes, but we're going to
paraphrase a few of them, andall three of our wonderful
guests are going to give you oneline about each one.
Okay, here we go.
Number one the most effectiveB2B marketers in 2025 will be
(39:31):
those who can seamlesslyintegrate AI into their
workflows while retaining thecore values of human connection
and creativity.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Absolutely.
I agree with that.
Easier said than done.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
That was exactly what I was going to say.
Sorry, I should have said itfirst.
Damn it.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Come on, Mike, jump faster, Go John.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
And I would say you know, that's, I think, a too
strong a statement, I think in2025, that the you know people
can, as long as you're focusedon doing right by the customer,
even if you're not incorporatingAI into your workflows, that's
going to be okay because it's along-term trend, not a
short-term.
It's a vision.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
It's a vision, Okay.
Next one AI will replace most,but not all, marketing and sales
jobs within the next five years.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Don't agree.
Don't agree.
I think that it's not a greattime to be a junior salesperson,
like an SDR, If all you do isfollow up on inbound lead forms.
Not so good.
But as we've talked about,ironically, the changes to
buying that AI is driving ismaking things like experiences
(40:39):
and relationships and brand andhuman connections more important
, not less important.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Absolutely agree.
I think the research we see,especially on the sales side, is
accelerated and offloaded partsof work they used to do.
But the relationship side isjust going to be much more
expected because more sellersare able to spend time.
And I totally agree with John.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I actually think that it is going to replace a lot
more jobs than we areacknowledging out here.
Folks, I think what's going tohappen is going to change the
shape of the organization and,while you could say it doesn't
eliminate it, I guarantee yousales and marketing will be 30,
40% lighter than they are today.
So that is job elimination,call it what you will, and I
(41:18):
think a lot of that work.
There is going to be no suchrole as the hyper-segmented sale
passing off between six peopleThank God for that, by the way
and AI is going to replace allof that.
You're going to come in for thefinal kill, so you better know
what you're talking about or getout of the way.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
All right, Love these answers.
Next one Traditional marketingmetrics such as MQLs are
outdated and no longer relevantin the age of AI buying agents.
Remember 2025.
Companies need to adopt newmetrics that reflect engagement
with AI audiences.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
So not going to happen in 2025, guys, I mean, as
much as Avi loves it, I mean Ithink that when I last spoke to
the Forrester folks coveringthis, 92% of their customers
still use MQLs.
It's very hard to move off ofthe shift towards buying groups,
account centricity.
These are things that are stillon the wishlist, that are for
the most sophisticated customers, and so you need to add the
(42:08):
metrics, but it's not going toreplace the metrics in the next
2025.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
It's the trend.
You know that we will be movingaway from MQLs and towards new
metrics.
The new metrics won't just bequalified agent interactions or
QAIs you know that might be onebut we also will be measuring.
You know some of the sort ofbrand awareness and preference
(42:33):
metrics that we talked about aswell for the humans.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, so much as I would love to see some of this
happen earlier.
I do agree that change takestime, but I do think that
something what I call DOE depthof engagement, okay, intensity
of engagement, yes, and superfine segmentation of intent is
going to start to be find a wayto get appended to those mqls.
(42:57):
But for the time being, we arestill in the world of the mql.
Folks, make no mistake, don'trush out to try and kill it,
because you see, you see if wewant to love it and neither will
your pe firm, so yeah, we canhope to make it better me love
intent, intent segmentation,okay growth product-led growth
here's a controversial one.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Product-led growth pl here's a controversial one.
Product-led growth PLG is afailing strategy.
The future of B2B sales lies ina return to sales-led
approaches.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
Don't agree.
I think this entirely has to beanswered in the context of the
kind of product you're sellingin the ACV.
If you're selling Canva,product-led growth is a
wonderful strategy and I don'tthink that goes away.
And if anything, it ties intoall the research that says
buyers want self-servicepossibilities whenever possible.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
And I think that what we see is that it's product-led
and sales-led for higher margin, especially if you have
something that is a little moreplatform-oriented, and so you do
need to have those entry pointsand it's a great combination.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
I mean, I think Elastic has really shown that.
To be a truism on that, yeah,let's just call it product-led
sales.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Yep, love it Great.
Next one Building a strongbrand is more important than
ever.
In a world dominated byAI-generated content, companies
need to invest heavily increating authentic and memorable
brand experiences.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yes, some of them may need to be offline, otherwise
you get back into the issue ofAI again, summarizing everything
for you.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I wonder, abhi, if this doesn't get back to just
what strategy you choose, thoughyou may have to just be the
low-cost producer here andunderstand that there's a level
of decedent.
Mediation and commoditizationis going to happen at some level
, and you just have to be chooseyour segment.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Actually, mike, I think that's a really, really
good point.
Right, you know, commodity, lowcost products will be
completely bought and sold by AIagents talking to each other,
and that's fine and you're right.
I've been talking about, youknow, more differentiated, high
value, higher value products,but absolutely and some of those
could be your entry points.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Your PLGs could be easily sold via some of these,
some of these, these earlycategories, yeah, I'd say it's
not just low price.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
I think it's also highly automated that know how
to work with agents where lowprice would be a component.
But massive automation is theother aspect.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Agreed and PLG plus.
Speaker 4 (45:20):
Yeah, got it, sorry, interesting analogy.
Right Today, you know, ouragents are already buying our
Google ads where, dynamically,they are negotiating the price
of what we're going to pay.
You know, instantaneously, it'sjust called Google AdWords,
true, right.
But you know why can't we buyother quote-unquote commodity,
high distribution products, witha similar model.
(45:42):
That's a great point, avi.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
The rise of AI buying agents will lead to a shift
towards value-based pricingmodels.
Companies that cling toseat-based pricing will struggle
to compete.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
So we went through this thinking at my last company
, at Quadrics, and we're lookingat this right now at Samba and
all of our helping out.
I think it's going to be acombination of
subscription-based andconsumption-based.
Anybody who sticks to strictlyseed-based it might work for a
few areas, but I think you'regoing to have to blend
seed-based and consumption-based.
I think there's some areas thatgo all consumption-based.
(46:15):
Some areas go to a combinationof seat and consumption.
I think purely seat-based is introuble.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Sounds like a telco model.
I agree with what Avi said.
We're going to see differentcombinations where seat and
consumption, but consumptionblocks as well, love it.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Last question Before we go to the game the majority
of B2B purchases in 2025 willhappen through self-service
channels like websites andonline marketplaces.
Companies who fail to adapt tothis shift risk falling behind
(46:58):
just said, are we talking aboutdollar volume or transaction
count?
Speaker 4 (46:59):
you know, etc.
Etc.
But you know, to net, net, no,I don't think so.
You know, like like it.
Just when I just think aboutthe, the amount of buying, right
, you know, you know it's, it'splg is important, but they're
probably especially on dollarvolume.
It's still dominated, I think,by direct sales especially with
the level of risk.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
People are taking on a lot of this.
These purchase, purchase ofsoftware.
They're going to want to havethat relationship and the
experience will matter.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Yeah, rajiv, my answer is it's not binary.
The channel, the experience ofbuying, is omni-channel.
I went through this at AT&Twhen I was the head of digital.
We had multi-million dollarsales where the contract might
be signed in person, but most ofthe buying and purchasing
actually happened online.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
So that's an omni-channel journey, so it
could be a combo.
All this stuff happens offline,but then you may pump it
through a private offer on amarketplace.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
But increasingly agent-driven.
They're going to help guidethat buying process and that
selling process.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
I love it.
Okay, this part's the fun part.
If you haven't had fun already,I want to welcome John, abhi
and Mike to the Shark Tank,where top-tier AI experts go
head-to-head.
This is where three C-levelmarketers are forced to fire up
(48:13):
those neural networks and battlefor strategic brilliance.
This is where cutting edge AIstrategies clash and only the
most innovative approaches reignsupreme.
Get ready for the ultimatefighting AI showdown, where only
one emerges as the champion ofthe AI revolution.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
So this is like it's going to be like two truths and
a lie.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Okay, it's two truths and a lie, but I'm going to
read you three statements.
Two of them are true.
One is a lie.
You've got to pick out whichone is the lie.
I'm going to count down three,two, one, and you're going to
have to show your answer as yourfinger, so that you can't cheat
off each other, like you'vebeen doing all throughout this
podcast.
So here we go, round one.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
One finger is true.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Two is lie, One is.
I'm going to give you three.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Three answers.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
Three answers and we're putting the number of the
lie Okay.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Okay, here's round number one A neural network was
trained on recipes for magicpotions from fantasy books and
used.
They use that knowledge togenerate new, potentially
functional potions.
That's number one.
Number two researchers areusing AI to analyze the
communications patterns ofdolphins with the hope of
(49:27):
eventually building atranslation device.
And number three an AI-poweredsystem can predict the outcome
of Supreme Court cases with 95%accuracy by analyzing the text
of legal documents and thejudge's past decisions.
So first is the recipes forpotions, Number two is about a
(49:51):
dolphin translator and numberthree is about predicting
Supreme Court cases.
Ready, One, two, three, Okay.
And number three is aboutpredicting Supreme Court cases
Ready One, two, three, Okay.
So I have John at one, I'll beat three and Mike at three.
All right for this round.
I'll be in Mike Wynn.
(50:11):
Sorry, John, I knew the dolphinone was true.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
All right, I knew the dolphin one was true, and I
just know there's just so manyMIT nerds where I went that
someone would have created thatpotion creation tool.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Surprise number three , and the one was too obvious
that's what I wanted to say wasfalse, but my brain said it
can't be that simple All right.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
Here we go Round two.
Two AI is being used torecreate the voices of people
who have lost the ability tospeak due to illnesses like ALS,
allowing them to communicatewith loved ones in their own
voice.
Number two a major Hollywoodstudio announced plans to create
a blockbuster movie writtenentirely by AI, with no human
(50:56):
involvement in the scriptwriting process.
And number three AI algorithmsare being used to compose
personalized lullabies thatadapt to a baby's cries in real
time to soothe them moreeffectively.
So one is recreate voices ofpeople who've lost the ability
to speak.
Number two is a studio creatinga movie entirely by AI.
(51:19):
Number three is personalizedlullabies Ready, it's a major
studio.
It says a major Hollywoodstudio says my notes Ready.
Three, two, one, all right.
I got John and Mike agreeingwith two.
Oh, abhi is two, all right.
I got John and Mike agreeingwith two.
Oh, abhi is two, all right, allright.
(51:44):
All three of you are right,congratulations.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
Number two is the lie you guys are 2-0.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Pretty good.
Number two is the lie, so I gotall three of you got this so
far.
Abhi and Mike are still in thelead, John, unless we go to
extra rounds.
This is your chance to catch up.
All right, round three.
Number one an AI art generatorwas accidentally entered into a
prestigious art competition andwon first prize, fooling all the
(52:12):
judges.
Number two IBM announced itwould pause hiring for roles
that could be replaced by AI,potentially affecting around
7,800 jobs.
Number three scientists havedeveloped an AI system that can
accurately predict earthquakesseveral days in advance by
(52:32):
analyzing subtle changes in theEarth's magnetic field.
Okay, AI art generator Foolingjudges.
Number two IBM laying offbecause of AI.
Number three An earthquakepredicting system.
Three Two, One.
Okay, I have two John at two,Abhi at three and Mike at two.
(52:57):
All right I guarantee you tohave a winner.
All right, two, three, two.
So the winner is none of you.
Number one is the correct one.
An art AI art generator wasaccidentally entered into a
prestigious art competition andwon first prize, fooling all the
judges, that was the lie.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
I could have heard like that I swear, we heard that
one.
Maybe it didn't win first place, maybe they're trying to be a
little bit too cutesy with thewording Alright so here we are.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
We are.
Mike and Abhi are tied forfirst place, so do you want to
go to round four and see if weget an actual winner here?
Number one a song entirelygenerated by AI featuring Drake
and the Weeknd went viral andracked up millions of streams
before being taken down due tocopyright claims.
(53:52):
Number two an AI program hasbeen granted a patent for an
invention that it designedindependently, raising legal and
ethical questions about AIintellectual property rights.
And number three UniversalMusic Group successfully forced
Spotify to remove allAI-generated music from its
platform, arguing that itinfringes on the rights of human
(54:15):
artists.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
Is that like successfully, or just asking
them?
Speaker 1 (54:19):
Successfully forced Spotify to remove all
AI-generated music from itsplatform.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
I like how seriously Abhi's taking this.
I know it's Abhi.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
I wrote this sermon.
Really, come in Versus thisright.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Like 10,000 days on Duolingo.
Okay, ready, ready.
Three, two, one, all of themare.
All of you are two, all of youare wrong.
Again, okay, we're still tied.
It was actually number threeUniversal Music Group did.
(54:52):
The first two were truths andthe last one was a lie.
All right round five.
So this is your chance to win.
Speaker 4 (55:03):
I'm normally pretty good at two truths and a lie,
and I'm whiffing pretty hardtoday, so here's round five.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Number one the Trump campaign was found to have used
AI to generate political adsthat are specifically designed
to trigger emotional responsesin audiences, bypassing logical
reasoning and increasing thelikelihood of swaying opinions.
Number two researchers havedeveloped an AI system that can
(55:28):
detect lies with over 90%accuracy by analyzing micro
expressions and vocal cues.
Expressions and vocal cues.
And number three AI is beingused to generate personalized
perfumes by analyzing anindividual's scent preferences
and their social media activity.
This is for the.
This is for the win.
Ready Three.
(55:49):
Two, one Different answers,same answers.
All right, it's a tie.
I'll be right or wrong.
The answer is number one.
Is the lie?
Damn it.
What?
yes, even trump wasn't cleverenough to use ai to generate
political ads, most of thesewrong you guys know the monty
(56:14):
hall problem.
Speaker 4 (56:15):
If you're given the opportunity to switch, you
always should switch.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
So you guys did a great job.
I really appreciate you guysdoing this with me today.
This was fantastic.
What a great way for us to gothrough what happened in 2024
and what's coming up.
Thank you, john, for writingthat wonderful thought piece
that triggered all this, andit's so amazing to have you guys
as experts here on the show.
So thank you for joining theSpark of Ages Ton of fun.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Thank you, thanks for having us.
And thank you, John, forcreating this.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
And putting up with us.
Take care everyone.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Take it easy.
I just want to tell you howmuch fun this was for me.
One of the great gifts I havein this world is I get to hang
out with really, really brightpeople who, like me, are trying
to figure out what makes changeand what gets people to buy, and
I get the thrill of connectingthem together.
And really this came about alittle bit surreptitiously,
(57:15):
based on a great idea from theFNFunny team, and it was amazing
to have all three of these veryaccomplished executives
together and entrepreneurstogether to just talk about
where they think things aregoing, and we can learn so much
from it.
You saw how we talk aboutconsumer as well as B2B, and how
(57:35):
we borrow techniques from oneplace to the other, how we talk
about AI and how that's blendingin.
But then there's the emotionalcontext of how we need to still
be human.
We still need to connect toeach other.
We talked about our growthmarketing summit.
Yes, we focus on digital, butwe know that to get people
together, to get people to trustyou, you still have to create
(57:57):
emotional connections, and thoseemotional connections then
bleed over to each other andthey create great synergy.
So humans still need tointeract, even if we have these
amazing AI tools to help usbring information together.
So that's what I think wasreally powerful, and we will
definitely have the link toJohn's amazing content.
You can find it on LinkedIn.
He's done a great job of reallythinking it through, as he does
(58:19):
every year.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod, pleasetake a moment to rate it and
comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere
podcasts can be found.
The show is produced by SandeepParikh and Anand Shah, with
production assistance by TarynTalley, and edited by Sean Marr
and Aiden McGarvey.
(58:39):
I'm your host, rajiv Parikh,from Position Squared, an
amazing AI-based leading growthmarketing company based in
Silicon Valley.
You can visit us atposition2.com.
This has been an effing funnyproduction and we'll catch you
next time.
And remember folks be evercurious.
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
To close out the year, we aredoing a special roundtable
discussion on go-to-market,along with some thoughts and
predictions for 2025 and beyond.
We have three amazing guests,two of whom have already been on
our podcast.
John Miller, who has 25 plusyears experience at the world's
(00:27):
most innovative marketingtechnology platforms.
Currently, john is founder andCEO of a stealth B2B tech
startup.
Maybe he'll reveal what it istoday.
Previously, he was CMO ofDemandbase, which he joined as
part of merging with his startupDemandbase, which he joined as
part of merging with his startup, engagio, and before that he
(00:51):
co-founded Marketo, where he, asthe CMO, brought incredible
thought leadership, drovecategory leadership and adoption
and helped the company gopublic.
And John was our first Spark ofAges episode guest.
Abhi Ingle is a C-suiteexecutive with a proven track
record of success in launchingand growing multi-billion dollar
businesses, with extensiveexperience in go-to-market
strategy, digital transformationand AI, ml, ai and machine
(01:14):
learning.
Abhi has held leadershippositions at AT&T and Qualtrics.
He's currently serving as aboard member, startup advisor,
c-suite consultant and angelinvestor, and he was episode 13.
Mike Nee is the CMO ofOpenPrize.
Mike specializes in drivinggrowth for early stage SaaS
(01:36):
companies and brings expertisein product strategy,
go-to-market execution andRevOps, enabled journey
orchestration, leveraging AI anddata-driven insights to
optimize customer engagement.
Now, since Mike's not been onthe show, I should at least give
you a little bit about hisbackground.
He has the trifecta he's theguy that all moms want to have
their daughters marry, havinggone to MIT, stanford and
(02:00):
Harvard.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
You know, it's just my tagline should be
overeducated, underutilized.
I guess that should just be mytagline going forward.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Mike is the guy that all the Asian kids hated,
because everybody pointed to him.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
It's just mom bragging rights.
That's all I did for mom, justfor mom.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So I'm so glad to have you here.
This is our first format whereI get to have these three
amazing guests who are thoughtleaders and will talk to us all
about AI, marketing, sales, allkinds of good stuff.
So here's the first question Ismarketing becoming irrelevant?
Many B2B organizations aremoving towards this notion of a
(02:39):
unified revenue operationsfunction, with AI taking over
many tactical execution tasks.
Should marketing leadersrebrand themselves, as John
would say, chief market officers, to signal a more strategic
focus, or will the functionpotentially be absorbed by
others?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Marketing is not going to go away is, I think,
the first and the short answer.
But I do think marketing isgoing to change.
I think, as we're going to talkabout on the podcast today, you
know the way what works inmarketing is rapidly changing,
just at the same time as AI ischanging how people can market
and how people can buy, and Ithink the result is that things
(03:20):
like brand and relationships andexperiences are beginning to
become more important than everin marketing, and that's just a
fundamentally differentdiscipline than sales.
So maybe it all rolls up to oneorganization, but I think we
are going to continue to havethe function of marketing that
(03:41):
has a senior, most marketingperson.
I don't think that goes away Now.
Focusing on things like brandand relationship experiences is
not, by the way, giving up onmarketing's impact on revenue
Anything but it's actuallyrecognizing that true,
sustainable, long-term revenuecomes from having those things.
(04:04):
So it's really, more thananything else, a change of the
mindset, of how we think aboutmarketing departments.
It's moving away from what Icall fall machine mentality,
where you think of marketing assimply budgeting MQLs out and is
this like more complex functionthat comes down to really
setting the preconditions forlong-term revenue growth.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Look, I mean I agree with what John said.
Right, marketing as a function,like a role, has not gone away.
The contours of theorganizational structure, which
were very rigid before, withthese deep silos between the
different departments, with itsmarketing, sales, customer
success, you name, whatever thenext stages might be, have by
(04:49):
necessity to actually blur.
And I think as people move tomore digital buying, as other
channels kind of start to takeover how you prosecute your
go-to-market.
You prosecute your go-to-market.
(05:09):
I do agree with John that therecognition or the brand that a
company has is going to play amore important role and, more
importantly, I think it's goingto become more tangibly
measurable as we go forwardbecause of all the technologies
that are going into place, and Ithink the age of AI will also
allow us to bridge some of thosewhat I'll call inefficient
operations functions which usedto kind of separate out the
organizations together, right,plus, of course, software, like
(05:30):
what Mike Neeworks said.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Well, I mean, I hate to make this boring, but it's
hard not to agree with what Johnand Abhi just said.
I think the one thing I wouldpush on John, which is clearly
what Abhi said yes, we need tothink about the overall
experience and how that movesacross the entire buyer journey
and breaks down some of thesilos that are absolutely
already happening, and we seethat in RevOps.
But I actually also want totune in on one thing John said,
(05:54):
which is chief market officer.
I mean, one of the roles I gotpushed into was chief growth
officer and really it was theCEO recognizing that someone has
to be looking at what are thevectors of growth and how do I
think about the long-termstrategy, even as we look at how
do we close and continue tomove revenue.
I think that's anotherdimension that starts looking at
what are the type of skills andtherefore what are the types of
(06:14):
tools or approaches that eachare going to have to bring to
the table to actually thinkabout the full go-to-market
engine.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I think it's an interesting way of putting it
right the notion of it, andwe'll go a little bit off on
this.
How would you define it, mike?
The difference betweenmarketing and growth?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Well, I mean, this is where, when you think about
growth, you're thinking not thisquarter, maybe not the next
quarter.
You think about what marketsare we in, what's the insight
that says where we win, where wewon't, and how are we going to
make money there.
And I think this is wheremarketing is looking at a little
bit earlier.
I mean, it's really whatmarketing should have been doing
, frankly, and I think it's alittle bit of recognition that,
(06:53):
with the set of tools we have,we're actually able to expand
the remit a little bit broaderas well.
I don't know, john, what do youthink?
Am I interpreting a little bitwhat you're saying properly?
Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
What do you think?
Am I interpreting a little bitwhat you were saying properly?
Yeah, maybe to build, you know,to specifically define chief
market officer, because we'vetalked about it but we haven't
defined it.
Yes, right, so if you thinkabout it, marketing is the only
CXO level function that's namedafter the job, the tactical job
function, and not the output,right, we don't have a chief
(07:24):
financing officer or a chiefselling officer, right?
So, you know, effectively, youknow, the question is should the
most senior marketing leader beresponsible for being the voice
of the market?
That's, that's ultimately whatwe're talking about here, you
know, you know, you know, maybeto sort of, you know, you know,
(07:47):
put it in another way, reframingit to focus on the domain and
not the activity of marketing.
But?
But I want to make one otherpoint, which is I don't really
care what you call yourself,Right, like if, if all the CMO
does and say I'm now a chiefmarket officer, yay, you do the
same crap.
Yeah, you fail.
(08:08):
Give me some more MQLs, right?
The only reason to do this isto have the strategic
conversation about what is therole of this department and this
function, you know?
And are we the tactical MQLcreators and party throwers, or
are we actually a strategicdriver of long-term growth by
representing the customer in themarket?
(08:29):
That's the conversation to have.
If the title can just be aforcing function to have the
conversation, then so be it.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
I think this answer does change a little bit
depending on the type ofmarketing organization you're
looking at.
Let's just take, for example,b2b SaaS.
Okay, since we're talking aboutB2B marketing out here, you
know it was an interestingreport that we've all seen here.
But you know Canalys hasrecently said that 50% of all
SaaS sales are going to happenthrough a hyper-placed
(08:59):
marketplace, hyperscalermarketplace, in the next couple
of years, by 2027.
Okay, whether you believe it ornot, whether it's 50% or 40% or
30%, the point is that it's aentirely different type of way
in which you kind of prosecutethat particular journey for a
customer who's looking to buy inthat manner, or how you might
work side by side with thehyperscaler salespeople.
(09:22):
I went through this journey atQuartrix.
You know we are going throughthis journey of the companies
I'm working on and it changesfrom company to company.
So in that particular case, youknow, what role does marketing
play?
That's fundamentally differentthan somebody who might be
actually somebody that you goafter from an outbound
perspective, or somebody whomight be coming directly to your
website, and I think you knowcoming back to your website and
(09:52):
I think you know coming back tohow you face off to the market.
I think it does depend onmeeting the buyer in the
preferred mode of their buyingjourney and where they are.
So I think it's hard to kind ofplace one particular you know
title on that particular is thatmarket?
I'm okay with that if that'swhat John wants to call it.
I don't see any reason why notto.
I like the analogy of the salesofficer not being called a
selling officer, a financeofficer not being called a
financing officer.
But I think that misses thepoint of the fact that you're
(10:13):
going to have to be many thingsto many people in different
channels.
That's not different frombefore, except those channels
actually have gotten incrediblypowerful relative to what is to
exist.
I'd like to see what peoplethink about that.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Actually, I like what you're saying there.
You brought up the notion ofmarketplaces right as a way to
offer your product and in thisworld, and I think one of the
things John recently talkedabout in his latest update about
thoughts about 2024 and what'scoming in 2025 is about the
notion of AI agents that are onthe buying and the selling side.
(10:48):
And then you bring up thenotion of marketplaces right,
these hyperscaler marketplacesthat in many ways resemble like
an Amazon marketplace, but fortech.
So I mean, relate that to howwe, as marketing folks or market
folks, should drive ourgo-to-market strategy?
(11:10):
Are there mistakes we're makingtoday that we ought to think
about, for correcting for thefuture?
How do we think about it?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I mean there are many , many, many mistakes that start
from not understanding thecustomer and not aligning with
sales and a whole bunch ofmistakes.
But I've alluded to where Ithink the most fundamental
mistake comes in, which is inour drive to achieve short-term
metrics like MQLs.
I think we all too often dothings that are not in the
(11:41):
interest of the long-termcustomer relationship.
Things like gating content,things like hiding our pricing,
things like bombarding customerswith lots of emails or bringing
in the sales developmentfunction Just because somebody
attended a webinar, they startgetting put into a sequence with
a whole bunch of emails thatthey don't want to get.
These things don't buildrelationships, they burn them.
And it's that short-termismfocus at the expense of doing
(12:05):
what's right for the customer inthe long term that is hurting
our ability to actually achievethe revenue growth we all want.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, it's reflective of a little bit of how we
measure.
It gets back to what Avi wassaying earlier.
I mean, we've been measured notonly in silos between sales and
marketing, email marketers,events, right, every one of them
had tools that optimized fortheir own set of view, and the
question is, how are we breakingthat?
John, I agree with you.
I mean these are mistakes, butit's buried into the explosion
(12:33):
of RevTech we have and, frankly,the type of data we now have
underneath that, yeah, and, bythe way, I should acknowledge my
role in the current state ofthe situation, right?
Speaker 4 (12:44):
I mean, you know the marketing automation tools of
today.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
You're the sequence king, I mean, you're the email
marketing sequence king.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I wrapped everything around Engageo, just put it that
way.
You know I've always usedeverything.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
you did the marketing automation tools of today are
largely responsible for theshort-term you know, machine
gumball, machine mentality ofmarketing that exists today.
So, yes, the metrics and thetech of today are our fault.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
But I think you've got to look back to where we
were.
I think it's as in all thingsthings swing to the extremes and
then need to be moderated back.
We were at a point in whichmarketing was actually not well
measured.
The rise of digital, the riseof channels like what you know
John pioneered, actually made itvery measurable, okay.
And then when the other extremeof like everything to be
(13:35):
measured you know I was laughingwhen I saw John's prediction of
the gumball machine, you knowbudget in MQ allowed it went to
the point where it's gone theother extreme like, and every
SDR has to follow up, and thenperson must respond to that.
And you know I personally amsick of getting a message from
an SDR saying let's connect formutual benefit.
I'm like I'm sorry there is nomutual benefit.
(13:57):
I've been in the business for30 years.
You guys got out of school 30days ago.
There is no mutual benefit outhere, all right, but it's caused
by the need for them to kind ofget those metrics that John was
talking about, the gumball orwhat Mike was talking about.
And I personally think that youknow this situation is going to
even worse and we'll talk aboutAI in a second.
But if we don't change theprocess, ai is going to make it
(14:20):
easier and easier to hit us alla hundred times over, and then
everything's going to shut down.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Okay, so the process has to change Totally.
I love this because a lot oftimes I'll sit there and talk to
CMOs and, no matter how smartthey are, they'll get back to
well, my organic's doing thisand my email's doing that and my
paid is not working, blah, blah, blah.
So if traditional B2B demandgeneration playbook is failing,
right, so why are so manycompanies clinging to it?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
What's right, and so why are so many companies
clinging to it?
How, what's going to get themto let go?
I think change takes time.
Change is hard.
You know, like, yeah, theproblem is that we've spent 10
years teaching cfos, ceos,private equity investors, that
this is the way you should thinkabout in measure marketing, you
know.
And so it's really hard for acmo.
You know, up to Vista Equitywho says every month, fill out
the sheet of the number of MQLsyou generated and just tell them
yeah, no, I'm not going to dothat because that's bad
(15:12):
marketing.
So this is going to take sometime to change.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yes, well, not only that but, rajiv, you asked what
mistake did marketers make?
We're actually doubling down ona mistake this year.
I mean, if you think about 2024, ai moved from sort of
experimentation and we're reallyexecuting with it now.
But what are we using?
Chachi Petit, jasper, you knowAdobe, sensei, right, we're
starting to power content andcampaigns and predictive
outcomes.
I mean, I remember when webought my first ML market
(15:37):
automation to bolt onto ourproduct 90s right, we've been
doing this for a while, but 90sright, we've been doing this for
a while.
But the problem is, every oneof these things we add, we
actually further silo our data.
Each one of these, everyco-pilot, every tool, is
actually further fragmenting thedata and therefore the
experience for the customers andthe relationship that John is
trying to optimize towards.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, I think, sometimes back to the basics
approach, which goes back towhat are we actually trying to
do fundamentally?
Right, you're trying tobasically engage with a person
who might be interested in yourproduct, hopefully informed with
something that tells you, as wewere saying earlier, who that
ideal customer for your productshould be.
See if they're interested.
(16:17):
If they are interested, getthem the right sets of
information along the way and,when they're ready to engage
with you, have them talk to aperson who might resolve the
issue.
It could be an agent, it couldbe a human being, right, but
that's what we're fundamentallytrying to do.
And going back and remappingthe hash of the tools that are
right now killing you withhyper-fragmented metrics along
(16:41):
the way that John has said hasgotten embedded now in the
private equity playbook and theCFO playbook, makes it very hard
for people to rise about that.
The question is how?
Speaker 4 (16:53):
do we do that?
I think the other thing that wehaven't really talked about why
this is so essential there'sthis rule of thumb, the 95-5
rule, right, that says, at anypoint in time, only about 5% of
your market is in market to buyyour products.
Just to remind everybody, thatis not based on research, that's
(17:13):
just based on a back of theenvelope calculation based on
average sales cycles times.
So whether it's 3% or 5% or 10%, that doesn't matter.
The point is, most of yourtarget market is not looking to
buy right now, and so if youmarket to them as if they are,
you're going to alienate them.
So the first thing we have torecognize is that our goal isn't
(17:34):
necessarily to say, hey, areyou interested?
Do you want a meeting, are youinterested?
Our goal is to start to buildlong-term awareness and
preference, which connects up tothe other stat I want to share.
Sixth Sense recently releasedtheir buyer survey study, which
basically found that 80% of thetime, buyers have already picked
(17:59):
their preferred vendor beforecontacting sales.
So the decisioning is happeningbefore we even think there's a
sales cycle going on.
Trustradius had some research78% of the buyers chose products
that they were aware of beforethey started their research, and
that number goes to 86% forenterprise buyers.
(18:20):
So we're in this interestingconundrum as marketers which is
the traditional marketing oflike hey, are you interested?
Right, doesn't work because italienates them, while at the
exact same time, if we haven'tcreated awareness and preference
for our solution before theystart the buying cycle, we've
basically already lost.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So are you suggesting , then, that one of the metrics
we should be driving for aremuch more brand-centric, much
more like CPG-centric, whereit's about gaining awareness,
delivering content, educatingfolks, but not having those
strict metrics like we typicallyhave?
Speaker 4 (18:56):
A hundred percent.
Awareness and engagement needto sort of become, I think,
top-level CMO metrics that wetalk about, which can be
quantified.
It can be quantified withmarket research, customer
surveys.
I was talking to the CMO of acompany who is primarily a
PLG-oriented company, a B2Cconsumer product, that has been
(19:19):
trying to build their enterprisebusiness and the number one
thing they care about is do youthink of this company as an
enterprise solution?
Right, and so you know what.
They can survey that and theycan measure that quarter over
quarter over quarter.
And the CMO told me I wouldrather spend money on that than
one extra trade show.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
All right, so there's more of your share of voice
kind of metric right, so shareof voice, aided unaided right.
So that's more of a CPG, that'smore of a consumer-based metric
right, and that brings to therise the notion of reaching out
to influencers.
So now, if you're trying toreach out to influencers because
that's how, like you talkedabout John, 80% of people or 70%
of people, or Forrester waslike what 67% of people have
(20:01):
researched about you know aboutyou before they come to you.
So how do you identify them?
How do you engage with them?
How do you create is this a lotabout partnering, not just
doing sponsored content?
Right, but it's a lot aboutpartnering, not just doing
sponsored content right, butit's a lot more than this.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Yeah, we need to think about it, especially going
forward.
We're entering a world where AIis going to be
disintermediating our ability totalk to customers, whether it's
summarizing our inbox orzero-click search, or AI buying
agents that are actually goingout and doing the research.
So, to build this brandawareness, I think it really has
to start with what are thingsthat that AI cannot summarize,
(20:41):
and I think that's going to comedown to a couple of things
Experiences, relationships, andincluded in relationships are
things like partners andinfluencers.
Included in relationships arethings like partners and
influencers.
Put another way, the source ofthe information is going to
become probably more importantthan the actual information.
(21:04):
We already see that in howpeople consume their news, and
it's increasingly going to beimportant in how we consume
information for business.
So you have experiences, youhave relationships, and then I
do think there's going to bestill an opportunity for
communities, which again,frankly, is kind of a form of
(21:24):
relationships and originalcontent.
Content becomes cheap in theage of AI.
Anybody can generate a blogpost, but something that's truly
original and valuable will, Ithink, continue to stand out,
partly because AI can'tsummarize it if it doesn't exist
yet.
This is great.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
I'm going to throw this one to Mike, mike, because
I know you love the engineeringbehind this stuff.
John has proposed and he'sreflecting what he sees AI
buying agents become moreprevalent In a B2B marketing
battle.
Ai buying agents become moreprevalent, right, and so now the
B2B marketing battle is itbecoming a battle for the
algorithm?
So how does it affect contentand messaging?
So I think, john, you talkedabout having two types, a
(22:04):
two-tiered capability.
One is the notion ofmachine-readable AI agent
content, and then you haveexperiences that you're creating
.
So how does this affect contentand messaging in this new type
of environment?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Well, it's interesting because I think
there's data quality overquantity on one side.
I mean, one thing that's goingto happen is you don't know
who's actually on your sitesometimes, and for a period of
time, you don't know what's abot versus a human, and so how
are you actually really startingto delineate these things?
And in third-party data, we knowis getting harder and harder to
differentiate around.
So the question is now, ifyou're going to have the right
(22:38):
ability to not only respond tohumans, to create the right
engagement, as well as torespond to the agents, you
really have to be much moreeffective about your own data
and the quality of that data.
I'm going to parrot Abhi, who Ithink, at the last time I heard
him speak, his rule, or the newgolden rule, is he who has the
data makes the rules, and inthis case, it's not just the
(22:58):
data itself, but think about howyou start capturing the context
around every one of thoseengagements so you can say what
are the algorithms that thebuyer agents are starting to use
that actually are mostrecognizable?
I mean, you're still now havingto do very similar work, but
now you're profiling differenttypes of people and the agent
just becomes another type ofbuyer.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
That's right, can't just use a word.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Tell me, give me an example of context.
Well, you know, clearly there's.
You know, when we think aboutdata, people think about
attribution, but really it'strying to capture all the
context around that touchpoint,whether it was channels, whether
it was around the touchpoints,the preferences that we want to
get to, but also just what youknow, where are they?
Like you said, in the otherthings they're looking at,
(23:42):
because there's so many otherpieces of how the agents are
going to start putting togetherwhat the buyer wants that you
just have to start interpretingas well, and there's going to be
a wide variety of them, justlike there's customers today.
And the question is how do youmake sure you understand one,
who's the agents and who arereal people, and then actually
start to make sure that yourfirst party data is actually
able to be leveraged to be ableto better actually start
(24:03):
understanding that whole journey?
And that is just incredibleamount of data that we're
starting to see people invest in.
I mean, you see the re-rise ofCDPs of last year and a half, or
composable CDPs.
All right, mike, what's a?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
CDP.
Help us with the.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
CDP.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Actually, I'm going to make Avi explain to us what a
CDP is Go for it.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Cdp is a customer data platform.
Look, it's basicallyfundamentally just a way to kind
of understand and compile allthe information about your
customer, how they've interactedwith you, worked with you.
Whether you call it a CDP, youcall it a data lake, you call it
a composable CDP, it doesn'treally matter.
It comes back fundamentally towhat John said.
It's like coming back to basicprinciples about where is that
(24:44):
customer?
I think one of the things youhave to do is something we've
talked about before Rajiv is thesegmentation of intent.
Instead of following themechanistic intent that John
talked about oh, you check thisout, give us a call form, a
meeting, let's go how about youtry and understand Exactly, how
about you try and figure outwhat is that intent?
(25:07):
Sub-segmenting intent into fineslices, by the way, and you can
start doing that based on AIthat is trained to take a look
at the way the person isinteracting with you.
And if it's true, as John saidearlier, that people have
already made a decision beforeand they know who they're going
(25:28):
to buy, then the whole exerciseand exercise in justifying their
buy.
Okay, if that's going to happen, you're going to have two
things.
One is what are the ways inwhich you become that justified
decision beforehand and thesecond side, if you're trying to
break in, is OK.
What are the kind of thingsthat are going to help me break
the incoming assumption thatthat's the buy and all I need to
(25:50):
do is give a bunch of specsthat can against.
Even the notion of RFIs kind ofstarts to kind of break down
right, because an RFI, you cansay, automate the process of RFI
.
That's what people say.
I'm like, why would you have anRFI?
An agent can compile all theelements of an RFI by going out
and collecting what you have.
So the question is, as Johnsaid earlier, like what can you
(26:12):
measure?
What can you not measure?
But the what can you not measuredoes have to break out in a
significantly different way andI think the only way you can
start doing that is throughpartnerships, is through truly
groundbreaking thoughtleadership elements.
That's why he kind of saidbrand-like.
So it's not quite brand, butit's brand-like elements to
establish yourself in thejustified by.
(26:33):
But then you also have to thinkof the counter, which is how do
I break it?
Otherwise you would say, john,if I follow that as natural end,
75% to 80% of the time you haveno chance of winning, because
all they're doing is putting youthrough a song and dance to
justify buying whom they'vealready chosen.
So you really have to focus inon which side of the equation
you might be in right and playthe game both ways.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Okay, so an RFI is a request for information, right?
So, to our listeners, an RFI is, as a company I want to learn
about, I want to.
I'm engaging in an area that Iwant to change as part of my
company.
I want to put in a new system.
I want to put in AI,potentially for my customer
support department.
I'll put out an RFI request forinformation from main vendors
(27:13):
in the industry and ask them tocomment on it.
So maybe that's something thatAI can do for me as an agent
going out and requesting it andI can have receiving agents on
my side that deliver it.
Right, right.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So you can have that, but then that doesn't mean the
agent is going to buy, theagent's only going to collect
information.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
So you still have to get to the buyer?
No, but you can influence, tothe point that Mike made earlier
If you kind of have anunderstanding of intent and if
you know, as John said, if youare in that favored set versus
unfavored set.
You got to figure out whatanswers the agents are
exchanging.
Not that they're not truthful,but the exchange of information
between the agents has to bemanaged in such a way that you
know that which your previouscustomers have told you is
(27:56):
particularly well differentiatedand find a way to land that
with the buying agent.
Okay, your information agent oryour selling agent has to be
very, very, very thoughtfulabout that, and it only comes
through in a deep understandingof your customers and what
really matters to them.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Any examples of that today, like there's AI products
out there today, there'sgo-to-market of those AI
products.
Any examples of this happeningto help?
Speaker 4 (28:22):
our viewers, listeners.
I think it's more coming.
I think I alluded to zero-clicksearch, right?
You know where?
Now you don't have to go clickthrough the website to see.
The AI is going to summarize itfor you.
I think we're going to see thatmore and more in our email
inboxes.
We're like, hey, here's theemails you need to pay attention
(28:44):
to.
I think a full buying agentwhere you just say I'm looking
for a new finance solution.
Go research all the options,talk to the selling agents.
Negotiate'm looking for a newfinance solution.
Go research all the options,talk to the selling agents,
negotiate initial pricing for meand come back with a rankless
recommendations.
That's years away, right, butthe point is it is coming.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, I'm going to argue that it's actually not
going to be that far away,because you're seeing the
composition.
They want to be one agent,right, basically.
Fundamentally, it's going to bea swarm of agents, each of whom
is going to be broken down intolittle pieces.
You're going to have acoordinating agent.
One of person is going to justsay here's your damn template,
(29:22):
go collect all the data.
That basically goes there.
Poof goes the RFI.
By the way, the request forinformation You're not going to
be asked for it.
You better make sure yourwebsite is architected in such a
way, or your information piecearchitected and labeled in such
a way, that you make it supereasy to be gathered.
Ok, the second one might sayhey, here's the criteria, score
everything against the criteriaso that the little information
agent passes that to a scoringagent.
(29:42):
The scoring agents have beentrained by your people.
By the way, that might be justa process where you have a
buying committee and the agentinterviews the buying committee
to actually profile their areas.
And, by the way, I'm sayingsome of this because I have seen
a lot of stealth companies inthis area.
I just can't say who they areand what they're doing, but it's
actually happening right nowand the third one says okay, go
(30:04):
ahead and, based on what youheard from the buying committee,
score all of these people andtell us what the follow-up
questions should be At thatpoint in time.
It's a very different game thatwe're playing right now.
I think this is going to happen, frankly, within the next two,
two and a half years.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
It's not going to be like three years or four years.
I'm going to talk about adifferent type of product,
because there's a spectrum ofproducts here and the level of
definition.
We saw the old marketplacesback in the 90s right, when the
level of specification on steelor other products like that
allows you to have marketplaceswith an interchangeability.
We're talking about differentsolutions now and how do we have
that gradation, which I thinkis somewhere between where John
(30:40):
and you are speaking to, Becauseyou may have a shortlist but
you're still going to need toengage to really understand what
you guys need to use at thenuance with the questions, like
you said that the machines aretelling you what to ask, but the
difference is that the scoringis calculated not by a one
specific, like a simple scoringsheet.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Remember how you had to go fill out those moronic
lists?
It's focused on the intent ofthe buying committee, which the
algorithm has sussed out.
Okay, on that dimension, itcomes back with we think this is
the best matches.
Here's why.
And when it comes to market out, okay, on that dimension, it
comes back with we think this isthe best matches.
Here's why.
And when it comes tomarketplaces, mike, you're right
, marketplaces have alwaysexisted, but when I was talking
about marketplaces and thehyperscaler marketplace, what is
(31:22):
different out here is theseridiculously large commitments
that customers are making tothese buyers, and then you're
getting them to burn down thosecommitments.
That's never existed.
When the budget is alreadyallocated somewhere else, your
budget is allocated to somebodyelse who then needs to release
it on behalf of you.
So there's some slightlydifferent dynamics.
Yes, there's versions of thesethings that have happened in the
(31:43):
past, but they're variants.
You know, that's just myperspective.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I love this.
Okay, in your view, what is themost interesting innovation
outside of AI that you're seeingin go-to-market?
Speaker 4 (32:08):
I think that there are some companies really
starting to experiment withinteresting experiences.
I mean, this is ranging frompeople.
Obviously there's the steakdinner that's been around
forever Omikazi at AJ's house,and then there's fancy versions
of that.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Growth Marketing Summit by.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
Position Squared.
Actually, I think the GrowthMarketing Summit is actually a
really good one to talk about,because, at least the one I went
to, you know, you tookeverybody to salt lake city, you
know, and we basically livedtogether in a house for a couple
days, um, and we did somelearning together, but we also
did some skiing together andhanging out together, you know,
(32:46):
and and I came back from thatevent and I told my friends or
my wife, is it felt as much likehanging out with my friends as
it did going to a workconference, and I think that's
gold.
That's exactly what you want.
You developed an experiencethat AI will never summarize.
B2c companies have spent thelast 10 years investing in
interesting experiences, whetherthey're immersive exhibits and
(33:11):
whatnot.
I think it was one of the emailvendors might have been
mailchimp.
They put together basically aninteractive museum.
You know.
That basically was called likeemail is dead right and it was,
you know, but it was.
It was.
It was like, um, the candymuseum or the ice cream museum,
(33:32):
if you, you go to these placeswhere each room is
Instagrammable and you do stuff.
So that was like a B2B versionof creating an experience.
So I think there's earlyinnovation happening there and I
think there'll be moreinnovation coming.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Well, I think there's always interesting things we
can steal from the B2C side,because they have been thinking
about this for a long time.
I think about Rajiv, like acouple of years ago.
I think there's alwaysinteresting things we can steal
from the B2C side because theyhave been thinking about this
for a long time.
I think about Rajiv, like acouple of years ago.
I think you and I actuallyworked together on the
personalization B2Cpersonalization so we work with
customers like Tiffany's andSaks, as well as Walmart.
So we had the whole spectrum ofhow do you personalize these
(34:10):
experiences at scale, the wholespectrum of how do you
personalize these experiences atscale.
And what's interesting here islike it's like a playbook of you
know how many experiences doyou have available at what stage
of where they are in thejourney and making smart
selections based upon theinformation you have at that
point in time stream-basedarchitectures a lot down
underneath I'm getting a littlegeeky, I apologize.
You're really talking about thiswhole playlist of different
(34:31):
experiences that can be puttogether dynamically based upon
what you detect of where they'reat, and I think that this is
where you see some playerstrying to put together basic
infrastructures to do this inthe B2B world, but the tools
they have today have beenholding them back.
So you know, we've been workingwith folks at Whippling and
they've gone into that wholeScott Brinker architecture.
(34:52):
Frankly, snowflake-based,centralized-based centralized
data.
Openprize is a dataorchestration layer which is
really that automation andreally helping you connect.
Now, best of breed components.
They end up using differenttypes of AI or email engines or
whatnot, so they can craft highvelocity, really different
(35:12):
experiences based upon what theydetect from 20 different
external vendors of data.
And how do you do this at scale?
And you're starting to see realinnovators put together pieces
of the machinery that we sawmore in the B2C world, but for
B2B, and we're going to see, Ithink, more of this as vendors
start coming up with solutionsthat can deliver this out of the
box.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
So, rajiv, like, like people you'd want to be
associated with, right, andthat's what leads to the kind of
experience that John talkedabout, because if you do this
right and you do this in a waythat is not overly geared
towards kind of selling yourproduct, but really create and
curate an experience where birdsof a feather hang, they will
(36:15):
sell each other frankly, okay.
And it happens at a deepemotional level, not just at a
transactional level, which iswhat I think john was
referencing.
The problem is you can't.
You can't manage theseexperiences.
So thinking about how to layerthem down.
So we had those.
You know it was in, of course,it was in park city, it was in
utah right, because I was calledtricks.
But then we had a series ofthese kind of step-down events
(36:37):
that went all the way down,right.
And if you look at, for example,again taking a book or a page
from the consumer side, if youlook at some of the work that
has been done by some of theKorean food companies that are
kind of capitalizing the K-popcraze right now, they've done
some amazing experientialmarketing in the US.
What can we learn from that?
(36:57):
Or take Mike's example youcould have AI.
Just go and say I'll find a wayto bug you even more by having
an automated SDR.
Now I'm like great, perfect.
Instead of like a kid buggingme, now I'm going to have like
an AI agent who never tiresbugging me.
Or you could go down the microute and say hey, let's use the
(37:18):
AI agent to figure out piecesof data, perhaps get into that
fine sub-segment of intent andwhere in that buying journey you
are which is what John wasreferencing and only find a way
to give you that which you needin that process, because you
have such a deep, deep, deepunderstanding of your customer,
what they've done before, howpeople have progressed and where
(37:39):
this particular customer is.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
I'm going to insert myself because I think Abhi hit
something very, very cool, andI'm going to use the example
with Burberry's, which was acustomer of ours, which applies
right, because what they decidedwas friction was good.
Friction was where the brand iscreated.
Friction is good Because if youwant to buy socks, go to Amazon
Frictionless experience.
If you want to create arelationship, if you want to
(38:04):
create brand, it exists in thefriction.
Where do you slow someone down?
So, in terms of Burberry's, dothey get you to a cross-sell,
upsell or do they want you toknow that at this point in time,
this is a point to introducethe weft and the weave, the
history behind the tartan at bar, because then, when you make
the purchase, that experiencehas actually carried you into
now a sustaining customer.
(38:24):
How do you grow with them?
Because they know, they havethe data that if you actually
were educated in certain pointsof the experience, you actually
stuck around and bought more.
The cross.
That was much more natural, andI think this is some of the
experience that John's trying totalk about.
The issue has always been,though, for B2B volume and
actually measuring the brandconnection to how that
(38:44):
contributes to funnel, and Ithink that is the unspoken
question we haven't touched uponhere at all, not to say we'll
get there.
That's a big one, but I thinkthis is where we're starting to
see some really interestinginnovation, and think this is
where we're starting to see somereally interesting innovation
and we're going to see thingslike this, based upon what we're
(39:04):
going to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
All right, we have this really fun section here
where we're going to talk aboutgo-to-market tactics in 2025.
And John Miller, our thoughtleader, has written a great
article on marketing profs.
I'm going to link it to ourshow notes, but we're going to
paraphrase a few of them, andall three of our wonderful
guests are going to give you oneline about each one.
Okay, here we go.
Number one the most effectiveB2B marketers in 2025 will be
(39:31):
those who can seamlesslyintegrate AI into their
workflows while retaining thecore values of human connection
and creativity.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Absolutely.
I agree with that.
Easier said than done.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
That was exactly what I was going to say.
Sorry, I should have said itfirst.
Damn it.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Come on, Mike, jump faster, Go John.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
And I would say you know, that's, I think, a too
strong a statement, I think in2025, that the you know people
can, as long as you're focusedon doing right by the customer,
even if you're not incorporatingAI into your workflows, that's
going to be okay because it's along-term trend, not a
short-term.
It's a vision.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
It's a vision, Okay.
Next one AI will replace most,but not all, marketing and sales
jobs within the next five years.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Don't agree.
Don't agree.
I think that it's not a greattime to be a junior salesperson,
like an SDR, If all you do isfollow up on inbound lead forms.
Not so good.
But as we've talked about,ironically, the changes to
buying that AI is driving ismaking things like experiences
(40:39):
and relationships and brand andhuman connections more important
, not less important.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Absolutely agree.
I think the research we see,especially on the sales side, is
accelerated and offloaded partsof work they used to do.
But the relationship side isjust going to be much more
expected because more sellersare able to spend time.
And I totally agree with John.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I actually think that it is going to replace a lot
more jobs than we areacknowledging out here.
Folks, I think what's going tohappen is going to change the
shape of the organization and,while you could say it doesn't
eliminate it, I guarantee yousales and marketing will be 30,
40% lighter than they are today.
So that is job elimination,call it what you will, and I
(41:18):
think a lot of that work.
There is going to be no suchrole as the hyper-segmented sale
passing off between six peopleThank God for that, by the way
and AI is going to replace allof that.
You're going to come in for thefinal kill, so you better know
what you're talking about or getout of the way.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
All right, Love these answers.
Next one Traditional marketingmetrics such as MQLs are
outdated and no longer relevantin the age of AI buying agents.
Remember 2025.
Companies need to adopt newmetrics that reflect engagement
with AI audiences.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
So not going to happen in 2025, guys, I mean, as
much as Avi loves it, I mean Ithink that when I last spoke to
the Forrester folks coveringthis, 92% of their customers
still use MQLs.
It's very hard to move off ofthe shift towards buying groups,
account centricity.
These are things that are stillon the wishlist, that are for
the most sophisticated customers, and so you need to add the
(42:08):
metrics, but it's not going toreplace the metrics in the next
2025.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
It's the trend.
You know that we will be movingaway from MQLs and towards new
metrics.
The new metrics won't just bequalified agent interactions or
QAIs you know that might be onebut we also will be measuring.
You know some of the sort ofbrand awareness and preference
(42:33):
metrics that we talked about aswell for the humans.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, so much as I would love to see some of this
happen earlier.
I do agree that change takestime, but I do think that
something what I call DOE depthof engagement, okay, intensity
of engagement, yes, and superfine segmentation of intent is
going to start to be find a wayto get appended to those mqls.
(42:57):
But for the time being, we arestill in the world of the mql.
Folks, make no mistake, don'trush out to try and kill it,
because you see, you see if wewant to love it and neither will
your pe firm, so yeah, we canhope to make it better me love
intent, intent segmentation,okay growth product-led growth
here's a controversial one.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Product-led growth pl here's a controversial one.
Product-led growth PLG is afailing strategy.
The future of B2B sales lies ina return to sales-led
approaches.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
Don't agree.
I think this entirely has to beanswered in the context of the
kind of product you're sellingin the ACV.
If you're selling Canva,product-led growth is a
wonderful strategy and I don'tthink that goes away.
And if anything, it ties intoall the research that says
buyers want self-servicepossibilities whenever possible.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
And I think that what we see is that it's product-led
and sales-led for higher margin, especially if you have
something that is a little moreplatform-oriented, and so you do
need to have those entry pointsand it's a great combination.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
I mean, I think Elastic has really shown that.
To be a truism on that, yeah,let's just call it product-led
sales.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Yep, love it Great.
Next one Building a strongbrand is more important than
ever.
In a world dominated byAI-generated content, companies
need to invest heavily increating authentic and memorable
brand experiences.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yes, some of them may need to be offline, otherwise
you get back into the issue ofAI again, summarizing everything
for you.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
I wonder, abhi, if this doesn't get back to just
what strategy you choose, thoughyou may have to just be the
low-cost producer here andunderstand that there's a level
of decedent.
Mediation and commoditizationis going to happen at some level
, and you just have to be chooseyour segment.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Actually, mike, I think that's a really, really
good point.
Right, you know, commodity, lowcost products will be
completely bought and sold by AIagents talking to each other,
and that's fine and you're right.
I've been talking about, youknow, more differentiated, high
value, higher value products,but absolutely and some of those
could be your entry points.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Your PLGs could be easily sold via some of these,
some of these, these earlycategories, yeah, I'd say it's
not just low price.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
I think it's also highly automated that know how
to work with agents where lowprice would be a component.
But massive automation is theother aspect.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Agreed and PLG plus.
Speaker 4 (45:20):
Yeah, got it, sorry, interesting analogy.
Right Today, you know, ouragents are already buying our
Google ads where, dynamically,they are negotiating the price
of what we're going to pay.
You know, instantaneously, it'sjust called Google AdWords,
true, right.
But you know why can't we buyother quote-unquote commodity,
high distribution products, witha similar model.
(45:42):
That's a great point, avi.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
The rise of AI buying agents will lead to a shift
towards value-based pricingmodels.
Companies that cling toseat-based pricing will struggle
to compete.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
So we went through this thinking at my last company
, at Quadrics, and we're lookingat this right now at Samba and
all of our helping out.
I think it's going to be acombination of
subscription-based andconsumption-based.
Anybody who sticks to strictlyseed-based it might work for a
few areas, but I think you'regoing to have to blend
seed-based and consumption-based.
I think there's some areas thatgo all consumption-based.
(46:15):
Some areas go to a combinationof seat and consumption.
I think purely seat-based is introuble.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Sounds like a telco model.
I agree with what Avi said.
We're going to see differentcombinations where seat and
consumption, but consumptionblocks as well, love it.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Last question Before we go to the game the majority
of B2B purchases in 2025 willhappen through self-service
channels like websites andonline marketplaces.
Companies who fail to adapt tothis shift risk falling behind
(46:58):
just said, are we talking aboutdollar volume or transaction
count?
Speaker 4 (46:59):
you know, etc.
Etc.
But you know, to net, net, no,I don't think so.
You know, like like it.
Just when I just think aboutthe, the amount of buying, right
, you know, you know it's, it'splg is important, but they're
probably especially on dollarvolume.
It's still dominated, I think,by direct sales especially with
the level of risk.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
People are taking on a lot of this.
These purchase, purchase ofsoftware.
They're going to want to havethat relationship and the
experience will matter.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Yeah, rajiv, my answer is it's not binary.
The channel, the experience ofbuying, is omni-channel.
I went through this at AT&Twhen I was the head of digital.
We had multi-million dollarsales where the contract might
be signed in person, but most ofthe buying and purchasing
actually happened online.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
So that's an omni-channel journey, so it
could be a combo.
All this stuff happens offline,but then you may pump it
through a private offer on amarketplace.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
But increasingly agent-driven.
They're going to help guidethat buying process and that
selling process.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
I love it.
Okay, this part's the fun part.
If you haven't had fun already,I want to welcome John, abhi
and Mike to the Shark Tank,where top-tier AI experts go
head-to-head.
This is where three C-levelmarketers are forced to fire up
(48:13):
those neural networks and battlefor strategic brilliance.
This is where cutting edge AIstrategies clash and only the
most innovative approaches reignsupreme.
Get ready for the ultimatefighting AI showdown, where only
one emerges as the champion ofthe AI revolution.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
So this is like it's going to be like two truths and
a lie.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Okay, it's two truths and a lie, but I'm going to
read you three statements.
Two of them are true.
One is a lie.
You've got to pick out whichone is the lie.
I'm going to count down three,two, one, and you're going to
have to show your answer as yourfinger, so that you can't cheat
off each other, like you'vebeen doing all throughout this
podcast.
So here we go, round one.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
One finger is true.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Two is lie, One is.
I'm going to give you three.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Three answers.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
Three answers and we're putting the number of the
lie Okay.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Okay, here's round number one A neural network was
trained on recipes for magicpotions from fantasy books and
used.
They use that knowledge togenerate new, potentially
functional potions.
That's number one.
Number two researchers areusing AI to analyze the
communications patterns ofdolphins with the hope of
(49:27):
eventually building atranslation device.
And number three an AI-poweredsystem can predict the outcome
of Supreme Court cases with 95%accuracy by analyzing the text
of legal documents and thejudge's past decisions.
So first is the recipes forpotions, Number two is about a
(49:51):
dolphin translator and numberthree is about predicting
Supreme Court cases.
Ready, One, two, three, Okay.
And number three is aboutpredicting Supreme Court cases
Ready One, two, three, Okay.
So I have John at one, I'll beat three and Mike at three.
All right for this round.
I'll be in Mike Wynn.
(50:11):
Sorry, John, I knew the dolphinone was true.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
All right, I knew the dolphin one was true, and I
just know there's just so manyMIT nerds where I went that
someone would have created thatpotion creation tool.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Surprise number three , and the one was too obvious
that's what I wanted to say wasfalse, but my brain said it
can't be that simple All right.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
Here we go Round two.
Two AI is being used torecreate the voices of people
who have lost the ability tospeak due to illnesses like ALS,
allowing them to communicatewith loved ones in their own
voice.
Number two a major Hollywoodstudio announced plans to create
a blockbuster movie writtenentirely by AI, with no human
(50:56):
involvement in the scriptwriting process.
And number three AI algorithmsare being used to compose
personalized lullabies thatadapt to a baby's cries in real
time to soothe them moreeffectively.
So one is recreate voices ofpeople who've lost the ability
to speak.
Number two is a studio creatinga movie entirely by AI.
(51:19):
Number three is personalizedlullabies Ready, it's a major
studio.
It says a major Hollywoodstudio says my notes Ready.
Three, two, one, all right.
I got John and Mike agreeingwith two.
Oh, abhi is two, all right.
I got John and Mike agreeingwith two.
Oh, abhi is two, all right, allright.
(51:44):
All three of you are right,congratulations.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
Number two is the lie you guys are 2-0.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Pretty good.
Number two is the lie, so I gotall three of you got this so
far.
Abhi and Mike are still in thelead, John, unless we go to
extra rounds.
This is your chance to catch up.
All right, round three.
Number one an AI art generatorwas accidentally entered into a
prestigious art competition andwon first prize, fooling all the
(52:12):
judges.
Number two IBM announced itwould pause hiring for roles
that could be replaced by AI,potentially affecting around
7,800 jobs.
Number three scientists havedeveloped an AI system that can
accurately predict earthquakesseveral days in advance by
(52:32):
analyzing subtle changes in theEarth's magnetic field.
Okay, AI art generator Foolingjudges.
Number two IBM laying offbecause of AI.
Number three An earthquakepredicting system.
Three Two, One.
Okay, I have two John at two,Abhi at three and Mike at two.
(52:57):
All right I guarantee you tohave a winner.
All right, two, three, two.
So the winner is none of you.
Number one is the correct one.
An art AI art generator wasaccidentally entered into a
prestigious art competition andwon first prize, fooling all the
judges, that was the lie.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
I could have heard like that I swear, we heard that
one.
Maybe it didn't win first place, maybe they're trying to be a
little bit too cutesy with thewording Alright so here we are.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
We are.
Mike and Abhi are tied forfirst place, so do you want to
go to round four and see if weget an actual winner here?
Number one a song entirelygenerated by AI featuring Drake
and the Weeknd went viral andracked up millions of streams
before being taken down due tocopyright claims.
(53:52):
Number two an AI program hasbeen granted a patent for an
invention that it designedindependently, raising legal and
ethical questions about AIintellectual property rights.
And number three UniversalMusic Group successfully forced
Spotify to remove allAI-generated music from its
platform, arguing that itinfringes on the rights of human
(54:15):
artists.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
Is that like successfully, or just asking
them?
Speaker 1 (54:19):
Successfully forced Spotify to remove all
AI-generated music from itsplatform.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
I like how seriously Abhi's taking this.
I know it's Abhi.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
I wrote this sermon.
Really, come in Versus thisright.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Like 10,000 days on Duolingo.
Okay, ready, ready.
Three, two, one, all of themare.
All of you are two, all of youare wrong.
Again, okay, we're still tied.
It was actually number threeUniversal Music Group did.
(54:52):
The first two were truths andthe last one was a lie.
All right round five.
So this is your chance to win.
Speaker 4 (55:03):
I'm normally pretty good at two truths and a lie,
and I'm whiffing pretty hardtoday, so here's round five.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Number one the Trump campaign was found to have used
AI to generate political adsthat are specifically designed
to trigger emotional responsesin audiences, bypassing logical
reasoning and increasing thelikelihood of swaying opinions.
Number two researchers havedeveloped an AI system that can
(55:28):
detect lies with over 90%accuracy by analyzing micro
expressions and vocal cues.
Expressions and vocal cues.
And number three AI is beingused to generate personalized
perfumes by analyzing anindividual's scent preferences
and their social media activity.
This is for the.
This is for the win.
Ready Three.
(55:49):
Two, one Different answers,same answers.
All right, it's a tie.
I'll be right or wrong.
The answer is number one.
Is the lie?
Damn it.
What?
yes, even trump wasn't cleverenough to use ai to generate
political ads, most of thesewrong you guys know the monty
(56:14):
hall problem.
Speaker 4 (56:15):
If you're given the opportunity to switch, you
always should switch.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
So you guys did a great job.
I really appreciate you guysdoing this with me today.
This was fantastic.
What a great way for us to gothrough what happened in 2024
and what's coming up.
Thank you, john, for writingthat wonderful thought piece
that triggered all this, andit's so amazing to have you guys
as experts here on the show.
So thank you for joining theSpark of Ages Ton of fun.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Thank you, thanks for having us.
And thank you, John, forcreating this.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
And putting up with us.
Take care everyone.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Take it easy.
I just want to tell you howmuch fun this was for me.
One of the great gifts I havein this world is I get to hang
out with really, really brightpeople who, like me, are trying
to figure out what makes changeand what gets people to buy, and
I get the thrill of connectingthem together.
And really this came about alittle bit surreptitiously,
(57:15):
based on a great idea from theFNFunny team, and it was amazing
to have all three of these veryaccomplished executives
together and entrepreneurstogether to just talk about
where they think things aregoing, and we can learn so much
from it.
You saw how we talk aboutconsumer as well as B2B, and how
(57:35):
we borrow techniques from oneplace to the other, how we talk
about AI and how that's blendingin.
But then there's the emotionalcontext of how we need to still
be human.
We still need to connect toeach other.
We talked about our growthmarketing summit.
Yes, we focus on digital, butwe know that to get people
together, to get people to trustyou, you still have to create
(57:57):
emotional connections, and thoseemotional connections then
bleed over to each other andthey create great synergy.
So humans still need tointeract, even if we have these
amazing AI tools to help usbring information together.
So that's what I think wasreally powerful, and we will
definitely have the link toJohn's amazing content.
You can find it on LinkedIn.
He's done a great job of reallythinking it through, as he does
(58:19):
every year.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod, pleasetake a moment to rate it and
comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere
podcasts can be found.
The show is produced by SandeepParikh and Anand Shah, with
production assistance by TarynTalley, and edited by Sean Marr
and Aiden McGarvey.
(58:39):
I'm your host, rajiv Parikh,from Position Squared, an
amazing AI-based leading growthmarketing company based in
Silicon Valley.
You can visit us atposition2.com.
This has been an effing funnyproduction and we'll catch you
next time.
And remember folks be evercurious.
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