July 7, 2025 • 24 mins
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"AI is an enabler, an augmenter, not a replacement." These words from Navneet Singh, a marketing leader at Palo Alto Networks with nearly a decade of experience, set the tone for our exploration into the transformative relationship between artificial intelligence and marketing.
During our conversation, Nav shattered common misconceptions about AI's role in marketing by demonstrating how human creativity and AI efficiency can form a powerful partnership. He shared a compelling example from Palo Alto Networks' recent product launch, where an AI-powered contest among product marketers generated 56 creative entries in a single weekend - compressing what would have been weeks of agency work into just one business day. This force-multiplier effect showcases AI's true potential when guided by human expertise and strategic vision.
What makes Nav's perspective particularly valuable is his practical approach to AI adoption. He described how Palo Alto Networks created an "AI-first" culture through leadership summits, expert consultations, and establishing clear guidelines for responsible use. The company developed internal tools like Panda AI for employee assistance while implementing Google Gemini and Flow for marketing content creation - all supported by a balanced system of education and technological guardrails. But perhaps his most powerful insight was a simple question he's instilled in his team: "Every time your hands are on the keyboard, ask yourself why this shouldn't be done by AI."
Looking toward the future, Nav envisions marketing shifting from targeting segments to personalizing for individuals at unprecedented scale, with company websites transforming into AI-driven digital storefronts handling the entire customer journey. For those concerned about their marketing careers in an AI world, his message is clear: don't fear replacement - embrace experimentation. The greatest opportunities belong to those who view AI as a collaborative partner rather than a threat. Ready to transform your marketing approach with artificial intelligence? Subscribe now and join us on this journey into marketing's AI-powered future.
Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, I'm excited to dive into AI and
marketing today Two hot topicswith a real industry insider and
marketing guru from Palo AltoNetworks, Nav.
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm great.
Thanks, Evan.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
It's really great to be talking to the audience of
your work and the team at PaloAlto Networks.
Before that, maybe introduceyourself your role within the
company and how would youdescribe Palo Alto Networks
these days versus 10?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
years ago when you joined.
It has transformed.
So just a little bit aboutmyself.
I'm Nav.
I joined Palo Alto Networksnine years almost 10 years now,
which is half the age of thecompany.
Almost 10 years now, which ishalf the age of the company.
I lead marketing for networksecurity and AI.
Have really loved every day Ihave worked at Palo Alto
Networks.
How we've changed is reallytransformed.
When I joined the company, wewere a single product company
(00:58):
offering next-generationfirewall and security services
transformative products.
Now we're the cybersecuritypartner of choice for large
Fortune 100 companies, offeringeverything from solutions for
cloud security, endpoint SOCtransformation, ai security,
network security and so onEverything that a large
(01:20):
enterprise might need from acybersecurity partner of choice.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, it's been brilliant to witness the
transformation and amazingproducts that are now Gen AI and
AI powered.
But we're not going to go theretoday.
We're going to talk aboutmarketing, something we both
know a little about.
And what are the biggest mythsor misconceptions when you talk
AI and marketing these days andwhat's your personal experience?
(01:45):
Maybe you can set the scene forus.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, one of the biggest misconceptions, in my
view, is when we say AI willreplace marketers.
The reality is that AI is anenabler.
It is an augmenter, not reallya replacement.
So think of it like this AIhandles the heavy lifting, the
data crunching right and thepatent recognition, also the
(02:11):
rapid content generation, butit's the human that gives the
strategic vision.
The essential ingredients thatinclude understanding of
customers, the customer journey,ethical judgment as well on
what should be included and,ultimately, the creative spark.
All of that comes from thestorytelling.
(02:32):
The basic, the ingredients comefrom humans, but AI is a huge
augmenter.
So without human direction, aiis just like a powerful engine
right without a driver.
So one of the projects that Ican give you an example of where
we used AI is a few months ago.
(02:53):
We launched a new product AIsecurity called Prisma Airs.
In the past, we would have to doa long cycle of coming up with
taglines, subheads, creativeimages and so on, working with
multiple agencies and in-houseas well.
This time, what we did was weran a contest with just the
(03:14):
product marketers using AI.
We said generate as manyheadlines and subheads that you
can with a concept that you havein mind.
We got 56 entries over oneweekend, basically one business
day.
We had a meeting with the CEO.
We said these are the top fiveentries.
(03:39):
We chose one and went with that.
So that's a huge forcemultiplier.
We were able to do that inbasically one business day,
something that would have takenus a few weeks in the past.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, it's incredible .
What a fun story, reallyeye-opening, and let's talk
about mindset shift.
It's not just about the youknow the you know marketing tech
stack these days.
You know, it's about, you know,emerging tools and change, and
I was curious about some of thetools that you used in this
(04:15):
example.
Can you mention them?
How did you ensure adoption,how did you get approval for
adoption and how were they usedin that particular example?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
The good part is that our company itself is AI first
and have executives backing that.
When AI first burst onto thescene through ChatGPT in
November 2022, was it seen?
Through chat GPT November 2022,was it?
(04:50):
I remember, within a few months, our CEO called an AI summit,
which is internal meeting of allVPs and, above for all the
leaders of the company.
They were all in person here.
We were a global company, right, everybody flew in.
We had all the leaders here.
We brought in leaders in AI,people who had been working on
IBM Watson, people who had beenworking on Google Gemini, people
who were startup founders whowere working on AI, and they
(05:13):
discussed with us at that timehow they have used AI.
What are the different usecases where they have seen AI
being successful.
Then we did different functionswithin our company, like
marketing, finance, it.
Each of them actually had aleader experiment with their
teams on AI use cases and thendemonstrated those use cases to
(05:38):
the leadership team and welearned from each other from
those experiments and it reallyset the stage for us to be able
to effectively use AI.
So today we have an internaltool called Panda AI, which is,
if I have any question as anemployee.
The IT team has created thistool, which is available in
Slack, replacement of a laptoplogged out of my account,
(06:09):
expense report policy, travelpolicy all of that can be
answered by that tool.
In marketing, you mentioned someof the tools that we've used.
So we work with.
We partner very closely withGoogle, so the primary tool we
use is Google Gemini, and GeminiAI is available as a chat
interface, but it's alsoavailable within the documents.
We use Google Workspace, so inany document like a Word doc, if
(06:32):
I have a Google doc, I canaccess Gemini there.
And then we also started usingGoogle Flow, which is a video
generation tool.
So in the past you would haveto again work with either
agencies or creative serviceswho only have a limited
bandwidth to create videos.
Now we are asking everybody inthe marketing organization to
(06:56):
experiment with that and we arecreating some really, really
great videos using Google Flowand VO3 Engine.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
That's amazing.
Yeah, these are incredibletools.
How do you think aboutempowering the brand voice and
supporting it without going offthe rails?
You know, we've all createdcontent with AI and it's turned
out to be dodgy, to say theleast, or it takes us in a
completely different directionthat doesn't necessarily support
(07:29):
the mission.
How does that show up?
How do you avoid it?
And how do you keep it underwraps, as it were, because AI
can be a little wacky, to saythe least?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It's very powerful and with that power as I think
in Spider-Man movie they said itwith great power comes great
responsibility.
It's a really powerful tool andyou really have to be
responsible in using it.
So there is no foolproof way tobe honest, evan.
But when we did that leadershipteam summit, ai summit, we
(08:04):
formed an AI task force whocreated guidelines for us and to
begin with, those were theearly days.
At that time, everything had togo through that team to be
approved.
Now we are at a much differentplace where we've said place
(08:29):
where we've said here are theguidelines Use the Google Gemini
tool and all the AI tools thatare sanctioned for use for this
level of data.
For example, it can be used forconfidential data.
It cannot be used for secrets,and here's the definition of
what that means.
And we go through the trainingevery six months, every year.
There is training to all theemployees, mandatory training.
That talks about some examplesand what can go wrong if AI is
(08:54):
misused.
So constant training.
Some guardrails that have beenbuilt using our own products.
For example, we have productslike Prisma Airs, ai Access
Security, prisma Access Browser,some of those products that
actually create those guardrails.
For example, it says ifsomebody is trying to use a code
generation tool which is notsanctioned, it would Microsoft
(09:16):
Browser would block it and saythis tool is sanctioned, use
this instead.
So we have a mix of educationand guardrails that are provided
by tools.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Oh, really well done there.
Ai, gen AI is also changingmany of our daily rituals that
you know as professionals.
We built up over years, decades.
You know our daily rituals,what we do and how we do.
It enhance my productivity interms of collaboration, in terms
(09:54):
of you know everything fromemail, a calendar, to you know
meeting requests.
I mean it really is phenomenal.
What about you as a marketingleader?
How has it enhanced, changeyour routines or habits while
leading the team?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I'll give you a couple examples of what hasn't
changed, and then I'll also giveyou an example of what has
changed.
So what hasn't changed is someof the core beliefs and some of
the rituals that I had in mypersonal life.
Two of them I'll share with you.
One is meditation so I talkedabout in one of the previous
(10:35):
talks as well.
Follow meditation, even like 15minutes before going to bed.
It gives me that perspectiveand helps me calm down in this
very, very fast pacedenvironment with pressures and
deadlines.
That hasn't changed anddeadlines.
That hasn't changed.
In fact, it has become moreimportant in this age of AI.
(10:58):
Second is visualization.
So I visualize goals six monthsfrom now, a year from now, five
years, 10 years from now.
I live by what Bill Gates saidthat people overestimate what
they can achieve in one year.
That's why you have those newyear resolutions 1st of January
(11:18):
and by the time March rollsaround, you're no longer going
to the gym, right?
So they overestimate what theycan do in one year, but they
underestimate what they canachieve in 10 years.
So that's another ritual that Ihave about visualization.
Those are the couple of thingsthat haven't changed.
On the other hand, some thingsthat have changed are.
(11:42):
I've told my team that everytime you have your hands on the
keyboard, ask yourself whyshouldn't this be done by AI?
As an example, we have a newleader who joined for investor
relations.
I have a 45-minute meeting setup for later today.
(12:02):
Last night, I received 39questions that have to be
answered and I said there's noway I can answer 45 in 45
minutes.
So I immediately used Gemini tocome up with answers, and it is
80 to 90% there, and now I canfocus on that.
10 to 20% of what additionalvalue I need to add, based on
(12:26):
the latest customerconversations that I've been
having with, let's say, cios,right?
So the ritual that I have toldmy team is every time you have
hands on the keyboard, my voiceshould be in their ear saying
why am I doing this, why shouldAI not do this?
And so that's something that Ihave really imbibed myself, and
(12:51):
I've asked my team to do it aswell.
In fact, I'll give you one moreexample the team meetings.
I have team meetings that areabout 70 people who attend Every
team meeting.
Now we have a topic wheresomebody comes and presents what
they achieved with AI.
It can be a success or it canbe a failure can be a failure.
(13:18):
Every team meeting we haveeither a video or a persona that
somebody created that used AIand that just fosters that
thinking, that creative thinkingin others and on how they can
use AI.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Oh, wonderful perspective.
It's changed my work life aswell.
I've gone from having a podcastor live show two or three times
a month to having it daily,because one click and this video
gets turned into a podcast,turned into a blog, a newsletter
distributed on 20 differentplatforms, edited and cleaned up
(13:51):
with the click of a button withseveral different tools.
It's really transformative,allowing me to focus on the
conversation and not the busywork or hiring folks to edit
every clip, et cetera Amazing.
Of course, AI is more than justcontent and content creation.
You know it really istransforming search and
(14:13):
discovery and education.
It really is transformingsearch and discovery and
education.
How do you think about thewider landscape of
future-proofing, not justcontent, but SEO, brand
discoverability and reachthrough AI?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, and this has to be done with AI working
together with humans.
I recently gave a talk at ANAB2B Marketing Conference, which
is from fear to future.
That's one of the topics I'mreally passionate about really
creating messaging and marketingthat is based on positivity
(14:49):
rather than based on fear, whichis very prevalent in
cybersecurity.
While acknowledging risk isimportant, I believe that the
true impact comes fromempowerment, and so, for me,
it's about that brand, thatculture that we have to create,
which is about how can we enableour customers to solve problems
(15:13):
while taking care of security.
The messaging doesn't have tobe cybersecurity risks.
Nation state actors Everybodyis trying to take you down.
Attackers are already in yournetwork.
Cloud is compromised right, soit doesn't have to lead with
that.
It can lead with.
(15:34):
Ai is a transformative force,and our customers are
organizations that will havetransformative effects.
For example, maybe somebody willcure cancer, someone will have
a meaningful impact towardsalleviating poverty in the world
, for example, or spreadingeducation to countries that are
(15:57):
not so fortunate that everybodyhas access to a school, right.
So our customers are going tohave that impact in the world,
and what we need to do as acybersecurity organization, as
an example, is to help them doit safely.
And so, to answer your question, it really has to come from
(16:19):
that core brand perspective thatyou have.
Your brand has to be built onthat core value of positivity
and empowerment, and then youcan use AI to really turbocharge
your messaging, your marketing,and then, as you said, we can
hyper-personalize the message.
Instead of a segment, we canactually personalize the message
(16:41):
to an individual at a scalethat is unprecedented.
We can do webinars, we can doon-demand courses, hands-on
learning with our products.
We can have AI avatars that cananswer questions about our
products right on the website,so that you don't have to call a
meeting with a system engineerto know more about the product.
(17:03):
So we can do all of that.
But the core of that has to beour brand, which is for us.
It's based on positivity andempowerment.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Wonderful and speaking of positivity and
empowerment and fear.
Sadly, there's a lot of fearand uncertainty with employees
these days, particularlyentry-level employees, about
their job prospects, theircareer prospects with AI and any
advice or mentoring you canoffer them as they navigate all
(17:36):
of this change and disruptionthat's inevitably coming.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, it is actually a great time to be in the
generation that is AI first.
So in one of our calls our CEOwas saying that in the past we
(18:05):
have mentored people who areearly in career and are interns
and we've given them projects.
We could potentially even doreverse mentoring now.
Who are AI first, who'veexperimented with AI, then maybe
they can teach us how to usewhat are the use cases that they
are using for AI.
But the question is, as anintern, as an early in career,
(18:25):
are you really experimentingwith AI?
And that's what I try and teachmy kids and anybody who's in
the younger generationExperiment, experiment with AI.
And if you truly do that andfind use cases where AI can help
you achieve certain objectives,I think that companies will
actually be wanting to learnfrom you.
(18:53):
I think that companies willactually be wanting to learn
from you because you will be theAI first generation.
You'll be the generation thatasks AI for health care advice.
Maybe it's about you know whenyou talk to a doctor, it is
actually logging into the healthcare system and really
interacting with AI, and thatexpectation then comes into the
enterprise and they would say Iexpect AI to be able to do these
(19:15):
things, like they should becoming in and asking why not,
rather than what can we do withAI.
They might be asking what can'twe do with AI, right?
Might be asking what can't wedo with AI, right?
So my advice to them is reallyexperiment to the fullest extent
.
Every aspect of life is goingto be transformed with AI and if
you do that, companies will belining up to actually learn from
(19:37):
you.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, great advice, proactivity always.
So, looking ahead, what do youimagine a best-in-class
marketing team will look like intwo or three years?
I imagine there's some form ofagents out there.
Will we have AI coworkers oradvisors that will be helping
each of us with our daily goalsor skills or advice?
(20:00):
What other vision do youanticipate?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, let me talk about that.
Or do you anticipate?
Yeah, let me talk about that.
And let me also talk about if Iwere, let's say, to be talking
to a CMO, then what's reallyrequired to achieve that vision.
I think there are a couple ofthings that are required, and
then let's talk about thatvision as well.
I think one of the thingsthat's required is to really
have the data foundationally ina place where it can be accessed
(20:30):
by AI, because AI is only asgood as the data.
So you really need to transformyour data strategy, and the
data has to be unified.
It's clean and accessible.
Today, data resides in silos.
Take the example of marketing,right?
So product data is differentfrom campaigns.
(20:51):
Data is different from socialmedia.
Data is different from you know, if I ran a webinar, what were
the results of that webinar?
Right?
Customer surveys are in adifferent area area.
(21:11):
So I think one of the thingsthat CMOs need to do to really
realize that vision of thefuture is to have data in one
place so that AI can access itand give you insights.
Second is to aggressively investin talent development.
It's not just about hiring thenext campaign manager.
It's about hiring somebody whois really great at prompts that
(21:32):
they can submit to AI andupskill and reskill their
workers and really encouragethem to experiment and fail and
fail right.
So if you do invest in some ofthese capabilities, I think the
future is going to look reallydifferent.
(21:52):
In the future, I think thatinstead of marketing to customer
segments, we will market toindividuals.
Wow, if you receive a marketingcampaign, let's say, from us,
in the future, it would be veryspecific to you the kind of
podcast that you do, the kind ofinterest that you have, the
(22:14):
kind of risks you might befacing, and every individual
would probably receive.
There are 30 contacts in anenterprise.
Every contact would probablyreceive a personalized email and
personalized message.
Every contact would probablyreceive a personalized email and
personalized message.
Another, I think, transformationthat will happen is the way you
interact with a company, avendor, will be very different.
(22:39):
You could come to our website,and website would be our digital
store.
You would be able to doeverything that you are able to
do today with a seller, whetherit's about finding out about
features or get a quote, ornegotiate or whatever you need
to be able to do to arrive atyour final decision.
You would be able to do itusing agents on our website.
(23:01):
And I think in this new world,agencies will also have to
transform how they offer theirservices to marketers and their
role will have to transform tohow to use AI in the best way
possible.
For example, if it is thecampaign tagline example that I
(23:26):
gave you, if you were able toturn it around in a weekend, how
can they do that at scale?
So I think it's going to bevery different but very exciting
world, and I think it's onlygoing to.
Ai is only going to be.
It'll only improve from here.
(23:48):
This is the worst of AI that weare seeing right now.
It is only going to get betterfrom here.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Such a great point.
We're living in interestingtimes.
Thanks for sharing yourinsights and really appreciate
the advice.
Very helpful.
Thanks, nav.
Thank you, evan, it was greatto be with you and thanks
everyone for listening andwatching and sharing and also
check out our new TV show,techimpacttv, now on Bloomberg
(24:15):
and Fox Business.
Thanks everyone, take care.
Hey everybody, I'm excited to dive into AI and
marketing today Two hot topicswith a real industry insider and
marketing guru from Palo AltoNetworks, Nav.
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm great.
Thanks, Evan.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
It's really great to be talking to the audience of
your work and the team at PaloAlto Networks.
Before that, maybe introduceyourself your role within the
company and how would youdescribe Palo Alto Networks
these days versus 10?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
years ago when you joined.
It has transformed.
So just a little bit aboutmyself.
I'm Nav.
I joined Palo Alto Networksnine years almost 10 years now,
which is half the age of thecompany.
Almost 10 years now, which ishalf the age of the company.
I lead marketing for networksecurity and AI.
Have really loved every day Ihave worked at Palo Alto
Networks.
How we've changed is reallytransformed.
When I joined the company, wewere a single product company
(00:58):
offering next-generationfirewall and security services
transformative products.
Now we're the cybersecuritypartner of choice for large
Fortune 100 companies, offeringeverything from solutions for
cloud security, endpoint SOCtransformation, ai security,
network security and so onEverything that a large
(01:20):
enterprise might need from acybersecurity partner of choice.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, it's been brilliant to witness the
transformation and amazingproducts that are now Gen AI and
AI powered.
But we're not going to go theretoday.
We're going to talk aboutmarketing, something we both
know a little about.
And what are the biggest mythsor misconceptions when you talk
AI and marketing these days andwhat's your personal experience?
(01:45):
Maybe you can set the scene forus.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, one of the biggest misconceptions, in my
view, is when we say AI willreplace marketers.
The reality is that AI is anenabler.
It is an augmenter, not reallya replacement.
So think of it like this AIhandles the heavy lifting, the
data crunching right and thepatent recognition, also the
(02:11):
rapid content generation, butit's the human that gives the
strategic vision.
The essential ingredients thatinclude understanding of
customers, the customer journey,ethical judgment as well on
what should be included and,ultimately, the creative spark.
All of that comes from thestorytelling.
(02:32):
The basic, the ingredients comefrom humans, but AI is a huge
augmenter.
So without human direction, aiis just like a powerful engine
right without a driver.
So one of the projects that Ican give you an example of where
we used AI is a few months ago.
(02:53):
We launched a new product AIsecurity called Prisma Airs.
In the past, we would have to doa long cycle of coming up with
taglines, subheads, creativeimages and so on, working with
multiple agencies and in-houseas well.
This time, what we did was weran a contest with just the
(03:14):
product marketers using AI.
We said generate as manyheadlines and subheads that you
can with a concept that you havein mind.
We got 56 entries over oneweekend, basically one business
day.
We had a meeting with the CEO.
We said these are the top fiveentries.
(03:39):
We chose one and went with that.
So that's a huge forcemultiplier.
We were able to do that inbasically one business day,
something that would have takenus a few weeks in the past.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, it's incredible .
What a fun story, reallyeye-opening, and let's talk
about mindset shift.
It's not just about the youknow the you know marketing tech
stack these days.
You know, it's about, you know,emerging tools and change, and
I was curious about some of thetools that you used in this
(04:15):
example.
Can you mention them?
How did you ensure adoption,how did you get approval for
adoption and how were they usedin that particular example?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
The good part is that our company itself is AI first
and have executives backing that.
When AI first burst onto thescene through ChatGPT in
November 2022, was it seen?
Through chat GPT November 2022,was it?
(04:50):
I remember, within a few months, our CEO called an AI summit,
which is internal meeting of allVPs and, above for all the
leaders of the company.
They were all in person here.
We were a global company, right, everybody flew in.
We had all the leaders here.
We brought in leaders in AI,people who had been working on
IBM Watson, people who had beenworking on Google Gemini, people
who were startup founders whowere working on AI, and they
(05:13):
discussed with us at that timehow they have used AI.
What are the different usecases where they have seen AI
being successful.
Then we did different functionswithin our company, like
marketing, finance, it.
Each of them actually had aleader experiment with their
teams on AI use cases and thendemonstrated those use cases to
(05:38):
the leadership team and welearned from each other from
those experiments and it reallyset the stage for us to be able
to effectively use AI.
So today we have an internaltool called Panda AI, which is,
if I have any question as anemployee.
The IT team has created thistool, which is available in
Slack, replacement of a laptoplogged out of my account,
(06:09):
expense report policy, travelpolicy all of that can be
answered by that tool.
In marketing, you mentioned someof the tools that we've used.
So we work with.
We partner very closely withGoogle, so the primary tool we
use is Google Gemini, and GeminiAI is available as a chat
interface, but it's alsoavailable within the documents.
We use Google Workspace, so inany document like a Word doc, if
(06:32):
I have a Google doc, I canaccess Gemini there.
And then we also started usingGoogle Flow, which is a video
generation tool.
So in the past you would haveto again work with either
agencies or creative serviceswho only have a limited
bandwidth to create videos.
Now we are asking everybody inthe marketing organization to
(06:56):
experiment with that and we arecreating some really, really
great videos using Google Flowand VO3 Engine.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
That's amazing.
Yeah, these are incredibletools.
How do you think aboutempowering the brand voice and
supporting it without going offthe rails?
You know, we've all createdcontent with AI and it's turned
out to be dodgy, to say theleast, or it takes us in a
completely different directionthat doesn't necessarily support
(07:29):
the mission.
How does that show up?
How do you avoid it?
And how do you keep it underwraps, as it were, because AI
can be a little wacky, to saythe least?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It's very powerful and with that power as I think
in Spider-Man movie they said itwith great power comes great
responsibility.
It's a really powerful tool andyou really have to be
responsible in using it.
So there is no foolproof way tobe honest, evan.
But when we did that leadershipteam summit, ai summit, we
(08:04):
formed an AI task force whocreated guidelines for us and to
begin with, those were theearly days.
At that time, everything had togo through that team to be
approved.
Now we are at a much differentplace where we've said place
(08:29):
where we've said here are theguidelines Use the Google Gemini
tool and all the AI tools thatare sanctioned for use for this
level of data.
For example, it can be used forconfidential data.
It cannot be used for secrets,and here's the definition of
what that means.
And we go through the trainingevery six months, every year.
There is training to all theemployees, mandatory training.
That talks about some examplesand what can go wrong if AI is
(08:54):
misused.
So constant training.
Some guardrails that have beenbuilt using our own products.
For example, we have productslike Prisma Airs, ai Access
Security, prisma Access Browser,some of those products that
actually create those guardrails.
For example, it says ifsomebody is trying to use a code
generation tool which is notsanctioned, it would Microsoft
(09:16):
Browser would block it and saythis tool is sanctioned, use
this instead.
So we have a mix of educationand guardrails that are provided
by tools.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Oh, really well done there.
Ai, gen AI is also changingmany of our daily rituals that
you know as professionals.
We built up over years, decades.
You know our daily rituals,what we do and how we do.
It enhance my productivity interms of collaboration, in terms
(09:54):
of you know everything fromemail, a calendar, to you know
meeting requests.
I mean it really is phenomenal.
What about you as a marketingleader?
How has it enhanced, changeyour routines or habits while
leading the team?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I'll give you a couple examples of what hasn't
changed, and then I'll also giveyou an example of what has
changed.
So what hasn't changed is someof the core beliefs and some of
the rituals that I had in mypersonal life.
Two of them I'll share with you.
One is meditation so I talkedabout in one of the previous
(10:35):
talks as well.
Follow meditation, even like 15minutes before going to bed.
It gives me that perspectiveand helps me calm down in this
very, very fast pacedenvironment with pressures and
deadlines.
That hasn't changed anddeadlines.
That hasn't changed.
In fact, it has become moreimportant in this age of AI.
(10:58):
Second is visualization.
So I visualize goals six monthsfrom now, a year from now, five
years, 10 years from now.
I live by what Bill Gates saidthat people overestimate what
they can achieve in one year.
That's why you have those newyear resolutions 1st of January
(11:18):
and by the time March rollsaround, you're no longer going
to the gym, right?
So they overestimate what theycan do in one year, but they
underestimate what they canachieve in 10 years.
So that's another ritual that Ihave about visualization.
Those are the couple of thingsthat haven't changed.
On the other hand, some thingsthat have changed are.
(11:42):
I've told my team that everytime you have your hands on the
keyboard, ask yourself whyshouldn't this be done by AI?
As an example, we have a newleader who joined for investor
relations.
I have a 45-minute meeting setup for later today.
(12:02):
Last night, I received 39questions that have to be
answered and I said there's noway I can answer 45 in 45
minutes.
So I immediately used Gemini tocome up with answers, and it is
80 to 90% there, and now I canfocus on that.
10 to 20% of what additionalvalue I need to add, based on
(12:26):
the latest customerconversations that I've been
having with, let's say, cios,right?
So the ritual that I have toldmy team is every time you have
hands on the keyboard, my voiceshould be in their ear saying
why am I doing this, why shouldAI not do this?
And so that's something that Ihave really imbibed myself, and
(12:51):
I've asked my team to do it aswell.
In fact, I'll give you one moreexample the team meetings.
I have team meetings that areabout 70 people who attend Every
team meeting.
Now we have a topic wheresomebody comes and presents what
they achieved with AI.
It can be a success or it canbe a failure can be a failure.
(13:18):
Every team meeting we haveeither a video or a persona that
somebody created that used AIand that just fosters that
thinking, that creative thinkingin others and on how they can
use AI.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Oh, wonderful perspective.
It's changed my work life aswell.
I've gone from having a podcastor live show two or three times
a month to having it daily,because one click and this video
gets turned into a podcast,turned into a blog, a newsletter
distributed on 20 differentplatforms, edited and cleaned up
(13:51):
with the click of a button withseveral different tools.
It's really transformative,allowing me to focus on the
conversation and not the busywork or hiring folks to edit
every clip, et cetera Amazing.
Of course, AI is more than justcontent and content creation.
You know it really istransforming search and
(14:13):
discovery and education.
It really is transformingsearch and discovery and
education.
How do you think about thewider landscape of
future-proofing, not justcontent, but SEO, brand
discoverability and reachthrough AI?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, and this has to be done with AI working
together with humans.
I recently gave a talk at ANAB2B Marketing Conference, which
is from fear to future.
That's one of the topics I'mreally passionate about really
creating messaging and marketingthat is based on positivity
(14:49):
rather than based on fear, whichis very prevalent in
cybersecurity.
While acknowledging risk isimportant, I believe that the
true impact comes fromempowerment, and so, for me,
it's about that brand, thatculture that we have to create,
which is about how can we enableour customers to solve problems
(15:13):
while taking care of security.
The messaging doesn't have tobe cybersecurity risks.
Nation state actors Everybodyis trying to take you down.
Attackers are already in yournetwork.
Cloud is compromised right, soit doesn't have to lead with
that.
It can lead with.
(15:34):
Ai is a transformative force,and our customers are
organizations that will havetransformative effects.
For example, maybe somebody willcure cancer, someone will have
a meaningful impact towardsalleviating poverty in the world
, for example, or spreadingeducation to countries that are
(15:57):
not so fortunate that everybodyhas access to a school, right.
So our customers are going tohave that impact in the world,
and what we need to do as acybersecurity organization, as
an example, is to help them doit safely.
And so, to answer your question, it really has to come from
(16:19):
that core brand perspective thatyou have.
Your brand has to be built onthat core value of positivity
and empowerment, and then youcan use AI to really turbocharge
your messaging, your marketing,and then, as you said, we can
hyper-personalize the message.
Instead of a segment, we canactually personalize the message
(16:41):
to an individual at a scalethat is unprecedented.
We can do webinars, we can doon-demand courses, hands-on
learning with our products.
We can have AI avatars that cananswer questions about our
products right on the website,so that you don't have to call a
meeting with a system engineerto know more about the product.
(17:03):
So we can do all of that.
But the core of that has to beour brand, which is for us.
It's based on positivity andempowerment.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Wonderful and speaking of positivity and
empowerment and fear.
Sadly, there's a lot of fearand uncertainty with employees
these days, particularlyentry-level employees, about
their job prospects, theircareer prospects with AI and any
advice or mentoring you canoffer them as they navigate all
(17:36):
of this change and disruptionthat's inevitably coming.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, it is actually a great time to be in the
generation that is AI first.
So in one of our calls our CEOwas saying that in the past we
(18:05):
have mentored people who areearly in career and are interns
and we've given them projects.
We could potentially even doreverse mentoring now.
Who are AI first, who'veexperimented with AI, then maybe
they can teach us how to usewhat are the use cases that they
are using for AI.
But the question is, as anintern, as an early in career,
(18:25):
are you really experimentingwith AI?
And that's what I try and teachmy kids and anybody who's in
the younger generationExperiment, experiment with AI.
And if you truly do that andfind use cases where AI can help
you achieve certain objectives,I think that companies will
actually be wanting to learnfrom you.
(18:53):
I think that companies willactually be wanting to learn
from you because you will be theAI first generation.
You'll be the generation thatasks AI for health care advice.
Maybe it's about you know whenyou talk to a doctor, it is
actually logging into the healthcare system and really
interacting with AI, and thatexpectation then comes into the
enterprise and they would say Iexpect AI to be able to do these
(19:15):
things, like they should becoming in and asking why not,
rather than what can we do withAI.
They might be asking what can'twe do with AI, right?
Might be asking what can't wedo with AI, right?
So my advice to them is reallyexperiment to the fullest extent
.
Every aspect of life is goingto be transformed with AI and if
you do that, companies will belining up to actually learn from
(19:37):
you.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, great advice, proactivity always.
So, looking ahead, what do youimagine a best-in-class
marketing team will look like intwo or three years?
I imagine there's some form ofagents out there.
Will we have AI coworkers oradvisors that will be helping
each of us with our daily goalsor skills or advice?
(20:00):
What other vision do youanticipate?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, let me talk about that.
Or do you anticipate?
Yeah, let me talk about that.
And let me also talk about if Iwere, let's say, to be talking
to a CMO, then what's reallyrequired to achieve that vision.
I think there are a couple ofthings that are required, and
then let's talk about thatvision as well.
I think one of the thingsthat's required is to really
have the data foundationally ina place where it can be accessed
(20:30):
by AI, because AI is only asgood as the data.
So you really need to transformyour data strategy, and the
data has to be unified.
It's clean and accessible.
Today, data resides in silos.
Take the example of marketing,right?
So product data is differentfrom campaigns.
(20:51):
Data is different from socialmedia.
Data is different from you know, if I ran a webinar, what were
the results of that webinar?
Right?
Customer surveys are in adifferent area area.
(21:11):
So I think one of the thingsthat CMOs need to do to really
realize that vision of thefuture is to have data in one
place so that AI can access itand give you insights.
Second is to aggressively investin talent development.
It's not just about hiring thenext campaign manager.
It's about hiring somebody whois really great at prompts that
(21:32):
they can submit to AI andupskill and reskill their
workers and really encouragethem to experiment and fail and
fail right.
So if you do invest in some ofthese capabilities, I think the
future is going to look reallydifferent.
(21:52):
In the future, I think thatinstead of marketing to customer
segments, we will market toindividuals.
Wow, if you receive a marketingcampaign, let's say, from us,
in the future, it would be veryspecific to you the kind of
podcast that you do, the kind ofinterest that you have, the
(22:14):
kind of risks you might befacing, and every individual
would probably receive.
There are 30 contacts in anenterprise.
Every contact would probablyreceive a personalized email and
personalized message.
Every contact would probablyreceive a personalized email and
personalized message.
Another, I think, transformationthat will happen is the way you
interact with a company, avendor, will be very different.
(22:39):
You could come to our website,and website would be our digital
store.
You would be able to doeverything that you are able to
do today with a seller, whetherit's about finding out about
features or get a quote, ornegotiate or whatever you need
to be able to do to arrive atyour final decision.
You would be able to do itusing agents on our website.
(23:01):
And I think in this new world,agencies will also have to
transform how they offer theirservices to marketers and their
role will have to transform tohow to use AI in the best way
possible.
For example, if it is thecampaign tagline example that I
(23:26):
gave you, if you were able toturn it around in a weekend, how
can they do that at scale?
So I think it's going to bevery different but very exciting
world, and I think it's onlygoing to.
Ai is only going to be.
It'll only improve from here.
(23:48):
This is the worst of AI that weare seeing right now.
It is only going to get betterfrom here.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Such a great point.
We're living in interestingtimes.
Thanks for sharing yourinsights and really appreciate
the advice.
Very helpful.
Thanks, nav.
Thank you, evan, it was greatto be with you and thanks
everyone for listening andwatching and sharing and also
check out our new TV show,techimpacttv, now on Bloomberg
(24:15):
and Fox Business.
Thanks everyone, take care.
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