How AI is changing the marketing landscape

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:25:00
Patrick Gilbert
You actually don’t need a huge budget or a team of data scientists to run a really effective marketing program. AI had made an accessible, right. You can make great creatives. You can measure things in ways that you haven’t been able to do before. And I think that’s really where the industry is going. So I think that a lot of people in this industry are not going to be able to cut it because they are stuck in doing these low value things, and they are not willing or able or whatever to adjust their mindset to adapt.

00:00:25:02 – 00:00:49:03
Patrick Gilbert
But those that can and become more strategic and understand how great brands are built, and understand complicated business dynamics and be able to problem solve through them. Or I think that the future is very bright. I think that this industry is going to like trim some fat and then reach another golden age. And I’m excited to be a part of it.

00:00:49:05 – 00:01:19:21
Alex Cleanthous
Today on the Growth Manifesto podcast, we’re speaking with, Patrick Gilbert is the CEO at Adventure Media and author of the book Join or Die a book he wrote in 2019 2020 about how AI is going to change the world. What’s interesting is that so much has happened since that point, since ChatGPT was launched in November 2022. And so what we do is we talk about how AI is shifting the marketing landscape, how brands are adapting, and what you can do to take advantage of this seismic shift.

00:01:19:23 – 00:01:41:13
Alex Cleanthous
I hope you enjoyed this episode, and make sure to subscribe to get the latest episodes as soon as they’re released. Now let’s get into it. So this episode’s a little bit different, because, we both have agency, so I figured that this would be a good conversation about kind of how the world is shifting. And it does seem to be shifting pretty fast in the last six months.

00:01:41:14 – 00:01:54:00
Alex Cleanthous
Yeah. And so what I want to start first by speaking about kind of this book, journal dot that, you wrote how many years ago now? I was just written.

00:01:54:02 – 00:02:02:02
Patrick Gilbert
It was published in 2020. So it’s been it’s crazy to think it’s been half a decade, but I guess that’s how much time has gone by the 2020.

00:02:02:02 – 00:02:26:01
Alex Cleanthous
I mean, this was, the first year of the pandemic. And to us, speaking about how the rise of automation and AI is coming right. That was only five years ago. And I think kind of most people, when they think about five years ago, this it both feels long and short because there was a period of three years where it all felt the same, which is like a single day, but it was actually quite a while ago.

00:02:26:03 – 00:02:46:13
Alex Cleanthous
So what was happening in 2020 and how much has changed since then? Because I know in the last two years, since that GPT, I mean, that’s come a long way. But so you wrote this book before ChatGPT was on the scene, right? And I don’t think that people even know what that world is like. So kind of what was happening back then and how much has changed since that time?

00:02:46:15 – 00:03:14:14
Patrick Gilbert
Well, so much has changed. Because to understand that, I mean, the book was, you know, 2 or 3 years in the making before it was published. So to really understand the the crux of join or Die is to really understand what was happening in the digital marketing, digital advertising performance marketing space. And let’s call it like 2017 through 2020 and automation been around for a long time.

00:03:14:16 – 00:03:32:00
Patrick Gilbert
And I, you know, we worked in this space, right? It felt like Google was always pushing their automation agenda and the entire industry hated it. And I remember like, you know, when I started doing this, it was like, oh, target CPA is bad as is. Like it’s Google trying to get more of your money and it’s they’re trying to trick you and it’s this whole thing where they’re going to run away with spending whatever it was.

00:03:32:02 – 00:04:02:20
Patrick Gilbert
And then at some point, I don’t know, in 2017, our team started leaning into automated bidding specifically. That was really where, like, I really had its first, you know, roots in the in the Google Ads ecosystem. And we started leaning into it and said, like, maybe there’s something to this, right? Like we were kind of learning a little more about it and then quickly understood that, like the real reason people are pushing back against this technology and this, you know, these bidding solutions specifically is really out of like fear and insecurity.

00:04:03:00 – 00:04:17:24
Patrick Gilbert
And it was just like kind of admitting that, like everyone, even, you know, this is almost ten years ago now. Like we just felt that automation was going to take our jobs away. And so like the whole narrative was like, you would go to a client, you would say, oh, I tested automated bidding and it doesn’t work, right.

00:04:17:24 – 00:04:34:11
Patrick Gilbert
My manual CPC campaign won, you know, every time. And we were so proud to talk about that because it was like job security. And the entire industry was predicated on that. And it was a lot of propaganda that we all spread about this. Like I did this well, I wrote blog post back in 2016 about how manual bidding is better.

00:04:34:13 – 00:04:52:20
Patrick Gilbert
And then what I realized is, like, the reason that that test always fails was because no one actually understands target CPA. No one understands target return ad spend, no one understands how AI is meant to work. So we as an agency really leaned into like understanding the products out of it. And I started writing about it and said, like, listen, like this stuff is really working and it’s really good.

00:04:52:20 – 00:05:16:00
Patrick Gilbert
Like, automation in AI is great. You should listen to it. But everyone hated it. They hated me. I had clients that literally fired us because they were like, we can’t. We can’t listen to you talk about how great AI is anymore. And so it pissed me off and I started writing blog content, and the very first blog post that was published, I think, in 2018, titled Join or Die, it’s time to embrace Google Automation.

00:05:16:02 – 00:05:32:20
Patrick Gilbert
And eventually that, you know, have a narrative to it. And people liked it. And I started getting offers to speak at conferences around the world. And then eventually it turned into a book. It was like kind of a no brainer at that point. I had so much content, so much to say on the topic, that it was like it was, you know, absolutely no brainer about writing the book.

00:05:32:20 – 00:05:55:06
Patrick Gilbert
So I started writing it in 2019, published in 2020. The pandemic certainly helped, be able to finalize, the book project. And then it’s so funny now because, like, I think some of the earlier chapters in the book are about trying to convince people that AI is a good thing. And I think, like, if you were to just pick it up off the shelf now and start reading it, it would be really weird because it’s like, why is this guy trying to tell me something I already know?

00:05:55:08 – 00:06:16:23
Patrick Gilbert
Because now the world is like, AI is the greatest thing ever, and if you’re not embracing it, you’re a moron. So it’s like this very weird, like change that has taken place over only, of course, of a matter of, a couple of years. But like, it really is funny, like people, people in the industry, like other peers, other agency owners did not like me when I put out this content because they were like, no, like, this is this is going to replace us.

00:06:17:03 – 00:06:20:02
Patrick Gilbert
So it is really interesting to see how everything changes.

00:06:20:04 – 00:06:42:00
Alex Cleanthous
Yeah, I think there’s there’s certainly has been a shift even in ChatGPT consumption because I remember when it came out in November 23rd, I think it was 22. But the 22. Yeah, that that month, that whole period is a bit hazy, right? From 2020 to 2020. Let me, let me.

00:06:42:02 – 00:07:05:10
Patrick Gilbert
Be positive time. This is a crazy situation, right? So so November 2022, was a month after October obviously. And so calendars work. Meta was in the middle of their rebrand. They had just announced on their earnings call, a big beat because iOS 14 had completely turned meta upside down and their entire, ethos at that time.

00:07:05:10 – 00:07:24:14
Patrick Gilbert
On the earnings call, the CFO went out there and said, we’re making all these investments into AI, and this is the future, and we’re going to rebuild our ad platform from scratch. And that was October of 2022. And Wall Street hated that narrative. And their stock price hit a ten year low. I think it was trading at like $60 or $80 a share.

00:07:24:16 – 00:07:45:21
Patrick Gilbert
Guess who was right? They were right. The thing is, if that earnings call taking place a month or two later after ChatGPT became the coolest thing on the planet, the reception on Wall Street was so different at that time. When matter released those earnings, what was it? It was 17% of companies on the S&P 500 were mentioning the word AI in their earnings calls.

00:07:45:23 – 00:08:05:09
Patrick Gilbert
You fast forward two months later, that number went up by 175%. Almost everybody was somehow working. I see their narrative, and it’s so interesting to me that no one really saw this coming. And there was a few canary in the coal mine. This book was one of them. But also Mark Zuckerberg was another saying like, AI is a really big thing.

00:08:05:14 – 00:08:23:04
Patrick Gilbert
Get into it now. And nobody wanted to listen. And then all of a sudden activity became very cool. And I think, guys you were alluding to, it took a little while for people to finally realize the practical implications of it. But now this is what how many cycles of Moore’s Law later. And it’s like it’s completely transformed every aspect of our lives.

00:08:23:04 – 00:08:33:19
Patrick Gilbert
And now it’s finally cool and finally interesting, and people are finally leaning into it. So it has it’s on the one hand, it’s taken a long time, but it’s also been like the craziest three years of our lives.

00:08:33:21 – 00:08:53:00
Alex Cleanthous
Yeah. So November 2022 I remember it was around Christmas time. I found it and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. And I was like, and it was the summer holidays here. Like in Australia, I think, it’s kind of, it’s the winter holidays over there. If there are holidays in winter. But, I just spent that summer just going, oh my God, this is amazing.

00:08:53:00 – 00:09:25:24
Alex Cleanthous
I can do everything in like one second. And it was at the very start. And so there was the initial hype, and then there was a period where it kind of stayed the same. And then, AI agents started to come into the scene. Right? So like, like, like it went from ChatGPT just cause I’m like, this is amazing into this next level of kind of of of the workflows, automations and so on that integrated ChatGPT and Claw and Gemini and Perplexity as part of kind of like a workflow.

00:09:25:24 – 00:09:54:04
Alex Cleanthous
So as this thing, it can help to construct content like, extremely fast. It can analyze spreadsheets whole or some data. And now it’s going into this other level just where, it’s automating a lot of the mundane work, I think, to start with. But then I think it’s coming for the creative work next. Right. And so how is marketing shifted, like in the last two years, and how has it stayed the same?

00:09:54:06 – 00:10:16:06
Alex Cleanthous
Right. Because there’s so much change. Right? I speak to lots of, of company and company kind of founders and CEOs and so on. And for us in the industry, it feels like, oh my God, like everyone’s there. But then when you talk to people outside the industry, they’re not there yet. So it’s kind of like almost kind of back in 2020, where at least now they know they should be on it.

00:10:16:08 – 00:10:24:19
Alex Cleanthous
But then but they’re not sure on how to get started. So, so how much has shifted and how much is stayed the same marketing.

00:10:25:00 – 00:10:48:14
Patrick Gilbert
It it’s I mean, that’s the perfect question. And there’s so many different ways in which we can take this, but I think that it’s important question because in a world that’s constantly changing, I think the most important thing is to first understand the things that do not change. And consumer behavior doesn’t really change. Our brains are wired based off of thousands of years worth of evolution and our habits.

00:10:48:14 – 00:11:04:24
Patrick Gilbert
The things we like to do have been largely unchanged, and we all are very quick to like, jump into the latest shiny thing and the fads and the trends and, you know, in Covid, when it was like, oh, we’re no one’s ever going to travel again and no one wants to shop in retail, and no one’s ever going to work in an office again.

00:11:05:01 – 00:11:26:17
Patrick Gilbert
And then you realize, like, like people have certain habits and they like to do them. And this is this is how this is how we behave and shopping. And, you know, making consumer decisions and very much similar. So the psychology of what we do is similar and strategy is similar. It’s just the tactics are evolving over time. It’s becoming faster.

00:11:26:19 – 00:11:45:21
Patrick Gilbert
And the data and the insights are becoming richer. But the thing that I’ve been saying all along, like the best thing that someone could do, is go take Intro to Marketing University again, because for the longest time, like when you and I were getting started in this industry, it was all about growth hacks. And like secret sauces and funnel tactics.

00:11:45:23 – 00:12:06:06
Patrick Gilbert
That was a short lived opportunity, right? Like that was the shiny thing of the era, because the cost of acquiring traffic on Google was basically pennies and competition hadn’t caught up. And the platforms are not yet that advanced that you could hire an agency like, you know, yours or mine. And we could figure out, oh, well, actually, let’s just target this audience or this long tail keyword, and we’re going to get it at a fraction of the cost.

00:12:06:11 – 00:12:24:09
Patrick Gilbert
That was never real marketing, right? So like at a certain point, the jig was up. And that window of opportunity for exploiting arbitrage and the digital ecosystem was closed. So now what it forces us to do is actually become marketers again, which is kind of fun, because that’s really the reason that I think we got into this industry not to just like capitalize on cheap clicks.

00:12:24:11 – 00:12:44:10
Patrick Gilbert
So the fundamentals of marketing, the four P’s, like all that stuff really does matter, like understanding. I mean, you guys in Australia are probably bigger fans of how brands grow into the Byron Sharp. Types of schools of thought than it is at all popular in the US. In the US, we become obsessive over short term, hacks and gurus and all that nonsense.

00:12:44:11 – 00:13:02:24
Patrick Gilbert
We don’t really read academic literature, but in, in the UK, in Australia, in other parts of the world, you guys are much more so, like understanding how brands grow concepts like physical and mental availability and, and targeting light buyers. Not being overly segmented and personalized in your messaging is actually a really good benefit. I think we’re getting back to that now as a as a community.

00:13:03:05 – 00:13:24:17
Patrick Gilbert
And I think that’s really exciting because I think that’s kind of what drove, drew us to marketing to begin with. Now, what’s changing? Well, there’s multiple forces that are changing at once. One is understanding the changing dynamic of this industry that is no longer a Wild West, understanding the changes of like, what I described before. Like there’s no more kind of arbitrage hacks to be had.

00:13:24:19 – 00:13:44:07
Patrick Gilbert
So shifting to creative matters, messaging matters, like all that stuff. AI isn’t really a big part of that. That’s just like becoming a more sophisticated marketer to understand what’s actually happening in the media landscape. That’s kind of problem or one. And we could put like measurement into that. And like the whole myth of like how attribution is totally bullshit, like that can be all in that camp.

00:13:44:12 – 00:14:01:18
Patrick Gilbert
And then it’s everything that has to do with AI and how it’s transforming the work that we do. And there’s so many different ways in which you could take that. I think the simplest way of describing it is like, look, there are in any job, whether it’s marketing or any field that you’re in, there’s four different kinds of work that you do.

00:14:01:23 – 00:14:26:11
Patrick Gilbert
There’s design, there’s decision making, there’s problem solving, and then there’s building. And just about everything you do can fit into one of those four categories, right. And then within each of those categories, there’s historically been three ways in which you would get the work done. You would either do it yourself, would delegate it to somebody else or something else, or you would, you know, collaborate, work with somebody else on it.

00:14:26:11 – 00:15:02:19
Patrick Gilbert
Right. And in this new AI world that three methods shifts down to two, where you really should only be doing something with something else or delegating it entirely based. What I’m saying is, like in a world where AI is constantly your assistant, you never have to do something by yourself. And if any of those things that I said before, whether it’s making decisions or designing something from scratch or doing creative problem solving or building something, if you’re not thinking about which of these things do I do by myself, and which of these things can I automate or delegate or collaborate?

00:15:02:21 – 00:15:23:05
Patrick Gilbert
That’s where I now amplifies your ability to be more productive and efficient and more insightful. And I think the biggest thing that marketers are probably really should be leaning into more because we’re not all designers, right? We’re not all creatives, and we’re not all, like, physically, like, working inside of, like, let’s say a meta ads dashboard.

00:15:23:07 – 00:15:42:14
Patrick Gilbert
The number one thing that I think most marketers can take away from this conversation is think about decisions that you make, which is informed by data and other other things, right. And figure out how you can layer AI on top of it to make those decisions more insightful. Enrich that data that you get or make it easier to get that information so that you can make that decision.

00:15:42:17 – 00:16:00:24
Patrick Gilbert
I think that’s probably the lowest hanging fruit if you’re trying to, like, get a leg up on becoming more AI forward, it’s think about all the decisions that you make, whether it’s determining budgets, whether it’s evaluating, different headlines, whether it’s, whatever it might be. Right. Figure out, okay, how can I get this content into a spreadsheet?

00:16:01:05 – 00:16:23:02
Patrick Gilbert
And then how can I, like, maybe get access to a script that leverages open AI to add context into it to make a pivot table, so that I can understand in a much more simple way how how to best allocate my budget across these platforms. And I think that it’s the sort of thing that everyone can start doing immediately, and it’ll change your life once you start to see the results of these things in real time.

00:16:23:04 – 00:16:45:07
Alex Cleanthous
We’re only talking about the basic level right now. This is just kind of kind of having it there. As copilot. Right. And the copilot is like the simplest way to get started with it. And that’s just basically they’re just like, kind of almost like has a really, really super smart kind of team of assistants. Right. And yeah, the thing I always like to say to people is that it’s not the right way of saying it, but like, it’s smarter than all of us, right?

00:16:45:07 – 00:17:01:11
Alex Cleanthous
So, if you’re not getting the answer from it, then it’s probably, it’s more likely a lot like, on our side than on its side or not. It’s just kind of. How do you engage with it? Right. And I think in the beginning everyone was like, what you were saying with, the automated kind of bidding, right?

00:17:01:11 – 00:17:15:10
Alex Cleanthous
Oh, well, I can just do it kind of better myself. I remember that was the first six months of ChatGPT. Oh, look, it’s just okay because we’re only doing a single prompt, kind of, conversation. And of course, like, it’s not going to be like, good if you don’t know how to prompt it. Right? So I think there’s a lot that’s happened there.

00:17:15:12 – 00:17:33:10
Alex Cleanthous
But my big conversation right now internally here at Where Profits is, if everybody can make everything now like in an instant, right. Because I can ask it for the Google Ads campaign, all the headlines, all the descriptions or the size, or I can ask it for a strategy for email and all the flows and all the different things.

00:17:33:10 – 00:18:00:12
Alex Cleanthous
It does it in a second, right now it’s okay sometimes, and most of the time it’s just average. But now everybody can make everything in a second. So if everybody can make everything and where is the value now. Right. Because I can instantly make a, I can be a person who’s just kind of the I think I need marketing, I can find a prompt online, I can put the prompt into ChatGPT, I can put the website in About Us page or whatever and say, hey, of course, make me a Google Ads campaign.

00:18:00:16 – 00:18:18:00
Alex Cleanthous
So if everybody can do that, then where’s the value in marketing now? Because it was linked to time, you know. All right. Of course this thing’s going to take us about 16 hours. We have to figure out kind of hourly rates and all that different things, because everything I think that there was an acknowledgment that things take time.

00:18:18:06 – 00:18:38:16
Alex Cleanthous
Right. And there was a value. And the more time it takes now, the longer something takes, the lower the value. It is because of the speed of time. Right. And so this is just a conversation. We don’t have the answer yet. I think it’s something around the value side of things. And now kind of ability to hit on the winners above average of the time.

00:18:38:16 – 00:18:49:09
Alex Cleanthous
Right. But I just thought I just thought a conversation with you about where you think it is. Right. Because this is something that we’re investigating, right. Or trying to unpack.

00:18:49:11 – 00:19:13:20
Patrick Gilbert
So I think that idea of like a level playing field, it’s kind of what you’re describing. And that has always been there in some other iteration. Right. Like 15 years ago, anyone can start a Google Ads agency. Anyone could create a website and start and start dropshipping products and become an e-commerce brand. Anyone could do any of these things, right?

00:19:13:20 – 00:19:35:21
Patrick Gilbert
Like the barrier to entry and almost everything that we do has always been pretty low. So this question isn’t new, right? And I don’t think like I think there’s a lot of panic button with what AI is doing to everything where it’s like, well, it’s different now. It’s like, well, it’s not really. It’s just a it’s another problem that we’ve already solved without intentionally doing it.

00:19:35:21 – 00:19:47:10
Patrick Gilbert
So where is the value? I think that the value comes from recognizing that all I does is optimize for the average. So like, yeah, like anyone can have an.

00:19:47:10 – 00:20:01:09
Alex Cleanthous
Agency hold on to all the AI does it because that was really interesting statement. Right. So all the AI does is optimized for the average. So you just expand on that statement because I think that’s a really, really important statement.

00:20:01:11 – 00:20:24:07
Patrick Gilbert
All of the data in the world. And then you say, here’s a question, give me an answer to it. And it’s going to pull all that. The data points, all the signals that are relevant to your query. And it’s going to give you the average output that’s going to satisfy your answer. Also remember that these programs, their cost is every token.

00:20:24:09 – 00:20:46:19
Patrick Gilbert
It’s number one job is to get you to stop asking questions. So in the same way that humans brains are wired to be satisfied like we we we we don’t look for the best answer for anything. We look for the good enough answer. You know, what am I going to eat for dinner tonight? Okay, well, whatever is just like the easiest thing for me to do, right?

00:20:46:22 – 00:21:07:21
Patrick Gilbert
Or what? I need a new mattress. Am I really going to spend every waking moment of every hour of my life dedicated to figure out the right mattress I need to buy now? I’m going to figure out, like, a good enough solution. Move on with my life. The AI platforms are the same thing, like any sort of LM is built to give you a good enough answer so that you stop asking it more questions.

00:21:07:23 – 00:21:30:06
Patrick Gilbert
And that is exactly why, when you ask a more sophisticated prompt, you get a more sophisticated answer. Because if you ask a very general prompt, if you opened up a if you opened up to Azure right now and said, I’m a, I’m a jewelry brand, can you, can you make me a marketing strategy? It’s going to give you the most bland answer of all time, because it probably is interpreting.

00:21:30:06 – 00:21:54:20
Patrick Gilbert
It’s not necessarily it. It’s interpreting you as a moron. But it’s like, okay, I don’t need to like, really dig deep here. I don’t have to use a lot of electricity to go and answer this person’s question because it’s so surface level. But if you simply say, give me a strategy as if you are a executive at Ogilvy, it’s now all of a sudden going to give you a little bit more depth.

00:21:54:22 – 00:22:15:10
Patrick Gilbert
And that is why, like they optimize for the average, it’s going to give you like if you say, write me something in a Shakespearean sonnet, it’s going to give you the average interpretation of all the sonnets combined that it’s been trained on. And so a bidding algorithm in Google is the exact same thing, right? It’s going to be like and you say, here’s my, here’s my product category, and I want to get a three times a turn on outspend.

00:22:15:15 – 00:22:31:23
Patrick Gilbert
It’s going to be able to figure that out. Will it be able to scale your budget infinitely and be able to get you more and more customers at a three times a year? Nothing? No. Because without you on top of it being able to train it about how to actually get that next incremental customer, it’s going to fail.

00:22:32:00 – 00:22:49:17
Patrick Gilbert
So the value that you provide as a marketer is being able to understand how to continue to get that competitive advantage, how to continue to differentiate, whether it’s managing data, creating unique brand messaging, doing all the other things that I think we’ve always been opposed to doing. It’s just in a different way. But yeah, there’s definitely value.

00:22:49:17 – 00:23:01:21
Patrick Gilbert
I think there’s always going to be value. There’s always in a in a capitalistic society, there’s always a room to to get a competitive edge. And this is just a new version of that same problem to expertise.

00:23:01:23 – 00:23:20:08
Alex Cleanthous
It kind of changes the quality of the prompt, which changes, the output and increases, the average performance. Call it. Right. Because the more sophisticated the prompt, the fewer people that are doing it out of the heart of the outcome. And that’s where experience helps for brand owner. That’s what I place. Yeah.

00:23:20:10 – 00:23:39:13
Patrick Gilbert
They’ll say like, another thing with this is the biggest lie in digital marketing is that everything can be tracked. And there’s just been this like, huge lie about like having the perfect attribution model that can solve all your problems and tell you exactly. Like what? Like here. It’s always been a lie, right? Like it’s never been true. It’s never been accurate.

00:23:39:13 – 00:24:02:19
Patrick Gilbert
It’s always been based on proxies. And I think we’re now finally getting a little bit more sophisticated as an industry where we’re not living and dying by what, whether it’s a platform or a third party attribution tool or even an event tool. Well, we’ll tell you what is now being taught. And there’s great research that is being published by Google and Meta and all these other platforms.

00:24:02:21 – 00:24:25:14
Patrick Gilbert
Is that having a measurement stack that includes different modeling methods, including attribution, but also including incrementality and media mix modeling, is the best way to get the best kind of context to solve your measurement needs. But there is no perfect solution. So at the end of the day, the value of a marketer is being able to make smart, strategic decisions.

00:24:25:16 – 00:24:46:05
Patrick Gilbert
In a world where perfect data does not exist, you will never get all the information from your short term data. You will never understand where all of your conversions came from. You will never get true statistical significance out of all your incrementality tests. And in a world where you just have to accept that to be the reality, there needs to be a smart marketer on the other end of that.

00:24:46:07 – 00:24:56:24
Patrick Gilbert
That still is making decisions with incomplete data sets. That has always been the case, and I will always be the case that I will bet any amount of money that that’s not going anywhere. And that’s where the humans can still be valuable.

00:24:57:01 – 00:25:21:00
Alex Cleanthous
So for brand owners who use agencies or who hire marketers, but, they run the business like, say for example, it’s e-commerce or something like that. Right? And so they know enough about the business and they know enough about kind of marketing, in general. But, they’re not sure on the place to start and they’re not sure kind of how to speak about, but I kind of with their board.

00:25:21:02 – 00:25:43:09
Alex Cleanthous
What’s the advice that you give them on how to start thinking about where do you start with AI? How do I speak with other stakeholders internally and get them on board? Because I do like yes, it’s come a long way since, 2020, since, the book which you wrote. But there’s still a little bit of hesitation there.

00:25:43:11 – 00:25:45:05
Alex Cleanthous
What do you say to them?

00:25:45:07 – 00:26:04:18
Patrick Gilbert
I’d encourage everybody. So so there’s a before there’s these four methods of work design, problem solving, decision making and building. And I think like what gets confusing about AI is that we talk about it as this like abstract thing, and then you immediately get people that are like, oh, well, you just have to use it. And it’s like, for what?

00:26:04:22 – 00:26:35:10
Patrick Gilbert
Like someone point you in the right direction. And I think, like depending on what your role is, what you spend your time doing, are you designing, are you building or are you just making decisions? Then think about where you can interject AI and honestly, by the way, you know what? I should I should probably figure this out. We have a blog post on this on our website or BBC like, what I call the four by two model to open up ChatGPT, drop a link to that blog post in there and say I’m trying to become more mindful of using AI in my job.

00:26:35:13 – 00:26:54:05
Patrick Gilbert
Describe what you do all day. Say, I want to use this framework to figure out how I can get started and have chat typically tell you an answer to that question because depending on what you spend, you’re like, maybe it’s like the biggest problem in that e-commerce brands like right now is that they cannot figure out how to lower their shipping costs, and it’s eating away all their margin.

00:26:54:07 – 00:27:10:20
Patrick Gilbert
Great. Well, you know what? Tell that problem that you attribute, and they’ll give you a framework for how you can go about and solve that. Or say, like my creative stock and AI people talk about how generative AI can help with creative strategy or whatever, but I don’t really know the first place to get started. Go and ask ChatGPT that talk about your budget, talk about your brand, talk about all these different things.

00:27:10:20 – 00:27:33:09
Patrick Gilbert
You’re going to learn a million things. But here’s the actual main advice I would give. You need to experiment with all of these tools outside of work with outside of any sort of working dynamic, because that’s really where you’re going to have the freedom and the flexibility to learn and play around. And that’s where all the greatest things happen, right?

00:27:33:09 – 00:27:55:00
Patrick Gilbert
Like everyone in our company is playing around with or building AI tools in some capacity, and those that are doing it where they’re also working on some sort of side project or they’re interested in is that whatever? They’re trying to do it because of, you know, I have a colleague that was trying to buy a house, and it was so competitive and everything was crazy, and the rates were.

00:27:55:04 – 00:28:13:09
Patrick Gilbert
So he was like, trying to figure out how to buy and how to build an agent to help him with Zillow listings and all these other things. And he became obsessed over it, and it never ended up working. But he learned so much about AI in that process. I just built an app that I published a few days ago.

00:28:13:11 – 00:28:38:07
Patrick Gilbert
That is a scheduling assistant to help my friends figure out a time to meet for our fantasy football draft. And I learn how to code. And I’m not a developer, right? And I learned how to code this program and host it as a web application that runs with all these API integrations, because my friends and all these different time zones have these crazy schedules, and we couldn’t figure out a time to, like, get 90 minutes all together with ten of us in a room.

00:28:38:11 – 00:29:01:04
Patrick Gilbert
And I built this program. It’s like totally unimportant and totally stupid. And I spent two weeks of my life trying to figure out how to do it, but I came away with so much more knowledge about how to build programs that exist with API calls and token costs, and which model should I use for this? And if it was a working situation, like I never would have had that freedom and flexibility to do it.

00:29:01:06 – 00:29:21:05
Patrick Gilbert
Because like if you’re working on a deadline where the quality of the output really matters and you’re getting paid to deliver something, you’re just going to revert to the way that you know how to do it already, right? It’s like, I’m not going to use you to help me build a better presentation for this client pitch, because that’s going to take me ten times the amount of time I know how to build a good sales pitch.

00:29:21:09 – 00:29:36:04
Patrick Gilbert
Like I’m just going to do it. But if you, like, had a different kind of presentation that you had to give, that was kind of just something interesting and passionate as a side project. Then I promise you, a month later, like you’re going to be able to turn that into a sales pitch and use it in your actual job.

00:29:36:06 – 00:29:50:05
Patrick Gilbert
So the main advice I have is to figure out some sort of use case in your personal life, where you can really dig into the AI tools and experiments and be creative and have fun with it, because then it’ll much more easily translate to you’re working day to day.

00:29:50:07 – 00:30:09:07
Alex Cleanthous
100%, and especially on, the AI agent side of things. It’s certainly a place that we’ve been spending a lot of time and the ability to go in and to play around, screw things up a little bit, and understand things has made us all kind of a developers now, because of like, but this thing where we have to to connect everything.

00:30:09:11 – 00:30:28:06
Alex Cleanthous
But for the people who don’t know, could you just give, a quick overview of how AI agents actually work, like kind of what they are and kind of what they do because I think everyone understand kind of chat an LMS now, but I think the AI agents are still pretty new on the block for non agency kind of non marketers.

00:30:28:08 – 00:30:54:22
Patrick Gilbert
I’ve seen some really good definitions of agents that are like not fully coming to mind right now, but I’ll say like think of it this way. Imagine you’re handing ChatGPT a computer and say like you’re my personal assistant. Now go and just do a bunch of things on my behalf. You have access to my Google Calendar, you have access to my data, you have access to Google, and you can go do searches on your own.

00:30:54:24 – 00:31:19:17
Patrick Gilbert
Here’s a computer. You go figure out whatever it is to complete this task. And that’s essentially what an agent is. I mean, there’s a lot of buzz around it. It’s it’s, you know, it can be used in a bunch of different ways. But I think, like, what really is happening here is that so like chat activity is a interface that can provide language context.

00:31:19:17 – 00:31:44:08
Patrick Gilbert
And you can do things with language there. Right. An agent type product generally is where you can connect multiple tools together. The best way to explain this is like I’ll give you a very practical example. You have a search term report in Google Ads and it has all these different terms branded terms, your product terms, your competitor terms.

00:31:44:10 – 00:32:03:19
Patrick Gilbert
You know, maybe you sell, apparel and all the, you know, women’s apparel, kids apparel, babies apparel, men’s apparel. Right. And all these different things. And you export that search term report and it’s kind of a jumble of stuff. And you can scan through and you can okay. Well, you know, there’s, men’s formal attire and neckties and women’s dresses and maternity clothing and baby clothing and onesies.

00:32:03:19 – 00:32:25:15
Patrick Gilbert
Right now, just imagine that you had, you know, on all that’s in like just a long list of search queries. Imagine you had a very simple way of populating column C just to categorize all that. Right? Like so that you didn’t have to go in and say, you know, a onesie means that it’s for a baby. But like the raw data in your spreadsheet doesn’t know that.

00:32:25:17 – 00:32:50:13
Patrick Gilbert
So what you could theoretically do is you can build an agent that then connects to a large language model and then says, I want you to categorize this based off of what is most likely the category. So is it men’s? Is it baby? It addresses? Is it whatever? And just take all this data and then start to categorize it this way I can start to create pivot tables and analyze it a little bit better.

00:32:50:17 – 00:33:14:13
Patrick Gilbert
And that to me is like a very simple way of like getting started with agents is take data and then the agent is like connecting it. Right. So from your Google Sheet to the open AI API key and then have that large language model essentially ChatGPT just give you information in another column that is like the easiest way to think about using an agent.

00:33:14:16 – 00:33:35:06
Patrick Gilbert
And the most complex version of it is like give it access to your bank accounts and your credit card statements and all these other at the top, and how it does run your whole life. You don’t have to go there just yet. Like start by just connecting two things together and then just interfacing, because I think the real value and why chatbots unlock this whole AI queries that we now have is it’s really simple to have a conversation with something.

00:33:35:08 – 00:33:56:13
Patrick Gilbert
If you can just unload your brain in a very stream of consciousness way and have this program interpret it and then add context, then you can get a lot of amazing stuff done, right? So what? What makes humans so unique, and what gave us the competitive advantage over every other species on the planet is our ability to communicate with one another.

00:33:56:19 – 00:34:17:04
Patrick Gilbert
But still, we suck at communicating, right? It is the number one thing that has made us the dominant, dominating species on this planet. But still, there is not a single topic in this world that we have studied so extensively and we work so hard at, as opposed to be trying to become really good communicators. And yet we all still suck at communicating.

00:34:17:07 – 00:34:37:11
Patrick Gilbert
When I say something to you or even my wife, it is misinterpreted nine times out of ten. So, you know, it’s really good at interpreting our intentions. I am. So that’s really where the breakthrough comes. It’s like if you can unload your brain to a text box and say, this is what I’m trying to do, this is what I’m trying to convey.

00:34:37:11 – 00:34:52:22
Patrick Gilbert
This is the message I want to get across. This is what I’m trying to understand with this data. Can you help me figure it out? Then you’ll start to have the light bulb moments go off where it’s like, oh, that is where I can plug this in. I’m going to enhance this data. I’m going to have it access my Google calendar, all these other stuff that you can start to do.

00:34:53:01 – 00:35:10:09
Patrick Gilbert
So I think that is bridging the gap between like not doing anything at all to starting to test the waters with agents. And there’s a lot of simple ways that you can do this is a lot of great tools online. Depending on like your technical like abilities, things that are very, very simplistic, things that are like very customizable.

00:35:10:11 – 00:35:15:07
Patrick Gilbert
Do a couple of Google searches and or go to ChatGPT and ask it for advice. And and you can get started.

00:35:15:09 – 00:35:33:24
Alex Cleanthous
I mean, for us, as we use a software called n a n, and then and it seems to be the one that everyone seems to be using because it’s got like the visual interface, like the old school, the email kind of flow maps where you can just go, all right, cool. Insert a node, insert a chat model, insert a source of data, then make the decisions.

00:35:33:24 – 00:35:54:24
Alex Cleanthous
And it’s kind of cool. And we’ve been playing around with that. I mean, we immediately got stuck on. All right. So how do you set up a credential? I did set up an API. It’s like some so like but but the journey is even to understand that part and to unlock it and kind of like how we’re thinking about it is that especially for agency kind of life?

00:35:55:01 – 00:36:03:22
Alex Cleanthous
There’s the part that actually has the value. And then this is part kind of that’s in between all the value, which is all of like the admin and the shuffling of information and kind of the follow.

00:36:03:22 – 00:36:05:10
Patrick Gilbert
That’s the majority of your time.

00:36:05:10 – 00:36:06:21
Alex Cleanthous
The majority of our time.

00:36:06:23 – 00:36:08:07
Patrick Gilbert
Is in game.

00:36:08:09 – 00:36:30:03
Alex Cleanthous
Yeah. Like and so what we’re trying to figure out is how do we at least put all this AI on the low value stuff and then have the copilot actually help to support the high value stuff? Right. And so I think a lot of people are trying to automate the most kind of valuable, hardest thing. But there’s all this stuff in business where there’s no value but it’s required.

00:36:30:03 – 00:36:47:18
Alex Cleanthous
And so that’s where we’re starting to think about, how do we use kind of, AI agents and kind of workflows to, like, stop all that stuff in between because that’s most people’s time. And so it’s really interesting time right now. To be alive. I thought it was really interesting back in 2022, in November when ChatGPT came out.

00:36:47:18 – 00:37:03:14
Alex Cleanthous
But it feels like, it’s changing quite a lot. So a final couple of questions. Where do you start? And this is so hard, right. Because who knows, right. But I’m just gonna ask you to give a little prediction. Maybe I don’t even know how far I got that, like maybe 12 months, maybe two years. Right?

00:37:03:14 – 00:37:20:19
Alex Cleanthous
But, like, what do you see in the future coming? And I’m not going to hold you to it. I think anyone’s gonna remember this conversation, but, but, but, I would either, personally. I just want to know from you who wrote the book in 2020 about automation. Right. So there’s a bit of pressure, but not much.

00:37:20:19 – 00:37:33:06
Alex Cleanthous
Right. But where do you see it going? In a couple of years time? Like, is it kind of the same with a few more tools? Everyone kind of got stuck in the same thing. Or do you see things changing completely?

00:37:33:08 – 00:38:07:17
Patrick Gilbert
Look, the scary reality is that, like, I’m the most pro AI in the world, but I don’t know the single person whose job is in as much jeopardy as mine is from all this stuff. It’s disrupting every field but ours in particular. And the job that we do today won’t exist in two years. Just in the saying that the job that we did two years ago doesn’t exist now, because just look at any of the ad platforms, look at the changing dynamics, like the stuff that we all spent our time doing.

00:38:07:19 – 00:38:33:20
Patrick Gilbert
You know, all the whatever it was doesn’t really exist. So you have to continue to reinvent yourself. Where is it going? I will say, I’ll plug this. I am working on another book that hopefully be done a little bit later this year, but it is focusing on this specific topic, and I mentioned the need for strategy and the need for smart marketers who understand how to build a business.

00:38:33:22 – 00:38:57:13
Patrick Gilbert
And I think what has what AI is allowed us to do, it has democratized the ability for people to do great marketing work. So if you think about it like the the when I study marketing in school and you learn about effective strategies that big and successful brands, there was this like un that like this thing you can talk about or like, yeah, but like I’m not Coca-Cola.

00:38:57:13 – 00:39:20:17
Patrick Gilbert
So like that’s not relevant to me. Like I don’t have their budgets, I don’t have the access to their data. I don’t have a team of art directors, like I don’t have all that stuff. Right. So I’m a small business, so I have to find a different way. And that’s why I like smaller brands. I’ve always relied on like direct response marketing and like hacks and arbitrage and all the other stuff that we’ve been known for.

00:39:20:19 – 00:39:41:13
Patrick Gilbert
So that window is closed, kind of a separate issue. But now it’s like, okay, well, you actually don’t need a huge budget or a team of data scientists to like, run a really effective marketing program because like I said before, like, you know, it doesn’t change human psychology and things that get people interested in brands and like the difference between your system two, your system one brain, your system two brain.

00:39:41:13 – 00:39:57:09
Patrick Gilbert
And when you’re going to be receptive to certain messages and how, you are much more likely to buy something that’s a little more expensive for all these, principles of influence, all that stuff. Right? You can be a small brand with a very, very small budget, and you can benefit from those things because AI has made it accessible.

00:39:57:09 – 00:40:15:07
Patrick Gilbert
Right? You can make great creatives. You can measure things in ways that you haven’t been able to do before. You can experiment and create new ideas in ways you haven’t been able to do before. And I think that’s really where the industry is going. Somebody published a, a GitHub repository, which is our words that I didn’t know a few weeks ago.

00:40:15:09 – 00:40:41:00
Patrick Gilbert
But, basically, like a folder of code, let’s just call it that. That shows Walmart’s framework for measuring the effectiveness of free shipping promotions. And so you can go to you can go to GitHub and you can find this person’s profile, you can download. And it’s a model, it’s a mathematical model that they use to test whether or not not just not just if it increases conversion rate, which it obviously does.

00:40:41:00 – 00:41:01:20
Patrick Gilbert
Right. If people have promotions, they’re going to convert more. But what is the incrementality on the bottom line profit. And so that is something where it’s like, wow. Like I’m not Walmart. So that doesn’t matter to me. But you can actually take that and you can say, okay, well, if I’m a brand doing $100,000 a month on Shopify, how can I tweak this model to run a similar promotion?

00:41:01:20 – 00:41:18:24
Patrick Gilbert
Because I also am afraid that I’m giving away all my contribution margin in free shipping. And whenever someone signs up with their email, I’m giving away 10% on that first order. And we quickly realize that all of our margin and ability to actually scale a business is being given away by trying to keep up with all these stupid promotions that we give away.

00:41:19:05 – 00:41:51:18
Patrick Gilbert
So you, as a small brand, can run this sort of test that up until recently was only really ever, like accessible to a brand of Walmart size and caliber. But like, we’re running this test again. I have a blog post on the site that talks about it and like points can sell longer, can take as a set of tests and Shopify, these are the kinds of things that marketers need to be doing because ten years ago, my value was finding the keyword that your competitors didn’t figure out was valuable to them.

00:41:51:20 – 00:41:57:21
Patrick Gilbert
And that’s so low value. And that’s so like.

00:41:57:23 – 00:42:13:15
Patrick Gilbert
The best. Well, like, there’s no real utility and intelligence and wisdom that goes in there like, oh, I found the keyword that no one’s bidding on this is great. Now we’re going to print some money for a little while until the jig is up. Now it’s really thinking about, you know what, maybe that free shipping promotion isn’t actually driving our bottom line.

00:42:13:17 – 00:42:32:09
Patrick Gilbert
And if marketers can start thinking that way and solving real marketing problems that like, then you’re going to be relevant for a long time. So I think that a lot of people in this industry are not going to be able to cut it because they are stuck in doing these low value things, and they are not willing or able or whatever to adjust their mindset to adapt.

00:42:32:11 – 00:42:52:09
Patrick Gilbert
But those that can and become more strategic and understand how great brands are built, and understand complicated business dynamics and be able to problem solve through them. Or I think that the future is very bright. I think that this industry is going to like, trim some fat and then reach another golden age, and I’m excited to be a part of it.

00:42:52:11 – 00:43:11:21
Alex Cleanthous
And then final question, and this is probably the most helpful question to everyone who’s listening. So you’re and I didn’t see you on a so am I. And so we hire people all the time. And this is like, marketing, podcast. It’s a business podcast, but everyone who’s listening is going to have to hire some kind of a knowledge worker, right?

00:43:11:23 – 00:43:50:02
Alex Cleanthous
Somebody who uses their brain to produce, a specific out, come right. What do you look for these days in people who you hire because it’s so rapidly changing? And I think the point that you just made a second ago was to be adaptable is really, really important. But it’s not just that. Right? So, if you’re looking for, for people kind of these days and I have a way that I do it, but I mean, kind of how or what do you look for these days in a recruit who’s like, oh, that would be like, like an ideal kind of person who can join the team.

00:43:50:04 – 00:44:10:05
Patrick Gilbert
So this is going to sound so generic. You know, it’s been this whole conversation talking about AI. And so this is not going to be surprising to you, but like I have no interest in hiring anybody that’s not building AI tools in their own. Like, you know, there’s a there’s a, there’s a grace period kind of learning it right now in our agency.

00:44:10:05 – 00:44:29:11
Patrick Gilbert
And every week I’m hosting these like AI office hours and we’re all building stuff and sharing it together. And there’s a learning curve where, like, I’m driving a lot of this forward. I feel like in the company, and a lot of others are kind of taking it and running with it, but like six months from now, I have no interest in bringing somebody in who isn’t caught up to speed with where the rest of the team is.

00:44:29:17 – 00:44:49:06
Patrick Gilbert
Like, I have no patience right? Because like I, I generally have have always grown our company from within. And we have a bunch of people that I’m working on the team for six, seven, eight, nine years. Right. And a lot of them maybe that were hired right out of college. And we truly believe in like being able to get good people, talented people that have a lot of upside.

00:44:49:08 – 00:45:07:02
Patrick Gilbert
And I’ll teach you how to think like a strategic marketer, and we’ll teach you how businesses really solve problems. And like that can all be taught. But if you’re not coming in with a fundamental understanding of, like how modern technology works and where you can teach me something, then you don’t have a lot of value in my organization.

00:45:07:07 – 00:45:32:08
Patrick Gilbert
Like it’s just that the sad reality and like. But you know what though? Like when I was graduating college, the value that I provided to senior leadership in different organizations was like, I understood the internet and I understood a little bit of website code, and I understood social media and like, if I didn’t have that, like I had this Wall Street job for a little while, or the only thing I brought to that team was I knew how to format the reports in Microsoft Word and like they didn’t do it.

00:45:32:08 – 00:46:04:05
Patrick Gilbert
And if I didn’t have that value, I did not belong in that organization right now. Look, it was a different world. This is probably more challenging, and it’s faster and it’s more cutthroat than it has ever been. But that same dynamic, like you need to think about, if you’re especially a young person, that trying to like, break into this industry, you need to take the advice that we were speaking about earlier on this podcast, like build something, understand the complications of getting like different APIs to talk to one another and oh, like, how do I store that data and how can I pull from it again?

00:46:04:05 – 00:46:29:01
Patrick Gilbert
And what’s the right format? Learn all these things now so that that’s your portfolio that you can show to a potential employer. And then like, yeah, the other things that I look for is like, does this person honestly flexibility and being nimble because what I don’t like are people who are very dogmatic, who think that they know everything, like if you don’t have that general sort of mindset where it’s like, oh, this is how things should be done, then you’re generally not a good fit for our organization.

00:46:29:01 – 00:46:47:15
Patrick Gilbert
And that has always been the case. But I would say like, be open minded, recognize that the smartest thing that you can do is recognize that you don’t know anything. I don’t know anything, you don’t know anything. And smart like, but people coming out of college think they know everything. So recognize that and then build something with AI and build out your portfolio and be willing to continue to practice this.

00:46:47:17 – 00:46:54:06
Patrick Gilbert
And if you do that, then you can provide a lot of value, and you’ll be a much more attractive candidate to someone in this space. Maybe. Yes.

00:46:54:11 – 00:47:10:08
Alex Cleanthous
Yeah, I think that’s a fantastic point. And I think on that point, just for the people who are looking for, a specific kind of role. Yeah. Like like like in the old days, you’d hire interns and they would kind of help with all the stuff in between, and kind of they would learn. But those things are now being done by AI.

00:47:10:08 – 00:47:36:21
Alex Cleanthous
And so then the question is, well, how are you going to find out? Well, a way to stand out is to be the person who’s innovating, in areas that are hard right now because, yeah, because I was the same. I mean, I think back in the day, I knew how to conduct some keyword research, so I got some jobs was because of that, because I, because I had some tools available, and I was, like, kind of experimenting, entrepreneurial, but I didn’t know anything.

00:47:36:21 – 00:47:53:16
Alex Cleanthous
But I knew enough that they were like, oh, that’s something that I need. And I think it’s similar to these days. And I also think, though the world only has a finite amount of kind of marketing available. Right. But there’s a lot, a lot, a lot of people who do digital marketing in the last ten years. Right.

00:47:53:16 – 00:48:11:10
Alex Cleanthous
And so I think that that kind of pool is going to shrink a little bit. So, if you want to stand out in that, it’s the ones who execute like on the front line that are going to stand out. So, I think that’s a great point. Yeah. How do people connect with you? And, and speak to us about the book that’s coming up, at the end of the year?

00:48:11:12 – 00:48:32:08
Patrick Gilbert
Yeah. Kagami on LinkedIn, probably best, best place. Most active there. Patrick Gilbert, search me on LinkedIn. I’m sure it’ll come up more. So, this book that I have coming out, you know, it’s funny, like, I didn’t work with a traditional editor this time. I basically been writing it for five years and going back to November 2022, and a reason that that sticks out in my head.

00:48:32:10 – 00:48:52:09
Patrick Gilbert
I had finished going to be Joined or Die part two, in October of that year. And then we were having a company event, this like conference that we were going to have in November, a few weeks before ChatGPT came out. And I was like, okay, I’m going to like, once this conference is over, I’m going to like finalize the book, and we’re going to publish it at the beginning of next year.

00:48:52:15 – 00:49:10:24
Patrick Gilbert
And then ChatGPT came out and I was like, I probably shouldn’t publish a new book, and I think I need to see how this plays out. So I’ve been I’ve been working at this and writing this, like some of the earliest chapters were written in 2021, probably. So this has been a really, really long project and I really I this, this thing here was a sprint.

00:49:11:01 – 00:49:25:23
Patrick Gilbert
I wrote this in probably a matter of ten months. A lot of it had already been done already. It’s a how to guide, right? It’s like automation is great, AI is great. Here’s how to use it. What I’m trying to do now is be much more thoughtful about like, what does all this mean for the future of marketing and the future of like, building brands?

00:49:26:00 – 00:49:41:21
Patrick Gilbert
And so a ton of research. I’ve rewritten it 15 different times, but I haven’t worked with an actual editor. So I’m using creativity as my editor. And it’s different because the first book, I had a couple different editors and it was like, okay, like, let’s schedule a day to work on this, and then, you know, they’ll get back to you for weeks later with this.

00:49:41:21 – 00:49:52:02
Patrick Gilbert
Now it’s like every time I, I’m like, you know, I don’t really like how this chapter sounds like. And I open up to activity and I’m like, tell me how this sucks. Tell me what I should keep. And it’s bing, bang, boom. And I, you know, 20 minutes later I have some edits that I can put in whatever.

00:49:52:08 – 00:50:19:15
Patrick Gilbert
So that because that’s so available to me, it’s like pushing the finish line even further because I’m constantly chasing this, like, perfection. Anyway, enough about that. The book is going to be called Never Always, never, never, strategic marketing in my world, the concept of never, always, never, never, something that I’ve been saying for a long time, it’s this idea that, like, we grew up in a world where best practices were like kind of everything, right?

00:50:19:17 – 00:50:35:06
Patrick Gilbert
And it was like there was a specific way to run a Google campaign. That was a specific way to run a meta ads campaign. But that was the world that was like based on arbitrage and finding cheap clicks and all these other things that no longer matter. And what you now have to sort of embrace is like, no perfect way to do everything.

00:50:35:06 – 00:50:52:06
Patrick Gilbert
And all ideas are welcome and all ideas might work, and you need to have an open mind. I kind of said this before about like what we look for in candidates. It’s like, I don’t want people to think that they know exactly how things should be done. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the years and like, I’m constantly proven wrong about, like, what I think is going to work.

00:50:52:12 – 00:51:12:19
Patrick Gilbert
And I think embracing that mentality is so fundamental and like being an effective marketer. So it talks about AI’s role in reshaping the landscape. It talks about how marketing actually works. It talks about how to develop strategy, starting from goal setting to measurement to how to actually execute copying campaign across a diverse media mix. And then it talks again.

00:51:12:21 – 00:51:28:24
Patrick Gilbert
The last part of it is about building AI tools and being able to automate all this stuff and doing some of the stuff that we spoke about in this conversation. So I’m trying to be very thoughtful, because at one point there was a chapter on like, what is, you know, generative AI going to do to creative and like, that’s not really relevant chapter anymore.

00:51:28:24 – 00:51:42:24
Patrick Gilbert
So like I’m trying to figure out, like, what are the themes here that I’m going to be a little bit more, long lasting and that’s making the project a little bit more difficult. But I’m super stoked with how it’s going and I’m really proud of it. I think it’s really, really important stuff, so keep an eye out for it.

00:51:43:01 – 00:51:57:18
Patrick Gilbert
I’m really hoping that at least by the end of this year, we’ll have an announcement of the publication date. I’ll have some cover art coming out within the next month or so, and it’s getting there. We’re getting there soon. But yeah, never always, never, never strategic marketing in an AI world.

00:51:57:20 – 00:52:13:16
Alex Cleanthous
And I’ll link to your Amazon page. And so when it’s available, that it’s already there. Because the podcast is going to be out, for many years. So that’s going to be accessible. Thank you. Select it. Yeah. As we’ll also just include articles, links in the show notes just for those, for the two articles that we spoke about as well.

00:52:13:21 – 00:52:28:05
Alex Cleanthous
So people can just get access to that. But, Patrick, what a time to be alive. Thank you for your time. Speaking about kind of how we’re using AI and. Yeah, like I’m excited. And it sounds like you are as well. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

00:52:28:09 – 00:52:40:19
Patrick Gilbert
I thank you. We have our work cut out for us for sure, but it’s exciting. And, this is a great conversation. I appreciate it. And, we’ll be in touch. This is, well, we’ll reconnect once once we fully get replaced, for sure.

00:52:40:21 – 00:52:56:22
Alex Cleanthous
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