← AdTechGod Pod
AdTechGod Pod
Ep. 104 Leading with People and Purpose: Dani Mariano on AI, Culture, and the Future of Razorfish
00:27:07
Loading summary
Transcript32 lines
- [00:01]
A
This podcast is brought to you by Vyant. Still investing in paid search? Hoping to grow your business? Tides are shifting. AI tools have arrived and in the end search is simply capturing existing customers that already know your brand. The real growth is in creating new demand on CTV where attention is high and co viewing is the norm. Vyant's AI powered DSP puts your brand on the largest screen in the home across premium streaming content including live sports driving real outcomes. See why Vayant leads in CTV@vyantctv.com that's vyantctv.com welcome to the AdTech Godpod, your.
- [00:40]
B
Window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, Ad Tech God. Welcome to the ADTech Godpod where I speak with the agency leaders of our industry. Today's guest is Dani Mariano, the CEO of Razorfish. Danny has spent the last 11 and a half years at Razorfish where she held multiple roles and climbed the ranks to where she is today, leading the company as their CEO. I've had the pleasure of having mutual friends in the space who tell me she will be transformative to Razorfish and she will do nothing but fuel their growth. Danny, I'm really excited to meet you today. Welcome to the pod.
- [01:21]
C
Yeah, thanks for having me. I, I'm excited to have a conversation today and see where, we'll see where this conversation takes us.
- [01:30]
B
Same here, Danny. And being a female in the space and just looking, I usually write these long, drawn out introductions because people work at 57 different companies. But looking at 11 and a half years at Razorfish, it really tells me a lot about the culture that is there and the culture that you're carrying on as CEO.
- [01:50]
C
Yeah, you know, it's been, it's been, it was a big career shift to come to Razorfish 11 years ago and I live in LA today and I'm, I'm basically bi coastal but I like to say I live in LA and you know, I worked at a lot of local and founder led companies and so going to an organization as large as Razorfish and we're owned by Publicis was huge culture shock. But it's also been a rocket ship ride where every two years my job changes, I get more responsibility and I've just learned so much and quite honestly have landed in a role that I never envisioned for myself. But there have just been so many people who have believed in me and given me the opportunities to continue to grow and learn and it's, it's, I call it my rocket ship ride. Because it's been like, in a very short amount of time, in my opinion. Like, I've. I've had a career of a lifetime in 11 years. So it's, it's been fantastic and I'm thrilled to be leading Razorfish at this point.
- [02:58]
B
It's funny because you touched upon so many hot topics, right? Like the knowledge, the added responsibility and growth, and these are all the things that people look for in their careers. So if you're getting it in one place, like, why leave if you continue to see this growth pattern in your career?
- [03:11]
C
Yeah, 100%. Especially I. I like to stay at places about seven years. So when I hit my 11 year anniversary this summer, I was like, oh my gosh, I've been here 11 years. That's the longest I've ever stayed someplace. And I typically last about seven years, showing my age a little bit. But, you know, you. You really get to know the organization. You get to build the relationships, which I think. Yeah, I had a roundtable with early careerists earlier this week, and, you know, just talking about how important relations are in your career and how easy it is to overlook that with all this remote work and the push and pull there, but being able to build those deep relationships and, you know, finding advocates and mentors and all of the people that really help, you know, not only shape you, but buoy your career. And I found all of that here at Razorfish. And so I like to say that I've been lucky, but I also know there's a lot of hard work and being ready for when opportunities presented themselves to, to be able to grab them.
- [04:13]
B
It's, it's always that balance of, you know, hard work and then luck and somebody seeing something in you that you can do and then trusting you and taking on that responsibility. How. How has it been for you? You just recently became the CEO of Razorfish?
- [04:26]
C
Yes.
- [04:27]
B
Like we always do. How's. How's your first hundred days?
- [04:29]
C
Yeah, well, I am like, I think I'm on day like 95, so we're definitely very close to that 100 day mark. And it's been interesting. I was the president for the two years prior of Razorfish, and so I definitely had a front row seat at, you know, guiding the company, getting to know the talent. And so the first 90 days, I've really focused on people because we are in a people and a relationship business. And so even though I know a lot of people, it's. It's like I put a new pair of glasses on and I can see the world differently now. I really can't explain that because I feel like I had a seat at the table already. So I'm not sure why. Everything seems new with a different role and responsibility. So that's been really interesting and you know, so important to making sure that the right people are in the right roles. And so that's been a big focus for me, but also listening and not just listening to the leadership team or the senior people, but throughout the entire organization. And I'm in the middle of a listening tour right now where I'm focused more on kind of like that mid level and early careerists because they're the people that are living and breathing the business every single day and shaping the culture. And I'm fascinated right now to understand our culture and how to continue to build a high performing culture that still lives up to our values. And so it's been, it's been a good start to the tour and I'm fascinated to hear more as I go through the different dates and and offices.
- [06:05]
B
Amazing. It's nice to hear that you just kept talking about the people and the culture. Especially with so much change happening outside of the people and the culture. It's just like the technology advancements. I was listening to a podcast the other day about the industrial like evolution and stages that we went through and now we went through the Internet and now we're going through this AI thing. And the time spans between all these were so different. One was you know, 5,000 years and the next one was like 300 years. Next one was like 50 years or 20, 30 years. And now we're moving through AI and it seems like it's accelerating so fast that the focus on people just becomes even more important to understand, you know, how they play a role. Talking about technology. Have you seen, and people in general, have you seen changes in how your consumers and your clients are impacted by that and how they want to work with. This is Adtech God. And this is a commercial message. Finding the right audience shouldn't feel like doom scrolling with Experian. It doesn't. Experian syndicated audiences help you reach holiday shoppers, car buyers and more across over 200 top platforms with over 3200 pre built audiences. There's no more doom scrolling. It's just audience targeting. You can trust. Made simple. Learn more@experian.com architecture Again, that's EX P E R I A N.com/market with you.
- [07:43]
C
Yeah, absolutely. I think and it's really interesting to see how some clients are really aggressive about Wanting to understand AI and start to adopt it and are really thinking through the consequences, especially of agentic when it comes to shopping. And other clients are kind of like, yeah, we kind of got to start doing something. And it's like, whoa, you're years behind at this point, which I think AI is still so nascent that you can certainly leapfrog different phases. But if you're not starting to work in thinking about how you're using AI and you're not already kind of down that path, you're behind for sure. Your competitors are absolutely thinking about this. So from a client perspective, you know, we're, we're anxious to talk to them about AI because we don't want them to get left behind. From a consumer perspective, we definitely see people are using the, the AI tools and I have so many people just in my personal life that tell me about how they're using ChatGPT and it's just like, it's like a space bar now. You know, it's like, it's no big deal to say, like, oh yeah, I went to ChatGPT and did blah, blah, blah. And we see the dynamics in search changing so much on how consumers are using the different AI driven tools and how geo search is really changing everything for a lot of our clients. And so consumers are adopting it. There's a lot of benefits for them. And I think our clients have to figure out how they're going to get more comfortable faster to start adopting and gaining some of the advantages. But at the heart of all that is a lot of people questions, right? Like we have clients, groups that are afraid of it because they think it will eliminate their roles. And you know, those are one of the things where we're really focused on the critical thinking skills that humans bring to the table versus the tasks that AI can actually do much more efficiently and quite honestly better in a lot of situations. From a data processing perspective, when you.
- [09:45]
B
Talk about the consumers, your clients, the power of AI, even as it relates to personalization and the importance of human creativity as well as critical thinking skills, are you seeing specific generations or targeted audiences or audiences of interest leaning more towards this AI than others? Do your clients come to you and say, we want to target, you know, Gen Alpha more or Gen X more or Gen Y more. Do you see that kind of shift in how they're looking to target people and utilizing technology to do so?
- [10:17]
C
You know, we don't hear, I mean, from the first part of your question, I think it's natural. We're seeing it with Younger, like with Gen Z being a lot more open to adoption. But within our agency we see adoption across generations. Like that's something that we've really has been a hot topic for us for several years now. And so there. I don't see it as quite as generational. I do expect that Gen Z will continue to be the early adopters that will push the adoption because they're learning it in school. When I talk to college professors, they're talking about how they are teaching, really teaching and focused on teaching critical thinking, but that applying that critical thinking plus AI and generative AI to solve problems. So I think as they come out of school and having had this training, they're going to transform the marketplace and how we think about getting our work done because it'll just be so second nature to them. But I'm also relieved to hear that the critical thinking part, which is the part I worry about the most, is where colleges and professors are starting to focus their energy. The second part of your question is really interesting because our clients are still obsessed with, with Gen Z and they don't, they very rarely talk about Gen Alpha, which for me is like one of my passion projects. I am absolutely in love with Gen Alpha from just a generation that I think will be very difficult for us to understand because they're third generation digital natives. We've never had kids born with tablets in their hands and encouraged to use them that swipe the TV because that's how they know to change a channel and that everything is just so native for them. And two hour delivery from Amazon is kind of like a no duh, of course, of course. That's how the world so normal, so normal. And even for my kids, my kids are Gen Z and they're in their early 20s and for them like they do remember watching cartoons and watching linear tv, they do remember, you know, Amazon being relatively new and these kids today, they're just the firepower and brain power that they're bringing, the empowerment that they're bringing. They're very different than Gen Z. And that's one of the things I'm fascinated about because our marketers who think like, oh, they're just going to be many Gen Zs are about to make another mistake like they did with Gen Z. And so when I talk to marketers, their only focus right now is get more Gen Z. At the same time though, to answer your question, because we do have AI now and especially generative AI when it comes to personalization, I am hearing from a lot of clients like now I need personalization like now. It's possible with the tools. I have one client, one CEO who said, I want a million different versions of an email to go out the door. Now, I don't know if we need a million, but I'm very interested in finding the point of diminishing returns on personalization and email and CRM.
- [13:17]
B
Danny, going back to Gen Alpha and you talked about, you know, grew up with a tablet in hand, even the way they're being reached by advertisers has changed. Right. For me, I would wake up, and I'm not giving away my age, but I would wake up on an early Sunday morning because I wanted to watch cartoons. And so I would watch the Lego or those, I don't know what they're called, the cars, where you click a button and it just goes around a circle. And I would see those ads and that was on my Christmas list. Right. That's how I found out about toys, how I found out about products. Now it's, it's influencer based. Like my kids tell me, oh, there's this influencer, there's that influencer. They're big on YouTube, they're big on Instagram.
- [13:54]
C
Yeah.
- [13:55]
B
And the way they, they consume advertising content is very different. Where they consume that content is on demand. So if it's not interesting, they're swiping right past it within a millisecond. It's just like it didn't catch their interest. And it's creating a very different generation that is very much so instant gratification instantly needs to be addressed and instantly wants to express themselves. And it is so different than my world of running home after going out and typing on my wall on MySpace saying, I had a great night, here's a picture with some HTML code for me to apply a photo. Now it's like they're live and they're live streaming it and they're posting it instantly. How are you working with these brands and how is that experience different?
- [14:40]
C
Yeah, it's a great question. I think we do well. I think there's a lot to talk about with Gen Alpha and a lot to unpack and everything that you just said. So first, we do a lot of proprietary research. We work with GWI as our research partner and we do research with kids and their parents because we want to understand from their perspective, but we want to do it in a way that's safe and respects kids privacy. Of course. And at Razorfish, we don't actually have brands that target children. So what we're really Thinking about is how do we understand from a generational perspective what's going on? So that as they become, and they're turning 13 this year, as they turn 16 and 18, our, our brands and our clients are ready for them, especially I think about product development cycles because innovation for them is not incremental. Um, it's dramatic to breakthrough. And so we know that those, those life cycles for product development are long. And so that's, you know, one area that we're really focused on with clients of. Are you thinking ahead four years from now on your products? You know, what I hear a lot of anecdotally is that they see something online from an influencer and they, they, they see that as something that they can do themselves right away and that they want to have that physical experience in addition to seeing it online. And so it's not aspirational for them. It's like diy. And so I think back for my generation, it was Martha Stewart, like those magazines are gorgeous, but I never thought I was actually going to make anything that looked like anything in her magazine. But for these kids, they see something like that, they're like, yeah, let's go make it. And I hear so many stories from parents saying like, yeah, when they see something, we have to go to the store, get all the things and they come home and they, they want to like hands on, make it. So they're definitely a generation that thinks that they can do anything. And they probably can because there's a how to on YouTube for pretty much everything. But they have a different blend of digital and physical. Whereas Gen Z tends to be more like everything's digital and their physical experiences are separated. For Gen Alpha, it's all continuous and blended. And so that's something that's important for marketers to start thinking about of how do you create those true omnichannel experiences, especially with personalization, so that you know them whether you're in the store or whether you're online, in your car, in the kitchen, you know, like whatever screen they're looking at, they, they know you know them.
- [17:08]
B
How with, with AI becoming such a huge part of our lives day to day, you know, it's as common as clicking the space bar today. How do you keep the, the authenticity around everything and how do you build trust when everything around us feels like AI? It's getting, I don't know if you saw, I think it's Sora too was just recently launched and if you've seen any of those videos, it's incredible, like, absolutely incredible. Yeah, but how do you keep that authenticity and that brand and trust building present when everything looks like AI?
- [17:40]
C
Yeah, it's, it's, it's something that we talk about a lot because with AI becoming so good, we're creating a sea of sameness. And so for creative and for creative and creative from brands to really break through, you've got to have the right insights. You have to understand your consumers in a way that we've never really had understand them before. And so it all starts with those insights. And then I think it's about that human element. Right. Like we don't want a sea of sameness. It all might be excellent, but if it all looks the same, we're not breaking through. Like we've created yet another problem for, and the need for breakthrough creative. And so for us it's about that human element having the right insights and having humans think about how to bring that together. And I think the other part is transparency and that's one of the things I'm really proud about. Razorfish and Publicist group We belong to a group called C2Paul, which is all about content provenance. And so whenever we work with AI, we are transparent. We use the Adobe suite which has all of the functionality built in for the provenance of the images to be very clearly labeled so that anybody can hover over an image and see where that image came from and what kind of manipulation was part of it. Because I think the other part is transparency. I do think consumers are okay with seeing things that are AI. They just want to know it was AI and not feel like they're watching a celebrity deep fake, but that, you know, that's it's, it's either been approved or it's, it's genuine. And so the authenticity I think will become the differentiator in the future. And brands that focus on that and make that a priority and to know their consumers and have that two way dialogue with their consumers is they're going to be the ones that are going to win.
- [19:35]
B
Yeah. I feel like the growth of Gen AI is incredible, but it's both incredible impressive and it's also really dangerous. The amount of content that can be created that looks so real is a little scary at times. It's very hard to differentiate some of the content that's out there, especially when it's something as subtle as only the audio or only your lips moving where you really have to zoom in to pay attention. Is this real or is this fake?
- [20:04]
C
Yeah. And it will, just like you said, it'll Just get, like, better and better. So you. You may not even be able to tell anymore, which I think we're like, if it's not here already, it's imminent. You know, of. Of the subtlety will be harder and harder to detect.
- [20:18]
B
Danny, what are you most excited about in the. In the near future is taking over as CEO in the next 12 to 18 months. What. What excites you the most about razorfish and what excites you about the industry?
- [20:29]
C
Yeah, you know what I love about razorfish and why I've stayed so long is because we love innovation. It's in our DNA. We actually turned 30 years old this year, so we're like one of the OG digital agencies, which seems kind of like a strange sentence to say out loud, but, you know, I'm really very proud that we are still considered most innovative agency and win those awards every year. So it means it hasn't. Like, it's in our DNA. And for me, I always like being on the forefront of marketing and technology because that's where the invention is in the fund. So for me, the next 12 to 18 months, I'm very interested in AI as a business accelerator and as a business challenge and how we're going to use that. But I'm also really spending a lot of time with clients now and am very focused on understanding what's going on in the C suite and where they are looking to solve business challenges, not just marketing challenges. And so for me, that's very rewarding. My background is really marketing, and so those are fun conversations for me. And what I see shifting is, number one, a shift to the conversation around market share. And so for me, I'm like, oh, we're not talking about conversion anymore. We're not talking about brand metrics, but now we're talking about market share, which is a much bigger equation than just, like, what's your media or marketing doing? And the second shift I'm pretty excited about is understanding consumer experience. And so I am seeing a lot more of my C suite conversations being not just about what's going on in my consumer journey from a marketing perspective or a purchase journey, but, like the entire experience. So one of my automotive clients was talking to me about, like, we need a unified experience. Like, no surprise that starts from, like, not just the website to the dealer, but what happens in the car, what's happening on the app, and how are we pulling, like, all of those experiences into one single thread? And I think I see a lot of brands having that conversation with us, which for me is fantastic. That's like, real transformation for businesses. And we're at a time when we have the technology and we have the ability to have those bigger conversations because we can get so much more done faster.
- [22:49]
B
I love that you even started this, you know, after I asked you the question. You started with people and meeting them and having a conversation. I call this podcast, the Podcast for the People, about the people. And I can tell that you are absolutely driven to just know your clients better, to know your team better. It's literally how we started off the podcast and how we're nearly ending it. I did want to ask you a personal question, and this comes up often with some of the female leaders that I interview. It is a little biased, can I say that? And there are some challenges for women in the space. How has it been from your experience, the growth that you've seen in your career and now leading a major agency like Razorfish? What are some of the challenges and what are some advice that you can give to some of my female listeners?
- [23:35]
C
Yeah, so I think, you know, I could go on. We could have a whole podcast just on this topic. You know, one of the things that I have seen throughout my career, and it might. It might be a little bit of my generation, I'm definitely a Gen Xer that as I came up, there was only going to be one woman in the room. And that was just always accepted. And so if you were the one woman in the room, you kept other women out. And so once you got into the room, knowing that that was the dynamic, you kind of held onto that spot really, really tightly. And one of the things that I've been focused on since I've come to publicist group is how do I bring women with me? How do I open that aperture? And I think the piece of advice I would give to women is, like, we're in a time where, you know, you have to really own your voice. And the thing that I tell every woman that asks me for advice is believe in your ability to learn. If you know you can learn and you're facing a challenge, a new role, you want to apply for a new role, and you believe in your ability to learn, you can get it done. Women typically tend to believe, if I can't do everything a hundred percent before I try or I go for that new role, they. They select out. And I think if we believe in our ability to learn, we will take more risks. And so that's a. It's a leap of faith. It's one that I have learned in my career, I learned it about five years ago, so did not come early to me. But once I, once I believed in myself that I know, I know how to learn. Everything has gotten much easier. And then for men in your audience that want to advocate for women, I would say don't give them opportunities, don't make decisions for them like, oh, they've got children at home, they probably don't want a job that has travel or long hours or they're getting married. They probably won't be interested in a relocation like let women decide for themselves which opportunities they want to pursue at different life stages. Because that's something I see quite a bit of backroom conversations of people making decisions without actually finding out from women what they're, what they're ready for, what their ambitions are and you know, what they, what fits their lifestyle. Like let, let them make their own decisions on some of those important trade offs.
- [26:01]
B
Incredible. Danny, thank you. Thank you for being my guest and thank you Razorfish, for having you. I do wish you the best of luck now that you're 100 days, probably with this podcast a little more than 100 days, but I wish you the absolute best.
- [26:13]
C
Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation today and same here. Yeah, look forward to talking more.
- [26:19]
B
Awesome. Thank you. Talk soon.
- [26:21]
C
Bye Bye.
- [26:24]
B
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the AdTech Godpod, a podcast for the people about the people. Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of ad tech. Don't miss out on the latest updates. So follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.