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Michael Treff | CEO, Code and Theory | Why Your AI Strategy Needs to Be More Than Tools & Efficiency - An Agency Perspective
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- [00:00]
Mike Linton
The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to CMO Confidential.
- [00:25]
Michael Tref
The podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by 5 time CMO Mike Linton.
- [00:36]
Mike Linton
Marketers have been working on personalization since the dawn of the Internet and actually even earlier than that. Now, with AI, you can deliver ads made for each of your customers. Publicist Sapient is committed to faster, better personalization and is proud to introduce SlingShot and Bodhi AI. Now these AI platforms are designed to customize every key touch point and reduce creative timelines from weeks to days. With Publicis Sapient marketing isn't just fast, it's personal. Smarter marketing, happier teams. Wow. Worthy customer moments. Upgrade your marketing@publicissapient.com welcome marketers, advertisers and those who love them to Chief Marketing Officer Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance and Ancestry.com here today with my guest Michael Tref. Today's topic why your current AI strategy needs to be a lot more than tools and efficiency. An Agency Perspective Now Michael is the CEO of Code and Theory, an agency that combines creatives with engineers, of all things, to bring clients answers at the intersection of technology and marketing. Under his leadership, the company has grown to over 2,000 people and and worked with many clients including JPMorgan Chase, Black and Decker, Microsoft, and Qualcomm. They were also just named Ad Agencies B2B Agency of the Year and were called out by Fast Company as an Innovation leader. Full Disclosure we met at the ANA B2B conference in 2024 and this is his second time on the show. I also learned that he played in a punk band called Baby Teeth that came out in the last show, so who knows what's going to come out this time. Welcome Michael.
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Michael Tref
Hey, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for having me back. It's always such a pleasure. Awesome.
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Mike Linton
All right, well let's have fun like we did last time. You know, you see the B2B marketplace writ large all day. There's so much going on. Political change, cultural change, technology change, and what you think is the most transformative change ever, Like, a lot of people, AI, how are companies dealing with this? And then we can talk about agencies and other things.
- [03:20]
Michael Tref
All right, great. I mean, it's a big question. Thanks for opening this. From our perspective, it kind of goes across the spectrum. There are so many seismic changes that are happening all at the same time. You mentioned a bunch of them. There's political lack of certainty. There's massive transformation in technology and AI. There's also huge disruptions in consumer behavior. And what Everybody forgets in B2B is that these are people too. They're just customers, just like anyone else. And so we're seeing these huge waves of disruption really affect the entire spectrum of our client base. Now, specifically, you know, in B2B, people think it's unique and it's different. And in some ways, it is. Like, the procurement cycles can be very different. The deal sizes can be different. The scrutiny can be different. The need for alignment can be very different across a client organization. Oftentimes, the feedback responses that you get from activities that you do to drive revenue in the B2B category take longer, so you don't have as much to optimize. But that said, at the end of the day, our approach has always been, these are people. These are people that need help making decisions. These are people that have needs, and how can we best service them. And in today's world, a lot of that work, a lot of that work is on really understanding what. Where people are, where are they engaging, what are their behaviors, what would be useful to them in their decision journey, and how you can be more of a holistic partner to your customers in the B2B space. Because that's gonna cut across technology, that's gonna cut across your operations, that's gonna cut across marketing decisions. And so we're pushing our clients to look at the problems they can solve for their customers and then align around that.
- [05:01]
Mike Linton
So implicit in that answer is that what the business world needs is a much more holistic look than they've maybe taken before us. And B2B is now looking actually at kind of customer problems and how to fix them versus just give me some marketing to sell this thing I made. Is that. Is that a fair comment?
- [05:26]
Michael Tref
I think it is. I think it's a nice summary. I mean, and it's unfortunate because you can do so many amazing things in the B2B space. Like, there are more complicated decision cycles that should be an opportunity. You know, there's so many more ways you can add value into that funnel. There's so many different ways you can bring content and thought leadership and information and whatnot to your customers. The touch points can be very different, and oftentimes more and more of them are inhuman in person than they were, you know, in a traditional consumer funnel. Because these decisions can be a lot bigger. Oftentimes they involve partners. Go ahead.
- [05:58]
Mike Linton
Yeah. And it's also a marketplace where a lot of times, you know, all your buyers are all your potential customers and, you know, I mean, depending on the product. So. So this is interesting. We'll talk about that in a little bit. I want to, I want to ask you about, you know, there's been an awful lot of mergers lately, with the biggest one being, you know, Omnicom ipg. There's people that are saying, and they've been on our show, like Rashad and other folks saying, this is going to be. You either get really big or you get really little. And the middle are very specialized. And the middle is no place to be. Tell us about that.
- [06:35]
Michael Tref
That's a great question. So I think there's a lot of truth in that. I think the middle is hard. I also don't think that's analogous to, like, agencies and professional services businesses. Like, look at the world. The middle is getting squeezed to the polls, right? That's in any category you want to look at. So that's definitely happening. And that is dangerous. So what does that mean, you know, for us, when you look at these mega mergers? Like, we see it as an opportunity. You know, we're part of Stagwell. You know, we're definitely a challenger holding company. Nowhere near the size and scale of some of our competitors. But overperforming. And why are we overperform? Because we're like 100% focused on our customers, on our compliance. We're less focused on figuring out IPG and Omnicom come together and who's going to do what job and what the governance is. So, like, I look at it like a massive opportunity for us. We can step change by solving problems and staying focused. Like I ask our clients all the time, you know, do you want to spend the next couple years figuring out what your team looks like and what the contracting is going to look like? Or do you want your agencies, like, completely focused on driving performance and solutions for your business? And that seems to be a good sell. Now, that said, I should. There's a big caveat here. I don't want to lose the caveat.
- [07:41]
Mike Linton
All Right, let's go with the caveat. Let's hear it.
- [07:43]
Michael Tref
Thank you. Thank you, sir. So there's no question though, that scale has advantages sometimes in data. And if we're going to move into an AI conversation later on, the gold that allows AI to be the most effective is the data that you put into it. And so certainly when you deal with these mega mergers and the sort of pull out clarity that's going to happen in our professional services category, there are massive advantages to that and they shouldn't go, you know, unrecognized. The counter is it's much harder to make that data useful across an enterprise when that enterprise is five, six, seven times the size of other enterprises. And so There's a catch 22 there.
- [08:21]
Mike Linton
Okay, super interesting. Let's talk about, you know, in what we're talking before the show, you talked about the concept of leadership to win in an anxious market. There's no doubt it's an anxious market. We actually have done a couple shows on just how anxious the market is and how to get through it. But what does that mean in your mind for leaders of today? And then let's talk about what it means for Code and Theory.
- [08:49]
Michael Tref
Okay. This week's episode of CMO Confidential is brought to you by publicist Sapient. Visit them at www.publicissapient.com@Publicis Sapient. We're not just talking about AI. We're delivering real results today with Sapient AI, we speed up software development and save clients thousands of hours. We revolutionize how travelers discover their perfect getaway and even turn a simple fridge scan into a personalized meal plan. Making AI work for you, it's what we do.
- [09:27]
Mike Linton
Now back to our conversation with Michael Tref, CEO of Code and Theory.
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Michael Tref
I mean, look, what I'm going to say here doesn't sound like revelatory, but I rarely see it in practice. And we have a philosophy and what we believe the best leaders in the organizations that are going to win are doing is they're making disruption and change their offense. So instead of reacting to all the uncertainty and, or freezing because of that uncertainty, which you see a lot of, and you can see that in like the deal numbers of what's happening. You know, from new business perspective across the industry there's a lot of like stagnation, wait and see, we're not so sure. Similar to what happened in AI in the very beginning. Right. That paralysis is the absolute opposite of what leaders should do in uncertain and shaky times. You should make this opportunity your offense because what can you do when things are uncertain that you otherwise couldn't do? You're not necessarily pulled down by the day to day. You're not pulled down necessarily by like the aggressive growth that you're experiencing. You're trying to keep up in service and keep the quality high and build the leadership and scale. So we push our clients to make moments of disruption, moments of uncertainty, moments of change. The offense take that opportunity to change the things that you don't like because everyone will accept it's an uncertain time. We have to make a lot of changes. The cultural bar of acceptance is so much lower. In those moments you have a real opportunity to do that. So you asked, you know, what we do also at code and theory. I mean, we spent the last year doing that at code. In theory. We replatformed our management team. We looked at how we go to market, how we productize our services, how we package them. We built new capabilities and new practices that we felt were the future leaning practices. We invested in technology so we could also have technology solutions that we can bring to our clients that are productized, that are going to accelerate their success. And we change the way we work because there's more scrutiny.
- [11:19]
Mike Linton
But there's a, there's a whole cultural and a mindset shift in there, which I think is really important actually for marketers and agencies as well, which is you have to be on offense to win, but you want a whole bunch of your culture and your company wants you to be on defense because offense you can actually lose. But there's this old general quoted gentleman, to secure people to succeed, you have to ride towards the sound of battle. And that is you got to go do something or you won't get good enough at it to actually develop any skills. And eventually defense will fail you. I think.
- [11:58]
Michael Tref
Yes, and, yes. And old improv motion there you have the ability to. Yes, and you have the ability to experiment in a different way. When things you know are uncertain, you can place a few little bets and see what happens. You can be more liberal in terms of, you know, where you're prioritizing, you know, your offensive plays. Because there's, you can't force clients, at least in our category, you know, in this professional services category, if people are uncertain and they're not sure what's going to happen with tariffs or their budgets, etc. They're not sure what, what the impact of all this Martech investment and AI investment is going to be like. You can't control necessarily that they're going to appropriate money and make decisions when they're going to make this. And you can help them, you can counsel them, of course, but like you have the ability to do things in an unencumbered way in these moments of uncertainty and you should experiment and use that to your advantage.
- [12:50]
Mike Linton
And to be clear. Yes. And is the improv thing where you get the line from somebody? You cannot reject the line. You have to take the line and build on the line. You can't say that was a terrible feed, Michael. I need a better. And you have to accept the line. And I think that's the other thing I think you're saying here, which is you have to go on offense in some way even though it's uncomfortable or you will never win. You will just play defense. But there's a huge amount of companies playing defense. And how do you talk people into this offense for real when they don't want to do it or they want to wait?
- [13:27]
Michael Tref
It's really hard. And look, that's why oftentimes we're able to change ourselves faster than we're able to change our clients. Because we built a culture of always changing at coding theory. We're used to it, we want it, we crave it for clients. It's harder to do. And a lot of our work has changed from, and I think this is probably true of the broader industry from just executing the RFPs and executing the work and executing the deliverables to really being the change agent across the C suite to drive the thinking change, the sea change in approach. You know, we work with BMOs because we do a lot of marketing services work. We work with CTOs because we do a lot of technical and infrastructure work. We work with CIOs because data is the key of all of this. We work with CEOs because business priorities and chief revenue officers, etc. And when you sit there and you get that view, what you see is that stasis hurts the wait and see allows an opportunity for others to leapfrog you. And that is what you don't want. You don't want to come through this to a more stable, more growth oriented time saying, oh, I wish I had made these changes when we had the opportunity.
- [14:36]
Mike Linton
Well, the other thing, since no one actually knows exactly how it's going to play out. You have no practice if you're just playing defense. And if you don't have any practice, you don't have any experience. Experience. And that will probably kill you. I, I wanna, I wanna dive into this a little more because it was, I Think over a year ago we talked about our AI in the marketplace. You know your thoughts, winners and losers. And then talk about like, we'll talk about AI strategy and why you know, the title of the show, but tell us what's happened in the last year. And I, I know you also have something you must say about prompt engineers.
- [15:13]
Michael Tref
Yes, of course, obviously I have to go back to that theme. But look, I'm sure you've seen it too, so you know, your perspective is very valuable as well on this. But what we've seen, at least from my perspective, is a massive acceleration in the efficacy of the software. It's just gotten so much better. And it doesn't matter if it's like a small fit for purpose tool or if it's larger enterprise systems like these tools, these AI built tools are just getting better and better and better. So much so that they're accelerating at far greater leaps and bounds than anyone had imagined. Every time, you know, whatever it is, Gemini or GPT, who, doesn't matter who it is, releases the new version, you hear like, oh my God, it's so much better than we could have imagined. And that's not going to slow down. Like the acceleration curve will continue to go and it's faster than any other historical adoption curve. Like that's really important.
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Mike Linton
Like it requires no infrastructure to go faster either. Like I don't have to have an install base or users or nobody. You know, to do mobile. People actually needed mobile devices. AI designs, nothing. It's just going as fast as it can go.
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Michael Tref
So yeah, so we're seeing that and we're seeing like massive spend as you know, we're seeing massive, massive. See, I'm going to, I don't want to like overhit you with stats, but like I'm going to hit you with a couple.
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Mike Linton
Knock yourself, Michael. Go, go.
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Michael Tref
Thank you. Thank you. Here comes the math lead in me. So it's clear everybody is investing tremendously in Martech and I. 80%. I mean according to like IBM and Deloitte, 80% of CEOs say that AI will transform their business. But like 28% of them have a vision on how it will drive value for the brand other than efficiency and cost savings. Another stat. 70% of C suite leaders, the AI is critical. This is according to Accenture and McKinsey, but 28%, 28% say it's delivering strategic value currently. So what we're seeing is massive adoption of software under the banner of efficiency, cost savings. Do more with less scaled content, whatever it May be, but we're seeing dissatisfaction with the ROI of that spend, with the value extraction from that. And partly, partly. And this is where I think the, the winners and the losers to your question, the winners are going to be the people who understand that having a plan for how your entire enterprise orchestrates AI, what you want to do with it holistically, how it will benefit customers, how it will benefit value generation, you can create for them, and then what you want your humans to do. That's the next wave of this. It's orchestration, intent, imagination and purpose.
- [17:49]
Mike Linton
Let me distill that. And by the way, I wish you could generate a little more enthusiasm about this. Like, what I hear you saying is, and it's in the title of the show is a lot of people are thinking their AI strategy is the application of tools and saving money. And we just saw a bunch of consulting companies lay off people, you know, and the jobs are disappearing and that AI is having a super impact there. You're saying it's a lot more than that. And I don't know if you ever actually talked about the prompt engineer. So let's, let's talk about. It's more than that. And also why the prompt engineer was a terrible strategy.
- [18:26]
Michael Tref
Yeah.
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Mike Linton
Last year.
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Michael Tref
So let's start there. It's such a flashpoint for me because there was such a focus for like a year, 18 months. There was like mania and chaos about, we're going to need to hire prompt engineers, and they're $450,000 a year to hire and there's not enough of them and no one knows how to do it. And I got to find a kid who's 19 at MIT who can, like, lead my department. It's like there's some truth in that. Like, it's good to have AI native people who are now growing up with this the same way, you know, we grew up with the Internet. But, like, the software is going to figure that out. The whole idea is that it's artificial intelligence. It's meant to be more and more and more human. It's meant to oper with us as a co pilot in a human capacity. That means if you have to really hire people to engineer prompts to get the outcomes that you want, you're either you have the wrong software or you don't have a strategy around how to orchestrate all of it. And so that's where it goes for me.
- [19:22]
Mike Linton
So I think this is probably. And why prompt engineers are featuring so largely in this little discussion is that was viewed by some People, I think what you're saying as a strategy, I will dominate prompt engineers and I will hire a bunch and effectively those tools, and then they will save me money and this will be great. And what you're saying is that's not really a strategy. That's an execution of, you know, that it's better than nothing, but it's not really a strategy. It's not like writing it into your workflows or writing it into your job specs or anything else. It's just, it's bolting on something. And I think that's what you're calling out here about the losers are doing it the wrong way, everyone's doing. Is that what you're saying?
- [20:06]
Michael Tref
That is what I'm saying. So most of the focus is on let me get the right software and let me get these tools in and let me make sure my people adopt them so I can show my CFO the cost savings and the efficiency savings. And no one's saying that's not important in a challenged business climate. But yes, and like, there needs to be more than just the tool identification, because at the end of the day, the value of AI is connecting people, tools, products, the workflows and data. It can connect those things, those three things in a different way than anything we've ever experienced before. It can become the integration and orchestration engine that allows end to end enterprises to do better. So, like, what am I talking about? I'll give you like a real example. You have CMOs on this show all the time. And if you ask them what is your biggest frustration in the way your organization uses data generally, the answer is we have so much of it, we don't know what to do with it. It's all not connected. And I can't really unlock the value of all the insights because it's not orchestrated across our team. So maybe this team has like this little sliver over here and this team has this little sliver over here and.
- [21:14]
Mike Linton
Everyone moves to the data that favors them the most.
- [21:17]
Michael Tref
Exactly. So that is a perfect example of what AI can solve. So we're building this, like for all of Stagwell, we're building a system. It's called the Machine. It is an orchestration operating system to bring people, data, tools together. Fine. It's going to really significantly drive value for ourselves and the way we work and our clients. No question about it. But that's just a perfect example on that. Now let's, let's take another example from the other side.
- [21:38]
Mike Linton
Wait. It's called the Machine.
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Michael Tref
It's called the Machine.
- [21:40]
Mike Linton
Like Florence and the Machine. Sorry, Correct.
- [21:43]
Michael Tref
Correct. No, I appreciate the reference. Thank you. I mean, you know, in my, in my BAM circles, I'm not sure that she gets as much credit as she should have, but discuss that another time. Yes, but that's the idea. So another example, how many of your CMOs that you have on, and this is another example where the AI strategy of orchestration wins. They have agencies. They have agencies all over the world. They have specific agencies, they have AORs, they have I. But really, at the end of the day, are I looking at performance completely end to end? Because I've never seen that. I've never seen a performance dashboard and real time analytics that I can agentically say, go optimize my segmentation, my targeting and this creative. And it just happened in real time. I've never seen that connectivity. And that is the power of AI. So when I sit here and say, yes, you have to get the tools right, but the software is going to solve that, the real challenge is, okay, where can it add value in connecting my people, my tools and my data to drive the enterprise forward with its products, its services, its ways of working for its customers. And no one's talking about that.
- [22:46]
Mike Linton
Well, thank you for ramping up the enthusiasm. I think that's a great point. I want to flip over now to the creativity thing. I think one of the things you may have said is creativity is being democratized. Tell us more about that.
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Michael Tref
Great question. So as you mentioned, I was in a punk rock band and one of the things that happens when you're in a punk rock band is you really don't know how to play your instruments when you start. And that's true for me too. I still don't know how to play any instruments really. And like, that's what was amazing about that. And like getting in a band and starting it was that like, you just did it. You just did it and you figured it out, right? When we talk about creativity being democratized today, think about how you were raised in school. If you could draw, you were creative, you had a craft skill. If you could write, you were creative, you have a craft skill. So the craft skill was what segmented you into the creative bucket or the non creative bucket. But having an idea about a business, having an idea about a financial thing that could like completely change the balance sheet, those are creative functions too. Strategy, insights, you know, the ability to tie it all together, all of that is very creative. But those people who didn't have a craft skill were relegated to the non creative workforce historically unless you had like very understanding partners and you know, companies who can embrace that today the tools solve that. I don't need to. I'm not a coder, I'm a very bad engineer. But I can code full websites through prompts and software. Today I can do it right now. So am I now a creative in the traditional definition? So that's what I mean. Like the craft execution anyone's going to be able to do now, certain people do it better and taste matters and skill matters, but the execution of things is going to software. So the question becomes today, not like, what creatives am I hiring? You should expect everyone to be creative in what they do. You want full stack creatives, people who understand strategy, execution, design, communications and technology. You want that because the tools will enable that. But you gotta ask yourself as an organization, and this goes back to your previous question, what do I want my humans doing?
- [24:52]
Mike Linton
Well, I do think there's a case to be made here, and we've had it on a couple other shows, of the person that actually can think creatively is going to be super valued and that is different than the person that can draw a great picture or great film. It's the person that can see the field and see the opportunity and that will be where the creativity goes. You know, I want to, I want to pile onto this because one of the things we both agree on, I think, is this endless search where you put people in a room where you challenge them to come up with the big idea and tell us your theory on the big idea and why it's a waste.
- [25:39]
Michael Tref
I love you for bringing that up. Thank you. So like about a decade ago, I started to write this book and I totally failed because there was no chatgpt and I'm a terrible writer who's called Death to the Big Idea. Because I was so sick and tired of getting these briefs from name. I will not name names of clients where it was like, we need the big idea. It's a $200,000 social campaign. And it's like, this is absurd. Like, what are we talking about here? And also, what is even the definition of a big idea? Because you can make an argument that, sure, it might be the brand platform, it might be the communications platform, it might be the campaign. No argument that's valid sometimes, but sometimes it's actually the product itself and how to make the product better. And sometimes the big idea is actually who your audience should be because maybe you're trying to sell a thing to the Wrong audience. So, like, I believe, and I started to write this book, that this concept of the big idea, the big idea, has distracted the entire industry into a singular focus on traditional platform creativity, which left so much opportunity off the table.
- [26:43]
Mike Linton
I. Look, I agree with this and I know you're going to talk to my classic case this year, but. But one of the things about the big ideas is there's this assumption if you demand and interrogate the room long enough, it's going to show up, when in fact it doesn't show up like that. It has to be created out of something that you see that no one else sees.
- [27:04]
Michael Tref
That's exactly right. It takes human perception. So when we think about that question, just to tie it all together, because it all relates, what do we want our humans to be doing? We want them using judgment, we want them doing orchestration. We want them being purposeful and intentful on how they spend their time on things that drive value. So if you've relegated the idea of what is valuable into this concept of the big communications idea, you leave all that other field of play off the table.
- [27:34]
Mike Linton
Well, and then you say stuff like that's not a big enough idea, when in fact it might be. And I will say, look, I worked a lot in retail and insurance, where the big ideas are almost always how you position the business. Not that there's some fundamental, you know, thing that no one else has thought of. And the thing about retail and things like insurance and banking is if it is a really good idea and you come up with it, other people just do it. So you totally, you have to create how you go to market with it. That is unique. I think this is, is super interesting. Talk about.
- [28:12]
Michael Tref
Mike, one second, if I could just add one more point on that, because you just teed up one more point, Michael. That's kind of the point is that the go to market really matters. And so having the people focused on looking at the things that actually unlock and sometimes those things are a series of things orchestrated and integrated together. A new product to a new audience that drives enterprise value back to the overall legacy business and a new way of working. So we can have more people focusing, focusing on driving that growth in revenue versus delivering, you know, the assets needed for a marketing plan. Like, that's many things, that's not one thing. And this idea of singularity, singularity of solution is just receding to the background. And I hope more organizations embrace that.
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Mike Linton
We agree with that. We have actually been, you know, had a lot of people on about talking about why Business schools are doing a terrible job at this because they're teaching all this concept, which really what this is is context.
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Michael Tref
Right?
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Mike Linton
Hey, so what do you want to predict that we will see by the end of 2025 and B2B tech AI? Anything you want, you. You go crazy.
- [29:28]
Michael Tref
You got it. Well, you're definitely not going to see a Knicks finals appearance because you know, they got eliminated and I'm still really upset about it. But that said, what you will see. Three things I think you're going to see continued frustration and dissatisfaction with the ROI on more tech spend most of that being around AI, specifically for all the things we've been talking about all show. So you're going to hear a lot of noise about value extraction and really understanding how to implement these tools, how to orchestrate them and how to make them real value. So the CEO and CFO can say, look what I did. Look at the value I'm driving, not just the cost efficiency, because that's a real thing. The second thing I think you're going to see is better and better and better technology. We mentioned it earlier, but the rate of acceleration is just unlike anything we've ever seen before. And it will continue to do that and we will continue to need to relook at our labor and our human resources and what we want them to do far faster than people think. People think this is like a multi year roadmap, that we're going to have to reinvent our organization. It's not, it's right now.
- [30:29]
Mike Linton
Right.
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Michael Tref
And the third thing that I really hope we start to see is the ability for people to just take some more chances. And even if it's starting small, that's great. But you know, to the point where we started in an uncertain time, you make offense your advantage. I actually think we are going to start to see people embrace that. We're going to start to see people experiment and we're going to start to see some real reorientations in the big players in the individual categories, like the legacy players who don't adapt. We're going to start to see it really soon because just like the rate of software improving, we're going to see the rate of like the truth is in the pudding and the earnings reports start to hit soon.
- [31:08]
Mike Linton
Well, and, and buried in those three things or not a conclusion I can make. One of those three things is if you don't get on offense, sooner or later it will show up in your share price and it's really hard to make up that gap. I think the other thing is really hard to make up that because the culture is not hardwired to move towards it. So an interesting thing I have to. Before we get to our last question, there's no way I cannot say, are there any updates on the music front? You know, I know Baby Teeth is no longer, but maybe there's something else. You know, as you get older, there's so many ways to go with Teeth. I won't say it, but yeah. Any new updates on the music you want to share with our listeners?
- [31:53]
Michael Tref
Well, thank you for asking. I'm sure no one really cares, but yes, there are a few irons in the fire. Might be a few reissues coming out and Baby Teeth may actually be getting back into the studio for the first time ever, really to record our long lost album from 22 years ago that no one knows how to play. So we're teaching ourselves.
- [32:11]
Mike Linton
Yes. And in 25 years you can call yourself the Dentures, so.
- [32:14]
Michael Tref
Yes, exactly.
- [32:15]
Mike Linton
So. So this brings us to our traditional last question, funniest story or piece of practical advice we haven't discussed yet. You can take one or both of those, you know, questions, but you must take at least one.
- [32:30]
Michael Tref
Okay, I'm going to take the practical piece of advice. And the practical piece of advice is very simple and it builds on a theme that we've been talking about all, all episode, which is you have the ability to implement change right now. It doesn't matter what your job is, what your role is. You don't have to be in the C suite. You could be, you know, down the line, you know, a junior designer working on their first creative campaign and asset delivery. You have the ability to make change. And I think in today's world with all these seismic changes, people lose sight of that and they lose sight that each person can drive an impact and make a change. And that is something that I would like to advise everyone across the entire organization, top down, that every day, look at your time, look at what you do and just see where you can drive a bit of change, at least a positive outcome and be a leader for that change because that's what's going to be needed as we go forward.
- [33:22]
Mike Linton
Michael, I think that's a great way to end the show. Thank you and thanks for joining us. It's great to have you back. Thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. If you're enjoying the show, please, like share and subscribe. Look for all of our shows on Spotify, Apple and YouTube, which include it's a Bird, It's a plane. Holy shit. It's AI Parts one and two. Is your next best customer an AI bot? Synthetic influencers. Should brands do it themselves? And of course, Michael's first show using AI for anticipation versus reaction. Hey, all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential. Marketers have been working on personalization since the dawn of the Internet, and actually even earlier than that. Now, with AI, you can deliver ads made for each of your customers. Publicis Sapient is committed to faster, better personalization and is proud to introduce SlingShot and Bodhi AI. Now, these AI platforms are designed to customize every key touch point and reduce creative timelines from weeks to days. With Publis's Sapient, marketing isn't just fast. Yeah, it's personal. Smarter marketing, happier teams. Wow. Worthy customer moments. Upgrade your marketing@publicissapient.com.