Reinventing Marketing for the AI Era: Insights from Steven Wolfe Pereira, CEO of Alpha

Summary

Marketing Vanguard: Reinventing Marketing for the AI Era with Steven Wolfe Ferreira

Episode Release Date: January 31, 2025
Host: Jenny Rooney
Guest: Stephen Wolfe Ferreira, CEO of Alpha

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Marketing Vanguard, hosted by Jenny Rooney, Stephen Wolfe Ferreira, CEO of Alpha, delves deep into the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the marketing landscape. Drawing from his extensive background in technology and marketing, Ferreira provides invaluable insights into why Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) should spearhead AI strategies within their organizations.

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Stephen Wolfe Ferreira: A Journey from Tech to Marketing

Ferreira’s Early Career and Transition into Marketing
Ferreira begins by outlining his journey, which bridges the realms of technology and marketing. Graduating from Tufts University with a degree in international relations and economic development, he initially ventured into private equity investment banking, focusing on Technology, Media, and Telecom (TMT). His transition to technology was marked by his tenure at Akamai Technologies, a foundational company in internet infrastructure.

“This moment that we're in is literally bigger than the Internet.”
[03:45]

Ferreira’s move into marketing was somewhat serendipitous, taking on roles that merged his tech expertise with marketing strategies at companies like Univision, Publicis, and later, leading marketing efforts at Datalogix, Oracle Data Cloud, NuStar, and Quantcast. His entrepreneurial spirit also led him to launch Encantos, a venture capital-backed company aimed at reinventing brand experiences.

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The Foundational Shift: AI as a New Platform

AI Compared to Historical Technological Revolutions
Ferreira emphasizes the unprecedented nature of AI, likening its impact to foundational inventions like electricity and the transistor. He argues that AI represents a platform shift of monumental proportions, fundamentally altering how brands, companies, and consumers interact.

“This is intelligence. And I don't think people understand that. This is a platform shift unlike any other in our generation.”
[03:45]

He contrasts AI with previous technological advancements, noting that unlike NFTs or larger screens showcased at events like CES, AI is a deep-seated transformation affecting every facet of business and daily life.

AI’s Exponential Growth and Intelligence
Ferreira highlights the rapid advancement of AI capabilities, noting that systems like ChatGPT possess intelligence levels far surpassing average human cognition and are growing exponentially.

“Today, ChatGPT has the equivalent of 150 IQ points.”
[10:43]

He warns that AI's exponential growth means that its intelligence will soon outpace human ability to comprehend or manage it effectively, necessitating proactive leadership.

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Why CMOs Should Lead AI Strategies

The Case for CMOs Over CTOs in AI Leadership
A key argument Ferreira presents is that AI strategies should be led by CMOs rather than Chief Technology Officers (CTOs). He contends that CMOs have a deeper understanding of customer needs and behaviors, which are crucial for leveraging AI effectively in marketing.

“Your AI strategy should not be led by a CTO. Period. Full stop.”
[01:32]

Ferreira asserts that since AI applications in business often revolve around enhancing customer experiences, the CMO is better positioned to guide these initiatives. He criticizes the current trend where CMOs are underrepresented in board meetings, thereby limiting their influence on AI adoption and strategy.

“Most boards don’t have enough CMOs in these board meetings.”
[15:28]

The Role of Marketing in Corporate Governance
Ferreira discusses his work with Alpha, focusing on "AI for AI," which aims to educate boards on corporate governance, risk, and compliance in the AI era. He emphasizes the necessity for CMOs to advocate for customer-centric AI strategies at the executive level.

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AI’s Disruptive Impact on Marketing and Beyond

Job Displacement and the Fusion of Functions
Ferreira explores the disruptive potential of AI, predicting significant job displacement, especially in white-collar sectors. He foresees the merging of marketing, sales, and customer support functions into unified roles driven by AI.

“The pre-sale, sale, and post-sale functions are going to get fused into one.”
[19:55]

This fusion could lead to substantial reductions in traditional marketing teams, urging CMOs to adapt by taking proactive roles in reshaping their organizations’ customer engagement strategies.

Creating New Roles in the AI-Driven Marketing World
With AI taking over many traditional marketing tasks, Ferreira envisions the emergence of new roles such as Brand Agent Personality Architect, responsible for instilling brand personality into AI-driven agents that interact with customers.

“Someone needs to instill your personality into that agent so when it interfaces with you...”
[22:01]

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Addressing Ethical Concerns in AI

Bias and Fake News in AI Systems
Ferreira addresses the ethical challenges posed by AI, including inherent biases and the proliferation of fake news. He acknowledges the difficulty in mitigating these issues due to the vast and biased data AI systems ingest.

“The bias in frontier models, it’s already in there. It’s going to be so difficult to really unpack.”
[23:08]

Solutions and Regulatory Measures
While recognizing the challenges, Ferreira remains optimistic about developing new tools and regulatory measures to combat deepfakes and misinformation. He stresses the importance of not halting AI adoption but rather embracing it responsibly.

“Stick your head in the ground and don’t let your teams use AI? I am shocked at how many companies literally prevent their employees from using AI.”
[24:39]

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Bridging the Gap Between Marketing Education and Practice

Educational Challenges in the AI Era
Ferreira highlights the struggle marketing education faces in keeping pace with the rapidly evolving industry, exacerbated by AI advancements. He shares his experience teaching an MBA class at USC, where students were already out of step with current industry needs.

“It's moving so fast. I just taught a class at USC for their MBA program...it was just crazy.”
[25:09]

Alpha’s Role in Educating Executives
Through his company Alpha, Ferreira aims to bridge this gap by curating and disseminating cutting-edge AI developments directly from industry leaders and venture capital trends, ensuring that executives are well-informed and prepared to lead AI initiatives.

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The Future of Marketing Leadership

CMOs as Central Figures in AI Integration
Looking forward, Ferreira envisions CMOs taking on more central roles in their organizations, leading AI integration to enhance customer experiences and drive business growth.

“If CMOs don’t go in the office and say hey, I own the customer, I need to lead this initiative...”
[21:47]

Strategic Recommendations for CMOs
Ferreira advises CMOs to proactively engage in boardrooms, advocate for customer-centric AI strategies, and embrace their roles as leaders in the AI revolution. He underscores the importance of leveraging AI to stay ahead of competition and reinvent customer engagement.

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Concluding Insights and Future Guests

Final Thoughts and Recommendations
In wrapping up the conversation, Ferreira stresses the critical juncture the marketing industry stands at and the urgent need for CMOs to lead AI-driven transformations. He encourages CMOs to seize the opportunity to reinvent themselves and their organizations.

Suggestions for Future Episodes
Ferreira recommends inviting influential figures from the venture community or product leaders from pioneering AI companies, such as Kevin Wheel, Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, to provide further insights into the evolving AI landscape.

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Notable Quotes

• “This is intelligence. And I don't think people understand that. This is a platform shift unlike any other in our generation.”
  Stephen Wolfe Ferreira, [03:45]

• “Your AI strategy should not be led by a CTO. Period. Full stop.”
  Stephen Wolfe Ferreira, [01:32]

• “Today, ChatGPT has the equivalent of 150 IQ points.”
  Stephen Wolfe Ferreira, [10:43]

• “Most boards don’t have enough CMOs in these board meetings.”
  Stephen Wolfe Ferreira, [15:28]

• “The pre-sale, sale, and post-sale functions are going to get fused into one.”
  Stephen Wolfe Ferreira, [19:55]

• “Bias in frontier models, it’s already in there. It’s going to be so difficult to really unpack.”
  Stephen Wolfe Ferreira, [23:08]

• “If CMOs don’t go in the office and say hey, I own the customer, I need to lead this initiative...”
  Stephen Wolfe Ferreira, [21:47]

---

Conclusion

This episode of Marketing Vanguard serves as a wake-up call for marketing professionals, emphasizing the indispensable role CMOs must play in navigating the AI era. Stephen Wolfe Ferreira’s insights underscore the urgency for marketing leaders to embrace AI, drive strategic initiatives, and fundamentally reinvent customer experiences to stay relevant and competitive in an increasingly intelligent world.

Transcript

[Jenny Rooney]

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[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

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Your AI strategy should not be led by a CTO. Period. Full stop. And I know that might be controversial provocative in the bay, but the truth is this is about understanding your customer. If you look at every single use case that CEOs because every CEO on an earnings call is talking about AI in some way, shape or form. It usually involves some type of customer use case and who understands the customer the best. It is the cmo.

[Jenny Rooney]

Hi everybody out there in the listening universe, it's Jenny Rooney and I'm here with SWP coming to you from CES in Las Vegas for the Marketing Vanguard podcast. Stephen, very exciting. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Well and what a great time because there's so much happening.

[Jenny Rooney]

There's so much happening. I know we needed to wait on purpose for the right optimal time because then you would have an awful lot to talk about. Not that you don't always have a lot to talk about.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

You say I talk a lot.

[Jenny Rooney]

It's always good things.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Always good things. Good things.

[Jenny Rooney]

But I think it's new good things. So that's why I'm excited you're here. Because I would otherwise say this is overdue. Yes, but this was by design.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Well, it's time for some real talk because we're in such a moment, it's such an inflection point and I just feel like there's a lot of people that are bullshitting, a lot of folks that are just not having the wake up moment that we are in. So let's get into it.

[Jenny Rooney]

Well, let's get into it. And I would argue that, listen, marketers are good bullshitters. No offense to them, love them, but I mean, they're marketers.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

I think they call that storytelling.

[Jenny Rooney]

Storytelling.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

That's part of the role, part of the practice.

[Jenny Rooney]

Let's spin it around. It's optimism. I think marketers are very earnest. I mean, everybody wants to believe and think about what's next and be very sort of all in on it. And at the same time, there's a lot that, you know, you kind of want to sort of have the energy around something maybe before your true understanding and knowledge really catches up. So. But before we get into AI and talking about that, because I know you think that it's unlike anything else that's come before. However, you and I have both lived through this industry over many decades, quite frankly, and there have been, I think.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

You just call me old, but I'll.

[Jenny Rooney]

Take it, calling myself old. We're there. But I mean, I have to ask the question, how is this any different than Y2K or crowdsourcing or, you know, oh, geez. I mean, where do we begin? Where do we begin?

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Okay, so this is not an NFT for all the folks that are out there. This isn't a bigger screen. All the things that you see in the Florida every year at ces, this is foundationally different. And I think a lot of people know me obviously from my roles in marketing or on the agency side or in media companies, but I actually started my career in technology. And so over 25 years ago there was a company that I worked at when it was a startup that came out of MIT called Akamai Technologies. It's actually the 25th anniversary of when it went public and I started in the network infrastructure group in engineering. And Akamai was co founded by this guy, Tom Layton, Dr. Tom Layton, who was literally the founder of the Lab for Computer Science at mit and he literally wrote the book on parallel computing. And so this Was AI machine learning. Back before it was a thing, before it was very faddish. But the moment that we're in is literally bigger than the Internet. And what I try to help people understand is the Internet is effectively just a network of networks. You're just connecting computers through communication. This is intelligence. And I don't think people understand that. This is a platform shift unlike any other in our generation, because it is the equivalent of inventing electricity, the transistor. And everything from this moment on will be foundationally different because it will affect every single brand, every single company, every single consumer, every single country. And I don't think people have woken up to that.

[Jenny Rooney]

Okay, so let's dial back a quick second because I need to understand who Steven was. I mean, you went to Tufts University undergrad.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

You majored in international relations and economic development. Okay, but very quickly, I got sucked in because I think when I graduated in 1995, we were the first class that actually got an email address.

[Jenny Rooney]

Yes.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

So I feel like very proud to be Gen X. We were that true generation that we lived the early days of the Internet. And in kind of 96, 97, I was in private equity investment banking, working on what they call tmt technology, media and telecom. But I was mostly on the telecom side. And so from that foundational element, I was able to really understand Internet infrastructure. And that led me to go work for Akamai. And today akamai is almost $20 billion public company still around, and they are 40 plus percent of global HTTP traffic.

[Jenny Rooney]

And that was your first job out of MIT?

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Well, I did banking first, and after my few years in banking, I went into technology. So that's where I worked at Akamai in 1999.

[Jenny Rooney]

And then from there you continued at various tech companies, Then you moved into. It sort of was a melding right. Of the marketing of the marketing industry.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Well, it was kind of by accident. I mean, I worked in Akamai for like five, six years. I did a web analytics startup and that eventually got acquired by a company called Amateur, which is now part of Adobe. Then I did a brief synth back doing kind of technology investing. And then a friend of mine said, hey, this company called Univision went private. You're Latino, you should go to Univision. And I ended UP being their VP of Business Intelligence to help them with data analytics CRM in 2008. And then a few months later I was like running marketing. So that was how I fell into this crazy world of marketing. And then in 2010, I got recruited by Publicis I went to run the Walmart kind of business and that's really where I was using all of my knowledge about tech and data. And we started the first retail media Network back in 2010 with Stephen Quinn. You may remember a buddy of mine from my Akamai days was now at this little startup called Facebook, this guy, Jay Parikh. And so he was running all of the infrastructure for Facebook. We brought the whole Facebook exec team out to Bentonville, Arkansas and so we became the largest advertiser on Facebook from 2010 to 2013. And then that led me to get courted by some other data technology startups. So that led me to go be the CMO of Datalogix, then Oracle Data Cloud, then NuStar, and then Quantcast. So I feel like I've been in this kind of data tech ML AI space for a very long time. But it's always been viewed from this lens of the customer marketing media. But now we're just at a very different stage.

[Jenny Rooney]

And in between, you're an entrepreneur as well. You launched a company.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Yes.

[Jenny Rooney]

And then most recently you were at Televisa Univision. Back to Televisa Univision.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

So I view it as really trying to figure out how do I either build brands, how do I build businesses, and also always try to think about the consumer that is really being affected by this. And as obviously a proud Latino and someone that really believes. I know some people want diversity to be dead, but if not, we are still understanding where culture is, where the consumer is going, where the trends are. Diversity, equity, inclusion is still going to be alive. It'll just be maybe reinvented in a different way. But launching my kids company called Encantos, so we raised venture capital for that and that is still thriving. So I'm the chairman of that company. I helped my friend Donna Speciali over at Television for a bit, but really seeing what ChatGPT, when it came out in November 22, it was such a foundational moment and I literally remember being in Cannes with Quantcast, doing dinners, doing kind of lunch and learns, helping people realize what is AI. It was just too early. And now it was finally the consumer application that really opened up everyone's eyes. And now it's like all bets are off, it's time to go.

[Jenny Rooney]

So passionate isn't a good enough word to describe you. I mean you are passionate. You're all in. So you could argue this should be no different. And yet I sense a difference here with you in terms of your passion.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Foundationally different, because again, I don't think you get many shots on goal. I'm a huge football fan. Soccer for our American listeners. But you know, we lived through call web one with the late 90s and the dot com boom and seeing that was foundational. Then you saw the rise of Web2 with obviously all the social platforms and network effects. But this is such a critical moment we're literally seeing. When ChatGPT came out in November of 22nd, that is our Netscape Navigator moment. And understanding that literally from this moment forward and everything's going to have to be built from the ground up to be AI native. And you can't just sprinkle some AI on top of some legacy software. It doesn't work that way. And so when you literally have really smart people smarter than me, whether it's Marc Andreessen, whether it's Jensen Wang from CEO of Nvidia, whether it's Satya Nadella over at Microsoft saying that, oh yeah, like SaaS is like going to be so disrupted through AI native companies understanding the moment that where everything is going to get reinvented from the ground up because you just have a fundamentally different platform, which is intelligence. This isn't a widget, it's not a feature. It literally is. Today, ChatGPT has the equivalent of 150 IQ points. Just to put that in perspective, the average human is somewhere between maybe 70 to 100 on a good day. Elon is about 140 and Einstein was 161. And so if you literally have artificial intelligence, that is that intelligent today and it is growing exponentially and that is the key word, this is not linear. And humans can't think in an exponential way. So at this point next year, in January of 2026, is it going to be 2 times smarter? 5 times, 10 times? Whatever it is, if it's 2 times 300 IQ points this time next year, that's smarter than any human on the planet.

[Jenny Rooney]

That doesn't scare the Singularity. That's the concept of machines overtaking human as sort of the leading, most smartest on the planet.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Look, we, I mean, again, Geoffrey Hinton, who's the godfather of AI, he helped invent Alexnet, which is really what really sparked the whole next wave of innovation in neural networks. In 2012. He talks about how we will be the second most intelligent kind of form on the planet because AI will be. And again, a lot of folks that are the engineers that have built this, they don't really view it as artificial. That's basically a term to make humans feel comfortable that we have this semblance, that we could control it. It really is alien intelligence. Right.

[Jenny Rooney]

So again, that doesn't scare you?

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

So again, you cannot stop technology. And you know what I find so funny is you hear all these people saying, oh, we're hitting a scaling wall, or we're tapping out, or AI sucks, or it got this word wrong. It's like, no, you don't understand that you cannot stop the wave of technology. It is only going in one direction, up and to the right. And so is it scary? Sure. But at the same time, the opportunity to reinvent things and how do you leverage and harness this? And I have to imagine people are like, oh, when, you know, the web came out, it was scary to put your credit card on the Internet. I had so many friends being like, well, I'm never going to do that. But, you know, you can't see where the puck is going to go. But understanding the gravity of the moment that we're in and how it's going to disrupt labor, how it's going to create brand new industries and everything gets to be reinvented, including the user interface, which is. I mean, think about industries like search. I mean, Google's being disrupted. Who would have ever thought that? But again, if you understand the history of technology, all these things come in cycles. And this is now the beginning of the next cycle.

[Jenny Rooney]

Yeah. How are you? So, again, I referenced the word passion in defining you, because Marketing Vanguard Podcast is as much about getting to know the person behind the title as anything else. And, you know, is that passion coming from frustration in what you're seeing around you? Is it coming from excitement in what you're seeing, or is it coming from fear of being left behind?

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

I think everyone that realizes the gravity of the moment that we're in, there's a feeling of excitement and trepidation, like you just cannot unpack the two. And so it's this very interesting cockpit for you that, yeah, I feel super excited about what you can build. Right. And the way that things are going to. I mean, you know, this year I did my top 10 predictions, you know, for Alpha, about what's going to happen with AI this year, and one of them is unlimited memory. Right. Infinite memory. In terms of your universal context window, which is like the window, people think it's a search bar. It's not. It's a universal context window. And when you have infinite memory, literally you now have AI that can remember everything. Like, people are literally working on devices right now where you'll have, like a necklace and it will be able to record every single thing that you say, so that you literally have a second brain in the cloud. And you could be like, oh, what was I talking about with Jenny last week? And the AI will be able to prompt that back.

[Jenny Rooney]

Wow.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

So when you have that kind of technology, infinite memory, that's great for aging.

[Jenny Rooney]

Gen Xers like myself.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Great for aging Gen Xers. But think about now. You put in every single reference, every single PhD study for medicine, for chemistry, for physics, and think about the ability to unlock healthcare to solve diseases. Like, you will be able to see incredible advances in the sciences. But on the flip side, what are going to be the downside of all these things and the displacement that's going to happen because jobs are going to go away. And what gets me excited, but also I feel like this responsibility to give this wake up call because I love our industry. I believe in, again, not necessarily marketing. I just believe in the role of the people that care about customers. And again, I almost feel like we need to rename marketing to really be the Chief Customer officer. Because the onus on people that understand customers as you reinvent the customer experience using AI, it should be led by the cmo. But I feel like too many people are still viewing this as either a fad or they're scared or it's an NFT or it's like the Metaverse. It's like, no, this time it's real.

[Jenny Rooney]

Well, dollars is what finally turns things around. So, you know, how far out do you think that that inflection point is where you can no longer not have it be part and parcel of your leadership within a given company because it's dependent on you to harness it to be successful and to drive business.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Well, so that's with my new company, with Alpha, we're very much focused on boards. So we're focused on what we call AI for AI, so executive intelligence. And it's really trying to help boards really understand corporate governance. Risk, compliance, compensation, like all the things that boards care about. And I do all these presentations to the boards, my version of the wake the fuck up presentation, to really get them realizing the moment that we're in. But the sad thing is there are really not a lot of CMOs in these board meetings. Right. Because they're just not on board anyway.

[Jenny Rooney]

They're not. Yeah, right, right.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

And so if you look at where folks are talking about investing and again, you look at what's happening in Silicon Valley, because I'm in the bay probably every week, it's literally worlds apart. The conversations and the capital has been allocated. Like you just have to look at the raise that are being made, the valuations of these companies. And again I'm not saying that it's the perfect proxy, like obviously you'll have bubbles, but the amount of capital that's being put in by venture into the anthropics of the openais and the coheres and like all these other foundational companies then you have the middle layer of like scale AI and data bricks and certainly companies that are public like Snowflake. But then all of the new vertical AI companies are going to come out like a Harvey AI and such forth like these companies, the capital that's being allocated, it's already there. And then you look at big tech, look at literally what Meta and Google and Microsoft, Amazon, all the capital that is being put in Salesforce, I mean agent force, they're literally reinventing the whole company around agentic AI. So you're seeing all the capital be allocated in the bay.

[Jenny Rooney]

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[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

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But it really hasn't percolated or people haven't woken up. On the enterprise side, are you acting.

[Jenny Rooney]

As a advocate for a proponent for the CMO community to be in those rooms? Like are you basically going to investors and to CEOs in those communities to say put the CMOS in this conversation?

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Very much so.

[Jenny Rooney]

Part of what you're doing?

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Very much so. I mean I'm a big believer and I say this with so much love and respect to all my friends on the technical side CTOs and CIOs. But your AI strategy should not be led by a CTO, period, full stop. And I know that might be controversial, provocative in the bay, but the truth is this is about understanding your customer. If you look at every single use case that CEOs. Because every CEO on an earnings call is talking about AI in some way, shape or form, it usually involves some type of customer use case. And who understands the customer the best? It is the cmo.

[Jenny Rooney]

Well, and that's not even controversial, because controversial inherently is going against the grain, going against something that's, you know, assumed or no.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

But, but if you're in the boardroom, you ask, hey, CEO xyz, sure. Who is leading your AI initiative? It's the CTO or the CEO.

[Jenny Rooney]

That's by default, right?

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

I know, but that's the point. When you say it should be the cmo, everyone scratches their head and they're like, how? Why would that be the case?

[Jenny Rooney]

You can tell that story, you can be the one who can come in and.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

But we could say it with data and with facts, right? Not wishful thinking, really trying to explain what is the rationale. And it should be like some type of tiger team, like you do a little task force, but it should be led by someone that intimately understands the customer. Because this is going to radically change the customer experience. I mean literally agents, because this is another prediction for 2025. This is true. The year that agentic AI agents will start to percolate into companies won't be perfect. And again, people say they suck, but they are coming. And your agent will be more important than your website, more important than your app. And when you wrap your head that this agent is going to literally be the brand ambassador for the company who should be leading that whole initiative, it should be the cmo.

[Jenny Rooney]

It does become the point of engagement. Absolutely, in that scenario. So that makes sense. So when you say you're done with sort of the bullshitting and by the way, that, I mean, it's still so new. So where are you seeing that happen? And why? Where are you still frustrated? I go back to the question I asked about frustration.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

I'm frustrated that marketers are talking to themselves. I am frustrated that we are potentially laying down the same playbook, that we're just going to make the same mistakes. And what I don't think that people realize. And again, not to be a pessimist, but another prediction is the rise of the white collar gig economy. So what does that mean? Everyone always thought automation is going to go after you know, kind of the bottom of the pyramid, blue car workers, the truck driver. And it's been the exact opposite. Because what people don't understand, again bigger than the Internet, this is intelligence. So you have frontier models that have literally ingested every single piece of public information on the Internet and they have mastered human language. And so you now have white collar jobs that are basically knowledge worker jobs that are all primarily desk based, focused on language. And now you have machines that could do those tasks better. And so what is going to happen, you are going to see the fusion of everything. Go to market, sales, marketing and support. The pre sale which is your marketing, your point of sale of sales and your post sale of customer experience or customer support. Those three functions are going to get fused into one. And when people realize, wow, I don't need to have, I don't know, 30% of my marketing team, 50%, 90%, that is going to happen. And so you are literally going to see the collapse of these functions and you're going to see a lot of people that won't have a home. And it's already happening. If you just open your eyes, think about how many CMO roles have been eliminated or the marketing function being tucked in under production or tucked under revenue. And so if CMOs don't go in the office and say hey, I own the customer, I need to lead this initiative, they need to get out on the offense and that's part of the wake up call.

[Jenny Rooney]

And ultimately it sounds like that becomes a solution around, you know, whether the cmo, like do companies even need them anymore? You're actually creating a narrative if you will, or positioning that actually puts them much more in the driver's seat for business 1000% than ever before.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Because again if you now have your agent being your brand ambassador, there are companies out there like Sierra AI which was co founded by Brett Taylor who used to be the co CEO of Salesforce. He was the guy that helped create Google Maps, he was the CTO at Facebook. He's the chairman of this little company called OpenAI. What is he doing? Conversational AI. He's literally building agents that are going to help represent brands. And you now need to have brand new jobs and roles. I mean when we were coming up, webmaster was a job, remember that? What the hell is a webmaster? You're going to need new roles, for example, a brand agent personality architect. Someone needs to instill your personality into that agent so when it interfaces with you or probably in the next year or two, your own agent. Well now Agents are talking to agents like what is that customer experience going to be like? Someone needs to really architect and do that customer experience mapping.

[Jenny Rooney]

A couple other questions that come up and as I'm thinking about this is certainly how do you eliminate bias but also how do you eliminate fake news and sort of like information? You talk about AI collating information, but how do you make sure that it's clean?

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

I have a kind of a two tier matrix. I have things that are happening now and in the future and I have things that are good and things that are bad. Right. And so really trying to figure out where do these things plot out and there are all these things that are right now in this Wild west moment and we're not going to be able to solve our answer. We have to ask the questions. But I mean the bias in frontier models, it's already in there. It's going to be so difficult to really unpack. And how do you actually eliminate all the bias that has been done through human history that's already in these models ingested. Like you're going to have new solutions. So again, that's the exciting part of new opportunities, new tools, new kind of features that are able to almost be a plugin on top of these kind of next generation of vertical AI applications. But I mean when you think about deepfakes, I mean, have you seen Reed AI, Reid Hoffman? Reid Hoffman has his digital twin and he does interviews with his digital twin.

[Jenny Rooney]

Oh, okay, no.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

And so whether it's 11 labs folks that are able to, you know, do this, but it's not just for people. You can actually do digital twins for products, for manufacturing, for prototyping. But what happens when you actually have a deep fake of a celebrity or maybe your brand and there's a website and you're, they're using an agent and they're selling and there's fraud, right? I mean there's going to be so many landmines. But that is not to say stick your head in the ground and don't let your teams use AI. I am shocked at how many companies literally prevent their employees from using AI. And all you're doing is making sure that you are going to be irrelevant and that your employees are not going to be employable.

[Jenny Rooney]

Education, what's happening in the classroom and let's keep it to our marketer community and never mind all the other frankly aspects of business and everything else that's being taught at the college level and business school level. You know, I mean, talk about disrupt. I mean you and I have witnessed there's such a gap between marketing practice and marketing education and has been for years. No blame to anybody in that equation because the practice has been changing so dramatically that schools try very hard to keep up. But now I would say it's mind.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Boggling when you start because it's moving so fast. I just taught a class at USC for their MBA program and shout out to my podcast partner in purpose, Marisa thalberg, who's at JCPenney. You know, she introduced me to them and it was just crazy because these kids were just not learning what they need to learn. And it's not the fault of either the teacher or the schools. It's just moving so fast. And I think that this is really one of the areas of focus for Alpha for my new company. It's really trying to help curate and really identify what are the companies that are legit. That again, I focus on boards now that boards and executives need to know about. But the best way to do it is literally to watch and read and listen to what's coming out of the companies themselves. Watch how VCs are investing. Who are they putting the big bets on? What is Sam Altman saying? What is Dario saying at Anthropic? What is Satya saying at Microsoft? Like, you have to look to these companies because you're not going to get it in a school. And when you literally have all these just, honestly just tired debates of brand versus performance, like, it's 2025, are we still having that conversation? You know how many marketers are whining about like, oh, I can't get a role in the C suite or no one will listen to me or my cfo. Like, we got to stop that narrative. It is so self defeating. It is so just pathetic. And I promise you there aren't a bunch of CFOs. Oh, no one will really listen to us. Or CTO saying, I wish I could get the ear of my CEO. Like really?

[Jenny Rooney]

In defense, those are very well defined jobs.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

They are, but they're also not. I mean, when you think about technology, it is sprawling. Right. When you think about finance and everything that has to do with Sarbanes Oxley and like activist investors and you now have the universal proxy cards. You could go after an individual board director and actually target them and put a campaign to actually oust that director. I mean, there's always this complexity in every single role and function. Absolutely. Marketers have it the hardest because everyone thinks they could do their job. But I really feel that there has to be a way to go on the offense. And what an incredible opportunity. I'm always going to be a realist, but I'm always an optimist. And I feel like if you look at the glasses half full, what an opportunity for marketers to reinvent themselves. Go on the offense, lead this initiative, lead this moment to bring AI adoption into your org. Let your company get AI ready and you have the permission because it's about the customer experience.

[Jenny Rooney]

And I'm sure we're getting a taste of what you do with Alpha and company. You have dinners with CMOs. I'm sure this is the kind of conversation that you're having. Is your goal with those to basically get this message out there.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

So it's actually not so much with CMOs per se, but they are a part of the C suite. It really is focused on board directors and the folks that are on the board, which are typically the CEO, the cfo, gc, a cto. And in the rare sense, I mean, there are some folks that are in marketing functions that are on boards, but frankly, they're not enough. And so how do we actually elevate them so they could be on the boards to represent the customer? I mean, it's crazy. You will have folks always talk about shareholders, but who's talking about the customer? Well, the CEO talks about the customer all the time, but it's not really the marketer that's making that case. And again, I'm generalizing. Of course they're outliers, they're standouts. There are some really great business people that happen to be marketers that are on boards, but it really is just a wake up call for the industry. What a great opportunity to reinvent yourself, focus on the customer and really lead this initiative because it is so incredibly important.

[Jenny Rooney]

Two quick questions. I always ask this in my podcast because I love soccer just like you do football. Our kids play. We love, love the game as a leader, especially in the context of this. Are you the striker, the midfielder, the defensive?

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

I am absolutely a midfielder. I love the midfield position. My club in the Premier League is Arsenal and so I love Declan Rice. But Martin Odegaard, who's the captain, he is like your attacking midfielder. So I like to think of myself as a number eight. So I'm an attacking midfielder and if I could help kind of orchestrate, bring boards together, C suites to really have this wake up moment and really start to get this predictive nature, leverage the tools, think about different interfaces, to really understand how to be not just defensive because so much is around risk and compliance and playing the safe defensive game. I want it to be offensive. How do you think about reinventing the customer experience and more importantly, getting there ahead of the competition?

[Jenny Rooney]

Who's Next? Who should I have on the Marketing Vanguard podcast next? Somebody you admire, somebody you work with, somebody who's doing extraordinary things in this space.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

So I would highly, highly recommend that you either get someone from the venture community or you get someone that is really at one of these incredible companies that are truly blazing the path forward. Maybe it's not a marketer, maybe it's actually a product person. Someone like Kevin Wheel, for example, who's now the Chief product officer at OpenAI. Kevin was at Meta, he was at Twitter. He understands our industry and our space. But someone like Kevin, I think would be really insightful. And he actually just led the whole kind of 12 days of shipments that OpenAI was doing in December. And so you saw him reveal a lot of the new features and functionality.

[Jenny Rooney]

Very cool. Stephen Wolf Ferreira, thank you so much for joining me.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Jenny thank you. And thank you adweek for all that you do for our community.

[Jenny Rooney]

Thank you.

[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Thank you for listening to Marketing Vanguard, part of the Adweek Podcast Network and Acast Creator Network. You can listen and subscribe to all of Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek.com podcast stay updated on all things Ad Week Podcast Network by following us on Twitter Dweek Podcasts and if you have a question or suggestion for the show, send us an [e-mail] thanks for listening. If you're a maintenance supervisor for a commercial property, you've had to deal with everything from leaky faucets to flickering light bulbs. But nothing's worth worse than that ancient boiler that's lived in the building since the day it was built 50 years ago. It's enough to make anyone lose their cool. That's where Grainger comes in. With industrial grade products and dependable, fast delivery, Grainger can help with any challenge, from worn out components to everyday necessities. Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger. For the ones who get it done.

[Jenny Rooney]

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[Stephen Wolf Ferreira]

Patients treated with Anktiva BCG may still.

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