What Today’s Marketing Leaders Are Missing

Summary

MarTech Podcast ™ Episode Summary: "What Today’s Marketing Leaders Are Missing"

Release Date: December 16, 2024
Host: Benjamin Shapiro
Guest: Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of the MarTech Podcast ™, host Benjamin Shapiro engages in a profound conversation with Brian Solis, a renowned futurist, keynote speaker, and author of Transforming Leadership, Driving Innovation, and Reshaping the Future. Brian brings his extensive experience as the Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, a leading cloud computing platform, to discuss the critical elements that today's marketing leaders are overlooking.

Brian Solis' Vision on Leadership and Technology

Brian opens the discussion by sharing the core message of his latest book, emphasizing the rapid acceleration of technology and its exponential growth. He states:

“Generative AI was the first true disruption that's going to require us to transform, not just adapt.”
(02:54)

Brian underscores the necessity for leaders to evolve their mindsets and frameworks in tandem with technological advancements. He highlights that while technology evolves swiftly, leadership approaches often lag, necessitating a transformative shift to stay competitive.

Three Converging Trends Impacting Marketing

Drawing from his research and experiences, Brian identifies three pivotal trends reshaping consumer behavior and, consequently, marketing strategies:

1. Attention Economy: The battle for consumer attention is fiercer than ever, especially with platforms like TikTok and Snapchat dominating user engagement.

2. AI Economy: Generative AI is revolutionizing how consumers search, research, and make decisions, fundamentally altering their interactions with brands.

3. Introvert Economy: A legacy trend amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, where consumers prefer staying indoors, engaging in activities like streaming and online gaming over traditional social outings.

Brian elaborates on these trends as catalysts for change, urging marketers to empathize with and understand these evolving consumer behaviors to craft effective marketing strategies.

The Missing Element: People and Humanity

When probed about what marketing leaders are currently missing, Brian succinctly responds:

“People.”
(06:29)

He explains that in the quest for metrics like market share and business growth, marketers often overlook the human element. Brian emphasizes the importance of reconnecting with the humanity behind the data, suggesting that AI can be a powerful tool to achieve this by enabling personalized, human-centric engagement at scale.

AI as a Tool for Enhanced Human Connection

Addressing a common misconception, Brian clarifies how AI can foster more human interactions rather than detract from them:

“It's all in intention. [...] We genuinely use technology [...] to design an experience that delivers the type of experience that they're going to remember at a very human level.”
(09:11)

He stresses that the intentional use of AI can transform customer interactions into meaningful engagements. For instance, Brian cites Carvana's use of AI to create personalized animated videos celebrating individual car purchase anniversaries. This approach not only personalizes the customer experience but also makes consumers feel valued and special.

Practical Applications and Success Stories

Brian shares compelling examples of AI-driven human-centric solutions:

• Therapy Services: AI-powered therapists in private settings have shown increased engagement and effectiveness, particularly among demographics traditionally hesitant to seek help.

• Healthcare in Shopping Malls: Introducing comfortable, AI-enabled health consultation pods has made seeking medical advice less intimidating and more accessible for consumers.

These examples illustrate how technology, when used with the right intent, can enhance human experiences and build stronger connections between brands and their customers.

Transforming the Purpose of Marketing

Towards the end of the discussion, Brian addresses the evolving role of marketing in the age of AI:

“We're not going to get companies to suddenly change overnight to say that they need to be more human. But we do need to show them that there are other ways to use technology rather than distancing from customers...”
(13:22)

He posits that the integration of AI fundamentally changes the practice and purpose of marketing by enabling more personalized and meaningful customer experiences. This shift not only fosters trust and confidence among consumers but also drives increased spending and loyalty.

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with Benjamin and Brian reaffirming the critical need for marketing leaders to prioritize the human element in their strategies. By leveraging AI thoughtfully, marketers can enhance personalization, build stronger customer relationships, and ultimately drive business growth.

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Key Takeaways

• Evolving Leadership: Leaders must transform their mindsets to keep pace with technological advancements.

• Consumer Behavior Trends: Understanding the attention economy, AI economy, and introvert economy is crucial for effective marketing.

• Human-Centric Marketing: Prioritizing the human element in marketing strategies leads to more meaningful and impactful customer engagements.

• Intentional Use of AI: When used with purpose, AI can enhance personalization and foster deeper connections with consumers.

• Future of Marketing: The integration of AI is not just changing how marketing is done but also redefining its very purpose in enhancing customer experiences.

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Notable Quotes

“Generative AI was the first true disruption that's going to require us to transform, not just adapt.”
— Brian Solis (02:54)

“People.”
— Brian Solis (06:29)

“It's all in intention. [...] We genuinely use technology to design an experience that delivers the type of experience that they're going to remember at a very human level.”
— Brian Solis (09:11)

“We're not going to get companies to suddenly change overnight to say that they need to be more human. But we do need to show them that there are other ways to use technology...”
— Brian Solis (13:22)

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This episode offers invaluable insights for marketing professionals seeking to navigate the complexities of modern consumer behavior and the transformative potential of AI in crafting deeply personalized and human-centric marketing strategies.

Transcript

[Benjamin Shapiro]

The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the Ihear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, iHear 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.

From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate.

[Brian Solis]

Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours. If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

Welcome to the Martech Podcast. I'm your host, Benjamin Shapiro and today we're going to discuss the future for marketers. Joining us is Brian Solis, who is the head of global innovation at ServiceNow, which develops a cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows and enterprise operations. But Brian is also a futurist, a keynote speaker, and the author of Transforming Leadership, Driving Innovation and Reshaping the Future. He's a top voice on LinkedIn and we're very excited to have him here on the Martech podcast. And today Brian and I are going to discuss what marketing leaders are missing. All right, here's the first part of my conversation with Brian Solis, the head of global innovation at ServiceNow. Brian, welcome to the Martech Podcast.

[Brian Solis]

Benjamin, it's awesome to be here and I gotta say I've enjoyed every conversation that we've had and just excited to finally get it out there live.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I have to say there are some interviews when I see the application come through our system that I'm like, what does this person do? You're a futurist. Okay, show me the crystal ball. Tell me how you know what's gonna happen down the road. And then once we connected our pre interview Stu, I was like, oh, this guy actually is brilliant. Knows what he's talking about. I haven't been this excited for an interview in a while. I'm thrilled to have you here. Why don't we start off with an elevator pitch here? Let's pretend we're in New York City. We're going up 50 floors, you've got a lot to tell us. Bing, go ahead and give me your elevator pitch.

[Brian Solis]

All right, well, I'll give you the elevator pitch for the book. Realizing that I'm already on floor three here. The reality is that technology is accelerating and exponentially increasing like never before. Generative AI was the first true disruption that's going to require us to transform, not just adapt. And what's not happening at the same speed and velocity and extent is the evolution of leadership mindsets and frameworks and measures. So I wrote a book to help people understand in an approachable way how to think differently, how to see opportunities differently, how to look around corners and how to make sense of it not just for yourself, but how to make it a competitive advantage and how to bring people along with you. So it's a book about change, but it's a book about innovation at the same time.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

So we've seen a fair amount of change for marketers. As you went through the process of writing your book, tell me a little bit about how much you focused on marketers and are there any big headlines that marketers should be thinking about that they can take from your book to understand how to have the mindset shift to be able to change?

[Brian Solis]

Yeah, I wrote it for executives and leaders in general. As someone who's personally been involved with CMOs and marketing leaders basically my whole career, I was even a former CMO at two companies. It's the same thing. You have to be able to recognize how people are changing, how decision making is changing, how influence is changing, and what is causing that, what are the catalysts causing these changes? So that you can then reverse engineer to then use today's tools to use this innovative and disruptive technology to your advantage. So, for example, I just wrote a piece. It's not in the book, but I wrote a piece inspired by the mind shift that I had around consumerism for Worth magazine, and it explores the rise of three converging trends. One is the attention economy, which I think we all know about, especially if we use TikTok or know people who use TikTok or Snapchat. The other one is the AI economy. So how is generative AI changing? How people search, how people research, how people make decisions, how people get informed. And then the other one is what's called the introvert economy, which is this sort of legacy trend, this silent trend that's getting bigger and bigger, resulting from COVID where people aren't spending their time and their money in the ways that they used to. They're not planning for the long term. The way that they used to. They're staying more inside, consuming Netflix and playing online games versus going out late night or having late night dinners. And so these three things were the result of me using the books exercise to rethink for an event that I was participating in for CMOs and advertisers, how the consumer was changing and what was the mind shift. I needed to recognize what I couldn't see before, how to identify the trends and then how to take those trends and inform me how to market differently to them once I understood them. And it was really an exercise in empathy. And once you feel it and once you see it, you can't unfeel or unsee it. So that's one example. This framework and the methodologies in the book can be applied to marketers, but it could also be applied to business leaders.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

So I want to jump in and talk about the first major topic we're going to cover today, which is from your research, what are marketing leaders missing? So let's jump back in here. Can you give me one word? What's the word that you can use to describe what marketing leaders are missing today?

[Brian Solis]

People. And I say that with all the love in my heart. I speak to a lot of marketing leaders and they're under pressure for driving business growth. They're under pressure for increasing market share. In fact, in many cases, marketers are faced with a lot of the things that business leaders should also be thinking about. So when I say that they're missing people, we look at eyeballs, we look at audiences, we look at Personas, we look at transactional details, and we sort of miss the humanity in all of this. And I actually believe that AI, for example, is a tool, a very smart tool that can help us be more human to personalize at scale, engagement by understanding more of what people do, who they are, what they value, and using it within our campaigns. One to one to many. And it's been a holy grail for many, many years. But I think we're finally there. And all that requires is using AI to be more human in your engagement at scale. So one example, it's an early example, but it's still one of my favorites, was when Carvana used its data from those individuals who purchased cars, location, day, type of car, et cetera. And they used that to personalize this really cool animated video that celebrated, I think it was either the anniversary of their car purchase and it told a story that was unique to them based on that data. So it was episodic, it was templatized. It used AI to fill in the details, almost like Mad Libs, but it was hyper personalized, and if you received it, it was a lot of fun because it made you feel special.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

It's interesting you said that. The word that marketers are missing is people, which really resonates to me, and I want to talk about that a little bit. At the end of every one of my podcasts, I always say something to the extent of focus on keeping your customers happy. Because I feel like often as marketers, we forget about the people that we are serving. We're always focused on lead generation and finding new people and using data. And we forget that we are fundamentally trying to understand what our market is so we can effectively communicate to it. Something conflicts with what you said, where you're saying marketers are missing people, but we need artificial intelligence to help us be more human. That breaks my brain. Artificial intelligence seems like it's making us less human, like it's disconnecting us. Sure, we can personalize everything. We can write different copy for every experience, but I'm not sure that that necessarily makes us more human. Talk me through that. Where, like, we're using this new technology to help make better connections, it seems like it would be more personal. Personal connection makes us more human.

[Brian Solis]

Yeah, well, it's all in intention. I always say, may I have your intention, please versus may I have your attention, please? Because I believe it's something that needs to be earned. When I say that technology, like AI, has an opportunity to make us more human. It's all about intent. And what that means is that we genuinely use technology and have used technology. And this isn't just true for marketing. This is true for customer service. This is true for employee experiences and human resources. We have historically used technology to get further and further and further away from people. So we scale engagement, we automate engagement. If you think about customer service, for example, from 80s, 90s, 2000s, we were deploying technology systems that made you hit a button to try to get a customer representative to help you with whatever problem you're having. And then we could use voice technology to be able to do that. And your true test of character comes out when you have to say operator or representative a thousand times just to try to get your problem solved. If you think about the early iterations of chatbots, they were just essentially smart decision trees that still got you to nowhere where you still ended up typing representative.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Talk to a representative. Talk to a representative. Talk to a representative. Press zero. I hear you.

[Brian Solis]

Yeah, absolutely. And so now you're seeing. Let's just take one example of AI. If you power AI with whatever LLM, whatever data sources, whatever rag models necessary to be able to hyper contextualize an engagement for whatever scenario might be applicable to that moment, you could essentially put together a very human, a very fun, a very engaging chatbot that could help you solve problems and have fun with it in the process. You can use it. For example, if you read the Worth article I wrote, you would now be able to see that your consumer is different and becoming far more conscious in the brands that they're looking to engage in, the things that they're looking to buy, and the ways that they're looking to spend their time. Those insights would then give you direction on how you would use artificial intelligence tied to certain data sets to figure out how to be more meaningful to them. Whether it's in the moment, top of funnel, whether it's trying to get someone's attention, whether it's putting them through a customer journey that was more meaningful and personalized, more dynamic. So the point is, the intent of how we use these technologies leads to the innovation and how they're experienced or leads into the innovation of how I connect with you. So for example, one of my favorite technology demos that I have seen is it's out of market, but it's still human, it's still about people, is in therapy. And the scenario in this case is that men in general have a hard time opening it up to therapists, so they'll choose, if they can, to avoid it. But in the tests that were conducted, they were given the option to talk to a very fun and very intelligent therapist within this specific type of therapy. And they found that more people were engaged, more people left feeling helped, and more people return as a result. And a similar case was done. They're putting these, essentially these private boxes within shopping malls as an experiment to see if we can get more people to talk to doctors in a safe environment that isn't beige with clipboards and daunting and frightening, very comfortable chairs.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

You think that they would solve for that right now?

[Brian Solis]

Yes, very outdated chairs. So same thing. The doctor is powered by AI, the doctor is personal, the doctor listens. And what they found is that more people are willing to open up in those types of scenarios. So essentially, if you intend to design an experience, if you intend to design an intelligence platform, if you intend to design a more engaging campaign, if you're taking people in, mind you are using technology in a way that delivers the type of experience that they're going to remember at a very human level. And it's like that Maya Angelou quote, but people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And that's how I use AI. That's how I use every technology in any kind of experience I've tried to develop.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

All right, so answer this for me. Trender Trash AI is changing the purpose of marketing.

[Brian Solis]

It's changing the practice of marketing. Truth. What we're talking about is changing the purpose of marketing and the role that marketing can play in customer experience. Because we're not going to get companies to suddenly change overnight to say that they need to be more human. But we do need to show them that there are other ways to use technology rather than distancing from customers and trying to cheapen the experience and instead invest in growth. Because if customers believe that they're going to get a good experience, data shows that they will spend at least 25% more per product with you because there is trust and confidence.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

It seems like the answer here is it's a trend. If it's trend or trash, it's like, yeah, marketing is fundamentally being changed by artificial intelligence because of the level of personalization, which helps us build better experiences. That wraps up this episode of the MarTech podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Brian Solis. He is the head of global innovation at ServiceNow. If you'd like to get in touch with Brian, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show Notes. You could visit his company's website, servicenow.com he's got a personal website, briansolis.com, b r I a n s o l I s.com that's where you can find a link to his book mindshift. Just one more link I want to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head to martechpod.com we've got summaries of our episodes. You can apply to be a guest speaker on the martech Podcast if you're interested. That's where we have the link to our weekly newsletter. You can also reach out to us on social media. Martechpod M A R T E C H P O D Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn. My handle is benjshapp. B E N J S H A P and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast, feed. We publish episodes every day during the year. So hit the subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to focus on keeping your customers happy.

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