← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#576: AI and Human Creativity in Marketing with Diana Lee, Constellation
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The agile brand.
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Welcome to Season six of the Agile Brand where we discuss marketing, technology and customer experience, trends, insights and ideas with enterprise and technology platform leaders. We focus on the people, processes, data and platforms that make brands successful, scalable, customer focused and sustainable. This is what makes an agile brand. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, marketing operations and CX best selling Author and speaker. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information go to teksystems.com now let's get on to the show.
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Today we're exploring how AI and human
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creativity work together in marketing with Diana
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Lee, CEO and founder of Constellation, a
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SaaS platform that allows top brands and
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Fortune 500 companies to seamlessly build, launch and manage compliant creative assets at scale. We're going to discuss how marketers can blend technology with human insight to enhance their strategies and connect more deeply with their audiences.
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Diana, welcome back to the show.
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Thank you so much Greg. Thank you for having me.
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Yeah, yeah. Returning champion here. So always, always glad to talk with you here. For those that didn't catch the last time we had you on the show, do you mind just giving a little background on your journey and you know, your journey to founding Constellation?
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Sure. It was kind of a complicated journey but I started the company with our co founder and eight years ago and I really did not mean to build Constellation to what we're going to speak about today. It was just basically thinking I was going to be a digital media company with a co founder that happened to be 21 years younger than me that actually came from Oklva Mathers and he came from Social Labs and I thought I was going to just launch digital advertising for auto dealerships. So I went door to door and basically started closing those deals and realized the complexities of what we were trying to do which was launch everybody's individual types of formats, whether they needed to make it for website landing pages, E Blast, social pages, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, all the content that needs to go to those channels. Plus everybody in the automotive industry at least has to make it offer specific and inventory specific based on what they had in stock. And so it is against the law to advertise something you don't have in stock. It's a bait and switch law. And so didn't realize all of that when I launched Constellation, then quickly realized we needed technology to be able to advance and scale our internal business before it turned into a SaaS technology where identified the same types of clients that were just like Constellation. Constellation at the time, that had the exact same issues. To be able to scale creative content compliantly was its true, true challenge to the regulated space. So that's where we transformed the business to now Constellation as the AI technology that makes dynamic content for the regulated space that's already compliant.
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Yeah, yeah. And so we're going to talk about AI quite a bit and this balance between AI and human creativity. I know you touched on it briefly here, but based on your personal experience, how has that influenced how you look at the use of AI in marketing?
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Oh, it changed everything because you can't actually do it in scale without AI. It's impossible. So it's funny how we started to actually do things a long time ago, but didn't realize the importance of how ChatGPT and Gemini and companies like that change the perspective of not just the users, the investors, and just all, all the way around consumers and businesses out there.
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Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, let's, let's dive in here and talk about this balance between AI and human, because unlike what some may have said, you know, AI is not going to completely replace humans. As you just said, it has a tremendous potential to scale what, what humans are able to do. So, you know, you, you emphasize the importance of balancing AI and human effort and some of the things you've written and talked about. Can you explain how AI tools can best be utilized for. Let's start with know, repetitive tasks and why it's crucial to retain human input for the creative part of those, those endeavors.
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Sure, Greg, I'm going to start with probably a story just to try to make this more relevant for people. ChatGPT came out recently and what they basically do is they scrape data. That's what they do. They go on all the open data sources that are out there, such as Reddit, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook, if it's open, they're able to scrape the information. And then what they do is they neatly organize the information. So if a consumer or whomever wants to ask a question, it's actually answering those questions based on all the organic content that people are already writing out there. So I had a pharmaceutical company that came to me and the CEO said, I'm really upset. And I said, why are you really upset? And he said, well, when I asked ChatGPT who has the better cancer drug, he said, it named the other company. And I said, well, let me ask you a couple questions. And he said, okay. I said, do you have a Reddit page? He said no. Do you have a Twitter page? He said, no. I said, do you have a Facebook page? He said, no. So everything is getting aggregated by the chatbots that are already out there and they're compiling it and they're able to answer questions based off of customers asking those questions within those platforms. So if you don't have those pages out there, you're not going to rank. So Google SEO is no longer relevant in these conversations. If you're not relevant on the web and you're not actually out there digitally and people aren't speaking about you and things are not being written about you, then there's nothing to scrape. So therefore there's no information out there. The first piece I would say, Greg, is that our core business starts with the data first, just like ChatGPT. The only difference is our data is coming from internal sources that are from the regulated space. So what does Constellation have? Constellation has all of the automotive VIN data across the country. Every dealership, every vehicle, every piece of inventory they've ever sold. And it goes back years and it goes forward and is able to predict based off of that information. So just like ChatGPT, if you came on Constellations platform and you ask it questions that are specific based off the data sets that I took, then basically you're able to get that information. So where do I locate a BMW X5 in black with an MSRP of $47,895? It will list you all of the VINs and all the dealerships that have that information in real time. So you could get to that information immediately. Very similar to the other chatbots that are out there. But the differences are that I'm aggregating it just in the regulated space and that information and creating our own chatbot that answers that question. From there you can ask the question, okay, I would what is the best incentive that's available for that vehicle? And it's now going to tell you the best incentives that's actually in the market. From there I could say, which VINs do I have in stock that I should advertise right now? It's going to pick the exact VINs and then I'm going to say, okay, what pieces of content can I actually make that? And it now gives all the different variabilities using Gen AI, the content that's already pre compliant that I can release based on the VINs and based on the incentives that I have in stock. And then because Constellation already has the integration to Meta, performance, Max, Email, Twitter, Pinterest, all of those different types of channels. It now pushes out to any of those channels that it's, it's available in marketing. Does that make sense?
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Yeah, it does. So I mean I have a few ideas here, but you know, based on this and the, just the way that AI is able to provide this information and just make sense of all the data, how does this change the way that somebody looks at their, their marketing strategy or you know, how, you know, how should someone be thinking when I can only imagine how to, how someone might have had to do something like that more manually. So you know, what does that enable someone to do when, when they have such ready access to stuff like that?
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Yeah, Greg, I think the reason that we got to where we were is because I had artists that came to me and said I didn't go to Pratt and Parsons, the best art schools of the world, to do banner advertising all day. I qu and then I had marketers that came to me and said Facebook and Meta and these channels were not built to do hyper localized personalization based off of inventory and offers. I can't do it. It takes too long on Meta's platform just to upload one ad is very, very difficult. And so Meta made its platform just like Google for national advertising or global advertising, there's only one ad account. The problem is at the local level when you have 17,500 US franchisees and each franchise has a Meta page, a Google page, a Google My business page, a Facebook page, Twitter page, an Instagram page, a Pinterest page, a TikTok page, all of that is separated and they have their individual ad accounts because of that. A person who needs to market in those types of local environments would have to actually be able to syndicate all that content messaging to all the different types of platforms that they want to advertise in. And it is just super time consuming, super expensive because you could hire all the people to do it. But even after you hire all those people, just like Constellation, it's still going to be wrong. And mainly because humans make mistakes. We're going to put the wrong links with the wrong name, we're going to miss typos, we're going to add it incorrectly with the best intentions, we'll still get it wrong. But if it is a pre vetted data feed that automatically goes into a platform and it's rule based, it will never get it wrong. So we can launch a million pieces of content on a monthly basis like we do now, and never have a QC issue from anybody because it is data driven and the data pieces are always right.
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So I want to change topics a little bit here. And another thing to wanted to talk about with you is just the idea of regularly auditing strategies and just the importance of doing so regularly. You know, to the earlier point we've been talking through and just how quickly data can change or even the technology that utilizes data can change and evolve and things. You know, there's probably that argument to make even alone, but there's a lot of other things continually changing here. So, you know, how often do you recommend that companies audit their marketing strategies and you know, what are, what are some of the key elements they should focus on when trying to improve?
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Yeah, I mean, I think right now is the best time I've ever seen in my lifetime where there's such huge advancements of AI that simplify a marketer's life. We now have the ability to take a brochure, put it into our AI platform and dissect all the different Personas that are out there that we could actually target, as well as the messages to those Personas in real time. I just dump the brochure. It aggregates the information. It tells me all the Personas and, and the messaging for those Personas that happen in real time. In order to do that, a human, to actually do that, it would take probably several months between multiple teams that would come together in order to get that correct and go through the QCs of making sure everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be. AI now is able to take that content and then be able to aggregate it and organize it in a way that makes it accessible, accessible to a marketer in real time. So now you can actually make the content or the things strategy that you need to do instantaneously. And so if you are not looking at avenues right now to see how you can apply AI and save time, save resources, save manpower, and save money. There's a lot missing right now. So I, believe me, Greg, now is the best time for marketers to be able to do all of those four things that I just spoke about. Save money, save manpower, become super agile and efficient, and be able to release information in a very, very quick, timely manner.
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Yeah, but of course, taking a step back and auditing strategy, I mean, there's probably a, a point of diminishing returns when you do it, but so often, you know what I mean? So like how, what would you recommend on, you know, data may be readily accessible and there may be continual shifts but you know, is there, is there a point where it's, you need to kind of let things run and you know, how is there a point where it's too often that you might be kind of almost second guessing your strategy or you know, what do you recommend as far as frequency? There's.
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So it's interesting because what your question kind of reminds me of is we at Constellation had gone through this question a lot of times where people ask, does your technology do optimizations? And I said, no, it doesn't and I don't want to have anything to do with optimizations. They said, why? I said, because Google is the best optimizer in the world. So is Facebook. Most of the platforms that are already out there, that's already pre built, they already have the machine learning and optimizations in it. What is the reason that I have to pre optimize something before I actually release it to have them be able to optimize the content? It's things like that that I sometimes look at and I say that's a waste of time for me to build something when there's the best optimization technologies that are already out there. Why would I want to pre bet and pre build? Spent a lot of money there. I'm never going to be able to catch up to some of those entities. So at Constellation, we really, really think about what already has been released, who's already the king of it and do I have to replicate what's already out there?
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Yeah, yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Speaking of, you know, some of some of the other things that are out there, you know, another key thing in, you know, just marketing strategies is utilizing customer feedback. Right. And so things like surveys, social media, as you've as you' mentioned already, whether that's comments or other types of feedback, how do you recommend that marketers look at those things and balance those with other considerations as well?
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Yeah, Greg, I think that's a great question. So I meet with a lot of clients and some of them do surveys. And to me, I think just my personal thing, I think surveys are completely useless. I think they were great like 30 years ago. But again, technology advancements, our surveys are on the web, like all the reviews and what people are saying about your product and your competitive products are on the web. They're on Reddit, they're on Twitter, they're on Facebook, they're already speaking about you, they're on Google reviews. I think that if you know what, also Constellation has the ability to. But I think others as well, they're able to take all of the social media content that's already out there and pre aggregate the information to really tell a marketer what best messaging and approaches that you may want to have out there when you actually market your product. Because when customers are already saying all this about you, about your brand, about your competitor, about your product, I think the greatest gift from a marketer's perspective is to aggregate that information before you release one piece of marketing content out there, what are they already saying about you and the brands and the messaging? Plus how do they feel about it? Because it's already there and if enough people are saying it, you must pay attention to those types of situation and it could even be about customer experience. Right. Like what are they saying about you customer experience wise, Whether you actually had a great experience at the department store or wherever you went to, that already exists out there as well. So I hate when people say, well we do a survey system. And the main reason I hate it so much is when I worked with the manufacturers, I worked the survey system, I was the one that was doing consulting for it. And I realized that everybody can manipulate that system. All you have to do is basically tell whoever is basically filling out the survey, can you please give me a good survey? It really means a lot to me, but it also impacts my job and I really don't want to get fired here. Most people don't want to hurt people.
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Right? Right.
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They're going to fill out the survey as requested. And so if it is manipulated and if it's a situation, it may look completely different from what people are saying out there already. And so I always say our surveys are already on the web, it's on social media. Pay attention to those.
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Yeah, I recently was asked that question when I, you know, bought a car recently and the salesperson told me literally what you just said as far as like please, you know, this affects my bonus or whatever, whatever it was they said. But so yeah, and, and I think you know, what you're, what you're talking about leads to, you know, it's, it's the leading versus lagging indicators. Right. And I'm, I'm not going to say there's no value in, in surveys, but I, I'm, I think I'm more on, on your side of the. If there, if it's an argument, I'm more on your side than, than not. And I think they're definitely between the leading indicators that are already out there and the real time data that we have access to. You know, it, it surveys can play a role but it's, it's, it's tough to make them the end all be all when to your point there is so much unsolicited and often, you know, oftentimes a lot more genuine information already out there, not to mention the observable, you know, behavior and stuff like that. So yeah, definitely I wanted to get back to the topic of, of AI a little bit before we wrap up here and you know, just talk about, you know we've certainly, and I talk very positively about AI in general on the show and but you know, wanted to get back to, you know, are there areas where AI is still kind of falling short a bit in marketing and where humans really need to take a bigger role in it? You know, where, where do you see the balance where you know, humans really need to, to step up and support as opposed to AI being great for scaling and repetitive tasks and all those things that we talked about before. Where do humans need to take the lead here?
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Craig that's a great question. I think that when I think about AI, I think it's an efficiency play. I always think of it as an efficiency play which is like we could really speed up the time of doing things and making things pretty efficient and quick and be pretty good at whatever the AI is actually telling us. There are many areas of opportunity though, like gen AI. It's definitely not perfected. You know, I cannot trust imaging from the regulated space to gen AI. The main reason is they have to have the data. So I mean that's the key, right? Like people don't realize like hey imaging is going to get better and better. And I would basically argue it's not if they don't have the data. So what does that mean? And I'm just using auto as an example or even like even HCP healthcare practitioners, they don't have all of the vehicle data across the country. They don't have all the incentive data from the regulated space. So they only can answer questions from a social media perspective where they scrape the information from these channels. But overall if you're asking a question that's related to buying a car car or going to a specialized doctor, it's going to give you a weird answer. It's going to say something like oh go check out cars.com or it's going to say oh well if you want to get some doctor information you may go to WebMD. It's not going to answer the questions and the main reason is it doesn't have that information to be able to give it to You. So it's giving you some like, kind of a good enough answer, but not quite the right answer. So why I bring this up is it's really the area of critical thinking. Like we as humans are built to be critical thinkers. We can look at it and we can say this is right and this is definitely wrong. I should not use this information. And it's also being able to create things from a perspective that an AI can't generate, which is really creativity. So I'm all about like videos in the future that are very quick clips that basically doesn't have a lot of meaning, but could actually make GIFs in real time and getting that up in two seconds. I think that's an efficiency play to be able to tell a whole story from a perspective of how a human goes through certain experiences in life. I really don't think that AI is something that can do that now. I mean, I just think that you need critical thinking and humans and emotions to be able to tell a story to that impact so that people would actually follow or be impacted. And so I think that there's a big gap still in those areas. And so I think as long as humans are really in charge of asking the questions and we're the ones that are enforcing how to apply the AI, I think that it would work for all parties out there.
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Yeah, yeah. So how do you see then the role of the marketer then evolve? I mean, it sounds like strategy, decision making and creativity are where marketing gets pushed into more. Where do you see that over the. I mean, it's hard to think out 10 to 20 years or something, but next three to five years, let's say. How do you see marketing evolving then?
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Exactly, Greg? I think it's right now, from what I can tell, ChatGPT and places like that would say, oh, you know, you should market in those ways, but they don't have the context right. Like you can even ask them to write a letter for you, but without the context, it's just words.
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Yeah.
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And so for me, it's the critical thinking of making sure the context to what we're asking is there from a human. Us being able to tell a story and be able to relay that story in a way that's impactful to other consumers out there is what humans do best. I think we can tell that story and I think for the efficiency sake of getting messaging out there and getting it linked to all the social media channels and being able to throw that message out there, I think that's where AI and ChatGPT and all those things are much better than humans actually doing that work. And it's really humans coming to me saying, I didn't go to Pratt and Parsons in the best art schools of the world to do banner advertising all day. I mean, I think about that all the time. And I was like, I am never going to retain these people if I put these types of what I call monkey work and ask them to do endless hours of monkey work versus asking them to do higher level functioning, using their brain and critical thinking to make sure that when they ask these questions of any AI, it makes sense that it's going to work.
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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Having designed a couple banner ads back in my early days, I can say it's, it's. Wasn't, wasn't my most fun work to do by any means.
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Yeah.
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Well, so to close things up here, it's been great chatting with you here. Wanted to just get your thoughts on. I know we looked a couple years out here in the role of marketing, but what do you see? What are you keeping an eye on when it comes to AI, when it comes to data, and just this integration between AI and marketing, what do you see as some of the next developments to come?
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I feel like that the scariest piece for me is that people are no longer going to Google and asking those questions and now people are asking those questions on ChatGPT and Gemini and all those types of things. There is no SEO right now, but there will be. This is what I really believe in is people will do everything to manipulate those channels so they come up on those searches and those companies don't exist yet out there, but they will be sets of companies that will be able to manipulate some of the stuff that's happening on the chatbots that are being invented out there. In addition to that, I think that data is king now, meaning that if you own your own data, the value of that data went up infinitely higher because of the fact that without the data it can't answer those questions. None of the chatbots can. And overall, I believe a future where everybody is going to start inventing their own chatbots for their company and they will become their own subject matter experts with the data that they have in house. I'm excited for that because I think that if we can do that internally, it makes all of our jobs a lot easier. Externally for consumers, it's a lot easier also for them to be able to find the information. Right now, if you count all the websites that are out there by every single brand, it would be a tremendous effort to be able to go to all of those websites to get any of the pieces of information. And right now we only have Google. And my thing is we pay Google. And unless you pay Google, you don't actually come up on the first 10 the first page or you don't come up on a search. And I feel like that's wrong. Greg. I feel like to have a monopoly where you're paying one entity in order to show up is wrong for any marketer and for any consumer out there. So I look forward to the age where free market is allowed for us and consumers to be able to find information significantly faster between all the websites and all the things that we're searching for without money going to one entity to actually have all those searches come up.
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Yeah, that's great. Well again, I'd like to thank Diana Lee, CEO and Founder of Constellation, for joining us today and sharing her expertise.
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To learn more about Diana Lee and
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Constellation, you can follow the links in the show notes.
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Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show more easily. You can access more episodes of the show at www.greggkilstrom.com. that's G R E G K I H L S T R O M While you're there, check out my series of best selling Agile brand guides covering a wide variety of marketing technology topics. Or you can search for Greg Kilstrom on Amazon. The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay Agile.
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The agile brand.