The Dave Gerhardt Show (Exit Five)

Episode: Creative + AI Examples from B2B Marketers
Date: April 9, 2026
Host: Dave Gerhardt
Theme: How top B2B marketers are harnessing AI to supercharge creativity, scale content production, and enable teams—with concrete, current examples from real creative leaders.

Episode Overview

In this live panel, Dave Gerhardt brings together leading B2B marketers and creative directors to demonstrate practical, real-world ways teams are using AI-driven creative tools—not to replace human creativity, but to accelerate and enable it. Featuring leaders from ElevenLabs, Brainlabs, Bitly, and UiPath, this hour covers detailed use cases in voice and video AI, creative ops systems, cross-functional workflow improvements, and team transformation stories. The panel insists on genuine examples, avoiding fluffy hype and “AI slop,” making this session a must-listen for marketers seeking actionable AI inspiration.

Panelist Introductions & Context [05:45]

• Dave Gerhardt (Host, Exit Five): Sets the stage—Exit 5 community is all about practical B2B marketing. He’s been “getting his hands dirty” with AI in his own campaigns and pushes for real-world, beyond-the-hype creativity.

  “People want the real examples. They don’t want the fluff.” – Dave, [03:50]

• Luke (Growth & Product Lead, ElevenLabs): Runs creative AI tooling and production at ElevenLabs; has built workflows for iconic AI-powered video/voice campaigns.

• Liz (CMO, Brainlabs): Veteran B2B/demand gen leader, now building systematic, org-wide creative AI processes.

• V / Vicente (Creative Director, Bitly): Bringing traditional storytelling skills into AI-driven video, shortening timelines without “gutting” creative quality.

• Carter (Global Brand & Video Initiative, UiPath): Operationalizes video and audio AI, especially for localization, asset scaling, and brand storytelling.

Key Discussion Points & Examples

1. AI in Voice & Video—Production at Warp Speed

ElevenLabs’ Michael Caine Campaign [08:14–13:20]

• Case Study: AI-powered launch campaign featuring a digital Michael Caine.

  • AI roles: Michael Caine’s synthesized voice (with licensing), AI-generated B-roll/video (Nano Banana), orchestrated by a single creative in one day.
  • Outcome: Production timeline cut drastically, campaign felt human—not “AI fake”.

  “The entire thing was made by AI by one guy called Jack, who did it in one day, going from idea to the full finished version.” – Luke, [09:45]

• Voice Licensing & Marketplace: Real people license their voices, get paid. For celebrities, brands must apply and get approval for specific usage.

  “We partnered with people like Michael Caine and the estate of Albert Einstein... you can request those, use those in your app.” – Luke, [10:58]

• Takeaway: Modern AI tools are “there” for B-roll, music, VO—but still not fully replacing live-action (A-roll) footage.

• AI Creative Producer role has emerged: specialist at orchestrating AI tools to take concepts to launch fast.

2. Systematizing Creative Ops with AI—Repeatable Value, Not “AI Slop”

Brainlabs’ Custom Org-Wide Claude Skills System [14:50–27:22; 28:44–31:56]

• Problem: Creative bottlenecks from repetitive requests (“Can you make me a slide/infographic?”); designers stuck in template purgatory.

• Solution:

  • Custom “Mega Skill” built in Claude: Inputs brand guide, visual styles, and tone, creates flexible but governed content templates.
  • Any employee can generate on-brand infographics, sales decks, dashboards, etc., in tools like Figma & Google Slides.
  • Governance: All change requests are centrally reviewed; design team still owns “the brand,” AI just supercharges scale and consistency.

  “You’re not just flooding LinkedIn with all very, like, generic templates ultimately, but you are giving the team the freedom to create their own things within the brand confines.” – Liz, [17:13]

• Workflow Automation:

  • Tasks are submitted via Notion → Claude skill generates deliverable → output pushed back into Figma/Slides.
  • Integrations exist but true “bi-directional sync” is a wished-for feature.

• Transformation Story:

  • AI took time—CMO rewired the team’s process documentation, encouraged upskilling, and fostered collaborative iteration.
  • Result: Website redesign and brand overhaul in a month, with the design team up-leveled/redeployed.

  “You’re not creating AI slop... you’re just creating almost an AI employee for yourself for different processes that you feel like are repeatable enough to have a centralized repository.” – Liz, [28:44]

3. The New Video Production Stack—Bitly’s Creative Director Workflow

Bitly’s AI Video for Customer Education [33:31–37:41]

• Scenario: Previously, customer education videos were high-investment, slow, and required on-camera talent.

• AI-Powered Workflow:

  1. Start with prompt in Claude for scripting.
  2. Use Nano Banana for visual storyboards (“traditional, but faster”).
  3. Generate and edit clips; post-pro as usual, with tweaks.
  4. Use voiceover AI (not A-roll/speaking actors—not yet realistic enough).

  “Having AI… now it’s less about selling the idea… and more like you have the idea, you start creating day one. And that’s been a huge shift… that should be more celebrated instead of fearing it.” – V, [35:47]

• Impact: $100s in credits, 2 weeks production, high creative freedom.

4. Scaling Global Brand Content—UiPath Video & Localization Workflows

Carter on Video, Voice, & Localization [38:02–44:39]

• Evolution: Gradual ramp from ChatGPT (copywriting, YouTube tags) → Descript for voice → ElevenLabs for fast, scalable voiceovers (incl. legal voice cloning and localization).

• Localization:

  • Cloning voices vs. using dubs: sometimes a cloned voice from EN to, e.g., Asian languages doesn’t sound authentic—choose “best fit” for each project.
  • SRT/translation workflows for streams and generated content.

• Video B-Roll:

  • Formerly stuck with stock, now AI-generated shots allow brand-specific, “never-seen-before” visuals (e.g., generating a venue image with their branding).

  “I wouldn’t be able to find a shot like this in a stock video library... being able to generate the exact theater that we were hosting it at, put our name on there, put our branding on there, was just really exciting to me.” – Carter, [44:29]

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Empowering Creatives, Not Replacing Them:

  “If you’re a creative person, your job isn’t going to get replaced by AI, but your job will be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI to do those things.” – Dave, [47:02]

• On AI Expectations vs. Human Output:

  “No disrespect, that’s like assuming that like we all always get exactly what we want in perfect designs from the human designers at the same time. And that’s not…” – Dave, [48:59]

• On Team Transformation:
  “When we realized that the Org skill had the power that it had... that was the biggest buy in for the team... you’re not creating AI slop, you’re just creating almost an AI employee…” – Liz, [28:44]

Memorable Q&A Segment [45:12+]

• Which roles should you hire for AI video?

  • Generalists over specialists: Creative director with art direction, copy, cinematography chops, maybe “AI creative producer”. Old-school art & copy pairings may return, just “prompting together” instead of putting Post-Its on walls.
    – AI creative producer is a sought-after new title (Luke, [46:07], [47:25]).

• How to handle less-than-perfect AI design output?

  • Build feedback loops into your workflow.
  • Don’t expect perfect outputs—neither from AI nor from humans (Liz, [48:03–49:17]).

• Cost Justification:

  • AI generation costs are trivial compared to traditional production—think $3 for a video versus thousands per shoot (Luke, [49:49]).

• AI as Editor & Research Assistant for Content Creation:

  • Dave uses Claude to synthesize interviews, transcripts, and research, allowing him to focus on high-value editing rather than “candle-lit flow state” original writing ([50:58]).

Timestamps for Core Segments

• Panel introductions & context: [05:45–07:50]
• ElevenLabs’ Michael Caine campaign: [08:14–13:20]
• Brainlabs’ Claude Skill system: [14:50–27:22]
• Bitly’s video workflow: [33:31–37:41]
• UiPath’s localization & video B-roll: [38:02–44:39]
• Q&A on roles, design quality, cost, practical advice: [45:12–53:00]

Key Takeaways

• AI is best used as an enabler: The most successful teams treat AI as “infrastructure” or an “assistant,” freeing creative and strategic mindshare—not as a replacement for taste or expertise.

• Real examples, not hype: Every panelist showed actual outputs and explained workflows, not “AI slop”—and all insisted that brand, design, and governance still matter.

• New hybrid roles: The “AI creative producer” is emerging as a crucial bridge between traditional creative and rapid, algorithm-enabled production.

• Creative power to the people: When creatives and marketers build systems for self-serve assets—governed and brand-protected—orgs can move faster and unlock high-leverage work from both designers and “non-creatives.”

• Continuous feedback and learning: Both humans and AI need iterative refinement. AI tools are not magic, but their compounding benefits—rapid prototyping, localization, asset scaling—are already transforming marketing.

Final Note:
Participants were energized by the potential of AI and passionate about maintaining creativity, taste, and strategy at the core. This episode is a real-world guide for B2B marketers who want to get past endless LinkedIn threads and "prompt hacks" and start delivering better creative, faster—with the right mix of human and AI.

Panelists’ LinkedIn links and Q&A transcript will be included in the session recap at exitfive.com.