← The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
The Unfiltered Truth About Video Marketing and AI with Holly Xiao and Dave Gerhardt
01:01:32
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- [00:02]
Dave Gerhardt
Hey.
- [00:02]
Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
This episode of the Exit 5 podcast is brought to you by Qualified. It's no secret. AI, the hottest topic in marketing right now. And one thing we hear a lot of you marketers talking about is how you can use AI agents to help run your marketing machine. And that's where Qualified comes in with Piper, their AI SDR agent. Piper is the number one AI SDR agent on the market, according to G2. And hundreds of companies you've heard of like Box, Asana and Brex, they've hired Piper to autonomously grow inbound pipeline. How good does that sound? Qualified customers are seeing a massive business impact with Piper. A 3x increase in meetings booked and a 2x increase in pipeline. The agentic marketing era has arrived. And if you're a B2B marketing leader looking to scale pipeline generation, Piper, the number one AISDR, is here to help. Go and check it out today@qualified.com Exit 5 and you can hire Piper, the number one AISDR agent, and grow your pipeline too. Who doesn't want more pipeline right now? Come on qualified.com exit5 and we'll see you on the podcast.
- [01:10]
Dave Gerhardt
You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gearhart. Exit 12 1, 2, 3, 4. Exit.
- [01:27]
Holly Xiao
All right, everyone, welcome. I'm Holly Xiao, and I lead our B2B marketing efforts at Heygen. I've been really looking forward to today's conversation. We're calling it the Unfiltered Truth About Video Marketing and AI. And I think that name sets the tone for what you can expect. So the next hour will really be more of a conversation between two marketers, and we'll save the last 15 minutes or so for a Q and A. So feel free to pop your questions into the chat as we go. But I'm stoked to be breaking it down with the one and only Dave Gerhardt, who's the founder of Exify. Dave, good to see you.
- [02:01]
Dave Gerhardt
That was the greatest introduction to the point. Let's go. Let's get it going. Yeah, yeah, all good. Actually, this isn't me. This is AI. This is my AI avatar. I don't do any webinars now. I use AI avatar to do all these things for me, and I'm actually playing golf right now, so thank you for having me.
- [02:24]
Holly Xiao
Of course. I actually thought about potentially starting with my interactive avatar. A lot of times when I'm in conversations, they're like, are you real? Are you, like, the real Holly? Are you the interactive avatar Holly? So, like, no, that might be a little Too complicated. But maybe next time we'll break out the. Yeah.
- [02:41]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah. Well, cool. I'm glad, I'm glad to be here. This is, I've, I've been saying this to everybody recently. I've worked in marketing for a long time and B2B marketing. And I love all the stuff that's happening with AI because it's given me a new sense of energy and I'm talking to so many marketers, there's a lot of confusion and there's a lot of people trying to figure out what type and what's not. But I'm super excited because it's made marketing super relevant. We're feeling this with Exit 5. I'm seeing it in conversation with founders and other marketers. Like, it's a really exciting time to be in the world of marketing because of what's happening with AI. And so I'm honored that you asked me to. Out of all the thought leaders in the world, you asked me to come hang out with you and I appreciate that, of course.
- [03:23]
Holly Xiao
Yeah. And I totally agree with you. I think AI is really going to change a game and the entire landscape when it comes to marketing. And I mean, we are here to have, you know, a no frill conversation about all things video marketing and AI. And I think, you know, when I personally think about video marketing and more specifically a success story in video marketing, one of the first things that comes to mind is the now iconic videos that you posted on LinkedIn starting in, what was it, 2017, 2018. But like, what initially gave you the idea to create those videos while you were at Drift?
- [03:54]
Dave Gerhardt
So David, who is the founder of Drift, was always very forward thinking from a marketing standpoint. And so he was always pushing me to do more things and try more things. And that is, I'm very lucky to have had that. I know there's a lot of other people out there who, marketers might post a video to LinkedIn and then like the CEOs, like, what's the ROI of posting that video? And so I had a lot of freedom to try new stuff. But one of the biggest bets that we made with that brand back at the time, which is actually really relevant to today, is that we were going to win through being human, being relatable, building a brand by cutting through the noise and showing our faces and showing up authentically in places. And so this was probably 2017 and right around that time, short form video started to become, and just video in general started to become kind of like the de facto way people got Information, whether it was long form stuff on Netflix or YouTube or podcasts or Instagram Reels or TikTok, everybody was doing video. But there was something about like, well, but we're in B2B. And so B2B is very serious. You know, we don't do any of those things. And we just started basically talking about all the things that we were doing directly into the camera on an iPhone and posting it to LinkedIn. And we did this because LinkedIn recently LinkedIn had just opened up a their video feature and one common trait and I'm not great at this, I'm not an early adopter. I'm like in the middle. I, I, there's people that I know that were like, you know, in chat GPT like two and a half, three years ago, it I needed like a year and now I'm deep. Now I'm deep in that world now. But we noticed that LinkedIn added video and David was like, you know, start posting videos on video on LinkedIn. And I would post a video and it was just me walking to work, drop my daughter off at, at school, walking to work, walking in the office, talking about something I'm doing at work at Drift that day at work and the video will get like 50,000 views. And I was like, holy shit, this is insane. Obviously it doesn't happen anymore because it was a new channel so they were prioritizing views on videos. But we noticed that being early on video created a huge advantage. And so two or three times a week I would just share the same thing that I would basically sit down and write, but I wouldn't do it on a script. I just would kind of riff on something. And so I might be walking to work and I would say, hey, I want to share with you this really powerful copywriting tip that I always use. And here's what it is. And just started to notice the feedback and the signal on that. The engagement was unlike anything I was getting from text posts. And the second half of that was also I noticed a feeling of connection and engagement beyond what was happening with my written content. People at events felt like they knew me. People replied to our emails and would say, hey, I just watched that video. And so I think video created that authentic connection in marketing and helped us stand out in a world where all of marketing and B2B felt very clinical, felt very sterile, felt very automated. It allowed us to basically stand out in a way. And I've been bought in on video ever since. Now it's a huge part of what we do in our business in Exit 5. And I'm excited about where the future of video is going to go. Obviously, I have a lot of questions for you, but that's my backstory on getting into video.
- [06:59]
Holly Xiao
That's great. And initially, what was the intent of creating those videos? Because, and you kind of mentioned a lot of CM or CEOs are like, what is the ROI on this video? Or, like, a lot of the brand campaigns are not specifically tied to roi, but, like, what was the initial intent when David was like, start creating videos and kind of try to tap into the LinkedIn side?
- [07:18]
Dave Gerhardt
There was no intent. This is my biggest pet peeve with marketing is that, like, everything that we have to do has to be directly measured. And it's like, what do you need to know the ROI on, like, the seven minutes it took me to, like, pull out my phone, record the video, upload to Instagram like we did. The brands don't get built that way, and they don't work that way. And so I think we had a strong belief that we know that in order to be successful in marketing, people need to know, like, and trust you. And so we wanted to use video as a part of our social media strategy, which is to be authentic and to show up regularly. And so it just became another piece of another medium for the content. And so I kind of typically only wrote about marketing on LinkedIn, and it became a way for me to share what I'm doing and what I'm learning in marketing. And obviously, the more you publish videos, like, on any platform, you get feedback, you get signals. I post that video, and that video flopped. Okay, so I'm not gonna do that topic again. Oh, when I talk about this topic, people, I got more messages than ever, okay, let's do more videos like that. And so I think a big part of it was building up this feedback loop. And then eventually, the goal is awareness, which leads to more followers on social media, which leads to more engagement. And over time, people started to know, oh, that's Dave from Drift. And as a result, the Drift brand grows. There's this guy called Pranav Piyush, and he's the founder of a company called Paramark, and they're a measurement company. But I love that the way he talks about measurement. He's like, we need to stop treating our audience on all these platforms like they're morons. If you do something that is interesting. If I see a video pop up in my feed and Holly gets my attention and she shares something interesting, I don't Need a UTM link to know and properly attribute that. Like, you know, she, that, that goes to the HeyGen site. I'm going to be like, oh, that's Holly from Hey Gen. Where have I seen her before? Oh, I see her keep popping up my feed now. That's the fourth time I've seen her. I'm going to go Google her. I'm going to go Google what the company does. Now all of a sudden I'm on the heygen site. That is how people get information online. And so what worked, what was beautiful and why it worked is like we weren't trying to do anything. We weren't trying to like generate, you know, seven more sales meetings this month by posting videos on LinkedIn. We were, we were trying to get engagement and strike up conversations and build this kind of content feedback loop which is so valuable with social media. That was the goal.
- [09:30]
Holly Xiao
Yeah, I love that. I think, you know, a lot of times what we think about is always like pipeline generation, like leads and all of that. But what we neglect a lot is just the relationship building and like really being that person and like that having that dynamic relationship with people that you don't. Haven't met yet. And I think that's so key and so important because it's pretty clear that we're in the video and social era. You know, video is such a dominant force online. YouTube's been what, the second largest search engine since 2008, I believe. And social media channels like TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram are really the dominant marketing channels today. So as somebody who's built amazing brands and has really figured out social and content, why do you think video hits differently from static content?
- [10:11]
Dave Gerhardt
I think we like to see other people. There's so many more elements there can be actually. Remember what happened backstage when I came on video? What did you say to me? Say, oh Dave, that's a nice plant in your background.
- [10:22]
Holly Xiao
Green's a pop of green.
- [10:24]
Dave Gerhardt
What's the equivalent to like that in like a design based piece of. It could be a nice image. Right. But I think we also, as market like as, as humans, our brains get turned off to marketing. That feels like marketing. If I know this is marketing, I'm gonna ignore it for later. I moved recently and our neighbors, we, our old neighbors, we had a ton of mail from like the last six months. I don't know why they didn't give it to us earlier by the way, but had all this mail and literally I got a, had a Trader Joe's bag filled with mail. Yesterday. And I had to sit down and go through it. And guess what? I did all of the things from the irs, from the Vermont State tax department, from the, you know, workers comp policy, all the things that I have, this and that. I separated all that. And I immediately went to open the first two things that I saw, which is like two holiday cards, handwritten notes to Dave and Leah that we missed. Right? And there's a great book called the Boron Letters by this guy, Gary Halbert, and he's talked about this in the past, which is like, we have this A pile and a B pile. When you get home, you separate the mail, you put everything over there. You're gonna, you know, that's marketing, you know, that's promo. You're gonna open that stuff later. I'm gonna open the stuff that feels real, feels human, feels authentic first. And I think the same is true in, in marketing. And video is a way to express that. I, it's almost like a, it's just a multi dimensional form of marketing instead of a static email. You get my voice, you get my personality. Maybe there's music, there's animation. You know, I, I talk to a lot of people who. I'll do a video thing like this, and people are like, wow, you're much nicer than I thought you were, based on how you write online. And I was like, oh, shit, okay. And so it's a level of like building trust and authenticity at, at scale.
- [12:02]
Holly Xiao
So, yeah, and you kind of alluded to this too, but I think it's safe to say that not all videos are engaging, even if it's meant to be, you know, more personal. We see so many corporate videos, whether it's a company overview launch video, a brand video that's just kind of fall flat. Why do you think that is?
- [12:22]
Dave Gerhardt
There's, there could be so many reasons. And I love Gary Vee. And I watched this video a couple weeks ago and I sent it to my team. Gary Vee was like, he was doing this call with somebody and they're like, gary, I've been taking your advice and I've been posting videos every day to Instagram for the last year. And you're wrong. These videos aren't working. And Gary's like, I say this, mean this in the kindest way possible, but like, maybe your videos suck. And that is the, that is often the reason. It's, it's the offer, right? Like, why did people show up for this today is because, like, it was a good headline. Is the right audience for this and so a lot of times, just because you've made a. Just because you made a launch video doesn't mean that it's going to be good, just that it's going to work. Like, there is an art into marketing. We've tried to over science everything in marketing. Like there's totally an art to this. The other thing is like, it could, it could just be. I, I hate long cycles. I hate, I hate taking months. Like, yeah, we're working on the product, you know, it's going to take us six weeks to do the product launch video. And I think it could be because of that. It could be because there's too much feed, maybe too many rounds of feedback, too much consensus. Maybe there wasn't even a good idea in that from the beginning. Also, I've posted a ton of videos. So we have a podcast and I post, we have these like highly edited podcast clips that we post on my LinkedIn. And then a couple months ago, I took a video of like my wife and I on a hike and it was like seven seconds long. And guess what? Guess was the most watched video of the last 365 days on my LinkedIn. That. That one.
- [13:47]
Holly Xiao
Wow. Okay.
- [13:48]
Dave Gerhardt
Cost took me no time, no effort, no editing. And so I think, I just am not of the belief that oftentimes it's not always about the production quality and the editing and it's not always how much time you put into the video are going to make it successful. So it's usually some, some form of, of those factors. What, what did you want me to say there?
- [14:09]
Holly Xiao
No, I mean, I think that's spot on because I think it's really an art, right? There's like the storytelling, there's creativity piece to it. And I think a lot of times these are creating these videos. It's. And I think this is applies to like everyone, but sometimes it's very about them. We're launching this new product, we're doing this and there's like, I call it like the so what test, right? Like if I were to ask so what would I be able to answer it? So I think it's how do we think from the lens of the customers. And to your point, it's an art. It's really about storytelling. More so than how do you actually produce the videos? In a lot of ways, yeah.
- [14:41]
Dave Gerhardt
I mean, just because you're like, oh, we have a product launch in three months and we're going to make a video for that. And then that video gets, you know, it's every B2B company and maybe even consumer brand go to their LinkedIn. It's like every video on their channel has like, you know, 73 views. And so I think that another part of it is like there's multiple things you made me think of. One of them is probably sticking to the same recipe. Oh, I've seen, you know, I saw the hey gen product launch videos and so we're going to make our product launch video exactly like that. And it's kind of like, you know, you kind of have that like drum beat, stock music and then the dun dun and the piano comes in and then you show the product. It's like, well, why? Who's watching? Like who's watching that? Does that work? I, I don't know that. Maybe, maybe that's true. Maybe you just want to have a nice video on the landing page. Maybe the video doesn't need to convert. But I also think a part of it is like, did you have enough reps and sets on the idea for the video that you're gonna, gonna produce? And so if you look at anybody that has success is successful. Now let's look at YouTube creators, right? Everybody loves talking about Mr. Beast, but I'll give you another guy. There's this guy called Jay Clouse and he runs a company called Creator Science. If you go to his YouTube channel, he's, he's now blown up on YouTube and all his videos get, you know, 50 to 100,000 views, which is amazing in his niche. But if you go to hit, if you hit videos and you scroll all the way back to the end, he's been putting videos on YouTube forever. And it's like 83 views, 16 views, a hundred views, 100 views, 210 views, a thousand views, 23,000 views, 40 views. Like, it just takes time. It takes time and reps and feedback. And so like, I think it's crazy to be like, we're going to put out this one, we're going to make one video in the next six months. And we know that, we think that video is going to be a smash and most of us are never going to be. Do you remember like the dollar Shave Club launch video? The guy walking through the warehouse like, that was hilarious. Obviously scripted, of course they knew that was going to be. They probably didn't know it was going to go viral. But like, anybody that watched that probably was like, oh, this is so funny. This is not like anybody else is doing it. This, the deck was stacked and they invested in the content to create that video. I think you just need more reps. And I also think this is where organic social is a huge driver. Not just for video, but for your, for demand gen, for anything you're doing in the company. We now live in a world of social media where you can publish all of your ideas and thoughts from a company, from a, from your personal account. Whatever your point of view on your industry is, you can publish all that for free. So I want to go through and look through all of those posts and I want to figure out which topics are, are going to jump off you. You and I have a mutual. You know Elias from, from Drift. Now he has a new company called Agency, right. He's cranking out LinkedIn content right now and he's doing an awesome job on it. Right? We could go and analyze his last 60 posts and we could then go figure out like, okay, if we were to gonna go make videos for him, here are the kind of ten highest engagement topics. I'm not guaranteeing that those videos are gonna work, but we kind of have these signals for Exit 5. I came up with this tagline years ago like because nobody goes to school for B2B marketing and people love that and they, they kind of took hold of that and it became a thing I would feel good about. If I wanted to go invest and make a kind of funny skit style video. I'd feel good about that landing before we even know. So I think there's lots of ways to get feedback and get small signals and little tests before let's go spend 17 grand on this like product launch video that we're going to make. And we haven't tested any of the ideas and concepts first.
- [18:07]
Holly Xiao
That's such a great point because even when you're saying try to create one video a month, one video a month is actually quite expensive, especially if you're getting production. You have all these costs going into it. So I think to your point of testing the message, see what sticks and then kind of investing in it is a huge game changer. Of course AI, which we'll talk about is also going to be a really big way that you can scale video production. But I think overall that makes a ton of sense of just hey, figure out what works first through your written content because we know that's cheap, that's easier to produce and then from there figure out what to prioritize and kind of invest in.
- [18:40]
Dave Gerhardt
Also like, this is what is exciting to me about all of the AI things in marketing right now is like I think before it used to be this yeah, if we want to make a video, it's going to take. It cost this much in production. Where are we going to film it? You know, we have some footage from here, we got some B roll, whatever. Like, I like to think of a world where I can go make that video. As a marketer myself, you know, I can. This is not like related to hey gen type of video, but like I could just take 15 videos that I got on my iPhone, dump them all to airdrop them all to my desktop, go into Cap cut, make the night, you know, edit much better on Cap Cut than I can on my phone and, and ship a video that is like good enough. I got text on there, I got some animations on there. All that stuff is going to continue to get easier and easier as we get smarter and build AI tool. So like I like to think of a world where I'm a marketer and we're launching a new campaign in two weeks. Like I'm writing prompts and I'm using my. Like I'm spending all my time on the story and the creative and then I don't have to worry so much about the video production aspect. That's what's excited about where, that's what I'm excited about, where things are going. It's just shrinking the cycle. My biggest beef, like, everything takes too long. We want a launch video. It's probably going to suck and it's going to take us eight weeks to do it. Like, okay, then I don't want to do that. Let's try something different.
- [19:59]
Holly Xiao
Yeah, exactly. And I feel like we can't talk about marketing without talking about AI. Right. Because we're undeniably in this new era shaped by LLMs. There's text to video models, you name it. And the noise and hype around it have been very real the past couple of years. I know you are a fan of AI, but like, how are you thinking about the role and impact of AI in the marketing world?
- [20:20]
Dave Gerhardt
I think a year ago my response would have been different and I would have probably told you about like, yeah, we're using it to, you know, write our, write emails better. And there's just so many. It's such a hard question because like my mind every, every I can't even keep up. Every day I'm finding like somebody sending me a new tool, a new company. I do think a lot of it is like theater. A lot of it is like, check out this new tool. Here's this thing you can do. And I'm like, well, show me somebody who's actually using that inside their business and like, what did that change for the business? So I think you have to separate that. But I, I think of it more like I'm trying to. I'm trying to just like, rewire my brain to be like, what's happening now is like the late 90s finding out that, like, the Internet was going to be a thing. Right. And there are lots of people who don't believe it. There's obviously lots of, you know, hype around it. There's going to be things that don't come true. Hopefully not like a bubble bursting, but like, a lot of it's probably not going to come true. But at the fundamental layer, can you see how this technology is going to disrupt a lot of the things that we're doing?
- [21:25]
Holly Xiao
Yeah.
- [21:26]
Dave Gerhardt
And a perfect example of that is like, I've always hated working with data, working with spreadsheets. I can work with an AI tool now to be like, here's all this data. Can you help me organize it? I used to have to go find somebody inside the company to go do that because they spend me half. Take a half day doing that. So it's like, it's things like that. It's not just about, like, cool, look at this kind of like, weird image finger, weird guy with weird fingers. You can generate an image from, like, that's just all theater for, for LinkedIn. But, like, what are the workflows that are happening inside of your business that either take a long time, require really specialized knowledge inside the business, and so you have to, like, pass it on to somebody else. We're trying to find like a contractor right now to help us with events, and we have a bunch of applications and before we decide, like, what the next step with, with that person is going to be, we have written basically a brief inside of Chat GPT to say, here is what our ideal candidate looks like. Can you go through this list of, you know, 300 applicants and, and call out like, five of the contractors that you think might be the best fit to handle our job? That's amazing. Like, now, I did an. I did a podcast interview with a guy last week and I did all my prep in Claude. I started asking him about something that he wrote in his book and he's like, where did you get that? It's like, I use Claude. He's like, that is. I've never said that in my life. It was like, it was like a framework. It was like the score from like. So in your book, you talk about the score framework, like S, C, O, R, E, S. And like, I'm reading out the letters to him, and halfway I stop, and he's like, no, where'd you get that? He's like, that's a hallucination. I'm like, oh. So there's definitely a lot of those things. You, you know, you can't, like, just fully outsource it. But I think that's really exciting. You know what? Another thing has been the bane of my existence, Holly, probably. You two. As a marketer, how many decks have you made in your life?
- [23:13]
Holly Xiao
Oh, my God, way too many. Especially as a product marketer. It's deck after deck after deck.
- [23:19]
Dave Gerhardt
So it's not there yet, but it's like, this is a perfect example. Like, I'm not. I don't want to be another, like, AIs, you know, I don't want to be another AI hype person. And so I. I'm looking at all these things about, like, oh, if it's already this good, like, where can this go? And so whenever I write a deck, I've ghostwritten a bazillion decks for founders for keynote talks they gave, whatever. And I'm really good at the writing, and I'm really good at the storytelling. But then, you know when you have, like, that idea in the Google Doc, and then you're like, now I gotta get this from here into slides, and I gotta get them designed. And that is another two weeks. And there's gonna be a world and there's tools that you can. You know, Canva's gotten some awesome features now Gamma others. Right. There's gonna be a world where, like, I can basically write out the story I want and the slides are gonna get generated. That is amazing. That allows me, as the marketer, focus on the story, not, like, dragging and dropping, like, the icons on slide 16 or, like, trying to get an image. You know what I used to do? I used to write. I used to draw, like, if I was doing a deck and I wanted, like, a chart or something, I would, like, draw it on my notepad, take a picture of it, airdrop it, put it in the deck, and then leave a note to the designer on, like, the type of graphic that I want to create. Now people are making tools that you can do that, right?
- [24:31]
Holly Xiao
Yeah. I wouldn't say I would create chicken scratch wireframes. Like, this is what I want. I'll take a picture of my chicken scratch and just put it on this slide and be like, hey, let me know if you have questions. About it. But I truly think that AI changed in the game in a lot of ways. But the elephant in the room is there's a fear that AI kills creativity. What are your thoughts on whether AI will replace creativity or not?
- [24:54]
Dave Gerhardt
I don't think so. I totally can understand why. I like to think AI is like my robot helper, but there is. And actually this is the guy. This is the guy I was talking about. There's this guy called Mark Schaefer, and he has a book called Audacious How Humans Can Win in an AI World. And I have no affiliation with him. I'm not going to get any dollars if you go buy his book or whatever. But he's just been an author in marketing that I, that I followed and I had him on my podcast because I'm like, man, this is the exact take that everyone wants to know about right now. And his point of view on it, which I love, was basically like, the opportunity with AI is actually to be more creative and more human and take more chances and do more human things. And let's, let's use AI to run a lot of the business systems and process and data and do things at scale and use generative AI to produce things that we couldn't produce on our own. But the. It's going to be like the last mile problem, right? And that is where the creativity. Creativity is always going to be the factor for why your thing is successful. And so I think this is going to free us up to be able to spend more of our time focusing on the creativity and the humanity and the emotion of our marketing and hopefully have a lot of the other work offset by AI. Because I used to always have this conversation with the team at Drift. I'm like, my job as a marketing leader was to like manage the team, do performance reviews, build board decks, have be in spreadsheets. And I'm like, if I'm the best marketing, if I'm the best marketer here that we have, if this is like a sports team and my superpower is marketing, like actual marketing, like storytelling, creative product launches. Right? The actual marketing. Do you want me to spend all my time like making board decks and being in spreadsheets for internal meetings about metrics and KPIs, or do you want me to like, do the marketing? And so this is what has given me a renew sense of energy. Because candidly, like the reason I got burnt out of a job and being VP of marketing and even and CMO is like, actually none of, none of this is marketing, but you have to play the game as you climb the ladder and become the head of the marketing team, you have to play. It's a people management job. And I love marketing because I love the creativity, I love creating things. Right. And so I'm excited about a world where we're going to get back to that. And I'm talking to a lot of founders right now of early stage companies who've done other things in the past. And they're like, I don't need to have a marketing team of a hundred people. I want to have like a very strong CMO where the CMO is the chief storyteller, the chief creative person for this brand. We have a team of, you know, five to 10 marketers, or maybe even less three to five. I'm just making this up. I don't want to rub anybody the wrong way. Like, obviously, if you already have a big company, I don't, don't want you to go lay off all your marketers. But I think that's the future and that has me excited again. It was a bummer for me to realize that, oh yeah, you climbed to the top of marketing inside of a company only to realize that, oh, it's actually not your job to write any of the copy anymore or do any of the things. And so I think we should hopefully be able to get to do more of that because of what's possible with AI.
- [28:00]
Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
This episode is brought to you by Walnut. It's 2025. Something has to change based on how people buy today. Why are we pouring all of this effort into marketing just to hand prospects a PDF or push them behind a book, a demo wall?
- [28:14]
Dave Gerhardt
Come on.
- [28:14]
Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
Today's buyers, just like you and me, we don't want to wait. We want to explore the product, see how it works and understand its value. Before booking a meeting with someone, I.
- [28:22]
Dave Gerhardt
Want you to show me the product.
- [28:24]
Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
Come on. 70% of the B2B buying journey is already done before a sales rep is even contacted. So your buying experience needs to match. And that's where Walnut comes in. Walnut helps you put your product at the center of your marketing. They make it easy for marketers like you and me to embed interactive demos on the site, drop them in campaigns, or personalize them for sales in minutes. No engineers. Acquired love that is that, is that called vibe coding? Once a buyer is interested, they don't just want a one off walkthrough of your product.
- [28:52]
Dave Gerhardt
They want a place to actually evaluate.
- [28:54]
Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
Compare notes, and make a decision that they feel confident in. So Walnut has deal rooms that make it easy for your internal champion to sell your product to their team. With interactive demos at the core, the result is fewer stall deals. Fewer stall deals, consistent buyer experiences and intent data that shows exactly what features are winning. That's why companies like Adobe, NetApp and more trust Walnut to shorten sales cycles, scale pre sales and drive millions in new pipeline.
- [29:21]
Dave Gerhardt
Want to see it for yourself? Go check it out.
- [29:23]
Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
Walnut IO. That's Walnut IO and they have a.
- [29:27]
Dave Gerhardt
Cool offer for you.
- [29:28]
Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
They will actually build your first demo for free so you can see how demos and deal rooms actually work. So you get to see the product, test it out.
- [29:35]
Dave Gerhardt
They're going to do it for free.
- [29:36]
Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
Because we're sending you there from exit 5. So go to Walnut I.O. today and tell them that you heard about them from Exit 5.
- [29:44]
Holly Xiao
Yeah, I totally agree. I think the fundamental nature of AI is really built upon and also to replicate what humans have already created. And it's based entirely on past data training. And so AI really excels at handling the mundane, the repetitive and the very tedious tasks quickly and efficiently, which does free up us to focus on more meaningful and creative work. And at heygen, our goal was actually to isn't to replace human creativity, rather it's to amplify it by simplifying, to your point, the script writing, the video production process that you don't want to do so that you can focus more on like crafting the compelling stories. The other thing that we're really thinking through is like how do we empower individuals by offering a practical way to put themselves out there without investing extensive hours recording themselves. So instead of spending two hours recording just to capture a two minute clip, people can now achieve really high quality outcomes by allowing them to channel their energy into these creative aspects that truly matter. So I totally agree with you that I just don't see AI replacing creativity.
- [30:46]
Dave Gerhardt
And I really have a question on that. Yeah, even in that world. So I love what you said is like all the AI stuff is basically trained on all of the stuff we've done in the past. But isn't there a world where like AI is doing more of the things that maybe we have is creating new variations and, and new things? How do we keep the humanity. I don't even know if that's the right word. How do we keep the creativity in that? Do you think AI will ever be able to be more creative than a human? Or is it that humans want to relate to other humans and we want to see that part of it?
- [31:23]
Holly Xiao
So I Honestly think that AI is only as good as the user is, right? Like to your point earlier about prompting Claude, was it if you don't have a good prompt, the output that you get is probably not going to be great. And I truly think that AI is so variable depending on what prompt you give it, what information and the context you give it. Will it ever be better than humans? Who knows? I don't think anybody can really predict that in this stage, but I do think that, I guess just in terms of generative videos, right. I truly believe that AI will unlock and disrupt the whole marketing ecosystem. So think about ads, right? And to your point, let's say Instagram ads. So currently most ads are the same for large segments of audiences, if not everybody, just due to the high production costs. So what a company serves me is likely what you would see as well because of a certain surface level trait, right? So let's say that we're both marketers with AI and where we see things going is a world where we can dynamically individualize videos at scale. So tailoring every ad specifically to individual viewers based on their unique interests, behaviors, all automatically and in real time. And so in this world, as a marketer, we would create a single template script and that would automatically adapt personalized elements for each viewer, making every interaction super relevant and impactful. So I don't know if AI will, I can't predict and I don't want to go on record for saying like, AI is definitely going to create better solutions than humans, but I do think it will truly amplify and scale all the stuff that we're able to create and have this entire avenue of video and just content production as a whole.
- [33:07]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, that would be great. I love the idea of the thinking about how we can use AI, like at scale to be more, be more personal. The thing is just like I'm feeling a lot in marketing right now, like there's kind of two sides of things. It's like I heard Chris Sacca talk about this, which is like in a world of AI, AI is going to be great, going to solve a lot of, you know, do a lot of business stuff for us. But as a result, humans are, we're going to crave also more analog in person, real life experiences too. And so it's just there's this weird trend of like as exciting. The AI stuff is awesome. At the same time, like people want to do, at least we're seeing in our business and other companies we work with, they want more in person events and people want to get out of their house, they want to hang out with each other. And so it's like this crazy spectrum of like, you got AI over here, you got more computers, more machines, more robots. But then like, and even in my personal life, I just want to go for a hike with like three of my friends and just like, you know, shoot the, and just hang out and be offline. And there's like these kind of two poles that are becoming present. I'm curious in the chat, actually, if you're, if you're still listening to this, like, does anybody feel that, like, I love tech, like, I'm a believer in this, like, but I'm at, there's kind of like, I want to use AI, I want to talk to chat gbt, I want to get all these ideas, I want to do this. But at the same time there's this craving for like in person human led events too. And I think that is a trend that we're going to see more of.
- [34:30]
Holly Xiao
I totally agree. I actually think one of the common misplaced conceptions around AI is around authenticity. That, you know, somehow communication through AI driven mediums isn't as genuine or personal, which I totally hear understand why people feel that way. But I also think that mainstream AI technology is still new, right? And that newness creates suspicions, especially in video production, because creativity and execution is so key to success there. But as humans, I think our methods of communication naturally evolve alongside technological advancements because we can also argue that even Zoom meetings aren't as authentic as face to face interactions. Right. And ultimately they're just different ways of connecting and communicating shaped by the evolving technology. And I think in the future, knowing that a video was fully generated with AI and interacting with somebody's avatar might feel just as authentic and personal as speaking to them over Zoom or even in person. And I'm not saying that this transformation will happen overnight, but it's very likely that AI driven communication will become the norm as zoom and these more virtual conversations are as authentic. But I truly don't think in person events will ever be replaced because we still create that in person connection. I just think it's a different way of thinking about it, especially as technology changes. But Curious thinks about that.
- [35:56]
Dave Gerhardt
I don't know, it's crazy. The other thing that comes up a lot is like, do you care if AI did it or a human did it and you got the desired result? Do you care? I think it came up in exit 5 actually. Someone said, hey, our agency did this thing and this and that third year But I'm pretty sure it was like generated by AI. And I was like, well, is it good? And they're like, yeah, it's great. So is it because they didn't want to pay 15 grand retainer to that agency and they could have gotten it done with like a 20amonth ChatGPT subscription or was there some like deeper thing there? And I don't have any. I'm just faking that I have all the answers to this. I'm just giving you my reaction to all these things live. But so super interesting time to be working. Super interesting time to be a knowledge worker. Yeah, yeah, man. I don't know.
- [36:44]
Holly Xiao
Honestly, like one of the reasons that we got pretty frequently towards the end of last year was a lot of these businesses were saying, well, my audience is not going to like the fact that we're using AI to create videos. So we actually did a consumer study after just hearing these objections on, I think we surveyed more than 202,500 people in general to just get their feedback and the results were pretty in line with what we had thought, which was that over 90% of consumers don't actually have a problem with brands using AI generated videos in their marketing content, which is a huge endorsement showing that audiences are open to engaging with AI driven creativity and storytelling. I think what they are looking for though is the quality AI videos, right? Like we don't want to go into the Canning Valley and it's like obviously super robotic, all that. But if it's higher quality, if it looks realistic, people are actually very open to brands using AI in their videos and it doesn't really have a negative impact or perception of the brand for using it. So I thought that was really interesting.
- [37:47]
Dave Gerhardt
Yeah, I think that makes sense. That's where I get turned off. If it's like, if it's like slow, glitchy, a little bit off, if it looks fake, then you're kind of like, I don't know, can I trust this? Also the content, the substance really matters. Like all of the big companies, like I don't know where you live. Well, obviously live in San Francisco. But you ever tried dealing with like Comcast lately?
- [38:12]
Holly Xiao
Not Comcast, but I dealt with like a plant delivery service and that was rough too.
- [38:17]
Dave Gerhardt
So. But, but they're used like, I don't care, Help me solve my problem. And I don't care if it's a human or an AI or whatever. I really don't care. Help me do the thing that I want to do. It's when it's like this endless loop of like, I don't understand what you're saying. Sorry, we can't help with that. I don't understand what you're saying. Like, just as a consumer now, this isn't even a take on marketing right now. Like, please help me. This is a great comment. Actually, I hadn't thought about Colin in the chat. Said story is king. For example, we've been watching animated movies for years. That's a great take. Like, I'm not like, yeah, I'm not taking my kids to watch Moana too, because it's animated. It's not real people. No, we love it. It's great. It's a great movie. Right? Perfect example, I think. But. But if you're using like shitty marketing tactics and it's not good and then you do AI with it, then you're. Then you got like a video that's like not informational, not educational, not specific, and it's not funny, useful or entertaining. And it's generated by AI. Like, right, but if it's funny or if it all the. You have to like to back what we were saying about creativity earlier. It's like you have to check what is the angle, what's the hook, why are we doing this? And then, okay, if it's created by AI versus human, then maybe that is actually not the differentiator.
- [39:31]
Holly Xiao
Yeah, 100%. So how do you kind of see AI transforming video marketing in the near future? Like, how would you perceive it and how would you implement it in your own workflows?
- [39:43]
Dave Gerhardt
I would love to be able to. Basically, I love the idea of an AI avatar in some form. Like, I would love to be able to film a bunch of videos and record a bunch of things of my own and basically make a one to two minute like promo style video. Like, hey, I'm doing this webinar with, you know, Holly at Heygen and the Marketing AI Institute. And if I could write all that and prompt it and come out and it's me, but AI version of me. Like, if I could use it to scale content. Because here's another example. Last. Last Friday I was supposed to do something. I was supposed to do this video thing and I was sick. Like, real sick. Like I couldn't speak. My wife was like, you get. I had like the. I just found my voice. My wife was like, you can't go on a call like that. Like, that's a perfect example. Like, if I could just sit at my computer, I could write some prompts and work on the copy and write the script and maybe there's like a descript style type of editor and I'm generating videos that way for. For kind of the run of the mill marketing videos, I think that'd be great. I also think like being able to help me scale as a. This is not even. This is just me as a marketer. Like I think maybe I'm a marketing exec sometimes, I'm a thought leader sometimes, but I'm a. I'm a marketer. That's my craft. That's what I like to do. I'd love to be able to make a video and have all of the animation, have all the B roll, have everything like that. Basically, if I can work, if I can do all that stuff without having to hire other people that have to know about the lighting and get experts to do all that, if I can sit there at my computer and map out the storyboard and write the script, oh my gosh, that's the creative dream for me. I feel that way about video. I feel that way about like websites and landing pages and any types of offers. So I think that's what's exciting to me about where things are going.
- [41:19]
Holly Xiao
Yeah, definitely. And I have to bring up Paige in here because that's truly our mission, right? Our mission is to make creative storytelling accessible to everyone. So our AI video generation platform is really designed for marketers who want to create professional quality videos on demand. And that's without the typical barriers that you mentioned of like the time, the budget and the resources, even like being on camera. And fundamentally believe that AI video generation will create a new productivity force to really unlock new forms of video with every business creating a hundred times their videos than they are now. And that's kind of the. The goal and like what we're truly working towards.
- [41:56]
Dave Gerhardt
Do, do people do like. Do people you like? Can you make like a product explain? If I want to make a product explainer video, let's just use my business now. Exit 5. If I wanted to make an overview video, could I do that completely through hey Gen or AI to be able to do that?
- [42:13]
Holly Xiao
Yeah, you definitely can. So there are a few ways that you can do it. Specifically in hey Gen, there are four ways that you can actually create videos with our studio and platform. The first way is that you can video create videos completely from scratch without a camera or production needed. So whether that's, you know, a product explainer, an overview video, you can easily create those in hey Gen. And my favorite part is actually the ability to go back and easily Edit the script and video if anything changes last minute, which we all know happens way too often. So your video can always be up to date in a lot of different ways. The second way is you can turn any written content into a video in just a few clicks. So customers are essentially repurposing what they already have. Because I'm sure, like them, you know, you, Dave, and also most of you watching are sitting on a gold mine of content, like written content. So this could be a landing page, blog post, PDF.
- [43:05]
Dave Gerhardt
Well, even just. Even just like, just to build on that. A lot of times that for anything that we've created in marketing, it almost always starts with writing first.
- [43:14]
Holly Xiao
Exactly.
- [43:14]
Dave Gerhardt
Whether it's like, I'm writing a script, but actually a lot of times I would kind of. I like this. We used to do this a lot at Drift was just like, we just would kind of write. We would frame it as like an article or a blog post, but it was just kind of like a first person. Like, what are we announcing? Well, you know, why is it valuable? Who's it for? Why does it exist? How do you use it? And I'd always love the writing first. And then we would use that as the jumping off point for, like, product marketers would go and make their email and the landing page stuff based on that. The video team would go and write a script based on that. So I think I love the framework of like writing first and then being able to generate from there.
- [43:49]
Holly Xiao
Exactly. And we all like. It's just cheaper. Right. And to your point, we can actually test to see what's actually working, what's not before you actually generate video to then really double down on the message or the story there.
- [43:59]
Dave Gerhardt
Well, I'd rather fail. I did this. I made this terrible explainer video for this company that was working at. And I spent. I didn't test it. I spent like 7,500 bucks right out of the gate. It took like four weeks to do it. And I. The process was terrible. And so I think, like, based on what we talked about earlier, if you believe that you need lots of at bats and lots of reps to do this, I can see how, like, oh, yeah, okay, maybe we need to, like, how can we make, you know, 15, 20, 50 to a hundred videos and really get a sense of the feedback loop without every time having to be like, we're filming live, we got a studio, we got this whole setup. Like, I think it makes a lot.
- [44:34]
Holly Xiao
Of sense for sure.
- [44:36]
Dave Gerhardt
I know I got to step my game up. I got to. I Made a note. I got to like, I need an AI, I need a. I need an avatar. I need a. I need a Dave avatar. But, like, with, like, a British accent or something.
- [44:45]
Holly Xiao
We will fly to you, or we'll fly you to LA to come do a shoot. But it's funny because Reid Hoffman actually created an avatar of himself, and we actually fed all of his, like, past keynotes, speaking sessions, written books, and all that into the knowledge base. So he actually now sends his AI version of himself to a lot of different talks around the world, and he has, like, a full team dedicated to doing that. So I would love to see you as an avatar and just like, we'll have these conversations in the future and we'll both send our avatars to those meetings.
- [45:15]
Dave Gerhardt
I'll come to LA, but I need to be 6, 8, and super jacked. And then we can do my. I'll be an avatar. We'll make.
- [45:22]
Holly Xiao
We'll make it work.
- [45:23]
Dave Gerhardt
All right. We got a lot of good. We got a lot of good questions. Yeah.
- [45:26]
Holly Xiao
Yes, we do. Before we get to the actual Q and A part, I just want to ask you one last question. What's one piece of unfiltered advice or challenge you would give to marketers to stay ahead in this very competitive market right now?
- [45:40]
Dave Gerhardt
Push yourself to be an early adopter. I think that there are so few times in life when you haven't, like, marketing and business and everything just becomes so competitive and it's like everything becomes a whole sea of sameness. It's like, we're going to do marketing like everybody else. And so I found that I can think of maybe three or four people in my career that at each company that I was at, I think of somebody that I worked with at HubSpot who did an amazing job with this, somebody that I work with at Drift who did an amazing job with this, and somebody on my team. Now at exit 5, there's always kind of one person who is willing to be an early adopter and break things and try different things and try all these crazy tools, and that is the one who gets the outsize advantage. It's just like being an investor, right? Investors have to make you make a hundred bets and, like, one or two of them return the whole fund. I would be right now forcing myself to try to use these tools the way that I've done it. If I could share. I'm not going to share my screen now, but I have in the bookmarks, in the top of my bookmarks here, I have ChatGPT Claude, perplexity and one other tool which I. It's a fully disclosure, I can't name it. And I put those in my bookmarks because every time I open my browser, it's a reminder to me to be like, is there a way I could be using one of those tools to do that? And this is something that we're pushing our team at Exit 5 to do. And so I would say take a bet that this is where the world is going and use this as a time. Use this as an opportunity to like, reinvent yourself, rethink those workflows, question all your assumptions and like, try to go all in and be an early adopter on a bunch of these tools, right? Whether it's like, you want to make videos with hey gen, you want to be a full stack, you know, landing page builder, you want to build awesome creative stuff with, you know, Canva or Gamma or whatever else you're using. I think taking a bet on where the future is going, it'd be like if you were like, I always think about this all the time. If you were like the first person in like 2008 to believe in inbound marketing and like bet your company on HubSpot, like, you probably did pretty damn well. I think the same is true right now. There are very few opportunities to be an early adopter, to move to move fast. And oftentimes if you can go first, you can get an advantage. So I would just push you to really try to use these tools and rethink your work and rethink your workflow. And how can you get smarter and do cooler work by being an early adopter of AI?
- [47:55]
Holly Xiao
Awesome. Thanks. Dave Alexander, do you want to come join us for the Q and A?
- [47:59]
Q&A Moderator
Hello.
- [48:00]
Dave Gerhardt
Hello.
- [48:00]
Q&A Moderator
Awesome chat so far, guys. Loving it. So, yeah, we have some really great stuff in the chat. I think the first one makes a lot of sense. What we were talking about earlier. Dave, so what do you suggest to someone who wants to push the usage of AI but their boss is hesitant to using it?
- [48:21]
Dave Gerhardt
I would just go walk up to your boss at work and just like punch them right in the face.
- [48:28]
Holly Xiao
I would a little bit differently, but do anything other?
- [48:34]
Dave Gerhardt
No, I think, I think I would, I would just push back on that. And I think a lot of times people look, overall humans, we don't like change. And so I think I would sit down and try to show the business case of doing this. And I have this conversation with marketing leaders a lot, which is like a lot of times they just don't know they don't know. And so, you know, as, as a leader, as a manager, I don't want people just to be like, hey, I should use, we should use AI. And I'm like, okay, great. But if someone was like, hey, Dave, you got a minute? Like, can we, in our next one on one, can I present to you some of my thoughts about, like, how we can be using AI inside of our business and three reasons why I think we should use it. And you thoughtfully present, like, here's what's happening in the world. Here's why this is a huge trend. Here's some areas in our business that are holding us back right now. Here are three ways that we can start to use AI. Here's how we're going to do it. Here's how, how much it's going to cost. Here's why we're going to do it, here's how we're going to measure it. Like, sit down and actually, and be the leader and share a point of view and almost present the strategy and then get the, get the okay to start, share your results. You know, get other people around the team bought in. I think that's where I'd start versus being like, hey, boss, I want to use AI. And they're like, well, it's always got to be like, talk about this strategy. I can't think of a manager, boss, company owner, board investor in the world who is like, hey, we want to use this new thing. Call it AI, call it the Internet, call it whatever you want. Like, we want to use this new thing to make our business better. Here's how we're going to do it. Here's how we're going to measure it. Like what, what boss in the world would say no to that? And if there, if you do all that and they're still not down to that, then you need to quit your job and go find a company that, that believes in some of this stuff. And, and now clearly you've identified this as an important thing to you.
- [50:12]
Q&A Moderator
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And earlier, I know you mentioned your marketing pet peeve was trying to tie everything to roi. Someone asked, what would be your biggest video pet peeve? And Holly, I'm curious, yours as well.
- [50:28]
Dave Gerhardt
Holly, you go first.
- [50:29]
Holly Xiao
Video pet peeve. I think I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but when it comes to video, it's, I think people see this as like the shining moment, right? Because a lot of companies don't have the budget or the resources to actually create a lot of videos. So when it comes to the video pet peeve. I think it's more. How do you. It's when companies make it all about them. It's this is what we do, this is how like we work. And then they're not really making it about the audience and it's not resonating with the audience in that same way. And it's more like tooting their own horn in a lot of different ways. So I'll probably say that is my pet peeve when it comes to videos.
- [51:05]
Dave Gerhardt
I got like seven. I think one of them is just like having empathy and being like, is this video? Like, would I, would I watch this video? Like, let's stop making things that are just going to get lost in the feed and no one's ever going to. Am I just like this guy in our community, Brendan Hufford? He, he calls it like a checkbox marketing. I love that. It's like, am I just checking the box to make a video here or am I going to actually make something that someone's going to stop and stop their scroll and watch and pay attention to? That's fine. Right?
- [51:34]
Q&A Moderator
Cool one here from Whitney. Obviously, Dave, you've been doing this a while now, so. Because we can consider video being an older channel now. So how do you think marketers need to pivot to keep it relevant and fresh? And maybe this is a layup for you, Holly with half insurance. But curious your thoughts.
- [51:54]
Dave Gerhardt
I just don't agree with, like, this is like saying, oh, I'm not going to watch Netflix anymore. Because, you know, Netflix is old videos old. I think you got to innovate on the content. You got to make it interesting. And like, it's, it's the. It's the what? It's the offering and it's like the. What is the video.
- [52:13]
Holly Xiao
Yeah, I agree. And I think one of the common themes that everyone's been experiencing in is like how AI search is changing SEO. And from, you know, the small sample set of just like my peers who have been talking to traditional search traffic from company to company has probably decreased around like 10 to 20% because of LLMs like perplexity and chat GPT. So when we were brainstorming ways to help supplement for the SEO drop, YouTube was actually a channel that came up because, you know, how do we, instead of just creating blog posts and landing pages, how do we turn them into videos and put them on YouTube? Because that is still a really key channel. So that's also something I would consider as well.
- [52:52]
Q&A Moderator
Yeah, we're starting to play around a lot with YouTube and seeing a lot of really great stuff from it. So here, if someone is just starting to play around with video, what do you think is the first thing they should focus on first?
- [53:07]
Holly Xiao
I mean, I honestly think this is like just start small, right? I think this is where you should not shy away from experimenting with various use cases. So you can start by identifying one or two areas where video can make an immediate impact, whether it's like social media content or streamlining tutorial videos. And that's really where I think AI can come in a play to help you create videos faster so you can iterate and test on different channels much, much faster and at a much less steep of a cost than traditional production methods. And I think that in itself will allow you to learn the technology, you know, measure the results and just really refine your approach overall. But once you start seeing some success in these initial efforts, then you can expand into other high potential use cases like product demos, customer support, or even ad campaigns. But I think it's really important to test out different use cases because your audience is very specific to you and your company and your industry. So just because something works for other industries and companies doesn't mean it will necessarily work for you. So key is to stay curious and really iterate there.
- [54:09]
Q&A Moderator
What about you, Dave?
- [54:11]
Dave Gerhardt
I wouldn't even think about video. I wouldn't even think about the production yet. I would think about first, like, what's the hook? What's your angle? What's the niche? Like what are we, are we just going to make, what are we making videos about? It's like, oh, My company sells 3D. My company makes, you know, 3D, 3D printer. So we want to make videos to promote our 3D printers. I'm going to make a series where like I make a grilled cheese sandwich and I make it five different ways and every time I do it, we talk about something new and as it relates it, that's a terrible. I'm just riffing, right? But I think you need to. It's like, why are you going to start a YouTube channel? You're not just like, I'm just going to start YouTube and I'm going to start making videos. No, what is the thing? And so it's like Dave and Holly are going to start. We're going to. Dave and Holly are going to start a weekly video show. It's going to be super interesting because it's going to be only three minutes long. We're each going to ask each other three questions about AI. In the future of marketing. Great. I love that. You need a concept, you need a hook, you need an angle. Then you can go figure out like lenses and editing and whether to use hey Gen or not. Like it's about the. It's about the. What are you, what are you going to create? That's where it all starts for me.
- [55:18]
Q&A Moderator
That makes sense. Another sort of. Actually on a similar wavelength for someone who has a smaller marketing team and this might kind of bleed into the last question. Is there any ways that either of you would think to use AI to sort of punch above their weight? So let's say, you know, they have, they have the niche, they know where they're going, but they know that they really want to go down the video route is what would you recommend to use AI?
- [55:46]
Holly Xiao
I mean, I think, you know, Hadron will be perfect for this in terms of like helping you speed up production and like the cycles and really punch it above your weight. There. One of our customers, Toronto IO actually uses. They have a very lean marketing team as well. I think their team is less than four people and they're competing with the big wigs. Right. So they're leveraging hey Gen. To essentially scale all their video creation process so that they can compete with the big wigs and try to be better when it comes to storytelling and just be more engaging with the content that they're producing. So I think there are definitely ways to use AI to punch above your weight and a lot of it is how do you create the best script? So using AI to create compelling stories. And I actually personally use ChatGPT and Perplexity and all that to kind of play around with just like different ideas and see like what angles are going to be the best and resonate the most. But in terms of the production process itself, that can really help free up your team's resources, your budget and all of that to help create even more videos than you already have.
- [56:47]
Q&A Moderator
Agreed. Any thoughts, Dave, on that?
- [56:50]
Dave Gerhardt
No. Retweet. That was great.
- [56:54]
Q&A Moderator
Actually. Another one for you, Holly. I think we have time for about one or two more. Let's say someone is using. Hey Jen, what do you suggest is the best way to get people's attention when using an avatar based video within the first few minutes.
- [57:10]
Holly Xiao
Ooh. I mean, I think a lot of this has to do with storytelling. Right. Just because you use avatar isn't gonna be compelling for a lot of people. However, I know that if you use an avatar that does not look realistic, that's definitely gonna grab the viewers attentions. I actually personally, when I'm on just social channels and YouTube, when I look at videos, I don't know if this is like just because of the work that I'm in, but I personally look at them and I say, oh, is this created with AI? Is this not created with AI? And I try to guess it, which is so hard because the technology has gotten so good these days. But I would say like, if start with a story, right, like what are you trying to do with it? You can use avatars for a lot of different videos. Whether it's the more face to camera, traditional type of webinars. It could be more personalized conversations or outreach and messages. But I think it's more, what do you want to do with avatar based video and what is, what exactly is your goal with the video itself? I don't know if that actually answers the question, but I would probably start there. I don't know, Dave, if you want, if you have anything else to add.
- [58:12]
Dave Gerhardt
There, I mean I, I would guess that the answer would be it would be the same whether human based, avatar based, whatever, not. It's like the hook is I'm not a YouTuber, but I think there's something about like the first three seconds or something like that of every. So I think just think, what's the hook? Avatar.
- [58:30]
Q&A Moderator
Yeah, that makes sense. That's all the time. We have wanted to thank you both for joining us today for the AI Marketing alliance workshop. So great to have you. We'll definitely hope to have you back. As a reminder to everyone in the audience, we do have in the Docs tab, just in the top right, some downloadable content from hey Gen on Video Marketing. And you will get a recording of this within the next 24 hours into your email. So if there's anything you want to recap or share, you can definitely do so.
- [59:04]
Holly Xiao
Awesome. Well, thank you for having us.
- [59:06]
Q&A Moderator
Pleasure. Take care everyone.
- [59:08]
Holly Xiao
Bye everyone.
- [59:13]
Dave Gerhardt
Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what, I'm not even going to ask.
- [59:18]
Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
You to subscribe and leave a review.
- [59:20]
Dave Gerhardt
Because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you.
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Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
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Dave Gerhardt
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Dave Gerhardt
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Dave Gerhardt
And get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days, so you can go and check it out risk free and then there's a small annual fee to pay. If you want to become a member for the year, go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community.
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Exit 5 Podcast Host / Ad Voice
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Dave Gerhardt
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Dave Gerhardt
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Dave Gerhardt
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Dave Gerhardt
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Dave Gerhardt
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Dave Gerhardt
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