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- [00:00]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO to this special edition of the podcast. In partnership with my friends at bcg, we are talking about how AI will transform marketing to people that really know what they're talking about. Mark is managing partner at BCG and works with brands all over the world using AI to transform their business. And Elka runs international marketing at OpenAI. And I'm particularly pleased because OpenAI don't often come on podcasts, so this is a bit of a couple to have her sharing her expertise with us. Today we're going to talk all about how ChatGPT is transforming the industry, but also how CMOs can take advantage of this technology. There's loads of practical insight in this episode. I know you'll love it here. It is. Great. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored cmo. Now, I'm delighted in this episode because we're talking about OpenAI with our partners at BCG. And part of the reason I'm so fascinated by this conversation is we haven't heard much from OpenAI in the context of marketing before. So I'm really pleased that we get the chance to have this conversation.
- [01:05]
B
Yeah. And we're excited to start having the conversation.
- [01:07]
C
Yeah.
- [01:08]
A
It begins here on CMO, which is great. Now, OpenAI, I think I'm right in saying, is like the fastest startup success story in history. Can you give a bit of background to just how far you've come in a short space of time?
- [01:21]
B
It is truly wild. ChatGPT was actually only launched three and a half years ago, November 2022. And I always joke, I'm like, I've got socks at home that are older than that. Today we are at close to a billion users that are using ChatGPT on a weekly basis. And we grew five times faster than the Internet, 10 times faster than the PC. So it's an absolutely incredible story. And I think the main thing that people always try to understand is sort of the why behind that. And I think it's fundamentally because it adds use and value to people's everyday life. People go to chats to learn new skills, to understand topic better. It helps them navigate big decisions that they need to make. Advice. At the end of the day, it's really about the value that it unlocks for people. And I think that's sort of what's behind that.
- [02:08]
A
It's an amazing example of virality because it seemed to come out of nowhere and then suddenly everyone's using it. That transition from kind of like, you know, make believe oh, AI to suddenly everyone's using. It was really short, wasn't it?
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B
Yeah, it was.
- [02:23]
A
There any moments where you sort of. It all broke through?
- [02:26]
B
Well, I think it was actually like from the beginning. I don't know where you were in Christmas December 2022, but like we were at home writing end and lyrics in the style of Dolly Parton or Snoop Dogg, et cetera. And I think that was the moment when people for the first time probably experienced part of that wow moment. But then when people started using it for, for, for, for more use cases, I guess that magic got unlocked in a much deeper way. And I think since then the trajectory has been like, absolutely incredible. There's, it's, it's. Yeah, I think ChatGPT for a lot of people is truly synonymous with AI.
- [03:02]
A
It is, yeah, it is, yeah. And what's, what's the. How have you been able to scale that quickly, that fast? Because that's an incredible, like, transition in just a short amount of time.
- [03:12]
B
I think, as I just said, like, it's, it's adds value to people's life in a really meaningful way, but I think it's also done a fantastic job at transforming every single industry across business. And I think you'll talk about that a little bit more as well. Like, it changes how businesses operate, it changes how decisions are made. It's fundamentally changes how value is being unlocked as well. So that value adds across all parts of life, regardless of you being somebody who uses it quite simplistically for everyday life, or if it's a business that is going through full transformation. AI touched all of it. And I think the fact that we are continuing to focus really on products, building products that people love, that helps businesses really unlock new opportunities is what's part of that, of that growth.
- [04:00]
C
Yeah, it's really remarkable just how much CMOs themselves have come along in this journey in three years. I remember three years ago when we did our first CMO survey right after ChatGPT launch. There was a lot of confusion and people just sorting out how to use the technology for the marketing function. Fast forward three years now and CMOs are telling us they're in the driver's seat. They are making the AI investment decisions for their function. And ChatGPT is a critical tool they're using in that process, as well as Codex and all the other great parts of what open AI is offering.
- [04:37]
B
And that's why I'm so proud as well to be part of the industry marketing and advertising, because I feel it's this industry that's always truly leaned into innovation, and we're seeing that discovery really come from our functions now.
- [04:50]
A
One thing a lot of marketers try and get their heads around is where in marketing is AI having the biggest impact? And maybe the opposite question is, what do you think will still be led by humans in the next few years?
- [05:01]
B
Yeah, it's a question I get a lot, to be completely honest with you. I always actually like to flip it on its head. If we think more about where does the most value sit in a world where AI can do a lot more from my seat. The answer is actually quite simple. Like, at the most basic level, it is judgment, it is context, it is taste, it is a point of view. Because marketers can use AI to do research, all of the data analysis. They can go from an idea to concept in a matter of hours, which in the past would have taken large teams, complex tools, et cetera. That is all really right in front of us and available to everyone right now. But at the end of the day, AI doesn't decide what the right message is to land what needs to be communicated, like that judgment that still needs to come from people. And I think when we look at work in general, which hopefully we get an opportunity here at KAND to do, it is still the work that truly unlocks an emotional connection that resonates the most. And that takes taste, it takes judgment. So it's a good question that we indeed get a lot. But that's my perspective on that. Yeah.
- [06:09]
A
Now, talking of that and humanity and unlocking emotion, you surprised everyone last year with your first ad campaign.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Which was. You lent very much into human emotion and human storytelling, even the way it was filmed, you know, traditional kind of 35 mil camera. What was the thinking behind taking such a. Maybe a surprising and different approach to what people would expect.
- [06:29]
B
I love how the fact of the 35mm camera, like, really stuck with everyone. Yeah. Well, as we just said, like, ChatGPT today has close to a billion users on a weekly basis, which is insane. So we definitely do not have an awareness problem. But people haven't all truly experienced the magic of ChatGPT. Like, at OpenAI, we talk about that moment when you felt the magic. I'm sure it was the same for you. There was a moment in time where like, whoa, this is absolutely incredible. So the job for us to do, and what was and still is, is to really ensure that we demonstrate, use cases that explain and deepen the usage of the product and the. So the work itself showed use cases of Real people. But the perception is that this campaign was purely an ATL campaign. Like people talk about TV of course, like the out of home that we were in. But the campaign had a lot of legs. We localized it in different markets, we worked with local communities, we hosted supper clubs, fitness clubs, we worked with local influencers. So the campaign itself was actually like deeply integrated and a lot broader than what perhaps from the outside it might have looked like. And we didn't end there either. Like, we are showing up all around the world in a way that feels culturally super relevant and really meeting people where they are. We just in India showed up during the IPL in a, in a relatively big way. If you're not familiar with cricket, when, when the IPL starts in India, everything else stops and. But we really tried to meet people where they are voices being used a lot in India. So the work that we created really leaned into that particular feature and, and showed how chats super assistant on the side to help solve problems.
- [08:14]
C
So yeah, it's amazing actually what you're seeing in places like India where you have so many dialects and E commerce actually couldn't scale to some of the tier 2, tier 3 cities. Now with voice, you're able to overcome some of those barriers and you're really seeing the uptake you do indeed.
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B
Yeah.
- [08:33]
A
Now you've also this year talking about your own advertising, but you've also now created a platform for advertising yourself, haven't you? February this year that launched. What does that enable marketing marketers to do they couldn't do before?
- [08:44]
B
Yeah, well, we are in an entirely new era of advertising like AI is changing how marketers work, how work gets done. It's changing how they create like the opportunities are truly endless right now. But it also going back to ads, it's created a new way of reaching people. So we launched our ads platform 18 weeks ago, four months ago, something like that. It's currently available in seven countries, so the US, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Korea. And in next couple of weeks, ads are going to be available in Brazil and Mexico as well. We have been fortunate that we've had the opportunity to work with thousands and thousands of advertisers already. We work with agencies of the likes like Dentsu, wpp, Omnicom, of course. And the response and really the early successes that we've seen have been phenomenal. And this is an entirely new ad format. I think when we like sort of go back only a couple of months ago, like in the attention economy, it was for brands really all about capturing attention, being an interesting brand. Like, how do I ensure that, like from that first moment on, something sticks with the intelligence economy, it's different. People come to ChatGPT and they describe in their own words what it is that they want to learn, what they're trying to solve for. So the intent there is a lot higher already as well. And that creates for brands an incredible opportunity to show up in a more interesting way.
- [10:18]
C
Yeah, I think you're going to see a huge evolution here. Just like seven years ago we predicted retail media would be $100 billion business. Now it's I think $150 billion. You're going to see LLM Advertising, I think eclipse that because that's where people are. We're meeting as brands people where they are.
- [10:38]
B
Yeah, we totally do. But it's also really important that with this new format being unlocked, that there remains trust in the platform and the product, the advertising product itself. So we ensure that our ads are very clearly labeled. They don't show up within the answers. And we of course also make sure that conversations aren't being shared with advertisers. But it's early days, we went from a CPM system to a CPC auction. We've started to introduce measurement tools and there's a lot more to come. The question I scores and especially here in can that we're going to get a lot is so when our ads available in my market, we hope that over the next in time to come, like we're able to roll this out to a lot more markets.
- [11:24]
C
Also, as the personalization guy, what I love about this is brands get to understand the context. They're not just putting in a search result. They are actually understanding what the customer was searching for and are showing up in a very deeply contextual way. They're getting that data back so they can then take the journey forward.
- [11:42]
B
Yeah, 100%.
- [11:44]
A
Now we talked about paid, there's also earned and a rather funny story. So when I started the podcast about seven years ago now, I was flying through Schiphol Airport and there's this amazing book I bought called it's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be. Now the guy's name who wrote it is Paul Arden. And it wasn't the title that caught my eye, it was the subtitle. He said, the world's best selling book by Paul Arden. And I'm like, that is genius. So when I launched the podcast, I launched it as the world's number one marketing podcast by John Evans. Now I didn't think anything of this right, till three years ago. And this guy did this YouTube takedown of me and he literally a seven minute rant about how bad the podcast was. He called me tyrannically British bullshitter. I mean, he went like all in on it, right? He went all in. And he think, in those situations, what do I do? Do I kind of like defend myself? Do I make a joke of it? Anyway, I got hold of him, I phoned him up and I said, dude, why are you hating on me so much? And he said, well, I just went to ChatGPT and asked who the world's number one marketing podcaster was.
- [12:46]
B
Well, there you go, there you go.
- [12:48]
A
It has consequences. Unfortunately, I've now kind of almost got to that position anyway. But at the beginning, of course, it was just a good thing. But it shows you the role of chat in this case, ChatGPT to inform brands can also influence the LLM to their advantage. Any advice on, from a brand point of view, what you should be doing to making sure that you get good recommendations?
- [13:08]
B
Yeah, My honest take is that it's not about gaming. Trying to game the system like it is an SEO too. Like this is truly about brands being useful and meeting people in terms of the intent that they have to do something. So that would basically be my take on it. Yeah.
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C
I guess what I would add would be twofold. One is content is king now. So really investing in your own content, whether that's through your own channels or what else is out there, and being aware of that as a brand is even more important in this new age. And then the other piece is measurement. It's not as easy to measure where you actually stand as a brand. And so that's where we're working with a lot of brands to invest in the right measurement tools and test and learn becomes really critical. But there are just new ways of doing that and you are seeing brands standing up entire teams and new approaches to really treat this as a science.
- [14:04]
A
I mean, I found it with 260 odd episodes. The amount of times episodes and show notes get quoted happens all the time. And of course with the people I have on the podcast, anyone searching for them, often it'll be podcast material that will come up. The other thing as well, this is, I know, a bit sort of year 2000, but having a good website because of course we thought we'd all moved on from websites, but actually websites now providing some of the content that gets picked up by LLMs.
- [14:29]
B
Yeah, and building websites has never been Easier before.
- [14:32]
C
Exactly.
- [14:33]
B
I don't know if you're familiar with Codex, but Codex is our aging tool, which aging agent. Blah. Sorry, I don't know. I kept talking about agents my birthday. That's probably why.
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A
There you go.
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C
Happy birthday.
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B
Talking about websites, building a website has never been easier. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Codex. Perhaps for our listeners worth like a really quick voiceover, but Codex is our agent tool which was initially developed for developers. We launched it on desktop back in February and today we have over 5 million weekly active users using Codex. But what the really interesting, interesting trend is or trend is perhaps not entirely well, observation that we're seeing is that Codex is being used by people who don't have a technical background. So as a marketer, I truly can't write a line of code for the life of me, but I am able with Codex to develop a website from scratch.
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C
Yeah, our BCG consultants love using it too. We're past like writing slides now. Now we're building microsites and websites for client presentations. So it's truly changing the game for us as well.
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B
We even build websites that are for internal use only. So for my team, like when we're trying to track certain things, build a really quick site, can see exactly what's happening where and when we flash it up during team meetings.
- [15:48]
A
So, yeah, I like your point in presentation as well. So this time last year at Cannes, I was sat next to Colin Fleming, who's just joined you, isn't he, as one of your CMOs? And he just showed me his chat and said, Cause we were both at Adobe Summit a few weeks ago, but he was presenting on the kind of main stage. And he said, oh, you know that presentation I gave? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was brilliant. He said, you know, 70% of it was written by chat. And I'm like, no, really? And then he showed me and he'd downloaded like episodes of the podcast. He downloaded articles, he downloaded research and basically trained it. And then he put a prompt in saying, I'm going to do a presentation. This is the audience, this is the message I want to get across. These are the sources. I want to quote, build me a presentation. And he said, it's about 70%, right?
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B
Yeah.
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A
Amazing, isn't it?
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B
Amazing.
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A
I mean, that is a lot of prep time and effort. Shortcut, straight away.
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B
It is, yeah. And Colin, yeah, he joined two weeks ago. We're so excited to have him. But you're right, like presentation would normally be something you'd block an Hour out for in your calendar to make literally within minutes prompted, boom, we have the output.
- [16:49]
C
Yeah, for me, it's like my chief of staff, this con is the first one I use ChatGPT to prep for and just like putting in all the notes, putting in all the context from our teams, putting in my article and boom, like, I think I can do double the number of entries and the like this this week.
- [17:05]
B
So, yeah, talking about cheapest staffs, I actually made my own cheapest staff. I also, by the way, gotten in a habit where I use voice a lot. So now in the office, I walk around with a tiny microphone so that I can chat to Codex the entire time. And I made it chief of staff, I guess similar to yours, but it goes through all of my slacks and emails every three hours, then sends me an update. The things I have to respond to. What's worth knowing, it drafts all of my email and the only thing I have to do is go back in and basically press send. So it's been a true game changer.
- [17:36]
A
That's amazing. I'm taking notes after this. I'll send you the prompts, please. Yeah, I need this. That would be revolutionary. That's amazing. Mark, I was keen to find out a bit more about your CMO survey. You've interviewed 300 CMOs. What's changed in the last year when it comes to AI? Because I think you said this a bit earlier, but in all the conversations I have, there's a feeling that that AI is being done to CMOs and it's like, got to save some money and where's the efficiency and can we cut down on time to market, that kind of thing. But that's shifting a bit in terms of who owns kind of the impact of AI and growth, isn't it?
- [18:12]
C
And that was the most striking thing this year in the CMO survey. So over half of CMOs for the first time ever told us that they're in the driver's seat on the AI investments and the decisions about those in the marketing function. And this is unique because CEOs, actually, they're in charge of 70% or so of them, tell us that they're driving the decisions across the enterprise. And in most other functions, tech and marketing are the only exceptions to that. So CMOs are now getting to make these decisions. Now with great power comes great responsibility. So you're also seeing expectations going way up on delivering ROI from these investments. And that's where CMOs are also telling us they've got some work to do on the Actual transformation itself. The other big learning from the survey was this whole dichotomy between the illusion of transformation. Almost every CMO told us they are seeing AI transform critical parts of the marketing function. But when you dig into it, it's really a broad, not deep transformation. Only about a third of the CMOs have really done the hard work of wiring the organization, upskilling their teams, actually putting in place that new agentic tech stack that's required to deliver on that transformation.
- [19:35]
A
That's very interesting. How do you do that? Because I see exactly what you say. People in marketing are taking bits of the task and automating it. How do you start with AI and work back to deliver that kind of transformation?
- [19:49]
C
So last year you already saw specific workflows getting piloted and then scaled. You know, content is the obvious one where CMOs have been piloting AI for a long time. I think what's new now is being able to connect those workflows. So insights agents that sit on top of your data and provide insights for the marketers, democratizing those insights where you have to go to the data and analyst to get those insights. Or creating creative briefs with, with ChatGPT and tools like that, or actually using your tools to generate content and then on the measurement side as well, automating a lot of those reports that took days and weeks to deliver. When you connect those workflows, you see about 8% of CMOs saying they're actually running autonomous campaigns end to end for certain types of creative content and certain types of channels. But then you also see still the human part of the workflow is critical when it comes to checking the quality as well as setting the brand standards upfront.
- [20:56]
A
And what does it mean for the skill set of the future cmo? What skills are going to be in demand to deliver that kind of change?
- [21:05]
C
I think collaboration is even more critical. The role of the CMO has completely changed. That partnership between the CIO and the CMO has never been more important. A lot of the critical decisions on big IT investments are made by the CIO these days. But the strategy, the requirements, even the foresight on what tools are necessary has to come from the CMO. And that's where smart CMOs are setting up strong martech functions inside their organization. One CMO told us she's established a group of AI wizards. So these AI wizards are looking at the latest tools, for example, including Codex, but a bunch of off the shelf startup tools to really figure out what's the next tools that their companies need to onboard and really scale and go through the security checks. And by doing that they've now got a set of trained trainers who can then adopt the tools, be early advocates and really jumpstart the transformation, which in
- [22:13]
A
one sense is a human being transformation, isn't it?
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C
It really, in a way that's part
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A
of the task here.
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B
It is. And it's hard, especially for certain functions within markets. Nowhere to get started. But I agree with everything that you said. Like I think every CMO or senior marketing leader should really think of themselves as the architect of intelligence and very early on bringing on board the expertise, an AI ninja, somebody that can sit across the different functions within the organization, really look at the workflows where, where do the problems sit and help figure out how AI can help is a really helpful start.
- [22:48]
C
Yeah, and that talent doesn't exist out there. So you really have to upskill your own team to get there. I think that's what CMOs are telling us too is how you upskill folks in bite sized chunks every week. It's not just sending them to a big training and then suddenly they're upskilled, it's doing the hard work every week and then also rethinking the roles is another big chunk of the work. You may not see functional specialists that only focus on one channel, like email versus paid versus website anymore. You can see a lot more cross channel orchestration because the tools are there to do the last mile execution.
- [23:31]
A
Now you say a lot Mark, don't you? Because you cover a lot of sectors, a lot of different customers. Who's doing this really well? Who should we be looking?
- [23:39]
C
Well, I love looking at the beauty space for inspiration. You know, you see some great marketers there and also just because of how much has been transformed with influencers, with digital marketing itself, content has been really critical in that space. So you're seeing some of the largest beauty companies, but also emerging brands really employ agentic workflows, not just in the content creation but in insights and an activation and connecting the three. The other piece is in media and entertainment. Those companies are the ones trialing autonomous campaigns, but also really using the insights detection piece when you bring together a great agent with your proprietary data, third party data and the what I call brand intelligence layer, which is everything the brand needs to think through in terms of guardrails, how their best marketers do these workflows and really tap into detecting trends at the speed of culture. So when you're a music company you can understand which audience and which artist is trending right now. And Tap into that real quick with the right campaign.
- [24:54]
A
Now, a couple of years ago, CAM was all about the potential for AI. A year ago we're talking about agentic now in sort of agentic commerce. Like you're saying autonomous, connecting all things together. Maybe a question to both of you, just to kind of speculate a bit. What are we going to be able to do in a year's time that we can't do today?
- [25:12]
B
Yeah, that's a good question. Now I think you're right. There often is a perception that AI is still a technology platform, but it's become an operating layer and we're already at the next frontier. Like when you look at our models, like ChatGPT 5.5 is our smartest and most intuitive model yet. It is absolutely incredible. Codex, I talked about that a little bit already. Like fundamentally helps audiences, including non technical ones, to do work in a different way and then ads helps reach people.
- [25:42]
C
So two predictions. All right, we're on, we're on. Come on then. Okay, so two predictions.
- [25:48]
A
We are recording this.
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C
Number one, so I lead our marketing, sales and pricing practice at bcg and across these functions we've always had some tension. You know, marketing generates the leads, but can sales convert them? And is pricing at fault for not being able to convert them? I think you're going to see these silos start to break down because with agentic workflows, the handoffs become much cleaner and easier and more of the work can be spent on the strategic layer. So that's number one. I think the other piece is the big brands have to close this gap between illusion and reality in terms of their agentic transformation. Otherwise they will see these agentiq native startup brands start to take share. We are already seeing this in spaces like beauty or apparel where small brands are gaining share very quickly because they're using the latest tools, not just on content creation but how they deploy to channel, optimize their campaigns, then tap into new trends and we're just barely scratching the surface.
- [26:57]
A
It's a really good point. There's never been probably a better time to be a startup now because you don't have all the legacy, legacy infrastructure and technology that's holding you back or the ways of working you suddenly got, like you said earlier, just a small thing about building websites can be done immediately. You don't need to be technical. So it's a huge opportunity, isn't it, for smaller challenger brands to compete with the large ones.
- [27:16]
B
It's true. And I think that the smaller rising companies right now, like they are already seeing AI as a fundamental operating layer where there is sometimes sole perception with slightly more traditional organization that it's just a technology platform that they have to figure out. But we're already at the next front. When you look at our models, like our latest model, ChatGPT 5.5, it is the most intuitive and smartest model yet. Codex allows everyone, technical, non technical, to do work in a different way. AI is doing the actual work. ADS allows brands to really reach people in a different way. So perhaps my prediction is more that I think all brands, regardless of like where they sit, how long they've been around, that they have to be a lot more intentional moving forward and meeting people where they already are. Yeah.
- [28:03]
A
And I think because a lot. You referenced this in your report, From Illusion to Reality. A lot of it has been potential and talking about what's possible, but now we're seeing actual results and brands achieving great things. And that'll be the exciting change next year, won't it? To see the reality.
- [28:20]
C
Yeah. That's what I'm excited about is finally we can move from just productivity gains to really pursuing growth. We've got all these amazing tools and you're seeing it. In our survey, 30% of B2CMOs in 20% of B2B CMOs said they have realized real measurable gains on the growth front from using tools like ChatGPT.
- [28:42]
B
Yeah, no. But I'm also really excited next year to hear the stories from the creative community and how they have been using AI to develop the next campaign and big bodies of work. At OpenAI, we do a lot of design sprints and it is absolutely incredible to see how fast we can move from idea to concept. As I'd mentioned earlier, to see some of the work that we're supposed to present to leadership, to see that instantly come to life, to really play around with the settings in which the potential work shows up, the people in the work, the talent itself. So I think that next year, hopefully we're going to see some very interesting things coming from the creative community as well in terms of how they've been using AI.
- [29:25]
C
Yeah, I just love that speed point of before we would spend when we were working with clients together with you like so much time on creating the actual output versus now a lot of the time is spent on iteration and getting input and making the work better because you can actually show them what it looks like.
- [29:45]
B
Yeah.
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C
So we've come such a long way,
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A
so we're sitting here together. I know you guys have got this kind of great partnership working together. What's the power behind you two collaborating? What does it allow you to do?
- [29:57]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, we are incredibly grateful to partners like BCG to be able to help scale the work because from this seat of a marketing leader, it isn't always that easy to know where to start. But it really is thanks to partners like you who have been truly phenomenal that we can really scale the magic and power of what this technology brings to so many more organizations.
- [30:19]
C
Yeah. And I'm especially proud that we've been able to do it pretty much in every corner of the world, from Asia to Europe to the US And I think attack both sides of the issue. On the tech front, our BCGX4 deployed engineers worked seamless with yours to actually, actually get the technology humming. But then so much of the heavy lifting, 70%, as we like to say of the puzzle, is about that human element and driving the change, upskilling people, training people, figuring out who those AI wizards are going to be that are going to lead the charge and then really scale to the rest of the organization.
- [30:56]
A
So Mark, given how much you see and how many different industries, like if you had to pick one thing, thing that you think people haven't properly understood yet, what would be the thing people haven't understood?
- [31:07]
C
I think it's that deploying agents just on top of your data is not good enough. In this age of AI, companies will compete not just on their data, but also how their best marketers do the work. And that's what you need to codify in this brand intelligence layer, as I like to call call it. And that is hard work, actually. You have to define the guardrails, what KPIs matter, how you do the work, what quality checks should be applied. That's where companies really need to invest the time to get it right.
- [31:39]
A
Yeah, that makes a sound sense because your data is your moat, isn't it, in terms of the information you have in your customers and all that kind of thing. But then it's how you use it that's going to determine the value you can extract from that.
- [31:48]
C
Yeah, it's like you're competing on your best talent and being able to codify it into this new agent tech start stack paired with your data. Yeah. So it's a new age.
- [32:00]
B
It's new age. It's only just begun.
- [32:02]
C
Yes, yes. We're just scratching.
- [32:03]
A
We do forget that, don't we? Because it's a bit like the A when the Internet was created or created.
- [32:08]
B
Exactly. That's why I was talking about my socks, I swear to God. Maybe that says more about me than about like. But it is absolutely incredible. Seriously, people talk about ChatGPT like it's been around forever. People forget, like sometimes the answer isn't perfect. I'm like, do you understand what sits behind that? It is, it's wild. Yeah.
- [32:28]
C
I got my surfboard out this weekend for the first time at six years old.
- [32:32]
B
There we go.
- [32:33]
A
Double the age of ChatGPT. Well, I've got, I've got two teenage daughters are going through education. I've just, I've just watched how suddenly ChatGPT is now being used in class for research, but also how they have to audit to make sure that you put some original thought in. Yeah, because obviously it's a combination of both original thought and the research together. But even that's what moved, you know, you'd see as kids of certain age whether or not they've kind of, you know, been educated with the benefit of.
- [33:00]
B
And that's why like we keep on building products that people truly love. And like one of my absolute favorite ones, my kids are a little bit younger still, but not that young is study mode. I think because I work at OpenAI. They're of course very exposed to like GPT specifically. But study mode allows them to learn in a different way. So I upload a curriculum or a particular assignment and it just asks questions to help expand their thinking, which is, is fantastic.
- [33:25]
C
That's an answer. I think you're going to find entirely new jobs get created here. And that's the piece that's not in the conversation. So our latest AI study, we looked at 1500 job families and only about 15% of them, in our judgment, will go away. The rest will actually expand or even get created as new jobs. So actually we're not even yet appreciating how much of the economy me there is to unlock through AI. And for example, in our sales practice, you're seeing young, fresh out of college kids that are agent native get paired with established, well respected salespeople and just completely transform their workflows and triple, quadruple their productivity. So yeah, yeah, lots of great stories.
- [34:15]
A
I mean stats I looked at the other day actually, just to put this in perspective, the amount of investment in AI blew my mind.
- [34:22]
C
Right.
- [34:23]
A
So I look back at big, big investments in humanity. Like humanity changing level Manhattan projects, obviously huge, right? 36 billion. The Apollo space program, 298 billion to get us on the moon.
- [34:35]
B
Right.
- [34:35]
A
AI. So far 2.5 trillion has already been invested it just shows the scale of potential, doesn't it? That sits in front of us.
- [34:43]
B
Yeah, it really does.
- [34:44]
C
Yeah. And we are seeing that in our CMO survey as well. This year the average CMO said they're spending upwards of $15 million on AI tools. That's on top of everything they're spending on their Martech stack and core systems. And they're in charge of those investments now. So they're in the driver's seat.
- [35:03]
A
Well, that's good news actually.
- [35:04]
C
Exactly.
- [35:05]
A
CMOs finally get some control back.
- [35:07]
C
Exactly. They just have to deliver.
- [35:10]
A
Yeah. Expectations just went through the roof.
- [35:12]
C
Yeah.
- [35:12]
A
Be careful what you wish for. So one of the things I'm seeing in a lot of conversations is how up to now particularly the focus has been on efficiency and cost saving rather than effectiveness. I love particularly what you said earlier about the, you know, the judgment and the craft and all these things. Because there's a danger, isn't there, sometimes they, that it makes us lazy, that what we do is we outsource thinking, we outsource creative ideas rather than focus in on actually where the values gets had. So I just thinking from your perspective, how do you see that element, the effectiveness being improved through AI rather than just the efficiency?
- [35:45]
B
Yeah, the efficiency is something that's easy to measure. So very understandably, like that's where we started, but if that's where we would end, so much of the opportunity would be lost. So from a CMOS perspective, like this is the moment to really help figure out how AI can evolve particular workflows and start with one build on top of it. How from a creative development perspective, like you're approaching production in entirely different way. That might feel a little bit uncomfortable in the beginning, but once you get going, you'll be astonished by how much it is that you can indeed evolve.
- [36:24]
C
I think that's so true and I would build that. A lot of CMOs are under cost pressure still, but leading CMOs are taking that as an opportunity. So when they're faced with a restructuring or cost out target, they're not just going in and taking out 10, 15% of their function. They're actually saying let me create some investment pool back, let me invest that into tools and new workflows and new technology and new types of roles and upskilling my own team and maybe make harder, bigger changes, but really build for the future rather than just take another 10% out.
- [37:05]
A
By the way, I loved your reinvestment quote. There you go. That's a great picture of CMO by the way. To See, say of everything I save, what percentage can I reinvest in growth? Because that's the win, win. I think we've forgotten that equation. We've gone all in on the how much can I save rather than how much does that liberate to grow the top line of my business?
- [37:23]
C
Yeah. I mean, one CEO we worked with said, across all the functions, over half will be reinvested and the marketing function actually led the way. And the change.
- [37:35]
B
Yeah. And in true marketing style, it's about flipping on its heads. Like, it isn't just about the efficiency. Flipping like, look at it from the other perspective. Imagine the growth that you can generate when things are more efficient as well.
- [37:48]
C
Exactly. CMOs are leading the way.
- [37:50]
B
They are leading the way.
- [37:51]
A
Good to have such an optimistic view of this, I think, which is really exciting. It's well needed, this conversation.
- [37:56]
B
It is. I honestly can't think of a more exciting moment in time to be in marketing and advertising than right now.
- [38:03]
C
And this place right here, this place
- [38:05]
B
here in Cannes especially, like, it is absolutely amazing. Amazing.
- [38:09]
A
Now, maybe to round off, you two are both working in very influential positions at the forefront of technology, seeing great changes happening in front of you, what would be the one best bit of advice that you've both been given from a career point of view that our listeners could benefit from?
- [38:26]
C
I would say when I was elected partner at bcg, someone Weiss told me, invest in the people on your team. Teams, that is the single most important. And we actually have the data to show this across thousands of partner long term measure of success. And it's definitely been true. I've had some incredible people that I've had a chance to work with over the last decade who've gone on to have stellar careers inside and outside of BCG themselves.
- [38:57]
A
That's interesting. I've just done my first ever uncensored CF CMO survey of CMOs I've interviewed earlier this year and one of the questions was, what's the single biggest challenge you face? It wasn't strategy, it wasn't investment, it wasn't tactics, it wasn't technology. The top two by Country Mile were leadership and people.
- [39:16]
B
Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. The best advice I think I've been given is by my previous boss, Kate Rao, who was a CMO here at OpenAI, who unfortunately, due to some personal health issues, stepped away from the role. But I've had the fortune of working with her at Coinbase before this as well and had a bit of an overlap at Facebook as well. And what Kate's always told me. She's like, it is all about operating with your hands wide open and creating a safe space for experimentation because things move so incredibly fast. And if our teams feel any sense of fear for failure when they're trying to adopt new technology or do things in a different way, you're never going to see any of the output. So really, creating a safe space where people are willing and open to experiments is, I think, incredibly important importance.
- [40:03]
C
It goes back to your first question on the CMO as well, I think. Curious. CMOs are going to win the future. It really is. So true.
- [40:11]
B
It is.
- [40:12]
A
And you're fighting against the corporate desire to risk mitigate all the time, isn't it? Because in most corporate organizations it's, how do I take the risk out? How do I make sure I don't look silly? How do I avoid making the big mistakes that get me fired? But on something like AI, where we're making generational links, leaps into the unknown often, aren't we? You can't afford just to sit back and wait to see how it plays out. You've got to jump.
- [40:35]
B
Yeah, true. I think when your teams feel that you trust them, magic can happen.
- [40:40]
C
Yes.
- [40:40]
B
Yeah.
- [40:41]
A
That's amazing advice. Thank you both. I very value both those advice. That's really, really good.
- [40:46]
B
Thank you.
- [40:47]
C
Thank you.
- [40:47]
B
Well, thank you for having us.
- [40:48]
A
Yes. Yeah, you're joining me. Thank you.
- [40:52]
B
Yeah, no, thank you.
- [40:54]
A
So I hope you enjoy that episode of Uncensored CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter, so if you'd like to get my thoughts on the One Thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the One Thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast just launched, Uncensored Renegades, with the fabulous Corey Marchisoto. She is one of the world's best CMOs. She's an absolute rockstar. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that it's in your feed. Uncensored Renegades. And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast, it would not happen without them. So big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.