Colgate, SOCi CMOs Pivot to Brand Moats as AI Automates Campaign Work
Ai4
As generative AI commoditizes routine content creation and compresses go-to-market cycles, marketing executives warn that technological speed has become table stakes, making distinct human brand identity and ARR per employee the only defensible competitive moats.
## Background
Published on YouTube by Ai4 on August 22, 2026, this panel session titled "Scaling Smart: How AI Is Driving Marketing Efficiency and Precision" brings together marketing leaders from ISS North America, Goodwill Industries International, Colgate-Palmolive, Sequel.io, and SOCi. The session explores how AI is reshaping customer acquisition economics, automating campaign workflows, and addressing the operational challenges of data privacy, attribution, and brand authenticity in an era of synthetic content.
## TL;DR
Marketing leaders share practical strategies for operationalizing AI across enterprise and growth-stage organizations, detailing implementations such as unified internal "company brains" and compressing go-to-market launch cycles from months to weeks. The panel addresses structural evolutions in search and discovery, including the transition from traditional SEO to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and the necessity of auditing workflows before automating them. They emphasize that while AI successfully eliminates repetitive administrative tasks, true competitive advantage relies on preserving authentic human storytelling and brand soul. Finally, the discussion outlines modern measurement frameworks, urging marketing teams to move away from retrospective mix modeling and communicate value through board-level efficiency metrics like ARR per employee.
## Atmosphere & style
The discussion is candid, pragmatic, and refreshingly grounded, trading speculative AI hype for hard-won tactical lessons and organizational realities. Moderator Marjorie McCarthy guides an engaging, collegial dialogue where early-stage agility and enterprise-scale perspectives bounce off one another naturally. It feels like an authentic peer-to-peer strategy debrief, balancing humorous acknowledgments of everyday workplace friction with thoughtful reflections on the enduring value of human creativity and brand taste.
## Key takeaways
- [05:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=348s) AI delivers its greatest strategic advantage when grounded in clean data taxonomy and centralized institutional 'tribal knowledge' rather than isolated execution tools.
- [11:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=674s) Centralizing disparate enterprise data into a unified 'company brain' integrated into Slack allows teams to extract immediate customer messaging insights and enables recursive self-correction.
- [14:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=880s) Compressing go-to-market cycles from months to weeks requires extensive upfront workflow engineering and prompt fine-tuning rather than relying on naive, single-prompt AI outputs.
- [16:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=970s) The transition from traditional SEO to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) necessitates standardizing structured schema and data credibility across decentralized digital properties.
- [17:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1076s) Organizations must optimize internal workflows and departmental structures before injecting AI capabilities to avoid simply accelerating broken processes.
- [17:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1076s) Marketing roles are shifting from manual asset execution to AI agent architecture, workflow management, and hallucination quality control.
- [21:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1315s) Automating redundant administrative tasks frees human marketers to focus on emotional connection, creative strategy, and preserving authentic brand soul.
- [24:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1444s) Talent acquisition is shifting toward hiring candidates who provide tangible proof of building with AI tools and possess flexible, cross-industry learning mindsets.
- [29:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1741s) Marketing measurement must transition from retrospective autopsies like traditional quarterly Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) to proactive, predictive real-time feedback loops.
- [32:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1958s) Internal workflow time savings act as leading indicators, but board-level evaluation remains strictly focused on lagging revenue outcomes such as ARR per employee.
- [33:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2025s) As AI automation becomes commoditized table stakes across industries, human-led brand positioning and narrative distinctiveness become the primary defensible moats.
- [40:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2416s) Resolving enterprise data fragmentation requires semantic vector search paired with probabilistic confidence scores that flag ambiguous data for human-in-the-loop review.
- [43:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2616s) Generative campaign pipelines and customer qualitative inputs must continually reference an authoritative 'brand brain' to preserve messaging hierarchy and strategic intent.
## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=4s) Introductions and Panel Overview
Marjorie McCarthy, Chief Marketing Officer for ISS North America, opens the session "Scaling Smart" and welcomes the audience. She describes ISS as a global workplace experience and facility management services company powering the spaces where people work, with over 320,000 employees operating across nearly 60 countries. In addition to overseeing marketing and communications in North America, McCarthy acts as the panel moderator and invites the panelists to introduce themselves, their roles, and their organizational remits:
- **Monica Ho (CMO, SOCi):** Heads marketing at SOCi, an agentic marketing platform built for enterprise multi-location brands (such as Ford Motor Company, Ace Hardware, and Jersey Mike's). The platform deploys brand-trained local agents to manage marketing tasks essential for visibility across AI search, traditional search engines, and social media, including local reviews and local page optimization. Having served as CMO for eight years, she focuses on delivering on the promise that agentic AI can fundamentally transform how marketing gets done.
- **Onney Crawley (CMO, Goodwill Industries International):** Leads marketing for a federated model comprising 150 local organizations deeply embedded in their communities. While Goodwill is widely recognized for thrift stores and donation collection, Crawley highlights that retail revenues directly fund free local workforce development, training, and job search services. Her remit centers on telling impact stories, driving donations and foot traffic, and ensuring the federated network moves together as a unified brand via AI.
- **Christy Borrowman (VP of Marketing & Transformation, Colgate-Palmolive):** Has spent 11 years at Colgate-Palmolive specializing in digital, data, media, and enterprise transformation. In her newly appointed role focused on AI transformation within marketing, she is tasked with shaping how the organization operates end-to-end and connecting future-facing tools with agency and developer workflows.
- **Kathleen Booth (VP Marketing, Sequel.io):** Represents Sequel.io, an early-stage company that originated as a platform to host webinars natively on customer websites. It is evolving into an agentic go-to-market platform used by clients like Datadog, Clay, and Morningstar. By capturing first-party webinar engagement alongside pre- and post-event web visit behavior, Sequel.io scores data at the contact and account level to fuel broader revenue engines. Booth's mandate is to balance brand integrity and human-first storytelling with AI efficiency, scaling the company without letting headcount expand proportionately with revenue.
---
[05:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=348s) High-Level Strategic Advantages of AI in Marketing
Moderator Marjorie McCarthy poses a foundational question to the panel: Where is AI driving the greatest competitive advantage for marketing today at the 30,000-foot level?
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Competitive Advantages of AI in Marketing
subgraph DataFoundation["Data & Knowledge Architecture"]
direction TB
D1["Clean Taxonomy & Data Foundation"] --> D2["Democratized 'Company Brain'"]
D2 --> D3["Spoken Tribal Knowledge & Transcripts"]
end
subgraph RealTimeSignals["Market & Audience Adaptation"]
direction TB
S1["External Local Search/Review Signals"] --> S2["Dynamic Real-Time Customer Profiles"]
end
subgraph ContentScale["Execution & Distribution Velocity"]
direction TB
C1["High-Volume Asset Creation"] --> C2["Automated Multi-Channel Distribution"]
end
Christy Borrowman points to two primary pillars: solid data foundations and massive content scalability. Without organized data taxonomy and connected internal endpoints, AI augmentation cannot function effectively. Once proper data plumbing is established, AI democratizes data utilization across teams. On the execution side, Borrowman quips, *"Thank you TikTok, I now need to produce 10,000 pieces of content a month,"* pointing out that AI provides the necessary velocity and volume that human bandwidth alone cannot match.
Kathleen Booth strongly echoes the data imperative, emphasizing that AI's greatest competitive unlock is capturing hidden "tribal knowledge." By indexing call recordings and spoken conversations alongside structured CRM data into a unified "company brain," organizations can search and leverage institutional insights that were previously lost. She also highlights a systemic marketing issue she observed while running marketing at Pavilion across a 10,000-member community: teams historically poured nearly all their energy into content creation, leaving insufficient bandwidth for distribution and promotion. AI flips this paradigm by automating distribution pipelines.
Onney Crawley adds that AI democratizes siloed organizational knowledge, preventing vital research from remaining trapped inside isolated folders. Furthermore, she identifies dynamic audience intelligence as a critical advantage. Traditional segmentation models—often expensive, slow research studies—quickly grow stale. AI allows marketers to grow, learn, and adapt with consumer preferences in real time, preserving precise targeting and engagement.
Monica Ho approaches data through the lens of external signals. While first-party data is valuable, it is inherently limited. Specialized AI platforms can aggregate hyper-local data signals—such as changing local search patterns, customer sentiment from local reviews, and localized competitive moves—and combine them with core business data. However, Ho delivers a cautionary warning regarding integrations: while many teams eagerly connect new platforms and Master Control Programs/Model Context Protocols (MCPs), feeding incomplete or sparse data sets into internal systems creates substantial risks of AI hallucinations.
---
[10:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=647s) Moving to Practical Applications
Marjorie McCarthy transitions the discussion from high-level strategy to concrete, ground-level tactics, asking the panelists to share specific AI implementations currently being deployed within their teams. Kathleen Booth prepares to detail the practical construction and rollout of their newly built internal company brain.
[11:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=674s) Building "Cerebro": Creating a Company-Wide Collective AI Brain
During a recent company offsite hackathon, Kathleen Booth and her team set out to solve internal data fragmentation by building "Cerebro," named after the iconic X-Men device that detects mutants across the globe. The goal was to build a comprehensive "company brain" by piping in every internal data source available across the enterprise: CRM data, marketing automation tools, product usage metrics, customer support logs, project management systems, sales and CS call recordings across multiple platforms, Intercom help chats, and internal HR documentation. The system interfaces directly through Slack, allowing employees to query company data either publicly in a dedicated Cerebro channel or privately via direct messages.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Architecture of the Cerebro Internal Knowledge System
subgraph Ingestion["Enterprise Data Sources"]
CRM["CRM & Marketing Automation"]
Calls["Sales & CS Call Recordings"]
Support["Intercom Chats & Help Docs"]
HR["HR Policies & PM Tools"]
end
The primary strength of the system lies in its ability to synthesize siloed data across platforms to generate highly contextual answers. For marketing, Booth describes it as "gold in terms of messaging"—instantly stack-ranking the exact words and phrases customers use to describe the product, running win-loss analyses, and evaluating competitive differentiation directly from customer sentiment. The platform has also transformed customer support; CS reps use Cerebro live on customer calls to pull immediate, precise troubleshooting answers from historical help tickets and documentation.
Crucially, the tool incorporates recursive learning to prevent the spread of inaccurate data. When an executive or technical lead—such as the CTO—steps into a Slack thread to correct an incomplete or inaccurate output, the system writes the correction back to its memory, continuously improving its precision with every interaction.
- **Data Ingestion Scope**: Ingests CRM, product telemetry, call recordings across two different platforms, Intercom chats, project management boards, and internal HR wikis.
- **Workflow Integration**: Lives natively in Slack via public channels and private DMs, serving marketing research, sales positioning, and live customer support.
- **Self-Correcting Memory**: Implements active recursive learning by capturing conversational corrections in Slack threads to permanently refine its knowledge base.
---
[14:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=880s) Compressing Go-to-Market Cycles from Months to Weeks at SOCi
Monica Ho highlights a common operational challenge for modern technology companies: as engineering teams adopt AI to develop and ship product updates at record speeds, marketing quickly replaces engineering as the organizational bottleneck. At SOCi, taking a brand-new offering to market traditionally required an 8-to-12-week cycle across product marketing, sales enablement, and collateral production. To eliminate this friction, marketing developed dedicated AI modules designed to automate enablement workflows and content generation.
Ho emphasizes that building functional AI modules requires substantial upfront investment and realistic expectations. The team spent months fine-tuning workflows, moving past the naive assumption that basic prompting would yield production-ready marketing assets:
> "The upfront lift on building actual AI workflow and modules, it's real... you think it's so simple, you're like, 'Oh, I'm just going to prompt this. I'm going to feed it a couple of things and then I'm going to get what I need out of it.' And you would be surprised. You don't get what you thought out of it."
Through rigorous fine-tuning and human oversight, SOCi successfully compressed its go-to-market execution timeline from 8–12 weeks down to just 1–2 weeks, unlocking rapid deployment capacity across the entire marketing organization.
- **Bottleneck Inversion**: Marketing replaced engineering as the release bottleneck as software development velocity surged.
- **Timeline Acceleration**: GTM delivery windows shrank from 8–12 weeks to 1–2 weeks using fine-tuned AI workflow modules.
- **Implementation Reality**: Emphasizes that reliable enterprise outputs demand months of workflow structuring, prompt engineering, and human-in-the-loop validation rather than raw prompt inputs.
---
[16:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=970s) Transitioning from SEO to AEO Across Decentralized Brands
Onney Crawley outlines the operational hurdle of managing digital visibility for Goodwill Industries International, an umbrella network comprising 150 independent local organizations, each operating its own separate website. In the evolving search landscape, search engine optimization (SEO) is shifting toward answer engine optimization (AEO). AI search engines no longer simply serve lists of links; they synthesize comprehensive direct summaries, often bypassing website visits entirely.
Because Goodwill's 150 independent sites host fragmented, contradictory, or uncorroborated information lacking uniform citations, generative AI engines frequently discard the content as untrustworthy or uncredible. To resolve this, Goodwill launched an extensive initiative to crawl and scan every network property. The project audits structured schema, backlinks, digital architectures, and Q&A content to establish an authoritative, cleansed data baseline. By aligning all 150 local entities under unified data standards, Goodwill aims to ensure AI answer engines present accurate corporate facts, while actively dispelling persistent online myths and misinformation about the organization.
- **Scale of Dispersal**: 150 independent local Goodwill organizations operating 150 disparate web domains.
- **The AEO Paradigm Shift**: Transitioning from driving link clicks to optimizing authoritative data sources for direct AI-generated summaries.
- **Content Hygiene Objective**: Standardizing schema, citation structures, and backlink integrity across network nodes to reinforce brand credibility and combat misconceptions.
---
[17:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1076s) Restructuring Marketing Teams and Redefining Competencies for AI
Addressing the challenge of balancing in-house talent and agency partners in an AI-driven environment, Onney Crawley details the recent strategic realignment within Goodwill's marketing department. Recognizing the necessity to accelerate operations while remedying underlying internal friction, leadership chose to fix organizational workflows before injecting AI tools:
> "Knowing that we wanted to bring in more AI capability, more AI learning, we had to sort of clean up our structure first because otherwise what's going to happen is we're doing the wrong thing... and you're going to bring in AI and just do that all better."
The restructuring focused on auditing marketing priorities, identifying redundant tasks, and establishing automation targets. As part of this evolution, Goodwill is actively recruiting for a leadership role (Senior Director of Advancement) tasked with viewing department structures, digital ecosystems, and community engagement specifically through an AI lens.
Monica Ho adds that while AI agents are absorbing execution-heavy tasks—such as baseline SEO drafting and standard B2B campaign builds—the need for high-level domain experts remains critical. Rather than reducing overall headcount, marketing roles are shifting fundamentally from manual execution to workflow architecture, prompt fine-tuning, quality control, and hallucination detection. When hiring and promoting, SOCi now prioritizes candidates who actively experiment with frontier models like ChatGPT and Claude to build and manage automated agents, rather than relying strictly on conventional marketing skill sets.
- **Fix Workflows Before Automation**: Optimizing organizational structures and priorities prior to deploying AI to avoid accelerating inefficient practices.
- **Execution to Supervision**: Marketing talent shifts from manual output creators to AI agent architects and output evaluators.
- **Evolving Hiring Criteria**: Prioritizing hands-on proficiency with tools like ChatGPT and Claude, algorithmic fine-tuning skills, and error detection over traditional standalone channel expertise.
[21:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1315s) Brand Soul, Human Storytelling, and Eliminating Repetitive "Crappy Work"
Continuing the discussion on marketing talent and organizational capability, Onney Crawley emphasizes that at Goodwill Industries International, storytelling sits at the very core of the brand. Goodwill is inherently human-centered and in the business of helping people, meaning the voice and judgment used in storytelling are proprietary assets that cannot simply be automated away. Addressing the pervasive influx of generic AI-generated content across social platforms—quipping that LinkedIn "blop" is getting out of hand—she argues that maintaining a distinct brand soul requires human judgment and taste. The objective is not to eliminate team members, but to redeploy them away from purely mechanical execution into higher-value work that preserves a unique brand point of view amid digital noise.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Freeing Marketers from Redundant Tasks to Focus on Brand Soul
subgraph Repetitive["Legacy Manual Repetition"]
A["Single Copy Point"] --> B["Enter into DAM"]
A --> C["Enter into PIM"]
A --> D["Paste into Binders & Packaging"]
A --> E["Sync 35 Disconnected Systems"]
end
subgraph Modern["AI-Augmented Core Marketing"]
F["AI Automation & Integration"] --> G["Human Creative Strategy"]
G --> H["Authentic Human Storytelling"]
G --> I["Proprietary Brand Soul"]
end
Repetitive -.->|"AI frees marketers from 'crappy work'"| Modern
```
Christy Borrowman backs up this perspective from an enterprise lens at Colgate-Palmolive, explaining that many marketers currently spend their working hours manually pasting identical copy claims across disparate systems:
> "I have marketers today who spend time putting in the same copy point in a DAM, a PIM, a binder, a creative asset packaging claim. It's all the same. And they're spending time doing that repeatedly because it's 35 different systems... let's get out of the crappy work and let AI do that."
By taking over low-level, administrative busywork, AI augments human marketers so they can focus on true brand building, heart, and emotional resonance.
---
[24:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1444s) Rethinking Talent Acquisition: Mindset, AI Natives, and Fast-Tracking BDRs
When the panel turns to whether hiring sources and candidate expectations have shifted, Onney Crawley notes an unexpected dynamic. Because AI has begun absorbing lower-level tasks over the past two years, early-career pipeline development stalled. To counteract this, Goodwill restarted its internship program and restructured a senior vacancy into multiple junior positions. The results revealed two starkly contrasting applicant profiles:
- Several recent college graduates resisted AI entirely, perceiving tool usage as "cheating" and requiring active encouragement to adopt modern workflows.
- Other interns arrived as true AI natives, outperforming experienced team members on tactical output despite their lack of traditional tenure.
Crawley reflects that long-tenured marketers—such as public relations professionals who have operated the same way for two decades—can inadvertently hold back teams if they fail to adapt. Rather than looking in entirely new geographic or functional pools, she looks for a fundamentally flexible mindset, frequently recruiting from outside the retail/non-profit category to import cross-industry learnings.
Kathleen Booth shares that her hiring criteria have evolved from passive interest to verified execution: candidates must show tangible proof of what they have built using AI, such as deploying custom chatbots on their personal portfolios. Furthermore, because Sequel.io’s Business Development Representative (BDR) team reports into marketing and generates 100% of the company's sales pipeline, speed to productivity is paramount. Rather than running slow, expensive in-house training for entry-level sales hires, Booth partners with SV Academy:
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Accelerated BDR Acquisition Model via SV Academy
subgraph Training["SV Academy Bootcamp"]
A["Career Switchers / Non-Sales Talent"] --> B["Rigorous Training in Cold Calling & Objection Handling"]
end
subgraph Evaluation["3-Month Risk-Free Trial"]
B --> C["Embedded in In-House Marketing Team"]
C --> D["Immediate Pipeline Impact<br/>(Demos Booked in Week 1)"]
end
subgraph Onboarding["Permanent Hire"]
D --> E["Seamless Conversion to Full-Time<br/>(No Finder's / Recruitment Fee)"]
end
```
- Candidates complete intensive boot camps on cold calling, outbound workflows, and objection handling before ever stepping through the company's door.
- Hires remain employed through SV Academy for their first three months while working directly for the company, eliminating upfront recruiter fees and lowering hiring risk.
- New hires achieve immediate business impact, with one recent recruit booking customer product demos during her very first week on the job.
Christy Borrowman adds that Colgate-Palmolive leans heavily into internal mobility and upskilling, identifying early adopters and curious employees across the existing organization to train and augment their capabilities.
Turning to analytics and performance attribution, the discussion examines how traditional marketing metrics must evolve alongside AI integration. Christy Borrowman highlights that standard measurement historically relied on retroactive assessments—such as Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) evaluated over quarterly, annual, or three-year lookback windows. While baseline econometric modeling remains necessary, modern marketing demands real-time or near-real-time feedback loops to guide automated campaign optimization, content velocity, and hyper-personalization at scale.
Borrowman cautions that reliance on conventional metrics like click-through rates and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) fails to measure modern brand presence accurately. Marketers must move away from retrospective autopsies and prioritize forward-looking predictive metrics. She candidly points out the awkward realities of executive-level perceptions:
> "It can't be your division president sitting in the room saying, 'Well, I used ChatGPT and the best toothpaste is not coming up as us.' We need to get a lot better at the realities of what it takes to get there. But the future of measurement is absolutely much more, in my opinion, proactive versus the reactive."
---
[31:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1874s) Communicating ROI to Leadership: Leading Indicators vs. Board-Level Reality
Addressing how marketing leaders articulate AI value to executive teams and boards of directors, Kathleen Booth outlines the fiscal realities facing venture-backed companies. The venture capital landscape has undergone a dramatic correction, shifting away from unconstrained "growth at all costs" toward disciplined capital allocation and demonstrable return on investment. Marketing leadership must strictly justify every software expense and internal hour allocated toward AI initiatives.
To bridge this operational gap, Booth categorizes AI measurement into leading and lagging indicators:
- **Leading Indicators**: Productivity enhancements and task efficiencies within the workflow. For instance, Sequel.io dogfoods its own automated event platform, cutting the execution time required to produce a webinar by approximately 80%.
- **Lagging Indicators**: Revenue-oriented business outcomes that directly affect valuation and company stability.
While internal teams celebrate dramatic time savings and reduced production effort, Booth stresses that executive boards and investors remain indifferent to operational time savings on their own unless those efficiencies directly translate into pipeline velocity and revenue results.
[32:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1958s) Metrics That Matter to the Board: ARR Per Employee and Real Business Impact
The discussion focuses on how venture-backed SaaS companies evaluate AI-driven efficiency. Rather than tracking internal leading indicators alone, boards and executive leadership are zeroing in on high-level efficiency metrics. Specifically, Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) per employee has become a central benchmark in boardrooms. Investors look at AI-native tech companies like Cursor and Lovable and expect similar leverage across their portfolio companies, regardless of legacy differences.
Marketing leaders must translate these high-level expectations down to actionable, departmental metrics. This includes tracking revenue productivity per individual sales rep and analyzing ROI by channel—evaluating how teams scale revenue generation without needing a proportional increase in headcount or marketing spend. While attribution models are becoming significantly more complex, marketing leaders are advised to keep technical leading indicators internal and present concrete business impact directly to CEOs and boards.
- **Key Board Metric:** ARR per employee, driven by benchmark comparisons to hyper-efficient AI-native software startups (such as Cursor and Lovable).
- **Sub-Tier Efficiency Indicators:** Revenue generated per sales representative and channel-specific ROI scaling disproportionately to spend.
- **Reporting Strategy:** Track granular attribution and operational leading indicators internally, but present macro-level business impact metrics to executive leadership.
---
[33:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2025s) The Future of Marketing: Preserving the "Soul" and Brand as the Ultimate Arbitrage
Looking ahead three years, the panel reflects on what marketing practices will diminish in value and what will become essential. Christy Borrowman highlights a quote from Rebecca at Glean: *"Don't automate the soul out of work."* She emphasizes that even with extensive AI implementation, the core mandate remains building brands that consumers genuinely fall in love with. The goal is to automate and scale mundane, repetitive tasks—what Borrowman terms "the crappy stuff"—so humans in the loop can focus on meaningful, differentiated brand storytelling and scientific product superiority.
subgraph HumanCore["Human-Driven Core (True Arbitrage)"]
D["Brand Authenticity & Soul"]
E["Emotional Consumer Loyalty"]
F["Creative Strategy (Mad Men Era)"]
end
Automation -->|Frees up capacity for| HumanCore
```
Onney Crawley draws a parallel to past technological leaps, noting that just as people do not refer to "electricity-powered refrigerators" or "internet-powered banking," AI will soon transition from a novelty buzzword into baseline infrastructure. Kathleen Booth adds that marketing has fundamentally been an arbitrage game focused on finding competitive edges. While the past decade emphasized technological arbitrage through automation and speed, ubiquitous AI access turns those tools into table stakes. Consequently, brand identity becomes the primary defensible moat that AI cannot replicate, heralding a return to classic, "Mad Men era" strategic marketing principles.
- **Baseline Utility:** AI will become an invisible utility layer across organizations, shifting the competitive focus away from tooling and back to execution.
- **Brand as Arbitrage:** Technological speed and personalization become commoditized table stakes; human-crafted brand positioning and customer love become the primary competitive differentiators.
- **Preserving Core Values:** Automating low-value operational tasks enables marketers to focus on product differentiation and emotional consumer engagement.
---
[37:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2263s) Quick-Fire: Reclaiming 10 Hours a Week for Strategy, Dialogue, and Rest
The panel members share how they would spend 10 reclaimed hours per week if AI automated their routine tasks:
- **Monica Ho:** Focuses product marketing teams on real-time competitive battlegrounds and strategic execution rather than administrative pipeline tasks.
- **Onney Crawley:** Devotes time to direct conversations with on-the-ground stakeholders—specifically connecting with 150 local Goodwill member CEOs to gather grassroots operational insights that shape national marketing campaigns.
- **Christy Borrowman:** Advocates for mental space, rest, and exploration—suggesting "hot baths" and personal innovation time to combat industry burnout and foster organic creativity.
- **Kathleen Booth:** Splits the time 50/50 between hands-on experimentation with emerging AI tools and conducting in-depth qualitative discovery calls with buyers to understand their pain points.
---
[40:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2416s) Audience Q&A: Resolving Data Fragmentation and Implementing Vector Search
An audience member asks about maintaining data quality and completeness when using AI, without sacrificing reliability. Christy Borrowman acknowledges that while companies apply taxonomies and skimming layers, much of the data preparation remains manual, creating an urgent need for automated pipelines. Monica Ho highlights how local market intelligence platforms ingest and smooth fragmented data signals to achieve statistical significance.
A follow-up question from Matt at Poff Labs asks Kathleen Booth how to manage conflicting cross-platform records (such as discrepancies between CRM notes and Customer Data Platforms) and unstructured customer feedback. Booth explains that their internal Slack-based company brain displays its confidence probability directly in its answers and flags when data is ambiguous, allowing human operators to intervene. Additionally, Booth utilizes Supabase integrated with vector search—a concept she covers in her Substack newsletter, *Code Meets Creed*—to search customer insights by contextual semantic meaning rather than relying solely on rigid, exact-word database queries.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Internal AI Knowledge Retrieval Architecture
subgraph DataLayer["Storage & Indexing"]
A["Unstructured Customer Data"] --> B["Supabase Database"]
B --> C["Vector Search Index (Semantic Meaning)"]
end
subgraph InterfaceLayer["Human-in-the-Loop Interaction"]
C --> D["Slack Interface / Company Brain"]
D --> E["Confidence Score & Probability Output"]
E --> F["Human Operator Review & Correction"]
end
```
- **Slack-Based Interaction:** The internal AI brain operates transparently in Slack, providing confidence scores and flagging ambiguous records for human team review.
- **Vector Search vs. Keyword Matching:** Using Supabase with vector search layers allows teams to query unstructured qualitative feedback by semantic context rather than exact phrase matches.
- **Data Signal Smoothing:** High-volume signal aggregation helps bridge gaps in fragmented local business records.
[043:36] Aligning Customer Voice with the "Brand Brain" and Session Wrap-up
The discussion concludes with a final emphasis on grounding AI-driven messaging in a well-defined brand identity. While customer feedback and direct user quotes are undeniably "gold" for marketing efforts, the brand must ensure that outside input aligns with its core narrative. At the end of the day, the company is still responsible for telling its own story. Therefore, any marketing automation or generative pipeline must continually reference back to the central "brand brain" to establish what the company actually wants to communicate and how to prioritize key messages—an integration that can be connected quite easily.
With the conversation wrapping up, the session concludes as the panel runs over time, ending with warm thanks to the audience and participants for attending.
- **Brand alignment**: AI tools and customer insights must continually point back to the central "brand brain" to maintain narrative consistency and messaging priority.
- **Session closing**: The panel officially concludes, thanking the attendees and panelists for their time.
## Notable quotes
> [05:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=348s) Thank you TikTok, I now need to produce 10,000 pieces of content a month — Christy Borrowman
> [14:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=880s) The upfront lift on building actual AI workflow and modules, it's real... you think it's so simple, you're like, 'Oh, I'm just going to prompt this. I'm going to feed it a couple of things and then I'm going to get what I need out of it.' And you would be surprised. You don't get what you thought out of it. — Monica Ho
> [17:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1076s) Knowing that we wanted to bring in more AI capability, more AI learning, we had to sort of clean up our structure first because otherwise what's going to happen is we're doing the wrong thing... and you're going to bring in AI and just do that all better. — Onney Crawley
> [21:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1315s) I have marketers today who spend time putting in the same copy point in a DAM, a PIM, a binder, a creative asset packaging claim. It's all the same. And they're spending time doing that repeatedly because it's 35 different systems... let's get out of the crappy work and let AI do that. — Christy Borrowman
> [29:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1741s) It can't be your division president sitting in the room saying, 'Well, I used ChatGPT and the best toothpaste is not coming up as us.' We need to get a lot better at the realities of what it takes to get there. But the future of measurement is absolutely much more, in my opinion, proactive versus the reactive. — Christy Borrowman
> [33:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2025s) Don't automate the soul out of work. — Christy Borrowman
## Mentioned
Marjorie McCarthy, Monica Ho, Onney Crawley, Christy Borrowman, Kathleen Booth, ISS North America, Goodwill Industries International, Colgate-Palmolive, Sequel.io, SOCi, Ford Motor Company, Ace Hardware, Jersey Mike's, Datadog, Clay, Morningstar, Pavilion, TikTok, Cerebro, Slack, Intercom, ChatGPT, Claude, SV Academy, Cursor, Lovable, Glean, Poff Labs, Supabase, Code Meets Creed
## Video description
Marjorie McCarthy — Chief Marketing Officer, ISS North America
Onney Crawley — Chief Marketing Officer, Goodwill Industries International
Christy Borrowman — VP of Marketing & Transformation, Colgate-Palmolive
Kathleen Booth — VP Marketing, Sequel.io
Monica Ho — Chief Marketing Officer, SOCi
AI is enabling marketing teams to do more with less—faster. This panel features leaders who are using AI to automate creative generation, tailor campaigns, and boost conversion rates with data-driven precision. We’ll explore how AI is changing the economics of customer acquisition and reshaping go-to-market strategies. You’ll also hear insights on managing data privacy, attribution challenges, and brand authenticity in a world of synthetic content.
Enterprise marketing leaders argue that while agentic AI drastically compresses operational cycles and democratizes organizational knowledge, sustainable advantage relies on rigorous workflow restructuring and distinct brand positioning. As technological speed becomes commoditized table stakes and boards benchmark efficiency by revenue per employee, authentic human storytelling and brand governance serve as the primary defensible moats.
Data Architecture and Centralized Enterprise Knowledge (11:14)
Panelists agree that effective AI deployment requires clean data taxonomy and integrated endpoints. Kathleen Booth detailed Sequel.io’s internal system, 'Cerebro,' which connects CRM data, product telemetry, call recordings, Intercom chats, and documentation into a Slack-based interface. Using Supabase and vector search for semantic retrieval alongside recursive CTO corrections, the system surfaces hidden tribal knowledge and assists customer support in real time. Monica Ho of SOCi cautioned, however, that integrating sparse or incomplete external datasets into internal systems creates acute risks of AI hallucinations.
At Goodwill Industries International, Onney Crawley described an enterprise audit across 150 autonomous local organizations to standardize schema, backlinks, and citations. This unified data baseline addresses the industry shift from traditional search engine optimization (SEO) to answer engine optimization (AEO), ensuring generative AI search engines cite credible corporate facts rather than bypassing contradictory or unverified local websites.
Compressing Operational Cycles and Workflow Hygiene (14:40)
As software engineering velocity accelerated with AI, marketing emerged as the organizational bottleneck. Monica Ho noted that SOCi compressed its go-to-market enablement and collateral production cycles from 8–12 weeks down to 1–2 weeks by deploying specialized AI modules. However, Ho stressed that production-grade outputs require months of prompt engineering, workflow structuring, and human validation rather than naive, raw prompting.
Technology integration must follow structural refinement rather than precede it. Onney Crawley emphasized that Goodwill audited departmental priorities and eliminated friction prior to tool adoption, warning that automating disordered processes merely accelerates inefficiency. Similarly, Christy Borrowman highlighted Colgate-Palmolive's focus on eliminating low-value mechanical repetition—such as marketers manually copying identical product claims across 35 disparate systems including digital asset management (DAM) and product information management (PIM) platforms.
Talent Reallocation and AI-Native Hiring Standards (24:04)
Marketing roles are shifting from manual content execution to AI agent architecture, prompt fine-tuning, and output supervision. Monica Ho noted that SOCi evaluates candidates on their direct experimentation with frontier models like ChatGPT and Claude to build automated workflows. Concurrently, Onney Crawley identified a generational split among junior applicants: traditional graduates who viewed AI assistance as cheating versus AI-native interns who rapidly outperformed senior peers on tactical output.
To compress onboarding timelines for revenue-generating roles, Kathleen Booth outlined Sequel.io's partnership with SV Academy to hire pre-trained Business Development Representatives (BDRs). Candidates complete cold-calling and objection-handling bootcamps and undergo a three-month trial embedded in the marketing team without upfront recruiter fees, allowing new hires to book sales demonstrations within their first week.
Measuring Performance Through Real-Time Efficiency and ARR (32:38)
Traditional retrospective analytics, such as quarterly Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) or click-through rates, are insufficient for automated campaigns operating at high velocity. Christy Borrowman urged a shift toward real-time predictive feedback loops, cautioning against anecdotal executive evaluations based on informal ChatGPT queries.
In venture-backed environments, Kathleen Booth differentiated between internal leading indicators and board-level lagging indicators. While internal teams benefit from operational efficiencies—such as Sequel.io reducing webinar production time by roughly 80%—executive boards prioritize macro-level capital discipline. Facing valuation benchmarks set by lean AI startups like Cursor and Lovable, boards increasingly evaluate marketing performance through Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) per employee and revenue productivity per sales representative.
Brand Soul as the Core Defensible Moat (33:45)
As access to generative tools universalizes content volume and speed, panelists maintain that brand identity becomes the ultimate commercial differentiator. Christy Borrowman cited Glean's principle—'Don't automate the soul out of work'—advocating that automating administrative busywork frees human practitioners to focus on emotional resonance and product differentiation.
Onney Crawley and Kathleen Booth argued that marketing is experiencing a return to strategic brandcraft reminiscent of the 'Mad Men era.' To combat an influx of generic AI-generated content across digital platforms, organizations must ground automated external messaging in a centralized, human-directed 'brand brain' that aligns customer feedback with the company's core strategic narrative.
The panel concludes that as AI transitions from a novel differentiator into standard operational utility, marketing success will depend on disciplined data foundations and distinct brand positioning rather than tool adoption alone. However, enterprise leaders continue to grapple with the manual burden of data preparation pipelines, persistent cross-platform data conflicts, and the challenge of proving that operational time savings directly expand top-line revenue.
## Background
本内容由 Ai4 于 2026 年 8 月 22 日发布在 YouTube 平台上。视频记录了一场题为“精明扩张:AI 如何驱动营销效率与精准度”的圆桌研讨会,汇集了来自 ISS、Goodwill、高露洁-棕榈、Sequel.io 及 SOCi 的营销高管,共同探讨 AI 在创意自动化、上市周期压缩、数据治理及品牌真实性等维度的重构与实践。
## TL;DR
本场研讨会深入剖析了 AI 时代营销团队如何实现从执行者向系统架构师的范式转型。嘉宾们分享了通过构建“企业大脑”整合全渠道数据、将 GTM 周期从数月压缩至两周、以及应对零点击搜索(AEO)的实战案例。讨论还指出,随着技术红利逐渐成为行业标配,企业需从滞后归因转向即时预测,并最终回归以人为本、情感共鸣驱动的经典“品牌套利”护城河。
## Atmosphere & style
整场研讨会节奏紧凑、干货密集,洋溢着务实与清醒兼备的行业探索氛围。主持人的提问直击业务痛点,台上的资深 CMO 与高管们既毫无保留地分享了自建智能体与工作流的前沿战果,又毫不避讳地指出了大模型幻觉、繁琐低效系统以及过度生成内容带来的现实挑战。现场互动真诚而热烈,在严谨的技术拆解与生动的业务案例碰撞中,勾勒出营销人面对 AI 变革时的从容与笃定。
## Key takeaways
- [05:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=348s) 数据基建与内容分发是 AI 赋能营销的核心支柱,AI 打破了人力产能天花板,使月产数万条短视频及全渠道智能分发成为可能。
- [11:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=674s) 通过构建“企业大脑”(如 Cerebro)打通 CRM 与通话录音等非结构化隐性知识,并通过递归学习实现自我纠错与知识库迭代。
- [09:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=560s) 告别静态且昂贵的传统用户画像,利用实时市场信号动态适应消费者,同时严密把控数据输入以防止模型幻觉风险。
- [14:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=880s) 重构 GTM 入市流程:经过深度的 AI 工作流微调与模块化重塑,全新产品的上市周期可从 8–12 周压缩至 1–2 周。
- [16:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=970s) 从 SEO 向 AEO(答案引擎优化)演进,企业需统一并净化底层 Schema 结构化数据与 Q&A 库,争夺 AI 零点击搜索摘要的权威引用。
- [17:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1076s) 营销团队角色发生重构,专业人才从耗时的具体执行者,转型为配置 AI 工作流、训练智能体、制定交付标准与纠偏的复合型专家。
- [21:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1315s) AI 旨在将营销人员从跨多系统复制粘贴的繁琐杂务中解放出来,促使团队专注于不可替代的“品牌灵魂”与情感共鸣叙事。
- [24:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1444s) 人才招募打破对传统工作年限的依赖,更加注重候选人的 AI 原生思维、实战构建产出以及跨行业快速见效的能力。
- [29:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1741s) 营销评估体系从滞后性的事后归因(如传统 MMM 模型)转向近实时监控与前瞻预测(Predictive Optimization)。
- [31:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1876s) 向管理层及董事会汇报时应区分过程指标与商业结果,资本市场关注的核心在于“人均 ARR”、管线规模与实际营收增长。
- [33:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2025s) 当 AI 效率工具普及成为行业标配(Table Stakes)后技术套利红利将消失,营销将回归经典法则,以“品牌本身”作为核心套利支点。
- [40:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2424s) 借助向量检索(Vector Search)捕捉碎片化反馈的深层语境,并依托“品牌大脑”校准发声,确保对外传播与品牌战略定位严格一致。
## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=4s) 圆桌开场与重磅嘉宾阵容介绍
主持人、ISS 北美区首席营销官 Marjorie McCarthy 热情开场,感谢与会者一早赶来参加本次以“精明扩张(Scaling Smart)”为主题的研讨会。Marjorie 简要介绍了 ISS——一家拥有逾 32 万名员工、业务遍及全球近 60 个国家的工作场所体验与设施管理巨头,并随即将话筒交给台上的四位资深营销负责人进行自我介绍:
- **Monica Ho(SOCi 首席营销官)**:Monica 介绍 SOCi 是一家专为拥有成百上千家分支机构或门店的多网点品牌(如 Ford、Ace Hardware、Jersey Mike’s)量身打造的 Agentic AI(智能体)营销平台。其核心是通过经过本地品牌训练的智能体,自动处理本地化评价回复、本地页面优化等繁重工作,以帮助品牌在传统搜索、社媒以及新兴的 AI 搜索中抢占先机。在掌舵营销的八年里,她正带领团队践行智能体 AI 颠覆传统营销流程的承诺。
- **Onney Crawley(Goodwill Industries International 首席营销官)**:Onney 以一句“现场有多少人喜欢淘二手货(thrifting)?”开场,引发台下热烈共鸣。她指出 Goodwill 拥有由 150 个深植本地社区的独立机构组成的联邦制架构。大众熟知其二手门店和捐赠网络,但鲜少了解其本质是将销售收入转化为免费的本地就业培训与职业支持服务。面对各自为政的联邦机构,Onney 的核心职责是在讲好职场赋能故事、吸引捐赠与客流的同时,确保 150 个组织以“同一个品牌”协同发声,而 AI 正在这一进程中起到加速与聚合的关键作用。
- **Christy Borrowman(高露洁-棕榈 Colgate-Palmolive 营销与转型副总裁)**:在高露洁深耕 11 年的 Christy,职业生涯始终围绕数字化、数据与媒体转型展开,并于近期刚履新营销部门旗下的“AI 转型”新职位。她专注于打通全链路端到端流程,探索大型快消品牌未来的营销形态,并结合自己在广告代理商及与开发团队紧密协作的丰富经验推动落地。
- **Kathleen Booth(Sequel.io 营销副总裁)**:Kathleen 介绍 Sequel 最初是业界首个能够直接无缝内嵌至企业官网的研讨会平台,如今正蜕变为一个 Agentic Go-to-Market(智能体市场进入)平台。平台通过采集研讨会全生命周期与官网浏览深度融合的第一方行为数据,在联系人与账户级别进行动态评分,赋能 Datadog、Clay、Morningstar 等客户。作为多所初创和早期成长型企业的营销操盘手,Kathleen 当前的核心目标是打破“团队人头必须与营收成正比增长”的传统定律,在坚持“以人为本(human-first)”和品牌价值的前提下,以 AI 原生(AI-native)模式撬动业务规模化扩张。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Panelist Backgrounds and Focus Areas
subgraph Panelists["圆桌嘉宾与业务核心领域"]
direction TB
M["Monica Ho / SOCi<br/>多网点 Agentic AI 本地营销"]
O["Onney Crawley / Goodwill<br/>联邦制组织品牌统一与公益叙事"]
C["Christy Borrowman / 高露洁<br/>快消巨头的端到端 AI 转型"]
K["Kathleen Booth / Sequel.io<br/>精简人效与智能 GTM 数据平台"]
end
```
---
### [05:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=348s) 宏观视角:当前 AI 为营销带来的最大竞争优势
Marjorie 抛出第一个宏观层面的核心议题:“在当下这一刻,大家认为 AI 为营销带来的最大竞争优势究竟在哪里?”几位嘉宾不约而同地将核心聚焦于“数据”与“内容分发”,但从各自不同的商业维度进行了深刻剖析:
Christy Borrowman 首发发言,指出优势体现于两点:其一是**数据基建**。若企业自身的数据底座不够扎实、分类学(Taxonomy)混乱、链路没有打通,AI 便无法发挥增效作用;只有理顺数据结构,AI 才能让更多业务人员轻松调取并利用核心数据。其二是**内容生产的规模与速度**。Christy 半开玩笑地感叹道:“感谢 TikTok,我现在每个月需要生产 10,000 条内容。”面对如此庞大的吞吐量,任何规模的团队单靠人工都不可能实现,AI 在内容扩量上带来了质的飞跃。
Kathleen Booth 对此表示完全共鸣,并补充了两个关键切入点:
1. **沉淀企业隐性知识(Tribal Knowledge)**:以往企业中最宝贵的行业认知与口头沟通(例如销售与客户的通话录音)极易流失。Sequel 最近构建了“企业大脑(Company Brain)”,不仅汇聚 GTM 系统数据,更将通话记录等非结构化口语资产全部向量化,使原本散落的信息首次成为可全员检索利用的竞争壁垒。
2. **重塑内容分发杠杆**:Kathleen 曾在拥有上万名 GTM 高管的全球社群 Pavilion 担任营销负责人,她观察到绝大多数营销团队的通病在于“把 90% 的精力花在内容制作上,却只有极少精力用于分发推广”。AI 首次让营销人员能够低成本将优质内容自动重构、全渠道精准宣发,真正打破了“重生产、轻分发”的恶性循环。
Onney Crawley 进一步从大型组织管理与消费者洞察的角度切入。她指出,传统调研成果往往被束之高阁,而 AI 推动了数据的“平民化”,让去中心化组织里的每个人都能基于同一事实基准迅速做决策。更重要的是**实时动态适应消费者**。以往花大价钱做的受众细分报告往往几个月就脱节过时,而 AI 赋予了品牌与消费者行为同步进化、实时微调精准定向与互动策略的能力。
Monica Ho 则从多门店本地化营销的独特视角发出洞见与警示:企业自有数据固然重要,但视野往往受限。SOCi 的做法是将企业私有数据与实时的本地市场信号(如各地区用户搜索习惯的差异、对具体门店评价的好恶、当地竞对动态)进行深度匹配融合。同时,Monica 提出了一个冷静的行业警示:不要盲目跟风接入各类系统接口或搭建不成熟的应用;如果输入给 AI 的数据不完整、颗粒度不足,极易引发模型“幻觉(hallucination)”,给品牌带来不可控风险。
- **内容吞吐需求爆发**:以 TikTok 等短视频为代表的新媒体矩阵催生了每月数以万计的创意素材需求,AI 成为打破人力产能天花板的唯一路径。
- **打通暗数据与隐性认知**:通过公司大脑(Company Brain)整合 CRM 与通话录音,把原本沉睡的非结构化销售/服务洞察转化为生产力。
- **告别静态用户画像**:用实时动态的数据学习替代昂贵且易过时的年度消费者调研。
- **警惕劣质数据喂养**:调用外部平台或构建智能体时,必须严把数据完整度,防止底层数据污染导致大模型幻觉。
---
### [10:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=647s) 落地实战:从宏观到具体的 AI 营销战术探索
在结束了宏观维度的探讨后,Marjorie 将讨论引向实操层面,希望嘉宾分享各自团队近期发现或正在推进落地的具体 AI 应用战术。Kathleen Booth 率先接管话题,准备深入拆解 Sequel.io 刚刚完成的内部实践……
### [11:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=674s) 打造企业级“大脑” Cerebro:全源数据整合与 Slack 递归学习
Kathleen Booth 兴奋地分享了她在公司最近一次团建黑客松(Hackathon)中的成果。作为一名《X战警》(X-Men)的忠实粉丝,她与团队受漫画中能定位全球变种人的超级计算机“脑波强化机”(Cerebro)启发,为公司打造了一个名为 Cerebro 的“企业超级大脑”。团队梳理并接入了公司内部几乎所有的数据源,包括客户关系管理系统(CRM)、营销自动化工具、产品使用分析平台、客户支持系统、销售与客户成功团队跨两个平台的通话录音、项目管理系统,乃至内部 HR 文档。系统的交互前端直接集成在 Slack 中,员工无论是在公共的 Cerebro 频道还是通过私信均可直接向其提问。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Cerebro 企业智能大脑系统架构
subgraph DataSources["多源企业数据接入"]
D1["CRM 与营销自动化"]
D2["产品使用与客户支持 (Intercom)"]
D3["销售与 CS 通话录音 (多平台)"]
D4["项目管理与 HR 文档"]
end
subgraph CoreEngine["Cerebro 核心引擎"]
C1["跨数据源上下文关联分析"]
C2["递归学习与知识库记忆回写"]
end
subgraph SlackFrontEnd["Slack 交互与应用场景"]
S1["市场营销:客户高频词汇与竞品定位"]
S2["实时客服:通话中即时调取精准解答"]
S3["管理闭环:CTO 等高管介入纠错调优"]
end
D1 --> C1
D2 --> C1
D3 --> C1
D4 --> C1
C1 --> S1
C1 --> S2
S3 -- "修正错误回答" --> C2
C2 -- "持续学习进化" --> C1
```
Cerebro 展现出了打通孤岛数据的上下文整合能力。Kathleen 尝试让其分析“客户在真实对话中如何描述我们的产品”,系统瞬间遍历了 CRM 记录、两套通话录音系统及 Intercom 聊天记录,直接生成了客户提及频率最高的词汇与短语排行榜——对营销人员而言这堪称“文案金矿”。此外,它还能直接产出成败单分析(Win/Loss Analysis)以及针对竞品的差异化优势洞察。更令团队惊喜的是,客户成功(CS)团队甚至开始用它替代传统的知识库检索:在与客户进行支持通话时,客服在 Slack 线程中输入问题,Cerebro 便结合全部帮助文档与历史支持记录秒级给出详尽答案。当遇到不完整或错误的回答时,CTO 等技术专家会直接在线程中指正,系统通过“递归学习”(Recursive Learning)将修正内容回写至记忆库,实现每一次纠错后的自我迭代。
- **接入全量企业数据**:整合 CRM、产品用量数据、客服工单、项目文档、跨平台销售/CS 通话录音及 HR 知识库。
- **营销赋能案例**:自动提炼客户真实用语词频榜、竞品对比分析、成单/丢单核心驱动因素。
- **递归学习机制**:专家在 Slack 线程内实时纠偏,AI 自动更新知识记忆,彻底规避企业大模型常见的事实性幻觉累积风险。
---
### [14:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=880s) 破解 GTM 瓶颈:SOCi 如何将产品上市周期从 12 周压缩至 2 周
Monica Ho 聚焦于科技企业面临的严峻现实:随着研发团队借助 AI 极速提升产品发布与功能迭代的节奏,营销团队反而沦为了业务推进的瓶颈。在传统流程中,针对全新产品的市场推进入市(Go-to-Market, GTM)通常需要 8 到 12 周的时间,涵盖产品营销(PMM)、销售赋能培训(Enablement)以及各类核心内容的撰写与制作。为了破局,SOCi 团队决定将大量赋能与内容生产流程重构为标准化 AI 模块与自动化工作流。
Monica 直言,搭建实用的企业级 AI 工作流绝非简单的“写几句 Prompt 提示词再喂点材料”那么轻巧,团队实际投入了数月时间进行深度微调与工作流搭建。这种前期的大量投入带来了跨越式的效率红利:目前 SOCi 的整体 GTM 周期已经从原本的 8 至 12 周大幅缩短至 1 至 2 周。她特别强调,AI 不是一劳永逸的黑盒,前期必须愿意投入时间调优,并在实际运行中始终保持人类专家的监督与审核。
- **GTM 周期大幅缩短**:全新产品与功能的入市筹备时间由 8–12 周压缩至 1–2 周。
- **工具链重构认知**:打破“简单 Prompt 即可解决复杂业务”的误区,构建模块化 AI 工作流需要数月的精细化工程与微调。
- **人机协同原则**:前端自动化提效的同时,必须保留人类专业视角进行把关(Human Oversight)。
---
### [16:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=970s) 从 SEO 到 AEO:Goodwill 统一 150 个独立站点的品牌“真实数据源”
Onney Crawley 介绍了 Goodwill 在数字化与搜索转型中的巨大挑战。Goodwill 旗下拥有 150 个独立运营的成员机构,对应着 150 个独立的官方网站。在搜索技术由传统基于链接排名的搜索引擎优化(SEO)向由 AI 生成摘要驱动的“答案引擎优化”(Answer Engine Optimization, AEO)演进的当下,用户往往不再点击跳转到具体网页,而是直接消费 AI 总结的答案。然而,由于 150 个站点之间存在大量相互矛盾、缺乏佐证且未标准化的分散内容,AI 引擎在抓取时会判定其不可信而直接放弃引用,导致品牌在 AI 搜索环境中严重失声。
为了夺回品牌在 AI 时代的信息主导权,Goodwill 启动了一项庞大的数字工程。团队正在对所有 150 个站点进行全量扫描与爬取,系统性重构网页结构化数据(Schema)、外链结构、问答库(Q&A)以及内容底层设置,旨在将混乱的内容净化为高度一致、经过清洗的官方权威数据源。这不仅能确保用户无论在何地搜索任何一家 Goodwill 门店都能获得准确信息,也是正面回击长期以来围绕 Goodwill 品牌的各类谣言与误导性言论的关键战略举措。
- **网络规模与离散挑战**:全美 150 家独立分支网络拥有 150 个独立站点,内容冲突与数据割裂严重。
- **SEO 向 AEO 演进**:顺应零点击(Zero-Click)搜索趋势,确保品牌核心事实能被 AI 检索生成模型正确引用与沉淀。
- **数据净化与重构**:统一 Schema 结构化数据、重构 Q&A 问答生态,以单一权威事实源重塑品牌公信力与信任度。
---
### [17:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1076s) AI 时代的组织重构:从具体执行者转向 AI 工作流训练师与调优专家
面对“在 AI 时代如何构建内部团队与外部代理商矩阵”这一让许多高管彻夜难眠的课题,Onney 与 Monica 分享了各自的组织变革实践。Onney 透露,Goodwill 营销部门在过去一年中完成了战略重组。她清醒地指出,在引入 AI 之前必须先梳理并修复内部原本低效或错误的运作流程;否则,直接将 AI 接入有缺陷的流程中只会导致“以更快的速度做错误的事”。在精简低效事项并明确核心业务优先级后,Goodwill 专门设立并正在招聘一个全新高阶岗位——“高级发展总监”(Senior Director of Advancement),该角色需具备深厚数字生态视野,专门负责用 AI 视角审视与改造部门的组织架构与业务系统。
Monica 则深入剖析了营销专家的角色演化。她认为,AI 工作流、智能体(Agents)以及底层平台的训练和搭建必须依赖具有深厚专业知识的业务专家,AI 本身无法凭空自我构建。但在未来,团队并不需要过去那么庞大规模的“纯执行型专家”。以往擅长 SEO 或 B2B 渠道营销的专家往往要将大部分精力耗费在繁琐的日常执行上,而现在这些执行环节已完全被 AI 智能体自动化接管。
```markdown
| 维度 | 传统营销团队角色 | AI 时代新型营销专家 |
|:--- |:--- |:--- |
| **工作重心** | 耗费大量时间进行手动文案、排版与渠道执行 | 搭建并配置 AI 业务工作流、引导智能体运作 |
| **专业价值** | 个人经验驱动的单一技能交付 | 制定高质量交付标准、识别并剔除 AI 幻觉 |
| **核心能力要求** | 传统 B2B 营销战术与流程熟练度 | 具备 AI 敏锐度,深度理解技术并善于精细化微调 |
| **工具使用习惯** | 传统营销 SaaS 与手动办公软件 | 熟练协同 ChatGPT、Claude 等 AI 工具的主动创新者 |
```
Monica 表示,SOCi 并没有裁减团队编制,而是深刻改变了岗位职能模型。现在的营销专家核心任务是深度理解底层技术、精准界定高质量产出标准、进行模型与提示词微调,并敏锐识别潜在的 AI 幻觉与错误。在如今的招聘与内部晋升中,相较于只懂传统 B2B 营销的人选,她更青睐那些已经深度将 ChatGPT 或 Claude 等 AI 工具融入工作流程、具备主动创新与自动化思维的复合型人才。
### [21:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1315s) 品牌的灵魂与摆脱低效重复劳动
在探讨营销团队的核心能力时,Goodwill 首席营销官 Onney Crawley 强调,无论技术如何演变,以人为本的叙事能力始终是品牌的护城河。Goodwill 的核心使命是帮助人们改变生活,这种具有温度的真实故事几乎构成了品牌独有的专有资产。她直言目前职场社交网络(如 LinkedIn)上充斥着大量缺乏灵魂的同质化生成内容("this blop is sort of getting out of control"),因此营销人员必须具备敏锐的审美品味与判断力。AI 可以代劳繁杂的执行工作,但品牌的“灵魂”只能源于活生生的人;团队必须将精力集中在能让品牌展现鲜明观点的工作上,避免淹没在信息洪流之中。
高露洁-棕榄(Colgate-Palmolive)的营销与转型副总裁 Christy Borrowman 对此深表赞同,并生动指出了传统大企业内部极其痛苦的低效劳动现状:许多优秀营销人员每天花费海量时间,在数字资产管理系统(DAM)、产品信息系统(PIM)、演示文稿、创意素材与包装宣称等多达 35 个互不相通的独立系统中,机械地复制粘贴完全相同的文案。团队当前的目标正是构建智能协同系统来替代这些重复劳动,将专业人才的大脑从繁重无趣的琐事中解放出来("let's get out of the crappy work"),让他们重新专注于真正具有战略价值的品牌建设、情感共鸣与叙事创作。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: AI 人力解放与价值升维流程
accDescription: 展示营销人员如何从重复性系统录入转向高价值品牌叙事
subgraph LowValue ["低价值机械劳动 (由 AI 与系统自动化接管)"]
A["同一文案内容"] --> B["DAM / PIM 系统"]
A --> C["包装宣称与文档"]
A --> D["35+ 独立企业系统"]
end
subgraph HighValue ["高价值核心能力 (由专业营销人才主导)"]
E["品牌灵魂与核心叙事"]
F["敏锐的商业与创意判断力"]
G["以人为本的情感共鸣"]
end
LowValue -.->|"系统自动化解绑"| HighValue
```
---
### [24:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1444s) AI 时代的营销人才选拔与招聘思维转变
针对“企业是否正在改变营销人才招募策略”的问题,与会嘉宾分享了各自观察到的显著分化与策略调整。一方面,由于大量初级执行工作已被 AI 取代,传统招募刚毕业新人的路径一度受阻。而在重启实习与初级岗位后,团队发现应届生呈现两极分化:一部分年轻人心理上对 AI 产生排斥,误认为使用 AI 等同于“作弊”,需要管理者推着往前走;另一部分人则是 AI 原生代(AI-native),凭借对新工具的熟练驾驭,在工作效率和产出上甚至大幅超越资深员工。传统营销人员若固守过去 20 年的公关或传播旧套路,反而容易成为企业转型的包袱。因此,现在的招聘不再仅看垂直领域的履历年限,而是更加注重“思维范式”以及跨行业的借鉴能力。
Sequel.io 营销副总裁 Kathleen Booth 从实操层面提出了更苛刻的选拔标准:她不再满足于候选人口头上宣称“我喜欢使用 AI”,而是要求直接展示用 AI 亲手构建的具体成果(例如为自己求职量身定制的网站或互动问答 Bot)。此外,由于 Sequel.io 的业务拓展代表(BDR)团队直接向营销部汇报,并承担 100% 的销售线索管道(Pipeline)生成重任,初创公司在追求极致速度的压力下,根本无力花费大量时间从零培训无经验的新人。为此,她转向了创新的招聘孵化合作模式:
- **合作机构与模式**:与专注于职业转型培训的机构 SV Academy 合作,由其对零销售经验的跨行业候选人进行电访(Cold Calling)与异议处理等高强度实战集训。
- **无风险试用机制**:候选人前 3 个月挂靠在培训机构,企业支付薪资且无需招聘中介费;若考核达标即可直接转正入职。
- **快速见效(Time to Impact)**:新员工入职第一周即可直接预约客户演示(Booking Demos),极大缩短了人才产生业务价值的周期。
- **内部人才激活**:高露洁团队则侧重于从内部挖掘具有好奇心与拥抱新技术意愿的早期采用者(Early Adopters),通过全员培训提升存量人才技能。
---
### [29:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1741s) 从事后归因到前瞻预测:营销衡量的范式转移
在探讨数据与指标评估时,Christy Borrowman 指出传统营销衡量体系存在明显的“滞后性”(Retroactive)。行业长期依赖回顾性的营销组合模型(MMM),去分析 3 个月、1 年甚至 3 年前的营销表现与事后归因。然而,在 AI 赋能的当下,内容生成的高速度、高通量与高度个性化对评估机制提出了即时性要求,营销衡量正从“事后复盘”转向“近实时监控与前瞻预测”(Predictive Optimization)。
未来的评估体系需要先建立基准,并在活动投放过程中根据数据动态进行实时调优与策略转向。同时,营销人员必须摆脱对单纯点击率(Clicks)或传统广告投资回报率(ROAS)的机械式依赖。Christy 风趣地调侃了当下管理层常见的认知误区——高管们不能仅仅因为“自己在 ChatGPT 里提问,推荐的第一款牙膏不是我们品牌”就简单判定营销失败。营销团队必须建立更客观、更贴合当下消费者真实交互场景的全新度量衡。
| 评估维度 | 传统营销衡量模式 | AI 驱动的新型衡量模式 |
|:--- |:--- |:--- |
| **时间属性** | 滞后性、事后复盘(Retroactive) | 近实时、前瞻预测(Predictive / Real-time) |
| **典型工具与指标** | 季度/年度 MMM 模型、点击量、传统 ROAS | 动态基准监控、跨渠道即时优化、受众交互预测 |
| **执行机制** | 投放周期结束后复盘总结 | 活动投放过程中动态微调与资源倾斜 |
| **决策依据** | 历史投放归因报表 | 数据流驱动的动态决策与算法优化 |
---
### [31:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1876s) 应对高管与董事会:前置指标与最终投资回报
针对“如何向管理层与董事会汇报 AI 投资价值”的问题,Kathleen Booth 结合其风投支持企业(Venture-backed)的背景剖析了沟通策略。随着资本环境从以往不计代价狂热追求增长(Growth at all costs)转向重视合理 ROI 与精细化运营,任何在 AI 工具或时间上的投入都必须受到严苛的财务审视。在衡量 AI 价值时,她明确区分了“前置指标”(Leading Indicators)与“后置指标”(Lagging Indicators):
- **前置指标(Leading Indicators)**:关注团队工作流程的效率提升。例如 Sequel.io 在内部推行“吃自家狗粮”(Dogfooding),将自身产品的 AI 功能深度应用于网络研讨会(Webinar)流程中,成功减少了 80% 的执行耗时。
- **高管与董事会关注的现实**:Kathleen 直言,尽管节省 80% 运营时间的前置指标令执行团队倍感振奋,但董事会根本不在乎内部工时节省("the board does not care");管理层与投资人唯一关注的是这些效率提升是否最终转化为收入增长、成单转化与管线规模等硬性商业结果(后置指标)。
### [32:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1958s) 董事会视角下的关键指标:从先行指标转向商业产出
对于软件和 SaaS 企业而言,年度经常性收入(ARR)始终是最核心的度量标准。在董事会层面,投资人们日益关注一个关键指标——“每位员工对应的 ARR”(ARR per employee)。董事会看到像 Cursor 和 Lovable 这样极具代表性的 AI 原生企业展现出极高的人效,即便传统或转型中的软件企业并非这类原生公司,但同样作为风险投资支持的企业,资本必然要求团队展现出同等维度的生产力飞跃。
这种高维度的衡量可以逐级向下拆解至具体业务线:例如单兵销售的产出效率(单个销售代表能带来多少营收增长),或是各渠道的投资回报率(在维持或微增预算的情况下,如何非等比例地扩大渠道营收贡献)。尽管随着全渠道触点的复杂化,归因分析正变得愈发困难,但向高管层及董事会汇报时,必须清晰区分内部过程指标与外部商业结果。
- **过程指标 vs 最终结果**:团队内部应当密切追踪过程性的先行指标(Leading Indicators),但面对董事会与 CEO 时,应重点呈现能够直接体现商业影响的产出指标(Impact Measurements)。
- **人效基准的重塑**:AI 原生公司极高的人效正在重塑资本市场对 SaaS 公司的估值与效率期待,销售人均产能与渠道 ROI 成为核心关注点。
---
### [33:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2025s) 展望三年后:AI 对营销的深远重构与“品牌套利”的回归
讨论转向了对未来三年的前瞻:三年后回顾当下,AI 对营销影响最深远的将是什么?哪些工作会贬值,哪些又会变得更为宝贵?Christy Borrowman 引用了 Glean 公司 Rebecca 的一句话:“不要把工作的灵魂自动化掉”(Don't automate the soul out of work)。品牌建设的核心始终是让消费者建立情感认同、爱上品牌。如果把激发营销人员热情的核心工作完全剥离,品牌将失去灵魂与感知优势。AI 的使命应当是自动化与放大那些繁琐低效的杂务("crappy stuff"),从而让“人机协同”(Human-in-the-loop)重新聚焦在真正重要的实质性工作上。
Onney Crawley 与 Kathleen Booth 也表达了高度共鸣。Onney 指出,正如当年电力赋能冰箱、互联网赋能银行业一样,AI 将逐渐退去概念光环,成为像水电一样无处不在的基础工作方式,但驱动品牌忠诚与情感共鸣的实质工作依旧需要人类来完成。Kathleen 进一步从“套利”(Arbitrage)的视角剖析了营销演进史:过去十年营销人依靠技术、自动化、提速和个性化获取竞争优势,但当这些工具全面普及成为行业标配(Table Stakes)后,技术套利的红利将彻底消失。营销将迎来钟摆式回归——重返《广告狂人》(Mad Men)时代的经典法则,将“品牌本身”作为 AI 无法复制的核心套利支点。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 营销核心竞争优势的演进路径
subgraph Past["过去十年:技术驱动套利"]
T1["流程自动化与提速"]
T2["大规模个性化与工具红利"]
end
subgraph Present["当下转变:AI 成为行业基准(Table Stakes)"]
AI["AI 深度融入工作底层<br/>效率工具高度普及并拉平差距"]
end
subgraph Future["未来三年:回归经典品牌套利"]
B1["人类情感与品牌灵魂"]
B2["差异化感知与忠诚度构建"]
B3["《广告狂人》式的经典战略思维"]
end
Past --> Present
Present --> Future
```
---
### [37:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2263s) 快问快答:如果每周因 AI 节省 10 小时,你会做什么?
主持人向全场嘉宾抛出了一个快问快答问题:如果 AI 能够每周为你省下 10 个小时,你会把这些时间用在哪里?各位高管从不同的战略维度给出了回答:
- **聚焦实时竞争策略与真实营销**:摆脱日常琐碎任务后,产品营销(PMM)团队可以迅速响应市场动态,专注于当前正在发生的实时竞争打法与真正的市场战略。
- **深入一线倾听一线声音**:Goodwill 在全美有 150 个本土会员机构,CMO 希望将省下来的时间投入到与各地基层 CEO 的面对面交流中,深入了解一线挑战,从而制定更扎实的全国性战略。
- **给大脑留白与激发灵感**:在所有人都在为追赶 AI 学习曲线而疲惫不堪、焦虑过载的当下,营销团队需要空闲的时间(甚至“泡个热水澡”)来放松,重拾以往供员工自由探索灵感项目的机制,让真正的创意自然涌现。
- **五五开:一半探索工具,一半链接客户**:将 50% 的时间作为“AI 技术迷”去上手试玩每天层出不穷的新工具;另外 50% 的时间则全部花在与客户和买家深度交流上,挖掘他们真实的生活痛点与核心顾虑。
---
### [40:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2424s) 现场互动:数据清洗治理与构建企业“第二大脑”
在现场提问环节,观众针对实际落地中的数据与架构痛点向嘉宾发问。关于“如何利用 AI 在不牺牲质量的前提下补全数据缺口并保持完整性”,嘉宾坦言全行业仍在积极探索分类分层与自动清洗方案,核心在于避免“垃圾进、垃圾出”,同时在局部场景(如本地市场智能)中,可通过统计学显著维度的信号数据拟合来平滑噪声。
随后,来自 Poff Labs 的观众 Matt 追问 Kathleen:在构建企业大脑(Company Brain)时,若不同数据源(如 CRM 记录与 CDP/客户数据平台)发生冲突,或面对非结构化、非逐字一致的客户反馈碎片时,系统应如何可靠地提炼洞察?
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: 企业第二大脑数据处理与交互架构
subgraph Ingestion["底层数据与向量检索"]
Raw["碎片化非结构化数据 / CRM / 反馈"] --> SB["Supabase 数据库"]
SB --> Vec["Vector Search 语义向量检索<br/>(基于语义理解而非单纯字面匹配)"]
end
subgraph Output["交互与校验层"]
Vec --> Slack["Slack 交互界面<br/>(拟人化交互 / 事实问答)"]
Slack --> Conf["置信度反馈<br/>(展示百分比概率,不确定时主动提示)"]
Conf --> HITL["人工介入校正<br/>(Human-in-the-loop 纠错与微调)"]
end
```
Kathleen 结合自身实践分享了具体实现路径:
- **透明的交互与置信度反馈**:她们在 Slack 内部署了交互界面。该助手具备拟人化的表达风格,当遇到不确定的信息或冲突时,它会主动说明并给出置信度概率(Confidence Probability),团队成员可以随时在群聊中进行人工介入与校偏。
- **引入向量检索(Vector Search)捕捉语境**:Kathleen 在其个人 Substack 专栏《Code Meets Creed》中详细记录了这一转变。她将原始非结构化数据存储于 Supabase 中并叠加向量检索能力。与传统的文本精确匹配(Exact Word Match)不同,向量检索通过理解语义和深层含义来查询数据,能够极大地捕捉到碎片化客户反馈中的细微语境(Nuance)与上下文,成为构建可靠企业知识库的关键转折点。
### [43:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2616s) 依托“品牌大脑”校准发声与圆满结语
在探讨如何平衡用户声音与品牌定位时,讲者强调品牌必须清晰了解自身的内核与认知。虽然外界和用户的真实反馈弥足珍贵、堪称“真金白银”("what people say is gold"),但品牌最终仍需掌控并传达属于自己的故事。因此,任何对外传播都必须时刻回溯并引用核心的“品牌大脑”(brand brain),借此明确品牌真正想要表达的内容,并据此对各类信息与叙事进行优先级排序。将这些机制与 AI 系统紧密连接其实十分顺畅且易于实现。
随着这一核心观点的总结,主持人提醒讨论时间已到,圆满宣布本场圆桌研讨会结束,并向现场所有观众与嘉宾致以诚挚的感谢。
- **品牌大脑(Brand Brain)的核心作用**:无论收集到多少用户反馈与外部素材,输出内容都必须与品牌自身的定位、核心叙事和优先级保持对齐。
- **研讨会收尾**:嘉宾们在热烈的掌声与致谢中结束了关于 AI 如何驱动营销效率与精准度的全场分享。
## Notable quotes
> [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=4s) 现场有多少人喜欢淘二手货(thrifting)? — Onney Crawley
> [05:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=348s) 感谢 TikTok,我现在每个月需要生产 10,000 条内容。 — Christy Borrowman
> [21:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1315s) this blop is sort of getting out of control — Onney Crawley
> [21:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1315s) let's get out of the crappy work — Christy Borrowman
> [31:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=1876s) the board does not care — Kathleen Booth
> [33:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2025s) Don't automate the soul out of work — Christy Borrowman (quoting Rebecca from Glean)
> [43:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o&t=2616s) what people say is gold — Kathleen Booth
## Mentioned
Marjorie McCarthy, ISS North America, Monica Ho, SOCi, Ford, Ace Hardware, Jersey Mike's, Onney Crawley, Goodwill Industries International, Christy Borrowman, Colgate-Palmolive, Kathleen Booth, Sequel.io, Datadog, Clay, Morningstar, TikTok, Pavilion, Cerebro, Slack, Intercom, SV Academy, Cursor, Lovable, Glean, Mad Men, Matt, Poff Labs, Supabase, Code Meets Creed
## Video description
Marjorie McCarthy — Chief Marketing Officer, ISS North America
Onney Crawley — Chief Marketing Officer, Goodwill Industries International
Christy Borrowman — VP of Marketing & Transformation, Colgate-Palmolive
Kathleen Booth — VP Marketing, Sequel.io
Monica Ho — Chief Marketing Officer, SOCi
AI is enabling marketing teams to do more with less—faster. This panel features leaders who are using AI to automate creative generation, tailor campaigns, and boost conversion rates with data-driven precision. We’ll explore how AI is changing the economics of customer acquisition and reshaping go-to-market strategies. You’ll also hear insights on managing data privacy, attribution challenges, and brand authenticity in a world of synthetic content.
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZsG08Ds1o)
Source quotes
[0:04] Onney Crawley: 现场有多少人喜欢淘二手货(thrifting)?
[5:48] Christy Borrowman: 感谢 TikTok,我现在每个月需要生产 10,000 条内容。
[21:55] Onney Crawley: this blop is sort of getting out of control
[21:55] Christy Borrowman: let's get out of the crappy work
[31:16] Kathleen Booth: the board does not care
[33:45] Christy Borrowman (quoting Rebecca from Glean): Don't automate the soul out of work
[43:36] Kathleen Booth: what people say is gold
Source quotes
[5:48] Christy Borrowman: Thank you TikTok, I now need to produce 10,000 pieces of content a month
[14:40] Monica Ho: The upfront lift on building actual AI workflow and modules, it's real... you think it's so simple, you're like, 'Oh, I'm just going to prompt this. I'm going to feed it a couple of things and then I'm going to get what I need out of it.' And you would be surprised. You don't get what you thought out of it.
[17:56] Onney Crawley: Knowing that we wanted to bring in more AI capability, more AI learning, we had to sort of clean up our structure first because otherwise what's going to happen is we're doing the wrong thing... and you're going to bring in AI and just do that all better.
[21:55] Christy Borrowman: I have marketers today who spend time putting in the same copy point in a DAM, a PIM, a binder, a creative asset packaging claim. It's all the same. And they're spending time doing that repeatedly because it's 35 different systems... let's get out of the crappy work and let AI do that.
[29:01] Christy Borrowman: It can't be your division president sitting in the room saying, 'Well, I used ChatGPT and the best toothpaste is not coming up as us.' We need to get a lot better at the realities of what it takes to get there. But the future of measurement is absolutely much more, in my opinion, proactive versus the reactive.
[33:45] Christy Borrowman: Don't automate the soul out of work.
Original transcript
[0:04] Hi everyone. Welcome to Scaling Smart. Um,
very very excited to have y'all here. Thank
[0:11] you for getting up somewhat early to to come
join our session. I'm Marjorie McCarthy. I'm
[0:16] chief marketing officer for ISS. If you are not
familiar with ISS yet, we are a global workplace
[0:24] experience and facility management services
company. We have over 320,000 employees working
[0:33] across almost 60 countries around the world,
all delivering hospitality in the workplace. So,
[0:39] we are essentially the people that power all of
the spaces where we work and have experiences like
[0:47] this one. Um, I have the privilege of leading our
marketing and communications team in North America
[0:54] and I also have the privilege of moderating our
panel today. And we have a really fabulous group
[1:02] of marketers here to talk about this very
interesting topic. And I'm going to ask each
[1:07] one of y'all to introduce yourselves. Please tell
us a little bit about you, your role, your team,
[1:14] your remitt within your organization. Um, I'm
just going to go down the line here. Monica,
[1:19] you want to start? Sure. Hello everyone. Monica
Hoe, um, CMO of Soshi. Soshi is an agentic
[1:26] marketing platform specifically built for brands
that don't just operate out of one location or
[1:33] one storefront, but hundreds to thousands of them.
So, think Ford Motor Company, Ace Hardware, Jersey
[1:39] Mike. Those are some of our our clients. Um, and
what we do is we have local brand trained agents
[1:45] that do the critical local marketing work at each
location that is essential to being found in AI
[1:51] search, traditional search and social media sites.
So, um, think of like local reviews or optimizing
[1:57] your local pages, things like that. Um, as the CMO
of SOI, I run all of marketing. I've been in the
[2:04] seat for eight years, so have seen a tremendous
amount of transformation. Um, what we're really
[2:09] focused on, uh, in our team right now is really
paying off what we promise to our customers,
[2:15] which is that Agentic AI can really transform
the way that marketing gets done. All right,
[2:23] good morning. How many um, thrifters do we have
in the room? Can I see show? I love this. Anie
[2:29] Cwley. I'm the chief marketing officer of Goodwill
Industries International. We are a federated model
[2:35] actually made up of 150 different organizations
who are deeply embedded in our local communities.
[2:40] And all of you probably know our thrift stores.
You probably know about our donation services.
[2:46] What you may know less about is that the reason we
actually exist and why we take your donations and
[2:52] why we sell them is we use that revenue to provide
free services in those local markets for people
[2:57] who are looking for job services and training.
So, we're all about workforce development and
[3:02] economic empowerment. And a big part of my remmit
in this job is to make sure that those stories
[3:06] are getting told and that we're getting in more
donations. We're getting more people to come and
[3:10] thrift so that we can actually serve more people
in local communities. And because we are federated
[3:15] and everyone's kind of doing their own thing in
the local market, I also need to make sure we
[3:19] are still moving as one brand. And I think AI is
going to go a long way in helping us do that even
[3:24] better and faster than we have in the past. Nice.
I'm inspired already and I was already a fan. So,
[3:32] uh my name is Christy Borrowman. I work
for Colgate Palm Olive. Uh I have for the
[3:37] last uh 11 years and have made my career on uh
transformation um really it started in digital
[3:46] data media those things and then now my current
role as of seriously this month AI transformation
[3:55] as part of the the marketing arm right so we are
looking to move end to end how how are we going to
[4:00] do this what's the future going to look like for
our organization I've also done time at the agency
[4:06] see and and work really closely with many of
our developers and and I think that that's
[4:10] also going to come in to play um connections for
the future. So happy to be here. Thank you. Hi
[4:16] everyone. I'm Kathleen Booth. I am the VP of
marketing at SQL.io. Uh SQL it was the first
[4:23] webinar platform purpose-built to host webinars
on your website. Uh today we are evolving into
[4:29] really an agentic go to market platform because
of the way we embed we collect a unique set of
[4:34] first-party data encompassing all of the webinar
data as well as all the website page visit data
[4:39] before during and after the webinar and we're able
to combine that and score it at the the contact
[4:44] and the account level and companies that work with
us and use our platform are there companies like
[4:50] data dog clay morning star they're using that
data to power their broader gotomarket motion
[4:57] Um, and so we we're all about basically helping
these companies use the agentic front end that
[5:03] we're building and use AI to scale the impact
of their video and their webinars. Specifically,
[5:09] um, my remitt is really around balancing brand
uh, and a human first kind of approach to go to
[5:16] market with AI. We are a an early stage company.
uh this is kind of what I've built my career on is
[5:23] working in startups and early uh scaleups and
we are looking to grow in the same way that a
[5:28] lot of the AI native companies are growing. So
the remmit I have is headcount is not going to
[5:33] expand proportionate to revenue and uh we're
really leaning in hard on AI to help us make
[5:39] that happen but without sacrificing brand as we
go. Thank you. Um okay so first question starting
[5:48] kind of at the 30,000 foot level and this is
for for everyone where do you see AI driving the
[5:56] greatest competitive advantage for marketing today
in this moment and anybody can start uh I can I
[6:04] can start if you want um it's it's two things for
for me it's around data uh if you don't have your
[6:12] data foundation in order um then you can't really
use AI to augment everything on top of that. So
[6:20] um really helping us build that up. Obviously
we have to get it organized. We have to get the
[6:24] taxonomy right. We have to connect the dots. But
AI I think can then sit on top of it and I believe
[6:30] empower more people to actually better utilize
the data for what we really really want to do.
[6:37] The other piece are the basics of content, right?
Um the scalability, the velocity, the volume. We,
[6:45] you know, thank you Tik Tok, I now need to
produce 10,000 pieces of content a month. Um and
[6:51] so regardless of how many people you have on your
team, you you never have enough time to get that
[6:55] done. So AI will make a huge transformation or
is um already impacting the the opportunity to do
[7:01] that. I was just say I'll jump in because I have
almost the exact same answer. um and just add a
[7:07] little flavor to it. Um the data piece I I cannot
underscore enough and I think what to me really
[7:13] is going to unlock competitive advantage is the
tribal knowledge that we have within our companies
[7:18] for the first time. We have an opportunity to
harness it and a great example is you know we
[7:22] just built a company brain which I I'll share more
about in a minute but it includes not just the
[7:26] data that are in our that's in our go to market
uh platforms but also call recording information.
[7:33] um you know we can now search that and and pull
out spoken knowledge that I think otherwise gets
[7:39] lost without AI. So that to me is huge. And the
second piece I I feel like as a marketer the
[7:45] the biggest problem I've had and I've seen before
joining SQL I led marketing at Pavilion which is
[7:50] the largest global private community of gotomarket
executives in the world. We had 10,000 members.
[7:56] What I saw across that community uniformly was
an issue where marketers poured so much energy
[8:01] into creating content and not nearly enough energy
into distributing it and and promoting it. And AI
[8:08] for the first time really gives us an unlock to
solve for that which I just think is incredibly
[8:13] exciting. Al all so true. I couldn't agree more
with both of those things. And I will sort of add
[8:19] on to that two things. One is that I think the
tribal knowledge aspect just the democratization
[8:23] of data across an organization. We all know the
situation, right? You've done this work. You've
[8:28] done this research and it's now sitting in your
file in your folder. Maybe you try to centralize
[8:32] it through your team, but the organization doesn't
have broad access to it. And so using AI to really
[8:37] help give everyone the same information at the
same time to make the best decisions for the
[8:42] business. The other piece is, and this is really
much more consumer centered and consumer focused,
[8:46] the ability to really grow and adapt with
your consumer in real time. As a marketer,
[8:51] one of my biggest sort of I guess pet peeves is
that we do the segmentation work, right? You spend
[8:56] all this money and time and do this big research
body of stuff and now it's sitting there like,
[9:01] okay, now I know who my audience is and
what they think and what they do and how
[9:03] they behave and that stuff gets dated really
quickly, especially today. So now having the
[9:09] ability to in real time adapt and grow and learn
with your audience so you can tightly target them
[9:15] um and tightly understand how to engage them,
I think is really really going to be valuable.
[9:20] surprise. I'm going to say data also, but I have
a little bit of a different response. So, where I
[9:26] sit at, we're a marketing platform. What we love
is marketers that know how to leverage their own
[9:31] data, which is incredible, but the reality is
that you have only so much of that data. And as
[9:36] on said, like the marketplace is changing so much.
Search is changing. What we do is we're one of the
[9:43] platforms that can bring in local data signals and
actually pair that with your own location data,
[9:50] your own um business data. Why that's important
is because you might know a little bit something
[9:55] about your different businesses, the products
that they offer, but do you know how they're being
[10:00] searched in that market? Do you know exactly what
your consumers like or dislike about that specific
[10:06] business? Do you know what the competitive set
looks like in that local market? that's changing
[10:10] all the time. Those are the data signals that
you now can access with really good AI data
[10:16] platforms and then merge that with your data. The
cautionary tale I would tell you is that there is
[10:21] a lot of access to data. Everybody's got an MCP
and everybody wants to hook it up and you want
[10:25] to start leveraging that data. Think about is that
really what you want to do. Do you really want to
[10:31] build a a marketing platform or an application?
There's a lot of really great MCPs out there,
[10:37] but you got to be careful that the data is
complete and that there's enough of it so you're
[10:41] not feeding something to your own systems that's
going to allow the AI to hallucinate. Okay, all
[10:47] those responses got me very excited for this next
question, which is let's get a little bit more
[10:52] tactical. can't would love to hear some specific
examples of um a tactic or a use of AI that y'all
[11:02] have recently found in your organizations or
you're in the process of deploying. Um Kathleen,
[11:09] I think we're going to start with you on that
one. Sure. So, we just built we had a company
[11:14] offsite recently and we had a little hackathon
and I was part of a team that built something I
[11:21] am so excited about. Um, the nerd in me is really
coming out now. But we built what we call Cerebro.
[11:28] I'm an X-Men fan. If anybody here likes X-Men, you
know, Cerebro is that big Yeah. the big the big uh
[11:35] brain that can see all the X-Men everywhere in the
universe. So, we wanted to build a company brain.
[11:41] And what we did is we listed every source of
data that we had in the company. Everything from
[11:47] our CRM, our marketing automation, our product
usage platform, our customer support platform,
[11:54] our call recording for sales, for CS, um our
project management, even our employ uh internal
[12:01] HR docs, like literally anything you might have
a question about if you work at our company. And
[12:07] we we piped it in to this system and the front
end of it actually lives in our Slack instance.
[12:15] And so now anyone can go in and either in the
shared Cerebro channel or even in a private DM
[12:20] if you don't want to share what you're asking, you
can ask it a question. And this goes back to the
[12:24] point about data. What is unbelievable about this
thing is that it can combine data from different
[12:30] sources to create really contextual answers.
So I had a field day playing with this when
[12:36] we first built it and asking it things like um
what how do our customers talk about our product
[12:43] in their own words? what are the words they use?
You can imagine as a marketer like gold in terms
[12:48] of messaging. And so it looked across, you know,
CRM notes. It looked in all of our call recordings
[12:54] which span two different platforms. It looked in
our intercom help chats and it came back and it
[12:59] stack ranked the most common words and phrases our
customers used to talk about us. I asked it about
[13:05] uh win loss analysis. Um, I asked it about
competitive positioning and if we, you know,
[13:12] what do customers love most about us VisaV
competitors? I mean, the number of use cases
[13:18] for this is insane. But here's what's really
cool. That's just how I'm using it. Our CS team
[13:22] is actually using it now in place of our CS uh,
platform because it's providing better answers.
[13:30] It sees our help docs. It sees all of our existing
help chats. And so while they're on a support call
[13:36] with a customer, they can go in and ask it a very
detailed question and it will come back, answer
[13:42] it in the thread. And what I love is we all have
visibility. So for example, our CTO very commonly
[13:48] will jump in and if there's some misinformation
or it's an incomplete answer, he'll respond. And
[13:53] the way it's set up in in um Slack is it will then
it has recursive learning, which in layman's terms
[13:59] means it learns from the answers it gets. You can
have a conversation with it. it will write back to
[14:04] its memory and get smarter every time we correct
it. So that to me is just like the dream state.
[14:11] I I feel like I barely even tapped into how we're
going to use it, but it's super exciting. Just to
[14:16] comment on that, that actually in a couple of
the round tables I was in yesterday that came
[14:20] up a lot that if you build the brain, right, what
happens when it starts perpetuating inaccuracies,
[14:28] right? And and what do you do about that? So I
think that's great that you guys built that in.
[14:32] I have about 10 more questions about Cerebro. Um
Monica, I'm gonna ask you to share an example now,
[14:40] please. Sure. Um I'll get a little bit more
specific. I think um one of the things that we've
[14:46] been challenged with, especially as a technology
company is how quickly our product team can now
[14:52] ship products, new products and enhancements.
And so we found ourselves in a situation where
[14:58] marketing became the bottleneck, not product this
time. And so we were being, you know, it typically
[15:04] takes my team if it's a, you know, a brand new
offering to the market about 8 to 12 weeks,
[15:08] right? You've got PMM, you've got enablement,
you all have all these teams. Um, we were able
[15:13] to build modules that allow us to take a lot of
that enablement work, a lot of that content. Um,
[15:20] we had to build these modules. So, uh, the upfront
lift on building actual AI workflow and modules,
[15:27] it it's real. like it took us months to do it
because you think it's so simple, you're like,
[15:31] "Oh, I'm just going to prompt this. I'm going to
feed it a couple of things and then I'm going to
[15:34] get what I need out of it." And you would be
surprised. You don't get what you thought out
[15:38] of it. So, after some fine-tuning, a couple
of months, we now have these modules. We were
[15:43] able to take our go to market from 8 to 12 weeks
down to 1 to two weeks, which is incredible. So,
[15:50] um it's just a really great unlock if you're
willing to invest the time up front. Again,
[15:54] I think the worst thing is thinking you're just
going to feed it a few prompts and it's going
[15:57] to give you what you need. You need to you need
to watch it. You need you need human oversight,
[16:02] but it's been a scale uh and a game changer for
Soshi. That's awesome. Um Anie, talk to us a
[16:10] little bit about some work y'all have been doing.
Yeah, so we we so I mentioned earlier we have
[16:15] 150 different organizations. That means we also
have 150 different websites. So, good times. Um,
[16:23] and what we're trying to focus on now is making
sure that we are discoverable and that we are
[16:27] consistent and that we have awareness and depth
and clarity with our content. When you think about
[16:32] SEO and how things are migrating to now more of
sort of an AEO, right? We're not no longer waiting
[16:37] for links. You're getting this whole AI summary
and you don't even go to the website, you get
[16:40] what you need. How do we show up? And because we
have so many different websites, there's so many
[16:45] different pieces of content that may contradict
each other. Um, they don't corroborate each other.
[16:51] it's not cited. And so, you know, AI says, "This
is incredible. I'm not going to use this." And so,
[16:56] we don't show up. So, the work we're doing right
now is to really kind of scan and crawl all of
[17:01] these sites to understand what needs to change.
How do we change the schema, the back links,
[17:06] the setup, the Q&A, all the different things to
allow us to show up as sort of one brand. So,
[17:10] regardless of where you are or what Goodwill
uh location you're looking at or looking for,
[17:15] you're getting sort of one set of really clear
and cleansed data about the brand. And it's been
[17:21] a pretty big undertaking, but I think we're really
excited about it because it's another way to just
[17:24] combat some of the um I'll call them untruths
about Goodwill brand. I'm sure some of you have
[17:29] heard some of them. Um so this is going to be a
big project for us and it's going to take the um
[17:34] collaboration of all of our network organizations
as well. So we've started engaging all of them and
[17:38] I think that's going to be a big part of how this
brand how we drive uh trust and truth among our
[17:44] customers. Thank you. Um, okay. So, let's let's
talk a little bit about how we are thinking about
[17:56] our teams in the age of AI. So, I know this
is actually this is a question that keeps me
[18:01] up at night, and I'm not kidding. Like, what how
do I make sure that I've got not only the right
[18:06] in-house team, but the right agency stack as as we
think about um being in the age of AI. Um, Anie,
[18:14] you recently went through a team restructure
where y'all did some thinking about this. Will
[18:18] you talk to us a little bit about that? Yes, I
uh recently went through a process last year uh
[18:24] for the purpose of doing a strategic realignment
of my department. Um, two things. One, we knew
[18:31] that we needed to move faster um just given the
categories that we play in and making sure that
[18:36] we can meet the moment of our different audiences.
I also knew that we had just some intrinsic issues
[18:42] within the team and how we operate. And so knowing
that we wanted to bring in more AI capability,
[18:47] more AI learning, we had to sort of clean up our
structure first because otherwise what's going to
[18:53] happen is we're doing the wrong thing um and doing
things the wrong way and you're going to bring in
[18:57] AI and just do that all better. Um and so it was
a real focused process of understanding like what
[19:02] is the work where do we need to focus what are
our priorities and what do we sort of streamline
[19:08] um in terms of what might be able to be automated
or what just needs to be what needs what might
[19:12] not need to be done at all. So with that
restructure we're actually bringing in a new
[19:16] role I'm currently in process of hiring that role
right now someone who sort of understands sort of
[19:21] the digital landscape because a big part of our
path forward is really driving stronger digital
[19:26] ecosystems and stronger communities. someone who
understands that landscape and understands how
[19:31] to look at our structure and our systems through
an AI lens and that will really kind of be a part
[19:37] of how the entire department sort of shifts
um and adapts to to what you know the markets
[19:42] are demanding today. Sounds like a very cool
role. Don't know if there's any uh out there.
[19:47] So there any senior directors of advancement in
the in the in the making? Let me know. Uh Monica,
[19:55] you're you're obviously at the forefront of
this conversation, both advising clients, but
[20:00] also thinking about it, you know, with regard to
your own team. Talk to us a little bit about that.
[20:05] Yeah, I think um when I think about marketing
teams, um and we talked a little bit about,
[20:11] you know, the go to market process I just rebuilt.
Actually training your AI workflow, AI agents,
[20:19] a platform, it actually takes a human, right?
you're not going to get that done with AI. So,
[20:25] I think marketing experts are still going to be um
a very necessary um role within marketing teams,
[20:32] but the the reality is you're not going to need
as many experts, right? I think in a lot of our
[20:37] teams, we've had a lot of experts, and those
experts might be great in SEO, they might be
[20:41] great in B2B channel marketing, um but they also
had to do a lot of execution. Now with AI, you can
[20:47] actually get rid of a lot of that execution work
and give that automate that through an agent. Um,
[20:53] what that does and what we've been changing
on our team is that not necessarily do you
[20:58] need less less staff, you actually need your
staff doing different things. So if you have
[21:02] an AI workflow built and you have an agent
that's actually executing tasks, you don't
[21:07] need that person doing that. You need that person
to be very good at understanding the technology,
[21:13] how to fine-tune it, and to be expert at what that
output should look like and fine-tuning and making
[21:18] sure that output is what it should be, right?
Identifying hallucinations and other things.
[21:23] And so when I look at my staff today, as we, you
know, we haven't reduced our staff at all. I think
[21:28] we've really changed up some of the positions. But
I will tell you that as I'm looking for new staff,
[21:34] if I have somebody that's left or we need to
um promote people, I am looking for people that
[21:40] um are not necessarily just great at B2B
marketing. I'm actually looking for people
[21:45] that are very um they're already innovating
with AI, even a chat GBT or a claude co-worker
[21:55] and I'm looking for proof. It's that type
of thinking um I think is kind of it's going
[22:01] to be kind of the the the bare minimum for
the marketing team of the future. In fact,
[22:05] can I just add to that quickly because on my team
a big part of Goodwill is the stories that we tell
[22:11] and I always say we are we are a very human um
centered organization. We are in the business of
[22:17] helping humans and so the way that we tell those
stories is really really important and almost
[22:22] proprietary to the Goodwill brand. I've seen a lot
out there on social media. We all have LinkedIn
[22:27] is starting to turn me like I I mean I can't this
blop is sort of getting out of control. Um and so
[22:34] having people who understand how to tell those
stories who can look you know with sort of a a
[22:39] lens of good judgment so you you you can get
people to do sort of some of the executional
[22:44] stuff but there's also sort of this there's a
soul that your brand has and that's going to
[22:49] come from the people. So understanding where to
place them and to your point it's not you know
[22:53] they don't have work they're doing different work.
So what is that work to make sure that your brand
[22:58] still stands out with a clear point of view in a
proprietary way that doesn't just get lost in in
[23:05] you know everything that's out there. I have an
add-on as well. What I what we're hoping with our
[23:10] teams as well is I have marketers today who spend
time putting in the same copy point in a dam,
[23:18] a py, a binder, a creative asset packaging claim.
It's all the same. And they're spending time doing
[23:27] that repeatedly because it's 35 different
systems that you have to do that. We're
[23:33] we're trying to get to the point where we're
augmenting that person, that brain. You know,
[23:38] there's a whole system that we're working on.
Then they can actually get back to real marketing,
[23:43] right? So, I actually do believe I need experts
to build brands. Maybe not in the B2B like you
[23:48] said as an example, but I I do need people
to still know the heart, the storytelling,
[23:53] the the actual soul of of the work there. So
that that's what we're kind of hoping to is
[23:58] is the future as well. Like let's get out of
the crappy work and let AI do that. Just a
[24:04] quick follow-up question to all of this.
Are you finding, and this is for anyone,
[24:09] are you finding that you're looking where are
have you changed where you are looking for talent?
[24:20] That's a great question. We probably should
leave. You know what's interesting? So,
[24:25] I don't know if you guys are the same, but with
AI, I think a lot of the lower level work has
[24:31] gotten eaten up a little bit. And so we had an
issue over the last two years where we weren't
[24:35] bringing young marketers into the organization.
And we decided as a team this past year that we
[24:42] were going to change that. We we started an intern
program and then we we opened up we took a senior
[24:47] role and we opened up a few junior roles. What
was interesting and you it's it's really I can't
[24:55] put my finger on it but some of the young people
they actually do not want to use AI coming out of
[25:01] college. they feel like it's cheating and I've had
to really like pull them along. But then I would
[25:06] say on the other hand, we've hired some um some
of our interns came in and just because they're so
[25:12] native with a lot of the tools um they're kicking
my team's ass on things like I mean even though
[25:19] they don't have the experience because honestly
you guys some and I'm going to say something that
[25:24] might be a little controversial but marketers we
have a lot of you know we we build our careers up
[25:29] and some of us like if you're in PR right and
you've done communications the way that you've
[25:34] done communications for 20 years this is not
the way you need to be doing them now and it
[25:37] actually hurts us. And so knowing where you need
to change those rules out and freshen things up
[25:43] is really important. You I don't it's a good
question but I don't know if I'm looking in a
[25:48] different place. I'm looking for demonstration of
a different mindset almost which I'm seeing with
[25:54] certain marketers. Um, but also too, and I've
always done this, looking for people outside my
[25:59] category who are bringing kind of a different
mindset because oftentimes, as we all know,
[26:03] you can get great learnings about your business
and your category from outside the category. So,
[26:07] it's really trying to find someone who's kind of
thinking sort of in, you know, in in the way that
[26:12] that that needs to happen today. I'll just add
really quickly to that. Um, I I think for the most
[26:16] part, I would agree I'm changing how I'm looking
and what I'm I'm demanding of candidates. Like,
[26:20] I want them to show me their work. I don't want
to just hear I use AI. I like to use AI. I'm like,
[26:25] "Show me something you built with it."
Even better, if you're looking for a job,
[26:29] do something as part of your the way you present
yourself. Like, build yourself a website. I've
[26:33] seen people build chat bots on their site that
talk about them and answer questions. But there
[26:38] is one way I am changing where I look. Um, so I
don't know if anybody else here um as a marketer
[26:45] has the I have the BDR team that rolls up to
me. So, essentially my team is responsible for
[26:51] generating 100% of the company's pipeline. So, our
BDRs do all of our outbound. And the thing that
[26:58] I've noticed that's really important for me right
now because we are a small and growing company is
[27:03] is speed is essential. And I cannot afford to hire
BD a BDR who has no experience. Um, and what I
[27:12] mean by that is usually BDR is the entry-le sales
role. Usually you get someone who's never worked
[27:16] in sales. You're training them, teaching them
how to cold call. you know, they're doing the
[27:20] work honestly that no one else wants to do in
sales, but it's important. Um, what I've done
[27:26] is I I don't have the bandwidth to train a bunch
of new BDRs. We're moving too quickly. And so,
[27:31] we actually have a relationship Hello. We have a
relationship with a company called SV Academy and
[27:38] they uh take career switchers and people who've
never worked in sales and they put them through
[27:43] a boot camp and they train them on the basics of
cold calling and objection handling and all the
[27:48] things that I would have to do myself if I hired
and experienced BDRs and you get your candidate
[27:55] from SV Academy. They actually work for SV Academy
for the first 3 months. And if you like the work
[28:00] they're doing at the end of 3 months, it's a great
you they just become part of your team. There's no
[28:05] finders fee, recruitment fee. You're paying their
salary while they work for SV, but it's like a
[28:10] risk-free way of getting a pre-trained team. And
one of my BDRs might be in the room right now. Um,
[28:17] she started with us and she was booking demos in
her first week. That is really rare when you hire
[28:22] somebody who hasn't had the experience. And so I
think like to broaden that the point behind that,
[28:28] I do think we're going to start looking for ways
to find people who have more of that baseline
[28:33] experience so that we can have impact faster
because that's what AI really allows us to do is
[28:38] get time to impact shorter. I would I would just
add we're probably looking more internally, right?
[28:45] As you said, it's the mindset. Who are the people
who have been early adopters, who are curious,
[28:50] who are doing those things. So we and we want to
augment the people that we've got. So we spend a
[28:55] lot of time on the training, the implementation
and and that's actually made a huge difference.
[29:01] Um okay, this would not be a marketing panel if we
did not talk about data and measurement. So as AI
[29:10] becomes more embedded in marketing, how should
we be rethinking how we measure its impact for
[29:17] marketing purposes? So Christie, you are obviously
thinking about this all day every day and your
[29:24] role. Talk to us a little bit about that. Yes, all
day every day. And and it's a passion. So that's
[29:29] a good thing, right? Um I actually was thinking
about this and um instead of getting granular, I'm
[29:36] I am going to go with a theme today. Much of the
measurement that we do is very retroactive, right?
[29:42] It's an MM from 3 months, three years, one year,
you know, it's a marketing mix. What has happened?
[29:50] How did that work? And of course, we still need
those things. However, I think we're getting to
[29:54] the point where we're bu building real time or
more near real time that's actually allowing us
[30:01] to do much more optimization, which means the
future of measurement has to look different,
[30:06] right? It has to be maybe what's our baseline?
um X looks good, but then within the campaign
[30:14] if it's not optimizing in real time because
remember we still have the volume, velocity,
[30:19] all of this personalization that has to be done
as well. I I think the future of measurement for
[30:25] us is actually going to get a little bit more of
what's the predictive and how are we hitting the
[30:29] numbers and then do you shift gears um more more
heavily, right? I think also over time if you're
[30:35] still a marketer focusing on those you know basic
numbers the rorowaz and the clicks and you know
[30:40] you can you can speak much more to where we need
to show up in the world where the people are the
[30:46] measurement has got to change on what's successful
and it can't be your division president sitting in
[30:52] the room saying well I use chat GPT and the best
toothpaste is not coming up is us right so that's
[30:57] a measurement I you know we need to get a lot
better at the realities of of what it takes to
[31:02] to get there. But um the the future of measurement
is absolutely much more in my opinion proactive
[31:08] versus the the reactive. And just to follow up
to that are again as marketers, one of the things
[31:16] we're always thinking about is okay, how do I
talk to my leadership? How do I talk to my seuite
[31:21] about, you know, whatever aspect of measurement?
Um, Kathleen, talk to us a little bit about how
[31:28] you're how you're having those conversations about
AI with your with your leadership in your seauite.
[31:34] Yeah, absolutely. So, we're venture-backed
and there is tremendous pressure to hit
[31:38] very aggressive growth targets, but the venture
landscape, as many of you are probably familiar,
[31:42] has changed a lot in the last few years, and it
we've moved from this like growth at all costs,
[31:47] just spend, spend, spend, and don't worry about
ROI to a little bit more of a of a reasoned
[31:53] approach. And so I do have to justify expense uh
into AI. I have to also justify any time we're
[32:01] spending on it. Um so the way I think about it is
there's leading and lagging indicators. Leading
[32:06] indicators are what I think most people are
talking about right now. Um you know we might look
[32:10] at jobs to be done within our teams and we might
say wow we saved all this time. Like for example,
[32:15] we're dog fooding our own platform and we're
estimating that we're saving 80% of the time
[32:20] it used to take us to execute a webinar program
by just using our own AI that's built into our
[32:25] solution. That's a great leading indicator. Um
but the board does not care. I was going to say
[32:32] they do not care. Uh it it's great. Our team
loves it. Um what the board cares about in our
[32:38] case because we are software we are measured on
annual recurring revenue. And so one metric that
[32:43] I see coming up a lot in board meetings is ARR per
employee. They want that number to get much higher
[32:49] because they're seeing it in these AI native
companies like the cursors and the lovables of the
[32:54] world. And you know it doesn't matter that we're
not cursor or lovable. We're still venturebacked.
[32:58] And if they're allocating their capital towards
us, we need to show that we can have that same
[33:03] kind of an impact. And I think you can take that
and you can take it down a level and you can look
[33:07] at productivity per sales rep. you know, how much
revenue is one individual sales rep able to bring
[33:13] in and can we increase that? You can look at,
to Christiey's point, ROI by channel, you know,
[33:18] how are we increasing the amount of revenue we're
bringing in per channel, you know, while keeping
[33:22] the spend steady or or like growing it but not
necessarily proportionately. So, I think we have
[33:28] to think of it that way like yes, let's as an
attribution is getting more complicated. Oh
[33:33] yes. Um, but yeah, so like let's internally look
at the leading indicators, but don't go to your
[33:38] board or your CEO with that. Go to them with the
impact measurements. That's super helpful. Thank
[33:45] you. Okay, so zooming a little bit back out again,
if we're sitting here 3 years from now, what will
[33:53] we say was the way that AI impacted marketing the
most? How will marketing have changed the most?
[34:02] what will what will be less valuable? What what
are we doing today that will be less valuable now
[34:08] versus what will be more valuable? Um Christie,
I want to start with you on that one. Sure. So
[34:14] um actually in a session I was in yesterday uh
Rebecca from Glean had a great quote that was
[34:21] uh don't automate the soul out of work, right?
Which has has again summarized so many things that
[34:28] are running around in in my head this week. And
I'm using that reference because I think looking
[34:35] three years from now, we still have to build
brands. We still need people to fall in love with
[34:41] us. And if we take away the work that actually
fills you, that actually brings you into the
[34:48] office as a marketer or wherever work from home um
wherever you are, right? You you need that work to
[34:54] matter. And and I believe the difference also will
show through um especially for brands like ours,
[35:00] right? We're really proud of our science. We're
really proud of the perceivable superiority of of
[35:06] how the product feels, looks, performs. And if you
take the soul out of the work to truly get there,
[35:12] then you you've got nothing, right? So my hope is
that's why we can automate, augment, scale some of
[35:19] the crappy stuff so that we can actually get back
to the real work that that matters from humans in
[35:24] the loop um part of the process. Kathleen, Anie,
you want to add to that? I was just going to I
[35:30] love what you said cuz I think it's so absolutely
true. Markers will still be here. The work is
[35:35] still going to be here. I think right now because
we're sort of in this age of AI growth, there's
[35:40] a lot of like AI enabled and AI powered which is
absolutely true but we're not sitting here saying
[35:46] oh you know electricity powered refrigerator right
we're not saying you know internet powered banking
[35:52] so it will be a leveler and it will sort of become
how work happens but the work is still there to be
[35:58] there to be done right so when the internet came
we didn't all all of a sudden we weren't all of a
[36:02] job not doing something so it's going to change
I think what you were saying it will change how
[36:06] we work, but the work is still there. And as a
brand that drives in consumers, engages them,
[36:13] um, and drives brand love, which is what we want,
and brand loyalty, you still need those humans.
[36:17] That's who is going to get it done. I love that.
Kathleen, did you have something you wanted to
[36:22] add there? Yeah, sure. Um, I think marketing has
always been in some respects a game of arbitrage
[36:28] where you're looking for an edge, right? And in
the last 10 years, a lot of that edge has come
[36:34] from technology and ways we can automate and move
faster and personalize and and I would totally
[36:41] agree with what Anie just said. I think that is
all now kind of table stakes and and it's it's
[36:48] going to eliminate those aspects as edges or as
arbitrage uh levers that we can pull which leads
[36:56] me to I actually think AI is going to be one of
the greatest things that happened to marketing.
[37:00] This might be controversial or maybe not
given that this is an AI conference, but
[37:05] um but I think what it's going to leave us with
is brand as the main element of arbitrage. It is
[37:13] the thing that AI cannot replicate and it is the
thing that the marketer is uniquely positioned to
[37:20] do best. And so it's it's going to be a return
to some of the classic tenets of marketing that
[37:27] maybe we've shuttered shuffled off to the side in
the last several years as we've been so focused on
[37:32] exploiting this technological edge. Um we're going
back to a time of I call it back to the madmen
[37:38] era, right? It's kind of like that pendulum swing,
right? It's going to make its way back. Yeah.
[37:43] All right. Um, one last quick fire question
for everyone and I think we have maybe we'll
[37:48] have like maybe time for one or two questions
from the audience if folks have questions. So,
[37:53] start thinking. Um, let's assume that AI is giving
you 10 hours a week back. What are you doing with
[38:02] those 10 hours? I Everybody gets 30 seconds on
that. I would say spending There's so many timely
[38:09] things that are happening right now, right? and
our teams have been just buried in tasks. Uh when
[38:15] I when I talk about the the go to market process
that we just um made very fast, my PMM team now
[38:21] is focused on competitive plays that are happening
right now because we've learned something new in
[38:26] the market. So I think going back to again real
strategy, real marketing um is is where I would
[38:33] use that having those real conversations, finding
out how we can make an impact in the market. It's
[38:38] exactly kind of what close I was going to say,
the conversations, talking to people. I have 150
[38:42] members across the country that I don't get
to talk to enough that I want to learn from.
[38:46] They're on the ground. They're doing the work.
And that insight is what helps me build better
[38:51] strategies at the national level. And I don't have
as much time as I would love to do that today. So,
[38:55] if I had 10 hours, it's me talking to more CEOs
and local markets, understanding more about their
[39:00] challenges and their issues and how we solve them.
Uh, I was thinking about hot baths. People are
[39:08] so overwhelmed right now. People are seriously so
overwhelmed right now with having to stay ahead to
[39:15] learn. I mean, it's it's a full-time job to spend
time learning all of this on top of your job and
[39:21] then driving your own personal change management
to get there. I legitimately think people need
[39:26] more space. Uh just empty space to explore or or
for example back in the day, right? There used
[39:32] to be time for programs um where you could have
people do their own inspirational projects. Let's
[39:38] get back to that. Let's let's use those hours to
get back to things like that and and great ideas
[39:42] will come out. I'm going to split my time 50/50
of it. I am such an AI nerd that I'm going to be
[39:50] sitting and playing with all the tools because
there's new ones every day. and I feel like I
[39:54] just want more time to play. Um, so half my time I
would do that and then the other half I would just
[40:00] I would spend it talking to customers and buyers
and building relationships and understanding their
[40:06] day-to-day problems and what keeps them up at
night. I think that you can never do enough of
[40:10] that. All right, I think that's good inspiration
for all of us. Um, we have about three minutes
[40:16] for questions. Couple questions right here. And
I think we've got a microphone right behind you.
[40:24] All right, here we go. You spoke earlier about the
need for data quality and completeness. What sort
[40:31] of AI are you leveraging to manage this process to
fill in gaps without sacrificing quality? Does who
[40:40] has a solution for that? I seriously I I think
you're right. We're still trying to figure that
[40:46] out. We we have taxonomy, layers, skimming, all
of it. And and right now it's people still trying
[40:55] to figure that out, but we've got to get to the
automated piece or we're going to spend years and
[40:59] years and years trying to get the data right
and then finally be able to use it. So we we
[41:04] have to expedite and scale that significantly.
I can speak to it just for my use case, which
[41:09] is local market intelligence, right? So inside
businesses, you might have a little bit of data.
[41:15] So being able to leverage all of that signal data
and do it at a statistical significant level,
[41:21] that's what we typically do and we we are able to
smooth out some of those signals. Um but again,
[41:26] you're going to find a lot of platforms depending
on what kind of data you're talking about there
[41:30] there are data pipes that can help with
that. Well, and if the quality is not there,
[41:34] you're just putting together Yeah. big stuff.
Time for one more question. This gent over here
[41:45] Thank you. Um, really good followup actually.
So, I'm Matt from Poff Labs. We help companies
[41:51] aggregate their data together. Um, so they
can build their own customer brains. So,
[41:55] my c question is for Kathleen. Um, for a company
brain, this is actually multi-layered. The first
[42:01] one is what happens when your data sources
disagree with each other? say your CRM notes
[42:06] disagree with um your account or your CDP and
how do you handle aggregating your fragmented and
[42:13] unstructured customer feedback because customer
feedback is never onetoone verbatim to surface
[42:18] insights across um the platform reliable rei
reliably. Yeah, it's a great question. So as
[42:25] I was describing we the interface for this this
solution we built is in Slack. The responses are
[42:31] very visible and we have conversations with it.
It's actually kind of funny because we built it
[42:35] and launched it and it it has a personality.
It's kind of crazy. Um so we we can really
[42:42] interact question. It will tell us when it's not
sure. It will give us the percent probability of
[42:46] confidence on its response. Um and our team can
jump in and correct it. Um but the other thing I
[42:52] would say in response to your question is there
is nuance in in how you access your data. And
[42:58] um so I I publish a Substack where I write about
how I'm working with AI. It's called Code Meets
[43:03] Creed. I literally just published an issue this
morning about for me what a game changer vector
[43:08] search has been. So I've been putting a lot of
my raw data into Supabase and I just layered on
[43:15] vector search to that. And for anybody who doesn't
know what I'm talking about, I am not an expert in
[43:19] this but the way I describe it is like a regular
database. You can search for exact word matches.
[43:25] Vector search lets you search for meaning and it
it it is more intelligent. And that has been a
[43:30] game changer for me to be able to find nuance and
context within the data. I would also just add you
[43:36] have to know who your brand is, right? So if those
things don't line up and you're absolutely right,
[43:41] what people say is gold, but at the end of the
day, you're still trying to tell your story. So
[43:45] it should always use or reference back to that
brand brain to say what do we actually want to
[43:51] say and how do we prioritize this? And that can
be connected quite easily as well. All right,
[43:57] we are over time. So, we are done. Thank you
everyone. Thank you all so much for coming.