My MAICON Headlines
The Marketing AI Summit: What Marketing Leaders Need To Know, Today
This is my personal journal about my learning journey in AI and ML for marketing. With over twenty years of experience managing and marketing tech companies, I have deep knowledge of marketing analytics and attribution, always focused on generating measurable and meaningful business results. For the last nine years, I've advised and served marketing leaders in tech companies, enabling me to share my insights on the impacts of AI and ML, including privacy and ethics issues, through this Substack. You can learn more about me, including my policy on using AI for this blog, in the "About" section of this Substack. I welcome your suggestions for further education on AI and ML.
In This Issue:
MAICON 2023: What Marketing Leaders need to know.
Want A Video of This?
Celebrating Humanity
Playing with Generative AI Images
What’s Next
MAICON 2023 Headlines for CMOs
Overall, MAICON 2023 was a blast! The food and logistics were all top notch and the people were friendly and curious. I can’t thank Cathy McPhillips enough for her community building and logistics support. I paid for my attendance and travel, and no consideration has been given to me for my post or comments.
I wrote this post 100% and have decided to not even edit it with AI to preserve my own voice. So any mistakes are mine, and I thank you in advance for your patience.
1. AI In Marketing Is A Once-In-A-Generation, Career-Defining Opportunity. For the Top Line as Well As For the Bottom Line.
Last year, MAICON had about 300 attendees. This year there were nearly 800, blowing well past the goal of 600. Those of you burned by crypto, Metaverse, and/or Web 3.0 might be feeling a bit wary, because some of the same characters are saying some of the same things. (“disruptive.” etc) People who have followed me for a long time know I rolled my eyes at this stuff.
If we’re talking about AGI (the stuff we see in science fiction), yes, that’s a long way away, and it’s pretty much not something that’s something mere mortals are going to be accessing in the near future. If you’re a CMO here to learn about what this all means for your career, you can safely set aside most “future of humanity” discussions in the near term, unless you work in the industry, or have a lot of time on your hands to feel frightened and helpless.
Ah, but the AI I’m talking about is going to transform our lives in a way no less profound than the personal computer, or the internet. I’ve witnessed four major technology shifts in my lifetime: the PC, the internet, the mobile phone, and social media. This has all the earmarks of that kind of change. And the gold rush is on, and you should be looking everywhere you can to find a way to participate.
If you don’t want to believe me, believe the data on adoption:
MIT Sloan and BCG, and Oxford’s Institute for Ethics Survey of 1200 companies: “The research suggests 78% of organizations report accessing, buying, licensing, or otherwise using third-party AI tools, including commercial APIs, pretrained models, and data. More than half (53%) rely exclusively on third-party AI tools and have no internally designed or developed AI technologies of their own. “
No, this isn’t just about ChatGPT. Even back in 2021, HBR was reporting the “skyrocketing use of AI”:
86% of PwC’s survey respondents said AI was a “mainstream technology. “ In 2021. Sobering for those of us just getting on board. (but it’s not too late, don’t despair!)
You HAVE read McKinsey’s AI report from last week, right?
On the mainstage at MAICON, the speakers gave us chart after chart, story after story of how AI can and is being used by many companies of different sizes and at growth stages.
The fact is that big companies have been working on this for close to a decade, and that’s not just the big Tech companies. AI is being used to drive both strategic competitive advantage as well as cost and efficiency savings. Here are some publicly available articles about stories I heard in the hallways that will help you see past the generative AI hype with ChatGPT to the enormous opportunity right in front of us all.
2. Marketing Is Likely Best Suited to Lead the AI Transformation.
The short answer is that as the function charged with growing the company, Marketing is missing the boat if it only focuses on the efficiencies available with AI. Product is one of the four P’s of “Capital M” (my phrase) Marketing, and we should always be at the table, if not leading, when revenue strategy is being discussed.2. AI Adoption Must Begin and End With Business Strategy In Mind. If you want to debate this idea, please join the community on this Substack discussion I started yesterday.
3. AI Adoption Must Begin and End With Business Strategy In Mind.
Nearly every presentation exhorted us all to stay focused on the business strategy and the potential business value of using AI, NOT on adopting tools just because they were fun to use. I came away with a solid framework for helping my clients begin the process of adapting to the AI future in their marketing departments.As an MBA, this is so obvious, I can’t believe it needs to be said, but apparently it does: tools are not the solution to all business problems. It’s critical to clearly define the problem and develop a a strategy for executing it.
This is where I insert my shameless plug for my own services as a marketing technology and analytics veteran. Hire me to help your company figure out what the business cases are, and create a plan for thoughtful adoption. Better yet, hire me to help figure out how AI can make you a strategic leader against your competition. Let’s go to the grand and glorious future together.
4. The Good News: You Are Not Too Late: Even Free Generative AI is Nowhere Near Ubiquitous As You Might
I saw a lot of folks at MAICON who were small agencies, and not as many big brands, or big agencies. I talked to a number of people who went out of sheer curiosity. Many, many people are at stages in their careers where they’re ready for something new. (Confirmation bias on my part is a real thing here, because that’s me.) But You’re not too late if you’re just getting into this, you are still right on time. But that advantage is shrinking rapidly…
The world isn’t yet ready to dive into AI like I, and the people reading this blog probably are. They’re still well behind, and overwhelmed and curious and trying to make sense of it all. I hope my blog will help, just a little bit.
Nevertheless MAICON attendance was notably lacking in West Coast presence. I don’t know if it was timing, the long haul to Cleveland, or coastal snobbery. My theory is that the Valley is focused on the tech itself and is less vested in how it’s used or not ready to really think about how it’s being marketed….yet.
But the people that were there were so passionate about the potential for AI in marketing, and it was so fun to be in a time where we could debate what is coming and hear from people with varied perspectives: sales, strategy, ethics, finance, and technology. There wasn’t as much hype and hustle. It felt so much more holistic and dare I say, HUMAN, than most tech conferences I have ever attended. We need more Midwestern Nice in the world.
5. This Is Gen X’s Moment.
As I have been saying since April, I firmly believe that AI in Marketing is made for Generation X. The crowd was almost entirely Gen X, with some Boomers and Millennials and a smattering of Gen Z in the crowd. Maybe because we’ve see how much money can be made in a gold rush, and we smell it here? Loving this piece from a couple years back about what Gen X Brings to the table from a leadership perspective. We are independent, fearless, and very, very experienced at living through technology transformations. We have also gained life wisdom, and we still have the energy to lead the types of transformations ahead of us. AI is hitting at exactly the space between the retirement of the Boomers, and the ascendency of Millennials in management. To use a Gen X phrase, I’m stoked.
6. MAICON: More Education Than News
The number of vendors and audience members were consumers of AI, whether personally or professionally. I did not see enterprise software or large enterprises represented on stage or in the vendor booths. I don’t see this as a conference you go to to learn the about latest release of ChatGPT, but a place where junior staff and newcomers go to learn about how these tools are being used.
This is not a bad thing, because it means that Paul Roetzer, Cathy McPhillips, Mike Kaput, and the MAICON crew have their finger on the pulse of what their audience needs. Manage your expectations accordingly.
7. I haven’t Been Thinking Enough About Voice.
One of the highlights for me was a fantastic preso by married team Susan and Scot Westwater from Practical Digital on the use of Voice and Conversational AI in business strategy. They’re working with some of the world’s largest companies, and have been for quite some time. They gave an in depth discussion, and I want to spend more time thinking about that opportunity for my clients. Tidbit: GA still tracks voice traffic as Direct. Gah, my nemesis strikes again!
8. 30+ Tools I Can’t Wait To Try
Mike Kaput of MAICON is a human wikipedia of AI tools and he very generously shared a presentation called 45 Tools In 45 minutes. I love tools and I could think about them all day, but there are just too many in the world; so I’m grateful for his thoughtful curation. Some of these may be MAICON sponsors, so take that into account.
Perplexity, Quantified, Alli.ai, Vista, Pictori,ai, content@scale, Rasa.io, Hyperwrite, Lately, Pecan.ai…to name just a few! I’ll write about them in the weeks to come.
Want A Video Of Some of These Thoughts?
I met the fascinating Geoff Livingston at MAICON and he invited me to do a MAICON download with his pal Greg Verdino on the “No Brainer Podcast” which is all about Marketing AI. Check it out! It was my first video appearance since being diagnosed with cancer a little over a year ago.
Celebrating Humanity: AI For Good
As a breast cancer patient, soon to be a survivor as I finish treatment in 2 weeks, this is some amazing news. My cancer was the kind that can’t be felt or seen, and it was diagnosed by a radiologist. We can’t just be afraid of AI, we have to seek out and develop uses that will be good for humanity.
AI Use In Breast Cancer screening as good as two radiologists, (preliminary) study finds.
Playing With Generative AI Images
Substack’s generative AI didn’t like this prompt, but Bing AI (Dall-E) gave me it’s best shot. We’re still in early innings, folks.
”Dog Days Of Summer”
What’s Next
I’m currently taking a course in “conversation design”
Testing tools from MAICON
Planning my travel for this fall. What conferences are a must do?
Please keep an eye on my “notes” in Substack for quick tips, links, and more. that’s what will help me keep these blogs from being so huge.
What do you want me to drill into? what’s interesting to YOU? Let me know!