The Futures of Marketing with Mitch Duckler

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Marketing Meets Web3, a podcast that helps marketers navigate the news trends, opportunities and insights surrounding Web3. Today's conversation is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Hi everyone, welcome back to a special interview episode of Marketing Meets Web3. Today we are honored to have Mitch Duckler with us. Mitch Duckler is a strategic brand growth expert. He's the bestselling author of the Indispensable Brand, a TEDx speaker and founder and managing partner at Full Surge, a brand and marketing strategy consulting firm. And managing partner at Full Surge, a brand and marketing strategy consulting firm. His consulting resume is impressive. It spans dozens of Fortune 500 clients, including US Cellular, deloitte, kellogg's, best Buy, nbcuniversal, wrigley, the Home Depot, general Electric and ExxonMobil. So Mitch is no stranger to helping brands navigate the ever-changing brand and marketing landscape. Today we're talking with Mitch about his forthcoming book, the Future Ready Brand, and his ideas about how marketers can prepare their brands for a tsunami of consumer and technological change. Mitch, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Why don't we dive right in?

Speaker 3: 1:22

Great, thank you. It's great to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Well, to get us started, would you mind telling us just a little bit about your background story, how you ended up in the world of brand strategy and some of the adventures you've had along the way?

Speaker 3: 1:34

Sure, yeah, I'd be happy to. So I have about 30 years a little over 30 years of experience in brand and marketing strategy and it's somewhat split between roughly one third, two thirds between client side and consulting. So I started my career back in the early 1990s in in brand management with Unilever and Coca-Cola. I got some great classic CPG brand management training there for about 10 years. In the last 20 plus years I've been consulting, but in the same space, right, brand and marketing strategy. And then about 11, 12 years ago yeah, 2012, I founded Full Surge, which is a brand and marketing strategy consulting firm, and what we do is we help clients with fairly basic brand strategy fundamentals like how do you position your brands, how do you manage a portfolio of brands, brand architecture, brand growth strategy, et cetera.

Speaker 4: 2:41

Awesome. Well, thank you for the, for the yeah, the background check. It seems that you are the person that we can talk to about well branding and maybe we can dive into the, the book, because I think it's like a nice summary, I guess, of your experience with um over the years, and I want to start maybe asking you so what inspired you to write the Future Ready brand? Was it just to summarize your experience or was it something else?

Speaker 3: 3:12

It was actually something else. My first book, which you mentioned in the intro, the Indispensable Brand that was really about kind of the summary of my experience to date and reflects a lot of the core tenets of Full Surge, the firm that I represent. This book I really set out to write about the future of the brand, a future of brand building. Rather, where is it heading, given the confluence of societal, technological, of societal technological and commercial trends? And what I realized is I don't have a great grasp on it. You know, I have hypotheses about where it's heading, but I don't claim to know all or have the answers.

Speaker 3: 3:56

So what I did is I set out to interview CMOs and I interviewed over 40 CMOs over the course of about 10 months about those things, about societal trends, about technological trends and how they're impacting their jobs, and what came out of it really was this book. And there are nine chapters in the book, three chapters in each of those three tranches, right? So in the societal trends there's a chapter on transparency and purpose, a chapter on changing attitudes towards health and wellness, and also a chapter on Gen Z, the emergence of Gen Z, and then in the technology section, there's a chapter each on artificial intelligence, extended realities and metaverse, and then web three, and then it's really how do the combination of those six forces really impact things like content marketing, gamification and influencer marketing, which is really the last section of the book. So you know, in an overview, that's kind of why I wrote it and what it's about and where I got a lot of my information from.

Speaker 4: 5:11

I want to ask one question here. Sorry, just out of curiosity. Out of those interviews, which one was the one most demanding? I'm just curious.

Speaker 3: 5:20

The most demanding. In what respect?

Speaker 4: 5:22

Or challenging. I don't know, because you had these conversations with these CMOs and probably one of them was like I don't know, because you had these conversations with these CMOs and probably one of them was like I don't know, a hard one. It doesn't need to be like hard as in hard, but you know.

Speaker 3: 5:36

Wow, I would say I would actually, and it wasn't so much hard. I just thought it was insightful. Ulrich Klink is the global chief marketing officer for Deutsche Telekom or T-Mobile here in the US and he just is doing so much like he was able to speak about virtually every single topic. Like most of the CMOs I spoke with, they felt comfortable talking about maybe two of those nine topics, or three at most. Speak about virtually every single topic. Like most of the CMOs I spoke with, you know they felt comfortable talking about maybe two of those nine topics, or three at most, and he just had so much to say about all that. We actually had two interviews. I had roughly an hour with them and then he had so much more to say. He's like you know I know our time is up. If you'd like, I'd be more than happy to speak with you again and we have a second conversation. But I just think he's kind of a shining example of really grasping all of these forces or trends and really how they're interrelated.

Speaker 4: 6:35

Okay, thanks. Actually, can I speak about that later, because I remember that we found out something or we covered, I think, t-mobile's strategy on Web3. But yeah, we can get there later, nick, you go.

Speaker 2: 6:50

Yeah, so I wanted to dig into one of the chapters in particular, Mitch. So you dedicate an entire chapter to getting your head around Gen Z and you go into detail about some of the aspects of the way that Gen Z thinks and interacts with brands and their expectations, and you have this interesting perspective on Gen Z which is Gen Z me and Gen Z we, which is kind of this duality of this generation and kind of two sides that every marketer needs to pay attention to. Can you share a little bit more info about the challenges and the opportunities that marketers face when interacting with Gen Z?

Speaker 3: 7:27

Yes, uh, happy to so for just in total transparency. That actually came from one of my interviews, um with, actually, the chief marketing officer of Cody and uh, that that was a lot of consumers. So they do like cover girl um, uh, adidas, they have relationships with it, they a lot of consumer brands in the personal care and beauty care space. Um and he, they've done a lot of research on gen z because that is so critical to their business and and what they they found from their research is there is this duality and um, you know, sometimes they are separate consumers, you know sometimes they are just dual aspects of the same consumer, but importantly, there is, there is, as you said, the me and the we. And the me is all about individualism and personalization and self-expression. Connection and experience are very important to them. So that's kind of the me. And then there's also, which is probably the more commonly understood aspect of Gen Z, the Gen Z we, which is very much about purpose and purpose and transparency. So they're very cause driven Right, they, they are the ones who really embrace things like sustainability and ESG and DEI, 10 DEI. So it's really important, I think, to understand both and how they impact marketers and how you actually activate brands.

Speaker 3: 8:55

So I think some of the things that come out and we did talk about this with Cody as well as some of the other CMOs is again when you think about the importance of authenticity and how that impacts the brand building. It has implications for things like your content, and user-generated content is so critical. Authenticity in content is important, as one CMO said think TikTok, not Instagram. Right, it's authentic, it's real, it's rough, it's raw, it's not highly polished Madison Avenue type content, and that's actually what tends to resonate with much of Gen Z. The other thing that was kind of interesting is this notion that most of Gen Z they kind of demand that brands and the marketing of brands be individual and personalized to them. Right there. They want it to be, uh, you know, reflective of them and their desires and their, um, their personalities and so forth, and yet they are incredibly reluctant to hand over personal, personal data, right, so that's a challenge yeah, right, yeah.

Speaker 3: 10:06

So hey, make it just for me, but I'm not going to tell you the first thing about me. So it definitely is one of the challenges, but, um, you know, I think you know, through things like artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies that I read about in the book, you know it's not easy, but it's certainly doable yeah, that that does seem like kind of not a conflict of interest, but two aspects.

Speaker 2: 10:32

It's a conundrum for sure. Yeah, okay, no, thank you for that.

Speaker 3: 10:36

You bet.

Speaker 4: 10:37

Okay, you already mentioned some of these trends and, of course, you may imagine where I'm getting to, because, well, writing this book about the future of brands and how they can go about managing their presence, we have to get into some of these developments and one of them that is of particular interest to our audience, of course, is Web3. And we would like to hear you know, maybe a bit of the context, because it is a technology that's been a bit of a Well. The technology has always been well, always, for the past few years, been there and worked on, but the narratives around the technology have changed a bit over time over the years. So maybe you can speak a bit about the context of Web3, when you decided that this was here to stay, and how you understand this technology, before we get into how brands can maybe use it.

Speaker 3: 11:35

Yeah, no, it's interesting because Web3, as I mentioned, there are nine factors or components that I talked about in the book, a chapter on each, and I would say the chapter on web three was by far and away the most challenging to do, the one that, almost to the CMO, was the most difficult for them to talk about, just to be honest, because I think it is so new and there is so much not known yet and so many variables and unknowns that I think most people are saying you know what we don't know what this is yet and what it represents, much less what the implications are.

Speaker 3: 12:21

You know, but yet they were able to kind of give some perspective. So you, gentlemen, are probably much more versed on Web3 and the underlying technology than I am, but certainly one of the things that I learned through some of these conversations is you know, it really is this notion of the democratization of the Web, of the World web, and it is because of the underlying technology, the blockchain technology, that there will essentially be kind of a decentralization of ownership and, in particular, ownership of data. Consumers will increasingly have control over and ownership of their own personal data.

Speaker 2: 13:07

That's no longer going to be controlled by intermediaries, huge technology intermediaries like Google and Facebook, and that really has very profound implications for the very foundational relationship between marketers and consumers right, yeah, one of the things that we talk about quite a bit on the show and in our own work is just the fact that Web3 introduces this new paradigm where there is this direct incentive relationship between between consumers and between brands really hasn't been possible before, you know, and obviously there's, I think, a level of acceptance that has to be there or a level of adoption. You know, people understanding this technology, feeling comfortable enough to use it on a regular basis. But how do you see, you know, the world changing in, say, three to five years, if this technology takes hold and brands are able to create these very direct and personal relationships with consumers, is that, you know, from a brand marketing and a brand strategy perspective? Is that scary or what needs to happen? How do marketers need to shift their thinking?

Speaker 3: 14:20

So I think it is both scary as well as a great opportunity, I think, depending on how you look at it. And that was pretty much what I was hearing from the CMOs and again, this is all conjecture on their part, right, most of them are experimenting or dabbling with with, you know, in this area, if that even Right, so, but I think the projection is that, again, with the ability to, to have a more direct relationship, right, without these intermediaries, that it just inherently lends itself to, you know, a richer, deeper relationship. You know, consumers are willingly and openly sharing their personal data this, you know, um zero and first party data, if you will, which helps, which can help marketers. Right, if they have access to this and understand consumers at a deeper level, they can, you know, personalize the experience and personalize the offer to an unprecedented extent. Right, they could only hope to do up until now. So, again, again, it just it's, it kind of it's, it's a more frictionless or seamless relationship, which just lends itself, I think, to to, you know, a deeper, you know deeper experience and a deeper overall relationship. Um, you know. So I think that was one of the key themes that came out of the of a number of the interviews, the other things.

Speaker 3: 15:50

There were some other benefits that I thought they brought up or that they project will be present with Web3 also. The obvious one is just revenue generation. In a number of my interviews we spoke with Lexus in particular and how the CMO of Lexus has this idea that right now, with NFTs, they're not looking to monetize them yet NFTs are a big part of the experience and takes hold. Nfts and, more broadly, tokenomics, just have an incredible opportunity or ability to be a great revenue generation tool for marketers. So that's certainly in addition to the, I think, the bigger idea, which is a deeper relationship and richer experience. Relationship and richer experience.

Speaker 3: 16:49

The other some talked about, when you combine Web3 with other emerging technologies, like extended reality in the metaverse, they foresee the opportunity to do testing like product testing, market research, in a much more seamless, much quicker and costeffective manner with, like real-time input and feedback from consumers. So there's a lot of just again, I think the technology is a little scary now because it is unknown and how it will be eventually used is not necessarily fully understood. But I think there is, in general, more optimism and encouragement than there is skepticism.

Speaker 4: 17:31

I want to follow up on that, because you've been in this industry for a while and that you've probably seen developments come that when they came, they felt a bit of an unknown. It wasn't really clear whether it was going to be something that was going to be valuable or not, and I don't know. Maybe when you're looking at something like Web3, does it remind you to anything in your story or in your experience that you know was a surprise and it wasn't really clear what to do with it, and then it eventually became a thing.

Speaker 3: 18:07

Yes, absolutely and actually's. I'm glad you asked that question because this actually came up on unprompted. A lot of the cmos compared what is going now, going on now and, by the way, this came up both, uh, talking about extended reality in the metaverse, as well as web3 a a lot of comparisons back to the? Uh, to the dawn of the internet, right, and in the early 2000s and and the um, the dot-com boom, uh, there was just a lot of uncertainty, right, people knew fundamentally that the world was changing, you know, not to mention marketing, um, but nobody really understood how and and and. There were a lot of questions in terms of you know, what is the future going?

Speaker 3: 18:53

to look like there were a lot of questions about platforms, right, and which platforms are going to be the winners and which won't, and back then it was which websites will dominate, which will kind of fall into the background, and it's very similar. Now, right, which metaverse will be the metaverse, or will there be a single metaverse or multiple metaverses? And same with Web3, right, there's just a lot of uncertainty. People know that things will be different, they're just not sure how. And there is most CMOs and you can imagine the ones I was speaking to. They're some of the most influential in the world. They have this fundamental belief that you can't just sit on the sideline and wait for a tall shakeout.

Speaker 3: 19:38

That's tempting, right, let's see what's going on with extended reality, but right now, it seems to have a speed bump. We're just going to wait and see which Metaverse platform is the winner, right? Or we're not going to take our chances with Web3 and blockchain technology, because we're just not sure where this is going. And there's been some speed bumps, right, with crypto and so forth. And you can't do that, right, you have to experiment, you have to test and learn. Uh, you know, don't. Don't make foolish bets. You know big foolish bets and go all in, but by the same token, you can't just sit on the sideline and watch, because you're going to fall behind. Same applies to ai, um, although that I think that people are embracing wholeheartedly right now.

Speaker 2: 20:28

Yeah, it's definitely the shiny new thing.

Speaker 3: 20:33

That's happening.

Speaker 4: 20:35

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

Speaker 1: 20:39

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Speaker 2: 21:07

Go to step3.io to learn more. So I want to dig into something that you mentioned, which is just these different platforms coming together and these different technologies and these different contexts. You know, when I sit back and I think about the convergence of all of this technology and I think about what that means day to day for a marketing organization, that's a whole lot of complexity to manage, that's a whole lot of technology to manage and try to get your hands around. I'm curious, in these conversations that you had with the very top level thinkers in the marketing industry or the world of marketing, how are they thinking about structuring or allocating or preparing their teams to be responsive in this world that's just changing so quickly? Like I can imagine, they're dealing with a lot of sometimes pushback, sometimes fear. You know, nobody knows where this is headed, but we have to keep moving. How are they leading their teams through that?

Speaker 3: 22:05

Yeah, so a few things. First, I would start before I answer that I would even start one step above that and what they are envisioning and again, these are probably some of the more insightful, forward-thinking CMOs. But they envision these emerging technologies, especially AI, but really all the technologies collectively represent a huge opportunity for marketing to change its very stature in the organization. And in a lot of companies, and certainly where I grew up, if you're in CPG, marketing is kind of in the driver's seat, right, those are very brand-centric, marketing-driven organizations. But in a lot of companies, especially B2B, marketing is not right. They are not leading the growth agenda, they don't have a seat at the so-called strategy table. And these technologies especially AI, but to a lesser extent, extended reality and Web33 have the ability to elevate marketing. Right. If you think about the potential of understanding the consumers and competitive dynamics and market dynamics at a much more sophisticated level, which is what artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, machine learning, allow, you have the opportunity really to step up.

Speaker 3: 23:31

And what a lot of the CMOs were saying, I thought it was very profound. They're like look, you don't need to become a data scientist, right? We're not saying you have to be a data scientist, but the CIO in that group should be your new best friend, right, it used to be sales, right. They're like you don't really need to embrace and to leverage that. That's a critical relationship, because there is so much power and insight and intelligence can come out of this data and your ability to structure it and manipulate it. And, if it's done well, you will be seen as an equal partner to the CEO, just like the COO or the CFO are today, and the CMO often is not Right. So I think that's the first point I want to make them.

Speaker 3: 24:24

But then to answer your question more directly, I think that there is this notion of you need to bring your teams along slowly, right, and you can't overwhelm them, especially people that are not as familiar with or comfortable with this technology.

Speaker 3: 24:38

You'll introduce it slowly, don't change everything at once. Create these like pods, right, and experiment with things like AI or Web3, you know off on the side, right, you're not changing everything up front and you know all of a sudden basing your entire business model around these technologies, but you're experimenting with them, getting people familiar with them, and then, as you start to learn and experience some success, then you begin to integrate it into the broader workflow, if you will. So that's one thing I think I learned Start slowly, integrate, bring people along and then, I think, help them understand that it's not. I think, especially AI, there's this fear it's going to replace people, it's going to make people's jobs irrelevant, and, while I think a lot of the marketers I spoke with- feel that, yes, things will change, and I think certain skills will become less valuable and others more.

Speaker 3: 25:42

there is this notion that no technology can ever replace two things, and that is creativity and emotion, and those are things that really are human-centric and are going to be important for marketers to continue to own, and all of this technology should enable them to do that better right. It takes away a lot of the laborious tasks and allows you more time to inject creativity and emotion into your world.

Speaker 2: 26:13

Absolutely Great answer. I'm curious are you using AI in your day-to-day?

Speaker 3: 26:19

I'm beginning to absolutely Especially mostly generative AI. So, working with you know, using chat, gpt, but not just the generic version. I'm working with, actually, a vendor to to customize GPT tools, right. So I've got these, I've got books, I've got a website, a blog and so forth, and I'm charged, as you may imagine, with you know, generating content myself, right, so I am trained. I'm working with, as you may imagine, with generating content myself. So I am working with somebody to train tools on how to generate content more efficiently. That represents the universe of my thinking, instead of going out to the web, which it does do, but it's first and foremost, looking to my books and to my own content, which obviously represent my own voice too. That's the other benefit. But it's trained on all of these things and it's exciting to see it work for me and important because then I can help translate how it can be used with clients.

Speaker 2: 27:25

I think that in 10 years we're going to look back and personal agents are going to be the way that we see smartphones now. Right, everybody's just going to have one. It's going to be part of our interface with the world. That's really cool. You know, you mentioned something in the last response about CMOs preparing their teams and how they can kind of, you know, crawl before they run. You talked about experimentation and, with Web3 in particular, kind of going back to that realm, there's been an ongoing experiment for the past 15 months happening at Starbucks.

Speaker 2: 27:57

Starbucks has this Odyssey Web3 program where they've been bringing people in you know small beta group I think they got up to 35 or 40,000 participants and basically experimenting with the technology. They created a Discord community. They brought people in for one-to-one conversations. They've started gamifying the experience and helping them earn digital badges and stamps that can be redeemed for status, for rewards or even sold on a marketplace. They recently and pretty suddenly, shut that experiment down. They ended the beta and have been pretty tight lipped about the future, whether or not that those learnings get. I mean, I'm sure the learnings will, but whether or not the program will survive in some form. And I'm just curious if you have any perspective on, you know the impact that can have on the market as a whole or the marketer mindset. When we see an emerging technology experiment like Odyssey suddenly go dark or suddenly get turned way down, I think that can have an impact on the marketer's mindset, marketing morale, people that are championing those technologies. What do you make of any of that?

Speaker 3: 29:10

What do you make of any of that? So yeah, I'm not familiar with the details and the nuances of Odyssey specifically, but yeah, I think that that is a concern and, you know, one thing I would hope is that eventually there is more transparency as to why that happened.

Speaker 2: 29:31

Right.

Speaker 3: 29:32

And and because I think, in the absence of information, um, people make up their own narrative, right, and there begins to be speculation. And, oh my gosh, is you know, um, is? Is our NFTs not all they were cracked up to be? Or is AI beginning to, you know? Are we starting to see some cracks in the foundation, right? And again, I just I think that, especially given the profile of Starbucks and how often that specific company came up as an example, that specific company came up as an example, especially with ai, and and what they're doing, uh, and gamification, um, it's just really important for them to, you know, hopefully shed some light on you know what they've learned, you know why there is a pause, or, but it's just it's not helping anybody that, given they are such a high profile and such a model example.

Speaker 3: 30:41

Right, yeah, yeah, and I'm sure it's only if it's magnified 100 right, especially if there isn't understanding.

Speaker 4: 30:46

Sure, yeah talking about um, sharing uh learnings. Uh, in your book you do talk a bit about, well, you share a lot of case studies, but these case studies and these CMOs, as you said, they come from large companies and large brands. But, however looking at them, these are some changes and some avenues that could impact all businesses, or businesses of all sizes. So do you think any of these insights that you share in the book apply to small businesses and, if so, how could they be applied to these businesses?

Speaker 3: 31:31

Yeah, I think it's twofold. One is. The first point I would make is that which isn't necessarily a theme of the book it was really more my first book but it is that brands are every bit as important for small and medium-sized businesses, smbs, as they are for the Fortune 500. For small and medium-sized businesses, smbs, as they are for the Fortune 500. The Fortune 500 tended to be the target of my interviews just because they are the ones they are the CMOs who are probably doing the most in these areas. But there's a lot of basics and foundational work that needs to be done. That, I think, is regardless of the size of your company, work that needs to be done. That, I think, is it's regardless of the size of your company. Your brand, your brands, are the most among the most valuable assets and tangible assets that your company has and they need. They are more. A brand, as we all know, is more than just a name or a logo or a color palette or taglines. You need to have your strategy in place, your what is your brand positioning right. What is your unique point of difference? What is your value proposition? And I still think that everything I wrote about in this new book are the bright and shiny objects, but at the end of the day, that is the low hanging fruit, right? It's just. It's make sure your fundamentals are in place, make sure you have strong brands that have a compelling, unique value proposition and, you know, are well positioned in the marketplace. I think that's the starting point.

Speaker 3: 33:03

With regard to the technologies itself I was just talking about, I think the good news is that, again, it is this notion of democratization and a lot. So I mean, I'm a small business, right, I'm a boutique consulting firm. I'm not one of these. You know big multinational consultancies and I'm using some of this. As I mentioned a moment ago, it is available to the masses. It is highly, highly affordable. A lot of this you know, especially a lot of the AI tools, and they are things that can really be game changers, right, because for not a lot of money, you can start playing ball with the big guys. And again, I'll draw the analogy back to the early internet. They talked about the internet as being a democratization of sorts. All of a sudden, smaller companies have access to markets and opportunities that only big companies had access to. I think it's similar here you have access to intelligence and insights that you never would have before, at a fairly affordable price tag.

Speaker 2: 34:17

Yeah, that's a great point. You know, earlier we were talking about the complexity and you know what it takes to manage that and maybe the new skills, the new tech that a team has to bring in. But at the same time you know a small business owner now, or a marketer at a small business you know, can apply some pretty sophisticated technologies and and frameworks. You know that they wouldn't be able to pull off even a few years ago, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 34:43

Absolutely, it absolutely can be a game changer and um expose companies to opportunities that they never would have had access to without.

Speaker 4: 34:56

Yeah, you were answering the question and I was thinking well, maybe a different way to put this question could be the other way around. What are things or tactics that small companies are trying out, as you said, because they could be trying stuff with AI, they could be trying stuff with Web3 that is very simple and approachable for anybody and that is actually working? And then, what are some of these things that actually could be implemented by larger companies? You know that maybe they're not paying attention to it because it's been done by small companies, but it's actually something that they could start to pay attention to.

Speaker 3: 35:31

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know. I think the other point, too, is one of the things there may even be a window of opportunity where it's actually more advantageous for small, like one of the things I was running into in a lot of my interviews, or I should say the CMOs that I interviewed are running into is just a lot of my interviews, or I should say the CMOs that interviewed are running into is is just a lot of internal resistance and risk issues. Right, and, and especially with AI and to a lesser extent, you know, web three, but it's just this reluctance to, you know, because of the risk exposure associated with it, especially in generative AI and all these questions around IP and ownership and data integrity and what sort of exposure do we incur by using these tools. You know, arguably, those are less of issues at smaller companies, right, they're not facing some of those internal challenges and barriers or the regulation that larger companies might be.

Speaker 2: 36:38

So in your book you go through, you know quite a few different ways for a brand to start thinking about getting ready for the future. You know whether it's your positioning or your personalization strategy or the way that you're promoting your brand. You've had dozens of conversations with top thinkers who are actively figuring out how to bring these technologies and these new approaches into their businesses. For the rest of the world out there, who's trying to do the same and these other brands that might have the same questions are there. Through conversations that you had, did you find maybe one or two activities that are kind of low hanging fruit for a brand to start experimenting with, whether it's, you know, some aspect of AI or some aspect of XR, like what stood out to you?

Speaker 3: 37:30

I think the lowest hanging fruit is AI and, in particular, I think the genitive AI is something that you know. If you think about marketers and the importance of content and content marketing, you know AI can be such a game changer for them, can be such a game changer for them and, again, at a relatively low cost and a relatively low entry point, even if you are getting into things like customizing or even building your own proprietary GPT tool. Those are things I think that, depending on your size, your level of sophistication, what your needs are, those are things that I think you can probably get into pretty easily. Some of the other technologies I think they're certainly doable, but they're probably not as low-hanging fruit as I think what AI represents.

Speaker 3: 38:30

And I think there's also just a lot more known about AI than is as much that isn't known. There's much more known about it. There's much more use cases and application of artificial intelligence that we haven't seen quite to the same extent in those other technologies. So that's probably where I would go. And again, generative AI is only one aspect, but just even using artificial intelligence and machine learning more broadly to help make decisions is certainly another opportunity that we've seen great advances in, and smaller and medium-sized businesses might want to be looking at.

Speaker 2: 39:12

Yeah, that's a great point, and I mean, you know, creating content, and content can be anything from a text message to an email, to a post you know you name it a video images. I mean it's something that we all have a need for, right, regardless of our industry, like we all have to create content, so that that makes a ton of sense, exactly.

Speaker 4: 39:33

Yep, yeah. Well, coming to the end of the interview here and I want to get back to the beginning a bit and talk a bit about Full Search and your company consultancy, and I want to ask well, what is your purpose with this company? But, more specifically, what is like your best seller? What is your typical client? What is your typical client? What is they looking for and what is your usual approach to their problems?

Speaker 3: 40:01

Well, ironically, it's not what I write about in this book. Again, it's more what I wrote about in my first book. So we're not a digital agency, no-transcript, brand extension or growth strategy. Those are the things that we kind of specialize in and when you think about that, that certainly applies to companies of all sizes. So we've worked with Fortune 500 companies A lot of our clients are Fortune 500. But we've also worked with smaller and medium-sized businesses too, because, at the end of the day, they have a lot of the same needs, which is how do you use your brand as a source of competitive advantage? How do you build it into an invaluable asset? So that really applies to companies or clients of any size.

Speaker 3: 41:23

Yeah that makes a ton of sense.

Speaker 2: 41:24

It's go ahead, alberto.

Speaker 4: 41:28

No, I was going to say that, well, it makes sense, as you said, and also that, yeah, as a consultancy, I guess it must be tricky to get into some of the things that we've covered over this conversation. Right, because, as you said, a lot of these technologies are still getting ready to show the full promise. These technologies are still getting ready to show the full promise and, yeah, it must be difficult to really use them every day, you know, to help with branding. So, no, no, I was just going to agree. You were going to say something else, I guess, nick.

Speaker 2: 42:09

No, I was just going to yeah, also agreeing. But, mitch, thanks for hanging out with us today. Thanks for the insights, thanks for sharing. From these Sounds like great conversations that you had, I'm curious when does the book drop?

Speaker 3: 42:22

May 14th. It's available for pre-order now on Amazon, but it is officially available May 14th.

Speaker 2: 42:30

Okay, fantastic, and where can people find on?

Speaker 3: 42:32

Amazon. You can also um, if I could put in a personal plug, full searchcom is my company's website and there's information there as well as the ability to pre-order.

Speaker 2: 42:43

That's. That was my next question. Where can people go to follow? You find you get in touch.

Speaker 3: 42:47

Yep and I'm also on LinkedIn, uh, as well.

Speaker 2: 42:50

So great Well again, mitch, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for hanging out with us Appreciate it.

Speaker 3: 42:56

Thanks. I enjoyed the conversation very much. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 4: 43:00

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 43:06

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