Audio transcript:
AI Is Changing How We Work — But Not in the Way Most Business Leaders Expect
Jillian Viner: We talked about how SEO used to be a skill, and maybe it's not anymore. And you wouldn't hire a marketer who doesn't have data skills.
Hilary Kerner: Exactly. So the same way that, like, you wouldn't, I wouldn't hire a marketer who wasn't comfortable with data, like data and analytics. You know, you wouldn't hire a marketer who's not comfortable you know, starting to use ai. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. It's just our, our profession is constantly being disrupted by Tech
Jillian: Welcome to Insight on the podcast for leaders who need technology to deliver real business results. No fluff, no filler, just the clarity you need before your next big decision. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Jillian Viner. Today we're gonna do a deep dive on the impact of AI in MarTech with insights from Insight CMO, Hilary Kerner. Welcome.
Hilary: Thank you, Jillian. Thanks for having me.
Jillian: So, Hilary, you're a great person to have this conversation with, because you've been in tech a long time before you came to Insight. You were the leader at IBM and you were very heavily involved in Watson. So I feel like AI has been a big part of your world for a long time, but maybe not as impactful today as it was before, or is it kind of the same and everyone else is just kind of catching up to the excitement around AI that you've known for years?
Hilary: You know, it's, it's really kind of incredible to see how far it's come. So I led marketing for Watson which at the time you know, back in 2012 was really just open domain q and a. So kind of like a precursor to today's LLM's. So it's, it's really, really remarkable to see how far the technology has come in such a short time. And at the same time, what has not changed, which is, you know, people are still trying to figure out how and what to do with it.
Jillian: This feels like maybe the first time, maybe not that marketing has had a pretty significant seat at the table when it comes to technology decisions. Would you agree with that or is that maybe not as true as we wanna think It is.
Hilary: You know, it's interesting. I think that the C-I-O-C-M-O relationship has always been a really important one. And that is because our, our profession is constantly kind of being disrupted by tech, whether it's new channels with which to engage our audience or, or new tech that our buyers are using to engage with us. I think about kind of early in my career the shift to data and analytics. Suddenly all of these different things about your customers became knowable. You could instrument different touch points and get data about how well your tactics were performing. So the CIO relationship became a really, really important one because CMOs suddenly had to, you know, navigate the world of enterprise tech, and you needed to have a really good partner in the C-suite to help you adopt and maintain and you know, roll out that tech.
Hilary: It's really no different now. If anything, that relationship has just become much more important. And I think the CIOs need the CMOs, they need marketing at the table to help actually define the roadmap. And that's probably the piece that's, that's a little bit different and incredibly exciting is you know, it, it's, it's gone beyond marketing kind of giving their requirements to the CIO to actually helping to define the roadmap for the company. And I think that's, you know, because marketing is one of the very first places where AI is causing real disruption and represents real opportunity for companies.
Jillian: Yeah, big time. I mean, content generation is like one of the biggest use cases for generative ai. And you think about the enterprise, how, I mean, generative AI has really forced a new type of IT literacy for folks outside of the IT space. I mean, you mentioned data analytics and other MarTech tools that have come about that we've, you know, had to get a little bit more up to speed on our technology, but maybe not quite to this extent. When you think about the relationships that you have across the business, particularly on the IT side mm-hmm <affirmative>. You know, they're getting a lot of different requests, requirements, demands. Is there something that you wish they knew or understood about marketing that would help make the relationship better or make the the IT decisions easier?
Hilary: That's a really great question. I think it's, you know, it's always helpful when any of your key stakeholders in the C-suite understand your function. It just, you know, makes it easier to partner together. When I think about you know, what I wish the CIOs understood, I think well, I think all leaders are being told right now, AI is gonna be this amazing path to productivity, and it's gonna be this amazing opportunity to save a lot of money. And it certainly can be those things. It can be a path to productivity and it, and it can and, and should be, you should see cost savings as a result of that. But it's, it's really much more than that. And if you are only kind of looking at how can I save money and make my people more productive, you are missing the, the sort of big transformative opportunity.
Hilary: And so I, I think an, an understanding of marketing processes is gonna be really, really important for CIOs if they're gonna help us build out the agenda capability that we need to really help our marketers. So for example, some of the use cases that we're looking at are just these sort of like soul crushing administrative tasks that are a necessary and important part of our job. But you know, no marketer likes to spend their time on actually automating those, transforming those that's, that's gonna be where the kind of real, real power comes in. So I think CIOs understanding kind of the basic tasks of marketing is gonna be really important.
Jillian: I think those use cases, those discussions are so interesting because you are kind of putting yourself in a vulnerable position in those conversations and sort of rolling back the curtain on like, here's the stuff that we get buried in day to day, and here's like the annoying tasks that we have to complete. And for someone in a different department to kind of witness that. I mean, I know we all have those mundane as you soul sucking work mm-hmm <affirmative>. But you're kind of showing them like, here's the gross part of our day to day <laugh>. How do you make, how can you help us make this better? So it's a little bit of vulnerable and they're kind of getting to see the inner workings of marketing some of our processes, I guess, you know, when you're having those conversations, is there any time where someone's reactive of like, wow, I can't believe you guys have to go through all these steps just to do this one thing?
Hilary: Oh, I wish <laugh> I wish we were creating greater appreciation for some of the things our, our marketers go through. No, I think you know, the, the thing that stands out to me is how some of the I think some of the biggest traction we're getting are around some of like the least sexy use cases. So, I mean, you hear AI adoption and everyone's mind immediately goes to content generation. And I think that's just, you know, the nature of generative AI people, it's very easy and relatable to think, I'm gonna use this to write copy or you know, to create images or video. And that's, you know, that's fine. But I think about, you know, one of the use cases we're exploring where we one of, one of the things that we do it being in the channel is we have to provide our partners with proof of performance.
Hilary: This is incredibly important. And understanding the ROI of you know, the dollars that our, our partners are investing in, in us is incredibly, incredibly critical. But it is also this really ous task where, you know, each partner has different requirements. It's all that information is buried in contracts that differ that the types of things that they want, you know, for proof are, are very, very different. And collecting that information and understanding the differences and figuring out the, the timing, you know, that's, that's a task. Mm-Hmm. That's, you know, something that marketers have to spend their time on. Yeah. And that's time that is spent not engaging with customers or looking at the, you know, campaigns. So that's a great use case for ai. So I think that's, that's been, you know, a really important part of our earliest success is having use cases like that bubble up from the team so that they kind have a say in where and how, and where we use ai.
Jillian: Every company, I'm sure has an experience like that. You ha you're doing some piece of work on a regular basis that is arduous, it's soul sucking, it's tedium, and it just raises a question of like, is this work that I like doing? Can this be done a better way? Let's go explore that. So I think that's a great approach. Now, we talked about how, you know, you'd like the, the other business leaders understand a little bit more about the processes to make those decisions easier. There is on us on us as marketers since we've done all throughout the years to keep up with the technology. This is true for other lines of businesses as well, other leaders across finance, sales legal. What do you think these leaders need to be aware of in order to, you know, position themselves for success in the future? How do they need to be thinking about this disruptive generative AI revolution?
Hilary: Well, I think about for us I, ironically AI skills are good and important. You need to understand what model to use for what. You need to kind of understand what's available to you. I think the, the things that it is requiring of us are to actually make us better marketers. So the skills that you need to build are actually marketing ones more than, than tech skills. I think because we can understand our audiences better than ever before, because whether that's, you know, we, we've talked in it in our marketing team about building synthetic personas mm-hmm <affirmative>. So that we can sort of interrogate our prospective customers and get
Jillian: The really harsh
Hilary: Feedback <laugh> Yeah. And better, better tailor our, our tactics accordingly, because you can understand your customers, you know, better than ever. It, it really makes you know, the, the skills around building belief in a company, a product or brand, and motivating a buyer to take action, that has never been more important. And that has not changed. It's just become more important now that the tech is, you know, helping us. Likewise, I think, you know, our judgment has become much more important. So now that AI can generate content, knowing what to ask for, what kind of content do you need to plug into the journey, at what point, what is actually gonna motivate a buyer to move to the next stage of their buying journey? And then knowing whether or not the content that you got back, whether it's good or not, like that judgment has become so much more important. So, I know, I mean, I, I can't speak for every profession, but I can say that, you know, for marketing, that the skills that have become even more critical are marketing skills.
Jillian: Yeah, that's fair. We, we did do some experimentation with the synthetic persona as we bunched up against some, some ad creative that we did, and we're really just hounding the AI to keep challenging us and, and give us, you know, alternatives and different options. At the end of the day, we realized that the content that we had, the tagline that we had, was really the strongest one there. So it's very validating. Like the AI isn't always right. It's gonna help, I think, refine, but you can't take it at face value and forget that, hey, we as marketers, or, you know, any leader in a different line of business, we have the expertise. We need to lean on that.
Hilary: It's a really powerful brainstorming
Jillian: Tool. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna talk about something a little bit controversial in a way. You know, we're talking about the use of ai. A lot of companies are being very bold about saying that we have an AI approach. We've even even heard that from our own CEO. It hasn't always gone well. The feedback has been a little rough from, from critics and fairly so, but, you know, AI is obviously an important tool for us to adopt to and adapt, especially being in tech. We know that's the future. But from your perspective, what do you think is the right approach? And we say, I AI first, you know, what are we really saying when we put those words out there?
Hilary: Well, I know for insight, we mean human led and AI empowered. So how can how can AI assist and empower us? But it's about how can we use AI to achieve scale to help free up people to do work that is more meaningful?
Jillian: Not collecting pop Yeah.
Hilary: <Laugh> not collecting proof of performance. And I, I think we're kind of seeing that across the different functions, not just in marketing. How
Jillian: Do you move the skeptic on that?
Hilary: Well I, I can speak to what's worked within our team or what I, what I think is starting to work. I think it's really important that the transformation happen organically. And there are always gonna be people and the adoption curve. Were more enthusiastic about technology than than others. And I think letting them take the lead and kind of build momentum and consensus is like one of the best things you can do for your organization. I mean, I can mandate it, everyone has to use this. But I think that having it come from the grounds up, especially as we're defining use cases and prioritizing how and where to put it first mm-hmm <affirmative>. I think having that come from within the team is in incredibly powerful. You know, I think as a leader of people your first and most important responsibility is to your team.
Hilary: And I think about the, the marketers on our team, and I, I want them to have skills that are competitive. I want them, you know, to have their time at insight, be time spent where they're doing really great exceptional work and where, when, you know, when they go on to the, out into the job market to whatever's next, like, they have competitive skills. So I, I feel a really deep responsibility to them to make sure that I'm providing opportunities, you know, for practice. And so I think having kind of that kind of mindset and then letting it build organically has been really important and effective for us. I think we're starting to see, see some real momentum. I also think leaders shouldn't be afraid of resistance. I mean, I think within, within the resistance, like, or, or at least I, I think we should make time to understand how and where it's coming from. 'cause A lot of times there are very real, you know, concerns in there that you know, maybe this isn't the best use case. Maybe we should start somewhere else. I think taking time to kind of understand that is, is also valid.
Jillian: And you, it sounds like you're letting the teams drive those use cases.
Hilary: Trying to, yeah. I mean, I, I think we can always go faster. But I, if, if you can, if, if the team can identify that the spaces where they think it's gonna be make the biggest impact, like of course we should start there.
Jillian: Yeah. That change curve can be challenging to adapt. We talked to Joyce Mullen a bit about this as well. Mm-Hmm. And she's an ambitious person, so ever, you know, she always wants to go faster. AI is definitely one of those areas where it feels like leaders are ahead of employees. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. In terms of those AI champions, because that's really what you're talking about when you're talking about that groundswell. Where are you seeing that from the most?
Hilary: You know, I think on, on our team, it's it's the people who, you know, are maybe using the technology and their, like, personal life. Now having permission to bring it into work. So you know, I'm seeing it there. Certainly your, your content teams are doing really interesting things with it. I, I think our, if I look at our guild, which is the, you know, the, the internal group that we've started in marketing to kind of collect all the enthusiasts and help define and prioritize the use cases, it's really a mix across all the different functions. I was really pleased to see that
Jillian: Functions across marketing mm-hmm <affirmative>. That are coming functions across
Hilary: Marketing. Yeah.
Jillian: That's interesting. So it's really being driven by people who are maybe experimentation, experimenting on their own, and being able to do that in the workplace. I feel like we've seen something like that before where tech kind of like started personally and kind of came in. I mean, you, again, you've been around the tech industry for, for many, many years. And I'm even thinking back to you talking about skills development. Mm-Hmm. You know, a couple years ago, couple <laugh> you couldn't apply for a content role if you didn't have SEO on your, on your resume. And so now it sounds like SEO optimization is probably passe. And now it's all about can you do a good prompt, prompt engineering.
Hilary: Exactly. So the same way that, like, you wouldn't, I wouldn't hire a marketer who wasn't comfortable with data, like data and analytics. You know, you wouldn't hire a marketer who's not comfortable you know, starting to use ai. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. It's just our, our profession is constantly being disrupted by tech. I remember a time earlier in my career where you know, we were, the conversation was about Web 2.0, you know? Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. We, you know, millennials have seen the rise of the internet. And then, you know, it was Web 2.0 and I remember at IBM, they did a summit. They brought in somebody to talk about podcasting, blogging YouTube and Twitter, which were all like, relatively new <laugh> at the time. And, you know, we're, we're kind of sitting there thinking about how can we embrace these new channels and and, and figure out new and different ways to engage our, our buyers?
Hilary: And you do, right? Like, it, it the same way that SEO wasn't a profession, you know, a, a decade ago when it is now I think we're gonna see the same thing with ai. But I think the important point is that you know, we're, we're just not strangers to that kind of disruption. It is always changing. There are always gonna be new and different channels. There are always gonna be new and different tools that we have to understand our audiences. There's always gonna be ways to streamline tasks and make them easier. But the core skills, understanding the customer, understanding, you know, what's gonna motivate them to take action, that that has not changed. And if anything, you know, as I was saying, it's more important.
Jillian: So as a leader, you're working across different age groups, different demographics, maybe their comfort with new technologies at different stages. Their expertise is at different stages. How are you coaching or, or even just seeing the natural integration of AI into their workflows. Are there certain age groups where you, you kind of need to like, put some training wheels on the ai 'cause you don't want them to become too reliant, and there are others where you're like, please just try this out.
Hilary: That's really good. And important question. I think early career professionals really need to give themselves the experience of building the skills that, you know, maybe millennials learned earlier on in our careers. I think, you know, practicing your writing is really, really important. That's what makes you a good editor, and that editing that judgment is really critical. As you, I've to put you in a position to evaluate what you're getting back from ai mm-hmm <affirmative>. It, I think AI is allowing us to think more like creative directors than it is like copywriters. But if you've never been a copywriter, you know, you can't, you can't be a, a really effective creative director. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. You know, it's, I think earlier career professionals need to kind of take the time to practice those skills, and they need to, to kind of practice working with ai.
Hilary: They need to do both. It, if anything, it's a little bit harder, but that's gonna be really, really important. Especially as they kind of build their own careers. I think that's where, you know, maybe middle managers later career professionals have a bit of an advantage because you have that foundation. And then now we have the, the new tech. So I think our, our responsibility is to make sure that we're mentoring our more junior employees so that even as AI is maybe automating some of those kind of tasks, they still know how to do them. Mm-Hmm
Jillian: <Affirmative>. And with the career experience, you're having a, a stronger foundation to kind of test and validate. I mean, I mentioned earlier we use the, the synthetic personas to do, to test our ad copy. At the end of the day, we're like, no, no, no. This is the ad copy we have is actually great. But it does take some experience to stand on your own and, and kind of say the AI is wrong. Are there situations where, you know, maybe you've put something into AI and, and you've kind of challenged it, or, or is like, that's nice, that's cute, but that's not what I was going for <laugh>.
Hilary: You know, what you get out of AI is only as good as what you put in. True. So your, your prompts need to be really precise. You really need to be thoughtful about the role that you want AI to take on the context is really important. And then I just go back to, you need to deeply understand your customer and the customer journey. Otherwise the AI is not gonna be as helpful a tool as, you know, we maybe
Jillian: Think, yeah. My favorite hack is telling the AI to create its own prompt. Oh,
Hilary: <Laugh>, I have, I've not tried that.
Jillian: Yes. Just, you just do a brain dump on it and let it rewrite it, and then validate that it's actually spitting out what you intended and make adjustments. And then it's got a really clean prompt. Some people are becoming a little bit more sensitive to what they perceive as AI generated. They're starting to kind of call out the internet where they think something is ai, it's got the rocket ship emoji, or too many m dashes, which is heartbreaking. It is
Hilary: Heartbreaking. I love m dashes. <Laugh>.
Jillian: How do you leverage these tools in a way that builds trust, not just with your employees, but also with your customers? Hmm.
Hilary: That's a really good question. It's interesting. I, I have talked to people who have like a real problem with AI generated content and will spend like time. And I don't know, that's a great use of time trying to figure out whether or not something was generated by ai. I remember when you know, we started to use marketing automation tools and you could suddenly generate emails automatically, like the big complaint people had about them is that they weren't personalized. Well, with ai, you can get over that. And, and more than that, it's, you know, you can engage with a company or a brand, and it might not even be a person, it could be an agent. I think you know, humans are are, are very predictable in that they're willing to accept a lot in exchange for value. So, you know, we give our data away every day in exchange for, you know, value, personalization, good experiences. I think the same thing is gonna hold true as long as we're using AI in a way that is in service of our customers. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. You know, how, and you know, why something was generated is maybe less important.
Jillian: We know that AI has a lot of potential to drive productivity efficiency. We actually talked about that earlier. Mm-Hmm. How it's gonna improve our processes for developing and collecting all those pieces that we need for the proof of performance. Is there another outcome for generative AI that you're particularly excited about?
Hilary: I, I look forward to our marketers having more time to be creative and less time bogged down. I mean, I think about the, the feedback that I get from our team and the things that, you know, people complain about. I look forward to the day when AI can solve, you know, most of that mm-hmm <affirmative>. And they can spend their time on the things that they enjoy about their jobs the most,
Jillian: Which is refreshing because I think a lot of people in the creative community have really felt the threat of AI taking over the fun jobs and leaving them to do the mundane. Mm. But the focus that you're seeing, at least under your leadership and here at Insight is No, no, we're gonna have AI take the mundane so that we can be the creative. Totally.
Hilary: I mean, it is, it is a little bit threatening. It is, it is. Change is scary, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. But our, our jobs have always been changing. Marketing has, is always evolving as technology does. And you know, I I don't think it can, it can replace, you know, true judgment, true human creativity. I don't think we have anything to worry about from the perspective of not being able to do the parts of our job that bring us joy.
Jillian: Now, you travel a lot, you at a lot of events. You're talking to a lot of peers or leaders of other businesses, kind of what's your, what's your pulse on the broader environment? Where are people at in their AI adoption?
Hilary: Well, everybody is talking about it, right? Sure. I mean, you I was at can, which is a great gathering of CMOs, and you could not go to a panel where AI and marketing was not touched upon. And that is because we are, we are not strangers to, to tech and to transformation. And I think marketers have always done a really good job of kind of being out in front. So it's not unsurprising. I walked away thinking that our team is in a really good place in terms of some of the use cases that we're taking a look at. And some of the ways that we're using the technology, they're, they're unique and that's good. I felt really good about the progress our team is making. What
Jillian: Do you think's been the difference?
Hilary: You know, I, I think it's it could be that it's coming from the team, from the people who are closest to the work who are specialists in their roles. I think it I hope some of it's coming from them having the kind of permission and the, the freedom to, you know, go do that. I think it very much helps that I have a CEO who's incredibly supportive of the transformation and is giving us access to the resources we need, whether it's, you know, technical resources or, or even time to go fast and fail fast and try things out. I think having the support of your leadership team, I think about my partners. I have very, very good partners in our, our CFO and our CIO. And I think that's been really important too.
Jillian: Do you think this is one of the rare instances, I'm saying rare, maybe not rare, but you know, often smaller companies get the advantage of being small so they can move fast. Mm. But you just mentioned a lot of resources that are big resources that maybe those smaller companies don't have. Are you seeing a difference in progression or adoption between smaller companies and larger companies? Do you think that's because of the resourcing, or is it just kind of different from one to the other?
Hilary: Well now we're getting into, I think, I think we're gonna see the role of the channel shift. So I think this is a place where insight can really step up and help our customers. We can make this very advanced technology much more accessible to smaller companies who don't have in-house IT teams. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Because right now, you really do need in-house IT teams. I mean, these these kind of built for purpose models that you can get off the shelf are, are good, like functionally, but if you're really gonna make a difference within your organization, you need to be embedding this technology within your like, existing enterprise stack. And you need technical skills to do that. So I think about some of the projects that we're running with our customers where, you know, we're kind of starting small with maybe something very specific and getting it embedded, get having the customer see results and then, you know, earning the right to do more. I think there's a very real role for channel partners to play in helping drive that adoption with smaller companies that lack the skills and expertise. I mean, we see that as a very common reason why AI deployments fail because they don't have the, there's a gap around the expertise of the skill in-house.
Jillian: Interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of integrations and mm-hmm <affirmative>. Things you have to consider when you're looking at the future of your talent pipeline. Again, we talked about how SEO used to be a skill, and maybe it's not anymore, and you wouldn't hire a marketer who doesn't have data skills. How do you see the roles in marketing or even just across the org changing because of generative ai?
Hilary: Well, certainly I think there's an expect expectation to be much more AI literate. I look for marketers to have a point of view on how and where they should use it. If somebody has a strong point of view around, like, I would not use AI for this. I think that's okay and fair too. I just, you know, wanna see that it's considered. I think it's really, really important that, you know, marketers are, are curious mm-hmm <affirmative>. We have to be, you know, asking questions about our customers, about the landscape. So somebody who has a hunger to understand, you know, the technology and what, what it can be doing for them. I think that's even more important than having kind of the skillset already established.
Jillian: What's been the most exciting part for you? Like, have you seen a shift in employee attitudes or even attitudes across your peers about generative ai? Is there ever been a moment where you're like, oh, this is disappointing, or, no, this is actually quite amazing.
Hilary: I think there's a lot of optimism. That was kind of the overarching feeling that I left can with the, the sense that we're kind of all on the, the precipice of a really big moment. And that that's a really exciting time to be a marketer. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for, for people to kind of step up and lead and define that, that future. So that's, I, I, I'm very optimistic about that. There's certainly parts of my job that I would love to have agentic capability to, to solve for. I'm still waiting for the day that I can, I can build an agent to help me with my, my email and like put things into folders for me. I'm sure someone's gonna listen to this and tell me exactly how I can do that. Yes. So I very much hope that that is the case. But I, I think it's an in, it's an incredibly exciting time and I am very, very excited to see kind of what comes next.
Jillian: Well, on that note, I have to ask you before we go, do you have a favorite use case? Something that you've like really just honed in on that's kind of changed the way you live or work Hmm.
Hilary: At work? I think the use cases that our teams have come up with are really cool. I mean, the, the way that we're looking at doing mass personalization at scale, and like true one-on-one engagement with customers with custom content, that's gonna be a really, really cool one. Automating some of the things that I know just really bug people on our team, like that's a really cool one. And you know, the holy grail for me is that Inbox <laugh>
Jillian: Organization. Yeah. The email summary is not cutting it for you.
Hilary: No, I like, I like my email summary. I like the prioritization, but I need, I, I aspire to be an inbox zero person and I'm not quite there yet, but I'm, I'm sure, yeah. Can help me.
Jillian: Well, good luck with that. Thank you. We'll wanna know how you achieved it. Maybe that's gonna be your 2025 goal. <Laugh>. Awesome. Hillary, it was so great to talk to you. Thank you for coming on. Thank
Hilary: You very much. This is an important conversation.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to this episode of Insight on. If today's conversation sparked an idea or raised a challenge, you're facing head to insight.com. You'll find the resources, case studies, and real world solutions to help you lead with clarity. If you found this episode to be helpful, be sure to follow insight on, leave a review and share it with a colleague. It's how we grow the conversation and help more leaders make better tech decisions. Discover more at insight.com. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are of those of the host and the guests, and do not necessarily reflect on the official policy or position of insight or its affiliate. This content is for informational purposes only, should not be considered as professional or legal advice.
