A Leader’s Journey into AI Marketing

Reading Time: 27 minutes

Imagine stepping out of a Fortune 500 boardroom after 16 years, only to find yourself on the cutting edge of AI marketing and innovation. Sounds like a plot twist in a tech thriller, right? Well, for our guest today, it’s not fiction – it’s her extraordinary career path.

In today’s fast-paced marketing world, staying ahead often means embracing the unknown. But what happens when that unknown is as vast and complex as artificial intelligence? Many marketers find themselves at a crossroads, wondering how to bridge the gap between traditional strategies and this brave new world of AI.

This is where our guest’s journey becomes not just inspiring, but invaluable. Today, we have the privilege of speaking with Lauren Schiavone, a visionary leader who’s made the leap from corporate titan to AI trailblazer.

Lauren isn’t just any former executive. With nearly two decades of consumer insights, brand, and sales leadership experience at Procter & Gamble, she’s been the driving force behind some of the most recognizable brands in your home. Her work at P&G was consistently recognized as best-in-class, and she was even selected as one of Progressive Grocer Industry’s Best and Brightest Under 40.

But Lauren’s story doesn’t end in the corporate world. In a bold move, she stepped away from her prestigious role to dive headfirst into the world of AI. Now, as a consultant and thought leader, Lauren is on a mission to demystify AI for business leaders, particularly in the realms of consumer goods, brand innovation, and retail.

What makes Lauren’s perspective so unique is her ability to translate complex AI concepts into practical strategies that non-technical leaders can actually use. She’s not just talking about AI – she’s showing businesses how to enhance decision-making, drive innovation, and deliver business growth in tangible ways.

AI in Marketing: Unpacked host Mike Allton asked Lauren Schiavone about:

✨ Corporate Wisdom in AI: Understand how traditional business acumen enhances AI implementation in marketing.

✨ Practical AI Integration: Learn strategies for incorporating AI into existing marketing processes and teams.

✨ Future-Ready Marketing: Discover how to prepare marketing strategies for an AI-driven future while leveraging current strengths.

Learn more about Lauren Schiavone

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

Lauren’s Framework for AI Adoption:

Assess | Establish | Experimentation | Scaling

Full Transcript

(lightly edited)

From Boardroom to Bot Room: A Leader’s Journey into AI Marketing with Lauren Schiavone

[00:00:00] Lauren Schiavone: I developed this four step framework to outline how to navigate this. It starts with Assess. Here, we are going to conduct a comprehensive audit of the agency’s capabilities, their technology, their skills, their literacy. I actually developed a scorecard to help brands do this. And this just helps to provide a clear, measurable way to understand sort of where your agency partners are at in their AI journey.

The next is Establish. Here, we identify what the opportunities are for AI, define goals, KPIs. And really start to select the pilots that, that align with the business goals. And then we get to Experimentation, right? And this involves AI pilots, make sure you iterate quickly and, and most importantly, there needs to be feedback loops to understand the impact, refine the approach, and probably even decide on new pilots to do.

And the last phase is the Scaling phase where we scale successful pilots. It’s also important to develop a roadmap here to ensure that AI continues to be integrated.

[00:00:59] Mike Allton: Welcome to AI in Marketing: Unpacked, where we simplify AI for impactful marketing. I’m your host, Mike Allton here to guide you through the world of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on marketing strategies. Each episode, we’ll break down AI concepts into manageable insights and explore practical applications that can supercharge your marketing efforts.

Whether you’re an experienced marketer just starting to explore the potential of AI, this podcast will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to succeed. So tune in and let’s unlock the power of AI together.

Greetings program. Welcome back to AI in Marketing: Unpacked, where I’m selfishly used this time to pick the brains of experts at keeping up with and integrating or layering artificial intelligence into social media, content, advertising, search, and all these other areas of digital marketing. You get to learn too. Subscribe to be shown and prepare yourself and your brand for this AI revolution and come out ahead. And listen, imagine stepping out of a fortune 500 boardroom after 16 years, only to find yourself on the cutting edge of AI innovation.

Sound like a plot twist and a tech thriller, right? Well, for our guest today, it’s not fiction. It’s her extraordinary career path in today’s fast paced marketing world. Staying ahead often means embracing the unknown, but what happens when that unknown is as fast and complex as artificial intelligence? Many marketers find themselves at a crossroads wondering how to bridge the gap between traditional strategies and this brave new world of AI.

This is where our guest journey begins. Becomes not just inspiring, but invaluable today. We have the privilege of speaking with Lauren Schiavone, a visionary leader who’s made the leap from corporate titan to AI trailblazer. Lauren isn’t just any former executive with nearly two decades of consumer insights, brand and sales leadership experience at Procter and Gamble.

She’s been the driving force behind some of the most recognizable brands in your home. Her work at P and G was consistently recognized as best in class. And she was even selected as one of Progressive Grocer Industry’s best and brightest under 40, but Lauren’s story doesn’t end in the corporate world, in a bold move she stepped away from her prestigious role to dive headfirst into the world of AI. Now, as a consultant and thought leader, Lauren is on a mission to demystify AI for business leaders, particularly in the realms of consumer goods, brand innovation, and retail. Hey, Lauren, welcome to the show.

[00:03:23] Lauren Schiavone: Thank you so much, Mike.

It’s great to be here.

[00:03:25] Mike Allton: So excited to have you on and to, quite frankly, pick your brain. Cause I think this is going to be really insightful for me personally. And for all of you listening, Lauren, if you could just start by talking us through that decision to transition from corporate and focusing on AI and marketing.[00:03:42] Lauren Schiavone: Definitely. So Mike I had a incredible opportunity at P& G to be there for 16 years and work on some incredible brands. Actually started at P& G and consumer insights. Then I moved into brand management and finally really my interest in e commerce is what took me to sales in my final chapter at P& G.

And at P& G, I spent a lot of time working on product, consumer and retail innovation. And in doing so that’s where I really developed my passion for leveraging innovation to drive business growth. And last year I made a very personal decision to leave P& G. I have two young children and I wanted the flexibility to spend more time with them.

In this time away, I finally had a moment to lift my head up from the corporate world and see the broader landscape. And that’s when it became very clear to me. AI is going to revolutionize everything, not just marketing and sales, but every industry, every career and the way we live our lives. In fact, early in my journey, I was walking with a former executive at P and G.

And she said to me, Oh, Lauren, this is like the early days of e comm to which I said, no, Amy, this is not like the early days of e comm e comm was a new way for shoppers to shop, right? A new modality, if you will. AI will transform absolutely everything. So I was super inspired, inspired by the possibility.

So I really decided to dive in and immerse myself in learning and really figuring out how AI can be a growth accelerator. And of course, just like you probably Mike, my AI learning journey is ongoing. There is something new to learn every day. But I’m focused on helping non technical leaders really harness that power of AI.

So this past summer, I decided to combine my 16 years of experience leading business growth and innovation at P and G combined with my industry leading AI education to form wonder consulting. So with wonder consulting, I want to empower leaders to thrive in this AI driven future and use A I to accelerate business growth and to do it in a way where I demystify a I really to make it practical, practical and actionable, particularly for non technical leaders to use it for growth.

[00:05:55] Mike Allton: Love that there’s there’s so many aspects of your journey in that answer, quite frankly, that I can relate to starting with the first of moving from corporate wanting to spend time with your kids. I have two girls. One of them turns 10 tomorrow, the other’s 13. And I just, I love being able to work from home.

I’ve been working from home for their entire lives. So I’m, you know, a real part of their life. And, and to your point, the AI journey is very much the same. It was kind of a thunderbolt to me late in 2023 that, wow, this is to your point, changing my life. Everything. It’s not just changing marketing. It’s not just changing sales or e commerce.

It’s literally the fourth industrial revolution. And it’s something that we have to pay attention to. And I loved your point about how it’s changing every day. There’s news and developments and new apps every single day. That’s something we don’t talk a lot about on this show.

[00:06:46] Lauren Schiavone: Yeah,[00:06:47] Mike Allton: but to your point, you know, recording this on October 9th and I was just playing with OpenAI’s new Canvas feature just before we got on this call, this innovative way to edit a document or collaborate in real time because I had a document that Colleagues, an actual, like a word document or a Google doc that colleagues had left comments on.

And I wanted AI’s help addressing those comments and integrating them into this larger four page piece of text. So I basically duplicated it in canvas and got AI to weigh in and help me address these colleagues concerns. And I could not have done that without canvas, which is super cool. But you talked about.

Yeah. You talked about your consumer insights background at PNG. And I’m wondering how that’s kind of influenced your approach to AI implementation and marketing strategies.

[00:07:38] Lauren Schiavone: So at PNG, we believe that consumer is boss and that belief really shapes a lot of the work that I do. And I want the consumer to be at the forefront of every strategy and every piece of work that I’m working on.

And AI really is an incredible tool to allow us to uncover consumer insights. Thanks. Not just more quickly and deeply but in a more real time way than traditional methods. So I’ll share with you a few examples of how this comes to life for me across a couple different, you know, quote, consumer groups.

So the first example highlights how you might use a tool like ChatGBT to gain consumer insights. So I was actually working with a client who wanted to understand consumer insights related to the different service offerings that they had. The client needed quick insights, right? So I use Chat GBT to draft consumer personas and develop a discussion guide based on our business questions.

And then at Chat GBT simulate a focus group. This part blew my mind because as someone who has spent hours in the backroom of traditional research, the speed and effectiveness of this tool was just, I mind blowing for me. Chat GBT even summarized the results. They provided the top lines, you know, that I could share with my client.

And look, I know what many of you listeners are probably thinking. Wait, these are not real consumers and you’re right. These are AI generated consumers, but the model is trained on so much consumer data that it’s able to simulate consumer sentiment and beliefs very, very quickly. accurately. And look, AI research or should never be a replacement for traditional research, but it’s an incredible tool for early stage brainstorming, ideation, or gaining even initial feedback as you think about how to shape your research plans.

The next example, you know, it’s not always the traditional consumer. Sometimes the consumer is the person that we’re selling to. So maybe for you, it’s the buyer or someone at your retail partner or someone like that. So LLMs also offer a powerful way to ensure that you are listening to those key stakeholders.

So one of the things I like to do with many of my friends in sales is we create a detailed buyer persona. In that persona, we include things like the buyer’s background, their goals, their objections their maybe personal things that they’re interested. And if possible, I also like to incorporate any sort of call notes or previous communication back and forth with the buyer.

Once we have that persona, it’s an incredibly valuable tool. So imagine the scenario where you say, act as my buyer and provide me feedback on this business plan, or act as my buyer, or and provide me feedback on this new brand artwork. It allows you to get insight and allows you to optimize what you’re working on by really listening to the voice of the person that matters most in the discussion.

And then last, you know, sometimes the quote consumer is just our client or a key leader in the organization. In these cases, I like to use Chat GBT to perform what I call tone of voice analysis. So this really helps you ensure that the content or the tool or whatever you’re developing really reflects the style and preferences of that person.

In order to do this, I gather tons of documents, videos. anything that you might have and organize it in AI and create a tone of voice analysis, then I use ChatGBT to refine content in that, in that tone. So for example, I’ll say, Hey, ChatGBT, act as John and write this update this document as if it’s in John’s writing, or how could this sound more like me?

And honestly, this has been a game changer for anyone who is creating content on behalf of someone else or has a leader that wants something written in a certain way, or is writing on behalf of a brand, having a tone of voice analysis and using it in Chat GPT is an absolute must.

[00:11:40] Mike Allton: I love that approach.

I’ve even used it for myself on a copy that I had previously written. And when I went back and I looked at, I’m like, I obviously just kind of mailed that one in. I really didn’t pay attention or pay a lot of time because again, it’s for the social media hat, my personal side hustle. So sometimes I’m doing things really, really rapidly because maybe I have 20 minutes on a Thursday night to put up a contact page or landing page or something like that.

So I can feed all that into. Check GPT and get a much better, you know, several paragraphs or whatever of copy cause I’ve taken the time to develop a Mike Allton’s voice, custom GPT. And in fact, I think I’m going to do a whole episode just on, on how to do that for you folks. But I also loved your point about simulated data is something we’ve talked about a couple of times on the show and a friend of the show and former guest. Chris Penn has spoken at length about how to create simulated audiences and simulated data. So I’ll link to some of those in the show, because I think that’s a really powerful use case.

[00:12:41] Lauren Schiavone: Yes.

He has a great tool to create an ICP persona. He does.

[00:12:46] Mike Allton: Yeah.[00:12:47] Lauren Schiavone: The, just one to add on to one of your points, Mike, and you know, you talking about how valuable it is to have your tone of voice or a clear persona, you know, where people get a little bit tripped up, I think is like, it takes some time to do that.

You know, maybe it takes 30 minutes or an hour to organize your content and go through it. So, yeah. Mike. And some people are like, oh, that’s a little time consuming. But you cannot imagine you guys, the amount of time that you’ll save if you just, you know, put a little bit of time in in the upfront.

[00:13:16] Mike Allton: Oh yeah.

And then everything else is better stuff again, that you would’ve just, you know, like thrown away is not important pieces of copy. Yeah. A tweet, you know, a reply to an email, something like that when all of a sudden you can feed it through. And really just punch up the language because I’ve trained it, for example, to know that I like science fiction and fantasy and I love historical analogies and references.

And so now, and I can tell it, Hey, for this one, let’s not do any sci fi, it’s not really appropriate here, but if you find an historical analogy, by all means, weave that in. And that last example, it woven perfectly this Lewis and Clark. Reference of expanding westward and taking leadership and being an uncharted.

I mean, it was just brilliant. And I’m like, this is the way I talk. I love it. So that’s awesome. I love uncovering those little surprises, those little gifts like, wow, okay, this is, this is really cool. What are some of the other bigger surprises or maybe even challenges that you’ve encountered diving into AI after being in corporate for so long?

[00:14:18] Lauren Schiavone: So the first surprise is really what I’ll call the power of a LLM or a tool like Chat GBT. So it is so easy to get overwhelmed by AI, right? There’s a new tool every day, but mastering an LLM combined with your own experience or expertise. expertise can really give you superpowers. I find that today most leaders are only scratching the surface of what is possible like chat GP with a tool like chat GPT.

You know, many are writing, using it simply to write an email. You guys, that’s just the beginning. The possibilities with the tool like chat GPT are really endless. I think the biggest challenge Mike is one that we touched on. It’s just hard to keep up with AI and how quickly things are changing. But I’ll give a couple of tips on sort of how I like to stay up to date and informed.

So first is podcasts You know, great ones like this one are a great way to stay informed while I’m doing things like this. driving my kids to school, right? So find one that you, you like and listen to it when you have a little bit of downtime. The next thing I like to do is just integrate these tools into my life, into my personal habits.

So a tip I always give my friends is download Chat GBT on your phone. And the next time you reach for Google, go to chat, GBT. Instead, it’ll help you start to understand what are the use cases. And I’ll start you to get, get in the habit of using a tool like Chat GBT. And then finally, I found that LinkedIn is an incredible tool.

There’s so many thought leaders sharing tips, tricks, et cetera, online. So I’ve given up a little bit of my social media like Instagram. And instead I take those, you know, a couple of minutes of downtime here and there, and I open up LinkedIn so that I can learn from, you know, some of the incredible folks that I get to follow there.

[00:16:01] Mike Allton: Those are, those are great tips. LinkedIn is a fantastic piece of advice because there’s so many of us to your point that we’re all learning together. We’re sharing what we’ve learned. We’re sharing our challenges. We’re sharing our questions, and then other people are answering them in the comments. So there’s a wealth of knowledge out there, and I love your examples of just, you know, jumping into ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity.

I’m using more and more often when I’ve got just general questions and research and that sort of thing. And these are all great use cases. The other thing that I also wanted to mention is if you are in marketing. You don’t necessarily need to know the latest and greatest things that are happening with the LLMs.

You don’t have to know how they’re being made, where they’re developing, what’s, what’s going on with funding and all these kinds of things. It’s enough to have just a high level understanding. I often think for many of us, that’s why I usually recommend The Artificial Intelligence Show that Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput put on, you know, that’s my one hour a week of research and awareness into what’s happening in the overall world of AI.

And the rest of my time spent playing with the tools.

[00:17:09] Lauren Schiavone: Yes.[00:17:09] Mike Allton: Finding new use cases and, and researching examples of how other people are using AI and how I could potentially adopt that myself. So to that point, I’d love if you could share an example or two of how you’ve kind of translated what we might call the traditional marketing principles and strategies from your, your P and G days into some AI driven strategies or tactics.[00:17:31] Lauren Schiavone: Yes, definitely. So let’s talk about the path to purchase and how AI is, is transforming this. So AI, as we’ve talked, is going to transform everything and commerce is no exception. I think there’s three things that leaders need to be prepared for or aware of. So first is shoppers are trusting AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, et cetera, for product recommendations. So today we see that up to 60 percent of consumers are actually trusting those tools. And even we see right platforms like Perplexity already connecting AI searches directly to links. So Mr. Brand being recommended, right? And are your consumers being directed to links at your retailer?

Things to think about. The second area is that retailers are integrating AI solutions into their platforms for shoppers. So I really believe that what once we call the e comm search will really evolve to what I call AI driven answers. So consumers will no longer type in and search. They’ll just go straight to the AI assistant shopping assistant on that platform and ask for a product recommendation.

So there are tools like this out there today. Rufus is Amazon’s. AI shopping assistant, and it really helps you break down any purchase barriers you have and also provides recommendations. This is going to shift how shoppers shop. You want to ask yourself, is your product being recommended? And are you having conversations with your retailers about these tools?

The last area is that AI is supercharging commerce trends. So for a long time, we’ve talked about trends like personalization, omnichannel, customer experiences, but AI is going to supercharge this with speed, precision, scalability, And interactivity.

[00:19:16] Mike Allton: That’s absolutely true. Our previous episode, we had Michael Nevsky.

He was the Director of Global Insights from Visa who spoke at length about the changes that AI is having on consumers and how they’re buying and they’re purchasing. And in fact, all of you marketers listen today, I would be paying attention to your Google analytics and be watching how much traffic is increasingly coming.

From perplexity and chat GPT. I’ve been seeing it in my referral traffic now for six to 12 months, and it’s going up and up and up every single day. Now, my next question, Lauren, is kind of funny because I’m very transparent about the fact that we were talking in the green room about how I have a custom GPT that helps me prepare for these podcast interviews, right?

And it suggests a lot of questions and it always likes to ask, how do you see the AI landscape changing in the next five to 10 years? And I always laugh because. And a human knows that five to 10 years out and AI is ridiculous. Question can’t possibly know five to 10 months alone years. But I’d love your take from that consumer goods and retail sectors perspective.

How do you see AI kind of reshaping those industries specifically?

[00:20:24] Lauren Schiavone: I think it’ll reshape the industry in a lot of different ways. I think one is. AI driven commerce, right? Which we just talked about. I also think the pace of innovation will accelerate. So as my time as a marketer, I spent months and months and months on things like unlocking insights, claim development, concept development, brief development, and now all of those things can be done much faster and maybe even better with AI.

I think consumer expectations will continue to rise in terms of personalization, custom experiences As well as custom products and as well as speed I also think that I’m starting to see right the traditional manufacturer and agency model. It’s going to evolve it. It has to And I think within that with ai there’ll be a lot of content out there It’ll be very easy to create content, but I think good content and creative will still really matter, right?

Particularly in that sea of AI generated content. And then the last thing is, look, organizations are going to look different, right? We know that in an interview, Sam Altman said that, you know, essentially with AGI, 95 percent of what marketers do will be easily done instantly and at no cost by AI, right?

So maybe you’re listening to this podcast and you’re in sales or you’re in HR and you think, Oh, I’m good. Like that’s just the marketers, but you got to keep in mind that he was asked about marketing. Right. So he could probably answer that question with any profession. And you know, so organizational designs are going to have to look differently.

Liza Adams, who I love in the AI space, you know, talks about chatbots, you know, potentially reporting to you. And I think that’s likely a scenario that’ll happen.

[00:22:07] Mike Allton: Couldn’t agree more. Liza Adams is fantastic. And it was, I think that quote from Sam Altman and then some commentary from Paul Roetzer that kind of jarred me into realizing, all right, then I need to change how I’m approaching this.

And I love your point about writing. Cause the writer and me and, and, and friend, like, Ann Handley really appreciate the fact that good writing will still continue to matter. It’s, it’s that. Not really important kind of transactional writing that’s easily replaced by AI. So you want to make sure that you’re focused on that focus folks.

We’re talking with Lauren Schiavone about her experiences working for corporate and how that’s applied to today’s AI technology. And I’ve got seven more questions. You’re not going to want to miss, but first a word from our sponsor.

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So Lauren, we’re talking about some pretty frightening statements, I think on behalf of AI and marketers and yet there are marketing leaders out there who are hesitant to integrate AI, or even think about how they can potentially use AI in their departments.

What advice do you have for people in those kinds of situations?

[00:24:18] Lauren Schiavone: My first advice is, reflect a little and understand what is your barrier. I think oftentimes the barrier is simply people just don’t understand and they don’t have the time to upskill, which is hard, right? We all spend a lot of times time at our jobs.

So take some of those tips of how you can just take a couple minutes of downtime start to integrate it into your life, whether that’s a podcast or using Chat GBT or Perplexity or Claude and instead of Google for some use cases. And also, you know, follow a couple of people on LinkedIn that you can learn from and spend some downtime doing that.

And maybe a little less time. on Instagram, right? The next I like to encourage all of my friends and clients to use what I call an AI first mindset. So anytime you’re working on anything, think to yourself, how might I be able to leverage AI for this to maybe make it better or faster? And if you don’t know how to use AI, the most amazing thing about AI is you can just simply ask it.

And it will tell you, so you can say, I’m working on client outreach. You know, how might you be able to help me Okay, great. Can you share a couple different ideas? Right. So it’s a great way to just start building that habit. I would also recommend don’t do it alone. You know, maybe it’s your team you go on this learning journey with.

Maybe it’s a group of peers or maybe it’s a learning circle. I am part of a women’s learning circle. learning circle, and it’s honestly a highlight of my week every week. And then finally, I’ll conclude with a concept from Paul Roetzer that I’m sure you’ve heard Mike and Paul’s right, the CEO of the Marketing AI Institute.

Look, there are going to be three types of companies in the future, AI emergent, AI native, and obsolete. You get to decide, but not adopting AI will have big implications.

[00:26:08] Mike Allton: That is fantastic advice, and I loved your point about working with clients about trying to take that AI mindset of AI first mindset.

So talk to me a little bit more about that. Have you worked with clients? What kinds of success have you seen where your corporate experience in particular helped with implementing that kind of an AI solution?

[00:26:31] Lauren Schiavone: Yeah, definitely. So having worked at P& G, I, you know, really understand well, the relationship between manufacturers and their agency partners, which can be complicated, especially when transformation is needed, like what’s needed with AI.

And I think many brand leaders out there, Mike, to your point, they, they know they should be thinking about AI. They know they should be leveraging AI. They know they should be having AI discussions with our agencies, but they’re not really sure how to, to start and how to have that conversation. One of my clients was exactly in this position.

So to help them, I developed this four step framework to outline how to navigate this. It starts with Assess. Here, we’re going to conduct a comprehensive audit of the agency’s capabilities, their technology, their skills, their literacy. Scorecard to help brands do this. And this just helps to provide a clear, measurable way to understand sort of where your agency partners are at in their AI journey.

The next is Establish. Here we identify what the opportunities are for AI Define goals, KPIs and really start to select the pilots. That that align with the business goals, and then we get to Experimentation, right? And this involves AI pilots, make sure you iterate quickly and, and most importantly, there needs to be feedback loops to understand the impact, refine the approach and probably even decide on a new pilots to do.

And the last phase is the Scaling phase where we scale successful pilots. It’s also important to develop a roadmap here to ensure that AI continues to be integrated. And I think really important if you’re a brand partner working with an agency, it’s important that you outline how you can continue to drive accountability with your partners, whether that’s regular updates or, you know, quarterly analysis of has the agency improved on the scorecard.

And so with this tool, my client was able to have a great discussion with our agency and develop a clear plan on how the relationship couldn’t improve their AI capabilities.

[00:28:30] Mike Allton: I love the use of frameworks. In fact, folks, I’ll make sure that I spell out exactly what what Lauren just said in the show notes.

You can go back and you can read it or just listen to that segment. I’ve got a human framework that I use for a I integration, which which a I this is so genius. It helped me come up with that you know, acronym of human to, you know, replace the different words. Framework. But I think that’s helpful for us as consultants to keep us on track and focus.

But of course, it’s helpful for the client to understand, okay, this is the roadmap of where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. But when you’re talking to, let’s say, non technical executives, are there any techniques that you’re using with them specifically that kind of help them understand or even demystify artificial intelligence.

[00:29:17] Lauren Schiavone: Definitely. AI tools, right? Instead, learn and master an LLM, like a Chat GBT or a Claude, right? Because it can give you superpowers. Like we talked about when you combine it with your own experience and expertise. And then I spent almost 10 years at P and G trying to teach people about e commerce and through that journey, I learned a lot and how to drive not just upskilling, but also habit adoption of, of using a new skill. And from that, I talk about three principles that are really important. One, it’s got to be integrated into your processes, whatever your key processes are, marketing plan, sales plan, joint business plan. It has to be integrated. We have to move away from just random acts of AI to true integration.

It has to be simple. So people need to know. No, what is exactly the prompt I should use? Like, can you please just tell me and I can get started there. Please make it as simple as possible for me. And then finally it has to be personalized. So tell me in this exact role, at this exact level, at this exact time, how might I use a tool like Chat GBT?

So I think those three principles are super important. And then the last component is I like to link concepts to things that they already understand. So right in the world of marketing. We are very well aware of share, market share, share of voice, share of shelf, et cetera. So I also start to talk about a concept called share of LLM, right?

So are the, is this LLM providing your brand when a consumer is asking for a recommendation? And then finally, instead of, you know, creating AI strategies, I like to just understand what is, what is your business, what are your business strategies, and how do we integrate AI into that versus building a separate AI strategy?

[00:31:12] Mike Allton: That is such a solid point. Robert Rose has said, you don’t need an AI strategy any more than you need an electricity strategy, because it’s just technology that as we’ve been saying from the start of the show, right, it’s underlying every single thing that we’re doing. And I love that approach with executives.

That’s, that’s, that’s fantastic. I love how you’re helping them really wrap their brains around these things. But that’s also the challenge, isn’t it too? Because if they’re not working with an A. I. Consultant like yourself, then they’re left to their own devices to try to figure out what is the prompt that I should use?

How do I personalize it? How do I apply it? Those are some of the other challenges. But what are some other misconceptions that you think maybe some of these marketing executives might have when it comes to A. I. Marketing at least once that you’ve come up and come up against and how have you addressed them?

[00:32:00] Lauren Schiavone: I think the first one is it doesn’t work. You know, oftentimes people use these tools and they’re not pleased with the outcome. Maybe that sounds generic, or it doesn’t sound like me, or it’s not what I was looking for. And I think oftentimes people get frustrated and maybe turn away from the tool.

Instead, you should have the mindset of imagine if this was a direct report coming to you with this, what would you do? Well, you’d provide it. More guidance, more direction. Maybe you show an example, you’d say it a different way, right? And think about that the next time you get something back from the tool that maybe isn’t exactly what you’re looking for.

Another misconception is AI is in the future, right? Like, Oh, that’s something in the future. It doesn’t impact my work right now. Like, no, it’s impacting your work. Now is the time to act. The next misconception I, I hear a lot, particularly from women, and that’s using AI is. This is cheating. This is cheating.

So I hear this from women, women will be more impacted by AI in their careers, but they’re actually less likely to use it. High achieving women for high achieving women, there’s this theory called the good girl theory, right? They see it AI as a cheating or a shortcut. It’s not cheating. It’s not a shortcut.

It’s a help, a tool to help us work better. Right. Just like a calculator was, or like Excel was, or like the internet was. And just remember that AI does not have superpowers on its own, right? It’s your experience and knowledge combined with its abilities that is really going to give you the superpowers.

And then the last misconception I hear often is that AI is a productivity tool. And look, AI is a productivity tool, but if applied correctly, it’s a growth tool. So we need to shift our mindset to AI being a growth accelerator, AI driving innovation, unlocking new strategies, and accelerating new ideas.

[00:33:54] Mike Allton: I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you bringing up the point about women and the perceptions they have about ai technology in general.

It’s not something i’ve said explicitly On this show, but implicitly i’m doing everything I can to shine a stronger light on the women who are already you know just doing incredible things in in this role Folks, if you look at my guest list, you’ll see the predominance is women and people of color because there’s just so much opportunity out there.

I want to help them have a stronger voice in this community. And it’s really important to your point because they have those misconceptions so we can help combat that. I’d love if you could, as we wrap up, just kind of look ahead because we’ve spent a lot of time a little bit more than usual on this show talking about some of the risks for marketers who are complacent or even in denial about where AI is heading and where this technology might potentially take their roles and marketing in the future. So how do you envision the role of human marketers evolving alongside these AI technologies that we’ve been talking about all day?

[00:34:57] Lauren Schiavone: Look, the future of marketing is going to be a partnership between humans and AI, right? AI will likely take many of the repetitive time consuming tasks, you know, that marketers have typically done, which by the way, like Awesome. I like what marketers want to spend their time on that. And with AI, it’s going to free up marketers to focus on things where they bring incredible value, creativity, strategic thinking, building human connections.

And with that, marketers are going to have the opportunity to push more boundaries, innovate more, grow their brands. Because when you combine human, human creativity It’s going to let those marketers deliver better ideas, better stories, better innovations, and that’s going to lead to more deeply connecting the consumer and ultimately, you know, driving unprecedented growth in the, in the industry.

And so I know it’s a little overwhelming or maybe a little frightening for, for marketers, but imagine that future where you just get to, you know, to use your strengths and to use your strengths to build your brand. You know, and not have to spend time on the things that maybe, you know, are just kind of tedious and not as much on building the brand.

And so to this, I say like, isn’t this so exciting? Like it’s an incredibly exciting future for marketers where you can really just focus on the things that are going to deliver the business. And like, Let’s go. Let’s do it.

[00:36:21] Mike Allton: It’s it’s hard, but but to your point there are things that we’re doing today that we won’t have to do which frees up our time. There’s also things that we’re not doing today because we don’t have that kind of time. Whether it’s repetitive stuff that could simply inform us like running reports like much more exhaustive reports and analysis that we just don’t have that kind of time to do or you know things that we could be doing that takes less time and therefore freezes up.

Like I mentioned, you know, the podcast custom GPT, right. That’s allowed me to have five different shows at my full time job at Agorapulse. Plus the shot got six podcasts. Who has six podcasts? No one’s got that kind of time, except I have, I’ve been able to use. Chat GPT and AI to really condense the amount of time that I’m spending preparing for each show.

I still prepare. I still spend a lot of time reading and obviously networking with guests to bring them on the show, but you know, it’s really streamlined that process. And now I’m able to start to use AI and other creative ways for analysis. Well, what, what shows are performing best? What topics are really resonating, right?

Things that we could not do easily.

[00:37:27] Lauren Schiavone: And talking to your data, like amazing, right? Like you, when you have a question, you just. The answer comes back to you versus, you know, digging around through all your Dashboards, right?[00:37:37] Mike Allton: Right. You’ve got a custom GPT set up finally for your audience. We’ll talk to the audience.[00:37:41] Lauren Schiavone: Yeah,[00:37:42] Mike Allton: you know, will they appreciate this this topic or that topic better? Which do you think which guests might resonate more?[00:37:48] Lauren Schiavone: Yeah,[00:37:48] Mike Allton: So much possibility on the horizon. Lauren, you have been absolutely phenomenal. Thank you so much for those who want to connect with you. They want to learn more. Maybe they want to reach out and use you to help them in their AI journey.

Where should they go?

[00:38:04] Lauren Schiavone: You can find me on LinkedIn. It’s Lauren Morgenstein Schiavone, or you can definitely send me an email. It’s Lauren at wonder consulting LLC. com.[00:38:15] Mike Allton: Thank you, Lauren. Thank you all of you for listening today. Don’t forget if you’re relatively new in this AI journey and you want a little bit of help, check out the AI Marketing Primer I’ve got linked in the show notes below, it’s a really easy read ebook, but I’ll help you understand what is an LLM.

What’s the difference between Claude and Gemini and Chat GPT and all the other things that are being floated around in terms of jargon and concepts that you need to know in order to get ahead tomorrow, check that out. And don’t forget to find the AI Marketing Unpacked podcast on Apple and leave us a review.

I’d love to know what you think until next time, welcome to the grid.

Thanks for joining us on AI and Marketing Unpacked. I hope today’s episode has inspired you and given you actionable insights to integrate AI into your marketing strategies. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and consider leaving a review. We’d love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you might have.

Don’t forget to join us next time as we continue to simplify AI and help you make a real impact in your marketing efforts. Until then keep innovating and see just how far AI can take your marketing. Thank you for listening and have a fantastic day.

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