From attention to experience: The latest shift in brand strategy

Ben Walker  0:00  
Bill, hello everybody, and welcome to the CIM Marketing podcast. And today we are joined by two special guests, one of them all the way from across the pond, in the shape of Dr Rhonda Hadi, and we're one closer to home, Mr. Kris Hunt, who joins us from our own shores. Now, Rhonda is associate professor of marketing at Oxford University's Saïd Business School. She is academic expert in the field of marketing, investigating the profound impact of emerging technologies on consumer experiences and behaviour. And for his part, Kris is a strategy and creative director specialising in building culturally resonant brands in a social first world. He's worked across global travel, luxury and FMCG brands, shaping brand platforms that live in culture, not just campaigns. His work blends cultural insight, creativity and commercial impact to build long term brand, meaning, Rhonda, Chris, how are you today?

Rhonda  1:10  
Happy to be here. 

Kris Hunt  1:12  
Very good.

Ben Walker  1:14  
It's great to have you both on the show. You know, creativity is the topic of this season's podcast, and this is a perennial question, but no less for it. It's something that I think exercises the minds of marketers and many people actually in the creative industries more widely, is that is this rapid technological change that we're experiencing as useful as it is, in some ways, actually empowering brand creativity, or is it something of a distraction that weakens the emotional impact of human storytelling? And that's the topic we're going to try and get into a little bit today. Rhonda, your research brings together the digital and the physical. Where does creativity lie? Do you think in that gap?

Rhonda  2:03  
Well, what I think is really interesting is that that gap in and of itself, between digital and physical is becoming increasingly blurred. So to me, creativity comes from acknowledging that we don't live in this dichotomous world of okay, now I'm going online, or, you know, now I'm offline. I think thinking about it in that way is somewhat counter intuitive, or counterproductive rather. And I do see some firms think about, okay, well, what's our digital strategy or or what's our AI strategy, as opposed to thinking more fundamentally about customer experience. So traditionally, one big difference between our digital experiences and offline experiences has been the sensory richness associated with our physical world. And when you ask people who strongly prefer physical world experiences, they often refer to things like the smell of fresh air or feeling wind in their face or the hug of a loved one. It almost always comes down to some sort of sensory attribute, but we are seeing technology close that gap, because our digital interactions are becoming more visually rich, more auditorily rich, more haptically rich, and I've done a lot of research in these three spaces. We've even seen a lot of explorations into how you can deliver things like scent pretty compellingly via online interactions. So I think creativity comes from not even thinking about that gap, but thinking about how you can deliver the best customer experience, regardless of the platform or technological affordances.

Ben Walker  3:42  
Chris, do you think that's right? Do you think that it's becoming blurred, and actually we're starting to get emotional return, a little bit of sensory turn from our digital experiences as much as from our physical ones?

Kris Hunt  3:54  
Yeah, I think there's an interesting topic around what creativity is. And like Rhonda kind of says, it's always the online versus the real world, where we kind of know that the touch points that consumers actually see are multifaceted, basically. So there there's more than one touch point, and it's not just online, and it's happening on pop ups, which have become really popular with VoxBox, with a lot of brands doing activations in the streets, capturing that content so people don't feel left out. So even if you don't have that true experience with the brand in real life, you can have an element of understanding what the brand was doing. So I think it's more around, how do you have that creative flow from one touch, touch point to another, rather than, is digital more creative than, say, an activation in real life? I think that's where sometimes it does get blurred around the conversation,

Ben Walker  4:57  
how's your creativity changed? How's that creative breakthrough? Do change is the tech stack has grown and grown and grown. It's sort of proliferated, hasn't it? The amount of apps, the amount of outlets, the amount of places we can put our content, what's changed in terms of the ways that you express your creativity?

Kris Hunt  5:11  
Yeah, I think nowadays, everyone wants to try the new thing. And that used to be the great breakthrough. Everything that was basically new, whether it was AI or different tool that you could use that could really help kind of push that creative breakthrough, but I think nowadays it's a lot more around meaning and the actual creative meaning behind the message. So when you've got so much tech available for marketeers or brands to use, it's quite confusing at first to understand which tool is kind of right for you. And where does that sit within, I guess, the marketing campaign, you know, there's a lot of new stuff that's come out. I think last summer, or around June time, we had the first kind of AI ad with Cal she in the US, where they generated basically a 32nd ad in the NBA Finals. And, you know, it's the first time on a commercial level that people actually got to see the real use of AI at full scale. Thing that kind of split people's opinions. So it's taken a while to adjust to, I guess, new technology as well, even if you use it or the first person to use that as a brand, doesn't mean you're going to be successful.

Ben Walker  6:20  
How do you define it? Rhonda, you're obviously from the world of academia. Oxford said, as I said at the top of the show, although joining us from New York today, how do you define it? Do you find that your definition of creativity in the academic world clashes with that the agencies advance as their definition of creativity?

Rhonda  6:41  
So I wouldn't say it directly clashes, but I do think one potential disconnect is that oftentimes in academia, when we think about creativity, we are thinking about the process and output in terms of things like originality and novelty, without necessarily simultaneously considering effectiveness. And I think obviously in in the industry, you care about effectiveness, and something can be really creative, but if it is not moving customers, if it's not gathering the attention or conveying the message that you need it to convey, or whatever your KPIs happen to be, then it's not considered a good piece of creative and so I think perhaps that's one slight difference.

Ben Walker  7:22  
There is the art of it and the science of it. Chris Hunt, you know, the art of it is the is the artistic creativity, the science of it is that it actually brings a return in terms of visibility, in terms of revenues, things that, all those things that as marketers like, in terms of how tech interacts with that. Do you think there's a chance, or there is a way in which the advance of tech has actually made creativity more likely to make that return. Yeah.

Kris Hunt  7:49  
I mean, ROI is the biggest term used in agency, and probably client side as well, especially in terms of kind of the economic struggles that most brands are kind of facing nowadays. So I think it really depends how you position that tech and how you position that creativity, especially within the social world, and kind of digesting it. Everything gets broken down to every single piece of content. So everything from the hook to what's the middle part the story, art, how we've, you know, what's the CTA? Everything is almost engineered. And sometimes you can lose that creativity of just where the idea actually started to and what the endpoint actually looks like, can be very fast in terms of how that actually comes along. So I think if you're marketeer, it's just very important to have that creative element, kind of being strung through the whole creative message.

Ben Walker  8:44  
Essentially, what's changed when, in terms of that process? Rhonda, you know, you've got a paper out regarding the future of social media. Chris talks about the toddling with the creative role that the starters market has always had, but now, when we've got this proliferation of outlets. What's changed, in terms of, to use your phrase, the process in which that is delivered?

Rhonda  9:07  
Well, I think one meaningful change we've been seeing in the marketplace has to do with the nature of the platforms that customers, and particularly young customers, Gen Z and Gen alpha are spending their time on. To me, one market shift is movement towards more real time synchronous platforms, whether that be things like live streams, gaming platforms, you know, to me, they're really gaming plus, because gaming is an element, but a huge element of the popularity of those platforms are the social aspects associated with them, and the CO experience with other consumers, and that is markedly different than traditional social media, which was very asynchronous and in many ways designed to reflect what was happening in the offline world. So you might, you know, post a picture of the dinner you went to, or your kids. At or talk on Twitter, x about, you know, real world events, as opposed to entering an online environment to co experience in real time with other people. And I think where brands fit in, there is a really important conversation to have, because I do think it is markedly different, and some would argue we're moving into more of an experience based economy online, as opposed to a pure attention based economy, where, you know, ads will just live alongside asynchronous content.

Ben Walker  10:31  
 That's interesting, i sn't it, because that speaks to your original point, that actually this idea of a sort of sensory experience, a visceral experience, if you like, which wasn't originally associated with the digital world is becoming more and part and parcel of the digital world because it's becoming a synchronous experience. You know, you're using digital more and more as a real time live experience, connecting individuals in the same way that we're having this call here. We're using digital platform to connect ourselves. And that really is an important lesson for marketers. Instead of telling people about the bar you went to the brand, you use the clothes you bought things that happened in the near past, you're talking about things that are happening in the present. Chris Hunt, and that's a big shift.

Kris Hunt  11:14  
It's a huge shift. And I think that's probably why you've seen a lot of content change in the last few years, and a lot of brands tap creators, influencers, people who actually have a voice online, rather than hosting from the brand platform that exists on, say, social media or different avenues of media. I think people become a little bit wise to being sold to. And this day and age, most people are scrolling so they will flick through so much content in a single day that if you're not standing out, then that really resonate with them, then you're not really going to stand a chance. And the stuff that really does pull them towards having some sort of emotional connection is, like you've kind of mentioned, is kind of the lived experiences that other people can relate to. Rather than brands pushing a single product or service trying to curate that element,

Ben Walker  12:09  
it's interesting the Signal and the Noise. You know, there's a lot of noise out there, but if you can tap in to what Dr Randall hadI was saying right at the top of the show about that sensory, real, lived experience on digital. You can push away your competitors. You can extinguish that noise and become the signal.

Kris Hunt  12:27  
Yeah, and I think what you're seeing is two different worlds of people consuming content and marketing. Nowadays, I think you're going to have that acceleration of live stream and always on and people watching, you know, live stream, or people who are streaming for like, three hours long that work really well. And say it's the a niche like gaming, but then you're getting an element of society which, you know, the new luxury is being offline, so actually, not having a social media presence and having lived experiences. So you're seeing a lot of concerts now, you know, banning the use of cameras or mobile phones, that kind of, so people can actually enjoy the experiences and talk about it offline. So I think you're going to have a real shift between kind of how society and cultural elements, how people actually live through those experiences.

Ben Walker  13:16  
Interesting, this idea of viscerality. Dr, Rhonda Hardy, you know, some of it, it is about using these platforms to connect with each other, to create that sensory experience, as you talked about, rather than leaning into the sort of high tech nature or the high tech tools that are available to us. You know, sometimes you sort of marketing meetings centred around well, just because we've got these gimmicks doesn't mean that we have to use them. Just because these gadgets are available to us doesn't mean we have to use them. Is there a risk? Do you think that sort of availability of high tech creativity can actually make it harder for consumers to remember the brand message, and that actually, if we can lean into things that are creating experiences and connection, we're more likely to succeed. In fact, going back to basics,

Rhonda  14:10  
I think that risk is always there with any new technology. I think it can be tempting to want to jump on the bandwagon. I think some brands have real FOMO about not wanting to be the last to embrace a certain technology and to go along with the hype. Certainly, I think that risk is always there. But I think if used correctly, new platforms and technologies can be incredibly liberating and usher in a whole new wave of creativity. To me, one classic example of this, if we look back at more traditional mediums, is when television first came out, early TV was essentially men sitting at desks talking into a microphone, because that's what radio was. And so it's like, okay, you know, this is, this is what TV is, and it wasn't. Until much later that we found artists and creatives and content creators really taking advantage of the medium and more advanced cinematography, etc. And so I think that that's the case with any platform. With a new platform, ideally, there would be new affordances and leaps we can take creatively. However, if we're just using that, just for the sake of using the platform and not to actually add value or bring anything meaningfully New, then I think that's a waste of time and money.

Ben Walker  15:27  
I've got in my notes here, I don't mind telling our audience. This is one word line, Metaverse, which kind of speaks to your point is that we remember the metaverse. You might remember it. Many would want to forget it, and this would became a sort of obsession in marketing for a defined period of time in which the technology for the metaverse became available, and everyone was told to develop content that lent into that obsession, that lent into the availability of the metaverse. The rest, of course, is history, and it's not a particularly happy history. How do we avoid that happening again? Dr Rhonda, how do we avoid, you know, a new technology of being a coming available, and then the industry diving head first into it. Perhaps the casualty being creativity, narrative and brand value.

Rhonda  16:17  
To me, what's really interesting about that case study is that many of the technologies supporting the metaverse and in many ways, this idea of CO experiencing content with others in real time, you know, remotely, are very much still a big thing. I think to me, The distinguishing feature is, are you going online to replicate an experience that would actually be much better in person, or are you going to this digital environment to co experience things you would never be able to experience in the real world, including Some of these gaming context adventures scenes that, particularly depending on your own physical abilities or financial abilities, may not be a reality to you in the physical world. And so I think you know, if you look at the size of, you know, just the gaming industry, it's larger than the music and film the media industries combined. So it's just huge, huge. And I think it's largely ignored because we don't understand it. I do think there's also a generational divide there. So I had an MBA student who in class maybe one or two years ago, mentioned that he was the best man in a wedding, and that was the first time he met the group in person. Was was at the wedding, but they were absolutely best friends because they had spent hours and hours and hours on these gaming platforms talking they knew all about each other's lives. It was unquestionable that they were best friends and that, of course, he would be the best man in his wedding. And I think there are people in the room who totally got that, and people in the room who were shocked by that and couldn't imagine without having that physical content, you could develop such a close bond

Ben Walker  18:07  
to somebody. Which camp are you in? Chris Hunt? Would you be in the shot camp or the sanguin camp? About being a best man at a wedding with people you'd never met?

Kris Hunt  18:17  
I don't think it's totally weird. I mean, I've been in the gaming space as well. When I was in teenager, so I used to run matches and clans with Americans and people all over the world, and you're managing people's lives, and at the same time, you're going to a science lesson. So it's not totally weird, but I think in the case of like, the metaverse. I think it's probably the right tech. It's probably just the wrong timing within society. And I think there's anything that they probably learn is that platforms can't force culture in people. You can have all the technology or the infrastructure, obviously the trillions that were invested into it. But if the culture is not there, and it doesn't emerge from people who choose to care about the tech, then you've only rented that attention only for a small while, and eventually kind of die down. I think that's what we kind of saw with meta and the metaverse and them basically chopping back on the actual technology, but what we have seen is probably livable and wearable tech competition. I remember years ago, maybe like eight or 10 years ago, everyone was talking about tech rain jackets and all of this, and it was just the wrong timing, and none of that really came to life. But nowadays, everyone is tracking every element of their life, from, you know, having wearable rings or fitness bracelets to Apple watches to monitoring heart rate to everything that they can basically put a data point on, and it's become the next big thing. So I think the metaverse will. On round again. But I don't think it's just at this time or this place. At the moment

Ben Walker  20:06  
is a lesson then Rhonda not to be an early adopter full stop, or to be a little bit cautious about adopting a new technology or something else.

Rhonda  20:16  
I think the answer really comes down to what value is this adding and so I think if you're becoming an early adopter of a new technology just for the sake of becoming an early adopter, then that's much more of a tech demo than creating content that's actually memorable or meaningful to your audience. And so you know, if using this new technology or platform allows you to do something that touches your audience in a way that you can't do on other platforms. And that's a no brainer, you know, if that's where they are, and that's, you know, the best conduit for that message, wonderful, but you shouldn't just be seeking out that medium for the sake of, you know, being a first mover, or even an early mover to the platform if there's no value add, there absolutely

Ben Walker  21:05  
golden advice. But marketers often complain that actually, what happens in their organisations is that the tech team procure a new platform or new technology and then tell the marketers to use it. How do you get around that if you either don't have any use for it at all, or you're not clear what value its use would bring as a marketer or a marketing team,

Kris Hunt  21:30  
think with technology being forced onto, say, employees or within marketing teams or any sort of teams, I think we're living through an element of that right now, with everything being AI, I think the amount of times that people have just gone, can you just uninstall it and go back to what I already had? Or is this really benefiting anyone? You know that I think that's every business is going to face that challenge one way or another, and it really comes down to maybe more of the culture or the experimentation, or how you approach marketing within the business, rather than what's been implemented by a certain team or procurement or because there's a deal done. I think the more question is, how you're bringing value out of that tech.

Ben Walker  22:17  
Essentially, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, few learnings here is, first of all, don't be led by the platform. Don't be led by the technology. Be led by your creativity. Then find the right technology for it. But also on the other side of the ledger, which goes back to rhonda's initial brilliant point, is that accept that digital space and digital media can now and does evoke physical feelings. You know? It involves sensory feelings. It involves lived experience. And actually, that sounds to me like what we should be aiming for. So, you know, let's, let's, let's dive into that little bit more on the you know, what do we need to do as marketers? What are the techniques that we can use to evoke physical feelings, physical connection, if you like, or at least mental connection. Through our digital work,

Rhonda  23:08  
every new technology has different affordances, and to me, the one that most literally represents this blurring of digital and physical is augmented reality. And I think oftentimes when people talk about augmented reality or AR, they conflate it with virtual reality, and they think of the headsets and when actually they're completely different technologies, both in terms of practically and theoretically. Because whereas virtual reality is meant to remove you from your current world and supplant you into a completely synthetic environment, augmented reality is the kind of literal visual coexistence of physical and virtual. So using, you know, any device camera to see content that is, you know, a digital artefact, either on yourself, on your physical self via, you know, filters on, you know, Snapchat, Instagram, etc, or to see content in your space, or even in public spaces. And that, to me, is the most literal coexistence or blurring of digital and physical. And I think that that is fascinating, particularly from a psychological point of view, where we think evolutionarily, we've always known we need to play closer attention and give more care to content or people who are in our proximal space. And so when objects or contents or people feel like they're in our physical space, even if they're not. I do think that that triggers a certain sense of intimacy and empathy, which is fascinating, and I think has been really under explored to date, that

Ben Walker  24:55  
is absolutely fascinating, you know, to blend the physical and the. Digital together through AR. Augmented Reality helps us develop these what we're looking for, which is the mental connection, the physical feeling, the stimulus, if you like, through digital work that we want claimed we could only experience through pure play, physical experiences. Chris, when you're working, how do you ensure a creative idea, which, say, begins in the physical space. A big billboard, for example, can then be converted and made effective into a digital space, or a quasi digital space, the sorts of things that Rhonda has been describing.

Kris Hunt  25:35  
Yeah, I think if you start with a single, simple idea that can be expressed at different levels, then I think it works, especially if the creative can attach to different formats. Should they kind of flex or different ways to actually access that content, but the meaning shouldn't really change in terms of what that idea is about. Otherwise, if it needs, like, over explanation, or, you know, too much steps in the process, especially with the technology behind it, then it becomes really fragile and it doesn't really work. I think what we're seeing where the tech is coming to life is especially sports. Nowadays, I think there's been a lot of activations, especially with AR on mobile phones, whether it's sort of like Snapchat filters or on TV screens. I think now even Sky Sports are experimenting, where you can see the data points of, you know, how fast the footballer kicked the football into the back of the goal, or, you know, the positioning. So I think we're seeing a lot of that come to life now, a lot more than we used to. So I think fans and people who engage with a lot of sports want that extra element. So I think you know that technology really helps elevate the content that's kind of being presented to them.

Ben Walker  26:53  
Do you think you can ever get to a point where digital, pure digital work, can match the creative impact and the sensory impact of a physical tactile brand activation. Is that possible? Do you think interesting question?

Kris Hunt  27:09  
I think it depends on the preference of the consumer or the user in that that instance, I think a lot of people prefer one thing or another. Some, you know, prefer to switch off when they get home, whereas others use technology or social media nowadays to that's their way of switching off. So I think it really comes down to how people interact with content, and not everyone's going to interact the same way. I think a lot of people confuse. You know, we just have one touch point within a creative campaign, and that's it. We expect all of our target audience to interact how we basically programmed it, or, you know, explained how it'll operate. But reality is, people are distracted. They're getting on with their daily lives. You know, they're one eye on a screen, one eye on another thing. So I don't think it doesn't really come to fruition as how marketers might see on a board in a room, to what happens actually in reality. Rhonda, do you

Ben Walker  28:10  
think we can ever get to a position where pure play digital can maximise the impact and experience of physical or mixed creative work?

Rhonda  28:20  
So I think the very phrasing of that question carries with it this implication that there's a certain primacy or superiority of our physical world, and can we ever replicate that in the digital realm without acknowledging that for many people, and in many ways, digital platforms can allow us to do things you can't do in the physical world, right? And vice versa. And I think that's where Chris has alluded to this a lot. It's really important to think about individual differences and different audiences and where they're getting value. Or there is this beautiful film on Netflix called the remarkable life of ibelin. It's a Norwegian documentary about this boy who grew up with a pretty severe form of muscular dystrophy, and his parents were always sort of worried he's missing out on life. And he passes pretty young, maybe around the age of 2025, and then they discovered, because he had left passwords to his different platforms, they discovered he had this very full life, and all of these friends and connections who reached out to him afterwards, and all of these things he was doing in this community, he built that he really would not have been able to build in in the physical world. And so I think it's really important to sort of take a more neutral stance when it comes to that distinction between physical and digital, and not necessarily assuming one has primacy over the other, and recognising that each has its strengths and weaknesses,

Ben Walker  29:46  
that's a great point. But we live, and we're born in the physical world. Chris Hunt, but we shouldn't necessarily see the digital world. They are, the virtual world, as subordinate in some way. And if we. We're making a fundamental error.

Kris Hunt  30:02  
Yeah, I think you can find a lot of research online where you know it says you need around 11 to 13 touch points before a consumer actually converts. So even if you take in social media and website, that's only two touch points for that user. So I think you have to mix the real world and the digital world, otherwise, you will alienate a few people from having that brand experience that you're trying to get across interesting.

Ben Walker  30:29  
You touched on it before. I mean, while we were sort of leaning into it a little bit here, when we're talking about digital no no CIM podcast in the modern day would be complete without having a little bit of a discussion about AI. We did a whole season on it last time you touched upon it, earlier, Chris, when you were talking about, you know, AIS of various shades and colours being introduced into businesses and sometimes marketing departments, saying, Look, can you just instal this? Because it's we can't see the value of it. Nevertheless, you know, a lot of AI does quicken our jobs. You know, let's be honest about it. There's a danger AI and similar technologies, though, you know, making us more productive as marketers, but less creative.

Kris Hunt  31:12  
I'm not sure if it's more productive. I mean, I haven't found a tool yet that can really completely overhaul marketing department. I think there's a lot of elements that can help speed up certain things, like ideation, copywriting, but it's never to overtake the real job of the creative element. I think you still need brains in the room, because the human is only going to be able to understand another human's pain points and different cultural preferences and nuances by living and I don't think there's an AI yet before maybe AGI comes along that has that nuance capability to really understand what's happening in the daily world, and why there is that friction point, or why is that emotion being, you know, coming through certain society. So as much data as you can input into an AI system, there's nothing that's going to replicate, say, four or five creative people in a room to actually get that campaign live. So I think it's not there yet, maybe in the future, but I think right now, I think there's just elements which are helping speed up certain aspects of marketing. But I don't think it's really taken over the creative arm. What are the big tools?

Ben Walker  32:37  
Rhonda, if not the off the shelf? AIS, what are the big tools for creatives that are going can lean into which are actually going to expand? You know, less about expanding productivity or speed and more about expanding creativity or limiting or reducing the shackles on human creativity.

Rhonda  32:55  
I think the value that comes from AI tools Is it automates things for us, and some of those tasks really are very mechanical, sometimes mundane tasks, and those it can speed up. But I think the question is, what are you losing by using AI to do certain tasks? Are you relying on AI for ideation, meaning you are no longer in a group setting tossing around ideas with colleagues, etc. Are you no longer engaging in any independent thought because you're completely relying on AI to come up with all of the new ideas? Or are you using these tools as an agent to help toss ideas around, soundboard. You can sort of think about the analogy of a group setting. How, if you're trying to come up with a creative idea in a certain group setting, you might end up with group think and a reduced amount of creativity, or you might end up with this idea generation that's much more than the sum of its parts, and again, bouncing ideas off of each other, etc. So I think the way that we use the tools are probably more important than the tools in and of themselves. Interesting.

Ben Walker  34:18  
What's the soft skill? The soft human skill then that creative professionals need to protect this tech takes over the some of this mundane, hard, routine stuff that Rhonda has been talking about, think

Kris Hunt  34:30  
comes down to having taste and almost the ability to curate and edit and know when not To do something because I think it's quite easy to kind of lean in and use tech or use AI nowadays, which gives you almost quite a bland answer. I mean, interestingly enough, I'm the top 5% user of chat GPT in the world, but I would. Never use it for strategy, because it's so bad at it. So I think you really have to understand when not to do something, and that comes from your years of experience of being, you know, going through all the bumps and humps and challenges that you've kind of endeavoured with different brands to really understand markets that if you just put that into an AI, I think you would always get some sort of answer, but I don't think that necessarily means it's the right direction. So I think taste and curation is kind of the unfair advantage that humans have of understanding like that cultural difference that's really going to turn people to kind of listen and, you know, pay attention to what you're trying to come across

Ben Walker  35:43  
interesting taste and discernment. Rhonda Hardy, are our unfair advantages.

Rhonda  35:47  
I think it comes down to judgement. And the analogy I think of as an academic is you move from being just an author to really the editor, so you're going to have all this content that's coming at you, and it's up to you to really have that higher level judgement of, is this good? Is this appropriate? Does this make sense, given my context and knowledge, I think one risk is, if you are relying on AI before you were an author to begin with, then, you know, maybe you're skipping steps, and have you actually developed the, you know, innate knowledge to be a good judge of content? But that's a very different story. It's an interesting story.

Ben Walker  36:29  
That is an interesting point. It may lead into your final advice. I'm going to press you for your final sort of 22nd piece of advice, which we always try to make this practical or practical outcome, if you like. Of these shows. You know what's the one practical step speaking to the world's marketeers as you are now to make a creative strategy more resilient as text grows and grows and grows and grows over the next half decade, the next five years.

Kris Hunt  36:53  
Think you have to build your strategy around human truths and not around platforms. So what I mean by that is platforms constantly change, and we've kind of seen that in the past, where Twitter's become X, or some platforms like Facebook, have, you know, not really kind of died out against a certain demographic, like Gen Z. So I think if you kind of position yourself around just focusing on the tech and the platform, then it's going to be quite a hard time for the brand or the creator to actually adjust with culture and nuance and new things coming around, because there's always going to be something new that's around the corner. So I think if you can really hone in on the human truth, and I think you can really push what that memory of that brand to your target audience, the

Ben Walker  37:47  
Tech's ever growing. Rhonda Hadi, the human truths are evergreen.

Rhonda  37:51  
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with Chris's points there. I teach a core marketing course for our MBA students, and the entire first lesson is dedicated to customer centricity and the importance of understanding human insight and needs, and that should be the starting point of everything that comes next, as opposed to, you know, the sort of shiny new toy syndrome and just jumping on a bandwagon for the sake of jumping on that bandwagon. I think it's easy to forget that tools like AI are largely trained on content that comes from our online interactions, and there is a lot of content there, and these tools are really impressive, but there's also a lot and this is sort of almost the antithesis of everything we've talked about so far, there's also so much unique insight that happens off of these platforms that those llms will never really get. There are entire audiences and geographies that are largely ignored, and there isn't so much offline physical experience that really isn't embedded into those systems. Human judgement, at least until now, reigns supreme.

Ben Walker  39:02  
Dr, Rhonda Hardy, Chris and thank you very much indeed. Great having you on the show. That's all the time we have for this episode of the CIM Marketing podcast. You can find detailed show notes and links to additional resources mentioned by our guests@cim.co.uk forward slash content, HUD, forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and find it helpful, please consider supporting the show by leaving a rating and review. It really helps grow our reach. The CIM Marketing Podcast is hosted by me Ben Walker, and produced for CIM by Brindley Walker, no relation, thanks again for tuning in to the CIM Marketing podcast. We'll catch you next time

Karen Barnett  39:44  
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