Welcome to Human Marketing, a weekly podcast for B2B marketers, unpacking how brands can stay authentic, demonstrate authority, and build trust as AI floods or feeds with content. I'm Chris Nelson, founder of Human Video. We remotely produce podcasts and other video content and real humans and just the right amount of soul. Welcome to the Human Marketing Podcast, Joe.

Thank you mate. Thank you. And as we're getting started, let me start off by just saying that you've been wonderful, you've been wonderful in the few minutes that we've been speaking, but also in our previous interactions, whether that's through TMM stuff or even just arranging this podcast. So thank you for being a completely wonderful human. I

Really appreciate that. Thank you. As you mentioned there, we've kind of been chatting back and forth about between you and your team as well. I've been a massive fan of the marketing meetup and everything that you've built over that time over the years and I was kind motivated to, I guess especially with the creation of my new business, I kind wanted to enjoy that. I wanted to dive into that world of being in a room with a safe space with other marketers. And I really value in-person meetings. I often say meeting in person is just the best form of guest outreach and communication. And the second best is video, which is my world. So I was really keen and I'm looking at lots of different ways to just do in person more and I looked up the website and said, where's my Belfast, my next Belfast event, and there wasn't one, which is grand. And I reached out to you guys and I was like, look, has there ever been one, am I missing something? And you're like, no, there actually hasn't. Would you like to do one, Chris, it sounds like you're volunteering and we're on that journey. But my first, I guess step in that journey as well as having good conversations with you guys was to take the two hour journey down the road to Dublin,
Which I did about a month ago. And it was wonderful. I got to experience everything that I'd heard about it and they welcome the extreme welcome at the door by multiple people, which was great. We will get into this, but you tell the story of not being comfortable in those position situations as why you kind created the whole thing. And I totally felt that I'm not somebody that is totally comfortable walking into a room full of 50 people even and starting those conversations. But everything about it made that, facilitated that and made it really easy. And I had a wonderful night down in Dublin, met loads of people. I'm connected. There's so many more people down there now and it has absolutely brought to life for me, the whole experience. So I was wondering on the back of that, could you just tell me a little bit about your story? Feel free to tell that story of what motivated you to start an in-person marketing event organisation, I guess, and what brought led up to that and what that has become?

It is weird. So in the week that we're speaking then it's nine years since I held my first event. So I think it was on Tuesday that I held my first event for the marketing meetup, which is crazy. And I guess backtracking to that day, nine years ago, then I feel like this is a story I've told a lot, but I feel like it's one of those stories that is important because hopefully it resonates on an emotional human level more than it does just being a story. And the reason for that is that my story starts from a place of fear really of walking into those spaces, but also disappointment. Probably the moments where I did pluck up the courage to say hello to someone else than my humanity was more judged by whether I was deemed to have an important job title or budget rather than the contents of my character.
And so if I see a problem, I'm generally someone who tries to do something about it. And in this instance, doing something about it was running a local event to me. I called it the Cambridge Marketing Meet at the time. It was held in the canteen, in the Redgate software building a buffet one speaker, and eventually about six months later, and that's a bit of a spoiler, the instruction to be positively lovely, really for me, the ambition was achieved from day one. I walked into this space and people were looking after each other and enjoying each other and that was enough. But what started happening was people started coming up to me and saying, much the interaction you've described, I'd love this thing closer to my house. And I was like 24 at the time, I was just messing about and I said, well go on and off you go type thing. I'll support you. I can. And so that's how we grew out in the first few years. It grew out and it was evenings and weekends. I was working full-time at the agency at the time, and so it was my job, it was something I was doing in my spare time.
But come April, 2019, I think we had 130 events scheduled across 13 locations, and that was enough to take the leap to go full time COVID happened and all those events got cancelled, which was a shame. We'd just picked up our first event in New York. But fortunately we shifted very, very quickly into online events. And if I pat myself on the back for anything in that transition period I think is that we just moved very quickly within a week of cancelling the events. We had an industry leading webinar programme which was like properly, properly great. At that time we had a mailing list of about 2,863 people I think. But over these past five years, then we've grown the community to 250,000 and we've picked up in-person events again as you spoke in about there. So we now are in 50 webinars per year, 150 events from London to Tokyo.
And in the meantime, just the thing that sort of stayed true to everything is the spirit of being positively lovely and just looking after each other. It's not mad, it's, it's not overblown. It's very simple. It's a very human interaction. But I think core to me as a founder and someone who enjoys the product as much as anyone else does, it's a safe space where folks can come together and I just know how it feels. Not feel safe and not feeling safe is not a nice thing. And so to be able to walk in and be in a space where people have their best intentions at heart is gorgeous, mate. It's a really lovely human experience. So that's the most important thing.

I love that. And as I said, I really experienced that. I really felt that in the event just to, I guess explain to listeners a little bit about everything that happens at it. There's beer and pizza drinks, there's a lot of initial connecting and chatting in a really safe, relaxed way. The thing that stood out was the be positively lovely. I absolutely love that. It's a rare thing in that setting. I find quite often these events are super corporate, that whole thing of some people are there to learn I guess maybe, and others sometimes are there to sell and that you're really intentional about. This is not a space where you're just pitching at each other. It's a very safe space to interact in a really wholesome way. And I totally felt that. And it was just instant. As soon as you start having the, and you break through that fear, I guess, and just the natural things or someone has just connected with you, I had a really funny moment, Joe, and I was doing the thing, I was standing there looking at you terrified, and these two amazing women just bounced up to me.
I'm like, Chris, I'm like, I've froze. I was like, oh no, I have no idea who you are. You obviously know me, but I don't know who you are. And I had that look on my face of How do you know me? And they're like, dude, you got a name badge on really? And that was the icebreaker and I had a wonderful time. And then obviously everyone sat down. There was a great panel at my event, which was really helpful actually to, there's a lot of students in the room, which really nice for me as well. I was in a rare position where I'm able to help other people as well. In my suggestion really at near the end of the event, two 18-year-old Ukrainian commercial filmmakers found me and I had a wonderful chat with the two of them and they were asking a thousand questions and I was so delighted to connect with them and I've still connected with them and helped them in various ways, but just everything that happened there was just wonderful.
And I got the full experience and I think it's a wonderful thing that you've created and I hope it keeps growing and I'm intrigued about the COVID story as well. That was a massive thing for me at the time. I was charging around the world making films and planes. That was my life, and it just all stopped and I quickly kind of pivoted and it was actually, that was the start of doing what I'm doing now in terms of getting better at remote video production. And now I've built a career out of that. So it's interesting that, and now obviously webinars and everything is a big part of what you do as well. You're reaching more people, I'm sure, just I've seen your lives where you have an amazing, amazing numbers on your lives and the amazing interaction that brings. Some of those have been great thinking just about the whole in-person event thing.
I have seen across the world, particularly maybe in the past year or two, just this real resurgence of in-person events in lots of different ways, like big events, dinners, people just intentionally finding each other to have coffee. I see a lot of, I'm going to be in this city, please LinkedIn, people connect with me. Let's try and meet up in person. That seems to be something that people have yearned for more increasingly the past year. What have you seen of that? Where do you think that's coming from? Have you seen it? I'm assuming you're seeing these things as well, but as someone who's bringing people together in person, what have you seen in that and what are your thoughts on all of that?

I think there's just, there is a magic to it, isn't there? It is. Everything you've just described, I mean, I think I'll be retracing some old steps to a certain extent and potentially not adding too much new to the conversation, but the example you've given there of meeting two Ukrainian young filmmakers and sharing some advice with them, had that come via LinkedIn message cold or whatever, you may have still responded and tried to help, but the richness of that interaction would've just been vastly inferior. And so I think what we can all acknowledge is just the serendipity of these wonderful occasions where people get together and we speak to, I love that you've had your own experience of it, and I love that your own experience is duplicated across every person who attends one of our events, also else's event that they have the opportunity.
And so quite often I'll speak about these things is the currency of these in-person events is opportunity and you don't know what you are going to get out of it when you walk out the room, but you are being removed from a transactional culture, which is one which will exist in the online space where, hey, I can get you 10 new leads in the next month or you won't pay. We've all had the messages all the way through to people pitching cold email at you. There is something about those spaces where you walk in and you feel like when it's done well, you are part of something and you're co-creating this experience and there's a richness and there's a humanity to it. I can speak to the trends, people wanting these things more after COVID and stuff like that, but I think principally I think it's just like this stuff is good and I think things have felt quite tough in our industry as well.
And I think when things feel tough, then you have the response of being able to go into yourself or seek help from others. The pleasant thing is that there is these sanctuaries in these communities and these spaces where folks can walk in and say, look someone in the eye and feel the presence of another person and simply know that they are not alone. And I think this becomes increasingly important, whether it's technological change with AI that sort of changes how we interact with machines as humanity, but also the fact that so many of us have sat in our home offices as I am today and just crave being around other people. And I think the last thing I can add to this particular answer is I've been a huge proponent of working from home for as long as my career has gone on. I've sort of been in the workforce for 10 plus years now. Had a lovely time, but just recently I have experienced that sort of feeling of maybe it'll be nice to not do another virtual meeting today. Maybe it would be nice to be sat across the table from someone or in a park and going for a walk or whatever it may be. And so we've got plenty of these opportunities for virtual things. Maybe it's just a slight readdressing of the balance to these in-person experiences.

I totally see that, and even in my own world, I'm on my own, I work from home, but I'm kind of cheating a little bit of my filmmaking past. I have a studio that I get to, but I'm still kind of on my own here, but I find myself, anyone, it's kind of rare that it's somebody local that I'm meeting with for some reason, but if it is at all, I'm like, we are having coffee. We're not like you're within an hour's drive for me, we're meeting up in person. I do feel that really acutely, but thinking of that, what I said earlier about in-person is the pinnacle, but then one step down from that is video. You have developed this cadence of webinars more as part of your offering and also I mentioned there the live experience, just you're doing that really well. The interaction that comes with it is fabulous.
Can you tell me a little bit about how that is developed, what you're getting out of that, why you sort of see the growth in that, I guess, and also how that Yeah, well, particularly the live, I'm really interested in live as just that kind of interactive experience. A lot of video, I mean, I was just before this, it was on somebody recording another podcast and they were talking about the lack of feedback. I guess particularly even maybe in a podcast production, the veer or the listener knows you so well and you have no idea that they're even there, whereas the live thing seems that you're just seeing the way you're doing it. There's a lot of interaction in the comments. How have you translated that into the live experience and why are you pushing that, I guess?

Yeah, so the way that we think about it is twofold. There's so many different directions. This question can go slow. It's a little bit open.
Sorry, my answer, the question was be, so the way that we think about on a very high level when we think about video and live streaming video and webinar based content at the marketing meetup is splitting up video versus in person. And what we're not saying that neither these platforms can't do the other thing, but what we're saying is that for us, the live streaming is predominantly for education and the in-person is predominantly for connection. And if you think about the marketing meetup, we say that we'd like to educate, connect and build confidence in marketers, and if we can do those things, then we're doing them great. And so education online in person connection, I think what has been a wonderful experience there is that, well, twofold things really the first advantage is of course the reach. So folks can tune in from across the world and they do.
So when we introduce the webinar at the beginning and say dropping the chat where you're watching from, we get folks from BA in Switzerland, from South Africa, from America, from Australia, and of course a lot of folks from the uk. But to see that global reach coming through is just fabulous. And of course that wouldn't be able to be possible without doing those things virtually. From a community perspective, of course, that has a huge advantage. We're starting to build out the community in spaces that we're not physically. And so we spoke about this even yesterday in our strategy meeting where we were like, well, maybe we start to do a little bit more targeting in America right now and try to build out an audience there, but rather than looking to spin out another 50 in-person events in America, why don't we just do some more specific targeted advertising in America and see if folks pick up the virtual stuff and then we can follow that through with the in-person stuff.
So that's really, really great. The second is of course, the chat feature. And you pointed to it, and I don't do the comparison game because comparison is the thief for joy, but it's also the most arrogant thing of saying you're the best at whatever. But that being said, I am proud of the chat feature and the culture that we've built in our webinars where folks do interact and help each other and speak and make connections. And I've heard so many stories of people who've met each other in a webinar, connected on LinkedIn, then ended up becoming great mates and stuff like that. And so those interactions probably would never have happened if it wasn't in that situation because maybe it's people who are in South Africa versus America or the UK and they happen to connect or maybe they just couldn't make the in-person event on a Tuesday say, there are so many things.
Really for us, the webinars has been the growth engine in terms of new folks finding the marketing meetup over the past few years. The newsletter is the thing which continues that engine chugging along, but the webinars is the thing. And so it is been phenomenal and really, as I said in the initial story, that sort of mailing list of 2000 people is not that number anymore. And we definitely attribute that to the webinars being a really, really important part of that. And so it is just a glorious experience. And the last thing I'll say is we referenced this before we went live, but I had the opportunity to sit down with Seth Godin and stuff like that, and I don't think that I would necessarily get in the studio with Seth Godin unless I specifically went over to New York and sort of sat down with him. He's not coming to me. And so the exposure to some of the best marketing minds ever is facilitated through those live conversations, which is wicked. So we're in a lovely spot with it and I'm a huge proponent of webinars and live stream video them. Well, I mean it seems to be an increasing force in the marketing world for sure.

I love that and I love what you picked up on the end there because one other, I guess thing that sits aside that for you is your podcast as well, and one of the main things we do is help businesses produce video podcasts and all the advantages that comes with in terms of repurposing and whatnot. But we advocate for, I guess for this, for remote production as I guess a preference exactly for why you said it's such an easier ask to say to Seth, do you have an R at where you are in your setup? Instead of either Can we fly you to London? Which people do, but it's a whole other expense and a massive time difference for your valued guests and a, I love that you picked that up, but I'd love to just ask you a little bit about the podcast, if that's okay.
These may be slightly odd questions maybe given your expertise around the event world, but I, I'd love to just dive a little bit into that, Joe, in terms of the, I guess your podcasting journey. I've only been, I may have been producing for years, but this is my first podcast hosting, I guess I spent a whole career behind a camera very intentionally never being seen or heard to, and I've been on a journey for that, but I'm massively enjoying the process of just sitting down with people and having a really conversation, much like those coffees that I would have with somebody down the road, and it's really valuable, it's super intentional. It's just two people having a conversation. But I had love to hear about how your podcast has also helped with the growth of everything, the content that has been generated from that. You mentioned, we keep talking about Seth, but I watched the Seth Gooden episode last night, just it was referenced to something that we're going to talk about later as well, but that still exists. That was over a year ago and it's sitting there on YouTube, it's gathering, it's completely evergreen. People are discovering it from nowhere, from maybe not knowing anything about the marketing made up. How has that been part of your growth and your content engine I think as well in terms of what you then can put out and maybe just a little thought on how other businesses, particularly in the B2B world, which is the audience of this podcast, how that can help.

Yeah, lovely. So the way that we've operate, I'm going to answer this in two ways, so forgive me, but it's relevant to something that's happening right now. So the way that the podcasts have set as part of our content engine to date is that we would record the live webinar and then after the webinar we would take the audio from said webinar and pop it up on the Marketing meetup podcast as well. And so it is a way of making the content work harder and presenting it in a different format. It's relatively low effort in terms of the content has already been produced and the session is there already, so it is just being presented differently. I think one of the principle thoughts that is important here more than anything is that you're meeting people where they are. And so I speak to people who say, I love watching the webinars.
I love being there live, or I love watching them back and watching them back on YouTube or whatever it may be. But you also meet a bunch of folks who say, I listen to you all the time when I'm walking the dock or I'm on my horse or I'm in the car, or whatever it may be. And this is just an example of taking the asset and meeting people where they are and their consumption habits. And so for me, if I wasn't on the live webinar doing it, I'd be far more likely to join afterwards and listen to the recording unless it was a guest I wanted to specifically ask a question to or I knew that I wanted to meet certain folks in the session itself.
And so I think it's a bit of a no-brainer to be taking these pieces of content. I'd be shifting them to podcast in that kind of way, in this specific flow. What we are doing right now is, and I haven't told anyone about this outside of cm, so this is new stuff, is we're about to launch a new content thread, which will be podcast led. And so rather than a live streamed event like the webinars that we run today, we're going to be going out and running a podcast where we will be interviewing folks and it will be delivered as a podcast first and then the content afterwards. So it's a flip on what we've been doing to date.
The reason for this is twofold. So the first is a little bit like what we've just spoken about. So the folks that we would like on the podcast are folks that are probably a little bit more inaccessible. Their calendars are don't have the flexibility to show up at two o'clock on Thursdays on Tuesday, sorry. And so we can meet them on a Thursday in London and record a session or we can do something virtually or whatever it may be, and then we've got that opportunity to get access to someone we wouldn't have done otherwise because of calendar stuff, which is great. The second is that when we are not running it as a livestream thing, then we can start to think of it as a little bit more of a social first kind of experiment. And so here clipping becomes really important. So one of the disadvantages of our livestream setup at the moment is, for example, it's optimised for landing on people's screens at the right time and in the right fidelity and sort of not be laggy, but all that means is it's recorded at like seven 20 p or whatever, which, or even four 80 sometimes.
And so we know that we can push the podcast quality through recording in 4K or at 10 80 p with DSLRs or whatever it may be. And so we've used podcasts in a couple of different ways, either to repurpose or to create brand new content. I'm relatively bullish about it in the sense that I think podcasts can be done really well and have great impact because you get so much longer with folks. And there is the flip side is I think those initial stages are running a podcast can be so demotivating as well because certainly in the first instances you're not going to be seeing large listening figures and it is a bit of a momentum game. The last part of your question was around how folks in B2B situations can use it though and content aside. I think it's just a fabulous relationship builder.
It is a flattering thing to be asked to be on the podcast, and I absolutely would've spent the time with you if this wasn't a podcast recording situation, but I think we both share a similar disposition, but there are folks who are just busy or don't necessarily want to spend half an hour taking random coffee chats, and in those instances that's absolutely fine, but if they ask is can we share your knowledge? I think you're amazing. I think it's a flattering thing and I'll look back on today and I'll go, I spent an hour with Chris and in the same way someone else would, and I think that relationship builder is not to be used manipulatively, but is absolutely a tangential benefit to recording podcast content as well.

A hundred percent. Some people, the bad way to do that is I've heard people say, do a podcast, just invite all your prospects, just trick them into coming on and you get the opportunity. It's just so disingenuous and they always think it's an awful idea and I can't even know how they do it, but people advocate for that a lot and I certainly don't. I think it should always be this really intentional conversation. And there's somebody I've been connected with for a while on LinkedIn there and we've had some great conversations back and forth and we were on the cusp of having quite a deep conversation about something and I said, look, you know what? It was a guy called Chris, come on to my podcast. Let's have that conversation, but let's record it. This will be really great. And it was just those moments of already it was already happening, it was already great, going to be a great conversation.
I'm like, no, absolutely. Let's record this. And he's totally up for it, which is fabulous. But yeah, I agree with all of that. I love the fact that you're kind of now doing another thread that's really intentionally podcast first. That's kind of reassuring for me, Joe, to be honest with you. It's great, but I also really excited to see what that feels like because the lives are a bit more kind of all go, is that fair? You're reacting to stuff and it can be, there's a lot of back and forth, which is really energetic, but the podcast can be that more intentional, just like I really want to hear from you.

Yeah, I mean I think you need a fair amount of patience to be able to listen to me in conversation, to be honest. I've got a slow voice whether I'm live or recording a podcast, but I think, yeah, there's certainly something where you're not worrying about the tech quite as much if you are recording a podcast that the pressure, it's not being beamed out to several hundred or several thousand people at a time. It's just you can start the conversation with, don't worry if you say something you don't want 'em in the recording afterwards because we can edit it out. Whereas in a live streaming context, you can't do that, which we curate our guests in such a way where most of them are open and fine with being transparent and have the relevant permission from their company anyway. But for some folks it would definitely be a comfort thing, particularly those who are a little bit less experienced doing these things.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I hope I said before we clicked record, I was like, this isn't live TV is my line. And for that very reason often to you just put people at ease quite often. Not necessarily this podcast, but when I'm a really good example is when we create customer testimonials for our clients, and that could be with just a senior, fairly random person maybe in a company like the Champion in a company that knows my customer the most or has experienced, it could be an engineer and a software company. It could be someone who just has never been on video possibly. And there's a real rule there I think for a producer in our case, to put people at ease and to say, this is a safe space that we're not trying to trick you out here. You'll get to see this before it appears anywhere, but also just stop. It's okay to just stop, take a drink, ask a question about the question. All those things are really important in the production of great video, but I love that that's the format and that is a shift in terms of what you create. That's really exciting and I absolutely look forward to seeing where that goes.
Mentioned we've referenced it a few times, but I rewatched the Seth Dakota episode because one of the things you talked about there was I guess the rise of ai and particularly I think the title includes the words AI and ethics, but what I thought would be really interesting was 14 months on from the recording of that, you see where this is going to, you know what? I feel like it's just been a roller coaster since then. I feel like even the past few months from my world. So I focus quite heavily on the rise of AI video and the use of AI avatars replacing real humans. I've kind of built a whole company around almost opposing that particular use case. I suppose the importance of sitting down with real people, humanising brands, getting a company's real humans out into the world to be themselves, I think is a real value in that.
I think it's the ultimate trust builder, which is just so important. But I see lots of things appearing, kind of threatening that. I guess I also would say I'm a massive advocate for using AI in lots of wonderful ways. I use it every day in the running of my business, even AI video, there can be great use cases. My favourite at the moment is the translation of videos into other languages, and now that means translating it in your own voice and your own tone of voice, perfect lip sync it, it's mind blowing. And that could just be my favourite platform of choice, Wistia for hosting videos. They have a fabulous facility of those guys. So I had Sam Balter, who's the head of content at Wistia on the podcast. Fabulous. And I love, I've been at for 11 years too, and I love everything they do and especially their content creation.
They're good. It is absolutely, the world could learn a lot on content creation from them, but now it's just a dropdown menu or which particular country of Arabic would you like? It's would you, this country, there's like 180 different languages that just feels like a wonderful globalisation opportunity where someone, a company maybe in the US has created 200 really useful videos in English, and to be able to open that up to completely new markets, even doing Spanish and French opens you up to South America and most of Africa and things like that. It's amazing. So that's great ai, but thinking back to your conversation with Seth 14 months ago, everything you were talking about then, what have you seen, I mean, it just feels like a really fast moving progression. How do you feel about that, particularly in the B2B marketing world and the application of it and potentially the misuse of that or the less helpful ways to use that in terms of helping B2B marketing activities? I guess

It's such a big conversation. I think increasingly I'm of the perspective that the way that we speak about AI today will be in the same way as we speak about doing something on the internet in 15 years. I don't think we'll be pointing AI did this or AI did that. We'll just be saying in the same way as today, we don't say, I created a graphic on the internet. It is just not a thing. Worldwide web.

Yeah,

Exactly. And so I think in a way that particular genie is out of the bottle in terms of whether AI is a thing or indeed whether you should be using it. I think there are some ethical concerns around environmental stuff in particular and copyright that is very, very valid and to point out in part of these conversations. But that being said, if we do accept that framing of someone turning around in 15 years and sort of saying the same as the internet example, then I think it's quite hard to not be on this train and grow a business in the same way as it'd be hard to grow a business today without the web. And so therefore we are left here with what is rapid change. And rapid change is hard and scary and disorientating and uncertain is an emotion that I particularly struggle with because uncertainty is not a pleasant place to be in.
Some priest, people embrace it, but that's not necessarily my perspective. I go to fear first and then I find comfort later. And when change happens so quickly, then it's a fearful thing. And so one needs to acknowledge these things and sort of say that it is both scary and exciting. And it's funny to observe how people speak about AI because they'll quite often say a series of negative statements and then they need to caveat it at the end with, oh, but I'm very excited. Exactly. It made me smile. That's what everyone does, because you don't want to be seen as a luddy either. A hundred percent, that's

The word I use.

And so it's hard to strike that balance, but what we just need to acknowledge is this is a period of the change and being resistant to that change and in a being resistant to that change, I think harms us potentially. I think it gives us a critical lens to look at these new tools available to us and sort of say, okay, I'm not going to be wholly accepting of everything just because it's got an AI badge on it. But similarly, if we are wholeheartedly rejecting AI because it's new, it's different then I think similarly that puts a disadvantage. And therefore I sort of point to examples in the same way as you do where I go, okay, I'm not going to use it in this way, but I am going to use it in this way. So in a video content example, the other day I actually produced a video for Wistia for me enough and sent it to their team. So I spent four hours creating this video. It was a video which was addressed to camera in the same way as we're having this conversation. It cut in a bunch of scenes from their previous content marketing, which is fabulous, which also includes AI scenes, by the way.

Oh, I know. Yeah,

They're

Quite

Vocal about that, which is great. And I cut in some of marketing meetup footage as part of it too, but there was this moment in this particular video where there was a three second gap where I wanted to do a bit of voiceover to make a specific point, and I think it was about shouting from the mountains about air or something like that. And I didn't have a clip that was appropriate for that. And so I went into VO and I just typed the prompt in and got a video that was adequate enough for those three seconds. And so you go, okay, cool, right time, right place. It's making the point that I wanted to make didn't take the humans out of the equation, but it did enable me to authentically go across my message.
There was no less authenticity in this exchange, in this video because I used ai. It was just a tool that I used to get across my message better. And so I guess the point of encouragement really when I think about this is recognising as we've spoken about the change is scary, and that's okay to feel that way, recognising that it can be lovely to try and embrace these changes if you want to, but also reject the ones you don't want to. But then finally place these things in context and if you can find them useful and critically think about how you're going to apply them, then I think that's a good thing. I think where people fall down is saying, I'm full AI or I'm full not ai. And that is a tricky argument to justify in either circumstance. I don't think you run a great business by being full ai, and I don't think you run a great business by being not full AI or not ai. So it's a rapidly changing thing and it's a lot of emotions, but also a lot of excitement too. And there you go. I did a negative and a positive as well. So

There you go. Yeah, I mean I totally feel the same way. I see the extreme version and I push back against that, I guess the full ai. Just this week I came across a company that was posting ads in LinkedIn and I was drawn to, it leapt out to me because it was clearly an AI avatar and it was an avatar of a young woman talking about the product, and I dived a bit deeper. I was intrigued at that point because the name of the company was something about building trust and I was like, okay, you're building trust, but you're AI avatars and then elected more of their ads. They had fake podcasts of two people who two AI avatars talking. I was just like, it wasn't even that great. And then I went to the website full of clearly AI created stock photography. None of their humans knew her on the whole thing.
Even the copy was pretty clunky. I suspect the whole website was AI generated and it leapt out at me as an extreme example of too much. There was no trust. I couldn't find a human. I even couldn't find any people working for the company in their LinkedIn page, which is a massive red flag. I do knows who the company really were or what was going on, but it lacked any humanity. And other folks are like, I've seen and I have these very open conversations. I quite often DM folks who I see doing this stuff, and I just want to learn more about why they're doing it, how they're doing it, how it's being received is a really interesting thing for me. People doing entire podcast episodes with AI avatars, big well-known companies, particularly maybe in the marketing world where they're dialling us at more than most, but I'm really intrigued and I always ask them, what's the feedback? How is this going down? And what I find more and more in my really intentional research is human pushback against it, particularly the avatar thing. Maybe it's specific to sort of the B2B world where they're just not keen on it. I don't know. I know it's massive in the consumer space and maybe much more accepted, but certain generations as well. But yeah, there seems to be a little bit of pushback against just blindly creating fake content and only putting that out and not being in your example part of a bigger piece with humans.

I think the point that really sparks in the story that you just told is the fact that they're positioning on trust and it feels like if they're positioning on trust and then you felt like they weren't upholding that part of the trust, then I think that is like it's just not good marketing as much as anything else. There was a quote from someone in one of our very early webinars, Margaret Malloy, who said that a brand is a promise kept, and you can debate that definition, but I think what you can recognise is that a brand is saying you are these things and then delivering on those things. And if you have something which juxtaposes against those things, then that's not fabulous. And so I can see how new experience that was jarred, and it was probably, it was about the ai, but it also wasn't about the ai.
That was a marketing thing as well. And so it's curious and yeah, it's a curious and nuanced thing. And I think probably the thing which you also pointed to in what you were saying there is maybe there's nuance in the customers and a reminder to any marketer that you are not your customer. And maybe as you said in a generational perspective, maybe there's people, I don't tend to point to age demographics being a particularly relevant thing, but maybe there's a group of people who bloom in love AI avatars and actually find that as a really big trust signal that someone's on the cutting edge or whatever it may be. And in that situation, it'll be wholly appropriate. So what we're speaking about is going back to the fundamentals of marketing and sort of saying, what's the promise that we're trying to make? What's the positioning? Who are we positioning to and looking to understand all of these things and place that into the context of our business and our worlds to get an outcome which feels appropriate for the people you're trying to reach. And it doesn't sound like you had that experience, but maybe other folks would.

Yeah, sure. No, I love that. And yeah, I think from a fundamental good marketing point of view, I think especially in the B2B space, there's just so much value in humanising your brand and if you go too far down that route, you're losing that, I feel. And there's a wonderful middle ground of, I see, so well, Westley is a great example of, and your example of VO three of just like, I need this thing that I can't, I just don't have time, I don't have a budget, I don't have a film crew to make this thing happen. It's really accessible now to add those wonderful additional pieces. And there are so many good marketing ways to use it and other probably possibly pitfalls to avoid. Joel, that's a great place to come into land. I really appreciate your time. How can folks find out more about you and crucially find all the great content that we've been talking about from the marketing made up?

So folks head to the marketing meetup.com. We've got all of our previous events. I think there's nearly 300 hours of webinars now recorded there, which is a labour of love, but also a labour of community, which has been fabulous. Also, I just spend way too much time on LinkedIn, so if folks want to message there, then feel free to do so. Absolutely.

Tell me about it. I'm definitely need to check myself every now and again. I mean, I'm like, oh, this is good for my business. It's okay that I'm spending a ridiculous amount of my life on my phone or in LinkedIn, and it is often having wonderful conversations, but there's definitely a healthy balance, isn't there? I will, I'll absolutely link to all of those things wherever this episode appears. I really appreciate your time, Joe. It's been a wonderful conversation and I hope to keep in touch and hopefully get the first ever Belfast marketing made up happening. It needs to happen.

That'd be it. That'd be so lovely, mate. I'd love that. I really would. Let's make it happen.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Joe.

Cheers, Chris.