The ongoing AI revolution

[00:00]
If you’re doing repetitive tasks in your day-to-day work, it is something that can free of that burden if you don’t have the knowledge I can teach you if you don’t have the proficiency I can give you the experience. We just need to think about how you’re able to use it add value Curate those responses. There’s a lot of opportunity to really practical level and also an aspirational but if you don’t have interest in curiosity in how the world is changing then. I can’t really help.

[00:28]
Hey everyone and welcome. You’re listening to the mmm. Podcast this is a special South by southwest edition. I’m your host Steve Madden I’m the editor-in-chief of MM+M and I’m coming to you live from the offices of RevHealth in Morristown, New Jersey my guests today are Chris Cullmann the chief innovation officer of RevHealth and Marcia Goddard the chief creative officer at RevHealth.

[01:03]
Chris Marcia welcome, thank you. Thank you very much. Great to be here glad we could all be in the same place, so we’re gonna be talking specifically about AI and part of the reason we’re talking about AI and South by southwest is that if you look at the agenda the lineup for South by this year probably half of the sessions regardless of the track touches in some manner shape or form on AI and I have a feeling that regardless of the stated theme almost every session is going to touch on AI and some manner shape or form. So I just thought that it would be a good idea for us to kind of drill down into that a little bit some good to you guys sounds great. Love too. There’s a ton of smoke and a ton of heat around AI but there’s also a ton of static and I think one of the things that would be really helpful is to separate the static from the signal right now and just ask a very basic question, what is a

[02:03]
I

[03:05]
Shing was a tool in the late 80s in the early nineties that everybody got upset about you know I’m dating myself here, but the comparison is apt right. We all good freaked out by it and it didn’t it didn’t kill anything it made things better and I think AI is the same potential yeah, I think what’s really unprecedented about it is the speed. I think two years ago. You really was a glint in the technologist size and in the last year in particular almost a year to the calendar a chi pd4 was announced putting the market and it’s gone through several iterations. It’s become not only accessible tapped into it’s become part of the regular vernacular that you’re hearing people talk about and let’s get my haircut and the person cutting my hair was asking me about you know have you heard about AI put boy have I the but they were talking about it, because there was so excited because it was a first time. They used to tool it was like I was up in the middle of night playing on this thing was like I was able to generate all these images. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

[04:05]
I think it’s on the tip of everyone’s lips and I think when you talk about desktop Publishing and that desktop publishing Revolution that had happened in the 80s. So really good proxy because it made a commoditized something that had such an escalated value, you know for something to be in print. It was proof. It was validated at authority and that quickly became something was like you know anyone can publish and probably sharing showcasing a little bit of own age here like anyone could publish a zine and put what they want inside of the marketplace. I think AI is going to see that same thing at every Walk of Life but in particular in our industry. There’s a lot of drive to adopt it. Use it and have it included in the agency offering and add to that you know as much as we want to define what it is. We also have to define what it is. Not at my last agency. I had a very heated argument with a colleague who just said it’s it’s Google it’s just Google

[05:05]
and I was like okay. I mean Google is kind of AI but you’re not going to use Google to go through drug development and Discovery and put different compounds together to shorten the time to save people’s lives you know it’s it’s a lot of what it’s not as much as what it is. So that’s kind of in my next question was about hype around AI and what what that person was mentioning was antihype. You know saying like you kind of dismissing it.

[05:33]
Admittedly there’s a ton of hype around it. How do you you know when you’re dealing with clients? How do you guys separate hype from a reality? I think there are a couple of proxies for this one that we’ve seen in our industry for a long time. I’ve been no practicing inside a Healthcare for very long time and when mobile came out they had you know mobilizer and several technologies that made you know websites accessible to mobile devices and that quickly became evident it had a lot of shortcomings and in particular the explosion of mobile usage and the explosion of the need to make sure that that content was accessible regardless of the platform that was being engaged in became very important and very important to the marketer, but also became important to the users and it’s those kind of tenant changes that we’re seeing that we need to be cognizant of and thinking about how we’re going to be able to use this does it have a place is it relevance? Is it not just something that we could put in front of someone and be like it has AI but what business problem is going to solve? How’s it going to alleviate a pressure or anxiety?

[06:32]
Or a workflow and really enable people to lean into the strengths that they have it’s an unlock if you’re doing repetitive tasks in your day-to-day work. It is something that can free you of that burden. You just need to think about how you’re able to use it and value Curate those responses. I think I really think that there’s a lot of opportunity to really practical level and also an aspirational level. Yeah, I think that’s very true and I mean when I’m trying to introduce it to clients or creatives. I try and make it as practical as possible because some people just get caught up in the thought of it, but it’s it’s like let me show you how chat gbt can write. Thank you note for you when you don’t have the words to say something like make it very tangible and practical and that is a great way to kind of introduce it and then you can get to the fancy stuff. I also think it has you know when you talk about something like writers block or when you’re having trouble getting a room started the easiest way to volunteers to get people engaged is for you to have a you know to put out something that’s wrong because people’s.

[07:32]
Reaction of participate when something’s wrong it draws out the criticism it gives them feedback it gives them a place to start at and I think if we look at AI even to be able to start through those initial inspiration points and speed the Foundation of things that are moving forward. It’s it’s a huge way to add value to the conversation to get things started because people be very quick to say well. That’s not right because or it could be better because especially on the creative side where there is a certain lack of emotion. It is sometimes very uninspired and it’s responses and I think when we look at the value that the human Element can bring to those engagements and look at it as a way to start inertia to start a process to start people down the road to being something great or doing something great. That’s where it has a huge amount of value.

[08:26]
I love the fact that that you know a simple demonstration of its of its abilities kind of demystifies it and that’s you know that’s that’s a great use case too to just say show you how it can help you write a thank you letter so let’s let’s talk specifically about AI as it pertains to health care marketers. We know anyone listening to this podcast knows that this is an industry that has some distinct peculiarities in terms of the regulations around the marketing of certain products. What do you guys see as the opportunities and the challenges that AI presents a Healthcare marketer like what if you’re from your perspective? What’s the biggest opportunity that it presents. I mean I can kind of think about it from the creative perspective. You know our clients have to spend a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of money on the stuff that we produce for them and now with AI we can use you know predictive analysis.

[09:26]
To make sure we’re going after you know the right demographics we can predict behavior with it. It’s great for you know testing and getting sort of feedback on the stuff. We’re doing as well as actually creating it so I think Healthcare marketers can really get a lot out of saving them time saving them money and making everything more personalized and accurate. I think that’s a really excellent points. Yeah, how about from your perspective Chris I think there’s there’s an element of scale here that we don’t recognize inside of our category. We talk about things like modular content or being able to move across multiple channels efficiency there’s like the regulatory burden. There’s the segmentation burden and as an industry. We tend not to really exercise that we tend not to look at segments because from an mlr standpoint. We’re like really threatened by the idea of putting all this material through mlr. And this is where AI has a lot of benefit which is we can produce infinite combinations and be able to put business.

[10:26]
Rules in place to allow us to adhere to whatever the mlr requirements are and first to dial in how ambitious or conservative and mlr group is and for us to generate all of that content and then be able to put it through the more traditional parameters of submission, so what is traditionally very laborious expensive Talent that would be doing iterations of content we can now be able to move through that process much more quickly and efficiently and still have it be accurate and compliant of course with human careeration and some oversight really this idea of augmenting the human ability is how we should be looking at it especially in the regulated industry and that’s just one small segment even if you look at the science elements of this and what AI can give us relative to being able to look at huge data sets and for us to exercise portions of clinical trial process and making sure that we’re moving into the various iterations of molecular development. These are all spaces inside of health care that we are already moving through.

[11:26]
True, but that are easily recognized it really is such early days for this technology that I think were you know we’re going to be talking about how immature our ideas however advanced now are in a year five years ten years and saying that you know this was really the beginning of the journey and we had to redo everything twice and we were moving incredibly fast probably faster than we’ve ever moved from the adoption of the new technology and there’s still a lot of it that’s unknown and for people who are not in health care, mlr is medical Legal and regulatory, and it’s kind of where big ideas can go to die if you don’t handle it the right way, so yes, it would be a great use of AI so one thing that’s I think really important to discuss when we’re talking about AI is biases. You know gender bias race bias cultural biases things like that first of all. Can you kind of set the table? What do you know about biases that we’re seeing so far in the AI

[12:26]
I think a lot of people have either seen in the news or understand that you know AI is as smart as it’s trained as and you know being that it’s trained on things that have been put into the World by certain group of people. There’s a lot of bias when it comes to you know gender age sexuality and ethnicity you know I’m sure people have seen the stories about how facial recognition technology is trouble ideing non-white faces and things like that, but I think it’s even more critical and healthcare where the decisions AI makes and the information AI shows us can actually affect the Healthcare of certain populations. Yeah, I think there are a lot of examples the most recent. I will probably showcase a little bit of the time of recording Gemini was just taken down last week relative to producing images that necessarily showed probably an unnatural over to overindexing of bias, but I think there’s the health.

[13:26]
Exercise I mean this is still and we come back to this point still really early days for artificial intelligence and inherently we all come to the tables bias. You never get to a meeting room with her isn’t some form of bias the question is with AI you know we’re assuming that it’s a point of truth that it’s balanced and reflect in the fact. This is only as good as the data coming in and the quality of the query. That’s prompting it. I think having the context around this and being able to bring our own experiences to the table is an excellent example of where human intervention in human touch augments technology and augments the way we should be approaching artificial intelligence and I was think it’s a good discussion point. I think challenging what we think about health and data and in particular like in an agency environment in most cases most of the people there are going to be pretty well insured and fit to a specific demographic of probably being very health focused that may not be representative of what.

[14:26]
You know everyone in the world is experience or everyone even in the country is experiencing that’s a great point and that’s why it’s so important to get this stuff into the real world into the Wild and and out of what we would think of as clinical trials essentially.

[14:41]
Um you also make a really interesting point about the personal about the human touch and it goes back to something we were talking about earlier. Is that AI is only as good as what’s fed into it. So how does the human Element come into play here with making sure that it’s that the machine is being properlynnourished for lack of a better term for me awareness is the first thing obviously this happened because people weren’t thinking about it before they started acting on things but I think there’s also other things that humans can do other than making sure that the data set is robust. You know for example. I simple as making sure the people who are developing AI come from different backgrounds or you know attracting more women people of color to technology jobs like that alone would start shifting things apart from the initial awareness going in that this has happened and it’s a really big problem in health care, where.

[15:41]
For example the app that detected skin cancer and underperformed on darker skin tones people get really sick from that. It’s not just about being I guess PC it’s about people’s lives right and it’s true with you know. It’s also true with exercise performance monitors, which haven’t been built to handle all skin tones properly. I was chatting with a client the other day who told me that something that he used AI to develop in December now, and this is being recorded on February 20th is horribly outdated. So you know are you guys seeing the technology and your ability to use it as as AI gets smarter you get smarter too right. So you presumably you’re you’re getting better at being able to work with it. Have you seen a similar timeline and and how quickly it’s evolving yes 100% We’ve developed a number of products that we put into market that I would say six eight months later are not irrelevance but

[16:41]
Would have struggle to finding as much value as they did when we put them together and presented them also the costs for deploying these platforms is dramatically changing as well open AI had a significant announcement on late in the fall relative to not only their structure, but they’re approach and managing data that dramatically change the pricing model inside of the marketplace. We’re seeing not only adoption but platforms that are moving in the market that helped with everything from the the creative process visuals to the written word and pros having greater scale greater articulation more refinement. You know the hallucinations that would be happening whether it be you know the classic example of the six-fingered hand as much as I’m a Princess Bride fan. It’s nobody wants to see that in their creative the you know we are seeing these things mature and we’re learning very quickly and that’s part of what makes it exciting we’ve all come to this industry on the on the advertising agencies side of it at least I think this we’re attracted to the speed of iteration to the

[17:41]
Way that we can become inspired not just by emerging technologies, but how we’re applying Solutions and this is a really good example of everyday you come to work this could be a different vehicle a different mode of operation at different set of rules for us to open it and it’s it’s really inspiring and I think there’s also a lot of Fear we you know they’re it’s foolish. Not to have some level of apprehension about this because you know we’re starting to see some of the tenors of our job change for the first time in quite a while and specifically post covid and we have to ask ourselves like is it is it us you know is it something that’s authentic to the agency and the culture that we’re working in but also is it something that is true to how we want to practice the craft and I love how you are bringing the inspiration and excitement to it because you know I mean if we’re being honest Healthcare advertising marketing is usually like six to seven years behind consumer stuff and this could be the first opportunity where we can either lead the way or

[18:41]
Or at least keep up with the way things are changing and you know improving in some ways so for me. That’s that’s what excites me. We might even have a chance to not be seven years behind yeah, and I also think it’s a big way for people to change a little bit of their role, too it does require curation it does require or find I it does require context and how it’s not only matured and proven but how it’s also going to move to our client relationships and and when we put Concepts in front of a client how it’s articulated in the value that we as creatives technologists account people project managers all provide value to a relationship all provide value through the way that we’re representing. This is a solution the speed and Efficiency that comes from these platforms is away for us is people as employees as crafts people to harness something to do the job better. We need to keep that in mind partially to not be afraid of this because it’s coming it’s here.

[19:41]
Here um but more so so that we can figure out how to include it in our practice included in our craft and and shape it make it our own otherwise we’re going to be victims of a space that changing we need to bring up your desktop publishing example. You know that happens to a portion of the audience right. There was a whole group of professionals that did not evolve as the channels were they still had they were still a lot of manual type setting going on there were still a lot of manual layout that was going on but that quickly faded not completely away, but it became relegated to some niche opportunities. We need to be careful about how we’re doing that we need to be careful about how we’re including people in our teams and making them feel as though this is an opportunity not necessarily hindrance so that that’s an interesting point that leads nicely into into the next question and that is you know it’s it’s one thing to talk about what does this mean for the industry and what does it mean for my clients and everything else but I think.

[20:41]
Think that one of the the base reactions to the news about AI and the reality of it is people are scared right. They’re scared because the the way it was first pitched. Was you know the robots are going to steal my job, so I guess your people working with this tool and you’re leading teams of people who are working with the tool. So you know at a very selfish level. What does AI mean for for our listeners and what does it mean for their jobs? We hear that a lot as well? It’s it’s very common. I think what really got my mind around it or reframed is I heard a engagement strategist say you know where is AI going to do for us. I kept thinking of that word for because anytime you talk to people who are scared. It’s like what does AI going to do to us? It’s going to take over our jobs. It’s going to turn into Skynet it’s going to do all these terrible things to us, but if you reframe everything with what is it going to do for us. I think that.

[21:41]
Takes a lot of Fear out of it and it gives you the control. It’s not going to take your job if you want to stay employed you are going to use it to make yourself and your work better.

[21:51]
Yeah, I think we got a really good example of inside our agency. We have a platform called amplify that does clinical influencer identification. We use this to analyze data at scale looking at local market clinical influencers that have the reflect the values of that a brands might look at from a national kol, but it’s much more nuanced into how much reach do they have do they mirror a lot of the attributes that we look for nutritional kol and then we overlay that with with our team who’s looking at this to the lens of the client out of this cohort. That was selected are they relevant to our client when they talk on social media is it in a tone or tenor or is it appropriate for our brands for our company to be partnered with these clinical influencers? You know are they in the right places for us. Is it a relationship where they are in their career relative to us being able to provide value back to our clients who that that human aspects to it that not only intelligence but intuition is where?

[22:51]
You know we’ve imported an element that has a tremendous amount of value and for those you know for those people on our team. That’s a huge among. That’s a huge way for us to be able to for them to participate in this and to use the tool in order for them to have scale where previously they had not was a manual process. We have a number of data system. We use it but at the end of the day you’re going through a much larger set of data looking for these Gold Flex in the in the Sand so to speak that’s just one example of where you’re seeing these things begin to shift but part of that is working with the teams in order to harness this as a tool and for us to show the clients how technology and people and experience are able to prove a lot of value to a product that was otherwise or category of research. That was otherwise a little bit stale so from a very very sort of basic level do you have advice for for people who are have been keeping this this creature at arm.

[23:51]
Lengths and they’ve been convinced by our conversation that they need to take the plunge. How do you get started? I mean I have just I mean it’s so simple and it’s so strange that people don’t do it, but you know a lot of people I’ve spoke to don’t even know that chat GPT has an app so his basic as like sitting with somebody and saying okay, this is you know what you want to download this is how you’re going to use it like really demystify things and then the other part is kind of reminding people of what this can do for us. I mean I think about in Healthcare compliance and adherence to medication hurts more people than any disease in the world and you know AI could help us with that bots could help us with that and trying to show people that on one hand you can it’s very practical and sitting with them and saying here’s how you do it and on the other hand like you know Chris was saying remember the inspiration and the wonder of what this is and what it can do for us how.

[24:51]
Would you not want to be involved in that?

[24:54]
Chris I think

[24:58]
It to call back a little bit to South by Southwest and I think is a good rally point for the conversation is we have a group of people who are going you know to hear these talks and to sit on these panels. They are traditionally the people who are running into the rally cry. They are the advocates the evangelists so part of it. Is is listening to what that tenorentone is coming back as to how you know what is this next year look like what are we looking at as we you know as we sit into March for as an inspiration standpoint right. What is it? We’re hearing that are the opportunity looks like and how do we begin to figure out? How we participate in that getting exposure. I think there’s a part of this is not being afraid to the of the tool and you know you had said it very very succinctly which is we are. There’s a population of people who are very concerned about what AI does but haven’t actually tried it. It’s like being afraid to ride a bicycle and never have gotten on. It’s like you could choose that.

[25:58]
Is not for you, I hear you, but if you’ve never tried it, you’re you’re missing the opportunity. I mean it truly. You know like it is a tool of whimsy it is incredibly impressive to use and even to look at it understand it to some degree and walk away from it shows a level of a curiosity that I think everyone needs to engage the same way. I would with any other technology is before you know we dismissed it or under your state what it’s role is going to be we need to immerse ourselton. We need to have some actual experience and I think that’s really important, but it’s also why the the group of people who are most inspired by this or the Likely the ones who are you know running into this two years ago and we need to listen to them temperate with some practical elements and some sensitivity, but we also need to understand where we’re being LED and what the opportunity looks like and it is a bit of a reframe but they’re innovation is not going to stop for people who don’t necessarily want to get on the train.

[26:58]
That doesn’t mean they’re going to be left in the dust. It means that there is going to be a group that’s going to be able to harness this and take full advantage of it and a group who’s not and the distance between those two things is going to change pretty rapidly as we go into this year and next year. Yeah. That’s really true. I mean I think about the people that you know are just not going to adopt some of this stuff. They at least need to be curious and interested in it. You know if you don’t have the knowledge. I can teach you if you don’t have the proficiency I can give you the experience but if you don’t have interest and curiosity in how the world is changing then. I can’t really help you.

[27:39]
Yeah, the more the more I learn about AI whatever fear. I had when I first you know came to be more aware of it is turning into not fear but FOMO well. I think it’s really interesting we talk about the personal touch in the value of of coming together and you know working together. I think it’s interesting that the conversation at South by southwest will be dominated by talk about AI and yet. It’s all happening people are coming together in one place to have that conversation and it just reinforces the points that Chris and Marsha that you both made about the value of of personal interaction so listen. This is just this has been we could go on on and on about this. It’s I I would love to come back and like three or four months and have this conversation again and maybe smoke test a little bit about what we talked about or just catch up to say like you know here’s what we

[28:39]
In in February what what’s actually happened or how is thing? How are things accelerated but that’s for another day. I think you’ve been listening to the mmm podcast. I’m your host Steve Madden guests today have been Chris Coleman chief innovation officer at rev health and Marcia Goddard chief creative officer here two very smart people who have taken the plunge into AI and share their wisdom with us a very much appreciate it Chris Marshall thanks so much for for being on the show today. Thank you Steve it’s been great talking to you. Thank you.