Why Human Touch in Marketing Beats AI Every Time

Rebecca Ai, I think can make things look as though they are creative and unique, but I really think that the. The human touch and the human element is what makes people feel the things.

Intro Welcome to Contrary to Popular Opinion, a podcast hosted by IDE Digital. In each episode, we bring you provocative topics and novel perspectives around leadership, business, and marketing that defy the norms because exponential growth demands unconventional thinking and visionary action.

Intro So open your mind and let's get into this week's episode.

Kelly Everyone. Kelly McGuire with IDE Digital. Excited to talk to today's guest.

Todd Hey everybody, this is Todd Kelly's co-founding partner. It's Monday, November 10th. I am fresh off of Parents weekend at UCSB, the Barstool Sports ranked number one party school in the country.

Todd And I'm ready to go 'cause it was a fun weekend. and we have. A really, really fun, fun [00:01:00] personality and person that we have known for a long time. Rebecca Rothstein, who I don't know for more than a decade, has worked at some of the biggest agencies and the biggest brands, and on the brand side,

Todd Sailing from both New York, Miami, LA is an la native resident. you have a lot to talk about. we know and we've always enjoyed that conversation. So, welcome Rebecca to contrary to Popular Opinion.

Rebecca Thanks for having me guys. I'm so excited to be. Back on the Zoom screen with you all.

Todd I don't know about the zoom screen, but yeah, we'll, we'll take the conversation all day long.

Rebecca well it's second best to like meeting for a, one of Kelly's fancy lady cocktails, so, you know,

Kelly do like a good girly drink.

Rebecca Yes, yes.

Todd Well look. So today, what I wanna talk about is your, your new company, the shorts. and I wanna talk a lot about creative and content and strategy and [00:02:00] sort of the mixology of all those things, which comes out into this sort of soup of storytelling, which is, that's sort of your bread and butter and where your core.

Todd Interest life. I've got a lot of sort of questions or topics to talk about. I mean, from the time we started working with you in our past lives to now. Wow. Have things changed? Because when we first started talking to you, working with you, AI wasn't an acronym that we used in our language. So a lot's changed.

Todd I wanna talk about that. we'll put you on the hot seat at the end. but first the shorts. There is a Madison Avenue backstory to this. You must explain to the listeners what does it mean.

Rebecca Okay. So here we go. So, for those that have never met me in person, I'm not of tall stature. So, it is one of my defining characteristics.

Rebecca I have many defining characteristics, that's just one of them. and when I worked on Madison Avenue, I worked at [00:03:00] TBWA Shy Day for seven years. Four eight. Eight Madison. I worked the early shift and I worked the late shift. And the late shift, was, you know, past seven 8:00 PM and there was a late night security guard that worked downstairs to make sure, you know, the riffer raft didn't come in the building.

Rebecca And, me and my colleagues that worked the late shift, hustle mode, at Shiat, we became really good friends with the security guard and she was this fabulous woman. She is from Queens and she's just, oh, she was the best. Her name was Nikki. And when you came down late at night after your, you know, really long day you would have to sign out.

Rebecca And when you signed out, she would always just call me shorts. And so, and it was more like ss so SHOs, oh, it's SHOs and then it [00:04:00] would be my buddy Jason who was squids. so everyone kind of had a nickname and, we would just sign out our name as Shorts and squids. so it's sort of my tribute to the late night Madison Avenue hustle that, Put in my time and, with my new company, it's really bringing to life all the things that I've learned along the way on Madison Avenue and Venice Beach and all of the places that I've sort of grown up in. and a, you know, a shout out to Nikki, the security guard at, four eight A Madison who, who really, I think she appreciated the hustle.

Rebecca that late night hustle and not leaving until the job was done. So

Todd love it. something interesting you said there, which. Culturally, Kelly and I have always been, very much against, as agency employees and owners, which I think is interesting. And this is not the topic we wanna talk about today, but something that you did bring up is the idea of this like late night agency sort [00:05:00] of working mentality and shift.

Todd And, I remember telling stories to people about how I had to do that. And I don't think we've ever had to do that in any of our companies or asked our employees to do that. Maybe rarely, but it's not the norm in the, in the world that you grew up in. that was the norm. maybe it is still today.

Todd I don't know. I don't hear about it as much as I used to hear about it being the norm and the grind. but that was the norm back then. For those of you who might be thinking about entering the advertising industry as a career,

Rebecca it was the norm. And I'm not sure, I'm not in the Madison Avenue worlds anymore.

Rebecca certainly not in the New York Agency world. I know that there are probably still late nights, but I think with the shift in culture of people working from home, and schedules being a little bit more fluid, but like that was. Part of the fun, you know, you, I was in my twenties and like, that's what you did.

Rebecca you hustled. There were many nights [00:06:00] where I, you know, was there, we pulled Allnighters and, you know, we were working on a new business pitch and it was all night. people would come in the next morning at 8:00 AM and they'd be like, you're still here. Yeah. We're still here, we're gonna win that pitch.

Rebecca We're gonna win it. so yeah, I think it's not so much, you know, ever since then, it has been my mentality to not do the late night hustle. it's, it's not fun. It sucks. but I think that if you. Really prioritize your day and your workflow, and you have the right team in place, which sounds like you guys do because you don't need to do that anymore.

Rebecca you can try and eliminate that late night hustle. But back in the day, in like the, like early, mid two thousands, like that's, that was the hustle. That was the hustle.

Todd And your salary was $28,000.

Rebecca I mean, if that, yeah. So exactly.

Todd while you were doing that. [00:07:00] here's to the past.

Todd and let's talk about the future, which, is completely unknown at this point in time. Kelly and I are having this conversation regularly. but to talk with you today about creative and strategy and content and sort of again, the mixology of all those things. I think some of the biggest topics we're facing today is human versus machine and human craft versus machine generated craft.

Todd So, so you and Kelly, I'm interested to hear from both of you, especially on the creative side, is taste, is culture, is any of that stuff. An advantage, a human advantage do you think that there's a machine advantage to taste and culture? How does that work when machines can generate hundreds or thousands of variations of things now, is it diluting craftsmanship or is it making it better?

Todd I'm curious what you think, what you've seen recently in the last maybe 12 months, what is your opinion about this?

Rebecca So I would say that. [00:08:00] Brands and organizations are leaning very heavily into using AI to portray this feeling of being creative and tapping into culture and being funny and being emotional.

Rebecca And I think that AI. This is why we're talking about this, right? Contrary to popular belief, AI I think can make things look as though they are creative and unique, but I really think that the, the human touch and the human element is what makes people feel the things.

Rebecca You can look all you want, but the way that something makes you feel That's what moves the needle in my opinion. you know, AI is great if you need to bang out 50 different ad size [00:09:00] units and you need to just go, go, go, yes all the way. Use ai, make sure that there is a human looking at it at the end to make sure that everything is as it needs to be.

Rebecca And just so, but use that all you want. But I think when it comes to a core idea and making an audience. Feel something, feel an emotion that you really need that human touch, you need that, that human who has experienced that same feeling. I'll give you an example. I've worked on a lot of products that, you know, moms parents are the shoppers for.

Rebecca And I worked on it before I was a mom, before I had kids, and then afterwards. And I really do think that I'm able to tap into those insights so much easier and with so much more emotion, and sensitivity because we have those shared. [00:10:00] cultural moments, those shared insights with my audience.

Rebecca So, I will go out and say, yes, if you need to create 350 different ad sizes, go ahead. Use ai. Yes, it's a great tool. When you want to make your audience feel special and feel an emotion. let's put the human touch in there.

Kelly yeah, I think for me it gets really interesting 'cause I think it opens up.

Kelly A bigger conversation around what marketing and advertising and ads in particular are trying to accomplish. Because, and it opens it up to so many avenues on that, right? Because you have this idea of you can be very formulaic, right? If you were trying to create conversion at the end of it, there is an element of.

Kelly Formulaic approach to that where it's, if I say the right words in the right order, if I match it to that person's experience, if I can use data to understand their needs, I can put together the right combination of [00:11:00] assets to put in front of them that taps into their need and sends them to the right direction.

Kelly But you're talking about a very particular point in the funnel, a very particular thing that you're trying to, to push, and I think that this. Carries through on what you're trying to sell, right? There are some things that are very emotionally driven. They're very personal, they're very decision making.

Kelly You know, this goes back to conversations we've had around are you pushing brand or utility and, and what's going through there versus some of the emotion needing to be what grabs attention, what gets people to stop scrolling? What gets people to. Have credibility and authenticity and believe the message that's coming through.

Kelly And I continue to believe that AI can be an incredible tool to enhance what really creative and talented people can do. And if it's guided and leveraged in the right way, it can be really powerful.

Kelly And I, it frustrates me when I hear more about the replacement and the ease and the cheapening of things. Because yes, it can be used that way, but I don't think that's the most effective way. Like, I feel like that's. A limited ceiling on what it'll do. Like maybe, [00:12:00] maybe AI has enough novelty right now to where you can use it.

Kelly It'll be kind of cool for people, and maybe you get that sort of that bounce or that pop on. Okay, I got, but once everybody's using ai, once, it's the same data once it's the same things being informed. I always talk about it's gonna become noisy. How are, how is anyone gonna differentiate and break through?

Kelly And you just kind of create this, new level playing field where everyone's fighting on the same field once again and you have to figure out creative ways to break through and now you bring back the human element to it. So I. it's so complicated. 'cause there's so many different ways you can be like, well AI's great and it can solve things really fast, but it can take away the human element, but it can also enhance the human element if used right.

Kelly And all of that. So, I dunno, it's, there's so many ways to think about it. It gets so interesting.

Rebecca You know what, I also think on humor, I'm big on humor and I think, Everyone has their own sense of humor. Like what is AI's, sense of humor, you know, that makes me, that is like a little cringey to me.

Rebecca I [00:13:00] think humor is in delivery. Humor is in how you say it, not just what you say. and it's like the whole package. So anyways, So I think we're, we're in agreement here, Kelly. I think on this one, I think on this one. Well, here's, here's the

Todd final question for you both agree or disagree.

Todd Is taste still advantage? Human?

Kelly I know I feel like I never give a straight answer 'cause I feel like I look at both sides of the coin and every single thing that I do. But

Todd taste though, but in its real literal sense, is taste still advantage to the human or the machine?

Todd So it,

Kelly this is the answer I'll give. It is still. Driven is still human based. But what I do think the advantage you get from AI is it has the ability to look at a broader dataset to look at what's trending on, on the internet, what's popular, what's matched to certain groups. It can use data to understand what are people liking and sharing and commenting and engaging, and what are the components of that.

Kelly Now, again, [00:14:00] I'm not of the belief that. It can take the outputs of that and do it as you will, but I think it can empower a really talented person to be armed with really, really good information that can then take it and kind of hit that perfect note of, okay, if this group is really loving this thing right now, here's what I can match to my brand and really kind of insert in and, and do really well.

Kelly So. I, it's a middle ground answer.

Todd I disagree. For the record, Rebecca, agree or disagree, is taste still a human advantage or machines encroaching on taste?

Rebecca I think that the human's gotta win on this one. I I think that yes, it can pull data sets faster than any human ever can pull a data set and it can, you know, scroll the internet.

Rebecca Faster and more efficiently than any superhuman. But,  but also what's good to me isn't good to you. So I, I was gonna say, are you gonna change

Kelly your [00:15:00] answer if we talk about generationally who we're serving?

Rebecca You know, it, it's also like who is inputting the prompt, right? if I'm inputting the prompt one way and you're inputting the prompt another way.

Rebecca You're gonna get slightly different results. Also, it's, I don't know,

Todd well, I dunno,

Rebecca humans aren't dead yet. Don't kill the humans yet.

Todd Maybe I can marry both of your, your answers. So I would use this as an analogy 10 or 15 years ago if you were a well-known fashion apparel brand, and you were a trendsetter on the runway in Paris every year.

Todd Where did taste come from at that time? Taste came from the people at the brand. Who were the designers, the fabric people. taste came from those

Kelly humans, is your question really? Who decides what's cool? Yeah. Taste. Yeah, taste is taste

Todd [00:16:00] still a human advantage or as an ai, but today, one of those brands very well may be doing what you're doing, Kelly, which is ingesting large sets of data to see what sort of apparel sells the best, what does it look like, what does it feel like, what kind of fabrics does it use, what's the positioning?

Todd And there's all this data out there to, to now tell them, Hey, for our fall or winter or spring line, or our lookbook. We have all this data that tells us we should be doing this versus some taste maker that's just some fashionista in Paris who just did it because it was their, Rebecca, to your point, it's, it was their taste.

Todd Right? people love Louis Vuitton or, Christian Dior or any of these brands, right? Because of the taste that those brands. Have been established on, there's no machine learning that developed that. That was so body. That was a person. That was

Rebecca an idea. That was an idea. You know? It was an idea and it was a stroke of creativity.

Kelly Yeah. Let me ask you a different question on this, Rebecca. I'm curious how you'd think about it this way. Do you think for a brand, this [00:17:00] might be situational, so pick any example. Do you think it's better for a brand to have their core principles, their belief, who they are?

Kelly To look at what's popular or the audience that they're trying to reach and try to craft a story that matches to that audience. So the brand sort of, I'll say brand outwards. Or is it better to look at what's trending, what's popular, what people care about, and adapt your brand story to fit what is in demand and hungry at that moment for who you're trying to reach.

Rebecca I mean, your brand story should always be your brand story. You're not gonna go change who you are and your brand beliefs and your mission and what you stand for just because, you know, crop tops are trending on the internet. I think that. Who you are is who your brand is, and what you stand for is should be within every single thing that you do.

Rebecca So I don't think you should go being [00:18:00] go change. Who you are and what you believe in just because something is trending. What about, what about,

Kelly maybe like the core values of the company, but the way you convey your story, who you are, right? What if you're trying to take a 50-year-old brand and conveying it on TikTok to a younger generation?

Kelly Like is it better to try and adapt to. The medium that you're going out to and try and convince them or to know, okay, like they're loving memes and they love, you know, six, seven and these other things, and how does that fit? How can I craft that and match my brand in there? Like, again, I'm thinking of it as like brand out or culture in

Rebecca Oh yeah, I'm going the Todd route and say it's a little of both.

Rebecca Then if you're gonna make me come up with a campaign about six, seven, I'm gonna. I quit.

Todd Well, the, the analogy is if you were a fashion brand that didn't make that particular top, and all of a sudden all the data tells you that that's the most trendiest, top two that's gonna sell for the next spring collection, are you gonna [00:19:00] make one even though your brand's never historically made one and that's not a look that your brand, you know, historically has put out there, do you make one because the data tells you it's popular?

Rebecca Maybe you test one that feels you. Feels like your brand. Oh, you know, I keep thinking about, you know, when you said it's this old brand that you know, you're trying to revitalize like Stanley, like the Stanley mugs. The Stanley Cups, like water bottles. Right? That's a super old brand and it's been around for a while and I think that they like updated their color schemes.

Rebecca Like everything is like pastels and like cute. You know, hot girl culture and they weren't hot girl culture before. No. but they're staying true to who they are about, you know, providing hydration on the go. I don't know what their brand principles are, but you know, hydration on the go. It's still hydration on the go, but.

Rebecca now, it's for the like hot girl that did [00:20:00] yoga. And I think that that was a great evolution of their brand tapping into colors and trends and, who that new consumer is. Your consumer is constantly changing. So you've gotta be able to, change with your consumer, but still keep true to your core.

Kelly So let me tie this back around to the original question. How is a brand better served at figuring that out? are they better using AI and tools to research and tell them what they need to adapt to? Or is it still human? Led with a creative director that can kind of tap into the zeitgeist in the culture and say, this is the way our brand needs to move.

Kelly Should it be more data driven information? I'm

Rebecca human, I'm going, wins still. Human wins creative director is gonna win.

Todd Alright, well, so this is a good segue into the next, topic, which is the idea of this new creative process. So today, what is a creative director, is a creative director today in your, your eyes, Rebecca, [00:21:00] what it was five years ago?

Todd Or is a creative director today somebody who's now a prompt? A smart and savvy, prompt engineer, prompt director, and you know, is that the new sort of creative director superpower or is it still Again, like I went to the art institute. I went to art school. Like I understand fine art and color and juxtapositioning and depth and like what a lot of creative people might, even though I have, don't have a creative bone in my body for some dumb reason, I went to school for that.

Todd Is that still important or is it, is the prompt more important now?

Rebecca I mean, look, anyone can put in a prompt, right? Make me this, make me that. it is a bit of an art and a science to putting together what that prompt is, and then deciding what is even worse, a prompt in the first place.

Rebecca and then I think you do need somebody that's able to like, find the [00:22:00] holes and, and, mine on the good ideas. Away the bad ideas. because not every point that comes through on AI is gonna be a point that's really. Worth digging into. So I do think that you still need that, filter with, again, the human, the humans are still needed.

Rebecca Don't kill the humans. Maybe we call this episode, don't kill the humans. There,

Rebecca I think that we need to be able to. Sift out the good from the bad, and create those, great prompts that, can set AI onto that right

Todd path.

Rebecca there's a lot of crap out there, you know, that you get back.

Kelly So that touches on, something I brought up where that's how I find AI to be the most useful. I'm, like taught I'm the least creative person. There is at least, yeah, some

Rebecca give yourself more credit than that. You two, come on. Have I have plenty of

Kelly creative [00:23:00] ideas? I can't actually bring them life. I can't draw, I can't like actually do any of the things that like make 'em real.

Kelly Right. But maybe that's what AI for, fix that for me. Right. And that, and that kind of brings me to my thought here, which is what I often find AI is really helpful for me is. It allows me to explore avenues and exploration things that I don't know exactly how it's gonna come out. Like, you know, I use a lot of data sets and I explore and I'm like, you know what?

Kelly If I was to create this map or model or this analysis and things that would take me days to potentially run down to a dead end and be like, okay, there's nothing here. And so I couldn't afford to do that, but now I can be like, oh, is there something there? And it'll kind of validate or invalidate something.

Kelly I can take a little further. It feels like that can be really salient and powerful in the creative world where you can kind of. Create an idea like, oh, what if the logo looked like this? And instead of spending a day drawing and being like, I don't like that. It's a couple of seconds. And, and then you see it, and then it lets you iterate like, I like most of this, but if I changed this and that [00:24:00] iteration component and the, ability to chase ideas and thought and created things into, I almost feel like it's an expansion of my brain, right?

Kelly Like I have little nuggets of ideas. I can't. Without ai, I can't run and explore all of them, but now I can explore 10 times more than I ever was able to. And most importantly, I can build upon, I have a little bit of a vision. I see it, it sparks a new idea, and then it sparks a new idea and it carries us through.

Kelly Whereas that would've never happened before. Like that's what I've seen really powerful with it.

Rebecca Absolutely. And that's how I'm using it right now. You know, I'm using it as like a, an initial starting point. And then as an end point. And the in-between is gotta be, again, the human, it's gotta be an actual a brain.

Rebecca but it's a great place to start and it's a great place to get iterations and it's a great place build. It's, it's this great like building playground. and [00:25:00] you can do it with crazy speed, which is always nice.

Todd So a quick, agree, just agree or disagree. Let's not go down the rabbit hole 'cause we're gonna move on to the, okay.

Todd To the next subject. agree or disagree. Do you believe the use of, of AI and this kind of technology, to your point Kelly earlier, is going to completely homogenize the output of eventually what sort of happens in creative and storytelling telling. I've just, for the record, I agree. I think it is going to have some level of homogenization across what we see, because I think as the AI gets used more and gets trained on more and more data, it probably is gonna fall into a sort of similar suit.

Todd But I, so I agree. What do you guys think?

Rebecca what I would say is that I want to disagree. To say that it's so odd, but I don't think so. I know I want to disagree. And I think those that [00:26:00] are good leaders for their brands, and good creative folks, are not gonna let that happen. So if you've got not such a great leader or not such a great brand that doesn't believe in the, the core of creativity, then yeah, Everyone's going to be matchy matchy. And then, but I think that's, the call for great leaders is that great leaders are going to continue to come up with great ideas that cut through, and make an impact.

Kelly I'll just say mine a little bit quicker. I agree, but I think it's gonna operate like a bell curve.

Kelly I just don't know how long the timeline of the bell curve is. I think the novelty of the, early adopters will create great benefit from it. Then it'll eventually get saturated at the peak and everyone will sound the same. And then eventually on the backside, everyone will start to revert back to how do I be different again?

Kelly And that'll be anti ai. And I don't know if that'll happen [00:27:00] over the course of two years or 20 years, but I think it'll be a bell curve.

Todd I, I would agree with that the most actually. so, alright, Rebecca, here is the topic that Kelly and I have debated ad nauseum. is good. Good enough. And we had this discussion last week on the media side of things where there's a lot of AI tools and technology that are, I would argue, sort of homogenizing the way media.

Todd It gets thought about, gets sort of pre-planned, gets planned, gets executed. It's sort of the tools that are coming out are sort of generalizing everything, and we've always worked in, in areas of like absolute specialty. and so the argument is that, well, the machines will, do okay. They'll do good.

Todd And does that become the new norm? Is that good enough? And so. We have this debate around media and media technology. I wonder where you see this going with, creative and content and just [00:28:00] strategy, brand strategy and things like that. Do you think, you know, efficiency or originality are going to come to a head and, and do we get to this place where people just simply accept that good is good enough, but it's no longer?

Todd Great.

Rebecca I'll give you a very quick answer for this. Is that good? Is not good enough? Great is good enough. So I think that if you wanna be memorable, if you want to somebody to associate greatness with your brand or your product or your service, you gotta be great. You can't just be, but are people gonna be willing to

Kelly pay for it is the big question, right?

Kelly If you can get good for one price and great costs, another. Where's the cost benefit analysis coming? Like five. That's the big struggle. Like

Todd it's not close either it's good is $1 and great is $10. Are people gonna be willing to pay that [00:29:00] anymore?

Rebecca You have to have a great brand. If you're gonna shell out the 10 bucks instead of the dollar, you better be able to, to really live up to that promise. So, I say this all the time, I'm like, good is not good enough. It is not good enough. Great. Is what's good enough.

Todd Yeah. To Kelly's point, can marketers afford to pay for great? Not all of them can. Even the ones that can, will they, when somebody else is telling 'em that they ha they can be great, but they're using.

Todd Technology as an efficiency. Sort of tool, not an originality tool. And so they'll never get great. They'll get good, but it'll never be great. But they'll sell it as great. It just won't

Kelly be great. Yeah. I think the other thing, we've talked about is will it be as obvious when it's not great?

Kelly Right? Because if you go up and, things are good, right? It's, pretty easy to understand when something's bad, right? But now the floor might be raised where everything feels pretty good. And [00:30:00] so instead of having to recognize bad, which is clearly I'm not getting the numbers I want, I'm not getting the results I want, that's easy to understand.

Kelly Like I can't tolerate that. But if you're sort of in this comfort zone of like, things are pretty good, I don't have any red flags that are staring me at the face that I need to address. Well, what I now don't know is what could it be? What am I missing out on? that becomes scary for me is will people get comfortable with good enough because they don't know any better or because it's easier and will we miss out on what could be, because there's nothing poking me in the side being like, I need to address that.

Kelly It's like, everything's fine, but you don't know how good it could be if you, push the boundary,

Rebecca totally agree with you, like what's on the other side. If you were to be great, how much greater could it be? and I think that that's, sometimes what companies are doing is like, okay, yeah, we're good.

Rebecca We're we're good, we're, we're steady. But what if you really took that leap to greatness?

Todd And could you pay for it? [00:31:00] Can he pay somebody to take you there?

Kelly And, and what does the risk tolerance come to? Right? Sure. Mm-hmm. Is taking the risk to try for greatness worth it or do I just stay in my comfort zone?

Todd Okay. So Rebecca, since you have had a lot of of years of experience, both West Coast, east Coast. I wanna talk about the talent pool and now that you're off and running with your own firm, consultancy, agency, whatever we wanna label it, you have to think about talent. And one of the big talk tracks around talent in the last, say, six months, is that the employment rate of college grads is the lowest it's ever been.

Todd Do you see in this particular field of work, do you see junior roles like you grew up in, in the agency world or like I did or Kelly did? Kelly, same question for you. Do you see technology completely displacing these roles and what you think you are going to be doing Rebecca in your company [00:32:00] over the next six to 12 months?

Rebecca Great question. I. I think that the market is awful out there. I'm on LinkedIn all the time and reading everybody's, you know, posts about the job market and all of that, and like, let's all be real. It's not great out there. I think that there are some things that AI can, you know, replace, look, when I was in my twenties and, working on the agency side, One of my big roles was taking notes, making conference reports, That is something that is a thing of the past now. Nobody's writing conference reports anymore. because AI can do it. And you know, like when we got on this call, my AI note taker came on to join and I was like, well, we don't need her.

Rebecca so I think that there's things like that where that role is that task. and that that need is no longer there. but in that case it's might be more accurate. It might be, you know, it knows what [00:33:00] the acronyms stand for. but it still needs that human touch again to be able to go through and be like, is that look actually talked about?

Rebecca Is this correct? Was this captured correctly? So there is still, a need for, you know, for example, purposes for a notetaker. it's just that Notetaker now has, some additional tools in their toolbox. but when I'm looking for talent to hire, and I'm guilty of this. In every role I've ever been in is that I like to hire my friends.

Rebecca I like to hire people that I know that I've worked with in the past. and you know, people that if I don't know them, that I know somebody that they know this world is small. And I think I've got advice for people that are just starting out. Make a lot of friends out there, network, go, you know, take the coffee.

Rebecca Take the zoom call, [00:34:00] go out there, make friends with whoever you can make friends with, because this world is very small and your path will cross again.

Todd I wanna ask you the question in a slightly different way, and Kelly Okay. Can answer this one too. If you were hiring for, a copywriter, a content strategist, some sort of, let's call it like a mid-level role, not a junior role, but maybe something that, you know, you need to see that somebody's got some experience, they've got a little bit of a portfolio.

Todd If you had two candidates, one of them came to you with just basically, here's my portfolio, and the other one came to you and said, here's my portfolio, plus, here's all the new stuff I've done using AI as a hybrid, sort of copilot alongside me. Which person do you hire?

Todd I gotta

Rebecca look at both of the work, you know, because the first person may have just used AI and is not telling me that they used ai. So, I read. Work when somebody sends me a portfolio I go through and I, I [00:35:00] scroll that brand's Instagram feed, their TikTok feed of what they've been doing.

Rebecca And I go way back, right? Yes, everyone has their show stopping viral pieces of content. But what was the day to day? What was that like, mundane post on a Tuesday, that maybe didn't go viral? I like to look at that stuff. I would ask the first person some more questions about their use of AI and their use of other tools within their toolbox.

Rebecca I would take a meeting with both of them, and then it might just come down to chemistry and, who's got a good vibe and, And if they're in the same time zone as me, that's even better. So, fair. I don't love a 6:00 AM meeting. So,

Todd yeah. Kelly, who do you hire the, the purest with non AI sort of demonstration at this point in time?

Todd Or do you hire a hybrid? Somebody who said, I've done the pure thing and now I'm doing it in combination with tech and ai.

Kelly I think AI has exacerbated what I've always believed when it's come to [00:36:00] hiring, which is, for me, the most important thing is to hire the personality. I think that the way that someone approaches things, their work ethic, their, creative thinking, the way they handle things, I think that is the hardest thing to.

Kelly find and to adapt to and to teach. And I think now that AI can close a lot of the skill gaps and, can enhance a lot of those things, I think that becomes even more teachable. And it becomes not what's available or what someone knows how to do, but what, what is their hunger? What's their drive level?

Kelly What's their personal passion? What's the way that they approach work? What does it matter to them? Those are all personality driven things. I think AI just reinforces that further and further. And for me to answer the first question you went through, The whole thing about AI taking or replacing jobs and things like that.

Kelly The biggest problem that I see, and I think I said this on one of our earlier podcasts, is I think it's gonna create an experience gap. I think what's gonna happen is the entry level elements, the note taking, the things that Rebecca talked about were the things that got you the exposure. Got you. The ability to know how to prompt or how [00:37:00] to iterate, or how to use AI to take it to the next level.

Kelly I think not getting that experience, not getting your foot in the door, because AI can do the lower level things that generate that experience. That's gonna be the cul-de-sac that we run ourselves into, where it's gonna be people who are already have an experience and can use the AI to create advantage.

Kelly They will continue to level up the people who never get their foot in the door and can't get to the point where they can be the users of the ai, but instead they're being replaced by the ai. That's gonna create a huge problem. And I, again, don't know the timeline, don't know if it's a couple of years or, you know, five or 10 years, but I, I do see that being the biggest risk and problem is creating a huge experience gap in the workforce.

Todd The reason why I asked, asked the question is because the most common thing that I hear said today is AI is not gonna replace humans in a lot of these types of roles. But as a human, your job risk is. Competing with another recruit for a position who's better at AI than you are. That's why I asked.

Todd do you take somebody who [00:38:00] applies for a job that has very little sort of, you know, demonstration of AI knowledge and use, or the same person comes in with the same amount of years of experience, equivalent experience, but also has like a whole, you know, like demonstration of ai, sort of tech savviness and use, and those are the people that Are being sort of set up as the ones that are gonna get the job, not the one that didn't take the time to learn ai.

Kelly I don't think you need an AI expert already. I think you need the person who has shown the passion and the interest and the willingness to begin to use AI and push it further. So again, it's the personality you're like, again, you don't already have to be an expert, but if you're the person that's threatened by AI and not willing to.

Kelly Look at how it can help you. That's more problematic than, I don't know it yet, but I'm really excited to learn it and I'm already experimenting with it and this is what I'm gonna go figure out how to do.

Todd Alright, let's wrap up. Rebecca, time to put you in the creative strategy. Hot seat all. I've got five, themes.

Todd I'm gonna ask you one or the other, [00:39:00] and your answer just is whatever one or the other is. Okay. Let's a typical hot, hot seat, hot seat routine here. So thinking from your creative sort of direction, strategy, direction, all of that stuff you've been exposed to. the first one is conceptual or copy.

Todd First concept or copy. First concept. Love it. Ai, friend or threat. Oh,

Rebecca don't kill the humans.

Todd We're going threat there. We'll call it threat.

Rebecca Okay. Threat

Todd storyboard first or prototype storyboard. Craft or speed. Craft. TikTok or Instagram. Ooh, I wanna know this answer.

Todd Snap. Oh,

Rebecca no, what I will say, for me personally, it's Instagram for my [00:40:00] audience, for, business owners that I'm looking to work with, heads of marketing that I'm looking to work with. It's Instagram for customers. Of my clients' brands,

Kelly TikTok. All right, fair enough. I would've put you in the TikTok box if I was answering for you.

Kelly Just recent. I know. I experience felt a lot of,

Rebecca I felt a lot of pressure, you guys. I'm sweating now. Hot seat. I'm sweating. It's called the

Todd hot seat. Alright, this is the last question I asked Kelly at times and other people at times. Rebecca, can you remember the very last ad that you saw? Last ad that I saw, it always proves how bad we're at advertising.

Todd We can't remember. Okay.

Rebecca No, no. The last ad that I saw that I loved was, after the Dodgers won the World Series, the Nike ad that ran.

Kelly All right. That was a good one. Good. On Nike.

Rebecca Yes, it was. Go Dodgers.

Todd Rebecca, I think we should just have you on as a, regular, 'cause there's so much we can talk to you about [00:41:00] and get your opinions on.

Todd that would be helpful. I would love that. So thanks for, the first, show and, we'll share this out and you can share this out with everyone that you know. And, thanks for joining and we will definitely, Seek to have you back. Yes. Thank you Shorts. Thank you

Rebecca guys. Thank you. Thanks so much.

Rebecca Next time Bijan will need to join us, but if anyone wants to follow me, and the shorts in my little corner of the internet making an ass of myself, feel free. It's hello Shorts, MKT.

Todd Love it. We'll put that in the show notes as well for everybody.

Rebecca Guys, thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me.

Rebecca It was so great to see both of you. And next time you're up in la. Gimme a call. We'll hang out.

Todd Absolutely. Good.

Rebecca We'll get one of those girly cocktails with Kelly. There you go. I'm

Todd man. Kelly's favorite. Sold. Yes.

Intro Alright

Rebecca guys. Thanks. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

Intro Thanks for listening to contrary to Popular Opinion where we challenge you to think independently, push the limits, and take [00:42:00] uncommon action so you can achieve game changing results in your business and your life.

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