AI: The Future of Retail Marketing Part 1 with Lindsey Scheftic

Join Robin and Shelley with AI expert Lindsey Scheftic, Founder of The CMO Sidekick, for a candid conversation about AI in Part 1 on this topic.

With in-depth marketing expertise at Amazon/Ring, Red Bull and Vans, Lindsey gets real about the future of the CMO and how marketing will be transformed by AI. 

Our dynamic discussion hits on the velocity of change in the marketing world, what executives should be thinking about, and a cautionary tale of getting too much content out to the market too fast.

For more strategic insights and compelling content, visit TheRobinReport.com, where you can read, watch, and listen to content from retail industry experts, and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.

Transcript

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Robin Host 00:00

Hi everybody and thanks for joining our weekly podcast. I'm Robin Lewis, founder and CEO of the Robin Report which, by the way, is really much more than a daily report. It really is a knowledge platform from which we communicate thought leadership on various strategic topics through our daily reports, but also on these podcasts as well, and we do webinars and perhaps in the future we will be doing some live events and along with Shelley Cohan, my weekly podcast partner, and, by the way, she's also a professor at Fashion Institute of Technology, and so Shelley and I welcome you to our conversation. On the topic of marketing's future with AI, there's that buzzy couple of letters which is the hottest topic in the world today. Anyway, I'm thrilled to have someone with us today who is an AI enthusiast, and not just an enthusiast. She has held several impressive roles as a CMO, formerly at Amazon, Ring, Red Bull, Vans, Apple and AT&T.

Lindsey Sheftick has left that big corporate world and started her own business, and the CMO sidekick is the name of it, and it is a support system for senior marketing leaders and this industry has a lot of them in senior's operating work. A system, an on-demand CMO, if you will. That is what Lindsey does kind of like as a third party for these big companies who really need an education. Two factors that have heavily influenced the change in direction for marketers today is the near elimination, really, of third-party cookies. Data from that and the advancements of artificial intelligence.

The advertising ecosystems today is not what it was in the past and traditional marketing tools are essentially out the window. And I will add one more major influence, which is the velocity to which all of this is happening. It's absolutely incredible, and I would also add that, because of these dynamics, many of the old and older CMOs, and particularly those working in old world legacy brands and retailers, either resigned because they just could not understand the new tools and how to use them, since legacy advertising and marketing really has been flipped on its head, or they have been asked to leave. So welcome Lindsey, we're really glad to have you.

Lindsey Guest 03:27

Thank you.

Robin Host 03:30

And I think you're in a great space today for what you do. So let's start by you're telling us how you got to where you are today and more about your passion on AI and marketing. And, by the way, having just said about the pre-digital world and old CMOs having to scramble to catch up to the new world or leave it, I have to believe there is a major need among CMOs to hear from you. So get us started.

Lindsey Guest 04:07

Absolutely Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here today. You know, I think I've kind of chosen in my career to go places and I kind of like to say I've kind of read the tea leaves right Of what was coming and what was next. So when I was first coming out of college, it was websites and digital. You know, I remember going to work at my first ad agency and I was kind of the youngest person in the agency and they're like oh, websites, oh, you can do all of that. So I was like, okay, I will do all of that. And that kind of led to the next role and to the next role. And I think even you know, midway in my career, if you would have asked me oh, Lindsey, you know, would you know so much about social media or work in social media? And I would have gone, oh yeah, social media, that is like the drudge of advertising and marketing. I don't want to work in that.

But I think when, you know, I started to see that's where the industry was going, that's where money was going, that's where, like strategy, active marketing strategy was being developed, that was really exciting for me.

It's probably why I've bounced a bit to some some different places, but just wanting to kind of be on the cutting edge and wanting to learn as much as I can About, you know, the future and or what's in the near future, what's the what feels like the future that's here right now, which is AI.

Part of me leaving Amazon and Ring to start my own thing is just this natural curiosity for what's happening in the marketplace and not having enough time to really be able to look into it and talk to different vendors and talk to different types of people, talk to different technologists and learn about the technology, and so, you know, I've been spending a lot of time meeting with different AI companies, getting an AI Slack channels and talking to lots of startups about their technology and helping kind of advise them on you know how, how they could be helping marketers, how they could help position themselves, and then also taking that technology and all these amazing people that I'm meeting and recommending them to other people and other companies for how they can just get really resourceful with, with how they're using AI and their daily business.

Robin Host 06:28

Yeah, wow. So you know, with that kind of a career path you certainly occupy a incredibly much needed space and you obviously see the old CMO jobs you know their description of their jobs absolutely disappearing, right? Or is the CMO's position reporting to the chief technology officer instead of the CEO?

Lindsey Guest 06:58

I think that the CMO roles are evolving. You know, I would say I do not think that the CMOs will report into the CTOs. Well, hopefully not. I think that would be a disaster, to be honest. Maybe the CTO should report into the CMO. Maybe that would be a better structure. Yeah, you know, I think oftentimes you're now you're seeing lots of CMOs reporting up to CROs or you're kind of seeing those roles combined. That's a lot of what I've been seeing in the marketplace. There's a couple of CROs that have also taken on the title of CMO, which is pretty interesting. But I think that the traditional CMO role is definitely changing. I think CMOs are being asked to do more than traditional marketing. I think, in terms of data and analytics and measurement and solving larger business problems, that maybe CMOs were kept in a box or on the sidelines. The curtain is being opened up more in terms of technology and allowing allowing we have to be allowed into conversations, sometimes across different businesses, but allowing to weigh in in different areas and help guide the technology of a business.

Shelley Co-Host  08:16

Lindsey, I love your analogy about opening up the curtain. I think that's a great analogy and I think it's true, and, of course, I am so thrilled to have you here with us today. And you and I were recently at a conference together the Zeta Live in New York City and I really thought that John Skelly's point about how it's not AI intelligence that we should be thinking about, but intelligence overall that really resonated with me, because, of course, skelly knows a thing or two about technology and consumerism.

Lindsey Guest 08:51

Yeah, just a thing, or two.

Robin Host 08:52

Yeah, a thing or. Two.

Shelley Co-Host  08:54

For our audience. I'm sure our whole audience knows this, but he headed up PepsiCo and Apple, of course, in his former lives. But the importance is that all of us are not just focusing only on AI intelligence, but how can we synthesize all the data from all the different analytics that we're kind of pulling together? It's a tall task, for sure, but what are your thoughts about this topic?

Lindsey Guest 09:19

Yeah, I mean, I agree.

I think that there's so many different sources of data and analytics as a marketer, coming through your pipeline.

You have things that are site-side, you have things that are coming from your vendors, you have the analysis that's coming from your media agency.

You've got an internal opinion and how your data should be structured and set up, and so it is a really complicated infrastructure, especially if you're working with e-commerce and you have that type of data as well. And, of course, like customer privacy and I think, as Robin said in the beginning, that the moving away from cookies and incrementality is something that is on everybody's top of mind these days and how are we going to measure that and how business is going to measure it? So I do agree with John, as intelligence is not AI intelligence, it's just intelligence, and knowing where all your data sources are coming from and how to get them organized in an organization and in a very matrix organization, I think is going to be really important. I think, when I was at Ring, we were starting to talk about having like AI, talk about AI and how we can make it part of your business, and it really was a joint effort, like you said, across the CTO across the CMO and other places of our business.

Robin Host 10:49

Well, you know, Lindsey, the world today is so complex. I mean I remember when I was working for one of the biggest ad agencies and there was many, many years ago obviously, probably half a century anyway, yeah, I mean it was very linear. I mean, you know, you did creative work for TV or magazines and blah, blah blah, and there wasn't really a lot of data that was being thrown at these agencies and the traditional kind of marketing CMOs of the time way back then, which is 1970s and 1980s, anyway it sounds wonderful, actually.

Well, I know I was a part of the madman really, and the best part of that, of course, were the three martini lunches.

Lindsey Guest 11:39

Now I know why everyone wanted to go to work.

Robin Host 11:41

Five days a week.

Lindsey Guest 11:42

right, that's right, exactly.

Robin Host 11:44

But you know, getting back to the more serious issue here again, there, as you say, there's nobody better than John Scully emphasizing that point. You know about it's not just AI intelligence, but really about the whole ecosystem of integrating all sources of intelligence. You know, Shelley, as you quoted him in your Forbes article covering Zeta. So you know the future of marketing involves using AI tools and other intelligence sources to drive deeper loyalty, higher personalization and, of course, ultimately more revenue, right? Also, the part that amazing me quote unquote is the pace at which marketing is changing. How can brands and retailers keep up?

Shelley and I are always talking about the CEO role CEO changing but I think the CMO role is up for even more dynamic changes. With the continuous growth of AI, it's only going to get faster and faster and faster. I've seen over the past couple of years and these retailers are going named, but big retailers, their CMOs, have left because they just can't get caught up with the technology and the whole business about integrating all of this data which they never had been used to. So you know, what should executives be thinking about and how can marketers keep up with the speed to which data and real-time analytics are coming back? How to act at a rapid pace. Can you fill us in a little bit, Lindsey?

Lindsey Guest 13:40

Well, I think that the big thing is, you know, it's great to have all this technology, but if you don't have anyone on your teams that knows how to use the technology, it's worthless, right. And so what I think is going to happen over the next I think, quickly over the next several years is, you know, marketing teams hiring not just a data analyst, but somebody who's, you know, like a technology expert on their teams that can make recommendations on the right tech stacks, the right data platforms to use, because there are so many right. So I think that's going to be a key hire over the next. You know, year two, three is not just. You know, I think, as AI has come into the marketing world, people are talking about it like on the creative side or replacing creatives, which I don't necessarily think is going to be the actuality of what happens. I actually think that where the AI and the data technology needs to be implemented is through the marketing teams and probably needs to be adopted more quickly than you know.

Going to the creative side, like if you can get a technology to, you know, it's not about, like, reducing headcount. For me, it's reducing the time of your employees spent doing mundane or stupid things that your, that an AI could do in two seconds, like why wouldn't you look to implement that into your teams, right? Like everyone's all? Everyone's saying, oh, we're going to replace the copywriters. Like well, you're not going to replace the copywriters, you're just going to, you're just going to have AI do the copywriting stuff. That's stupid, that your teams don't need to waste their time doing, and then you're going to free up their time to do more strategic initiatives. So I really think that's going to be the key to keeping up in this rapid pace as hiring experts that really understand the technology and how to implement that into your teams to get more out of your resources and more out of your headcount.

Shelley Co-Host  15:54

Wow, I love that and that is so true. We're always like, oh, reducing headcount, reducing headcount, no, we're freeing them up so they can do more great things for the company. Right? Exactly, exactly. So this whole speed or velocity, as you say, robin, has just really Exponentially increased in the past three years.

So we went from five years ago we were worried about latency issues how long is it going to take for the web page to load? How, how to make the mobile app intuitive? How can we load content at the speed to which users were actually consuming data to three years ago, at the high day of the Pandemic, it became critical that data was synchronized and our mindset went from wow, we should really get on the channel to work to oh, my god, if we don't get on the channel to work, we won't be here post pandemic. And you know, sadly, that's exactly what happened to some brands yeah, couldn't keep up and you know they got left behind. But Back to this marketing and the speed of content consumption. You know, production of marketing material has gone from like three months to three minutes, which, right, which I think can be like a positive thing because you're able to swiftly react to consumer preferences and you can be able to adapt to real-time marketplace environmental factors.

That was me putting on my little professor hat. But, Lindsey, what's the impact of this highly curated, personalized content developed at warp speed? Are there any cautionary tales here?

Lindsey Guest 17:33

Yeah, I think, as a marketer, this is probably one of the most scary things. I mean, I don't know about you, but like in my tiktok feed or in my Instagram feed, I like to see things that are really authentic and authentic. Yeah, you know, in term, I mean, I love being targeted. I think it's great, I love one's a piece of content resonates with me because it's contextual and they've the marketer has done a good job of you know, framing it that way to the customer and they've hit, hit me at the right time. You know, I think that I do think there's a line, though I think that I think there's something to say, for maybe I'll be a non traditional traditionalist, but, like, I do think that there is a humanizing factor to creative that isn't gonna go away. I mean, how many times do we put something in chat Gbt and it just sounds like a robot wrote it right, like not a human wrote it? And there are also nuances about humanity that I think AI will learn over time, but I still think that that creativity and that Human touch is still gonna be important. Now, like, I think creating content at At speed that's contextual, and certain Panels, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, when you look at search and which is very algorithm based, it's very copy based, and I think AI is like pretty, pretty.

I've used this in my past. It's pretty predictive and it works really well and there's just not a lot of creativity where I think it gets. You know, and I have a retail brand that I've been getting hit, hit up on on TikTok constantly and I'm convinced is gendered of AI. I'm like there's just no way they made all this content. There's no way. It's definitely like a hundred percent genertain, you know, and I think that's a little bit scary to me because I do think brands lose a little bit of authenticity, especially in Makeup where, like, that outward appearance and you know what you're selling is really directly, directly related to the influence of, you know, this content that you're seeing online. I think that's where, kind of there's there's a little bit of a line, or needs to be a little bit of a line.

Robin Host 19:44

Yeah, you know, I totally agree with you, lindsey. I don't. I think they're. You know, the it's gonna be interesting to see, as we, because we're really in the embryonic stages. But it would be interesting to see is go down the road with AI, if people can really get work, work out the balance between the human touch and and you know what AI can do so well in terms of the world of data, and. But I it's never gonna take over the final Cognizance of the human being.

Lindsey Guest 20:19

I'm just curious too. Like you know, you have influencers or hashtag ad. You know how long did that take to come into play? Like, when is something gonna have to be, you know, publicly denounced as AI or not real. Because it really I do think in some areas there will be like a line drawn between a bit of false advertising. I think that that is gonna. I think that's gonna come up over the next couple of years is my guess.

Robin Host 20:49

Oh boy, yeah, of course.

Shelley Co-Host  20:50

And we didn't even touch upon the virtual influencers.

Lindsey Guest 20:55

So yeah, that's what I'm hinting at for sure.

Shelley Co-Host  20:58

You have all these virtual influencers that are really, you know, creating quite the buzz and following, and they have this trust and credibility with their, you know, target markets, which is really interesting because they're not really human but somehow we trust them.

Lindsey Guest 21:14

Yeah, it's pretty unbelievable.

Robin Host 21:16

Yeah, the other thing I mean without AI, what we're seeing today in terms of people believing whatever these, whatever social media channel they're on and other major cable, you know, cable news, talk shows if there is such a divide and just believing what you're in front of in social media and the unbelievable conflicts that we're seeing today and actually violence, so forth, is without AI. But when AI starts to get involved, just think about it it's a little scary. And that, I think, is why sort of Sam Altman that went before Congress and they were pleading with Congress and what's Elon Musk was a part of that group who were pleading with Congress to put regulations on this. But when I look at Congress, 90% of those people in the Congress don't even know what these guys are talking about. So it's a little scary. You know it's scary.

Lindsey Guest 22:28

Yeah, it is for sure. So I think I was just going to say, Shelley, just to kind of bring you back to your question. So I think that you know content being created in you know, three months versus three minutes is. It's going to put a lot of content out in the world and I think it's for me a little bit of to be determined if that content is good or not. Right, more doesn't always mean better and I think that, as a marketer, as you're building content and you're, you know you're generating content. The other thing too is like look at your content, is it good? Like, have people, humans, you're creative Look at the content and make sure that it's good. I think a lot of times I've seen, you know, you see something and you know someone generated with CatGVD because they didn't proofread it, and so I think that that's going to be really important with putting all this tons of content out is to really make sure it's good, make sure it's still resonating with your audience and it still feels authentic to your brand.

Shelley Co-Host  23:32

Well, we have so much content to share with our listeners on the new world of marketing that we're going to have to actually end part one of our podcast marketing's future with AI right here, and we'll come back next week with the second half. Lindsey, I have to say you have been a wealth of information for sure.

Robin Host 23:52

Yes, Lindsey, thank you so much. Our listeners are going to be hanging on the edge of their seats until next week's part two of the podcast and, in the meantime, if any of our listeners has a great idea for a topic, as I say every week, please email me at robin, at the robin report dot com. You know I've had some really great feedback from many of you about our podcast and I really do appreciate our listeners.

Shelley Co-Host  24:26

And for our listeners. You can find more of our podcast on Apple, Spotify, Buzzsprout and the robin report dot com, and please follow us on social media. Link in with us for the latest thoughts about the industry.