Who's In This Podcast
Helen Todd is co-founder and CEO of Sociality Squared and the human behind Creativity Squared.
Cathy McPhillips is Chief Growth Officer at the Marketing AI Institute, overseeing marketing, growth, and customer experience, including MAICON and AI Academy for Marketers.
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Ep54. The A.I. Midwest Prompt: Level Up Your A.I. & Marketing with the Marketing AI Institute’s Cathy McPhillips #MAICON
Cathy McPhillips is the Chief Growth Officer at the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, a digital media and educational platform where she’s at the forefront of making A.I. approachable and accessible to businesses of all sizes. She oversees marketing, growth, and customer experience, including its annual signature conference MAICON and the AI Academy for Marketers.
Her marketing journey spans decades. She started in Cleveland’s advertising agencies, founded a strategic digital marketing business, and led marketing efforts for organizations like the Content Marketing Institute and Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.
Recognized as one of Folio’s Top Women in Media and a MarTechExec Woman You Need to Know in Martech, Cathy has also been an Ohio University Jerry L. Sloan Visiting Professional in Public Relations.
Marketing AI Institute is an invaluable platform for industry knowledge that it shares through media products, educational content, and events such as MAICON. Its signature conference is held in the institute’s hometown of Cleveland. Helen and Cathy will both be on stage this year alongside a host of fellow marketing leaders this September 10-12.
Marketing AI Institute is just one example of a growing network of Ohio and Midwest regional organizations committed to Responsible A.I. for a more intelligent and, ultimately, more human-centered world.
“We are not trying to have A.I. replace anything in particular. We’re looking at A.I. to augment some of the things we’re doing so we can be more human, more creative, and do the things we love doing.”
Cathy McPhillips
Cathy has a front-row seat to how A.I. is changing the trajectory of the marketing industry and how marketers can start to understand, pilot, and scale their own A.I. efforts. Cathy discusses A.I.’s role in content creation and the liabilities A.I.-generated content can create.
Since A.I. isn’t going anywhere, Cathy encourages marketers to embrace it, stressing the continued importance of human expertise and creativity in collaboration. Cathy also discusses the delicate balance between A.I. efficiency and human creativity in marketing and reflects on how creativity is evolving in the age of A.I.
This episode demystifies A.I. in marketing and provides practical insights for marketers at all levels.
Plus, you’ll learn what it means to Midwest Prompt!
Marketing AI Institute
Paul Roetzer, the founder and CEO of Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, grew the idea out of a personal desire to streamline the agency he founded in 2000. He launched Marketing AI Institute’s precursor in 2016 as a blog and newsletter to share the things he and his team learned along the way.
According to Paul’s founder story, he began the business with a genuine interest in A.I. and its potential to transform the marketing industry. Building his niche began as an uphill climb since A.I. wasn’t in the spotlight yet. Initially, progress was slow and steady. Paul approached industry experts, pitching the potential of A.I., but met with repeated rejections.
Sentiment around A.I. shifted dramatically when ChatGPT dropped on the scene in 2023, though. Paul found people revisiting his ideas after seeing what generative A.I. could do with their own eyes. Although generative A.I. still represents just a portion of the vast A.I. landscape, it helped change the company’s trajectory by creating a sudden and massive demand for information about A.I. tools.
Since then, the Marketing AI Institute has grown into a comprehensive media, event, and education company. The media division produces a variety of digital resources, including blog posts, eBooks, white papers, research, podcasts, blueprints, and webinars. Most content is freely accessible.
The company also runs a busy event schedule. Cathy and Paul host an introductory A.I. class monthly as a free educational resource. The company also hosts virtual summits, such as the upcoming AI for Writers Summit and the AI for Agencies Summit. MAICON (Marketing AI Conference) is their flagship event, where industry leaders discuss the latest cutting-edge trends in A.I. and marketing.
The day this episode drops on Thursday, June 27, the webinar 5 Essential Steps to Scaling AI in Your Organization will take place at 12 PM ET.
More Intelligent, More Human, More Responsible A.I.
Cathy says that the Marketing AI Institute team shares a common vision of A.I. helping us become more intelligent and more human.
For Cathy, the best use case for A.I. is enabling people to fully shut down their computers at the end of the day to spend time with family or enjoy nature. By automating repetitive tasks, people can channel their energy into more meaningful and fulfilling activities. A.I. can enhance intelligence in certain areas, allowing us to be more human in others.
Take Cathy’s event planning process, for example. Even with the best tools and workflows for email distribution and event promotion, the most effective method for boosting attendance is still good old-fashioned personal outreach. Cathy spends hours sending personal invitations to her contacts. She tells them about relevant sessions, expresses a desire to reconnect, and emphasizes the value they’ll gain from attending. Genuine connection takes time, but by leveraging A.I. to handle other tasks, Cathy can focus on this outreach, which she truly loves.
Cathy and Helen, who both live and work in Ohio, also discussed the growing movement of Midwestern A.I. enthusiasts looking to differentiate the region as a hub for Responsible A.I. development. They include people like Kendra Ramirez, who along with Helen co-hosts the region’s largest A.I. networking group Cincinnati AI for Humans, OhioX’s Chris Berry in Columbus, Ohio State Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted, and Nicole McCaffrey of the Responsible AI Institute.
Each in their own way, members of the Midwestern A.I. community are pushing back against the coastal mantra of “move fast and break things,” which Helen points out has broken society in its wake.
“We have a chance, one chance to get this right. And we want to make sure that we are on the right side of all of this.”
Cathy McPhillips
Cathy says that’s why the Marketing AI Institute team is selective about its partnerships, ensuring that collaborations align with their values and contribute positively to the industry. They are committed to ethical practices that allow them to advance the field while maintaining their integrity.
The collaborations they do accept within the Responsible A.I. community are stronger as a result. Instead of viewing other organizations as competition, they see opportunities for partnership and mutual support. Cathy believes that this collaborative approach is vital to Ohio retaining its many advantages in A.I. development.
Challenges in A.I. Marketing
Despite the many ways that A.I. promises to make life easier, challenges abound, even in the tech-savvy world of digital marketing.
Chief among them is the knowledge gap between companies that prioritize A.I. and those that don’t. Cathy recently saw this firsthand while presenting to a group of fellow leaders in marketing about the A.I. tactics she uses for podcast production.
To her surprise, Cathy says that many of the participants weren’t familiar with fundamentals she considers basic.
“Education is a huge problem at some of these companies. Some of these market leaders are very smart, but they don’t have the time to invest to learn about it. So it’s just getting put on the back burner.”
Cathy McPhillips
To stay current, Cathy practices time blocking. She dedicates a few hours each week to explore new technologies, find use cases, and review new tools. She also participates in Slack communities and listens to the Marketing AI podcast, not necessarily to become an A.I. expert but to learn how A.I. can aid her role in driving company growth.
Cathy emphasizes the importance of effectively prioritizing time. For her, this means focusing on tactical implementation rather than getting bogged down in the weeds of artificial intelligence. She finds that by relying on curated content from trusted sources and participating in community discussions, she can keep up with advancements and apply them in ways that benefit her work and the Institute’s growth.
Cathy says A.I. isn’t going away, and with so much free educational content available online, leaders would be wise to learn how their industry is changing.
Tips from Piloting and Scaling A.I.
The Marketing AI Institute makes it easy to start learning, including the foundational courses Paul designed to help companies pilot and scale A.I. strategies.
According to Cathy, a good place for business leaders to start is choosing a framework for deciding where to prioritize A.I. implementation. Depending on specific needs, a company could benefit from a problem-based model or a use-case model.
The problem-based model focuses on addressing significant business issues, such as increased churn, decreased website traffic, or declining sales. These are fundamental problems that need solutions, and the goal is to find an A.I. tool that can help resolve them more easily or quickly.
The use case model involves identifying specific situations where an A.I. tool could be beneficial. Cathy, for instance, started to think about using A.I. in her podcast production process by listing all 30 steps involved. That way, the team could share knowledge about where A.I. might be most effective, such as post-production. They then piloted the A.I. tool, measuring performance, efficiency, and other factors through benchmark tests.
Once the data is in and approvals are granted, the next steps might include training the rest of the team, purchasing the paid version of the tool, or expanding its use. Cathy emphasized that starting with tangible use cases leads to better results than finding an exciting tool first and then figuring out what to do with it.
Avoiding A.I. Liabilities in Marketing
While the Marketing AI Institute encourages a culture of A.I. experimentation, not every industry sector or type of company can do the same.
Companies in highly regulated sectors like healthcare and finance have to carefully consider their responsibility as custodians of client data and the reliability of a model’s output before implementing A.I. solutions.
Cathy says that companies should have clear policies for using A.I. at work and communicate the technology’s risks to employees.
Even with the Marketing AI Institute team’s wealth of A.I. knowledge, they’re careful about what data they put into A.I. systems. When forecasting MAICON ticket sales with A.I. assistance, they strip out identifiable data to protect customer privacy. Cathy says that the key is to balance A.I.’s productivity benefits with the need to safeguard customer data.
A.I. tools such as Adobe Firefly and Shutterstock’s A.I. image generator are touted as being safe for commercial use because, according to the developers, the models’ training data doesn’t infringe anyone’s intellectual property and the creators get compensated and control over their works.
Nonetheless, Cathy reminds us that contract clients often expect human-created content. Using A.I.-generated materials could technically breach such agreements because content significantly altered or created by GenAI cannot be copyrighted under current law.
So, while A.I. can be extremely useful for generating content like social posts that don’t require copyright, caution is essential for generating blog posts, images, taglines, and similar brand assets. Cathy recommends consulting with an attorney if in doubt.
The Marketing AI Institute primarily uses A.I. for ideation and minor tasks, according to Cathy. For example, she uses ChatGPT to generate images for landing pages where stock photos are not ideal.
How a Marketer For an A.I. Marketing Education Platform uses A.I.
Is Claude better for copywriting or ChatGPT? Which image generator is most accurate? Runway just dropped a new update, should you switch over from PikaLabs? There are so many A.I. tools out there for the same use cases that it’s hard to know which tool will yield the best outcome. Cathy says that she likes to try a little bit of everything, focusing more on the output quality than the tool itself.
Although ChatGPT is her go-to, she also works with Perplexity and Claude to see which performs best depending on the prompt, the day, or the topic.
“The free [A.I.] tools are actually really good, start there. You don’t need to jump in and buy the tool, or three of them. Find the interface you like best, find the experience you like best.”
Her A.I. toolbox also includes Descript for podcast transcription, editing, and creating short video snippets for social media. Opus Clip is another tool that can generate short-form videos from longer content.
When working with large language models, Cathy says she often finds it helpful to have a conversation. Instead of just instructing the model what to do and waiting for a response, you can ask the model for tips to improve a prompt or to help brainstorm ideas. Don’t be afraid to ask for adjustments if the output isn’t right. Cathy likes to practice what she calls “Midwest Prompting,” with plenty of please and thank yous and gentle corrections. As we’re using these LLMs, we’re also training them about human behavior, so using conversational politeness is encouraged by experts in the field.
Creative Expertise Plus Creativity Equals Superpowers
Cathy says that the arrival of generative A.I. has given her even more profound admiration and appreciation for human creativity.
“A.I. can help you, give you the superpowers. But the power that you start with is really, really critical.”
Cathy McPhillips
A.I. tools can help her and her team turn a podcast episode into 30 pieces of unique content across every social channel, but it takes a human to make sure everything looks good before it goes out the door. Cathy saw this firsthand at Marketing AI Institute, where adding a teammate with video editing skills helped enhance the podcast production process beyond what was possible just with A.I. tools. Before Claire took over much of the process, A.I. had helped Cathy produce and publish the show despite her “novice” editing skills. Knowing when and where to add fade-ins, fade-outs, images, or quote graphics, however, required a human with Claire’s expertise. While A.I. helped someone with limited experience produce a good-looking show, A.I. helped somebody with more experience produce a great-looking show.
We’re big fans of the Marketing AI Institute’s podcast and all of their content and event, and hope to see you in Cleveland in September for MAICON!
Links Mentioned in this Podcast
- Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute
- AI Academy for Marketers
- MAICON
- 5 Essential Steps to Scaling AI in Your Organization
- AI Resources for Marketers
- Marketing AI’s Story
- AI for Writers Summit
- AI for Agencies Summit
- Cincinnati AI for Humans
- Responsible AI Institute
- Marketing AI podcast
- Marketing AI Institute Podcast Showcase
- Descript AI
- Opus Clip
Continue the Conversation
Thank you, Cathy, for joining us on this special episode of Creativity Squared.
This show is produced and made possible by the team at PLAY Audio Agency: https://playaudioagency.com.
Creativity Squared is brought to you by Sociality Squared, a social media agency who understands the magic of bringing people together around what they value and love: http://socialitysquared.com.
Because it’s important to support artists, 10% of all revenue Creativity Squared generates will go to ArtsWave, a nationally recognized non-profit that supports over 150 arts organizations, projects, and independent artists.
Join Creativity Squared’s free weekly newsletter and become a premium supporter here.
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TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Cathy: It just goes to show you that AI can help you and give you these superpowers, but the power that you start with is really critical.
[00:00:08] Helen: Cathy McPhillips is the Chief Growth Officer at the Marketing AI Institute, where she’s at the forefront of making artificial intelligence approachable and accessible to businesses of all sizes.
[00:00:21] Helen: She oversees marketing, growth, and customer experience, including MAICON and the AI Academy for Marketers. Her journey in the marketing world spans decades, starting in Cleveland’s advertising agencies, owning her own strategic digital marketing business, and leading marketing efforts for organizations like the Content Marketing Institute and Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.
[00:00:46] Helen: Recognized as one of Folio’s top women in media and a MarTech exec woman you need to know in MarTech, Cathy has also been an Ohio University, Jerry L Sloan visiting professional and public relations. I’m a big fan of the Marketing AI Institute and its robust educational content and events, including its signature MAICON conference, which takes place this September in Cleveland, Ohio.
[00:01:12] Helen: I’m honored to speak on stage alongside other AI marketing experts like Cathy. And I couldn’t be more excited to have Cathy on the show and proud that the Marketing AI Institute is headquartered in Ohio and part of the responsible AI movement, which envisions a future where AI doesn’t replace human creativity, but rather augments it, making marketing more intelligent and ultimately more human centered.
[00:01:39] Helen: Today, you’ll hear how AI is changing the trajectory of the marketing industry and how the Marketing AI Institute helps marketers understand, pilot, and scale AI. The conversation includes AI’s role in content creation and the ethical and legal considerations surrounding AI generated content. AI isn’t going anywhere and Cathy encourages marketers to embrace it, stressing the continued importance of human expertise alongside AI tools.
[00:02:12] Helen: We also discuss the delicate balance between AI efficiency and human creativity in marketing and reflect on how creativity is evolving in the age of AI. Get ready for a conversation that demystifies AI and marketing and provides practical insights for marketers at all levels, especially when we geek out about AI tools and prompts with tips that you can use today.
[00:02:39] Helen: What does it mean to Midwest prompt? Listen in to find out. Enjoy.
[00:02:51] Helen: Welcome to Creativity Squared. Discover how creatives are collaborating with artificial intelligence in your inbox, on YouTube, and on your preferred podcast platform. Hi, I’m Helen Todd, your host, and I’m so excited to have you join the weekly conversations I’m having with amazing pioneers in this space.
[00:03:09] Helen: The intention of these conversations is to ignite our collective imagination at the intersection of AI and creativity to envision a world where artists thrive.
[00:03:27] Helen: Cathy, welcome to Creativity Squared. It is so good to have you on the show.
[00:03:32] Cathy: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. I know we’ve been planning this for a few months now.
[00:03:36] Helen: Yeah. Well, and it’s been, I had to look it up before we started recording though. It’s been almost actually a year since we’ve met at a Dooley Social Studios AI event last year where we were both on stage.
[00:03:48] Helen: And I really enjoyed your presentation and I’m a big fan girl of the Marketing AI Institute. So it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show and dive into all the topics that you guys are working on over at the Marketing AI Institute.
[00:04:03] Cathy: Yep, absolutely.
[00:04:04] Helen: So for those who are meeting you for the first time, can you share who you are, what you do, and a bit of your origin story?
[00:04:11] Cathy: Sure. So I just had my three year anniversary here at the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. I head up-growth, which includes marketing, a little bit of sales, customer experience, growing our programs and our events. And I come by way of two agencies in Cleveland I worked at right out of school.
[00:04:28] Cathy: I went to OU, and then I started my own business for about 13 years. And a lot of my clients from the agency, as they were leaving, their companies called me and said, “hey, can we give you some contract work?” And I was like, Oh my gosh, I’ve got a business. So that grew over the course of about 13 years.
[00:04:44] Cathy: And then in 2012, I met Joe Polizzi. I’m not sure if you know Joe at the Content Marketing Institute here in Cleveland as well. And I headed up-marketing for the company. Big event content marketing role that took place in Cleveland. And then Paul has been a good friend of mine. Paul is a CEO of the Marketing AI Institute and he and I were talking one day and here I am.
[00:05:06] Helen: Amazing. Oh, and I didn’t realize it. I actually own one of his books, The Marketing Blueprint, and I didn’t put two and two together until just like last week that they’re one in the same person.
[00:05:16] Cathy: Yes. And the thing about that is that’s kind of how the Marketing AI Institute started was that Paul was just trying to find efficiencies in his agency because he owned an agency for 16 years.
[00:05:27] Cathy: And you know, how could he use AI and other technologies to help streamline some of his processes, the RFPs, the reports, the, all the things that are repetitive, et cetera. And where could AI fit in? So his team could be more productive, creative, all of the things we love doing.
[00:05:43] Helen: Yeah. And he’s been in the AI space a really long time, but I know when we chatted last year, that Chat GPT moment was a really big game changer for your institute as it is with, I feel like [with] all AI in the world.
[00:05:58] Helen: But can you kind of tell us the difference from the seat that you sit, what kind of happened before Chat GPT and what’s happened since it’s launched for you all?
[00:06:12] Cathy: Yeah. Paul just told this story at a, the AI and CLE event. We had it earlier in June and he was telling a story and it kind of was like a little bit, you know, pulling at the heartstrings, you know, he was talking about how he had the agency, got really interested in artificial intelligence and kind of went down this rabbit hole of all these ways that could help with the agency.
[00:06:32] Cathy: And then pet project, that was a blog turned into a little bit more, then turned into a company. And yeah, it was really interesting. Paul was just telling the story the other day and it was really emotional to me because he started the business as, you know, “I really am interested in this. I know it can impact my business and it can impact other people’s businesses.
[00:06:49] Cathy: I want to help lead that church.” And then it was just very slow and steady. You know, he was going out to people that he knows were really smart and saying, you know, we have this opportunity and it’s like, no. So it was a real slow build. You know, I started in 2021 and it was still like, okay, we can do this.
[00:07:08] Cathy: We can do this. Can we do this? And then Chat GPT came out and then everyone’s coming back to Paul saying, this is what you were talking about. And I think just Chat GPT made it so tangible and understandable. It’s like, oh, this is artificial intelligence. So, and I know that generative AI is a very small part of the
[00:07:25] Cathy: AI puzzle and all the opportunities we have with AI. But I think that was something that people could actually wrap their head around and see a direct impact from what they were doing to, you know, prior to how AI could help them in so many different ways. So it really changed the trajectory of the company.
[00:07:39] Helen: And I know that you’ve seen explosive growth and I love your mission of making AI more accessible to small businesses. So can you tell us for those who may know a little or hearing about The Marketing AI Institute for the first time, kind of what the Institute does. Cause anytime someone’s like, I don’t know where to get started with AI and marketing.
[00:08:03] Helen: I always send them to you because you have so much rich resources on it. But maybe you could tell our viewers and listeners some of the content and programming offerings that you have.
[00:08:13] Cathy: Well, first of all, thank you. That’s very kind of you. So, Marketing AI Institute, we are a media, event and education company. So the media company side is blog posts, eBooks, white papers, research, podcasts, blueprints, all the webinar or all the media company stuff. So all of that is free. A lot of it’s ungated. And then there’s the event arm, which is, we’ve got an intro to AI class that Paul and I do once a month, we have AI Academy for marketers, which includes a piloting AI, scaling AI.
[00:08:43] Cathy: So depending where you are in your AI journey, we have a course for you and the intro class is free and it’s a great place for people just to come and learn. And if that’s the only thing they do with us, by all means, take that hour, learn a little bit, get a little educated and that’s fine. We don’t push you to set, you know, we do tell you, of course, we’re marketing.
[00:09:02] Cathy: We do say here’s something you could get after, but it’s a very small part of that hour and then our event arm. So we have some virtual summits. We just finished our AI for B2B marketer summit. We’ve got an AI for writer summit. We have an AI for agency summit coming up in the fall, and then our big flagship event is MAICON, our marketing AI conference that’s taking place in September in person in Cleveland, where Helen is taking the stage.
[00:09:26] Helen: Yes, I’m very excited. I went to go last year and a few friends went and they just like raved about how great it was and that they couldn’t see how it could be topped this year. But looking at the lineup there’s a lot of speakers that I’m really excited to see in addition to being on stage.
[00:09:45] Helen: So really great event. And for everyone who’s interested, I’ll be sure to, you know, include all the links to everything that we mentioned in the dedicated blog posts, which we’ll link to in in the description. And this episode is coming out on June 27th, and I think there’s another webinar coming out the five essential steps to scaling AI that’s released the same day. So I want to give you the opportunity to to plug that too.
[00:10:13] Cathy: Oh, thanks. So we started piloting AI, which is a, which is an eight hour course, pre-recorded, that people could take at their own pace. Just kind of giving you the frameworks of here’s how, here’s what artificial intelligence is. Here’s how it impacts you as a marketer or business leader.
[00:10:28] Cathy: And then goes through how to identify where AI is right for you, go through some different use cases, whether you’re in advertising, PR, communications, analytics, sales, and giving you some ways that AI can, you know, immediately help you or give you some use cases to kind of get your mind thinking about where it fits best for you.
[00:10:46] Cathy: And then the next step of that is scaling AI and scaling is created for leaders, company, you know, whether it’s department leaders or company leaders. And I like to say those aspiring to be, I think there’s a lot to learn for everyone in that course. And it’s the next six hours of content saying, okay, you want to build a generative AI policy.
[00:11:07] Cathy: You want to build an AI roadmap. You want to onboard, you know, this tool. How do you do that? How do you identify which tools to be using? And I’m really excited because I went through it all a few weeks ago when I was, proof, you know, editing the videos, doing some work in one of the tools that we use.
[00:11:23] Cathy: And I was like, I want to go back through this as a customer, because there’s just so much stuff in there. I know how to prompt to get this outcome, how to do this and ways to use AI, almost compounding AI use, use this tool for this, and then take that output and put it here and take that, you know, it was just like, there’s so many ways to use it that, you know, we’re just scratching the surface.
[00:11:44] Cathy: So it’s exciting to see, you know, how we can get our brains going a little bit more. So that webinar that day on the, on June 27th is going to be Paul going through a very practical, tactical, useful webinar saying, if you’re ready for that next step, our scaling AI course is going live that day.
[00:12:02] Helen: Very cool. I looked at the agenda items on it. And I want to take it as a customer to just soaking in. And one reason why I send everyone to you, you know, as like a marketing background, it’s like, I want to create all these courses, but you guys are already doing it and really so prolific in all of your content.
[00:12:22] Helen: So I just send them to you all since you really haven’t covered when it comes to marketing and AI. And one thing that I like about your tagline is like more intelligent, more human. And I was wondering if you could kind of expand on that, what that means to you all.
[00:12:40] Cathy: Yeah. I think one thing I really like about the mission of the company and just, you know, Paul, Tracy, Mike, Tamra, Claire, Noah, everyone on our team, we’re very much like, we are not trying to have AI replace any thing that we’re doing in particular.
[00:12:54] Cathy: We’re looking AI, we want AI to augment some of the things that we’re doing so we can actually be more human, so we can be more creative, so we can do the things we really love doing. We don’t advocate for companies using AI to cut their headcount in half to do, I think that’s going to come back and bite them.
[00:13:10] Cathy: I just, I feel like AI… There’s so many ways that AI can help us in our jobs. There’s ways for AI to help us shut our computers at the end of the day so we can go outside and be in nature and do things that we love doing, spend time with our families. That sounds really hokey, but it’s really true. Like, let’s find the ways we can use this for good.
[00:13:27] Cathy: And use this to make ourselves really happy. Take away some of the real repetitive things we don’t love doing and put it in, let us use our energy for good. So I think, you know, we can use AI to focus on us being more intelligent in certain way so we can be more human in other ways. One example that I have is our event.
[00:13:46] Cathy: You know, so we have all these systems and processes as far as our email distribution promoting the event. But the most impactful way for us to get people to attend our event is me spending hours and hours doing individual outreach to people that I know. And I’m saying, Helen, here’s why you should be here, because I know you’re working on these two things.
[00:14:05] Cathy: We’re gonna have these sessions that you’ll get the value of your attendance by attending these two sessions, or I just want to see you. I haven’t seen you in a, you know, I haven’t seen you since last year. And they’re genuine emails from me. And that takes time. So by using AI to do other things, it’s affording me the time to do what I really love doing.
[00:14:24] Cathy: And that’s doing that outreach to people saying, I can’t wait to see you in September. And it works and it’s not disingenuous, but it works.
[00:14:31] Helen: I fully support that. And I’m a big believer that we’re kind of co-creating the future right now and we get to decide. And I think one of my fears is everyone’s like, AI is gonna, you know, help improve all this productivity, but then we’ll just expect everyone to do 10 times more work in the same amount of time.
[00:14:54] Helen: And, you know, productivity has increased over the years. But are we vacationing more right now? I think there was some economists What was it in the twenties or thirties? That’s like the people of the future, their biggest problem is going to be, what are they going to do with all of their leisure time?
[00:15:12] Helen: Which really hasn’t come to bear. So it’s like, we didn’t really get it right the first time. Can we really get it right this time with the intentionality of how we’re using these tools so that we can get out and do more things that we love? So I’m on this train with you all to co create this future.
[00:15:31] Cathy: Hopefully this young generation, I have two 20 something year olds, and they are very much of, we are going to work and we are leaving. So maybe between the combo of their mentality, their mindset and AI, that maybe will actually come to fruition.
[00:15:46] Helen: Yeah, that’s great. Oh, and one thing too, I wanted to make sure that we talked about on the show is you know, I’m based here in Cincinnati.
[00:15:56] Helen: You are in Cleveland, and there’s this whole responsible AI movement and a lot of just like excitement and activities happening here in Ohio. And I know a lot of people may not realize everything that’s happening. So I wanted to kind of take a few minutes To really discuss what’s happening in the Midwest, but specifically Ohio. So I wanted to kind of get your feedback on what you’re seeing from the seat that you sit.
[00:16:23] Cathy: I just think there’s so many people in Ohio that are genuinely interested in this, are very talented in this and are the people that are on the right side of this movement, you know, you and Kendra in Cincinnati, Chris Berry in Columbus, Lieutenant governor Husted.
[00:16:38] Cathy: Paul, obviously, and our team in Cleveland, Cal, Al Dubay, Nicole McCaffrey, they’re in the responsible AI Institute. So Cal and Jason Tabling are at Further, and they are, Cal formerly owned Pandata, and he is now with Further, Futher acquired Pandata. But all of these people, are just really smart people, very, very talented, but really are like, we have a chance, one chance to get this right.
[00:17:03] Cathy: And we want to make sure that we are on the right side of all of this. So all of these things that we’re saying, none of us are saying, like I said, AI is going to be the, you know, the best thing in the whole entire world. How can we be using it to do the right thing? And I think there have been instances where, you know, even we’ve had people come talk to us about let’s partner together and we do a little digging and we’re like, you know, this isn’t the right fit.
[00:17:23] Cathy: So we are making sure that all the things that we are doing are following a path that lets us sleep at night and know that we are trying to push this whole industry forward. And I think that a lot of Ohio is doing that. And there’s so many good people, you know, it’s not like. Oh, Ohio X is doing this. We should have been doing that.
[00:17:38] Cathy: It’s like, Oh my gosh, good for them. Let’s partner with them to do something else or let’s join them. Let’s support them. Let’s sponsor them, whatever it is to make sure that Ohio is at the forefront. Cause I really think that we are ahead in a lot of ways.
[00:17:49] Helen: Yeah. And that’s something that we say a lot. So you mentioned Kendra and those who are listening to the show know that I co-host the largest AI meetup in the Southwest Ohio region, which Cathy is coming to our next meetup on July 9th to talk about the MAICON conference. So if you want to see her in person, open invite, I’ll put the link to that too.
[00:18:13] Helen: But we also have in Cincinnati, the University of Cincinnati, which has the Digital Futures building where we co host our AI meetup, and that’s a hundred million dollar investment in the innovation district here in a multidisciplinary building. And we have Dr. Kelly Cohen, who has been a responsible AI leader for like 20, 30 years.
[00:18:35] Helen: So we have that. Another group in our community just had Cincy AI week last week which was the largest, I think Chicago might beat us this week but prior to this the largest AI conference in the Midwest. And then I think they’ve already scheduled one for Columbus. Intel is putting 20 billion into a chip factory.
[00:18:59] Helen: So there’s just a lot happening. That’s really exciting. And I’m really proud that we’re kind of leading this responsible AI movement. And I’ve said before, you know, the whole move fast and break things has like broken society on the coast, like from the hyperpolarization, teen depression, the loneliness epidemic.
[00:19:21] Helen: And we have these like Midwest values that I think really can shape this responsible AI and how we want to co-create the future for the better. So I’m very proud to be in Ohio at this moment in time.
[00:19:35] Cathy: I agree. I agree. You’re right. And that’s a very good way to look at it. It’s just, we’re excited. We’re smart. We are wanting to advance all of this, but you know, we just are taking a minute to make sure it is the right way to go.
[00:19:46] Helen: And on that note where do you see like from the marketing AI lens, like, what are people thinking right now? Like, what are the biggest opportunities and the biggest challenges? Cause I know we get hit with like a slew of news, it seems like every day of what to happen. So what are you kind of seeing both on the biggest opportunities and the challenges as you’re talking with marketers in the B2B space?
[00:20:12] Cathy: Well, it’s interesting. I’m on this weekly Zoom meeting with a bunch of marketing leaders.
[00:20:19] Cathy: And every week it’s like really, really deep conversations about go to market strategies, just big overarching marketing issues within a company. And they’re very strategic. They’re very deep conversations. And a few months ago, the person who was in charge of it, asked me, “can you come on and talk about some of the tactics you’re using for your podcast production and things you’re using at the Institute?”
[00:20:43] Cathy: And I was like, it’s just so basic. You know, I just… It was a little bit, it’s a little daunting to talk to your peers. You’re very, you know, who are at that level in marketing. And he’s like, could you just do it? I’m like, well, I’ll do it for like 30 minutes. And we can talk about other things for the last 30 minutes.
[00:20:56] Cathy: Of course, me, you know, doubting myself, but so I was going through it and they were like, Whoa, slow down. And I was like, Oh my gosh, you guys, this is really the most basic stuff. So I was just very surprised that these very smart marketers and business leaders didn’t really understand a lot of the basics.
[00:21:12] Cathy: So I think we have seen that education is a huge problem when it comes to some of these companies and some of these marketing leaders who just don’t have the time, not like they don’t have, they’re not smart enough to do it. They are very, very smart. They don’t have the time to invest to learn about it.
[00:21:26] Cathy: So it’s kind of become, you know, it’s just getting put on the back burner, but as you know, AI is not going away. So they really need to step up. So I think an opportunity is that we just need to get some of this free content, free marketing, or, you know, free courses that we have out to these folks and saying, just invest a little bit of time and to your point about, you know, just how can we get, how can we
[00:21:48] Cathy: stay on top of things? I actually posted a LinkedIn post a few days ago about I time block, you know, I block a few hours a week so I can dive in a new tech, find some new use case, take my new use cases, dump them into these new tools, compare it to things I’ve been doing, or find something totally new.
[00:22:06] Cathy: And then I get on each morning and I talk to some people, you know, I’m in a few different Slack communities, including ours, where I’m reading some things, trying to learn some things. And then I’m listening to our podcast. You know, I realized that I don’t need to be an expert in artificial intelligence to do my job.
[00:22:20] Cathy: I just need to know how AI can help me at my job. So I can’t be all things, you know, so what I need to be, is I need to be in charge of growth for our company. So if I can just dedicate an hour to listening to Paul and Mike each week, because let them do the legwork, let them spend, you know, hours and hours curating the podcast, curating these articles, curating the news, telling me why I need to, what it is, why I need to care.
[00:22:43] Cathy: I can get it all in a week. And certainly I do have to read some more things just based on the company I work for. But generally speaking, I can keep up pretty fairly with just listening to the podcast. So it’s just prioritizing where I need to be spending my time and where I need to be spending my time is implementation and less on knowing all the ins and outs of artificial intelligence.
[00:23:04] Helen: And I’ll be sure to link to that cause I’m always impressed with the news coverage and the depth of coverage that the podcast covers too. And again, it’s like, man, should I be doing that for my show? It’s like, no, they’ve already got a coverage. So I’m going to stick to my lane. And in the deeper conversations cause our viewers and listeners are.
[00:23:29] Helen: you know, from the whole spectrum of the AI curious, and this is a safe space to kind of listen and learn a little bit to the more advanced AI users. And it seems like some topics that are kind of top of mind right now are, you know, Google’s AI summaries, how that’s going to impact search.
[00:23:49] Helen: And I saw that Will Reynolds, who I’m a huge fan of is one of the speakers at the MAICON conference, is like one of the topics and then, Perplexity has pages now, and of course, like the future of work, but are there – in some of your deeper conversations – are you hearing, like what feedback or how marketers are thinking about these maybe more advanced topics too?
[00:24:15] Cathy: Well, I think that’s one of the joys of having MAICON, is because we’re a team of seven people and we can’t keep up with all of this stuff. So we need to make sure there are people like you and there are people like Will who are coming on the stage saying, well, like, please explain this to us so we can know what’s going on.
[00:24:31] Cathy: But a few weeks ago, Paul was, something out in the Perplexity pages. And he was like, Oh my gosh, look at this. So from our perspective, we are doing the same as everybody else. We are diving into these tools and we are just trying things out. From a search perspective, I was talking to someone in the industry who is a huge, you know, like Will level of search, you know, like that in the weeds on it when it comes to SEO.
[00:24:56] Cathy: And he was like. I don’t know, you know, we’re doing the best we can. We’re just figuring out as we’re going along. And I think that’s one of the joys of kind of where it is right now is certainly there are people that are doing this better than many, but there are also a lot of us who are just learning as we’re going along.
[00:25:12] Cathy: It’s like no ego, let’s just figure this out together. And then it just let people know about where we are along, the way and what challenges we’re running into, what opportunities we see, what light bulb moments went off. And I think that’s kind of where we are with a lot of these things between our Slack group and our, and MAICON.
[00:25:30] Cathy: It’s like, you know, even our team meetings, it’s like, you know, we’re talking today about a GPT that Paul built over the weekend. So it’s just fun to keep learning.
[00:25:38] Helen: Nice. Yeah. And I find some comfort in that because it’s like, I feel like I try to stay on top of all the news as much as possible.
[00:25:45] Helen: with my show, but still it kind of can be overwhelming. So I hope some of our viewers and listeners find comfort too, that we’re all in the same boat together as we’re navigating this, wild new, AI world that we’re all, that we’re all navigating together. And I do like your, your framework.
[00:26:07] Helen: If you’re willing to share a few of the tips for our listeners, maybe like a teaser for your AI one on one course on like how to start thinking about, marketing and AI, and what the components are of, you know, for those who haven’t started are very into the, maybe you haven’t, just played with Chat GPT or haven’t even touched it.
[00:26:28] Helen: Maybe you could give a few pointers to our listeners and viewers too.
[00:26:31] Cathy: So this is Paul’s work. So I’m just going to share a few things, but no, it is Paul Reitzer’s part of his presentation, but he talks about two different things. There’s a problem based model and there’s a use case model. So the problem based is, you know, web traffic is down, like some big business problems, churn is up, website traffic is down, sales are down.
[00:26:50] Cathy: So some big fundamental business problems that you need to solve. Is there an AI tool that can help us [do that]? The easier way, the quicker way, is what’s a use case? Do you have a use case that you could be using artificial intelligence tool for? And an example of that would be, which you saw Helen, is our podcast.
[00:27:07] Cathy: So at the time that I did the presentation last year, I was producing our podcast. We have someone else helping me with it now. But you know, there are 30 steps every week to producing the podcast. So let’s write out those 30 steps. Is there a tool that could help us with any of these things? So okay, yes, from an editing standpoint, we found a tool that could help us.
[00:27:27] Cathy: So let’s benchmark that. How long did it take? You know, just some of those things. Use the tool. Did you save time? Did you save money? Was it a better experience? Is it a better output? What is the value that tool gave to us? And then was it easy? Was it easy to train? Was it easy? Was it easy for us to learn, train ourselves on how to use it?
[00:27:48] Cathy: Was it affordable? All those types of things. And then once you can identify a use case and you have a try, you know, you do a pilot program, then I could go back to our leadership team, you know, if I was in a position that I needed to get someone to approve it. And I would say, okay, here’s what I did.
[00:28:03] Cathy: here’s what the outcome was. Can I do more? Can I, can we train the rest of the team on this? Can we buy the paid version? Can we, you know, all of these different, what’s the next step, but starting with something tangible, a use case versus finding a cool tool and saying, Oh, what could we do with it?
[00:28:18] Cathy: Start with the use case. These are going to get a better result.
[00:28:21] Helen: I love that tip. and, I guess on that front too, it sounds like your approach, at least at the Marketing AI Institute is that everyone’s kind of empowered to start using AI themselves with their own use cases and then bring it to the broader team.
[00:28:39] Helen: When you’re consulting with companies, whether agencies, since we are at the, you know, the intersection of creativity and AI, to any type of business, is that your general approach or is it just kind of custom to each company and their AI policy and needs to, or the size?
[00:28:57] Cathy: Yeah, it’s definitely dependent on the company because if you’re, if you have HIPAA, if you’re in healthcare and you have HIPAA, if you are in financial services and you’re in regulated industries, there are so many things you need to take.
[00:29:08] Cathy: into account, into consideration when you’re thinking about an AI tool. You know, if someone from a healthcare system is using an AI tool to analyze data versus an AI tool to rewrite a press release and use it to create social shares, those are two very, different experiences within that organization.
[00:29:27] Cathy: So, making sure that you have a policy in place, making sure there are people on the team and company wide that are, that know what’s going on, knows what tools are out there that are being used and making sure your team knows, you know, here are some implications on if you do take this customer data and put it into a tool, what it’s going to do.
[00:29:45] Cathy: So educating the team members and someone like us, you know, we’re, like I said, we’re, lean, we’re agile, we can move quickly. We have you know, a CEO and a team who knows about this stuff. So, I mean, we do need to take pause and say, okay, when I’m trying to forecast for MAICON ticket sales, what, can I, what can and can I not put into some of these systems?
[00:30:06] Cathy: Where can I strip out some identifiable data before I, but I can still use it. So it’s just trying to find that right balance of using AI versus knowing our customer data is our most precious asset. So we need to be really careful with how we’re using it. So every company needs to, you know, kind of look at that framework and say, okay, what are we really allowed to be doing?
[00:30:27] Cathy: And there are some companies that are like, nope, no way. We’re not using any of it. And I think they’re going to get left behind and they’re going to get behind. But I also think there should be some advocates in the company saying, We understand, your hesitation. We understand this, but here are some ways that would be very safe for us to use that would still help us from an efficiency standpoint.
[00:30:47] Cathy: And there’s so much more than efficiency gains, but I think it’s a really good way. It’s a, very tangible and visible way to see an impact.
[00:30:54] Helen: And when it comes to, I guess, how to use generative AI output for, and marketing purposes. I’m curious what your stance is, because, you know, some companies are comfortable using Chat GPT images and Midjourney images, despite how they’ve been trained.
[00:31:14] Helen: Other companies only use them maybe in the brainstorming and internal processes, but not on the final output. Do you all have a stance when it comes to what output is, I guess, commercially safe or recommended for companies? Or is it kind of everyone’s kind of determines their own barometer of what they’re comfortable with to?
[00:31:35] Cathy: Well, I think the most important barometer is what’s legal. you know, if you are, an agency working for a client and you work for higher agreement, your client thinks that you are writing the content, creating the images that you are doing everything as a person.
[00:31:52] Cathy: So technically, if you’re using any of that for your clients, you’re breaking that agreement because they can’t actually copyright anything that you’re using. You’re creating, using the tools. So if you change, if you write a blog post in Chat GPT change, 51% of it change, 99% of it. It’s, you can’t copyright that
[00:32:12] Cathy: according to US copyright law today. So like you said, ideation is really great, emails are really great, social shares. Things like that you’d never, you wouldn’t copyright. But if it’s a blog post, if it’s an image on your website, if it’s your tagline, if it’s all of those things, like just be really careful. Talk to your attorney, make sure that your team, you know, knows the right way to use it.
[00:32:33] Cathy: So aside from just that barometer of like what’s right or what’s wrong, there’s a whole legal side of it that people need to worry about. We use it a lot for ideation. I use it a lot for like a landing page for a webinar where I don’t want to use a stock photo. I don’t have a huge library of assets I could be using for that.
[00:32:52] Cathy: So I will use Chat GPT to come up with an image. And it’s this big on our website. It’s a very secondary, tertiary part of that page, but it needs a visual of some sort and that’s okay. So we’re trying to find ways that we can use it efficiently for those sorts of things, but not for the bigger stuff.
[00:33:09] Helen: That makes a lot of sense. and I think helpful as people are navigating, like, is it okay? Or is it not okay, to use these, Chat GPT or Dali images as well too. and I’m curious, you mentioned like the, the podcast that you, helped produce. What are some other ways that you use AI, personally?
[00:33:32] Cathy: Oh, personally. I mean, I think, You know, Goodreads, Spotify, Peloton, like those are the apps I use. I think the most that all are like recommender engines for me on like how I’m using AI in my day to day life. And then it kind of helps me think like, okay, how can I use that recommender engine idea in my day to day, you know, in my work, you know, what can I be doing from an aside from just like, Oh, you’re reading this blog post.
[00:33:54] Cathy: You might like this blog post. I think that’s. An okay use case. I think it’s not as effective as something else. Like, could I be using that in my email system and creating a recommender engine for things within our emails to get people to come to the event? Like all those sorts of things. It’s like, gets me my head spinning on where are these opportunities and where do we start?
[00:34:14] Cathy: You know, and it’s, that’s, when I go after that spreadsheet of identifying the use cases and we’re, what’s going to have the biggest impact on the business.
[00:34:20] Helen: Very cool. And do you have any, since you mentioned a bunch of tools, start with a use case. I’m curious, what are some of the, LLMs that you use the most or some tools that are some of your favorite that you found, with, being the chief growth officer?
[00:34:37] Cathy: Chat GPT 4.0 is, you know, I’m using that right now. That’s I just default to that. You know, I’ll have. Chat GPT, Perplexity, Claude. I’ll have them all open at the same time and I’ll give them different prompts. And it’s not always Chat GPT, but there’s never been like, Oh yes, this is definitely the best one for this.
[00:34:54] Cathy: It just kind of depends. Maybe it’s my prompt. Maybe it’s that day. Maybe it’s the topic. I don’t even know, but I do like to test them out a little bit to see what’s performing. I do like to use some of the free tools. Sometimes when I am talking to folks, I could say the free tools are actually really good.
[00:35:09] Cathy: You know, start there. You know, you don’t need to jump in and buy the tool, nor do I think you need to, jump in and buy three of them, you know, find one, find the interface you like best, find the experience you like best. And by that one, but Chat GPT, I like, Descript is my favorite tool. I’m using it for transcription, editing, podcast, editing, webinars, editing, any video, cutting up snippets for when we’re doing, you know, any of our social shares and short things for, you know, short.
[00:35:39] Cathy: snippet videos for LinkedIn or something. So we’re in Descript a lot… a lot, a lot. And so that’s probably where I spend most of the time from an AI standpoint, if it’s not Chat GPT. And then there’s tons of others. I mean, I could go, I could be a whole hour podcast of just the tools that we’re using, but Opus Clip is one that we’ve been using a lot to get some short form videos.
[00:36:01] Cathy: Because, again, it’s just me not having a big video, you know, experience. It’s just been great for me to be able to use some of these tools to fill a knowledge gap for me. And the more I use them, I actually am getting better at video. So it’s taught me a lot of things, but it’s helped me, you know, when we need to get something out quickly, these tools are there to help.
[00:36:22] Cathy: And not always are the, you know, Opus Clip, for example, you’ll get 10 to 12 outputs from one 60 minute video. They’ll give you 10 short, vertical videos for YouTube shorts, Instagram stories, Tik TOKs, things like that. And I would say of the 10 to 12, probably six to seven are ones that we’d actually use.
[00:36:39] Cathy: So they’re not always right, but it’s, it gives me something, you know, so we don’t use them all. So, but it does more than half of them we use in some capacity.
[00:36:48] Helen: We’ve dabbled with that and I’ll be sure to, we’ll include all the links to all these too, but it is amazing just how quick, cause you know, finding clips in an hour long podcast where you have to listen to it all, find the timestamps that a video editor clips them and do the, closed captions on top of them.
[00:37:09] Helen: Opus. And I think there’s another one, CapCut, they do it within minutes, if not seconds, and you can still edit them, but I mean, talk about efficiencies and saving time. That can be a very tedious process and the video editing. They, really are pretty fantastic and I know I have, I call them my AI assistants.
[00:37:29] Helen: I have a tab with all of them open too, and like, for the different titles for the podcast episodes, I’ll brainstorm like two or three and then ask each of the assistants, which one they think is best and why. And usually it’s like a three, three to two vote among the AI assistants. And then I pick the final one, but it’s, interesting to see, you know, which word they lean into or don’t lean into in that regard.
[00:37:58] Helen: So that’s an easy tip for people, listening of, you know, ask the same, question to all of them and see if you get any different answers, and what you think, you know, using your intuition at the end of the day on that front.
[00:38:11] Cathy: And really, speaking of asking questions, it’s also really good to be able to talk to, you know, one of these tools and say, I’m working on this, you are a blank, you are working on this project and here’s what you’re looking for.
[00:38:25] Cathy: And here, you know, give me this output. By the way, what questions am I, do you have that I’m not answering so you can give me a better output. So having a 2-way conversation with these tools that could say, Oh, you didn’t tell me when the event is. You didn’t tell me who you’re targeting. You didn’t tell me these three things.
[00:38:40] Cathy: Give me that information so I can make the output even better. And having that conversation, because sometimes, you know, oftentimes, most of the time, that first output isn’t what you want. You’re like, Oh wait, I didn’t tell them this, or I wasn’t clear enough or something. So it’s fun to play around with them.
[00:38:54] Cathy: And actually I was down this rabbit hole trying to come up with a theme for this year’s event. And I knew what I wanted it to be, but I couldn’t think of the right words. And I went back and forth to Chat GPT. I mean, I’m going to say 20 times and the outputs were never good. And I felt so bad.
[00:39:09] Cathy: I’m like, I’m so sorry, but that’s not exactly what I’m looking for. And Oh, I must’ve, you know, and then thank you so much. That was great, but it’s not quite there yet. And I was like, is Chat GPT? You can be like, forget it. We’re done. I’m not helping you anymore. And it didn’t, but it was just funny about how I was so worried about offending it and like having it, like not giving me any more information, so…
[00:39:30] Helen: That’s funny. I actually, got to do a Q&A with professor Dakai, who’s a luminary in the AI space as well. And one of the things that he had said of, what to do with these AI chatbots and whatnot is to be nice to them because as we’re interacting with them, we are training them, the human component.
[00:39:53] Helen: So I know I always say please, and thank you, unless I’m like, really short of time, because, we’re training them on the politeness and the, good side of human behavior and interacting with them. So, that was one tip, is to be nice, when you’re interacting in these conversations.
[00:40:11] Cathy: I call that Midwest prompting.
[00:40:15] Helen: I love that. I’m going to borrow that and give you credit whenever I use it. do you have any other favorite prompts that you like to use or share?
[00:40:24] Cathy: You know, we use it a lot for social, you know, I started in social media when social media just was fresh and the best thing about it was talking to people and talking to humans and social listening and listening to, you know, who people are talking about your brand and that now it’s just like this distribution channel for your content and I get it.
[00:40:44] Cathy: It’s valid. People are looking for resources. You know, Paul’s best resource where he’s getting all his AI news is through LinkedIn or a rather a Twitter list of all these publications and all these people. So it is very valuable to digest content and find content on these channels. However, I still feel like social, the meaning of social media is to be social.
[00:41:03] Cathy: That said, I know how important it is for us to put our blog posts, our podcasts, everything on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Facebook and everywhere. It just takes so much time. So we use Chat GPT or any of these tools to help us craft all those posts. Here’s the post name or here’s the podcast episode. Here’s what was discussed.
[00:41:23] Cathy: Give me, ‘please’ give me, you know, 12 tweets, seven LinkedIn posts, seven Facebook posts. I want them this length because I want to include a link. Here’s Paul and Mike’s Twitter handles. Please include the Twitter handles of any companies mentioned. Find some hashtags that might be really useful that I’m not thinking of that are getting some good traction on Twitter right now.
[00:41:44] Cathy: Don’t include emojis. Or, I like emojis, but I don’t love emojis because ChatGPT loves emojis. What else? Just all these different things, the more detailed you are on what you want, the better the output you’re going to be. So we, you know, Claire on my team and I, you know, we talk a lot about the different prompts we’re using to get the best results for this system that we have every single week when the podcast is done.
[00:42:06] Cathy: It’s like that one podcast episode turns into 30 pieces of content. So we do have a lot of the same prompts that again, need to be massaged depending on the topic, you know, but more, more often than not, it’s very similar from a prompt standpoint.
[00:42:21] Helen: As someone who has a podcast, I feel your pain on the amount of production work on a weekly basis.
[00:42:27] Helen: And just out of curiosity, do you, do you create a new thread for each episode or do you build on, the same thread? So it like remembers your previous prompts and stuff. This is getting a little into the weeds, but super curious.
[00:42:44] Cathy: No, no, no, I love questions like this. It depends on what it is. I would say for the social, for the podcast, I was starting a new one each time.
[00:42:51] Cathy: But there have been things where I have said, you know, I have built on the same prompt. I just did this where I like the output. And I said, okay, now try this. Now I’m, here’s my next question, here’s my next question. Build it in that format. So it really just depends. What I have done before that I think makes a difference is if it’s helping me write something, I’ll take that output and I’ll put it in, you know, and then I’ll put it in Word and I’ll edit it in Word.
[00:43:14] Cathy: And then I’ll go back and I’ll say, thanks, here was my end result. And then it’ll say, thanks, you know, thank you for sharing. This is a great output, or this is a great post, or this is a great email or whatever. So that’s been really interesting. I’m like, I wonder if it’s learning me now, because I’m now giving it feedback on what I took from that and what I changed.
[00:43:31] Helen: I haven’t done that, but I’ll try it maybe with your episode. One thing I do cause, for each episode, I do a prerecorded intro, and I take the transcript, which, I know my podcast agency uses Descript a lot. We, actually use Otter for the edit. So I’ll take, the audio file, put it in Otter and then, do the edits there, so that they know what to do.
[00:43:59] Helen: So I’ll take the transcripts, the bio, and as much as I can get from the company and put all of that, I actually use Claude for this piece. And then I have a few pre recorded intros I really like. I was like, here’s all the information you need. Here’s, a prerecorded intro to model it after, that I like take all this information and now do the output.
[00:44:21] Helen: And it really saves a lot of time of like, could take me anywhere from, you know, a couple hours to do this. Now it’s an hour or less, with the help of, that and just having example text, for it to model off of, is really nice to use too.
[00:44:38] Cathy: Yeah, absolutely. And I have done something where I’ve written an email and then the next week we want to send it, resend that didn’t open it or people that did open, depending on what we’re trying to do.
[00:44:49] Cathy: And I have put it through the tool saying, can you revise this for me? And I’ll say, put it from, you know, I have enough published works online and now enough published works in Chat GPT that I can say, don’t forget, this is coming from Cathy and it sounds like me. And it’s crazy. And I’ve tested it saying, okay, make it sound like Paul, make it sound like Mike.
[00:45:08] Cathy: And it does. It’s like, it’s pretty fascinating on how, and how much these tools know, you know, these models have been trained on all these different works.
[00:45:16] Helen: Well, and I’m super curious, about the custom GPT you all are using, as we’ve started dabbling with it a little bit for Creativity Squared, but haven’t, I’ve been traveling so much, doing this conference circuit this spring that I haven’t really got to spend so much time on it, but I’m curious how you all are thinking about custom GPTs or Paul’s a experiment with it.
[00:45:42] Cathy: It’s fresh. So I don’t have a whole lot to share on that yet. Other than the fact that Claire and our team has developed a few GPTs for our podcast and for social media. Paul is doing one now based on a scaling AI course that he just did. And actually our team, we were going to do a hackathon one day where we all had to learn about GPTs, custom GPTs and go build a use case for our company and come back and we were going to kind of do like a little show and tell site type thing.
[00:46:12] Cathy: And then AI doesn’t stop moving, so we haven’t had time to do it, but it’s on our list of things to do. So I’d love to share more about that. After it’s done, but we’re just tinkering and we’re still in that early stage of that, but I think there are some really, valuable use cases, especially for the things we’re doing, like you said, in a week by week, day by day, month by month, whatever that cadence is basis that these GPTs are there to, to help us through that process, make it even more efficient.
[00:46:35] Helen: I find that very comforting that you’re tinkering too, because I feel a little behind. I was like, I should already have a custom GPT for Creativity Squared. So, you know what’s funny, a guy on my team, which I’m very proud that he took the initiative, went through all the Otter transcripts. And created one because I was like, we need to update the categories to make it easier to navigate on the blog.
[00:46:59] Helen: And he put all of them in there and started interacting with it to come up with themes. I was like, that’s great. You took initiative. That’s such a clever way. And then the content creator in me was like, man, anyone could take any of the transcripts from the podcast and do this themselves. And I don’t know how I feel about that.
[00:47:17] Helen: Like it’s, going to happen. And it’s going to be inevitable unless. Even the coding on the websites can prevent the scraping, but not really people copying and pasting from the website to like, start interacting with my content. So I’m like, part of me is like [unsure, unsettling blurt], but the other part of me is like, just embrace it and figure out how to still add value and where a potential custom GPT,
[00:47:40] Helen: if I make it public, like where can it really add value? Have you like had those thoughts as a content creator on your side too?
[00:47:46] Cathy: Well, not from the GPT standpoint, but we just had a virtual event and someone a few hours after the event said, and it was a, free event, but it was a private, you know, you had to register to get in and the chat was going all day long.
[00:48:00] Cathy: I mean, there had to have been thousands and thousands of conversations. And a few hours later. Someone who I know really well, I like, trust, respect, everything, said, “I use an AI and I took the whole entire chat transcript and I put it here and I’d like to share it with everybody.” And I was like, wait, I don’t know if I… I don’t know if I want that.
[00:48:23] Cathy: And I was like, I don’t know. I felt like I lost a little bit of control, but then I took a step back and I was like, does it matter? Was there anything in there that was proprietary, private? Can you just share it with people that were there? What if it got out? I don’t know. It was just kind of gave me pause, like, gosh, what a great use case.
[00:48:39] Cathy: But I don’t know if that was the intention of it. You know, we did all the people, to the 4,000 people who registered for this event, give the authorization for us to use this chat in any way. So there, it just made me stop and think for a second. So I just said, please don’t for right now, I really need to think this through.
[00:48:57] Cathy: And he was, cool with it.
[00:48:59] Helen: Oh, it’s good that he reached out and asked. So if any of our listeners do this, yeah. Because I know from the consumption standpoint. Like I’ll put in PDFs into the different LLMs, depending on how large it is. Cause some of them can handle different files. And one prompt I like is, give me the 20 percent of this PDF.
[00:49:22] Helen: So I can understand the 80 percent of it. And it more or less turns whatever the content is into like a quick cliff notes. So I can like just scan. And then if I want to do a deep dive, I can find the sections in that. So it’s like, I love doing that. But do I want people doing that to mine? So, but it’s like all for personal use and education.
[00:49:44] Helen: And I’m not taking that and publishing it and, you know, profiting or, you know, not giving credit or anything like that too. So it’s very interesting waters. cause I think it’s going to happen. so we should just all, I guess, be intentional at how we’re doing it, making sure we give the creators credit and get permission when needed.
[00:50:03] Cathy: Well, Mike does that with the podcast each week. you know, when they’re, he’s curating these 30, 40 articles, boiling them down into three main topics. And then there were some rapid fire topics, but when you say the first topic was on Open AI Sora, and he’s like, okay, I have to read these 10 articles about this, synthesize it, get ready to talk about it on the podcast.
[00:50:23] Cathy: But at quick glance, he was like, I don’t really – Sora is, I guess, an easy one to understand, but say it wasn’t. He could type, he could take these articles, put it into one of these GPTs and say, explain to me at a ninth grade reading level what Sora is. So he gets that output and he’s like, okay, now, that I understand that, I’m going to go back and read the articles now that I understand what it is.
[00:50:45] Cathy: And it helps, him understand the articles more. So there are ways to use those tools to that without using it in any harmful way. It’s just helping him kind of wrap his head around it a little bit before he dives into this big topic that he has to then discuss for thousands and thousands of people to listen to and have him as the expert on this, you know, so just help it get, it just gets him one step further faster.
[00:51:07] Helen: Yeah. I love that. And I, mean, and when we talk about AI being a great educational tool, I think that’s such a wonderful example of… Yeah, and I do the same thing of like, summarize it in a way that I can understand and help me prep for whatever I need to do. And it kind of just condenses the learning or speeds it up, much faster at whatever level, whether fifth grade, ninth grade, AI marketing expert speak or whatever,
[00:51:37] Helen: so I think that’s really great. Well, it is so fun nerding out with you about all things AI and marketing. I feel like we could like spend hours just sharing tips and stuff. So hopefully our listeners and viewers are enjoying some of the tips being shared, but before we hop off, cause I know we have a time limit, I guess two last questions, you know, you’ve been in the marketing, and content creation space for a long time.
[00:52:03] Helen: And this show is at the intersection of AI and creativity. Has your, I guess, view of creativity changed at all with AI or how do you think about creativity and your creative process? Is it any different with AI or just kind of curious your thoughts on creativity in relation to AI these days?
[00:52:25] Cathy: Yeah, I think it’s made me have a really, deeper – which I didn’t know was possible – admiration of creativity and, appreciation of it.
[00:52:33] Cathy: I feel like they’re, these tools can give us so much content, but it’s up to us to really make it creative and make it ours and make it the right tone, the right voice, the right image, the right everything. And I don’t think AI is there yet. I think we need humans to differentiate. I also think, you know, if you look at the ways that people on our team are using some of these tools, some are more, are better at certain things than others.
[00:53:04] Cathy: I’ve used the example before that Claire and our team came in with video experience. So she took over a lot of the podcast process. So I went from a novice at best video editor. I mean, I wouldn’t, I would say like zero, zero experience. And I was, fine. It was good. It was a good podcast. It sounded good.
[00:53:22] Cathy: It looked good. It did all the things it was supposed to do. But since Claire came in, there’s fade ins, there’s fade outs, there’s images, there’s quotes, quote graphics over when Paul, when Mike’s reading something from an article, there’s all these different things. And it’s just like, we need the, we need these experts.
[00:53:39] Cathy: You know, there’s such a different experience with the way that she’s doing it versus the way that I was doing it. It just goes to show you that AI can help you give you these superpowers, but the power that you start with is really, really critical.
[00:53:52] Helen: Very, very well said. And one question I like to ask all of my guests is if you want our listeners and viewers to remember one thing, what is that one thing that you want them to, walk away with?
[00:54:03] Cathy: I think I would just say that, you know, AI is here, whether we want it to be or not, it’s not going away. I just implore you just to take, find something, find some way that AI could help you and, just give it a shot. And if you have any questions, you know, find a community, find a person, find a group that you can connect with just to help you through this.
[00:54:25] Cathy: And if you have any questions, just reach out. I’d love to help in any way I can. And I’m not like a big AI pusher. I would just love to help people, like you said, make it accessible, make it actionable, approachable, help people understand a little bit. So give it a try.
[00:54:38] Helen: I think that is great advice and a great note to end the show on.
[00:54:43] Helen: So Cathy, thank you so much for your time, being on the show, excited to see you in July for our Cincy AI meetup. And then in September for your big signature conference, MAICON. And hopefully we’ll get to see some of our listeners and viewers at these events too. So thank you again for, being on today’s show.
[00:55:02] Cathy: Thank you so much.
[00:55:02] Helen: Thank you for spending some time with us today. We’re just getting started and would love your support. Subscribe to Creativity Squared on your preferred podcast platform and leave a review. It really helps. And I’d love to hear your feedback. What topics are you thinking about and want to dive into more?
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[00:55:58] Helen: And a big, big thank you to everyone who’s offered their time, energy, and encouragement and support so far. I really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. This show is produced and made possible by the team at Play Audio Agency. Until next week, keep creating.