AI-powered digital doppelgangers and AI decision matrix

AI-powered digital doppelgangers and AI decision matrix

In this first Marketing Smarts episode of 2024, guest Andrew Davis and host George B. Thomas discuss and demystify some of the hot topics in modern marketers’ use of generative AI.

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In particular, you’ll learn what a “Digital Doppelganger" and an “AI Decision Matrix” mean and how they can help you use AI and determine how and when you should do so. Andrew also shares a number of practical tips for using generative AI effectively.

(Note: In keeping with the theme, the rest of this introductory text was created by ChatGPT with minimal human editing.)

In this insightful interview, Andrew delves into the evolving AI landscape in B2B marketing, focusing on the concepts of the digital doppelganger and the AI ​​decision matrix. He addresses the challenges and potential of AI in content creation and emphasizes the need for transparency and strategic implementation. Andrew’s perspective offers a mix of caution and optimism, helping marketers leverage AI while maintaining authenticity and efficiency.

Here is a summary of eight key takeaways from Andrew’s discussion, with a particular focus on his thoughts on digital doppelgangers and their potential role in modern marketing:

AI – and the challenge for marketers: Andrew expresses his concerns about the use of AI by B2B marketers. Many find that the initial performance of generative AI is subpar, which has led to its rejection. This lack of effective AI use, particularly in certain sectors such as B2B, highlights a knowledge gap in leveraging its full potential.AI and transparency: A major concern for Andrew is the lack of transparency around AI use in companies. Many employees use AI tools secretly, leading to a lack of openness about the role of AI in their work. This trend, especially in large companies, highlights the need for honesty when applying AI in professional settings.The “digital doppelganger” concept: Andrew defines a digital doppelganger as a virtual copy of himself that mimics his substantive behaviors, preferences, and style. The concept extends to how generative AI can recreate a person’s tone and voice, enabling personalized content creation. He envisions a future where AI complements marketers by embodying their capabilities and increasing their value.AI capabilities and limitations: Andrew identifies the strengths of generative AI: text recognition, information retrieval, sentiment analysis, and imitation of human tone. However, he warns about AI’s tendency to “hallucinate” or fabricate information and the risks of overwhelming AI with complex projects that go beyond its capabilities.The benefits of digital doppelgangers: Andrew advocates for marketers to experiment with creating digital doppelgangers. He emphasizes that they are useful for learning more about your own creative process and increasing efficiency. He recommends giving your digital doppelgangers a name to foster a collaborative relationship.“AI decision matrix”: Andrew introduces the AI ​​Decision Matrix to balance the utility of AI with the value of human relationships. The matrix helps determine when AI should guide a task and when human input is more appropriate. He also advocates for transparency regarding the role of AI in content creation.Challenges and success metrics: Andrew highlights challenges in adopting AI in business and privacy concerns. He suggests that success with AI is evident when it generates results that are very close to one’s style and increase productivity. He recommends viewing AI as a collaborative partner and not just a tool.Parting tip: Andrew’s parting wisdom emphasizes the need for marketers to manage their AI-related projects wisely. He recommends finishing two projects every time a new one is started to ensure that creative energy is focused and not spread across multiple, potentially fruitless endeavors.

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Full Transcript: Understand Your B2B Digital Doppelganger and AI Decision Matrix with Andrew Davis

The Andrew episode demystifies these timely topics that are critical to modern B2B marketers. Learn what a digital doppelganger and AI decision matrix mean, their key components, and how they can revolutionize decision making. They also dispel common myths and provide practical tips for using these technologies effectively. This episode explores the challenges associated with these innovations and is a must-read for marketers who want to stay ahead in the digital age. Get ready to transform your strategies with these insights!

George B Thomas: We speak to the one, the only, the man, the myth, the legend, Andrew Davis. Today we’re talking about you as a B2B marketer and understanding your B2B AI-powered digital doppelganger and AI decision matrix. We’ll talk about what keeps Andrew up at night and some hurdles, we’ll debunk some myths, and we’ll take a deep dive into how to optimize yourself, your life, your team, etc. depending on whether it is right for you.

In case you didn’t know, Andre Davis has worked for the Muppets and MTV. He co-founded, built and sold a marketing agency. Maybe you’ve seen him on the Today Show or in the New York Times. He is a best-selling author and one of the most influential marketers in the world. Andrew drank more coffee today than you will drink in a week. Please extend a warm welcome to Andrew Davis from Marketing Smarts. Let’s get to the good things.

I’m double, triple, quadruple excited today because you won’t believe this, but we tracked him down, Andrew Davis. At least I think it’s Andrew Davis and not his digital doppelganger. We’ll get into that in a moment.

Andreas, how are you today?

Andrew Davis: I’m fine, George. Thanks. I’m really excited. It’s me, just so you know. My digital doppelganger is incapable of replacing me on podcasts, so now you have the real doppelganger.

George: Note that he said “yet,” meaning he may just be thinking about it. One of the things I like to do is I like to ask some fun questions along the way to really get people thinking. Curious people want to know what keeps you up at night, but in a specific way. When you think about B2B marketers and their use or perhaps the lack of AI, ChatGPT or other tools, and the understanding that you are now able to create a digital doppelganger, it could be a nightmare or a dream be, but what remains Are you awake at night?

Andrew: Honestly, when I dive deep really quickly, I think there are two reasons that keep me up at night. First, I think everyone is kind of excited or maybe intrigued, especially by generative AI, but I don’t know many marketers who have found it to really work effectively for them, especially B2B marketers.

The content that is generated immediately is generic C content. So a lot of people who have tried it have kind of brushed it off as it’s fine if you’re not a real marketer and it’s great for solopreneurs, but I’m in B2B marketing and I sell industrial light cure adhesive, therefore this is not enough for me and my customer base. That’s the only thing that keeps me going. They have rejected its effectiveness or the possibility of using it because the product on the market is simply not good enough for what they need.

The second thing that keeps me up at night, and I find this very worrying, is that I’m very concerned about the use of AI in marketing, particularly B2B marketing, and transparency. I just recently read a survey that said 70% of employees at companies like Bank of America, Nike, and global companies, all these huge brands, are using AI in their work, but they tell their bosses or theirs Superiors not their colleagues. They think they’re secretly using it to write their emails or draft a strategy document and think they’ll get away with it. The lack of transparency, especially initially internally and then externally to customers and clients, about the use of AI keeps me sleepless. We have to be transparent about this.

George: I love this so much. It’s about the idea of ​​at least being honest. You mean people need to be honest even if we are B2B marketers? Yes, we do. Let’s take a step back. I had the opportunity to watch a video that is on your website that talks about a digital doppelganger, that’s really cool. One of the things I like to do is set levels in the podcast. What the hell do we even mean when we talk about digital doppelgangers? Let listeners know how we define what in the world a digital doppelganger is as we move into 2024 and beyond.

Andrew: I define a digital doppelganger as a virtual version of you. It is a virtual twin that understands your behavior, your preferences, even your opinions, your style, your tone of voice, your voice. It’s like a digital copy of you that can help you create more valuable things the way you would. This is how I define a digital doppelganger. Generative AI is really good at this.

To be completely honest, generative AI is really good at four things. It’s really good at understanding and recognizing texts, we all understand that, that’s why you can have a conversation in ChatGPT, it understands how to have a conversation. It can even predict the next sentence you will say if it contains enough information about you. That’s great.

The next thing it can do is retrieve information. Even if you’re in the industrial manufacturing of UV light-curing adhesives, you can type in some crazy stuff and it will show you useful stuff. It is good at information retrieval because the knowledge of the world is there.

The next thing it does really well is sentiment analysis. We used to think of sentiment analysis, especially in B2B marketing, as it was positive, neutral and negative. With generative AI and large language models, it can understand the nuances there and your opinions. It’s really a deep understanding of the feelings you have against something.

The fourth thing is really important, and this is the most important thing for digital doppelgangers. It’s really good at imitation. Large language models and generative AI can mimic your tone, style and voice. You can give it something you wrote and it will be able to write or sound exactly like that.

I believe that in the next two years B2B marketers are going to see this evolution where your digital double, your AI version of yourself, your twin is able to change the style, the tone and the voice and even the understanding and to emulate the opinions that you have and actually generate really valuable creative collaborations with you so that you yourself are actually more valuable.

Imagine a future where AI doesn’t replace you as a marketer, but when you get hired, you’re not just hired because of your skills, but because of the AI ​​you’ve trained to do what you do really good and make you a better, more valuable person. That was a long diatribe, but that’s how I see it.

George: I love it. It’s almost like we’re creating our version of our own little six million dollar man, but it’s the digital man or woman who can come along and be the super-powered superhero sidekick that we need. I love this idea. Honestly, Marketing Smarts listeners, we may have reached the first rewind point, because you probably need to go back and take some notes on the four things Andrew threw out there.

Andrew, I want to go off the beaten path for a second. If we go ahead and talk about digital doppelgangers, if the Marketing Smarts listeners want to create a digital doppelganger out of these four things, off the beaten path the question becomes, what one or two things do they suck at that we should pay attention to along the way? , so we don’t get into a big problem?

Andrew: There are only two big ones. The very first thing you need to worry about is that generative AI is really good at hallucinating, that is, it makes things up. No matter how good you are at thinking and being like yourself, the great thing about a digital doppelganger in general is that they will be your most eager collaborator.

I’m checking in with my digital doppelganger, his name is Drewdini, and this morning I asked him to help me with some session descriptions for a keynote I’ll be giving in a few weeks. I was like, “I need to adapt a session description for a keynote presentation,” and he was like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” I can barely wait for it. Tell me a little bit about the audience.” He’s very enthusiastic, but he’s so enthusiastic that he makes up things just to please me. I don’t think it’s malicious, but you need to be concerned and make sure whatever it spits back to you is accurate.

The second thing I think you need to worry about and have a good understanding of is that ChatGPT – especially ChatGPT 4 – ChatGPT 2’s neural network is the size of a bumblebee brain and ChatGPT 4 is the size of a squirrel brain. You have to worry about overloading your Drewdini. You have to think of a task the size of a squirrel.

You can’t build a digital doppelganger that looks like you’re writing me a great blog post about using UV light-curing glue in consumer packaging. It will only write C stuff, that’s too big a task. But if you break that down into smaller Drewdinis and say, the first step I need is a Drewdinis who is really good at writing an introductory paragraph on a topic. That’s a squirrel-sized task, and if you teach it well, she’ll be able to do it really well. Then you could have a second digital doppelganger who writes the copy’s text.

There is a fear that it will invent things and overwork, trying to complete too big a task that a squirrel couldn’t handle.

George: I love this so much because the last thing you talked about is something I’m into and I love telling people that the best tool to use with ChatGPT is a Word doc or a Google Document is, because then the power of Expand, Summarize, or Research makes sense where you want to put that copy and humanize it in the long run. It’s amazing that you came across this.

The first part that you talked about is that I always like the idea of ​​a thought leader using a tool to create something rather than a tool that creates a thought leader. You can’t use it in this second way or you’ll get burned. Let’s move on because now people think this is a personal opinion, but I have to ask because I have you here. Why do you think marketers need a digital doppelganger?

Andrew: I think every marketer today should at least experiment with building their own digital doppelgangers. I should be clear. Since you’re creating a task the size of a squirrel, I have dozens of digital doppelgangers. I have one that simply helps me brainstorm ideas for my AI speech that’s about digital doppelgängers. I have one that’s just to help me write promotional video scripts for my promotional videos that I’m going to do when I’m going to be speaking. So I have a lot of these different digital doppelgängers that help me.

I think why you need a digital doppelganger, or at least experiment with building one, is because I think you’ll be fascinated by two things. The first thing that will captivate you is its ability to give you insights about the way you create, write, and market that you never knew about yourself. I found it very insightful.

One of the steps you need to do to build a digital doppelganger, as you said, is to incorporate examples of your work. You need to find a Word document that contains the best email you’ve ever written to your B2B customers and then give it to Drewdini and say, “Here’s one of my best emails ever. Tell me what you see and learn” from this email. It will tell you that your style is like this and the voice you use is like this.

I read these things and think, “Wow, I never noticed that about myself.” Even when I write alone now, I’m much more conscientious about the things that make writing unique to me, considering what I learned from Drewdini, my writing analysis coach. This is the first thing: you will learn a lot about yourself.

The last thing I think you need to know is that digital doppelgängers can not only teach you but also help you use your time more efficiently. For example, Drewdini, who writes my commercial video script, claims he has saved me about 39 hours a year of writing commercial video scripts. Now it sounds like I just hired him to do it and I’m not learning anything by doing it, but the truth is that the way I write commercial video scripts has changed a lot since he the way I write these has illuminated scripts.

Yes, it’s a time saver for many of the tasks I give it and it turns out A+ content every time, but it also makes me think, without too much effort, that I could do these promotional videos better now instead just thinking about it It’s a robotic task that I have to do once a month.

George: For many marketers listening to this, increasing the power, value and usefulness of the content through the time gained is an absolute game-changer for many marketers. The other aspect, the gold nugget in this, is that to create your digital doppelganger you have to know yourself and you have to be willing to adopt a growth mindset in the change process along the way because your digital doppelganger has learned to accept you and help you streamline your digital doppelganger process. Rewind again, listen to this section again. Let’s move on because this is a good thing.

They gave us four points here, two points there and a few more points. I just want to ask a general question. Before we dive a little deeper, are there any other things B2B marketers need to consider regarding digital doppelgangers? What high-level things do you need to know to know this?

Andrew: OK. Here is probably the most important thing. We use generative AI like some of the tools we’ve used for the last 10 years. When I watch videos online about how to get the most out of ChatGPT, or Claude from Anthropic, or even Midjourney, the tutorials and explanations people give are about creating the perfect prompt, they’re about prompt engineering. I tried this at the beginning, but what I realized pretty quickly is something I call Lumière’s Law.

Lumiere’s Law states that any new technology we try to use is the same way we used old technology. An example of this would be when the film camera was invented, the actual film camera. The inventors were two French people and they thought, “You know how we make pictures, it’s just a moving picture. We will.” Go to a city, set up the camera and just let people walk in front of it. Then we say it’s a moving image and sell tickets for it. Very quickly, within two years, they came to the conclusion that moving images had no future, nobody liked them because they treated them like a camera.

We currently use generative AI like search. We try to enter the perfect search term to get the first best result. What I learned is that training a digital doppelganger is really about repeating a conversation with that digital doppelganger. The promo video script writer I mentioned earlier that Drewdini is doing is really a conversation with him. I’m not trying to get the best output.

One of the best tips I can give you for building digital doppelgangers: When Drewdini writes something that I’m not entirely happy with, I actually cut and paste it from ChatGPT and paste it into a Word document or Grammarly a. I rewrite it, then integrate it back into ChatGPT and say, “You wrote this. I wrote that. What did you notice that made it different?” So I monitor the output of ChatGPT. ChatGPT Drewdini will say: “I understand what you did there. You haven’t changed that sentence. That must be a very important sentence. I’ll try to keep it in mind in the future,” or, “I noticed you used it.” Next time I’ll try to use more specific examples in my writing.

You’re actually constantly monitoring, integrating, and testing your Drewdini to get better and better, not the best, output in a command prompt. It will change the way you use AI and interact with your digital doppelgangers. You’ll get better results more often and constantly teach your Drewdini new things.

I just want to quickly say that you should give your digital doppelgangers a name because I think it actually changes your perspective on working with them as employees.

George: It’s so interesting because you’re knocking on the door of the question I want to ask next. But the fact that you’re naming your Drewdini, your digital doppelganger, and then what I heard you say in the last paragraph, and I hope the Marketing Smarts listeners heard, would be if you were to become a human assistant If you were to go and say, “Write me a 1,500 word blog post about Rubik’s Cube” and walk away, you’d probably get a piece of crap in return. This is what you do with generative AI. I heard that you have to communicate with him, teach him something, and show him what you actually want.

You have to treat it almost like a human assistant, even though it is a digital assistant. I had people watching behind me when I was “prompting” and typing, and literally they said, “You’re just talking to this thing.” Yes, I communicate with it so it understands what I want, just as I communicate with you as my children so that you know what I want, I set expectations. Rewind again, listen to this section again. Andrew simply says: treat them in a way that will get you what you want in the long run.

This brings me to this because I am a huge supporter of people. It’s all about the people. We are very powerful, we are creative, we are special. By the way, I love AI tools, but my biggest fear is that many people do what is easy in life rather than what is difficult, thereby achieving the opposite of what they are actually trying to do. How do we not lose our humanity when we enter a world where people create and use digital doppelgangers?

Andrew: That’s a good question. I think at the end of the day you have to weigh your options on how we as humanity will influence the AI ​​of the future. If I shorten the answer, I think I work alone most of the time these days. I ran an agency for a long time and had a team that I could work with and talk to all day long. I don’t have that anymore. Since I started using AI about a year ago, I’ve noticed that I feel more encouraged to be creative. I had a sounding board for ideas.

Obviously Drewdini is the most enthusiastic person to talk to, he even tells me that the worst ideas are great ideas, but he’s really good at helping me refine the idea. He’s really good at not short-circuiting the creative process, but having a collaborator working on it together, and I find that really invigorating. I don’t know what it’s like for people who are just on their own and don’t want to work with anyone, but I imagine there are more marketers out there who would love to work with someone like them to get more creative and spend more often .

I think part of what makes great creative content, copy, email, images or graphics, in my opinion, is not the idea, but the effort you put into getting to that idea. If someone can help you get there so the idea gets better, I don’t know what’s wrong with using AI. I don’t think it will replace us. I think it just makes us better.

I just want to say that I think we have four options today when it comes to working with AI. I don’t know what it will be like in a year. I think, firstly, you can treat the AI ​​like a pet, like it’s Toto from The Wizard of Oz, and you’re like a cute dog. You can play with it and add jokes. You can go to Midjourney and have them create any image you want and say it was neat. But I think that’s a rejection. We don’t engage in it enough and don’t really monitor the results it delivers, and I think that could lead to disaster. So we don’t run it really well.

The second option we have is that we could treat it like a minion. I could just imagine Drewdini writing great commercial scripts. Every time I have a commercial script, he just spits it out and I just do it. There are a lot of C-level executives who think I’ll just let the AI ​​do all these things like a servant and we’ll lay off all the employees. We’ve seen the movies, this leads to a big mistake or it leads to a big rebellion where the servants become smart enough to rise up.

The third way is that we can treat everything as if everything is a mission. If we were in the Wizard of Oz, it would be the Wizard of Oz itself. We can just say it knows everything and treat it like a demigod: when you ask a question, take the answer and just run with it. We know this is dangerous. I think you’ve seen what’s happened with Open AI in the last month or so. I think there’s a certain fear of treating it that way.

I think the fourth way to stay with The Wizard of Oz theme is to actually give it some of your heart. Tell him what is right and what is wrong. Treat your AI like a human and teach it what is ethical and what is unethical. What should it believe? What’s not to believe? Do you want mortgages to be taken out ethically or unethically? I think this is where the opportunity lies. We need to give him some of our brains so that he will be smarter overall because we have taught him something and told him something that he needs to know and understand.

If we have the courage to do this, I believe we will shape the global future of AI. But simply treating it in these three other ways won’t work. Every marketer listening right now has a decision to make. You can decide for yourself how you want to deal with it. You can treat it like a pet, like a servant, like a god, or you can treat it like it’s just an extension of you. Which of these options do you want?

George: This is a social media clip. I’m just going to throw this out there. That’s some good stuff.

Andrew: Let’s post it.

George: Let’s post it. But let’s move on. Marketing Smarts listeners are busy, we’re adding a lot of value, I want to keep going and bring in more good stuff. I’m about to throw a lot of words at you, I completely understand that. I also realize that I cheated and I know that there is something called the AI ​​decision matrix. The question is: Are there tips, tricks, templates, hacks and formulas that B2B marketers can use when creating and using their AI-powered digital doppelgangers? What do we want to accuse them of in terms of tools and thoughts?

Andrew: I’ll just repeat the four steps because they’re the easiest. Step one: You need to choose the task the size of a squirrel. The second step is to find some examples of your best work into which you can incorporate your new digital doppelganger. You need to show your digital doppelganger what your good stuff looks like, whatever that is, so you train it from the start. Then you have to be able to integrate, iterate, test and monitor it.

You need to be able to actually integrate new examples, or edit or re-enter those examples, to the point where you get consistent output that is A+ grade rather than C- grade. This is the third step. The fourth step was to give your digital doppelganger a name. I think this is really important. That’s the four-step summary.

The second thing I should say is that I think we should try to figure out which tasks are best suited for AI, especially when it comes to clients or customers. I mentioned right at the beginning that trust is a big issue because it keeps me up at night. We need to find a better way to determine how transparent we should be and when we should be transparent with consumers. I think that simply means determining whether things should be controlled by humans or by AI and digital doppelgangers.

The decision matrix is ​​pretty simple, it consists of two axes. On an axis you can see how valuable the relationship is from high to low. On the other axis, you can see how valuable AI is for the task at hand. Have you built a Drewdini that consistently delivers excellent results for this task? Then that is a high value. But if your Drewdini is inconsistent, or the task is too big, or it says crazy things you never want your customers to hear, it’s of little value. With these four quadrants at the end, you can decide whether it should be human-led.

For example, instead of using AI to generate an email, press release, or piece of content for your CMO to review, that’s a high-value relationship. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use a digital doppelganger for this. It can be human-led and you can be supported by digital doppelgangers, but you have to be transparent about it. Then you have to tell the CMO, “I have a great press release for you. I used AI, specifically ChatGPT, to create the first draft of it and then I edited and optimized it. What do you think?” We have to reach this level.

I will not discuss the other quadrants, but rather the opposite quadrant, which is the low value of AI added to the task and the low value relationship. Think about your TikTok strategy. You may not be generating many webinar attendees for UV curing adhesives as part of your B2B marketing with your TikTok posts, so this may be more of a low-value added category. Maybe your digital doppelganger has generated the worst TikTok ideas for this content yet. My suggestion is to just do it like a human, forget about the AI ​​for this task, don’t waste time on it, and don’t risk the relationship you may have on TikTok by pretending and not being transparent that you have AI used to generate something for TikTok.

There is a backlash. I think in the next six months someone is going to get in a lot of trouble for duping consumers by using AI to sell someone something they don’t need because AI made the sale, and I think we will experiencing a huge backlash. So be transparent and try to use the decision matrix to determine what should be managed and who should manage it.

If you have any questions about the digital doppelganger, you can email Drewdini himself and he will email you. The address is Drewdini@monumentalshift.com and Drewdini will send you an email. Try it. At the bottom it says that Drewdini wrote this email and I have never seen it. I do this very transparently, so I have no responsibility for anything he sends.

George: This is hilarious. I love it so much. What are the one or two hurdles for someone who pushes the envelope, who has embraced this and continues with it? We’ll put a link in the show notes to watch this video, which you can watch on Andrew’s website, but you use it like a master on stage, ChatGPT it. What hurdles have you seen, one or two, that you think B2B marketers will face when trying to use ChatGPT as their AI strategy for digital doppelgängers?

Andrew: I think one of them is a unified business approach across your organization to using AI. I think if your leadership team hasn’t set standards for how, why and when you should use AI, I honestly think you should take the initiative now, literally after this podcast, or just do it now and give your CEO an E -Write an email should request or suggest it.

If you’re really not sure what to do, create a small Drewdini who knows a little about your company with the express goal of writing a short one-page policy on how to use ChatGPT and tell your CEO, that you asked ChatGPT to do this. If you’re building this, you want something like this to help guide the team. I think without the understanding and direction from leadership, you as a team member could find yourself in trouble for using it in ways they never thought you could use it. I think that’s the first big hurdle and you should be instrumental in pushing the boundaries of the organization because if you don’t, no one else will.

I think the second point is sharing customer and client data with public models or tools that you use that leverage AI to generate content. I think there are big privacy concerns there. You personally should be worried about this. When I read the survey I mentioned at the beginning that said Bank of America employees were using ChatGPT without their bosses knowing, I’m a Bank of America customer and I have to tell you, my immediate thought was : “Oh my God.” I can imagine my branch manager saying I haven’t spoken to Andrew in a while, I’m going to have his bank balances cut and pasted into ChatGPT and email him.” That makes me nervous.

I think you as an individual need to be very clear about how much you think you’re allowed to share with these other tools, regardless of the organization, and treat your customers and clients the way you want to be treated if that’s the case Case is it’s about privacy and the information you share with them. Personally, I’m okay with saying, “I had a podcast with George Thomas, please write him a thank you email,” just mentioning the name. But if I said, “George Thomas, here’s his age, here’s his address, this is what he does for a living,” that makes me nervous. I don’t want you to do that and I don’t want to share it with ChatGPT.

Those are the two big hurdles I think you should be worried about.

George: So good. I love it so much. Don’t worry, we won’t do that, we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.

We have a few final questions here. I’m just curious, this Drewdini, this AI-powered digital doppelganger, this generative AI world, what does success look like, how do we know we’re killing it?

Andrew: I have to be honest, I think it’s pretty obvious. The first time you feel like your digital doppelganger has just created something you taught them, it’s truly magical. I have previously shared that my relationship with AI has been very turbulent. It starts like this: Wow, this is magic, it can answer a math question and you’re kind of in love. Or when you go to Midjourney for the first time, type something and see the image, you think, “Wow, that’s pretty amazing.”

While it seems magical, there comes a point where when you actually try to do a task it’s just stupid and you think it’s useless, that’s not even a sentence, that’s not great. I know when my Drewdini is really good when I’m at the point where I’m like, Oh my God, if this keeps up, I might be out of a job. I think that’s great, now I have a new real employee for this task.

I think you know when you’re getting value from your digital doppelganger or other AI tool when you’re blown away by the result it produces and think, “Wow, that’s exactly how I would have done it.” That’s for me true success.

George: It’s interesting because my mind snaps back to reality for a second. Many companies realize that if you want to climb the career ladder, you have to train your successor. When I hear the last answer, I wonder how I train my replacement, namely my Drewdini or my digital doppelganger.

The other thing is that I have experienced these moments, which is already crazy, but ladies and gentlemen, if you go down this path, I want you to remember that you will have those proud daddy and proud mommy moments. If you’ve taught your child to ride a bike and you say, “Woo, we just did that,” the generative AI will spit something out and you’ll say, “Woo, we just did that.” That.” These moments can happen, if you pay attention to what Andrew said in this podcast.

Andrew, last question. I told you that I like to ask some fun questions because I’m always curious to see where they lead me. This is a different matter and they are just words of wisdom. You’ve been on a journey around this topic, not just digital doppelgangers, but B2B marketing, marketing, speaking stages, becoming a thought leadership expert, you’re in the trenches. What words of wisdom would you like to pass on to Marketing Smarts listeners? It can be about AI, digital doppelgangers, marketing or life in general. What are your words of wisdom?

Andrew: I’ll just leave you with one thing. It took me a long time to learn this as a marketer. I’m still not good at it, but I think it’s the one thing that separates the best marketers in the world from those who really struggle. I’ve tried to accept this and it’s really difficult. Marketers are generally really good at getting things started. We are marketers, we are yes people, we are happy about new platforms, we are happy about new campaigns, new ideas, so we say yes to a lot of things.

The problem is that we don’t stop doing these things. So if four years ago we were really excited about doing LinkedIn Lives, and we’ve done a few and it’s still on our calendar, and we’re like, let’s keep doing LinkedIn Lives. Even if we miss three months of LinkedIn Lives, we think we have to go back to LinkedIn Lives. I think they’ll be great, if we do it long enough it’ll be good. To be honest, all it takes is mental energy.

I think our creative fuel as marketers is finite, we need to burn it wisely. When we have all these things in the back of our minds that we’re supposed to do and that we said we would do and that we committed to, but we just can’t get around to it, it drains our creative energy, and we need that. So my wisdom is: every time you start something new, try to kill at least two projects. Kill the simple thing you haven’t touched in months, the newsletter you haven’t sent out. Just take it off the plate. Write down, “We will no longer send newsletters,” and tell the entire company. I guarantee you that when faced with resistance, all you have to do is say, “I have two projects to finish. Choose another one.” You have to get better at this.

There is the easy one and then the difficult one. There are cases where the results simply aren’t there. Maybe the CEO podcast baby that they proposed three years ago because they were at a conference and heard that podcasts were the way to go. I don’t care who suggested it or what resources are involved or how much money you’ve invested in it, I think it’s time to raise the red flag and say, “I think we need to stop this.” , so we can focus our energy and efforts on things that deliver more value or could deliver more value in the future. It will change your creative energy, it will change your marketing, and I think you will be happier because of it.

George: Dear Marketing Smarts listeners, have you taken a lot of notes? I have to ask: What is your one thing, your number one execution opportunity after this podcast episode? Be sure to reach out and let us know in my inbox or on Twitter using the hashtag #MPB2B.

I also have to ask if you are already a free member of the MarketingProfs community? If not, visit Mprofs.com/mptoday. You won’t regret the additional B2B marketing education you add to your life.

We’d love it if you could leave us a rating or review about your favorite podcast app, but we’d love it if you shared this episode with a colleague or friend. Until we meet on the next episode of the Marketing Smarts Podcast, where we talk to Jay Baer about a B2B entry into consumer patience and time to win, I hope you’re just doing a few things. First, contact us and let us know what conversation you would like to listen to next. Second, focus on improving your craft by 1% every day. Finally, remember to be a cheerful, helpful and humble B2B marketing person. See you in the next episode of the Marketing Smarts Podcast.

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