SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hi Casma. Hi Casma. I'm not sure whether I should be asking you this, but how are you today?

SPEAKER_00 0:14

I'm very good. Yeah. I'm in pain. I've been renovating uh the summer house all weekend or one day. And the rest I've been in pain.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

I hope the summer house uh is in pain as well, so it's not just you. Yes, I hope so too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

But um it's okay when I'm static when I'm not moving around.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Well, so uh for the next uh 20 minutes or so you're gonna be fine because uh we're just gonna be sitting here.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Yeah. I've been looking forward to that. Well, I well I appreciate you uh getting out of bed and getting over here just for these 20, 20, 30 minutes. Of course. Talking to you is the highlight of my week. And taking the pills in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Exactly. Exactly. I might might look a bit tired, but um, I'm okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

How are you? Um I'm good, I'm good as well. Uh talking about renovating, I was uh helping a friend as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

And we dropped a massive uh water tank uh on top of ourselves. Uh so uh I have uh a blue mark with the size of my thigh. Um as the Patreon followers. But but I guess uh but I guess uh I guess it indicates that we're getting to an age where we probably shouldn't be renovating.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, I agree. But I think it's the dad syndrome or the parent syndrome, like we are I guess, especially dads, overconfident in what we can do, yeah, and it can become somewhat dangerous, but uh but we manage. Um what are we gonna talk about today? I want to talk about um a bear that walks into a bar. Okay. Uh and it goes up to the bartender and it says I would like uh a gin and tonic and the bartender says, uh why the big pause? And the bear looks at his hands and like I don't know, I was born this way.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Why the big pause? Pause? So it it it took it took me a while.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Yeah, yeah. I hope you like it. Um but we're talking about a pause today. Not a pause, we're talking about AI and something that's going on in the market, uh, that is currently going on in the market that uh I've been thinking a lot about, and this is mass firings in marketing, especially during like big uh global enterprises, um, due to AI. Yeah, which I think is super interesting. Um, because on on one hand, we have the yes, obviously, AI is gonna revolutionize how we work in marketing, how we like the all the workflow should be optimized and in many places need to be optimized, uh, which AI is a massive tool for, uh which we've been talking about before. On the other hand, we have marketing who are currently, and and this must be why thousands of marketers uh are fired, looked at as a workflow. So, on the one hand, we have like the natural selection of tasks that will be replaced by AI, on the other hand, we have marketing that somehow is underdeveloped in their ability to prove the value of the work, so they're considered a workflow that can be replaced at mass. And I think that's super interesting because both are truths. We've been talking so much about um that marketing are not like they are in vanity metrics in many cases and siloed performance optimization that never reaches the business. Like last week we talked about exactly this. Um so there is for sure a burning platform in marketing. But but how do we approach this as marketing leaders? How do we approach this as commercial leaders saying, hey, like one marketing needs to prove the value to not get reduced by thousands? At the same time, we need to acknowledge that the workflows will change and we will will um see optimizations from this.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Okay. How do you see this? Is this something that that like now in Denmark alone, like last week, uh a few weeks back, uh Mersk introduced like thousand digital marketers fired. Mode 1500, as far as I recall, last week. Yeah. So it's like quite pronominate uh predominant decisions that's been made around this. Um and it's obviously because you want less hands on the things because like natural flow should should follow. So in the tools, like in the Adobe package that you work a lot in, a lot of this is happening as well. Um I guess.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Yeah, yeah. Um it's an it's a really interesting topic, and I guess obviously it is gonna be re replacing some people, but I think I think marketing is gonna be more efficient because I also think that marketing to some degree has been and are very depending on IT development.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

So if you have a request that goes into a backlog and it takes, you know, anything from three months to 12 months before something is in place, right? Yeah. And suddenly you you become this doer where you you don't have the dependency because you can have AI do something for you.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Right? Um but obviously there are roles that has I'm gonna say simpler task, that that's probably not the best way to phrase it, but just you know, uh copywriting people don't have a job anymore.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

No.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Right? Because AI can automate that and do it way cheaper than uh than paying for those people. Yeah, faster that's faster and uh more efficiently if you train it correctly, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

If you have the right prompts to do it, and yeah, that's that's maybe one of the challenges of taking out a thousand people. Yeah, that you're losing a lot of this knowledge on on how to do it and I I guess it depends on what role that they've been playing. Yeah, right. For sure. Um but this is also digital marketing leaders. I mean, and some I've I've been thinking about it that in some way like the generalists are kind of being replaced in many in in many areas with AI.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

No matter the level, no matter if it's like basic task of sorting things or it is actually digital strategy and all these things. Yeah. Um, and are we getting ahead of ourselves? That's that's the feeling I'm sitting with. Yeah. And and and hence my my A-B scenario here. I think we're not getting ahead of ourselves with the possibilities in AI and the workflows that have been set. But we're maybe getting a bit ahead of ourselves in what marketing, how marketing can be automated in this.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

I think I'm I'm surprised that big companies like uh uh Mersk is is actually laying off uh that amount of people within digital marketing. Because I oftentimes see that big enterprise companies are moving slower when it comes to these tools. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

So that so that they're doing it, it seems that they're either at the forefront or they are using it as an excuse.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Yeah, yeah, but that's how it seems. And that's like that, that would be the like from the marketing side, that would be the easy conclusion. This is the wrong decision, do you are doing it wrong, uh you're misunderstanding it, you are premature, which probably is is correct in some sense. Yeah, but at the other hand, if financial uh service uh companies are wanting to make less complex flows for their customers and automate more and do all these things, that's a positive development. That's what we want to get at because we don't want to pay all the steps that makes no sense to have.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

So I think it's super interesting because AI on this is not replacing your jobs, it's optimizing your workflows. Yeah, but on the other hand, it's replacing generalists in marketing, it's replacing leaders in marketing whom we need. But I think you wouldn't replace your CFO with AI, you wouldn't replace your head of IT with AI.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

I I don't know. So so I'm very uh very much inspired by uh Jespa Weissel, uh who's uh running uh Viertel Group, a Danish uh company who has um online shops with uh beauty stuff, and and um he's gone from 80-something people to 30-something people by uh replacing them with uh AI uh and he has uh systems that's uh you know making orders for uh 200 million uh Danish krona uh a year. Yeah. Um and I saw uh I was at a conference and I saw him speaking, and he has 32 agents working for him, yeah, where he has re you know, they're taking over 90% of his job, so he can actually focus on running the company instead of being deep hands-on on some of the things.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

But that's my point exactly, because I think you're spot on here, but he's not getting replaced at that level because it's workflows, he's replacing workflows, he's optimizing workflows, which marketing also needs to do, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

But marketing is not efficient if people have been sitting and just moving stuff from one place to another.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

But that's the challenge, and marketing hasn't because marketing has heavily developed and been optimizing on platforms, but have not been able to prove the value of this. Marketing, and we talked about this last week, marketing has not been able to show objective business thinking in terms of what is delivered. It's still local optimized values that we present that has no value for a CEO or leadership in general. Where the CFO is reporting on numbers, where the IT is security, marketing is still reporting on how do campaigns perform in individual channels instead of what is the business outcome of this. And I think it's a burning platform, I think it's a massive burning platform in marketing that we need to take very seriously if we don't want to be replaced by AI. Because as long as we are seen, as long as marketing is seen as a workflow, AI is gonna come for everything.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yeah, I I don't think it's that black and white though, no, right? Because uh I mean there are also KPIs that uh can't be reported on from marketing that are more uh tangible, like number of leads or opportunities created, right? But I agree that there are some some metrics that are not great because the way that marketing data is, you know, with consent and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Marketing data is siloed. And I I don't think consent is a challenge, but it's a local challenge. I think the main challenge is reporting back to the business.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah, but but uh the reason why I mention consent is because you you struggle reporting a number that's that's impacted by consent up to it because it doesn't match numbers from other departments in the business, business. Yeah, and then you suddenly have to explain, and it you cannot avoid it turning into a technical explanation for someone who may not understand it, right? No, but is it different for the CFO?

SPEAKER_00 12:39

They they have just very late numbers.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

I think it is because those are more uh more accurate, right? Typically.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

I think you're looking at it upside down. Okay, yeah. I think when we talk about leadership, we look from top down. So we look at the numbers, the conversions, for instance. Where if you look at it the other way, it would be like how many dropped here, but that's not the case right now. The case is those who we know what they did. Yeah, and then there's a local flow of optimizing those conversions, those we know converted and did these things. Where did they come from? Yeah, what was the journey that affected us? Yes, we cannot look at the whole, we need to look at the cheese as a book I read in my early days. Don't like it's it's right because we need to look at what do we have. Yeah, and the challenge right now is that I don't think we have much uh across all marketing efforts that reports back to the business. It becomes very local all the time. Marketing are fully aware that that the journey is complex and full of jumps and everything, like yeah, but but if we're not able to kind of prove those things, because that's what leadership looks at, and I think that that's that's that's the caveat here. That's the burning platform for marketing. We don't have the data standardization across everything we do to prove that, and hence the easiest job has always been like where where are the budget cuts? Where's the budget scrutiny? It's in marketing nine out of ten times due to this. But AI is putting it to the forefront because yeah, and it might be me over analyzing, but how I see it, this is a catastrophe for marketing because unless we're able to change this, we'll be the next workflow that's 95% replaced. And and this these are some of the biggest companies in the world who are doing it pretty early days on, like it's pretty early days still, but they are cutting thousand fifteen hundred employees within marketing.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Yeah. Couldn't the opposite be happening as well? Instead of it being, you know, a cast cat cat cast cat a cat tough cat tough uh that exactly, uh being a cat stuff uh I cannot we'll skip it. Couldn't it be couldn't it be the solution for marketing?

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Say more.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Um I'm just saying in instead of painting the picture uh you know uh dark, then couldn't couldn't AI be some of the one part of the solution for marketing? AI is in my view the part like But you're you're concerned that AI is taking over all marketing. And and marketing department is not needed because AI can do everything for you.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Actually not. No. I'm concerned that marketing are not acting fast enough, improving the real outcome of the work, so it will be considered a workflow. If if marketing for the CFO, for the CIO, AI are optimization tools, it's not a matter of this department's value in the business, it's about optimizing workflows. Where I see it becomes way more of a fundamental problem for marketing right now because the data foundations are not there.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Yeah. And I agree that they're not there. Uh I also think that uh you know, IT and marketing is probably the two departments that are moving the fastest with AI. Yes. Right? Uh but I agree that uh the the foundation is not in place. And especially if we've talked about this many times, you know, that's that's the core functionality of getting value out of uh AI, right? That that that uh and and proving value for the rest of the business is making sure that you have your data foundation in place, right? Um I said makes no sense. I can and I completely agree on that.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Um I think like these are these are only the early showings of what's what's gonna happen. Yeah, but marketing needs to take this very very seriously from where where I see it.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Okay. Um so so uh so you are actually you're calling a prediction here.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah. I am. I'm seeing it and I'm seeing it very clearly. Because why is it that it's the marketing department? Yeah, at scale, when we can both agree that this is premature. Yeah, it is premature because these are some of the most developed data centers in the world. Like they they have a lot of this under control, yeah, but still it seems premature because it's still a function that is spreading across channels, it's been done in in in still somewhat siloed, but but they are on this journey that that we've been talking about for for a long time. But I I think just seeing it and and doing it, they and they will probably succeed a lot of the way. But what is the cost on marketing? Because the and this is why I think it's premature. The cost on marketing will be too high.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Yeah, I think this is at is at the level of uh the one guy who called the recession in 2008.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Think of us, no, but but seriously, and I I think it's like the formula for this is not complicated, it's data ownership, and we like I've I'm preaching this all the time, so like I'm repeating myself, but data ownership is like leadership needs to take data ownership, and now they've seen it, like they they've now in marketing lost so many employees, and we can talk about if we needed every one of those, or they should be doing different tasks because definitely, if we have the AI, if we have the workflow, then marketing can operate in a completely different way. Yeah, um have you seen other companies doing the same? Uh scaling down, uh laying off uh uh people in marketing. But I mean, we've been seeing it for years, but we haven't seen it at this scale that's happening right now with a clear AI printed to it. Yeah. In financial services, this is now a board uh strategy. We need to optimize the workflows, we need less hands on the things to make it better for the customers.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

In FSI, for years, the objective from the board has been compliance, and it's been like digital user journeys. And those two fit perfectly into the AI. If you have this somewhat under control, then we can move into the next step, which is like how do we optimize the flows? But my worry here is that and we've been seeing it for years to your question, like marketing budgets have like digital spend has gone up and up and up and up, yeah, while marketing budgets and teams are being scrutinized, like smaller and smaller and smaller. We need to do it more efficiently. So we need AI, and I agree with you, AI is part of the solution, but this is a trend that has been going on for so long, and as we've been talking about, like I think the core reason for this, or I know the core reason for this in the majority of companies, is that they're not able to prove objective business value from the marketing side. Yeah, that's why marketing is always first in line on software, on employees, even more, yeah. Uh on hours to do stuff, on budgets to invest in stuff, on the next, because we're not able to answer these critical business questions that we talked about last time. Yeah. Are you seeing any of this in the like tool implementation and and considerations? Like we talk a lot about like all these automation tools in in Adobe and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

So um we had analytics and appetizers a couple weeks ago, right? And I was in a panel and and one of the the Ben Gaines brought up, you know, is there a concern that the AI that Adobe is building into the solution is taking the job from the analyst? Yeah. And and I'm not directly concerned about it because I don't think that the AI will be it, it needs that human in the loop to validate the numbers, or um, so I don't think it's gonna be fully taking it. Obviously, so I think it's more about being more efficient. Um and with that said, I can be completely wrong, and and in two years' time everything has been taken over by by AI, uh, and the the teams has been reduced because it's it's yeah, you only need a few people to actually uh manage the different agents that you have, right? Which which most likely is is potentially what what we're moving towards, right? But but I think AI is still so new and it's evolving so extremely quick that it's really really difficult to predict where we're gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

It's not impossible to predict, but we can see you can see the tendencies. So even though we try To tell each other, and I really don't want to be the guy who's out there saying we're all gonna lose our jobs because I don't believe that, I think it's a more of an evolution, yeah. But when you open the papers now, this is what you see, yeah, it's thousands of people losing their jobs, and there's big considerations in it, yeah. So I agree, and we don't want to tell that narrative, but I now it's that's talk data. Let's be parents for like we're telling this. Is this just like we cannot tell marketing anything, every marketer, you decide what you want to do. But we're telling everyone like put on your base layer before you go out in the winter and play soccer. Yeah, you need your base layer because if you want to reduce the chance of you becoming the casualty of AI, then you need your base layer to prove the base value of what marketing is and what it contributes. Because then we can have the talk that should be having. But AI as a workflow.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

But I guess it's no different than it's been over the many decades, right? Because because every uh if if marketing had its base layer, they wouldn't be cut because they had a business case for proving why they had the existence, right? Exactly. What we're seeing right now is just that there's a new player in town which is speeding up that process. But but the I don't think it's exponential.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Like it's just gone boom.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yeah, but it's not it's it's no different than it's been over the you know 10, 20, many years, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:29

But maybe the consequences are because I haven't seen the development and it's early days, but I haven't seen companies move at this pace before, and it scares me. Like it's it's like whoa, yeah, we really need to get this right. Um and it's easy for me to say, like, I've I've I've been working with this for for many years, but it's just those who have it on the control, like work differently. And I've been thinking about should what should I how should I talk about this? Because on the one side, this means the depth of marketing, on the other side, this means the ownership of marketing to do the things that we really want to do.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

So what I've been thinking a lot, what differentiates this? And from my view, the one thing that differentiates it is data ownership and that we are able to prove the simple value back to business.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

And to be honest, this is only probably only for this intersection that we're seeing with AI now.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

When we surpass this, it will be the next one and the next one, and we need to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

But when we talk about data, when we talk about uh AI, when we talk about LMMs, when we talk about everything, it is about what the data foundation you have. This is the differentiator in everything that we're seeing right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

So data is the new currency, and marketing is still looking for old dollars to. Yeah, but potentially, I feel like marketing has been collecting too much data over the years, but they've forgot to put a structure or good governance around it, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:08

That's a problem. It's the shared data language. Yeah, it's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Like uh in construction, uh Meetus, great company, just released a report on this. They've created a full magazine. This has nothing to do with marketing data, it's construction data. But you know what the statement is for those who like on average, they are like five out of ten. Maybe a bit higher, some of them. Yeah. But what they say is the challenge for not succeeding with these things to make it efficient. Data standardization. Yeah. And when I read this, it was just like it's two different worlds, but it's exactly the same challenge that we have here. Yeah. And if so many people agree that this is the solution, why don't we do more about it? Why or why aren't more doing things about it? Yeah. Everything that feeds the Adobe platform is based on the data quality, and quality is one thing because quality is just as much that we know what data we need, what how it should look, and what we use it for. But if we don't have the right data, if we don't have the right feed, then then we're like in this pickle. There's no right or wrong. Uh and that's why I wanted to talk about it today, because I think I don't have a formula one, two, three, do this. No. I do have the formula for data standardization, but that's something we've been talking about before and we can talk more about. But I think just spend a minute, think about this if you are a marketing leader.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

How can you prepare your base layer?

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Yeah. Yeah. What is the base layer? And the base layer is not further channel optimization. The base layer is that we prove the overall objective commercial value of marketing.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Yeah, and can we report it upwards? Yeah. Yeah. On that note. On that note. On that note. Thanks. It was a pleasure seeing you.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Well, same to you, Caspar. Um and we'll soon be uh headed off to uh to Las Vegas. I'm looking very much forward about that.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Yes, so am I. Um what are you looking forward to the most?

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Actually, I think I'm one of the things that I'm most looking forward to is that this conversation actually.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

How it feeds. I think Adobe is very good at being up front with new tools and all these things. Um and I see every day companies valuing massively from it when they have the data foundations, right? So I looking I'm looking very much forward to talking about what is the difference between 50% data that you want in Adobe versus 100% data that you want in Adobe. Yeah. Because that's the the superstars. What are you looking forward to?

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Um I'm looking forward to seeing some uh uh old colleagues in the US. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh one of the few opportunities for actually you know flying over there and meeting them. Uh obviously it's also interesting to see which direction Adobe is taking it in, right? And um I think everyone has seen that Chantanu has announced that he's gonna be stepping down as the CEO, which made the stock drop. Um so that's gonna be his last summit as well. Um, I assume he's gonna stay until they found a replacement. So um so I think that's gonna be interesting as well. And I think you know, with somebody new coming in, I think Chantanu has been doing a fantastic job in in driving the vision. It's probably also a good time for him to step down. Yeah. Maybe he's seeing the painting on the wall that you're you're painting, and and I think you know, from an Adobe perspective, um with white coating, there's so many things that can replace a lot of the tools that they have they have and uh are making tons of money on. Um so they they need they need to come up with something else, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Sure, but this is like this is also the biggest opportunity that uh Adobe have had for years, if you ask me. Yeah, absolutely. So it's super interesting.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

So it's uh it really depends on how they're gonna be approaching it. So um yeah. So I'm hoping we're gonna be seeing some of you there.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Yes, yeah, and if uh you see us around, come say hi. Uh if you want to be part of the podcast, because we're gonna be recording at the summit. We plan on uh recording an episode at Summit. Exactly. Yeah, so if we can get some of the Adobe guys, uh we will get some of the Adobe guys, yeah, and we will get some of the the bigger companies there, hopefully, to give a comment. It's gonna be super exciting. There's been a lot of interest around it, so I'm I'm confident that uh we can bring cool people on. And if you are one of those, then uh tap us on the shoulder.