Apiary Digital® Founder and CEO Karen Amundson spoke at SMX West 2018, held in San Jose and hosted by Search Engine Land. Karen’s talk addressed the topic, “Man + Machine: The Exploding Brave New Universe For Today’s Online Marketers.” In preparation, Karen met with industry leaders Ben Bauermeister and Ty Martin to discuss the future of marketing in a world with increasing automation. In this episode, we’ll hear them discuss how new technologies impact marketers, including how AI will intertwine with our day-to-day work tasks, and how it can go wrong. Apiary consultant Connor Witt also attended the summit to ask fellow SMX attendees specific questions about bots and AI. Take a listen!
Full transcript (from transcription service)
Tess Barry: 00:00:03 – 00:00:29
Welcome to the Hive Is Alive – a marketing podcast for Apiary Digital®. I’m your host Tess Barry. This episode centers around the events of SMX West 2018 in San Jose, hosted by Search Engine Land. At this year’s summit, founder Karen Amundson gave a talk, “Man + Machine: The Exploding Brave New Universe For Today’s Online Marketers.” Hello Karen, can give a little more explanation on what that means?
Karen Amundson: 00:00:31 – 00:00:50
My thought is about how you, as a marketer, can keep your job once AI-driven technologies take over a lot of the things that we do today in terms of executing campaigns. My theory is that the role of marketers is to be calm decision agents.
Karen Amundson: 00:00:51 – 00:02:06
We have as marketers this incredible framework of skills, data and tools, but we could take that same framework and apply it to helping to solve larger business decisions. Now that said, I threw in a bit of a twist, which is that also the knowledge you can be used to amplifier assisting biases, and we essentially did the analysis. The first time around in late talk as lookalike modeling and the results with that. We actually missed out on a big opportunity because we were just amplifying biases from the current data set that we had and it took a human marketer to notice, wait a minute. Here’s this missed opportunity, and so it kind of illustrates the example of why you need humans to do the critical thinking and ask those tough questions. So we can do the role of marketers. Now is seeing. What’s not there, you know, what’s the thing we’re not doing? What’s the strategy we’re not taking what’s missing in the data? What’s what’s wrong with this analysis in this episode, we’ll be hearing Kerr and prepare for the summit by interviewing forward thinking, marketers spend our Meister anti Martin on their thoughts about automation, but first, if you’re, a team member Connor, which also attended this year’s summit to her thoughts on automation from telemarketers, by asking some very specific questions.
Connor Witt: 00:02:07 – 00:02:26
For this question, you will be answering whether this tweet came up from a bot or not. The tweet is B. to the stomach and the body will sleep per se? That’s a bot. It is in fact not a bot that comes from famed musician, John Mayer.
Connor Witt: 00:02:28 – 00:02:47
I am here with Danielle, who will be answering whether this tweet comes from a bot or not. The tweet is feed. The stomach in the body will sleep. What do you think Danielle. I’m gonna say this: tweet. Did not come from a bot.
Connor Witt: 00:02:49 – 00:03:40
Danielle, you are correct that comes from famed musician, John, Mayer, very insightful. Thank you, John Mayer. Thank you. John Mayer. Well, here’s some more from Connor and SMX attendees. At the end of the episode
Tess Barry
Now, we will hear Karen in conversation with Ben Burmeister
Ben
Hi I’m Ben and I’ve been working with Karen for awhile on Apiary sort of a serial entrepreneur, half my time is spent in big companies have started a little bitty companies anti Martin. An apiary consultant sure yeah well I started with digital marketing at Peter and then got even after that, and then, when independent, you know working with companies from other critical to get more from digital advertising. So that a little. Let me.
Tess Barry: 00:03:41 – 00:04:28
What about you know as we’re guiding this process? examples of automation or technological advancements gone wrong, yeah, so so, back in the early internet and he’s there was a photographic company that was doing one of the first web based catalogues of images and This was all put together and they were going to roll it out to the board members and they sent a link out consent. Okay, board members going to poke at it. You’ll have fun and one of the board. Members showed up the next day and was just appalled. He said this is the most horrible thing in the world and and she you know drilled into it, said you know I what happened you know we’ve we’ve tested, it seems to work pretty. Well, he had it in the search string, just putting the word content.
Tess Barry: 00:04:28 – 00:04:51
He wanted to search for content which makes very little sense. The content was hit the bus, the word back, then, you know try to still is today and and That search word went against the meditech spore, the image archive and One of those meditech is what’s disturbing contact.
Tess Barry: 00:04:52 – 00:05:46
So out of all the hundreds of thousands of images that they had catalog, he got to see the most disturbing. Is there, and, and and- and they had tag goes that way so that they would not show up unless they were specifically searched for so I I thought. That was great. You know it’s just one of those things where you think about how you’re approaching the problem and then how a stranger to the environment is gonna. You know, search for that same thing, yeah I mean I. Think it’s like an automation enable just around email marketing. You know so I’ve done a variety of things, really that trying to drum up business. Some of that is just trying to automate. You know the finding of read the right prospect how to contact them. You know what their email address and then having you know through the emails that are personalized in the right way, but also able.
Karen Amundson: 00:05:48 – 00:06:17
And okay, you know, you know who the other. All the young. Where I’m like, how can he leave? You get a list of company names and you can’t shoot in her field in here the email template, what company name and have it be like hi, you know, I was checking out the inter company name. You know website because the company name usually like ask me, though comma LOL, the.
Karen Amundson: 00:06:19 – 00:06:22
Wait, no one who that actually had a conversation with.
Tess Barry: 00:06:25 – 00:06:40
You’ve done a ton of just cool product development and you kind of see ways where maybe we could plug in marketing earlier into the process of product development or product roadmap works. Have you seen examples of that.
Karen Amundson: 00:06:41 – 00:07:24
Yeah it’s two sides of a coin. For me, one is if you’re doing innovative products, and one is if you’re doing, product extensions. If you are doing product stanchions, it is all about knowing how your user uses that product, what they’re interested in and where they expect the next iteration of it to go. So what are the parts of search marketing that allow us to identify that audience better? What are then, based on that search, the tenants of how you approach that market approach that audience that then makes it a more social endeavor if you’re coming up with something truly innovative and new.
Karen Amundson: 00:07:25 – 00:07:57
You know the best advice I got from The P. at one point was listen to what your colleagues and your potential customers have to say, but then weigh those comments completely independently and weigh them against your own vision. Don’t give up on the thing that you’re trying to achieve and you’ll you’ll come out with the right solution, yep and then another one that I can think of is there is a a big utility company and they try to innovate. More than I actually.
Karen Amundson: 00:07:58 – 00:08:27
So the way that they ended up doing this was by having it thank you, digital access or like either and different products that we thought could be useful, and then we just hit the start up full of just putting it out there and seeing how do we get and if it works, I mean it was clear that, like two of these execution work things out, you know people are actually looking for an old.
Karen Amundson: 00:08:29 – 00:09:12
Who. And like what we do with the rest of our time, some of these things are automated. It is your right, I feel like we’ll, still spend a lot of time. The ministry. Configuring them you know starting, then stopping them doing their out. You know that kind of a thing like we’ve seen already with just some of them did automation systems, but it seems like even when you’re managing automated bidding, you still end up going in there every day and dealing with gold making it thirty five. Eighty five. Ninety five dollars so yeah I thought that was kind of an interesting point.. Yeah I mean what will.
Karen Amundson: 00:09:15 – 00:09:50
Yeah one of the things you know that all came to mind when you increase the capacity or something in a lot of studies, show that it doesn’t actually increase the resource. doesn’t like you, hi it’ll it’ll become do. You know the phenomenon that, after buying more of a good thing,. If, if you know and with that we’re increasing, but. Bring a hard time. Her doctor that can consume more.
Tess Barry
00:09:51 – 00:09:56
At the core of this, for me it it has to be a.
Tess Barry
00:09:57 – 00:10:53
Overall social tide razor, meaning that this automation doesn’t just free up some people to do less and engage with society more. It has to lift everybody up at that level. So if some jobs are lost because they were easy to automate jobs, I’m happy to see those jobs go if there is ample and ready replacement set of work for the people that used to do that task. If we use this new technology to create a further divide between the rich and the impoverished I, don’t think we’ve taken any step forward. Thank you to Ben Bauer Meister anti Martin for talking with us for a copy of Karen slides from the S. cemex talk, email us at podcast at a digital dot com and now here from Connor back at cemex, asking workers what they think of AI companies.
Karen Amundson
00:10:54 – 00:11:29
We are here, live at S., M., X. west, with my very good close personal friend tailing Peterson. Halen I’m gonna ask you now to identify whether since time is an artificial intelligence company, a space mission or an electronica band since time. Sensetime I mean my my first thought was definitely a I but electronica band is coming and they’re pretty sure. It’s not a space mission, a mystical, my original intuition go with A. I. technology company. That’s a fantastic! Yes, you are correct.
Connor Witt
00:11:31 – 00:11:34
You are the proud new owner of an apiary digital sticker, yeah.
Connor Witt: 00:11:37 – 00:12:33
Hello, we are joined here today by Jenny, ranking Jenny is answering the question whether this name is an artificial intelligence, company or electronica band. The name is ecstatic. I’m gonna go with the and the electronica band. Jenny would be correct.. We are joined here by Matt is mobbed boy, an artificial intelligence company or a space mission. I’ll go for artificial intelligence company. You would be correct. We are to prove for two over here at the Rev M. boot. Good morning we’ve got Julie here with us. Hi I’m Julie fits so our question for you today. Is this a name and a I company or electronica band? The name is sub focus. That is an electronica bands. You are correct.
Karen Amundson
00:12:34 – 00:12:38
I’ve actually heard of some focus on out there, music.
Connor Witt: 00:12:40 – 00:13:07
We are live with Justin, who will be answering the question of whether deep Sentinel is an artificial intelligence company, a space mission or electronica band Justin? What do you think. I’m going to electronica band. Electronica band is incorrect. What we have there is an artificial intelligence company I wish you all the best next time.
Tess Barry: 00:13:09 – 00:13:32
Thank you for joining us. Please feel free to follow up with thoughts or questions by emailing us at podcast. If your digital dot com following two does that, if you’re aged at all and subscribe to our show. The high was a lives produced by a digital media. Collective editing, help from Holly hill to. Reduced by Miguel Bravo test, Karen am Anson and we will see you around the water cooler.
