Why AI Video Won’t Save Your B2B Video Strategy | B2B Podcast - Content Wars EP22

One of the things that we've seen is when we interview executives,
sometimes they may give a surface level answer, and the follow-up questions
is where the true gold comes out.
And I think that you're not gonna get that with AI scripting
something of half information about what it knows, because just like we're
sitting here and we're able to have a conversation about real life
examples and real life scenarios, we can link that to an experience,
to a solution, to, you know, some aspect of- What we've done,
our expertise, that, that just doesn't exist.
AI can't pull from, it can only pull from what it knows
or pull from what it's knows about the rest of the world,
right? What it learns.
And so I think that the, the tough part will be extracting
authentic, genuine content in a way that doesn't start to sound muddy
and like everyone else.
Somehow, we have made it all this time without recording a single
episode specifically about AI.
And it seems that every business conference that you look at, every
trade show, every everything, every single speaker is AI, AI, AI, AI.
And we have this platform yet we haven't discussed it, so I
think it's time that maybe we do.
Yeah, I think, I mean, as with anything that is the new
and trending topic, right?
It gets a lot of attention, but I think that also the
pace in which it's moving and improving is something kind of worth
hitting on because the thing that we keep hearing back and forth
is You know, oh, are you afraid of, you know, AI in
your business?
Are you afraid of AI in the video aspect?
Are you afraid of, you know, AI taking over the video aspect?
And I think there's a lot of different, angles that you could
look at that from, of how people are using it and, and
in what capacity that I think is worth kind of Jumping into,
but I think that the, the main thing is that it is
integrated into our lives in a variety of capacities, but the, the
reality is the way that it's implemented is gonna be kind of
the key difference here.
Yeah, absolutely, and I think some of the, the more recent examples
from our clients specifically of how they think that AI is used,
specifically when it comes to video or content in general, and the
way maybe it should be.
used in their business is a little bit different, and I think
that, that's really what I want to talk about and kind of
unpack that and look at kind of what's being requested and I
think is, is kind of on the minds of everybody about how
AI might fit into video specifically.
Debunk some myths and hopefully come up with a greater shared understanding
of where AI can add value and where it probably shouldn't be
used at all in a business.
Yeah, and I think those are great points to hit on because
at the end of the day, we're not against AI.
I'm not against it, I use it in a variety of ways
to make things better, to improve things, to help me in different
capacities, to streamline things.
So I think that there is a real opportunity there, but I
think as we're gonna kind of unpack here today that there Also,
limitations or guardrails of, of how you should implement it when it
comes to the video side of things.
Yeah, absolutely.
So let's, let's talk about just AI video in general.
I think, you know, when it first came out, you saw all
those examples, and I think the most classic one that everyone's seen
is the progression of Will Smith eating spaghetti, right?
It, like initially, it, it just looked damn ridiculous.
It, it didn't look real.
It, it was, it was awful.
It was cool at the time, it was like, It looked awful.
Fast forward to today, the most recent versions of Will Smith eating
spaghetti look like Will Smith eating spaghetti.
So, AI is impressive, there's, there's no doubt about that, it can
create. Components of content and help in numerous
ways, but when it comes to video specifically, actually generating that image,
it There's, there's no question, it is impressive.
It is impressive that it can do those things.
The question really becomes, how should that be used, or should it
be used?
Yeah, we, we hear this often of like, "Well, can't you just
use AI?
" Right?
It's kind of become, and we joked about this earlier, it's become
the Photoshop of today, right?
Where if there was ever a problem before in like a photo
or something, people would be like, "Oh, just, just Photoshop it, "
right? Like it was just this easy one-click solution to fixing the
thing that you either didn't do properly the first time or that
needed the attention after the fact.
And, and I think the reality is the way that we're seeing
Request it or think about it, isn't in the way that we
might think about it, it isn't in the way that, it aligns
with your work.
It, it's kind of like the, the easy button in some people's
perspective, and I think that, that may be flawed.
Well, and that, I, I'm gonna take that back to what you
just said.
Just Photoshop it, right?
That's kind of, in, in marketing circles, that's kind of the, the
joke, right?
It's like, oh, just fix it with Have to fix it before
we shoot it, you just fix it afterwards.
And that same mentality is coming into the realm when it comes
to AI of, "Oh, we don't have to have it look a
certain way, we don't need that person, we don't need this environment,
just, just make it up and it'll be fine.
" And the idea is that it will be the easy button
if AI can just do everything, then, then why go through the
effort? Why have the cost?
Why have the hassle of doing it?
You know, the old way, when AI can just do it for
us. But I think as we'll uncover, easy
doesn't necessarily mean good.
Yeah, so I think that the first place that would make sense
to start is, is looking at kind of the potential ways people
are implementing, right?
So you have your B2C brands or D2C brands, and then what
we're really focusing on for this conversation is more on the B2B
side, right?
And I think that maybe starting there and, and- Differentiating the-- this,
and I guess you could even put some B2B on the commercial
side into, into the first group, but break down kind of from
your perspective the, the difference of where that commercial production
and AI aspect stands versus more of how you are getting
requests for B2B video that implements or utilizes AI.
Sure. So The distinction of, we'll, we'll just simplify
it and say B to C and B to B, right?
In the B to C realm of things, generally, you're creating a
fake reality, you're creating ads, you're creating commercial content, you're creating something
that is staged to begin with.
You have a location, you have actors, you have props, you have
fantasy that you're creating, right?
So AI can create that fantasy.
In some instances, it creates it faster, it definitely creates it cheaper
in almost every instance.
I don't wanna say it creates it better, because in most cases,
it doesn't, but, it can create that type of content, and there's
a number of brands, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Guess,
that have created Commercial content with those tools and have
had a lot of backlash from that, where people came back and
said, "Hey, sure you can do it, but the big question was,
should you have done that?
It, it doesn't feel authentic, it doesn't feel human, it feels soulless,
lifeless. We hate it, and also maybe we hate you because you
used it, which is kind of the opposite point of advertising, right?
" So those are extreme examples of kind of where people have
pushed back on On that content, but there's also a lot of
examples where it maybe wasn't used as, as aggressively, where maybe people
didn't even notice or maybe didn't care.
So, on that side of things, you're, you're dealing with usually some
kind of emotional connection to a brand or a product or a
person or to something, so you're, you're literally dealing with people's emotions
and when you use fake reality to do that.
It's gonna come off sometimes as inauthentic.
I think there's a space for it in what I would say
the, the B to C production realm of things, and I think
you can get away with a more upfront use of AI visual
or video content in general in that space because you are manufacturing
a reality almost every time, not every time, but almost every time
your goal is gonna be, let's manufacture something that really doesn't exist
to create this brand connection of some sort.
Type, right?
When you get into the B2B realm of things, your landscape changes
a little bit.
You have a completely different audience.
we could argue over whether they are driven by emotion, the same
way a B2C audience is, but the reality is whether they are
or aren't driven in an emotional sense of things, they're many times
going to be looking for actual information, they're gonna be looking for
real experts, real expertise, real experience, real stories.
Reality is kind of the, the key word that usually surfaces in
a B2B context of things.
We're not looking for a fantasy, we're not looking for an untrue
story, we're looking for facts and figures and information that either
helps us do our job better, solves a problem that we have,
explains a new way to think about an old problem maybe, right?
So there's, there's this Difference of content in that on one side
of the things in the, the, the B2C world we're manufacturing a
reality, on the B2B world we're highlighting the reality itself.
So there's, there's a difference where- AI kinda could fit
in, and I don't think everyone is understanding that
distinction or that difference.
And, and honestly, what's, what's fueling my suspicion there are.
Some of the requests that we've actually gotten from some of our
prospects and even some of our clients.
Yeah, and I think that that is a really good point because
a lot of B2B sales is based on trust.
I trust that you're going to do the thing that you say
that you're capable of doing.
That can-- that trust can be established over, you know, months sometimes,
sometimes years, but also usually the person making the decision, they have
a certain responsibility to their organization of, "I'm gonna do- The best
job that I can to source this solution, and I want it
to be a good solution for what I'm doing.
Nobody wants to implement a, you know, half-baked product.
Nobody wants to implement something that, that feels like a bait and
switch of like, "Well, hold on, I thought I was getting this,
but in reality I got this.
" So there's a huge layer of trust that has to be,
in place in most B2B relationships, and if that is eroded, I
think that it's gonna come at a really big cost that people
may not Back to, oh, well, we used AI and video, and
then the outcome was completely different than what they expected.
I, I, that might be a, a bigger gap to bridge, in
the long term, but I think that that underlying problem will be
there if people implement it irresponsibly.
the one thing that you kind of talked about is some of
the requests that we get, and I think it would be good
to just share those because I think that while we talk about
this in theory, I think that seeing some of the requests come
in and then, you know, we Best approach for this.
Like, there's a difference between can I and should I.
Can I use AI to do this?
Maybe. Should I?
That's where we get into these conversations kind of behind the scenes
of should we do this?
And I think that there are implications, and I don't think that
people always see or think about those.
So I think breaking those down here would be good as well.
Let's start first with Where AI can definitely be used and be
beneficial when it comes to video, whether it's B2C or B2B, anything
that has to do with the pre-production process, the planning of the
video content itself, AI can help drastically.
That is not replacing the pre-production process, it's not replacing the strategists,
the copywriters, the experts that are needed to do those things, but
helping. Organize mass amounts of information to be processed
by those people, I, I think it's, it's hugely beneficial.
I mean, today we use it a lot with any customer that
has a concept about a video where we don't have to have
you sit down and write this super extensive brief and figure it
all out ahead of time.
We can literally just have a conversation about what you're trying to
accomplish, how you see that going, what you think the message is,
what you believe the angles to be, what you think the talking
points are gonna be, and what- You might want to show, and
we can just talk about it, and I think it's more authentic
that way.
It is more authentic that way.
Because instead of them giving you like the, their regurgitated public-facing answers
to that, you can have a conversation, you can dig deeper, and
you can actually uncover some gems in there that I think that
you might miss if you're just like, "Hi, fill out this, fill
out this questionnaire, fill out this intake document, fill out this, you
know, you know, complete these set of questions."
I think having that conversation allows And
into something that's actually deeper than what it would have been.
And that's exactly what happens.
We have a lengthy, in depth conversation, we give it to AI
and say, "Harvest the moments that make sense for the goal that
we're trying to achieve here, "and we're literally able to get exponentially
better answers because.
Shocker, nobody wants to fill out a questionnaire.
You ask a question and they answer it as briefly and succinctly
as possible, which means there's not a lot of information to go
off of.
Whereas if we have a conversation, there's a lot more information, and
AI is fantastic at sorting information.
You give it a two hour conversation and it will tell you
here are all the points in the categories that you want and
will actually help you plan those things.
So that's a fantastic use of AI in the video process that
we use all the time, where we start to lose.
With the AI situation and, you know, our prospects or our, our
clients in general is when they start to use it in a
way that doesn't necessarily add to the equation.
Perfect point.
I'm literally on the phone with a prospect and they say, "Hey,
we just hired a brand new advertising agency.
" They're putting our content on LinkedIn, they're putting our
content on Facebook, they're putting it on Instagram.
We are going to have all these paid campaigns, and they're telling
us that we need video content.
Great starting point.
Video on social?
Turns out it can perform well, especially in an advertising space.
Really? Yeah, it turns out.
But they have a problem.
They have thirty sub-brands that they need to serve, so the way
they're looking at it is, well, it would be impossible for us
to shoot video for thirty brands.
Just think about every video that a normal company would need to
create, they need to create it thirty times.
They're like, just cost-wise, this isn't going to work for us.
Our idea is if we create a system and we reuse like
components, you can get there.
Their idea was, "Well, what if we just use AI instead of
real footage?
". Okay?
Let's explore that.
So we, we dug in, looked at what they were trying to
accomplish, how they were planning to do it, and within five minutes,
we determined a major flaw, which was Their advertising agency is trying
to use user-generated content, which the entire purpose of
user-generated content is that it is authentic.
It's low production value, it's, it's, it's your customers literally using their
phones or whatever device to record themselves.
Telling their perspective, their stories, their truths to be used
in an authentic way.
And my question for them is, you, you, you literally want to-
Fake authenticity and you think that's gonna work.
And they didn't have a very good response to that, 'cause they,
they honestly hadn't even considered it.
They, they just wrote off that we could actually produce content, that
we could actually create a system.
It's just, oh, it's, it's the easy button, it's the easy button,
we, we can just put something into ChatGPT and it gives us
answers, and we heard it does video, so we think we can
just say, "Give us user-generated content.
And it will.
The scary part is, it will, it will give you user-generated content,
it'll say whatever the hell you want, it'll make Mrs.
Smith look however you want in whatever environment you want her to
be in, but it won't be real.
And users will see that, they'll feel it.
It's, it's not something you wanna fake.
Authenticity isn't to be faked.
I don't wanna say it's a slap in the face to the
users, but it, it's not just this instance, it's not just inauthentic.
My opinion, it's a lie.
That's a lie.
That, there isn't that person.
That person didn't say these things.
It's not backed up.
It's not like on TV and you see an actor portrayal of
like an actual scenario, like it's not that, it For the sake
of earning your trust, and then how real is that trust?
They're tricking people into trust.
Yeah. Like, I, I mean, unless you what, what you're gonna have
the disclosure, not real person, produced by AI at the bottom, which
they would never do, right?
So, I, I mean, our advice to them was, don't- Don't just
stop thinking about that.
Never think about that again.
Like you're gonna hurt yourself so quick if you even attempt to
do that.
And reality, could we do that?
Yes. It is possible for us to do that.
The answer's no, I'm not gonna be involved in that.
That's, that's a big no.
If you wanna figure that out, go ahead, it, it won't involve
us. So at the end of the day, for that particular client,
they ended up seeing that.
AI, user-generated content probably wasn't the best way to go.
they're kind of reorganizing, rethinking, hey, what is the way we could
actually produce real content, build systems, do it in
a legitimate way that isn't going to ruin our trust with our
thirty brands and their, their potential clients, which is great.
But not every company is gonna see the light and really understand
the flaws of AI, and, you know, some of them will, will
step in landmines as a result.
Yeah, and I mean, that's not the only example.
I know that, we've had lots of conversations behind closed doors of
these scenarios coming up, which is essentially what led to this, episode.
But we had a situation a couple weeks ago, similar situation, started
with a prospect, they had an idea, they were kinda talking through
it with us as we were strategizing like, "What And one of
the things that we learned in this process was that the manufacturing
process wasn't here in the United States, it was overseas, and we
said, "No problem, we've done this in the past, we can hire
a, another video company overseas to handle this and get b-roll of
your manufacturing floor.
That way when- We're creating the video, we can authentically link it
to your machines, your equipment, and show that and tell that story.
Their solution was, "Yeah, that's cute, but let's just use AI.
And at first glance, you might say, "You know, yeah, it's just
machinery, right?
" But if you back up and you look at one of
our clients that actually had one another deal from a video,
that client said, "Hey, I saw this video, I really wanna learn
more, I wanna fly out to this facility, and I wanna see
it, " and they walked the floor.
So now what we had to explain to this client was, you
can use AI to show your manufacturing floor and, and everything, and
that's definitely a possibility, but what happens when a prospect says, "Hey,
this sounds really good, I wanna see it, "and they're willing to
go to see it wherever it may be because this is a
big investment for them, and they actually go and it looks nothing
like that?
They're gonna feel deceived.
They're gonna say, "Well, hey, where's, you know, this, you know, fifty
thousand square foot building?
" It's like This is where we live, and it looks like,
you know, the, the back corner of, a warehouse.
And it's, it's like you have to be authentic, and even if
that doesn't mean, you know, it is the most beautiful, most polished,
most state-of-the-art result, I still think showing it in an authentic way
and showing kind of the best side of you is better than
showing a fake side of you.
Well, even in that example, I mean, there's, there's a number of
dangers obviously if your prospect wants to tour your facility after that,
they're gonna realize this isn't your facility, I don't think.
What, what went on here, right?
You've, you've lied to me, kind of.
But. AI's not perfect.
Even if it generated a good-looking image, is that your process?
Well, no.
Maybe they're looking at it being like, "Hey, that thing that's happening
in that video is, is not safe, or it's wrong, or it's
the wrong brand, the wrong process, the wrong timing, the wrong color,
the wrong something that's-- they're like, "Oh, that's not good.
Maybe they've been to other facilities and they understand how it works
or how it shouldn't work, and AI has depicted it in a
way it shouldn't work, so there's, there's dangers wrapped up into that
that honestly just aren't worth it.
It just, it doesn't make any sense.
That's a good point, and it makes me think about this client
that we were filming with, last year, and they were kind of
on the, the cutting edge, the innovative side of creating this new
category, and I just think back to that and I'm like, there's
no way AI It was new, it was unique, the way that
they approached it, the way that they thought about it, the way
they engineered it, like it was all unique to them.
So how do you put that in AI?
Like, yes, you can give it renderings, and yes, you can give
it images and, and all sorts of things, but like at the
end of the day, if you want to showcase who you are
and your work, doing it in an authentic way is gonna have
a cost.
That's really the main point.
showcasing who you are, the work that you do, who you do
it for, and what results that you get.
That's, that's most of the B2B content ecosystem, and none of those
things really lend well To AI production, I mean, you
want to hear from real experts with experience.
Those aren't AI characters, those are the people on your team that
are leading the charge of your company.
That can't be faked with AI.
Let me restate that, that shouldn't be faked with AI.
You can fake that with AI if you want to, I think
that's a really, really short-sighted bad idea, but you could do it.
I highly advise against it.
Secondarily, the "what you do, " your product, your service, your people,
your facilities, is that really what you wanna fake?
What, what do you think you're saving?
You're, you're saving a production day?
To produce a bunch of AI slop that kind of looks like
your people or kind of looks like your facilities or kind of
looks like your process?
What, what was the point?
What did you really gain?
The risk isn't worth the supposed reward of it
was easy or cheap.
Your customers are- Are you gonna AI generate your customer stories?
Forget about the authenticity of what the customer's saying, but just their
environments, their business, you're gonna lie to- Customers who look like them,
that know that business better than you do, that these are real
environments, they're gonna pick that out pretty quick.
Not to mention.
What the customer's saying is now not only not real, you made
it up.
Your, your customer testimonials now say, "This was the absolute best experience
I've ever had in my entire life.
I would never buy from anyone ever, ever again.
" Like, just, that's not the way a customer talks.
Because the customer isn't focused on you, they're focused on them.
They're telling their story.
I don't know about you, but I'm not real interested in sitting
down and listening to a robot tell me about its story of
what happened and how our product fit into its fake life So
in the B two B content realm of things, it doesn't fit.
You need real experts, real products, real customer stories.
A I isn't real, the reality or absence thereof, makes A I,
in my opinion, a non contender when it comes to the majority
of b two b content.
So I'm sure that there's somebody listening that is playing devil's advocate,
so I will play devil's advocate for them.
What if their perspective is, "Hey, you know what?
My executives are really busy.
I'm gonna create an AI clone of them with their permission through
some of these softwares that allow it.
We're gonna clone them out, we're gonna clone their likeness, we're gonna
clone their, you know, voice, and then I can put text in
there of things that they may say or have said or want
to say.
They can just send me an email with, with the text, and
I'm gonna start, using this AI avatar of them to say and,
and do the things that they would say and do if we
were actually on camera anyway.
But I'm gonna- Save the hassle of trying to organize all of
that on a production day.
And I think that unfortunately is a real situation that marketing
teams are considering right now because, I'm not even gonna blame the
marketing team here, I'm gonna blame the executive team.
The executive team, not everywhere, but in a lot of companies, doesn't
make the time for marketing, doesn't make the time for content creation.
So as a marketing team, they're sitting there going, "I can't get
my executives to do X, Y, or Z.
" What if I just make new executives to do it, right?
That's the big plan.
I would strongly encourage you to reconsider that position
because of that authenticity factor.
It's going to come out.
AI will get better, it will eventually 100% look like a human,
and even when it does, that's not going to be what you
want to do.
You want to have a real human with real speech patterns, real
flaws, real experiences, real reality that you are able to share, and
I don't think the solution is.
Well, we're just gonna clone out Jim because he won't get in
front of a camera.
I think the conversation is, "We need to have a conversation with
Jim, "and if marketing can't do that, they need to find out
who can.
My recommendation is that marketing.
Elevates themselves to be able to have that conversation with that executive,
because at the end of the day, the executive team in general,
one of their primary jobs is to represent the company, and the
content itself is only a way to represent the company.
So if Jim refuses to be on camera, refuses to be involved
in content, refuses to do any of those things.
I don't think an AI avatar is the answer, I think we
need to reset Jim's mentality around the content,
why we're creating it, what its purpose is, and what specifically we
need his involvement to be.
And there's a lot of value in what you just said as
far as how to approach that.
One of the things that we've seen is when we interview executives,
sometimes they may give a surface level answer, and the follow-up questions
is where the truth is.
True gold comes out, and I think that you're not gonna get
that with AI scripting something of half information about what it knows,
because just like we're sitting here and we're able to have a
conversation about real life examples and real life scenarios, we can link
that to an experience, to a solution, to, you know, some aspect
of what we've done, our expertise that, that just doesn't exist.
AI can't pull from, it can only pull from what it knows
or pull from what it's knows about the rest of the world.
Right? What it learns.
And so I think that the, the tough part will be extracting
authentic, genuine content in a way that doesn't start to sound muddy
and like everyone else.
I told you earlier, there are videos that I will see on
TikTok or on Instagram now.
Where somebody is positioning themselves as an expert, as a coach, as
a thought leader, as somebody that really knows something, and about usually
Twenty percent into the video, depending on how long it is, I
can tell that it's scripted and they're reading it, and they didn't
write the script, that it's from AI, because of the speech patterns,
because of the way that they frame things, because of the way
that they are, are positioning it, and it's really- Disingenuous.
I will, like, "Oh, I was gonna call you."
That's the real person.
Yeah. That's the real person reading an AI script.
Right. Now, now imagine an AI person reading an AI script.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so, I mean, it, it just, it's something that you have
to be aware of and you have to consider because honestly, it's
only going to get worse or better, depending how you look at
it. Getting better might make it worse.
The quality is going to get better, but that will cause the,
the adoption to be Going
to be this, this challenge where good brands, successful brands
are going to see this as, "Hey, we, we need to create
content, we're gonna create content, we can use AI to help us
scale content without creating the content with AI.
" And they're gonna leverage that, and they're going to widen the
gap between those who are just taking the shortcut.
I saw somebody the other day that was, Publishing videos
on YouTube that were a hundred percent, like, not even faking it,
but a hundred percent AI videos that were talking about medical
things. Of like, here's, here's what this does in your body, and
here's what it doesn't.
It wasn't really just like educational, because it led to buy this
product from us.
Imagine if Gary Breck would try to take his expertise and put
it into an AI character and educate people.
Like, it loses its authenticity, it loses, like, I'm not gonna trust
this AI avatar to tell me about these medical things and then
go buy something because this AI avatar said it.
It's not Gary.
Yeah. You, you trust Gary.
Yeah. He, he is- An expert in your opinion in, in this,
this conversation, replace him with anyone, replace him with Steve.
The big question is, who the hell is Steve?
Right? No one knows.
Now we're replacing with someone that doesn't even have a name.
It's a fake person with- Where did the information even come from?
Did it come from Gary?
There's no source of the information, therefore it can't be trusted.
Automatically, not authentic, not trustworthy, move on.
One interesting point that you, you touched on, but you didn't elaborate
on, is the, the idea of really using AI for any
of your executives and, and using it To think for them, and,
and not getting to that depth of information that you're talking about.
To your point, when you sit down with somebody that has real
information, real expertise They're able to go deep, they're able to tell
you things that, in a lot of cases, maybe only they know.
Turns out, that's the value.
They might be the only person in the world that have, have
ever had that experience that can share that.
A I doesn't know that, A I can't do that, A I
has to go to the middle point of all the information that
it has.
And if your team is the leading team, the most experienced, the
people with the most expertise, AI can't be them.
If you were able to successfully clone all of your people, you
would still not be successful because you're not able to actually extract
real information, real expertise, or anything unique.
What you've done is you've made all of your executives look like
a mediocre version.
Of people in your industry with a moderate level of understanding of
what they're talking about, and if that's how you want to portray
your executive team.
I, I think maybe you should, retire from marketing because that isn't
going to benefit the company.
Oh yeah, there's, there's no differentiation in that.
When, I know that when we first started, I'll use the word
playing with AI, one of the things that it kept trying to
do is, is label us or, or categorize us as, as kind
of traditional production, and, and we actually had to fine tune that
over time to be like, no, like we think about it differently,
we approach it differently.
And, and those differentiation factors are why people will hire us.
And I think that it's like that with any company.
I think about the, the number of valve companies in Houston, right?
And it's like if you ask AI to give, you know, any
kind of output related to that, it's like, it's gonna take the,
the aggregate of its knowledge and here you go, like, here's the
output. And I think that, it loses that aspect that most
organizations have worked really hard to build and protect over the years.
And, and it isn't just that the audience is gonna notice it,
and, you know, it may reduce authenticity, even the platforms the content
comes out on are starting to even give users ways to flag
it, right?
Like, LinkedIn just added the option to literally flag content
as AI slop, and there is, there is a lot of AI
content on LinkedIn and every social platform for that matter, but they
literally have a button where you can now- Click, I believe this
is AI slop and they call it AI slop, right?
It's, it's kinda cool, but the reality is like the platforms are
giving people tools to call out.
Inauthentic content.
So in the B two B space, guess what one of your
main content platforms is?
LinkedIn. That platform is giving their users, your
potential customers, a way to call you out.
That you're creating crap, like, might not be a good look for
you to continue to create crap.
Yeah, and we don't know how that's gonna evolve over the next
few months, years, you know, to, to figure out is there going
to be some kind of, you know, reputation or some kind of
score or some kind of something that really that begins to impact
you of, of, you know, the authenticity side of things.
Ironically on, on the personal side, you know, I'm heavily involved in
the baseball community and during tryout season.
All the teams put out flyers of tryout times, dates, locations, and
everything else, and I would bet seventy percent of them are using
ChatGPT because every flyer looks the same, and people are starting to
like make fun of these other organizations where it's like, "You can't
take the time to create something that invites a family into your
organization to be-- that we're trying to invest our time, our energy,
our money, our, you know, child's development into, like, you just run
this through ChatGPT and it just spits something out.
Like- But they all look the same, and it, it, it is
literally muddying the water of like, okay, like, who's, who's serious about
this? Who's authentic about this?
Like, if that's your approach to how you position your team, what's
it gonna be like when I actually get inside your organization?
And, and that's, I mean, that's youth baseball.
Like, we're talking about an, a B2B organization where people are making
huge investments into things.
I think, you know, the same sentiment stands.
Yeah, I mean, the exact same feeling that, that you have, the
same emotion of, you're unwilling to take the time, a little
bit of time, invest the time in.
Doing it right for the people that are gonna give you attention,
gonna give you money, right?
Gonna give you their, their, their time.
The same thing is true for your prospects, your customers, they're, they're
going- There's this stuff out here.
They didn't care enough about me to give me real information or
useful information.
They're checking a box.
They're checked out.
If they're checked out, maybe I just go find a company that's
not checked out, that cares about me, that's willing to invest.
In the relationship that we're gonna have, by the way, a relationship
between people, not a person in some AI nonsense that, that, you
know, was your executive team on, on video, on video.
I think the point that we need to get to is, is,
is AI isn't bad, and right now we're doing a very good
job of shitting all over AI that we- That, that isn't the
purpose. The purpose is, at least currently, there is a time and
a place to use it, and, you know, there, there are good
uses. We already touched on kind of some of the pre-production stuff.
There's some things in post-production that, that you can use it for.
for, for instance, we had a scientist on that was talking about
something very specific, and it had facts and figures, and he was
reciting them off the top of his head, and he messed up
a couple of them.
He transposed some numbers, and it We're
gonna have to cut that 'cause it's not, it's not correct, right?
We were able to use AI, clone the voice out, and use
AI to correct the inconsistencies and have the correct facts and figures
in what he was saying.
Now, are we being inauthentic by doing so?
No, it is a clone of his voice that is probably used
in. Less than one percent of a video that's just giving the
actual, authentic, correct numbers that he meant to say, had he said
the right numbers?
It would have been what he said.
After the fact, post-production, we realize these aren't right.
We can take corrective action to make him say the right thing,
replace little pieces of the speech to make it correct, actually.
I don't think that's wrong.
I don't think that's inauthentic in any way.
You had a real scientist at a real place telling a real
story with real facts and figures, he just didn't remember them.
Jumbled them up a little bit, yeah.
Yeah. I think, I think that's perfectly fine and, and useful.
I also think, and this happens from time to time, and I,
I don't love it because I'm somewhat of a video snob, but
there are times that you simply can't get an image, you just
can't get it.
Maybe you can't go there, maybe it's inside a machine, maybe it
doesn't exist yet.
There are reasons why sometimes you can't get it, and the default
answers will just use "stock.
" stock has come a long way recently.
Most of it still kinda sucks.
It, it doesn't feel like what you would really shoot.
It actually feels kinda soulless and purposeless.
It kinda feels like AI, in my opinion.
So in those instances, if you can't find the stock that
you would use, if you can't find that image that you have
it in your mind but you just can't find it, could you
create? That three, four second clip of that
piece that would have been stock in AI, potentially, I'm open to
that. That could, depending on how it's used and how it's put
in included in the project, that could be a great use of
AI, as long as you're not relying on that piece.
As a critical part of the authenticity of the video, and it's
more to illustrate something that you're talking about, I think that's fine,
and probably in most cases, is a good use.
Of video when it comes to even B2B content.
Yeah, I mean, I think all the, the use cases that you
just described are, are examples of organizing things or making things,
you know, easier as far as like a process more efficient, or
implementing things from a fixing minor things, like they're supplemental, right?
They're, they're not the focus and you're not doing it at scale.
And I think that's the big difference is like Is there a
time and a place?
Yeah. Will this conversation change in six months?
Yeah, it'll change in six days.
But will it change and evolve?
Yes. But at the time of recording this, like, I can't find
a- Good authentic solution to kind of the problems that we've talked
about today of using AI to create B2B content at scale.
If you use it in a workflow or you use it as
part of, you know, fixing minor things, like I, I do think
that there is a time and a place for that.
If you're doing it every time, it starts to, you know, beg
the question of how did we get here?
But I think that the reality is that people are people and
they're always going to crave a human connection, and if we dilute
that or distort- That it's going to be really muddying essentially the,
the viewpoint from the prospect, from the customer, from even internal employees.
Yeah. I, I think- At the end of the day, the big
takeaway here is authenticity is your friend, and prioritize
it over easy or over cheap.
There's going to be a divide.
There's gonna be companies that don't do that.
There's gonna be companies that don't prioritize authenticity and say, "I want
easy, I want cheap.
" And they'll go down that rabbit hole, and they'll create fake
executives, they'll create fake environments, they'll create fake processes, they'll create fake
customer stories, and somewhere along the line, their customers are gonna look
up and say, "Everything that they tell us isn't real.
Everything that they show us is fake, every benefit that's presented isn't
authentic. We're gonna go look for something different.
You don't wanna be in that crowd, you wanna be in the
crowd that is probably going to end up in the minority of
Our executives take the time to speak to our market and share
real expertise.
Our product team and service teams take the time to show how
we work and why we work that way and where we work
and how we do it and how it's different.
Our customers take the time to tell their stories about the real
impacts that we have in their lives.
Everything we do is real, it's authentic.
Is it easy?
Not always.
Is it cheap?
No. But it's real, and it has value, and that's the big
point. So, the choice is- Be authentic and tell true
stories to real people from real people, or go
ahead and create whatever fantasy you want, but don't be surprised.
When your market doesn't accept it.