Join us on our inaugural episode, where we delve into the fascinating origin story of this groundbreaking initiative. In this episode, you'll discover the spark that ignited our own Marketing AI Council at a global marketing organization at a B2B software company. Hear firsthand from the pioneers who saw the potential of AI to revolutionize marketing and took action. From pilot project to industry force, witness the council's journey from a small experiment to a crucial resource for the global marketing organization. We'll also delve into the obstacles faced and the victories celebrated in building a community dedicated to responsible and impactful AI adoption. The whole team is here for episode one. You'll hear from Jessica Hreha, Maila Ruggiero, Yadin Porter de Leon, Suzanne Ambiel, and Michelle Moore and they take you through the details of how they got the Marketing AI Council Strated.
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AI Edge Podcast - Transcript
EP 001 - Origin Story
Jessica Hreha, Maila Ruggiero, Michelle Moore,
Suzanne Ambiel, Yadin Porter de León
- Edit v1 -
00:00:02:00 - 00:00:22:22
Yadin
Welcome to the first official episode of the Marketing Insiders podcast, a show dedicated to sharing insights, strategies and experiences from a group of experts who have successfully implemented A.I. Solutions in a large enterprise B2B software company. Specifically, when the context of global marketing and how that effort can connect to sales, a product and the rest of the business.
00:00:23:00 - 00:00:51:20
Yadin
This podcast aims to help other marketers navigate the complexities of scaling our tools within the organizations. I'm doing Puerto de Leone and I'm joined by all the other amazing founders and host of the show who will be on this journey with me and those who are listening. And we're going to be sharing our lessons learned best practices around implementing marketing at scale, providing guidance to other marketers on strategies, governance, change management, tech stacks and more, and inspiring marketers to embrace A.I. to enhance capabilities and performance.
00:00:51:20 - 00:01:12:21
Yadin
So let's go around the cast of characters that we've got here, those who listen to Episode Zero. Thank you so much. You got a sense of where we came from, who we are. We're not getting too deep into everyone's background, but if you want to know more about each person, where they came from, what their thoughts are with their into, go back to episode zero, the very first intro episode, listen to that one and you'll get more of whatever anyone is all about.
00:01:12:21 - 00:01:19:00
Yadin
So with no further ado, you're going to go around the room and talk to each of the people who are on the show today and just do a quick intro. Michelle Intro yourself.
00:01:19:00 - 00:01:35:00
Michelle
Hi, Michelle Moore here. Glad to be here today.
Yadin
Excellent, Jessica.
Jessica
Thanks, Jess Hreha. I realize I put a name to my career pattern in that I'm an entrepreneur who gets shit done. Am I allowed to say that?
00:01:35:02 - 00:01:51:08
Yadin
Yeah, you're allowed to say that. For those of you who can't see because you're just listening the podcast. Jessica's wearing her do epic shit t shirt that you just fabulous. Yes. Yeah. Which is fabulous. It's on her LinkedIn profile as well. So check that out.
00:01:48:09 - 00:02:10:02
Jessica
Shout out to news grad who has a different name now. They gave away bags at content Marketing World years and years and years ago and I loved it so much it became my thing. That's fabulous. And you're doing it. Yeah. And we're going to talk about one of those epic things here on the show today. So excited to be here.
Yadin
Maila.
00:02:03:00 - 00:02:38:14
Maila
Hi, everyone. My name's Milo Ruggiero. A lot of people fumble my name, so I'll just help you out real quick. It's actually spelled m a i l a That's one reason their LinkedIn profile too. For Milo, you'll see the A's in parentheses just to highlight that. It's like you were born to do this. It was fate.
Yadin
All right, Suzanne.
00:02:24:14 - 00:02:55:12
Suzanne
Hey, how you doing? Hey, everybody. Nice to see you, Suzanne and Bill. I'm here as part of this illustrious group, and I will label myself the wonk, the nerd of the group, getting into the engine of AI and the open source and the who and the what and the how.
And yeah, I like peeling onions, so I'm here to peel some onions with you all.
Yadin
That's why you're here, Suzanne. You are here as the official onion peeler for all things that need peeling. That's why we're here. So we're really glad to have you. We're going to get to the center of all this eventually. Yes. And Suzanne, last, we're going to get there.
00:02:55:14 - 00:03:16:07
Yadin
Fabulous. All right. So this episode, origin story, really talks about something that is been sort of a highly discussed topic at the shows that each of you have been to at virtual events, other content you guys have created, because a lot of organizations are really just getting ready to get ready for how to build teams, how to build processes, how to do all the stuff around generating ice.
00:03:16:07 - 00:03:33:20
Yadin
So we found with the best way to really kick off the show is to just talk about how we got started, how it all began and how we did it. And that is a much larger topic, of course, that's going to be dug into in many different ways throughout the episodes to come. But today we're really just going to talk about origin stories to see this is how it can happen organically.
00:03:33:20 - 00:03:56:07
Yadin
It doesn't have to happen as a big proposal where you get budget and everything is all your ducks in a row. You can start in various different ways and the way it's going to start, for those of you listening can be different than the way it started for us, but we're going to through our journey. And so I'm going to go and start out with Jessica and Mila, because I think it's really interesting the way that you guys just kind of were there in the beginning, kind of kicking around.
00:03:56:07 - 00:04:11:12
Yadin
I mean, this was all kind of in our heads. We all November 2022 came around, creativity was released. This is all kicking around our heads. But it really didn't happen in organization. The spark wasn't lit until I feel like Jessica you, Myla and others kind of lit it. How did that spark start? When did that happen?
00:04:11:12 - 00:04:47:04
Jessica
Yeah, I'll back up a little bit to the Fall preach activity. Our PLG team was actually trialing Jasper. They're a start up, scrappy sort of team and they had to produce more content faster. Some of the PLG elements came onto my team and so we had an opportunity to broaden that use case. And again, from last episode, if you weren't listening, I ran Global Demand Content strategy, so we were kicking around a use case where if we could just shorten the production timeline of our campaign copy, allowing us to spend more time editing.
00:04:47:05 - 00:05:12:03
Jessica
Therefore improving the quality of our content, subsequently improving performance and getting out our campaign packages to our stakeholders faster, it would be a huge win win for us, right? So we started trialing that out in Jasper and ultimately to get leadership to approve it, I had to sign up for a 50% reduction in agency fees was ultimately how it sold up to the senior leadership team.
Yadin
I just let you know, like others, you know, you're not going to get that deal from Jasper. Sorry, everybody.
00:05:12:05 - 00:05:32:03
Jessica
We spent a lot of money with agencies. No disrespect to agencies out there, but who'd take a really long time to create content so long that we weren't able to actually spend any time editing it because we were so behind in our production timeline.
00:05:32:05 - 00:05:50:03
Yadin
I think everyone experiences that. We're like just to get a meeting started maybe two weeks before you even meet to begin to talk about the concept that is, the struggle is so real and you can collapse that timeline, that agency timeline. You actually, like you said, just you get better quality stuff, so please continue. But I just I just want to highlight that because that is a problem for everybody.
00:05:50:05 - 00:06:10:20
Jessica
Yeah. I mean, so we thought if we brought some of that in-house, we could drastically shorten it. And in fact, one of the examples is from six weeks to one day for social ad copy completion. And because of that, we're saving money that we can then reinvest into our campaigns. So that's what we started. We started onboarding. That was eventually how we got everybody on board.
00:06:10:20 - 00:06:38:06
Jessica
It included it was a three month, four months long process that we got in really quickly because it was so new probably. And meanwhile, in November, of course, Chachi beat happened while we were already in the process of doing all this and under way with this pilot. So I want to flip to Miley because at the exact same time Myla was having similar experiences learning about Jenny AI and then we'll talk about how it came together.
Yadin
And I like this parallel processing.
00:06:38:08 - 00:07:01:11
Maila
The timing couldn't have been more perfect for this, so I heard about Chatty for the first time a couple of weeks after it was released. So this was like mid-December, and I actually heard about it through my younger sister who is in high school at the time, and she had been coming home and raving about this new viral tool that everyone at school was using.
00:07:01:11 - 00:07:19:19
Maila
And I had never heard of it. And, you know, as the oldest sibling who actually works at a large enterprise in tech, I certainly wasn't going to let her outshine me in the tech savviness department. I mean, we are nine years apart, so I ended up taking it for a spin and I just started interacting with it and asking it to four questions.
00:07:19:19 - 00:07:41:14
Maila
It's kind of like the start for everyone. I quickly realized just how versatile and powerful it really was, and I could feel that we were just on the brink of something huge. And it was definitely going to transform marketing, which was what I had committed to years of the start of my career too. I'm like, Oh shit is everything is going to get tossed out the window.
00:07:41:16 - 00:08:09:15
Yadin
What's going to happen to us? I just want to say how amazing would it be if I had that in high school? That would be so great.
Maila
I know school just gets easier and easier.
Jessica
Well, and I will say Myla has an innovative spirit built in. When I first met her, actually, because technically we never really work together, but we met at our customer Technical Advisory Board at VMware Explorer the summer before, and she was the one who was innovating and trying things out in the metaverse, which we won't get right, but just that's in her core. So it's no surprise, Myla, that you really jumped into this.
00:08:09:15 - 00:08:25:12
Maila
Yeah. So for me it was like from that moment forward, the writing was on the wall. I knew I wanted to position myself at the crossroads of A.I. and marketing, and so I spent the entire Christmas break just devoting all of my time. I had no life because I just wanted to learn about this stuff.
00:08:25:12 - 00:08:45:15
Maila
Being a sponge, taking in as much information as I could. And then I stumbled upon a gold mine, which is the Marketing Institute. So we'll definitely talked about them a lot on this show. They were super important to my learning journey as well as the rest of the council. Tons of resources, podcasts, courses, certifications and truly are what inspired me to be a catalyst.
00:08:45:15 - 00:09:12:07
Maila
And I can't talk about the Institute without talking about Paul Reiser, one of the founders. So it weren't for him. Maybe I'd still be here, probably not. But he really helped revealed to me, like early on that you don't have to be a data scientist to be able to implement this technology successfully. And then knowing that most marketers coming from a non-technical background were starting out at the same point, it made the opportunity that much more ripe for me to make it a defining moment in my career.
00:09:12:07 - 00:09:43:02
Maila
So that's kind of how it unfolds. And I knew Jessica because we had met previously at one of our conferences and was like, Hey, do you know about this? Are we doing anything? And how can I get involved? Because I'm super passionate about it right now.
Jessica
Let me add in a couple of things here, because, one, while the rest of us are on holiday break trying not to think about work, I just want to double click on the fact that Myla took trainings and webinars the entire two weeks and she paid for the piloting course from the Marketing Institute out of her personal dollars. Like she was just that interested in it.
00:09:43:02 - 00:10:05:13
Maila
Well, I did reach out to Paul and he gave me a little discount, so it wasn't that bad. Yeah.
Yadin
Nice. See, we got to we've definitely got to have Paul on the show. Let's let's book him. Let's book online, reach out to Paul, send the text message.
Suzanne
So while you're doing all that well, Jessica, you're spinning wheel on the Jasper thing while you're out there kicking over rocks and you're learning stuff.
00:10:05:15 - 00:10:35:12
Suzanne
I'm out there roaming around because I'm just that type of person just and I just stumble upon. I don't know why I was looking for this, but I found this article and it quoted Jasper and it referenced VMware. And I went, Holy shit, somebody is doing something with I somewhere in the company. And at the same moment we had an inquiry coming in from one of our product marketing teams out in the business unit saying, Hey, we want to use AI to write all of our blogs.
00:10:35:15 - 00:11:00:14
Suzanne
Are you guys in branches with that? And my manager went, Oh, what the hell.
Jessica
I could see like fire coming out of Suzanne's ears right now.
Suzanne
Great. Let me let me look into this. I've just found this article and I went into sleuth mode like, I'm going to find out who this person is that's doing this. I share and I'm going to talk to them.
Yadin
Ha, ha. You guys and Brad, chill with that. And every organization has had this moment.
00:11:00:14 - 00:11:32:14
Suzanne
Yeah. And so I start no, I'm just like, I'm scared to death. Here's why. My introduction to AI happened in 2021.
Yadin
Did you have the idea of like, you're going to shut it, You're going to shut it down? I'm shutting down.
Suzanne
You guys hadn't even heard about it. So I'm sitting in September 2021 at the Linux Foundation Leadership Summit, and the keynote is all about AI generative AI and the risks involved.
00:11:32:16 - 00:11:50:02
Suzanne
And it was Brian Christian, and he wrote a book called The Enlightenment Problem. I'm on the freaking edge of my seat. Oh, my God, what the hell is this? I'm just like, it's kind of like in my presence. And so when I stumble on it a year later that someone's doing it, I'm like, okay, I got, I got to go find out.
00:11:50:04 - 00:12:13:19
Suzanne
So rummage around all the systems in VMware and I'm search and search and I find Jessica's name attached to an I.T. ticket in some obscure system somewhere. And that's when I pinged you, Jessica, Ping, Hey,
Jessica
I was wondering how you got my name because the email was scary was Yeah, well, anytime you get an email from brand, it's probably a little scary.
00:12:13:21 - 00:12:33:14
Jessica
Yeah. I'm like, Are you the one? Well, well, that's always so funny, too, because I'm going to take issue with that. That was so funny because I hadn't worked with Suzanne before. In the email. We have a copy of the email here up on our screen. It says, I'm wondering if you are the source for the potential or actually use Jasper to generate marketing content.
00:12:33:14 - 00:13:05:05
Suzanne
And I think it was the word source, but I was like, Who was the source? I got it approved, I swear. Yes, we've uncovered you. The dark underground operation has been uncovered. Yeah. So that's how I stumbled upon it. And Suzanne's here to expose. Yeah, I was working with Michelle at the time, and Michelle was starting to dread what we call explore season because Michelle's responsible, along with a few others, for reviewing all the content that's produced and presented at Explore to make sure it's on brand.
00:13:05:07 - 00:13:25:21
Suzanne
And it's such a slog, right? Michelle is like the most soul sucking type of work you can do. And I was thinking at the time, maybe there's a way we can get a bot to do the heavy lifting so that we don't have to spell check, we don't have to brand. And so that's where my interest was. So Michelle, you want to leap in?
00:13:25:23 - 00:13:55:02
Michelle
Yeah. So thanks to Suzanne and her sleuthing. I quickly became aware that Jasper was being used and my initial inclination was to, of course, find out more about it and see how we could possibly leverage it to generate content that's potentially even better, more consistent and on brand. And so my initial contribution was, okay, we need to find out how it's being used and then put some guardrails and some guidelines in place.
00:13:55:04 - 00:14:12:04
Michelle
It wasn't so much that we wanted to shut it down. We wanted to first make sure that we were using it in a responsible and safe fashion, which we were, and then make sure that we could get some communications out as soon as possible to those who are either interested in using the new tool that we were onboarding.
00:14:12:10 - 00:14:32:19
Michelle
It was still in the pilot phase at that moment, but more importantly, get a communication out company wide around the general use of genitals. Because Chatty Betty had really got fired. We knew people were experimenting with it, so we couldn't just stand by and wait for our staff or anybody from the outside to come in and tell us what to do.
00:14:32:19 - 00:14:57:14
Michelle
We're like, okay, we need to provide some guidance right away. And it can't just be don't use it. It's got to be use it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's got to be do, do this, not this. So that's yeah, that's kind of what initially caught my attention.
Suzanne
And when Michelle and I were sleuthing around, I discovered a whole cadre of people that were off doing all kinds of things on chat IPT using a personal email address but using company information.
00:14:57:14 - 00:15:19:10
Suzanne
And that's when I came back to Michelle said, We got to get something out there as quickly as possible to help people make smart decisions about what to use, how to use it and when to use it. And that's, I think when I went back to you, Jessica, and said, hey, we need to start providing some guidance to more than just marketers on this because it's getting a little sketch.
00:15:19:12 - 00:15:37:14
Jessica
Yeah, you guys had started on your brand P.O.V., which I love, because you took it to words to kind of share how you felt about it. The opportunity. And I remember it was really early too, and a lot of the concerns you guys had, Jasper actually overcame from a security perspective or from brand voice and things like that.
00:15:37:15 - 00:15:56:13
Jessica
But my life I'd seen a LinkedIn post from you on, and that's how we connected the dots there. And you had mentioned you had been talking to some other people who were diving in on your team and on the search team, and then Brand is having this very energetic swirl. Can we talk about the email where you guys were also scared?
00:15:56:16 - 00:16:22:07
Suzanne
Oh yeah. Secretly terrified and mortified. Feared right at a job and was at that moment. I think that was my comment. Yeah, that was me. Me? Yeah.
Jessica
So I felt like we just needed to all come together. And even if it was like a therapy session to come together to figure out these uncharted waters, what does this mean for certainly our company, for our teams, for our jobs as individuals.
00:16:22:09 - 00:16:39:01
Jessica
And it must have been because I did read Paul's book over winter break, I had an agency friend actually gift it to me. So when we talk about stars aligning and fate here, right. I had a holiday sort of breakfast meeting with an agency friend. We were on the same board and at the end of it he gave me Paul's book.
00:16:39:04 - 00:17:00:03
Jessica
Wow. And so this first meeting, we're looking at it here on our screenshot to it does say brainstorm, but it was called marketing counsel. But also the first bullet point says, is this a good idea and are you interested? Right. So we wanted to really get people together to say, is this something we want to get together with often?
00:17:00:09 - 00:17:22:08
Jessica
And I even remember asking the team how often you guys think we should get together. And it was unanimously, absolutely weekly, because there's too much going on in the space to meet, to take any longer between meetings. And we kind of had just for the audience, take some bullets here in that first meeting in terms of, okay, we've got to figure out our purpose, our charter.
00:17:22:08 - 00:17:54:08
Jessica
But I knew I couldn't go into a meeting just with a blank slate. I mean, that's the worst way to get things done in a group setting, right? You've got to give people something to react to. So I had bullets like keeping tabs on global marketing. Say I use cases, opportunities and challenges, and even a good time for Brand to talk through their P.O.V. doc that they were working on cross-functional, sharing on experiences but really just in this is bulleted a team of like-minded marketers with a self-driven desire to stay up to date on news related for AI related to A.I. for business marketing.
00:17:54:10 - 00:18:11:08
Jessica
I knew that it had to be a group of people who were self-motivated to stay up to date because that's the only way where you're going to get things done. We weren't going to be able to educate along the way. We needed people to educate themselves in terms of what was going on in the industry so that we could come together with solutions in this team.
00:18:11:10 - 00:18:33:02
Suzanne
Yeah, I think one of the things that was really cool about that first gathering is we all had different entry points into the conversation in different interest points. So we're all reading different things. No one of us brought the same, like I just learned this. Have you read this? We were all bringing a different perspective into the conversation, and I think for listeners it's important to really understand that this was grassroots.
00:18:33:04 - 00:18:55:01
Suzanne
Nobody was telling us to do this. My manager did not say, Go off and investigate. I this was all us from the ground up.
Yadin
And everyone had day jobs. Everyone had a whole other job they had to do on top of this, which is a huge point, that all this was being done, especially that early on, while you were doing your normal day jobs.
00:18:55:03 - 00:19:16:18
Jessica
Yeah, and this was February 3rd. So then there was a Gen I conference in February that Jasper was hosting and they gave us some complimentary tickets. So luckily a group of us from this first initial team were able to attend that conference, people from San Diego. But then we were also able to fly in others from brand around the country.
00:19:16:20 - 00:19:38:14
Jessica
And here we got to meet Paul right there in person with this was a big milestone. Myla set this up actually. Yeah.
Maila
And he validated and I got to meet Jessica in person.
Suzanne
We're all meeting for the first time.
Jessica
Yeah. Yes, exactly.
Maila
When we met with Paul too, he really validated for us that he was talking with a lot of different companies who wanted to start exploring these tools technologies.
00:19:38:14 - 00:20:03:16
Maila
But like, we were the first that he had heard of who had actually formed a group and were actually coming up with a plan. So that was awesome.
Suzanne
And then right after that conference, I went to a second conference hosted by Blue Ocean, which is an AI based branding tool, and I got there and realized what they were talking about and Jessica's VP was there and he was there just like wandering around.
00:20:03:16 - 00:20:25:16
Suzanne
And I kind of pulled him aside and said, Hey, bud, what Jessica's doing and what Mike is doing with I pay attention, support her. We're going to do some really interesting things. So that caught his attention. And I think two weeks later I see our CMO on campus and I saw up to her and said,
Jessica
We'll wait before that, though, too.
00:20:25:18 - 00:20:54:02
Jessica
I just want to mention we heard Megan Kenny Anderson speak and I call this her turning point presentation. So it's a turning point in marketing. And she talks about the computer, the cloud, the cell phone, Gen AI. And so the next morning I was I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, and this our offices in Palo Alto. So I was in town and I was able to get on my VP's calendar in the morning and I put together an extremely barebones presentation, which I'm known for because I don't over engineered PowerPoints.
00:20:54:02 - 00:21:16:11
Jessica
And luckily my V.P. is okay with that. Thank you. Kevin and I pulled in screenshots of her presentation to kind of make him aware of this opportunity or ask if they were aware and then pitched the initial idea of this council because we had just had this meeting the Friday before. And I remember asking at the same time, I'm sure your leadership team, the CMO.
00:21:16:11 - 00:21:35:10
Jessica
Sweezy, I'm sure you're talking about this and he said they weren't, so they were just heads down. There's a lot going on in VMware in 2023 to work on. But that also told me that they weren't doing it, so we had to. And then, Suzanne, I think your air cover from here was what really took it to the next level.
00:21:35:12 - 00:21:55:00
Suzanne
Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that presentation. So I nudged Kevin and then two weeks later I nudged our CMO and said, Hey, this is really important. We have to invest in this. We have to lean in. And I think soon after that I think she endorsed the learning plan, the introduction to AI that we brought in from Marketing Institute.
00:21:55:05 - 00:22:21:08
Suzanne
Then the speed kind of went warp speed. I feel like at that point we really all of a sudden the floodgates, if they weren't open, then they were certainly open at that point.
Jessica
Yes, that was in May. So all this started in February and we actually published our guidelines in March. So, Michelle, you could talk about that, too, because then we also started our Global Enablement education sessions in March with Myla and bringing in Paul Racer.
00:22:21:10 - 00:22:40:16
Jessica
But one of the things I talk about too, while we're just here on executive sponsors is we took probably a couple months from February to March and after the guidelines, I feel like we sat back a little bit waiting for our executive sponsor to come on board because it was an internal discussion about which VP was going to take it.
00:22:40:18 - 00:23:04:04
Jessica
The ongoing discussions between your MA tech leader strategy and ops leader and then global demand where is sitting on my team and I kind of feel like we could have done more, like I would encourage everyone to go pedal to the metal in terms of piloting use cases, testing, because I was one point thinking, Well, I want to make sure we're aligned with leadership on how we move forward.
00:23:04:05 - 00:23:29:05
Jessica
And I feel like we could have done a lot more testing in those couple of months between March and May than we did. So that was something I would look back on.
Yadin
Well, those are crazy times too, and everyone just had a lot of question marks around this piece. And I love the fact Jessica, that you felt like you should have done more, even though even poll rates for himself and others have said that VMware was ahead of the curve pretty much for any other large enterprise organization, and still even now you're just like, we should have done more.
00:23:29:05 - 00:23:52:22
Yadin
We should have been more ahead of the curve. What were we thinking? Waiting for like 14 days for executive sponsorship.
Jessica
Welcome to my personality.
Michelle
Yeah, we were just sitting back doing nothing, though. We were also absolutely training ourselves and sharing information at a really rapid pace because of course it's too much for any individual to keep up with.
00:23:53:00 - 00:24:17:03
Michelle
But as we quickly put out like a Slack channel and we opened up floodgate of communications amongst ourselves, we were really able to collect a body of shared knowledge that was so key in our decision making down the road.
Maila
Yeah, I have to give us some grace. There was so much going on literally every single day. There were like at least 50 to 100 new tools that were being released.
00:24:17:03 - 00:24:47:01
Maila
Okay, There was a meme revolution going on. We had the AI Wars. Chalkbeat was writing like five paragraphs. There was so much to unpack like that. Like, honestly, I can't imagine that we could have gone that much faster unless we had hired people who specialized in AI to like, do this thing for us. We killed it.
Suzanne
And at the same time that that was the period where the CTO, AI Council spun up and they started going, What's going on?
00:24:47:01 - 00:25:11:00
Suzanne
What is this? How is this working? And and simultaneous to that, then the legal AI working group got spun up. And so I started sitting on both of those meetings and realized, wow, we really are way, way, way ahead of everyone else.
Jessica
Well, and luckily because of brands relationship with Legal, Suzanne, you guys actually brought in legal issues.
00:25:11:00 - 00:25:42:05
Jessica
They were invited to the very first meeting that we had on February 3rd. And I think in that next couple of weeks was the legal summit on AI that then you guys were invited to sit in on. So I feel like it was a partnership from the beginning.
Suzanne
Now, Michelle and I went to that and presented to them and quite frankly, that was a really interesting meeting because it was clear they were all quite terrified in that moment because they realize how far behind they were and they needed to catch up last week, I mean, really, really fast.
00:25:42:05 - 00:26:03:21
Suzanne
And they were just hungry for Tell me more. Tell me more, Tell me more. They were concerned about IP issues. They were concerned about trademark issues. They were concerned about secrets leaking out. They were concerned about a lot of things that the legal people we want them to look at. Right. And Michelle and I both walked into that with open arms and open hearts and say, help us stay out of trouble.
00:26:03:23 - 00:26:20:11
Suzanne
We will help you. We will tell you everything we're doing, help us make good decisions that's within the protects the company and protects the interests. And over time, we got them up to speed.
Yadin
I want to pull on a couple of threads here, too, because I think are a couple of really important things that are coming out. We've gone over a lot.
00:26:20:15 - 00:26:34:12
Yadin
There's a ton and I know somebody is listening to this going, Oh my God, there's all this stuff that was going on and and you connected to all these things that are connected to legal and branded the CTO and sponsor. Yeah. And it's only May. So if you're listening to this, don't be intimidated by like you have to connect to all these different things.
00:26:34:18 - 00:26:54:02
Yadin
You don't have to accelerate the super fast. This team, I think, was unique in the fact that there was a really great sort of accelerated path to get to where we got, which is great sort of global organizational adoption for marketing, global marketing. But two things. One is some people just mentioned that they thought they were late to this, like they were way behind.
00:26:54:04 - 00:27:09:17
Yadin
Even if you're listening to this now, you're still not way behind. There's still lots of organizations that are just beginning to get ready to get ready. So if you're listening to this thinking, oh my goodness, how where formula I counsel, how do I get a bunch of like minded individuals together to talk each week? You're not way behind if you're listening this.
00:27:09:17 - 00:27:27:01
Yadin
In fact, you're probably on the right track. So continue on that path. And the other piece, too, is I want to just highlight the fact that each of you were going to conferences, talking to execs, talking to CTOs, talking to other individuals. You thought you were going to get information with them. But what ended up happening is that everyone kept asking all of you questions.
00:27:27:04 - 00:27:59:20
Yadin
You're at conferences and you were like, Oh, these big companies, they probably have it together. Let me go and ask them what they're doing, what their best practices and ended up being. You were teaching because no one had done anything that VMware had done to that point.
Suzanne
That's correct. That's correct.
Jessica
That's what it sounded like. Yeah. And our CMO was going out and they meet regularly with the other CMO is from big like minded companies, and she often tells the story in this videos out there too, in multiple channels where they would start to talk about AI and they would all just sort of look at each other either because they didn't want to share
00:27:59:20 - 00:28:21:02
Jessica
what they were doing or because not a lot was being done yet. So she became a really big champion in May. And I'll say to emphasize, getting an executive sponsor what actually happened was able to happen at that point in May was we were then hooked into the corporate council that was just found in which was led by our CTO and CIO.
00:28:21:04 - 00:28:51:23
Jessica
We were given the opportunity to present in multiple marketing leadership team meetings. So that's the CMO staff meetings which normally at our level we would not be in or presenting in. And then we were put on the agenda for the Q three global marketing townhall, which is with the entire organization over a thousand. We also started talking about having a required learning and development KPI for second half to take our intro to a course that we got from the Marketing Institute.
00:28:51:23 - 00:29:13:21
Jessica
So it just really catapulted our ability to scale education and adoption across the board. And of course we got buy in to expand our AI tool licenses. And so then we started planning out phase one and phase two expansion efforts education, onboarding, in addition to our general global marketing enablement training that we were doing.
00:29:13:21 - 00:29:50:06
Suzanne
And all of this work was fantastic and people were just drinking it up. But if you weren't part of our global marketing organization, you were on the outside looking in and there were plenty of other people in the company that could use this and wanted to use it, and they were total FOMO. They were so super jealous of what we had. Yeah, yeah.
Yadin
It was tough because there's a lot of people organizations and you might be listening, you know, experiencing the same thing where some group picks it up, they run with it, they get the license to go, but you're just sort of sitting there looking on the other side of the glass, hoping that you'll get your license, hoping you'll get the enablement, hope you can get all that stuff.
00:29:50:06 - 00:30:10:12
Jessica
And I was getting emails almost daily outside of Google marketing asking for access to our tools and even from our team while we were rolling them out in phases. But I will say the way that we were able to add in people outside of global marketing was to get on to our marketing council as a representation of their function.
00:30:10:12 - 00:30:35:08
Jessica
So for example, we had someone from product marketing to people because they were in opposite ends of our business, added to our marketing council, and then because of that, a benefit of joining our council is getting access to our tool, which was Jasper at the time. So that was also a way how we were starting to infiltrate, at least from a testing perspective, into some of the other business units and departments.
00:30:35:09 - 00:31:03:06
Suzanne
Yeah, and I ended up on the Legal Aid working Group meeting with them every week. And I remember going to the meeting and went, okay, I'm on. I'm the only outsider here. I'm the only one out of JD, why am I here again? But it was about that cross-pollination, right? Because I would go there and hear their concerns and bring them back to RCI Council and say, Hey, here's what they're worried about, here's what they're curious about, here's what they're not certain about.
00:31:03:09 - 00:31:28:18
Suzanne
Here's what we need to pay attention to as marketers. And a lot of it was around imagery. The legal case hadn't been settled on that. And so they were very concerned about any sort of imagery that we would create using an alt tool. So it was part of that cross-pollination. Same with the CTO council I could hear with the CTO council was worried about and where their focus was, which was quite different than ours.
00:31:28:18 - 00:32:05:07
Suzanne
And I think people forget that and it was really curious to see how they were really almost 100% focused on the developers use of AI to generate code rather than a marketer’s use.
Yadin
Yeah, there was definitely developer focus and so definitely there's a disconnect. I think you'll see that in other organizations to the disconnect between what the developers need, what the line of business and the business units need for product, and then what the internal people need, whether they're marketing, sales, accounting, any of those different pieces, it's tough to bring all that stuff together.
00:32:05:13 - 00:32:30:15
Yadin
I know it's tough because there's a lot more and I think we're going to cover that on other episodes. But I think right now I think we come to a point where let's sort of talk about where we think based on sort of the history we've talked about before, and we'll kind of get a little deeper and other episodes to get specific about results, impact how we worked with things special like legal office of the CIO for onboarding weren't like sort of just takeaways from today based on kind of where we're at and sort of the origin story.
00:32:30:17 - 00:32:47:01
Yadin
And I'll just go around the room real quick to just get everyone sort of what we're should people start right now if they don't have any counsel, if they don't have all the relationships that we've had collectively as a group where they can start to make impact, because I think there's a lot of really value in power of just getting started.
00:32:47:02 - 00:33:05:06
Yadin
You're enthusiastic about this. You want to start something or position, find others who are just as enthusiastic. I'll start with Jessica as my call to Fearless Leader of the Marketing Council. We'll start with you.
Jessica
Yeah, I mean, I think you touched on it. I've spoken at a couple of conferences now about this five steps to get started with your marketing.
00:33:05:06 - 00:33:24:22
Jessica
I counsel, and that's exactly the first one. Find other people who are interested, enthusiastic, passionate because you'll need that passionate enthusiasm to work those probably extra hours to get this going on top of your day job and bringing those people together. And a lot of times that's just the catalyst you need and maybe even the confidence you need.
00:33:25:00 - 00:33:56:23
Jessica
Maybe if it's a couple people, you're not by yourself to bring it to a leadership team, kind of even half baked to say this is something that we think we should focus on and here are our days to move forward.
Yadin
Excellent Maila.
Maila
And I don't know if this was part of your vision, Jessica, as like our leader, but for me, I think I was really surprised in the short amount of time that we were working together, like how quickly we extended our influence outside of our initial boundaries too, because we even had down the line some folks from the sales team who were like, Can I get in on this?
00:33:56:23 - 00:34:18:01
Maila
Like help us? And I think that finding a starting place is definitely the hardest part, but there is no one size fits all approach. So the best place to start once you have group of people together is like defining what your values are, what behaviors are acceptable or not acceptable, and then kind of building off of that from there.
00:34:18:03 - 00:34:45:19
Yadin
All right, Michelle, do we have you? And so for those of you listening, I'm sure we lost Michelle for a little bit, but she's back now.
Michelle
Yeah. I would say to hone in on what matters to you the most personally about generative AI and its potential, both for good and bad, and then focus on that and then on what you can bring to the table, because that way you will naturally be motivated to continue to really dig deep and to act on your interests.
Yadin
Suzanne.
00:34:45:21 - 00:35:12:17
Suzanne
Yeah, I would say someone listening is just start where you are. Wherever you're at right now is the right place to start. Find other people who are interested in this as well. Keep your eye on the prize. What is the business outcome that this will deliver and that will help your cause immensely. Second tip Don't wait for somebody else to get started.
00:35:12:18 - 00:35:32:02
Suzanne
Don't wait for your manager or your VP, the CTO, to tell you what to do and how to do it. Go for it, Go for it. Go until now and then ask why now?
Yadin
I like that. Go until now and then ask why. No, that's fabulous. So I think it's good. I, I know I love listening to the timeline.
00:35:32:02 - 00:35:50:16
Yadin
There are little bits and anecdotes that actually I hadn't even heard until just now. I got involved in talked about sort of my timeline here. I got involved in February of 2023 because I was super excited about this. I was all amped up. I didn't think anyone in the organization was doing it. I was all in my little silo over there and I started saying, We need to do this global marketing training in this thing.
00:35:50:18 - 00:36:05:15
Yadin
And then the person who was it was like, Well, there's actually some people that are already doing it. I'm like, Who are they? Tell me what they are. And they did an intro email and that was that was off to the races. And I was like, There's this Marketing Council thing. Absolutely. I'm jumping on getting involved. I don't even know what I was going to do or how I was going to be involved.
00:36:05:15 - 00:36:23:16
Yadin
I just knew there was other people who were as excited and passionate about, like all of you have said. And this is a good takeaway, finding other like minded individuals are they're passionate people who educate themselves, willing to step up and do more than their day job, which that was the gig you got to do more than you do before you have to do to to move the organization forward.
00:36:23:18 - 00:36:39:00
Yadin
And you find those people and you just start to build something. You start with, like you said, Jessica, just start with something can just start with like just nothing. Just bring a little bit of structure, a little bit of ideas. Like you said, start with, is this good idea? What should we do? What are the topics? How should we organize?
00:36:39:02 - 00:36:52:17
Yadin
And that's how I started. I just started jumping on and they were kind of in the beginning, I think like someone mentioned, there were a little bit of therapy sessions. They were like, Hey, we really want to do this. We don't know how we're worried about our jobs or, Hey, I'm a writer. The thinking rate is going to do what I do.
00:36:52:19 - 00:37:08:03
Yadin
A lot of those and it can start out that way so they can build those relationships. Then take stock of what's everyone do? What part of the organization you're connected to do we have representation? Then you can do all the different things. Like you. I think it was mentioned with the five key steps and I think we probably list those and just have those as a mantra.
00:37:08:03 - 00:37:33:21
Yadin
And each show what those five key steps are. One, that's, you know, forming a marketing council. But that's how I started in February 2023, sending an email to Jessica and saying, What's happening? I heard you're doing this. What's happening? Let's do it. I'm on board. And it just took off. From there. My focus was all about how are we going to leverage all this really amazing technology in a way that's going to make a massive impact in the organization and really digging deeper and deeper and deeper into what that means.
00:37:33:23 - 00:37:56:20
Yadin
I like the example of not just taking blog post writing from the two hour thing to a five minute thing. It's taking a vendor engagement from six weeks or six months or whatever it was. They was six weeks, six weeks to two. One day. That is where it impacts. And that's I think what we're going to explore through this show is how to make impacts like that within the organization.
00:37:56:22 - 00:38:20:08
Yadin
And so with that, I just want to say thank you all for getting on all the same time. All five of us will not be in every episode. It's kind of crazy getting our schedules just all together. So it's going to be a couple of us, two or three or well, it will kind of alternate. Those are going to be on the show, but we're going to continue to go through all the different things we talked about, like the impact, like legal, like onboarding or contract negotiation.
00:38:20:08 - 00:38:39:18
Yadin
Yes, education is huge. It's huge. Education is huge. And you don't have to be an expert.
Suzanne
And measurement benchmarking all that. Yeah.
Yadin
Yes. So all those things we're going to dive deep into. So thanks for going on this journey with us. Jessica, Myla, Michelle, Suzanne, thank you once again for joining us and listeners for the marketing Insider's podcast.
00:38:39:20 - 00:39:20:09
Jessica
Stay curious.
Suzanne
Yeah, absolutely.
Yadin
Yes. Listen to the next episode.