Mike Griffin: 0:29

Hey, welcome back to Marketing Qualified. I'm Mike Griffin and I'm Chris Newton, and we are here again to talk about all the absurdities of modern day marketing. We have a really fun agenda lined up for one another today, and hopefully for you guys as well Some stuff to get off our chest, some stuff to catch up on and some stuff that, frankly, is just kind of fun to discuss. What do you have in mind, chris?

Chris Newton: 0:49

Well, there's going to be a couple curveballs later for each of us. We like to do a couple of segments where we don't know what the other person has coming at us. So, yeah, it should be fun to see what we have in store for each other. But, yeah, to start off, I was thinking we could talk about some good examples of viral marketing. Obviously, we're big fans of viral marketing. I think that you know it's one of the best ways to kind of get your brand out. But obviously, like, nobody knows how to do it, which may be part of the appeal, as we talked about on the last podcast.

Chris Newton: 1:20

Authenticity is really big for us and I think the reason that viral marketing is so like well, I guess the reason that it goes viral, is because it is so authentic, it's raw, it's captured in the moment, it's not rehearsed, you know it's not kind of scripted and everything. It just happens. And you know people love it. And you know we're trying to also do something similar with this podcast. Like, we don't rehearse beforehand, we put together a loose agenda with some things that we want to talk about, but then we often go off on tangents and kind of let the episode take it wherever it wants to take us. So, yeah, we thought today would be a good way to start would be to talk about some viral marketing. So, Mike, do you want to go first and then I can go through the one that I had?

Mike Griffin: 2:03

I do. Yeah, I would just echo your sentiment, though, like rehearsal is heavily frowned upon. The more from the hip that you can be on this thing, the better off that you are. Authenticity is the name of the game, so the one that I wanted to talk to you about. I thought a lot about this, like what have I seen recently, or maybe not so recently, that really stuck with me the most and the first thing that came to mind was just old school beer commercials. Right, if you think about the impact of, like a Bud Light drinkability or a Coors Light the Rocky Mountain, by the way, sorry, quick side thing on this you ever notice how Coors Light only ever talks about how cold they are and how cold it is coming from the Rocky Mountain. They never say anything about the taste. Like the quality of the taste is never flaunted by them, it's always like, oh, this is the most refreshing thing you can get.

Chris Newton: 2:52

Yeah, I mean honestly, like the warmer something is, the more you taste it. And like good beer is, like is actually supposed to be drink at like cellar temperature, like a Sam Adams beer or you know something like that. Or like when I was in London, like a lot of like the caskills they had are all cellar temperature but you enjoy drinking them at that temperature because they actually taste good. If you drink a Coors Light or a Bud Light at room temperature, it's you know there's a reason that they tell you to keep it cold. As you know, the Rockies.

Mike Griffin: 3:18

I think you've won over a lot of European listeners just by that statement there. I probably turned off half of america.

Chris Newton: 3:26

So well, I have to edit that part out. We'll have to see leave it in.

Mike Griffin: 3:30

Leave it in uh, I was thinking about like the old school beer commercials, like the, the budweiser, like think about how transformational the what's up the what's up was right, like that was a part of your, your culture.

Mike Griffin: 3:44

You would see something like that and then, regardless of like I certainly wasn't of age to consume alcohol and that came out. But you better believe, when I got together with my buddies to play a pickup basketball game after school, that's how we were greeting each other. Right, it became so like embedded in the culture, and I think that the best type of viral marketing accomplishes exactly that. Like it may have a direct impact on sales or impressions or share of voice or something like that, but it also leaves like a lasting impact on society, at least for a little bit, and that's my take. What do you think about the old school beer stuff?

Chris Newton: 4:18

Yeah, I mean I remember watching the Super Bowl when I was growing up and obviously well before I could drink as well, and those commercials always stood out to me. I just remember that budweiser and bud light would always have like the best commercials and I feel like the past couple super bowls I haven't really seen much from them at all like the, the ones, the commercials that stand out from this most recent super bowl definitely the duncan one um, yep, I'm trying to think of what other ones stood out. I mean, that's one that most immediately comes to mind. Were there any for you this, the past super bowl that stood?

Mike Griffin: 4:50

out just with the full disclosure that I'm a huge marvel cinematic universe or mcu geek.

Chris Newton: 4:54

The deadpool trailer I was pretty pumped about, but besides that I totally agree it was the dunks yeah, yeah, um, I mean, the giveaway to me that you were a huge mcu fan is you literally have like a Captain America shield directly behind you. We're recording this on Zoom right now and we're both looking at each other's backgrounds and, yeah, there's definitely a Captain America shield right there.

Mike Griffin: 5:17

Fun fact, it is made of Legos.

Chris Newton: 5:19

Oh nice.

Mike Griffin: 5:20

Even better. By the way, just to give full credit on this International Women's Day, shout out to all the amazing women out there in the marketing field. Certainly, in our personal lives we would be just absolute schlubs. We're not for our significant others making us better folks. But, yeah, seriously, happy International Women's Day. At time of recording I say that, say my wife made this. I do not have the patience or the discipline to put together, brick by brick, the full Captain America shields.

Chris Newton: 5:46

Uh yeah, um. Happy international women's day to everyone. I think that women are definitely the unsung hero on some heroes of society. I know that some of my favorite mentors as I was coming up in the marketing world were, um were, women, and I'm just incredibly grateful to have learned from them and, um you know, been able to kind of grow my career alongside a lot of great women.

Mike Griffin: 6:07

No doubt, yeah, I mean, like even today in my capacity as a people manager, like some of the best techniques and the best ways to deliver feedback, and what have you I've taken directly from women managers that I've had that really went out of their way to make sure that they were setting me up for success. Couldn't be more appreciative of that experience, just like past me. Couldn't't be more appreciative of that experience, just like past me. Couldn't have been more appreciative for these ridiculous commercials, right? But I know that you had something else a little bit different in mind. Not necessarily alcohol, arguably not alcohol related, for your pick. What do you have?

Chris Newton: 6:41

So this is. It's happened last August, I think it was lastust, or at some point last september or, uh yeah, last last fall or so, um, so I live in the boston area, so this actually, I think, went national. I think it got beyond the. The boston area was, um, if anyone's ever heard of the, the cop slide, so this is the video that went viral where, for some reason, unbeknownst to pretty much anybody other than the cop, he decided to climb up a jungle gym in Boston city hall Plaza, go down a slide, like it was probably like a good like maybe 10, 12 foot drop of a slide and he came flying out of that thing, at least at like 30, 40 miles an hour. Like anyone who's seen that video knows exactly what I'm talking about. Somebody caught it on camera, immediately went viral. It looks like he kind of hurt himself. Luckily he didn't get injured too bad as he was shot out of that cannon. But yeah, it was just so unexpected and nobody first of all knew why he was up there or why he decided to go down the slide. The fact that it was a cop to begin with, like you typically see, cops as you know, buttoned up and professional and just trying not to, you know, do anything that might, you know, indicate that they have any kind of a, you know sense of fun or play or anything. And then this guy just comes shooting down this, this slide, and yeah, it was incredible.

Chris Newton: 8:05

I'm actually going to read verbatim from the Wikipedia If you Google cop slide, wikipedia will come up with an article.

Chris Newton: 8:12

That's now the unofficial name of this slide in Boston City Hall Park or Boston City Hall Plaza, so it says before the incident, the slide was situated in the $95 million plaza outside Boston City Hall. The slide itself was installed in November 2022 at a $70 million renovation and was intended for children between the ages of 5 and 12 and was labeled as such. The city struggled to attract the public to the area prior to the incident. As you can imagine, after this incident went viral, there is literally like long, super long lines of both children and adults alike trying to use this slide and, you know, take pictures in front of the side. So I'm not completely convinced that the city didn't set this up and, you know, stage it. But yeah, I can't help. But you know, anytime I go by a cop, now when I'm in Boston, I can't help but think, is this the guy? Is this the guy who decided to, to take the the plunge and uh do?

Mike Griffin: 9:10

you think he, he do, you think he got any kind of like shit for that internally, like is there a scarlet letter on him now? Oh, I hope so.

Chris Newton: 9:17

I hope so. I mean what's it called like the blue, the blue shield or whatever, when cops like look out for each other. I hope that every cop in boston just intentionally roast this guy every single time that they see him. I mean, all in good fun. Obviously we don't want somebody to be too mean, but you know it's uh, you know good, a good jest is always to be had?

Mike Griffin: 9:36

uh, most certainly. I mean, I actually read that wikipedia article when I so. I I found about this extremely recently and to your point about it going national, I actually actually watched. It was a. I'm not a big TikTok guy, I'm more of a YouTube shorts guy, so feel free to roast me for that if need be in the episode comments. But no, I watched a YouTube short from CNN about the whole thing and it was very like professionally done, covering and like yeah, the guy was flying.

Mike Griffin: 10:00

Listen, my son goes down slides at parks and I've seen what just like a bat out of hell can look like when he exits this thing. And this guy had a lot more mass than my son. You really, if you haven't seen it, you really should. It's remarkable that he only sustained like minor injuries and didn't actually end up missing any work time. And, like you mentioned, there's a happy ending for the city of Boston and City Hall. Depending on your perspective, now, there's probably crowd control issues and shit like that. But yeah, pretty, pretty wild viral marketing. What a good, what a good choice.

Chris Newton: 10:31

Right, and I think the best part is that at the bottom of this article they talk about the scientific analysis. People have actually taken time to like analyze what potentially made that guy so fast, you know, go down the slide so fast and like they're looking at like the velocity and the angles of the slide and like the material he was wearing and they thought that maybe like the you know, the polyester or whatever type of material he had on, like acted as some kind of accelerant as he went down this metal slide and it's uh, yeah, it was great, honestly, probably one of the funniest things I saw last year.

Mike Griffin: 11:07

There is no need for you to be so humble. You can take credit for the scientific analysis that ended up on Wikipedia.

Chris Newton: 11:11

It's totally fine, I'm proud of you. I mean, I wish I was smart enough to do some of that analysis. I just I had a good laugh at it and um yeah and here we are.

Mike Griffin: 11:22

Here we are laughing about it still hey, speaking of being smart enough to do something I know that we wanted to take, so, again, the idea of this, this podcast, is to share some of the absurdities and also use it as kind of like a mini failure forum for us. Hopefully it gives you a chuckle or two, but you might actually get one of those nuggets that we keep alluding to of like being helpful in some way. Uh, so chris and I gave some thought to what some of our biggest fuck-ups have been in our roles as marketers, and I'm gonna go ahead and let you go first, because I'm genuinely captivated by what I see in this. This loose style and, remember, real prep is frowned upon, but we do have to have like some stream of consciousness to guide us through this thing, otherwise we'd be here for hours. So, yeah, what do you got?

Chris Newton: 12:05

uh, so I mean it's.

Chris Newton: 12:05

It's hard to narrow it down to just one um considering I actually had a pretty major one on our website this week, but I'm not going to go there. It's way too recent, uh, it's, you know, way too way too near and dear to my heart. I thought I was getting fired but, um, it's, it's in the past. Water under the bridge at this point. But I actually joked with my vp of marketing that typically when I start a new job and I've been at this job that I'm at now for just over a month now typically whenever I start a new job, there's always at least one major fuck up within the first month or so, and I just had mine. But the biggest and most important thing is I learned from these mistakes and typically don't make as big of fuck ups again in the future. So, knock on wood, that we're. You know we're past that at this current job.

Chris Newton: 12:47

But at my last job actually, we used HubSpot as our CRM and kind of source of truth for marketing and you know marketing leads and all that kind of stuff. And we use Stripe as a source of truth for customers and billing and subscriptions and all that kind of stuff. So as a marketer, I wanted to try to figure out you know these leads that we're sending in that are, you know, coming through like the free motion, so the product led growth motion. Are they signing up? How much are they paying us? You know a bunch of questions that were that data didn't live in HubSpot, it lived in Stripe. So I thought you know, why not just go ahead and integrate HubSpot with Stripe? Stripe has the email addresses of these contacts, hubspot has the email addresses of these contacts, so I'll just integrate the two so that we can get some of that data alongside the contact record in HubSpot and I can build reporting to kind of answer some of these questions that I had.

Chris Newton: 13:37

So I go about and start doing the integration, unbeknownst to me that it's a two-way integration and I thought I was integrating data from Stripe back into HubSpot so I could get the subscription data. What I didn't realize at the time was that the contact database of I think 60,000 contacts in HubSpot was also syncing back to Stripe, creating subscriptions for every single person who was in our HubSpot database, whether or not they had ever signed up for the product. So the silver lining of this was that I caught my fuck up pretty much right away and was able to shut down the integration by pulling all the things out of my computer, just completely smashing my computer until the integration stopped. But no, I was able to figure out how to disconnect the integration immediately before the damage got too bad, and I think we ended with about 5 000 incorrect subscriptions inside of stripe that I had to then uh, go through and manually clean up one by one.

Chris Newton: 14:37

But yeah, it was not great. I also thought I was getting fired for that as well. I let the head of product know right away and I sent it to him on slack and the first thing that he replied to me all in caps what the actual fuck with his response, I'm like well, this is not off to a great start, but, um, we were able to fix the issue. There's no harm done. Nobody got notifications, luckily, like luckily nobody was getting like stripe emails or anything, and none of the active subscribers or customers were impacted at all.

Chris Newton: 15:09

So but yeah, for the. You know, for the first hour or two my heart rate was significantly elevated, but we were able to move past it.

Mike Griffin: 15:18

I am. I know this is an audio format. I am visibly uncomfortable with what you just described. I'm sweating. I can't imagine what that was like going through.

Chris Newton: 15:30

Oof, oof, yeah good for you for out on the other side uh, you got, you got to love automation and you got to read. Uh, you got to love. Uh, not reading through documentation before you flip the switch. So that was a lesson learned it's so, so it's so.

Mike Griffin: 15:44

It's such a great segue into my failure, my fuck up, that I'll share with you and talk about. Like things you should read documentation and probably like the bio of your new boss and certainly your boss's boss's boss. So this is this is from a job. Actually, the first job that I had when I moved to New York was at a tech company. First job post HubSpot, I should say. When I moved to New York it was a restaurant reservation software platform that will remain unnamed for the time being. So I was one of the first ever B2B marketing hires that company had made. They did a great job building up kind of like a grassroots, like a base of people that were trying to use this platform to actually find restaurants and make reservations at them. Right, but they didn't have a very in fact, there was almost no go-to market motion on B2B side of things has brought aboard to help acquire leads, really in like a classic demand gen capacity.

Mike Griffin: 16:40

Well, as part of that, as you know full well, search optimization, seo is a big part of that, and so I started to put together the first meeting that we had with the CEO of this company. I start to go through the benefits, the pros and cons of a good on-page linking playbook, of trying to secure offsite backlinks right to increase the overall domain authority and get some seo juice. And I'm talking about this at a very 1000 level view for him at one point in time. Dude, he just cuts me off, looks me dead in the eye. He's like I think you're assuming I know less about seo than I really do and I was unprepared for such a direct comment. I most certainly assumed that, come to find out, he was at like a food magazine publication for like years before doing this. Totally got the value of building up authority, publishing online, securing back All of this was like super old news to him and what he was really interested in was how we were doing in terms of like making strides towards actually building up that domain authority.

Mike Griffin: 17:54

The lesson learned do your research on who's going to be in the room. Don't assume, don't like oversell, oversolve for like setting the baseline of the point that you're going to make. They'll let you know. A C-suite person is going to let you know if they don't get your point and then you can go and backfill that information. But that was tough. It was uncomfortable. Other things transpired in that meeting. My colleague at the time, the other B2B marketing person, had a rough go building out our Google ads model. That could have gone far better, but man, I was so happy when that meeting ended. Uh, I think I was. If you looked at me, it looked like I was swimming in shoulder height water just the pit stains going through. So bad. It was tough. I think I drank all of my water halfway through Cause I was so nervous. Just sitting there with a parched throat trying to make it through. Not great man, not great.

Chris Newton: 18:46

I don't know what the bigger lesson is to take huge bottles of water in whenever you're talking to your CEO or doing your research. I think that the research probably wins out on this one. But yeah, that's a great point. It goes back to just marketing in general, just knowing your audience. I think the most important thing is just don't assume your customers are idiots. Let them tell, tell you what they want. Like same with your CEO. Like, let him tell you what he wants. Don't assume that they're idiots. Go into more detail if they ask for it. But yeah, it's I, that's, that's. Uh, you know it's, it's. I think it's great advice for a lot of, a lot of different. Yep.

Mike Griffin: 19:22

Take it from me.

Chris Newton: 19:24

Take it from me, cool Go ahead Well yeah, do we want to switch over to the next segment. So we want to talk a little bit about fractional marketing, which I was actually surprised when Mike and I were chatting before this. Mike doesn't know what fractional marketing is. I don't know if this is a new concept or if this is the first I had heard about. It is after after the pandemic and whatnot, but, um, and it's not limited to just marketing.

Chris Newton: 19:47

There's lots of different fractional types of roles like, uh, operations managers and whatnot. But essentially, like, my understanding of of fractional marketing and just fractional roles in general is a lot of like smaller companies might lean more towards these roles because they don't necessarily need somebody full-time to do these roles. So a fractional CMO, for example, would be a CMO who's like kind of like a part-time CMO. They don't dedicate 40 hours a week to the business, but they are available to kind of consult and do a lot of the work that a CMO would do on a on a fractional level Like that's where the word comes from is they're not investing their full amount of time on these roles and I'm just kind of curious your thoughts on it Because obviously, like these are roles that are traditionally full time, that are now like being kind of outsourced to part time for companies that don't necessarily need a full time person in house.

Chris Newton: 20:36

And yeah, I mean I have my own thoughts on it. I actually started looking at before I ended up taking my full-time job. I was looking into potentially taking on a fractional role, decided I wanted to go back in-house full-time. But just kind of curious your thoughts on. You know what that type of setup looks like at a company and you know just your overall thoughts on how that might work.

Mike Griffin: 21:00

Yeah, I got a couple of takes on this right. So the first is just from thinking about working with someone you might bring into your organization and how that would impact your day-to-day advocacy. And the other one is just from a personal perspective right, like having dipped my toe very briefly into the consultant role, the marketing consultant role, knowing the stupid things like tax implications of doing that right and predictability of income, and what have you. There's like a risk there. I'll go with the former first and that is just it. I get the need and I get for sure, from, like a balance sheet standpoint, the cost savings by not having to give someone health insurance and what have you if it's an outsourced contractor, that type of thing.

Mike Griffin: 21:40

I do have inherent concerns about someone's ability to like truly ingrain themselves into an organization and see, I guess the concern is like the motivation, like the skin in the game, right. Like if you're fractional and your contract ends after however many months, like what are the actual repercussions from you if what you're trying to recommend doesn't actually pan out? Right, like you get fired, your contract ends, right, you could maybe not receive your full pay. So I do have some concerns around that. That said, I do think if there hasn't been a tremendous amount of turnover at the marketing, like leadership level or like really in any role I guess I'm picking on like a fractional CMO, for example, but anywhere like new ideas never hurt, right, and I do think that organizations tend to be a little bit overprotective of, well, this is how we've always done things, or I don't think that would work.

Mike Griffin: 22:35

And there's still, despite all this like chest thumping and shit like that about like let's fail forward, let's ab test everything, I still think there is like a native hesitancy to actually administer these type of experiments that an outside source might suggest at your organization. And there I think the value comes in from the fractional standpoint. I'm not going to get into the tax situation because it's a huge can of worms and I don't feel like going into it at this moment. What are your takes on? I mean, you said you almost became a fractional marketer. What made you choose not to?

Chris Newton: 23:08

Yeah, I mean I think that you hit the nail on the head in terms of accountability and whatnot.

Chris Newton: 23:13

I do a lot of consulting and freelancing on the side, but it's never in what would typically be a leadership role like a CMO or something I typically will report into one of the managers or even the head of marketing or the CEO of these companies, but as a freelancer, I'm still accountable to them. Obviously, the fractional CMO would be accountable to the CEO, for example. Yeah, it's. I don't know exactly how it would work because essentially these are like freelancers, but freelancers and consultants typically tend to be, you know, individual contributors, whereas a fractional CMO might have direct reports or might, you know, have other freelancers or contributors oh shit, you know reporting it to them. So I could see that be a challenge, especially like I can't really see it working that well if there's like a fractional CMO who would have full-time direct reports like that, that level of accountability like that. I could see that being a potential issue, like you mentioned. Um, but yeah, I think that I mean a lot of the fractional roles that I could see like I could see a small startup hiring a fractional cmo. It might be like the first marketer who's meant to bring right, you know, start building out the marketing function from the ground up and, you know, once they get to a point where the company is doing more business, either bring on somebody full time to do marketing or, you know, maybe bring in some additional freelancers and whatnot.

Chris Newton: 24:29

But yeah, I think the biggest hang up for me is just roles that are traditionally leadership roles, where you know you're incentivized by bonuses or stock options or you know, even to your point like just not even, you know, not losing your job if you're a full-time worker.

Chris Newton: 24:45

Um, I don't know how that would work on on a fractional level and I'm guessing that a lot of these fractional CMO roles they might not have defined contract terms, like it might not be. You know, start in firm end date for a contract. It might be like a month to month agreement, which is usually what I'll do when I, when I do like freelancing and whatnot, right, but yeah, it's, it's definitely interesting. I, I don't, I, I don't think that it's a good or a bad thing, but I can definitely see it being a benefit for smaller companies and potentially more of a liability for for larger companies, like, if you're not, if you don't have somebody in the role who's completely bought in and that makes a lot of sense. You know willing to, you know go above and beyond for, you know for for a specific company.

Mike Griffin: 25:26

Well, also, I didn't even consider, I hadn't even considered the, the direct report, kind of thing. Right, like I think you're right, the size of the company matters so much Like that. That ain't going to work If we think about like a large person, a large person, people of all sizes, can step into fractional marketing.

Chris Newton: 25:43

This is safe space. We'll have to edit this part out. Maybe we'll leave it.

Mike Griffin: 25:48

No, people stepping into large organizations that may have direct reports, like I don't know, man, I just don't picture that. I mean, just having recently gone through an end of year review process, my myself, like I can't imagine trying to provide like actually helpful feedback to someone that I'm around Maybe not as often, even if it's a full-time person. Right, you have other things you have to focus on. You've, I don't know, I have my doubts, but that is that is where we can. That is where we can leave it for now.

Chris Newton: 26:15

Anything else on fractional marketing no, that's, that's all I can think of for the time being. It's yeah. I mean, I personally think that, you know, freelancers and fractional roles are great, but again, yeah, like the leadership stuff is what I'm struggling to kind of get my head around. But I think it does make sense for a small startup to. You know, look at fractional positions for like a, you know, like a first hire in a specific department, like a operational, fractional operations manager, or, you know, fractional CMO or other types of roles like that.

Mike Griffin: 26:47

That makes sense. Hey, if you're a fractional marketer right now and you want to weigh in, reach out to us, let us know. We'd love to get your take. What's going well, what's not going well? Are we even close to making accurate statements here? We want to know.

Chris Newton: 26:59

We love being called out on bullshit, especially Mike. If you have any hate mail, send it to Mike at marketingio.

Mike Griffin: 27:07

Please do and make sure to use an all cap. Subject line Cool.

Chris Newton: 27:12

So let's go on to the next and last segment here today 2024 marketing predictions. So, Mike, I'll let you go first on this one.

Mike Griffin: 27:20

Yeah, so for me when I think about this is not necessarily something new to 2024, but I do think with the advent in late 2023 of like thought leadership ads on LinkedIn, for example, right. And with the advent of people just like spending more time on social. If you're not already following the Refine Labs folks of the world, they talk a lot about dark social and the influence that has on actual pipe gen. Please do give those folksa follow. Give their podcasts a listen. It's really informative stuff, but just consuming content natively like.

Mike Griffin: 27:54

In my previous role before I joined my current gig, it was a lot of connecting creators and influencers with brands that needed content to be produced, and one of the biggest pieces of advice that we would give to creators or to companies that needed content created for them was make TikToks, don't make ads, right. You have to solve for the native consumption of content. It should look like it's native. You have to solve for the native consumption of content. It should look like it's native. You don't need to have a full-blown video production studio to have a get-ready-with-me type of video, right, if someone is trying to use your product in that. So, thinking about making it look real and native for there and then actually accepting the fact that you might lose some visibility into your attribution by keeping someone within the native social platform they consume.

Mike Griffin: 28:45

When is the last time that you actually click through to a website at the end of a video playing? Probably not very recently. We tried to do something like this recently at my current company, we had a teaser video that played for I think 32 seconds or something like that, and the call to action was well, click through to watch the full video. And I got to tell you the results are not good, right, like literally no one wants to do that. They don't want to have a click, they want to go offsite, they want to stay there. I think that just solving for native content consumption will be a bigger emphasis, even than it started to be at the end of 2023. That's my take. What do you?

Chris Newton: 29:22

think. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think this might actually be an even better segue to the last segment that we're going to have here, which is the pending name Two Takes and a Fake. What was your suggestion for it?

Mike Griffin: 29:38

Yeah, here's what I got for you, so I thought that I would give you two. This is based on two truths and a lie. I would give you two real posts that a LinkedIn influencer or a LinkedIn contributor has posted in the last week or so, and I will sneak into their one fake take that I have created using ChatGPT, and your objective is to identify which one of these three statements is the fake one. Are you ready?

Chris Newton: 30:08

Did you use chat GPT 3.5 or chat GPT 4?

Mike Griffin: 30:12

I use whatever you get when you log in. I couldn't even tell you.

Chris Newton: 30:16

It's one one is significantly better than the other. But that's just the the geek in me talking. But yeah, let's do it. So is this would you consider this native advertising? Or is this would you consider any of that native advertising, like what you see on Tik TOK and like videos and that kind of stuff?

Mike Griffin: 30:33

Some combination of the both. To be honest with you, I don't even have like a super, like hard definition of it at the moment, but what I can tell you is that I like my chances of faking you, faking you out here. So all right, all right, let's see if you can do it. Quote number one we stand on the brink of a new frontier, a brave new world, shaped as much by algorithms and ai as it is by human needs, ethics and societal norms number one that so.

Chris Newton: 31:00

So that was the whole post.

Mike Griffin: 31:02

That's the whole post. Quote number two Focus on data-driven decision-making by setting clear objectives, identifying KPIs and regularly analyzing data using tools like Google Analytics. Segment your audience to personalize campaigns, conduct A-B testing to refine strategies and invest time in staying updated on industry trends. Marketing automation can streamline tasks and collaboration across team. Ensures a holistic understanding of customer insights for more effective campaigns.

Chris Newton: 31:33

Well, that one's definitely not chat GPT, because it recommended Google. So let's hear the third one what you got for me, mike?

Mike Griffin: 31:42

Oh boy. The third one is rookie B2Bs chase in quotations more. More clients, more followers, more customers, more web traffic, more engagement. Pro B2Bs chase quote better B2B is Chase Quote better. Better clients, better followers, better customers, better web traffic, better engagement. Volume may help you gain traction, but quality will help you win the long game.

Chris Newton: 32:17

What do you think? I think I'm going to have to go with number one being ChatGPT. Like I felt like the first one left me wanting a little bit more and it was short and to the point. But yeah, what number one number one.

Mike Griffin: 32:32

It is hilarious to me that you had the utmost confidence that number two was not chat GPT. In fact, that was the fake. That was the fake. Damn it, that was the fake. That was the big damn it, that was the fake. So good, yep, uh, I uh I was nervous, to be honest. I know I portrayed confidence. I thought, for sure you're gonna snip this out, that, uh, this is fun, this is fun. We'll have to keep like an active tally of how many, how many, uh accurate, like sniff outs you get with this thing.

Chris Newton: 33:01

I'm gonna have to pay more attention to your uh, to your body language next time. Yeah, yeah, you're gonna have to watch your lip quiver a little bit when you're saying the lie, start sweating profusely again. You know that if anybody from open ai is going to hear this, they're gonna, you know, have to refine the chat gpt algorithm because obviously, openai and Google being the two biggest competitors in the AI space Also, this might be an unpopular opinion we can spend an entire podcast episode talking about this. Google Analytics 4 fucking sucks. Plus one plus two. Thanks for listening. Bye, so funny, I don't, it's, it's terrible. I started using club spot analytics a lot more, even though there's a little bit less than you know what you could, what you used to be able to get in Google analytics, but Google analytics for is almost unusable.

Mike Griffin: 33:53

It's really painful, man. I'll tell you, like my current gig, we've had to outsource it to like a google analytics, like specialty agency and bless these people's heart, man. But, like, even with this expertise, every time I get a slack from our show channel, my ulcer just grows a little bit big. It's, it's fucking tough, dude. It's, it's real fucking tough. Uh, that that's my game for you. You like it?

Chris Newton: 34:16

yeah fine I, I like that. Um, I'll come up with one next time and uh, we'll, uh, we'll have some fun with it, but, um, yeah, do you want to read us out, mike? Uh, we've got less than a minute here before zoom kicks us out. As everyone knows, we use zoom to record these and we have the 40 minute limit, which I think helps to make a nice tight podcast. You know, nobody has hours to spend listening to us fools that's a fact.

Mike Griffin: 34:38

Yeah, nor do you want. Yeah, thanks for coming back for episode number two. If you like what you heard, subscribe, leave us a comment. If you don't like what you heard, please like, subscribe, leave us a comment and let us know how we can do better. We'd love to have you on and have your roses. So that's it, gang. Happy International Women's Day again. Appreciate you all and boy, no spoilers, for Love is Blind, season finale. I haven't seen it yet. Thanks, al. Thank you.