Knicks Parade And Sports Rivalries

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hey everybody, welcome back to Marketing Qualified. I am Mike Griffin. And I am Chris Newton. Hey, Chris. Reporting to you live from New York City, scene of the New York Knicks parade. We were talking about this a little bit before we hopped on the recording, but people are idiots. And it's amazing that some live as long as they do. We have people sitting on top of like sidewalk sheds. We have uh literally no trains south of Canal Street running, at least as of this morning. I'm sure the parade is uh hopefully dispersed. The crowds have by by now. Uh, I guess bearing all of that in mind, I I want to ask you, is Giannis coming to Boston? What is your take?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I I cannot answer that, but uh I do have some questions on the the trains not running south of Canal Street. Does that mean like pretty much nobody can come to Manhattan from Brooklyn? Like how does that how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

You you you you are asking the right question, and as an ignorant uptowner, I cannot provide any detailed information on that. What I can tell you definitely is that my wife got a text at like 6 37 in the morning from the city that was like, hey, literally all entry points to like where you can safely view the parade along the route are like full or there's ridiculous lines no one will be permitted in. And if you are here and you leave, you ain't coming back in. That's essentially what was that that's what was communicated. So I I don't know. It's uh it's a little intense, it's a little crazy. I know there was a bit of lottery that was given to people that can, it was like a thousand folks or so that were allowed to view the actual like handing of the keys to the city ceremony at City Hall that's happening with some of the players. Um I did not enter. I didn't do it, but uh, I don't know. Great. It was really it was a really exciting time to be in New York over the last couple of weeks. It was genuinely like enjoyable to watch the playoffs. I'm a certified Wemby hater at this point. I uh I don't know, I'll wear that badge probably. Did you catch any of the finals?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Uh I watched a little bit, yeah, but I I watched them win. And uh, you know, as a Celtics fan, it was uh you know a little bittersweet seeing. I I don't think that the Knicks are as big of a rival as like the Red Sox Yankees, but you know, being in Boston, like you never like to see New York win anything. Even though I love New York City, like I you know, I I I do love the city, and you know, I I lived there for a little bit. Uh don't like to see them doing well.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

I get it. I get it.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

I totally hear you. And and you were mentioning that uh you know you're a Celtics fan, obviously. Uh your your wife's a Lakers fan, and your son who was born in New York City, you're trying to get him to be a Knicks fan. What if he just somehow like finds the Celtics and he you know just kind of gravitates towards the Celtics? You're not gonna stop him, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:19

No, no. My idea is I'm basically supposed to be like the watcher in Marvel, right? Watch but do not interfere, right? Exactly. No shepherding of any kind, no interjection. That may not be the best analogy because spoiler alert, if you've watched what if the the watcher does get involved at some point, like very involved, but anyway, uh the analogy falls apart, but the the the premise is the premise is sound. Uh I'll I'll tell you what is not a sound premise, okay? We we got we got to talk about this. We've been meaning to

What AI Native Actually Means

SPEAKER_01 3:47

for a bit. One of the things we want to uh air some grievances about today is AI native. What does that mean? Who knows what that means? What does it look like to be AI native? And I want to share with you a uh share with you an example of something that I got while on the job hunt that is just pushing all this just a just a smidge too far for me. That's thing number one. Thing number two, tangentially related to that, we want to talk about uh this is a fun. I saw this from actually a president of the United States tweet, this word mandatorily requesting. So first of all, let that sink in. Secondly, there are places that are mandatorily requesting AI usage for individual contributors and some of the surprise, surprise drawbacks to just rolling that out, uh, but just without real buckles in mind. You have some fresh anger to take out uh on Google, actually, uh, about aggressively pushing some AI Macs down your throat. Can't wait to hear what that is all about. And we're gonna touch base on a couple of things we've covered in the past gating strategy. There's a recent change to your favorite social media platform, LinkedIn, what that actually means for people that are trying to, you know, generate awareness and leads on that. Uh, and then towards the end, I want to try to sneak in today. Just a simple question for you, and that is how how pissed off would you be? And uh you get no context as per usual. So uh that's where we're heading today. AI native. I just want to ask you what is your definition of being AI native? What does it mean, Christopher, to be to be AI native in today's day and age?

SPEAKER_00 5:25

So there's what uh I think the actual definition is and what I think of it every time I see it. Um I'm not gonna be shy about the fact that I think it's a stupid fucking term and I wish it would go away. Um much much like uh Knicks fans uh the past couple weeks. Like like how how many how many bandwagon, not to not to go off on a tangent, but how many bandwagon Knicks fans do you think there were who like never watched a single Knicks game in the past you know 28 years or you know, 50 years or however long since they've been. I guess it's been like 20 something years since they've been in the championship or something, and then like a 50 plus since they won it or something.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Yeah, that's roughly correct. Yeah.

unknown 6:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yep. I mean, lots lots of fair weather fans. I mean, the the weather's nice out and the weather is fair in in New York City these days, but um that's all I'm gonna say about that. I I hope that our two listeners uh don't live in New York City and take offense to that. Uh AI native, so what it actually is, I'm actually gonna pull up the definition here from Google, uh coincidentally read by an AI overview. AI native is actually nope, sorry, that's the that's the wrong thing. I uh Googled AI native meme because I wanted a good meme to go along with this. So AI native, the definition is uh product system or company that was designed from the ground up with artificial intelligence as its poor foundation, rather than just bolting AI features onto existing legacy software. It represents a complete restructuring of workflows where AI agents and machine learning models autonomously drive the architecture. Uh and that AI overview was pulled by an article written by um IBM, which is also the number one result for what is AI native. So I actually think that's a pretty good definition. Like I think of AI native as a basically a company. So like think of like a brand new tool like Claude, for example. You know, Claude is AI native, or like tools built to like use LLMs and like APIs and that kind of stuff. Those are AI native tools because they were built specifically around AI as a core feature, where if you don't have AI, it wouldn't function. And it also like wouldn't have been possible 10 years ago to build these types of tools. That's what I consider to be AI AI native versus an existing legacy company like a HubSpot, where HubSpot's perfectly functional without it. It's not an AI native company because yeah, they can add on AI features like breeds and like all these other things that enhance the existing workflows and tools and automations and everything within HubSpot. Yep. HubSpot wasn't built specifically around those tools. So I actually do think that's a good definition. And I'm sure you're wondering where am I gonna differ on this? Yeah.

Why AI Native For People Fails

SPEAKER_00 8:09

I fucking hate the term still because uh as someone who's been applying for jobs and and whatnot, I've seen on multiple applications, just multiple like job listings, companies saying we want people who are AI native. So this is what I'm gonna turn it over to you. What do you think an AI native person is?

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Well, okay. Before I react directly, before I react directly to that, I just yeah, in the definition that you read and your like subsequent agreement with it, it was very noticeable that it focused on companies, right? And the ecosystem infrastructure they've built being focused on that. Because if that is the AI native, and you just called out on the definition, not like bolting on that to something. I actually agree with you. That's a pretty well-defined AI native um well definition, right? Notably absent from that definition, though, was any mention of like individuals, human beings, people. Right. AI native is not meant to apply to that. And through the context and to empathize with you for a moment, many of the job listings that I have seen, in fact, some of the interviews that I have put myself through, were on the hunt for AI native individuals. We may have texted about this, or it may just be occupying uh more space than it showed in my REM sleep. But in order to be AI native, wouldn't you have had to be born in the last like uh one to three years so that AI has only been what you've known and utilized as a as a piece of software, as a as a technology?

SPEAKER_00 9:42

The only technology you've used as an infant, yes, exactly. That's that's exactly where my mind goes to it as well is you know, if they're looking for like three-year-olds, like all these companies that are asking for AI natives should be like immediately like flagged for like violating child labor laws or something. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

It's like what here's what they clearly mean is AI proficient, right? Or like AI curious at a minimum, the the willingness to take on and try to experiment with incorporating agents or workflows or whatever the case is into their workshop. But it is objectively a stupid thing to ask for someone to be AI native. It just doesn't make sense. I don't like it, makes me uncomfortable. I think that all those companies should lose some credibility for, in my opinion, not doing anything like illegal, but just fucking trying too hard, man. Like you're just trying too hard. Fuck off.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Just I I don't know how and and and here's the the fun the funny thing is like these companies, like if you do manage to get an interview, which I'm convinced that the majority of these job postings are fake anyways, like but like if you do manage to get an interview, they'll be the first people who will complain that, like, oh, this person was using AI to cheat on the interview. It was so obvious they were like grading from a prompt or something.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

It's like it is just a bunch of Judases out there going around like ridiculous expectations and conflicting like execution of those. It drives me fucking crazy.

The AI Recruiter Phone Screen Problem

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Yeah. And something else is that drove me crazy. Speaking of execution, and so one of the one one of the fractional engagements that I put in an application for I actually well here, I'll give you the pros and the cons. The pro, I got a very quick response to this application that I put in. It was for a fractional like demand generation role, nothing crazy, right? Um and again, the response time was good. Here's the con. The con is that the response time was auto-generated via automation or like AI, presumably, right? That's not in and of itself bad. You and I have set up a bunch of autoresponders, right, based on interactions or behaviors or things like that over the course of our career. What pissed me off was the content of this note. I will read to you as follows. Hi, Michael. Thank you for applying to the growth market. Oh, sorry, I was a growth marketing manager. Growth marketing manager, parentheses, contract America's position. I noticed you have not yet completed your initial interview with Alex, our AI recruiter. That is the first step of our interview process for incoming applicants. If you are still interested in this opportunity, you are able to call Alex back at list the phone number anytime 24-7 to complete that step in the process. If you are having any issues connecting with Alex or would prefer to speak with a recruiter directly, please let me know. Sincerely, whatever this dude's name was from the recruiting company. Well, Christopher, I won't I won't drag this out. I responded back to that and said, I would prefer to speak with a recruiter because I fundamentally reject the idea of talking to an AI recruiter because of all the flaws that we were just kind of like dancing around and what we've certainly discussed in the past. It will shock you to learn that I never heard back from from that response. And so you either get your AI recruiter screening or you get a fuck you very much, is basically how this thing panned out. So you're what do you what do you think about that? You're not AI native, is what you're saying. What I'm telling you is that I am not AI native. I am what I am, what I was was furious about that. Because I actually thought it was a decent fit for the role. But then this like barrier of entry, the experience, right? It just yeah, just like if you're trying to fucking buy or sell or market something, experience sucks. Say so so too goes it for this interview process. What what do you think? What is your reaction to that, that whole thing?

SPEAKER_00 13:37

I mean, I'm definitely probably gonna date myself and get called a boomer on this, but I'm 100% with you. Like, fuck AI interviews and AI recruiters. Like, I think that this is like really where people need to start pushing back and like this kind of stuff that you know, everyone's saying that AI is gonna take jobs and everything, but you know, if we let this become the norm, then like every company is gonna be using AI recruiters, and like, you know, what's to stop them from like every single candidate who applies gets the AI interview, and then you know, they just choose a you know, couple percent of those to move on to the next round. Then not only are you wasting time applying, but you're also wasting time talking to this AI interview that you know, phone call that should have been an email or like whatever details they want it should have been on the application to begin with, or like in you know, you can include it in your resume. But like it really like this is one of the things where like it doesn't provide any value whatsoever to the candidate, but it extracts all the value from the candidate and passes that over to the company. Like, there's absolutely no benefit for candidate to

When The Hiring Company Is AI

SPEAKER_00 14:42

do that. And I've actually had a similar experience where coincidentally, uh the I I like sometimes I'll apply to jobs like I'm just like I don't even know what the fucking company does. It looks like a role that's up my alley. If they get back to me, then then I'll kind of you know look into the company a little bit more and see if it's something I'd actually be interested in doing. But we're all guilty of you know, mass applying to jobs, like we don't know what the fucking company is. And I have AI like write all my cover letters and all that stuff because I'm an AI native piece of shit. So um perfect. But this company I actually applied for, they got back to me, they sent a LinkedIn message, which I don't know if it's from AI or if they if this is true, but they basically said, um, I'm leading higher for hiring for this growth lead role. I was really impressed by your application and want wanted, I was so impressed, I would like to invite you to a 10 to 15 minute AI screening interview. Congratulations, you're among a small group of applicants moving forward in our process. It's like, am I Mike? Am I or is is everyone getting the same fucking message? And then he goes on to say, this interview is an opportunity for you to tell us more about your professional background beyond your resume. The interview will focus only on your qualifications, not personality or culture fit. Before starting, you're welcome to take a practice interview as many times as you like to feel prepared. The AI interview allows us to assess every candidate using the same role-specific criteria, ensuring a fair process. After you submit your responses, I'll personally review them before making any decisions. Wink wink. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Of course. That wasn't in the message. Um, okay. I recommend completing the interview within the next five days. I'll be in touch soon after with next steps. If you have any request, if you have any questions, uh feel free to reach out here. You can learn more about the AI interview and take it here. Again, nothing in that in that message had any value to me other than like you're dangling this care of a potential job in front of me. So, you know, as a candidate, I have to do whatever the fuck you want. Um absolutely no benefit to me. Like, nowhere in there was it like this, it also gives you an opportunity to you know ask questions to learn more about the company. Like, you know, anyone who's worked their salt knows that an interview is a two-way street. I don't even like calling it an interview because an interview is inherently one-sided. Like, I always approach these more as like conversations, like what can I offer to the company, but also what is the company going to offer to me. Yes. And it has to be, you know, mutual, it has to work both ways for for uh uh something to be a fit. So I got that that email. I didn't reply. Um I get another email. Uh I get this is a LinkedIn message, first of all. I get an email a couple days later from the same guy being like, Hey, I noticed that you didn't complete the interview, like, here's the link, blah blah blah. And then he followed up again on LinkedIn, and then a third time saying, Hey Chris, hope you're well. Just heard the AI screening had some technical issues, so I'm sharing my personal calendar link below, looking forward to connecting. So this guy followed up with me three or four times, probably like you know all all the time spent following up, he could have just done like a 15-minute phone screen to begin with, like most companies do, and it would have been the same amount of time, and like that would have given me the opportunity to ask them the questions I had. Immediately, because you like are using the shitty AI tool or whatever, um and like the fact that it's an AI interview is the first step, I just completely ignore it. Like, I'm not gonna fucking do it. Yeah, and now you're basically saying that the AI tool that you're using has some bugs, or you're just trying to save face and you're offering like an in-person meeting. So I look into the company a little bit more because like I I just think it's ridiculous. It turns out this company, what they do is AI interviews. So, like they're trying to like use their own software and like trying to use their own processes. Like, as far as I know, they're just like beta testing this on candidates for like this fake growth role or whatever, to just like see how things go and like optimize their their own AI for this AI interview stuff. So um, what I actually tried doing, like I talked to Salty Dan about this, and what I really wanted to do was find a way to like make my own AI bot, like bring Naomi on the call and have Naomi like talk to this AI interview like as if she was Chris Newton or something, and then just like have the two fucking AIs talking to each other. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

I mean, honestly, that's about the response that it's is warranted for this. You you brought up so many things trying to figure out like the directions that I want to go in

Building From Scratch Versus Proven Tools

SPEAKER_01 19:13

for this. But I guess first of all, is like so I was doing a full-time interview recently, and it was one of those AI native companies they're building on. They like take pride in using their own like AI proprietary CRM or whatever to do this, that, and the other thing. They don't deliberately don't use like a HubSpot or Salesforce or anything like that. And so we got to the point where I actually got to like the presentation round of this, and so I'm asking them questions toward the end. Real people, by the way, not a bunch of AI agents, real people in a room. From what you can get against the as far as I could discern, yes. And and and I'm asking them, so like, what are some of like the biggest areas of opportunities you've re like improvements here? Like what from my presentation like really stood out in the in terms of like potential concerns or like pushback you would foresee getting internally, blah blah blah. And they were like, Oh, how much time do you have? Like, it's really difficult for us to get this data thing and to trust that kind of thing, like, yeah, exactly, because you you don't have like why are we trying to do something from scratch for the sake of like doing it, for the sake of like saying you're AI native versus using some shit that like actually works? It's been around for a while, and sure, like that may be like a detriment in your opinion, but like at least it's been tried and true. At least other people have fucked around and like failed forward to get this thing to a decent place versus you trying to you know figure it out and at cost yourself. Well, these it the great irony to me is that a lot of places that are so focused on like velocity execution, like just launching and shipping stuff as as fast as possible are hindered by their own ineptitude and poor like infrastructure like quality, right? That exists.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

And it's just like trying to trying to build shit from scratch instead of pony up the you know couple hundred dollars a month subscription that you would need to accomplish the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Exactly, exactly, man. And so I don't yeah, I don't and and the other thing I wanted to say about like, okay, so the AI agent, I listen, you you've been on the other side of this, you've interviewed candidates. Uh it's not uncommon, it's not great, right? But for you know, especially for a cross-functional interview to be like, okay, here's the scoring rubric we want to use for the candidates. Please, like, you know, uh product marketing or please, like salesperson, uh, assess them against this kind of stuff. And it's a behavioral kind of style, right? And there are some fucking bozos I've worked with, right? That really don't like I I'm not sure how much I trust their ability to adequately complete this rubric and even like carry a conversation. And anyway, right? So you could make an argument that, okay, we're gonna solve for that by standardizing these questions or whatever and trying to get just a real sense of qualification of these folks, right? Because not everyone, if you're great at your like role or your managerial role, or like your IC role, doesn't mean you're gonna be a great interviewer. We saw in the inter in the example that you shared how it's like flawed anyhow. And if you wanted to make the arguments like, well, we trained this model, we built this skill that the agent is using to conduct these interviews based on like real professionals, you know, and like HR or whatever the case is. Those are some of the biggest fucking bozos of them all, man. Like, I don't that doesn't that doesn't make it better. I'd rather have the human error and be able to like listen to a recording and be like, well, you know, I I can make my own determination about that or have a bit have an actual conversation. And so I just it's stupid. They shouldn't do it. I hate it. I'm glad that uh glad that you you didn't glad that you didn't take that that interview. And I'm not upset at all that this company did not get back to me because uh well, why would I be interested in doing that? You know, have the and so that that's that's what I would say about that.

Where AI Crosses The Relationship Line

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Uh on on the notion of like AI taking jobs, like obviously like they're trying to save time by like you know, screening out candidates or whatever, like the AI recruiter and everything. What other things could you think of off the top of your head that would companies do that are like AI, like for X that do something like this that you would absolutely push back on, either as like a professional or as an individual consumer, you know, whatever. Like I guess where do you draw the line for you know both like B2C? Like if you go into a restaurant and like you talk to like an AI server or something, you know, like what what other things could you think of that you would be as willing to push back on as the AI recruiter?

SPEAKER_01 23:17

I I can't think of it specifically, but just like more broadly, just label relationship building stuff, right? Like, yeah, you can go in and you can like it depends on like the experience too. So like I don't have a problem going to fucking like Shake Shack and punching in my order there, right? For like because usually the line is super long for like the ordering in person or whatever, and like that can expedite the process. But if I'm like going to a sit-down dinner where I want to be like taken care of, right? Like I would I would hate having like a non-human do that sort of thing for me. So any kind of opportunity to have like an actual connection or relationship, that's where I would that's where I would hope to that's where I would hope to draw the line, right? And what about you?

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Yeah, I'm I'm with you. I mean, I think that anything relationship-based would be relevant. Um I also think too, like this is just coming hot off of a vacation that you and I chatted about, but like an AI like Airbnb host or something, like I've had like some pretty good hosts in the past that the host that we just had was exceptional. Like like she definitely put the what am I trying to say? She put the hospitality in hospitality. What what's the what's the phrase I'm trying to look at? But like she she baked us like warm, like cranberry orange muffins and like made sure that we were well accommodated for like our baby and our dog and everything, and like you know, just like what you would expect from hospitality, like she was very like welcoming and everything, like made us feel at home in the Airbnb.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

I could see like some hosts just having like an AI respond to your questions, like if you have to message them. Like, I usually I usually don't message hosts that much on Airbnb. Like, I'll if they require like a message to like reserve the booking, I'll just like tell them like what we're there for, who I'm traveling with, and you know, all that stuff. But I could see like Airbnb, like not Airbnb itself, but like even just like hosts that might have like dozens of properties, just automating like responses from AI or something. I could see that being like something I I'd be a little bit turned off on.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah, I mean like there's a way I'm sure you could program where it's like I in my experience, most Airbnb hosts are decent about including like an FAQ section, right? So if someone asks me a question that's from the FAQ, it's like okay, if it relates to this, then send this automated response, right? But if it's like custom or whatever, that's when I would want it, you know, actually ship through to me. I wouldn't trust anything, just sort of like, I don't know, no. I feel like it's just difficult to to to anticipate all the things you might get as an inquiry, right? That is so you can like an AI is only as good as like the people, the program, like the skills that it has to like assess things and all that stuff. So that yeah, that yeah. That's what I think. Yeah, I think it would be yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Yeah, okay.

The Free Dinner Cancellation Fee Trap

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Well um, well before we move on to the next segment, I do want to get to the one where you asked me how pissed off I would be because we weren't able to get to that last time, and I want to make sure we have plenty of time for it this time.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yes, let's talk about how angry you would be. And to do this, I'm gonna give you a visual uh for the sake of well, the video, and I will give you the voiceover as as well. Okay, so this is um, as far as I can tell, a a real thing. This is a non-AI uh generated thing here. So uh I saw this I don't know a few weeks back or so, and I've just been like really excited to piss you off with this. So here we go. Okay, for the folks on the uh on the audio, this is a post from a VP of Growth of Marketing. Okay, and I will the post is as follows. Apparently I owe money for a dinner I didn't eat. Got invited to a marketing dinner, something more relevant came up, so I canceled the day before. Then this landed in my inbox. Quote, I'd like to draw your attention to our standard registration terms. If you can, provide a suitable replacement by 12 p.m. Or alternatively, we would need to apply a cancellation fee. End quote. I said I'm not paying a fee for a free dinner I didn't attend. The follow-up. Quote, I've managed to secure a learning and development session for you virtually with the hosts. If we get this booked, we could waive the fee. End quote. So I cancelled the free dinner and now I owe you either a fee, a replacement guest, or thirty minute or thirty minutes of my time listening to a sales pitch. I can't wait to sign a contract with the company that tried to invoice me for not eating their salmon. End of post. Chris, how fucking mad would you be?

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Uh so before I answer that, on on which side? Uh from the company side or the lady attending the free dinner side?

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Oh man, do both, but do the lady first.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Uh well, from the lady side, I mean, I I don't know if I would be necessarily pissed or angry as much as like just perplexed that this is even a thing. Because it if I'm reading it correctly, it was like a prospect dinner or something. That's like Exactly. It's like you you know, you're higher up, they they want to get in front of you, so they offer you a free dinner so you can come and listen to their picture kind of thing. Yep. Yep. I mean, I guess like putting on like my my legal hat. It's like, did I sign anything like saying that I would attend this free dinner? Like, what recourse do they have to like even be like charging a fee? Like, was the cancellation fee disclosed up front? Is this just like a shitty sales tactic where the sales rep is trying to save save something? I I don't know why he would even try to save a relationship by offering a fee. Like, why not reschedule the fucking dinner or something? Or like I I guess I don't have all the context as to what this is all about. Like, was it a one-on-one thing or was it like a group dinner?

SPEAKER_01 29:02

Like can't say for sure. The way having participated in several of these in the past, my educated assumption here is that it was like a group, small dinner, you know, maybe five to as many as twenty people in a room, facilitated discussion kind of thing. Presumably trying to, you know, get her in the room with other people, she could get like the peer-to-peer dialogue that happens, and ultimately there's at least a soft sales pitch that occurs from the host, right? But like, man, I am empathetic to trying to have like ROI positive outcomes for investments in more intimate engagements like this, especially if this lady is squarely in their ICP. But to damage a relationship like this, to your point, like let's cool, we'll catch you next time. We can reschedule, like, it shouldn't be you're invited to this by the way, super like used car salesman. You're right, like, oh, I talked to my manager and I was able to secure this fucking discount for you. Like, dude, what is that? No, like it compare to the virtual thing next time around, free of charge, waive the fee, or or or even if you wanted to be like again, like fucking cringy here, but like, well, typically speaking, we do assess this fee. Like, we apologize if you missed that this time around. Is we'll make a first-time exception here. We'd really love to have you come around or whatever. It's like anything other than you have to pay us because you didn't come would have been the better route to go, in my or even worse, like, what the fuck are they talking about?

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Like a learning and development session, like, oh, you have to come to our webinar and like waste your time because you didn't come to this dinner or something.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah, like it's just like even that the learning, hey, dumbass, come learn from us because you don't know what you're doing. Get enough of your job. It's not even like I would call that anything else, too. It's not a learning development, it's like a it's like a discussion with ongoing industry trends with your peers or something like that. You know what I mean? Like dress it up, like nothing, no part of this was handled well. I bet it was a strategy put together by some fucking AI agent. I'll bet you. I'll bet you. But I don't know. So that you have anything you want to say in defense of the of the company here?

Do Marketing Dinners Actually Work

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Uh I mean, I've like done these dinners in the past, like on the company side, like, do they actually even fucking work? Like, just to be honest, like between you and I and our two listeners, do these even fucking work? Like, is is somebody gonna decide to buy a product over a dinner as opposed to some other product not over a dinner? Like, first of all, like if I was a CEO and I knew that my marketing VP chose to purchase some software because she got invited to a free dinner without like doing diligence and like evaluating all the other pieces, you know, softwares or products that are equivalent that could potentially be better or more affordable, and she just went with it because you know, he or she went with it because they went to a dinner. I would fire that fucking person. Like, you need to like evaluate all your options and make the best decision for the company, not because you got fucking sweet talked at the dinner.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

I happen to agree with that. To me, this feels like a super old school way of doing like marketing and sales or whatever. Like, I've been in plenty of organizations that event marketing is the only form of marketing that there's genuine enthusiasm, right? Because it's like, you know, they're in the room, they can physically shake a hand or whatever and just flex their sales prowess and all this kind of stuff. Does it actually work? In my this is to more to answer it more seriously for a moment. Like, my experience has been that these type of events serve more as a pipeline accelerator than a pipeline generator. Like, I would rather spend the dollars to get someone like unstuck, especially in longer sales cycles, here because presumably, if they exist as an opportunity in your forecasts, they've done the due diligence, they've had a couple of conversations with you, and it's just a matter of like you distinguishing yourself from whatever competitor might be in the mix. That's a better use case than like inviting someone in net new, wooing them with some decent wine and a salmon, uh, and and then just hoping for the best. That ROI is a hell of a lot like harder to, in my opinion, like generate. So that's that's my reaction.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Yeah, I I can see that. Like, if it's an existing pipeline, then you're you're trying to like get a deal closed or whatever. And like, especially like if it's like an enterprise sales motion where you have multiple decision makers and you're trying to get a champion and like build a relationship, like I could see that potentially working, but like to me, this seems like there wasn't an existing relationship, and like just a bunch of like people were invited to a dinner as a way to like kind of create an opportunity, you know, create some pipeline from it. It's just you're not gonna do that, you're not gonna do that by uh threatening a cancellation fee or like you know, send your coworker and set who's not busy kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Right, right, man, exactly. Not not the most important thing here, but like so one of these didn't one of these dinners I attended as a prospect, uh, the restaurant was shut down within like three months of us being there. And I I don't know what it was for. I hope it wasn't like a health inspection, but anyway, the the the net net here is like that that shit that we just talked about is way too like aggressive of of a tactic.

Google AI Max And Lost Control

SPEAKER_01 34:10

And with the time we have rebating, I would like you to express your frustration with the aggressive Google, what does it have? Uh like the Max thing. What are you even talking about?

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Yeah, are you are you from first of all, are you are you familiar with uh AI Max? It's a Google type of it's a Google setting you can enable for your search campaigns and stuff like that. Is it the same thing as performance max back in the day? Nope. Uh uh apparently everything is maxed these days. Uh HBO Max, AI Max, Performance Max. Performance Max still sucks after even like three to four years, especially for B2B. I've seen a little bit of success with B B2C, but B2B, it still sucks. Um AI Max is basically a setting you can enable that gives Google the keys to your car and lets them drive your budget for you. Instead of it basically takes away a lot of the controls that you historically had in terms of like exact match. Like it basically like it makes a lot of things broad match, but it also like creates the ad copy and like crawls your landing page and like pulls stuff out. So it basically gives Google the keys to the castle and lets them spend the budget however the fuck you want. Right. I had a client who I've tested this on and it the results were terrible. Like we turned it off within a month because it was just like leading to a lot of wasted clicks and just irrelevant, irrelevant stuff and you know, everything. And um, I've got another client who a Google rep is getting exceeding exceedingly aggressive on pushing this. There's numerous Reddit threads out there saying that Google reps are like gold on the number of you know AI max people they can get turned on because basically if if an account isn't spending their full budget, whether there's not enough search volume out there or whatever the case, turning on AI Max is almost guaranteed to spend the full budget. Um at the end of the day, make Google more money. Um but yeah, I mean some of the tactics that they're using, like they actually said that the account in an email, they said that an account wasn't performing well, which is a direct reflection on as me, the freelancer managing the account, saying that the only way to fix it was to turn on AI Max. It's like, get the fuck out of here. Like you're you're gonna do my client a disservice and like throw me under the bus just so you can hit your fucking quota for AI Max and you know, enables for the the month, the month of the quarter or whatever. Like it just it really rubs me the wrong way. We actually were testing it on three of the six campaigns in this uh client account. Um, my the the the lady who was the uh who was managing the account before I took over enabled it for these three test campaigns. I looked at the performance and they didn't get a single conversion from any of these AI Max keywords. So, like not only am I pissed off and I'm not gonna take any of your fucking recommendations ever again, but I actually went in and I disabled AI Max for each of these um each of these campaigns, like hopefully hurting his goal because he was trying to get us to turn on the next three. Like he wanted the whole the whole account to have it turned on. So we Jesus. I I could go on for I know we're almost out of time, but I could go on for a while about this.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Uh listen, I'm proud of you for doing your part to push back. Fuck that guy. Fuck AI Max, fuck the aggressive uh manner that's being pushed on you, and fuck the aggressive way that Zoom is about to bounce us from this thing. We appreciate you guys coming along for the ride. More to say on this and some other stuff next time. Uh, we'll unpack it then. Appreciate you. Thanks, all. Take it easy.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Later, it's a little bit more.