Transcript
Welcome to the Flow State podcast. I am Flow State founder and managing director Stuart P Turner. In this five episode mini series we’re talking about the implications of AI cutting through the hype to talk about real world use cases, real examples, and what it means to people in their day-to-day jobs. So Lee, thank you for joining the show, it’s awesome to have you on. Obviously you’re the marketing manager at Don’t Panic events. I’m actually super excited to talk to you because you guys cover a huge array of industries and markets. So for the benefit of those people who may not have heard of you, can you give me a quick rundown of exactly what it is that Don’t Panic does and the breadth of the sort of scope of the events that you guys run?
Absolutely, Stu. So basically we are a B2B events company and we specialize in Awards events. We just set up events that are based around people who have been in, you know, the search, SEO, PBC, Agency, company culture, you know, the vast range of industries that they are in the digital space and we basically set up Awards nights for them. But it’s a lot more than just that. I think the background of it is making sure the people just know that if they have a great campaign, if they have a great kind of product, tool, software, company culture, in-house initiative that they can basically enter our Awards and, you know, have that kind of winning element to the agency or to their name or to their campaign. So that’s basically what we set up and we do it from inception all the way from getting people to download entry forms for a particular events all the way down to judging and then selling tickets for the event and the actual Gala event night. And we currently have around 30 events in our portfolio that we run throughout the year. So yeah, that’s basically Don’t Panic in a very small nutshell.
Wow, I like it. So just everything everything everywhere basically, I like it. And look, I think one of the interesting things in particular about obviously speaking to you is there’s a kind of dual, a jewel I guess purpose to the conversation. Because I’m sure as you know as an agency fan stroke, uh, you know, sort of person yourself, that’s AI potentially, if you believe the hype, is coming for many of our jobs. But also it’s actually really interesting to see how it’s actually going to be represented in the awards and how people are actually using it. So talk to me about, you know, is this a Terminator type situation that we’re in now? Like are we all going to be usurped by machines or is that just like hype and should we just all calm down?
Oh my gosh. I just feel like, you know, everybody as soon as it came out, as soon as like, you know, your ChatGPT kind of came out, everyone started just really becoming stressed out. I’m speaking from experience because I’m just like, oh my gosh, why is this thing without any any form of kind of, you know, the long hour research that we kind of human beings put into it? I guess it was just, you know, that kind of worry in the beginning. I definitely know that from our content manager’s point of view, I think she she was really stressed out. Really Biggie, oh my gosh, this thing, you can just do hours worth of research and in split seconds and yeah, taking up company time. But I think from from the the time that ChatGPT did come out up until now, there’s just so much more to it than than worrying that it’s gonna unserve your job or something like that. I think it’s more that you can use it to your advantage. You can, you know, kind of take back those hours in the day now. Instead of, you know, taking hours and hours to do research on something, it types you up whatever it is that you need and you just have to do the the the fact checking basically behind it, which isn’t as as long as kind of doing the research, kind of putting pen to paper or, you know, fingers to notepad kind of thing. And now I would rather say it’s more of an advantage than anything else. If you’re not using it in your job role, if you’re not kind of utilizing it as much as you can, that’s when you should worry that your job’s unsafe. Because I think everybody, whether you’re a copywriter or not, whether you’re a marketing manager or not, you know, it’s it’s just so great to kind of use. You know, the the other night we were thinking about, you know, we wanted to have like these place card holders on the table so people could discuss, you know, the points of discussion. So if you you’re sitting with someone at your table that you don’t know and you don’t know how to start a conversation, we thought, okay, what could we do to create, you know, little cards that basically are conversation starters? Yeah, that’s cool. We put it into and we put it into ChatGPT, our designer did it. And he’s likely, I understand none of these terms. I don’t know what that matches. I don’t know what phrase match is. I don’t know what it means for a competitor’s ad to rank some. He’s just like, please help me, and it fills such a great like these search words, what does this mean, what does this mean? And he’s honestly just a designer, didn’t know what any of it meant. And when I sat there, I was like giggling myself. I was like, great, okay, let’s this is what we do. We take what ChatGPT did and we kind of work it around into the ones that are a bit more funnier, the ones that it kind of very much office space. And it was just such a such a great way to kind of use the tool for advantages and sitting in a brainstorm meeting for about an hour to try and throw out words and throw out phrases that kind of work in the search industry. And like, I mean, something like that is just a great way to show that it it’s it’s really great for people who are not even in the marketing space, who’s who’s more of a designer who doesn’t know anything about social SEO PPC to to utilize it quite well. So I mean, yeah, just just a small example. So it’s quite quite good to use for that.
Look, I think that’s actually a really interesting example which is it’s come up a lot in in a few conversations actually about the education side. And from from reading a few bits as well, I’m sure you’ve been across this yourself, there’s a bit of a kind of a, you know, a pro and con that seems to keep cropping up which is obviously, you know, it’s great that you now have a tool at your fingertips that can teach you things. Like it’s, you know, super even easier than just having Google there to to find things. Instead of having to fish around, you’re like, I’ll just tell me this which I think is awesome. But the Counterpoint to that which I’ve been hearing quite a lot is the, you know, the concern about sort of the the garbage in garbage out problem where a lot of people in specific areas are slightly worried that, you know, it’s giving you things that are inaccurate. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the stories about it like making up references and sort of as you said, the fact checking sides not necessarily being there. Are you seeing any of that either yourself or in in the entries to the awards?
Not just yet into the entries because do you know what we’ve decided to do? We’ve recently had the UK Dev Awards come up quite recently and it’s it’s coming up for its 2024 cycle quite soon. And what we thought was we we wanted to actually have categories, AI categories into the awards or the the upcoming years awards. But we actually took a step back and we thought, you know, instead of rushing to make sure that we have AI categories imta awards where people are not ready. I don’t think they’re ready or have refined their tools or refined the kind of AI based tools that they’re using. Instead of pushing a category in and then getting sort of submissions that aren’t ready to go to market yet or haven’t been had the kind of market research that it needs, rather than pushing it to to kind of go down the route of let’s just get people to enter into these awards and this AI category for for them and trying to push it to go to market too quickly before people are even ready for it, let’s give it another year for people to actually do their market research, do the testing, you know, take the time that they need to actually perfect something that could be helpful, rather than just throwing something out, oh we’ve created an AI tool, oh there’s a category and an awards, we’re just going to put it in because we know we’re going to win because there’s such a small kind of nuance to it at the moment that you could win without any competition. So we thought we’re gonna actually put on the back burner for the for the next year, so that we can hope that people actually take their time to do the research, fix any bugs, take their time to do kind of market research and actually put out a tool that they’re actually happy to win that will gain some kind of competitor competitors in the space. So so yeah, I think you know, looking at kind of the the AR tools that have also come up to counteract what’s been done by ChatGPT. I mean, I’ve been reading on, you know, students, you know, creating their own essays and kind of thesis and dissertations through ChatGPT. And, you know, as a human being, how would you spot that out? Unless you realize, oh, ChatGPT is quite repetitive. But if you’re not a professor in this, if you’re not someone who’s using it quite constantly like a marketeer, and you’re a professor and you see this long well written essay has a few references, and you know, it could be possible. But how would you know that the students has actually written in? Another just been reading about all the a Harvard student in particular who created a non-ChatGPT app that basically picks up if it’s been written by AI. And I thought that’s quite interesting to have done, you know, literally going against the curve. Everyone’s going down the AR routes of writing and kind of publishing novels and books and kind of essays and blog posts where someone ‘s decided, well, how do we know what’s real and what’s not? Because that’s I think that’s what it says human beings apart, isn’t it? That you know, we we So based in the art and kind of creative space, do you really want AI to kind of take over that as well? You know, it’s just it’s a lot of conversation about it and I guess it’s just us deciding what we want to what do we want to do with it and what route we take with it. And yeah, it’s just it’s it’s actually just quite interesting to read everything at the moment that’s coming on. Honestly, Steve, if I can tell you one thing, everything is about ChatGPT. Honestly, I log into LinkedIn and it’s just like everybody going on about it. It’s absolutely insane.
Yeah, it’s funny you say that actually because obviously spending a lot of time on LinkedIn myself, not necessarily by choice, I want to I want to add, there is, you know, it makes me want to like stab pencils into my hands reading some of the stuff on there at the moment. But like, I’m actually in a, there’s quite a couple of amusing Reddit like threads that I’m in as well where, oh my gosh, people are talking about like, uh, like what was the best, the best job title they saw was a prompt engineer that people are calling themselves now. And people were just like ripping out of this. Like a prompt engineer is like not a thing. It’s just, you know, how to type stuff into a chat bot. It’s just asking it questions and telling it to do stuff.
Exactly that. It’s basically all of us going into Google every day and typing in what we’re trying to get out of it. So it’s it’s basically I’m prompted.
Look, I think I’ve been there. I’ve been probably quite offensively liking it to my friends when I talk to them about like, you know, when like little kids first learn, they’re learning about the world around them and they put everything in their mouth. Like what is happening in a minute is everyone’s at that phase where they’re like, oh, can I do this with ChatGPT? It’s like when you were a little kid and you were like, oh look a rock on the floor, I’ll put it in my mouth, maybe that’ll tell me about it. And you’re like, we just need to kind of power through this phase, I think, and see if anything useful comes out the other side. But you know, absolutely not everything tastes good, I guess, is the takeaway. And there’s only so many things you can learn by just eating stuff that you find on the floor, which you learn quite quickly.
Yeah, it is great that people are using it and trying to use it as as well as they possibly could. But it’s not always going to work for everybody. I mean, some of the times that I’ve gone into ChatGPT and kind of put in a prompt, it’s come out with literal garbage. Like very repetitive kind of content or content that’s basically, you know, repeated in in a different way. Or it’s it’s quite methodical in introduction, main paragraph, conclusion. But that’s not the way kind of writing works at the moment. I mean, you can go off on the tangent if you wanted to. You can go and reference several other things in in a blog post or an article that you’re writing. I mean, it it isn’t as straightforward or the structure isn’t as always straightforward as introduction a little and end. Like that’s the way that you learn it in sort of high school and primary school and things like that. So it’s not it’s not the way that we kind of write in the modern world or the Working World. So yeah, it’s it’s interesting to kind of take note of, I guess. But it’s it’s also taking what ChatGPT gives to you or any kind of AO software and working it for your own advantage and not just using it as is. And I think that’s the worst thing about LinkedIn is that you can kind of pick up now after can you even make all those things? Yeah, and so you can’t, you can’t pick it up. So why don’t you just take a little bit longer to just kind of edit it out and make it your own voice? Because your own voice is basically what you need to do on LinkedIn. It’s all about, you know, your own branding and your own kind of marketing to it. So yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s it’s all interesting at the end of the day. It’s it’s good to kind of note what people are using it for and what actually works and what doesn’t.
Yeah, and look, like I completely agree. And I think coming back to the point you made about sort of efficiency and quality being combined together, I think I agree with you. I think that’s where a lot of people are falling down right, where they’re just going way too far down the efficiency bucket and being like, oh, look, I can do like a million crap things, you know, way faster now. Instead of thinking, well, what’s the one really good thing that you can do way faster that would actually be really useful? Not like, you know, I can just spam out like 20 articles instead of one in the same time. Like that’s not necessarily the the right thing to be doing, you know, for any use case, I guess. But you just reminded me actually this kind of what concerns me. And I think coming back to your point around the awards as well is obviously models like ChatGPT have been trained on like the sort of corpus of information that’s just on the internet. And I’m sure you know as well as I do that a large proportion of the content that’s out there is already created basically at quite a low level just to either thumb, you know, farm clicks, farm ad dollars. Like there’s a lot of like pretty poor quality stuff if you go back to the early days of SEO when everyone was, you know, just building like link farms and stuff like that. That is absolutely all that stuff’s what they’ve been trained on. So is that a concern? Like should we be worried that a proportion of the information that’s actually in there is pretty poor to start with or do you not think that’s too much of an issue?
reference is that, you know, it was compared to ChatGPT at least makes it different every single time. So it’s a single person is going to have the same kind of copy, same kind of content. It’ll change each time with link farms it’s just like same links on the same platforms on the same recruitment or dodgy little websites. I mean, so you do know obviously that we we struggle with quite a lot of spam having 28 or 230 Awards, which means that we have a website for each of them. And we just get hammered with spam every single day. And we know that there’s that one Russian Gmail account that keeps getting the websites constantly over and over and over again. It’s basically the same thing with those link Farms back in the day. Like it’s just like the same websites that you’re having your ads and content move on to, whereas now it’s I think it’s a bit nuanced and if you are a good copywriter or editor or marketeer, you wouldn’t just take what’s given to you. You’d kind of adapted for what you’re actually trying to write for, the the message that you’re trying to get get across. So what is that CTA that you want to have in mind for for people to actually click on action or or make use of? So I think it is quite different and that’s sort of the nice thing. But also you’ve got to worry that if it’s creating something different each time, how would you know who’s using it for the same advantage? Who’s using it and actually editing it down and making it a bit more nuanced and who’s not? Yeah, it’s it’s it’s quite a difficult one. Like you you never now, it’s almost like the difference between, you know, I could have I could have quit my job and decided to become a copywriter and then just use ChatGPT and just like you’re living off of it. But I mean, it’s just like how far is it gonna go and how long can you use it for until it’s not sustainable? Yeah, and I think that’s that’s the hard part. If you are consultant or freelancer in the market today, it’s just every other, you know, person who’s kind of hired you to do work now things they can do it on their own using ChatGPT. Yeah, quite a scary part of it.
Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting, hey? Because I think like obviously we’ve as white collar, you know computer people, we’ve been pretty safe for quite a while. There’s been, I mean, there’s been a lot of disruption but it hasn’t disrupted us, right? Like we’ve been able to be like, oh no, I still I still know stuff, special stuff that nobody else knows. Whereas now, with chat, you’re like, ah, well, people could actually find that out like pretty quickly now. Like is are you worried about that? Like I mean, you know, if you were a copywriter, would you be would you be worried now?
I mean, you know, it depends on the type of copyrighter you are. I think, you know, I’ve I’ve had the privilege of me to quite some really great copywriters in in my day and I just know them that what they’re taking from GPT is so different to what they’re outputting. So we had a little, we did this little exercise in the office and we decided to have ChatGPT write an article about, you know, award entries and the importance and benefits of it. And then we had a copyright to do exactly the same thing. She didn’t know, but she knew she just needed to write this blog post for me. And I didn’t ChatGPT. And then what we did was we took both copies of that article and we gave it over to our data analyst who’s not a words person at all. Yeah, who doesn’t know anything about words, kind of just is stuck in numbers and stuck in stats and analytics the whole day. And we thought, you know, she doesn’t understand our copyrighted handwriting because she doesn’t obviously edit and read it through like I do each day. And we gave it over to him, we said, okay, so tell us which is our copywriters, uh, you know, article. And and I could see her face, the high pressure A B test that, you know, absolutely. And then she was just looking at it thinking, oh my God. But Emma, and as she actually started reading it, she realized that that’s an interesting word. That’s exactly the way that we would actually put it for ourselves. And you know, she actually went through it and she realized, oh my God, this is so much better because this just sounds like it’s been bloated out and copied and pasted from the internet. Yeah, right? I mean, it and and that’s the thing now with without copyright and and the copywriters that I’ve met, I just know you’re not, you’re not, you’re absolutely safe if you’re doing your job compared to if you’re just taking something off ChatGPT and throwing it wherever you need to throw it, and hoping that it sticks. And at the end of the day, if you are a good copywriter, you would take the time to kind of make sure actually this could be a bit more nuanced for a particular audience. This could say a little bit extra in terms of making sure that people understand what the awards Trustmark means for us. Or, you know, like those small nuances that we would always kind of market and make sure to market. I wouldn’t know that it needs to do that. So I think, you know, I wouldn’t necessarily worry if you are a good copywriter and you do take the time to do that research and do take the time to actually go through what you need to go through, because ChatGPT doesn’t do that. It just takes a bunch of things off the internet. And sometimes you need to worry about the sources because sometimes it’ll give it a source from somewhere that it doesn’t pick it up from immediately where it had originally come from. It just takes the latest source that it kind of found. So so yeah, it just it’s it’s quite interesting. But I think if you are a good copywriter, you shouldn’t be worried.
Yeah, I look, I think that’s that’s actually really reassuring. And I I like your line of thinking because I, you know, I’m sure you are as well, like I have a sort of strong feeling that that will that will be how this plays out. And I think, I mean, you would probably know better than me with your, you’re sort of, you know, being across all the the different kind of awards and categories you guys run. But there is a real distinction from every client conversation I’ve ever had with people particularly, you know, from working in agencies for a long time where people get that there’s only so much like tactical sort of tweaking that you can really do that’ll, you know, it’ll get you so far but it won’t get you any further. And you end up just sort of, you know, plateauing at a level and that’s fine for some people. But you know, the where people really excel and I think where, you know, agency teams and service providers really excel is exactly what you just described. It’s understanding how that all connects up to like real marketing, you know, and how it connects up to having a brand and distinguishing yourself and understanding how people behave. And I feel like that side of things, it’s had a real sort of taking a real battering over the past kind of 10 years or so, you know, probably since the since the growth of, you know, the the advertising models online because people were like, I don’t need to worry about that. Just, you know, whang a load of money at Google and they’ll sort it out for you. But I’ll figure it out. Yeah, yeah, I feel like we couldn’t kind of back background full circle now which to me is quite reassuring. Because I think the, as you were saying earlier, is the human the human element that makes you stand out or or not, right? Like not the the amount of stuff that you can do.
Yes, and now it’s exactly. It’s a quality. It’s always about quality over quantities. And it’s like if you realize that with everything in life. So the thing is I think back in the day when you could write a sort of, you know, 50 blog posts quite quickly about nothing or or sort of take the same topic and reword it over and over and over and over again until you get some kind of good SEO and you you’ve got your articles kind of pointing in multiple different directions. I mean, used to work that way back then but not not anymore. Like it takes a bit more time and effort and that’s why I think SEO is even blown up the way that it does. That’s why you’ve got like these major conferences like SEO that comes up each year and it’s it’s grown as as they advertise it. It’s grown from a pub in Little Old Bright into this Global phenomenon. So I mean, there must be something to it. It’s very conference by the way, Brian SEO, well worth, well worth.
Absolutely. Oh my gosh, absolutely. I went this year and last year and this year was just absolutely Mega. I mean, the speakers were great. I mean, the the kind of, I went for PPC Advanced training course because I thought, you know, with everything that’s changing in the industry, I just want to make sure that I’m abreast of everything. I know exactly what’s going on. And even those kind of courses were amazing. Funny enough, the speaker had won four awards at our UK paid media Awards. And I thought, okay, this is someone I want to obviously listen to. And it’s a great person that they chose because she’s an agency owner as well. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, it just shows that if SEO has come just so far. Yeah, such a such an important part of the industry that yeah, I guess not a lot of people if you’re not in the space would know how much of a hard work actually goes behind everything. Yes, you know, he’s still there. Yeah, yeah, so I think the the best way to describe it or the best way to put it is you know, when your parents ask you what do you do and they just don’t understand. If you have to say, oh, it’s marketing, it’s computers.
Yeah, I was used to it. I used to have explained to my mum that we’re like back on, we were doing more media, more paid Media stuff. We’d be like, you know, when you like go on any website and you just see the same advert everywhere? Like I was like, that’s what that is what we do basically. It’s just to Hound you around the internet until you buy stuff. That was yeah, exactly that.
Oh my God. And that’s the funniest thing to explain it to appearance. I think that’s what it’s almost that’s what it’s almost boiled down to that. Yeah, that’s kind of what everybody kind of thinks. It’s it’s awful if you’re not in the industry, you wouldn’t know. But I think everybody else that it’s like, oh, you do, you do Facebook, yeah, Twitter all day.
Yeah, give you a mildly dirty look as they wander off. Yeah, hey, it’s funny talking about SEO actually because I’ve, you know, like is having having been doing it for many years now, like it’s still I’ve been really surprised that maybe it’s just as you said in virtue of just being so deep, I guess, in the industry that I can no longer see the way back out, I suppose at this point. But people, yeah, I still get asked about it now. We’re still doing quite a lot of SEO work with with slow Stokes. People just like don’t don’t get it still. And I was like, is it not really easy now? There’s loads of like super easy tools and stuff for people. Like, yeah, how does it work? And I was like, well, you know, you just do what Google says basically, but not not all the time. And then they were like, oh. And then, you know, their eyes closed over a bit. But I was like, you always do it for you? Yes, we can. But yeah, look, it’s interesting. I think but back to your back to your point earlier actually, one of the most exciting things I’ve seen recently was the introduction of the testing of AR driven allegedly search results from Bing and Google. Like what do you think about that, Lee? Like have you seen them, if you had to play around with them? And like, do you know if there’s going to be much of an impact on the the search industry as yet? Given that it’s still quite a small a small test I guess at the moment.
It might be a small test now, but I feel like it could blow up really quickly and very easily. I mean, once people start using it a little bit more and kind of getting, you know, I think with anything, it’s it’s just how do people use it and how are they wanting it to grow? And that literally goes in hand within anything that you kind of launch or any kind of product or tool or software or anything that you kind of use these days. It just depends how the user finds it and how you want it to grow, because at the end of the day, you can use it for, you know, something really small. Like, you know, ChatGPT wouldn’t have blown up if every single copyright and marketer didn’t just go on it in London. Like literally just flood the system and use. You’d use it as as much as I could. I know consulted then. I know he wouldn’t wouldn’t ChatGPT first came out. He thought like, oh my god, I’ve been paying someone to write blog posts for me and they could only really do like five a month. Then it cost six months money, which is quite a bit. And he just sat the whole day thinking of every single blog post idea you could think of and putting in the chat chat. Brilliant. Saving it out because you thought it was gonna crack and it wasn’t going to go anyway. He honestly just thought this this is like such a great product. There’s no way it’s going to be free for very long. It’s definitely gonna crash, it’s going to be an issue, there’s going to be a bug, something’s going to happen. I’m literally said before like four to five hours a day typing in everything that he could to try and save it out and edited at a later date because it just saves you so much of time and money.
That’s great. Just really getting this, getting his money’s worth in there. Good way to go.
No, exactly. That’s I guess, I guess it just it boils down to how do people use it? How do we test it? How do we how do we want it to function for for ourselves basically?
Yeah, look, I think again going back to a point you made earlier just in connection with that, I think the, just to talk about I suppose where you see the the next kind of opportunities coming in. The most interesting use cases I’ve seen are actually the most pedestrian ones. And maybe that’s just, you know, says more about me than anything else. But for example, like we use a tool called Loom quite a lot, which, you know, helps you like record videos and do quick screen shares. I think I think I’m about to do with a few of those. And they’ve introduced a really cool little like, it’s not really AI but like, you know, they’re calling it that’s like the language model. But it summarizes what’s in your video. It breaks it up into chapters for you which is quite cool based on, you know, where you’re pausing or starting to talk about different things. And it also transcribes everything and then edits the transcription. So back to your point about things that take a load of time afterwards. I was like, you know, that was one of the veins in my life where I’m like, how do you give this video a really useful title? Like do I need to actually put markers in where I’ve said something? Oh, I forgot when I said it. Like obviously I’m not writing it down. But that that to me is a massive Time Saver and actually really helpful for the recipient. Because then as you know, I can talk quite extensively. So if they’re like, oh, it’s you actually talking. So he’s talking about what we actually wanted to hear it like five minutes in. So you just skip straight ahead. So that that I thought was super useful. And there’s one in ClickUp which we use as well which is our project management tool where it just literally has a button that just says summarize. So if you’re writing a description or a title or something and you’re like this isn’t going to make any sense to anyone, you just press summarize and it just gives you a way shorter version. And I was like, this is this is great. It’s like super boring but really useful at the same time.
Oh my gosh, that is a lifesaver. That’s what I know. I was like, this is just saving me hours already. Have you seen anything like that? Not at all, at all. This, you know what, the the day I was, so we do judge recordings basically. And judge recordings, we just want to find out those little nuanced bits about what a judge is looking for in an entry form, what they’re looking for that stands out in terms of an entry, the way that people submit their entries, kind of what they’re saying about budgets, what they’re saying about the objectives, how they reach their objectives, what are the challenges? Like those those things the judges have to go through for every single entry form that they’re judging. And obviously, you know, there’s there’s such a big variety of entries that come in. We always trying to find out from a judge what stands out. What are those nuanced pieces that actually stand out? And so I’ve been doing judge recordings recently, and just like recording the session, having having a discussion with them, speaking about the entry forms, you know, what what is helpful? What are the the kind of big things that people always must make mistakes on? And one of those small things that interns you on you, you know, some people have been entering our awards for about five, six, seven years. And it’s basically what do those people who’ve been entering you and you, how do they stand out a little bit more? What could they have tweaked a little bit more to make sure that they got an extra point for something? So it’s, you know, we need to cater not only to the new entrants who don’t understand the process at all, but to injuries who’ve been entering you on you on the same entry form and how do they stand out? And so I’ve been study with judges obviously trying to pick their brains about things like this. And my the bane of my life is sitting afterwards and actually transcribing it all.
Yeah, you say my like a hell of a long time. I’ll send you the website. Yeah, but it’s, but I’m, I understand being both very lazy and a huge fan of efficiency. Like and constantly on the hunt for things that are like slightly faster, slightly easier. Like, you know, anything like that, I’m like, brilliant, we’ll just we’ll just use that, done.
Yeah, I mean, if uh, you ever applied for a job with Bill Gates, you’d hire you immediately. What does he always say? He hires uh, lazy people, not hard workers.
I know, we should know that when I was younger. I could have gotten the Microsoft gravy training earlier.
Yeah, exactly. So talk to me about get back on the subject of awards. And I know you said that you ‘re not sort of, you’re not pushing AI too hard this year. But are there any areas where you or the team are actually kind of like, oh, there might be some really interesting stuff happening next year? Have you heard any kind of rumblings from either the UK or across the other markets that you guys operate in yet? Are there any sort of, you know, any exciting things that are sort of happening that you you were kind of keen to see an award entry on?
Oh, absolutely. I think I’ve just come back as I said from Paris from the global search board awards. And that was really good because we interviewed one of our judges, Matoka Hunt. She’s really, really good and she’s been judging our awards for the longest time. And you know, I asked her exactly the same thing. Like, you know, what have you seen in 2023 in terms of trends and what do you expect to to find in 2024? And you know, she spoke a lot towards, you know, the search industry and all the policies kind of changing at the moment and how people are adapting to that. But what I found is that we’ve just finished our Global social media Awards. And what we realized is there’s so much in to do in terms of influences. And I know everybody loves an influencer. But they they really do push a product. They push tools. They push, you know, you know, different kind of services in in the industry. And as much as we hate to acknowledge that they are a big part of kind of marketing. I mean, you know, influencer marketing is an absolutely booming and growing industry at the moment. And I’m not talking about those guys who go to a restaurant and try to get a free meal. The free ice cream people here. Yeah, exactly. It’s not it’s not those guys. It’s the ones that actually kind of take on a product and are really passionate about it. And then go on to push it. And and how did I push it? What are they kind of using? What tools they’re using? What kind of messaging are they using that’s different from others? And that’s what I’m trying to also adopt in our marketing at the moment. Because, you know, with us, an event is not something that you can push right here and right now. It’s not a product that you can sell right here right now. It’s not tangible. It’s a day in the future. And that day in the future is so hard to kind of show people and navigate why they need to be there. Why they need to be a part of the award ceremony. And that’s what we’re trying to what I guess myself and the team are trying to really push at the moment. Like that content creator look and feel of a video or look and feel of an awards night is what we’re really trying to push. And and I feel like the the realm of being a content creator or I wouldn’t even say influencer, I would say content creation at the moment, and how content creators put out the the their thoughts and takes on products is way more important and way more, you know, something that we really need to look at doing. And look at, you know, onboarding for for 2024 in the upcoming years. Because the influence of space has taken a bit of a negative turn. And I feel like a lot of people don’t really want to be associated with an ad. They get a lot of podcasts that I listen to. People just that, you know, who are in the influencer space just feel like, oh, I I don’t even want to tell someone I’m an influencer when I when you know, someone asked me what what job do you do. But on the other hand, be a content creator. Someone who’s actually putting the work in, taking the hours in the evening from your full-time job to actually create the content that resonates with your audience. Like that’s I think coming up to be, yeah, quite a big thing. And especially because we only have that day in the future to kind of push people towards it. We don’t have a product to actually sell. So I think that for us is a big thing in terms of of how we navigate our own content. When we get when we sit with our videographers, so whenever I go to an award ceremony, I make sure to interview judges, our sponsors, finalists and then winners at the end of the evening. And then what are we doing with that content? How are we we kind of adapting it for our social media channels? How are we adapting it for our ads? How are we making sure that it doesn’t look heavily branded? Because I think that’s the big thing at the at the at the point today is that I don’t want to see things that are heavily branded. And no matter if I’m a loyalist to, you know, Nike or Adidas or Givenchy, whatever it is. I even if I’m a loyalist and with blind from them for years, but I see an ad that’s heavily branded, couldn’t get less. If I see an athlete testing out a shoe or a wannabe athlete who’s just a kind created taking a run around a park, I want to see that. I want to know that if you trip and fall, it’s still going to be a good shoot away. Yeah, yeah, those kind of things that I feel, I honestly do feel is is coming up quite big in in the next few years. And it’s how are we adapting content to make sure that it’s. And I think if you go onto YouTube at the moment, if you go on to TikTok, if you go on to Instagram, you’ll definitely see the way the content has changed. And how brands are stepping away from the heavily branded content and getting as many content creators on board. And that’s kind of where I want to take at the space that we’re in at the moment. Because we we just as I said, don’t have that product to sell. We have a day in the future. And yeah, I want to really get those those kind of celebrations on the night to become part of our, you know, marketing strategy going forward.
I think that’s I think that’s really interesting. Because yeah, I mean, not too, you know, not to sort of show my HD image but like, you know, this is going back to the very old school days of, you know, when people did exactly as you said, people did you create content because it was fun? Like you remember back in the day when like YouTube first launched and it was, you know, the the Halcyon Days when like every Super Famous meme like ever was kind of created probably over like a couple of years period. There were loads of people who were just like, you know, before the big advertising models and before it became a big sort of industry, just, you know, doing random stuff, like throwing throwing it on the internet that was great. And I think, I agree with you. I think it’s very exciting to see people getting back to that more real stuff. Yeah, I think the, you know, the cynic in me says it feels a bit like sort of corporate MLM. But you know, I’m trying to put that to one side just to be like, yeah, do you want to like sell our stuff kind of for free? I’m like, you know, I don’t know how I feel about that. But I think on the whole, I agree with you. I think it’s great that like that more genuine sort of less, yeah, super shiny early 2000s, the super Brandy stuff is going away. Because I also am not a huge a huge fan of that. Yes, of course. Yeah, and I think I mean, you know, following on from what you’re saying as well about just sort of selling the experience. Because I have recently been to a few events, which I’ve not done for quite some time because, you know, you you couldn’t go to any for a while. That was pretty pretty rubbish. Of course, they’ve been there. They’ve been a real mixed bag. Like it’s been a propagating two halves. But one was very well structured. But they’d run effectively. I won’t say any names because I don’t want to be unfair to, you know, it’s a different people who were running them. But they basically ran like three events at the same time, which I thought was quite a canny sort of commercial move because it felt very busy and there was three different things happening all sort of in the same space. But the, you know, the sort of the impact of that on everyone though is you’re kind of mingling in between the sessions with a pretty random group of people. Like so the people the one that I was at which was B2B focused, there were people at like a, I think it was like an affiliate thing going on, like a channel partner thing, it’s like SAS oriented thing at the same time. And you’re sort of wandering around being like, are you in? I haven’t seen you any of the things? Like, and they’re like, oh no, I’m at the, you know, the affiliate thing. And you’re like, all right, okay, well, we don’t really have much to talk about, like right now because we’re doing completely different things basically today. So I could sort of see where they were going. But it was it was a bit odd basically. But the plus side was they were doing exactly what you were talking about, which is like loads of great content capture. They had like just cameras set up around the place. They were doing like sort of little Vox poppy like, you know, what do you think about the thing that you’re doing? So that side of it, I thought was really awesome. It was just a bit of an odd, I think very commercially driven sort of structure, probably because it’s very expensive to put events back on now. And they weren’t sure that they would film it. But um, yes, of course. Yeah, it was weird.
I’ve been to one like that. Yeah, but I’ve also been to something like that before where we, I also won’t mention names. But really obviously went an event thought, you know, okay, sold us that they were going to be, you know, thousands of people. Get there, we have a stand. And it seemed really nice. But then eventually you realize the location wasn’t great, because a lot of students were eventually coming in and they didn’t realize, okay, this is this is not it. And, you know, most of the people that were there are just never gonna buy from you, just trying to get freebies. And I think that’s that’s the irritating part. Because yeah, do you have a notebook for me? I need one of those. But like, you know, 2015 anymore. Nobody’s giving up Brandon moleskins anymore. Come on, come on. No, not exactly. Right? I mean, you know, you taking the time to use for conversations with people in the industry. And because of the location, you’re getting like, just 18 year olds and 19 year olds walking through the door and you’re just like, no, this is this is just not it. Yeah, so yeah, a bit of a different, difficult one. And that’s why I think I have to commend Brighton SEO as much as I do. Because even when I win, I win this year. And I know last year was a bit different because, you know, just recovering from covert, not as many people went. But this year, it was just exactly the right people in the right space. And I think that’s right. The fantastic thing about it is that there’s so many really good people that are walking through those doors. The top of some of our sponsors are even there. They have stands and they kind of, you know, don’t sponsor the event really. But I’ll just stay putting up their name and their branding. And everything that you speak to is to someone who would be Geared for awards. And not only that, you know, this past year for Global search, we thought, you know, what’s it, what’s something different that we can do? What’s what’s something out of the box that we can kind of start looking at? And we just thought, why don’t we try and do a few of our ads in Spanish and German? Just because it is a global event. It is a global awards. And I had to reach out to judges and some of our judges to kind of translate some of our copy over for us. Just so I can make sure it’s not Google translated. Because mostly accurate, you know? Yeah, I’ll get it. You know, with the judges, they they are fantastic. And you know, they they came to the board. They translated a whole bunch of stuff for me. And when I was a writer and I saw this company that literally just that’s what they do. They kind of translate any kind of copy, articles, blog posts, headlines, ads, whatever it is, into any language across a multitude of dialects. And it was just yeah, you just find like little small things that actually it’s it’s something that you don’t realize is a bit of an issue for you when you’re doing it because there’s no other solution. But then when you get when you get like really good conferences, you you find solutions so quickly. Because you didn’t realize this product was out there until you you attend one of these these awards. Because, you know, something like translating, you know, copy, it’s not something that I’d gone to Google for. I wouldn’t think, oh, where can I go and change, you know, I’d want to do it on Google translate or I have to look for a product which is going to cost a ton of money. And that’s why I winter judges. But then, you know, something where it’s just like a few lines of copy. You can build a relationship with another agency and organization. And the the best part about it is I could tell them, you know, it would be great for you to kind of translate one or two sentences for me. And just by the way, this is a really great tool. Have you decided to enter into a wonderful? Like the conversation is much easier. So so yeah, it’s it’s it’s really nice. But yeah, I think you struggle in Australia with a few consequences, don’t you? Anyway, yeah, certainly certainly in the space that I’m in at the moment. There just seems to be a bit of a death of stuff. And like, you know, I mean, I I’m not too windy on about this cycle. You know, I won’t complain too much. But you know, the minute that anyone gets a sniff that I might be some kind of service provider or agency, they’re like just throwing sponsorship at me. Instead of being like, oh, you might actually have something useful to say and you can just attend sort of, you know. I’m a bit bitter about that already. But I was like, look, you know, we we’ve actually noticed like this such a boom in the APAC region and especially Australia and New Zealand. Like we see, you know, one of our awards, the APAC search Awards. We don’t really see that there’s, you know, the people struggle to end so. You know, people see these awards and think finally there’s something for us to enter into and to celebrate our work. And I think that’s what we we definitely picked up. On our sales manager, Steph, also has mentioned that you know it’s the easiest conversations that she ever has. It’s people who just want to enter, just need to understand a couple things but are so keen for it. And yeah, I think I’ll mention it to you at some point. But we do have a surprise of our sleep. We thought so there’s a lot of room in the industry. Yeah, there’s such a there’s such a growing industry and such interest in this industry that we we feel like we need to do a lot more. So yeah, great. A little something up our sleeve. But I’ll I’ll get to it.
Tantalizing surprise at the end. That I like it. No, look, I I agree with you. I was really surprised like when I first came down here, I was still doing a lot of SEO and analytics. And I was really surprised at the lack of awards or even just kind of recognition for those areas specifically. And just any, you know, any decent awards down here. Like there’s a, you know, there’s a kind of a group of kind of companies that do run some events. But it’s nowhere near like what’s happening across sort of Europe or the UK. And it’s as you said, it’s not for a lack of people doing really good work or that people don’t want it. You know, people are happy to end it. It just wasn’t anything happening. So I’m super excited that you guys are sort of making some there, making some moves down here. I’m very interested to see what’s going to happen. And I’m to be involved later in the year, which would be awesome. Yeah, look, so I think just being conscious of your timely as well. Let me let me give you a bit of a bit of a roundup question. Because we’ve covered a lot of a lot of ground which I think has been super interesting. So if you’re going to make one, your one big prediction or one big concern about the general, you know, AI chat at the moment. What what is that? Is it is it opportunity or something you’re excited about or a concern? Like what’s your prediction for the rest of this year?
I think my prediction is that it is the biggest opportunity that the marketing industry has been able to to cling on to. I think there’s there’s so much that’s happening in in AI at the moment. And the fact that we have we can use it to advantage and use it to really bolster the the kind of marketing space. And kind of show that, you know, that that it’s a working industry. And that we can we can build and use tools to to really navigate and to uphold kind of the industry standards and kind of make sure that we’re doing things quicker, easier, smarter. I think there’s there’s so much of potential opportunity in this space. So I’m really excited to see where it grows and how it grows. Because I mean, why not use it to you to your advantage while you can? I think the other thing is that even though we were worried about it stealing our jobs and you know, all of this that’s come out at the end of the day, it’s how are you using it to actually make sure that that doesn’t happen? How are you using it to make sure that you’re cutting down on time doing the research? And the hour’s worth of of, you know fact checking. It’s it’s it’s just making sure that you’re using it to advantage. And I just feel there’s there’s a ton of opportunity. It just everyone from a copywriter all the way down to a paid media person all the way across to, you know, a designer could could use ChatGPT and any kind of AI tool to make their lives easier. I mean, there’s a lot more that’s come out in terms of presentation tools as well. And it’s something I definitely want to take a look into. And I just feel that with AI, it’s just making our lives that much easier. And one thing our managing director has been really, really putting forward to us. Helen should keep saying we need to work smarter, not harder. And I just feel that AI is definitely the way to go in terms of that. So yeah, I’m really excited to see what what comes out of it.
Oh, that’s cool. I think that’s great to hear. And like, you know, you’re speaking my language, to be honest. Like our whole our whole business is built around that exact proposition. You know, it’s like just kind of do stuff faster and more efficiently without sacrificing the quality that you need, right? Like, which is where I I completely agree with you. I see all the opportunities in that space. And I think it’s, yeah, going back to the point she made earlier, I think if you’re concerned and you don’t know how to deal with it, that is exactly where you should be focusing. Like how do you save time? How do you become better at your job by like leveraging all these free or at the moment very cheap tools that are at your fingertips? Yeah, don’t need to tell anyone, do you? You just need to like get on with it and look awesome. And then you know, if you’re laughing earlier. Yeah, I think that’s a great a great point to round off on, Lee. So look, thanks very much for coming on and having a chat. It’s been an absolute pleasure and I think we’ve covered some super interesting areas there. So yeah, thanks for joining, Lee.
Yeah, Nostra is always great to chat to you soon. I think the last time we were just chatting for hours on end. So I’m so sorry I have to dash off. But this has been really great. Always great, yeah, always great chatting to you. So can’t wait for the next one. Thanks very much for listening. You have reached the end of the show. There were loads of interesting takeaways from that, to be honest. But the key thing for me was that we’re not going to see any sort of real awards won by AI this year. I think I agree with Lee that we’re not really seeing the real impact yet. But we are feeling the waves in the digital industry everywhere. Hopefully, we will see some next year. I’m pretty excited to see what the future will hold in that regard. If you would like to hear more about who we are and what we do, please head over to our website, theflowstate.io. Thank you.