Balls Deep with Bernard Canavan | Is AI Going to Make You Redundant?

Michael McNish: Hello everyone, welcome to Balls Deep. This is Michael and we are actually up to episode four, which is absolutely fantastic. Can't believe we got so far already. We haven't been canceled yet, which is cool. I am absolutely excited to have someone on the show today who I've never met. ⁓ And either he's a complete lunatic, crazy, insane, or he doesn't know what he's in for. What do you think, Bernard? Well, we're actually, we are back. Unfortunately, we just had a major technical issue where the internet completely dropped out. We were trying to get back online. I couldn't hear the other side and now my headphones aren't working. So we are back. I just think it's absolutely hilarious and I think it just goes to show that no matter how much we trust in technology to deliver what we want, there's always going to be hiccups along the way.
Bernard: Uhhh... Well, I'm on the edge, let me say, and ready to go ball steep.
Michael McNish: On the edge. Well, that's important. Hopefully you're ready. ⁓ How deep we go? Who knows what's going to happen here, but we're here today to talk about the impact of AI on creative. And you've had over 30 years experience in branding, in PR.
Bernard: Quite right. Any time, it's my experience, when one is dealing with ⁓ technology, things can go wrong. I'm very sanguine about those sort of ⁓ events, Michael. So worry not. It doesn't worry me a bit.
Michael McNish: all the things that you, you I guess I'm going to call it traditional marketing sense where, know, traditional branding agency kind of work, right? For the big guys, right? So you've been in marketing for over 30 years, you've seen branding to digital now to AI. What are we getting completely wrong right now? What's wrong about where we're going? It's like a lot of television where that's always the biggest fear with technical teams and live shows where if something happens, you want to make sure you actually have people available to actually help you overcome the problem. Because if you're relying on chat GPT or claw to come in and save the day, you you might be waiting a bit.
Bernard: Correct. Yeah. Well, I don't know whether there's anything particularly wrong. I think there's anticipation that is leading us perhaps to thoughts that aren't quite correct or anxiety I think perhaps is at the root of it all. You're quite right Michael, I have been along for a long time. 37 years come the 1st of March so... Well, to your point, and maybe just getting back on the horse again, and you talked about Claude and the nuances that are coming out of Claude with it becoming a, ⁓ I suppose, more, I suppose, independent operator of your... ⁓ I have the benefit of ⁓ reasonable hindsight and have seen generational change to creativity right from the very first time I entered into this business. And there were things called bromides and ⁓ people did sketches and things like that for and put photos in place and there wasn't anything called Illustrator or Photoshop or anything like that. But happily ⁓ technology, i.e. some, ⁓ and it was mentioned in a recent podcast that I listened to, ⁓ they did mention creativity, being ⁓ sort of ⁓ managed, let's say managed by the Claude agent, right, that would become an organiser and could plug into your Zoho or your accounting system, any one of those. But they did also mention that it could plug into Photoshop and work Photoshop ⁓ on your behalf. That's this called, taking it the extra step. But I'm not quite sure how that's gonna happen. Sure. Throughout this course of 37 years, I've maintained a serious ⁓ attraction to technology. We had Apple Macintosh when there were tiny little square things on our desks that had floppy disks that went in the front of them. Now, they were all challenging and ⁓ we worked within the constraints of the technology and then flourished when they got more able and capable. it's still going to need a human interface to instruct Claude to instruct Photoshop to do a particular action. I ⁓ think it's ⁓ feature creep, if you will, for mount, ⁓ which does happen. And you get software engineers just saying, how are we going to be different from the rest of them? Well, we're going to... I suppose challenged ourselves to do what we could to transition from the manual art of bromides and sticking down type and all the way through to where we are today. And look, I think the journey has been a great one, not one to be frightened of though. And how AI either intersects with us or is a companion, I would say more so. We're to push it that one step further, right? Then they're going to run it and I'm just going to sit back and drink Pina Coladas and ⁓ I've got this AI ⁓ robot, whatever we'd like to call it, organizing my day's work for me. You know, I've got to do this, this whatever, you know, this whole digital campaign for a particular product and we need this, this and this. And presently, then it should be feared. That I have, I've done reasonable ⁓ seeing other, I think other bits of technology evolve, like the power of the software that we've used over the time ⁓ and the Adobe Suite, which allows many, many things to be done today. And their own intersection with AI as well, which is a... You know, I think that's a big reach, really. And I'm not quite sure that ⁓ the people at Adobe Photoshop, which is owned by Apple, I think, really ⁓ think that that'd be a way to go, right? Because, one, I'm not quite sure about the interface that you'd have to have between Claude and ⁓ Photoshop to make those things work. interesting evolving outcome at the moment and especially Photoshop they've got an AI component which can now do things and create backgrounds that aren't there and that's a really good aspect of it and a time saver. It probably leads me to the point that I don't think we're going to lose any creativity. I'll give you an example, we had a photo the other day that was going for a cover and ⁓ we needed to lighten it and it was taken from a normal, ⁓ probably a digital photograph of some decent high spec. In the process of trying to ⁓ lighten it in Photoshop, ⁓ the I think these things, these AI agents will assist us. They won't overtake us. ⁓ think those who are not embracing it are in trouble. That is the key point. And if you're running a design studio, big or small. you should be fully embracing how it can be. I think reasonably seamlessly included in your studio activities does take some, ⁓ I think, understanding of where it actually fits, how it actually can be of assistance. ⁓ My premise is that it operates at the edges of design. the technical spec of it wasn't there. mean the dots weren't there for us to do it and it gave some unusual patterning. Now, technically you could probably put this into one of the better AIA image generators and say here, here's this original photo, make it lighter and then it does a completely new image for you and fills in those gaps for you. not in the centre. I'll explain that by saying the edges are research, if we're doing a logo design it can gather wonderful research for us about the the company's intent, ⁓ its history, perhaps ⁓ other brochures that might exist and that can help ⁓ There's a whole sway of concerns about whose work it is. You've just changed the whole part of the intent of the author of the photography. And there's some terrible gray areas and weeds that one can get into here around authorship and the effects of AI. That could be a whole different... ⁓ perhaps detect ⁓ some themes perhaps, some that are maybe not obvious at first sight. But I've always been a fan of the human ⁓ element of this, talking to clients face to face. We can't do that these days via these methods. ⁓ But that's where it can help, I think. ⁓ podcast Michael. But I'm just saying that where we were when we last spoke, I definitely think that it's still on the edges, AI, still kicking around there. It still can generate things, but ⁓ it can't evaluate them. what it doesn't and can't do at the present. I'll say at the present, but it can't ⁓ really do the centre part, which is understanding what the client wants. A written brief is a written brief. It's words on a page, right? But what is the, and I'll use this word now, the nuance of the... There's no sort of being or consciousness to do that. It responds to prompts but it doesn't think right particularly. So I think for the moment, ⁓ creatives should not be scared. They should be embracing it. They shouldn't have their head in the sand, that's for sure. And they'll be without clients if they don't move with... ⁓ issue before us if it's to do a new logo, if it's to create a new website, if it's to understand an audience that ⁓ is ⁓ developing, aged or they want to change an audience. Now to my ⁓ knowledge at the moment and you can't do that, you can't have an opinion as such that move with adopting its capabilities, which in what form it may occur in, but still around the edges, I think, still a helping tool rather than a creative tool. ⁓
Michael McNish: think that was not just creative, so I think every industry. you know, no matter what you're good at, with if you're a music teacher, my dad's music teacher, well, I could teach you how to play the guitar. Right? There could be an AI quite simply. If you're an accountant, well, quite simply, you can use AI plug it into something like zero or myop. And why do you need a bookkeeper? Like what? Why would you need one? Right? If you need a lawyer, well, why not have AI can understand all the laws and have them uploaded into why Why do you need a lawyer? Why do you need it? Why do
Bernard: ⁓ yeah. hasn't been already prompted by the human element of this. It ⁓ has a failure in that point and I'm sure that we want it to ⁓ succeed because that would prove some sentientness of it being its own being, having its own consciousness. And of course this is a heavy subject around creativity but nonetheless ⁓ important one to stress.
Michael McNish: need anybody, you know, like ⁓ personal trainer, you the fitness program. So I think, you know, just like the ebook didn't destroy the book industry, and just like, there's still newspapers, even though they're not as prevalent anymore. But like journalism is still a thing. It's still a career, and it's still a skill requirement to deliver good news. But anyone can write a blog, anyone and you can just click a button and chat GPT or something
Bernard: ⁓ The tool part of it, it is a tool, right? It can't make a good logo. It can't tell you the difference between many logos it may come up with. It will just give you ⁓ maybe options, but from what I've seen so far, its ⁓ capabilities to think creatively is very limited.
Michael McNish: Hmm
Bernard: Yeah.
Michael McNish: could write a news article for you. But that doesn't mean that it's going to add value to the world. ⁓ So
Bernard: Sure. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Michael McNish: How would you define what creative means? ⁓ There's the tools and I actually think going back to the ice to do graphic design and marketing in my in my work that was I'm going back a while back. I was a marketing manager of a franchise company. We had a graphic designer and I was the marketing manager to save costs. I started learning how to use it. Illustrator and an indis Adobe InDesign, which was a step up from when I was doing graphic design at McDonald's because I was in the McDonald's marketing team and to save money, we use PowerPoint. I think there's the artistic side of creative where we're talking to explore ideas, something new, something novel, something iconic. How do you create iconic like the Nike logo or the McDonald's logo? How do you do that compared to how do you create something functional where let's say you're a small business and you need a logo, you need a website and someone says to you, oh, know, like the design, that's not that important. You just need functional. You just need to have something up and you have it there. Where do you, how do you compare
Bernard: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael McNish: and that was like the Canva. That was the Canva of the 2000s. It was fantastic and I remember we used to have compare and contrast both those views.
Bernard: Sure was. Well, it's an eternal question, The levels of one's creative endeavor, right? How far do you go with it? Is it a... You know, one could argue that all design's important, right? ⁓ And at whatever level that... If it's just to do a... Let me say a sign as something creative. There's still... Well, I'll probably challenge you on that, ⁓ Michael. Nothing good came out of PowerPoint. Fantastic is an overreach, for sure. I don't doubt that you are creative, but the limitations of PowerPoint have well been plumbed.
Michael McNish: Really? I had it done good work. I made it work. Hey, you wait to see some of the stuff I made. I was quite proud of it. But was interesting going from like a, and I'm going to.
Bernard: there's still points of interest in what the human has to ⁓ accommodate in his own brain or her brain ⁓ to understand the client's requirements, where it's going, its functionality. So that's at the very bottom end of the creative ⁓ sort of peaks, you know, it's at the bottom. But at the very top when...
Michael McNish: compare that to say Canva, like if you're looking at the comparison and then you start realizing the power of the tools and things you can actually do in Adobe was mind blowing. And I had to like, what are these buttons do and what's that? And I was one of the jobs that I had to do was so time consuming and it was a pain in the ass and it was cropping around products. we took the photograph and I had to manually deep etch it to get rid of the background. And then there was a, you know, some sort of
Bernard: Yeah. Yeah, deep-bending. And I have a word or at least a phrase for this for my designers and the very best designers and I will say there's a big, I think there's a big difference between a designer, a good one and a very good one. And I qualify them by saying they're the ones that they can give you something from nothing. Now quintessentially I think that is something that
Michael McNish: technological advance, but you just press a button and the whole background's gone. I'm like, ⁓ my god, this is fantastic.
Bernard: Yeah. And you're seeing those offered now on phones. know, that's, you know, highlight this person, get rid of that background, you know, they do, they're sort of cut down versions of Photoshop ⁓ for phones because it's a cute little way of, you know, manipulating ⁓ photo imagery. And we're all bloody experts in photo imagery now because we can edit the contrast, we can edit the exposure, we can take the, you know. a computer AI agent can't do. They can't give us something from nothing. They need input and their input is, you know, ⁓ can be words and it can be, ⁓ and I'm aware that there are bots out there that you can give word descriptions to and they can produce ⁓ a cat eating a carrot.
Michael McNish: Absolutely.
Bernard: We can take that out, I don't like that, you know, back when the simplest instruction was get rid of the red eye from the flash, right? But now it's so much more evolved, right? We can take that out, I don't like that, you know, back when the simplest instruction was get rid of the red eye from the flash, right? But now it's so much more evolved, right?
Michael McNish: I can get red-eye quite simply by flying from Perth to Brisbane at midnight. I can do it myself. I can get red-eye quite simply by flying from Perth to Brisbane at midnight. I can do it myself.
Bernard: Right? You can say, draw me a cat eating a carrot and they'll do that, right? But I'm not quite sure what that proves, only that it can do it. Where does it fit within the ⁓ large design cycle ⁓ is another thing. My feeling is that when designers, human designers can do something for nothing. ⁓ Ha Ha
Michael McNish: ⁓
Bernard: ha ha! Yeah, look, there's no end of making a designer, a accountant, ⁓ a lawyer, even a doctor, right? Because we're all Dr. Googles now and we've gone past Dr. Google, we're Dr. Chappie GPT.
Michael McNish: Dr. Chibbity, you're right. But I would argue that my time spending deep etching around product and spending hours of my day doing that wasn't productive. I would say that that was not good use of time.
Bernard: That quintessentially is the difference. And the word that I thought of as I was ⁓ contemplating this is nuance. Not one that we use on a regular basis. But nuance has a whole depth of understanding of what is part of the creative process. And we think of it in... ⁓ Yeah. No, no, I agree with you wholly and that is where I say it's good around the edges. It can do those laborious, time-consuming pieces of work. Sorry. It can do that sort of stuff that you're charging a client for and...
Michael McNish: Hmm.
Bernard: We do graphic design, but other creativity like art and let me say music for example. And we've got amazing examples of Picasso and maybe Mozart that are exceptional creatives. And the same thing applies. They can give you something from nothing. Where did Picasso come up with these ideas that revolutionized? If you've got a lot of deep etching to do, that can mean hours of work to do. Whereas now, that's a benefit of ⁓ programming, a benefit of, and that's really what it is. It's an AI capacity to select and deselect the background. And that's powerful. ⁓
Michael McNish: ⁓ Speed and efficiency for something that is mundane and monotonous that you would be doing, like you can focus your energy on the creative. if you think about the, there's a question that I ask and we ask in my business circles is what's the highest and best use of my time? Like what, if I have eight hours of work in the day, what percentage of those hours, what should I be spending it on?
Bernard: art to this very day.
Michael McNish: Do think it's similar to music in the sense that synthetic drums didn't replace the percussionist or the ⁓ electronic beats didn't replace necessarily the piano and that they just became tools in the element of mixing and creating music?
Bernard: Yeah. Well, I think, you know, right back when they became, you know, the Moog synthesizer, it came through and there was thought at the time that it would replace somebody on a keyboard, but it only enhanced it and other genres of music came to the fore. know, punk and many other techno came out of that era. So, yeah, it's a tool. I couldn't agree more. ⁓ Proper, well, ⁓ time efficiency has always been at the front end, I hope, of most people's businesses. notwithstanding my individual creative business, it should be everybody's want and desire to be efficient and put the best... And I'm of a strong proposition presently that this is a tool again for us to adapt and to use. Sure, it will give a enhanced result perhaps. It'll help, right? At the very least, it will help. ⁓ But ⁓ I suppose the human's capability, and this is also a decent point. of you into your business and not being down in the weeds doing the ho-hum and mundane. And look, to be truthful, that business has always been there in many businesses and we're just getting tools to make that easier, aren't we? ⁓ It is the right tool. There are lots of... ⁓ the human's capability of using it appropriately, so it can help you even more so, will be challenged by the creativity of the person operating it. So, you know, we hear this word prompt engineer that comes up regularly and ⁓ it's true. You have to prompt it. uses for it. ⁓ Speaking to a friend of mine who was in ⁓ the City Council and they are using ⁓ AI tools to ⁓ do a front ⁓ first cut evaluation of applications to the Council. They feed the foremen, right, ⁓ yeah he's filled it in appropriately. ⁓ This can go on to... well enough, I think, to get the result that you're ⁓ perhaps, and not really having too much of a high expectation of it to do the whole thing for you. It definitely won't, right? an officer further up the rank. Whereas that well may have been done by somebody in a junior position, right, say, hey, you've got this wrong, this detail's not here, you've filled this incorrectly. Those are great uses, right, and people in performing those roles within businesses, government and otherwise, will need to look carefully about their ongoing positions, I think.
Michael McNish: Have you played around with apps like Lovable before?
Bernard: No, I haven't. ⁓ Tell me about it.
Michael McNish: Well, the thing with lovable is that you can literally just type, you know, give it a prompt at the top of website that you want it to build. it will build it. And then you can have a conversation with it about what you want it to change. But the problem is, that you have to, therefore, as you said, the nuance, you've got to know what you're asking for. You've got to know what, how to direct it. So it might get 70 % of it pretty good in terms of like a wireframe structure. It might even be able to write some copy for you. That's a good starting point.
Bernard: where those sort of roles are required and clearly an AI bot can do them. And that's happening already. Cannon-Brooks' cutting of his stuff was quite ruthlessly adapted, but that's what he had to do. I think, what was it like?
Michael McNish: Mm. But I think that there's a tendency for people to just accept the first iteration or maybe even the second iteration of what AI builds. So there really is that requirement to be able to look at something and go, that's gonna work, isn't it? Mm.
Bernard: 1300 or 1400 people didn't have their jobs because of them adopting AI methodology. yeah, there's some moments out there in employment land that bear immediate consideration for people and the long-termness about this is that education at the very front end of this. Yeah, look this came about in other previous programs and I'm not familiar with lovable, but I have tried it with cheap chat GPT just out of pure interest as to you know I gave them the parameters I wanted a WordPress website I didn't have one well I did have one ⁓ the pre existing client had one it was It was in need of work and I gave them is seriously lagging behind what's happening at the coal face. significant enough prompts to produce something right that looked okay. That's about all I'll give it because after it produced that one outcome it really after a number of prompts it wasn't able to make it any better right. It got caught in a loop and this does happen with some AI bots even you know.
Michael McNish: think it was lagging behind in the early 2000s when I went to university and I did my double major, did marketing in e-business because I thought technology is where it's at. We need to learn about what's going on back in the early 2000s. Websites were still happening. Everyone was still working out how best to do websites. Mobile responsive didn't exist. But guess what? I went to QUT. Do you know what school of the university
Bernard: ⁓ yeah. 5.2 chat GPT, it's powerful to a point, right? And then it refuses to ⁓ go beyond it. Like another example is that I got some hand drawn sketches for a mud map for a house, right? That I said, well, convert these into a floor plan, please. It cannot do it. It has no idea what it's looking at.
Michael McNish: they put the e-business department in? Accounting. They didn't know where to put it.
Bernard: ⁓ engineering, accounting, ⁓ that's well surely it should have gone in IT at the very ⁓ late.
Michael McNish: You would think it would be more related there. But it was such an emerging field, the concept of e-business, they didn't know where to put it where it belonged. So they had the School of Marketing and International Business and they turned into advertising, marketing and public relations and they had tech, you know, IT and e-business was where do we, where does that belong? It's kind of in the middle. I will put it there, you know.
Bernard: and no idea how to do it. So, great limitations there. Whereas a human could do that quite easily. It'll take time, it can't be done in five seconds or less, ⁓ and really, even a floor plan, a simple floor plan, they got wrong, right? They just didn't get it right, and couldn't get the walls right, couldn't get... ⁓ Yeah, I'm not so sure about the wisdom of that one. ⁓
Michael McNish: I don't know if it even exists anymore how they do it today but AI I would argue actually belongs in every faculty. AI is a tool not a subject it's not a specialization it's it's an area that we're all utilizing.
Bernard: Like that. I didn't even, it was only in 2D, so God help it if I asked it to get into 3D. look, I think the ⁓ essence of what I think it might make or assist you in being ⁓ a better manager of your job, ⁓ I'm not gonna say it will make you a better designer. In fact, I'm pretty sure it won't make you a better designer. Well, there's no doubt that some of the ones that need great math computations like engineering and to develop those sort of products must be a complete and utter boon for those type of businesses that require those sort of things. Physics, anything to do with physics where ⁓ huge brain computation is part of the very being of it.
Michael McNish: Yeah. Absolutely.
Bernard: you can see it being well applied there. ⁓ to your point as well, in the study of graphic design and et cetera, and for that matter, marketing. I'm a QUT graduate of marketing as well. Those things weren't being, I'm not familiar with what's happening now in the curriculum, but they were only an elective subject. ⁓ I think anything it can give presently is going to be inferior to what a good designer will be able to come up with. Writing is an interesting ⁓ area. I think the parameters around writing is ⁓ much more defined. ⁓
Michael McNish: What about writing?
Bernard: in, you know, we have a start, finish, a middle and an ending and other various forms of report writing that can be managed by the pure volume of work that these ⁓ large language ⁓ bots have got at their disposal. I think ⁓ it has some pluses for it. the College of Art course at ⁓ Seven Hills and I would argue that, now I do give the advice to any graphic designer, even though I said earlier that it's hard to find both competencies, design and coding, I said go ahead and do a course on web coding, understand. digital marketing, how to get the best out of your digital marketing. And you'd have to agree, if you're lagging behind there in that area, you're not a very good option for a boss to employ you. and I won't say that I haven't used it for some starting points for research. Very handy for that, I think. It enables you to be more nimble, a quicker response in this age that we live in. Our ability to turn that around is always part of the...
Michael McNish: If you don't know how to drive the car, then you're no good being a taxi driver. You got to know how to use the tools and I think it's more like leveling up. When I was at uni, you'd learn Word and Excel and you'd learn the foundations and the principles. Now it's about how do you use these AI softwares and there's so many of them. Nano Banana is the, you want to create an image
Bernard: Correct. the rich tapestry of being in business in these times. We have to be responsive.
Michael McNish: think, I mean you're talking I guess from a very strong basis in PR writing, websites, brand, creative in that sense, those sorts of spaces. People that I know in the video production space, the podcast production space, and... ⁓ Well, that's where everyone's going. But, you know, and good luck to Shutterstock and all the stock photography websites. I wish them luck. ⁓
Bernard: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Michael McNish: And even the marketing space are all finding huge wins in AI to the point where they're... I was having a conversation with a guy that was like saying that the AI video was outperforming the traditional standard method that they were producing video and he was concerned. He was more concerned for his staff because the efficiencies were and the performance was outweighing the need to have all these people. And same thing with the video guy. He was like... and just to be completely...
Bernard: They truly could be the typesetters of the 1990s.
Michael McNish: Well, you know what, I was thinking about this earlier before the internet decided to explode on us and we got disconnected and now we're back together. I was actually thinking McDonald's and I was thinking this is the era that we're in. When I first started working in restaurants, this is because I wanted to do marketing for McDonald's and I thought I need to be in the restaurants first. So I did. that you're frank, he basically said we're right? Because how quick, fast and easy it is, and we're living in an era where it's almost like fast moving consumer goods now. It's about how quick you can pump out content, how quick you can test stuff, how quick you can actually make it work and dial it in. And because it's good enough. they would have the production bin, right? So you'd have the burgers already in the warming cabinet and you'd have the timers behind them and then you'd, know, the burgers were ready straight away. So you'd have fast food. ⁓ Then it emerged, it was in the, I think the mid 2000s, 2005-ish, they developed a system called Made For You.
Bernard: Mm-hmm.
Michael McNish: Like it's not perfect and it may not be the peak of creative like super stardom, but it's good enough and the results are what people are judging the outcome by. ⁓ There are some people out there quite worried. And so it was made to order. And so they were able to make a completely different system. And the benefit was, is that if someone didn't want pickles or they didn't want cheese, it wouldn't hold up the process. And everything was made fresh because Subway was the big competitor, right? So Subway was making everything fresh. So McDonald's like, how can we show that they're not getting a 10 minute old burger? They're making it fresh to order, despite the fact that the ingredients were in the warmers in the back.
Bernard: Yeah, I get that, right? And I'll harken back to a time where there was a program called MS Publisher, right? It's a Microsoft ⁓ program that, yeah, that ⁓ businesses had in their group of software that they might produce an in-house newsletter or...
Michael McNish: I remember the publisher. matter. The fact that it's been assembled fresh, that was the most important thing and you got it ready to go. That's a bit like AI in the sense that in the moment I can ask for what I want, the AI bot or creative system will instantly move the pieces together and convey about it out to me. Whereas like the traditional method, like I'm looking at on the shelf, can I buy that?
Bernard: a little flyer or something like that. Now this has always been at the crossroads of where ⁓ design creativity ⁓ is handled by the business, the client themselves rather than having an expert do it for them. Now I think what this AI revolution has happened is that those lines are blurred. Yes.
Michael McNish: Can I get that? And then the other method, guess in traditional, if I'm asking for a website or a brand, working with someone like yourself, a professional, and ⁓ you're not gonna turn that over in five minutes. You're gonna take the time to develop strategy, consult, ⁓ develop the concepts, present the concepts, ⁓ refine further. So it's not gonna be fast.
Bernard: and become more, now think of what in a 100 % thing that before AI, look, I reckon there would have been no more than 10 % of work ⁓ tackled by the client themselves as ⁓ I don't need a designer to do this, this is simple, right? I'll do a form or something like this, I'll do this in publish or I might even have, you know. Yeah, we're not fast food, that's for sure. No.
Michael McNish: ⁓ you're a deca- decastation?
Bernard: Maybe, well, it's a fair simile. Yeah, dig the station. ⁓ But you know, it determines that you've got a ⁓ burger flipper rather than a qualified chef, right? And there is the difference and we come back to that whole concept of companies accepting a dumbed down solution.
Michael McNish: Have a taste of this one. Do you like that?
Bernard: Photoshop or something like that or they'll do it in some other MS thing like Excel or Word even. Word gets abused in that way as well. And look we've seen other tools come about to move into that space. For example Canva and that's a whole news story that's tried to give the person in business ⁓ the tools of being a designer without being a designer, right?
Michael McNish: Yes, that's good example.
Bernard: And is that okay? Well, okay, if you want to be like that.
Michael McNish: But there will be companies that like and are okay with that. Like the white back in the day when I had a business partner and we were doing custom development email and landing pages. And we would do that. And we've had a lot of pride in that it was a little custom designed, we were at full control of it. And we felt really good about ourselves because we felt like we're adding value. Hmm.
Bernard: and to your point, ⁓ it's good enough. know, ⁓ look I needed that invite. And maybe it's a sign of the times that there's been a market for that and they've been quite successful in the product that they offer to the wider populace. And I don't doubt that the ⁓ MS publisher and...
Michael McNish: Then what was happening is there were these templates, just and then people would say, just use the template. Why would you recreate the wheel? And it was difficult for me because my identity was stuck in the creating and the doing that that was what that was the value that I offered. That was my thing. And it was really hard for me to then I was actually convinced I was convinced. ⁓ I used a template, did a Google ad to it.
Bernard: Yeah. today's Canva are meeting a market request and edging out ⁓ videographers and other things and getting the client to do more of the work internally than externally. Now in my observation that that type of work, and it may cause a paradigm change in employment though, that...
Michael McNish: And for the same service, I didn't even build my own landing page. I used pages. It was a template. And someone said, I really love the design of your landing page. It's really good. And I had a bit of a chuckle to myself. I went, ⁓ that's a template. And
Bernard: there'll be people that are still humans that will be needed to do that work, right? Even if they're creating stuff within an AI environment. My point earlier is that the creative part of this, it just doesn't happen by itself. Even, you know, producing AI ⁓ videos or podcasts, it still needs a producer like yourself and others. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a tempting drug though, isn't it? Yeah. That one either chooses to ⁓ dive in on or one chooses the unaltered course, right? The one that exists with your capacities to say, well, I'm not going to go down that track of being a slave to a template. And is that acceptable? Well, you'll be challenged. There'll be people that...
Michael McNish: Yeah. So, you're being creative, let's talk about that. Is it about the skill of being able to implement it? Or is it more of something else? it inside of yourself of knowing what you want?
Bernard: Well, it comes back to that word, the nuance and experience, I think. It does ⁓ predicate you to have, and it's seated at experience and learnings, and like any human, we start with nothing and learn by osmosis and by our environment around us. Don't mind you using templates for the very fact that they couldn't give us give us stuff that ⁓ yeah that that's not important to me I just want to get it out you know or I just want to get going on this project I don't care whether you like the colors or the type that you've chosen at the top right and that will be eternal ⁓ client ⁓ differences right where they have ⁓ you get ones that what's the best way to do these things? What's the bad way of doing these things? And really computers don't have the bad way. They only know one way, the way they're going to do it. They don't have any alternate... take an interest in that. And we argue that they're the things that make you stand out. They're not the...
Michael McNish: but doesn't depend on your outcome, right? Like what's most important to you. So if you're building, I've been in front, I've been done marketing and franchising, I did it for about seven years. And brand was important because that's what people were buying. It was important for consistency. You defended your brand. You had a brand guideline. McDonald's had the golden arches code.
Bernard: Sure. experience that says, I should never have done it that way, that was a long way around to get there was a better, ⁓ quicker and perhaps even a result that was achieved and that was achieved because you'd been there before or you'd made that ⁓ critical error and you've learnt from it. They don't have critical errors, they can't assess critical errors.
Michael McNish: you know, like it was literally like, this is what you can do. And this is what you can't do. They would spend a lot of money developing the Ronald McDonald, Ronald McDonald brand, you know, there was only one in Queensland, you could you couldn't have another one that was he was it. And then there was the Ronald McDonald for, you know, for other states, because if you wanted him at a function, there was a brand associated with that.
Bernard: They just keep on going and churning. So AI is about churning, right? And ⁓ they'll just keep on going, right? As we find on chat GPT, you ask them something and then they want to give you something more, right? And that can be frightfully annoying for mine. Now I'll give you something, do you want it this way or that way three times full? But for mine, I think it's a... Yeah.
Michael McNish: the design, the whole customer experience. And if I'm an entrepreneur who's selling a course, if I'm a coach, if I'm ⁓ selling an ebook, then the need and desire for branding or that sort of extent like PR and traditional methods of, I want my website to kind of fit the brief, potentially that... Hahaha
Bernard: almost a distraction from the ⁓ essence of the design. They're dealing with things that they can do or it can do. They're not dealing with new stuff. They're not dealing, ⁓ I've got this great idea to go in a different direction. And that's what a designer has at their, via experience or otherwise, by their learnings.
Michael McNish: they're not the customer for that. you think that there is a certain type of business that's appropriate to really hire that high-end creative because it's appropriate for that type of business, like a fast moving consumer good, for example, compared to say the solo printer who wants to build a half a million to a million dollar company selling courses on school.com.
Bernard: they can take it in a new direction that the client has never thought of. And you'd be surprised how many times that's the winning ⁓ essence of the design is the one that's come out of nowhere. ⁓ I wasn't thinking about that, but gee, I like that. You know, get that, we get that regularly, right, when we present maybe three options and there's always a soft and a soft. Yeah, look, it is ⁓ an argument that one can ⁓ adopt and that's why there's always different people for different markets and different solutions for different markets and different niches and you know, let's talk about that. That's the whole niche marketing outcome that I learnt when I was at uni, right? easy one that may be close and look, we're dealing with brand ⁓ legacy and things like that that you can't ignore, they're tools that you can't ignore. And you always take it that way and maybe you take it the other way where the brand legacy isn't taken on board. And you get the tick, the Nike tick, you know, that people are familiar with, you know, and the great designers of... We're just applying it in different scenarios that allow us to, ⁓ a client to be selective in that respect. You know, there is this infinitely more variance in what they can choose to be ⁓ acceptable, right? ⁓ yeah, I can just do it this way. I can compromise here. I can do this. That's a good result, right? It's a whole level of rationalization that wasn't generally accepted. the Commonwealth Bank logo which Ken Kato did, a fabulous ⁓ designer of his time, but nobody really knew what that was. So, you know, those unique ⁓ elements were a long way from having an AI agent present that to us as alternative thinking. or available to a person going into business. You know, they had very limited options. You know, I want a corporate brochure. Okay, well, that's going to cost you $10,000 to get a corporate brochure, right? We're going to have to do photos, we're to have to get a copywriter, we're going to have to do a design, et cetera, right? Whereas that doesn't exist anymore. Right, and that's really one, you know, they haven't got any conscious moments, right, and let's be aware of that, even though we quite often find ourselves talking to it, ⁓ there's no conscious moment at all. So how can it have alternative thoughts about how to do these things? Right, yeah. Okay, you've got a corporate capabilities ratio on that you've done in Canva, right? That costs you $200. I'm just making that up. that's the reality, or that's the check that... And maybe it gives access to more businesses to potentially succeed. But I will say, and you being in digital marketing as well, you can have all that.
Michael McNish: You know, I say, I'm gonna use the word yet. Because the evolution is quite dramatic, that the updates are hard to keep up, and to the point where the developers of Claude even don't even know necessarily about how to answer that term of consciousness. But what I'm interested in is what makes us human. Like, what differentiates human
Bernard: Yeah. But if you're not finding your market, then it's all for naught as well. Right, it just doesn't happen automatically, right? As much as the automation is there and you might say, yeah, okay, how many eyeballs are gonna be looking at my ebook, for example? And I don't believe those stories that are on ⁓ Amazon ebooks and stuff.
Michael McNish: from artificial and I always sort of, if you go from a spiritual, even a religious perspective, to be human is what separates us even from the animals is the ability to create is the ability to, build like the internet, ⁓ electricity, that stuff that humans create flight television.
Bernard: I might be. I might be wrong. Do you believe those stories that people publish, self-publish stuff on Amazon e-books?
Michael McNish: all these amazing technologies. ⁓ When I grew up watching the Jetsons and it'd be like ⁓ a person on the TV screen and they're having an audio call instead of on the telephone and I'll say to my friends, wouldn't that be cool if that would actually happen? And look what we're doing right now. Well, they do self publish, but a lot of the numbers are skewed based on on marketing efforts to give away free copies and do undo all the things that they do. I mean, there's, there are there's there's methods to manipulate any system, like, like reviews, like, no one would do a fake review, would they like that doesn't exist, does it?
Bernard: Here we are doing exactly what the Jetsons did and science fiction becoming reality is. Well, no, not at all.
Michael McNish: tablets, you know, the iPad is like you'd see that in a Star Trek kind of movie and they'd just be like doing that. Why wouldn't that be cool? And so I, my worries, like we create a Terminator and here we go. we're creating this, this, this technology to create. I mean, the question is, do we know what we're doing? Do we know what we're creating? Not at all. But you know, like, you know what, actually, thinking about AI, you know, people are making fake UGC content with AI, which is completely misleading. Like there's, there's a, there's an ethical and legal issue regarding fake representation and messaging, but people will do it anyway, and they don't care.
Bernard: Yeah. Yeah, look, the boundaries of what's right and what's legally or morally right are massively blurred in this environment. You can be serving your ads to people all over the globe, right, in jurisdictions that may or may not be concerned about those things. Well, I think, you know, when we look at those things like AI, for example, the movie AI, there was lots of sort of moments there which were brought into question about how far, is it just code? And it is just code, right? And we do, and... Does anybody care? Maybe, probably not. It just breeds a different person of cynic that looks at reviews and say, that right? You only have to look at IMDB, for example, for classic ⁓ seeding of reviews by the producers or otherwise ⁓ of movies that are crap. And you get these 10 out of 10s reviews. Parameter driven code. ⁓ Now, there are code writing ⁓ AIs now that can write their own code. ⁓ How far does that go? Is it just still a dot and a dash, right?
Michael McNish: We don't need developers anymore and we don't need VA's anymore because the AI will do that. We don't need call centers anymore because the AI will answer the phone call for us. And we don't need, you know, we actually don't need 15 year olds at Woolworths anymore because we do it ourselves. ⁓ So like there's almost this. But the actor will play the best script that I've ever read.
Bernard: Yeah. Exactly.
Michael McNish: You know why? Because they want to be employed. They want another job. That's, you know, they got a...
Bernard: They do, So credibility, ⁓ authenticity, all those things. Yeah. Yeah, there's no doubt that there are some ⁓ forms of employment that ⁓ don't have a redundancy built into it and will disappear, right? And I can give you the experience that I had right at the beginning. ⁓ In our business, there was a business called Savage Type, a massive business in Brisbane, huge offices employed.
Michael McNish: those two words right there, that is actually, and the last few podcasts, that's been a common topic. Authenticity and credibility. Trust is the pillars, they're the critical pillars that are what people actually want. And what people buy from people they trust, they like, they believe,
Bernard: Well, you hope that's what they want. Incredible business. couple hundred people, did Bibles, did massive encyclopedias, and you know, huge jobs, huge, huge jobs. It didn't take more than I think under a year for that business to pack up when the Mac came about, that you could produce type ⁓ on a screen rather than ⁓ type it in in a manual way to a... Yeah.
Michael McNish: And, and like what we're having is real conversation right now, like people, people want realness, they because and I think this is my prediction. And I got other friends in the industry that also have a similar prediction, we could be completely wrong. But in the as we move into more AI, people are sick of the fake. and they will flock to more honest realness in video content and ads that don't look manufactured. Now I could be completely wrong because I know that there people getting great results with the manufactured AI fake stuff.
Bernard: a typography machine, right? And yeah, so that whole industry, the typesetting industry disappeared phenomenally, right? And let's not be ⁓ churlish about these things. ⁓ Businesses will ⁓ disappear from some site. I'm thankful that I believe our business won't disappear. Yeah. Yeah, it was something I was listening to the other day that the, ⁓ let's say, actors, characters, ⁓ personalities that are copywriting their personality at the moment so that they don't get copied. Which goes to authenticity and trust, right? Like you can have any sort of AI-interpreted avatar.
Michael McNish: Yes. ⁓
Bernard: In our business may well be enhanced by the need to be better than the next one. If you, the quintessential edge, I'll be using that word quintessential a fair bit today on this cast, but it's true if we look at the word. You know, it's something ⁓ that ⁓ is inherently ⁓ unique, right? Unique's a good word. that looks great, talks great, looks even better maybe than some. But ⁓ is that credible? Is what they're saying believable? Is it just general? Hmm? Yeah. Well, that's the question. But we've been talking about authenticity.
Michael McNish: Well, it's perfect because it's AI generated because it will be exactly how you want Because if everyone's doing the same thing, if everyone's using AI, there is no advantage, right? Because everyone's using the same technology to the point where like back in the day when I was, back when Facebook ads was just the right hand side, now I'm showing my age, where there was no newsfeed ad and you to stand out, you needed an image that was so different to everyone else. And same thing, if everyone else was using color, you'd go black and white. You'd do the exact opposite. Does it matter? Does it matter anymore?
Bernard: Yeah.
Michael McNish: Mmm.
Bernard: I suppose the strength of somebody who has a personality, as a personality, which has always been there in advertising world, does that become even more so ⁓ a currency? I'd probably argue it does.
Michael McNish: Looking at social media now, mean, Facebook is probably the number one place that most businesses will be advertising these days and generating leads and customers. They make all the money. ⁓ There's a look. There's a look. And what I found that's really interesting is sometimes completely avoiding all that technology and doing something the complete opposite, either better or worse, depending on how you want to stand out and be different. think so. I think I think so and people buy from people. And that hasn't changed. And also what's also that's changed a lot is that when people are doing Facebook ads, they're more likely to advertise now from their personal brand and as opposed to their company brand now. So you'll find the more like instead of click funnels, it's Richard ⁓ Branson, you know, so it's Branson. And so instead of ⁓ is is where to go where like there's a I think there's a desire to be like everybody else ⁓ they're doing that I want to do that Tesla would be Elon Musk, you you're getting the person, the era of the person and that personal brand is such a thing now. ⁓
Bernard: Yeah. Sure, follow the leader outcome, it's always been part of business or being creative and looking for a unique aspect, whether it's driven by ⁓ image or by copy. I think it's a marriage of both, That still hasn't ⁓ changed, right? What appeals to people visually, you know, we've still got, you know, high impact video.
Michael McNish: And you can manufacture yourself with AI. Like you can use 11 Labs and clone your voice. You can use any of the infinite number of AI video tools and put yourself into a video. And guess what? It can work. Because you can script it and you can have a copyright.
Bernard: Sure. Yeah, that's only going to get that is only going to get more and more refined as well. More and more refined. Perhaps music involved as well. Sure, that can be AI driven as well. And look, there's a certain amount of that stuff that's been quite useful for production values. But in the end, what are you doing? You're doing an ad or whatever. The uniqueness of it is what stands out, right? Does it sell more product?
Michael McNish: Yeah, absolutely. Would that outperform you just getting the camera out and talking and on your phone and or would that outperform a full studio gig with a videographer, proper lighting, sound set ⁓ done, done properly.
Bernard: Maybe... Maybe.
Michael McNish: ⁓ And I think what I've found and what I've noticed is that the low tech stuff tends to do better. And the reason I believe it does better is simply because of the platform of which you're advertising on. So Facebook is social media. It's not design media. It's designed for connection, real people, and you look at organic content, like the stuff that most people would share. If it looks like that, people are less likely
Bernard: Maybe the jury's out on that one. You look for example at Aldi ads, which are quirky to say the least. Do they push the good value that you might get at Aldi? No.
Michael McNish: It depends.
Bernard: Much better. They don't. They're just looking for some point of difference, right, that catches the consumer in that point of time. Visibly it's on, mainly on television. you know, I always say about the consumer, you're looking at a consumer at one point of time. Are they wanting to make a purchase decision or not? Right?
Michael McNish: likely to think it's an ad. in magazines back in the day, advertorials were clever because they looked like articles. And so they kind of blended in to the other material,
Bernard: Michael, it's no mistake in why we're talking here on podcasts that the rise and rise and rise of podcasts have been so popularly adopted because of their authentic nature. I was looking at John Stewart's, he's got a thing called The Weekly, which is his sort podcast monologue. You're only appealing to a ⁓ certain audience at any given point of time. So you have to be out there. In fact, can I use your words? Balls deep as far as design goes. ⁓ look, AI for the moment will give us a leg up to understanding markets better, right? Research, as I said earlier.
Michael McNish: Bulls day. Hmm.
Bernard: He's got three producers underneath him that are doing it. he was on with an English chap who I forgot his name. an amazing hour and 25 minutes of John Stewart podcast on current issues with Trump and others. ⁓ And so authentic. And you certainly found out that Where should I be aiming this, especially in digital advertising? What market should I be pushing this in? What audience? Is it the right language? These things can all help for an end result. I think there's still gotta be a human in here driving that outcome. ⁓ John Stewart is no man's dummy. He is a very intelligent man and as you quite often find about ⁓ comedians, if you want to call him a comedian, ⁓ they're intensely ⁓ intelligent and his grasp of ⁓ geopolitical ⁓ environment was astonishing. So extrapolate that over all the other myriad of podcasts that are out there. I'm not, you know, who can say that what we'll be doing in another 30 years? I'm almost 65. So it will be difficult to tell how far. But we can go right back to Alan Turing. You he developed this idea that there can be a thinking computer back in the... They are immensely popular and it's all about ⁓ authenticity and genuineness and trust. Where are the brands? So in effect the human ⁓ element, and I'll bring it back to ⁓ Al, is still living and strong. And I think for the moment our attitude towards that is still engaged. well, in the early 1930s. And here we are, almost 100 years ⁓ hence to what we're experiencing now. So a big change, driven by ⁓ software, hardware in combination ⁓ that can, I suppose, ⁓ delight us.
Michael McNish: Yeah.
Bernard: Right? And that's why there's no... That's why the human element of creativity, and that's a great idea, why didn't I think of that, is still strong. That's probably where I'd like to finish it with. And, you know, I think that's... We need to use it. Round up and say we use it, use it wisely, use it advisedly, but don't shy away from it. and for some of the people that are frightened by it, but I've found with any sort of technology in this space, in my space, ⁓ we should embrace it. ⁓ We should use it to our best ability, like the technology leaps that we've had in the past, and this is a technology leap from my point of view.
Michael McNish: I agree with you.
Bernard: If you do, your business will fold up, but embrace it and use it to advantage. That's where I think we're at. Good call. ⁓ produce even a better outcome for our clients. is still around right that we haven't found a replacement for commerce so there will always be a need for creativity in a commercial sense and
Michael McNish: I you're right, mate. I think you're spot on. And I think ⁓ the value of our humanity in what we do, the driving force behind the technology, the tools, a drill on its own won't know where to drill. It can drill really well, but where do you put the hole and how big and wide and what bit do you put on it? would argue that creativity is an essential skill for any entrepreneur because effectively it's not just in the design aspect, it's in creative how you approach and solve problems. Because if you're looking at AI, it's literally just a tool to overcome a problem. So your ability to solve problems is your ability to be successful in business, right?
Bernard: 100 % My, an often quoted ratio, businesses are 85 % customer relations, 15 % product. That may even be further blurred in the ratio. That's something that I've lived by in business for the last 37 years.
Michael McNish: If we treat AI as a companion, a tool, as a staff member, as an extension of ourselves, then we can actually create great things faster and possibly more effectively.
Bernard: you
Michael McNish: and plugging it in to where our constraint is or where we can see ourselves, it could amplify and improve, as said, with research or with monotonous tasks ⁓ as a starting point or as a refinement sounding board, it can ⁓ speed up things in so many different areas. But I agree, it's not gonna replace real talent.
Bernard: You can't replace the human element to it. And it really doesn't matter who you are. You've still got to talk to people. ⁓ And I know we're going to get AI agents to do mundane jobs like taking calls at call stations and things like that and solving ⁓ a mundane sort of... ⁓
Michael McNish: and you know a TV personality. I can't imagine us going that AI personality was so good I love that guy.
Bernard: Yeah, well, if we can pick it. If we can pick it.
Michael McNish: Or maybe.
Bernard: question but I'm sure given any sort of really outside parameters they've got defaults that will end up having to speak to something that isn't AI generated ⁓ avatar. You will have to come back to it, right? It works for a certain number as we know we have frustrations with the technology now. Sure that will only get better but you know where it ends up who knows.
Michael McNish: If we can pick it. Mate, I already want to thank you for this, this chat. It's been absolutely fantastic. And it's actually been really nice thinking about, you know, the professionalism of creative and really owning the skills that we have, owning our own. expertise in an area in a world where, you know, fast fashion versus designer, fast design versus, you know, competency, you know, we're competing with quality versus fast moving consume commercial goods, we can call it. So I it comes down to what your outcome is because ⁓ sometimes if you can't get what you want with AI, then you're gonna need a person. You're going to have to get that person. Like I tried to do some branding. I thought I'm gonna have a go at some of these AI logo generators just to see where we're up to. And it was like clip art. It was terrible.
Bernard: Yeah, look, quality over quantity. It's a lifelong ⁓ ambition really, isn't it? ⁓ You've got people down the other end that want the quantity end and then you've got people up the other end that want the quantity end. And it's humankind. ⁓ And it's a dichotomy that will exist and continue to exist forever, I think. Yeah. Right, Yes. Terrible.
Michael McNish: Someone might look at that and I'm sure there's someone out there that goes, that is the best logo I've ever seen. I mean, that's fantastic. mean, I'm sure there have to be someone that goes, that's a cool logo. Or do you remember like Vistaprint? You know, could get, choose your logo from the directory. And then there was 99designs back in the day where you'd do an auction and you'd try and see. Thank you very much for coming on the show.
Bernard: Cheers. Thanks, Michael. Yeah. I know all of them. And we've got Canva now as well. You know, you're trying to get...
Michael McNish: You've got Canva that can do those. So, you know, it's like if you're a startup and you're trying to just get a logo done on the cheap, then probably it fulfills that functional thing, but it's probably not solving what you actually want.
Bernard: No, it's not. And look, ⁓ if AI can do anything for those sort of businesses like startups, they should start at the very beginning and ask for a plan. And look, I think they're probably pretty good at doing that, right? They're not good at doing creative parts, but they can set up a framework. They can set up a plan, a step-by-step. you know, these are the things. Think about these things before you actually go asking for a logo. What is the expression of your business? What is the essence of it? Right? And this is my ISP. This is the one, this is why I'm gonna make money, right? This is why I'm taking the leap. And after that, you know, follow through those steps to, I think, you know, a steady way of building a business. But what's happened in the past and why so many of them fail is that there's no proper structure around a good business. Have they got money to ⁓ spend on it? Have they got a plan for sales? Have they got a, you know, it's a great idea, but nobody wants to buy it. Right.
Michael McNish: Do you think, and this is a quite kind of a leading question, but Do you think people know what they want when they ask for creative?
Bernard: Quite often no. Quite often no. In fact, there's some that are, but I would say they're in the minority, rather. There's some that know precisely what they want, right, and can instruct you. But most of the time, we need to give them something before they can tell us what they don't want or what they don't like. Yes.
Michael McNish: I see it and now I know I don't like that or I see that and I go, ⁓ there's something there, I like that.
Bernard: And that's how it starts. It's a kernel of an idea that rises out of our creativity and then correspondingly is adopted by the client. And the nuances can come after that. ⁓ yeah, can I see that in black and white? I see that another color. Can we tweak this here? Can we tweak it there? I think... That doesn't stop, right? What AI can do, and this is a cautionary tale, it can dumb down a lot of this. And I expect you know what I'm saying by that. People can put up with, oh, it's okay, it's good enough. So it's dumbing it down. And I will say, you I think some of those. Automated ⁓ design programs like Canva are dumbing down the experience of having something at the right, talking to your client at the right level. Right, okay, I've seen that before, that's a Canva template. They're not valuing what they're doing. So there's a dumbing down of it, there's not a uniqueness of it, or at least a polished end. It kind of looks polished, but it's not. And what you're saying about your experience in trying to build a logo is quite typical at the moment. I think it goes through my whole argument here today. They're nowhere near commercially ready. If you want to have a fiddle with it, sure. And like I also said about website generators and plans and things like that, they're nowhere near it. And certainly ⁓ somebody to nuance a bit of typography and the vast amount of typefaces that there are and the human element in picking that for these reasons. We quite often put with all of our designs a rationale as why we chose colors to go with this, why we chose this typeface ⁓ and that all goes with the whole idea of them buying in. as well to our idea, but our ideas come from our extracting of their essential requirements for creativity for their business. So it would be a long way off I think Michael before you...
Michael McNish: Yeah, well the last episode I was talking with Ben Simpkin and we've been using AI to create marketing and generate hooks and generate copy and all those sorts of things and we're talking about how someone out of the box, if they're using one of these platforms, they're probably not gonna get very good copy. You gotta know how to train it. You gotta be an expert and train it with 20-30 years experience in what is good and what is not good in order for it to actually know what it's doing. that also at the same time, the art of the prompt requires some degree of expertise in what you're asking. And I'm gonna give an example. Frank Kern is one of the famous internet marketers in the world. And he got in trouble recently for using AI to generate an image of a woman. and that woman looked like a real woman and she got quite offended by it and went through a bit of a process with him. He had to go online and prove and show the prompt to illustrate the fact that he didn't actually use that woman's image. Right? So AI went on its own thing, but I found a copy of the prompt itself and I'm just going to read out like a little bit of the starting point.
Bernard: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Michael McNish: But I would imagine that most people wouldn't even be close to a prompt like this. And in order to have a prompt like this, you need to think like a photographer. You need to think like an artist. You need to think like a professional who knows what they're asking for, like the art of the brief. Because if you don't have a good brief, you're not going to get a good outcome. So here's an example. Cinematic portrait shot on 85 millimeter lens, movie poster composition, mid chest up, a beautiful, super sexy Caucasian woman with flowing brown hair and bright blue eyes, she wears a red string bikini, she stares directly at the camera, making a casual shrugging gesture with her shoulders and hands as if to say, who knows. The background is a beautiful sunny beach with sand and ocean, shallow depth of field, blurred slightly, rich natural dramatic sunlight, film grain, high end editorial photography. And that's not the finish of it.
Bernard: Hmm that's an extensive ⁓ brief by somebody who knows exactly what he's doing right in photography and in composition right. Wow on a beach somewhere and yeah they made a red string bikini brown hair I like brown hair right.
Michael McNish: What would someone else type if they went, make me an image of a woman looking good. Yeah. Yeah.
Bernard: Point back in the whole starting point of this is that some of this, all of this stuff allows access to the unexperienced person, Them to have a fiddle with it, right? But is it worth it anything at the time, right? Will it empower businesses just to do it all themselves? My thought is no, right? My thought is yeah, you can go down that route of
Michael McNish: Yeah.
Bernard: of having ⁓ somebody in your office that has a capability of doing that. ⁓ my long-term experience with businesses, and maybe this will change in some form of paradigm, people, there is never in most businesses ⁓ time to employ a full-time person that's going to sit around prompting. ⁓ an AI agent to do work for that business, right? It's a matter of resource allocation. I think those people may well exist in separate businesses of their own that still have clients that say, right, okay, we'd like a lady on a beach for our new promotion in a RedString bikini, but that's... That won't come from ⁓ an internal employee. It may, but if the business is in what we classically see as a normal business that needs marketing to the public, then there's times where you need that and there's times where you don't. You get out and start selling. ⁓ There was an idea that I thought that you'd need an ⁓ internal person to do this. But the requirement of expert knowledge would be quite something else. As you say, you need an author or a copywriter that knows how to prompt stuff and get the best outcome. ⁓ You need a graphic designer that knows how to put it all together, right? And you probably need a, ⁓ you know, an SEO expert that can ⁓ divine, ⁓ you know, the right tone ⁓ and placement of it. And then, you know, you need an SEO coder that gets the right ⁓ punch out of it ⁓ behind the scene. ⁓ in the coding. So it's a very complex amount of people and we've never been able to find it in 37 years of really people that can do two jobs. I've probably seen it maybe once, that somebody can really build a website and understand the nuance of the market and how deep the website needs to be. what its dual function or single function is to do, is it good e-commerce, is it this? I haven't been able to find any one person that can do those at the competency that we'd require of them. It's beyond, I think, most people to do, and this will be controversial, I'm sure. I'm sure there'll be people out there saying, ⁓ yeah, I can do it, you know, I can design a great website, but I can also coded as well or I can use a template. We don't tend to use templates, we do occasionally, but we mainly code from scratch for our websites.
Michael McNish: Have you seen that Venn diagram where it's the three things that people want? They want quality, they want speed, and they want cheap.
Bernard: Yeah. Yeah, can have two, but you can't have three.
Michael McNish: That's right. What are the two that you want? Because I think that, and there was another piece of content that I saw recently. I think it was Alex Hormosi actually. I think it was him. And it was about, if you want to stand out amongst anyone, do it faster.
Bernard: Well.
Michael McNish: So if they're giving a website to you in seven days, I'll get your website in 24 hours. And then that becomes your point of difference. So speed is a very, we live in an economy in a world where instant is what people want. Like that's why credit cards are huge. I'll have it now and I'll pay it later. It's where streaming and internet speed is critical. I wanna watch that movie now. I don't wanna wait. And literally there's a guy, ⁓ have you heard of Sam Cart?
Bernard: Yeah. No, I haven't.
Michael McNish: SamCut was like a e-commerce platform for entrepreneurs to sell like e-books and courses and like digital products and give them a checkout basically. And so he's been developing that for many, many years and he's just launched a product that with a simple prompt, it will build your landing page, write your ebook, put it into a funnel. Do you create for you boom boom boom boom boom five minutes ten minutes? You've got a you've got a product cell Now it's pretty crap now. I haven't tested. I've seen it
Bernard: Yeah. Yes, my opinion of that is what compromises and what assumptions have been made for it to fit within those parameters. Given, sure, there's some immense capacity by AI to enable you to move quickly, but Along the way, there will have been some decision making in this flow of how these things will happen in process and assumptions will be made that this is where the photo needs to be, this is where the text will need to be, this is where the pricing will be, etc. We're talking about an e-book or something like that online on Amazon or something like that. dumb the product down. I get why people want things quickly, in the end, what's going to be the experience? And that's a point of view. It's experience sacrificed for speed. And I think your Venn diagram is well made. You can have two, but you can't have three.
Michael McNish: but they won't three.
Bernard: But they do want three. They want it cheap. They want it quick. And they want it good. And that goes to your point about this website that can do this in all three things and launch it and push. So we had the...
Michael McNish: Yeah, press a button and instantly and it's all there.
Bernard: And this has been going on ever since websites or virtually since websites came out. We designed our first website in 1996. Now we were amongst the very earliest website designers. It would have been in Netscape. Well, no, actually it was probably, no, was before Netscape. It was coded, right? We had a real nerd on our staff and he coded for one of the...
Michael McNish: Was that for Netscape Navigator back in the day? ⁓ You
Bernard: biggest law firms in Australia and Brisbane, weirdly not Sydney, but Brisbane was the place where it got designed for. ⁓ But the solution in a box has been around forever, decades now of website designs. Are they working or are they not? When you want to add on all the nuances in... ⁓ CRM parts and UX outcomes that the science between UX, where are they sacrificed along the way or are they all seamlessly built into this thing that pops out in two or three minutes?