speaker-0: Hey everyone, welcome back to Chat B2B, the podcast that gives you a front row seat to AI and B2B marketing. I'm your host, Andrew Au, co-CEO of Intercept. And on this show, we sit down with enterprise marketers who are building and scaling really interesting use cases. Today I'm joined by Liz Merlise Emle, who's the head of global creative services at HP, and she's responsible for content and creative behind HP's product launches around the world. We get into why AI is good at producing the average. How do we break out of that? How do we empower creative teams to stand out? And what are some of the hard lines that HP is drawing between what AI produces and what humans produce? We also get into what does the future of creative teams look like? Lots of great stuff ahead. If you like what you hear, don't forget to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This is ChatB2B. Let's get into it. So ⁓ Liz, let's we'll set the table for for everybody. I mean, you lead content and creative services for HB Globally. So for for just for the audience, if you could just set the table, what does that kind of cover? What's like the full like remit for for the team?
speaker-1: Sure. So to simplify it, because of course it's never as simple as it sounds, but we produce all of the content, ⁓ sort of structured and unstructured content for product launches globally. And then we also have ⁓ creative services. So for ad hoc ⁓ projects that require anything from SIL videos to social media, whatever the needs are for our marketing organization, our team helps pull that together.
speaker-0: Awesome. So it's pretty much everything under that, everything under content and creative. ⁓ do you find because you mentioned sort of the the product releases and launches, is that cycle happening faster and faster? I mean, I I feel like it is, like as a consumer, because so much stuff is being launched in new formats and new this, but what what's what's that like?
speaker-1: So the product production cycle itself has not significantly changed yet. We are still a manufacturing organization. So it is still very much following the same processes and steps that have been in place for decades now. ⁓ what has changed though is the expectations around being able to be flexible on that. So the reality in our economy today with the supply shortages that we have, with for memory especially, you know, folks are needing to be much more nimble. And we're finding that not rather than just necessarily saying, okay, we're making product number one and then we're gonna sell product number one, now it's like, ⁓ well, I can only get product number three today. So you know, let's quickly pivot and make sure that we're able to do that. So that's the what is changing and that's where that feeling of sort of chaoticness is coming from is just having to constantly manage at the last minute.
speaker-0: Yeah, I I've been hearing a lot about that on just the shortages all up. Is that something you think in the next year or so will get clear cleared up, or is that just kind of a a new norm of we just don't know, you just gotta be agile?
speaker-1: From what I'm hearing, this is now the new norm. You know, data center construction is not going away. This is it's probably only gonna get more and more ⁓ important for all countries as they kind of push towards where they think they need to go. So I wish I could say it would stabilize because it would make my life a lot easier, but I don't think so.
speaker-0: That's interesting. Cause it's like then how do you I can think about how do you plan your releases, your go to market, when again, you got to make sure you got inventory to move. So that's ⁓ that's an interesting challenge. ⁓ when you think about, you know, AI and leveraging AI for a lot of your workflow flows today, where do you see AI delivering value in whether it's content or creative services? Where's it delivering value? Where where where isn't it? Delivering diets and where's it not ready yet?
speaker-1: So specifically to content creation, you know, we've been partnering with ⁓ our agency partners to really bring AI into some of the more templatized and repetitive work that we need to do. So, you know, we launch hundreds of products which have thousands of pieces of content every year. Some of that needs to be very specialized and to really stand out, but then some of it You know, think ⁓ e-commerce content, for example, is very templatized. Amazon does not care that you wish it was a different size. You have to conform to their specifications. So some of that work our agency partners have really managed to help us find some real efficiencies in. ⁓ but then lots of the process is still the traditional linear product production ⁓ process that we've had for decades.
speaker-0: Yeah, got it. So it sounds like the downstream execution, there's some efficiencies there that's being sort of unlocked. Like the I like what we call sort of the keep the lights on work, where it's the work that you have to do. Your partners expect you to to to produce it, ⁓ versus sort of that frontier work, which is how do we just like redefine the buyer experience? So more the keep the lights on at this point.
speaker-1: Well, even within what we would have called keep the lights on content, there's pieces to that that are easier to templatize than others, right? Like ⁓ we have been able to templatize ⁓ you know, ⁓ annotated images, for example, where you're really for a a computer or a printer, you're really focusing on the same things, even if the names of those things are changing. Got it. But for the baseline product imagery that supports that, that is not something that you can templatize. So even with, you know, the angles being fairly standard for a picture of a printer or computer, the initial creation of the computer graphics that support that takes a lot of ⁓ love and attention. So it's because you know we we want our products to look as beautiful as possible. And we want the soul of that product to come through in the imagery, even at the most transactional level. So we definitely spend a great deal of time on that kind of upfront work. But then once you're having to reproduce the same ad in multiple languages ⁓ with the same intent over and over again, that's where you find advantages.
speaker-0: Okay. So and how much of that do you see as ⁓ because we've had like dynamic creative optimization like DCO for long time where it's like, hey, just swapping stuff out, which is more like workflow automation than than AI in a way, depending on depending on how it's done. Is it more of that where it's like, hey, you gotta swap out, you know, make sure that the right image is being used in the right, you know, scenario? So it's really like the assembly work, or is it actually creating that image or a variant of that image and AI is being used in that in that case.
speaker-1: I I actually love that you're making that distinction because I think that so many people mix the two up. Automation is actually the biggest pieces of the advances that have been made recently. Whereas true AI for the work that we're doing is harder. So, you know, for us, the representation of our products is absolutely key to what we're doing. And So far, ⁓ AI cannot generate ⁓ an object, namely especially a complex object like a printer or a computer, effectively, accurately, pixel perfect at scale. It just doesn't work yet. And so we really are challenged. to figure out how therefore does AI, true AI, fit into our workflow when we cannot risk error. ⁓ so because there is literally zero tolerance for any type of AI hallucination on what our product looks like.
speaker-0: Yeah, I thought our I thought your product had six USB ports. It's like actually no, it's ⁓ Yeah. It I mean, as a global organization, obviously you've got a higher threshold, a higher bar to hit than, you know, if you're an SMB or mid market where there's just probably a little bit more grace, right? You know, you d you're not as much in in in the limelight. But ⁓ yeah, it's interesting 'cause the what we're seeing is, you know, you can you can get there, but it takes a lot of work and I don't know, you know, how much more efficient it is when you have to run like multiple multiple layers of this QA. But then it's, you know, do you take a shot of the back of the shell of the laptop as opposed to the keys? Cause on the keys it's every single letter on the key. It's the right it's it's almost like controlling for how much detail you have in the shot, but it is it is hard. It is very, very hard to get it pixel perfect, you know? So I can I can definitely see that.
speaker-1: And we are exploring with some partners in terms of how we could possibly do that, just because the the number of SKUs that we are trying to sell globally just continues to increase in volume. And it's because, you know, we're really trying to manage for the realities of the business that we're in today, where you just have to work with the components you have rather than what the ideal components. configuration of the machine should be. And so, you know, you're we're trying to manage for an not an infinite variety of imagery, but quite a large variety of imagery that with the traditional methodologies and humans doing the work, it's just literally not possible.
speaker-0: Yeah. Agreed. I mean, when you have like a hundred thousand SKUs, it is it is it is a lot to manage, right? And then you gotta be able, yeah. So ⁓ so when you think about so there's there's efficiency in terms of it sounds like more the file assembly, the the variance that each maybe the the retail partners expect. When you think about upstream on like just creative and coming up with creative ideas and concepts and campaigns, I feel AI is very good at bringing you to the median or just the sort of the center point or the average, which is kind of counterintuitive to like creativity because you want to break through and you want to be unique and different. And so you don't want to be the same as as everybody. How do we or how do you think about creativity in in in that way? Like you've got AI that brings you towards the average. How do creative teams stay creative? when they're leveraging these these these tools.
speaker-1: Well, so I think actually what you said at the very end there is the most important part of what you just said is leveraging tools, right? Yeah. So in the same way that, you know, some of us might be old enough to remember the transition from pencil and paper to computer graphics software. Yeah. Right. So in the same way that there was new tools available to express creativity. That I think is the world that we need to move towards. Folks who are able and comfortable and interested in understanding how these new tools work and how they can make them work to their advantage, those are the folks who will thrive. And I don't honestly see it as a removal of creativity. I just see it as, you know, just another shift in the way that creativity needs to work. I love the questions around what is going to be the role in the future for creatives. Because to me, that shows a distinct lack of understanding of what it means to be creative. The advantages that we're going to see in the future for our businesses are going to come from people who have critical thinking skills who can look beyond what's in front of them, look beyond what other people have done already, which is exactly what AI is synthesizing for us, right? It's taking everything and just dumping it in a bucket. And so what to be successful in the future as a business, those who can allow for that type of pushing of the boundaries, of allowing for that questioning of the norm of the status quo, those are the businesses that are gonna actually be more successful and outstrip their competition. If you are looking to just use AI to crank out stuff, notice I use the correct you know, that is going to limit you. And it because
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: People aren't stupid. They may not understand what good design looks like. They may not understand why one piece of creative moves them and the other one does not. But average never gets you very far. Yeah. And so in I suppose it probably makes a difference. You know, if you're selling a pad of paper which has no emotional value and it's just a transaction, fine, whatever. Doesn't matter.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: But you know, we are trying to sell you something that's worth $2,000. And so why would I want to be blended in with all of my competition? What my hope is, is that we can use AI as a tool to help us reach the most number, the largest number of customers possible, but at the same time have a creative team that is inputting into that. And making sure that what we're producing can stand out, at least for some of what we're doing. You know, you always have to balance between bringing the customers in in the first place and then when they're ready and when they're actually interested in making a purchase, then you're ready with that more tactical information. But you've got to be able to do both.
speaker-0: One of the things that we we talk about here is sit with the ambiguity. You know, not just the creative team, but strategy and client services and opposites. Don't immediately go to the AI tool stack or Intercept OS to help solve it right away. Sit with the ambiguity and think on it. And it's okay to to take that time to do that because I think AI can quickly feel like an easy button. And it's a you know, the way that we see this is it's a thought sparring partner and you you need to give AI permission to disagree with you and so forth, but you ⁓ you need to sit with that ambiguity. I think that's an advantage. You know, it might not be the fastest way to do it, but I think it's how you're gonna get the most thoughtful output.
speaker-1: I love that you're doing that with your own staff because, you know, I certainly see the uptake on AI internally at HP is either in, you know, very tiny, very specific you know, functionality, or it's the sort of bigger, you know, we we partner with Microsoft. So we're all using Teams and we're all using Microsoft 365. And it's co-pilot is a great tool. It's a great tool that we are able, you're able to help with a lot of outputs, but I can see it when my colleagues have not put enough effort into what the what's being shared, right? Like I don't know why, but all of the outputs from AI, they always seem to be formatted in the same way. I'm like, really? Do you couldn't I just customize it a little bit?
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: So and you see it on LinkedIn all the time too. It's like you wrote using LinkedIn AI. It should have a tag on it. ⁓ so it it's and people are defaulting to lazy and it's interesting to see. So I'd I love the the push on your own employees to do that. You know, and maybe sometimes it's not that important. You know, sure, make my email better. Great. But when it comes to thought leadership, when it comes to strategy, it really, you know, having the human brain behind it is what's gonna make it stand out.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. And and in to know when to override the decision or the recommendation. Like I think you and I chatted about this at one point, which was the show Seinfeld, which actually failed all of the pilot assessments. So they put that in front of an audience and the audience was like, I don't like it. I think this show's not funny. And and there was a an executive at NBC that said, you know, I think that this actually is different and it's unique. And so they launch it anyway. And it starts off as like a very niche sort of following, but then obviously it accumulates bigger and bigger following and still somewhat kind of niche, but it's one of the most successful ⁓ shows. And I just thought to myself, if we applied an AI model to that, It wouldn't have recommended the show. Like you you probably would have cut it. But you have to have that gut, that that taste, that judgment. And that's again where the humans really gotta sit and think on that to make the decision. Cause you can't blame Bob the agent for the wrong decision. You you need to be accountable for it.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, it's also what I was saying earlier about design. People most people can't tell you why they like something or don't like something. They just know they don't like it. And a good designer, ⁓ you know, a good creative thinker, they're able to tell you at a level of finesse that AI just cannot give to us right now in terms of why.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: You should do one, make a particular creative decision versus another. And so I think for creatives to circle it back to that is the strength will be in that thought process, in that pushing the if even if you are using agents as your tools, how are you pushing those them to deliver above and beyond what they're set up to deliver? Yeah. So that'll be interesting to see where that creatively goes in the future. Cause I think unfortunately we're just gonna see way too much garbage.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think It's just getting louder and louder. And actually that that's a a good segue to really the content side because I think we're seeing, you know, whether it's LinkedIn or or anywhere, it's like the volumes of content are going through the roof. I think Amazon was reporting the number of books now that are being pushed through Amazon or or or available through Amazon is like up some crazy number because it's it's so much easier to just
speaker-1: Garbage.
speaker-0: put content out there. And so I think the the question that we're thinking about, I'd love to get your take on this, is what is the implication of that? And how do you stand out in this sea of, like you said, kind of garbage content that's that's out there? Yeah.
speaker-1: Well, and I think it's gonna get harder and harder because I think about the nature of our business. You know, we to your point, we have a hundred thousand SKUs out there live in the world right now. And a lot of them are very, very similar. And so we used to have this mindset of like every product is a special baby and we must have very unique. you know, value propositions and so on. Whereas now it's like, okay, well, maybe this family serves a particular customer need and has a particular customer benefit that we want to lean into. But within that family, you know, maybe the decisions become more tactical. Is it about just, you know, speeds and feeds and price points. Right. But we can can still sell you on
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: What is the overall customer benefit of thinking about that type of product? And so, and some of our competition does a probably a better job of that than we've done historically, but that's something that we're really looking at. And so, how do we, within those keystone pieces of content, within that, the creative thinking that goes into the value proposition and the messaging around that? That's where a lot of the real effort and creative decision making happens. And then, you know, when you're at the point of purchase and it really is about do I, you know, how much memory do I want to pay for or need, you know, then it can become a much more tactical decision.
speaker-0: Yeah, that makes sense. Cause th to me I see that as like the core messaging and positioning framework, like the richest source of what you want to say for that family of product and ⁓ the hero visuals, human led, human executed, largely human executed. But then as you get downstream, it's like you can take that goodness. And there's a there's a long tail for a lot of the content that you can produce, that long tail. is probably better suited for AI use cases than coming up with like the big tin pole piece, you know? Exactly.
speaker-1: Exactly. And it's been interesting because we've certainly tested out, you know, some copywriting AI type of applications. And it's still to the point you were making earlier, you still need a person to sit there and evaluate and nudge and really how do you make it so that it is distinctive and on brand correctly and expressing the right value proposition for the product. So it's it's been a learning curve for our people internally to be able to do that. ⁓ and then, you know, sometimes you still, you know, it's like, well, this is terrible and I need a real copywriter.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, exactly. One of the things that we were talking about here is again in in terms of how we stand out, is it, you know, like let's assume that the content already is high quality. We're leaning more into the context side versus the content, which is, you know, is this the right positioning for that particular audience? And that's where we've seen some success with AI of take one main thesis or output. Call it an ebook, a guide or whatever, but like a really high quality, let's call it a thought leadership piece. But then how do you make that relevant for a chief legal officer, for a chief marketing officer versus, you know, a segment, a small business, a big business versus an industry? And I think that, you know, investing a lot of time and and resources and energy around is how do you create this real-time in-the-moment customization? So at the point that I say, hey, I wanna consume this content, how does it how is the context perfect for me? And that's something that ⁓ don't know, I'd love to get your take on that, sort of like context versus like the content itself and you know, what what you think is valuable there.
speaker-1: Well, HP has done a lot of work on the future of work and what that means for HP and what the role that HP plays in that space. And the interesting thing that I've seen is that in order to get to that context, in order to really be able to deliver relevancy, the amount of legwork that it takes to understand those customers is tremendous. So
speaker-0: Yes.
speaker-1: We have spent a great deal of time with our customers, understanding our customers. And, you know, whether this is on ⁓ the enterprise side, through, you know, SMB customers, through individual end user purchasers who typically purchase it at retail. It doesn't matter. We are really trying to understand how they use technology, what role that plays in their life and which parts are the true benefits for them so that instead of having to spend that time at the end at the tail end where you know by the time you're there, if you haven't already, if you're not already on the list, you're not getting on the list. You know, it's so you really have to it's really more about the upfront effort. And then you can build out that context. And to I think where you're taking this question is like
speaker-0: Yeah, that's true.
speaker-1: So if I need to build a content engine that then satisfies all of those customers, I have that the basis of insights to build that on. So it it's you really have to build the foundation of the house before you can build the house. I think it's ⁓ and it's it's one of those parts to marketing that executives find challenging because it's like, why does this take so long? Why is it so expensive? And yet once you get it right and you have the right connection points, you can make yourself relevant to that customer in a way that your competition isn't. So it's one of those areas that is so fun to be in as a marketer because you delve into an understanding of your customers. But at the same time, it, you know, if you try to shortcut that, if you try and average it out, use AI to try and say, hey, what would this customer do? You're you're cheating on your own company and you're not gonna get the the right outputs that are going to help you move move the needle at all.
speaker-0: So Liz, I feel like executive teams, when they talk about AI, and you see this within the headlines and ⁓ you know, we've seen that within like memos at that at at other ⁓ enterprise tech companies, efficiency seems to be the pursuit. That's kind of the main thing of like we we can make this more efficient. It's do more with less. is that the right framing? Do you think efficiency is the promise of AI, or do you think that It's actually something else.
speaker-1: That is the the big question these days, right? I I think for better or for worse, we have to confront the reality that especially in the enterprise space, I cannot speak to, you know, small companies right now, but in the enterprise space, that's just the reality. You know, the board of directors, the C suite. It's always about efficiency, you know, and there have been different levers for that over time, you know, layoffs, cuts, whatever it is. And now AI is the new lever. And so specifically for HP and the work that I'm involved in, I really hope that the future is going to stay focused less about on, hey, we need less people and let's just get AI to do everything for us. And instead it becomes a conversation around great, we have AI now to help us do all of this grunt work that we had to have people do before. What that does is that frees up the resources to then be innovative, to focus on the core of marketing and to be able to do those that thinking that you were talking about before that perhaps got bogged down in the you know, in the complexity of what we have to produce. And so in the future, what I hope we see is honestly, you know, just a repurposing of those resources because the companies that can bring up that thought leadership can improve their strategic thinking and critical thinking in the marketing function, they will be the ones to jump ahead of the competition. If it becomes all about cuts, it You're gonna get what you pay for, just like everything else. And it's going to be, sure, you're gonna continue to push cheap product ⁓ through all of your partners and your sales end of point sales, but you're gonna end up just ⁓ with mediocre results, I think. Whereas if you're really pushing the boundaries, getting people to think about new things, new avenues, new formats, new you know, whatever it is. then yeah that will be the key to being successful. So we'll see where it goes. I think you're going to see both. And the companies that win are going to be the ones who understand that using humans for what humans are good at and letting the AI do what it's good at, those will be the ones that are successful.
speaker-0: I agree with you, and I think that's really well said because, you know, the like we've talked about before, the whole ghost GDP, you know, thesis of around make everything more efficient, and what does that do? It eliminates the customer base, and then we basically have no more economy and we don't have any GDP growth. I think that that is only true if we don't do anything that is truly creative and new and value creative ⁓ value creation. ⁓ and I think that's where we need to focus on because, you know, AI, yes, is an efficiency driver, but it's like the that's not the promise of I I to me, I think it's not the big unlock for AI. And I think you're you're saying the same thing, which is what is the new stuff we can go do and create and solve? That is gonna create GDP growth. Because I think if you're just going efficiency first, there's a limit to how efficient you can get without cannibalizing your business through an elimination of the customer base it's itself. Like if you just want to cut everything, you know, you I don't think it benefits humanity or society.
speaker-1: Yeah. And I think, I mean, I think it's Elon Musk who's presented that vision of the future. It's just gonna be all the robots all the time. but that's not the way humans work. You know, we aren't gonna just sit there and do nothing. People are creative, people want to be doing things. And so will it shift where work happens? Will it shift the type of work? Yes, absolutely it will. Will some people get left behind? Yes. I think that's true. But as with every change and transition. But at the same time, you know, I think with human creativity, we will see new uses and new things that we just can't even imagine today. So I I am actually somewhat optimistic. I don't I don't see that full, you know, Terminator vision of the future. I think it really You know, we humans always just imagine and are curious and always wanna find new things. So I don't I don't see the robots taking over the world.
speaker-0: And and even in Terminator, I think humanity won in that one, right? In the end, I think he was still one. Yeah, that's true. ⁓ yes. you know, y Sam Altman and others have talked about just universal basic income and how that's kind of what we need to get to. And yet, you know, I like I get there's more to life than work, but I think work is still part
speaker-1: But
speaker-0: Like it's ingrained in who we are. It's part of our identity. And so if you take that away from somebody and go, Hey, here's a check every month. You're never gonna have to work. I I don't know how happy people would be. So Well
speaker-1: And you know, let's be real, like can you see the US government ever actually implementing something like that? I don't think so. Right. You know, in Canada here we have a more socialist mindset probably, but still. Yeah. I mean I all but I agree with you. I think nobody wants to just sit still and do nothing. And, you know, sure, laying by a pool with a margarita would be nice for a day or two, but then you're gonna be bored and then what are you gonna do?
speaker-0: Exactly.
speaker-1: So I think, you know, whether whether it's just that jobs change or whether that there's brand new jobs that just don't exist right now, new things will happen. And I wonder, you know, perhaps in the best case scenario, perhaps it opens up doors to art and music and so on that don't exist now. But on the other hand, I think, you know, people want to make money too. Some people that's their motivation. And the competitiveness of capitalist society appeals to some people. So, you know, then what are you doing? So I think there's just so many elements to human nature that there's no one answer to that question.
speaker-0: So Liz, lots of noise right now. Whether we still need creative headcount in the AI era and and how many people I think it may be a better question is like what do we what do people just focus on next? So how are you how do you think about redesigning roles when the work's changing so fast and you know what what roles do we what roles do we need, you know, going forward on this side?
speaker-1: So what I'm seeing so far is there is, if anything, almost an increased need for creative roles. You know, perhaps where the impact is most felt right now is at the junior but like many other places, the bottom end where you're just, you know, it's more tactical and iterative. But from a strategic creative leadership, ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: it's never been more needed because the ability of an AI model to independently do anything is ⁓ is non-existent. So you still need guidance, direction, strategy, and you still need somebody who can assess what good design looks like, what the right tactics might be, what direction do you want your brand to lean into? That's not something that AI can can come up with at all. That is creative thinking. And I think that is the most key element for the future of of creative in in our world. You know, we we love it, right? But yeah it's also that if we just default to AI, which is has learned from what everyone's done before, that is like the antithesis of creative thinking.
speaker-0: Reading a quote that creativity is the last legal advantage that we have in this world or in marketing. Interesting. And ⁓ I I agree that models generally are very good at bringing everything towards the ⁓ the median or the meme. And so it's this sort of fast path to mediocrity. But if you want to stand out, and that's what creativity is all about, right? Is standing out, differentiation. That, like to your point, you need human. ⁓ direction in that creative taste to know what good looks like. ⁓ I think, I think generally too, we we probably need to free people up to be creative. And what I mean by that is like how much time are people spending creating and generating new ideas? And I would say that probably not
speaker-1: Probably not right. But I can tell you internally at HP, you know, and and this is not this is actually not new. This is a legacy comment in that marketers have struggled for years to balance the amount of administrative work and the amount of tactical work that they're required to do on a day-to-day basis to be able to have the time.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: To have that freedom to think. And, you know, it it's partially just ⁓ a characteristic of our modern world. We're on Teams or Slack or whatever chat channel. We're on email all the time. You know, you're on virtual calls all the time. And it's it's very, very hard to really put those walls up to say, I am gonna blockade this time. To actually spend some doing some deep thinking. And so the idea that there is this technology that could take away those repetitive tasks, the ones that aren't fun, the ones that are a time suck for people, because they have to get done or stuff doesn't work, but they're not fun. And they, you know, it's it's what is the possibility there? And I think that's where we should be exploring. as opposed to potentially worrying so much about taking away the creative work. I think it we're all we're doing is pivoting the creative work.
speaker-0: That. and I agree. So much administrative tax for each task that we have to do that it's a burden. The way the way that we think about too how we use AI in meaningful ways in marketing workflows, we use this sort of dumbbell analogy where we use AI on the left side of the dumbbell to make the keep the lights on work more efficient, which is the email nurtures and the you know, the stuff that has a role, but you're not like terribly excited about it. It doesn't change the buyer experience. It's just status quo, keep the machine running. Our goal is to make that side of the dumbbell as efficient as possible using AI to be able to free up time and budget and capacity to feel frontier work, which is the creative stuff. It's the new ideas. It's doing things that haven't been done before. And so that's how we kind of think about it is You know, to keep the lights on work has to happen. Make it efficient. Free up time to actually dedicate on, you know, innovation. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. And I don't know if big companies like HP are doing that particularly efficiently today. I know HP's got a long way to go still, but I love that it's a conversation because for the longest time the creative work that we do has been dramatically undervalued. And I think it's because we don't have the time to be producing that truly breakthrough thinking.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ and again, any of these large global organizations, it's so hard to goes back to like classic change management, right? So hard to do. And this is like fast, big change. Like this is the chewy stuff, right? so when you look ahead then you think about new roles maybe within creative teams or organizations, whether new roles that have come online recently or new roles that you think might come online. What are what are your thoughts on that? What are some of the new roles that we Maybe should expect to see.
speaker-1: Well, I definitely think we're going to need folks who are very, very good at manipulating models, whatever the model is that you're trying to run. You know, and and I mean that actually even outside of marketing, you know, whether you're trying to provide that support in finance or in legal or whatever it is, but that ability to get the models to do exactly what you need it to do is gonna be a skill. that ⁓ needs to be nurtured and developed. ⁓ but it, you know, is it like learning to use the first typewriter? Is it like, you know, is it's gonna take a while. People are thinking, is gonna think this is the weirdest tool ever, but eventually it will become part of the skill set that people have. ⁓ and I think you'll probably see some people who really rise up will be better than others at
speaker-0: Who's
speaker-1: getting those outcomes that are what either what they personally want or what the business wants.
speaker-0: Yep, I'm aligned with that thinking on sort of the workflow side. I don't know what we call it, whether it's like a AI workflow engineer or AI model engineer, but like specific to marketing, because I think when agents come online in a big way, and we're already obviously seeing that, you're gonna need a lot of infrastructure, agent tools, agent workflows. ⁓ I was talking to this company called Modern who builds I mean not to get like into their product, but they basically have like a semantic tree that allows you to allows the agent, think about you give it the tool or a blueprint where it knows exactly what data fountains to drink from for specific things. And it's deterministic. It's not probabilistic. You run it a hundred thousand times, you're gonna get it a hundred thousand times the exact same way. Right. And there's recipes that basically, again, that further support these deterministic workflows. I think marketers are best designed to to design these workflows. Like IT and tech have no idea what that workflow looks like. Exactly. So to your point, if you're a really good marketer, I think we're gonna see like this big I don't know, I think some people are just gonna take off in in a in a good way, like in terms of value creation. So I I agree with you on that. I think that's a big thing.
speaker-1: Well, and it's gonna be interesting, and I'd love your perspective on this. And you know, for young people who are just starting, how do we make sure that they have the fundamentals of understanding? Yeah, you know, Sure, I have never actually loaded letters onto a letter press, but because I know what it is, I know what leading and kerning are and I know where they came from and I know why it's important and I understand from a design perspective the amount of both science and art that go into a font. And so the you know the understanding of what what is a what is a truly good
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: print job look like? If you've got to make out of home or digital, you know, transit ads, or if you are trying to think through a social media experience without without having an understanding of how to build that, how do you nurture that kind of learning? So I'd love your perspective on that. Cause that's something I'm struggling with.
speaker-0: Yeah. It's such a good question because and I and I and I think about again, I you know, is you know, I got two kids and going through school. And you know, even though for example, like with math, you've got the calculator, you have an Excel sheet that can basically compute it like this, you still have to learn math, like the fundamentals of how it works. And a lot of people say like, there's no use of learning computer science anymore because you can code. You can vibe code everything. Okay. But if you don't understand computational thinking, if you don't understand the foundations, you will never be as good in that in that role of working with these tools if you don't understand the fundamentals, which is why I think that you still need to teach it. So that's actually something with our our intern program that we're running on the technology side, we are our CTO still adamant on. We still need to teach these fundamentals because otherwise you get a bunch of lazy code that is is is not only slow and inefficient and hard to scale, but it's not secure. Right. And then you gotta go harden that code. I mean, no, I know your son obviously is a com site. Yeah, but so so ⁓ com side graduate. So he he knows, he gets it, right? He's in the thick of it. But that's why I think you still need to teach the fundamentals.
speaker-1: That's right. And if you take that back to the creative realm, the art of the graphic designer sitting there, you know, nudging the lighting source to get, you know, and this is obviously very personal, like in terms of the work that that my team does, you know, there is a lot of passion that goes into making our devices look beautiful in a digital context, right? So having ⁓ you know that nudging the light source, having the bounce off the the composite surface just be correct so that the the color comes through, or, you know, if there's a sparkle that's within the material that you need to make appear through digital means that ⁓ it it it's just a level of attention to the art that ⁓ a computer can't do for you. Yeah. ⁓ because
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: You know, is the color blue? Yes, the color's blue. But is it the right, does it have the right warmth and vibrancy that you were looking for?
speaker-0: Yep. I and actually that is when we were building our photography AI capability, where the team has spent a ton of time, ⁓ particularly as lately, is with lighting sources and making sure that all the shadows make sense. Right. And you know, that that's really key because ⁓ there's there's there's nuances here. that you ha you have to get it right and it makes a big difference. And I think lighting and shading is the difference between like good and great photography and how do you replicate that in an agentic way. It's still not perfect. It requires still a lot of like human oversight. That's what we're learning. Liz, I wanted to ask, you've you've talked about preparing your team for jobs and ⁓ potential scenario that doesn't exist today. We can't really define it. How do you best prepare people for the unknown?
speaker-1: That's great question. And I wish I had the magical answer to that because I can't, you know, ⁓ there is a lot of fear in the system right now. Yeah. I mean, it outside of AI, you know, the economy, all of the sort of macro, geopolitical, all of the things. There's a lot of fear in the system. And so you layer AI onto it, and nobody really knows. How to handle it. So I think right now my my approach with my people at least is just to communicate often, to be as transparent as I can be. you know, here's what I know today. Here's what I can share with you. I'm one of those people that leans into probably sharing more than I should, but I I strongly believe that, you know, people need to be informed and need to have a good understanding and to have that support. Exactly. ⁓ but in terms of helping prepare people, either professionally or emotionally, like whatever the dimension that you're thinking of, there's no clear answer right now. You know, the the amount of change that people have seen in the last well, year, but even, you know, the last five years has just made it even more difficult. So we just have to continue to nurture, continue to overcommunicate and just try and help people along that path.
speaker-0: It's well said. I and I and I love that ⁓ I mean your focus on just being honest and transparent because I I I I I think along the same path, which is just be honest that you don't know how this plays out, right? And be honest that it is gonna be it's gonna be painful. Like if if if you look back, there's a great study, I'll send it to you. ⁓ it was a it was an HPR article that was That was titled, Don't Automate, Obliterate. And it was from it was from the 90s, and it looked at how when computers, when companies poured a ton of money into computers, the whole thing was, well, computers are everywhere, but we are actually not seeing the impact. We're not seeing the ROI or the productivity gains. And the diagnosis after, I think it was a decade or two, was that the companies That didn't see the productivity gains were using computers as like a bolt-on to the way that they were working before versus others that actually is as he says, obliterated workflows and built rebuilt them around computers and that technology saw tremendous gains. And so I I do think that that is likely what is happening with AI, because there's the whole like, what's the ROI of AI? Nobody can
speaker-1: No one can identify it. Yeah.
speaker-0: Right? Nobody can say that this is
speaker-1: Which is why the focus is all on money and and you know, how many people can we get rid of 'cause we now have this massive new technology. Yeah.
speaker-0: So I think I think being honest about that and it it is gonna be it's gonna be painful, but I think it'll be worth it, you know? So it's
speaker-1: I agree. If we can figure out how to help, well, how to help people reposition their own skill sets. Yes. But then how to help our leaders really see the value in rethinking what we're doing, that will be a tremendous win.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and and we just I think we need to be ready for the moment. And maybe the moment isn't quite now where we can go to the executive team and say, hey, this is exactly where you're gonna get the ROI, etc. Maybe the tools aren't quite there yet, with like we're saying, with lighting, with photography and all that. But I think the question really is gonna be who will be ready to extract the most value when the tools and the infrastructure are ready, you know? And so Exactly to your point. How do you prepare people? How do you train them? And it's actually funny. Now I'm seeing people more and more people opt out of management roles and get into IC roles because they're like, I need to get more hands on to understand how the hell this thing works. And I need to be ready for the moment. So but yeah, I I I love your focus on transparency. I think I think, you know, rather than trying to spin up a story. That just people are like, I don't believe this. You know? Let's be honest.
speaker-1: They're gonna see through it right away. Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Well Liz, I know you're you're a busy person, so thank you for joining us and ⁓ really great discussion, really great insight. So thank
speaker-1: Thank you. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I appreciate it.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Sure. So to simplify it, because of course it's never as simple as it sounds, but we produce all of the content, ⁓ sort of structured and unstructured content for product launches globally. And then we also have ⁓ creative services. So for ad hoc ⁓ projects that require anything from SIL videos to social media, whatever the needs are for our marketing organization, our team helps pull that together.
speaker-0: Awesome. So it's pretty much everything under that, everything under content and creative. ⁓ do you find because you mentioned sort of the the product releases and launches, is that cycle happening faster and faster? I mean, I I feel like it is, like as a consumer, because so much stuff is being launched in new formats and new this, but what what's what's that like?
speaker-1: So the product production cycle itself has not significantly changed yet. We are still a manufacturing organization. So it is still very much following the same processes and steps that have been in place for decades now. ⁓ what has changed though is the expectations around being able to be flexible on that. So the reality in our economy today with the supply shortages that we have, with for memory especially, you know, folks are needing to be much more nimble. And we're finding that not rather than just necessarily saying, okay, we're making product number one and then we're gonna sell product number one, now it's like, ⁓ well, I can only get product number three today. So you know, let's quickly pivot and make sure that we're able to do that. So that's the what is changing and that's where that feeling of sort of chaoticness is coming from is just having to constantly manage at the last minute.
speaker-0: Yeah, I I've been hearing a lot about that on just the shortages all up. Is that something you think in the next year or so will get clear cleared up, or is that just kind of a a new norm of we just don't know, you just gotta be agile?
speaker-1: From what I'm hearing, this is now the new norm. You know, data center construction is not going away. This is it's probably only gonna get more and more ⁓ important for all countries as they kind of push towards where they think they need to go. So I wish I could say it would stabilize because it would make my life a lot easier, but I don't think so.
speaker-0: That's interesting. Cause it's like then how do you I can think about how do you plan your releases, your go to market, when again, you got to make sure you got inventory to move. So that's ⁓ that's an interesting challenge. ⁓ when you think about, you know, AI and leveraging AI for a lot of your workflow flows today, where do you see AI delivering value in whether it's content or creative services? Where's it delivering value? Where where where isn't it? Delivering diets and where's it not ready yet?
speaker-1: So specifically to content creation, you know, we've been partnering with ⁓ our agency partners to really bring AI into some of the more templatized and repetitive work that we need to do. So, you know, we launch hundreds of products which have thousands of pieces of content every year. Some of that needs to be very specialized and to really stand out, but then some of it You know, think ⁓ e-commerce content, for example, is very templatized. Amazon does not care that you wish it was a different size. You have to conform to their specifications. So some of that work our agency partners have really managed to help us find some real efficiencies in. ⁓ but then lots of the process is still the traditional linear product production ⁓ process that we've had for decades.
speaker-0: Yeah, got it. So it sounds like the downstream execution, there's some efficiencies there that's being sort of unlocked. Like the I like what we call sort of the keep the lights on work, where it's the work that you have to do. Your partners expect you to to to produce it, ⁓ versus sort of that frontier work, which is how do we just like redefine the buyer experience? So more the keep the lights on at this point.
speaker-1: Well, even within what we would have called keep the lights on content, there's pieces to that that are easier to templatize than others, right? Like ⁓ we have been able to templatize ⁓ you know, ⁓ annotated images, for example, where you're really for a a computer or a printer, you're really focusing on the same things, even if the names of those things are changing. Got it. But for the baseline product imagery that supports that, that is not something that you can templatize. So even with, you know, the angles being fairly standard for a picture of a printer or computer, the initial creation of the computer graphics that support that takes a lot of ⁓ love and attention. So it's because you know we we want our products to look as beautiful as possible. And we want the soul of that product to come through in the imagery, even at the most transactional level. So we definitely spend a great deal of time on that kind of upfront work. But then once you're having to reproduce the same ad in multiple languages ⁓ with the same intent over and over again, that's where you find advantages.
speaker-0: Okay. So and how much of that do you see as ⁓ because we've had like dynamic creative optimization like DCO for long time where it's like, hey, just swapping stuff out, which is more like workflow automation than than AI in a way, depending on depending on how it's done. Is it more of that where it's like, hey, you gotta swap out, you know, make sure that the right image is being used in the right, you know, scenario? So it's really like the assembly work, or is it actually creating that image or a variant of that image and AI is being used in that in that case.
speaker-1: I I actually love that you're making that distinction because I think that so many people mix the two up. Automation is actually the biggest pieces of the advances that have been made recently. Whereas true AI for the work that we're doing is harder. So, you know, for us, the representation of our products is absolutely key to what we're doing. And So far, ⁓ AI cannot generate ⁓ an object, namely especially a complex object like a printer or a computer, effectively, accurately, pixel perfect at scale. It just doesn't work yet. And so we really are challenged. to figure out how therefore does AI, true AI, fit into our workflow when we cannot risk error. ⁓ so because there is literally zero tolerance for any type of AI hallucination on what our product looks like.
speaker-0: Yeah, I thought our I thought your product had six USB ports. It's like actually no, it's ⁓ Yeah. It I mean, as a global organization, obviously you've got a higher threshold, a higher bar to hit than, you know, if you're an SMB or mid market where there's just probably a little bit more grace, right? You know, you d you're not as much in in in the limelight. But ⁓ yeah, it's interesting 'cause the what we're seeing is, you know, you can you can get there, but it takes a lot of work and I don't know, you know, how much more efficient it is when you have to run like multiple multiple layers of this QA. But then it's, you know, do you take a shot of the back of the shell of the laptop as opposed to the keys? Cause on the keys it's every single letter on the key. It's the right it's it's almost like controlling for how much detail you have in the shot, but it is it is hard. It is very, very hard to get it pixel perfect, you know? So I can I can definitely see that.
speaker-1: And we are exploring with some partners in terms of how we could possibly do that, just because the the number of SKUs that we are trying to sell globally just continues to increase in volume. And it's because, you know, we're really trying to manage for the realities of the business that we're in today, where you just have to work with the components you have rather than what the ideal components. configuration of the machine should be. And so, you know, you're we're trying to manage for an not an infinite variety of imagery, but quite a large variety of imagery that with the traditional methodologies and humans doing the work, it's just literally not possible.
speaker-0: Yeah. Agreed. I mean, when you have like a hundred thousand SKUs, it is it is it is a lot to manage, right? And then you gotta be able, yeah. So ⁓ so when you think about so there's there's efficiency in terms of it sounds like more the file assembly, the the variance that each maybe the the retail partners expect. When you think about upstream on like just creative and coming up with creative ideas and concepts and campaigns, I feel AI is very good at bringing you to the median or just the sort of the center point or the average, which is kind of counterintuitive to like creativity because you want to break through and you want to be unique and different. And so you don't want to be the same as as everybody. How do we or how do you think about creativity in in in that way? Like you've got AI that brings you towards the average. How do creative teams stay creative? when they're leveraging these these these tools.
speaker-1: Well, so I think actually what you said at the very end there is the most important part of what you just said is leveraging tools, right? Yeah. So in the same way that, you know, some of us might be old enough to remember the transition from pencil and paper to computer graphics software. Yeah. Right. So in the same way that there was new tools available to express creativity. That I think is the world that we need to move towards. Folks who are able and comfortable and interested in understanding how these new tools work and how they can make them work to their advantage, those are the folks who will thrive. And I don't honestly see it as a removal of creativity. I just see it as, you know, just another shift in the way that creativity needs to work. I love the questions around what is going to be the role in the future for creatives. Because to me, that shows a distinct lack of understanding of what it means to be creative. The advantages that we're going to see in the future for our businesses are going to come from people who have critical thinking skills who can look beyond what's in front of them, look beyond what other people have done already, which is exactly what AI is synthesizing for us, right? It's taking everything and just dumping it in a bucket. And so what to be successful in the future as a business, those who can allow for that type of pushing of the boundaries, of allowing for that questioning of the norm of the status quo, those are the businesses that are gonna actually be more successful and outstrip their competition. If you are looking to just use AI to crank out stuff, notice I use the correct you know, that is going to limit you. And it because
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: People aren't stupid. They may not understand what good design looks like. They may not understand why one piece of creative moves them and the other one does not. But average never gets you very far. Yeah. And so in I suppose it probably makes a difference. You know, if you're selling a pad of paper which has no emotional value and it's just a transaction, fine, whatever. Doesn't matter.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: But you know, we are trying to sell you something that's worth $2,000. And so why would I want to be blended in with all of my competition? What my hope is, is that we can use AI as a tool to help us reach the most number, the largest number of customers possible, but at the same time have a creative team that is inputting into that. And making sure that what we're producing can stand out, at least for some of what we're doing. You know, you always have to balance between bringing the customers in in the first place and then when they're ready and when they're actually interested in making a purchase, then you're ready with that more tactical information. But you've got to be able to do both.
speaker-0: One of the things that we we talk about here is sit with the ambiguity. You know, not just the creative team, but strategy and client services and opposites. Don't immediately go to the AI tool stack or Intercept OS to help solve it right away. Sit with the ambiguity and think on it. And it's okay to to take that time to do that because I think AI can quickly feel like an easy button. And it's a you know, the way that we see this is it's a thought sparring partner and you you need to give AI permission to disagree with you and so forth, but you ⁓ you need to sit with that ambiguity. I think that's an advantage. You know, it might not be the fastest way to do it, but I think it's how you're gonna get the most thoughtful output.
speaker-1: I love that you're doing that with your own staff because, you know, I certainly see the uptake on AI internally at HP is either in, you know, very tiny, very specific you know, functionality, or it's the sort of bigger, you know, we we partner with Microsoft. So we're all using Teams and we're all using Microsoft 365. And it's co-pilot is a great tool. It's a great tool that we are able, you're able to help with a lot of outputs, but I can see it when my colleagues have not put enough effort into what the what's being shared, right? Like I don't know why, but all of the outputs from AI, they always seem to be formatted in the same way. I'm like, really? Do you couldn't I just customize it a little bit?
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: So and you see it on LinkedIn all the time too. It's like you wrote using LinkedIn AI. It should have a tag on it. ⁓ so it it's and people are defaulting to lazy and it's interesting to see. So I'd I love the the push on your own employees to do that. You know, and maybe sometimes it's not that important. You know, sure, make my email better. Great. But when it comes to thought leadership, when it comes to strategy, it really, you know, having the human brain behind it is what's gonna make it stand out.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. And and in to know when to override the decision or the recommendation. Like I think you and I chatted about this at one point, which was the show Seinfeld, which actually failed all of the pilot assessments. So they put that in front of an audience and the audience was like, I don't like it. I think this show's not funny. And and there was a an executive at NBC that said, you know, I think that this actually is different and it's unique. And so they launch it anyway. And it starts off as like a very niche sort of following, but then obviously it accumulates bigger and bigger following and still somewhat kind of niche, but it's one of the most successful ⁓ shows. And I just thought to myself, if we applied an AI model to that, It wouldn't have recommended the show. Like you you probably would have cut it. But you have to have that gut, that that taste, that judgment. And that's again where the humans really gotta sit and think on that to make the decision. Cause you can't blame Bob the agent for the wrong decision. You you need to be accountable for it.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, it's also what I was saying earlier about design. People most people can't tell you why they like something or don't like something. They just know they don't like it. And a good designer, ⁓ you know, a good creative thinker, they're able to tell you at a level of finesse that AI just cannot give to us right now in terms of why.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: You should do one, make a particular creative decision versus another. And so I think for creatives to circle it back to that is the strength will be in that thought process, in that pushing the if even if you are using agents as your tools, how are you pushing those them to deliver above and beyond what they're set up to deliver? Yeah. So that'll be interesting to see where that creatively goes in the future. Cause I think unfortunately we're just gonna see way too much garbage.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think It's just getting louder and louder. And actually that that's a a good segue to really the content side because I think we're seeing, you know, whether it's LinkedIn or or anywhere, it's like the volumes of content are going through the roof. I think Amazon was reporting the number of books now that are being pushed through Amazon or or or available through Amazon is like up some crazy number because it's it's so much easier to just
speaker-1: Garbage.
speaker-0: put content out there. And so I think the the question that we're thinking about, I'd love to get your take on this, is what is the implication of that? And how do you stand out in this sea of, like you said, kind of garbage content that's that's out there? Yeah.
speaker-1: Well, and I think it's gonna get harder and harder because I think about the nature of our business. You know, we to your point, we have a hundred thousand SKUs out there live in the world right now. And a lot of them are very, very similar. And so we used to have this mindset of like every product is a special baby and we must have very unique. you know, value propositions and so on. Whereas now it's like, okay, well, maybe this family serves a particular customer need and has a particular customer benefit that we want to lean into. But within that family, you know, maybe the decisions become more tactical. Is it about just, you know, speeds and feeds and price points. Right. But we can can still sell you on
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: What is the overall customer benefit of thinking about that type of product? And so, and some of our competition does a probably a better job of that than we've done historically, but that's something that we're really looking at. And so, how do we, within those keystone pieces of content, within that, the creative thinking that goes into the value proposition and the messaging around that? That's where a lot of the real effort and creative decision making happens. And then, you know, when you're at the point of purchase and it really is about do I, you know, how much memory do I want to pay for or need, you know, then it can become a much more tactical decision.
speaker-0: Yeah, that makes sense. Cause th to me I see that as like the core messaging and positioning framework, like the richest source of what you want to say for that family of product and ⁓ the hero visuals, human led, human executed, largely human executed. But then as you get downstream, it's like you can take that goodness. And there's a there's a long tail for a lot of the content that you can produce, that long tail. is probably better suited for AI use cases than coming up with like the big tin pole piece, you know? Exactly.
speaker-1: Exactly. And it's been interesting because we've certainly tested out, you know, some copywriting AI type of applications. And it's still to the point you were making earlier, you still need a person to sit there and evaluate and nudge and really how do you make it so that it is distinctive and on brand correctly and expressing the right value proposition for the product. So it's it's been a learning curve for our people internally to be able to do that. ⁓ and then, you know, sometimes you still, you know, it's like, well, this is terrible and I need a real copywriter.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, exactly. One of the things that we were talking about here is again in in terms of how we stand out, is it, you know, like let's assume that the content already is high quality. We're leaning more into the context side versus the content, which is, you know, is this the right positioning for that particular audience? And that's where we've seen some success with AI of take one main thesis or output. Call it an ebook, a guide or whatever, but like a really high quality, let's call it a thought leadership piece. But then how do you make that relevant for a chief legal officer, for a chief marketing officer versus, you know, a segment, a small business, a big business versus an industry? And I think that, you know, investing a lot of time and and resources and energy around is how do you create this real-time in-the-moment customization? So at the point that I say, hey, I wanna consume this content, how does it how is the context perfect for me? And that's something that ⁓ don't know, I'd love to get your take on that, sort of like context versus like the content itself and you know, what what you think is valuable there.
speaker-1: Well, HP has done a lot of work on the future of work and what that means for HP and what the role that HP plays in that space. And the interesting thing that I've seen is that in order to get to that context, in order to really be able to deliver relevancy, the amount of legwork that it takes to understand those customers is tremendous. So
speaker-0: Yes.
speaker-1: We have spent a great deal of time with our customers, understanding our customers. And, you know, whether this is on ⁓ the enterprise side, through, you know, SMB customers, through individual end user purchasers who typically purchase it at retail. It doesn't matter. We are really trying to understand how they use technology, what role that plays in their life and which parts are the true benefits for them so that instead of having to spend that time at the end at the tail end where you know by the time you're there, if you haven't already, if you're not already on the list, you're not getting on the list. You know, it's so you really have to it's really more about the upfront effort. And then you can build out that context. And to I think where you're taking this question is like
speaker-0: Yeah, that's true.
speaker-1: So if I need to build a content engine that then satisfies all of those customers, I have that the basis of insights to build that on. So it it's you really have to build the foundation of the house before you can build the house. I think it's ⁓ and it's it's one of those parts to marketing that executives find challenging because it's like, why does this take so long? Why is it so expensive? And yet once you get it right and you have the right connection points, you can make yourself relevant to that customer in a way that your competition isn't. So it's one of those areas that is so fun to be in as a marketer because you delve into an understanding of your customers. But at the same time, it, you know, if you try to shortcut that, if you try and average it out, use AI to try and say, hey, what would this customer do? You're you're cheating on your own company and you're not gonna get the the right outputs that are going to help you move move the needle at all.
speaker-0: So Liz, I feel like executive teams, when they talk about AI, and you see this within the headlines and ⁓ you know, we've seen that within like memos at that at at other ⁓ enterprise tech companies, efficiency seems to be the pursuit. That's kind of the main thing of like we we can make this more efficient. It's do more with less. is that the right framing? Do you think efficiency is the promise of AI, or do you think that It's actually something else.
speaker-1: That is the the big question these days, right? I I think for better or for worse, we have to confront the reality that especially in the enterprise space, I cannot speak to, you know, small companies right now, but in the enterprise space, that's just the reality. You know, the board of directors, the C suite. It's always about efficiency, you know, and there have been different levers for that over time, you know, layoffs, cuts, whatever it is. And now AI is the new lever. And so specifically for HP and the work that I'm involved in, I really hope that the future is going to stay focused less about on, hey, we need less people and let's just get AI to do everything for us. And instead it becomes a conversation around great, we have AI now to help us do all of this grunt work that we had to have people do before. What that does is that frees up the resources to then be innovative, to focus on the core of marketing and to be able to do those that thinking that you were talking about before that perhaps got bogged down in the you know, in the complexity of what we have to produce. And so in the future, what I hope we see is honestly, you know, just a repurposing of those resources because the companies that can bring up that thought leadership can improve their strategic thinking and critical thinking in the marketing function, they will be the ones to jump ahead of the competition. If it becomes all about cuts, it You're gonna get what you pay for, just like everything else. And it's going to be, sure, you're gonna continue to push cheap product ⁓ through all of your partners and your sales end of point sales, but you're gonna end up just ⁓ with mediocre results, I think. Whereas if you're really pushing the boundaries, getting people to think about new things, new avenues, new formats, new you know, whatever it is. then yeah that will be the key to being successful. So we'll see where it goes. I think you're going to see both. And the companies that win are going to be the ones who understand that using humans for what humans are good at and letting the AI do what it's good at, those will be the ones that are successful.
speaker-0: I agree with you, and I think that's really well said because, you know, the like we've talked about before, the whole ghost GDP, you know, thesis of around make everything more efficient, and what does that do? It eliminates the customer base, and then we basically have no more economy and we don't have any GDP growth. I think that that is only true if we don't do anything that is truly creative and new and value creative ⁓ value creation. ⁓ and I think that's where we need to focus on because, you know, AI, yes, is an efficiency driver, but it's like the that's not the promise of I I to me, I think it's not the big unlock for AI. And I think you're you're saying the same thing, which is what is the new stuff we can go do and create and solve? That is gonna create GDP growth. Because I think if you're just going efficiency first, there's a limit to how efficient you can get without cannibalizing your business through an elimination of the customer base it's itself. Like if you just want to cut everything, you know, you I don't think it benefits humanity or society.
speaker-1: Yeah. And I think, I mean, I think it's Elon Musk who's presented that vision of the future. It's just gonna be all the robots all the time. but that's not the way humans work. You know, we aren't gonna just sit there and do nothing. People are creative, people want to be doing things. And so will it shift where work happens? Will it shift the type of work? Yes, absolutely it will. Will some people get left behind? Yes. I think that's true. But as with every change and transition. But at the same time, you know, I think with human creativity, we will see new uses and new things that we just can't even imagine today. So I I am actually somewhat optimistic. I don't I don't see that full, you know, Terminator vision of the future. I think it really You know, we humans always just imagine and are curious and always wanna find new things. So I don't I don't see the robots taking over the world.
speaker-0: And and even in Terminator, I think humanity won in that one, right? In the end, I think he was still one. Yeah, that's true. ⁓ yes. you know, y Sam Altman and others have talked about just universal basic income and how that's kind of what we need to get to. And yet, you know, I like I get there's more to life than work, but I think work is still part
speaker-1: But
speaker-0: Like it's ingrained in who we are. It's part of our identity. And so if you take that away from somebody and go, Hey, here's a check every month. You're never gonna have to work. I I don't know how happy people would be. So Well
speaker-1: And you know, let's be real, like can you see the US government ever actually implementing something like that? I don't think so. Right. You know, in Canada here we have a more socialist mindset probably, but still. Yeah. I mean I all but I agree with you. I think nobody wants to just sit still and do nothing. And, you know, sure, laying by a pool with a margarita would be nice for a day or two, but then you're gonna be bored and then what are you gonna do?
speaker-0: Exactly.
speaker-1: So I think, you know, whether whether it's just that jobs change or whether that there's brand new jobs that just don't exist right now, new things will happen. And I wonder, you know, perhaps in the best case scenario, perhaps it opens up doors to art and music and so on that don't exist now. But on the other hand, I think, you know, people want to make money too. Some people that's their motivation. And the competitiveness of capitalist society appeals to some people. So, you know, then what are you doing? So I think there's just so many elements to human nature that there's no one answer to that question.
speaker-0: So Liz, lots of noise right now. Whether we still need creative headcount in the AI era and and how many people I think it may be a better question is like what do we what do people just focus on next? So how are you how do you think about redesigning roles when the work's changing so fast and you know what what roles do we what roles do we need, you know, going forward on this side?
speaker-1: So what I'm seeing so far is there is, if anything, almost an increased need for creative roles. You know, perhaps where the impact is most felt right now is at the junior but like many other places, the bottom end where you're just, you know, it's more tactical and iterative. But from a strategic creative leadership, ⁓
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: it's never been more needed because the ability of an AI model to independently do anything is ⁓ is non-existent. So you still need guidance, direction, strategy, and you still need somebody who can assess what good design looks like, what the right tactics might be, what direction do you want your brand to lean into? That's not something that AI can can come up with at all. That is creative thinking. And I think that is the most key element for the future of of creative in in our world. You know, we we love it, right? But yeah it's also that if we just default to AI, which is has learned from what everyone's done before, that is like the antithesis of creative thinking.
speaker-0: Reading a quote that creativity is the last legal advantage that we have in this world or in marketing. Interesting. And ⁓ I I agree that models generally are very good at bringing everything towards the ⁓ the median or the meme. And so it's this sort of fast path to mediocrity. But if you want to stand out, and that's what creativity is all about, right? Is standing out, differentiation. That, like to your point, you need human. ⁓ direction in that creative taste to know what good looks like. ⁓ I think, I think generally too, we we probably need to free people up to be creative. And what I mean by that is like how much time are people spending creating and generating new ideas? And I would say that probably not
speaker-1: Probably not right. But I can tell you internally at HP, you know, and and this is not this is actually not new. This is a legacy comment in that marketers have struggled for years to balance the amount of administrative work and the amount of tactical work that they're required to do on a day-to-day basis to be able to have the time.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: To have that freedom to think. And, you know, it it's partially just ⁓ a characteristic of our modern world. We're on Teams or Slack or whatever chat channel. We're on email all the time. You know, you're on virtual calls all the time. And it's it's very, very hard to really put those walls up to say, I am gonna blockade this time. To actually spend some doing some deep thinking. And so the idea that there is this technology that could take away those repetitive tasks, the ones that aren't fun, the ones that are a time suck for people, because they have to get done or stuff doesn't work, but they're not fun. And they, you know, it's it's what is the possibility there? And I think that's where we should be exploring. as opposed to potentially worrying so much about taking away the creative work. I think it we're all we're doing is pivoting the creative work.
speaker-0: That. and I agree. So much administrative tax for each task that we have to do that it's a burden. The way the way that we think about too how we use AI in meaningful ways in marketing workflows, we use this sort of dumbbell analogy where we use AI on the left side of the dumbbell to make the keep the lights on work more efficient, which is the email nurtures and the you know, the stuff that has a role, but you're not like terribly excited about it. It doesn't change the buyer experience. It's just status quo, keep the machine running. Our goal is to make that side of the dumbbell as efficient as possible using AI to be able to free up time and budget and capacity to feel frontier work, which is the creative stuff. It's the new ideas. It's doing things that haven't been done before. And so that's how we kind of think about it is You know, to keep the lights on work has to happen. Make it efficient. Free up time to actually dedicate on, you know, innovation. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. And I don't know if big companies like HP are doing that particularly efficiently today. I know HP's got a long way to go still, but I love that it's a conversation because for the longest time the creative work that we do has been dramatically undervalued. And I think it's because we don't have the time to be producing that truly breakthrough thinking.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ and again, any of these large global organizations, it's so hard to goes back to like classic change management, right? So hard to do. And this is like fast, big change. Like this is the chewy stuff, right? so when you look ahead then you think about new roles maybe within creative teams or organizations, whether new roles that have come online recently or new roles that you think might come online. What are what are your thoughts on that? What are some of the new roles that we Maybe should expect to see.
speaker-1: Well, I definitely think we're going to need folks who are very, very good at manipulating models, whatever the model is that you're trying to run. You know, and and I mean that actually even outside of marketing, you know, whether you're trying to provide that support in finance or in legal or whatever it is, but that ability to get the models to do exactly what you need it to do is gonna be a skill. that ⁓ needs to be nurtured and developed. ⁓ but it, you know, is it like learning to use the first typewriter? Is it like, you know, is it's gonna take a while. People are thinking, is gonna think this is the weirdest tool ever, but eventually it will become part of the skill set that people have. ⁓ and I think you'll probably see some people who really rise up will be better than others at
speaker-0: Who's
speaker-1: getting those outcomes that are what either what they personally want or what the business wants.
speaker-0: Yep, I'm aligned with that thinking on sort of the workflow side. I don't know what we call it, whether it's like a AI workflow engineer or AI model engineer, but like specific to marketing, because I think when agents come online in a big way, and we're already obviously seeing that, you're gonna need a lot of infrastructure, agent tools, agent workflows. ⁓ I was talking to this company called Modern who builds I mean not to get like into their product, but they basically have like a semantic tree that allows you to allows the agent, think about you give it the tool or a blueprint where it knows exactly what data fountains to drink from for specific things. And it's deterministic. It's not probabilistic. You run it a hundred thousand times, you're gonna get it a hundred thousand times the exact same way. Right. And there's recipes that basically, again, that further support these deterministic workflows. I think marketers are best designed to to design these workflows. Like IT and tech have no idea what that workflow looks like. Exactly. So to your point, if you're a really good marketer, I think we're gonna see like this big I don't know, I think some people are just gonna take off in in a in a good way, like in terms of value creation. So I I agree with you on that. I think that's a big thing.
speaker-1: Well, and it's gonna be interesting, and I'd love your perspective on this. And you know, for young people who are just starting, how do we make sure that they have the fundamentals of understanding? Yeah, you know, Sure, I have never actually loaded letters onto a letter press, but because I know what it is, I know what leading and kerning are and I know where they came from and I know why it's important and I understand from a design perspective the amount of both science and art that go into a font. And so the you know the understanding of what what is a what is a truly good
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: print job look like? If you've got to make out of home or digital, you know, transit ads, or if you are trying to think through a social media experience without without having an understanding of how to build that, how do you nurture that kind of learning? So I'd love your perspective on that. Cause that's something I'm struggling with.
speaker-0: Yeah. It's such a good question because and I and I and I think about again, I you know, is you know, I got two kids and going through school. And you know, even though for example, like with math, you've got the calculator, you have an Excel sheet that can basically compute it like this, you still have to learn math, like the fundamentals of how it works. And a lot of people say like, there's no use of learning computer science anymore because you can code. You can vibe code everything. Okay. But if you don't understand computational thinking, if you don't understand the foundations, you will never be as good in that in that role of working with these tools if you don't understand the fundamentals, which is why I think that you still need to teach it. So that's actually something with our our intern program that we're running on the technology side, we are our CTO still adamant on. We still need to teach these fundamentals because otherwise you get a bunch of lazy code that is is is not only slow and inefficient and hard to scale, but it's not secure. Right. And then you gotta go harden that code. I mean, no, I know your son obviously is a com site. Yeah, but so so ⁓ com side graduate. So he he knows, he gets it, right? He's in the thick of it. But that's why I think you still need to teach the fundamentals.
speaker-1: That's right. And if you take that back to the creative realm, the art of the graphic designer sitting there, you know, nudging the lighting source to get, you know, and this is obviously very personal, like in terms of the work that that my team does, you know, there is a lot of passion that goes into making our devices look beautiful in a digital context, right? So having ⁓ you know that nudging the light source, having the bounce off the the composite surface just be correct so that the the color comes through, or, you know, if there's a sparkle that's within the material that you need to make appear through digital means that ⁓ it it it's just a level of attention to the art that ⁓ a computer can't do for you. Yeah. ⁓ because
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: You know, is the color blue? Yes, the color's blue. But is it the right, does it have the right warmth and vibrancy that you were looking for?
speaker-0: Yep. I and actually that is when we were building our photography AI capability, where the team has spent a ton of time, ⁓ particularly as lately, is with lighting sources and making sure that all the shadows make sense. Right. And you know, that that's really key because ⁓ there's there's there's nuances here. that you ha you have to get it right and it makes a big difference. And I think lighting and shading is the difference between like good and great photography and how do you replicate that in an agentic way. It's still not perfect. It requires still a lot of like human oversight. That's what we're learning. Liz, I wanted to ask, you've you've talked about preparing your team for jobs and ⁓ potential scenario that doesn't exist today. We can't really define it. How do you best prepare people for the unknown?
speaker-1: That's great question. And I wish I had the magical answer to that because I can't, you know, ⁓ there is a lot of fear in the system right now. Yeah. I mean, it outside of AI, you know, the economy, all of the sort of macro, geopolitical, all of the things. There's a lot of fear in the system. And so you layer AI onto it, and nobody really knows. How to handle it. So I think right now my my approach with my people at least is just to communicate often, to be as transparent as I can be. you know, here's what I know today. Here's what I can share with you. I'm one of those people that leans into probably sharing more than I should, but I I strongly believe that, you know, people need to be informed and need to have a good understanding and to have that support. Exactly. ⁓ but in terms of helping prepare people, either professionally or emotionally, like whatever the dimension that you're thinking of, there's no clear answer right now. You know, the the amount of change that people have seen in the last well, year, but even, you know, the last five years has just made it even more difficult. So we just have to continue to nurture, continue to overcommunicate and just try and help people along that path.
speaker-0: It's well said. I and I and I love that ⁓ I mean your focus on just being honest and transparent because I I I I I think along the same path, which is just be honest that you don't know how this plays out, right? And be honest that it is gonna be it's gonna be painful. Like if if if you look back, there's a great study, I'll send it to you. ⁓ it was a it was an HPR article that was That was titled, Don't Automate, Obliterate. And it was from it was from the 90s, and it looked at how when computers, when companies poured a ton of money into computers, the whole thing was, well, computers are everywhere, but we are actually not seeing the impact. We're not seeing the ROI or the productivity gains. And the diagnosis after, I think it was a decade or two, was that the companies That didn't see the productivity gains were using computers as like a bolt-on to the way that they were working before versus others that actually is as he says, obliterated workflows and built rebuilt them around computers and that technology saw tremendous gains. And so I I do think that that is likely what is happening with AI, because there's the whole like, what's the ROI of AI? Nobody can
speaker-1: No one can identify it. Yeah.
speaker-0: Right? Nobody can say that this is
speaker-1: Which is why the focus is all on money and and you know, how many people can we get rid of 'cause we now have this massive new technology. Yeah.
speaker-0: So I think I think being honest about that and it it is gonna be it's gonna be painful, but I think it'll be worth it, you know? So it's
speaker-1: I agree. If we can figure out how to help, well, how to help people reposition their own skill sets. Yes. But then how to help our leaders really see the value in rethinking what we're doing, that will be a tremendous win.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and and we just I think we need to be ready for the moment. And maybe the moment isn't quite now where we can go to the executive team and say, hey, this is exactly where you're gonna get the ROI, etc. Maybe the tools aren't quite there yet, with like we're saying, with lighting, with photography and all that. But I think the question really is gonna be who will be ready to extract the most value when the tools and the infrastructure are ready, you know? And so Exactly to your point. How do you prepare people? How do you train them? And it's actually funny. Now I'm seeing people more and more people opt out of management roles and get into IC roles because they're like, I need to get more hands on to understand how the hell this thing works. And I need to be ready for the moment. So but yeah, I I I love your focus on transparency. I think I think, you know, rather than trying to spin up a story. That just people are like, I don't believe this. You know? Let's be honest.
speaker-1: They're gonna see through it right away. Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Well Liz, I know you're you're a busy person, so thank you for joining us and ⁓ really great discussion, really great insight. So thank
speaker-1: Thank you. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I appreciate it.
speaker-0: Yeah.
