New Sense-makers podcast episode from Collective Content. Live!

Our host, CC MD Tony Hallett is joined by an expert panel including Nessa Keddo, Phil Szomszor and Harendra Kapur. Live from a rooftop bar in London, we present our special event ‘Mis World: Misinformation, mistrust, and missing the point of AI’.

In our Sense-maker Sessions we interview content leaders to get the latest insights from the content world.

Bill Clark: In content marketing, sometimes you just need someone to make sense of it all. In this series, we’re joined by industry leaders sharing their tips, advice, and expert knowledge on what good content is and does.

Our latest episode is brought to you live from the sunny rooftop bar of The Marquess of Anglesey in London. As Collective Content MD Tony Hallett is joined by a panel of content leaders to present our special event ‘Mis World: Misinformation, mistrust and missing the point of AI’. This is the Collective Content podcast – Sense-maker sessions.

Tony Hallett: I feel like I should stand up now. Everyone, welcome. Hello. Thanks for coming. I realise I’ve killed the music. There’ll be no more fun for the next 45 minutes. That is it. But thank you so much for coming. I know there are people coming in. So feel free to still drink and be merry. We wanted to just do, a bit of content. Funnily enough.

I’m going to introduce our lovely panellists one by one. But I wanted to also just give you a couple of minutes of context first. So you will have seen that we were going to talk about, important things like trust, mistrust, misinformation, disinformation and how AI is supercharging it all. I wanted to talk very seriously, I think a lot of you in the room will have heard of something called the Edelman Trust Barometer.

This year’s edition, which came out earlier this year, Phil knows what I’m about to say. Found that among groups like journalists, the government, lawyers, the one number one group that came out as being most trusted was companies, which is saying something. And I think it also says there’s an opportunity for people like our clients, and I see lots of client faces in the room, to really, like, maintain that trust and put out great information and, do everything you can to be better at your businesses.

One of the things we talk about a lot as Collective Content is being sense makers and trying to make sense of things for you and helping you make sense of things for your clients. That’s what we’re doing here. So I’m going to get into, our panel.

So to my immediate left is Nessa Keddo. Nessa is an academic at King’s College London, which is literally you can throw a stone that direction.

Nessa Keddo: Kind of a bit adjacent this way. Yeah.

Tony Hallett: Yeah, I’m not saying you’re here just because it’s an easy walk.

Nessa Keddo: I had no idea how close it was.

Tony Hallett: Nessa has also been a practitioner, in the sort of comms and PR background and can talk about all the issues of tech, diversity, this brave new world that we’re in. Next to Nessa, we’ve got Harry. So Harry Kapur is, well, he’s worked at agencies like ours. And Harry is also this, no, no hard sell, is the author of this.

He’s doing a book signing afterwards, apparently. So this book is called Truth is Better Marketing. Believe it or not, I have read it all, Harry, and it’s very good. And it talks a lot about the sort of things that we espouse as well. There’s an opportunity today to stand out by just not bullshitting all the time and being really useful and coming up with really great stuff.

I’ll say more about that in a bit. And then finally we got Phil Szomszor, Phil is an old friend of the agency, Phil had a career working in tech, comms and PR. We’ve been on other sides of the journalist PR fence going back way, way when, and in recent years, you’ve had your own agency.

And I think it’s fair to say you’re a LinkedIn expert deal and lots of issues around trust. And we’re working together on some LinkedIn, propositions for our clients. So that’s our panel. You can see I’ve got a bunch of stuff here to, to talk about. And I want to get into because we’re going to think about the world we’re in.

Where there’s an awful lot of misinformation and disinformation right now. This panel will come back to how is this all relevant to you guys and what’s going on. I’m going to ask our guests, starting with you, Nessa, if you can start to tell us about how best would you say that our audience here, how should they, think of the changing information landscape?

I’m going to ask the same thing to all three of you from your different perspective. So, Nessa?

Nessa Keddo: Yeah, sure. I’m sure you you’re all from different industries and sectors, but from my experience as an academic, and also an industry consultant, there seems to be a lot of, hesitancy for organisations to invest in their teams, particularly in relation to what’s happening in the changing tech landscape, but also particularly politically. A lot of what is happening in the US, also in the EU, is having an impact on what we’re doing on digital platforms.

Just for reference, I came from a meeting in Manchester, and I was doing some brainstorming with a media client, and they had no idea how what was happening in terms of misinformation, the Online Safety Act is being driven by what’s happening in the EU, but also in the US, particularly if you’re in a global company. So I’m seeing a lot of strategy changes within media organisations, within tech firms.

But less in investment, which is where the problem is happening. So of course we’re using more AI is I’m sure we’ll go into, we’re using more digital resources, using more tools. And I think people forget that ChatGPT only came out less than three years ago. Right. So all of this is still quite new. Governments are slow, so it’s a slow-moving process in terms of how the landscape and different sectors and industries are changing.

So with more investments in teams, in resources, in understanding what capabilities, what tech and digital capabilities, different organisations need, I think that’s where we need those changes to happen and occur.

Tony Hallett: Good starting point. I’m actually going to come to Phil next. Okay. I’ll get to you, Harry. So, Phil.

Phil Szomszor: So before I start talking, anything I tell you, or say, please ignore any of the stats, go check them first and corroborate them because they might not be accurate.

Tony Hallett: That’s absolutely part of what we’re talking about, right?(!)

Phil Szomszor: There may be some misinformation in what I say. With that in mind, an Edelman research, again found that eight out of ten, people that work in comms, comms leadership roles are worried about misinformation.

And almost half of those people don’t know how to deal with it, which is, a sobering thought. So if you’re one of those people, you’re not alone. And I think, from the conversations I have with clients, I tend to look at it from a, a PR point of view and sort of looking at the narrative and the things that are most concerning.

Not just the rise of misinformation, but the fact that there’s a fragmentation of the media. So it’s not, you know, it’s not so set out now. Even within social media, there’s so many different sites to look at. A lot of information isn’t shared publicly anymore. So we see the rise, what we call dark social, where people are sharing information via telegram or WhatsApp and things like that, so you can’t even see it.

So that’s the problem. And then obviously all the things that we experience around ChatGPT and hallucinations and all of those things, so they’re kind of three buckets of things that I think are causing problems. I’m sure we’ll get on to what some of the answers will be shortly.

Tony Hallett: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Harry.

Harendra Kapur: I, you know, I think I’m coming at more from a point of view of sort of personal responsibility. So my, my sense of it, you know, a big information landscape feels kind of abstract to me. The way I tend to think about it is, there’s a big commons between all of us. It’s like a big park.

And all of us get to go to, and, some of the places in the park are not great. Some of the slides have sharp edges. Some of the ponds are kind of gross. And, all of us making stuff, on behalf of companies, are contributing to those commons. And so I think, the most important way to think about it is, is what is the contribution to the Commons we’re making?

Because I think there’s a very straightforward way in which, it works out if you are putting stuff out that you believe in, creating things that you think should exist, that would better your audience’s lives. I think it’s very natural for people to gravitate towards those things. And actually, the more misinformation and disinformation there is, the nicer your corner of the park’s going to look.

So that’s kind of how I, I think about it, and I, I reckon it’d be useful for more marketers to think of it that way as well.

Tony Hallett: Yeah. It’s interesting. And I think if we take that, the big view of the world and the dangers of things like, you know, how we live our lives every day and big, big fluffy things like democracy, which are very actually tangible and important as well. You know, this this misinformation being super powered by AI is having a big effect on that. To bring it down to, the world of marketing and how we are trusted amongst each other and people like our customers and clients out there.

You mentioned the sharp edges. Let’s talk about some of the dangers. Harry, tell us a bit more. Like what? What are some of the, and this this might be all things we all know about, but what would you say is some of the biggest dangers out there?

Harendra Kapur: You know, this polluting the commons is I think, one of the bigger dangers. We live in a world now where, I mean, if businesses of the group of organisations we trust the most, that’s a bad sign. Frankly. I don’t know, like, it feels like, you know, slowest horse in the slower, slow race as opposed to some sort of crowning achievement.

So I think the fact that, most people are getting their information online, but that feels like a dangerous place to get information probably means there’s a widespread epidemic of sort of insecurity and that kind of thing. Part of me does think that that’s kind of a healthy thing, actually, that it’s, in a sense, it’s good that we aren’t blindly believing, you know, whoever’s putting out a press release anymore.

I think that’s that’s a pretty, good thing, but.

Tony Hallett: So the bar is getting higher for, a lot of a lot of things to be trusted.

Harendra Kapur: Or lower, if you think about it. Right? Like, if you, you know.

Tony Hallett: Right. For those doing it well.

Harendra Kapur: That’s right. Yeah. I mean, the, the bar for being authentic is as low as it’s ever been, and few people are trying to cross it. There’s many people claiming that crossing it. But not everyone is. And so I think, again, the responsibility thing, I think of this from the point of view of the brands we’re trying to build.

If all we’re focused on is this quarter or the next six months or that meeting with the CEO, then bullshit away like, that’s, that’s a perfectly viable approach. They’re very successful companies that have made billions and millions of pounds, through bullshit. But I think if you’re taking a longer term approach to things, if you’re trying to build a brand.

I heard this thing that the, the Guinness, the family that founded Guinness when they took out, when they, took out the lease on the brewery, they took it out for 3000 years. And I think if you’re thinking on, you know, time horizons like that, then integrity and doing stuff you believe in, and, believing in the things that you do, I think that stuff really counts for a lot.

We’d enjoy our jobs more. I mean, the number of creatives, young people I’ve met who are in marketing, ostensibly, who think capitalism is a bad thing. And I just think, like, what do they make you do it work? And why are you doing it? So I think it’s those are the things that worry me more than anything else.

Tony Hallett: Phil, what are some of the dangers?

Phil Szomszor: You’re the eternal optimist, Harry. I’m Mr.. Mr. Doom-monger? So, yeah, I’m more concerned, actually, because I, think of all of the dangers and risks of bad actors and, the fact that in something like, we talked – I talked just now about the fragmentation of media, there’s no greater fragmentation than the fact that all of your employees have a mouthpiece called LinkedIn, and they can all be talking about stuff that you have no control or understanding of whatsoever.

I think there’s a lot of risks, and not many companies are actually doing very much about that. Around, you know, and that can cause all sorts of reputational problems because if there’s, a crisis like, I don’t know, like the aisle of the foods one that we had a little while ago where, where there was a load of misinformation about that.

What happens if a bunch of employees start joining in the pile on and the problems that that can cause? So I think there are a lot of of risks out there. And another one that just – I might come back to this soapbox – The amount of people that get away with cheating, it’s just so annoying by spreading misinformation by on LinkedIn, you can join these things called engagement pods, which is kind of like a club where you can kind of fake your, fake your, your identity so that it looks bigger than it actually is.

So there’s a lot of problems around things like that that the platforms unfortunately aren’t doing enough about. So Facebook, Meta has kind of rolled back its policies around how it’s going to tackle misinformation. X the same. LinkedIn is kind of one of the better ones, but they’re not you know, they’re not still doing enough, I would say.

Tony Hallett: And I’d say, I know you’re going to talk about some of the opportunities again, a bit like how you’re doing it.

Phil Szomszor: I’m just going to be negative the whole. It’s just not it’s just bad, bad bad.

Tony Hallett: So Nessa, what does this all mean? Like so tell us the dangers from your perspective might be slightly different.

Nessa Keddo: Yeah, I’d say more generally it’s how companies, a lot of the time don’t acknowledge how. And I’m going to disagree with you, Harry, there, because I don’t think it’s just about, personal accountability or individuality. I think a lot of the time it says, Phil was saying it’s about the tech companies and responsibility, but information spreads fast.

If we just use the example of the girl who was murdered in Southport last year, and I think it was something like 6 million views of fake news has circulated by 10 p.m. that evening, and by the next morning it was something like 10 million. So the more we have this kind of fast paced resharing of news, it’s just not what’s happening, what marketers are putting out there, it’s what influencers are putting out there.

Content creators, as you said, engagement groups that are not only on LinkedIn but also on, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, every platform has its own equivalent. Right? And of course, there are people who have their own ulterior motives. But if we’re talking about automation, it’s also about bots as well in spreading this information. So you just mentioned about what’s happening with Meta and this rollback.

And as you said, all of these platforms are not taking accountability. TikTok refused to share information as well as X because they said, “no, this is private business, how we do our advertising is not a concern of, what’s happening publicly.” And of course, this is because of the slow pace of government. It’s a fast pace of information and resharing and misinformation and disinformation and so on social media.

But government’s are just too slow. And I think that falls slightly outside of what happens on a more individualistic level, because there’s so much happening outside of our control as professionals as well.

Tony Hallett: Yeah. We when we were talking ahead of this panel, we talked a little bit about, gen AI and its impact supercharging. You know, we have lots of good stories to tell in this room, but supercharging the bad things potentially as well. And we sort of heard a bit of a flooding the zone comment earlier about the pollution in the Commons and etc.

So my question, so Nessa, you speak to the next generation, like quite a lot. So I’m not just talking about people early in the workforce, but even your students for example how they’re using gen AI. Now what. How do you see that going? To what extent will every one of us have to be an AI expert, to some degree?

Nessa Keddo: Interesting question. As a university – I’ve been in academia for about 15 years, and of course the past three years have been the most bizarre years of my entire career. Right? Students are literally using AI for everything. We have AI declaration cover sheets, and it’s quite clear when a student has used ChatGPT, they even leave their tag in the reference list not realising that.

And again, this is due to the newness of it, right? They haven’t quite got, things completely. So it’s a benefit. So the next generation, they naturally, of course, as they use social media before the rest of us, they did use ChatGPT before us. Universities are just as slow as government. So that’s a positive, right? They’re coming into organizations.

They know how to use the technology. And again, the downside to that is that because academics are slow, so I mean, I use generative AI, I use ChatGPT on a daily basis. I’m quite open about it. But the majority don’t. So what we have is the next generation coming in using these tools and not using them responsibly.

So I’ve had students from the last year come back to me and said “oh, accidentally, I’m working for a law firm in the marketing department, I used to generate this. There’s loads of kind of sensitivity issues.” And because there’s that disconnection there, and I think that’s also happening between different educational levels.

So there’s that disconnection between those leaving high school to college to university. And again it’s due to that fast pace of education is far behind. Policy is far behind. So that bridge needs to be gapped. But it is a positive that the younger generation are more tech savvy and have that knowledge of.

Tony Hallett: More tech savvy. But to be negative again, fitting in to Phil’s picture of the cheating, looks like there’s a conveyor belt of new talent coming in. Knowing some of those secrets already. From your guy’s perspectives, in terms of people in this room, what we need to know about AI and what we need to be as practitioners, does everyone really have to dabble?

So, Phil, to you first.

Or more than dabble.

Phil Szomszor: I think it’s smart to embrace the tools. I mean, I’m, I’m sure everybody in this room has used ChatGPT or Gemini at some point to do something, whether it’s to make a recipe or help their kids with homework like I do with my daughter. An absolute lifesaver. I can assure you.

But, Yeah, I think what it’s about is not just using the tools, but learning how to use them well and learning how to use them responsibly. And I think some of, actually, the responsibility lies with organisations to help their people do that. So if you want to, use ChatGPT to generate marketing content, it’s about making sure that people are trained in how to use those tools to create custom GPTs to check the sources, to perhaps use another GPT to kind of corroborate it.

But I’m not. I’m that responsibility isn’t just the individuals, it’s the companies that are employing them, to give them the right frameworks and to educate them how to use those tools properly. So I think you’ve got to use it, but learn how to use it properly.

Tony Hallett: Yeah. And Harry already touched on the whole idea that the bar has never been really low, as low to really stand out and do the right thing, and it’s an opportunity for everyone. I’m going to put you on the spot because I don’t remember every example in your book. But are there any types of company or even name some names of people who are doing it well?

Harendra Kapur: Using AI you mean?

Tony Hallett: Not just using AI, but, you know, taking this truth first approach.

Harendra Kapur: You know, there’s a few I can think of. There’s a company called ProfitWell, recently had an exit, maybe a couple of years ago, where their founder was using the data they were generating on SAS companies to, guide SAS CEOs through the pandemic, and the kind of economic volatility that was going on then. I thought that was a really, generous use, of a company’s internal data, to do things.

Another company I can think of is Flexport, again, a really similar sort of founder-led organisation, where their CEO has, helped people deal with supply chain, volatility by just conveying stuff from ground zero where they tend to operate. And so, if there’s a bunch of news about, a certain, ship or a certain collection of ships suffering, he would sort of come out and be like “okay, you don’t have to worry about it,” or “actually, you should worry about it a little bit more”, and that kind of thing.

So I think there’s many examples. My sense of it isn’t that, you know, no one’s telling the truth. Actually, my impression of, after all these years of marketing is that almost all of us want to be telling the truth, and would rather be doing that. And there’s enough of us actually doing it.

It’s just the – it’s all the times that people choose not to out of a fear of short term pressure, or upsetting a CEO or potentially alienating an audience or something like that. Those are the bits that I’d like to give folks some pep talks about, I guess.

You know, but, you know, as for the AI thing, I mean do what you want, if you feel like using it? Use it. If it doesn’t feel natural to use it, or if it feels like you’re shoehorning it into the marketing process, I think it’s perfectly valid to go without it. But when I think about the communication process, the most important parts of it, I think AI still doesn’t really stand to touch.

Not in its current conception. Anyway, it’s stuff like talking to customers, stuff like having a genuine insight, having a genuine point of view, about your market. Even if you know, all the focus groups tell you you’re wrong or that they disagree with you, to still go to market and, with an idea that maybe feels a little scary.

AI’s not going to touch any of that stuff. It’s trained on the past. And, as marketers, our job is to do a bunch of stuff in the future, and that’s, it’s only unpredictable. That’s never going to go away. That problem will always exist in front of us. And so, if you’re scrolling, you know, marketing messages on a post-it note with a pen, or using ChatGPT to do it, we’re all in the same boat.

We all have the same kind of challenge, I think.

Interlude: This is the Collective Content Podcast

Tony Hallett: So we talked a little bit about, you know, guardrails, best practice policies, all that. One of the comments I heard back in preparation was like “who’s got time for all that?” What, so, so penultimate question, what can companies be doing? And marketing departments, teams and individuals in this room? Nessa – can I just get a quick answer from each of you on this?

Nessa, first, what’s some of the best practice now?

Nessa Keddo: I’d say investment into teams. I’ll come back with a quick caveat to what you’ve just said there. I think everyone should be using AI and it’s just like at the moment there are so many people saying, oh my gosh, I haven’t got a LinkedIn page. I don’t use social media. And those are the ones who are the late adopters of kind of social media in general.

Right? So those are the ones who are struggling. And I guess as an educator working with the next generation, that’s my advice. If you don’t know how to use AI, you don’t know how to use keywords in job searching and within your CV. So I’ll say it’s essential, so I’ll leave it at that.

Tony Hallett: Harry?

Harendra Kapur: I’m going to stick to this personal responsibility line I’ve chosen – I didn’t think I would, but I’m going to stick to it – I think it’s worth confronting ourselves about the things that we’re doing. Do you believe in the messages you’re putting out in the market? When you’ve launched a campaign, do you all go to the pub afterwards and kind of roll your eyes at the nonsense you put out?

Are you speaking a truth to your CEO, are you comfortable standing up for what you think is the right thing to do, even if it’s kind of an uncomfortable conversation? Do you believe in the products, that your company is, building? Are you banging the drum for customer experience? But you haven’t actually experienced talking to your customer service agents? Right?

Like, these are all just, like, very simple exercises of integrity and truth. And I don’t think these things – I want to be really clear about this – I’m not saying these are things that are worth doing, so you can be, like, morally righteous or something. That’s, that’s not the point of it.

The point of it for me is, is that if we followed those things, we would make more money. We would spot bigger problems.

Tony Hallett: I would say that comes across in your book. That point of view. It’s not, it’s not about an ethical thing necessarily.

Harendra Kapur: No, not at all.

Tony Hallett: It’s about being more effective.

Harendra Kapur: Yeah, yeah. I think our customers would like us more. I think our prospects would want to listen to us, a little bit more. Our customer service agents would, have to listen to us when we’re giving them feedback about how they’re dealing with customers. I think all of these things can be, quite straightforwardly dealt with.

So long as the people involved in the process are doing it with a sense of an internal compass. And if we’re following that, great. And again, you don’t have to do that. You do the bullshit thing instead and make tons of money. It’s fine. But, but I do think there’s more success to be had.

If individually, we were asking those questions.

Tony Hallett: Okay, and to Phil.

Phil Szomszor: I’ll be a Mr. boring process answer. Cause you gave the inspirational answer. So the boring process answer is get your house in order. Have some policies around social media use and, how to use information, how to collect and reuse information, how to then train people and give them support and encouragement. Not telling them no, but saying yes, but this way.

And then also having some tools in place to monitor conversations so you know what’s going on both within your organisation and also using tools to kind of try to get a sense of what’s happening out there.

Tony Hallett: Okay. Thank you. Any questions or additions from the team? One second Julian, I’m going to come to Samad first.

Samad Masood: I’m afraid I’m going to be really annoying. Cause I got the three questions.

Tony Hallett: And the first one has two parts.

Samad Masood: Yeah, you know me, Tony. what do you think about the theory of, you know, the trust of effectively everyone just basically not trusting anything and therefore requiring more authenticity.

I mean, think about, have you ever hired anyone based just on their CV. Have you ever done anything of any merit, any seriousness, based on an internet post? I mean, if you have, you know, fine. But, you know there’s that.

Secondly, do you not, and I know there’s an overlap here, but, personal responsibility versus the culture of an organisation. Do I go home and think what I did at work today was really important? No, I don’t. But do I get paid for it? Yeah, but there is a culture of, you know, approaching the CEO.

Yeah. How does you know, how does culture overlap good personal view? The final not so serious, but do you honestly think people with any career prospects post on LinkedIn?

Tony Hallett: Oh, I oh.

Nessa Keddo: Good conversation about that.

Phil Szomszor: Well I bet my business on it. So…

Samad Masood: Which goes back to my point about all of the stuff that’s on LinkedIN, we all create content. Oh, all the stuff that’s online. We all create content. As I’ve said to Tony, I mean, I started many years ago writing as a journalist. I think, I feel myself fortunate to always feel that no one was reading anything that I was putting out. But I managed to get this far.

Is it just more dross? I guess. Is my overarching question. Thank you for listening.

Tony Hallett: Yeah, I’ll offer that to any of you because I think, I think you picked them off one by one. So Nessa or Phil.

Nessa Keddo: Yeah, sorry I missed your name.

Tony Hallett: Samad.

Samad Masood: I’m not giving you my name.

Nessa Keddo: I would say the problem is those who are that kind of early adopters of AI are using it for absolutely everything. I know so many people who are using it for their CVS, using it during an actual interview with prompts, using it for their everyday job. So there just needs to be this sensibility. If you use it for your CV, don’t use it whilst you’re in an interview, kind of tapping away to the side because of course the employee is going to know, right?

So it’s down to organisations as well to make sure that within that process, of course, you know, people are going to be doing that. So if you’re going through a recruitment round, when you get to that final stage, invite people in. When you’re in a meeting, ask questions instead of asking people to send their –

Samad Masood: That’s been happening for decades.

Nessa Keddo: Yeah, but I mean, what I’m speaking about here specifically is with AI tools, right? With that capability of quickly just doing something, searching for something, it can be talking on behalf of you. It can be – it can write your CV for you off the basis of just a couple of prompts. Right? So it’s just taking away that laziness and making sure that, and we spoke about this, that kind of individuality point of view.

Right. So a lot of people use it for ideation in marketing, but not everyone uses it to create an entire campaign necessarily. So it’s just that balance between what works for your organisation. So within the context of what I’m speaking, it’s about those people who I speak to on a regular basis, on a daily basis, who are literally trying to say, what can I use?

ChatGPT, perplexity, Gemini, our internal tool to do absolutely everything for me. And of course, that’s not possible.

Tony Hallett: Okay. Just in the, in the, for time reasons, would either of you like to – so you want to defend all of LinkedIn Phil?

Phil Szomszor: Well there is a lot of dross on LinkedIn. But I tell you what, there’s a lot of journalists that are moving to LinkedIn from Twitter because it’s, a much safer and, sensible place.

Harendra Kapur: Twitter, that bastion of, of good writing. And good thoughts.

Phil Szomszor: Just say one thing. Anybody here who has hired someone, you’ve probably looked at their LinkedIn profile. If you’ve ever had a business meeting, you probably checked them out on LinkedIn first. If you’ve ever, wanted to find out about an organisation cause you want to sell to them or their selling to you, you’re going to check them out on LinkedIn.

So I think it is still a source of degree of truth. It’s not perfect. There is a lot of dross. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you’ll see that there’s, an awful lot of good stuff out there. And I’ll take any connections.

Tony Hallett: So. Julian?

Julian Heathcote: Samad touched on the points of authenticity which I was thinking of. I think of we, it reflects our world. We’ve built a world of fakery, you know, we have reality shows showing sort of an ideal that we’re not.

We have people like the, live guru, who tells you how to improve your profile and get almost, sort of you know, shonky kind of qualifications to give yourself credence. So isn’t better that we, certainly for promoting business, that we work to drive that authenticity so that Ai reflects back what we try to put out there.

And, get some sort of, you know, some kind of, positive.

Tony Hallett: If I can summarize a little bit if anyone didn’t hear, it’s about there’s an industry around almost like fake authenticity. And you were saying like it’s better to be out there and I think.

Julian Heathcote: Well I think AI reflects that back to us. What we put into it. So when we are trying to find differentiation, I think in communicating that’s really important. In marketing it’s the number one really, find that point of difference. So we need to drive that.

Tony Hallett: Okay. So your question is.

Julian Heathcote: Do you think. Sorry I’ve lost myself here.

Tony Hallett: You have no idea.

Julian Heathcote: Do you think – I feel that it reflects the world back at us, I think we need to put the authenticity back, how do we do that?

Tony Hallett: Go on Harry, you go first.

Harendra Kapur: I think by doing the very scary thing of expressing what we actually think, regardless of the consequence of doing that. That’ll never be comfortable. That’ll always be a little, intimidating to do. But I think we, if we want to create more authenticity and I want to be clear, I’m not saying we should, I, you know, it’s certainly not my view that, like, all of you should go home and tell the truth.

You know, I don’t care, do whatever you want. It doesn’t matter to me, but, But I think that’s the that’s the really straightforward way to do it. And I don’t particularly care if that makes AI better reflect us or not. You know, I think that’s a second, third, fourth order effect, of doing that.

I think the more direct thing is, if you, sharing what you really are, you will be connecting with people on the basis of that, as opposed to some sort of a fake, proxy of you, which is going to be really hard to maintain three years from now when you don’t disagree, when you don’t agree with the proxy anymore.

Tony Hallett: Okay, I just I want to thank everyone for coming to this. I think in essence, one of the things, I mean, we can talk a lot about the future of marketing and how AI is going to help and hinder different things. We can’t get into all that tonight. Please carry on these conversations with our panellists, with each other.

I think there is really, really something to be said for helping all your customers make sense of this, and in doing that, you become more trusted. The whole – we had this new tagline about six months ago called Trust Through Understanding. It comes from this kind of approach. I think we can all do a better job of it, but it’s been fascinating.

I really want to thank all of our panellists. So thank you, Phil, Harry and Nessa for having some different views on this and getting tonight kicked off. So thank you very much.

Bill Clark: This was the collective content podcast sense-maker sessions. Let us know what you’d liked us to make sense of next.