AI, Marketing, and the Balance of Creativity and Analytics: Sean Johnston Speaks

The Synergy of AI and Creativity: Exploring Digital Marketing with Sean Johnston

In this episode of The Human Code, host Don Finley welcomes Sean Johnston, a seasoned digital marketer specializing in paid social media campaigns, to discuss the intersection of technology and creativity in digital marketing. The conversation covers striking a balance between creativity and analytics, the role of AI in modern marketing, maintaining a human touch amidst automation, and future advertising trends in a privacy-conscious world. Sean shares his personal journey, insights into successful marketing strategies, and the evolving landscape shaped by AI. The episode offers valuable lessons for anyone navigating the dynamic field of digital marketing.


00:00 Introduction to The Human Code

00:49 Guest Introduction: Sean Johnston

01:46 Balancing Creativity and Analytics in Digital Marketing

07:16 The Role of AI in Modern Marketing

25:04 Future of Advertising in a Privacy-Conscious World

31:43 Career Advice for Aspiring Marketers

34:15 Conclusion and Sponsor Message


Sponsored by FINdustries
Hosted by Don Finley

Transcript

Don Finley: 0:00

Welcome to The Human Code, the podcast where technology meets humanity, and the future is shaped by the leaders and innovators of today. I'm your host, Don Finley, inviting you on a journey through the fascinating world of tech, leadership, and personal growth. Here, we delve into the stories of visionary minds, Who are not only driving technological advancement, but also embodying the personal journeys and insights that inspire us all. Each episode, we explore the intersections where human ingenuity meets the cutting edge of technology, unpacking the experiences, challenges, and triumphs that define our era. So, whether you are a tech enthusiast, an inspiring entrepreneur, or simply curious about the human narratives behind the digital revolution, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Human Code. In this episode, we're excited to welcome Sean Johnston. A seasoned digital marketer with a deep expertise in paid social media campaigns. Sean's diverse experience across client agency and freelance roles gives him a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities in the world of digital marketing today, Sean and I will share how to strike the right balance between creativity and analytics to create impactful digital marketing campaigns. The role of AI in modern marketing and the importance of maintaining a human element in an increasingly automated landscape. Insights into the future of advertising in a privacy conscious world, including the potential shift back to more traditional methods. Join us as we dive deep into these insightful topics with Sean Johnston. The episode is packed with valuable lessons for anyone looking to navigate the ever evolving landscape of digital marketing. You won't want to miss it. Welcome back. I am here with Sean Johnston, and we are going to be talking about a bit of AI, the connection between humanity, technology. And so Sean, I just want to like, offer it up to you. What got you interested in the intersection between humanity and technology?

Sean Johnston: 2:02

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that, as a person, it probably took me a lot longer to figure this out, but, I'm one of those people that really needs to have both sides of the brain working, intensely analytical, also very creative. And I guess as I started to develop into my career, which, think there's really a whole lot of people that, can say that they woke up when they were five, six, seven years old and said, I want to be a digital marketer someday. Cause it's one of those jobs where it didn't really even exist when I was a kid. I wanted to be a weatherman turned game show host turned U. S. Senator. And I held on to that for pretty much most of my college career until I realized I wouldn't be able to actually get my, meteorology, degree. So, marketing was a plan B for me. But what's great about that, getting back to your question, is in order to be successful in marketing, especially digital, you have to look at things through both of those lenses. there is a huge element of creative that goes into the success of whether or not a campaign can do what it's supposed to be doing. Obviously there's the logical, the numbers part of it. So I guess I just realized as I was, maturing into my career, wow, this is it for me. Like I waffled and went back and forth in terms of the spectrum. there was a period of time where I really wanted to embrace the creativity part of it. And even thought about, just resetting and becoming a copywriter or a creator. didn't realize, that was going to be a really long kind of journey for me. And there's still that itch. So I was just like, yeah, I really like what I'm putting out here, what's the logical, at the end of the day, we need to sell cars, we need to sell mortgages. And, so I went to the other side of the extreme and was an analyst for a while and just realized that, my happy medium, where I really want to be, uh, uses both. And I think, Like I said, I never intended to be a digital marketer, uh, but I've realized that I think I'm really good at it because I can see things and the implications of those things through both lenses, through the logical and through the emotional, through the creative. And I think that's really just something that, nowadays you have to be, if you want to be a really successful. digital strategies. You have to understand all the different elements that come into consideration here.

Don Finley: 4:16

I, I mean, it's fascinating to hear that you're You're looking at this as like the, the left brain, right brain, And like the experience of the creative act versus the logical act and how they play together. I think that's where the, the synergy exists of creating something that is like top notch, Cause from my own experience, I can tell you like, we create something that's entirely logical. Like it just usually falls flat. There's that lack of kind of like involvement from it. And then in your, in your work, do you feel like you've achieved that balance? Like, is this a good spot for both the creative side and also the analytical side for you?

Sean Johnston: 4:53

oh yeah, absolutely. and to further your point, that's one of the things that I love about marketing as well as you can actually see the implications and the results if you do not both sides of that equation. Like for example, I can have the best. Creative ideas, something that is absolutely world changing and people are able to look at that product or service in a way that nobody ever thought possible. But if you don't execute it correctly, if you don't know your target audience, if you don't know a lot of the logical Sort of left brain things. They're going to get that content to a point where it's able to be served to the right folks in the right capacity and know the kind of systems and stuff behind it. It's not going to work. and I see that a lot of the time. It's like some agencies spend a lot of money creating a very nice piece of polished content, but. They don't do anything with it. they don't have the strategy. They don't have the ability to put that correctly in front of the right people and on the same side of the equation, like I can tell you, like I can take a real shit idea and I can have the best strategy in the world and I can know exactly who to target and who I want to go after and, have this great funnel and exactly, Follow the path that the client wants to, and it can work, like I can get a few people to do something with it, but without both those things, marketing just doesn't work. There's the science and the art to it, and if you're not paying equal consideration to both, then it's just not working the way that it should be.

Don Finley: 6:27

And I think I love that idea about marketing as that platform to basically be testing these ideas is. You're right, you're either gonna get feedback that it's working, you're gonna get feedback that it's not. You're gonna see, where you kind of have that, playground of testing. And then given, the digital side of this, your feedback loop on what's working, what isn't working is, is fairly short, I

Sean Johnston: 6:47

Instantaneous. Yeah. And that's actually one of the great things about it. we've find sometimes that clients that have traditionally worked within, non digital spaces where it's yeah, we're gonna put this print ad out there and it's gonna take six months before we're gonna, they understand that digital is a lot more measurable. It's a lot And surprisingly, they don't have a lot of patience for it. it's Oh, you put that ad out there yesterday. It's, what's going on. so yes, it is more of a short turnaround in terms of getting results and stuff like that. But one of the things that I think is the most interesting and ties into the, aspect of AI and how it's absolutely, changing the landscape of digital advertising is our ability to test. Multiple messages, multiple creative elements, multiple different strategies. All of these things that are so imperative to have a successful marketing campaign has grown and has become so, so much easier over the past even 18 months.

Don Finley: 7:45

Yeah.

Sean Johnston: 7:46

you now have this ability where, yeah, you use to be able to have a pretty decent message, pretty decent landing page, a good strategy, and you could get stuff done, you could let that run for a few weeks if you wanted to, a few months if you needed too. But now it's if you really want to take advantage of what's going on, And how you can actually get that campaign to its fullest potential. Like you've got to have so much creative, you've got to have so many insights. You've got to let the machine, if you will, do some things that I think a lot of marketers aren't necessarily ready for us to come, turn the keys over to a computer and let them do. So it, yeah, it's one of those things where if you're not at least being cautiously optimistic about it, then you know, you're missing opportunities for sure.

Don Finley: 8:31

now we're doing a lot of work around, you know, helping companies to adopt AI and create their strategy for implementation and then also helping them to deliver upon that promise. One thing that we've seen is it takes a bit of a mind shift, a change and like that shifting of. How am I interacting with the computer and like what tasks I'm looking for? And I, I liken it to, you know, we did e commerce in the early 2000s, Like, your physical retail was where you needed to get stuff. And now we had this digital world that was, extending on. There's a company, in Philadelphia, GSI, that they made their name by going to big brands and saying, Hey, we'll manage all of your e commerce. In your systems internally, treat us like a, retail store, So we're just like any of your other retail stores. We'll have inventory and we'll run it, but we'll handle the whole e commerce side of this. And you know, they had the NFL, Banana Republic, and a number of large brands, but that simplicity of getting a Old school brand online in the, simplest fashion was by adopting the mindset of like, just treat us like a retail store and we'll operate separately. What we're seeing from an AI perspective is the person no longer needs to be doing the work, but they have to have managerial skills. on a task basis much earlier in their career to basically say like, now you're managing something that's doing the work you're not. I also could imagine that from a digital marketing standpoint, this tool that can go out and generate, you know, additional ads, it can generate the copy. It can now generate the images that go along with it. and you can do a number of variations that you're going after. what's the mindset around determining how the AI should create those variations? is it hyper personalization? Is there something else?

Sean Johnston: 10:25

Yeah, no, that's an excellent point. And I think we're at a nascency when it comes to generative AI in the digital space. It has exploded over the past year to 18 months for sure. Like the tools that we have access to, especially on, I'm a bread and butter social media marketer and meta in particular has been at the forefront of all of this. I think the answer lies within how do we effectively identify the tools and facets of these AI opportunities that exist. How do we identify and prioritize ones that are going to have the most meaningful impact on what we're doing right now and give it this cautious optimism where I'm willing to test it? I know that it's new. I know that there's going to be unintended consequences. I know that if I put my image in there, it's going to potentially generate some things that the creative folks on our team are going to throw up when they see. I think it's one of those things where you have to have a person that is Not necessarily. I don't want to liken it to like you're just supervising the work of a computer because it's not like that. Like you said, it's managerial. Like we have to be able to identify the product that's being created, but also whether or not this is the right fit. For AI in this particular case, what are the things that AI can do in this particular instance that are going to give us the best end result? And a lot of the time it's not creative. I'll be honest with you. especially on social, copy is probably pretty decent. Like at the end of the day, you have to look at it like there is this hunger for these platforms to develop content. And one of the reasons why there's that hunger is because the AI targeting has gotten so good at identifying. within this large group of people that we want to go after. This person responds better to an ad that looks like this. This person responds better to an ad that looks like that. And if you don't have that collateral, then you're missing opportunities, right? So that's why I said if you could run one ad and you'd be okay, that's fine. But like at the end of the day, you know that if you have multiple pronumerations, even if it's just different ways to develop copy that speaks to a different point emotional versus rational and stuff like that If you don't have that in the system, then you're missing opportunities And you cannot physically You know, especially modern marketers, when you're managing so many different channels and so many different projects and stuff like that, to be able to sit down and to handwrite copy, to fill all of these different creative gaps is impossible. So that's where generative AI can help. Granted, it's not something that I'm just like, Oh, chat GPT, write me an ad for, this client. That's going to say why this content offers really great. It doesn't work like that, but what it can do is it can give you thought starters. It can identify. Patterns. It can help you get good starts on stuff to make your job easier. So the way that I look at AI, it's 20 years down the road, we might be having a different conversation, but right now it is a companion. It is a very helpful tool that allows us to do things that either we don't have the bandwidth, the speed. Or quite frankly, in some cases, the processing power to be able to do right now, but if you don't know how to use it, then it's going to lead you down the absolute wrong path. I've seen clients that have basically turned the keys over to AI, like just let, like meta, basically they're pushing it as much as they possibly can. They want you to AI opt into everything, targeting, creative, all of that stuff. And the product can be absolute garbage. It absolutely can. so if you don't know how that works and what levers you can pull, then you're going to be in a situation where now a computer is essentially dictating what your brand looks like and who you're supposed to go after and all that stuff. So there is definitely a role for people to be able to bridge the gap between the technology and the humanity. of those clients of that brand to make sure that we can keep all of these things in consideration. And it's a tough balancing act. I'll be honest with you. For

Don Finley: 14:40

And I like what you're hitting at here too. So there's the, the augmented intelligence side, that companion, you're not delegating. really responsibility to the AI just yet. And we find that probably in like 90 percent of our processes as well, that we've have AI involved with where also there's the human in the loop component too, because there is that special zest that the human can add to this. But at the same time, there's the responsibility aspect of it as well. I agree with you. We're, we're definitely gonna be having a different conversation in a couple of years, as far as like how much we can delegate or like what areas we can. but also like, I gotta ask the people that are handing everything over to Meta's AI, like the AI targeting, the, the other AI tools that Meta's offering here, are they seeing results or

Sean Johnston: 15:31

So the way that I would look at it, I'm a firm believer that, Meta's pushing this for a couple of different reasons. One, I do believe that at their core they believe that these tools can help clients and help advertisers get better results. I can tell you they do. for example, back in the day, like using very specific target audiences. if I want to go into the meta platform and say, I want to target this demographic with these interests and this, that would work. Now we have tools that allow us to basically take a look at the content, take a look at the offer, and then meta does that. It's Oh, this is who we think, is going to give us the best result, by not embracing that you're missing opportunities, but. By turning everything over to the AI, yes, I've had clients, generally speaking, smaller clients, generally speaking, clients that are new to advertising. The reason why I think Meta's pushing this so hard is for better results, but also because it lowers the bar and the barrier of entry to digital advertising, If I'm a landscape company, and I've been spending 35 years building brick hardscapes, And pool facades and stuff like that. I don't know anything about digital marketing. But I'm looking at Facebook, and I'm looking at Instagram, and I'm seeing all these other companies that are out there, and they're starting to generate business, and they're starting to get more awareness and stuff like that. I gotta get in on that. I don't want to hire an agency to do that, because I don't even know if this is going to work. I don't even know who to talk to. Meta's not going to help you with that. All right, I'll look up a tutorial on YouTube and I'll start a campaign and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don't know what any of these things mean. of course, I'm going to opt into meta recommends if you just let us target meta recommends. If you take this ad and it's going to generate different, of course, if meta recommends it, it's got to be the way to go. I think a lot of it is just a convenience factor and a fact that, you can get a lot further with a lot less knowledge today than you used to be able to. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that any Joe can go into Facebook and create a campaign that's going to be lights out and do exactly what it's supposed to do, because we're not there. But you can get a lot closer to that than you would have been able to five years ago. So I think by allowing AI to make it easier and lower that barrier of entry, It's going to hopefully, in Meta's, world, result in more advertisers on the platform. So that's what I think it is. But yeah, no, I do not recommend, especially when it comes to creative. don't let Meta dictate what your brand is. Don't let Meta define who your target audience is to a certain extent. results are results. but at the end of the day, anything that's going to be like a physical manifestation of your brand, a piece of creative copy, how you would explain, that's the kind of stuff that you have to be really defensive about and not let meta dictate for you. But some of the things on the backend, yeah, where are we going to show this ad and whether or not it can expand that audience. If better than I do in some cases, we've absolutely seen that work. But we've absolutely seen where it can go quickly off the rails if you don't have those guidelines in place, for sure.

Don Finley: 18:34

and I think you're hitting on another point here that's, careful as to what you're delegating out to another entity to be responsible for, like, how you're viewed in the market, Like, that is your identity. That is the identity of the brand that you're, involved with. That is a piece of your company that, you may not want to put into a third party's hands. And I know from our perspective, where We're really reflective about like what AI we use that is hosted outside of our four walls and then what we're hosting internally. and it may still be a cloud provider, but it's inside of a private cloud that we have, for the reason of like, Hey, that data could be used for training. And so for you, if it's anything sensitive, we definitely don't want it on somebody else's servers. and there's variations of that. Like sometimes Microsoft has, much more to lose as far as any sort of data breach or contractual obligation than OpenAI does. And so that is a valid place for us to be hosting some information as well. but then additionally, You have the segmentation, Like meta is going to understand your brand. They're going to understand, the proposition that you're out there, that front facing piece of it. But there's pockets of knowledge inside of our operations as far as how we do that could play an impact into how we talk about what we have going on. And the lightest example would be like a case study, but then additionally, there's like process methodology that we have baked in that like an AI that understands the full scope of our business. Could help us in that augmented intelligence space of saying Hey, we need to pull this in from our operations team or our dev ops team can, help to speak to this. And we would miss out on that if we were just using the meta tools as well.

Sean Johnston: 20:26

think there's an actual, fantastic example of what you just described, which is, a new product that LinkedIn and Microsoft offer advertisers. it's just being rolled out. It's called Accelerate. our agency was, I'm. Like a beta tester. there's a whole PR, play that they did for it. I'll be perfectly honest with you. I went into this whole thing, very nervous, very Oh, I don't like what they're doing. The brand and the proposition there is it is literally you tell LinkedIn what you want to promote, be it a website, a landing page, a piece of content, whatever. And it can, and it does, spit out an entire campaign without really any Interaction Or intervention on your part. They create the creative. They create the target audience. They, basically, all you have to do is tell it what we're marketing. And I looked at that and I was like That sounds awful. I want the tools to help But I don't want this thing to basically one, two, three, an entire marketing campaign. and I'll be honest with you. I ended up eating my own words about it. Like I'll be the first one to say the creative part of that. Not there yet, but the targeting. All I can say is that we had so many different audiences that were based on so many pieces of business intelligence, specific accounts that we wanted to go after, specific job titles, functions, members, all that stuff that we were doing manually. We compared that against the AI audience and the cost per result. Not even comparison. Yeah, it's three times lower. we lowered the cost of our clients inbound leads by 80%, something like that, just by using this. However, um, and this is something that I think is going to be a huge implication and goes back to what you were talking about. There's a quality element to that too, right? Because the AI can go out there and it can find anybody that's willing to give your name and email address and say, okay, yeah, give me this piece of But whether or not those Email addresses, whether or not those leads that are being generated are actually, for the business, or the target audience that they're looking for, things that the AI wouldn't necessarily know yet.

Don Finley: 22:41

Okay.

Sean Johnston: 22:41

there's an element to quality that needs to be addressed. So I'm not going to say that the lead quality wasn't good because it was good, but that's a consideration. That's a concern that I have. We're not going to be able to know without the right linkages, whether or not, these systems can actually take that a step further. And not only People that are just willing to take action, but people that are actually willing to do business.

Don Finley: 23:02

And I love that consideration because you are right. if the AI is optimizing for people that, and we've seen this sometimes in LinkedIn, like outreach where the people who are very interested in talking to us sometimes are the people who are looking for jobs. Right. And that's why they're on LinkedIn. The people that we want to be talking to, you know, they're still interested, but we've got to wait through that. But an AI that sees that, Hey, this is the type of person. And these are the behaviors that they have on our platform before they interact. You might over optimize or over fit to the job search or job seeker instead of the person that is looking to do business. And I think that's a really tight point as far as like how we build AI into our workflows. And to ensure that the end goal of the AI is aligned with the intermediary goals that it is also working towards.

Sean Johnston: 23:54

And it's hard to train AI to do that. that is another development that's gotten much better over the past, two years or so. Meta, LinkedIn, all of these advertising platforms, Google too, have their version of what they call like offline conversion tracking, which, I work with a lot of B2B advertisers, and that's what it's about. It's about trying to get a lead, Uh, but also we want a lead that's going to convert to a customer. And when you have a sales cycle, that's, three weeks, four weeks, months, it's really hard to tell right now whether or not that actually bore fruit for us and what the value was. What was the ROI? we don't know because, it's going to take six months to sell this in. But each one of these platforms has their own tool to incorporate that backend data into the front end. That's where I think we're going to see the most development. That's where I'm going to, place a bet that like, if that can get better, we're going to start to see some really meaningful strides in terms of, not only using AI to be able to lock onto that one thing, that action. Meta can get you a click, easy. Meta can get you a lead, easy. A good lead, something that's actually, that's tougher. And if they can solve for that, I think we're in business here. That's going to make things a lot, better. easier for us?

Don Finley: 25:04

you see the, the future of advertising shifting? We basically went from like the outdoor advertising, the in print advertising, everything that wasn't online before to a very heavy online type of like presence. And in fact, platforms that are specifically designed around like feeding advertisements as well as their core functionality or at least part of their core functionality. Do you see the way we're interacting with AI today, the way that we're interacting with computers today and our phones shifting enough that it would change the advertising industry

Sean Johnston: 25:38

something that is, all of us marketers are borderline terrified about, to be perfectly honest with you, because a lot of it comes down to so many of the privacy movements that have emerged in the past, few years. We had Uh, TCPA, GDPR, Google was gonna get rid of cookies, and now they're not, and all that stuff. So there's been this, what are we gonna do, if we can't track anybody, then what's gonna So I think a lot of the, hysteria has been born out of a lot of those privacy, Issues that, not issues, but development and people's preferences. nobody likes to be tracked every action that they take online. I get notifications on my phone. My weather app has been tracking every single, cause I want to know what the, you know, are you sure you want it to do that? Yeah, okay. I guess I want to know. So a lot of that stuff is happening in the background, And we don't know that. So I think that there's going to be a fundamental shift as these privacy conversations continue to happen that will have an impact in terms of. where it's going to make the most to advertise, Because if we remove a lot of the tools that have made digital advertising trackable and ROI, centric and stuff like that, then that kind of opens up, a lot of other, and opens the door for more traditional opportunities. I don't know where you guys are at, but like Michigan recently, and legalized recreational cannabis, and you still can't advertise digitally. Facebook won't let you run ads. Google really won't let you run ads. So it's basically fundamentally propped up the dying billboard and out of home advertising, industry. Every single billboard on every single road around here is some dispensary or cannabis, and that's the kind of thing that we need to take into consideration as regulations and as tools and things begin to shift. We're going to have to look at different places that may not have been able to provide that trackability or ROI before. But hey, billboards are cool again, because that's the only place that I can advertise. Maybe partnerships and sponsorships, and putting your Logo on a baseball field and stuff like that is really the only way to I think, at the end of the day people especially digitally, nobody wants to be hounded with this stuff. Nobody likes to see ads every five seconds, And no disrespect to the Google folks, but I find it personally offensive that I have to watch a 15 second pre roll video to watch a minute and ten. video on how I'm supposed to build a backyard, soil sifter. that's just ridiculous. So that's going to start to shift where people are going to be placing their bets. Because at the end of the day, you're going to move off the platform because if you don't want to, so I don't know, I think there's a lot of consideration to be had there. I also think that, there's probably Places to advertise that we haven't even thought about, I don't want to get too into the metaverse and all that stuff. But as people's behavior starts to shift, if virtual reality becomes more of a thing, if augmented reality becomes more ingrained, like you're going to see at the end of the day, we got to pay for this stuff somehow. And if you're not paying out of your pocket, That's where advertising comes in. So it'll be interesting to see how

Don Finley: 28:43

the product at that point.

Sean Johnston: 28:44

Exactly.

Don Finley: 28:45

Wait, I think it's, it's fascinating to think through because I've noticed myself changing behaviors. Just over the last two years, like I was, I had a queue of about like two hours of YouTube videos that I wanted to like learn about. And I found myself just copying and pasting the links to the episodes in the chat GBT and being like, Hey, I need to understand what the salient points of this are and how these four videos relate together. And then it composed a report for me that basically I could read in two minutes compared to taking the two hours. But that takes me. off of YouTube's platform, Like you can no longer advertise there. I think that if you started to incorporate ads into chat GPT, exactly right. I think the trust factor would drop significantly of like, Hey, are you answering my question? Or are you collecting your paycheck and you need to collect your paycheck. But at the same time, I need to. Have faith or trust that, you know, the experience is authentic.

Sean Johnston: 29:44

That this is a neutral, at the end of the day, if the, Excel, formula that I'm trying to is sponsored by, IBM Watson or something like that, then I'm going to look at that, I think you're absolutely right. I think, that behavior shift has already started to happen. But there are economic realities, which I think a lot of people that don't work in this industry fail to take into consideration, which is, yeah, nobody likes ads. they don't, you know,

Don Finley: 30:11

I think nobody likes ads because out of the thousand ads that you see a day, there's like two of them that you want to be interacting with.

Sean Johnston: 30:20

exactly. And that's tough. And, I will die on this hill, Don. I have this conversation with my sort of marketing lay people in my life that don't really like, am I seeing this ad for a, car that I just brought? kids are targeting. It happens. that's, that's how it works. I will die on the hill of I would rather have ads. that at least take into consideration my interests, my hobbies, my behaviors a little bit and serve me something that's relatively interesting to me than, the experience that you have if you're still watching like cable television. I'm trying to watch a Tigers game and all I'm seeing are, ambulance chasers and, pharma and stuff like that. None of that applies to me. But yeah, like at the end of the day, they have to pay for this. They have to pay for the equipment to get the, you the folks there to comment on the game and, the bills have to be paid. So, I would much rather it be something that's a little bit more tailored to my personality. it has a little bit more information on, but to do that without being obtrusive, I think is the big,

Don Finley: 31:20

It is the challenge, how do you anonymize it so much that even the end advertiser doesn't know that it's me, but like, I still am aware of their, their product, Like I would like to. Expose my interest to the world without having the world know my interest. Yeah. Sean, so Wrapping this up, I got to say, I really appreciate you being on today. any advice for anybody either starting their career, changing their career, how do they prepare themselves for all this upheaval that we're talking about

Sean Johnston: 31:51

Yeah. Specifically in marketing. At the very least, let me be an example of somebody who really didn't know what they wanted to do, or at least had to make a late decision in terms of, Oh shit, I can't be a weatherman. I'm gonna have to do this. Marketing is a really good industry for a lot of people that are either disaffected or have skills That might not necessarily translate into a very specific job like, lawyer, doctor, plumber, all that stuff. at the end of the day, people can work in marketing. If you have a keen eye for human behavior, if you know how to reach people through either your words or your art. So I would say, first of all, if you're looking to get into marketing, try to collect as many different skills as you possibly can. gone are going to be the days soon of the one trick ponies. Like you need to know how to do Google search. You need to know how to do this. It's good to know how to copyright. It's good to know how to, do some, graphic design and stuff like that. So add as many tools as you possibly can to your tool bag in order to be as marketable as possible, ironically enough, but also don't think just because you didn't go to school for marketing. That you're not eligible. it's an industry where if I were to poll the people that I work with, 5 percent of them actually have some sort of degree in marketing or communications. And the rest of us are just wow, this is interesting. but most importantly, in order to future proof yourself from any of the implications that AI has, as much of a multi tool as you possibly can. make yourself indispensable. being the guy that knew how to write Excel, formulas got me a job right when, my first agency job, I was about to be laid off and if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have been able to go work for this company. If it wasn't for that company, I wouldn't be able to work for this other company. And the next thing you know, here I am, 15 years into my career. So don't be afraid, but also. Don't stop learning. The minute you stop gaining new skills and the minute you stop and think, yeah, you know what, I'm at the top. That's when you're, that's when you're done, man.

Don Finley: 34:00

think you hit it home right at the end. We got to continue to learn. And like, that's really the, the curiosity that keeps us going. So once again, Sean, thank you so much for being on today. And I greatly appreciate

Sean Johnston: 34:12

pleasure, Don. It was a lot of fun. I appreciate it.

Don Finley: 34:15

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