028: The ying and the yang of progress
[Before - Session 09] We're going to talk about Data tomorrow and I promise it will not be boring
TL;DR
Our sixth major theme is Data—it’s where insights and ideas come from, never mind how we ascribe efficacy and results. Lots of push and pull, plug and play, hey hey hey!
Jeepers are all things AI moving fast, and suggesting a truly brave new world is already at work among us
NEWS: You can hire me for a one hour coaching called Generatively Better designed to help marketing and advertising leaders and teams immediately leverage AI-generative tools.
Three items upfront:
1️⃣ Let’s pause to recognize Gordon Moore, self described “accidental entrepreneur,” who passed away Friday at age 94. Moore could, as The New York Times put it, “claim credit for bringing laptop computers to hundreds of millions of people and embedding microprocessors into everything.” I’m typing this and you’re reading it in some part due to his legacy. In addition, “Moore’s Law” helped us comprehend the acceleration we felt as a result of semiconductor advancement.
2️⃣ Speaking of acceleration, I went back and rewatched Microsoft’s 37 minute “The Future of Work with AI” Copilot explainer video from 10 days ago. 🔮 A prediction: This tech will frustrate a lot of people. And not because of what these systems enable (which is a stunning lot)…
…rather, because it raises the bar minus emotion. Systems like Copilot don’t have feelings like we do. They don’t have bad days. Copilot doesn’t need McKinsey’s A2E, or FranklinCovey’s 7 Habits or Multipliers curriculums to optimize its personality to get sh*t done. It just summarizes the meeting recap, drafts a SWOT analysis, posts action items to Teams, and moves on. (Granted, all at your bidding.)
We can’t hide from this augmented productivity. Now we’re really going to have to focus on the actual hard stuff: Having profound ideas, and being truly imaginative!
3️⃣ Finally, a super niche art thing: I am not a 📸 photographer. But I love the technicality of image making. So this thread from Nick St. Pierre explaining his Midjourney prompts to achieve various film stock “looks,” is totally my cup of tea.
“CineStill 800T A unique color film that's actually repurposed from motion picture film. It produces a vintage, cinematic look with high contrast and muted colors.” [Prompt: street style photo of a woman, shot on CineStill 800T --seed 1 --v 5]
The ying of data and the yang of imagination
Way back in 2008 when I taught the very first iteration of the Future of Advertising course at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, we spun up a speaker series to supplement the curriculum. (Thank you, Lee Lynch!) Conversations About The Future Of Advertising (CATFOA) lasted a decade, and hosted over 20 industry experts. Our very first guest was Jan Leth, then co-Chief Creative at Ogilvy NY, who titled his talk Data.Dada.Beta.
Jan’s premise 15 years ago was simple: Data Fuels Storytelling.
And Tom Cruise movies.
A few years earlier we leveraged Tractor Supply Company’s store level SKU data, Weather.com’s data and ZIP codes to produce stories inside banner ads. Each placement triggered an IP query tied to ZIP code, weather look up, an in-stock inventory look-up, then headline, CTA and layout generation all on the fly. The data made the story possible. Inventive at the time; now commonplace.
The recent eclosion of AI only makes the story of data all the more relevant. We still aspire to reduce waste in targeting and media, we aim for greater relevance with prospects and customers, and we dream of golden insights rising from the depths of corporate knowledge. Data is the infrastructure supporting those goals.
Conversely, data is us.
I want my doctor to have my health data. I do not want social platforms to have that data. Meanwhile, I’m fully aware social businesses utilize and trade some of my data to their advantage. I get it. I am the product. And it would be wonderful if our federal government could grasp any of this and act coherently. (Oh, hello, Shou Chew!)
Then there’s a decent amount of chatter around the notion of Personal LLMs, Personal GPT, Personal AI—trained only on your data, to suit your purposes. I want my AI to scan the teens’ grades weekly, and only set a note in my calendar if certain conditions arise. And review my calendar, note client meetings, review all relevant emails from the past 30 days then write an agenda 48 hours ahead. All of this will be real, soon enough.
Of course, we’ve already seen plenty of data downside, from credit reporting to evaluation bias.
So I’m excited to welcome my friend Andrew Eklund (LinkedIn), co-founder and CEO of Ciceron to help us unwind and opine on all things data as they relate to the Future of Advertising.
See you tomorrow evening after class.