How AI is Enhancing, Not Replacing, Human Creativity in Digital Marketing with Jason Brigham

Welcome to MediaScape Insights from Digital Changemakers, a speaker series and podcast brought to you by USC Annenberg's Digital Media Management Program. Join us as we unlock the secrets to success in an increasingly digital world. I am thrilled to have Jason Brigham on MediaScape Insights from Digital Changemakers. Jason, we're just talking and I said I have to push record right now because we're talking about how the world has changed so much and I'd love for you to share a little about your journey from computer science into working at the Marriott and then you know the way that your career came together to now having this amazing agency and the work that you do. Thank you. Yeah, no it wasn't really the traditional linear path. I suppose a lot of people take you know going to college and choosing a major and that leading into a career path. You're at the time as I was going to college was I think like many people, young people, someone uncertain you know I wanted to go into something where I could find a career path immediately out of college and that was kind of my driving force behind and like what I chose to do with Vice Selected you know looking through the computer science major but once I graduated and I started to have to live I guess real life and adult life and whatnot. Getting into the job market I was fortunate enough to have opportunities but as soon as I started, as soon as I started in the kind of true career world and whatnot too I found that it really wasn't my car. It wasn't the fit for me largely had to do with you know I was the youngest of my professional peers in my office and the type of work I was doing just wasn't very challenging and it didn't really give any opportunity for creativity and that was you know 21 years old I had recently moved from Vermont, the small state of Vermont to the big state of California and this new city in San Diego and new environment the opportunity to meet new people and so I had one of those kind of life moments where you say I don't know that I want to do this anymore and you know like many people you know many college students you know the careers you choose typically are key opportunities so I worked in bars I worked in restaurants I managed both and so I was very familiar with that environment I was also familiar with the fact that many of the people in that environment are my age they're my demographic and so for me it was that kind of career path change where I was like I want to go somewhere where I can make friends you know meet people in my new city being environment that's fun and creative and collaborative and and get something you know in the start of my career that I was going to be you know enjoying and having fun with and so that was the kind of pivot mood but then as I you know time went on and you know my life changed my wife and I decided to get married we also decided to start a family and for as much fun as hospitality can be the hours are incredibly demanding you know nights weekends all of this a lot of those times where people normally have time off to spend with the family people in hospitality fortunately for us that you know aren't working in hospitality and can take advantage of that you know they are working and I an enormous amount appreciation for everybody that's in the hospitality industry I just want to say that could be clear but that was another moment in my life where we had to we decided that would be a change and I need to reconsider my career where I was going and so I happened to find my way via my neighbor into the digital marketing world and it was funny at the time she made the comment she's like well you study computers in college like digital marketing but you know all that now I was like not exactly the same thing but I appreciate it and if you believe that I could probably sell someone in the organization to make them believe that and I was not that misleading in my representation myself but it was something where I was like I'm you know I'm a tech and client and I'm enthusiastic I you know most of my life to live in an animal and a long world but I firmly embrace the digital world I'm excited for those opportunities and that began my journey within the digital marketing and advertising world and through that initial step went on and and started another agency with partners and then eventually took over I get another agency that I actually was able to go through successful M&A in 2019 right before the pandemic which was good and bad timing and the whole world of business transactions especially when you're working in an industry that's the line upon people spending money on advertising and marketing to have an event like that that affected the entire world was was a big deal but it was another moment and kind of a pivotal change in my life and the importance of perseverance and you know taking care of people and making sure that you have enough belief in the people that are around you within our organization and an agency that you can overcome this challenge and it was very fortunate to have overcome that challenge and came out relatively unscathed then was able to continue building in the subsequent years all the way through you know to where we are today and so it's been a really exciting journey I've been lucky that I've worked with amazing people along the way the culture in the industry is just so creative and forward thinking and progressive and it's just it's a really great environment for you know might myself as a young person to get involved with and work with like-minded people but also as I've matured in the industry to also continue to be learning and getting to new new platforms and new social media channels and now we have all these changes relative to privacy policy analytics that's that's shaking things up and it's just such a dynamic and ever evolving and changing industry that it's for someone who is passionate about learning and continuing to experience their things that's a great great place to be. Yeah well tell us about the name behind your organization how to choose the name and what are the areas of expertise that your team plays in when it comes to digital ecosystem absolutely so it actually goes back to be a much longer story if I told the full story but I'll just tell you the origin of the name and so a friend of mine and we were looking to start a business and he's actually Indonesian by birth and so the origin of the name was an Indonesian term we actually dated it back to actually a Sanskrit that's loosely you know says many solutions on a single thread and so the idea behind it was that we wanted to be an organization that helps people solve unique problems and that there wasn't necessarily a one-size-fits-all or you know a blueprint of everybody had to follow but then you'd help with their sales operations or they need help with their marketing or their digital strategy or their executive leadership or whatnot too we would be able to provide support to help them resolve those solutions whether it be from our team or through the network of partners that we had built over the years of very capable amazing people that could slot it to that and so our whole mantra has always been you know we're here to help you know and if you have challenges and sometimes you know your challenges are not as obvious you know we can help uncover those things but the intention is always to help find solutions in the creative way whenever possible we've really started you know looking at the types of brands and industries we work with and I've really started hearing ourselves toward really mission driven organizations and that's not always necessarily in the traditional sense of nonprofits and things that nature however they are but so much of the technology world has moved towards being very mission driven whether that be helping you know under service communities or finding better solutions that enable people to do things more effectively within finance within housing in real estate you know that's been a big thing is is to helpfully be a little bit more altruistic in our motivations and not always be focused on revenue by focused on making difference and hopefully you're affecting lives around the world for the better yeah amazing and we've had many conversations not unrecorded this is yeah so I'm really excited to have this conversation with you and have us recording it to talk about these areas I want to talk about something we were briefly touching on before we jumped on which is something that is really important to both of us which is AI Teregoji teaching people how to use AI whether from the University perspective or the business perspective in your own team so we talk about that framing for your team and then how does that work and correlate with what we need to make sure our students who are taking programs masters and digital media so digital social right what skill sets do they need to have in this new not really new just new words and everybody knows about it right AI ML so I but I think that's a really good point though too is while everybody knows about it I don't know that we at least from my experience in working with the kind of broad swath of individuals with the inside and outside of digital why not to everybody is aware but I don't know that everybody truly understands what it is and there's in AI and LLM and there's acronyms thrown around all the time and what not to and they can create some confusion but we're really helped to I guess encourage people is the concept of adoption it's just try it as an example and this is unrelated to my professional life but I had a small group of dads that we have a workout program that we do every Saturday morning and on a whim I use chat GPT to to draft up some logos and some t-shirts that we're going to need to make and whatnot too and I'd share them with the inner groups group chat and several people were like oh my god you did these all yourself and I was like I can't take any credit for it I'm like this was all done by AI and that sparked the conversation about well oh I didn't know what could do that and I think they're amized to that point like a lot of people are aware of it but they don't understand the function and how it can enable and that's the other part of it too that I'm trying to you know help my team and you know young people in my community to to recognize is that it's a tool that helps to enable things like it's never going to take over your creativity it's never going to take over the inside and the experience that you have just like any tool it's about how you use it and how you put in the inputs and how you tailor those things and so but that being said it is a means of which you can accelerate your workout course it's a means of which you can you can work through more complex things in a shorter amount of time and in particular for applications within the industry every young person I talk to in college and otherwise I'm giving them that advice definitely take the time to learn it many if not all the programs do have three options and so there's not a typically a cost for you to go and get up the basic program which at GPT or Claude or whatever it might be you know there are definitely the I guess that buyer be aware but the kind of cautionary tales that you have to also reinforce of like it's still learning you know it's still very young it's in its infancy and it's not always going to give you accurate outputs so you do need a human person you do need some of the fact check and spot check these things never take credit for as it being your own because it's not and making sure that again quickly learning about things I you know I equated to is like if you're traveling to a new city in the country and say you're going to roam you know Italy for the first time you probably would go to Google and maybe do some searches you know best places to eat in the room why wouldn't you do that with chat GPT right or could chat GPT also take into factors to consideration as to where you're staying the route the trip map or the route that you're taking to other places and that tool could actually potentially give you an itinerary that could help you find some of those spots to go to and so again it's it's it's just another tool in that arsenal of different things that you wanted to become familiar with in order to help read efficiency and then the other piece of advice I always give to is like talk about it with others I will learn more about adopting and kind of adapting to this AI world by talking with other people and then providing me use cases will I do it this way or I use this prompt or I always end my prompt and do you have any questions before I get started and learning those things has enabled me to become more efficient in utilizing those tools it's interesting in the academic side of things my oldest daughter is actually a freshman and they're just I should say she's no longer a freshman she just you completed her freshman year in college and it's been a big topic and was through their orientation all the way in each of the course syllabi about when and how is appropriate to use AI I know early on with the onset there was a lot of concern relative to plagiarism and copywriting and for the most part it seems like people have all learned their lesson or maybe done that before or not to but I also think it created a little bit of a fear in stigma and people saying well I don't want to touch that I don't want to get caught using it and I think that was a bit of a detractor because it is a tool of enablement it is helping you to the very simplest things you know get over that hour of writer's bark that you have like we're in a prompt and get some you know get some insight and have that guide you to getting going and cutting over that hump on that paper that you have to turn in or using it to to find citations from different articles that you can quickly and easily reference is there's practical applications of utilizing those tools with an academia that doesn't you know doesn't sway them into the the wrong or bad uses I guess if you will I'm taking advantage of it. Yeah well I mean one use case I have is in the class I just finished teaching which is DMM 510 and we talk about advertising analytic data analysis measurement and so the second week of class is martec how do you create a more stack so instead of having them just go through and hypothesize I said put this prompt into any LLM of your choice including martec bot which is a fun little thing to work with and ask for some different tools and how they would play you know based on your goals for your organization which ones would make the most sense and what and then create a little you know create a little chart and let me know if you think these were analyze it right was this correct is this what you would use or are there other tools and what other tools are you currently using in your business that maybe there's overlap between what the recommendations were you don't need all of them right to create a good text doc and so the critical thinking aspect me is so important 30% and you ask them you prompt that is there an iteration iterate iterate iterate like take the next step take the next step like don't be done and just say easy button check done iterate on that and force that challenge and whatnot too and you'll find that I hope they'll find that they'll get even more insight in going through the experience and asking it to challenge itself and themselves to get to a better solution well and as you mentioned they're the prompt engineering so they learn how to create better prompts to actually get the answer they want for the industry they want instead of just something generic exactly yep well and that's fascinating my good friend of mine is in the telecommunications industry and we were talking about that and that he did bring up just that point of the importance of iterating and don't assume that the single prompt because AI in its nature its first thing is to get you the answer as quickly as possible so it chromes all of the data searches for the matching terms that meet your query and quickly return them back to you which is great in the idea of efficiency right but it isn't necessarily the answer you really were looking for and and so it is about and where that critical thinking comes into play is okay wait that's not exactly what I was asking like is that because the AI didn't understand me is it because maybe I misunderstood it but I think that's a point where and I think this is important you know especially for people that are learning to that like then don't just stop don't just assume like oh well it didn't work you know there there's got to be that iteration and that's where I think a lot of that you know the concern where you know people say that AI is the death of critical or creative thinking I'm like I don't think that's at all the cases I bet I think it should prompt you to think what's next and maybe I should ask it a different way maybe it'll give me a different result okay now that I know that like let me ask those things again and so it's back to those things I think that knowledge sharing aspect of it and that can like you know here's what works for me like what works for you has made such a difference I think and you know at least in my interactions with my team my peers and just becoming more and I get excited about so I get a new tip I'm like oh gosh I got to go home and try that and you know see what that does for me I think yeah well and to your point as well knowing which LLMs are better for which areas that you're exploring right absolutely that complexity because it has more up to the information and maybe has a little bit for better research is it flawed which I say and many people say it's more human sounding open AI has really great the everyone every single one has different things about it and also I have the experience of when Google Cloud services went down and I could not access my cloud and I was about to a big meeting I just done a whole bunch of prep work and I hadn't copy it over yet so that I was like oh my gosh I have to recreate this let me remember exactly how I prompted go into my because I do have backup projects in open AI so I was like all right you know but it makes to really think about the value of information and we can't lose our critical thinking we'll be able to know the information you can't just you know rely on the outputs 100% yeah I had a very similar experience doing that output and I was like everything's gone and again you have that moment of like I was so dependent or so relying upon this piece of technology you know having this storage be there and whatnot too that in the absence of it or do I go into panic or do I say okay take a step back you know I again I'm gonna make myself sound old I graduated four years before you by the way so there won't say it again but I always make the job of you know with my with my daughters when it comes to directions and I was like we didn't have smartphones like Emily and we barely had map quests and they look at me when I say map quests why would what's map quest I'm like we literally went online and printed out step-by-step instructions which how more people didn't get car accidents flipping through pages of map quest direction still boggles my mind but again that you know being so reliant on digital is actually I think a detriment you know that you become so used to I can just put the address into my Apple Maps or Google Maps and it'll give me literally it'll hold my hand until I arrive at the front door of our room going to but what if you forgot your phone or you know what if your service goes out like what do you do and so do you have the ability to then quickly say okay like I can figure this out you know and whether that be for directions or whether that be for whatever it might be like you you should have that you know that ability to critically think how am I gonna get myself out of that situation yeah well I wanted to ask you about something when it comes to your business and you argue that there's a growing demand for talent still in digital marketing data analytics e-commerce when so much of what we hear is oh no those are the jobs that can be taken over with artificial intelligence and machine learning so I'd love to just bring on because this is a this is good news for units 100% well and I do think particularly in the digital marketing in the in the agency industry it is still and well I'd still be further very foreseeable future and beyond that a very people-forward industry like the IP and most agencies is it's people you know it's how they represent them the brand you know their knowledge and experience working a light side of business that actually provides I mean and I always tell my team I'm like you just an extension of that marketing team just because you know your LinkedIn says you work for Guna and you know you know your client is Ripcoe doesn't mean anything other than you're just an extension of that marketing team and part of that team and but I do think it's important to recognize the fact that yes AI is going to start and has in some instances help to facilitate the production of some of these things especially data and analytics and insights but the ability to communicate the story yes of what that data means and the why and then well what's next it's not there yet and I don't necessarily foresee that happening anytime soon that it replaces that person who is you know creative can be critical in their thinking you know is has that ability in that presence to say directly to the C-suite or the CMO or their director marketing like you know this is what the data is showing us we ran it through our different you know AI sets or a date scraping the filtering here's the outputs here's what it means and here's what we're going to do about it that human element is not going to be replaced any time soon and we're still at a stage right now at the early part of AI where there's there's still that back checking like you have to double check and you can't just assume it is for what it is and we've had that I mean that's been an issue and then data fidelity has been an issue as long as the internet's been around and what's your source of truth and how accurate is that and I think that's another factor as well too is that there's so much of the configuration of analytics in order to effectively properly track data there are typically two-point in regards to what is your tech stack possibly three to five to ten plus different sources of data that may all also be buying for the same single source of truth and in value and so taking all those things into consideration that again I have not seen any technology that's going to then replace that human being you can say okay like I see the outputs and it's great that it helped produce a more consolidated picture of what happened but like let me kind of pull these you know let me pull these threads and see again how valid are these different things and you know it's giving credit to TV where we're also sharing credit with meta and well but the end of the day Shopify is something something different like understanding that combination of the tech stack data and analytics sources the fidelity to the data and then having those outputs of a report still needs to have someone that could function critically in reviewing that information yeah fantastic I love your answer and I love the fact that there is there's still a need but I would also say if you have that AI advantage you're going to be placed in a better position to win and get that role so I also want to talk about remote work because you went through an M&A right before the pandemic and right before we all realized how nice it is to have a normal so talk about that how has it impacted the industry you know are you a remote first company or you hybrid what's your philosophy and why do you think that other organizations should also look towards your strategy absolutely yeah so so we are we are remote first but we do offer a hybrid solution so we do have a joint office that is available for the team to take advantage in its in a co-working space which I think is great because co-working also has all the extra amenities that go along with you know most co-working spaces and it was interesting because having gone through you know the onset of the pandemic everybody go home and experiencing what that was like for so many people who we were entirely in an office and I have I've only been in office for the majority of my professional career up until the pandemic so and if anybody had asked me in even in 2019 would I ever want to move towards a hybrid or a remote scenario I would say I'm not opposed to it because I respect you know people having work-life balance and I understand like you know my commute is 30 minutes if someone's commute is 90 minutes like and they don't want to come in a few days a week because they don't want to spend about three hours in the car I told the respect that you know and the end of the day having that type of open you know kind of culture also gave the respect of like get your work done in the time that you know you need to do it like in if that's from eight to four great if that's from end to six that's fine too like at the end of the day we just got to make sure we you know are accountable to ourselves accountable to one another and getting those things done but anyway and so the hardest part I think was so many people were accustomed to going to work every day that all of a sudden this this new thing happened in remote and there's obviously a lot of fear and anxiety just on a global scale beyond you know what I'm working for is no more not that it was just a very difficult time in our culture for a lot of people I mean the agency world itself typically tends to skew a bit younger typically younger and single which was I think hard for a lot of my team that didn't necessarily have a family unit or remains or someone else that you know they were all by themselves but they missed that socialization and so as we came back into things and obviously a lot of the you know social distancing was still in place but socializing was becoming more common and you go back to work and things of that nature we kind of open it up and didn't really make a hard and fast rule like hey we're going to open the office again no one is obligated to go in so you don't have to if you don't want to but it's open and it was you know we have key card access and things of that nature so it wasn't you know we didn't have to worry about other personnel being in there and stuff like that so I would say we had people go in a handful of people go in like every couple weeks or so and ran went on for a while and then we moved to and so we're the kind of cool things that I think was a great opportunity and why a hybrid and/or remote model is great in this industry is that our recruiting capabilities expanded drastically and all of a sudden we had team members outside of Southern California that were in Idaho where we're in Texas that were in Oregon and why not too and so we had the opportunity to work with these people that we wouldn't have been even on our radar prior to this that now were people that we could potentially work with how rad is that where we get to meet new people and different walks of life from different experiences that are now being able to work and collaborate that so that was I think probably the coolest thing and then kind of fast forward we're saying like we kept doing the kind of polls of like who wants to go back in and then I was like yeah I will go back in okay who wants to go in once a week every other week and it was funny because you know we said okay fine that's cool like we'll set up this cool working space like it's open and so available like you're welcome to come in if we have clients or we have to host someone we haven't available to us but don't feel any obligation and so for our team that kind of whether that with us that was great kind of going back over the last I would say year and a half as we've gone and started building back more of our interim programs and speaking at more of the local universities and things of that nature every young person every student you know without fail the question that they will ask is are you in person or are you hybrid or are you completely removed and it's not a loaded question they're not a rhetorical question they just want to know but I would say the vast majority of the young people in particularly the students that are starting their careers are wanting to be and at a minimum a hybrid and at the time because I would have these kind of open conversations about it I was like I mean I'm like yeah it's cool but like you don't have to commute and like you have a lot more flexibility in your day and if you want to throw a little laundry and you can and you can still get back to work but without failure it was like well what about like the socialization aspect what about like having an opportunity to sit down yeah 100% and I sadly realized that after the fact after multiple conversations that all of these people haven't may have never been in a in-office environment yeah at all and so where I took it for granted and kind of thought oh gosh I'm quite enough to work can you you know an hour and a half of my day that I get back in my life and flexibility is nice and I can kind of go in the office when it's convenient for me and stuff like that I don't know that I would genuinely want that if I was you know in my you know late teens early 20s thinking about my career path because so much of what my experience was getting out of this industry was being in that environment was being in an office and you know being able to go over to someone's desk in my brainstorm and my can I got this like creative idea what do you think and what not to and so I do see a lot of value as you know for our organization and for other agencies to have at a minimum you know that option of having a hybrid or or some you know in person days because especially in kind of the learning and the experiential and the socialization aspects all the kind of cool things that help create that you know that people value that you know I mentioned earlier about you know what makes you know agency survive as the people like it's kind of a big deal yeah yeah it's something we talk about at the university level often some people hate some professors hate teaching online they want a class of experience I actually have found that virtual teaching I have great relations with my students many of them come back and ask me for advice or they ask me you know for advice guidance referrals recommendations it's so many different things and so I feel like there is a way to do it but you have to be in that mindset but then I also do value I had a friend in town from Houston last night and she's a friend and I work with her on a number of different things for one of her businesses PR and strategy and it was so great to be in the same room because we have them in the same room for over six years right every all the work we've done together has been remote but to be able to sit there across from the table and brainstorm over dinner there was nothing like it right yep so there's there's there's a happy medium somewhere in there absolutely pretty good work yeah and yeah I think again choice right and when you have choice I mean that's a powerful thing you know and I think that's what I would say at a very minimum you know like that our organization like wants to be able to achieve to have that choice and not necessarily be stuck one way or the other and I think that's kind of the biggest takeaway at least Carla think and where we are just in all industries is I think people tend to tend to lean more well I love the idea and I love being in person I live you know sitting across from you and you know doing those sessions and planning things out or I'd like to have you have the choice that if I'm just not feeling like today's my day where I want to I just want to put my headphones in and my head down and do work like to be able to do that and I think that's you know I think that's a great part of what helps breed a healthy culture is making sure that people have choice yeah yeah hundred percent so Jason what is that last piece of advice that you would leave our students with today about you know what it means to be globally minded and to you know aspire to lead people and whatnot and I've been I've been fortunate that both of our daughters at the elementary school level went into the international baccalaureate program and one of the guiding principles is this kind of global thinking of being thinking about you are global citizen not just an American or Canadian whatever whatever it like you're a global citizen and I think that's kind of where we lost a lot of sight and particularly where technology and the internet and communication telecom like we are our global society and the things that we do and have represented ourselves and be vulnerable and being positive and learn from other people like the very fortunate experience of being introduced to a gentleman who was a former Navy CEO he's actually now paffing and looking to start his own consultmanship and he was talking about his experience of going through the Stanford executive leadership program of which Harvard has one word and there's several of them and he reinforced the value of being present in part of a global community and meeting people from all walks of life and all over the world and so my advice is to being positive think globally want to learn from others and because there's so much I think that we we don't get a chance to experience by only focusing on our small bubble that if we open up our that aperture a bit further and get to see more in this world that will live way more enriched and and and help your lives and so yeah and if you can find the means to do it travel like if you can find them because I think that's a great way to get those experiences not everybody can do and I get it but if that's just traveling you know from California Arizona Arizona's a little different than California get to learn get there by car fantastic and that's such a great thing to leave us with because the students in this program are from all over the world so so it plays really well and I think that's something that we really try to bring to the classroom so I teed it up perfectly huge the important and that's again I think where there's such a great opportunity is to reinforce that and then hopefully enable young people to continue advocate that ensure that with others because again regardless of where you get your news or information or media and all that thing but there's a lot of really wild things going on and I think that again too many people have near their aperture way too tight and forget that there's all of these beautiful things and amazing things that are around them and so you know to have that opportunity and especially in an environment like yours like it's a blessing and you know I would tell them to tell anybody that they can keep doing that fantastic of course we're gonna link to your LinkedIn and to the Guno website last question do you have internships or opportunities available if any of my students want to reach out to you I don't currently but I would please encourage them to reach out like if they have interest like as I mentioned before you know many solutions on a single thread I have a number of great friends and colleagues in agency world in the SaaS industry that if they have an interest in getting into media and a methodology company is like I am more than happy to make introductions and invite people to take advantage of my network and anywhere they can it's something I take great joy in doing so please feel free to connect you know let me know what you're interested in and I will do my best to help fantastic thank you so much this has been a delightful conversation as always always and I can't appreciate you thank you so much for having and taking the time with me today it's so much fun I always have fucked you down so that's not surprising and thank you to everybody who's watching this episode or listening to it on your favorite platform this is media scape insights from digital changemakers I'm your co-host Onika Jackson and we'll be back again with another amazing guest to share their story their journey and some insights for you to make your career path a little smither to learn more about the master of science and digital media management program this is us on the web at dmm.usc.edu