The Human Side of AI Branding  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: The Human Side of AI Branding - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/f139f582-6de3-4757-9cca-5bc68b9bab6f ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **AI Multiplies Behavior, Not Morality** - AI acts as a force multiplier that amplifies both good and bad brand behavior. - Mark Kingsley urges using AI to deepen human connections rather than just optimize metrics. Transcript: Mark Kingsley Does it change the rules or does it put more pressure on people's behavior? It puts more pressure on what I would, you know, my ethically, I would call like better behavior. Because AI does multiply. It's a force multiplier for the ability to extract more attention and to extract more profit from brands and transactions, to extract more attention, etc. But I see it also as an opportunity to, in the book, I speak about connecting with the I-thou connection, me-I, you-thou, and seeing each other with open eyes, seeing the other person As a person, not as a target, as a member of an audience or a potential transaction. And AI does offer these opportunities. It just comes down to what is the choice that people are going to make. John Jantsch Well, say a little more about that, because, I mean, you're talking about it as a force to actually humanize some marketing. And there certainly are people that are saying just suggesting just the opposite. It's turning marketing into a more robotic exercise. Mark Kingsley Yeah, well, it's very easy. In the beginning of the book, I talk about the way in which I'm approaching it. And I do it differently than most other people that speak about AI. If you go to LinkedIn, there were volumes and volumes of gibberish every day about the best prompts and how this company is going to market cap, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. That's what I call calculative thinking. And that's basically like figuring out how am I going to get from here to there. It's logistics, right? And I'm proposing that we also enter, it's also an opportunity for us to enter into what I call a more contemplative or meditative thinking, which is I am going to consider the way that AI is going to impact my relationship and our relationship to each other, to time, to history, to society, to knowledge, all of that. And so this is, it's more of an inflection point. ([Time 0:01:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/11385506-2843-4425-ae14-e06bfcc7e535)) - **Balance Calculative And Contemplative Thought** - Calculative thinking optimizes logistics while contemplative thinking considers societal and relational impacts. - Kingsley recommends balancing efficiency with reflection about AI's effect on people and society. Transcript: Mark Kingsley More robotic exercise. Yeah, well, it's very easy. In the beginning of the book, I talk about the way in which I'm approaching it. And I do it differently than most other people that speak about AI. If you go to LinkedIn, there were volumes and volumes of gibberish every day about the best prompts and how this company is going to market cap, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. That's what I call calculative thinking. And that's basically like figuring out how am I going to get from here to there. It's logistics, right? And I'm proposing that we also enter, it's also an opportunity for us to enter into what I call a more contemplative or meditative thinking, which is I am going to consider the way that AI is going to impact my relationship and our relationship to each other, to time, to history, to society, to knowledge, all of that. And so this is, it's more of an inflection point. It's very easy. We are rewarded for good calculative thinking. ([Time 0:02:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb0cad07-b4cc-45a0-9997-ea74f4a8008b)) - **Technology Reframes Relationships** - Technology reframes our relationship to things without being inherently good or bad. - Kingsley cites examples where gains in convenience create new externalities and trade-offs. Transcript: John Jantsch So what role does AI play in enhancing trust as opposed to eroding it? You know, you hear people saying all the time now, one of the negatives about AI is I don't know what to trust because am I seeing something that's real or not? So I think there's going to be this swing both ways to like not trusting. And then how do we get back to humanizing the emotional connection? This is humanity's relationship to technology in general, regardless of whether it's AI or it could be computers. It could be automobiles. Mark Kingsley I was just going to say that. Exactly. Right. So we all rush to new technological innovations and advancements, and we see the benefits that it's going to bring us. But technology does technology is never positive or negative. It's kind of like a neutral thing. What technology does, and this is an idea that comes out of Heidegger, is that it reframes our relationship to things. For example, the technology of taking sawdust, mixing it with glue, and coming up with medium-density fiberboard, right, that gives us Billy bookcases. And it's amazing that we can kind of use this material that was once considered to be detritus. We can now use it for an actual building material and make money with this. Right. What that does is that there are forests in Romania that have been decimated just to build billy bookcases, just to make sawdust for the billy bookcases. So that's what I mean about the, you know, the constant reframing that technology does in our society. ([Time 0:05:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/18206a44-fae9-4490-ac42-578bfcca7bb1)) - **Don't Chase Algorithms Alone** - Avoid chasing algorithms as your only strategy because that makes you replaceable by AI. - Focus on human judgment and unique insight to remain valuable as a marketer. Transcript: John Jantsch One of the things that I hear a lot of people talking about is sometimes marketers are just responding to what the algorithms give them, right? You have to do X, Y, and Z if people, if you're going to show up in AI overviews. And so you see a lot of people just chasing the algorithms that really truthfully are making decisions in some cases for our customers. So how do you kind of fight that no, let's be human to no, let's chase algorithms? Mark Kingsley If that's all you're going to do as a marketing person is chase algorithms, you are replaceable. You are replaceable by AI. And so it's it's short sighted to even think that way. I mean, in the book I describe and it's a constant example that people use if you look at lawyers. Right. And the education and training of a lawyer is you because you go through law school and then you become a junior partner and you sit there all night long going through paper and going through Cases, reading cases and looking for ways in to a case or some sort of insight. That is you learning how to be a lawyer, right? But we can now offshore that work to AI and have AI go through and do this analysis. But what we're doing is we are basically robbing the future. We are robbing new generations of lawyers. ([Time 0:06:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c72ea350-7f89-44cb-89a4-ed79a714e78f)) - **Bar Moment That Shows Being Seen** - Kingsley recounts a Chelsea bar where the bartender knew his wine and served it as he sat. - That experience illustrated the power of brands making people feel seen and recognized. Transcript: Mark Kingsley First off, we have to identify what storytelling is, right? And so I would, at think, I think I potentially may take cause with how you're identifying storytelling. Okay. Because a lot of storytelling is basically, at least within the brand world, like the whole idea of the customer journey. A lot of that isn't necessarily storytelling, but it's events. It's a, it's a repetition and it's a chronicling of events that happen. This, I look at storytelling as some sort of, requires some sort of aha moment, a moment of transportation, transcendence, transformation, and then, oh, I see the potential here, Right? And so my favorite example, and this all comes down to like, how do I create a sense of being seen, of that I-thou relationship, right? So an example that I give when I give talks is I talk about one of my favorite bars in Chelsea called Chiquito. And I used to walk in and the person behind the bar, she would look at me and she'd go, you know, she'd open her hands about, you know, like a bottle length and I'd nod. And then as soon as I sat down, there was a bottle of the Baronia Reserva ready to go, right? She knew my wine and that's how I ordered it, right? She knew me. I knew her. We had a little secret link. We didn't sit down. I didn't meet her after work and go, hey, when I walk in, you need to know. It just happens naturally because we saw each other. And so to take that kind of notion of, oh, you're seeing my another example that I use in the book is talking about going to JFK in a long term parking lot. So you can make reservations at JFK. You kind of have to do long term parking. And there are a couple of parking lots there where, you know, you type in your license plate. That's how you do your reservation like any other place. And the first time I showed up at this one parking lot, there was no one there. There was no booth. And I was like, I was ready to get really angry very quickly. You know, I'm a New Yorker, right? I'm ready to get angry. So, but I pull up just a little bit closer and the gate opens. It's because there was a tiny little camera that saw me and my license plate and put it together and said, oh, here's Mark. And that was that moment of transformation where I'm like, oh, I felt I instantly went from feeling ready to fight to welcome. Come on in. You're here. ([Time 0:09:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ae015194-8adc-4c8d-bd34-60fa4b9c3013)) - **Parking Gate That Turned Anger Into Welcome** - Kingsley describes a parking-lot camera that read his plate and opened the gate, transforming anger into welcome. - He uses this to show frictionless AI experiences can create emotional storytelling moments. Transcript: Mark Kingsley So you can make reservations at JFK. You kind of have to do long term parking. And there are a couple of parking lots there where, you know, you type in your license plate. That's how you do your reservation like any other place. And the first time I showed up at this one parking lot, there was no one there. There was no booth. And I was like, I was ready to get really angry very quickly. You know, I'm a New Yorker, right? I'm ready to get angry. So, but I pull up just a little bit closer and the gate opens. It's because there was a tiny little camera that saw me and my license plate and put it together and said, oh, here's Mark. And that was that moment of transformation where I'm like, oh, I felt I instantly went from feeling ready to fight to welcome. Come on in. You're here. We get it. In you go. And, you know, these kind of innovations are slowly happening in airports, right? We're going to get to a point where I don't need to do bag drop-off, right? Because AI has been watching my gate. Our bio kind of information, biometric information is already out there in the world. I mean, I go to other countries and it scans my face and it recognizes me. My face is already there in that country, even though I haven't been there since the introduction of AI. So it's already out. So I'm going to walk into an airport that will recognize me by my gate, by my face, and it'll recognize my bag. And I'll do all that stuff. I just put the bag on the thing, off I go, and then it'll track it for me. I already get, when I check my bags, I already get text messages from various airlines going, oh, the bag's on the plane, the bag's off the plane, the bag's coming to you. So this is all part of that push to a sense of subjectivity, I guess, or a sense of I don't need. And part of that is removing all the friction, removing all the bumps along the way where I don't have to worry about, oh, geez, I'm going to have to stand in this line. Oh, here's the check in line. Oh, my God, it's 15 people long. I'm just going to walk from taxi to gate relatively soon. Right. And so that for me is that's a transformation. ([Time 0:10:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5d37de41-da2b-427a-baec-b7feaf6482d6)) - **Brand OS Needs Integrated Databases** - A Brand Operating System could automate repetitive strategy and integrate databases to remove friction. - Kingsley warns current siloed systems (like licensed stores) break the seamless brand experience. Transcript: Mark Kingsley It's there's an idea. And this comes from a friend of mine, Ali Madad, who has like a strategy firm that he's beginning these experiments with like ideas of what he calls it like a brand operating system. And there is potentially a way to kind of automate the donkey work. It's the donkey work of strategy, right? Can I set up my criteria and my parameters and set off a system to do the automatic customer segmentation, to do the automatic logistics, the automatic ordering supply chain. All that stuff can potentially come together if we get to that point where we properly integrate databases. But that's, you know, the integration of databases is a problem right now. You know, that's, for example, Starbucks. Starbucks is in the middle of closing locations all around the world right now. They've closed like 900, no, they've laid off 900 employees and closed like a couple hundred locations in the United States in the last couple of weeks. What's happening is that I'm seeing more and more licensed Starbucks opening up, you know, in the Barnes& Noble bookstore or in a hotel, that kind of stuff, right? So that's not really Starbucks. They call themselves Starbucks, but they don't act like Starbucks, right? So what that means is that I have my app and I can go order a coffee 10 minutes out and show up and then the coffee's waiting for me. I can't do that anymore because the databases aren't connected, right? And so Starbucks has gone for the efficiency and the profit, but not necessarily the customer experience. John Jantsch Yeah. I mean, you see that. I hate to pick on airports, but particularly in the airport ones. I mean, those are concessionaires. And that employee may have been working at Chick-fil you know, two days ago, and now they're at Starbucks. And I mean, so you don't get the same. You also don't get the same vibe as well as the database issue. Yeah. Mark Kingsley So the idea of a brand OS, an operating system with AI. So those licensed Starbucks, if they need like stirrers or like coffee lids or something like that, they can't call up another Starbucks a couple of miles down the road and go, Hey, can You loan us some until the shipment comes in? They have to go through the home company that owns a license, and then it'll take a month for the material to get there. And it also comes down to training. So I can't go to another Starbucks and train there. I have to train within my own little group. ([Time 0:14:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/89ce3f9a-70c7-4eea-9d7c-efdbfed41441)) - **Language Limits Agentic AI** - Agentic AI faces linguistic limits because tokenization never perfectly matches human meaning. - Kingsley highlights open semiosis as a fundamental challenge to reliable AI outputs. Transcript: Mark Kingsley Well, there's also, and then on top of it, there's a purely a linguistic and epistemological issue there, right? Because if I am going to use agentic AI, anything that I type in is symbolized. It's called tokenization, right? So like words and sentences and like syllables will be put into a token, like given a numeric value. And then that numeric value is put into the AI. The AI then predicts what's going to happen next. If I get this kind of input and will give me some sort of of predictive output, right? So it's like a game of, it's like a very fancy game of computer telephone. You know, like when I think of tree, I may be thinking of an elm. And when you, when I, you hear me say the word tree, you're thinking of a pine tree, right? And so this is in semiotics, it's called an open semiosis. It's like it never really quite matches the original idea. And this is going to be part of that problem of agentic AI is how are we actually going to know with any degree of confidence? Right. So it's this is part of the complexities that are before us. ([Time 0:17:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6ba14a4f-8645-4420-8282-e94d3f5ce7c9)) - **Use AI To Level Up, Not Erode Value** - Small agencies should use AI to level up capabilities instead of only cutting fees or headcount. - Pair AI with insight and creativity to offer higher-value services, not just faster delivery. Transcript: Mark Kingsley And let's think through this thing together, shall we? Okay. So if I was a branding agency, you know, like one of the larger branding agencies, and I sent an invoice for kind of strategic work. You know, for work that had been done that had been delivered and approved by the client. The client has every right to go, wait a second, why are you paying, you know, charging me this much? Because I knew you used AI and you didn't have as many people. Right. So there's going to be a certain kind of arbitrage that happens within organizations. Now, if I was a smaller, more mobile agency or client or whatever, that that's where the opportunity is. Right. It helps. I think it may help you kind of level up to the behavioral capacity of a larger firm. Yeah. I mean, and quite honestly, the truth of the matter is, you know, so my experience is in agencies and brand firms and design firms, et cetera. So the truth of the matter is that most branding teams, regardless of the size of the company, are five people at the most. Right. You have a client person, you have strategy, a couple of designers, a creative director and like a kind of an executive director of the thing. That's five people at the most. And that's basically what I had when I was at Lander working on Citi. And we were the global brand team, you know, working with the global brand team at Citi. We were the global brand team at Lander. We were just five people. And we'd bring in people extra here and there, right? ([Time 0:19:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e177d5a4-7cfe-4aa6-9742-ac5d5193860f)) - **Productivity Gains Risk Value Erosion** - Delivering more output for the same price risks long-term value erosion and wage stagnation. - Kingsley calls for societal reckoning about how productivity gains translate to value and pay. Transcript: Mark Kingsley Yeah, but I see the problem in that though, right? Because what you're doing is you're eroding value. You're eroding what you can potentially charge. And so there does need to be a certain kind of larger societal reckoning about value, right? Because employee productivity has grown over the last 50 years, you know, because of information technology, communications technology, you name it, right? Our productivity is through the roof, but wages have remained the same, right? ([Time 0:21:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/29fe1a6a-f2ee-4637-b4e3-ee1f71a9b0fe))