Episode 261 / Phil Clark / Canada Goose / Senior Director, Digital Marketing & Media
Gen AI & Human Talent: The Data Driven Marketing Balancing Act
Phil Clark has an eclectic career background, having started in the music industry, learning how to manage artists, egos, and album launches. His learnings from there into data driven marketing drive home the importance of relationships and human talent.
Whether in music or marketing campaigns, there is no replacing the human touch. Building strong relationships makes you better at your job and more fulfilled, says the Canada Goose Senior Director, Digital Marketing & Media. Human talent is also the real difference maker when we use generative AI.
But there is a twist: according to Phil, marketers need to start incorporating AI earlier in the process to secure important efficiencies and help them uncover insights that inform successful campaigns.
Find out more in the full podcast episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Phil Clark 0:00
We would suffer as brands, and we would suffer as audiences and as end users of this technology if we just hand over control.
Speaker 1 0:14
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Tom Ollerton 0:37
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform, and this is a podcast about the future of data driven marketing. Every week or so I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing one of our leaders, one of the industry's leaders, I should say, about their vision for the future of this industry, and this week is no different. I'm on a call with Phil Clark, who is senior director digital marketing and media at Canada Goose. Hi, Phil, thanks for joining. Could you give anyone who doesn't know who you are a bit of a background on what you do and how we got here?
Phil Clark 1:17
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Tom, so yeah, work at Canada Goose, and have been here in my current position for two and a half years. Started in a completely different industry. So when I was studying and went to uni, the focus was music. It was always going to be music. At first of all, I was just, you know, going to be a rock star. Clearly, that one didn't pan out. So I wanted to get into studio production and engineering and then computer production, that then turned into an infatuation with artist management. So ended my studies with that and managed DJs and producers and some songwriters for about six years, which was intense. It was a roller coaster. I learned a lot and suffered a bit as well. And then at the end of all of that, decided it was time for a step change, something else that I might be able to really get my teeth into and excel. And at the time, when I saw media, my initial thought was just media. Music doesn't sound too different. I'll, you know, I'll dip my toe, got into that went to reprise media. They were called at the time, now called now part of knesso worked in client services, starting in performance, and then that evolved into more of a digital role, as I noticed that brands were many brands were completely disconnected in their brand marketing and performance marketing, so it took on more of a digital world to help brands navigate those worlds and that connection. And then Canada Goose were my client for a number of years, and a position became available there, and I took the leap. And it's a lot of lessons learned coming client side as well, but it's been, it's been great so far. So yeah, that's what's got me here.
Tom Ollerton 3:11
Curious to know, just sort of going back into music a little bit. What did you learn about managing artists, egos, timetables, pressures, creative output. What did you learn from that that you find yourself applying to working with colleagues and partners?
Phil Clark 3:27
It was, you know, I say to people often when, you know, I regale stories from tours and festivals and and anything else that, and they think it's completely different worlds. And I say actually the day to day not so different. You know, helping somebody by managing their their tour or their album release is not too dissimilar from helping a client manage their digital marketing campaigns. It really isn't. And you get really difficult artists, and you get really amazing artists that have become friends for life. And it's exactly the same with clients. When you're working with brands, you know you're there to enable them to get the best out of themselves and what they offer. And I learned, you know, I didn't actually know it at the time when I was in music, just how much I was learning about what I think is the number one attribute for someone for a good client services team, which is empathy and really putting yourselves in the shoes of another person, an artist, a creative or a brand, or a digital director at A brand, or a marketing director at a brand, and understanding what does this person need to achieve and what, what is the best attribute that this person has, that I can amplify? Now, I was doing that for years, and I came into quite a junior role in a digital media agency, and learn fairly quickly that I had that skill. Know, and grew through the agency world because of it.
Tom Ollerton 5:03
I think I'm always trying to work out what was the benefit of me doing music for as long as I did, I was equally unsuccessful, but I had some interesting experiences. This not too dissimilar to the ones that you mentioned. But I think the big thing that took me is like, I don't know if it was the same for the artists that you worked with, or when you're an artist yourself, is that the amount of detail and energy that went into tiny, tiny things in music, right? Okay, so well, is that? Is that guitar line going to go from that note to that note, or actually that was ever so slightly too quick, versus the decisions that can get made in advertising about millions and millions of pounds, like, oh yeah, that's fine, yeah, just whack that in there. Do you know what I mean? That was the thing that really struck me when I moved from music, it was just like, wow, you're just gonna that's just gonna go, that's fine. Really. You thought about that for 10 minutes. I don't know if that would be the same with same with you.
Phil Clark 5:55
100%, you reminded me of a story, actually. But I used to say to people when I came over from music to media, it was like, you know, you talk about having a piece of the pie, and in music, the pie is very small, and there's a lot of very aggressive people around it with big forks that are diving over your shoulder and pushing you out the way to get or whatever piece of the pie they can have. And then you come across to media and at the time, which is, I don't know, eight, nine years ago now, the pie is so big you can't see the other side, and everybody's just grabbing a bit with their spoon, sharing it. Do you want some pie? Come and have some pie. Let's all talk about the pie and share the pie together. It was, it was such a change in working environment. And there was a, there was a when I moved, when I first moved across, I carried on managing a band. They were called Strong Asian Mothers, actually, and they were incredible. But I carried on managing them. That was the only thing I was doing on the side whilst I was, you know, looking after a number of clients for Reprise media. And I remember the one week when we made a monumental mistake on one client. We ran some YouTube activity when it shouldn't have been running to the mistake was to the tune of 50,000 pounds. And, you know, hadn't been in the industry long, was my first big screw up agency side, really panicking. At the same time I had we were releasing a song with Strong Asian Mothers, and we had an exclusive with one of the PR websites, and I set the YouTube video live five minutes before this PR website posted the exclusive. I went to both bosses at the same time to explain what had happened. When I told the boss that I've set it live five minutes, fully exclusive. It was I got hair dryer treatment. It was like, How could like, I'd ruined the world for this band, for these artists. It was a complete nightmare. Really, went at me, put me in a bad place. Then I went to my current boss and said, we've made a 50 grand mistake on this client. And he just said, Oh, that's okay. You know, this shit happens. We'll, we'll work it out. We'll find a way to work it out and make the money back. It blew my mind. Blew my mind, and actually made me realize, do you know what? I'll probably be happier if I just get fully stuck into media and my growth there.
Tom Ollerton 8:31
I love the idea of the pie that's so big you can't see the other side. I will, uh, use that, right. Well, yeah, yeah, I think there's something in there. So since that move across from music in the media, what's been the best investment of your own time, your own energy, or your own money, in benefit, in your career, people?
Phil Clark 8:57
100% investing in people, investing in relationships, you know, and I speak to, you know, I love to mentor people and mentor my team and coach my team, but also people outside of my team and outside of my work. And when people ask me about how I've got to where I have in a relatively short space of time, I tell them, it's, it's relationships, it's investing my time in building valuable connections and relationships with people when I first got into the agency, you know, and made really good relationships with with bosses and senior leaders, and that will help you get promotions, but you also make really good relationships with clients and with media partnerships, and that has turned into jobs of the future, or really valuable relationships now, even people in very junior roles at the time are now in roles of Chief Strategy officers, Chief Digital Officers at different clients, at different agencies, and I've always found so much value in before I get into anything else in terms of work. And the value there is the value of relationship and building rapport and building relationships with people. It's never something that's gone badly for me. It's always something that's given value to me.
Tom Ollerton 10:11
So moving on to something more practical. Now, what is your best bit of data driven marketing advice? The thing that you find yourself sharing most often, maybe in those mentoring scenarios that you mentioned. But what is that bit of silver advice that you stand by?
Phil Clark 10:29
Yeah, I would say it is to stay humble and never be afraid to ask questions. There's very rarely, if ever, a single source of truth. You know, all data sources are built on historic or predictive models, and they're very clever, but they're not fact. And there will always be someone very smart with a differing opinion or approach or caveat that needs to be noted, and you'll do well from broadening the scope of data sources and also human sources that you're you're putting into your strategies or your responses.
Tom Ollerton 11:10
So that's really interesting to me. So you say that they're very clever, but they are not, fact, so I've been doing quite a lot of reading research around this topic at the minute, or trying to understand the relationship between data and creativity in more detail. But what do you mean by that, that you don't trust the data or the data is not the full story? Just unpack that a little bit.
Phil Clark 11:32
So definitely don't mean that I don't trust the data, and I am very much a data led person and a data led marketer, and we'll always respond, especially when it comes to creative to remind people to move away from the subjective and be led by the data. But we look at when we build data, when we pull data, we look at trends, we look at historical results, we look at predictive models. We look at historic models. There's, it's, it's the best amalgamation of information that you've that you've got. But the world is ever changing, and everybody is individual, every audience that you will market to is is different, and may fall close to trends, and may fall exactly within trends. But there's a broad scope of of end user, of whatever you're, you're, you're putting in front of them. So it, you know, data is our best guidance. You know, it's our best guide. But it, I don't believe we should mistake it as fact, and we should all there will always be nuance that we need to consider.
Tom Ollerton 12:43
So we're going to move on now to your shiny new object, which is end to end Gen AI. So I think a lot of people listening to this podcast will probably guess what that is. But can you be specific about what that is and why you've chosen it as your shiny new object?
Phil Clark 12:59
Yes, sure. I mean, Gen AI, we've been talking about it for ages, and as marketers, me, if I talk about me, I've been thinking about, how can I find efficiencies and benefits to Gen AI? And it's and the focus really has been on Well, targeting and creative development, creative optimization. But actually, the more discussions I'm having, the more I'm realizing that we can really take 10 steps back and use generative AI all the way from audience strategy, understanding who our audience is, where they are, how they feel, their anxieties, their passions, how we should consider these people, what sorts of things we should be saying to these people, and how we should be saying it, and where we should be saying it, the sort of creative and message and copy we should put into that all the way through to predictive modeling of what's going to work best, and then automization of our marketing and our creative and our messaging and our targeting to create a then a full loop of AI led marketing, essentially, and it has such a broad impact on a business, broader than I'd anticipated when I started having conversations about Gen AI, which is equally exciting and scary in part.
Tom Ollerton 14:27
And what's scary about it?
Phil Clark 14:29
I, you know, I think it's the cliches of losing control, you know, I worry. You know, I have challenging I'm probably a challenging client to Meta and to Google more than most, I will always push back against complete, a complete handover of control to optimization and machine learning, because I think it takes away the intention about our marketing. You know. When I sit with meta or Google and tell them how much I want to segment my audience, segment my targets, and I'm met with "that's not efficient. That's not the way we do things. That's not the future." But, you know, I'm very reluctant to believe that our future is a complete handing over of control. You know, we put so much work and energy into ensuring that we're speaking about our brand in the most appropriate way to then just hand over complete control to the bots in terms of who we speak to and how we speak to them. So the lack of control, I think, is scary. Then there's the you know this, the what the topic that most people are speaking about, which is just resource. You know, are people going to lose their lose their jobs? I truly think the brands and the businesses that will benefit the most from AI and new technology are the ones that use it to enhance their existing talent and resource, rather than replace it. But it is a fear, of course, as businesses strive to improve their bottom line.
Tom Ollerton 16:13
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And so where are you seeing Gen AI in this kind of end to end process as doing something more than an efficiency?
Phil Clark 16:59
The strategy the audience work. And you know the efficiency is in how much time and money goes into focus groups, goes into consumer research to start understanding who your personas are, if you with with Gen AI, and not only are you saving on that time, are you saving on that significant, often significant cost, but actually you're potentially getting more truthful answers from people because you're you don't have the anxieties and egos of a human not giving you a fully transparent answer. I had an interesting conversation recently where someone used the term that the art of the prompt, and actually in in that respect, in AI tool is only as good as the human who's prompting it. And I know now you have aI prompting AI, which is bonkers, but actually, with a real human, you can get to a really creative and deep place in terms of the information that you're that you're gathering. And there it goes beyond efficiency, but only, as I say, in my belief, with a human there and a prompter, you know, prompting is the is the future of talent in our industry, and in many industries, people that can get the best out of these tools. So I think when you get that right, and you get the mix of human and AI, then it can go far beyond efficiency.
Tom Ollerton 18:37
So how are you seeing the audience bit work. So, so let's just assume that you're right. The focus groups are expensive and biased and slow, which they can be. But then what data are you replacing that with? Like is the interaction with ads or like visual tracking models and that kind of thing. So what? What is replacing that gooey, human, soft analysis of what someone is saying in person with?
Phil Clark 19:08
I think it's just, it's how quickly you can get from, first of all, there's, there's the, you know, let's go deeper what you can really understanding people's real passions and some real anxieties, and going deep into that and what, and getting specific about your brand, you know, when someone tells you that, yeah, they're a huge fan of your brand, and they would definitely buy your products, they really fit with that persona. Actually, let's get down to but What? What? What stops you? What are the real anxieties? What are the things you're afraid to say that actually we would need to work around as a brand to really bring you in as a customer. I think you can get a level deeper there. That's, that's, that's kind of what I'm saying, what I've been saying. But then there's the then there's linking that to, okay, what are the key messages that we that will resonate with these people, and that can take a lot of time. A lot of smart thinking to get to where you know this technology can get from. Okay, here's the information that we have from our consumers, be it real life consumers or AI driven and then these are the messages that will resonate with them, and either from a brand association point of view or from a conversion point of view. And then go a step further into using predictive modeling. These are the ones that you should be running. And then that's just messaging. Is all things copy, all things creative generate the creative, which is, every time I see it, and I've seen it a few times now, it completely blows my mind, the images that can be generated now from from nothing, but yeah, that, that full process of, okay, this is who the consumer is. These are their these are their pain points. These are anxieties. These are their passions. Through to these are the messages that resonate. Put this creative with it. This is what's going to land best to those audiences and optimize it in real time, is unlocking such a powerhouse if it's done in the right way.
Tom Ollerton 21:08
So my anxiety with that is that all of that stuff's pretty affordable, right? I mean, even chatgpt, four, zero, whatever it's called, is 2030, $40 a month. And if something's going to be truly automated, it needs to be able to be automated at scale and at a fairly low cost. Otherwise the business model support in that business probably will fall over, right? So it's cheap, it's easy to use, it's right, it's good, it's quick. Therefore the problem with that is, is then that becomes available to every brand over a certain size, like your mom and pop shop down the road, obviously not but to your, you know, your CanadaGoooses, and your whoever your competitors are, but then, yeah, in adjacent verticals and so on, like all of it that, my worry Is that all of this stuff is, it's relatively cheap and relatively easy to access, so therefore everyone can do it. So it's not actually a competitive advantage, it's a disadvantage not to do it. So and what something you said before, quite get the coat, but there's this part of you. I mean, especially what you said before, about like, networking that this, you know, it's the human relationships, it's the humans doing things of craft that really matter, that really cut through. And my concern is that I think the industry's getting a bit fixated with going a tool, a tool, a tool, whereas our job as marketers is to be, as you say, empathetic about the person on the other side of the gap of the ad. And if you, as you say, if you're outsourcing that to a meta or a Google, and they're just like cranking through all the variants, what we lose is the humanity. What we lose is the empathy. And as soon as you strip those things away, what does that do to creativity? So I'm curious to keep your thoughts on that ramble.
Phil Clark 22:57
No 100% agree with you, and this is my point about, well, a couple of things. One the sort of scary nature and just losing control to the beast. And the other is, you know, to go beyond efficiency. To go beyond this is really quickly, and it costs, and it costs lens to actually, how do you get the best out of this? Is in people, is in that art of the prompt, you know, narrative that I that I heard, you have to it's not about replacing what you're doing with these tools. It's about having the best people utilize these tools in the best way. I'm really passionate about having relevant messaging, relevant creative, relevant advertising in front of an audience. You know, I, as I say, I have a fear of us sleep walking into complete automization and complete machine learning, which is what you know, you know, meta and Google are having us do. The real fear is that we're moving. We've recently come away from non transparent, non transparent agency models, and we're sort of almost slipping back into this with with the tech giants, and just handing over complete control. We'll hit your KPI for your budget and not reveal anything that's going on to make that happen. And the result of that is you don't really understand, truly understand what's working to take that outside of those platforms and what impact is that having on your consumer when you know, for all we know, they're seeing 1000s of completely irrelevant ads, which is building up a great deal of revenue for these these partners. Yours becomes one of those in a fold, but at the same time, you do hit that revenue, that ROAs KPI, that you, that you agree to at the start, that I'm agreeing with you in many ways, right? That we would suffer as brands, and we would suffer as audiences and as as as end users of this technology if we just hand over control. Yeah. To the bots, I think to really win with what's being developed in the evolution of this technology is to marry it with real human skill and talent, and utilize talent that you've got to get the best out of this emerging technology. I'm telling you about something that I'm is, like sparking my excitement. But I'm not telling you as an advocate for, let's all, let's all throw control at the
Tom Ollerton 25:27
machine. You know, it's a passion point of mine. I mean, you know, seven years ago, around the time we started automated creative, you know, we used to run an event about the intersection of creativity ads in AI, and there was, and there was this thing called generative adversarial networks. I'm not sure if they're still a thing. And seven years ago, they were doing formative videos. Like it wasn't prompt based, but it was like, have some person playing golf, and it looked vaguely like someone playing golf, and it was like, right? Well, in the question still in my mind, is seven years later, after sort of pursuing that holy grail, is, what does it mean when a machine can produce anything that a human can? What does that mean for advertising? And we don't know, we don't, but there's a really brilliant podcast that's far, far superior to this, unfortunately, called Better offline, by a guy called Ed Zitron, who's a PR guy in LA and he's such a brilliant broadcaster, and he's really giving putting the boot into Gen AI at the minute for two reasons. Love to get your view on this. The first reason is no one's making any money out of it. There's revenue like you know, they're open AI reporting big revenue, but they're not reporting profit, and I think it costs them somewhere between 750 and a million dollars a day to run it. So no one's actually talking about making any money. And zittrains view, which I think is probably correct, it's not really that good. Like Gen AI is brilliant at designing my daughter's fifth sorry, sixth birthday card. You know, that kind of thing. But like, for example, this a provocative question, like, how much AI music do you listen to? I don't listen to any. I'll be the last thing I do you know, like, how many AI films do you watch? They really its ability to fully replicate the majesty of what a human can in an art context or a music context is incredibly limited. Sure it can write a poem about Huddersfield if I wanted to, but like, if I really, if I, if I said, create something that's kind of connect and make an audience feel something, as opposed to look with this can probably get a better click through rate. I don't think it's very good at it. So I'm kind of curious to know what you think about that.
Phil Clark 27:35
Yeah, you know, it's a tough one for me to answer, because it's head versus heart. With this, it some of the I would agree with you completely, and there's many things you touched on there, especially, you know, how much AI music do I listen to? None. Well, that I know of is the scary thing I've done, and how much would I want to listen to in the future. None. I've spoken to a few music artists, though, that are have no issue at all in using AI to help them with developing their music and making music and using it in parts of recordings, because it speeds up the process. It makes it much simpler, and as long as we get to a place where we've set up the right parameters in terms of IEP, then I've met a number of artists that are very happy to utilize technology like this in the creative process. But nobody wants it to replace you know, nobody wants me to start going out and buying music that no human has had a part in, apart from the person who's given it the prompt to say, Go away and make a drummer based banger that Phil Clark is really going to love and but that, you know, that's, that's the whole point. It's like it's moving, and it's moving at such a pace as well. You know, you know you talk when we say it's not that good. One year ago, two years ago, five years ago, we were, we were rightly saying, yeah, it's not very good. Because it really wasn't, even when ChatGPT first launched, it was kind of like, it's not that great, but it's wild, the speed of evolution here. And it's, and it sort of pains me to say...
Tom Ollerton 29:23
You say that though, like, I think it was one of the big CEOs. Was it something advertisement said, Well, how do you use Gen AI? And, oh, well, I use it so, you know, write better emails. And, like, wow. The guy who's, like, has access to the fire hose of that technology, and he's using it to make better emails. No, I mean, it's like, I Yes, the and this is the argument is that, like, people go, Well, when, when, when, Gen AI goes bananas. But like, it hasn't, it may be better, but it started off as pond life, and now it's potentially grown a couple of legs or something. Do you know? I mean, there's, this, is some. Option that it will get rid of hallucinations. There's this assumption that it will produce something that is generally makes us feel something. But at the minute, it's like my wife sent me a video, which was they asked Gen AI to produce the visual of the Tour de France. It's like so funny, like the sort of leg sort of merging into trees and all this stuff. But someone's chosen this really brilliant soundtrack to go with it, and it's and it's just like, it's funny because it's AI, it's impressive because it's AI, it's efficient because it's AI. And that's my worry with it. Like, when's it gonna get to the point where it's like, you've just removed the it's AI bit, and it's just the thing itself is moving to the point of which we'd actually do something
Phil Clark 30:44
When you merge the right human talent with this technology, is the answer in my mind, you know, and you made the point about how, when are we going to get to the point where AI really makes you feel something and starts evoking emotions? I don't know. I'm not to say that we won't get to that point. I don't think we will. But as I say, when I see I see examples of a timeline of what AI is doing now, it does seem to be moving scarily fast, but if I think when it comes to evoking emotion and how we get the best, you know, stop that leg merging with that tree, and let's choose a piece of music that's really going to bring this to life. That's when human element needs to be, needs to be brought in. And I said from the start, and I'll always say, the businesses that really excel from using AI are the ones that use it to enhance their existing talent and resource rather than, rather than replace it. So it's um, it's emerging of the two. And I'm, I would never want to be involved in something that relinquishes human control and human influence in evoking emotion or creativity, I think is the right thing to say. But utilizing this technology to enhance what we can do in humans, I think, is inevitable.
Tom Ollerton 32:20
We've gone massively over. Because, as you can probably guess, this is pretty close to close to my heart, and something I just think about so much at the minute. And Phil, I'm sorry we're gonna have to leave it there, although this could go on and on. And thanks for telling us your story and sharing with with great passion about this end to end. Gen, AI, thing that you're you're envisaging and having the debate, if someone wants to get in touch with you about this stuff, where it's good to get in touch and what makes a message that you will actually reply to?
Phil Clark 32:50
Oh, okay, well, you can always get me on LinkedIn. I do read all the messages that are sent to me on LinkedIn. I'll be honest and say that I do not reply to all of them, that's probably the best way Just make sure when you're sending me a message on LinkedIn, well, firstly, that you haven't used AI, you know, be real. Be real. Know who you're speaking to. It's blows my mind. How many auto generated messages I get sometimes where people have even forget, forgot to correct the name of the brand or my own name, or put that they're only speaking to an individual rather than multiple people.
Tom Ollerton 33:31
We've all done it.
Phil Clark 33:32
Yeah, yeah. Make it. Make it a real message. Speak to me with intent. You know, it's my objective as a marketer to speak to people within with intent, with intention. So do do if I see that coming my way, I'm far more likely to to respond,
Tom Ollerton 33:48
Okay, brilliant, Phil, thank you so much for your time.
Phil Clark 33:50
It's been fun. Thank you.
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