Episode 223 / Brian Costello / General Motors / Head of Performance Driven Marketing - Corporate Brands
Why Generative AI Can Make Marketing More Dynamic
With a career that covers entrepreneurship and roles at Staples and SharkNinja, Brian Costello has always been focused on what drives the performance of brands. He is now the Head of Performance Driven Marketing - Corporate Brands at General Motors and recognises the importance of injecting some dynamism into content creation in B2B marketing. That’s why he’s picked generative AI as his Shiny New Object.
It’s true that perfect is the enemy of good, according to Brian. Very often, marketers need to accept that good can be good enough and just get content out the door. This is particularly true when looking to increase your creative effectiveness through multiple rounds of testing and experimentation.
For Brian, generative AI makes content creation easier and more dynamic, particularly in B2B marketing. Where in-house marketers may know the business very well, but struggle to turn it into fun and engaging messages, they can get a start with generative AI. Instead of spending time and budget with sophisticated, expensive campaigns, create small-scale content and continuously adjust it based on feedback received from the audience.
Dynamic advertising is just one of the ways Brian sees generative AI serving today’s marketers. Solving the problem of “busy work” is another. This includes adapting content for various platforms and simply “getting out of the process.” It allows “the really smart people to focus on the things they’re very good at, such as innovation.”
On the podcast, Brian also shares his top tips for starting a career in marketing and for proving the worth of your work as a seasoned marketer. Tune in to hear more about accepting the small jobs, getting out of your bubble, and having proof and receipts.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Brian Costello 0:00
As a young career, I wish I took that advice. Get out of your bubble and learn about as many people and about as many things as you can whether you agree with them or not.
Speaker 2 0:16
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Tom Ollerton 0:38
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, which is the creative effectiveness platform. But we are not talking about that, we're doing a podcast with a guy called Brian Costello, who I had a really lovely call with to prep for this conversation. And he is the performance driven marketing leader at General Motors. So Brian, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, could you give us a very brief background of your career?
Speaker 1 1:06
Yes. Hi, Tom, thanks for inviting me. My career is fairly, I would say some people would say all over the place, I would say it's planned. But primarily in media marketing. I'm an entrepreneur, I started four companies in the past, I am focused primarily on performance of brands, and driving revenue and business results through using data and smart thinking. I'm currently at General Motors. I was previously at Staples and SharkNinja before that, and I've had my own agency, a couple of them in the past as well.
Tom Ollerton 1:49
Right, Brian, I have a very high expectation of the quality of your content, if that's the case. And which question did you want me to ask you from that list, the magic list of secret questions that all guests get?
Brian Costello 2:00
Well, you know, I'm a bit of an old guy. So the thing that jumped out at me was the advice that you would give a smart driven student who's trying to get into the industry.
Tom Ollerton 2:13
Fantastic. Let's hear that, then.
Brian Costello 2:15
You know, I think the key part is, I've interviewed 1000s of people over my career, I've hired many hundreds, I would say maybe more. And the thing that I always try to get people to really understand is first, you do want to take the small jobs. I know everybody wants to take sort of the job that they can talk to their friends about and tell you how great you're doing something really interesting and exciting. I find if you took the small job, right? If you do the dirty stuff, and yeah, ask for doing it. That's the stuff that gets people like me, really interested in people like you, you know, so you got to do the research on the companies that you're real focused on, and really understanding everything about them. I would say my one very basic research, I want somebody to come in and say, Hey, I saw that you took private equity investment recently. How's that changed the company, did the leadership take an earnout? Things like that, that really makes me excited. And it's the stuff like that gets you, I think, going into the direction of building a career, right? Come in early, work late. Ask for the junky jobs, ask a lot of questions. But do your research, figure out how to hone your presentation skills, ask for advice, go to a lot of events if you can, sometimes you can't I understand. And I think the biggest thing is get out of your bubble. I think we all live in a bubble of the same types of people, because we like to focus on being around people like us. And I think that's the biggest mistake in marketing. And as a young career, I wish I took that advice. Get out of your bubble and learn about as many people and about as many things as you can whether you whether you agree with them or not. And then finally, it's sort of like be in person when you can, some companies are still remote. I happen to be a remote employee, but I go into the office when I can. Because I think that in person connection at your young career is something that you can't replicate. And if you can't get in the office and just find humans, just get out there and find humans to talk to and and ask a lot of questions. I'll stop there for a second.
Tom Ollerton 4:28
All really good stuff. I hadn't thought about that in terms of people starting their career. Yeah, just think that like my entire career, whether you perceive that as good or bad is entirely based on people that I met and if I hadn't met some of the key people at those key times then it wouldn't have followed this path and followed a different one. Sure, but that's never thought about that. So thanks for sharing that Brian but we're gonna move on from student advice and career advice to marketing advice and what is your top marketing tip? What is the one silver bullet bit of advice that you always give that you know always works?
Brian Costello 5:00
You know, the thing, well one measurement, obviously, I think you have to always think about, what am I going to do to prove that the money I spent to the senior leadership actually did anything? I mean, that singular question and not just like glazing over it. And I know it's kind of boring for some folks, especially on the creative side, and I consider myself a creative person. But what I find is, it's a question that I wish I asked a lot more in the past. And I ask constantly now, it doesn't mean, I have to get to the nitty gritty, this dollar brought in this sale. But what it does mean is I have to have a view that says, Can I bring receipts and proof I like to use that those two words, proof and receipts, when I'm in a sea level conversation, and they ask the simple question, well, what did this do for us? Can you prove it, if I can have receipts, and I can have proof, then at least have something that says they're not coming for my money, the budget, or I'm doing something for the business, I'm really making a change for the business, and I can prove it. And that can be through advanced measurement, like mmm, or MTA, or just simple conversion metrics. But there's got to be something behind your brilliant thinking and your awesome creative. That does say, Hey, I got something from this. This may be beyond just brand health, right? I think brand health is a really important metric, you have to build your brand, you have to get people really focused on it, you have to get people excited about it. Right? That's a metric too, right? How do I measure that, but have have markers that say this did this, and it got us this - is the thing I focus on most.
Tom Ollerton 6:54
So we're going to now talk about your shiny new object. So what have you chosen as your shiny object? And why do you think it represents the future of the industry?
Brian Costello 7:05
Yeah, you know, it's funny, originally, I was thinking, the shiny new object is not the current thing. And then the thing I'm most fascinated about is sort of the current thing. But I would argue that it's not the current thing. It's the interesting thing.
Tom Ollerton 7:18
Come on Brian, get to it. What is it?
Brian Costello 7:20
Okay. It's generative AI, which I know all everybody's talking about. But specifically...
Tom Ollerton 7:26
Can I tell you my little pet hate about Gen AI? Right? I was I was at Cannes, I was at MADFest, shortly after. And when anyone mentions Gen AI, everyone has to mention that everyone's mentioning it. It's like, of course, everyone's mentioning it. Oh, it's so interesting. You don't have to qualify that everyone's talking about it. Because everyone's also talking about everyone's talking about it, it drives me nuts. Anyway, gen AI, Brian, I can't wait to hear what you have to say about it.
Brian Costello 7:50
It's spectacularly interesting, right? If you in the past, I don't think I thought it would be as interesting and what really, when I started playing with some of these tools, like mid journey and sector and these tools that are just fascinating to me, in the sense that how it's going to impact every industry, especially on the creative side, especially on the marketing side, the idea that this content generation, and this new way of creating sort of creative process is going to change our business in a major way, not even just a little way, I think it's going to change it in such a major way when you think about simple things like text to image and recolouring, you know, images, you know, experimentation. Now, it's going to solve the problem of some of the busy work that we're all stuck with, like a sizing and, and platform specific creative. And in the text within your sites and your advertising. Everything there is going to improve if you train it to improve right I think it's still one of those things where it needs a lot of playing with and a lot of work. But every time I interact with generative AI especially on the on the content creation side, I'm just incredibly fascinated about how good it is. Maybe not perfect and maybe not the best, but still way better than anything I could have ever done.
Tom Ollerton 8:16
This episode of the shiny new object podcast is brought to you in partnership with MADfest. Whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect the distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content startup innovation pitches and unconventional entertainment from MADfest events. You'll find me causing trouble on stage recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www.madfestlondon.com
Tom Ollerton 9:59
One of the most amazing things about Gen AI to your point is how good it is it is getting 98% of the way there, like copy, images and some of the platforms that you mentioned, right? It's easy, and it's cheap. And it's fast, which makes it amazing, right. But there's also no barrier to entry, which means everyone can use it. So my view is that it's only a disadvantage not to use it, as opposed to an advantage to use it. Like if you can save 20% on production. So can the agency next door, if you can write better SEO, copy, so can the brand next door? So my thing is, is that ultimately, it'll be the creativity of the person using it that counts, which isn't actually that different to where we are pre Gen AI, that it's the quality of the creative that really matters. So I'd love to get your view on that.
Brian Costello 10:49
I think you're right, I think ultimately, it's going to need and I think that's what I meant by the training of it, right? You still need really, really smart human beings with an eye for detail and creativity, to get it to the level where I think people will want to use it. But I also think that it changes how they think I think it creates way more opportunity for those really smart people to focus on the things that they're just really good way good at, which is innovation and thinking and get them out of the process stuff that a lot of people don't like it the workflow, right? I think it will change the workflow. And it gives folks a lot more flexibility in that regard. And I think you can actually create a lot more ideas when you feed it the right way, and you train it the right way. But I'm 100% on board with the fact that you still have to be a really smart human. It doesn't mean by the way, we're going to have that. I think they'll just be a lot of folks using it and a lot of it will be real junk. And it will just be the way but it how's that change anything right? It's the same today. You're just narrowing it down.
Tom Ollerton 12:05
So it amazed me today is putting a poll on LinkedIn for another show I do called advertisers watching ads. And I noticed like a new icon on LinkedIn, create a message, and it got a Gen AI post maker. So you go, I want a picture with some sad dogs crying on computers, and the strapline is dogs are cooler than cats or whatever. And I had a play with it. And it wasn't amazing. But LinkedIn, of all people, you know what I mean, I was just like, God, like, even these guys are doing it. And I thought like, it needs some playing with it, but it's gonna be everywhere on everything. Like every the Apples, the Amazons, Google, Facebook, everyone's gonna have an LLM, there'll be everywhere, it will be baked into everything. So my question to you is, yes, it's going to be big, yes, it's going to change. But what is Brian Costello using it for for work today?
Brian Costello 12:56
For me. The thing I'm most intrigued with is that creative element, right. So I think large enterprises really struggle with, for instance, creating not only platform specific creative, but they're really struggling with dynamic creative and creative based on certain audiences, and things of that nature, it costs a lot. And it costs a lot because large, large enterprises have really expensive agencies, and creative agencies that are sort of used to doing big bucks, you know, creative splash campaigns, right? Whether it be a big linear television commercial with a, you know, a famous director, down too much too expensive, creative for, you know, display and social. I think when you look at the enterprise side, they're really efficient at getting contracts with a agencies, but I don't know how efficient they are at actually doing stuff that this can do. So where I'm most intrigued with is, can you get stuff out? Can you test? Can you can you experiment faster? And I think if you change the mindset to say it's okay to go out with something not absolutely perfect, that didn't go through 97 rounds of, of creative and everything else, and just to see what happens. To me, that's really interesting. So I really think that, um, you know, perfect is, is the enemy of, of, of good. And I think sometimes good is good enough. Especially if you're in the experimentation and testing phase. So to me, that's the place that is most interesting. I think content creation, especially on the b2b side, it sounds boring, because I think a lot of people approach b2b as sort of like, it's a you know, it's a little boring. It's a little staid, but I think business is, again, enterprises struggle with creating content efficiently, they have really smart people that know the business. They're just not necessarily good at building really good, fun, interesting content that gets you excited. And so can that generative piece help out with at least the tools to get it there and go out?
Tom Ollerton 15:16
Yeah, and that view obviously sits very close with Automated Creative's belief and products. And so it's refreshing to hear you talk about using this technology to do doing something different. Because the thing I write to me about this industry is people are going, Hey, we can do everything faster and cheaper. That's cool. But if everyone does the same faster and cheaper thing, you're gonna end up it's a zero sum game, right? Whereas what you're talking about is like, right, how can you make imperfect things very quickly to test and see what works? That's absolutely our vision. And so it's refreshing to hear someone else say that on this podcast, which doesn't happen very often. So thank you.
Tom Ollerton 15:56
Right, Brian, so we're coming up on time, unfortunately, I'm sure there'll be lots of people that want to speak to you. So where can they do that? And what makes a brilliant outreach message to you?
Brian Costello 16:06
Oh, this is good. LinkedIn is probably the best way Brian Costello on LinkedIn, I workfor General Motors, it's easy to find me. I don't have a Twitter account. I know that's horrible for a marketer, but I just don't.
Tom Ollerton 16:18
You have an X account, is that what you're saying?
Brian Costello 16:21
Excuse me, you're right. LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best place. Just say something useful to me, I get, I would say, I get so many pitches. In LinkedIn. It's insane. I was going through this morning, and I couldn't believe it. But did I meet you? Did I? Did I say anything interesting to you? Do you see anything that's interesting to me? I'm always curious. I'll never I'll hopefully not blow you off. I usually do respond. But I just want to hear something interesting. That's relevant to me today, from from like, partners and vendors, and obviously, from people from brands, anybody that just wants to reach out, I speak at a lot of events. And so you can always find me at something like brand innovators, or one of the one of the events, especially around the Boston and New England area where I happen to live.
Tom Ollerton 17:12
Well, look, Brian, that's excellent guide for anyone trying to get in touch with you. And thanks for sharing your passionate views about Gen AI, receipts and proof and taking on the small jobs. That was fantastic.
Brian Costello 17:23
I appreciate it, Tom.
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