Episode 308 / Francesco Federico / S&P Global / Chief Marketing Officer
Data, Gut Instinct, and the Rise of Agentic AI
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At the end of the day, marketing is still very much about emotional connection, ingenuity, and creativity.
Often, the obsession with data driven marketing can become a refuge for mediocrity or a way to escape accountability, says Francesco Federico, CMO at S&P Global.
For him, marketers need to always balance a genuine need to read and interpret data with the courage to follow their gut instincts and make bold decisions. This is cultivated in time, through learning and developing skills that are adjacent to your day-to-day work, but can still prove extremely valuable to help you connect the dots. This is why Francesco’s best investment has always been learning, helping him develop laterally. And that’s why one of his key marketing tips is: “Stay curious and investigate adjacencies.”
Francesco’s shiny new object is agentic AI, which he sees as a step beyond generative AI and a new way for humans to communicate with technology. To what extent this is different from automating tasks, remains to be seen. In Francesco’s view, “the technology will actually now be able, not just to predict, but also to recommend what to do next, and in some extent, in some circumstances, even do it without human intervention.”
Listen to more on these topics on the podcast.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Francesco Federico 0:00
You need to take accountability for your own instincts as well, and you know, and find the courage to make decisions following, you know, your gut feeling and because at the end of the day, marketing is still very much about emotional connection, ingenuity and creativity.
Speaker 0:20
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Tom Ollerton 0:53
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 regular podcast about the future of data driven marketing. Every week or so I have the pleasure and privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders, and this week is absolutely no different. I'm on a call with Francesco Federico, who is Chief Marketing Officer at S&P Global. So Francesco, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Can you give us a bit of background?
Francesco Federico 1:22
Yes, of course. And thanks Tom for having me. So as you said, I'm Francesco Federico. I'm originally from Milan, Italy, and now I live in London. As you said, I'm in the CMO for S&P Global, which is this sort of huge heritage brand, 165 years old of history, and oversee brand, the demand, generation, thought leadership across all five divisions of S&P, and in terms of where I come from, I mean maybe 20 seconds pitch on sort of my journey so far, I studied law at university, believe it or not, but then I ended up in marketing when I founded my first sort of venture, small digital marketing sort of consulting firm in Milan, had fun with it for a few years, and then I joined Vodafone, and since then, I've been with large organisations like Acer in consumer electronics, JLL in commercial estate, and now S&P Global. And I think the sort of the connecting point, a fil rouge, if you want, in my career, has always been change and disruption. I always join these brands at the moment of an inflection point in their journey. And I hope I play the role in sort of pivoting either the business model or the marketing organisation to sort of really be fit for, for that new wave of change.
Tom Ollerton 2:47
So what has been the best investment of your own time, energy or money in your career,
Francesco Federico 2:54
I think, at the maybe at the expense of being a little bit banal, because I know Steve Jobs has been quoted saying this multiple times, when he famously referenced to his sort of decision to take calligraphy classes, which later on in life, as he said, like he connected the dots, and when he was working through the sort of user interface of the first Macintosh, all that sort of, all those studies came back to fruition and allowed him to create beautiful interfaces. And I think for me, has always been learning, I mean the biggest investment in time and energy and sometimes money, because I often self funded training that has been by far the best investment, and it's also something that I recommend, sort of young marketers climbing up the ranks, or to be honest, any sort of young professional, is to really stay curious and investigate adjacencies. So not just obviously, study what is your field, your discipline, but be curious about adjacencies. And even potentially, just like in the case of Steve Jobs, even things that are completely out the remit of your day job, those are the areas that's going to probably bring you, sort of the best inspiration in the future. And back to sort of Steve Jobs point of connecting the dots, you can really connect the dots together. So for example, in my own sort of very recent example, in 2022 I decided to learn coding because I never had the chance to at the time or desire to really learn. But that was something that actually I said, Okay, why don't I learn Python? It seems sort of easy enough for a first time coder like me to learn. And then after a few months, chat GPT came came out. And so throughout the 2023 I was actually able to play directly with many of these open source generative AI models, and that gave me a profound understanding of the technology. Of course, I'm not I cannot consider myself a coder, but that knowledge of Python really allowed me to explore these technologies. Technologies and then ask the right questions, or maybe probe a little bit more, sort of deeper that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to when I was having conversation with my technology partners in the organisation. So there have been so many other similar examples in my career. So stay curious and really look at adjacent areas to your business that might come useful one day.
Tom Ollerton 5:23
But how would you fit that in? Right? Because I always say the opposite of busy in marketing is to be unemployed, right? There's always something else to do. There's always something else to learn, and especially with AI and automation, we can do a lot more in less time. But you know the nature we're going to be asked to do more in with the same amount of time, right? As opposed to finishing early and doing less. So how do you how do you find time to do this extra stuff? You got a couple of kids, got big job. How do you make sure that you've got time to study the equivalent of calligraphy or something more adjacent, like coding?
Francesco Federico 5:55
Well, whenever possible, I try to solve problems that I have. So I not just study for the sake of studying, but studying something that can have a practical application, even my personal life. So back to the example of coding. One way I sort of practised was in sort of have a little bit of a nerd myself. So I have a sort of smart, smart home with sensors and, you know, all the lights, etc. And I decided to apply those skills I was learning in Python to further customise my home setup. And so it was a home project for the whole family. And so to this extent, it wasn't necessarily eating up family time, because I found also ways, maybe, to bring in some of my family members along the journey and and also had an outcome in mind that also gave me motivation to really continue learning. So I think, obviously, you can't always do that. Obviously, you know, I spent some days during the Easter break working on retrieval of mental generate generation. At one point, my wife told me, You need to stop and just, you know, close the computer. So there are those moments. But the advice I would give is try to do something, learn something, that has a practical outlet, practical application in your day to day life, to make it a little bit more compatible with all the other duties.
Tom Ollerton 7:19
Yeah, that's a really nice idea, and that's something I struggle with quite a lot, actually, because I make music, but I make it in exactly the same place where I work in, like, in front of my laptops, you know, close the laptop, whatever time, and then right it's time for a hobby, and you just open up the same laptop when you're sat in the same room. And it's quite, quite tricky that I find, but I love that idea of solve a problem, and then you're, yeah, you're getting, you're getting double the double the benefit. So getting back to digital marketing now, and away from this smart home setup, which I'll ask you more about later. But what is your best bit of advice to become a better data driven marketer?
Francesco Federico 7:52
Well, I, if you allow me Tom I might be a little bit controversial here, and because I've been hearing about sort of being data driven and data driven decision making and data driven marketing, etc, for for quite a while, and although obviously, I do not dispute at all the importance of data I also think that sometimes this almost obsession with data driven marketing or data driven decisions can become a refuge for mediocrity, if I may say so, or also a way to escape accountability. And I think data tells you a lot, tells you yesterday's story. Sometimes, if we are all really honest, then we all know how our data stacks made of we don't know, we know what gaps we have in our analytics platforms. So I don't think anyone can really say we have 100% sort of correct data, accurate data, and so you have this sort of data almost God, that is looked at to sort of base on all our decisions on but often is incomplete. And as I said, it's always historical. And so for me that to become a better data driven marketer, I think you need to find that balance between reading the data and making sure that you have the best sort of data layer possible in terms of accuracy and precision, but at the same time, you need to take accountability for your own instincts as well, and you know, and find the courage to make decisions following, you know, your gut feeling and because at the end of the day, marketing is still very much about emotional connection, ingenuity and creativity. Of course, marketing has changed immensely in the past 10-15, years, and I've been saying this for many years, that the role of the CMO has steadily converged with the role of the CIO and vice versa. Also, CIOs are now more and more versed in marketing and customer experience, but that does not negate the need for sort of courage in making decisions. And so I always say you want to be a great data driven marketer, remember to balance the data the rational side of you, sort of your mind with the instinct, the gut feeling and the back to my previous answer, the ability to connect the dots, sometimes in ways that your analytical stack cannot cannot provide.
Tom Ollerton 10:34
Yeah, reminds me of a previous guest on the show that said, if we only needed dashboards, then you wouldn't need marketers, right?
Francesco Federico 10:40
Indeed.
Tom Ollerton 10:46
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Tom Ollerton 11:23
So we're going to now move on to your shiny new object, which is agentic AI in marketing. I think I know what those words mean, but could you be specific about why that's what is agentic AI in marketing? Why it's your shiny new object?
Francesco Federico 11:37
Yeah, of course. Well, let me start maybe from a quote so Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce earlier this year, said something that was quite striking, as he said, This is going to be the last generation of chief executive officers that will only lead humans. So essentially, what he was saying is, very soon chief executive officers, and I bring this into my work as well. So marketing leaders will have to be able to lead a hybrid workforce which is made of, obviously humans, but also sort of machines, AI, colleagues. And so what we mean by agentic AI is the step beyond the current if you want level of AI, which we call generative AI. So generative AI is sort of this set of technologies that may enable us to create new content or new images or new videos, starting from a data set that has been analysed by various technologies. Agentic AI is that step forward that connects multiple and different generative AI technologies together with a very specific purpose, which is why it's called agentic. It's because it's an agent. So you might have, for example, an agent tasked with campaign planning, and so this particular agent would not just come up with the copy so generate new text like chat GPT would, but it would also create the whole the whole Gantt chart with all the milestones feeding all the creative copywriting, and potentially even create all the media assets that go with it. And so you can see how existing roles will, at some point in the near future, I believe, be augmented, in some cases, potentially even replaced by the agentic workforce. And so the reason why I think this is so exciting is because we're really witnessing the dawn of a completely new phase in business. Of course, I talk specifically about marketing, but this really applies across across all functions. I think probably customer operations, if you think about contact centres and marketing, are probably the two sectors that are going to be the first one to benefit from these technologies, but eventually you will see this even in healthcare. There are already some experiments of generative AI applied in healthcare settings, and you can clearly see hybrid workforces emerge there as well. And so I think the challenge now, as we only are literally seeing the dawn of these technologies. The challenge for leaders, I think, is to think about their own teams. And how do you train how do you make sure that you bring in not just the technology, but also you think about the change management and you bring your people along the journey so they can effectively accommodate for, if you want the these new colleagues, you know, these new machine colleagues. And the final bit, I would say about agentic is also another big shift happening in marketing, is that now, obviously, we've been talking a lot about business to business, business to consumer, and now in some cases we're talking about business to business to consumer, which is sort of a little bit more complicated models, but I think now there is an emergence of also what I call sort of machine to machine marketing, where you are actually writing marketing and you are bringing to life marketing campaigns that are targeting machines. They are targeting other agents. Because, again, some decision in terms of buying decisions or considerations consider, the consideration journey will actually be driven by agent agents in the client companies systems and so you need, still, obviously, to write web pages for people that will read it from buyers who will read it human buyers, by the same time also be ready to cater to an emerging machine audience of agents going around your properties trying to find out the best products for their particular outcome. So this is a completely new, this is probably the main revolution that I think, you know, you cannot probably think of any like, anything like this since the birth of marketing. Maybe the internet was as disruptive as this, when we suddenly, sort of, you know, broke the barriers, and these intermediated new markets were opened and new ways of doing marketing. But I think agentic AI might be even more transformative, because also has a very, very profound cultural and societal element attached to it.
Tom Ollerton 16:29
So a point of clarity here for anyone listening to this who isn't as experienced and doesn't have your perspective. So we even gave the example of the agent, the marketing agent that would come up with the all of the copy lines and the Gantt chart and generate all of the ads for argument's sake, I think those are the three examples that you gave. So in what sense is that an agent and not just an automation? Because I think that marketing is very good at coming up with acronyms and words to make itself sound more complicated than it is, and an agent is someone that acts with agency to your point where I can go and do stuff and can have critical thought and then act upon it and then bring back the benefit of that work to you as the employer of that agent. Because what you're talking about there sounds like automation. So I'm, I'm trying to get to where it's like when, when someone says agentic, do they mean an actual agent like or is it really just a process?
Francesco Federico 17:26
I think it's a very good point and to answer your question, it is indeed automation. It is indeed a novel form of automation. I think the reason why we call it agentic and we come up with a new label is because it's completely new. So previously, automation was very much rule based, and so you would have a defined set of rules, you know, if this happened, then do this, etc. And then came advanced automation, where you could connect various processes together and sort of automate end to end. And to some extent, the agentic AI works using sort of the same paradigm of sort of chaining one action after another to achieve a certain outcome. What is new here is the technology that underlies this automation, which is not just rule based anymore, but is based on generative AI. And again, this brings me to my previous point, that the technology will actually now be able, not just to predict, but also to recommend what to do next, and in some extent, in some circumstances, even do it without human intervention. So for example, if you look at some tools around sales, you had this kind of automation for years where, for example, the tool would tell you in a marketing funnel, would identify some leads that are not progressing as quickly as they should down the funnel, and would flag it to the demand management team for action. But this is just literally some basic sort of statistic models, linear regression or standard deviation. What agents can now do is take action and really understand deeply why that particular lead is not progressing and recommend a series of next steps that are specific to that individual lead and not just a recommendation based on X amount of previous data accumulated in the technology. And so I think this is the shift, is really moving from rule based to tools that can actually, in a way, think, although obviously not how we think as humans, but really sort of profoundly analyse data and generate options and and multiple scenarios and and act on those.
Tom Ollerton 19:48
So really it's the proactive element, the generative element, that makes it not just robotic process automation or something, and making it actually a different thing.
Francesco Federico 19:58
Yes, and also I would say the sophistication So really, the ability of understanding what is that they're working on. Again, back to the example of creative you might have someone, a creative designer, coming up with a hero creative for a campaign, and then the agent would automatically create 50 assets, starting from a hero one, and that requires not just, you know, resizing and moving text around, but really understanding what the asset is trying to achieve from a rational and emotional standpoint. And I think this level of sophistication is certainly something new that we didn't have before.
Tom Ollerton 20:39
And so going back to the Marc Benioff quote, which was, this is the last generation of CEOs that will just order people around, but then they will all also order agents around. So what I'm having trouble with is connecting those, your description and that statement, because, to be blunt, and my limited understanding, because everyone's got limited understanding, because it's so new, is that an agent, an AI marketing agent, in this case, is a tool, right? So the marketer, say, yourself, as a CMO, would go, right, we're not going to use this agency anymore. We're going to use this one person who comes up with an idea, and they will command an agent to produce the 50 ads that you mentioned. However, that is not a that is not a CEO ordering agents around. That's a CEO speaking to a marketing person to use a bit of software. So I'm doing, I'm I'm just trying to get my head around the difference between those things, I think there's a bit of AI spin going on, certainly from some of the players, whereas in reality, it's just going to be a marketing person using a tool, which is what they've been doing for about 20 years or so.
Francesco Federico 21:52
I think this is very true. I mean, at the end of the day, we talk a lot about AI, but AI, exactly as you say, it is a tool. I mean, it's a technology, and like all technologies, it's a tool. I think the reason why we feel compelled sometimes to come up with new labels and new names is because this is really very new. It's very different from what we have seen in the past. And I can clearly see examples where the CEO themselves will be interacting with agents in a way that is new. For example, there will be... previously you mentioned dashboards. I mean, in the very near future, you would be able just to query dashboards in natural language using your voice. And so you would sit at your desk, your big CEO desk, and ask a question, like, you know, how's the pipeline today? Or tell me what people are told about our brand the latest NPS survey, and the tool would reply in natural language. And so to this extent, you might even say some CEOs will have sort of an agentic Chief of Staff, you know, that will provide them information that would otherwise historically have been given to them by by a human collating all this information. So I think all roles across organisations, from the operational ones up to the CEO, will see some sort of agentic functionality creeping. But then at the end of the day you are right, these are tools. These are technologies that all these people will use. But I think again, given the level of interaction, they can which, which is really novel because you interacted the same way you would interact with another human, this is what I think prompts the speculation as to whether we'll have we can call this a hybrid workforce, because, yes, these are tools, but you interact with them in a way that really feels and sounds incredibly natural. And this is even before you talk about robotics. This we're only talking about voice interfaces or computer interfaces. Imagine when you start adding into this equation, the physical dimension as well. And then you would actually have robots walking around the office performing certain tasks in full, fully integrated with the human counterparts. So are they tools? Yes, of course, this would be still tools, but integrated in the in the fibre of the of the of the office environment in a way that is certainly unprecedented.
Tom Ollerton 24:27
Yeah, it's great to hear your perspective, and we've offered our clients the ability to be able to talk to their data as well, right? So we obviously produce a ginormous amount of paid advertising for clients, and each one of those ads is tagged, so we have this incredible amount of metadata associated with all of the work that we do, and then that's we found clients just talk to it: which market's performing best, which ad's performing best, which message's performing best, which psychological theme is driving conversion, all that stuff. So we've absolutely evidenced it in our work. But I think that. It just must be incredibly confusing for people going right, the future... the future is in an agentic workforce and and then how do people even get started with that? I mean, we we are building that future as a business, and very excited about this, but I'm just a bit loath to call it agentic, because I don't think that clears it up. I think it confuses it. And I think someone said to me once, where there's mystery, there's margin, I think there's a lot of people making margin out of it by making it seem more complicated than maybe it is. But anyway, that's a bit cynical today on this, on this Monday, the 19th, 19th of May. But Francesco, if anyone wanted to get in touch with you about this, where's a good place to do this, and what makes a message that you'll actually respond to?
Francesco Federico 24:27
Well, LinkedIn is certainly the best, the best way to reach out. I am on LinkedIn. I actually publish regular newsletter on these topics, really talking about AI and how I see AI really entering and changing the marketing department. So that's, that's the best place to reach out and continue a conversation.
Tom Ollerton 24:27
Brilliant. So Francesco, thank you so much for your time.
Francesco Federico 24:27
Of course, thanks for having me.
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