Name: The Unfiltered Truth about Video Marketing and AI
Uploaded: 2025-04-29T18:16:08.716Z
Duration: 59 min 52 s
Description: The Unfiltered Truth about Video Marketing and AI

Transcript for "The Unfiltered Truth about Video Marketing and AI": Alright, everyone. Welcome. I'm Holly Shao, and I lead our b to b marketing efforts at HeyGen. I've been really looking forward to today's conversation. We're calling it the unfiltered truth about video marketing and AI, and I think that name sets the tone for what you can expect. So the next hour will really be more of a conversation between two marketers, and we'll save the last fifteen minutes or so for a q and a. So feel free to pop your questions into the chat as we go. But I'm stoked to be breaking it down with the one and only Dave Gerhardt, who's the founder of Equifax. Dave, good to see you. That was the greatest introduction. I'm glad. To the point. Let's go. Let's get it going. Not out of coffee. Yeah. Yeah. All good. Actually, this isn't me. This is the AI. This is my AI avatar. I I don't do any webinars now. I I have I use AI avatar to do all these things for me, and I'm actually playing golf right now. So, thank you for having me. Of course. I actually thought about potentially starting with my interactive app because a lot of times when I'm in conversations, they're like, are you real? Are you, like, the real Holly? Are you the interactive after Holly? So I'd actually like, now that might be a little too complicated, but maybe next time, we'll break out the call. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. I'm glad I'm glad to be here. This is, I've I've been saying this to everybody recently. I've worked in marketing for a long time in P2B marketing, and I love all the stuff that's happening with AI because it's given me a new sense of energy. And I'm talking to so many marketers. There's a lot of, confusion, and there's a lot of the people trying to figure out what's hype and what's not, but I'm super excited because it's made marketing super relevant. We're feeling this with exit five. I'm seeing it in conversation with founders and other marketers. Like, it's a really excited an exciting time to be in the world of marketing because of what's happening with AI. And so I'm I'm honored that you asked me to out of all the thought leaders in the world, you you asked me to come and hang out with you, and I appreciate that. Of course. Yeah. And I I totally agree with you. I think AI is really gonna change the game and the entire landscape when it comes to marketing. And I mean, we are here to have, you know, a no frill conversation about all things video marketing and AI. And I think, you know, when I personally think about video marketing, and more specifically a success story in video marketing, one of the first things that comes to mind is the now iconic videos that you posted on LinkedIn starting in what was it? 2017, '20 '18. But, like, what initially gave you the idea to create those videos while you're at Drift? Well, I think so so David, who is the founder of Drift, was always very forward thinking from a marketing standpoint. And so he was always pushing me to do more things and try more things, and and that is I'm very lucky to have had that. I know there's a lot of other people out there who markers might post a video to LinkedIn, and then, like, the CEO is like, what's the ROI of posting that video? And so I had a lot of freedom to try new stuff. But one of the biggest bets that we made with that brand back at the time, which is actually really relevant to today, is that we were gonna win through being human, being relatable, building a brand by cutting through the noise and showing our faces and and and showing up authentically in places. Places. And so this was probably 2017, and right around that time, short form video started to become and just video in general started to become kind of like the defacto way people got information, whether it was long form stuff on Netflix or YouTube or podcast or Instagram reels or TikTok. Everybody was doing video, but there was something about, like, well, but we're in b to b, and so b to b is very serious. We can't you know, we don't do any of those things. And we just we just started basically talking about all the things that we are doing, directly into the camera on an iPhone and posting it to LinkedIn. And we did this because LinkedIn recently LinkedIn had just opened up a their video feature. And one common trait and I'm not great at this. I'm not a early adopter. I'm, like, in the middle. I I, you know, I I I there's people that I know that were, like, you know, in chat g p t, like, two and a half, three years ago. It I needed, like, a year, and now I'm deep. Now I'm deep in that world now. But we noticed that LinkedIn added video, and David was, like, you know, start posting videos on video on LinkedIn. And I would post a video. It was just me walking to work, drop my daughter off at at school, walk into work, walk into the office, talking about something I'm doing at work at at at at Drift that day at work. And the video will get, like, 50,000 views. And I was like, holy shit. This is insane. Obviously, it doesn't happen anymore because it was a new channel, so they were prioritizing views on videos. But we we noticed that earl being early on video created a huge advantage. And so two or three times a week, I would just share the same thing that I would basically sit down and write. I wouldn't do it on a script. I just would kinda riff on something. And so I might be walking to work, and I would say, hey. I wanna share with you this, like, really powerful copywriting tip that I always use, and here's what it is. And just started to notice the feedback and the signal on that, and the engagement was unlike anything I was getting from text posts. And the second half of that was also, I noticed a feeling of connection and engagement beyond what was happening with my written content. People at events felt like they knew me. People replied to our emails and would say, hey. I just watched that video. And so I think video created that authentic connection in marketing and helped us stand out in a world where all of marketing and b two b felt very clinical, felt very sterile, felt very automated. It allowed us to basically stand out in a way. And I've been bought in on video ever since now. It's a huge part of what we do in our business in exit five, and I'm excited about where the future of video is is gonna go. Obviously, I have a lot of questions for you, but that's my backstory on on getting into video. That's great. And, initially, like, what was the intent of creating those videos? Because and you kind of mentioned, you know, a lot of c m or CEOs are, like, what is the ROI on this video? Or, like, a lot of the brand campaigns are not specifically tied to, ROI. But, like, what was the initial intent when David was, like, start creating videos and kinda try to tap into the LinkedIn, side? There there was no intent. There this is my biggest pet peeve with marketing is that, like, everything that we have to do has to be directly measured. And it's like, what did it what did it what do you need to know? The ROI on, like, the seven minutes it took me to, like, pull out my phone, record the video, upload to Instagram. Like, we did the the brands don't get built that way, and they don't work that way. And so I think we had a strong belief that we know that in order to be successful in marketing, people need to know, like, and trust you. And so we wanted to use video as a part of our social media strategy, which is to be authentic and to show up regularly. And so it just became another piece of, another medium for the content. And so I kinda typically only wrote about marketing on LinkedIn, and it became a way for me to share what I'm doing and what I'm learning in marketing. And, obviously, the more you publish videos, like, on any platform, you get feedback, you get signals. I post that video, and that video flopped. Okay. So I'm not gonna do that topic again. Oh, when I talk about this topic, people I got more messages than ever. Okay. Let's do more videos like that. And so I think a big part of it was building up this feedback loop. And then, eventually, the goal is awareness, which leads to more followers on social media, which leads to more engagement. And over time, people started to know, oh, that's Dave from Drift. And as a result, the Drift brand grows. There's this guy called Pranav Piyush, and he's the founder of a company called Paramarkand. They're a measurement company, but I love that in the way he talks about measurement. He's like, we need to stop treating our audience on on all these platforms like they're morons. If you do something that is interesting, if I see a video pop up in my feed and Holly gets my attention and she shares something interesting, I don't need a UTM link to know and properly attribute that. Like, you know, she that that goes to the HeyGen site. I'm gonna be like, oh, that's Holly from HeyGen. Where have I seen her before? Oh, I see her keep popping up my feed. Now that's the fourth time I've seen her. I'm gonna go Google her. I'm gonna go Google what the company does. Now all of a sudden, I'm on the HeyGen site. That is how people get information online. And so what worked what was beautiful and why it worked is, like, we weren't trying to do anything. We weren't trying to, like, generate, you know, seven more sales meetings this month by posting videos on LinkedIn. We were we were trying to get engagement and and strike up conversations and build this kinda content content feedback loop, which is so valuable with social media. That was the goal. Yeah. I love that. I think, you know, a lot of times what we think about is always, like, pipeline generation, like, leads and all that. But what we neglect a lot is just the relationship building and, like, really being that person and, like, that having that dynamic relationship with people that you don't haven't met yet. And I think that's so key and so important because it's pretty clear that we're in the video and social era. You know, video is such a dominant force online. YouTube's been, what, the second largest search engine since, '20 '2 thousand and '8, I believe. And social media channels like TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram are really the dominant marketing channels today. So as somebody who's built amazing brands and has really figured out social and content, Why do you think video hits differently from static content? I think we like to see other people. I think it there's so many more elements that can be actually, remember what happened backstage when I came on video? What did you say to me? You said, oh, Dave. That's a nice plant in your background. Green the pop of green. What's the equivalent to, like, a a a that in, like, a, you know, a a a design based piece of you know, it it could be a nice image. Right? But I think I think we also as market like, as as humans, our brains get turned off to marketing that feels like marketing. If I know this is marketing, I'm gonna ignore it for later. Mhmm. I moved recently, and our neighbors we did we our old neighbors, we had a ton of mail from, like, the last six months. I don't know why they didn't give it to us earlier, by the way. But, I had all this mail, and, literally, I got a I had a Trader Joe's bag filled with mail yesterday, and I had to sit down and go through it. And guess what I did? All of the things from the IRS, from the Vermont State tax department, from the, you know, workers' comp policy, all the things that I have, this and that. I separated all that, and I immediately went to open the first two things that I saw, which is, like, two holiday cards, handwritten notes to Dave and Leah that we missed. Right? And there's a great book called The Boron Letters by this guy Gary Halbert. And he's talked about this in the past, which is, like, we have this a pile and a b pile. When you get home, you separate the mail. You put everything over there. You're gonna you know that's marketing. You know that's promo. You're gonna open that stuff later. I'm gonna open the stuff that feels real, feels human, feels authentic first. And I think the same is true in in marketing, and video is a way to express that. I it's almost like a it's just a multidimensional form of marketing. Instead of a static email, you get my voice. You get my personality. Maybe there's music. There's animation. You know, I I talked to a lot of people who I'll do a video thing like this and people are like, wow. You're much nicer than I thought you were based on how you write online. And I was like, oh, shit. Okay. And so it's it's a it's a level of, like, building trust and authenticity at at scale. So Yeah. And you kind of alluded to this too, but I think it's safe to say that not all videos are engaging even if it's meant to be, you know, more personal. We see so many corporate videos whether it's a company overview, launch video, or brand video that's kind of fall flat. Why do you think that is? There's there could be so many reasons. And, I love Gary v. And I I watched this video a couple weeks ago. I sent it to my team. Gary v was like he he's doing this call with somebody and, Gary, I've been taking your advice, and I've been posting videos every day to Instagram for the last year, and you're wrong. These videos aren't working. And Gary's like, I say this meanness in the kindest way possible, but, like, maybe your videos suck. Mhmm. And that is the that is often the reason. It's it's the offer. Right? Like, why did people show up for this today? It's because, like, it was a good headline. It's the right audience for this. And so a lot of times, just because you made a just because you made a launch video doesn't mean that it's gonna be good. Just that it's gonna work. Like, there is an art into marketing. We've tried to over science everything in marketing. Like, there's totally an art to this. The other thing is, like, it could it could just be I I hate long cycles. I hate I hate taking months. Like, yeah. We're working on the product. You know, it's gonna take us six weeks to do the product launch video. And I think it could be because of that. It could be because there's too much fee maybe too many rounds of feedback, too much consensus. Maybe there wasn't even a good idea in that from the beginning. Also, I posted a ton of videos. So we have a podcast, and I post we have these, like, highly edited podcast clips that we post on my LinkedIn. And then, a couple months ago, I took a video of, like, my wife and I on a hike, and it was, like, seven seconds long. And guess what guess what's the most watched video of the last three hundred sixty five days in my LinkedIn. That that one. Wow. Okay. Cost me could took took me no time, no effort, no editing. And so I think I I I just am not of the belief that oftentimes it's not always about the production quality and the editing, and it's not always how much time you put into the video are gonna make it successful. So it's usually some some form of of those factors. What what did you want me to say there? No. I mean, I think that's spot on because I think, it's really an art. Art. Right? There's, like, the storytelling, there's creativity piece to it, and I think a lot of times these are creating these videos. It's and I'm not saying this is, applies to, like, everyone, but sometimes it's very about them. We're launching this new product. We're doing this, and there's, like I call it, like, the so what test. Right? It's like Yeah. If I were to ask so what, would I be able to answer it? So I think it's how do we think from the lens of the customers? And to your point, it's an art. It's really about storytelling more so than how do you actually produce the videos in a lot of ways. Yeah. I mean, just because you're like, we have a product launch in three months, so we're gonna make a video for that. And then that video gets you know, it's it's every b to b company and maybe even consumer brand. Go to their LinkedIn, and it's like every video on their channel has, like, you know, 73 views. Mhmm. And so I think that another part of it is, like but there there's multiple things you made me think of. One of them is probably sticking to the same recipe. Oh, I've seen you know, I saw the HeyGen product launch videos, and so we're gonna make our product launch video exactly like that. And it's kinda like, you know, you kinda have that, like, drumbeat stock music and then the and the piano comes in and then you show the product. It's like, well, what who's watching? Like, who's watching that? Does that work? I I don't know that. Maybe maybe that's true. Maybe you just wanna have a nice video in the landing page. Maybe the video doesn't need to convert. But I also think a part of it is, like, did you have enough reps and sets on the idea for the video that you're gonna gonna produce? And so if you look at anybody that has success is successful now let's look at YouTube creators. Right? Everybody loves talking about mister beast. I'll give you another guy. There's this guy called Jay Klaus, and he runs a company called Creator Science. If you go to his YouTube channel, he's he's now blown up on YouTube, and all his videos get, you know, 50 to a hundred thousand views, which is amazing in his niche. But if you go to hit if you hit videos and you scroll all the way back to the end, he's been putting videos on YouTube forever. And it's, like, 83 views, 16 views, a hundred views, 100 views, 210 views, a thousand views, 23,000 views, 40 views. Like, it just takes time it takes time and reps and feedback. And so, like, I think it's crazy to be like, we're gonna put out this one we're gonna make one video in the next six months, and we know that we think that video is gonna be a smash. Mhmm. And most of us are never gonna be do you remember, like, the Dollar Shave Club launch video, the guy walking through the warehouse? Like, that was hilarious. Obviously, scripted. Of course, they knew that was gonna be they probably didn't know it was gonna go viral, but, like, anybody that watched that probably was like, oh, this is so funny. This is not like anybody else is doing it. This the deck was stacked, and they invested in the content to create that video. I think you just need more reps. And I also think this is where organic social is a huge driver, not just for video, but for your for demand gen, for anything you're doing in the company. We now live in a world of social media where you can publish all of your ideas and thoughts from a company, from a from your personal account, whatever your point of view on your industry is. You can publish all that for free. So I wanna go through look up I wanna go through and look all look through all of those posts, and I wanna figure out which topics are are gonna jump off. You you and I have a mutual you know Elias from from Drift. Now he has a new company called Agency. Right? He's cranking out LinkedIn content right now, and he's doing an awesome job on it. Right? We could go and analyze his last 60 posts, and we could then go figure out, like, okay. If we were to go and go make videos for him, here are the kinda 10 highest engagement topics. I'm not guaranteeing that those videos are gonna work, but we kinda have these signals. For exit five, I came up with this tagline, years ago, like, because nobody goes to school for b to b marketing. And and people love that, and they they kinda took hold of that and it became a thing. I would feel good about if I wanted to go invest and make a kind of funny skit style video, I'd feel good about that landing before we even know. So I think there's lots of ways to get feedback and get small signals and little tests before before let's go spend, you know, $17 on this, like, product launch video that we're gonna make, and we haven't tested any of the ideas and concepts first. That's such a great point because, you know, even when you're saying, like, you know, try to create one video a month. One video a month is actually quite expensive, especially if you're getting, like, production. You have, like, all these costs going into it. So I think to your point of testing the message, see what sticks, and then kind of investing in it is a huge game changer. Of course, AI, which we'll talk about, is also gonna be a, a really big way that you can scale video production. I think overall, that makes a ton of sense of just, hey. Figure out what works first through your written content because we know that's cheap, that's easier to produce. And then from there, figure out what to prioritize and kind of invest in. Also, like, this is what is exciting to me about all of the AI things in marketing right now is, like, I think before, it used to be this yeah. If we wanna make a video, it's gonna take it cost this much in production. Where are we gonna film it? You know, we have some footage from here. We got some b roll, whatever. Like, I like to think of a world where I can go make that video as a marketer myself. You know? I can my this is not, like, related to to HeyGen type of video, but, like, I could just take 15 videos that I got on my iPhone, dump them all to airdrop them all to my desktop, go into CapCut, make the you know, edit much better on CapCut than I can on my phone, and and ship a video that is, like, good enough. I got text on there. I got some animations on there. All that stuff is gonna continue to to get easier and easier as we get smarter and build AI tool. So, like, I like to think of a world where I'm a marketer, and we're launching a new campaign in two weeks. Like, I'm writing prompts, and I'm using my like, I'm spending all my time on the story and the creative, and then I don't have to worry so much about the video production aspect. That's what's excited about where that's what I'm excited about about where things are where where things are going. It's just shrinking the cycle. My biggest beef is, like, everything is too long. We want the launch video. It's probably gonna suck, and it's gonna take us eight weeks to do it. Like, okay. Then I don't wanna do that. Let's try something different. Yep. Exactly. And I feel like we can't talk about marketing without talking about AI. Right? Because we're undeniably in this new era shaped by LLMs. There's text video models, you name it, and the noise and the hype around it have been very real the past couple of years. I know you are a fan of AI, but, like, how are you thinking about the role and impact of AI in the marketing world? I think a year ago, my response would have been different, and I would probably told you about, like, yeah. We're using it to, you know, write our write emails better. And there's just so many it's such a hard question because, like, my my every every I can't even keep up every day. I'm finding, like, somebody's sending me a new tool, a new company. I do think a lot of it is, like, theater. You know? A lot of it is, like, check out this new tool. Here's this thing you can do. And I'm like, well, show me somebody who's actually using that inside their business and, like, what did that change for the business? So I think you have to separate that. But I I think of it more like I'm trying to I'm trying to just, like, rewire my brain to be like, what's happening now is, like, the late nineties finding out that, like, the Internet was gonna be a thing. Right? And there are lots of people who don't believe it. There's obviously lots of, you know, hype around it. There's gonna be things that don't come true. Hopefully, not like a bubble bursting, but, like, a lot of it's probably not gonna come true. But at the fundamental layer, can you see how this technology is gonna disrupt a lot of the things that we're doing? Yeah. And a perfect example of that is, like, I've always hated working with data, working with spreadsheets. I can work with an AI tool now to be like, here's all this data. Can you help me organize it? I used to have to go find somebody inside the company to go do that because it's been me half take a half day doing that. So it's like it's it's things like that. It's not just about, like, cool. Look at this kinda, like, weird image thing weird guy with weird fingers you can generate an image from. Like, that's just all theater for for LinkedIn, but, like, what are the workflows that are happening inside of your business that either take a long time, require really specialized knowledge inside the business, and so you have to, like, pass it on to somebody else? Mhmm. We're we're trying to find, like, a contractor right now to help us with events, and we have a bunch of applications. And before we decide, like, what the next step with with that person is gonna be, we have written basically a brief inside of ChattGPT to say, here is what our ideal candidate looks like. Can you go through this list of, you know, 300 applicants and and call out, like, five of the contractors that you think might be the best fit to handle our job? That that's amazing. Like, now I did an I did a podcast interview with a guy last week, and I did all my prep in Claude. I started asking him about something that he wrote in his book, and he's like, where did you get that? And I was like, I used Claude. He's like, that is, I've never said that in my life. It was like it was like a framework. It was like the score from like, so in your book, you talk about the score framework, like, s c o r e, s and, like, I'm reading out the letters, and then halfway I stop, and he's like, no. Where'd you get that? He's like, that's a hallucination. I'm like, oh, shit. So there's definitely a lot of those things. You you you know, you can't you can't, like, just fully outsource it, but I think that's really exciting. You know what? The the other thing has been the bane of my existence, Holly, probably you too as a marketer. How many decks have you made in your life? Oh my god. Way too many, especially as a product marketer. It's just deck after deck after deck. So it it's not it's not there yet, but it's like, this is a perfect example. Like, I'm not I don't I don't wanna be another, like, AI is you know, I don't wanna be another AI hype person. And so I I'm looking at all these things about, like, oh, if it's already this good, like, where can this go? And so whenever I write a deck, I've ghostwritten a bazillion decks for founders, for keynote talks they gave, whatever. And I'm I'm really good at the writing, and I'm really good at the storytelling. But then, you know, when you have, like, that idea in the Google Doc, and then you're like, now I gotta get this from here into slides, and I gotta get them designed. And that is another two weeks. And I'm just like, there's gonna be a world and there's tools that you can you know, Canva's gotten some awesome features now, Canva, others. Right? There's gonna be a world where, like, I can basically write out the story I want, and the slides are gonna get generated. Yeah. That is amazing. It allows me as the marketer to focus on the story, not, like, dragging and dropping, like, the icons on slide 16 or, like, trying to get an image. You know what I used to do? I used to I used to draw, like, if I was doing a deck and I wanted, like, a chart or something, I would, like, draw it on my notepad, take a picture of it, airdrop it, put it in the deck, and then leave a note to the designer on, like, the type of graphic that I wanna create. Now people are making tools that you can do that. Right? Yeah. I would say, like, I would probably create chicken, scratch, like, wireframes. Like, this is what I want. And I'll, like, take a picture of my, like, chicken scratch and just, like, put it on this slide and then be like, hey. Let me know if you have questions about it. But I truly think that AI changed in the game in a lot of ways. But the elephant in the room is, you know, there's a fear that AI kills creativity. What are your thoughts on whether AI will replace creativity or not? I don't think I don't think so. I I totally can understand why. I like to think AI is, like, my robot helper, but there is and and, actually, this is the guy this is the guy I was talking about. There's this guy called Mark Shafer. He has a book called, Audacious, how humans can win in an AI world. And I have no affiliation with him. I'm not gonna get any dollars if you go buy his book or whatever, but he's just been an author in marketing that I that I follow. And I had him on my podcast because I'm like, man, this is the exact take that everyone wants to know about right now. And his point of view on it, which I love, was basically, like, the opportunity with AI is actually to be more creative and more human and take more chances and do more human things. And let's let's use AI to run a lot of the business systems and process and data and do things at scale and use generative AI to, you know, to produce things that we can produce on our own. But the the, like it's gonna be, like, the last mile problem. Right? And that is where the creativity creativity is always going to be the factor for why your thing is successful. And so I think this this is gonna free us up to be able to spend more of our time focusing on the creativity and the humanity and the emotion of our marketing and, hopefully, have a lot of the other work, like, offset by AI because I used to always have this conversation with the the team at Drift. I'm like, my job as a marketing leader was to, like, manage the team, do performance reviews, build board decks, have be in spreadsheets. And I'm like, if I'm the best marketing if I'm the best marketer here that we have, if this is like a sports team and my superpower is marketing, like, actual marketing, like, storytelling, creative, product launches, right, the actual marketing. Do you want me to spend all my time do you want me to spend all my time, like, making board decks and being in spreadsheets for internal meetings about metrics and KPIs, or do you want me to, like, do the marketing? Yeah. And so this is what has given me a renewed sense of energy because, candidly, like, the reason I got burnt out of of a job and being VP of marketing and even and CMO is, like actually, none none of none of this is marketing. But I have you get to play the game as you climb the ladder and you become the head of the marketing team. You have to play, like, the it's a people management job. And I I I love marketing because I love the creativity. I love creating things. Right? Yeah. And so I'm excited about a world where, like, we're gonna get back to that. And I'm talking to a lot of founders right now of early stage companies who've done other things in the past, and they're like, I I don't need to have a marketing team of a hundred people. I wanna have, like, a very strong CMO where the CMO is the chief storyteller, the chief creative person for this brand. We have a team of, you know, five to 10 marketers or maybe even less three to five. I'm just making this up. I don't wanna rub anybody the wrong way. Like, obviously, if you already have a big company, I don't I don't want you to go lay off all your marketers. But I think that's the future, and, like, that has that has me excited again. It was like it was a bummer for me to realize that, like, oh, yeah. You climb to the top of of marketing inside of a company only to realize that, like, oh, it's actually not your job to, like, write any of the copy anymore or do any of the things. And so I think we're gonna we should hopefully be able to get to do more of that because of what's possible with AI. Yeah. I totally agree. I think the fundamental nature of AI is really built upon, built upon and also to replicate what humans have already created, you know, and it's based entirely on past data training. Right? And so AI really excels at handling the mundane, the repetitive, and the very tedious tasks quickly and efficiently, which does free up us to focus on more meaningful and creative work. And at HeyGen, our goal was actually to, isn't to replace human creativity, rather it's to amplify it by simplifying, to your point, the script writing, the video production process that you don't wanna do so that you can focus more on, like, crafting the compelling stories. The other thing that we're really thinking through is, like, how do we empower individuals by offering a practical way to put themselves out there without investing, you know, extensive hours recording themselves. So instead of spending two hours recording just to capture a two minute clip, people can now achieve really high quality outcomes by allowing them to channel their energy into these creative aspects that truly matter. So I totally agree with you that I just don't see AI replacing creativity in a really question on that. Yeah. Even in that world so I I love what you said is, like, all the AI stuff is basically trained on all of the stuff we've done in the past. Yep. But isn't there a world where, like, AI is doing more of the things that maybe we have is creating new variations and and new things? How do we keep the humanity I don't even know if that's the right word. How do we keep the creativity in that? Do you think AI will ever be able to be more creative than a human, or is it that humans wanna relate to other humans and we wanna see that part of it? So I honestly think that AI is only as good as, like, the user is. Right? Like, to your point earlier about prompting, Claude was it? It was, like, if you don't have a good prompt, the output that you get is probably not gonna be great. And I truly think that AI is so variable depending on what prompt you give it, what information, and the context you give it. Will it ever be better than humans? Who knows? I don't think anybody can really predict that, in this stage. But I do think that I guess, just in terms of, like, generative videos. Right? I truly believe that AI will unlock and disrupt the whole marketing ecosystem. So think about ads. Right? And to your point, let's say Instagram ads. So currently, most ads are the same for large segments of audiences, if not everybody, just due to the high production costs. So what a company serves me is likely what you would see as well because of a certain surface level trait. Right? So let's say that we're both marketers. With AI and where we see things going is a world where we can dynamically individualize videos at scale. So tailoring every ad specifically to individual viewers based on their unique interests, behaviors, all automatically and in real time. And so in this world, as a marketer, we would create a single template script, and that would automatically adapt personalized elements for each viewer, making every interaction super relevant and impactful. So I don't know if AI will I can't predict, and I don't wanna go record for saying, like, AI is definitely gonna create better, solutions than humans. But I do think it will truly amplify and scale all the stuff that we're able to create and have this entire avenue of video and just content production as a whole. Yeah. That would be great. Yeah. I I love the idea of the thinking about how we can use AI, like, at scale to be more be more personal. Exactly. I sorry. Go ahead. No. The thing the thing is just, like, I'm feeling a lot in marketing right now. Like, there's kinda two there's two sides of things. It's like and I've heard I heard Chris I I heard Chris Sacca talk about this, which is, like, in a world of AI, AI is gonna be great, gonna solve a lot you know, do a lot of business stuff for us. But as a result, humans are we're gonna crave also more analog in person real life experiences too. Yeah. And so it's just there's this weird trend of, like, as the AI stuff is awesome, but at the same time, like, people wanna do at least we're seeing in our business and other companies we work with, they want more in person events. If people wanna get out of their house, they wanna hang out with each other. And so it's like this crazy spectrum of, like, you got AI over here. You got more computers, more machines, more robots. But then, like and even in my personal life, like, I just wanna go for a hike with, like, three of my friends and just, like, you know, shoot the shit and just hang out and be offline. And there there there's, like, these kinda two polls that are that are that are becoming present. I'm I'm curious in the chat, actually, if you're if you're still listening to this. Like, does anybody feel that? Like, I I love tech. Like, I'm a believer in this, like, but I'm at there's kinda, like, I wanna use AI. I wanna talk to chat GBT. I wanna get all these ideas. I wanna do this, but at the same time, there's this craving for, like, in person human led events too. And I think that is a trend that we're gonna see more of. I totally agree. I actually, I actually think one of the common misconceptions about around AI is around authenticity that, you know, somehow communication through AI driven mediums isn't as genuine or personal, which I totally hear and understand why people feel that way. But I also think that mainstream AI technology is still new. Right? And that newness creates suspicions, especially in video production because creativity and execution is so key to success there. But as humans, I think our methods of communication naturally evolve alongside technological advancements because we can also argue that even Zoom meetings aren't as authentic as face to face interactions. Right? And, ultimately, they're just different ways of connecting and communicating shaped by the evolving technology. And I I think in the future, knowing that a video was fully generated with AI and interacting with somebody's avatar might feel just as authentic and personal as speaking to them over Zoom or even in person. And I'm not saying that this transformation will happen overnight, but it's very likely that AI driven communication will become the norm as Zoom and, you know, these more virtual conversations are as authentic. But I I truly don't think in person events will ever be replaced because we still crave that in person, connection. I just think it's a different way of thinking about it, especially as technology changes. But curious to see what everybody thinks about that. I don't know. It's it's crazy. This the other thing that comes up a lot is, like, do you care if AI did it or a human did it and you got the desired result? Do you care? Like, I was talking to I was I think it came up in, in exit five, actually. Someone said, hey. Our agency did this thing and this and that third grade, but I'm pretty sure it was, like, generated by AI. And I was like, well, was it good? And they're like, yeah. It's great. So is it because they didn't wanna pay $15 retainer to that agency and they could have gotten it done with, like, a $20 a month chat g b t subscription? Or was there some, like, deeper thing there? And I don't have any I'm just faking that I have all the answers to this. I'm just giving you my reaction to all these things live. But so super interesting time to be working. Super interesting time to be a a knowledge worker. Yeah. Yeah, man. I don't know. Honestly, like, one of the lessons that we got pretty frequently, at towards the end of last year was a lot of these businesses were saying, well, my audience is not gonna like the fact that we're using AI to create videos. So we actually did a consumer study after just hearing these objections. I think we have surveyed more than 200 2,500, people in general to just get their feedback. And the results were pretty in line with what we had thought, which was that over 90% of consumers don't actually have a problem with brands using AI generated videos in their marketing content, which is a huge endorsement showing that audiences are open to engaging with AI driven creativity and storytelling. I think what they are looking for though is the quality AI videos. Right? Like, we don't wanna, like, go into the uncanny valley, and it's, like, obviously, super robot on that. But if it's higher quality, if it looks realistic, people are actually very open to brands using, AI in their videos, and it doesn't really have a negative impact or perception of the brand for using it. So I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. I think that makes sense. That's where I get turned off if it's, like, if it's, like, slow, glitchy, a little bit off, if if it looks fake, then you're kinda like, I don't know. Can I trust this? Also, the content and the substance really matters. Like, all of the big companies, like, I don't know where where you live. Well, obviously, you live in San Francisco. But you ever you ever tried dealing with, like, Comcast lately? Not Comcast, but I I dealt with, like, a plant delivery service, and that was rough too. So but but they're used like, I don't care. Help me solve my problem, and I don't care if it's a human or an AI or whatever. I really don't care. Help me do the thing that I wanna do. It's when it's like this endless loop of, like, I don't understand what you're saying. Sorry. We can't help with that. I don't understand what you're saying. Like, just as a consumer, that this isn't even a take on marketing right now. Like, help please help me. This is a great comment, actually. I haven't thought about Colin in the chat that story is king. Example, we've been watching animated movies for years. That's a great take. Like, I'm not, like, yeah. I'm not taking my kids to watch Moana two because it's animated. It's not real people. No. We love it. It's great. It's it's a great movie. Right? Perfect example. I think, but but if you're using, like, bad if you're using, like, shitty marketing tactics and it's not good and then you do AI with it, then you're then you got, like, a a video that's, like, not informational, not educational, not specific, and it's not funny, useful, or entertaining, and it's generated by AI, like right? But if it's funny or if it it all that you have to, like, to back what we're saying about creativity earlier. It's, like, you have to check, like, what is the angle? What's the hook? Why are we doing this? And then, okay, if it's created by AI versus human, then maybe that is actually not the the differentiator. Yeah. %. So how do you kind of see AI transforming video marketing in the near future? Like, how would you perceive it, and how would you implement it in your own workflow? I would love to be able to basically I love the idea of an AI avatar in some form. Like, there's so much I'd love to be able to film a bunch of videos and and record a bunch of things of my own and basically make a one to two minute, like, promo style video. Like, hey. Well, I'm doing this webinar with, you know, Holly at HeyGen and the Marketing AI Institute. And if I could write all that and prompt it and come out and it's me, but AI version of me, like, if I could use it to scale content Mhmm. Because here's another example. Last last Friday, I was supposed to do something. I was supposed to do this video thing, and, I was sick, like, real sick. Like, I couldn't speak. My wife was like, you get I had, like, the oh, yeah. I might just sound like a voice. My wife was like, you can't go on a call like that. Like, that's a perfect example. Like, if I could just sit at my computer, I could write some prompts and work on the copy and write the script, and maybe there's, like, a Descript style type of editor, and I'm generating videos that way for for kind of the run of the mill marketing videos. I think that'd be great. I also think, like, being able to help me scale as a this is not even this is just me as a marketer. Like, I think maybe I'm a marketing exec sometimes. I'm a thought leader sometimes, but I'm a I'm a marketer. That's my craft. That's what I like to do. Mhmm. I'd love to be able to make a video and have all of the animation, have all the b roll, have everything like that. Basically, if I can work if I can do all that stuff without having to hire other people that have to know about the lighting and get experts to do all that, if I can sit there on my computer and map out the storyboard and write the script, oh my gosh. That that's the that's the creative dream for me. I feel that way about video. I feel that way about, like, websites and landing pages and any types of offers. So I think that's what's exciting to me about where things are going. Yeah. Definitely. And, I have to bring up Paige in here because, like, that's truly our mission. Right? Our mission is to make creative storytelling accessible to everyone. So our AI video generation platform is really designed for marketers who want to create professional quality videos on demand, and that's without the typical barriers that you mentioned of, like, the time, the budget, and the resources even, like, being on camera. And Yeah. Fundamentally believe that AI video generation will create a new productivity force, to really unlock new forms of video but every business creating a hundred times their videos than they are now. And that's kind of the the goal and what we're truly working towards, at Humid. Do do people do like, do people you like, can you make, like, a product if I wanna make a product explainer video, let's just use my business now exit five. If I wanted to make an overview video, could I do that completely through HeyGen or AI to be able to do that? Yeah. You definitely can. So there are a few ways that you can do it. Specifically in HeyGen, there are four ways that you can actually create videos with our studio and platform. The first way is that you can video create videos completely from scratch without a camera or production needed. So whether that's, you know, a product explainer, an overview video, you can easily create those in Asia. And my favorite part is actually the ability to go back and easily edit the script and video if anything changes last minute, which we all know happens way too often. So your video can always be up to date in a lot of different ways. The second way is you can turn any written content into a video in just a few clicks. So, customers are essentially repurposing what they already have because I'm sure, like them, you know, you, Dave, and also most of you watching are sitting on a gold mine of content, like, written content. So this could be a landing page, blog post, PDF. Well, even just even just, like, just to build on that, a lot of times that for anything that we've created in marketing, it almost always starts with writing first. Exactly. Whether it's, like, I'm writing a script. But, actually, a lot of times, I would kinda I like this. We used to do this a lot at Drift, which is, like, we just would kinda write we we would we would frame it as, like, an article or a blog post, but it was just kind of, like, a first person, like, what are we announcing? Well, you know, why is it valuable? Who's it for? Why does it exist? How do you use it? And I'd always love the writing first, and then we would use that as the jumping off point for, like, product marketers would go and make their email and the landing page stuff based on that. The video team would go and write a script based on that. So I think I love the framework of, like, writing first and then being able to generate from there. Exactly. And we all like, it's just cheaper. Right? And to your point, we can actually test to see what's actually working, what's not before you actually generate video to then really double down on the message or the story there. Well, I'd rather fail. I I did this. I made this terrible explainer video for this company that I was working at. And I spent I didn't test it. I spent, like, $7,500 right out of the gate. It took, like, four weeks to do it, and I I the process was terrible. So I think, like, based on what we talked about earlier, if you believe that you need lots of that batch and lots of reps to do this, I can see how, like, oh, yeah. Okay. Maybe we need to like, how can we make, you know, fifteen, twenty, 50 to a hundred videos and really get a sense of the feedback loop without every time having to be, like, we're filming live. We got a studio. We got this whole setup. Like, I I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. For sure. I know that I gotta step my game up. I gotta I made a note. I gotta, like, I need a AI. I need a I need a avatar. I need a I need a Dave avatar. But, like, with, like, a British accent or something. We will fly to you, or we'll fly you to LA to come do a shoot. But, it's fine because we often actually created an avatar of himself, and we actually fed all of his, like, past, keynote, speaking sessions, written books, and all of that into the knowledge base. So he actually now sends his AI version himself to a lot of different talks around the world, and he has, like, a full team dedicated to doing that. So I would love to see you as an avatar and just, like, we'll have these conversations in the future, and we'll both I'll come to LA, but I need to be six eight and super jacked, and then we can do my Albaia avatar. We'll make we'll make it work. Alright. We got a lot of good we got a lot of good questions here. Yes. We do. Before we get to the actual q and a part, I just wanna ask you one last question. What's one piece of unfiltered advice or challenge you would give to marketers to stay ahead in this very competitive market right now? Push yourself to be a early adopter. I think that there are so few times in life when you haven't like, marketing and business and everything just becomes so competitive, and it's like everything becomes a whole sea of sameness. It's like we're gonna do marketing like everybody else. And so I found that I can think of maybe three or four people in my career that at each company that I was at, I think of somebody that I worked with at HubSpot who did an amazing job with this, somebody that I worked with at Drift who did an amazing job with this, and somebody on my team now at exit five. There there's always kinda one person who is willing to be an early adopter and break things and try different things and try all these crazy tools, and, that that is the one who gets the outside advantage. It's just like being an investor. Right? Investors have to make you make a hundred bets and, like, one or two of them return the whole fund. I would be, right now, forcing myself to try to use these tools. The way that I've done it, if I could share I'm not gonna share my screen now. But I have in the bookmarks, in the in the top of my bookmarks here, I have chat g b t, Claude, Perplexity, and one other tool, which I it's a fully disclosure. I can't name it. And I put those in my bookmarks because every time I open my browser, it's a reminder to me to be like, is there a way I could be using one of those tools to do that? And this is something that we're pushing our team at exit five to do. And so I would say take a bet that this is where the world is going and use this as a time use this as an opportunity to, like, reinvent yourself, rethink those workflows, question all your assumptions, and, like, try to go all in and be an early adopter on a bunch of these tools. Right? Whether it's, like, you wanna make videos with HeyGen, you wanna be a full stack, you know, landing page builder, you wanna build awesome creative stuff with, you know, Canva or Gamma or whatever else you're using. Mhmm. I think taking a bet on where the future is going, it'd be like if you were like I always think about this all the time. If you were like the first person in, like, 02/2008 to believe in inbound marketing and, like, bet your company on HubSpot, like, you probably did pretty damn well. I think the same is true right now. There are very few opportunities to be an early adopter to move to move fast. And oftentimes, if you can go first, you can get an advantage. So I would just push you to to really try to use these tools and rethink your work and rethink your workflow, and how can you get smarter and do do do cooler work by being an early adopter of AI. Awesome. Thanks, Dave. Alan Maynard, do you wanna come join us for the q and a? Hello. Hello. Awesome chat so far, guys. Loving it. So, yeah, we have some really great stuff in the chat. I think the first one, makes a lot of sense to what we're talking about, earlier, Dave. So what do you suggest to someone who's wants to push the usage of AI, but their boss is hesitant to using it? I would just go walk up to your boss at work and just, like, punch them right in the face. I would a little bit differently, but they've already made out there. No. I think I think I would I would just push back on that. And I think a lot of times people look. Overall, humans, we don't like change. And so I think I would sit down and try to show the business case of doing this. And I have this conversation with marketing leaders a lot, which is, like, a lot of times, they just don't know. They they don't know. And so, you know, as as a leader, as a manager, I don't want people just to be like, hey. I should use we should use AI. And I'm like, oh, okay. Great. But if someone was like, hey, Dave. You got a minute? Like, can we in our next one on one, can I present to you some of my thoughts about, like, how we can be using AI inside of our business and three reasons why I think we should use it? And you thoughtfully present, like, here's what's happening in the world. Here's why this is a huge trend. Here's some areas in our business that are holding us back right now. Here are three ways that we can start to use AI. Here's how we're gonna do it. Here's how how much it's gonna cost. Here's why we're gonna do it. Here's how we're gonna measure it. Like, sit down and actually and be the leader and share a point of view and and almost present the strategy, and then get the the get the okay to start. Share your results. You know, get other people around the team bought in. I think that's where I'd start versus being like, hey, boss. I wanna use AI. And they're like, no. Well, it's always gotta be like, talk about this strategy. I I can't think of a manager, boss, company owner, board, investor in the world who is like, hey, we wanna use this new thing. Call it AI. Call it the Internet. Call it whatever you want. Like, we wanna use this new thing to make our business better. Here's how we're gonna do it. Here's how we're gonna measure it. Like, what what boss in the world would say no to that? And if there if you do all that and they're still not down to that, then you need to quit your job and go find a company that that believes that believes in some of this stuff. And and now clearly, you've identified this as an important thing to you. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And earlier, I know you mentioned your marketing pet peeve was trying to tie everything to ROI. Someone asked, what would be your biggest video pet peeve? And, Holly, I'm curious yours as well. Holly, you go first. Video pet peeve. I think I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but when it comes to video, it's I think, people see this as, like, the shining moment. Right? Because a lot of companies don't have the budget or the resources to actually create a lot of videos. So when it comes to the video pet peeve, I think it's more how do you it's when companies make it all about them. It's it's this is what we do. This is how, like, we work, and then they're not really making it about the audience and it's not resonating with the audience in that same way, and it's more like tooting their own horn, in a lot of different ways. So I'll probably say that is my pet peeve when it comes to videos. I got, like, seven. I think one of them is just, like, having empathy and being like, is this video like, would I would I watch this video? Like, let's stop making things that are just gonna get lost in the feed and no one's ever gonna am I just, like, this guy in our community, I, Brendan Hufford, he he calls it, like, a checkbox marketing. I love that. It's like, am I just checking the box to make a video here? Or am I gonna actually make something that someone's gonna stop and stop their skull and and watch and pay attention to? That's fine. One here from Whitney. Obviously, Dave, you've been doing this a while now. So because we can consider video being an older channel now. So how do you think marketers need to pivot to keep it relevant and fresh? And and maybe this is a layup for you, Holly with, avatars, but here's here's your thoughts. I I just don't agree with like, this is like saying, oh, I'm not gonna watch Netflix anymore because, you know, Netflix is old. Video is old. Yeah. I I think you gotta innovate on the content. You gotta make it interesting and like, it's it's the it's the what. It's the offering. It's like the what is the video. Yeah. I agree. And I think one of the common themes that everyone's been experiencing in is, like, how AI search is changing SEO and from, you know, the small sample set of just, like, my peers who have been talking to traditional search traffic from company to company has probably decreased around, like, 10 to 20% because of LMs, like, perplexity and chat JPG. So when we were brainstorming ways to help supplement for the SEO drop, YouTube was actually a channel that came up because, you know, how do we instead of just creating blog posts and landing pages, how do we turn them into videos and put them on YouTube because that is still a really key channel. So that's also something I would consider as well. Yeah. We're we're starting to play around a lot with YouTube, and seeing a lot of really great, great stuff from it. So, here if someone is just starting to play around with video, what do you think is the first thing they should focus on first? I mean, I honestly think this is, like, just start small. Right? I I think this is where you should not shy away from experimenting with various use cases. So you can start by identifying one or two areas where video, can make an immediate impact, whether it's, like, social media content or streamlining tutorial videos. And that's really where I think AI can come into play to help you create videos faster so you can iterate and test on different channels, much, much faster and at a much, less steep of a cost than traditional production methods. And I think that in itself will allow you to learn the technology, you know, measure the results, and just really refine your approach overall. But once you start seeing some success in these initial efforts, then you can expand into other high potential use cases like, product demos, customer support, or even ad campaigns. But I think it's really important to test out different use cases because your audience is very specific to you and your company and your industry. So just because something works for other industries and companies doesn't mean it won't necessarily work for you. So key is to stay curious and really iterate there. What about you, Dave? I wouldn't even think about video I I wouldn't even think about the production yet. I would think about first, like, what's the what's the hook? What's your angle? What's what's the niche? Like, what are we are we just gonna make the what are we making videos about? It's like, oh, my company sells three d my company makes, you know, three, three d printer. So we wanna make videos to promote our three d printers. I'm gonna make a series where, like, I, make a grilled cheese sandwich, and I make it five different ways. And every time I do it, we talk about something new. And as it relates to that's a terrible just riffing. Right? But I I think you need to it's like, why are you gonna start a YouTube channel? You you're not just like, I'm just gonna start YouTube, and I'm gonna start making videos. No. What is the thing? And so it's like, Dave and Holly are gonna start we're gonna Dave and Holly are gonna start a weekly video show. It's gonna be super interesting because it's gonna be only three minutes long. We're each gonna ask each other three questions about AI in the future of marketing. But oh, great. I I love that. You need a concept. You need a hook. You need an angle. Then you can go figure out, like, lenses and editing and whether you use HeyGen or not. Like, it's about the it's about the what are you what are you gonna create? That's where it all starts for me. Makes sense. Let's see here. Another sort of actually, on a similar, on a similar wavelength, for someone who has a smaller marketing team, and this might kind of lead into the last question, Is there any ways that either of you would think to use AI to sort of punch above their weight? So let's say, you know, they have they have the niche. They they know where they're going, but they know that they really wanna go down the, the video route. Is what would you recommend to use AI? I mean, I think, you know, Hey John will be perfect for this in terms of, like, helping you speed up production and, like, the cycles and really punch it above your weight there. One of our customers, Toronto.io, actually uses they have a very lean marketing team as well. I think their team is less than four people, and they're competing with the big wigs. Right? So they're leveraging HeyGen to essentially scale all their video creation process so that they can compete with the big wigs and try to, be better when it comes to storytelling and just be more engaging with the content that they're producing. So I think there are definitely ways to use AI to punch above your weight, and it's a lot of it is how do you create the best script. So using AI to create compelling stories, and I actually personally use ChatGPT and perplexity and all that to kind of play around, which is, like, different ideas and see, like, what angles are gonna be the best and resonate the most. But in terms of the production process itself, that can really help free up your team's resources, your budget, and all that to help create even more videos than you already have. Great. Any thoughts, Dave, on that? No. Retweet. That was great. Okay. Thanks. Actually, another one, for you, Holly. I think we have time for about one or two more. Let's say someone is using HeyGen. What do you suggest, is the best way to get people's attention when using an avatar based video within the first few minutes? Oh, I mean, I think a lot of this has to do with storytelling. Right? Just because you use the avatar isn't gonna be compelling for a lot of people. However, I know that if you use an avatar that does not look realistic, that's definitely gonna grab the viewers' attention. I actually personally when I'm on just social channels and YouTube, when I look at videos, I don't know if this is, like, just because of the work that I'm in, but I personally look at them and I say, oh, is this created with AI? Is this not created with AI? And I try to guess it, which is so hard because the technology has gotten so good these days. But I would say, like, if start with a story. Right? Like, what are you trying to do with it? You can use avatars for a lot of different videos, whether it's the more face to camera traditional type of, webinars. It could be more personalized, like, like, conversations or outreach and messages. But I think it's more what do you wanna do with the avatar based video, and what is what exactly is your goal with the video itself? I don't know if that actually answers the question, but I would probably start there. I don't know, Dave, if you want if you have anything else to add there. I mean, I I I would guess that the answer would be would be the same whether human based, avatar based, whatever or not. It's like the hook is I'm not a YouTuber, but I think there's something about, like, the first three seconds or something like that of every video. So I think just think what what's the hook? Avatar. Yeah. That makes sense. I think that's, that's all the time we have. Wanted to thank you both for joining us today for the AI Marketing Alliance workshop. So great to have you. We'll definitely hope to have you back. As a reminder to everyone in the audience, we do have in the docs tab, just in the top right, some downloadable content from HeyGen on, video marketing. And, you will get a recording of this within the next, twenty four hours sent to your email. So if there's anything you wanna recap or, share, you can definitely do so. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having us. Pleasure. Take care, everyone. Bye, everyone.