An interesting perspective on AI today!
I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of people argue against AI, but what about an argument for it?
Today we are talking to Holly Smith!
About Holly:
Holly L. Smith, MBA Holly L. Smith is a freelance marketing and communications consultant with more than 25 years of experience leading strategy, storytelling, and brand growth across higher education and healthcare. Her career reflects a rare blend of creative vision, analytical rigor, and a deep commitment to mission-driven work. Holly began her academic journey in athletic training at Indiana University before earning a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Southern Indiana and an MBA from the University of Evansville. Her professional experience spans both in-house leadership and agency environments, giving her a well-rounded perspective on marketing strategy, operations, and execution. Throughout her career, Holly has held senior marketing roles at respected organizations including Cincinnati Children’s, St. Elizabeth Healthcare, Ascension St. Vincent, Heritage Federal Credit Union, and the University of Evansville. She also spent several years at Ten Adams, a boutique agency specializing in healthcare marketing and strategy, before serving as Director of Marketing, Strategic Planning, and Printing Services at St. Mary’s Health System. Most recently, she served as Senior Director of Marketing and Communications at the University of Evansville, where she led institutional branding, communications, and enrollment support initiatives. Currently, Holly owns and operates Hollylocks Marketing, where she provides strategic marketing and communications consulting to mission-driven organizations. She also works part-time with Community-Engaged Alliance, supporting community-engaged teaching, learning, and research across Indiana. In addition, Holly serves as a Fractional CMO, Project Manager, and Web Coordinator at Caylor Solutions, partnering with higher education clients on integrated marketing strategy, digital initiatives, and project execution. In addition to her professional roles, Holly has been an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Evansville since 2016, sharing her real-world expertise with emerging professionals. In recognition of her leadership and service, she received the University’s President’s Distinguished Service Award in 2021. Holly is equally known for her deep community involvement and nonprofit leadership. She has served on numerous boards, including as Marketing Chair and Board Member for A Network of Evansville Women (ANEW); in advisory, grants, and leadership roles with the Women’s Fund of Vanderburgh County; as Board Chair and Marketing Chair for Building Blocks; as Marketing Chair for the Children’s Museum of Evansville; and as a member of the Advisory Committee at the Southern Indiana Career and Technical Center for the WPSR program. She previously served with the Evansville Police Foundation as a Board Member and Marketing Chair, Co-Chair of the Policeman’s Ball, and Interim Executive Director. Across every role, Holly is known for her strategic insight, collaborative leadership style, and passion for using marketing as a force for connection, growth, and community impact.
Contact Holly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollylocks/ hollylocksrocks@gmail.com
To invite someone to the show, reach out on Linkedin!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanjjordan
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Sean Jordan (00:08)
Well, hello, I’m Sean in St. Louis and you have once again joined us at the Marketing Gateway. And today we’re going to have an interview with somebody that is just absolutely going to inspire you. Her name is Holly Smith. She is a freelance marketing and communication consultant. She’s got more than 25 years of experience and she does it all. She is so good at everything she does. She does strategy, she does storytelling, she does brand growth. She helps CEOs and leaders.
She’s a fractional CMO for some organizations and she really knows her stuff. And more than that, she’s got some really great ideas about how we can use this tool that everybody’s talking about all the time, AI. But she’s talking about it in a way that I think is really helpful and really positive. Practical, how to use this stuff to make sure that you’re doing your best possible work. So you’re gonna love this interview. By the way, you can check out her full bio in the show notes. She’s done so much. I don’t even wanna try to cover it all because.
There’s just so many things to see. So check those out and enjoy the interview.
Sean Jordan (01:11)
Well, welcome back to the Marketing Gateway. Of course, I’m Sean in St. Louis, and with me is Holly Smith. Holly, I’m so excited to have you on because you were referred to us by one of our previous guests, Ed Lehu, who’s a great friend of mine, and I know of yours as well. So welcome.
Holly Smith (01:25)
Thank you so much.
Sean Jordan (01:27)
And you know, I like to begin every one of these episodes with ⁓ asking guests to tell me something that I don’t know, something surprising. So what would you like to share with us that’s surprising today?
Holly Smith (01:37)
What I always like to tell people when I first meet them ⁓ is I’m a jack of all trades when it comes to marketing, but I’ve been doing face. I’ve been doing marketing longer than Facebook’s been around. So it kind of coins a little bit about how long I’ve been doing it, but also that I’ve been around for the evolution of marketing is what I like to say.
Sean Jordan (01:55)
So does that mean that you were on MySpace before Facebook rolled around?
Holly Smith (01:58)
You know,
I was on MySpaceFreak a little bit and I had a blog spot, if you remember those. ⁓ then, you know, just back in the day, you know, there were things that were done so differently. I know one of those things we talked about is, you know, we used to go to the printer when things were printed off at the printer and see the blue line. And, you know, it’s just so different now. And I think it’s better. That’s for sure.
Sean Jordan (02:03)
Mm-hmm.
It is and it isn’t like I really remember like the old days of like internet chat rooms, for example, like IRC or you’d get on ICQ or AOL instant messenger or things like that. And there was a certain ⁓ personability to those interactions that kind of lack on social media today where people yell at each other and get angry so often. But I think in terms of ⁓ the work we do as marketers, things have definitely improved. ⁓
Holly Smith (02:43)
Yes, I agree, yes.
Yes,
I would agree with that too. Yes, definitely the work as marketers and I feel like we can be so much more efficient, productive and just the speed to market so different.
Sean Jordan (02:58)
So true. Well, in this series on the marketing gateway, we’re really focused on the St. Louis area, and you’re not actually living in St. Louis, so you’re someone that’s a little outside, although I know you know our area. So what are your impressions of St. Louis to someone who doesn’t live or work here?
Holly Smith (03:13)
You know, we love St. Louis. We’re in Evansville, Indiana. We’re not too far away. We love to come over for a good baseball game, go to the arch, go to a hockey game. But, you we visited, you know, I feel like every other year we’re over there for something. The only thing I haven’t done is I would love to go to your zoo. I’ve never been to the zoo. So, but yeah, great experience. Love shopping there. Love visiting. So many cool things to do in St. Louis.
Sean Jordan (03:39)
And it’s a free zoo. mean, you know, can literally just walk in. ⁓ It’s just down the road from my office here. And I literally just go over there sometimes and just take animal pictures if I need a little bit of a relief because you can just walk right in. There’s no barrier to entry. So definitely check it out. I’m just curious in Evansville, ⁓ know, St. Louis, legendarily, we’ve lost two football teams from the NFL. Who do you guys root for in Indiana for football?
Holly Smith (03:42)
No!
Yes.
of course the Colts.
Sean Jordan (04:07)
I figured as much.
Holly Smith (04:11)
And of course basketball now those winning Hoosiers, know, kind of comes to college football. That’s what we’re in for too. So yeah.
Sean Jordan (04:17)
And it’s so odd, we were talking in another episode about how the word Hoosier here is a bad word. ⁓ If someone is described as a Hoosier, especially ⁓ on the West side, ⁓ that is a bad thing. Never really understood why here in St. Louis that is, but in Indiana, Hoosier is a good thing still, right? ⁓ Well, what’s something about the St. Louis area that really interests or excites you beyond the zoo?
Holly Smith (04:33)
That’s so interesting. Okay, good to know.
I just love that there’s so much variety of things to do and no matter what part of town you’re in that you can go downtown, you can go all over. When you live in a little bit smaller town, you appreciate all the really nice things and nice areas and places to go and things to do in a larger city. And I think for us too is that we live so close to so many cities, but we may not have those things here, but we can access them pretty easily in a day trip or a weekend trip.
I really love so many aspects of St. Louis, it’s really cool.
Sean Jordan (05:16)
Great, well, hope to have you back in town soon. And again, get over to the zoo, you’ll really enjoy it. Well, let’s talk a little bit about marketing now. So as you mentioned, you have watched marketing evolve in your career. You’ve gone from seeing it be print first, to digital first, to AI assisted. So what has changed about how marketers have thought during this process? Not just how they’re working, but how they’re actually thinking.
Holly Smith (05:22)
you
Yeah, you know, it’s very interesting because I have seen the evolution when it comes to media. You know, it used to be you would have a photo show with a reporter and the evolution of what they’ve gone through. And now that reporter is all of the things, right? So I feel like now the marketing industry that’s happening as well as we’re streamlining and we’re condensing the workflow. so now when it used to take
You know, a whole team to do things, especially as a freelancer, you’d have to have friends that were experts and things. Now you can really kind of be your one man show, you know, just like when it comes to a reporter. So the evolution of, know, really being a team and being able to, when you need a freelance again, to have those partners to now having all the AI assisted tools out there today.
Sean Jordan (06:32)
Yeah, and ⁓ when I talk to people in various roles in marketing, mean, marketing is such a huge umbrella of tasks these days, right? ⁓ It really seems like a lot of folks are trying to look for ways that they can kind of get some of that, I don’t know, collaboration back, and AI has proven a good tool for that for many of them. And some of them, of course, are apprehensive about using AI for anything creative, because that’s their job. That’s their stock and trade. ⁓
they’re happy to use it maybe to help them kind of get to that point where they can be creative. And I think that’s a big change that I’ve noticed in the last few years.
Holly Smith (07:07)
Yeah. And what I really see too is, there was this time that was very, you know, siloed intense. And then there was a period of time where, you know, really social media took off internet advertising. And there was so, so much of this dependency on your graphic designer and almost to the point where is overloading a graphic designer that now, you know,
we’ve gotten back to letting them hone their skills and be a go at what they do, but all those little things that necessarily graphic doesn’t need to do like social media graphics or, you know, little tiny graphics for things that we, you know, we have other tools to do that now ⁓ that can be checked and also on brand if it’s done the right way, but also, you know, those heavy projects or those things that really truly need a keen eye.
also feel like graphic designers, have more of an art director role too, where they’re able to kind of proof check and look at things and make sure they’re on brand and make tweaks to it and maybe not have to start to finish to be the actual designer on things as well.
Sean Jordan (08:08)
Yeah, yeah. I’m hearing an increasing number of people telling me that they’re using Canva. And maybe they’ll have a graphic designer ⁓ set something up and kind of give them a design bible or design template. And then they’ll take it into Canva to create all those other smaller graphics. And Canva can do that job in a way that traditional tools just couldn’t do it. So it’s been fascinating to watch that tool really rise in prominence.
Holly Smith (08:24)
Yes.
Yeah, I agree. There’s so many tool kits and now the brand kits that they have available to set up to make it easier. I even work for a firm that we help universities set up the Canva tool kits to launch across campus as well. And we used to have tools like that that had templates, but it just wasn’t as easy or friendly as what it is today. And I think that’s a great example of the positivity of evolution of technology today is that
It enables, like I said, even like an end user like that to be able to do things, even like business cards. The campus I worked at, we set up where people could enter their information, see their own proof and hit order on their own business card. And it didn’t take a typesetter to typeset that anymore. That’s a perfect example of the evolution of technology and where marketing’s really taken us. Because a business card’s a great sales tool. It’s great to have. Not everybody has a business card these days.
⁓ But if it is a necessary tool, it takes away necessarily from what could really produce revenue for a business ⁓ when it comes to generating graphics and things like that could be used more in sales.
Sean Jordan (09:38)
And you make such a good point that ultimately these tools should help us to take away the tedious things that really they’re important, but they don’t really need the time that we allocate to them so we can get to the things that really are important and require our time and energy. I think one of the things you and I have talked about is ⁓ the opportunity to have it take out some of the sting of the things that you don’t normally get paid for, Like writing a proposal or putting together a template that you’re going to use or things like that.
They might just be things that you’re doing in your free time or that you’re doing when you’re prospecting for work But that take a lot of your time and focus away from actually serving the people that you’re working for
Holly Smith (10:15)
Yeah, I think the value of time is what I like to talk about with people is, know, trying to get business is very time intensive. ⁓ And when you’re trying to do that, you’re taken away from actually making money and spending on time on projects and serving other clients. So I think, you know, anything you can do to condense them out of workload, it comes to onboarding a client or getting them to say yes. ⁓ It’s just that conversion part. We’ve all struggled with. That’s always a great tool to use for that. And I have actually used it.
many times to help not only produce proposals based upon a conversation, download the transcript, upload it to an AI, have it produced based upon the conversation and it’s got the actual knowledge base. Of course, I’m proofing it and making sure it’s accurate. There’s no hallucination in it. ⁓ That’s a perfect example of, you know, these tools to be able to take a conversation and then literally produce what you talked about into what you’re looking for, whether it’s a blog post, a proposal.
or whatever else asset that you may need to come out of the conversation.
Sean Jordan (11:15)
mean, the last thing we want ChatGPT to do is to look at our proposal and go, you know, you could do this a little cheaper and ⁓ change the price on us, Well, I know you’ve held some in-house leadership roles. You’ve worked agency side, and now you’re operating as a fractional CMO. So what does each model teach you about leadership and trust?
Holly Smith (11:22)
That’s right.
You know, I think having, working inside at a corporate or a large corporate organization, especially in healthcare or higher education and working agency side, I’ve worked agency side and now have my own agency three different times. ⁓ It gives you the perspective of what’s important and what needs to be done during the business day and maybe what needs to happen at night. But again, it feeds back into that value of time, right? And you’re respectful of other people’s time.
And you’re also, understand what each role needs. You I felt like, now working agency side, I know what it was like to work corporate, right? I know that what they’re looking for in their email box when they ask for something. And I feel like I can deliver that a little bit better and help provide more guidance, more information, those recommendations, what they’re clearly looking for in a recommendation. I think just seeing both sides of the perspective for that can really help.
Sean Jordan (12:31)
You know, one of the things you just said that really stuck out to me in a positive way was respecting other people’s time. When you’re working with people that know what they’re doing and you’re asking them to do things that you know they’re good at doing, if you have a good sense of the time that’s required, you can work with them to make it better and to iterate and improve because you’re not just sitting around waiting for layers of approval, or you’re not sitting around waiting for them to have the right marching orders to know what they’re doing, or you’re not even…
just wasting their time making them have to schedule meetings weeks or months out from when you asked them to do the task, right? And I think that that’s one thing that is often lacking in corporate leadership when I work with different organizations is that the leaders don’t respect people’s time enough and they don’t always understand how long it takes to do things because they haven’t done them themselves. So when you can do that, the results that you can get are just amazing.
Holly Smith (13:20)
Yeah, there’s been times I’ve walked through, I’ve worked with like vice presidents enrollment that, know, they understand enrollment. They don’t necessarily know when it comes to marketing and what goes into it to step them through and explain, you know, here’s when we initiated a project, here’s the back and forth. Here’s what’s needed. Here’s the tools and information that’s upfront. If we can get that and what the speed to market can truly be or what the output can be. ⁓ but also education, you know, that clarity and communication and consistency can really help.
a team be better together and work better together. ⁓ I’ve actually educated, I’ve actually done a couple scenarios and talked through with people like how to give good feedback. That’s actually harder than it sounds. ⁓ I mean, some people really struggle with that and there’s always more efficient ways to do it. And there’s also very direct, clear communication you can get to do that as well.
Sean Jordan (14:13)
Once worked in the comic book world and I gave an artist some feedback one time and found out later I absolutely destroyed him He never wanted to draw again after I gave him feedback and I didn’t mean to do that You know, I didn’t mean to undermine his confidence. I hope he’s picked the pencil up since I last talked to him but ⁓ giving bad feedback can can really adversely affect people especially when they’re sensitive about their work or they’re creative or they’re just trying to do good things and you don’t know how to tell them how to do their best work, right?
It’s amazing.
Holly Smith (14:42)
Yes.
Yeah, it’s funny. That’s what I call it. The seas of feedback, ⁓ clear, consistent and caring and caring is one of those. Cause you have to make sure you say it in a tone that it doesn’t hurt someone’s feeling. And it really is giving, it’s also giving them enough breadth and depth that they can make the changes and maybe even make something better or different based upon your feedback, because maybe what they even provided, they maybe even had a different idea of something completely, you know,
different they showed you and it gives them the opportunity to maybe introduce new things.
Sean Jordan (15:17)
So often what I hear when I see something come back that I didn’t want was, well, you told me to do it this way. And I think, did I? But I probably did. And I didn’t communicate it in a way that gave them the opportunity to see other avenues. And then I didn’t give them good enough feedback to help them to see that maybe what I told them, I didn’t have as clear of a picture in my head as they thought I did. Well, let’s talk about AI for a little bit. So AI is reshaping content creation. And ⁓ it’s also reshaping analytics and strategy.
Holly Smith (15:35)
Yes. Yep.
Sean Jordan (15:46)
So where do you see it genuinely helping marketers and where do you think human judgment still matters most?
Holly Smith (15:52)
Yeah, first I just want to say like, I think everybody has their own attitudes towards it. I talked to many groups and it is really truly a glass half full, glass half empty perspective when it comes to AI. I am definitely a positive glass half full, maybe more than half full kind of person. ⁓ I also, when I talk to the younger generation, I get a lot of criticism towards it, but I will just say.
we talk about the evolution of marketing and what I’ve kind of seen and gone through. This is actually very similar when the internet first was introduced and what we saw, right? There was a lot of claims about, you know, licensing and stealing of information and, you know, that all came out as well during that period of time. So how we use it, implement it and put, you know, barriers and rules around it. And also just checking. mean, some of the things that have come out for, you know, accuracy and hallucination.
I mean, you could have Googled that and got a wrong information and put it into something. I mean, it’s pulling it from the internet somewhere. So it could be listed some, I shouldn’t say that. It could hallucinate. It could make it up. But you could pull a resource or something, an article someone wrote that was incorrect and it could have been done as well before. So I feel like some of the emphasis and negativity around it, ⁓
is warranted, but some of it I feel like it could have been done even before. Maybe it’s just expedited and then, you know, the speed of some of that’s coming to light a little bit faster.
Sean Jordan (17:20)
You know, I mean, I’m a big defender of Wikipedia. think it’s a great project and I donate money towards it, but ⁓ I do a lot of ⁓ hobby research and I often find that Wikipedia has citations that don’t really match what they’re actually citing or it has information that isn’t quite reliable. And I know certainly there’ve been a lot of people and organizations that have looked at their own Wikipedia pages and said, where did this information come from? It’s not true at all. So if some of it’s not true, there’s probably a lot of it that’s not true.
That doesn’t mean that it’s not useful as a tool, but it does mean that we have to be skeptical. what I always encourage people to do is we’ll go back and read the sources that it’s citing and make sure that that information lines up before you use it. Because quite often, you’re going to find that there’s more nuance than you might have realized from that little blurb. And I think the same could be true with AI, that you have to verify. You can’t just automatically trust. have to make sure that what it’s saying is appropriate. But one of the ways to do that is to run
content through multiple models and see what they say and if they agree with each other or not. And that can give you a little bit more certainty. ⁓ What other things have you kind of picked up on in terms of being able to trust this type of technology?
Holly Smith (18:29)
Yeah, I’ve seen more if I give it a knowledge base or I give it a transcript from a conversation, if I give it documents and I limit it and say only pull from this information and it’s not going out to the web. I do find more accuracy that way. I think when you leave the door open to interpretation and it can go out there and just find something is where it can be a little tricky. ⁓ I also feel like there’s times I’ll actually say like, how did you find this information? I’ll quiz it, right? And make it bring back the source.
I also feel like it doesn’t tell you it can’t do something, which is really interesting. So I’ve been trying to put that in my prompts now more. Or when I get a very specific prompt and a lot of information, I’ll say, ask me questions first. ⁓ It’ll usually ask you 10 or 15 additional questions of information that they can pull from versus going out there and trying to hallucinate. So I feel like that’s helped solve a little bit of what I’ve seen, some of the hallucination. And I would say I have seen it seldom, rare.
The one time it really went out ⁓ is that it didn’t tell me it couldn’t watch a video. So I asked it to watch a video and give me some information and it made it all up. And I’m like, why didn’t it just say it can’t watch the video? So that’s the one instance that I’ve seen. And maybe one day it will be able to.
Sean Jordan (19:46)
Yeah, I think the trick it’s able to do right now is read the transcripts on the videos and then act like you’ve watched the video, but it can’t give you lot of clues about what was actually in the video, just what was said. And I’ve come across that too. And one of the things that I have been hearing from people that are in the marketing world is that they generally view AI as being something that can help them, but they’re afraid to rely on it too much because the hallucinations are a problem, but they’re also afraid that it might
Holly Smith (19:50)
Yeah.
Sean Jordan (20:16)
you know, impact them creatively in some way, that it might, you know, kind of lead them down paths that maybe aren’t what they would come up with on their own, or that it might even plagiarize someone that they didn’t mean to plagiarize. So what are your thoughts on that?
Holly Smith (20:28)
Well, I think if you’re starting from, are the information source, right? Or you’re going and finding the research or you’re using something like perplexity, that’s a different AI tool versus chat to kind of document where they got the information from. But you know, if it is truly from like our conversation and you know everything we just talked about, you’re able to quickly validate everything in the conversation is matching and it’s a win. think when it gets outside of the scope,
Sean Jordan (20:38)
Mm-hmm.
Holly Smith (20:55)
beyond that, that is a little tricky and it does require some more verification. I mean, we know today law is not a good practice of AI. ⁓ When it comes to higher education research, I would not recommend that that needs to be done in a very appropriate way. But if we’re truly talking about marketing copy and concept, mean, it’s not, I mean, you have to worry about licensing and copywriting. Yes. But most of the time, like we just said in a conversation, we’re based upon that that’s happening and it may be coincidence.
Sean Jordan (21:08)
Mm-hmm.
Holly Smith (21:25)
compared to something else. And if you’re giving it a source in the conversation, you have where the root of the conversation came from and where that started as well. Yeah.
Sean Jordan (21:35)
Yeah, I completely get what you’re saying. I think nobody in the marketing world, at least that I’ve talked to, is going and saying, you need to use AI to create your entire campaign, and you just need to make sure that it looks good and is on brand. ⁓ What I’m seeing instead is, ⁓ you need to use it maybe to try to see if you can enhance what you’re doing, or maybe to speed up the process. Maybe have it do things like write a communication brief for you, or.
write up notes about feedback and systematize them so that they can be better understood or try to offer proofreading tips or things like that. Things that are genuinely helpful that we do during the process of creating things, but that they can just help us to do a little bit faster. I think that’s most of what I’ve been hearing from people that are actually using this stuff.
Holly Smith (22:20)
Yeah, I also like to tell people, know, AI has been around since like the 50s or 60s. It’s not a new concept. We’re just highlighting it. And when it talks about news and the way that, you know, we’re using it as a little bit different. I mean, you just mentioned like proofreading, like Grammarly is AI. I mean, we use every day. If you have a notification on your banking that if it hits a certain limit or a dollar amount, that’s AI. When you watch Netflix, it’s recommending shows, it’s AI.
Sean Jordan (22:36)
Mm-hmm.
Holly Smith (22:46)
Like there’s all kinds of things we’ve been interacting with for years and decades that we may not realize, you but it’s just a new way and a new invention. also, I was pausing. I also will say when it comes to AI, we don’t want to get lost in the mix. We don’t want to become the neck block blockbuster, right? So.
Sean Jordan (22:58)
There’s a pretty, go ahead. That was good.
Holly Smith (23:11)
You have to figure out how to use this tool and evolve and move on and move forward and adapt and be flexible. And I think us as marketers, we all have done that with so many, so much innovation in our industry today. So don’t not use it. Right. I mean, use it because you may get left behind. And if you’re in a marketing, let’s say you’re in a corporate right now and you’re not using it at all. Well, you are cause you’re using Grammarly and you’re probably using it in Adobe and using it somewhat, but
If you’re not adopting it and figuring out how to leverage it and use it in your team, today’s the day to start.
Sean Jordan (23:47)
And there’s a pretty famous quote that I think it was from 2006 in Wired magazine where basically the person is saying that ⁓ we call it AI until it becomes so useful that we just forget that it’s AI and then we just call it an algorithm or something like that. ⁓ that’s the pre-Facebook days, that’s the pre-iPhone days that we were thinking about AI that way. So really in 20 years, what has changed is just what we’re calling AI, right?
I think that’s one of the things that is really important to get across. often talk about ⁓ AI was used for games for a lot of times, like teaching computers how to play chess or how to play Go or how to play backgammon or other games like that, because the idea was if we can teach a system to follow instructions, then maybe we can get it to do something useful once we figure out how to get it to actually follow instructions. ⁓ that actually wound up not being a good use of AI. They had to figure out some other ways to make it be able to think more.
⁓ creatively using neural networks and other tools like that. And so ⁓ if you study the history of AI, you’ll often find that what it really is good at is it’s good at taking instructions and then contextualizing them through its training set. And that’s what these modern tools are really doing, right?
Holly Smith (24:56)
Yeah. And there are creative ways to use it that aren’t infringing. I there’s times I’ve, I’m not great at like headlines and sub headlines and being creative in that way. So I’ll say, give me 10 ideas. And sometimes I’ll say, give me 10 more, or I like this one, ⁓ that prompt engineering and putting in what you really want. But also don’t just go with the first thing it gives back to you. Give it more information, refine it within your prompts.
You’ll get better results, not only for that instance you need something, but in the future. also, I mean, it’s not great at graphics yet, but there are times I’ve asked it to like mock up a flyer. And even though I don’t use what it gives me, it gives me a great outline of a structure that I can start to build in Canva. that creativity, actually helps me be creative. That makes sense. It helps me start. Cause I also, more of those people get kind of frozen when I don’t know what to do or where to start. So I just.
kind of start with an AI. can start with Chad or Claude or Pleurplexity or something and go in there and just start giving it prompts to get me motivated and get me moving.
Sean Jordan (26:05)
My daughter is an artist and one of the things that she does is she kind of moves her pencil over the page to get a little bit of color or ⁓ ink or whatever on it so that it’s not a blank page when she’s starting from it and then she can kind of work from that. ⁓ it really is a helpful way of getting you started when you’re at that very difficult point of trying to figure out what you’re going to do with a blank slate.
Well, looking ahead five years, what do you think the role of a marketer or CMO will look like, especially with AI automation and data playing bigger roles?
Holly Smith (26:37)
I truly think that there’s gonna be a lot that’s gonna be similar because if you’re at that level, you should truly be driving strategy, growing the business and staying on mission, right? If you’re a nonprofit, those things are not gonna change and that needed critical thinking and that guiding mission and vision and voice is still gonna be there. It’s just how we get it done. And I feel like every day and every year and every decade, it changes how we get it done.
So that may change, but at a higher level, it should truly be very similar. ⁓ The other thing that may change is the speed to execution and how quickly we can get things done may change. But other than that, I really see a lot of the thought leaders, a lot of the strategists we’ve had, their role is gonna still be that.
Sean Jordan (27:25)
I agree. I think if anything, ⁓ managing these things as kind of a subordinate ⁓ function to the people that you’re working with is going to be a big part of the job. way that, I mean, in my work, when I started as a researcher, we didn’t do online surveys very often. They were expensive. They were hard to do. Now everybody’s on Qualtrics or QuestionPro or SurveyMonkey or all these other platforms. And so a big part of my job now is to manage those platforms.
And ⁓ it’s not that those platforms have replaced employees per se, but they’ve replaced some of the tedious work that those employees had to do. And so now we have to manage the software, but we also still have to manage the other aspects of the project. And I see AI as ultimately kind of fitting into that, where it’s a tool that we do have to manage because it is contributing to what we do, but it still is just a tool. It’s not ⁓ going to take away our jobs. It’s not going to replace us. It’s not going to become our boss, I hope. ⁓
Holly Smith (28:20)
I don’t think
so either. Yeah.
Sean Jordan (28:22)
But
I can’t see ⁓ a future where AI is becoming so enmeshed in what we’re doing that it ⁓ isn’t, that it’s replacing people to the point where we’re managing AI agents. I think rather AI agents are gonna be doing work for people and allowing them to do more of the tasks that we actually want them to do.
Holly Smith (28:41)
Well, I think it’s a good spin of what you just said too, is how many people are using tools like Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey and you know, whatever. But I also feel like what you just said is it made research more accessible for people, right? So AI is going to make marketing more accessible for people as well. So maybe those smaller businesses that really struggled and you they weren’t doing much marketing or even, you know, those big corporations to, you know, have teams to be.
Sean Jordan (28:43)
Yeah.
Holly Smith (29:09)
maybe more products and services than they would have had and when they go to market. So I think it kind of flips the script a little bit just for accessibility. I love actually really like that that, you we can think about perspective is that more there can be more marketers out there. I’ve also had people ask me, do you feel like you’re less busy that there’s less marketing to do? And I would say, no, I’m actually busier than ever. Just because these tools are available.
Not everyone wants to use them. So I do have people coming to me and asking me still for marketing help. It just lets me help more people than I was able to help.
Sean Jordan (29:48)
I love that.
Holly, you have worked closely with presidents and CEOs and boards and community leaders. So a lot of these folks are not marketers. How can you help non-marketers to understand the strategic value of marketing?
Holly Smith (30:02)
Yeah, I think the biggest pieces we’ve talked about, you know, I’ve worked agency, I’ve worked corporate side. I’ve also, I can be tactical and strategic at the same time and just bringing and understanding when it comes to that, all the elements when it comes to marketing and strategy and strategic planning, but also understanding what they need, how much time, how quickly they need it.
again, impressing the value of time, but also moving forward with the evolution of marketing, as we’ve mentioned. think staying in the forefront of AI, using AI, not being afraid to always try something new. And because if I was doing what I was doing 25 years ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation we’re having today. ⁓ That’s the flexibility and adaptive adapt the flexibility.
And adaptiveness of marketers today is more important than ever. We can’t stay where we were. We have to move forward and we have to be curious and hungry and ready.
Sean Jordan (31:09)
I took marketing classes in 2008. That’s when I got my marketing degree. And pretty much everything I learned in school, we don’t do anymore. Or if we do it, we do a very different version of it now. And when I talk to marketers that are working today in the workforce, especially when they’re right out of school, almost everything they’re doing, I never learned how to do. ⁓ It’s constantly changing, constantly evolving. And digital marketing being a great example of where what we were doing back when I was in school ⁓ was very
primitive compared to what we do today. you know, A-B testing wasn’t something that we did 20 years ago, and now it’s something that’s pretty routine. ⁓ So there’s so many things that we have to be on top of, and we have to be willing to change. I think that’s one of the reasons I like the field of marketing so much is because it’s so different. You you have to constantly be learning new things and trying new strategies and new approaches. But it also can be intimidating. ⁓ And I think that’s where you need a guide to really help to make sure that those discussions aren’t rooted in what we remember.
as being impactful for marketing as opposed to what’s actually working today.
Holly Smith (32:12)
Yes, I agree. Wholeheartedly. Everything, like you mentioned, just even like 10 years ago, my favorite question I always get from people is like, what’s a day in a life in a marker? What’s your day like? I’m like, every day is so different. can’t even tell you whether I’m running an event, I’m running someone’s social media, I’m working on a startup nonprofit and setting up, you know, their CRM. It’s so different. And every day it’s something new. And I feel like every day I do something new or learn something new. Like I’m a constant learner every single day.
Sean Jordan (32:42)
Likewise, and that’s part of why I went into research, because I love to learn. ⁓ Well, Holly, it’s been so great talking with you, and you’re so knowledgeable and so experienced that I know we could probably go on for another hour. I always like to end our show by asking every guest if there’s something they want to plug. So here’s your chance. You can plug anything you want. Go for it.
Holly Smith (33:03)
Yeah, so I actually don’t market myself, which is kind of interesting because I work for a ⁓ startups and I also work for a couple agencies. But if anybody would want to hire me directly, I do have some local clients. My expertise is really in higher education, health care and nonprofit sector. And my email is hollylocksrocks at gmail.com. Yes, that’s right. Holly locks rocks at gmail.com.
Sean Jordan (33:29)
And you said you’re not good at promoting yourself. That’s fantastic. Well, we will of course put all of that information in the show notes as well. And Holly, I just want to thank you again so much for being on. It’s been a pleasure to have you and I hope we get to see you in St. Louis sometime soon.
Holly Smith (33:43)
Thank you.
Sean Jordan (33:46)
I am so grateful to Holly for coming on and being one of our marketing mentors. ⁓ My friend, Ed Lehu, had recommended her because he knew that she just had so many awesome things to share. And in getting to know her, ⁓ getting ready for this podcast and actually doing this interview, I have just been so impressed by her. It’s such a ⁓ affirming conversation to have with someone that really knows what they’re talking about and to realize that, yeah, we share a lot of the same ideas about how to do things.
I hope that you found some points of intersection with her as well, as well as some inspiration on how you can continue to push your practice of marketing forward. Well, as always, I want to mention that we are so grateful to our community of marketing mentors, both here in St. Louis and on our friends in Evansville and elsewhere. And if you know of anyone that would like to be on the show to talk about their marketing career, their marketing practice, I would love to have them on. So please send them our way. You can find details on the show notes on how to how to do that. But
I also want to say thank you for listening. We really do appreciate you. We hope that you’re getting a lot out of these interviews and we’re going to keep them coming. So look forward to that. Thanks so much. I’m Sean in St. Louis. This has been the Marketing Gateway. We’ll see you next time.
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