[Fully Managed] Donté Ledbetter from VSCO Ep. 48

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Shannon Donnelly (SD): Alrighty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Donte Ledbetter from VSCO.

Thank you so much for coming on with me today.

Donté Ledbetter (DL): Thank you for having me.

Weather and Small Talk

SD: I appreciate it. Uh, it’s a very, is it a nice day by you? It’s like kind of rainy here.

DL: It’s pretty chilly in New York. Uh, but it’s very sunny.

SD: Oh, well, that’s nice, at least. Yeah. The wind is, uh, the wind in the city. It’s a fun time. I’m thinking about opening my windows, but I think I missed the gap where it was a nice time to open the windows and now it’s like 40 degrees.

DL: It kind of just skipped over a hoodie weather and went to like coat weather.

SD: Yeah, it was kind of mean. I hate it when that happens, fall is so, is so short now.

DL: Yeah

SD: It’s fine, though. It’ll be warm in like two weeks. 70 degrees again because the weather’s just unpredictable this time. So, first, can you just one, kind of describe how you got to this point and, just like maybe a fun little fact about you or just like your professional career up to this point would be great. Just so the audience can get a little…

Donte’s Career Journey

DL: So I spent 10 years in marketing, specifically tech marketing. So, I started out in the BAB space, working in ad tech and marketing tech. Then transitioned to the consumer side in 2017. Working in FinTech, working in EdTech, and now working, for VSCO, which is a photo editing app, but also a community for photographers. And I’ve worked for startups mainly my whole career. I’ve never worked for a big company. I’m more of like a get accurate person ’cause I have that startup background. So, I love tech, I love startups. Um, yeah, and I’ve been, I’ve done everything in marketing. I’ve done CRM, I’ve done social. Content marketing, but now I’m in this really interesting space and product marketing where I get to launch new features and products for our customers and really get to understand the business, understand the product, and also understand just the industry as well. So this is, I would say this is probably my, my best job. This is the best head space I’ve been in in my career in terms of just like being really excited about my work.

Startups and Skill Building

SD: Oh, that’s awesome. I love hearing that. So I actually just talked to someone about this. Do you think that startups helped you kind of prepare you for a job like this? Because I know that being in a startup can really, because of the amount of transparency between like everything going on, because I feel like a larger corporation, it kind of like is more, “Oh, it’s this person’s job so you don’t hear about it” kind of thing. Do you think that startups kind of helped you kind of round your brain well enough around different sections of marketing that prepared you for right now?

DL: Yeah, I would say like my first job, like I basically did everything and I was the first marketer. I was the only marketer.

SD: Many hats.

DL: I had many hats, but it was a blessing because I had experience with everything. And you know, sometimes some people say like, being a jack of all trades isn’t good, but early on in my career, early on in your career is really good to get that experience in all functions of marketing. And at a bigger company, you might not have that opportunity. You might be sort of pigeonholed into sort of one lane or one function in marketing, whereas at a startup, you have to do everything basically, especially if you’re the only marketer and you have to get your hands dirty right away. And I, and I like that, I like that about startups because again, it really builds that experience. That you can take to other companies, other bigger companies, further down your career. So, I’m biased with startups and I always recommend that people get that experience. It can be a lot of work. Obviously you’ll have late nights, you might have to work on weekends, especially if you’re working for a really high-growth startup that’s, you know, trying to find product market fit. But it’s, it’s worth it because you will have that experience. And I’m somebody who… you know, I like autonomy. I’m somebody who actually can like, work independently because I had that experience at a startup early on. So, yeah.

Gaining Clarity in Your Career Path

SD: Yeah, I think that’s really nice. I also agree with, that sentiment of that, especially when you’re younger and getting into it, it’s really, even though it’s, it might be difficult and you’re not… Depending on, I guess, also the type of brain that you have, because I know some people doing a bunch of things is the worst thing ever for them because they’re not, you know, organized in the same way as they probably want to be in a specific position. But I think for marketing, it’s a really helpful space to be in if that’s how your brain works, because the more things that you get to experience, the more you’re familiar, if something does come up in the future, like yeah, maybe your role might narrow down the line, but you still have the ability to see into other worlds, so to speak, and understand what’s going on there and still include them into your campaign or strategy, even if it’s not exactly… I guess it’s more inspiration than anything else because even if your field is narrowed or your job is narrowed, you still have these different things that you can pull from that are not just from that exact thing.

DL: And the great thing is, you know, because you’ve had experience with all these functions, you get to really figure out what you actually like and what you don’t like. And you get to figure that out sooner rather than later. So like I realized, I would say four years or five years into my career, they’re like, okay. I kind of like the strategic side of, you know, marketing and I kind of started exploring product marketing. ‘Cause I realized like I didn’t like so doing social media a lot, I didn’t like doing like paid advertising a lot. But I really like being heads down on the product, being in the weeds of the business and combining the two. And then also being in the weeds of our customer base. You know, running surveys, talking to customers, like, I like being in the middle of all of it. And product marketing was actually that perfect function to do all of that. So I realized that halfway through, you know, my career already. And I’ve been doing it for a while now. So that’s, that’s the benefit of like getting all of that experience early on.

Discovering What You Like Early in Your Career

SD: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s nice to be able to find your, you know… And you might, it can always change. So no, you might get bored one day. But it’s really nice to be able to find out what you like earlier on in your career. I feel like a lot of people will spend a really long time in a space that they’re, you know, maybe not the best at, or maybe they’re good at it, but they don’t enjoy it. And, it’s nice to be able to find out earlier on what you do like, and, you know, that’s always, it always can change, but you know, at least for the time being it’s, it’s nice to be able to enjoy what you do.
DL: Sure. Yeah.
SD: Did you go into VSCO having, or being excited about any new ideas when you were kind of seeking that, or, I don’t know if it was a role that you didn’t know that you were, you didn’t plan on getting, or, uh, I don’t know the story behind that, but I was wondering if there was anything.

Choosing Jobs Aligned with Personal Interests

DL: So like for me, like job hunting is very strategic in that like, I like to apply to jobs that I have an interest in in number one, right? So like, if I interested in the product, I had to be somewhat interested in the product, you know, so you’ll never find me like working for a construction or anything, like I don’t know much about the industry, I don’t know much about, you know, what goes on. But you know, when I apply for jobs I say, listen, you know, do I understand the product? It turns out like I was a VSCO user before. I’m also a photographer. So like, it was sort of like a perfect scenario. But even in past roles, for example, when I was at Codecademy, I had learned how to code on Codecademy before I joined Codecademy.

SD: That’s awesome.

DL: I was already a customer of the product before I joined the company. I was already a customer of VSCO before I joined the company. Even before Codecademy. When I was at Stash, I understood the importance of finance, the importance of investing. So I kind of have a personal stake in kind of every company that I’m joining, if that makes any sense. And that kind of, you know, just like drives me to, to be excited about the opportunity. But like, usually I don’t join companies where like I just don’t have no interest in. Because, you know, there, there has to be a drive, there has to be a motivation to actually do the work. And ’cause I like the product and I understand the product. There’s like inherent motivation to actually do the work.

Using VSCO as a Personal Time Capsule

SD: It is very funny because, uh, I didn’t even realize that I’ve been using VSCO since I think I was 12 (laughs). I, it was like a very big thing when I was younger and I’ve still, I really, I do really love it because, I think that my, like my entire life from then to now is recorded through my, you know, my profile. So it’s really nice because it’s the one place that I also refuse to delete things from,like, even if I have, you know, some ex-boyfriend on there, I’m like, no, no. This is, these are memories, these are my life, I’m gonna keep it. It’s like the only place that I don’t delete anything on.

DL: Yeah, I don’t think I keep pictures of my exes.

SD: They’re, they’re not crazy. You know, they’re just like, you know, one or two, you know, but yeah, it’s like, it’s really nice because, I don’t know. It’s just the one place that I’ve, I’ve, you know, made a set point of like, one, they’re all aesthetically pleasing because that’s, you know, I feel like that’s what it’s meant for almost, but it’s also, it’s nice to have a collection of memories, kind of like a scrapbook, that, you know, I’ve never touched.

Why VSCO Appeals to Photographers

DL: Well, you know, I, like I told you, I’m a photographer. I’ve been doing photography for 15 years and, you know, pictures are powerful. I’m somebody who, like, I, I was a VSCO user and the reason was because I was sort of anti-Instagram and like, no shade not towards Instagram. I’m somebody who really appreciates the art of photography. And sort of the technical aspect of it, of like shooting the right picture, having the right aperture and shutter speed and things like that. So I appreciate that part of it. And when I was on Instagram years ago, I don’t have Instagram anymore. I got rid of it like six years ago. But when I was on Instagram, it, it, it transformed from a picture platform to a social engagement platform. And then algorithms came in and then, you know, that it makes sense, like that’s how they drive up engagement and make money. But I wanted something that was more pure and that’s why I joined VSCO as a customer years ago. And it’s still like that actually, like to this day, this’s still that platform that’s like very pure, very for creators and photographers. Not so hell bent on trying to drive up engagement, trying to get people to react to notifications and things like that. So that’s what I like about it.

A More Private, Authentic Platform

SD: Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that. I kind of like that. There’s a very minimal social aspect to it, like the chat or whatever, it might be, and I think now there’s commenting. I noticed that recently.

DL: Yeah.

SD: I do really like that because I don’t know, as everyone that probably uses Instagram, I definitely custom curate what’s going on there, in a way that’s very, I don’t know, for people to enjoy. It’s for other people, and not for me. And I think VSCO is something that’s, really beautiful in the way of like, you put whatever you want on there. And also it’s, you know, anyone can find your VSCO by using your link, I suppose, but no one has. No one is looking up my VSCO link. So it’s, kind of private and I know that I, I can probably make it private, you know, like actually I should familiarize myself. But yeah, so it’s nice because it’s also like mine, in the way that, you know, there is engagement, but it’s, you know, people that I don’t know. And that’s actually fine with me ’cause those aspects of my life, like I don’t really care that these strangers see this because it’s just beautiful photography and not something that’s, what’s going on in my life.

DL: When it comes to social media in general, I’m pretty private person and like, it actually makes me uncomfortable that like, I get to see people’s private life on Instagram ’cause they have public profile. I know way too much about you right now. Like, I don’t, so like I’ve always been like a strategic user of social media. Like I don’t have, I’m not very active on a lot of social media platforms. I love Reddit for some reason. Like Reddit is just, it’s, Reddit is kind of a cesspool, but like it’s, it is really good thing. Instagram it, like, I, I kind of just stay away from it. VSCO, you know, I, I love obviously because I’m a photographer, but yeah.

Designing for Creators, Not Engagement

SD: I really do enjoy it for what it is. And, I do like that it doesn’t have, it’s not heavily influenced by, you know, like how another social media would be. It’s more, I like what you said, pure ’cause it is kind of, I, I post things on it and I’m not looking for engagement. I’m just doing it because I like it. And maybe it might get engagement from people that I don’t know, and that’s fine. Yeah, it’s just a really nice place to put things.

DL: Thing is, you know, working in tech and working in marketing, like I know sort of the mechanisms that a lot of these companies use to sort of drive engagement with notifications and things like that. So, no, I kind of get torn where it is just like, you know, I understand what they’re trying to do and trying to get you back how they’re trying to get you back into the app and like, I know how to avoid it, but like I see some other people use these apps and I’m just like, they got you, they got you. Like, you know, I, I’m able to avoid it ’cause I understand what’s, what’s going on behind the scenes. So it’s, there’s definitely things that can be done to like, for example, help people, use it in a healthy way. But I just don’t think that sometimes it conflicts with the business interest, if that makes sense.

Introducing Comments and Building Community

SD: No, that completely makes sense. I was actually, surprised about, them adding the comment thing because I didn’t realize that that was, uh, something that I never thought of that would’ve been, I’ve definitely received messages from, you know, strangers about photos because the messaging thing has been there probably, I don’t know how long, but the commenting saying was something that, uh, I was surprised about. Not that it’s a bad thing, I don’t think, but it’s definitely something that I I noticed as something that was very different that they haven’t done, before. Maybe I just updated the app and it’s been there for a long time.

DL: I think VSCO, what we’re trying to do is like, actually like build community.

SD: Yeah. And I like that.

DL: ‘Cause like, you know, photographer photography is like a lonely, it could be a lonely, sort of profession or where you’re just doing your thing, you have your own graphy business, but you’re not really talking to other photographers. So like trying to build that community for them, is something that, you know, we’re trying to do. And like adding like discussion functionality is like one of the ways we’re doing that. But yeah, like nowadays, like platforms all about community. Again, that’s the reason I love subreddit is because you have these many, Reddit because you have these many communities which are subreddits where like, okay, maybe that subreddit, like maybe r/wallstreetbets is like really horrible, but like you can go into other subreddit where like things are actually pretty good and motivational and things like that. So having these like sub communities and communities that like is really, I think it’s something number one, that a lot of marketers and like tech companies in general are trying to like build nowadays because that’s something that people value, especially like younger people.

Addressing the Loneliness Epidemic Through Photography

SD: Yeah, I think that’s beautiful. I think it’s very, there’s definitely a loneliness epidemic as they say, generally but I think, yeah, photography definitely makes sense to have that as an issue. And I think that being able to create those communities is really lovely, especially for a niche category of things, but also the idea that photography can really be for anyone. Like there’s people, some people take it in a more serious light, or some people take it in a lighter light, but it’s something that, you know, that now that we have phones, everyone can do to a level. And it’s nice to be able to share that and create communities out of that. And I actually think that’s really lovely. That’s, I also love Reddit for that reason. It’s like so awesome. Sometimes it’s a crapshoot of diabolical individuals, but sometimes it’s a really great wholesome place, which is so funny. It’s just, yeah, I guess, you know, unfiltered, uh, opinions is, so interesting to some view. Actually, okay, that actually gets me onto the point of, so how much do you think psychology plays in consumer based marketing? Because that’s, uh, I think I hear psychology being seeded into marketing very often, and I definitely think that that’s something that’s like, you can’t escape it because you’re, you know, you’re thinking about how someone thinks.

DL: Well, it is very important. Number one, I always like to say that like, consumers are very complex. Sometimes we, we’re even like hypocrites in a way. Like, you know, sometimes, like for example, like, you know, I’ve run surveys throughout my whole career and like people will tell you one thing but do another and you’re just like, wait, in the survey, you told me you like this thing, but then like, we offered to you and now you’re not. So people in general, humans are very complex and that’s why you have to understand number one, what motivates people, and kind of like what biases people have. So it, it’s, critical to marketing. In my opinion, you can’t really be a good marketer unless you understand the psychology of human beings. And that’s something that you’ll continuously learn over time. Like no one’s gonna be perfect at the psychology of humans. Like I’m not perfect at it. I’m constantly learning more and more about consumers. Even 10 years into my career, learning how people behave and what drives people. And then not only does psychology change, but also what goes on around us changes, right? Culture changes, politics, things like that. And that affects what people do and how people behave. So it’s, it’s a lot. It’s a whole field, obviously, and like trying to merge that with like the tactics of marketing, that’s the hard part about marketing. People always like to think like marketing is easy. Like it looks easy, right? Oh, you just like write some emails or like some social posts and like, that’s, call it a day. But like trying to actually drive change for your business and make it mutually beneficial for your business and for your customers. That’s hard. Because again, people are complex and like it’s not gonna be as clear cut. You have all these factors that go into whether somebody buys a product or not. You have your psychology. There’s personal circumstances. It’s a lot and it, it’s, it’s very hard to draw results. If it was easy, I’d be a multimillionaire. A lot of other markers would be millionaires like, but it’s not easy.

Marketing to a Broad, Diverse Audience

SD: No, I definitely understand that. I think because marketing is kind of everywhere, I think people think that it’s something that’s kind of easy or like self explanatory and sure, parts of it are, you know, if you understand humans to a level that’s not, I mean people are different. So, you know, you can’t, you can’t fine tune psychology to cater to everyone because everyone is different and you can’t either there’s not a cookie cutter way of selling something or convincing someone to want to do something. But I think there’s also something to say about when people can reach out to a large group of people that are all different and still somehow, you know, get to them. Snd that’s something that, uh, is actually really interesting, I think about VSCO is, as mentioned earlier, that photography is something that is very fast and something that someone like everyone can kind of get involved in nowadays. How do you kind of create a way of marketing something to such a large group of people?

DL: Well, I think for VSCO, like, you know, we like to say like everyone’s a creator. Because like, you know, that’s how we talk about our customers and our users. So like you said, like photography is accessible to everyone, because of phones. And at VSCO, we want to create a platform where people can like really tap into the, the creative side of that and not just like the social engagement part of it. So, you know, photography exists with everyone. We approach it differently where it’s just not about, engagement is more about just the art of it. And just sharing, you know, your art basically. So it’s more of a art, I would say it’s more of an artistic platform than anything, more than a social platform. And everyone’s artistic. We all are creative. Some people, they don’t think they’re creative because they haven’t done anything creative in their lives, but like we all have that ability to be creative. And, you know, VSCO, like we want to help people do that in a visual way with, you know, photography, with pictures. And yeah, so I think we’re, we’re just trying to tap into the creativity in everyone, which everyone has, basically, and it’s more accessible because of smartphones and really pretty nice cameras now.

SD: Yeah, they’re just getting better and better on the iPhone. It’s crazy.

DL: Yeah. I still use a… I use a mirrorless camera now, but sometimes I use my iPhone, like even this year, for example, I did a project where I only used my iPhone to take pictures. I didn’t use like actual real camera. And it’s fascinating, you know, what the technology can do nowadays, especially with like what Apple has done with the iPhone. But I, I’m still like a photography purist. Like I still like to use a camera when I’m doing really serious photography. So, yeah.

SD: No, I can, I can understand that as someone that has never owned a real camera other than a phone, which is insane. Maybe like a digital camera, really way back once. I have no gauge of anything surrounding that. But I do see some gorgeous photography from some of my friends that do use, that still use cameras that are not in a phone. And it’s something that’s really fascinating to me. I’m just, anything that involves technology or buttons or any buttons – not for me. So, it’s actually so funny. I built my. Pc, but, I can’t talk to anyone about it because I forgot all of the elements.

From Childhood Curiosity to a Career in Tech

DL: Even back in the day. Well, I’m not that old, but like, you know, so I was always into computers. I was always into like gadgets. So when I had a, I had my first computer, I would say the year 2000. I had like a Compaq, which is like a company like went outta business. But it was like a Compaq that had like Windows 98 on it and then Windows, well, Microsoft came out with Windows XP, I would say around 2001. So I was like, you know, 10 years old and I wanted, I wanted Windows XP, I had Windows 98. So what I would do was I actually windows to my friend’s house and he had Windows XP on his computer, and I like took a floppy disc back when floppy dis were thing. I took a floppy disc, like I put it into his computer and I tried to like take all the Windows XP files. Office computer and put it on my floppy disk and then went home and put it into my computer just so I can… It didn’t work ’cause that’s not how you do it. I ended up getting Windows XP, but I was so desperate. I’ve always been like a early adopter when it came to, you know, technology and software. So I was so desperate to get Windows XP, but I was so happy when I finally got it. But yeah, I’ve always been into software, so that’s why it was kind of natural for me to end up in tech, uh, because I was just like, this is what I’ve always been interested in, so…

SD: It’s really funny. I built, my PC because I crashed my laptop playing, putting too much mods on my video games that I would play, and that’s the only reason why I had any motivation to build this. But I understand relatively the Windows issue because I just stole a key from, from Reddit, downloaded onto my computer and someone like a flash drive from someone else’s Windows to you.

DL: Wait, how long did it take you to of your PC?

SD: It should take, and many people told me like maybe a week. It took me six months. But I, to be honest, I was buying the park slowly, so that was a big part of it. Oh God, everything, so many YouTube videos. Those are great though. They’re really helpful. You can do everything. You don’t have to know anything about doing it, and you can do everything through just watching YouTube tutorials. I swear. I, I am the least technologically savvy person. I can’t remember any of the parts in my computer ’cause they’re all numbers and letters and I don’t know how anyone remembers any of that, but it’s, it’s very funny.

Redefining Creativity and Making It Accessible

SD: But yeah, for going back to creativity, very I’ve always told my boss, he’ll, ask me to like create the name for a podcast that we’re doing or something like that. And I will tell him. I am the least creative person that you’ll ever meet, ever. I can’t create these, like I can’t make names for things like, you have to do it for me. But I think that there’s something to say about creativity ’cause I think it really is a kind of completely subjective. No one is… I don’t think, I don’t just think of creativity as something that’s artistic, because I think that’s what most people do believe. And I think that, you know, you could have like a science or mathematically geared brain and that doesn’t make you any less creative than someone who maybe is more artistic. I am not artistic at all. I love art, but I’m bad at it. And, I think it’s really nice to have a space where VSCO is something that’s very easy to use and navigate. And I think it’s really lovely because I think someone that doesn’t feel like they’re creative can use that app and feel that they are because, they can create something beautiful, that you know, maybe they took that picture and they were like, this doesn’t look good. And then, you know, they do some things on this app and they’re like, oh wow, I really like this. And I think I, you know, made something really nice. And that’s such a beautiful thing to be able to make people who don’t feel like they’re creative, creative.

DL: Yeah. I would say like, even like on VSCO, you know, we have our presets, which, you know, we have the best presets in the world. Sometimes you’ll take a picture and like it doesn’t look good, but then you slap or piece it on it and then it looks good. But, you know, a lot of people think that, you know, adding filters to pictures, is a bad thing now because like a lot of people would do it for their portraits and like, oh, I stopped the filter at it, now I look good, look like a Kardashian or whatever. But like, it’s, it’s more about looking at pictures in a different way. ’cause you may look at it one way, like when you first take it, but then like you change the color of it, and it kind of looks different. Like, well, that’s a different point of view. Like, so like a preset is a different point of view. That’s basically how, how you should look at it and sometimes I, I’ll shoot pictures and like, I’m, I don’t like it. And then like I do something to it editorial wise and I’m just like, actually I kind of like it now. Or I’m just look at it a different way. So that’s kind of how you can look at presets is like you’re just looking some, looking at something in a, from a different point of view essentially. People adding filters to their portraits, like, that’s enough. Sure. I, I don’t need filters, but like, yeah.

SD: No, I mean, I, I really like that you think about it like that. Well, because I don’t, I think it’s very silly to, you know, die on that hill of like, oh, okay, this is not real photography because you edited it. But at the same, there has been a slew of different cameras that have been created throughout many, many years since photography was invented. And those all, even though they don’t have filters on them per se, they are not the same as you looking at something and then taking a photograph of it. They’re completely different because they’re different lenses, there are different perspectives of doing something, and I think that is the equivalent of that. It’s like you take something with a different camera, that’s considered photography. But if you take a picture with your camera and put a filter on it, that’s not because it’s something that’s been edited, but I don’t necessarily believe that.

DL: Yeah. I, I would say like everyone’s is a photographer, but I, I kind of also wanna be careful with that too, because there are people who like really practice the art of photography.

SD: Exactly. You know, they deserve to have that.

DL: Everyone can take pictures and take beautiful pictures. There’s some people who obviously like earn money from it and they’ve been doing it for a while. They studied it, you know, so I think we have to still respect those people.

SD: Of course.

The Impact of AI on Creativity and Marketing

DL: And now with AI is like, you know, people, you, you see many different pictures and you don’t know if what’s real, what’s fake. And yeah, it’s, it’s adding, it’s creating problems in terms of people constantly questioning the value of photographers. Photographers will always be valuable. And you, you’re not gonna like, hire AI to do your wedding photos and things. Robots will like come in like, you know, stock pictures will still remain valuable, but like, you know, people are just starting to question it now ’cause of AI.

SD: Yeah. That is a very complicated thing especially yeah, in all artistic forms. I would say, obviously I like sculptures because AI can’t do that yet. But yeah, any kind of a digital art form is something that’s very… it’s messy. Now that AI has been involved, I think, uh, I try not to look at AI super negatively as a general sense because I know, you know, especially with marketing and it’s a very useful tool. But I like that is a tool and not something that is a replacement for a person, because it’s nice that it’s helpful, but we don’t know what’s real sometimes anymore. I think that, and it does take away the years or even lives of people that have dedicated their selves to a craft. And I think that, I don’t know, I think that there’s complications to it because, you know, some AI might not ever be able to do it like that person. And I think that that’s why I agree with you that I don’t think they’ll ever be, replaced. But I think it’s a, I dunno, it’s a tricky subject because it does stink that, it’s something that sometimes you don’t know what is what or what is a real person or what is AI. For art specifically, that’s something that does bug me or make me feel a little pessimistic. But yeah.

DL: I think in terms of AI and marketing, I’d say marketers should embrace it as a tool. Like you said, there are some functions in marketing and just in general that there, there may be some risks when it comes to, you know, AI replacing those functions, right? But I think that’s only from companies that rely that, that are gonna rely too much on AI.

SD: I agree.

DL: So it’s just like, some companies rely on AI for copywriting. Copywriting on like websites and things like that, and like, you can do that, but like that copy might be really crap, right? Because like, you know, ChatGPT is only gonna give you like, you know, stuff based on like all of the other copy it’s learned. But as a person you can really understand market, you can understand the problems the business has, in a very intimate way that AI can’t. So you can write copy that’s really sort of effective. Whereas AI is just gonna give you some predominantly generic stuff. So yes, like, some companies will rely too much on AI to the point where they start replacing copywriters and things like that. But what they’re gonna find out is that like, it’s probably not gonna be as effective as actually hiring a copywriter to like, understand your business, understand your customer. So that’s the unfortunate part. Some businesses who don’t have a lot of resources have been rely heavily on AI, which I think is fine. Like, listen, if you can’t hire a bunch of full-time copywriters or marketers, you have to do what you gotta do as much as you can with the tools you have. But if you have the resources, like, don’t be a fool, like, hire the right people, like your business will be better off ’cause of it. So it is a fine line. I mean, I’m an advocate for AI personally, like I use it, especially when I’m coding. It helps a lot with coding. But I do use it sometimes to like, like just generate ideas for like campaigns and things like that. So yeah, I don’t rely heavily on it. I still try to use my brain, so yeah.

SD: I think when it began, I was very, I dunno, fearful is really the right word for it, because I wasn’t like, “Ahhh!” But, I think I was just really wary about using it because I am really someone that doesn’t like to rely on certain tools to replace thinking processes, because I’m very, even when I’m like having a debate with a friend and I can Google the, uh, answer and we can just quickly figure out what it is, I’d rather kind of work through a problem. Because I think that once I train my brain to not work through a problem, then I won’t be, you know. I’ll be rusty at a much earlier age if I can just figure something out myself. And I think that’s something that, people should consider when using AI as a replacement for something that a human can do much better, is that, you’re not, now you’re just used to using this tool, but, you know, you’re not used to interacting with a human that can do this probably much better.

DL: Yeah. Like even for my job personally, like I know some people who will like, use AI to write marketing briefs, right, for campaigns and things like that. And you could do that. But like, I still like to write out my briefs myself because again, I wanna, I like exercising, I like going through the motions, exercising my brain, and like really just understanding what I’m doing. And like trying to outsource that work to AI, I feel like it’s gonna make me brain dead. Like I’m just not gonna, like, you know, there’s a muscle memory that you have by doing the work. And when you start outsourcing these tasks, AI is like, you know, what good, what good are you basically, you know what I mean?

SD: Yes.

DL: I still like going through the work. I like writing and brief myself. Even if I can outsource some of it to AI, I still don’t do it because it helps me understand the problems that I’m trying to solve, helps me understand the business. Some things I still do manually. But yeah, if it’s a very small task, if it’s like some data, an analysis or data entry or whatever, that can outsourced AI.

SD: Yeah.

DL: But obviously the real strategic work, especially as a product marketer, that’s all me, that’s all human brain right there.

SD: Exactly. And as it should be. It’s a really helpful, I like it as a tool. It’s a tool like in your toolbox. It’s no you. It’s not replacing you. It’s just something that’s really helpful, especially for tedious things that take inextensively long time that wouldn’t, doesn’t add anything to your life or your knowledge or help you by doing it yourself. It’s just something that’s, you know, saves time. So a lot of the time too, and that’s something that’s really helpful.

DL: Yeah.

Wrapping Up

SD: Well. I’m so sorry to cut short, but we are already over time, so this is all the time we have. But this was a very lovely conversation and that’s when we, when we go over time accidentally, that’s the best ones.

DL: I lost track of time.

SD: I didn’t even, I have to look at it, but, yeah, once it gets closer to 40 minutes, I feel like whew. But I really, really appreciate you coming on today. This was absolutely incredible and I really, appreciate all the knowledge that you have about all these different things. Especially, you know, I don’t get to talk about non-marketing related things often on the marketing podcast, getting talked about photography and stuff. It’s really nice.

DL: Well, well, Thank you for having me, yeah.

SD: Thank you so much and everyone that is are is watching for listening at home. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe to hear more stories like this and be able to, you know, be a part of the discussion. Thank you so much.

DL: Thank you.

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