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AI as a creative tool for making better decisions, with Matt Chick
72 Plays1 year ago
Only 15% of businesses are using AI. So are the businesses not using AI going to get left behind?
In this episode we're chatting with Matt Chick from Chick Digital. Matt and his colleagues work with companies who are not only using AI to answer questions, but who are also harnessing AI to find better questions to ask.
There is so much chatter around AI, what it might threaten and the damage it could do, that we might be in danger of missing the positive opportunities AI can offer us.
During our conversation Matt Chick gave many real-world examples of how using AI to analyse data has helped SMEs develop new hypotheses that challenge conventional thinking, with surprising results.
https://chickdigital.co.uk/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattchick/
https://yeseo.io/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlaws/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, welcome to the podcast. I have a guest with me today and I'm not going to introduce the guest. I'm not being rude. I'm just going to ask our guests to introduce themselves. So go ahead, guest, please introduce yourself.
Chick Digital's Mission
00:00:14
Speaker
Well, hello, my name's Matt. I run an agency called Chick Digital and basically we're a development agency and we work with mainly small and medium businesses and help them make the most out of the technical
00:00:30
Speaker
landscape basically, work with them to find ways that they can exploit or take advantage of all of this new technology that's all around us all of the time.
00:00:42
Speaker
Excellent. So the reason I want to speak to you today, you won't have had it yet because it's not published yet, but by the time this episode goes out, it will be.
Fears of AI in SEO
00:00:50
Speaker
For the first episode, I interviewed a gentleman called Norman Sanders, and he introduced computer-aided design to Boeing in the 1950s. And there was some resistance, and I wanted to speak to you because I know that one of your specialist topics is AI. And at the moment in the world of SEO, everyone's
00:01:08
Speaker
wetting their knickers over AI basically. I can't think of a better way to put it really. There's lots of what I think might be unfounded fears. So because I'm not the expert on AI, I thought the very fact that you run a dev agency that helps people get the most out of tech, you'd be a good person to speak to about it.
AI as Technological Evolution
00:01:26
Speaker
So everyone has their own different definition of AI. So the one that
00:01:30
Speaker
everyone in the world of SEO is panicking about the moment is that they might be an AI where you can press a button and it will generate thousands of articles that will then, you know, wash over Google like some torrent of silage or sewage or something. But that's not my definition at the moment. I haven't really formed one. So Matt, what's your definition of AI in the context of your work, your working life?
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's a really interesting question because to some extent I just see AI as the latest evolution on the kind of technical
00:02:06
Speaker
evolution of man, for want of a better word. I mean, if you look, go back to, you know, the industrial revolution, all of these things, it ultimately all comes back to sort of automating tasks and automating ways of working. And the kind of, you know, you see the resistance at every single stage in human history. And in terms of, you know, you had the Luddites, you know, a lot of resistance to a lot of firms who didn't know how to handle the internet or how to cope with it. And
00:02:35
Speaker
you know, a lot of businesses went out of business in the long run, just because they never really got a handle on how to work differently in a digital world. So, I mean, in terms of AI, and what I sort of consider it, I basically consider it anything where you are leaving the
00:03:01
Speaker
computer to make judgments for you or to get answers for you. So I mean, we've had things like big data for years. And that was basically AI is an extension of that. Whereas with big data, we were pulling information together to try to get answers. This has actually given you the answers. So it's a little bit like, an example I always use is
00:03:30
Speaker
is apple so or music more specifically which i know something that you you like but um if you go back along you know we used to have records and had tapes then we had CDs and then along came um
00:03:47
Speaker
along came Apple and allowed you to save all of your stuff onto your computer. And to begin with, that was great because it was all there. You could search for it. And now, as it's evolved and Spotify there, it's actually telling you what you want to be listening to. And it knows better than you do what you want to be listening to. And I think that's really where the evolution
00:04:08
Speaker
basically from being big data, which is big data, all of your files are available, all of your music is available in one place, to actually, artificial intelligence is actually using that information to make recommendations and to change people's behaviors without a human sitting there driving that.
Historical Resistance to Technology
00:04:31
Speaker
There's several things I'd like to unpack in that. I think that you've covered quite a lot of ground in quite a short time there. There's the first element about being left behind. So the Luddites, were they the people who were smashing the mills?
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly that. So industrial revolution, jobs that took whole towns of people with a needle and thread can suddenly be done by large machines in mills. So some people, the Luddites went out and smashed it. I'm very hazy on that period of history, but is that roughly the right thing?
00:05:04
Speaker
I'm no massive historian, but broadly speaking, that's my understanding of how it went down. That angle's interesting to me because there's a slightly cliched argument that you shouldn't allow people to use diggers on building sites. The argument being that one digger takes away the job of 20 people with shovels.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:43
Speaker
moving forward, like a tide pushing into a shoreline as technology advances. So yeah, that's an interesting analogy.
AI Branding and Buzzword Culture
00:05:54
Speaker
I mean, one of my theories on this is that this change isn't a new thing.
00:05:59
Speaker
you know, we didn't look at the news in January 2023 and say, Oh, my God, look at this AI thing. It's just that it's almost like some brands have managed to coalesce into a thing they've branded it as much as the internet initially was very disparate, until people like AOL came together and said, right, we're going to take all these elements that are sort of existing anyway, and we're gonna, we're gonna trash it with capitalism, or, or whatever. What's your thought on that?
00:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think there's definitely an element of like, of branding things. It's like, I was liking it. You wanted a big craft beer explosion. You'd notice that you'd go into the shop and all of a sudden beers have been there for years. I'd suddenly been rebranded to make it look like crafty. So all of a sudden now, you know, pedigree suddenly looks like it's been made by hipster. Whereas, you know, it's exactly the same beer that people been drinking for.
00:06:58
Speaker
hundred years so I think there's an element of that where people realise that it's a buzzword and when a buzzword comes around it's a good way of unlocking spend from people because they feel it's something they should be doing.
00:07:15
Speaker
a lot of people, it's not so much the case now, but it always used to be easier to get money out of people if it was for something digital rather than something IT based because people felt like it was the way to go. I think you're
Societal Lag with AI
00:07:31
Speaker
right. I think it's true with where people have started to brand it
00:07:36
Speaker
and people have started to talk about it. I think in the recent lectures last year, they had a series of conversations around AI and it being one of the big aspects in human history. And I think it's kind of come to the forefront because people are bringing it to the forefront.
00:07:58
Speaker
And like you said, I think it's not we didn't suddenly wake up and it's there. It's kind of always been there. It's just that I think people it's just getting more airspace. It's getting more bandwidth from from everybody. And I think also with it, I guess there's a lot of the one of the interesting things with technology is that and it comes back to your toothpick analogy to some extent of the the pace of technology
00:08:27
Speaker
always outstrips the kind of society's ability to actually process what that technology can do and decide how to respond to it. So it's like the legal, you know, the legal frameworks are always well behind where we, you know, need to be with it. And also like the kind of ethical moral sort of compass in terms of as a society deciding if this is something you want, basically by the time
00:08:57
Speaker
as societies come to terms with all AIs here, which is probably the moment we're in at the moment that actually AIs...
00:09:04
Speaker
society's got the point where, oh, actually, AI's here. It's a real thing. We're going to have to start thinking about what we do about it. The technology's so far advanced that there's no sort of turning back the clock. And, you know, it's exactly the same with the, you know, in the early e-commerce days when they're talking about it's killing the high street. Well,
AI's Impact on SEO
00:09:22
Speaker
it's killed the high street. And we still haven't come up with a sensible response to it. And I guess the advantage certainly come back to what you're saying at the beginning, like the fears within something like SEO.
00:09:35
Speaker
The advantage for the arbitrators there are really people like Google and Bing and the search engines. So to some extent, at least you've got there a body that can move quicker than like a government can. So ultimately, the reason that Google is successful is because it gives people the content they want. So if they create a magic SEO button using AI to create all the content,
00:10:03
Speaker
Google are going to get wise to that and find ways, if they want to stay as a market leader in search, they're going to have to find ways of analyzing that and responding to that. So the best quality results still come top and the ones that are right. And I think that's, you know, we've had spam articles for forever, you know, if we're talking about the volume that that's now going to bring up.
00:10:26
Speaker
But it's obviously could increase through AI, but you've got a better arbitrator, not necessarily morally better, but certainly they've got the skills and the understanding to be able to respond to the changes. Whereas in other areas of society, AI
00:10:49
Speaker
are a way of handling it, like when you look at things like deep fake and all of this kind of stuff. We're so far off of actually getting to grips with what we're likely to be able to do with, you know, likely be able to legislate about any of that. But really, it's that's where I think the bits are really where
00:11:10
Speaker
I have some apprehension around the use of AI. I think within the business context, it's broadly, it's broadly right. And I think broadly we'll have to get used to it and evolve like we have with all the other technological advances.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah, and as you mentioned, the e-commerce and the high street, it certainly has killed the high street in a lot of places, but there are a lot of places.
Adaptation of Small Businesses
00:11:37
Speaker
Berry St Edmunds near us, we're both in Suffolk in the UK, still has a really nice collection of shops. So does Norwich. A lot of places do places like Ipswich are dead.
00:11:47
Speaker
And what surprises me about that is it's the large brands that either didn't embrace the shift to online. I mean, huge brands like Denim's, Phoenix, there's loads. I'm not going to start listing places that don't exist anymore. They didn't shift fast enough, but it appears to have been the smaller places that perhaps have more flexibility that embrace that technology. I mean, I had a record shop in about 2004 and we had an online store.
00:12:14
Speaker
because I'm a tech and I do SEO, I could embrace that. But I think the fact that there's more boutique shops now is a sign that when technology like this comes along, some people will just run from it and say, you know, I'm not changing. And those people, unfortunately tend to fall by the wayside. There's the people who embrace, you know, run face first into everything, which which I think I'm sometimes guilty of. Sorry, excuse me.
00:12:41
Speaker
But then there's also the people who, because this tech has been around for a while now, I'm talking about the internet, because this tech's been around for a while now, there are people who will listen. And perhaps a lot of business owners have now spotted the warning signs or the opportunities. I don't want this to be a fully negative thing. And it's quite normal now, for example, small boutique clothes shops to embrace Instagram or whatever and just see it as a natural part of their business.
00:13:09
Speaker
So yeah, I think smaller businesses I think have possibly have a larger opportunity than very large businesses who have to get together a strategy team and do all these kind of things. So obviously, you don't have to give away any of your secret work that you do at Chick Digital. But I mean, what's your experience? What size businesses do you work with when you're doing AI type work?
00:13:35
Speaker
For AI-type work, it does tend to be small businesses for exactly the reasons that you're talking about. I mean, I think really,
00:13:47
Speaker
with any of any new technology, I think you've really got three ways of approaching it. Well, four ways, the fourth ways to ignore it, which is what means you end up like debenhams, or that kind of thing. But realistically, you've got to either
00:14:06
Speaker
use it to automate stuff you need to look at your business and see what adds value basically and what doesn't and you can either use strategically you can then make the choice of either we use this technology to automate the things that don't use value so we've got more time to do the things that do you can look at the things that
00:14:29
Speaker
add value and then look to see if the technology can help you to improve that even further or do something even more.
00:14:41
Speaker
Final option is that you can pivot completely away from it. But if you pivot completely away from it, you need to actually, that needs to be a strategic decision. And then you need to think about what you're going to do because you not using it won't stop other people from using it. And that's, I think, where you get these boutique shops where their internet presence might be very small. It might be quite niche. But they've actually managed to build up
00:15:08
Speaker
build up a successful business based on the opportunities in front of them, which is niche, which is personalized service, which is having a human you can talk to. That's an angle from speaking as an SEO person.
00:15:26
Speaker
That's an angle that always really interests me. A lot of the research we do when we work with clients is trying to find those gaps. And all the time, and this goes back 20 years, people in business will assume there's no point in doing it because everyone else is doing it or everyone else is doing it better. And my goodness, SEO proves that wrong all the time. We're still the giant killers. And I think that long may that continue that you can start any business. And if you do SEO,
00:15:56
Speaker
as a part of many, many, many other things. You can still dominate fairly swiftly. And I see the kind of AI tools you're talking about as just being a part of that process. What can we do to make things faster? So in SEO, for example, if we're going to write an article, we'll use various SEO tools to make sure there's an appetite for that article.
00:16:20
Speaker
So can you give us a real world example of a project you've done where you've brought extra value and a higher level of automation to a process that has helped move a client forward? Yeah, of
AI in Copywriting
00:16:34
Speaker
course. So I think, as I mentioned, we tend to
00:16:38
Speaker
We tend to approach AI, we call it accessible AI, with the idea that at the moment, only 15% of businesses are using AI. And that's mainly because most small businesses aren't. When you look at the large businesses, they're spending big money on AI. It's part of the big teams that are sitting around drawing up strategies, integrating it, doing all of that kind of stuff.
00:17:07
Speaker
I think with small businesses, they've got the barriers there that stop them. They don't have the skills. They don't have the money for the huge, great projects. And I think what we've tried to focus on with people is how you can actually use AI without it having to be this huge, life-changing investment and actually just picking some of the
00:17:26
Speaker
some of the technologies or some you know getting people like us to help you with those technologies to actually help automate and understand things better. So one of the things we've really focused on because we're kind of always quite heavy length towards data and insight is using using that kind of old AI to
00:17:51
Speaker
basically allow us to analyze text data to gain insights that we wouldn't have been able to otherwise so like a couple examples are we worked with a copywriting agency and we
00:18:08
Speaker
analyze the entire website using AI. And we use that to understand things like how easy the text is to read, how easy it is for what the key subjects, what's the tone of voice, what personality is coming across in that. And now, if you think about that as a job in a copyright agency, that's a huge task because it's hugely important that your text is consistent and on point and on brand.
00:18:37
Speaker
and obviously they do loads of work around what their tone of voice should be and what we were able to do is analyze within hours, analyze thousands of blog posts and thousands of pages to actually pull out what the content
00:18:57
Speaker
was saying to people not so much in the text but in terms of its tone of voice and in terms of how it's going to be perceived and how easy it is to read and that allows people to understand actually are they communicating to their customers in the way they want to without having to pay somebody to read through a thousand articles. So that's I think a really sort of powerful way where you can I think
00:19:23
Speaker
you know, that gives you a bit of both. You can automate a task that takes a long time, but you can also quantify to some extent the qualitative data so you can make better decisions. So, you know, this particular
00:19:40
Speaker
were able to work with this agency to demonstrate that over time their tone of voice had become more professional, more conscientious and that was exactly what they were aiming for because they were trying to position themselves as a
00:19:59
Speaker
copywriter to law firms and a copywriter to accountants and a copywriter to big enterprises that would want to be so they want somebody who's going to be conscientious, who's going to have a very professional tone of voice. And the last thing you want in that is to find a few blog posts that have got some real neurotic sort of over the top comments that then just completely throw doubt on
00:20:24
Speaker
if someone came across them and throw doubt on actually are these people the right people. And if you think about the volume of content that gets created now,
00:20:33
Speaker
actually getting a handle on what your content is saying and how it's saying it is huge, but that was something that was relatively accessible and relatively easy to do and relatively affordable and could be used in SEO, it could be used internally, it could even be used internally on your own, like on your internal comms in larger organizations without having to go through the whole kind of cycle of making something
00:21:01
Speaker
you know, an embedded program, it literally can be just a case study or research piece that's making use of of AI. And I think that's a way a lot of smaller firms can kind of look to actually get
00:21:18
Speaker
involved in AI for the first time is look at what tools are out there, talk to technologists or people that might be able to actually take what their challenges are and find innovative ways of solving them with these technologies.
00:21:34
Speaker
You've hit on something there which I think I see as a real opportunity in AI.
AI and Data Analysis
00:21:40
Speaker
And you mentioned earlier about how AI can give answers for things faster. And whenever we're looking at large sets of data, be it Google Analytics or anything, so I'm just sort of vaguely keeping this on an SEO track, when we look at data, quite often,
00:21:57
Speaker
The results we can get from data analysis are restricted by the questions that we can think to ask. So where I see projects like the one you just discussed as being really interesting and potentially revolutionary is that instead of a data analysis project being an input-output thing, so what questions are we going to input, what's going to come out of it? I'm kind of hoping AI is going to give us the opportunity to pose questions that we might not thought of asking.
00:22:27
Speaker
Is that hopeful or is that am I sort of roughly ballpark there? No, no, I think you're right. So certainly, I mean, we're kind of on a journey with our AI products and AI work in terms of, I think we've worked out that there's a lot of stuff we can do with this and it's finding the best applications and working with people to find those. And I think one of the things we're really keen to look at is actually, if we were to take
00:22:53
Speaker
data like whether that's transactional data or in your case, looking at SEO data or Google Analytics data is actually the bit that's involved in that is, okay, well, this post as well, this post hasn't done so well, this is converted more, this is converted less. And actually,
00:23:15
Speaker
The bit that that data never tells you is, well, is that because of the way it's written? Is that because of the actual qualitative facts that I guess separate out a good SEO agency from someone churning out just minus content is actually that fact of, well, yeah, when you write in this tone, it actually converts better. I mean, we're so really interested. That's really powerful.
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's, I saw really interesting talk recently, and it was talking about, I guess, kind of like persuasive marketing, persuasive copy, and it's all of these things about, you know, if you write in a particular way, you can get a particular result, and that, we don't get that,
00:24:05
Speaker
currently out of Google Analytics, we can just see that, well, this post did well and this post didn't. And we can look at maybe some of the factors of all the links that were coming into it. But we can actually look at the difference between is the reason this article does well, because it's actually a really good article.
00:24:25
Speaker
and it's actually written nicely and it actually makes the people do what you hope they do. I think you've hit upon an example and I like talking about content examples because it's one of our specialisms here at the
AI Enhancing Human Work
00:24:40
Speaker
SEO. Now what I really like about that is potentially that copywriting agency could have seen it
00:24:45
Speaker
Seeing AI as a threat, because a large part of the skill for a good copywriter is understanding tone and is thinking about how to persuade and how to motivate. But instead of saying, oh, no, AI is going to ruin that, they've kind of taken it and said, okay, well, how can we get better faster?
00:25:04
Speaker
with the content. And that yeah, I think that's I'm not really sort of arriving at a point here other than just to celebrate that. That's great. It's kind of saying what makes us unique as humans? What's our human input to this? And how can we use AI to make ourselves more efficient as humans? You're not taking the humans out of the whole process. And I think that that's one of the threats that people
00:25:27
Speaker
misunderstand with AI is that it doesn't tend to replace human beings for everything. It's like owning a dishwasher sometimes. Yeah, you can stand there for 20 minutes and wash up, or you can cram everything in the dishwasher and kick the door shut and hope for the best that that probably gives you more of an insight into how I use dishwashers than anything else. But you know, it's saying, right, well, this one part of it that is is repetitive, could probably be not done by a human.
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. And also just the scale of that repetitiveness. So, I mean, I know it's one of the things that we've looked at in our copyright example in terms of looking to explore
00:26:12
Speaker
is that what happens in a big organisation where you've had six different marketing managers, you've had 12 different agencies working on different projects, actually, how consistent is that across all of that? And at the moment, normally,
00:26:30
Speaker
If you get an agency in, they'll look at what you've done and have a quick look around your website and probably give you an answer. They'll do some work around how your tone of voice should be, and then moving forward, they'll write in that way.
00:26:46
Speaker
this opens up a whole new world of possibilities of actually auditing what's there without having to pay somebody to sit there and read it all to say, well, look, we've analyzed all of your content for the last 10 years. And there's this weird bit in 2016 to 2018 where it's completely off base compared to what everybody, what all of your other content is.
00:27:13
Speaker
So, you know, we need to revisit that because that stuff's still out in the wild. And that stuff's still going to be changing opinions of you. Or similarly, using that as a way of validating your work of actually saying, well, look, you know, we told you he needed to be more professional in your copy. We've now we've been working with you for six months, you can see how the tone of voice is improved over that time and how that consistency has happened. So it does, I think,
00:27:42
Speaker
It's a tool that you want to use. And at the end of the day, you can choose how to make the best out of it and use it. But it comes back to your digger example of, do you really want to be the firm that's known for digging with spades? Or do you want to use a digger for some of the bigger bits? Yeah. Or do you want to use a digger for some of those bits?
00:28:09
Speaker
That's a challenge in the crossroads I guess we're at from an AI perspective of if you're going to keep on digging with spades, you need to sort of explain the benefits and hone in on those benefits and make sure that your clients see them and perceive them and understand them. Otherwise, they'll just go and get a digger.
00:28:32
Speaker
You've highlighted something else here and that's the cross-pollination of different disciplines around data because really good things happen in the world as a whole when people in different disciplines join together to use new technologies. We're recording video for this. I don't know if we're going to use it or not because
00:28:54
Speaker
I don't know, just because I don't know. But if anyone is watching the video, they would have seen you said something there and my jaw dropped because you mentioned something in that project that for an SEO agency would be fantastically powerful. We spend a lot of time looking back at old content, trying to figure out which bits of content to optimize and if we're working with a client who has.
00:29:15
Speaker
hundreds or even thousands of articles. We have certain things we can do very manually, like let's see which articles have dipped in rankings in the last few years. Let's see which ones are sort of on the verge of greatness. But we can't take tone into account. There's loads of things that you've just mentioned that we can't take into account. So it still requires a human. And it's a laborious process. We do it because it's a really good thing to do.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's an example of cross pollination where you're just telling me about this one thing over here. Me, as your dev, I'm an SEO. Sorry, in SEO. I never liked that an SEO thing. Just in discussion for the purpose of this podcast, the cross pollination of that, I've gone, wow, actually, no, that's really cool. I can see that as being a big advantage. And ultimately, that would give us more time to spend looking for new opportunities. I don't think we're riding the crest of a wave with technology like AI.
00:30:12
Speaker
I think we're swimming. We're bobbing around and occasionally we bump into another swimmer and help each other out. That's a weird analogy, isn't it? I think I know what you mean. And it's actually we did a really interesting project with a fashion brand or a fragrance brand, basically.
AI in Sensory Product Marketing
00:30:31
Speaker
And it was using content available online to better understand
00:30:38
Speaker
people's that like particular perfumes also like this kind of perfume because or fragrance. I'm not the great is with all of the different
00:30:51
Speaker
all of the differences around yeah all the different smells crazy world a lot of smells yeah and um and but there's a huge um there's a huge sort of subset of people who or what a subset sounds that sounds wrong but it's all right we're both in tech we can break down to unemotional terms been talking about humans i mean unfortunately we have to yeah so but there's a huge subset of people who really love fragrances and you know can talk about them all day and have the
00:31:19
Speaker
opinions. And apparently even, you know, they'll like to me, I thought there was a world where you got as high as I know, CK one. And that was like a good, good one. Yeah, there's a whole level above that stuff where you're getting into sort of four figures for bottle of perfume and or bottle of aftershave. And it's, it's amazing. You get people who buy vintage ones. And but what is really interesting is one of the huge challenges that
00:31:49
Speaker
if you're a perfume brand or if you do that kind of stuff. And it's similar with anything is how can you sell something that is sensory online? And that's, you know, other than by price. So up until now, most sensory stuff like, you know, I used to work in furniture and people would buy online because it was cheaper than going into a store. They'd normally go into the store and sit on the sofa and say, yes, this is the sofa I want, and then go home and try to find it cheaper online.
00:32:20
Speaker
Whereas with, you know, so it might be the case that you smell a perfume, you like it, you find it cheaper online. But if you're actually doing something that isn't just trying to compete on price, how can you get people shopping online for sensory stuff? And a lot of that comes down to understanding what people are going to like and putting them, you know, making sure that experience is right. And that's where, again, where AI can
00:32:46
Speaker
can help and big data. And this is where all of the lines sort of cross, isn't it? But it's like, actually, if we know that you really like CK1, there's a pretty good chance you're going to like something else. And that's where the opportunities are in AI for a firm that really is all about the sort of
00:33:14
Speaker
creativity of creating fragrances. It's the creativity angle of it that always interests me. There's a really famous person in advertising called David Ogilvy. He kind of invented the advertising game as it were in the way we see it today. He died many many years ago and I often think if he could see
00:33:35
Speaker
what we're able to do now, he would kill him. No, I mean, I was trying to think of a good way of saying that, not realize he's already dead. So his whole principle was learn about your audience. So they had to do that in the 40s and 50s and 60s by doing focus groups, doing test campaigns in newspapers where they couldn't really get any direct feedback. And then the job of the ad copywriter is appeal to the emotions and other less tangible parts
00:34:04
Speaker
of what motivates people to buy. So with your fragrance example, being able to say, hey, Mr. Ogby, you're going to sell a £4,000 bottle of Aftershave because we know these people have a preference for the colour purple and
00:34:21
Speaker
It could be absolutely anything, couldn't it? I was trying to think of a really obscure example, like these people always scratch their left ear with their right hand or something, but it could be almost anything. And that goes back to AI giving you the questions to ask, not just being an input output thing to give you the answers. Yeah. And I think also finding correlations that you weren't expecting and you weren't looking for, because obviously you tend to start with a hypothesis, don't you, of like, I think this page
00:34:51
Speaker
ranked really well because it was, you know, or this page had a good dwell time because it had lots of funny jokes in it or whatever. And where, you know,
00:35:04
Speaker
AI can help is it can actually just it takes out that hypothesis side of it to some extent. And that you can find things that you weren't expecting at all. And that's, I mean, what we found sort of going back to that copywriting example, was we just basically just chucked a whole suite of AI tools to see what all of them said, and then focused in on the bits that were interesting. And, you know,
00:35:29
Speaker
We looked at ease of read. And to be honest, every single article is easy to read. So, OK, great. We know that. We registered that and move on. But when you got into the personality bit, that was much more interesting because you could see actually how the tone of voice was changing. But we didn't know before we started that what our major findings would be. The first finding might have been, well, look, some of your articles are impossible to read. So there's your big. That's a good one to know if you're a copywriting agency, isn't it? Yeah.
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah. And so I think it's that with the, it's just, you can kind of just keep on adding in other checks and other things that you look at to try to understand those opportunities. And you just build up this wealth of data. And then the biggest challenge in some ways is finding ways of communicating that data because it brings back so much information that being AI is normally numerical and
00:36:30
Speaker
Well, that that's then another discipline.
Visualizing Data in SEO
00:36:33
Speaker
I know a guy done bits of work with actually is a guy who invented the invented he designed the SEO logo. He's a designer, but he's he's a designer of data visualization. So he takes the kind of data that that your processes would create. And it's his job to make it.
00:36:54
Speaker
pretty pictures, he will slam me for saying that, because that is a horrible oversimplification. But it's kind of true. You know, it really is. It's saying, here's a phenomenal amount of data, make it something I can shout across a room and the person on the other stand side will understand what what what we've learned. I think I think you're right. I mean, we so we've we have
00:37:22
Speaker
designers who have data design, whatever you want to call them data visualization people that we use. And to be fair, a lot of the input and we're quite good at it. But a lot of it's come from just experience of working with people who, who understand the business, a lot of it, that sort of stuff comes from the business need of like, so one of our big clients work in the wholesale industry. And I guess their sort of stuff is probably the border line between
00:37:51
Speaker
big data and AI. There's so much data there that although we're not using always AI to analyze it, we do sometimes, just that volume of it, just making that readable is kind of really leveraging the powers of
00:38:10
Speaker
of technology. And I remember one of the very first meetings we were in and they were saying, well, look, you know, the point of, so we've got these series of dashboards. So there's like 20 dashboards that visualize different aspects of a supplier's performance. And I remember in the first meeting, we had about this going back nearly eight years, I think, and they would literally
00:38:33
Speaker
Well, the point of this page is so that if I am an account manager, I can go in and I can say to somebody on my tablet, turn it around and say, look at this number. I want to talk to you about this number. And it's that kind of understanding what people are looking for and how what kind of visuals people respond to. And like you say, I mean, it's all
00:38:59
Speaker
really easy to say, oh, let's just chuck in a chart, put into Excel and do that. But the skill involved in visualizing the data is huge and getting the charts only really the first step of the journey. I mean, the stuff that you guys do and we do as well, to be fair in SEO, although from very different angles, we're only getting business owners and analysts to step one over a long journey.
00:39:29
Speaker
I've been in and out of loads of different places over the years, and factories, there's one factory I went in once. These huge screens, and even when you're up close to them, it was just a lot of graphs. I'd have no idea why they were doing it. I understood that industry well, because like you, we start working with the client in the new industry, we have a steep learning curve.
00:39:49
Speaker
I don't know why they're doing it. I was always thinking, well, who's looking at that and making decisions about what happens tomorrow, or what's going to happen in five years, you just getting the data is only the start of the journey, really. Yeah, and I think that's what one of the this client that we work with hours, but like, part of what they're offering is consultancy around utilizing data.
Consultancy in Data Utilization
00:40:11
Speaker
And because because of for that very reason, of, you know, the likes of
00:40:16
Speaker
of me and you can produce grass for days. But actually, it's understanding. Yeah, exactly. It's for us. It's doesn't look nice. But I think, yeah, there's some actually working with with the client to actually understand, well, what is it you
00:40:36
Speaker
What's really important to you, because that's often the thing I see with dashboards is that problem of everyone's like, well, wouldn't it be great if I could see every single thing about my business on one page? And it's like, well, that's great. But at what point do you ever sit down and say, right, today I'm going to review my entire business? It doesn't work like that. You want to be looking at it in the context of a particular challenge or a particular
00:41:05
Speaker
situation. And like you say, the person that's planning what's going to be made to tomorrow isn't going to need the same data as the person who's making sure that all today's tasks are completed. And you kind of need to, yeah, that's often what the
00:41:26
Speaker
what what in the consultancy side i think it starts out a lot of the time and is that actually who need to see what information and don't necessarily flood them with other information because that just then people just then just see a page of numbers or a page of graphs and just data blindness yeah yeah no exactly that yeah um matt this has been really interesting i'll just spot the time and we've we've been talking for a while oh sorry no no this is absolute pleasure i mean this is
00:41:57
Speaker
I think I'd like to think that we'll look back on conversations like this in five years time.
Future of AI in Personalization
00:42:04
Speaker
And we'll either say, wow, we did not see it going that way. Or we'll be quietly confident that it's not how we react to new technology. It's how we perceive technology as a whole that actually makes a difference. That's my opinion. I'm not thrusting that kind of on you at all. So just for fun, where do you think we'll be in 10 years with AI?
00:42:26
Speaker
There's a big thing, isn't it? It's that we overestimate what's going to change in 10 years, but underestimate what's going to change in five years. And so I think we're still away off of having anything serious like, you know, cars that drive themselves, all of this kind of stuff. I think really what we'll be seeing, certainly in the five year window, is just like good quality personalization in lots of aspects of our lives.
00:42:56
Speaker
I think is going to be a big part of it driven by AI. I think also, I think we'll probably get more used to some tasks being completely kind of automated and you know, AI becoming a way of a way of getting things done remotely. So for example, I know like now they've started
00:43:24
Speaker
doing things like using facial recognition on your driver's license against you to see that you're actually who you say you are. And I think there'll be a lot of that kind of stuff that is probably some of the first portico. And I think that's what we'll see a lot of. I think actually, fundamentally, it's not going to be that different, just probably an extension of what we've seen of more automation
00:43:54
Speaker
more clever ways of doing things, breaking down barriers in terms of basically making it easier for people to spend money, I think is going to be what drives it. So that's what I
00:44:10
Speaker
I think will happen. I'm sure, you know, like you say, look back at this in 10 years and we'll see it's actually, you know, I'll be sitting there in a hovercraft. We were promised hovercars many, many years ago, back to the future, that documentary back to the future lied to us. So Matt, I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed your
How to Connect with Chick Digital
00:44:30
Speaker
company. It's been a fascinating chat. So before we go, how can people find out more about, about your business?
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, so you can find us on chickdigital.co.uk, or you can look us up on LinkedIn. So I think if you search for me, Matt Chick, or for Chick Digital on there, you should be able to find us. We're based in Colchester, so if anyone's in Colchester in the east of England, so if anyone's around that way, feel free to give us a shout and we can have a coffee.
00:45:01
Speaker
Brilliant. So final thing, I'm going to ask every every guest this every guest who's a consultant or an operative. What's your favourite type of project? What's the one that when it comes in, you think, yes, this is going to be great. This is this is my thing. This is what I love. At the moment, I love anything do they are in data, to be honest, anything do they are in data gets me really interested because I just I'm one I've
00:45:31
Speaker
might, that's just where my brain works. I find content and stuff like that really confusing. You know, I kind of first time I got excited about it was when I was able to turn it into numbers to say, Oh, look, now I understand it. Yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, anything to do with data always gets me interested because I always think there's so much
00:45:51
Speaker
potential in data and AI is just to me an extension of that in lots of ways because it just helps us analyze and understand that data quicker. But to me, that's also the area where I always think you can have the biggest impact the quickest because so much data isn't used and the possibilities opens up just by actually understanding what's happening on a day to day basis, either in your business or in the places you operate is just huge. So yeah, definitely.
00:46:20
Speaker
if anyone that's got any data-based projects, not only will I buy you a coffee, you might even get a cake as well. I like that one. I've been making notes throughout this, and you said so many quotable things, and just there, so much data is never used. That's just, put it on a T-shirt, Matt. What a great quote. That's so brilliant. Okay, well, as you probably gathered, listeners, I could carry on chatting to Matt.
00:46:48
Speaker
kind of all the rest of the day. But I'm not going to because unfortunately, I've got to go and do other things and now I want cake. So Matt, once again, thank you ever so much. Is there any final thoughts? Or would you just like to say goodbye to close the show? No, no, that's thank you, Andrew. It's been really good. Really enjoyed it. And yeah, looking forward to hearing some of the other people in the in the series.