The Human Code
The Human Code" podcast unravels the intricate blend of technology, leadership, and personal growth, featuring insights from visionary leaders and innovators shaping the future. Host Don Finley dives deep into the human stories behind technological advancements, inspiring listeners at the crossroads of humanity and tech.
The Human Code
AI's Impact on Marketing and Creativity: Insights with Dan Evans
AI and the Future of Marketing: A Conversation with Dan Evans
In this episode of The Human Code, host Don Finley sits down with Dan Evans, a global marketing leader with over two decades of experience, to explore the transformative potential of AI in marketing. They discuss Dan's pioneering work in digital strategy, from his revolutionary role as the first digital marketing director for the US Marine Corps to leading initiatives at USAA. Dan shares insights on leveraging AI and large language models (LLMs) to enhance efficiency and innovation, touching on practical examples like automated content creation and workflow optimization. The conversation also delves into the implications of AI on jobs, future workforce skills, and maintaining human connection in a tech-driven world. This episode is a deep dive into the evolving intersection of technology, strategy, and human ingenuity.
00:00 Introduction to The Human Code Podcast
00:49 Meet Dan Evans: A Transformative Marketing Leader
01:40 Dan Evans' Journey and Innovations
03:45 The Impact of AI and LLMs in Marketing
06:12 AI in Podcast Production and Beyond
09:07 Future of AI: Opportunities and Challenges
12:57 AI in Everyday Life: Practical Applications
16:05 The Future of AI and Human Interaction
27:09 Preparing for an AI-Driven Future
29:05 Conclusion and Sponsor Message
Sponsored by FINdustries
Hosted by Don Finley
Welcome to The Human Code, the podcast where technology meets humanity, and the future is shaped by the leaders and innovators of today. I'm your host, Don Finley, inviting you on a journey through the fascinating world of tech, leadership, and personal growth. Here, we delve into the stories of visionary minds, Who are not only driving technological advancement, but also embodying the personal journeys and insights that inspire us all. Each episode, we explore the intersections where human ingenuity meets the cutting edge of technology, unpacking the experiences, challenges, and triumphs that define our era. So, whether you are a tech enthusiast, an inspiring entrepreneur, or simply curious about the human narratives behind the digital revolution, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Human Code. Joining us today is Dan Evans, a transformative global marketing leader and current global marketing officer at end to growth with over two decades of experience, spanning both B2B and B to C industries. Dan has redefined digital strategy and innovation on a global scale. His journey from serving as the U S Marine corpse recruiting commander's first ever digital marketing director. Where he revolutionized recruitment strategies to leading groundbreaking initiatives like the USAA personal brand academy showcases his dedication to elevating brands and talents alike. Dan is passionate about harnessing cutting edge technologies like AI to drive impactful results. Both personally and professionally from increasing inbound leads by 300% to scaling global marketing efforts. Dan's visionary leadership exemplifies the intersection of technology strategy and human connection. Today, we dive deep into his remarkable journey, exploring the transformative role of AI in marketing, the evolution of digital tools and what it means to lead with innovation in today's world. I am here with Dan Evans. Dan, it's been a pleasure talking to you pre show, and I really just want to dive into it to talk about humanity and technology and what got you interested in that intersection.
Dan Evans:Yeah, so I think for me, technology has always been a part of my life. It's, even when I was younger, I grew up in the days where, we used LimeWire to download Our favorite audio tracks and convert those into, CDs for those who don't know what that is, listening compact discs and make our favorite jams. It was long before we were streaming, music to our phones over the internet, and video gaming, playing PC. I did that when I was younger. And then. just, I have always embraced, technology and particularly as social media came out and, the, 2000, 10 timeframe, I guess it was 2008, 2010, somewhere around there. I was seeing opportunity getting on LinkedIn. I remember sitting, having a conversation with my wife, when we went out on a date and I'm like, this Facebook thing, Every single business is going to have a Facebook. Every single business is going to use this as a platform to propel, commercial activity. And I remember sharing that insight with people and it, seemed like a foreign concept, so it's always just been a part of, who I am, where I'm going. And now, of course, with the advent of artificial intelligence and these, language models like OpenAI and Clod and, there's hundreds of different AI powered platforms that largely sit on these, popular LLM APIs. There's just so much opportunity there, and I'm really excited to talk about those things.
Don Finley:So I'm definitely curious about even taking a step back. LLMs really showcased themselves in the last two years, Like we've been working with GPT for probably four or five years right now, but like the first GPT 2 that was released was basically like a glorified autocomplete. GPT 3 had a little bit better, but it was really that use case of figuring out how to get it to chat with you. And so ChatGPT showcased us how powerful LLMs could become, or not even could become, but the baseline of this new wave. And I know two years ago I would have said that the automation and jobs that would have been impacted by AI first were going to be like entry level positions. Additionally, they were going to be more of a blue collar type of work first. Then, Well, LLMs changed that on their head where now you're talking about like intellectual thought workers and the creative process can now be impacted by this. How has AI and LLMs in the last two years impacted you and your team?
Dan Evans:I would say significantly, the things that we were, dreaming of, just a couple of years ago are starting to, grow in maturity today. things like, just full end to end automations from start to finish, from, taking, this podcast, for example, and turning it into a blog post and publishing it in an automated way onto your, website. Like these types of things start to finish end to end. It's almost this AI has become multiple agents or people, so to speak, that can do these jobs for us, or at least create, a 90 percent draft solution from the get go, which is really exciting because, think of the amount of effort and time. And energy it takes to start and do some writing from scratch. So had a podcast around 2014, and, even just creating the show notes, top to bottom, start to finish, you'd have to listen to the podcast, you'd have to jot down notes, it was very cumbersome. having a podcast was a lot of work.
Don Finley:Yeah.
Dan Evans:And, things have since changed. I'm not sure how you're using it, but,
Don Finley:So here I will tell you 100 percent how we're using it. cause my eyes are lighting up thinking about a, how much different it is from 2015, Like you were talking about creating show notes. never thought about show notes. Like we have them, they're in all of our descriptions, but like they get created by AI and then they also get reviewed by our producer. And so That is a task on our list that takes probably a minute to accomplish. now, the other side of this is our guests fill out a show form before coming on. so when you fill that out, we then have an AI that pulls like your LinkedIn profile and puts together a persona for you, for me, with some like sample questions and some possibilities for what we could go at, So that's one area. Then when it comes to the editing of the podcast, you used to have to listen to it, make cuts. and then go through with that fine tooth comb of did I make the cut right? Am I doing this? And video and audio editing to me has always felt like the same thing as like the show, the shop floor of you have the film strip and you're literally cutting it and then piecing those two things together. today we edit on a transcript. And so like the AI has gone through, listened to everything, labeled the speakers, identified who's speaking when, what they're saying, and we can go through with AI and remove ums, uhs, filler words as well. And so that initial process of editing a 30 minute episode used to take, I think it, was between one to two hours for that initial cut. of just removing, like they, just a fast pass kind of thing in order to do that. That happens in less than five minutes today. so that's one of those areas. And then afterwards, Like you want to do promotional material. We have an AI that goes through and takes The 30 minute episode and then creates between three to 10 different social media shares based on the content of the episode, as well as the, what is trending in the world today. And so since we talk about AI, it's always trending kind of thing, but, at the same time, it also picks up on other. And then it writes the post for us as well to describe the content and what's going on.
Dan Evans:I think, that's a great example and I think, it's not really an oversimplification, but in terms of like the setup process, I'm sure, it took some time to build out the rules, the style, the tone of your podcast, the types of. Clips that, your, AI agent is searching for and trying to find and curate for your audience. And, I think that therein is the piece that we should all be focusing on is how do we build. These agents to understand like we would as people and then teach them and train them and refine them. and that is the skillset I believe of the future is exactly that.
Don Finley:I think you're hitting on something very positive here because it is a, how do you apply the tools that we're seeing today? But then how do you change the way that we look at our work in association with what we're getting done? And that ability to identify the workflow, the processes, and effectively more of that managerial, type of work is going to hit every job. And knowing that we can essentially automate something that may have taken. a couple of hours before into a couple of seconds or to do something that, like we have lead criteria, like we have leads that get evaluated, you want to score them and you want to see and. We used to have somebody who would spend hours of their time going through scraping data to validate, is this person in our ICP? Is it not in our ICP? Do we want to be reaching out to them? And now we can have an AI that. takes a look at the information and instead of processing a couple hundred of these an hour, you're doing a couple hundred in a few seconds. But at the same time, it isn't work that people find fulfilling. And so they can move on to working on things that are more fulfilling. what has been the impact on the work that you're doing around, is it more fulfilling now? Is it less fulfilling? how does it change?
Dan Evans:that's a pretty broad and big question, but. I would say that, everything has changed. I think the most recent disruptive technology that I can think of off the top of my head is the internet. And now it's something that we use, it's in our homes, it's in our businesses, it's ubiquitous in every single facet and in everything that we do. And it's very difficult to go off the grid and be off of the internet and still function as a human being today. I think AI is very similar to that. it's going to be embedded, ingrained in every single thing that we do. Now, I think that, initially, AI, when it came out, was focused on Text. It was very heavy on text. And, now we've got these tools like MidJourney. We have Dolly with OpenAI to create images and Meta most recently announced that they're Launching a platform to edit videos using AI in their platforms, which is super exciting So when we look at just those things look at the way we used to do writing Which was highly manual, very difficult starting from scratch. Same thing with creating images and graphics, creating images and graphics with a designer, is typically very expensive. Now, what we're seeing as designers, we still need designers. We still need the human, but we're creating some initial works and graphics that can be layered into, popular editing tools and refined. And made, specific to a brand. And that process is just been accelerated.
Don Finley:Okay. So
Dan Evans:yeah,
Don Finley:in the ideation process of trying to describe to the designer, Hey, here's what I'm looking at. You're using some of these tools to basically say here's a visual of what I previously would have described to you.
Dan Evans:That's right. Yeah. And
Don Finley:okay.
Dan Evans:yeah, and that's one, one way that, we're using, AI in our work is we use mid journey to help create some initial iterations that are aligned with our brand. We've defined a very. Specific style that we use in various facets of our brand and we're able to replicate those things and make unique imagery and graphics that really stand out, differentiate us from the competition. And I don't know about you, Don, but I am absolutely, sick of stock photography. And maybe at some point I may feel that same way about AI generated images, graphics, vectors, photographs, etc. But I'm really struggling to identify when that's going to be because it's been a while. Pretty darn cool.
Don Finley:you're 100 percent right. I resonate at 100 percent with what you're saying because it is so cool to be able to do things that I couldn't do before, and not to say that I can do them to a level that is professional, but I can do it to the point where I can convey a thought. I can convey an idea much quicker than I could before. the ideation process happening faster. But I do also recognize that there is going to be a point where I just get tired of it. Have you heard of the dead internet theory?
Dan Evans:Enlighten me.
Don Finley:Okay. So this is a theory I first ran into around, I want to say somewhere between 2016, 2018. And the general premise is that the internet that from earlier, Like our early days in social media, the excitement of being able to get online, to talk to a community, to interact, to do, I don't know if you were, you a ICQ or AOL chat, Like that way, those were felt exciting. Cause now you're using a new form of communication to engage with somebody who's across the world in some other way. And now it's pretty standard, there was nothing exciting about us. Creating a video chat today in order to have this podcast. That wasn't the excitement. where the dead internet theory plays in is. At some point, bot traffic on the internet will eclipse human interaction. And so you see it on like social media platforms today where you're like, is that a bot or is that a human? I'll tell you there's a greater than 51 percent chance right now that it's a bot. That's where we're at. We're right at that tipping point. But if you start to get up to the 80, 90% of interactions are with bots, you lose that connection to a human. That you can have those thoughts, you can have those concepts, and then the world feels more and more isolated because you're not having that interaction that you either previously had, or maybe we just all go out and touch some grass at that point. but that's the theory, is that basically the internet will end up getting consumed with bots. Artificial intelligence.
Dan Evans:yeah. that's not a far fetched theory. it totally could happen. At the same time, I think it's important to recognize what, these bots are freeing us from. And it's the mundane, and we're going under the assumption that the bots will not become smarter and more human like. I saw an interview with, Mark Zuckerberg, the other day, and he was talking about, the future looks like, just a bunch of agents, AI bot agents that communicate with one another that they're working together as teams. They're solving challenges. They're learning from one another. They're creating qualitative outcomes and deliverables that we as human beings, have our mortal shortcomings, Like we're tired. We miss things. But you have the precision accuracy that comes with a computer doing the work. If we've come this far in just a year, imagine where we're going to be this time next year,
Don Finley:Yeah.
Dan Evans:and where are we going to be in five years. And if we can leverage these tools for good, and use it as a means to free up headspace and time where we can focus on, the meaningful activities like this, of doing a podcast interview. People, person to person, these interpersonal, relationships, a beautiful thing in my opinion. So it is a balance for sure. How do we protect privacy? How do we protect people? How do we make sure that the bots are doing what they should be doing? It's almost like we could be supervising teams of agents and bots in the future and that is an interesting challenge to solve. So how do we do that effectively? How do we make sure that, the bots don't get deceptive and start doing things that, they're not supposed to be doing? These are all concerns fortunately, there's a lot of smart people working on these problems and ensuring that they don't become that,
Don Finley:you know also, AI alignment, Like that point of, is the human goal aligned with what the AI wants is a fascinating field of research, but also some of the latest things that are going on is using AI to train the AI in human AI alignment as well, which is, An interesting scenario. but I agree with you that if we're going to create an environment that is utilizing these tools, the place where those tools will get applied is in the mundane. it is in the activities that we are not enjoying, and then we can focus on the activities that, we do enjoy. how do you see that playing out in your life around the activities that you find to be either more worthwhile now that you weren't able to get to? And once again, thank you for being on this show and creating these moments with me as well.
Dan Evans:I see it, a lot like electricity. it's just going to be ubiquitous and everything that we do. And much of the innovations going forward are going to have various forms of AI in it. Now, if we look at electricity, entire new markets were stood up as a result. of electricity. We changed business as we knew it. We changed how we operated in our daily lives. and even now, like we have the internet. That has drastically transformed the way we do business. It's transformed our lives. Gone from, books, hard copy books to digital copies of books to being able to use the internet and AI to scan, and read a book for us and synthesize and produce summaries and, an instant people like things very fast. These days we've grown, impatient in a lot of ways. And I think that impatience is driving innovation. And for me, I think my hope is to just be cautiously optimistic about how that looks. I'm integrating it where I see fit, where I see that It's safe, it's been tested, and just being very careful about the types of pieces of information that we're adding to the internet. because these large language models, they're collecting all of the pieces of data that are ingested into it and forming, new neural pathways, if you will. as those pieces are being synthesized,
Don Finley:And I think that's an incredibly strong point to hit on is if you're giving your data to these LLMs, you're training it to do the thing that you're asking it about as well, you're moving the ball forward in that capacity. and I know when we work with our clients around like AI implementations, that is a big discussion upfront about like, how comfortable are you about putting your data into somebody's system? And there's three ways that we look at it. You're either fully comfortable kind of thing. Like I know I go to perplexity and I ask it silly questions. I don't mind about that. But then there's also data that's important to my life. Certain things in the enterprise will actually move over to open AI and Microsoft because we have legal protections that they're not using it for ourselves. But then there's sometimes data that's so sensitive. And the example that I give is Microsoft I have trained an AI to mimic Carl Jung. I do not want that information out there. So I run that locally, In my own server, my own space, the data stays with me. we're getting the model from, Facebook, from or wherever we're getting it from and using it, but all the data stays local to us. I think it's a good point that you're hitting on here around, you gotta know what you're doing, how you're handing over that information. we look at technology, innovation in businesses and in our lives as a, Hey, this does the thing that solves this task. And then we bring it in. Are we going to be looking at AI in different ways? Or is it still that same sort of model of I'm going to have an AI that like cleans my house. I'm going to have an AI that, makes pictures for me.
Dan Evans:one recent example that, comes to mind is I was talking to my wife about, grocery delivery services, we use Walmart plus, and, here in Texas, we have H E B everybody loves H E B. And my wife expressed a little bit of frustration about like ordering groceries and, thinking of meals and all this other stuff. well why don't we integrate, a meal planner into, these various grocery apps going forward and plan our meals for us and do the ordering for us where everything just shows up at our porch, Amazon is, pioneered the logistics of getting things to us between, overnight, between 4am and 8am or between, 5 and 10 pm same day delivery type thing. Why can't we do that with groceries? Why can't we take out some of these mundane, tasks that just are dreadful?
Don Finley:Please, Dan, I think we're just going to talk to the audience right now. And let's hope that somebody is listening who wants to be creating this, because I'm telling you that would solve 80 percent of my shopping problems for groceries, if you could create a meal plan, have the AI figure out what you need and then place the order that it gets delivered. Love that. Like absolutely fantastic
Dan Evans:things you don't have to think about. Yeah,
Don Finley:Yeah,
Dan Evans:yeah,
Don Finley:it's more of a coordination of activities that go on that are rather. Not germane, but they feel repetitive or they feel like there is something that doesn't require my full intelligence. And then at the same time, going online to shop for food requires that I do that step already, I can't just go on to the website for Whole Foods and click a few buttons for the pre prepared meal, not even pre prepared, but like to get the ingredients for the meal. I got to figure out the ingredients, what I need, and then get onto the website. I love those applications of this because it is filling the gap between why you're doing something the way that we used to do it and saying, you know what, my end purpose here is actually to make a meal with my family. And so for me to be making that meal with my family, what are the steps that can be taken out of that and go, my family likes this meal. All right, AI, go figure out what we need to get in order so I can make that meal at this time.
Dan Evans:yeah. And that's a beautiful thing. these things, these little, tasks that are mundane in our households, there's so many my wife has been, ordering groceries for our family, going to the store for, nearly 20 years that we've been together. And, she's just now, not just now, but recently getting into ChatGPT for, planning trips. ordering groceries, meal plans, like you can plug in the address of your Airbnb as an example and do a full outline top to bottom of, nearby things to do with a family of five to your Airbnb. these are things that we're working on. In the, just a couple of years ago would have taken hours to do. Imagine how many Chrome tabs it would take to plan a, a 10 day trip. That's a lot of copying and pasting. And now we can just, make the AI go do it. And then you can plan your trip around, the activities that it's set forth all the way down from, the distance from where you're staying to a budget. Free activities, if you're an outdoorsy person, if you're a hike person, or if you're a lounge by the pool person, it's just incredible.
Don Finley:We live in a society that basically, we went from having information scarcity in this place to going to a place that was informationally abundant, if we look back 40 years, there was a general benefit to being able to remember something and to be able to apply it. And now in an information abundant society, the value is in how I can synthesize the information and how I can pattern match against it and find the relationships. of the sea of information that's out there. Now with LLMs, we have a tool that can do that. And it's coming into that space. And I know with O1 Preview and the future iterations of where, ChachiBT is heading, as well as I know others are, that reasoning step is getting a lot stronger and being able to plan forward and do the things that you're talking about, which is just an amazing, space that we live in. But I think you're hitting on the key activity here of, You got to interact with it and try it and see, what it can do to help you. Because if you are planning a trip, it's going to help you in some way to sit down and say, all right, can you at least get me farther along? And I know I personally use, chat GPT for exercises where I'm not the strongest in, Like marketing and sales. Isn't my strongest suit. But I do it and chat GPT has been a nice reflection point for helping me to advance my skills on there. A partner in that collaboration. one thing I would love to know is what do you think is the activities that people can focus on to help them like either adopt this or additionally get prepared for, even more changes that are coming in the future.
Dan Evans:think just using it, I've talked to a lot of professionals who are still using these tools at a very basic level. they're going in, asking, ChatGPT to write an article about this. And that's the extent of the prompt.
Don Finley:Yeah.
Dan Evans:And, they always say if you want great answers, you need to ask better questions. And if you want great outcomes, you need to ask or tell the AI be very specific about what it is you're asking it to do, how you want it to look, what type of tone, what type of style, this is just one example, but having that kind of, it's like you're the coach for the AI and this is where the human really plays the part in making these systems work.
Don Finley:Yeah.
Dan Evans:I think for your listeners here playing with the tools, trying different things, getting on YouTube University doing some studying, going to Reddit, do some studying on, how to get, Prompts that create desirable outcomes and then innovating off of that. I really think that is how you can position yourself for the future and maximize.
Don Finley:Dan, I gotta say, that's honestly just great advice on this. Simple. And at the same time, like it is what's necessary. You've got to get comfortable with these tools. You've got to try them out. You've got to figure out like where it's working for you, where it isn't working for you. And that's really helpful for everybody to understand. so I really, I just want to thank you again for taking the time today to talk to us and it's been an absolute blast having you on.
Dan Evans:Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Don Finley:Thank you for tuning into The Human Code, sponsored by FINdustries, where we harness AI to elevate your business. By improving operational efficiency and accelerating growth, we turn opportunities into reality. Let FINdustries be your guide to AI mastery, making success inevitable. Explore how at FINdustries. co.
