We say 'return' as if it ever actually went away...

Last week on the podcast, we talked about change with Mike Wessel. One of the big things we're all juggling at the minute is trying to stay on the straight and narrow in the midst of the 4th industrial revolution. It's change like we've never seen it.

New software. New ways of working. New competition. New expectations all over the place.

Yep, that's me talking about AI in a slightly convoluted way.

But in the many meetings I've been in, presentations I've given and conversations I've had with customers and fellow marketers, all AI-paved roads seem to lead back to one thing:

Making human connections is the way to succeed in the age of AI.

My colleague from the APAC arm of Avidly, Alex Mackrill and I sat down on Avidly Talks to discuss how fostering real-life, human-human connections is proving the secret sauce for marketing success.

It's a return to founding principles of marketing – the most important of which is trust and integrity.

And who isn't going to trust someone who've they've been on a 'learn, booze and cruise' with?

Listen to or watch the full episode here or read more tips and insights below

Listen on Spotify

Takeaways from this episode:

• In an age of AI, human connection is crucial.
• Traditional marketing tactics are making a comeback.
• Events can create meaningful customer engagement.
• AI should be used as a tool, not a crutch.
• Reconnecting with past customers can yield quick wins.
• Authenticity in marketing builds trust and loyalty.
• Every customer touchpoint is a marketing opportunity.
• B2B marketing requires a focus on customer experience just like B2C.
• Ethical considerations in AI marketing are essential.
• Brand reputation must be fiercely protected.
  

Why “Human-First” Is the Only Strategy That Still Moves the Needle

There’s a strange irony to modern marketing: the more machines we enlist to help us, the hungrier our audiences get for unmistakably human interaction. I was reminded of that truth while recording our recent Avidly Talks episode with Alex from Hype & Dexter. He walked us through their captain’s dinners, booze cruises and golf days—classic, hand-shake-heavy tactics we’d all sworn off a few years ago.

It hit me: the campaigns I’m proudest of—and the ones prospects still reference on calls—were built exactly the same way. Avidly Activates, our one-day learning event in an Art Deco cinema, required more sweat than any automated nurture we’ve launched this year. But the payoff was priceless: movie-themed swag in every attendee’s office, LinkedIn posts tagging our brand weeks later and a whole new layer of rapport with accounts that had been stuck at “maybe.” The finer the details—the popcorn carts, the custom-printed ticket stubs—the louder the after-shocks in pipeline.

My new rule for using AI: Let it interview me, but never let it speak for me

Yes, I lean on AI every day, but only as an accelerator – never a ghost-writer. The moment a tool strings together nine sentences when I’d say it in three, I rip control back. That line got blurry when I asked Claude to draft a blog recap for another event; a colleague who has proof-read my stuff for years swore it was mine.

Flattering? Absolutely. Terrifying? Even more so. If a model can mimic my cadence that perfectly, it can easily also slip in beige, “filler” paragraphs I’d be embarrassed to claim.

So, thanks to Alex, I’ve flipped the workflow: I make ChatGPT interview me.

While crawling through traffic I’ll now hit voice mode and say, “Ask me about building trust in B2C marketing.” It fires questions, I answer out loud, and by the time I park, I have a verbatim transcript of my thoughts – complete with the inevitable Northern sarcasm and typical half-finished metaphors.

The AI then formats the piece, trims the hemming and hawing, and hands me back something that sounds enough like me that I just edit, polish and finesse – instead of getting p'd off and starting from scratch.

The trust test: Can your audience tell a real hand was involved?

Inbound 1.0 taught us to blog. 2.0 layered on social. 3.0 introduced automation that nurtured leads while we slept. Each stage helped, but also pushed us further from the people we’re meant to serve.

Inbound 4.0 (or 'Everbound') is a hard swing back to trust-first marketing:

• Let people trust that you’re actually human. Show your face. Host a workshop. Send a video voicemail instead of another PDF.

• Trust that you know what you’re doing. Publish point-of-view content rooted in lived experience, not recycled SEO mush.

• Trust that you’ll do what you promised. If the invite says “lunch starts at noon,” the burritos better land at 11:59.

Those three layers create an operating system where every touchpoint builds credibility instead of eroding it. Metrics shift, too: I’m watching repeat-sign-up rate, referrals and how often our event swag sneaks into a client’s Zoom window months later.

Practical ways to start playing in inbound 4.0 mode

1. Audit your funnel for “AI slop.” If a paragraph adds nothing, kill it.

2. Plan a one-day, high-touch event. It doesn’t need a Hollywood budget, but it does need a signature moment people will photograph.

3. Turn your next commute into an interview. Give ChatGPT a topic, let it grill you, and post the cleaned-up transcript as a LinkedIn carousel.

4. Revive your dormant database before you chase another net-new lead. Those 2019 hand-raisers might be contract-free today.

Conclusion

Marketing tech will keep racing ahead — Gemini, Sora, the next miracle acronym — but buyers will always judge us on the same oldest-school metric: “Do I trust this person to deliver?” My bet is that the brands stacking genuine experiences on top of savvy automation will win the next decade.

We’ve already seen the proof: a cinema-themed activation that’s still whispering our name in boardrooms, an AI draft that fooled a human editor, a podcast that sparked this blog you’re reading now.

The thread tying them together is unmistakable: maximum humanity, minimal filler. That’s Inbound 4.0, and I’m all in.

Chapters 

Transcript:

Paul (00:00.372)
Welcome to Avidly Talks, a mostly marketing, sales, Hubspot, Focus podcast. We're looking at all things to do with inbound in the age of Industry 4.0 and I'm joined by a special guest this week, my colleague from nearby, technically, geographically originally, but now well over the other side of world. Good morning, Alex from Hype & Dexter, CMO.

Alex (00:03.047)
Yeah.

Paul (00:29.458)
leader of our APAC marketing arm. How's it going?

Alex (00:33.486)
Thank you Paul, pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Paul (00:37.042)
You've just driven through a cyclone you were saying before we hit record. That's dedication.

Alex (00:41.051)
dear, bit of wind, tail end of it. The worst has passed by the night.

Paul (00:46.221)
I feel like you two were making light of this. It sounds pretty serious. But I guess not if you've driven to the office.

Alex (00:53.3)
We get them every few months and a few branches will blow off trees. The odd tree might come down but as long as no one gets hurt, it's all good.

Paul (01:01.586)
we've got no weather to report apart from it's not rained for weeks cricket is back this week and guess what's happened now the cricket is back literally like four weeks of bone dry cricket is back it's rained can't script it but we're not talking cricket and weather obviously we're here to get your thoughts on marketing in 2025

Alex (01:09.966)
Well that's a rare thing. Nice. That's right. Of course.

Paul (01:30.356)
Age of AI, Industry 4.0 and you've got some success stories, put my teeth in, and some learnings you're finding from working with our clients and as well as doing our own marketing that you do. So one of the big things that you've been doing successfully and you've sort of pivoted to in the past 12, 18 months or so is these sort of small exclusive events you've done like the learning booze cruise thing and

Captain's dinners and all this kind of stuff. tell us about what they are and why you think they work.

Alex (02:07.126)
Yeah, not to go too deep too quickly, I think in an age, you hinted at it there, in an age of AI and automation and things like, people are craving human connection more than ever. when you're engaging with content, and let's take content marketing and inbound marketing as being synonymous, as a potential customer, you're not sure if you're actually engaging with a human anymore, right?

fairly confident you are, but a human has vetted or reviewed this content at some point in time, but who you actually hearing from. we've pivoted, sorry, I'll finish the thought and then hand over. We've pivoted to being entirely dependent on content and inbound based marketing, and gone back to some more traditional sort of like sales and marketing tactics of getting people to lunch in a room and to events. And when we do a case study, we don't just publish it and hope people find it.

Paul (02:39.27)
had today.

Paul (02:47.921)
Yeah, yeah, go.

Alex (03:06.254)
via search or paid ads, we actually do an event and invite, select handpicked prospects to whom this case study would be relevant and get them in the room and get them talking.

Paul (03:18.915)
your customers taking this on board as well not not as in to work with avidly but I mean your marketing customers that you do marketing for you seen this as a wider trend

Alex (03:32.59)
Yes, I mean, we do a lot of B2B. We do a lot of B2B and it's definitely a trend on the B2B side. And we're advocating for some version of it for our own clients as well.

Paul (03:49.125)
I there's some industries as well, thinking like construction or manufacturing where these things probably never went away as well.

Alex (03:59.406)
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, as I say that they're sort of more traditional old-school if you like sales and marketing tactics and five years ago we might have been turning our nose up at those who are still still doing it but all these things are cyclical right and it feels like it's coming back. As I say we do lots on the B2B side and lots on the sort of you know big ticket items, long sales process, those kinds of industries where that's a factor.

And we still do the inbound thing. We still support our clients through creating content and thought leadership. think thought leadership has always been important, but even more so. And like I say, in an age of AI, being somewhat confident as a reader or a consumer that you're actually engaging with an individual and their thoughts and their IP is even more critical.

Paul (04:52.627)
Mm.

Alex (04:55.374)
So we made that change ourselves and it immediately shifted the dial. We saw the entry email to download an e-book and stuff becoming less effective, more expensive to promote as well, more competition on the organic side as well. So just diminishing returns in that respect. And then those who do engage with it aren't necessarily qualified or ready to move ahead with a meaningful conversation.

So we decided, you know, we've built this company on our IP and our reputation based on where me and the other founders came from. And we should probably continue to do that.

At the time were six years into Hype and Dexter, top APAC partner five years in a row, now six. Really good reputation within HubSpot, so within the CRM industry as well. We weren't really going out and talking about that enough. we, let's just dial back the blogging and the e-books and things like that and actually just start to...

really repost as ourselves rather than as hype and dexter and get the word out and hope that people want to work with us because of the content and the IP that we're providing as individuals.

Paul (06:25.139)
individual is you mentioned a couple of times of people knowing that they're dealing with a person who knows what they're doing but dealing with the person first of all you can't get away from that when it's an in-person event. are people getting value from actually just getting out of office and meeting people? Is that just part of the puzzle? that a big big part of it? Obviously the content's got to be good but I imagine the whole experience has as well.

Alex (06:35.959)
Yeah.

Alex (06:54.106)
It really is. mean, I think it was maybe two years ago at Inbound where Yarmouli was talking about people craving connection. the penny didn't really drop for me until a bit later, but I'm seeing it now. We're doing things like sponsoring a whole lot of golf tournament and things like that. And, you know, we're going to be there at the clubhouse with flags and branding and stuff. it's...

Paul (07:02.29)
Hmm.

Paul (07:19.909)
Old school stuff, like you say.

Alex (07:21.132)
It's old school stuff. mean, a lot of the people there won't be our target audience, but a lot will. All those who aren't will know the CEO of a big company or whatever it might be. So we're going back to doing a lot of that, as I say, because we could see physically getting in front of people just having a bigger impact. Yeah, as I say, not to say we've stopped doing...

content production and things like that. But where we are doing it, it's a bit more considered. It's really built on the IP. And going back to Ivana, our executive interviewing the expert within the business to get their IP on the page. And it's not just generic AI-generated SEO-focused content. It's genuine.

experience that's going into that content.

Paul (08:21.811)
And it's blended I presume with modern ways of doing that as well. For example this is why we do this podcast every week. This is easy enough to do now where it is like blogging every week was. It's easy enough to get the transcript, get the social snippets and the tools are all there to make it easy as well to repurpose it, to remix it.

Alex (08:48.73)
Absolutely. Yeah, don't get me wrong. You're a fool in this day and age if you're not leveraging AI, but don't become completely dependent on it. I mentioned we might do an in-person interview where it's practical, but Ivana will take the transcript of that interview, which will be recorded by an AI. She'll put it into an AI and say, you format this into a 1,000-word blog? Make sure you include an emphasis on these points. Give it the direction. And it's just a time saver, because she was

Transcripting, we're having to slow down as we're doing the interview so she can keep up with the typing. Things might get missed. And then she's got to turn 17 pages of notes into an 800 word blog that could take hours upon hours. So we can fast track that workflow now and get much the same, if not a better result. you've got to use it in small ways. And even when it's not practical to do a person to person interview, you can use chat GPT or whatever you prefer.

platform is to perform an interview as well. I've done it in the car on the way to work. When the traffic's looking a bit hairy, it's going to take me a while. Launch Chat GPT and tell it I'm thinking about database marketing or something like that. And I want it to ask me questions in these areas. And then it'll interview me. And then I can ask it to turn that into a blog post and a bunch of social posts. And we're away.

Paul (10:12.637)
Yeah, and that's come out of your head whilst driving. Yeah.

Alex (10:15.638)
Exactly, putting my input onto the page. I'm not asking it to produce the content. It's asking me to produce the content. what comes out is completely unique and my intellectual property.

Paul (10:28.775)
these little flips like that that take it from going so wrong to so well and I heard a great podcast this week let me get the link for you and send it you know it is called

Paul (10:48.103)
Don't be evil. And it was an episode of Brand New World interviewing Google's CMO about their Gemini campaign.

Alex (10:56.718)
Mm-hmm.

Paul (11:00.911)
and they got a lot of backlash from a campaign where it was a sort of, remember what the exact scenario was, but it was a dad who needed to help the child do a commendation letter or reference letter or something. something that the dad should have put his heart into, but...

they played Gemini as write this letter for me and they saying it's such a fine margin of if they'd have just said help me write this letter they wouldn't have got the backlash that they did but it got slammed for sort of that's if that's future we don't want it you should be able to write your own letters for heartfelt things like that and it was a good

good you just reminded me there of it's actually asking you and it's actually transcribing your thoughts isn't it so love that love that i'm going to use that technique i've actually done that myself i've done

Alex (12:03.416)
Yeah, give it a try. You really get a different result from flippin'

Paul (12:07.313)
Hmm, imagine. Yeah, the thing I was gonna say a minute ago was when you talked about it you don't know you're speaking to a human. I actually had, we've gone full circle. I get lots of cold calls. Every day get about three or four cold calls and I've been monitoring, just as a bit of fun really, but how good the AI recordings are now. Obviously they used to just be a generic hit play and it'll just talk at you.

and that they've quickly gone into listening to you interpreting coming up with a different answer off the script but had somebody today where I thought it was a robot and it turned out to be a real person and it was really embarrassing because I was given these really rude... yeah and then once I knocked them off script I was like oh shit it's a real person I felt really bad but yeah in person you don't have to worry about that

Alex (12:52.782)
I thought they were just going through the motions following the script.

Paul (13:05.363)
Cool, so whilst you mentioned still doing digital marketing obviously, not all just in person events and booze cruises and golf days.

Alex (13:16.302)
No, it can't be right and you have to find the people you want to engage with at an event and sometimes there's opportunity to, know, lot of events and conferences are pay to play and they're sometimes worth looking at if you can get, you know, pay to do a keynote or a roundtable or something like that, be present at a conference where it's really aligned with your target audience. That's really good.

But at some point, you're going to have to find these people, right? So you've still got to create content. You've still got to go to market. You've still got to build your brand equity and reputation. As I say, we build the reputation off the expertise that's in the business and then put a face and a name to it and make sure that's genuine. Because particularly on social channels, people don't tend to want to engage with faceless entities, right? They want to engage with people. So we're going to market with our

with our IP, our intellectual property, and our reputation, and our expertise. But we're always aiming to create that human connection as soon as possible. in practice, we're not focusing too much on the email nurture series. We're following up. If someone's engaged with a piece of high-value content that's maybe sort of middle of the funnel.

The next they hear from us might be an invitation to a case study or to play golf at the golf day or something like that. If we can get them in person and meet them, that's the most valuable next step. And it's a non-committal one as well. It doesn't want to to dinner at a nice restaurant, all expenses paid, or come along to a golf day and enjoy that, whatever it might be. Make it somewhat hard to say no to, you know?

Paul (14:57.733)
and even if you don't, well no, even if you can't make it there's a little sort of positive tick in the back of the mind isn't there of, I wish I could have made that.

Alex (15:10.064)
absolutely. Yeah. We did a free workshop in Sydney with HubSpot execs, hyper index to people. Very much, know, no obligation. Just come along, find out. We'll show you how we're solving common business challenges. There was an organization due to come. They had to pull out with a couple of days notice, which is unfortunate. But the week after they closed anyway.

They had that trust in us to deliver value and to be, you know.

good partners to their business just based on them having had those engagements even though they couldn't come to the event which was meant to be the closer, it did the job.

Paul (15:56.468)
What kind of other things are you seeing amongst the customers you work with that's working now in this day and age?

Alex (16:05.018)
I'm still seeing, I've always seen it in the time I've been, you know, with Hype and Dexter and in inBounds, the obsession with finding net new leads and net new customers prevails. There's all kinds of stats out there, It costs so much more to find and convert a brand new customer than to reconvert an existing one or to convert dormant databases. So...

I'm always asking clients who engage with us who are looking for a lead gen or inbound kind of strategy. Like, what have you got already?

Alex (16:47.918)
the real immediate wins will probably be in that existing database of 10,000 customers who have never bought from you again. Well, why? And let's look at the 2,000 that did buy from you again. What did they buy and when did they buy it? What's that life cycle actually look like? And let's build something around that. Because they're sitting there. We're guilty of it too. Customers who were like, oh, we worked with you a year ago and then we didn't really hear from you. So we're reaching out to see if there's anything else we can do. You've got to remember that.

Paul (17:17.843)
Practice what you preach.

Alex (17:17.902)
They're there, they've engaged with you, they might have had a good experience, but then life goes on, know, there's lots of distractions or reasons why they didn't come back doesn't mean they'll never buy from you again. And some of the, like I say, existing databases that have never really been fully realized in terms of their potential to convert, you know, lots of you maybe did lead gen activity three years ago and they weren't ready to buy then as leads, but they could be ready to buy now, you don't know unless you send them some communications.

and ask, right? Especially in B2B. There's lots of long sales cycles, long-term contracts with vendors and things like that. At some point, they'll come to an end, and you might just time it right and get in front of them when they're looking for another option.

Paul (18:04.595)
How's the, or what sort of feedback are you seeing from people around these wider issues that we've talked about at first is where's the market at in your experience with sort of in-house marketers or in-house business owners and you know not just out and out marketing people like us.

Alex (18:24.524)
Yeah, mean, I'm sure it's not unique to this part of the world, but people wondering how they can leverage AI, worried about how their competitors might be leveraging it.

It's a bit of a space race, isn't it? When some powerful new tech becomes available, everyone's scrambling to get there first. But also, as we mentioned just a minute ago, you've got to approach it in the right way. Lots of questions about AI and how they can leverage that. Everyone's trying to do more with less, right? Lots of marketers concerned about being replaced by AI.

Paul (18:42.13)
Yeah.

Alex (19:08.462)
So we're lots of conversations around that. And as I mentioned, there's lots to be done before we engage with an AI.

Paul (19:17.171)
do you get many do you know if any of the stereotypical trends of like the the stereotypical ceo being like we don't need more marketing people you're saying anymore which do more with less and then you've got skeptics going no no it won't be any good do you see any of that playing out

Alex (19:39.438)
Yeah, you do. You do, absolutely. As I say, everyone's wondering, can we do more with less? What can this replace? Or what can we do with this that we couldn't do before? That's the way I like to think of it. We don't like to see people replaced. And for the reasons I mentioned, there's still a lot for people to do. Even leveraging AI is just a tool at the end of the day.

But then also, sorry, sorry, I'm trying to stop all these notifications popping off. I'm not even sure what's done.

Paul (20:04.913)
What else do you think? Sorry, on. No, go on.

Paul (20:11.603)
It's the 10 minute warning notifications kicking in isn't it? 10 to the hour. Well you led us on to one of the final topics and that's kind of the ethical considerations in marketing. We touched on it bit earlier with help me write this letter rather than write me this heartfelt letter. How were you?

Alex (20:17.646)
It is. What's the little reminders?

Paul (20:36.561)
as like a marketing leader tackling that within your team and with your customers, how are you coaching people to not just go gun blazing, AI slop everywhere.

Alex (20:49.592)
Yeah, much in the way I've described. So I'll touch on B2C briefly in a minute because we haven't touched on that. But on the B2B side, make sure it's your genuine thoughts, your wisdom, your experience on the page or whatever format. And we talked about a couple of ways of approaching that to make sure that's the case. Don't forget that. that in a space race situation, like I said, we're in, there's going to be lots of people who are dubious or disparate.

believing, like your experience with the telemarketer, am I actually hearing from a genuine person? So you've got to bring that genuine thread through. And like I said, the offshoot of marketing on your own reputation is that you're going to be more invested in what goes out right in your name.

Paul (21:20.593)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (21:41.738)
I could give our marketing exec a big list of content that we want to create and it's going out in my name or Romy Dexter's name or whoever and it just goes out without visibility and we don't know what it's saying. We can't have that right.

sure it's true of almost any market. We're in a market where our reputation is everything and our expertise is how we've gotten to where we've gotten to in our own careers and as a business. So we have to protect that fiercely. We can use AI as a tool to fast track, know, transcribing or formatting and things like that, but we're not falling back on it to speak for us.

Paul (22:26.749)
you see something different in B2C.

Alex (22:30.894)
Yeah, mean a of B to C.

Paul (22:34.023)
sort of like the, what's the word? Sort of the threshold of how AI marketing can be.

Alex (22:44.782)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think there's some good practices coming through on the B2B side when it comes to AI in terms of like doing a single product shoot and then being able to render it in 100 different ways and 100 different environments and things like that. that's become easier. But I think on the B2C side, it's just as important, if not more, to be genuine and to create a brand that people...

people believe in and trust in, that it's genuine and authentic and something that they want to be associated with. Again, it's not rewriting any rules of marketing or anything like if you do the long-term brand building, you create a brand that aligns with a lifestyle or an attitude or a way of being that is in harmony with your target audience, then...

Paul (23:18.739)
Hmm.

Alex (23:40.942)
then you should hopefully do okay. Obviously you have to back that up with the right product and the right customer experience, right? Got to align back to the band promise. There's a big focus on loyalty in the B2C space. Big focus on loyalty, retention, referral, gifting, growing organically through the loyalty of your own customers. And in order to that, you've got to make every touch point exceptional.

whether it's the content you create and how that makes them feel. Like I say, there's got to be an affinity with the lifestyle or their attitude. Again, this is 101 stuff. But then continuing that thread, you've got to a brilliant purchasing experience, a first experience with the product, whether that's an unboxing in your own home or within a store, and then through to customer service as well. You've got to be really consistent in every touch point.

Paul (24:38.545)
it's all marketing along the way because if your competitor does have that all in place, yeah they're both alright but it was really cool when I got this product through compared to that product.

Alex (24:49.568)
Absolutely, the marketing doesn't stop once you've served someone an Instagram ad, you know, it's the experience of purchasing, the communications you get when you're waiting for the product. Let's take an e-commerce example. The experience of the product arriving, like how is it packaged? How is it boxed? Does it feel premium? And what's that experience like? you know, the organizations like Apple who sussed this out, you know, 10, 20 years ago, obviously.

Paul (24:54.835)
you

Alex (25:18.242)
just went gangbusters in terms of growth and the loyalty to brands like that is what everyone should be striving for,

Paul (25:26.983)
Yeah, whatever your scale or version of it is, it can all be done, can't it? So I think.

Alex (25:32.259)
Every touch point with a customer is a form of marketing, right? And you're only as strong as your weakest link in that respect.

Paul (25:39.453)
super key as well, just to say it out loud with the amount of sort of...

Paul (25:49.7)
low trusting brands, people are to listen to other people and what they tell them and whether that's their friends via WhatsApp or Facebook messenger or people on LinkedIn or G2 reviews of software or whatever it is, those reviews are to be key to keeping those customers happy with your service and then also getting your, from a marketing point of view for like for us, getting those happy customers saying those things publicly, more key than ever but you're

Alex (26:15.278)
Absolutely, absolutely critical. And it hearts about to say anyone as strong as your weakest link, any one of those links falls down, then that's where the bad review comes from, right? And you see it all the time when you scan the reviews yourself. This was brilliant, this was brilliant, this was brilliant, but this bit wasn't one star. It can all fall down, right? Just because of that one touch point, which didn't deliver.

Paul (26:32.115)
Yeah

Paul (26:42.387)
So the consistent theme, back to where you started, we've gone full circle, is sort of these classic themes. These are things that have made businesses successful for years. Things that have made marketing before SEO attribution and in my methodology, you know, brand loyalty, sticking to your purpose, keeping up your promise to your customers. I normally ask, what's something somebody can do to action this? But you've already said it, I'm gonna repeat one of your answers, which was,

Alex (26:51.406)
Absolutely.

Paul (27:10.481)
Getting your intellectual property out of your brain by chat GBT to ask you questions. Walk us through that that you did in the car again.

Alex (27:19.5)
Yep, so you've got, I don't think you need the paid version to do this, I happen to have the paid version. You've got the ChatGPT app on your phone, there it is in bottom corner. You launch that, you launch into the...

I don't know what you call it, the little audio button there. So you're speaking, not typing, which obviously keeps your hands free. Very important if you're driving. And you give it a little break. Yep, in the middle of a cyclone. Doesn't matter as long as you've got connection. And you tell it what's on your mind. I'm thinking about, let's take the topic of this, what we just talking about, what works in marketing in the B2C environment in 2025. And it'll say, that's a great topic for discussion.

Paul (27:33.971)
face mode.

Paul (27:41.747)
In a cyclone.

Alex (28:02.601)
Are there any particular things you want me to ask you about? And you give it off a dozen things in your way. long as you've got your brain switched on, you can answer its questions. It's actually not a bad interviewer. So it's flipping it around, right? So I'm not asking it questions. I'm not asking it to produce the content. It's asking me to produce the content. So then at the end, you've got a transcript of an interview. It'll probably prompt you, what do you want to do with it? I want to turn it into a thousand word blog, six LinkedIn posts.

Paul (28:14.618)
I'll bet,

Alex (28:31.214)
and it's job done. And by the time I get to work, I can copy paste that into a straight into a HubSpot blog and some social drafts if I want, or I can give it to someone to make sense of.

Paul (28:45.299)
You've just added a whole new dimension to my workflow. I've never thought of flipping it that way to interview me. I've done the voice thing, but it's been a conversation to make the brief into a five minute conversation and me dumping out my thoughts, but just that little switch of, no, ask me some probing questions, ask me follow up questions. You're gonna just unlock that next layer. That's so good. Thanks Alex. Gonna let you get on with your day. Has anyone else arrived in the office?

Paul (29:33.267)
it wouldn't be Easter if the weather didn't spoil it where we're from. thank you very much if you enjoyed this episode be sure to leave us a comment and a five star review whichever format you're listening to us on you'll able to do one of those and please hit the follow button to not miss future episodes. Thanks so much Alex speak to you soon.