WEBVTT 00:09:57.000 --> 00:10:03.000 Monica Niblack: Okay, the transcript's on. You ready for this, girl? Should I hit the record button? 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:05.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: I guess so. 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:07.000 Monica Niblack: You're good. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:37.000 Monica Niblack: Hi everyone, I'm Monica Kniblack from LQ Digital, President here of Agency Services, and I'm joined by Jessica Eastman-Bowman, our Director of Digital Marketing, and today we are excited to talk about a topic that I feel like you and I have been going back and forth on a lot this week, Jessica, more so than usual, but I think something that's going to be more and more commonly discussed, and frankly has been for a long time. 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:30.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:49.000 Monica Niblack: Felt like one of those weeks where it wasn't doing quite all it promises to do, and that is AI and creative, and how is AI impacting our creative services, and… 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:55.000 Monica Niblack: how people are viewing, kind of, those ads they see across the Internet, and what is it doing to a. 00:10:55.000 --> 00:11:03.000 Monica Niblack: I'd say trust in advertising, is that how you would put it? As we kind of see more and more AI take over these days. 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:11.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Absolutely. I feel like there's a lot of talk of AI in the landscape, right, especially when it comes to creative and everything changing. 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:04.000 Monica Niblack: Of course. 00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:20.000 Monica Niblack: I mean, I think every coffee chat I've done this month has been about AI, but I feel like with, uh, creative especially, uh, it's a two-sided… 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:36.000 Monica Niblack: story, right? It can drive awesome efficiencies, and you can test more and more. there's some kind of hilarious things that can happen that can really backfire for a brand if it doesn't go right. I mean, I think I sent you that article. Rei is the fun one where. 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:39.000 Monica Niblack: Meta just decided to start inserting… 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:47.000 Monica Niblack: generative images, and suddenly bikes start to have two handlebars instead of one. So, you never know what's gonna happen if you're not quite careful. 00:11:47.000 --> 00:12:02.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, Meta has been definitely one that's gotten a lot of attention in the news. Even True Classic's brand has gone a little haywire with some of the Meta algorithms. So something to watch out for. 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:54.000 Monica Niblack: Thank you. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:17.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah, well, okay, speaking of meta and paid social, what a perfect place to kind of just kick us off. So, obviously, creative is coming more and more important paid social. I think it's something you and I have been talking about a lot. We hear it, but I have a feeling. 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:30.000 Monica Niblack: a lot of people don't quite understand the mechanisms behind why that's important. So, can you help us understand what's happened in paid social, and especially meta, that is making creative so much more important? 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, absolutely. 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.000 Monica Niblack: Or even more important. 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:42.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: So it meta used to be like, start with the audience to an extent, right? Find all the people that you want, send them all variations of creative. 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:59.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: That's evolved quite a bit, right? Meta's Advantage Plus has limited our targeting. Now it's kind of a light suggestion at this point. And because of that, creative has become a lot more important as a lever to find your ideal audience. 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:14.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: So, if your creative messaging isn't there, then you're not going to find the people that you want. And then on top of that, Meta started penalizing ads that are too similar. So, there used to be a game where it's like, hey, we want. 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:30.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: 5 creative variations of something. Let's just take the foundation, add a few different color backgrounds, and then cool. We've got enough variety, but that's no longer the case. So now you really have to come up with unique, differentiated creatives to find your audience, because that's. 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:22.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:45.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: That's one of the primary levers that you can use. So Meta has made that nice and fun and that's kind of becoming more common across other platforms, right? And a thing that's already required to churn out content more commonly than something like search. 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:40.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:49.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: So it adds a nice bit of complexity. 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:53.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. Gone are the days where we could just test a good old button color. 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:54.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:13:53.000 --> 00:14:00.000 Monica Niblack: what exclamation point would work the best, yeah. And now you really need to have a whole lot more concepts, and… 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:08.000 Monica Niblack: understand how it's going to impact your audience. So, kind of, what does that mean? Do brands just need more creatives? 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:19.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: So that's one of the things that we've talked with a lot of brands about, right? Because we need enough, but we also want to make sure that we're investing in the right creatives, because you can have a high velocity of. 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:18.000 Monica Niblack: Uh-huh. 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:38.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: bad creatives, or things that are not likeness, right? Like, it takes a lot more time to create multiple pain points and ideations and truly design different concepts. So it isn't always that more is better, right? You just have to be intentional with what you're creating and really put together a strategy behind. 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:39.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: the designs. 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:40.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:48.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: and I'm sure we'll get into this more, too, but, like, feedback looping with your creative team is more important than ever, because the synergies between them is just… 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:50.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: So necessary. 00:14:49.000 --> 00:15:01.000 Monica Niblack: It's key to your success. Yeah, and kind of on that note, like, if it's key to your success, what's the right way to think about AI and creative, right? Because I know you have one camp saying, kind of, creative agencies are dead. 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:17.000 Monica Niblack: It's all going to be done with AI. And then I know some people are like, well, AI is eroding all the confidence in creative. So where do you sit? Where do you think AI fits? Is it good enough and gone are the days? Or no, we need human. It's eroding trust. Where do you think that line is? 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:35.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: So if you're not aware, I think this was when you were on maternity leave, I created the LQ Falcon with ChatGPT as our brand. So as you probably saw from the Falcon, right? 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:30.000 Monica Niblack: Oh, no, I remember the LQ Falcon. I was like, I love the LQ Falcon! 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:44.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: not the thing that we want to actually put our paid dollars behind in brand. And even though we create a lot of. 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:47.000 Monica Niblack: I don't know what you mean, I have a whole ABM campaign about to go live with the… 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:56.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Even though we create a lot of, um, kind of early concepts with Chad and Claude and a variety of LLMs. 00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:12.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: We certainly rely on our creative partners very closely to actually deliver the highest quality creative, because that's the the biggest piece right now, right? As you mentioned with REI, with True Classic and other brands, there's just too much on. 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:04.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:30.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: the brand itself, and we don't want any backlash on the things that we're delivering, so it's very important to us to be able to kind of leverage AI for scale, but also make sure that we're still delivering that kind of highest quality content at the end of the day, and that comes from really having a design partner. 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:42.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think to your point, it's really useful for ideation and iteration, right? It's a great tool. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:58.000 Monica Niblack: we have a client who's coming to mind, who I won't name, but who… they really want their creative team to own everything, right? But I know our team has been having a hard time trying to convince them to kind of refresh certain things. That'll do a lot better, and I loved it the other day when our team finally was like, we're just making. 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:16.000 Monica Niblack: Not because we're going to run it, but because a picture is worth a thousand words, right? And so it was so, like, you could see the aha moment in the team when they're like, yes, this is what I've been wanting, okay, I get what you guys want, we can get our team to make this. 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:03.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Here are a few free versions. 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:06.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:17.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yes. 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:22.000 Monica Niblack: But also, it would… I would have never taken that to market, because… 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:32.000 Monica Niblack: you know, there are very large cultural landscapes that were in their creative that actually don't quite look the way they were, right? Like, I don't want to answer those questions! 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:36.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: The the occasional 6 fingers, or like questionable things on there that don't just look right. 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:33.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:36.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:42.000 Monica Niblack: But there is a time and a place where it can be good enough, right? So I think it's just that balancing act and… 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:37.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:44.000 Monica Niblack: Knowing when and where, like… 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:57.000 Monica Niblack: In our own LinkedIn, I had fun making some kind of Lego jokes about marketers that, no, I did not waste someone's actual time to go make. But yeah. 00:17:57.000 --> 00:17:59.000 Monica Niblack: So kind of on that note. 00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:02.000 Monica Niblack: When do you use it? 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:09.000 Monica Niblack: Right? We just named kind of two examples that I think do work, but how and when should brands decide? 00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:04.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:23.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, so we use it a lot for concepting in the early stages, especially, right? If we want to come up with a matrix of pain points or things that we really want to test and learn, we're helping feed some of those concepts. 00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:51.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Agentic AI tools, our insights and our learnings about our clients, and then putting in our known experiences to give us some early ideations of, okay, here's a direction that we could take this in, or here's a mockup, let me adjust these things and then also layer it in with the professionals, as I said, so kind of that early concepting. So that helps us move a lot faster than we used to, right, where we're creating absolutely everything from scratch and we're able to consolidate all of that data a lot. 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:26.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. Okay. 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:37.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:42.000 Monica Niblack: Right. 00:18:51.000 --> 00:19:08.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: So that's been a huge benefit in balancing out kind of the AI. But at the end of the day. Everything has to be human reviewed and then human executed because we don't want to send anything into production. So we're always cognizant of turning off all the meta features that are like. 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:53.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:14.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Are you sure you don't want to test into these? Maybe not today. 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:22.000 Monica Niblack: You don't want to be automatically enrolled like the RAI team? Okay, I know I keep going back to that, but am I the only one who… I understand why people were up in arms about the brand and about kind of… 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:33.000 Monica Niblack: But I personally fell for their marketing team. I was like, of course! They got auto-enrolled into something they didn't improve, and now they have to go deal with it, right? Like, I think that's a headache people deal with a lot. 00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:32.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: I'm… 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:49.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: I'm sure the marketers that are watching this video are familiar, but if you are not, when you go into meta campaigns, they try and re-opt you into things you've already opted out of. So they are trying very hard to get people into it. So it's not so easy to just be like, oh, I opted out of that. 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:43.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:55.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: When I set this campaign up, no, like, it's attempting multiple times. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:51.000 Monica Niblack: One. 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:52.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:58.000 Monica Niblack: You will use our AI. 00:19:56.000 --> 00:19:59.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:03.000 Monica Niblack: But yeah, kind of, I think you mentioned… 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:15.000 Monica Niblack: trust, right? Like, trust factor is something that I always think about, and I read an article recently, and I don't remember the exact statistics, but it really stood out to me, because it was something like. 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:31.000 Monica Niblack: 83% of marketers, or like 80-something percent, think, yeah, of course we should use AI, it's not gonna hurt our trust, like, people are positive! But then, I think it was under 50% of people who actually are positive about it, so to me that seems like a… 00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:31.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yep. 00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:37.000 Monica Niblack: Really wide perception gap. Right? Like, over thirty five percent. 00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:38.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yep. 00:20:37.000 --> 00:20:38.000 Monica Niblack: So kind of… 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:41.000 Monica Niblack: I feel like we, as marketers. 00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:49.000 Monica Niblack: And executives, right? I'm a marketing executive. Need to remind ourselves of that, because I think it gets really easy to be caught in this… 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:52.000 Monica Niblack: AI buzz, but… 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:53.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:57.000 Monica Niblack: It's hard to walk back that damage if you aren't careful. 00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:14.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Agree. And there is, I've seen it a lot in the studies for especially younger generations being against, but those younger generations are rising to business decision makers and we service a lot of sensitive industries like healthcare, finance. 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:15.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:33.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Those are especially volatile areas where, you know, we want to make sure we've got all of the compliance pieces. We have a whole compliance team dedicated to making sure we are all approved. But it is very important, and having that trust component for our clients is. 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:26.000 Monica Niblack: Yes. 00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:48.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Absolutely critical. And I'm sure you've scrolled social media and seen the comments when you come across an AI ad and people are hating on it and not completely unfounded, right? Like some of them are very obviously AI and they're like, this is just. 00:21:41.000 --> 00:21:42.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:51.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: AI slop. 00:21:50.000 --> 00:22:03.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah, oh my gosh! And you see it also on, like, thought leadership posts and stuff now. I think LinkedIn recently came out. That's one of my fears. I'm like, sometimes I feel like it sounds like AI wrote stuff, and I'm like, I swear I actually wrote this, but… 00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:52.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Thank you. 00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:56.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yes. 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:04.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Um, my… 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:09.000 Monica Niblack: I'm afraid I'm gonna be called out for AI slop when it wasn't even, and I'm like, no, it's. 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:19.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: I was a user of the EM dash and the semicolon, like, throughout my entire life, and now I'm like, I've got to remove it from everything. 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:33.000 Monica Niblack: Remember that? When you and I were talking about your writing, you're like, no, this is just my writing, and I'm like, well, we gotta undo it, because now it's just gonna, like, nope. I actually always had short, punchy sentences, but apparently, I can't do that anymore. 00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:23.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Double dash. I don't know. 00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:48.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, I forget what book it was. They went back to one of like the old legacy books and they were like, how dare Hemingway like use chat GPT. Like that is actually something you can use in the English language. 00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:44.000 Monica Niblack: To tea, yeah. 00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:47.000 Monica Niblack: Dot Hemingway. 00:22:47.000 --> 00:22:49.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah, yeah. 00:22:50.000 --> 00:23:00.000 Monica Niblack: Now, you know, okay, this might veer more into parenting topics than AI trust topics, but I do wonder, you're referencing, kind of. 00:22:56.000 --> 00:22:58.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Okay. 00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:19.000 Monica Niblack: the younger generation, I think this article that we're talking about, I can tell you read it too, like, the younger generations are more hesitant about it. But I also wonder at what point that changes, because I feel like I keep reading kind of these parenting moments that are, like, the really young generation, like, not the ones we're advertising to yet, the ones we're parenting. 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:24.000 Monica Niblack: They're talking to AI like it's just their friend. And so I do wonder if. 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:30.000 Monica Niblack: we're gonna see a shift over time, or if we're gonna see a backlash over time, and… 00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:35.000 Monica Niblack: I'm really not sure, but it's just a thought that I've been having as I kind of watch these conversations. 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:49.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, I am interested to see how things unfold. I have a three-year-old, so I really hope he's not talking to AI. He's definitely talking to his dinosaur book. That's unquestionable, which who knows? That might be written by AI. 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:36.000 Monica Niblack: Right. 00:23:41.000 --> 00:23:42.000 Monica Niblack: Oh my gosh, right? 00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:47.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. No, I was like, my four-year-old better not be talking to AI. 00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:53.000 Monica Niblack: That being said, he's told me to ask the robot a few times, so I guess he's done it! 00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:52.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Thank you. 00:23:52.000 --> 00:24:03.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, but it is, and it's even, like, a discussion that I've gotten into where it's like, how do you control even watching YouTube and them understanding this is not… 00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:04.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:20.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: This is AI TV. This is not something that you need to watch. There's no intellectual piece here. But frankly, even at my age, which I don't have to name the age, it's gotten harder to decipher AI. 00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:12.000 Monica Niblack: Oh my gosh, that's a battle in my house. 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:27.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: sure, there is the obvious moment where it's like, here's the seven fingers, that looks wrong, but I think there is also a future where. 00:24:27.000 --> 00:24:36.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: How do you delineate and teach every generation, but also the younger generation, this is real, as opposed to, no, this was… 00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:52.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: created by AI, I think the future will get us there. So there's going to be a lot to unpack, and I think that with that will come a question about trust, and that is one of the reasons why a lot of the feedback is that you should be a little less. 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:39.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. Okay. 00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:45.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:58.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: perfect in your brand, right? Like, it's okay to have that spelling mistake. 00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:55.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:07.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: arguably right, I'm sure somebody's… we're not actually gonna put a spelling mistake on your ad, but, like, to be a little bit imperfect, um, just because. 00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:00.000 Monica Niblack: But… 00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:06.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:08.000 Monica Niblack: To show you're human. 00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:11.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: That builds that humanistic trust. 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah, and I think kind of to that point, like. 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:29.000 Monica Niblack: no, I'm not gonna just go spell the wrong word on purpose and put there instead of there or something, because, you know, a human would do that. But I do think… I start to kind of wonder, what does a strong testing system look like? What are we trying to kind of build. 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:37.000 Monica Niblack: when this is the world that it's evolving to? Like, how do we prepare things now and systems now to ensure. 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:40.000 Monica Niblack: That as the ability to, you know. 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:47.000 Monica Niblack: get concepts faster and faster, as does look more and more like that, you know, your. 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:55.000 Monica Niblack: still putting your brand in the strongest place? Because there is this fine balance of compliance and brand safety, but also. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.000 Monica Niblack: When the world's moving this fast, you have to move even faster. 00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:19.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. And I mean, the good thing, at least from the LQ standpoint is we're really not changing the foundation, right? We have a really strong test and learn plan. This is just helping the velocity of it. So we're still going to market with the strategy of, hey, here's the things that we want to test in our creatives and putting together that intentional. 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:09.000 Monica Niblack: Yes. 00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:29.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: test and learn methodology, whether that's finding the audience, leveraging the creative messaging, all of the things that kind of tie to successful performance. 00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:24.000 Monica Niblack: Yep. 00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:42.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: But AI helps us do those things more efficiently, so what we were talking about before, of the concepting and some of the early iterations, we're able to move through faster, and then putting it into market faster, meaning that we're getting. 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:51.000 Monica Niblack: Well, and I think that's actually a really good point, because to your point that used to be really about the audience, and now it's more about the creative, you can still leverage. 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:44.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Answers. 00:26:51.000 --> 00:27:07.000 Monica Niblack: AI to get more insightful things to put in the creative, right? Like, I've… I'm thinking out some of the things I've seen your team produce with LQ Insights, right? Our tool that gives you deep audience research about, kind of, their motivators, what do they care about? Like, that is heavily dependent on AI. 00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:57.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, I believe. 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:07.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:27:07.000 --> 00:27:11.000 Monica Niblack: And it allows you guys to then make creative briefs. 00:27:11.000 --> 00:27:18.000 Monica Niblack: That are so much better, because they are about specific audiences, and what do they care about, and how do you really get uniquely to their problems? 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:26.000 Monica Niblack: But it's not the, you know, it's not just the, hey, I gave this all to a machine and walked away, right? You're using it. 00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:35.000 Monica Niblack: And I think there is this point of this kind of the human plus the AI that's getting, at least what we're seeing, the best results, because to your point, you can just… 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:37.000 Monica Niblack: the velocities. 00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:52.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, exactly. 'cause we would've done all of that same research, it would've just taken us a lot longer. So now we can say, okay, use the high quality research capabilities to pull some of these stats, we'll vet them, we'll verify that that's, you know, truly what we wanna say. 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:39.000 Monica Niblack: Crazy. 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:43.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:53.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:27:52.000 --> 00:28:03.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: And then put together that plan a lot faster than as if we're manually going to Google Scholar for everything, like a research paper in school again. 00:27:58.000 --> 00:27:59.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:05.000 Monica Niblack: Right. Remember those days where you had to type it in and then think? 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:06.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, thank you. 00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:16.000 Monica Niblack: Or now I'm really dating myself. Remember those days where you had to get a book and look at it? So kind of, you know, there's a lot of velocity, there's a lot of systems you can build. 00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:07.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Okay. 00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:11.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Go to the library. 00:28:11.000 --> 00:28:12.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Okay. 00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:24.000 Monica Niblack: AI is a fantastic tool for creative development, but it's also one that can have its pitfalls, so… so what do you think is… 00:28:19.000 --> 00:28:21.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:28.000 Monica Niblack: Kind of one of the biggest mistakes that you're seeing brands make right now. 00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:40.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, so I think one of the biggest mistakes is testing just for the sake of testing, but not testing to learn. We are so protesting. Sounds like I said protesting. 00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:42.000 Monica Niblack: So… 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:46.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: This is a lovely recording, but… No. 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:45.000 Monica Niblack: We're protesting testing. No, got it. 00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:48.000 Monica Niblack: But yes, we are all for testing, but… 00:28:47.000 --> 00:28:49.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Exactly. 00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:52.000 Monica Niblack: With a learning agenda, not just throwing stuff at the wall. 00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:52.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Exactly. So… 00:28:52.000 --> 00:29:08.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Sometimes we'll have teams just hand us the next batch of creatives and we're like, okay, what's the testing methodology between these? And it's like, these are what our creatives teams delivered, which those are the instances I was talking before about when things are in silos. 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:16.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: and the feedback looping isn't as consistent, then sure, we can say Creative A outperformed Creative B. 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:11.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:30.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: But it doesn't actually give their creative team, like, intentionality behind what they should go build next, so that kind of falls apart, and it's gonna take them a lot longer to get to some winning mix of assets. 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:22.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:45.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: just because you don't really have intention behind them. So whether that's understanding the theme, or, you know, pain points, or all sorts of things that go into the creatives, kind of having that intentional set plan before the asset is even. 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:35.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:47.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: delivered to you. 00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:56.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. It's like running fast in a direction, not run fast just for the sake of running fast. Right? Mm-hmm. 00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:56.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Exactly. Yes. 00:29:57.000 --> 00:30:03.000 Monica Niblack: Because if you have that clear learning roadmap and that direction, you're gonna get somewhere pretty cool pretty quickly. 00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:04.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah. 00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:08.000 Monica Niblack: Or you might have just been running around the track and find yourself in the exact same place. Yeah. 00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:14.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Occasionally you'll get a winner in there, but, I mean, you could have had a lot of winners! 00:30:09.000 --> 00:30:10.000 Monica Niblack: who… 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:13.000 Monica Niblack: I mean, yeah, you might… 00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:25.000 Monica Niblack: But, like, it's really better when you can compound your windows. I like compounding growth, personally. Uh, cool. Well, Jessica, thank you so much. I guess my final question to you would be. 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:30.000 Monica Niblack: If you kind of had one takeaway in what you're seeing in the creative space right now. 00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:38.000 Monica Niblack: And how it's impacting, especially social, like, what would, you know, if you were an in-house marketer, what would be the one thing you'd want to take away? 00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:54.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, so I think it's a culmination of all the things that we're talking about, right? Like creative is the future and it's only going to become more important. So it's really having a partner that's going to help you put together kind of whether that's your creative team. 00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:48.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah. 00:30:54.000 --> 00:31:05.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Or another team kind of working together with that feedback loop and that test and learn to really scale creatives and social. 00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:03.000 Monica Niblack: Yep. 00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:07.000 Monica Niblack: Yeah, that makes sense. 00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:08.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: in 2026 and beyond. 00:31:07.000 --> 00:31:18.000 Monica Niblack: Kind of the basics still count, right? That's how I think of it. It doesn't matter if it's you or the AI, but like have that learning loop and have that feedback. 00:31:17.000 --> 00:31:19.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yeah, absolutely. 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:19.000 Monica Niblack: Cool. 00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:27.000 Monica Niblack: Well, thank you so much, Jessica. It's been fantastic to catch up and share a laugh also. So again, this is Jessica. 00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:31.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Yes. I'm sorry there was no actual coffee involved, just a lot of hand movement. 00:31:28.000 --> 00:31:31.000 Monica Niblack: You know, one of these days. 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:38.000 Monica Niblack: I'm always afraid I'm just gonna, like, throw it while I'm sitting on my couch. This good old pink couch, I've been told I. 00:31:38.000 --> 00:31:51.000 Monica Niblack: do that too. Uh, but anyway, I really appreciate the time. Once again, this is Jessica Kiesman-Bowman, our Director of Digital Media here at LQ, and I'm Monica Niblock, President of Agency. Thanks for listening. 00:31:51.000 --> 00:31:53.000 Jessica Keeseman-Bowman: Thank you.