I love a contest as much as any athlete… but this makes my blood run cold.
It’s an advert to promote agentic AI compeing alongside CSRs to book appointments.
You may not know this, but I’m a demon cold caller. It’s a service I provide as part of B2B Marketing – yet the underlying premise of this service is going to drive enshi*tification into yet another part of business marketing.
I know I can spot many online fakes, bots and robo-voices.
Soon we won’t be able to do this.
Agentic AI cold calling bot service
It will be ‘fun’ to try to get the automatic agents off the line quickly – but where’s the joy in beating a machine? It’s man-to-man mortal combat that gets my adrenaline surging.
That’s only a sorta-joke. I do like a competition. I do like to pit my skills and my wits against another person. But only in a fair fight.
I’m sure that these services will shortly be incorporating human-like aspects of speech and language to persuade the listener that they’re not talking to a bot.
Yet again – where’s the fun in that.
Does agentic AI risk taking all the fun out of doing business? Your thoughts….
No related posts.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/cold-call-battle.png1112996Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2025-05-22 13:56:402025-05-22 13:56:40Agentic AI is a joy-killer for NBD
The allure of the speed-to-answer is great for early users of AI. Those of us who have been longer in this particular swimming pool Realise that critical assessment still remains the most important input of the human actor.
1960 Porsche – Dragons of a bygone age. Image Credit: Rebecca Caroe
“the implied cost of additional work in the future resulting from choosing an expedient solution over a more robust one”
Cognitive debt is where you forgo the thinking in order just to get the answers, but have no real idea of why the answers are what they are.’
This in part reveals why enterprise finds it so hard to incorporate AI use into daily workflows. You must have the human input in order to ensure that you’re not making a fool of yourself in the rush to deliver speedily.
Anyone fancy a brown bag lunch to share experiences?
No related posts.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1960-Porsche-scaled.jpg19202560Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2025-05-06 16:07:082025-05-06 16:07:08Here be dragons
I got back from holiday recently and apart from the hideous time zone dislocation I definitely know that I achieved some of my goals – rest, a change of scene and the opportunity to do some quiet thinking without interruption.
Settling back into the work routine comes easily yet I find the best outcomes from this time are to start making changes.
Ideas, plans and thoughts which I have captured while travelling are always freshest and best implemented when energy levels are high.
Going back to your old routine feels as comfortable as familiar old clothes, but I believe it’s worth resisting and taking risks with new ideas and new plans.
And anyway, I like porridge!
No related posts.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/noemie-roussel-ZoSftIGPP0g-unsplash-scaled.jpg17002560Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2025-05-01 16:07:272025-05-06 16:09:44Old clothes and porridge
Are these a thing of the past? Or are they still a useful marketing tool.
Remember when having a round number (ending in 000 or 5555) was a really important part of your business marketing positioning? We slaved to get the same 4 digits for all our regional offices back in the day.
Today, I’m calling Harcourts Real Estate in Brisbane – head office for a kinda large real estate business. Their switchboard has a voicemail. I left a message on 18th March – called again today – still on voicemail.
I read an article about airline spend on glossy safety videos and found some great marketing reasons for investing in high production values.
4.8 million views and counting
First – aligning cultural values with education. Air New Zealand partnered with the Department of Conservation (DOC) to promote the importance of wildlife protection. That was after they did a movie hook up from Men in Black featuring the All Black rugby stars.
The baton was picked up by United whose $1m spend and 160 crew on their current Safety in Motion video boggles – but apparently viewers love it.
Qantas uses a true customer romance story (with actors and the actual people in the credits – no they don’t look alike at all), British Airways features home grown “national treasures” like Gordon Ramsay. So far so good – but did you know some of these get millions of YouTube watches? Sounds like a new revenue stream from people who won’t even be paying to fly with you.
In these straitened times, does this make the cost of production a worthwhile marketing investment?
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Airnz-safety-1.png5381534Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2025-03-25 14:58:212025-03-25 14:58:21Airline safety videos are a great messaging platform
That’s because they’re new, they represent change and that can be threatening to jobs, budgets and ‘the way we work round here’.
It doesn’t mean they are necessarily a bad idea. I find that frequently it takes a couple of goes to overcome the pushback and also it takes some time – maybe a year or more.
There’s nothing more powerful than “an idea whose time has come”. But that doesn’t just happen. The marketing communications outreach that builds the comprehension, that challenges the status quo, that offers alternative pathways is where us B2B marketers can prepare the ground so that you overcome the pushback, get acceptance for a pilot or a trial and then move towards adoption.
Here’s a case study.
I’m the MC for a B2B marketing careers event at the Marketing Association which I first proposed as an un-conference a year ago. Now the event is re-framed and is happening next week.
Let’s talk?
No related posts.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/melinda-martin-khan-etcp7sNcFiU-unsplash.jpg24482448Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2025-03-20 09:13:562025-03-20 09:13:56New ideas often receive pushback
Use your experience of life, of human communication and decision making to work out times in the customer journey when personal, individual, manual actions will have greater effect.
I love using letters, phone calls, SMS – all great tools for use cases when you need cut through and to effect human-to-human contact as a context for making a sale.
PM me and I’ll tell you one use case I’m doing right now with a CV for a job application.
No it won’t do the whole job for you, yes you will use your human insight and creativity to frame up the AI supplied text. It’s so satisfying.
No related posts.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/marielle-ursua-l7AVeJi1RMk-unsplash-1-scaled.jpg19202560Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2025-03-16 09:18:462025-03-20 09:19:00Not everything is enhanced with AI.
The inexperienced new business development marketer will disagree with that statement. Why wouldn’t you want more prospects in your pipeline?
The customer doesn’t owe you their business – but they do owe you an answer.
Creating marketing tactics that provoke the prospect to answer “no” is a good thing. Sales know not to pursue them and can focus their efforts elsewhere.
And remember, no is just for now.
95% of B2B prospects aren’t ready to buy at any one time. So going back to them later, may mean they’re ready to hear your brand message and review their plans.
No related posts.
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/petr-machacek-BeVGrXEktIk-unsplash-scaled.jpg17072560Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2025-03-12 09:20:392025-03-20 09:23:57Getting a “no” is a good result for the sales pipeline
Sam Irvine is CEO of Copyright Licensing New Zealand – as a B2B marketer he understands the use cases for AI and marketing. There are two main ones, you can use it internally to manage processes as organisational AI and secondly for external outputs like campaigns and marketing material creation.
Good and Bad AI Actors
Sam acknowledges the time saving benefits of AI and he warns that many LLM training sets were created with scraped data taken without permission. He notes some legal cases in USA and Europe currently challenging this – Books3 which has 200,000 books pirated from the internet has been taken down after alaw suit.
The days of tech startups seeking forgiveness not permission are over.
New Zealand has a cross-party political group looking at AI right now but there aren’t yet any legal cases being heard.
Sam’s advice to marketers
Be careful about which tools you choose to use – are they ethical and responsible?
Nvida and Adobe have licensed all the images they use from Shutterstock and other photo libraries. The original creator is paid when you use their AI generated images.
A closed AI is one developed internally and trained on the organisation’s own data.
An open AI uses public data.
Three risks of using open AI
Your input data will be added to the training set. Is this confidential information that you are authorised to put into the public domain? Sam warns against adding client data into an open AI system.
The output you get could include copyright material taken from the LLM training set which could put you into the courts.
You might get an answer which is wrong. Be careful around fact checking those outputs.
As the data sets are being withdrawn, the information used by open AI models is now getting older and less relevant. It’s incumbent on all of us marketers to use AI in the right way and embrace it while protecting ourselves and our clients.
Copyright NZ has courses on copyright, contracts and agreements including AI. www.copyright.co.nz
Watch Rebecca’s interview with Sam Irvine
Related posts:
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/marketing-and-AI.png9261694Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2023-09-27 13:45:042023-09-27 13:45:04Marketing with AI - a warning
Agentic AI is a joy-killer for NBD
/in B2B, Lead Generation, Sales /by Rebecca CaroeA “cold call battle”
I love a contest as much as any athlete… but this makes my blood run cold.
It’s an advert to promote agentic AI compeing alongside CSRs to book appointments.
You may not know this, but I’m a demon cold caller. It’s a service I provide as part of B2B Marketing – yet the underlying premise of this service is going to drive enshi*tification into yet another part of business marketing.
I know I can spot many online fakes, bots and robo-voices.
Soon we won’t be able to do this.
Agentic AI cold calling bot service
It will be ‘fun’ to try to get the automatic agents off the line quickly – but where’s the joy in beating a machine? It’s man-to-man mortal combat that gets my adrenaline surging.
That’s only a sorta-joke. I do like a competition. I do like to pit my skills and my wits against another person. But only in a fair fight.
I’m sure that these services will shortly be incorporating human-like aspects of speech and language to persuade the listener that they’re not talking to a bot.
Yet again – where’s the fun in that.
Does agentic AI risk taking all the fun out of doing business? Your thoughts….
No related posts.
Here be dragons
/in AI /by Rebecca Caroe1960 Porsche – Dragons of a bygone age. Image Credit: Rebecca Caroe
As Neil Perkin quotes John V Willshire
Where technical debt for an organisation is
This in part reveals why enterprise finds it so hard to incorporate AI use into daily workflows. You must have the human input in order to ensure that you’re not making a fool of yourself in the rush to deliver speedily.
Anyone fancy a brown bag lunch to share experiences?
No related posts.
Old clothes and porridge
/in B2B, Strategy /by Rebecca CaroeOld clothes and porridge
I got back from holiday recently and apart from the hideous time zone dislocation I definitely know that I achieved some of my goals – rest, a change of scene and the opportunity to do some quiet thinking without interruption.
Photo by Noémie Roussel on Unsplash
Settling back into the work routine comes easily yet I find the best outcomes from this time are to start making changes.
Ideas, plans and thoughts which I have captured while travelling are always freshest and best implemented when energy levels are high.
Going back to your old routine feels as comfortable as familiar old clothes, but I believe it’s worth resisting and taking risks with new ideas and new plans.
And anyway, I like porridge!
No related posts.
Corporate phone numbers
/1 Comment/in B2B /by Rebecca CaroePhoto by Wesley Hilario on Unsplash
Are these a thing of the past? Or are they still a useful marketing tool.
Remember when having a round number (ending in 000 or 5555) was a really important part of your business marketing positioning? We slaved to get the same 4 digits for all our regional offices back in the day.
Today, I’m calling Harcourts Real Estate in Brisbane – head office for a kinda large real estate business. Their switchboard has a voicemail. I left a message on 18th March – called again today – still on voicemail.
What message does that send?
No related posts.
Airline safety videos are a great messaging platform
/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Strategy /by Rebecca CaroeI read an article about airline spend on glossy safety videos and found some great marketing reasons for investing in high production values.
4.8 million views and counting
First – aligning cultural values with education. Air New Zealand partnered with the Department of Conservation (DOC) to promote the importance of wildlife protection. That was after they did a movie hook up from Men in Black featuring the All Black rugby stars.
The baton was picked up by United whose $1m spend and 160 crew on their current Safety in Motion video boggles – but apparently viewers love it.
Qantas uses a true customer romance story (with actors and the actual people in the credits – no they don’t look alike at all), British Airways features home grown “national treasures” like Gordon Ramsay. So far so good – but did you know some of these get millions of YouTube watches? Sounds like a new revenue stream from people who won’t even be paying to fly with you.
In these straitened times, does this make the cost of production a worthwhile marketing investment?
Sources:
No related posts.
New ideas often receive pushback
/0 Comments/in B2B, Conferences / Exhibitions /by Rebecca CaroeNew ideas often receive pushback.
That’s because they’re new, they represent change and that can be threatening to jobs, budgets and ‘the way we work round here’.
It doesn’t mean they are necessarily a bad idea. I find that frequently it takes a couple of goes to overcome the pushback and also it takes some time – maybe a year or more.
There’s nothing more powerful than “an idea whose time has come”. But that doesn’t just happen. The marketing communications outreach that builds the comprehension, that challenges the status quo, that offers alternative pathways is where us B2B marketers can prepare the ground so that you overcome the pushback, get acceptance for a pilot or a trial and then move towards adoption.
Here’s a case study.
I’m the MC for a B2B marketing careers event at the Marketing Association which I first proposed as an un-conference a year ago. Now the event is re-framed and is happening next week.
Let’s talk?
No related posts.
Not everything is enhanced with AI.
/2 Comments/in AI, B2B /by Rebecca CaroeUse your experience of life, of human communication and decision making to work out times in the customer journey when personal, individual, manual actions will have greater effect.
I love using letters, phone calls, SMS – all great tools for use cases when you need cut through and to effect human-to-human contact as a context for making a sale.
PM me and I’ll tell you one use case I’m doing right now with a CV for a job application.
No it won’t do the whole job for you, yes you will use your human insight and creativity to frame up the AI supplied text. It’s so satisfying.
No related posts.
Getting a “no” is a good result for the sales pipeline
/0 Comments/in B2B, Lead Generation, Sales /by Rebecca CaroeThe inexperienced new business development marketer will disagree with that statement. Why wouldn’t you want more prospects in your pipeline?
The customer doesn’t owe you their business – but they do owe you an answer.
Creating marketing tactics that provoke the prospect to answer “no” is a good thing. Sales know not to pursue them and can focus their efforts elsewhere.
And remember, no is just for now.
95% of B2B prospects aren’t ready to buy at any one time. So going back to them later, may mean they’re ready to hear your brand message and review their plans.
No related posts.
Marketing with AI – a warning
/5 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca CaroeSam Irvine is CEO of Copyright Licensing New Zealand – as a B2B marketer he understands the use cases for AI and marketing. There are two main ones, you can use it internally to manage processes as organisational AI and secondly for external outputs like campaigns and marketing material creation.
Good and Bad AI Actors
Sam acknowledges the time saving benefits of AI and he warns that many LLM training sets were created with scraped data taken without permission. He notes some legal cases in USA and Europe currently challenging this – Books3 which has 200,000 books pirated from the internet has been taken down after a law suit.
The days of tech startups seeking forgiveness not permission are over.
New Zealand has a cross-party political group looking at AI right now but there aren’t yet any legal cases being heard.
Sam’s advice to marketers
Be careful about which tools you choose to use – are they ethical and responsible?
Nvida and Adobe have licensed all the images they use from Shutterstock and other photo libraries. The original creator is paid when you use their AI generated images.
A closed AI is one developed internally and trained on the organisation’s own data.
An open AI uses public data.
Three risks of using open AI
As the data sets are being withdrawn, the information used by open AI models is now getting older and less relevant. It’s incumbent on all of us marketers to use AI in the right way and embrace it while protecting ourselves and our clients.
Copyright NZ has courses on copyright, contracts and agreements including AI. www.copyright.co.nz
Watch Rebecca’s interview with Sam Irvine
Related posts: