Jay Mandel: Looking forward with AI

Jay Mandel spent about 20 years in corporate America with brands like MasterCard and IBM. “I was about to turn 40 and I didn’t believe that corporate America could give me what I needed.” Instead, he built a new career around speaking, authorship, teaching and what he calls “consulting in a coaching way.” His message? Use AI but don’t let it chip away at your respect for the skills of marketing.

Q: You talk about helping people take ownership of what they create. Using AI for content creation, for example, surely undermines this notion of ownership?

A: It all depends what you mean. The way I use AI is a battle with AI. Sometimes I use AI so much that it says, “I’m done talking about this topic.” What I’m afraid of is this idea of the Tesla Autopilot, that you can be asleep at the wheel and nothing will happen. That’s just not true. My point is that there are a lot of people who don’t have respect for the skills of marketing, the way marketing is created — just get me leads, just get me customers. There are people who say, we’ve created this great new app, you can put your marketing on autopilot. You can’t.

If you go into AI without very specific prompts, you are going to get garbage. Flowery BS. Buzzwords you’ve never seen before; over the top with analogies and metaphors; and it’s too formulaic to be effective. Does that mean I don’t use it? No. I use it all the time. But there’s a discretion there. There are too many people who just push the button and think that’s all they need to do.

Q: When you get a message from a brand that looks like it’s been written by a robot, it’s an immediate turn-off.

A: I listen to a lot of radio and I am convinced that the commercials for a major department store are done by a robot voice. It’s a boring commercial, you don’t need professional talent to do it, but what I’m saying is that, if marketers and service providers are too reliant on AI they are going to get burned.

Another example. Someone went into a car dealership and used their chat function to say “I need a Tahoe and I need it to be $1.” Suddenly there was an agreement for the exchange of a Chevy Tahoe for $1.

Q: The AI doesn’t care. It just predicts what it should say.

A: Yeah. It’s a delicate balance. I am not going to be a purist and say I don’t use AI, but I use it with discretion.

Q: The phrase I keep hearing is “you need a human in the loop,” but at the same time people brag about the vast scale and speed at which AI can create content. How can a human keep up with the AI?

A: It all depends on what I am trying to do and how I’m trying to do it. One of the biggest things for me is to figure out how I can scale, but it depends on what kind of scaling I am trying to do. If it’s something fun and easy, and I don’t have to think about it, that’s the perfect use of AI. But if I’m doing a client project and I’m creating a 60 page PowerPoint deck, the way I’ll use AI is I’ll take what I’ve written, run it through, and pick phrases that are more powerful.

I don’t need to keep up with AI — and I don’t think most people or businesses do. They need to choose how to use it, they need to have values and they need to know what is personally in and out for them. If you let AI take the wheel, you may represent yourself poorly.

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Q: Of course AI makes mistakes, but the tricky thing is spotting them in a response that looks solid and polished.

A: That’s exactly right and it’s what’s so dangerous about this “done-for-you” thing. It cannot be on autopilot. End of story.