Are You Ready for the AI Marketing Revolution?

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Holiday shopping is getting personal—54% of consumers are now buying gifts for themselves, signaling a major shift in how we approach seasonal spending. But that's just the beginning. From critical opportunities for insights professionals at IIEX Europe and FutureList, to the AI revolution reshaping marketing (hello, Mondelez's $40 million investment), this conversation tackles what matters now.

The key question: as AI tools promise unprecedented efficiency, how do we balance innovation with privacy? Plus, why the upcoming GRIT Report might be the most important industry read of the year.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

[00:02] Lenny: And there we are.

[00:03] Karen: Here we are. So happy Halloween, everybody. It's Halloween. It's October 31st, which is Halloween here in the US.

[00:11] Lenny: So happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. There we go.

[00:17] Karen: This is one thing we really haven't done — we're not really costume people, personally, at this stage of our lives, right?

[00:24] Lenny: No.

[00:24] Karen: But, much to Karley’s chagrin, we did not dress up. I'm sure she's a little bummed.

[00:29] Lenny: We did not. You know, I did think about it briefly.

[00:33] Karen: I thought about it briefly a few times actually, but it was always fleeting because I never can converge on an idea that I care enough about to put a costume on for it.

[00:42] Lenny: Yes, yes. As I tell my kids, you know, Dad would be dressing up as a middle-aged dad. It's a terrifying thing in many ways.

[00:53] Karen: And I just said I'm dressed up as a Starbucks consumer. There you go, that's my costume.
Which is not really the spirit of Halloween — you're supposed to dress as something that’s the yin to your yang, your opposite. I can pretty much be that every day. But anyway, let's start off and share some Halloween stuff, because I think we are, friends, moving into the holiday season. And one thing I get really jazzed about is when people share with us holiday-related data. I say all the time, I love myself some data — but Zappi shared with us their annual Halloween rankings, which, first of all, I guess I don't remember them doing this before. So I'm glad it's annual. Now we know top-rated candies, and I think this is important. So anyway, for the record, before we start talking about the data: Lenny, what's your favorite candy?

[01:49] Lenny: Uh, so… Reese’s cups.

[01:54] Karen: I like it. Of course. So here's why that's funny: Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins really pretty much — I wrote down in the brief “for the win.” Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins: best tasting, most festive, top quality, and most authentic. Literally my whole takeaway from this piece about the top candy is, like, Reese’s. Seriously.

[02:16] Lenny: And after this, we get the Christmas trees and then we get the Easter eggs. And I don't know about you, but in my family, right, there is the tithe — the parental tithe of all candy — and the Reese’s cups are what goes to Mom and Dad.

[02:30] Karen: So we don't have that anymore. We have had no… we used to. Oh, I think we talked about this last year because Twizzlers are my thing, right? They used to just give me the Twizzlers. Anyway, that's done now. But I don't really buy our favorite candies to give out because I don't really want to give… I get kind of like, “Hmm, do I want to give all of our favorite candies away?” I’d rather give away stuff I don't like. Anyway.

[02:55] Lenny: But strategy — you buy more, and then you know that you have something to hold back.

[03:03] Karen: I suppose, I suppose. Well, you know, the bottom line is: happy, happy trick-or-treating to everybody. I also thought about this other one — the National Retail Federation… Foundation? Now I'm forgetting which one the NRF is here. But Trends Shaping Seasonal Decorating — I was like, “Oh, another good seasonal story we can share.” So did you look at this one? Did you see it?

[03:25] Lenny: I did not dive in; I was looking at all the other stuff.

[03:29] Karen: So you're saying like, what's your fall decorating label, right? One of them is “Fall Forward” — those people are most likely to buy pumpkins and gourds. And then there's “The Haunted House” — the folks who are looking for lawn displays, like gravestones and skeletons and everything. There are a few others in there, but I'm like, that is so funny to me how there is definitely a vibe. Driving around in this Connecticut town, it’s like it’s either/or — which is kind of hilarious.

[04:01] Lenny: We’re both. We are both. So we have pumpkins and mums and all of that good stuff and we have skeletons. We are the only ones — here’s, if you’ve never lived in an Amish community — we are the only house totally decorated for Halloween. There’s always a little concern like, they may be avoiding us, or our home, even. There are conversations about your home at those Amish households, very likely. “Boy, those Murphys on Turkey Creek…”

[04:35] Karen: That's so funny. Well, anyway, safe trick-or-treating to everybody who's going out with kids today here in the US. That is probably, for me, the best kind of demographic to be in for this particular holiday: when you can hold the hand of your little ones and go from house to house.

[04:57] Lenny: Yes. We’re 13, almost 15, and 16 — we're still going trick-or-treating tonight.

[05:06] Karen: I love that.

[05:06] Lenny: Probably the last one. We're getting near the end.

[05:06] Karen: I know. You know what? Certainly when I had kids that were teenagers, there was an article floating around on social media about: please don't be annoyed with the teenage boys that go trick-or-treating. Please recognize that teenage boys who go trick-or-treating — girls may get a little bit like “I'm too cool for this” sooner, but those boys are like, “This is really fun.” Let them be children a little bit longer, because God knows adulthood will hit them hard someday. And if a 14-year-old wants to knock on your door and get some candy, just give him the damn candy.

[05:33] Lenny: He has worked so hard on his costume, my almost 15-year-old son. We were working on it together last night. So anyway.

[05:42] Karen: Fun stuff, fun stuff. One more study as we go into the holiday season. So, you know, NIQ — NielsenIQ — announced real-time holiday insights to track consumer behavior throughout the season. So again, if you're a retailer or if you're a brand that is tracking retail trends, I thought this is a good one to tune into, bookmark it for yourself. One of the things that jumped out at me, which I shared here, is — did you know this, Lenny? 54% are jumping on the self-gifting trend, buying themselves something special for the holidays. 54%! Self-gifting trend. This is news to me.

[06:21] Lenny: It kind of goes against the idea — well, the way I think about gifting. But the gifting trends — didn’t know there was a self-gifting trend.

[06:31] Karen: I may want it. Fair enough.

[06:35] Lenny: Although I'll do it. But with you and Tim, and with Danielle and I, it's kind of like, “What do you want?”

[06:42] Karen: I mean, when you get to a certain point… Anyway, Christmas does shift again back to that sweet spot of holding the little kids’ hands. The whole holiday season is really special for kids who want and then young adults who need. But once everybody's sort of adulting… anyway. Hats off — and I say that from a place of privilege. Not hats off. Hats off to the people that are making it work, because I say that from a place of privilege — that there's not a lot of real needs happening in our family; it's a lot of wants if nothing else. And I know for some people that is not the case, and Christmas might be frustrating. For everybody who's out of work, Christmas — and all the Jewish holiday gifting as well — this could be a stressful time. So we're not blind to that, and maybe self-gifting can be as simple as an hour for yourself during a really busy season.

[07:33] Lenny: 100%. Starbucks. 100%. There you go. All right.

[07:39] Karen: If you need a Starbucks pick-me-up, I can send you a little $5 coffee.

[07:43] Lenny: I think there's one in my future — Danielle’s and my future — this evening before we begin our walking around. I think that we will have one.

[07:51] Karen: Get yourself that hot beverage, right? Yes, absolutely. All right. A couple announcements — and, Karley, this is your time to shine, right? Karley’s got some stuff queued up for us. We extended our IIEX Europe call for speaker applications. It was due last Sunday; we gave people an extra week. It will shut this, I believe, Sunday night/Monday morning. So if you are inclined, get that submission in. Once we shut down, we've got enough to pull from. Usually we have more submissions than we have spots. So, if you submit, it does not guarantee selection. But this is your window to get that in because after that closes, pretty much time's up.

[08:36] Lenny: Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, the lottery, right? You gotta play it to get a chance to win.

[08:41] Karen: It's true. And I mean, I was saying, North America this year — that call for speakers came and went. If you did not get in the North America mix, I'm so sorry, but that ship has sailed. Our North America agenda is almost full based on really high-quality submissions this year. Lots of brands in attendance. It's just going to be extraordinary this year. And that is locked up by October, which is unusual for an April event. So I'm hoping the same thing happens for Europe, that these are just outstanding applications. And I’ve said to people who have asked, “Can I submit more than one?” My answer is: you can — does not mean you'll get selected. So if you submit five, it doesn't mean I'm choosing one of those five. That doesn't matter. I would rather you put your best effort forward than try to submit a bunch of times, because one solid proposal is going to win over multiple proposals any day. To me, that just means you're trying to play the game and game the system. Nope, that's not what it's about. I'll get off that bandwagon.

[09:53] Karen: No, no—

[09:56] Lenny: Related: FutureList applications. Not quite as… well, I was going to say it's not quite as competitive, but that's not true. It is. You know, there's a judging criteria — unlike some things out there where everybody wins, it seems. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

[10:18] Karen: FutureList is really a very special program because there's a few steps to the process and we're very transparent about that, and we do have judges. So: you nominate somebody, and there are lots of companies who nominate all of their junior-level employees. And I'm like, guess what? That is not necessarily what matters. The nomination is only step one. Then the nominees get triggered by an email to fill out an application. So they also have to be the type of person to present themselves well. It's all part of how we start to know who the cream of the crop is. It’s not just a nomination. You also then have to sell yourself and help us — meaning us, the judging panel, because I am on that particular judging panel — get to know you and why you are worthy of the honor. So it's a nomination, it doesn't stop there. Then there's application. Then those are reviewed. Then those are whittled down to finalists that are put in front of a panel of judges who have a matrix to make sure that we are really selecting 20 — only 20 — in each year's cohort of shining stars. And every year it's really exciting. So we extended this deadline as well for folks to give them an extra week, but this weekend is it. If there is somebody that you think, “This person is a star,” nominations happen now. And they have to be somebody within the first 10 years of their insights career. So we're not talking about Lenny — you cannot nominate Lenny. He would not make it through.

[11:48] Lenny: I probably wouldn't anyway, but—

[11:50] Karen: You get my point. My point is, we're really — the spirit of this is the future, and hopefully a very long future in the industry. So, absolutely.

[12:04] Lenny: And then finally, Karley, we have the GRIT Forum coming up. Hey guys, I gotta tell you — and this isn't just me with my usual exuberance around GRIT — this upcoming GRIT report is consequential. And we'll leave it at that. I mean, the rate of change and the way we have documented that change is amazing. We've dived in a lot deeper on many topics. It is deep and rich. And the GRIT Forums are where we go over that with our commentary providers. We talk through it. There’s a lot to talk through. This is a great way for you to get familiar with the high points of GRIT, with people talking through the implications and all of that, while you also digest what is an important report for the industry to digest. So please show up. Listen: internally, we're talking about this — there has never been a more consequential edition of the GRIT report than the one that we're about to publish. And the GRIT Forum is where we're going to talk about it. It's everything we talk about here on The Exchange — the pace of change, etc. GRIT’s where it’s quantified. It is really quantified. The difference between the last report and this one on some of the key metrics, especially business outlook and some of those things, is just almost mind-blowing — how quickly things are changing. So this is where we talk about it. Show up, register. You'll have a good time. It's fast-paced, it's fun, and lots of great conversation on important topics.

[13:53] Karen: Yeah, cool. Cool. And I'm sure we'll remind you of that again since we are a few weeks out, but no harm in blocking your calendar now. Note to self, note to self — okay, note to self: as I say six or seven times, I better block some calendar time too. We need to talk, Lenny. Okay, QRCA — just a shout-out. Current president Lisa Horwich and I were chatting, and she is sharing a survey link for foundational research that they are conducting. They at the QRCA get input from all — whether it's market researchers or UX researchers, other kinds of design researchers, any kind of researcher — informing the strategic planning for the QRCA. So Karley will share the link out to that. We don't have it to put up on the screen, but QRCA is an important organization for me in the history of my career. So let's weigh in and help give direction to the current board as they plot the direction of QRCA and the initiatives that they offer.

[14:59] Lenny: To tie it together: there is no more important aspect of the market research industry today than qualitative. I'll tell you that much. So yes, please participate, because that talks about a sector of the industry that is changing dramatically in all the right ways — really, in a good way. So yes, please participate.

[15:23] Karen: All right. All right. Now — oh my God, we spent 15 minutes on stuff like that.

[15:28] Lenny: I know. Let's get through this pretty quickly, though.

[15:32] Karen: So take it away. Start with the Walmart Data Ventures story, since you had an exclusive on that. It's your time — take it away.

[15:40] Lenny: Yeah, well, our friends at Walmart Data Ventures — their Inspire event this week, they invited me to go. I could not make it, because I don't make it to anything like that, unfortunately. But they were kind enough to at least get together and share the results of one of the studies they released, which was a benchmark study between Walmart sample, working with Bob Fawson at Data Quality Co-op, comparing the results of a study from their Spark community to other panels. And it's not so much that it’s bragging rights about the Walmart community — of course it is higher quality because it's their shoppers, they have data, they validate the identity, they manage it carefully, yes. The point is really comparing the quality results of a highly engaged, well-managed panel versus other sample assets that are out there. And unfortunately, the other sample assets are left very wanting. So we wrote a blog post about it; the link’s here. Yeah, guys, if you're in the panel business, we have work to do. Because you also can't just — everybody should know this — go to Walmart. You can't. That's not how their business model works. So if you're a research supplier, you can't just go to Walmart and utilize their sample. Sorry. So it is up to the rest of the sample industry to raise the bar. So… yeah. And that's a good segue.

[17:22] Karen: Bless you. Yeah. Well, linked very much to this, right, is that the Global Data Quality Benchmarking Report is out. So, another data quality initiative. Pay attention to this one. I haven't dug into it, but it talks about fraud detection, which is the topic du jour, you know, certainly across the board. We are needing to be — and are being forced to be — very cognizant of the fraud in our industry. I feel like ever since, you know, “Botgate” whatever a year ago, we have spent a year saying, “It's time, it's time, it's time, it's time.” But I think now it's like — that’s just hit everybody over the head, right?

[18:06] Karen: So—

[18:08] Lenny: We've been talking about it. Garbage in, garbage out — never been more important.

[18:14] Karen: Yeah.

[18:15] Lenny: And so these next couple ones — actually some product launches — let's just run through these really quickly. So, Behaviox partnering with Cint. Behaviox is a behavioral application that captures passive measurement of data for consumers. Cint aggregates a lot of panels and builds their own. The behavioral data, by its very nature, is another data set that can be used in other ways, while also helping validate, “Oh, this is a real person because we see they shopped at Walmart,” or whatever the case may be. So more and more growth around behavioral data as a distinct data set that drives value, while also being a critical piece of the data quality component. On top of that, then Toluna just announced their synthetic personas around claim testing. Toluna is a panel — it's a good panel — so they're building synthetic personas off of real first-party data of consumers and now showing how effective the synthetic sample can be around very specific things, like claims testing, without needing to ask a survey. Anybody who's listened to us should know this. It’s kind of like “no duh,” but it's based on quality. All right, so there's the through-line here. Our friends at Remesh launched Remy, an AI agent. So they keep expanding — again, another example. Remesh was one of the first kind of AI-driven qualitative-at-scale platforms. Now they are continuing to expand their capabilities. Same thing Recollective: Conversation Tasks — an AI-moderated feature. Recollective’s been around for a long time, probably the leader, in my opinion, in communities and online qual from a user standpoint. They’re rolling out AI solutions as well. SightX/Canvas released ASA, an AI sidekick with 25 research skills to speed analysis. Canvas is fundamentally a text analytics platform — and its original big use case was in qualitative. So, Sarah’s going about all this qual.

[20:37] Karen: Well, and even the Qualtrics story — Qualtrics has a promotional article on their site talking about synthetic research models outperforming general-purpose LLMs in research tasks. So, they’re doubling down on that and saying they’re not using customer data, but they have a very well-trained LLM in play. We've been tracking them for years now. They have invested in their internal LLM. So their synthetic research models are their own. Interesting, right? Connecting dots there as well. Theirs is not for hire — you're not getting them.

[21:24] Lenny: No, but as a Qualtrics user, you have a choice now. You can use that new process we talked about: “I'm going to go to synthetic first, then ask a survey, and fill in the gaps.” Absolutely. And speaking of Qualtrics, probably not a big surprise — after their latest big deal, the CEO, Zig Serafin — great guy — stepped down. All of these we've talked about before. There've been tons of announcements, and we don't always cover those announcements, but if you look at it, lots of the big companies have had massive changes in management. They've either completed a transaction like this or are moving towards another transaction. It's the next phase of growth. So Zig did a great job getting Qualtrics to this point. Now I'm sure he’s been handsomely rewarded for that, and he’s stepping into a board/advisory role, and now someone else is gonna come in and drive to the next level. That's just the cycle of life in these businesses. Hats off to Zig.

[22:27] Karen: Yeah, super interesting. So yeah, and Medallia — who, when you're at the Qualtrics event, Medallia comes up quite a bit. In the insights space, that's not necessarily a name that comes up all the time, but in the CX space, it comes up all the time. So they, big surprise, are now also promoting that their “frontline-ready AI capabilities” are accelerating — so yet another call. They're obviously going to be competitive with Qualtrics across the board.

[23:00] Lenny: It was interesting how they called out “frontline-ready,” which I thought was interesting, with mobile innovations — mobile-centric — which, they're a CX platform, so of course that makes sense. But they were differentiating on, “We’re not just throwing stuff at GPT,” or whatever. It seems to be designed around CX.

[23:33] Karen: Now, we’ve rushed through all those because we had so many to deal with, but now we can talk about big-picture tech. This story is really interesting to me though, and I think you had pulled it up last week when we had talked about OpenAI and Atlas. It's crazy for me — like, every time I'm doing things in Atlas, I still cannot believe that I'm actually doing it. It is slow. Their agentic mode is slow within my work ecosystem. But guess what? Microsoft decided, “We're going to relaunch Edge with Copilot mode.” I can tell you, I have some firsthand experience with this in this household because my husband works in that ecosystem with the enterprises he works with, and it is not a bed of roses in the Microsoft ecosystem right now. But they will also have their Edge browser with the same sort of agentic capabilities at the enterprise level. So, I don't think we need to go in-depth into all of the browser stories, but — you know, there were the AI wars, and now there are the AI browser wars. And we will see more and more of that. You will see more and more of that depending on which browser you use. They're just gonna keep one-upping each other, and everybody will have an integrated workplace within their browser.

[24:54] Lenny: Well, and let's zero in on that, because you said “the browser war” and it's like, “Oh, well, whatever, who cares about the browser?” It's about the user. And it is about that integrated workflow. We think about today: there’s Apple, Google, or Microsoft, right? Over the past couple of years, that was the thing — all distinctly different but integrated ecosystems, with Apple being the best example. Now everybody wants to be Apple. This is the next wave of that. You're going to be ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity or Google or whatever, but it's about owning the user experience and owning the user's attention — and their data.

[25:45] Karen: Yep.

[25:46] Lenny: And the other — did we even… we didn't put this out there, right? And it's fine. If you go read the news this week — like Wall Street news — you see things like OpenAI looking for a $1 trillion IPO…

[25:59] Karen: Yeah.

[26:00] Lenny: Or Nvidia now having a $5 trillion market cap. Follow the money, guys, because that is big damn money.

[26:09] Karen: And think about it — not just you at the consumer level, but it's probably safe to say every listener to this particular show is a professional, right? They have professional use of browsers — that's just how we do business today. Whether it's your email, then you're checking a website, then you're checking your Salesforce, then you're checking whatever task management software you have, or whatever CRM you use — if it's all in your browser space, then guess what? Your browser is going to become how you manage your agentic internal workflows. That's just what's happening right now. So really interesting. Good luck with that, because you've got to take it in. And to the CEOs and founders and presidents that are out there trying to come up with AI strategy: this is something you need to be tuning into because it's how your employees will be doing work. Setting research aside for just one hot second, this is how your people will be working — doing the work that they do. That's where those people have to be thinking strategically.

[27:20] Lenny: I saw an article just this morning — maybe we'll throw it in for next week; I won't spoil too much — but it was interesting about exploring the difference between SaaS and vertically-integrated agentic solutions. I had not thought about it in quite the way this article positioned it. But it was… well, we'll save it for next week. It was interesting in thinking about the era of broad-based SaaS solutions, when you have a whole bunch of agents that are really pinpoint-built to do very specific things. It’s a different model. And the browser is the key that unlocks it.

[28:01] Karen: Right. And think about it for user researchers, usability testers, when this agent is taking over. If I'm in Atlas and I'm in my email and I'm like, “Oh shoot, can you make an Asana task for this so I don't forget to follow up on this point in this email,” and I now have my browser going into Asana for me, suddenly my browser has different usability needs. So just think about the implications of even just that. It’s really — it's uncanny. That particular browser-based software… everything is changing. And at each step along the way, there might be implications for you in your work world. Anyway — challenge you.

[28:47] Lenny: And I was… you know, I'm a laggard in these things. I'm a little more resistant. And even this week I went further in utilizing Perplexity, my favorite LLM, and I was like, “Damn it, I just need to enable all of these capabilities in their browser because this is dumb that I'm losing efficiency.” It was like, “No, I'm not willing to do that yet.”

[29:10] Karen: But that is a real factor — that “No, I don't want to give them permission. I'm not going to give them permission. Don't want to give them permission.” And then you just say… you can't fight it.

[29:20] Lenny: I mean, there's too much. Like, “Hey, I can pull from your email to do this analysis.” It's like, “Oh, there's a bunch of stuff in my email that'd be really good…” “No, I don't want you to have access to my email. But you could do so much more…”

[29:36] Karen: It is such a struggle. And then yet, once you do it — once you get over that hurdle and you say, “Fine” — now there are, like, I think we talked about this last week, there are some things where I'm like, “No, you can't know that.” I'm not going to do this on my personal. For instance, you know, I have Gmail personally, and I'm also not using this for my personal. I do not want any of my personal emails to get into the world because that's tied to… I just am not happy with that. Professionally, they can't hurt my person. I guess that's kind of the way I'm thinking. So, so be it. Come up with: what are your boundaries? What can you do? What are you comfortable with? I'm not at the point where I'm comfortable with it accessing anything financial — not for the company, not for me — so I do have some guardrails up. But will it change what we share internally in our emails? Maybe.

[30:23] Lenny: Yeah, absolutely. But the resistance is futile. I'm still holding out. I don't know how much longer.

[30:30] Karen: Three marketing-related things, which I think are really interesting. You talked about this: PamAI-ly?

[30:37] Lenny: We’ve talked before about friends at Sparky, and they were building end-to-end marketing platforms using AI. Well, Google — now they’re called PamAIly — it's a marketing tool that generates on-brand content from a company's website. I didn't demo it, but I watched a demo of it, and yeah, it seems pretty darn good. Is it going to be perfect? No. But if you're generating… I can certainly imagine Jaz on our team looking at it. I sent her a link. You can create a lot of efficiencies.

[31:17] Karen: Well, and then you think about our team, which has a small department, but then Mondelez now investing 40 million in terms of AI across the Middle East and Africa to cut their marketing costs.

[31:28] Lenny: So investing 40 million to accomplish a 50% reduction in the market. So what the hell do you think their marketing costs are where that is a “no-brainer”?

[31:40] Karen: No-brainer. So yeah — cutting marketing expenses. That's one of those things that made me say “Hmm,” as I'm like: here we’re seeing it at an organization loaded with marketers. I mean, I would say any of the big ones are loaded with marketers. That's like a brand-marketing dream, to end up in one of those large CPG companies, right? So when you're graduating with your MBA, you're like, “Oh, I want to work at a Mondelez or a PepsiCo or a P&G,” or whatever. And now, look — maybe not all the markets, but we’re looking at halving marketing costs. And then concurrently this week, Wharton Executive Education is launching AI in Marketing: Creating Customer Value in an AI-Driven Enterprise — a blended program for senior leaders. And I thought, that's interesting. So Wharton — excellence in executive education — coming up with AI-in-marketing education programming. So if you are a marketer, if you are a brand-side professional, if this is where your function lies…

[32:45] Lenny: Absolutely.

[32:47] Karen: Know this. Because that's where — and I don't want to be alarmist for anybody — but that is where I worry more about the marketing professionals than I do for the insights professionals. I think that you need — I think both kinds of roles, they're so adjacent — but where we can get to “How do insights professionals stay relevant in the age of AI,” marketers: up your skills. Because we haven't talked enough about them, I don't think. But up your AI skills so that you are not deemed replaceable by AI.

[33:20] Lenny: Look — I mean, yeah, we did really well on time. Let's pontificate just for a second. You read the news this week, right? There were massive job cuts in many big companies in white-collar management roles. It wasn’t because of financial performance. It was not because these companies weren’t booming. They report their results and everybody's doing great. No — these were redundant roles from an AI standpoint. Now they’re obviously reallocating money in other ways, but you can't make that decision — “Oh, I'm going to lay off…” whatever number it was at Amazon — and move it into building infrastructure, unless those roles weren't necessary to begin with from a process standpoint.

[34:09] Lenny: Sorry.

[34:09] Karen: Yeah. I don't have the inside track on this, so I am making an assumption — and call me out if I'm wrong — but I would assume that the people who have value staying are the people that have tackled the “How is this integrating?” My guess as well is: “How do we make sure I'm versed in it? Maybe I'm not doing it myself, but I am smart enough to understand AI. I am versed in AI. I know what's happening in the AI ecosystem.” Get your skills up.

[34:38] Lenny: They're managers and directors of AI functionality. That’s my guess. And that's what I think this AI-in-marketing and overall… we keep talking about this, right? The process just isn’t where the value is.

[34:54] Karen: Yeah.

[34:55] Lenny: Knowing what to do, how to manage to get to an outcome — that's where the value is. And to your point, I think that from a research standpoint, we still have lots of gas in the tank for that. But yeah, it's trick or treat, guys — it's Halloween, right? There’s some scary stuff happening, to some extent. Again, wait till this next GRIT report. But it's just change. We can adapt.

[35:28] Karen: We can. We’re adaptive people.

[35:30] Lenny: Yeah. We are highly adaptive. I'm still kicking and screaming a little bit, but that's so funny because I was working from my parents' house this week and I let my mother see my computer take over. She just sat there and said, “Well, this is life-changing.” And I said, “It is, Bob.” And she just shook her head. Here's a woman, 86 years old, and she is able to get her head around the life-changing nature of all of this. I was feeling quite proud of her at that moment. I'm like, she’s not about to start using it, but she certainly can recognize that this is life-changing. And as we head into next year, bear in mind: this was the year of the build and rollout of the beginning of the robots. Next year they will all go on sale, guys.

[36:15] Karen: Oh yeah, I know. I know.

[36:17] Lenny: So this won’t just be the AI. We will also literally have — at price points — humanoid robots in homes performing tasks. And it's going to take a little while, but that's where we are.

[36:34] Karen: Margaret, who is now on my team contractually as a speaker scout for me, she's already told her husband, “Oh, I'm getting one.” She's like, “I don't care how much it costs. This is on my list. I am getting a little robot.” And I was like, “Oh my God, me and you both — we're going to be talking to our little robot pets.” These aren't the pets — these are like the full-blown humanoid robots. Remember, my hand goes down because I'm like, I really want a little one. I'm going to put in the special order for a little one.

[37:05] Lenny: Got it, got it. All right.

[37:07] Karen: I mean, just make it bigger than my Roomba. Actually, I'm just talking — I need it to be cat-sized. I need it to not even be dog-sized. It needs to still be cute or it's not joining my household. Anyway, we can go in all types of directions.

[37:23] Lenny: Yeah, it's an interesting time, guys. So, anything else we want to make sure that we cover on this?

[37:30] Karen: We're good. We're good. Have a safe and happy Halloween. Welcome, November 1st. We will see you next Friday.

[37:34] Lenny: We'll see you next Friday, everybody. Yeah — be safe. Happy Halloween and have a good weekend. Bye everyone.

Links from the episode:

Trick or treat: Which Halloween candies are winning in 2025 

The trends shaping this year’s seasonal shopping 

NIQ Unwraps Real-Time Insights Throughout the Holiday Season 

The QRCA launched a foundational research study seeking input from all market/UX/design researchers to inform its strategic planning 

Walmart Data Ventures and Data Quality Co-Op Redefine Authentic Insights 

Wave 1 of the Global Data Quality (GDQ) Benchmarking Report debuted 

Behavix partnered with Syno International and Announces Senior US Advisor Appointment with Matt Hynes 

Toluna’s one million synthetic personas accelerate ideas and claims testing worldwide 

Remesh launched “Remy” 

Recollective unveiled “Conversation Task” 

Canvs AI released “Asa” 

The Synthetic Research Breakthrough: How Fine-Tuned Models Outperform General AI 

Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin stepped aside to become vice chair and special adviser 

Medallia expanded its Frontline-Ready AI with new mobile capabilities to accelerate CX action 

Two days after OpenAI’s Atlas, Microsoft relaunches a nearly identical AI browser 

Google Labs introduced Pomelli 

Mondelez Allocates $40 Million to Generative AI Aiming to Cut Marketing Expenses by 50% 

Wharton Executive Education Launches AI in Marketing: Creating Customer Value in an AI-Driven Enterprise