The Automation Tipping Point: Why AI Just Changed Everything in Research

Check out the full episode below! Enjoy The Exchange? Don't forget to tune in live Friday at 12 pm EST on the Greenbook LinkedIn and Youtube Channel!

AI is transforming market research at unprecedented speed, with $42 million in fresh funding driving innovation across brand tracking, interviewing technology, and audience simulation. This episode explores how major players like Meta and Sequoia are doubling down on AI investments while startups automate everything from data quality to white-collar jobs. Discover why traditional research methods are rapidly giving way to AI-driven personas and automated insights that promise to revolutionize brand-audience relationships. 

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

Use code EXCHANGE30 to get a 30% discount on your general admission IIEX tickets!

IIEX.AI

Stay Ahead of the Curve! Subscribe to The Exchange Newsletter on LinkedIn Today! 

Transcript

Lenny Murphy: There we go, we are live. Hi, everybody. Happy Friday.

Karen Lynch: Happy Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th. It's always so ominous. Every time you say it, it's like it always has just that, oh, it is Friday the 13th. Do you know why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky?

Lenny Murphy: No.

Karen Lynch: I mean, other than the fact that the number 13 is supposed to be unlucky.

Lenny Murphy: No, this was the date when, well, it was a Friday the 13th when the Pope and the King of France uh, joined forces to, uh, to attack the Knights Templar, uh, simultaneously coordinate attacks all over Europe, uh, because they'd become too powerful as effectively the first bank. Um, that's really the function of the Knights Templar. Um, uh, among other things, there's weirder stuff that you can get into, but, but because that was the date that that became considered unlucky because, you know, it's when they took down the Knights Templar. All right.

Karen Lynch: Well, that's very interesting. Interesting.

Lenny Murphy: And I do the research. This is all about the date.

Karen Lynch: But I think it's funny, because when you're not a history buff, you hear these little history factoids. And you think to yourself, I've probably heard that before. But my brain, my brain puts it in a category of I will never need that information. So therefore, it's always interesting. It's just my brain doesn't keep it. In my mind, they made a decision. History factoids are not the things that stay in there.

Lenny Murphy: That is interesting. Mine is like this massive index. Kind of like my email with folders. Things are classified, they're put in there. I may need that one day. Or my garage with screws left over from putting together a hundred things. I may need that one day.

Karen Lynch: Mine does that maybe with craft supplies or like art supplies. I have, like, if anybody were to say to me, mom, any chance you have a, you know, a piece of purple yarn, well, purple's pretty obvious, but you know, like an orange variegated yarn, I'm like, as a matter of fact, I do. Like, you know, like it's one of those.

Lenny Murphy: Right. 20 years ago, I had a fair amount left.

Karen Lynch: I just said to myself, a little while ago, I saw one of those trifold poster boards that the kids use in school. And I was like, yeah, I mean, my youngest, 21 next week. I probably don't need the trifold anymore.

Lenny Murphy: Like I, I will proudly say this, that I still have discs, literal discs for windows 95. Um, and I am sure that I have a charging cord somewhere like my original, uh, like 1995, uh, phone. So I, cause you may need it. One day. It's just so interesting.

Karen Lynch: Anyway, I don't want to get sidetracked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Anyway, let's go. I'm just taking this down as a totally different conversation.

Karen Lynch: But it was an interesting week, one way or the other.

Lenny Murphy: Interesting day, interesting week, you know. So happy Friday.

Karen Lynch: At this point, if you're joining us, we have already had the Grit Forum, which means if you weren't listening last week, you missed the announcement that we are holding a contest that Karley is also sharing on social media, thank you Karley, Johnny on the spot, that if you can find the most pop culture references in the last Grit Report that was launched and released this week, Karley just shared the link to download it, email the exchange at greenbook.org with your list of the pop culture references you found in it, and you will win a ticket to an IAX event. We, because we're choosing one person, we can, you and I can bounce back and forth about which event makes sense for you. So, um, so anyway, so yes, that's what we're going to be doing. So we will announce the winner next Friday.

Lenny Murphy: Get in on the fun. Getting in on the fun. It's a, it's a, it's big, but it's great.

Karen Lynch: So the report, uh, and now every time you read one of those, you will smile and you will say, aha, got another one. So, and if you're a skimmer, if you're a skimmer of this you might skim and find them. So, you know, you can read the sections you're gonna read. Who knows if you'll be the one with the most. So maybe you skim faster than everybody else. So readers will do great. Skimmers can also do okay.

Lenny Murphy: So, you know. Absolutely. And we can give you a little hint. When we say pop culture, it's predominantly music, movies, TV, and literature. It is really big, but the, Um, and particularly music. There's a lot of music references.

Karen Lynch: So fun. So fun. Anyway, so yeah. Um, yeah, let's get into it. So we're going to start with funding news, right? Because, um, a lot of money was sort of flowing last week and we always say, yeah, follow the money. Always, always, always. So, um, investors are betting. So I don't know what you know about track suits. Um, this was new to you, new to me.

Lenny Murphy: Uh, that was the way. Brand tracking, syndicated brand tracking, effectively, right? Morning Consult, GWI, you know, variations of that, a little more tech-centric. Yeah. AI-driven, of course.

Karen Lynch: AI-driven, but 25 million are going into brand tracking software or platforms right now, and I'm like, okay, that's interesting to me because, like, I feel like brand tracking is sort of like the industry's stepchild in terms of methodology. Right? It's like you sort of have to do it.

Lenny Murphy: You have to track your brand, right? But it's not- It's because of the data that they're collecting and how that data can be used outside. Brand tracking is a great, great excuse, entry point to collect a lot of information. And that information now can be unlocked in a variety of ways. We see other companies do the same thing. You get the ones that I route, GWI, Morning Consult, YouGov, Tracksuit. I mean, all of these guys are rocks. They're all expanding based on the data asset. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty sweet.

Karen Lynch: So congratulations to them. And then also, Outset, who, you know, we've done a bunch of things with Outset. They've been on our stage. They've been on our podcast, 17 Million Series A, scaling their AI interviewer technology. You know, the one that comes to mind is I believe I interviewed them with their client away from the luggage company on our podcast talking about some of their kind of UX methodologies So, you know, that's a nice 17 million series days pretty good it is and think about that.

Lenny Murphy: So now we got in the last three months outset Conveyor listen laps All with you know, really large series around 17 million I think comedy I was about 17 million list labs 27 and follow the money. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: The thing is, if you're not following ListenLabs, you know, we track them because they're competition winners and Alfred, they've come to our events and he's a Futurist Honoree this year. If you're not following him on LinkedIn, he's somebody to pay attention to because he's also meeting with some very, not just big investors, but big companies. He just posted last week and it didn't make it into our brief, so Karley, we don't have a link here. But he posted kind of, you know, being in a meeting with, you know, the CEO of Microsoft, and I'm like, this company is moving and shaking. And, you know, I remember when they were on stage at our event, and nobody knew who they were. And they, you know, they had this very sort of simple kind of quality scale methodology that won, you know, in that competition. And it, I think there is something that they have done, which is making insights, kind of the gathering of insights in quality scale, very understandable to people who are not insights professionals. And I think that is part of what they're doing to win right now. And I just think watching them is one of my favorite things, because I'm like, okay, I see what you're doing.

Lenny Murphy: I was in a conversation, not too much of a side line, but I was in a conversation yesterday with, company in space who's building out a series of AI tools that are primarily kind of merging. Anyway, they're demoing it to me. And it occurred to me as I was looking at the demo from a feature standpoint, it's like, here's the challenge for you. You have to build for two audiences at once. One is future users who are not trained in research or current users who are not trained in research that only need to, they only want you to trust that I'm getting the right answer, everything else is noise. The other is the current users who expect a certain feature set because there's a business process to reuse. Like the example I was using, can you download it as an editable chart object in PowerPoint? To your point, it's interest, know your audience. ListenLabs is not, they're targeting a different population. Like Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, they didn't become who they were because they were selling it to research organizations. They were selling the CX in the marketing. Uh, listen, labs and the others are all targeting those things as well. Of course, listen, labs, it doesn't hurt when Sequoia is your backer. Yeah, exactly.

Karen Lynch: Suddenly you're at a lot of tables. Yeah. Yeah. But they're all, but yeah, but follow the money guys.

Lenny Murphy: I mean, and that's where it's just jockeying for, you know, cause there's three companies we just mentioned all fundamentally kind of doing the same thing, right? There's very, of course, but they're all targeting different user bases and different segments. And that's kind of where we are right now in space.

Karen Lynch: So, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's, let's mention this last bit of money. So we talked about, let's just talk about this little company called Meta, shall we?

Lenny Murphy: Yes. Meta, they wanted to acquire scale AI. They did not, they did not do that effectively. They bought 50% for 14 billion dollars and 50% of that company for 14 billion dollars. Here's what really jumped out at me. Do you think that Instagram has got meta? What's the messaging app the messenger?

Karen Lynch: No, what's up?

Lenny Murphy: What's up? What's up? What's up? Anyway, they have access. But we know, from what we talked about last week, I think or before last, almost 50% of all web traffic, in particular on social media platforms, is bots. So, yes, they have access to a massive amount of data, but half of it is bullshit. So it's not usable. So they want to build Llama, right, more effectively. They need access to quality, first-party training data. We've been talking about this for three years now, right? Or as long as we've been doing this show. Uh, that's what drove that. So if your panel companies, et cetera, et cetera, right. There's a, it's not as simple as it was just access to people. There's a whole piece of technology built around that that makes the data usable and effective for design for AI training sets. So it's not that simple, but a piece of it is certainly getting access to people to do things. $14 billion, one company. $14 billion.

Karen Lynch: Well, and let's segue from getting access to people into three product launches this week that are getting access to personas. That's right. Built off of the data, right? I mean, that's the segue.

Lenny Murphy: What are they doing? Yes. So yeah.

Karen Lynch: So like three different companies came up this week that are showing how AI-driven personas and kind of interviewers and whatever are helping us, you know, in our industry, right? So starting with Bolt, who, you know, Bolt, you know, they have, they sort of, you know, have chat AI, but they have expanded their capabilities with new dynamic personas and mega analysis features through this Bolt chat AI platform. So, you know, big announcement, it's another quality scale concept. You know, they are often a sponsor at our events. So they were just at the Grit Forum with us. You know, such an interesting expansion of their capabilities and more power to them.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. And Persona is like, it's cut to the chase, right? Get to the output. That's a fundamental way to do that. Then data diggers. There's Syntheo, an AI platform using Persona models. To simulate audience responses and test research hypotheses. Those types of things, using that language, testing hypotheses, I love that. Like, that's a no-brainer. That's not scary, ooh, you're gonna replace research. Like, yeah, we're testing ideas. Then you go do real research, simulating audiences. So that was good. And then research for good.

Karen Lynch: So. Research for good launching there. Is it Q-U-I-P? You know, as I look at this, I'm like, Q-I-P, Q-I-P, Q-I for this kind of persona-based methodologies, Lenny and I don't go through things and say, let's find persona launches. We just kind of share what's happening and then we pull it together on a Friday morning to say, what are we going to share with you? And I just think it's really interesting timing, right, three this week alone that are focused on personas. For those of you who are thinking that this synthetic data stuff was a trend that maybe wasn't going to take off, No.

Lenny Murphy: And I, and you know, what's interesting here is it's easy to kind of dismiss it as everybody chasing the same bright, shiny object. These are business professionals, leaders, investors, et cetera, et cetera. That's naive bullshit to think about. So, right. There is a use case. They're finding the use case. We're definitely in that process. We're absolutely in the fit for purpose, finding where things fit for sure. But you don't build something because you hope somebody is going to buy it. You build it because you know there's already a market for it and then you want to grow that market. Yeah. So that is what is happening. Um, and the, uh, and it's happening at a faster pace than any other new introduction of solutions we've ever experienced. So pay attention guys. We can't, it's so as I said to me this week, somebody was at a poor, uh, event, right? A poor is like, you know, the academics and the, and, you know, the ivory, I mean this in no disparaging way, kind of the ivory tower of pure scientific research folks, right? The guys who bemoan that we're still not using RDD, you know, dialing for everything, which again, not disparaging, I get it. The point was, they're clueless on all of this. And that was the comments like, they don't know anything about any of this stuff. They just don't, they don't know. When like, you know, okay. Cause- Maybe the directive is if you're listening to this show, tell a friend. Especially if they work in academia. You don't have to do what we do and pay attention to all the research.

Karen Lynch: You don't have to be the one who's like, let me start following all these AI companies and getting a Google trends lawyer for it. You don't have to do it. Do the work for you, but just keep paying attention because there's a lot, there's a lot, it's hard to keep up with. And just because the rate of change is so much, it's really hard to keep up with. And anyway, we keep trying to make that easy on you.

Lenny Murphy: So. Absolutely. We'll keep showing the trend line.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And I mean, so, so speaking of segue into, you know, into relevant launches of what's needed and, and the companies to pay attention to. Dynata is, you know, coming off of the Persona stuff, however, recognizing the need for data quality at this point in time, perfectly timed launch, in my opinion. They've enhanced their AI-driven data quality tool quality score event, expanding its availability and adding some new features to it. So I think we're probably going to see more of the big players saying data quality, like, you can trust us, you know, now that we've kindled down a little bit after the initial wave of the Opinions for Good scandal. I think now we're going to see these companies saying, you can trust us for data quality. Here's why. And here's what we've built, and here's what we've put into place. And maybe we weren't ahead of it six months ago, but we are now. I expect to see more and more of that. I'm sure you do too.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. And just to be clear, earlier we were talking about research for good, not opinions for good.

Karen Lynch: Absolutely. Funny, I had the same thought. I was like, oh yes, no, this is research for good. Because apparently we want to do good in this world, right?

Lenny Murphy: We do. We do. We want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Research for good. You're good folks. They're doing good stuff, right? Opinions for good. They're the ant farm, right?

Karen Lynch: So we. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and remember, let's be fair. Not everybody that was there was. There were lots of good people who were victims as well.

Lenny Murphy: And it's still allegedly. Nobody has been, nobody has been convicted of anything. So anyway, all right. Kantar, their live rapid qual quant tool across 45 markets. That is a partnership with another company. I don't know if that's public, so I'm not gonna say who it is. So that's what I zeroed in on is this was really cool for Kantar, someone of their scale, to identify a need and to amplify the opportunity to effectively sell, somebody else developed tech, right? And the solution, they've white labeled it, and now they're bringing it to market to really scale that, which is a great way for these big companies. It's a great example of these big partnerships as companies develop technology to partner with someone that has that scale and reach and let them go sell the hell out of it. And that's what they're doing. So very cool.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, very cool. Yeah, and and neurons, you know another kind of solid Consistent partner of Green Book launching brand kit and AI tool providing creative recommendations We could have dedicated an entire show where we could dedicate an entire show to creative, you know some of this stuff kind of falls by the wayside time permitting but Their tool is kind of helping marketing teams and with brand identity work And, you know, I'm making an assumption, there's behavioral science behind it without even really having checked it since Neurons is, you know, known for their kind of behavioral science expertise. But this is another area that is so closely linked, so closely linked to the work of all the insights professionals are what marketing is doing, or many of the professionals, what marketing is doing, what creative development comes out of it. I did just see an ad that actually made it to primetime. That was all done, you know, script with AI and then video production with AI and it ended up on like primetime television. So, you know, I just think it's really interesting because that's what's happening. Yes.

Lenny Murphy: And they were one of, they were AI for AI was cool, right? So just because we haven't done it for a long time, Dr. Thomas Ramsey, good friend, early, a neuroscientist, right? They were playing with things like visual intensity models, which is the early stages of this. Mimic where the eye is going to be drawn and they'd map it and, okay, well, let's move this creative, make the lady in red stand out more. Now, they're developing through and incorporating to your point that leveraging AI to make it more scalable and effective.

Karen Lynch: Very cool. Yeah. Well, let's flip the order these last two bullet points to kind of stay with that because of this HubSpot integration. So now we're kind of getting a little more meta with the lowercase M for all of y'all. And it's more of this kind of big picture of what's happening. So HubSpot integrates OpenAI Chat GPT to provide CRM access. So it's working with Chat GPT right into your customer database. Many people use HubSpot. They have a lot of other ones as well, but they're working with this simple AI concept that will allow queries to happen right in your CRM that will help you really explore, question, and interact with your CRM data. And that was one of those things that they've actually drafted an article we're gonna be publishing about this one, because this is just another example of how this technology is going to be integrated into daily processes, not just the big picture research methodologies. This is kind of a daily process, which is also very similar to, I think, the article that you pulled up, because you're a big perplexity fan, so about perplexity labs. Well, let's talk about that in a second.

Lenny Murphy: I actually have a question. So you've dived into the I have not so my thought when I saw it was Wow, so You'll be able to create that's a huge step towards powering Individualized marketing. Yeah, so using the marketing component as a drip campaign, right? Yeah, so am I right that you could profile customers who have these certain, you know attributes or interests and set up targeted campaigns towards them in a very finite way. Is that it? Yes.

Karen Lynch: And it's basically letting you query just like you would with anything else that's in there and then follow the path. So you know, show me five of the people in our in our CRM that who, you know, you know, who are who are the last ones that that bought, like, say, say you're a small research company, and you sell brand tracking, like, who are the who are the people in our database that, you know, purchase brand tracking projects with us, you know, five years ago, and then it's like, you see, you see, alright, so those are our lapsed users, right? And then it's like, what else have they purchased? So you basically are engaging now in a conversation with your CRM, to then be able to deliver custom offerings to them, help me write, help me write an email to pitch this that they haven't sold in a long time based on what I've learned about them since. I mean, it's a whole agentic ecosystem right there in your CRM, which is a highly usable customer intelligence tool. That's really what it is. The tool now is in your CRM platform, and you don't have to go the other way. It's right there in your CRM.

Lenny Murphy: So another example we were talking about earlier when we started off by unlocking new value from existing data sets, like the track suit, right? The brand tracking companies, right? So we're unlocking new things that we couldn't really get to before easily, and now we can. Well, so Perplexity, you queued me up on that. I'm a big fan. So they have, and I have not, it is on my to-do list this weekend. They launched the Perplexity Lab. Which Just does all types of cool stuff Particularly so you create quizzes media kits presentations. That's what I have a Deliverable for a client that I'm thinking about. It's like alright, I'm gonna try this in perplexity. I'm gonna go through and see if it will create a presentation for me that way except because I have not found anything that does that particularly really well. Yeah. Another example, right? So do they aim to be the next kind of replacement for office or for Google? Google Sheets, etc, etc? Well, yeah. But all within the perplexity ecosystem, and I'll tell you, I mean, what, again, this isn't it for? I like that. I because it is, I don't worry about it ever hallucinating. So it started as an AI search, right? So I like if I'm doing a market assessment, a competitive market assessment, right? I trust the data. But today, it's just your standard output and you have to take it and go do something else with it. So things like this are addressing the usability unlock, right? Like, okay, well, I've done, in like a workflow would be, okay, I've done the market assessment of these companies. Oh, I want to, but I want to look at it this way. No, it should enable us to do that. So what does that do to bite into workflows? Here's the real key takeaway. And I'll shut up about it. If you're a small, if you are a small, small research organization, right. A consultancy, right. Specialist boutique. And you're thinking, what the hell do I do with all this stuff?

Karen Lynch: Right.

Lenny Murphy: These are the types of tools that will give you the superpower to compete from a speed standpoint, which will equate to cost reductions, which gives you a competitive edge as well. But not just that, it does unlock more value. Oh, now I can pull this and this and this thing, put it together and I can think about things. These are the types of tools that you need to pay attention to because they're going to give you a competitive edge rather than needing to invest in, Oh my God, now I have to get this whole other third party software. Well, no, a lot of the big platforms are powering you with those things now.

Karen Lynch: I just found a platform and I'm not ready to share because it just came across my desk this morning and I played with it and it's a deep research platform specific for, um, you know, B2B B2B use. So basically go. In there and say, I want to target this company, and give them a little bit of background about why they're important to you. And it does deep research on everything you need to know about that company, including what they may have done with other vendors, if it's out there for them to find, what they've done with you, if it's out there for them to find. And then customizing, OK, here's what we've learned about them. Here's how other people have leveraged them. Here's how you leverage them. Here are some needed gap analysis. Like, and it's, it was all at the click of a button. And in five minutes, you know, I started to explore it. So again, not really doesn't feel ready for primetime for me yet to share with this audience, but I'm like, okay, that's interesting. And it was one of those things where you could use it for targeting a job hunt. You know, I want to know more about, you know, company X, I want to get high, you know, all right. So who just got a lot of let's go back on up there, like, you know, outset, tell me what you know about outset, because I'm applying for this job. And I want to know everything there is to know about outset, in particular, this position. And that's how I had experimented with it actually using my own role at our company, which is just very random. And well, this is what you should talk about in an interview. Here are good follow up questions. Here's how you approve your ROI in that position. So you know, I basically did the work for someone who would want to kick me out of my role and be like, what's what, you know, what would they say? So I see why you want to keep that use case right, like doing company research, which is one of the ways to stand out today, but letting AI help you with the company research, helping them evaluate what's the ROI for your position? Or what would you need to prove if you were to take the position? What are some things you can say on the interview to, you know, show your And I'm like, well, this is interesting. And then I started to play with it as a potential sales tool. So, I mean, these platforms are just going to be popping up everywhere to make our lives easier.

Lenny Murphy: I was on that same call on it earlier with the company that's demoing their stuff. The CEO, who I've known forever, he is not a developer, nothing like, you know, he's like, yeah, I sat down for like an hour and I just cranked this out, you know, as a demo, as proof of concept. Because, to your point, the barrier to entry creating these platforms is, you know what? They're there, they're there.

Karen Lynch: Right, right.

Lenny Murphy: So if you can imagine it, you can try it. Not everything is gonna work perfectly out of the gate, that's for sure. Right, right. But the opportunity to create and do new stuff, and then in that case, find like, hey, here's a niche. Yeah. Putting those things together, absolutely. Or the agents you've put together, which you're far more advanced. I have not done that yet. I have not put together my own agents. So you're the secret agent woman. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: All my mom and dad, who continue to say, like every time they see Tim, they're like, so Tim, what's new in AI? And he just shakes his head like, have you talked to your daughter?

Lenny Murphy: She's actually doing it every single day.

Karen Lynch: My parents still to this day have no idea what I do. They just have no idea. I know.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. All right. In the spirit of Friday the 13th. Excellent, excellent.

Karen Lynch: I was like, are we gonna do this? Did you read this? I did.

Lenny Murphy: This is one of those things that all I need to know is the summary and it's like, I get it. I don't want to know anymore.

Karen Lynch: So it was in the New York Times this morning and I very quickly did a Google search for it because the New York Times articles aren't necessarily shareable so you may be blocked from seeing this New York Times article. Might be worth it to use a free trial just to read this article in the spirit of Friday the 13th. And then also go to the Read.AI thread, which, Karley, shares the Read.AI thread also. Because the Read.AI thread is, it happened very quickly, to somebody saying, so what do you all think of this article? And hundreds of people, and this was at 6 AM, were already on it. So it's something to pay attention to. Basically, this company, Mechanize San Francisco startup, and they're developing tools to automate all jobs, pretty much all white-collar jobs, every single one of them. They would like this AI to do it all and do everything. Basically, the article goes on to explain and then challenge them a bit like, what do you mean? And they're like, well, then we'd have to have kind of an economic system where everybody is free to pursue their passions then. They don't need to work. So it does devolve into a different type of society, which again, the Read.AI thread really digs into too. But it's this whole idea of like, yeah, we can replace everything. And they want to train AI to do everything. And so you read it and then you just think like, what the actual hell? And there's a part of me that was like, you silly Silicon Valley junkies that just wanna do something like that. And make billions as it sucks up all the jobs. And then all of a sudden, like, I don't know, is that what's gonna happen? Like, you know, you could get gloom and doom pretty quickly.

Lenny Murphy: So Friday the 13th. There you go. Well, and combine that with the, you know, the op, the robot revolution, later on this year, this year, performing labor based tasks, right? I mean, like, you know, carry this, do that.

Karen Lynch: Right. I don't know.

Lenny Murphy: Are we going to wind up like Wally? I don't know. What did George Jetson actually do for a living?

Karen Lynch: That's the question I started to have. He pushed buttons. He pushed buttons.

Lenny Murphy: He pushed buttons. So we still need button pushers.

Karen Lynch: We still need button pushers.

Lenny Murphy: What did they even do for work on the Jetsons?

Karen Lynch: Because he left for work a lot.

Lenny Murphy: It's really, we could go off for a while, I've really been thinking about this a lot as it relates to our industry. We'll have to talk more about it at some point but there's a term there's two terms that we've mentioned before that you look it up right one is Service as a software What does that look like right? The other is a wisdom worker? Not a knowledge worker or wisdom worker, those two concepts I think are incredibly important. We won't go into it because we're wasting time looking them up. They're really interesting for, if you are in this world, a white collar job, separating function process from expertise, maybe the best way to kind of think about it. And what does that look like overall? And it's really, it's just here where we are guys, right? Because somebody's going to give these guys $14 billion to do If not, they probably will soon.

Karen Lynch: So I literally, you know, put in the brief and then we'll wrap it like, do we even, do we even share this? Because it is fairly gloomy and doom. Um, this whole concept of basically saying in the next few years, this could be a reality. So, you know, like, like read the article, read it and weep and then recognize that this is an extreme example. Um, but, uh, uh, this was an extreme newsworthy example because it was so kind of, um, evocative, but, um, You know, what does that mean? That means shore up your skills right now or the immediate future. Right.

Lenny Murphy: If, if, if your skills, a commodity, you may not have felt that, but now it's probably going to be. Um, so what wisdom experiences type things. I mean, I really, I think all that being a coder two years ago, become a coder, you know, son be a coder. And I was like, Oh, that was a bad choice. Right. Remember the Little Shop of Horrors in the spirit of Friday the 13th, son of a dentist, Steve Martin. Anyway, you have a talent for causing people pain. Anyway, it's a really funny thing. Never seen that script. All right. There we go. We digress. I just want to say, Aneesh, we see you.

Karen Lynch: We're just deep in conversation here. But we see you. Thank you for adding to that. To the conversation that's happening online, we really appreciate that.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Hey, last, I would be remiss if I didn't say, safe travels, IAX Europe next week.

Karen Lynch: Thank you, yeah, leave tomorrow. So, you know, I head to the airport early afternoon, we'll land on Sunday morning, I think most of the team lands on Sunday morning, and we'll have two days of setup before the big event.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, we're over 900, right? It's going to be big, and you know, It's so funny because I just kept thinking oh, it's not gonna be as big this year, but you know silly me so and massive client-side attendance Yeah, that's off to the entire team for that. That's why I don't normally have FOMO about Europe. I do this year.

Karen Lynch: Yeah It's also What's interesting is it's not just organic spots, but also spawn our sponsors in Europe They you know that the majority I would say, you know more of the sessions on our agenda feature a Brandside partner. The partners over there have really gotten the memo that that's important, that our audience collectively wants to see how people are using the services and how they are evolving with the industry. And it also shows that level of partnership, which shows the human connection at work as well, which I think is really important. So really my gratitude goes to so many of our sponsors who are on stage. As well as our organic speakers. Yep.

Lenny Murphy: Last thing I'll say about that, CAN is this week as well. So we're going head to head against CAN, which probably is not a good decision. We shouldn't do that again. But the fact that we have 900 people.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Well, there is a day overlap. So I think that one is through Tuesday and then ours is Tuesday, Wednesday. So some people are doing both. But again, as I shared on someone's LinkedIn post, I don't remember that not everybody who is interested in insights and analytics is creative and wants to be over there. So not everybody, you know, a lot of people do. A lot of people, that's a big part of it is the insights that's informing kind of creative design and so on and so forth. But it's not, we've talked about Venn diagrams before, like these are two Venn diagrams and there is some overlap, but they're not, it's not, not everybody is in both concentric circles.

Lenny Murphy: So we'll get yachts next year. So nobody has to feel like they miss anything. So we can get yachts.

Karen Lynch: We might be able to get, you know, canal boats, but we'll call it a canal yacht.

Lenny Murphy: All right. I'm sure somebody, I'm sure there is a partner that's taking people if, if, cause I feel like that happened a few years ago.

Karen Lynch: It did. It did. I think hotspots do a canal boat ride or something like that. I feel like they did and anyway, that's one of my favorite things to do there. I'm not doing one this year. I didn't get an invite to anything, so I don't really know what's happening in terms of all rights, but If you're gonna be if you are a sponsor it is Europe, and you're doing something cool invite Karen Let me clarify I've got an invitation.

Lenny Murphy: It's the canal one specifically so Canal ride in my Karen All right On that note, safe travels, everybody. Have a great weekend. There is a lot going on in the world. Everybody, you know, hang in there, be safe, and we'll talk next Friday.

Karen Lynch: Good to see you, everybody, and good to see you, Lenny. We'll see you next week, and I will be sleep deprived, but I will show up.

Lenny Murphy: I'm looking forward to that. Bye, everybody.

Karen Lynch: See you soon, everybody.

Links from the episode:

Tracksuit secures $25M Series B to fuel global brand tracking ambitions 

Outset raises $17M Series A to scale its AI-interviewer technology 

Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang confirms departure for Meta as part of $14.3 billion deal 

Bolt Insight expands AI capabilities with new Dynamic Personas and Meta-Analysis features 

DataDiggers unveils Syntheo 

Research For Good Introduces QuIP: AI-Powered, Persona-Driven Engine 

Dynata enhances its AI-driven data quality tool QualityScore 

Kantar brings quantitative scale to qualitative research 

Neurons launches Brand Kit 

Charlie Hills - Perplexity Labs showcases how to build interactive quizzes, media kits, and presentations using AI-driven tools and custom prompts 

HubSpot integrates OpenAI’s ChatGPT to provide direct CRM data access 

Mechanize, a San Francisco startup, is rapidly developing AI tools aimed at automating white-collar jobs 

Reddit Article