Digital Mindset: The Bridge Leaders Need For The AI Era

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation, brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg, and today I am joined by Mariano Bosaz. He’s the author of the Digital Mindset: Marketing Strategies for the AI Era. And we’re very excited to learn from his deep expertise in what it means to lead digital and data strategies in companies such as Coca-Cola, and he serves as a keynote speaker and guest lecturer around the world.

[00:00:31] Tessa Burg: Mariano, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re so excited to have you here.

[00:00:36] Mariano Bosaz: Thank you, Tessa, for having me. Very excited to be here as well.

[00:00:41] Tessa Burg: So the first thing we wanna open up with, and for any listeners, definitely check out Mariano’s background on LinkedIn. He has great content and just really fascinating experiences that not only have prepared you to be an international leader in what it means to be a marketer in the age of AI era, but also giving people this blueprint inside your book.

[00:01:06] Tessa Burg: But let’s start with, tell us a little bit about yourself. And you know, where, what has been your journey up until now?

[00:01:15] Mariano Bosaz: Thank you. So my journey was a little bit of, um, accident after accident, if I had to describe it. And not physical accidents, but more career, professional career accidents. Basically, I wanted to be an ambassador.

[00:01:31] Mariano Bosaz: And I wanted to travel around the world and represent my country. Um, live two, three years here and there. Meet the culture and then sometimes go back home. That was my intention as a kid. Um. And until I finished university and someone told me, well, that you need to have a diplomat or someone in your family being able to do that career, otherwise they’re gonna send you when you’re very old, to a very bad destination just to do photocopies.

[00:01:59] Mariano Bosaz: And at that time I realized that that wasn’t going to be a path, but fortunately I had a short term, um, exchange with the University of Richmond in Virginia. Where I met one guy, and this was in 1997/1998, and we had to do an assignment. And during the assignment, um. We thought that the tests people take to get jobs, were going to move online.

[00:02:30] Mariano Bosaz: So those tests that you normally look at, which are pictures where you should never see that, you see a bat or something negative, you should always see bears smiling and jumping. Well, we just uploaded them. We scanned the, the images, we uploaded them. We did a test where you could answer online. Um, we bought the URL, we published it.

[00:02:51] Mariano Bosaz: We developed a business, which was based on ads, as was the way to fund things at the time, and still is. And well, it ended up being a great learning experience. We didn’t become LinkedIn, uh, but definitely we learned lots of things, uh, especially having right contacts and access to, uh, private equity and investor capitalists.

[00:03:13] Mariano Bosaz: Um. And we ended up selling the URL just to cover the cost of everything we did. Um, but that led me to move to a venture capital company. In Latin America where we were curating, this is pre bubble 2000 for the dotcom companies. Um, so I was curating and selecting companies that had potential, which were all startups looking for funding.

[00:03:39] Mariano Bosaz: And that also led to a merge where I joined, um, a media company newspaper, a very prestigious newspaper from Latin America called La Nación, where they developed the dot com and mobile business. And after that, in 2007, I joined Coca-Cola where I thought I was going to last, uh, six months, but I ended up working for 18 years and moved to, um, basically every continent.

[00:04:05] Mariano Bosaz: I started in the UH Africa region based out of Dubai, and I was looking after 92 countries after I was in Latin America. Then I got moved to Asia. Based out of Singapore, then China and then the US. Where I’m at now looking at global and consumer data, that’s a little bit the professional journey, let’s say.

[00:04:28] Tessa Burg: Yeah. Well it’s fascinating because you ended up being an ambassador just at a company.

[00:04:35] Mariano Bosaz: Yeah, exactly.

[00:04:35] Tessa Burg: Not necessarily for a country.

[00:04:38] Mariano Bosaz: Yeah,

[00:04:38] Tessa Burg: and I think it’s so important for people to have those. Not really failed experiences, but maybe not the success you dreamed of early on. I similar for myself. You know, when you’re young, you think that ideas are valuable and that you have, and that.

[00:05:01] Tessa Burg: You’re smart, you’re capable. You can do something with these ideas, and of course then success will follow as long as you work hard. And I feel like when you have not as much success as you expect off an idea, you learn that it’s not working hard, that matters. It really is. As you experiencing your journey, the relationships and how well you do at raising money and networking within.

[00:05:26] Tessa Burg: Private equity and investment circles, and the idea is almost the least important part of all of it.

[00:05:34] Mariano Bosaz: I agree. And I like it honestly. I mean, this will take us to more career discussion or more philosophical. Um, but it, it connects with AI and, and the approach and maybe even the book of Digital Mindset. No, um, embracing things sometimes.

[00:05:51] Mariano Bosaz: It’s a better strategy than resisting or, or not listening to what’s happening? No, I could have tried to become an ambassador. Um, and as you’re saying, the way I see my life is that I was able to achieve what I wanted. It’s just that the format life gave. Or whatever you believe in, it’s different. Uh, it was just different.

[00:06:16] Mariano Bosaz: I wasn’t an ambassador, but I was able to meet cultures and do whatever I was passionate about because I’m very passionate about technology, maybe even more than politics. And so it ended up being better than my initial vision. So sometimes your vision must be open to embrace what the world’s vision or the universe vision is now, depends on what you believe in or God’s vision.

[00:06:40] Tessa Burg: Yeah. And I think that’s such an important mindset and you challenge leaders in the book Digital Mindset to abandon traditional strategies and embrace a mindset that transforms not just a business but an entire industry. And you just said like being open to listening. And it’s interesting, we ask questions all the time, like.

[00:07:04] Tessa Burg: What, what are you scared of? Where is your fear? You know, what’s blocking you from embracing? And it really is even from leaders, and you hear this in public forums, they’re, they felt very confident in the path they were going on and very stable and sometimes embracing transformation. Feels less stable, but the truth, and if you, if you just look at what’s happening, like 70% of shoppers are now using AI tools to assist with their shopping journey.

[00:07:38] Tessa Burg: So it’s not like spending time on whether or not we should use AI. Where does the role of AI is AI value? Those are not really productive questions, but how do you help leaders move to that more transformational space and sort of open up? To, you know, what’s happening and what they’re hearing and seeing in the market.

[00:07:58] Mariano Bosaz: That’s, that’s a great reflection. What I would add is, when I wrote the book, why I, why I wrote it was because felt, I felt I could help accelerate some of the processes that I see in certain industries that are lagging a little bit behind in terms of evolution. Um, in the book, I don’t, I’m not telling people abandon your analog mindset.

[00:08:24] Mariano Bosaz: What I’m saying is. Use this book as a bridge to your digital mindset because if you only stay in your analog mindset, you may be able to protect your core business. Um. But with lower barriers to enter, uh, and technologies that are out there that are enabling other players to get into your industry. And if you don’t use a digital mindset to try to capture some of that value, you may be able to grow but not as fast as you could.

[00:09:00] Mariano Bosaz: Or you may be leaving some space relying on companies that will. Basically take some of your, of your profit. No. So that’s a little bit why I propose digital mindset as a bridge, you know, to be able to understand when you should use one, when you should use another. I started the book with an example. No.

[00:09:18] Mariano Bosaz: So I talk about the Last Mile Challenge. That’s a challenge we are gonna see until in, I don’t know how many years Elon has a theory, um, and, and some other people have others, but sooner or later. The last mile might be solved by bots. No. Uh, you may you, you see here in Florida a little bot delivering things.

[00:09:39] Mariano Bosaz: No. Um, and I believe that’s for now a pilot. But, but when you ask someone with an analog mindset, then I  Johannes and as a name, the printer, basically the, the, the inventor of printing, um, Johannes, um, and I put another name, which is Jeff. You can imagine who I’m talking about and you give them the same problem to solve, which is the last mile.

[00:10:08] Mariano Bosaz: No. And how to get an item distributed to, um, to a particular address. Knowing that. If the value of that item is not high enough, it’s too expensive to get it delivered to your door. No, that’s the last mile challenge and a lot of companies face that challenge. Um, so Johannes in the book, um, says, well, that’s an easy, uh, solve.

[00:10:36] Mariano Bosaz: Basically you just need to understand the basket size. Of the order. You need to be able to have a distribution network that is able to make that last mile distribution, and you should increase your presence in the point of sale. You should reduce this out of stock, and then you should measure the return on investment you did.

[00:10:58] Mariano Bosaz: While Jeff says, well, basically we should crowdsource it and allowed anyone to deliver products and then. Amazon Associates exists. No. And that’s how they get distributing items in one day when you’re subscribed to Amazon. Uh, prime. That’s how I start the book. No. And, and, and again, Amazon is using a lot of analog mindsets to do things, but it’s also using a lot of digital mindset to do things.

[00:11:29] Mariano Bosaz: They have their own warehouses and they have their own bots. But they also use private garage houses to store things. Um, they do have trucks and they do have airplanes, and they distribute things. But one of the tactics I heard that they do is that if you put an item on your basket, they start getting that item closer to you in space that they have left in their trucks or their airplanes.

[00:11:55] Mariano Bosaz: Okay. So those things are mixing analog mindset with digital mindsets, and I think that’s the bridge I’m trying to create, um, with the book.

[00:12:05] Tessa Burg: I love that. So if I am looking at a challenge or a problem like the one you described, how do I know where the digital mindset is more valuable? The analog mindset or when does, or when to flip between the two?

[00:12:19] Tessa Burg: Or even when I think about managing teams. How to balance that and prioritize initiatives appropriately? Were based on value.

[00:12:30] Mariano Bosaz: Oh, that’s a great question. So it’s a bit dexterity, you know, you have to protect your core business in order to stay, um, operating, um, and existing as a, as a company. No. Um, how I would describe, um.

[00:12:50] Mariano Bosaz: If, if, if an executive has to decide, how do I manage this, how do I em embrace now the AI era, how do I tackle this? Understanding the concerns people have, um, and the framework. I call the framework Move 37, that’s how I call it Move 37 is the move AlphaGo did to, uh, basically beat the world championing goal, A Chinese game that has millions of times, more combinations than chess.

[00:13:17] Mariano Bosaz: Um, and move 37 was something no one was expecting and a machine did, and that’s how it beat the best player in the world, um, and that the machine was deep mined now from, from the uk. So move 37 for me is three things that are going to happen now in AI, um, and in businesses. One is that when you look at.

[00:13:41] Mariano Bosaz: What’s happening with AI? There is a recent article from Harvard one week ago, um, that says, um, AI doesn’t reduce work. It’s intensifying it and all the examples that they give. This is by an author Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye. Um. What they say as an example is that when people start using these tools, their level of production goes to the roof.

[00:14:14] Mariano Bosaz: It goes very high. So what this is telling us as a signal, um, is that people are gonna be more productive. Uh, and I love, there is a conversation with Jeff Besos where a journalist is asking him his learnings about Amazon and, and then Jeff shares the story saying that he was talking to a coach, I believe, and the coach was telling him, you have enough projects in Amazon.

[00:14:40] Mariano Bosaz: I don’t know if he was a coach or an employee or a partner, uh, but he told him, Jeff, you have enough projects in Amazon to destroy Amazon. Um, and, and I think. What he meant was that there were too many initiatives inside the company, and if he was trying to do more than what he should have, um, or not the right ones, in terms of timing, he would’ve made a very big mistake.

[00:15:13] Mariano Bosaz: So sometimes he’s saying that he had to put some ideas in, um, in a drawer to take them out whenever was the right time to do them. So. Long story to say that the first thing is if, if your teams now are going to be able to produce in one month or one quarter, what before they were producing in one year, you need to be very clear on what are your priorities, because now people are gonna be able to produce more than before.

[00:15:46] Mariano Bosaz: Um. So I think prioritization is always going to continue, be one with the complexities that AI now is adding. Um, the next one is gonna be related to talent. Um, people have concerns. I think AI has these waves of disruption. Same like any, um, previous technology. I mean, RI would disagree because this time he’s saying it’s different.

[00:16:15] Mariano Bosaz: Now in the World Economic Forum, Harari the author, Israeli author, was saying, AI is different because if you compare with the knife for fire, uh, you can choose as a human, a knife. To do good or bad? No. Or you can choose fire to do good or bad. But now we are in front of a technology that can choose itself what to do.

[00:16:43] Mariano Bosaz: Um, but for the very, very, very short term, um, I believe people and talent in the organizations. We’ll have to use these tools and adapt them, um, and understand how to, how to use them, um, and for the short term that will help. People inside organizations to become more productive, to be more competitive, to focus on things that they can use to add more value.

[00:17:20] Mariano Bosaz: No, we’re in an era where you could send your bot to a meeting, take notes, give you a summary while you can do something else. No, that’s, that’s how we get to people becoming more proactive. Um, before, if you had to take one hour to write an email to explain things now. It might take two to three minutes to do that, uh, before, if you needed 11 months to approve a piece of content to go live in television, well now it takes one week probably to do it.

[00:17:55] Mariano Bosaz: Um, so we are, we’re facing a change where you need to prepare your talent to understand that these are tools that they should understand how to use. Um, and that they should put them into work as soon as possible. Um, and then the, the last one to me would be velocity. No. So if you are now facing a new technology that is gonna make your team more productive, you need to understand your priorities.

[00:18:25] Mariano Bosaz: If your team needs three meetings, and to find time in the calendar of a VP to test an AI prompt, you are gonna be in trouble. Um, you need governance that allows you to keep the control that you have in your company. And I know corporations, especially big ones, they love control. Um, but you need to allow a governance model that will enable you to be able to test these rather quickly, to empower teams to give permission to do things.

[00:18:59] Mariano Bosaz: Um. Otherwise you’re gonna be facing very aggressive, um, speed from competitors that might have a better governance model on how to do these things. So in summary, how to prioritize, um, how to manage talent and how to treat velocity. And, and one more thing about talent. No, when I speak about talent and people starting using AI tools, what I imagine is, um.

[00:19:27] Mariano Bosaz: Teams working with bots? No. Where they should feel safe when they’re working with them. Um, in terms of a bot not trying to take their jobs. I mean the world economic forum share study. No. And I don’t know if you saw the numbers, have the figures here. They were talking about projections to 2030. And the projections that they do in terms of job creations is 170 million new, new employ, new employments to be created.

[00:19:58] Mariano Bosaz: Um, but at the same time, they’re saying 92 million will lose their current jobs. Those jobs will evolve. There is a surplus. Okay, so it’s 78 million new. Jobs. Um, but the ones eliminated are going to evolve into some new type of work. Um, and when you look at LinkedIn, what they saw is an explosion short term of AI positions being created.

[00:20:27] Mariano Bosaz: Um, so they’re saying that AI, this is from the beginning of the year. AI has created 1.3 million new job roles, um, and there are 600,000 that are related to data. So you need to make people feel safe in that sense that the bot is not there to take their job, but to make them more productive. Just like when we incorporated the computer or some, um, software solutions, um, to make them work more efficiently.

[00:21:03] Mariano Bosaz: Uh, and that will. Require people to work with bots, fam, like to have an employee that is a bot and not fill them as a threat to, to your employment? No.

[00:21:15] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I totally agree. I think most of the time when we talk about talent, the biggest question I get most, or it’s a big question and it’s the most frequent, is if we automate out this workflow.

[00:21:29] Tessa Burg: So there might be seven people who today are involved in. Doing the market research to understand the customer, creating the brief and the creative concept, mocking up the storyboards, putting together those designs, getting in front of the client, and then all the people who manage all the feedback come with it.

[00:21:49] Tessa Burg: And as part of the platform that you know, we’re building and lots of other people are building, you take out all of those steps and the need for all those handoffs and instead you introduce. A single way that you can collaborate in real time. And you have the research there, the concepts, the creative, and you’re more like tuning it.

[00:22:12] Tessa Burg: And what’s interesting to me, the more and more we automate out workflows is we do new challenges, new new ways of working, introduce new challenges, new problems, new things to solve. But the people who fear. I might be replaced or Oh my God, what’s gonna happen to all those people in that process?

[00:22:36] Tessa Burg: Sometimes just haven’t started, like they haven’t started on the process. They haven’t gotten to a place where the velocity is so high, they actually feel overwhelmed. And when I think in that world economic forum. Post. The part that I really resonated with me was all the new types of roles and those new types of roles are coming from companies that have already begun to automate out the old roles, and now they’re finding.

[00:23:08] Tessa Burg: Oh my gosh. Okay, so we don’t have to spend a whole lot of time on this research piece. And in fact, when I log into my computer, all the research, my next steps, what I have to do today, what needs to be prioritized, is there, the next thing for the human is thinking about, all right, so now, now that I understand this about my consumer, what’s the best way to collaborate?

[00:23:28] Tessa Burg: What’s the best new way to go to market? How do I continue this differentiation? What is, what is what’s possible today? That wasn’t possible in the past, and that that really starts to elevate your thinking. And I see folks who are taking those roles are the ones who are at the best at not just elevating their thinking, but using the agents to challenge them to even pull out more humanness and like, okay, interview me, press on me.

[00:23:58] Tessa Burg: How do I take this to another level? But my worry is that not enough people. Are balancing the analog mindset versus the transformational mindset. And so they’re not hitting the the velocity fast enough, and so therefore they’re not seeing where those new roles are emerging. And then if they don’t see the new roles, then they won’t know how to bring along the teams.

[00:24:26] Mariano Bosaz: Look, you made me jump into a couple of things and I, I love all the things you mentioned. So one is there are different types of leaders giving different types of messages. No. So I mentioned  Harari, no,  Harari, main concern. I have it somewhere here, but if I can replicate it, um, as, as close as possible to what he means.

[00:24:51] Mariano Bosaz: Is that, um, he thinks AI agents should have like a dic, um, or judicial legislation to regulate them? No, that’s his main concern. And then he’s saying everything that is defined with words and thoughts, and if thinking is that for humans, well, AI will do it better. Um, but when it comes to, um, emotions or, um, some things that are more organic to humans, we don’t know yet.

[00:25:24] Mariano Bosaz: Um. So you have that in one side. Uh, also the facts I shared, you know, short term we’re seeing creation of new jobs, like you’re saying, positions that didn’t exist. Um, a whole new industry, um, that is being developed. At the same time I was reading this post from Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, where he was saying, uh, most tasks, accountants and lawyers and other professionals, uh, currently undertake will be fully automated by AI within 12 to 18 months.

[00:25:56] Mariano Bosaz: No. When you read these things, you really panic and I understand. Yeah, it may, it makes sense. Also one more thing that relates more to the book. My book questions a lot. Uh, the advertisement formats that we have been using to engage with consumers, um, uh. And when I see deep fakes, and I read that Netflix and other companies, uh, like Disney, are evaluating a lawsuit against Seed dance because of the video of Brad Pit and Tom Cruise fighting.

[00:26:38] Mariano Bosaz: I don’t know if you saw it. Um. Definitely the barrier to create content is becoming very low. So before you could have a super production, invest a lot of millions of dollars, um, and then have movies no one else could do, and all of a sudden, very soon a kid from his room can create a short film. Um, using, um, private, uh, intellectual, private rights.

[00:27:10] Mariano Bosaz: So when you see all these things, um. My personal take is to try to learn how to use these tools. These are at the end of the day tools and technologies and that will help you make your job in a better, more efficient way, just like every tool should do, um, because it’s gonna be better to be prepared.

[00:27:38] Mariano Bosaz: Rather than to resist again. And we, we’ve seen this with other technologies, so I remember having conversations in the two thousands with people saying, I’m not sure I need to have device always in my pocket to check all the time. And then suddenly, um, we have phones everywhere. Unless you don’t want to be connected and live in the middle of somewhere.

[00:28:04] Mariano Bosaz: Um, and, and one more article. This is from Fortune. No. Um, they inter, they made a survey with, to 6,000 executives across the US, Europe, and Australia. And they said that there is a massive adoption of AI in companies. Now, 70% of the companies reported that they’re actively using AI. Now, despite the adoption, what they’re saying that over 80% of these executives reported no impact on their company’s productivity, uh, employment levels or profit margins to date.

[00:28:42] Mariano Bosaz: So again, short term. The numbers are showing new creation of roles. They’re showing, um, new skills that are required because the roles are asking you to use AI. Um, and, and we’re seeing companies investing and proactively doing it. In the, in, in the document, they talk about the solo paradox, which is basically that there is a J curve effect, which means in the beginning you don’t see the returns, and then you’re gonna start seeing them growing very quickly.

[00:29:13] Mariano Bosaz: So now it’s the time to jump on board and understand how to use these tools, you know. And if there are better ways to do things, like why would you spend an hour writing an email when someone else can help you write it in one minute? No. Um, why would you attend a meeting and spend one hour listening to things that are not maybe so relevant when you can send a bot to do it?

[00:29:34] Mariano Bosaz: Um, so all, all these tools, um, I think are good. Equipments you should have on your belt, uh, to become, uh, very attractive for companies looking for talent. No.

[00:29:49] Tessa Burg: Yeah. Yeah. I think even if the AI wave and the AI evolution and revolution, if you will, is different from all the other technology waves, what people have to do now is still the same.

[00:30:09] Tessa Burg: Which is get curious, learn get, learn new skills and start using it and start moving forward and embrace, because I remember like similar questions when I first started as a front end developer and I was working at a company and I wanted to expand our digital department, and they said they weren’t sure if the internet was gonna be a thing and they didn’t want.

[00:30:40] Tessa Burg: To follow some that could be a trend. And you know, AI is not a trend. It’s going to be the new way in which the world communicates in which the new way in which we do our work, the new way in which we connect, find products, have things delivered to us. It may be so different because it touches every single aspect of our life personally and professionally.

[00:31:07] Tessa Burg: But what you have to do with it right now in the moment is not question whether or not I should use it, whether or not I should care about it. Is this better than that? It’s you have to start and you have to look at what is, what are the things that I do today that are commodity that anyone can do?

[00:31:23] Tessa Burg: Because if you are doing something that a lot of other people are doing, then that’s a commodity. And if you wanna do what you say in the book and transform. That’s the level that you’ll have to want to aspire to is how do I em embrace my humanness, the emotional side, the physical connection that I can have with someone else that you know the bots and agents can’t have, and how do I start thinking in transformative ways as opposed to continuing to do commodity level activities.

[00:31:54] Mariano Bosaz: Totally agree. And I mean, going back to, to the book, no, that would be to have a digital mindset. Does it mean your analog mindset is useless? No, not at all. Um, also a very tactical comment. These technologies for now, they require to be supervised. So you can write an email and send it to your boss. But you have to read it before, no, for two reasons.

[00:32:22] Mariano Bosaz: For two reasons. One, it might have some, uh, errors. Um, the second reason is you can add an aspect that the intelligence is not gonna have, um, that might relate to a conversation you have with him. Some things you have in your mind, some vision, um, at the moment. Uh, these technologies, as I’m saying, they’re helping you as an additional intelligence that might be superior.

[00:32:50] Mariano Bosaz: Might not, might have more memory, might not have more memory, but definitely they will not have, um, an infinite amount of data or the power to create something related to a conversation you have with your boss. Not, not for now. Um, so. I wouldn’t be too worried about the long-term future, these discussions that come public with Ellen about the universal income that we are gonna need because no one will have an employment, uh, or that everything is gonna be free.

[00:33:27] Mariano Bosaz: Um, I think for, for those discussions, uh, we definitely need the global leaders and the best brains in the world that they’re already involved in these conversations. To understand where we want to take humans. But for the short term, I think these, these are just technologies and the, the sooner you embrace them, the sooner you have your analog mindset and digital mindset working together, the more successful you’re gonna be able to to operate.

[00:33:53] Mariano Bosaz: Um, this led me to other few important things, not that relate to the advertisement industry. Um, if you apply digital mindset to. How brands engage with people. Um, basically the process is quite simple. I mean, and, and like Mark Twain says, no, history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Um, so when, when you look at what always happened with digital and this technology is that it goes, it disrupt an industry.

[00:34:29] Mariano Bosaz: So it first started with media. So for media companies, I remember the internet became a threat. Because newspapers used to fund their business 30% with the cost of them buying the newspaper, 30% with advertisement, and 30% with, um, classifieds. And then the Craiglists of the world appeared where you could offer your product instead of paying a newspaper, just publishing it for free.

[00:34:56] Mariano Bosaz: Uh, then newspapers went crazy because they were getting disrupted. And so then other companies started to get disrupted from the automobile with Tesla, from um, um, B2B businesses and distribution like we were talking about. And I think now we’re reaching a point where the disruption is human. No. Um, and we’re facing a moment in time where very soon is gonna be very hard to distinguish something that was created by human and something that was created by, um.

[00:35:29] Mariano Bosaz: By a bot or a machine. So if you’re looking at that, what, what should be your, your approach and in, in my opinion, first of all, if you’re on the production side, you should work in two fronts. One, to make that type of content the most insightful possible, using tools that will help you get insights that are not only focus groups or some information that some companies with panels will have.

[00:35:58] Mariano Bosaz: Um, the second thing is you’re probably gonna need data to understand your consumers. And this is something that I’ve been advocating for very long. Some companies question themselves and they say, should I have data about consumers or should I, I go and talk to people and companies that have data about my consumers and they can tell me, uh, what, what are their insights?

[00:36:24] Mariano Bosaz: Um, and the reality is that you should have both. The one you can buy in the market your competitor can buy. So if you want to get data about your consumers and you go and you purchase it from a third party company, well your competitor also have access to that. So you should have some data that no one else have.

[00:36:45] Mariano Bosaz: And you should understand the insights of your consumers, combining that data that exists in the public together with the data that you only have. And that way you turn data into a competitive advantage. Um, so that’s specific things I would do, but on the other hand, I would also work. On what is my value proposition from the beginning of engagement until the end?

[00:37:11] Mariano Bosaz: And I talk about the book when I distinguish engagement versus involvement? No. To me, engagement is a vanity metric. You can say, oh, this video has these millions of views, or this video has these millions of skips. No, whatever, how you wanna measure it. But, um, that’s how you engage with someone with a piece of content that they didn’t wanna see sometimes.

[00:37:35] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:36] Mariano Bosaz: Um, involvement is something that you can offer to people since the internet exists, so we’re talking like old times here. You could offer consumer something that goes beyond your product or your service. Okay, you could offer a service, but if your service doesn’t have a platform, and I mean a consumer platform, they can go and enjoy their time and do whatever they’re looking for and solve for the problems that they’re facing in a very seamless and smooth way.

[00:38:05] Mariano Bosaz: You’re missing a big opportunity. And if you’re not doing it, someone else will do it. Um. So involvement to me is more than engagement. Involvement is not. Vanity is equity. If you have a platform where people can involve with your brand, they can solve some of the problems that they have, either to buy your product, to get it delivered, to get some additional benefits, to get better content experiences, or whatever you want to offer them.

[00:38:38] Mariano Bosaz: Um, then you’re gonna be building equity. You’re gonna bring more value to your company. Um, so I think, um, this is an example of, um, what’s happening with, with, um, the advertisement industry specifically. So you shouldn’t only think, how do I make this video in a more productive way? You should also think, what are the opportunities that these technology is bringing to me in order to have the.

[00:39:04] Mariano Bosaz: People engaged and involved with my brand since the first time they see it until they purchase it and afterwards, no. Um, and, and if you look at the pressure that advertisement has as an industry, it’s even affecting, uh, artificial intelligence platforms. Uh, so, Zoë Hitzig, she was one, um, high executive from OpenAI who quit.

[00:39:31] Mariano Bosaz: Because she was saying that, um, OpenAI and ChatGPT should not have ads. Yeah, because it’s probably the large, the largest private emotions database. No, I read an article yesterday that people are using a AI tools for a lot of, um, conversations on emotional feelings and, uh, almost like a therapist, like, um, psychologist.

[00:39:58] Tessa Burg: Oh yeah, I’m doing it.

[00:40:00] Mariano Bosaz: Yeah. So they were-

[00:40:01] Tessa Burg: Trying to become a better parent.

[00:40:03] Mariano Bosaz: Yeah. So, but they were saying, so you shouldn’t put ads there. Now why? OpenAI considering putting ads? Well, because the advertisement industry was not able to evolve the model. No. And it stayed interruptive. It’s a lot of money and it’s funding that these companies need in order to cover their costs.

[00:40:21] Mariano Bosaz: But there are a lot of examples that could be taken as flashes from the future or where this is heading. Um, if you look at YouTube, YouTube offers a premium, uh, service with no ads. Um, and those numbers keep growing year after year? No, uh, Spotify, if you have the premium account, no ads. Um, if, if you look at, um, other companies, no, like Disney or, uh, even Lego, the brick company, they moved from doing a 30-second ad.

[00:40:58] Mariano Bosaz: To doing a two hours movie or a series in partnership with Marvel and DC so. There are ways to evolve this. The always discussion about Nike Running Club, um, no. Coca-Cola has Coco in Japan. It’s a platform where you can order the, the beverage, you can purchase it using a Coca-Cola app experience that’s involving consumers.

[00:41:23] Mariano Bosaz: That’s not engagement. That’s a different way of. Of doing advertisement and it’s probably opening a door to go away from something that consumers don’t want to see. Okay. One of the most click buttons on the internet is skip ad. That means people don’t want to see those things that you’re trying to show them.

[00:41:44] Mariano Bosaz: So I’ll tell you an example specific on advertisement. Um, people saw this? No. There was an article I remember from a university, I think it was from Melbourne, saying that the attention span of consumers went down, this is like 2019, um, to six seconds. And then there were a lot of companies that were saying, okay, good piece of information.

[00:42:07] Mariano Bosaz: I’m gonna move the length of my ads from 30 seconds to five. Also because they’re very expensive. So every year having a second to show something, especially in the Super Bowl, I put this in a book, costs a lot of money, you know? So like 7 million, um, I think it was this year for, for just few seconds. So how do you.

[00:42:31] Mariano Bosaz: Take that approach with an analog mindset is exactly that way. You would say, oh, attention span is six seconds, so I’m gonna do content for five seconds. Some are gonna be very creative, some are gonna be very transactional. Um, and then you see people trying to do a video like squeezing five seconds and Alex, everyone talking quickly.

[00:42:49] Mariano Bosaz: Yeah. You know, to squeeze it in five seconds before you skip. Um, but the reality is that you were watching something else and now you see that and you want to skip it. So, I know BMW did a very good one saying from zero to 60 miles before you can skip this ad. Which is less than five seconds. So that was a smart one way to do it.

[00:43:10] Mariano Bosaz: And it’s also a free ad because you don’t pay if you put only five seconds. But another trend is to say, okay, so people don’t want to see this. What do they want to see? Um, and again, people don’t care if what they want to see was made by. A bot or made by a human? I think they care about what they see.

[00:43:35] Mariano Bosaz: Let me correct themself. It’s even worse because they do care if it was done by a bot. And I think sometimes they react negatively. Um, but at the end of the day, technology is more of a commodity for people. I would say like consumers don’t know and they don’t really care where some of these platforms are created.

[00:43:56] Mariano Bosaz: Like where is Google built or developed? What technologies are they using or where is Open AI built? I think that’s a discussion that entertains some engineers. But not on average. Consumers, they wouldn’t care. They just care that when they ask for something, what they get in return is good. That when they engage in an experience, what they see touches their tension points, their emotions solves their problems.

[00:44:20] Mariano Bosaz: When they go to a platform, they expect it to work, to be easy to use, to solve a specific need that they have. Not so much who was doing it, you know, so.

[00:44:31] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:31] Mariano Bosaz: Um, I think these distinctions are important. Um, and I, and I think hopefully illustrates why. I mean, the book could be a bridge between a digital mindset and an analog that you will still need.

[00:44:44] Tessa Burg: Yeah. I can’t believe this, but we’re at time from over time, but this conversation has been so rich with insights and some important next steps that I think. Any leader at any level can take, and you said something that I just wanna emphasize because it’s so important. Not only do businesses all have access to the same kinds of data and that any, again, any leader at any level needs to look at data as a competitive advantage.

[00:45:18] Tessa Burg: And what your book really illustrates is when you can, when the times when you make that bridge over the transformation mindset. And imagine connecting in a way that you don’t today in a truly unique way that adds value, brings joy, has that emotional connection that is where you can get your own data and start to build up that competitive advantage.

[00:45:44] Tessa Burg: I think I see a lot of marketers get stuck in the analog mindset, and they’re only looking at the data that they can get today. And they overinvest and well, we already have a lot of data and now we have to go through this extremely expensive exercise of aggregating it or bringing it all together or putting in a data lake.

[00:46:07] Tessa Burg: And there are, like even in your commercial example, yes, there are times that you should do that, and data standardization and governance is extremely important, but in parallel. Today you have to start unlocking new possibilities to build owned data as a competitive advantage in ways that didn’t exist before in your business.

[00:46:32] Tessa Burg: And I think it’ll be like a huge miss if people don’t start doing both at the same time.

[00:46:39] Mariano Bosaz: Yeah. And if I can add one, one more thing, I know we’re on time.

[00:46:43] Tessa Burg: Yeah.

[00:46:43] Mariano Bosaz: But just one more thing that this triggered me. Um. And another example of an analog mindset versus a digital mindset,

[00:46:56] Mariano Bosaz: Why we’re doing things is not changing. Why no. How we’re doing it is changing. And the reason why I highlight that is because a typical analog mindset when they listen to this podcast and they hear, oh, so I need the market data available that some partners can give me, but I also need my unique pieces of data from consumers that I can only get.

[00:47:26] Mariano Bosaz: So no one else has it. Will then go to a meeting and say, we need to collect data.

[00:47:34] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:34] Mariano Bosaz: That’s the how. That’s the how, and a digital mindset will approach in a different way. Because first you need to answer why you’re doing this. Which will lead you to what you should do, which will lead you to how you should do it.

[00:47:55] Mariano Bosaz: I’ll give you a very easy example when you think of Tesla. Okay. And this is from a book from Francois Chaubard. He’s a professor in Stanford. I was lucky to be in his class, and he has a book very cool on AI for retail. I, I recommend it after they get mine. Uh, but that’s, that’s a very other good book to, to read.

[00:48:16] Mariano Bosaz: But, um. You know, Elon, and I’m actually also reading his book, not from Saxon, but basically he had this vision of self-driving cars and electrical, um, that could outperform any sport car. Um, and he started with a roaster and you can get on your own conclusions about where he’s at now, but in 2018. There were in the US 6.7 million car accidents.

[00:48:43] Mariano Bosaz: Okay. Um, and the vision with self-driving car was basically to reduce, reduce the number of accidents. That’s the why they do it, that’s the purpose. Uh, so in the fourth quarter in 2018, they recorded that one crash. Every, every 1.3 million miles driven. Were basically, um, when, when humans. Were driving. And then for drivers that were not using it, the number of crashes that they had was superior to that.

[00:49:18] Mariano Bosaz: So in 2018, how they did it was collecting data from cars that were connected to the internet. So they first answer why, which is reducing the number of crashes we have on the road. That answered, what are we going to do? Why you were doing it, the how, then it became simpler. They just needed to have information no one else had.

[00:49:44] Mariano Bosaz: Because in the book, they compare it with Waymo. Waymo is the self-driving cars that, uh, Google has in, in the area of San Francisco. Um, they didn’t have as much information as Tesla. Tesla had all its cars connected, collecting data about what people do when they drive about roads, about weather. Where to put the cameras, and that way they were able to reduce the number of accidents that were on the road with self-driving autopilot.

[00:50:11] Mariano Bosaz: So I think that’s a digital mindset. Starting with the why, then what, then how otherwise an analog mindset will be like, okay, now we need to collect data. What data do we get? Well, it really depends on what you wanna do, why you are doing it.

[00:50:25] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm. Well that was perfect. Thanks so much. For joining us today, and I hope all the listeners go and check out the book A Digital Mindset.

[00:50:36] Tessa Burg: You can. We’ll post a link to it on our website along with all the other episodes of Leader Generation. You can find that at modop.com/podcast. So you can click on The Van Guardian. Mariano, thanks again for being our guest and if people wanna reach you directly, where can they find you?

[00:50:55] Mariano Bosaz: Thank you, uh, Tessa, and I hope everyone enjoyed the conversation.

[00:51:01] Mariano Bosaz: I really did. Uh, they can find me at marianobosaz.com, uh, my own website, and we can engage and chat over there.

[00:51:09] Tessa Burg: Awesome. Well, until next time, have a great rest of the week.

[00:51:13] Mariano Bosaz: Thank you. Same to you and everyone.