What Actually Scales A Marketing Team With Erik Huberman

We cut through AI hype to show what actually scales: disciplined ops, brand-led content, and a practical framework for awareness, nurturing, and trust. Eric Huberman shares Hawk Media’s scaling lessons, where AI helps, where it hurts, and how to build a moat in a noisy market.

• LLM shifts to persona-first, Q&A-led visibility
• AI as acceleration, not strategy replacement
• Hiring and tooling only with clear business cases
• Lean tech stack choices that reduce complexity
• Brand as the moat in a copycat software world
• Branded entertainment and YouTube as growth engines
• Limits of synthetic audiences and AI-looking creative
• Deepfakes, eroding trust, and authentic messaging
• The Hawk Method: awareness, nurturing, trust
• Channels that scale for B2B and B2C performance

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Guest Contact Information:

Website: erikhuberman.com
Instagram: instagram.com/erikhuberman
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/erikhuberman
YouTube: youtube.com

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Transcript

Setting The Stage: AI And Marketing

SPEAKER_00 0:02

This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing. Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential? Let's get started.

Eric’s Background And Hawk Media

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Howdy, and welcome back to another funfold episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I'm your host, Matt Bertram. As always, we're talking about different strategies in the digital marketing space and how to optimize in this new layer of AI optimization and LLM visibility. So I wanted to bring on somebody that has uh just done it all and has built AI tools. Um, he's grown with data different strategies, he's spoken, he's worked with some of the major brands. And for all of you agencies out there listening, he's been able to scale his business quite quickly. So maybe we'll get into how he's been able to do that because I know that there are a lot of agency owners out there that everything's a moving target. There's a lot of bespoke work. Um and uh, you know, how do you scale? So I know that that's a question that that people have. Uh Eric Hubberman with Hawk Media. Welcome to the show, Eric. Yeah, thank you for having me. Awesome. So, you know, super impressed with kind of like everything that you've done. Um, if you want to credentialize yourself a little bit more, I'm happy to uh, you know, give you some time to kind of share your your journey or your origin story.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Uh yeah, I mean can make a long story short, uh, at this point, we build Hawk Media because we saw how broken the marketing ecosystem was. I mean, there's 90,000 marketing agencies in the US, and I'd state, you know, pretty confidently that 99% of them have no idea what they're doing. So the idea was to build a team that is the best at what they do, but also easy to work with because the generally the few good agencies out there won't work with the small and medium businesses. So at this point, we're about 220 people. Uh, we currently manage marketing for about 600 brands. Uh, companies growing, been fun. We also invest a lot. So we have our venture fund, we're on our second fund, uh, focused on marketing tech, e-commerce tech. Between our funds and our balance sheet, we probably invested in 115 companies. Um, and then uh yeah, have a financing arm and have built our own AI software as well and very tech forward and constantly growing.

LLM Reality Check And SEO Shifts

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Awesome. So tell me kind of how you view the market currently. I mean, there was quite a big shift uh a couple of years ago when LLMs came onto the scene. And you know, there's a lot of debate whether it's like, you know, just better SEO gets you visibility. But the argument that that I seem to identify with most is like this technology was not around five or six years ago at all. So you may be getting to a similar result, but how do you get to that result? The mechanism is completely different. And how buyer behavior is changing uh is dramatically like shifting the landscape. And so um, you know, and then and then really leveraging some of this, like I guess, machine learning, AI intelligence and ads and everything else, you know, it is a moving target and and things things are changing. And there's been a fan out from Google and Facebook of where people are uh finding new information. So, so I mean everything's kind of reset. And so I'm curious how how y'all are approaching that.

Interns With GPUs: AI’s Real Value

Scaling Teams And Avoiding Bloat

SPEAKER_02 3:23

Yeah. So the nice thing is Google is actually capturing a lot of it with Gemini. So there, I think, you know, if I were a betting man, I think they're actually gonna come out the winner in this. Uh OpenAI's metrics and economics just are tough. Maybe I'll eat my words, but I'm not, I'm pretty bearish on their longevity. Um, I think it was they were the first mover, but so is Friendster. So is oh so are a lot of companies you don't hear about anymore. So um I also think it's completely overhyped what this stuff is gonna do. I think in the short term, AI is as overhyped as it could possibly be. In the long term, I think it's probably somewhat legitimate. I think guys like Elon Musk and um Sam Altman are way overpromoting it. Uh, the idea that we're not gonna have any capitalism in five years and everyone's just gonna hang out is absurd. Um, again, realize that ChatGPT like really started proliferating almost four years ago now. So like it's like we're the in another five years, it's not gonna completely take over capitalism. Like that's not a thing. Um, but it it's definitely causing some efficiencies, some changes. Six percent of people now go to, or I should say six percent of organic traffic comes from LOMs now. It's not 50, it's six. So it's happening, it's a thing, but it's a very small piece. Now, we we invested in tools and really leaned into optimization around LOMs early. So we're doing it for hundreds of brands and it's working great and it's fun, but it's like it's not gonna make or break a business yet. Now, I think over time it'll get more and more prolific and it'll probably be beneficial, but right now it's just a nice, I wouldn't say it's nice to have. It's one of many things you should be doing with your marketing. But again, you're not gonna build an entire company off of just showing up in ChatGPT for a certain search. Plus, the big difference there, like it's not just good SEO, because the difference between SEO and now is one of the biggest differences is LLMs are trying to cater it to the individual audience. So you have to deal with persona targeting on top of the traditional SEO side of things, which is like every like in SEO, we all see the same thing that we all see the same result for the same search. With LLMs, it's trying to please you individually. And so it's a very different tactic there. Plus, it's way more question and answer driven than fact-driven. So you have to model it so that it can, all it's doing is regurgitating what's out there already. It's looking for high authority, question and answers. So when someone asks that question, they can say, well, this question was asked on this site, and we believe it's true. So we're gonna give the same answer. Like this is just replication and it's not true intelligence whatsoever. And so that's why celebrities are so bent out of shape where it's you know digesting all their work and then creating like then when you see AI created music, it's like, well, no, it digested a bunch of existing music and then just regurgitated it, like you asked. Didn't create anything.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah, no, I so I I think that LLMs, uh, the application in different areas of your business is what's transforming the business, right? Like, so if you take like the tech debt that's happening with automation and you bring automation forward, like people are calling that AI, but then you actually add that agentic layer on top of the automation where where it has some agency and a narrow capacity to do things, I feel like that's um that's where I think the real like value driver or the leverage is is coming from.

Tech Stack Choices That Actually Scale

SPEAKER_02 6:45

It is, and I agree with you. Uh, it's just I think the the value that that provides is being overstated. Where it's like, I would argue that it's basically like having an army of 17-year-old interns. Like, yeah, you can find value in that, you can find efficiency in that, but like you need adult supervision, it needs help, it needs guidance. And I don't think that that's rapidly going to change. I think that it's gonna improve. I think we're gonna see things better and better. And it's like it is impressive how fast it's improving, but I don't think we're gonna get to the point where it's just like, just let it go, it'll be fine. Like, I don't think that's coming anytime soon.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

The the the bot economy, right? As they're promoting.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Buy bot talking to your bot isn't, I don't think like I listen, I think the early adopters and the people that it's kind of like it reminds me a little bit about when blockchain got really popular and everybody was throwing blockchain at every like they're throwing the solution of blockchain at places where they didn't even have a problem. That's what the everything's agent agentic now, and it's like, but that doesn't really help now. And again, we use a lot of different uh AI technology here that we find practical. But to me, it's like great. It's like I've had the same feeling of innovation when we install a great piece of software. It's not like it's like all of a sudden, like, you know, it's changed our entire business overnight. It's shifted just as much as like when we finally, you know, got on a good CRM or we ended up with you know a good billing system. It's like these things are helpful and it's really interesting, and I think it'll continue to be. But again, I worry about the hype level because you know, I just got off a uh venture and finance call, not for our own company, but in general, sort of a macro call. And it's like watching where things are hyped and where they're valued right now, it's like this doesn't end well.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah, I I'm I'm starting to hear that as well. And and certainly uh the chat GPT model, uh he, you know, they're looking for some money, and it's gonna be interesting the the quality of service where where that's gonna go.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Well, and the economics don't make sense. It's not getting cheaper to use AI, it's getting more expensive. So Moore's Law isn't keeping up, they're not getting cheaper commute compute, and so at some point, the whatever they charge, 30 bucks a month or whatever, charged at GPT, doesn't end up making sense because they're literally losing money on every inquiry. And then all of a sudden the economics catch up. And instead of it sent you saying, Whoa, I replaced it with a bunch of junior people with this hundred dollar a month tool, it's like, well, now that tool is five grand and it doesn't look as valuable anymore now, does it?

Build Vs Buy And Data Moats

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Yeah, so I would love to kind of um take a step behind the curtain a little bit of like how you were able to scale your agency and then how you've been able to layer in some of these uh AI technologies or just advancements, like whether it be software, because because I'm certainly uh in the process of learning Python right now, and it's giving me a lot of different kind of capabilities and access from a programming level that from a marketing level I didn't have access to. And I kind of feel like AI is just that that that next layer on top of that. And and I'll just be interesting to see how you were able to scale your agency and like where you inserted different pieces of technology as you grew.

Custom Tools, GPTs, And SaaS Moats

Brand As The New Software Moat

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Yeah, it's it's funny. It's it's kind of the same way you need to look at, and this is actually something I've really become aware of. And it actually came from watching more politics and government and then realizing we all have the propensity. Companies have a propensity to spend more and more and more and more money, just like government. Like you build an infrastructure, they're gonna spend it. You give a budget, they're gonna spend it. Um, I'm trying to think of how to say this without calling them out, but I talked to a manager the other day about how the team felt bloated. And it was like, hey, like there does this seems to be way too many people here for what needs to be done. And his response was like, Oh, yeah, I told the frankly, the person and topic, like, this is gonna be short-lived. Like, you know, this we didn't need this person that long, but I can't believe it lasted two years. And then part of me is like, Mother, are you kidding me? You just said that to me. Like, you wasted two years of this money that you actually didn't think we needed. But like on the other side, it's like, well, that's on me because I didn't challenge it, because you have to push back. Because you know, this is going to what your question is, which is I, you know, what I like to do is basically push this to the limit until we find a breaking point and then bring people on because that way you don't really ever like unless you really screw up, people are gonna have job security. Like there, there's a lot of work to be done for those people. It's when people don't have work to do that the job security goes away. And I don't think people realize it. When it's really easy at your job and things are really chill, that's not a good thing. That that that you know, they're gonna wake up at some point and go, why do we have all these people? And that's what's happened the past couple of years at all these big tech companies. Um, same thing goes for software. I get tons and tons of requests to add software to our company all the time. And the amount of, I guess, tech debt or whatever you want to call it that accrues because all of a sudden you've got a tool for everything, you're spending thousands of dollars on things, and you just go, all of a sudden you look at it and go, We don't need all this. Like this, you know, like the easy example, because I will call them out because I do not like them. The two platforms that I really didn't have a good time with NetSuite and Salesforce, two tools that are so overcomplicated and so overexpensive. And like we went from QuickBooks and HubSpot to Netsuite and Salesforce thinking we had to quote grow up. Yeah. And I spent three years trying to get out of those contracts because HubSpot and QuickBooks were so much easier to use, so much more efficient. I had to scale up my finance team to like seven people from three, and now we're back to three because we didn't need all those people when we're on QuickBooks. And my company's grown, to be clear, since we made the switch there and back significantly, but it turned out we didn't need all that overcomplicated. So you end up with these, you know, ridiculous tools that are hard to implement that you walk into these long-term contracts, and you know, I don't have a lot of, I think we're getting away from that. That's where AI thinks really gonna hurt because you're gonna get much more nimble and flexible tools that can do exactly what you want them to do versus having to buy into these massive ecosystems that you are completely unnecessary. Because it to their credit, to NetSuite and Salesforce credit, trying to build an enterprise tool for everyone's really, really, really hard and near impossible. So it kind of comes with the territory, but both to answer again, answering your question directly, both with people and with software, I've really tried to find like we only do it when there's a really solid business case on why bringing that person or that software on is going to make us more money. Because it's really easy to say, oh, we're gonna cause relief. It's like relief at the for the sake of what? If we're not causing relief, like even if the argument is we have to give employees this tool or they're gonna burn out and we're gonna lose them. Well, I can make a business case for that. What is the cost of replacing them, et cetera? Great, retention is a cost. Like, let's figure out what that's worth. But that there has to be a business case, or it's really easy just to go, sure, sure, sure, sure, while you're doing well, and then all of a sudden you've you're deaf by a thousand paper cuts and you've hired a bunch of people and a bunch of softwares that you don't need and it's all out of your pocket.

Demand Trends: LLM Optimization And Entertainment

SPEAKER_01 13:24

So I have a couple follow-up questions to that. So it it sounds like you started exploring like like a ERP layer, right? Of like bringing every everything together. And and and we've we've explored a couple different um tools, and and there's there's some freemium tools out there or like you know, uh community tools out there that that do a lot of this, and then you can develop on top of it. Um and you know, there's there's of course tools like go high level that kind of you know uh aggregate a lot of these tools together like that. So um what is your viewpoint of of utilizing at an agency of your size, like what does that technology later look like? And like maybe what is the tech stack that you're operating from? And and you you shared QuickBooks and and uh HubSpot, um, which I I think do a lot, right? HubSpot quite quite does a lot, and they're pretty sticky too, right? Like once you get in to different components and then what's interesting is we left them.

Live Shopping’s Cultural Limits

AI In Paid Ads And Analytics

SPEAKER_02 14:25

The that was probably one of the first software things we did that we like my entire team was excited to re-onboard. Like teams hate new software, they hate changes. When I said I went from sales first to HubSpot, everyone's like, Thank God I should get paid for this. Um but uh yeah, in terms of tech stack, productive for project management and time management. Um I'm trying to think what else we're using. Uh we're switching to Charge B, I think we're negotiating with right now for billing. And I'm saying these things because these are re like this is a good example of like frankly, this is where SaaS, I think, loses me. Our other billing software, uh, what's it called? Biller Genie decided to like triple our cost year over year. It was like no. Like, thank you. You just opened up the competitive landscape for us to go do our research, and now we found something way better. And like, this isn't how we you want to be disloyal to us and treat us like shit after we, you know, signed contracts with you? Like, no, we're not doing that. So looked for opened up the you know, sort of uh world and you know, charge B, we actually had a relationship with, and their software is great. So we're probably you know, assuming they work with us on the pricing and we're going through that right now, we'll probably switch to that, and it's a better solution. And then uh, I mean, zip recruiter for recruiting along with LinkedIn. Um what else? I'm trying to think tech stack-wise. We have our own system called Hawk AI that's digesting about 6,000 companies marketing media and revenue data in real time so that we can actually use on the performance marketing side, benchmark in real time, know what's working, what's not. That's been our own in-house build for tool that's just we can't find someone else that can do that because they don't have all the data and we don't really want to give someone else all the data. Um I'm a big, you know, rent over build for the most part, because unless you're building something to go to market, you're building a software company, it's such a massive amount of investment. Like I have not spent money, more money on anything in my life other than my own AI software. My house, my like there, there is not a single line I guess payroll in general, but like for like an asset, that is the biggest thing I've spent money on.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

So um for for orchestration of the assets, like uh like HR, like bringing people on, like scaling up projects. Um that was just like more of a personal question. How are how are you managing that? Like what what is there a tool or a platform that you're using to help do that quickly? To to onboard people and to manage like resources on on accounts.

Synthetic Audiences And Real Tests

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Yeah, so productive is part of that. That's a project management tool. Um, in terms of training and onboarding, we have trainual is another tool we use. Um, they're great. Uh what else do we use on that side? Uh we have all sorts of bots now we've built internally that are like so you can inquiry quick questions about like, hey, what do we do here? Have we worked in this? How do we handle this? Like, that's due. We use right now we use Pandadoc uh for designing. Yeah. Um, I mean, yeah, Google Suite is a we also use.

AI Creative: Authenticity Or Bust

SPEAKER_01 17:28

So got it. Cool, cool. Yeah, and I think that one of the things that you mentioned previously, which was super interesting, it and that's what I'm seeing is uh we're we're not a development agency, right? We're we're EWR's marketing agency as well. And so um we've started to build like little custom tools to do different things. We built like custom GPTs to to query uh different accounts and um uh internal resources as far as like how do we do what? And that that that has been, I think, a game changer. And like we were able to mock stuff up pretty quickly, like get to MVP pretty quickly. And it's given us like the more we learn about AI, the the wider we can reach as far as like a T-shaped um approach. And and we're starting to build all kinds of little tools. And to your point, I feel like you can you can spin up a tool that is customized to your needs pretty quickly if you're if you don't have like if you're not going to market and you don't have a lot of throughput, right? Like it's just like essentially like you're trying to uh run a script on on what you're doing. Yep. I mean, you can build all kinds of stuff uh today. And uh how do you think that that's gonna affect the landscape of these big SaaS companies and these big um recurring revenue?

Deepfakes, Trust, And Media Fatigue

SPEAKER_02 18:44

Yeah, it so I we we talk a lot about this on our venture side uh because we do a lot of investing in early stage software. I think we're in a time now where software is be like it's had a moat for a long time where it's like you can't just replicate someone else's software, it's really hard. And like now, I think it's really easy quickly. So to me, brand is gonna hit software like never before, and it's gonna be really interesting because you know it's the same way. Why is Hawk defensible? Well, where it's not just about your product. You can hire, again, there's 90,000 uh uh uh marketing agencies in the country. Well, why are we defensible? Because we have a lot of credibility, we've done it, we've been very successful, we have a big brand. We've built a brand in the space, and so we're signing, you know, 50, 60 new clients every month right now, and we're getting we have that throughput and we're able to handle it. And we we have a good reputation. So, because of that, we continue to build and continue to grow, and it's been great. Um, I think that goes to software now too, where it's like it's not the the benefit, the value is not going to be in the actual software anymore, other than it delivers and it's good, and like it's a good piece of software that functions. But I think brand is gonna take go to market and brand is gonna be everything. What's your distribution strategy? What's your go to market strategy? What's your marketing strategy? And doing all that in a way. That hits the market well because I think it's going to get so noisy in software that if you don't do that, you're you like if you do that well, you're gonna have a moat because no one's gonna want to deal with figuring out which like it's it happens to us too. It's like if someone built the next AI-driven HubSpot, like I've been pitched on that 50 times. I don't want to take the risk on any of them. There's too many people with the same pitch, so you just don't touch it and let let everyone else be the early adopter there before they break something. And so in that moment, HubSpot's got way more strength because nobody wants to try any of these thousand competitors. Same thing as like a t-shirt company. Once you find the t-shirt you like, you kind of want to stick with it and not deal with all these other guys. Like once in a while, and that's a low barrier. You're talking about you know, 10, 50, 100 hours, whatever you spend on a t-shirt, like not a big deal. Like, but you most people stick to once they get over that hump, they stick to it.

Win With Trust And Consistency

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Yeah, you know, one of the things that you just said that got me thinking, and I I do agree with you on the brand, um, is is really uh the pendulum swinging back. I don't know if you can kind of see. I I need to set up my cameras a little bit better, but there's a a mad a madman poster back there. And and I think that brand brand is is really coming back into vogue because I don't think that what the LMs are producing, unless you're a really good operator uh and you and you really know what good looks like, you can get to something. So I think that creativity is going to be there for sure. What are because you have such a wide view of like the demand in the market and and you're onboarding so many clients, where do you see the market going as far as needs? Like if you were to categorize, you know, you know, paid ads and uh paid social or SEO or website, like where where do you see the market kind of flowing to right now? Well, where is it flowing to or where should it, I guess? Uh where where is the demand right now? And then then then if you want to project out, tell me what you see.

Actionable Framework: The Hawk Method

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Whatever you whatever you want to call it, GEO, AEO, AIEO, like optimization for LOMs is definitely where people are in like most intrigued right now. But where I'm trying to push them because I think it's where it's going to be even more uh competitive, is uh branded entertainment. Uh I'm you know, as a performance marketer, I think like we have such a limited amount of uh like great content. We have cheap content, tons like infinite amounts of cheap content on TikTok and reels and everything. But in terms of like true thoughtful entertainment, I think that you know, you've got Netflix, you've got these platforms, Amazon, you've got Hulu, you've got these platforms, but the amount that's coming out versus like, I don't know, I feel like when I was a kid, there was a new movie every week or two that you wanted to go see, and now it's few and far between. There's still movies releasing, but a lot of them suck. And you go into Netflix and it's a lot of cheap entertainment, and it's like there's an opportunity to own your space from an entertainment point of view, because distribution's been proliferated. That if you can capture that audience, like, you know, I've got CNBC on in the background, someone is gonna come along and build a much better financial news outlet than CNBC, and it's gonna be attached to a financial or a fintech company. Like that's where I think it marketing is going. And I think it can be at all scales. It's not just, you know, Robinhood launching CNBC as an example. It could also be the next, you know, running shoe company just running, yeah, you know, giving running tips and cool running content, but be there for their specific audience, they become a go-to for those rabid fans of running. Like it's I I I'm all about engaging above and beyond a purchase decision when you're building a company. And I think if you do that, it's hard because the uh performance metrics aren't there, but I think it'll pay off. And I think that's why it'll pay off even more, is because so many people will be kind of stuck with their head up their ass about like, well, I can't track it on a spreadsheet, so they won't do it.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Yeah, I mean, Google at the beginning of this year pivoted hard to YouTube. And I've seen uh starting uh a lot of shows and and people kind of set up their formats of building content around that as well as certainly advertising. And to your point, I mean, that's where, you know, uh like Vemo3 or whatever you want to call it from Google and and some of these other tools uh on the um on the AI side, it's interesting.

Practical Channels For Scalable Growth

SPEAKER_02 24:12

Yeah, the AA side. You gotta be careful with that stuff. Like the AI content, it looks like AI, so it immediately kind of hurts your trust factor and your authenticity. So unless it fits and it's something that like fits your brand, yeah. I think a lot of people are gonna hurt themselves with that too, because authenticity is a big part of why you want to create content, is build that trust.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah, I I guess I I've I've been following um some of the like uh Bigfoot and uh and uh like uh Starship Trooper uh chronicles and stuff. And and I I think that they're they're building uh such demand that they can uh use product placement and promote things and um you know and and so I think there's gonna be a proliferation of that for sure. I I do agree with you. And then like Gary Vee is talking about like live streaming, like selling is happening around the world. What are what are your thoughts around?

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Around the world, it hasn't caught on in the US. I think people are so used to on demand here. It's like, you want me to be on your time to buy something? It I we've looked at many, because again, the venture side, like we have to look at all these trends, part of investing thesis too, and a marketing thesis. Like, is live shopping gonna help our clients? You know, TikTok's shoving it down people's throats, but it's not been incredibly effective in the US. TikTok shop is, but the live shopping aspect of it, people are fine to watch it later. They don't care that they're tapping in, you know, you can do drops and things like that, but those are limited. And so it it I don't know that live shopping in the US maybe it will catch on at some point, but it's it and it's huge in Asia, but it just hasn't fit the culture here. And maybe again, maybe that'll change, but kind of to your point about like where is the demand? The demand, the demand from the consumer side is not we need more live shopping.

Resources, Book, And Free Audit

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah. So so just to keep this theme of AI, let's let's move into like how you see AI enhancing because uh paid ads. I've I feel like paid ads just there's been a shift in how how they want you to give the input. You know, we've we've been having some issues with brands where you know it's manipulating uh the imagery or even like the sizing on Facebook wasn't like perfect and it would cut off some stuff. Like things are just changing so rapidly. I'm curious uh how how you're viewing the the AI is kind of getting into everything, uh, how how it's affecting paid ads for you.

Closing And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 26:33

Uh paid ads, I mean, a little bit of help on like replication, where like we know we need to build out a bunch of different ad sets with different variables. We can get help with that. There's a company called play.ai that we use, P-L-A-I. Um, and so they've been great. Um there's a lot of the analytics, like that's why we built Hawk AI, is now we can see like what are the benchmarks, where are we performing, where's the opportunity, and really quickly diagnose, which used to take us hours and hours, now is instant. So it's those kind of efficiencies where again, you like I I guess the metaphor of an army of 17-year-old interns, but that can work instantly. So the quality needs to be checked, but the outputs they're like that. So that's the part that's like you can save a lot of time on things that used to be really time suck, like really tedious, a huge time suck that you could have had a junior person do, and now you can just have AI do. And that's been again analytics work, replication work, uh, some research, deck making, presentation making, all these things are helpful. But it what's nice is it frees great people up to go more to do their highest and best use and actually execute great marketing, make great recommendations, communicate well, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yeah, I I would love to get your perspective. We've been starting to test out some tools that uh build synthetic audiences, and then you can run those ads again that, but we've had mixed results.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I've never like that's where in theory, awesome. In practice, bullshit. Like, and I've we've looked at investing in a few, we've looked at trying, we've tried a bunch. It's like, yeah, it'd be great, but it I guess this is also where not like inlet. I don't know how they ever replicate because it's not that complicated as to how they work, like to build it's complicated, but to understand it, it's like you're you're assuming based on LOM what the response is going to be based on these personas. Like, I get that. It's all assumptions until you actually run it. And to me, I'd rather just spend a little bit of money on some meta ads and see how they perform and see if people actually buy it. I I I've always hated, you know, uh what do you call them? Um, not sample groups, but uh like research groups, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Questionnaires and all that.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Yeah, all that shit. Like, because it's like they they never actually produce the answers that they're like legitimate answers. Like it's it's my favorite question people ask how much would you pay for this? Five people are gonna throw out whatever number they feel comfortable at the time, like whatever number's sitting in their wallet. Like it's like that doesn't, it's such a dumb thing. Like, just go spend five grand on meta ads, you'll learn everything you need to learn and move on. Like, don't run around, like it. These sample sample groups don't really tell you much. And I think this is just the AI version of the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Yeah, so I mean, we we work mostly with B2B and oil and gas and work here in Houston energy-wise. Um, but you work on a lot of the consumer side. I I and I haven't used these tools as much as I would like to, where you can use AI to take that shoe or take that product and put it in all kinds of different backgrounds and like have different um models or whatever hold it. It seems like from a creative standpoint, um, you know, if you're if you were doing big on shoots and stuff like that, this this expedites that and also it it brings down the cost to more editing, or have you not seen that these tools work that well yet?

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Exactly. It's the latter. It's they they look like AI. Now, for the right company in the right situation where like you're changing the color of the background or something, it can do a decent job. So there's some basics that it can do. But people like if you're selling shoes as an example, you can't get a real model to do this. You're using AI. I just saw it happen. Like I won't blow them up, but someone used AI yesterday in an ad that we didn't do, and that was sent to me, and it's they're like, This is falling completely dead. I'm like, yeah, because it's not real. And it's like, and you're not owning it, you tried to make it look real. Now, if you're making a cartoon in AI and you're doing something that's fun and like doesn't matter, it's not supposed to be real and authentic, then you're fine. But if you're trying to make it look like a real person, like it doesn't look like a real person. So it just looks like you're a wire, and that's a really bad precedent to set as an advertiser.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

So so I want to open that up. I think that that's a really interesting perspective uh that I would love to hear you talk more about is as people are getting exposed to AI, right? Whether it be ads, copy, like whatever posts, social media is just like uh prolific with all this AI stuff. Yeah, and you know, people are pumping out all kinds of content. And like, where do you see that trajectory going? Do you think that people accept it? Do you think people push back on it? Like, like, how do you think people respond to that over time?

SPEAKER_02 31:10

People are pushing back already. Now, I don't know what percentage of people push back, but I think it's like I kind of hate it. Like when I go, like, even when I go on Instagram and I see like a really cool uh nature scene or a really cool thing, and I'm like, whoa, and then I look at the comments and I'm and everyone's like, This is AI, and I go look it up, it's like it's AI. So even when you're at first able to fool me, I'm so annoyed because like you know, now it's like I saw, I don't know if you've heard of the blood waterfall in Antarctica. No, no, you like if you want to pull up a browser, like it is cool. And I had to go research for like five minutes because I'm like, this can't be real, because we're at this in this trust factor, and so you play with that the wrong way, you're gonna, and again, I'm thinking of this as a marketer and an advertiser. Yeah, break your audience's trust by using shit that's not real, and you don't do it in a way that's super transparent and authentic, you've really hurt your brand. Like, you know, my and my whole I wrote a book that's now taught in a bunch of universities about marketing called the Hawk Method. It's about the three pillars of marketing are awareness, nurturing, and trust. Trust is one of the three pillars. You knock out your trust in your audience, you're done. And so to me, like you showing people that you're gonna fake it by using AI and not using real people, to me, like again, sends a message that you couldn't get real people. It sends a message that you don't mind doing things that are dishonest. It's like now again, if you own it and you do it in a funny way, different. You use humor, you use again, it's instead of hiring someone to create one of those cartoon uh like for B2B for uh software, for example. A lot of people did those how-to videos, like this is why this software exists. And it was like the cartoon, it was really popular like six, seven years ago. You do that with AI, doesn't matter. Like if you're just replicating cartoons, maybe cartoon drawers are gonna have a hard time, but true, like you know, commercials with people being replaced by A, like it's not working very well for Coca-Cola. I know they think it is because they hit a lot of impressions. This is the funny thing, though, is Coca-Cola is celebrating their AI commercials because they said they got so much uh uh awareness and interaction into it. It's like people hated you for that. So, like, no, in a time when people are getting healthier and not drinking soda, and now you just broke their trust even more with this. Like, no, you did not do a good job.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

I I do feel like Budwezer is figuring it out, right? They're going back to their core market. Um exactly.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

And you deal with this. I mean, listen, I've been in a room with enough major CMOs to know, like, they have a a lot of them have a very inflated view of themselves and they think it is their job. I've heard it. They verbatim. I've heard a group of COs say it's our job to move the cultural conversation of the of Americans for American brands. And it's like, not really, your job is to sell beer or soda, actually, is your job. Not to like it's a and I hate I'm probably gonna piss off a couple of CMOs, but they probably aren't the right clients for me, anyways. Um, like at the end of the day, you're here to build a business, and I think a lot of them get stuck. And so when they get see these AI things, they think, well, I'm gonna be innovative and I'm gonna do something different. And it's like sometimes that's good when it serves the North Star of building your brand and selling your product. Like, that's why you build the brand, by the way, is so that people more people buy your product. That is what we're trying to do here, and so they lose a little sight of that and do things that yeah, run the wrong direction.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Now, now, just talking about kind of like deep fakes and and kind of that that arena, which can move markets. Uh, I remember there's some some things that people would put out, and I'm I'm starting to see it even more, and I have to like go check it, or like my wife will tell me things, and I'm like, that's not true.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

I saw someone going crazy about it was a bunch of fake ice videos that like I had to message and be like, you know, this is AI, like, not to comment on ice one way or the other. Like, I think a lot of what they're doing is bad and a lot of it's necessary, but like, so I'm kind of in the middle. Not the guy that got shot, to be clear while we're on the record. That being said, these are like fake videos of ice people beating people up, etc. And like very for anyone that knows AI, like very obviously, like a video three video, like it it's almost cartoony. And this person's like, look at what they're doing, how dare they? I'm like, Oh, you can't tell this is fake. Like, I can, but you can I had to like messaging those are fake videos, like, not saying that there aren't real videos that are bad, but everything you just the four videos this person posted were all fake AI videos, and a lot of people aren't able to tell the difference, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

So, how do you think societally we're gonna deal with that? Is there I I mean, I I know that there's like okay, I guess tools that are nascent that are coming out that that you can run it through, and there's not gonna keep up.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

It's it's gonna be at some point in a weird hope, we're just gonna stop trusting what we see. We're not used to that, but it's just gonna be part of it. You're gonna, I think, you know, institutional trust is going to have to come back, and you're gonna have a lot of crazies that are gonna believe whatever the hell they want to believe. And you know, the sad truth is we're already there, like we're kind of already like AI, it didn't take AI to do that. It took, you know, bat media, irresponsible media to do that, and it already happened. Major media sources constantly reporting fake news, you know. And to be clear, I'm a registered Democrat. So when I say fake news, I feel like I'm gonna get you know MAGA thrown out. Um, but it's just the truth. Both sides of the aisle, like, you know, whether it's left leaning or right-leaning, the amount of bullshit that comes out of our most major media channels is crazy. Journalistic integrity is pretty much gone. And so you end up with, you know, and so you already have that. And so now you've got the compounding of that. Now it's like literally like the footage is fake too. I think you're gonna, I don't know. I think we're gonna end up in a lot of echo chambers. And I don't know that it gets better before it gets worse. I think it's gonna be people are gonna believe whatever the hell they want to believe.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

So so let's like bring it back to um how to thrive in a market like that and and in a crowded market today. Like, where do you think? I I think we kind of touched on it with the the infotainment, I guess, component of it.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

But it goes, it's it's exactly on that. It's because trust is so hard to find, when you find it, people latch on now. And so if you are authentic and you are trustworthy and you do deliver, people are going to be much more loyal because they don't want to deal with getting screwed over again. They're getting inundated, but like it becomes to the point where it's noise. And I like the easiest way to look at this from a business standpoint is the music industry. When you got Napster and Spotify and kind of democratize the access to music and it didn't have to be these gatekeepers, the expectation would be that there'd be a much wider array of music taste and a big larger middle class. It's not what happened at all. The rich got richer because what happens is when there's that much noise and that much happening, people just default to whatever is the most well known in general. Now, you know, there is also a little bit more music discoverability now. And there's people that have come up that maybe wouldn't have in the past, but let's be real, the Taylor Swifts of the world are way more successful now than they were 20 years ago without all this.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

I agree with that. And certainly people latch on to different people and brands and trusted advisors and and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

And so the idea is like in that example, be the Taylor Swift in your industry. How do you be the one that everybody wants to go to, that well known and gets out there? And if not, there's a gap. My business partner used to talk about this a lot that this sort of chasm that's coming where it's gonna get more and more divided. It's the wealth gap, too, by the way. It's literally the same thing where it's like it's gonna get for when you're already rich and you're already popular, or if you can lock in that audience, it's gonna get easier and easier to keep that stance and it's gonna get harder and harder to compete. And I think that the only sort of hole in that is AI, because now you can come in and work so aggressively and so fast that you can find that sort of weak spot in your competition and potentially exploit it.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Okay, so we're we're getting close to time here, but I think to to frame it up for people to take away something actionable is I I love what you were saying about uh the Hawk method. And like maybe frame up like for a mid-sized company or not not a micro business, like somebody that that that is looking to scale, like a growth-oriented business, and they're looking at scale. What is like the framework or frameworks that you're looking at when they come to you from a go-to-market strategy, or like let's lead people with something that's tangible because you know, AI, some people are toning it out, like tuning it out completely, which is dangerous, right? Um, but but but also it's very good with the internet.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

Like it's it's something you should probably pay attention to. At some point, everyone's gonna have it in integrated, and you're you're like, like it's gonna be like not having a website would be not integrating AI. But it's also like businesses are gonna survive without using it too. There's my my that my tire guy that changes the tires of my car doesn't have a website, he's fine, he's been in business 50 years, old, you know, Bob's tires, they're doing just fine. Um, so you have that. So you you it's not like everybody's screwed if they don't. It's just like you got to make the decision. If you want to keep growing your business and take on an opportunity, you probably should use it in terms of. The full stack, I'd say I really like the scalable, repeatable part of marketing. I think that should be 90% of what you do. And that still is, you know, all the different social media channels. So TikTok, Facebook. And by the way, this is for B2B too. Like I spend for Hawk Media, I don't know, where we're at probably two million dollars a year on Google and Meta and TikTok and Twitter ads. Like they, you know, LinkedIn, I know everybody thinks LinkedIn's the B2B advertising. They change their platform so often, it's just impossible to build something repeatable and scalable there. So while content is great on LinkedIn, advertising has not been. Hopefully they fix it at one point. Um and so figuring out your media channels, I could go forever on how to do that, but that's the you know top of the funnel. How do you build awareness for your brand? Let people know you exist, along with driving word of mouth, have really easy messaging of why you exist and who you are so that your customers feel comfortable talking about you to other people. That's huge. And then nurturing that, that's where content comes in. That's where uh email marketing, SMS marketing, and on the content side, we talked about it, but it's like building content that solves your value proposition from a content perspective, not just your product perspective. So whatever you're selling, if you're selling, oh, we'll go back to shoe, running shoes. People buy running shoes because they want to go out and be healthy or they want to be stylish. Pick a lane, let's say it's healthy. Now create you know content around diet, around great trails to run, around you know what other people are doing for longevity, like whatever, get into the science of it, whatever it is that fits your brand, but be that destination, not only because it'll bring your potential customers back that they'll convert at a higher rate, they'll also share that and you'll increase word of mouth. So both of them, and they'll build more of that trust. And then again, the other third pillar is trust. That's where you get third-party validation, testimonials, reviews, uh case studies, influencers, um, what do you call it? Uh celebrities, uh, PR, all these things that people go, I trust them. And if they're saying I should trust you, I feel comfortable with that. Um, there's a lot more to talk about on that. But yeah, that would be the quick way to look at your stack. Oh, how are you building awareness? How are you nurturing that awareness to convert it and keep it as a customer? And then how you're building trust.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Awesome. Well, Eric, where's the best way to people to find out more about what you're talking about and your thoughts and uh how to get involved with you?

SPEAKER_02 42:15

Yeah, I didn't think I'd plug it, but uh hawk method is easy. That's our book. Um, and then you can reach out to me at or slash Eric Huberman on any social channel. And by the way, happy to give you a free digital copy. It's not, I didn't do this to make money. So uh happy to give anyone a copy of our book uh again on all those socials. And if you want, hawk always will do a free marketing audit for any business. So that's just hawkmedia.com.

SPEAKER_01 42:37

Awesome. So uh everybody, if you like what Eric's saying, you want to check out more of what he's doing, check out Hawk Media. So, guys, thank you so much. If you want to grow your business with the largest, most powerful plan on the internet, keep listening to this podcast and we're gonna help connect you with the leaders in the industry. Until the next time, my name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now.