Going Deeper On AI & Marketing
Marketing Unfiltered 46 - The Real State Of AI With Marketing Lens
Good Morning Leaders.
This week, we have not just another podcast edition of MU.
I have Oren Greenberg join me and we go deeper on AI & Marketing.
Who is Oren? He is AI Marketing Advisor & B2B Growth, he is a LinkedIn Top Voice with 36,863 followers, sometimes I think it should be the Oren Greenberg (not Kevin Bacon) of (Marketing) separation, Oren and I have over 1800 mutual contacts alone. We are speaking at the same AI conference in October and wanted to I have Oren appear on MU before then. I’ve Oren on my list to interview with for quite a while, so here’s Oren speaking on AI, the world where Marketing & AI are headed and why so many people who think they get AI don’t.
Listen 🎧
Watch ⏯️
You will likely notice the video is not up to our usual standard, note to self don’t use a new tool (Squadcast) to record an interview…my video and audio aren’t great, however, Oren’s is and that’s the most important thing.
Timestamps To Jump To ̬
00:00 - Introduction To Oren
00:15 - Oren's Background and AI Journey
00:32 - AI in B2B Marketing
02:23 - Impact of AI on Business Processes
04:18 - Content Creation and AI
08:52 - Challenges and Misconceptions in AI Usage
19:28 - Contrarian Views on AI and Wealth
24:05 - Practical Advice for AI Implementation
31:11 - Understanding AEO/GEO Ranking and SEO Tools
32:13 - The Shift to Authentic Marketing
33:52 - The Dominance of Google in Search
35:24 - The Role of AI in Search and Marketing
37:40 - Specialised AI Models and Future Trends
38:59 - Challenges and Misconceptions in AI
45:01 - Practical & Deeper AI Tools for Marketers
52:41 - The Importance of Talent and Data Quality
56:14 - The Future Outlook
If you don’t have the time right now to watch/listen to Oren, here is a written breakdown from our chat.
The Pod Exec Summary:
In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of hosting Oren, the sharp mind who has successfully navigated the transition from a B2B marketing expert to a leading AI marketing advisor.
Our conversation was a deep dive into the realities of artificial intelligence in today’s Marketing world, cutting through the noise to discuss what truly matters.
No surprise to me but I found Oren’s perspective incredibly grounding; he’s not an AI hype man but a realist focused on tangible business outcomes.
We explored the common pitfalls Marketers and leaders are falling into, from the over-reliance on flawed AI-generated data to the dangerous myth of becoming a "solo billionaire" with no-code tools.
The Key 6 Points Discussed:
AI Hype vs. Practical Utility: One of the most striking points Oren made was his belief that "the hype around AI is about a hundred x greater than its utility." We discussed how this disconnect leads to a crisis of trust, with Marketers caught between doomsayers and ‘AI overhypers’.
Oren’s view, which I share, is that AI is incredible for very specific use cases but is often applied incorrectly, much like using tequila shots for the wrong occasion.The Danger of Unvalidated AI Personas: I see this frequently, and Oren articulated it perfectly. Marketers are putting too much faith in the personas and insights generated by LLMs without proper validation.
He explained that for niche B2B audiences, there simply isn't enough rich, specific data online for an AI to create an accurate profile. This leads to costly mistakes, running entire campaigns based on synthetic, unverified assumptions.The Myth of the "Solo Billionaire": Oren offered a brilliant contrarian view on the narrative that AI and no-code tools will create a wave of solo billionaires. He argued that the people truly "printing money" are the LLM providers (like OpenAI), the big tech firms, and the tool creators themselves (like Cursor).
The idea that anyone can build a simple app and achieve exorbitant wealth overlooks the commoditisation of features and the critical importance of distribution.Distribution and Brand as the Ultimate Differentiators: Piggybacking on the previous point, we agreed that in an age where a site or app's features can be copied in minutes, the only true differentiators are distribution and brand (go deeper here).
Oren’s advice was clear: crack your audience and distribution channels before you build the solution. Too many are building tools in a vacuum and then trying to find a market, which is a recipe for failure.The Shift from SEO to Brand-Centric "Online PR": With the rise of AI-driven search (GEO), the old ways of doing SEO are slowly becoming obsolete. Oren argued that the focus must shift away from technical optimization and backlink buying toward what is essentially "online PR" or Brand Marketing. Building genuine authority and awareness is the new paradigm for discoverability, a return to more traditional marketing fundamentals.
The Leadership Blind Spot – Lack of Upskilling: A critical issue we covered is the failure of leadership to properly upskill their teams. Many leaders buy licenses for tools like Copilot or Gemini but provide no training on how to use them effectively and safely. This leads to "Shadow AI" (employees using unapproved tools) and a massive underutilisation of the investment, hindering any real progress. Here’s my dedicated 8 minute pod on AI manifestos vs AI policy.
Some of the other core takeaways are:
Teams need help from AI enablement to full automation - when you feel like you behind, you’re not!
While AI is a transformative force, it’s not a magic bullet and won’t be for a long while.
The foundational principles of Marketing like understanding your audience, building a strong brand, and mastering distribution are more critical than ever.
AI should be seen as a powerful enabler, not a replacement for strategic thinking and genuine human insight.
10 Subjects To Ponder 💭
AI is Influencing Core Business Decisions: AI's impact extends beyond Marketing tasks; it is now a factor in major business milestones like M&A, fundamentally affecting company valuation and exit strategies.
The C-Suite is Focused on AI for Efficiency: CEOs are increasingly looking to AI to automate marketing processes, putting pressure on leaders to strategically integrate AI to prove value and efficiency, sometimes with an eye on team size.
Authentic Content Creation Wins: The most effective content strategy is creating what you, as an expert, would find valuable. This self-centered approach to content builds a stronger, more credible personal brand than trying to please a fragmented audience.
Beyond the Chat Interface: To unlock AI's full potential, Marketers must move beyond simple chat prompts and explore APIs (doesn’t have to be on your own but with devs and tech colleagues) and workflows for complex tasks like data classification, extraction, and automation.
Comfort with a Wrong Answer is Dangerous: A significant risk is the tendency to accept a plausible but incorrect AI-generated answer over no answer at all. This can lead to entire strategies being built on a flawed foundation.
Specialisation is Crucial: Just as in any field, AI expertise is not monolithic. A data scientist specializing in computer vision is not automatically an expert in LLMs. Finding the right specialist for the specific problem is key.
Iterate Across Models for Quality: For higher-quality results, don't rely on a single output from one model. A more robust method is to run prompts across multiple LLMs and then iteratively refine the best output.
"Shadow AI" requires Guardrails, Not Bans: Employees will use AI tools regardless of policies. The leadership challenge is not to ban these tools but to establish clear guardrails and a manifesto that enables productive use while mitigating risk.
Look Past the Hype to the Long-Term Trajectory: While today's AI narratives are often overblown, the long-term transformative potential is being underestimated. The current technology is the "clunky first mobile phone" version of what's to come.
The Foundational Problem is Data Quality: The principle of "garbage in, garbage out" is amplified with AI. The most significant barrier to successful AI implementation for most companies is not the technology itself, but the poor quality and disorganization of their own data.
The Tools Mentioned 🧰:
During our conversation, we mentioned a number of tools that are prevalent in the AI and marketing space:
ChatGPT
Claude
Gemini
Microsoft Copilot
Cursor (for building sites and apps)
N8N (one of the automation tools)
Google Colab (for Python scripts)
Top 3 Smart Quotes 💬 From Oren:
1/ "AI is really great at some things and absolutely horrific at others… kind of like tequila shots."
2/ "The hype around AI... is about a hundred x greater than the utility of AI."
3/ "Features are commoditized. So distribution, differentiation, that's how you're gonna win."
Follow Oren: If you don’t already I highly recommend connecting or following Oren on LinkedIn (his newsletter he mentioned is here) or following him on TikTok, where he is posting brilliant videoes almost daily.
Oren also released a dedicated video yesterday discussing what the top 3 mistake B2B marketers make with AI.
I think you’ll agree Oren has some incredible lessons and teaching in this weeks episode and will be MU you return back to.
Thanks and have a great weekend,
Danny Denhard (& Harry Lang)
PS If you enjoyed this, I have been working through specific skills and departments in Marketing with industry experts: