Leysan Zigangirova on Leveraging Human Taste to Beat AI Slop

The third thing, AI, at least based on my observation, can't understand the reality of your resources. Even if you give as much details as possible, like describing ChatGPT that this is my situation, please advise me what to do. AI cannot imagine that this type of the resource, how much is that? If you have a content team, what are the real capabilities of this content team? Because even if you tell that I have 4 people within the content team, still AI doesn't understand how this or that person is compared Comparing to each other and how much output each content manager can produce. This is just an example, you know. So all the judgmental thing and the decision-making thing is still on the human side within our team at least.

Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success.

I am thrilled to have from around the world my guest today. And before we get started, I want everybody to sit with this question. If your product is hard to explain, if it takes 3 sentences before anyone even understands or starts to understand what you do, how do you build a brand around that? My guest today has answered that question for living at almost every scale there is. Lisanne Ziganjirova, hopefully I got that correct.

Yeah, that's correct. Thank you.

Has spent 15+ years building brands, starting in the deep end consumer marketing at Procter Gamble, Philip Morris, then tech with Microsoft. And some products are kind of hard to explain. And as a university professor teaching digital media, I know I still have problems under— explaining You know, different kinds of technology, cloud infrastructure, managed data systems, platforms, and of course, AI. And you led the creation of the brand identity for Nebius, which went on to attract $700 million in strategic financing. You were also a chief revenue officer at DoubleCloud. You took a wonderful around-the-world trip, which I also wanna discuss, and you are now the chief marketing officer at Async, which was the rebrand from Podcastle. The podcast that a lot of people listening have probably recorded on. So, we're gonna talk about rebranding products people love, making marketing accountable to revenue instead of just the vanity metrics, and also what you think, Laysan, gets more valuable, not less, as AI makes content almost free. So, thank you very much for being on the show. It's really an honor to have you here.

Thank you so much, Anika, for inviting. I hope this is going to be a really enjoyable conversation for both of us and for your audience to listen to.

Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, you're coming from London, but you have some different life experiences. Talk about your background, what got you into marketing and into this world of consumer products and then beyond.

Of course. I think I was, I'm one of those persons who understood that want to be in marketing very early. So I Graduated. Um, I have a degree in marketing and since graduation of the university, I built my entire career just in that area. So I started in P&G, in Procter Gamble. That was a consumer and market intelligence, and that was intentionally so I didn't go into the brand management immediately. Mm-hmm. Because I wanted to do some groundwork, you know, knowing the numbers, understanding how, uh, the data-driven decisions can be made within the large corporations. So that was an amazing start and they gave me really good basics for working with the numbers and getting a holistic understanding of how business works, how market is working. But then ultimately I want, as a career girl, I was always ambitious. I wanted to become a marketing director at one point. I understood that I need to follow into the brand and product area. Because these are the people who are really making decisions in the, in the large companies. At that, at that time, I was thinking only about working in the large corporations. I didn't even think that I would go into the startup. So I moved to, to Philip Morris. That was quite, you know, questionable decision, but I was young, so I was 24. And on one side, it was a great experience because working in the restricted market, as a tobacco market is a restricted one, and I was a brand manager for Marlboro.

Mm-hmm.

It requires a lot of the creativity and going out of your comfort zone in terms of the thinking, always finding some new channels at the same time, being really on the ethical side of the business and within the restrictions that we had. So I spent really amazing 2 years in the company and Philip Morris. Uh, the best thing which I did there was the revamp of Marlboro Lights, which was, uh, one of the brands which we had at that time on the Russian and CIS markets. And we rebranded it into the Marlboro Gold Original. The tricky thing was that the insight that we found, uh, please interrupt me if I'm going in too much detail, but I think this is an interesting story to tell. Yeah. One of the insights that we discovered is that the Marlboro Lights, which existed only in the limited amount of the markets, has the perception of non-authentic product. Because, you know, Balmoral is a strong brand with this American origin. So people still had the connections with the cowboys and all these brutal guys. And when they saw absolutely different pack, they started believing that this is a fake. So this is some fake product which was produced somewhere else. So what we did, we decided to revamp it into absolutely different brand and bring it from Europe. And we wrote on the back that it's produced in Europe to, in order to overcome this perception of the, of the counterfeit. So what, that was the, the largest project that I did. But during this 2 years, I was constantly suffering from the ethical hesitation because it's really very difficult, especially, uh, when you have some, some pressure from, from the close people, like my mom or some friends who are not very supporting that, uh, though. career-wise, that was a smart decision. So I decided to, to move on. And at that, uh, point I started to think where I want to land. That was 2014. So technologies kind of were emerging. So not a lot of the people were looking into that direction because fast-moving consumer goods and fashion was still like the, the most desirable industries to work in. But for some reason, you know, I got this intuition saying me that, girl, you need to be in that area. In several years, it's going to be like the real, the real thing. So I got an offer from Microsoft and that was the turning point in my whole life, I would say. So I joined as the marketing manager who was working for the beginner's audience. So students, the schools who were just, who worked with the, with the technologies and marketing, the focus of the marketing was to evangelize this knowledge into the, this beginner's audience. And then I grew up to the digital marketing lead and started working with Azure, Microsoft's cloud, which was just launched at that time as the key competitor to AWS. So I spent 4 years, uh, worked in a different market. So I spent some time in the US, in Redmond, in Microsoft headquarters, working with the developer advocates audience, then being back to the markets of the Central and Eastern Europe. And after that, uh, in Microsoft, uh, one of the benefits which I got was the mentorship program. And one of my mentors, he left the company and joined Yandex. Yandex is the leading technology company in Russia. We, we call it, uh, like Russian Google. So, he left Microsoft and joined Yandex to start the cloud business from scratch there. And sometimes after, he asked me to join his team. I was only 29 and remember I said that I was always, uh, dreaming about becoming a marketing director. So I understood that this is the, the, you know, the time. So I accepted his offer to joining Yandex as the, um, founding member of the team. I built the whole marketing of Yandex Club from scratch. Yeah, that was, uh, you know, Really a challenge because I was young. I didn't have quite a lot of experience, so I was doing a lot of things intuitively, just by my understanding how it should be. Finally, it was successful. So, by now, Yandex.Cloud is the leading cloud business in Russia and CIS, and the part of that became Nebius, which is now one of the leading neo-clouds in the world. So I was the one who created the visual identity, the brand name of the Nebius. My team, part of my team still works there. So another, like, you know, another child who existed in a bit different part of the world. Myself, at that point, there were already, there was already 7 years I've been working in the cloud industry. So, you know, I felt a bit exhausted, I would say, because it was a very, intense work and technology area is quite intensive in terms of the time you spend. I was literally working on the weekends, so for 7 years, it was quite enough. Uh, so I decided to take sabbatical leave and did, uh, the, and I did the, the around the world trip. That was one of my, another dreams. You know, I'm, I'm a dream person. When I was young, I created the list of the things which I want to accomplish this life, and I, I think I just followed this list.

Yeah.

So I did the, the career thing, so I became the CMO. Uh, I did the around the world trip. So let's now move to, to, to, to some other dreams. So yeah, I took the sabbatical and went into the world around trip. That was ultimately 15 countries. Yeah, I traveled to India, then Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, then moved to Central and South America, traveled across almost all of the countries there, and then moved to Europe and then being back to Moscow. Because I was living in Moscow at that time. That was a, you know, very life-changing experience, I would say. It gives you absolutely different understanding of how this world operates because you see so many different people with so many different backgrounds. I think it, it, it can even be named as one of the best corporate trainings, I would say, because it's an unconventional way of building your strategic thinking. You know, when you are going into that kind of a trip, you need to plan it. At the same time, you still need to have some agility in order to have things change. Simultaneously, you meet a lot of the people, your environment is changing so fast, so the brain starts operating in absolutely different mode. I started to notice that when I came back and that was the time when I started working in anything, that time at Podcastle. And I think that this sabbatical leave and this trip, which I did, actually helped me a lot in order to adapt in the fast-changing AI environment we're all living in and especially myself because I'm working in the AI market.

Yeah.

Sorry for the long speech. No, it's not.

And there, there are so many points a little bit before your time at working with Marlboro. I actually worked on the Camel account in Chicago and, um, not doing experiential marketing. So trying to get people to use Camel cigarettes instead of Marlboro cigarettes. And I didn't smoke and the same thing. Me too. You know. But it was a job and I worked on that and a couple of other, and I think Smirnoff vodka and a couple of other accounts at the time. But fast forwarding to now, it's really interesting because Marlboro is back up in the news because of Coca-Cola, right? Because of the way that Coca-Cola has rebranded and done some new fonts for some of the typography and the color identification is so strong. And so it's pretty interesting because as a brand, Coca-Cola is iconic, just like Marlboro. And people are saying Coca-Cola also has some subversive advertising and they kind of do these little nods back to their history of how the product was originally made. Right. So I found that interesting because we can see how brands cycle through and how brands that are that identifiable can still have relevance today, even if people, you know, you're not allowed to smoke necessarily in bars in a lot of places in the United States. People, there are a lot of warning signs. There are less younger people who are taking up smoking versus other things, but all of a sudden it's going to spark interest in them again because of what Coca-Cola is doing.

Exactly. Exactly. How did you feel, by the way, when you were working on Camel? Did you have this ethical hesitation side? Absolutely.

But I was mostly, like I said, on the experiential side. So I was talking to people who were already smokers.

Okay. Okay.

So I wasn't trying to get, you know, I wasn't trying to pitch it to people who weren't smokers. I didn't have to.

Yeah. Yeah. Like me too. I'm like the whole team, but still, still. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I, I love the fact that you have your checklist from an early age, that you identified what you wanted to do, and that you also had the experience, because I've also noticed I'm Probably like you, I'm a, you know, I'm a dual citizen for Thailand and the US and being able to be multicultural or live in different places and gain that cultural knowledge. And I've been to Vietnam and met with businesses to talk about their brands and their companies. You do get this really different outlook and it does really prepare you for, to open your eyes much wider.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's sure. And I think you have this mental agility due to the fact that you are, you lived or you worked into the different cultural environments. You better understand, you not the better, but faster understand different audiences, different people, just because this agility is already somewhere into your brain.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And the other thing that I really want to take note of is the fact that you were from an early age also. Realizing you wanted to know about the data and analytics because everything has to be tied to that. Yet so many times people, I, I think in the old way, even before, before we had so much access to data, especially with artificial intelligence helping us with predictive analytics and everything, I do feel that there was this perception, right, that marketing doesn't control revenue. And that idea is dead. And that's something that you do. talk about, but there are people who still hold onto that and don't wanna be held accountable. So how did, you know, your perception obviously from the beginning was there is a correlation. So what do you say to people and how do you get them to change their mind and realize that everything we do is tied directly into the revenue stream?

Yeah, I'm absolutely the fan of that idea that marketing should be accountable for the revenue. Even in the large organization where there is a sales department or commercial people who have the sales and the revenue as the KPI, I truly believe that marketing should be, should have a shared KPI of the revenue with these people. That if this is the case, when the marketing has the KPI as the revenue, then usually 2 things happen. Marketing people has a motivation to set up tracking everywhere where it is possible. Not to rely on the intuition, which is still important, I believe, but at least start tracking whatever it is possible. When it's not done, then it's always like, you know, we're responsible only for the brand equity. This is the studies that we are doing twice a year and so on and so forth, which is usually not very close to the, to the real thing. Second, when you have the shared KPI, especially with the salespeople, especially in the B2B, then you have a closer relationship with those teams. You have more trust because they don't perceive you either as an enemy, like, because I know some organizations where marketing and sales really as enemies, they're usually trying to persuade each other who is the, like, who is wrong, but not working as a team.

Right.

So when both of the teams has one goal to follow, Then this magic of the joint work is happening and marketing cannot say like, look, we're just for the fancy things to be done and the sales is purely on your side. So yeah, I think that this is, especially now in the very fast-moving world we're living in, this is kind of a must for the organizations.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, and especially as the technologies we use for the monitoring are converging, right? So you can see the whole customer funnel, you can see the whole cycle and, you know, the touchpoints that marketing may have been involved in and then you, you know, how that can work.

Of course, yeah. We're so advanced in terms of the technology just right now, so you actually can track almost everything, but I think there is one small trap here, you know, the opposite side when marketing directors or CMOs, they are very into the data, sometimes they start lacking this creative part, you know, and they start lack intuition and they start waiting to gather the data rather than going into the risk and making the decision just right now. And I think that's the mistake as well. Again, especially now, I will be always referring to this phrase saying that especially now, because the world has changed. significantly and the speed of execution became just enormous. So, previously we were planning things like, let's do a yearly planning and let's understand what we will do in the next year. Now, me and my team, we're planning in the best case for a month.

Right.

Usually like 2 weeks. So, in a lot of the cases, you just don't have enough time to gather all the data. You need to react and to make decisions. with some blind spots and I think that this is okay. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't rely on the data. You still need to gather that, you need to analyze the funnel to get the understanding of all the touchpoints, but you shouldn't wait it to be perfect and you need to still to go into the risk and to make the decision. That's what is make us different from AI actually. AI, if you chat with anything like with the Claude, with ChatGPT, with Grok, with any interface, is not risky. Like this is a very, you know, human being thing that we take a risk. And I think that this is going to be really a changing thing, especially for the marketing people who want to grow and to, to build the successful brands and businesses in the future.

And let's touch on that point. It's interesting. I teach digital media at university and yesterday I was bringing up an article about Cloudflare. Flare and how in September they have this new, you know, they have 20% web content and they're kind of doing some gatekeeping. And I said, I'm sharing this article with you, but I can't give you any hypotheses on what's going to actually happen. It hasn't happened yet. We're seeing this in real time. And so much of what I teach, I feel like, is exactly this is what's happening in real time. We don't know what the outcomes are. So you do have to think about that. And we've also spoken in class about how major brands, Apple for instance, is having to show, we made this logo with human intellect and we use these kind of technologies to make this commercial. We didn't use AI to make it because yes, more people are starting to use it. It's decreasing the barrier to entry for small businesses and big brands, right? Reducing the cost, maybe the number of team members, but then there also is a little bit of a pushback. So how do you balance that? In your work and also, of course, at Async?

Yeah, that's a great question, actually. I'm a fan of a, you know, balanced approach. Of course, I rely on AI and we're building an AI-native company, not only in terms of the product we're shipping, but also in terms of the internal processes. So for example, when hiring the new people, uh, like there is an AI section. or within the interview. So we really want to ensure that people whom we're hiring are very proficient with any AI tools, so they think together with AI. But at the same time, this decision-making process is still on the human side because AI may make mistakes. This is kind of obvious. As I already said, AI is not able to take the risk and usually is supporting the answer or the decision, which has a lot more data or has more like evidence, but not in all of the cases the best decision. The third thing, AI, at least based on my observation, can't understand the reality of your resources. Even if you give as much details as possible, like describing ChatGPT that this is my situation, please advise me what to do, AI cannot imagine that this type of the resource, how much is that? If you have a content team, what are the real capabilities of this content team? Because even if you tell that I have 4 people within the content team, still AI doesn't understand how this or that person is comparing to each other and how much output each content manager can produce. This is just an example, you know. So all the judgmental thing and the decision-making thing is still on the human side within our team at least. At the same time, everything that can be automated, everything related to the productivity, of course, is done with AI. The image generations, the text generation, like everything that can speed up the process and bring the new features to the market faster, we do for sure. Coming back to your second part of your question, like how is it related to Async as the product that we're building? As a mission, we, we never put an idea of replacing a human. So what I want to, what I want Async to be is the, is the editing copilot actually. So it's the tool which helps editor, creator to co-create, but not to replace. So you imagine it's, it's like you are really experienced fellow whom you're asking the questions. Whom you are uploading your footages and based on the, the AI, the trained AI model, which is inside the platform, it advises you what to do in order to get the, the best result. This is how I see that. And I think that's what, of course, we don't know how it's going to be in the future, but I believe that for the brands and the products, like, oh, so this is the better strategy rather than saying that we're completely like Replacing your job. Mm-hmm. Because I already started to notice like 2 things. First, the reason, um, like people started being afraid of the fact that AI will take their jobs. And the more and more I see the complaints within the internet, um, like this is the AI shit. Sorry. Like, and, uh, yeah. Yeah. The small, uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. AI slop and let's just stop it. So it's becoming harder. for technology companies to sell the AI because people become engaged. Second is this slop thing. Yeah, the quality of the AI-generated thing is still not comparable to the genuine human quality. And you know, there was the article in The New Yorker some months ago which was named like, Why Tech Pros Are Keen on the Taste. Yeah, because the taste is becoming so important for the technology companies and Taste is extremely subjective thing. And what is they are trying to do now is to, to teach AI taste. Yeah, because taste is becoming really competitive advantage.

Wow.

So yeah, it's, it's really interesting market, you know, and interesting time we are living in. Uh, but I'm for the balance. So balance both in terms of the work and in terms of the product that we're building. At least we're trying to do that.

Yeah. And what was it about Async that drew you to the company? Because obviously this is also another title you have been— you went from, you know, working on different products and then being a program manager, and then you got to be the marketing director, chief revenue officer, and now you're the CMO. So is that ticking something off your box, but also you're going into another new industry? Which it seems like you're also. Yeah.

That was actually, again, intentionally. So I was thinking what else, what I want to do, like in my life, in terms of the, in terms of the job. I definitely wanted to stay within the marketing. I went within the technology, but I didn't want to do cloud anymore because I already did it. Let's try something new. Creativity and creative economics was always interesting for me. I'm very much in, much into the arts. I'm also thinking of doing, you know, my personal exhibition maybe in London. I don't know, in 2, 3 years. So that was really really interesting area to, to go into. So, um, yeah, therefore Async was one of the, like, the best decisions at that point. So I, I'm glad that, um, I met the founder of Async, uh, yeah, and enjoyed the, the, the startup a year ago.

Yeah. And, um, as we mentioned, obviously there was a rebrand in the name, and you are, you have a product out on the market, but you're also creating new identity, right? You're also with the rebrand and with positioning and with helping people understand what the benefit is over other tools in the market. So crafting that storytelling element.

Yeah, for sure. So we decided to, that previously we were known as a Podcastle and Podcastle was purely in the podcasting area only. So it was the recording studio with some editing capabilities. Nothing related to AI at all. So it was kind of old-fashioned. I hope my founder will not, will not listen to that, but that was true. You know, you're kind of old-fashioned SaaS, which guys created like 4 years ago. At that time, that was very timely into the market. But with AI entered the, entered the world, things has changed significantly. So the product started becoming less and less fitting to the market need. Because a lot of people, they still produce their own content, but there were a lot more people going into the AI features. So the decision was to make the product pivot as well. So it was not, you know, the pure rebranding from the marketing side. Let's just change the name and let's try to be someone new. No, there was a complete restructure of the, of the company, of the product. So we went from the podcasting area to the video editing. Therefore, the old name of Podcastle stopped serving at all because I was, you know, when I just joined the company, I was doing the first interviews with the users and immediately when I was naming Podcastle, it gave an immediate hint that this is relating to podcasting. Yeah. And if we wanted to be the video editing or generation platform, we should be someone else. My founder is an engineer, so, and he's, you know, very geeky guy and async is the term from the programming So this is the way of coding and it is, it sounds also quite nice and the idea that is lying behind that name perfectly fits the new positioning that we wanted to be, wanted to have. So this is actually about asynchronous creation because in the modern world you can create simultaneously into the different areas. You can do the video, do the voiceover, do the editing, then add voiceover and do the clips out of your long videos. This is all happening Asynchronously, and we are building the platform, which is giving you the opportunity for this asynchronous creativity without stopping you. So that is the whole idea behind the new brand and the, the story we're trying to deliver to the market.

Yeah, which I love and I, I understand, but if there are a lot of founders and small business owners, entrepreneurs who don't know how to best position themselves, how best to brand and market themselves. So if someone like that were coming to you to get advice on how to make the best use of this tool, because they see the time savings, they see other things that will be benefit, what do you suggest that they do? Where should they start?

Don't get the question. So start with our pack, or if they have an idea of doing the new brand for themselves, or yeah.

Yeah.

So somebody, perhaps just a business owner. They need to get their message out. They need to get themselves out as a thought leader. They're not a natural storyteller. They're not quite sure, right, how to position, maybe kind of like your CEO who's more of the tech side. They know they need, they need this secret sauce.

Yeah, I would sound a bit old-fashioned, but all the time someone is coming to me with that kind of a question, I'm saying the same thing. Go and talk with your users. So everything starts with an insight. Again, I will be coming to that thing that this makes us different from AI. AI can generate you zillions of things, but this can be absolutely out of the blue and not connected to the audience. So I would suggest starting still with a conversation with your core users. What do they want? What pains do they have? What do they strive strive for. Second, again, based on the classics of the, of the marketing books, what makes you different from, from the competitors? So what do they offer from the rational, from the emotional side? I think emotional thing is more important because again, my founder, he's an engineering guy. It's, uh, we, it's from time to time we have some clashes with him, me trying to, um, uh, explain him what the brand is. So the brand is not the same as the product. So when you think about the differentiation thing, it's not only about the rational stuff. It's not only about the features that you have, not about the package. Uh, it's always about some emotional connection that you, that you bring to the, uh, to the audience with, with your product, with your, with your service. And third, this will sound a bit counter-rational, I would say, based on my observations, the successful brands, especially in the small and medium businesses, I'm not talking about large corporations with a lot of resources, The successful brands are usually those based on the passion of the founder, based on the passion of the CEO who really understands why he or she is building that business. So I always advise to, like, in the situation where you don't know what to do, to come back to this initial idea, why you decided to start this business, why you believe that this mission, like, and this product is is going to be important for the world. The key is usually there.

I absolutely believe that. And that's one of the things I try to point people to as well. I love that you talked about, because going back to when, uh, we were starting, you were talking about different brands and fashion and beauty, things like that. We see so many times that companies will list their benefits, but the companies that do really well on social media and get really great fans and community building, are the ones that go from the emotional standpoint.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. So I'm just wondering, what do you think are the skills, the creative skills that marketing leaders or founders need to invest in right now to make sure that they're still relevant in this fast-moving world? You know, how can they learn something now to be relevant even in 3 years?

Number one is curiosity. You always need to look into different directions and shouldn't limit yourself with just your industry. Because what I also noticed that people, that marketing people, well talented, but they are, you know, a bit narrow-minded because they always just look into what the similar company is doing. So they are all very limited by just one industry. Again, giving my example why I decided to go into the art area as well. Because this is widening your mindset very much. So you start noticing absolutely different things. So stay curious, definitely just beyond your industry. Look what other industries are doing. Um, for example, I was always looking for inspiration in fashion. I personally like, uh, you know, nice clothes. I have my own stylist. I was always curious what, uh, I don't know, Louis Vuitton or Jacquemus or some other trendy fashion icons are doing, and I was getting some ideas from that absolutely far away industry into my tech. So this is like a must thing. Then I would say a writing skill, and that's non-conventional thing, which, which I would suggest. I truly believe that writing gives you a lot of the, first, it gives a lot of structuring, and second, uh, you know, there is such kind of a practice of Like the writing from, from out of nowhere. You just, you usually start your morning with that. You just sit down, you take the, the sheet of paper and you just write everything which comes to your mind. This is a really great exercise. A lot of the people just don't believe that it'll work, but if you practice it at least for a week, I did it for some period, for, for, I did for like couple of months. It really helps you to, you know, to, to find some inner inspiration from inside you. So if this, uh, the first example I was giving, it was about the outer inspiration, but this is about the inner thing. Yeah. So that I think is going to be the second one. The third one, of course, learn AI. This is again a must this time.

Mm-hmm.

A lot of people are asking me which AI tool should I, should I start beyond, I don't know, ChatGPT or Claude. Just start with anything. Again, a lot of people just don't do, they search for ideal situation, for ideal tool. This is not the, the working strategy. So you need just start with anything and then you usually start learning some other stuff, getting some other tools, but you need just to start. Yeah.

You know, it's funny because the first 2 things you mentioned aren't necessarily things I would've thought.

Oh, really?

Well, because I think today we think about, oh, what technical skills, what programs do you need to know, what other things? But I really love the fact that you're pushing people, right, to really think above and beyond. And the act of writing, is it handwriting or is it—

Yes, yes, of course, handwriting, not typing.

No typing, just typing everything now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, just writing, handwriting. And there are a lot of the studies about how your brain is activated when you are doing the handwriting. So you can browse the internet about that. There are like clear evidence that this is really working. Uh, and I'm actually, uh, happy that you are, uh, like kind of surprised that I'm giving that, uh, non-conventional advices. You know, the reason is because I'm So much into AI now. Yeah. That I started searching for some, some other stuff. Of course, we are all going to be into the AI. But again, we are coming to this philosophical discussion, what makes human different from AI. And this is my like personal exploration area. Therefore, I'm a fan of trying some different stuff rather than just, just going with another AI tool.

Yeah, I am too. I'm definitely a fan of trying to find those morning routines, the time to get out and just let your mind be free off the computer, right?

Sure, for sure.

Enjoy the environment that you're in. So, this has been really wonderful. And I, again, I have more questions that I could ask than we have time for today, but I'll look forward to continuing to stay connected and hopefully bring you back on.

As we see your career develop. I would be happy.

Yeah. So, I always, I do wanna ask a couple of last questions. One of the things we know is, right, the sea of sameness with AI. AI can, you said it has boundaries. It doesn't know all of the context, right? So, but so many people are turning to it and completely depending on AI to write everything for them to be that fully creative partner. So what should we be thinking? What else do we need to be doing differently in terms of how we interact with AI?

Perceive AI as a copilot, not as a, like a person who is doing everything for you. A good example would be like, let's imagine that you need to craft a post for LinkedIn or, I don't know, for your blog. Don't ask AI to generate that completely. But instead of that, ask to generate the list of questions that you're going to answer, and then based on that, AI can craft you the post. The outcome is going to be absolutely different, but because the approach is absolutely different. So that would be my reco.

Yeah. Fantastic. And Lisanne, do you have a piece of advice or a motto, a poem, a verse, something that resonates with you that continues to motivate the person you are and where you see yourself going?

Oh, I would give a quote of Steve Jobs, stay hungry and stay curious. I think it's the, like, you know, advice for ages. So, let's all be hungry and curious.

Fantastic. Well, this was, again, a wonderful conversation. I love the fact that we're talking about things that can produce more, but the things that are still our unique advantages. And that's what I keep going back to. So of course I will have the link to your LinkedIn in the show notes for people to reach out if they want to learn more. And then also to Async, just merely async.com if anyone wants to check it out, but you can also click the link.

Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. If you want, we can provide actually the, um, the promo code for substantial discount for your audience. Like 30, 40%, that's easy.

Okay, fantastic. Well, everybody who's listening or watching this episode, you will find that in the show notes. Thank you so much for that generous offer. And I know I'll be sharing it with my grad students at USC as well.

Amazing. Thank you so much. Of course.

Thank you to everybody who's watched this episode or listened to it. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I just, I love being able to talk about technical things and marketing and wonky things, but still feel like I'm also speaking to a friend and about things that excite us both. And that to me is the best of both worlds. So, I'll be back again really soon with another amazing person for you to listen to and learn from.

Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com. Brandamplified.com.