Ep. 1414 Jules Herd | Masterclass US Wine Market With Juliana Colangelo

Hey, guys. Check out Italian wine unplugged two point o brought to you by Mama jumbo shrimp, a fully updated second edition, reviewed and revised by an expert panel of certified Italian wine ambassadors from across the globe. The book also includes an addition by professoria Atilushienza. Italy's leading vine geneticist. To pick up a copy today, just head to Amazon dot com or visit us at mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Welcome to Mastercross US Market with me, Juliana Colangelo. This show has been designed to demystify the US market for Italian wineries through interviews of experts in sales and distribution, social media, communications, and so much much more. We will quiz each of our esteemed guests at the end of each episode to solidify the lessons that we've learned. To sharpen your pencils, get out your notebooks, and join us each week to learn more about the US market. Hello. Welcome to master class US wine market. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Juul's herd to the Italian wine podcast. Juul is the managing director of five in a boat, a Brandon communications agency specializing in transformative technologies. Jules works outside of the wide industry, and I think it's gonna be super interesting and valuable for us to hear her perspective today coming from outside the industry. I reach out to her after reading an article. She wrote for Forbes about generative AI and how it's gonna change. The future of communications and PR, and there's been so many conversations recently about this topic. So I'm really excited for today's conversation. Welcome to the show, Juel. Thanks for being here. Hey, Juliana. Thank you for inviting me on the show today. Fantastic. So before we dive into today's topic, Joel, tell us a little bit more about your background and your work at five in a boat. Sure thing. So I started in PR about twenty three years ago. It actually makes me feel super old now. Maybe maybe because I am super old. I originally wanted to be a journalist, decided that wasn't for me when I was at university switched across to a PR course, and then went straight into agency life, and basically spent probably the next eighteen years also working either in house for very big brands such as music streaming service, Visa, and HTC, which had a variety of technologies within it. And then also big agencies like WeberShandwicks, and I had a whole host of companies that I worked for that that I would say generally sort of sat in the transformative technology, I guess David and Goliath were very much the the David space. So it was it was challenger brands. And then about probably about five years ago, I was working at Visa, and I and I got to the point where I was a VP of communications, Global VP of comms, I was reporting into the, the the board. And I realized that actually, really, there wasn't anywhere else I could go. You sort of hit that ceiling, and then it's like, right, what do I do now? So I thought I I actually had such an eclectic background. I thought it would be helpful to launch my own agency and to help predominantly businesses that sit in the scale up space. So everything from seed to series d is our is our sort of comfort zone, although we've done M and A's for much bigger clients and various other bits and pieces, actually help them to get to their next phase of growth. And that growth usually involves looking for funding or launching a product or profiling their CEOs or managing some difficult issues. And as a re so really we we started looking at a lot of different brands. And because I'd had a fair bit of experience in music, music tech was really changing the game in terms of challenging the traditional music ecosystem like labels and publishers and bringing in technologies that were evolving that ecosystem We kicked off there, and we started working with a number of different clients, had a couple of, fairly big wins quite early on. So Image and Heath, we started working with very early, and and she's obviously a songwriter that has a load of technologies that she's been working with in music space. We've also done some stuff beyond our various ofaba. We work we're working with a with a number of others, but it's sort of expanded beyond that into games, editech, sex tech. I mean, you name it. We we do it. But technology nine times out of ten sits at the heart of everything, everything we do. And then just to add a couple of things on the slides. So you probably don't do anything in the beverage alcohol industry. Correct? Or is there anything you're working with, you know, in the mouth So, randomly, in my previous life, I launched virgin wines. So I did some stuff then, but that was a really long time ago. And then we've been working with an energy drink called Gourmet, which is focusing on effectively taking the Yerba tree and crushing the leaves and using that as a form of energy vis a vis, caffeine like the red bulls and the monsters used. So we have done some stuff there, but then also I decided in lockdown to start a cocktail business. Sort of like a local thing where we go in and we do almost kick off to people's party. So a couple of hours cocktail making and tasting sessions, and through that, launched a gin called blind swan, which is just for the second year in a row, well, one of the world's best contemporary gin, which is kind of random because I'm not from a spirits background at all. It's weird. And and it really wasn't what I was expecting. It was a it was a lockdown sort of project, and it's gone from strength to strength, really. So we do do a bit in the drinks trade, but it's not really what we do at five in a boat. That isn't kind of where our focus is. And then I just, like, I think I've had some kind of midlife crisis because I also decided to co buy an electric vehicles cable company. So I'm now working in the EV space as well. So and I've got an eight year old and a dog. So I think I might have had my brain supposed to be removed at some point. Well, really fascinating background, Joel. And, again, excited to hear a little bit from an outside perspective on this topic because I think in the wine industry, you know, we're a little slower to change sometimes. So but we're, you know, need to stay ahead of what's happening and and understand how it's gonna affect our business. So today, we're gonna focus specifically on generative AI and what that means for us in the marketing and communication space and more generally for someone that might own a winery or work for a wine company. So our three key takeaways for today's master class are gonna be number one. What can generative AI do for your communication strategy? Number two, what is the role between the communicator and AI? And number three, how can businesses use AI to their advantage? So Let's start just with some basic definitions. What is generative AI to find it for us and tell us what it can do. So I think the first thing to say about generative AI is that regardless of what business you operate in, it's going to impact you. And there are there are two routes you can go down. You can either embrace it and use it to your to your advantage or try and avoid it for as long as possible and end up behind the curve. So looking specifically at what it does, essentially, it's a type of artificial intelligence technology that is able to produce different types of content often using large language mod models like chatchie BT or Dali. And that content can include anything from text to imagery to audio, but also importantly synthetic data. And the difference between sat synthetic data and real data is real data is taken from real world events, and synthetic data is artificially manufactured. So it's effectively used as a funnel to generate lots of information and to share that and outwards using, as I said, these language models. Got it. And would you have the same, you know, some of the conversation that's been coming up is around the copywriting issues around, especially with image usage, but with this synthetic data, would you have any of those cooperate issues or no because of images are synthetic? Well, I think think the thing to to be be wary of with generative AIs that at the moment, whilst it is extremely helpful in terms of generating information, doing research, etcetera, etcetera. There is a side to it where it's the I think the term is that it hallucinates. So it actually makes up things that aren't necessarily true. Like, for example, there are colonies on Mars, So because of that, there is always the risk that there's going to be, you know, issues, which is why it's really, really important that it's not seen as a standalone technology that can operate without the help of humans. That's absolutely not the case. It can only really operate effectively if humans form part of that management of the various tools. Right. Yeah. That's what I've been hearing as well. And do you think it's gonna become a critical part of an agency or communicators workflow to master generative eye and get really comfortable with it, or do you think that communicators can still exist, you know, without using it? I think that it's actually less about the communicators, and it's more about how businesses decide to use it. So, for example, any one of our clients could decide that actually they're not going to hire a PR professional because they're going to use chat GPT to, for example, write a press release or write an opinion editorial. And that's obviously a huge risk to the communications profession because in many respects, when you're looking at that type of example, it's a direct replacement for the PR Pro. So, actually, the concern is more about how businesses use it and how communication our professionals can ensure that they insert themselves into the conversation and into the usage of generative AI so that they are still a really key part of the process. Honestly, I think any PR person, and actually it's not just restricted to PRs, it's mathematicians, it's data analysts, anyone that, you know, where their jobs could potentially be impact, anyone that sat there at the moment thinking this isn't a problem, and it isn't going to impact them really needs to look again because the reality is it's going to impact absolutely everybody. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's a really, really good reminder for of us and our listeners as well. So let's, you know, on that note, how do we start using generative eye? I'm sure many of our listeners haven't dove into it just yet. So talk to us a little bit about how you one might get started using these technologies. So first of all, I would say that to your point earlier, there's an awful lot of chat around generative AI and don't necessarily always believe everything you read. And, obviously, that's even evident when you use it all themselves, because as I said, sometimes they don't report correct information. The best way to do it is to not be afraid of it. It can seem really scary, not panic, and actually just have a go. So get on to onto it all like chatty BT or Dali, and have a play around. Start putting questions into it. Start putting prompts into it. And then you'll start to understand how it's working and the types of responses you're getting back and how you can use those responses. It might be for argument's sake. So let me use an example that's not relevant to PR, but relevant to the cocktail club. I might decide to want to look up a whole list of distributors in the US that might distribute my spirits. That's gonna be far quicker than me looking on Google trying to do it myself. So start playing around or, you know, can you give me the list of the top breed of dogs that are good for families? Anything like that doesn't necessarily have to work related, but that will show you how it starts to perform. Alternatively, if, you know, you want to have a little bit more information before you start making around with it, and there are different versions as well. So there are ones that, you know, chatty bitty four is the latest. Then there's a number of interesting white papers that actually talk you through what it is, how it's going to impact you, what the positives are, what the negatives are, what you need to watch out for, how legislation's impacted the rules around privacy, ethical considerations, you name it, So either one of those, either taking a direct approach and getting hands on or having a read of some of the white papers that are actually tick boxes next to them saying, this is, you know, this is actually what you need to be wary of. And we know that this information has been rubber stamped so to speak. That's the other route forward. Italian wine podcast, part of the momo jumbo shrimp family. Yeah. And I think that, you know, your example of using it in your personal life too is a good one because it's not, you know, just making it part of your daily routine and habit might make it feel a little less daunting when it comes to utilizing it and integrate it into your workflow. At least that's how I feel about it. You know, sometimes, you said, just researching some basic information, comparing products for shopping, building out an itinerary for a vacation. I mean, and I can think of so many examples of where it might be helpful. And I think you know, part of what as communicators, we need to start realizing is that this is a tool that's gonna save us time and can help us and let's use it to our advantage. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, on that note, according to a recent industry survey, of US wine communication professionals, sixty one percent of PR professionals are already using this technology. You know, again, how can we think about the role of the communicator, the agency, the publicist, in the context of generative AI. Yeah. I think I mean, the most important thing, people are and and it's terrible, but it's true. People are governed by fear. And when there's a lack of understanding about anything, really, I mean, it could be a medical diagnosis, or it could be a particular type technology, your immediate response is to be fearful of it because you don't know what the outcome is going to be. The reality is is that regardless of of what we think, a PR person's role is a hundred percent going to be impacted positively and negatively, but it's absolutely not going to be eradicated. In fact, an overwhelming eighty six percent of comms professionals globally, according to a report that was done recently by provoked media and sandpiper sit as an opportunity rather than a threat. So actually, what it's about is about teaching PRs how to use it to their advantage. And as I mentioned earlier, chatty Bitty is a great tool for doing research quickly or for carrying out writing tasks. And for a PR person that's often juggling multiple balls, you've got ten different clients. They've all got different deadlines. This absolutely expedites the time it would normally take a PR to carry out the type of research that actually frees them up to focus on things that are more important and that drive greater business value, like business consultancy or issues management or reputation management. Also, the tools can be used to analyze sentiment about brands products and services in real time, which is super important when you need to take swift action to mitigate certain trends or to capitalize on positive ones. We've had some examples recently where we had a company that was owned by Russians, which, obviously, you know, given the situation with Russia in the in Ukraine at the moment, isn't great, who have business as it assets frozen, and we had to gather that sentiment super quickly so that we could react to it. And it was a real issues crisis management situation, and being able to use generals of AI to gather that data in a way that is far quicker than you actually sat there as a PR person, you know, on your own is super beneficial. And I think also, it's it allows PRs to understand, you know, what the most effective comms channels are for their target audience. So often people and and this is a great example if you apply it to new business. So There's a lot of PRs that sat in their seats and part of their remit for growing their business is to get new clients on board. And what they'll often do is they'll take a cookie cutter approach, and they will copy and paste emails, potentially just change the name of the business and, you know, a little bit of reference about that company and then send it off to a different company. But effectively, it's the same email. Actually, what generative AI will enable you to do is to do the necessary research in real time very quickly about the different businesses, which enables you to target and personalize messages, which in the end will ultimately deliver you better response rates because you will have a better understanding of what those businesses do. So it's huge opportunity. I've been thinking a lot about it too in the context of competitor research, measuring shared voice, thinking about where are your competitors living in the media landscape and being able to pull all that research a lot more quickly. Right? So I think that there's some analytical tools beyond the generative piece of of maybe helping to write a press release but there's some analytical and reporting tools that I think are gonna become part of any communicators workflow. A hundred percent agree with that, Juliana. I mean, what we're seeing is PR is always a tricky one because actually measuring it is very tricky and we're seeing our clients more and more because of the current economic climate and coming off the back of COVID want to be able to demonstrate return on investment. And generative AI is absolutely, you know, one of the best tools to be able to, you know, look at results and measure results and look at sentiment and look at tone in a much faster way than a traditional media monitoring agency would be able to do it or we, you know, sat at our desks will be able to do. So it's critical for things like that. Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, one question I had for you around January of AI, you know, we think about tone of voice when we we know what we work with our clients. We wanna make sure the press release, the caption, the social media posts, all comes from their voice and also is on brand, on message. Do you think that January of AI is going to learn how to create tones of voice for specific brands? Like, will we be able to sort of filter it for x y z brand has this tone of voice and then use another prompt to get a different tone of voice? I mean, ultimately, yes, it's not there at the moment, but I think what's key regardless of whether you're using the AI of today or the AI of tomorrow unless we turn ourselves into a Westworld situation that who know may happen, is that AI tools need to be fed the right information. So you as a PR pro have to be super specific when using these tools so that AI can actually understand you and deliver better results, which might be one day writing a social post for Nike and the next day writing one for Adidas. I mean, I could put in a request that asks me to write a social post for my clients. And then when the suggested posts come back, I could say, oh, well, that's not quite right. Can you make it more fun? Can you make it more authoritative? Whatever it might be, and actually, then it will respond to your requests, and it will enable you to deliver against those different tones. But you need to enter the right prompt. Otherwise, it's just gonna go and do its own thing or you're gonna spend time and time again writing things and it and it absolutely not being right. I think also it's really important to note that at the moment, There are some challenges with it in that it doesn't recognize bias. There's also considerations around ethics. So AI needs to be deployed in line with clients and your own business's ethical boundaries. And and at the moment, and if this will a hundred percent change, it can't address emotion, it can't it can't give you a judgment. So if you had a sensitive work issue, for example, it's something HR related and you put a question into this with regards to whatever the issue might be, it wouldn't be able to take a human judgment call, and sometimes you need humans to make those judgments. So it could give you the relevant information, but it couldn't judge what was the right way to go. So we need to bear that in mind as well. And then as I said earlier, you know, it can misreport facts, which is why humans need to go and check, and it needs continuous updating and training. So you need to evolve with the AI tools. Otherwise, it's not going to live with what you want it to deliver. Yeah. When you use the example earlier about your tin and, you know, searching your distributors in the US, you know, I was being so curious to understand on the back end where the information is being pulled from and how accurate it is. Right? So I guess you know, it's worth doing some testing like you said and just getting into it, using the tools and playing around and and seeing how they work to understand how it can, how it can benefit your business and how you can use it. Here's a good example. So we we've used it to do some new business research. We're looking at particular industry, and we sent what are the top twenty five scale ups in this space that we could potentially approach? And it plays back to us the twenty five scale ups, but when we actually research further, what it didn't tell us is that a quarter of those scale ups had been bought by other companies, by much bigger companies, which actually isn't highly relevant to us in terms of what we're trying to do with our business, which is why, as I said, the human element is super important. They can't operate code independently. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's a really key takeaway for today. It's just there is still a human element involved in generative AI that's really important. It's about mastering it. So in that vein, how do you think businesses can use generative AI to their advantage? From our perspective, we, at the moment, are generally using it for research, for fact checking, but, obviously, we're double checking those facts afterwards, and for just getting us information super quickly when we need to make decisions quite quickly. But I do know that other companies, and especially companies that would potentially look to consider to hire a freelancer or a small agency and then look at their budgets and think, actually, how can I cut costs? You know what? I'll use Chachi BT. And I'll get chatty Bitty to write a press release for me, and that'll save me a thousand dollars on a freelancer, because obviously it's significantly cheaper. So they are using it to draft materials, and that's fair. But ultimately, I don't think it's give them a desired result when we talk about things like bias, ethics, tone, etcetera, etcetera. Also, we do an awful lot of reputation management for our clients. And as I said earlier, you know, the example of the company where we needed real time data analysis and insights based on particular situations, that's absolutely imperative that we have that information quickly to make informed decisions when it comes to certain response strategies and stuff like that. I mean, the reality is that AI, the sheer speeds that AI tools consist through data is absolutely bonkers. And it should be completely used more advantage as humans because we just can't work that quickly. However, good we are, as I said, I've done this job for twenty three years. I consider myself to be fairly at the top of my game. I just can't work as quickly as a generative AI tool. It's as simple as that. What's on the horizon? I mean, things are changing so quickly, and I think that's one of the challenging things for about this space for a brand owner who might be doing a million other things is how do I keep up? How do I understand what's changing and generative by an AI? How I should be using it? So what can we expect next? You know, we're seeing now the generation of text, of image, of video, and how it can be used in a marketing plan, or how it can be used, like you were seeing for reputation management, for research, But what what's next? What what do you think we should be expecting next? I think we have to acknowledge that it is moving extremely quickly and that we, as PR professionals, and equally, other businesses that want to use to their advantage, they need to be at the forefront of how it's advancing. Which means playing with it, getting used to it, engaging with it on a constant basis. Soon, we're gonna be in a position where we can see content created that is tailored to individuals' preferences, interests, and moods, which is nuts, it takes us on to a whole new level. And then if we look at some of the research that's been conducted, so Gartner, for example, a a very big global analyst house has stated that by twenty twenty five, a third of outbound marketing messages from large organizations will be synthetic be generated, which is what we talked about earlier, which is up from less than two percent last year. So that's, you know, twenty eight percent increase. And then also by twenty thirty, a major blockbuster film is gonna be released with ninety percent of the film generated by AI. So from text to video, which is again, you look at the moment and think that's just not possible. And then one of the things that I'm personally looking forward to, I was reading an article the other day that said in, I think it was, like, twelve to eighteen months time, AI is going to enable to train me to understand how to talk to my dog. So it will it will monitor how dogs are barking. How does the dog want food today? Yes, I do, woof woof woof type of thing. So it's moving in lots of different directions. And as I said, we can use it professionally to our advantage but also for people that wanna understand what their dog's saying, sometimes a lot of animal lovers, that kind of stuff is just crazy. So loads of things are gonna happen. Yeah. I think that's gonna save people a lot of trips to the vet, you know. I'm thinking of my old dog, mate. Wow. That's that's pretty incredible. I've got a puppy. And since I've had her, she's been at the vets twice eating raisins. And the second time, I wasn't even sure that she'd eaten the raisins, but had to pay to get her stomach pumped anyway. So she got to her around and said, no, mom, I didn't eat the raisins. That would have saved me a lot of money and time. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Well, lots of change ahead and really appreciate you being here to talk us through some of what to expect in some of the trends. So as we wrap up today, we'll do our rapid fire quiz for master class where we'll review our our key takeaways from today's conversation. So, Julie, if you can do your best to answer these questions, in one sentence or less, please. So question number one, what what can generative AI do for your communications So I think the most important thing is it freezes up to concentrate on other areas that may deliver more business value for clients. Question number two, what is the role between the communicator and AI? So at the moment, the communicator is very much the organ grinder. And that AI is the monkey, but because we still need humans to input prompts and requests, but I've got a feeling that this may change as AI evolves. Absolutely. Okay. And finally, number three, how can businesses use AI to their advantage? I mean, I would just say don't see it as a threat, see it as an opportunity, use it to automate routine operations, which you might find really boring and time consuming, which will ultimately save you that time that results in that money. Yeah. I think that's really key. It's gonna save us all a lot of time and automate so many things that we're doing manually right now. So, it's a huge opportunity. So thank you so much for coming on here today and talking us through some of the trends and what's going on in this space. I really enjoyed our conversation and learned so much. So how can our listeners connect with you and follow you to stay up to date on what's happening in this AI space? Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me on here. It's it's great to chat to you, and it it's a topic that I feel as you can probably tell, quite passionate about. In terms of keeping up to date with my views and and various other bits and pieces that might be relevant, I'm on all the social media platforms, both personally. So jewels you heard on Twitter and I'm on Instagram, and then my various businesses, five in a boat, EV cables, and cooking coop tail club are on platforms as well or on LinkedIn. Or if anyone's dropped me an email, it's jules at five in a boat dot com. So feel free to do that as well. Fantastic. Lots of ways to to stay connected, and I can't wait to check out your cocktail club. It's on. So that was, like, a lot of fun. Fantastic. Thanks again, Joel, for being here today on the Italian wine podcast. We really appreciate you joining us. Thank you for joining me today. Stay tuned each week for new episodes of Master class US wine market with me Juliana Angelangelo. I remember if you enjoyed today's show, hit the like and follow buttons wherever you get your podcasts.