PTW3 054: THE BRAND SENSEI's AI & Branding Formula with G. Kofi Annan and Donna Mitchell

Thanks for checking. In the Pivoting the Web 3 podcast. Go to pivotingtheweb3podcast.com to download and listen or web3game plan to check out the videos. Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to pivoting to Web3 podcast. And today we have coffee Anon. Now, coffee was episode, I think 38.

Donna Mitchell

00:00:22 - 00:01:14

And we decided to have him back because he's doing some fabulous things with his expertise, you may not remember. So let me remind you, he has worked with Mercedes Benz, Puma, Saatchi and Saatchi and Ogilvy, and he's also spoken at South by Southwest. He's been at Harvard, Columbia University. I mean, this is The Brand SENSEI for sure. But let me not speak any further. Let me introduce you to Kofi or non Kofi. Say hello to your audience and ours and let us know what's happening with you today and why you wanted to be back on pivoting to web3 with all the information and technology and transformation that you've been doing and trying to help brands and nonprofits and solopreneurs moving forward. Say hello and what's going on now.

G. Kofi Annan

00:01:15 - 00:02:14

Thank you, Donna. Thank you. Thank you so much for another wonderful introduction and I'm glad to be back here on the Pivoting to Web3 podcast. I had so much fun last time and I really was able to connect with you and a lot of your audience and really even understand some of the, some of the things that I even I didn't know in the Web three as I kind of engaged with your audience. But yeah, to that point, you know, I've always been a technologist and a strategist. As you mentioned. I've worked in marketing primarily for most of my career, marketing as a focus, but it really has been marketing supported by technology. And as we moved through, you know, in the early days of, you know, just HTML and the dot com to social to mobile, and then obviously, you know, what we really all engaged with right now is AI as we move through all those different technological advancements.

G. Kofi Annan

00:02:14 - 00:03:10

My experience and how I've really approached it has really been in the context of how can this technology help brands build their visibility, grow their visibility, and then also connect more authentically with their customers and clients so that it could generate that revenue. Because at the end of the day, customer companies are really focused on that growth and that customer engagement and the technologies, luckily for us and luckily for you, and I really allow them to do so much more with so much less and so much more efficiently and I could definitely share some examples of how I've seen that happen. But you know, it's an exciting time to be, to be in this space where the technology is advancing so much and so much of it is so accessible. And that's really where I come in to kind of help companies understand how to use them and where to use them more effectively.

Donna Mitchell

00:03:11 - 00:03:45

Well, I do have something in the back of my mind that I want some more information on. I saw in the past week you were talking about some new type of AI or chat or chatgpt or it was something that you discovered. It sounded like it was new. I didn't know about it. I think quite a few of us on LinkedIn that didn't know about it. Can you share that again? I was kind of in that swipe mode real quick and I kind of missed it a little bit. But I stayed long enough to know, oh, I got to talk to Kofi about this. So what's happening with that?

G. Kofi Annan

00:03:45 - 00:04:45

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, it's really what I've really been spending on my time on in the past, I mean, year and a half. Like a lot of, a lot of folks is understanding how AI is can be used, can be leveraged and all the changes that's happening. It's, you know, to your point, there's so much going on, sometimes you're swiping through, it's a new news items, new news item coming through. But I really, I spent a lot of my time training again keeping up with that and dissecting that. But more recently there really been some two developments that really affected how I see development of AI and the ability for it to affect and grow brands. The first one was we all know Chat GPT and you know, that's that they really blew the doors open as far as AI accessible AI for companies. They really blew the door open there and they've been going well and they've got some lot of challenges. You have perplexity, you have, you know, even Google, you have a lot of meta is also developing their AI generated AI capabilities.

G. Kofi Annan

00:04:45 - 00:05:24

So they have a lot of competition. But really I would say OpenAI and ChatGPT have really been setting the standard. A couple of weeks ago they finally released was a really huge move. They released what's called Search GPT. Previously you, when you were using Chat GPT. Chat Chat GPT was really only trained up to a certain day and time. So a lot of the data that was in Chat GPT that people were able to access was really dated. So you really didn't have that real time information, that real time analysis and, and information, unless you as a user uploaded that.

G. Kofi Annan

00:05:25 - 00:06:41

So that was a big, big hurdle for ChatGPT as far as accuracy. But as innovators, as innovative as they are, they released a Search GPT feature which essentially right now, just for paid ChatGPT users and enterprise, but essentially it opens up the door for within the Chat GPT interface for you to actually query, do almost like a Google search. So you're able to, you're able to, in your prompts and in discussion and in your analysis, you're able to access real time information. So think news stories, you think, you know, even search information, you think social media information. All the same things that you're used to going to Google and kind of typing in these keywords. Now all that's being pulled, most of it is being pulled into chat GPT and that, that puts them square in competition with Google because we all know, you know, the term Google is a thing, you know, go and Google and that's where you find your information. But right now, ChatGPT is a direct competitor with the release of that feature to Google. And one advantage of that is that they've already got the leverage as it relates to the AI and being personalizing the information that people are inputting and getting out of it.

G. Kofi Annan

00:06:41 - 00:06:48

So you add that search feature and boom, it's a whole new world and a whole new opportunity for companies.

Donna Mitchell

00:06:49 - 00:07:25

So with that said, with the ChatGPT, the new feature, all your experience that you've had with these major brands, how does AI and the technology today help the engagement or the personalization or the experience with the customer? What are they doing today? Or what do you wish you had in technology before that's here now, that might have saved you some time, made you more money and made life a lot easier when you were doing a lot of brand and advertising and out there in the big game.

G. Kofi Annan

00:07:25 - 00:08:21

Yeah, yeah. I mean that. One of the reasons why I'm so excited is that, you know, I've been wishing for these abilities for many, many years. I remember one, probably about maybe 10 or more years ago, I was actually working with Party City, which is the, you know, kind of the retailer that sells a lot of party supplies, you know, here in the U.S. you know, they're all over, they have their retail stores and at the time when I was working with them, they were actually moving, they were trying to enhance their E commerce. So like really kind of trying to build up their, their online accessibility for all Their information and their products and SKUs and allowing people to buy and all that. So it's exciting time for them. But a huge, huge hurdle for all of that was they have millions of products, right? I mean, they're huge store, so they have millions of products.

G. Kofi Annan

00:08:21 - 00:08:55

So the big problem was how do you get all those millions of products, how do you inventory all of those, but then also take that information and put it online so that it's seamless for the user. Someone can just go. Now we're used to it, where you could just go on online and you kind of pick one of this, two of these. You know, you could cross reference different kinds of. You know, if you're having a. My son had a Ninjago party some years ago when he was younger. Ninjago is a, you know, kids animated series. And you know, you're able to go as a parent and you say, oh, I want a Ninjago party.

G. Kofi Annan

00:08:55 - 00:09:47

So I want, you know, Ninjago, you know, plates, yada, yada, and put all this together and buy. So, you know, those of us who've been around for a while, you know that previously you'd have to go into some fairlight party city and you had to walk all the aisles and get all those different things. So obviously with online, they wanted to take that whole experience and make it more accessible for people so that you don't have to go to a physical store. But none of the, that information was, was put together in a way that made it easy to deliver that product online. So we spent a good, probably about three, four, five months just categorizing everything literally in the warehouse. You know, I was, I was the person, I was part of the team that was trying to digitize that whole thing. So we would physically go into a warehouse, look on the shelves, say, okay, this is a Batman. This, this is Batman thing.

G. Kofi Annan

00:09:47 - 00:10:32

Take pictures, we'll write it down, you can imagine. And all that inventory that take it back would have to create, you know, group them, put them, you know, type them all into the computer. Very, very labor intensive, high cost, large team. We really, we got it done, but it took a very long time. Fast forward to today. One of the things that I'm thinking about is that had we had the advances of AI with photo recognition and voice recognition and image recognition and inputs, a lot of that would have taken so much shorter. We might not even have had to go into the warehouse. We might have just had a camera that you could just take a picture of something.

G. Kofi Annan

00:10:32 - 00:11:19

It would digitize that and say, okay, this is a Batman costume. This is a Batman plate. And it would make our jobs, my job, so much easier to just, okay, create. Create a category that's called Batman stuff, right? And put that online. And that's where we've really come. The efficiency of doing that manual labor really allows us, allows companies now to not spend as much time and energy on a lot of that manual labor. But really the expertise of the, of the people that, like myself, who understand the product, understand the strategy, understand where the brand needs to be, we could spend a lot more time really crafting that roadmap, crafting that strategy. And as long as we know what technologies we're using and how to leverage them, we could really accelerate what we're doing.

G. Kofi Annan

00:11:19 - 00:11:37

And that's what makes this thing so much, this day, so much better. And even more importantly, that's accessible to smaller brands. And you don't have to have the big budget like Party City or Puma or even Bayer, which I worked with some years ago. So it's exciting time to be if you know what you're doing and if you have the right strategies.

Donna Mitchell

00:11:37 - 00:12:16

So you walked right into my next question as you kept talking. So if you know what you're doing, there's probably some people in the audience that are new to the game of solopreneurship or transitioning out of corporate, and they're used to having a brand department, advertising and all the support, and now they got to do their brand. How do you explain to an entrepreneur or owner, founder, what is a brand and what does it encompass? How do they look at this for themselves? And what does the brand do? Why is it so important, always hearing brand, brand, brand. So why is that like that?

G. Kofi Annan

00:12:17 - 00:13:04

Well, I mean, the idea of a brand, I mean, has evolved over the years, but, you know, put simply, a brand is what others think of you, right? So it's not what you say, it's not brand. It's not a message and all that. I mean, it's part of that. That's how you, that's how you. You put it out there in the world. But at the end of the day is the perception of what your company or what your project project or what your initiative or if it's a personal brand, who you are. So, you know, what are the values? What are characteristics? You know, so you take a famous brand like Nike, if you take away the, the word Nike, I'm sure even Donna, you could think of, okay, what is, what is, what is it? What is the Nike brand? Swoosh, athleticism, Swoosh Exactly. Is the swoosh like, so that's.

G. Kofi Annan

00:13:04 - 00:13:26

That's both a word, but then also kind of like a feeling and, you know, an expression audible. It's, you know, Nike is primarily, you know, from a logo perspective, black and white. They have some colors. It's about athleticism. So again, it's more. It's more than just the word Nike or even the check mark. Right. It's about what they've spent years and years putting behind that.

G. Kofi Annan

00:13:26 - 00:14:15

The way how they've connected with people in different environments, how they've sponsored different events, how they. They create their shoes, how their ads even paint a picture of the environment and the emotions that you get from that brand, from Nike. So a brand, you know, at the end of the day, it sounds really complicated, but really, it's how people see you, how they experience you, and how they really access you from a revenue perspective, really, it's all part of building your brand. And in today's world, there are more than enough choice for. In any category, whether it be on B2B or B2C. In today's world, there's so much. There's so much choice for consumers that your brand really has to stand out, and it really has to stand for something. And so it's.

G. Kofi Annan

00:14:15 - 00:14:18

That's what makes it so much more important in today's world.

Donna Mitchell

00:14:18 - 00:15:41

So when you look in today's world, with all the advancements in technology, you got AI. You have the different types of AI with different functionalities, the capabilities, the engagement experiences. And you have also a lot of the web3, which you go into the blockchain is that intersection for security, read, Write, Verify, trust, and all the different opportunities that are available to us? When you look at everything in totality, what would you say are the most important steps, the first three or five steps that one should look at as they try to create their brand? Or is that something they need a professional for? Is that. So is that where you step in? I mean, how does that work? How far can someone really go with all this AI? When do they contact you? When do they get an advertising agency? When. When do they just say, let me just have an avatar. Let me pick me some colors and keep it moving. But when you bring in the artwork, is there a way to communicate to those that are listening, that are trying to figure it out and say, okay, so I know I want to do this and I want to do that. I guess it's time to create my brand, or I know it must be time for me to really nail down who I'm talking to how, how does all that piece work together?

G. Kofi Annan

00:15:41 - 00:15:43

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question.

Donna Mitchell

00:15:43 - 00:15:55

Become Mercedes Benz and Puma and all these places you worked. How did that brand get so good? How does a little guy like us get our brand out there? That's my question.

G. Kofi Annan

00:15:55 - 00:17:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a, it's a great question and it's a question I love answering and talking about because it isn't as straightforward. But I'll give you exactly what works. Again, regardless of how much budget you have or how big your company is, how long you've been around to create a brand, first you have to start with yourself. So if you're a smaller company, you as an individual, you and your partners, you know all, you know, essentially what brought you to wants to create this product or put this idea out there, right? Because at the end of the day, that's what's going to sustain it. So what is your. Why, why are you doing this and how are you hoping to change the world? Right? Because at the end of the day it really does come back to that. So once you identify that, you start internally, what are you about, what are you trying to do out in the world? Then it's also about, okay, who are the people, the audiences, the clients, the customers that you need to interact with? Who are the people who need that solution, right? So you understand who you are, you understand who the people are.

G. Kofi Annan

00:17:05 - 00:17:57

So at the nexus of, if you have a Venn diagram, at the nexus of that is the brand. So meaning, okay, so now that you know who you are, now that you know the people that you want to interact with, so how do you do it? What are visually, what are the things that help them again, go into the Nike because only because it's popular, the how, how will they be able to recognize you as that solution? So in the Nike case, it's the swoosh, right? Or it's the way the words or maybe they, they put something that's kind of sports related. Again, these are kind of the, the visual signals of. So someone could say, hey, I want to do that fast thing. That just do it thing. Yes, that is the company that is associated with that just do it thing. And that's what I need in my life. So you start putting together these, both the visuals as we talk about the switch and stuff, the messaging, right? Because you also have to speak their language.

G. Kofi Annan

00:17:57 - 00:18:47

So just do it was really popular because it really spoke to what people were feeling and what people wanted to accomplish, right? So the messaging. So the images, the words, but then even more importantly today, the experience around where you're going to meet them and how, how you're going to interact with them. So if you're meeting them online, how accessible are you? You know, is there, is there a wait list? Is there some. Can they just directly message you? Can they not message you? So again, it's the images, imagery, it's the words, but then the environment. So where are they engaging with you? Twitter versus Reddit, for instance. Right. Is that where your audience is? So, and you have to create that. So all that really comes up comes into the brand.

G. Kofi Annan

00:18:47 - 00:19:36

Now, it's a lot of work. It's not something that you could do in 10 minutes. And sure, you could certainly query AI ChatGPT and say, hey, this is what I do. This is whatever, give me a brand roadmap or tell me what to do. That's the shortcut. Most times it's inaccurate because at the end of the day, ChatGPT is general. It doesn't know you, so it could give you a generalized things that you could do, but it's going to be missing that spark, the uniqueness that you bring individually or as a team. So with today's technology, you could definitely have a head start in looking in, pulling the initial information, you know, into ChatGPT and then getting something that says, oh, these are the kinds of things that you should be looking at.

G. Kofi Annan

00:19:36 - 00:20:11

But I would say that you would definitely need someone like myself or, you know, someone else who's worked in this, in this space to really help you so that you don't get confused as to where you need to spend your time, money and energy to create that brand. Because they're very. There are a lot of choices and you have to find something that's unique to you. And that takes a lot of, a lot of deep diving in conversations and analysis and testing that. And which is something that I do with my clients. Like, I really kind of dive deep into their, into what they're about and what they're trying to bring and what their customers looking for.

Donna Mitchell

00:20:11 - 00:20:42

So, so some of those AIs that are out there are bots. People are feeding bots with their background and their product and all their information. That would be a way to go if you didn't want to utilize a agency or you would strap in a company or a project. And would that be helpful if you had a kind of corner off, it was secure and it kind of knew who you were, you've been using it over time and then you start Doing the branding, how does that do you know how that might work out?

G. Kofi Annan

00:20:42 - 00:21:28

So, so there's, there's, there's creating the brand, which is like what I just talked about, which is kind of putting the pieces together. So you can say this is my brand and there's the branding. Right. And I separate this too because the creation of, you know, what I just talked about, the imagery, the words, the environments, making those decisions, which are kind of like the strategies is different from how you actually execute on that. Right. You know, so there are AI tools and a lot of talk to a lot of different people and a lot of them are just go to ChatGPT and start using ChatGPT. If you wanted to get from point A to point B driving, you don't just get into any random car. Right? Depends on how fast.

G. Kofi Annan

00:21:29 - 00:22:01

Exactly. Right. Like we're used to, if we have the choice, we choose selective. We're selective about what we're choosing for the task. Right. We might want a Ferrari or maybe you've gone so far that you need a train ticket. Again, all those kind of decisions. And I say that to bring that back to what the Chat GPT thing, where a lot of people if chat, if we could say ChatGPT, Chat GPT was a Mercedes Benz, they just always want to choose a Mercedes Benz, but sometimes that's not the right tool for what they're trying to do.

G. Kofi Annan

00:22:02 - 00:22:54

So there are a number of different tools that people could use both for the creation of the brand. So to your point, kind of creating the visuals and the colors, if you have that sensibility of color and messaging, it's good to kind of start and get something on paper. I would say again, always have someone with expertise kind of bump that, audit that for you and give you some pointers. But you could definitely put a lot of ChatGPT, for instance, could help you put some of those. And even Dall E, which is the visual part of that's associated with OpenAI, give you some visuals around that. So you could definitely create that. And then you have a whole nother set of tools, AI enabled tools that allow you to do the branding. So there might be a tool like Perplexity that allow you to find some articles that you could kind of riff on so that you could bring in your personality into the world.

G. Kofi Annan

00:22:54 - 00:23:28

There are ton pretty much most of the major social media tools now have some AI components and capabilities built in. So, you know, depend which, which one you have. So I really spans the gamut of brand creation, brand development and. But you just really have to be cautious of the tools that you're using and what you're trying to get out of them. And that's definitely something that I work with my clients to kind of choose the right tools, but then. And also get the right outputs out of them.

Donna Mitchell

00:23:29 - 00:23:38

So what concerns you? Have you seen anything that really concerns you with AI as you've been working on it? On the brand side, what concerns you? What do you worry about? What do you see?

G. Kofi Annan

00:23:39 - 00:24:23

Yes, the. One of the main things that concerns me is just like a lot of technologies and AI is actually more. So there are a lot of brands, big brands and small brands that are just jumping in with both feet and they're trying to automate and just create stuff, right? Because it's pretty. These days, creating visual content and creating any kind of content is pretty much a commodity, right? Like, you don't have to have an idea. You could go out and create a video image, text. You know, you could create pretty much any idea that you come up with. You could create it in two seconds with all these different AI tools. Right.

G. Kofi Annan

00:24:24 - 00:25:49

The good part about that is that you're able to create things, but just like a tool that's so powerful in the wrong hands, it comes out really bad. And unfortunately, we have, especially online, we are swamped and we're overwhelmed with so much content. And most of it is bad, right? Most of it has no soul. It's not authentic. It has no connection to the people that are engaging with it. And that's the biggest challenge that I see right now, where you have so many companies that just because they can create content and they can create visuals, like Nike, I mean, you could pretty much copy and paste Nike or Amazon or any of whatever Patagonia, whatever your favorite brand is, you could pretty much copy and paste it and make one that you can use these days, you know, except for copyright. But you could kind of create something. But the question is, does that connect with your audience? Does that represent you? Again, that first part of that diagram, and does it connect with the audience, that second part of that diagram? And these days, online, most of the times it's no, because it's generic, it's soulless, and it does not have that authenticity that really is what people look to brands for.

G. Kofi Annan

00:25:50 - 00:26:00

It helps build the Nikes, Amazons and Apples of the world. So that soul, that uniqueness, is definitely something that's missing right now. And unfortunately, we have a lot of generic stuff out there.

Donna Mitchell

00:26:00 - 00:26:01

Like faceless.

G. Kofi Annan

00:26:01 - 00:26:24

Faceless, exactly. Faceless. Soulless. You know, it's A lot of noise and contrast to that. People don't have a lot of attention. So, you know, most consumers don't have, or clients or customers don't have the attention that they need. As you mentioned with me, even you like, kind of scroll, I saw something and it kind of piqued my interest. And like.

G. Kofi Annan

00:26:24 - 00:27:33

Right, that's, that's a habit that everyone has right now and we're being, we're being flooded with just so much information. So it is, it is a, that's the downside. The opportunity is for companies like Airbnb or even Starbucks who have really spent years crafting how their, what their brand is, what their customer understanding what their customer wants, understanding how the behaviors have changed and expectations have changed. So they spend years outside of technology under, trying to understand. And they continually do that so that when they use AI, for instance, it actually accelerates what they're doing that they're doing so well and that ultimately AI only amplifies and accelerates what you're doing. If you're doing something horribly, it's going to make that, you know, it's going to get that to everyone in the world. If you're doing something well, it's going to get that to everyone in the world and have the impact that you're looking for. So that's the difference that, that's where we are right now and that's the, both the opportunity and the barrier.

Donna Mitchell

00:27:33 - 00:27:52

So what is it that you're working on that you could share with us? Or what is it that you'd like us to know going forward as the future comes upon us with branding and AI? And what does one need to be prepared for?

G. Kofi Annan

00:27:53 - 00:28:46

Yeah, I mean, it's, it, it's going to be more and more crowded and noisy out there. Competing for attention is going to get even harder. I mean, it already is, but by 2025 is definitely going to get that much harder as more people start using AI for not good things. So what I'm, what I'm working on is with the, with the people that I work with, the clients that I work with, I'm trying to get them both the strategies that I know work regardless of technology. So what are the strategies that, the strategies that I've seen work with PUMA clients like Puma, Mercedes Benz, Bayer, when I did their AI projects in 2016, you know, these are all strategies that have worked for years and will continue to work for years. Right. And that's agnostic of the time or technology. So getting them to understand those strategies.

G. Kofi Annan

00:28:46 - 00:30:24

But then Also getting folks to understand the right tools that they need to be using. You shouldn't be using all the tools and how to use those. So and I think that is the path to success. Having the right strategy, knowing what you want to do and how you want to do it and then leveraging the tools that you have at your, at your beck and call in the right way to then get that result that you're looking for and you can't do everything all at once. So within that context, I have a workshop, two day workshop that I've created. It's called the brand plus AI intensive and I'm working with a number of different clients in two days being able to kind of really understand that strategy, but understand the tools, get them familiar with those strategies and the tools so that they can start building that brand and have the success that I've seen work for even Bayer when I worked with them in eight years ago on their first AI project. So we've kind of looking at all the different time and all the different components that we've that I've seen over my 20 years of experience and I compressed that into to a two day intensive that I really kind of one on one work with brands and I really kind of help them kind of move through that, that initial phase of getting the grounding that they need and then having them be able to measure that. And then we work, you know, we work depending on how we work forward.

G. Kofi Annan

00:30:24 - 00:30:35

So again, just try and make sure that people are using the right tools in the right way in with the right strategy so that they can see the results both in their business, but then also for their customers and customer base.

Donna Mitchell

00:30:35 - 00:30:37

So how do they connect with you?

G. Kofi Annan

00:30:37 - 00:31:39

So yeah, I mean I have a couple of tools that and things that I've put together and one of the main ways that you can connect me, I put together a link that folks can kind of go to get some of the tools, see some of the things that I'm working with and that's going to be at the brand Sensei Co. So the brand Sensei S E N S E I that co web3 and that's specific and that's specifically for the web3 or your web3 audience. Donna so if you go to the brand Sensei co forward slash web3 you'll see a cheat sheet for creating your differentiating your brand. You'll see, you'll get access to my weekly newsletter where I share different strategies and tools that I'm seeing working in different developments and then also some other goodies that I put that I'll put up there for folks. But yeah, a lot of free downloads. And then also, you could definitely get in contact with me. And I could I'm always on social as well.

Donna Mitchell

00:31:44 - 00:32:05

So coffee. This has been exciting to hear the updates, what's going on, and I'm sure our audience will be able to find that on your page on pivoting to web3podcast.com you'll find all those tools and links there. And thank you for listening. We're Shaping Tomorrow together. We're here to serve. Have a nice day.

G. Kofi Annan

00:32:05 - 00:32:06

Thank you for having me.

Donna Mitchell

00:32:32 - 00:32:43

Thanks for checking in the Pivoting the Web 3 podcast. Go to pivotingtheweb3podcast.com to download and listen or web3game plan to check out the videos. Thank you. We're Shaping Tomorrow together.

PTW3 054 G Kofi Annan Final Donna Mitchell Brand Sensei
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