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Room 301: Daring to Be Real in an AI World, with John McCrea

Posted on: October 22, 2024

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Rob Twells

Rings

In this thought-provoking episode of Room 301, we discuss the challenges and nuances of navigating authenticity in a world increasingly dominated by AI. Join Rob and John as they unpack the pervasive issue of watered-down networking, where AI-generated comments flood social platforms and online discussions, leaving meaningful conversations feeling like a rarity.

In their quest for authenticity, they discuss turning to books for insights to gain perspective and step away from the digital noise (with a few recommendations too!). This episode highlights the need for bravery in digital, and how daring to be real and different is essential when building genuine connections.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the digital chatter or questioned the value of your online engagements, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in to discover why authenticity matters more than ever, how to reclaim your voice in an AI-driven world, and the fresh insights that can help you navigate the complexities of digital marketing.

Watch it on YouTube


Resources

Some of the resources mentioned in the podcast.

Disclaimer: These resources shared are based solely on the experiences of the podcast guest. This is not a sponsored segment or an endorsement.


More Episodes of Room 301

When Your Audience Speaks You Shut Up & Listen (with Nina Alexander)
Room 301: The Spooky VIP Event That “Haunted” My Career, with Rob White
Room 301: Why Your Marketing Strategy Should be 10% Bonkers, with Emma Clarke

Podcast Transcription

Rob Twells (00:01)
Good afternoon, John, how are you?

John McCrea (00:03)
I'm good, thank you buddy, how you doing?

Rob Twells (00:05)
Yeah, very well, thank you, very well. Thank you for joining us. First thing I want to cover, John, is really tell us about you. Tell us about how you got into marketing first of all.

John McCrea (00:17)
Sure. So I've been in marketing for about five years now. I think like most marketers had a bit of an unconventional route into it. I used to be a content editor for the financial services wing of Reuters. So I do kind of like long form writing or occasionally like distilling complex documents down into sort of like bite -sized chunks really for financial services clients. And it was great.

But I was doing a lot of editing and not lot of original writing and creating. So I had a chat with somebody on LinkedIn and we went for a coffee. We spoke about the role that they had, which was a content marketing position. And basically she was like, you can write, I can teach you how to do marketing. And I was kind of like, cool, let's do it. Let's go for that. That sounds great. And there my journey began really.

I've since worked in a bunch of SaaS roles, experienced the delights of back -to -back redundancies along the way because of COVID. It was pretty rough. And now I'm at a company called Beauhurst, which based in Nottingham and Brixton. Basically, we're a private company database provider and pretty much

Rob Twells (01:26)
Blimey.

John McCrea (01:45)
Any UK company, we've got the data on it, what they're doing, what industry they're in, where they're based, who the key stakeholders are, and I work in marketing for them.

Rob Twells (01:58)
Excellent. And what's your day to day there? What's your sort of role at Boehurst?

John McCrea (02:02)
So I'm a content associate. So pretty much all of the content that you see coming out will be from myself or my other colleague. I'm one of two content associates. So we do a lot of blog writing. We're moving into webinars a lot recently. All of like the full mix marketing stuff. So the email comms, the social comms and so on and so forth.

Rob Twells (02:08)
We'll be here, yeah.

Awesome. Well, look, as everyone will know by this point, we sort of cut the podcast into three different areas. The first one is called What's in Your Toolbox, which is where we really we ask marketing leaders what's in their toolbox. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a software tool. It certainly can be. I also like to hear about sort of frameworks, the ways people like to think about their workload.

Marketers are very, very busy. So, you know, how you approach your workload, how you get things done, how you stick the deadlines, so on and so forth. Once we've done that, we move into what's called a funny failure. And the reason I do this is because I like to hear something funny, first of all. But second of all, I think the best way to learn, the best way to improve is by failing. It's by doing stuff wrong, making mistakes.

and understanding what you can take from that in order to apply something different the next time you go about it. And then finally, the sort of main event is Room 301. So Room 301 is a room where we put everything we no longer want to see in marketing ever again. We stick them in there never to be seen again. So, start us off, John. Tell us what's in your toolbox. Tell us how you approach your work, tell us what tools you use to help you be more efficient. I'm a nerd about this stuff, love to hear it. So yeah, over to you.

John McCrea (03:38)
So I think I'll probably recommend a couple of software tools that everybody already knows and uses if you're in marketing, digital marketing or otherwise. And then something a little bit outside the box. So ChatGPT GPT, obvious, everyone uses it. Well, about, I I say everyone uses it actually. There was a report the other day that came out and said that people don't use it that often, but it's just, it's spoken about a lot. Are you? Yeah.

Rob Twells (03:45)
Go for it, yeah.

Okay, well I'm one of the ones that do. Yeah, yeah.

John McCrea (04:08)
So I use it for very specific uses. As a content writer, there's obviously like a lot of friction between, you know, content writing and sort of artificially created content, like creates a lot of anxiety, I think for content people, justifiably. I use it for different reasons. I don't use it for copy. I'm pretty good prompter, but I just don't think the copy that comes out of it is very good. And I think that just comes from

Rob Twells (04:22)
show.

John McCrea (04:38)
just years of being a writer. But what I do use it for is for ideation. I also look at gaps in the content, both content I'm writing at the moment, almost as a sort of like a BS alarm. Like, what are you missing from this? What's the key thing that like maybe you've not thought about? I think it's really, really good for that. Also for like content strategy, I'm one of those

Rob Twells (04:43)
Yes.

Mm.

John McCrea (05:06)
like just invariably scatty content writers who has all sorts of ideas, but I need a framework to put it down and I need to think about the reasoning behind what I'm doing. Who's it for? What's it trying to achieve? Because you don't want to like run head on into content production because ultimately it just ends up a mess. You need to really think about who you're speaking to, what it's achieving. So I think the great thing about

large language models, whether it's ChatGPT or Claude.ai or any of the others is, it's very concise. It can just, you ask it something really, you know, complex and can distill it down into the basics for you, which I find really good for just kind of like gathering my thoughts, you know.

Rob Twells (05:49)
Yeah.

100%, I think that's a really good way to use it as well. I know our team, particularly in the SEO team here at The Digital Maze, anybody involved in copywriting, how you explained how you use ChatGPT is exactly how we would do it. It's obviously very dangerous to take content in big blocks and plug it on a website. We all know that, but to identify content gaps, ideation, it's brilliant. Me personally.

you won't relate to this John because you're obviously great at writing content. I am not one of those people. I use it in ways, for example, when I'm leading a company, you obviously have to communicate things internally quite a lot. And I think sometimes one of the things I'm not fantastic or hands up is getting the tone right in those messages. So sometimes I'll write a message, I'll get the point I want to put across in there. Maybe it's a company announcement or a change to a process, whatever it might be, but I asked Chat GPT to sort of…

give me thoughts on the tone, how might this be received by different people and then, you know, ask it to do a different iteration of that until it gets to the point where it's got a nice balance between delivering a message but also considering how it might be met by different people. And that's really quite good for me, who's someone who's not fantastic at writing. I can use that in emails as well sometimes. So yeah, it's definitely good to have, it's like having somebody with you just look over your shoulder and go, I'm not sure about that Rob. Maybe take that bit out.

John McCrea (07:11)
No, that's great. Yeah. Now that's a really good use case actually, because it also like, I think when you use it for content writing, whether it's internal content like that, or, you know, or external, it's thinking, it makes you think about what you're producing, what you're writing, like you said, how it might be received, that's really important for stuff like that. So almost like, again, having that.

Rob Twells (07:19)
Yeah.

The funny thing is I used to run messages like that by my wife. I used to go, just check this. I don't want to come across like, you know, but now that AI is now my wife. Yeah, there we go. Next, what's in your toolbox next then, John?

John McCrea (07:40)
You

put that as the tagline for this vlog.

I also have a couple of books. Something I neglected to mention in my intro is I am a book blogger. I, yeah, when I'm not rearing two very, very small children and working full time, I do on occasion partake in a lot of reading, obviously, and a lot of critical reviews. So I have a couple of books to recommend.

Rob Twells (08:01)
Wow.

John McCrea (08:22)
One is Write It All Down by Cathy Rentzenbrink. And basically, the reason I recommend this is although it's a book that's aimed at helping people write memoir, which is something I'm looking at at the moment, it's actually just really good for writers in general in terms of like getting your thoughts out on the page. Some things she talks about in it a lot is tolerating the terror of the blank page, which I think any copywriter, content marketer,

can probably attest to, you start on a project, you've got that blank page, what do you do with it? And how do you get past that mental block of knowing that invariably the first draft of literally anything you produce will be garbage and it just needs refining. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Rob Twells (09:04)
Well, yeah, that's everything, isn't it? That's not just for copyright, I guess. Any project starts with a blank page and that comes with lot of anxiety and what's next?

John McCrea (09:15)
Yeah, no, for sure. But it's a big mental block sometimes for people. yeah, I found it really, really useful for that for both creative writing and for marketing.

Rob Twells (09:19)
100%.

Excellent. that a new book? Has that been around for quite a while?

John McCrea (09:30)
I think it's a few years old.

Rob Twells (09:34)
One that I think will stand the test of time, It feels like it's a framework. Yeah.

John McCrea (09:37)
absolutely. I emailed the author, I emailed Cathy actually after I read it and was like, this is basically one of these books that's kind of changed my life. So thank you. And got a pretty nice response. 2022. That's quite recent, actually. I have another two if we have time, I can be briefer with those. I'll blast through them. The second one, I don't have

Rob Twells (09:45)
Yeah, yeah,

nice. Okay. Quite recent, yeah.

Go for it.

John McCrea (10:03)
paper copy of, I've got it on Kindle, is George Orwell's Politics and the English Language, which is a little bit left field, but actually, any writer, whether they're a journalist, whether they're a politician, whether they're a copywriter, whether they're just involved in communicating to people en masse, should read that book. It should be recommended reading. I mean, I say it's a book, it's about 26 pages, it's really an essay.

Rob Twells (10:11)
Yeah.

John McCrea (10:33)
And kind of speaking to what you've just said about using Chat GPT. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, it's worth the read. can get it on Amazon for free or very little. Or good book shops. No, good book shops everywhere.

Rob Twells (10:39)
That's what's going through my mind now. Maybe I should read this.

There we go. No bias here.

John McCrea (11:00)
And basically he deconstructs how politicians use language to justify things that, know, atrocities, for example, how language can be used to couch quite serious things in ordinary everyday language. It's obviously a very cynical book, but it's also really, really important for, again, thinking about what exactly are you saying? Like you're writing words down.

but words have power, words have meaning. Make sure you're using the right ones because again, they'll be perceived in certain ways. And it's got all sorts of like just really great recommendations on things you should do, things you shouldn't do as a writer.

Rob Twells (11:47)
I think that's really, I mean, it's straight away, that's something I've been reading, but I think certainly, certainly post COVID where a lot of companies are remote, the amount of leaders now that have to, you know, put something out, some sort of messaging, it's not always good news, of course, it's not always good news, sometimes it is, but sometimes it's not good news.

There's definitely something to be said about how words on a page are perceived by people now in a company of all sizes, whereas pre -COVID that may have been spoken about. You might have done that announcement in the office rather than written it down. And therefore the tone might be a bit better. You can sense how, if it's positive, if it's negative, but words on a page are very different. People read them and receive them in all different ways. So I think that's a really interesting recommendation.

John McCrea (12:38)
Yeah, it's actually, yeah, it's a point with, you know, words down on emails and things like that, you know, people read something like a word like restructuring is very loaded and people immediately will go, what does that mean? Or, yeah, he sort of talks about words that are used that have almost been just people don't use anymore because of the connotations associated with them. Pretty much, yeah.

Rob Twells (12:43)
Hmm.

Yes.

The blacklist of words.

John McCrea (13:07)
And if we've got time for one more very briefly, I have Copywriting Is... by Andrew Boulton. You might know him. He's pretty, yeah, he's pretty prolific on LinkedIn. He's a very, very good copywriter. And it's just like a really, really funny book as well as being informative. I think one of the things I like about it is that it's not prescriptive. Like it's not like a quote, unquote business book.

Rob Twells (13:10)
Absolutely.

I've yeah I've heard of this one, yeah.

Hmm.

John McCrea (13:37)
Like it's just a really, really funny, relatable and still educational piece of writing for copywriters. And to be fair, marketers generally, it's full of like quite amusing observations about marketing departments and the perceptions of them within wider businesses. I think anybody who works in a marketing team will enjoy that.

Rob Twells (13:56)
Hmm.

Awesome. And did you have one more in your toolbox? Am I right in saying that? Something more left field, I think you said.

John McCrea (14:07)
Yes, to be fair. Well, to be fair, I thought the books might be left field purely because I know people don't necessarily recommend them as their tools. But for me, literally what I live and breathe it.

Rob Twells (14:17)
Well, I don't know. I mean, a lot of my frameworks, a lot of the ways I think about getting through busy workloads and pressure and all, all my coping mechanisms and working frameworks are from books. Everything I know is from something I've failed at out or reading books and stealing ideas from people who are much smarter than myself. And that's why books are so good, isn't it? Right.

John McCrea (14:43)
That's it, love to hear it. Love to hear it.

I suppose as my other thing I would recommend actually just to new content marketers or copywriters is especially if you're coming from a background like I did where I was coming from a white paper writing background and then I really had to think about my words in a more sort of like digital friendly and commercial way is like just get used to search console early on like it will be your friend for a long long time.

Rob Twells (15:07)
Hmm.

Yeah.

John McCrea (15:17)
It's very simple. You know, it's not like an enterprise tool or anything. Obviously it's one that you get out the box with Google, but it's such a great way to look at how's your content performing from an organic perspective and what kind of insights are you missing again and what you're producing at the moment. I still use it every day. been doing this gig for five plus years. It's a staple.

Rob Twells (15:38)
Yeah, yeah, I know our team do as well. And I guess in terms of another use case for that, I guess you can use it to find where the gaps are as well. What sort of terminology are people using just because you've got a service or the way I would think about it is just because you've got a set of services and you're used to calling it a certain name. If somebody is trying to find that service and has a need for it, they may.

call it or classify it, something very different and your content needs to almost marry up with that doesn't it I suppose and something like Search Console can help you do that marrying is one way I've always approached using Search Console.

John McCrea (16:14)
Yeah, 100%. 100%. It's a really, really, really, really important tool. I think it gets overlooked sometimes because people, everybody knows analytics and so on and so forth. But yeah, no, I think it's great. you're, again, if you're getting into content marketing, get used to that straight away.

Rob Twells (16:23)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah, I agree. It's been one of them ones that been around for so long and it's taken lots of different shapes and sizes, but it's remained a fundamental for as long as I can remember. Going back about 15 years now, it's just a constant. Our team have changed software tools, I don't know how many times, but the one that has remained constant is analytics and search console. It just shows how good it is and how useful it is for the ones that knows who knows what they're doing.

Yeah, I know, I think they're really good recommendations, particularly the books. I really enjoyed that. So once we get off the off the air, I'll be getting some Amazon links off you and that lapel microphone. I need some of that, think, as well. Cool. Absolutely. Let's do it. Failures. I get a bit obsessed with failures in a strange way, because I think a lot of the things that I know how to do and what I I guess, say I'm reasonably good at these days is because somewhere along the lines I have made.

John McCrea (17:10)
I'll send you a link to the blog.

Rob Twells (17:28)
a horrible horrible mess of it. And that's the only way you can learn, it's the only way you can pick up where you went wrong. So yeah, one of the questions I always ask our guests is, what's something you've failed at that stuck with you and what did you learn from it? Bonus points if it's funny as well, because everyone likes something funny.

John McCrea (17:48)
Right, I reckon I can do not funny and I can do funny. So let's do both. Let's start with the not funny because then we can end on a high. Not funny is back to back redundancies as I spoke about at the top of the episode.

Rob Twells (17:52)
Okay, one of each. Let's do both.

No.

John McCrea (18:08)
I've never experienced that before. And 2021 and then 2022, they pretty much just came like buses They always seem to coincide as soon as we had a child as well, which was really, really bad timing.

Rob Twells (18:22)
I was about to say, I did notice you mentioned about rearing two children. I've got a young child myself so I can only imagine what sort of impact that had on you on a personal level as well.

John McCrea (18:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, it definitely sticks with you for sure. You question yourself a lot. There's a lot of introspection following stuff like that, whether you could have done much about it or not in those situations. It's just a case of COVID just knackering businesses really.

Rob Twells (18:50)
And if you don't mind me asking, yeah, and if you don't mind me asking, we're not going to name any companies here, but was it financial strains on the businesses? it to do with that ultimately?

John McCrea (19:04)
Yeah, the first one, the entire department, marketing department just folded. So yeah, that was an interesting experience. None of us had actually met each other in person because it was during COVID, but lockdown restrictions lifted about the time we all got our P45. So we met up for a Nando's and commiserated together. And can look back on it and somewhat of a with a with a wry smile, I got to meet them.

Rob Twells (19:08)
Yeah.

That's nice. Yeah.

John McCrea (19:32)
the good people still in touch with them, but it was tough. It was really, really tough. And yeah, kind of the same with the other one is financial pressures, supply chain, as much as anything, supply chain affecting the business that has a knock on effect on how much capital you've got to work with. you know, in reality, I don't think I could have done much about those things. They're external factors. But like, I think what I did learn from that is

You sort of have to become more resilient, but there's a certain point where you need to harden yourself to be more resilient, but not harden yourself to the point where you kind of become defensive and close -minded. You have to think about, try and take a top -level view. And sometimes that just comes with time. That just comes with healing, that comes with talking to people, getting therapy as well, potentially.

Rob Twells (20:18)
Hmm.

John McCrea (20:31)
you sometimes you just need to take a step back and know the value that you bring and know that sometimes things happen like that. And it's really unpleasant, but you can learn from it in terms of, yeah, resilience, but don't harden your heart. You know, it's these things happen.

Rob Twells (20:51)
And what I was on that point then was in a strange way was the second time it happened almost Easier than the first one because you've been through the experience before

You kind of knew the thoughts and feelings you had would pass and you know, so on.

John McCrea (21:03)
Yes and no. Yeah, yeah, I think so. mean, obviously it happened like quite soon after because it was back to back. So there was an element of here we go again. Yeah, like really like, yeah, pretty sort of like few months kind of thing. But at the same time,

Rob Twells (21:12)
Also, really back to back then.

or whatever.

John McCrea (21:23)
that only happens, like you said, for the first time once. You only ever have that first time experience once, there's nature of it. So you do have that benefit of hindsight and perspective and so on and so forth. So it definitely helped. yeah, I just learned a lot about myself in that time. I couldn't have necessarily done anything about it, but I could still think about how I react to adversity. And that's important just in day to day.

Rob Twells (21:28)
Yeah, that's it.

100%.

Yeah.

Hmm.

No.

John McCrea (21:53)
You know, the sort of ebbs and flows of business, right? You have some really bad days sometimes and it's about how you kind of just like draw a line under it and come back again next day.

Rob Twells (21:57)
I think people for…

Yeah, I think people forget that particularly in marketing related roles there is a lot of…

There is a lot of resilience required in my opinion because you can try 10 things and only nine of them, sorry, nine of them won't work. You're just looking for that one thing that works and you kind of double down on that. But it takes a certain level of resilience to see that nine of the things that you worked so hard at doing didn't work. But you get the benefit of that one thing that really does work. And it can…

John McCrea (22:32)
That's the spark as well, isn't it? Yeah.

Rob Twells (22:34)
Yeah, and it can take months to find the one thing. You can spend six months just constantly. Why is this not working? Why is this not working? Lightbulb moment. So yeah, and you do need resilience. It's not always, pressure doesn't always come in the form of pounds, pence and revenue and profitability. It comes in other forms as well. And I think it's easy to forget that in marketing roles, definitely.

John McCrea (22:56)
100%. And to lighten the mood, I have another failure. Let's end on a high. Yeah, no, I've got a, this was long before I was in marketing. I was but a teenager. My first ever role was I volunteered at Barnardo's I did quite a few volunteering jobs when I was a teenager prior to getting my first role. And I was volunteer on the shop floor and first day walk in super anxious.

Rob Twells (22:59)
I was going to say let's end on a high.

John McCrea (23:25)
I'm naturally quite an anxious person anyway, but this was just intense because you're just of front of shop, people coming in, asking you questions. Everyone who's done it for the first time knows what it's like. And I was wanting to pay so much attention to make sure I did absolutely everything right that I was just almost not listening. I was super jacked in, just making sure that I didn't do something stupid, so I did something stupid.

The lesson learned there is just listen, take a step back again, take a deep breath. And basically they took me around the tour of the shop and they were like, this is the back room, this is where we store everything. This is the kitchen, this is you can grab a cup of tea. This is X, this is Y. This is the bin area where we put everything out. And I was just like, okay, cool, yeah, no, it's fine. And they were like, here's all these CDs, here's all these books and stuff, go and put them out.

And I was like, I was like, that's a strange thing to say. was like, I mean, these are fine. These are great. Like, and they were like, yeah, can you just put them out, please? And I was like, are you sure? But they were like, yeah. So I put them in the bin, obviously. And I was just like, like, it was so stupid. But like, again, it's, it's, know, it's a, it's a first job thing and everyone has their failures and their vulnerabilities and stuff. But

Rob Twells (24:26)
no.

Well, why wouldn't you?

John McCrea (24:55)
Yeah, anxiety is one of them. And sometimes when you get anxious, you just like take everything literally because you're just trying not to mess up. fortunately, was long ago. I can kind of laugh about it now. I was horrified at the time.

Rob Twells (25:03)
Yeah.

I imagine all it took was asking the question, by putting them out, you mean, and you know, there is no, I mean, there's that saying, isn't there, there's no stupid questions. Of course there is stupid questions, but if you're not sure, it's better to ask, even if you do make a slight fool of yourself. I it wouldn't be as bad as if you put, if you ask that question, it's not as bad as putting them in the bin. There you go, you've shared it to the world now. There we go.

John McCrea (25:28)
I've not shared that story either, so I've made myself, I've opened myself up to all sorts of ridicule now.

Rob Twells (25:35)
No, obviously, know, learnings from both of those, think definitely resilience, going through an experience you've been through before. There's a lot to take from that. actually on the second one, you know, taking a step back, taking a breath, trying to look at it from a different perspective. On a serious note, again, two things that I've certainly had to go through on various occasions. And you learn something different every time, don't you? So thank you for.

John McCrea (26:03)
Perspectives the word definitely and go for them. Yeah

Rob Twells (26:04)
That's it, yeah, exactly. Well, look, main event. What are we putting in, What can't you stand about marketing? What do you not want to see again? What grinds your gears?

John McCrea (26:20)
So like most marketers, I love my job, but there are many things that belong in Room 301. Many, many things.

Rob Twells (26:26)
There is many. We could beer all day to be honest, couldn't we?

John McCrea (26:29)
Yeah, yeah. And actually the thing I settled on, and there's a broader theme here, is returning to AI, AI comments on LinkedIn. my God, like they are just rampant at the moment. There's just so many like, good point, or like great to hear, you know.

Rob Twells (26:45)
Hmm, I can't, yeah, I have to agree with that.

What I've noticed is it's… I do a lot on LinkedIn, some good, some not so good, but I'm trying. But what I've noticed is a lot of comments are almost… it's almost a regurgitated version of your post, just reiterating what you've said. And it makes no sense and it adds no value. But I guess in the person's commenting eyes it means they've ticked the box that day and I don't know, but yeah. That's what I've noticed, it's just regurgitated version of what was already there.

John McCrea (27:22)
see that a lot as well. Yeah, it's just like, yes, you're so right. The something, something, something has done the something, something. It's a really interesting one because I think that, mean, LinkedIn is a fantastic platform for just networking and just talking about everything and anything relating to your job or otherwise. And it's really, really good platform, but…

Rob Twells (27:27)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well done. Yeah, I know, I said it first.

Hmm.

John McCrea (27:52)
since they've started rolling out like AI suggestions or like the suggest a post kind of function where it will just like write something for you. The quality has like really, really nosedived.

Rob Twells (28:05)
Yeah, I have to admit as well, my personal opinion is that LinkedIn haven't got that right. I find no benefit of the AI. You you see a post about, I don't know, recruitment or whatever and LinkedIn will put, what is recruitment? Are you supposed to click in? It's supposed to give you all this. don't know. I don't get it. I don't get it at all. Give me something useful. No, they've got it wrong in my opinion. But and you're right. Yeah, there's so much drivel on there now. I mean, I have

involved in that at some point but there we go. But there is, there's a lot of drivel.

John McCrea (28:36)
We all are in some of some degree, but yeah, there is. think it's really like diluted the quality of discussion online. And it's something that I call it. I don't know if anybody else has called it, but it's always just like networking at scale. Everybody in marketing, we're all big on doing things at scale. And that's a really important thing. You have to do that. Otherwise you can't just do one offs. But I tell you what, commenting.

Rob Twells (28:44)
Yes.

Hmm.

John McCrea (29:04)
and networking at scale is not one of them. I think if you want to build relationships with people, you've got to be sincere. And that's my point here is that I think LinkedIn and actually a lot of other tools as well is they've sort of like half arsed their kind of AI features where all that's happening is people are just being insincere with it. Like if I see something like that, I just immediately just like check out and

I've kind of made a judgment that that person can't be bothered to contribute to the conversation. So maybe they're not worth talking to. like, maybe that's maybe that's just, you know, judgmental on my part. But I just think that if you're going to say something, have some thought behind it, especially if you want to build relationships with people in business, I think in a sort of sea of mediocrity that

Rob Twells (29:54)
Hmm.

John McCrea (30:03)
those tools we provide, just be brave enough to be different.

Rob Twells (30:07)
Yeah, and there is, I think there's going to be a hell of a lot of misuse with AI. I mean, to me and you, it's no longer a new thing, because I think given what we do for a living, it's…

Not been and gone obviously, but it's a year, 18 months and we've been using it. But to the average Joe is not involved in this and has different expertise and skill sets. It's new, it's just coming in now and they're getting all excited about it. And you can start, you're starting to see the mainstream use of it. And it is poor, it? That no one, there's a lot of people getting their use case wrong. And that probably, I was probably one of those people at the very start. takes a good few months. Yeah, it takes a good few months to realize

John McCrea (30:39)
Mm.

We all have, yeah.

Rob Twells (30:49)
what role it plays in your own workflow, where it's actually useful, not useless. And I think it's interesting to watch from the sidelines, people starting to use it now and the misuse you see. And yeah, it's gonna be interesting for you on the AI front, I think.

John McCrea (31:06)
You see it in a lot of like products though, don't you like SaaS products online where like they've just implemented like just not even a chat bot, just almost like, can I just write this for you or something? And sometimes like don't get me wrong, like there's definitely a use case for that in certain places, but social media, I'm not sure is one of them. I think it's kind of anti -social really. Yeah, it's a weird one for sure. Not everything needs to have.

Rob Twells (31:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

John McCrea (31:35)
Not everything needs to have a suggest a post feature.

Rob Twells (31:38)
No, no, definitely not. Definitely not. And I think it's going to get worse before it gets better, to be honest. One of the better, on this topic of AI, one of the better users of AI I've got is, I use like a, it's like a meeting AI. So my Zoom meetings have like a little AI in it that records the meetings.

And the tool that I use is called Otter.ai – I like it, it's very good, but they've introduced the chatbot. But it's really good because you can talk, you can ask it questions about the conversation you've just had. So if I'm talking to a sales prospect, I can ask AI, you what were the main pain points of that particular prospect? And it does return some good stuff, but ultimately it's just using the chat GPT API, I believe, but that's a cool use case. that's, yeah, that's worked really well for my own workflow. But again,

John McCrea (31:58)
area.

Yeah. I love Otter. It's brilliant with you on that.

Rob Twells (32:28)
Yeah, the misuse is quite funny. no, that's firmly. Yeah, no. AI LinkedIn comments is firmly in room 301, word. Anything else to chuck in there?

John McCrea (32:39)
don't think so, to be fair. Generally.

Rob Twells (32:41)
You cannot get worse than that though. yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like I said, I do a few bits on LinkedIn and some of my posts that get a bit more engagement. I can see the ones that have got AI involved. I can see the ones that are actually contributing to the conversation. Yeah, it's funny to watch.

John McCrea (32:44)
No, that is like the pit, like that's the bottom.

This is the thing, if you're listening, we see you.

Rob Twells (33:04)
We do see you and you leave a footprint and we won't forget it. Well, John, I really appreciate your time. hope you've enjoyed your time on the Room 301 podcast. Anything you'd like to say before you leave?

John McCrea (33:18)
Just thank you for having me on really. It's great podcast. Really, really grateful to be asked on. So thank you very much.

Rob Twells (33:25)
Excellent, no problem at all. Good to have you on. And thank you all for listening. For those that have listened, please continue to do so. We're looking at doing an episode every two weeks. And I'd like to do an episode every week after that. So keep listening. That's what we might do. So thank you everyone again. Hope to hear from you soon. And we'll speak to you again very, shortly.

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Rob Twells

Co-Founder & Managing Director

Rob is the Founder of an award winning digital agency (since forming a digital agency group The Digital Maze with Boom Online) specialising in SEO, PPC, CRO, digital strategy and web design. With over 10+ years in the marketing space, Rob has been involved with hundreds of marketing projects and campaigns with some of the best known brands.

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