Laura Jones, CMO of Instacart, joins Jeremy & Henrik on Beyond the Prompt to explore what happens to creativity when AI makes "pretty good" effortless. She shares why brand becomes a question of trust as products converge, how a data insight about bananas became both a product feature and a Super Bowl campaign, and why the best ideas still require human friction — not just human-bot dialogue.
Laura Jones explains that generative AI is raising the bar for creativity. When everyone can produce “pretty good” content, the real challenge is creating something that actually stands out. The risk is not poor output, but settling too quickly for what already works.
She argues that as products become more similar, brand becomes a signal of trust. Not in a visual sense, but in the experience behind it. At Instacart, that shows up in details like how a banana is selected. With over a billion bananas delivered and millions of orders including notes on ripeness, customers are expressing very specific preferences. That behavior led to both new product features and the creative idea behind their Super Bowl campaign.
The conversation also explores how teams should work with AI. While it can automate repetitive tasks and speed up iteration, it can also create a tendency to agree with what’s generated, especially when working alone. Laura emphasizes that the best ideas still come from people challenging each other, building on different perspectives, and pushing beyond the first acceptable answer.
Key takeaways:
Instacart: instacart.com
Super Bowl ad: Super Bowl (Instacart ad)
Laura LinkedIn: linkedin/laurajones
ro's post: ro.co/perspectives/super-bowl-economics
00:00 Intro: Originality vs AI Complacency
00:27 Meet Laura Jones
01:23 Brand as trust when products converge
03:50 Personalization and reducing mental load
06:24 What still matters in marketing
10:33 Why need-finding cannot be shortcut
14:09 Using AI without losing judgment
16:33 New channels and where customers actually are
21:35 Why “dopey ideas” matter
25:42 Human plus bot plus human
28:44 Inside the Super Bowl ad
31:47 From banana insight to product
34:49 Taking creative risks at scale
37:34 Fear, pressure, and team chemistry
46:24 AI and faster prototyping
53:26 The debrief
📜 Read the transcript for this episode proof-of-craft-what-it-takes-to-stand-out-when-everything-looks-good-with-laura-jones-cmo-of-instacart/transcript
[00:00:00] Laura Jones: I think it's very dangerous when it's just you and a bot because it's just complacency, right?
Everyone has access to ai. What everyone doesn't have access to is the unique ideas and thoughts that come out of the kind of chemistry of this specific group of people. I think about this in a world of like infinitely scaled content.
And if all the content's pretty good, then you know, to break through, you're gonna have to be incredible.
Hi, I am Laura Jones. I'm the CMO of Instacart. I just took a huge creative risk with our brand and I'm here today to talk about preserving and amplifying originality and human creativity in the age of ai.
[00:00:42] Henrik Werdelin: Maybe I'll kick off 'cause I was excited to talk, uh, to you. And one thing that obviously is in the news is all the, uh, OpenAI ad product that is coming on. And so this is probably not like an easy answer, but. You have done, you came where there's not a lot of brand spin. You've done anything from Super Bowls, I guess.
But in a world where we don't talk to the brand anymore, we talk through an interpreter that might be in a foundational model, how do you think about being responsible for brand in a world where you kind of have to do Chinese whispers?
[00:01:23] Laura Jones: Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, there's always been a tension with these kinds of apps between like the utility and the emotional connection.
And you know, I think if, if all of us then ignore brand and focus solely on the logistics of it, then it, it really does become kind of interchangeable, right? Like, especially as you know, differentiation starts to fade. And that's where I think actually brand can become even more important to think about kind of building trust and building preference.
So in a world where things start to functionally converge, and the question is like, well, who do I actually trust? Who's going to get it right? Who's going to get this order perfect? Who's going to be there when something goes wrong? And brand is really a signifier for that. And, and that was very much also kind of the premise, even behind our Superbowl A, was this idea that, um, we're not just gonna bring you a banana, we're gonna bring you the exact perfect banana that you want.
Um, and so I think that while the front end of it all may start to converge, I think the question of like, who's actually behind that order? What does that company stand for? Who the people that work there, how do they make you feel? Do they make you feel cared for? All of that, in a way becomes more important because you're not really just willing to give something as personal as groceries to, to just anyone.
[00:02:50] Henrik Werdelin: So the whole brand becomes the experience design and the, the promise, you know, like of what people are getting much more than the, what the website's colors might be.
[00:03:01] Laura Jones: Yeah, exactly. I think that what I, you know, what I like about these kinds of logistically driven tech enabled businesses is that even if the software itself becomes, um, in some ways more easily replicable, the actual apparatus behind it, the fulfillment, the experience of those shoppers, the way that we think about treating customers, um, both at the front end of their order, the back end of their order, and if anything were to go wrong, all of those things are actually really, really hard to replicate.
Um, and so I, I really have, I've spent the past 15 years in these kind of on-demand marketplace businesses, and I think it's, it's that intersection of the digital and the real. That makes them special and, and frankly, in the era of ai, I think it makes them even more special.
[00:03:50] Jeremy Utley: How do you see that evolving, Laura, if you, you know, fast forward a year into the future, what are some of the elements of the customer experience that you feel become even more important than they are today or than they have been in a pre AI era?
[00:04:07] Laura Jones: Yeah, well, I mean, to state maybe the obvious, I think, you know, this AI era is all about data, right? And this question of like, how do things become more personalized, right? I think the, the promise of the agent is somebody that can act on your behalf, can predict your needs, and I think that's gonna be really exciting in our space because you know, what's more personal than the food that you put in your body in order to place on the table with your family, and everyone's preferences are in incredibly unique.
I think if you looked. Every different bite. Again, history of every Instacart customer, I don't think you could find ones that are the same. Um, and so I think that, you know, idea of, okay, 13 years of data, um, from customers, everything from, you know, what goes into their cart to what their family's preferences or dietary needs are to things that we capture in shopper notes, uh, like how you, like your bananas, which we've now turned into a kind of productized feature.
There are just so many nuances. Um, and so I think, you know, what I get excited about in terms of what that unlocks is just like reducing the mental load. I think that's always been the promise of Instacart is we serve what I like to call the COO of the household. A very busy person who is responsible for making things happen for their family.
And you know, we, we've seen this with the search in general and the kind of unprecedented mental health challenge of heads of households and the amount of things that we're all asked to. Um, keep track of, I know Jeremy, for, for you and your family especially, you have even more kids than I do, um, you know, it's, it's a ton of work.
Um, and if we can take a piece of that sustenance, which is, you know, at the core, the, the very base of Maslow's hierarchy, and make that piece of it a bit easier while still, you know, letting a parent express their care and knowing that this child likes purple carrots and this one likes orange carrots, and this one likes ripe bananas and this one likes green bananas.
Like, if you can do all of that without having to kind of carry that in your mind, um, and can, can partner with an agent to get some of that done and trust that Instacart will actually faithfully deliver on those preferences, then I think that's a, that's a super exciting world to be in. Hmm.
[00:06:24] Henrik Werdelin: So in many ways, I mean, like, I'm still a little bit stuck with this kind of new world of brand being how you act, not kind of what you look like.
Um, and I guess for somebody in your position. As I read the story and research online, you came in where there was not a lot of you like brand budget. You talk a lot about like how both brand and performance have to work together. And so in many ways this is seemed to be like a new evolvement that marketeers will have to go through where they, as they try to help their CEOs figure out how do we make sure that customers get the emotional response that we are hoping to, we can no longer use tools that we, I mean I'm sure there's gonna be Super Bowl ads for a while, but like the banner ads and the other things that we're used to might not be.
And so how do you think about, from an organizational perspective to invoke the emotional DNA that you are hoping customers will get at the end of the journey with you guys? What new tool sets do you have to invent to, to make that happen?
[00:07:37] Laura Jones: I think we're watching the evolution in real time. Obviously, you know, ads are about to be piloted in, in chat, GPT and we're, we're about to see what this new world of AgTech advertising looks like and which platforms will allow it, which ones won't, um, or maybe won't right now.
Um, so we'll, we'll see how that all evolves. I think that the fundamentals are always gonna be true in marketing, which is you really have to understand your customer and their needs state. You have to ensure that the experience you're building, again, whether that's an experience where you control the surface of it, or frankly where you don't, is responsive to those needs, and then that you think about needs holistically, not just functional needs, but emotional needs as well.
Um, this hearkens back to our D school days, Jeremy, of, you know, the functional and emotional needs, and I think that. You know, a lot of times people kinda overlook the emotional needs of the customer, and I think that's why people fail to understand the role of brand marketing in many cases. Um, 'cause they say, oh, I have this thing.
I'm just gonna sell it. And it, and gonna, it's gonna solve the problem, right? But so much of, you know, what we crave as humans is not just the solution, but you know, to have that solution acknowledge the broader context, right? And so that's where, you know, when I look at the stories we've told over the past, you know, several years since I took the helm, it's really meeting this busy head of household where they are celebrating the joyful, messy chaos of, in many cases, parenthood, um, or just being the head of a household, whether you're a dog mom or a girl dad.
You know, just what does that mean? What does that feel like? And then how Instacart fits into that. And when I think about the future. Um, those problems are still gonna exist, right? Like, yeah, we're all, you know, as, as long as humans are, are here, we're all gonna still have this complex, um, set of emotional needs that we carry with us.
And so I think that the role of storytelling will, will always be relating to people and helping them see themselves as a potential customer of this product, showing how it meets the functional and emotional needs. And then, you know, in the lower funnel, it's about finding them where they are, right? So if they are on an iPhone in the app store, we're gonna meet them there.
If they are on an LLM and they're trying to do meal planning, we're gonna meet them there. So I think like the fundamentals of the funnel don't really change, but the form factor does definitely change. And, you know, I don't think any of us sitting here can predict, you know, in, in three, five years, like exactly what that will look like, feel like what device it will be on, what modality will it be voice, will it be touch, will it be gesture?
Who knows? But in the end, you, you have that kind of emotional landscape of, of need, and then you have that kind of point of conversion, which is wherever someone is making a decision.
[00:10:33] Jeremy Utley: Now, Laura, one of the, uh, guests that we had recently that folks were really delighted by, was a applied anthropologists, which if I, if I haven't sent you the episode, I should, you'd love it.
But Mic as a anthropologist, he talked about the art of, and the painful art of, of discovering human needs, emotional needs. I thought maybe it'd be fun if you wanted to do a bit of a masterclass, not on AI per se, but just on how does a marketing leader in this era think about equipping your teams with the skills they need to go and find needs as they're emerging.
What are your teams doing to identify needs that will resonate with customers just very simply, tactically, organizationally, et cetera?
[00:11:21] Laura Jones: I think this is a case where sometimes people like think more technology is a good thing across the board. Like, and, and they say, okay, every part of every job should use as much AI as possible.
And I think some parts, some jobs should absolutely use as much AI as possible and some parts maybe should use it in connection with more ancient skills. And I think the
[00:11:45] Jeremy Utley: say more
[00:11:46] Laura Jones: of need finding is, is incredibly ancient, right? It's understanding kind of the universal human truths that don't change that much over time.
And again, I'll info our friend Maslow, I don't think that that pyramid of, of needs has, has fundamentally shifted since the dawn of humanity, right? And so there are certain, again, universal human truth that I think we can all anchor ourselves in. And then the question of like, well, how does that present for my specific customer base?
This then becomes the art and science. The science is who is your customer base? So how do. Understand who uses your product or who might use your product, who has a need that your product could fill? And that, that is certainly informed by data and informed by large end research. Um, but then the actual need finding has to be a, a mix as it always has been, of qual and quant and, and really understanding, okay, like once I have a sense of who my customer is, like just need to go spend time with them, I need to find that person.
I need to understand what makes them tick. Um, and and a lot of the classics like finding a category rejecter and getting them to use your product, finding someone who loves your product and taking it away from them. All of these kind of classic research methods, um, still, still hold true. And you know, it's interesting 'cause we have pitched on a lot of like synthetic customer research and
[00:13:06] Jeremy Utley: Yeah.
[00:13:07] Laura Jones: Yeah. Uh, I think there is a place for that. I think sometimes that can be really helpful, but I. I think that that is a poor substitute for that kind of fundamental work of knowing your customer. I think it can be additive, it can extend it, um, it can help with running scenarios. It can help with some quick and dirty pulse checks.
But I, I really get very skeptical when someone presents me an idea and they're like, wow, the synthetic panel loved it. You know, especially, you know, when you get a pitch for an, you know, an advertising concept and they're like, well, the synthetic panel said that this is the best thing since sliced bread.
And I, and I sit there and say,
[00:13:46] Henrik Werdelin: okay,
[00:13:47] Laura Jones: that's great. Have you talked to a real human? Um, I think that this is the case of embrace the things, the tools that, that we have always possessed as humans. And then find places where, you know, AI can be a supercharger or a superpower, but be careful of substituting that for that, which is our, our fundamental human ability to understand one another.
[00:14:09] Jeremy Utley: How do you think about, um. You think about managing your team and deploying attention, right, is as CMO, you are effectively the steward of a vast team's attention, and you have to think about how to deploy it. And, and something that I have been curious about recently is it feels like as we get these AI Ironman suits, right, and you can, marketers can now do a hundred x the amount of copy they could do before, for example, in that world, the opportunity cost of a unit of time feels higher than ever, right?
So if, if, if you send a marketer into the field to go to an ethnographic study, that's not like one unit of human marketing copy creation time, you're forfeiting it's a hundred units now, right? And so to me, there's an interesting question of how does a leader think about allocating the team's attention when the opportunity cost of being away from the machine is getting higher and higher?
Do, do you think about that at all? And if you do, how so?
[00:15:10] Laura Jones: I think about it more as outsourcing things that don't need as much human attention. So if we know, okay, we wanna send a push notification about a snow day, and there's a thousand different ways that you could do that, great. Like, no human wants to sit there and write a thousand different versions of that.
They wanna maybe write 1, 2, 3. They wanna say, okay, here are the things that are important. Um, so to me, the, the beauty of this moment is that some of the things that are the least loved tasks, the most repetitive, you know, if you think about like, kind of versioning an asset, nobody wants to do that. That's just not that much fun.
Um, and that used to be that someone had to sit there all day and, you know, take an asset and produce it in, you know, a hundred different formats. Now a lot of that can be automated, so then it, it frees you up. But I, I, I kind of think about it like, only do what only you can do if you can outsource something to a machine.
Great. Do it, like outsource it and then go spend your time doing something that's more uniquely value add for your skillset. So I, I think of it as actually harvesting time back from tasks that nobody really wanted to do, to begin with.
[00:16:26] Jeremy Utley: Hmm. That's a cool, that's a cool search criteria is what's the least loved task and just starting there.
[00:16:33] Laura Jones: Yeah.
[00:16:33] Henrik Werdelin: If you're a team suddenly got 60% of their time back, what would you ask them to do?
[00:16:41] Laura Jones: Ooh, I love that question. I do think we could, we could go deeper on the human front and really think about what are the needs that are unmet? What are some of the, the places we could be playing in culture that we're not playing?
I think there's so much required to, um, run a team of this complexity. We're a foresighted marketplace, you know, so we have. A lot of different customers that we're serving, and it's just a, it's a highly complex business. And so I think that giving everyone time back to more deeply understand their part of the business, their customer base, and, and really thinking about like, how could we more effectively be reaching these customers?
I think that that would be great. I sometimes think that, you know, there's a little bit of kind of inertia that can happen when you've been doing something for a while and you're like, okay, these are the channels at our disposal and these are the kinds of assets that we put into those channels and these kinds of messages that we know that work.
And it's a bit of the innovat dilemma. It's like, okay, we have to keep beating the machine, so let's just keep doing what we've been doing. Not to say that, you know, I, I don't wanna minimize, I think my team specifically is, is incredibly ambitious and, and does really push our
[00:17:55] Henrik Werdelin: No, I hear you. I mean like, when you're done, like when you're doing like your number 250,000 version of a Facebook ad, like, you know, you have to.
Find a way of, of data.
[00:18:03] Laura Jones: Yeah. Like I, you know, I think like one thing we've done over the past few years that I'd love to even do more of is just like getting into new channels. So we, yes, of course we use a lot of like search and credit listing ads and those work really well, but last year we're like, what about Twitch?
And I think initially we were like, oh, is that really our audience? And when we turned on Twitch and it was like extremely incremental and so that was just like this great wake up call of like, oh, don't just assume that, you know, again, like you, you think you know your customer, but like push yourself and ask yourself, oh, maybe there's a customer Ian that we had overlooked.
Or maybe these people are hanging out in a place that we didn't realize they were hanging out. So I think if I had more time, I would wanna go a hundred x that and be like, where are all the other places? And it might not be like a net new channel because at some point you run out of those. But it could be different subcultures within, you know, social or even in IRL, you know, it's, we haven't had a chance to do a lot of kind of real world marketing just 'cause we're time and resource constrained.
But if we had. More resources or more time. I think just going out and finding really new ways to engage with customers would be, would be incredible.
[00:19:08] Henrik Werdelin: I wonder if you, uh, if you're, you're talking about obviously understanding a customer to the level where, you know, the rightness of, of the banana that they're looking for, and that's kind of like an in a one kind of world, right?
I wonder if we will be heading towards a world where we can't almost, we can't even think about it as groups anymore. We have to think about these principles that we have to operate on because your data, Mitch, with a model, will know that the way that I and my family consume our dinner will be different than Jeremy's.
And so you almost have to think about what is the abstraction layer you can create where you, you know, induce your, the values of your firm. You know what I mean? Like, there seemed to be this world where almost even thinking about groups will be a okay.
[00:20:01] Laura Jones: I think that at, again, at the, at the bottom of the funnel, at the point of purchase, I, I think personalization will become incredibly important because everyone, as you said, has different preferences, different cadences.
So I do think when it comes to building the basket or fulfilling the order, that will be incredibly personalized in terms of groups as a construct. I do wonder if actually in some ways people are seeking out more connection in this moment because, you know, if we are able to outsource more things to our computer, then what are we gonna do with that time?
I hope that that will be us getting together more in person or finding more shared experiences. And, you know, anecdotally, I, I live in San Francisco and I do feel this resurgence of people wanting to gather, um, whether it's, you know, like Sunset DJ sets or run clubs or cold water sliming, my personal favorite.
Um, people are seeking human connection, I think now more than ever. And so I, I think in a way we've reached peak internet, peak phone, right? Like, I dunno if we could consume any more phone than we're current cons currently.
[00:21:15] Jeremy Utley: Well, it's, I mean, unfortunately the form factor I don't know about, fortunately, unfortunately, Laura, we had my good friend Josh too, on the show a while back, who's making kind of the next version of, we're not gonna be looking at the phone, we're gonna be looking at glasses, which is, that's whole other kinds of problems are going to come when our devices are basically, anyway, we could go down all rabbit.
I always zoom out one level and ask you something totally different here. So you had me come and work with your team mid last year. In my mind, like, because I'm focused on AI so much, I thought, oh, Laura wants to use some AI stuff. And I get there and you're like, don't say anything about ai. And I go, wait, what do you want me to do?
You go, I want, I wanna focus on creativity. And specifically of all things you wanted. I mean, it's kind of, I, I hope I'm not speaking outta school, but I thought it was amazing that this incredible marketing leader who's got an incredibly tech forward organization says, I want you to emphasize the value of dopey ideas.
Will you help my people see that bad ideas are important? Why was that your area of focus for your team?
[00:22:20] Laura Jones: I think it goes back to what we've been talking about, which is just, you know, computers can get you to like the 85th percentile or the 90th percentile of ideas then, like, that raises the bar. And us humans have to really like, do better in a way.
Right. And it, I, I think about this in a world of like infinitely skilled content and if all the content's pretty good. Then, you know, to break through, you're gonna have to be incredible. Right? And I, I feel this every year, you know, super Bowl is of course, like a very specific, um, point in time, but it's, it's, you know, the largest concurrent viewing event that exists anymore.
130 million viewers just two years ago, 125 this year. And the ads just get better and better and better, right? Like, this is like the pinnacle of commercial creativity. Maybe not all creativity, but mm-hmm. Certainly commercially funded creativity. And, and it, you know, I think it's always very intimidating.
'cause if you're gonna kind of throw your hat in that ring, you have to really like push for something that's never been seen before, that's attention grabbing, that is worth that massive investment that you've made. And so I think about that in, in all dimensions, whether you're making an ad or a product, we have to challenge ourselves to be more creative, more groundbreaking, especially as.
Kind of getting to that bar of mediocrity, if you will. Or even good enough.
[00:23:47] Jeremy Utley: Mediocre. Mediocre. Easier than ever. That's exactly what you're saying. Mediocre is easier than ever. And therefore, what I'm hearing, I'm just gonna put words back in your mouth. This is something that Nick Thompson talked about.
The CEO E of the Atlantic came on this show and he said, our unwired capabilities matter more than ever. Because if you think about AI as, call it a multiplier, the question is what's it multiplying?
[00:24:08] Laura Jones: Yeah.
[00:24:08] Henrik Werdelin: Hmm.
[00:24:08] Jeremy Utley: And if there's no underlying capability, any number of times, zero is still zero. Right. So it doesn't matter how great the multiplication effect is.
And it sounds like what you're saying is this is a unique opportunity to double down our investment in our unwired capabilities. Is that what I'm hearing? Or uh, poke holes in that?
[00:24:26] Laura Jones: Yeah. No, I agree. I think in a way, like I didn't feel like we needed to talk about AI in that forum. 'cause we talk about AI all day long, every day, and we're using all the tools and we're very much, I think obviously we were.
Somewhat early to the realization of it's important with Fiji at the helm, um, really pushing us to adopt it years ago. So I, I don't worry about my team's, you know, awareness of AI or, or willingness to try it. I, I worry about our ability to continue to be the very best. And, you know, I always think for us, creativity has to be our competitive advantage because we're in a really tight competitive market.
And, you know, we compete against companies that are larger than us, so we have to just be better. And yes, AI is part of that, but everyone has access to ai. What everyone doesn't have access to is the unique ideas and thoughts that come out of the kind of chemistry of this specific group of people. So if every single person in that room is operating at their very best and not being afraid to share their best ideas.
Bringing in that kind of human edge, then I think we, we can and we will win. And I think that's a lot of how we have been winning
[00:25:42] Henrik Werdelin: one things. Uh, I was like everybody else playing with, uh, over last, uh, month or so. And one thing that, um, we implement the other day was this new principle of, uh, non-cognitive decline where I've noticed that I became so exper, like I, I would just say yes to everything that it suggested because it was pretty good.
[00:26:04] Laura Jones: Yeah.
[00:26:04] Henrik Werdelin: And so now we created these, these roles that basically a, if I say yes too many times, it basically comes back and saying, Hey, are you really, there are, you're just busy pressing. And the second thing was, instead of just offering one thing, I wait, it
[00:26:18] Jeremy Utley: alerted you, Henrik, you're saying your open closet said, dude, you're just saying yes too much.
[00:26:22] Henrik Werdelin: It's basically the Tesla IU sleeping, kinda like a question uhhuh. And the second thing is, instead of suggesting, one thing I now ask is to, you suggest three completely different things. To force me to have a perspective about something. And I think you're totally right, Laura. Like one of the biggest issues of all this stuff is that our ability to generate your originality is just gonna be hotter and harder because what we get from the model is so good, and we're doing so many things that you just gonna chat or let yourself through the day.
Right?
[00:26:52] Jeremy Utley: And we're so deeply tempted to settle because we are lazy and it's cognitively expensive to push for exceptional. And when mediocre is literally a prompt away, what's gonna distinguish humans is the humans who refuse to settle for mediocre. And that's actually just from a probabilistic standpoint, it's a very small percentage of people who are gonna push beyond the mediocre.
[00:27:16] Laura Jones: And that's where I think the group dynamic comes back into play. Because it's, if you're just, if it's just you and Claude or you and Chay T going back and forth, it's kind of easy to be like, okay. But if you're in a room with really smart people that you respect and you're all challenging yourselves to.
Throw out good ideas, dopey ideas to challenge each other, to poke holes. Like, I think that becomes more important to getting to excellence. I think it's very dangerous when it's just you and a bot because it's just, it's, it's complacency, right? But I think we all as humans, have a desire to connect and to please, and maybe even a competitive streak in there sometimes, or a collaborative vibe.
I always feel like my best ideas come from an old school d school style jam. You know, ideally in person, ideally with, uh, some post-it notes, but even, even on a zoom, just like truly building off of other human ideas and challenging each other, I think is, is probably a path to more originality than that kind of, you know, bot zone.
Not to say that like, that can't be complimentary and I think that that can. Again, free up some space or get you to a really good starting place of like, okay, here's some inputs that you may come in prepared with. But, um, I, I think the best ideas will come from the collaboration of Human plus bot Plus Human.
[00:28:44] Jeremy Utley: Okay. So, uh, you're leading me to think about a case study. It might be cool just to unpack your Super Bowl ad. I thought it was so fantastic. I mean, absolutely. I watched it on repeat, like watching Ben Stiller do a back clip into, it's just so I can't, I'm sure you're on set. I'm sure it had to be hysterical.
But if you could maybe do just like a play by play of the development of the idea as I, I think it can be interesting as a case study. Where does AI come in? Where does, where do human weirdness come in? What's serendipitous on set? Is that something that would be cool? Just kinda walk us through a case study.
Yeah. And take as a given, it's an exceptional piece. If you haven't seen it, you should actually pause and go watch on YouTube real quick and then come back. It's like, let's, let's unpack it.
[00:29:32] Laura Jones: Yeah. Go watch the long form. Two minutes and 30 seconds of Spike Jones' personal faves. Um, but yeah, I think the Super Bowl is such a good example in its complete non-linearity.
I mean, every, especially Super Bowl ads were at such a high investment level. If I think about either last year or this year, totally non-linear journeys, we could have never predicted where we entered. And every decision built on the prior decision. A lot of one-way doors. And, you know, a lot of fear along the way that like.
Ooh, I hope we're on the right path. 'cause at some points, like the end state isn't completely obvious, and so it's a, you know, requires a bit of belief in the process itself. Um
[00:30:14] Jeremy Utley: mm-hmm. Yeah. We always say trust the process. You've been hearing that since we were a students in 2007. Trust the process. Yeah.
[00:30:20] Laura Jones: Yeah. I think anytime we're doing something truly creative, you have to, because it involves taking risks, it involves going somewhere that is not obvious. Um, if you're seeking something that's truly novel. And so I've always felt like if you can kind of already envision how it ends or what it's gonna look like, it's what's the point?
You know? It, it's kind of been all by definition, if it's that predictable. A lot of our work is very different, breaks the mold, and I think it's because we support each other in taking creative risks and we do trust the process.
[00:30:52] Jeremy Utley: So for people who aren't familiar with non, non-linear, 'cause you say that and Henry, can I both go?
Sure, sure, sure. Next thing. But there are people going, wait, what is a non-linear process? Like, can you give a s couple examples of maybe going backwards or, or sideways rather than forwards?
[00:31:06] Laura Jones: Um, so many, I mean, the, the number of different iterations that this idea took would be mind blowing. I mean, this could have ended in a completely different place, um, with a completely different cast of characters, a completely different concept that its core.
The way that we briefed it, the way that the first pitch came in would be completely unrecognizable relative to the end concept. And I think that's just, again, inherently part of the creative process. You know, you think about, okay, maybe it's a story about finding the perfect slice of ham. Oh no wait, maybe it's about bananas.
Maybe it's about avocados. Like, I mean. The number of iterations that this thing took was kind of mind boggling. But in the end, as I said, we always ground ourselves in customer insights. And a big unlock for us was our most delivered item is the humble banana. We've delivered over 1.8 billion bananas.
And uh, we saw real observed consumer behavior that 32 million of those orders had shopper notes. So people were like typing out like, oh, I want my banana with little brown spots. I'm making banana bread in two days. Or I want it slightly green because that's how I prefer it. So if you think about the time and energy that was going into this, it we realized that this was this kind of unmet need of people wanting to know that their banana would be exactly right.
And when we look at the category itself, there is a, a big barrier around can someone else get my order? Exactly right. And this goes to all the things you're talking about, the importance of what you put on the table, what you put in your body. So we had this realization that we could address this barrier of, you know, can someone else.
Pick the perfectly marbled meat, can they pick my perfect banana? Um, and, and really use the banana as a kind of emblem of our commitment to quality. So we got the product team to partner to build the preference picker, which now works for bananas. It works for avocado, it works for deli meat thickness and more to come.
Um, but it, it enables you to express preferences in a much slim, fuller way than having to type out exactly what you want on a tiny little keyboard. And, and then we thought, you know, okay, let's, we have this moment to get in front of the largest audience, 125 million Americans. Like, let's have the audacity to make a Super Bowl out about bananas, and let's do it in a way that's bananas.
And then from there, right? Musical comedy, that's
[00:33:28] Jeremy Utley: perfect.
[00:33:28] Laura Jones: Or Ben Stiller, Benson Boone, spike Jones, Robbie Blue, you know, just get it all in the mix. And it ended up being something that. I think we can all agree is pretty distinct. I'm not sure you've ever seen an ad that looks like that before. We shot it on kind of the vintage tube cameras that Spike Jones used to shoot his skate videos on and ran it in a four three ratio.
So it didn't even fill up the HD TV and wasn't in hd. And I think we kind of broke the molds and it, it generated a lot of attention, a lot of conversation, and um, a lot of banana sales. So we're happy.
[00:34:01] Henrik Werdelin: How do you, when you have to do something original, you have to take APIC of a chance, right? You have to take a risk.
'cause otherwise it is average by almost perfect definition. Where do you find the, the courage, I guess, to 'cause your kind of head is on the block? You have to go into a lot of people who I'm sure are going and go like you. Sure. And often, I would imagine as least that's how it is as an entrepreneur, you have to go, yeah, I, this is gonna crush it.
But inside you probably go like. I don't know. Where do you find that kind of courage?
[00:34:36] Laura Jones: I think two, two ways that I've channeled courage. I think one is just working up to it. We, we've been at this now for almost five years of doing full funnel marketing and you know, started with our first television ad, our first brand campaign, the first time we ever worked with the celebrity, the first time we bought premium media in the Olympics two years ago.
And each time taking a slightly larger bet, really looking at the metrics, making sure it paid off so that when I had to go two years ago to our CFO and CEO and say, Hey, I think we're ready to make super. And frankly I think we have to 'cause our competition's all there. I did feel we had enough reps and enough data and proof points to suggest to, to show that this was the right choice.
But that's just the cost of entry. That's just getting to Yes. And then it's like even scarier, staring at a blank canvas, you know, of like 30 seconds, um, a very expensive 30 seconds. And then how do you tell a really compelling story? And I think the way that we get confidence there is just the team. The, you know, my incredible ECD, my incredible VP of consumer, all of us have worked together now for almost five years.
Um, actually my VP of consumer a decade. Um, 'cause she and I came from Uber together. So we, we just have a lot of trust. We have a she ambition. We're all competitive. We all stripe for greatness. We all wanna make work that we're gonna be so proud of. And, you know, with Super Bowl, everyone you've ever met in your life, pretty much is gonna see the work.
Your second grade teacher, your uncle, your best friend, anyone you've met, for the most part. If again, you grew up in America, like most people watch this Euro bowl and so everyone's gonna see it. Everyone's gonna have opinions. And I think all of us just wanting so badly to do our best, to put something out there that we all feel wildly proud of, that makes us laugh and smile is kind of the driving force.
And just knowing that we're gonna. Hold each other to account and kind of to your point of like the bot not letting you say yes. Like we kind of challenge each other. And there were so many moments throughout where we're like, oh, we could do this slightly safer concept and it would probably be like a BB plus.
And we say, no, no, and we do this to each other and we're not gonna do that. We're swinging for the fences. And it's funny, my mentor, when I, I kind of told him about the concept we were working on, he goes, well, you're either gonna make the best super bowl out of the worst. And I said, you know what? That feels like, that feels like the right space to be in right now.
[00:37:01] Jeremy Utley: Okay. But, uh, even that, even mentor, I, if I go back to Henry's question around summiting courage, sounds like you've got a community of support around you to be able to pull it off. Are there any moments in particular, I, I'm looking my very handmade, uh, you know, analog notes. I wrote totally non-linear. And then fear.
And then belief. Those are, those are five words that you said. Right. Was there a particular moment that you felt that sense of during the midst of the non-linearity, that sense of fear and what did you do in that moment?
[00:37:33] Laura Jones: Yes. I think it's probably an underused part of any creative field is the fear. And we, especially this year, we were kind of saying, oh, it's our sophomore, it's our sophomore album, right?
Like the first year we really strucked and felt so proud of what we put out there and it just worked so well for the business. And then this year we said, oh, well if we're gonna do it again, we have to top it. I mean literally, 'cause we're gonna comp last year Super Bowl, so we actually have to do better, both objectively and subjectively.
Otherwise, like it's kind of a negative comp for the business. So it was a lot of pressure. And again, I think we all support each other. Everyone has different ways of dealing with that pressure. And I think again, you, you have to assemble the right team that. Can lift each other up in different moments.
And I think I tend to be a bit of the, the challenger, the pusher, but I also, I also live in, in the stress of it. And then we have other people on the team that are more the calm, even keeled folks. And I think it's that chemistry of finding the right mix of people where you are pushing each other, but holding the center.
You are striving for greatness, but making sure that, you know, all the details are covered. Like I, it's, it really does come down to having the right mix of folks when you get into the challenge. So much else of our job, so many other parts of our job are so purely scientific, replicable, predictable, very math-based.
The rest of the job is almost entirely linear. Um, which is, which is great. And then this is the piece that kind of challenges you to. Break free of that. And you know, I think I, I value that this team is capable of both and I, I'm super grateful that I have a job that lets me do both. I think if I were in just a purely linear world, um, the part of me that the D school really connected with would, would miss that ability to take risks and to have that extreme payoff that when you've made something great as a team, something greater than you could have made alone.
Um, and something that hopefully makes people feel something, even if, if that feeling is, is, is some laughter and some, uh, feelings of, of, you know, just kind of joy in the moment.
[00:39:48] Henrik Werdelin: Can I ask a question on the, uh, productization of marketing? So when you were talking about the features that you created for the banana, I couldn't help thinking about another marketeer, Jeff Benjamin that we had on the podcast from now.
Tom Bruce, but he was at Chris Porter at the time where they came up with the, um, the pizza track. For Domino's and that became for Domino's and that became this kind of like, I think a iconic productization of the promise that the brand was trying to deliver. Right. And and you're expressing the same thing.
Do you think that there's going to be a closer kind of like marriage between product and brand s more of the experience will have to be personalized and more maybe even kind of experienced through other avenues than a website that you can control?
[00:40:39] Laura Jones: Yes. I think the, I think the best brands out there really treat product and brand as two sides of the same coin.
I think they, they view them as um, one and the same because if you're doing it right, they should both be based off of insight. So the mentoring coach I referenced earlier is Jonathan Den Hall, who was the CMO of Airbnb at the time when they came up with Belong Anywhere. He is currently the CMO at Rocket and.
One of the best marketers in the world, and Airbnb for me has always been this kind of iconic example of when they came up with Belong Anywhere. It wasn't just marketing copy that they put on an ad. It really, it opened up this idea of experiences and this kind of articulation of what was amazing about Airbnb, which was the ability to integrate into kind of a local neighborhood and to really feel like a local.
[00:41:29] Henrik Werdelin: I also remember apparently Every Little Helps, which is Tescos in the UK's, uh, slogan started as being an internal slogan before it became an external slogan to your point, right?
[00:41:40] Laura Jones: Yeah, totally. And I think if you look at, you know, the Apple, Airbnb, these great brands, these great enduring companies that have amazing products and a ton of brand love, it's because those teams work in a really.
Inextricable manner. And it's something that I always really look for. I mean, when I joined Uber, I actually sat initially on the product team. 'cause I was in product marketing and we were hired into the product team. And then eventually when we, um, got our first CMO moved over to marketing, but I sat on both the product and marketing leadership teams there.
And that was such a big unlock for us because we were able to really shape the product to get surfaces in the product that enabled us to do marketing. We were able to influence what products got built. And same thing at Instacart, you know, I think that the product marketing relationship is the most important one.
I mean, C-M-O-C-F-O also important.
[00:42:32] Jeremy Utley: Good.
[00:42:33] Laura Jones: But you know, the, the head of product and the head of marketing, I think if they are sharing the same insights and working together seamlessly, that's how you get to really great innovative products. That's how you get to a brand that is an authentic brand that is manifest through the product.
And I think to your point, in a world where. Functionality can easily be commodified. We're all going to have to be in a bit of an insights arms race and really trying to get out there and figuring out, like how can we create something unique, something that makes our audience feel connected to us, um, using all the tools that are disposal.
[00:43:14] Jeremy Utley: Do you think about, um, or think about the next feature, you've got insights right now probably in the hopper, similar to the meat marbleization or the deli meat, you know, thinness or whatever, right? Those are, it sounds like, if I understand correctly, those are marketing insights that then get manifested in the product.
What are the mechanisms just between you and product that enable that kind of bubbling up of discovery and then the collaboration and brainstorming? How does it actually work operationally or practically?
[00:43:45] Laura Jones: Yeah. Well, I'll say it wasn't a marketing insight per se. It was just an insight. I don't believe in the distinction between a marketing insight and a product insight.
I believe it is insight. That one came from literally looking at the product itself and looking at where were we seeing shopper notes, where were we seeing complaints? I mean, so much when you have a product that's operating at a scale that we're operating at, so much is revealed through the product itself.
And you could have an entire roadmap that's literally just based on looking at like support tickets and the way people are using it, the hacks that they're coming up with, the places where you've made something hard for them that could be easier. Looking at, you know, the flow and where people are spending time and realizing any place someone's spending time is an opportunity to either reduce friction or delight them more.
And then as well, zooming out of the product. I mean that's, uh, those are kind of the obvious low hanging fruits. And that's certainly where the, um, all of the preference picker ideation came from was, was observed behavior. But zooming out, you can then, you know, I, I always love that kind of. Exercise we used to do in the D school that was kind of like 10 x, it was like zooming in 10 X and zooming out 10 x.
So yeah,
[00:44:53] Jeremy Utley: Charles and Ray Eames, uh, kind of started that. Yeah.
[00:44:56] Laura Jones: So if you've zoomed in 10 x to like, you know, the support tickets, then you might need to zoom out 10 x and think about, okay, well, like who are customers? Where do they live? Who are the people that should be our customers that are not, what is going on in their lives?
What are some of the contextual elements that are, are, what are the forces that are
[00:45:15] Jeremy Utley: weighing on
[00:45:15] Laura Jones: them? What role can we play as a product, as a brand? So I think that's the other, um, the other place that I, I see insights. So if, if you zoom in 10 x, you can find a bunch of inside your own product. If you zoom out 10 x, you can find a bunch of insight in the lives of your customer.
And then I think our job as product marketing and design team is to talk about those things and to come together and. Talk about where are there really interesting unmet needs? How could our product evolve? How do we differentiate from the competition? That's something I think a lot about of like, I don't wanna just copy and create something that can be copied.
I think there's too much of that in tech. I would like to do something that's really unique to our customer, to our data, to our use case, and, and do something a bit unexpected just in the way that, you know, the creative concept we came up with for Super Bowl is a little bit out of left field. I also strive to do that in partnership with product and design to think about, well, what are things we can do that would be really delightful and are more unique to us?
Um, and, and then go down that same path of let's try things, let's iterate, let's, you know, prototype. Let's, and, and by the way, prototyping has gotten whew. Like this is where AI really gets interesting. I mean, the ability, say
[00:46:32] Jeremy Utley: more
[00:46:33] Laura Jones: test things, to build prototypes, to get feedback, to try it yourself. That I'd say is like, of all the things that I can do about what I'm actually like probably the most excited about, because it takes away the barrier of needing to have very advanced coding skills or needing to invest an entire cycle and building a prototype.
You can get feedback on ideas a lot faster and it just speeds up the innovation cycle. And again, it's no substitute for insights. You're kind of multiplier on zero analogy. You still need an insight. You still need to have an idea of what you might wanna build. But then the ability, the speed to build it's tested to get feedback is a lot quicker.
And I think in some ways, maybe then you get more shots and goal, maybe you have a few more flops, but hopefully in your bell curve analogy, you also have a few more really great, um, ideas. Mm-hmm. Ideas that come out of it as well.
[00:47:21] Jeremy Utley: Yeah. That's huge. Yeah. We talked to another Stanford alum, John Waldman, I, I think he was after us at the GSB, but he came through entrepreneurship program at the D School.
He's the CEO of home base, which serves small and medium sized businesses. And he talked about how their whole product development process has totally shifted from, he used to be, you know, uh, it was responsible of him as a CEO to me reading these 20 page PRDs and every product, you know, roadmap Review is a bunch of 20 page PRDs and he said now everything's a clickable, lovable prototype and we're spending way more time in the field with actual business owners with clickable prototypes.
It's actually faster to get in the field with a coffee shop owner than to write the PRD before. Right. Which is just a total acceleration to your point of, of ideation then you're seeing the same in marketing is what you're saying?
[00:48:09] Laura Jones: Saying, yeah. Yeah. I think we're, we're seeing the ability just no matter what kind of idea you have the ability to express it and test it faster.
[00:48:18] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Was there any interesting intersection between AI and the Super Bowl ad? Like at any point is your team testing et.
[00:48:29] Laura Jones: Yeah, so exactly what you said. The, the ability to test an idea faster, so whether it's storyboarding or when we were playing around with the song, which was a whole thing, you know, um, all of that was made so much faster and easier with ai.
But then when it came time to shoot, we shot it all practically. We, as I said, shot it on vintage cameras on film. Um, so for this specific ad, we used AI only in the concepting and ideation phase, and all the craft was done with the human care that we feel is emblematic of what we put into our orders. And in the future, I think it will be a combination.
I think there'll be some assets that make sense to be highly localized, highly personalized, and absolutely we are already using AI for those kinds of assets where, you know, I wanna put the exact right product in front of you, Jeremy, so I'm gonna use AI to know exactly. You know, how to make that ad the most appealing as possible.
But then there's also gonna be moments that are maybe these mass viewing moments or places where storytelling and human craft and care is super important. Whether Super Bowl or holiday, we did actually stop motion where we actually handcrafted these little characters and did the whole thing. Um, and in a way I think those, those become, they stand out a bit more in a world where there's so much, I'm not gonna call it slop, but just high volume, generative content.
I think those moments of like actually doing craft and then frankly having proof of craft. We also, you know, in both cases released behind the scenes footage that showed how we made it. I think there's interest and and value to that. Um. That helps you stand out in a world where things are increasingly
[00:50:13] Jeremy Utley: proof of.
Craft is a really interesting phrase. I haven't heard that before. Did is that on mute there? Can you just give another double click on proof of Craft?
[00:50:22] Laura Jones: I, I don't know if I heard that somewhere. I made that up. But we talk about it a lot internally. Proof of craft is showing that you made it, showing how you made it.
So I'll take, in the case of our holiday ad, I don't know if you know of the, like Rankin Bass is the little, um, you know, the like old school Rudolph movies. Mm-hmm. You know, made by Rankin Bass and we thought, oh man, these are so nostalgic and iconic. What if we took some inspiration here and crafted some Instacart specific characters?
My favorite of which was the Bipolar Bear. Um, I envisioned a world that occurred within, within the Instacart bag. This idea of like, you place an order, you crash, zoom into the app and have this kind of Santas workshop of little characters and then kind of come out through the bag with the order.
Perfectly crafted into this was like the stories we were envisioning of like what happens. In this magical world where these orders are getting crafted. Um, and so we created all these little characters, shot it all in stop motion, and then we released it behind the scenes showing the people who made the character showing how we shot it.
And that is proof of craft. Same thing with Super Bowl. We had Spike Jones. We shot an entire, obviously we hit the long form, then we even longer behind the scenes film, which is also really hilarious. Uh, and it shows everything. It shows the stunt doubles doing the crashes, uh, the flip crashes. It shows spike on stage with Ben and Benson.
And it shows that like, this was all made and we shot it in LA and we shot it, you know, in, in a way that respects the craft of this industry. And, um, invests back in, in that creative craft, which we believe it.
[00:51:59] Jeremy Utley: There, you know, the, the thought that's coming to my mind right now, Henrik and I talk a lot about this idea of conviction.
It sounds like there is real value in the handcrafted, in the artisanal product of the final output. One way to think about the value of ai, perhaps in this case, again, this is stated as a statement, but it's meant to be a question, is it's speed to conviction.
[00:52:22] Laura Jones: Yeah,
[00:52:23] Jeremy Utley: totally. AI can accelerate the conviction with which we get behind the tube.
Cameras go on. We're pretty sure this is worth devoting these resources in this way. Is that a beer assessment?
[00:52:34] Laura Jones: Totally. It's the same thing. Again, this is whether you're making an ad or building a product, it's about getting, yes, getting that data back faster, knowing this is worth doing, and then doing it in whatever way makes most sense.
The same like it might have been that we went through this whole process and we said we have to make this entire ad with ai, and that could have been a very valid outcome, which is, it wasn't the case in these scenarios, but. I agree. I think it's about getting to a place where you feel good about the resource investment.
And then I, I still think there's just huge value in just saying like, what's the right tool for the job? And the right tool for the job might be handcrafting a tiny little figurine, or it might be, uh, unleashing the, the box. But you gotta get to that point where, you know what it is.
[00:53:15] Henrik Werdelin: This is also, you know, like I'm sitting here and feeling like, uh, I'm having a, the deschool conversation played out in front of me, which is like, incredible.
[00:53:25] Jeremy Utley: Come on,
[00:53:26] Henrik Werdelin: Jeremy, did you see the Super Bowl at, if you're really being honest,
[00:53:30] Jeremy Utley: a hundred percent honest. And I watched it multiple times. I love that Super Bowl. I
[00:53:34] Henrik Werdelin: love that Super Bowl
at too.
[00:53:35] Jeremy Utley: It, it reminded, it reminded me of, uh, Zoolander, kind of like Me too, the Zoolander side of Vince Filler. And it was just like, it was so perfect.
[00:53:42] Henrik Werdelin: You know, like in, in full disclosure, I, I was proud of the, the crew that helped build Roe that also had a Super Bowl at, and the founder Simon, wrote this quite cool, very, very long post about basically the argument of why. It makes a thousand percent sense to make these Super Bowls at specifically now where basically everything is so commoditized.
This is still one of the only places where you put something out and you're, she, hundreds of millions of people gonna watch it.
[00:54:09] Jeremy Utley: Hmm hmm.
[00:54:10] Henrik Werdelin: It's just worth a read.
[00:54:12] Jeremy Utley: Yeah. Maybe we link it in the show notes. That'd be cool. Yeah, it's done. Yeah.
[00:54:15] Henrik Werdelin: So what was some of your main takeaways?
[00:54:18] Jeremy Utley: You know, I, so Laura and I have known each other, we were in business school together, so we've known each other now nearly 20 years.
And I've had the, as as we even talked about, I've had the privilege of working with her team a few times. I, I think that her, I emphasis on cultivating the creativity of the team is so important as a differentiator and. To recognize that the safety and the courage and the risk taking that she enables on her team is what leads to exceptional product.
I very much subscribe to that belief that that's, that the creative ability of the individuals that you choose to recruit and assemble will be a differentiator, uh, or is presently a differentiator. Right. I'm very much a subscriber to that. Do you want to take the opposite of that, or do you, do you also agree?
I'm just thinking about your AI advice to us recently to disagree more. So I'm trying to figure out whether I can poke you to disagree.
[00:55:15] Henrik Werdelin: I mean, like, I, uh, no, unfortunately, uh, that one is tough to disagree 'cause I do think that originality is going to be the thing that's gonna set us apart of humans.
Right. If you can say something that is, you know, the makes sense, quote, quote on like, then it's, it's unlikely that the model won't kind of just tell that to you. Right. And so, you know, the, when she was talking about like. I was asking the questions as I'm obsessed about these days, which is what will you do when you got 60% of your time back?
Right?
[00:55:44] Jeremy Utley: Yeah.
[00:55:45] Henrik Werdelin: It did resonate a lot with me that trying to get out more and connect with the world. And then I realized a lot of the world now is online, so getting out of the office might get onto Reddit, but really try to understand what is the undercurrent of culture I think will be very important for our marketeer.
And finding ways of getting input so that you can have more original output is also gonna be important. I mean, I think for a lot of us, when we go to a museum or go to a gallery or an art exhibition, we get all these ideas because suddenly somebody's giving us something which is not the, the standard.
And so I'll find something else to vividly disagree with you on, but it's not gonna be that one.
[00:56:31] Jeremy Utley: Well, I, here, here's one that I'd be curious to get your, uh, take on proof of craft. She mentioned there that they actually, they create B roll to be able to demonstrate or prove that they actually made it. Do you think that's important in this day?
I was, I was kind of going back and forth as I was listening.
[00:56:49] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah. I think for a lot of people there is this very aggressive stand against ai and I, you know, I can see that for brands that I'm involved in when they put something out, some of the
[00:57:03] Jeremy Utley: comments will be, yeah, you know, this is just AI and why is this not
[00:57:06] Henrik Werdelin: really, I will counter that because, for example, at Bar we did a AI generated clay animation and it's a beautiful piece of work and it is very original and the characters inside are very thought through.
Now they're all AI generated, but. Obviously is sometimes lost in that discussion is that there was a person sitting there and generating all these one, there was a person
there.
[00:57:32] Jeremy Utley: Yeah. There's still, there's still craft, there's in a, there's
[00:57:34] Henrik Werdelin: still, it's
[00:57:34] Jeremy Utley: just a different craft. It's probably less compelling, like the proof of craft when you're filming somebody at a keyboard prompting an ai, it doesn't feel like it's less crafts than, than like the, the construction paper and the scissors, you know?
No,
[00:57:46] Henrik Werdelin: and I, I'm reminded of this beautiful documentary, which I encourage you over to see, which is about Disney and there is this, there, it's like six episodes, but one of the episodes is about the entry of, of CGI. And what they were doing at the time was they didn't know if CGI would be kind of advanced enough.
And so they had these puppeteers and these world kind of amazing puppeteers sitting and working at the same time. And this one guy who, I can't remember what it was called, but appear in documentary. Was kind of the ripple that did something doing at night to create a little demo of what the CGI could do.
And then I get goosebumps just thinking about it. And then he shows it at the big screen at a screening. And I think as, as I recall, also a little bit like was not really allowed to do and the world's best puppeteer, the person that was kind of hired to do this job said, and I quote, and I realized I was the dinosaur now.
And so there's this moment where even the craftmen realize that the CGI, the sort of the technology have eclipsed what they're able to do.
[00:58:57] Jeremy Utley: Yeah. Yeah. The, the challenge is, it's, maybe I'm just, I'm riffing with you right now. It's proof to whom, if I go back to this idea of proof of craft, proof to whom, and there are, to your point, there are audience members who have a vested interest in, in, I need it to be proven that this was made by hand.
And I think to those people, proof of craft is necessary.
[00:59:21] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah.
[00:59:21] Jeremy Utley: To people who don't need that proof. No proof is necessary. Or to people who would be compelled if they could just see the conversation history with Claude that co-developed the idea, that would be sufficient proof, right? Where the human is steering and reacting.
And as you said, not always just saying yes. But I think the question actually is what constitutes proof and what is, what are we trying to prove? And I actually, I saw a really interesting study, um, recently, which showed that in idea generation, a panel of evaluators, when they didn't know where ideas came from, they almost always picked AI generated ideas.
When ideas were attributed to AI instead of human, they would undervalue those ideas, and when they were attributed to human, they would overvalue. So there's this weird thing of like proof of craft. The problem, it's the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or the deceit, you could say, is in the eye of the beholder.
And if the human tendency is to, by definition undervalue AI generated work because there's some virtue to the human generated work, then I think it's incumbent upon a marketer to prove to the human that values human work that no, really humans did this.
[01:00:36] Henrik Werdelin: Mm-hmm.
[01:00:36] Jeremy Utley: But I don't, I don't know if that's, if we're in a transitionary period, like nobody, I, you know, I
[01:00:42] Henrik Werdelin: think part
[01:00:42] Jeremy Utley: of both, right?
I don't need to prove that I, that I thought independent of a computer when I'm working on my newsletter, right?
[01:00:49] Henrik Werdelin: When you hear a song and it hits you and you feel an emotion, you want that emotion, that emotion part is connecting with the artist, pain or happiness or whatever. It's uhhuh. And I do think that, that humans have been taught by, you know, many generations to understand and do that.
I think a, that you want to do that. And I think second is suddenly that turned out to be hollow. If so to speak, the emotion was faked because there was not a human on the other side. I think you might feel a little bit cheated or felt, you know, faked because that the emotion that you are getting is it was generated by something that you don't necessarily understand how to have an emotional connection to.
[01:01:39] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
[01:01:39] Henrik Werdelin: And so
[01:01:40] Jeremy Utley: I, I think you're totally right, but I do think for a
[01:01:42] Henrik Werdelin: while people want to have an emotional connection to another person or they'll start to ize the computer and then we're kinda logging into, you know, completely then went to a GI and mm-hmm. And all these other things.
[01:01:56] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I also, the other thing that resonated in the conversation was her saying Only do what you can uniquely do.
[01:02:04] Henrik Werdelin: Mm.
[01:02:04] Jeremy Utley: It's a, it's an interesting, uh, it think it's a valuable. Stock taking moment for people. I actually wrote about this in my newsletter. I wrote probably one of the most personal pieces I've written recently, which was basically about what are the things that only I can do, like for example, parenting my children being a father to my kids.
I don't want AI to do that, and even if my kids preferred it, I, I would feel an existential responsibility to be a good father. Mm-hmm. I feel as part of the, one of the very few reasons I can be a hundred percent confident. I am here to blank, I'm here to be a good father. I think it's harder, it's in work, in the work context, I feel it's a little bit more difficult to kind of categorically conclude I am here to do this.
[01:02:52] Henrik Werdelin: But I think, you know, maybe there two thoughts. One is there's definitely the question, what do you have that's not in the model? And I think for Instacart, they will obviously talk about all this preference and so that's like a hot data that is not there. I think the other question is, and that's back to the idea of courage, is who do you wanna be?
Like what is it where you are willing to take a leap of faith to be different? Mm-hmm. And that, you know, I was thinking about the other day because one of the things we talk a lot about for entrepreneurs is that how the about page is very important because as we talked about, users want emotionally connect to something.
But increasingly the about pace is also important for you to your model because you won't need to teach your model what makes you unique. Well, how should it be playing back the originality that you want to express. And so, in an ironic way, the about page is a, is about to get important as we use AI to try to become more original ourself.
[01:03:52] Jeremy Utley: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. There's a, um, the last thing I'll say on that is. This, the, the question about least love tasks and what can only you do uniquely, there's a lot of your work that isn't uniquely you, you're just kind of filling the role. But there is something, I think is a personal responsibility.
What is the thing that I'm doing that nobody else could plug into or nobody that's uniquely me and I, I'm just, I'm, I'm compelled That's a question worth asking. I've been asking a little bit, as I said personally, but I think in the work context it's worthwhile because then you go, okay, what are all those other things that I don't like doing that I roll my eyes at when I have to do, can I?
How much can I get free of so that I can contribute the thing that I am uniquely capable of contributing?
[01:04:43] Henrik Werdelin: I'll give you one thing actually, as you're saying this. One thing that I, I think because I've built a few things that were successful, I notice that sometimes when people come and pitch an idea and I tell them that I think it's a good one to pursue.
That it's almost like I give them permission to, like an idea that they have themself even more. Mm-hmm. It's almost like the idea has not been blessed, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it's a quite beautiful gift to have because as an entrepreneur, you have all this insecurity and you don't really have that much data to prove that whatever you have in your mind is going to be.
So the having somebody to say, you know what, I, I see it. I, I, I think this might happen. And it's from somebody who you think might have the ability to predict better than others, which I don't know if I do, but let's assume what happens. Uh, that's actually a quite cool gift because you give the gift of encouragement and, uh, which is tough for GBT to do
[01:05:43] Jeremy Utley: as an aside.
By the way, encourage literally means to give courage to.
[01:05:48] Henrik Werdelin: Mm-hmm.
[01:05:49] Jeremy Utley: Isn't that great?
[01:05:50] Henrik Werdelin: That is great.
[01:05:50] Jeremy Utley: When you, when you encourage someone, when you encourage an entrepreneur, you're literally giving them courage.
[01:05:55] Henrik Werdelin: I like that. Maybe on that note,
we should end,
[01:05:59] Jeremy Utley: you know, you know who else could use A little encouragement.
All, all your old buddies, Rik and Jeremy could use a little encouragement in the show notes. You give us a review, you let us know what you think of the show. We could use a little
strength.
[01:06:11] Henrik Werdelin: We also had a few t people who then pr by having a keyword that they listen to this very end and then we send them a book.
That's, and I think we should continue that. That's so what should be,
[01:06:22] Jeremy Utley: I've enjoyed doing that.
[01:06:23] Henrik Werdelin: I very much, the last thing was, was it anthropo? Uh, never. Anyway. What's the one today?
[01:06:30] Jeremy Utley: I mean, it could be something about like, uh, how about take heart? Take heart,
[01:06:36] Henrik Werdelin: I'll take out, and with that, please, like, subscribe, send with somebody that you, um, take heart to.
[01:06:46] Jeremy Utley: Bye bye-Bye.