Glen Calvert, Co-Founder of Kaizan AI: “I think AI is under-hyped and the impact will be monumental”

Are you sitting comfortably? Well, by the end of this interview with Glen Calvert, Co-Founder of Kaizan AI, we suspect you won’t be. Especially if you work in marketing, with Glen dropping truth bombs such as “I think execs soon won’t hire marketers who don’t have a basic understanding of how models work and the art of prompting, it’s a table-stakes knowledge set”.

And if you think that idea and campaign is “good enough”, you’re not going to be working for Glen. “Firstly, everything can be improved 10x. Every idea, every process, every campaign, and every result can be improved 10x. You must always ask this question on every agreed decision and plan, ‘how can we 10x this?’.”

Couple this demand for the highest standards with his very evident drive, and it’s no wonder that Glen has achieved so much. Prior to founding Kaizan AI, a client intelligence platform that measures client satisfaction (and revenue), Glen was the COO of the global esports team Fnatic. (It’s well worth reading his thoughts on what B2B and B2C marketers can learn from gaming below.)

Glen previously founded Affectv, a global programmatic ad tech business that was recognised by the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 as one of the UK’s fastest-growing startups – and was later acquired by Azerion.

In short, Glen Calvert is a man worth listening to. Just don’t expect a comfy read.

Why Dust or Magic? That stems from a quote by legendary American advertising creative director, William Bernbach: “An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.” (And if you’re wondering where you’ve heard the name, Bernbach was the inspiration behind Don Draper of Mad Men fame.)

Could you please introduce yourself to our audience? What motivated you to pursue a career in technology and marketing, and how did you embark on your journey in this field?

I believe that technology is the biggest driver of productivity, value creation and societal well-being and so have always been fascinated by what technological advancements can enable. People experience and learn a lot of this advancement through consuming media, entertainment and how they access information (the internet, social media, streaming etc) and so I’ve always been interested in how technology shapes these experiences. Media and marketing are also industries that embrace change and speed – so technological shifts can be rapid and are welcomed (compared to industries that require lots of deep regulation). 

If you combine this with the inherent creativity in marketing, you have a fascinating ecosystem. It is never static and has to constantly evolve for the audience. When you combine this creative thinking and leverage technology it benefits consumers and everyone in the value chain.

My first job was at Dennis Publishing, founded by the highly charismatic entrepreneur Felix Dennis, just as internet advertising and social media were taking off, so I was immersed immediately in technology and media and fascinated with the speed of innovation and creativity. 

What are your thoughts on the escalating integration of AI in digital marketing and its potential influence on the future of marketing, Martech and social media?

I think AI is under-hyped and the impact will be monumental. The technological breakthrough has occurred, and now every team and company involved will iterate rapidly to improve the technology and achieve AGI. The cat is out of the bag and progress will be exponential. It has far-reaching consequences and products we can’t imagine yet will be created by entrepreneurs. Importantly, it’s a technological platform shift that can be utilised by incumbents and upstarts. Prior technological shifts favoured startups, but AI can be leveraged by all players. 

Generative AI is by default good at creating content, and so naturally will be embraced by marketers. The impact will be profound in two areas, and both require deep thought as they’re not necessarily all positive:

• Infinite content and delivery, while helping brands market their products, will have downsides through deepfakes, spam and fraud! 
• Organisations will not need as many people to ideate, create and deliver marketing in the future. And clients know this!! So will demand lower fees. What do organisations look like with specialised AI marketers conducting many co-pilots and how will talent training evolve for this world is fundamentally different to anything we’ve experienced before. 

Related reading: Barry D’Arcy, VP of Partners at Storyblok: “There’s a lot of innovative technology that is being built ‘behind the scenes’ that has a profound impact on customer experiences”

How do you ready yourself for an AI-driven landscape as a marketing leader? What new skills do you need?

I think execs soon won’t hire marketers who don’t have a basic understanding of how models work and the art of prompting, it’s a table-stakes knowledge set. Understanding what you can achieve with which models, data sets and prompts will be a must-have, in the same way marketers need to understand segmentation, messaging and channels.

I believe that all marketers should be going deep on AI now, and becoming experts as fast as possible, so they’re not left behind. While many jobs will be replaced, and agencies look at how they add value, it’ll be the marketers that embrace the change that is well positioned. We saw the same occur with all platform shifts, if you became the internet advertising expert, the social media expert, the mobile expert etc, you accelerated your career. These platforms couldn’t replace parts of your job though, so get ready to learn and adapt fast.

Do you anticipate any significant disruptions in marketing and sales technology for 2024? If so, what?

The opportunity will be in unique and authentic experiences. I can’t have an AI write this for me as it’s based on my personal experiences and suppositions, and the same will be true for marketing and sales where there’s still a place for genuine creation not invented by AI. 

How AI-first interactions between buyers and sellers evolve will be interesting, usually through chat interfaces on your website, or demo requests, but other marketing assets too. These interactions can be highly scalable, but how we control the message and brand values via AI interactions will take some time.

I expect the future will see a greater convergence between sales/marketing and technology. We’re moving from being ‘on the internet’ to ‘in the internet’. As generative AI, VR/AR hardware, distributed teams and gaming continue to exponentially grow, the convergence between technology and how brands market will further entwine. 

Related reading: Mattia Santin, CMO at Hotjar: “The escalating integration of AI in digital marketing is ushering in a new era”

How do you think AI might evolve B2B marketing and/or ABM strategies in 2024?

Hyper-personalisation and community/experiential will be the themes because of AI in B2B marketing. Limitations from email clients on email spamming mean highly curated ABM with personalised content sequences will be the only way to get cut through. There will need to be a step change in email marketing from 2024 onwards. 

In a sea of infinitive content being served to us, the brands that can curate meaningful communities and experiences for these consumers will have an advantage. Activations that are one-off, exclusive and unique, will warrant a premium. 

People respond to values-based marketing that has uniqueness and creativity at its core. This will never change, just the method of creation and means of delivery. 

Could you share some of your most noteworthy accomplishments that you take particular pride in?

I believe you remember the people you worked with more than what you were working on at the time. So while there are many business accomplishments I could name, I will always take the most pride and fondest memories in building teams in startups, where people come together and flourish to solve problems, and with the people I worked with and the experiences we had delivering the accomplishments.

Successes in business look like a single point in time and an overnight success, but they’re the result of consistent graft alongside great people over a prolonged period of time. Building those teams is what I’m most proud of. It’s also important to note, that teams are difficult to build, iterate and level up quickly; it’s easy to change an idea, initiative, or software vendor! So curating and growing the best teams is the most rewarding as it’s often the hardest part.  

Having said that, right now I’m taking a lot of pride in the impact we’re having on client-facing teams with Kaizan. We wanted to build an AI that augmented the client service teams in professional and managed service industries, the people who manage and deliver value to clients are the most crucial in your company and have been underserved by tech for too long. The feedback we get on how Kaizan is helping them means a lot to us. We’re on a mission to give client-facing teams and service-centric companies unlimited productivity and knowledge and we’re just getting started. 

Recommended reading: FinInsight enters the sentiment analysis space at CES

What core values have played a pivotal role in shaping your approach to marketing and communication?

This is very cliched, but I’ve always tried to bring any marcomms back to the why and what you stand for, versus the specific features you’re trying to get the recipient to understand. If you’re not proud of it, it shouldn’t exist. If you strive for differentiation and adding value to the consumer, and it doesn’t work, that’s fine. But if you’re not proud of the work because it’s mediocre then it needs to be addressed.

What piece of advice would you offer to fellow marketing leaders that has been particularly beneficial to you personally?

Firstly, everything can be improved 10x. Every idea, every process, every campaign, and every result can be improved 10x. You must always ask this question on every agreed decision and plan, ‘how can we 10x this?’. It’s a great habit to get into to eke out more from you, the team, and the activity. Every single element can be improved. 

Second, study the best B2C marketing activations with the youth in gaming. Marketers that engage with young gamers have to be truly original, authentic and community-led. Staid marketing activities in B2B, or B2C brands trying to market to older demographics, can all learn what true innovation looks like by seeing how brands interact with the youth and gamers. It must be original, creative, digitally native and community-led and so pushes the boundaries of what’s possible. 

What Martech technology has your company recently embraced and what difference has it made to your business?

Not specifically martech, but OpenAI for reasoning and perfecting content we create, for generating assets, and refining sales and marketing collateral. The savings on time and cost is incomparable.