What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
What if AI became your most valuable team member?
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"AI is an enabler, an augmenter, not a replacement." These words from Navneet Singh, a marketing leader at Palo Alto Networks with nearly a decade of experience, set the tone for our exploration into the transformative relationship between artificial intelligence and marketing.
During our conversation, Nav shattered common misconceptions about AI's role in marketing by demonstrating how human creativity and AI efficiency can form a powerful partnership. He shared a compelling example from Palo Alto Networks' recent product launch, where an AI-powered contest among product marketers generated 56 creative entries in a single weekend - compressing what would have been weeks of agency work into just one business day. This force-multiplier effect showcases AI's true potential when guided by human expertise and strategic vision.
What makes Nav's perspective particularly valuable is his practical approach to AI adoption. He described how Palo Alto Networks created an "AI-first" culture through leadership summits, expert consultations, and establishing clear guidelines for responsible use. The company developed internal tools like Panda AI for employee assistance while implementing Google Gemini and Flow for marketing content creation - all supported by a balanced system of education and technological guardrails. But perhaps his most powerful insight was a simple question he's instilled in his team: "Every time your hands are on the keyboard, ask yourself why this shouldn't be done by AI."
Looking toward the future, Nav envisions marketing shifting from targeting segments to personalizing for individuals at unprecedented scale, with company websites transforming into AI-driven digital storefronts handling the entire customer journey. For those concerned about their marketing careers in an AI world, his message is clear: don't fear replacement - embrace experimentation. The greatest opportunities belong to those who view AI as a collaborative partner rather than a threat. Ready to transform your marketing approach with artificial intelligence? Subscribe now and join us on this journey into marketing's AI-powered future.
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Hey everybody, I'm excited to dive into AI and marketing today Two hot topics with a real industry insider and marketing guru from Palo Alto Networks, Nav. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm great. Thanks, Evan.
Speaker 1:It's really great to be talking to the audience of your work and the team at Palo Alto Networks. Before that, maybe introduce yourself your role within the company and how would you describe Palo Alto Networks these days versus 10?
Speaker 2:years ago when you joined. It has transformed. So just a little bit about myself. I'm Nav. I joined Palo Alto Networks nine years almost 10 years now, which is half the age of the company. Almost 10 years now, which is half the age of the company. I lead marketing for network security and AI. Have really loved every day I have worked at Palo Alto Networks. How we've changed is really transformed. When I joined the company, we were a single product company offering next-generation firewall and security services transformative products. Now we're the cybersecurity partner of choice for large Fortune 100 companies, offering everything from solutions for cloud security, endpoint SOC transformation, ai security, network security and so on Everything that a large enterprise might need from a cybersecurity partner of choice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been brilliant to witness the transformation and amazing products that are now Gen AI and AI powered. But we're not going to go there today. We're going to talk about marketing, something we both know a little about. And what are the biggest myths or misconceptions when you talk AI and marketing these days and what's your personal experience? Maybe you can set the scene for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the biggest misconceptions, in my view, is when we say AI will replace marketers. The reality is that AI is an enabler. It is an augmenter, not really a replacement. So think of it like this AI handles the heavy lifting, the data crunching right and the patent recognition, also the rapid content generation, but it's the human that gives the strategic vision. The essential ingredients that include understanding of customers, the customer journey, ethical judgment as well on what should be included and, ultimately, the creative spark. All of that comes from the storytelling. The basic, the ingredients come from humans, but AI is a huge augmenter. So without human direction, ai is just like a powerful engine right without a driver. So one of the projects that I can give you an example of where we used AI is a few months ago. We launched a new product AI security called Prisma Airs.
Speaker 2:In the past, we would have to do a long cycle of coming up with taglines, subheads, creative images and so on, working with multiple agencies and in-house as well. This time, what we did was we ran a contest with just the product marketers using AI. We said generate as many headlines and subheads that you can with a concept that you have in mind. We got 56 entries over one weekend, basically one business day. We had a meeting with the CEO. We said these are the top five entries. We chose one and went with that. So that's a huge force multiplier. We were able to do that in basically one business day, something that would have taken us a few weeks in the past.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's incredible. What a fun story, really eye-opening, and let's talk about mindset shift. It's not just about the you know the you know marketing tech stack these days. You know, it's about, you know, emerging tools and change, and I was curious about some of the tools that you used in this example. Can you mention them? How did you ensure adoption, how did you get approval for adoption and how were they used in that particular example?
Speaker 2:The good part is that our company itself is AI first and have executives backing that. When AI first burst onto the scene through ChatGPT in November 2022, was it seen? Through chat GPT November 2022, was it? I remember, within a few months, our CEO called an AI summit, which is internal meeting of all VPs and, above for all the leaders of the company. They were all in person here. We were a global company, right, everybody flew in. We had all the leaders here. We brought in leaders in AI, people who had been working on IBM Watson, people who had been working on Google Gemini, people who were startup founders who were working on AI, and they discussed with us at that time how they have used AI. What are the different use cases where they have seen AI being successful. Then we did different functions within our company, like marketing, finance, it. Each of them actually had a leader experiment with their teams on AI use cases and then demonstrated those use cases to the leadership team and we learned from each other from those experiments and it really set the stage for us to be able to effectively use AI. So today we have an internal tool called Panda AI, which is, if I have any question as an employee. The IT team has created this tool, which is available in Slack, replacement of a laptop logged out of my account, expense report policy, travel policy all of that can be answered by that tool.
Speaker 2:In marketing, you mentioned some of the tools that we've used. So we work with. We partner very closely with Google, so the primary tool we use is Google Gemini, and Gemini AI is available as a chat interface, but it's also available within the documents. We use Google Workspace, so in any document like a Word doc, if I have a Google doc, I can access Gemini there. And then we also started using Google Flow, which is a video generation tool. So in the past you would have to again work with either agencies or creative services who only have a limited bandwidth to create videos. Now we are asking everybody in the marketing organization to experiment with that and we are creating some really, really great videos using Google Flow and VO3 Engine.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Yeah, these are incredible tools. How do you think about empowering the brand voice and supporting it without going off the rails? You know, we've all created content with AI and it's turned out to be dodgy, to say the least, or it takes us in a completely different direction that doesn't necessarily support the mission. How does that show up? How do you avoid it? And how do you keep it under wraps, as it were, because AI can be a little wacky, to say the least?
Speaker 2:It's very powerful and with that power as I think in Spider-Man movie they said it with great power comes great responsibility. It's a really powerful tool and you really have to be responsible in using it. So there is no foolproof way to be honest, evan. But when we did that leadership team summit, ai summit, we formed an AI task force who created guidelines for us and to begin with, those were the early days. At that time, everything had to go through that team to be approved. Now we are at a much different place where we've said place where we've said here are the guidelines Use the Google Gemini tool and all the AI tools that are sanctioned for use for this level of data.
Speaker 2:For example, it can be used for confidential data. It cannot be used for secrets, and here's the definition of what that means. And we go through the training every six months, every year. There is training to all the employees, mandatory training. That talks about some examples and what can go wrong if AI is misused. So constant training. Some guardrails that have been built using our own products. For example, we have products like Prisma Airs, ai Access Security, prisma Access Browser, some of those products that actually create those guardrails. For example, it says if somebody is trying to use a code generation tool which is not sanctioned, it would Microsoft Browser would block it and say this tool is sanctioned, use this instead. So we have a mix of education and guardrails that are provided by tools.
Speaker 1:Oh, really well done there. Ai, gen AI is also changing many of our daily rituals that you know as professionals. We built up over years, decades. You know our daily rituals, what we do and how we do. It enhance my productivity in terms of collaboration, in terms of you know everything from email, a calendar, to you know meeting requests. I mean it really is phenomenal. What about you as a marketing leader? How has it enhanced, change your routines or habits while leading the team?
Speaker 2:I'll give you a couple examples of what hasn't changed, and then I'll also give you an example of what has changed. So what hasn't changed is some of the core beliefs and some of the rituals that I had in my personal life. Two of them I'll share with you. One is meditation so I talked about in one of the previous talks as well. Follow meditation, even like 15 minutes before going to bed. It gives me that perspective and helps me calm down in this very, very fast paced environment with pressures and deadlines. That hasn't changed and deadlines. That hasn't changed. In fact, it has become more important in this age of AI. Second is visualization. So I visualize goals six months from now, a year from now, five years, 10 years from now. I live by what Bill Gates said that people overestimate what they can achieve in one year. That's why you have those new year resolutions 1st of January and by the time March rolls around, you're no longer going to the gym, right? So they overestimate what they can do in one year, but they underestimate what they can achieve in 10 years. So that's another ritual that I have about visualization. Those are the couple of things that haven't changed. On the other hand, some things that have changed are.
Speaker 2:I've told my team that every time you have your hands on the keyboard, ask yourself why shouldn't this be done by AI? As an example, we have a new leader who joined for investor relations. I have a 45-minute meeting set up for later today. Last night, I received 39 questions that have to be answered and I said there's no way I can answer 45 in 45 minutes. So I immediately used Gemini to come up with answers, and it is 80 to 90% there, and now I can focus on that. 10 to 20% of what additional value I need to add, based on the latest customer conversations that I've been having with, let's say, cios, right?
Speaker 2:So the ritual that I have told my team is every time you have hands on the keyboard, my voice should be in their ear saying why am I doing this, why should AI not do this? And so that's something that I have really imbibed myself, and I've asked my team to do it as well. In fact, I'll give you one more example the team meetings. I have team meetings that are about 70 people who attend Every team meeting. Now we have a topic where somebody comes and presents what they achieved with AI. It can be a success or it can be a failure can be a failure. Every team meeting we have either a video or a persona that somebody created that used AI and that just fosters that thinking, that creative thinking in others and on how they can use AI.
Speaker 1:Oh, wonderful perspective. It's changed my work life as well. I've gone from having a podcast or live show two or three times a month to having it daily, because one click and this video gets turned into a podcast, turned into a blog, a newsletter distributed on 20 different platforms, edited and cleaned up with the click of a button with several different tools. It's really transformative, allowing me to focus on the conversation and not the busy work or hiring folks to edit every clip, et cetera Amazing.
Speaker 1:Of course, AI is more than just content and content creation. You know it really is transforming search and discovery and education. It really is transforming search and discovery and education. How do you think about the wider landscape of future-proofing, not just content, but SEO, brand discoverability and reach through AI?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this has to be done with AI working together with humans. I recently gave a talk at ANA B2B Marketing Conference, which is from fear to future. That's one of the topics I'm really passionate about really creating messaging and marketing that is based on positivity rather than based on fear, which is very prevalent in cybersecurity. While acknowledging risk is important, I believe that the true impact comes from empowerment, and so, for me, it's about that brand, that culture that we have to create, which is about how can we enable our customers to solve problems while taking care of security. The messaging doesn't have to be cybersecurity risks. Nation state actors Everybody is trying to take you down. Attackers are already in your network. Cloud is compromised right, so it doesn't have to lead with that. It can lead with.
Speaker 2:Ai is a transformative force, and our customers are organizations that will have transformative effects.
Speaker 2:For example, maybe somebody will cure cancer, someone will have a meaningful impact towards alleviating poverty in the world, for example, or spreading education to countries that are not so fortunate that everybody has access to a school, right.
Speaker 2:So our customers are going to have that impact in the world, and what we need to do as a cybersecurity organization, as an example, is to help them do it safely. And so, to answer your question, it really has to come from that core brand perspective that you have. Your brand has to be built on that core value of positivity and empowerment, and then you can use AI to really turbocharge your messaging, your marketing, and then, as you said, we can hyper-personalize the message. Instead of a segment, we can actually personalize the message to an individual at a scale that is unprecedented. We can do webinars, we can do on-demand courses, hands-on learning with our products. We can have AI avatars that can answer questions about our products right on the website, so that you don't have to call a meeting with a system engineer to know more about the product. So we can do all of that. But the core of that has to be our brand, which is for us. It's based on positivity and empowerment.
Speaker 1:Wonderful and speaking of positivity and empowerment and fear. Sadly, there's a lot of fear and uncertainty with employees these days, particularly entry-level employees, about their job prospects, their career prospects with AI and any advice or mentoring you can offer them as they navigate all of this change and disruption that's inevitably coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is actually a great time to be in the generation that is AI first. So in one of our calls our CEO was saying that in the past we have mentored people who are early in career and are interns and we've given them projects. We could potentially even do reverse mentoring now. Who are AI first, who've experimented with AI, then maybe they can teach us how to use what are the use cases that they are using for AI. But the question is, as an intern, as an early in career, are you really experimenting with AI? And that's what I try and teach my kids and anybody who's in the younger generation Experiment, experiment with AI. And if you truly do that and find use cases where AI can help you achieve certain objectives, I think that companies will actually be wanting to learn from you.
Speaker 2:I think that companies will actually be wanting to learn from you because you will be the AI first generation. You'll be the generation that asks AI for health care advice. Maybe it's about you know when you talk to a doctor, it is actually logging into the health care system and really interacting with AI, and that expectation then comes into the enterprise and they would say I expect AI to be able to do these things, like they should be coming in and asking why not, rather than what can we do with AI. They might be asking what can't we do with AI, right? Might be asking what can't we do with AI, right? So my advice to them is really experiment to the fullest extent. Every aspect of life is going to be transformed with AI and if you do that, companies will be lining up to actually learn from you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great advice, proactivity always. So, looking ahead, what do you imagine a best-in-class marketing team will look like in two or three years? I imagine there's some form of agents out there. Will we have AI coworkers or advisors that will be helping each of us with our daily goals or skills or advice? What other vision do you anticipate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me talk about that. Or do you anticipate? Yeah, let me talk about that. And let me also talk about if I were, let's say, to be talking to a CMO, then what's really required to achieve that vision. I think there are a couple of things that are required, and then let's talk about that vision as well. I think one of the things that's required is to really have the data foundationally in a place where it can be accessed by AI, because AI is only as good as the data. So you really need to transform your data strategy, and the data has to be unified. It's clean and accessible.
Speaker 2:Today, data resides in silos. Take the example of marketing, right? So product data is different from campaigns. Data is different from social media. Data is different from you know, if I ran a webinar, what were the results of that webinar? Right? Customer surveys are in a different area area. So I think one of the things that CMOs need to do to really realize that vision of the future is to have data in one place so that AI can access it and give you insights.
Speaker 2:Second is to aggressively invest in talent development. It's not just about hiring the next campaign manager. It's about hiring somebody who is really great at prompts that they can submit to AI and upskill and reskill their workers and really encourage them to experiment and fail and fail right. So if you do invest in some of these capabilities, I think the future is going to look really different. In the future, I think that instead of marketing to customer segments, we will market to individuals. Wow, if you receive a marketing campaign, let's say, from us, in the future, it would be very specific to you the kind of podcast that you do, the kind of interest that you have, the kind of risks you might be facing, and every individual would probably receive. There are 30 contacts in an enterprise. Every contact would probably receive a personalized email and personalized message. Every contact would probably receive a personalized email and personalized message.
Speaker 2:Another, I think, transformation that will happen is the way you interact with a company, a vendor, will be very different. You could come to our website, and website would be our digital store. You would be able to do everything that you are able to do today with a seller, whether it's about finding out about features or get a quote, or negotiate or whatever you need to be able to do to arrive at your final decision. You would be able to do it using agents on our website.
Speaker 2:And I think in this new world, agencies will also have to transform how they offer their services to marketers and their role will have to transform to how to use AI in the best way possible. For example, if it is the campaign tagline example that I gave you, if you were able to turn it around in a weekend, how can they do that at scale? So I think it's going to be very different but very exciting world, and I think it's only going to. Ai is only going to be. It'll only improve from here. This is the worst of AI that we are seeing right now. It is only going to get better from here.
Speaker 1:Such a great point. We're living in interesting times. Thanks for sharing your insights and really appreciate the advice. Very helpful. Thanks, nav. Thank you, evan, it was great to be with you and thanks everyone for listening and watching and sharing and also check out our new TV show, techimpacttv, now on Bloomberg and Fox Business. Thanks everyone, take care.