AI Won’t Replace Strategy. It Will Expose Weak Thinkers. George Nimeh | Ep. 009

AI will not replace strategy. It will expose weak thinkers.

Most companies do not have a strategy. They have content calendars, meetings, campaigns, and more tools than ever before. But in a world where everyone can publish, automate, and generate more content with AI, the real question becomes: who can still think clearly?

🎙 Episode 009 of HXD212: unfiltered conversations with leaders, rebels, and builders shaping what's next.

George Nimeh has spent his career at the intersection of media, marketing, technology, and brand building.

He was Digital Director and Editor-in-Chief at Red Bull, one of the few brands that understood attention, culture, and content before most companies had even started using those words seriously. He also held senior roles connected to NYTimes.com, CBS-backed iwon.com, KURIER, and now leads NIMEH & Partners, his Vienna-based agency focused on strategy, innovation, content, and AI.

In this episode, Thibault Catala and George Nimeh explore:

◼️ Why AI exposes weak thinkers more than it replaces strong strategists
◼️ What most brands misunderstand about Red Bull's content machine
◼️ The real difference between a strategy and a content calendar
◼️ Why volume is increasing but value is not - and what to do about it
◼️ The "slopocalypse": why garbage prompts produce garbage output
◼️ What Kodak got wrong - and why the same mistake is happening again with AI
◼️ Why Europe's risk aversion is holding back innovation (and what Austria can learn)
◼️ Where AI is genuinely useful in marketing, and where it creates noise
◼️ Why taste, domain expertise, and human judgement matter more than ever
◼️ What CEOs should ask their teams before turning on any AI tool
◼️ How to build automation workflows without deleting your entire inbox
◼️ Why cloning is easy but invention is still very human
◼️ What founders can learn from the way Mateschitz approved ideas at Red Bull
◼️ Why the future belongs to people who can think, decide, and communicate clearly

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction & George Nimeh's background
1:31 George's early career: France, journalism & the early internet
7:02 US vs. Europe: speed, risk-taking & decision-making culture
16:15 Technological turning points: internet, mobile & social media
19:41 Kodak & the companies that missed the digital shift
32:39 Red Bull: storytelling over advertising
42:58 Strategy vs. content calendar - what's the difference?
44:45 "AI won't replace strategy, it will expose weak thinkers"
55:04 Where AI is actually useful in marketing today
1:07:33 George's daily AI workflow & tools (n8n, Codex, Cursor)
1:20:15 Lightning round: Apple, Jaguar, TikTok & bravery
1:22:48 Closing thoughts & where to find George

🎧 Follow George & NIMEH & Partners:
George Nimeh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgenimeh/
NIMEH & Partners: https://www.nimeh.com/

🔥 Follow Thibault & HXD212:
Follow Thibault Catala on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/thibaultcatala
Follow HXD212 on Instagram. https://instagram.com/hxd212
Follow HXD212 on TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/@hxd212podcast
Catala Consulting. https://catalaconsulting.co.uk
Revenue Management Online Course. https://learn.thibaultcatala.com/revenuemanagement

#AI #MarketingStrategy #BrandStrategy #ContentMarketing #RedBull #Leadership #Entrepreneurship #HospitalityLeadership #FutureOfMarketing #HXD212

Transcript

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Introduction & George Nimeh's background

Speaker 0:00

So welcome back to another episode of HXD212. And uh you know it's a series of uh unfiltered conversations with creators, with uh rebel, uh with people chef shape shaping the the future of uh of innovation and the future of uh what's next. That's uh that's the main trend. Uh today I'm joined in Vienna by George Nimeh. And George is a founder and CEO of Nimeh and Partners, an agency focused on strategy, innovation, AI, and content marketing. He has worked at the intersection of media, technology, brand building, uh, and digital transformation for many years. That's uh that's uh that's his first pitch. And earlier in his career, George served as a digital director at Red Bull and held leadership roles connected to NY New York Times.com, CBS and Courier in Austria. More recently, he has been active in the AI conversation, including as a TED AI ambassador and Perplexity Business Fellow. But this episode is not only about uh Red Bull, about uh AI, about everything, it's also the full journey of George and uh and what has been what he has seen across the years and what has been the different changes. But it's also like how do you build attention, trust, and meaning in a world where everyone can publish, everyone can automate, we have seen we are going to see a lot of things around it, and everyone can pretend to have a strategy. Okay? So today I want to explore George's journey, the turning point that shape is thinking, what Red Bull really understood about attention, that's something we can talk about, what most brands get wrong, and what leaders need to understand now that AI is changing pretty much everything.

George's early career: France, journalism & the early internet

Speaker 1:31

So, George, welcome to HXD212. Thanks very much, and thanks for having me here. Excellent. So my name is Thibault Catala, I'm the founder of Catala Consulting, and this is HXD212. Alright, so um George, before we talk about uh Red Bull, AI strategy and so on, I I want to understand the the person behind uh behind all of this and what shapes the way you think about media attention and and change? What was uh the beginning of this?

Speaker 1 2:04

Oh that's a great question. It's a nice place to start. Yeah. Um well if we wind back the clock and the years, um I spent uh time after high school in France, and it's where uh uh j'ai appris le francais. There you go. Uh there I was exposed to um in particular to art and culture in a way that I hadn't experienced before, and it really made me think about um how visual communications and how culture combine to impact people in general, um, from not just a business perspective, but you know, uh uh in their daily lives. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but when I returned back to the United States after five years and started studying, um, I turned that into uh um studies that were focused on journalism and mass media. Um I also got a degree in art history at the time, which was a nice way to kind of combine those interests in my undergraduate studies. But the real turning point was um we're we're back in the mid-90s, for those of you who are uh curious at home. Uh I um, you know, it was the very beginning of the public internet, and uh I was playing around with uh green screen browsers and text-based uh messaging and things like that. And I got into graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. I received a fellowship to go there and was lucky enough to study with Kathleen Hall Jameson and a bunch of people who were just brilliant researchers looking at uh the shape of media and what not only uh research but also technology would or how it could impact lives across the world. Um, the Pew Charitable Trust, for example, I got to work on uh several projects with them. My first week of school there, um, I met a man, he came to speak at our school, his name is Martin Nissenholz, and Martin was a graduate of the school and came to talk to us in 1995 about the New York Times on the web, and that he was building the New York Times on the web as its first iteration, and that quote, the future of the gray lady is online, and for uh something that I had always revered as the pinnacle of uh media and journalism, for them to be taking this step back then to say that their future is digital was for me was transformative. And so everything I was thinking at that point, all of the ideas about strategy or communications or visual, uh written communications, all kind of merged into this uh idea of how we take these things and what this idea of the internet would do to transform the way we think.

Speaker 4:55

That's super interesting. Um first I love that you mentioned uh the all beginning of uh of your story. It starts with a French uh touch. But uh and and as well, I hear about this kind of um digitization that you saw coming at the very uh early stage. Did you feel as well there was some um resistance from uh from people around like let's say like when they move um New York Time magazine towards the digital? Do you think people were like, no, it's not going to work or anything?

Speaker 1 5:22

Uh massively, and the comparisons to today, you can definitely draw parallels to all the things that we're experiencing today. Back then at the uh at the Annenberg School at UPenn, for example, the faculty was less than impressed, at first at least, that I wanted to look at the internet, that I was really convinced that this was something that was going to be impactful and important beyond um simple messaging, that the what Martin was talking about and this idea of where the future of communications would go wasn't necessarily resonating with people who were studying radio impact on small communities in Africa, for example, or on political communications. And so that resistance was huge. At the New York Times, even it wasn't considered an experiment. It had a lot of investment behind this thing. However, um, like most digital businesses in the 90s and early 2000s, if you were part of a large company, you weren't integrated into the larger company. The New York Times Online, which it was called back then, was in a building across the street from the main building. We had our own office and own floor, and in agencies that I worked on after that, you know, and businesses, we called ourselves, you know, kind of being in the closet, right? That the digital guys were somewhere else, and the main business uh was uh was was the thing that was operational. Which is now is the reverse. It's reverse or hopefully kind of together.

Speaker 6:47

Together, yeah, that's true. And um, do you see some um differences between the US um media digital or brand positioning compared to the to Europe? And what did you learn in the US media that later helped you in Europe? Do

US vs. Europe: speed, risk-taking & decision-making culture

Speaker 7:02

you see some pattern here?

Speaker 1 7:03

That's another really great question. Uh, I think the thing that I took away from being in New York all that time and kind of getting my formative years in both media and business and the digital landscape was uh were two things actually. One was speed. Um, there is nothing faster that I've experienced than working in New York um and uh having uh companies and and business partners in California, for example. The the speed of operations is unparalleled, and we have very a very low understanding of just how fast it the Americans are capable of operating. And I was thrilled to learn that there. Um I found parallels when I was at Red Bull. It was one of the I think one of the reasons why I was I was brought here to work at Red Bull because they knew and understood that themselves, despite the larger kind of business landscape here. Um and the other piece of it is let's call it uh handshake quality. That here, if you let's say and shake quality first. So let's let's uh so the other thing that I really thought was interesting in and that I learned in in the United States was what I'd call handshake quality, which is you go to a meeting, you uh uh find uh common ground, it's either a pitch situation or a presentation situation, and by the end of the meeting, if the person on the other side of the table or at the lunch that you're at reaches over and says, Yep, this sounds great, you've got a deal. Okay. Um and you can pretty much get started. And within a very short period of time, you're you're on you're on your way. Um, that is a very big difference, at least from here, um, where I like to call things uh uh boomerangs, where you sit down and uh throw out a boomerang and uh off it goes into the wild someplace. You're not really sure where it went. You might have six more coffees in between over the course of however much time, and then eventually either it comes back or it doesn't. And if it does, you're like, oh, that. You know, and so there's a much, much slower, much longer uh uh window of opportunity or or decision-making process, which can have detrimental impacts, especially when you're operating in a business at pace.

Speaker 9:28

That's interesting. And you think that has an impact as well on the on the pace of innovation? Like the US may be more um advanced in terms of innovation or like more risk taker because of this, because I think like they may be faster. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 9:41

I I think I think saying that they're more advanced is is maybe over the line because there's real there are really brilliant people here. We can get to that. Really great to explore. But the speed of decision making, the risk taking, and the ability to say, let's just give this a try, um, the the the lower level of fear of making mistakes, of uh fucking up, uh is uh that that level is is is much lower than here. There's no embarrassment associated with it. It's kind of just uh almost like a badge of honor. Um, versus in European cultures and also in in Asia and certain places where um that's it's not seen the same way, and I think has a uh um uh a slowing impact on on business decisions and on the wider ecosystem in general.

Speaker 10:34

We had a discussion actually on uh with Marcus on the on the podcast about the difference on the entrepreneurship between, for example, the US and Europe. Yeah. Where in the US, if you want to know when you have an idea, they're like, oh great, that would be amazing, let's do it, let's take the risk, we're going to that, that would be amazing, and so on. And in Europe, when you say you have a new idea, people say, Oh, actually, maybe it's already done. You see this, or maybe that's a mistake, you shouldn't do that because of this XYZ. So it's trying to find an excuse not to do it. You know what I mean? So it's a different type of mindset. That's maybe from an external point of view, but I feel there's this kind of mindset on entrepreneurship and risk taking, which is very different from the US and Europe as well.

Speaker 1 11:07

Yeah, I just watched the the rewatched the podcast with Marcus, and it was great. Um, I think he made a a lot of very, very valid points, and you should all watch it. I think it's definitely worth a worth a view. Um and simultaneously, I think that that he's right when he talks about the decision-making process. I'd add one more thing to it is that the US culture, and now I think also emerging in the in China, um, is the lack of fear of being a first mover. Um there it's okay to have a great idea. The you mentioned skepticism. No, I think that there's a pendant uh to skepticism, which is also not wanting to go first. So in Austria, for example, what I've experienced quite a bit is that if there's a proof of concept and if there's you said that it, you know, on occasion it can hold people back to say, oh, that's already been done. But I think there's a a pendant to that, which is that if it's been done and if it's been successful, the second person in line is going to be sometimes more likely to say, oh, look, the Germans did this, or the look at what's going on in Paris. Um, we can do that too. And so the the for whatever reason, that that inability to take the first step is more present here than it should be. There are definitely exceptions to that rule. I'm not saying that this is uh a hundred percent across the board because there are some great examples of that not happening here, but uh changing that attitude uh in the the near term would be a real advantage for Austria and for Europe in general. Super cool.

Speaker 12:40

No, I I agree with you. And uh looking back on the on the brand marketing positioning, um, I feel as well, and again that's me as a European, I feel the the the way marketing is done or or branding and so on is done in the US is quite different from uh in Europe. And I feel and again, correct me if I'm wrong, uh, but I feel in the US is much more um extravagant. I don't know if I call it this way, than in Europe. Do you think it's uh it could be something which I made one of your strengths going from the US to Europe with Red Bull or with other companies?

Speaker 1 13:12

People who know me, I guess would say I'm not afraid of being loud. Um uh I'm I have the conviction of my opinions, I'm not really afraid to share them. And sometimes that gets me into trouble, but it's also responsible for a lot of my success. So if that's Americanism, I I don't know. If it's just me, then so be it. But I think that from uh a brand perspective, that uh there are inherent advantages in the United States in terms of um size of market, and despite the fact that you know Louisiana is definitely not the same as as uh upstate New York or Buffalo or you know, California to Tennessee, um, but there is a homogeneity which enables them to have a market size, much like China, um, which provides advantage. We have language differences, we have deep cultural differences across Europe, and then we also have laws that that that uh that are seemingly European, take the new AI Act, for example, but when you lift up the hood, there's 27 versions of that same universal law, and that also holds us back, and it holds us back not just from a regulatory and development perspective, but it also makes it harder to be uh a single brand with a single voice uh across a single market.

Speaker 14:31

Nice. Plus, the US is huge as well. You have you uh you have like a US, which is a big country, so different different different region with different culture and so on, which could be uh quite similar as well with Europe with different countries and and so on. So, yeah, I I see the pattern. And uh of course being Lord for me, I I I I uh I suggest this, and uh I think it's great. We need more of this kind of thing.

Speaker 1 14:52

The advantage here though, and one of the things that I've discovered uh being in Austria for all this time is that it does act as a microsystem, however. You have a major metropolitan area, you have secondary cities, you have rural areas, but it's compact. Um, and so from a test market perspective, or for trying to understand how a general population might uh approach something, I think that can actually be an advantage. Um, I've described uh Vienna, for example. Vienna is like uh any large metropolitan city in the world that you've left in the dryer for too long, right? It has all the attributes and pieces, but it's just a little bit more compact. That can be a disadvantage, but if taken the right way, I think you can you can kind of turn it into something that works.

Speaker 15:40

That's great. And you saw many um um evolution, revolution on the on the tech side as well with uh internet. Uh I won't say that you saw as well uh the computer, you're not that old.

Speaker 1 15:50

No, no, I had an Apple, I had an Apple II, I had a Commodore, I had the first Commodore 64 and uh an Apple II E.

Speaker 15:58

But uh no, I wasn't here pre-computer, I think is probably pushing the limits. So you you saw some shift happening as well in uh in the in the tech side, on the media marketing and strategy side, and you know, like there's a turning point where the old logic starts to stop and is not working anymore.

Technological turning points: internet, mobile & social media

Speaker 16:15

Do you see that shift uh happening in your in your career? And when do you realize that that was kind of a turning point now? Like, for example, with um internet or like the digitization, as you just mentioned.

Speaker 1 16:29

I would say there's there's there's a few different phases where I've seen where the real opportunity would come from, and a few things that I've really tried to categorically avoid.

Speaker 3 16:37

Okay.

Speaker 1 16:37

Um the obviously the the the beginning of the consumer internet and browser technology was revolutionary. It changed the game, it uh uh really uh uh shifted our focus in terms of how we can operate, at what speed we can operate, at what geographies that we can uh uh uh access and uh and how we do it. Um that uh gave way to early um mobile and social. So I'd say mobile was was uh shortly thereafter or combined with with social media, those things were for me uh true game changers. They changed my focus, they changed a shift in terms of of understanding that it's not just unidirectional communication, this singular direction, which for a publisher like the New York Times was also really hard to swallow. You know, we're going from a publishing one-directional communication to multilateral, uh uh multi-way, uh, bottom-up and top-down communications. If if you're interested in that and in that era, the one of the things that I read, which was fundamental to my understanding of everything we know today, is called the Clue Train Manifesto. Okay. Uh it's out there. It was, I think it's from somewhere around 1998, 1997, some something around there. And it's it's a manifesto of the way of understanding the way that the internet would impact our lives. And the crazy thing is that despite changes in mobile, the adapt the adoption of social, um, what we're experiencing now with AI, the blockchain in between, um, I a lot of it still holds true. And so I would highly recommend that anybody out there uh uh look it up um and uh see how lots have changed over the course of the last 25-30 years, but a lot of the fundamentals have still stayed the same.

Speaker 18:32

I've I've read a book similar to this by uh Kevin Kelly. Um, don't by his name, uh I think it was Kevin Kelly, about uh that he doesn't know exactly what will be the next technology, the next innovation, but the fundamentals will always be the same. Like uh don't basically like the sharing culture about like uh um people sharing or like the socials and so there's fundamentals which are consistent across uh different innovation, yeah, but then the innovation itself can materialize in different uh aspects. Yes. I think that's uh that's gonna be key.

Speaker 1 19:02

I think that's very true. I there are human truths, yeah. Right? There there are things that I think have always been true and probably always will be. How technology specifically impacts those truths is calling into question how we deal with it. Yeah, but I think the fundamentals of who we are as as human beings on this planet revolving around the sun somehow. Yeah, um, I think those things stay true over time.

Speaker 19:26

That's true. And when you saw this shift happening from the publisher to the traditional marketing to the more digital marketing, do you feel there was some company um left behind? And do you believe like there was some company that under underestimated uh the impact

Kodak & the companies that missed the digital shift

Speaker 19:41

of digital?

Speaker 1 19:42

Well, I grew up in Rochester, New York, or around Rochester, and Rochester is the home of Kodak.

Speaker 2 19:48

Okay.

Speaker 1 19:49

And so I, you know, kind of grew up experiencing uh disruption firsthand. Lots of family members worked for the company. Um, and for those of you who don't know the story, you know, Kodak had the patents for uh digital photography and they sat on them. Uh, instead of taking advantage of what should have been an opportunity for the company, they protected their chemical-based uh film business in the hopes that um that cash cow uh would continue. And instead um uh they were disrupted by fast-moving startups who understood that sharing digital photography, for example, and the future of that type of communications would be uh much more powerful um over over time than um than what they were doing. Um there are lots of businesses that that have that are experiencing that and media and large journalism, um newspapers in in particular are certainly feeling the impact of that over time.

Speaker 20:51

That's interesting. And what do you believe were the um the biggest uh mistake, like leadership mistake that were made at this time, Kodak or any other one, about not doing this transition correctly?

Speaker 1 21:06

I'm gonna be nice. Okay and instead of calling it a mistake, I think there are ways of understanding it from a systemic and structural perspective, which can explain some of the reasons why. I I do think simultaneously, however, that there were fundamental uh leadership decisions uh to uh protect the past instead of invent the future. But for example, if you're Kodak, or if you're the New York Times, or if you're courier, or one of the many newspapers here in Austria, for example, around the same time as the internet was developing and this idea of what it might become was being considered uh in, you know, on in the world, um, they were also making massive bets and investments into digital printing. And so they were going from uh black and White printing to color printing, and they were going from analog printing to digital printing and the infrastructure and investment in order to build these places that would sustain their business, which they thought because they had had tons of old school consultants telling them that this is the future, required them somehow from a CapEx and investment perspective to continue down that line. Because you can't just make a billion-dollar bet on a digital printing center. And then six months later, or a year and a half later, or two years later, when you understand that, oh, look at that, a third of our uh users are flocking to this new thing called uh the internet. We better just turn off the printers. You you can't. The banks will foreclose and you'll be out of business. So I think it's two things at the same time short-sightedness from a strategic perspective. I think that definitely plays a role. Um, but capital investment that was preventative. And so the rise of startups, the rise of fast-moving businesses in New York, California, here in Europe, in Asia, um, they took advantage of that because the investments that they had, um, the requirement, they didn't have that baggage. And baggage can really weight you down um in terms of the speed at which you operate if you're not really careful.

Speaker 23:21

Interesting. I I may have uh I may add another point here. I believe as well being more agile in a way that um not going like to uh maybe once like uh in a one billion investment for a new innovation, but like doing some small test to see if there's some good reaction, to see if it's working and so on. I will avoid any making any big mistake or big investment, but testing the water, seeing what is working, you experiment, you continue what's working, you stop, and you do some kind of thing. So having this kind of uh of uh culture of innovation, this agile culture could help a lot of companies try as well and try and experiment and take risk as well.

Speaker 1 23:58

100%. And at the same time, I think that's what digital technology offers in general because it's cost effective. Yeah, um, it costs less to do digital uh uh uh um test cases. Yeah um it costs far less now using uh AI uh to code and build uh new products and test markets, for example. So uh that agility definitely plays a huge role in in innovation, but simultaneously then it requires a mindset that allows it. And in far too many companies, it's the tools might be there, but the people aren't quite ready. And um as an anecdote, you know, Austria is the uh is the average age of Austrians is seven years older than the uh than Americans. We are the as far as I understand, we're the fourth oldest uh country on the planet. Japan is up there as well, but but we're we're amongst the oldest averaged aged on uh on the planet. And so that means that your directors of companies, your board members, your CEOs, they're they're all in compared to the Americans, they're seven years older. And and in today's day and age, you know, it that's a that's a generational shift in terms of mindset.

Speaker 2 25:20

Yeah.

Speaker 1 25:20

Um, and the older you get, uh perhaps the more protective you are of it was better before of or of today. Yeah. I'll I'll I'll take a side note here, just just a little aside. Yeah, yeah. Because it's something I've I've I've it's a thought I've been developing for for a while. I on some level, it's it's too good here, right? We're we're we have uh a huge uh massive quality of life standard. We always rank top one, two, or three on on all the mercer lists, for example. Um uh the air quality is great, the food's really good, it's gotten better over the course of the past 20 years, education's good, healthcare is here, the the the money is old. Um the thinking can be old. There are other factors that that contribute to a uh a conservatism. But generally speaking, when it's good, it's easy to say, why change? And so is it a benefit or a curse that it's so nice here? You know, that that the quality of life is so high. I think on some levels it's awesome. It's why I live here. Um, but uh simultaneously I think that that can also uh hold us back.

Speaker 26:33

That's interesting. No, you're right. I think when it's too good, you say, okay, why change? It's just uh just uh don't touch if it's walking, don't touch anything. Just to go just continue.

Speaker 1 26:42

I spent some time in China um as part of the Berlin School. Okay. Um I was at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, and we did uh certain sessions in in other countries. And when in Beijing, we talked to um uh some local government officials, but also local people in in business there. And what we got was you know, obviously the quality of life there is is challenging in and certain in rural rural areas it it it it's it's more challenging. However, what they see is consistent improvement, right? Things get better, and as things improve, the willingness and the desire to continue to kind of push forward, um, I think that helps with acceleration. And when things are good and and what you want to do is maintain the status quo, then maybe it's a little bit harder.

Speaker 27:31

I see. And you mentioned about uh the mindset sometimes of uh leadership and as well as uh the age of uh some leadership uh in some companies that may slow down on the on innovation and some of the I call it mistake, you call it um uh different approach. Uh, but you think it's with now with the AI uh age, do you think the do you see the same mistake happening again? Or do you think it's uh it's a bit different now?

Speaker 1 27:53

So let me make a quick caveat to before, just so that we're we're pretty clear. I think age is more a mindset than it is a number. Um, as somebody who's aging, I like to at least think that. Um but I think it's it's relatively true. I've met uh I've met 20-year-olds who seem 40, and I've met 60-year-olds who uh seem uh 32 and uh within the last week. Um so uh so yes, it's definitely happening again now. I think it's cyclical. I think this happened with the beginning of the internet. I think it happened again with mobile and social. I definitely see the same thing happening with AI. And the challenge is that the cycles that we're going through are getting faster.

Speaker 3 28:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1 28:38

Right? It took 10 years for the first uh uh the first round of of internet technology to really mature. By the time we had Google and then Amazon and then like kind of the first companies that were kind of uh making headway, uh, it took them a decade. Uh mobile then accelerated that further. It was social uh on top of that. Um and those waves, mobile and social, they were quicker, but it was still, you know, Facebook 2007, it took, it still took uh several years or half a decade or a decade to kind of really break a billion. Look at what's happening today. It's you know, it feels like a decade since we entered what call it the generative era or an AI uh uh uh era that we're that we're experiencing today. But from a consumer and and let's say from a B2C everyday perspective, it's like it started at the end of 2023, maybe kind of came to fruition in beginning of 2024, and that's like two and a half years. Uh so the cyclical nature is true, but the speed at which it's happening is definitely, definitely accelerating.

Speaker 29:45

That's true. And uh, and for the small story, um, we are seeing as well. I'm referring to hotel tech, I'm referring to to tech in uh in hotels, that uh the users which are the most um um using the tech in an hotel, like the chatbot or like uh any kind of uh the the keys or whatever, but like people who are the most uh using the tech in hotels are actually the older generation, right? Because they are, I don't know, they want to be part of it and they are they're like, Yeah, chatbot, I'm going to talk to it, is it's becoming my new best friend, and so on. But the older generation actually the ones which are embracing it more, I feel uh at home.

Speaker 1 30:21

I can say um I think there's some generational differences in terms of you know, it's often said that um um you're gonna be more like your uh grandparents' generation than your parents. It's not that you won't um emulate characteristics of your parents themselves, but generationally they say that there's a little bit of a uh a delay or a generational delay. So maybe that accounts for it to some extent. I know that there is uh a ton of pushback from uh uh Gen Alpha, Gen Z, for example, and although they're using it a ton, and if you ask their teachers, they're using it too much or at least too much for the wrong stuff. But at the same time, the idea of slop and of, you know, every time my kids see um an ad, um, especially, you know, uh a TV ad or anything online where where they're it's obviously been been generated, they hate it. They call it out, they see it immediately, and they're like, I'm completely uninterested. I think it's a process I think that'll get better over time, um, where the differences are going to be not so great. But in the meantime, from a brand and marketing perspective, I think a lot of people are doing themselves a disservice by uh masking um what they think is innovation in a wrapper that is completely identifiable and being shunned by a lot of people.

Speaker 31:48

That's true. Yeah, I agree as well. And when you when you see like uh ads generated with AI, and it's obvious, I find it's actually more negative than positive. Yeah, but that's still like a turning point. Like people need to adapt because some people say, Oh, yeah, I'm using ChatGPT, look at my picture, we don't look like it's AI. Say actually we do. So there's kind of of this learning curve that needs to happen, and that's why this kind of event that you did recently was uh was great, and all this kind of uh of workshop or like podcasts and everything. We talk about AI to educate the market. I believe that will be the next turning point. Yeah, that's a big one, and uh that's that's also a good segue with um with uh Red Bull because Red Bull has been around for for a while. Uh and uh I believe as well we have this kind of um we talk very often about Red Bull about this content machine, uh, but they have been quite uh in the game for for long. So, what do you really believe that um

Red Bull: storytelling over advertising

Speaker 32:39

what did Red Bull understand right? And what did the success of of Red Bull behind this kind of brand marketing? Because at the end, Red Bull it's a lot of brand and marketing. So, what's your point on this?

Speaker 1 32:51

I owe a lot of how I think about content and content marketing to uh Didi Mateschutz. Um he brought me here to Austria. Um, I got to work with him on uh a monthly basis. We would meet and talk about strategy and about where we're taking our our projects and how we think about digital technology, but his insight and his way of thinking, uh the the transformative way that he understood brands as uh content creators, as uh media companies versus advertisers was radical at the time. I mean, I came here in 2002 and um having that time with him and understanding how uh storytelling as opposed to advertising would shape the way brands would communicate over time was for me transformational and is, you know, uh uh quite evident and uh uh obvious when you just look at anything that that that that company does or that it's done over the years. Uh we created events and had sponsored athletes and filmed early stage uh uh uh video uh uh uh vodcasts and vlogs when there was where there was basically no such thing because he understood the value of of storytelling as opposed to um just doing uh uh uh straightforward advertising. The they still have and always have always had the animated uh spots because it has brand character and they're cute and funny, and they add uh a dimension to the brand which is light and playful and so still works, but the vast majority, like everybody knows, of how Red Bull communicates is through what's now known as the Media House, um, which I was lucky enough to be part of in its really early days.

Speaker 34:51

That's interesting because is Red Bull um a beverage company or a media company, or is it a bit of in-between or well uh it's it's obviously both, but I mean it if you look at Brass Facts, they don't make the stuff.

Speaker 1 35:06

You know, they they you know, when uh M Mateschitz uh brought the brand back from Thailand and partnered with uh the the family that was there who owned it, um he also uh partnered with Rauch here in in Austria to produce. I think there's multiple production centers now around the world, but as far as I know, um, and not uh being at the company anymore for the last several years, um, they don't make it. Yeah, you know, what they do make is content, and what they do make is the infrastructure and uh uh enable the teams uh to do that. Yeah, one of the greatest things about being uh at that company at the time, and I think it's still uh true today, is that it was the idea and the concept that really mattered. And if you pitched uh uh Didi or if you pitched Hermateschitz, um uh you'd sit in a room, you'd talk through your idea, and if it resonated from a storytelling perspective and it had a real brand appeal, the money was there because obviously the profits are are are super high. Um and there was also a creative freedom um enabled to the people or allowed with the people who had those ideas to execute their vision and in a way that they thought would be great. The wonderful part about him, which is something I've tried to learn but still struggle with, is that uh he was a relatively quiet guy. You'd sit in a meeting with him for an hour and present or update or show concepts. And he wouldn't say much. You know, he would he would okay an idea, he would maybe pass on another, but what he would say would be this is great. We're gonna write you the check for 250 grand so you can do the event in Switzerland and bring these people together. Make sure you talk to this person, okay, or make sure that this thing is blue. You know, I mean maybe not so specific, but he would have these really fine points because he definitely had a point of view. I mean, it was a brilliantly targeted, uh brand-centric and company uh-centric vibe, but it was enabling of other people, but nonetheless, uh still with a uh a vision within his own head, which we all try to unlock on a regular basis.

Speaker 37:26

Can you walk me through? Have you been part of uh of any room where they had to decide on a on a crazy project? Okay, let's make this guy jump on a on a motorbike in a in a fire ring and so on in the middle of the mountain. So, how does it work? You go in a room, you talk crazy stuff, and then let something happen. Is it like that?

Speaker 1 37:42

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, back back then, I I have I think that they've matured as a company. There are new layers of structure and and and teams, you'd have to speak to the the team in 2026. Um, but in the 2000s, when uh you know kind of early 2000s when I was there, it was very similar to that. Um, I'll give you an uh an example. Nicholas Hale Woods is now the CEO and the guy who runs the Freeride World Tour, one of the greatest ski uh uh off-piste ski events and series on the planet. Back then, he ran um the Verbier Extreme, which was a big mountain competition held at the Bec des Rose, where I got to meet uh uh you know uh Xavier Delarue and a whole bunch of other crazy, crazy people who taught me to ski off-piste. But the idea of that uh event and how it uh translated then into other uh activities for Red Bull were pitched by him in a room where he said, What happens when we bring together uh two uh uh teammates and we pair them with a filmer, and we get five of those teams, and we throw them up into a mountain for 48 hours, they come back fueled by Red Bull, they cut and edit a film for 12 hours, and then they drive from the mountains back to Zurich to the Edefaul, um, the old uh electricity center, and we throw a massive premiere party where we invite everybody to watch the films. What do you think? And you know, pitched with obvious resources needed and the rest, and you'd get an approval. Um, and obviously there's trust that builds up over time because Nicholas had been working with him on other stuff, but it wasn't as uh, you know, like that was the business case. And that did get the approval because it told the stories that the brand wanted to tell. And uh the respect level that I got from being part of that and and experiencing that was as going back to the beginning of our conversation, felt a bit American because it was done really quick. Okay. Um, it was done with uh passion and with uh an emotional quality to it to understand what the impact would be. And as long as it stayed within the guidelines that were then agreed, people just uh uh supported it and let it happen.

Speaker 40:05

Was it anything that you learned during your time at Red Bull that is useful today with your clients? What did you learn with Red Bull that you still use today with your clients?

Speaker 1 40:15

Well, I I mean the overarching uh thing, which I also have uh uh my time and uh on the stage with with TEDx here in Vienna that I did back in 2015, is that storytelling replaces everything, that there is no room for banal uh classic advertisements. Um we are in a generation where we all have ad blockers in our head. Um, I think we're going to have AI ad blockers in our head, as evidenced by being able to at least still recognize slop from uh authenticity. And that idea of authentic storytelling using people um who are really talented, who have domain expertise, who bring all of that together and mixing those people. So really talented filmers with really talented athletes, with a great uh infrastructure from a company, for example, combining to create something unique, that is something you can translate into any company, because then you find where is the genius inside of the company? What resources and people and teams do you need, perhaps externally or at least identified internally, to do that? Mix that up into something awesome and let something develop and let something get created as a result. And Red Bull was great at that, still is great at that, and that's definitely something I've I've I've brought through since then.

Speaker 41:39

So try to find ways to be unique, to be authentic, and uh to differentiate yourself from the noise that you have out there.

Speaker 1 41:45

Yes, and identify the people who are part of your teams who can do that or who are because I mean there's some people in companies who do great jobs, um, they come to work, they execute, they deliver, they deliver value, but they're maybe not the most uh forward-looking or creative or uh I don't know. Um maybe they're they're not the the exact right person for something like that. Maybe that they're good for a supporting or structural role, it's great. But identifying those leaders uh or those people in the company who do have that thought process and enabling them, giving them the opportunity to think differently, to bring new ideas to the table, as opposed to saying, no, we've got our pathway, everything is the way we want it. Um give the opportunity to those voices to be heard and to be heard more often, even if it's not stuff you're gonna be doing every day. Um uh you know, at least uh allow those uh ideas to surface.

Speaker 42:42

That's interesting. And uh the same, like um today we talk about noise. There's a lot of uh a lot of companies are publishing more than ever, like they publish every day, sometimes too much.

Speaker 3 42:52

Yes.

Speaker 42:52

Um but sometimes the message is not very uh clear. Like we don't know exactly what they are trying to do.

Strategy vs. content calendar - what's the difference?

Speaker 42:58

Um so what's the difference between a company with a strategy and a company with just a content calendar, in your opinion?

Speaker 1 43:04

Yeah, I mean I think AI, for example, is definitely increasing the volume. Um, it's certainly not increasing the value. Um, I think AI exposes um mediocre strategy. Yeah, I think it exposes mediocrity in general, because if you're relying on um average case studies and average thinking and um uh old school ways of working, and that your prompting or your processes or your workflows are vague, and then you have some expectation that this tool, which most of the time reverts back to average and to mean that you're expecting something new or interesting, what you get is slop, uh, what you get is uh mediocre, and what you get is average. And for those of us, uh I try to count myself amongst that group who bring Experience authenticity and uh strategic thinking to the table, we leverage that as a way of differentiation, as a way of of finding uh polish potentially in how we're thinking, rather than it doing our thinking for us. And so while lots of people are out there thinking I can be a, you know, it's uh what do they call it? It's a Dunning-Kruger effect, right? And that's you know, pervasive, where everybody thinks that they're gonna be an expert at everything. And I think that the good part about uh artificial intelligence is that it exposes the genius, but it also exposes the fakes.

Speaker 44:42

So we we started this episode with um

"AI won't replace strategy, it will expose weak thinkers"

Speaker 44:45

the saying like AI won't replay strategy, it will expose weak thinkers. Yeah. Do you agree with this?

Speaker 1 44:50

I totally agree with it. I think that it's it's you you just have to scratch the surface. Um, and I don't mean using easy tools to understand whether something's been written with AI, because that's pretty simple, right? We've seen enough M-dashes and we know enough that the uh it's not about this, it's about that, right? I think those are the things that are really easy to identify. But um I think that there are large-scale businesses making huge decisions based on incredibly mediocre outputs from a lot of models or teams or even consultancies that are pitching them on stuff that they are using these tools to create. And in the short term, that might seem very effective and interesting, yeah, but in the mid to long term, it's an exposure to risk which is at least from for people who are are close enough to this, is readily identifiable and incredibly obvious.

Speaker 45:52

Yeah, and let's make it a bit more practical as well. If if there's any CEO or any founder or anyone listening uh on on this one, and they realize that the company uh has a lot of content, like maybe a bit too much content, uh, but not much strategy, uh what do you recommend they do first?

Speaker 1 46:10

So I think the first thing that leaders, leadership teams uh need to do is before they turn the key on technology, is to really understand the people that they're working with. Um it's about enabling those teams, it's about making sure that the human factor is really uh prepared, um, that they're not just gonna prompt some engine to give them some output and generate pictures or text or email or presentations or workflows or all the things that we can do from both generative to deep tech to multi-agentic, you know, all these things that are now at our fingertips. If the people that are doing this aren't prepared, there's there's very little chance that the output is going to be meaningful in the long term. So I think that's their first step is to say, are they familiar with it enough? Do they have a fundamental understanding? Have they spent enough time either speaking to people, you know, kind of uh watching your podcast or learning from their peers? And then how are they enabling their teams to do that as well? There's a lot of people here hiring AI uh specific people. I'm not really sure. Maybe for some companies that makes sense. I think in general, kind of like digital 20 years ago, this is just something that's going to become embedded in in what we do and how we think prompt engineers? Yeah, prompt engineering, perfect example. It's like one of the one of the great overhyped things. Like my best prompt engineer is Claude. You know, it's like, you know, so when I I I reverse engineer prompts based on my thinking, and and you know, I think Sam Altman also kind of made that point uh about 18 months ago, saying it's just these these things are fads, you know, and they're just gonna go away. Yeah, and and in the end of the day, much like in your business in hospitality, it's human-centric. It is it's about the human experience. And so whether that's on a product level or on an experience level inside a hotel, or if it's about a team set up inside of a company, I think ignoring that um throughout is uh catastrophic. And not taking that into account right from the beginning is incredibly dangerous.

Speaker 48:25

And as well, I will add a small point making sure everything that you post or you do on marketing and all your commercial activities, you still keep the client in mind, the customer in mind, your ICP in mind, because sometimes you just create just for the sake of creating and you forget about why you're doing it or for who you're doing it, and you just go crazy, and then you're like, okay, why did I do this at the end? You see what I mean? Uh like we have some examples in uh in hotels where I know some very smart uh uh board and uh and and and hotels leadership. When they do their meetings, they keep an empty space on uh at the meeting and they say, Okay, good idea. But what do you think uh um uh Alan for ICP number one is thinking about this idea? Oh, yeah, maybe not Alan, but what about Sarah? You see what I mean? So they all discuss and they keep the ICP in mind for everything they do, and I think that's key.

Speaker 1 49:16

I really like that. And uh I was speaking to somebody yesterday about um a product that she's developing, a service, and uh we were discussing how hotels on a luxury level um could be interesting, uh, could be interested by this. Um and my advice when we were speaking through business cases and uh um a kind of uh lead generation and and how to grow the business, one of the things that I kept coming back to with her was where's the human touch in this experience? You know, she has a business that actually uh has a product that people are going to touch and use. And and my uh feedback to her was, you know, when discussing this with uh four or five-star hotels, for example, they thrive on the experience, the human experience that they give their guests. And bringing that touch into uh her plan um uh from both a product but also um a sales and marketing perspective, I thought was really interesting, to the point that I told her to write letters, you know, to send post, which seems crazy from a guy who's been in digital for you know 25, 30 years. But at some point I thought, you know, if you're trying to reach a hotel director or a concierge at one of these places, maybe the first step isn't digital. You know, they're creating these authentic experiences. Maybe they'd open a letter from you and say, hey, I'm Sarah. I'd really like to get in touch. And here's something that's authentic and tactile that that that kind of emulates a human experience or at least kind of represents a human experience to the point where that that person might understand, okay, this person kind of gets who we need to be.

Speaker 51:00

I I don't know about the B2B, and that's a good exam a good thing that we can try, but I know about the B2C because I recommend some of my hotels to uh send letters, yeah, like handwritten letters to the top customer to thank them about the season and so on. Yes, and you will be surprised by the engagement on those letters, like hand it and like post uh like we send the letters to to the to the address and everything. Engagement is amazing uh because that's different. Yes, like it's not the noise or newsletter and so on, and it's amazing.

Speaker 1 51:28

Yeah, I think if you look at um one of the impacts of digital transformation in um a lot of different marketing, but also in publishing, I think what we're gonna see it well, I think what we do see is an incredible reduction in the amount of printed materials, but I think the value of uh uh of them uh could increase over time. In other words, I subscribe to the Sunday paper, not the seven-day paper, or I subscribe to one magazine and not um 20. Yeah. Like I still get uh The New Yorker physically delivered to me here in Vienna because I like reading it. I get one uh a Christmas letter from a hotel that that I love called Desurzerhof, which I was lucky enough to kind of uh get to know through some events that I did there. I get their Christmas card every year, I get a greeting from the family Scargassi, and it's always really nice to get. I get one publication from the T-Roll uh Tourism Bureau, which is a really nicely created, which must be ridiculously expensive uh uh to create publication, but I tend to read that as well. The rest of the stuff goes in the garbage or I unsubscribe. So it's far, far less, but I ascribe more meaning to the stuff that I actually hold in the hand.

Speaker 52:44

That's true. So to differentiate yourself, you can go back to the so I I don't think to the future. It's not necessarily like old marketing or new marketing, it's more about making sure you use everything that you have in your toolbox for the right market, for the right opportunity. Yeah, and uh sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but keep trying.

Speaker 1 53:02

And you have yeah. So in the one thing that I don't see, at least here, which I know is happening in other places, is that I do believe that, for example, you could tailor those things to people. Yeah, so I'm getting the same copy. The the the the Christmas card I get from the family is always to me. And I think it's really, really nice. And uh when when I when I see them when I'm there, it's always a familiar feeling. The the magazine, uh the tourism magazine, for example, I know that that's the same thing that everybody gets. And given today's technology and now with the addition of AI data and the rest, I don't think it would be terribly hard to find one section or one piece of this puzzle, um, one chapter of a magazine that would be a little bit more tailored to me, for example. Um, and with digital printing, probably not that hard to do. So, yes, it's same as it ever was, but probably with a twist that would make it even more valuable in the future.

Speaker 53:59

I'm I'm going to disappoint you maybe. Is uh is the letter that you're receiving from the family handwritten? Uh it's hand signed. So, wait. Have you heard about the the post uh robopen?

Speaker 2 54:10

Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course.

Speaker 54:12

So yeah. Robopen is uh it's a it's uh it's a technique by the post or any services which uh handwritten handwritten handwrites uh the letters. Yes, and it's actually very clean. You don't realize it's not uh donor. So I I don't doubt that.

Speaker 1 54:27

I will I I will admit to not knowing, and if it is, uh Johannes, uh I'm looking at you, then I'll ask you the next time we meet. Uh um, but yes, it's possible. Is it possible? Yeah, sure. Um uh and there's even political autopen stories going on in the United States politics, which I'm definitely not getting into today. No, so um, is it possible? Yes. Uh is it uh does that cross the line for me?

Speaker 54:54

Uh not not too much. Okay. So yeah, like robotic it's uh it's also a big innovation. Uh but as well as um so going going back to to AI,

Where AI is actually useful in marketing today

Speaker 55:04

where do you believe um AI is genuinely useful in marketing and in strategy today?

Speaker 1 55:11

One thing that AI is great at is helping structure um great thinking.

Speaker 2 55:18

Yeah.

Speaker 1 55:19

Um and so one thing that I find very useful for me is helping teams and myself take um lots of thoughts that I've had, um uh ideas that I'm creating, or work that I'm doing with clients to create struck more structured approach. Yeah, right. I'm a relatively creative individual, although strategy is my kind of uh uh business card. Yeah um and uh I've found that to be highly advantageous, that if you don't ask it to invent something new, because it can't, right? Um, that it is very, very good at um helping you um understand where your the strongest points of your thinking might be, or at least kind of putting things into shape a a little bit more. I think that's great. Um outputs, I think, are really dependent upon domain expertise and on the input itself. Vague prompt, shitty output, right? It's uh uh uh Andrew Karpathi, uh, somebody who I really respect uh uh several months ago talked about the AI slopocalypse. Slopocalypse. Yeah, it's a great term, it's one of my buzzwords for 2026. And what it's what we're seeing, right? It's this wave of shit. And um, and it like we were saying before, easily identified, and it's because you know, garbage in and garbage out. And unfortunately, the machines that we have to create it are are even greater. Um, on the other side, however, when you combine high levels of domain expertise and really authentic and useful data, you end up creating and have outputs which are phenomenal. And if you want, I can kind of we can go we can go there right. Yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead. So uh last year I had the privilege of getting to know MEAI from Linz. Um, we worked together at the TED AI conference last year. I we I created a panel with them. I used uh several different uh uh custom GPTs, uh Claude Code, and uh a lot of other tools to learn as much as I could uh about um physics AI and what large engineering models are, because I'm not a trained engineer. And so for my own uh kind of uh um um yeah learning and uh process, that was really beneficial to me. But what they do and what is really incredible, and what Johannes and uh Mix and Dennis, the three founders, alongside of Carlotta and the rest of the team have have put together there, is that they have incredibly smart people who are physicists in and and and and and true engineers who understand uh CFD and computational fluid dynamics, you know, like the the real nuts and bolts of physics, right? And they've combined them with people who are uh true talented developers and uh um um uh generative both on a generative side, but also just a plain old, beautiful, uh technically uh advanced uh AI-enabled developers. They've combined that with data sets that they gather from clients and from their research. And what they can do is model the real world in seconds for things like aerodynamics or for injection molding or for thermodynamics inside of energy uh power plants. Um, and they they do that because the data is is trusted and own sourced, the models that they're creating are unique, and they have the domain expertise to uh in in you know as as a company to to to create output, because we were talking about output that is completely that is that is that is valid and unique and authentic. And I think that's one of the reasons why Mistral bought them. Yeah, I mean the proof is in the pudding, right? A year a year after raising a 15 million uh uh seed round, they got purchased. Rumor is you know, over three uh 350 million or something like that, you know, good for them. Whatever the number is, it's a well-deserved exit, uh, uh, a brilliant company. But because they recognize that the output is dependent upon the quality of the inputs. And they're even though they're in physics and in engineering AI, I think translating that into the way marketers and businesses think uh is would really help. Because the the more they're relying on bad prompting, bad data, average strategy or no strategy, just kind of like make me a picture for this campaign, right? What do you expect other than uh low-level output? And and when you increase that level, um, when you uh have uh really high quality data, um, these tools are really great at doing that, at creating outputs that are that are uh that have high value.

Speaker 1:00:34

Similar to the MEAI, is there any companies right now which are capturing your attention right now?

Speaker 1 1:00:42

Yeah, all of them. Um I'm lucky enough to be uh working at the AI factory now over in St. Marx. And so I'm meeting uh new people every day uh on a on a on a very uh young level. It really helps me kind of keep my ear on the ground uh in terms of how people are thinking. I am ridiculously impressed by how um people who were, you know, when I I I think to back I think back to what I was like in my 20s and meet 20 and 30 year olds, for example, who and what they're capable of doing today and when they invest their time with the tools that they have at their disposal, what they're able to do. And so uh it's it's incredible. Um, so I don't know who's really impressing me. I've seen like a f Funio, Fonio AI. Funio is really good. Yeah, I'm I I I'm not super close to them, but I I I'm I'm aware of uh uh of what it is they're up to. Um I what I think is really interesting these days is is maybe it's because of my uh time with Emmy, but I'm I'm really fascinated in understanding what happens when this technology uh really understands the fundamental laws of of nature, of of of how it's going to impact our physical world, yeah. Of how you know when digital first started, uh, you know, when we were finally when the the the the internet was growing in the 90s, it was it was this kind of nebulous thing that existed in the ether, that was, you know, kind of confined to a browser. Um, but then we started having experiences where, oh, that would lead to something that would be shipped to my house, or oh, that's something that helps me drive my car. Um, or oh, that's something that helps me cook, you know. And today, from the banal to the uh to the extreme, I think what we're seeing is a shift from purely digital output from these tools to what happens when deep tech really understands more about us as humans. And I think that that's where medical innovation comes from. I think that's where tech, you know, uh engineering and physics uh innovation comes from. Um, and then on the, like I said, on the banal side, um to take a really personal example, um, one of the things that I created was a sous-chef. You know, uh I took all of my favorite recipes, I took all of the profiles of the favorite chefs that I have, I combined them into a character that I modeled after the television series, The Bear. So it'd be like, yes, chef. And when I cook, because I like to cook as a hobby, that's kind of my partner in the kitchen. And so it's it's it and and it's a real physical thing, right? I'm I'm the one that's uh uh chopping the celery and and uh pressing the garlic. But but I have a sous-chef with me who is trained on all the things that I love and is impacting the real world. And so from uh combustion uh uh uh energy drives and uh improving solar to maybe understanding how we have less summers in Austria that are over 40 degrees over time, maybe you know, or or from a healthcare perspective, I think there's definitely innovation happening there. Um, but then meanwhile, in the kitchen, it's it's definitely doing its thing. It's uh it's impacting my real world on uh, you know, kind of as they would say in German, uh von bis.

Speaker 1:04:33

No, but it's interesting because um I I see AI myself more as a Jarvis, you know, like in uh Iron Man as an assistant, yes, rather than a replacement yet. And I think that's what people are confused because they try to outsource everything to the thinking, even to the AI, why you should only be an an assistant. You see what I mean?

Speaker 1 1:04:52

Yeah, I think that's true. I think that there is, you know, there are roles for this to play. Um, if you had asked me a few years ago, I think the best case that I could come up with was that the tools that I were using, um, regardless if it was some kind of generative technology or semantic logic or whatever, I could kind of it was the equivalent of an intern.

Speaker 2 1:05:11

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:05:12

Um, it then evolved into what I kind of considered to be the best junior level uh that I had ever hired, uh, or amongst the best junior levels that I had ever hired. And now inside the team, I think it ranges. If you give very specific tasks on very specific sets of data with very specific desired outcomes, I think they perform. And I think, you know, in in in in in what we were talking about just before in terms of physics modeling, for example, I think that's very, very evident.

Speaker 3 1:05:42

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:05:43

Um, in other cases, um uh it's not um because as we've said, uh as I was trying to say before, I I have seen very little invention. It's great at interpretation, it's really great at output, but but we're still not inventing to. Much we we solved some new math problems, which are great, but those are problems that existed, hasn't found a new math problem to solve, as far as I know. If if you know of one, then let me know because I'd really love to know. Um, but at that intern and junior employee stage, the the way that I've always described it is that it's highly motivated, available 24-7, um, great education, makes tons of mistakes, takes on tons of responsibility, and thinks that it knows all the outputs, but when you get back the output, you look at it and go, yeah, but um, but that's okay. That's then hand holding and training, that's correction and improvement. And somehow the I I certainly don't treat my um uh artificial intelligence the same way that I treat the team or the or the people that I work with, but there are similarities in terms of you know, kind of uh when you've worked as long as I have and built uh teams and hired people as much, you do kind of make some similarities and go, oh yeah, oh, it's you again. That's a great deck, or that's a really great uh uh structure or a plan or whatever. But let's consider this, let's rewrite that, let me do this piece here, and I'm gonna give it back to you, and then we're gonna use that as something that we're gonna just keep. Yeah, um, but then let's work on this together. Oh, great, that's fine. You know, let's let's do that. And somehow that interaction uh in some cases is relatively similar to other times in my professional career.

George's daily AI workflow & tools (n8n, Codex, Cursor)

Speaker 1:07:33

Can you as well um uh quickly walk me through your your your day-by-day in terms of uh or you use the AI tools in your in your setup? Um you talk about the chef, which is very uh important.

Speaker 1 1:07:44

Yeah, I mean, I I like most things, it I'm a relatively obsessive person. Okay. Um, I tend to latch on to things I love and give them tons of my attention and um have uh kind of dedicated uh resources, time, and energy into the things that I love. And that applies both to people as it does to work life. It's that's just me. And so I think having been through a lot of these cycles in digital technology, that this thing is for real, that it is going to be increasingly important and play a bigger role in our lives as time goes on. Um, and so my passion for it and the time that I spend with it and the things that I do, uh, when you ask me what my day is like, it's it's I don't want to say it's constant, but it's relatively constant. Okay. For example, I I still love listening to podcasts and I do, and I have a handful that I subscribe to, and I make the time to do that, and I still read and and do all of this. But my road trips, for example, when I have four or five hours to drive someplace, or if I'm on a train, where it used to be um uh one-directional, you know, kind of listening to something or reading a book or writing or thinking about something, I now find myself having conversations about things that I've written or documents that I'm generating, or on my way here, uh, I did have a question or two about your podcast. There you go. And and was saying, you know, look at the last couple of episodes. What's he likely to ask? You know, because you know, you said this would be unscripted and it is, and I really love that. But I couldn't help but cheat just a little bit, right? Because you know, it was a 25-minute drive, and I was like, let's let's have a chat. Yeah, so how my my workflow is, it's um it ranges. There are a few things that I've established with bots that do things automatically, like I have some scanners on uh um on on things that I like to look for and read that are out in the news that used to take me a lot of time to do myself, which is now done automatically. So I get my own very, very custom feed every morning. I don't have to do expenses anymore because that's just taken care of. Anything that comes into my my mailbox is automatically just kind of taken care of. And that's a workflow that I check. Which tool? Which tool is it? I coded it. I I did it in codecs. I I I'll give a uh a tip. There are tons of off-the-tool shelf uh I'll get I'll give a tip. There are a lot of tools that you can get off the shelf. You can buy apps, there's tons of people making them, but uh one of the things that you can do is learn by doing. Yeah, and so uh I built my expense tracker. Um I I I used codecs, I used a little bit of N8N in the background for a workflow, and I discovered how these things work by guiding myself through a process to build it. I'm taking a road trip with a friend of mine to uh uh to Italy uh next week, uh, thank God. And um uh I built last night a really stupidly simple uh Google form connected with a sheet in the background that lets us enter our expenses and then it splits it all in the background and a sheet and um divides the costs. Now, could I find that off the shelf? Of course. Are there tons of templates to download? Absolutely. Was it really fun to work this time with Codex and not Claude and a little bit of Gemini because Gemini is really good at the forms, for example. So I was kind of using both of those tools. I spent an hour and a half doing it, and then I designed a nice little header image to go alongside of it for our little trip. And that hour and a half of time invested made me better at what it is that I do. And so I combined my passion for uh AI and tech with an occasion where I'm hoping to get away from it all, actually, um, uh to learn something new. And I think that when you find yourselves in a situation where you can do that, where instead of just downloading that that thing or using that sheet, just try it. You know, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And you can probably debug it with one of the other tools anyway, but it's gonna get you one step closer to understanding how it all works. And if you're at that CEO level or a director level and you're trying to improve yourself so that you can then identify how your team works and move forward, those are really stupidly simple opportunities to learn how this stuff all works.

Speaker 1:12:27

I I give you an example because after the the workshop, uh, was it yesterday, the day before?

Speaker 1 1:12:32

Yeah, it was the day before.

Speaker 1:12:34

Uh so I've learned about uh a bit more practical with NA8 and uh and Cursor. Yes. And uh and I went back and I've I've I've built my own uh automation with NA8 to to make some triage on my mailbox and to to craft our already the draft before I even look into the emails, so huge amount of time gained on this one. However, I've also learned the hard way and it deleted all my mailbox in a second. So again, I'm I'm okay. I'm like okay, that's uh that's painful. I'm going to find all those emails, not a problem. But I'm I'm learning, yeah, and I think that's how you do. You you see a YouTube video about this kind of uh new skills and so on, a LinkedIn post or Twitter and so on. Just try, just see what if you can replicate it, if you can do this, and that's how everyone's learning it today. And I think like everyone is trying to figure out on the AI. No one has figured it out completely yet, I believe, on AI. And that's the beauty of it. I see it as a big opportunity for everyone.

Speaker 1 1:13:24

I agree. Um, and when you have those questions about something you've seen on Twitter or a YouTube uh video where somebody describes something, the other great thing you can do is then you just pick the link out or take the transcript and shove it into your favorite tool and say, I'm interested in doing this, and and can you do it? Um and because of the state of the you know, kind of state-of-the-art technology in 2026, which is I would almost argue a quantum bleep from even just two two, three years ago, and God knows what it's gonna look like in another 24 months, um, it definitely gives you the opportunity to do that. Yeah, the similarities, though, while I love N8N, and I'm really thankful to Christian uh Lividaro for hosting one of the sessions uh uh at the Build and Barbecue a couple days ago, um it reminds me of um a platform in the 2000s called If This Then That. Yes. Right? It's the same, except that back then it was a single, a single workflow that says, if I add a track to my Spotify, um tweet it. Right? Um and so with these kind of really simple XML or RSS-based uh uh actions that it can take, adding an agentic layer to that that's based then on uh um that has LLMs to to fuel it creates two things, right? What you've experienced. One is real interesting efficiency, and the other is the danger that it deletes everything that you've pictured. So uh my other tiny advice, which we were talking about before this, is that you know, I sandbox everything, I still haven't given full control over.

Speaker 3 1:14:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:14:59

Um my developer friends, um uh those who are really kind of deep inside the tech, I think most of them have their own boxes, or they're the Peter Steinberger version of OpenClaw where they have a Mac mini and a and an environment that's that's relatively safe. I still think we're there. And if it's you know kind of sensitive data, I really I I I know that it takes a little bit longer when I'm working on things, but I still press the approve button a lot in terms of saying, Do you really want me to do this? I'm like, Yeah, you can do that. Okay, but but no, you you can't go delete my inbox. You know, it's good just and and most of the time it's a lot of the time it's our fault, right? We've we've created the workflow, we gave it the permission.

Speaker 1:15:41

I've I found this amazing to be living in this kind of area, and I believe it's an opportunity for pretty much everyone, this AI thing. Uh, look at what we have done with the cursor. The the guy in the room that created uh uh a duplicate of uh X uh Twitter uh in a matter of a few minutes.

Speaker 1 1:15:57

Five minutes, we had a a working version with a small backend that looked and felt just like X. I wasn't mind-blown. No, I've been on, I think I joined Twitter in 2007, somewhere around there. I didn't tweet very often, but I was still on it back then. And um, when you think about what the level of effort, even just five years ago, if someone came to you five years ago and said, Hey, I'd like to clone a social network, we take some months, it would take uh or it would take at least, you know, five people over you know, a front-end designer and uh and and and the time and the effort to kind of get through the process, put together the requirements, have a team that's that's agile, like you were saying before, that can actually kind of create something, right? And this guy who barely had touched this tool in the past, um hijacked um uh Abdul's prompt because he was using uh uh voice to text, right, from his own laptop, uh brought the prompt into his own cursor, and in five minutes had a working version up and running. Now, is that is it uh um uh is it ready for prime time? Like, could you just launch that onto the internet? Probably not. Is it good enough that if you want to take a prototype of something like that to someone and say, hey, we could do something like this? Absolutely. Have I spent weeks in the past developing uh uh uh HTML5 wrapper apps, for example, as proof of concept to take to either my team or a client or a partner to say, hey, look, here's a quick demo of what we could actually do. I remember paying 20, 30, 50 grand, depending on size and scope, for stuff that you can just do in an afternoon. Which that's I believe is the biggest opportunity to do that. It's amazing. Yes, amazing. Now, the the the there's good and bad, right? Because again, volume does not um uh equate to value. Right. And so what we have is um I think we are overhyped on the volume because we're creating so much of the stuff, and the hype is there to generate every picture and every email and every text and every outbound and every you know, front end, all the stuff, all the purple websites, all the you know, everything that's out there, right? And that part is massively overhyped, but the quiet part and the the value and what's underhyped is what happens when you take real data with a real workflow with really talented people and jam that together, and then what comes out of it. And then you can create the the the Twitter killer because I don't think, for example, the irony that that the Musk bought cursor, right? And that we're and that we were coding on Twitter killer in the session was not lost on me. But you're not gonna be able to no one's I I don't believe that anybody is gonna kill Twitter by recreating Twitter. And at the moment, that's what you can do with a lot of these tools. You can replicate, you can regenerate, you can imitate. But when you want to create the next social network or the next version of what a social network might even be, when you want to imagine what comes after TikTok, or what imagine what comes after X or any of these places, it at least as far as I know today, it's not the LLM that's gonna say, here are five great ideas for how to create the next thing.

Speaker 3 1:19:29

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:19:29

That's that's still us. That level of taste, that level of quality and thinking, that level of strategy and insight and experience, I think that's still a very human domain. I'm very thankful for that. I think that that's a a blessing for all of us to wrap ourselves around that and really understand where we interface with it. Um, because otherwise, what you do get are really great clones. And clones aren't gonna advance us. They're they're not the things I think they're gonna lead us to the future. Yeah. Um, but they but they're very helpful on occasion, right? For proof of concept and for kind of rapid prototyping and stuff like that.

Speaker 1:20:08

I see we can't talk, we we could talk about this topic for for hours, but we're going to wrap it up. Before we wrap it up,

Lightning round: Apple, Jaguar, TikTok & bravery

Speaker 1:20:15

uh let's do like a lighting round. I give you like some uh some prompts and you give me like the first thing that comes to mind. Okay, I'm getting some water to do this. That's very good. You don't need to explain as well the the answer, just the first thing that comes to your mind. Um best brand in the world today.

Speaker 1 1:20:31

I still think it's Apple. Uh I still think that they have a luxury approach to a commodity product and a margin that's more luxury than than it is uh uh hardware. And so I still think that despite the challenges they're facing, they're they're still top of mind for me.

Speaker 1:20:48

Okay. And what is the most overrated brand today? Overhyped politicians. A good one. I'm not going to comment. The most underrated marketing channel today.

Speaker 1 1:21:05

As a marketing channel? Yeah. I'd say I still think TikTok is relatively underrated. I think people are taking advantage of it. I think in Europe it's still undervalued, and I still I still think there's a lot there.

Speaker 1:21:18

A book every strategy is actually read. Isaac Asimov's trilogy. A company that you would love to think about today. VW A brand that you think today is struggling with AI. Oh man, that that listen is long.

Speaker 1 1:21:47

Um struggling with AI is what you're saying. Uh Jaguar. Okay. Very good. And if you look at their marketing and some of the uh they change on the on the Google and everything as well.

Speaker 1:21:57

Yeah, good one. And uh one question more CEOs should ask their marketing team.

Speaker 1 1:22:06

Who has brilliant ideas that we haven't talked about yet?

Speaker 1:22:11

And uh my final question if you had this one giant billboard in the middle of you know, anywhere in the world that you could write anything on it, what will you write on it? Bravery bravery. Moot moot to happen. I think that's uh that's a mindset thing that needs to happen. People need to take more risk, you need to be more courageous.

Speaker 1 1:22:41

Yeah, I would love a big gigantic billboard that just said bravery. Bravery starts here.

Speaker 1:22:46

Love it. But uh

Closing thoughts & where to find George

Speaker 1:22:48

George, thank you so much for for for today. I I I've learned a lot and uh I find it quite exciting. So if if uh the listener wants to find you somewhere, where can they find you?

Speaker 1 1:22:56

Uh just put my name into Google uh or ask your favorite LLM. You'll find me. Uh easiest way uh is probably via LinkedIn these days, but uh just reach out. I'm I'm pretty quick to reply. This has been awesome, and I've really appreciated uh the opportunity to be here with you today.

Speaker 1:23:13

Thank you, George. But today, uh what I'm taking away from this as well, it's um uh the courage as well to take some risk. Um we are also at this kind of turning point for AI, and I believe it's a big opportunity for for everyone. We see as well a bit of of what Red Bull did with uh the emotion, the storytelling, which I find fascinating, and I think that's still doing a good job today. And uh and yeah, how can we um be more risk risk taker and uh and try things with uh with AI with all the new tools that you have out there? But uh I'm very optimistic about this new trend, and I believe we should all learn and embrace these uh new changes. But yeah, George, thank you so much for for joining and for everyone listening. I'll see you next time.