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It’s a double rainbow! Just kidding, but it is a double episode of Earned. In the first half of Ep. 138, Conor sits down with David Jones, founder and CEO of the Brandtech Group, before our Global Head of Strategic Accounts,Chris Curtis, closes out the episode with Heather Kehrberg, Director of Amazon Ads Creative Studios.
To start, David Jones discusses the transformative impact of generative AI on the marketing and advertising industries. From founding the BrandTech Group in 2015 to achieving monumental growth, David shares how strategic investments, including in AI, drove the company's success. We unpack David’s experience pioneering AI chatbots, digital twins, and acquiring generative AI platform Pencil. We then dive into the shift from traditional advertising to AI-driven content creation, offering insights and career advice for aspiring professionals in a rapidly evolving landscape.
We then pivot to our own Chris Curtis’ conversation with Amazon's Heather Kehrberg, which explores the power of creator marketing and brand storytelling. Heather reveals the strategic integration of video content and creator partnerships into Amazon's ad campaigns, and emphasizes the importance of authenticity to drive success. We close the show by unpacking CreatorIQ’s robust relationship with Amazon, and offer a forward-looking perspective on the evolving landscape of advertising and community building.
We’ve included a couple of highlights from the episode below, but be sure to check out the full video above, or tune into the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen!
The following interview has been lightly edited for concision.
“The creator economy, with the power of AI, is going to be off the charts”: Brandtech Founder & CEO David Jones on the AI Creative Revolution
Conor Begley: It seems like you've really leaned into the generative AI side of things, even making it a central part of the branding of the organization. How does this impact the creator and influencer marketing world, which is built around people—not necessarily computer generated images, videos, or content. What's your perspective on that? How do you see it affecting this category?
David Jones: I think it will create the greatest creative revolution in history. If you think about it simplistically, the mobile social era made every single person on the planet a creator. Generative AI makes every single person on the planet an advertising agency. If you think of what the creator economy with the power of AI is going to be, it's just off the charts.
You're one of the pioneers in the creator economy. There's pretty much the same number of people employed in the advertising industry today as there was 10 or 20 years ago. But there’s 60 million people today who make their living in the creator economy, and it's going to be 10X that. If you look at the world simplistically, we had the TV advertising era, which was high quality, but very high cost. We had the mobile social era, which was low quality, low cost. The gen AI era is going to be high quality, low cost. We had the era of corporate-generated content, with all the big media companies. We've then had a 10-15 year run of user-generated content. We’re now going to get into machine-generated content. I don't subscribe to the theory that, ‘Oh my God, there's going to be no jobs for humans anymore.’ I think it’s actually the opposite. If you look at every time there has been amazing technology in the world, you're creating more jobs for humans, not less.
“It goes beyond educating consumers to really being memorable and having that recall for your brand—which I think a good story will capitalize on”: Amazon’s Heather Kehrberg on Creating a Compelling Brand Story
Chris Curtis: What gets you out of bed and keeps you excited? What are things that you believe are really emerging right now? What do you think the future holds from a storytelling perspective across digital platforms?
Heather Kehrberg: I would say, specifically for Amazon, we have such a broad canvas that advertisers and brands get to play with. We recently launched Prime Video ads, which is just another way and another touch point that you get to deliver to your customers. I think what I'm most excited about is continuing to leverage that full canvas across Amazon by really leaning into video. Most consumers prefer to consume video content, so really leaning into a video strategy that does play across the content community as well. And also having more consistency around storytelling so that consumers can connect with it. It goes beyond educating consumers to really being memorable and having that recall for your brand—which I think a good story will capitalize on.
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