Carrie (00:49) 
Oh my gosh, my eight-year-old nephew learned the word "doom scrolling", and he thinks it's the funniest thing. Every time he's on the phone with me now, he's like, what are you doing? Are you doom scrolling? 
 
Pete Bishop (00:53) 
Hahaha. 
 
Nice. 
 
Carrie (01:01) 
The Gen Alphas. 
 
Pete Bishop (01:03) 
So considering this may be our first episode and we could pretend like we haven't already recorded a whole bunch of times trying to get everything organized, maybe it makes sense to introduce ourselves. So I thought maybe we'll start with you. 
 
Carrie (01:19) 
Sure, I just want to read what I wrote about myself. Yeah, my name's Carrie. I live in Calgary. I'm a copywriter for an advertising and marketing agency, ZGM, Modern Marketing Partners, where I work with Pete, which is how we know each other. 
 
Pete Bishop (01:24) 
Ha 
 
Carrie (01:45) 
I like camping, obviously. I'm a musician. I'm a pretty curious person. And so my job title is actually Copywriter and AI Specialist, which is how we kind of got here, sort of, kind of, which is what we're also going to talk about today. 
 
Pete Bishop (02:02) 
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I, yeah, we worked together, so no big surprise there, at a marketing firm. My background is probably more on the illustration and design side, which is how I got into this about a million years ago and got more into digital marketing over the last little while. So I think that we got a nice little mix here or a couple of different perspectives, which is kind of cool. And AI in like every good marketing firm is something that we all can't ignore right now. 
 
I think the question on everyone's lips is how do we get involved? And you did. This is kind of the impetus for all of this is you saw what was happening and you decided, okay, I'm gonna grab this and get started. And at the time you're a copywriter, now you're our AI specialist. did you see out there that made you want to take this on? 
 
Carrie (02:54) 
Good question. There were a lot of things happening all at once in my life, I think for this to have happened. But it's funny, I actually had the idea for this during the bike trip last year. So we do a nice little Grand Fondo bike trip at work. And I had actually been on stress leave during that time and came on the bike trip. And I was I remember sitting in the hot tub at the time. 
 
During that, was like, something just clicked, because I had been kind of stressed out about AI and worried about it and didn't know what it meant for my job, but I was really interested in it. And I was like, well, can I be interested in something that might be taking my job? That doesn't seem right. And then all of sudden, something just clicked in my head of like, well, you should be the one figuring out what it actually means. 
 
Pete Bishop (03:49) 
Yeah, I think, well, A, all the best ideas happen in hot tub. B, I think for every business, there's this thing around, okay, well, yeah, if we get into this, how do we make a business around this? How do we monetize this? Is this an opportunity for us, or is this just like converting someone from a paid salary to an unpaid salary because now they're non-billable, right? 
 
There's this investment, I think, from the business side, as to, do you invest the time and energy that it requires to figure this stuff out, which we're going to probably say it's the smart thing to do. Or do you wait until everyone else figures this out and then you kind of latch onto it once it all makes sense. And there's just two ways to look at it. 
 
Carrie (04:41) 
Yeah, I just didn't want to be left behind. I didn't want to be the person who didn't know the answer to any of the questions. So, I started learning the answers and then you come to realize that's really all that takes. That's the only difference between being a specialist in something and not. 
 
Pete Bishop (04:57) 
Yeah, there's something I think freeing when everyone's trying to figure it out at the same time. There's this kind of wild west moment where there are no real experts. There's a lot of people professing to be, but there's a lot of people who are just posing. there's this freedom of just being able to make as many mistakes as you can in the interests of trying to figure this out.  

And I don't think businesses have the luxury of time like they did in the past with big inventions, you know, computers came out before my time in the industry, which I'm happy to say, computers came out into marketing. Funny enough, one of our founders here, he worked at a company called Strokes Design in Calgary. They were one of the first agencies in Canada to bring in computers, which is crazy. Apple came in to do a photo shoot because they were so excited to see like a real-life marketing agency using Apple products. They were going to do this big spread. 
 
Carrie (05:43) 
Whoa. 
 
Pete Bishop (05:55) 
And they came in with all their photographers and quickly found out that Rich had actually used PCs because they're cheaper and just use Mac monitors. So they all left in a hurry. But it took a long time for other agencies to adopt computers and get going. And everyone was trying to figure it out, but there was no real consequence to being late because everyone had their own way of doing things. It took a while for everything to kind of take over. 
 
You know, since then internet, same thing when I was around when the internet came into marketing and it took a long time for people to really understand the business model and how to actually monetize and how to kind of shed some of the old practices and get into it. I don't think we have the same luxury here because I think that we're adopting, adapting so much faster to technology. 
 
Carrie (06:41) 
I think that's what was happening is people were sending me a lot of different articles and a lot of different information about AI and I was kind of learning things and all of a sudden a week or two later you're getting all these completely different things and everything's changed and now there's a new model of this, this and this and it was that feeling of being left behind that I was like I don't like that.  

But it is all happening so fast and you kind of slowly realize, like, you're never gonna be completely on top of everything with something of this magnitude that's rolling out, but at least you can try to be in it and be a part of the conversation and, you know, feel like you have a little bit—I don't want to use the term control. It's hard to be like, yeah, I just wanted to feel some control in this situation. It's like I have zero control in this situation.  

But I do have control over what I do and what my decisions are and how I face it. I just, I was like, I just need to align these with my regular values, which is like to be curious and to be interested and to not say no to something right away. As I think what happened with a lot of writers is like, it was this fear, was this, my God, I don't think we should do anything with this. Like it's going to ruin the craft. It's going to ruin things, which it absolutely can in certain areas. But I figured I may as well jump on this train, see where it goes. And if it crashes and burns, then I'll still be a copywriter. 
 
Pete Bishop (08:06) 
Yeah, you mentioned a good point a while ago to around, there is this general anxiety around everyone moving ahead, except for you, or all these things that are coming up that are, that you just don't understand and you get, there's an anxiety because you feel like you're being left behind or you're just not learning fast enough, or you're just being overwhelmed by all these people who sound so smart and confident on, especially social. But the notion that anxiety is usually born from, because you're not doing something you know you need to do. And some, sometimes, the doing of it removes some of the anxiety, especially in AI. Do figure that's true? 
 
Carrie (08:48) 
100%. It's, and I really live by that rule that like, if you're scared of doing something, you should probably do it. 
 
Definitely with AI because there's so many different things to discover and so many different tools you can use and so many different ways for you to explore this thing completely innocently. Like it's so easy to just play around with as a toy as a fun little thing. I think that's how most people get started with it is, you know, I'm sure this isn't a fact, but I'm sure that one of the like number one first things that people ask AI is like, tell me a joke or something like that or make 
 
picture of a dog playing poker. You know, it's usually something just kind of fun and harmless. 
 
Pete Bishop (09:29) 
Yeah, I think there's this little piece of curiosity and playfulness that I think a lot of people miss. I know that my parents' generation were scared of technology and afraid to touch things, right? So we had a VCR, which I think took maybe 40 years for my mom to figure out, because she was just afraid that every button she pressed would ruin something. And I know that that's a big fear because they didn't grow up with any of that. And I think 
 
Carrie (09:47) 
you 
 
Pete Bishop (09:59) 
me being in a generation X, a little bit half a foot in both camps, right? I think I'm a lot more tech able and I'm, I've got that side because I grew up in the industry too, but there is still a little bit of fear that, what if I screw this up? Like, and then my, kids are fearless. They will, they will press every button, swipe every screen and they don't really care about the consequences and they figure stuff out way faster 
 
Carrie (10:25) 
Yeah, because that's the best way to figure something out is by doing it and trying it. And I feel like technology is adapted in that way too, where they make it safe for you to go in and do that. Because yeah, maybe a long time ago you get on a computer and I mean, this definitely happened when I was a kid and we had one computer for the family and all of a sudden you exit out of something and you've lost the brother's essay and you've lost the progress in the sister's game. And also you could try to download a song from Kazaa like. 
 
Pete Bishop (10:52) 
Hahaha. 
 
Carrie (10:55) 
You know, so that there was that fear, but I feel like technology has advanced along with that anxiety where it's like, no, no, no, no, no. We auto save now. We can get a document back that you accidentally deleted. Like come in here and muck around. It's all going to be okay. And apps are definitely like that. Like if you accidentally mess up an app, you delete it and redownload it and it's right there again in your pocket. 
 
Pete Bishop (11:20) 
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of this non-destructive tech that I think has come in. I was talking to someone a while ago about Photoshop, Photoshop three, which then this dates me a fair bit, but Photoshop three, when it came out was the first time layers had ever been introduced into kind of any sort of graphic software.  

And that was the beginning of non-destructive work where you could make, you know, paint on something with a background, and then you take it off and put it on a different one and take that off and put on a different one and put a whole bunch of layers on and then delete a whole bunch of layers. Whereas in the past, everything you did was permanent. 

As soon as you put red on a brown background, that's it. You've ruined the brown background forever. So I think it's interesting how that's come more and more. And like you said, auto saves or saving every moment that you're doing as part of that and being able to back up a million, you know, command ZEDs to get back to where you were, or it's just prevalent everywhere, which is such a big change, I think. 
 
Carrie (12:19) 
Yeah, you talk about kids, any kid can pick up on almost any piece of technology and kind of figure out how to use it and mess around with it for a bit and press the buttons and off they go. Now they know how to play that Nintendo Switch or now they know how to use an iPad or now they know, because that stuff is everywhere. Touchscreens are everywhere. 
 
Pete Bishop (12:38) 
Yeah, I think that it's funny how interfaces and being able to adapt to screens has become such a thing now that it's actually alienated, I think, a big crowd. Like my mom, who's again had a hard time with a VCR, is now faced with so many interfaces, even at the grocery store or on a TV screen, you know, and all the different streaming channels.  

There's so many things that you're expected just to intuitively understand, that she has been completely left behind. And also the notion that you kind of need a smartphone now to kind of transact in most day-to-day things. It's just, it's become this barrier that's interesting. It's just kind of crept up over the last little while, but you can really notice when someone is not kept up how alienated they are in kind of in society in some ways. 
 
Carrie (13:28) 
Totally. And it's funny because I talk about how intuitive these things are, but they're intuitive and then they get an update and then they get another update and then all of sudden they're not as intuitive anymore and this button has moved and the way that this technology works has changed all of a sudden and it can be so frustrating.  

Like there's nothing more frustrating in the whole world to me than any piece of technology not functioning the way it's supposed to and not like from a vacuum, computer to a car to whatever it's just like you have one job and you're not doing it and I think that's what's interesting about AI is it has a it can have a quadrillion jobs because you can ask it to have whatever job you want it to have so it's such a different form of frustration sometimes but for the most part it's just fun to mess around with and I think that's one of my number one tips for success is to have patience with it.  

And know that it's gonna change, know that it's almost like working with a kid and kids can be frustrating. And you can tell I don't have kids, cause I just give off parenting advice all the time that is completely unwarranted. 
 
Pete Bishop (14:45) 
Kids ruin everything. Hey, so good getting us back on track. One of the things I wanted to ask was, okay, so you decided you wanted to get into AI. You wanted to kind of lead the charge here. Talk about buy-in right? So how did you get the company on board. 
 
Carrie (14:49) 
Yeah, I think initially there was just kind of this awe and wonder around it. And I kind of stepped in and said, OK, well, let me be the one who kind of delivers the news and talks to people about AI. Let me be that person, everybody said OK, OK, nobody else has the time to do that. That sounds great. Let it be you. 
 
And then I kind of started slow and I did a presentation for everybody on, like for the whole company on how to get started with AI. It was just a really simple presentation on like how to just go in there and mess around. Basically what we're talking about, how to open it up, how to ask it to do something like make a joke and what you can do with that information afterwards. 
 
And then that presentation went super well. And I think there was a lot of people suddenly being like, there's all these different things I could do with it. And then I also realized I can't do this all on my own. There's a lot of information. There's a lot of things I don't understand. There's tools for people who do jobs that I don't do.  

So I had the idea to start a Taskforce, which is when I started reaching out to all of the directors to say, hey, I'm going to be taking some time from people in your department to kind of help make sure the conversation keeps going and make sure your department gets what it needs out of AI, not just my department. And the minute I started talking to every single department head was like, yes, absolutely, whoever you need. In fact, I suggest so and so because they have shown interest. So there was just this incredible buy in. everybody was just like, yep, we trust you. And which, you know, I'm really, really grateful for. Because it turned into it just made everything so much easier. 
 
Pete Bishop (16:51) 
Yeah, I think it's possibly different with a marketing firm whose kind of job is to kind of stay up on technology and are pretty tech savvy to perhaps some of the other companies out there. I know that buy-in can probably be different for everybody, right?  

When you're in a, let's say maybe as quasi government or something like that, where maybe you're the lone wolf who really believes in this and just you're surrounded by people who are maybe scared of it or just too busy. What do you think in that case? Do you have any idea how you would start something similar in an environment that's maybe a little less friendly in that area? 
 
Carrie (17:33) 
Yeah, and I've talked to a few people who have gone through that. 
 
I think the big thing is to start small. You know, don't go running in there with this way that AI is going to completely change the entire company overnight or anything, but start small and truly teach the people who are going to be making the decisions, teach them how it actually makes a difference. Teach them how, like, let me actually physically sit down with you and show you and open up this ChatGPT and give you an example of how I just wrote three emails in 10 minutes instead of three hours. Because that does a couple of things. Like as a creative, I wasn't really thinking about, you know, I'm a fan of efficiency, but I wasn't really thinking about like, we're going to save a few dollars here. But then it happened pretty quickly. All of a sudden I was like, wait, we're saving like, I can save some hours, some serious hours. 
 
And know your audience. That's number one marketing rule. Know your audience. If your audience is a CFO, don't go to them saying, yeah, this is going to help me be more creative. Talk about how much money you can save. That's a good, that'll usually get people on board. 
 
Pete Bishop (18:45) 
Yeah, speak their language, right? I do agree. I think there's some really easy wins, especially when you just like show how quickly you can get up to speed on something, you know, some simple tasks with ChatGPT or something along those lines where you're like, Hey, you know that thing you're just about to write? Here's another way to do it. And just show how, how, like you said, once you start using it, a lot of that fear and anxiety starts to go away a little bit. 
 
So then like we have a taskforce. What are some of the areas that that taskforce is kind of in charge of, or what are some of the elements that, we all had to tackle? It's not just, Hey, how do we get everyone on board and using these tools? But there's other thoughts as well. 
 
Carrie (19:29) 
Definitely, and a lot of other thoughts. I think one of our first tasks was to write some AI guidelines for our company. Which, you know, we have guidelines for everything. We should definitely have guidelines for how we as a company would like to see AI used in this company by our employees. Especially when it comes down to certain ethical concerns or certain law concerns or certain copyright, et cetera.  

And, you know, we have a lot of clients with a lot of confidential information that they're not gonna want plugged into ChatGPT for somebody else to potentially mine later. So that was a big one. We also if there's a new tool that we think might be interesting and might be helpful, we'll usually get one or two people trying it out. Usually they already are trying it out and that, I've tried this new tool. And then sometimes that conversation just leads to, OK, cool, well, maybe we should share this with everybody else.  

Or we keep trialing something. And we've definitely trialed tools that did not work, which thank goodness we did. And thank goodness we trialed it and didn't just buy it for a year, otherwise, part of it is just keeping the conversation going. Like, we have a pretty active chat where people will share different news that they find, different tools that they find, concerns about AI, and we talk about it openly, not just the wins, but also the losses, and just being really open, open and honest about it. 
 
Pete Bishop (21:02) 
Yeah, that's awesome. I do find that there's solidarity in having a little bit of a group rather than just being kind of again, like that lone wolf who's just trying to push things through and you get tired and fatigued and uninspired and it's nice to have other people kind of grab the baton and keep moving. 
 
Okay, cool. So one of the other things we probably should talk about, I know that picking the size of team, it was challenging and maybe in a good way here, but how did that go. 
 
Carrie (21:35) 
Yeah, think initially I was just trying to get anybody who's interested, so I would go talk to somebody at work who I knew had been maybe playing around with some AI or had been interested in it. And I'd say, hey, we're going to start this AI taskforce. Do you want to be a part of it? And then all of a sudden, 15 people later and every single person was like, yes, absolutely include me. I'm so interested. And then all of a sudden I realized like, shit, everybody's going to want to be a part of this and it can't be the whole company, unfortunately.  

So I just had to scale it down and like you and I discussed this and it was like, OK, I think it just makes the most sense to have one person from each department and at least have every department represented. 
 
And, you know, for accounts for like our biggest department. And I think we have, well, we do, we have one person from each city. and yeah, so I had to have a couple hard conversations with some people to tell them, yeah, you know, keep it up and like, keep playing around with it. But, but the team that we have, it just makes sense to keep it a little bit smaller to at least begin with. And then they can pass things onto their team, to keep their team excited about it. 
 
Pete Bishop (22:46) 
Like I said, it's a good problem to have when everyone wants to be part of this. I suppose the opposite could happen where you can't get anyone involved and then you're looking at, well, do I conscript people? Do I just keep it really, really lean? I don't know how that would work in that situation. 
 
Carrie (23:02) 
Totally, and we ended up with about 13 people, which is awesome. 
 
I think we were lucky, like everybody was really excited. I think that if you're working at a place where people are a bit more hesitant about AI and a bit more worried about it, I mean, those are kind of the people you want in there too. Like you want to have somebody who's going to be like, wait a minute, we can do this, but should we be doing this?  

Because those are important questions too. And you could frame it like that to people as well when they're coming in. It's like, you know, if somebody says, well, I don't know anything about AI and I'm a little worried about it. It's like, yeah, great. Come be a part of this taskforce and we're all going figure it out together. 
 
Pete Bishop (23:39) 
Yeah, it's a good way to get people on board, especially if you do have doubters, you know, having some ownership in a team like that, I think gives them, you know, if you can convince them in that group, then they become perhaps some of your biggest champions too, because their voice is usually one of the louder ones. 
 
Carrie (23:55) 
100 % because once their concerns are addressed, then they're in. And like you said, yeah, they're championing it. 
 
Pete Bishop (24:00) 
Mm-hmm. 
 
The so here's another question, with the rest of the company, obviously, there's a bit of a mandate to get—how do you educate the rest of the group, the people that haven't put up their hand for the taskforce? How do you kind of get them involved and not keep it so it's like non-inclusive, right? Because there's a bit of it, maybe a little bit of an elitist, we're part of the AI group and I'm not. How do you think you overcome some of that stuff? 
 
Carrie (24:34) 
I think part of it is like, if somebody comes to my desk and says, I have this thing from AI that I kind of want to check out. I would never ever say, great. I'll send it to the taskforce and we'll check it out. I'm always still like, cool. Why don't you check it out and tell me about it?  

You know, I'm always willing to have these conversations with everybody, not just with the taskforce. The taskforce has some specific things to do. That doesn't mean you can't have a conversation about it with everybody. 
 
But also part of the taskforce beauty is that you have somebody in a specific department who's in the taskforce. So say somebody for media is like, hey, I kind of have this idea for an AI thing or this tool that we should use. I don't know what that's for as a creative, as a writer. I'm like, yeah, that would work for the media team. Like, I have no idea. It's like, yeah, why don't you go talk to Brody about it? Because he would have a better idea of whether or not this is something that would actually work for his team.  

And then the other part of it is what we love to call our lunch and learns. And doing just company-wide quick updates on where we're at, different AI tools that we have, making sure that every single person has access to it. It's not just for this group. And if somebody kind of comes out of the woodwork and is like, well, it seems like it's just for those people, be like, it's not. It's for you. It's for all of us. It's for everybody. 
 
And yeah, having semi-regular updates on what's going on in the AI world within our company and what our stance is on it and what our guidelines are and, you know, every kind of important update, just like anything else, should be shared with the whole company. 
 
Pete Bishop (26:24) 
Yeah, I like that. And you know, it's not even people in that group don't have to be the ones presenting or finding other things that could be anybody really, it's just, it's like a committee is this is a chance to formalize and make sure we continue talking about it and continue learning. And everyone, like you said, is represented. 
 
Carrie (26:42) 
Yeah, it's almost like totally. It's almost like having a party planning committee and then not inviting everybody to the party. It's like, no, the committee plans the parties and, you know, decides what's going to be there, but everybody's invited and everybody's there to take part. You know, the taskforce is here in order to help the entire company, not just each other. 
 
Pete Bishop (26:50) 
Hahaha. 
 
Yeah, I think it's an important distinction because you could work against you otherwise, right? Like I think that's the right way to approach it. At least it's been working for us, which is cool. 
 
Carrie (27:14) 
And the whole point is to like de-silo things, to bring things out of departmental, like just this department knows what this department is doing. So you don't want to create another silo where just this taskforce knows what's going on. 
 
Pete Bishop (27:26) 
Right. Right. Right. It's also kind of a cool way, a lot of companies are doing this where they're kind of creating that cross team where there, you know, there are departments, but then there's cross departments and it's a great way to kind of learn what everyone else is doing and see what they're up to. So there's a bit of that, which is nice. You get to work with people you don't normally get to work with, which is kind of cool. 
 
Yeah, think having the taskforce has been a really good step for us. And I know a lot of other companies have been struggling with this, but it feels to me a little bit like we don't have all the answers yet, but it feels like we're on the right track. 
 
Carrie (28:00) 
100%. And I think we've known from the beginning that it's going to be something that changes over time and something that evolves probably pretty distinctively from the start to the finish. And I think just continuing to be open to that evolution. And, you know, I'm not going to say we did everything right and we did everything perfect and we did the best AI launch a company's ever done or anything, but, but, you know, we did it and now we're having conversations about it and people are on board and we can just keep learning from what worked and what didn't and hope for the best down the road. 
 
Pete Bishop (28:41) 
I think that that's a good place to leave it. I think where and it'd be interesting throughout the course of a season, which will be a year and next year and whatnot to kind of check in every so often and see how it's going and see if we actually did do it right or whether we made some huge horrible mistakes along the way. 
 
Carrie (28:57) 
Yeah, I can't wait to listen to this exact episode in a year and be like, what were we talking about? But, hopefully all of our listeners can tag along for the ride and see what we screw up and see what we do right. 
 
Pete Bishop (29:02) 
Yeah, God, what an idiot. Yeah, no, that's good. Cool. 
 
Yeah, exactly. They can point it out in the comments, I'm sure. 
 
Carrie (29:15) 
I can't wait. The emails. The hate mail. 
 
Pete Bishop (29:20) 
Alright, well have a great long weekend. 
 
Carrie (29:24) 
And you.