Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hey everybody, my name is Kat Margolis, and welcome to the Future of Content Marketing. Today I have with me Kate Bradley Cherniss. Kate is the founder and c e o of Lately, which is his AI to generate high engaging content in your unique brand voice that is customized to target any audience as a farmer. Rock and roll. DJ Kate served 20 million listeners as music director and on-Air Ho on-Air host at Sirius xm. She's also an award-winning radio producer, engineer, and voice talent with 25 years of national broadcast communications, brand building sales and marketing expertise. What she learned in radio about the neuroscience of music helps fuel lately's artificial intelligence. And prior to founding lately, Kate, also owned AM marketing agency, which got Walmart a 130% r o i year over year for three years. Kate, thank you so much for being part of the future of content marketing.
Speaker 2: (00:53)
It's all true. Thank you, Kat. Good job, slogging through the, the slog. That's my life. .
Speaker 1: (01:01)
No, I love it. I mean, I think it's always so interesting, um, all these life events and, and and, and things that we do, and then what ultimately comes out of that is really magical and special. So I think it's all perfect,
Speaker 2: (01:15)
But um, yeah, you, you hope it's a straight line, right? I mean, that's, that's the thing, but it ends up being a zigzag and then you, you make straight out of it, you know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: (01:23)
Totally. Totally. And, um, so, you know, thinking about you today, Kate, uh, I think that you must be having a lot of fun right now watching everybody lose their minds over AI and chat G B t when you've been in this AI powered content game a while now. Um, so let's chat about that. How is AI impacting us and what we do as businesses, um, in part in particular with regards to contact marketing?
Speaker 2: (01:52)
Yeah, I mean, I am having a great time in that. I mean, I'm having terrible time in other aspects because that's startup life, you know, but it's, the funny thing is it's when you're building something that doesn't exist, it's very hard to define it. So that's been our challenge for nine years. And as a marketing expert whose job it is to do these things, when you can't do it, it's really frustrating, right? It's like the bane of my existence. So, um, right now it's pretty easy because everybody knows what generative AI is, except like, lately quite isn't also exactly what they think. So we still have some challenges there. Um, but the inbound is crazy. I mean, our self-service inbound has quintuple in the last two months. My VP of sales can't, can't. She's works with the enterprise and she can't demo fast enough, right?
Speaker 2: (02:40)
So that's great. Um, there's still a huge massive miseducation. I mean, Hollywood messed up, right? Everybody thinks that AI is what Hollywood has taught us, and that, that's called magic. Magic doesn't exist , right? Yes. Yes. So it's kind of funny. Hi Katie. Um, watching like people be disappointed and to some, you know, and I mean, I think people, I believe in magic. I want it to be true. You know, I'm, I'm working on inventing that also. But, um, you know, a, a real reset of, you know what, and we can get into this if you want. Yeah. What is artificial intelligence and you know, where are we as a, as a race, you know? Yeah. With, with what's there, but
Speaker 1: (03:27)
Well, what, I mean, you're on the front lines of it. So what's the biggest misconception that you're coming across from, um, people who want to use it,
Speaker 2: (03:34)
Um, that is sentient. There's no sentient robot that doesn't exist. It's not even close, right? It's all, this is all math. So artificial intelligence can only work in a if then, then, then this scenario, right? That's it. So you have to imagine all the variables. I mean, the reasons humans are so amazing is we have this, you know, is it the frontal cortex that is able to process all of the variables and then make decisions based on that, right? So the reason self-driving cars aren't self-driving is because there's so many variables. They can't tell if it's a bird crossing the road or a snowball or a football. And if they can talk, you know, if they can get to a place where they're like, oh, bird, how do they know what kind of bird it is? Or, um, is it a picture of a bird? Like if you've watched Silicon Valley, it's not. Hotdog is where we are at. That's as good as it gets. Okay.
Speaker 1: (04:32)
Hate to say it. Yeah. I love it. So what can it do and what can we, um, count on it to, to support us with now, right now?
Speaker 2: (04:41)
Yeah. I mean, so I'm limited cause I only know about text generation ar artificial intelligence, of course. But, um, you know, again, it's all about data and how much data the machine has to, to make that if then, then this decision, right? That's all. So the reason that open AI is amazing is because it has millions of data points of the general population, right? But the reason that it's very limited is that it's super ized. It's, it's recommending the same thing for me and you and Robin or Gabby. Like, if we put the same inputs in, we will be getting the same inputs out. So you have to think of it like cliff notes, remember Cliff notes? Mm-hmm. , right? I mean, the teacher knows you're cheating cuz he's got the cliff notes too, , right? Yeah. So, um, I love it. A real level set needs to just kind of happen, I think, on expectation.
Speaker 1: (05:37)
Yeah. And so, um, I mean obviously you're in it, so, well maybe you still have some, you know, like, I guess I wanna go into like, there, there's a lot of fears and concerns around ai. It might even be polarizing like we needed anything else to, to divide us, right? Um, yeah, you know, some are professional, some are existential. Uh, obviously I'm gonna say that for you. It's good. You think it's good. This is something that you've invested a lot of time and, uh, resources into. Um, but, uh, yeah, good, bad. How do we navigate it?
Speaker 2: (06:11)
Well, I mean, let me clarify what I think is good. So it's not that I think that artificial intelligence replacing humans is good. That's terrible. Of course. However, technology will always replace humans, and it always has. That's part of the deal, right? So you can embrace it and move the flow or you can stamp around and cry. You know, that's, that's the deal. Um, with us, you know, we purposely included human training in our algorithm so that not just to be ethical, to be honest with you, it's because we, we saw the difference between the results. So again, like open AI is great chat, g p T, great, it's amazing, right? What they've brought to us. But, um, the fact that it can't customize to your voice or your audience at all is not so great. But I can, and the reason I can is because we included humans in the training process, right?
Speaker 2: (07:03)
And, and the results with AI alone, like I said, amazing, great. When you put a human, um, as a collaborative feature, that's when you see galactic results. And I can describe, you know what I mean? But I will describe it. I mean, that's how our customers see a 12000% increased engagement, 98% sales conversion, 84% time saved, 82% increase, increased in clicks, uh, 40 x increase in productivity, right? Those are some balls numbers, right? And it's, it's because the human's in the process. Now, what does that mean? That means that it, it takes work. You can't just, again, there's no ma magic wand here as much as I would like one. So the human has to be involved in, in coaching the AI along. Um, I'll give you guys an example. So if you've seen the Mandalorian, when the, um, you know, murderous death robot gets reborn as a nurse.
Speaker 2: (08:01)
Now again, this is fantasy and TV in Hollywood again. But even in this moment, even in Hollywood, even fantasy, the, the robot is having just such a hard time figuring out how to pour this cup of tea, right? And you see it fail on a number of occasions because there's so many things. It's what's the height? Um, he might grip the cup too. So he I think grips the cup too hard so it could break, right? There's all these variables that can, can happen. Um, and so, you know, again, like it's this, it's this understanding that it takes a long time to train the ai It does, you know, we've built in a bunch of fail safes to give you great results, um, pretty much off the bat in 1.8 seconds. Um, but if you really want to see those galactic results, you have to put a skin, you have to put skin in the game. You know, like all good things, you have to earn it.
Speaker 1: (08:51)
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Um, so, so maybe we'll go there next. So like, previously to your work in marketing, you were a dj, radio music director and ho and, um, that's obviously influenced you in how you help businesses now. Um, but yeah, tell me what you learned in radio, uh, particularly about the neuroscience of music, like we say in, uh, in your, your intro that helped you fuel lately's artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: (09:20)
Yeah, so what I love about radio is the theater of the mind. It's incredible component. And you, you get it in another arena of life, which is reading, right? So by which I mean theater of the mind is the act of a human playing a role in the story, right? So a great author gives you the ability to fill in the blanks and guides you along, but you have, you feel as though you have some control, right? You're able to, to imagine what the characters look like. That's why movies can be so disappointing because you had something else in your mind, right? And that's very, very powerful and meaningful. And part of that is because the theater of the mind is always tapped into nostalgia and history, right? It's just the way your brain works. Now, um, radio is the same way when you're listening. No, remember when I was in radio, the internet when I started in radio, it hadn't happened yet, so you couldn't look up what people looked like, okay? There was none of that. Um, so you had to really imagine who was behind the microphone. And I learned to cultivate a personality that would be enticing, but but not, not too much. So I mean, it's a, it's a persona that, you know, this academy, I mean, you're doing it on the Yeah,
Speaker 1: (10:37)
I just never thought about it in terms of radio before.
Speaker 2: (10:40)
Yeah, I mean, there's something about when you're communicating with large groups of people, you, you imagine and authors do the same thing. First of all, you imagine your audience and it's one person. You have one person in mind that you're speaking to. I mean, my gift was when, when Covid happened, I was like, great, I've been talking to a blank blank space of no one for years, right? so fine. Um, but thinking about like, you know, how can you get people to, to feel that this is a two-way street, not a one-way street, and that they have a voice, that they have a role in the story. And for me, that meant all kinds of little tricks. Like I would, um, I would make mistakes on purpose. I would kind of drip out little tidbits of my life that were, you know, just personal enough.
Speaker 2: (11:25)
Um, I would make this, and I do this in writing too, I make all kinds of references to different eras. Like obviously you notice Pacman in the beginning here, I'm a child of the eighties, that that sucker is velo, like, you know, right? Um, . But I also like, you know, grew up in the nineties too. So I'll, I'll make references to terrible nineties rock bands. And, um, sometimes I call myself mo like Miss Piggy, all these little, you know, nuggets we're doing here, right? The, it, it was, and, and I was winning. I was winning. I was like winning my station like awards in a format that never got, um, recognition. And it at night when like, no one was listening and my, my boss would call me up and he's like, you're number one in our terrible format. How can this be? Right? And so I started thinking about it.
Speaker 2: (12:10)
What, what was it? And I, I read that book, this is Your Brain on, uh, music, and I understood something so simple, which is this. So Kat, when your brain listens to a new song, you must instantly access every other song you've ever heard in that instant, right? Just happens. And what it's trying to do is it's trying to index, it's trying to look for familiar touchpoint so it knows where to index the new song in the library of the memory of your brain. And by default, it's grabbing nostalgia and memory and emotion to figure out where to put this song. It just happens to be. Now those three things must be in place for trust to happen. And trust is why we buy, right? Has to be there. So very similarly, your voice, your beautiful voice, like a song, has a sound to it has a frequency, all sound has a, has a like a musical note. There's a frequency there. And when I read your email or your text or your social media post, I'm gonna hear a voice in my head, right? And you wanna make sure I hear the voice you've intended. That's why like, I have rest, resting voice, right? I have to use a lot of emojis. , right? That's Katie. She knows she's on my team.
Speaker 1: (13:25)
I've never heard that before. That's so great.
Speaker 2: (13:27)
My poor husband, right? I mean, he's just the best. Um, but you have to, these are the, the things you, that's why we have vitalic and bold and all capital letters, all these things to emphasize your words so that the communication that you intend is actually happening on in the brain of the other person, right? That's my goal is to get, get what's here through this machine and into your brain, right? Um, and so when you're writing, it's very similar. You wanna think about, well, how can I evoke nostalgia and memory and emotion and therefore trust? The difference between thinking about writing this way and not is, um, is the numbers we talked about essentially, right? It's, my objective isn't make the sale. My objective is make a fan because a fan is the sale and then also the mouth. And that's what I want.
Speaker 1: (14:21)
Oh my God, , I'm doing my mis piggy dance right now.
Speaker 2: (14:26)
. There you go. Right? It's really like, it's, it's so simple when you think about it. Um, mm-hmm. , you know, I know a lot of people like socialism mystery for a lot of people. And, and like, so my gift is, is this making listeners and defense and um, like on LinkedIn, when I write a social post, I'll get 84,000 views, 27,000 views, right? Yes. They don't mess, mess around here. Um, and we taught our AI to replicate my best practices, by the way. So like, it looks to your data first and is looking at your best practices. It can see the things that got you the highest engagement. It can break down those high posts by ideas and phrases and sentence structures. Um, and it'll, you know, build off that. But then it'll look to me and then it'll look to my brand, cuz we're awesome as, as a brand as well. And then it'll look to the best practices of our customers who we've been teaching these same kind of writing tips, this all the stuff we've been talking about for a long time. So we've, we've created this data set for nine years of people learning how to write to create megaphones. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Large .
Speaker 2: (15:44)
Thanks. It's a, it's a, it's a funny mindset because, and I'm sure you guys have seen this, like people, they hate writing cat, they just hate it. Yes. Um, it, for a long time, like when I was, as I was a fiction writing major in college, and I wrote thousands of scripts for radio because I learned that the money in radio isn't in radio, it's in commercials, producing commercials, right? and I'm learning so much today, , I mean, about this dead format, right? I mean, no one needs, it's, it's sort of sad because like, what's so beautiful about live radio is the stuff we're talking about. And like, you don't get any relationship with Spotify. You don't know who, there's no right programmer, there's no dj, there's no voice there. And then the voices that are on the air and crappy radio, they're crappy because they're not making the decisions themselves.
Speaker 2: (16:33)
Somebody else gives them a playlist, right? There's no control, there's no personality. And so, like, we're missing this, I think this very like, visceral dream state kind of, you know, I don't know, like you, you get it at a concert when you, and you get it at a concert because there's the, the crowd and you feel the, you feel the wave of the crowd, right? Yeah. What's kind of interesting is that in Old Stool Stool Radio as a listener, you would feel that collective vibe with other people, you know, and even on the air. Um, and, and this is a skill you can't teach, but, um, and being able to read a room of thousands and millions of people that you can't see, right? It's hard. I can do it. It's hard to do, right? And, and there's some weird tele telepathic thing. I don't know what the hell it is.
Speaker 2: (17:22)
Like, um, David Mirman Scott is great at that. He's, he's a very famous marketer. Um, a lot of rock stars, you know, are great at that, right? They can't see you , the lights are bla are blinding them, you know, and it's just this channeling this. Um, and I, I think writing is the same way as as what I'm getting to here. Like if you write with this idea in mind that, um, I'm worth listening to, that's the first thing. Not by eye, I mean you like think, think of this to yourself like, I'm worth listening to. I have something valuable to say. And then I think the other thing is to not do what I'm doing here, which is vomited all out at once. , right?
Speaker 2: (18:03)
All of life is, is is about getting people to do what you want them to do. It is all communications. It's about that, right? Mm-hmm. . And so, um, love me, pay me, feed me, , make me smile, right? Um, and if you back, if you back into that, or, or if you use that to back out of, so let's take social media. Social media has two objectives, click or share. That's all I can ask for you to do, right? And so now I'm gonna write with that in mind. So when I'm thinking of the share, if that's what I want, share is all about ego Kat, I'm making you look good. When you share my content, you get credit for it. Just like if you're in college and somebody recommends a new record to you and it's amazing and now you recommend it to your friend, you're the cool one.
Speaker 2: (18:53)
Same thing, right? Yeah. And so if you're thinking about what's shareable, those are usually one liners, you know, like they're, they're often very funny, um, or something poignant. They can also be something super cliche. I mean, Gary v is the queen of that, king of that , that's just right. Sorry Gary . Um, but, but you know, it, that's how, that's how it is. So, yeah. Um, and then the, the, with the clicks, it's also, clicks are harder because they have to trust you to click because, you know, it might be spam. I don't know what I'm gonna get behind the click. There's some mystery there and there's a lot of tricks that you can do. And I'll share a couple of them. So one is, if you use the click to be the answer to a question, so the text is a question you, the click is the answer.
Speaker 2: (19:36)
That's tr that's very tricky trick of you because, you know, people can't stand an unresolved question. It drives them crazy. Especially if it's a why question. Because why is always follow followed by, because always, always, always, right? So, you know, because it's coming. And so there's some trick of trust there by clicking the link cuz you know it's gonna start with because Right? Or something about that. Also just the word because alone, um, because it's a resolving word, it's, it's meant to resolve an unanswered question just because, um, like quotes, it implies trust right off the bat, . Mm. Right? So there's a lot of psychology that goes into doing that. The other thing with clicks that always, almost always works is, um, how-to, everybody loves a how-to, right? Because again, it's a, it's a question implied that the answers will all happen in the clicks. So even if you're a small company and you haven't built a lot of trust with a big old brand splash, you can talk about, you know, um, how to eliminate greasy hair, which is something I'm very interested in right now. I I didn't wash my hair for two weeks this morning trying to reset it. It did not work . And I'm.
Speaker 1: (20:48)
Oh my gosh, I didn't think we were gonna go to half of these places. This is amazing. Um, yeah. Um, I just feel like there's so much there. I kind of like wanna break it down a little bit, but I'll, I'll uh, watch the clock too. Um, cuz I was gonna ask you, you know, for people who, um, what are, you know, you know, obviously, you know, hope, hopefully people will check out lately and whatever and, you know, explore it and or even other tools. Um, but what would you be, what would be like some practical quick tips and, and things that they could take away and start implementing? But you just said like a whole, you just gave us social media, you just gave us how to write better . So like ,
Speaker 2: (21:33)
I know. Where
Speaker 1: (21:33)
Do I go? ?
Speaker 2: (21:35)
It's a lot. I mean, I think, you know, one of the, we were just talking about communications, right? That's everything Kat, and, and obviously this is your specialty as well. Um, it's so hard because I'm on all day, right? I'm, I'm on here. And so with my team and with my husband and with the people who know me well, I, I like to be off. And so sometimes that means letting my hang out, right? , like I don't have time to pretty up the words. I just wanna get it done. And, um, and, and then I feel bad about it cuz I am, you know, I'm, I'm a human being after all. But it's like, it takes so much effort to, to get people to do what you want. I mean, it really, really does. And writing, you know, people used to make fun of me.
Speaker 2: (22:20)
I was a fiction writing major. What are you gonna do with that? You're gonna be a teacher, you're gonna be a poet, you know? Right. But now look, the entire internet, even even video, even audio gets, gets, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Distilled down into writing because there's transcripts, you still have to promote it with writing, you know, in some way. Yeah. It's all, all part of the thing. So here's a crazy stat for you. Companies waste $400 billion each year on poor writing skills. And it's not just marketing and sales, it's even internally like how we communicate with each other, you know? So like, um, one thing that we deal with as a team, we have, we have team members in, um, uh, Vancouver and, and London and Denver and or Vale and like all over the base, east coast, west Coast, et cetera.
Speaker 2: (23:08)
And, you know, we're always having to say 11:00 AM Eastern and be, and I, I can't do the math of g m t time, sorry Vanessa, but like I can do it for, you know, mountain time, obviously in Pacific time. And that's something I learned at XM because we were, we were, you know, a, a national channel. You always had to say 12:00 PM east, 9:00 AM west. So one of the nice things you can do for people is do that math for them. Like assume that everybody's an idiot. Cuz we all are, we're too too fast. Um, when you're setting a meeting, right? Mm-hmm. just a real n nice little thing. Um, so those are the kinds of things I try to remember. It's, it's the golden rule. .
Speaker 1: (23:49)
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: (23:49)
. Like I aspire to live by the golden golden rule. I, uh, I miss it a lot, but, um, yeah, you know, it's, it's the, it's it's the mi it's the mirror. You know, I was thinking about this as we were just talking about speaking to a room full of thousands and hundreds of millions of people and not knowing who they are. And the reason it works, the, or what I do was, is it's not only that I'm imagining a person, I'm really just imagining myself. Maybe it's the cooler self than I am, than I, than I actually am. But I'm, I'm trying to be the person that I would find interesting on the air or on this show or in when I'm writing a blog or a social media post.
Speaker 1: (24:33)
Yeah. I love it. Um, and again, like I can ask the question, but you, you've answered it in, in a different way, so I don't wanna like repeat my question now, but, um, maybe let's talk about the larger content experience, the larger content strategy, you know what I mean? We're, I'm hearing like what works, um, for, for when you're actually like delivering the content and how to, what to deliver and how to deliver it better. Um, do you have tips or, you know, just about like the, the larger experience and like how to, cuz you're just brilliant. So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna take, let's see how far we can roll this out. , , um, you know, as far as like, uh, yeah, just the larger, uh, experience. Is there any kind of like mindset that you have or that, you know, uh, way you can frame people so that they can think about, not just what is the message or the action I want the customer to take right in this moment, but
Speaker 2: (25:31)
Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I see what you're asking. So like, it's storytelling and I hate that. So I don't wanna say it cuz it's really been over said and no, I don't think people know what it means. I don't even think marketers know what it means. Honestly, I don't, right? What is storytelling a yarn? I mean, like, that's what I mean, you can hear me do that all day, right? Mm-hmm. . Um, to me what you're describing is, um, what I thought of as you were talking is, is making metaphors. So like one of the things I always say to Jason, my co-founder, he's, um, my design guy. And so we're, we're constantly designing graphics and decks and webpages and product together. And we're thinking about, you know, we have writer's block a lot and, and I'm always like, it's always right in front of us, Jason, it's already here.
Speaker 2: (26:16)
We have done this at some point somewhere and we just have to grab like the, the metaphor and, and readjust it and put it on here, right? So that's why like, I love it when I walk by and add on the subway and I have marketing envy because I, what I'm thinking is how can I steal that and flip it around somehow and use it for myself, right? Yeah. Right. How can what's, what's our, um, ice bucket challenge? That's what everybody had thought a few years ago. Um, and so that is part of that overall, you know, strategy, right? Like obviously there's the, the grand objective. This is the journey that customer journey people say also I think kind of. Um, especially because you can't map that out because the way marketing works is there is an undefined that is part of marketing, right?
Speaker 2: (27:02)
You can't really trace people's exact journey because we could be talking about, we've had, we've, this happened all the time. We've had about six or seven customers that knew about lately sometime in the last four years and just made a purchase recently. Right? Now they didn't come, they didn't like hear about me on social, click to go to my website, you know, all that kind of stuff, right? There was word of mouth, there was the [inaudible] the mystery. It's undefined. So you have to know that you have to go into that as, as that you're, you're not gonna be able to math it up. If you math it up, you ruin it. You take out the human element. By the way, this is all ties together here, right? The math doesn't allow for theater of the mind. So, so in that journey, oh God, I hate the word is, um, like just, you're just trying to be relatable.
Speaker 2: (27:51)
That's all that really is, right? Like you're, you're always wanting people to feel sympathy or empathy around what you're trying to communicate. So like, we sell, save money, save time, we do, that is what we sell. It's, but that's not what people respond to a lot, right? So here, um, sorry, vomit my friend Val. Um, David Allison is the king of this amazing database called Value Graphics. And what he's done is essentially torn demographics to, to shreds. So it's the idea that, you know, um, that a person who is five feet tall and a person who is seven feet tall and one of them lives in Egypt and the other person lives in LA and one of them is African American and one of them is, um, from Finland originally, and one of them is 22 and another is 68 can have multiple values in common.
Speaker 2: (28:49)
So those demographic get, get wiped out, right? So, and there's there, I think there's 56 values like productivity, community, um, family. And when you understand what those values are, you can actually predict behavior of, of people in, in marketing and elsewhere. And you can create your marketing to appeal to those values. So for example, one of the things we learned about our customers was that they value community very much, right? They wanna be a part of that. And so Katie's job is to make sure that online, on, on our brand lifts people up in their community. So when um, Lisa fee releases a book, Katie's gonna go and so she's gonna give her lots of love on behalf of us. Ah, right. So we're like building, this is again the fan. This is our, we're building the megaphones. Yeah. All related. Oh
Speaker 1: (29:41)
My gosh. Uh, I just burnt all away. , we got to everything somehow. Um, amazing. But also to so many other places, I, that's why I just love this. I love this, this, this stuff. I love having a conversation with you and all the places you took us to today. So, so much good stuff. I'm, I'm blown away and I can't wait to like break it down. It's a little cause there's so much there. Um, wow. Kate, thanks for listen that so much. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing and oh man, I, I hope you guys were taking notes cuz and we have a replay because there was so much here. Uh, it's just blowing my mind. So thank
Speaker 2: (30:27)
You so much. Reach out to me. Yeah, for sure. Katie just dropped my um, LinkedIn link in the chat there and everybody's welcome to say hi. Just tell me that, that you met me with Kat. So I like looks up you and uh, and Kat like, I love you. It's amazing what you're doing here. Um, thank you. Really lovely to meet you. And if there's a way I can help you in the future, you let me know.
Speaker 1: (30:45)
Okay? Thank you. Thank you. What an amazing, brilliant conversation. Um, so much Reed for thought. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for those who are watching it later at home. And um, stay tuned. We got more great conversations. See you soon. Bye.
