[00:00:00] Stephanie Wierwille: Welcome to the No Normal Show, brought to you by BPDA marketing services firm that delivers the future to healthcare’s leading brands. This show is where we leave all things status quo, traditional old school, boring in the dust, and instead we celebrate the new, the powerful, the innovative, and the bold.
All focused around the future of healthcare, marketing and communic. I’m your host, Stephanie Weal, EPP of Engagement here at BPD, and I’m joined by my co-host, Chris Bevelo, chief Transformation Officer. Hello, Chris
[00:00:31] Chris: Yo. Hey Stephanie. How are you?
[00:00:34] Stephanie Wierwille: Yoyo. I’m good.
[00:00:37] Chris: Yo,
[00:00:40] Stephanie Wierwille: Oh, man. Um,
[00:00:42] Chris: it’s Friday. Friday. deserves at least one. Yo, if not two,
[00:00:47] Stephanie Wierwille: At least four and maybe a YOLO somewhere in there. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:00:52] Chris: All right.
[00:00:53] Stephanie Wierwille: Uh, we have a fun episode today. We are going to, um, cover a few headlines that we [00:01:00] saw. One, um, one is gonna be an interesting one. We’ll see. Chris, we haven’t talked about the, the Dominoes rebrand, so I’ll see what you think.
We can share what we think. We also crowdsourced from BP DERs to see what they thought about a rebrand. ’cause you know, you can’t talk about a new logo and a new identity without giving 2 cents. And then we have a headline from Amazon and Amazon’s, um, some updates they’re making in the. Pharmacy slash one medical slash urgent care world.
And you guessed it, we’re gonna talk about ai. I would say that at this point you could probably, uh, gamble some money on whether or not we’re gonna talk about AI and probably win every time. So we are talking about ai, um, one more time here, and we’re doing a few more thought experiments deep into the rabbit hole of what could be possible in the future in the world of healthcare marketing.
[00:01:53] Chris: No fun. I am ready This is gonna be a great episode.
[00:01:57] Stephanie Wierwille: I’m excited. So [00:02:00] a few quick plugs and updates before we jump in. BPD is everywhere. In the next few months, you can see us pretty much no matter where you are going to be. We are on the go. Uh. Coming up just actually in two weeks from now, um, mid-October, we’re going to be at health HLTH 2025 in Las Vegas.
The no normal show will be recording and we want you on it. So please join us. We’d love to, um, give you the mic. And we’re gonna be talking about the biggest things Chase shaping healthcare, uh, whether that is AI or workforce realities. So reach out to us@infoatbpd.com to join us. We’re also headed to shushed in Dallas.
That is just next week, right? Chris? You’re headed there?
[00:02:45] Chris: Yes, next week, oh my gosh, when this comes out, we will have been there?
Maybe even still be there. I don’t know. It depends when this drops Dallas. I hope we can get there. That’s all I’m saying, you know?
[00:02:58] Stephanie Wierwille: hope so.
[00:02:59] Chris: Air travel’s [00:03:00] not the best right now, so
[00:03:01] Stephanie Wierwille: No,
[00:03:02] Chris: it would be great to get there.
[00:03:04] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, well one way or another you’ll be there with boots on. Um, and leading a few sessions around the future of the CMO. Joined by healthcare leaders like Vic Rice from UNC Health, as well as Matt gov from Quick MD and Summit Health as well. Philip as fellow Philip Giuliano with brand Active.
That’s gonna be a really exciting session.
[00:03:24] Chris: People I have known for years and years And years and years and years and years and years and years and years and years, years, it’ll be great. Yes.
[00:03:35] Stephanie Wierwille: And then also remember to sign up for the Joe Public retreat before it fills up. Uh, the 2026 theme in February is the AI Dream. We are going to get together on South Beach in Miami, um, where the sun is always shining, and we are going to be in the lab concepting the biggest, boldest ways to use AI in marcom.
So that’s February 18th through 20th. Mark your calendars, book a flight. Um, grab some beach [00:04:00] time and let us know if you’d like to be there.
Okay, let’s get into it. Um, Chris, I know that you’ve been hearing all about all the Swifties being very excited and chattering a lot, um, both online as well as at BBD, um, Taylor Swift’s album release happened one week ago today. What have you been seeing? Have you, are you a swifty? I guess I should start with that.
[00:04:30] Chris: A swifty, that’s a strong word. I like Taylor Swift a lot. I actually have a playlist of her music. It’s not very long. It’s probably the hits that.
everybody would imagine. Um, but I like her music and I like her. I think she’s amazing. I love that she’s successful. Um. But Stephanie, I, I am not the person to ask about Taylor Swift’s new album.
Uh, that is an, that is a misdirected call for opinion. Someone of [00:05:00] my, of my makeup. We’ll just say my age. We’ll just stick with age. Um, what, how are you feeling about it? How are you feeling about the album and the, and the response to the album, which is called what again? Something of a showgirl. I.
[00:05:16] Stephanie Wierwille: of a showgirl.
[00:05:17] Chris: Okay.
[00:05:18] Stephanie Wierwille: Yes.
[00:05:18] Chris: feeling?
[00:05:20] Stephanie Wierwille: I am, I am officially a swifty. I wasn’t two weeks ago, so I will
[00:05:25] Chris: Wow.
[00:05:26] Stephanie Wierwille: swifty,
[00:05:28] Chris: Okay.
[00:05:29] Stephanie Wierwille: and I think what did it for me, it absolutely was this album, but more importantly, it’s how it’s, it’s me learning the background of it. I watched her interview with Jimmy Kimmel.
I watched her interview with BBC went, you know. Really deep into the lyrics and the backstories. Um, and I think I fully understand, I’ve always enjoyed Taylor Swift, right? I’ve always listened to her music. I’ve listened to every album she’s come out with. But now I think I finally get it. I finally get the brilliance.
I finally get the connections, the Easter eggs, the surprises, the meaning, the fact that, you know, she. [00:06:00] Brought back the theater, the fact that all brands like Starbucks are, you know, just really leaning in and creating this super fun cultural moment. ’cause we need something to be happy about right now. And I just think, hey, there’s, this is something that’s only joyful in my opinion.
So really excited.
[00:06:16] Chris: That’s good. Let’s just move on from there, because we know that there’s other things that people say, um, about it and about her, which is essentially 2 cent nation. It’s just 2 cent nation. That’s all we have to say. People need to get a hobby. I, I mean, just like I, I’m, once again, I’m gonna raise the idea of banning social media would be a net positive to our society.
And this is yet another example. There are more serious reasons why that would be helpful. Not hearing everybody’s take on Taylor Swift. Um, particularly because so many people are just love to be cranks. Um, 2 cent Nation put a plug in it. How about that? I.
[00:06:57] Stephanie Wierwille: We’ll, we’ll start a side campaign. [00:07:00] Um, yeah, I like it. So speaking of 2 cent Nation, I guess that’s the segue here. Um, there was another rebrand. So we talked about the
[00:07:08] Chris: Oh God.
[00:07:09] Stephanie Wierwille: was not as, this was not as fiery as that, but Domino’s, um, unveiled their first rebrand in a decade. And it includes a new identity.
It includes a custom typeface, it includes a jingle. Bring back jingles. That’s my campaign. I’m gonna do, um, the jingles with Buzi, and then they have a new tagline. Mm, dominoes. That’s a hard one to say. A little, little cheesy. And that is, pun intended. Chris, did you see this rebrand? Um, did you take a look at it or did you have 2 cents or 5 cents to throw in?
[00:07:42] Chris: rebrand is offensive. It, it is the worst thing. Like, I can’t believe dominoes went this direction. It is, it is just awful. And I am, I am going to cancel Domino’s. I’m never gonna use Domino’s again. Um, I can’t [00:08:00] believe that they’ve used that subtly different shade of blue and red, that they continue to use their domino.
Um, it’s just, I can’t even, I can’t even believe the world we live in, Stephanie. That somebody would do this. It’s offensive to who I am as a human.
There you go. That’s it.
[00:08:19] Stephanie Wierwille: maybe they will change the logo back
if you say
[00:08:22] Chris: That’s right.
[00:08:23] Stephanie Wierwille: If.
[00:08:24] Chris: Here’s what, here’s the real thing. If they had not an, uh, If.
they had not announced a rebrand, would people have even noticed? Like it is, I like it. I like it a lot, and it, and it’s, but who cares whether I like it or not? Like I’m still gonna order dominoes and it’s so subtle. Why is this one flying under the radar?
But like our friends at Cracker Barrel, like literally the agency got fired and their stock dropped. Like bots are all over it. Where are the bots for this one? Where are the anti dominoes people? That’s what I want to know.
[00:08:59] Stephanie Wierwille: I don’t know,
Maybe that’s a [00:09:00] test of how much brand passion you have is if you do a subtle rebrand. Do people get angry? If so that you have a lot of brand passion. If no one cares, you don’t have enough, and you should maybe, maybe that’s the new theory. I don’t know. Um, but yeah, it was pretty subtle. I will say.
[00:09:16] Chris: There’s the story that Mari posted for us. Our producer from Adweek, you know, kind of gives the highlights of it and I was scanning it and there’s a part that’s called taking a risk. Trumbull acknowledged the risks that come with any rebrand. Global brands from Jaguar to Cracker Barrel have recently faced backlash for their new visual identities.
Insane. Why? Why is there a risk in updating your. Brand identity, like just honestly we have too much time on our hands. I’m just so we can move on. I’m, um,
[00:09:52] Stephanie Wierwille: need to get out into the real world
maybe.
[00:09:56] Chris: yes.
[00:09:57] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Well, yeah. [00:10:00] dominoes.
So
[00:10:01] Chris: love Domino’s, by the way. Uh,
[00:10:03] Stephanie Wierwille: um, yeah, and and hey, they didn’t cause a firestorm,
so we’ll give
[00:10:07] Chris: far as we know.
[00:10:09] Stephanie Wierwille: Uh,
[00:10:09] Chris: We haven’t heard from everybody yet, so.
[00:10:12] Stephanie Wierwille: No, I didn’t look at Reddit to see the Reddit reviews. So in the healthcare world, Amazon pharmacy is launching vending machines per prescription drugs, and they’re doing that at their one medical clinics.
So this is, um. When you walk out of a clinic, you can get your prescriptions right after your appointment immediately before you even leave. Um, and just one more example of convenience from Amazon. I will say they’re not the first, this is not totally new health systems have been doing this for a long time.
Um, but since it’s Amazon, they got the headline here and yeah, I mean, good, good for them. What, what do you think Chris?
[00:10:52] Chris: I, two things. The, the limitations of this to me are interesting. Like one I’ve always been, my mind has always been [00:11:00] boggled. Is that a thing? Uh, by vending machines with prescriptions. Like how many prescription drugs can you have in a vending machine to make it actually. Helpful. Like, there’s no way I, I, I just don’t know how that works.
So kudos whoever figured it out, but I just gotta imagine it’s a half solution. Um, the other thing is as long as Amazon is restricted to one medical, their impact will be minimal, right? Like, I don’t know how many patients one medical has, but it is a teeny, tiny fraction of primary care, urgent care, whatever.
Um. I mean, certainly Amazon could be putting these anywhere. Um, and the other thing I like about it is I, I really feel for pharmacists in this day and age, I think pharmacists are, they’re just overburdened. You know, pharmacists at Walgreens, it’s just awful. Like what they have to go through and they’re in the middle, they’re getting squeezed by all the players.
Um, so in some ways I [00:12:00] feel like, boy, if you could automate this, uh, that would actually help pharmacists, right? Because like it’s, I understand why pharmacists have to count pills, but it seems kind of silly, you know, it’s kinda like a doctor. Is the one who’s required to put the file folders in the file cabinet, right?
Like because they’re medical licensed, like can’t we have machines, count pills? I don’t know, maybe that’s dystopian, but that would free up a pharmacist to be what they’re supposed to be, which is a health partner to customers. So anyway, I mean, this
[00:12:33] Stephanie Wierwille: absolutely. No, I think that the whole tech ecosystem around pharmacy is really, really interesting. This is one tiny point, part of it or point of it. Um. But you know, there’s, there’s robotics that’s pharmacies are usually in the basement of health systems, which I have a whole beef with that too. But anyway, there’s, there’s all kinds of robotics that work behind the scenes to count pills, to, um, you know, to dispense drugs.
So that pharmacists could actually be what [00:13:00] they’re meant to be, which is patient facing medical professionals. And you know, you can go to your local Walgreens and ask your pharmacists all kinds of great questions, but people don’t do that because the pharmacists are stuck back there doing this kind of work.
So hopefully that will be the future that we live in.
[00:13:15] Chris: This is my visual of a, I have to go to the pharmacy quite a bit and I go through the drive through and usually it’s a 20 to 30 minute experience of the drive through. They’re understaffed, but if you ever go in there and you see them, the picture that’s always in my mind is the, them stretching like a, a curly phone cord from 1987 across, like on their computer with the phone cord stretched.
And they’re trying to like, look something up, somebody’s insurance coverage and they’re on the phone with somebody and it, it literally looks like it’s 1987 in there. Um. So yes, like we feel for the pharmacist and it would be great, but there’s nothing worse than when you’re waiting for your prescription, which should take like 30 seconds and somebody’s asking questions.
Right? Like, it’s too, it it, it would be [00:14:00] like, yes, it would be like you to, to, to be able to find out, like to go pick up your vitamin order. You have to wait in line with everybody else at the primary care clinic. Like it’s, it’s insane. You know, so you’re stand in line four deep and like somebody’s asking all these questions, which are important to them, and you’re like, I just wanna pick up my pills, which are sitting right on the shelf, like right there.
Can I just grab ’em? Can I, you know, so the whole, maybe there needs to be some disruption of the farm maybe. Maybe Vending machines are the, just the first disruption. No
[00:14:34] Stephanie Wierwille: I’m hearing that Starbucks needs to be the next owner of pharmacies because we talked a few weeks ago about the CEO’s multi-prong strategy to allow you to sit and talk versus pick up your mobile order. So that’s what I’m hearing for pharmacy. Which path do you wanna take?
[00:14:49] Chris: It is back to what we said before, transactional versus emotional. What the hell is a pharmacist? They have, to be both and they can’t do either Well because of that, so [00:15:00] boy, there ought to be a better way for them to do their transactions. And also be the emotional partner. Anyway, we’ve spent a lot of time on pharmacy today.
Good for us.
[00:15:11] Stephanie Wierwille: we’ve solved all the problems apparently at
pharmacy. Okay,
so let’s move into our main
topic here, um, which is all around AI and last. Time if you joined us a couple episodes ago, um, we have been working through what we’re calling the Einstein Divide, which is just as a quick reminder.
It’s all about how, um, AI is of course really exciting and interesting, and it’s in every headline you see. But most of the headlines are about how to use AI for efficiency purposes, how to automate, how to make those transactional, um. Things faster, better, smarter. And so what we’ve been brainstorming here at PPD is all the innovation elements.
So what is going to change in the consumer landscape? What consumer behavior is already changing? What marketing behavior needs to change? What is gonna change in healthcare? And then how do you rebuild your entire, um, function around that. [00:16:00] So with that, we’re gonna do a series of what we’re calling thought experiments.
And this is a little bit of what if questions. Um, trying to look at the tea leaves of where are we today, what does the data say, what does the tech already allow already able to do, and then what will it be able to do tomorrow? And then imagining how everything will change.
[00:16:21] Chris: Yes, and we’re going to, we’re going to. We’re gonna have a surprise right now. Stephanie, we’re gonna surprise Stephanie. We’re gonna, we’re gonna turn the tables on Stephanie, because last episode, um, somehow it became a ask me anything for me. Um, and everything from the upfront, quick hit icebreaker to the main thing was an interview of me, which is super cool, but not what the podcast is supposed to be.
So we need to balance, we need to balance things out. So we’re gonna flip the script and I am going to ask you, Stephanie, these things. Okay, Are you ready for that? All right. Um, so thought experiment first one, marketing [00:17:00] to machines. So what is it gonna be like in the future where we think about how we are trying to persuade.
AI agents or otherwise to take the steps that we want them to take, to take the actions we want them to take, to buy the things we want them to buy as representatives of, I would assume humans, I mean, we could go. even further, like why there have to be human on their side, but let’s just assume, um, that all this is in the service of, of humans, even though the agents are, are the middleman.
Um. There’s a lot of ways we can come at this one. Stephanie, let’s first talk about, um, websites. We’ve talked about that a little bit, uh, and there was this great story that you posted from Future Today Institute. The title alone is amazing. The next internet isn’t for us. We’ve heard our friend Andy Chang, talk about that.
Um, so let, oh, web 2.0. Oh my gosh. I [00:18:00] forgot that was a thing. Remember that? Holy cow. Alright, so what. That’s just one thing we could talk about. We can also talk about what it’s like to market to machines. Like what does that even look like? Uh, where do you wanna dive in? You wanna dive in a little broader with marketing machines.
You wanna start with like one aspect of it, which is websites and internet. Where are you at with marketing to machines?
[00:18:24] Stephanie Wierwille: Maybe we start where I think where we last left off, we did have a discussion around, you know, hey, what if websites are not the center of the digital ecosystem? What if you know, people are already going to their AI platform of choice and bypassing search and bypassing websites? So that’s kind of how we got to that one.
This is almost like the next leg of that. So, yeah, I, I think. You know, we’ll drop this in the show notes, but, um, there was a recent, uh, share by the feature Today Institute where what they talked about in the next internet isn’t for us, is kind of taking that whole idea of websites are dead to the next level and saying [00:19:00] there’s, there’s new features that just came out inside chat GBT just last week, where there’s now an app store and so.
That starts to show a vision for what OpenAI is trying to build, which is use Canva inside chat, GPT, use Spotify inside chat, GPT, use Expedia inside chat GPT in the same way that Meta was like, don’t leave meta. We’re not gonna, we’re gonna devalue link clicks chat. GPT is like, we are not all, we don’t want you to leave our little ecosystem.
So then you can imagine, okay, AI is crawling the web. To pull things in to the new, should I say, digital front
door. We
[00:19:36] Chris: Oh.
[00:19:37] Stephanie Wierwille: to the, the
new front door. Um, and, and so this whole internet that we’ve built to your point Web 2.0, what, which is, you know, 1.0 was like the, the Prodigy version 20 years ago.
Web 2.0 is what we have today. It’s built for humans to read. Web3 0.0 I feel like died a very fast death. But where we are [00:20:00] going is, is Future Today Institute called it, I think they called it, uh, the Model Web, which is basically who’s using the web is bots. And so I’ll come back to this whole headline here.
If bots are the ones using the web and serving up recommendations and everyone’s living inside of their AI platform of choice, then who are you actually marketing to in the future? You have to market to machines, right. To get served up
at all.
So I’ll
pause there, but that’s
[00:20:29] Chris: Do you, I think we, I think when we, the next thing that we’re gonna talk about in this section, um, will brand awareness even matter? That’s the question. Right? But you’re, but you, but I think you’re right. Like, yes, you’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to market to, to agents or somehow persuade agents.
Whatever that means may be something that doesn’t even smell or look like. Marketing the way we describe it [00:21:00] today. Um, like is promotion even a thing for machines, right? Well, you’re trying to persuade somebody and there’s so many ways to persuade them. Um, emotional, as we’ve talked about, emotional transactional.
Is there an emotional component to persuading anymore if it’s just AI machines? I will, I will lob a, um. Lobb question at you next on that, but like Annie Chang has talked about this before, right? Like, what does UX look like if your website’s for agents, not for, not for humans, I don’t know. Human-centered design is gonna have to.
be balanced by model centered design, or AI centered design or machine centered design, right?
It’s a whole new field. Boy, if you are worried about your job going away, for some reason, as a web designer, imagine what you could do if you, [00:22:00] you know, I wonder if everybody’s offering classes on that. Stephanie AI Center design, what would that be? Ax.
[00:22:09] Stephanie Wierwille: There you go.
[00:22:11] Chris: All right. So wait, I wanna ask you a question because think about that, right? That’s a practical thing in our world website. Um, and under marketing to machines, another question that we could ask is, will brand awareness matter? Right? And we talked about this a little bit last time too. What, to what degree will brand awareness matter to a bot?
Okay. What will happen in the consumer journey? Uh, will a lot of the aspects that we know are effective in brand go away because it’s all about, you know, like we said before, people need brands because they need shortcuts. They cannot just, they can’t go to the grocery store and, and use logic and research to make a decision on the a hundred items they need to buy.
They would curl up in the fetal position. So brands allow you to [00:23:00] build trust in something for all kinds of reasons. And then you just go.
and I’m picking Del Monte corn off the thing, even though I couldn’t tell you why I’ve been doing it for 15 years. Right. Um, but with bots, maybe not, but maybe. Right, because what’s one of the most power, well, we talked about this with Starbucks, what’s more powerful in branding?
Emotional transactional,
Stephanie,
[00:23:24] Stephanie Wierwille: Emotional.
[00:23:24] Chris: right? So is there a world where you’re a human, you have bots working on your behalf, right? And theoretically I just want the best quality item at the best price. What has that ever been true? Why do people buy, sorry. If you have one of these a, a Jeep Cherokee, which are super cool looking horribly made cars, people know they’re horribly made cars, but they buy ’em anyway ’cause they’re cool. So would you not tell your bot like, Hey, I don’t [00:24:00] care what kind of corn, canned corn you buy for me, but when it comes to my clothes, like this is the vibe I’m going after. Huh? What do you think So where would you go with that.
[00:24:13] Stephanie Wierwille: So I think that. Brand is still going to be important in the marketing to humans realm so that when they are served a recommendation or something shows up at their front door, that it is reinforced. But I think that the transactional marketing to machines is going, is going to be purely algorithmic. And I’m gonna introduce something.
We could call it the reputation graph or the reputation algorithm, reputation, right now, it’s a very big, vague word, right? But it includes sometimes, sometimes, depending on how you define your words, you might call brand reputation or vice versa, right? But often reputation is thought of as. Everything from earned media to ratings and reviews to word of mouth [00:25:00] to what your employees think of you and so on and so forth.
But imagine all of that mapped and graft. Whereas today, ratings and reviews are very specific to like Google My Business and product reviews and Yelp. Tomorrow there might be an entire knowledge graph of all this information that. Machines, bots are pulling from to make decisions of what to serve up to me.
So here’s my silly anecdote of how I already do this. Like, I already asked my AI friend of choice to give me supplement recommendations, and I, you know, I’ve told it, you know me, I’m, I’m all in on this. So I’ve told it all my medical information, I’ve given it all my lab work, and I’ve been like, recommend supplements for me.
Tell me why. Give me every possible detail. What time of day should I take it? Which. Brand, should I get why? Which one’s the cleanest? So what’s it pulling from? It’s pulling from the web of content. Imagine that times a million. It could pull from all kinds of information, and so that’s very transactional.
What I’m getting at is when it gives me the recommendation and those vitamins show up on my doorstep [00:26:00] where I haven’t even asked for them. I need to be reinforced and, and have the emotional connection to maybe know that brand to some degree. So that’s where I am today. What I don’t,
what do
[00:26:11] Chris: do you I think in, I think in one hand I could argue that you’d. You, and on one hand I could argue that you don’t. So what does it matter what the brand is? If it’s giving you what you want, who cares? Like if it’s Johnny’s house of supplements or if it’s. Rite Aid, like what difference does it make if you’re getting what you want?
But that’s, that’s, that’s the trick. At the end of the day, you have to be getting what you want no matter how you’re getting it. Right. So you, you could take what you just said and apply it to everything, not just products you buy, services you use, people you engage with. Right. Like that, the next Tinder.
Like what, how, how does this become basically a way to engage anything in the world, right? But at the end of the day, if whatever you’re served [00:27:00] up is not what you want, so let’s say that, like going back to the emotional argument. Hey, I want a new. Outfit for this rave. I’m going to, this is totally me ’cause I go to raves every weekend.
Um, and I want it to be super cool. I want it to be the hips thing. I wanna look, um, not too sexy, but also like, you know, pretty hip. I, I describe it however I’m gonna describe it. Then AI goes out and does all the things you just said and brings, like, orders me the costume, orders me my outfit, and it is a costume in many cases, or a rave.
I know this from my daughter. Uh, and, and I’m like, this is not me. Right. Or I think it’s me. And then I show up and people are like, what’s that? What’s, what is Johnny’s house of Rave clothes? What is that brand you’re wearing? That’s, they laugh at me now. Now I’m like, well, it fit all the criteria, [00:28:00] but I’m not
buying this
again.
[00:28:02] Stephanie Wierwille: But just like a good salesperson, AI would give you. Hints along the way. So I, I shop for my furniture. We’re, we’re doing a little furniture update. I’ve been doing fur. I’ve been, it’s my a, my AI is my interior designer. So I take pictures of my house. I give it a little bit of inspo photos. I give a direction.
It creates a mockup for me. I change the mockup. We go back and forth. We settle on the mockup. I show my friends and family, everybody agrees we change more things. Then I’m like, go out and find the products, give me the links, and now you can take it to the next level because now agents are a thing. Now buy the furniture for me.
Negotiate a price for me. You know, negotiate the shipping, whatever you need. By the time it shows up on my doorstep, I’m already sold. It’s not showing up, and I am like shocked and surprised. We’ve been partnering together along the way. Unless it’s toilet paper, in which case it would know. I don’t care. I was
gonna say, I
don’t
[00:28:55] Chris: But I,
[00:28:55] Stephanie Wierwille: and you know,
there’s a good
[00:28:57] Chris: But
I, I, get that. I get that. Right. [00:29:00] And maybe I think in the future though, it may, it’s gonna be faster than that. You’re going to trust your AI person, like you would trust your stylist.
If you, if you got a stylist you like, and they’re like, oh, we got this new new line in. you gotta try this sweater.
And you’re like, cool. You know me, you know what I like, you know, my size, you know my style, you know, the vibe I’m trying to give. And I would just say like, cool, order it. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, like, I might look at it to be fair. Um, but if this is true for everything, I can see the point is there’s gonna be times where it’s not what you want or it’s, you think it’s what you want and it’s not when you go out in the real world.
And that’s fine. That’s the way it is now too. You can go on your own and buy something and find out like, oh shit, this was the wrong move. Um. And that’s what’s gonna reinforce a brand at the end of the day anyway. Right? So if it turns out that Johnny’s house of rave clothes is amazing, you can tell your AI bot, I love [00:30:00] this place, I love this brand.
Make sure you’re always including them in my options,
right?
[00:30:06] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess back to the big question here, will brands matter? Do you still need brand awareness? I guess the answer is going to be back to, it depends. It depends on what you’re shopping for. It depends on how high the emotional connection needs to be. Perhaps it depends on how it needs to be reinforced, how it’s shopped for.
But I think that the point is marketers should start thinking yesterday about how to market to machines. And we’re already thinking about it in terms of search and websites, but we’ve gotta start thinking about it in a much bigger world. Um, in terms of. Healthcare recommendations, right? How do you make sure that your doctors are being served up at the exact right moments or whatever it is.
So put that on the FY 26 audience list. I would, I think, is the takeaway.
[00:30:55] Chris: Okay. So I know we’re running low on time. We wanna do one more of these thought experiments. I’m [00:31:00] gonna skip to the brain breaker. Okay. Ready for the brain breaker. The, uh, so everything we’re talking about kind of infers some level of a, of a machine economy where like the whole economy is. Basically fronted by machines everywhere.
The interactions are machines, the purchasing decisions are machines. Um, you know, there was a story last year, a couple years ago where two AI systems negotiated a contract in a way that was beneficial to both parties. Um, where, where are you at with this? I
think this is,
this is massive.
[00:31:42] Stephanie Wierwille: It is, and you can already see this starting to play out. I mean, you already mentioned this has already been done in a small scale, even in 2023, but then when you look at. At Open AI and what they’re building, well, they’ve got shopping being built inside of their platform. You have ROC launching advertising.
That’s [00:32:00] maybe a small example, but then you can imagine, okay, there starts to become a commerce play here for B2C. So now change that over to B2B and think about if we all have our agents buying on our behalf, which is what we just dug into. And organizations have agents buying on their behalf, researching on their behalf, shopping on their behalf.
Then Then they’re negotiating on their behalf. And then next thing you know, you have this entire underbelly of the economy. Um, that’s machines creating its own. Yeah. Like you said, machine economy. And this already happens to some degree, right? You already have programmatic media buying. In the advertising world, that all happens like on the back end.
You have APIs at storefronts, you have. Robo bots, um, robo buyers on the stock market, um, like making deals behind the scenes. So that’s already been happening. It’s just imagine if procurement from a B2B standpoint is 100% machine driven. [00:33:00] Then the question for B2B, I think we can port over from our first thought experiment, which is how much does B2B brand matter?
How much do emotional decisions play in a B2B mindset? How much do relationships matter in that future? Or is it all based on reputation? ROI, negotiation and price points?
[00:33:19] Chris: Well, I mean, we’re definitely gonna have to invent. B to A, if somebody hasn’t already said that we need to trademark immediately, make a note, Mari, we’re gonna trademark B to A and also A to A. So you can have, you can have B2C marketers, B2B marketers, B two A marketers and A to a marketers. Um, so yeah, I mean, I, I think that this is where people like Sam Altman and others at that level, that’s their, what they think is coming as just one.
Part of what’s coming, but it’s a big part. Um, and it’s also why people say like, oh, we’re just all gonna be sitting around. It reminds me of Wally, like we’re gonna all turn [00:34:00] into the people from Wally,
which is not a good thing, but you know
what I’m
[00:34:05] Stephanie Wierwille: I already feel, yeah, I feel pretty close to Wally already. Um, to be honest.
Just the screen time, the addiction to the phone, the couch, like I’m loving my sofa. I don’t know, it’s just, I’m already so close to that, Chris. I just, it’s not that far off.
[00:34:21] Chris: You are not, but look at the outcome of the people in Wally. They’re all like. You know, not healthy people. Um, and all they do is sit around all day and do nothing. You’re right. I guess that’s partly that’s true. But you know what? Look, don’t sell yourself short. I remember somebody was talking about this last week, um, when I was a kid and growing up through the eighties and nineties before the internet stick, seven hours of TV was normal.
Get home from school. You watch Hogan’s Heroes, Gilligan’s Island, maybe some other shows, Scooby-Doo for at least a couple hours. This is Gen X because there of course, there’s no parents around for us. [00:35:00] Um, and then you would watch two or three hours at night, you’d watch all the shows. You’d watch Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley and whatever the hell else, Dallas and, you know, fantasy Island.
So, you know, it’s not like it’s a new thing that people are spending, it’s just a different screen.
[00:35:19] Stephanie Wierwille: True.
[00:35:21] Chris: So when we look at our screen time and we, we have those terrible times where we, we tell everybody, pull out your phone and look at your screen time. We’re like, oh my God, it’s seven hours or eight hours.
It’s like, well, you know, that’s just your phone though. This is not your iPad and your TV and all the other stuff that’s not showing up there. But anyway, I digress. So we, we believe that the, you believe. With you that the AI economy, the machine economy is,
we’re on the
cusp of
that.
[00:35:52] Stephanie Wierwille: Absolutely. I think it’s already happening more than we can even already imagine, um, in many areas. And so. [00:36:00] It needs to scale. Um, and the hardest part of all of this, I feel like I’m gonna start saying this every time we talk about ai, but the hardest part of all of this is not the tech, it’s not the processes of how it would work.
It’s the change management and it’s the cultural adaption. So yeah, you might have robo buyers on the stock market, right, that we don’t really think about or hear about. But to apply that to massive organizations at scale is going to take a lot of time. That’s the part that’s gonna take more time.
[00:36:33] Chris: Yes, and it’s very disruptive.
Very disruptive. Um, alright, so I think we need to be
done.
Do you want to take
[00:36:40] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Okay.
Let’s go home.
Um, thank you everybody for listening. Uh, you heard it here first, B to a, A to a and ax. I think we coined three terms
[00:36:51] Chris: I wonder if those are coined already.
[00:36:54] Stephanie Wierwille: Maybe you heard it here second.
[00:36:56] Chris: But there’s no original
ideas, so I’m just
assuming somebody’s
already said that. [00:37:00]
[00:37:00] Stephanie Wierwille: That’s right. Um, all right, well, you heard it here second. Um, but make sure you show, share the show and let us know what you think the future is gonna be like. And until next time, don’t be satisfied with the normal push that no normal. And we’ll talk to you soon.
[00:37:14] Chris: Hi, bye,
