Ep 86: Laser Cats and Compliance - Designing Websites for the AI Search Era
Watch the YouTube video version above or listen to the podcast below!
Episode Summary
Alex Pokorny and Dave Dougherty examine whether AI search changes what a website is for. Alex opens with the premise: if people increasingly read a brand's content through a chatbot, and LLM-referred visitors land deep in the site at a product or checkout page, then the homepage-first, minimalist, committee-approved design of the last decade may no longer earn its keep. He asks whether that frees brands to bring back personality, from storytelling to the "laser cats" and cursor trails of the old internet, while still meeting accessibility, compliance, SEO, and LLM crawlability requirements.
Dave answers by arguing against "the financialization of everything," citing Rory Sutherland's observation that creatives are the only people in business who must pitch their ideas to non-creatives. His central claim is that AI search is pushing marketers back toward traditional PR, because AI answers draw on the general sentiment around a company, its people, and its associations. He illustrates it with a recent exercise: an AI answer for a high-level informational topic cited five sources, including the company's own page, a product press release, the CEO's CNBC appearance, a trade publication covering the release, and an influencer covering the trade publication. Dave's conclusion is that the strategy has to be an "all the above strategy," and that a company still needs a website as the home base other sources point back to. He also notes that a highly regulated component manufacturer's site will always function largely as a library of technical documentation.
Alex reframes the customer base as a community rather than a set of individual buyers, pointing to internet service providers whose reputations sank after years of cost cutting. Both hosts describe the pre-launch questions marketers skip: whether sales can service the leads, whether manufacturing has quality issues, and whether there is stock to ship. Alex recalls a head of user experience at a large health insurer who called website testing pointless because everyone, including the CEO, knew the service was the real problem. On design, Alex compares minimalism to "landlord gray," the safe choice of agreement by committee, while Dave says smaller organizations have more room for personality because it is how they differentiate. They hold up Liquid Death, which sells canned water, and its Yeti casket cooler collaboration as differentiation through creativity. Alex describes Campus Profile '04, a side project built with Claude that recreates early-web sites such as The Facebook, MySpace, GeoCities, Neopets, and a Nic Cage tribute page as downloadable themes designed to pass WCAG 2.1, SEO, and AI search best practices.
The second half turns to trust. Dave describes spotting a site built from unedited Claude output ("Only Claude uses that version of pale yellow") and argues that design signals whether a company cared enough to show up. He cites a man who handed his text messages with his wife to an AI bot, and a financial services firm, discussed by Robert Rose on This Old Marketing, that used an AI avatar for quarterly reporting meant to build trust. Alex recounts a Walmart return that a chatbot looped on and then abandoned, compounded by a third-party seller with copy-and-pasted fake reviews, and says the experience reduced Walmart in his mind to "any random website." Dave says many marketers raised on "technology at scale" now question whether everything needs to scale, and Alex adds that mobile game advertising shows how concentrated scale produces bland, pay-to-win products while a niche tank-artillery game on Steam thrives with a small audience that loves it.
The hosts close on positioning. Dave says the question he asks of any opportunity is what he wants to be known for, because "the scarcity of you is your differentiation," and that filter kills roughly 80% of his ideas. Alex warns that companies overestimate how much customers think about their products, which breeds fear of having a personality. Dave adds that a people pleaser in marketing is sunk because the job is to signal who a product is not for, and shares a construction-products case in which ad clicks came from site managers on mobile while orders were placed on desktop by office staff and channel partner reps. Their shared conclusion: AI makes scale easy, but being liked, known, and trusted still depends on knowing and showing up for a real community.
Ep 86: Laser Cats and Compliance: Designing Websites for the AI Search Era Podcast and Video Transcript
AI Search Changes Websites
Dave Dougherty: Hello and welcome to, wait, is that right? Uh, Enterprising Minds. Alex and Dave here. So, um, we are going to talk about AI search and how that impacts your strategy. Um, and Alex, you had, like, some more nuance to the thing- Yeah ... but that's basically the topic. You know, before we, we jump in, just a quick plug to like, subscribe, share, help us out, move all that stuff forward on your podcaster of choice or YouTube.
And check out enterprising-minds.com. All right. Alex, your turn.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. This was kind of a random side thought that I started chatting with some people, and everyone seems to have thoughts on it, and I would love to hear everyone's thoughts. So speaking of commenting, please do.
It's basically as AI search takes off, that means people are taking your website content and viewing it through a chatbot, basically, a search window, right?
Which removes the experience of your website. So then it becomes this question of, okay, are we now finally in an era that kind of pulls away from the very clean, minimalistic, you know, high accessibility, high SEO compliance sort of websites? Are we finally going to go back to something that has more personality?
Because the only time someone would land on the site is maybe to do a deep checkout process because AI threw them all the way down to a deep product page. You know, they re- they went, they hemmed and hawed, they went through the reviews, they saw the pros and cons list, and they clicked on the one that they want, and they suddenly appeared deep into the site, which people have been seeing that show up in their analytics that a lot of, uh, LLM users show up really, really deep in the user kind of journey, typical user journey.
But once you get down to that level, now you have this website experience. So this experience now can be more of a storytelling creative s- um, aspect, showing off the brand, but also showing off your personality, the company's personality, as well as still maintaining those levels of, you know, accessibility, compliance, SEO, easy crawlability for the LLMs.
All that has to be built in, of course. But can we now start getting away from minimalism? Can we start having some fun with the designs that are out there, and can we start changing things back to maybe, I don't know. I keep thinking of like the old internet. Can we get laser cats around? Can we get some click tails, like following your mouse, you know, that goes around?
Like just some of the fun stuff that used to happen on websites, and now they're just, they're so gray and boring. I don't know. So do you think this is a time and opportunity for that kind of renaissance or revival of design, of creative design, or do you find this to be kind of like a time of like, no, let's make these things fast and stripped down.
It's an online spreadsheet with a chatbot. Like there's an efficiency play here too from a business standpoint, which I see both sides.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, I see both sides too.
Creativity Versus Efficiency
Dave Dougherty: And I think one of the things that I've been railing against, I think it'll be obvious, for anybody who's listened to a bunch of our shows.
If you're new here, welcome, and, uh, here we go. I am strongly against the financialization of everything, right? 'Cause some of the best things, some of the best creative things don't make sense-
Alex Pokorny: Yeah ...
Dave Dougherty: from a spreadsheet standpoint. Um-
Alex Pokorny: Right. But they matter.
Dave Dougherty: But they do matter, and they have a outsized impact to where if you didn't do that, you wouldn't imagine, you know, the organization without it, right?
Like, um- Right ... Rory Sutherland, one of our, favorite speakers, um, has this wonderful line on how creatives in the business world are the only ones who have to pitch to non-creatives to get their ideas approved. And if you took the inverse of that, you get the financial guys pitching their projects to creatives to say, "Hey, can you come up with some creative ideas around, accounting?"
You'd be like, "What? No, don't do that. We don't want creativity in our accounting."
Alex Pokorny: Or let's make the cup 7% smaller. That's what we're going to pitch to you creatives. And creatives would say, "No, that sounds like a terrible thing for the user. Why would they want to make..." Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Well, and that's the whole, that's the old Henry Ford quote, right?
If I would've asked-
Alex Pokorny: Yeah ...
Dave Dougherty: the person what they wanted, they would've said a faster horse. Yeah. They wouldn't have said a car, right?
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Um, so I think one of the nice things, and this will be kind of a roundabout way to get to the point. I think AI is putting more of a focus on a lot of what traditional PR has been promoting for a very long time, and all of us just forgot about it because all of the other tactics were be- were easier, so we didn't want to do PR, right?
But now, you know, what is AI pulling from? AI is pulling from what the general sentiment is of your company, of your personal brand, of- ... Your associations, all of that. So if you don't like any of that, you need to change the perspectives of, your community so that when they search for you, things are the way that you would like them to be, right?
This is very much brand building and communication strategies and all of that stuff. However- Y- you and I both know having worked on, creative, smaller entrepreneurial websites and then huge conglomerate, very highly regulated websites- Yeah ... the purpose of the site is very different for all of those.
So- Yeah I think, you know, the creativity piece, yeah, that could work for a lot of different industries, um, a lot of different companies. But if you're going to be a highly regulated, component organization, you're never really going to get past, um, our website is the collection of technical details that people can download so that when they've purchased or specced in our product, they can have all the information they need for their, their files.
Yeah. You know, do you need a website for that? No, not really. But, you know, you need that- Yeah ... part, you know, to back up your conversations with them as they're speccing in the project, right? Um, yeah. I'll stop there. Thoughts, comments, questions?
Community Before Promotion
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. Yeah.
No, there, there's some really good points that you're bringing up there.
So, um, one of the first ones that really piqued my interest is you said community, and that's a phrase that I keep using as almost kind of like the anti-financialization of everything kind of piece, where a lot of companies forget that they're actually working with a community of individuals, not just one individual customer, one individual customer.
Because it is those reviews, the community of word of mouth, the community of those pieces that actually creates your customer base. They're not individual customers that you're trying to... Yes, I mean, personalization is big, and there's all these kind of pushes towards, greater segmentation and trying to, like, slice and dice this community as fine as you can to try to convert them.
But overall, you have a customer base which is a community, so if you piss off your community, you're going to have financial problems. And that, that's a piece that seems to somehow be so easily forgotten with... I mean, I, I think of, like, you know, internet service providers. Some of them have some of the worst reputations out there.
Now, I mean, their, their vans get, targeted for, vandalism because people hate the company so bad that when they see one, they'll just immediately try to attack them. Like, that- that's, that's pretty bad. Yeah. That's, that's a good line to say, "Wow we really messed up." Um, but they got so focused on the cost aspect that they really, really lost focus on the whole point of a business, which is to make money and have a relationship with your customers who support your business.
They're supporting you, yes, by individual interactions, but my gosh, if you don't have loyalty and continuous payments in the future, your business has no future. Those are completely tied together.
Dave Dougherty: Well, and how many, how many times have we talked about this, you know, outside of the podcast, but you're sitting in a strategy session or a campaign, you know, scoping session, and It's like, all right, here's the campaign we're going to do.
It's going to run in these countries. It's going to, you know, here's our budget. Yep. We're targeting this, these particular people. And then you go, "Okay, great. What's the cost per acquisition you're, willing to have?"
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: I mean, you've commented on the game that you would play- Yeah ... you know-
Alex Pokorny: Right ...
Dave Dougherty: on a previous episode.
Throw out a number. But then also on top of that
At least, you know, when I was younger as a marketer, I wouldn't have thought of asking this question. But, you know, what's our ability to actually service the leads in the country?
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. That's a huge one.
Dave Dougherty: Do we even start the campaign because we don't actually have a full-time salesperson in, you know, the area that we're going to be launching stuff in?
Or-
Alex Pokorny: Gosh, I run into that so many times ...
Dave Dougherty: do we have quality issues in the manufacturing aspect of the organization? Or do-
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. Should we be popularizing this product? Do we actually have- Right ... stock for this product? Can we- Right ... ship this product realistically, or will the shipping cost be so astronomically insane that it makes no sense to ship to them?
Like-
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. So do you then have that relationship with your customers where, "Hey, we're launching this new product," or, "We have this, you know, this update to this existing product that you buy from us all the time." And they go, "Okay, great. But you didn't fulfill the last order I put in yet, so-" Right ... "I don't really care about your new stuff.
Just give me the stuff you already promised me." Right? I mean, how many businesses do you know have to deal with that?
Alex Pokorny: Oh, man. It's a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. I once met with a person who was head of user experience for a very large health insurance company.
Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm.
Alex Pokorny: Um, one of the largest in the US, and she ... It was pretty funny because I asked her about, like, "You know, what kind of user testing are you doing on the website?"
She's like, "It's all pointless. Because really everyone knows. CEO, everyone. I mean, you probably know. The problem is our service is terrible, and everyone knows the service is terrible. So the website, yes we're testing things. But we know it's also pointless because the service is really bad."
And it was like, wow. Yeah, you kind of, kind of captured the greater picture. That's ... You finally encapsulated the whole point, which is- Mm-hmm ... you need to fix that first. I mean, you, you do have to ask those questions before, should we be just promoting for the sake of promoting? No, you shouldn't be. If your product is terrible or your reputation is terrible, like, you got some- Mm fundamental issues that you probably shouldn't be like, "Hey, more people pay attention to us while we're going through this."
Five Sources Behind AI Answers
Dave Dougherty: Right. I was in a discussion recently I have to keep it relatively generalized. But we were talking about a particular part of the website, and we were talking about AEO and, you know, how does this work?
And I said, "Okay, if you look at this page, this is like a high-level informational type page that, we want to make sure that we're in the conversation for."
Alex Pokorny: Sure.
Dave Dougherty: I pull up Google and I do the thing that as an SEO, you loathe, which is, you Google the page- Yeah ... to see what shows up, right?
But in this case, I can't trigger an AI answer box without that. Right? So we do that, and I look at it, and then I hover over the five sources for that page. And or the topic of that page. And it was interesting because it was a perfect example of this collection of strategies and the kind of like culmination of what people think of you and, full content strategy, communication strategy piece.
There's the actual page that was under question, right? So the owned media website. Sure. That was source number one. Yeah. Source number two was a press release-
Alex Pokorny: Okay ...
Dave Dougherty: relating to a new product for that particular topic.
Alex Pokorny: Okay.
Dave Dougherty: Sure. Yeah. Source number three was an appearance by the CEO on MSNBC. Okay.
Or CNBC, sorry. Yeah. Fourth was a trade mag talking about the press release for the new product, and then source number five was a influencer talking about the industry mag talking about the press release talking about- Sure.
Alex Pokorny: The product. Yeah ...
Dave Dougherty: right? And so it was just like, this is why strategy you need to do isn't all the above strategy, right?
We, we've always debated with Ruthi about whether or not a website could just be a spreadsheet, and I've always pushed back on that because w- if you are looking at basic communication to the customer, a spreadsheet might be sufficient. Mm-hmm. It is extremely efficient, not very personal, not very good, only goes to one kind of learning style, right?
But in my mind, it's not really defensible in, you know, a legal situation, right? Depending on what your products are. Like, you need that home base for other entities to refer to, to know where you stand on a subject, to know what your product releases are, and to show your expertise in that, right? Yeah.
So if we're going to launch into that particular topic that's current and we want to be a part of,
Alex Pokorny: Yep ...
Dave Dougherty: that content needs to be there.
Alex Pokorny: Yep. Yeah, th-that's, that's an interesting point too about, like, websites in general. I've been getting this question, which really based upon the amount of AI search it's not really a valid question yet, but it's do I need a website?
Do I need a webpage for this? And the answer is yes, of course you do, because just because you made a cool product in your basement doesn't mean anyone knows about it. And you at least should put it onto your website that, you know, you created something so that then an AI can come and pull that information from it.
I'm still mulling over the, the point you made earlier, though, about speaking of, like, a manufacturing business who has a bunch of safety documentation that they're required to have or something like that. There's a lot of industries actually that have that. Even, food companies, which can be more consumer friendly and a lot of fun to be- to market.
Right. They still have allergen information, you know, manufacturing information, recalls. There's a bunch of legal stuff that's always created. You know, it's, it's necessary and it's, there's a compliance piece to it too.
So can you have laser cats and compliance? That's the thing I keep rolling over.
Yes. Can I have Nic Cage jokes and Chuck Norris jokes and compliance?
Dave Dougherty: I think so.
Alex Pokorny: I think you can, but maybe it's just- Minimalism has created easy templates? I don't know, or, like, less choices, less, maybe the, the choices are, it's like the, the landlord gray. You know, it's, you paint everything gray because that works with any color and it's, you know, inoffensive as can be, but it has absolutely no, personality to it.
But you do that because it's a easy blank slate. Is, is that the white and black kind of websites of today? Is that, that the reason? It's just because, you know, you get agreement by committee, and that's the least offensive version of it versus the fun laser cats? I don't know. Well- I'm stuck on this of, like, man, like- the old internet was fun, and the new internet is boring, and I am, I feel like-
Dave Dougherty: Says the man in the gray sweater. Yeah.
Alex Pokorny: I know, in a gray room. Millennial gray is the color. No, it should be. But yeah. I mean, i- is, is that how we kind of got to here, and then do we have a chance now to finally get out of it?
And-
Personality as Differentiation
Dave Dougherty: Well, I think it, I mean, any, with anything, right? If you're in the, a smaller organization, you're allowed to have a higher personality. Why? Because that's part of your differentiation strategy.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, it's how you show up, like how, how you get noticed, right? You have attention- Yeah ... because you got the, the loud hairstyle, because goodness, that's the only way you're going to get attention.
Dave Dougherty: Right. Yeah. I mean, this, this is the same reason why, your teens and your 20s, you're allowed to have, purple spiky hair and, you know- Mm-hmm ... um, a lot of piercings, right? But it doesn't necessarily match your environment when you're 45- Right ... for most people, right?
Alex Pokorny: Yep.
Dave Dougherty: So you know, you have to adapt to the things.
But I think the, the reason I fight against the financialization of everything is that it goes to streamline everything, so that- Yeah ... you're then forced to make the decision of, hey, we could have a fun brand we could do something really creative here and really, you know, resonate with our, our community of potential customers.
Or- Yeah. Or- I can post the webpage, write a thing on LinkedIn, and call it good enough. Yeah. And then they'll check the boxes and move on. And then you don't have to fight the politics. You don't have to go to the- Yeah, plug creative rounds ... accountants and say, "Hey, here, let me justify my creativity so that you guys can, go back- Right to your spreadsheets and, and have your security blanket." But I think, you know, the, the most recent example, at least in my mind, of a company that's doing both is Liquid Death.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. No, I was wondering if you wanted to bring them up because they're a great example- Yeah ... of differentiation through creativity.
Right. I mean, their product, well, go ahead and explain what their product is. I mean, it's-
Dave Dougherty: I mean, the product is water. I mean, it is- Yeah ... so undifferentiated.
Alex Pokorny: Exactly. It's the most homogenous one you can think of. It's just-
Dave Dougherty: Right ...
Alex Pokorny: a can of water.
Dave Dougherty: But the, the way that they were able to break through was
I mean, they're, um, an amazing case study for, um, collaborations, especially when it comes to social media.
Alex Pokorny: Yes.
Dave Dougherty: You know? I mean, like, my favorite example that they did was the, um, the Yeti casket cooler. Yeah. Where it was two Yeti coolers in a full size casket, so that you could just have a casket in your backyard barbecue.
You know? I mean, like, how it-
Alex Pokorny: Liquid Death. Yeah, I see it.
Dave Dougherty: I mean, that works pretty well for the brand. Yeah. I mean, even their whole name is, is a troll on-
Alex Pokorny: Yeah ...
Dave Dougherty: how you market water. It's always, you know-
Alex Pokorny: Right ...
Dave Dougherty: liquid life or- Right ... energy or sustenance and amazing whatever. Something. No. Death. Right. Like, so I mean- Yeah, no, I mean- the whole thing is contra.
Yeah, you can see it. So, yeah.
Old Web Revival Themes
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, that's a cool one. Let me mention my s- crazy side project, 'cause I got another one, which relates to this fun topic, which was a late night conversation with Claude. Thank you, Claude, for staying up late. Um, which was, can I have fun old websites who are accessibility, SEO, AIO, GEO compliant, basically.
Right. Can I have best practices, the WCAG, like 2.1, compliance against The Facebook, if we remember Poke Wars, and people poking each other back and forth. Oh. That was a part of The Facebook, and that experience- I mean,
Dave Dougherty: that was how you started some relationships, man. Yep. This is, hey, here's my interest.
Alex Pokorny: And then Tom from MySpace, which everybody was friends with because the minimum template of any profile page included a, the guy named Tom who was a friend with you. So you had your top eight friends or whatever. Can you rebuild that one? Friendster, NeoCities, Blogger, uh, GeoCities. Never AOL. There were Neopets, and G- G- oh gosh, I should have.
I didn't. I didn't go that far. I should have. And also one that is simply just a Nic Cage website that has the bees GIF and random quotes from him. And I rebuilt all of those individually as themes, downloadable. I will post them somewhere. I'll figure that out on our next episode and share it out.
When they pass accessibility compliance and SEO best practices, and AIO, GEO best practices as they exist today. The, all of those things found workarounds to do all of them. I'm trying to do Winamp next, but that one's a little tricky, but I'm, I'm getting there.
Dave Dougherty: Are you going to run into a bunch of trademark issues with that?
Like-
Alex Pokorny: It's called Campus Profile '04. Uh, my friends, it's not MySpace. It's my friends.
Um, basically I'm skirting a line on a lot of those, but, Yeah ... quite frankly there, there's disclaimers and posting basically saying that this is the theme of that era, and that, that's basically what I, I have a collection of websites that is, um- Mm-hmm. Design project ... themes designed with that intent.
And really they're parodies, uh, when you get- Right ... down to it, of each one of them. And everybody, there's also, also a disclaimer speaking of the compliance standpoint. The sites, as they stand alone, are basically compliant friendly. I can't say that they are compliant, because the moment you throw an image on there and don't properly tag it correctly, that is not compliant.
So that is always up to the user once they download this theme to mess with it and make it not compliant, right? So they can totally- Well, I think- ... do whatever they want ...
Dave Dougherty: part unpacking. You know, like you say, you want a little further. The flip side of it too is that it, like any market or any technology, we're seeing it maturing.
Alex Pokorny: Yep.
Dave Dougherty: So, as it matures, you get more and more regulation and it becomes more complicated and it gets more whatever. Sure. So then, yeah, it's easier to do a Instagram post because then you don't have to go through all the legal checks. You don't have to go through all the- Yeah ... compliance checks or whatever.
So yeah, I think I recently ran into a website. I was researching a thing for an idea that I had And in the back of my head I thought, "Okay, I could just have Claude do this and do an HTML thing." Like, but for me, I would've stopped at this is like an MVP, like sketch on a napkin level thing. Yeah. Like, I would never go to market with straight Claude HTML output.
But I found this website with this idea that I had where it was, I looked at it and I went, "Only Claude uses that version of pale yellow."
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. Like- There's tells all over.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, yeah. Oh, man.
Dave Dougherty: And so I was looking at him like, "Dang, these people don't care."
Alex Pokorny: No.
Dave Dougherty: A lot of people don't. Whoever does this, like, has the idea.
Yeah. So on one hand it was cool because I'm like, "Okay, this is literally the minimum viable." Yeah. I'm seeing it in front of me.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Uh, I'm recognizing that this is not what I would do with this idea. ... So great. Now I have an example of the minimum viable, now I can iterate and make it better.
Sure.
Alex Pokorny: Sure.
Dave Dougherty: But then it had me thinking too that there's a level of trust with design because you actually took the time to show up- Yeah ... in a way- Yeah ... that's not- Right ... just minimal viable, right? Right. Um, so that's another piece of it, too, is that, hey, we want to build the trust with our community, with our target audience, with, you know, whoever were current customers.
And in order to do that, you have to show up. Yeah. Relationships are two ways, right? You can't just outsource- Yeah ... your conversations with, somebody, right?
AI Can't Replace Trust
Dave Dougherty: The, there was the there was the little news article of the guy that created an AI bot to handle the text messages with his wife.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: I'm sorry.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, that's a poor choice.
Dave Dougherty: If you... Yeah, it was a very poor choice. If you want to maintain that relationship, you handle that communication.
Right? That is like- A long time ago. Jeepers ... the key account of key accounts right there. Like, you can't.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Since we're a marketing show, we got to keep that lens on it.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: But if you have to show up, you have to do it. You know, have you heard the phrase churn?
Alex Pokorny: 'Cause it's going to involve a divorce lawyer.
Your account turnover is a little high, sir.
Dave Dougherty: Yes. Your customers are always cheaper.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, exactly, and your reviews are really bad. Word of mouth on the street, not great. Not great.
Dave Dougherty: Exactly. But that- Wow ... the, um, Pulizzi and Rose, the, the This Old Marketing- Yep ... the latest episode they were talking about I think it was Robert Rose was talking about a conversation he was having with the financial services guy where they had outsourced some reporting that they would do on here's what we bought, here's what we sold, here's why, that they, have to do- Yeah quarterly.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: And they set up an AI avatar to do all of it.
Alex Pokorny: Yep. I've heard of this, yeah.
Dave Dougherty: And their idea was that they wanted trust. Well, the problem with that is that you've blown it-
Alex Pokorny: Yep. Stuck in the bus ...
Dave Dougherty: right away because you're not, you're showing that you don't care enough to show up to tell people.
Yeah. Right? So this is where you have to decide what relationships are important to me and how do I show up for them.
Alex Pokorny: You know, I just had-
Dave Dougherty: This is basic humanity. This is not hard.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Walmart Chatbot Fallout
Alex Pokorny: I just had that experience with Walmart. I was trying to process a deal with a return, refund, missing parts situation, basically.
Very, very common customer issue, right?
Gigantic company. It was the only one who sold the particular product. I'm not usually that big a fan of the company, to be honest. But I, I had bought it and then now had issues with it. So, hey, quality issues, what do you expect? But they're trashing their reputation actually through a few different ways.
One of them has become more public, I don't know if you've been seeing it on YouTube or Instagram, but of, AI created items that are being sold online that once you buy them, they are nothing like the image, you know, the, the purchase, you know, page or the- Hmm ... social media ad that you originally clicked on.
And there's a few. Corridor Digital did one just recently ripping fun of them. They had like a cat blanket that was supposed to be this giant fuzzy thing, and it's a printed, screen printed like, sheet. Not even close to what it was, you know, in the photos and all the rest. But basically they're trusting a lot of third-party retailers to then advertise on their site without any kind of quality control-
Dave Dougherty: Right
Alex Pokorny: to push product, and then the, the customer service now is a chatbot. And it's such a funny perspective now that I have of the company. I am not, no longer working with this giant company who is able to handle problems and situations and returns, and the complexity of basically, and the trust that I have that they can handle these things as a, you know, retailer.
Dave Dougherty: Mm.
Alex Pokorny: Instead, there really is no differentiation between them and any random website that I find online. That suddenly, like, th- that was such a huge drop in my mind of like, we went from giant corporation with physical, you know, brick and mortar locations, one of which is nearby to me and I was just trying to get the, you know, return processing paperwork basically settled so I could go to the store and do it.
And the chatbot basically ran in circles and eventually just quit working, which a fantastic experience there, thanks. Yeah. Um, but the problem really was the manufacturer who had sold the product via their website had a really poor quality product, and they had, my guess is some fake reviews. And going around some of the other postings of this particular manufacturer, clearly fake reviews.
I mean, it was reviews that were talking about completely different products, and they were like, "Oh yeah, this pencil is so great," and the product is absolutely not a pencil. You know, that kind of stuff of like, wow, you copy and pasted bad reviews just to give yourself a bunch of five stars. Like, congratulations.
But it, it was so funny because it went from this big reputation destroyed to I could have gone to any imported goods website and had the same experience.
Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm.
Alex Pokorny: Like, that, that's it. Like, they lost it so fast. And now the next time I try to buy a product, honestly, I won't think of them as a nearby retailer that I trust.
Instead, it will be a random website. And do I trust a random website? No, I don't.
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Alex Pokorny: Like, wow, what a loss to... I mean, they already outsourced their customer service years ago. It's not like they were paying a whole lot of money to begin with, and now they just went down a layer.
I don't know.
Dave Dougherty: I had... Yeah I'm not the biggest fan of Walmart, so I won't add anything to this conversation.
Alex Pokorny: I mean, it's-
Dave Dougherty: But it is an interesting point ...
Alex Pokorny: Trash on us, to be honest. Right? Yeah. They really-
Scale Versus Real Relationships
Dave Dougherty: Because I think you and I have talked about this a number of times on and off record where, like, we both came up With, technology was totally the solution.
Yep. You had the s- sort of the Silicon Valley thinking of, "All right, cool."
Alex Pokorny: Right.
Dave Dougherty: "With these new tools, we can do everything at scale." Right. Which of course made, here's a creative technological solution that makes the financial guys happy.
Great, let's do that, right?
Alex Pokorny: Yep.
Dave Dougherty: So cool, now we've spent a whole lot of years running through those hypotheses and those scenarios, and I think there's a lot of us who are coming to the same kind of conclusion at the same time of, do I actually need to scale everything?
Alex Pokorny: No.
Dave Dougherty: I don't know that I do.
And the quality suffers. I think there's actually a lot of value of being able to just know who it is I'm selling to. And you know what? If maybe if I'm near you, we'll go catch a ballgame and a, and a dinner, and we'll call it good, right?
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Maybe that's good enough.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
And- In the way that we've kind of gone the, like, extreme programmatic route of this is much how we have to interact with our customers instead of call them up, have dinner with them, meet with them, talk to them, figure out who they are as a human being, 'cause that will probably matter a lot more than bombarding them with ads and tracking them as finely as you possibly can.
Dave Dougherty: I mean, and this is the other thing too, right? I mean, we talked about the laser cats and the fun websites. Yeah. I think a lot of that has transferred over into the creatives, the creator economy, right? So what are you doing? You're leveraging the creators using their creativity, their own templates, their own brands to advocate- Right ... on your behalf, right? So they have a little bit more freedom than the actual, manufacturers or company sites or whatever, right? But you're borrowing the trust of their audience. ... Right? To maybe get some of that for yourself to be, you know, associated.
Again, total PR thing, right?
Alex Pokorny: Mm-hmm.
Dave Dougherty: Why are we doing this charity gala? Because we want to be associated with the good feelings that are- Right ... involved with this charity.
Alex Pokorny: Yep.
Dave Dougherty: I mean, this is an old, old, old, old tactic.
Alex Pokorny: Yep.
Dave Dougherty: Just in a new context. And so, where content creators then struggle is because you have to be so extreme to get the likes and clicks and, it's not enough just to, like, show up and talk like we are having a decent, conversation.
You need to, like, jump off of a roof on the slide that's filled- Right ... with jelly or whatever, right? And it's just like, okay, cool. You know, I, I watched MTV too. Like, that, we had that show already. Like, I don't need that in shorts now. Yeah. So I think that's where There's some natural backlash, and then just the inundation of AI, shorts, social media, all the backlash to all of that. I don't know in your circles, but at least in my circles, there's a lot of sort of pushback of like, "I don't know that I want to be on social anymore." It's like, I get that.
I am for work. Other than that, I'm very limited in the amount of time that I spend on social media. I mean, even LinkedIn. LinkedIn with all the AI slop. You know, what used to be- Yeah ... a safe haven for work and professionalism-
Alex Pokorny: Oh,
Dave Dougherty: man ... is, is no longer-
Alex Pokorny: That's changed. Yeah ...
Dave Dougherty: no longer valuable in that same way, right?
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. No, that's definitely true. Yeah. It's ... I mean, we could get into a much longer discussion about like, you know, kind of the third place and like, you know, where people go for community and in-person things or just go to get away from work and home. Like, what is that third place? Yeah. A lot of times it doesn't exist, so they go online to find their third place, which I get that.
Um, a different example of that, of just kind of like that scale and kind of economies of scale being compressed and concentrated so much that you kind of see what's happening right now. I look at this, this is mobile games. If you've gotten mobile game ads, which I'm sure everyone has, you've been inundated probably with the exact same ads over and over- Yeah and over again, and it's f- I mean, there, there's a thing in advertising, call it frequency, which you can turn down, which is how often an individual user will see your ads because there's a point to showing them a few times so they actually, view it and take in the content versus just scrolling past it or, you know, skipping by.
But there's also a limit because you don't want to annoy the heck out of them. I, I, I swear they don't know what frequency is because those ads are so frequent. Like it's, it's crazy. But these ads and these games are, quite frankly, pretty bad, very basic, and money grabs. Like they very, very quickly push you into a pay-to-win strategy, and they're trying to find those few players that will spend literally thousands of dollars a month on a video game because that's how they make their money.
And the discovery process for mobile games I've talked about before i- is really quite poor. So to try to rank highly in the Android or the Apple store is extremely difficult and takes a ton of advertising to get enough users to basically- Yeah ... pull yourself up through those ranks, which takes a huge initial investment.
They might have a number of different games that they're trying. Some of them are going to work and some of them won't, which means there's a lot of lost cost and sunk cost going on. And you get to this point where you end up with this very bland, money-grabbing product at the top. And then the other day I went over to Steam kind of a PC gaming e-commerce platform which has recommendations and the like.
And there was a game that had ... It was like 1,000 positive reviews. Most people who played it had very positive reviews of it, and I looked at it and the game is you're inside a tank, and you're loading the tank with a particular type of shell to hit the velocity, and you're setting, like, the calibration of the tank and all the rest, and then you're getting a snapshot back of where the shell landed, and you're trying to defeat this enemy that you only have, like, coordinates and positions and maps and compasses of.
And it's like, wow, it's a math game done fast, okay? And there's a timer on it because you're going to be attacked or something like that. And I was like, there is a very finite population who would have any interest in this particular game. But apparently those who play it, I mean, one they see the demo and the demo apparently is very similar to the gameplay, which is not true of these mobile game ads because usually that's- Yeah complete farce. So the people know what they're getting. They are the type of people who like this sort of thing, and when they play it- Yeah ... they very much enjoy it. And that kind of game will never survive in a mobile game situation because those ones were concentrated money-grabbing vehicles that push on those economies of scale to such a fine degree that- Yeah you have to grind in a certain pattern, produce a certain type of game, send so many millions, literally millions of dollars in advertising, which means there's no way you're going to have this indie little game that maybe 1,000 people or a few thousand people will ever play. But, you know, the developer's really happy that they were able to put out their, you know, their Laser Cat, their random tank game.
Which, my gosh, people who play it apparently really love it, but that's not a game for me.
Choosing What You're Known For
Dave Dougherty: Right. Well, and I know for me, like, as we've talked about careers-
Alex Pokorny: Uh-huh ...
Dave Dougherty: you know, with AI, and you hear these different things on, students are changing their majors because of AI and, and all of these things.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah ...
Dave Dougherty: the question I ask myself for this very reason is what do I want to be known for?
Do I want to be known for pushing mobile apps? Absolutely. Will I create a mobile app if it makes sense for what I'm doing? Yeah, totally. Will it be the primary thing? Probably not, right?
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: You know, if you go from the money grab piece, which I think there's so much nihilism in tech, um- Yeah that it's really easy to fall into that, right?
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: But if you actually ask yourself the personal reputation and the branding exercises of what am I willing to work for, what am I willing to be known for, right? And what am I willing to wake up and work a lot of hours for?
Alex Pokorny: Mm-hmm.
Dave Dougherty: Right? Because in order to differentiate, you have to show up And you have to be knowledgeable about it, and you have to, your time, the scarcity of you is your differentiation Right?
So what's that going to be? So that for me kills 80% of ideas straight away.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. There's a lot of ways to make money out there, and-
Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm ...
Alex Pokorny: there's a lot of things, to your point, to spend time on and effort on, and, you know, really dedicating yourself to something to make a, a name for yourself, to make the thing successful and maybe profitable or well-known or part of your reputation.
It takes a lot of concentrated effort, and I agree. There's a great question of do you really care about this? Do you really want to do this? I have that problem personally with, um, like sometimes seeking employers. Right. Like, there's some who have ... When you look at the reviews, the products are terrible.
And yeah, they're still hiring, and yeah, they're still spending money on advertising, and yes, they still need someone to run those accounts. But man, it ... I just can't do it, like pushing the second-best product all the time, like when you know it's flawed. No. Like, come on. You can't really, like believe in this thing and really, like put your full effort into it.
Dave Dougherty: Um- That is my least favorite question in any interview of, "So why our company?"
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: I need a job. That's why.
Alex Pokorny: Oh, yeah. You know, there's a thing called a mortgage and food. Food costs money- Right ... as it turns out. It's not free. So, uh- ... I need food money.
Dave Dougherty: Are you going to spend your career with me? No, probably not.
I mean, look at the stats.
Alex Pokorny: Come on. But- Exactly. We're talking a couple years max. Maybe a year and a half let's be honest.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, let's stop kidding ourselves that your company is-
Alex Pokorny: I know ...
Dave Dougherty: going to be the desired whatever, you know? Eh. If you're the founder, if you're the owner, then yeah. But let's also- Yeah not forget that no one will care as much as you do.
Know Your Audience
Alex Pokorny: Which is a good point, actually, about the community piece, too, is that that's a delusion that a lot of companies have, is that they think about their products all day long.
Dave Dougherty: Yep.
Alex Pokorny: And they think that their customers therefore think about their products all day long.
Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm.
Alex Pokorny: And every little move matters so much, which it doesn't, and that their product makes such a difference in their customers' lives, which 99% of the time it doesn't. Right. And it is simply the tool that they used during this one part of their day with all the other things that are in their day.
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Alex Pokorny: Like, do they focus on that particular solution? No. Especially if it solved the problem. Man, they're onto the next thing. No, they don't care. They're not going to focus on it. And to kid ourselves to thinking that, you know, we are the, the great gods of humanity by bestowing upon them our great products, and that we must, you know, curate them and caretake them to such a high degree, I think that also, like, puts in some of that resistance to have personality because we're so- Right scared and, concerned about what all of our audience will think. But two, it also has this delusion of we have not talked to our customers. We don't actually know them. We don't really actually understand where our product fits in their day. So we have a misplaced idea of how we should present ourselves.
You know, you're the scared new kid at the school.
Dave Dougherty: Well, but that's the other thing too with-
If you have a people pleaser as a marketer, you're sunk.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Because the whole point of marketing is to get rid of the people who are never going to select your product.
Alex Pokorny: No.
Dave Dougherty: You don't want everyone.
Alex Pokorny: Find your audience.
Right.
Dave Dougherty: So you need to signal that I am not for everyone. How do you do that, right? On an individual level, we do that based on how we dress, the cars we drive, how we present ourselves, and how we talk to people. That's going to immediately, like, you know what, that Dave, he's a little eh, right? Like-
Alex Pokorny: Sure
Dave Dougherty: cool. Yeah. I know I'm not for everybody, and that's great, 'cause then I don't have to waste my time on those people. And I can devote more time on the people that actually support me.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Right? And that- That approach works in business too. We forget that though, right? And I think the one more kind of case study as I'm thinking about it, there was-- when we get so specialized, and I think the swing back to generalization through AI is, is interesting to start having people remember this.
I was working for some products where they have to be used, like, on construction sites, right?
Alex Pokorny: Sure.
Dave Dougherty: And we were looking at the data because God forbid we're not data-driven in all of our decision-making, right? And there was a whole political battle. This was years ago, so it doesn't matter. There was a whole political battle on whether or not we should have mobile website first or regular website first.
Alex Pokorny: Sure.
Dave Dougherty: And all of the advertising team was saying we should be doing all of our stuff for mobile because all of the clicks that we get on advertising are on mobile. I said, "Yeah, but if you look at where the actual conversions take place, it's on desktop."
Alex Pokorny: Sure. Yep.
Dave Dougherty: I said, "This means we don't have the full story."
Right. So we went and we did the whole voice of consumer stuff and we, did the testing. And lo and behold, the person who was identifying the need for the products was the site manager who realized- Sure ... oh, you know-
Alex Pokorny: We need more of this. Right ...
Dave Dougherty: so and so didn't bring their fall protection stuff or I'm missing four hard hats for whatever reason.
Alex Pokorny: Sure.
Dave Dougherty: I need to buy them. What do they do? They call into the office and they say, "Hey-" Buy X amount of whatever I need, right? And get it to me- Right ... as soon as possible. Or they call the channel partner rep and do the same thing. Sure. And so the channel partner rep is sitting on a desktop and just- Right punching in the order for him. So all of the conversions were happening via desktop even though the need, the want, the desire was identified via mobile because you're not lugging around a desktop to a construction site.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. Yeah. B2B e-commerce sometimes gets the same problem. They run into that. Yeah.
Where the data that always is going to show up in that, it's the same problem basically. And it might be even desktop and desktop in this case, but it'll be different people. Right. Those who are your routine purchasers who maybe a full-time job is purchasing. Uh, healthcare systems have this, large manufacturing companies have this, uh, large corporations have this.
They have, uh, particular departments who do the actual purchasing product, but they're not the same ones who actually are the users, nor, I mean, if you're spending time on awareness, which I can see from the advertising standpoint, you, yeah, awareness would be on mobile. Conversions will be on desktop.
Who is your audience? It's a split audience, but primarily it's the end user or the, the site. But actually, that's a good point. It's not actually the end user, it's the worker who is the end user. Mm-hmm. So you're, you're a step away from the actual individual who's actually even using the product.
So that's a, a third audience. Yeah. It's a lot more complex, but the moment you start talking to people and you start to realize things, like-
Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm ...
Alex Pokorny: figure out that community, figure out who those people are, and then you'll start to learn things that actually c- really know what's going on.
Dave Dougherty: And so just because you can do things at scale, and because you can- Right ... do things via AI doesn't mean that you should- True ... if you want to actually be liked, well-known, trusted-
Alex Pokorny: Yeah ...
Dave Dougherty: in that space.
Alex Pokorny: Right.
Dave Dougherty: So the more things change, the more they are exactly the same.
Alex Pokorny: Yep. Yep.
Dave Dougherty: So. And on that note, thanks for spending an hour with us.
We, uh, greatly do appreciate it. Uh, like I said, like, subscribe, and share. We do greatly appreciate any comments, feedback, so let us know what you're seeing, what you're working on, um, and, uh, and how this, impacts you, uh, if you're relating to what we're talking about. Um, yeah, man, I could do another like two hours on this.
So- All right. Take care ... anyway, take care. Have a good one
