I'm trying to engage with you on this, but I'm really not sure what you're getting at. You originally stated "I think the essential job of marketing is to help people make the connection between their problems and your solutions. Putting all on them in a kind of blamey way doesn't seem like a great approach to me."
I agree that's the job of marketing, but I'm not someone who markets AI, I'm someone who helps large marketing organizations use it effectively. I agree that if my goal was to market it that wouldn't be an effective message, but my goal is for folks who work in these companies to take some accountability for their own personal development, so that's my message. Again, all I can do is be honest about how I feel and to be consistent in my beliefs and experiences working with these kinds of organizations.
No, that’s not what it means. You can read what I’ve written about this for the last three years and I’ve been very consistent. In the enterprise too many people are waiting to be told things and whether it’s good for my business or not I’d rather be honest about how I feel (you need to just use this stuff).
Tbf I haven't played much with it, but I have generally found that I don't like the permission model on Gemini CLI or Codex anywhere near as much as Claude Code.
That's fair. But it's what I believe. I spend a lot of time inside giant companies and there are too many people waiting for stone tablets to come down the mountain with their use cases instead of just playing with this stuff.
Exactly this. I actually think it’s exactly the opposite of assuming your audience is a stupid: it’s respecting them enough to do the work yourself instead of offloading to them. I’ll die on the hill that 19th century referring to the 1800s is fundamentally unintuitive.
I’m not sure about the broader success of the show or how he books guests, but if the question is what makes his show work, I have a few opinions as a listener.
First and foremost, he’s a good interviewer. He knows enough about the topics being discussed to ask good questions but also has enough discipline to give his guests time to work through a question and makes it about them.
Second, and this is related to #1, his guests clearly respect him/his audience enough to give reasonably in-depth answers. I mostly listen to the interviews with the deeply technical folks, and I’m impressed by their willingness to offer long technical explanations. I don’t understand it all, but I appreciate it and haven’t found another show that offers quite the same thing.
Finally, he does long episodes. This gives everything room to breathe. For me at least, my favorite interview podcasts are the ones where guests are hanging around for awhile. It gives interviewer and guest time to get acquainted and also let’s them cover a lot of ground. When I am deciding whether to listen to a Marc Maron episode, for instance, I’m definitely wary of anyone that goes to close to 60 minutes because it feels more likely it was just another interview for that person.
To the general question “have ads changed?” Yes. The style of ads generally evolve to match the time. Some of this is because the industry learns what’s effective and some is because trends and aesthetics change. In the 80s there were a lot of jingles and characters in ads, which you see much less of now. In the late 90s/early 2000s Apple started to include pop songs and the rest of the industry followed suit.
As to whether this is an effective strategy, it’s hard to say without knowing the specifics of the ad and the business, but as a rule for an ad to be effective it needs to be noticed and you need to connect it with the brand, so if it’s not accomplishing that it probably isn’t delivering on its intention (though it’s also possible that you’re not the target and if you were it would deliver). FWIW, I pretty strongly suspect that there’s too much sameness in the aesthetics and that’s hurting effectiveness. https://whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/why-is-this-inte...
I agree that's the job of marketing, but I'm not someone who markets AI, I'm someone who helps large marketing organizations use it effectively. I agree that if my goal was to market it that wouldn't be an effective message, but my goal is for folks who work in these companies to take some accountability for their own personal development, so that's my message. Again, all I can do is be honest about how I feel and to be consistent in my beliefs and experiences working with these kinds of organizations.