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- Francois' Highlights #6 - Marketing in the AI era
Francois' Highlights #6 - Marketing in the AI era
Another masterclass: unleashing community at Notion | What ChatGPT's new image gen will likely change | Using ChatGPT's voice mode | Using Maturity Models in B2B Marketing and Sales
As announced, my highlights aren’t just about AI. Notion’s community playbook is too good not to share. Same for Carilu’s article on maturity models.
If you only check one thing today =
if you want AI-productivity tips: ChatGPT advanced voice mode use cases
if you're a Marketer thinking about Community, this section ⬇️
- François
📹 A masterclass from Notion on unleashing your community
The forces transforming marketing most IMO are
influencers & community
AI
And they compound: today, with AI, influencers and customers (lines can blur fast) can create more and share via their social megaphones. Sadly for established brands and fortunately for new entrants, people trust personalities over established institutions.
Notion absolutely aced their community play. Their members organize meetups, create templates, train users, amplify launches, and defend the brand online.
Rachel Hepworth, Notion’s former CMO, shared Notion’s playbooks in this lightning talk (incl. props to Camille Ricketts and Ben Lang for building that motion practice).
What community playbook is right for you?
First, understand the difference between community of product and community of practice. The playbooks to deploy are different.
Community of Product
| Community of Practice
|
Guiding principles for a community of product
🔓Empower, don't control: the best community wins happen when you let passionate users take ownership. Avoid dictating terms or over-managing.
🏆 Status & Visibility: create recognition systems - e.g. simple titles like "Notion Ambassador" work wonders. Recognition ranged from swag to early feature access to direct contact with the Notion team.
💰 Help them earn: even if that’s $ you could have captured, let users monetize templates, courses, and consulting services built on your product. Some Notion community members earned over $1M, making more than if they'd joined as employees.
🚀 Leverage & Scale: Focus on intrinsic motivation vs management overhead - Notion kept the community team small (4 people) and let users to self-organize.
🎥 Watch the video (21 min)
My selection of tips, news and workflows
🛠️ What ChatGPT 4o image gen will likely change for us marketers
This episode from the AI Daily Brief lists likely implications of the new image gen capabilities. I will cover that more in my next issue.
He claims it will change: filters, online ads, memes, books, slide decks, websites, movies, social networking images, image search, visual distinction.
💡 Takeaways for CMOs:
1. Prepare for a new approach, smaller budgets for asset + campaign creation since AI cuts production time and cost.
2. Emphasize ideation and selection - Focus on testing many concepts and applying human judgment rather than technical production of a limited set of options
3. The boundaries between code, design, and content creation may dissolve. Plan for new collaboration patterns, skill development, and restructured teams (ONE person can do so much more).
🗣️ ChatGPT advanced voice mode = so good for One-on-Ones with… yourself
Francis, Chief Product Officer at Madkudu (and Santa Cruz surfer who’s actually nice on the water - or so he claims), shows how he uses ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode as a “Digital Socrates” thought partner. Who wouldn't want some help stepping back, prioritizing, and especially writing performance reviews faster (he uses it for that too)?
And the good news? You rarely disagree with yourself.
tl;dr:
- AI can function as a personal accountability partner for busy execs
- Use voice mode (in ChatGPT app) for productive thinking sessions
- Great for when commuting or walking
- The value comes from the structure, not the AI content
- Self-reflection via AI questioning helps with time management and prioritization
- It’s FREE and delivers significant clarity benefits
💡 Did you know you can tell ChatGPT to “speak 30% faster” to save time?
🗣️ And…yes, you can also turn ChatGPT voice mode into a free live translation app
I had to do this when an angry Uber driver only spoke Armenian (my story):
How it works
1. Open the ChatGPT app on your phone
2. Select voice mode (the black circle, right of the mic icon)
3. Say “I need your help translating instantly from language X to Y. I'm going to speak in language X, and will say “over” when I'm done. Then translate that into language Y. You will then hear a 2nd person speaking in language Y. They will tell you “over”when they are done. Then, translate that automatically into language X. And and on and on as our conversation continues. Before we start, summarize my instructions to make sure we're on the same page.” (adjust if needed)
4. be amazed🤩. It’s free and instant! with an app that was not even created for that.
📈 The power of maturity models for B2B marketing and sales.
Carilu Dietrich explains the value of maturity models in B2B + includes case studies.
tl;dr:
Maturity models:
- Help teams sell business value, not product features
- Set a vision of best-in-class
- Spark executive engagement with relevant, strategic benchmarks
- Create a sense of urgency: "You're here, but your competitors are here... This is what you need to do to get there."
- Drive executive engagement beyond technical or user teams
- Drive upsell and adoption at existing customers
- Power campaigns with real thought leadership
- Align marketing, sales, and customer success around a common vision.
My $0.02:
Seems enticing right? Know it takes a village internally to get the execution right. Creating & publishing the maturity model is the easiest step.
If your product powers a new practice (see Community of Practice above), For each maturity phase, define the corresponding processes, people & skills, tools and metrics to adopt. (i.e. your “tool” is ONLY one facet).
Final Words
The average ability of everyone to create anything has increased dramatically, and we have so little idea of just how transformational that's going to be.
Let’s do ourselves a favor and, with these new AI superpowers, let’s create something a little more original than Ghibli versions of our pictures.
I always appreciate: a) a reply with feedback b) you sharing this newsletter with busy marketing execs. 🙏
François | LinkedIn
👋 I'm a CMO, Advisor, and "CMO Wingman." Yes, that's a thing :-). Ask my clients (in this AI era, when so much changes so fast, CMOs need a strategic supportive advisor more than ever).
Former CMO at Twilio, Augment Code, Apollo GraphQL, Decibel, Udacity and Head of Marketing for LinkedIn Talent Solutions.