If you only check one highlight this week:

• B2B CMO? see what you can now do with new GenAI video models

• Everyone else: avoid the long chat threads with AI for frequent tasks (last section)

👋 I am back from my French vacation and a lot happened in Marketing and AI land…

The biggest changes IMO being =

1. how improved AI-generated short videos, now with sound, open up new capabilities for ads, social media, education and personal outreach

2. how much AI chatbot and generative search results (including AI overviews) are hurting SEO

3. how vibecoding tools are both more powerful and easier to use, embedded into into our favorite AI chatbots

4. how the above raises the bar for content marketing and keeps challenging and enabling marketers to run new playbooks

This edition is part I of a two-part series and focuses on 1 and 2 above.

I will cover 3, i.e. vibecoding, next week.

(But the best recent update? SpaceBalls 2 is coming)

-François

📹 With Veo3 or Hailuo, short AI videos are taking off

Have you seen the Cat Diving Olympics? The stormtrooper vlogs? (good analysis by Trung Phan). The bigfoot vlogs? Or maybe other gorgeous AI-generated videos in your various social feeds? And even strange cities made with Veo3 by Ethan Mollick?

Now that AI video gen models can create much better 6-8 second videos with sound, creators of all kinds are having a ton of fun, and there's a lot of opportunity for marketing there. This recent take from Marketing Against The Grain highlights that, like this episode from NLW, which that I had to share with my son.

The bottom line:

1. anyone can create short form video content cheap and fast now

2. marketers and sales need to experiment and have fun

It’s still far from perfect, but remember that this is still “just the beginning”. Folks who can write scripts, have a strong sense of humor, or a talent for teaching, and good prompting skills will go quite far. Check out the follower and view numbers on the examples I shared above.

Which tools? Veo3 by Google and Hailuo seem to have the lead, at least right now, with more realistic rendering, better adherence to prompts and greater creative control (but still limited context windows and tight daily limits if you are not on $200+ monthly plans).

You - or your team - will need good prompting skills. And because these videos are limited to 6-8 seconds, you’ll need some video editing skills to edit and assemble the clips.

CMOs should challenge their teams - and themselves too - to create:

• memes

• shorts

• music videos

• ads

• educational explainers and

• short personalized videos for VIP customers or prospects

Just don’t strive for perfection and be ok breaking a few brand guidelines.

Arm and train your BDR and SDRs!

Provide some initial ideas, premium accounts, guidelines and prompt templates and unleash your junior reps to have some fun, innovate and share best practices and learnings weekly.

PS: we should get back to and challenge our favorite agencies because they are the homes of the most creative folks whose talents will be greatly multiplied by these new capabilities. They should be able to offer concepts faster and cheaper, so you can test many before you find the winners and put big $ behind them. Also find and tap talent on social media.

My selection of tips, news and workflows

📉With search moving to AI, visits and clicks are disappearing…

This important shift is accelerating now that more people trust AI chat results and that Google further rolled out AI overviews in search results globally:

For AI search optimization:

1. track your AI search game progress by measuring share of voice. Use brand studies and prospect surveys too (in sign up flows for instance), like for some other brand or PR tactics rather than tracking that as click-based performance marketing.

2. up your game on Reddit and Quora since they have deals with Google and OpenAI and favor their results in their AI searches.

3. More tips in my June 13 edition and here

That clicks are rarer doesn’t mean you should deprioritize AIO or SEO. A prospect who comes to your site after doing AI research is much more likely to be well informed and have higher intent. Attribution will just be more manual, directional or self-declared.

🛠️ How to think about careers in a post-AGI world?

Stanford's SALT published an article on the future of work with AI agents. Francis Brero shares insight/takeaway about future-proof skills:

Check the chart below. Its high level summary = humans who can lead and orchestrate other humans and their tasks will do great. While that is re-assuring for people with experience, what does that mean for new entrants into the workforce who don’t have that experience yet? How will they gain it?

💡Try Gemini Deep Research again (with 2.5 Flash)

I observed the same thing as Prof. Mollick when using Gemini for deep research (Google are the search kings after all). Well worth $20/month if you get throttled:

➡️ How to create a more scalable AI prompting process

From Nicole Leffer:

“If you’re regularly doing the same type of work with your AI tool (things like drafting LinkedIn posts, repurposing existing assets into content, persona research, competitive intelligence, or creating event strategies), chatting back and forth every time is a waste of time and resources.”

Final Words

Thanks for sharing these highlights with busy marketing execs around you.🙏 

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François | LinkedIn 

I'm a CMO, advisor, and "CMO Wingman". Yes, that's a thing :-). Ask my clients: in this AI era, CMOs need a strategic proactive advisor more than ever. I’m former CMO at Twilio, Augment Code, Apollo GraphQL, Decibel, Udacity and Head of Marketing for LinkedIn Talent Solutions.