208: How AI Is Forcing Brands to Be More Human with Brent Csutoras

As the world rushes to adopt AI, what if the most future-proof skill isn't mastering the machine, but mastering human connection? In this episode, Sani sits down with Brent Csutoras, a true OG of the internet who has been a core member of the Reddit community since 2006.

Brent argues that the unfiltered, honest, and often chaotic conversations happening on Reddit, a platform he calls "the real world online", provide the ultimate blueprint for the future of brand building. So many brands fail on Reddit because they treat it like a traditional advertising channel, only to be torn apart by a community that values authenticity above all else. Brent breaks down his "anti-marketer" playbook, using incredible stories, from the REI AMA that turned from a PR disaster into a masterclass in accountability to a beef jerky company that sold $30,000 worth of product from a single, honest conversation, to illustrate his points.

If you are professional trying to navigate the future of digital marketing, you need to hear this. Brent makes a compelling case that we are not in year 21 of the old internet; we are in "Year One" of a completely new era , where solving real human problems has replaced the old hacks of chasing keywords and gaming algorithms.

Guest

Our guest is Brent Csutoras, a renowned Reddit thought leader and marketing strategist. As the Founder of OGS Media, he has spent nearly two decades helping Fortune 100 brands, scrappy startups, and skeptical CMOs navigate one of the most misunderstood platforms online.

In addition to his deep expertise in Reddit, Brent has been a Managing Partner at Search Engine Journal for over a decade, helping to shape the voice of the digital marketing industry. He is a self-described "futurist at heart, with a bias for action", constantly drawn to the edge of what's next in search, social, and AI-driven discovery. His core philosophy is simple but profound: help brands stop marketing at people and start connecting with them.

Key Takeaways

• Community is a networking event, not a megaphone
• Trust is the only metric that matters
• Solve problems, don't chase keywords
• Your new job is to train your AI assistant

Links and Resources

• Connect with Brent: The best way to reach Brent is on his LinkedIn Profile.
• OGS Media: Learn more about Brent's Reddit community engagement company at ogsmedia.com.
• Search Engine Journal: One of the leading online marketing publications where Brent is a managing partner.
• ZipTie.AI: The project Brent is working on to map online conversations.
• Book Mention: Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger.
• Book Mention: Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.
• Book Mention: The Advice Trap by Michael Bungay Stanier.
• Brand Mention: Sonos, a brand Brent highlights for its excellent community engagement on Reddit.

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Transcript

Brent Csutoras
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Sani: [00:00:00] It feels like we're living in a world where everybody is rushing to adopt ai. But what if the most future-proof skill has nothing to do with mastering the machines and everything to do with understanding people? We're told that AI is rewriting the rules of work, search and marketing, but what if the platforms that truly shape a brand's reputation, the messy, the chaotic, the deeply human ones.

Sani: Don't care about your AI generated content, hate it even, or discourage it. I'm talking about platforms like Reddit. For years, brands have seen it as a digital minefield. They either avoid it or they show up in an old school advertising tactic and then get torn apart by the community. They fail. Because they don't bother to understand the unwritten rules and they forget that behind every anonymous username is a real person.

Sani: My today's guest not only understands those rules, he was there when they were being written. Brent Csutoras is a ready thought leader and marketing strategist who has been on the [00:01:00] platform since 2006. He's the founder of OGS Media and a longtime managing partner at Search Engine Journal Also. Very close personal friend of mine, he has guided Fortune 100 companies and skeptical CMOs through the most misunderstood corners of the internet for decades.

Sani: He's a self-described futuristic heart, focused on a simple but powerful idea. Brands need to stop marketing at people and start connecting with the people. In this conversation, Brent explains why the unfiltered. Honest discussion on Reddit are the blueprint for the future of brand building in the age of ai.

Sani: We talk about why community is not a hack. But a long term strategy and why the most powerful AI in the world is no match for genuine human trust and never, ever will be. Before we get into the conversation, if you enjoy the podcast, this episode, uh, or the podcast in general, please consider sharing the episode with a colleague or friend, or leaving a quick rating is the best way to help others [00:02:00] navigate the changes ahead.

Sani: Discover the podcast and help no Hacks grow. Now let's get ready to look behind the algorithm. Here's my conversation with Brent s.

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Sani: Brent, welcome to No Hacks. Finally. Finally, for

Brent: for sure. Right. We've been talking about, uh, getting together. You know, I don't, I don't know that a lot of people know, but we, me and you talk like every, every other week for like years now. Um, and it's always

Sani: than a decade, I would say.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. We've, we've been, um, we've known each other. We were just talking about it earlier for 16 years, uh, 16 and a half years now.

Brent: And the, the, the cool thing is that like I've really, I think both of us have had a chance to watch our, our, our, like our skill sets and our knowledge and our, our careers grow. But like, I've always been super impressed, uh, with you and your work and, and, and I'm on, [00:03:00] I, I, I don't, I do a lot of podcasts, but is, I'm genuinely honored to like, be on your podcast 'cause you're one of the few, like, I, I was thinking about this the other day.

Brent: I was like, oh, you know, there's like five people you can count. And I was like, okay, well count 'em out. And I'm like, bar to Sloan.

Sani: You are? Yeah. You, you are one of my, not even

Brent: you know, and it's like, okay, well, you know, of the people that I would blindly just trust like that I just know are like, have integrity, are hardworking, are super smart, and will always find that solution and do it in a productive way.

Brent: So like I've, you're, you're one of the few people that I like respect, you know, so much in, in marketing and so it's super exciting to be on your show.

Sani: man. Uh, I mean, we go way back, 16 and a half years total is when we first started working together. It feels surreal. So these days we, we were together a search engine, all that stuff. These days you are, you own OGS media. It is a Reddit marketing firm, right. That is that, that is the core business.

Brent: Yeah, for sure. You know, I'm always a little weird on the word [00:04:00] marketing, but we're definitely a, like a, a Reddit community engagement company and whatever words you want to put to it, like, um, you know, we've been, you know, I've been on Reddit for almost 20 years, you know, I've worked really, you know, early days.

Brent: It, it the funniest story, like people always, you know, yeah, I knew Alexis and stuff, but the thing was is that it was so small back in the day that there was a bug on the site and I was just like, Hey, there's a bug on your site. And he wrote back right away from Gmail, like, thanks a lot. And I'm like, Hey, you're in San Francisco.

Brent: We should grab tacos sometime. He's like, absolutely. So me and him used to run around and get tacos. He'd come over and we'd watch MMA fights and we would like just kind of, you know, get to know each other. And so I was. It was very fun to be a part of like the very beginning of Reddit and to see the small little corner office in the wired building where they were just in the corner and they had a little logo up there.

Brent: So if you didn't know it, you wouldn't know it, you know? And so, um, yeah, you know, I've been with Reddit so long and I've always, I always felt like, you know, my initial social was, you know, um, actually, uh, [00:05:00] Yahoo answers Japan. Right. And that was way before like social launched here in the us And it was, it was interesting because it was, it was such an addictive thing.

Brent: I knew a friend who was just so addicted to it. They always had to have the best answer. And, and I thought to myself, that's really incredible how you can draw people in with, you know, accolades and the gamification, some of the elements. And then once I moved, you know, once I was back in, and that was when I lived in Tokyo, once I was back in the States, I ended up in San Francisco, ended up meeting these, you know, guys who were doing the early social.

Brent: I ended up, you know, meeting Matt cuts at Google and so I had these like. Kind of early phase friendships with people that really gave me insight into like this kind of transition, this kind of change into digital. And I always thought to myself like, this is really powerful. And then I just watched everybody kind of ignore the power of it.

Brent: And I always felt like, you know, with Reddit, you're really looking at the world online, right? Like, everybody's like, oh, what's it like? Well, I mean, if you wanna see the world online, Reddit's it, right? It's like every demographic you can think of, [00:06:00] every topic you can think of, you know, wants to have like all these little nuanced rules wants to have, you know, a community as much as they have rules, they have rules for people they know and they have rules for people they don't know, you know?

Brent: And it's just like life, right? And so, you know, you see like early days I would work with, um, I worked with Ben Hu and them at, I can hash cheeseburger. When they created the first memes. So we would put memes all across, you know, Reddit and Dig and the, the funny, one of the funnier stories as well as whenever Reddit wanted to promote something, you know, and I would be the one who would submit it to Dig.

Brent: So we would submit Reddit content all the time to dig and get it to the front page of Dig, and we would kind of screw around with that. So, yeah. Yeah, I definitely love Reddit, not just because it's a cool thing to do right now. Um, you know, I've been on Reddit for, you know, since the beginning, and I think it really is key to kind of seeing the storytelling of the internet.

Sani: We'll get to Reddit in a lot more detail, but Reddit is really, it [00:07:00] mirrors society in a way that no other web property does, in my opinion, because. There are no external filters. There's no big company, there's no government that that controls. It is what it is. It is what the people want it to be. The people who are there Also 20 years on Reddit.

Sani: I, I thought my 15-year-old account was, was old. You, you've been there since day

Brent: Twenties, a little bit of a round, because I think they just turned 20, you know, so it's, it's it, I'm giving myself a little bit of a round there, but I mean, you know, and I used to tell people all the time, the best thing for Reddit ever was when Alexis and Steve decided they were gonna leave the company, and it just kind of stayed in stagnant.

Brent: Right. Because by being kind of, you know, not chasing the, you know, you know, you saw what DIG did when they were like, the investors were like, well, look at the valuation Facebook's getting. Now we have to do shares and we have to do all this extra stuff, which really just kind of destroyed the community and destroyed the, the, the site.

Brent: But like Reddit didn't have to chase. They weren't like in a position where they had to [00:08:00] make profits, they had, so they were able to kind of sit in a vacuum and allow the progression of the site to be the progression of society online. So that's why you see such a great matchup there, because it really is just what people progressed, not so much what a company progressed.

Sani: A great way to describe it. It's about as organic as anything online can be. There, there, there are no filters there. It, it doesn't really focus on mul media content. Yes, there are videos there, there are images, all that, but it's about the conversations between real members. Most of, most of them completely anonymous.

Sani: So there's no trying to be something you're not. Nobody cares who you are already. That, that's the whole thing. Of course, your account should have karma, all that. We'll, we'll get into that. But that, that is, to me, that's the beauty also. I mean, I, I, I know you, I, I, I've known you long enough. I know that you don't jump on trends like there are many people jumping on Reddit right now.

Sani: You have for as long as I've known you, you have been the person to, [00:09:00] to jump on future trends before they become a thing. And yeah, this is one of them. This is clearly one of them.

Brent: Yeah. I appreciate that. I, I, I think that for me, I always kind of describe, I'm like the anti marketer. Marketer, you know, and it's because like what excites me is, you know, the influence of storytelling and how, like I always look at like Coca-Cola and some of these places where if you really look at like subliminal advertisements and you look at planting triggers and you look at things like Contagious by Jonah Berger, if you look at the book, you know, stumbling on happiness and you understand how the brain works, where do triggers come into play and how does a connection to a memory influence how you are making decisions for the rest of your life?

Brent: Right? And so. There's, you know, everything we do, even like some of the negative stuff, like why you go and you talk about internal family systems and counseling is because your 13-year-old self is defending your 40-year-old self [00:10:00] because you never evolve. Right? Like the, the triggers in our lives just never really evolve.

Brent: And some of those are good, right? That's why we always have that, you know, reminiscence, that smell of the wood burning on a Christmas, you know, season is like, oh, that's a great memory. Right? But I've always been fascinated by that. And I feel like those are made in the earliest days of the storytelling within a certain channel.

Brent: And by being present when things are kind of cutting their teeth, when they're becoming the next thing is when you get that influence. And so I think that, you know, um, I, I love that, that that part of it's

Sani: Very well said. So let's get to Reddit and the Reddit mindset at, for people who are not on Reddit, let's try to describe what Reddit is and, and how they should approach it. Like you said, you've been there for, let's say two decades, maybe. Maybe we are rounding up by a month or two, but two decades.

Sani: Cra Crazy. Absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. For a brand, for a big brand or mid-size brand that is still hesitant about engaging with Reddit, what is the [00:11:00] fundamental misunderstanding for those who are not engaged, who think they should, or maybe people tell them they should, but they decide not to.

Sani: What do you think is the

Brent: There's a couple ways, there's a couple ways you could talk about this, but I'm gonna take it in a way you're taking it with, for a brand, for a company, right. I think the biggest misconception, or the biggest thing that I would tell people to change the way they look at is think of Reddit, like the real world online.

Brent: And I know I say that a couple times, but like, how would you go out and market your product or brand to the real world, right? Like you wouldn't walk around with a bunch of newsletters and pass them out. You wouldn't, you know the things that you would think about. So you have a team of five people and you say, Hey.

Brent: I want you to start doing online marketing, and you're like, okay, well we need to think about keywords and content creation, and we need to think about funnels and we need to figure out tracking. Right? But if I said, okay, take those five same people and now send them to a conference that you would like to one day be a speaker at, the [00:12:00] way you would approach going to a conference would be so fundamentally different.

Brent: Right? You would say like, well, you can't wa you wouldn't be like, okay. John, when you get there, I want you to walk right into the main stage, walk up on the, on the stage, grab the mic, and you tell them how amazing our product is. Right? Like you would be escorted out by security. Like it would be like you would get publicity, but for all the wrong reasons.

Brent: Right? And that you see that play out on Reddit all the time. Like, I've never been on Reddit. I'm gonna come and do an a MA and I'm gonna just half-ass it. And then next thing you know, you definitely got the media coverage, right? But it was everybody talking about how horrible that experience was and how, you know, bad it was.

Brent: So I think the one thing is really look at Reddit in a way of like networking, right? You're going there to connect with people. Think about it from that standpoint, and your success does a lot better. The other thing to really understand is that, um, there is no one Reddit. Everybody's always like, okay, so we want to go and we want to be a [00:13:00] part of our user's journey, or we want to do all of these things because we wanna rank on search.

Brent: You know, because of that deal that Google has and how quickly Reddit can rank, or we want to be in LLMs because they're using a lot of that content. Or you want to connect with your audience. A lot of the people now, a lot of the brands are like, I want insights because you can't, once you ask a survey question, you change the mindset of.

Brent: The question. Right? And so in order to really, you know, and I was just talking to, uh, you know, one of my, um, you know, clients, um, who's in retail, and he would say, we used to go once every couple weeks to the different stores and watch people and listen to the conversations because you can't ask them a question you have to observe, right?

Brent: And in order to do that online, it's expensive, it's time consuming. It's almost impossible. So. I think really understanding kind of the space of Reddit, knowing that each one of these communities is different and you can't do all things at once on Reddit. You really have to think about, okay, what do I want to do?

Brent: Do I wanna, you know, help my customer? So I always say, go through a three [00:14:00] part process and be honest. Like, throw all the crap about, you know, who you think you should be and what people think they should. Like. Really just strip all away and have a real honest conversation. I'm channeling Brene Brown now, right?

Brent: Like get in a room and rumble a little bit and say, what do people expect from us? Like, what is it that they honest? Like if you're going through Reddit and you see, oh, this brand's here. What do I expect that brand to be doing? Where do I expect them to be? How do I expect them to be engaging? And then as a brand, think, Hey, I've got these customers.

Brent: What do we really, genuinely have a value to give that that customer? What do we have to give that audience? Right? And then you can consider as a third part, kinda like what are your marketing goals? Like what are you trying to accomplish? What is the point of all this? Right? Because none of this is in a void of, of not having some sort of ROI and people don't mind giving you their money, right?

Brent: I always say it's like the lawyer conversation, right? You give legal advice. At some point somebody says, what are you a lawyer? And you say, yeah, actually I am. And they go, oh, [00:15:00] can I get your card? 'cause I kind of needs a little help with this, right? So, so when you have those three components, you're able to find that middle ground.

Brent: And then I think that the next thing I would, I would really tell brands, I know I could go on for hours with this, but I'll try to cut after this one. Um, is that you really need to understand that people don't come in. Without knowing their problem and then go to a purchase of a solution. Right? We, we are very much used to marketing being, because we're getting 'em at the end of the funnel.

Brent: They came to my site so they're ready to buy. Well, when people in conversations start, they're actually talking about their problems and they don't know that there's a solution to that problem yet. They think there probably is, and they're waiting to find. A conversation that leads them to understand, hey, you know, there is something you can do.

Brent: There is a thing that solves your problem. There's a way for you to find your resolution. And so understanding your user's journey, the, you know, the, you know, and, and that's tough, right? Because when you, when you lose, use the logical [00:16:00] stuff that you can track, you lose track of the emotional side, which is really the key to why people make decisions.

Brent: So I work a lot with the company, which we, we can talk about anytime, but zip tie, right? And what that is, is it's taking logical mindsets, but then going and mapping out the actual conversations to determine the phase. And one of the things when we were building that, because, you know, it's a, it's a separate thing that I'm working on, but what that was where we really started noticing like the value of being a part of these conversations on Reddit and how it was feeding into LLMs and how it was feeding into search was that.

Brent: People are on different parts of the journey, and when you know what their emotional state is, what are their considerations? What is it that takes them from stage one to stage two, not stage one to stage 10, right? If you go in and somebody's like, I want to get a raise at my job, and they need to get education and your university, and you're like, well, sign up for this university.

Brent: There's such a disconnect. You missed the opportunity, right? So I think understanding that user journey and really finding where are the [00:17:00] opportunities to be of value so that you can connect with your user, that is the catalyst that gives you the LLMs. It gives you the search, it gives you the triggers, it gives you everything that you actually

Sani: And all those conversations that happen on Reddit and similar websites and places now, they were happening in the past as well. They were just completely invisible to a brand because they were offline. It's conversation between friends, school, whatever else. So, uh, this is a good thing. This is a great thing that, that now finally, uh, it is possible to understand the sentiment of the

Brent: There is one reason why, you know I say like it's not Reddit, but there is one reason why. Reddit is kind of positioned right now as the biggest catalyst for this. And, um, you know, if you go back and you really pay attention to history, and I, because I was there at the beginning, I know these stories, right?

Brent: I know why they got funded. I know that they were lipstick.com first, and then they were, you know, as a testing, you know, [00:18:00] for a, a for, for, you know, beauty products as a way of testing the platform. You know, I know some of the backs stories in all of this, right? And one of the things that is not necessarily a backstory, did you know that SNU wasn't known for years?

Brent: It was a secret what the alien's name was. Like, they wouldn't tell anybody what the name was and it was Sno and I had to be told, I'm not allowed to tell people that. Right. Anyway, so, um, if you go back Reddit. You know, really has two key things that I think shaped it to where it is today. And one was the decision to use anonymous users, right.

Brent: Pseudos. And, and, and that, you know, you go back and, and you can see a quote from Alexis, and I'm pretty sure Steve was on board with you. I say them kind of intertwined. I, I had more of a friendship with Alexis than Steve necessarily, so that I say Alexis, but I kind of mean founders. Right. Um, so they, they really wanted an, the, the anonymous nature so that people could feel like they could speak their mind.

Brent: Without the recourse. Right. But the thing that me and him fought about back then, a lot, like sometimes animated like arguments, was about this concept of subreddits. [00:19:00] The idea that you would break your community into all these sub communities. And I was marketing minded too much back then, and I was like, well, why you have this big audience?

Brent: Why would you break them up? Like people come because they want people to see. But you have to remember back then it was less about the conversation. It was more about like the content. So it was like, why break everything apart? People are sharing 'cause they want this exposure. And I'll, I'll admit back then, like I didn't get it.

Brent: But like, if you think about the ability for subreddits to segment people, to give them a place to go when they have a passion that has built up this group of experts, the, and, and what we call fan experts, right? The people that actually probably know the product better than the people who make it, you know, um, are the people that know every use case of it.

Brent: And so that created a place. With volume of people. That led to a depth of conversation that allowed the problem to satisfy the actual decision making elements that are needed by human right. The validation, the [00:20:00] nuances, the finding, the real problem, the depth of the conversation to do that, the sharing of responsibility with others, and then at the end, coming to a decision you feel like you made on your own.

Brent: These are instrumental in decision making, and yet none of that occurs in traditional marketing channels. And so in order to have that, you need to have the silo with the anonymous nature of it, with the depth of conversation and the expertise. And there's just no other place right now that has built that catalyst in the way that Reddit has.

Brent: And that's, it's kind of like, it's, it's an unintended, you know, benefit of just the way that it was drafted and created

Sani: And unless they dramatically changed the platform. You, me, you mentioned Dig. I remember Dig 2.0, they called it, it

Brent: Yeah, it's coming back out. Like Yeah. It's still kind of focused on dig

Sani: they redesigned it, uh, when they ruined

Brent: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. When they made the, when they, well, the worst part was when they let brands start putting a URL of their feed and then auto [00:21:00] submitting all of their content and then they would get, it was like, that was the moment when it was no longer user-based.

Sani: What I wanna say about Reddit, unless they make a stupid change like that, this is not going away. Everything is become looking more modern, but the conversation and, and the human to human interaction, that, that, that's always going to be there one way or another. You briefly mentioned AMAs.

Sani: I wanna ask you, what is your worst, a MA disaster that you remember from red? 

Brent: The one I think is the most fun for me, the one that I think is the, is the best, is actually the REI. Um, a MA And the reason why they say that is that it, it, it, it gives you each part of the problem and the solution, right?

Brent: It gives you what was the mistake that you shouldn't make, and then it tells you how to engage with Reddit to be successful, right? And so what they did is it was a Black Friday thing, and it was, you know, you [00:22:00] know, holidays, black Friday, and they were like, look, we are not going to participate in that because, and, and I, I hope I'm, this is so many years ago, let's assume I'm getting the details right, but the, the energy of it will be right.

Brent: So they were like, we are not, we're not gonna participate in that 'cause we love our employees and we just think that, you know, we shouldn't have to, you know, you know, be a part of all that. And then they posted this a MA and they participated for a couple minutes, and then the CEO left. Like, you know, walked away and the employees started posting about how it was really like a, a pyramid scheme and how they were forced to like sell memberships or they would get like yelled at if they didn't get the membership sold.

Brent: So there was this whole thing that started coming out. All the other employees were coming in and they were like, yeah, you know, I'm always worried I'm gonna lose my job. Or, you know, I didn't get promoted because of this. So they start totally trashing the company and their whole business model, right? So typically what happens in these cases is people shut it down, like, okay, don't respond to anything.

Brent: [00:23:00] Shut it down. CEO came back and you can read, this is done in multiple cases. I've written it about it a little bit. He came back and he said. Oh my God. Basically, I didn't realize that our program was causing this kind of stress. This was not the intention of the program. We are immediately gonna meet as an executive team and we are going to come up with a solution for this.

Brent: I apologize to the employees, I apologize to the people that have been infected, basically saying like, we take complete ownership of this and we are gonna start right now. And then they came back, they made changes and it turned into something that was like a really big eyeopener. And that one for me says a lot because what it also tells you is when you get, when you start a company, you have a solution you think people would benefit from and you're excited about it, and you go out to help people.

Brent: When you get to a certain point in business, it's about making money. And you lose track of what really happens with your audience and you lose track with the pa. The fact that people evolve in their, their [00:24:00] usage, like storytelling, how cultures kind of evolve. And I think it shows that like if you're willing to listen on Reddit, you can learn a lot about what your customers really think about, not only about you, but the problems they're having, what it is that they're doing to solve 'em and what they need from you to help.

Brent: And I think that that example is, is a really great one. Another great example I love is, and I won't go into the whole detail 'cause of time, but is you can search up the old beef jerky one where a guy's like, why is beef or jerky so damn expensive? And the guy's like, you have to understand you're taking steaks and you're shrinking them down.

Brent: You're buying like six steaks in one bag and they're good steaks if it's good jerky. So what are you paying for? Six steaks? What are you paying for jerky, right guy's? Like what you work at a, and I love this, right? What you work at a beef jerky company or something. He's like, my family owns one. And they're like.

Brent: Discount code question mark, and the guy sells $30,000 worth of jerky in the next couple days. Gets invited to do an a MA does end up, ends up doing like two or three [00:25:00] AMAs to talk about the whole industry and everything, and ends up like crushing it with like sales and numbers and insights and, and, and brand connection.

Brent: And I still talk about it like 12

Sani: That, that is, that's an incredible story. This reminds me of the early days of other social media networks, Twitter, Facebook, where every, every smart marketer will tell you it's not a megaphone. You can't just yell at people. You have to interact. It's a two-way conversation. Somehow on, on Instagram or on on, on those big networks.

Sani: It kind of is a one-way thing right now because it's a media channel almost, but with Reddit it, it just cannot work like that still. Well,

Brent: that's where you see the audience. I mean, like, the thing about Reddit is everybody's like, oh, Reddit became big because Google put it in search, right? Like, I've been paying attention and, and talking about the growth and the numbers of Reddit since it started. I remember when they hit a million users, right?

Brent: Like, you know, there has always been a [00:26:00] consistent, I would say there's like a six month period where there was a little bit of a plateau. But other than that, there was always a very, very solid growth. And I used to sell the charts, look at the growth, like look at the, the trajectory, look at the demographics.

Brent: Like these are college educated, well, you know, employed. These are people you know, you know, it was probably like 45% female, 55% male, but it was pretty close to, you know, an equal audience. It was like, you know, there is a really good opportunity here and this is a really good site and it's growing and it's evolving.

Brent: And I think that, you know, I think that what you see is. It's not so much that Reddit made some deal or they did something that projected them. It's not like TikTok where they spent like $500 million to try to get on top of every single advertising that were gonna be the number one, a downloaded app, right?

Brent: They actually didn't do anything for the success other than create a good platform. The users, the need of the people, the, the, the user journey used to be, I need a product. I go to Google and I search it. [00:27:00] And then it evolved into a little bit of social and then it evolved into some the user journey's really long now, and they only really are going to that final bit at the end of it.

Brent: So now you're ing, you know, Hey, I got a better deal for you for something, or you should care about this. But like users are what created the success of Reddit. The need to have real people talking about something in depth so you can feel like they're touching on the things you care about. Like, Hey, I got really wide feet and this is why choose for people with wide feet, but my feet are really wide, wide.

Brent: Do these fit for wide wide? And they're like, no, totally bro. I got the widest feet ever. And they totally fit. Good. Okay, good, good, good. I just needed that. So now I can go buy it. And you know what, if I get that pair of shoes and it's not wide enough, at least I know. I'm not totally responsible. I did ask somebody, I did talk to somebody with wide feet.

Brent: I felt confident. So it shares responsibility. Right. And I think that is what is really driving this shift. And that's, you know, that that conversation is so valuable. [00:28:00] That's why everybody's paying attention to Reddit because they're like, I want to be a part of that. I want that. That is what's leading people to make decisions.

Sani: Like I said, I've been on Reddit, my account is 15 years old. I'm not very active there, but I've been uh. Daily visiting Serbian subreddit because we have a revolution going for like 10 plus months already slowly burning about to escalate. I, I dunno what's gonna happen, but my primary source of information about what's happening in Serbia, where people are protesting and students are locking down the country and all that has been Reddit, like Serbian subreddit.

Sani: And you get, you get the news there, you get, uh, an Instagram clip that someone shares and then you get 50 people chiming in. No, no, this is bullshit. There's this other source. If you want to dig deep and get the, the correct, proper source, source of truth, you can do that on Reddit. You really can do that.

Sani: And it's very difficult for a brand or anybody else to fake and lie about because they'll, they'll rip them apart in the comments.

Brent: there. There the audience. That it attracts, [00:29:00] right? The non flashy, non 32nd video, non, you know, that audience went and, and, and, and there's certain industries where that's really important, right? Like, I mean, if you're looking and it's just fashion and you need quick and stuff, then you know, TikTok is great, right?

Brent: You know, uh, you know, you know, Instagram is great for you. You can see great success there, but, and you can find that on Reddit. But the core of early Reddit, the core of what makes Reddit is an audience that wants to discuss, and they're not afraid to dig deep. So when you can't put your name on something, when you can't, you know, but you want to have a place, then you have to earn respect, right?

Brent: You have to earn your community's respect. And by doing that, you have to be accurate. You have to not be lazy. You have to take the time to really engage. And so Reddit values a depth. It values expertise, it values you taking the time to really think through your response, right? And now there, it's the [00:30:00] world.

Brent: Can you find a subreddit? There's subreddit right now, cat dot. Cat dot. All you're allowed to do is comment, cat. You're not allowed to say another word other than cat. And if you do, it automatically gets removed. The titles of the post are ka, the comments are ka. So you just see ka ka, ka ka ka ka ka ka ka ka ka ka ka ka.

Brent: Like look. And that's a big subreddit, right? It's a very active subreddit. People love that. So is there a place on Reddit for silliness? Absolutely. But that's the thing is that Reddit is not, it's like WordPress. Not every WordPress site is connected. Just because you're on the platform doesn't mean that you're all equally the same, right?

Brent: Every subreddit has its own rules, its own culture, its own tone of voice. And like humans, they have their own unwritten rules, which you have to figure out because you're like, look, I just followed the rules. I didn't break this rule. I didn't break this rule. And you're like, but I just got banned. And that's not like a, oh, sorry.

Brent: Like a No, we don't want you here. Go jump in a ditch. Go away. Don't ever come back again. And you're like, what's the [00:31:00] deal? I didn't break the rules. Yes, but you broke the unwritten rules because we don't really always publish our rules. Right? We have the rules that are out there to keep the really big problems down, but then we have our, you know, nuances that

Sani: but that, that's the thing. You need to be there to know the unwritten rules, and if you don't know them, you don't belong it. It's absolutely also when you have a social network, which right, it's, it's a social network. It's a, it's a non-social social network because of the anonymous thing. But when you have a network where it's not about who you are, it's uh, it's about what you have to say.

Sani: That's where you get the value. That's where you get the real information coming straight out of people.

Brent: And the thing is, we can talk about, look, how wild is Reddit? How interesting it is, what are the nuances? But the reality is you can have a lot of success with Reddit like. I mean, crazy levels of success right now. Um, and, and, and we have been working with a lot of, you know, really big brands that, [00:32:00] you know, you would've come to me two, three years ago and I would've said, Hmm, that's a really tough call.

Brent: You know, that's, and I've done TikTok account when it was like crazy negative. I've done some campaigns in the past. I built all the purple stuff for the Purple Mattress and we, we, you know, we had to kind of wade through some stuff to get to the other side, but like. We'll work with companies like, you know, we're working with Asurion right now, and their whole thing was like, they had ex-employees that had taken over their like, you know, brand and they had the like brand names and the subreddit and it was all like, it was really, really bad.

Brent: And you know, the entire front page of Google, everything was. You know, it wasn't helpful. It was misinformation, it was confusing and it was just causing a lot of problems. It wasn't even about like they're saying something mean about us. They're, it was there, it's inaccurate and it's causing people like a frustration and, you know, it was a lot of work.

Brent: But a year later it's like they have their community, which is doubled in size and now is focused on problem resolution. All the negativity's, you know, [00:33:00] essentially gone, but they're not hiding from the negative comments. They're engaging it. Um, on top of that, like all the rankings that they had that was like, Asurion is a scam, is now our content.

Brent: Asurion is a scam. Question mark. You know, like, let's talk about a little bit deeper. And so what, what, what came from that is we started pro, you know, as we've been kind of seeing the change in search in the LLMs, is that like, even Amazon has like noticed like, hey, the, the metrics on this program are improving.

Brent: Like people are complaining less, there's less confusion, there's better, you know, conversion, there's better help channels. Like, it, it, it's not just about marketing, it's actually solving your user's, you know, needs. And that's what I think is a beautiful thing about where we're at at marketing right now, is we're actually at a place where you can do both.

Brent: You can make the user really happy and you can be really helpful and be really successful at it. So I think that there's a great opportunity right now if you're like, I really care about search, if you're everything about like the current, like when we talk about AI search, right? And we talk about [00:34:00] SEOI, I would phrase it

Sani: jump in, we'll get to that in a lot more detail after,

Brent: Okay, then I'll, I'll

Sani: So maybe let's stop there and let's do the rapid fire round and then

Brent: I don't let you keep to any itinerary Do

Sani: No, no, no, no. I, I, I'm very, I'm very, I'm very careful about, about the outline. So let's get the rapid fire and then we talk about how Reddit is influencing the future of AI search, or just search being discovered and what the future proof marketing professional really means today.

Sani: With all of these changes in mind, rapid fire, uh, if Reddit was a country, what would be the political system in that country?

Brent: I'm not a huge political person, but I would say that like,

Sani: Just say communism,

Brent: no, no, I mean because they really are hands off, like Reddit as a company is like, if you [00:35:00] don't like what's happening to you in a community, go make your own. Right. It's for you and the moderators to figure out, like they don't get involved unless you're breaking the law, right? Like if you're posting pictures that are inappropriate, if you're selling things that you're not allowed to sell, if you're doing black market type stuff and you're doing things that are considered illegal, or you're trying to hack their site, or you're trying to game their site, then Reddit as a company will ban you.

Brent: If they're not, they will not get involved. Like they don't get involved in the individual communities. So the individual communities end up being, you know, individually run. Now those communities have a different structure in each one of the communities. So that's why I'm like, it's really hard to

Sani: Did you go to Copenhagen? Ever? Did, did you visit Copenhagen? There's

Brent: I think I did.

Sani: yeah, I think so too. There's a part of town called Christiania, I think, where it, it is just a state in, in Denmark, like a quasi state. I dunno what it is, where they have their own rules. They, anyone can do whatever they want, just not [00:36:00] harming

Brent: Didn't we go to the Viking

Sani: That was Stockholm. That was Stockholm.

Brent: That was Stockholm. Okay.

Sani: That was, that was a crazy turnip pie that I, I, I don't understand why people ever ate turnip. I never tried turnip after, I never will in my life. But that, that dinner was with the waitress and waiters, uh, walking

Brent: With them throwing stuff

Sani: it was, it was when they announced you, when you walk in.

Sani: That was amazing. That was so good. Uh, second question. Uh, what is a digital marketing practice from just five years ago that is just straight up dangerous today?

Brent: On Reddit or in general? I mean, there's a couple of 'em, cloaking, hacking for links, injections, um, you know, a lot of the bad, bad stuff. Right? Um, I would say probably right now, link building is if you're looking at, like, you're looking at, because like people get reported all the time and you get like kind of outed for it, and it really kind of clearly says that you're [00:37:00] outside of the scope of what people are doing.

Brent: Not, not like the good there is good link building. I don't want to piss off all the link builders, but I get so many emails that are like for, for search engine journal, right? I get so many people like, Hey, can I, how much can I pay to get a link on there? And I'm like, you and I just, you know, I just delete and delete, delete, delete.

Brent: But I, I think that that's one of the areas that I think is, is, is pretty bad. Um, yeah, I would say I, I think influencers are starting to, to get to that point. I think that, um, it's become too much of an industry. And, and I think that it has, um, people will say all the time, like, I wanna do influencer marketing on Reddit.

Brent: And I'm like, it doesn't work that way. Like there's no in

Sani: You have to be there. Let's go to the next one. Uh, name one brand that is absolutely crushing it on Reddit when it comes to community engagement. It doesn't have to be your client, it could be just any brand that comes to mind that is killing it right now.

Brent: I really think that, [00:38:00] like some of the clients, I know what the outcome is, right? So when I say killing it, I mean actually making an impact. We had a, a brand core balance training, right? It's very small brand, but they were doing back pain and, and restructuring and they're changing people's lives, right?

Brent: There's CPAP that, you know, the conversation around that. It's not like a brand that's on there, but the, like the product. Um, I think that device that does like Intune deployments, but if, if you really want like a, a, this is not a client of mine, but this is somebody that I always look up to, like when they do it, is the one that almost everybody that knows Reddit will say is Sonos.

Sani: Mm. Okay.

Brent: Like the, the, the speaker systems and stuff, like they are crushing it with Reddit and, and their model is just great. They're, they're, they're not the brand, they're representatives of the brand. They don't overtake the community. They participate in it. I think that they, um, and I think a part of that is that they've struck a really good balance with the [00:39:00] community of fans so that they're not battling, they're not, they're in tune with, they're very connected in tune with them.

Brent: So I'd say Sonos is definitely like the community engagement. I really like what Asurion's doing to be honest. Just because they're, they're, they're, if you go look at their account. It's a lot of like negative posts, right? Like this didn't work, but they're choosing to post those, like they're filtered and then they're choosing to post them because they wanna solve that problem for that person and others.

Brent: So I think that it might not look as sexy if you go look at it, but what it's doing for the actual company and their brand reputation is actually quite

Sani: Being transparent, honest, that that's long-term. That's gonna work every time. The last one. And then we get to the future of, of everything basically. Uh, what is a bigger threat to a brand's long-term health, uh, bad algorithm update, like what we have right now with the, you know, search, ai, search killing clicks and all that, or loss of community trust.

Brent: I mean, loss of community [00:40:00] trust a

Sani: That's an easy one. Okay.

Brent: it's so easy because algorithms follow trust, right? Algorithms are based on trust. You have a short window of manipulating or hurting from an algo if your algo takes you out. Like there's been brands that have been hit by algos that have like gone out, and the user you group has gotten it back in like really quickly.

Brent: It's like, it's almost so obvious that it's like, yo, that can't be that. That's impossible. Right? So a good community backing will typically undo just about, and that's because it's, it comes down to humans, right? Um, humans tend to break the rules for people they like.

Sani: That. Let's, let's get to the future of, I wouldn't say AI search. I don't like, I, I just don't like that term AI search. I don't like the new SEO replacement acronyms that much

Brent: That's because search has a, this, this complete tie to, um, SEO and Google instead of being the way that a a, a customer or a user [00:41:00] finds, you know, searches for the resolution to whatever problem or need that they have when they go online, we search all the

Sani: It's still search engine optimization. It's still search. Let, let's, let's just try to see it that way. Search is not just a Google search box, and, and that's exactly what I mean now. You obviously have been with Search Engine Journal for a very long time and now you work with zip tie. So for someone who's a digital professional who maybe has built their career on traditional SEO metrics or knows about the traditional SEO now with these changes, what are the, what are the mindset shifts required to not get lost?

Sani: I'm not gonna say succeed, but to not get lost in this new reality of search?

Brent: So I would say that like the first part, like there's two parts and I'm gonna say 'em so that I don't lose them in case I forget. 'cause I tend to, my, my mind, my divergent mind will go crazy. So I think there is, um, there is, uh, understanding the difference between [00:42:00] keywords and problem resolution.

Brent: But I think the first thing that you really have to, to understand is that we in marketing have been told a couple things, right? If you're, if you're a scholar or not a scholar, but if you've been in this industry for a while, you'll understand that like everybody has said, quality content, being good for your user, being helpful to your user is the metric that you should suit for in order to have success online.

Brent: And then there's a whole bunch of people that say, yeah, that's bullshit because I cannot do any of that and still have success. There has been a way to subvert. The, the idea of what everybody wanted the online experience to be and still be successful to such an extent that it made in some cases not cheating or bypassing or kind of hacking through it a bad business decision.

Brent: Um, and I think that what we've seen is about 20 years of marketing and every time when somebody says, well, AI is gonna destroy search, well, it [00:43:00] doesn't. And AI is gonna, you know, this is gonna change. Search and search isn't gonna exist and it's gonna change. And mobile is gonna change everything. And voice search is gonna be the end of search and it hasn't happened, right?

Brent: It's kinda like me in Florida like this hurricane's gonna be the one nobody evacuates 'cause and then every 10 years it is the one, right? So what I would say is we're at the end of a 20 year period in the start of a next. Period, not the 21st year of another thing that applies. We, you really almost need to take a moment to say, okay, AI has given us the, the, the, the, the, the ability to deliver on the promise that we were never able to deliver on before.

Brent: And what we need to think about now is understanding that you're almost starting new and it's the reconnection of traditional marketing and psychology and understanding how people are and what the understanding where the storytelling is. Understanding [00:44:00] what society's doing, and then taking everything you've learned from, you know, digital marketing and saying, how can I connect those two to have meaning?

Brent: Right? And I think that like, just coming to terms with, we're not on year 21. We're on year one. So really think about being brave, being, you know, uh, a little bit wild. I think. Um, I was just listening Brene Brown, uh, interview about her new book and she's like, if you're settled, that's unsettling because we're not in an era of being settled anymore.

Brent: Like we are in an area of chaos. And good leaders need to understand that there is no more settle. There is, I'm always behind. I'm always getting left behind. There's this driving force. So be brave and understand and feel that, and don't get freaked out. Take it as like a motivation, right? Like, okay, I'm ready to go forward and make stuff work again.

Brent: I'm ready to go do this. The now when you get into this idea, everything was built around, people are gonna search and I want to be present in that search so that I can grab from people what their needs are, right? So it was problem resolution, but in a [00:45:00] kind of different way, right? What I would say is it's no longer in my mind about what are the keywords I should be chasing and things like that.

Brent: It's more like what are the real problems? That my customers are dealing with, where I have the ability to solve that problem for them in a meaningful and positive way. Right. So it's, it's really going back and saying, if I could look at what they need and what they want, and, and I'm able to answer that question because of the fact that it comes back to that vision of saying, what does Google want?

Brent: What is, what does everybody want? They want you to come. Onto their platform, go through a process of an experience, and at the end be satisfied with that process and the outcome. Right? And a lot of searches looking for a solution or a recipe or something, you know, you want something at the end that satisfies you.

Brent: So if you understand what the problem is and you understand what are the emotions and the considerations that, and it's not just [00:46:00] one problem and then yours, the solution, it's what is the way that somebody has gone through that journey to then say that they need solutions, and then start evaluating solutions and then pick you.

Brent: How do you figure out what that early problem is and what is the journey they're going on so that you can be a part of progressing them through that journey? The thing is, is if you do that, if you solve the problem, that's what Google wants. Right now in the validation phase, if you solve the problem, that's what LLMs want.

Brent: They're, and so they'll pull you not because of how you've strategically built authority or anything like that. They'll pull you if they can tell that you're giving them a part in the, the ability to tell the story that allows a user to

Sani: And all that is because that's what the users want. The what Google wants. What? Well, the way I see this, if you could just look at the last, let's say 20 years, because you said 20 years. This is year one. The last 20 years of last click attribution. Last click [00:47:00] marketing, like the the keywords thing. If we had the ability to track intent and user problems, and then from that we had to go back to the keywords, people would say, this is so stupid.

Sani: I don't wanna do this. So this is just a

Brent: people don't know what their problem is. I think that's the other thing that people just don't get is that if you look at the studies, you look, people don't know what their problem is. I need marketing strategies. I need new marketing strategies. Okay, well, what things have you been trying? Well, I've been trying this and this and have they been working?

Brent: No. Well, they did it Well. What was the problem? Well, we, we tested this, but why is that a small Well, I couldn't get budget approval. Oh, budget. Is a problem, right? And if you could get the budget, well then I couldn't get buy-in because they didn't believe in it because I could. So you have a budget buy-in problem, like you could make all the new tactics you want, but you're not getting budget and buy-in from your team.

Brent: So it takes going through that conversation for people to understand and it takes going through that conversation for somebody that wants to provide help to understand how they can be helpful. Right? And [00:48:00] this goes back to a book I read The Advice Trap, which is a great book, talks all about the psychology behind this.

Brent: But like we have an answer within seconds that we think is gonna work for somebody. But we, we have a different life. We do different things. Our setup is different. We don't know what they've tried, what has worked, what hasn't worked. So being curious and getting into it is a part of uncovering that problem, right?

Brent: So when we say, Hey, you know, it's about tracking your problem, although I get that I got all the data from my website, I can show you the click maps I can show you. Well that's great, but like. You're already into a different mindset, right? Like you're already tracking something that is not what people are actually making decisions on.

Brent: Now there's a middle ground to that. Some of it probably is, but in a generalized speaking, what they do, and we always love that, we're like, why does everybody say, if I was gonna come to an intersection, I would take a right. A hundred percent of people say I'd take a right, but then like 80% of 'em turn left.

Brent: Why? Like what's the disconnect? Right? And you see it over and over and over and over and over, and it consistently is there, [00:49:00] right? So I think that in that sense. I think that, yes, we're taking, we're chasing after problems, but we need to find a way to get to those problems without going through the channels that are siloing the conversation or changing the conversation in a way that we don't quite see what the real problem

Sani: And the reason.

Brent: we see that when we do the, the stuff with the zip tie stuff is because we'll take it and we'll say, oh, you think it's because of these things? And these make logical sense. This is what you, because you put yourself in a logical mind. You're just like, Hey, you wanna buy an electric car? Right? So when you're buying an electric car, you wanna know what's the battery linked on this ev, right?

Brent: You wanna know what's the, you know, what's the type of charger, right? Well, when you get into the conversations, people say like, well, if you live in a place that's hot. There's no sunroof on a Tesla, so it heats the car up, which causes your battery to run down because you're running the eco to keep it from getting so hot.

Brent: And so it's not a great experience, right? And so forth. And we don't have knobs. I'm really used to having a knob. So when I'm [00:50:00] trying to do something and it's like, I need the sound off, I've gotta go to my smart screen and open up spot, you know, and I've gotta click this and oops, you know, and I have it in my ev like I sit down and the, you don't have a seatbelt on, pops up or something, or some other notice.

Brent: And I'm like, I can't get to the audio. I'm trying to talk to my family. I'm like, Ugh.

Sani: that's dangerous. Let's just,

Brent: But those are the things that come out in real conversations, and those are the things that lead people to making a decision, right? It's like you can do all, and I've told you this before, we, because we talk about this stuff all the time.

Brent: You go study that, you're gonna get an iPhone and you're dead set on getting an iPhone, me, and you're talking, and I say, I totally would get an Android. And you're like, yeah, but I, no, it does all the same things, man. It's super fast. But does it have a good, bad, yeah, it has a good battery. You're gonna go buy an Android and if you don't like it, you're gonna say it's not the Android.

Brent: That sucks. It just wasn't for me. Whereas if you walked out and bought an Android without anything, thought about it and it didn't work, you'd be like, that's a stupid ass phone. I'll never

Sani: To get back to the, well, not, not to to knobs. No, no, not to knobs on [00:51:00] cars. But it's not enough to see that in the spec sheet. Uh, what you need before you make a decision is to see someone complain about it or be enthusiastic about it because someone telling their story with it is a much stronger driver than just seeing a spec sheet that says No knobs.

Brent: I, I see this all the day and every day in every way is that people talk, referencing a visual image they have in their head. I can't see your graphs and charts and visuals. I don't have your internal story. You throw 80 different stats at me. All I see is 80 stats. It's like when I, it's like a chef opens a kitchen sink, uh, a fridge, and sees a meal.

Brent: I open the fridge, I see a bunch of ingredients. There's no food here. I've gotta order out. My wife comes behind me and makes four course meal. Where the hell did that come from? It was in the fridge. Nah, there was only ingredients in there, right? So if you don't have the vision in your head and you're describing it.

Brent: So I went to go get an ev, you know, electric [00:52:00] vehicle. I looked at all the, and this was, uh, honestly, a couple years ago. This is kind of where me and Bartow started. It was like. Who gives a shit about any of this information? I can't even, I can't even understand enough from this information to know anything.

Brent: I felt more confused, more, you know, kind of like, well, maybe this is just not a good, maybe I'll just get a gas card. I mean, I, I was like, you know what, I'll just do this in another couple years. Like, there's, nobody gives you, it's like the insurance thing, like what insurance should you get? I don't know.

Brent: It's like there's a hundred different parameters and nobody has the right answer, and each one seems like you're screwed in one way or another. So it's like you don't have the information you actually need. And then, so I end up going to Reddit and I end up reading through there, and I end up hearing people say, okay, well here's the breakdown.

Brent: When you have this car, here's the pros, but here's, and you're like, okay, this is normal conversation. This is, I don't need to know the voltage of the battery. I just need to know that it lasts longer than the others. Right? We don't need the best answer. A lot of times people think, oh, you [00:53:00] have to have all the info.

Brent: No, no, no. Look at our world, people make decisions every day on stuff that they heard from their neighbor. Right. And they, they will go in the street and fight over that misinformation like passionately. People don't need the right answer. They need what resonates with

Sani: Lemme tell you, I have not bought a pair of running shoes for more than five years without reading Reddit reviews and trusting GDI reviews it. It has not happened. And I buy them frequently.

Brent: and that is the same for everyone. And that's why their site has almost doubled. That's why they've become so big. That's why they're, you know, so influential right now. And that's why it's kind of like an engine that keeps turning because now where else are you gonna go? Like, yeah, Google's starting to play with some commenting on some of their, yeah.

Brent: Okay. So five people comment with no connection, no real understanding of whether are you even interested in this, right? I, it comes back to the subreddits. And the siloing is really powerful in saying people know this. If you wanna know about a TV show. Right, you go. I mean there, Rick and Morty's, one of my favorite shows.[00:54:00] 

Brent: If you go to the Rick and Morty, uh, uh, subreddit and you sort by top, there are complete 20 page long posts about which Morty is actually the real Morty. And it walks through episode and episode and where he died and where they went and they got this. And you realize quickly that like they're not the same people.

Brent: Like, it's like there's an evolution that's happening through here. And it's fascinating, right? This is the type of knowledge. So if you had a question about wanting to understand what happened in a Rick and Morty episode, you could go to Google or you could go even to AI right now and you're gonna get, or you can go to Reddit and you can get like this really detailed explanation of exactly what's happening in a way that your brain can see it and understand it, and that makes you feel satisfied.

Brent: And that's, at the end of the day, what we care more than anything is about. That's why I still have a 5-year-old phone because it's just like, is good enough and I like it.

Sani: Uh, mine is, yeah, five years old as well. And, and I, I'm absolutely fine.

Brent: But the new models [00:55:00] say that I can get an extra hour of my battery, but my battery's never gone below

Sani: Do I need, do I Yeah, exactly.

Brent: You know,

Sani: Um, let's, let's just wrap this up with looking at the future. You have you, one of the things you are is a futurist. You have been a futurist. You care about how the world will develop, how the marketing world, digital world will, will change over time with all the influences, especially now with ai.

Sani: Now as AI is. I'm not even going to say as it becomes more capable, because it's capable enough, in my opinion, to do most things well if handled properly. How should people who are in marketing think about redefining what their role is and what their responsibilities are, and which skills, which human skills are more or less valuable?

Sani: Thanks to ai?

Brent: the. it's more about understanding the connectivity between things and how people want to be interacted [00:56:00] with and what avenues they're using than it is to get into individual elements. I'll give you a great example. AI came out, and me and you talked about this. Prompt engineering was the next big thing, right?

Brent: Everybody's out there with those super crazy advanced prompts and everybody's creating prompts. And we're selling prompts. 'cause you know what? That's the next thing. And then chat, GPD was like, you don't need to make prompts anymore. We just built it all in, right? And then they're like, oh, okay, well now we need instructions, right?

Brent: We need projects, right? Projects are gonna make it happen. Because we needed to go through multiple steps. And now they're like, oh, you can do that. We'll even go back and check. Although don't use the reminder thing. I was at the DMV and I set chat to remind me if there was a news announcement about the, the, the driver's license system being down.

Brent: So it was tracking and I was like, okay, thanks. It's back up. You can stop now. Went home and had 45 emails that had been sending every 15 minutes and it wouldn't stop. And I was like, yo, you gotta stop. Can you delete this? They're like, yep, delete it. Got another email. I'm like, um, hello. Can you delete this?

Brent: They're like, we actually can't delete these, but we turned it off. You're not getting it [00:57:00] anymore. I'm like, I just got two more. And they're like, well, you must be asking again. I'm like, I haven't asked again. You're in the same thread with me. You know? So anyway, I think that the skill is. If you're, if you're trying to figure out, like we used to have to learn PPC or we used to have to learn search or content writing or schema, you have to learn a lot about it.

Brent: AI is going to allow us to shortcut a lot of that. Imagine whatever position you're in. What would you be doing if you were one position higher? Because what you're able to do is you're able to give yourself somebody who's lower than you, somebody who can do the work that's lowered, you, can assist you in understanding the work that's one level lower than you.

Brent: So if you were, you know, a, a director and you were gonna go to vp, what would be the shift that you would start thinking about in those positions? Well, today, imagine you have a, a, a virtual assistant. Imagine you have, you know, some basic team building type, you know, collaboration. Like you have these tools [00:58:00] that allow you to do work that's one step higher.

Brent: And so I would focus more on understanding, like, the connectivity of all these things than I would really trying to figure out really how every single one of them works at the, the nitty gritty detail level.

Sani: Uh, I just had a solo episode about vibe coding and what a AI does for developers and coders is you don't have to worry about syntax anymore. This is exactly what you're describing. You don't have to worry about the boring details that were boring 20 years ago and still are because there's, there's an intern that does that for you.

Sani: Basically. Another thing is

Brent: calculator scenario who's sitting down writing out equations and stuff like that. You know, you would, you wouldn't even think about it

Sani: Another thing is, uh, it needs to be in the vertical you are in. You cannot just protect, like, I, I'm not going to use AI to become the best guitar player in the world, which is something I, I've never done in, in the past. If you are a, uh, let's say a marketer or web developer, you can become next level of that [00:59:00] thanks to AI, easily, easily,

Brent: two ways you can look at that question. What's gonna be the best for you for being successful in marketing, and what's gonna be the best for you for success for yourself right now? If I was gonna tell you the one thing that I would do and I am working on right now. Is that like I'm, right now I'm downloading every email I've ever done and I'm going, I was telling you about this.

Brent: I'm going through, I'm downloading all my emails, I'm grabbing all the chats that I've ever had. I'm grabbing all the articles, the interviews, the podcasts, because AI agents, like your virtual assistant is coming. That's the hundred percent the money maker for AI right now. And everybody is trying to get to a point.

Brent: That's what all these little tasks and these connections are meant to do. So at some point, you need to have an understanding of yourself. And please, for God's sake, stop trying to tell AI what you think it should do and really start asking more. Because what you need is you need all the information about you to be created into a format that LLMs would use.

Brent: Like how would AI use this for prediction models? Because it is [01:00:00] predicting based on the collection, but you need it to, if you ask a question to AI and you change one or two words, it changes the entire answer, you know? Um, and it's

Sani: if you don't change the words and ask the question

Brent: It, it'll change the answer because it reads into so many different elements that you've asked it twice or that you've, you know, there's so many different elements that are into like, what cre.

Brent: So stop trying to like, create that first part. Really think about like, what does it need to be able to predict in a way that satisfies you, right? So if, and we are not that, we're not that unique, we're not that hard to figure out. Like, like I tell people all the time, like. We are just regurgitating and memorizing and polling from reference a lot of things.

Brent: So if you were to say to me, how would I respond to this email? If you really want a virtual assistant to be useful to you, what if you hired one today? You have to give them access to everything. You have to teach them. You have, they have to understand how you think. So in preparation, I would be gathering everything.

Brent: I would be going through your chat history. Now that it can look at it and say, Hey, in the last month, write out this. [01:01:00] Using this format, all the details that are about me and the evolution of my thought on different topics, marketing on my family, on, you know, because when you start getting to a virtual assistant level, they're going to be very useful and I mean useless.

Brent: And they're gonna break for you unless you're providing a lot. And so if you don't wanna spend a ton of time trying to train them while they're being product, you know, productive for you, then start now by building a set of data about yourself.

Sani: What you said about hiring an assistant, a virtual assistant. If you hire a and, and I've had a virtual assistant, executive assistant, whatever you wanna call it for, for the first time earlier this year. So now I feel, I feel like an I can trust an AI agent doing those things because I know what that work is about.

Sani: If you're going to hire a human being without telling them what you want and what you're trying to do and expect, they'll figure it out. You're failing with ai. You are

Brent: Yeah. You have a picture in your head, you have to describe that picture, right? And a lot of times when my prompting comes up, I'm like, Hey, here's the end goal. And you know, I'm [01:02:00] trying to do this and I'm trying to have what I would say to a, Hey, look, I'm trying to write an article. I really want it to be this, but I don't want it to say this and I don't want it to say that.

Brent: And I, you know, it has to be within a scope of this, and I want to use a couple of this. Can we research a bunch of different things? And let me look at that, and I wanna make sure, you know, you're, that's what you have to do with, you know, your prompts to get like what you really want out of it, right? So.

Sani: The final question for today. Uh, you're a futurist and many times you've told me pay attention to this, and then it happened. Uh, you told me to pay attention to LinkedIn seriously. Years before people started. Really? And, and I wish I listened better, listened to, to more then, because now I don't know what I would have on LinkedIn.

Sani: But, uh, what is, with all the AI development, with everything happening in, in, in digital world, what is the one thing you see happening in three to five years that most people do not expect right now?

Brent: Wow. There's, there's a, there's an [01:03:00] easy reason why I can see those other things happening. Um, I think that, like, I think that the resistance people have to, the idea that AI is going to solve problems is, is, um, is miscalculated. I think you're giving way too much credit for people feeling like they need to believe in something.

Brent: And, and, and I, I will tell you that if you put virtual reality headsets on within three minutes, you're in the environment. You don't, I mean, you, it's believable. I would say that like, um, there is going to be a shift into personalized discussions and I think really paying attention to how, um, people are changing their use because we are, the thing is we're, I know this isn't like a go do this product, but I would say.

Brent: We are at a point where we're introducing smartphones to people. We're introducing AI to technology, which means that everything that we've kind [01:04:00] of come to understand in our standards are gonna get rewritten. A new generation coming in looks at this stuff completely different. So I would say right now I would want, I'm, I'm in a phase of really trying to pay attention to the social patterns, like how are people using things?

Brent: I'm really monitoring, like, what is this technology changing in the way people do things? Because we're not in a phase where the next thing is obvious. We're in a phase where we're looking for the next thing. AI is gonna be a catalyst for it, but we really need to be hyper tuned into how is it impacting people?

Brent: What is, I would be paying attention to the laws, I would be paying attention to the restrictions. I would be paying attention to what are the features that AI's releasing, and I would watch how people are using that technology and how is it changing their everyday life. Because my kids use chat GBT instead of search.

Brent: So you know, if you're getting, but there's inform misinformation, like what information are they getting, what are the contextual things? So I would [01:05:00] say that there is a learning that we're going through and there's an evolution and, and, and, and, and the next thing is going to present itself within that scope of focus.

Brent: And I think paying attention in that area is what I'm doing. So I don't, I, I am in a place where I'm looking for that right now. I see signs that it's about conversation. It's about making somebody feel like they're having a personal conversation. And you, you, I'm sorry, I know this is a long answer, but.

Brent: If you remember when influencers came out, the reason why they did so well is because we had smart times and FaceTime. So when you would talk to a family member, you, you would start to connect the, the neuros that, you know, I'm talking to a family member. When you're listening to an influencer, it would actually trigger the same effect.

Brent: It's kind of like why your itches became vibrations, right? Your body will change the way it interprets signals based on patterns. So right now I think that what people are, are starting to see is that that is evolved to ai. That is evolved to a [01:06:00] different type of conversation. It doesn't matter if it's a real person.

Brent: It doesn't matter if it's or not, like written or video. The signs are there that make people believe in you. So I think that being able to become, and that's kind of why I really like what we're doing with Reddit. To really understand how to interact with people like a real person. AI is going to allow you to do that on scale, but they can't create that for you.

Brent: You need to figure that problem resolution out, and then let AI kind of do it on scale, but you have to be the one to figure out the connection and to know where that connection's happening.

Sani: That was insightful. This was such a great conversation. I'm so thankful and so glad we finally did this. Before I, uh, shut the episode down, uh, what's the best way for people to connect with you and, uh, if someone's interested in working with you, what is the best way?

Brent: So honestly like we have, we, it took me like six months to put up a site. 'cause I don't really, I'm not big on like going and selling, right? It's never been [01:07:00] my thing, right? It's like people know me, they know how to find me. If you don't, then you whatever find somebody who does. But I actually have a site up@ogsmedia.com.

Brent: Uh, it's not big site, it's just a contact form. But you know, on LinkedIn as well, everything, all my social is just Brent Sotos, but the only one I check is LinkedIn. So if you message me on LinkedIn, I will actually see it. Um, so I would say LinkedIn or the website, you know, and just, you know, contact me through there.

Brent: But, uh, that would be the two channels I would use to mine.

Sani: Brent, thank you so much, and to everyone

Brent: Thank you. I always feel like at the end of my conversations, they were just rambling, so hopefully there was something of value in the rambling, but

Sani: it, my friend. And to everyone listening, uh, thank you as well and I'll talk to you next week.

Brent: thank you. Cheers. 

​

Sani: what an interesting look into both the past and the future of marketing, but internet [01:08:00] as well from Brent Su Toros. My biggest takeaway for, for this from this conversation is as technology gets more complex, the path to success gets more simple. Be human 'cause everyone's trying to. Go all in on whatever the latest, shiniest thing is.

Sani: But if you just try to connect with the people, that's a guaranteed win every time. The future of discoverability, the future of brand building is not about gaming the system. No hacks. Once again, it's about earning the trust by showing up, listening and participating in real conversations with your users and your customers.

Sani: There are no shortcuts. This is the only path that is guaranteed to work for the long term. Huge. Thank you to Brent for sharing his deep experience with us. You can find Brent on LinkedIn. Check out the show notes to to get the link or just search for his name to learn more about his work and if this conversation.

Sani: Sparked an idea for you. The best way to support no hacks is to share the episode with a friend or a colleague. Leave a quick rating or review in your [01:09:00] podcast app. It makes a huge difference in helping others find a show. Thank you for tuning in. I'm sunny. This is no hacks. Talk to you next week.