Human After All

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, not a rock star, but a CMO and trusted advisor, and in this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of marketing street knowledge that I hope will help unlock the rockstar marketer in you.

Hello rock star!

Whatever your view on the hype around AI is, the notion of work is changing.

Knowledge and expertise are starting to look like mental arithmetic in a world of calculators; still useful, just not necessary, there are machines for that now.

The debate is now about where we humans fit in a world of intelligent systems.

Inspired by an article “Rick Rubin is the Future of Work”, I was chatting with Robert Rose about Rick Rubin, a music producer who couldn’t play an instrument but could predict audience tastes. He is quoted as saying:

And as the article goes on to say:

“That’s it. That’s the whole job description of the man who produced Run-DMC, Johnny Cash, the Beastie Boys, Adele, Jay-Z, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Metallica. He can’t do the how. He is the undisputed master of the what.”

Rick Rubin is described as the future of work, as he may not have the knowledge or expertise, the things that the LLMs can provide knowledge workers, but he has taste and discernment.

Shortly after this chat, an old chum of mine, Andrew Finlayson, shared an excerpt of a book on leadership he’s writing (on LinkedIn), which, concluded with this:

I encourage you to read the whole article; it’s really good, and I am looking forward to Andrew publishing the book.

So, we can add judgment, responsibility, morals, and experience to the taste and discernment I mentioned earlier to the list of things that we, the humans, bring to a world where synthesized expertise and research are so abundant.

Then, as I was preparing to publish this, I listened to Keith Smith’s The Fuel Podcast, and an interview with a Messaging Strategist, Anna McLoughlin. On the topic of creating a snappy tagline, Keith asked whether CMOs could simply put a prompt into ChatGPT and have it generate a tagline.

Her response was interesting: as consultants, we often see the big insight sitting in plain sight - the client just can’t see it. And you are shedding light on something they can’t see.

How do they prompt for something they can’t see?

So maybe that’s the job now.

Not knowledge. Not output.

But judgment, responsibility, morals, experience — and above all, taste.

And finally, something else - when to stop.

When to ship it, imperfect, and a final quote by Rick Rubin:

So, I’ll stop!

That’s it for this week, and the tune that gives us the title of this newsletter is from Daft Punk.

Have a splendid week!

Cheers!

Ian

PS: Apologies for the delay in sending this - we had a long holiday weekend here in the UK, and if you celebrate, hope you had a happy Easter.

Good to know, we are human after all…