Making sense of AI’s investment frenzy

Denise Persson: Hello and welcome to the CMO Blueprint. I am delighted to have Diego Lomanto, Chief Marketing Officer at Writer here today. Diego, welcome.

Diego Lomanto: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Denise Persson: Diego, you are a self-described tech optimist, and you spent a lot of time really looking at the history of technology. If you look at this era we have in front of us now, what are some of the key learnings that we can apply today?

Diego Lomanto: Yeah, I think there’s a couple. So first off, starting at sort of the industry level, You know what you what I’ve loved reading, Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions of Financial Capital. I’ve read that book and that essay, and it really impacted my my viewpoint on how industries form. You know, the thesis there is we’re in an investment frenzy. Typically when a new technology comes, there’s an investment frenzy and we’re certainly in that right now, right? Well, all the startups that are getting high valuations, maybe don’t even have a product yet, but that’s necessary so that all the good ideas can come to fore and all of the real use cases can be built out, even if there’s a lot of use cases that don’t make sense, right? So there’s a lot of investment, but then we go to a stage where, you know, we start to shake out what’s real, what’s not real. And we start to see some of the consolidation that happens in an industry. And what becomes important is who’s getting real value. I look back at AI and just markets in general, and it’s helpful, I think, to understand, are we in a frenzy or are we in deployment? That’s from a company perspective. I also think it’s really helpful to understand societally where we are in a cycle, right? I say I’m an optimist because if you just study the history of technology, society figures out, reshapes and is reformed. And we don’t know what that looks like, but it generally works out to drive more wealth creation and a better standard of living for humanity. And I just think that’s where we’ll be next.

Denise Persson: You’re just not an optimist. You’re very passionate about technology.

Diego Lomanto: I am.

Denise Persson: And you have a little bit of an unusual background and career path. Yeah. I mean, you just started as a developer.

Diego Lomanto: I did. I did. I started as a developer. Yeah, well, I went to school for marketing. I went to school for business and marketing, and I was interning at an advertising agency on Madison Avenue. I grew up in New York. I was just, you know, this is like the dot com era and I just love technology so much that I started building websites for fun. Yeah. And I’m sitting next to the people who are starting the interactive division inside the agency. And we happen to be music fans as well. And I showed him Diego’s music site with blinking text and ugly backgrounds. I showed him I built this myself and they’re like, hey, we just got a big contract to build country dot com. You want to come work for us over the summer? $10 an hour to build websites. I was like, are you kidding me? I’d love to do that. And that actually led to my first job as a web developer. And so I think it’s been very helpful for me in my career to have my start in technology and engineering because I understand how the technology works. Ultimately, I was capped, I think, on my engineering chops. And I found product marketing. And then I was like, OK, this is the right thing for me. Art, science, engineering, business. And that’s where I led next.

Denise Persson: clearly very applicable today where we’re all becoming builders in marketing as well, right?

Diego Lomanto: Yeah, having that mentality has been really helpful because, and I propose everyone get hands on with the technology. If you’re not, how can you really understand how it should be used and what value it brings and what it could possibly do, especially now inside a marketing organization where it’s a mix of technology and craft that you have to bring to the job that you do every day?

Denise Persson: So let’s talk a little bit about Writer and maybe how do you use Writer in marketing?

Diego Lomanto: Yeah, we use it everywhere. I would say we actually have, you know, I started Writer two years ago and one of the interesting things about it was that You know, we’re a fast growing company. We’re a series C. We’ve hired really seasoned professionals who know how to do marketing really, really well, at least on my team, right? Like in the marketing organization, we hired great experienced marketers. But they grew up in the SaaS era. And so we had our own transition to make to go from learning how to do marketing in the 2010s to learning how to do marketing in the 2020s. And so we became very AI native very quickly. And so we start with everything that we do. Is there an AI first principle solution to how we do this?

Denise Persson: So also, I mean, one of the key differentiations with Writer is governance and trust. Yes. Talking about the importance of governance and trust now. Yeah. For companies to succeed with their AI strategies.

Diego Lomanto: Yeah, so, you know, Writer’s customer base is the Global 2000, Fortune 500. We’re in highly regulated industries, retail, CPG, and tech companies. And, you know, for those organizations, AI carries risk for every organization, but when you think of a large bank or a large financial institution, a large retailer or a large CPG manager, there’s so much risk inherent in bringing AI into your marketing program. And we built our entire offering around putting guardrails around AI that can give brands the confidence and the trust that what gets produced is not only safe and doesn’t hallucinate and is accurate, but really on brand. And that’s the hard part for a large scale AI driven operation. When you have a thousand marketers and people are creating stuff that the CMOs don’t see, right? We’re not blessing everything that goes out the door in a large organization. How can you trust that what goes out there is actually on brand? You have to build the guardrails in, and that’s what Writer’s really secret sauce is, is that we’ve encoded that in our solution in a way that is trustworthy and proven for large organizations.

Denise Persson: Yeah, I mean, the greatest brand asset these large organizations have is a trust that they have with their consumers. Yes, right. And it’s a trust in the brand, it’s a trust in how they use their data,

Diego Lomanto: And that can fray. If you read something that is off-brand, brand is a bundle of experiences, right? And if the experiences start to fray, I think the brand value starts to fray. And that position that we’ve taken, and it hasn’t been easy and we’ve taken a different route than a lot. We have our own LLMs and we’ve built them in a different way, but it’s really put us in a good position to be that type of partner.

Denise Persson: Right now, we’re in the midst of the biggest transformation ever in marketing. Technology is at the center of this. This is also a big change management challenge for all organizations. You have done this yourself in your organization. You’re working with many of the largest companies on the planet. What are some of the lessons that you have learned in terms of what is working right now?

Diego Lomanto: It’s the technology is amazing. I often say even if we pause the technology two years ago, we’d still have a similar challenge with human adoption. Getting humans to change behavior is the hardest part of any new technology revolution. And so focus on how do you drive different behavior from people? And that is a bit of a carrot and a stick, right? On one hand, management leaders have to show that it’s visibly important to change and why it’s important, right? It’s not change for change sake. You have to explain it. You have to explain why we need to go through this change. And then you need to lead from the front and show that you are living this as well. Otherwise no one else will, right? That’s the stick. The carrot is you have to celebrate the wins. You have to show the people who are doing, you know, are changing, who are adapting. Those are the ones who are thriving in the organization and you have to give them the organic opportunity to be successful, whether that’s, you know, workshops and awards and things that drive that energy and enthusiasm from the ground up, you have to combine both. And if you don’t do that, you really just get either a bunch of stuff happening that doesn’t have framing and context, or you have a lot of, I’m pushing this down and I’m just doing it because my boss told me. Got to merge both.

Denise Persson: No, exactly. I also think we see that those organizations that are inspiring change, those are succeeding better than those who are just mandating people to use AI. That’s right.

Diego Lomanto: And that’s hard. At bigger companies, that’s hard to do. With a mid-sized team like a startup like mine, I can see everything and do that. But at scale, that’s a big challenge for organizations.

Denise Persson: And also my technology is becoming easier and easier to use as well. I’m thinking about your days back developing those websites. Yes. Today we can all do those websites that you did back in the days, right? Yeah. 20 plus years ago. Yeah. We’re going to see the same evolution here from an AI perspective, right? These tools and applications are going to be incredibly easy to use as well.

Diego Lomanto: Right. So we give more people the ability to use it, which I think is just a good thing.

Denise Persson: So if we look ahead in five years, maybe it’s only one year. We don’t know. Things are moving at the breakneck speed right now. If you’re looking at this nirvana for marketing in the next five years, where would you like to see this go?

Diego Lomanto: I’d love us to be able to drive scale with AI, but keep the humanity center and creativity and innovation centered around humans. I think the Nirvana is the perfect blend of human and AI working together in concert and not an over index or overweighting on one side or the other. And I think we have a lot of risk in overweighting on AI. I mean, I’m an AI company. You know, maybe that’s taboo for me to say, but I truly think it’s really important to find the right balance between the two. And we’ll learn that through experimentation, I think.

Denise Persson: And we’re seeing more things around authenticity, you know, human connections. And it has grown massively just in this year. People really want to get together. We at Snowflake, we’re seeing events are really on the rise.

Diego Lomanto: I mean, speaking marketer to marketer, I actually... do more in-person field marketing type events than most people would either would expect from a company like us or my cohort, my peer group, because we believe it’s really important to help people, help companies change. You have to have these human connections.

Denise Persson: I remember just a few years ago when everyone was saying events are going away. I mean, why are you spending so much money and effort on events? And again, now we’re really seeing the importance of those

Diego Lomanto: I’m glad to see you come back. I’ve always been a true believer in the value of a business, bringing people together to connect.

Denise Persson: And that’s where the peer-to-peer learning is happening, like we’re doing here right now. That’s right. Okay. All right. It’s really been great to have you here. I have a few rapid-fire questions here for you before we end. So any recent movie or show you watched you want to recommend to the audience?

Diego Lomanto: I’m doing a Sopranos rewatch right now. I haven’t watched a Sopranos since the original run in the early 2000s, and it is the best crafted television show and maybe even cinema that I think I’ve watched. And I’m really appreciating it the second time around. And, you know, 20 years later, as a professional in marketing and someone who talks and thinks about human curation, human judgment, human creativity, The creative work done there is amazing. And it shows you what a really, truly, authentically brilliant creative mind can do that creates something that stands the test of time. And so for me, that always makes me go back to it’s really helping me think you know, great strategy and creative truly set you apart and are eternal. And I want to make sure that, you know, so I, sorry, that’s my learning from, I always take it back to like work.

Denise Persson: Again, AI is about freeing up time, right? So maybe we have more time to watch Netflix and shows. Yes.

Diego Lomanto: Take it as research for great creative.

Denise Persson: Okay, what is one word your team would use to describe you, Diego?

Diego Lomanto: I think engaged is probably the word. I am not an expert at all the things my team does. I am not the best communications person. I’m not the best brand strategist. I’m not the best DG person. But I feel like I’ve learned and I’m broad enough across them that I could be an engaged partner to help them figure out how to run their teams and be effective and be someone that they can bounce their ideas around. So I try to be really engaged with the team and lead from the front.

Denise Persson: I can totally see that. So going back then, 25 years, you were a web developer on Madison Avenue. Any advice you would have given yourself back then?

Diego Lomanto: Two things. One, monetize the things you were building for fun. And two, be more comfortable questioning leaders because leaders are trying to figure it out as well. And I only realized that when I became a leader myself, you know, we have more experience and we can, you know, we’re the right person generally with the experience and the skills to make the calls on what to do. But we’re often facing questions and trying to figure out what the right thing to do is. And it has been helpful to have the people who help me think through and question things and help me think more critically. And I probably could have done that more as a junior person. I don’t think it was okay to question your leader back 25 years ago. I think the generation today is totally comfortable with that. I tell you, they question me every day.

Denise Persson: Same here, same here, which I love, but you’re right. Maybe it was a different world back then. Diego, it’s been so much fun to have you here. Thank you so much.

Diego Lomanto: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. It’s been fun.