How GenAI in Marketing Will Impact the Way We Work

In this episode on Visionaries, we invite two marketing executives leading GenAI-led software companies, Ada Agrait, SVP and Global Head of Corporate Marketing at SAP, and Doug Rozen, CMO at Rokt, to answer how GenAI is changing the way we work. Together, they discuss:

• How they are using AI every day to increase productivity 
• How their marketing teams are experimenting with AI 
• How customers are utilizing AI in innovative ways  
• Job creation vs. Job elimination 
• Their best career advice
• How B2B marketing practices have changed
• Learnings from moving from B2C to B2B marketing
• Which function they believe will not be touched by AI, and which will be obsolete
• What college degrees are going to be most important in the future

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Transcript

SAP + ROKT

[00:00:00] [00:01:00] 

Lisa Hufford: Hello, and welcome. I'm your host, Lisa Hufford, and I'm excited to have a conversation today about how Jen AI can change how we work with our amazing guests.

Please welcome Ada Agrait, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Corporate Marketing at SAP, and Doug Rozen, who is the Chief Marketing Officer at Rokt. 

So let's kick it off talking a little bit about each of your career journeys. Both of you are such amazingly accomplished professionals. And I'd love for you to share about a two minute story if that's possible. I know that's a very high level summary of everything you've gone through, especially any pivotal moments.

As you think about your career and , where you are today. So let's go ahead and start with Ada and then we'll move to Doug. Go ahead Adda. 

Ada Agrait:. Hi everyone. Thank you Lisa. So I started my career as a copywriter back in [00:02:00] 1994. I'm totally dating myself 'cause you could probably do the math and figure out how old I am.

But I really I did P. R. And advertising. I went to Syracuse, moved to New York City because if you could make it there, you can make it anywhere. And then, I fell in love with the sort of intersection of technology and marketing doing P. R. for tech companies back in the day. And that sort of drove me to take a job at Ernst Young when it divested from the consulting firm.

And I helped set up all of their digital infrastructure, their websites, doing our first paid media digital buys, setting up our CRM system. And I just fell in love with that idea that we could actually reach customers in a more efficient and scalable way. And then I went to Microsoft and I was lucky enough to be part of their transformation into the cloud and lead integrated marketing for our commercial businesses.

And that was, absolutely one of my favorite jobs. And then after 18 years, I [00:03:00] decided to come to SAP to help SAP do their transition digital first cloud first to support our customers. And I've been here now for Two years. And I, I love what I do every day and I love how we can really unlock value for customers as marketeers every day.

Lisa Hufford: That's awesome. I'm hearing a lot of transformation transition as a key part of your pivotal points in your journey, Ada. Thank you. Doug, how about you? 

Doug Rozen: Well, first, Lisa, great to spend the time with you and Ada, and thank you to the Marketers That Matter. My career is actually built from a series of pivots, probably very similar to add to the notion of transformation and, and always being a step ahead and a willingness to conquer new frontiers was always kind of part of everything I've done.

I played college sports. I was a goalkeeper and one day I got hurt. And so I took a job in marketing at the athletic department and it was like this wow moment. [00:04:00] I was, I am always operating at this Seamless intersection of where creative and being culturally relevant and combining that with data and tech and harnessing innovation.

It was all coming together. So after getting this taste and marketing, I went all in and, I started client side as a product marketing designer out of college, but. Pivoted to J. Walter Thompson at the right time to be one of the first digital marketers and in the nineties, I learned the the power of an idea, the power of transformation, the importance of brand.

I then pivoted from there and the, the advertising legend at the time and in to go to the opposite end. Loyalty marketing. And so I went to Carlson and there I got firsthand the importance. I had no idea. Decision sciences, predictive analytics, and like, we look at it today and it's like, of course, it's table stakes, but this was like 2005, 6, 7, like, [00:05:00] I didn't know, but I got such an appreciation for data.

And then my next pivot was to go publisher side. Where I learned to really appreciate the power of messaging and content. And then from there, I pivoted back to the agency world, but now in a media capacity to lead digital at, at OMD at a, at a critical moment in the industry when brand safety and programmatic and all that was happening.

And this led me to the CEO role at Dentsu where I was right before joining. And I understood and drove a lot of business change and in that short period of time but I, I joined rocked five months ago after years of advising some of the world's leading CMOs, I wanted to have the opportunity myself.

I wanted to do it in a very fast paced founder led product driven environment. And, and let's face it in my mind. Commerce is. To what digital was. So it's been, it's been a great, amazing five months. [00:06:00] 

Lisa Hufford: Wow. Sounds like you're having a great time and talk about transformation transition. Your stories is pretty phenomenal as well.

So I couldn't think of two better people to have a conversation today about gen AI, because everywhere you look, that's all everybody's talking about how we're using it, how our customers are using it, how our teams are using it. So we're going to attempt to stay in our conversation to really.

Have a very broad Kind of wholesale discussion around exactly those things. And so let's start off thinking about Jenna Jen AI for each of you and how you're using it today. So can you share an example of how you're using AI every day to really increase your own productivity? And Doug, let's start with you this time.

Doug Rozen: Yeah, I think I think the best way to answer this is to step back for one second. And I think for years, I've strongly believed that AI is all about this notion of extracting the robot from us humans. And [00:07:00] every day, all of us are weighed down by these mundane tasks. And I see AI as this ultimate way to take action.

That off us to free us back to, to not being these hands on keyboards, but minds with these machines I also think there's a lot of overuse right now of AI, of machine learning, of automation. One of the things I did was last year, I decided to get a degree in applied AI strategy from Berkeley. And it allowed me to really understand the different types of models and And appreciate that machine learning is all about optimization where AI is all about prediction and AI and ML are not synonymous, which I think right now, a lot of us in the industry are finding it overused and actually wrongly used.

Most companies when they reference AI, they're actually talking probably about automation. Maybe, maybe at best machine learning. [00:08:00] Very few are actually doing deep AI. So I, I think that's just an important backdrop to, to start with. So to the question though, I actually use it every day. I mean, I'm an avid Siri user, so That's AI.

To begin with I have a tab open on Chrome for chat chat, GPT. And I use it daily to like ask things that can help me get to an answer faster. If you haven't seen some of the things they, they introduced last week, it's absolutely incredible. They have this like voice and screen share that I've been toying with even today.

Google released their latest version of Gemini in the search engine results, which I was geeking out on this morning a little bit with. All of us, no matter what, no matter the role, no matter the level, should be spending time with these tools. I fundamentally believe that If you're going to be a successful marketer, you've got to put in the work.

I said a few years ago that no one was going to out AI me. And I really have believed that, but I also [00:09:00] said three decades ago that no one was going to out digital me. So I think it's like, we have to bring this into our minds every day. And if you're not using AI right now, then you should not be talking about it in any of your marketing.

It's that simple. 

Lisa Hufford: Great. Thank you. All right, Ada, how about yourself? How are you using AI to be productive? 

Ada Agrait: Yeah, so I'm I'm lucky enough. So I do use it a lot for my sort of personal and professional life. And I would say that practically, at S. A. P. We have Microsoft copilot and, trying to go from being in meetings 99 percent of the time to really help me optimize my days.

Like, where should I focus on versus not? Things as as simple as, meeting uh, an email prep summary so that I can action things quick, quickly, building travel itineraries as well. And I also use it in my personal life to find recipes birthday [00:10:00] ideas for my daughter's birthday now in June.

So I try to integrate it into the every day. And we also have some things that we use as SAP employees around success factors and, and other areas. So, I believe that in order for me to be an effective marketer and sell AI, which is a core component of our portfolio, I need to immerse myself in the tools and how customers and the use cases that customers are using.

Lisa Hufford: That's fantastic. I'm really hearing that from both of you is immerse yourself. So you, you can be knowledgeable, incredible as you're really developing solutions for your teams and customers. 

Doug Rozen: I think what it is, if you're going to embrace innovation, you can either be at the front or be at the back.

And I think what both Ada and I are saying is like, I think it's important to be at the front. To to experiment to tinker to explore to understand nothing is perfect right now, but if you're going to be operating in these [00:11:00] areas, you got to dive in. You can't just. Be at the back watching it or reading about it.

Lisa Hufford: Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. So, so let's build on that a little bit and talk about your teams. And I, I'd love to hear from each of you and Ada, I'm gonna start with you. Can you share specific use cases or examples of how your, your marketing teams are either using or beginning to experiment? With ai.

Ada Agrait: Yeah, so we actually have a lot of great use cases. And then in parallel we have an entire re-skilling effort so that we can get all of our marketeers skilled on AI and the potential of ai. We think of our AI use cases in three stages ki things that are, that we're considering things that we're actually actively piloting, and then things that we're actively using and that allows us to, be able to sort through and understand where are majoring versus minoring in. I'll call there's three areas where we are [00:12:00] either piloting or actively using today. One is with search engine optimization, obviously to optimize keyword research as well as creating copy and optimization.

I'm going to categorize things into content, creative and campaign development. We have piloted developing a campaign from brief to execution with our agency partners pretty much fully with a I. And then obviously, as I talked about content generation for a lot of what I'll call a More of generic content for customers like what is E.

R. P. And things of that sort um, optimizing all of those specifics. And then, obviously we are optimizing our customer journeys and the personalization or the having ensuring that we're delivering. Surfacing relevant content. So we are doing some pilot work around that. And then obviously we have our big customer event coming up in June.

We're doing some pilot cases as [00:13:00] with agenda builder and other cases to scale for both internal employees and our customers. So those are just a few examples of of what we've been doing here. 

Lisa Hufford: That's exciting. Thanks. How about you, Doug? 

Doug Rozen: Yeah, a lot of similarities. Like, I think that the premise of rocked is predicated on machine learning and a I.

And so, I think for us, it's not necessarily what Just marketing is doing, but across rocked what we're really looking at is, from an L. M. M. standpoint, we have 11 years of analyzing over 5 billion transactions in the e commerce moment. And that's really allowing us to optimize the customer experience as you go through from product selection to checkout to post checkout.

So we have a significant amount of machine learning. It includes over a [00:14:00] dozen proprietary models that look at both classification problems where an outcome is like binary, it's yes or no. Or regression problems where the outcome is much more continuous and, and not as. easily defined. An area that we're moving into as we shift away from just optimization and ML into more prediction and AI is that we're finding that creative is critical to really powering these relevant commerce experiences.

And the key to improving relevance is, is really through the The continued focus on diversifying messages, but how do you do that at scale? How do you experiment at scale? So we built this AI creative tool. That's an internal tool. It enables our teams to generate this really massive creative at scale.

We have a bad internal name for it called rads. It's rock ads, diversity system. And [00:15:00] I think the D is the most important thing. Well, actually, the D and the ask, because it's, it's all about creative diversity. How do you get that scale and then the system so you can allow for that, that to happen.

So we work with our advertising partners to really experiment to, to accelerate that, that creative experimentation to look to understand how. How you can drive more diversification of the creative, the tone, the language, the value, the offer to really drive better performance. And the most important thing again, I think, is this notion of structured experimentation and really making sure that the the AI system can learn from itself which is, which is key.

Lisa Hufford: I love that structured experimentation to take a note about that. I like that. So so let's continue to build on these experiences and talk about customers. And as you each think about your customers and usage, how are customers utilizing and innovative ways that might be [00:16:00] interesting for other marketers to know.

So Doug, let's start with you. 

Doug Rozen: Yeah. I mean, I, one way I think is scaling offers. So some of the work we're doing right now is exploring what we think the holiday season is going to be. I know we're six plus months away from it, but there's a lot of work we're doing to understand how AI is going to create hopefully more offers.

But the other thing we're hoping that I doesn't and our clients understand is sometimes. AI will help us predict that the best ad is an ad not shown. And we really believe in this notion of of what we talk about is the paradox of choice. Where, if you look at the average campaign right now, uses over 44, 000 websites, I think, according to the latest report.

And so there is advertising everywhere and what we want to try to use with our clients is AI to [00:17:00] understand where the best at. Can be displayed and almost take away opportunities for advertising will generate value. So for us, that's a really important notion that that we see AI playing an important role.

I use clients because in my mind, the end customer is the consumer. And they shouldn't know, they shouldn't feel, oh, that's AI, that's human, it should just be a relevant customer experience for them. And not something that they can discern the difference between human versus machine.

Lisa Hufford: Love that. All right, Ada, how about you? What are you seeing as far as customer experiences? 

Ada Agrait: Yeah, obviously at the intersection where a lot of companies are running their ERP systems or their HR systems with our technology the way that that sort of is enabling our customers to to to.

To be more effective and to gain more [00:18:00] value is we have our, our version of copilot, which is jewel and it's a natural language, dinner of AI that allows the customers to really grow, go across. Key systems like finance, supply chain management, procurement and customer experiences, and really create a level of symmetry and understanding of how they can actually optimize and enhance those processes.

So, things like simplifying and optimizing tasks. It's right from supply chain management, expense management, improve the performance of your financial systems, if you can only think about invoicing and auditing and forecasting and really also shortening the process to create customer experiences and optimize those experiences.

We really have three sort of examples, our Team Liquid. They're actually like a draft pick company and, they're actually using our technology [00:19:00] to really optimize the experience for customers based on the popularity of drafts. Right? Chobani, who many of you may know as, as. If you've eaten their, their yogurt, they've really looked at SAP Concurl to really optimize the submitting travel expenses, right?

And the time of reduction of managing that from start to finish has gone down about 75%. So there's literal efficiency as well as, as cost gains. And then Suncor Energy really they're looking, when you're running sort of global companies and you have a tax structure that is different in every, in every location.

We have actually worked with them to, to enhance how they do their, their taxes locally. So that's a few of the examples. And, and it's really about. Technology that we have, how do we layer an AI not for the AI sake, but really to increase value and that can be can come through efficiency revenue [00:20:00] gains accordingly across the board.

Lisa Hufford: Fantastic. There's so many scenarios, aren't there, to your point about adding the value. That's been, that's wonderful. So let's shift gears and talk a little bit about, what, what you want people to know about AI. And, there's a lot of conversation. About AI in jobs, is it a job creator?

Is it a job eliminator? And so I just love to hear each of your perspectives and Ada will start with you. How do you how do you think about AI in relation to jobs? 

Ada Agrait: We, we are actually investing in headcount. And, and what I would say is that we're shift shaping our workforce, right? There are things that we believe that we can, whether it's automation or optimization and allows us to take headcount and reinvest it in other areas where AI may not be thriving.

So in marketing, we, we are. Investing in areas. As we think about more [00:21:00] customer journey development, right? The maybe we don't need as many people pushing the personalization button, right? But we actually do need people that are data scientists and folks that are actually consuming the data and are helping us develop.

So I see it as an opportunity to shift shape your, your workforce versus today versus a threat where, Oh my God, all the jobs are going to be taking away. Okay. We're actually just shift shifting and and looking at, areas that that makes sense to invest in. So that's been our approach and really helping re skill existing existing employees where we can so that we are raising the bar for the company.

As we go forward. 

Lisa Hufford: All right, Doug, how about you? 

Doug Rozen: Yeah, I mean, I think we're fortunate being a hyper growth. Commerce driven AI backed company that we're not reskilling. We're more skilling. We can't, we can't hire enough ML and AI people right now. So we're not really [00:22:00] talking about, I guess, job limit or there is actually a scarcity issue.

For really strong and talented engineers. A key area for us is, is diversity. There's certainly not enough female and diverse engineers. So we're doing actually a lot with getting to the systemic issue around teaching and grade school and and lower levels to support more stem opportunities.

And, looking at it, that that's going to change, maybe the picture 5, 10, 15 years. But diversity, I think, is a big area that we need as a, as an industry to address in, in the area of, of AI and ML. I think the other thing is just making it part of everyone's job description.

We don't have an AI department or an ML department. It's everyone, everyone here has a role in [00:23:00] contributing to how we think about the way our tools and products and systems work, how we bring it to life, how we go to market. And so I think, it's a lot of companies set up specialist practices.

And I think, and it starts with our founder. It, it really isn't about creating those special groups, but making it part of the entire organizational ethos. 

Lisa Hufford: I love that. Well, that leads into my final question for you, which is a perfect setup around advice. Both of you are very accomplished, successful leaders.

And as we are right in moving into another transformation, what is your best advice? Key piece of advice, and I'm sure you probably have people coming to you all the time, aspiring marketing professionals. What should they do to get ahead in their careers? What skills, maybe building on this conversation we're just having?

Do they need to be acquiring and developing? [00:24:00] What is it right now when you think about those up and coming marketing leaders? What's the best piece of advice you can give them to succeed and thrive as a marketing professional? And Doug, let's start with you. 

Doug Rozen: I mean, for me, I'd say check your ego at the door and be vulnerable and willing to to learn.

I am later in my career, and I am leaning on people half my age. People that I've just learned were born in the 2000s, which is scary as crap in some ways to help me be a better leader. I actually was telling somebody the other day that I'm learning, I've learned more in the last five months.

than I've learned in the last five years. And I think in order to be in that mindset, you got to check your ego at the door. You got to be vulnerable and willing to take advice and opportunity from anywhere and everyone no matter their level, no [00:25:00] matter their role, and in order to help you and help your career, even if you're, you're in the later stages, as some of us might be.

Ada Agrait: Yeah. I have a, an acronym that I use A BL, which is always be learning. I think if you are a marketer in technology or a marketer in general you always have to be thinking about what are the skills that I wanna learn to understand what's happening in the market to become a better marketer.

Especially as a technology world moves really fast. I think the other, the other thing that I would. Say is like, you need to find something that you're passionate about. Because if you love what you do, it makes it so easy to come to work, deal with the tough days and the challenges that are, that are thrown your way.

So like figuring out what you love to do and what you. Don't love to do is important and do that through your career. Take the opportunity. And then last but not least, , your growth is not going to be linear. There's [00:26:00] no perfect line. There's going to be ups and downs. So expect, and then you have to build a personal development plan.

I think there's a lot of things around you that can change. Your manager can change. Your company could be taken over. There could be, more hiring layoffs. And I think the one thing that you can control. is how you show up. And also , how you're developing your skills and engaging with others that you can control.

There's a lot of things that you can't. So just make sure that you focus , on how you're growing, and, and ensure that you have a network of people that you can that can be your supporters and your, your spiritual leaders through, through your lifetime of your career would be the last thing.

Lisa Hufford: That's fantastic advice. Love it. Okay, so we're going to move into the fun part where each of you have a question for each other. So, Doug, we're going to go ahead and start with you for your question for Ada. 

Doug Rozen: Yeah, well, one, I just wanted to say, Ada, I love the idea of passion. I mean, as marketers, we We are the [00:27:00] core of the passion.

Like, we have to, we have to bring it. If you don't believe , in what you're doing and, and it's not bleeding out of you, good luck trying to be a successful marketer in some ways. That's not my question. It was just but so as being relatively new to focusing solely on, on B2B, I'd love to get your perspective on how B2B marketing has changed Over the years.

And what's surprising you in that transition or transformation that you've seen? 

Ada Agrait: Yeah, I'll I'll start by saying, B to B marketing used to be very one to one. A lot of times driven by sellers primarily, right? As, as your primary engagement point with customers. And I'm talking 20 years ago.

I don't want to date myself. And, and really this, this reality where it's a combination of touch points and those touch points whether they're from sales or marketing and how we are actually engaging customers [00:28:00] in a meaningful way over time is really what has made me in some ways, fall in love with the craft.

I remember creating flyers. Do you remember paper flyers? handing out software out of a trunk of a car because, that, that was what, the primary tactics that you used back in the day to, to engage with B2B customers. And what I love is that now there's a diversity of touch points and really giving the customer choice of how they want to engage with you, right.

To, to ultimately enable their dreams and the goals that they have. So I actually think B to B marketing adopted digital before even consumer brands did because our budgets were smaller. We needed to be scrappier. So we relied on digital first to really drive our engagement with a lot of customers, whether it's through web, C.

R. M. Or customer portals that we would have in our companies. So I love, I feel like in some ways where We were a little bit of more of the [00:29:00] pioneers on the digital space early on as a technology. And now, I love all the work that you're doing today. Gets me super excited because that's the beauty of using technology and B2B marketers.

Marketing can be very targeted to the customer, but you're an expert now. So what do you need to learn from this? 

Doug Rozen: Well, I mean, 

Ada Agrait: go ahead. 

Doug Rozen: I was just going to say it's, it's, it's fascinating because I think there's these tropes of B2B, B2C, and I think some of the things I've seen is just like, just be a marketer, be a damn good marketer.

Marketing is about having the right message, getting to the best customer, having incredible like strategy. B2B versus B2C, I think is just. a barrier in some ways and it's probably held b2b marketing [00:30:00] back and it's probably liberated it in other ways and so I don't know for me it's just like Just be a great marketer instead of falling into the tropes of, what has been B2B, what has been B2C.

Ada Agrait: Absolutely. And I think, I think maybe many years ago it was very different. We had like this line in between of, and I think your mix may be different. But the, this idea that you're trying to connect with customers in a meaningful way, regardless the channel, Like, there's no about, the differences are if you think of the customer and how to reach them, I think that there's this flood of like, oh, my gosh, you don't have to be experienced, but you have consumer experience.

And I just care about can you work with data? Do you understand what the customer needs? And how are we delivering that? So totally agree with you. There's this sort of this perception that it's very different. And the reality is that the same principles apply for, for marketing, regardless of your marketing.[00:31:00] 

Lisa Hufford: Important point. Okay, add I think what's your question for back? 

Ada Agrait: Well, I'm just curious, and I think you already talked a little bit about it. But as you made your move to be to be what's been your biggest if you had any a hot or surprising learnings that you're like, Hmm, I had no idea. Or are you like, No, no surprises.

It's been similar. I'm just curious to hear 

Doug Rozen: Yeah, I mean, for me, I think there's been to major moments. The first is like, we're evolving our go to market strategy away from a more lead gen approach to a much more account based approach. And like really understanding the differences between, having SDRs versus ABM and how we think about that.

And then how does that change, The notion that ABM is not the responsibility solely of the marketing department, but all of our GTM group. I think then the second part of [00:32:00] that is then what it does from an attribution standpoint. So we, we built like most B2B marketers, a very significant MQL kind of ability to understand what's the marketing qualified lead versus an SQL.

or other type of understanding around the lead. Now we need to really understand that the, the notion, the importance and, and quite frankly, the challenges of attribution. It really doesn't matter. We have a target to achieve our operating plan, whether it's the CRO or the CMO, we're joined at the hip to deliver that top line number.

And marketing influences it, sales influence it, and like what we're now working on is like less about where the credit falls, but more do we have the right things in place to deal with how we can sell and deliver more. I think for me, what I, what I've really learned is that marketing is the bridge [00:33:00] between product and sales.

And for me, I want to make sure that we keep that and not just creating marketing for the sake of marketing to what you were talking about before. 

Ada Agrait: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I I love, we have a very similar engagement with our CROs, right. Where I always say it's one plan and we're building and we have one goal as shareholders of the company and we're building that pointing fingers doesn't really help anyone.

And it's like, how do we Help our customers and then deliver the targets that we have. So it's great to hear that. 

Lisa Hufford: Fantastic insight from both of you. All right, we have a few minutes left and we do have a couple questions. So if you have a question out there, go ahead and put it in the chat. I'm going to start off with a question from Marina and Ada, we'll start with you.

Marina asks, I'd love to ask the panelists about what function they believe in marketing will not be touched by AI, if any. And on the flip side, [00:34:00] which one will be obsolete? 

Ada Agrait: I believe, like, AI is going to impact every single function. I mean, actually every aspect of our lives, technology how we use products.

So, I don't know if, if there is an area that, Would not be touched by A. I. So so that that's my humble opinion as I've see it through the work of my team and reading what other competitors and partners are doing accordingly. In terms of I don't know that there's any 1 thing that will, even though we're driving automation and efficient process efficiency.

See. I, there isn't like a function that I could tell you now, like, Hey, we no longer need people in, brand, or we no longer need people in digital marketing or media. I would say I'm investing more in sort of people understanding data analysis data scientist and analyst to help us.

Harness the [00:35:00] power of, of, of the data that we're getting to help inform other parts of marketing. So that's just my thought. 

Doug Rozen: Yeah, I, I think every area of marketing should be touched by AI, but it's not at the. It's with human and machine. I do think, and one of the reasons I pivoted into a company like rocked away from where I was, I do think there will be an obsolescence around biddable media.

That theoretically the algorithm and the A. I should help. And you're already seeing it with what Google and Facebook and other bit of a platforms are rolling now that you need less human hands on keyboard as the machine gets gets smarter. And what's interesting is that was a profession that's really come out of the last 10 years.[00:36:00] 

And so you're just seeing. Probably something that has been built that will transition into something new. You'll probably need prompt engineers instead of biddable media practitioners. New roles.

Lisa Hufford: Yeah, that's interesting. All right, moving on to our second question from Angelina. This looks like she's looking for some career advice.

She, she writes. I come with 15 plus years of experience with engineering product, digital marketing demand and growth marketing leadership. Like to think of myself as a next gen marketing leader excited about generative AI's next wave. If you have any pointers for leadership roles as I'm looking for my next 1, I would love it.

All right. How about you? Once you start this one? 

Doug Rozen: I mean, nobody told me I should go get a degree in a and also with what happened to education and covert when I went to get a degree from a from Berkeley. I [00:37:00] did it on nights and weekends. I did it in my own time. And so you can do all this online learning to become.

Really differentiated and how you think about and how you apply. I think 1 of the things I looked for, and I continue to do. I want to find the applied, not just the theoretical. And so I think that's really important. The other thing is, the power of, of, and I said it before, like, putting yourself out there, introducing yourself, and, and going to events, understanding, learning to what Ada was saying, the, the ABL mentality, I think, is really important.

Ada Agrait: Yeah, I would say practically you could go to s a p dot com whack careers and we have a ton of roles that we're hiring for on the on the marketing side of things. But I think just to build on what Doug just mentioned, the reality is that [00:38:00] networking a lot of times people think that they network when they actually need to find a job.

And the reality is that you have to Form relationships and not just talk to them when you need a job, but have ongoing conversations because the people that you talk to today may not be the people hiring tomorrow. It may be the people that will hire two jobs from the job that you had today. So I think you just need to be thoughtful and and proactive.

And, I always say you need a plan A, B, and C, right? So, and then, I, I, Do like Doug, go to industry events so that I not only understand the latest that's happening, but also get to meet some other people. And, and that's really how I've been lucky to find jobs through I've applied to some, but also through referrals of other people.

So I would say activate your network or accordingly. 

Doug Rozen: Yeah, I would I yeah, the ABL, you just said ABN, always being networking, right? 

Lisa Hufford: Yes, [00:39:00] absolutely. It's great. Great advice. And, I, I do a lot of mentoring with college grads, and I'm curious your take on this, because this is a hot question right now, which is, what should my degree be?

And I'm curious if you either, if you have an opinion on. The degree there is some about the degree, of course, and learning. And is it also that self right? That self driven go find those courses on your own. Like, you were talking about that. Curious how you think about guiding someone might be interested in and what kind of a degree or focus of study and that I'll let you go 1st on this 1.

Doug Rozen: Well, my, my daughter who's 19 and finishing up actually today, , her freshman year at, at school she is getting an engineer degree and we've had long conversations about either being an engineer or philosophy, because I think it's one of the two ends. that matters most and having that [00:40:00] core.

That said, one of my favorite books is, is the book range, which talks about the challenges with specialists versus the power of generalists. And I think it's something that, we're seeing more and more specialized kind of breadth based, I mean, depth based. Roles and therefore you're losing breadth or horizontal thinking 

Lisa Hufford: really interesting to check that out. How about you? Any, any thoughts? 

Ada Agrait: I think I also focus on the experiences that people have because I think for a degree, I think, personally having a business degree helps if you understand how businesses work and, and, and it's bigger than any one discipline. Right? So, I love to see how people, whether, early, early in their they're having an undergraduate or graduate degree, really look at business to take a step back to understand how, The, I'll call it a company or a [00:41:00] machine works and then that sort of gives you also the opportunity to then say, okay, out of what I've learned, here's where I think I'm interested in.

Um, engineering is going to be an area that will there will continue to be a lot of demand. I, by default, I'm not your, I'm not gifted with, with the engineering brain. So I went, I started with advertising and PR, and then I went into marketing and business. So, it was a little bit the, the traditional for those that, you know are not as smart or lucky as a Doug's daughter who is doing an engineering degree.

So that would say, and then the experiences that you that you have, right? I think, for me, it's not as much as like, where you go to school, but more like, what are the experiences that you had during school, whether they were volunteer or, or paid opportunities and how you actually thought through and took advantage of those opportunities.

Lisa Hufford:  Absolutely. Great advice. Thank you both. We're at the end of our time here, and this has been such a fascinating, insightful conversation. So thank you, Doug and added for your time and your wisdom and just sharing so honestly and openly to make all of us better. I also want to close by thanking Marketers that Matter and 24 Seven Company for hosting.

And with that, thanks everybody for joining us and have a great day. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Doug. It's great. 

Doug Rozen: Thank you. Talk to you guys later.