My Marketing Society Keynote: How and Why I used GenAI

Last Thursday I had the privilege of speaking at The Marketing Society Singapore's annual Changemakers Conference. The theme this year was Impact, and I had a 20-minute keynote called “Beyond The Expiry Date”. My goal was to start talking openly about the issue of Ageing, and ageism, in the marketing industry, while widely acknowledged, it is also quietly acknowledged.?

The post conference response to my session was amazing, and I am grateful for the attention that was paid to it, and for the encouragement, comments, and questions I received afterwards. What surprised me though, was that almost half of the questions or comments I received were about the presentation itself, and not about the content. I thought I would write this article about both the HOW and the WHY of the decisions I made in creating the presentation for this talk.?

OK - so as many of you know I have been writing about The Epilogue Economy, that intersection of aging consumers, marketing, and wealth. This was the foundation for my talk, which also then layered in the issue of ageism in marketing.?

The Keynote

The talk was a 20 minute “TED-style talk”, meaning it was meant to be informative, provocative, and I wanted it to be true to the TED slogan “Ideas Change Everything” (The slogan used to be “Ideas Worth Spreading”, but I really like the recent change to that). As part of my planning cycle, I watched a lot of TED talks, and read up on what makes a TED talk, well, a TED talk.?

The Structure

I leaned heavily on everything I had ever learned from Nancy Duarte , whom I had met years ago, while working with Apple. Nancy leads Duarte Design, quite possibly the most influential presentation design agency in the world. She worked with Steve Jobs on his Keynotes, Al Gore on his “Inconvenient?Truth” doco, and keynotes from over half of the Fortune 50’s leaders. I was fortunate enough to take courses with her, to be able to ask for advice, and to actually work in her office on Apple projects. Nancy was, and will remain, my most influential mentor in presentation. You can watch her TEDx press here, on story structure. https://www.duarte.com/resources/talks/the-secret-structure-of-great-talks/

Nancy has an amazing story structure that I use. It’s deceptively simple, but oh so powerful. She moves between “what is” and “what could be”, until reaching the end - that new vision, the new normal that we are trying to achieve, in order to create change and impact.?

The Influence and Assistance of GenAI

Since I was already deep diving into this space of aging, ageism, and The Epilogue Economy, I was armed with a folder full of of stats, data, studies, Op-eds - but I needed to be able to make sense of it all. So naturally I turned to ChatGPT, which is my GenAI analyst. Together, we reviewed the resources at hand, looking at what I had, and what I might be missing. I switched over to Perplexity, my research assistant, to begin both verifying the information in hand, and to find new resources to fill the gaps. Once this was completed, I moved everything into NotebookLM.?

The move to NotebookLM is something that I have been doing since it came out with the “Conversation” feature. Using the resources, I generated a conversation between the two synthetic “hosts” of the discussion, as I was curious about what they would find as important in this dumpster truck sized set of resources. I was looking for that needle in the haystack, a turn of phrase, an insight or exclamation that I wasn’t seeing.?

Listening to people - synthetic or real - talk about a topic is a fantastic way to learn about what could be important, or resonating. Since the majority of my work is as an individual contributor, this also gives me an on-hand audience to test and learn from.?

I generated the transcript of the discussion, added it into my “data lake” and then moved everything into Claude, my GenAI thought partner.?

Now, I had already mapped out the territories I wanted to talk about. The wall of my office was covered with post it notes, set in a classic 3-act structure. My audience would be the hero of the story (Luke Skywalker), and I would be the mentor or teacher (Yoda), and the marketing Industry would be Darth Vader, providing the resistance and conflict along the story arc.?

"The hero of your presentation, you are not. The audience, the true heroes they are. Always, this remains." - Yoda

I added my casting notes for the Hero’s journey, my notes on the 3 acts, and Nancy’s “What is, What could be” framework into my notes, and added everything into Claude. It was time to work.?

Together, we crafted the script for the 20 minute talk, moving between “What is” and “What Could be”. Now, Its been a long time since I have delivered a 20 minute running narrative talk, and looking at the script, with all the facts and figures and data points that helped describe the landscape of “what is” the current state of age, ageism, and the economics of the growing over 60 population was extremely difficult for me to memorise.?

Synthetic Guests

As I have been working in the area of creating synthetic characters for a while now, I decided that I would do a couple of things - I would off load the heavy lifting to synthetic “Guest Speakers” and I would make these speakers look like “experts” in their fields. Using Midjourney, I began crafting my cast of experts who would deliver key facts, data, and Ideas, never hesitating, or forgetting a salient point, while adding additional texture and context, and giving me a chance to regroup when ever they were speaking.?

Using a combination of Midjourney for the character creation, HeyGen for the synthetic animation, Eleven Labs for the voice creation, I created a half dozen expert guests speakers that would step into the narrative at precisely the right moment. I used CapCut as my post production tool, allowing for camera moves, zooms, and transitions.?

I then sent my finished script to my friend and thought partner Robin Moroney , who teaches a? framework for MBA students to become unique thinkers and speakers based off his experiences working with and coaching global, regional leaders and CEOs. Over all, Robin’s critique of the script was positive, but he did challenge a few structural decisions I had made, and because I trusted him, his recommendations had a profound impact on the story structure.?

The Presentation

The total presentation deck was only 36 slides: 6 short videos of my synthetic guests, 10 “Key Points” slides consisting of a single thought in text only, and 11 animated slides for infographics and data builds and 9 blank slides, only background images, which stayed fairly consistent throughout the entire presentation. 25% of my slides had nothing on them.?

If you want people to listen, don’t give them something to read. - Christopher Smith

I had learned, via training and experience, that if you want people to listen, don’t give them something to read. We can only do one thing at a time with intention, and I wanted my audience to really hear what I was saying. I dint want the reading the slides, or trying to rationalise why I used a particular color, or font, or if the alignment was off, or something was poorly written. I wanted them, needed them, to hear me.?

So now let’s look at the map of my talk, overlayed against Nancy’s framework, with Robin’s insights in place.

The Story Map

I moved between “what is” and “what could be”, using my narrative, videos, and slides, pausing for both effect, but also for the audience to have a moment of self reflection, because everyone in the room would, at some point soon, come face to face with aging in our industry. I needed them to have time to recognise that. And to see that they were the heroes in this story, and that they would, ultimately need to push back on the Evil Empire of Dark Vader and Agesim.?

At few points in the presentation, I showed a dozen or more “people of certain age”, all AI-generated, because I felt I needed to put a face to the problem, so that my audience could see themselves as part of the cast of my narrative. And in my casting for experts in the videos, I used a combination of both older and younger professionals, so that the presentation didn’t fell like an AAPR commercial, old people fighting for old people’s representation, showing that this is a multi-generation problem, as well as a way toward solutions (HT to Robin for this insight)

The Wrap Up

Ok. Long post, but by now dear readers, you should be used to that from me. I hope this breakdown of not just how I used GenAI for this keynote was helpful, but also in sharing the WHY, and structures I used, will be helpful when you work on your next presentation.?

And if you are looking to being in someone to work with you on your next big talk, I am of course available for hire!

Thanks for reading, and good luck with your next presentation.?