The Blank Space Opportunity in AI Transformation with Rebecca Aliab Deng

[00:00:00] Rebecca: I think that there is still a place for agencies when we're thinking about culture and cultural relevance. You know, people say that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and there was a stat around how much millennials versus Gen Z actually appreciate and. Buy into and respond positively to AI creatives, and the numbers are pretty low.
I think that there's a way for agencies to continue to own that conversation in terms of building the actual story.
[00:00:36] Mike: My name's Mike Lander, and you are listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast, where we bring you actionable insights about sales, RFPs, negotiations, and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders.
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Rebecca, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle the B2B Sales Club podcast. Great to have you as a guest.
[00:01:04] Rebecca: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:05] Mike: So whereabouts are you today? I think you're in New York. Aren.
[00:01:08] Rebecca: Yes, I'm on the Upper East Side. I live about a 20 minute walk from the Met Museum.
[00:01:13] Mike: Oh, lovely.
[00:01:14] Rebecca: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:14] Mike: I guess you go there.
[00:01:15] Rebecca: Yeah, I actually go about every two weeks and there's a new Rafael exhibit that just went live, so I, I'm gonna check it out for sure.
[00:01:22] Mike: Fantastic. So tell the listeners who are you, what do you do? Your favorite song and why?
[00:01:28] Rebecca: So I am Rebecca Aliab Deng. I'm based in New York City, as I mentioned, and I am the VP of Business Operations at Cognitiv, which is a deep learning advertising platform.
I also lead the Women in Programmatic Network in the US and I would say it's not maybe my favorite song, but when you prompted me, the first thing I thought about was, um, the hymn Jerusalem.
[00:01:52] Mike: Haven’t had that before.
[00:01:53] Rebecca: I know. So I went to boarding school for high school and pretty much any like boarding school that was founded before the United States, like that is the school song.
Okay. Kind of like our fight song. So that, I would say that would be, that was the first thing that came to mind,
[00:02:09] Mike: and it's a great song. It's a great
[00:02:10] Rebecca: song. It's
[00:02:13] Mike: So let's get into the questions. So your experience of leading AI transformation at Cognitiv. So let's just talk about what were the kind of challenges of evaluating, implementing new AI tools, including dealing with that kind of mismatched expectations and the need for operational readiness.
[00:02:32] Rebecca: Well, the first thing that we ran into was just the volume of tools. So I think there's an element of trying to understand and appreciate, okay, when I am looking for a tool, is it actually primarily based in a use case? So what is it going to solve? And then from there, okay, there are these plethora of tools.
Are these tools actually able to do what they say on the tin, or is it just something. On top of the basic LLM, the first level is just figuring that out and then working directly with teams to understand, okay, what are your primary use cases? And so there's an element of you go into this in good faith thinking these are the maybe two or three things exactly that I want to solve for.
And then you start the process of finding all these different vendors, getting them in, testing them. Understanding the tech, and then you might realize that actually what I thought I wanted this to do, I don't necessarily need it to do. Like there's an element where you're now able because of all of these different generative AI capabilities to essentially prompt an entire workflow away.
So I think there's been an element of, once the teams get their hands on tools and they start looking at them and start thinking about them, it's like, you know, I don't necessarily need to recreate the existing workflow that I had. I can completely reimagine this as blank space. So I think for us doing that iterative work of sitting down and saying, these are the three issues.
This is the tool. And then actually getting out there and then seeing where we land has been, I wouldn't even call it a challenge. I think it's just been very interesting to see where the matchup is between the two. And you know, one thing that's also been so interesting beyond the number of tools is how quickly they're changing.
And so I feel like when we generally think about procurement or B2B sales, we're thinking on the timeline of a year long contract. Like I have my period where I get to review, then I'm going in and I'm trying to negotiate year long contract, and now the way that models and things are moving. Three months, six months.
That's really like what the development timeline is. So it's a complete shift in like the type of procurement processes that you would do maybe two years ago.
[00:04:41] Mike: Exactly. So I wanna just talk about this in a bit more detail. Yeah. Particularly the point around shifting mindset from replicating existing workflows and instead focusing on outcomes or the system that you sit within.
I think there's a lot of problem here. There's a lot of talk in the industry, AI industry, and marketing industry. About people that have read, people like Sange Tre's work or any of the HBR stuff, or any of the people that are talking about, like Sequoia Capital, talked about, you know, where is AI taking us in the knowledge economy?
And everyone's saying, well, if you just automate tasks, then obviously what happens is you basically automate the task, make it more efficient, and then you give away that value to your clients. They see it's more efficient and therefore they ask you for a change in pricing structure downwards, so they halve your price.
Whereas what we really wanted, obviously, is we want to say, well, it's a blended system of people and technology, uh, SaaS and agenda, ai, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is people don't know. They don't know how to get into it. Apart from going, I'll just automate some stuff and see what happens. What have you found about, how did you get to the realization that, or your people, in fact, actually automating what we do currently probably isn't the right approach.
Maybe we should rethink, well, what's the job to be done? What are the goals that we're aiming for ourselves and our clients? And what does this enabling technology allow us to change? How did that thinking kinda go about?
[00:06:11] Rebecca: Sure. So one thing that I think is important, regardless of whether or not workflows are automated or what you do next, is to really understand like the principle use cases.
So saying to yourself like, what are the actual, to your point, jobs to be done. So being extremely clear on what that looks like, how long it takes, what are the systems that you use currently to do that. And then I, I think there's also an element of thinking about, okay. Not only am I going into this thinking about potentially the gains in time, I'm also thinking about the gains of my brain space.
When I have this extra time, how will I use it going forward? So I, I think there's definitely the element of like when you're going into these types of transformations, being very clear about what is that high value work at the end of this that I'm going to have more time to lean into. So I think that that's helpful in terms of not just thinking about what this.
Potential workflow or tool is taking away, but what you can incrementally do with that time. So I'd say that would be the first piece. And then in terms of jobs to be done and making sure they're actually being done, I think there's also an element of understanding your larger operational readiness. So if I take on this tool, if it can, let's say automate something away, something that I do multiple times a week.
Am I actually in a position where I can take that output and apply it? Am I in a position where I can take, you know, that work product and the way that the data is formulated, it already plays well with my existing systems. I think it's really easy to say we want to be better, we want to be faster. But let's say you take on, you know.
Some type of software or some type of solution that allows you to generate significantly more RFPs. When you get inbound RFPs from clients, are you now able to actually service those clients as they come in? So I think there's a balancing act of keeping things very grounded in the use cases themselves.
I think that white space or being able to. Not be so married to the actual workflow itself, right? Because exactly as we said, that's the thing that's gonna go away. And I think that we're at times bound by our imagination a little bit. One of my colleagues recently sent me this article by Zapier about AI fluency.
And so talks about in the stage of different, as you do your AI transformation, that you have your enterprise tools out. People are using them. But then you move to the next phase of do people feel comfortable and competent using this tool? Are they able to transpose what they're actually thinking about?
This is my use case, this is my problem. And take the tools at hand and actually create something themselves. So I think in terms of the overall RFP process or procurement process, there's an element of this thinking that's very like. At the beginning of, okay, what are the tools, what can they do? What are the capabilities?
And then I think some of what you're mentioning of imagining away the workflow and being open to what the software can provide is a little bit more in the fluency stage of saying to myself, okay, this is what it can do. Here are my use cases, how do I actively apply?
[00:09:22] Mike: Yeah. And I think if you kind of follow that thinking on as well into your client's looking for an outcome.
Back in the day, five years ago, 10 years ago, a client wants advertising campaigns run, and then they want to run them on Google and Matter, and they go to an agency and they'd say, yeah, fine, we can do that. And here's the price of doing it, and here's the anticipated impressions or outcome that you'd get.
I think what's happening now more and more is clients are going, well, what am I trying to achieve? I'm trying to grow our business. Well, what's the best way to grow our business across all digital channels using a third party? That can help me think through, should it be MarTech SaaS? Should it be Ag agentic ai?
Should it be human with high judgment? You know, should it be my in-house team? All of that is changing, and so we have to also not only think about what's happening in our own environment, our own company, but what's happening in our client's environment. And the winners are gonna be those that obviously help our clients change the way the outcomes get delivered.
What's your impression of that as well, or your experience of that in the kind of journey you've been on?
[00:10:27] Rebecca: Yeah. I mean, I'd say what's interesting from the Cognitiv perspective is that because we are a deep learning advertising platform. That's very much in the work that we do for our clients every day, right?
Understanding and building out custom algorithms for them, specifically being tailored to outcomes. So from the actual product that's client facing, it's something that we already do. I think as more AI tools become available to us, the question then becomes, okay, how can we be even more efficient, even more on the ball for our clients and what we deliver based on how we.
Operationalize ourselves. And so it's been a little bit different in terms of what's the general work product like. That for us isn't changing. If anything as AI improves, it's getting better and what it can predict and what we can model on. But what I think is been really interesting to see is how things like agentic ai, or to your point, like popping up across the ecosystem or you know, I'll listen to talks about shopping with agentic AI and all of these things.
I actually was on a call recently and at 1.1 of the women on the call said she works for a large publisher in the States. And she said, does everything have to be agentic? And I'm like, you know, maybe not. So I think there's an element of judgment where to your point, the client has expectations of outcomes, making sure that like the work product can meet those outcomes with ai, with whatever tooling, and then saying internally, okay.
Here's how we can meet and accelerate that. But then also I think perhaps not overdoing it is important as well.
[00:12:01] Mike: Exactly. Maintaining the human touch. So a question that I hadn't prepared with you Yeah. But I'll ask you anyway 'cause it's part of the fun. What do you think's the future of what is currently called the marketing agency landscape?
What's the role of agencies with clients in the future where we've got AI. Native advertising platforms that will do a bulk of the engine work that before agencies would've done. Where do you think that's all going out of interest?
[00:12:30] Rebecca: Yeah. I think that there is still a place for agencies. When we're thinking about culture and cultural relevance, you know, people say that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and I was on an industry call recently and there was a stat around how much millennials versus Gen Z actually appreciate and.
Buy into and respond positively to AI creatives. Right. And the numbers are pretty low. I think that there's a way for agencies to continue to own that conversation in terms of building the actual story, like the actual storytelling,
[00:13:08] Mike: the high craft piece.
[00:13:09] Rebecca: Exactly. I mean, I don't know if you've ever asked AI to tell you a story.
It's not particularly great with that. So I think that there's, there's an element of that, right? Like that highly relevant cultural piece. And then the piece is in between about how things are automated. Ideally, agencies can find a way. To bring all of that efficiency into the larger storytelling piece and say, we're now only more qualified to do that for you because we have the overarching story and the pieces in between.
But I can definitely imagine like a reconfiguration, a rethinking of. What fee structures look like. For sure. There will definitely be downward pressure there.
[00:13:51] Mike: Definitely. And that's happening already.
[00:13:52] Rebecca: Yeah.
[00:13:53] Mike: A lot of the research that I've been looking at recently, absolutely saying that direction of travel is, the hourly rate model clearly is dead in the long run, and it should have died many, many years ago, should never have been founded.
Really moving towards outputs and outcome based remuneration. And I think also the. The size of agencies, the shape of agencies, even the word agency I think is obviously now, I would say a question. Agency means to have choice and relative freedom to do things. That's not what marketing agency does traditionally.
It delivers. Outputs and outcomes for a client. It's not really about freedom of choice. And so yeah, I think a lot of that will change, I think. So let's move on to part two of this conversation, which is the women in programmatic network that you are a principal board member and regional activation lead of, what's the origins of that network in the UK and its expansion into the us?
[00:14:44] Rebecca: Yeah, so it started I think right before the pandemic. Our two co-founders went to an ad tech conference and they were the only women there, which is. I mean, I've been to a few ad tech conferences. That's not particularly surprising, but to them, they had just had enough. And so they founded the Women in Programmatic Network in order to increase the pay and parity of women in ad Tech.
And in 2023, I volunteered to help bring it stateside. I was at a point in my career where I was no longer actually like agency side or. Agency adjacent. And so nobody was trying to sell me anything. And because of that I just didn't really feel like I had a great grasp on what was going on Industrywide.
So being in that new role, I wanted to meet more people. I had just started taking on a quota caring role as well. So it was just a great opportunity to be more industry facing. And since then. We have established a chapter in New York. We have a chapter in Denver, and last week we recently announced that we'll be rolling out a new chapter in Austin in May.
And in terms of the work that we do, you know, people often say that there's systemic inequality when it comes to outcomes for women or opportunity for women. I kind of see the work that we do as creating systemic opportunity within the pipeline for the women in our network. So we partner with bodies like Ad Exchanger to ensure that we can get our members to conferences, that we are creating opportunities for them to speak in front of their colleagues that we are working with other companies like Dan Ads to essentially help.
HANDPICK members who are interested in speaking on panels for them. So really just trying to create like a flywheel of opportunity so that as we go out into our community and bring more women in, we already have this. System wide set of things that they can tap into.
[00:16:41] Mike: So how big is that network now? Give it some sort of scale.
[00:16:44] Rebecca: Yeah, so we are over a thousand women in the US and it's interesting because, yeah, it's interesting because you have, you know, the people who are in New York and then for ad tech. At a certain point in your career, if you are on the conference circuit, you will come through New York. So we will have women on our list who are based in the uk, based elsewhere in Europe, but we just had our fourth annual International Women's Day event at the Trade Desk.
It was 175 people and. There were, you know, members and allies there, but there were also based in New York, but there were also members who had flown in from the uk. Like there were conferences the week before. So people who had already come in who were already there and eager to join in our programming.
[00:17:29] Mike: And what kind of topics are you talking about? So obviously it's about driving a bigger agenda forward, but what kind of topics get discussed? What are the key issues on members' minds?
[00:17:37] Rebecca: So it's interesting at the in-person events, I think there's an opportunity to really go a few levels deeper because we do have q and a and people are very receptive.
So we talked about for women, what it means in terms of their career journey from being the person who is delivering on the deliverables to moving to a VP role, to being in the boardroom. How do you negotiate that? What are the strategies? And that's great for in-person conversation. We also do a monthly.
Webinar. Each of the different countries do their own. And some of the things that our members wanna talk about are just the specifics of like hard skills. SPO, what do I need to do to be more productive in this? Like, let's talk about like some real strategies for negotiating my next salary. There's a lot of range.
So there's an element of, okay, what are some tools that I can take on to, you know. Better do personal branding and better navigate at work. But then there's also the element of like the pure hard skills. Let's talk about agentic AI buying and what we think the future is.
[00:18:39] Mike: And so if you look at kinda like follow on issues, I guess around the inequality in that industry.
Is it perception? Is it reality? Is it a bit of a blend of both? Does it vary by country? What's the kind of, what is going on at that kinda level? Because obviously you've got together as a collective group for a particular reason. A, it's to promote each other, but also to, to redress the imbalance, I guess.
[00:19:02] Rebecca: Yeah, so for the US specifically, we did a guest blog post with the Marketeer where we talked about all of our programming for the month, but then also the mission. And one of the things that we had quoted was a recent Adweek article about the actual like pay inequality between men and women and how it is going to persist within our industry.
But then there are also, you know. Terms of some of the other conversations.
[00:19:27] Mike: So that's just kind of, I find it quite, uh, shocking to be quite frank that it is. Why that there's still that there's a disparity. I, I'm like,
[00:19:35] Rebecca: mm.
[00:19:35] Mike: In this day and age, there's still a dis that's just dreadful, to be honest. That's just,
[00:19:41] Rebecca: yeah.
Well,
[00:19:42] Mike: shocking.
[00:19:43] Rebecca: So part of that difference is, another thing that comes up a lot in discussion is. Caretaking. So when women, you know, leave the workforce to have children and come back, you know, I've worked at companies where the company's so small and so new. No one has gone on maternity leave before, so, right.
Yeah. And there are no women in leadership, so it's like, until somebody needs to go on maternity leave, there is no policy. There is no thought about it.
[00:20:09] Mike: No, of course. No, I get that. Yeah.
[00:20:10] Rebecca: Yeah. And so I think in general in the US there's been, I think maybe epidemic is too strong, but a lot of women are leaving the workforce, um, for a myriad of reasons.
So I think just in terms of, I mean, I guess the fact that I'm less surprised than you are is kind of says it all, um, about where we are, at least in the us. But yeah,
[00:20:31] Mike: because it is shocking that it's like we have a young son and we're always talking about mm-hmm. You know. Those days should be gone. The inequality should be gone.
But of course it's not, and it'd be naive to think it is gone.
[00:20:41] Rebecca: Yeah. And I think that, you know, where there's that lack, I really see an abundance of opportunity to say, okay, well, you know, what is the difference? Like, what is the observable difference between, you know, men and women in these roles? It might be that they're not necessarily, you know, on stage, it might not have equal opportunity to all of these things, but it could also mean that they're not the ones who are.
Leading the teams and doing the work to get the opportunity to be on stage. So it's like, okay.
[00:21:07] Mike: Exactly.
[00:21:07] Rebecca: In terms of, right, like the pipeline problem. So it's like, yeah, I will create absolutely the opportunity, right, for a woman to get on stage. But then I also need to think three layers deeper of does she have the right contacts to get on stage?
If she's interested in pivoting, does she have the right network to help her do that? When it comes to the actual hard skills, does she have a place where she feels like she can come? Get the advice, you know? Exactly. Get the network to do that. So
[00:21:32] Mike: without being judged in a way that helps advance those skills.
Yeah,
[00:21:36] Rebecca: exactly. So it's not just seeing the numbers, seeing the disparity. That to me is just like, that's the visible,
[00:21:42] Mike: yeah,
[00:21:42] Rebecca: that's the outward sign. It's like
[00:21:44] Mike: that's above the surface,
[00:21:46] Rebecca: above the waterline. Exactly. What are we doing? What are we doing below the waterline as a community, as a network to create more opportunities.
[00:21:53] Mike: Yeah, exactly right. And that's why you formed and that's why you are so large as a network and very active.
[00:21:58] Rebecca: Yeah. I would say, you know, the part about the work that is the most inspiring and heartwarming is just seeing how much people enjoy being in community. And women especially, I find that they really appreciate something that is well planned.
It's near public transport. They can leave early enough to like take the commuter rail to go see their kids and have dinner. Exactly. And they just know that they're going to get what they came for on the tin. A great community, great networking. And they can go about their day
[00:22:28] Mike: Exactly. And yeah, I mean, society's changed dramatically.
Me and my wife, we both work from home, we run our own businesses. We're fortunate that we get to see our son in a very flexible way. Not everyone has the opportunity and that's what we should be trying to get. Right, definitely. Is that everyone's got the opportunity to see their family grow up.
[00:22:45] Rebecca: Yeah, for sure.
[00:22:46] Mike: It's been amazing. Rebecca, what's the, kinda like if you were driving in the car listening to this episode, what are the couple of things that you would want to go, Ooh. I could think about that or try that or do something. What are your couple of takeaways from this?
[00:22:59] Rebecca: Yeah, I would say first takeaway from the AI side of things is to sign up for a couple of newsletters, even do like a Google alert on some of these companies to just, because there's just so much happening so quickly.
Just so you can understand baseline, what's moving. And then also don't be afraid. To test. I think any tool that you want your teams to adopt that you're thinking about, you should always be at the forefront of trying it out yourself. And then I would say in terms of thinking about larger economic opportunity for women or anyone on your team, you know, I would say that women and minority groups in general are probably over mentored and under sponsored.
So people are very willing to spend a lot of time giving them. That's a advice. Yes. Yes.
[00:23:49] Mike: Over mentored unsponsored. Yeah.
[00:23:52] Rebecca: Okay. Makes sense. Everyone wants to talk. That makes sense. But nobody wants to,
[00:23:56] Mike: to do
[00:23:56] Rebecca: perhaps Exactly. Or to say, okay, I know that you want to talk, or I know that you. I want to work on this project, or you think you might be issuing for this role, I'm going to create the opportunity for you.
I'm going to create the circumstances to give you, I'm gonna
[00:24:13] Mike: expose to you.
[00:24:13] Rebecca: Give a chance. Exactly. And so I think any, any opportunity to do that in the workplace. Opportunities, big or small with people that you manage or don't like. Just creating the space for people to actually try to do something.
Exactly. 'cause through that is how we. Get feedback, we learn and we grow. I would challenge everyone to just find even one small way to do that for someone.
[00:24:37] Mike: But Rebecca, that's a great phrase. If I reflect on a lot of people that I meet, no end of people happy to have a conversation.
[00:24:43] Rebecca: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:44] Mike: To spend half an hour to spend an hour and that's a good human thing to do.
You are passing on knowledge and experience. That's okay. But that's a world away from being an active sponsor.
[00:24:52] Rebecca: Yeah. And you know, it could be as simple as you have that 30 minute conversation, you provide them some feedback for their resume. But then the sponsorship part is you pass the resume on.
Exactly. So it's really easy to just do the next step
[00:25:05] Mike: and you have a meaningful conversation with someone about why this person would be a really good person to talk to about the roles that you've got and why they'd be a great opportunity. So for sure. Brilliant. Rebecca, thanks ever so much for joining me.
On Higg, all the B2B sell to podcast. Where can people find out more about you?
[00:25:20] Rebecca: Well, thank you for having me, Mike, and you can find out more about my work at the women in programmatic network.com.
[00:25:27] Mike: Perfect. Are you open to all women joining that network? Do they just apply to you or how do they
[00:25:32] Rebecca: get involved?
Yeah, everyone can sign up online. So not only women, also allies, anyone who's interested in our work, we would love to have along for the journey.
[00:25:39] Mike: Brilliant. Thanks ever so much. I will talk to you again soon.
[00:25:41] Rebecca: Thank you.
[00:25:43] Mike: Thanks for listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast series with your host, Mike Lander.
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