Episode 8 of Launch Codes is here! Matt Tonkin, RP’s VP of Consulting & Partnerships, joins Joe to crack the code on trust issues and privacy concerns.

Here’s what we’re talking about this week:

 

Listen Below

 

Episode Summary

Google tackles image trust issues with new features

A 2023 Poynter study revealed that 70% of people are not confident in their ability to tell when online images are authentic and reliable.

Matt pointed out that he’s impressed that 70% of people are willing to admit they are not confident in identifying authenticity. He went on to say “this number is when they’re actively polled. How many are thinking about that when they’re scrolling through social media?”

In an effort to combat disinformation, Google announced three new ways to check images and sources online last week.

  1. About This Image: Gives history of image and how websites use it.
  2. Fact Check Explorer: Gives journalists and fact-checkers a way to learn about image/topic.
  3. Search Generative Explorer: Gives AI-summarized descriptions of sources.

This is a good step forward for brand controlled in Joe’s opinion. He referenced the early days of Midjourney when images of the Pope wearing a Balenciaga parka went viral and how this technology can help protect brands from maleficent acts.

But there’s also a larger concern outside of brands, with international crises or election coverage, that these tools don’t address. The ability to quickly and easily check facts was critical when the 24-hour news cycle was first introduced. Now with the rise of news consumption through social media, paired with AI imagery and video, it’s of paramount concern.

“There needs to be a bit of time [for these tools to provide value],” Matt said. “That time is longer than it takes for a post to be on Instagram or TikTok.” If there’s a million views before content is fact checked, then the guardrails do not work.

 

Artists use Nightshade to derail AI image recognition

A new digital tool known as ‘Nightshade’ is enabling artists to protect their work from being scraped into AI training sets.

The tool manipulates images at the pixel level. Once enough distorted images are used to train AI, the entire model starts to break down and misread images.

For example, Stable Diffusion XL started misinterpreting the prompt for “dog” after just 50 images and outputs cats. Other examples included cars becoming cows, hats become cakes and handbags become toasters.

It could require hundreds or thousands of images to create these hallucinations, depending on the size of the AI model.

Developed by Ben Zhao, a professor at the University of Chicago, Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool for artists to “mask” their own personal styles.

Joe and Matt both feel it will be challenging for artists to compete with artistic copyright. Developers of LLMs will look for ways to defeat this type of tool. “I do like the conversation its starting and feel it’s part of the short term battle for copyright protection,” said Joe. “It’s going to be an uphill battle and I think they’re going to have a lot of trouble… to protect their images.”

Perhaps painting will have a resurgence to give artists the ability to protect their work.

 

Can LinkedIn connections become career critics?

This week’s question from the MarketingOps.com Slack Channel (used with permission from the founder, Mike Rizzo) is: “Do you have any experience with a potential new employer seeking feedback from a mutual connection on LinkedIn without your consent?”

It can feel uncomfortable for a potential employer to reach out to someone who was not on your list of approved references. Matt points out that “it doesn’t have to be a one-way street.” When Matt was interviewing with RP, he reached out to a former consultant to understand their experience.

Matt also suggested taking preemptive steps by doing research on the company and determine who your direct manager would be, then vet potential mutual connections.

 

Hot takes

 

Pairings

This week, Joe brought in Mavis Staples’ self-titled debut solo album, with the track Security, a fitting song for this week’s topics. Matt brought in “Lady Friend” an IPA from Elora Brewing. It’s a malty beer which is balanced by hop notes and a pleasantly bitter finish.

 

Read The Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was created by AI using Descript and has not been edited.

[00:00:00] Joe Peters: Welcome to episode eight. I’m your host, Joe Peters. On today’s episode, Google sharpens their focus on image trust issues. Nightshade poisons AI image recognition. We have a community question about LinkedIn connections and the connection between career critics. And then we have some hot takes on new Ray Ban smart glasses, the Brits letting their royal guard down on cyber security.

[00:00:31] Joe Peters: And Marketo writing a new chapter for their program reference library. Today I’m joined by Matt Tonkin. Happy Halloween, Matt. Happy Halloween, Joe. What are you excited to discuss this week? So,

[00:00:44] Matt Tonkin: from just a pure pun value, the nightshade poisons AI, I think you know, that really hit it out of the park for me.

[00:00:52] Matt Tonkin: But just from being a glasses wearer myself, I think I want to hear about this Ray Ban smart glasses and see, see how much better my life can be or, or not be.

[00:01:03] Joe Peters: Well, I, I, I hear that well, there’s like two phases of this, but let’s not scoop that segment. We’ll get to that in a minute. Okay, so our first topic today is about a 2023 pointer study that revealed that 70 percent of people are not confident in their ability to tell when online images are authentic and reliable.

[00:01:27] Joe Peters: And so Google is offering three new ways to check images and sources online. One, it allows you to fact check this image, so that gives you history of the image and how websites use it. Second, it has a fact check explorer, which gives journalists and fact checkers a way to learn about the image or topic.

[00:01:47] Joe Peters: And then finally, this search generative explorer, which gives AI summarized descriptions of sources. So, Matt, I think, you know, we’re in this new era deepfakes.

[00:02:03] Joe Peters: What do you think this means for brands? And what do you think it means for a broader society?

[00:02:10] Matt Tonkin: Yeah, well, first off, I’m actually somewhat impressed that 70, 70 percent of people are, are not confident, admit that, right? Like That to me is, that’s something that people are understanding. Like, yes, I’m bad at this.

[00:02:23] Matt Tonkin: I think one thing though, that jumps out to me is this is 70 percent saying that when they’re being polled and specifically asked about that, how many are actively thinking about that while they’re scrolling through, you know, right, right. From, from a brand’s perspective, I mean, There’s a few good things, right?

[00:02:39] Matt Tonkin: Like, I think imagine brands looking for stock images for their you know, products and stuff and wanting to, you know, not use maybe something that’s just generic and AI generated that gives them an option to see, you know, where is this actually coming from? If we’re just buying it from, you know, a stock image place.

[00:02:58] Matt Tonkin: I think having that there’s a lot of ability to sort of Take more control in what you’re using. And have that again, you’re just trusting what Google’s providing. So it’s not always going to be perfect, but there’s a bit more source.

[00:03:14] Joe Peters: Well, I, I think one of the things that I worry about for brands are kind of misappropriation of the brand.

[00:03:21] Joe Peters: So I think back to one of those first mid journey, mind blowing images where the pope was in like Balenciaga inspired parka. Yeah. And You know, I think there are some things that could be on the negative side of brands and so quickly and easily generated. Now obviously there are content guardrails on some of these systems for generating imagery, but Obviously, there’s going to be ways to defeat that or ways to manipulate it.

[00:03:54] Joe Peters: So I really feel like we’re going to have a real challenge now in ensuring that this is an authentic experience an image that we’re consuming. And I think our default question for ourselves has to be, Hey. Is this image real or not? Every time we’re looking at something that kind of piques our interest and and questions like, Oh, wow, this is pretty crazy stuff.

[00:04:21] Joe Peters: And then is that real or not?

[00:04:23] Matt Tonkin: My, my go to when I’m talking with, you know, friends and family about this or anything you see online, whether it’s a, about a generation or not is if it makes you have an emotional response, good or bad. Think about why you’re having that response and, and always go with the assumption that everything’s fake.

[00:04:40] Matt Tonkin: But it’s funny when you, when you mentioned, you know, brands and, and how they’re being represented. What triggered for me, and I think any Canadian of a certain generation will have this memory is the house hippo. Which, if you don’t know about the North American House Hippo, it was a PSA back, I can’t remember exactly when it was running, but it’s done up like a Animal Planet Discovery Channel animal documentary, right?

[00:05:07] Matt Tonkin: And it’s this little hippo that’s running around a house, building nests out of lint and all this stuff, and it looks really the takeaway at the end of the commercial is that, you know, this looked really real, right? But you knew it wasn’t, so you need to be careful about what you’re seeing on TV and understand that it’s not always real.

[00:05:26] Matt Tonkin: And I think this is sort of leading us towards like, what’s this generation’s house hippo? How do we, how do we put it in the back of people’s minds? Like, be aware of, you know, how these are being made. Be aware of what might. You know, be false for some sort of agenda or something like that, or just in general.

[00:05:47] Matt Tonkin: Yeah,

[00:05:48] Joe Peters: I, I think I’ve never, I’ve actually never heard of the House Hippo. So that’s what

[00:05:53] Matt Tonkin: Joe, I guess maybe there is a, no, I won’t. I won’t say there’s a, I won’t say there’s a generation, but I knew where

[00:06:00] Joe Peters: you’re going.

[00:06:03] Matt Tonkin: Okay. And yourself and anyone else get, just go type house hippo into Google and it’ll come up cause you really
need to experience it.

[00:06:12] Matt Tonkin: That’s

[00:06:13] Joe Peters: hilarious. Okay. Well, I think when, when I start to see the challenges that we’re going to be facing, like, so we’re seeing a lot of things happening in kind of the Middle East right now with. The Israel Palestine conflict with, you know, what is the real image? What is not what was from a previous
time?

[00:06:32] Joe Peters: All that fact checking is, is super, super concerning. You saw that fake Tucker Carlson segment with Elon Musk, I think we’re in for real nightmare moving into, I’m going to say election season. Not only in the U. S., but also Canadian elections coming up with being able to determine In relatively quick order how to stop fake content from, I’m going to say, poisoning the minds of the electorate.

[00:07:08] Joe Peters: And I think, I actually don’t know how we’re going to combat.

[00:07:14] Matt Tonkin: That’s, that’s a great point because if you think about those three offerings, they all still feel like a, there needs to be a bit of time for those to be figured out, right? Like, about this image even if it’s being done really quickly. Or fact checking, there’s a time, right?

[00:07:30] Matt Tonkin: And that time is longer than it takes for a post to be put on TikTok or Facebook or Instagram, right? So, it doesn’t matter if you can fact check it after the fact and say, Oh yeah, no, this is wrong, because everyone already saw it, and they don’t.

[00:07:44] Joe Peters: Exactly, if there’s a million views before it’s fact checked, or this presupposes that someone wants to fact check, Right?

[00:07:52] Joe Peters: You’re just scrolling through your X feed and seeing things. Who knows, right? Who knows what you’re consuming and whether it’s real or not. So I think we’re in for a bit of the Wild West in terms of manipulation and and deep fakes taking hold. And we’re going to collectively as a society have to just question almost Everything that we’re consuming and I think your, your, your idea of if I have an emotional response or trigger for this, I need to understand if this is real, right?

[00:08:28] Joe Peters: Well, let’s, let’s move along to our second topic here on your, your favorite topic especially for with Halloween coming up is artists using nightshade to derail AI image recognition. So. This new tool is enabling artists to protect their work from being scraped into AI training sets. And it manipulates images at the pixel level, and once enough distorted images are used to train AI, the entire model starts to break down and misread images.

[00:09:04] Joe Peters: So, for example, Stable Diffusion started misinterpreting the prompt for dog just after 50 images. And I think this is helpful and a tool for artists to master their own personal style. But it could take hundreds of thousands of the

[00:09:28] Joe Peters: hallucinations that we’re looking for, or they want to achieve, depending on the size of the AI model. So, what do you think about this new battleground for protecting artistic copyright?

[00:09:42] Matt Tonkin: The funny thing is, I’m not sure it’s a new battleground, it’s new in the sense of against AI, but right, this isn’t, this isn’t anything different than what we’ve seen for years, think back to artists trying to prevent, you know, peer to peer sharing of songs and that sort of thing, and how, you know, yes Napster went away, but then LimeWire and a hundred others pop up.

[00:10:05] Matt Tonkin: And I think anytime you’re, you’re developing tools to prevent something, you’re already behind, right? You’re playing catch up because as soon as you develop something to block it. And I mean, the solution, at least, well, not solution, but You really didn’t see that first drop off in piracy until iTunes and Netflix right, where you’re giving a legal way to get people want because they’ll get it.

[00:10:31] Matt Tonkin: So, so I don’t know if there is that sort of parody, but I think even now you’re seeing piracy start to trend up again because, you know, there’s 30 streaming platforms and I don’t know which ones I want. So I just want what I want to watch simply and that’s the same thing here. I just want. To produce this image simply and somehow you’re going to get it done.

[00:10:51] Matt Tonkin: So it’s, it’s interesting. I think it’s a cool tool, but you’re, I think you’re always fighting an uphill battle if you’re trying to prevent something.

[00:10:59] Joe Peters: Yeah, I think, I think you’re right there about the uphill battle and where I see. You know, the process that these scraping mechanisms are going to sort of create their own next salvo of, or volley of of shots in this battle is, they’re going to scan to check before ingestion, and then it kind of defeats this.

[00:11:27] Joe Peters: So. I, I do, I do like the conversation that this is starting, and I do feel like this is a short term part of the, of this battle for copyright protection. But I think it’s going to be an uphill battle, and I think there are going to have a lot of trouble. Mm-Hmm. being able to stop accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish.

[00:11:52] Joe Peters: Yeah. Which is the protection of their, their images.

[00:11:56] Matt Tonkin: Yeah, I think you’re right. There needs to be, you’re not going to win the battle. I don’t think so there, it needs to be more collaborative and how you do that. Yeah. And I think

[00:12:07] Joe Peters: photographs and digital art are going to be challenges to maintain artistic copyright.

[00:12:14] Joe Peters: And it’s almost like we’re going to go old school a little bit. Painting is going to be, have a resurgence because that’s something that you’re going to be able to, you can maintain some protection on, but that’s a topic for another, another, another day. All right. I love this community question we have today and really, really interesting.

[00:12:40] Joe Peters: And to be honest, as an employer, I’ve never. Come across this as a process that we would necessarily use, but do you have the question is, do you have any experience with a potential new employer seeking feedback from a mutual connection on linkedin without your consent?

[00:13:01] Matt Tonkin: Yeah, that’s an interesting one because yeah, it doesn’t, it doesn’t shock me.

[00:13:06] Matt Tonkin: And I think I know myself personally. I’m, if I’m interviewing someone, I’m, I’m going to go on linkedin and look them up. So, I think if you see that you have a mutual connection, it would naturally be sort of the first on your mind is like, Oh, I can actually hear from someone else what this person’s like if they’re, if what their resume says is an accurate representation of what they’re doing.

[00:13:28] Matt Tonkin: So it seems. Sort of logical and kind of the, the part of LinkedIn, what I’d say is, you know, that doesn’t have to be a one way street. I know when I was coming here, Joe, I, I reached out to a former consultant from RP and I asked him, you know, what’s it like here? So I think, I think it’s a tool that can go both ways.

[00:13:45] Matt Tonkin: I definitely don’t think it would be, you know, out of, out of out of reason. You need to think about, like, who you have on your LinkedIn, and you can see that too. You can, you can go through, you’ll have an idea, I think, of who is going to be interviewing you, who would be your manager if you’re doing the research.

[00:14:01] Matt Tonkin: And you can see, do I have mutual connections with them? Is that mutual connection someone I want to have with them? And maybe take some preemptive steps before you go through the process, right? Well, I think

[00:14:13] Joe Peters: that that is probably the only solution. If you think someone from your, you may have to do a scan of your connections.

[00:14:22] Joe Peters: And just decide, Hey, maybe Bob Bob didn’t like that. I got the promotion over, over him. And maybe he has a bit of an ax to grind and maybe I shouldn’t be connected with Bob anymore. I don’t know, Matt. Like that’s, that’s, yeah, it’s going

[00:14:38] Matt Tonkin: to be a bit of a challenge. I mean, it’s tough because the whole concept of LinkedIn is you want to expand your network and expand your network.

[00:14:44] Matt Tonkin: So you probably never think of it. Like, is this a good person to have in here? Like, is this someone who’s going to give me good feedback if we have mutual connections? Yeah, I definitely think, well, and I know personally being in like the Marketo world there’s always everyone knows everyone. So it’s changed a bit in RevOps in general.

[00:15:06] Matt Tonkin: And I don’t think that’s industry specific. It’s probably true of a lot of industries where there’s tight knit networks and. Everyone knows everyone. So you kind of do have to have that rapport with people.

[00:15:22] Joe Peters: I think you’re right. I think you’re right. This is a, this is a hard one, but it’s a reality. And it’s kind of like probably taking a little shot at the reference check process, knowing that you’re generally not going to give references that aren’t going to give you a good reference.

[00:15:42] Joe Peters: Yeah. Right. And if you have, then that’s a little odd. But this is this is a approach of sort of checking that reference check process with with connections and relationships, which I think is which is a natural part of this.

[00:15:59] Matt Tonkin: So And I think, I mean, the good news is if, if you have good relationships and you have people on your LinkedIn that your work really spoke to them and they can talk well for you, I think someone that you didn’t provide is going to be a much better reference than someone you did provide just because of what you said.

[00:16:19] Matt Tonkin: If I reached out to, if I’m hiring someone and I reached out to a connection of theirs and they said this person is great, they’re great at their job, great to work with, I’m taking that a lot more seriously then. You know, the names that the three names I get and a piece of paper at the resume.

[00:16:34] Joe Peters: Yeah, I think you’re right, Matt.

[00:16:36] Joe Peters: I think you’re right. So it’s a little bit of a reality check. And this is just where we’re at for our community member here. But

[00:16:46] Matt Tonkin: anyway. I think it’s, I think it’d be frowned upon if someone’s going on your link or your Instagram and finding your like family and close friends and asking you about that.

[00:16:55] Matt Tonkin: That’s definitely going a step far. But I think the purpose of linkedin is to curate a network that you get along with and you work well with.

[00:17:04] Joe Peters: Yeah, that I think you’re right. Although I do know that some employers are doing those thorough scans of socials with new employees and, and double checking everything there.

[00:17:18] Joe Peters: So, yes, what a, what an interesting time we’re in here where you don’t really get to control the process either as an employer or as a potential employee. Maybe it goes both ways, so you just have to kind of… Look, I think you have to expect that this is going to happen. Alright, well let’s move on here.

[00:17:43] Joe Peters: And first, I’d like to thank our friends at Knack for sponsoring today’s episode. Knack is the no code platform that allows you to build campaigns in minutes. Get AI powered translations in up to 75 languages in just minutes. Visit knack. com to learn more. That’s K N A K.

[00:18:05] Joe Peters: So now we’ll shift into our hot takes segment. We have some great ones here, Matt. And as a glasses wearer, I mean, I have contacts on now, but

[00:18:17] Matt Tonkin: you, you were I’m just saying, I switch back and forth, depending on the day. But

[00:18:22] Joe Peters: these new Ray Ban Meta Smart Glasses have been introduced. And actually a colleague of ours, Pierce, has a pair already.

[00:18:31] Joe Peters: It has five built in microphones. Captures audio, video, and still images. Has a 12 megapixel camera. And shoots up to 60 seconds of 1080p video. It has good stabilization, so you don’t get motion sick with the, you know, the head moving, taking the shot. You can live stream to Facebook or Instagram.

[00:18:55] Joe Peters: So, obviously, it’s tethered to your phone. And there’s a voice assistant that allows you to listen to text, take hand free photos and videos, and send messages. So… And then there’s an AI augmented part coming in the future where you can kind of look at, I don’t know, a monument or a building and ask it what it is.

[00:19:17] Joe Peters: Oh, that’s cool. So, what do you, what do you think about this? I think privacy, it’s another new era part of the
era of declining privacy with pretty much every single day we go out into the

[00:19:35] Matt Tonkin: world. Yep. So, it’s funny what hop, what jumped out to me when I was thinking about this, because I’m like thinking, Oh, this is cool.

[00:19:42] Matt Tonkin: Like I just replaced these. But if you remember the last time I was on the podcast, we talked about the pendant that records everything as you go around and I. And I can say this, I felt a lot more hesitant about that pendant, like I could feel that emotionally I responded different to this, and I don’t know why, because there’s a lot of similarities, right?

[00:20:03] Matt Tonkin: I mean, there’s more video being captured, there’s video being captured, not just audio so I’m wondering if that’s just a brand recognition thing, and I mean, I’m wearing Ray Ban, so it’s probably partly mental there, right? But you’re, that, that privacy thing we’re going around, and you’re taking video, so out in public People are now being captured.

[00:20:22] Matt Tonkin: And I mean, that’s true. Anyone on their phone could just be taking videos of anyone out there. But I think it’s different when there’s sort of that visual visual indicator that, okay, someone’s got their phone up, like they could be taking video versus someone just wearing glasses. So that’s, you know, that’s an interesting thing.

[00:20:40] Matt Tonkin: I’m not, I’m not sure how I feel about that. Yeah,

[00:20:44] Joe Peters: I, I, there’s so many layers to this. I actually think there’s a bit of a risk for Ray Ban at this point in doing this. There could be a bit of a backlash. You could see it. Oh, that guy’s wearing Ray Bans,

[00:21:01] Matt Tonkin: a bit creepy Oh, great. I got to change my glasses.

[00:21:06] Matt Tonkin: Well, well,

[00:21:07] Joe Peters: those are the sunglasses. I know. I know. They’re also sunglasses. Oh, there’s a, okay. Okay. I’m pretty sure they’re sunglasses, but I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure they are, but I think we’re. I find this interesting is We’re, we’re, we’re getting into this period where we’re going to start to see augmentation of our capacity and abilities.

[00:21:32] Joe Peters: And I think this is just another step forward in that in terms of the integrated or add on to ourselves by technology and augmenting ourselves in different ways. And you know, this isn’t the merge between, you know, where we’re having AI connected right into our. Into our brains, but, but there, there is a path along here a little bit.

[00:21:57] Joe Peters: That’s that’s. Stirring for us to, to see. And you know, you could see that there would be some, are there competitive advantages that you could have with this type of

[00:22:09] Matt Tonkin: this type of, well, you can imagine just traveling Joe. You don’t need to have great understanding of different languages anymore.

[00:22:15] Matt Tonkin: If. If just in your field of vision, signs are being translated. If, you know, you can take in what someone’s saying and immediately have an English translation or whatever language translation. There’s suddenly, suddenly a whole new world literally opens up for you that you, you didn’t have there. So just simple, simple day to day things that don’t even get that far out of reality right now.
[00:22:39] Matt Tonkin: I mean, I can do that with my phone and hold up to a sign and it’ll translate. So it’s that progressive steps that, yeah, what, what’s going to be, what are these guys going to be doing in five years? Yeah, I

[00:22:51] Joe Peters: think you’re right. Like, imagine you’re walking around, you’re trying. Some old city that’s a maze, let’s say Barcelona, or, you know, and you have your sunglasses on and it’s kind of saying, Oh, to get back to your hotel, you take these types of, you take this route.

[00:23:10] Joe Peters: You’re navigating the the maze of alleys and, and being able to find your final destination. So I think this is, we’re just in the early days here, and you can only imagine there’s going to be a period not too far in our future where this is table stakes and every, everybody’s going to have this in some form, but all right, that was a bit longer than just a long, yeah, that got us, that got us fired up.

[00:23:42] Joe Peters: So this next one is around a cyber security. So one third of Brits admit they’ve given up following cyber security best practices. So new research from Thales of over 2000 UK city and citizens found an alarming level of consumer apathy when it came to keeping themselves safe online. This apathy is closely tied to feelings of confusion, futility, and information overload.

[00:24:12] Joe Peters: So, 51 percent struggled to grasp rapid advancements in technology and the implications on their own personal security. 22 percent admitted they had no clue about the significance of where in the world their data is stored. China, Russia, U. S. Wherever. 47% percent confess to signing TNCs without a thorough reading.

[00:24:39] Joe Peters: I think that’s a that’s that’s a

[00:24:40] Matt Tonkin: lie. That’s a straight. I, I’m moderately cyber security you know, conscious, I would say, and I, I’m so guilty of this. So yeah.

[00:24:53] Joe Peters: And 56 admitted they always accept cookies on websites due to it being an easy process or an easier process for them. So there’s a digital

[00:25:02] Matt Tonkin: marketer that that’s like, yay, but no,

[00:25:07] Joe Peters: but I think, you know,

[00:25:14] Joe Peters: And tying back to our, our last topic on privacy and that we’re in an era where it’s very, very difficult to be vigilant we’re continuously having our, our personal information violated. How many times do we now get that email from some business where they’re, they have to inform us that they’ve had a data breach in our information or passwords?

[00:25:44] Joe Peters: Or even some more important information, whether it’s social insurance numbers or social security numbers, we’re, we’re, we’re experiencing this. I’m not going to say every day, probably weekly and monthly at the bare minimum, where there’s some infringement on our personal information.

[00:26:08] Matt Tonkin: It’s so, I think it’s so commonplace to your point, like that it’s happening all the time in a lot of younger generations who are, you know, in the working.

[00:26:17] Matt Tonkin: World now that that’s been their whole life is, you know, just clicking. I accept these terms and going through that. And even older generations, it’s been most of their life, right? Where it’s just sort of become static in the background. And you okay, what’s an easy password? That sort of thing. I’m not having like good practices around that password one, that sort of thing.

[00:26:42] Joe Peters: No, it is, it is hard to be vigilant and it is I mean, I think of just the inundated nature of a phone call, not like just being the spam that you get on through the phone now is unbelievable. So I think where you stay strong friends is the message and you have to keep on thinking about. What you can do to to protect yourself and what are some of the, I feel really challenged for or feel really poorly for seniors today that have low technological literacy and are being manipulated all the time.

[00:27:34] Joe Peters: Right. And it’s very, very, very, very tricky and the AI is only going to get better and easier to do this. So we, we have to, we have to work together on trying to keep each other safe. All right, let’s move on to our last hot take this week from our friends at Mercado, and they’ve revamped the program reference library and part of the September 2023 release there’s allowing users to import example programs.

[00:28:05] Joe Peters: So whether that’s email engagement, event scoring, deliverability and operational programs. This is all part of the Marketo revamped program reference library. What are your thoughts on this,

[00:28:19] Matt Tonkin: Matt? Yeah, and this has always been something that Marketo’s kind of had. I think a lot of people don’t realize that there’s sort of these template programs that you can pull into Marketo.
[00:28:29] Matt Tonkin: Maybe I’m a little jaded from my past experience with it, but I never felt that they were, you know, great. But for, you know, a new user to Marketo, someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience, they’re, they’re programs that are set up. In a way that works in a way that Marketo was structured to make use of.

[00:28:46] Matt Tonkin: So it’s great for getting your bearings on how these things could be structured. The problem is, is Marketo has to build these for every all of their customers, right? They have to be a single program that’s going to work for manufacturing for financial services for SAS companies. And what that means is they don’t really work for any of them, at least not in a way that.

[00:29:08] Matt Tonkin: is beneficial if you have customizations that you need. So I really look at these as sort of a base building block and use them to understand, especially if you’re new, but you’re going to want to customize eventually, whether that’s building onto these base programs or, you know, building these out and making programs that work for you.

[00:29:27] Matt Tonkin: So. It’s great that they’re, you know, trying to get a bit more of this user friendliness involved, I think but I think there’s still room to go there.

[00:29:35] Joe Peters: Yeah, just more Lego in the Lego box that you can take and build with, right? Yeah, I mean, the

[00:29:43] Matt Tonkin: benefit of Marketo is that it’s completely customizable. So having a cookie cutter program isn’t why you get Marketo anyway.

[00:29:52] Joe Peters: All right, well. Let’s move on to our pairing segment. So this week we have a great album from Mavis Staples and it’s a self titled debut album from 1969. And so just for, for, for our listeners. We’re putting the audio at the end of the podcast so you can sort of listen to it without having our voices

[00:30:22] Matt Tonkin: over top of it

[00:30:23] Joe Peters: or Matt opening a beverage and disrupting the vibe so you’re able to hear.

[00:30:29] Joe Peters: The, the track right at the end and the, the song that we’re, or the track that we’re so showcasing is called security, which I think is funny based on our theme this week, but then the second reason we’re showcasing it is this vinyl. For those of you that are watching the video version, it’s orange and black.

[00:30:54] Joe Peters: It’s Halloween today, so I thought this was a perfect, perfect choice for us to have this weekend. You know, it is, it’s just a, it’s an incredible album and I feel like I’m in a Real funk and soul exploration phase right now. Like I actually can’t get enough. I, I, I find this, the, the, it’s so rich and the albums are so strong.

[00:31:19] Joe Peters: And so this may, this staples one actually it’s a lot of familiar tracks, even if you put it on, there’d be. Be songs that are just part of our, our, our, our cultural backdrop. Son of a preacher man is on this album, which if you’ve, if you’re a fan of Pulp Fiction and the soundtrack from that film.

[00:31:40] Joe Peters: That is it’s one of the key tracks from that, from that movie. But anyway, how are we going to pair a beverage with Mavis Staples

[00:31:52] Matt Tonkin: this week? Okay. So I will say I had a plan, Joe, that, that fell through, unfortunately, I initially, so a few weeks ago I got to announce that I am, I’ve joined the executive team at RPM.

[00:32:04] Matt Tonkin: I’m, I’m vice president. So, so what I had intended to do was if you’ve ever been to the Dominican Republic. The beer that’s around everywhere there is Presidante. I was hoping I could maybe get one of those so I could have a cup of coffee. Turns out it’s really hard to import that into Canada. So that fell through unfortunately for me.

[00:32:24] Matt Tonkin: So, oh yeah, there we go. What I have this week, it’s, it’s a local to my actual like local in town brewery. I’m in a small town, so we’ve just got the one. It is lady friend IPA from a Laura brewing company. Just a, a really good it’s one that I think it used to be sort of their fall IPA release, so it reminds me nicely, like.

[00:32:46] Matt Tonkin: Well I say fall, but there’s snow on the ground for me right now. So maybe we skipped that. But that’s what it feels like for me as a nice fall fall IPA. It’s sort of a, another go to for me. So I’m happy with it.

[00:32:57] Joe Peters: And it goes along with Mavis, our lady friend today as our, as it is, that’s a great pairing, great pairing that we have this week.

[00:33:06] Joe Peters: So that’s that’s pretty, that’s pretty fun. Alright, so, I think that’s it for this week, Matt. Thanks for, for joining me, and thanks to our listeners. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review. You can find us on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. And stay connected with us on LinkedIn or by joining our newsletter using the link in the description.

[00:33:33] Joe Peters: And thanks, Mom, for watching, as always. Have a great week.

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