For the first time, AMA-Madison is teaming up with AMA-Milwaukee and AMA-Northeast Wisconsin for an extra special online lunch n learn on Thursday, November 7. And whether you’re brand new to AI or well along into your AI journey, it’s a can’t-miss.

We’ve brought together three experts in AI and its role in the marketing world:

AI Panel:

• Spencer X Smith, an AI consultant and experienced speaker, who will share his journey from early tech adoption at IBM to advising some of the largest financial institutions.
• Jo Phillip, Director of Creative Strategy at Weidert Group, uses AI daily to optimize workflows and elevate content strategies.
• Michael DeNunzio, who will focus on the transformative impact of GenAI on marketing, offering insights on how automation and AI-driven innovation are reshaping brands and customer engagement.

These panelists will discuss all things AI, including practical applications, emerging opportunities, and challenges to avoid when integrating AI into marketing strategies.

Register now to get access to all this advice and a chance to virtually connect with marketers from around Wisconsin. In the meantime, get a preview of what to expect at the event in the Q&A conversation below with all three of our speakers, Spencer X Smith, Jo Phillip, and Michael DeNunzio:

What to expect: Q&A with Spencer X Smith, Jo Phillip, and Michael DeNunzio

1. AMA: Tell us a little about yourself and your background with AI.

Spencer X Smith: Started my career at IBM during the Y2K days and saw the early versions of the internet itself, Bluetooth, and handheld computing (we used the very first Blackberries). Those technologies during that time barely worked, were clunky, and had slow adoption. Modern AI – especially LLMs (Large Language Models) has been the exact opposite…huge adoption and application right out of the gate. Have been working with AI since Google Translate first rolled out their transformer models, and now use various AI tools every day with clients.

Jo Philip: I’ve been writing for marketing for about 20 years, and I started experimenting with LLMs after November 2022 and the public launch of ChatGPT. As a content manager and director of creative strategy, I work with clients in highly specialized, technical, and complex industries. Integrating AI into content development workflows streamlines processes like background research, persona development, interview prep, and gap analysis. I’m really interested in finding ways to redeploy the energy from those efforts toward critical thinking, creative strategy, and deeper conversations that produce more helpful, valuable content that B2B audiences really need to advance along their buyer journeys.

On the executional side, content repurposing for multichannel distribution is increasingly in demand, so just as AI helps us get to better core concepts and information in the content, it also helps us reshape and distribute those concepts more effectively, to meet those target audiences where they are, with content formats that differentiate against competitors and appeal to target audience preferences. For example, AI tools can adapt content for different formats and audience segments, making your content creation efforts more efficient. By automating the process of repackaging and redistributing content, marketers can maximize the value of their efforts without burning out their creative teams.

I try to keep a focus on AI use that really amplifies the place and value of the people involved, especially with regard to critical and creative thinking. Applied thoughtfully, AI can be both an incredible productivity tool and a strategic advantage.

Michael DeNunzio: Hi, I’m Michael DeNunzio, Founder and Managing Director of PVAI Consulting, where we help brands drive growth and transform their markets through AI. We do this in two primary ways: through strategic consulting services focused on organizational AI enhancement, and AI powered services that support brands with business and market strategy, research, brand development, and more. In addition to these services, we offer a series of executive learning programs, including our flagship course Mastering AI Skills for Marketers course, on Maven, as well as workshops and an AI-focused newsletter called The AI Outcome.

I’m also a Board member and originally a co-founder and of an AI SaaS marketing platform called AIREA, which enables marketers to create a knowledge base of their brand and, with just a few simple prompts, generate full omnichannel marketing campaigns in minutes—what previously would have taken days or even weeks. Prior to this, I founded a digital marketing agency that we successfully sold, and I was a shareholder and advisory board member of an AI/ML search company, which we grew from inception to its eventual sale to Coveo.

2. AMA: Most marketers by now have tried using AI in their workflow, but there are still many untapped opportunities they probably haven’t thought of. Can you give us a preview of an underutilized use case for AI in marketing that you think more marketers should be aware of?

Spencer X Smith: Voice-to-text prompts is the most underutilized aspect of LLMs. Instead of typing prompts, we can talk through our ideas or our ideal outcomes with the tools to have them expedite our work.

Jo Philip: One underutilized area where AI can add significant value is in audience intelligence and social listening. Many marketers use AI for generating content, but fewer are using AI to listen to audiences in near-real-time. Tools that combine social listening with AI can analyze vast amounts of data from various channels, providing insights into not only what’s trending, but also what is resonating emotionally with an audience. Strategically, that information is so valuable.

For instance, in B2B marketing, understanding the emotional drivers behind a technical buyer’s journey—such as pain points, frustrations, and goals—can be transformative, making it easier to create campaigns that truly connect. B2B marketers don’t always take the extra step to tap into buyer emotion; that’s often left to the sales team. But demonstrating that empathy in marketing communication can do a lot to help lay the groundwork for more successful sales conversations down the road.

Those social listening tools are also really helpful at finding the digital spaces where audiences are active (besides, for example, your own website and LinkedIn). As search evolves, identifying those opportunities to connect with prospects and customers will become increasingly important.

Another underutilized use case I’ve seen among content creators is data analysis. As primary data grows increasingly valuable as a marketing asset, getting quickly from data to story will be key. AI tools can be helpful for identifying data patterns that point to insights—which isn’t every writer’s strong suit, and can be a time-consuming part of the content creation process. A little AI help with analysis can get the content creator farther along the path toward story-building with less difficulty.

Michael DeNunzio: One of the most underutilized but highly valuable applications of AI in marketing lies in brand strategy and customer persona development, especially when it comes to uncovering new customers and exploring new markets. By leveraging AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data from diverse sources, marketers can identify untapped customer segments that were previously hidden in the noise of traditional data analysis.

AI tools can not only help refine and develop detailed customer personas but also reveal new distribution channels and opportunities for product-market fit. For instance, AI-driven market analysis can pinpoint emerging trends, customer behaviors, or geographic regions where demand is growing but competition remains low. This enables businesses to enter new markets with a tailored strategy and a competitive edge.

Moreover, AI can play a pivotal role in uncovering insights related to pricing and margins. By analyzing competitor pricing, consumer purchasing behavior, and even macroeconomic factors, AI can help marketers adjust pricing strategies to optimize revenue and profitability. This can lead to better margin management and more informed decisions about product positioning, especially as new markets and channels are explored.

In essence, AI helps marketers go beyond incremental improvements by opening up new avenues for growth—whether that’s through identifying new customer segments, discovering alternative distribution channels, or fine-tuning pricing strategies to maximize margins.

3. AMA: From your knowledge and experience, how do you see the role of AI in marketing evolving over the next couple of years?

Spencer X Smith: Substantially. From creating content itself, creating variants of existing content, or customizing content for myriad audiences, marketers jobs will be augmented by AI assistants/agents on a daily basis.

Jo Philip: I foresee AI becoming an even more collaborative partner in the process over the next couple years, moving the emphasis of the human’s role deeper into strategy and storytelling. Essentially, I see AI finding its way into every tool and application we use to do our jobs—and as we improve integrations between tools, it will further streamline workflows and enable marketers to create more helpful, tailored content—at scale.

As AI capabilities advance, we’ll see tools helping with ideation by analyzing vast amounts of data, from trending topics to audience preferences, to identifying information gaps that technical SMEs can help content creators fill. This will enable writers to quickly tap into insights that would have taken hours of manual work. The speed at which AI can analyze data has the potential to turn marketing communications into something that feels much more like a two-way conversation, or at least a feedback loop.

AI will likely get better at editing and optimization. As real-time feedback on readability, SEO, and brand compliance improves, writers will be able to produce and polish content more efficiently. It will also quickly become easier to tailor content for different audience segments without a massive increase in workload by tapping AI to adjust tone, style, or messaging to resonate with different buyer personas.

Essentially, AI will shift from being just a productivity tool to being a creative partner, helping marketers focus more on innovation and less on the manual aspects of execution.

Michael DeNunzio: The role of AI in marketing is going to be incredibly transformative in both positive and challenging ways. On the positive side, AI will enable marketers to achieve things at scale that we’ve always wanted to do but never had the ability to execute efficiently or effectively. For example, creating hyper-personalized customer experiences across multiple channels, real-time campaign optimization, and predictive analytics will be done on a level we’ve never seen before.

But underlying this transformation is the significant amount of automation we’re going to see through AI-driven agents and technologies. These innovations will change the nature of many current marketing jobs—some roles will be eliminated, while new ones will emerge, though how many new jobs will be created is less certain.

As routine tasks become increasingly automated, the focus will shift toward more strategic, creative, and analytical roles. Marketers will need to adapt quickly to this evolving landscape by developing new skill sets, particularly in human-AI collaboration. It’s an exciting but complex future, and staying ahead of these changes is really a question for yourself, do you want to be a leader or risk being a laggard?

If you wanna be a leader, the path is pretty clear: think augmentation. AI is going to shift from being a tool to enhance human creativity and decision-making to becoming a true collaborative strategic partner. So start with the mind shift today that AI is not your competitor, but it’s your superpower and figure out how to infuse it in your workflows for the highest value outputs that you are responsible for delivering.

4. AMA: What is a big takeaway people can expect if they attend the event?

Spencer X Smith: Learn how to use these tools to make their work both more effective and more fun! I’ll show the tools in real-time and how the attendees can best implement concepts right away in their jobs. 

Jo Philip: AI is moving fast from a differentiated value-add to an indispensable must-have for the platforms and applications marketers use every day. As AI becomes a standard feature, a major differentiator among marketers will be how creatively and effectively they can harness its capabilities.

Success as a marketer in the age of AI means understanding its best uses, and that demands an embrace of new tools and a curiosity to look beyond the current state and try new ways of working. Attendees should expect to take away the confidence to experiment—whether that means getting started in the first place or expanding their curiosity and looking beyond their current, comfortable use cases.

Michael DeNunzio: A key takeaway from this event is that AI isn’t just a technology—it’s a mindset shift for leaders. Attendees will walk away with actionable insights on how to leverage AI not only for automation but also for smarter decision-making and deeper customer engagement.

See You November 7!

If you haven’t yet, register here. We can’t wait to learn and network with you.

 

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