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TRANSCRIPT:

DOUG: Moon, one of the things that I think will be of the most interest to our viewers about the leadership role that you have at M Booth is the work you’re doing just infusing your team with an understanding of AI, how they can use it, knowledgeable about it, utilize it on behalf of clients, and educate their clients. Can you share sort of your top tip for someone who’s looking to gain a better understanding of AI from your perspective of what they should be doing?  

MOON: Absolutely, that’s actually a great question. I think the one key thing is really to stay curious and schedule play time with AI, because if you’re not using AI and feeling confident or at least curious about AI, how are you effectively able to counsel clients and other team members? So, I think that’s the number one thing I would recommend, but the other piece is like, make sure you’re at the center of it. So, make sure you’re still at the driver’s seat and not over relying on AI. So, there’s this delicate balance.  

DOUG: What do you see and what is your team seeing as the biggest value they can bring to the work that you’re doing? And of course, that in-house teams could be doing as well. Where is AI making the most difference?  

MOON: Now, you read a lot about like productivity gains and all these efficiency gains, but I think the greatest value, Doug, is really when you’re using AI and you actually feed it because it’s all about good input begets great output, but if you’re able to feed it, it’s more details, more specific, you’re able to get gold star work, um, consistently and at scale without the burnout. You have to treat AI like you treat onboarding a colleague. You want to onboard the colleague, take that time to feed it information, right? These are some great gold star examples. This is what I want from a structure. This is what I want from tonality, and the more you feed it, the more AI will actually work for you. So, I think that’s the biggest, I think value that AI can provide is actually providing you with great work.  

DOUG: One of the big changes that we’ve been seeing is somewhat of a switch from focusing as much on search. Of course, that’s still important to now. GMO is important. Like, are you going to be showing up in the AI questions that people are asking? What are some of the key things there that you’re seeing?  

MOON: Earned media has become even more valuable in the era of AI and working hand in hand with journalists and reputable outlets because those are actually where AI is scraping information. In fact, I believe Muck Rack just did a report on like, these are the top outlets that AI generally likes to cite sources from. Axios is one of them as an outlet. So, I think just knowing if they are AI accessible or AI friendly outlet is important to know to get your desired messaging out there. And I also think the more you think about press releases that used to be considered, maybe, is that a dead tactic or is that not as relevant? I think it’s even more relevant in the age of AI, because that’s where you actually are producing your own content with your desired messaging. So, the more you have out there what you want to say and how you want to say it is actually great, but you have to structure it differently now.  

DOUG: Yeah. And we’re also seeing for people who are using it to find something locally. The idea of local news has become more powerful if they’re doing market specific research. There is an AI anxiety out there and you’ve talked about that as well. What are some ways that maybe people should still feel anxious, or in some ways you can sort of ease that and ease the worry? 

MOON: Yeah, I think sometimes anxiety can work in your favor if you’re able to, like, really leverage it in the right way instead of letting the fear and anxiety drown you and paralyze you actually use it to be curious. The more you are curious and embrace AI, I think the anxiety will sort of settle. I think the balance is don’t let AI be a crutch because if you surrender to and give yourself sort of like take your authority away, I think that’s when you don’t get the great work. You also don’t build your own critical thinking skills. And I think that there’s this sameness output to like people start to tell like, oh, this is a robot writing this email. This is not a human voice. So, you always want to inject your own humanity to it and let AI do some of the grunt work for you, but you up level that. You still use your own thinking in your own voice to bring sort of yourself into the into any and every output.  

DOUG: Are you seeing a different perspective among, say, junior and senior workers, which could be also code for younger and less young workers? And how do you get them sort of on the same page working together, because I would think that could be a big obstacle if they’re not aligned.  

MOON: Yeah, absolutely. I actually had this really interesting dialogue with my account coordinator, and he actually said to me, I actually want to do it first before I even turned to AI, because I know I have to build the skills. So, it’s actually using AI almost as an afterthought versus maybe someone more senior, like someone like me, that have done all this might be like, actually, maybe I’m going to turn to AI to see what I get. So, I found that to be a fascinating dialogue where he’s like, I want to do it first and I want to do it first a few more times before I even start to look at AI as a consideration. And I found that to be very noble, because he wants to learn. He wants to learn how to write this, whether it’s a pitch, whether it’s a press release, whether it’s a briefing memo for an executive, he wants to do the grunt work first.  

DOUG: Yeah, well, I don’t know if there’s a gambling marketplace for his career, but I would bet on a promotion pretty soon for someone who’s coming at you with that kind of insight and self-awareness, which is really cool. Obviously, he avoided a lot of the common pitfalls that might come up with AI, but what do you see as some of them? Is it that overreliance on it?  

MOON: It’s also, I think, using just not copy pasting AI. So maybe that’s a little bit of a segue into overlay. It’s just like trusting it with it and making things like not checking for it, because I think actually I used AI for helping me to identify some influencers or key opinion leaders. And I was like, actually, this looks good, let me just vet that. And literally there was a couple of them were made up titles. And so, you really do have to edit AI and look for mistakes because instead of thinking like it’s actually, oh, I’m just going to check one thing. No, you need to check the whole thing because it could be hallucinating still, but it sounds so confident. The output seems so confident and pretty, you know, reliable, but you still have distrust it, look for the mistakes, and correct it. I think that’s the other piece of it.  

DOUG: Something about your expertise in AI is something that would be good for a new business. Maybe it’s an area that people are focused on, but how do you make sure that the agency client relationship is maximizing the value and avoiding problems that can come up?  

MOON: That’s a really great question. I think first, you have to really understand your clients policy. Some clients still in the MSA don’t want AI. We use it because there’s obviously proprietary information that we are able to access, but they don’t want us to put that into an AI platform. So, just first do your homework to make sure you’re not going rogue or not following policy. And that goes the same with your own agency or your own company’s policy. Understand it because there are some approved tools and there are some tools that aren’t approved. So, know what they are. So, I think that’s the first most I think second is actually being transparent with clients to like, hey, I started this, but I also leverage AI and I think that is important to build that trust with clients. So, you don’t break that with hiding any information. And then Doug, you mentioned new business. Absolutely. It’s not only about media coverage or media audit like showing, it’s also like how do they show up on AI? We just had this pitch last week, and we actually shared how this company and brand shows up against competitors, not just in media, but also using the different AI tools. How are they showing up and what questions do they show up top or at the bottom? I think that information is super valuable to clients because they know now where to move the needle. What can they do? What tactics can they do to uplevel their visibility in these AI platforms?  

DOUG: That’s fascinating. Before we get to your final thoughts, I always like having our guests throw in a little personal anecdote. I’m going to cheat and guide you a little bit because when that caught my ear, was that for a while you worked as a docent in a New York museum? Maybe you could talk about that a little bit.  

MOON: I was a docent at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum for five years when I first moved to New York. And of course, I wanted to better understand the city. So, I loved history, and I also had this fear of public speaking, like most people do. And I knew that I just needed to kind of embrace my fear and go out there and do something with new information that I wasn’t really comfortable with. And I ended up loving that experience that I stayed for five years. It was every Saturday or Sunday, a job for me. And not only did I get to meet really interesting tourists or people who just loved New York City, but I also got to be part of the history, too, and saw how the Tenement Museum has grown, working on more towards the different families and the creative community was just, you know, have such a special place for me even to this day. I actually took my kids there when they were on spring break in April, and I still saw some of the familiar faces, and they got to see a tour that I did, but they had obviously up leveled or elevated it, so it was different than when I did it all those years ago, but it was so nice to see that again with my children.  

DOUG: Yeah. So, I’m not going to ask you what those who first lived in those New York Lower East Side tenements might have thought on AI, but if you do want to give us a final take on this conversation that we’ve been having. I’d love to hear it.  

MOON: Being at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, working that you really got to see how families get by, how they make the most of it. And I think that’s a really great lesson. Even today, it’s a timeless lesson of getting by with what you have, but also staying curious, staying flexible, staying agile to elevate and not just survive, but thrive. I think there’s lessons there that are really still relevant today in this age of AI. Not many people know where it’s all going to go, but to stay agile, stay curious, stay flexible. I think those are the keys to help us get there.  

DOUG: Perfect advice to wrap up our conversation. Thanks so much for your time.  

MOON: Thank you for having me, Doug.