Higher Ed Storytelling University

00:00:00:12 - 00:00:26:14
John Azoni
My guest today is Artist Kidu. Artist is an entrepreneur, technologist, A.I. fanatic and CEO at Element for 51 element for TV. One is air powered CRM for student engagements. It empowers admissions and enrollment teams to work more efficiently as they develop stronger and more personalized engagements with prospective students. In this episode, we're talking about personalization specifically and in storytelling using AI.

00:00:27:04 - 00:00:44:03
John Azoni
And we'll dive into this really cool video that that artist turned me on to from Carvana, which sums up the power of personalization really well and possibilities with a AI. We'll also have some bonus content from this episode come out in our weekly newsletter, so make sure you're signed up for that because it won't be available anywhere else.

00:00:44:13 - 00:00:45:19
John Azoni
Artists Welcome to the show.

00:00:46:17 - 00:00:49:05
Ardis Kadiu
It's great being here. Thanks for having me. John.

00:00:49:17 - 00:01:06:16
John Azoni
Yeah, awesome. So tell us, I always like to start off the show by asking what's something that people would be surprised to know about you? I'm sure a lot of people know you. A lot of people that I know know you. So what would be something that they that they might be surprised to know about?

00:01:07:08 - 00:01:30:02
Ardis Kadiu
I don't know about being surprised. I have I've had a an interesting kind of story around forming the company and kind of immigrating here to the U.S. So I'm not I'm not a U.S. native. So I only got my I've been here for about 20 years or so. But yeah.

00:01:30:17 - 00:01:31:07
John Azoni
Where are you from?

00:01:32:20 - 00:01:34:03
Ardis Kadiu
I'm originally from Albania.

00:01:35:00 - 00:01:43:05
John Azoni
Okay, cool. Tell us a little bit about element 451 Give us just a brief primer for people who haven't heard of you guys.

00:01:43:22 - 00:02:20:01
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah. Element 451 is a a AI powered CRM. We essentially take care of the whole engagement layer of student to school interaction. So everything from top of the funnel marketing, email communication and SMS messaging, application management, even current student engagement with things like API bots and and copilot. So element is that full lifecycle CRM that a school can use for all of their constituents.

00:02:21:06 - 00:02:43:06
John Azoni
Awesome. So a lot of personalization opportunities in there. Talk a little bit about personalization. I think we all know that personalization is really important and you know, there's kind of like surface level personalization which is like, okay, first name, you know, that kind of thing, or a company name or something like that. Like, but, but why is it important to maybe go a little deeper than that?

00:02:44:10 - 00:03:21:00
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, the the word that everybody loves the most is their own name. So so you're when you're putting somebody's name on, you're calling their name, that resonates with us. So the familiar and the trust aspect of something that's familiar to us, we interact with other humans and other people and the way that we build that trust is by a common and shared experiences or shared knowledge.

00:03:21:08 - 00:03:45:01
Ardis Kadiu
And if you know me and I know you and you know something about me and we kind of trust each other, so so that's why like recommendations or introductions by friends, it's like the whole the whole star system, right? The whole recommendation system that we are so used to right now it's all about trust. So that's when we think about personalization.

00:03:45:09 - 00:04:11:14
Ardis Kadiu
It's all about, okay, I know something about you and I want to feel that I know you so you can trust me, so we can get past that hurdle of essentially, you know, the shutdown, right? Because as consumers, we're being bombarded so much with information and so much with with offers and things like that. So our minds are really shut to any new interactions.

00:04:11:14 - 00:04:23:16
Ardis Kadiu
So when we see that somebody else knows us or we see those signals of trust coming in, then we open up to the actual message of what's on the other side.

00:04:24:10 - 00:04:39:02
John Azoni
Yeah, I find that to be true. Like, I feel like I don't ask for a lot when it comes to like people, you know, reaching out to me cold because I get it like, you know, as a business owner myself, like, you know, you gotta put food on the table. You got to you got to go out there and get some business.

00:04:39:02 - 00:04:59:23
John Azoni
Yeah, but I'm just kind of like I'm looking for signals of like, did you even spend 10 seconds, you know, on my LinkedIn profile? Did you do anything or are you trying to dupe me into thinking that you've researched me? Like I could always tell is like, I'll get these emails. It's like, I'm so impressed by what you've done in the music industry.

00:05:00:17 - 00:05:05:13
John Azoni
And I'm like, Where did you get that? I don't. Somehow there must be an unveiled.

00:05:05:13 - 00:05:06:17
Ardis Kadiu
A keyword that you have.

00:05:07:00 - 00:05:31:19
John Azoni
Yeah, I have nothing to do. There's some sort of Spotify, something connection with music industry and I'll get these all the time. And I'm like, You clearly are lying. Exactly. So but yeah, I think, you know, we can all agree like personalization is really important in and you know, from a higher ed perspective, doing outreach to students and things like that.

00:05:31:19 - 00:05:51:13
John Azoni
You know, like you said, the first name, you know, there's some like little merge tags that even just in an email that you can personalize. But when it comes to personalized and in general, whether it's web content or whether it's emails or video or whatever, I think if anyone's like me, the struggle is how do you do that at scale?

00:05:52:10 - 00:06:00:21
John Azoni
Right, Right. So talk a little bit about like maybe ways that are happening at scale right now that people can implement.

00:06:01:18 - 00:06:23:06
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah. I mean, when you're sending stuff out, it's all about you mentioned like those merge tags, so you have a piece of information in a database and you're kind of trying to merge it so it becomes personal to that particular record or person. However, there is no editorial. There's no generation of story there. So it's it's very template ties.

00:06:23:19 - 00:06:47:20
Ardis Kadiu
So which is great for, you know, the way that our systems are built right now are around retrieval, right? So we retrieve information from somewhere. We we put it together in a template and then we send it out. Now, the only way that you can do that personalization where it's unique to each person is by, you know, writing it or changing it human based.

00:06:48:05 - 00:07:34:06
Ardis Kadiu
As of maybe a year ago. Right? Or maybe as of six months ago. Yes. Generative AI that has completely flipped on its head how we can now generate content based on those data points that is as good or even better than what a human can do. And because those machines and because those models can can run 24 seven and and they don't get tired of overwriting the, you know, variations for for hundreds or even thousands of people, we can now scale that infinitely or we can scale it to our whole databases of people that we're reaching out.

00:07:34:13 - 00:07:58:21
Ardis Kadiu
So it's changing the compute and the personalization engine from a I'm going to retrieve something about you and I'm going to merge tags to I'm going to retrieve and generate something that is unique to you. So that generation part is very, very new and something that we're seeing in email, text, generation, audio, video, whole lot of different models.

00:07:58:21 - 00:08:03:04
Ardis Kadiu
At ease of content. Of course, it's a lot easier with text right now.

00:08:03:13 - 00:08:30:10
John Azoni
Right? Absolutely. That's why I'm sad. I'm excited to talk about the Carvana thing, but I do want to talk about like, you know, in our earlier conversations before we start recording or talking about that, the opportunity for storytelling and yeah, when you when you know something about an organization or a in this case of higher ed a prospective student and you can tell a specific story that that they're going to resonate with, that's super powerful.

00:08:31:16 - 00:08:46:05
John Azoni
You know, that's why we have like, you know, you have like case studies or something like that. If you're just a if you're like a B2B or something like that, because you don't have all these kind of different examples of, you know, you go into a sales meeting or something, go, okay, you know, they have this problem, I'm going to share this story with them.

00:08:46:10 - 00:08:57:18
John Azoni
In the case of like prospective students, like, how do you see that? Like playing out in terms of like storytelling to in personalizing a story, to say, a prospective student?

00:08:57:18 - 00:09:19:02
Ardis Kadiu
You know, that's very hard. Actually, last week I had a conversation with my marketing and sales team and it's like, okay, we need to put together a bunch of case studies. You mentioned case studies and it's like, okay, well, give us the personas that this case studies are going to and then we'll put them together and we're going to, you know, put together one sheet or something and it's like, whoa, that's such an old way of thinking about it.

00:09:19:02 - 00:09:39:07
Ardis Kadiu
And it's like, that's going to change. Like the person that you were talking to has a very different, you know, intent of why they're doing what they're doing and why they're talking to you or what their what their motivations are. So the combination of all those different things, you're going to give them something that's going to be a little bit more generic, right?

00:09:39:19 - 00:10:03:01
Ardis Kadiu
So case studies need to tell a story which is very specific to the person on the other side. Right. And the combination of five, ten, 20 different variables that you have as pieces of data is going to drive you 400 500, 600 different variations that you're going to need, combinations that you need to come up with. Right? Which is, which is crazy.

00:10:03:06 - 00:10:26:11
Ardis Kadiu
So the only way that you can kind of do that is by using technology and kind of telling a story that is going to resonate the most with that person. Right. By knowing what's important to them and by retrieving certain pieces of information, then you can write that story. I mean, stories are pretty formulaic when you think about it.

00:10:26:16 - 00:10:54:04
Ardis Kadiu
They're like, we've written stories now for hundreds or thousands of years. We know what you know, how to write really good stories. They're very formulaic. So, you know, as long as we know a few pieces of information, then we can write a story that resonates at a human level. But we now need to personalize it to resonate at an individual level as well.

00:10:54:08 - 00:11:39:08
Ardis Kadiu
Right? So so that's that's a really unique thing that we weren't able to do before. But now we can see all these examples, like you mentioned, for example, Carvana sending videos that are personalized and we'll talk about that to their to their car owners or or, you know, folks, for example, that have sophisticated CRMs sending communications that are specific to what the person is studying, plus where they live, plus Web pages they viewed on the school's website and buy sending those communications and weaving in the content that's specific to what the actions is that they did.

00:11:39:17 - 00:12:06:05
Ardis Kadiu
That's essentially putting a story together right? Right. So a series of pieces of content that tell, you know, that are written in a specific sequence are telling a story. It might not necessarily be a movie story or something like that, but it's actually telling a story of intent. Hmm. Right. The person has an intent to enroll or has an intent to apply or something like that.

00:12:06:12 - 00:12:37:13
Ardis Kadiu
And they're following a particular journey. I mean, you can call it a journey as well, but it's again, like the how you help them along that journey. That's that's the story here. You know, the hero's journey, for example, it's like when you position the product as kind of the the guide rather than the hero. And you try to do that and the school traditionally for us, when we market a school, we talk about it from our marketing perspective.

00:12:38:02 - 00:13:08:02
Ardis Kadiu
We think about a school being or the student being the hero of the story. The school is never the hero, right? The school is always the guide. So the hero is your Luke Skywalker, right? And then you have Han Solo being the guide, trying to trying to guide them along. And they're always at the right time giving them advice or pushing them to the next kind of piece of the journey.

00:13:08:02 - 00:13:32:05
Ardis Kadiu
And and that's how you position yourself, right? That's how the brands position themselves as as kind of guides rather than heroes. And heroes are always the consumer or they're always the student or so that's that's an interesting way that we have thought about it in the past. And we're like, well, how do we how does element as a as a tool fit in to to that story?

00:13:33:04 - 00:13:33:13
John Azoni
Right.

00:13:34:05 - 00:13:41:10
Ardis Kadiu
I'm like, we're not the guide. We're certainly not the guide. We're not the hero. So how do we position ourselves?

00:13:43:00 - 00:13:44:12
John Azoni
You're like the guide lightsaber.

00:13:45:10 - 00:14:06:23
Ardis Kadiu
We can be the light. We're the tool, right? We're the we're the magical tool, the lightsabers, and we're the you know, that that is helping the the guide. We're the tool chest, so to speak, that that's helping them provide what the hero needs. So it's an interesting exercise to think about where you fit in in the consumer's mindset.

00:14:07:18 - 00:14:35:08
John Azoni
I've tried to watch Star Wars. I don't know much about it, but I can confidently say, what good is Luke Skywalker without his lightsaber? Yeah, yeah. So a couple few years ago, you know, every makes these New Year's resolutions. And I my resolution was to try to watch all the Star Wars, the whole Star Wars series. And then I got really overwhelmed because everyone has an opinion about what order you're supposed to watch them in.

00:14:35:15 - 00:14:36:14
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah. Yep.

00:14:37:03 - 00:14:55:15
John Azoni
Yeah. And then I watched. So I ended up watching the very first one that like Crown, the first one that ever came out. And I was just like, I kept having to ask my wife, like, what is happening here? I'm like, I have such a squirrel brain. I'm like, I have to, like, rewatch things. And and I was like, All right, one is enough.

00:14:55:15 - 00:14:59:23
John Azoni
I did. I did the first one. And then we go, We didn't go, and we're probably.

00:14:59:23 - 00:15:01:10
Ardis Kadiu
Going to get some air mail for this.

00:15:01:10 - 00:15:01:22
John Azoni
But yeah.

00:15:02:10 - 00:15:02:19
Ardis Kadiu
Fine.

00:15:03:09 - 00:15:30:05
John Azoni
Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, in that hero's journey, it really is like you're speaking to what they want. And I think that that's the temptation that every marketer faces, is to talk about the product, which is, you know, jump right to the solution before addressing like, what does that person want? And it's in that desire that that person has that makes them the hero.

00:15:30:05 - 00:15:56:05
John Azoni
They're they're trying to achieve something. They're the ones overcoming obstacles. You and your brand are either guiding them or you are the tool that's helping the whatever. But you're not the hero, you know? And the the opportunity for personalization really, I think, really is is strong there. And I think like for me, I do a lot of outreach.

00:15:56:05 - 00:16:18:14
John Azoni
You reach out to people on on LinkedIn and I'm like I like genuinely want to get to know, you know, this person whose profile I pulled up and I'm like, I wish there was a way where I could know, like deeper things about, you know, what they've written about in the past or what they're trying to do or something like that, versus just what you can find on their LinkedIn profile.

00:16:18:14 - 00:16:41:17
John Azoni
And half the people aren't even active on LinkedIn. So it's just like where they went to college and you know, where they where they worked last. But yeah, it's like, okay, if you could combine that, like here's the journey that that you're on and you know, I like knows that journey, you know, somehow and then you can plug your product along that journey that seems insanely powerful.

00:16:42:01 - 00:17:10:10
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah I mean that's, that's an area where there's so much software being developed right now around behavioral marketing. So it's like we had behavioral marketing before where it's like, Hey, I know what your behaviors are like, what you did, how many posts you posted, what's the content on those posts. But you needed a human to synthesize all of that for And, and the API was there, but it was all about machine learning.

00:17:10:10 - 00:17:36:01
Ardis Kadiu
It's like, okay, you did this, this action, the next action is going to be this and this. However, there was no ability to provide personalization on the nudges, on the content itself and, and to to essentially provide personal, personalized outreach to say, okay, hey, I know what you're doing, but here is something that I know about you and this is actually content that's for you.

00:17:36:01 - 00:18:05:02
Ardis Kadiu
Unless a human wrote it or a human produced it. Now we're able to do that without a human in the loop, which brings us back to the generation part is what is new and what is so exciting today is that we're able to generate content that is complete and send it to the user to get them to do the things that we want to do, which is great.

00:18:05:05 - 00:18:30:07
Ardis Kadiu
And it's it's I haven't been more excited about the generation part since we figure it out. I mean, when we launched Element, when we launched the product, it was all about personalization. It's like, okay, we have all of this email communication flows, you need it. So many different permutations of the emails to change. We figured a way to do it more dynamically.

00:18:30:07 - 00:18:57:20
Ardis Kadiu
So all you have to do is change little snippets of information and content and areas and images so you can kind of dynamically move those in and out. But but somebody had to write and build those. But that was really exciting. This was like ten years ago or, you know, five years, seven years ago. Now we're building or calling kind of these AI blocks and essentially somebody can write an intent of a prompt in there.

00:18:58:05 - 00:19:40:11
Ardis Kadiu
And rather than the you writing that paragraph or writing that image, it's going to change it depending on what information or tokens you're putting in for that student. So if you're saying write a message about their program and tied to how can these be impactful in their location or their city, like that is super important because now when email goes out, you can pool together the program of interest, which can be, let's say, engineering or mechanical engineering, and you can pull together the location, which can be, let's say, Michigan or Detroit or whatever.

00:19:40:18 - 00:20:03:20
Ardis Kadiu
And now because of those two components, the API is going to give them something that resonates with them around. I'm pretty sure it's going to be something automotive or something along those lines. But but you know what I mean? But if it was a different location, if it was let's say this, the SAT of the Southeast or or California or whatever like that would be different to messaging.

00:20:04:06 - 00:20:10:14
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah. So it's it's so exciting because that's new. That's very new.

00:20:11:03 - 00:20:42:13
John Azoni
Yeah. I've been editing a lot of I just been in like year end deadline, you know, Edit for edits mode lately and I saw the music company that I that I pull my soundtracks from has implemented like an AI search function which is amazing because as I mean if you know any video editors, they would say that's the most tedious part of the process is finding the right song, you know, and then you do all that work to find the right song and then the client decides to change the song.

00:20:44:12 - 00:21:22:10
John Azoni
But I was able to just be like, you know, I'm telling the story of this person. She's talking about this. I want the song to kind of be like this and it pull a list. I'm like, the first. The first two or three or four of them were like, spot on. And I was like, This is cool. I mean, that's simple, you know, just a simple use of AI, but even just the ability to give it context for what you're doing rather than having to having to give it, I want a song that's light and beautiful and right, you know, because that just you that's how you used to have to search for music was

00:21:22:10 - 00:21:37:11
John Azoni
you check these filter marks and you know, every site has different labels for those and exact different different interpretations of what beautiful means or what upbeat means. So it's it's a really amazing.

00:21:38:06 - 00:21:48:04
Ardis Kadiu
Hey, wouldn't it be wouldn't it be really nice if you actually just seeded the script and you can tell generate music that you know, that goes along with this script? Yeah.

00:21:48:22 - 00:22:09:12
John Azoni
Yeah. That would be pretty cool, right? Pretty cool. I am excited for I know I've, you know, some some video people are nervous about, about AI in the video landscape and being replaced and all this stuff. But I'm excited because I think it's those it's those kind of tools that helped me get to the fun part faster, you know?

00:22:09:12 - 00:22:09:23
Ardis Kadiu
Yes.

00:22:11:05 - 00:22:30:18
John Azoni
It's, it's like it's like, yes, I can go through hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of interview footage and eventually pull a story together. That's good. But if I can like, kind of just give it some direction, you know, some A.I. tool, some direction and say this is kind of the story arc that we're going for.

00:22:31:01 - 00:23:02:23
John Azoni
You know, this is what the client you know, this is what their goals are, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'll give it some keywords and then boom, like that's, that's like I'm like praying for that to come through because I like that's, that just takes the most tedious part of the entire process, like going through these transcripts and, and listening to your interview footage and stuff to get to the part where, okay, now we're building something, now we're now we're putting visuals in place and we're and we're moving things around and and we're cooking with with gas here or grease, whatever.

00:23:02:23 - 00:23:03:11
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah, yeah.

00:23:06:03 - 00:23:25:20
Ardis Kadiu
So that that is really interesting. I think I think a lot of people you hit on on one interesting area where a lot of folks are a little bit afraid of the automation or it's like, well, I do that now. Like what's going to happen to me right? And they're not looking at it from a value creation perspective.

00:23:25:20 - 00:23:52:02
Ardis Kadiu
It's like, as a customer, I'm hiring you to provide me an end result or a product or an outcome for that matter, right? And if it takes you 2 minutes or if it takes you, you know, 50 hours, like I value this thing a certain way. And if you can get it all done a lot faster, then you can do a lot more with your time and you can do a lot more.

00:23:52:02 - 00:24:15:01
Ardis Kadiu
But but, but this idea of hourly thinking about it as an hourly output can be a little bit tricky as we kind of transition as we start working on different, different types of work, right? It's like it's about the the outcome and it's about the value that you're creating rather than how much time you put into producing something.

00:24:15:14 - 00:24:35:13
John Azoni
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That whole about value based value based thing is as Yeah. Versus just like I'm going to take a long time on this because I have to justify the, you know, what we're charging or something like that. But yeah, if I can get stuff done faster, I can provide so much more value because I'm like, All right, let's do more with this footage, you know?

00:24:36:14 - 00:24:59:16
John Azoni
All right. So speaking of video, Carvana, so you turn me on to this this video I watched it this morning prepping for this episode, and I was floored. And so there's many obviously, it's personal. So there's many versions of this video. There's like 43 million or 43,000 different, you know, people that they sent this to.

00:24:59:16 - 00:25:11:00
Carvana Video Voice Over
I'll never forget the day we met. I was so excited. It was March 31st, 2022. Everyone was posting their word, all scores. Wow.

00:25:14:00 - 00:25:42:07
Carvana Video Voice Over
It was National Crayon Day. That's wild. It's spring. It finally arrived, and you and I were both in Fairlawn, New Jersey. Gosh, we were just kids. That it was a wide eyed, innocent. 2015 red Hyundai Sonata. And they just told me the name of my new owner, Giovanni. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, and your language is tricky, but I love it.

00:25:43:04 - 00:26:05:17
Carvana Video Voice Over
Jeans, giraffe, reindeers. Those things are so fun to ship. I know this is crazy, but do you believe in fate? I mean, out of nervousness, millions of cars and tens of millions of online visitors. Are you kidding me? Look how many of us there are. Wow. Even before you chose me, I was already dreaming of everything we do together.

00:26:07:03 - 00:26:30:12
Carvana Video Voice Over
Traveling along the coast, coming out of the boardwalk. Or maybe you take me to New York so we can get stuck in traffic together. But to be honest, it doesn't really matter what we do, so long as I'd be doing it with you. Carvana is celebrating our millions of customers. But this isn't just a story of fact. This is about the millions of stories that came out of it.

00:26:30:23 - 00:26:41:18
Carvana Video Voice Over
Like our story. You and me, pal. I'm your sidekick, your wing machine, your home away from home. I'm your car. And I'm glad we're on this joy ride together.

00:26:44:09 - 00:27:10:18
John Azoni
For people listening. So, Carvana you sell your car, I think it's the one where you sell. They'll come pick it up and you know, you you can sell a car. You could buy a car on Carvana. So what they did is everyone that bought a car, you get this like personalized story, which was it's like from the for the one that I watch is like from the perspective of this 2015 Mazda sedan or whatever.

00:27:10:18 - 00:27:28:12
John Azoni
And it's like driving down the road and it's just like, remember the day that we met? You know, people were, you know, and it had some inputs like what was happening on that day that you bought that car, which is like in general, oh, people were sharing their word all, you know, scores and, you know, and it was national pizza.

00:27:28:13 - 00:27:33:02
Ardis Kadiu
That was the thing, right? Yeah. City Yeah.

00:27:33:12 - 00:28:03:15
John Azoni
Right, right. And, and then it just kept going and it's, and then it had like a location thing or it's like a location specific little touch point which was like and then the sign changed to say like, Oh, you bought this in New York or whatever. Here's what was going on. Anyways. So if you're listening, well, I'll link to some of these in the show notes, but I just thought that was amazing and I was trying to dissect how they would do that.

00:28:04:14 - 00:28:14:07
John Azoni
Give me your thoughts on like, how could that even be done? You know, if you were to like reverse engineer or what they did. What are your thoughts?

00:28:15:14 - 00:28:32:00
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah, I think I have a pretty good I think there were some articles around like how they did it, but if you think about it and we go back to the template ization of a story, so, so that you have a story and you want to tell this story and you're you're making it a pretty generalized, it's like, okay, I want to make a connection with you.

00:28:32:00 - 00:29:00:10
Ardis Kadiu
So I'm going to provide some personalization there around things that were happening in the world around dates and times, right? So your anchoring around dates and times and then you're calling in and you say, okay, here's a bunch of keywords around those dates and times, pulling them from news articles, from news headlines. So that's what they did. They went into Google News and then they said for every day over the last whatever years, give us the five or ten social headlines that were in the news.

00:29:00:10 - 00:29:19:20
Ardis Kadiu
So now they pull together the headlines for Google News and they say, okay, now that that's that's relevant, the location or where the car was picked up and where the destination was, they already had that. They have that in the database. So that's something that they started already with a database like that's that's proprietary information that they had.

00:29:20:04 - 00:29:40:19
Ardis Kadiu
So now they can kind of pull that out and and start creating an image that it's a little bit relevant to that the way that they did it in order to create all these different images is that I'm not sure if they created them before or they put it together after but they they generated they use generative API and to to kind of create all these different images.

00:29:40:19 - 00:30:10:16
Ardis Kadiu
So they used a version of Dolly or I forget what else, but, but essentially they, you put in keywords of different things or you put in the that the text and then you generate that image of the thing. So so now they have a massive amount of for every person or for every location and every day they have like the news, they have the different locations, they have the different destinations, right?

00:30:10:23 - 00:30:30:02
Ardis Kadiu
So when you go past in the highway, they have the sign of what what city they're passing by or whatever. Yeah. And then they have the car as well because you see the car in there. So they have to have the make of the car and the color. So they had variations and all these different makes and colors as well.

00:30:30:07 - 00:31:02:17
Ardis Kadiu
So they created a massive library for each one of these different variables so that they're changing variations for each one of those. And then when they're putting the story together, they saying, okay, John, you know, did it on this day and this is the make that he that he had and here's the destination that he went to and now we're going to build a personalized story based on replacing the variables in this template with John's variables.

00:31:02:23 - 00:31:24:22
Ardis Kadiu
And because we have created all of the, you know, all of those assets before, which is hundreds of thousands of assets, we're going to dynamically create that video for them and to render it. So we're going to put all the edits right? So it's like just swapping all the edits together with the right assets and then creating that that video.

00:31:24:22 - 00:31:50:23
Ardis Kadiu
So so that's a really it's not very hard to do, right? Because now you have, like I said, thousands of different permutations or or whatever it is. Yeah, but they pulled it off, right? I mean, they pulled it off and the value that the customer got out of it and the goodwill and the marketing, you know, juice they got of it was, was incredible.

00:31:51:21 - 00:32:08:15
John Azoni
It was cool because it like I felt something watching it, you know, it was like this personification of a car. It was like the car talking, talking to the buyer as if they they now have this special like they adopted a child or something like that. You know. And it was exactly, exactly.

00:32:08:18 - 00:32:10:07
Ardis Kadiu
That's the story part. Right.

00:32:10:21 - 00:32:32:12
John Azoni
And that's yeah, that's that's like the hallmark of like really getting to the emotion of why people buy a car, to go on adventures, to go, you know, to you spend so much time in there. And it mentioned like getting stuck in, in like New York traffic or something like that. You know, he's like, we'll get stuck in traffic together and, you know, it's just like this.

00:32:32:12 - 00:32:48:04
John Azoni
And people it's like almost tapping into that. We're like people name in their cars, too, you know? And it's super cool because I've experimented with runway ML It's, you know, video, video creation.

00:32:49:02 - 00:32:49:08
Ardis Kadiu
Yep.

00:32:49:12 - 00:33:32:09
John Azoni
With like very poor results. It's it's rough. It's rough out there. And I was impressed with like, you know, for people, for people listening, we'll put one of these videos in the actual in the actual episode here so you can at least hear the script. And if you're watching on video, you can see the video. But to explain the video part, they really leaned into the I look, I feel like because I think I think what's tough about any application, any new sort of application is trying to fit that applications output into into the old way of doing things the yep yep.

00:33:32:13 - 00:33:37:06
John Azoni
New on an old wine skins or something like that you know from the Yeah.

00:33:37:10 - 00:33:37:19
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah.

00:33:37:19 - 00:33:56:22
John Azoni
You know and so for me like I think I think it was really about like struggling to get it to look like real video, like real cinematic video. And then it's kind of like, Oh, wait a minute, like let's embrace the style that it's putting out and let's, let's kind of try to guide that style a little bit.

00:33:56:22 - 00:34:12:20
John Azoni
I thought I just was amazed at like, how would you even quality control that? Because all the scenes blend together just so seamlessly. And I would be I would be afraid to, like, send something out that was like, embarrassing, you know, like some some mishap, you know, in there.

00:34:12:21 - 00:34:39:17
Ardis Kadiu
I'm sure they're not showing you the mishaps. I'm sure there's yeah, there's some mishaps in there for sure. But you mentioned runway and now last week there was something really interesting. Piqua 1.0 was released and there that's another platform that does video text of video generation. And a lot of folks are saying, is this the Chad Beatty moment for video generation?

00:34:40:03 - 00:35:13:08
Ardis Kadiu
So Pico, Pico, 1.5 sorry, 1.0 is really good at producing video. I don't know how long it is, but the quality has gotten so much better with PICO as well. To your point around leaning in to the output, it's very similar to, if you remember, a lot of folks who are trying to produce very highly product or highly produced videos for social right.

00:35:14:06 - 00:35:42:03
Ardis Kadiu
And essentially the videos who are getting the most engagement were the you know, were the authentic like what we call authentic. Right? There's not really authentic. But but basically the ones shot from a cell phone, the, you know, the nine by 16 aspect ratio rather than 16 by nine. So like, you had that look that kind of matches the medium and matches kind of the expected output.

00:35:42:03 - 00:36:18:21
Ardis Kadiu
You're not trying to fake it, right? You're not having this really nicely produced videos on social too, to kind of get somebody it's like, Oh no, that's an advertising one. It's like, I'm not going to pay attention. So there's a trust aspect to that as well, right? So the content needs to fit in the medium as well. So I can see that happening now where over the next six months to a year as we produce this, I generated the stuff story is going to be very important and people are not going to pay as much attention to the actual quality of the of the asset or of the visuals, but they're going to care about

00:36:18:21 - 00:36:35:02
Ardis Kadiu
the story as long as that story. And then it's going to get better and better and better with images and so on and so forth. But but it's going to be there's going to be a period of time where if you pass it off for high quality stuff, it's like you go through that uncanny valley, so to speak, right?

00:36:35:02 - 00:37:03:19
Ardis Kadiu
It's like, you know, it's fake, but at the same time it's just like better beef, really fake or it not if it's very close to human production or but not quite. There. Like our mental model, like our minds actually reject that and have an adverse reaction to it. Right. Like we Yeah, Yeah we, we don't appreciate that if it's close enough but not quite there.

00:37:04:04 - 00:37:12:22
Ardis Kadiu
Like we see that as a bigger negative than if it's like completely messed up and right or not messed up but like a completely cartoonish certainty, so to speak. So yeah.

00:37:13:15 - 00:37:50:08
John Azoni
Yes I, I tried going vegan for a period of time and the one thing you notice trying to go vegan is all the foods that are trying to they're forcing veganism into like junk food, like you're trying to like take like normal food and then make a vegan version of it. And it's like vegan brownies, vegan pancakes, Like, you're just like, it's like maybe, maybe let's just embrace like, let's not try to force, you know, Yeah, vegetables into everything.

00:37:50:08 - 00:38:00:01
John Azoni
Let's just, like, kind of have its own category over here. And yeah, I'm no longer me and I couldn't do it. I like cheese too much.

00:38:01:19 - 00:38:04:03
Ardis Kadiu
Same same line and cheese, of course.

00:38:04:13 - 00:38:38:22
John Azoni
Yeah, but I think that's cool. Like the personalization opportunities coming down coming down the line for video. You know, I generate generative AI for video, I imagine. Like what if you could feed it? Feed AI, some A.I. app like key landmarks from your campus? Because one thing I notice shooting video for a lot of schools, everyone has like kind of like, Oh, this, this is an iconic spot right here, an iconic building or an iconic courtyard or whatever.

00:38:38:22 - 00:39:10:15
John Azoni
Having a library of those kind of templates or whatever you could start with, feed it that and then have the ability for it to create videos based on where that student might want to hang out based on content they've consumed or something like, Oh, I see you've been watching all these like White Noise Asmar videos on, on YouTube, so maybe you'd want to come hang out at our law library where it's like the most relaxing place you've ever been in your life.

00:39:11:14 - 00:39:29:11
John Azoni
You know, I could see that being that being really cool. I've tried. I've tried to play around with that. I've tried to take like, let's take an iconic building from a school I was working with, and then I fed it into runway melt, didn't didn't quite get it, but I'm like, it's getting there. Like it's going to be there sooner than later.

00:39:30:10 - 00:40:06:11
Ardis Kadiu
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, have you A lot of folks are really interested in kind of how that feeds into the whole privacy thing and also authenticity and trust with deepfakes, for example, it's like, how do you like if you're generating you can have an actual actor do something and then you can superimpose somebody else's face or that student or, or the, you know, or the president like playing basketball or the president doing all these different activities that a student would do.

00:40:06:11 - 00:40:31:00
Ardis Kadiu
But now they're they're deep faked into all those activities. So maybe that president then would have a much better connection with those students. If the students see that, wouldn't that be really interesting or having them speak in very different languages, like having those videos be in every different language depending on who the student is and where they're coming from for international recruiting.

00:40:31:12 - 00:40:41:07
Ardis Kadiu
So so that's a really cool example of how can you use these A.I. models? Are you use 11 labs, I'm assuming for some stuff.

00:40:42:04 - 00:40:53:08
John Azoni
I honestly haven't like gotten to deep down the video generative Video Rabbit Hole. I've used runway it a little bit and that's that's as far as I've gotten Yeah.

00:40:53:16 - 00:41:29:07
Ardis Kadiu
11 Labs is as an audio synthesizer. Basically. It's a voice Synthetic generates a lot of synthetic audio. Right. And one of the things that they did recently is have you can upload your your voice in there and it can translate that into, you know, dozens and dozens of different languages. And there was also another model that you can upload a video and you will translate it into different languages, which is pretty cool, right?

00:41:29:07 - 00:41:49:14
Ardis Kadiu
Because now you can upload your finished video, you can say you know, we can have this in Spanish, we can have it in Japanese, we can have it in Chinese. And you don't have to record all that stuff in all those different languages. So that's anyways. So 11 Labs, it's a pretty, very cool website where you can do some of that.

00:41:49:14 - 00:41:50:09
Ardis Kadiu
That audio.

00:41:51:23 - 00:41:52:20
John Azoni
Think this is.

00:41:52:20 - 00:41:53:02
Ardis Kadiu
This.

00:41:54:03 - 00:41:54:19
John Azoni
Is one of my.

00:41:54:19 - 00:41:57:07
Ardis Kadiu
11 as a as the word 11 labs.

00:41:57:18 - 00:42:26:14
John Azoni
Oh 11 labs. Okay One of my favorite Instagram accounts are tiktoks accounts. Right now it's like this. They take snippets from interviews with the singer ice space and they and they impose President Obama's face and voice and do it. And so they just have him saying like just these like, like rap culture stuff, you know, which is like, so hilarious.

00:42:27:07 - 00:42:28:00
John Azoni
Yes. Yes.

00:42:28:10 - 00:42:58:05
Ardis Kadiu
I mean, that's that's pretty entertaining, right? It's like but as long as you know that you're being entertained and not watching a political figure, you know, telling you something that's super important. Right. There's a there's a difference there. So as entertainers, there's somebody who is producing content for education, stuff like I'm sure your more aligned with, hey, we're going to use these tools not to deepfake, but just to tell the tell a different story, so to speak.

00:42:58:05 - 00:43:19:06
Ardis Kadiu
Right? And we're to tell the audience that this is this is not real. Like if we take that example of the president playing basketball or or playing football or being the football coach and let's say they're the that the chemistry teacher and whatever you can still picture, it'd be like coming back to the office and being, Oh man, I'm so tired, you know, doing all these different things.

00:43:20:06 - 00:43:52:04
John Azoni
Yeah, yeah. And that's it. But that's the key point about storytelling is there's a whole ethics and storytelling kind of component to that. And, and like, I never want to misrepresent anyone whose story I'm telling. And that's very important to me because having a narrative license where maybe you rephrase things and maybe you rephrase it in a way that didn't exactly happen in that chronicle chronological order, but said that way it's more easy to grasp.

00:43:53:04 - 00:44:19:12
John Azoni
But then, you know, crossing that line is like completely misrepresenting what they said because it benefits, you know, the the agenda that that that you have as a marketer or whatever. So so yeah definitely definitely like ethics is a is a big component of storytelling. Cool Well this has been such a great conversation artists so where can people where can people connect with you and element at.

00:44:21:00 - 00:44:39:21
Ardis Kadiu
So I'm mostly on LinkedIn just artists could do on LinkedIn or slash artists and element 451 is on just on our website element 450 WINE.COM that's where most of the content and videos and other things get posted.

00:44:39:21 - 00:44:44:18
John Azoni
Cool. Awesome. Well, thanks so much man. This has been a great conversation. Appreciate you being on the show.

00:44:45:18 - 00:44:47:11
Ardis Kadiu
Thanks for having me. This has been a blast.