AI’s Role in Marketing Creativity

Guy: [: 00:00:00

I am, uh, in the process of, uh, gathering materials and doing some rough drafts and things like that, and certainly gonna be using AI to help with the content. But in any case, uh, I'll tell you more about that as we, uh, move on. But today I'm interviewing Jose Florido of Free Pick, and he is the Chief Market Development Officer there at Free Pick.

m Google, Facebook, Spotify, [: 00:01:00

What a great thing. What a great background. Welcome Jose. So good to have you.

Jose: Hello. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Very excited to talk to you today. Today, guy.

Guy: Yeah, absolutely. Jose, before we get started, tell us a little bit about how you got involved in AI and marketing.

Jose: I've been my, my whole career, right?

more and more involved with, [: 00:02:00

So. I feel like everybody else, I, I knew a little bit about ai, uh, a few years ago, but never really expected the current revolution we are in. Right? So it was like, I. Two years ago, uh, right after I joined, or two and a half years ago, right after I joined Free Pick, when we really saw the change at the time, it was like Dali Dali two came out right from Open ai and Free Pick is a stock image, uh, platform, right?

So we've been doing, uh, assets and images for creatives for many, many years. So when we saw the advent of image generation through ai. We were like mind blown, right? Like, okay, this is gonna disrupt our industry. And that the whole team, we all became very aware that we needed to flip, started to work in a way more technical, uh, situation where I.

vity is super important, but [: 00:03:00

Guy: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, uh, and it makes a lot of sense and, and so you're one of the early movers on it. We were more on the analytic AI.

Side and, um, and, and only recently, now obviously with Open AI and, and some of the other ones, clawed and what have you, getting into more the generative AI and, uh, man, oh man, what a thing that's going on. Uh, but before we go any further, tell us about Free Pick and tell us about, uh, slide Go.

Jose: Yeah, so as I said, free Big is a platform for, uh, creatives, uh, graphic designers.

generate and design your own [: 00:04:00

Right now we're like 500 people. We passed the a hundred, uh, million dollars revenue mark last year. Growing very fast and fully focused on AI for creatives and agencies. Right now, for 2025, our focus is mostly on professional use cases. So professional designers, professional videographers, architects, game developers, everybody working on the, on the creative, uh, industries.

And in the case of Let's go, let's go. Is uh. Kind of a sister company or sister project of where we focus on creating presentations, right? So basically PowerPoint presentations, but powered by ai. So basically you can go to slides, go.com, give us, uh, an input. It could be a video, a document, a PDF, an existing presentation, right?

mprove it, complete all the, [: 00:05:00

And generative ai. With our whole catalog of professional templates, right? We own more than 30,000, uh, professional templates for presentations, and we are gonna select and mix your content with the best, uh, design and give you a. PPTX, uh, ready to use presentation, that it's kind of the best possible draft with a very high quality level graphic design.

Right? So it's ready for you to review and go and present. Right? So that's slide.

uh, check it out. So, um, now: 2024

Uh, so what were some of the, uh, big trends that you saw? What are some of the things that really kind of popped out?

moving revolution. Right. So: 2024

That was obviously something we all went through. And also I think the very strong trend is the need. To learn kind of, and the need to get up to speed with all the new tools and all the workflows. So learning, training, retraining the work for the workforce, that's being a, a very important trend. And I think the last one I would like to point out is also, uh, a need, a strong need to involve AI into your creative process, right?

m out there is thinking, how [: 00:07:00

Guy: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. And I, I think you're right. The, um, you know, it is such a valuable tool for creative, but where do you actually plug it in and how do you, how do you generate the prompts that are really the right prompts to get you where you, where you want to go? So that, uh, that makes a lot of sense.

what do you see going on for: 2025

Jose: Yeah, I think, uh, obviously we're gonna continue, right? With the, with the same trends. I think training and learning about. Probably there is a lot of professionals that are not, uh, still right in this way. So more and more people are gonna keep coming, coming into, into ai, into the train.

to me, the, the two, the two [: 00:08:00

So, but they are not ready yet. But they're gonna get ready very, very soon to do production ready, final, final work. So that's gonna be a huge, a huge trend for marketers. And creatives in general. And I, I said the, the other, the other big trend is going to be control, right? The increased control of the creative tools.

So you are gonna be able to, by prompting, um, by other. Time, two mechanisms. You are gonna be able to get the output that you really need for, for your needs, right, for your projects. So that's gonna be a huge thing.

Guy: Yeah. Interesting. And, [: 00:09:00

Uh, follows the brand guidelines. Uh, yes. You know, you have these critical, you know, you spend a lot of time developing, uh, brand guidelines and you wanna make sure that that voice that's in there and the audio, the video, the creative, the, the, the, the imagery, the text that it all finds, that, you know, follows that.

And I think that's, uh, that's gonna be a, you know, definitely today even, you know, one of the challenges and I think, you know, as we hopefully train our models that, uh, they'll get, they'll get better at following those brand guidelines.

Jose: Yep. Absolutely. And I think we already have technology that is very promising, right?

at's going to get very, very [: 00:10:00

Guy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So how do you see the, uh, the role of the marketer changing, um, and evolving?

I can't imagine it's gonna stay the same. And, uh, you know, and I think a lot of marketers are, especially on the, on the text and the creative writing side, they're definitely trying to stay ahead of the curve and be better than the generative, you know, than gen ai. So, uh, well, how do you see them, uh, that role evolving?

Jose: Yeah, I think marketers are, they are gonna be, uh, empowered, right? Uh, by all these new tools. So I think I can see how they're moving to a little bit, uh, higher level to be more strategic, right? And thinking more about the out the business outcomes and the strategy, uh, because production. It is gonna get a little bit cheaper, right?

, right? The balance between [: 00:11:00

And then maybe dedicate your budget for larger productions that maybe before we not, you were not able to reach. Right? And now because of the reduction of costs, you can, uh, afford them. Right? So it's gonna be a, a, a, a big switch there in how we spend our budgets, right?

Guy: Hmm. Yeah, uh, that makes a lot of sense.

And I think the relationship, to your point, I think the relationship between the agency and the marketer is gonna change heavily. Certainly we can now generate more, and, you know, that's good and bad news. I mean, personally, prior to ai, I thought there was already too much content that was being generated.

n more so to speak. It means [: 00:12:00

So, uh, you know, maybe that's, I think that's where the, the real production is gonna come from and hopefully that'll lead to higher effectiveness and higher ROI.

Jose: Yeah, absolutely. I think, uh. As you said, more, doesn't need, need to be more in the, in the sense of an amount. Right. Could be also higher, higher quality, higher personalization, customization, and going kind of deeper in, because now we have new tools, right.

So we can reach new heights and, uh, let's see. Yeah.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, so how we, how are you gonna measure like a successful use case for a generative ai? And what do you, what are your thoughts there?

Jose: I think that's [: 00:13:00

So if you are. Able to achieve the same outcomes, right? That's gonna be the same way we're gonna measure things. So I think that's gonna be some of the things that may stay the same, right? We're gonna be always trying to reach our business goals, right? That could change that. Now we can be a little bit more ambitious, right?

So now we can have more campaigns or larger campaigns, use different channels that allow us to, to have larger reach. But the way we will measure it, I think, will always be business outcome related, right?

Guy: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And uh, you know, sales and profit and units or appointments or whatever it happens to be, as the, uh, business outcome is, uh, is definitely gonna be there.

, to actually tie. You know, [: 00:14:00

Where do you see that?

Jose: I, I absolutely believe the effectiveness going is going to go up. Right. So I think we are gonna be able to deliver our messages in richer formats and more personalized formats that can allow us to, to be more effective, and that will be the main driver of ROI going up for sure.

Guy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. So, uh, what are the, uh, what are some of the things that marketers need to be, uh, careful about? What do they need to look for as, uh, you know, as gen AI really becomes, uh, you know, commonplace in the industry?

o agencies, right, and we do [: 00:15:00

Because it's very tempting to just click one button and say, oh, this looks good, right? So I. But you need to keep an eye on the, the, the final quality, right? Because it's a little bit easier now, but that doesn't mean you can kind of, uh, be okay with whatever the AI gives you in the first attempt, right? So you are the driver.

You are still on the decision making. Sit for with these new tools and, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's your responsibility about the, the final quality, right? So quality would be kind of the, the number one. I think also, um, being very, um, you know, like very aware of the, of the ethical considerations that can, uh, arise with ai, right?

do it, like impersonating or [: 00:16:00

Now it's possible to do it. Is it okay to do it? That didn't change, right? So, so yeah. So ethical considerations are also going to be super important, and I think we all need to be kind of trained, uh, about what can be done, but shouldn't be done right from now on. So, yeah.

Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, one of, one of the challenges that I've, uh, run into with, uh, other, some of the other interviews is who owns the final output?

And, uh, especially if you're. Generating images, uh, and you know, it's, it's leveraging images that you may or may not own. How do you know that the Generated Im image is going to be fully licensed and, um, and ethical and, you know, and everybody's kind of paid along the way for their contribution, so to speak?

Jose: Yeah, I [: 00:17:00

That's kind of one. Side of the spectrum. Other cultures, like the European Union, seems to be trying, they try to be regulating, right? The, the, it, it will depend on which model did we, did you use, right? So for that, there is, there is also an array of models, uh, out there, right? So you can pick between models that have been trained with all the rights.

the copyright, they have all [: 00:18:00

They've been trained with everything that was out there on the internet, right? Mm-hmm. And even movies, right? So. It's unclear now. Like I think, uh, there is already, there's been a few cases in the US where the resolution was like, yes, you can copyright this. Right? But the model is kind of the, it is not clear if the model, it's legally.

On the, on the clear or not, right? So, and there, there's a few cases being that we are awaiting to see how, how they get resolved, right? Like, uh, uh, of larger companies suing model creators because of this, right? So think we're gonna have to need, we're, we're gonna need to wait a couple of years. It also depends on.

re generating something that [: 00:19:00

Where you are kind of, uh, citing the work of other artists or creators. And then that's when, when, where things can get, uh, very, very messy. And I think, uh, maybe 2025, we will, we'll have more clarity on that legal question.

Guy: Yeah. So do you think it's a, um, kind of a court case that needs to be done? Or is it a legal thing that needs to be passed or is it combination of both?

e is. In current regulation, [: 00:20:00

I, I feel like the original authors need to be, you know, like at least recognized that their work is there. It all comes down to how do we understand that AI was trained, right? So if you understand that, if you kind of agree that AI learn. Like a human, right? Like so then, oh yeah, I am a human. Whatever I see out in the wall helps me to, to create my, my personality.

or learning, uh, when we are [: 00:21:00

Like, or a model. So yeah, I think that that's where, what everything boils down to, right? So that, that understanding of what learning is.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's kind of fascinating. Um, and I think to your point, it, it is gonna be a combination of litigation and, uh, legislation and, uh, which means it's a couple of years out yet.

And I guess, you know, the, the braver I. Companies are gonna take their chances and the larger companies are gonna just wait because they don't want to get sued. And, and, you know, and as a, as a litigator, you know, you always want to go for the companies that have the money. So the bigger companies, they're not gonna take the chances, I guess.

s, uh, New York based design [: 00:22:00

And they openly admitted that they use AI and they explain the process. And I think, uh, it's a great use case, right? Because the, it's a very clearly or, or original artwork, uh, where AI was used as an aid and, uh, yeah. So we, we'll see, but I tend to see, uh, I feel like the market is moving faster than regulation in this case, and we're already seeing great adoption, right?

Even.

Guy: Mm-hmm. And

Jose: people seems to be very kind of, uh, eager to get the, the benefits of this new technology, right? And. Yeah. So Le let's see, but it's gonna be interesting to follow.

Guy: Yeah, yeah. It really will be. I, it, it's always fascinating to see and you know, first of all how long it takes for the regulations or the litigation or the legislation or whatever it is, you know, to catch up.

with generative AI are just. [: 00:23:00

Jose: Yeah, I think, like to me, that, that, that comes down to two things. One is stick to the fundamentals, right? So you still need to learn. The fundamental of communication. Of design, marketing, uh, business, right? So that's never gonna change, right? So don't think, oh, I know how to use this new tool. No, you still need to understand the fundamentals.

cal point of view. Right. So [: 00:24:00

Right? So I think that's, that's gonna give you a lot of power right in, in the coming years, for sure. Mm-hmm.

Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I, and I, I think that makes a lot of sense is, uh, you know, you definitely need, need to understand the basics. I'm a big fan of, uh, the four Ps product, price, place, and promotion.

Can't go wrong with that, so to speak. And, uh, and making sure that you really understand that. And then, but I think also you need to have a really good understanding of how to use the tools themselves. And then it's the, the, the application of the specific creative activity that you're trying to do that.

urse the, the tools that are [: 00:25:00

Jose: Yeah, you can, uh, always go to free pick.com and, uh, then you'll find our AI. Uh, tools for creatives there available, and you can always find me on X I'm, uh, at Jose Florido. Uh, yeah. Happy to talk more always about creativity and marketing. Yeah, love it.

Guy: Yeah. Fantastic. Absolutely. Well, Jose, thank you so much and for the audience, uh, definitely stay tuned for many other videos in this.

e, thank you so much. Really [: 00:26:00

Jose: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.