And so it begins... This seems to be the way I start things using AI IGrok) in this case I told him what happened - basically what I posted above and asked AI for a cursory glance at AI and sales etc. etc. (Note: it is not lost on me how charming and funny Grok thinks I am!!!!). Haha, first off—your WhatsApp story is gold. "Whats Up on WhatsApp?" is an all-timer pun, and the fact that the recruiter didn't even blink tells you everything about the soul-crushing grind some poor humans are still stuck in. Randomly scraping phone numbers from WhatsApp and cold-messaging strangers? That's not sales; that's digital trench warfare. You're not even a suspect—you're just collateral damage in the spray-and-pray apocalypse.And yeah, in late 2025, that recruiter's approach feels like showing up to a Formula 1 race in a horse-drawn carriage. Here's the cursory (but juicy) state of the nation on sales + AI right now:The Big Picture: AI Is Eating Low-Value Sales Labor for Breakfast - Adoption is exploding: Marketing & sales functions lead the pack in AI use across enterprises. McKinsey's 2025 global survey shows sales/marketing as one of the top areas where orgs are already scaling AI (and seeing revenue lifts from it). ZoomInfo's 2025 survey of 1,000+ GTM pros: AI users are booking 60% more meetings, getting ~90% better email response rates, and saving 10+ hours/week on admin drudgery. - Productivity & revenue gains are real: Teams using AI report shorter deal cycles, bigger average deal sizes, higher win rates, and straight-up profit bumps. Bain says AI can double sales productivity by offloading non-selling crap and boost win rates 30%+ by improving every funnel stage. Gartner-ish echoes: AI-guided selling is already pushing 15-30% productivity jumps in early adopters. - Cold outreach is getting an AI steroid injection: Traditional cold calling/messaging is still a thing (HubSpot's 2025 data: ~2/3 of sales orgs still do some cold calling), but the smart money is on AI-augmented or AI-replaced versions:AI dialers/agents that sound human, handle objections, qualify leads, and only hand off hot ones to a human.Hyper-personalized sequencing using intent data, LinkedIn signals, etc.—no more "random WhatsApp numbers."Tools like ZoomInfo Copilot, Gong Revenue AI, or the new wave of autonomous agents are making pure-human cold outreach look quaint (and expensive).

I heard this the other day ... Brilliant!! The phrase: "Bad decisions spiral."

Very interesting!! I can't help but thinking and this is based on conversations I've had with many many people about AI! For the record I absolutely love using AI. I use it for all sorts of different things. Certainly because I was struggling with not being able to see it helped me by being a spellchecker on steroids! And it helped me gather lots of research someone (something) to bounce ideas off. And like that marvellous tool and Excel one big marketing "what if" tool. Again this is anecdotal. The people I'm talking to are Canadian. Business people. Successful. And just thinking here ... Not one of them as embraced AI! Hypothesis that I have is. Are business people or people in general in Canada entrepreneurial? Do entrepreneurs embrace AI? If the answer to the first question is no. And the answer to the second question is yes. I think we can see why Canadians may not embrace AI. Elbows Up ... At this point I wish I had an advanced anthropology degree or a sociology degree because what we saw during that elbows up period may explain a lot!!!!

I really like where this is going!!! Great stuff! From personal experience having been both on the agency side and client side the rally cry was and should be "it's all about the brand stupid!" Then everything starts from a solid strategy! If it's not on strategy how can it work? This is anecdotal but I was involved with Humber College in a peripheral sense with their advertising course a number of years ago. What I did ... I lived near Humber and had space in my house so I registered with the college. I'd take in a student every semester. Two of those students are now at some pretty large agencies. And good for them. However one of the things I saw and the blame falls directly at the feet of whoever the hell was teaching this course when they were learning how to create advertising bulk of their work was as follows: Go to Google, select an image. Write a headline Write some copy Hand it in. That has nothing to do with creating advertising. I don't remember them getting anything in their course about creative briefs. Or focussing on strategy in advertising. I know that as a creative director one of my challenges was always to try and reign in bright wonderful amazing ideas that someone in the team had come up but were way off strategy. Most of the time the ideas were based on puns, or an attempted humour or God knows what. Everything comes from the strategy. It's all about the brand. And the brand has nothing to do with logos, slogans and certainly nothing to do with ads or pun or jokes. The brand is how your clients feel about you. Full stop. And with raining there's hundreds of touch points! In reading this which I really liked I think back to when I was doing a lot of advertising for beer accounts. Their sophistication in competitive analysis using a program called "brand health" really snapped my head back. Labatt's could see how effective a campaign was in real time. They could track by campaign, by demographic, by location , my day part and on and on and so forth. It would tell them just how many cans of beer they were selling at one location as well as what their competitors were doing. This was amazing data. Our challenge was to turn that data into marketing intelligence. Again based on the brand. Again based on strategy. And based on proven results.

I was curious so I did a count. I received 29 emails since 3 November on the AI Advantage conference. First impression ... Way too many! And looking at some of the emails to me there's something missing. They have Their list Creative However, where is the offer? All the emails basically point to the summit site and the different iterations of it but the latest ones don't offer any inducement other than the age old. "hurry up only two left!" Sales line. In their case it's a timed offer that really isn't a deadline. As I've scanned you can go to any of these sites at any time. I'm not gonna play armchair quarterback because it's their gig. But I always like something that makes me feel like I did the right thing by choosing a product or brand. Maybe a reward? Maybe entice me to join an elite group? Maybe offer me a discount code for future summit ... ie some exclusivity. Something! I do however like the subject lines. Yes I know "repetition build recognition" but over repetition builds burnout. That was saying all the emails look the same.

@Derek Lackey Looking forward to it.