Experience Before AI. Expertise With AI.

In 1998, I stood before the leadership team at Datalogic and made the case that we needed a website. They laughed. A few of them seemed to genuinely believe it was a fad, something that would fade out like Atkins or the Palm Pilot. A year later, I wasn't at Datalogic anymore. I'd moved on to Matthews International, where we were already building a website that put Datalogic's non-existent one to shame.

I think about that room every time someone tells me AI is either going to change everything or nothing at all.

A few years after that, I pushed to move our ad artwork submissions from film to fully digital. I got real pushback on that one. People told me, with total confidence, that we'd lose quality and that clients would notice it was a mistake. It turned out fine. The quality held up, and the money we saved gave me room to increase our advertising expenditure instead of just protecting the budget we already had.

Later still, I was driving to Starbucks on my own time to log into LinkedIn, because Matthews' IT department had locked down access to every social media platform on the company network. I was trying to market an upcoming tradeshow exhibit, and the only way to do it was from a coffee shop with my own laptop. Social media wasn't a marketing channel yet in most people's minds. It was a distraction to be blocked.

I bring these up because AI is a powerful tool. It can accelerate research, streamline workflows, generate ideas, and help organizations do more with fewer resources. Used well, it removes friction. But it's also just one part of a much bigger picture, and I've sat through enough "this changes everything" moments to know how that story usually goes.

For more than three decades, I've helped organizations build brands, launch products, develop content strategies, and strengthen relationships with the people they're trying to reach. Along the way, I watched the rise of websites, search engines, email marketing, social media, marketing automation, and smartphones. Technology after technology that was supposed to rewrite the rules.

Some of it did. A lot of it was overhyped. Almost all of it eventually settled into being just another tool in the toolbox.

What never changed was people. Customers still wanted to work with organizations they trusted. Strong brands still win by communicating clearly and building real relationships. AI is going to change how we execute marketing. It hasn't touched on why people choose one company over another.

What strikes me about the current AI conversation is how fast it jumps to prompts and tools, and how rarely it starts with the actual work of understanding who you're talking to, what they care about, why they should trust you, and what you want them to do next. AI can help you move through those questions faster. It can't answer them for you. That still takes context, judgment, and having sat in enough rooms to know what works.

If I had to put a label on my approach, it would be human-centered AI. Technology matters, but the people using it, the audience receiving it, and the judgment guiding it matter even more.

That's the position a lot of organizations are in right now. They see what AI can do, but they're not sure how to use it without sounding like everyone else. They want speed without losing what makes them distinctive.

AI isn't a replacement for expertise; it's an extension of it.

The organizations that do well with this will be the ones that use AI to handle repetitive stuff and free up time for the parts that require human insight, creativity, and judgment.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s responsible to ignore the questions AI raises around ownership, employment, data governance, and the growing infrastructure required to support these systems. Those conversations deserve thoughtful consideration, not dismissal.

I've been in rooms full of people who were sure the internet was a fad, who thought social media wasn't worth the headcount, who were certain that dropping film for digital artwork would tank our quality. Every single time, the winners weren't the companies that chased the newest thing. They were the ones who stayed focused on their audience and their mission and picked up new tools only when those tools served that focus.

AI won't be any different. The organizations that get the most out of it will be the ones that pair it with real experience and real judgment, not the ones that expect it to think for them.

Technology keeps changing. People don't, not really. The question was never AI versus human expertise. It's how to use both, and knowing, from having been laughed at more than once already, that betting against a room's skepticism is sometimes exactly the right call.