#35 - Dan Mallin, CEO of Equals 3 - On how AI augments Marketeers to deliver remarkable impact

This interview focuses on the product innovation opportunity for the marketing community, and my guest on the podcast is Dan Mallin, co-founder and CEO of Equals 3. For nearly 20 years, he has established a solid track record in creating, growing and transforming businesses, ranging from technology services, sales, marketing and business development.

Dan has twice been recognized as a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, he is a finalist for the MHTA Tekne award and he has been recognized by the Business Journal as one of 40 Under 40.

On my hunt for compelling stories that demonstrate the value we can create when technology augments the unique strength of people, I stumbled upon Equals 3 – and as the name reveals – their mantra is: Better than the individual and better than the machine, are the two together. You + Lucy = 3

And this intrigued me, hence I invited Dan to my podcast. During our interview, we explore the day-to-day challenges of CMOs and marketers with regards to analyzing and reporting on market data to drive segmentation and positioning decisions, and how this can be addressed with product innovation. We discuss how technology such as AI can help to not only speed up this process exponentially, but actually help to take outcomes to complete new levels of impact by revealing new insights, enabling marketeers to ask different and better questions, lowering Cost Per Action (CPA) and even guiding them to communicate more clearly. That’s pure competitive advantage.

Here are some of Dan’s quotes:

“Equals 3 is all about augmented intelligence, not artificial intelligence in the concept of 1+1=3 or you+Lucy=3. Lucy makes you better than she would be alone and better than you would be alone

Lucy is an answer engine, not a search engine

It gives access to places in the corporation where data exists.

If I have to spend a hundred, two hundred hours doing something to get the analysis that I need to get to, and that can be multiple people but the equivalent of that, or if I can do it in four hours or five minutes, what is that speed worth to the organization?

If your competition is doing it and you're not, then they'll be able to move faster, market faster, may react to whatever you're doing, understand things and deliver in a superior way.”

By listening to this podcast, you will learn three things:

1. How exponential value can be created by going beyond ‘just’ automation and embracing intelligence augmentation for any use case
2. Why the way to explore innovation opportunities is not about optimizing the process as such, but to find ways to eliminate the process altogether to shift the focus to what really matters
3. And why investing in machine learning is not about value creation today, but even more about value creation tomorrow by using all new insights to just get better and better