AI Advances Creative and Operational Excellence at ServiceNow

Jeff Mosier:

Hi, I'm Jeff Mosier. I'm the marketing content lead for the Infosys Knowledge Institute, and I'm here with Jim.

Jim Lesser:

I'm Jim Lesser. I'm the Chief Brand Officer for ServiceNow.

Jeff Mosier:

Where do y'all stand right now as far as your use of AI in your marketing department?

Jim Lesser:

Well, it's a complicated question, I think, because there are literally infinite uses of AI and what we're doing in marketing is putting it to work in as many places as we possibly can to test and learn. So there's not a single part of marketing that's not using AI in some way, shape or form. But as you know, marketing organizations, especially in B2B companies like ours are very big organizations and there's a vast range of specialties. So on one end of the spectrum, highly creative, on the other end of the spectrum, highly engineering oriented, data oriented, and everything in between.

Jeff Mosier:

What is your philosophy on experimenting and how to figure out what works best for different marketing activities and needs?

Jim Lesser:

I think it's a combination of having leadership who are focused on trying as many smart opportunities as we possibly can. So testing and learning with a learning agenda and sharing back what's working and what's not, combined with a communications plan that encourages everyone to dive in and understand how AI is going to be used in their discipline, in their specialty.

Jeff Mosier:

I'm assuming you're not having a change management issue with your people there. I'm assuming everyone's on board and pretty enthusiastic about it.

Jim Lesser:

We're probably in a bit of a unique situation because we're selling AI and utilizing AI. So our promise as a brand is put AI to work for people. So we're in the unique place that as marketers, we're putting AI to work for our people. And we're doing that with lots of different tools, lots of different partners. And I'm sure every marketer today gets 10 inbound emails or phone calls or whatever from new companies, new partners who want you to try out their tool and their system and their product. And we have some large partners who we obviously use their AI enabled products like Adobe. And then we have smaller partners like Evidenza, who I'm here with today, who created an incredible research tool. And we partnered with them very early on when they just founded the company and have seen great results.

Jeff Mosier:

Thinking back to when the GenAI revolution started, where did you think you would be a few years into it and where are you now? Did you think you would be more advanced? Did you not expect to be as advanced as you are? What were your expectations?

Jim Lesser:

I think when the GenAI revolution started, as you said, we were one of the first companies to say, "We actually have been in this business for a long time." And ServiceNow is the AI platform for transformation. And so we were just focused on getting that message out there as fast as possible and as focused away as possible. And that's worked because the wave of GenAI, if you want to think about it, is not just a wave you're going to surf, it's like a tidal wave. And I think we were able to, thanks to our whole leadership team at the company, get on that wave because we were way ahead of it.

We were actually paddling into it for years and acquiring other companies, and the company was largely built on a lot of the same innovation. And in terms of the expectations, there's that great Jensen Huang quote about, "Changes never happen this fast, but it'll never happen this slowly again." I think what we're trying to do is encourage everyone in marketing to have a growth mindset and really just be excited about how to deploy AI in their specialty. And that's different for a director or an editor than it is for a data scientist to do.

Jeff Mosier:

How do you keep up? Because obviously this is evolving in some cases monthly, if not even more often than that.

Jim Lesser:

Oh, I feel like if I'm on a long flight with no wifi, I miss something. I think everyone... And this is part of our communication plan, part of our change management, everyone is being encouraged to stay on top of it as much as possible. We have group chats, teams built just for AI enablement, teams built for AI sharing and learning, open forums. We had last week a company-wide AI day. Our chief people officer is also the chief AI enablement officer for the company. And so it's not just a part of marketing, it's a part of our company.

Jeff Mosier:

How does marketing in your company interact with other departments as far as AI and setting policy or coming up with new use cases or responsible AI, all of those kind of issues, then you have to deal with company-wide and deal with it in individual departments and individual functions?

Jim Lesser:

There's obviously a governance process and we have to be smart about it, but at the same time, we are the AI platform for transformation. And so we have to, I think, ingest and try as much of the new tools as possible and figure out ways to work with our governance team to make sure that they're safe.

Jeff Mosier:

What barriers are you facing with AI? What's the most difficult things to get past?

Jim Lesser:

I think as a brand, the biggest challenge is the perception challenge. That the broader marketplace views AI as this disruption to work, to the job market, to employment. And what we're seeing is we're actually trying to upskill three million new people to learn how to code on the ServiceNow platform because we need so many more tech workers globally than we have. And the global community who work on the ServiceNow platform is nearly a million people already, and it's growing exponentially. So while the news cycle might have you believe that there's a job destruction case to be made for what AI is going to do to the world, we actually are seeing that there's a huge job creation element to it as well.

Jeff Mosier:

Are there any other barriers that y'all have to deal with as far as responsible AI and data security, risk, all of that? How do y'all look at that? Obviously, that's something that you've been looking at as a company for a lot of years.

Jim Lesser:

Through my network of friends and colleagues and people who've been in marketing and other industries, I think there are clearly companies out there, Fortune 500 companies that are slower to change. And our team, our thought leadership team actually did a piece of research recently called the AI Index, the AI Maturity Index. And what we found is year-on-year from the last time we did the study, that the readiness of a lot of Fortune 500 companies is actually going down. So they're trying to obviously create change, but after the initial push to get AI enabled into a lot of companies, things have slowed down and they're recognizing the need to change, but they're not actually changing as fast as they want to.

And I see it with friends all the time. When we talk casually about what's happening at work and what's happening with AI, I talk about all the use cases that we're developing for AI. And what I hear frequently is, "Oh, our company won't let us touch it." And so I think there's going to be very quickly, a sense that companies who are not embracing it are going to have some really hard choices to make because they're going to feel left behind and their employees are going to be left behind.

Jeff Mosier:

Do you think some of that is because of risk, a concern to that-

Jim Lesser:

Oh, for sure.

Jeff Mosier:

Yeah.

Jim Lesser:

Yeah, without a doubt. But I think, as you said, when the GenAI revolution came along, most companies were not ready in the sense that they had a team of people ready to ingest all of this new information and these new tools. So if you're not doubling down and saying, "We've got a special team that's going to work on this," then it just becomes part of the business process and it's probably being kind of diluted, if you will, as a new practice.

Jeff Mosier:

Is there any areas where AI has not lived up to expectations in marketing in particular where-

Jim Lesser:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's a new tool, a new creative tool every week, it seems like. And you can write songs, you can create animated footage, you can make a toy version of yourself and put it on LinkedIn. I mean, there's a million things that are arranged between useful and novelty items, but all of it is moving towards being highly useful. And I think where we were a year ago, for example, with the creative tools, we were able to do a lot, a tremendous amount, for example, with still imagery, but less with imagery and motion, that's changed really, really fast. And now you can do a lot more with motion one year later. Six months from now, it'll double in terms of its capability yet again.

Jeff Mosier:

As far as training employees, re-skilling, upscaling, all of that kind of stuff, how have y'all approached that and how intensive has it been?

Jim Lesser:

Well, so this is actually a great segue into something we launched just last month, which is ServiceNow University. ServiceNow University is open to all employees and the public free to be trained on the AI platform for transformation. And so we actually had just last week a full company AI day to give people time in their calendar blocked out to focus on learning. And we also have these kind of bite size mobile enabled, you can do them anywhere. And these are courses that will upskill you on AI and give people the tools they need to be able to have the training they need for the future. So ServiceNow University has made a commitment to upskill three million people on the ServiceNow platform. And you don't do that if you don't see a massive opportunity in not just how fast the platform is growing, but also how big the need is for people who have those skills.

Jeff Mosier:

So it's like a massive ongoing process and you're going to have to keep adjusting that over the years as everything changes and what the needs are-

Jim Lesser:

That's right.

Jeff Mosier:

... evolve.

Jim Lesser:

That's right. And it's a modern learning platform. So typical corporate training videos may not have been always as exciting as, say something you'd see on Duolingo for fun or something you'd see on MasterClass and we're creating a learning platform that's the best of all worlds that brings you something that's bite size, that doesn't look like the typical dry learning process and that you actually level up and gamify so that it encourages people with little dopamine hits to take the next course, learn the next topic, learn the next idea and upskill their careers.

The exciting thing for us at ServiceNow is that the message platform that we've built is put AI to work for people. And putting AI to work for people is the message to the world, but especially to our customers who are 85% of the Fortune 500 and they are looking to transform their businesses. But we also are putting AI to work for your career, and that's with ServiceNow University. So putting AI to work in this context is really about the people inside of marketing, and I think it applies there as well. And what we're trying to do is make sure that people not only have the skills, but the attitude, the learning agenda to put AI to work for themselves.

Jeff Mosier:

You want AI to be exciting, not scary.

Jim Lesser:

Yeah. You got it.

Jeff Mosier:

Fantastic. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Jim Lesser:

Great to talk to you.