Hyundai India Head of Marketing Virat Khullar

VIRAT: I believe very strongly, and as a person, somebody who knows me and knows that I do it on a daily basis is that perpetual optimism, for me, is a force multiplier. If you are a perpetual optimist in today's world, if your glass is always half full, it is a force multiplier for you to do your daily life. It could be corporate life, home life, financial life, spiritual life.

But I believe, and somebody told me very early that when you are receiving an objective or you're receiving a task, if your first emotion is optimism, you will structure things better. You will motivate people around you. You will gather the right teams, you will list down things that will make you ultimately achieve the objective. Because, well, in today's world, the glass is half empty. So if you start focusing on that and as a leader, you will really not get anywhere.

GREG: Virat, welcome to Building Better CMOs.

VIRAT: Thank you, Greg.

GREG: Good. I'm so glad you joined us. For the listener, I don't know that they're going to be aware, but where are we recording this right now?

VIRAT: We are recording this in Gurugram, Haryana, India, Asia.

GREG: Yeah, exactly. So this gets the award for the first of the podcasts I've ever recorded in person with somebody. So I appreciate you doing that. Yes, there was a little problem there if they could hear that.

So listen, now you are AVP, right? Is that right? AVP and head of marketing for Hyundai here. And just for the audience, listeners, Hyundai: number two auto line in all of India.

VIRAT: It's the second largest four-wheeler manufacturer in India since inception.

GREG: Yeah, great.

VIRAT: So it's been about 30 years in the country, almost of three decades. So a strong number two. So presence across a lot of segments — SUVs, hatchbacks, sedans — across the country. India actually is also the headquarter for India, Africa, Middle East. So this is a very, very key market and a key location for us.

GREG: Got it. Are you actually working in those regions, too?

VIRAT: No. I'm only for the geography of India.

GREG: Okay, got it. Well, very excited here that we could do this.

GREG: So I guess I'd kind of ask you to maybe reflect on sort of the state of marketing, just to kind of kick things off a little bit here. State of marketing, the acceptance of marketing. How is marketing viewed within Indian companies? Is it a critical function, is it emerging, it's important? I'd heard from people that there's actually a fair amount of enthusiasm for students to want to get into marketing here. Give the listener some perspective.

VIRAT: Yeah, so I mean, as we speak — and I cannot unfortunately speak about the Indian industries in general — but what I understand from marketing functions in auto and also in related industries and also when we speak with CMOs of other industries, we believe that it's still a very vital, very key function in the Indian organizations. From old economy organizations and also from a startup organization point of view. Maybe on the startup side, the founders itself become the CMOs of the organization, et cetera. But yeah, we still believe in the power of the brand.

We still believe here in the power of the full funnel. You start from awareness, only then you will land into consideration and purchase intention. We are 1.4 billion people. So if you don't do your segmenting, targeting, positioning right, it's not possible to reach them. It's not possible to sell to them. So as we speak, yes, it is a fundamental function. The structure in the organization will depend on the scale, but it is important.

VIRAT: Also, your second point on are management graduates or students or first-time jobbers interested in marketing? Yes, they are, which I am against. I think people should do—

GREG: You're against?

VIRAT: Yeah.

GREG: Wait, what are you against?

VIRAT: I'm against first-time jobbers entering marketing directly.

GREG: Really? What do you think you should do before you go on?

VIRAT: I think a lot of them should enter sales first. Get into franchise management, dealer management, blacken your hands, understand the customer, face target rejections. Then come to marketing to be better.

GREG: Go work at the dealership itself, in some regards. Right, okay.

VIRAT: Do about certain amount of cycles in the field, and then if you come back to marketing, I think you'll be more solid.

GREG: Interesting. Your background is... I'm sorry, I don't have it clear in my notes, but undergrad in engineering and an advanced degree in business with a marketing emphasis. Is that right? Okay. So maybe, I don't know if you heard me yesterday, but I basically pointed out that only 25 percent of my board have a degree in marketing is one of the challenges. Although, I actually think that the engineering degree is almost as valuable or more interesting to me and some of those I've interviewed for the show. So I don't know. How'd you look at your career? Did you set out to be an engineer then change to marketing?

VIRAT: I mean, in the earlier times in India, we never used to look at our careers ourselves. We all know our parents decided a lot of it for us. So I'm sitting here because my dad said first engineer, then MBA, so that's how it started.

GREG: So Indian fathers still have a lot of input to where you're going to go.

VIRAT: When I was doing my education... I'm also a father. It's not working so smoothly for me, to be very honest.

GREG: He could get away with it. You can't anymore.

VIRAT: He's already getting away with a lot of it, but that's not the point. So the point I'm making is that I do not know that the process orientation or the objectivity that an engineering degree gives you is more beneficial or is less beneficial than some of the other streams. I think I've seen very, very bright people coming from all kinds of undergraduate courses. That's not the point. Because I'm in automobile, it does give me an edge. If I've studied automobile engineering or mechanical engineering, that's just the point. But ultimately, a combination of a strong undergrad plus a post-graduation course is what makes you a better manager.

But as I said, even when you become a better manager, the corporate world is a completely different cup of tea. You should rotate, see different functions, and then you will build yourself.

GREG: A hundred percent. I mean, my advice to my kids is build competency. Every time you can learn something new, do it. Every time you can build expertise in something, go do it. Just learn, acquire knowledge because at some point it's really going to come into effect in your career, in my experience.

VIRAT: Yeah. Rotate. I mean, get rotation. Go to different fields, go to different territories, go to different geographies. Otherwise, when you are 20 years into your corporate life and you've done one thing at one location, somebody will take over.

GREG: It has a little complexity to it. Okay, fair enough. So listen, one of the questions I like to do before we get to the big question of Building Better CMOs is what's the best advice you've ever been given, by chance? I mean, you can make it personal, you can make it business, you can go in any direction you want. But what's the best advice you were given?

VIRAT: I mean, in an organization structure, you get advice on a daily basis. You get it from the—

GREG: Reservoirs of unsolicited advice, I think, sometimes.

VIRAT: Yeah, on the water cooler, from your juniors, a lot of Gen Z gives a lot of advice nowadays. You take it, you just take it all in.

GREG: Yeah. Listen, we appreciate the fact that the young generation loves to give their input.

VIRAT: At least they're engaged.

GREG: Well, sort of. Not always.

VIRAT: At least they're engaged.

VIRAT: Some of the earlier mantras I've believed in, and maybe I've read it or maybe I've heard it... I believe very strongly, and as a person, somebody who knows me and knows that I do it on a daily basis is that perpetual optimism, for me, is a force multiplier. If you are a perpetual optimist in today's world, if your glass is always half full, it is a force multiplier for you to do your daily life. It could be corporate life, home life, financial life, spiritual life.

But I believe, and somebody told me very early that when you are receiving an objective or you're receiving a task, if your first emotion is optimism, you will structure things better. You will motivate people around you. You will gather the right teams, you will list down things that will make you ultimately achieve the objective. Because, well, in today's world, the glass is half empty. So if you start focusing on that and as a leader, you will really not get anywhere.

GREG: Got it.

VIRAT: So, for me, very early I tried to become an optimist. I mean, it's not you be an optimist and you be—

GREG: Are you an optimist by nature?

VIRAT: I am.

GREG: Have always been?

VIRAT: Yes.

GREG: Okay. And why did somebody give you that advice, by the way?

VIRAT: No, just somebody structured it for me. It's just that somebody, in our very initial trainings in my first job — one of the HR trainings in my first job — segmented me as that. And then when I spoke up to that head trainer, she said this line to me that perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. And it just stuck with me so far. And it's just getting all the people in the boat row in the same direction. I mean, you lead by optimism.

GREG: I've heard it called... A guy that I worked with for a while, he used to call that followership is the new leadership. That's a variation of what you're saying.

VIRAT: It is.

GREG: You're building support, encouragement, bringing people along.

VIRAT: Yeah. Greg, I use the word leadership very, very less to be very honest. I believe when you're sitting on a table, everybody's equal. If you do that, then you will actually get the multiplier effect. If there are 10 people in the room, if you want to make them a hundred, then the other nine people have to say and speak and believe the very same thing that you want to do in that room. And that is where I think the perspectives of Gen M, Gen Z is coming in so valuable that it just gives you one angle of the problem that it'll never come to your mind.

GREG: But there is a point, though.

GREG: So the listener here probably can't see me. I don't know if we'll put this video out there, but I'm older. And I'll tell you, in my experience sometimes, that leadership is about making the tough decisions when others don't. And so at the end of the day, as the leader — designated, accepted, or otherwise — you do have to make a decision and those can be tough decisions. How do you balance that within optimism?

VIRAT: Greg, first thing that I see some leaders lack or managers lack is they don't take decisions.

GREG: Yeah, I totally agree with you.

VIRAT: Yeah. So when you don't take decision and you solve a problem by saying, as you have said, "Let's do this," that's not how management teams, organizations work. That is not how consumers are captured into your brand. First thing is when somebody comes to you, do a yes or a no. The power of management is be able to do a yes or a no. A maybe is where people start getting stuck and you start getting dissonance coming in the deep. Now a yes and a no can be tough or can't be tough depending on your resilience, depending on the data you've got, depending on the execution team that is in front of you, et cetera. But I don't believe the decision is tough. I believe taking a decision itself has a lot of merit in itself, taking a decision at the right time. Now, it could be an 80 percent decision at the right time versus a 100 percent decision never taken.

GREG: Right.

VIRAT: So I'm still a believer of doing that.

GREG: But do you agree that you are being paid to make the tough decision, sometimes?

VIRAT: Yeah. Why not?

GREG: I mean, I certainly am. I see my role in that.

VIRAT: Absolutely. Absolutely. One should, and then stand by it. Be ready to fail. I mean, one of the other lines that I go by is that a hundred percent of the shots you don't take, you will miss. So there is just no point. You have to take those shots. You have to fail, say 30 percent, 40 percent of the time.

GREG: What I think in your orientation or optimism, I think you're then maybe providing an environment, it sounds like, for people then to also take the shot, even though they might miss.

VIRAT: They should.

GREG: Yeah. Is there a way that you do to kind of encourage people to take chances? It is harder at different levels to do that.

VIRAT: I have taken decisions, honestly, telling the team, "I believe it may not happen, but let's go with it."

GREG: Okay.

VIRAT: We will learn on the way.

GREG: I think Amazon calls it, somebody probably knows better than I do, but I think it's disagree and then commit. I'm not getting that exactly right. But it's just like, "Let's debate and then we're going to decide, and once we decide, we all go."

VIRAT: Greg, I think it's a big part of The Amazon Way book that you have to fail first to succeed later.

GREG: Right. In fact, I think the famous story is that Jeff Bezos was very opposed to either AWS or the ad business. Each of those are well over $50 billion businesses today. So I like to be proven wrong every once in a while. I think it's good for everybody. So that's good. So good for him.

VIRAT: Nobody's perfect.

GREG: Yeah, exactly.

VIRAT: If you have not been proven wrong, then you have not taken enough risks.

GREG: Right. Okay.

GREG: So let's get to the core of Building Better CMOs. So listen, MMA's thesis is that there's a lot of room — I talked about it yesterday — there's a lot of room for improvement. There are things that we can do better, that marketing has big gaps. In some regards, we're kind of still at some level, I think we're a bit of an immature industry. We haven't locked down the science in the way that engineers do.

I mean, if you're an engineer, you really study, you're really held to accountability. There are certifications. None of that exists in marketing. Most people in marketing don't even have a degree in marketing. So the question that I always like to ask people who've been around... And it's kind of the thesis of the MMA. My job as a nonprofit trade association is to go fix stuff, is to go do the hard, heavy lift when you don't have time to in the operation of the business to solve the bigger problems, bigger challenges.

So I'm always looking for challenges. Okay, so what do you think marketers either don't appreciate, maybe don't pay enough attention to or you think would benefit? Where do you think maybe we're just even wrong? Go at that any way you want. Where's the room? How do we build better CMOs?

VIRAT: So see, the whole paradigm of marketing is evolving very fast over the last decade, at least.

GREG: Oh, it's incredible how fast it's moved, right?

VIRAT: It's truly insane. And it's purely because the consumption patterns or the absorption patterns of consumers have transformed over the last 10 years.

GREG: Tech development, communication channels, media.

VIRAT: Screens. Your screens have evolved. You watch a six-seconder versus a 60-seconder, you watch it on mobile versus the TV, et cetera.

GREG: Yeah. What's an ad on Snap worth versus an ad on Instagram versus an ad on TV? I mean, it's really been tossed up into the air, I agree.

VIRAT: So I think a lot of marketers today are focusing on that side very strongly.

GREG: Yeah, I hear a lot of that. We do a lot of that.

VIRAT: Which is analytics, smart tech, looking at data...

GREG: Measurement, although we're still—

VIRAT: And you're inundated with it. And a lot of organizations today run on performance marketing as 80 percent of their expenses. So I think that part is evolving very fast and marketers are doing it very well. What I think is getting missed in this conundrum is when we did not have so much data, we had a love for the consumer.

GREG: Yes.

VIRAT: We had a love, a pure love to meet consumers, to meet their families, to do detailed researches with them, to understand the way he or she uses your product, how families are consuming cars, ethnographies at another level. So I believe maybe in today's day also marketing teams, marketing leaders, marketing juniors, everybody should be spending more and more time with the actual consumer. Which I think in today's over-inundated data age is getting missed. A lot of conversations on the panel today or in panels like this will ultimately hover around and drop on AI. We will do a lot of this and then ultimately AI, whatever. But essentially I'm trying to find the consumer.

GREG: So the engineer wants to know the people.

VIRAT: Yeah.

GREG: Interesting.

VIRAT: We should always know the people.

GREG: So why is that so important to you? What experience have you had? What opportunities that sort of shifted you in that direction?

VIRAT: No, because ultimately I'm not targeting a number, a statistic. I'm targeting a personality.

GREG: Yeah. Okay.

VIRAT: I am trying to say that brand A will be bought—

GREG: A person buys a car.

VIRAT: A person buys a car, a family consumes a car.

GREG: Not a data point, right?

VIRAT: A family consumes a car. If there is a data point that the car is purchased every six years, but there is no data point that the teenage son is deciding the car, we have to understand why the ethnography that across X number of families in X number of different geographies — and India is a very, very diverse country. The reason to buy, is it still a life stage? Is it still status? Is it still because the daughter said this or the son said this? I'm not kidding you. We are a high-involvement category. Cars is a high-involvement category.

GREG: It's an emotional category. It's representative of your personality, your status in life. I mean, automobiles is the biggest reflection. It's the one thing that probably everybody who experiences you would experience you through your car at some level. People may or may not come to your home and see how you actually live, but they'll probably know what you drive.

VIRAT: Yeah. It is supposed to be the latest reflection of your economic status.

GREG: Oh, yeah. Right. True, true. It can be.

VIRAT: It's the latest reflection in the last three years or four years. But I think if you ask marketers today or marketing teams today, when did you last spend a day in the home of your consumer? A lot of it will be, "Don't remember, we don't do it."

GREG: Wait, wait, wait. You actually, you go into the home of a consumer? Really?

VIRAT: Yeah.

GREG: Do you just sit there and listen in the background with a notepad or something?

VIRAT: That's what's supposed to be done. But what we do, I mean, I would love to see what are the fridge magnets that the family has? I would love to see what is the decoration on the center table? I would love to see what all has he or she put on the car as religious idols, et cetera. So these are all nuances that you understand that will help you segment, target, position, advertise, maybe even produce a product. And I think this is the purity of a marketer. Somewhere we have gotten inundated by Excel sheets and PowerPoints. I'm not saying that's bad because you can't target 20 million people out of 1.4 billion without doing that. But I think keep the purity of the consumer very close.

GREG: So you're not just doing focus groups, which I don't know, I find focus groups interesting. I can't tell how valuable they are sometimes. You're doing actual ethnographic research, going into homes. And maybe just explain, make sure everybody knows what that means and how that research kind of works. I don't know the knowledge of everybody here.

VIRAT: So it's two... Basically, we have different cars in different segments.

GREG: Yeah. There's a dozen Hyundai models—

VIRAT: A dozen Hyundai models in India. And so we would like to understand if you sell an i10 — which is a product which is 600,000 or 700,000 rupees — versus the Creta — which is, say, a 2 million rupee product — we would like to visit the consumers, the family who has owned it. We would like to videograph the experiences of that consumer, which will obviously entail some interviews, but sometimes people pose in interviews and you don't get the reality. But when you talk to all members of the family, spend a day with them, go to their houses, go to their offices.

So we have a series called India Stories. There are about 40 videos already out on there, which is where we have gone to consumers, videographed them, understood how they operate on the cars, how they consume the products, what do they use the car for, what are the reasons they bought it versus what are the reasons they now use it. It it's something that is done by the brand team. We also encourage, honestly, sales team to be part of it. Because if you're doing it in a certain city, we ask the territory manager, "Why don't you join us? Just spend the day with us. See what's happening." It just gives you nuances and ideas on even local marketing.

GREG: Do you have — this may be hard off the top of your head — do you have an interesting observation that you had from sitting in somebody's home or having a conversation with them? You went, "Oh my god, I just didn't get it. Oh, now I see that's what it is." Anything like that?

VIRAT: So we had an interesting observation about three years back, and that changed a lot of marketing we do. And I mentioned it on a previous question, when we realized that the brand purchase decision or the car that has to be bought, the actual model that has to be bought was decided by the daughter of the house.

GREG: The daughter of the house?

VIRAT: She had said, "You will buy a Hyundai Creta," for example.

GREG: This is hilarious. Can I just say, this is the funniest thing. My wife is here in the audience. She's going to totally nod her head to this. People, I am not a truck person. I don't live near farms. I don't really like animals that much. I like cities. We bought a truck because our daughter wanted it one year.

VIRAT: See, exactly.

GREG’S WIFE: [Off mic] And she drives a Hyundai Kona.

GREG: There you go. She drives a Hyundai. The listener didn't hear that. Our daughter drives a Hyundai Kona. So good job. But you're right. That's very funny. The daughter makes the decision.

VIRAT: I heard it three years back.

GREG: And you would never get that from a focus group. You would never get that from quantitative survey research. Never.

VIRAT: And the main customer or the man of the family who's bought the car will not say my daughter decided this car. And she had fixed this.

GREG: Of course, except for me just admitting it now. Never.

VIRAT: You're a good guy.

GREG: Exactly. That is hilarious.

VIRAT: So that came about and okay, the cascading effect is that I will need to talk to them as a marketeer. So if there is a higher influence of purchase by the teenagers, I will need to talk to them. So a lot of now our brand activations are done with youth-centric programs, IPs, sponsorships, et cetera. So it made me add a lot of real bucks on what she said.

GREG: So without giving away confidential information to everybody... At some level, this podcast is semi-worldwide, I guess. In fact, we have a very big listenership in India for Building Better CMOs, interestingly enough. How do you figure out marketing? I mean, you've got to appeal to the husband and/or wife depending on probably the car line. That varies a little bit there. I mean, they're the ones ultimately got to write the check and sign the thing. So they've got to feel good about it. They're the ones who are probably daily driving. But then do you also have a segment targeting off to the daughter? You're not targeting the son, you're just targeting the daughters, right?

VIRAT: The teenager.

GREG: How do you...? That's very funny.

VIRAT: It has to be done. You have to first finalize how much of the expense will go towards making out-market customers become in-market. That's the first objective to get people to become prospects in our dealerships. So how much of that will be to gain new consumers? And obviously how much of the money will be also spent to generate fandom, loyalty, word of mouth? So A, there will be a certain amount of expense across media. We are a full funnel. We do the entire Christmas tree of advertising and marketing in Hyundai. So if you have to target to get more prospects into my dealerships, what will I do for region awareness? What will I do for lead generation? Here's a certain amount of advertising, marketing. And on the left is when the consumer has bought my car, how will I give him or her experiences, which we do a lot of drives. We do a lot of concerts, free stuff for consumers.

So that they have not only bought the car, but it's an augmented product experience. So even on that side, there is a full-funnel marketing team that continuously activates. And obviously on the prospect story, it's digital, it's out of home, it's print, it's TV, it's everything.

GREG: That's phenomenally interesting to me. Like I just said, it played out in my life. And you know what? If you'd asked me that, I don't know that I ever would've said it to you, right? If you'd interviewed me in, like I said, a focus group or talked to me, I don't know if I would've said that my daughter made the decision for us on that vehicle.

VIRAT: See, when there is a fire, everybody will see it. It's the spark that has to be identified. If everybody knows that it's getting influenced by the daughters or the sons or whatever, and it's coming out in all kinds of studies, all marketers will see it. Everybody starts targeting. The inflection is if you've identified the spark through any of the work that you're doing and then you attack it very clearly, then I think you will get better returns.

GREG: Right. Have any other examples of those where you've had a sort of awareness and listening to consumers that really changed your... How long have you been at Hyundai now? What's it been?

VIRAT: Five years.

GREG: Okay.

VIRAT: So I mean nothing top of my head right now on what we have heard from consumers, and that has fundamentally changed some other things. But things like news consumption, we have to target the main breadwinner of the family to buy the cars. So where and how he or she's consuming news. How much is the percentage of female ownership of cars growing in India?

Now data tells me there's 10 percent or 8 percent overall that female buyers versus male buyers in India. But when we go to consumers due to tax reasons or other reasons, it's actually been owned by or driven by or used by the wife or the female in the house. But it's not been shown in data. So that also came up to us in a big way. And because of that, also we signed on three female brand ambassadors for advertising on our cars because we realized influence, but also real purchase happening by that side.

GREG: Are you doing influencer advertising, by the way?

VIRAT: Greg, we don't do so much of influencer advertising.

GREG: I had a CMO... I just was saying this to somebody earlier here today at the event. I had a CMO say to me the other day, "I'd like to measure the value of authentic advertising," which was influencer, versus I don't think she actually said inauthentic advertising, which is what I've done for years and you're doing. I thought it was a very funny question. And the use of words to say authentic was influencer, and what I've been doing is inauthentic and what's the value? And part of the reason she raised the question is because their influencer strategy was so strong. It caught me off guard at the time. I see it as an element.

VIRAT: So there are categories where the influencer strategies are very, very strong, always on, and they're getting their click-throughs through those activations. Categories like beauty, personal care are very, very strong on the influencer side. For us in cars, the high-involvement category we are in, I have yet to see a matrix that is performing on the influencer side.

GREG: Oh, is that right? So you're not seeing it as strong as what... I don't even remember the brand this CMO told me.

VIRAT: Obviously, we are with very, very heavy-duty brand ambassadors. I mean, they're not so much influencers, but we are not with creators and influencers so much.

GREG: Okay. Just curious.

GREG: Okay, let's talk about the big topic today, though. It's AI. Okay. Right. I mean, you're an engineer. You're a mechanical engineer, though, right? Mechanical engineering, is that what you got? Okay.

So what do you think?

VIRAT: In two and a half minutes?

GREG: Yeah, exactly. The audience can't see. We've got two and a half minutes here. So yes, could you tell us everything they need to know about AI for marketing? Go! No, I'm sorry, that's a show stopper.

VIRAT: As I said it's the buzzword of the discussion.

GREG: But is it a buzzword or is it substantive? What do you think?

VIRAT: No, it is obviously substance. I mean it's obviously substance. It is changing the way we make creatives, changing the way we do testing, changing the way we do personalization at scale.

GREG: Yeah. How have you organized within the company around it? Have you used sort of encouraged the team to do pilots? Do you have objectives? Have you given them a master goal? I actually had a CMO of a $3 billion marketing budget, so very limited number of companies like those in America, but $3 billion. And he says, "I'm just letting chaos reign for a while." And I thought that was kind of funny for him to do. Corporations don't usually say things like that, but he goes, let's just let them go out and do it and then we're going to sort it out from there. I thought there's some smarts to that.

VIRAT: Maybe with that kind of budget you can do all that.

GREG: Maybe you can have chaos at $3 billion, right?

VIRAT: Yeah, no, but we are not doing that. So all relevant teams, maybe it could be the CX team, the digital team, even on the brand marketing side...

GREG: Have they been given an objective?

VIRAT: Yeah, they've been given pilots. They've been given pilots. We have to be very, very careful on hallucinations and other things when we get into GenAI or agentic AI, et cetera.

GREG: Where's the big success coming now? Do you have a sense of where those... First off, have you moved anything from pilot to production? By the way, I've heard very few, almost none of that going on. It's all pilot still.

VIRAT: So AI or LLM—

GREG: And where do you think the big opportunity, really where my question's going, what's the big opportunity in AI based on what you see now?

VIRAT: I think the big opportunity in AI will be how the machine is learning to target lookalikes or similar audiences...

GREG: I think you're right.

VIRAT: ... in a more efficient way, in a more faster way, which for us has moved from pilot to production.

GREG: By the way, we've seen the same thing.

VIRAT: We run large, hyper-local digital programs where dealers are kind of advertising in their vicinities to get actual thumb falls onto their websites. And I think that is where AI is kind of integrating more.

GREG: Final question for you here, okay. It's a provocative question. I've said this a couple of times to others, I'm just looking for reactions in people. It is inevitable. I contend it is inevitable that all advertising will be created by machines, generative AI, and that all placement will be done by machines and that humans will be greatly extracted from that loop at some point. Agree, disagree? Inevitable.

VIRAT: Has anybody agreed to that?

GREG: Well, I don't know that we get to agree. I think it's going to happen already. I think it's going to move that direction. I'm seeing it.

VIRAT: Even today, it's machines. It's a camera. There's a guy behind it. It's a computer that's doing advertising. It's always machines. I mean, even a newspaper is printed by a machine. But the human element, if it's not there, then you can sell to robots.

GREG: You don't think the bots, the robots, the agents ever get good enough to replace humans at what humans can do uniquely?

VIRAT: No.

GREG: Okay. Well there we go. I think we should leave the listener at that stance as a little job security so that they don't walk away panicked at this point. You think that's it? Okay. Virat, I can't thank you enough for being on Building Better CMOs. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

VIRAT: Thank you.