Episode #102 – The Work and Death – an Interview with Filmmaker Sean Blacknell

I've been a Sean Ellis fan for as long as I've been following the startup space - and after this post, you might be, too. Sean's blog ranks first for "Startup Marketing" on Google, and he's credited with creating the term "Growth Hacking." His successful career includes head marketing positions at companies like LogMeIn, where his growth leadership took the company to IPO.

In this episode, we interview Brad Burge, marketing and communications director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

On the surface, it might be easy to make the argument that the farthest thing from business operations is science fiction. Star Trek and IPOs aren't known for having any kind of direct correlation, and unless you're making futuristic video games, there doesn't seem to be any explicit reason to study Ray Bradbury or Isaac Assimov.

One of the main differences between business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing is that the former is more complicated. B2B marketing generally has a longer sales cycle, there is usually a larger number of people involved in the sales process and, according to Douglas Burdett, founder of Artillery Marketing Communications, B2B marketing is more emotional than rational.

Episode summary: This week on AI in Industry, we speak to Paul Barba (Chief Scientist at Lexalytics) about what how companies are using natural language processing, and what it takes (in terms of expertise, time, and training) to get these systems working. From sentiment analysis to categorization, Paul walks us through interesting and fruitful use-cases and sheds light on the back-end "tweaking" required to keep NLP productive in a changing business environment.