“What is your AI strategy?” is a silly question. That is like asking what your electricity strategy is.

Patrick Gilbert, CEO of AdVenture Media and author of Never Always, Never Never: Strategic Marketing in an AI World, joined Long Island Technologists at the rock climbing gym where Mike and I met over 20 years ago. He did not come to sell anyone on the hype. He came to tell a room full of builders that someone is actively trying to put them out of business right now, today, and the only reasonable response is to do it to yourself first.

Patrick spent the last 18 months tearing his own agency down to the studs. He talked about the client who fired him that same morning for a cheaper AI powered competitor, why it did not matter that the competitor’s work was full of hallucinated nonsense, and how most companies are still trying to screw a light bulb into a factory instead of rebuilding the factory around the current.

We covered the light bulb versus electricity analogy, why internal efficiency is the boring half of the opportunity, how his team runs a hackathon to turn AI skeptics into builders overnight, the Blue Ocean escape hatch out of a commoditized market, and the Midjourney story that explains exactly where human taste still wins.

If you are still on the sidelines, you are earlier than you think. That is good news.

Timestamps

  • 00:00 Your AI strategy is a silly question
  • 01:15 Put yourself out of business
  • 03:12 You are still really early
  • 04:12 A termination notice arrived this morning
  • 05:30 Factories, electricity, and the Industrial Revolution
  • 06:05 Edison, the light bulb moment, and where most businesses are stuck
  • 07:34 Are you a marketing company or an AI company
  • 08:36 Claude Code workshops and training design teams
  • 10:07 AI is a self fulfilling prophecy
  • 10:46 The Midjourney story and why Isaac beat me in 40 minutes
  • 13:10 Internal efficiency versus external innovation
  • 13:43 A 40 thousand dollar commercial for 3 thousand dollars
  • 14:31 Media mix modeling comes to small brands
  • 15:32 Never Always, Never Never and why strategy comes first
  • 16:50 Blue Ocean Strategy and escaping the red water
  • 19:16 How a hackathon converted an entire skeptical team
  • 21:27 The rallying cry and the dog with the pirate flag
  • 22:40 Why we host a tech meetup in a rock climbing gym

Long Island Technologists is a 300 plus member community for builders, founders, engineers, designers and the technically curious across Long Island. We meet, we build, we argue, we eat. You might find your future co founder in the room.

Big thanks to Chuck Reeves and the team at Vonage for supporting the series.

Cause of a Kind is a full stack, full service, onshore and in house product development studio. We help cool people build great products.

Patrick’s book: neveralwaysbook.com

Patrick’s agency: adventuremedia.ai