#WayForward with Paul Rotzer, CEO at PR 20/20 and Marketing AI Institute

In the #WayForward series, CEOs tell us what’s on their mind in coronavirus times. Read how Paul Rotzer, CEO of PR 20/20 and Marketing AI Institute, sees things.

Our whole team, 15 in total, is based in Cleveland where the shutdown happened early. As an agency, we were able to continue to operate remotely during the quarantine and so did most of our clients. Nevertheless, we had to make a few hard financial decisions right at the beginning. Decisions we should probably have taken last year but then you try not to make them because they’re hard and you think you can grow through them.
I’ve had moments where I didn’t know what to do but that’s OK. Part of my role as CEO is to be able to embrace this type of situation, deal with the unknown and navigate uncertainty. The current crisis is the perfect example, the situation changes almost day by day.
My tip to CEOs is to think about the impact of Artificial Intelligence. We estimate that 80% of the tasks in marketing will be intelligently automated to some degree by AI in the next 3 to 5 years. There is a very important human aspect to think about – people’s sense of a career, rewarding tasks they’ve lost…

Paul had some extra insight that he shared on LinkedIn:

– About switching to a hybrid model (remote office & at the office): “There are different ways to go about it but the way we did it was based on seniority. So people who have worked for us for 1 year, are entitled to work remotely 1 day a week. And then any employees who have worked more than 5 years can work remotely anytime.”

– On finding the right talent: “The reality is that when it comes to #artificialintelligence [Paul’s Marketing AI Institute], we are going to have to look beyond where we usually hire to find the talent we need. In that sense, our hybrid model and switch to remote work will make this much easier. It will allow us to tap into a larger hiring pool and grow.”

– About navigating the unknown: “Launching the Marketing AI Institute is a good example of that. When we launched in 2016, nobody in our industry was talking about Artificial Intelligence and we didn’t even know if people were going to read or follow us. I invested a lot of resources, a lot of myself, without knowing where this was going. I’m motivated by doing something which hasn’t been done before.”

#WayForward Table Of Contents: Click here to get to the #WayForward series’ Table of Contents with all the posts we did with CEOs plus recordings of media events where the WayForward insights are discussed.