Matt Wilkinson on Marketing Personas For the AI Age

Featured this week

In a bit of a change from our regular scheduling, this week we went deep on Matt's new book, The Buyer in the Loop, and the concept of synthetic customers: AI models of your buyers built from real interviews, sales calls, and forum data that you can actually interrogate at any point in a project.

Having both seen good marketing get worn down by internal review until it sounds like the company talking to itself, we discussed how having a grounded, queryable buyer in the room changes that dynamic. Listen to the full episode

Also this week

Cross-party committee calls for a dedicated AI law as OpenAI backs binding UK rules — Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights and OpenAI are, unusually, asking for the same thing. Read more

King Charles warns AI leaders of 'existential dangers' at Scottish gathering — Jensen Huang, Demis Hassabis and others were summoned to Dumfries House for a conversation about keeping AI in the service of humanity. Read more

Month-old DeepMind spinout Emulate nears $700m seed at $3.7bn valuation — Three former DeepMind researchers have been in talks for a $700 million raise roughly four weeks after founding their company. Read more

Ofcom: one in five UK adults now use AI for news — Twenty-one percent of adults reached for an AI tool for news last month, with online sources overtaking television overall. Read more

Scotland pauses new AI data-centre approvals for up to a year — Holyrood is holding off while it works out planning guidance, with proposals already in the system requiring more power than Torness nuclear station generates. Read more

Ofcom warns AI is 'supercharging' online child-abuse material — The regulator told a Lords committee that the Online Safety Act is making progress, but AI is pulling hard in the opposite direction. Read more