Now barrierkut is managing director Marketing Focus. Always good to catch up with Barry. Well, we talk to Barry in a regular basis. Good morning, Good morning, Tony. I'm fascinated with as many are, and we're trying to get our heads around for those a little older and infinitely more wise, not necessarily always more wise, by the way. But the new big thing is that AI. How do we I mean, it's just going to be. It's moving so quickly, I think, Barry, isn't it?
It has been, Tony, But to a large extent, a lot of people use that as a collective noun AI artificial intelligence. It's anything but artificial. In fact, when you think about it, it's programmed intelligence because to a large extent, for them to come up with any conclusion with an algorithm or a computer algorithm type basis, you've got to have some sort of basis on which to come to decisions. So we have had for a long time, right back to the days of the IBM golf boil typewriter, that
was a form of artificial intelligence and technology. It's just been a progressive development of that type of situation. It's just that its growth has been exponential in the last three to four years.
Makes sense. Let me give you an example. So I'm not wild about social media, don't fully understand it, particularly Facebook, and I particularly like it at all for a range of reasons. Put that to one side for a moment. On LinkedIn, I just happened to cruise into my LinkedIn site and in LinkedIn to reply to some of the lovely greetings that I saw some days after my birthday last week. And all you've got to do is start to type one word, and it almost does it for you.
By way of thanking people who considered it a lovely gesture to send a birthday message. I hardly had to do anything. Hit a little button. It says thank you for your lovely note.
Almost well anticipated intelligence. That sort of thing says scripting that your texts, and you were saying that you want to have to rest onto everything. Well, that's a very easy collective way of doing it, because the important thing is at the bottom. It's got a name, Tony McManus. It's the personalization rather than the impersonalization of artificial intelligence. It's a label that really the means and I think you as a consultant and a person who speaks of
many conferences on customer service. When you've got technology interspersing and interrupting personal communications, you really are fracturing relationships. So you've got to utilize artificial intelligence, whichever mode or model it is, into the fact that you don't replace humanity. You complement humanity by using that. Because artificial intelligence improves internal efficiency, it does not enhance external effectiveness. That's the critical issue to remember it all the time.
Corporations need to be aware, are aware, they're sensitive to it.
They're spending too much money on saying we'll hold on. We've got to be in on this. You know, I'm an older person. I'm fifty and sixty years of age. I run this business. I've been the managing director for ten years. My staff tell me I'm an analog manager and we're now in a digital era, so I'm out of tup. So I'm going to spend a lot of money making sure that we've got access to all the
capital equipment for artificial intelligence. And that's the problem. In many instances, You've got artificial intelligence, so you've got capacity, but you haven't got capability. What we need to do is to make sure that internal to companies, You've got a lot of situations where people within the organization can use the technology or artificial intelligence to the advantage of the business and more importantly, to the advantage of the existing past and prospective customers.
So in terms of shopping out shopping habits where in the day you look at maybe the specials that were printed in the local newspapers, you look at those specials tick maybe things that were at that stage reduced, and that's where you would go to shop. A lot of that now is so easy to do using I don't know what it's AI, but you can do that's pretty much on your phone as you're walking into the store planning well.
And truly, Yes, this is the latest MOLL coming out of the United States of America agency purchasing or I agency purchasing, and it's about four percent, or you know, marginally less than three percent, but it's growing to about four percent of the market. So Tony McManus wants to buy a product. It might be a microwave, it might be a television so it might be a new radio. It'll be a digital radio that he wants to listen to on three AW or it might be six PR
or you know five am that sort of thing. So but the point is is he getting the right prices the right value? What you can now do and this is what the Americans are doing with this augenic purchasing. So the AI becomes your agent. You give them a brief of what you want to buy, what you're looking for, what are the brands, what's the price range that is tolerable to you, and they will go out search, select, choose nomination and actually be able to transact the business
and organize delerlavery for you across the board. Now you can see what's having the problem there. You've now got artificial intelligence acting as the agent for the consumer talking to the algorithm of the department store, the retail operation and everything else has been marginalized. So there's no relationships,
there's no personal loyalty, there's no repeat business. And so a lot of businesses are saying, I don't know whether I want to become a fulfillment center for artificial intelligence. So this is a great new model. And look, here's the point. If you look at it and say, let's take away the pursuit of what's the cheapest price and say what is the one thing that annoys many people when they're buying products. Now you are talking about Paul McCarty.
Now paor McCartney's tickets sold very very rapidly. Let's take that as the case. It's employed. What you can now do is you go to your artificial intelligence, you develop them as an agent, give them a brief. So Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, or whoever else it may be, is coming to Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane or Warn and Bull and say what I want is some tickets. I'm prepared to pay this price. I would like that range, and I want it on mat night. And so you can give
them a brief. And so rather than you waiting online on a telephone, online with the social media, or more particularly physically waiting in a queue trying to get tickets, artificial intelligence can take all the toxicity and the frustration and annoyance by simply saying, hold on, I'll do that on your behalf. And that is AI agency purchasing used in the most appropriate manner because it's saving you time,
which is time is money. Therefore, the value proposition is greatly enhanced when you use artificial intelligence intelligently.
Yeah, it's a beautiful observation. The great band Credit House doing some shows. Credit House, it was, and I just thought you I'd love to see that. Sure enough soon as I said at that loud Credit House as something hits the phone. They're doing a series of concerts I think, in the beautiful Yarra valley here in Victoria. They're going all around Australia, but here a valley here in Victoria. And I looked at the thing, and you can play one hundred and thirty one hundred and eighty dollars a
ticket or something. But then you have a selection of going into a restaurant or a cafe or a certain section, and the prices are all structured accordingly. It's just it's a different it's a completely different way to maybe you and I might be used to going to Melbourne Sports Depot to buy a ticket all those years ago.
Yes, And of course the point is it's now pricing. Yeah, if there's five people wanting that particular ticket, the price goes up inordinately high. What you've got to do is have the artificial intelligence, you know, acting as your agent, say well, this is the price range that I want, and these are the seats that I will go into. I won't take on the wings. I want to be more on the center aisles and that type of situation.
And people are very very happy with that type of situation. Now, a lot of people say that is the future, and therefore there's going to be you know, you've got to get onto that. Interestingly enough, the bigger businesses like the department stores, discount department stores, the global retailers, even the platforms like TikTok Amazon, they're saying, we don't know whether
we're losing control of our supply chain. We'll use it selectively, but we're not going to make it randomly available because all of a sudden, the whole equation of relationships of business, the value of brands, well, you've lost all of that type of situation because Tony, you're old enough as I'm old enough to remember that when you were went into the workforce and you went into sales, and they will always say, the important thing is what is the lifetime
value of your customers. With artificial intelligence and agency purchasing, it's transaction by transaction. That's fine if you're a president of the United States or the name of Donald Joe Trump, you don't need to be transaction or what you need to do is to develop relationships and so all the time utilize it to improve and complement the human quotion. But never deal out of the equation the human quotion, because that's not going to be the future of businesses.
Because many small business owners here today their whole superannuation fund is geared to one day I'm going to come and say, no, that's it. I want to sell my business. If all the transactions are done by online with algorithms and artificial agency purchases, there is no business to sell. So never step back and say, well, I'll allow technology to run my business because it's the most efficient way to do it. It can be unquestionably, and it's proving to be right now, a false economy.
False economy. We'll leave it there. Always good to talk to you, Barry. Thank you, Barry. You could manage your director marketing focus Bricks and water. It's and curious. I don't know what you saw on the news last night about Australia posts on all the news services Australia posts they're slightly new experience of picking up a parcel. At times, they are a change in m