Marketers of Technology
00:00:00 · Timo Pelz, Andres Figuera
[00:00:00] S0: We're not looking for you to become an AI wizard. Wizardry is not what we need here. Fluency beats wizardry. [00:00:12] S1: Hey, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Marketers of Technology. My name is Andres Figuera, and this show is brought to you by Front Lines Studios, Silicon Valley's leading podcast production studio. If you're looking to launch your own show, we offer a full podcast as a service experience. You just show up and host, and we handle everything else. And with that said, let's dive into today's episode. Because today, I'm here speaking with Timo Pelz, vice president of marketing at Clever, the global identity platform for education. So, Timo, it's a pleasure to have you on the show, man. How are you doing today? [00:00:45] S0: I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me, Andres. I'm excited for this episode. [00:00:49] S1: No. I'm also very excited to to get to know everything about your background and what's going on with Clever. So just so that we can hit the ground running, Timo, you be able to tell me a bit more about your background and how you came to become the vice president of marketing at Clever?
00:00:49 · Andres Figuera, Timo Pelz
[00:00:49] S1: No. I'm also very excited to to get to know everything about your background and what's going on with Clever. So just so that we can hit the ground running, Timo, you be able to tell me a bit more about your background and how you came to become the vice president of marketing at Clever? [00:01:03] S0: Sure. So, yes, I lead the marketing organization at Clever across product marketing, growth, customer marketing, brand, comms, a whole bunch of different functions. I'm having a blast. Before I worked at Clever, I was the VP of business marketing at Reddit. And then before that, I spent a number of years at Facebook and Instagram, always in the context of building and leading business marketing functions and teams. And yes, you mentioned it. Clever is an education technology company. We connect schools and students and teachers with the digital applications that they use for learning. And so I got here because I wanted to diversify a little bit. I've worked a lot in big platform tech and wanted to get a little bit more of an experience in a different part of the industry. And it's been very interesting so far. [00:01:52] S1: And yeah, I understand then that it's education with technology. So is an application like Kahoot something that you guys work with?
00:01:52 · Andres Figuera, Timo Pelz
[00:01:52] S1: And yeah, I understand then that it's education with technology. So is an application like Kahoot something that you guys work with? [00:02:01] S0: Yes, I think Kahoot is actually a perfect example. Not only is Kahoot part of the family, Clever actually belongs to the Kahoot family of companies. We are, in many ways, if you know an Okta that you use to as a single sign on solution, at the base level, that is what Clever does. Right? And if you imagine a teacher trying to log in 20 students into a Chromebook, every student has to remember their passwords. They have to help them with that. That takes a lot of time. And then once they're on their Chromebook, they have to get into whatever application they're using. Let's say it's a Kahoot. They may have a different login for that. Trying to get 15, 20 kids to do that, that's half your lesson. Right? And so Clever gives you a secure way to connect student identities to the applications that teachers use in the classroom. And we do it in a way that is safe and secure, which increasingly is a top priority for schools because it is a sector that is targeted by bad actors more and more.
00:02:58 · Andres Figuera, Timo Pelz
[00:02:58] S1: I can only imagine. And it is a solution and an optimization of time for teacher because if it's one classroom of 20, okay, you can handle it once. But if it's like several classrooms that you're leading with or several grades, this... It turns crazy. So I can only imagine how much time and how much energy must really save teachers in this process. And, Timo, just so that we can then speak more about the... To the nature of this podcast, do you have an issue that you had to resolve or a problem that you faced within Clever as the vice president of marketing that you can tell us about? [00:03:29] S0: Yes, and to the shock of everyone listening, it's about AI, right? [00:03:34] S1: Nowadays, what isn't, right? You would go again [00:03:37] S0: with AI. So this is not the typical AI story that I think I've heard so far. It's more about how do we actually operationalize AI across a marketing organization. This is not about the superlatives, is not about the shiny case studies. This is actually about treating this at the human level and bringing your team along for the journey and understanding that it's not something that you do overnight.
00:03:37 · Timo Pelz, Andres Figuera
[00:03:37] S0: with AI. So this is not the typical AI story that I think I've heard so far. It's more about how do we actually operationalize AI across a marketing organization. This is not about the superlatives, is not about the shiny case studies. This is actually about treating this at the human level and bringing your team along for the journey and understanding that it's not something that you do overnight. [00:04:03] S1: No. This... Like, the processes and making sure AI is properly embedded within an institution, I believe it is what companies are tinkering with and making sure they are doing appropriately because you can pay a cloud subscription for the whole company, and then everybody does their own thing, and it... And they start using tokens at their own rate. They start just doing whatever on their side. So maybe trying to do it all standardized is a better approach than just letting everybody go crazy.
00:04:28 · Timo Pelz, Andres Figuera
[00:04:28] S0: So yeah, look, the specific problem I think that we certainly face and I think that a lot of my peers are facing right now is that AI is everywhere. Right? You can't turn around without it hitting you in the face. But just because it's everywhere doesn't mean that people absolutely immediately know what to do with it. Right? And so I want to state something that I think is often overlooked in this context. My team already has full time jobs. They have things to do. Meanwhile, there's this, I call this enormous undefined blob called AI that's coming at every single person on the team from every direction. And the the message that is coming at us marketers, the very implicit message is AI is going to change everything and you need to figure it out and you need to do it now. You're already behind on this. There's so much urgency. And I think what that does is it puts a lot of people off, right, because you feel like you're already behind and there's not actually a lot of useful information in that message. It is just generalizing a very, very complicated topic in a way that is not helpful. And so that was one of the challenges I was looking at when it comes to making this more accessible for my team and making sure that we are reaping the benefits that AI absolutely has in store for marketing. [00:05:51] S1: And then could you maybe tell us a bit more how you were able to make it accessible for them or how that process was for you?