Why Experimentation Is the Most Important AI Skill for Marketers

Breanna Lawlor: Most marketing strategists will tell you AI is changing everything. But if you're a CMO right now, what you actually need is someone who can tell you what to do about it on Monday morning, and not just what it means. And right now, with AI closing the gap between what once required an entire engineering team and what a single marketer can do on their own, the strategists worth listening to aren't the ones with the boldest predictions.

They're the ones who've already built it. Today, I'm joined by Jill Hartling, VP of Strategy at Merkle. She brings a background that started in IT, designing network topology and managing databases before moving into marketing strategy, giving her a unique vantage point on what's actually possible with AI that most advisors simply don't have.

We talk about how AI is solving one of the most underrated problems in large organizations, the institutional knowledge that lives in inboxes and nowhere else, why experimentation is the philosophy worth committing to right now, and what this looks like inside a real team. What Jill thinks most marketing leaders are still underestimating about where this is all heading.

I'm Breanna Lawlor, and this is The CMO Club Podcast.

Jill, welcome. Thank you so much for sitting down with me at the CMO Club. I would love you first start off with who you are, the role that you hold, and also company that you work within, and then we'll get into it.

Jill Hartling: My name is Jill Hartling. I work at Merkle.

My role is a VP of strategy or VP of marketing strategy at Merkle. Our team is in charge of leading our clients on transformation and making great choices about their messaging. So this comprises many different things, and in our particular team, in this role that we play, can really branch out into all stages of the customer life cycle.

Absolutely. So it starts, for the most part, with the data, but it branches out to all things. Historically, we did a lot of work around email and messaging systems- Right ... push notification- Sure ... and SMS, et cetera. But now it seems that everything, because of the deep connectivity and capabilities of platforms, is integrated.

And so we are advising across the board, and that also seeps into the ways of working and the, and the organizational components as well.

Breanna Lawlor: Yes. Now, have you always been in this space, marketing strategy, or do you have some background that you lean on as far as help- helping you to navigate, you know, what you're doing now?

Jill Hartling: Well, I started my career in IT for many years. So I did IT topology design, which was more hands-on understanding how networks connected, but then I also did traditional IT network support and had to really know my way around a database- Okay ... to understand how, how data is normalized, what unification actually means from a executional perspective, and working with the different queries and nuance of managing data.

That particular piece of my background has really informed what I do today because I have working knowledge of, like, how it works under the hood.

Breanna Lawlor: Yes.

Jill Hartling: And that helps for me to speak intelligently to what is truly possible, but I find myself in a quite exciting time now where what is possible is seems to be expanding exponentially.

Breanna Lawlor: Oh, yes, and it's not always a blanket approach of what's possible should be what's done, and that's where the strategy component comes into it, too.

Jill Hartling: Very much so. It's a conversation around what is it you're trying to achieve, and then what are all the many different myriad ways that we can get there?

And then that, like I said, is expanding now at a pace that is exciting because there are capabilities with AI that were Previously not even possible, but also just not something that we could envision. Yeah. And it's coalescing, I feel- Yes ... around us-

Breanna Lawlor: Yes ...

Jill Hartling: into these, you know, user-level possible outcomes- where even our laypeople- Right ... are capable of doing things that at- Yeah ... one point would have required a team of engineers.

Breanna Lawlor: Which is wild, like the pace of which things have moved is just, it's mind-blowing.

Jill Hartling: It's really fun, yeah.

Breanna Lawlor: Well, that must be really exciting then to come to Iterals Activate Summit and connect with peers, and also have varying degrees of, you know, challenges that you're sharing.

Was there anything that's come up in conversation so far with people that you've connected with where you're like, "Oh yeah, we've already been here and dealt with that. Here's how we navigated it," or anything that's been surprising so far?

Jill Hartling: So far I've had... It's pretty early in the conference- Yeah ... so there hasn't been a ton of conversation, but I will say that it's so interesting for me to see so many people coming together to talk about-

Breanna Lawlor: Yeah

Jill Hartling: these types of things.

Breanna Lawlor: Yeah.

Jill Hartling: And there is a lot of topical breakout sessions that are specific to CRM, which is really where my wheelhouse lies. Mm. And I am very much excited and interested to see what my peers are doing in the CRM space. Right. But also to offer some guidance, because I think my experience with this, my experience in using data to drive customer experiences- Right

but also utilizing technology and the way that technology is evolving- ... to push that even further, puts me in a unique place where I can speak to it pretty fluently. But as far as the conversations happening today, I'm, at this point I'm really just very much looking forward to joining some of them.

Breanna Lawlor: What are you hoping to come away with?

Jill Hartling: Well, I will say this. I spent a lot of my career on the client side. Yes. And I'm now on the agency side.

Breanna Lawlor: Ah, yes.

Jill Hartling: And so I remember always feeling that I was the single one of my kind. It was like feeling unicorn-ish in an environment- ... or in an organization, 'cause usually there wasn't more than one of me there.

Right. In an agency, I am surrounded by others that can do some of and much of what I do, but at an environment like this one, I am suddenly surrounded by all this wonderful grouping of people who are at all levels doing all kinds of work that is similar to what I do, and have reach into organizations and experiences that are beyond anything that I've done myself.

So it really does give you a chance to broaden your own horizons. Yeah. But also build your network and understand, if I am doing this, I am finding success in it. How are others doing the same? And then building upon that with those that you meet. I don't always get a chance to do that in my own organization.

No. There are people that are just, they have a breadth or a reach into- Yeah ... experiences that aren't currently in place at Merkle, or that I, I don't do in my current role. I was just at a session that was talking about Liquid Death.

Breanna Lawlor: Yes.

Jill Hartling: And it was this media leader at

Breanna Lawlor: like- Yeah, Benoit?

Jill Hartling: Yeah, Benoit.

Benoit. He was talking about what he does there. And it's so fun to hear because I technically, you know, I come from this grouping of people that are kinda nerdy. I would be described as, and I- Intelligent ... happily, happily wear the badge of nerd. Yeah. Intelligent, you know, is up for debate. But I think that we, as the kind of people that do what I do, tend to feel most at home surrounded by data- Sure

and digging through possibilities of what we can do to enhance experiences. Right. Whereas Benoit is at the forefront of the top of the funnel- Yeah ... where people are experiencing a brand for the first time. Right. And that is less what I get to do on a day-to-day, but what I do can still influence that.

Yeah. So if you have great data, and you understand that data, and you have capabilities around it that can project the meaning and the, and the learnings from that data, then we can optimize those, you know, top of funnel media level experiences. And hearing him speak to it, and then layering it with what he adds, which is this- Yeah

question was, how do you keep it cool? I'm like, "I never get to answer questions about how to keep something cool." Yeah. The things that I touch are generally not, well, what would be referred to as cool by most, although I think they're very cool.

Breanna Lawlor: I mean, it sounds like you have the opportunity to influence a lot of touchpoints, especially for your clients, and then within your organization as well.

Jill Hartling: Oh, I do, yes. So when I'm working with clients, traditionally I'm looked to as a thought leader.

Breanna Lawlor: Yes.

Jill Hartling: So I'm explaining to them, what can you do with what's in place today? Where are your opportunities and gaps? And how can I help you enhance what you have? And I come to them as a trusted resource. My role isn't just, how do I grow my business with you?

Breanna Lawlor: Sure, yeah.

Jill Hartling: My role is uniquely, how do I, you know, coming from a place of truth and integrity, make recommendations that are going to grow your business? Right. It's just such an exciting place to be- It is ... because I interact with people in a real, and I think, authentic way. On my own team- Yeah ... I'm growing talent.

So I would say if you were to ask me, "Jill, what is the thing you are most passionate about in this world?" Sure. It would be finding the path to success for the people who I lead. What does that path look like? Whether that is, you know, within my team, outside my team, I have guided many of my team both through successful careers within Merkle, both in our team, and then beyond and above my role- Right

and then certainly outside it as well. So figuring out, what is that sweet spot of what you love, what wakes you up in the morning and makes you excited about work on Sunday night? And then a combination of what stimulates you, what makes your brain really work? And then, you know, what do you find really meaningful?

So what, at the end of the day, can you say, you know, "I'm, I'm proud of this work that I did"? And that mixture is so very different for every person. And, you know, peeling those layers back and understanding- Yeah ... that about every individual is such a fascinating process for me.

Breanna Lawlor: It really is, to see what the drivers are, and it's clear you have the hallmarks of a leader in how you shape people on your team and how you support your clients, and there's a, there's a lot there that we can unpack.

But kudos to you for taking that approach, 'cause you can learn a lot from the people that you work with, regardless as well what their role is. And it's really nice to have that philosophy that you're an advocate. You can help support people and bring them up. And also, a trusted advisor, too. Being in that position, trust is at the core of it, and it seems like this is a theme that has come up a lot, especially in relation to how we're navigating AI.

And if you're to be strategic about it, it sounds like you're doing the work with your clients. Ask those foundational questions so then you can move to the next phase. What sort of points of friction are you coming up against with clients in moving through that? Like, when you ask these questions and you're trying to be strategic about the direction they wanna go, where is the friction, and how are you helping them through it?

Jill Hartling: There's a lot of friction. I think that we are at an inflection point with AI- Yeah ... where it is clear that there is no choice but to embark on this horizon- ... and seek out where it will take us.

Breanna Lawlor: Sure.

Jill Hartling: And it is more confusing all the time what that journey might look like, because it's evolving. The ship is changing as we're on it, and I think that there's fear.

I think that- Yeah ... there's fear and trepidation around what that future state looks like. I'm often finding myself reading about the Luddites and how as technology evolves, there are always deterers.

Breanna Lawlor: Yeah.

Jill Hartling: There are those who are frightened and wh- who are concerned about jobs being lost, who are concerned about how the landscape will change for the worst, and ultimately, you know, how we preserve the things that are important to us, our relationships- Yeah

our jobs- ... our knowledge base, and the value of what that looks like. And I think that you can get very caught up in that. I'm seeing a lot of people feel that way. I choose not to. I choose to look at it as I have always, which is with optimism and passion. I am excited about what the future looks like.

I think that perhaps it is true, and I will acknowledge it is true, that jobs will be lost because there is automation to be found within AI that will make some jobs defunct, but I think many more will be made than lost. I just don't think that we're at the place- ... where we're seeing that completely unfold.

Yeah. And as the next 10 years, and I do think it's certainly the next three years will be-

Breanna Lawlor: Yeah ...

Jill Hartling: tumultuous and- Right ... exciting, and you can use many adjectives to describe what they might look like. But I think we'll begin, there'll be a horizon that we cross over the next five to 10 years that will begin to shake out what the future of work looks like-

Breanna Lawlor: Yes.

Jill Hartling: And how when we have these systems in place- ... that truly do automate How that opens up a whole new scope of jobs- ... capabilities, and roles that we haven't even thought of yet. I think that imbuing that confidence and that optimism- Mm ... onto my clients is part of what I am here f- to do. I remember when the internet was young, and I was very much an early adopter.

Right. In the early 1990s, I was on bulletin boards. Yeah. And I had... I believed in my heart that this was going to be this opportunity to bring us together as people. Right. Because I was connecting with people around subject matter that otherwise I would never have connected. And we know that the internet has both connected people and also- Sure

Created some friction around that connection. And that's- And sadly ... that's part of life. Yeah. But I do believe that it has brought more good than bad, and I think we'll see that with this technology as well. I also think that there is a privacy consideration- Okay ... with AI, and that is a piece that I address frequently with my clients.

And I think that-

Breanna Lawlor: Do you bring that up, or do they?

Jill Hartling: Oh, well, it's a little bit of both. Okay. And I'll tell you why. Sure. I think that they'll bring it up because as they're thinking through what transformation looks like- Right ... so I want to integrate these capabilities or this AI into what I do, can you tell me how can I ensure that this is secure, and who do I need to bring in to consult around that level of security that's necessary for me?

Or depending on the vertical, there are certain areas like health and finance- Yeah ... where they're just risk adverse, and it's likely that they're not gonna move that forward. Yeah. My husband works in health, and they're just not touching it at all. They're going to just wait and see.

Breanna Lawlor: Ha ha.

Jill Hartling: But yeah, I'll bring it as well because I develop tools that utilize AI.

Right. And I have to vet those through my clients before I can use them with my clients. Of course. So I will say, "Are you comfortable with me using this for this purpose?" Yes. And then I demonstrate what that looks like, and when I show them the value of what it brings to the table, generally speaking, they are.

Breanna Lawlor: Okay. So you're referring to some guardrails, having those in place.

Jill Hartling: Absolutely. And I think through those, I think that that's not new. Yeah. That when we are sharing data, when we are thinking about what we do- Mm ... to improve customer experience, there's always, at least in the work that I do- Sure ... data involved, and then there's always some level of privacy, security, info sec, et cetera, that we need to be considering What I'm hearing now between AI and what that future state looks like with quantum computing, we're going to have to rethink how we lock down privacy and data a whole new way.

We are. It's really exciting.

Breanna Lawlor: We are. And one accord point is that to get the value out of these systems, you have to infuse it with so much knowledge about what makes your brand, makes your team, what makes the way you operate work, and you have to put that into the system. And so that's where there's the potential point of friction because people don't wanna be left behind, and they also wanna get value out of it quickly.

Jill Hartling: That's absolutely true. That's hard. And depending on what it is you're trying to do with the, with the tools, the more and more data and more and more accurate data is important.

Breanna Lawlor: Right.

Jill Hartling: That's always been the case. And then trusting to say, "Will this data be safe where I am placing it?" Yes. Yeah. It's... I would say that no data is truly safe.

I think that it is an unfortunate truth of our time that there are efforts being made all the time to increase security and efforts being made by bad actors to-

Breanna Lawlor: Always ...

Jill Hartling: infiltrate that security, and there will always be a push/pull. We are at a kind of interesting point right now where that is Dangerous.

I just heard I think it's Vercel is the name of the tool, and I use this. I built an app for my husband and I to use for working out, for logging our-

Breanna Lawlor: Oh, there you go.

Jill Hartling: Yeah, it was an easy... It was like a cloud code exercise. I did it in an afternoon. It was just so frustrating. I didn't have what I needed- Yes

for us to do what we wanted to do and just plug in the data, and I wanted something that we could both share and use independently, and it was easy and fast, and I needed to use Vercel for a component of that, and I got an email yesterday that my data was compromised through Vercel. Oh. It's part of how it works.

I think that having worked at Experian, which is the credit bureau, I'm deeply familiar with data privacy issues and the oversight associated with them, and I'm careful around my credit. And I think that those areas, credit bureaus- ... banking, have the most work to do to ensure that we're on the right path for data security.

Breanna Lawlor: Yeah. There's so much here, and I just also wanna give you credit for being an optimist, especially with... Because there, there's, are these things to keep in mind, but it's also really good to look at the possibilities because that's something you can take action on. You can take action on the other stuff, too, but it might not be as motivating for people who are just kinda getting rolling on this.

I wonder, in your position as an advisor, what sort of tipping points are you seeing for people becoming more familiar with how they're using these systems to increase their output and get better ROI? What are you noticing? Is, is there any themes that are coming up as you're working with your clients or even within your team?

Jill Hartling: I see it more within my team. I will admit that my clients are often in awe of what we're doing- I bet ... at Merkel. Yeah. It might be I work with some retail clients- ... and I think that there, again, there's some oversight and some lockdown in their environments where- Sure ... they may not be able to use the tools as much as they would like.

Breanna Lawlor: Right.

Jill Hartling: And maybe they don't have the IT background, and they're not ready to just explore at the scale that I am. But on my team, I see so much being done. We are tying together various different types of tools into AI. To build out interactive platforms that we're able to use internally or that we're able to share with clients who are comfortable with sharing or using that.

And then we have a team of brilliant strategists. I've always said, and I say this in interviews when I'm interviewing people for my team, for those of us that come onto this, onto the strategy team at Merkle, many of them are not used to this, but you're never going to be the smartest person in the room ever again once you've joined this team.

Yeah. And being around all these people who are so motivating and challenging in a good way, and who are just open- ... and generous with their information. Yeah. This lends itself to a exciting and boundary-pushing- Yeah ... environment where we can utilize AI in a way that I think is, I think is cutting edge and is very, very exciting.

I think that for very specific examples-

...

Jill Hartling: We are rebuilding the way that we think about the tools, all of the tools that we use, whether it is interactive tools that I mentioned for workshopping or for ideation sessions-

Breanna Lawlor: Yes ...

Jill Hartling: or whether it is as simple as cobbling together history and the data associated with the relationships that we have- Yeah

both internally and with our clients. There's just, I think that we are all in a state of a bit of overwhelm- Yes ... when it comes to the amount of data that we have, like in our inboxes- ... in our OneNotes, in our office environments. And there are, you know, that we are now leveraging Claude to parse through all of that, and I can say things like, "I'm working with this client.

Let me understand a little bit about historically what it is that I've done here and how I've managed this kind of a problem before. Can you take a look at the correspondence? Can you take a look at the Teams messages with my team and see, like, how are ways that I've solved for this in the past? Where are there blockers or barriers?

And then how can I capitalize on all of the things that I've done and learned without-" Without missing a piece. And that's just, I mean, there was a movie, I think it was called Limitless, where he had a photographic memory and didn't forget anything, and I've always just thought, "Man, how would that change my life?"

This, I think, gets us a step closer to that, where we aren't at the mercy of our day-to-day recollection or at what is the recency piece of things which are in our inbox. But rather there is these capabilities now that will help us aggregate and synthesize. Yeah. And that, from an aggregate and synthesiz-ization- Yeah

perspective, is a game changer. It really is. It is. I think that we wind up reinventing wheels a lot in our lives- Yeah ... and that hopefully this will help to minimize that a little bit too. Yeah. And that's a simple use case that I think most people are using, but it cannot be, I think, underscored enough to say how valuable that will become as it becomes more nimble- Yeah

and faster and more encompassing of the different platforms that we use.

Breanna Lawlor: That's so true. Yeah, the value is yet to be seen. There's just so much possibility.

Jill Hartling: Exactly. It's constantly changing. It's evolving. There's new- Yeah ... capabilities emerging. There's new models being released basically every week.

Yeah. I listen to podcasts to try to stay on top of this. I have to listen to them every day.

Breanna Lawlor: That's a leave it. As humans, we can only ingest so much, and hopefully it's gonna be relevant for what you need to use it for.

Jill Hartling: Yes, and if it's not, we can aggregate and synthesize.

Breanna Lawlor: Yeah. I love that. I have one final question for you.

Sure. If you had to adopt a philosophy of how you're approaching AI, especially as you're working with your clients, with your team this year, and you had to choose between speed, experimentation, and quality, you could just choose one, what would you choose? What would you lean into?

Jill Hartling: Experimentation. I think that speed is there.

There's so much speed to be had. I think that quality is incredibly important, but with hallucinations- Right ... and some of the challenges with these models, quality is still left to the discretion of the individual. But experimentation, I mean, as a strategist, there's nothing more important. I just wanna build, I wanna try, I wanna fail all the time, and I wanna succeed some of the time, and experimentation is the path forward to do that.

Breanna Lawlor: Couldn't be a better way to finish than that. That's a mindset people could take wherever they go. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your philosophy and your optimism with Be Here. It's been such a pleasure to speak with you.

Jill Hartling: Absolutely, a pleasure as well.

Breanna Lawlor: Appreciate the time.