What Your CMO Needs to Know About AI Search w/ Tom Critchlow

**Ross Hudgens** (0:11)
Pretend I'm a CMO, say I'm a CMO. I walk in the door, and I have two questions for you in your search practice at the company. One, do you use Profound?
Two, are you creating AI-generated content?

**Tom Critchlow** (0:27)
The answer has to be yes. No, no, no, no, no, bear with me, this is...
What I mean by that is, SEO professionals have spent so long trying to rebuff dumb ideas from executives, right? Every SEO team knows this, right? You try and be protective of your SEO performance as a channel, you try and be protective of the website. Executives have a lot of dumb ideas, right? But what you don't want to do, what you cannot do, what is a career-defining mistake, is having a defensive stance when executives are interested in something that is new and exciting and interesting and the future, right? So like in this AI search, this GEO moment, right? You know, board members, executives, CEOs, CMOs, they've heard of Profound, right? They know that AI-generated content is a thing, and they come to you and they say, are you doing it? Your answer has to be yes. Even if the answer is, are you using Profound? Yes, we have evaluated them and we are actually using PromptWatch.
But the answer has to be yes. The answer cannot be, no, we're not doing that, right? Like executives will shut down so fast, and that means that you won't get back in the room, right? You won't get back in the room to have a seat at the table for those conversations and those discussions if executives perceive you as somehow like not moving with the times, not keeping up with the latest, not doing the exciting thing. And the same for AI-generated content. Are you AI-generating content? Yes, we are using AI and our content workflow in the following ways, right? That does not mean that you have to do end-to-end AI-generated content, right? And so again, like there's a real fundamental stance here, and this moment in particular, I think this is always true inside organizations where having a kind of positive collaborative frame is important. But especially in this moment, it's so critical that if an executive comes to you with something, you've got to be the yes person, right? Even if the answer is no.
Yeah.

**Ross Hudgens** (2:16)
No, that's well said. I mean, I asked those two questions in particular because I think it's the two questions everyone's getting asked. I mean, props profound for being so ubiquitous right now that most executive teams are asking about using the sword.

**Tom Critchlow** (2:30)
Yeah.

**Ross Hudgens** (2:31)
Same with AI generated content, of course, which is a nuanced question. I mean, for us, we're a premium content provider. It's challenging conversation, but I like the way you frame that, so I want to make sure we lead with that one.

**Tom Critchlow** (2:45)
Yeah, for sure.

**Ross Hudgens** (2:46)
So one of the most common questions, I think, well, I guess big news, you're now started AI search leaders. Can you give us a little spiel on that?

**Tom Critchlow** (2:55)
Yeah. So this is very much an evolution of the SEO MBA platform that I ran for a few years, and the thesis is simply, as an entire industry, we have to figure out how to do AI search.
Everything is new, the tools we use are different, the workflows are different, consumer behavior is different, the channels are different, chat GBT is new, AI mode is new. So where do you go to learn how to do AI search? I don't have all the answers, so I'm not pretending that I've got a secret playbook. But I wanted to build a community of senior professionals who are trying to figure it out together. In particular, not to throw anyone under the bus, but the discourse on LinkedIn is not necessarily always up to scratch. There's a lot of bad ideas out there, like a ton of bad ideas.
So AI search leaders is a paid membership community. We have experts come in and speak every other week, and we have a discussion space where we're trying to figure out the future together.

**Ross Hudgens** (3:50)
Nice. What is one of the most common questions you're hearing asked in there?

**Tom Critchlow** (3:55)
By far and away, the most common question is, how do you measure this thing? I think that comes all the way back from that executive pressure, which is like executives are like, how do we measure this thing?
Frankly, there are no satisfying answers. There is an entire industry, Profound, PromptWatch, all these other tools are doing prompt monitoring. There's a whole kind of-