In this episode
Greg Heinz, Senior Director of Brand and Digital Strategy at Optimizely, walks through the rebrand he helped land — repositioning a company assembled from experimentation, CMS, personalization and analytics as, in his words, the AI platform for marketing. Recorded live at Opticon 2026 in New York City, the conversation covers the research that triggered the change, the decision to commission a human illustrator while generating the photography with AI, the internal friction a single brand creates for business units that arrived through acquisition, and how a brand-level investment gets measured when there’s no direct pipeline attached to it.
Key takeaways
- The rebrand was a repositioning, not a logo change. Optimizely grew through acquisition — Episerver brought the CMS, experimentation and personalization analytics made it a DXP — and the rebrand existed to say the company is more than the sum of those parts.
- Two signals came out of the research, and both were awareness problems. Customers knew only the piece of the business they had already bought, and everyone else filed Optimizely under “another software company.”
- Messaging, not visual identity, was the thing leadership insisted on. CEO Alex Atzberger’s position, per Heinz: “It’s about the messaging. That’s what’s gonna really carry through” — which meant rebuilding voice from the brand level down through the products.
- The illustrations were commissioned from a human on purpose. Optimizely hired Berlin-based artist André Cassé, whose work includes Gucci, Nike and Red Bull. It was a significant investment, and it “has been the one thing that people talk about the most.”
- AI generated the photography and backgrounds — because the team already knew exactly what it wanted. Heinz’s framing: AI as the accelerator that scales the work, with the inputs “all definitely human.”
- AI is not automatically a time savings. Between ideation, prompting and problems like vectorization, Heinz is direct: “It’s not always a time savings… you’re not getting the exact result.”
- Internal discomfort is part of the rollout. Business units from prior acquisitions were used to dedicated campaigns and attention; under one brand, that attention gets redistributed and people feel it — not in results, but in focus.
- Brand spend gets measured against baselines plus third-party lift, not pipeline. The team tracks impressions, click-through and cost-per-click against historical benchmarks, and layered a Nielsen brand lift study onto its CTV and video investment.
- “The agent can’t feel.” Heinz declines to make agent-readiness a brand responsibility, putting AI-search optimization on product marketing and content strategy instead — brand does its work on the humans who arrive later in the funnel.
Chapters
- 01:02 — What’s left that a competitor can’t copy by the end of the quarter
- 02:54 — From selling 76ers tickets to running brand and digital at Optimizely
- 03:26 — How Optimizely became a DXP, and why AI-first came next
- 04:46 — The research phase and the signals that justified a rebrand
- 06:20 — Repositioning versus a new logo: what the brand promises now
- 07:32 — Recommitting to the community as the brand promise
- 08:17 — Automating the right things to buy back time for creativity
- 09:05 — Where human creativity stayed non-negotiable
- 10:37 — Commissioning André Cassé instead of generating the illustrations
- 11:23 — Where AI didn’t save time: prompting, ideation, vectorization
- 13:37 — Making the company behave differently, not just look different
- 14:57 — Shifting the story from features to what’s possible
- 15:51 — Measuring a brand investment without direct pipeline impact
- 17:22 — Holding consistency at volume: review cycles, templates, internal AI
- 19:44 — “The agent can’t feel”: who owns AI-optimized discovery
- 21:33 — What’s coming at Opticon, and how Heinz stays agile
Why an acquisition-built platform needed one story
Optimizely’s product surface grew by expansion and acquisition — the Episerver acquisition brought a CMS, which combined with experimentation, personalization and analytics to put the company in the DXP category. Most of its products are now AI-first, and Opal was the first AI product announced a couple of years back. The rebrand’s job was to stop the company being read as a collection of individually purchased parts and start it being read as the AI platform for marketing.
What the research actually surfaced
Heinz joined about a year ago, right as the research phase closed, and spent his first week going through interviews and meeting transcripts as an outsider. Two views repeated. Customers knew Optimizely for the piece of the business they’d invested in and didn’t realize the rest of the capability existed. Everyone else saw a software company among software companies — and, as Heinz notes, headspace for martech vendors is minimal. The goal that came out of it: build a brand people can love as much as they love the products.
Why the illustrations weren’t AI-generated
For an AI platform company, generating the creative would have been the obvious move. Optimizely commissioned André Cassé out of Berlin instead, betting that work with that pedigree — Gucci, Nike, Red Bull — couldn’t be reproduced by a prompt. Heinz calls it a significant investment and the single element people mention most. The photography and backgrounds went the other way: those were AI-generated, because the team knew precisely what it wanted before it started. The line he draws is between AI as an accelerator and AI as the author.
The honest version of the AI productivity story
Heinz doesn’t sell the time-savings narrative. Sitting there prompting, working out what you actually want, then not getting the exact result — plus downstream problems like vectorization — means AI often costs time on the first pass. What it reliably does is scale work once the human input is settled. Coming from someone whose company sells AI marketing software, that’s the more useful claim.
A rebrand is validated by behavior, not messaging
The rebrand launched at the end of June, and Heinz describes it as still being lived. The visible friction is internal: business units that arrived through acquisition were used to campaigns built around them, and a unified brand redistributes that attention. Results aren’t the complaint — the loss of special attention is. Alongside that, the storytelling moved from products and features toward what’s possible, which is where Heinz wants marketing to spend its time.
How you measure a brand investment
Nothing was ruled out on the feedback side, quantitative or qualitative. Standard performance metrics — impressions, click-through rate, cost per click — get compared against historical baselines, with the caveat that a brand-level investment shows less direct pipeline impact by design. The third-party read comes from a Nielsen study attached to the CTV and video investment. On the creative side, the standard Heinz sets is media worthy of people’s time and attention, produced with studios including Giant Ant in Vancouver and Thinkmodo in California.
Consistency at volume, and the “hall of shame”
Early on, consistency meant longer review cycles on anything published — Heinz cheerfully accepts the brand-police role. It scales through templating: high-volume requests like email banners and social tiles get standardized inside the product so the core team can work on bigger things, like showing up at events. Employees using the internal AI tooling produce results that range from genuinely good to bad enough to land in the Teams “hall of shame” chat — which, in practice, is how the models get refined.
What brands owe AI agents
Asked how a brand stays consistent when an agent evaluates it before a human does, Heinz doesn’t accept the premise as a brand problem: the agent can’t feel. Making sites, blogs and product content discoverable and optimized for AI search belongs to product marketing and content strategy — and Optimizely uses its own tools to do it. The brand work still matters, but it lands on the humans who show up further down the funnel, after the agent has done the early research.
FAQ
Why did Optimizely rebrand? Research showed two consistent gaps: existing customers knew only the part of the platform they had bought, and the wider market saw Optimizely as another software company. The rebrand repositioned a business built through acquisition as a single AI platform for marketing.
Did Optimizely use AI to create its rebrand assets? Selectively. The illustrations were commissioned from Berlin-based artist André Cassé rather than generated, while photography and backgrounds were AI-generated because the team knew exactly what it needed. Heinz describes AI as the accelerator, with human inputs driving the decisions.
Does AI actually save time on creative work? Not always, according to Heinz. Ideation, prompting and issues like vectorization mean you can spend the time up front and still not get the exact result. The gain is in scaling work after the human input is set.
How do you measure a rebrand that has no direct pipeline attached? Optimizely compares impressions, click-through rate and cost per click against historical baselines, and commissioned a Nielsen brand lift study tied to its CTV and video investment — accepting that brand-level spend shows less direct pipeline impact than demand programs.
Who is responsible for making a brand legible to AI agents? Heinz puts it on product marketing and content strategy rather than brand, on the grounds that an agent can’t feel. Brand affinity is built with the humans who enter later in the funnel, after agent-led discovery.
What changed internally after the rebrand launched? Business units carried over from acquisitions lost the individual attention their campaigns used to get, and that friction is real even though results haven’t suffered. The narrative also shifted from product features toward outcomes and possibility.
About Greg Heinz
Greg is a marketing manager with over fifteen years of professional experience in B2B software solutions and services, Healthcare, Sports and Entertainment. My goal is to help organizations achieve rapid growth through brand development and demand generation. I am a strong believer in creating amazing experiences and lasting impressions through UX design and storytelling.
Greg Heinz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gjheinz/
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Transcript
[00:01:02] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of the Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you: AI can now generate, test, and optimize nearly every touchpoint you own. So what’s actually left that a competitor can’t copy by the end of the quarter? Brand agility isn’t about moving quickly with the newest tools. It’s about being able to change repeatedly and still come out the other side recognizable as one company. Today, we’re talking about the evolution of brand strategy in the age of AI, recording live from Opticon twenty twenty-six in New York City. We’re gonna cover a few key areas: how to ground a major rebrand in quantitative and qualitative research so it holds up in the market, where human creativity stays non-negotiable when automation becomes the default setting,
[00:01:47] Greg Kihlström: and what makes an enterprise technology brand durable when the systems get better at everything except judgment. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Greg Hines, Senior Director, Brand and Digital Strategy at Optimizely. Greg, welcome to the show.
[00:02:43] Greg Hines: Thanks, Greg. Always a pleasure talking to a fellow Greg.
[00:02:45] Greg Kihlström: I know, I know. Great, great name, great name. let’s, let’s start before we dive into the, the topic here. Why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Optimizely?
[00:02:54] Greg Hines: Sure, of course. like many good marketers, I actually started in sales, [chuckles] specifically in, in the sports world. I was selling tickets for the seventy-sixers, which is actually probably the easiest job in the country right now, thanks to LeBron.
[00:03:05] Greg Hines: but no, since then, I spent my last fifteen years in enterprise software and services, and a various range of roles from demand generation, content strategy, events, digital marketing, and now brand. So with Optimizely, I’m currently running our creative services team, internally, as well as our digital team, so r- the team that runs Optimizely.com.
[00:03:26] Greg Kihlström: Great, great. And so Optimizely certainly has evolved over, you know, over the last several years. Lots of people know it either as a DXP company perhaps or an AB testing and personalization company, but there’s more to it than that as well. And, talk… Can you talk a little bit about, you know, that, that background and, and what’s, what’s changed over the last few years?
[00:03:46] Greg Hines: Sure. it’s been a, a rapid, evolution for Optimizely. Going back to a couple years ago when we first announced our first AI product, Opal, you know, it really– like many companies of our size, as we’ve kind of grown, a lot of it’s been growth through expansion and acquisition. So when we brought in kinda different parts of our business, like the acquisition of Episerver brought a CMS into our fold, and that’s, you know, combining that with the experimentation software and adding features like personalization analytics, that’s what helped get us into that category of DXP. but we know where we need to go forward, which most software companies of our, of our st-stature, is, is really leading first with AI. So we’ve had the amazing ability to rapidly innovate and develop our, our AI infrastructure.
[00:04:32] Greg Hines: most of our products now are AI first. So the rebrand was really an opportunity to reposition that and, and make sure that people, you know, understand that Optimizely is more than kind of the sum of these individual parts and really known as, you know, the AI platform for marketing.
[00:04:46] Greg Kihlström: So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about that and maybe starting from the, the research component. So, you know, certainly any rebrand is, is a big undertaking. This was certainly… You know, we’re, we’re sitting here at Camp Opticon here. Great– Love, love the theme. Love the, love the brand. Through the, the research process to start, you know, what were the key signals from the market or your customers that indicated that a change was necessary or, or, or needed?
[00:05:14] Greg Hines: Sure. I joined Optimizely about a year ago, so the project had formally kicked off. the research phase had just ended, so I actually joined at what I would view as a perfect time because my first week I spent just devouring information and interviews and transcripts from meetings. so it really helped me understand, all right, from the, from the perspective of someone coming in from the outside, you know, how are people feeling? And there was a couple really consistent viewpoints. One was kind of what I tap- touched on earlier, where, you know, people knew Optimizely for kinda that piece of the business that they had already invested in, but they didn’t realize all those capabilities, so there was kind of a, a scope challenge. And then the other is the, the piece that the people that loved us really, really loved us, and the people
[00:06:00] Greg Hines: that didn’t really know us that well just viewed us as another software company. And I think challenging for, you know, anyone in the marketing technology space, it’s just like the head space for vendors these days is, like, minimum.
[00:06:11] Greg Hines: So, you know, what we’re trying to do is, you know, how do we kinda lead forward so we’re not just another- … software, but really, like, build a brand that people can love as much as the products.
[00:06:20] Greg Kihlström: Well, and- and definitely there’s, I think there’s a, a visual element that is different and, you know, it- I look at a… So I see a lot of platforms, you know, in, in what I do, and so, you know, a lot, lots of blue and lots of similar fonts and things like that. So certainly, you know, definitely some differences there, but that’s- that’s not all that it’s about, to your point. So it’s also a repositioning, not just a, a new logo. So, you know, what- what’s the promise that this brand makes that the old one couldn’t or, or didn’t? And what do you have… What- what did you have to give up to make that promise credible?
[00:06:56] Greg Hines: Yeah, that’s, it’s interesting because the kind of conversation about being more than just a logo and a color change was very prevalent, especially over the, like, the winter months as we were kind of getting into that, like, six-month window before launch. And even all the way up to, you know, Alex Atzberger, our CEO, she’s like, “It’s about the messaging. That’s what’s gonna really carry through.” So we spent a lot of time really making sure that we, we had a, a consistent voice from the brand level all the way down through our products, which, which was a, a big undertaking, right? We have to r- through any rebrand, you’re redoing all of your collateral-
[00:07:30] Greg Kihlström: It’s a lot
[00:07:31] Greg Hines: … and it’s, it’s a ton.
[00:07:31] Greg Kihlström: Lots of stuff.
[00:07:32] Greg Hines: but I think the thing that was really unique is when we kinda talked earlier about, like, the commitment to kinda the brand and the story, part of that really comes to, like, a recommitment to the community. And I think the brand promise is really tied to making sure that we’re showing up and meeting customers and potential customers, like, where they’re at, and everyone’s kind of dealing with the same thing right now in terms of, like, how do I move forward with AI? How do I make the most of the investment? how do I take care of my people through a very, like, turbulent transition? So one of those opportunities that we have, being a company who gets to use all our own software, and we use it very well, but it also comes with the responsibility to show people kinda how to do it, what we like to view as, you know, the right way or the best way.
[00:08:17] Greg Hines: And a lot of that comes forth with, you know, showing that, hey, when you can s- create, you know, carve out new time, by automating the right things, you have more time for creativity, more time for strategy, and it also gives us the abi- ability to kind of take a little bit more risks and, you know, have a little bit more fun.
[00:08:34] Greg Kihlström: Well, and I think that’s, that’s another interesting part is that, that human part of it, ’cause, you know, you think, okay, this is an AI platform, you know, AI marketing platform company. When you think about visuals or even just the overall feel, you, you, you might naturally gravitate towards, okay, th- literally everything is gonna be AI-generated from the visuals to, to everything else, and there is still a human aspe- you know, like, I- I think someone mentioned the, the illustrations were ha- you know, drawn by a human.
[00:09:05] Greg Kihlström: And, and there’s photos of, of people in, in some of the aspects as well. And so there’s that, that human creativity in a world of AI. And, and certainly there’s plenty of AI being used as well with, you know, in, in, in the right ways as well. Even when we talk about AI, though, you know, that’s such a broad top- like, there’s, there’s a, a lots of different ways that it’s being used. So, you know, it could be a tool that speeds up a designer, but that’s a very different thing from a system that, you know, ships work with, you know, sort of semi-autonomously. During the rebrand, where, you know, where did you think about drawing that line between, you know, how much does AI do, how much do humans do, and hu- human in the loop, you know, is used a
[00:09:50] Greg Kihlström: lot? So where, where was the line there?
[00:09:52] Greg Hines: it’s interesting. In the beginning, I think we were really committed to doing almost everything, I don’t wanna say by hand, but, like, as, as people. So, like, the artist is a great example. So what we decided was from an illustration standpoint, we wanted something that couldn’t be reproduced by whether it’s a, a competitor or just, like, that’s gonna stand out and be completely different and unique. so yeah, we, we actually did a lot of research, and we, we found this artist, his name’s Andre Cassé, he lives in Berlin, and hi- his work, I mean, he’s, he’s celebrated and has done work with, like, Gucci and Nike and Red Bull. So we were very comfortable, but it also just, like, it spoke to us and resonated. And, it was a significant investment to, you know, lean into him and, and to commission the work. But I- it’s also been the one thing that
[00:10:37] Greg Hines: people talk about the most. So I think to me it reinforced the decision to say, hey, like, these uniquely human moments are, are worth it. But again, twofold, there’s the, the pressure as an AI company to showcase what our platform can do, and then there’s also, like, the time demands of a rebrand. we had a couple moments where it was like, okay, guys, we have to hit these deadlines, and there are ways to use AI to scale and to automate. so, you know, you mentioned, like, the photography and some of these, like, the background photos that kind of set this landscape that we’re sitting in here at Camp Opticon. you know, those, those were AI-generated, but we knew exactly what we wanted, and you, you talked about the designers, for example, saving them time. One of the weird things, and I think many people would understand this, is it’s not always a time savings. Because you’re sitting here prompting
[00:11:23] Greg Hines: and, like, the just the ideation of what is it you want and then you’re not getting the exact result. Like, even back to the illustrations, like, you know, we’re trying to create illustrations that are uniquely ours, that are kind of inspired by Andre’s work, but not infringing on copyright. But, you know, that work coming from AI, it’s not vectorized.
[00:11:41] Greg Hines: So, like-
[00:11:41] Greg Kihlström: … you know, there’s things where it’s, you know, there’s, there’s pros and cons to both, but, you know, I think we did a ultimately a good job in the end focusing on AI as the kind of the accelerator and scaling the work, but the inputs were, were all definitely human.
[00:13:37] Greg Kihlström: Another part of a, a rebrand is, you know, certainly there’s that external component that your customers see, even that the, you know, the, the marketing team is putting out. There’s also an internal component of really embracing the brand, the, the why, all of that stuff as, as an organization. Beyond the messaging, what actually had to change in how Optimizely behaves to, to truly make this brand stick?
[00:14:03] Greg Hines: I think we’re, we’re still living that. I mean-
[00:14:05] Greg Kihlström: The re- rebrand for context for those listening was, at the end of June. So it’s now-
[00:14:10] Greg Kihlström: So new, yeah
[00:14:12] Greg Hines: … September 1st or August 31st, so a couple months so we’re still really in the thick of it. you know, we’re proud of how much we were able to launch at one time. But kinda going back to the beginning, we talked about, you know, these series of kind of acquisitions that developed these different identities within the business, so we have kinda the CMS team and the experimentation team. I think that’s been the hardest shift internally is those people are used to having a lot of time and attention and energy put into their campaigns and into their story. And as we try to elevate and tell more of a unified story, I think people are feeling the, the pain a little bit. Not from, like, a results standpoint or that they’re not proud or excited by the work, but just that, like, it doesn’t… They’re not getting, like, the special attention that those business units used to get. you know, we still have campaign teams, but again, like, now
[00:14:57] Greg Hines: that everything’s really AI forward, it just, it changes the way I think we start with the story, right? So we’re, we’re really focused on, you know, what’s possible versus kinda the products and the features. And I think to me as a marketer, that’s so exciting. That’s where I wanna spend my time.
[00:15:13] Greg Kihlström: Well, and that’s… I think that’s the audience is buying outcomes, not necessarily a feature. I mean, a feature is a path to an outcome, right? So, let’s talk a little bit… I know, you know, it, it recently launched, so it’s hard to talk about, you know, outcomes, you know, too, too much. But still, you know, brand marketing can sometimes feel intangible, to, to some at least. You know, w- what are you measuring to see how the rebrand is landing and, you know, sur- surely in, in the future as well, and what did you decide in advance would not count as proof even if it looked good?
[00:15:51] Greg Hines: The second part’s a tough question, ’cause I don’t think we ruled anything out.
[00:15:54] Greg Hines: Like, all, all feedback… Again, kind of earlier you talked about qualitative versus quantitative. Like, they’re, they’re both valid, and they both serve different needs in terms of how do we improve, you know, the work that we’re doing. But I think to me, it’s really through the brand advertising strategy, especially over the initial months, being able to look back at like, “Hey, how did we perform historically?” versus how is the creative, you know, performing today. And it’s, you know, very down into, you know, impressions and click-through rates, you know, cost per click. ultimately, like, since we’re doing more of an investment at the brand level, there’s less of a direct pipeline impact, so some of that’s what you’re probably referring to. It’s gonna take longer.
[00:16:33] Greg Hines: but there are also some brand lift studies tied to this. one of the programs we’re, we’re investing much more into CTV, and into video in general. So the program that we’re doing with CTV, that actually comes with a Nielsen study as well, so we’ll get some really good metrics and, and evaluation from that. But I think the piece that’s gonna be a little bit harder to measure is in order to lean into these kind of more modern formats of medias, we have to create media that’s worthy of people’s time and attention. So we’ve spent a lot of energy working with incredible animation studios to bring some of this to life, like Giant Ant Studio out in Vancouver, Thinkmodo out in California. I mean, these are some of like… They’ve worked with some of the biggest companies in the world, and it’s been incredibly fun to work with them, and my favorite part about it is, like, they’re excited to share the work, which y- th- that’s usually a sign that we’re doing something pretty special.
[00:17:22] Greg Kihlström: Well, and, and I mean, you mentioned CTV. There’s certainly lots of, lots of different, channels that it’s on. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s out there. It’s been out there for a few months now. How do you think about, you know, as it gets expr- the brand gets expressed across all of these different channels, how do you keep, uh… You know, there’s the… It feels like there’s inevitable brand drift over the course of years, let’s say, but, you know, how do you, how do you keep it all feeling recognizably one company?
[00:17:51] Greg Hines: part of it is probably the famous brand police. Like, especially in the very beginning, it’s, you know, we’re, we’re very careful about what gets published and, you know, some of that may require longer review cycles, which is interesting. Again, going back to, like, the AI platform piece, the, the internal community, our, our employees are so excited by it, and they have an AI tool built into our platform that they can use to create. So they are doing it-
[00:18:14] Greg Hines: … and some of it’s amazing. Some of it’s [laughs] you know, ends up on our teams chat of kind of the hall of shame.
[00:18:20] Greg Kihlström: [laughs]
[00:18:21] Greg Hines: But it, you know, it’s, it’s entertaining and w- and when we get examples, we go back and it helps us learn and helps us improve the models. we’re also working really closely with our product team, and we’re actually developing new features within our product to help kind of package and templatize common brand outputs. So things like email banners and social tiles and things like that, where high volume request items that can really eat up our internal team’s bandwidth, if we can kind of standardize them, it- it’s kind of serving the end customer, our stakeholder, which is our fellow marketer, and it’s also freeing our team’s time up to really focus on the bigger stuff like showing up at events like this, which if anyone knows, takes so much time and energy. so that, that, that’s been a big way. just I think really making sure that everything that goes
[00:19:06] Greg Hines: out, like, looks, feels, and sounds, like, Optimizely.
[00:19:11] Greg Kihlström: So let’s talk a little bit about, you know, o- one of the, the stats shared earlier today was just, you know, the, the increased volume of agents experiencing a brand before a customer ever experiences it, right? So how does… You know, we’ve talked a lot about look and feel and, and some of the, the, even the emotional components of, of a brand. How does all– Like, how does a brand stay a brand when an agent is kind of doing the first pass on it? You know, how do you keep that consistent and, and feeling right?
[00:19:44] Greg Hines: So this is probably one where I don’t wanna pass on the question, but I don’t know if that’s really, like, the brand’s responsibility, ’cause at the end of the day, like, the agent can’t feel.
[00:19:53] Greg Kihlström: But it’s not– I, I don’t wanna say it can’t read sentiment, because obviously it can, but, like, it’s, it’s not, taking the same signals that make someone remember the Optimizely brand that we’re doing in our brand programs and campaigns. But really what that leans on is, you know, our product marketing teams and our content strategy, making sure that things are optimized for, you know, AI search. And again-
[00:20:17] Greg Hines: … keep tying back to, like, one of my favorite parts about working at Optimizely is we get to use our own tools, and we’re serving other marketers. So, you know, making sure that we’re leaning into, you know, how do we use agents to improve the way agents find our own, our websites or our blogs.
[00:20:32] Greg Kihlström: No, I th- I think so. And I, I think the other component here is just it’s humans are showing up, I guess, later in the funnel, right? It’s– So to your, to your point, it’s not– you’re not gonna create a brand color system for agents because I don’t think agents care about what color the brand is.
[00:20:55] Greg Hines: [laughs]
[00:20:55] Greg Kihlström: But you’re gonna create a brand that maybe, is gonna resonate with someone who’s a little further in the funnel because an agent did some research for them or something like that or-
[00:21:04] Greg Hines: Exactly, and it, it’s critically important, and we’re-
[00:21:06] Greg Kihlström: … certainly, like, part of the conversations.
[00:21:11] Greg Kihlström: Makes sense. Well, Greg, great talking with you here. Got a couple last questions as we wrap up here. So Opticon, you know, we’re in day one, today. It really kicks off tomorrow. So, what are you most looking forward to?
[00:21:33] Greg Hines: I think thinking about all the work that’s gone into the brand and then seeing it launch digitally was, was really exciting. But I can tell you, like, walking in today and seeing the, the construction and, you know, we’re sitting in camping chairs, which is [laughs] again, this doesn’t feel like any normal [laughs] B2B software conference in from that regard. So I think just having people, like, immerse themselves into the brand the way that I think we’ve been for all this time and just kinda, like, seeing the reaction, hearing the energy, um… You know, we also have some very special fun surprises on main stage tomorrow, in terms of just some, like, secret special projects we’ve been doing, maybe, you know, B2B, like, comedy series type stuff. So [laughs]-
[00:22:14] Greg Hines: … yeah, that all, really excited to kinda have that out in the public ’cause it’s been, you know, alongside all this work, a, an exciting passion project.
[00:22:21] Greg Kihlström: The, I mean, there is something interesting in immersing yourself in the brand ver- You know, I’ve sh- you’ve seen, I’m sure, plenty of digital versions and print versions and stuff like that, but being able to walk around it is a, a whole different thing, so.
[00:22:34] Greg Hines: A thousand percent. Absolutely.
[00:22:36] Greg Kihlström: Well, last question for you. what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:22:41] Greg Hines: I’m a big reader. I know we have, like, Seth Godin coming. He’s our keynote speaker tomorrow. I’m, like, you know, big, big fan. I actually have a presentation that I’m giving tomorrow on the breakout session where I’m referencing one of his, like, first books that I was a huge fan of, which is about tribes, and it’s, like, a big inspiration for us, like, leaning into this AI for marketing. So a big reader and, and obviously as I’m, you know, driving around, I’ve, you know, two young kids, I’m always in the car, like, to sports or school or whatever, so podcasts are, are, you know, for me, my, my two favorite mediums.
