Welcome to a new season of the Animalz Content Marketing Podcast. Seven pioneers in AI and content join us to answer one question: “Hello… is there any value out there?”
The AI conversation in content marketing is deafening — skeptics shouting from one side, shallow tips from fanboys on the other. But somewhere in this noise, there must be folks who’ve figured something out, right? Right??
We’ve searched for real innovators who’ve ventured beyond the hype to succeed (or fail) spectacularly. Through their hard-won insights, we’ll discover if there’s value hiding in the noise, or if we’re all just shouting into the void.
What to Expect This Season
We debated dozens of topics for the Animalz podcast relaunch: founder-led content, enterprise content marketing, distribution strategy, and, of course, AI.
AI seemed too obvious and saturated. Does the world need another podcast on this topic?
Yes, we concluded. We ourselves had many unanswered questions:
- WHO is creating real value with AI in content?
- WHAT is working for them (and what isn’t)?
- HOW are they doing it?
Finding such signals in all the noise is nearly impossible.
We took this podcast season as an opportunity to track down folks who are building things with AI, sometimes breaking things, and most of all, going beyond the clickbait hacks flying around our feeds.
Season Schedule and Guest Overview
This March, we’re bringing you conversations with leaders shaping AI and content marketing. Here’s the lineup.
Season Introduction with Ty and Tim (This Episode)
February 27, 2025
Ty and Tim kick off the season by exploring why AI and content was the clear choice for the podcast’s return, sharing their own AI workflows, and previewing what they hope to discover from our lineup of pioneering guests.
Nathan Baschez – Founder at Lex
March 4, 2025 (AVAILABLE NOW)
Lex founder Nathan Baschez discusses how he’s reimagining the writing process with AI, insights from his time at Substack and Gimlet, and why the future of content is about thinking with AI rather than replacing human creativity.
Kyle Coleman – CMO at Copy.ai
March 6, 2025 (AVAILABLE NOW)
Kyle Coleman of Copy.ai shares how AI is giving marketers their nights and weekends back while driving massive results. He explains how to integrate AI into marketing workflows, maintain creative quality, and identify where automation adds the most value — both for business outcomes and work-life balance.
Thenuka Karunaratne – Co-founder and CEO at daydream
March 11, 2025 (AVAILABLE NOW)
Thenuka Karunaratne explains how Daydream is helping B2B and B2C companies use AI to revolutionize programmatic SEO, automating strategies and scaling content creation. Learn how brands like Twin Gate are capturing traffic, adapting to search changes, and driving measurable results.
Stewart Hillhouse – VP of Content at storyarb
March 13, 2025 (AVAILABLE NOW)
Stewart Hillhouse explores how AI is reshaping content marketing teams, introducing new roles like AI content operators and personality marketers. He shares examples from his time at Mutiny, including groundbreaking campaigns like the Open Source Target Account List.
Parthi Loganathan – Founder and CEO at Letterdrop
March 18, 2025 (AVAILABLE NOW)
Parthi Loganathan, fresh from pivoting his company away from SEO, explains why LinkedIn is the new battleground for B2B content. As traditional search declines, he reveals how companies can build authentic relationships at scale by empowering their teams to become trusted voices in their industry.
Ines Lee – Head of Content at Ali Abdaal
March 20, 2025 (AVAILABLE NOW)
With over 6M YouTube subscribers, how does Ali Abdaal’s team maintain authenticity while scaling with AI? Ines Lee takes us behind the scenes of their content operation, from AI-powered video editing to maintaining their unique voice.
Alex Halliday – Founder and CEO at AirOps
March 25, 2025 (AVAILABLE NOW)
Alex Halliday explores the future of AI-assisted content, drawing on insights from his time at MasterClass and personal conversations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. He shares why the most successful brands will combine automation with deep human expertise to create original content that stands out in an AI-first world.
Season Wrap-up with Ty and Tim
March 27, 2025 (AVAILABLE NOW)
We’ll reflect on the season and share our takeaways about AI’s true value in content marketing.
About Your Hosts
Ty Magnin is the CEO of Animalz and brings extensive experience in product-led growth and content marketing from leadership roles at UiPath, Emotive, and Appcues.
Tim Metz is Director of Marketing and Innovation at Animalz. He has over two decades of experience leading marketing and media initiatives at global tech startups.
About This Episode
In this season introduction, Ty and Tim explain why they’ve chosen to focus on AI and content — a topic consuming “at least half” of their work-related brain space.
Looking ahead at their expectations for the season, they voice excitement and skepticism. Will they discover spectacular SEO use cases? How will AI reshape content creation teams? And what unexpected “second-order effects” might emerge as everyone adopts the same tools?
The hosts share their current workflows, from using AI as a “sparring partner” for writing to leveraging it for sales processes and data analysis. They confess where they’re finding value and where the technology still falls short.
Listen to the full episode above or find it on your favorite podcast platform.
Full Transcript
[00:00:00] Ty: Welcome to The Animalz Podcast. I’m Ty Magnin, the CEO at Animalz.
[00:00:06] Tim: And I’m Tim Metz, Animalz Director of Marketing and Innovation. This season on The Animalz Podcast,
[00:00:12] Ty: we’ll focus entirely on AI content use cases. We’re bringing you on a search to meet the AI pioneers. Those venturing beyond the hype to succeed or fail spectacularly.
We’re here today to kick off the season, so we’ll be talking about Why we want to explore this topic of AI content use cases, we’re going to come clean and confess where we are with using AI and our own content creation workflows. We’ll be talking about our hopes and predictions for this season. Before we get started a word about Animalz.
So Tim, yeah, we discussed many different possibilities for what this first season reviving the Animalz podcast might cover. We [00:01:00] chose this one, right? AI content use cases. Why did we choose that topic out of the oh so many different content related topics we could have covered?
[00:01:08] Tim: Well, I first I say the official title is AI and content.
Hello, is there any value out there, right? So yeah, I think, I mean, AI is obviously a hot topic. So on the one hand, you could say, oh, it’s a bit cliche. Everybody’s talking about AI. But then at the same time, if you look at like. What everybody’s sharing on LinkedIn and newsletters and everywhere. There’s a lot of the same and there’s a lot of noise.
It’s like, Oh yeah, you can repurpose easily and do this and that. It’s like, yeah, but what is really working and what is maybe really not working? Like who are really doing cool stuff? That’s actually kind of hard to figure out because there’s so much noise. And so we thought. Yeah, it’s a topic that, and we are interested in the topic, obviously, so, like, let’s use the podcast to, like, really try and figure out where the really cool stuff is happening.
Or at least, yeah, the really pioneering stuff. It could also be stuff that’s not cool and that’s failing, but, like, people are really pushing the limits on what’s possible.
[00:01:57] Ty: Yeah, and genuinely, it’s taking up [00:02:00] at least half of my work related brain space right now. Yeah. I can’t stop thinking about AI. I, you know, like, honestly, I’m looking at other people’s content and I’m wondering if they’re hitting AI workflows.
I’m thinking about how I can use it more in my day to day. Uh, I do use it day to day, so I’m thinking about it then. Um, it’s obviously an important part of the animal strategic roadmap, so Just kind of selfish, like, I don’t really want to talk about too many other things right now.
[00:02:28] Tim: I mean, it’s taking up more than half of my, all my brain space.
Not just work related brain space, I think,
[00:02:34] Ty: yeah. Yeah, you’re with your baby and you’re like singing some AI melodies to it. You’re, uh, teaching it some pop. I’m not, not, not to my baby, but I, like, I’m
[00:02:41] Tim: doing AI stuff with my son. Like, he has started saying, like, oh, let’s just ask. ChatGPT, he’s like, he knows how to, and I’m making coloring book pages with him already a long time ago.
Like, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff, um, I’m doing also in other parts of my life with,
[00:02:55] Ty: with AI. I figured,
[00:02:56] Tim: I figured Lewis would be pretty innovative
[00:02:58] Ty: and into this kind of [00:03:00] tech.
[00:03:00] Tim: Yeah, yeah, he is. Well, yeah, he’s, he’s, he’s, uh, he’s, he’s liking the, we just tried Sora last week. That’s kind of funny because I thought it was super disappointing.
The way it looks and then he and I’m like, ah, this looks really bad. And then he’s like, no, this looks super cool. Like some kind of 3d polygon kind of panther or something. So he was completely into it and then he wanted to see it on TV. And yeah, it’s cool. Why else? I think there’s a lot to learn for us and for everybody else.
Uh, in, in the sense of like, you know, like it’s hard to keep up and there’s so much going on. So, and I think it can be genuinely valuable. Uh, I mean, obviously there are also negative sides and dangers and we’ll get to that at some point as well, of course. But I do think there’s also a lot of positive stuff and a lot you can.
Gained from it. And you can genuinely make better and more interesting content. I think if you use it in the right way. So yeah, I think it’s also helpful to show what’s possible and inspire people and give people some, some guidance and some, some ideas. So I think that’s also important.
[00:03:54] Ty: Yeah. I’m really excited because I would characterize myself as a pre revenue [00:04:00] focused marketer.
Like I want to see the results of something and then work backwards from there to like re engineer it and deploy it myself. And so this is a good chance for us to bring in people that we know are driving some kind of revenue or some deep success metrics with AI and then get to have them kind of like show their hand for us to be inspired by, for our audience to also kind of rip off, um, or, you know, borrow from.
And that’s important to me as well. You know, I think a lot about how content can be research. And in a way, this podcast and this season of this podcast lets us go do some research to help build better products and services for Animalz, right? To help deploy across our customer base and in our own marketing.
[00:04:45] Tim: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:04:46] Ty: So, Tim, you and I talk about AI a lot. We think about AI a lot. How are you using AI today in your content creation
[00:04:55] Tim: workflows? I’m using it all the time, but, but probably the, the, still the thing that I use it the most [00:05:00] for is probably the most boring thing, which is like, it’s really like a kind of sparing partner.
So if I’m writing, I’m still writing like a human, like just doing the hard. Writing work, but then as I’m doing that, I will use it a lot going like, Hey, what do you think of this headline or like, or I’m thinking about this headline? What do you think of this? What do you think of this paragraph? Like, I mean, that’s super basic, but I do that a lot, just kind of going back and forth, almost like pair programming or something, but only kind of pair writing with the AI.
So I’m not asking the AI to write a whole thing. I’m just writing. I want a second opinion. And like, it’s almost like, or that I have an editor next to me. So I think that’s one. And I guess the other thing that I’m really starting to do a lot is kind of programming with AI. Okay. And so that can be anything from like, you know, we just relaunched our revive tool.
So kind of building a whole tool, but also start to create scripts to like pull data out of Google Analytics or Ahrefs and things like that. And, and, and that’s something I’m, I was trying a little bit, but I’ve really gotten into in the last two weeks or something. And that’s really powerful because you can.
You know, you can pull out things that either you could just never manually get out [00:06:00] of GA4, for example, or you get things out much faster and in much higher volumes. So you can just kind of query it and, yeah, and that’s super cool. I’m really excited about that as well. And we, some of those things, I think we can also turn into tools for other people.
[00:06:12] Ty: I like the sparring partner, uh, relationship that you’re laying down in the, the pure programming analogy too, right? Developers do this kind of thing when they’re writing some tricky code. I don’t exactly know when, but like, I know peer programming is a thing. Um, and they’ll do a screen share, right? Pair.
Pair
[00:06:29] Tim: programming. Yeah.
[00:06:30] Ty: Pair
[00:06:31] Tim: programming.
[00:06:32] Ty: Are you
[00:06:32] Tim: sure? Like, peer. I’m 100 percent sure. Yeah. I used to write for Parabol about Agile, like, for two years. So, it’s like, it comes from, kind of from Agile. It’s pair. Pair programming. Agree to disagree. I’m just kidding. We can put a bet. I’m sure you’re right. Let’s make a bet.
I’m sure you’re right.
[00:06:51] Ty: I use a lot of AI for our sales processes. So, uh, should you ever reach out to Animalz, have a sales conversation, you will have the [00:07:00] privilege, likely of chatting to me, maybe with Tim. For me to process those conversations, especially when there’s like weeks in between, you know, stages of a sales cycle or those conversations, I lean on AI heavily, you know, by basically exporting transcripts from Grain into Claude to then query to help me build a deck.
A presentation to help me do some sales, follow up, that kind of thing. And I find it pretty useful there. Sometimes I don’t always trust the output and I kind of have to ask it to fact check itself. I’m like, where did this idea come from? And half the time it’s like, Oh, that’s great. I missed that. Or I didn’t think about that the other half.
I’m like. I don’t really agree, you know, I use it for my own LinkedIn posts, mostly as kind of like you said, to pair program, like, uh, it can help fill in some details or do a little research into something to like corroborate an idea. Sometimes I’ll spit in like some talk track or a transcript or something kind of raw and have it output a few different [00:08:00] LinkedIn post options.
I’ve started playing with copy AI that has like a workflow pre programmed to. You know, give you five variations of a LinkedIn post from one input. I’ve also been playing with Claude’s voice notes. I forget exactly what they call it. Uh, uh, uh, style
[00:08:18] Tim: or something.
[00:08:18] Ty: Yeah. Style or yeah, something like that. Uh, in order to, to better format, you know, that kind of thing.
So pretty basic stuff. And then, you know, use it for personal reasons. But that’s, that wasn’t the question. For the seal stuff.
[00:08:31] Tim: What does it give you back? Like, what is a detailed example of does it? Write a sales proposal for you or just give you some pointers or how deep do you go with it when you use it for sales?
It’s
[00:08:41] Ty: mostly pointers. So if I’m framing up an SoW, right? Or if I’m putting together this the sort of high level approach to how we might support a potential customer, I can ask it about the challenges that were discussed within someone’s existing [00:09:00] content program. I can talk about, I can ask it about The goals and how they’re going to measure those things.
And it’s just saved me a little bit of time going from my personal notes or the call transcript to a deck or an SoW doc. Nice. It’s all right. I’m excited to level all this up, you know, by learning and iterating on my own process through the course of this season and beyond. I think 2025 is going to be a huge year for implementing more AI use cases.
And on that note, I’ve got to ask. What are your hopes and predictions in what we find and discover through this season?
[00:09:38] Tim: On the positive side, I’m sure we’re going to discover lots of cool stuff, you know, because we have very smart people coming on as guests. So, yeah, I think we’re going to discover a lot of stuff.
I think we’re going to have a lot of fun. Recording it and talking to them. I mean, a little bit more on the negative side. I think we’re gonna run into things that we might not like, really. I mean, some of these [00:10:00] people are going, you know, some people might say, yeah, we don’t need, we don’t need writers anymore.
Or like, you know, we can do all the content marketing work with 5 percent of the resources or something. So I think we’re gonna probably discover some painful, I wouldn’t call them necessarily truths, but like, opinions or observations or whatever, uh, about our, about our profession or industry. So I think that’s gonna be.
confronting. It’s not necessarily negative. It’s good to be confronted and to get kind of feedback. But yeah, I think we’re going to run into some of that. What about you? What do you think on the positive side? Well, let’s start positive.
[00:10:30] Ty: I think we’ll find some some real use cases, especially in SEO. We see a lot of especially early stage AI made of SaaS companies doing what I’m calling spray and pray SEO.
And I’ll be interested to learn about how some of those programs are working from what I hear. Anecdotally, I think They see some success, you know, it might be early indicators, some traffic, some leads, but I think we’ll learn more about how companies are evolving the way they do search with AI and seeing some early signs of success.[00:11:00]
I think we’ll also learn that people really love GPT and Claude, and that they’re starting to explore other gen AI tools that are more of like a tops down type approach. So, for example, over the last year, 2024, at Animalz. A lot of our AI usage has been what I call bottoms up. People are using Clawed, people are using, uh, ChatGPT and just kind of off in a silo on their own, creating prompts, using it as a sparring partner, getting value from it, but we’re not really standardizing on how that’s being done on the best practices, and then gaining more momentum through that kind of exercise.
And so I do think we’ll see more and more teams standardizing on certain tools. In order to basically create content more consistently and get that value faster. So I think we’ll see a few patterns like that on the negative side. I think some of the results are still going to be murky, [00:12:00] right? Like, I think we’re still really early in this innovation.
And so we might see early signs of success, but we haven’t seen how these kinds of efforts play out long term. It’s kind of like, well, maybe I shouldn’t go here, but it’s kind of like the COVID vaccine. It’s like. We’re all excited to get it. We knew that it could help us short term, but people are like, Wait, what about the long term implications of this stuff?
Like, I feel a little bit skeptical in that way right now. Not with like all AI usage, but with some of the use cases, like spray and prey SEO. And so, again, I think the results will be a little murky from the experts that we chat with.
[00:12:38] Tim: I think this year we’re gonna, now that I hear you talking, I think this year, when I say this year, I mean like 2025, I think we’re gonna see how some of these things play out, and hopefully also, and actually for the season, I hope we might get an answer to some of these things.
I think it’s so easy to say like, um, Oh, yeah, repurposing, right? Like, like, oh, you can use it for repurposing, for example, or you can use it for like, you can replace [00:13:00] 95 percent of your SEO with AI, right? And it’s like, yeah, okay, well, even if that’s true, how will that play out, right? Like, if that’s true, and everybody does that, then it also means it’s not a competitive advantage, right?
And so, yeah, that’s what I want to say. Like, I think we’re going to see some of the effects that you can’t, that you wouldn’t expect that are counterintuitive. Like one of them, like when ChatGPT just come out, everybody suddenly think, wow, maybe we My writing skills are useless, right? But actually, we might find out this year that it’s going to turn out that if you’re good at writing, you’re actually going to be a rare person because everybody else has started to rely on ChatGPT.
So it actually turns out that writing is a super big benefit. I don’t know if that’s going to be true, but like, that’s an example, right? So it’s like these counter intuitive downstream effects from something that are sometimes completely the opposite of what you would predict intuitively, right? And so Maybe because everybody can repurpose to do SEO, like you’re just going to see this complete shift to something else, right?
To a completely different content format. Because even if you can do perfect repurposing, it doesn’t make sense anymore because everybody does it. So it’s like, I’m, I’m curious to see some of that hopefully play [00:14:00] out in both what we learn in the show. And that some people have some clear answers on these kind of second order effects.
And, um, and just in general, see that play out in the, in the industry and what people are doing. Totally.
[00:14:13] Ty: This morning. I was designing quote unquote designing a, uh, holiday festive background for our like remote holiday party, right? So like a zoom background and I started prompting DALL·E to make me, you know, like I took our platypus logo and I was asking, you know, put it in a festive wintry place, give it a hot cocoa, right?
And it spits something out. And I realized pretty quickly, like, I don’t have the design language that a designer would to be able to communicate, like, make it look sharper or like bring out this emotional characteristic within it. Uh, and so I’m kind of like stuck with like V2 of this thing and then I run with it.
I think what you’re saying is You’re hopeful that a [00:15:00] second order impact, like, or a second wave here is that if you are a talented writer and you learn how to use the machine, you can just get better output, better results from working with it than someone without that depth of experience can.
[00:15:14] Tim: Yeah, that is right.
And that it will push certain trends or content formats or strategies that you wouldn’t actually expect. Some other ones are kind of canceled out because everybody can do them easily.
[00:15:25] Ty: So as you know, this season, we’re focusing entirely on AI content use cases. We’re bringing you on a search with us to meet the AI pioneers, those venturing beyond the hype to succeed or fail spectacularly.
Stay with us. We’ll be dropping episodes every week. You can always dig in or skip around because in our mind, a podcast can be a library, not just a publication. Hello. Is there any value out there?