Episode Transcript
Kyle James (00:01.317)
Hey, welcome to the AI Chronics podcast. I'm your host, Kyle James. And today we'll be discussing how a brand strategy and consulting company called MAP and FIRE is using AI inside of their own business. And we'll share the exact steps that you can take in order to implement AI for yourself. Now, before we talk more about that, listen closely. Are you looking to implement AI inside of your own company or maybe just struggling to get your AI to stop hallucinating? Speak to GPT Trainer.
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scheduled consultation today. Once again, that's gpt-trainer.com. Today I have with me on the show Clay Ostrom, who is the founder of the positioning and messaging app called Smoke Ladder and founder of the agency Map and Fire, which focuses on brand strategy and customer research. So excited to have him on the show today. Hey, Clay, welcome.
Clay Ostrom (01:23.254)
Great to be here. Super excited. Obviously, this is the topic of the year, maybe the decade. totally excited.
Kyle James (01:30.609)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, know AI is like this like all things everyone even people who are not even AI talk like people are just in like just other jobs like yeah, I'm talking about they're just talking about AI. I'm like, it's it's a it's exciting thing. Maybe it's a little bit of a nervous thing, too. I think we're all kind of nervous. Like, where's this thing going? Who knows? Like, we're just we're riding this wave and hopefully we don't wipe out.
Clay Ostrom (01:51.63)
I know, I know. even hear, you know, I listened to a recent interview with Sam Altman and I was expecting to be a little more calmed by it. And I think it actually made me more anxious and a little nervous. So I don't know. I feel like everybody's a little bit unclear on where we're headed.
Kyle James (02:05.629)
Yeah, I know. I know whenever, like if you've heard of DeepSeek, all these different, like Claude Anthropic, Google Gemini, Meta's got their llama thing. I mean, it's just like, okay, cool. And then all of sudden DeepSeek comes out and drops this, I don't know if you've heard of it, 99 % lower cost to implement their large language model. And it's like, what? 99? It's already cheap to begin with, but 99 %?
of a dis- crazy to me. Anyway, so, okay, so Clay, man, it great having you on the show. So tell us a little bit now, you've got Map and Fire, and obviously you got your app Smoke Ladder. Give us a little bit of context of like where you came from and how you founded those companies.
Clay Ostrom (02:32.674)
Yeah.
Clay Ostrom (02:45.718)
Yeah, so I started Mapping Fire, it's been 10 years now as of this spring. And my original background is actually in development. I have a degree in computer science. So I come at the world of brand strategy, I think from a slightly different angle than most. I think a lot of people come in more through a creative path. And it's really helped shape my
thinking around brand strategy, because I think I just come at it from a more, slightly more analytic view where I'm always trying to break stuff apart and quantify things. And I want to understand how things work. And brand to me is one of these nebulous things that, you know, it's just people are always trying to figure out what does brand mean? How does it work? How does it connect with people? Why is it memorable?
Kyle James (03:19.281)
Mm-hmm.
Clay Ostrom (03:41.262)
So that's what I've been really focused on and our customer research also plays into that understanding behavior of people, understanding what's memorable to people, all those kinds of things. So that's kind of map and fire in a nutshell is trying to understand people and what makes a brand memorable and effective is our
Kyle James (03:56.029)
Yeah, right, right.
Kyle James (04:02.62)
Yeah, I saw a little off the cuff here. What do you feel like has been the... Because I think there's a lot of people like, okay, I've got my website, I've got the company name, I've got this mission statement. What really makes it memorable? Not just like, here's a couple of colors and a cool... What makes it truly memorable? I know it be a lot of things, but what would you say are maybe two or three core things? Hey, you gotta have this to make it memorable.
Clay Ostrom (04:29.57)
Well, even though I love design and I'm a big believer in design, I always come back to messaging as being the center point of just about everything else you do. I think we've seen a lot of examples of brands that are very successful, that have very minimal design, but they have a very effective message and product. So they're delivering a very clear value to people. I think if you can communicate,
Kyle James (04:51.056)
Mm-hmm.
Kyle James (04:57.169)
Mmm.
Clay Ostrom (04:59.788)
very clearly about what you provide and have that align with a very important need of someone. That to me is the whole kind of the whole thing. And the design and the logo and the colors are all part of the equation. But I think they are secondary in my mind to exactly what you do and how well you can communicate that to people.
Kyle James (05:23.1)
Yeah, like keeping like the primary things, the primary things. Cause I think a lot of it is like, you see people, I'm to make this cool brand, this cool logo. But what you're saying is like, Hey, having that clear vision and the value and the message that you're giving, like, what are you helping? How are, like, what specific needs are you solving? Spend more time on that. Cause there's so many companies, like I've talked about ICP down the road and trying to figure out, okay, what do we pursue? What do we offer? like, Hey, it goes back to like, what do you, what's the core thing in this case? that's so, okay. So shifting gears now you're,
using AI over a map and fire, obviously over a smoke ladder, when did you start implementing AI? What were you trying to solve within the first place?
Clay Ostrom (06:04.108)
Yeah, I jumped into it kind of as early as possible. think there are, there's those early, early adopters out there who say they've been using AI for, you know, a decade or whatever. So I'm not, I'm not maybe on that level, but, but as soon as there were publicly accessible models and tools to use, I was super excited to jump right into it. And we use it all across the board at map and fire for different things.
Kyle James (06:17.359)
Yeah.
Clay Ostrom (06:33.378)
I would say primarily we use it for a lot of analysis and what I think AI is really strong with is looking at obviously like large sums of data and distilling out things from that. So that's more of how we use it as opposed to creative generation, for example, is.
Kyle James (06:48.9)
Mm-hmm.
Clay Ostrom (06:54.88)
not really what we use it for as much. And I also think that's where AI is a lot weaker in general. think AI strengths are, again, looking at lots of information, pulling out, you know, patterns and things like that. that's, you know, I'm part of my perspective with AI is like, let's use it for the things that I think it's really good at and not try to push it into the areas where it's, you know, humans are still better.
Kyle James (07:00.429)
Mm-hmm.
Kyle James (07:21.116)
Yeah, right, right, right. that's kind of interesting because I hear a lot of the content generation. I mean, that's big thing. In this case, you're like, hey, we're taking more of the analysis approach. Why the analysis? what have you seen the AI do on the analysis side that's like, hey, this is making a big difference in the way we work?
Clay Ostrom (07:44.322)
Well, I will say on the map and fire side, so we do a lot of customer research work and we do things like one-on-one interviews with customers. And just like this podcast, right? We will talk for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. It's a lot of content and it's a lot of work to code those kinds of engagements and pull out the important things and the patterns and the keywords and all those things.
That's place to me where AI is perfect, where you can feed it in 10 interview transcripts and pull out key ideas that you see repeated throughout. So that's one big area we use it. And then another area where I've been using it, this kind of leads into the app, is being able to do analysis of brands at semi-scale.
Kyle James (08:25.616)
Mm-hmm.
Clay Ostrom (08:41.39)
is something that I think is a great application for AI because for one, I think it's really great because AI sort of serves as an objective outside view of a brand. You know, we carry all this baggage with us, especially if you're working on a brand, you have zero perspective anymore about what's good and what's bad. You're way too weighted down with, you know, looking at the same content for months or years or whatever.
Kyle James (08:55.75)
Mm-hmm.
Kyle James (08:59.364)
Mm-hmm.
Kyle James (09:06.3)
Right, right.
Clay Ostrom (09:10.784)
AI can come in and sort of serve like that fresh pair of customer eyes where they're coming at it with no baggage. They're just looking at a face value and interpreting it. So being able to do that is, I think, super valuable. And then again, being able to do some analysis around that too, and saying, not just creatively, what do you think of this brand or something like that, but more specifically, how well does it deliver on these specific points?
Kyle James (09:15.523)
Mmm.
Kyle James (09:21.52)
That's cool.
Kyle James (09:38.236)
Mm-hmm.
Clay Ostrom (09:39.416)
Does it articulate a target customer, a target category, all these different points of value? How well does it deliver on those things? Those are the kinds of things that we try to pull.
Kyle James (09:46.534)
Yeah.
For sure. I think there's a lot of companies out there too. We've experienced that for ourselves. The GPT trainer is like, we have all this data. We're so caught up in the details that we don't see the big picture. I think it's like we were talking about, Clay, is you're seeing the face value. So, okay, let's get that fresh pair eyes here. Let's get the third party, the AI, or an advisor that can go, okay, let's just look at the data and then I'll just start.
and go, where would you make that suggestion on the next step? Because it's so easy to get caught up in this rabbit hole of like, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this. And you're like, okay, but we could, but like, let's look at like the analytical side of this. And that's kind of what your, the perspective that you're sharing here in this, right?
Clay Ostrom (10:35.564)
Yeah, exactly. Even though some of these things are inherently subjective, we're trying to bring some level of objectivity to it. If we can quantify things, it always makes it easier to have a discussion around them. So it's not just two of us sitting in a conference room saying, like, my opinion versus your opinion, and what do you think is better or worse? We're actually trying to put some numbers against it so that we can say, OK, it's better here.
Kyle James (10:55.3)
Mm-hmm.
Clay Ostrom (11:04.248)
for this reason, and it's worse here or weaker here for this reason. And it's just, I think that's just a much more productive way to talk about a brand or positioning or even messaging if you can kind of bring some kind of analysis like that to the table.
Kyle James (11:19.236)
Yeah, so I want to go back a few spaces here. when you're working with a lot of clients and you're building up the brand strategy and the vision, what have you...
Clay Ostrom (11:23.693)
Yeah.
Kyle James (11:32.068)
What have you seen kind of like, because I know you mentioned one of them, right? Like they don't have the fresh pair of eyes, but like you're coming in, I'm saying, like what have you seen kind of the biggest like maybe barrier that's stopping them from getting to like that solid brand foundation? Like what is, what would you say that is?
Clay Ostrom (11:51.064)
think there's a problem that I don't know if anyone else has used this term. So I'm not totally sure if I came up with this or not. I won't claim that I did if someone else. It's instantly trademarked this. But it's this idea that I call latent differentiation, which is essentially that a lot of brands, I think, are sitting on unique value that they are unable
Kyle James (12:00.063)
Well, no, we'll claim it. Well, we're giving you the full rights. Where's it? We're tattooing it.
Clay Ostrom (12:19.918)
to articulate properly or they don't articulate it well enough. So essentially it's the idea that you're doing something, some part of your product or your service is unique, is different. There's a reason why people come to you, right? There's a reason why people pay you for whatever you do.
Kyle James (12:22.236)
Tell me more.
Clay Ostrom (12:41.4)
But there's a gap between that and how well you communicate it to people. And I see it all the time where I'll come to a new brand or a new website. I'll read the homepage and have no idea really what they do. Or if I do understand it, I don't know why it's any different than the other five brands in that category. Again, it isn't that they don't have something to them. It's that they aren't communicating it properly.
And that to me is one of the biggest issues we see with brands. When we say the typical thing of all brands sound the same or all B2B brands sound the same, that's the heart of it, I think.
Kyle James (13:21.862)
So it's like you have to have that differentiator. And I think like what you're saying is like companies, most of them, or obviously a majority of them might already have that, but because it's so buried deep within, if it doesn't show, like if you can't make that super crystal clear on the front of the website or even on your messaging, then they're not gonna know unless they do get into the application website or your services, then they figured out themselves, but they shouldn't have to figure it out themselves. They should be able to identify on the front.
Clay Ostrom (13:42.99)
Exactly.
Kyle James (13:52.302)
of the of
Clay Ostrom (13:52.63)
Exactly. It's like, how many opportunities are you missing because someone came to the site and tried to figure it out and couldn't figure it out and just decided to go with the other brand that they had heard of from a friend because they didn't want to spend any more time trying to dig in to figure out what made you better. And yeah, so I think it's, it's a, goes back to exactly what you said a minute ago, which is we lose perspective. We.
Kyle James (14:20.358)
Mm-hmm.
Clay Ostrom (14:21.282)
when you're working internally on a brand, it's just part of the game. just, you can't see it anymore because it's too obvious to you. You've seen it a million times. And so again, if you can get an outside perspective from a human consultant or from AI, one of those I think is you're way better.
Kyle James (14:30.928)
Mm-hmm.
Kyle James (14:36.302)
Yeah.
What have you been seeing since like, I don't know how long you've been implementing the AI side of things, what types of results have you been seeing so far since you've been saying, asking the AI both internally for yourself and, or even like, don't know if you're having AI or your AI face the client or if it's just mostly internal, what have you seen so far as far as results go?
Clay Ostrom (15:03.17)
Yeah, we're starting to use it more. So it had been, would say largely an internal tool, but with Smoke Ladder being the app that we built, it's getting more integrated now into both sides. And this is, you know, doing like brand audits for companies where we can basically do a, you know, turn something like that around pretty quickly to start a conversation with a new brand.
whether that's an initial pitch or maybe having a first sales call, being able to come in out of the gate and say, here's what we're seeing with your brand. How does this differ from how you all see your brand? And being able to come in as with a more educated point of view, as opposed to just the typical get to know you a chit chat kind of thing, which is important too, but you know, they're usually coming to you because they've got an issue, right? They've got some kind of challenge they're trying to overcome.
Kyle James (15:36.572)
Mm-hmm.
Clay Ostrom (16:02.22)
So.
Kyle James (16:02.872)
Yeah, for sure. so what do you do like, you know, obviously there's a lot of change happening in the AI space and you talked about the smoke ladder, the app and just kind of potentially integrating both sides. What have you been seeing or maybe forcing, I should say, for the upcoming AI initiatives for map and fire for smoke ladder? And like, where do you see playing probably that biggest role in your operations next?
Clay Ostrom (16:29.208)
Well, I've always viewed Map and Fire as becoming more of a product focus company over time. And part of that's been building more productized services, which we use to do positioning, messaging work, and things like that. So I really want SmokeLadder to be, and maybe it's the first of a couple different tools we build, but I want that to become more and more of the focus because I do think it gives us
A lot of data gives us a whole, you like you were saying before with your brand, gives you proprietary access to data that nobody else has, which is a great differentiator for the agency. but it also helps us, I think, push things forward. You know, we, I publish, I'm on LinkedIn pretty regularly and I publish data around trends that we see. We're able to analyze positioning across thousands and thousands of brands to say like, what's working, what's not.
Kyle James (17:08.324)
Mm-hmm.
Clay Ostrom (17:28.888)
So I love being able to use that as a way to kind of, you know, it's both way to people, to get people into the platform, but also kind of help educate people about where there are challenges and opportunities, things like that.
Kyle James (17:35.611)
Right.
Kyle James (17:40.858)
Yeah, for sure. And as we start wrapping up, here Clay has been good having you on the show. Where can people go to learn a little bit more about you that you recommend them check out and then maybe even more about Mapping Fire, same thing with Smoke Ladder.
Clay Ostrom (17:54.648)
Well, like I said, I'm on, I'm on LinkedIn a lot. You can look me up there. I try to publish at least a couple of times a week, but, but I'm always, like I said, putting out data, putting out things that I think are hopefully useful, not just selfies and the fun stuff. No, no, no shade on selfies, but, yeah, but another whole content calendar, like for the next month. Again, no, you know,
Kyle James (18:08.444)
Yeah, yeah. You just, you just crush somebody's spirit out there. love something. No, no. Gone. There it is. All week. Done. Back to the drawing board. I'm sorry. We're hashing too much. That's funny.
Clay Ostrom (18:24.59)
Please show me your dog. I'm happy to look at your dog. I love love all animals. But, but yeah, my content's a little more data and things like that a little more nerdy. But so if you like that stuff, check it out. Definitely like connect with me. But otherwise map and fire.com is our agency site and then smokeladder.com and you can go on there and you can analyze your brand competitor brand for free. You don't even have to create an account.
to get started with it. But then if you do create an account, you can do a little more digging and get into your competitors and all that good stuff.
Kyle James (19:01.404)
Cool, awesome. love it. Clay, man, it's been great having a show, brother. And let's definitely keep in touch. Maybe we'll have you on the next one. So awesome. Yeah, definitely. And thanks, everybody, for listening in. And remember, if you're looking to implement AI into your business today, please, please, please don't try and do it yourself. The time of stress that the AI could cause, it may not be worth it. So schedule a call with GPT Trainer and let them build out and manage your AI for you. Once again, that's gpt-trainer.com.
Clay Ostrom (19:07.832)
Super fun, man. Thanks so much for having me.
Kyle James (19:27.837)
Signing off for now, have a great rest of your day, everyone. Looking forward to seeing everyone on the next episode of AI Chronicles.
