12. The Frog Is Already in the Pan. Is Anyone Watching the Stove?

I had a really engaging conversation this week with a digital marketing leader at a Fortune 100 financial services company. Smart, thoughtful, and wrestling with something I am hearing more and more.

The AI problem is real. But not in the way most people think.

His frustration was not with the tools. It was much bigger than that. What LLM are we actually using? There was an internal mandate but he knew not everyone was following it. What is the end goal of our AI investment? Who owns any of this? What does a consistent operating approach look like across the whole team? Right now, in most organizations, nobody has fully answered those questions. Everyone has an opinion. Nobody has the keys.

The market is absolutely flooded with platforms fighting for the same real estate. Funnel.io, Supermetrics, Improvado, Adverity, TapClicks, Whatagraph, Windsor.ai, Coupler.io. Aggregating your data, cleaning it, piping it somewhere useful. They are all good at what they do. But not one of them signals an organizational approach to AI.

I spoke with another agency recently. They have a dedicated Head of AI. Sounds impressive. But his entire focus was on data tools sitting on top of their Google reseller infrastructure. Not one conversation about how AI was going to help the people managing the clients. The tool was the strategy. That is the trap.

OK, why the frog? We have been here before. I am old enough to remember when Google went all in on mobile and most marketers were not ready. No mobile site. No understanding that mobile traffic would quickly overtake desktop. A lot of shops and brands never fully recovered. 

AI is that “frog on a hot pan” moment right now.

The question is not whether to act. It is whether you define the end goal, build a consistent operating approach, and decide now or wait until later feels like too late. Even if what you do today is not perfect, it is a start.

If this is something you are wrestling with, I would love to talk. This is exactly what we do at HITL Strategies. Head over to HITLStrategies.com or just reach out directly. No binders, no decks. Just a real conversation.