Podcast

Oct 27, 2026

AI Readiness and Human Judgment with David Magrini

Podcast cover art for In Clear Focus episode AI Readiness and Human Judgement

IN CLEAR FOCUS: Podcast guest David Magrini, CEO of Volute Group, explores the critical role of AI readiness before investing in new marketing technology. While brands rush to buy AI tools, David explains why a fragmented data infrastructure creates accumulating "experience debt" for everyday consumers. Discover why AI alone is not the answer, how to ensure your strategies remain human-led, and what marketing leaders must evaluate in their MarTech stack before their next software purchase.

Episode Transcript

Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS

David Magrini: AI alone is not the answer to everything in my humble opinion and how blue goes to market from a perspective with our clients. It's really about embracing AI and having a driven strategy but that is human.

Adrian Tennant: You're listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising, produced weekly by Bigeye, a strategy-led, full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I'm your host, Adrian Tennant, Bigeye's Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. Marketing teams have spent the past three years buying AI tools. Many of those tools now run on top of customer data nobody has cleaned up, inside operating models built for a different era. Our guest today argues that most of the value organisations want from AI is already sitting in the systems and the people they've already paid for. David Magrini is the CEO and founder of the Volute Group, a customer experience consultancy with over 80 senior consultants. Over 35 years, David has run individual marketing at one of the world's largest financial institutions, built Merkle Health into a top 15 US healthcare agency, and served as group president at Real Chemistry. In April, Volute acquired the analytic consultancy, QuantumSight, to discuss data readiness, where human judgment still outperforms the algorithm, and what to check before your next MarTech investment. I'm delighted that David is joining us today from Connecticut. David, welcome to InClearFocus.

David Magrini: Thanks for having me.

Adrian Tennant: Volute Group is positioned as a customer experience consulting firm rather than a technology implementer. So, when a CMO brings you in, what does a typical engagement look like?

David Magrini: Well, I wish there was a typical one, Adrian, right? They all seem to be somewhat unique, but oftentimes, you know, they have some use cases that they just have not been able to execute for an unknown reason, you know, from their perspective. That's a pretty common thread, right? Additionally from that, they'll have some resource gaps or constraints on resources that are inhibiting them from new go-to-market strategies, getting those go-to-market strategies in market in a timely fashion, or they have simply a really large goal from a revenue perspective that's been laid on them and they need to think differently. They need to get some fresh marketing in market or be able to affect the business in a different way than they traditionally have. I think those are probably the most common areas where we'll get a phone call.

Adrian Tennant: Now, earlier in your career, you ran individual marketing at one of the world's largest financial institutions. Getting a single personalized campaign into market meant pulling data from, I think you told me, 47 different internal systems.

David Magrini: Believe it or not.

Adrian Tennant: Yeah. David, what did that experience teach you about the gap between marketing ambition and marketing infrastructure?

David Magrini: Well, I mean, Adrian, first off, it's 20 years later and I'm still telling this story, right? So I think, I think I have some PTSD, you know, from that, that whole experience. But I think in general, no matter how great a marketer you and your team are when the infrastructure is fragmented and maybe not. And certainly not even to the degree that I experienced that we're talking about specifically here. It inhibits your in-market success, right? It's just, and obviously as well as tools and platforms and technology have evolved over the years from a marketing perspective. That's only grown, right? I mean, we also used to talk about at a former company, the Lumascape for marketing technology. Right. And that Lumascape, I stopped counting. But there were, I think at one point over 20,000 platforms in use at any one time. So just how to navigate all of that is just a, you know, a huge hurdle. But thinking about that distance between marketing ambition and market infrastructure. You have to be bold as a marketer to spend the time and the money to know your infrastructure, know the limitations, get that fixed if you want to optimize your in-market spend, right? And that's really the bottom line. I mean, with this example, even almost 20 years ago, we had great success in driving assets under management, which was what the team was there to do. But it would have been a heck of a lot better if we could have gotten six campaigns out a year, right, versus literally the two that we were able to because of that data infrastructure and the systems that we had to collect data from. So speed to market always really, really important. And where you can streamline it, you have to, especially today.

Adrian Tennant: Well, as you mentioned, that was nearly 20 years ago, and you've worked inside a lot of marketing organizations since then. So when you first look at a company's data environment today, what are the early signals that tell you they aren't quite ready to get value from artificial intelligence?

David Magrini: Sure. It's a great question. And every situation is unique, right? But I think the best place to start is by investigating the, you know, the use cases that are, and I'm going to say working in quotes, right, and those that they haven't been able to execute on. That's a good just sort of initial scan, right? Like you're sitting on this data set, we've looked at what your data assets are. Out of those data assets, how many are you really leveraging? Or, you know, if you could bring one or two new insights from a data perspective into your organization, what would you be able to do with those? So it starts to get at those gaps as well. And a quick data assessment will tell us how connected or not connected their data is. So going back to what we were just talking about, where is the data residing in your platforms? Is it in four platforms? Is it in a central location? How accessible is it? Are there APIs involved that make access easy or not? All of those factors. And if we find, which typically, look, I'll say 99% of the time, There are gaps, there are issues right because you've got so much data that every organization is sitting on regardless of the size of the organization. And if there are either gaps or manual workarounds in getting campaigns into market that's a really good signal that we need to do some data cleansing and some data work before implementing any kind of a strategy and we all learn this a long long time ago adrian the same thing holds true today. If it's garbage in, it's going to be garbage out. But today, those stakes are even higher with AI, right? Because, you know, data can really exacerbate a business problem in the age of AI. And oftentimes, if you're not fully on top of it, it can swell very, very quickly.

Adrian Tennant: Well, at Volute, you use the term “experience debt” for what accumulates when a new tool gets added to an already fragile data environment. David, how does experience debt eventually show up for the customer?

David Magrini: First of all, I love that term. I'd like to say we made it up. I'm not sure if we made it up or not, but I think it's very applicable to how business is operating today. But if you just think about how many, on a personal level, how many service encounters have you had, maybe even in the last week, let alone over a longer period of time, where you have to repeat answers to questions that you've already provided? I just went to a new physician the other day for a checkup. I'm very diligent about keeping my electronic medical record up to date because not only am I a marketer and a kind of a data guy, right? I also operate in the health system, right? Healthcare space. And I make sure that is all up to date. So when I have to fill out all those forms again, part of me just wants to say, go look at my record, my electronic medical record, which you have access to. But they wanted, you know, you've got a handwrite half the time or they hand you a tablet. Right. But if you just think about those service encounters where you have to repeat answers to questions that you've already provided, that's experienced that. Right. Or if you've just made a significant purchase, say you spent a couple thousand dollars on a couch and you have to call customer service with a question and they don't know who you are. They don't know your purchase. They don't know. anything about you, but you just made a significant purchase. That's experienced debt. Another example, when you get bombarded by promotional emails or SMS from a brand where you recently have just bought that same item. So they haven't used that transaction data in any way to tailor an experience for you and something that would be worthwhile for you to know as an add-on to the brand. And similarly, when the brand's recommendation engine is sending you completely irrelevant content or offers. Those are all examples of experience and how they show up. And we've all experienced that. I mean, I might even say to some degree, we experienced that on a daily basis as a consumer.

Adrian Tennant: McKinsey's 2025 “State of AI” report found then that 88% of organisations use AI in at least one function, while only about a third have scaled it across the enterprise. David, what's the reason for that gap?

David Magrini: A number of reasons, but I think inertia is at the top of the list, right? I mean, as marketers, we are constantly fighting inertia with our clients. The, you know, we've always done it this way syndrome, or that's going to cause a lot of extra work where I'm going to have to work with other departments that I don't normally work with or things along that line. But I think inertia is, you know, one of the main reasons. And a lot of people not comfortable with the idea that AI can actually enhance the value that they bring to the organization and to the team, getting over the fear that AI is going to replace my job, right? Now, there's examples of that. We've all seen that, but we at Volute, we won't take an engagement from a customer if the goal is to replace my team of 100 marketers by implementing an AI solution. If that's the end goal, is just simply to cut costs, that's not something that we're interested in doing because we don't believe in that and we believe in AI-enabled and human-led AI strategies, right? So being able to redeploy those resources or bring new use cases in market as a result of leveraging an AI strategy, that's a very useful way to think about AI from a marketing perspective. I think another reason for that gap or just, you know, kind of along the lines of what I was just saying is resource and skill gaps in the team and an unwillingness to bring in outside expertise. And then really also just some of the infrastructure issues that we've been talking about is another reason. But I would expect, I think it'll be interesting when McKinsey does their 2026 report, you know, what's happened to that 80, 80% of organizations. I bet it hasn't moved much.

Adrian Tennant: David, when we were preparing for this episode, you shared with me that within a single month, four senior leaders messaged you with essentially the same kind of questions. They were weighing whether to replace a platform, sunset a vendor, or pause and understand what they already own. Why is that third option the hardest one for a marketing leader to choose?

David Magrini: Well, you know, Adrian, I mean, great, I think great marketers are trailblazers, right? And in one form or another, and constantly looking for how to move the brand and the business forward. And if you think about it, pausing anything is the antithesis of trailblazer, right? Of being out there and leading and pushing and, you know, trying to find other ways to get their brand message across that's going to drive a return on investment. You have to be strong enough to take a stand and explain to your executive leadership how kind of taking that pause and examining the technology and the data, how that's going to benefit the company in the long run. And if you don't have like-minded influencers in the C-suite, That's a tough, right, it's a tough discussion to begin with, but then it's really a tough discussion if you're kind of standing on an island, you know, on your own as a marketer and saying, hey, our team is in the data and is in our marketing technology stack every day, and these are the issues, and if we're gonna run as fast as you want us to run, we need to fix those issues, right? So it's just simply a difficult discussion. And then I think, a lot of marketers constantly are facing growth goals that are unrealistic and that they really didn't have true input into establishing that goal, right? Those goals get brought to marketing oftentimes, right? And slowing down to get things done, get things right, is often just simply not seen as an option, even if it makes the business grow faster in the end. So I think they're in those types of situations Where you do need to maybe pull back from executing some use cases keeping the lights on certainly i mean you know no one would advocate that you know you go dark from a marketing perspective while you're trying to get your marketing technology stack in your data correct but focusing on the ones that are working. but really also analyzing and putting measures in place to fix the gaps that are there before you go and try to execute new use cases that you believe are going to bring a positive return on investment to the business.

Adrian Tennant: Let's take a short break. We'll be right back after this message.

Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. I'm speaking with David Magrini, the CEO and founder of the Volute Group. You recently posted on LinkedIn that Ford cut deep into its engineering ranks on the assumption that AI and automated quality systems could absorb the work. It then brought 350 experienced engineers back and went on to top the J.D. Power Initial Quality Study for the first time since 2010. David, what's the lesson we can learn from that reversal?

David Magrini: AI alone is not the answer to everything. That's first and foremost, I think. In my humble opinion and how Volute goes to market from an AI perspective with our clients, it's really about embracing AI and having an AI-driven strategy, but that is human-led. That, Adrian, I think really is the answer. If you'll indulge me, I can tell a little story of what happened to me and my home a couple of years ago.

Adrian Tennant: Well, on IN CLEAR FOCUS, we love case studies. So, David, fire away.

David Magrini: Beautiful, beautiful. I'll give this as a personal one. So, it's a Saturday afternoon, late May, really humid day, big thunderstorm rolls through our town, and we lose power. Now, not uncommon, right? For a lot of people, but we never, for whatever reason, we never lose power here at our home. And so we're in the dark for about 15 or 20 minutes. And I say to my wife, I said, you know, I'm going to just take a stroll through the neighborhood and just see who else was affected. Right? So I did that and I come back and I'm like, this is really odd. It looks like we're the only house without power. Right? So I call Eversource. I am going to name the name of the company. I call Eversource. It's a Saturday afternoon, and I can't speak to a human being. All I can do is leverage the AI agent to tell them what's going on. And then of course, the result of that is, well, someone will be in touch with you. So at first, my first call, Adrian, I say, okay, I'll be patient. Patient is not a strength of mine, to be honest. And about a half an hour goes by, I don't get a phone call. So I'm like, all right, you know what, I'm going to go kind of inspect, go look around the house. So I start to do that and I come up to where the main power comes in from the road to your meter. Everybody's got a meter on their house, right? Well, our meter is laying three feet off the side of the house. It got blown off the side of the house in this lightning storm. So now at this point, I start to panic a little bit, right? Because could there be fire in the walls, whatever, you know, what, what is it? What could be going on? So I call back. I call Eversource back, I get in the same trap and my wife I think was upstairs taking a shower or something and I run in and I'm like, you got to get out of the house, the power is blowing off the side of the house. And so at that point I realized I'm not going to be able to talk to a human being at Eversource to report this and get somebody out here ASAP. So what do I do? I end up calling 911. We have a volunteer fire department in our town, no less than 12 people in 12 different vehicles show up within 20 minutes or so. And each one of them comes in and says, well, geez, I've never seen that happen before. But the thing is. The fire department, thankfully, has a bat line, has a bat phone into Eversource. So they were actually able to get Eversource to respond. But I guess, you know, to me, that's just an example, again, of Eversource put in, you know, an AI agent policy to cover calls, but they must not have contemplated emergencies, which this was because my house very easily could have burned down as a result of this. Thankfully, it was contained. None of that happened. But my inability to be able to actually report it to someone who could then say, we're going to dispatch a crew out to you ASAP to make sure everything's okay. What was the cost to the town for those 12 different firefighters to come? So it's just, I think, an example of how AI can exacerbate a problem that could be easily taken care of if there was human intervention.

Adrian Tennant: Now, in April of this year, Volute acquired QuantumSight, which is a human-focused analytic consultancy. David, what did that add to how you diagnose a client's problems?

David Magrini: No, it's a great question. I mean, we've always had an analytic offering, right, at Volute. But the QuantumSight acquisition brought a few things for us. Certainly additional scale, right, and really a great leader in Shiv Gupta. who joined our leadership team as a result of the acquisition. They also brought an offshore capability that was now in-house, right? So when we did have a need for offshore, we certainly had avenues to be able to do that, but now we had an offshore capability that was really in-house for us. Another really, I think, important aspect and a reason that we did this was QuantumSite has been over the years very active in an organization called the Marketing Accountability Standards Board. And I would encourage anyone who listens to this podcast to look up Masby because it is an academic group. So these are not marketers. They're not looking to sell the next ROI model or what have you. Right. But it is a group of very distinguished. Academic folks that have created standards for marketers and specifically analysts to live by so that certification. We extended that certification through the acquisition and actually just received a new accreditation for blues are why analysis right so it's a way to be able to. point to a third party saying, the way these guys create their ROI analysis, it is best in class and it is a standard. And we've gone through a rigorous process to make sure that's the case. Right. So, you know, that MASB certification is something that we're pretty proud of. And then also QuantumSight brought up a SOC2 type two accreditation as well. We want all of our clients and prospects, frankly, for that matter, to know that we not only talk the talk, but we also walk the walk when it comes to measurement and the campaigns that we put in market and what a client can expect those to drive.

Adrian Tennant: Your sector depth is in healthcare and financial services. For a brand marketer in CPG or retail, does the data readiness question look any different?

David Magrini: I think it does, right? Because there's nuance in any industry, but we lead with health and wealth because those are the subject matter experts that we have within our 85 or so consultants that are with us today. But we also have subject matter expertise in retail and B2B. So I think it's, like I mentioned, there certainly is nuance in business, right? But I think also a good team of consultants can apply knowledge from one business segment or industry to another. And I've always been a big believer in that, you know, I might have healthcare expertise in a regulated industry. I might be talking to a B2B company. in a different regulated industry, but understanding regulations and how that affects the use of data and marketing campaigns can be applied back and forth. I actually think it makes for stronger campaigns and stronger results when you do some of that cross-pollination, right? You still definitely need the data experts in retail versus healthcare data versus financial services data. And luckily, we have access to those people when the engagement calls for it.

Adrian Tennant: Got it. IN CLEAR FOCUS listeners really like something they can act on. So David, what's one thing a marketer should do before they sign off on the next AI or Martek purchase?

David Magrini: Call me. Contact me. That's number one. Shameless plug. No, honestly, to me, it's all about engage your data team. for a full review of the data assets and the marketing technology stack and just make sure your data is in order. I mean, I think to me, it's also like, you know, your annual wellness visit with your doc, right? Or your review of your finances with your banker or your financial advisor. Having that view and an up-to-date view is really, really important, right? And then use that foundation. And that doesn't have to take a long time, Adrian, but use that insight of where you stand today to really evaluate the AI platforms and tools that you're looking at, to make sure they can easily be integrated within your existing stack. There's a lot of claims out there. I look at Google reviews. I look at any kind of review that I can get my hands on, frankly, when evaluating a new tool or a platform. But if you do that in a vacuum without understanding what kind of the starting point is with what you already have, that can easily create additional gaps. Even if that new tool is literally the best thing on earth, right? Um, if it can't be integrated, you know, in a somewhat of an easy fashion, you probably need to keep shopping.

Adrian Tennant: Great advice and a great conversation. If listeners would like to learn more about you and the work that you're doing at the Volute Group, what's the best way to do so?

David Magrini: Well, I am always happy to have a conversation, right? So reach out to dmagrini at volutegroup.com. You can find us online also at volutegroup.com. And then follow us on LinkedIn. We are very active in producing thought leadership. And one of the things that we really believe in as well, Adrian, is in sharing knowledge and sharing our experiences, right? So that number one, people might be able to apply that to their own situation and avoid some of the pitfalls that either we or our clients have encountered. But we are always happy to have a conversation and give some free advice. You know, especially as marketers, we're kind of all in this together and we're trying to fight the good fight. And oftentimes that's better done together than on your own.

Adrian Tennant: David, thank you very much for being our guest this week on IN CLEAR FOCUS.

David Magrini: I appreciate it. Thank you, Adrian.

Adrian Tennant: Thanks again to my guest this week, David Magrini, CEO and founder of The Volute Group. As always, you'll find a complete transcript of our conversation with timestamps and links to the resources we discussed on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at Bigeyeagency.com. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, produced by Bigeye. I've been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.

Timestamps

0:00: Introduction to AI in Marketing

00:22: Welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS

00:43: The State of AI Tools in Marketing

01:48: Meet David Magrini

02:12: Typical Engagements with Clients

03:09: Marketing Ambition vs. Infrastructure

03:37: Lessons from Past Experiences

05:30: Identifying Data Readiness Issues

07:46: Understanding Experience Debt

08:02: Customer Experience Examples

10:11: AI Adoption Statistics

10:32: Inertia in Marketing Organizations

12:30: Challenges in Evaluating Technology Options

12:56: The Importance of Data Assessment

15:17: "Customer Passion" Promo

16:21: Case Study: Ford's AI Experience

17:31: The Role of Human Judgment in AI

21:14: Acquisition of QuantumSight

22:25: Cross-Industry Data Readiness

24:49: Advice Before AI or MarTech Purchases

26:23: Connecting with David Magrini

27:18: Conclusion and Thanks

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