UT Interns AI Marketing Tools Discussion

Date: May 13, 2025 Participants: Gary Sheng, Jason Applebaum (Head of Marketing), Doug Green (Head of AlphaX), various UT Austin interns (Zach, Dylan, Alexandra, Anushri/Anu, Ranil), Garrett (joined late)

Overview

This meeting brought together Alpha's leadership with University of Texas Austin interns working on developing AI-powered marketing tools. The conversation revealed Joe Liemandt's vision to create a fully AI-driven marketing system that could eventually eliminate the need for traditional marketing agencies and teams. Each intern is developing expertise in a specific area of AI marketing technology with the goal of becoming experts by mid-June and potentially creating interconnected tools that could revolutionize Alpha's marketing approach.

Key Projects & Initiatives

Intern Projects

Each UT intern described their focus area:

1. Zach - Government contracting and software development

   "I got started last week as really structuring kind of the idea of how do we position Alpha to secure a government public ed contract."

2. Brand Kit Generator - Automated brand development

   "I've been focusing a little bit more on the branding and specific graphics for these alpha students and their startups... I want to make sure that we're getting the story right."

3. Dylan - AI website generation for vibe marketing

   "I was working specifically on website generation, vibe marketing style... looking at how we can use AI to make our websites be specific about the vibes that we want our products to give out."

4. Alexandra - AI SEO platforms research

   "I've been doing research on current AI SEO platforms. And I kind of want to figure out what the gaps are... I found that a lot of the platforms lack emotional understanding."

5. Anushri/Anu - AI-driven video creation

   "I'm working more on trying to use those insights in order to make a video. So possibly looking at an AI-driven video and what that might look like."

6. Ranil - Ad campaign analytics

   "Looking at different campaigns that Alpha is running... how we've kind of allocated costs and budgets to each of those ad campaigns and how we're kind of getting a return on investment."

Vision for Integration

Doug and Jason discussed how these individual projects could be integrated into a comprehensive AI marketing system:

Doug: "I kind of see how all these things may potentially come together... record those conversations, have them transcribed in real time, look for keywords to create these cascading campaigns in the background."

Jason: "Joe... said, I want to get to a point where I don't need you or a marketing team, that everything is just done via the AI tools. There's an AI, basically an AI marketing agency that does everything."

Current Marketing Challenges

Jason Applebaum candidly described the current state of Alpha's marketing operations:

"There are six schools in Austin, but there are probably another 10 schools, products, locations, items, if you will, that we're marketing. All of them have been managed individually... No brand consistency, no messaging consistency, no process consistency, no data consistency."

Key challenges included:

1. Fragmented Organization

   "We're at least 50 to 75 people that I know of for sure in marketing... a lot of people wear a lot of hats."

2. Tool & Content Fragmentation

   "How to store, manage, find, and use all of this content... Where does it all live? How does the ad platform go and find approved assets... it's nearly impossible to just go to one place."

3. Disparate Agencies

   "We just hired a brand new agency that's going to run all of our paid media. We had it run by multiple different agencies, which doesn't make any sense."

Gary's Concerns and Inputs

Gary expressed concern about adding complexity to an already complicated situation:

"I kind of feel like the existing people that were onboarded already... had plenty to have already plenty to figure out that... bringing on a bunch of more people creates a disaster basis issue."

He also emphasized hands-on experience:

"You should probably create your own personal website... You should probably get your hands dirty and really just try to understand, not just theoretically think about these things."

Next Steps and Timeline

1. Brain Lifts by June 15th

   Doug: "What Joe and I agreed to is that by mid-June, June 15th, that each of them would be an expert in their respective field or project that they were working on."

2. Presentation and Quizmaster Session

   "We're going to put you through the Quizmaster... will you guys feel comfortable having a presentation standing up in front of us and downloading and just getting quizzed?"

3. Testing and Implementation

   Jason: "How can we start to test it? How can we give it one school? Let's attach it to NextGen Academy... does it work?... Then we start thinking about, how do we actually implement that?"

Digital Asset Management Need

Jason highlighted a critical infrastructure need not being addressed:

"One of the other elements that I think is a huge, huge thing... is how to store, manage, find, and use all of this content... a digital asset management tool, but it's powered by AI."

Notable Quotes

Jason on his role: "I'm trying to build a center of excellence for all of those to come together. And we're still very much in the definition phase."

Jason on the future: "I may convince Joe and Mackenzie to help me build out this organization to do this, but ultimately the long-term goal in their mind... is, how are we going to do it without so many people?"

Doug on implementation: "We got 90 days to have six operational projects up and running. I think it's worthy of a dedicated resource who understands the technical?"

Jason on integration: "It doesn't all come together. They are literally being managed by different agencies or different groups or different audiences within the organization. So if we put it all together it would be a game changer."