Reed Hansen, CGO at MarketSurge, shares how critical thinking, communication, and human connection are becoming differentiators in a tech-saturated world.
Reed Hansen, Chief Growth Officer at MarketSurge, joins Sara to talk about the evolving role of marketers in the age of AI. From the renewed value of liberal arts degrees to the resurgence of old-school human interaction, Reed shares his take on where marketing is headed and what it takes to stay ahead.
Reed:
“Humanities majors of all varieties are going to be ultimately the most empowered by AI… with their ability to think and think critically… I think that the humanities majors are back in the game.”
Links & Resources:
Connect with Sara: linkedin.com/in/sara-faatz-b67213
Connect with Reed: linkedin.com/in/reedhansen
Learn more about Progress: progress.com
Timestamps:
00:15 – Reed’s biggest concern as a marketing consultant
01:10 – Why human touch still matters in a tech-driven world
02:30 – Merging human language with AI output
03:45 – How to get fluent with AI (before buying martech tools)
05:10 – Composable stacks vs. monolithic platforms
06:10 – Where Reed finds inspiration (hint: Product Hunt + DMs)
07:10 – The rise of the liberal arts marketer in the AI age
0:00:00.1 Sara Faatz: I'm Sara Faatz, and I lead community and awareness at Progress. This is 10-Minute Martech.
0:00:05.0 Reed Hansen: Humanities majors of all varieties are going to be ultimately the most empowered by AI with their ability to think and think critically. Think that the humanities majors were back in the game.
0:00:20.0 Sara Faatz: That's Reed Hansen, Chief Growth Officer at MarketSurge. Let's get started. Thanks for being here today, Reed. Let's start off by just talking about what is keeping you up at night.
0:00:40.8 Reed Hansen: Well, what's keeping me up at night is trying to stay ahead of AI. In my role as a marketing consultant, I worry about where I can continue to offer value and whether it's my knowledge that's going to be valuable or my execution that will be valuable. I just don't know. Everything's happening so fast.
0:01:06.0 Sara Faatz: When you and I were talking earlier, we talked about authenticity and the importance of that in marketing today and in marketing, particularly with AI at the helm. Talk to me a little bit about your thoughts on that and how people can bring that authenticity out even when AI is in the picture.
0:01:25.7 Reed Hansen: I really believe that every sales process, every marketing process should include points of human touch, points where we're talking face-to-face or I just pick up the phone and call to complete a step. And then I can definitely speak from personal experience. I fell into the trap of thinking that I could just automate everything for a long period running this business. And this year I've made a concerted effort to be more of an in-person marketer and networking and it has really paid off. I think there's some novelty to it in 2025.
0:02:05.4 Sara Faatz: Isn't that funny? It's kind of going, the evolution of marketing is bringing us back a little bit to some of our roots where the things that stand out are the things that were part of the playbook maybe in the late '90s, right? Where you actually engaged with people in a different way and things like that. So I think to me, it's really exciting to see how AI can augment that and allow us to have more interactions, more meaningful interactions.
0:02:32.6 Reed Hansen: Yeah. And I'll throw out too, I think attaching a face and like live presentations, public speaking, those kinds of things do a lot for your brand.
0:02:44.9 Sara Faatz: Right, right. Yeah, the AI output and human language are starting to merge a little bit. And so one's starting to sound a little bit like the other, which is really interesting. How the impact that AI could be having even on the way we speak and function, which will eventually make it harder to understand and to know where did that come from, right?
0:03:04.8 Reed Hansen: Yeah, and it is interesting how much we're reading from that's generated by AI. Yeah. And exactly to your point, I think I cited a study and I forget where it's from, but that people are actually taking social cues and including slamming and verbal quirks that you recognize from the AI engines.
0:03:23.8 Sara Faatz: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens to language and human interaction there over time. When it comes to AI, how can people today be future-proofing? And I know that word gets a lot of... it's overplayed a little bit, but how can they be thinking about their marketing technology stacks so that they can continue to evolve at the same pace that technology is?
0:03:48.7 Reed Hansen: Yeah, that's a great question. For one, I would recommend that everybody get access to one of the conversational interfaces with the AI tools and get familiar, practice that. And this can be free. There are freemium models for almost all the engines. Practice conversing with the agent and see what generates the quality of response that you want. And I'd say do that before you adopt the tools that are more specific to your role because they will be structured and limited. Like if you go straight to a blog creation tool or logistics management tool powered by AI, those already have some parameters. When you start with the conversational AIs, you can better understand how it works and potential. Ask follow-up questions, ask it to refine its answers, and even ask it for recommendations on how you can improve the outputs, which is very surreal. Like say, how can I get better work out of you? It's hard to envision that like in a human setting, but with the AI engines, that is definitely possible.
0:04:55.9 Sara Faatz: Yeah, that's great. And when you're thinking about the marketing technology stack all up, are you thinking that people should be buying like a monolithic stack, or, is your head more around composability and the architecture that allows you to kind of rip and replace as needed?
0:05:13.4 Reed Hansen: Yeah, great point. And that's definitely the latter is my recommendation, that there are apps that may not require AI, and they may need to be connected to others that are. There are great technologies that are very consumer accessible, like Make, Zapier, that allow you to make these connections, filter the flow of data that's going back and forth, and allow it to synthesize data that's coming from different places. Like, how does my web traffic affect my sales? Those are in two different systems. The great thing, though, is that between all these things, and now powered by AI, it does not require a full stack development team to build everything from scratch and the time and expense that that takes. You can build lightweight apps that deploy quickly and can be swapped in and out as needed and as you adopt new apps.
0:06:07.2 Sara Faatz: Can you tell me right now, who are you following for inspiration or information?
0:06:11.8 Reed Hansen: I've been using Product Hunt quite a bit. And what I have found is that I reach out to the individual founders. So, by the way, it's a website where people can promote their startup or their startup project. And these founders, they'll put their information, and so I'll backtrack on to LinkedIn and reach out and make connections. Now, this has been really helpful for meeting people to interview, but also I get a lot of great ideas and some fresh perspectives. Water filtration AI app creator from Lebanon, who is just a fascinating individual. And I've met other computer science grads that are doing some very interesting things and designers. And so I try to keep it at the ground level, and I just a lot time every day to do some deliberate networking.
0:07:03.3 Sara Faatz: Yeah, no, that's great. That's really cool. So tell me, what is your hot take right now?
0:07:07.9 Reed Hansen: Yeah, that's a great question. So I speak from personal experience as a Italian major, and I haven't actually encountered any other Italian members, Italian majors, other than those that I graduated with. But I loved my studies and thought at one point I'd go into international law. Didn't end up executing and ended up in sales and marketing. But years later, I finally find the medium AI that really empowers me to do some wonderful technical things. And my hot take is that humanities majors of all varieties are going to be ultimately the most empowered by AI with their ability to think and think critically and the language skills that we've developed in our studies and just our ability to question things. And I think that the humanities majors were back in the game.
0:08:08.8 Sara Faatz: There you go. I love that. Yeah, as an English major, I have to say, one of the things I love is to look at the sentence structure and I love playing with the different tools to say, hey, rephrase this for me or change it. And interestingly enough, seeing how sometimes it just restructures the words in a way that actually changes the entire meaning of the sentence. So it's really interesting to play with that. So I am right there with you. I think it was actually Andre Karpathy, one of the co-founders of OpenAI in 2023, he said, "The hottest new programming language is plain English." So I think that that plays exactly into what you're saying. I think understanding of language and structure and meaning and how to communicate, I think is going to be super, super important when you start spending more time with the agents and LLM outputs and bots and all of those kinds of things. Well, Reed, it's been wonderful talking to you today. Thank you so much for spending the time with us.
0:09:06.7 Reed Hansen: Thank you so much, Sara. It was a real treat. I appreciate it.
0:09:09.6 Sara Faatz: Listeners, thanks for tuning in. Make sure you like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, I'm Sara Faatz, and this is 10 Minute Martech.