Welcome!

Each week we bring to you a discussion on the latest trends in digital marketing and how you can actually implement these strategies into your organization.

#160 How AI is Revolutionizing Digital Marketing with Jeffrey Wiener and Stewart Cohen

Today we’re speaking with Jeffrey Wiener and Stewart Cohen. Jeffrey is an artist, creative director, and entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience blending art, design, and digital media. As the founder of Young Mind Interactive, he creates educational content, animations, and games that make learning immersive and engaging, while his artistic work spans five decades of illustration and fine art. Stewart is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer known for capturing life’s most vibrant moments—whether through cinematic commercials, heartfelt portraits, or large-scale campaigns for brands like American Airlines, Coca-Cola, and AT&T. In this episode, we explore creativity as a lifelong pursuit. From transforming ideas into visual storytelling to building businesses that bring art, media, and technology together in meaningful ways.
“I decided early on, before I was 20, that this was all about reinvention. Technology is coming. I didn’t have time to get used to that first thought before the Apple showed up.” -Jeffrey Wiener
“How do you scale intimate success? It’s really hard to do.” -Stewart Cohen

About the Episode

Welcome to our detailed breakdown of NTM Growth Marketing Podcast’s 160th episode—a jam-packed conversation with two seasoned marketing and media professionals: Jeffrey Wiener of Young Mind Interactive and Stewart Cohen of SC Pictures. In this post, we’ll walk you through every insight, story, and practical tip as they dissect the evolving landscape of marketing, technology, and creativity—with plenty of stories, practical advice, and a healthy dose of nostalgia.

Whether you’re a marketer, a creative professional, or just curious about how AI is changing the way we work and connect, this is your go-to guide for the episode. Let’s dig deep into their experiences, the big trends shaping 2025, and the human side of reinvention.

Meet the Guests: Jeffrey & Stewart

Let’s kick off by meeting our featured guests, both of whom bring decades of experience at the bleeding edge of marketing and creativity:

Jeffrey Wiener, Founder of Young Mind Interactive

  • Runs a digital agency, Young Mind Interactive, originally named before the gray hairs arrived!
  • Has been in marketing since before Facebook, before Macs, before “digital” was part of the everyday vocabulary.
  • Specializes in finding the intersection where marketing trends meet emerging technologies.
  • Recent focus: Shifting clients toward geo and AI-driven advertising solutions.

“The mission of the company is to really kind of find work where cutting edge technology and marketing trends meet.”

Stewart Cohen, Photographer/Filmmaker and Owner of SC Pictures

  • Dallas-based photographer, filmmaker, and the founder behind boutique media company SC Pictures.
  • Aggregates content from filmmakers, photographers, and artists for licensing and creative assignments.
  • Owns and manages extensive content libraries—think hearts, not just algorithms.
  • Believes in remaining boutique: “a little more artist-centric” even as tech scales.

“The big guys used to have souls… We’re trying to engage the community more.”

The Evolution of Marketing: From Print to Pixels

Jeffrey brings a unique perspective—his journey began long before marketing was synonymous with social media and automation.

Early Days: Pencils and Presses

Back in the day, a marketer’s toolkit was paper, ink, and hours of dedicated skill:

  • Jeffrey started as a teenage illustrator doing gigs in Miami for local papers and ad agencies.
  • Crafted menus, logos, and plenty of print design without a computer in sight.
  • “I come from the old days where we didn’t have computers. And then I watched computers come in—I was a young guy and I took advantage of the first Mac that came into a publishing house.”

That shift—from hands-on artistry and tactile production to digital design—created a pivotal moment. Suddenly:

  • Graphic design moved into the digital era.
  • Workflow and tools sped up, but some “old days” skills began fading.

The Nostalgia Factor

Jeffrey recalls marathon illustration sessions for Disney, Scholastic, and NYT—ten or twelve hours straight with just the artwork. No distractions, just deep focus.

“I miss those days. It’s impossible now… I built an animation video this morning for a client and probably, well with my prompts that was probably two minutes of my time. And then the AI took two minutes to build it.”

Marketers everywhere have their own nostalgic stories:

  • The “good old days” of posting motivational quotes and netting thousands of likes.
  • Less algorithmic filtering, more straightforward engagement.

AI’s Impact: Changing the Face of Advertising

It’s the elephant in the room: Artificial intelligence is changing everything.

AI and Search: Less Traffic, More Answers

Recently, Jeffrey’s client, LivingWellStores.com—selling power wheelchairs and scooters online—experienced:

  • A massive dip in Google advertising traffic, with AI-driven platforms answering customer questions before they even reach the website.
  • “Google advertising is not pushing through traffic to websites… We’re seeing website traffic dip down for consumer behavior.”

How’s this happening?

  • AI-driven search engines answer users’ questions immediately.
  • Fewer people actually click through to websites.

The Marketer’s Challenge

To stay visible, marketers now have to work directly with AI platforms:

  • Train language models about your brand’s identity and unique value.
  • Overhaul website content—making it readable by bots as well as humans.
  • Revamp schema markup so AI tools “see” your messaging.

“It requires an overhaul of the content of the website, which I’ve been working on for like 20 years… Now I have to make it natural language and redundant and really mark up the back end so that we’re teaching all these bots.”

Rewriting the Playbook: New Content Strategies for 2025

The landscape is shifting, and both guests are mastering new strategies for a 2025 audience.

Battling Declining Site Traffic

As search AI does more of the “answering,” the new focus is on:

  1. Brand Identity and Awareness
    • Build recognition directly with AI models.
    • Ensure brand content is AI-readable and richly tagged.
  2. Content Overhaul
    • Redesign websites to become “natural language” repositories.
    • Redundancy: Make sure your value statements appear in multiple forms so that bots catch it.
  3. Schema and Markup
    • Deepen backend metadata so AI learns everything about your company.

Video, Voice, and Visuals: The AI Toolkit

Jeffrey shares hands-on tactics for producing marketing content:

  • Voiceover Automation: Trained Eleven Labs (AI tool) to mimic his own “salesy” voice, creating audio tracks in under an hour instead of days.
  • Automated Image Editing: AI in Photoshop for instant background replacement, saving hours per product shot.
  • Video Generation: Creating teaser videos for newsletters in a fraction of the time.

“Our tasks become like very hypersonic… your bigger job as a marketer is organizing how many tasks you’re pumping into a 12-hour period.”

Real-Life Example: Overcoming the Old Bottlenecks

  • Instead of hunting for voice actors, setting up studios, and hours of production, Jeffrey can now create, edit, and deploy with just prompts and a few samples.

Inside the Creative Process: Then vs. Now

Jeffrey’s journey illustrates more than technological change—it shows how the nature of creativity has transformed.

The “Deep Work” Era

  • Marathon focus: Days spent painting for top-tier publishers, lost in the artwork.
  • Fewer distractions, more singular focus.

The “Hyperspeed” Era

  • Brief moments spent “prompting” AI tools.
  • The AI builds the video or audio in a minute or two.
  • Massive increase in creative output—but less immersive process.

From 10-Hour Shoots to Instant Content

Stewart and Jeffrey both observe:

  • Even complex tasks, like producing product demonstrations or “how-to” videos, are now possible via AI-driven character cloning and automated editing.
  • Example: Cloning “Scooter Girl,” the human face of LivingWellStores, to create endless how-to videos without real-world shoots in hot Florida sun.

“Let’s clone her… I can make more how-to videos that don’t require her to be out in the hot sun in Florida.”

Working Smarter: How AI Tools Boost Productivity

Speed isn’t everything—but being more productive lets creatives focus on the strategies that matter.

Core AI Tools Discussed

For Video & Audio

  • Eleven Labs: Mimics voice, instantly generating lifelike audio tracks.
  • HeyGen: Turns newsletter scripts into video, though it’s still being fine-tuned for “robotic” voice issues.
  • Photoshop’s AI: Automatically adds or extends backgrounds, saving hours per product.

For Image Search & Asset Tagging

  • Bria: An early image-matching engine.
    • Finds visually similar images across millions of assets.
    • Uses “pixel recognition” for smart, relevant search results.

“If you picked a photograph of a couple walking on a beach, it would scan the whole archive and have similars underneath… It really enhanced our search.”

For General Productivity

  • ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini: Mainstays for prompting, drafting, idea generation.
  • Podcast AI bots: Automatically slice long-form content into shareable clips.

Authenticity in an AI World

With all these digital advances, the big question is: What feels “real” anymore?

Perfect vs. Imperfect

Both guests—especially Stewart—notice a trend swinging back:

  • For a while, everyone chased perfection. Photoshop could erase every wrinkle, and AI could generate “perfect” faces.
  • Now, people crave authenticity. The candid “out of breath” smartphone video, rough edges and all, can resonate more than a polished ad.

“We spent a lot of years trying to make visuals look perfect. And I’m starting to feel like you need the imperfections to make it look real.”

AI Influencers: The Uncanny Valley

  • Are influencers on Instagram even real?
  • Sometimes, the “too perfect” visuals cause mistrust.
  • Authentic flaws prove a human touch—think Gary Vaynerchuk’s wrinkles and gray hair.

“We’re going to embrace the authentic for sure.”

Building Community and Culture at Scale

As companies get bigger, can they keep the heart that made them special?

  • Stewart shares that SC Pictures aims to remain artist-centric, engaging small creative communities even as they scale.
  • Oversized organizations often lose that “magic sauce”—the soul—when membership grows from a few hundred to tens of thousands.

“How do you scale intimate success? It’s really hard to do.”

The Challenge

  • Keeping culture while expanding is tough.
  • Balancing artist support vs. pure tech efficiency is an ongoing battle.

Reinvention: Skills for Thriving in Tech-Driven Marketing

If there’s one theme both Jeffrey and Stewart agree on, it’s this: Reinvent yourself—constantly.

Jeffrey’s Roadmap

  • Having survived a cardiac arrest at 54, Jeffrey now brings urgency and perspective to everything he does.
  • Early on, witnessing older print shop pros stumble as digital arrived taught him a lesson:
    • Don’t be afraid of change.
    • Keep learning; keep adapting.
    • Reinvention isn’t just survival—it’s the path to creative success.

“I decided early on, before I was 20, that this was all about reinvention. Technology is coming. I didn’t have time to get used to that first thought before the Apple showed up.”

Stewart’s Perspective

  • Growth means staying relevant—great marketing is about information and substance, not fluff.
  • You don’t just chase clicks. You build relationships by helping, teaching, and sharing wisdom.

Advice for Marketers

  • Embrace change as a chance to solve new problems.
  • Learn the new tools, yes—but stay aware of what makes great marketing feel

Wrapping Up: Key Lessons

Let’s recap the big takeaways from this highly practical, story-rich podcast:

  • Marketing is a moving target. What worked last year (or twenty years ago!) won’t keep working thanks to new technologies like AI.
  • AI is part of daily life. The tools are getting smarter, faster, and more useful—if you learn them, your output multiplies.
  • Authenticity matters. Perfection looks great—but imperfection, rawness, and human touch are what resonate most with audiences.
  • Top of Funnel Content is About Relationships. Stay in front of customers so you’re ready when the need arises—not just when they’re searching.
  • Stay relevant by reinventing. Technology will change again—and again. The skill is being willing to unlearn and relearn, over and over.

“Having those challenges keeps our brains fresh, keeps our young mind interactive, so to speak.”

Final Thoughts

In a world where creative professionals are being asked to learn, adapt, and reinvent faster than ever, both Jeffrey Wiener and Stewart Cohen offer not just technical know-how, but the wisdom to keep pushing forward. Their stories show us that the most important trait isn’t technical brilliance—it’s the courage to stay flexible, humble, and open-minded.

So pick up those new tools, learn their quirks, and keep your mind young—even if your agency’s been named for decades.

Thanks for reading this deep-dive recap of the NTM Growth Marketing Podcast’s episode 160!

More Episodes

The School for Humanity Archive

Explore our archive of NTM’s original podcast, The School for Humanity, created to discuss the greatest challenges humanity faces and help promote those who are helping to find solutions. 

Skip to content