If you watch TV at all – and who doesn’t? – you know our man Shaq is really big in the brand-ambassador and commercial spokesman biz. And by “big,” we mean it’s a big-time part of his personal brand and business. We never seen any numbers, but we’d guess he makes good money from that kind of thing.
Here’s something else the big man does as yet another “side hustle.” He appears at business conferences as a keynote and motivational speaker. What a cool gig! Just this past week, O’Neal was on stage in Las Vegas (one of his favorite places) to talk to employees and guests of high-tech firm Adobe Corporation. You probably know Adobe as the company that makes that “Acrobat” PDF reader on your computer, right?
Well, this past week (as of this writing) was the company’s big annual summit in Sin City. Shaq was hired to be on stage and take part in introductions with new products and services coming from the company soon.
The BIG Podcast with SHAQ
Like most tech companies, Adobe is diving into the artificial intelligence (AI) pool head-first. Live on stage, Shaq not only talked about the company’s latest developments, he was the guinea pig (a really big one!) who got to experience what AI could do in business office situations.
Adobe analytics and data science evangelist Eric Matisoff walked Shaq through a sneak preview of in-the-works generative AI-powered solutions to common marketing and branding problems. What does that mean? Stuff like producing marketing materials such as infographics, writing out steps for a marketing campaign, and lots more.
With Shaq’s help, the first preview was all about something called Project Perfect Plays, a tool that enables marketers to quickly create a plan for an ad campaign with just a brief text description. Here at the offices of ShaqFu Radio, we’d love to have a tool like that to help us with marketing and promotions on our Facebook page, Instagram account and others. Sounds very cool!
Shaq also got an up-close look at Project Brand Slam, a tool aimed at helping marketers keep their content as on-brand as possible. Sounds like something O’Neal could use himself with his other brands, like his Big Chicken restaurants! The AI tool can do things like write email messages, create logos and color schemes and lots more.
Shaq and the rest of the audience soaked it all up with plenty of ooohs and ahhhs. At one point, the big man said, “What I like about the technology is that it’s very easy to use…for dummies like Charles Barkley.”