The New Era of Video: Digital Twins & AI with Dave King, HeyGen

Dave King from HeyGen joins Katie Zeppieri on this episode of Get Mic’d to discuss the transformative power of AI in visual storytelling. As HeyGen’s Chief Business Officer, Dave shares how their avatar technology, including creating digital twins, revolutionizes content creation and accessibility. 

He highlights success stories, from viral campaigns to personalized client interactions, and emphasizes the potential for digital twins to expand the reach of ideas across languages and borders. In this episode, discover how HeyGen is making visual storytelling more inclusive and explore the future of AI in marketing with Dave.

Here are three reasons why you should listen to this episode:

1. Learn how HeyGen’s innovative digital twin technology allows you to create lifelike avatars and generate high-quality videos, revolutionizing content creation and making it accessible to a broader audience.
2. Hear real-world examples of how businesses, from global brands to local nonprofits, use HeyGen’s tools to enhance their storytelling, personalize client interactions, and engage with audiences in multiple languages.
3. Understand how AI transforms visual storytelling and marketing strategies, offering new ways to connect with audiences and spread ideas more effectively.

Resources

• HeyGen
• Connect with Dave King: LinkedIn 
• Connect with HeyGen on LinkedIn, X, Discord and YouTube
• The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr 
• How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp
• Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
• Listen to more Get Mic’d episodes

Episode Highlights

[02:30] The Accidental Marketer

• Dave shares how he accidentally fell into marketing while working on a college startup despite initially wanting to focus on product development or sales. Drawing the “marketing straw” led him to discover a passion he didn’t know he had.
• Dave recounts a pivotal moment in his career on Wall Street, where he realized the importance of storytelling in making business decisions. This experience played a crucial role in shaping his approach to marketing at Salesforce, Asana, and now at HeyGen. He emphasizes that all the financial analysis in the world can only support a vision—it’s the story that genuinely drives decisions.
• Dave reflects on how his initial understanding of marketing as merely promotion and creativity evolved. He now sees marketing as the art of identifying pain points and effectively communicating how to solve them.
• Dave discusses the importance of finding the right product-market fit, especially for startups. He introduces the concept of the “segmentation bullseye” to help teams identify their core audience, avoid markets that may lead to poor experiences, and concentrate resources on the most promising opportunities. This focus helps build a better product and ensures that marketing and sales resonate with the intended audience, avoiding generic approaches.

[05:40] Dave King: “What I misunderstood about marketing was I thought, oh, it’s about the promotion. It’s about the clever campaign. It’s about the creative; it’s not really about those. It’s about putting your finger on the pain and then being able to communicate how you solved that pain.”

[08:41] The Complexities of Modern Marketing

• Dave highlights the importance of having a clear North Star vision for the audience and story, which guides the team’s efforts. He stresses the value of internal clarity to avoid “random acts of marketing” and effectively utilize agency partners and freelancers.
• Dave shares insights on the importance of proactively setting strategic “big bets” to focus marketing efforts, citing Airbnb’s shift from performance marketing to emphasizing their unique offerings as an example of staying true to a brand’s strengths.
• Dave emphasizes the importance of aligning a company’s business model with its mission, sharing how Asana’s approach focused on creating an accessible and low-cost product to reach and empower teams worldwide.
• Dave discusses the importance of being helpful and creating remarkable experiences to drive business growth, highlighting the role of video as an increasingly essential and engaging format for connecting with audiences.

[16:59] The Future of Video with HeyGen at the Centre

• Dave introduces HeyGen as an AI-powered video tool designed to simplify video production, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes. He explains how traditional video production can be time-consuming and costly, whereas HeyGen allows companies to create high-quality videos quickly and affordably.
• Dave addresses the fear of AI replacing human connection in storytelling by explaining that HeyGen’s AI avatars are created with strict trust and safety protocols, ensuring authenticity and consent. He emphasizes that AI should enhance, not replace, human storytelling.
• Dave shares examples of how businesses use HeyGen for various purposes, including product explainers, sales enablement content, and personalized videos. He highlights the tool’s ability to localize content in multiple languages, making it easier for companies to reach a global audience.
• HeyGen’s mission is to democratize video storytelling, providing tools that were once only accessible to large companies with significant budgets. Dave highlights how even small businesses and nonprofits are using HeyGen to create impactful content without needing extensive resources.

[17:22] Dave King: “Now, with AI, there’s a whole new way. You can simply write your script and click generate video, and it’ll generate a beautiful studio-quality video 10x faster and at a 10th of the cost of traditional video production.”

[17:00] HeyGen’s Digital Twin and the Future of Personalized Marketing

• Dave explains how HeyGen enables users to create a “Digital Twin,” a lifelike AI avatar replicating their exact voice, facial expressions, and hand gestures. Users can generate their digital twin with just 90 seconds and a webcam, allowing them to create personalized videos quickly and efficiently.
• Dave shares inspiring examples, such as a campaign with McDonald’s, where customers could send personalized video messages to their grandparents in their native languages, powered by HeyGen’s localization technology. This campaign highlights how HeyGen helps unlock creativity by making complex, personalized content accessible to everyone.
• Dave emphasizes that HeyGen’s technology doesn’t replace creativity but amplifies it. By making video content creation more accessible, HeyGen empowers individuals and businesses to tell their stories in the most engaging way possible—through video.
• Dave discusses AI’s transformative potential in marketing, arguing that it enhances the ability to connect with audiences on a deeper level by enabling more personalized and engaging content. He believes AI will not replace the core elements of storytelling but will instead serve as a powerful tool to amplify human creativity and connection.

[18:22] Dave King: “Storytelling is the most powerful force on the planet, and video is the most engaging form of storytelling. HeyGen unlocks everyone’s ability to tell their stories in any language, making it more engaging and amplifying that connection.”

[38:17] Dave’s MicDrop Moments

• Notable Brand Definition: 
  “Standing for something even when it is not popular. Especially when it is not popular.”
• Memorable MicDrop Moment: At HeyGen, the launch of their avatar video technology showcased the power of creating and sharing a digital twin, exemplified by their CEO, Joshua, who gained 3 million views with his avatar video. This demonstrated the lifelike quality and ease of creating personalized content. Another notable instance was when the President of Argentina’s World Economic Forum speech went viral, thanks to HeyGen’s translation capabilities, making it accessible in English despite being delivered in Spanish. However, the most impactful moments are often the everyday successes, like a real estate agent in Arizona sending personalized videos to clients or an international nonprofit using HeyGen to open their conference in multiple languages.
• Brand Admiration: Dave admires AirBnB
• Recommended Resources for Brand Building: 
• The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr explores how the human brain processes stories, examining what makes a story compelling and the role of conflict in creating impactful narratives.
• How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp: This book challenges conventional brand marketing wisdom by emphasizing that brand success is less about creativity or ad budgets and more about consistently maintaining mental and physical availability and using distinctive brand assets.
• Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout: A classic in marketing literature, this book focuses on establishing a unique position in the consumer’s mind and effectively owning that space.
• Upcoming Projects:
  Dave shared that HeyGen is committed to democratizing visual storytelling by making it accessible globally, aiming to empower the 99% who previously lacked engaging formats. He encouraged those passionate about visual storytelling to join their expanding team. Dave also mentioned that you can connect with him on LinkedIn to see his real-life presence and digital twin. He emphasized that digital twins can significantly broaden the reach of ideas, allowing them to be shared in multiple languages while retaining the creator’s personal touch.

About Dave

Dave King is the Chief Business Officer at HeyGen, the AI video generation platform designed to grow your business. HeyGen enables businesses to create 10x faster, localize videos into 175+ languages, and personalize videos at scale, transforming visual storytelling for more than 40,000 enterprise customers. As CBO, Dave oversees the development of HeyGen’s AI video and audio product suite for various business applications, including marketing, corporate training, sales, and education. Dave was formerly the CMO of Asana and held various marketing leadership roles at Percolate, Highfive, and Salesforce. You can connect with Dave King on LinkedIn.

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