256: Timeless Industrial Marketing Strategies and New Ways Manufacturers Can Reach Their Ideal Customer featuring Wendy Covey of TREW Marketing and Joe Sullivan of Gorilla 76

Manufacturing Happy Hour · 7 Oct 2025 · 53m

AI in practice: one real use of AI described

What this episode covers

Wendy Covey of TREW Marketing and Joe Sullivan of Gorilla 76 discuss the evolution of industrial marketing, emphasizing that while fundamentals like expert knowledge extraction remain vital, the distribution channels have shifted. They highlight the resurgence of public relations as engineers distrust AI-generated content and seek credible third-party sources, and explain how manufacturers must build topical authority across platforms like Reddit and YouTube to appear in generative search results. The guests also address the common executive misconception that marketing should yield immediate ROI, advocating instead for long-term brand building and community-driven strategies like the Industrial Marketing Summit.

AI in practice

Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.

Marketing & salescustom GPT

Gorilla 76 built a custom GPT trained on their internal knowledge base (white papers, webinar transcripts, sales recordings) to generate LinkedIn content, aiming to produce higher-quality outputs than generic AI tools by using specific, expert-sourced inputs.

“Some of the AI tools are really interesting to build a custom GPT that's focused on how we're going to develop LinkedIn content from these 50,000 words of stuff we've already published. … She pulled in 50 some LinkedIn posts I've written over the last few years and helped construct something that we can now make all kinds of new things from…”

Joe Sullivan · Hear it at 25:58

Mentioned

Companies
TREW Marketing, Gorilla 76
Tools
ChatGPT, LinkedIn
Also
Industrial Marketing Summit

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