I'm Lisa.👋 Every two weeks, I write to you about marketing, brand, and the messy middle where they intersect. It’s a love letter of sorts. If this was forwarded to you, subscribe here.

January 27, 2023

Hey there. Happy Friday. 

Has your week been as snowy and wild-weathered as ours? 😨

The Overit crew braved the elements last night, hosting an AI meetup to discuss how long it might be before our robot colleagues take our jobs. 

There has been much conversation in our office about AI over the past few weeks--maybe in yours too? It felt nice to come together, human-to-human, to talk about the growth of these tools, what they’re best at, what we are best at, and the ethical considerations surrounding it. 

👉 For example, is content written with AI just well-branded plagiarism?

Here’s why AI isn't a replacement for human marketers and how I am using it to work smarter, not harder.

Writing is about more than words.

AI tools like ChatGPT and GoCharlie do a stellar job of creating mediocre content efficiently. What? Show me the lie.

But my job, your job - our collective job -  is not to form words into sentence patties as quickly as possible. Our job is to make words recognizable so that when someone in your market discovers a colony of bats doing brunch inside their chimney, they feel confident that Pest Control Company A is more trustworthy than Pest Control Company B, C, and D. 

We do not convey that through what we write. 

We convey it through how we write. 

Do you have a favorite author?

Someone whose writing you seek out and whose work is recognizable to you from their first sentence?  

For me, It’s David Sedaris. Me Talk Pretty One Day changed my life. I hear David’s voice like a fingerprint on the page when I read it. It’s not just the words he selects. It is his use of language to create a style that is uniquely his. 

Brand voice is kryptonite for AI. AI can write web copy in the tone of Shakespeare or a pirate, but it can't write like you. You cannot show how you are different by scraping the same datasets as everyone else and pulling the most common results.

Do not sacrifice your voice and what makes you recognizable for the false promise of “cheap content.”

AI cannot bring your brand to life. That work takes every bit of you.  

Growth takes relationships. Not endless content.

I was chatting with a client last week who joked that, for him, technology’s sweet spot came a few years ago. Back then, the new tech helped us get things done faster and felt simple. Today, all the authentication and integrations feel...hard. They don't always sync properly with each other or with us.  

I'm not anti-tech, but we're idolizing the wrong bits of why tech matters.

Think beyond using AI to work as quickly and cheaply as possible. Instead, identify opportunities for technology to make your business feel and act more human by making things more personalized and customer-focused. 

Creating relationships with people is how you transform your business to reach your growth goals. It's not the tech that's cool; it's the relationships the tech helps you build. That's the magic. Your audience needs to feel that you understand their pain points if they are going to trust that you can provide the right solution.

I promise you that no one is impressed by your archive of AI-written, generic-sounding blog posts. They never asked for that. 

So, yes, adopt the technology. Analyze the data into insights.

And then use it to be the most human company in your market.  

You are still the strategist.  

This was a key takeaway from last night's discussion. AI is a wonderful tool to help you see the bigger picture. It's one player on the team, but it's not your coach or the leader devising the plays. It is not here to replace you. It can't.

Leverage AI for what it is--an assistant to help you research and complete mundane tasks quickly. But the strategy part, the part where you make people care and notice, relies on you. AI gives us more time to focus on that, separating the chores from the work that inspires. 

AI will always need to be fact-checked. We've all had that moment where we know the data is pointing us in the wrong direction, recommending weaker copy, or giving inaccurate insights about our audience.

Don't let the ruckus over AI make you think it knows more than you. You are the one steering the ship.

💡What I Think: Creation vs. Transformation

Much of our conversation last night echoed what I've seen online. It was about using AI tools to create. To create words, images, music, and whatever you can dream up.

I'm not willing to hand my voice over to AI.

But I am thrilled to use it to work smarter. 

ChatGPT's legal name is Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer.

Might that last part be our clue into the best way to use it? Instead of prompting it to originate content, challenge it to transform content from one medium to another. 

Use your brain and strategic thought to create a unique, voicey original, and then let AI do what it's best at. To turn:

• A word-vomited idea into an editable filler draft
• A video into a blog post with appropriate headers 
• Words into images
• A research report into key takeaways 
• A podcast interview into a social media campaign
• An article into five social media posts
• Bullet points into ad copy
• A blog post into 15 title options

In an era of tighter budgets, AI delivers new value to help us get more from our resources. It is the best intern you've ever had.

The most important thing you can do to prepare for our robot overloads is to remember that it was never about the words or how quickly they came to us. 

It's about the story we used those words to tell. 

You cannot automate that. Or your place in it. 

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Here are some interesting reads for the week: 

•  How Authenticity and Vulnerability Pay Off:  Authority Magazine interviewed me about how creating an authentic persona became a professional advantage. In it, I offer up a sometimes-contrarian definition of what being authentic really means. I'd love to know what you think.
• Why the M&M's spokescandies are being traded in for Maya Rudolph: Your favorite little chocolate bits issued a social media statement to explain that their spokescandies would be replaced by Maya Rudolph after last year's "shoe controversy." Is it just a pre-Bowl marketing stunt? All signs point to yes.
• These drunken McDonald's ads are golden: Behold, your drunk late-night order is on full blast. 

• Toadzilla could be the world's largest toad: Local female wins awards and gets euthanized.

   

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