Tillamook, OR 7/28/2014

We’re in a wild new world with A.I. The rules are still yet to be written and everyone has a different opinion on how it will transform the world and more specifically, our copywriting jobs.

But one thing we can agree on: it’s here and it’s not going anywhere. So, rather than fighting an enemy this powerful, I’m going to take a swing at joining the band.

What I’ve learned actually, is that this is a pretty great tool to have in your arsenal. For starters, it’s a near-perfect spelling and grammar checker, it can iterate for duplicative copy variations in subject matter or tone, and it can optimize your existing copy using best practices.

But where it really shines is when you know how to prompt it. The more detailed you can be with your questions, the more concise outputs you’ll get. And following up on answers for more clarification and feedback refines even further.

It can also provide you with suggested SEO keyword lists, find you customer data and industry insights, write blogs from articles…basically all the stuff we don’t want to do anyway!

Maybe this is wishful thinking, but I think this tool can free us to be more creative by taking a lot of the technical and iterative writing tasks off our to-do lists. It can also make researching go a lot faster than clicking through a bunch of search results.

The bottom line is that the future of copywriting jobs is likely going to be one that requires learning how to use this technology. But until the machines are completely ready to take over the world, they’ll still need us to hold their hand while they grow up (exponentially).

And for a great primer in using ChatGPT for marketing copywriting, visit https://newsletter.theboost.ai/.

North Beach, SF 12/25/2017

ChatGPT: friend or foe? 

Consider me a reckless optimist, but I don’t think it will take away copywriting jobs…just copywriting jobs as we currently know them.

Yes, the impact on our craft will be significant. Marketers and advertisers will be looking to this technology to produce marketing writing faster, more efficiently and even more effectively. 

I think much like our art director and designer counterparts who have had to learn new technologies over the years to produce their work, it’s now our turn to learn a new way of producing our work.

The good news is that prompting this technology with “Write me an email” “Give me strong headlines” or “Craft a short story” gives you mixed results at best, and probably will for some time.

The better news is that this tool has the potential to help us become better writers today. ChatGPT is like having a search engine assistant that goes through all the possible search “results” and gives you one answer to contemplate. It’s fast and efficient. You can fire away at it endlessly, like a sounding board. It can save us time and make us more efficient. 

It can also give us inspiration. I’ve found that in the word salad that is ChatGPT, you can find golden croutons. Ask it to write you a script and it will be a hot mess, but sometimes there are excerpts that get the wheels turning, and can be the foundation of a script that actually might get produced.

Maybe you just need some facts to get some angles to write about. Or you want to know what your target audience likes to do on vacations when they have kids. Ask it to do some competitor research and share how rival brands are talking about themselves. ChatGPT is happy to help.

I don’t know if our eventual robot overlords will be cruel or kind to us, but for now i’ll keep my enemy closer.

This was not written by ChatGPT. Promise.

San Francisco, CA 3/25/17

Like a lot of advertising writers, I look for writing inspiration outside of the ad industry. So when a colleague recommended a David Mamet ‘Dramatic Writing’ Masterclass, I gave it a whirl using a 30-day free trial.

What I learned was this: being a playwright or novelist requires a vastly different writing skillset, but also requires an equal amount of resilience as we do in our business.

So rather than recap his advice on writing a play, I’ll share with you his advice on not getting chewed up by your own creations.

”If you have something to fall back on, the circus doesn’t need you.”
I’ve heard it said before there are always more people that want to be working in our industry than there are roles available. The way people are treated sometimes, that’s easy to believe. Either way, you have to have thick skin and not take things like feedback or criticism personally. A thousand no’s for every yes can make it feel like it’s something about you, but even the very best in this business get ratio’d like this.

“If you aren’t entertaining them, you aren’t doing your job.”
Cliff Freeman’s agency motto used to be “entertainment sells”. Maybe this is just wishful thinking —since AI will probably be horrible at this for quite some time still— but I couldn’t agree more. Creativity is a powerful weapon in marketing that has far more business-impact potential than copy the research group liked best.

“If it isn’t essential to the story or plot, dispense with it.”
’Clarity is kind’ and ‘brevity is the soul of wit,’ smarter people than myself have written. I’m inclined to agree. It’s a busy world, so don’t waste people’s time.

“You have to eat shit sometimes… you have to sit at the typewriter and bleed.”
Even for the person who is writing a novel all by themselves, someone else is eventually going to have to look at it one day. That is, if you actually want it to be out in the world. Unless you’re also a trust-fund baby. Then you can just fund it yourself, so congrats!

“Afraid you’re going to fail? So what.”
Admittedly, this one is tough one for a lot of people, including myself. I know I often put a lot of pressure on myself to have something “right” or “perfect”. Sharing your work can make me feel very vulnerable and that is one of the most challenging obstacles in our business to overcome. I’ll let you know if I ever get there!

Seligman, AZ 7/20/22

According to Google, 50% of the world uses email. Seriously. What else does 50% of the world share these days besides breathing?

And the average length people keep their email addresses –10 years. That’s longer than most marriages last. This is where you laugh hysterically, but gather yourself enough to pull through and continue reading.

Also according to Google, the average ROI on email marketing is $42 for ever $1 spent. I couldn’t verify this stat, but huge if true. I’m guessing this is data solely from their own email marketing products.

Long story short: email is here to stay and is an essential tool to pretty much every business. And as technology continues pushing the personalization capabilities, emails will become more and more advanced, albeit intrusive.

There was also a good primer on best practices:

• Constantly be testing

• Don’t be afraid to experiment and integrate/try new technology

• Personalize/customize content wherever possible

• Steal ideas from other emails you see and love in the world

I really resonated with the advice they had about testing various lengths, formats and email designs. It’s such an ephemeral medium in the sense we deal with it in so much volume, every single day. Our work email. Our personal email. The emails we look at to get inspired to write other emails….ok, you get what I’m getting at.

It’s crowded here for a reason, and people’s memories are short. I say, go nuts (but not in a business-harming way).

The best practices we normally think about like character counts, actionable cta’s, element hierarchies and the like are great foundations to making a lot of our choices in crafting emails. But depending on your audience and content, it may be beneficial to break a rule or two.

See you in Week 2