Amy Kenigsberg, Cofounder and COO of K2 Global, joined me on The Global Marketing Show to discuss WIIFM (“what’s in it for me?”) communications, cultural messaging, and ChatGPT. K2 focuses on precise, nuanced messaging to impact everyone involved in the purchasing process, a strategy especially critical within account-based marketing (ABM). To that end, Amy developed a process that her agency uses to build a “Bible of Messages”: starting with the engineers from its technology company clients, K2 translates all the features and benefits of the “tech talk” into “marketing talk,” which is then customized to each of the decision makers in the buying process.
They then test rough draft messaging across industries, roles, and geography to validate the messaging specific to each player, driving each to emotionally connect with the client’s brand.
Continued client support combines K2’s Bible of Messages with the PESO Model™ developed by Gini Dietrich, of OBI. The PESO Model™ integrates and optimizes use of the four media types – paid, earned, shared, and owned. Building the Model based on specifics from the Bible of Messages accelerates the end-result of helping companies build authority and thought leadership more efficiently.
Recently, clients have asked Amy about ChatGPT and its ability to write content. Like many content creators and translators, we are watching the technology to see what it will do to our respective industries, and here’s what we’ve seen so far.
The good:
The speed and ability of ChatGPT is amazing and it’s great at smashing writer’s block. It can clearly develop a thoughtful flow to the content for an initial “pre-draft” (rather than a “rough” draft, which is simply putting ideas on paper). It gives great ideas for short content like social posts, it corrects grammatical errors, it eliminates boring rote tasks.
The Bad:
The program pulls from historical content, so even if it’s dated, ChatGPT makes it seem current, and real. Add to that the seemingly worldwide trend toward a “post-fact” culture and it’s easy to imagine how the continued recycling of inaccuracies could kick-start the multiplier effect of a world operating on widespread misinformation.
The content is consolidated, with neither source nor attribution to the original writers. When we write and publish, we cite our sources to add legitimacy to our work. Hopefully, the tide will likewise demand and formalize citation of content from any automated source.
Its ability to adapt the tone of its output to the intended purpose is still limited. With the lack of emotion, ChatGPT content can get boring to read. It may make sense to use it to generate an automatic first draft and then edit for nuance, urgency, and other emotional cues, but outside of potentially helping with a writer’s block, it wouldn’t necessarily save time.
The Ugly:
Have you ever heard of the Infinite Monkey Theorem? It states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. Amy compares ChatGPT to this theorem! Given enough tries, maybe the program can come up with a creative story that encapsulates your marketing message with enough emotion to capture your buyer’s attention.
The Concerns:
Amy describes her additional concerns:
On his Revisionist History podcast, Malcolm Gladwell explained the difference between an anecdote and a story. An anecdote talks about something that happened: “I went to the store and used a $5 bill to pay for the items I bought.”
A story adds some spice to the anecdote: “I went to the store and tried to pay for my items with a $5 bill. The shopkeeper laughed and threw the bill back at me.”
(OK, I edited it a tad from the podcast, but you get the idea.)
In essence, an anecdote recites; a story keeps you interested, and you want to know more.
ChatGPT can produce anecdotes; creative writers tell stories.
Good marketers are creative writers.
Perhaps inspired by our conversation, Amy says her favorite foreign word is the noun “balagan,” which is Hebrew for “mess”!
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/k2-global-communications
https://mobile.twitter.com/k2gcomm
https://www.facebook.com/K2GlobalCommunications
Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/
Connect with Amy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amykenigsberg/
Music: Fiddle-De-Dee b
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