CMO Insights

It’s true. I’m easily inspired by a great speech or clever turn of phrase. I’m not a big reader but if I land on a good book, I’m hooked for life. That story is stuck in my mind forever. That’s the beauty of great writing. It connects with us in a way that’s not easily replicated.  If you’ve ever seen a movie of your favorite book and it fell flat, you know what I mean. Well, that's been my experience testing ChatGPT, JasperAI and other tools with high hopes that they were the content holy grail we’ve been waiting for. 

Content without a cause

Don’t get me wrong, they are freakishly fast and thorough. They provided sophisticated responses to my requests and synthesized research into blogs that had a logical flow of ideas and data. But as I requested more content across different topics, I was overcome by a flood of flat, bland, and unengaging content that needed a little and, in some cases, a lot of work to be valuable. Much was impressive in scope but painfully generic. Oh no, more content without a purpose. 

The human touch

It’s clear that AI Language tools are incredibly powerful. They can analyze large data sets, generate accurate summaries, and provide highly relevant results when searching for specific topics or terms.  But they can’t replace the human touch of great writing. At least not for the time being.

Great writing is loaded with the human experience. It distills what makes us human in an art form that requires immense creativity and sensitivity to capture human emotion. Think that sounds like fluffy content theory? Just ask Seinfeld. Could ChatGPT single out the humor in the everyday quirkiness of human beings? New York style? Let’s hope not.   

It’s not just language, it’s emotion.

Great writing makes us feel, think, laugh, question, or understand things differently. It’s not just language, it’s emotion. AI-powered algorithms might produce content with perfect grammar, but they lack the ability to understand and engage with the vast depth of human emotion and understand intangible concepts like empathy or the subtly of interpersonal relationships.  Emotion, believe it or not, can drive up to 70% of decision-making and brand preference. 

More Content doesn’t lead to more understanding

While it can be tempting to create volumes of AI-generated content to get your brand or product noticed, leverage these tools strategically. If you’re looking to incorporate them into your content strategy, here are a few guardrails to keep your content unique and effective: 

1. Create with purpose. Leverage these tools to develop content that drives your content strategy and narrative. Single-purpose assets created to fill space, will just fill space. Create content that fits within your buyers’ journey narrative - to solve a problem, answer a question, and lead to action. 

2. Demonstrate unique value. Develop content that provides new information or insight that is unique to your brand or product. More content created doesn’t equate to better understanding. Generic content could dilute your brand value.

3. Make it memorable. Whether creating content for a product, brand or your personal brand, people remember emotions. Have a point of view, empathize, use emotion with humor, sadness, joy. Tap into being human. Leverage AI-Language tools to do research or create a structure but make it your own through emotion.

4. Never delegate understanding. Read it, revise it, and ensure you understand and can defend it. If you can’t, don’t use it.  

While ChatGPT, JasperAI and others are great tools for speeding up tasks associated with writing, there is a risk of content getting lost in a tsunami of generic content. Use these tools thoughtfully and strategically.  Paired with a clear content strategy, there’s great opportunity for content creators to think differently about the purpose, value, and careful application of emotion in content.