CHATGPT & MARKETING USE CASES
It seems like everything in my feed these days is a pontification on the future of A.I. It’s either going to "change everything" or die as a "gimmick" – nothing in between. That’s why I enjoyed this episode of the Plain English podcast with guest Ben Thompson (of the great Stratechery newsletter). He talks very pragmatically about the technology and its real-world implications on search, business, writing, and art. I also dug this essay from Garbage Day (another excellent newsletter) that draws smart parallels between the early days of Web 2.0 (fuelled by social) and Web 3.0 (fuelled by A.I.) It includes the perfect concluding sentence on the topic: “Everything on the internet is dumb and shameful until it’s not.”
While marketers have been using A.I. for years (built into martech products), I’m interested in finding new, non B.S. ways that tools like ChatGPT can help my marketing clients save time and money (like this simple use case of gathering the URLs of all of your competitor’s social handles). If you discover anything interesting, please share and I’ll include it in a future newsletter. I’ve bookmarked a few helpful resources below:
FRESH RESEARCH
Where Did All the Podcasts Go? (NeimanLab): Did you know that the number of new podcasts launched dropped by 80% between 202-2022, and that listening has fallen for the first time in 10 years? I didn’t. This article points to COVID for the podcast boom, and poor podcast discovery for the decline. The author references Yogi Berra to capture the state of podcasting “Nobody ever goes there anymore — it’s too crowded.”
State of Mobile 2023 (Data.AI): A comprehensive and up-to-date review of what’s happening in mobile that spans gaming, finance, retail, travel, sports, and emerging trends. Great stats & charts – worth the download.
State of Marketing (Salesforce): A useful skim for marketing leaders looking to benchmark the maturity of their teams in terms of collecting and using data for communication purposes. The survey results square with what I’m see with my larger clients.
2023 Global marketing Trends (Deloitte): This survey of marketing executives describes a few big picture trends. Interesting to see that 38% of marketing leaders are making plans for the metaverse this year, and 41% have plans for implementing blockchain. Curious how detailed and committed those plans are...
Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2023 (Reuters): Fantastic research / perspective on media trends (e.g., use of A.I., shift to audio / video, newsletter subscriptions). Filled with examples of publishers not thinking or acting like publishers.
GOOD DECKS
The Speakery Presentation Canvas (Marcus John Henry Brown): As a fan of clever planning canvases and Marcus, his new template for mapping out your next presentation is gold – check it out.
Trends in Email Marketing (Litmus): If you’re looking for some design inspiration for your email marketing, this is a useful resource. Make sure to check out / subscribe to Really Good Emails if you don’t already.
The Future 100 Forecast (Wunderman): This is a fun one to browse through with a work buddy – it goes far and wide in highlighting different trends that marketers / businesses should be noodling. Lots of examples of ‘VR meets X’...X being customer service, travel, health, and (gulp) dating.
COOL BEANS
10 Minute Text: I love this news media format from Semafor with a text-based interview. Very fun – surprising it hasn’t been done before. It’s now sponsored by Verizon.
VR Headsets that Kill: Looking to bring a little more drama and realism to your VR gameplay? Might I interest you in a headset that actually kills you when you die in the game?
Roboticists Want to Give You a 3rd Arm: If given the choice, I’ll pass on the detonating VR headset for an implanted 3rd arm that I can control with unused neurons. To quote the scientists: “If humans could easily add and control a third arm, they would likely use them in new behaviors that we can’t yet even imagine.” I can imagine a few, and none are worth an implant.
MODERN MARKETING TEMPLATES
I’ve made some updates to the Kickframe Toolbox. It will now be focused only on marketing planning templates, along with lessons for choosing and using. If you’re looking for frameworks to use in your work that can be downloaded and edited, check it out. Why waste your time creating templates in PowerPoint / Google Slides when I’ve already wasted mine ;-)