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Now THIS is a genius ad
Charlie Braithwaite
May 02, 2024
Hello marketers. Welcome to AI Marketing School, the newsletter for risk-takers, innovators, and marketing trailblazers. In this week’s issue:
AI Marketer of the Week: How to turn $5k into a viral ad
The Stack: One search bar for your entire life
Consultant’s Corner: Words of wisdom from a 7-figure marketer
Onwards!
TODAY’S LLM LEADERBOARD*
*The best-performing large language models, according to the LMSYS Organization
MARKETER OF THE WEEK
This is an A+ ad
Marketer of the Week goes to the genius behind Bland.ai's billboard.
You might be wondering, who or what is Bland.ai? It's a startup that allows you to create AI phone agents, which can be used for sales calls, customer support, and, one can only assume, some more nefarious uses.
So, why is this ad so good? It seamlessly fuses the oldest marketing medium with the most up-to-date technology in a way that sparks curiosity and gets people talking (no pun intended).
Passers-by who are intrigued enough to call the number on the billboard are put through to "Bland" - the company's own AI agent. Bland engages in conversation, gathers their story, and pitches the benefits of the company's services.
But the real value of this ad doesn't come from the billboard itself, but from people sharing it online. The ad has got millions of views on Twitter, which is a testament to the power of a fresh and innovative idea.
Considering that the average billboard costs less than $5000 to hire, this campaign has yielded a sweet ROI.
Bravo, Bland, for a job well done!
THE STACK
Rewind: Search your entire digital life
Rewind is a $350 million startup backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz. During their fundraising round, the hype around the company was so insane that the founder started charging VCs $100 just to meet with them.
But does it live up to the hype? We’ve been playing around with it.
Once you install it on your Mac and iPhone (no Windows support yet), Rewind starts recording and transcribing every aspect of your digital life – meetings, emails, tweets, podcasts, you name it.
The data is stored locally on your computer, which means only you have access to it. You can then "rewind" your digital life, search through it, and use GPT-4 to summarize meetings and send follow-up emails.
The pros? Rewind gives you a single search bar for your life, which can lead to massive productivity gains, and you'll never lose a piece of work or forget a quote again. Plus, with Rewind saving everything in the background, you can truly focus on the task at hand.
But there are some (significant) downsides. Rewind takes up a ton of disk space – like 30GB per month, according to one reviewer. It also drains your laptop's battery life.
And then there's the privacy concern, which is a dealbreaker for me. And, plus, do I really need another piece of software cluttering up our digital lives?
Verdict? Rewind is an insanely good AI tool that truly lives up to its hype. It's one of the rare gems that actually delivers. However, for someone like me, the mere thought of accumulating hundreds of gigabytes of additional data is enough to send shivers down my spine.
BONUS TOOL (Sponsored): Use Google Meet? If so, you should definitely use the Chrome extension - Bluedot. It's the AI note-taker that records your meetings without bots joining the call (funded by Google). Just Press 🔵 to record, transcribe, and summarise.
CONSULTANT’S CORNER
Should you use ChatGPT to write blogs?
The debate about using ChatGPT for blog writing has been raging since day one. Marketers are divided into three camps. What I call:
The AI-Impaired: These marketers feed ChatGPT a stream of prompts and publish whatever comes out.
The Automators: They use AI to streamline the tedious parts of writing, like editing and drafting, so they can focus on what matters.
The Purists: They believe in writing everything from scratch and think AI will only hinder their profound creativity.
Which camp do I fall into?
I'm a proud Automator. Let me tell you why:
As a marketer, I’m not rewarded for unique sentence structures. I’m paid to get results.
Today, what gets results is content that’s helpful, original, and uniquely aligned with search intent. (Just because content is written “straight off the dome” doesn’t make it good.)
What makes content helpful and original isn’t thousands of unique words. It’s:
Demonstrable subject matter expertise
Firsthand experiences
Interviews and opinions
Proprietary research
Images, videos, etc. etc
This is where I want my team to spend their time. And if AI helps them do that, it’s a no-brainer.
Google agrees, saying:
“It's important to recognize that not all use of automation, including AI generation, is spam. Automation has long been used to generate helpful content… AI has the ability to power new levels of expression and creativity, and to serve as a critical tool to help people create great content for the web.”
So there you have it. Use AI with pride, and it’ll make your content more original. Not less. And originality means happier readers, happier search engines, and happier clients.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s issue. If you missed it last week, you can read it here.
Until next time. Happy marketing.
—Tom & Sam
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