AI-Powered Thought Organization for Marketers

Reading Time: 29 minutes

Have you ever found yourself staring at a blank page, your mind swirling with marketing ideas but struggling to organize them into a coherent strategy? You’re not alone. In today’s fast-paced digital world, marketers are constantly bombarded with information, trends, and possibilities. The challenge isn’t just coming up with ideas – it’s making sense of them all.

This overwhelming flood of thoughts can lead to decision paralysis, missed opportunities, and strategies that lack focus. How many brilliant marketing campaigns have been lost in the chaos of brainstorming sessions or buried under the weight of information overload?

But what if there was a way to transform this mental chaos into crystal-clear strategies? What if you had a tireless, intelligent assistant that could not only keep up with your rapid-fire ideas but also help organize and refine them?

Enter the world of AI-powered thought organization. Today, we’re thrilled to have with us a true pioneer in leveraging AI for marketing innovation, my longtime friend Ian Anderson Gray. Ian is the host of the Confident Live Marketing and Smart ADHD Podcasts, and the founder of Seriously Social. He’s an international speaker, trainer, and consultant who has helped countless business owners and entrepreneurs communicate their voice authentically using AI and live video.

Ian has worked with major brands to revolutionize their marketing strategies and has been at the forefront of integrating AI tools like ChatGPT into the creative process. His unique approach to using AI for thought organization has not only streamlined his own content creation but has also empowered marketers worldwide to unlock their full creative potential.

AI in Marketing: Unpacked host Mike Allton asked Ian Anderson Gray about:

✨ Structured Creativity: AI tools like ChatGPT can provide a framework for organizing and expanding marketing ideas systematically.

✨ Time-Efficient Brainstorming: Leveraging AI for thought organization can significantly reduce the time spent on initial ideation and strategy development.

✨ Enhanced Collaboration: AI-powered thought organization can facilitate better team collaboration by providing a clear, organized foundation for discussions.

Learn more about Ian Anderson Gray

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

Ian’s Brainstorming Process

C – Collect
R – Recognize
E – Establish
A – Articulate
T – Tinker
O – Optimize
R – Review

Mike’s Framework for AI Adoption

H – Harmonize
U – Understand
M – Map
A – Adapt
N – Nurture

Full Transcript

(lightly edited)

From Chaos to Clarity: AI-Powered Thought Organization for Marketers w/ Ian Anderson Gray

[00:00:00] Ian Anderson Gray: I think you just need to know yourself. So like, I was kind of tempted to, to, to take the easy route and, and just to, just to use AI for everything. I wasn’t really, but there was, there was a little bit of temptation there because it’s just so simple and so many people are doing it, but. Ultimately for me, authenticity, that, um, humanity is so important.

And, and particularly when it comes to marketing, like marketing does really well, I think when you have that human connection, the businesses, the companies out there that are doing really well are when they do embrace the human side of their business. And so like, if you’re using AI for the whole thing, you might be able to get away with it a few times, but eventually you’re not going to.

[00:00:44] Mike Allton: Welcome to AI in Marketing: Unpacked, where we simplify AI for impactful marketing. I’m your host, Mike Allton here to guide you through the world of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on marketing strategies. Each episode will break down AI concepts into manageable insights and explore practical applications that can supercharge your marketing efforts.

Whether you’re an experienced marketer just starting to explore the potential of AI, this podcast will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to succeed. So tune in and let’s unlock the power of AI together.

Greetings program. Welcome back to AI in Marketing: Unpacked where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at keeping up with and integrating or layering artificial intelligence into social media, content, advertising, search, and other areas of digital marketing. Oh, and you get to learn to subscribe to be shown how to prepare yourself and your brand for this AI revolution and come out ahead.

Now listen, you ever found yourself staring at a blank page, your mind’s swirling with marketing ideas, but struggling to organize them into a coherent strategy. You’re not alone. In today’s fast paced digital world, marketers are constantly barbarded with information, trends, and possibilities. And the challenge isn’t just coming up with ideas, it’s making sense of them all.

This overwhelming flood of thoughts can lead to decision paralysis, missed opportunities, and strategies that lack focus. How many brilliant marketing campaigns have been lost in the chaos of brainstorming sessions or buried under the weight of information overload? But what if there was a way to transform this mental chaos into crystal clear strategies?

What if you had a tireless, intelligent assistant that could not only keep up with your rapid fire ideas, but also help organize and refine them into the world of AI powered thought organization today, we’re thrilled to have with us a true pioneer, leveraging AI for marketing innovation. My longtime friend, Ian Anderson Gray. Ian is the host of the confident live marketing and smart ADHD podcasts, and the founder of seriously social. He’s an international speaker, trainer, and consultant, who’s helped countless business owners and entrepreneurs communicate their voice authentically using AI and live video. Ian’s worked with major brands, revolutionized their marketing strategies, and has been at the forefront of integrating AI tools like ChatGPT, and into the creative process. His unique approach to using AI for thought organization has not only streamlined his own content creation, but also empowered marketers worldwide to unlock their full creative potential. Hey, Ian, welcome to the show.

[00:03:08] Ian Anderson Gray: Hi, Mike, what an introduction. That was so much energy, so much excitement.

I’m ready to go. I’m excited about this.

[00:03:16] Mike Allton: My pleasure. And like I always tell folks, I’m just reading about you. You’re the one who did all the hard work to get up to speed on AI. And I know you’ve been doing this longer than I have. So I’m excited to hear from you. To have you here and just share with us how you’re using AI.

So if you could start by just kind of walking us through how you first discovered the potential of using ChatGPT’s conversation mode for organizing marketing ideas.

[00:03:42] Ian Anderson Gray: Well, yeah, before ChatGPT voice conversation mode came about, I was using it using just the standard text mode on ChatGPT. I was using it to generate ideas.

But the problem, the problem with it is, and I still do that, by the way, and it’s amazing. And I love it. But you are stuck in front of a computer, you are stuck in front of a phone. And sometimes tech can get away, get in the way of that creative process. You know, so many of us get our best ideas while taking a shower or maybe while driving.

And it’s not a good idea to bring your computer or your phone in, in the shower. And so, although I don’t use the conversation mode in the shower, I do use it, for example, when I’m driving, I’ve got Apple CarPlay, so I can have a conversation. Or when I’m out and about, I’ll just stick my earphones in and go on my way and have a conversation.

And so like the, the conversation mode, the voice mode that you get on the ChatGPT app is amazing. You can have an actual conversation. You can get all of those jumbled up ideas that are in your head and it can come out actually quite incoherent, but ChatGPT will actually organize all of those things.

And so I see AI or these LLMs as a way to help you to become more creative, more human, more productive, and actually more you, whether that’s in your personal life or in your, your business life. So I, I started to use it to organize my thoughts and to brainstorm ideas. And to give you an example of when I’ve, my mind was first blown with this, I dropped off my daughter.

In Manchester, which is my, my home city at a choir rehearsal. And so I had a half hour drive back home. I thought, why don’t I just have a little chat with ChatGPT? I’ve got all these business ideas, these marketing ideas of how I want to develop my business. And they were all jumbled up in my, in my head.

And particularly for me, as I work alone, this, this is my business. And I didn’t have anyone else. I don’t have any other friends, obviously. So I put up ChatGPT up on my phone through Apple CarPlay. And I basically just told it all of my thoughts that were going on in my head. I had all these ideas for ideas for my business and ideas that I wanted to do.

And by the end of it. When I got back home, I had this whole conversation of ideas and we went down tangents, but I, I had all of these ideas of how I could develop my business ideas for this new podcast I was developing at the time. And the best thing about it was that I, I, yes, I was interacting with it on voice, but I had the whole conversation history in text, which I could then interact with, you know, later on and then develop it later. It was, it just blew my mind. And so yes, since then I, I probably use that every single day. And now just as of today, this, this is quite fortuitous. I think is the word since I’m coming on onto your podcast, I’ve now got access to the new advanced conversation mode, which is, or it’s kind of, I think it’s called advanced voice mode, which is even more amazing.

So yeah, so much exciting stuff.

[00:07:04] Mike Allton: Yeah, I, I just got access last night as well. I kind of had to force the app to go grab the update cause it was just sitting there on Apple servers. And then as soon as it updated, yeah, it’s there. I was able to pick a voice and I’m just starting to play with it myself.

And that’s, that’s super exciting. Can you help us understand? What the difference though is between, you know, this conversational mode and what I guess most of us would consider the standard mode where you’re just typing in your queries or your props and you’re having that conversation back and forth.

And how is that different from the perspective of brainstorming?

[00:07:38] Ian Anderson Gray: Yeah, well, just a very brief thing on the advanced mode just first, because that’s just to say that’s not going to come out to everybody yet. Technically I shouldn’t have it being in the UK. I know that. No. Yeah. constantly. Yeah.[00:07:49] Mike Allton: Ian, that is true about so many things.[00:07:52] Ian Anderson Gray: It’s always the way it was the same with Facebook live. I, you know, and, and, but this is the thing I always try and think there must be a way. And so, you know, you can use VPNs. I actually had to find an obscure city in, in Australia to connect to, to get it. But but yeah, there’s, there’s that also the other thing just to say at the moment, and this may change when this podcast comes out this episode comes out, but you can’t switch currently between voice mode.

and text mode, which I know is your main question. I will get answer that question. I promise. But so, so that is frustrating. So one thing I love to do is if, for example, I had a I was interviewing somebody on another podcast I run. And so I get the transcript. I bung that, I paste the transcript into ChatGPT, and then I can brainstorm ideas of the conversation that I had with them.

Particularly if the, you know, it’s one of those episodes where my brain has been exploded by what they were saying, which happens quite a lot. And so I wasn’t able to do that with new advanced one, because you can’t, once you, you have a conversation on the advanced mode, and then you switch to text, you then will fall back to the old conversation mode, which is a bit annoying, but I’m sure they’ll change that.

And you also have to be a paid subscriber ChatGPT. And there were limits, limits on how much you can do. But Maybe by the time this podcast episode comes out, that will all have gone. So in terms of, yeah, so the way I would see the conversation mode, whether it’s the advanced one or the standard one, it’s just an edit added layer.

So you’re just interacting with it using your voice, and they and ChatGPT will reply to you using this uncannily human voice. Style it even has ums and uhs in it, which is kind of amazing and even breaths and things like that. So, but if, for example you, so for brainstorming, I was just at the supermarket and I had all these ideas jumbled in my head and I said, okay, here are all my thoughts.

I just want you to reply with the word yes. And then I’m going to interact with you later. So I just basically spoke all my jumbled thoughts at the supermarket. Then I came home. I had all of that conversation there and I could then interact with it using text and you’ve got to understand, like, you’ve got to think about, like, some things are really good to use your voice and some things are very good, much better to use this text.

So, for example, I wanted it to give me a table. to, to compare different ideas. You can’t really do that over voice. So it was very good that way. And then I could then bring in some ideas from another transcript, another podcast that I was playing around with and to manipulate data. So you can actually toggle between the two.

You can interact later on in the day, I can then go back to voice and then I can go back to chat. So it’s, that’s the great thing about it. You can use both on a single conversation.

[00:10:52] Mike Allton: That’s fantastic. I’m just kind of curious personally. I’ve always been kind of hesitant to have voice conversations.

It just wasn’t the way that I wanted to interact with technology. Does, does that resonate with you or have you just been kind of all in? Yeah. I love to talk to it.

[00:11:08] Ian Anderson Gray: So I think it depends on the situation that you’re in. So like, as I said, you know, in terms of brainstorming ideas or creative thoughts, I find sometimes that.

You know me, Mike, I’m I love my technology. I love tools. I love all this kind of stuff. But I’ll be the first one to say that sometimes that gets in the way of the creative process. And I’m all for be, as I said before, being more human, more creative. And so sometimes actually going on a walk, I get my best ideas.

And I found if I’m in one of those creative modes, Just putting the phone in my pocket. I’m not looking at it. I’m going on a lovely walk. Beautiful surroundings. I live in the UK. Beautiful green landscape. Just think of that. And that is it just I get so many amazing ideas away from that technology. So in those situations, It’s perfect for that and then I can come home and then I can get into working with certain maybe it’s more data driven where it absolutely I need to be in front of the screen I’m maybe doing some more i’m doing I do actually quite a lot of coding so I come up with some creative ideas For a tool maybe on my website And ChatGPT is amazing at creating code.

You don’t need to be a developer. You don’t need to really understand, understand the code. And so I’ve created like widgets and WordPress plugins, would you believe, on my website using ChatGPT and other tools. And you couldn’t do that on voice, obviously, you know so and then you can upload CSV files and get it to manipulate that, compare different types of files. So obviously that wouldn’t work with voice. So you it’s just really about using depends on what you’re wanting to use it for. But for brainstorming, and for creative ideas, I actually would highly recommend shut down your computer, go out out out of your house or out of your office, go for a walk and have a chat with ChatGPT, brainstorming ideas.

You will be really surprised at some of the thoughts that you get and the clarity you get from just interacting, using your voice.

[00:13:13] Mike Allton: You’re going on a stroll through the English countryside just has this vivid image of my mind of a little hobbit stroll into the shire with a pipe in his mouth and a, and an iPhone in his hand talking to ChatGPT.

This is great. No, I love how you’re using it in this way. Could you give us kind of like a step by step example of how you’re This conversation mode of ChatGPT to organize like an entire marketing strategy.

[00:13:38] Ian Anderson Gray: Well, yeah, well, there’s, there’s been quite a few, so I’ll give you a step by step and then I can also give you an example of how I’ve used it more probably for a a new direction in my business and a new podcast.

So I’ve been thinking about my process for a while and I have to admit, I did use the to help me with this, but it, I’ve come up with this acronym, which is handily called create a creator. So the first letter C stands for collect, and this is all about the first thing that you need to work out when you’re developing a marketing campaign is.

Thinking about your audience are gathering your audience, industry and competitor insights. Like, who are you trying to direct that to? So collecting that information? And I would so I’ve only just started using this tool. There’s a an AI tool called perplexity. And perplexity is very different to the likes of ChatGPT or Claude, which I use.

They’re great for manipulating ideas and creative ideas. But Perplexity comes into its own for research and real time information. So I’ve been starting to use that to, to get ideas for, for example, you know, for collecting that information, or you could use Claude or ChatGPT to maybe analyze data to do with, you know, competitors and what they’re doing to develop that.

So. You could do that. You could also create a custom GPT. So this is your own effectively, your own kind of AI that knows a lot of information about your audience. So you’re plugging into it, all the data about your audience. So it knows exactly what your marketing campaign is going to be for. So that’s the collect part.

The next one is R which is recognize. And this is to recognize and understand your audience needs and their behavior. So this is very similar to that first stage. But again, you could use ChatGPT for this to analyze that information. And, or you, you could use a custom GPT again for that. So that’s the C, the R.

The next one is establish. This is the bit, I’m going to be honest with you, Mike that I kind of struggle with. I, I’m very good at the, the details and the process and the creative ideas, but what I’m not so good at are establishing clear and measurable campaign goals. So this is the E. And so what I’ve tried to do is to Get tools like ChatGPT or custom GPT to develop goals to help with that goal setting and that marketing side of things that’s really, really helped.

So I can plug in my audience data. I can plug in my ideas and then it’s going to help with those those clear measurable campaign goals. Then the next bit, which I’m a little bit better at than the established bit, and that’s articulating the, and this is the messaging that resonates with your audience.

So you’ve got all that information from the first bits. Now you can start to create messaging that really resonates with the audience. You know, all of the, the custom GPT that you’ve created earlier knows about your audience. You’ve got the insights. You can now start to articulate that But that’s so you could use custom GPT, GPT, GTP, if I can even say the words to adjust all of that kind of stuff.

But then we’re on to the Tinker stage. So T for Tinker, which is to start playing around drafting and refining that campaign content and to refine that. So you could use, again, you could use ChatGPT to kind of come up with that creative ideas. But I think this is the brainstorming. And the refining. So you might want to use you might want to use the voice conversation mode for this, but you’re starting to develop and tinker and to actually create that content.

Then the next part of this, the, the acronym is O for optimize. So you have now back at your computer. This is very difficult to do using voice conversation. You actually need to see the copy on, on the page, on the computer, and this is optimizing your content, generating variations. This is kind of, and actually what I would do here is use a I think Multiple different tools.

So you could use ChatGPT. You could use Claude. You could use Google Gemini. You could use whatever. And to bounce ideas to optimize to get to to really optimize your your content there as well. And then review is the final bit, which is then to I suppose this is really, this is the other bit that I struggle with sometimes.

And that is to refine that strategy. Look back over it, look up look at the, the performance. I suppose this is analytics and the data. And again, you know, tools like ChatGPT are amazing at this. You know, I look at a. Google Analytics. And my brain just wants to just shut down. I know. I know. I know. Not everyone’s like some people love the data, but it’s just the way my brain works.

But I can plug some of that information into ChatGPT and say, What does this actually mean for me? And what can I do about this information? So like, Maybe the, maybe the, the campaign is flopped. I can see that. But why has that flopped? What are the, the, the ver the, the reasons for that and how can I actually use that data to do a better job in the future?

So you could use again, chat, GBT or Claude to do this as well. So, sorry, that was a long, a long thing, but it’s something I’ve thought a lot about recently. And I think using that acronym really helps.

[00:19:24] Mike Allton: No, that that’s a, that’s a great example. I actually went through something very similar in terms of experiences with, with ChatGPT, where I wanted to have a conversation and get to help me organize my thoughts around how businesses should approach adopting and implementing AI across their organization.

I wanted to come up with a framework of my own and I wanted to make sure that they were accounting for the people that were involved. And after working with, with ChatGPT, it’s remarkably good at taking those kinds of disconnected ideas and thoughts and building an actual framework and coming up with, as you said, a name, the name for my AI adoption framework is H.U.M.A.N. Harmonize, understand, map, adapt, and nurture.

And this is really cool framework that took all the things that I’d said to it, right. And gave it the H.U.M.A.N. Acronym. Beautiful, perfect example. Love using AI that way. How do you think though, that this kind of approach differs from what we would call traditional brainstorming methods in terms of creativity or even efficiency?

[00:20:30] Ian Anderson Gray: Oh, really good question. I think so AI tools like ChatGPT, you know, they’re not at the moment, at least they’re not always going to be. as creative as other human beings because it’s been trained on data that already exists on the whole. But it is infinitely patient and it is a huge amount of data at its disposal.

So, and obviously what you put in is what is what you get out. So if you put in a really not very helpful prompt and it doesn’t know much about what you’re talking about, you’re not going to get very much out. But I think it is definitely an amazing tool that’s going to help you Just really think generate ideas to help you to become more creative as well.

So I don’t always think it’s going to come up with amazing ideas, although it has in your situation coming up with that great acronym. It helped me with with mine, but I think it can help you to become more creative and to be more productive as well. And when we’re in situations, Such as certainly for myself where I don’t because I work on my own.

I do have a small team, but I don’t always get the chance to brainstorm ideas and be the team that I have, they’re not, they’re more for implementation, not for generating ideas and creation, that I think these AI tools are always there when you’re walking, when you’re, well, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t bring my phone in while I’m having a shower, but you get the idea.

You know, they’re always there to help with those things. So that’s why I think they’re amazing. And with this new, a, this new advanced feature, while I’m really excited about there, Is I can or I can have it running all the time, so I’m just plugging away ideas and then something pops in my head. I can then have a chat with it.

So it’s always there. Whereas, you know, if you have a team then they’re gonna be busy. They’re gonna be busy on other projects. Whereas ChatGPT never rests.

[00:22:26] Mike Allton: So it never rests. It’s got a wealth of knowledge. Maybe Isn’t necessarily the most creative, but that boundless access to all that knowledge allows it to create frameworks and do all kinds of wonderful things that just, it just needs to know what are the, all the possible words that I could potentially use that mean these kinds of things and it’s just brilliant at that. So what are some pitfalls? I mean, where could marketers go wrong using it for, for the kinds of scenarios we’re talking about today?[00:22:52] Ian Anderson Gray: Well, you know, so I gave a talk earlier this year about there were kind of two types of people when you talk to about AI, there’s basically the the people who are afraid of AI and think we’re all going to die and it’s going to take over the world and take over our jobs. They’ve been watching too many, they’ve been watching the Terminator too many times or something like that. And then you get the other side, which are it’s so amazing. It’s exciting. We should use it for absolutely everything. And I’m I probably er towards that second type of people, person, you know, I’m very excited about it, but there is that trap of over reliance and, you know, the old adage that says, just because you can doesn’t mean you should, I think comes into play.

There’s so many, so much potential with AI and we’re living in this a little bit of the wild west at the moment where, you know, there’s so many things that you can do. And sometimes you can. Forget about the ethics and, you know, for example, I can clone my voice, I can clone other people’s voices, I can clone myself, I could use it to, to create all my blog posts and to give you an example, I mean, I’ve developed a tool using ChatGPT so I actually got it to, to code and Google app scripts.

So it will, I’ve, I’ve Basically gave it my transcripts of a podcast and then it will generate the podcast show notes, a blog post, a newsletter. And I was doing this because I, I struggle a lot from that blank page thing. And I wanted it to create… Something. But what I found was that, okay, it’s great for functional content.

So by functional content, I mean, for example, where people just want information. So I would describe show notes for a podcast. I don’t think people mind too much that it’s not written by me fully. It’s AI, you know, because All they’re looking for is what’s this podcast about? What are the kind of the highlights?

But I would struggle with the idea of using it fully for a blog post. Again, maybe there’s again, if it’s if you’re really obvious about it, look, this is generated by AI. And we’re using this because all you want is information fine. Okay, I can get behind that. But I want to hear like, if I go to your blog, Mike, I want to actually hear from you.

You might have used AI in the process, but if you’ve used AI to completely write it and I’m not really hearing your thoughts, then I think that’s not so good. So for creative content, I think we can use AI in the process, but to totally use that, and I’ll be honest with you, Mike, I was tempted to use AI for everything, but it felt, I felt icky about it.

And so I use now, I use AI for my podcast show notes. I try to be like as honest and open about that as possible. I don’t think people mind about that, but for my blog posts, what I do is I use it for, to help me with the structure, help me with the process, but not to actually write the whole thing.

And it doesn’t, to be quite honest, it doesn’t always do the best job because what you then find is that your blog post titles tend to be you know, use this kind of typical jargon, like, you know, use the word optimize or level up or whatever these words are so you have to, you have to be really careful about that.

So, yeah, just, just be careful of shiny new tool syndrome and also for it to become a barrier between you and your audience to take away kind of your humanity. I, I, I’m a, I know I keep saying this today, but. I think we need to use AI to help us to become more human, to become more creative. But so often, if we’re not careful, it can actually make, do the opposite.

So I think it’s just something we’ve got to be aware of.

[00:26:46] Mike Allton: Could not agree more. Folks, we’re talking with Ian Anderson Gray about the benefits and the challenges when using AI to help us organize our thoughts and ideas. In a moment, we’re going to talk about how to make sure we keep that human and humanity in this process.

But first, let me share with you the tool I’m using every day. These kinds of conversations and organizational. This episode of AI in Marketing: Unpacked is brought to you by Magai, your gateway to making generative AI incredibly simple and accessible. Wondering how to seamlessly integrate AI into your marketing strategy without getting bogged down by complexities?

That’s exactly where Magai shines. It provides user friendly, Friendly AI solutions that empower marketers just like you to innovate and elevate your campaigns without needing a degree in science. Imagine having the power to generate creative content, insightful marketing data analysis, or even personalized customer communications, all at the touch of a button, Magai isn’t just about providing tools.

It’s about transforming AI that’s tailor made to be straightforward and effective. So. Whether you’re looking to boost your content creation process, or want deeper insights into your marketing performance, Magai makes it all possible with a few clicks. No fuss, no hassle, just results. Ready to simplify your AI journey?

Visit Magai today to learn how their solutions can revolutionize the way you engage With your audience, don’t just market market smarter with Magai tap the link in the show notes. So Ian I completely agree with, with your last point of being very careful of how and where we’re using completely AI generated copy.

Andy Crestodina has talked about this a lot. He’s talked about, you know, it’s fine to use it to your point, like in transactional content but yeah, if it’s for thought leadership or something like that, a newsletter, you know, using AI obviously to help you. 100%. I do it every single week and I have a long form newsletter that I send out on Sundays.

I use AI to help me brainstorm ideas and organize my thoughts around, okay, what I want to talk about in this topic. It’s great for research because I love bringing history into a lot of my ideas and I’ll ask AI, what, what are some great examples of history from history that align with today’s topic?

And, you know, say Apollo 13 and, you know, four other examples. I’m like, Oh, that’s a great idea. Let’s talk about Apollo 13 and compare the space race to the AI revolution. Absolutely. But how do we balance AI and humanity when we’re trying to organize our thoughts and we’re trying to have this ideation process, where’s that balance, do you think?

[00:29:21] Ian Anderson Gray: Well, I think, I think you just need to know yourself. So like. I was kind of tempted just to take the easy route and just to just to use AI for everything I wasn’t really. But there was there was a little bit of temptation there because it’s just so simple and so many people are doing it. But ultimately, for me authenticity that humanity is so important.

And particularly when it comes to marketing, like they When marketing marketing does really well, I think when you have that human connection, the businesses, the companies out there that are doing really well when they do embrace the human side of their business. And so if you’re using AI for the whole thing, you You might be able to get away with it a few times, but eventually you’re not going to.

We’ve seen that with a generative AI images, you know, when people companies are using that and the, the, the humans in it, I’ve got like seven fingers and things like that. It’s just, you know, it just doesn’t look good. So knowing the difference between what I call functional content and creative content is important.

Just always remember, you know, as I said before, just because you can, doesn’t mean you can’t. It doesn’t mean you should. So using it in that process use different tools for different parts of that process. So you know, I, I, I, I love Magai, I think that’s a great tool. There were other tools you can help with video, for example, descripts or descript however you want to pronounce it is, is great.

But I think disconnecting from AI Not well, disconnecting from AI is definitely good. Brainstorming ideas with other humans. Have a team of people around you who are going to keep you in check. So if, if you’re, you know, if you’re on your own, like me, you need to have friends around you, actual human brains who can keep you accountable.

But if you’re working in a team again, use the people within in that and And then use AI tools, like I’ve just been mentioning with the conversation mode out and about away from your computer to brainstorm ideas as well. But yeah, just make sure that you’re focusing ultimately on the most important person, which is your audience, the people.

And if you connect with them, you understand them and you speak with your authentic human voice. You can’t go wrong

[00:31:42] Mike Allton: great advice and I love your point about being authentic It was something I was just talking about in the previous episode with Sarah Lloyd Favaro and we were talking about images to your point I was saying look I I go out of my way to create blog post images for myself that are Obviously, AI generated their bears wearing human clothing and a fedora hat in a star wars setting.

I mean, nobody looks at those images and wow, gosh, is that a real bear? No, it’s obviously it’s AI because I’m not trying to pull one over on anybody. I’m showing how I’m using the tools and I love it because I’ve got a consistent theme through all of my blog post images. We’ve had Jeff Sieh on the show earlier.

He said, you know, Hey, if I see one of these images in the wild, I know that’s Mike Allton. I know that’s his blog. Because, you know, I just took that time to do that. And I think that’s the kind of authenticity we need either be, you know, upfront, this is AI.

[00:32:34] Ian Anderson Gray: Yeah. Yeah. And also, I’d also say like, sometimes you can actually have fun with that.

You know, I was giving this talk a few weeks ago in the UK and I used some really obvious AI generated images and we had a laugh like there was one when I, I think the, the prompt was, you know, I was telling you earlier about the, you know, the idea of there’s, there’s two different types of people were there, there’s the people who think it’s going to end the world and the people that think it’s the most amazing thing ever.

And so I was trying to get AI I think it was, it might’ve been ChatGPT or Dali or whatever to create this image showing this. this valley with with like death and doom on one side and this beautiful paradise on the other just to kind of have a bit of fun. But there were skulls on both sides of the hill.

I was thinking, where did that come from? And I thought, Do you know what? I’m going to use this and I’m going to kind of have a bit of fun with it. And we, it actually got a lot of laughter when I was speaking. So sometimes like use ChatGPT, even if it’s bad, but just have some fun with it. You know, if it’s a, if it’s a guy with like eight fingers on his hand you know, just, just, you know, you can have a laugh.

You can have, it depends on your, your business, you know, but you, you can sometimes have a bit of fun with it as well.

[00:33:46] Mike Allton: I don’t know. I kind of suspect the AI somehow knew that’s the image that would actually be better for you because it knew better than Ian Anderson Gray what would go over and get a laugh with an[00:33:57] Ian Anderson Gray: audience?[00:34:02] Mike Allton: Well, how do you see this rolling out in the future? How do you see AI thought organization evolving? And I know particularly with AI, it’s almost impossible to say what’s going to happen in, you know, years, but you know, just like in the next Six to 12 months. You see this having a greater impact on marketers.[00:34:19] Ian Anderson Gray: Oh yeah. I mean, without a doubt, it’s still like, I think sometimes like, I think me and you and other people we know in the industry, we can forget we, we, I think we just assume that everyone is on this. Everyone is, is using AI in the marketing world. Like that, that is not the case. And even people. who would, I think there’s a lot of people are dabbling, like where was it?

I don’t, I don’t think I’ve got the statistic to hand, but Google did some research and found that most people, the average number of words people use for a prompt is nine words or something. It’s something really small. Oh my gosh. It’s like, and the optimum, they say, is around 20 something, 23. I’m using loads more than that usually, but a lot of people aren’t, and so that is going to improve.

There’s a lot of people out there that are still really quite sceptical or scared about it. And I think that’s gonna only improve it. And I think what’s gonna help is for people like us to actually get some case studies of how we’re using AI. And this is why what you’re doing on this podcast is so, so helpful to people because you’re interviewing people who are using AI in the real world.

You know, I, I used AI in my, for my other podcast to generate the, the logo and it, it came up with the most amazing logo. There was only a few little tweaks. So what I did is I took that and I gave it to a designer just to do the little tweaks. I’m not a creative, well, I am a creative person, but not in terms of coming up with like visual logos and things like that.

I have a rough idea in my head of what I want. So I could get 80 to 90 percent there with AI and then pass that on to a designer. And so I think we’re going to see a lot of that. We’re not going to see AI doing everything. We’re going to use, see it we’re going to use different types of LLMs or AI

to do different things. And we’ve talked about that a lot in this podcast. We’ve talked about ChatGPT. We’ve used Claude Magai. There’s a tool that I use called LibreChat, which is not for the faint hearted, but allows you to use multiple LLMs. There’s one called mind Mac, which I haven’t used, which is for Mac, which allows you to use lots of different AIs as well.

So I think we’re going to see that we’re going to see a lot more case of optimizing using personalized workflows as well. But I think in a way what we’ve talked about today is is going to blow the most people’s minds because most people are just dipping. Well, a lot of people are not even dipping their toes into this.

There’s still a lot of hesitancy and the people that are, they’re dipping their toes in a kind of a nine word prompt way. And then there are some people like us who are just embracing it wholeheartedly. So it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens. We’re going to see a lot more Tools coming along the way.

We’ll have to see what Apple intelligence is like. I have to say, I’m not overly excited by that, but we’ll see later this year. But this is only the beginning. I I’m excited about how this is going to help me and my family from a personal point of view, organizing our thoughts. I, I use notion for example, to itemize everything that I own and know where it is to help us in our businesses and our marketing.

I think we’re going to get a lot more tools coming in that are specializing in a specific type of thing. It could be like organizing your email. We use that tool, organizing your thoughts, use that. We’re already having that a little bit. So Yeah, it’s exciting. I’m sure you’re excited with all these different things going on.

[00:38:02] Mike Allton: Yeah, I’m very excited. And I was, I was initially surprised when you said the average person is putting in nine words in a prompt, but the more I thought about the more I realized, Oh, that, that makes complete sense. That was me nine, 12 months ago when I first started using Chat GPT, you know, late 2023 or so.

I really started to say, okay, this is something I need to learn how to do. And I’ve evolved over time. I was reminded that last night I wanted to use Claude to help me develop a 60 second script that my friend Chris Carr and I are going to read and go back and forth on to create just a 60 second video.

Right. I wrote five paragraphs in the initial prompt before, you know, we’d even gone back and forth, but I wanted to give. Okay. Claude, the AI that I was using for that writing example, you know, all the context, all the information, all the guidelines and the pre work that would allow it to do a great job the first time.

And it did the script that I got back. I had zero notes. I shipped it to Chris immediately. He’s literally recording it as we speak. And then I’m going to record my bit and we’re going to spice them two together. That’s where, you know, we’ve evolved where, you know, if we’ve used it, I think to your point, often enough, we realize, okay, seven, eight, nine words is not going to cut it to get the kind of output that we’re looking for or hoping for, so we’ve got to put that time up front. And I loved your point about using it for your family. My, my youngest daughter is nine. She uses Pi every single day. She has these long conversations with Pi about, you know, whatever it is that she feels like talking about and Pi happily responds.

It’s fantastic. So love these examples.

[00:39:42] Ian Anderson Gray: It’s, it’s amazing. And, you know, just, just very briefly on, on those prompts, you know, like, cause I was the same, we start, we, we, I think we start to use it. Yeah. When we first open up ChatGPT as newbies, we probably use it like Google, like we’re just like search for something.

And and then over time now, I’m sure you’ve done this. You create a prompt for something and then you then ask ChatGPT to improve that prompt. So and then I, I’ve, I mean, I, I probably have overthought this. I then will take that. response and then take it over to another LLM. So how can you improve this?

And so like my prompts for like maybe helping with a blog post is we’ll have that. And then I will say, well, how can we make the output of this sound less like an LLM, like ChatGPT has created it. And then I plugged in some words that are overly used by ChatGPT and put that in, say, don’t use these.

And over time Yeah, you can really optimize these things to death. But it’s it’s good fun

[00:40:43] Mike Allton: And it’s important it’s important to take that time to put in that kind of work if we wanted to give us really great Feedback on the ideas that we’re dumping into it. So, you know, I just want to thank you because it’s been amazing I know folks are gonna be really excited to pick up their phones and start talking to them Everywhere they go For folks who do want to learn more and they want to connect with you, where should they go?[00:41:04] Ian Anderson Gray: Well, my website is iag. me. That’s probably the best place to go. And I have carelessly scattered myself across all the socials as well. So, but probably best to connect with me on LinkedIn these days, I think LinkedIn. So search for my name, Ian Anderson Gray, Gray with an A, and I’d love to connect with you.[00:41:21] Mike Allton: Fantastic. Thank you, Ian. We’ll have all of Ian’s links in the show notes below as usual. So if you want to follow up with them, you can do that there. And don’t forget if this is basically your first time really getting into AI and you’re finding some of the things that we said, like LLMs, you’re not really sure what we’re talking about.

What’s the difference between Claude. And Gemini, I’ve got my AI marketing primer linked in the notes before you can download that and take a look and get yourself up to speed really rapidly on what all these things mean and how you can jump into this AI revolution as a marketer and get ahead until next time, welcome to the grid.

Thanks for joining us on AI in marketing. I hope today’s episode has inspired you and given you actionable insights to integrate AI into your marketing strategies. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and consider leaving a review. We’d love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you might have.

Don’t forget to join us next time as we continue to simplify AI and help you make a real impact in your marketing efforts until then keep innovating and see just how far AI can take your marketing. Thank you for listening and have a fantastic day.

Related