Headline check

By Ariella Brown

hashtag

I've never cared for the way commas are used in headlines set for AP style. Written text should correspond to the language we speak as much as possible. 

Substituting a comma for the word "and" in this instance actually slows the readers down as they have to consider that, though the standard formulation of a comma between two adjectives makes one assume they both apply to the same noun, that can't be the intent of the headline.

Really, why write "How younger, older B2B marketers differ" instead of "How younger and older B2B marketers differ"?

The latter is both clearer and flows better than the former. Saving those three keystrokes is an insignificant gain for a loss of clarity and rhythm. IMHO. Does that make it wrong? I decided to investigate.

As a grammar geek, I got very excited to discover that I am not alone in feeling these headlines mangle English. That very point is the subject of Stack Exchange discussion from a few years ago. The gist of the investigation amounts to these points:

1. The substitution of a comma for "and" is assumed to be motivated by a desire to save space or to sound punchier, though it's not something mandated by AP style. In other words, it's not incorrect to include the "and" in the title.
2. The suspicion that this practice is related to digital publications is not supported by evidence. There are examples of such headlines in print going back at least to 1990.
3. It's also not a practice peculiar to American outlets, a theory that may have arisen from those with some bias against American writing.

Now to return to the very first point here, I stick with my objection. For this particular formulation, the effect of dropping the "and" is not punchier, definitely not clearer, and seems to be an affectation of the writer or journalist who seems to believe that an"and" never belongs in a headline.

Whoever is responsible for blindly following this unfortunate trend has forgotten the one golden rule of writing that George Orwell proclaimed in his famous essay: “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

Related

Make Your Content as Accessible as Possible

Follow Write Way Pro on LinkedIn and on Facebook.

You can also follow Ariella Brown.  

Aim higher than SEO for your marketing content

You know, Jane Austen could have opened "Pride and Prejudice" with the standard line, "Once upon a time there was a family with five girls and no sons to inherit the estate that they depended on for their support." She didn't.

https://www.zazzle.com/pride_and_prejudice_tote_bag-149363338488539996

Instead of sticking with the safe formulation, she crafted one of the most memorable openers for a novel that also gives the readers a taste of her wit and sense of irony. That opening line is Austen's brand in a nutshell.

This is what businesses should be striving for in their opening lines on their sites and their reports. Generative AI will not deliver that because it will work off pre-existing models. Simply tweaking that output will still not result in something truly fresh, though it may be just good enough to not incur the generative AI penalty Google has promised to deliver for those who aspire to achieve high SEO results.

Achieving SEO goals is not the same as making a memorable impression on your target audience when they click through to your site or blog.

What impresses Google is not necessarily going to move your target market to establish a relationship with your brand. The content that does can only be produced by a combination of analytics and human creativity.

You can't just be content with optimizing for search engines by following SEO guidelines when you need RO -- responsiveness optimization -- that requires blazing your own brand path.

That's what Write Way branding and marketing is all about. Learn more about my business offerings here.

Related

What B2B content marketers get wrong
Add a pinch of salt to creative claims for AI
Most Memorable Brand Slogans
What Edison Can Teach Us About SEO
Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness in Jane Austen's Novels

Follow Write Way Pro on LinkedIn and on Facebook.

You can also follow Ariella Brown.  

An Apology to Generative AI

ChatGPT spelled out in Scrabble tiles

By Ariella Brown

I'm not a generative AI fangirl. If anything, I'd consider myself more of a skeptic because people tend to not just use it as a tool to improve their writing but as a tool to replace the work of research, composition, and revision that is essential to good writing.

It is generally embraced by people who consider online research to be too much work and who believe that anything that comes out of a machine that will charge them no more than $20 a month for writing to be too good a deal to pass up. 

For those of us who actually read, the output of ChatGPT and similar LLMs is not exactly something to write home about. Unless you know how to prompt it and train it to write in a truly readable style, it will default to the worst of wordy, opaque corporate style text. 

But this isn't the fault of the technology. It's the fault of the mediocre content that dominates the internet that trained it. Below is one example that I pulled off  the "About" section of a real LinkedIn profile (first name Kerri maintained in the screenshot that proves this is real and not something I made up):  

As a strategic thinker, problem-solver, and mediator, I thrive in managing multiple, sometimes differing inputs to achieve optimal messaging and positioning. My proactive nature drives me to partner with leaders across marketing teams and internal business units, aligning efforts, connecting dots, and adding context to enable flawless execution of communication strategies and tactics.

In fast-paced, fluid environments, I excel in effectively prioritizing tasks and ensuring they are completed efficiently. I have a proven track record of setting and meeting strict deadlines and budgets, leveraging my ability to navigate dynamic landscapes seamlessly.

Driven by natural curiosity, I am constantly seeking to understand and implement the latest trends, technologies, and tactics essential for driving B2B sales opportunities. My keen interest in exploring new channels for messaging and content distribution fuels my passion for innovation and continuous improvement to not just meet but exceed expectations.

Let’s connect to explore how we can drive success together.

You know what sounds exactly like this? Cover letters you ask ChatGPT to compose for you. 

I've tried those out a few times and never been happy with the results because they always sounds like the text above. Trying to tell it to sound less stiff doesn't make it sound any less canned, and forget about getting it to copy my own writing style.

It's possible that Kerri used ChatGPT to create her "About" section. Given that she's been in the marketing biz for some time, though, I'd think she had to have had something filled out for years before ChatGPT was available, and it likely sounded very much like this even if she did let some LLM or something like Grammarly tweak it for her.  

People like Kerri, who ignore all writing advice from the masters like Orwell, White (watch for a upcoming  blog about him), and others made this the public face of corporate communication who are to blame for the bombastic and soulless style that LLMs replicate at scale. 

That's the reason for this apology too ChatGPT for mocking its output. You're not the one at fault. You had no way of knowing better. Humans do, and they should have provided you with better models for writing. 

Note on the title: I thought of giving this post the title "Apology" intended in the classical sense of a defense or justification for something others take as wrong with the hint of an apology to AI. Knowing that that wouldn't be clear to some readers, I opted to make this just a straight apology instead. 

Related:

A new generative AI comparison

The Perils of prompt engineering

Bard vs. Bard
Add a pinch of salt to creative claims for AI

An A/B test of generative AI
Bard brings in the clowns

A new generative AI comparison

Photo by Andrew Neel: https://www.pexels.com/photo/monitor-screen-showing-chatgpt-landing-page-15863066/

In the past, I've ncomparted Cha GPT to Google Bard (now Gemini). For today's exercise, I put the same query to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot. I put in the name of a real person and identified the location for that individual in Queens, NY.  None could give me the information I sough. 

What's interesting, though, is noting the differences in how they contextualized their responses. Out of the four, Claude shows the greatest self-awareness, and I'd say that Copilot shows the least.  

Claude's response

As this appears to be asking about a relatively obscure individual, I want to remind you that while I try to be accurate, I may hallucinate or generate incorrect information when asked about very specific people who are not widely known public figures. If you're looking for factual information about this person, I'd recommend checking other reliable sources.

I award Claude points for warning me about the possibility of hallucinations occurring when generative AI attempts to answer questions in the absence of data. See 

ChatGPT's response

I don't have specific information about an individual named ____from Queens, NY. It's possible that she is a private individual or someone not widely known beyond her personal circles. If she is known for something specific like public contributions, achievements, or notable activities, that information might be available through local news sources or community records.

ChatGPT's response failed to warn about hallucination, though it's interesting that it inferred the person in question was a she (based on the first name, I suppose), a gender identification that Claude managed to avoid.

Google Gemini's response

Gemini just bowed out, practically chiding me for giving it this query that it could not answer:

 
I do not have enough information about that person to help with your request. I am a large language model, and I am able to communicate and generate human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions, but my knowledge about this person is limited. Is there anything else I can do to help you with this request?

Copilot's response

Copilot went in a completely different direction. I wouldn't call it a hallucination, but it is still inaccurate. It wanted to find a match, so in one case it named a business with the last name appearing twice as a partnership, though it admitted that was Brooklyn rather than Queens. Its second suggestion was a male doctor in Queens with a similar last name, though it is spelled differently. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that these are the only two results for the last name in all of NYC. I mean once you're expanding the parameters, there really should be a lot more than two possible results. 

Related

The Perils of prompt engineering

Bard vs. Bard
Add a pinch of salt to creative claims for AI

An A/B test of generative AI
Bard brings in the clowns

Follow Write Way Pro on LinkedIn and on Facebook.

You can also follow Ariella Brown.  

Apple's Crush crash

Unless you truly believe that there's no such thing a bad publicity, the introduction of the new iPad Pro is likely the worst video ad ever made by Appl

By Ariella Brown

*See the P.S. added on May 10th below.

Unless you truly believe that there's no such thing a bad publicity, this is likely the worst video ever created for Apple and is a very good contender for worst ad ever.

As far as views and awareness, it's definitely a winner, having garnered  over 36 million views, 26K+ reposts, and 10K comments within 2 days. 

But in terms of sentiment it has aroused, it's a major marketing fail.

I'm saying this based on the overwhelmingly negative reaction it has inspired. Comments are turned off on YouTube, which usually indicates a deluge of negativity. But they're not off on X where every single reaction to Tim Cook's post I've read out of the thousands posted has been  negative. 

See some samples below.

@JuddBaroff

·I’m not sure ‘wanton destruction of all the good and beautiful things is this world’ was really the vibe you were trying for.

@kepano

·

I think the ad would work much better if it was reversed. All the objects should be expanding out of the iPad rather than being crushed into it made this edited version in five minutes (thanks iMovie!)

Geoffrey Miller

@primalpoly

This is the most ghoulish, tone-deaf ad I've ever seen in my life. Fire all of your marketers. This is utterly catastrophic for your brand.

Jash Dholani

@oldbooksguy

·

Everything beautiful, charming, and analog will be destroyed by a flat black screen You must never see a sculpted bust Never hear music from an actual instrument Never feel the texture of real things A silicon slab (and Tim Cook) will permanently stand between u and the world

*P.S.  I reported on the backlash to the Apple ad  on LinkedIn before AdAge did, yet that publication is the one that got the statement of apology from from Tor Myhren, Apple's VP of marketing communications. Of course, it descends into corporate blah blah before getting the point of confessing that they messed up big-time. 

The full text of the statement as reported in Inc. Magazine's quote is:

Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry

There is no way a company would have issued an apology like that if the negative reaction had not been this strong. 

Related:

Major Marketing Missteps from Adidas, M&M's and Coke

Follow Write Way Pro on LinkedIn and on Facebook.

You can also follow Ariella Brown.  

Sell me this raincoat

Umbrella in trash generated by Google Gemini

By Ariella Brown

The title of this blog is a variant on the "Sell me this pen" challenge. 

Confession: I find most marketing presentations a waste of time because they just rehash what I already know. But there is the rare exception that offers helpful insight and perspectives that spark my own #WriteWay creativity. 

That has been my experience in attending the Full-Funnel Summit.  Jen Allen-Knuth proposed shifting the sales intro from pushing your product of a $100 raincoat that may meet resistance from buyers who don't want to shell out that kind of money.

Jen said she'd frame it this was for a target market in the windy city of Chicago where it rains for about 1/3 the year: studies say only a small percentage of people remember to take their umbrellas. Those who forget will decide no to walk in the rain and so have to shell out $45 a pop for an Uber.

The implication that trying to save the $100 could end up costing you more if you forget your umbrella and end up paying for rides to try to stay dry.

As I wrote in the chat there, my approach would be different. I'd say "Ever notice how many umbrellas you see in the trash on a stormy day? That's because the wind rips through and breaks them. But have you ever seen a raincoat in the trash on a rainy day? No, you haven't. Here's why." 

And then I'd calculate the cost of multiple umbrellas purchased over the years vs. the one-time cost of the raincoat.

Why did I come up with this? Jen's framing refers to the forgetfulness of most people that you may think doesn't apply to you. You're smart enough to remember your umbrella, right?

 But even so, you have, no doubt, experienced your umbrella getting blown out from a strong wind and have seen multiple umbrellas thrown out that prove that even if you remember to take it, it can prove useless. Also the fact that you never see a raincoat peeking out of a trash can the way you see umbrellas creates a strong visual impression.

Another thing that made me come up with a different approach to Jen's was my thinking that it didn't make sense that her target market would hesitate over shelling out $100 for a raincoat would solve the problem of forgetting an umbrella by spend $45 on a single Uber ride to avoid walking in the rain. Generally, one would first look for a cheap umbrella, look for public transportation or just accept the inevitability of getting wet when walking home. 

If you're marketing to a price-conscious market, you have to speak to the in their own terms. They're not likely to indulge in expensive rides when they can walk. But they certainly can can calculate the cost of multiple replacements for umbrellas that don't stand up to the wind.

While I'm sure that Jen charged the client four or five figures for this marketing idea, I came up with it on the spot, and I'm sure I can come up with something that is equally sound and creative for your B2C or B2B.  The Write Way is all about putting yourself in the mindset of your target audience.

Visit my site to learn more about my marketing and writing services and book a free consultation call.

Follow Write Way Pro on LinkedIn and on Facebook.

You can also follow Ariella Brown.