I Made A Marketing Campaign With AI

As a marketer, I’m interested in seeing if AI could create a marketing campaign from start to finish. And do so in a manner where the messaging, the persona, and the channels are aligned logically.

For consistency, I made a marketing campaign for Glowing Greetings – the business idea I generated with AI – which sells illuminating greeting cards. This time I used ChatGPT to build the marketing campaign, using the “Yes, and” method from this Everydays note to collaborate with ChatGPT.

Generative AI tends to be a little wordy, especially since my prompts asked the AI to go for a volume of ideas. Thus, I pared each response down to my favorite idea and made a “Yes, and” statement to go on to the next part of building the marketing campaign.

You can view all of the marketing campaign ideas from our collaboration here.

What follows is the campaign idea I deemed best and built out with the AI. (My takeaway on AI’s abilities in marketing at the end.)

AI Makes A Marketing Campaign

My Prompt: Generate 10 marketing campaign ideas for a greeting card company

ChatGPT: "Send a little love" campaign: This campaign could focus on the idea of sending small acts of love and appreciation to friends and loved ones through greeting cards. The campaign could include targeted email marketing and social media ads featuring heartwarming stories about the impact of sending a thoughtful greeting card.

I started general to see a breadth of campaign ideas. The AI came up with 10 very different campaign ideas (view them all here) with interesting slogans, all relevant to something that Hallmark might do. Ultimately, I went with its first idea. I’d probably tweak it to “Mail A Little Love.” But solid theme to start with nonetheless.

My prompt: Yes, and campaign number 1, "Send a little love" could be a marketing campaign about focusing on the words we share in the card and not just what's in the box. We want to reset people's priorities with gift-giving so that they focus on sharing kind and impactful words with their loved ones. The campaign could target people that cannot make it home for holidays. How will we target this persona?

ChatGPT: Run a contest or promotion: You could run a contest or promotion that encourages people to share stories or photos of how they are staying connected with loved ones during the holidays. This could be a fun way to engage your audience and create a sense of community around your brand.

At this point, I was hoping for some ideas that were a little more nuanced for a card company. All 5 targeting ideas felt a little generic. But the last idea of a contest/promotion to basically incentivize user-generated content (UGC) was enough to flow off of. Also, in one of the other ideas, the AI said, “You could partner with companies or organizations that cater to people who are unable to travel during the holidays, such as airlines or hotels.” This was enough to give me my next prompt on the campaign.

My Prompt: Yes, I like the idea of running a promotion that encourages people to share stories or photos of how they're staying connected with loved ones during the holiday remotely. Everyone who submits a video of them mailing at least one card to a loved one will be entered into a raffle for an all expenses paid trip to see their loved ones over the holiday. Can you generate a video script that I can post on social media describing how to enter this contest and also emphasize to the importance of mailing kind words to people?

ChatGPT: Sure! Here is a video script that you could use to describe the contest and encourage people to participate:

[Video begins with a shot of holiday decorations and festive music plays in the background.]

"Hello and happy holidays! At [company name], we believe that the words we share in our greeting cards are just as important as the gifts we give. That's why we're excited to announce our latest promotion: the 'Send a Little Love' contest.

"Here's how it works: all you have to do is mail at least one greeting card to a loved one, and then share a video of yourself doing it on social media using the hashtag #SendALittleLove. Every person who enters will be entered into a raffle for a chance to win an all expenses paid trip to visit their loved ones over the holidays.

"But the real prize is the joy and connection that comes from sending a heartfelt greeting card. Whether you're far away or just looking for a special way to show your love, a greeting card is the perfect way to brighten someone's day and let them know they're on your mind.

"So don't wait – head to your local post office and send a little love today. And don't forget to share your video using the hashtag #SendALittleLove for your chance to win a trip to see your loved ones in person.

"From all of us at [company name], we wish you a happy and love-filled holiday season.

[Video ends with a shot of the company's logo and a cheerful holiday greeting.]

This was by far the most impressive thing that the AI created for the campaign. It understood tone-of-voice and pulled on the heartstrings with “The real prize” part. It included information from previous prompts, like how I summarized the campaign in the second prompt. I love everything about this campaign video. So I wanted to close it out with some tactics for growing this campaign.

My Prompt: I like how the "Send A Little Love" marketing campaign for my greeting card company is coming along. I'd like to share the video script on social media, but I specifically need to target people that will be away from their friends and family during the holidays because they can't afford to go home, are away from home for work, stationed abroad in the military, live somewhere far from their family, or any other reason. What type of influencers or accounts should I partner with to get this message out?

ChatGPT: There are several types of influencers or accounts that you could consider partnering with to promote the "Send a Little Love" campaign and specifically target people who will be away from their friends and family during the holidays. Here are a few ideas:

Military and veteran organizations: If you're targeting people who are stationed abroad in the military, partnering with military and veteran organizations could be a great way to get your message out. These organizations often have large followings on social media and could help you reach a targeted audience.

Travel influencers: If you're targeting people who are away from home for work or other reasons, partnering with travel influencers could be a good way to reach this audience. These influencers often have large followings on social media and are known for sharing tips and recommendations for travel and staying connected while on the go.

Mental health advocates: If you're targeting people who may be feeling isolated or lonely during the holidays, partnering with mental health advocates could be a helpful way to reach this audience. These advocates often have large followings on social media and could help promote the idea of using greeting cards as a way to stay connected and show support to loved ones.

Lifestyle bloggers: If you're targeting a general audience of people who may be away from home for any reason, partnering with lifestyle bloggers could be a good way to reach this audience. These bloggers often have large followings on social media and could help promote the idea of using greeting cards as a way to stay connected and show appreciation to loved ones.

All five of these partnership ideas I thought were well-aligned with the theme of the marketing campaign. From here, if I were looking to deploy this campaign, I'd pare everything down to a one-page document and dial in all of the wording. So there's still at least one touch needed from a human after the AI idea dump concludes.

My Takeaway on AI in Marketing

First and foremost, this was the first time I got to use ChatGPT. It’s noticeably stronger creatively than other natural language generation models I’ve tried. The downside, of course, is that ChatGPT is a very busy platform. As one of our Everydays members, Brian, pointed out to us, ChatGPT crossed 1 million users in just 5 days (potentially the quickest business to ever achieve that). Because of this demand, often, when I go to the platform, it’s too busy to admit another user, which can be a bummer. But it worked this time.

Collaborating with AI on marketing was a lot of fun and helpful to the creative process. The substance was there. Its ideas had nuance and creativity. The messaging was coherent. It generated great names for the campaigns too. It gave me just the spark I needed to build out a marketing campaign.

But the most impressive part is that it was actually able to build upon the idea prompt-after-prompt, using the context from the previous responses in its next text.

It started to lose some steam as I got more into the nitty-gritty of the marketing campaign. Regarding the final prompt around promoting the UGC campaign, I had to re-engineer that prompt three times. Ultimately, I fed it a much easier layup of a prompt, basically doing the creative work for it – suggesting the types of people and reasons people would be away from home. But with that handholding, it still came up with a nuanced approach for these promotional partnerships.

Do I think that there’s a place for Generative AI in marketing today? Absolutely.

Are there marketing tasks that Generative AI can assist with and not sacrifice human ingenuity? For certain.

Does it still need some savvy collaboration to take a marketing campaign to finality? Yes, for now.