ABOUT OUR GUESTS: Saadi Muslu | Naoka Watanabe | Eva Juretic | Peter Fodor

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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🐶 Keeping track of all the tools that are available.

🐣 How the tools fit into the day-to-day.

🪵 Using AI tools for research.

☔️ The trend of AI presenters.

🪐 Adopting AI tools across the team.

🌽 Optimizing the input on AI tools.

🎱 Common mistakes made while using AI tools.

🩰 Will AI take our jobs?

🎬 AI tools that have proven to be useful to panelists.

KEY QUOTES

How do you keep track of all of the tools that are out there?

Eva: I’d suggest exploring TikTok too. People share short videos about how they do something or create something and I get curious and go and explore.

AI tools are not the only answer.

Peter: I don’t think that AI tools are able to provide you with a strategy or a plan. Tools like ChatGPT and Jasper are like skilled team members – they offer inspiration and fragments. You, the expert, then weave these into original, impactful work, which AI-averaging responses can’t quite achieve yet.

Nevertheless, we’re using AI in growth and creative teams, both of which we’ll discuss. In strategy, I employ AI for competitive analysis and app optimization – keywords, competitors, and more, speeding up production.

I use GPT for sheets. That’s great for cleaning data very quickly getting to the stuff that you would otherwise do in multiple tools. It’s a plugin for Chrome. And when you are also in charge of user acquisition, and work with designers, I’ve seen that Midjourney really helps to define the vision you have and share my vision effectively making us faster and more efficient overall.

The trend of AI presenters.

Eva: AI-based presenters are an emerging field. While technology advances quickly, it still needs further development for prime time. It’s a great tool for experimenting, especially for sales pitches or replacing your own video content with different words. However, not all products or games may benefit.

But in our case, we haven’t found yet a way to really use it. You can clearly see that they’re AI-generated, but I don’t think it’s going to be a long time until they become more and more realistic.

Adoption of AI tools across teams.

Peter: We are very honest in our team, that AI can really disrupt our business. And because of that, we have to adopt it. We were able to spark an interest and excitement about these tools.

AI tools save time, eliminating tasks like background painting or hunting for missing assets. By January or February, the team recognized that this can save tremendous time and effort they’d otherwise put into daunting tasks.

We also have a channel where we share things that are new, including our experiments. I will say 1/3 of these experiments turn out to be practical and easy to implement. People are just excited to see what could be the next thing that will shorten the production time.

So I asked the team yesterday, and they said it changed a lot. We have more time for more complex things, or creativity, for being original.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Shamanth 

Welcome to our webinar on Generative AI! We’re thrilled to have a panel of all-star guests with us today: Naoka Watanabe, Manager APAC Creative Production at Liftoff Creative Studio; Saadi Muslu, Head of Content and Product Marketing at Singular; Peter Fodor, Founder and CEO at AppAgent; and Eva Juretic, Growth Marketer at Pocket Worlds.

A big thanks to our co-hosts Liftoff and Singular.

Today’s webinar explores generative AI, a fascinating topic that’s gaining immense interest. With the vast number of tools available, how do our guests keep track of them all? Saadi, if you want to kick us off?

Saadi 

Sure, before we began today, I talked with the fellow panelists. Generative AI has exploded, with more tools on the horizon. ChatGPT’s API released this week marks a significant step.

Plus members can now seamlessly integrate ChatGPT, enhancing software and coding. Until now, insights came from industry peers, marketers, Reddit, forums, and Slack discussions.
YouTube also offers a wealth of guidance on starting with generative AI in advertising and marketing.

Shamanth 

And Eva, how do you keep track of all of the tools that are out there?

Eva 

Marketers often discuss on forums like Reddit, but truthfully, company Slack channels are key. Saadi highlighted the influx of new AI tools, especially in startups. 

I’d suggest exploring TikTok too. People share short videos about how they do something or create something and I get curious and go and explore.

Shamanth 

Yeah, you don’t have to look really. The company Slack is interesting, because it comes pre-filtered, pre-vetted. And you also see results of what they’ve tried.

But Eva, how do all of these tools fit into your day-to-day workflow?

Eva 

So for me personally, it helps a lot with communication. So Pocket Worlds is a fully remote company and communication happens almost exclusively via Slack. So in a remote environment, having really good and clear, written communication is paramount.

As I sometimes struggle with expression, I would just get it out of my head and say, okay, how can we rewrite this to make it better? This process has become even more efficient now.

Shamanth 

100% and I think it’s taken the barrier down for folks that aren’t native English speakers, certainly on our team, they are able to come up with much more polished writing and output even on the creative side.

Saadi, I’m curious if you can speak to how all of these tools have fit into your workflow.

Saadi
Indeed, there are benefits of being a non-native English speaker and how tools like Grammarly aid in refining language, order, and conciseness. AI is widely utilized in the workflow: researching personas, competitors, crafting headlines, and copywriting, where it’s especially advanced.

It streamlines brainstorming, offering near-perfect options that can be enhanced with a human touch, it really reduces the amount of time you would normally spend on brainstorming and conceptualizing.

I think with image generation, there’s still some work to be done there. Normally, we would go on Dribbble or other kind of reference websites of designs to get an idea for a new ad creative. Now you can input some prompts, or images to work off of and get a perfect output.
It’s been useful in so many of the processes. 

One last thing is I spoke with a friend in the industry tonight. He’s using his successful ads and their KPIs to guide new ad creation, even adapting based on his CTR, inputting personal performance data for better ads is a smart idea.

Shamanth 

100%. We’ve also done that in terms of inputting a script or copying and saying, give me other ideas or other directions. I think just the process of going from zero to one is incredible, especially for those of us who faced a blank page syndrome.

To switch gears, when you look at strategy and planning as a marketer, how are you leveraging AI tools or processes that are built on AI tools? Peter, if you’d like to tell us how you’re using these.

Peter 

We’ll start with a little bit of a controversial statement. I don’t think that AI tools are able to provide you with a strategy or a plan. Tools like ChatGPT and Jasper are like skilled team members – they offer inspiration and fragments. You, the expert, then weave these into original, impactful work, which AI-averaging responses can’t quite achieve yet.

Nevertheless, we’re using AI in growth and creative teams, both of which we’ll discuss. In strategy, I employ AI for competitive analysis and app optimization – keywords, competitors, and more, speeding up production.

I use GPT for sheets. That’s great for cleaning data very quickly getting to the stuff that you would otherwise do in multiple tools. It’s a plugin for Chrome. And when you are also in charge of user acquisition, and work with designers, I’ve seen that Midjourney really helps to define the vision you have and share my vision effectively making us faster and more efficient overall.

Shamanth 

I agree. The output you get is almost never ready to use. But because it’s taking you from 0 to 80, you can go from 80 to 100, being a very smart curator of that output that you’re getting from the tool.

Naoka, what are you using in terms of tools or processes for your strategy and planning?

Naoka 

I fully agree with Peter on strategic building. AI isn’t a complete reliance yet, but it aids ideation and consolidating info. I use the generative AI tools for making my input efficient. So, I can easily digest and understand the information there better.

ChatGPT and Whisper transcribes and summarizes audio. They’re great for inspiration in my strategy work and creative projects.

Shamanth 

Yeah, if your inputs are bad, you’re going to get bad results. We call this on our team “lazy prompting”. But these tools refine the quality of your inputs, which can give you very high-quality outputs as well.

So Saadi, when it comes to doing research and coming up with new ideas, how do you use some of these tools?

Saadi 

ChatGPT has become my new search engine. Unlike Google, which requires digging through multiple results, ChatGPT summarizes and pulls out key focuses, saving research time.

Same thing with competitive research. For me it’s B2B.  I have to go through their blogs, and their webinars, and listen to them. It can be time-consuming.

Similarly, for a mobile app company, for example, that does gaming, They’d have to go and engage with the game itself to get far along with the game to get an understanding of the user experience or the differentiators and the value.

But with ChatGPT, you can get a summary and synopsis of the key themes that your competitors lean into, or the key messages and value propositions.

The prompts helper is vital, allowing me to improve search queries and find what I need faster.
For scientific research, it’s super helpful in crafting effective prompts to get the answers I seek.

Shamanth 

Regarding competitive research, Peter shared earlier. In ChatGPT 4.0, the web browsing feature enhances results, though currently disabled. Its return would significantly boost power. Marketing strategy and ideation have also greatly benefited from AI-based tools.

Peter, with creative production, what have been some of the tools that you have found most effective?

Peter 

Six months into our AI exploration, we’ve found immense value in various creative tools. I’ll show real AI examples and present additional tools for your testing. On the left, an icon for Star Stable was generated in Midjourney, refined with a designer’s touch in Photoshop.

The second very often used technique is generative fill. We are providing export in multiple formats, and the assets from the game sound very often in all of these dimensions as we want them to be.  We use tools like Dall-E to complete visuals.

Regarding Clash of Clans, AI offers an irresistible enhancement, making gameplay visually striking. Specialized tools sharpen the focus, ensuring detailed action even when zoomed in. This rapid process produces marketing-quality assets swiftly and visually appealing.

With a combination of ChatGPT and Revoicer, we crafted a Winston Churchill-like voiceover for a game ad. We’re working on an ad for a game called Kards, which is from World War II.

With ChatGPT, you can do a couple of prompts and achieve something that’s very decent, very close to how probably Winston Churchill will put it in his own words. Then you can use Revoicer where you copy that script, you put some marks where you want a pause and some emphasis. We got a tremendous output. After a couple of post-production effects, it now really sounds like a true movie and explains the story in this amazing act. 

Shamanth 

This is great. So Eva, a lot of ad creators, particularly for games require assets that are specific to the game. Peter, you showed how you guys had to do some Photoshop overpaint to make it more native to the game.

But what you have in a game may not be present in the output of the AI tools. So does that limit the functionality of the AI tools? And how do you use AI tools to account for the fact that there are very game-specific assets that you might need during your ad production? 

Eva 

Peter’s example of using Midjourney to adapt concepts and styles for games is insightful. AI is fantastic for sparking new creative angles and brainstorming. It’s like having an endless idea generator in a team session.

For text in ads, ChatGPT is great and easy to use. It’s a standout in generative AI for marketing, especially in creating videos and imagery.

Voiceovers benefit greatly too, saving time and allowing A/B testing to resonate with different audiences.

 Shamanth 

Certainly. Eva, I know you do work with a lot of UGC. Now, there are AI presenters around based on your experience, how ready are these for prime time? Or are they already ready for prime time? How do you see this change and evolve as we move forward?

Eva 

AI-based presenters are an emerging field. While technology advances quickly, it still needs further development for prime time. It’s a great tool for experimenting, especially for sales pitches or replacing your own video content with different words. However, not all products or games may benefit.

But in our case, we haven’t found yet a way to really use it. You can clearly see that they’re AI-generated, but I don’t think it’s going to be a long time until they become more and more realistic.

Shamanth 

Yeah, we used them as part of an ad creative, not the entirety of an ad creative and in that sense, I find it ready for prime time. 

But, currently, specifying emotions lacks authenticity. It could change as we move forward. 

Naoka, what are you seeing around AI-based presenters for UGC?

Naoka 

For a while, presenters offer technological capabilities. There’s existing tools and technology to replicate the real human. I think they cannot reproduce the authenticity or emotional sharing or unique creativity brought by the influencers at this moment.

So maybe the AI presenters at this moment have less credibility and less familiarity. And influencers,they have followers, and then we can empower the other creatives from them using their followers.

We cannot repress the real human. But I see in mobile gaming ads, that some of the advertisers, they’re using AI avatars of characters.

Their in-game character is speaking using AI-generated voice prompts and face animations which can make the ad more engaging with the users. I’m seeing that direction for AI presenters for mobile ads.

Shamanth 

Certainly. And I think a big part of using AI-based tools is just figuring out the organizational aspects of embracing it as a team. So what are some of the ways in which you guys review best practices with your team?

Eva mentioned the company Slack. Obviously, that can be quite a firehose, but Saadi, what do you think? Some of these learnings, synthesizing learnings, and adopting some of these processes internally.  

Saadi 

We’re still in the early stages of optimizing AI in our marketing department. We’ve initiated quarterly all-hands meetings to share how we’re experimenting and using AI across functions.

Our design team, for instance, tested AI on existing creatives but had to adjust for branding constraints.

There are so many copywriting tools, and ChatGPT is not the best one for it, because there are tools like Copy AI, that specifically are for marketing, writing, advertising, headlines, and copywriting. So I think it’s to learn and discuss now quarterly.

Shamanth 

Yeah, I think a quarterly show and tell is a great idea. Something we do is, every time somebody finds a new tool, we try to translate that into a mini project or a small task for them to come up with a deliverable of some sort, to see if this is something that could change.

And Saadi, when you said, every department comes together, I think that can be also powerful to see how you could use these tools outside of your immediate horizon.

For instance, I was able to use some of these tools to write programs despite not being skilled in coding. This app is incredibly cool to be able to do just to see how completely different people are able to use these tools in different ways which is inspirational.

Staying on the topic of teams, you guys have had pre AI workflows, pre AI processes and all of you have had teams that are somewhat sizable.

So Eva, how easy or difficult has it been to change your processes, and change your workflows to incorporate AI-based tools? Has there been pushback internally? 

What, if any, have been the challenges?

Eva 

Yeah, there was no pushback from the team. People are eager for new tech in Pocket Worlds. So that was easy. I mean, this is how I see our Slack being a good resource of what’s cool and new in AI as well because people are playing around with it and sharing.

Shamanth, your approach resonates – integrating AI is about creating deliverables in a fun way, not panicking over AI updates. So that’s the similar thing we do.

Speaking of habits, our initial inclinations often stick, whether in problem-solving, creativity, or job tasks. Personally, I tend to follow familiar paths rather than considering automation or AI solutions.

Also, I have a personal anecdote. A phishing attempt was tried on me, and I received a document that looked like a shortcut to PDF that seemed suspicious. Without opening it, I copied what I had and posted it in ChatGPT, which provided me with the rest of the code’s purpose.

It was trying to access Facebook admin accounts, elevating random accounts to the admin level. This incident highlighted the usefulness of AI, especially for accounts lacking two-factor authentication.

Shamanth 

Certainly. Peter, can you speak to us about how it’s been to drive adoption, so as to change or replace your existing processes? And whether there’s been pushback internally?

Peter 

We are very honest in our team, that AI can really disrupt our business. And because of that, we have to adopt it. We were able to spark an interest and excitement about these tools.

AI tools save time, eliminating tasks like background painting or hunting for missing assets. By January or February, the team recognized that this can save tremendous time and effort they’d otherwise put into daunting tasks.

We also have a channel where we share things that are new, including our experiments. I will say 1/3 of these experiments turn out to be practical and easy to implement. People are just excited to see what could be the next thing that will shorten the production time.

So I asked the team yesterday, and they said it changed a lot. We have more time for more complex things, or creativity, for being original.

Shamanth 

Yeah, certainly it can be an existential threat if you don’t adapt, I don’t think fear is always a good reason to adopt some of these tools, excitement can be a good reason to adopt these tools. And when people see that it saves a ton of time. Definitely, that can be hugely impactful.

And we talked about the promise of these tools, as well as the opportunities. But, if you’re not careful, you’re going to get junk. I talked about lazy prompts earlier. And certainly, I’m sure you guys are aware of hallucinations with ChatGPT output, certainly with AI tools.

Naoka, how do you make sure what are some of the ways to make sure you’re not getting junk outputs? Because if you put garbage in, you’re going to get garbage out. So how do you avoid getting garbage out? 
 

Naoka 

I keep it practical, set a clear objective here for the purpose and avoid overly abstract prompts when using ChatGPT or other Generative AI tools.

You’ve seen the long sentence of the prompt for the image generation on Midjourney.
For that kind of intense prompt, you need precise results. Maybe not that much for the text-based language model tools but, you need to be really precise about what you want to get.

Shamanth 

Sure I think that certainly makes sense. 

What do you guys see as some of the common mistakes that folks make when it comes to adopting tools, and these could be organizational mistakes?

Because that’s a big part of what we just talked about today, or could be individual mistakes in terms of how they use or adopt or test drive these tools. What are some of the common mistakes? Naoka, feel free to go for it.

Naoka 

As AI tools evolve and new users join, there’s a tendency to over idealize AI’s capabilities. However, practicality is key.

When incorporating AI into your company’s workflow, define clear objectives and match them with suitable AI tools and processes. So I think that’s what you need to do.

Shamanth 

Be more clear, be more specific, certainly. 

Saadi what do you see as the common mistakes that folks make?

Saadi 

Optimizing prompts has been my biggest challenge. Tools like FlowGPT and Chrome plugins are helpful. Providing context, examples, and key questions early in the prompt boosts effectiveness. I learned these tips through trial and error and seeking advice on platforms like YouTube.

Also, there are so many tools out there. People should work with a free trial as every tool is not going to work for your business, target market, or business use case.  In copywriting, Scalenut works well for me adapting to my tone better than ChatGPT.

Testing is crucial; don’t give up if the first tool doesn’t fit. Optimize usage and keep learning from the experience.

Shamanth 

Go on YouTube and there are a number of Udemy courses, which cost $10 to $15 and you get focused knowledge and education. You can invest in most of these courses and I certainly have heard that they are much more specialized, which can be hugely powerful. 

So Saadi is AI going to take away our jobs?  

Saadi 

Yeah, I think AI won’t take our jobs, but those excelling in AI might if we don’t evolve.

Human touch remains crucial, especially in refining ad examples.

AI aids ideation and research. Shamanth you have said, it’s helping you to focus on what’s really specific to you. You need to then optimize with the human touch.

And then you have more time to personalize and use human creativity to refine things. People who are using AI, taking these courses and getting certified, I think they’re going to have a competitive edge in the workforce. 

Shamanth 

We’re all going to become editors, not writers, and/or curators, not painters, if you will pick your analogy. The better the curator you are, the better the editor you are, the more secure you will be economically. 

Eva, what do you think about this?

Eva 

As with any technological advancement, fear and opportunity coexist. AI startups are abundant, driven by the same idea. The tools we’ve talked about automate tasks, granting time for higher-level thinking and creativity. Success lies in leveraging this technology, and I see it being equivalent to knowing how to Google really well in the past. That’s my perspective.

Shamanth 

Yeah, 100%. Obviously, Googling and using the internet is very ubiquitous now. But certainly, there was a time when this was a specialized skill, and people with email ids were the cool people. I certainly like that analogy.

Naoka, give us an example of a favorite AI tool that you think not many people will have heard of.

Naoka 

Generative AI tools I use ChatGPT, Whisper, and Adobe Firefly. But the non-popular one I use is Elicit. Elicit enables natural language searches for study papers, making it easy to explore topics like the impact of human eyes in advertisements on engagement and behavior. The site summarizes studies and provides references.

It’s really useful to get inspiration for your creative production or your marketing.
 

Shamanth 

Sounds good. Peter, give us a tool that you feel not many will have heard of.

Peter Fodor 

I will highlight two tools to try out. One is called Typecast.ai and the second is ElevenLabs.io These two are favorite tools of my creative team and provide very good voice-overs. So check them out.

Shamanth 

Wonderful. Let’s pass the ball to Eva.

Eva 

Notion AI, including ChatGPT API, helped me to improve my writing, adjust my tone of voice, and summarize an article into action points. Also, it helps with writing blogs, writing, conclusion, or summary.
 

Shamanth 

Excellent. Let’s pass the ball to Saadi.

Saadi 

For research and data calculation, ChatGPT has proven invaluable. Copywriting-wise, we rely on Scalenut AI, which streamlines content adaptation for various platforms and even offers robust SEO optimization.

Grammarly remains a longtime favorite for enhancing emails, ads, and extensive reports. Stable Diffusion for image creation is really fun to play with- with high-quality outputs. While I’ve also explored Midjourney and DALL.E, my current favorite is Stable Diffusion.

Shamanth 

Excellent. Also, I’d recommend that people check out the OpenAI API or any of the APIs because as a lifelong non-programmer. I found it very easy to write programs or debug programs.

I’m going to put out an app that produces scripts and adds scripts, hopefully in the next week or so. So look for it, play around with the API, and you’ll be amazed at what you can do.

I’m going to offer questions from the chat to the panel. The unanswered questions we’ll follow up on perhaps as a podcast episode. 

Saadi, what tool are you using to add the assets and results that you have achieved? And what did not work in order to get ideas for new assets? How do you add the results and metrics?

Saadi 

You can input this as a simple table. For instance, label one column “High Click-Through Headlines” for optimization.

Normally, the click-through rate is because if you try to do something, best ROAS, they don’t know what you’re targeting, your bidding strategies, etc.

But click-through speaks to your creative. So you can add a table that has examples with the respective click-through rates.

Add another table with text, featuring poor-performing examples.
 

Shamanth 

Yeah. What about AI for creative analysis? If Midjourney can describe an image, has anyone tried to use natural language processing to analyze creators and why they have performed?

Peter Fodor 

I just noticed in the last couple of days, a new tool that’s called the Domain. They have a couple of modules. One is creative tagging and the second is creative development.

One of the co-founders is the guy who builds the creative team at Tilting Point. The others are ex-Meta. So it could be interesting with a demo scheduled for next week.

Shamanth 

Yeah, I know Meta was using these kinds of tags to categorize creatives even before AI tools exploded. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible.  

How can we prevent plagiarism? When AI is all about learning and maturing with the collection and using other’s data?

Saadi 

It’s really early for regulators to come to a consensus on this and every kind of legal entity in the US is going to be different from the EU and so on.

In the US, Midjourney images are protected from direct copying, but there’s complexity around characters like Disney’s Mickey Mouse.

But if I was to go ahead and get inspiration for Midjourney, and then add my own tweaks to it, as far as my legal counselor is telling me, at this point in the US where I’m based, it’s not plagiarism. So I think it’s a really touch-and-go thing now.

 Shamanth 

Yeah, have you guys tried including UE5 in developing these AI presenters or virtual content creators? What are your insights?
 

Peter 

Well, they have this new plugin called MetaHuman which is real digital. We haven’t tried it yet. And I think there are some really simple tools that take less time that are getting close to the real feeling.

These tools enhance creative freedom when integrating characters into digital scenes, offering flexibility and potential. So in the future, I believe that’s the way to go.

Shamanth  Wonderful. Thank you for our superstar panel. Thank you for the amazing audience for being so engaged and asking so many questions.