From storyboards to client decks - ChatGPT finds unique use cases in the Indian ad world

ChatGPT has left the advertising world stunned & many agencies have started including it in their daily tasks. We speak to brands and agencies to find out ChatGPT’s use cases in A&M and the future of AI.

Every client needs someone who is always brimming with ideas, can understand their abrupt briefs, has the ability to turn it into a deck within a few minutes, and can brainstorm ideas for an entire month in just one sitting. No, we are not talking about Emily in Paris and her superhuman abilities. We are talking about the other superhuman tool that has left many copywriters speechless and has become envy for many – ChatGPT.

Many writers are losing their sleep worrying about AI replacing their jobs, while a few have already started mastering the tool. In a few months, virtual assistant ChatGPT has already seen early adopters across industries. In fact, as per Open AI CEO Sam Altman, ChatGPT saw one million users in less than 24 hours. Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, two very popular social networking sites, took months to hit the one million mark. 

Software engineers are using it to write and debug codes, and advertising professionals aren’t far behind. They have experimented with ChatGPT to conjure decks, write copies, draft emails and make a whole idea board. As per Glassdoor's social media platform Fishbowl, 37% of marketing professionals said they’ve used OpenAI's ChatGPT or another AI program in their work. 

Acceptance of AI in Advertising

The Indian advertising industry has already seen ChatGPT's uses cases across departments.

Sharing a few, Sudhir Das, Executive Creative Director, DENTSU CREATIVE India said, “Some of my colleagues have chosen to outsource certain parts of their jobs - ad copy, A/B testing variations, writing product descriptions. Some other colleagues use it as a brainstorming tool to riff with. Some use it just for research. Some designers use it instead of Lorem Ipsum. The best CRM is pretty much just chatbots now. An acquaintance has started using it to create personalised cover letters for every job he applies to.”

Das believes we’re on a cusp of a revolution and he is super excited to see how it can make our lives easier. At the same time, he has one concern, which does bring down his excitement.

“Every revolution claims its martyrs. Often, it’s someone who didn’t even choose it. And sometimes, I wonder what the martyrs feel,” added Das. 

Even advertising wizard Ryan Reynolds called it ‘mildly terrifying’ after he used it to write an advertisement for Mint Mobile. 

SEO, Secondary Research & Personalisation - ChatGPT’s uses cases

Apart from its wide creative applications, ChatGPT can become a powerful tool in SEO’s arsenal. It can quickly generate a list of keywords, says Samir Asher, Co-founder & COO, Tonic Worldwide, with intent and search volumes for any region, all in a spreadsheet format, making it a valuable tool. 

“SEO experts at Tonic, by doing manual research and utilizing their expertise, optimize our SEO strategies and deliver exceptional results for our clients. At Yellow Labs we are researching and developing complex solutions using ChatGPT that will help our clients revolutionize their digital marketing strategies and build more personalized connections with their customers,” said Asher. 

Swati Nathani, Co-founder and CBO, Team Pumpkin said that the agency has been using ChatGPT for secondary research but she believes that it is not dependable yet.

“Teams have been using ChatGPT for secondary research, to understand target audiences, debugging code snippets, generating ideas for photoshoots, SEO Blog Topic searches and even writing Out of Office mails. The fact that chats are progressive, makes it a much better option than other search engines. However, it's still far from being dependable. Currently, it's being used as more of a base platform and then the teams enhance it manually," said Nathani. 

Bharatesh Salian, Sr. VP - Marketing Science & CX, Kinnect told Social Samosa that GPT can be used in automating repetitive tasks, improving customer experience, and personalising browsing experience for consumers. 

“ChatGPT is a powerful tool for businesses looking to enhance their customer experience through technological solutions. Whether it's providing 24/7 customer service, personalizing recommendations, automating repetitive tasks, or enhancing chatbots and virtual assistants, ChatGPT has the ability to understand and respond to natural language input, making it a valuable asset for any business looking to stay competitive in today's digital landscape,” said Salian. 

As a visual designer, Karthik Nambiar, Creative at Talented says that ChatGPT has been a great tool to simplify complex ideas and concepts, making them more easily understandable.
"This is especially helpful when communicating my designs to others, such as clients or team members. The model's ability to provide a wide range of ideas and concepts, which can inspire me to think more creatively and generate new and unique designs. It helps me to identify the most promising concepts to further explore and develop visually. Additionally, ChatGPT's ability to understand and respond to natural language makes it easy for me to convey my thoughts and ideas in a clear and concise manner. This can be extremely helpful in the design process, as it allows me to communicate my designs more effectively and receive feedback in real-time. Overall, my experience with ChatGPT has been positive and it has helped me to streamline the design process and enhance the effectiveness of my designs."

On the other hand, Himanshu Arora, Co-Founder of Social Panga said that the agency is still in reviewing stage.

 “ChatGPT still needs to be put into use. Currently, we are only exploration phase & amazed by the kind of responses we are getting. Currently, I am just exploring ChatGPT, not able to put any clear usage from day to day point of view.”

Shahir Muneer, Founder and Director of Divo said that more use cases will soon come up as platform evolves. 

"We have been testing recently the use of ChatGPT for copy with search engine optimisation for usage on web and social media. It is able to arrive at right keywords and even hashtags related. This can have marketers be able to work on scale and use the tool to give multiple options to them. With the platform getting more refined, there will be more use cases coming up."

Siddharth Bhansali Founder, Noesis.Tech and CTO, Zoo Media has been using GPT to imagine and execute custom models for clients, assist with framing solutions, define site maps, and identify audience cohorts. 

“As the AI studies and absorbs information, users need to ensure the output from GPT is accurate and not factually incorrect or bizarre. We need to emphasise quality over quantity, and the Chat GPT has made us rethink benchmarks, cut through standardised solutions bordering on passive and cliche, and truly push the envelope when it comes to conceptualising and executing ideas to help our clients connect with their audience in a more meaningful way.”

Marketers marinate AI into their lives

Marketers spend a significant amount of their time on repetitive tasks, such as sending emails and creating social media posts, as per HubSpot. This is where AI can be a friend to marketers.

Shetanshu Dikshit, Lead, Digital Communications, Pernod Ricard India said, “The tools definitely serve to provide a key perspective from the lens of short and long format write-ups in various styles. While the result would seem slightly biased, it truly is opening up avenues in various content spheres: 

• Writing thought-provoking content (song/poem/essay) around topics of interest 
• Generate ideas basis specifics (moments/occasions)
• Generate potential blogs to titles based on content feed in
• Handle a wide range of customer inquiries.”

Arundhuti Dhar, Manager, Campaign Management, ITC Limited has found herself sometimes resorting to it for general searches for daily life hacks, or to dig out responses for marketing purposes. 

“Even though it occasionally lags, the overall experience is pretty unique, and seamless with interesting responses to the queries. It is very close to human-like interactions and saves time by avoiding the need to visit multiple websites in search of an answer,” she told Social Samosa. 

Apprehensions Around AI in Advertising

While ChatGPT provides human-like responses, it is only human-like. It is not human. It, therefore, lacks the ability to truly understand the complexity of human language and conversation. 

People are susceptible to numerous cognitive biases, including recency and confirmation biases, says a recent report by Wavemaker. 

The report further says that these biases manifest themselves in our actions and, consequently, in our data. Since data is the foundation of all machine learning algorithms, it is essential to keep this in mind while building experiments and algorithms, as AI has the capacity to amplify and scale human biases at an unprecedented rate.

It is perhaps because of these cognitive biases or its limitations that OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman had Tweeted, “ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness. It's a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. it’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.” 

He said that it should be used for fun, creative inspiration.

Shradha Agarwal, Co-Founder & CEO, Grapes said, “For now, it has quite a few crucial limitations to be used for practical purposes of any consequence, which is why we’ve refrained from using it on an organisational level.

Moreover, its knowledge has prominent factual errors, like believing that the Gateway of India is in Delhi. Even though it has been trained on an extensive data set, it might still not be enough for a country as big and diverse as India. This could also exude certain inherent biases. ChatGPT is not a substitute for human creativity and ingenuity.”

Due to the high traffic, ChatGPT hasn’t been responsive for all. 

Arushi Gupta, Head - influencer.in, said, “The biggest flaw I faced with the tool would be when a high volume of traffic approached the website it tends to become unresponsive. Overall the experience has been good, with a few fixes, the tool has major potential to be of great use for organizations as well as brands.”

AI is important now, today and will be in the future

In the past, with new technolocial advacements, many old platforms have feared redudancy. It wasn’t very long ago that the popularity of podcasts threatned the radio industry but with resilence, it continues to thrive. 

When Canva was launched, many feared that it would threaten graphic designers. However, today, graphic designers use Canva to strength for small cases and bump up their turnaround time. 

By 2030, AI will lead to an estimated $15.7 trillion, or 26% increase, in global GDP, based on PwC’s Global Artificial Intelligence Study, which is greater than both China and India’s current combined GDP.

The World Economic Forum estimates that 85 million jobs will be displaced while 97 million new jobs will be created across 26 countries by 2025. It says that AI will automate many repetitive and sometimes dangerous tasks like data entry and assembly line manufacturing.

Therefore, it is key to evolve with changing times and upskill. 

In the next five years, half of all workers will require some upskilling or reskilling to prepare for changing and new jobs, according to the World Economic Forum. 

Whether AI will make the need for human experts in digital marketing redundant, Tonic’s Asher says absolutely not.

“Natural language processing (NLP) and Chatbot technology can offer a useful and convenient interface for users to interact with, but they cannot match the imagination, compassion, and problem-solving acumen of human user experience specialists such as the ones we have here at Tonic Worldwide,” said Asher. 

It is important to remember that technology exists to aid humans and is prone to error. Employees who learn to work hand-in-hand with technology will continue to thrive, add new feathers to cap and climb up the corporate ladder. 
"Keeping in mind that errors like plausible sounding but inaccurate responses exist, it is safe to suggest that a considerable amount of human intervention will be key to using such platforms," said Shrenik Gandhi, Co-founder and CEO, White Rivers Media.

Chat GPT and AI tools are more good than bad, believes Indraneel Gawde, Country Head of Business Development, Schbang. 

“The digital industry is one that learns and unlearns so quickly, and we will be able to take this into our stride and make it an everyday occurrence. If today, one person has the capability to deliver an output of 5 things on a daily basis, tools like AI and ChatGPT will be able to increase it to 10-15 or even more. The freelancer economy will also boom from this as they will be able to deliver more. So I think it will help not only the structured agency industry but also the freelance industry," said Gawde. 

With ChatGPT finding more space in boardroom conversations and creeping it ways into more day-to-day use cases, it is becoming more apparent that generative AI is here to stay. How it evolves and finds more acceptance in the advertising world, we are sure ChatGPT will have a better answer to that question. 

And as Sam Altman himself said, “Embracing change will be important… Humans always find new things to do, and the future will likely be amazing.”

- With inputs from Social Samosa reporters Sneha Medda and Pranali Tawte