113 - AI-Powered Pitch Challenge

Zac: 61% of B2B marketers say AI has sped up their campaign ideation process, but great campaigns still need a human touch to truly connect with audiences. We're going to discover if that's true in today's episode.

Rich: So our question can AI create a B2B campaign idea that would actually work? And how would we make it better? So we're going to let AI do the pitching. Zach prompted. Did you take the prompting course? Did you do that one? Yeah, I did. Oh, okay. Good. So he's learned to prompt. Um, because garbage in, garbage out. So uh hopefully it was good stuff in, because I have confidence in Zach. Um but yeah, basically prompted it to create some campaign ideas for our agency, and we're going to share those with you and talk about what works and what doesn't.

Zac: But right now we're going to talk about this episode's cocktail, which is a fall sangria. Uh the fall sangria in this case was created by Bobby Flay, as I'm sure all of you know who that is.

Rich: Yeah, you're on a food network kick the last couple of these.

Zac: I know. They're interesting. The recipes are kind of interesting. They're like more like party focused or like gathering focused. So it's kind of fun. So this drink is very fall, has a lot of blood oranges, pomegranate seeds, rosemary, uh, sparkling dry red wine, and uh, you know, a splash of orange and pomegranate liqueur. And uh sounds very good to me.

Rich: Yeah. So um we fun fact, we have um dehydrated blood oranges in our freezer because we had we needed a blood orange for like some sort of cocktail. I don't know, but you just needed like the juice of half of it or whatever. So we took the other half and just sliced them all and then dehydrated them and stuck them in the freezer for garnishes. So anyway, uh you start with one cup of water. What a boring way to start a reps recipe. Um, the juice of one blood orange, uh, two torn rosemary sprigs, um, one quarter cup orange liqueur, two tablespoons of pomegranate liqueur, uh, a little bit of super fine sugar to taste, so one to two tablespoons. So this is not your normal granulated sugar. This is literally called super fine sugar, uh, and it dissolves much faster and easier. So you're gonna want that. Uh slice of blood orange and then a half a cup of pomegranate seeds and a bottle of chilled dry sparkling red wine. So that can be a weird one to find. So you could do a lambrusco. That's an Italian that's a sweet. Um, I don't know if that's, I don't think that's dry though. Um, but they have it. Uh most people think of sparkling as white, um, but there are red wines. Um, sparkling pinot noir is delicious. It's fantastic. So uh water, blood orange juice, rosemary sprigs, orange liqueur, pomegranate liqueur, and sugar. Put those all in a pitcher and stir them. So no shaking on this bad boy. Um, you'll know it's combined when the sugar is dissolved, basically. So you'll be good there. Um add the sliced blood orange and pomegranate seeds. So you just dump those in because it's like Zach said, this is like a party festive kind of a thing. Uh and then refrigerate it overnight. Sangria always must be refrigerated overnight to let the flavors infuse. Uh when you're ready to serve it, add ice to the pitcher and stir in the sparkling red wine. Um, so if you were using flat red wine, you would put it in the night before like everything. But since it's sparkling, you want that fresh fizz and bubble uh on there when you serve it. So just ice, stir in the sparkling red wine, serve that baby, uh chilled, and it should be really refreshing, especially if you're having unseasonably warm weather at Thanksgiving, which who knows? It could be 20 degrees here, it could be 80 degrees here. So and again, Bobby Flay from Food Network. Thanks, Bobby. That was great. Um totally my wheelhouse. I would 100% do this one. Um also, did you notice like I'm repping the uh Gen Xers today with my 1971 shirt?

Zac: I was gonna say, what's the story behind that?

Rich: It's just so I got a different shirt that uh for my workouts that I think is hilarious and accurate. It says uh kinda fit, sort of fat. Um and I'm like, yeah, that's where I'm at. I'm like in between the two. Um and then they had uh free shipping, but you had to buy two. And so this was they had a 1976, and I'm like, well, surely they have other ones besides just 76. That's dumb. And so I looked and they did. They had a 1971, and so I thought, hey, that'd be a nice shirt. And so I wore it today to be casual and represent Gen X. Gen X. Uh, and also just give a clue to people as where the 71 in her name comes from. There you go. All right. All right. Well, should we take a break and get back into it and see what this uh AI tool did for you?

Zac: Yeah, see what it came up with. I'm excited.

Rich: All right, so a couple of stats I think that really set this up. So uh again, if you're just joining us, although why would you just join us midway through? I guess people could. Um Zach prompted AI to create a couple of B2B campaigns for us, and we're gonna go through those. Uh, but first, um basically 75% of marketers are saying that AI gives them more time to refine strategy rather than start from scratch. So instead of starting from a black page and their brain, they're actually using AI to give them those thought starters. Um, I've seen this with writers as well when they get writer's block. Like not using AI to write, but using AI to like give them ideas to get them beyond the writer's block.

Zac: I feel like that's been super helpful for probably Isaac and definitely me. I mean, staring at a blank page just sucks. So having, you know, AI give you the starting point is great.

Rich: Isaac created his own custom research agent for a specific client because they research from specific places and specific things and it goes out and finds research for him, which is interesting. Um so the other piece of this though is you need a strong brand narrative. If you have a strong brand narrative, your campaign is two and a half times more likely to drive conversions than if you just have a bunch of disconnected ideas. Hmm, Zach, who would ever do a campaign with disconnected ideas? Not us.

Zac: And the reason I included that stat, so I'm just gonna give a little bit of background on how I prompted, just to give our listeners and you a little more perspective on what I did. So I kept myself, I limited myself to three prompts because I wanted to give it a starting point and I didn't want to I didn't want to guide it too much because I wanted to see its full capabilities. So first I told it all about who we are and kind of just gave it like a little bit of a background and said, I'm creating a two, I want I need help creating two B2B campaigns. This is who we are, these are some of our goals, this is how we want to grow. And so I prompted it there to start. It was okay, like it was fine when I got back. I wanted to iterate a little further, so I said, put yourself in the shoes of a marketing team with like years of expertise, and I like kind of split it up by like position, so like a content marketing specialist, like what would the president of Annual 71 care about, stuff like that. And then finally, I uh the final thing I did was basically I gave them I I narrowed it down to two specific campaign ideas that it presented to me because I asked for several, and this is kind of what it came up with. So the last step was just narrowing it down into what it thought would be the most effective.

Rich: So I want to break this down for a little bit for everybody because you did a couple of key things in AI prompting. Um one is you gave it context, right? Because AI doesn't have context unless you tell it where to go get context, or give it the context. So you give it context about who we are. I think the more important piece of that and the thing that is starting to work well until it like they become self-aware and take over, um, is you gave it a role. Put yourself in the shoes. You are a, you know, content specialist coming up with ideas for this audience. You've got to pass those off to the president, he's got to approve them. These are some things like you gave it a role as if it was a team member, which I realize freaks some people out. Like they get a little creeped out by that, but um it really can help it because again, and these are large language models, so they can go out to the internet and look at job descriptions for that role, you know, people's blogs for who are in that role, people's LinkedIn profiles who are in that role. They can go find all kinds of things on people in a specific role. It's an easy thing for them to go look for. Um, I think those things are really important. Um, the other one is you asked it for a bunch of stuff at the beginning, um, like a bunch of ideas first. Like, don't just go build me a campaign, just give me ideas for campaign themes or campaigns. Um, that lets you, the human, still be in control of the direction you go. Um, you get those ideas and then you can choose which ones you want to refine, which is exactly what you did. So kudos on um the solid AI prompting there. I I do love that you were worried about like leading the witness, and so you didn't give it too much. Yeah.

Zac: Um because I feel like I could have spent a long time doing it, and it was just like, and I almost did because I was like, okay, some of these ideas are okay. Like I feel like if I really nailed this down, like you could come up with something good. But again, like I said, we need to let it do its thing because we want to showcase like what it can do, like from a basic standpoint where you're in a crunch, you need some ideas, and yeah.

Rich: So and it's an experiment, so you didn't want to fully control the result. You you wanted to use the tools you had appropriately, but see where it went and what it comes up with, which can be really fun. Um, side note, did you see that there's now there's now AI that can learn and rewrite its own code to interpret things differently?

Zac: No, I did not scary cow.

Rich: I saw that when I was flying back yesterday. It was just a news headline and I dug into it a little bit, but not super deep. But um, not completely self-aware, but it can use its successes, its failures, context. Um, they're also looking at, um, and this is actually in a movie too, different AI tools being able to talk to each other and share what worked for one or didn't work and actually learn off of each other. They're coworkers.

Zac: People do. Yeah.

Rich: Um, and I saw that on a movie preview. It was basically like um, was it a movie? No, it wasn't a movie. It was actually a demo, um a tech demo. So they somebody had created this like um Android, basically, an AI robot that could like finally something useful. It can do your house chores, it can vacuum, it can fold laundry, like things like that. Um and what they said is as they like it's just a prototype, but as the goal is as they build more and more and more, they'll be networked, which again, Skynet, hello, problem. But um, the idea is if one of them learns how to use like a specific Dyson vacuum, it can tell all the other ones how to use that specific Dyson vacuum. Uh all right, Zach. So let's get into campaign number one. I'm curious about this one because I did not read all of the campaigns. I didn't want to spoil it, I want to have a reaction.

Zac: All right, so I'll do my best to give you kind of an overview of everything without you know going too deeply into what each thing is. We can kind of break that down as we like react. So, campaign idea number one is called the future builders, antidote 71 as the creative catalyst. So the big idea here is that Inadote 71 doesn't follow marketing trends, doesn't just follow marketing trend trends. We build what's next. The future builders positions A71 as a partner for brands ready to lead their industries, not just keep up. So the str the strategic angle it gives is every B2B brand is talking about the future, but few are showing it. The campaign turns innovation into a store story worth believing.

Rich: Alright, so idea number one, that's interesting, Zach, the future builders, people who are staying ahead of the industry and helping their clients lead the industry. That's a great positioning, honestly. Like so we came up with the positioning?

Zac: Yeah. So I gave it some insights into what we were kind of like looking for in 2026, but I would say the biggest thing is that um I think this has potential, right? So like you say, it's a unique positioning, and I'm liking what I'm seeing so far from it. And uh it also provided some stuff for the campaign campaign structure itself, so just some ideas in terms of content and things that we'll put out. So I'll cover a few of those. Uh they want to do a hero series, which is like a cinematic video and social like media post campaign, profiling a handful of our clients, they call them visionary clients, that and the impact they've made through bold strategy and storytelling. And it's it emphasizes that this isn't a case study, it's a narrative. So basically, it wants to tell the story of our clients in an interesting way rather than just saying this is what we did and this is how it happened. And I think that's really interesting. Um especially like if you like focus on things that are like not normal, right? So not your typical like strategies that you would do in BW marketing. So showcasing stuff like that is super interesting.

Rich: Yeah, I like this, I like this idea. Like, and the idea that like it's very specific, like this should be a narrative. Um, so it's more like the way we're consuming stuff, right? Like you could um, if this was a series of videos, which I think is what it wanted, you could binge watch them if you wanted to. You could watch part of one, you could skip around. Um, it's kind of like um for me, it's how I watch Black Mirror on Netflix because each episode is its own thing. They don't tie to each other, they're all just some weird, freaky thing. And some of them honestly freak me out too much, and I'm like, I'm never gonna watch this. But like, you know, there was one that was like a riff off Star Trek that they did, and then they did a follow-up to it, and like so I would jump into that one and then go back and look at stuff. So I like also it's just it's a narrative. So this is, you know, more Netflix, less LinkedIn, like kind of a thing.

Zac: And another piece of this is they want to make a future builder hub. So basically a micro site that's really scrollable and that invites visitors to exploit through these stories by industry, pain point, or transformation. So basically, it's almost like yeah, like a micro site, right? Where it's designed almost kind of like a resource center, but not boring, is what it says. Not a boring resource center. So you're exploring different things within your industry. So like we could put our services on a page like this and then have those stories live there, and it's its own site, so it's almost like a landing page almost.

Rich: Yeah, and I think that it also becomes like a choose your own adventure story, right? I don't know. Did you have those when you were a kid? Oh, those are my favorite books. Oh, okay. Yeah, same, same, same. Um because like I think that you know, things like services and what we do and how we did it would all be kind of hidden. You'd be choosing your path and understanding where you need to go. And based on the information you get, you might go down a different path or a newer one. Like it's you know, it's really interesting to me. Mm-hmm. Could take a lot to build.

Zac: Uh so some of the other campaign structure things that it like basically put out, everything would be powered, would be have AI powered personalization of some kind. So that's so it says content journeys are shaped based on a visitor's goals, like growth, rebrand, market disruption. Um, it says social layer, Colonel Bite-sized story teasers, and founders slash leadership sound bites designed to feel raw, not polished. So you're just getting thought leadership content out there. And then the final piece of this is events. So it says event integration, future builder roundtables, so basically webinars, but we host them with other forward-thinking CMOs, creators, and innovators. So we're not just saying we're a part of the future, we're bringing people on that are having these new ideas that are pushing the envelope.

Rich: Yeah. When um when I was client side, there was an agency we used um in um in San Diego, Red Door. Uh, I've mentioned them before, and Reed is their CEO, he's a friend, he's a great guy. Um and he got together current clients, prospective clients, and past clients. At the point I was a past and perspective, I think, or perspective. Um, and we did dinners. So we just sat around a table at dinner and he bought dinner and we just all talked about what was going on in our marketing worlds. And so like it was um somebody from like Cox Communications, Petco, a credit union. I was there from, I was at a financial firm at the time. And then like, and different people would come in. So like um he would he would try to rotate it through so there were different people. And you couldn't always do it, right? Like it just wouldn't fit the schedule. Um, so I love this idea of a round table because it's also smaller. You're not trying to do this giant event, you're just trying to get some people together. And honestly, if you buy them dinner and wine, like they're gonna they'll be fine. Um so I do like this. I think um, you know, some of the things that work well, it showcases strategic storytelling chops. Um, you know, if we have those, um, would have to kind of talk about what is true in this and what we can do and what we'd have to like actually shift in our own, like because sometimes a strategy makes you shift your own like way of doing things. Um it really focuses on the clients and uses those as proof points, but it does it in a way that's this storytelling what if, this possibility, which I love, obviously. I don't know how many times in the last month I've said, well, what if, what if? Like, imagine this. Um, and it and it pushes us as a forward thinker. Like, we're not just doing what's what needs to be done today. So I like this one a lot. Like, yeah.

Zac: Um I I mean, I was curious what you were gonna think of it, and I'm like honestly, like pretty happy that you like it because I was just like, that was one of the reasons I was like, oh, I could spend all day just prompting this to see where it can go because it's like such a good starting point. This one, specifically to me, it has a lot of good bones, right? So a lot of good, interesting ideas. Is it a fully laid-out campaign with like deliverables and assets? No, but it's a great like starting point. And I think it kind of shows just what a little bit of prompting can do too, right? Because I fed it a good amount of information and it was able to come up with this. Imagine if I did more than three prompts and actually continued with it. I think it would be like in a really good spot.

Rich: And that's um that I think is is a really good point. It's like you can take this as deep as you want to. Like, and we're gonna debate that on Friday. We have our annual meeting this week. Um, or by the time you hear this, it might be the previous week. I don't know when this is when's airing, but um it's it gives us an idea to be able to like talk through what we're gonna do with AI and what we're not gonna do with AI. So, like, this is a great example, and we might actually use this, so you so bring this. I mean, I guess I've got the document, but like, was this an appropriate use of AI? Did it go too far? Did it not go far enough? How far could we go? You know, so getting, you know, do we feed it like here are our clients and say, go look at their results and here's a report from the last year, and have it actually start to pull together the pieces of the narrative.

Zac: And can you standardize like the process of prompting it to a point where you can consistently get good results that are similar to this, but like in a way that doesn't pass those guardrails that we're gonna set, right?

Rich: Yep. Uh all right, campaign number two. We gotta get to that one.

Zac: Um so this is kind of interesting because you kind of literally just said this. Campaign idea two is what if you could. And this is an emotion-first brand narrative. So the big idea here is that we thrive on clarity and boldness. What if you could is a brand forward campaign built to challenge clients' assumptions and make them feel the power of possibility. So the strategic angle is in B2B, emotion still wins. Instead of listing capabilities, the campaign will actually start with a single provocative question designed to spark ambition, curiosity, and movement.

Rich: So this is um you see pharmaceutical companies do this um like a lot. They play with the what if, and there's some tech companies or like like an Accenture consulting firms will do some of this.

Zac: Um, if this condition didn't hold you back, yeah, that makes sense.

Rich: It's really um interesting. There's the one that is um, God, I can't remember the pharmaceutical company, but they have like negative terms by like like um like like incurable, and then they do a little science-y thing and the in like falls away and breaks and it just becomes curable. I cannot remember who that is. It's like Glaxo Smith Klein or one of those, who knows? Um, again, bad because I can't remember the name of the brand, but um, but it is that like what if all the negatives could be positives? What I like about this, and we'll get into it in a second with some of the structure, is it doesn't start with a negative, it actually just poses a a positive. Um, so it doesn't have to be the contrast. You can actually just point people at the positive thing. And there's a little bit like the negative is a little bit in these, like it's hinted at because you're solving a problem.

Zac: It's hitting your the pain point a little bit, right? So it's you're aiming at you're aiming at things that clients wish they could do, but don't think they can, which is honestly like it's it would work really well with the other campaign because it's like you're forward thinking, right? But this is another way of doing that with a different campaign structure.

Rich: So was forward thinking one of your prompts?

Zac: Like was that something yeah, so being like on doing things basically, I said we want to stand out from the like different like wave of like B2B marketers that are falling into the trap. I'm kind of just like generalizing it, but that are falling into the trap of doing what everyone else is doing. So I really want to stand out because B2B marketing is a lot of sameness. So that was one of the prompts, and I think it really hit on that one really hard.

Rich: Okay, great. All right, so structure, talk a little bit about this.

Zac: So there's some out-of-home digital, like digital out-of-home stuff, a stark minimal creative campaign using questions like what if your story made people stop scrolling? What if your brand actually felt human? What if clarity wasn't negotiable? And I think you could break this down by industry too, if you really wanted to get into it. Like, what if I I mean I'm not even gonna try and come up with a what if, but you could really get in more in-depth with these questions, I think, and it would really hit a lot harder.

Rich: So what if redoing your website was actually fun?

Zac: Yeah.

Rich: Like, I mean, that's what so what's interesting about this one is I feel like this one's a little more genuine to us because I know there are moments where we have made brands feel more human. Um, where, you know, I mean, the telling your story made people stop scrolling, like that's probably a little bit beyond. But there are pieces of what if. Um I also just say it all the time, and I love thinking about that.

Zac: What if you didn't have to make a thousand cold calls? There you go.

Rich: Yeah, what if your sales team only followed up on leads who were interested?

Zac: There you go. I think we're this is already this is already showing a little bit of what it can do, right? It's giving us a lot of like good points to brainstorm off of. So another piece of this is it says landing experience, but it's basically a single powerful interactive landing pages where users can click through questions that reveal A71 solutions and case studies in a conversational flow. And in parentheses, it has powered by AI.

Rich: And so it's giving itself a job.

Zac: Yeah. That could be like a chat bot. That could be like, what if I could do this? Ask our agent this question, right? Or ask us a question and we can give you a solution based off of it. Yep. And then there's short form videos. So basically, I think these could be really hard-hitting, a sequence of emotion-driven storytelling clips. So bold typography, things that are showing client transformations. It's a nice piece of supportive content. And then a lead per it has lead nurture path, emails, and retargeting ads designed to build on the what-if question of personalized proof points.

Rich: Mm-hmm. I think that, yeah, this one is it's interesting. It's also um most of what this is recommending is not like high production video. Like the previous one, like it specifically said a cinematic video experience, and it's like, okay, that's gonna be a lot. This one is really more about like bold type and simple design and really being um, you know, graphically forward, but not a whole lot of like, you know, on location shooting or anything like that.

Zac: Well, and I think it's so interesting that both of them do case studies in a different way, right? They frame it in a way that's m way more hard-hitting and like actually gets to like the pain points of the could of our like clients and our like potential leads. And that's something that I've been looking at for like our content in 2026 is how we can make case studies more interesting and how we can get them out there in a more interesting way. So this this is all just like like music to my ears. So yeah, I was ripp really not pleasantly surprised because I've done stuff like this before for like ideating, but I was really happy with what it did and the amount of prompts that it did.

Rich: Yeah. And it's it's almost like the better you get at prompting, the better results you get from AI. Like, hmm, who knew? Um, yeah, and I do like this one because it it's you know, we want to try to have a little bit of an edge, like we're not a super edgy brand, but we're also not like boring milk toast. Like we're we're just you know, we've got some attitude, we've got a voice. Um and it could be really, really memorable. I also love the idea, as it was suggesting the out-of-home, which is an interesting suggestion uh in today's times, but out of home does have a place, especially digital out-of-home. Having a big bold question and not answering it and just driving people to that landing page experience is really an interesting idea because that's going to be super measurable, right? Like we'll know how many people come there.

Zac: Um it's creative, right? Like you're just you're you're just putting it all in on a on that one question. And I don't know, like that has me thinking of a lot of things.

Rich: So I mean, and we could just do a71.co slash what if.

Zac: If you if our listeners see this campaign out in the wild, do you know where it came from? Yeah.

Rich: But just know that we executed it. Like we we used AI. I think that I think this is interesting, and we'll talk about it on Friday and see what the rest of the team thinks. Um maybe um give them a raw, like look at this episode before then and have them listen to it. Um But the idea of, you know, this is pushing AI a little bit further than we have yet. Um, with, you know, less, you know, research, totally get it. You know, coming up with topic ideas, yeah, we get it. And this is a topic idea, but then it goes beyond that to give it sort of a rounded campaign feel.

Zac: Um it gives you a nice like little roadmap that you can make your own and refine, right? Because at the end of the day, like we would never just take this and then turn it into a campaign. We would refine and brainstorm and discuss. And I think that's what's so interesting. It's like it probably did it, probably took me like 15, 30 minutes to like prompt that. I mean, if you put the attention to detail into the prompting, you can get a really good start like this. And I think if we think about things that it could improve, right? Because I think that's still an important part of it, it's not perfect. Some of the language is a little cheesy and stuff that we would never say, right?

Zac: Yeah.

Zac: And I think that some of the uh like campaign structure ideas, like the supporting content, is a little weak. Like we could definitely like nail those down a little more.

Rich: Yeah, there are a few pieces of that. Um, was this chat GPT you used for this? Yes.

Zac: In this case, maybe next time we could test different language models like Gemini and like ChatGP chat GPT to see if it's different.

Rich: 29:11

But yeah, I mean we have Google Workspace, so we have access to Gemini. Um, and then you've got HubSpot's um AI that continues to evolve and and grow. What would be interesting to me is for us to work on a really good creative brief and basically just hand it a Word document or a PDF that is the creative brief and have it come up with campaign ideas off of a human brief, basically.

Zac: Sounds like another episode.

Rich: I know. Like this is interesting. Um, you've got my brain thinking. So we'll see who we freak out with this when we talk about it on Friday.

Zac: Yeah.

Rich: Um that is um some cool stuff, Zach. Um that was a fun one. All right, yeah. And there'll be more content in the narrative of this, the description of the episode, and on the landing page for the episode. Um Zach can put in a little bit more detail. Um, maybe if you've still got your prompt. You can put in what you prompted just so people know exactly how you did it. Um and then yeah, we'll uh we'll go from there. So uh bring us out, Zach.

Zac: You can find our agency at anado71.com and all of our socials are there as well. If you have any questions that you any what if questions that you'd like to ask us, uh send them our way, or head to you can send them our way by heading to CTA Podcast.live to shoot us an email. Or even better, leave us a voice message on our hotline at 402 718 9971. Your question will make it into a future episode of the podcast.