“Honestly,” says Brooke Gracey, marketing director at Cvent, “I just wanted to see if it could be done. We came up with the idea when we heard how wonderful ChatGPT was going to be. I wanted to say, prove it! Let’s see what it can do.”
Presented by Cvent, this article explores the true story of a marketing team’s quest to build a webinar using ChatGPT. From concept brainstorming to content generation and marketing, it delves into the best practices, biggest fails, and overall impact of generative AI. Can ChatGPT truly revolutionize the way we create webinars? Read on to find out!
The Journey to an Innovative Webinar
Brooke Gracey, accompanied by her team at Cvent, set out to test ChatGPT’s capabilities by creating an entire webinar about innovative event technology. While the tool inspired them during the ideation and outline phase, Gracey emphasizes the importance of adding a human touch to the script. The team quickly realized that using AI doesn’t replace human involvement but rather enhances it, enabling marketers to achieve better, faster, and more efficient outcomes.
“We probably spent about a quarter of the time we would normally spend on creating a webinar,” Gracey says. “But it became clear very quickly that our jobs aren’t going to be taken over by AI. It can definitely help us do our jobs better, faster, more easily — especially when we live in a day and age where we’re all asked to do more in our jobs every single day.”
Although there were initial concerns about ChatGPT’s accuracy and ability to provide new and innovative information, Gracey explains that manual intervention was necessary to ensure the correctness and relevance of the content. She advocates for the integration of AI with a human element, highlighting that AI alone is not magical but incredibly helpful.
Overcoming Challenges and Enhancing the Experience
Gracey faced challenges regarding intellectual property (IP) rights when using ChatGPT to generate the webinar script. To address this concern, the team invited ChatGPT to be a featured speaker named Chatty. Gracey pre-recorded responses from ChatGPT, and they created graphics to accompany the character. This approach involved three speakers during the webinar: Gracey, a colleague, and Chatty, who recited the ChatGPT-generated responses.
Another challenge they encountered was making the script sound less computer-generated and more human and personal. Gracey explains, “It was my first time using ChatGPT in this way, and I had to work quite a bit to make sure it sounded like me. It gave me all the main points I needed, but I had to come in and do the work to make it interesting.” She emphasizes the importance of editing to ensure the content was useful and not just fluff, maintaining that although ChatGPT excels at generating creative ideas, it still requires human intervention for refinement.
“It’s terrific at offering inspiration,” she says. “I get a whole list of topics to talk about, and then I dive in and flesh them out, make them more interesting and more relevant. It’s great for a first draft of content, very quickly. In general, it feels like it helps expand my brain and makes me more creative.”
The Potential of Generative AI in Marketing
Despite not being a plug-and-play technology, generative AI shows promise across various use cases, as Gracey’s team demonstrated through their webinar experiment. She highlights AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data quickly, providing valuable insights to marketers. It aids in understanding audience preferences, personalization, and market analysis. Gracey also mentions Cvent’s successful implementation of AI in writing hundreds of emails for their nurture program. While ChatGPT-generated emails did not perform well, combining AI with human expertise yielded excellent results.
Gracey encourages companies to embrace the possibilities of AI, recommending starting small and early experimentation. She believes that leaders in marketing should become comfortable enough with AI to encourage their teams to utilize it in their work. Her message to webinar viewers is to be inspired, learn from her mistakes, and feel motivated to explore the potential of AI.
To delve deeper into the behind-the-scenes story of the webinar, including the journey from mistakes to breakthroughs, don’t miss the VB Spotlight! Watch it on-demand for free.
Agenda Presenter:
- Brooke Gracey – Marketing Director, Cvent
