In a world where A.I. can write all of the words for free, what is a copywriter to do? What tools should they adopt and how should they approach artificial intelligence? I invited Petter Magnusson, the creator of PurposeWrite, to join me on The Copywriter Club Podcast to discuss these questions and talk through how copywriters can use tools like his to serve our clients better. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Full Transcript:
Rob Marsh: It’s been three years since ChatGPT launched and changed the world. So what does A.I. mean for copywriting today? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
When OpenA.I. released the first version of ChatGPT to the public, what had been a quiet conversation about artificial intelligence happening mostly behind the scenes suddenly burst into our collective consciousness. Writers and creators in particular were suddenly aware that at least at some level, these large language models could do some of the work we were being hired to do.
Many of us dove into these tools to see what they could do. We launched a short-lived podcast that talked about how A.I. was impacting so many different ways of working, certainly within marketing, but also in many other industries. You can find the 20+ episodes of that podcast on The Copywriter Club website.
Since that time, the dust has settled a bit. The A.I. tools have gotten a bit better. Image creation tools are significantly better. Writing tools have also improved, but it remains true today that the best copywriters seem to be able to use them to get the best outputs… if you want good copy, copy that captures attention and converts readers into buyers, it helps a lot to have a copywriter guide the inputs and rework the outputs you get from the A.I. model of your choice.
Another thing we’ve seen in over the past couple of years is that while tools like ChatGPT and Claude get most of the headlines, lots of other tools have added components of artificial intelligence to improve their products, speed up useage, and make applications more sticky. At the same time we’ve seen the launch of job-specific A.I. tools that do one thing… like writing emails, or writing articles at speeds humans simply can’t match.
So when it comes to A.I., where are we headed next? What tools will we be using to get better results? And how helpful is it to have a user or prompt engineer or copywriter who really knows what they’re doing versus just playing around to see what they can get a model to do?
I asked Petter Magnusson, the developer of PurposeWrite to talk a bit about A.I., the tool he’s built, and also the broader environment of artificial intelligence and where he sees us going from here. And because whatever happens with A.I. will have a big impact on copywriters, this is a topic I may come back to in the coming weeks. This whole industry is fascinating. The speed of change is a bit scary.
During our conversation, I had a realization. In the past copywriters charged for the things we delivered… the words. Officially we sold blog posts or sales pages or emails or some other copy, but it was the words that clients expected to get. But now that ChatGPT can produce the words pretty much for free, we need to move up the value chain and sell the process, the strategy, the analysis, and the ideas. And bringing that to the A.I. model you use will make the outputs there so much better. Any way… I think this is a discussion you’ll enjoy.
Before we get to my interview with Petter, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. Unless you are hitting the 30 second skip button when you get to this point of the show, you are no doubt familiar with The Copywriter Underground. I talk about it every week. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.
And now, my interview with Petter Magnusson…
Petter, welcome to the podcast. I am really interested in your journey. How did you go from, i think, photographer, content creator, and now you founded an AI company all about writing How did you get here?
Petter Magnusson: First of all, thanks for having me. I’ve been like, to be honest, I have discovered your pod fairly recently, but I have listened in and I really like what you do. So I’m going to be stuck in here for a long time listening.
Rob Marsh: Thank you.
Petter Magnusson: There’s a bunch of episodes. So yeah, it’s so much, so many I want to listen to. So I’m surely going to do that. Yeah, so I have a bit of a weird mixed history. So I started as a, I don’t know if you youll probably You will edit this, you I guess.
Rob Marsh: Of course, well if yeah we can always cut it down or or sometimes we just like to hear the story.
Petter Magnusson: My background is a bit long story, I started out as ah as a programmer, actually, a long time ago. And then I started studying physics and I studied physics engineering. Then I went to Japan for for my work in advanced laser physics kind of thing. And then I stumbled into sales for that laser company doing sales. And that led me into marketing where I became marketing manager for an IT company in Sweden. And we did extremely well. We happened to sell modems at the time that internet exploded. My boss still thinks that I had magic hands or something because he became super rich from that. And and he still thinks I was had a part of it.
So anyway, so I did that. And then I started getting really interested in photography. And… I was having reached some of my life goals, to be honest, at the early 30s. I thought, ah, I want to change direction. So then I just bailed out. I applied for art school in Norway and I got in i as I took a bachelor in in art ah photography. And then I went to to do master’s degree also in Sweden in yeah photo and film. So then I was like a ah photo artist actually exhibiting in galleries and stuff like that. Classic art, you know, career. Until I got a little bit angry with that world in a way, because it’s not as it’s not as free as you may think. You know, I used to think that art is free. But in the art world, to survive, you have to be fairly political. You have to know certain people, you have to network, and you need to make pieces about the right topics if you want to get the scholarships and the exhibitions. And, you know, that might be all fine, but then I saw how people are were adapting to that, and that like goes against everything that art is for me. So that kind of got me, yeah.
Rob Marsh: Yeah.
Petter Magnusson: And then I thought, well, I might as well go commercial. so so So I did that. as so I went into commercial photography and and filmmaking. And now I have a small production company in Stockholm, and we’re doing corporate stuff mostly. So a lot of B2B topics. And that’s when I started to see what what kind of led into PurposeWrite. I have a lot of I see exactly the same. I saw the same happening in visual content as in copywriting, I think.
People come to me and they were like, hey, video is hyped. We want to make a film or or something. And I’m like, OK, great. Why do you want to make a film? And they’re like, it’s hip or something. And I’m like, OK, who’s going to see this film?
I don’t know. Everyone. and i’m like okay you know So I had to start you know the journey with them to like, okay, let’s find out if if you actually should make a film and who should watch it. What is your target audience and you know pain points and and interests and stuff like that. So that was kind of a struggle sometimes to make people understand that, yeah, of course I can just make a film for you, but that will make not make you happy or or the viewers or anyone. so And then we started… producing some text content too, and and especially for ourselves. And I think the trigger point came because I was trying to hire a guy that was not very good at writing, to be honest. Oh, maybe you should edit this out in case he listens to this.
But anyway, ah yeah, I came across that that was going to do some some writing for us. And then I saw the same pattern in text. And I think that’s what triggered me. like Because he would produce content pieces that had no direction, no purpose, no, you know, not thinking about who’s going to read this and why are writing it? And and why are they going to read this? Everything like that. And that got me started that, okay, this is this is exactly the same problem. But and And then at that at that time, AI came along, you know, ChatGPT and everything.
So I started playing with that and put that tool ah to work by kind of turning the process around. Because when you normally when you use ChatGPT, you write a prompt um and that will do something for you. And I could see the same problem there. Like, you know, generic content just exploding on LinkedIn and platforms like that. um I’m mainly talking content now because that’s the the area that I’m familiar with.
But people are are mindlessly prompting stuff and they get something that looks pretty good. I mean, AI writes pretty good. Layout is nice with nice headlines and stuff. So yeah, on the surface, all is always fine, but it’s really horrible. It’s got no no value, you know.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it lacks so much, just from an emotional connection standpoint.
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, exactly that. And there’s so many problems with it, you know like the emotional standpoint, the story, the style, and again, having a purpose with it, like who are you writing for, everything like that.
And the thing is, i discovered that um you can actually i have AI make pretty good text. But again, hip yeah and this leads me back. Now I’m i’m like floating around in my my thinking bit.
But lead this leads me back to the visual area because I saw the same exactly thing happening there because I’m coming from visual side of things. And I saw the same thing happening there first before I came to the tech side, like imaging, you know, AI imaging.
First you saw it and you thought, wow, this is so cool. It looks amazing. and and and then I’m trying to use it for professional purposes. And then I see, oh, it’s not so easy to direct this thing. i can make something cool. But when I do have a brief and I do have a brand and then an image and a style and a mood board, and it’s extremely hard to make it do what i want because I have a vision for what I want. Yeah, a vision for the result. And that’s when it’s like tricky and I started realizing that, huh, all right, yeah, you need to actually feed this pretty much information to get what you want out of it.
It is possible, though. you know If you give give enough information, you you can get pretty good results. And that’s what I discovered with text, too, that if you have a copywriter mindset, So, you know, sort i mean, first of all, you need to know what kind of information you should put in your prompt. If you ask it to just like generate a LinkedIn article about, like in my case, then selecting a corporate photographer, which could be a topic on our blog, you know, like one of those value bringing articles that are not selling us as a company, but like seemingly neutral guide kind of thing. then that will be totally generic, not helping the customer and not helping us in any way. But yeah, if you start putting in like the good stuff, like who are we writing for, what is actually important to think about, but then you are in a situation where you’re almost writing it yourself. So then the question is, what’s the what’s the purpose here? Yeah, gosh, I’m yeah gosh
Rob Marsh: So how did you go from how did you go from there to wanting to build your own tool ah that’s going to do this? Because, i mean, it’s one thing for a copywriter say, okay, I’m going to you know do the back and forth with Claude or ChatGPT, and I’m going to tweak it or maybe even set up a custom GPT at this point in order to feed it some some ah preliminary data so that it’s giving me you know a particular voice or whatever. But Going from from that to, well, i’m going to actually build a different tool that’s going to do all of this stuff in a different way. That’s a whole other jump.
Petter Magnusson: Exactly, yeah. And I started out exactly like what you say now. I started you know building larger prompts, longer prompts, more complicated, and then into custom GPTs. But then I started running into problems because when when the prompts got longer, like when I started getting to the really good ones, you know when I actually specify the tone and the target audience in detail and and everything like that, I started having problems with the AI cannot, can then and not any longer keep track of what it’s supposed to do. It’s losing stuff when the prompt gets too long.
It’s hard to, it doesn’t know where to focus kind of. come And that’s when I started thinking, wow, I would actually need, and then I know that a lot of people make then than several custom GPTs, like one for this, one to find the target audience and one to do this and that.
And then I thought, huh, I started doing the same. And then I thought, what if I would have a tool that can tie these things together so I can actually do these things together? Step by step. And that is kind of countering the limitations of the of the prompting. so And then I came up with the idea of making it like a traditional, since I’m coming from a programming in background, I started thinking,
A traditional program would actually be pretty good here. you know Step by step, first do this, then ask the user about this information, then go to the LLM and ask that to provide something back. So that’s how it started. So I started making a simple scripting language that can call ChatGPT and Claude. And that is actually all that PurposeWrite is in in a way. It’s a scripting language. And it’s um yeah it’s actually even open. So users can also make their own custom scripts if they want. So it’s kind of custom GPT on steroids, I say. um And the thing is, what happens there is that then you can kind of decide. Now getting, I don’t know how nerdy you want to get here.
Rob Marsh: Well, I’m curious, you know, obviously there are um a hundred writing tools out there now for, you know, mean, so even stepping beyond ChatGPT, which we’ll write, or Claude, which we’ll write, or LeChat, or HuggingFace, or Grok, or, you know, they’ll all do sort of the same thing.
Petter Magnusson: Yes.
Rob Marsh: But your tool, you’ve dialed it in for some, well, I mean, for It’s purposes and it’s even called purpose, right? So I’m not trying to be clever by saying that, but but um what have you done in your tool to make sure that what’s coming out of it is actually meeting the needs of the user?
Petter Magnusson: Right. Yeah. so and And that’s when we get a little bit nerdy now, because what what I do is to to not confuse the AI, is that I call the AI, the aid LLM, ChatGPT or Claude in this case, actually, which is what I’m calling. I call them in in small chunks. And I can decide, yeah okay I’m going to do this techie part. I don’t know if you you can edit this out if you don’t want it. But anyway, there’s something called context window. So every time you write a new prompt, you will also send along everything, the and the whole old conversation.
And sometimes it even warns you, like, hey should you really continue this conversation? Because it’s starting to get very expensive. Because you even if you write short prompts, it’s going to send ah away all the conversation with it. And that can sometimes confuse it. So in this scripting language, you can choose if you want to send along the context or not. So you can make little simple questions. So that ah so this is not really about how writing writing style or anything, but it’s just making it easier for the AI to solve a certain task. So I could like i could scrape a web page, which is why i do it in and one of these guides, or mini apps inside of PurposeWrite, we call guides.
And one is called ArticleWriter. And then you give it a yeah URL. It will scrape that page. And then you can say, please find suitable target audiences. Who do you think I’m trying to talk to on this website? And then it can give you suggestions. And then I will only do that. So that is a small, simple task. And then I can be pretty explicit about that task and give it a pretty pretty advanced prompt for that task because it’s only one task.
If I would mix that into a longer prompt that would do 10 things, it would be too much information. So that is one way that you can like kind of give it a one simple task, do this, and then will perform much better. And the other thing is that so I’m doing that in steps. So first, um if you look at ArticleWriter, you can, of course, yourself say, if you know your target audience, you just write it in in there. Or you can say, please help me analyze what what do you think is the target audience.
And then it will look at the target audience. and Compare that to the, I mean, i’m I’m talking mostly LinkedIn content here. So you are probably trying to sell a service or a product.
Rob Marsh: Well, I mean, copywriters do everything, right? So it can be everything from you know content for LinkedIn, whether that’s for our own businesses or whether we’re helping a client write that kind of an article. But obviously LinkedIn will have a character limit ah where maybe a blog post might be able to go longer or a sales page, which could go on for say 18 or 19 pages, right? Where you know it could it can get very extensive depending on what the product is.
So obviously there’s lots of different contexts as to the kind of copy that we’re writing or to the audience that we’re writing to. um And your tool, as I understand it, is is maybe better for some of those shorter length ones, but does would it also help write a sales page it it you know considerable length?
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, it it can do longer ah stuff, ah absolutely. um The thing is, I have chosen to focus on one area, and this is purely actually a marketing decision because Being a scripting language, I could actually make those scripts do anything. you know like I could probably make a script that helps write a chapter in a book or something. Maybe not the whole book, but at least. you know so but um I have decided that my target audience is people trying to build a personal brand or a company brand on LinkedIn with content.
So just to you know narrow it down, make it easier to place this product But there’s nothing stopping it to do other things. And that’s why I talk about content so much. And this is because this is the target we have now.
Rob Marsh: Yeah that is and and So this is this is interesting. Obviously, a lot of a lot of copywriters are on LinkedIn, are using the tool to you know create interest ah in their services and their thinking. One of the criticisms I hear about ah LinkedIn is that it is full content. AI generated content and that it’s not reflective of true thought leadership. You know, people aren’t actually writing what they’re putting up under their own names. i I’m sure that this is happening with copywriters too, although that boggles my mind that that writers don’t actually write, but you know, um maybe it’s happening. I hope that most of this content that I see, you know, on LinkedIn is actually real, but how does your tool help um pull out actual thought leadership, actual real writing and not not become the writer itself.
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, that is a fine line, actually. And I’m trying to avoid because I could, of course, make a guide that says, so press button, get content.
Rob Marsh: Exactly. Especially if you can if you can just read another website or another post whatever, rewrite it in this voice. AI can do that all day long.
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, exactly. So I mean, I could do that, but I hate that stuff myself. So I’m um trying to to to not do that. And these guides that I do, and I think that that is actually potentially even a weakness of the tool. I’ve heard from some people that, you know,
What I’m doing is I’m asking you to provide for a lot of information to write something. you know Okay, you can I can look at the webpage to find the target audience and the pain points and stuff and background information about the product or services or something, but you still have to choose. you know what pain points you want to address here out of suggestions that you can add yourself. And then it will also, after that, it will come back with areas that it thinks you should provide additional information. So it’s it will not base the whole piece on just that background information. It will say, okay, I found these 10 areas that um you could potentially say something about And then you can write that. in Of course, you can be lazy and say, na not going to do that.
But if you take your time and do that, the piece is going to be so much better. And that, as I said, that is in the same with style and voice and stuff like that. You can specify so much. And that is also, like i was saying, part of the weakness, perhaps, because I’m looking at spying out how people are using the tool. And I see that quite a lot of people are actually bailing out in the process. So that’s something I need to to address, I think. and But I’m not sure if I should go all the way there either to you know meet those requirements, because I think a lot of those people come with the expectation that, oh, it’s a content tool.
It’s one of those, we scraped a thousand LinkedIn posts, and now you just put in your company name and press this button, and you have copies of that content. And if you expect that, and then you you get a million questions about ah tone of voice and and target audience and stuff like that, it’s not what you expect. But that is also what makes it different in the end. So I think it’s a matter of finding our target audience. and know who is Who is this for? and and Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Marsh: I think one of the things that I’ve struggled with with AI is you know that lack of humanness. And the fact that when people find out something is AI, you know if we were having a chat, you and I were having a chat, and i found out that you were a bot AI, suddenly, the value of what we’re talking about is reduced immensely.
In fact, I might even feel cheated that I got the Petterbot instead of the the actual thing. right and so I think one of the challenges that creators like you who are who are coming up with these tools is how do we preserve humanness if we’re using tools that are very unhuman or inhuman ah in in the creation.
And you know the there’s a whole spectrum of criticisms that happen here, you know where, hey, if i can if I can take an artistic style and an AI can create an image in that style and I no longer need the artists to do that anymore, What’s the value of style anymore? right or and And the same thing applies obviously with writing with copy.
And so these are some really big questions around AI that I know people are so are asking them. Clearly they’re being asked, ah but I don’t know that there’s a lot of discussion or a lot of people that are really thinking through like, okay, this is actually something important we ought to be preserving.
Petter Magnusson: it it is yeah It is super important. And and yeah, up ah it it brings ah another thought to to my mind there that I think there will always be a reaction to things like this. you know People are starting to be really, really good at spotting the AI-generated content. And and you’re just like you scroll past it because as soon as you feel you that this is AI.
So that is problem. But I think there will always be a reaction. I’m seeing already now a reaction to this. you know I am connected. I’m hanging around talking a lot about LinkedIn, but that’s my hangout. you know I’m spending a lot of time on LinkedIn. And I’m connected with a bunch of of professional copywriters of of different types. And I can see the reaction happening. A lot of people are are starting to write in a consciously anti-AI way. which actually is a bit dirty, sloppy, or even, or something like that, you know, because AI is writing so good in a way, you know?
Rob Marsh: Formally is, yeah.
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s nice sentence lengths and and no… grammar problems and and spell errors spelling errors, you know all of that. And that’s where where I see a lot of my copywriter friends are are going ballistic with trying to prove that they’re human. So that’s ah that’s an interesting trend that I kind of like that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, from somebody who who is a bit of a stickler for for grammar, it’s really painful to see it. But on the flip side, again, we as humans value humanness. And and ah now i’ am I’m not anti-AI at all. I use AI ah every day in my business. And I think it’s an immensely helpful tool. But these are some of the things that i I’ve been thinking about too is, okay, When I write an email to my list and and I’ve yet to use AI to write an email, one exception when I was saying, hey, look what yeah what AI can do in an email couple of years ago.
But should I be putting a tag at the bottom? you know It’s like, hey, this is written only by me. I did not use AI, right? So that people see that. Or, you know, like there maybe there’s an opportunity yeah at some point for somebody develop, you know, a validator where it’s like, hey, yeah, this 100% human written or, you know, this is AI assisted. Or I know i know there are ah tools, you know, GPT zero and those kinds of things that try to establish that, but they’re they’re not great. They’re not great yet.
Petter Magnusson: No, no it’s it’s super easy to trick them. And here i I do feel a little bit dubious about myself because I have i have a guide in PurposeWrite that is called Rewrite.
And that is pretty good at mimicking a lot of these things. So it can trick these AI detection tools. And umm I’m sometimes wondering, like, should I really do this?
Rob Marsh: No, these are good questions. And I mean, at some level, we know this stuff is going on and it’s going to happen. And we’ve we’ve got to embrace AI you know in order to do some things. But also, it would be helpful if, yeah I hate to think that the government needs to do this, but you know if the industry could self-regulate a little bit and just say, hey, um this is where the line really is. And you should really shouldn’t be you know getting too close to this line you know for some of this stuff. But yeah, again, who knows? that It moves so fast, right?
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, it does. And and I think one another conclusion that could be reached is that it doesn’t really matter. you know as As long as the writing is good and I can get some value from it, does it matter if AI helped do it?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s that’s a great question too. And and how far you know does does that go? Obviously, like I said, I use AI in my writing for helping with headlines, for identifying benefits, and it speeds up the process for identifying needs and problems. there There’s so many good things that it can do. And so ah you know where you’re you’ve created this tool too that also writes really well or can help. If I’m writing an article or whatever and I get stuck, I’m not sure where to go or if I need ideas. Like it’s super helpful at at prompting those kinds of things. And so the right mix of machine and brain, human brain can actually elevate where we are if if it’s done right.
Petter Magnusson: Exactly. Yeah, I think so. and And I have actually become less afraid of the creatives losing their job. I mean, yes, creatives are losing jobs at at this moment. And especially, you know, I’m in the photo video business. A lot of photographers are are probably going out of business because of this. But that has happened before. In that business, we’re more used to it than on the text side, actually. For text, this is very new, but it’s happened on the photo side. I can give you an example. When digital cameras came,
You know, the small local newspapers, if they would, like, go to a farmer that had a funny carrot, they would bring a photographer specifically to take a picture of the carrot. And then digital cameras came, and then that photographer was out of the job because the the writing journalist could take that picture of the carrot. So we have seen this before. And, yeah, those low… Yeah, yeah. excuse the word, but low level work that goes and we’ve seen it happen. And that’s maybe what’s happening here too, that yeah, some of the low level work is gone and that we just have to live with that.
Rob Marsh: And It happened with stock photography as well. I mean, i you know I was in the ad agency world when stock photos started coming online. And I remember specifically photographers we worked with that were you know worried about, you know they were they were losing a lot of the typical, we’ll take a photo of this typewriter. Or you know if it if it wasn’t original, if it wasn’t specific to an assignment, suddenly there were 1,000 images out there that we could choose from. And so you’re right. In some ways, there is a stock copy thing that is going on. It’s a little bit different from stock because it’s not always going to be the same. But ah you know AI creates that stock. And so the challenge becomes, how do we as humans or humans using a tool like Purpose Right ah create the stuff that’s original, new, different, and unique, and you know shows off that creativity, that humanness in some way that stock copy no longer does.
Petter Magnusson: Exactly. And that’s where I’m not so afraid. I mean, if you’re operating on ah on a slightly higher level that you’re a bit more strategic and creative, I think you’re still needed. Because if if we go back to images again, it’s really easy to prompt a cool image. But what does that image say? What does it do? Same with the text. um You need to have a vision.
First of all, for where you are going, even if you’re using AI, you need to know which direction you should prompt the AI. and And you need to be able to judge the result also. Something comes out. Is this good? Is this on brand? is it you know And so we we are needed, i think, still. So I’m not that worried. Not yet, at least.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think what you’re saying is the opportunity is you know an analysis and strategy and figuring out direction. ah And as far as like the the actual operational tactics, we might need to figure that stuff out. But the exact wording or whatever, you know there may be a place for AI to step in and do, like you said, that ah lower level thinking that ah that can be easily replaced.
Petter Magnusson: Yeah. Yeah. and And again, referring back to to the visual side of things, we have seen a shift also there that users want to do stuff themselves. And and I think, again, that’s something that we just have to adapt to um So what we’re doing, it you know we would normally go and film everything for the customers. Now we’re we’re having a new service where we can actually work with the customer to ah think about what is what what should be filmed, what should be said. Then they can actually film it with their iPhone and and send the files for us to editing. So our role becomes different. And the most important part there is the strategic part. Like what should we, why should we film? What should be said? What…
And then who who holds that camera on? And if that camera is a professional camera, it’s not that important, to be honest. And I think it’s a bit the same with text. A lot of simple text, I think the customers can write themselves now. We just have to realize that we’re not going to do that. So they’re going to come to us for the more strategic and and creative stuff. And that’s where we can shine. And yeah and and also on a purely strategic level, help them point you know the stuff that they make themselves, we could probably help them with that.
Take good a good hourly rate, two because that’s what we do. We um we have this um so like social media package. And then we spend quite a lot of time thinking, OK, you want to build your personal brand. Who are you as a copywriter then in this case? you know Who are you on LinkedIn? why Why are you different from the other copywriters? What persona are you going have? When you are on camera, are you going to wear a T-shirt to suit or what is you know ah to be on brand? And that, I think, is super valuable. And we need to realize that for for text too, that that is a job that needs to be done and that we can charge pretty high for um to analyze things and have a strategy.
Rob Marsh: The irony here is from a copywriting standpoint, and this probably is true from a visual standpoint as well, is for the last 100 years or so, we’ve been selling the outcome and giving away the strategy for free in order to get the outcome. So if I sold a content strategy or a blog post or a sales page, that’s what I’m selling. But all of the thinking, the strategy that goes into it ah was happening ah you know kind of kind of for free you know on the back end. And what AI is forcing us to do saying, hey, the words are free, but the strategy, the figuring it out, the approach, the voice, and and putting your your mind power into that, that’s where the real value ah was all along and charging for that. And that’s definitely a shift in the way that we see see the creative business.
Petter Magnusson: Yeah. Wow. that That’s… ah Exactly my thought, but you twisted it in and and a great way. And I agree totally with that. and And now I don’t want to be here promoting Purpose Right all along. But I have been thinking about exactly this problem. So I have made in Purpose Right, I have something called profit sharing. And that is because I’ve been thinking exactly in these lines that how do we handle the situation where the customers want to write some stuff themselves? They know I have ChatGPT, I can write. And and as a copywriter, they’re just going to call you when there’s something really important to to write. you know
And the rest they’re going to make with ChatGPT and it becomes horrible. So… And that’s what I’m thinking that why don’t we, as copywriters, sell analysis? Like, again, who are you? Tonal voice brand, like a different brand for for different services, maybe even because we have a different target audience for different parts of what we’re trying to to communicate. Why don’t we sell that? And in in the case of PurposeRite, make custom guides for the customer.
So instead of the customer going off to ChatGPT and prompting really badly, we can say, I’ve done the analysis for you. And here are a few custom guides that you can use. you know I know you’re writing you’re writing ah this simple newsletter every Friday. You can actually do that. And I made a custom guide for you for that, which is on brand and and everything is prepared for you. And the cool thing then is that you will, as a copywriter, you get a kickback. So when you make a guide and share with someone and they use it, you get a kickback from that.
So that’s kind of a way of… Yeah, I’m also thinking that staying on top of mind with the customer. So I have on purpose made a lot of the the guide have a lot of description lines. And I’m thinking that people can actually put a little tagline there, like, remember me, Rob, when you want to write the important stuff.
Rob Marsh: Interesting. Yeah, that makes sense. so So that that kind of opens up a broader question. How do you see copywriters using AI in general moving into the future? ah yeah Obviously, it’s going to be doing a lot of writing or writing assisting, but how else can it help us improve the product that we’re we’re providing for our clients?
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, I think that, but most of it we’re already doing. It’s just that it will be better at it. I think the one of the most important things is just analyzing text and massive text. That is so useful to just pour stuff in there and be able to talk to that massive data chunk. So that I think is a super important thing. Save a lot of money because that’s That’s not the fun part of the job either, is it?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, analysis, I mean, yeah well, I mean, it can be fun, you know, when you stumble across those things that it’s like, oh, wait, I, you know, I just discovered something new, but I don’t see that being that different from ai helping me uncover something new, ah you know, and saving 10 or 12 hours of going through, you know, spreadsheets worth of data or whatever, and having it say, hey, have you thought of this?
You know, the, I guess my question will always be, do I trust that the AI is uncovering the stuff that I would uncover, right? Like how do how do we make sure that that analysis bot is better or as good as Rob when he’s, you know, analyzing a spreadsheet? Now, I’m not necessarily saying I’m all that great at and analysis. And so it may ah it’s probably already better. But obviously, you know, in using a tool, you you have to trust the tool.
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I think There, of course, we are at the point where it is probably, as you say, probably better. as long As soon as you have a lot of data, at least. I mean, if you have a couple of pages, you’re probably better. But as soon as you start getting hundreds of pages or something like that, I don’t think it’s very unusual that a human can keep up with that. in any way. So I think that that’s an important one. And then I actually think it can help with creativity. And this might sound a bit weird, but I do think that it triggers a lot of thoughts. you know And I actually made a ah guide for that in Purpose. I called Idea Expander. And it’s not doing anything advanced at all. It’s just a very simple prompt, basically. You just give it a basic concept, and it will then twist it around and say, or you can think this way on this topic.
And then you can take one of those and branch out from there. And that helps a lot, I think, with just coming up with ideas. So you can, like, I put in simple things, like, you know, It’s important to think of the target audience when you write content. And then it twists that around and comes up with something entirely different. And so that’s how I um have done some of the best content pieces, actually, using that kind of, you know, to to trigger my creativity. Yeah. yeah
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s when I’m using AI, that’s basically one of the main purposes that I do too, is that I’m um asking the engine to you know ask me back questions or to help me think about it in different ways or unconventional ways. And ah you know that back and forth between me and and the AI seems to, at least to me, it feels like it’s helping me get to something slightly different or something newer than my own thinking.
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, I think so too. I think we we are ah it’s super interesting with AI, how it operates. I think it gives a clue about ourselves. um’m um I’m of the opinion that we are just AI and the algorithms are very similar. similar Because you know if I look at, ah going back to images, image image generation again, how that actually works inside of an AI. So you you take take a pure noise image, like total random pixels. And then you From there, the AI sees something vague, like, oh, it’s a little bit dark up there. And the prompt was dog. And then it’s going to to change those, like assuming that could be the head, kind of.
This is a very simplified way of describing it. But i I see how that is close to how at least my creativity works. you know It’s really, really hard to sit there with a blank page. But as soon as you write something, that could be the start. you know You see it with an empty page and you’re going to write, oh I’m going to write an essay. Or you just write sun and then, ah, sun, right. And then then you can start. It’s the same as this little blob in the noise in a way. So I think it’s basically the same how we operate. So it will be interesting to see how how quickly we get to AGI, you know, this real
Rob Marsh: Well, that was going to be my next question. As somebody who you know is is operating in the space, working with these models, do you see AGI as a realistic next step? And how quickly do you think we get there if it is realistic?
Petter Magnusson: yeah Yeah, the question of is about the definition also. There’s been some weird definitions floating around. like Some definitions have been financial even, like when when AI can make profits bigger than the certain numbers, it’s AGI, which is really weird in my opinion. But yeah, I’m not sure. i mean, We are already at a level where AI can do many tasks better than most of us. If you look at a lawyer or doctor even, you know AI cannot can do better than most of us on that.
But on the other hand, it’s also completely wrong most of the time. ah like There’s always some hallucination in there. And I’m wondering if you cannot… Yeah, that that seems like a big threshold. like It needs to somehow understand what is realistic and real. And that is not I don’t see that happening. It’s just getting better at what it does, but it’s still stuck in this hallucination world. So yeah, um I don’t know. i’m I’m not a machine learning expert but yeah i
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah, neither am I. On the other hand, humans also glitch and hallucinate and, you know, break down. So maybe, maybe part of being an actual intelligence is sometimes we’re also actually dumb.
Petter Magnusson: Yeah, exactly. And very stubborn about being right when we’re not.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah there there there could be something to that. Okay, so what’s next for you as you know owner of Purpose Right? like Where do you see this tool going and doing in the future?
Petter Magnusson: Hmm. Yeah, I think what what is happening now is that now the tool is working and I need to start making a lot more guides. And I’m thinking that I should actually cooperate with copywriters on that because I have limited capacity and I’m not the best copywriter, to be honest.
So I need to make… more guides that is doing more stuff, because right now, and to be honest, it’s a bit limited. The guides we have and they take a lot of time to make these guides. It’s a lot of work to, you know, it’s it’s really tricky to make them because, yeah, to get technical a bit. But as the prompts again get longer and so on, it’s hard to balance them.
Like if you have a lot of choices, then you can have situations where one choice is canceling the other. So, and right now I’m the only one that can do this. ah I need to find some people who can actually help me make make guides.
Rob Marsh: Sounds to me, you’re probably talking to the right audience. I have a feeling that you may get a few emails from listeners who are ah eager eager to find out more about that kind of an opportunity. But for copywriters who have resisted using AI for a variety of reasons, you know whether it’s not human enough or it doesn’t feel right or ah you know worries about plagiarism, that kind of stuff, ah it still feels useful to me to be experimenting with these tools. You don’t necessarily need to publish what you’re doing or use it for your clients, although yeah ultimately, you know you may choose to do that.
Understanding how these engines work, the differences between the different kinds of applications, ah it it’s a little bit you know like refusing to use AI feels a little bit like refusing to pick up a smartphone. Yeah, you can continue on with the flip phone. But the rest of the world is doing some pretty amazing things that you no longer understand. You’re no longer a part of. And yeah, you can you can set down your smartphone, you know, but if you haven’t picked it up in the first place, you don’t know what’s going on.
And I think there’s maybe a metaphor there for how we should be engaging and Purpose Right may be a tool that people start to play around with a little bit on their own. And there is a free option so people can, you know, but play around and and see how the tool works without worrying about having to pay for it at this point.
Petter Magnusson: Exactly. Yeah. And you actually have ChatGPT and Claude in there. so And that is a fun thing also to just try the say prompt same prompt on ChatGPT and Claude and see the difference. They do have a a personality, I would say.
It’s funny because in in in the article writer guide, for example, I’m using ChatGPT for research things like find the target audience from looking at this web page. But then for the actual writing, I think Claude is better.
Rob Marsh: I agree.
Petter Magnusson: But yeah, but they are they are doing a different thing. Like ChatGPT is way too formal and I’m struggling to like loosen up. while While Claude is sometimes the reverse, it’s being, I think it is trained much more on social media posts and stuff because it easily becomes way too, to like TikTok style style basically. And then I have to tell it to calm down, you know, like become a bit more corporate or strict or something. But I think that is easier than having ChatTPT loosen up is more difficult. And then having Claude cool down a bit and and be a bit more strict.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, it’s it’s an interesting challenge. And again, one, if if we’re just prompting and and using the tools, it becomes pretty obvious the differences, especially, I mean, the two big ones are obviously Claude and ChatGPT, but there are, you know, i mean, ah Grok is incredibly sarcastic because it’s trained on that Twitter data, which is a place where so many people are are unkind and very sarcastic. You know, if you’re using Meta or LeChat, ah you’re you’re just going to get a different outcome with each. And so, yeah, like my my takeaway here, I think, is, hey, ah well, there’s really two. One, we need to be playing with these tools. And two, we really need to be upskilling when it comes to strategy, thinking, ah conceptualizing, and those those higher level marketing skills.
Rob Marsh: Because like I said, i you know where the words used to be the thing we sell, the words now free and it’s the thought. that needs to bring the value to the table.
Petter Magnusson: I think that sums it up very well. you know The words are kind of free now. So that that we need to focus on our actual knowledge, and that is to realize that that is actually not putting the words down.
Rob Marsh: Petter, if somebody wants to try Purpose Right or to connect with you, where should they go?
Petter Magnusson: if they want to try PurposeWrite, it’s PurposeWrite.com. And PurposeWrite as in writing then, and not write as in being right. W-R-I-T. E. Most copywriters should be able to figure that one out. And you can write to me on the info at PurposeWrite.com and I will reply. And hopefully I can, yeah, depends on what you ask, hopefully I can answer something reasonable.
Rob Marsh: This has been interesting. I love diving into these tools and seeing, you know, where where we are going and asking some of these questions. So thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
Petter Magnusson: Thank you so much. It’s been really fun. And yeah, I’m amazed. Time just flew by here.
