Category: B2B Content Hall of Fame

B2B Content Hall of Fame: the humour and humility of IBM’s Watson

Posted on by George Reith

AI has an image problem. Between the evil robots that permeate pop culture (thanks, Terminator and 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the likes of Elon Musk regularly reminding us of the dangers of AI, many see artificial intelligence as a source of fear rather than a useful tool.

This is just my (un)professional opinion, but this AI fear-mongering is far too often based on the fiction of AI rather than the fact. Ask anyone who’s spent some time with today’s AI and voice assistant tools, and they’ll quickly remind you that these things aren’t exactly equipped to enslave humanity.

While these technologies can (and certainly will be) very useful, they can also be downright comical. Whether it’s a lack of common sense, or their no-nonsense monotone, AI has a funny side that businesses shouldn’t be afraid to embrace.

That’s exactly what IBM has done with some of its Watson content, and its humorous, humble approach to marketing Watson makes it deserving of a place in the Radix B2B Content Hall of Fame.

From Jeopardy to comedy

Watson made a big debut in 2011, storming through a round of Jeopardy and dismantling its human competitors. So far, so scary AI. Though even in this early marketing stunt, we see a humorous – even human – side to Watson. Who doesn’t get a chuckle out of Watson’s monotone voice asking for a question from the “chicks dig me” category?

This humorous streak continues in a series of videos where Watson interviews a range of celebrities. Each one takes a different slant, both highlighting Watson’s unique capabilities, but also poking fun at the cognitive bot in a box.

“Today on the Watson show”

During an interview with Bob Dylan, the tables are turned on Watson’s usually monotone demeanour, with Dylan’s canned and repeated responses sounding more robotic than Watson’s line of questioning. There are also the less-subtle jabs at Watson’s singing voice; don’t worry vocalists, AI isn’t coming for your jobs just yet.

When interviewing Serena Williams, Watson is quick to point out its ability to rapidly analyse William’s match performance. When it gets a bit too big for its boots though (Watson is the “Serena Williams of cognitive computing”, apparently) the tennis superstar is quick to put Watson in its place. There’s a humility here you seldom see in traditional technology marketing.

When discussing empathy, love and storytelling with Steven King, the horror author extraordinaire urges Watson to “try writing a book. Find a remote hotel… bring the family.” And in a non-celebrity interview that explores its nicer streak, Watson assures young Annabelle that she is in good health based on her records – despite her being too sick to have cake at her birthday last year.

Out of the boardroom, into the zeitgeist

I’ll admit that the series does lean a bit too hard on showing what Watson can do, with jarring interludes from Watson that read more like a dry product brochure than an engaging repartee between interviewer and interviewee. This rubs against the grain of the otherwise light and enjoyable humour in the videos.

But despite some flaws, the Watson conversations do two very important things:

  1. They disarm Watson. Whether through humour or humility, Watson is clearly not an evil AI overlord. It works with people, discussing their problems and proposing solutions.
  2. They move out of the realm of marketing material and into general culture. By bringing in recognisable cultural touchstones like King and Dylan, the series pushes beyond the walled garden of B2B marketing content and into the mainstream.

Both of these are done with the concept alone. But the execution brings the wry humour that wraps it all together as a genuinely engaging, enjoyable piece of content.

IBM’s general approach to Watson marketing has provoked the ire of some critics, with commentators noting that – whether due to overexcited journalists, or IBM itself – much of the discussion around Watson is unrealistic and focusses on capabilities that are very much the future of Watson rather than the present.

This all comes back to the problems AI solutions must overcome as they shift from a cultural mainstay into an actual tangible product or service. AI must prove it can really do the things it says it can do, and that it will do them in a way that works with humanity rather than against it.

But if IBM keeps marketing Watson in this way – through videos that demonstrate humility, humour, and empathy – I think Watson might have a fighting chance of entering the public consciousness as a force for good rather than SkyNet coming to life.

B2B Content Hall of Fame: how CB Insights created a God-tier newsletter

Posted on by The Radix Team

As a B2B technology copywriter, I regularly part with my email address in return for the chance to look at a research report, eBook – whatever I need to add depth and credibility to the content I’m writing.

The result is an inbox swimming with newsletters from every tech field and industry. (Yes, I know I should systematically unsubscribe. Just like I know I should make myself lunch, instead of hitting Nemo’s.)

Unless they’re relevant to what I’m working on at the second they arrive, most of these newsletters are terminated on sight. But there’s one exception. The newsletter from CB Insights.

I’ll leave that newsletter be. And then, when a brief gets delayed and I find myself with a spare ten minutes, I’ll go and find it, and open it up. Sometimes I’ll even right-click and download the pictures. And then turn my screen towards my colleague, and show them an Amazon patent for a flying distribution fortress. Or a wildly inappropriate data visualisation.

And occasionally, even though I’m far from the company’s target audience, they’ll be something of genuine use to me – or anyone working in the tech sector. Like a neat little guide to Bitcoin and blockchain.

It seems I’m not alone in making an exception for CB Insights’ newsletter. Six times a week, it goes out to nearly 370,000 people – a six times its circulation in 2014.

Here are a few things that, IMHO, the CB Insights is getting very right…

It’s not afraid to be edgy.

CB Insights’ subject lines are short and rarely sweet. Here’s a selection from the last few months:

  • your analysts are wasting $25K
  • depressing bar chart
  •  Silicon Valley petting zoo
  • deathless cars
  • 86 page report – FinTech deals boom
  •  Slack is a waste of time
  • Zelda – sooo popular
  • an IoT butt plug
  • AI kills 10 million jobs
  • Peter Thiel loves millennial blood

Make no mistake: CB Insights wants your attention. It’s more important than taste, decency, and sometimes, even relevance.

That said, the newsletter will rarely serve you up clickbait without delivering something at least slightly nutritious in return, even if it’s just a lesson in how not to conduct a survey:

CB Insights’ boldness is understandable, when you consider every bit of frivolity is underpinned by cold, hard a-b (and in this case, c) testing. And that post – go on, click the link, but come back – leads me to another of their strengths…

It shares genuinely useful stuff.

Remember that blockchain guide I mentioned before? It’s far from the only useful content I’ve received from CB Insights. And I’m not even in the company’s target audience.

If you’re a startup or a venture capitalist, you’ll find predictions, patents, and insights into who and what are being mentioned on public company’s earnings calls.

In addition to this home-spun content, you’ll get a well-curated set of articles from around the internet, all teased in the house style – i.e. with lovingly crafted headers such as ‘Tortoises against bot abuse’.

And, if the edition’s attributed to CEO Anand Sanwal, you’ll always receive something even more useful – the reassurance that someone loves you.

It ropes its readers into making the content.

When you’ve an engaged readership in the hundreds of thousands, you’ve a ready-made research group. CB Insights’ newsletter regularly contains bracketed competitions, designed to gauge reader opinion on hot topics. This provides the company with:

  • Fresh newsletter content for a number of consecutive weeks
  • Another reason to open – will your contender have made it into the next round?
  • Fascinating results…

It’s at a massively unfair advantage. The scoundrels…

As professional a producer, aggregator and analyser of data, CB Insights is in an enviable position when it comes to creating compelling newsletter content.

But that doesn’t diminish the company’s achievement. After all, it’s the tactics it uses – its braveness with tone, its faith in testing and optimisation, the way it expertly mixes the valuable with the laughable, the way it weaponises its readership…  – that make its newsletter game so ridiculously strong.

Oh, and the clever bastards have also made sure it’s staggeringly easy to sign up for. (Yes, you probably should.)

Every month, a different Radix copywriter will nominate a piece of B2B writing for our Radix B2B Content Hall of Fame (essentially a compendium of projects we wish we’d worked on), and explain what makes it work. If you’d like to suggest an inductee, please do get in touch.

Podcast 60: the lowdown on B2B messaging workshops

Posted on by George Reith

If your business has more than one person communicating externally, you’ll know it’s hard to keep messaging consistent across your sales and marketing, and make sure everyone always has the right personas in mind.

One way to solve this issue is a messaging workshop – and it can also sharpen your elevator pitch, and give you a matrix of powerful, multi-use copy blocks to boot.

In the newest episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, George and Fiona dig deep into what these workshops are all about.

Listen now to find out:

  • Why consistent messaging is so important
  • Who should attend messaging workshops
  • What you really get out of a messaging workshop

(If you’d like a more detailed rundown of how a messaging workshop works, you’ll find Fiona’s in-depth blog post here.)

Also, copywriter Ben Philpott explains why he nominated Zoom’s “A Video Conference Call in Real Life” as our inaugural B2B Content Hall of Fame inductee.

Want to contact the show?

We want to hear from you. You’ll find us on Twitter… or feel free to send your thoughts, jokes, questions, suggestions, complaints or hat recommendations to [email protected] (better still, email us a voice memo).

Next month, we’ll be going shopping for essential copywriting kit, and inducting another member into our B2B Content Hall of Fame. 

How to listen…

You can download the episode here (right-click and “save-as” to download). Or stream the episode in the player at the top of the page.

(Or you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here. Alternatively, add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.)

Credits:

Audio editing and music by Bang and Smash.

B2B Content Hall of Fame: “A Video Conference Call in Real Life” (Zoom)

Posted on by The Radix Team

Think back to the worst conference call you’ve ever been on (sorry to dig up painful memories).

Chances are, it wasn’t the attendees that made it suck, but the platform. Or at least, that’s what comedic YouTube duo Tripp and Tyler say in their Zoom collaboration A Video Conferencing Call in Real Life.

Now, before I start rambling about why I like this video so much, give it a watch (it’s not long)…

Published in November 2015, the Gold Stevie Winner was produced as part of a sponsored series by the Zoom video conferencing service. While not a huge departure for Tripp and Tyler, this is no conventional partnership, especially in the typically conservative world of B2B marketing.

“It’s funny because it’s true…”

In B2B copywriting, every brief/client/project is different, and that’s great, but more often than not we’re working within clearly defined guidelines. I’m talking about tone, voice, and brand personality.

Of course, all of this is entirely up to the brand and how they wish to be perceived, but sometimes they can be constraining. When I see a piece of content like this, I can’t help but think “Ahhh, I wish I’d written that…”.

Why?

Because it’s relatable, funny, focused, and it does an amazing job at selling the product. And it shows that it pays to be a little daring with your content every now and then. Heck, at the time of writing the video has had almost 1.2 million views.

While Radix isn’t exactly the most traditional corporate environment, conference calls are a big part of the way we work with clients around the world. And just occasionally… well, technology and other happy accidents (to quote Bob Ross) can throw a spanner in the works.

Laggy connections, echoed speech, erroneous dial-in codes, interrupting kids – the list goes on.

In Tripp and Tyler’s parody, they effortlessly riff off every one of these scenarios in a way that feels candid. And best of all, the playful scene building makes its call-to-action at the end a lot easier to swallow.

It’s a simple three-part journey:

  1. Video conferencing sucks, huh?
  2. So, here’s some funny yet relatable dialogue to support that
  3. And now here’s a video conferencing product that doesn’t suck

Job done.

I enjoy copy that doesn’t hide behind marketing jargon. So when something like this comes along and uses relatable, grounded copy (or in this case, dialogue) to get to the point – it just works for me.

And by the looks of things, it worked for the client too.

Every month, we’ll induct a new piece of inspiring B2B content into our Hall of Fame. If you’re like to make a nomination (or better still, you’d like to work with us to create a bold new piece in its own right), please do get in touch. 

Alternatively, you can find out more about our B2B script writing services, here.