5 ways ChatGPT is harming your brand
Your brand is an asset. With a strong personal and company image, you can build an audience that can’t wait to hear from you and reduce your marketing costs to zero. But brands take years to build and seconds to ruin. Hours spent defining a customer avatar, crafting that perfect voice, and poring over landing page copy can all go to waste if you don’t protect it from external influences that could bring it harm. While ChatGPT has the potential to supercharge your output and help you get more done in less time, it could have darker implications for the effort you’ve expended.
Lucy Werner is founder of HypeYourself.com, an education platform to help build your brand and get it out there. Werner has taught hundreds of entrepreneurs through workshops, resources and courses for creative institutions like The Futur, Bayes Business School, and the University of Arts London. Werner has over 20 years of communications experience and has written two bestselling books, Hype Yourself and Brand Yourself. She has been listed in Alt Marketing’s Power 100, The Dots Risings Stars and Start Up Magazine Female Founders to Watch.
Werner is big on brand and thinks you should be too. But she’s noticed more businesses using ChatGPT to guide their marketing strategy and create content, putting their brand in harm’s way in the process. Werner shares the five main pitfalls so your business doesn’t suffer.
How using ChatGPT could be harming your brand
1. Misaligned suggestions
Relying on ChatGPT to set your strategy and guide your company decisions might not be a good idea. The large language model has plans for your brand that probably don’t match yours. So know yours first. Werner said if you don’t do this, “you are in danger of being steered into badly selected partnerships, collaborations and self-promotion.”
If you’re going to prompt ChatGPT to write your content and advise your next step, incorporate your company goals into the training. After you have its suggestions, get a second opinion from colleagues, clients and friends, “ensuring that where and with whom you align yourself fits with where you see your business heading.”
Werner’s advice is not only to know what you want but write that definition down for all to see. “Jot down all the ambitions that apply to your business and pick between three and five to train ChatGPT on.” When you prompt, include, “advising based on the overarching goals of [add your goals here],” to give ChatGPT your worldview and help it understand your mission.
2. Loss of authenticity
Werner doesn’t want you to wind up with a “cookie-cutter-based brand strategy,” that “won’t take into account how you operate, your audience, your purpose and what you stand for, or any unique provenance to your business.” She warned that, “You are at risk of losing what makes you truly authentic,” if you ignore this nuance.
Your biggest ace cards are the ones that make you different, but ChatGPT doesn’t know them. Not only that, it has a different a world view. Those off-the-wall ideas, unique insights and ability to empathize with that audience you know inside-out are unfamiliar to the LLM. “One-size fits no-one,” said Werner. ChatGPT cannot simply give you content and business ideas without being prompted to within an inch of its life, “with clever prompts that are authentic to you.” Include these before you make requests.
Create a prompt to include every piece of relevant information about your brand and use this before you begin any conversation with ChatGPT. Set the scene with your company name, purpose, operations and audience. Then, don’t take what comes out at face value. “Stick to your own path,” said Werner. “Remember what you do, who you stand for and don’t get too heavily swayed by advice lest your style becomes toned down and unrecognisable.”
3. Too much focus on digital
Social media might not be the channel that’s right for you, but with the term almost synonymous with marketing right now, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the only way, especially when using ChatGPT makes it so easy to create reams of content. “Not all brands thrive on social media, loud and extroverted self-promotion and digital assets,” explained Werner. “There is another understated source of customers that works wonders for many businesses. And that’s word-of-mouth.”
When your current focus is making existing customers happy, digital marketing might be nothing but a shiny object that could redirect energy and cost referrals. “If stealth marketing and nurturing word-of-mouth recommendation has worked well, don’t completely flip the way you take your brand out there based on AI recommendations.” You could be forgoing reliable upsells to existing customers while you’re chasing new ones on Twitter. You risk confusing people with your messaging.
Werner’s advice again is to, “remember who you are.” Just because you could now create endless blogs, tweets and email campaigns, doesn’t mean you should. Use your existing strategy as the north star and get help based on that rather than overhauling it completely.
4. Over-reliance on words
Large language models are biased towards language. But there are other elements of your brand to consider. “A visual brand identity brings your business to life and helps your audience to remember you,” explained Werner. “Your brand should be a micro-billboard for your business on all touchpoints.” There needs to be, therefore, unequivocal congruence between the language used and the image conveyed. They should be expertly tied together.
“ChatGPT will not help you connect the dots. It probably won’t suggest clever ways to use your brand using both text and visual-based communication,” said Werner. But you might not need an expert to tie it together. “From your email signature to the banners on your social media profile, how you present your work, product or services and every single other way your reputation is managed in public, consider tools other than ChatGPT to bring your message to life.”
Instead of relying too heavily on word-based communication, get good at the visuals too. Werner recommends tools like Adobe Firefly or Midjourney, where you can, “use word prompts to help craft mock-ups you need on royalty-free images.” When you’re making a pitch deck, don’t just explain how or what you can deliver, show it. Appeal to people who receive information in different ways by looking beyond language for your brand.
5. Loss of trust
Especially for entrepreneurs looking to build a thought-leadership profile, “without some significant editorial training, it will be challenging to replicate your mannerisms, personal stories and anecdotes using ChatGPT.” Nearly impossible, in fact, especially with ChatGPT’s language hallmarks. “People know if you have cut corners in your messaging and they start not to trust you,” added Werner. Not what you want for your squeaky-clean image. Don’t become reliant on ChatGPT content; continue adapting your own spin.
Once people smell that something isn’t quite right, they’ll find it hard to maintain their belief in your brand. Customers who were once loyal go elsewhere and you might feel like you’re starting from scratch. The personality is what built your brand in the first place, make sure it doesn’t get edited out by generic language that anyone could use.
Werner’s advice is to set rules. “Create some guard rails for your ChatGPT use.” Limit how you co-create in practice, so you don’t fall down a slippery slope with no exit route in sight. The rules could state you use ChatGPT, “for first drafts, but you always circulate them internally afterwards,” offered Werner. “Or maybe it’s just a headline tweak to make sure you are creating the best opportunity for a click-through.” Little and often rather than to its maximum ability all of the time.
Used in the wrong way, ChatGPT will harm your brand. But entrepreneurs aware of the pitfalls can make sure this doesn’t happen. Counteract the possibility of misaligned values, loss of authenticity, over-reliance on digital, content, and the eyebrow raises that overly-edited AI content can bring. Know your brand, know yourself, and use ChatGPT as a valuable tool rather than a replacement for thought.
