Generative AI benefits and challenges

As vice president of marketing at $301 million asset Unity One Credit Union in Fort Worth, Texas, Alyssa Guillory is responsible for the planning, development, and implementation of all marketing activities, including digital, content, and select employee group/community activities.

Increasingly, she’s been incorporating generative artificial intelligence (AI) into her role, calling it a “game changer.”

Credit Union Magazine: How do you use ChatGPT in marketing?

Alyssa Guillory: While we’re not directly using ChatGPT, we’re getting a lot of value out of a similar tool that's built on ChatGPT technology, Copy.AI. This tool has been a game changer, assisting in generating blog ideas, crafting relevant social media captions, and designing targeted, short-form video ideas that resonate with our audience, particularly among Generation Z and millennials.

Additionally, it has been indispensable for researching competitors, proofing press releases, developing drip campaigns and timelines, and much more.

Q: Why is the technology particularly useful in marketing?

A: Any seasoned marketing pro knows that a major part of their day is spent researching, designing templates, and cooking up marketing strategies. Tapping into tech like ChatGPT gives us a hand, speeding up these tasks and saving us some seriously valuable hours.

Take a task that would normally need a few hours of our undivided attention. With these tools, we can shrink that down to just minutes, giving us heaps of extra time during the workday. This efficiency means we can channel those saved hours into even more strategic and innovative projects.

With that extra time and freedom from the more repetitive or, dare we say, dull tasks, marketers can really flex their creative muscles. They can make innovative ideas and campaigns come to life, keep up with the latest market trends, and brainstorm fresh strategies to keep their audience engaged.

Plus, with that extra wiggle room, they can play around with new concepts, push their creative boundaries, and maybe even create marketing campaigns that really steal the spotlight.

Q: Do you use AI to complete projects, or is it more of an idea generator?

A: For us, it's mainly all about those light-bulb moments. We mostly use it as an idea generator in the brainstorming stage.

Don't get me wrong—it's a true game-changer when it comes to churning out ideas. But we wouldn't necessarily run with them word for word.

Search engines can sniff out AI-generated text a mile away, so we tweak the verbiage to make it sound like it's coming straight from us.

For example, we serve three distinct yet substantial metro markets. Our objective for this entire year has been to emphasize our local presence in each market using clever “inside jokes.”

As we are headquartered in Fort Worth, and a large majority of our staff were born and raised in the area, identifying “localisms” for the area was relatively straightforward. However, when it came to Minnesota and Kansas City, I relied on AI to help me generate ideas that would genuinely connect with each market.

Subsequently, I brought those ideas to our Minnesota and Kansas City teams for expansion or adjustment. We’ve received a great deal of positive feedback from members in the respective areas, commending our true understanding of their markets.

Q: How has your ChatGPT process improved since you started using it?

A: My approach to using ChatGPT has seen significant improvements since I first started. I follow numerous nonindustry marketers on various social platforms, such as LinkedIn. These marketers share a wealth of prompt ideas that serve as great sources of inspiration.

Although adapting these ideas to the credit union industry doesn't always yield results, it's still an incredibly valuable exercise for boosting my creativity and broadening my thinking.

What I've found to be most beneficial, however, is being precise when defining my target audience. For instance, specifying that I'm targeting millennials aged 25-40 who have two children and live in the Fort Worth area. Or guiding the prompt to write like specific authors, such as Seth Godin, has also proven fruitful.

Furthermore, using specific prompts such as "enhance the paragraph below” or "expand upon the idea below” have shown a high degree of effectiveness in refining the content, leading to high-quality outputs.

Q: Were there any ChatGPT uses that didn’t work well?

A: Certainly, I've experienced some challenges while using ChatGPT, especially when it comes to gathering specific information regarding the pricing of certain products, programs, or services.

For instance, I once explored the costs associated with sponsoring a local sports team. The AI performed surprisingly well in formulating a basic marketing plan for the sponsorship. It included a variety of potential promotional tactics and highlighted some key opportunities for brand visibility within the team's audience.

However, it fell short when it came to delivering actual cost estimates for the sponsorship. While it's a fantastic tool for many tasks, this particular event showcased that the AI does have some limitations when it comes to specific, nuanced financial information.

Q: How would you like the technology to progress in the future?

A: I hope we will see the development of a closed-system version specifically designed for credit unions, which can seamlessly integrate with the core system and access accurate member data.

Imagine an interactive and intuitive marketing customer information file system where, instead of struggling with complex formulas to obtain information, we can use conversational prompts to delve deeper and extract valuable insights.

Such advancements could revolutionize the way we use member data, transforming the process into a more conversational and user-friendly experience.

Q: Do you have any concerns about ChatGPT and AI?

A: Absolutely. Our credit union places the highest importance on safeguarding member data—it’s the top priority for our IT department.

Given this, one of our key concerns is ensuring that this type of technology doesn't expose any sensitive, personally identifiable information. 

We also have some apprehensions about how AI will handle all the information that’s inputted and/or retrieved. We're still not quite sure about the full impact of this, and the uncertainty rightfully makes everyone a bit uneasy.