Boy is this ever a “modern problems” topic. As a former agency creative director, we’re used to, well, directing creative people. But nowadays, very often, you can’t. You can’t speak to them. You can’t see them. And yet you need to direct, and coach, and motivate them, to do their best work. What gives? The gig economy cometh Back in the day, we’d walk around the bull pen and engage with our artists at their drawing boards (yikes!) and computers. We’d go to recording studios and direct voiceover talent and jingle artists. We’d direct photographers on photo shoots, videographers on video shoots, and so on. Very straightforward. Enter Upwork. And Fiverr. And their ilk. The vaunted “Gig Economy,” wherein people can work, and make money, from anywhere. We’ve weighed in on this topic before. It’s a double-edged blade, which democratizes the availability of talent purveyors to buyers, while also (often) encouraging a race-to-the-bottom mentality when it comes to pricing and (often) quality. We won’t get into that here. What we will get into is the way that these platforms, such as Upwork and Fiverr, force you to work. They expressly forbid the talent on their platforms from engaging with the people who hire them… outside of the limited messaging capabilities of the platform itself. Think about that. We’ve had some tricky video assignments, for example, which we needed to dole out to qualified editors. The requirements for success were nuanced. Know the best way to communicate this to the editor? How about a phone call? Or better yet, Zoom? Nope. Not allowed by Upwork. Or Fiverr. (To the point where they’ll banish these workers from their platforms if they’re caught engaging in such egregious violations of their terms and conditions. The platforms are effectively dangling their livelihoods on a string.) So what do we do? How do we surmount these challenges? Is it possible to make lemonade from such tainted fruit? The pen is mightier than the restraint There’s really only one tool at your disposal if you’re looking to get great work out of these gig-economy vendors. And that’s the written word. Imagine that rousing speech and directions you’d planned (or hoped) to give that vendor in person. Write it down. Verbatim. It’s your only/best choice. Sure, you can, and should, list all the mandatories in the project (“The logo must stay on screen for at least four seconds,” etc.). But you need to put the “carrots” in there, too. We’ve ended some lengthy directions with exhortations such as, “If this one comes out great, there will be others in this series. So impress us!” You’re not some HAL-like computer spitting out commands. You’re a person, doing your best to connect to that vendor on the other side of the gig-platform wall. Be nice. Make friends. And don’t be surprised if the street isn’t exactly two-way. You may spend, say, an hour writing up an incredible input package. And you may get in return something as succinct as “ok got it thx.” Don’t be offended. Just roll with it. You don’t need, say, that graphic artist to spend an hour or two on a beautifully written reply; rather, you want them to devote their time to making beautiful graphics, following your instructions in both letter and spirit. Need help getting the best out of a hybrid team like this? Contact us. We do this all the time, and would be delighted to help you, too!
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ChatGPT, as you know, was huge news about a year ago. So why are we writing about it now? Now is a good time. All the hype has evaporated. All the dust has settled. We can now discuss ChatGPT without the breathless hyperbole, without all the doom-and-gloom forebodings of the apocalypse. Quick teaser: We use ChatGPT. And so should you. Qualifier: When it’s appropriate, and useful, to do so. Let’s dive in. What it is… and isn’t When ChatGPT hit the scene, everyone with a pulse was accosting us about this supposed existential threat to our business here at Copel Communications. Wouldn’t we be subsumed by this marching monster that threatened all creative jobs? No. We weren’t afraid of it then. We’re not afraid of it now. Ignorance is what breeds fear. Knowledge, on the other hand, breeds power. We’ll take the latter any day of the week. ChatGPT, quite simply, is a tool. Just like a hammer. Or a pen. Or a paintbrush. It’s only as good as the person using it. You wouldn’t hand a hammer to a surgeon. (Or if you do, run.) The surgeon knows what tools to use. ChatGPT is no different. As a large-language model, it’s capable of stringing together astonishingly coherent sentences in technically excellent English. (Detect our qualifiers there?) It “knows” tons of stuff, effectively from scouring the entire internet (more qualifiers forthcoming). And it’s fast: Ask it something, and it answers. Instantly. All of which begs the question: Is ChatGPT creative? Oh come on. See what difference a year makes? Of course it’s not. It never was. It’s not even intended to be. It’s a tool. We were asked, many years ago, when Apple introduced iMovie, if Hollywood movies would be going away. See? You’re laughing. Because 1) they didn’t go away, and 2) they weren’t exactly threatened by iMovie. To the contrary: A pro version of iMovie (called Final Cut Pro) came out, and many Hollywood editors embraced it. They still do. So now, with all the hype in the rearview mirror, it’s easy—and often quite useful—to embrace ChatGPT. That said, there are some caveats. Some caveats ChatGPT doesn’t “know” everything. As the site itself will warn you, it’s only scoured the internet up through April, 2023. After that, it’s clueless. So don’t expect any recent information in its database. It’s also a classic case of the old computing adage, “Garbage in, garbage out,” or GIGO. There’s a lot of bad, and biased information out there on the internet (really??), and ChatGPT has Hoovered it all up with nary a hiccup. It will spit out the same junk, to you, that it’s sucked up, from others. And ChatGPT doesn’t have a “B.S. meter.” Sometimes, it will flat-out lie. We’ve tested it. So can you. It’s easy. (We’d asked it, for example, to name some famous dialogue quotes from a movie we have effectively memorized. And while it listed several good quotes, it also spat out others that had nothing to do with that movie whatsoever. And no “red underlining,” as you’ll find in Word for a suspiciously-misspelled word. As far as fact-checking goes, you’re on your own.) The good stuff Granted, we don’t use ChatGPT every day. To the contrary: We hardly use it at all. But every now and then, we’ll get an assignment that’s easy to hand off to ChatGPT. And to be clear: We will tell our clients whenever we use ChatGPT. We do this for many reasons:
So what kinds of assignments are good for ChatGPT? In our experience, it’s great for coming up with lots of “ideas” for basic things that have already been ideated by others. That’s a huge distinction. (It’s like the “technically excellent English,” we’d mentioned above—which checks all the boxes for spelling and grammar, but hasn’t an iota of creativity to it.) Some examples:
Now, it’s incumbent on you to ask ChatGPT in the best way possible in order to get the information you seek. We’re good at it; we have a nice feel for how it was programmed, and thus can effectively “reverse-engineer” our prompts. So ChatGPT is like Word. Or a pen. Or a paintbrush. Just another tool in our kit. Need help with that next assignment—whether it requires ChatGPT or not? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! |
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