Let’s be honest. Email, Excel/Sheets and PowerPoint/Slides are where you spend most of your time at an agency.
Here are three simple AI tools I’ve been using regularly…since before they called it “AI.”
Email: Copy Editors
Email fatigue makes efficient written communication paramount.
- Optimal email length is under 200 Words
- “Above the fold content” on a mobile device is typically under 150 words
It’s not enough to apply the Pyramid Principle. The best emails are simple, direct, clear and concise…like the writing of Ernest Hemingway.
I’ve been using the the Hemingway Editor for over a decade to transform my writing from dense to pithy.
My advice: Don’t write with AI. Edit with AI. Find your voice and shape it with AI editing tools.
Excel Chart Design and Colors: AI Color Palette Generators
It is a struggle to create meaningful charts when brand guidelines limit you to two colors. Ten years ago, I started hardcoding secondary palettes into Tableau to prevent “ugly” charts.
How does somebody who dresses like Johnny Cash manage to build rich BI color guidelines for 10,000 people?
I use an algorithm.
Free palette generator tools, like Coolors, suggest a limitless set of combinations. As an example, let’s see how AI can add two secondary colors to the McDonald’s palette.
Let’s not pretend that somebody with no formal design training would suggest pairing Mikado yellow with Vivid sky blue. For those of us not experts in color theory, AI is a wonderful palette solution.
Presentations: Image Generators
Chat GPT / Dall-E-3 is my favorite but Canva also has a solid free image generator.
These tools are incredibly easy to use. What makes your images stand out is your creative input. Here’s three everyday uses cases to embrace.
- Strategy – Visualizing Consumer Archetypes: Generate a “perfect” image of the target consumer.
- Creative & Content – Storyboards. Create countless iterations of a story board in near real time. (This article describes it best)
- Presentations – Personalization: What was different about the training I hosted on creativity? I skipped GenZ stock photography and replaced it with “mind expanding artwork inspired by Alex Grey’s work with Tool.” AI enables those without design skills to enrich corporate banality with inspired personality.
Closing Thoughts: AI Is Not A Substitute
AI is no substitute for a gifted writer, photographer, artist or designer. AI is an enabler. My advice is not to replace your work with AI, but to make it better, faster.
Learn to use AI and it won’t replace you.
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