Connect with us

MARKETING

The Mozbot Mashup: Roger Explores the World of Generative AI Imagery

Published

on

The Mozbot Mashup: Roger Explores the World of Generative AI Imagery

AI image generation has taken big leaps forward in the last year. It’s fun to play with. It’s a little bit weird. It can produce some mind-blowing results — and often laughable ones.

But is it useful in a marketing context?

We decided to find out, and our valiant SEO robot, Roger, was volunteered to be our first test subject. Don’t worry, he was cool with it. He was actually pretty excited to have a machine intelligence to engage with, after spending so much time doling out SEO knowledge to us simple humans.

Training the model

AI imagery tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E 2 are pretty amazing at creating images of just about anything you can come up with, but they have their own algorithmic and random-noise way of getting there. So while you can come up with interesting results, it can be hard to come up with a specific result.

To get to anything that actually looked like our friendly SEO Mozbot, we needed to train a stable diffusion model to get a start. There are a lot of ways to go about this, some that get pretty technical, and a number of others that use app interfaces to make the process easier on someone with a little less technical expertise.

Advertisement

We chose to start with Astria, a solution which allows you to customize (they call it tuning) a model of your own. A lot of users train it on their own likeness to make cool avatars (like the popular Lensa app), but we threw a bunch of variations of Roger in there, had him party with the AI model, and watched what kind of shenanigans they got up to.

A Rogues Gallery of Rogers

These tools generate images based on a text prompt, so our initial prompt was to see if it could output a version in a fun and colorful 3D style.

1678690178 853 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI

Not bad first results! It was clear this generation drew heavily from photos of a Roger toy held in a hand, as well as a photo of our life-size Roger Mascot at one of our Mozcon events (thus, the people in the background of some of the images). These are all actually recognizable as Roger, which I was impressed by, though none of them are quite “right”.

Time to try something in a completely different style. How about “Roger Mozbot with a rocket jetpack and fishbowl helmet, watercolor painting.”

1678690180 424 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI

Some super fun results! And others that look like Roger is having a very bad time. Also, apparently the “rocket” part of our prompt gave Roger some hardware in some of the results that made it look like his switch was accidentally set from Hugs to Destroy.

Further iterations produced equally interesting, fun, terrible, and wacky results as we messed around with other styles including more 3D, schematics, children’s book illustrations, and even Anime!

1678690180 809 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI
1678690181 716 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI
1678690181 340 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI
1678690182 51 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI

They just keep coming…

Want even more Roger mashups? We experimented further with a tool called Scenario.gg, which is a tool targeted toward creating game assets, but also has a nifty way to train a generator. A bonus of this one is that you can use an existing image as a starting point for a generation, allowing a little bit of additional control in how close or far you hew towards that starting point. Here are some of those results:

1678690183 338 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI
1678690184 694 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI
1678690185 853 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI
1678690185 940 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI
1678690186 304 The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI

If you’re following generative AI, you know it’s an area evolving incredibly fast right now, with new tools, features, and techniques constantly coming out. A couple weeks after the initial generating on Astria, we delved back in and they have a video generating feature now. A little trial and error later, we had a super cool little video of Roger to go with all those pictures:

What have we done?

The Mozbot Mashup Roger Explores the World of Generative AI

We’ve put Roger through the AI ringer, but to what end? Sorry Roger, it was all in the name of… SCIENCE! And learning. The initial experimental results came out with a ton of quantity, but the quality was not quite there. At least for reproducing a brand mascot with a specific look but that may not be widely disseminated enough to have been a subject of training on the models. If you are a little less specific with the results you are trying to achieve, AI imagery is already achieving jaw dropping results. Good enough that we are finding other ways to use this imagery in our marketing material, and no doubt you have seen some really cool stuff in your various feeds. For getting a quality version of Roger in a new style or pose, it would be more efficient to have an actual person just illustrate or render the artwork in the traditional style.

As mentioned at the top of the article, this technology is developing rapidly, and it seems like the game is changing every week with new models and new implementations that can make results better. As of the time of releasing this article, we’re already working on a new batch of Rogers using other tools, so look out for a follow up in the near future.

Roger is representative of a software tool that humans can interface with to achieve greater things. Generative AI is a new and potentially very powerful such tool in art, and for our purposes, brand design. Creative and talented people are still needed to guide the process, make decisions, and curate or cleanup the results. So, here’s to humans and robots working together to achieve interesting things! We’ll just have to see where Moz and Roger go with this next.

Advertisement

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

Published

on

A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

Advertisement

Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

Advertisement

Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

Advertisement

“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

Advertisement

Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

Advertisement

Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

Published

on

Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

Published

on

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

Follow by Email
RSS