Category: Contentions
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The only way to change someone’s mind
“Getting a prospect to admit their “mistake” borders on the impossible. All you’ll do is irritate or antagonize your prospect. That is not the way to persuade them to buy from you.… No, the prospect won’t change their mind, but they will be delighted to make a new decision, based on new information,” writes Zig…
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Getting to know a business
If you’ve ever wanted to start a company, or write a book, or make something meaningful, it helps to go through the process as the person who’s paying for it. If you’re starting a company, figure out your potential competitors and see if you can work with them as a customer. If you want to…
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Contentions: Names set expectations
What’s the difference between a book, an ebook, a digital book, a pamphlet, a booklet, a brochure, and a bulletin? By strict definition, they share a lot of common traits. They are all documents that hold words on them. The main difference is what each word leads a person to expect. For example, a book…
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Contentions: Long live typing
Author Luke Burgis puts forward the question, is typing dead? Luke had tried a new AI voice dictation app. From a text generation perspective, both language learning models and voice dictation seem more efficient. I did the same a few years ago, which I covered for Forge here. An excerpt: In dictating this piece, I…
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Fan non-fiction
Fan non-fiction is a book, article, or text about real facts, people and events, conveyed through the characters, stories, and lore of a particular novel, film, etc. It’s a great way to get someone interested in learning about a topic that would’ve otherwise bored them immensely. Elvia Wilk writes, “First I point—then, you notice my…
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A deliverable is just an artifact
Project deliverables—a final draft, an app in production, a strategy or plan, etc.—are great. They’re not easy to make, and they only exist because a person or group of people gave a ton of emotional energy to breathe life into them. We focus on the project deliverable because we can see and touch it. We’ve…
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Contentions: What A.I. will not disrupt in marketing, editing, and writing
Some friends of mine have recently asked me, “What do you think of A.I.’s implications for your field of work?” I work professionally in marketing, editing, and writing. I also wrote a book, and I write every day at my blog. My initial response was to discuss the difference between text generation and writing, though…
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Fictional brands
The fictional brands archive is one of the most intriguing directories I’ve come across in a long time. Merchandise from these fictional brands have occasionally made their way into the physical world, which is always fun.
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Contentions: They’re asking ChatGPT first
A good friend of mine was waiting for a branding plan from an agency. A few days before the agency was sending it over, and presumably presenting it, he prompted ChatGPT: “What does a good branding plan look like?” If the marketing agency came up with the same plan, he figured he probably wouldn’t need…
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Text generation
It used to be that typing was the only way to generate original text. By extension, you needed to actually know what you wanted to say before you could generate the text. Typing itself isn’t hard; the process of coming up with what you want to say, and then actually saying it, is the challenge.…