Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,
AI is changing the way companies approach content creation and category innovation.
In this week’s Pirates Perspective video, we dive into how you can use AI tools to generate new content and repurpose existing blogs, articles, and scripts into videos.
But that's not all.
We also explore:
Why Category Kings like Adobe and Dropbox might be missing major opportunities to innovate their business models and offerings
How Native Analogs and Native Digitals can work together to learn and leverage AI tools, like ChatGPT
Why AI tools can be a game-changer for category designers looking to create more effective and efficient content—from helping conquer a blank sheet to engaging in reflective thinking
Watch if you're curious about the impact of AI on category design (transcript shared below.)
Mini-books mentioned:
Arrrrrrr,
Category Pirates
PS: Share your thoughts on Category Pirates
Has Category Pirates changed your category, company, or creative thinking for the better? We’d love to hear about your experience! If you’re open to recording a short video testimonial, let us know at hello@categorypirates.com.
PPS: Help others “think different”
If reading this opened your mind to new and different thinking, click the ❤️ button on this post or share it so more potential pirates can discover it.
Video Transcript
Katrina Kirsch: So I found this article about Dropbox. And I'll share it really quick. They are talking about laying off 16% of their workforce. And one of the CEOs reasons he stated was because of the push towards AI, and artificial intelligence, he basically said, some of these investments that we thought would play out kind of didn't play out because of the pandemic. So now we're trying to shift people over to incorporating this technology into our into our mix.
I thought it was pretty interesting, because we've talked in the past about how Dropbox is committing what was a category neglect, basically, after claiming the Category Queen status. And now they're having issues, I guess, keeping up and keeping pace.
Which I think is a lot of what you're hearing in the news right now about people trying out AI and AI, voice generation and video generation, kind of like how we did last week with the video that we created. So just kind of wanted to talk about that this week and hear everyone's thoughts.
Christopher Lochhead: I'm not sure most people realize Kat that the video that was generated last week was an AI video. And so we were able to take our discussion last week about did we discuss Twitter? Thank you, Eddie.
You know, I have a whiskey-stained brain, sometimes the neurons gonna bump into some whiskey. But Kat, you also created a video to go with the conversation Eddie and I had about Twitter. And so, I don't know how you did it.
Why don't you tell us?
Katrina Kirsch: Yeah, I'll talk through it. I'm especially because we had some interest from some of our subscribers about how we did it. So I was just Googling around. There are a bunch of other options out there, I ended up using one called Pictory. So you can take a script or a transcript. And you can turn that into video. I'll show you what it looks like.
Christopher Lochhead: Watch now as a native digital teaches native analog things.
Because my first reaction was I don't know how in the world you did this, but I don't even know how the fuck she found it.
Katrina Kirsch: Yeah, I'm still figuring out the kinks. So you basically you can upload and just copy and paste a URL into here. It's basically the whole thing is designed for people who have a ton of content to repurpose their content into different ways. But the whole point is to help you repurpose content through AI.
Christopher Lochhead: Well you're just getting you're just getting started with this stuff. Right? Not a video producer, which is amazing.
Eddie Yoon: Isn't that the point? Yeah, that's the whole point. That's the beauty of AI is the ability to take someone like Kat who is an amazing writer, and amazing thinker. But he's also not in a native analog wheelchair like you and I, Christopher, and someone who can still learn new tricks, you know,
Christopher Lochhead: I push those wheels real hard, I guess I'm building up my arms!
Eddie Yoon: Yeah, our arms are gonna be huge. But I think the ability to take thinking and leverage AI and it's not just kind of hypothetical, conceptual, it's very practical. Kat has she has a point of view, she knows what she wants to say not a video editor, boom pictorial takes care of all that.
Katrina Kirsch: I mean, I don't even know how to use what is it Adobe Premiere or Final Cut? I don't even know what it's called. And obviously, I don't know how to use it.
Eddie Yoon: Insert bad news for Adobe. Right? I mean, there's something very interesting going on here with that. But I mean, because you said this took you you said was it a half day to create the video, and then you use more AI tools to generate the, you know, the email to get out to everybody else.
Katrina Kirsch: Yeah, the beauty of it is it's pretty easy to go from one AI tool to the next. Right, so it's this whole consistent chain, I go from Otter AI to Pictory AI and then using Chat GPT Open API to generate the email, generate any other kind of marketing material, Twitter threads, anything else that we need to do in order to promote it. So it's kind of from start to finish just this chain of different AI tools.
Christopher Lochhead: So let's just maybe unpack this even further. So you were doing these types of things at category pirates for quite some time, content-related things, making content. And in November, December, last year, ChatGPT shows up and then all this other stuff starts showing up. And here you are on the front end as a as a marketer, and as a category designer playing with this stuff to help execute our content.
And so maybe tell Eddie and I about sort of the arc of the last couple months going from the Native Analog world as it was to the AI Native Digital world as it's appearing in front of our eyes.
Katrina Kirsch: Yeah, it's, it's been a learning curve for sure. But as soon as we started using ChatGPT at Category Pirates, it just made everything faster. And to me, I always have seen it as just something that could make me do my job a lot better. And kind of I don't, I don't like the nitty gritty details always of content creation.
I like new things. I like creating things.
So pretty much any opportunity that I've had to be able to automate things like writing Twitter threads, or we spend a bunch of time and a bunch of hours and weeks writing a mini book. And then we can turn that into Twitter threads, LinkedIn posts, different email blasts, different courses, all that stuff. So it's been really helpful. But I definitely have seen even, on a writing perspective, people who are still pretty against AI. There are now people on Twitter who are even saying, you know, my tweets are not composed with AI. It's all my own thinking.
Christopher Lochhead: I think that's stupid. Yeah, let me share with you an experience.
But so as you both know, I'm dyslexic, and I have dyscalculia. And I have all these things, I call dysfucklia.
And I've learned to be a writer, obviously, and I love writing and a blank page doesn't scare me at all. However, I have learned something about my dysfucklia that is very powerful thanks to ChatGPT.
And here's the example. I have had an article in my head about Lululemon. And here's why we've written a whole bunch about how in the magic triangle product company category, that category is a single point of failure. And I think Lululemon is legendary example of this.
And so, in my mind, they are the great example of this use case that demonstrates powerfully that even if you f up from time to time on product and company, if you get category, right, you're going to be a winner.
For some reason in my head, structuring that argument on paper or on a computer, I've never gotten around to doing it, I've been stuck, even though I could articulate the idea just like I did. So a couple of days ago, I jumped on Chet GPT. And I thought, because so far, I had thought I wasn't going to use it for origination of content that I would create version one of whatever I was working on and collectively, we'd create version one. And we might use it for research and tweaking, but we wouldn't use it for blank sheeting. Well, this was the blank sheet, use case. And it did a great job. And it probably got me 75% of the way there. And I'm just tweaking it, and I'm gonna send it off to both of you. I wasn't writing this article, because I couldn't in my head, figure out how to structure that argument. In a written use case, that I can in a verbal use case.
But with six or eight prompts, whatever it was, Chat GPT was able to get me over that hump, and then I finish it. And so I'd be curious to hear from both of you what you think about sort of blank sheet creation, or co-creation, with it like that, versus tweaking, editing, getting some research data?
Eddie Yoon: Well for me, I mean, this is some of the stuff that we're working on with, you know, Paid to Create and Creator Capitalist is, you know, the whole reflexive versus reflective thinking was, take some of your common beliefs that you hold dear. And as champion, ChatGPT to steel man it.
What's the opposing argument to what you most fundamentally believe?
And that actually with ChatGPT, it's not hard to come up with green sky or blue sky blank sheet of paper type stuff. If you are willing to look at, you know, core beliefs that you have an exam that a longtime say, Hey, here's a core belief, what's the contrary point of view and what problem will and so it's just a few framing?
If you need a jumpstart, what are your core beliefs?
And if you were to reject that premise, ask ChatGPT to help you get started with it.
Katrina Kirsch: Yeah, and start thinking about what issues AI is going to create for people because there you go, there's your next category creation solution.
Christopher Lochhead: What solutions are tomorrow's problems?
Eddie Yoon: So if I think about if you take away anything from this is one you should find a Kat and you're a Native Digital go find one who is got great skills as a great thinker like Kat is but is also willing to try new things out there.
And so I think, you know, find a native digital and ask yourselves, what are the things I wish could be faster and easier and less rote?
Or I wish I could do this but I don't know how to do that. Co-collaborative. Find the native digital or AI solution and just give it a whirl. You know, practice and public as Cole always says put it out there and see what happens and the universal is true.
For any native digital out there, go find a native analog that you enjoy working with and talking with and say, You know what, you've gotten good at this content creation, I bet I can make it go faster, and make it easier for you or a new format to do that.
Christopher Lochhead: Absolutely. And to your point on if you're a native analog, find a legendary native digital. Here's the thing: I think a lot of native analogs don't understand about themselves in their careers. And this is inspired by my friend Tom Schwab at Interview Valet, he has a great phrase. I'll probably get it wrong, but I'll be directionally right.
He says something like, “What you think is common, is extraordinary to others.”
And so, you know, when we wrote the Mentor Myth that I think that was part of what we were trying to capture, and the cool thing, Kat, is we're living this with you on the front end of AI content creation.
Katrina Kirsch: So I've had this type of technology, you know, almost my entire career at this point. And but I think what's really interesting, if you're kind of looking at this native digital, native analog divide is, it's an opportunity to take everything that the native analogs have created and generated and all they're thinking, like, Eddie, I could probably go through and make a video for every single HBR article you've ever written.
Christopher Lochhead: That's a great idea. Geez, that woke me up. That's a great idea.
Eddie Yoon: But just to bring it back to how we started the conversation. I mean, Christopher, you talked about your dyslexia, and you know, some of your otherness around that. And I think the truth is, we all learn differently, we all different styles of how we like to learn.
Some people learn by listening to it, some people learn by watching, and I think what AI seems to be able to do is to meet people where they're at, in all of their uniqueness, and all of their different newness, and allows them to have a conversation because we can all learn new things, because AI has helped make it more empathetic and easier for us in the way that we were all made to learn.
Christopher Lochhead: And you know, that that fires something in my brain, Eddie. I was really upset when I heard that, you know, Chicago, LA, New York, I believe Seattle, these major school districts were quote, unquote, banning Chat GPT for students.
Just because at the time, you know, I was very early playing with this stuff. But at the time, my point of view as well, this is clearly the future, and you're cutting off our kids from the future. And that's insane, and, and teachers who are threatened by technology. You know, our friend Diego had a great line about this. Diego Pineda, he said, if a robot can do your homework, you need new homework.
Anyway, my point is, experiences like that. I've had this aha. Which is if every dyslexic kid, if every kid that has dyscalculia, who wants to learn how to code has this technology, they are going to be 20 years ahead of me when they're 20, compared to where I was when I was 20.
And I think that's exciting on an individual level.
And I think that's exciting on a societal and on a business, entrepreneur, category design level.
Katrina Kirsch: One thing that I did want to talk about and circle back to is this, just this conversation with Dropbox and how we started, you know, all these companies shifting over to try to, if they haven't already been creating AI to catch up and to start creating AI solutions.
So I just wanted to hear just briefly like, What could this mean, for companies?
Eddie Yoon: If you're not super organized like I am, then I can't find anything in Dropbox. And, you know, what if, if you had said, there's a Dropbox super-premium, where they're going to use AI to go into the content, you know, privacy protected, and all that and come up with a logical organization framework for you. Even better, that would have been an amazing thing that they have every right to be able to do and maybe they wouldn't be laying off 60% of their people.
Because, you know, the ability to store doesn't mean that you have the ability to organize. And an organization like we have this problem with Category Pirates, like I can't remember what we wrote in what piece out there.
If Dropbox can say, pay this amount and AI you can get, you can get it organized by date, you can get it organized by frequency of usage, you can get it organized by content, you can get it organized by keyword, by company, I mean, and frankly, having multiple organization systems would be helpful for someone like me who is not particularly organized, because I might remember I think I did that in April last year, or I know that there's this keyword here or there.
And that's the part that I think is really missing from these guys is that they fall in love with their technology. They do not understand what the Superconsumer is going through. And if they did, then they wouldn't have this problem that they're facing right now.
Christopher Lochhead: And to build on Eddie's point, Kat, I think two things. One are the practical tactical level of what's happening in that and more, maybe one zoom out at 30,000 feet.
So people have been saying, and I've seen it on Twitter and LinkedIn. And so this is not an original idea. But I think they're right: AI is is is powering content and code. And so there will be 10x more marketing content creators, and they'll be unemployed, marketing content creators. There will be 10x developers, and there will be unemployed developers, there'll be 10x researchers and scientists.
And so in any domain in any field, where there's content, or code and content of any kind, whether it's medical research content, or creators, you know, Mr. Beast, beasting, around on YouTube, and everybody in between.
This is a 10x-ing capability for all of us. And so I think that's what we got to get our head around.
And, and not to be afraid, and to jump into it. And as Eddie said, if you're a native analog, partner with a legendary native digital and then go to town.
The second thing I think of is one of my favorite analogies for the mistake people make, or that it's more of an evolution that happens with new technology is the introduce the introduction of the video camera. So in video cameras were first introduced, what did people do? They videotaped plays.
Because the paradigm for going to another paradigm for a story experience with actors was a play. And so they said, Great, let's put a video camera in the theater and videotape the play.
And over time, two things happen.
Well, at first, it's cool. You're like, Oh, my God again. But then over time, you're like, it's just it's actually not as compelling as the play. But it's cool.
People say well, what if we stop videoing the play? And what if we start creating with a blank sheet of paper, what Mike Maples calls backcasting. In other words, creating the future standing in the future, not trying to create the future by using the future, breakthrough technology innovation to speed up the past, you know. In the old days of computing, we used to call it pave the cow path, right?
And so I think that's where we are with AI. And we're starting to now move a little bit into going from videoing the play to experimenting with whole new categories.
And I think this is the big opportunity for business people, for creators, for scientists, for doctors, for artists, you name it, which is how quickly can you individually and or your company, move from? Ooh, this is a scary thing to experiment with to oh, this is cool thing to experiment with, to who this is really helping me do my job, and it's 10x-ing me, which is totally awesome, to we can create from a whole new unimaginable place that was not thinkable before.
Radical new category design, which is moving beyond videoing the play to create movies. And so that's another thing I'm excited about. And I'm trying to encourage entrepreneurs and marketing leaders and CEOs to really think about, okay, first, go video the play, because it's pretty fucking cool to do that.
But then start asking yourself, How can I use this technology to design and dominate new categories?
How can I stand in the future?
You know, because fundamentally, category design is about creating a different future. Creating demand where there was no demand, moving the world from an old place to a new place, having people get that magical, aha, right? Obvious, non-obvious content, oh, all that good stuff.
So if we Category Pirates, and everybody who can help encourage and support can start on that path, from experiment afraid to experimentation, to video, the play to maybe we can create movies, and I'm having a ton of fun on that. Yeah, I think particularly with YouTube.
Katrina Kirsch: I agree. I agree. Does anyone have anything else that they want to add?
Eddie Yoon: Find your Kat, and find a cat.
Katrina Kirsch: Find your Kat, and find your Eddie and Christopher
Christopher Lochhead: Yeah, we're gonna launch FindYourKat.com because everybody needs a Katrina.
How AI Is Impacting Content Creation & Category Kings