One day of an agency PR or marketer involves a lot of work that sometimes seems to require an extra pair of hands and an extra head. But that is why there is this buzzword, this phenomenon that we either bow down to or shy away from – artificial intelligence or, in short and better known, AI. Can it make the everyday life of our hero from the beginning of the story easier, since he/she suffers from the lack of necessary limbs and brains?
For years, if not decades, we have been working on the development of various tools based on artificial intelligence. But since Elon Musk’s OpenAI company launched ChatGPT in November 2022, it is as if they have experienced an additional boom. However, all this remains a dead letter (on paper or screen) if they cannot serve us in practice. Therefore, let us take a look at how much an average marketer or PR professional can benefit from them.
Artificial intelligence does not offer too much for the Croatian market
Before you get your hopes up thinking we are going to offer you 25 AI tools to help you reduce your workday from eight hours to four, we are going to have to disappoint you. After many hours of online research and testing of available AI tools, we came up with a very short list of those adapted to the Croatian market.
Namely, for the English-speaking area, there are a lot of them that can make everyday tasks much easier for a PR professional, such as:
- Finding contacts in the media: one such tool is Propel PRM made by PR people for PR people (so they say). As part of this tool, there is the Amiga application, which offers the possibility of writing pitches and searching for journalists’ contacts. As for the latter, we tried to find media contacts for publication in Croatian. Our mission ended badly – half of the contacts are not from this part of the world at all (!), and the other half were outdated contacts or contacts from the wrong market.
- Finding suitable influencers: in the research, we came across a list of nine AI applications for influencer marketing, but we did not find any indication of the possibility of working with influencers from Croatia.
- Post monitoring and tone analysis: the Brandwatch app offers all of the above, with the ability to search for influencers. Although there is a limitation in the in-depth analysis of emotions of texts in Croatian, certain characteristics are still functional for our market.
Therefore, the conclusion is simple – AI tools whose work is based on language analysis are still primarily oriented to the English-speaking area, with the addition of Spanish and some other European and Asian languages. But what about other types of tools?
There are too many graphic tools based on artificial intelligence
… If you have enough time to review them all in detail – indeed there are a lot of them. It is fascinating what can be done – from removing the background in a photo in just a few clicks to generating photos of models whose faces look really good (and anyone who has tried to generate images with the help of artificial intelligence knows that it can easily go wrong).
However, this text will not go in the direction of reviewing all these applications. On the contrary, we decided to give a brief overview of several AI applications that are free (because cutting budgets) and that can quickly do some graphic work for a PR or marketer. Still, we want to spare our designers from doing things for us we really cannot do on our own.
Canva (AI-boosted)
It sounds ridiculous to put Canva first because it is a tool that literally everyone knows, your next door neighbour included. But, the “good old Canva” has been greatly rejuvenated by artificial intelligence in several interesting ways.
First of all, when you enter the work on a project in Canva, clicking on the three-star circle in the bottom right corner puts a bunch of options in the palm of your hand for which you would otherwise have to dig a little longer in the toolbar on the left side of the interface.
Furthermore, if you need a photo or graphic quickly, the “Text to Image” option at the bottom of the toolbar provides quite satisfactory results. It is necessary to enter a detailed description of what you need and choose the style of the image. Below you can see what we have generated through this option.
Also, if you do not have time to put together simple graphics due to the overproduction of content, Magic Design is a great solution. The process starts from uploading the visual you want to use, then choosing between different formats, moods, colours and text of the final design. You should make sure that if you are creating, e.g., a visual for a story (9:16), you use an image of appropriate dimensions. The rest of the work will be done by Canva. Most designs can be further customized, and if you have the PRO version of Canva, the sky is the limit.
Looka
Although it is important to work with professional designers when defining the visual identity of a brand, Looka can be used for the first preview. In principle, Looka positions itself as an AI tool for creating a logo. In practice, it can serve you to better define the direction in which you will go in terms of creating the final logo and identity with the client.
To get a design from Looka, the app will ask you:
- the brand name,
- the industry in which the brand “operates”,
- choice from a variety of styles and colours.
- slogan (optional),
- selection of icons that would be part of the logo (also optional).
We have created a brand intended for women who are not the classic sports type, but enjoy wearing comfortable sportswear. The style of clothing is trendy, but also relaxed and gives you the feeling of being wrapped in a warm blanket. After a few clicks, we got this:
Not bad!
Cleanup.Pictures
If you do not have a lot of time or find Photoshop to be too complicated for you to work with, Cleanup.Pictures will remove any eye-popping detail from your photo. For extremely large or detailed images, it will not be of much help. But, if you need a small correction, and you do not have time to delegate that task to someone else, the free version of the Cleanup.Pictures app will suffice.
For the experiment, we chose a random image from Pexels. Although the original image is also great, we were somehow bothered by this pole in the middle. A few clicks later, the pole was gone – without a crane or Photoshop.
The only drawback of the final image is the lower quality, which is a consequence of using the free version of the app (source: Cleanup.pictures).
Now that we have graphic tools covered, what about others available for marketers and PR practitioners in Croatia and the region?
TransSkriptor to convert audio to text
Why do we single out TransSkriptor of all the applications that convert speech to written text? After reviewing numerous applications, we found that most of them do not work (well or not at all) for the Croatian language. On the other hand, TransKriptor produces results that require minimal corrections, whereas Transkriptor’s output requires minimal corrections. We tested the accuracy of the delivered text on a random video and, as you can see in the image below, it looks pretty good.
TransSkriptor can be used as a Chrome add-on or as a standalone application. What could you use it for? First of all, for taking notes in meetings (especially video calls) or for creating subtitles for videos for which you do not have prepared text. (And we all know that nowadays it’s desirable to have subtitles for a team that watches half of it on the Internet.) mute.)
ChatGPT – the jack of all trades
Yes, we know, that ChatGPT is everywhere (we have already written about ChatGPT in copywriting). ChatGPT is not always accurate with the information it serves. For example, we tried to get a list of the most famous Croatian fitness influencers through it and it was wrong, quite a bit. The older version of ChatGPT even threw out a list of Instagram profiles that do not exist. The new version, on the other hand, informed us that “unfortunately, it has a list from 2021 and therefore cannot respond to our inquiry.” Fair enough.
However, while you deal with answering emails on a daily basis (although it can also help), announcing projects and budgets, ChatGPT can be a great tool for generating ideas. In addition to saving you brainstorming time, it can provide suggestions that you might never have thought of on your own. You can look at two examples for which we have used it – generating interview questions with a doctor specializing in herniated discs (or a slipped disc, as we like to call it) and gathering ideas for blog posts about table tennis.
ChatGPT, in short, will not solve all your problems. However, it can save you a few valuable (dozens) of minutes and hours in your busy workday.
Expect generous help from Google’s AI
Those who follow the development of the AI story already know that Google is trying to catch up with OpenAI and Microsoft with their own AI solutions. Many have heard of Google’s Bard, but we have not yet received it on the Croatian market. However, Google is preparing the Duet AI – artificial intelligence that will be implemented in all Google Workspace tools.
Duet AI, once it becomes available for our market, will be able to help you write emails, write texts, organize and analyse data in spreadsheets, create beautiful presentations, and much more. In their blog post on Duet AI, Google promised a lot. We hope that it will not disappoint and that it will be available for Croatian Google accounts as soon as possible.
Well, to paraphrase for the end…
All you need is (not) AI
As we mentioned at the beginning of the text, in this blog post we could not offer you a lot of (free) artificial intelligence tools that you will be able to widely apply on a daily basis. However, we hope to expand this list over time.
We do not think AI can completely replace humans, and we certainly hope it will not. The ethical implications of using artificial intelligence are numerous, and simply, for now, AI is not the solution to all problems (there is always the world hunger). Do not be afraid of losing your job – if anything, the computer will never be able to understand the client who is trying to explain what he really wants using his hands and feet.
However, AI can make your daily work easier – it really can. Do not hesitate to give it a try. Even if it does not deliver perfect results, at least testing it will be fun. It certainly was for us.
