(This article summarises research published in the June 2023 issue of the Neuromarketing Science and Business Association (NMSBA) Insights Magazine)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere in today’s news. This is largely due to the increased popularity of ChatGPT, a conversational AI that allows you to ask questions and gives (mostly) grammatically correct and (mostly) intelligent sounding answers. Chat GPT’s ability to summarise large amounts of information is impressive, but we wondered if it would be able to create genuinely new content, the type of content that is used in marketing and advertising, and would it be as compelling as content created by a human.

To put Chat GPT to the test we asked it to create taglines for the fitness brand Fitbit. We also asked a human (an untrained copywriter) to do the same. We then used CloudArmy's innovative research methods to see how well both sets of taglines resonate with consumers.

To measure consumers reaction and emotional engagement we used Cloud Army’s Intuitive Fast Choice method. The tool measures the extent and speed with which consumers associate different attributes with a tagline, giving an indication of the strength of these associations.

Each tagline was evaluated based on five attributes: motivational potential, positivity, authenticity, personal relevance, and memorability.

CloudArmy’s Intuitive Fast Choice measures the breadth of agreement with an attribute as well as the intensity of that agreement (measures via reaction times where a faster reaction time indicates a stronger agreement). By aggregating the two measures for each attribute, we developed an overall ranking for the taglines.

The race was tight, but in a photo finish Chat GPT won. One of its taglines 'Unleash your potential one step at a time' had a slight edge over the best human-created one 'Commit don't quit with Fitbit'.

It's noteworthy that ChatGPT not only won the race but also secured four of the top five positions.

Interestingly there seemed to be almost a formula on how ChatGPT created these taglines. They all included the term 'your,' facilitating a personal connection with consumers, and they all feature positively-connotated words like unleash, empower, progress.

This test may not have been entirely fair comparison between human and AI as we don’t know how well taglines created by trained copywriters would have performed. However, it has shown that Chat GPT can create marketing material that consumers find appealing. The future may well lie in a collaboration where an AI creates ideas to be refined by a human - or the other way round.

(This blog post was written by Chat GPT and refined by a human.) To get the published findings of this research please enter your email below and we will send you the full article.