Positioning conversational AI pre-ChatGPT 🤖
Duncan | Strategist & Copywriter
Brand Strategist
Market Researcher
Copywriter
Google Apps
Slack
Zoom
Clevy
Flying Saucer Studio
Delivering clarity
Retained in 2019 by Flying Saucer Studio to work on a pre-ChatGPT conversational AI project for their Paris-based SaaS client serving the European enterprise market.
The agency asked us to craft brand strategy, brand architecture, strategic messaging and Web copy.
Project outcomes included:
Clarity on brand positioning for a complicated range of use cases in a complex industry whose key terms were changing year to year (per Gartner).
Recommended the term 'conversational platform' as the most representative of their market segment at the time.
Reframing their competition through the lens of Jobs-to-Be-Done:
Because clients were hiring their chatbot platform for digital transformation, their field of competitors extended beyond other chatbot solutions to include digital transformation providers at large.
Identifying go-to-market implications of market research insights.
To convince C-level executives who focus on big-picture results rather than specific technologies, they first needed to make the case that a conversational platform is the best tool to achieve digital transformation.
A simple, centralized branded house architecture for the company based on research-backed best practices for B2B brands, rather than a decentralized house of brands. This saved the client 6 figures in brand-related costs that would have been incurred had they multiplied the number of brand identities to create and manage.
Clear messaging and a strong, succinct headline that foreshadowed what is now unfolding at scale with AI agents... 5 years later:
Revamped company homepage, based on brand strategy.
A separate and more playful visual identity for the affiliated open-source project, per brand architecture recommendations, to appeal to developers and foster their sense of ownership of the open-source project, thanks to the arms-length relationship from the for-profit operations:
Predicting the future impact of conversational AI
Our analysis generated a key insight that was shocking in 2019, but nevertheless a logical conclusion given where the technology was going:
Ubiquitous conversational interfaces for computing will mean that everyone is a programmer.
This was a bold statement, practically unthinkable at the time, and was met with healthy skepticism. And yet, 5 years later, virtually anyone can program a Web page or a simple app using AI chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT as a natural language interface to the underlying code.
Praise from the client
The client's CEO offered a testimonial after the project wrapped.
He's a former Senior Consultant, Fast Digital Team at Capgemini Consulting.
In the 3 years before that, he had hired 50+ service providers.
Here's what he had to say...
$atisfaction delivered
The client was so pleased with the results that they spontaneously paid a significant bonus to the agency at the end of the project, which is a rare thing indeed. ✨
