Ep 144 - Why A.I. isn't a threat to marketing & public relations - An Interview W/ Joe Zappa, CEO at Sharp Pen Media

If you're tempted to cut your company's marketing budget and D.I.Y. public relations using A.I. such as Chat GPT - is that really a good idea?  Can you save money, or will it cost your business more in the long run? Confused? Not sure what to do?  Listen up to this episode of The PR Playbook Podcast featuring Joe Zappa with Sharp Pen Media.  You'll learn the steps needed to have a successful PR strategy for your business.  

Joe Zappa is a content marketer, journalist, and academic who has spearheaded content programs for dozens of businesses. He was the editor of the martech trade publication Street Fight from 2018 to 2023. Joe earned his BA from Brown and his PhD in comparative literature from Cornell.

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 Episode 144. Why Generative AI isn't the threat? We think it is?

Ronjini Joshua: Hello everybody. Welcome to Episode 144. Today, we're gonna be talking about a hot topic of AI and content marketing, and why you still need a marketing team. I'm gonna be conversing here with Joe Zappa, the founder and CEO of Sharp Pen Media. Hi, Nice to meet you.

Joe Zappa: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Ronjini Joshua: So before we get into the AI conversation, which I know a lot of people have questions of. They want to replace their marketing team with a bot. Let's get you a little background. Tell us where you came from.

Joe Zappa: So, I'm a journalist by training. I was the editor for five years of the martech marketing tech media site Street fight. And then I started freelancing as a content marketer and eventually hopped completely over. The divide built up a roster of clients, started hiring people and sort of became one of those sort of organic marketing freelancers to content, marketing agency owners.

Ronjini Joshua: And What do you guys typically focus in? What's your area of expertise?

Joe Zappa: So we do marketing strategy, content NPR mostly for advertising and marketing technology companies which obviously goes back to my time as a journalist in that space.

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah, absolutely. Okay So there's a lot of things about developing content that we all go through as PR and marketing folks. What do you think is the hardest part about developing content with new clients?

Joe Zappa: I think the hardest part is developing differentiated content that actually distinguishes a company from its competitors and resonates with its customers. So I think one of the tricks with content marketing, or one of the difficulties is that it's very easy to write stuff. And this is also related to the chat GPT thing, right? it's very easy to pump out…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: what I call commodity content that is just like there is an issue in our industry that we are all aware of and we will say a thing about it that other people have said before many times and you can do that but it's not going to have a big impact on your business. So I think the big challenge with content marketing and this, sometimes what I like to do is the narrative marketing, disciplines is building. Those differentiated narratives that are actually going to make people read your blog poster, your thought leadership eyeliner your white paper. This company genuinely has something to say about my problems. That I have not heard before.

Ronjini Joshua: Mm- Yeah, I mean that's really hard because all we do is do what We have a lot of clickbait and we have a lot of content that seems like it might be different but it's not necessarily saying anything different. what is your approach Extracting that information and making it seem more important, what it really is,

Joe Zappa: So I think the challenge here operationally is that whether you're working with an agency or figuring this out in-house you need to devote a month. Maybe it's at the start of every year. If you're working with an agency it's going to be the first month that you're working with that agency to marketing strategy. And this basically is three components. It's differentiated narrative building. It's go to marketer channels, where you going to distribute those differentiated narratives, and then it's measurement. How are we going to make sure that's working? And optimize it and…

Ronjini Joshua: Mm-hmm

Joe Zappa: I think we're in my experience where most tech companies go wrong with marketing is that they jump into it. So it's very common. For example, I'm sure you've experienced this a ton of times with your agency you'll get on the phone with the founder or…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: a head of marketing which is totally understandable. it's time for us to get out there or our VCs want us to get out there and it's like,…

Ronjini Joshua: I love that.

Joe Zappa: Yeah, yeah. And it's absolutely sure. we should get you out there. That's part of what marketing does. But before we start pulling the trigger and just creating content, can we devote 30 days to figuring out where you're competitors? What are they saying? How can you say something different? Can we talk to your customers and…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: find out? How do you want to be perceived by them? And what are the narratives that are going to help you make that leap? And that what impact did we expect that that's going to have on your business.

Ronjini Joshua: How do you get them to dedicate 30 days? Everybody wants it done yesterday? I mean, that's like also us specifically, we're working with ton of startups who just, they're late. They always feel like they're late. It's like the White Rabbit kind of syndrome, How do you get people to commit to 30 days? That's a lot.

00:05:00

Joe Zappa: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that that is part of the sales conversation and I really think that agencies need to be willing to lose clients over that requirement,…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: right? Or…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: if you have a client that has a sophisticated marketing team and they already have a strategy and they can show you. It's written in a doc It's like we have thoroughly thought this through. Here's what our competitors are saying, Here's why we're different. These are the channels, we're going to. Here's why? if they've thought through the strategy and they really just want to tactical partner to help them execute, that's fine.

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: In my experience though, early stage companies, like Seed, maybe even be like, they don't have that. All figured out, which is totally reasonable. That's why they're often going to an agency, but then it's like, Okay,'s we will get way more out of this If we spend 30 days, working through that,

Ronjini Joshua: No. I totally agree. When you guys do that I'm guessing that you're planning content as well. And kind of some of the topics that you come up with. And this is one thing that, is always a struggle with sitting down with the client, oftentimes, when they hire a PR agency. They're like, okay, we hired you. This is the kind of work we do. go do this and I feel like it comes the same thing with content, they're like, can you give us ideas? And we can always provide ideas. That's not the problem. I think the problem is inserting what they do as experts into the ideas that we have. And I think oftentimes, we have to convince them Hey, you're the experts at the job that you do. So you need to distill that information to us so that we can create content around that. how do you get people to kind of understand?

Ronjini Joshua: where they need to provide input and then what you can do to support that

Joe Zappa: Yeah, I think there's the upfront work you do to get the clients input and then there's ongoing work.

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: So in terms of being up front work, what we'll do with strategy clients will do a two-hour session with basically usually the founder / CEO. If it's a fairly early stage company and then the head of marketing if there is one and anyone else to five people who needs to be bought in on the marketing strategy and we'll get together and we'll talk about all those questions I mentioned earlier, who do you want to be? What are your competitors saying, that kind of thing? And then we'll also talk to their customers and when we talk to their customers that's kind of like the reality check. the company told us. Who

Joe Zappa: Think they are now. We're going to find out from the customers or do their customers agree and if not like we're gonna figure out the gap of perception. And then that's a huge part of what, the content Marketing and PR program will focus on the other. So that's like, getting the alignment up front and getting a strategy together. The other thing I would say is a lot of marketing engagements, marketing programs, they fail in the logistics because as you said, you need input from subject matter, experts and company leaders on an ongoing basis. And if you can't get that,…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: if you can't get someone on the phone to provide 30 minutes of their time, to weigh in on a piece of content or you can't get anyone to approve the content, then the company's going to waste their marketing spend for such an unfortunate and mundane recent. Right? So another thing I like to say is in the beginning.

Ronjini Joshua: Right. Right.

Joe Zappa: I'm like do you have a VA or a project manager who's going to help you?

Ronjini Joshua: Who's gonna be our point of contact? Yeah.

Joe Zappa: Coordinate logistics. Exactly. Yeah can you set aside two hours a week to do this including a 30 minute meeting it's the mundane stuff like that that gets the job done.

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah. I've been doing this for a long time and now I do say, hey just to be upfront like this doesn't mean that doesn't require time for me at the beginning. It's gonna require more time and then as we get to know each other, it'll require less time but you do have to at least have a couple hours a week to say, Hey, I'm gonna dedicate this to PR review, or content development or whatever and it's easy for people to say okay, yeah I'm gonna do that but then when they actually get down to putting it on their calendar, it's a much different thing. And I also adv

00:10:00

Ronjini Joshua: Sometimes people who are diying their PR and marketing. And I was like, if you don't block out time, at least two to three hours a week to just create content, It's not gonna work for you, you there's no getting around it, Whether you have a team at least the team can accelerate what you do. But whether you have a team or not, you have to make that time. And I think people feel like hiring an agency is a way to wiggle out of that work,

Joe Zappa: Yeah, absolutely. I think some people and it's really understandable. They're like, I'm hiring an agency. The point is that they're going to do this for me and it's like,…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: Yeah, they're going to write the content or pitch it or whatever like they are gonna do the bulk of the work, but they still need, an hour two hours. Severe time per week and…

Ronjini Joshua: Right.

Joe Zappa: so someone on the client side needs to carve out those two hours. And I just did this with the prospect where, there they've never had a marketing agency before and I said, Please block out two hours every week in your calendar again, 30 minutes of that will just be us meeting but then the other hour and a half is that, you're gonna have to edit a piece or provide your feedback or whatever. So it's really important.

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah. Yeah, I've noticed that I've had to say that. So let's jump into this conversation that we're here for today. Why is generative Not the threat? That people think it is. I know my answers. I mean, we have started using a little bit of chopped gpt We use it, mostly for research, and some background building. But what do you think on this Joe? Why is generative ai not really threatening to what we do?

Joe Zappa: Yeah, I think the response to generative AI in the marketing world in the tech world has been way overblown. at least for the state that it's a now.

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: I think it's mainly useful as an idea generation tool or as a research tool, for example, I had a writer who never written a piece about location data, and I just tested it myself and I went into chat GPT and I put in write a blog post about location data, like XYZ and

Joe Zappa: It gave me some interesting information where I was like okay this is a good primer on location data for someone who's never written a blog post about it, even though. I don't know, a past blog because we had written for the company probably would have been just as educational. But the thing is that blog post doesn't reflect the company's, not just the company's voice, which people will talk about. And sometimes that's important to the company and sometimes it's not but it doesn't reflect the particulars of their business, like everything. We were just talking about with narrative differentiation. That's really where Chat Gpt is a tactical efficiency tool falls short because it can't do the most impactful work of marketing which is that strategic component it is figuring out.

Ronjini Joshua: Right.

Joe Zappa: What is this company's unique selling point? What does it have to say that none of its competitors? in a way that accentuates, it's unique strengths. And so I think that the obsession with chat GPT reflects a broader problem in marketing, which is that a lot of marketers are people who are commenting on marketing are very tactical and they're thinking they're the big thing here is This is gonna help us do 10 blog posts in the time. It used to do one.

Ronjini Joshua: More content. Yeah.

Joe Zappa: Yeah, more content. That's gonna change everything. And I'm just having run or participated in content VR programs for dozens of companies. I just don't think that's true. I don't think that the thing that's going to move. The needle is doing 10 times more content. It's doing

Ronjini Joshua: And it feels like 10 times more reviewing the content too. I feel like people overlook the whole copywriting process of there's a thing with checking the work.

Joe Zappa: Yeah, I mean a lot of companies, struggle to even approve, the one blog post right?

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: Any agency has worked with clients where it's getting three articles a month done is really hard, not because the agency can't crank them out but because they,…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: you can't get feedback and you can't get approvals and all of that or they approve it and then it doesn't get posted on social these kinds of things.

Ronjini Joshua: Right.

Joe Zappa: So I think. Most marketing teams, especially in the startup world, which I know is your world and your audience's world. They don't mainly have tactical marketing problems,…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: they have strategic marketing problems, they need to answer those core three, strategic questions of what are differentiated narratives? How are we going to market with them? And How are we going to measure success and chat? GPT cannot solve those problems for you.

00:15:00

Ronjini Joshua: yeah, I mean I think this year especially like a down economy, VR Marketing is the first people to get cut, right? And so it's really funny because now with Chad Gpt or any kind of AI tools, everyone's like we can cut PR marketing because we could just chat gpt it or whatever and it's like okay sure. no.

Joe Zappa: What has football on us?

Ronjini Joshua: My goodness, I lost Internet.

Joe Zappa: No.

Ronjini Joshua: I don't know why I lost Internet. That's weird. obviously we never know why we can record. how is it still recording is a question. Are you recording?

Joe Zappa: I mean, I didn't hit record, but yeah, I've stayed on the line and I see that it's still recording.

Ronjini Joshua: It's so So we can pick up, it's gonna sound different, but I can always do a little interlude saying that We lost a little power in the middle.

Joe Zappa: Okay, yeah, no problem. I remember you said, it's a down economy. We can cut our marketing team replacement,…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah. Yeah,…

Joe Zappa: chat GPT.

Ronjini Joshua: my editor will. Tape it all back together.

Joe Zappa: Exactly.

Ronjini Joshua: Okay So Yeah, in a down economy, People always feel like, okay, They can cut their marketing team and use Chat Gpt Create a bunch of content, but I think what they fail to realize and fail to recognize is again, once you use kind of mentioned Already, you need that expertise and that voice the narrative inserted into those conversations. And then also, I mean, You can have as much content on your table as you want. You have 20 pieces of paper on the table, but who's gonna look through it, and make sure that what you have is quality, and then who's gonna send it out and how are you gonna manage? Kind of putting it on the different platforms? I guess that actually brings up another question for me to you is strategically and both strategically intactically.

Ronjini Joshua: How do you guys advise companies on really repurposing and leveraging, the content that you do create?

Joe Zappa: I think the most important thing to understand there is that every platform or channel is different and has its own norms and you need to comply with those norms and make the content feel like it's native. So

Joe Zappa: The Recont Repurposing is very big and B2B Tech right now but that you…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: I think most people who are practitioners probably understand this but that doesn't mean Take the blog post and just drop the link on LinkedIn. This is something that marketers now make fun of but it's still a thing that I think a lot of non-marketing like CEOs think they should do is if you Get a buy one published or you get a blog post or you publish a blog post, you just drop the link on linked and That's not the way. Because people who are on social platforms, they want to engage with native content on that platform. They don't necessarily want to leave, so it has to be really good content for someone to click the link and leave and the platform. So punish that link because they don't want people exiting me So you just need to make sure that

Joe Zappa: Everywhere you're redistributing a repurposing content, your tailoring it to that channels. for example, for LinkedIn, You're gonna have short sentences and a lot of paragraph breaks and that kind of thing, set us digestible and mobile. So just make sure that you're doing that is that the same advice you would give

00:20:00

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah, I think so. I think Yeah, I mean same thing. I think you said a lot of executives you're just stopping that too mindful of how different platforms communicate differently. And I think that's also a critical component of making sure that you're catering to the audience that you're looking at, Instagram from LinkedIn is different from a tiktok or Facebook or whatever channel you decide that you're is important for you. And also even on your blog I think that's one thing that we found too is that don't talk to people on the blog they're not already on your website. Sometimes we find that if they're writing for a publication when it's their own. Pub on their blog.

Ronjini Joshua: how do you guys kind of manage and kind of identify Stories. That are on different platforms. And What do you recommend for people that are writing content? all for our media outlet versus their blog or how to develop that content.

Joe Zappa: Yeah, I think that something I've heard a lot from clients is that not every content team or…

Ronjini Joshua: What is the strategic approach for that?

Joe Zappa: agency. That is good for blog writing or social writing can do thought leadership fine line writing for example. So when you're everything we just said about different channels and tailoring the content to those channels, it applies to the media too. So blog contents gonna look one way social is going to look. Another probably casual more digestible, punchier and then content that you want to pitch to the media. It can't be self-serving at all. it can't be promotional or about you. It has to genuinely engage with the industry discourse as the publication. And question is covering it and it needs to endeavor to move forward. The industry conversation. So it really like doing it. requires not, just writing like a piece that is insightful about your industry.

Joe Zappa: It requires understanding How is this specific publication covering this issue? What have they published on it recently and How is my take going to be different from what their readers have heard before. And that's where people can be really helpful. It's not just like I have relationships and so the editor is going to publish it, it's understanding what the journalists at that publication have been writing about interested in and tailoring a piece to their readers.

Ronjini Joshua: Right, right? Yeah. And I think it's so funny because I also have to explain to a lot of our clients I know it sounds like you feel like you're talking to the reporter, but really, we're talking to the reporters readers and the reporters have a job to do too, Anybody who's an editor or publisher or someone who's gonna publish our work or our content? Their job is to get eyeballs onto their website and I think that sometimes gets lost in translation from the client from the startup through the PR person to the media outlet. They just think I'm going straight out to my audience but actually We're going to somebody else's audience and so we have to cater to that content and information to those people and what they're used to and how they're used to receiving that information. And so the job is a little bit more nuance than just publishing their content.

Joe Zappa: Yes, exactly. You're providing value to the journalist by providing value to their audience which overlaps with your audience.

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah, exactly yeah no I mean I think Yeah we're hitting those content gems right on the head here. I like to make sure that, anytime I have a conversation with another marketer. we leave everybody with some, golden tips. So what would you say are, you're top three tips on producing content for publication, for any company really?

Joe Zappa: I would say first build differentiated narratives, before you start creating content. So don't rush to create content content that doesn't resonate with your customers and isn't differentiated from that of your competitors. It's not going to drive business objective. So make sure you do the strategic work of differentiation first. Second, consider the audience for each piece of content in each place,…

00:25:00

Ronjini Joshua: Okay.

Joe Zappa: you're distributing it. So, as we were just talking about your audience is on LinkedIn,…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: From your blog. It's different from the audience for, a media site. You are pitching and third understand. The objectives that the content is intended to drive and the KPIs for the content based on where it's going to be placed. So if you have an early stage startup and they're desperate for customers thought leadership, violins are probably not the place to go, because that's an awareness play and it's very difficult to measure. So they're other more …

Ronjini Joshua: Right.

Joe Zappa: in the weeds ways, you could produce content. you can go on social and you can comment on post by 50 of your target prospects. that's an example of a way to use content. That is very tactical and we'll get your client or if you're in-house will get your company in front of it, target audience versus things like thought leadership islands and trade sites they're more prestigious, but they're like a long-term play.

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah, those are awesome tips. where can people find you if they want to figure out a little bit more about what you guys do at sharpen?

Joe Zappa: Yeah, there are two places you can go to Podcasts.sharpenmedia.com or you can find me on Just Google, Joe Zappa LinkedIn and I should pop up

Ronjini Joshua: Joe it's been a pleasure speaking with you today. Despite our technical hiccups. Thank you so much for jumping on.

Joe Zappa: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was great to chat.

Ronjini Joshua: All right, great. guys, if you need any more information, check out the show notes and as always, we'll talk to you next time.

Ronjini Joshua: I stop recording but I don't have that capability on my phone so let me see. No, I can't do anything. All right, so I think when we hang up it'll send the recording if if it happens and we can't keep this guy we might have to record so I will let you know but I think it should be fine. I just got Internet back so I think it was just a temporary blip. So once I get the recording confirm that I have it, I will let you know so that we can move forward and then this is episode. I said 144, I think we're at 140 one or two. So be a couple weeks before this goes up, but I will definitely tag you and let you know when it does.

Joe Zappa: Okay, Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah, thanks I appreciate it too. And I'm gonna introduce you to What's her name? Lisa, from Reprise.

Joe Zappa: I really appreciate that. I just did that for a podcast host to add me on actually,…

Ronjini Joshua: Yeah.

Joe Zappa: keep my eyes peeled. All…

Ronjini Joshua: Sounds good. Talk to you soon. All right.

Joe Zappa: Take care. Bye.

Meeting ended after 00:28:35 👋