Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 77: How To Use AI For Competitive Insights

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Can you use AI and ChatGPT to learn more about your competitors than you could on your own? Today Yogesh Chavda, Founder of Y2S Consulting, joins us to break down the best methods and use cases to use AI for competitive insights. Newsletter: Sign-up for our free daily newsletterMore on this: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Yogesh and Jordan questions about AI and competitive insightsUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTimestamps:[00:01:00] Daily AI news[00:03:30] Yogesh Chavda's background[00:07:25] Using ChatGPT in consulting[00:11:30] How companies like Pinterest can use ChatGPT[00:15:13] AI & ChatGPT speed up competitive insight process[00:19:14] Exploring various use cases for creative content[00:23:33] Final takeawayTopics Covered in This Episode:- Discussion of various AI tools and plugins:- Plugin on ChatGPT for creating short videos using stock imagery- Amazement at the quality of voice tonality and script generated by the plugin- Tools enabling engagement in creative work previously thought impossible- Small businesses using tools for communication like TikTok posts and long-form videos- Accessibility of tools with a laptop and proper guidance- Mention of China's Internet giants ordering $5 billion worth of Nvidia chips for AI ambitions- Recognition of Nvidia's importance in powering the generative AI movement in both US and China- Focus on using AI for competitive insights and analysis- Examples of using ChatGPT in consulting work:- Understanding client's industry and pain points- Crafting presentations for conferences- Creating blog posts for weekly LinkedIn posts- Experience of helping engage customers at Pinterest during COVID-19 pandemic- AI news:- TikTok asking creators to label AI content- Microsoft's new language model called Gorilla outperforming GPT 4- Discovery of ChatGPT and its potential for productivity, research, and information mining- Transformation of work processes and incorporation of generative AI- Consulting focus on overcoming brand stigma and building a database using chat GPT and website scraping plugin- Mention of plugins for creating videos and analyzing websitesKeywords:AI, SEO assistant, keywords, episode, project, use cases, blog, subscribe, plugin, ChatGPT, short videos, stock imagery, voice tonality, script, editing, creative work, small businesses, communication, TikTok posts, long-form videos, laptop, guidance, China, Internet giaSend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. Can you use AI and chat GPT to learn more about your competitors and your customers than you could on your own?

Well, you actually can. And we have a very special guest today that's going to tell us how and why you probably should too. All right. So my name is Jordan Wilson. I'm the host of Everyday AI. That's what you're listening to. Thank you for joining us. So we are a daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter, helping everyday people make sense of what's going on in the AI world because there's a ton.

But not just like, hey, here's a new tool or here's a bunch of news, but how we can all actually use it to help grow our companies, to help grow our careers, to increase our output, right? So that's something that we're going to be talking about today, how we can use AI and chat GPTs to learn more about our customers, our competitors. and just insights that would be kind of hard to get otherwise. So before we get into that, let's quickly talk about what's going on in the world of AI news. So first, TikTok is now going to start labeling AI content. So TikTok is going to ask creators to label their AI content. So we kind of know what's real and what's not. So this kind of follows Instagram that announced this also a couple of weeks ago.

Also, interesting that TikTok is asking creators to identify it. and not necessarily developing any sort of detection system to do it. So we'll see how many TikTokers are actually fessing up. Next but not least, Microsoft has a new large language model. That's right. So they recently announced Gorilla, and it has beat GPT4 at writing API calls. So we're going to have more about this in the newsletter because it is pretty breaking news. But their new large language model called Gorilla was in its own testing was better at generating accurate API calls.

So more on that in the newsletter. Last but not least for today, $5 billion in sales. So that's China's Internet Giants just recently announced that they ordered $5 billion. That's billion with a B in Nvidia chips to power. their AI ambitions in the coming years. So we do talk about Nvidia pretty often on the show because, hey, Hot Take, I think that they're one of the most important companies here for the U.S. economy because they are powering this whole generative AI movement, not just for the U.S., but China as well. All right. So I hope you're excited because we're going to be talking about

using AI in a way that we don't talk about a lot on this show. And I think we should be talking about and more. So as a reminder, if you have any questions, please make sure to jot them down because I'm excited to bring on our guests for today. We have Yogesh Chavda, the founder of Y2S Consulting. Yogesh, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. All right. And we were just talking pre-show. Hey, we're both from Chicago. So we got to have a great show here and hold it down for the Midwest, right? So, Yogash, just before we get into using AI for competitive insights and analysis, kind of just quickly tell everyone what your background is, because you have a very extensive background, you know, even outside of, you know, founding your own consulting company. Yes. So I've been working in marketing and market insights my entire career. And I actually started working with Broker and Gamble initially. So I spent almost 17 years with them working across six different countries.

under very different circumstances and built up a, you know, like a, you know, a pretty wide set of, you know, capabilities around how do you do marketing under, you know, developing markets versus developed markets, different kinds of brands, you know, new brand launches, you name it, basically. I've also worked for some other companies like Spotify and Pinterest. I was a global head of always on marketing at Spotify. I was the global head of commercial insights at Pinterest for a while. And then my last big role was with a hearing aids company out of Denmark, where I was managing the Market Insights work for hearing aids in the U.S. So in and in between, of course, I've been doing some consulting work as well.

So I just started at my consulting company again this year. Yeah. Wow. That's the short version of my track out. So let me cut it down for anyone listening, whether you're listening on the podcast or listening with us live here. Yogesh knows what he's talking about, right? So he just, he just dropped some companies that all of us probably know and use. So PNG, Spotify, Pinterest, right? So, so, so, so, so, Yogesh, with your background in insights and marketing, what was your kind of take when you first kind of saw this, this generative AI wave,

specifically with chat GPT? What was your thoughts on, you know, hey, did you think it was going to be something, a useful tool? Or at, at, at, at, at, you know, first where you just kind of like, all right, this is something that could just be a fun little tool and we'll see what happens. So the funny thing is I found out of about this tool through my 16 year old when he told me about this back in November saying, Dad, I'm using this to write my essays. And I was like, what is this, you know, all about, you know? So that's how I kind of started, right? Thankfully, he's not using it, you know, to, you know, from a school perspective. He's very smart about what he does. So I don't want to get him into trouble, of course. So with that

said, as I started playing with chat GPT in particular, that's where I started. And then I also played with Bard and then later with Claude as well. I would say that I started recognizing that this is not just a basic tool that can do basic stuff. This is a very sophisticated tool that can actually drive productivity for different kinds of roles very, very quickly. It can help you do research very quickly.

And you can mine information very, very, very quickly, which would have taken me weeks or months to do in some cases because it's able to find it, right? And analyze it. Now, the challenge, of course, that everybody had, and I had in particular was like, is this real? So I was always going back and checking to make sure that whatever chat APD was telling me is actually correct or not, right? And there were instances where I was finding, like, no, that's not working. So there was a learning curve that I was going through, but the more I learned how to use the tool, the more I became a convert to say, this is not just, a fly-by-night thing. This is actually a game changer. It's going to change the way work

will happen moving forward, and organizations will have to be thinking differently about how they structured their work streams internally to be able to incorporate, you know, generative AI into their organizations. It's not a bolt on to your work stream. This is actually a redesign of your work stream completely based on generative AI, in my opinion. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, a lot of people think like, oh, maybe I can find a way to work chat GPT or to work generative AI into my workflow where I think if you flip that coin on its head, you can start to have chat GPT or AI kind of be the base, right, right?

Yogesh, like is that something that have you started to maybe restructure a little bit, even how you're doing your consulting work just to cut down on that repetitive and sometimes mundane task of research and analysis? Completely. Completely. So I can give you three different use cases already in terms of how I'm using it in my consulting work, right? So the first one is if I'm pitching to a client and I know a little bit about the

client and they're new to me, I'm using chat chPD to understand their industry, you know, so that, okay, this is the industry they're operating in, this is what's going on. These are some of their pain points. These are some of the things that are happening inside, you know, the industry. and that's helping me say, okay, if that's what the industry pain points are, then what are the brands pain points in this case? So, you know, chat GPT may not be able to help you specifically

because of obviously the cutoff, you know, up until October, but, you know, you can bring in Bard at that point to help you supplement kind of thing, right? So between those two, you're able to kind of like, you know, build out the understanding and say, okay, this is where the landscape is today. How do I write my pitch? Right.

So I've actually used chat chapt at you to help me think about how I should craft my pitch. And then the third thing that I've also done, and I'm doing a lot of presentations at conferences right now, I'm actually using generative AI to help me think about my presentation. My very first presentation I did was back in March of this year at a conference here in Chicago, where I was actually talking about how brands have to overcome stigma.

And in fact, that's the positioning for my consulting company. I helped brands think about how to address stigma in their industry, for example, right? And when I was thinking about the presentation, I had my own outline in my head, but chat GPT actually helped me make it much, much more sharper. So between the quick assessment of the landscape, the pitch development, and then the presentation development,

in all those three cases, it's helped me significantly. I'll add a fourth one, my blog post. I post every week on my LinkedIn page. And almost every post I've done, I've started first on chat CPT to help me think about the question I'm trying to answer. And then it's helped me then basically think through how to actually write and craft my blog post. So, you know, I'm seeing this as a massive productivity enabler for like a, you know, a small, you know, consulting firm that I have, you know, I'm doing the work of about

two or three people here if I had to have to do this without chat, GPT, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I do, real quick, just want to shout out some people joining us live today. So thank you for that. And again, if you're listening to this later on the podcast, make sure to check out the show notes. If you want to come and ask, you'll geth some questions. We'll have the link to join this thread. But Audrey is saying really excited for this one. So thanks for joining us. Mark saying, that's a great move, kind of talking about what we're talking about here. Brian joining us saying, good morning from the Gulf Coast. Thank you. Harvey saying Dallas, Texas. Glad to be here. So if you do have any questions, just as

a reminder for Yogesh, please drop them now. So, Yogesh, I do have one other question because you talked about, you said, hey, you know, you're able to use in your consulting role now, chat Chb-T in a way where previously you might have had to use two or three employees to do some of these things, right? So I guess what are maybe specifically, what are one or two ways that you're using chat-GPT on an ongoing basis now? And, you know, You look back and you say, you know, if you look back at your, you know, PNG days or your Spotify days or your Pinterest days and you're like, wow, if I have this, this technology now, how could it have changed what you were doing back then? So, you know, I guess could you speak a little bit to that and just how today's technology, given your background, how powerful it is and maybe even like how much easier would have made those things for you? So I'll give you a specific example from Pinterest.

And if you have time, I'll talk about one that's happening right. now as well. So I was at Pinterest when COVID was starting up back in March. And the global head of sales at the time asked me if I could help the entire organization in terms of the commercial organization in terms of keeping up engagement with their customers, their at sales customers by launching a newsletter that would kind of like showcase how different and unique Pinterest was relative to all the other social media platforms, right? And it wasn't as if I had like, you know, a month to start this. I had like literally five days to start this.

And I was freaking out because I'd only been in the company for a couple of, not even a month yet, right? And I was able to basically, you know, build a team out relatively quickly who spent time. It took them like a day or two to, you know, like mine the data to say, this is what the behaviors were of Pinterest users on the platform, you know, for the last two weeks, let's say, right? I started that on March 20th, if I'm not mistaken, of 2020. So right after Trump's overall office address, two days later, I was launching the newsletter in the U.S.

Two weeks later, I had launched the same newsletter across seven additional countries. And by the time I was done, I had about 25 people working on just a newsletter between analysts who were mining the data, designers and, you know, copywriters and sales leaders who were all kind of. kind of like involved along with the legal team to make sure everything was right, to make sure that everything that was being launched every week was, you know, meeting, you know, the requirements and everything else like that. Had I had a tool like this, it would have been a massive game changer for my analysts, for example, because you could have mined data much, much faster. And it would have probably identified things that we were, we were probably missing.

Because remember, these are people looking at data and saying, okay, I'm seeing these friends over here. I think we should talk about that. Had I had a tool like, like this, right, it would have supplemented that process, number one. And number two, it could have also probably supplemented the writing of the creative and given us more options to address. Because we were always in a time crunch, we had, we went with the best idea that was there, you know, and we were like, okay, we got to run. So we were running all the time.

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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, speaking of, we'll drop this in the show notes, but we actually had an episode a couple weeks ago with Patrick Mvah. I think it's episode 54 where we talked about that, right? Like talked about using, you know, just kind of mining customer data and customer reviews. I think that's a super powerful way, Yogesh, that we can use it. So wanted to shout out here. Fabian saying greetings from Chile, George, George Strom saying, hey, looking forward to hearing

these insights. Jackie, good morning. Athena, saying, great to see you again, saying hi to , Yogesh. Brian saying this is, so Brian talking about how this is how he's been using chat GPT and Harold here saying he's been able to create more in quarter one alone than he was of all of 2022. You know, Yogesh, how has, you know, chat GPT and generative AI, been able to change kind of even your output in Y2S consulting. How was it changed the game for you? So like I mentioned earlier, you know, my consulting is focused on helping brands overcome stigma. So one of the things I'm doing right now is actually building out a database of brands that

have had to address stigma within their industry or brands that are facing stigma. So think about the Bud Light example from the last few months. It's become a stigmatized brand today, you know, for lack of a better word, basically. So if I had to do this the old way, it would have taken me literally months, months, to pull together a database of information about the brand positioning, the brand selling point, the different types of stigma that could be affected with, you know, looking through the website, you know, and trying to pull all that information together. It takes time.

It takes time and effort to pull that together. I've been able to structure the database and pull together at least my first 10 to 20 use cases in the space of a couple of days using chat. Right. And using, you know, one of the plugins on the subscription version where you can scrape through their websites, it's able to summarize everything on the website. And it's telling me exactly what the unique selling points are, where what's there, what's missing. It can do comparisons if you wanted to versus other, you know, competitive, you know, websites. If you wanted to play it that way, you can do all those kinds of things, right? So when you've done all that and you're, I'm able to build up my database for me, that's one of my unique. selling points for my consulting company to say that I have a database for brands that have been stigmatized. So I can come and talk with information and data and be able to talk about this in a far more intelligent way very quickly than had I not had this. It would have taken me probably a 12 months to pull this together. I'm doing this right now in weeks, basically.

Yeah, that's that's such a good example. Yeah, having to go through, you know, hundreds or thousands or sometimes millions of data points used to be an incredibly time-consuming process. And now it's not necessarily. So, all right, so we have a question here from a LinkedIn user. So sorry, sometimes we get the name. Sometimes we don't. So asking Yogesh in your Pinterest example, how would you feed it the data over the last two weeks of Pinterest trends?

So how would you take that one on Yogesh? Yeah. So first of all, this is all obviously first-party data, right? So let me start with that first. So if they were to have, if they were wanting to use some sort of generative AI tool, my suspicion would be that we would have had to go through a process to make sure that, you know, the data that gets ingested stays within the firewalls of the Pinterest world. You know, that's what I would have, you know, in short first and foremost.

But once that's the case, you know, you can literally, you know, pull the data and download it, download it into, let's say, a Google sheet document, right? Millions of data points if you wanted to. and then you can just upload the link into, like say, you know, chat chPD through a plugin, and you can then basically start the process of, you know, questioning chat chepti on what you, you know, what is it seeing and then what you wanted to go look for, basically. In the simplest way, that's how I would have done it basically. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And I think, you'll guess you bring up an important point there is, you know, a lot of the things that we're talking about in the ways that even you're using chat chaptiPT would require the plus version. So the $20 a month version. So if you're listening out there, maybe you're a little newer to chat GPT and you're like, oh, that doesn't sound like something you can do, right? We had a whole episode Friday on chat GPT plugins and kind of the new features and functionalities that that provides.

So yeah, even the example that Yogesh is talking about of uploading different data points or reviews or scraping websites, yes, that does require kind of that chat GPT plus. You know, Yogesh, what's one maybe unexpected? way that you've been leveraging generative AI, that maybe you weren't necessarily thinking like, oh, this could really help in this endeavor, or maybe what's one way that you think other people should be using chat GPT or AI that maybe they're not thinking about? So I'm still playing with this. So I'm not yet gone live with this, right?

So as I mentioned with my blog post, I'm talking a lot about all of these kinds of use cases. So if anybody who's following me or if you want to follow my personal LinkedIn page, you can subscribe to my blog post there about all those use cases. But the thing that I'm playing around with is you could literally create a short blog post or some sort of like narrative that you want to create. And using one of the plugins on chat, JPD, again on the page site, the subscription site, you can actually go create your own video, right? And there are, you know, one of the plugins, I think is called Vista, I think,

where you can actually use stock imagery to create literally like a 30 second video of your post. I was blown away when I saw that because the, you know, when I at least played around with it, I was like the selection of the imagery, the tonality of the voice. the script it wrote out based on what I had written out was pretty amazing. You know, was it 100%? Of course not. You still have to go back and edit and do certain things, right? That always is going to be required. But the fact that it took me from, say, zero to like, say, 85% of the way there, right, is a massive, massive game changer. So for me, who's, you know, I come from the insights world. I've worked with advertising my entire life,

right? But I was not the person responsible for creative at the end of the day. There were others who were much better at creative than I am. But you're at, I'm now doing creative work in a way, which I never thought I could do before. Now I can with the help of these kinds of tools. So for a small business who is trying to figure out how to create communication, not just in terms of, you know, like, you know, 2D posts, like for Instagram or whatever, you could create TikTok posts. You could create, you know, long form video if you want.

All those things are doable today sitting behind a laptop and maybe just having, you know, the right person helping you figure that kind of stuff out. that's kind of the stuff that we can also help with now, which I never thought I could do. Yeah, so many unexpected use cases, I think. And even what Yogesh is talking about, I think we've actually done a video or two. So check back later in the comments or if you're listening on the podcast. And I think we actually have a video on that. So one last one last one last one here, Yogesh, from Dr. Rasaafa asking, what are two major AI apps that you use with chat? or just maybe, yeah, what are some either, you know, plugins or apps or even other AI tools that you're using and finding value with, Yogesh? Yeah. So on the, I can never remember the names correctly. So just search on the plugin part of it. But the one I've used, I mentioned Vistla already, which is the one that can create video for you.

The other one I think is called Open Scraper, if I'm not mistaken, which allows you to kind of like scrape websites, right, and analyze websites for you. So I found that to be incredibly useful. So those are two that I would, you know, suggest very rapidly. There are some other ones which I'm still playing around with. I'm not really been happy with this one is you can actually go have a plugin that can actually analyze YouTube videos also up to a certain length. I'm trying to figure out which is the best one to use for that just yet because some of them have, you know, like, you know, paid firewalls and things like that. I'm not ready to pay for things just yet. So I'm kind of like doing all the free stuff right now, you know.

But I think that would be another one that I think would be super helpful as well if you're able to analyze, you know, advertising. In fact, one thing that I tried to do this week and I'm not completed yet is to analyze the video. I have actual data on the video from some market research surveys. Can chat GPT actually analyze those two things together? For me, the moment I can figure that part of it out, that's going to be another, like, at least for me, a momentous, momentous step forward in how you can actually, you know,

like connect different components of chat chpT to solve the problem that you're solving for, basically. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great example, Yogesh, just how you can string together different tasks that would normally take, you know, hours. So, I mean, we've covered so much in such a short period of time talking about customer insights, analysis, even some favorite plug-ins and use cases. So thank you, Yogesh, so much for joining the Everyday AI show.

Your insights were super valuable, and I hope everyone out there enjoy this as well. So thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. All right. As a reminder, everyone, we covered a lot. So make sure you go to your everyday AI.com, sign up for the free daily newsletter. We're going to be recapping a lot of the things that we talked about today. So if you weren't able to type as fast as you could and take down all the notes and all the

nuggets of information that Yogesh was giving us, don't worry. We've got you. Go check out the newsletter. So thank you so much for joining us. Join us tomorrow. We're going to talk one more time about Mid Journey. We have our Part 2 series coming up. So we hope to see you back then.

and every day with Everyday AI. Thanks. Thank you. Meet Firefly AI Assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface.

You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in and refine at any. time. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit Your EverydayAI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.