Can ChatGPT Write a Better Safelist Ad Than I Can?

I’ve been writing safelist advertisements for more than 20 years.

That’s a lot of emails.

Some were pretty good. Some weren’t. And after digging through a bunch of my old advertising swipe files recently, I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking when I wrote a few of them.

There were song parodies, questionable celebrity impressions, and an alarming number of references to the handsome administrator of Mister Safelist.

Which is odd, because I’ve always been remarkably humble.

Anyways…

These days, ChatGPT can write an advertisement in a matter of seconds.

So I started wondering.

Could ChatGPT write a better safelist ad than I can? And could it write one that actually sounds like me?

Some of My Old Advertising

I’ve always had a habit of saving advertising copy.

Subject lines, emails, splash page ideas, promotional messages. You name it, I’ve probably got it stuffed into a text file somewhere.

Looking through some of those old files was quite entertaining.

Here’s how I opened one of my Mister Safelist advertisements:

Ho hum!

Another day another ad for Mister Safelist.

It’s Ok.

My members appreciate the hard work I do every day to bring in new members for them to advertise to.

They’re cool like that.

No big promises. No amazing secrets.

Just me, advertising my website again.

In another advertisement, I encouraged people to give Mister Safelist a try with this reassuring message:

Try it, track your results, and if you don’t like it simply delete your account.

But I hope you won’t :)

I’m not sure encouraging potential customers to delete their accounts is considered good marketing advice.

But there it is.

Of course, I wrote plenty of normal advertisements, too. Sometimes I just wanted to explain what I was offering and get people to click.

Other times, I apparently had a little too much time on my hands.

Whether my sillier advertisements performed any better than the serious ones, I couldn’t tell you.

But I enjoyed writing them.

Okay, ChatGPT. Your Turn.

I uploaded seven of my old swipe files to ChatGPT and asked it to look through them.

I wanted to see whether it could figure out how I write just by reading my old advertisements.

It came back with a surprisingly detailed analysis.

Apparently, I like short sentences, casual conversation, self-deprecating humor, and occasionally making fun of whatever I’m trying to sell.

Fair enough.

Then ChatGPT took a shot at writing a new advertisement for Mister Safelist.

Here’s what it came up with.

Subject: The Marketing Department Has Spoken…

Hello!

I asked the marketing department if we should send another ad for Mister Safelist.

They said yes.

The marketing department is me, so it was a pretty short meeting.

Anyways…

Mister Safelist lets you earn credits and use them to send your own ads to other marketers.

It’s free to join.

And we’ve got a very handsome administrator.

At least that’s what the marketing department tells me.

Click the credit link below and come check it out!

Enjoy!

Jerry Iannucci

Well, I’ll be darned.

I actually like it!

The marketing department joke is something I could easily see myself writing.

And naturally, ChatGPT recognized the importance of having a handsome administrator.

It’s learning.

So, Is It Better Than Mine?

I don’t know.

And I’m not going to pretend I do.

We haven’t tested these advertisements, so I can’t tell you which one would get more clicks or generate more sign-ups.

I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about what actually makes someone click, and I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the advertisement I like best isn’t necessarily the one that performs best.

Sometimes the simplest, most boring email produces the best results.

Which is unfortunate, considering how much time I’ve spent entertaining myself.

But I have to admit, ChatGPT did a pretty good job.

It picked up on my writing habits, recognized the sort of things I tend to say, and produced something that sounded surprisingly familiar.

And it did all that without spending 20 years writing safelist emails.

Show-off.

But Is Sounding Like Me Enough?

Here’s what I find interesting.

When I wrote those old advertisements, I wasn’t trying to develop some carefully crafted personal brand.

I was just writing.

Sometimes I had a feature to explain. Sometimes I wanted to try something different. And sometimes I apparently thought rewriting a popular song about Mister Safelist was a productive use of my afternoon.

Looking through those emails now, I can see the habits. Casual introductions, ridiculous subject lines, and the occasional joke at my own expense.

I suppose that’s how people came to recognize my ads.

And now ChatGPT can learn those habits in a matter of seconds.

But if AI can write something that sounds like me, does it really matter whether I wrote it?

I’m not sure it does.

As long as I read it, agree with it, and would have been comfortable saying it myself, I don’t see the problem.

It’s still my name at the bottom of the email. And it’s still my responsibility.

If ChatGPT starts promising people they’ll earn a million dollars by joining Mister Safelist, I doubt it’s going to stick around to answer the support tickets.

So, What Have I Learned?

I started out wondering whether ChatGPT could write a better safelist advertisement than I could.

I still don’t know the answer.

But I discovered that it can do a remarkably good job of sounding like me.

And that’s both impressive and a little strange.

I spent years writing those advertisements, developing habits, and occasionally making questionable creative decisions.

ChatGPT figured out how to imitate much of that in a few moments.

I’m not sure whether to be impressed or insulted.

Probably a little of both.

But I already use ChatGPT in my daily marketing work, and I can certainly see myself using it to come up with new advertising ideas.

And if it occasionally writes something better than I could have written myself, that’s fine with me.

I’m remarkably humble, remember?

What do you think?

Have you tried getting ChatGPT to write advertisements in your own style? Did the results actually sound like you, or did they sound like something everybody else is sending?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Enjoy!

Jerry Iannucci