Latest / Content, Briefly / Ogilvy: Ashly Stewart on creating amazing user experiences

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Ogilvy: Ashly Stewart on creating amazing user experiences · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [gentle music] It's extremely human-centric is the term that a lot of people use when talking about UX writing. It's not that it's not about conversion, it is, but it's less about that.
• 0:12
  It's more about what does it take to just get someone through the experience seamlessly and inclusively and in a way that is efficient and successful.
• 0:23
  The first priority is building a good user experience, and if you do that well, people will convert. [gentle music] Hey there, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly.
• 0:34
  Got a good one for you this week. I know I always say that, but hopefully it's always true. Today I'm talking to Ashley Stewart. She's a senior experience writer at Ogilvy. You know, that Ogilvy.
• 0:44
  And we talk all about the company. We talk about some of the history of the company, actually.
• 0:48
  We talk about her own path from content marketing into UX writing, and also we just talk quite a bit about the discipline of UX writing. And honestly, I didn't really know much about it.
• 0:57
  Kinda sounded like a fancy word for copywriting.
• 0:59
  Turns out it's a lot more than that, and there's a lot of things I think for content marketers to learn about the way that Ashley approaches her work, which is quite holistic. There's also an interesting data piece.
• 1:09
  They do a lot of measurement of the way that people interact with the experiences and the writing that she creates. So there's a lot in here.
• 1:17
  Definitely a little bit of a different flavor than the normal kind of head of content style interviews that we've been doing, but I think you'll really enjoy this one. Hope you dig it and take care.
• 1:26
  Also, just a quick reminder to check out the new and improved Superpath Slack group. It's now 20 bucks a month. You can also get an annual discount.
• 1:34
  Your employer should probably cover it for you since it definitely counts as professional development. And I think what you'll find there is gonna be really exciting.
• 1:40
  There's some really interesting high level strategy discussions, in-depth conversations on things like people management and career development. Honestly, it's awesome. I'm enjoying being in there more than ever.
• 1:50
  I think you will too. If you wanna check it out, just go to superpath.co/community and sign up there. [gentle music] Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath here with another episode of Content Briefly for you.
• 2:04
  Got something different today. Gonna be talking with Ashley Stewart. She's a senior experience writer at Ogilvy, that Ogilvy.
• 2:11
  And we're gonna be talking more about her career than we typically do because she's had a really interesting career in content and I guess writing more broadly.
• 2:19
  And I mean, I have a ton of questions about experience writing, UX writing, kind of what does it mean, like how did you get here, and I feel like there's quite a bit to unpack, plus I wanna know about your day-to-day job.
• 2:28
  But before we get into all that, Ashley, thanks for doing this. And could you introduce yourself to folks who don't already know you? Absolutely. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for having me, Jimmy.
• 2:36
  I'm a Superpath fan girl. I've joined the community years ago.
• 2:40
  It's been great as a content marketer, then kind of went into, like, content strategy and content directorship, and Superpath has been there for me every step of the way.
• 2:49
  But yeah, Ashley Stewart, based out of Indianapolis, and have just kind of pivoted to an official UX writing title within the last several months at Ogilvy. Amazing.
• 2:59
  So Ogilvy, for folks who don't know, it is the company, the agency created by the David Ogilvy, probably the most famous copywriter in history. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the company? Like- Yeah...
• 3:10
  who/what is Ogilvy today? Love to. Yeah, so Ogilvy, what I like to tell people if they're like, "Wait, what, what's Ogilvy?" If you watch the show Mad Men, a lot of people believe that the main guy...
• 3:22
  I didn't even watch Mad Men, but one of the main characters, white-haired guy who I think owns the agency- Yeah, Roger Sterling? Yeah, that he's based off of Ogilvy is the rumor. Don't know if it's true. Oh, interesting.
• 3:32
  Very interesting. But it would make sense because David Ogilvy was one of the founding fathers of kind of the big agencies that started in the States. Today, Ogilvy is global. They have offices in Singapore.
• 3:46
  They have offices in Australia. I mean, pretty much anywhere you can think of, they have an office. It does currently roll into WPP, which is a company that has brought a lot of agencies together.
• 3:58
  But what Ogilvy is known for is the bread and butter, we call it advertising and PR.
• 4:03
  So they started with advertising, but they've now expanded their services to provide consulting and a bit of a healthcare lens, and then experience, which is what I'm a part of as well.
• 4:14
  And we serve clients all over the world, big, small. They do great work. Very cool. Okay, I'm also just... I wanna just quickly correct myself because I said Richard Sterling. It's Roger Sterling is the guy from Mad Men.
• 4:24
  [laughs] And also- I couldn't even call you out 'cause I didn't watch it. [laughs] It's also, I think it sounds like Don Draper is the character that maybe Ogilvy's based on. That's hilarious and intense.
• 4:35
  [laughs] You have to watch. Mad Men is so good. I've heard that it is, and like I said, it's funny, like, I've done a lot of advertising writing. I just was totally, like, off that train when it was on air.
• 4:45
  But yeah, Don Draper is kind of like a controversial, like- For sure... sometimes not great character. [laughs] So I don't know.
• 4:51
  Yeah, I mean, Ogilvy, if you read his book, and I do recommend his book, Ogilvy on Advertising. It's something that even before I joined Ogilvy was always on my bookshelf.Because he did start as a copywriter. Mm.
• 5:02
  And there's so many great tidbits, no matter what type of writer you are and you do get a sense that he is just really passionate and intense. And so maybe that, like, inspired the Don Draper character. I don't know.
• 5:14
  Yeah, yeah. That's very interesting. Actually, it makes me wanna re-watch it. It's been a long time.
• 5:17
  So I just pulled up your LinkedIn, and I'm looking at it right now, and I, I can sort of see how you got here, looking at your past experience. Like, you were a copywriter at Salesforce. Mm-hmm.
• 5:28
  You did content marketing at Jobvite. Mm-hmm. Content marketing, then kind of broader marketing at Personify. Mm-hmm. You did some freelance work, and now um, UX writing. Right. So it kind of makes sense there.
• 5:38
  Did it feel clear to you along the way? You know? Like, it always sort of makes sense in hindsight, but, like, did you kinda sense you were heading in this direction? No, no. In fact, I was very resistant to.
• 5:48
  So when I got into the working world, I came from a writing and English program that was very literary focused, very kind of classic when you think of English and literature.
• 6:00
  I think we had a couple of marketing courses and things like that, but I really thought I was gonna go into publishing or teach Shakespeare to college students.
• 6:09
  And so I kind of accidentally fell into, like, marketing writing and business writing, and I was really hell-bent on keeping it traditional. You know, I wanted to do traditional print ads.
• 6:22
  I wanted to do traditional direct mail even. I was one of those weirdos that liked that.
• 6:28
  But this is totally dating me, but yeah, I mean, I graduated 2011, and so that was just when, like, social media was becoming a thing. That was just when SEO was becoming a thing.
• 6:38
  And it is funny you just said, like, hindsight you can see some things, but kind of how I came up in the content marketing world is kind of similar to how I think UX has evolved in that I came in at a time where everything was going digital.
• 6:53
  It, I mean, it was to the point where everyone was like, "Print is dead," like, "No one's gonna be doing print ads anymore." And then even the way we read. You know? Kindles were becoming a thing.
• 7:02
  Like, every piece of copy seemed like it was moving into this digital realm.
• 7:07
  And so I was kind of forced into it, and would not have guessed that I would end up, you know, gaining experiences and ultimately loving this kind of sub-discipline of writing that is really more digital focused.
• 7:23
  I mean, digital focused, but I think, like, where we're going with UX is digital focused, merging and combining with the physical world. But I think that's a whole other part of the conversation.
• 7:33
  But yeah, no, I did not see me going this way, but I will say that the moment I started working on digital experiences, whether websites or digital products, I did immediately respond positively to building things and contributing things that people use every day.
• 7:49
  And then once data kind of became a big thing, writing things that you could start to measure and kind of see its impact pretty immediately.
• 7:57
  I'm jotting down a note about measurement, 'cause I wanna come back to that, but I feel like there's probably still a little bit more groundwork to lay, because I have basically no experience in this world, and I have lots of like- I-...
• 8:08
  explain it like I'm five kind of questions for you. Yeah. What does a typical client engagement look like for you now?
• 8:13
  Is it a company coming to you and saying like, "We're building a website and we need copy," or are they saying like, "We have an app where logged in users will be doing something and we need to make sure they can navigate," or other things?
• 8:25
  I mean, I don't, I guess I don't really know. Yeah.
• 8:27
  It's a great question because as far as like what people come to Ogilvy for, I think it really is reflective of the wider world in that you get some people that come to us with kind of what I call the very traditional or old school need for UX, which is, yeah, in products or websites.
• 8:45
  So what they're looking for is copy and design, if you wanna like combine UX writing and UX design. They come to us because they need really good what's ultimate, like, way finding material. Mm-hmm.
• 8:58
  They have a product or they have a website and they just want people to know how to use it and use it well, and that's seen in like micro copy and informational architecture on a website or something like that.
• 9:10
  So there is that ask, and that's a pretty big one, and we can talk a little bit about, I think, why that's come over into the UX world, 'cause that hasn't traditionally sat in just, like, content marketing as a whole.
• 9:21
  So if you're interested, we could talk about that evolution. But then we do also get people that come to us and say, "Hey, we're doing this big advertising campaign that is physical."
• 9:34
  So like an example is Ogilvy just did that big Ikea advertisement where in select cities they basically built out this big inflatable structure of the blue Ikea bag, and people could walk up to it and walk around it, and it was this really exciting thing.
• 9:52
  And on that sculpture was a big QR code, and if you click on that QR code, you were basically led through a digital journey that... I think it was actually augmented reality.
• 10:02
  Our team didn't work on that, another team did, but that's UX work, where it took you through some of the most popular Ikea products and then ultimately led to, like, a 10% off or $150 off your next Ikea purchase. Yeah.
• 10:14
  So those types of engagements where people have recognized that whether it's the pandemic or something else in the air, but people are craving physical IRL experiences. Mm-hmm.
• 10:26
  But there needs to be, and people still do want and expect-Really seamless, positive digital experiences to go along with them. And so we get both sides of that spectrum. That's super interesting. Yeah.
• 10:39
  So you work closely with designers then. Like, I would imagine every project you work on, there's some overlap with a designer. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 10:47
  So UX, it's so interesting where we are because I look back to when I first started in content marketing, and some of the same conversations I remember with content marketing we're kind of having in UX, where someone would hire one content person and think, like, "Oh, you can do it all."
• 11:02
  Yeah. Like, "You can write for social. You can write for our website. You can write..." And I think over time we've said, "No, if you really want to invest and have good content, you really need the right team."
• 11:14
  You know, you need someone who specializes, you know, in social a little bit. You need someone who maybe has lead gen or demand gen experience, whatever it may be.
• 11:22
  And UX is the same thing that's kinda happening now, where it's like you could just hire a UX writer or a UX designer, but I think what we're seeing is UX really is...
• 11:32
  It's very content marketing adjacent, but it really is its own kind of discipline and thing.
• 11:38
  And to do it really well, a good UX designer, a good UX researcher, a good UX writer, and then a strategist, it's kind of a three or four-pronged approach.
• 11:48
  At Ogilvy, that's what they've worked really hard to build, is kind of a you could partner with us to get just UX writing or just UX, but we believe that to do it really well, and especially get that, like, Ikea experience I just described, you really need a strong UX team working together rather than doing it in a silo.
• 12:06
  You know, it is interesting because I've always sort of on a personal level just sort of been turned off by copywriting because I feel like, just personal...
• 12:14
  Yeah, I don't know that everyone feels this way, but it sort of, sort of comes with some, like, negative connotations. I feel- Yeah...
• 12:18
  like when you see copywriting, it's usually the writing is saying like, "Hey, look at me. Look how clever I am. Look at my short sentences." [laughs] You know? Or, "Look at my long sales page."
• 12:30
  It's like I just find it to be sort of annoying. Mm.
• 12:32
  And I'm just sort of realizing as we're having this conversation that maybe UX writing is like, you know, the more sophisticated, like, user-centric version of, you know, what I think of as copywriting.
• 12:43
  I would assume that, like, as you're doing UX writing, you want a, a seamless experience. You don't want the person to feel like, "Wow, this is such great writing."
• 12:50
  It's more like they're able to just be immersed in the experience and not even realize it. Yes. Yes. Jimmy, you know more about UX than you think you do. [laughs] Yeah.
• 12:59
  It's so funny 'cause I do think people are starting to get this perception about UX as a discipline and then UX writing specifically that it is. It's kind of like the altruistic sister to mean copywriting. [laughs] Yeah.
• 13:11
  Yeah. [laughs] What's funny about that is, like, I started as a copywriter and so I have mad love for copywriting still.
• 13:18
  But I think the kernel of truth in that prevailing thought is that what I like to say about UX writing is two things. It's not not about conversion, but it's less about conversion- Mm...
• 13:31
  than copywriting and some of the other types of content writing. So I mean, this is, like, a bit of a history lesson with UX. So user experience was... It was coined by Don Norman, who is an amazing UX...
• 13:43
  He's kind of the father of design thinking, and he has this amazing book called The Design of Everyday Things, which I highly recommend.
• 13:50
  And the legend has it that he was sitting in a meeting at Apple, 'cause that was one of the places he worked, as they were, like, first designing their product, and he was getting frustrated by just not having a way to talk about products that he felt did way more than just be a phone.
• 14:08
  And so the rumor is that he was just in a meeting and one day scribbled on a notebook, "User experience," and I think, like, just walked away from the meeting.
• 14:17
  Didn't talk about it at the time, but then it just kept coming back to him.
• 14:20
  And he later went on to say, like, "Yeah, I just wanted a way to communicate that when you're building digital products for people, you need to take so much more into account."
• 14:32
  It's a lot of cognitive psychology, which is the way people think. Like, that's where his mindset was. And it's extremely human-centric is the term that a lot of people use when talking about UX writing.
• 14:44
  It's not that it's not about conversion. It is, but it's less about that.
• 14:48
  It's more about what does it take to just get someone through the experience seamlessly and inclusively and in a way that is efficient and successful.
• 14:59
  I also say about UX writing that when I was doing copywriting, I feel like the mentality was the ultimate goal is to convert, but if we do it well, then it should give someone a good user experience still.
• 15:12
  Um, like, good copywriting does that. And I feel like with UX writing, it's kind of the opposite. The first priority is building a good user experience, and if you do that well, people will convert.
• 15:22
  So that's kind of the distinction in my mind a little bit. I like UX writing. This is good. [laughs] You know, one of the things about content marketing is that the experience isn't guaranteed.
• 15:32
  You're trying to figure out how to get someone's attention, and so there are all these tactics and sometimes gimmicks that we employ to get people on a website- Right...
• 15:43
  so that we can maybe get them to read or try to get them to take an additional step. What I'm hearing from you though is that the word experience is really important here.
• 15:51
  You know, it's like maybe we're assuming that that part is already taken care of. Maybe not. I don't know. But the getting them to wherever they need to be part is taken care of, and now it's just like they're here.
• 16:01
  Let's make this awesome for them. Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:03
  And I've worked on different content marketing teams, and I've worked on some really solid ones that they're always thinking about the experience, but I think just because of bandwidth, just what they have time for, some of it's a skill level thing.
• 16:18
  They just haven't done a lot with digital experiences and working cross-functionally with developers and designers and things all the time, and some of it is just to business goals.
• 16:28
  All that stuff combined, the good content marketing teams I've worked on, like, they think about the experience, but there definitely comes a point-Where they, they stop being involved, and it's usually after the conversion.
• 16:39
  It's kind of like, oh, that's someone else's, and then that heals.
• 16:42
  Or maybe we deal with them again, but only in as far as they're a warm lead and, you know, we pick them back up again if they express interest or, you know, what have you.
• 16:51
  But that's the other cool thing with UX writing, is if you're doing it well, I mean, at its heart, you're building experiences for people who are not even just not converting, sometimes they've chosen to leave or opt out.
• 17:03
  Oh, interesting. That's something that I do. I write interstitial messages for people who, they've been on a webpage for too long, and it's like, "Hey, are you still there?" You know, those types of messages.
• 17:13
  UX writing is concerned with the people that are a little frustrated with the company.
• 17:18
  Maybe your order didn't ship at the right time, and so UX writing and UX teams come along to say, "How can we make even that frustrating experience, or even an exit type of experience, positive, helpful, seamless?"
• 17:33
  And so, yeah, like UX, we're the people that when other people kind of say, like, "Okay, we've done what we need to do with the customer," we're the ones saying, like, "We still got them." Yeah.
• 17:43
  Could you talk about a day in your life? I'd love to. Just sort of curious to compare and contrast, like, what a content marketer's day might look like versus what your day might look like. Mm-hmm.
• 17:49
  And actually, as part of that, I would be so curious what tools you use. Yeah. Like, I'm assuming you're not using Google Docs. I'm assuming it's like- [laughs]... you know, you're working in Figma or like- Right...
• 17:58
  some more, like, design-centric tool that allows collaboration between you and designers and things like that. Totally. That's correct. Yeah.
• 18:04
  So when I think about my day-to-day, the way that it's shaped is not all that different from when I worked as a content marketer or a copywriter.
• 18:14
  You're still working with, if it's a larger company, a PM or someone kind of overseeing your clients and your projects.
• 18:19
  So I'm in a project management system, and we happen to use Smartsheets, but, I mean, I think other teams in Ogilvy use Trello. So that exists still.
• 18:29
  I- I'm not as in many client meetings as I have been at other agencies, and that's just with Ogilvy, it's so large, I hear that each client is just different.
• 18:38
  So I actually work really closely with more the creative team than the client themselves. But I think that can change just depending on client's preference.
• 18:47
  So I have meetings to work closely with the designer as we're building things out. And you're right, the tool of choice for us is Figma. So we're in there a lot.
• 18:58
  I still do use Copydocs, especially for larger digital experiences.
• 19:03
  And even though I'd say that's another feature of UX, is you are working in lockstep with design maybe more so than I have in my previous content marketing roles.
• 19:13
  There's still digital experiences that the designer, like, they're still figuring it out, and they're looking to copy still to kind of, I think, provide that direction of, okay, what is this entire experience going to look like?
• 19:25
  That's the other thing that's slightly different than my content marketing roles, is I have meetings with developers sometimes, and researchers, and strategists again.
• 19:35
  So again, it's that four-pronged approach of UX writing. Research is huge, and specifically, so I think I mentioned that Don Norman, the foundations of UX is cognitive psychology, so how people think.
• 19:49
  But I think what we're realizing what UX needs to be, and what I think Ogilvy does well, is they're heavily invested in behavioral science, the psychology of why people make the decisions that they do.
• 20:00
  And so I'm meeting with researchers that look at when we do an AB test for copy, which is something that everyone does in content marketing, we go, I think, a little deeper than behaviorally.
• 20:13
  And it's just because, again, of, like, the different goals. Like, if your goal is to really just get to a conversion, you're only looking at specific measurements and metrics and research.
• 20:23
  But if your goal is to really not just measure, but understand what the user is experiencing and what their behavior and what their preferences are on a page, it's just, that is a deeper level.
• 20:34
  I think it's kind of the why behind the data, to a certain extent. So I work really closely with our UX researchers.
• 20:41
  But yeah, most of my days, I would say it's pretty broken up between building the thing with the designer and the researcher, and then also having just, like, project management conversations, relationship management conversations.
• 20:53
  Got it. I have this sort of preconceived notion of copywriting and maybe UX writing in my mind, that it's like the volume of words is small, but it takes longer to create them. Mm.
• 21:05
  An extreme example would be, like, it takes a week to decide, like, the button copy kind of thing. Is that [laughs] how it goes? Or is that...
• 21:10
  Is the writing flow easily, like, when you have all the context in front of you?
• 21:14
  It's a super good question.Because yes, I do think there is a notion, even in copywriting, like take UX out of it, that yes, like, to write one line for an ad can take so much longer than writing, like, a blog post.
• 21:28
  Yeah. There's some truth to that, but I think when it comes to UX, the amount of writing and the volume of writing really can vary so much between project.
• 21:36
  But I personally think that with UX writing, there's more to consider in a good way. It's like you do have access to all of that research and that data, hopefully.
• 21:47
  So in the pa- if I'm writing a blog article or something like that, it's like I am looking at research, I'm looking at data, hopefully.
• 21:53
  But again, it's to one very specific end, and even the data that I'm looking at is very much related to what's gonna get someone to click this button ultimately, or maybe read a certain part of it.
• 22:05
  But with UX writing, I'm looking at what is the mindset of someone coming to this. So that's, like, a big distinction I make, too.
• 22:13
  In content marketing, you talk a lot about customer goals, and I think in UX it's about more, like, customer aspirations instead of in content and copywriting you're sometimes thinking of, yeah, what are kind of the entry points.
• 22:27
  It's more about mindset. And there's a bunch of, like I said, measurement and data to go around that if you have access to, like, a UX re- re- researcher, which thankfully I do.
• 22:35
  So there's just a lot more to consider but in a really exciting way that I think makes UX writing take longer. Got it. That makes sense. I am curious about the data part of all of this. So you mentioned A/B testing.
• 22:47
  Are you doing a lot of user testing before stuff gets presented to clients? And then after it's up and running, I assume there's lots of ways to collect data. Maybe it's just simple as like, you know, heat map- Yeah...
• 22:58
  click tracking, things like that. Or do you use like a, like I think FullStory is one of the tools where it's like every visitor screen is recorded or you can see how they behave.
• 23:06
  Like, is that the type of stuff that you're looking at? Yeah, it's a good question. I don't wanna misspeak.
• 23:11
  It's usually something that's what our, our UX data strategists and researcher, they look at it in the tool itself and then kind of report back to me or the client.
• 23:19
  So I'm not in the tool as much, although I would love to. But I will say that for a lot of our clients, that's always what they're working towards. That's always the intention.
• 23:28
  I think that's a big part of when Ogilvy partners with people and we talk about experience.
• 23:33
  You could just do UX writing, like I said, but if you really do wanna A/B test effectively, if you really do wanna user test, you really do need a good UX researcher, UX data strategist behind you.
• 23:45
  But what I've seen in my time at Ogilvy, and this is, I think, honest I could say this about any company I've worked for, is that data's just messy. [laughs] Yeah.
• 23:53
  You have these big companies that have the same problems as mid-level companies sometimes even of, like, you have disparate systems. You have the dirty data.
• 24:02
  And so I think that's always the intention is that's where everyone's working towards, but a lot of the engagements, especially for the new clients, which is really who I've been working with the most since I've joined Ogilvy, it's an exercise in just helping them get the data in a good place to start that A/B testing and then start to infuse some of those tools which I don't think most companies have access to, and that's the benefit of partnering with Ogilvy is we do come with, from my UX researchers and data scientists, is we'll use any tool that we can find that if you identify, yeah, we wanna be able to not just understand that copy is a problem, but the actual efficacy of it, of like why is it, and then that's when you get into heat mapping and all of those things.
• 24:43
  We'll go out and we'll use whatever tool we need. I'm not the data strategist, so I don't wanna over share 'cause I'm not entirely sure, but that's my experience with it. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 24:52
  Do you find things that surprise you as you get some of that data back, where you feel like, "I thought we nailed this," and then the data suggests that, you know, whatever, like A performed way worse than B, or you find something else that, like, then forces you to rethink how you write something?
• 25:07
  Totally. And I, I think that Ogilvy as an agency, it's my third agency I've worked for, I think, at this point, but I've worked mostly in-house.
• 25:14
  And so what I see is what I experienced in in-house, where there's just a lot of assumptions made and, like, well-meaning, and it's not even that they're uninformed assumptions.
• 25:24
  It's just that, yeah, that's part of the reason why people connect with a place like Ogilvy where the data just maybe isn't as strong or as clean, or they just don't know how to interpret it as much sometimes.
• 25:35
  So they come to us and they're just sure. And when they explain it to us, they're just sure that this copy will resonate or that we need to be sending it to these audiences.
• 25:44
  And the rationale makes sense, and the data we're looking at makes sense, but then when we get the A/B test back, we realize that, oh, when we do a deep dive into the data they gave us, it's kind of like, oh, this data kinda came from a bit of a faulty campaign or an interesting campaign, and that was our benchmark, you know?
• 26:03
  Or yeah, just the company's just realizing that as the company has changed, their audiences have changed, and it's been hard to keep up. Yeah. That makes sense. I feel like I have to ask you about generative AI. Okay.
• 26:14
  Because copywriting might seem like immediate use case- Mm-hmm... for better or worse, probably worse is my guess.
• 26:20
  And actually, McSweeney's, the satire site, did this really funny article, which I just pulled up, and it's titled I'm ChatGPT, and for the love of God, please don't make me do any more copywriting.
• 26:31
  [laughs] And it's a really funny article.
• 26:33
  I'm just wondering, like, have you found AI to be useful for you, or is it, and this is totally understandable if it is, is it a situation where you're like, Ogilvy's like best of the best, we don't do that.
• 26:44
  You know what I mean? Like, we rely on our researchers and our talented people- Mm-hmm... to do original work every single time, and we don't, we don't need ChatGPT. Yeah.
• 26:53
  It's a wonderful question, and I will say that Ogilvy as a whole is really feeling generative AI.
• 27:00
  We actually had one of our leaders give a town hall where he was talking about how he doesn't see AI to be an enemy of creativity, but to really be an enhancer of it.
• 27:11
  And that's a whole other conversation that, I mean, you know, I could walk you through some of his finer points, but I will say that as a writer, I remember I was on that all-hands, and all of us writers kind of were like, "Sounds great in theory," but yeah, we're like a lot of other writers where we're like, "But is it going to replace us?"
• 27:28
  So I mean, to your point of, like, you're Ogilvy, I think-A creative, no matter where you work, AI has been a bit of like a heart-stopping thing of just like, what does this mean for us?
• 27:37
  And I'll say that in my day to day it hasn't totally infused yet, but Ogilvy has embraced it. We did have an ad that was a Cannes winner, and it had an AI component. Oh, interesting. Yeah. It was a really cool campaign.
• 27:51
  I'll send you the link afterwards.
• 27:53
  But basically what it did was it took a celebrity in India, I think he was a Bollywood actor, and he recorded an ad, and then they used AI to replicate and personalize that ad so that it spoke to certain geographic regions and local businesses.
• 28:10
  Hmm. That makes sense. That makes total sense. Yeah. So I mean, there's absolutely ways to do it, and Ogilvy is already doing it.
• 28:17
  I will say for UX, how I think it could help or hinder UX, I think that because UX is so human-centric, I think it is one of the areas that AI will be hard pressed to replace.
• 28:29
  Now, I do think, though, that there are elements of what UX does.
• 28:32
  For example, one of the things that one of my coworkers has been involved in is doing AB testing for some digital experiences that ultimately lead to newsletters.
• 28:41
  And I just got a message in my LinkedIn of someone who has built an AI program that specifically helps put together and generate newsletters.
• 28:51
  And so that is an example of that tool wouldn't affect the AB testing that I'm doing necessarily, but if you could use an AI tool to help generate basically the big thing that our experience is leading to, which I think would eventually affect us.
• 29:07
  I'll be honest, I, I don't know quite how, but I know it would somehow. Yeah. But to be totally honest with you, I'm always sort of hesitant to bring up AI on this podcast. [laughs] I feel like I have to, but I- Yeah...
• 29:18
  there's fatigue around it right now. Yeah.
• 29:20
  One thing I'm very curious about is, given your experience at Ogilvy and also just sort of copywriting and UX writing throughout your career, how does it inform the way that you now think about content marketing?
• 29:30
  Like, say, tomorrow you started a job as a director of content at a SaaS company, are there things from your UX experience that you would bring into that that would change the way that you might go about coming up with a strategy and a editorial calendar and all that?
• 29:44
  Yeah. I mean, it's a really good question, and I honestly wanna think about it more.
• 29:49
  But I, just for the sake of the podcast, for answering your question, I will say that I don't see myself going back now that I've been in UX writing.
• 29:56
  And that's not to say that there couldn't be an opportunity where I work in a more, kind of content marketing role, but now that I have seen, and again, I've always seen, and that's the thing too.
• 30:08
  Like, we could have a whole other conversation about if there's anyone out there that's like, "I'm a content marketer," "I'm a copywriter, I don't think I could be a UX writer," my guess is that you've already been doing UX writing, especially if you're someone like me who came up as the digital world was coming up, where they didn't have anyone else to do UX writing other than, like, any other writer that was there.
• 30:28
  So I've always been UX writing, and I've always understood its value.
• 30:33
  But now having worked where that's my main focus and working with such an amazing UX team, I don't think I could go back to the old school way of content marketing, where those digital experiences we kind of just build as a bit of an afterthought, if I'm honest.
• 30:49
  Right. Or we build it, again, to a very specific goal of conversion, and I don't think I could go back to that again.
• 30:55
  But I do think maybe if I ever did take on a role in more traditional content marketing, I would just make sure that we always had that UX discipline and lens always on and prioritize those teams and hires, because it really is not just important now, but it's definitely gonna be more important in the future, I think.
• 31:14
  Right. I think that makes a ton of sense. I wonder, too, like, for people leading content teams now, what can they glean from just learning about your experience?
• 31:21
  Like, one thing that I'm already thinking is creating a more holistic experience for the reader or the prospective customer on the site, which, like you said, 'cause it kinda ends up being an afterthought.
• 31:30
  It's more about how do we create a piece of content that checks all the boxes for SEO- Mm-hmm... or if it's a thought leadership piece, that it reads nicely and the voice and tone are right or whatever.
• 31:42
  But there's so much, even just on the website, there are so much sort of surrounding the piece of content. Not to mention how they got there. Right. Are they busy and stressed out?
• 31:51
  Do they have time to sit down and read this? Right. Are they on their phone? Are they on their desktop? There's so many things happening to that person on the other end. Yeah.
• 31:59
  If you're a content marketer saying, "What can I take away from this conversation?"
• 32:02
  I would say I think that's a good place to start, is to prioritize the entire user experience, and that may mean having conversations that you weren't having before in the sense of maybe speaking to a developer was an afterthought or something you only did at the beginning of a project or an end of a project.
• 32:20
  Do that sooner and more frequently.
• 32:22
  Same thing with your designers.See if there are opportunities, whether it's to expand a tool that you currently use or maybe even bring on a tool to help you get to some of that research and measurement because, yeah, you just can't escape that the heart of UX is that research and that behavioral science.
• 32:42
  And there are tools out there that can help you do that. So I would say that's a takeaway.
• 32:46
  The other big thing, and again, it's no surprise with UX being so human-centric, is the UX discipline is really, I think, they are the ones currently, or if they're not now, they are quickly going to be the people that own inclusivity and accessibility in your experiences.
• 33:00
  That's kind of been buzzy for a while, and, I mean, I know that some companies are large enough that they have, like, DEI assigned roles. But I think that is even different than...
• 33:10
  My experience with those DEI roles are they're kind of leadership roles that kind of ensure that culturally and from a business perspective, of course, feeling included and that they belong and their experience is accounted for.
• 33:24
  But when it comes to the things you're actually building, that is something that in content marketing teams, everyone, we've looked at each other being like, "Who should own that?"
• 33:31
  [laughs] And I really think that's a UX thing.
• 33:34
  And so if you don't currently have UX on your team and you can't hire out for it or anything like that, I would say just really being conscious of building experiences that are inclusive and accessible for people of all different abilities, backgrounds, preferences, identities, all of those things.
• 33:51
  I love that. It sounds like UX writing might be sort of following the path of content marketing in a sense where, like, content marketing has happened for a very long time.
• 34:01
  I worked at an agency about 10 years ago now that was a custom publishing agency, and they would create magazines on behalf of brands and then mail them to people. Wow. It was content marketing. Mm-hmm.
• 34:12
  It's just a different name, but it's basically the same thing.
• 34:14
  And over the last, call it 10 to 15 years, there's kind of these, like, fragmented versions of content marketing which has now become the discipline of content marketing.
• 34:22
  And now we have communities like Superpath and professional associations, kind of like all this infrastructure built around it for the people who work in it.
• 34:30
  Has that happened in UX writing, or do you feel like that's coming together now? I think it's coming for a few reasons. I don't think... Even though you just explained it really well, it has been around for so long.
• 34:39
  It has been happening. But what I think needed to happen for content marketing that's just starting to happen for UX is, one, the technology.
• 34:47
  So in the same way content marketing needed a boost from technology to be able to produce a lot of different content and put it in different formats and build content engines, and not in a negative way.
• 34:59
  I'm not saying, like, build a content mill. But there's just certain technologies that didn't exist that really allowed content marketing.
• 35:05
  Once they did start, like the CMSs and all that, it made it a real viable revenue building thing. And I think that we're just now getting to the point with technology with UX where that's also the case.
• 35:18
  So there's, like, a technology component.
• 35:20
  But then again, I think the world we're living in where we're reaching this point where people need and want and expect digital experiences, but they're being now so infused with physical experiences.
• 35:34
  You're gonna see that more and more in both in, like, a very real augmented virtual reality way, which I know people are gonna say that and it's, like, scary and the robots are taking over. I don't think it's that.
• 35:43
  It could be just kind of like, again, the IKEA example. It's a physical experience, but there's a huge digital component that means a lot, not just to the user, but even the business.
• 35:53
  I mean, that's where they're, like, [laughs] getting lead gen information. That's where they're building revenue.
• 35:58
  So I think that that expectation from users and customers of having these seamless digital and physical experiences, we're just kind of getting to that.
• 36:07
  And I think that that's something that the UX discipline, that's where they will shine, and that's where they'll be needed, and that's really where their expertise is unique. I love it.
• 36:15
  I think that's actually probably a perfect place to wrap up. This has been just an amazing, kind of a 101 level course on UX writing. My pleasure.
• 36:23
  One day I would love to go deeper because I know this is much more sophisticated and there's more depth to it than we were able to cover in this- Yeah... initial discussion on it.
• 36:31
  But truly I'm fascinated, and thank you so much for your time and being willing to do this and sharing so openly also. Thank you. No, I've so enjoyed our conversation.
• 36:39
  Schedule a part two if you want, and thank you for the sweater. Oh, nice. I was wondering if that was a Superpath hoodie. Love it. [laughs] Thank you for everything you've done for the content community.
• 36:48
  If anyone has any questions, my door/LinkedIn inbox is always open. I love this stuff. So thanks for letting me talk about it. Absolutely. We'll put a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes.
• 36:59
  We'll of course link to Ogilvy too so people can just go get a quick education on the agency- Yeah... and the people behind it. So yeah. Thank you again, Ashley. Seriously appreciate it and can't wait to talk again soon.
• 37:08
  Great. Thanks, Jimmy. [outro music]