Can ChatGPT write B2B? It depends

I "lost" my first B2B writing client to AI a few weeks ago, though I'm not sure if it counts since we hadn't worked together yet this year.

Still, it fits the narrative: "AI is here, writers are a dying breed."

Except, maybe not.

Can ChatGPT write B2B? I'm going to do what you've been dying for me to do and quote a grammar and writing book by Stanley Fish called How to Write A Sentence — And How to Read One (2011):

In his great book How to Do Things with Words (1962), J.L. Austin considers the apparently simple sentence “France is Hexagonal.” He asks if this is true or false, a question that makes perfect sense if the job of a sentence is to be faithful to the world.

His answer is that it depends.

If you are a general contemplating a coming battle, saying that France is hexagonal might help you assess various military options of defense and attack; it would be a good sentence. But if you are a geographer charged with the task of mapping France’s contours, saying that France is hexagonal might cost you your union card; a greater degree of detail and fineness of scale is required of mapmakers. “France is hexagonal,” Austin explains, is true “for certain intents and purposes” and false or inadequate or even nonsensical for other. It is, he says, a matter of the “dimension of assessment”—that is, a matter of what is the “right or proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing in these circumstances, to this audience, for the purposes and with these intentions.”

Can ChatGPT write B2B?

If you are a busy marketer trying to get cohesive sentences out the door, ChatGPT can write pretty good B2B that keeps your publishing cadence up to snuff.

But if you are an founder/owner/executive/Someone With Skin In The Game trying to build relationships with other founders/owners/executives/People With Skin In The Game, that approach going to cost you a lot of business. ChatGPT can write B2B for "certain intents and purposes," but is dumb and meaningless and purposeless for many others.

So let's step back from the content machine and ask, "Why?"

Why all the white papers that look better than they read? Why the ghostwritten thought leadership by junior marketers passing it off as Mr. Skin In the Game? Why the microblogs (*shudder*)?

Are we still trying to connect with potential buyers (since robots don't have credit cards yet), or are we running down a checklist of SEO "tips and tricks" to fluff the numbers before everyone applies for a new job?

Are we carefully deciding to pursue one purpose and value proposition above all others, speaking the truth to win the sale (and transform someone's business), or are we just trying to get a bite of that battered carrot before the stick gets us in the behind?

I think our "dimension of assessment" for content is laughably skewed. I think we're forgetting that the circumstances of our businesses, the audience of our work, and the purpose behind all of this is to understand and enthrall and motivate people. And no, ChatGPT can't do that.