by David Gorman
For 10 years, Opal has been the platform where leading brands have orchestrated their marketing. Marketers from brands like Target, Starbucks, GM, and many more trust Opal to be the home for their work. From their strategic ideation through to the creation and calendaring of their content, it all happens in Opal.
Today we’re announcing something new that will help marketers in exciting, truly valuable ways. Opal is officially taking a step forward by launching AI capabilities that solve real problems for marketers in our platform. Three distinct generative AI-powered features have launched throughout our platform:
- AI Brainstorming
- AI Rewrite
- AI Translate
These capabilities are designed to bolster the chassis we’ve developed over the past decade. They naturally integrate into the workflows our users rely on for complex campaign planning and for managing their content operations and creation. This isn’t Opal checking a “We have AI, too!” box – it’s about giving marketers meaningful time back by leveraging AI in practical ways to improve jobs they already use Opal for.
Join us as we explore these potent AI applications, use cases of how real marketers have leveraged them in Beta, and our perspective on why bringing marketing AI into Opal was the logical next step forward.
The Natural Overlap of AI & Marketing
The core “why” driving Opal has always been to build the tools that marketers need. With AI, we recognized a clear mandate to leverage this cresting technology to impact the way our users work.
The marketing sector we serve is particularly ready for AI solutions. From our perspective, informed by working with top-tier professionals, marketers have a specific need for AI tools for these four reasons:
- Desire for Fresh Ideas – Marketers always strive for new and innovative ideas to capture their target audience. While they are creative individuals, AI can bolster their efforts and generate even more creative ideas.
- Need for Written Content – AI based on LLMs (Large Language Models) is particularly adept at generating written content. This makes it an ideal tool to assist marketers in the creation and organization of new ideas.
- Contending with Work at Scale – Marketers work at a rapid pace and must complete a high volume of work. Generative AI can significantly enhance efficiency and productivity, which is critical for success in this field.
- Innovative by Nature – As a group, marketers tend to be early adopters, always hunting for ways to break through old challenges with new tech. Naturally, they are quick to adopt AI when they see the potential.
So, those are the reasons why marketers and AI have such a compelling overlap. But why should Opal be the platform to deliver value in that way?
Because for our users, Opal is the platform where marketing work already happens. Bringing AI into the marketing platform you already use is more efficient and unlocks more possibilities than adding ANOTHER point solution. Point solutions for AI don’t make sense because AI has been democratized – every platform has the potential for AI.
For our customers, their content, their big pictures plans, and their editorial calendar are here – their AI solutions should live here, too.
Opal’s Philosophy on AI
The first half of 2023 has been something of a generative AI gold rush – especially in the marketing space. Practically every other day, another “can’t-miss” application flashes in the sifting pan. Beyond that, basically every previously non-AI marketing tool has sprinted to release their “game-changing” generative AI answer.
There’s no question that some of these AI marketing applications are as impactful as advertised. However, from our perspective, many of these capabilities were only built so the companies could check the box, keep up with the Joneses, and say they have generative AI functionality.
We’re taking a different path in regards to generative AI.
From the beginning, we built Opal to give our friends in marketing the tools they needed to do their best work. With the advent of generative AI, we recognized an opportunity to give marketers new tools to let them create even more impact. Every feature Opal builds is designed to genuinely help marketers work better. We don’t build gimmicks – we build real tools.
Ultimately, it is our admiration for the creativity of the marketers we work with that reaffirms our passion for crafting AI solutions. That original idea of helping our marketing friends be more successful and work better guides our design philosophy around AI technology. We want to see marketers think more and do less.
A case-in-point example is the benefit of AI Rewrite. Sure, a marketer can invest their time fully writing the copy for one or two different styles for a piece of content. However, we’d rather see a marketer envision 20 different approaches by letting AI do the heavy lifting of writing the first draft for all of them. The creative talent in that example isn’t the ability to write out content variations – it’s to discern the best idea and hone it to best tell your story!
Beyond any feature specifics, our overarching point is that AI is ready now to be a co-pilot for skilled marketers. The “co-pilot” positioning is important: while AI possesses a powerful skill set of its own, it can never replace human decision making and taste. This guiding philosophy has led us to set “three laws of AI in Opal”:
1. The user is always in control – You dictate if, when, and how you employ our AI applications. If you never want to use AI, you still get full access to the powerful Opal chassis.
2. AI-generated work is always clearly labeled – There will never be ambiguity about whether a tool is powered by AI or not. Along the same lines, AI-generated copy will also be internally labeled as such.
3. Customers can control if/when their data is used to fine-tune AI models – In Opal, you never have to worry about the security of your proprietary data. If you were to want to use proprietary information to train your Opal AI, that information would always be isolated to your work and your AI.
A Closer Look at Opal’s AI-Powered Marketing Features
While all three of our newest features are exciting, they represent only our first step into the world of generative AI – certainly not our last.
Let’s break down the specifics of AI Brainstorm, AI Rewrite, and AI Translate right here:
AI Brainstorm
AI Brainstorm unlocks your creativity by providing an endless supply of relevant marketing ideas that you can immediately select and start working on in Opal.
Feature details:
- AI brainstorming available throughout your planning process in Boards
- Able to generate Ideas, Headlines, Themes & Pillars
- Opal’s AI Brainstorm is tuned for the marketing space
- Once you have ideas you like, you can create moments to work with immediately
While basic ChatGPT can provide some of this functionality, AI Brainstorm has two key advantages. First, our AI is tuned to provide valuable ideas that are relevant for the types of companies we serve. The other benefit is that the brainstorming happens in Opal, so the fresh ideas you brainstorm are one click away from activating for your team.
Top Use Case – While our brainstorming application can ideate endlessly on anything, there is one key use case we want to highlight. The most common use for AI Brainstorm that we have seen in Beta is that marketers are generating topic ideas for social media content. These social strategists simply ask for social post ideas, refine the tone, pick their favorite ideas, and then start creating!
One of the reasons that we believe in the synergy of marketers and AI is the appetite for a vast amount of original ideas. Using AI Brainstorm enables marketers to leverage AI creativity to produce ideas at scale. A practical time-unlock from this would be a content strategist brainstorming hundreds of social post ideas with AI – and then pruning down to their favorite handful of ideas. Since this could be done very quickly, they could repeat this countless times in a day to create fresh content programs at scale.
AI Rewrite
AI Rewrite revises your content in infinite ways, all in an instant.
Feature details:
- AI Rewrite is available with every piece of content, for every content type with text
- Can refine content, incorporating a new approach or tone
- Ability to find & replace words – or full concepts!
- Opal’s AI is tuned for the marketing space
Having AI Rewrite in Opal is a game-changer as it allows content creators to revise content faster – and even see their work in a whole new way. Since Opal is the space where teams create, preview, and collaborate on content, building this powerful tool here upgrades how entire teams work.
Top Use Case – Content creators can visualize exactly how countless new directions of content would look – without spending hours writing them all. Whether that’s trying a new hook, new offer, or a refreshed tone, seeing your content in a completely different way is eye-opening. Ultimately, the more ideas you try, the better your final piece of content becomes.
Secondary Use Case – While many use cases for AI Rewrite center on unlocking new creative ideas, there is a strong use case for time savings using the find & replace function. Since find & replace can change entire concepts – rather than just words – you can leverage it to repurpose proven content. Whether you want to repurpose an individual piece of content – or a full campaign – it happens in an instant. For Opal customers like SAP Concur who frequently repurpose effective content, this feature has the potential to deliver even greater scalability.
AI Translate
Enterprise-grade AI translation built right into your marketing workflow.
Feature details:
- Translation tool in every piece of content
- Every major language & dialect is available
- Available for every content type, from Instagram carousels to longform content
- Maintains brand specifics & original tone
This is a must-have AI feature for many of the global brands that utilize Opal. These brands often perform translations and localizations of content within Opal. Equipping them with a marketing-grade AI translator where they already performed their localizations was essential.
Top Use Case – Since AI Translate in Opal offers accurate marketing-grade translations, it can change the way global teams work for the better. Rather than having marketers dedicating their time to bulk translation, they can utilize AI. This use case emphasizes leveraging cultural knowledge to drive impactful content – rather than spending the majority of time on mechanical translation. In addition, the potential to translate entire campaigns – with hundreds of content pieces – in a few moments shows just how powerful translation can be when applied at scale. This will be a huge time-saver for Opal customers using the hub and spoke marketing model for their global content distribution.
Explore the Opal Platform + AI
With the launch of AI Rewrite, AI Brainstorm, and AI Translate, Opal has equipped the marketers who trust our platform with three powerful new tools.
Opal is more than just a marketing platform; it is a purpose-built system created to solve the unique requirements of marketers. Opal is trusted by some of the world’s leading brands like Target, Starbucks, GM, Boeing, 3M, and many others. With Opal, marketers can easily plan, create, and calendar their content in a single, centralized hub. And now, marketers can also leverage Opal’s AI co-pilot feature to assist them in their marketing planning endeavors.
If you want to see how Opal can benefit the marketers, communicators, and creatives in your organization, we’d be glad to schedule a custom demo. A product specialist will guide you through Opal’s capabilities, with an emphasis on how we can address your specific marketing requirements. Contact us to schedule a free custom demo today!
