How did you become a part of the ‘gig economy’?
We began by creating an organic community of comedy writers and fell into the gig economy space as our community developed and began looking for opportunities where they could be more creative, and make money. Contributing to Write Label may be a part-time or second job for some, but others have turned it into a full-time career.
What technologies are pushing the gig economy? How does it benefit businesses and employees?
While Machine Learning is certainly pushing the gig economy, as far as creative goes, it’s still early days. The gig economy allows for broadly based talent networks as individuals don’t have to be in big cities like NYC or LA to work in a creative field or position. This gives them more flexibility.
While the Write Label platform does host a roster of established writers who have worked in advertising, film, and television, a lot of the company’s most successful work actually comes from contributors who have never worked professionally as a writer or creative.
Our technology ensures that we send hyper-targeted requests to specifically segmented groups within our community, efficiently delivering superior quality results for our clients.
What is Write Label and what technologies do you leverage to stay on top of business goals?
Write Label believes that freelance marketplaces are the way of the future in the Advertising, Marketing, and Media landscape. Unlike traditional freelance networks that rely on a small group of well-known people, Write Label provides access to 500-10,000 writers – an arsenal that agencies would never be able to have in-house, even for their biggest brief. This not only provides scale, but also a high level of diversity and unique perspectives.
Something we leverage frequently in our business is Grammarly. It’s a simple tool, but we need to make sure our content is of the highest quality. Regardless of the industry you’re in, it never hurts to cross-check your work. Grammarly is a great tool to have in your corner and we’ve partnered with them to offer their service to all of our writers at a significant discount.
Tell us about your interaction with the new-age technologies like AI, Machine Learning and Content Marketing tools?
The benefit of our model is that we collect huge amounts of community-generated content. From this repository, we’ve been able to develop the foundation for our Machine Learning platform. The process is fast, efficient and completely customized. Clients provide information through an online creative brief and, in just minutes, they begin receiving ideas, pick their favorites and provide feedback. The platform is powered by creative people, but it also harnesses data by vetting every writer and piece of content using Machine Learning to determine who’s able to deliver the best work, giving clients instant insight into idea performance. This has influenced our work significantly and is helping our company prepare for the future.
How is AI disrupting the whole gig economy?
There’s a future scenario where AI writes funny and creative lines (and there have been some bold attempts to do just that). At this point, higher levels of creativity haven’t lent itself to AI solutions. Our use of Machine Learning and AI is focused on segmentation, routing of requests and improving results through ensuring our processes are as smart and efficient as possible. Creative industries have long relied on support from freelancers, which has meant bringing on a small stable of people on a project-by-project basis. Now, this model is shifting, providing an unprecedented level of access to top-level and previously untapped writers.
Should freelancers fear about losing their jobs to Automation?
Our freelancers don’t need to worry, certainly not in the near-term. Using our platform strengthens their skills and allows them to hone their craft. In a way, I think this network makes them even more future proof.
Where do you see AI-enabled gig economy influencing Marketing and Advertising of highly skillful jobs in the gig economy?
We already use basic AI to ensure proper routing of writing tasks to the writers who are best able to fulfill them.
What is your opinion on the “Weaponization of AI and Machine Learning”? How do you promote your ideas?
We know people are concerned about AI, but human creativity is truly the final frontier for Artificial Intelligence. I’m not saying we won’t ever get there, it’s just that the room full of monkeys punching keys on a typewriter is probably as likely to come up with Shakespeare about as quickly as AI.
What start-ups and freelance boards are you keenly following?
A few that come to mind are Y-Combinator’s Hacker News, Twitter, Reddit, TechMeme Ride Home, and Product Breakfast Club.
What technologies within your industry are you interested in?
There’s quite a few actually including Machine Learning, Voice recognition and replication, multivariate testing and creative intelligence (input, not output).
What’s your smartest work-related shortcut or productivity hack?
Delegation is key.
Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read
Sir. Martin Sorrell
Thank you, Gideon! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.
Gideon Stein is the CEO of Write Label (formerly Comedywire.com), the leading provider of on-demand short form writing for media companies, agencies and brands. Prior to Write Label, Gideon spent more than a decade founding and running both for-profit as well as non-profit organizations in the education space. In particular, Gideon was the Founder and CEO of LightSail Education, the adaptive reading platform that helps students, classrooms and school districts significantly exceed their literacy goals.
Prior to LightSail, Gideon Co-founded and served as President of Future Is Now Schools, an organization focused on school turnarounds and union reform work. A leader in the national education landscape, Gideon serves on boards of several nonprofit organizations including New Classrooms, Narrative 4, Chalkbeat, and University Prep Charter High School.
Gideon is also the President of The Moriah Fund, a private foundation focused on supporting human and civil rights in the US and around the world. Earlier in his career, Gideon was Founder, Chairman, and CEO of the enterprise messaging company Omnipod, Inc. (now a division of Symantec). Gideon has a BA from Wesleyan University.
Write Label is the world’s leading writing platform, offering clients fast, efficient, crowdsourced creative writing solutions. Through certified contributors, the platform delivers instant access to high caliber content including ad scripts, social media posts, taglines, greeting card verse and topical jokes. Since the company launched in 2015, more than 10,000 writers have generated over 3,000,000 ideas for their clients, including iHeartMedia, NBC Universal, Spectrum, Nexstar, American Greetings and ShopRite.
The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.
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