Let this AI app predict how your audience will feel about your posts, then write them for you.

If you want to know how to get noticed, this show is for you. I have interviews, tools, tips, everything that an entrepreneur could need in order to help their organization get noticed for free. Thank you for joining me, Jim James, on the Unnoticed Show. I'm going to say guten Tag to Dr. Jonathan Mall, who's joining us from Hamburg in Germany. Jonathan, thanks for joining us today on the Unnoticed Show.

Happy to be here.

Now, Jonathan, you are the founder and CEO of a company called Neuroflash, and this is helping business owners, entrepreneurs, copywriters to create great copy. So can you tell us how Neuroflash is helping maybe the tongue-tied, the pen-tied, the keyboard-restricted entrepreneur from creating content that they can use?

Absolutely. So Neuroflash is an AI-driven software that automatically generates and optimizes short-form marketing texts. The software helps marketers, as you said, to find messages which resonate with consumers' hearts and minds. So the big difference between this, because there are many like, like this kind of trying to come onto the market, but the USP of Neuroflash is that we use proprietary semantic approximation and emotion mapping algorithms that predict consumer associations and feelings in 17 languages with up to 99% accuracy. And that means that when you have a persona that you address or you have a brand that you are yourself, we can ensure that is really conveyed, that people understand when you write something what you want them to understand. So you will not only with our text get higher conversion rates, We also ensure that your content makes people connect your brand with their life.

Jonathan, do you want to just break that down for us? We're creating content. Tell us, how are you going about that? Is it— do I need a degree? Obviously you've got a psychology background and you're a doctor in psychology, so you're the right guy. But how does a person like me go about creating this content using NeuroFlash?

It's, uh, 3 steps. First, you give a very small brief, like maybe a paragraph of an email that already describes the content for that email. Maybe it's just already an existing slogan that you have, the one that you currently use. Just some words that help the machine understand who you are and what type of business you are. So just a small text, usually 1 or 2 sentences. That's the first step. Based on that, the AI is creating text for different content types. So say you want a slogan, it'll produce 20 slogans. You want an email subject line, for your email body that you're given as a brief. It'll then create 10, 20 of those email subject lines. And then the third step, and that's really the crucial one that differentiates just some text from the text that gets clicked and that helps people understand what your brand is all about, we then rate the creations according to their ability to trigger certain automatic thoughts and automatic emotions, right? In marketing, If something is, for example, highly emotional and it's very clear what the topic is all about and it may even be in line with your brand values, then the message is effective because people feel, so they want to click. And they also understand who you are with those few words so that they feel everything is congruent, is in line. There's no sand on the slide. So they go right into your longer-form content. And thanks to the short marketing content that we have optimized.

Well, so these posts for maybe Twitter or LinkedIn or my headline, how do they compare with using something like, you know, Headline Analyzer? There are some of these that are using power words, emotive words. Is Neuroflash sort of augmenting these existing platforms, or are you going beyond those platforms?

Definitely beyond, because we are very flexible. When it comes to what type of associations you want to convey. So if your topic is very specialized, say, you know, and I think everybody thinks that or understands that their own industry, their own brand, their own product is special, has some special features, etc., that need to be conveyed in order to get people to click. And you can just simply enter them, fill them in. So if your headline not only should be clicked, but it should also convey that you are a very authentic brand, you You can say, I'm an authentic brand, click this headline, it's a great product, but nobody will. However, our engine can see that words like true, traditional, original, those type of words are themselves very strongly associated with authenticity. So when people read those words, they themselves get the idea that this comes from an authentic source, an authentic brand. So that brand message is conveyed. And then if we also ensure things like emotionality, then it will also get clicked because it's exciting. It is in line with who you are as a brand, so they click. But they also get what you are all about.

Is neuroflash somehow understanding the audiences that I'm talking to? And if so, how is it doing that? Because I might have one avatar that might be one segment of a community, and I might, for example, be doing a B2B article. I was talking to one young PR guy and he was talking about the difference between the technical writing that he does for a client and the slightly more mainstream writing he does for a client. Same client, 2 different audiences. So how's neuroflash helping to cover off the audience understanding side?

Yeah, so it's 2 things that we're able to predict. One is automatic thoughts and the other is emotions. Emotions may be a bit easier to explain because we have done over 60,000 surveys in different countries, so 17 languages, over 20 countries. Where we just ask people, this word, how do you feel? That word, how do you feel? And then we are able to predict for any other word that we didn't ask, because obviously we cannot ask 500,000 words, what is the predicted emotionality. And our algorithm is very accurate, between 93% and 99% are we within one standard deviation of the average human ratings. And that's a lot of complicated words to say, it's very accurate. Surprisingly accurate. So that's emotions. But with the associations, we actually reverse engineer how opinions are created, right? Let's go a little bit back and let's talk a bit about psychology. Like, how do politicians and brands convince us that they are great, right? They do it by doing PR, by being seen in certain situations, by having articles and then headlines written about them that connect them, their words, their name or brand name or product name to something positive, right? This tape is super strong, ultra strong. So now you have this tape and this brand name associated with strong and ultra, and you repeat that over and over. That's what marketing does. And then in the end, you're like in front of the shelf and you're like, I need a really strong one. This one I think is really strong. Why do you think that? Why do you think that automatically? Because you had heard that message over and in your brain, those 2 things got connected. Yeah. This thing is really bad.

By association.

Yeah, by association. And politicians obviously do the same thing. And right now, I hope this ages well, but we are in the corona epidemic and a lot of information is being spread about it. Here in Germany, for example, there were a lot of headlines regarding AstraZeneca and its side effects. And there were, well, way fewer about BioNTech, which coincidentally is a German brand to some extent. So people were more reluctant to take the AstraZeneca vaccine than the BioNTech, because there were way more headlines putting the side effects in association with AstraZeneca and not with BioNTech. Right. So this is how then opinions are being created. And this is just one example with brands, politicians, products. It's all the same. So if you know that, if you know that what people read and consume and hear is having influence because it creates these associations, what we have done is we look at all these texts that people could potentially read and extract from them the likelihood that a single word is indeed associated with another one. And that means that if you want to express authenticity or trustworthiness, without saying the actual word, we can tell you which words are the closest to authenticity, which then implicitly, so subconsciously, give people that idea of you being authentic or trustworthy.

Wow, okay, so really by word by association, almost like a giant thesaurus for people.

Indeed, a thesaurus, that's a good likening indeed. A thesaurus has in mind your goal, right? So if you then tell NeuroFlash in the engine, authenticity, trustworthiness, or maybe you want a more trendy fashion audience or whatever. You just set those things that you want to convey. You want to have people have that idea. It'll then check for any generated text how easy it would be for people to get that idea from that text. It's almost like Inception, right? It's, hey, trust me. That never works because when people— when you just confront people with, hey, why should I trust this guy? All the conscious thinking goes on and they're like, should I trust this guy? Because it's too straight. However, when you say lots of experience, always gives great presents to his mother for birthdays, now you would trust that guy a bit more. And the word mother, for example, is highly associated with trust, of course, because many people trust their mother. This is quite a bond that many people have. So you, by just using that picture, that word in that context, you can help people to understand that you are trustworthy.

So this sounds like the mother of all AI creation software then. So Jonathan, what about if I see companies that I like and I'd like to be like them in some way? Obviously there are some industry leaders in all categories, whether it's Hertz in automotive or Apple, obviously, or even like Pfizer, for example. Can I identify what these market-leading companies are doing and therefore ask the engine NeuroFlash to help position me in similar ways? Is that possible?

Yes, it is. And it's quite straightforward. You just define as a goal and you put in a brand name like Adidas or Nike, if you wanna be more rebellious. And just by having the brand name, the engine understands, oh, let's look at words that are close to that brand name. Because of course Adidas or Nike speak in a certain way, they use certain words. And hence, if you then use similar words, It will automatically sort the creations so that you use the ones that are closest to your basically ideal brand that you try to emulate.

These different words and texts, are they becoming iterative? Because when you create a campaign, it needs to be consistent over time and over channels. Can you just tell us, how do you ensure continuity, Jonathan, within Neuroflash for the content creator?

So recent example, yesterday we had a client who wanted to have a slogan. He wanted a Facebook headline and a Google ad. And just with the same brief, he just selected first the slogan, then Facebook, then Google, and he was able to create all of them. And in a sidebar, see how strong each of them was on their ideal brand values and on the emotions that the client tried to trigger. And only when all of them were at a certain level, like comparable level, would you then say, great, this is my package, this will now go out, and ensuring that all channels have the same.

Now, that's a very interesting point then. So you're creating different content on the same theme for different channels, is that correct? Because traditionally, for issues of just ease, people create the same post and they, you know, put it out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. Instagram, because it needs a different slightly awkward size picture, we normally have to do something different. But you're saying you make channel-specific content, is that correct, with neuroflash?

Yes, absolutely. So channel-specific in terms of length and also like use of emoticons, which are more prevalent on certain channels, for example. That is all included. We then ensure that the tonality is similar across all so that indeed you are conveyed in the way that you want to be seen. And critically, by the way, it's always up to date. So if you say, I want to be like Adidas, who 2 years ago had certain campaigns, they were quite different from what they are today. Well, if you want to be authentic and trustworthy right now, the engine is updated every month to reflect the current zeitgeist. So if the meaning of, or the positioning of a brand changes, or the meaning of a word like authenticity changes, maybe even it's not as positive anymore, it'll automatically and immediately be shown. So that if you want to stay truthful or authentic or whatever, we can ensure that this happens every month with the zeitgeist in that culture so that it's always accurate, even though the society changes.

How do you take advantage of events like the Olympics? 'Cause you mentioned you're updating every month, but the Olympics are now. Is NeuroFlash gonna be out of date or am I gonna stay up to date? Like with this American athlete Biles pulling out, for example, of the gymnastics, and maybe that's topical if I'm a brand owner.

So the topicality you can indeed probably get from a newspaper that was just printed this morning. We require a lot more data to build our models, so we take the last 12 months of text data from mass media, social media, etc., to create these semantic approximations and understand what does she, for example, what is she associated with. But you shouldn't forget that obviously what she is associated with, that athlete, even though today it may have changed, there was a lot of— one month ago when she was still in the trials and it was written about her in the context of the Olympics, all the strong associations were already there. We have Olympic Association, very hardworking. I think she's also one of the best. And all those things will have existed also before. So it is, I think that the grand things are always up to date, but if indeed you want to know exactly what happened today, then look at a newspaper. If you change your marketing positioning every day, I would question your strategic foresight a little bit, because I think the best communication is one that changes very slowly, but has a very strong core. And even though that core may change slowly over time, and it does every month a little bit, Just try to, to be consistent. That's already hard enough, I think.

Okay, John, that's a great point about the need to be consistent and not feel like transitory with whatever the latest fad is. In terms of as an entrepreneur, what have you found useful and working for Neuroflash in terms of getting your innovative platform into the marketplace?

So one thing I think, especially for us, is humility. Me, myself, and many people in the team have a scientific background, and one thing is to be humble. When you make mistakes, you tell people that you made the mistake, and then you correct the mistake. I think that is something that we have heard from clients is surprising for them. They were always working with people who were always right, everything was always perfect, but maybe sometimes it wasn't, and then they just switched agency or they switched supplier. I think we always try to be very open about that. And if we made a mistake, we were the first to say, I think we made a mistake, here's the correction, because I think that is really leading to more trust. And it's that trust then that carries you forward, because it's, I think, especially situations in which a relationship is put to the test that then also prove how strong and how reliable that relationship is.

Interesting, because with the conversation with Frank Buckler, that we had on the earlier episode of The Unnoticed, he was also talking a great deal about the importance of trust and building that. And is that something then, Jonathan, that you put into the NeuroFlash with your own content strategy? Trust? How do you use your own platform to build your brand?

Yeah, of course we do. We have a set of values that we, that we carry forward. Indeed, they are a lot about the Reliability, trustworthiness, authenticity, but also a healthy dose of just a bit playfulness because we are in the end dealing obviously with money and content, but the best content is one that makes you smile, right? Or makes you feel something. So I think that playfulness, that creativity should always be part of it. So yes, we definitely use those values when we write newsletters, when we have headlines on our website. We always try to incorporate our values as much as possible.

You mentioned a couple of things. You've mentioned a newsletter and a website. Which channels are you finding most useful for bringing your funnel a supply of leads then for Neuroflash?

It's a dual path for us because we have worked with very big brands in the past and still to this day. Many of them are now on the platform, of course. And if we talk about brands like Adidas or Nivea, or Volkswagen, it's indeed a lot about trust and the referrals that happen thanks to those relationships. That is how you grow in the, I think, best in the enterprise sector, because that's how you get to meet another CMO, because some other CMOs say, hey, you should really check out these guys. And then they just call you directly and you talk with them. Other ways to get to them are usually more costly, more timely. And not always reliable. So that's one on that path of the more bigger enterprise clients. For the inbound, it's a normal mix. It's SEO, it's conferences and PR, anything that gets the word out.

Yes, that's why you're on the show. Yeah, it's fantastic. You've mentioned though, you've got, I think, 17 languages that neuroflash can work with. So a company that's operating overseas could presumably use neuroflash. For one campaign in multiple jurisdictions.

But to be very clear here, so we can rate content in 17 languages. We can right now produce content in 2 by default, which is German and English. We have a good foothold here in Germany, so obviously we do everything native there. English is very straightforward as well, and we're now gonna add more languages in the next 2 months. So we can rate already. If you have your own texts, you can put them in and they will be rated. But the generation, yeah, is a little bit lagging, but over the next 2 months those gaps should be filled.

It sounds like it is already filling an amazing need for many people that are struggling with writing content, and I love the way that you can make it channel-specific. I can really see amazing uplift in, in content engagement as a result of not just sending the same content across different channels, but actually having content specific for each channel.

Seeing is believing. So indeed, if you want to try it out, we have a 7-day free trial. neuroflash.com, best way to get there. And you can just start writing within minutes. Another way to get in touch may be through LinkedIn. Always happy to get requests. And if you're not a— yeah, I would say a software salesperson, because I get many of those requests that are just pure ads. But if you are genuine and you want a real conversation, Then yeah, just hit me up with text or without, and I'll be happy to connect on LinkedIn there.

Jonathan Moll, you've answered my question, which was going to be how can people get hold of you? So Dr. Jonathan Moll, thank you for joining us. I say dankeschön for joining us from Hamburg today.

Gern geschehen. Thank you very much.

Okay, we've been talking to Dr. Jonathan Moll of NeuroFlash, and I can really recommend that you go and try that, and I'll put obviously the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur, and wishing you all the best and that you get noticed For all the great work that you can do. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Unnoticed Show. I hope that you've enjoyed it, and if you have, please do rate it on any of the players. If you'd like more information, go over to eastwestpr.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, or connect with me on LinkedIn. That's just Jim James, East West Public Relations. I'd be delighted to connect with you and let me know how I can help you to get noticed.