How can you blend AI and data science with creativity and win an Emmy? With Les Guessing

Data Malarkey - the podcast about using data smarter

In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Les Guessing, a 360-degree creative and marketer. Les is an Emmy Award-winning copywriter, video virtuoso, and self-professed data fool. He describes himself as a creative director “with a passion (some would say ‘personality disorder’) for using aspects of data, data science, machine learning, and AI … to make advertising creative better and more impactful”. On his website is, perhaps, one of the longest and most impressive resumés (CVs to British listeners) ever written, a full, 34-page PDF.

Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on Good Friday, 7 April 2023.

Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.

Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.

Voice over by Samantha Boffin.

After an unsuccessful stint in Hollywood – “I was a wildly unsuccessful screenwriter” he observes with typical humility and wit – Les has 20 years under his belt as a creative director in advertising. His penchant for humour won him fans among the client community and awards from judges. But his past decade has been very unlike many of his peers in the creative and copywriting world. He’s steeped himself in AI, data science, natural language processing, and neuro-linguistic programming. An “auto-didact addict”, he’s become more and more data savvy at just the point that data has become the new oil – the new gold – in marketing communications. And how it’s paid off.

An experienced improv performer – so often the hallmark of a generous, lateral, insightful thinker – Les is fascinated by the structure of jokes. His scripts often lead viewers in one direction, only for a switcheroo to confound expectations, cause initial confusion then laughter, and serve to make the ad more memorable as a result. We should expect a book from Les on the structure of many different sorts of jokes in the years ahead.

The race to AI may at last be opening eyes in Madison Avenue, but Les has been fluent in R, SQL, and Python for many years, helping machines to learn underlying truths of a market from big data sets. And then subverting expectations with a joke. His experience with a wide variety of different types of data – particularly large language models and tabular data – has convinced him that copywriters should only ever brainstorm and develop ideas having first steeped themselves in data.

But Les doesn’t believe machines have insight – “they just do math over letters” – and it’s no surprise to him that ChatGPT struggles with metaphors and puns. “ChatGPT is like a junior copywriter, producing B or C grade content. Useful, but not making star performers redundant. Far from it. They’ll be more in demand than ever before.” Les sees copywriters and AI tools working together as the modern equivalent of ad guru Bill Bernbach putting copywriters and the art department together in the middle of the 20th century.

How very refreshing!

EXTERNAL LINKS

Les’ homepage – https://lesguessing.com

Two of Les’ projects - https://zombiedatahunter.com and https://creativealgorithm.org

Les’ LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesguessing/

Les on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lesguessing/

To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.