Pepper Founders Anirudh Singla and Rishabh Shekhar
“The future is not human or artificial intelligence; it’s human and artificial intelligence,” insists Anirudh Singla, co-founder and CEO of Pepper Content. The content management specialist believes the rapid advancement of generative AI will help businesses like his, rather than replace them.
Founded six years ago, Pepper Content connects businesses in need of content with experienced, expert creators who can help them develop it. Working with approximately 150,000 creators, he has helped more than 2,500 companies develop content, including blue chip clients such as Amazon, Google and Adobe.
Above all, Pepper Content identifies the leading voices in a given content segment so clients work with creators who have real expertise in what they write. The company already uses AI to support creators – its technology is based on the increasingly ubiquitous OpenAI GPT-3 – but also offers a range of tools to help marketers identify the content they want. need and to analyze the impact of the final result.
The next step in the development of the fast-growing company is the rollout of what Singla describes as the first end-to-end content marketing platform. “It’s the creation of categories,” he says. “We believe that every business is now a content business, but if that’s the case, every business needs an effective way to grow their content creation.”
Pepper Content’s big idea is that just as customer relationship management (CRM) platforms have become essential for companies seeking to professionalize their customer interactions, content management platforms will become vital for the growing number of customers. companies wanting to drive sales and engagement. by content.
Indeed, the objective is to industrialize the creation of content. Companies that once employed a handful of writers to create a small amount of content are now looking to generate thousands or hundreds of thousands of releases, Singla says. To operate on this scale requires new technologies as well as human interaction.
To that end, Pepper’s Content Platform seeks to automate and centralize much of the work around content creation. It will undertake keyword research, identify expert creators, manage the creative process, and use data analysis tools to assess how the final piece lands. This information can then be fed back into the next content creation process. “Every post you post should be smarter than the last,” Singla says.
In other words, his pitch is that the platform will manage content every step of the way, something generative AI can’t match. “The platform helps create SEO content strategy, content operations, content analytics, and distribution,” Singla explains. “It solves three main goals that most marketers struggle with when it comes to content: increasing organic traffic, scaling content effectively, and providing content ROI.”
By embedding generative AI in the middle of the platform, at the point where the creator is responsible for writing the content, Pepper Content recognizes the disruptive power of this new technology. But Singla is convinced that the added value provided by the platform’s tools on top of this technology will be a unique selling point for the platform.
One of the benefits of the company is that it was able to build the solution based on feedback from its existing customers, with more than 200 CMOs and marketing managers providing feedback on what they would expect from such a platform.
Singla is also excited about the possibility of extending the initial offer. The platform will initially generate traditional written content, but new features offering multimedia content are imminent – the ability to generate video, for example, should be available within a few months.
The company is confident that an end-to-end content solution like this, which incorporates generative AI rather than seeking to compete with it, will be attractive to customers, especially companies looking to scale their creative quickly. of content. “The future of content marketing relies on the right technology, the right people, and the right processes.” insists Rishabh Shekhar, co-founder and COO of Pepper Content. “It’s a way for marketers to work much more efficiently.”
For their part, content creators are also hoping the company’s diagnosis proves accurate, amid predictions that the creator economy will simply be replaced by generative AI solutions. Admittedly, the jury is out on that one.
