Watt Advertising automates $10/hour work to preserve human touch
Chelann Watt is Co-Founder & CEO of Watt Advertising, an ethical, values-based ad agency that installs, operates and maintains the advertising systems behind client growth. The firm has automated routine $10/hour tasks such as inbox triage and low-level project management to save staff hours while deliberately keeping client communication human, which is the practical tension that makes this story worth reading.
Use AI as an executive assistant to automate recurring, low-value tasks but enforce intense human quality checks; do not use AI to replace client-facing communication.
What’s the quick origin story of your business, and what makes what you do genuinely different from the other options your customers are looking at?
My husband, Samuel Watt, and I started Watt Advertising in September 2020 out of desire to bring an ethical values based approach to the sometimes convoluted nature of the advertising world. Our results are transparent, our communication is always based on doing the right thing and we are indispensable to our clients because we solve the entire conversion triangle, not just the click. We get the leads, nurture them and close them by installing, operating and maintaining the advertising systems behind the growth.
Where does most of your new business come from today, and where do you wish it came from?
Most of our business comes from word of mouth and our custom LinkedIn outreach process. This is aligned with where I always hoped it would come from.
What’s one thing you’ve actually handed over to AI in the last year, and one thing you tried it on and went back to doing the human way?
Across the business we have automated what we call the $10/hour work – work that has to be done, but doesn’t directly produce value but supports the value we create on an infrastructure level. Low-level project management, inbox spam filters to make sure we connect with the right people fast, data review, research, ect. The thing that makes an AI process failure is lack of well-informed and experienced prompts and quality control checks done by a human.
One thing I’ve successfully handed over to AI is my inbox management: It flags what I need to see, sorts away the spam, files everything into the correct folder for easy access, ect. It’s saved a couple hours of time a week at least and helps me immediately see what I need to address.
One thing I’ve clawed back from AI has been document design and creation for anything using Google Doc. AI just doesn’t have the consistent output to get us the quality we need for this at this point of time.
Have you noticed a change in how customers find you or what they already know before they reach out? Is anyone arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT yet?
A lot of scams are arriving through AI assistants – that’s the main thing I’ve noticed so far. Yes we get the mass outreach emails from companies, ect. But usually those don’t evolve into an actual call because someone on the other side drops the ball. The people we actually want to work with are still mainly arriving of their own accord.
If you were advising someone in your industry on all of this for the next 12 months, what would you tell them to actually do, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Automate the recurring tasks you do on autopilot each day that still take up a lot of time. Checking off tasks, organizing things (like documents, ect), inbox management, ect. Imagine AI is your executive assistant and train it like you would a human. Follow through with IMMENSE quality checks until you are certain the task is being done with accuracy each time.
I would ignore AI when it comes to using it for the human touch point. People crave the human interaction more than ever before so never use AI to replace that especially when it comes to communication. People can spot an AI generated email from a mile away for example and will immediately feel like you didn’t care enough to write it yourself.
Essentially, use AI as your admin tool in the background to give you more time for the human side of business. And quality control EVERYTHING to ensure accuracy.
Thank you to Chelann Watt and the team at Watt Advertising for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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