For finding even the most basic information on a product or service, social media is mostly useless. Strike that. It’s utter chaos and completely useless. And Artificial Ignorance—I wish I could say I coined that one but I heard it from Jason Johnson, my former co-publisher at speedonthewater.com—isn’t going to improve things.
Can you imagine AI “learning” from social media to create more social media? Garbage in, garbage out. Just when you think social media couldn’t suck anymore, buckle up.
That makes Cigarette Racing Team’s new quarterly electronic newsletter a welcome outlier. The Opa-Locka, Fla., company is putting real effort into getting its news to the public in an organized yet still easily digestible format. It arrives in the form an email to Cigarette owners and others with interest in the product.
If it is “written” by Chat GPT or something equally dreadful, it is edited by at least one literate human. The people at Cigarette are at least smart enough to understand the still-essential need for human guardrails on all things generated by AI.
Of course, Cigarette’s newsletter is a house-organ, meaning the “news” included is all about the brand. But self-promotion is the goal of any company’s in-house-produced publications sent to target audiences.
So the first issue of the newsletter includes Cigarette-focused stories on the company’s new dealerships, Miami International Boat Show Experience and new apparel store.
None of this is essential go-fast boating news. It’s pure brand promotion. As intended.
But it’s also done well. And it bucks the trend of tossing information into the social media abyss and hoping for the best.