A fake holiday hijacks a doctor’s office phone greeting, and somehow that spirals into a super practical marketing hack: using Jay Schwedelson’s favorite ChatGPT trick to predict which subject line will actually win before you hit send. Then it takes a hard left into the worst trash TV of 2025, with zero apologies and maximum side-eye.

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Best Moments:

(00:52) A doctor’s office answers “Buddy the Elf, what’s your favorite color?” and Jay is not emotionally prepared

(02:15) Why sticking to one AI tool is a marketing mistake

(03:49) The “micro-pause” test for whether your LinkedIn post survives a busy feed

(05:30) Upload your A and B versions and have ChatGPT call the winner before the test runs

(06:45) The 89% accuracy claim that changes how you should run A/B tests

(08:15) Jay’s worst trash TV of 2025 list goes fully unhinged

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Check out Jay’s YOUTUBE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@schwedelson

Check out Jay’s TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@schwedelson

Check Out Jay's INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/jayschwedelson/

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Pre-order Jay Schwedelson’s new book, Stupider People Have Done It (out April 21, 2026). All net proceeds are donated to The V Foundation for Cancer Research—let’s kick cancer’s butt: https://www.amazon.com/Stupider-People-Have-Done-Marketing/dp/1637635206

Jay: We are back for ask us anything from the do this, not that podcast. This is our short episode. We're all week long. We getting questions, we get in ridiculous questions. We get in work questions. We try to tackle one of each. And if you wanna submit a question, just go to j sch swen.com. There's a button that says podcast, another one that says, ask us anything.

Jay: That's where we get these awesome questions. Let's do it. Let's do the work question. First we got a question from Will from Charlotte. Oh, will. So before we get to your question, will Farrell, I know that you're not asking, but he's a funny dude. I like to do a lot, but I'll tell you what's on my mind. This is absolutely the most ridiculous thing of all time.

Jay: Did you know that like two days ago was answer the telephone like, buddy, the Elf Day? I'm not making that up. I didn't know that existed, and I now know that for the most absolutely ridiculous reason of all time. Okay, why do, why do I know this? And this is the thing, like you have all these fake holidays answer the telephone.

Jay: Like, buddy, the elf day is a day, how do I know this? I called my doctor's office, okay? To make an appointment. I called my doctor's office and uh, the person picks up the phone. And says out of nowhere, uh, buddy the elf, what's your favorite color? I go, what? What? What did you say? And she goes, what's your favorite color?

Jay: I go, is it, is this the doctor's office? She goes, ha ha, ha ha. It's answer the phone like, buddy the elf day. I go, what are you talking about? What are we talking about? And then she goes on to explain it to me. I'm like, I, I just wanna make an appointment. I, I felt bad because I wasn't in the, I wasn't in the mindset of, ha ha, this is so funny, so cute.

Jay: I was in the mindset of, uh, can I make an appointment? Like, what are we doing? Um. So, uh, that's what's going on with you. Will, you may not have known this, but that is a thing. Uh, what, let's get to your question. Alright, Jay, uh, will, what did, here we go. All right, Jay. I am loyal to chat GPT even though everyone else talks about Claude or Gemini or whatever is chat.

Jay: GPT still the top dog. Um, okay, well. I'll tell you, chati has a major switch that just happened. I'm gonna tell you some tactics that marketers should be using chat for now that you couldn't do just a few weeks ago. There's been a big shift. In general, I don't think that there's one platform for everything.

Jay: Um, I like Claude for writing. I like, uh, Gemini for, for current, uh, research on things that are going on right now. And I like chatt for analyzation of, of content and, and different marketing tactics. So there's all these different, I don't think you should be a one trick pony with, with your AI tools that you're using, but.

Jay: Specifically on chat GT and I think everyone's sleeping on this, so chat GT in the last few weeks, just updated from their model 5.1 to 5.2. And I'm not trying to get all technical and whatever and who cares, but there's something different in 5.2 radically different that relates to marketing tactics that you can leverage that 5.1.

Jay: Couldn't do. So I think everybody now knows that in 5.2 and all you have to do is you go to the radio chatt, you don't have to do anything. It's just set at 5.2 already. It does a much better job now of simulating human behavior than it did before. This is a big deal, and, and here's how you could use this in for tactics and, and things of that nature.

Jay: So. So, for example, let's say, um, you wanted to have it analyze your social posts that you've developed and to see if those social posts, whether they're a paid ad or just a regular social posts, you're gonna put on your company page or your own personal page, right? Chachi PT 5.2 can really simulate what will happen when your post appears in somebody's feed.

Jay: So as an example, if you upload the post that you've created and you say to chat GBT in the current version 5.2, stimulate this post appearing in a busy LinkedIn feed, or it could be Instagram feed, how many people pause and how many people keep scrolling and why? Now I know how ridiculous this sounds.

Jay: Why would you ask that? The reason you ask that is in 5.1. The older model, it really couldn't do anything with this. It had no idea of, you know, partial attention or being able to, you know, judge content in a social feed type of situation. But 5.2 is really good at being able to analyze this idea of micro pause behavior and it will give you back a legit review on if it's.

Jay: A plausible piece of content and why, and if it's not and why, but the thing that we did with 5.2 that blew our minds that you could test as well. And this is like a, a really valuable thing to test because it's now so good at being able to, uh, predict things. Okay. Predict things. In 5.2, what we did was we took 50.

Jay: Different email campaigns that we ran for clients, 50 of them where we knew the open rate, the click-through rate, the response rate for these different campaigns. And for each of these 50 campaigns, there was an AB test. There was an AB test on subject line, AB test on creative. And we upload and we knew the outcome.

Jay: We knew the click-through rates, we knew the open rates for all of these campaigns, but we uploaded these AB tests to the newer version of Chat GPT, uh, without loading in any of the performance information that we had because we wanted to see in this new model. How good is chat GBT now in being able to predict?

Jay: The, the winner of an AB test without the test actually occurring. So we uploaded all of the creatives and subject lines of these 50 campaigns and we said to Chacha, bt, okay, for these 50 campaigns, uh, which the, a version of the B version, which one would have the highest open rate, the highest click-through rate overall for each of these 50 campaigns.

Jay: And we wanted to see, since we already had the data. How much of it does it get right and what blew my mind in 5.2? 'cause 5.1 was not that good at this. 5.2 predicted the winner correctly 89% of the time. For all these 59 campaign, these 50 campaigns that we love, 89% of the time it picked the actual one that we know for a fact actually did win.

Jay: What does this mean to you as a marketer? It means when you have an AB test that you've set up. Upload it to chat gt. Ask it, which one do you think it's gonna do better? And give it context. You know, this is what we're trying to sell. This is what we're trying to, the service we're trying to promote. This is the audience that we're marketing to.

Jay: This is the makeup of our database. Explain some stuff. And then see what it says. It will, it will then predict, uh, what it is that's going to happen and 89% of the time it was right. So 5.2 is really, really cool and I would be messing around with that right now if you haven't because it's very different than, than the Chate from a few weeks ago.

Jay: Anything that's horrible is my jam. It's my people. It's where I hang out. But I'll tell you the TV that should never have added, in my opinion this year, that was trash garbage, horrendous. First, I'd start out with the Baldwins. That show on TLC was impossible. I don't know. Hilarious. Baldwin is very difficult.

Jay: She's, I find her annoying. I know that's terrible to say, but I do. So the Baldwins on TTLC was just a weird show. Another one that I, I, I'm gonna get in so much trouble for these, I don't care, but with love Meghan. And that was Meghan Markle, you know, foray into this lifestyle type. She wants to be like Martha Stewart.

Jay: It was. It is. It's still on it's nails on a chalkboard. She like makes a fruit plate and she acts like she accomplished something. I think any 7-year-old could make a better fruit plate than her. The whole thing is, it is. I can't even believe that it got made. It is. Absolutely not good. Okay. What else? Um, and sadly, I love Sarah Jessica Parker.

Jay: I really do. I had her at Guru Conference. She is the nicest human being. Uh, I behind the scenes when I spoke to her, the most incredible, nicest, greatest person, Sarah Jessica Parker. Unfortunately. And just like that season three, which was the, uh, the finale, you know, the, basically the spinoff of Sex and the City.

Jay: And this was season three event, just like that on HBO Max or whatever you call that channel. It was unwatchable. I, I, I watched the whole thing. It was unwatchable. I, I'm very sorry to say that. I'm glad the season, I'm glad it's over 'cause it couldn't go on any longer. I wa I was, I was watching it 'cause I felt, uh, guilty.

Jay: Then I think the last one would be selling the OC on Netflix. See the difference? This is not selling Sunset. Selling Sunset is a great show. They should not have done selling the oc. The cast stinks. The show stinks. It all stinks. What are we talking about? Listen, you're probably like. Is he real? Does he really watch this garbage?

Jay: Yes, I do. And you could leave in the comments what I should be watching. 'cause clearly I have no taste. Listen, this year's almost wrapped up. Go to jay schwa.com. There's a page where we could partner together. Go there, stick in the form. Hey, have me at your event. Hire my agency. Tell me I'm a big doofus. I don't know.

Jay: And uh, I hope you're crushing it later.