ChatGPT's New 01-Preview Model, What It Means for Marketers, & 6 Use Cases

More reasoning does not remove the need for context

The o1 preview release mattered because it added more deliberate reasoning to ChatGPT. Instead of answering immediately, the model could slow down, work through a problem, and produce a more considered result. That is useful for marketing decisions that have competing constraints, but it is not magic. The model still needs a clear goal, relevant information, and a human who can judge the answer.

I think of the release as adding depth to the broader adoption of AI. More people may use a tool when it can handle a difficult question without requiring perfect prompt technique. The o1 mini version makes the same direction more accessible when speed or cost matters.

Use it where the decision is hard

The best applications are problems that benefit from a reasoning pattern: comparing strategic options, diagnosing a funnel, evaluating a complicated plan, or finding gaps in an argument. I can ask the model to examine assumptions, consider alternatives, and explain the tradeoffs before recommending a path. That gives me more than a polished first idea.

The model is less useful for simple tasks that a fast general model can already handle. It may overthink an easy request or spend resources on a problem that did not require them. More reasoning also does not compensate for missing context. If I ask for a business plan without explaining the audience, resources, constraints, or goals, I should expect generic output.

Keep a human review step

The visible reasoning can make the answer feel authoritative, but I still have to test it. Check the facts, challenge the assumptions, and compare the recommendation against what the business can actually execute. A strong model can help me see options I missed; it cannot decide which risk I am willing to take.

The practical workflow is to choose the model based on the job, supply enough background, ask for competing approaches, and then edit the result into an action plan. Use the mini model for lighter repeatable work and the deeper model when the decision genuinely benefits from more analysis. AI improves the process when it helps me think more clearly, not when it simply makes the answer longer.

welcome back to the AI driven marketer I'm Dan Sanchez my friends call me danz and it has been an exciting weekend because chat GPT just announced their new model yes it's that thing that I've been waiting for there's two things that I've been waiting for in 2024 in order to know that 2025 is going to be a freaking awesome year for AI and it just dropped the thing that the thing that I needed one was Apple releasing its updates to create breadth and more people using AI and that's moving forward that's happening I just ordered my iPhone and I can't wait to get it and test the updates they release uh over the fall um but the next thing was a new I was hoping that it would just be cat GPT 5 but they give it a different name o1 preview a a model that would add depth well Apple AI would add breadth I needed chat GPT to drop a new model to add the depth needed to make it more I don't know uh accessible for people to get great results out of AI because right now to get great results out of AI you had to know a lot about how to really steer it in the right direction how to prompt it just perfectly to get great results but now you don't need to because this new model o1 preview and 01 mini uh which is a smaller version of the preview and the faster version uh can do it for you uh and while new models are still on the horizon it's rumored that the next one's going to be coming out this winter it's Cod named oion very exciting I don't even know what's coming in that one and honestly I don't freaking care because what they released just this last Thursday and I'm recording this on a Monday after testing it all weekend I am excited to share some use cases for you and some learnings that I've had playing with this model all weekend uh called old one preview and the reason why it's exciting is because it can freaking think yes it can think now you're like oh Dan hasn't AI been thinking the whole time isn't that what makes it artificial intelligence yes but what this does is actually slows down to consider what's being asked of it and actually walks through a reasoning pattern so before it answers you can see it flashing on the screen like oh let me thinking through this thinking through that thinking through that before it actually responds to you and the cool thing is in the UI you can go back and see its whole thought process before it actually addresses your prompt now so there are some limitations to 01 preview um before we get started into those use cases in that 01 preview is only for paid tiered uh chat GPT you got to be paying for the Plus at $20 a month I know if you haven't done it do it now because1 preview is freaking amazing and I want to show you all the ways that it is um it's it's amazing uh it has some limitations still even if you're paying for it it can't do some of the things that uh the 40 model can do you can't upload documents to it you can't search the web with it you can't hook it into custom gpts it can't create images or analyze images um it's just plain text like it was when when chat GPT 3.5 first launched um so you pretty much whatever it knows it knows from its long-term memory or whatever you give to it in the prompt those are the current limitations it's also slower which is a feature for it to slow down and think so oh and one last limitation 01 preview can only give you you can only prompt it 30 times within a 7-Day period so it gives you some it slows you down on being able to prompt it all the time every time because I'm sure it costs a lot more for it to walk through this model as far as a computer proc uh server processing thing um so they're limiting it a little bit and I think accessing it through the API is also more expensive than usual because this model takes takes a bit more compute um the 01 mini I believe you get even more than 30 probably like 60 70 maybe even up to 90 I can't remember the number but it's something much higher uh but honestly I will probably be tapping out my 01 preview 30 every week because it's the only one I'm going to be using moving forward provided it's not already a custom GPT I need or I need to analyze a document of some kind if I'm just going straight to chat GPT it's probably going to be one preview because it is freaking amazing and it's not that slow like it's it mean it thinks for five to 20 seconds 30 seconds but the thinking is always worth it because it always does gives me better results uh I'm so excited about what this means for marketers but let me give you six different case studies and I've tested lots of things and I was going to include a lot more uh case studies for you but this recording started getting a little bit long I've actually already recorded it once and recorded the wrong screen so sad but this is my second time so considering I've already spent 40 minutes recording this once and this is my second time please give me give me some star ratings give me a thumbs up on YouTube if you're watching this because I've now had to do it twice so I'm back here for you guys and I want to get this out so let's jump into some case studies and then talk about why they're important as we go along first case study this is the first thing I prompted it as soon as it came out I gave it a stupid short prompt with no context it's a ridiculous prompt because it would be a ridiculous prompt for a human I said can you make me a mark write me a marketing plan like if you asked a consultant that specialized in marketing plans to write you a marketing plan with no other context that knows nothing about you and your business this consultant be like uh no but AI would it would do it before and it would just go through and rush and make you a marketing plan and it would suck because it didn't have any context and I knew we were on to something special because it it thought for 5 seconds uh it talked about crafting the plan and then realized it needed more clarification so it said certainly I'd be happy to help you create a marketing plan could you please provide me with some details about the product or service uh target audience and your primary goals this information will help me tailor the plan to your specific needs as it should be asking right and I didn't even give it all I went ahead and give it some details but not all the details I said can you do some research on sweet fish media I didn't even say write the marketing plan I just kind of let it hang out there uh luckily it know I know it knows about sweet fish median it's long-term memory it's training data it remembers some of the things about sweet fish its memory does go back up to October of 2023 so and it knows anything that would come up in there on his training data and then it thought for 7 seconds and let me show you you can it gives you this drop down menu where you you can click on it to see it's thinking it says I spent some time understanding sweet fish tracing sweet fish media um and what it's done up to 2023 of October uh taking a closer look to understand it and it's thinking through what its target audience is based on what it knows about sweet fish and then n navigating the knowledge cut off uh to the best of its ability and then it wrote a marketing plan its marketing plan is actually pretty good considering I gave it almost no context for what was going on uh a SWAT analysis like if I would have fed it more information I expect this the the marketing plan would have been much better even a SWAT analysis would have been made this marketing plan much better but still the executive summary the company overview the market analysis is not bad not bad way better than what it would have done before um I think the most exciting thing is it's just taking time to think about it uh and putting together a decent marketing plan um if you don't know how to write a marketing plan just giving it a bunch of information and context about the company and then asking it to do a marketing plan I would say with 01 preview is probably going to be better than not having one at all it's going to be way actually not probably it's going to be way better than not having to plan at all so everybody's on the same page as far as to what's going on um it did a good job of even ascertaining what the primary audiences and the secondary audiences for some reason it somehow knows that marketing directors content strategists and bdb companies are seeking uh are the primary audience I'd say VPS of marketing but it said secondary audiences SE Suite Executives interested in thought leadership and brand direction through podcasting and it's right because I've been the marketing director for this brand and that's pretty spoton um it did a good job as a marketing director who's actually written a marketing plan for sweet fish it's this is a pretty dang good first draft considering I gave it no context that's when I knew I was like ah oh one preview it's got some chops so let's see what else I've tested and what some practical takeaways would be this next one if you've been following my podcast for long you know I created a custom GPT called the name frame if you go to Aid driven marketer.com uh and search around you you'll find a link to name frame and you can use it to come up with creative names it takes the process from a book called hello my name is Awesome by Alexandra Watkins um that utilizes a simple naming process I won't go into it if you're looking at the video here um you can see the step-by-step process but I won't bore you with the whole whole process but it's a fantastic process for coming up with the name I highly recommend it but it's different than just asking it for a name but if it follows this process it comes with much more creative names so I did an experiment and came up I need I was actually working with a friend on a name for a uh podcast for Christian men living victoriously over sin shame and living a life of god-driven purpose um that's it's a I don't know the topic for this podcast uh and I then outlined the naming process again I used to have to break it down step by step for it to go one step at a time because chat GPT was not capable of taking a full step-by-step process 1 2 3 4 five and was single prompt in the than executing them all no couldn't do that so you had to let it do one step at a time in a chain prompt or a custom GPT to do it and then I also gave an example of what the output should look like to make sure it stayed on path it's always good to give AI an example even with this smarter 01 preview examples are miraculous us humans need them have help our AI friends do better work by giving them examples too um and then it went and thought for 40 seconds so this is a longer one 40 seconds but its results were much better much much better because before it couldn't reason through each step one at a time as simple as it is to us it had a struggle they would just like jump into it and kind of skip some of the steps in its eagerness here's its thought process if again I'm going to click the drop down for it to open up and it said Gathering creative ideas and there's actually a couple like a paragraph or a few sentences for each one of these but I'm just going to read the headlines and it's not process to give you an idea uh Gathering creative ideas weighing the vibe identifying Rhymes exploring rhym connections connecting the dots uh piecing together transforming titles transforming titles evaluating podcast names evaluating potential titles shifting through meaning mapping rhyming words rhyming words with movies you can see it's thinking through all the elements that I've asked it to Think Through um and then it actually executed it almost perfectly it would have done perfectly if it had a larger um ability to put out more than 3,000 characters and an output um that's still a limitation it has but for it's for because this is a really as simple as this process is it still takes a lot of characters to think through all the all the things and I'll kind of walk you through the naming process because I think it'll help illustrate it this point it starts by developing a list of words uh that relate to the the content of the show since I gave it a topic of course it came up with words like men faith God life hope truth Grace Strong Pur light rise it then comes up with and E did this really well step two find five words that rhyme with each of those words so we have like a dozen words and then it needs to come up with five rhymes for each of those dozens so we're getting a quy pretty long list why it runs out of characters men you know is the first word so it came up with Den ten when pen then right and it did that for all the words and then the next step in this naming process is toine movie titles idioms uh uh or idioms with the rhyming words and swap out the words so den of Thieves is the movie title become men of Thieves right and then you're just looking for interesting names it's it's a creative brainstorming process to get a lot of ideas out for you to find a few that work good and we have hot rod hot God you're like okay that a't why working out um so it went through and walked through that process I started running out of character limits because it probably could have found a lot more um and then did some analysis on looking for meaning within the names like a double on Tandra that fits the topic a deeper meaning or fun angles right that's generally what I'm looking for when I'm walking through this process and then gave me an analysis the final name ideas and they're they're pretty dang good way better than if you would have just asked it for names um it have light club The Good Life lost in Grace Fountain of Truth rise guys the strong man the pure grayoff do the light thing and truth fairy now obviously some of these are ridiculous like truth fairy like no Men's Ministry is going to want that um but lost in Grace it's kind of interesting light club interesting Grace off interesting uh contenders worth putting down on a on a list to consider with other names and it did a fantastic job this prom this process wasn't possible if you didn't break it up before but now it can the reason why this is important for us marketers is that you used to have to break down your thinking and your process in order for AI to do a relatively good job but I've noticed after working and Consulting and working with lots of marketers and businesses that it is very difficult and uncommon for people to be able to break down a process into a step-by-step directions and I'm not saying this to say like oh my gosh I'm so smart I I don't know I just I I I it kind of naturally um and this has been one of the things why what's made me a good consultant is breaking down into step-by-step processes to make it easy for others to follow along with um but that was what you had to do in order to make AI work well for you now you don't have to you can kind of throw it a generic like hey do this and it's going to be able to think and use the logic to think for you and walk through the pro build a either walk through your process or build a process itself in order to come to a much better output so in this next one I want to show you what that um how that like a practical application of something you've probably been doing AI already and how it's going to do it much better for you and that is taking a long form blog post and I didn't I didn't hone in the The Prompt much at all to turn a long form 5,000-word blog post that I wrote on thought leadership and turn it into five great LinkedIn posts here's the prompt read the blog post that I wrote below and turn it into five well-written LinkedIn posts that follow a hook body and question format here's the blog post it's very short and still it's it's still still somewhat of a meaty prompt because I gave it some instructions of a hook body question format um and then just the post but it's not like a really lengthy post it's certainly not a chain prompt I would have had to chain prompt it to get the results I got let me show you after I scroll through this freaking long post it gave me it thought for 15 seconds and did the job that I used to had to do for it in a chain prompt and if you've taken my AI course at Aid driven marketer.com course it's free and it's customized with AI free you uh quick and Shameless plug check out that course you you'll really like it and learn a lot about how to interact with AI for this but you also appreciate why this new model is so smart after you take that course is because here in its thought process that it took 15 seconds to think through it walks through what I would have had to have done in a chain promp before it's it's crafting the LinkedIn posts crafting engaging content choosing topics navigating digital clutter coping with information overload charting the course focusing on knowledge building credibility forming connections synthesizing insights smarter thinking it's kind of a hodgepodge of thought process but honestly our thought process usually is too it's not always our thinking isn't always in order but it's that thinking that allows you to create better outputs for your own thoughts and ideas and your your writing right and I can tell you I'm not going to read the LinkedIn post but it did give me five they are wonderful because I can tell that it actually rustled with the main ideas of the post and then translated them in a way that would work for LinkedIn and even though I didn't give it I usually tell it to not use so many emojis for some reason it think it used to think that LinkedIn like needed a lot of emojis uh it put the right emojis in the right place uh created great Hooks and had great questions uh in it and I could probably refine it more to get better answers but its first pass created fantastic LinkedIn content as someone who's read a lot of LinkedIn posts I'm like uh some of his stuff I've seen it right before I'm like that's that's not a LinkedIn post that's a freaking newsletter in fact I I think it LinkedIn posts were so good as newsletters that all my newsletters if you've gotten one for me is usually me prompting it write a LinkedIn post because they were so long but still they were great newsletter content now I'm looking at it and I'm like wow these are great LinkedIn posts it's better to contextualize it is so much better and again the main thing that it did that it struggled with before on a single prompt was to find the main ideas of the post and then encapsulate them in a way that was appropriate for LinkedIn and it it like hit it out of the park again I might reframe reprompt it a little bit with a little bit more of my writing style and personality in it um and probably a little bit more detail about what type of question to ask um but for just the simple one sentence prompt it slayed it did so good like this is something that every marketer can be doing uh with all their past content like today so another reason why ow1 preview is probably going to just become my normal as as long as I don't have I still have instances left because it only gives you 30 throughout the week I'm probably just going to go straight to 01 preview every time and then go straight to 01 mini every time afterwards because its output is just so much better let's go to another example this one's really exciting uh everyone's talking about how 01 preview is so good at code now I used to use other AI models to write small pieces of code because it could only handle small pieces of code so I was using it as a web designer to do little Snippets of JavaScript maybe like 10 15 lines of JavaScript could do little things you know like of my favorite things instead of making an image do something dramatic or having to call attention to an image or a call out of some kind is just to have like the image just kind of like wiggle a little bit just a little bit of subtle motion went a long way in web design if you need to call attention to something you didn't want to make it like a bright color or something or make it just bigger uh is just to make it bounce a little bit or wiggle but you need a JavaScript to make things move so I would often use it for that um and it was incapable of really coming up with larger code um now I just tested it and I like I've worked with WordPress for 14 years and I'm I haven't tested it to make sure it works because again I've only had this over the weekend and I have a lot to test with this still but I say can you create a WordPress plugin that scrapes a podcast RSS feed and publishes episode contents as posts this isn't that complex of a plugin but is way is Way Beyond something I would have been able to make before and Way Beyond what AI would have been able to make before it spent 21 seconds thinking about it and breaking down what it would need for this plugin and based the instructions yes it's giving me instructions of what to do with the code that it's giving me um it's like step one create a plug-in folder and file and giving me where I know is where I would need to go I wouldn't I wouldn't normally need these instructions but in case you didn't know a lot about WordPress this is really helpful step two add in plug-in Header information with the code below include WordPress plug-in functions Fetch and parse RSS feed there's the code for that create post from RSS feed titles it gave some more code for that schedule the feed fetching and then it gave some more code for that and then customize plug-in settings optional and it went through and actually elaborated on some other things you can do some security concerns and additional notes in order to help you build the plug-in this is the first time that I'm like oh my gosh we can actually use AI now to build simple plugins and I've seen a lot of tests of this on X where people are testing it building full out little mini video games like Checkers and it's fully functional on the first try no iterations and even getting close to being able to create chess so this is exciting as marketers you don't have to to know how to develop or use code but now you can build little mini Tools in order to solve problems you can now build your own little WordPress plugin you can now build little calculators other little widgets on your blog post in order to make your content better think about the implications you used to have had worked with a developer for this now chat GPT can do it for you in 30 seconds that is so freaking exciting I can't wait to start actually improving blog posts not just with content but with a little functional Tools in order to make better content for the audience and to serve the audience better imagine if you could break out little pieces of your if you're selling SAS like little SAS applications that kind of match what your SAS does but on a much smaller and easier scale you don't have to just use Google Sheets to try to come up with calculators anymore you can actually embed it into posts and give people a little preview of your thinking and thought process with this so I think this is going to be a boon for Content marketers you can now like essentially code it's so cool I can't wait to actually test some of this out and put it to work and test out this plugin of course um so moving on fifth one is if you know me if you've known me for long you've known and I've written some kids books I've written a book called I want to be a marketer when I grow up and I've written a book called how to grow an audience both kids books uh and I've worked with Timmy Bower who is like an like a freaking beast when it comes to kids books he's he knows how to write books that are kids actually like to read and they make him laugh out loud um and I asked it this was the prompt I gave it to write a kid's book write a story for kid uh write a story for a kid's book targeting third graders that teach kids about marketing the title of the story is I want to be a marketer when I grow up making an for ative but include a lot of humor that third graders would appreciate as I wanted it to essentially rewrite the book that I've already written so I can already kind of compare and contrast to like after I worked with a professional kids book publisher to come up with I want to be a marketer when I grow up how close can it get and I can say I I'll read you the first chapter it did remarkably well like if you want to come up with a kids book fast and send it to your clients as a little gifts because it only costs like five six bucks to print this on Amazon on Demand it's a great cheap gift um you can customize it with your own thinking and how your business works even if you're in B2B and want to give it to your audience so that they can explain what they do to their kids that's why I came up with mine uh this is a great way to do it it's it's funny it it writes the dialogue is smooth let me just read it to you chapter one The Breakfast Bonanza one Sunday morning Max woke up with an idea so big it nearly popped out of his head like a Jack In The Box as he munched on the serial he announced I know what I want to be when I grew up an astronaut guessed his little sister Lily nope Max said shaking his head a dragon t she tried again even better I want to be a marketer Max declared proudly LLY blinked what's a marketer Max thought for a moment it's someone who wants to make things sound so amazing everybody wants them like when Mom says broccoli makes us strong like superheroes Lily asked eyeing her green veggie suspiciously exactly Max grinned but tastier dad chuckled well marketers do help tell the world about cool things Max jumped up I'm going to start marketing right now and then it goes through uh the Max on his journey and in helping all these different situations with uh even helping a pet store sell more guinea pigs and Max's guinea pigs $10 how boring Max exclaimed he went inside and asked the store owner Mr Whiskers who ironically had a magnificent mustache if he could help right it's that little humor of like Mr whisker's Magnificent mustache I'm like that's just kind of fun it makes you smile I could obviously go back and ask it like hey make it funnier and it would probably add some more humor into it but its first pass at this is fantastic this is this is a great way great way to write a kid book it's just better at telling stories it's better at thinking through everything that needs to come together because stories are complicated uh and the stories it was coming up with before were kind of trit and short and simple and uh just just weren't that good of stories right if you've asked to write a story for you even a bedtime story for your kid you're like H plot's pretty lame this book is really good uh and is s such a huge step forward that I'm like okay 01 preview you're writing all my future stories if I'm going to be writing stories obviously still not at Timmy Bower level level but uh it's it's getting there and this last one is really powerful for me because I asked it to do something that I've I've wrestled with for days and weeks and still takes me a lot so much brain power and thinking power in order to do this here's the prompt writer Andy Rasin sell strategic narrative for a podcast agency sweet fish media because this what I've done before uh make sure that it speaks to the needs of the bdb marketers and incorporates a strong narrative that differen the company from its competitors and substitutes and the Strategic narrative it came up with Andy Raskin style is really good really good like it's so much easier to react to things than it is to come up from scratch and I've spent hours days weeks wrestling through this for sweet fish media specifically it was so hard and what it came up with out of the gate is so good now some of the directions it went in uh would wouldn't be the directions I would go in but if I just then went back through and tried again with a more uh prompt with more details about sweet fish media uh the current target market the current state of where podcasting is at the current uh competitors and how they're chipping away at Sweet fish's margins or something like that or or the general the current company is taking it would do so much better but even on its first pass with only two sentences of context it did really good let me read a little bit of it to you uh the rise of conversational marketing again that's the position I wouldn't go with but still it works why B2B Brands must Embrace podcasting now in a digital age a mic shift is transforming how B2B buyers make decisions traditional marketing tactics are losing their Edge in the new era of conversational marketer sorry conversational marketing is emerging the old Playbook is fading gone are the days when white papers and cold Outreach dominated B2B marketing strategies today's decision makers are inundated with information and crave genuine connections they seek insights not sales pitches conversations not commercials a new breed of winners is emerging companies that recognize this shift are leaping ahead they're fostering in authentic relationships through engaging content becoming thought leaders in Industry they're not just selling products or Services they're building communities meanwhile organizations clinging to outdated methods are witnessing diminishing returns their messages are getting lost in the noise their brands Fade Into Obscurity and their sales pipelines dry up that's good it's really good the fun part about this and I hope the thing that you're taking away from this like I'm taken away is you could make five of these from five different angles and then tell it to convert it into a landing page and it'll do it for you and then you can split test the landing page to see which one works best for you it is now so easy to come up with a great narrative um in the angle that you wanted to take that you could take lots of passes at it pick the one and merge some of the other ones this took weeks of wrestling and work and anguish and conversations before and now you can just come up with a few options pick one or merge some of the ones and help help tell to take another swing at it with some more Pizzazz and it'll do it how long did it take it took 10 seconds for it to think through and then execute it and of course I have the full narrative here um it did fantastic this is this is hard marketing work this is like VP a marketing level thinking and work you'd have to go through or CMO level stuff gosh it's now easy because it can take a lot of the thinking work for you because it can now think through things slower which means it can give you better outputs and better conversation and better ideas in which to start from and this is the power of 01 preview this is what I was waiting for I'm like this once it starts taking route because it's early days right now nobody knows what to do with it hopefully my AI driven marketer in this podcast will start sewing some ideas where people will utilize and get busy utilizing this thing so that 2025 comes around AI is just going to start becoming more and more of the norm again Apple's creating breath this new chat gp01 preview is creating depth to make it more accessible for marketers to get more out of AI without having to really hone and refine their prompting skills in order to get started so it is just an exciting time to be in Market marketing it's also a scary time because you're like well like if you could do this so fast like do you really even need that many marketers anymore that's left to be like left to be found out like we don't really know how this could impact jobs again if marketing is a black hole then maybe this just makes us have more and better outputs uh or maybe if a lot of jobs do disappear for marketers then you probably want to figure out how to refine your AI skills so that you can be one of the few actually running all these AI things all the time that's the kind of the way I'm seeing it I'm like well if all the jobs are lost then I'll maybe I'll be the one honing in all these AI Bots um to do the work or if AI is just the next Golden Age of marketing where marketers are using it all the time then maybe I can be on the Forefront of that that's kind of how I'm thinking about it hopefully you can follow me on the journey again as we Master AI in 2024 uh it hopefully this 01 preview overview has been helpful for you giving you some ideas broken down the context of How It's Working why it's working uh so that you can do better Marketing in less time if this episode's been helpful give me a rating uh find me on LinkedIn uh at linkedin.com ndigital marketing Dam and let me know what's been helpful to you what's uh and some ideas if you've been experimenting with it and have seen anything that's really impressive or something you didn't expect for it to happen message me I'd love to get into a future episode uh and thanks for listening