全球最大的视频网站YouTube上有这样一则“洗脑”广告，很多学生党都能将其全文背诵：“Writings not that easy, but Grammarly can help. This sentence is grammatically correct but its wordy and hard to read…” 

    Grammarly是一款在线智能写作助手，它不但能扫清文章中的拼写和语法错误，还能根据文章的目标受众调整行文风格和语气。试想一下：当某同学论文写到崩溃，正想在YouTube上刷个视频换换脑子，却又被Grammarly的广告嘲笑了写作水平…

    同为YouTube用户，这广告在我耳边“余音绕梁”了有小十年，甚至在我大学毕业后YouTube依然坚持给我推送。起初我强烈怀疑：莫非是瞧不起我们这些母语非英语的留学生？但我渐渐发现：Grammaly早就不只“圈粉”于学校和学术界，而是通过推出更多个性化的功能，吸引更多与文字打交道的人入坑；而它也逐步从一款语法检查工具转变成提升沟通效率的生产力工具。

    本期嘉宾是Grammarly的产品营销经理Zachary。从沃顿商学院毕业后，Zachary带着对沟通表达和前沿科技的浓厚兴趣，果断加入了Grammarly这样一家用人工智能提升文字生产力的独角兽公司。我请Zachary谈了谈Grammarly在过去十年里的功能升级、产品转型和营销策略。此次聊天中我收获了三个关于关于Grammarly的冷知识：

    1. Grammarly这样一款英文写作助手竟是由几个母语非英语的乌克兰人开发的。

    2. 过去三年办公模式的转变，不光利好Zoom这类视频会议软件，也助推了Grammarly的增长。这背后是什么逻辑？

    3. 不是只有那些觉得自己英语不够灵光的人在使用Grammarly；很多以英语为母语的人，哪怕对自己的写作水平再自信，也有依赖Grammarly的场景。

    此外我们还聊到了像ChatGPT这样的生成式人工智能模型对Grammarly这种文字生产类产品的潜在冲击。而至于Grammarly在社交网络上的“病毒式”营销，在Zachary这样的产品营销人士看来：管他洗不洗脑，管用就好！

Next time you proofread your writing, watch out for timidity — anything that sounds vague, indirect or hesitant unless you truly mean it. It's not just the grammar that matters, but the tone. As much of our communications have gone digital across text, emails and shared docs, it’s even more crucial to know how to add sparkle to what we write so that the readers would jump up and implement what we suggest.

This also raises the bar for online writing assistants —besides catching typos, those smart ones can even help tweak the tone of our writing, depending on whether we’d like to sound personable or professional.

In this episode, Lulu talks with Zachary, a perpetual creator / product marketing manager @Grammarly who shares how Grammarly has gone beyond fixing college essays and turned to revamping everyone’s everyday writing. As generative AI like ChatGPT takes the stage, could productivity tools like Grammarly still find their niche?

You’ll hear about:

* How could Grammarly attract two diametrically opposed groups of users?

* What is inbound and outbound marketing? 

* How to avoid being a "solution in search of a problem"?

* Why should marketers diversity their digital ad spend?

Music credits:

Sadens - Summer

小宇宙/喜马拉雅/网易云音乐 @斜杠青年研究所／@心心念的

Apple Podcasts/Spotify @Dedicated （搜索“dedicated lulu”更容易找到呦）