Prompted: Is Claude or ChatGPT Better for Integrated Marketing Teams? (Part 1: Copywriting)

Two AI fighters enter the ring: ChatGPT and Claude. Who comes out on top?

While OpenAI’s ChatGPT crushes the competition when it comes to weekly users (500 million!), Claude, Anthropic's chatbot, has developed a reputation for being a smart, personable, and creative companion. In this two part series, we’re exploring how the two tools really stack up when it comes to our regular integrated marketing workflows. First up: copywriting and content creation.

A quick technical note before we start: Both chatbots offer multiple models, which have different strengths and weaknesses. This test was carried out on ChatGPT 4o and Claude 3.7 Sonnet, both using paid plans. 

Test 1: Writing a Headline

Admit it — we all judge a book (blog post) by its cover (headline). Our first test compared Claude and ChatGPT’s copywriting capabilities by asking for H1 suggestions for this blog post. 

Lesson learned: We ran this test twice, first with a prompt that turned out to be too vague. Specifying the keywords you want to include and any other relevant details will help produce a more tailored output.

Example Prompt: I’m writing a blog post on [topic] for [author]. The post includes [relevant details]. Write me 10 possible headlines to use, varying in tone. For SEO purposes, include [keywords].

The Results: Claude and ChatGPT both quickly turned out 10 potential headlines to use for this post. Like we asked, each result varied slightly in style and tone and included the keywords we specified.

ChatGPT:

Claude:

The Winner: The winner here is … human copywriters. The options created by either chatbot were basic and uninspired, though ChatGPT’s seemed to be at least more relevant to the topic. Claude used one too many copy cliches and also ignored some of our instructions  (we specified that the titles should not include colons, but over half of Claude’s options still did).

Test 2: Editing a Social Post

While creative copywriting might be too much for our chatbots to handle, it’s always helpful to get an editor’s eye on your drafts. Need to tighten up your language in a pitch? Make your blog post more engaging? Given the right jumping off point, AI can help polish and perfect.

Which bot is more trustworthy with a red pen? We ran an old LinkedIn post promoting a job opening through each to compare the edits they suggested.

Example Prompt: Suggest ways to make this [social post, blog post, pitch, etc.] more [engaging, eye-catching, appealing to applicants, etc.]

The Results: Compared to our original post, both chatbots suggested breaking up some of the copy into shorter bullets. They also provided more audience-first language, focusing on the benefits for the potential applicant. And, they added another emoji or two.

Original Post:

ChatGPT:

Claude:

The Winner: Head to head, we’d definitely go with ChatGPT’s post over Claude’s. Claude got a little overly enthusiastic, with a lot of ALL CAPS and exclamation points for emphasis. It also hallucinated details we didn’t include in the prompt, including the specific job title and the limited availability of spots.

But Claude did have one benefit ChatGPT didn’t: It listed out its improvements and explained its suggestions. Instead of copy-pasting right from the bot, we could use those tips to make our own edits to the post.

Content Competition Champ

In these two copy-focused use cases, ChatGPT takes the cake — with caveats. Claude’s lack of accuracy knocked it down a few pegs, as it both ignored some of our inputs and made up fake details. However, neither of the bots shined when coming up with content on their own. 

Part Two of our series will put Claude and ChatGPT back in the ring, as we test both tools against our media team’s daily tasks, including interview prep and pitch research.

Prompted, our monthly blog series, brings you relevant updates and insights on how to strategically add AI-driven solutions into your marketing toolkit. Subscribe to receive updates in your inbox.