TruthGPT offers The Whole Truth through content marketing

Here is how the packaged food brand birthed its very own AI-powered chatbot GPT to enhance consumer engagement.

The packaged food brand, The Whole Truth (TWT), has been actively disseminating content, in the form of articles, to food and nutrition enthusiasts. In fact, the brand itself was born out of the founder’s very own blog. And now, The Whole Truth has birthed its very own GPT, TruthGPT - an AI-powered chatbot that helps consumers with questions related to food and nutrition.

With its roots tied to content, the brand has, since its inception, focused on delivering content pertaining to food and nutrition, in addition to its packaged products. Shashank Mehta, founder and CEO, The Whole Truth Foods, states that the brand is as famous for its content as it is for its packaged food.

In its pursuit of building a productive content-sharing strategy, the brand came up with its own weekly food and fitness newsletter called ‘Truth be Told’ (TBT), after a not so favourable distribution stint on Instagram. Mehta reveals, “We built distribution for our content on Instagram, and Instagram kept changing its algorithm, taking us farther and farther away from reaching people who wanted to listen to us. So we took a break from Instagram and went back to what we wanted to do all along.”

Within a year, the newsletter has attracted 10,000 subscribers. However, the introduction of TruthGPT raises the question of its necessity alongside the successful newsletter. Mehta asserts that the consumers who read the articles often have follow-up queries, which they typically turn to Google for answers, “A place populated with articles aimed at maximising clicks and engagement, rather than good faith, accuracy and nuance.”

TruthGPT is grounded in data sourced from the food and fitness journalism produced by the brand itself, in addition to utilising various other machine learning resources. “We built an on-demand platform that can answer your questions on food, fitness and nutrition: TruthGPT. Unlike ChatGPT which is trained on the entire internet and carries its own biases, TruthGPT is trained on our deeply researched and verified content- Truth Be Told, The Whole Truth Academy, FitShit Blogs and ChemX.”

While many LLMs (Learning Language Models) are trained on content from the entire internet, TruthGPT stands out by utilising ChatGPT's capabilities while drawing prompts from the brand's extensive content library. According to Mehta, that’s what sets the brand apart.

The platform is the product of a partnership between The Whole Truth and Fini AI, an AI-powered Chatbot provider.

While the consumers have shown keen interest in the brand’s long-format content, with TruthGPT, the effort is to provide specified responses to user queries. Mehta says, “While our audience loves our long-form content, we thought it was important to also give pointed answers to specific questions they have.”

Within the first 20 days of its launch, TruthGPT recorded over 19,000 minutes of usage by more than 10,000 users, with over 12,000 questions posed to the chatbot, as per the brand.

But, what are the consumers asking, we wonder. Mehta answers, “The range of questions people have been asking is quite stunning! They bucket broadly into 3 sections though: knowledge seeking, information seeking and opinion seeking.”

These questions aim to understand the "why," "how," and "what" aspects of various food and nutrition-related topics.

With content marketing at the core of its operations, the entire identity of the brand is intricately tied to its ability to provide credible information on food and nutrition. But how has the strategy faired for The Whole Truths?

Mehta answers, “A significant section of the people who know and love us probably don’t even know we make packaged food! This is because the aim of our content is not to sell our products, it is to aid people in being more aware and making better choices. If we can achieve that, we know that brands like ours would do well.”

The content arm of The Whole Truth is insulated from business pressures and only carries targets of building reach and impact for the content itself, as per Mehta. “Content and education is not a means to an end, it is the pinnacle of self-actualisation for us.”

Our community tells us that our content is relevant and expert while still remaining entertaining and accessible and we go to great lengths to keep it this way.” 

Content marketing often goes hand in hand with community-building efforts, as it brings together people who share common interests. The Whole Truth is dedicated to maintaining authenticity and credibility, allowing its community to naturally evolve and grow on its own.

“We have been able to foster an active community by just being ourselves. No one likes being lied to, and half-truths are more harmful than outright lies. This is why we exist, and a lot of people can relate to it.”

With the participation of experts from various fields in its Truth Be Told content, The Whole Truth plans to further expand its community-building efforts. But, are there any other innovations that the brand has up its sleeves?

Mehta hints at potential developments in the near future, stating, “We have some thoughts, and maybe you will see something from us later this year.”