USE IT OR LOSE IT

This week I’ve read newsletters, LinkedIn posts (and replies), OOH posters and two charity project overviews that all sounded distinctly AI. It was a stark reminder about what’s wasting away as language models become more embedded in our workflows.

The instinct that tells you a campaign idea has legs, or the gut feel for when something's off-brand, are built through years of doing the work. As is the ability to look at a competitor's move and know how to respond. Or having the creative confidence to back a leftfield idea in a room full of safe ones.

Every marketer, creative or founder who's good at this got there the same way. By living it. Making the calls, making the mistakes, bobbing and weaving and going again. 

The rise of language models mean the work that honed those instincts is being handed over. Not in the ‘I just fired the entire marketing department’ way, but a constant drip. Every time someone asks AI to write the strategy deck, generate the creative concepts, draft the brand positioning or write the copy, there’s a bunch of muscles not being exercised. 

And we all know what happens to muscles that don't get used. They go a bit soft. Like a nice crisp apple left buried in a fruitbowl.

As we get more and more hooked on the sweet, moreish outputs of AI, they’re accepted a bit more easily than before. The gut feel that once said "this doesn't sound like us" or "we can do better than this" becomes soothed. 

THE PATTERNS ARE AN EASY PICK

LLMs are still relatively new, but already the outputs are routinely recognisable. The patterns, structures and tics are easy to spot because they jar with how humans tend to write. 

It brings up an interesting point around how trust is affected once we clock the AI usage. For me, when I read anything, from a brand email to a business plan, that’s been written by AI, there’s a switch-off that happens in my brain. I’m aware that I’m not reading words or plans that were formulated by a person. What value do they have? How accurate are they? They sound fine, but they’re not the thoughts of the sender. 

Brands need to be aware that their customers are picking the same patterns and thinking similar things.

It's not that they can identify the specific model or even point out the AI giveaway. It's more a vague feeling that the email they just read could have come from anywhere. That the brand feels like it's going through the motions and that nobody who actually cares about this company wrote the words.

Their instincts are getting sharper at the same rate that brands are handing over more of the work to language models.

WHY THIS IS GOOD NEWS

The output of a system optimised for plausible rather than good isn’t how anyone ever built a memorable brand. And I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.

When it comes to copywriting and expressing a brand voice, the brands people actually feel something about and engage with will have earned their stripes because talented people made decisions about how the brand sounds. A lot of deliberate, consistent choices that added up to something unmistakable.

If more and more brands are busy repeating the same patterns, the ones that keep working on sounding like themselves will stand out. They're building a voice that reflects the brand personality, treating language as a considered part of the identity. 

KEEP FLEXING THOSE MUSCLES

AI can produce stuff quickly and at volume. But it can't find that insightful nugget of truth about your business and build a personality around it. It just isn’t going to develop a killer campaign thought and write you killer lines that make people feel something.

That comes from another person. Someone who's spent time thinking about how ideas, sales propositions, personality and language all knit together to create something compelling.  

So, as a brand owner, marketing professional, consultant or creative, don’t let any of your marketing instincts wither. Keep researching, thinking, planning, designing and writing things yourself, even when it's slower. With AI used as a helpful tool. 

That’s how you’ll keep standing out.