The Evolution of AI Prompting

 

Say the magic words to the AI and it behaves.

Prompts feel like control without the paperwork. Whisper the right words and the machine behaves.

The appeal is easy to understand: Prompts feel like control without the mess of actual management … no policies, no audits, no awkward accountability. Just vibes in a text box.

But as AI systems become more agentic* (less like tools, more like tireless junior employees) clever phrasing stops being governance. Vibes are not a control system.

CEOs already know how real control works. With humans, we use identity (who are you?), policy (what can you do?), and accountability (what happens when you mess up?). Nobody runs a company on tone of voice alone.

Yet with AI, we keep pretending a polite sentence is infrastructure. Like adding “be safe and ethical” is the same as locks on the doors. It’s charming. It’s also useless at scale. AI won’t be trustworthy until it’s wrapped in the same dull, necessary scaffolding we use for humans.

Trust comes from boring things: permissions, logs, enforcement. Not magic words. Which means the future of AI management probably looks less like poetry and more like compliance.

Not exciting. Just real.

_________________________

*QUICK BRIEFING: Generative AI vs Agentic AI

St. Patrick’s Day Rant

 

Ah, St. Patrick’s Day. The one day a year when the entire planet wakes up and collectively decides, “You know what would really honor Irish culture? Neon green beer and plastic hats.”

Every advertisement suddenly becomes a cultural historian. “Celebrate Irish heritage!” they say, while handing you a cup of something that looks like antifreeze and calling it festive.

I’m not an expert on Irish history, but I’m fairly confident that somewhere in the centuries of poetry, rebellion, and complicated politics, nobody said, “You know what would really capture the spirit of this nation? A beer dyed the color of a malfunctioning highlighter.”

And the outfits. Grown adults willingly dress like a kindergarten craft project. Felt shamrocks, glitter beards, suspenders with tiny leprechauns doing calisthenics. And, somewhere a marketing team decided novelty hats were the natural evolution of Celtic history.

Then there’s the leprechaun mythology. A tiny man guarding gold at the end of a rainbow ... basically the original financial influencer. “Trust me,” he says. The treasure is definitely there. Just keep chasing it.”

Meanwhile bars are full by noon. Green cocktails with names like “Shamrock Slammer” or “Leprechaun's Kiss.” People shouting “Slainte!” with the confidence of someone who hadn't learned the word 45 seconds ago from a bartender.

And the “authentic Irish celebration” includes “Irish nachos,” which appear to be regular nachos having an identity crisis because someone replaced the chips with potatoes.

Somewhere behind all this is the real history: centuries of Irish storytelling, politics, music. Complicated, fascinating stuff.

But what we ended up with is green bagels ... the cultural equivalent of putting sunglasses on a historical statue and saying, “Look how fun history is now.”

I’m not against celebration. I’m not even against absurdity. Absurdity can be wonderful. Humanity has always loved costumes and loud gatherings and an excuse to yell in public without filing paperwork.

What fascinates me is how quickly culture becomes a product.

You take a holiday with real history, run it through three marketing departments, add food coloring, and suddenly the meaning dissolves like sugar in soda.

But maybe that’s the real modern tradition: turning complicated human stories into something you can sell in bulk near the seasonal aisle.

Anyway, pass the soda bread ... preferably a loaf that has survived the marketing department and avoided the green dye.

Contractions

When I read marketing copy without contractions, I feel like I’ve wandered into “Pride and Prejudice” and someone’s about to discuss the price of lace.

“We are pleased to announce…” No one talks like that unless there’s a fainting couch nearby.

Just say it like a person. It’s, don’t, you’ll, can’t. Real words for real mouths in the real world (where we’re buying toothpaste on line while watching TV).

Formal isn’t trustworthy, it’s just distant. And distance is an ineffective way to have a conversation with a prospect. 

What happened to creative marketing?

No, creativity isn’t dead. But, in advertising and marketing, it has been evicted.

It’s been shoved out to the edges, crowded off the table by consolidation decks, metric dashboards, automation pipelines, KPIs with more decimals than soul, and the cult of “efficiency” that believes faster is automatically better. Creativity didn’t disappear. It just got buried under a landslide of well-intentioned optimization.

But here’s the thing no spreadsheet, no matter how color-coded or cleverly pivot-tabled, can keep underground:

Ideas still matter.
Taste still matters.
Craft still matters.
Human judgment (messy, instinctive, gloriously unquantifiable) still matters.

We don’t create great work by worshipping the frictionless. We create it by wrestling with the unpredictable, the subjective, the inconvenient spark that refuses to be reduced to a metric.

Efficiency can ship a product. But only creativity can make someone care that it exists.

And that’s something no dashboard can automate, consolidate, or KPI its way around.

Buckle Up

 

AI isn’t killing copywriting … but it is dismantling the old rules at speed.

We’re in the uncomfortable middle of a major shift. The tools are powerful, accessible, and moving faster than most people can think through their implications. As a result, confusion is everywhere. Copywriters are experimenting, overusing, underusing, or misunderstanding AI. Clients are doing the same … sometimes replacing judgment with automation, sometimes expecting “AI magic” without strategy.

Mistakes are inevitable. Some copy will get cheaper. A lot of it will get worse. And a smaller slice will get noticeably better … not because AI wrote it, but because someone knew what to ask, what to edit, and what to ignore.

This is how change always looks from the inside: messy, uneven, and uncomfortable. Entire categories of work will be devalued. New ones will emerge slowly and without clear labels. People who equate copywriting with typing words will struggle. People who understand positioning, persuasion, and context will still be needed. Maybe more than ever.

The future of copywriting isn’t clear yet. Anyone claiming certainty is selling something. But one thing is clear: the road there will be tough for many.

An Aging Warhorse Takes Stock

Seventy years old. Let that rattle around a minute. 

For a lot of businesses, that’s long past the expiration date they stamp on your forehead. Thanks for your service, now shuffle off to the golf course, maybe buy a recliner, fade politely into irrelevance.

Not me. Not yet.

I’m still here, still raising hell, still stringing words together like they owe me rent. Still laughing at the wrong jokes while also knowing when to button it up in a client meeting. Still learning, still cussing, still showing up.

And here’s the kicker: I like it better now. The pressure’s gone. I don’t have to pretend to be twenty-five with a full head of hair and a bulletproof plan. I get to be seventy, scars and all, and keep creating without asking permission. That’s freedom.

So if you think there’s an expiration date on relevance, think again. Age doesn’t close the door ... it blows it wide open.

Long live the ones who stay engaged. Long live the ones who keep swinging long after the crowd thinks they should’ve sat down.

I’m seventy. I've got places to be. Things to do. Get the fuck out of my way.

Stop Throwing the Map at Them

 

There’s a certain kind of pitch that feels like being chased through the woods by a very aggressive slide deck.

     Slide one: You are lost.
     Slide two: Very lost.
     Slide three: Shockingly, almost impressively lost.
     Slide four: Good news. We sell compasses.

It’s dramatic. It’s urgent. It can be effective ... and also exhausting.

Because the truth is almost always this: your prospect knows what to do. It just isn’t translating into steps.

Think of strategy like a beautifully drawn trail map. It has contour lines. Landmarks.

Execution, on the other hand, is the muddy incline with the loose rocks and the bug that won’t leave your ear alone.

Most pitches confuse the two. They point at the map and say, “See? You’re failing to follow it.” As if the hikers haven’t noticed.

Consider instead saying something like:

“You already know where you’re going. The issue isn’t intelligence. It’s traction. Let’s talk about where your boots are slipping.”

That changes everything.

When you soften the pitch, you stop positioning yourself as the all-knowing cartographer and start acting like a good trail partner. The kind who says, “Yeah, that hill is brutal. Let’s zigzag it instead of charging straight up.”

This allows you to reframe the pitch: “You already know what to do. The problem isn’t insight. It’s translation. Let’s build the bridge between knowing and doing.”

Now you’re not the hero with the helicopter. You’re the steady hiking partner. The one who says, “Let’s take this in switchbacks. Ten clear steps. We’ll adjust as we go.” Because most leaders don’t need another map, they need someone to help them walk it.

Your presentation should acknowledge autonomy, assume competence, and treat the client like a capable adult who hit a patch of mud, not a lost child in the forest. No humiliation. No theatrics. No 87-slide autopsy.

Because underneath the theatrics of most consulting decks is a quieter truth: people don’t need more insight. They need support in acting on the insight they already have.

_________________________

Executive Summary: Replace your 87-slide pitch deck with a simpler offer: "You already know what to do. Here's why that isn't translating into results yet, and here's how we actually get it done together."

Bad Markets Don’t Kill You … Standing Still Does

 

Everyone loves to swagger when the market’s booming.

Chest out. Pipeline fat. Every guru suddenly a genius, every agency “crushing.”

But then the wind shifts. The headlines are heavy with gloom and doom. Budgets sneeze and the whole world catches fear. And even brave brands become timid little field mice whispering the same sentence: “We’re just going to wait this one out.”

But markets don’t actually “go bad.” They don’t rot like fruit, they morph like weather.

Clients don’t stop needing help. They start needing different help. Problems don’t vanish, they upgrade into new, weirder, scarier shapes.

Slow markets are just crowded markets where everyone stopped talking at once. Which means there’s suddenly more oxygen for the ones still breathing.

Separating the builders from the bunker-dwellers: When the environment changes, builders don’t fold. They mutate. Listening harder. Studying what’s breaking.

You gotta look for the “oh shit” moments inside your clients’ heads and run toward them while everyone else is guarding their lunch money.

You think it's optimism, but it's evolution.

Your offer isn’t carved in stone , it’s clay … re-shape it to serve the moment.

A “bad market” is not a crisis. It’s a diagnostic tool. It reveals who was riding the wave … and who can surf when the ocean’s angry. It shakes out the hobbyists. It rewards the ones who bother to stay in the water when the weather shifts.

You don’t grow in spite of slow markets. You grow because of them. Because when the world panics, attention gets cheap. When your competitors curl up, loyalty goes on sale.

When buyers get scared, they cling to the ones who actually show up with a plan.

The market isn’t bad. Your old strategy is. Thank God, because stale strategies deserve to die. Let the timid conserve their courage. Let the cautious take long naps. Let the “we’ll pick things back up later” crowd rehearse their comeback speeches … while you’re rewriting offers, solving the new problems, reallocating budgets, and planting seeds where the soil is suddenly wide open. Because slow markets aren’t a winter. They’re spring dressed as winter … waiting to see who still believes in growth.

And if you do the work now? You won’t just survive the storm. You’ll own the forecast when the sun comes back.

_________________________

 

Here are some responses to “Bad Market” concerns from your clients (courtesy of Jamie Brindle):

From the Client: We’re pausing all marketing until things pick up.  

Response: That’s when growth stalls for good. While others go quiet, let's build something that steals the attention they just gave up.

 

From the Client: Budgets are frozen right now.

Response: Understood. What’s still funded this quarter? Let’s align to that instead of waiting for the thaw.

 

From the Client: We just need to conserve cash.

Response: Then every dollar needs to perform. Let’s focus on the channels already producing and amplify what’s working.

 

From the Client: People just aren’t buying right now.

Response: They are. They’re buying from whoever helps them save, survive, or get leaner. Let’s reposition to speak to that.

 

From the Client: We’ll restart when the market rebounds.

Response: By then you'll be fighting every company who waited. Let’s build while they sleep so you’re ahead when the rebound hits.

 

From the Client: Maybe it’s just not the right time.

Response: Everyone in your industry is saying that. Which is exactly what makes this the right time.

 

From the Client: You really think we can grow right now?

Response: Absolutely. Slow markets concentrate opportunity ... but only for the ones still playing.

 

AI … What Happens After the Hype?

 

I keep seeing the same AI demos, just remixed. A model writes a poem, draws a picture, argues with confidence it hasn’t earned. It’s impressive in the way a street performer is impressive: crowd gathers, phones come out, everyone claps, then we all move on and forget the name.

That phase is fading.

The next phase of AI is less about imagination and more about infrastructure. Less “look what it can do” and more “can it run all day without breaking.” Power, memory, deployment … those unsexy words are starting to matter more than clever prompts and viral demos. The future isn’t being decided by who can make a chatbot sound the most human. It’s being decided by who can keep the lights on and the latency down.

You can feel the shift inside companies. The AI that actually survives doesn’t feel magical. It feels like software. It’s embedded into workflows, half-invisible, mildly annoying, and useful enough that no one wants to turn it off. Enterprises aren’t adopting AI because it’s inspiring. They’re adopting it because it saves time, reduces errors, and doesn’t call in sick.

This is where the romance drains out of the room. At scale, AI stops being a muse and starts being an appliance. And appliances live or die on reliability. Nobody brags about their dishwasher’s personality. They just want it to work every night without flooding the kitchen.

At the same time, AI is slipping out of the screen and into the physical world. Warehouses, factories, logistics … places where nobody cares about clever language but everyone cares about reliability. It’s less “humanoid robot walking like a toddler” and more “this machine never drops a box and never asks for a raise.” Quiet automation doing one task forever without complaining. Boring. Profitable. Real.

Who benefits? It won’t always the loudest AI brands or the ones with the best demos. Often it’s the companies doing the dull, foundational work: chips, power, data centers, deployment tools, integration layers. The ones who know where the breaker box is. When things flicker, suddenly they’re the most important people in the room.

And now the sorting begins. Winners and losers. Which is just another way of saying gravity is back. Not every model survives. Not every startup becomes a platform. Revenue, reliability, and maintenance matter again. The market has stopped being impressed by potential and started asking annoying adult questions.

This phase is less hype, more consequences. AI isn’t replacing imagination. It’s replacing chaos. Fewer fireworks. More wiring. That’s usually how technology actually changes the world: quietly, inconveniently, and all at once.

_________________________ 

NOTE: I’m still curious. I still think AI will reshape how we work, build, and automate the boring parts of life. But I’m no longer impressed by cleverness alone. Cleverness without infrastructure is a beautiful thought with no spine, collapsing the second it has to stand on its own.

Suggested Reading:

QUICK BRIEFING: Generative AI vs Agentic AI

Why Every Copywriter & Content Writer Needs an AI Usage Policy 

The Adolescence of Technology

Generative AI: TO BE (a tool) OR NOT TO BE (a tool)?

Don't Let AI Kill Your Analog Intelligence

Beverage Bucket

 

Dunkin' just launched a 48-ounce coffee bucket.

The Beverage Bucket (with a handle) is priced so you can hydrate like a suburban livestock animal on your morning commute and still pocket change from a 10-dollar bill.

"Beverage Bucket." The name grabbed my attention: “bucket.” Not “carafe.” Not “jug.” The word “bucket” used to imply utility. You got water from a well with it. Now it’s a lifestyle accessory.

We’ve skipped past “cup,” blown through “large,” laughed in the face of “extra large,” and landed squarely in hardware-store chic. What’s next? A kiddie pool of cold brew?

Oddly, however, calling it a bucket feels honest in a way that marketing rarely is. No artisanal backstory. No whisper about origin farms. Just aggressively honest. Like, yes, this is excessive. Here’s the handle. Commit.

I sort of get it. In an economy where everything feels smaller and more expensive, a bucket reads like a win. Look at all that abundance. It’s less a drink and more a declaration: “I will not be rationed.” It’s Costco energy in liquid form.

And in our social media driven world, a bucket fits the feed. It’s absurd enough to grab attention ... subtlety never goes viral. A sensible 12-ounce cup doesn’t stand a chance against a beverage container you could use to bail water out of a canoe.

Anyway, I’ll probably try one.

Not because I need 48 ounces of coffee. But because I want to see what it feels like to carry my morning around like construction equipment.

Sometimes you have to hold the absurdity in your own hand.

Preferably with a handle.

Prospect Participation

 

When writing, leave a little air in the room.

Because the moment your reader starts painting their own picture, the message stops being yours and becomes theirs.

And that’s when it sticks.

Your job is to sow the seeds. And then step back and let their brain do what it’s built to do.

Will my job exist in the future?

 

A fellow copywriter said something to me recently that stuck.

“We’re in a job that won’t exist in the future.”

She wasn’t being dramatic. She was being practical. Her reasoning boiled down to a simple question: who will care about great copy in the future?

At first, that sounds like heresy coming from inside the church. Copywriting is persuasion. Persuasion is timeless. Humans don’t suddenly stop responding to words.

But the longer I sat with it, the more I realized she wasn’t really talking about words. She was talking about where power will be coming from in the near future.

For most of advertising history, copy mattered because access mattered. If you controlled the message inside a limited set of media channels (TV, radio, print) you could shape perception. Great copy amplified that advantage.

But today, access is on its way to becoming infinite. We don’t have a media shortage problem. And that trend will continue. There are more outlets than anyone could possibly pay attention to. More brands publishing. More creators posting. More “content” than time. Audiences are becoming increasingly decentralized, fracturing into micro-communities, niches, group chats, and algorithmically-curated feeds.

And in that environment, traditional copy loses leverage.

Not because words don’t work, but because ownership of attention has shifted.

Influencers will continue to grow in power, carrying more trust than institutions. Already, word of mouth travels faster than campaigns: a single TikTok can out-deliver a million-dollar launch. And increasingly, AI summarizes, remixes, and reframes whatever you say.

Which brings us to the uncomfortable truth: great copy in traditional media can’t reposition/save a mediocre product anymore. In fact, it might not even get a chance to try.

Because what really moves the needle now is product quality experienced and shared. Increasingly, people aren’t discovering brands through ads as much as they are discovering them through other people. Through recommendations. Through screenshots. Through stories told without the brand’s permission. That’s where the real persuasion is settling in for the future.

And AI is accelerating this shift. It’s not just generating copy, it’s flattening it. When everyone can produce “good enough” words instantly, the value of words alone drops. The differentiator moves upstream. To the product. To the experience. To the story customers tell for you.

The Long Term View

So, does copywriting disappear?

No. But the role changes.

Copy stops being the hero and becomes the translator. The clarifier. The connective tissue between what a product actually does and how people actually talk about it.

The future copywriter isn’t a clever wordsmith hired to grab attention and ignite desire. They’re a strategist shaping narratives that already exist in the market … and making them easier to spread.

Great copy in the future won’t be about clever lines or viral hooks. It’ll be about:

• Understanding the customer better than the customer understands themselves
• Articulating truth so clearly it spreads
• Creating language people want to borrow, not avoid

So, the job doesn’t vanish. The illusion does. The illusion that persuasion starts at the headline. The illusion that marketing can out-run reality.

In the future, the best copy won’t convince people a product is good. It'll simply make it easier for people to notice that it already is.

The Short Term View

AI doesn’t kill this job. It exposes who never really had it.

AI can generate words. It can remix patterns. It can mimic tone.

What it can’t do -- at least not yet -- is decide what deserves to be said.

That decision still comes from judgment. From empathy. From strategy. From taste. And these have always been a scarce resources. Resources that strong, experienced copywriters know how to access.

So, for the time being … No, copywriting isn’t going away.

Creativity Loves Constraints

Freedom does not make you creative.

Freedom makes you distracted. Freedom makes you scroll. Freedom makes you open twelve tabs, rename the document “new_v4_final_final,” and wonder if maybe you should just go get another coffee before inspiration hits.

Christopher Nolan, the guy who can turn physics homework into cinema, once said,

“The highest form of creativity is found by improvising within a set of restrictions.”

Nir Eyal, the behavioral whisperer behind “Hooked,” backed him up from another angle:

“Too many choices or irrelevant options can cause hesitation, confusion, or worse -- abandonment.”

Combine those two and you’ve got the entire creative tragedy of modern marketing:

Option overwhelm crushes creativity, but constraints set it free.

The Tyranny of Infinite Choice

We’ve all sat in those brainstorms. Someone throws out an idea: “What if we…”  and before the sentence finishes, the whiteboard has twenty-seven more ideas scrawled randomly across its surface. Everyone nods. Everyone smiles. No one knows where to start.

You leave the room with ten campaigns, zero clarity, and a creeping sense that maybe “brand synergy” is the creative equivalent of beige paint.

Writers love to talk about “creative freedom,” but freedom without focus is chaos. Unlimited options don’t create genius. They create indecision. And indecision’s best friend is mediocrity. Because when everything is possible, nothing is essential.

Creativity Loves Constraints

A 30-second spot. A 120-character limit. A single idea that needs to land before someone’s thumb scrolls past it.

Restrictions aren't handcuffs. They’re scaffolding. They give your imagination something to push against.

Think of a haiku, 17 syllables. That’s it. Yet centuries later, we still feel something when we read about  Basho’s frog jumping into an old pond.

Think of a tweet that changed public opinion, or a six-word story that broke your heart.

Creativity thrives not despite limits, but because of them.

When you only have 50 characters for a headline, every letter matters. Every comma becomes a weapon. You become ruthless. Sharp. Dangerous.

That’s what great marketing writing is: the art of doing maximum damage with minimum words.

Option Overwhelm

Marketers love options.

“Let’s make ten versions of the campaign!”

“Let’s test all the CTAs!”

“Let’s brainstorm five hundred headlines and see what sticks!”

Translation: Let’s drown our clarity in a sea of possibilities.

Nir Eyal nailed it: too many choices paralyze people. That’s true for your audience, and it’s true for you. Too many directions and you freeze. Too many paths and you forget why you started walking.

Constraint, on the other hand, focuses the beam. You stop wandering and start aiming.

 

Relevance

The greatest weapon in a writer’s arsenal is not vocabulary, it’s discernment.

What to leave out.

What to cut.

What to refuse to say.

When the brief is tight, your writing gets sharper. Every line has to justify its oxygen. Every choice becomes deliberate. Limitation becomes liberation.

As a marketing writer, you’re not meant to explore every idea. You’re meant to choose one and make it unforgettable.

So …

The next time you get a brief with too many “maybes,” do the brave thing: cut them. Draw lines. Make rules. Put walls around your project  -- word count, tone, message, medium -- and then rage inside them. Push every inch of that boundary until it groans. That’s where originality lives. Not in endless possibility, but in deliberate constraint.

True creativity isn’t about having all the freedom in the world ... it’s about knowing exactly where the walls are …

… so you can blow the roof off.

Possibly the best blog post on qualifiers you'll ever read.

Qualifiers express doubt;
they leave your reader wondering
if you know what you're talking about.

This is OFTEN the best advice you’ll ever get on qualifiers.

This is USUALLY the best advice you’ll ever get on qualifiers.

This is PERHAPS the best advice you’ll ever get on qualifiers.

This is POSSIBLY the best advice you’ll ever get on qualifiers.

This is TYPICALLY the best advice you’ll ever get on qualifiers.

This is PROBABLY the best advice you’ll ever get on qualifiers.

This is GENERALLY the best advice you’ll ever get on qualifiers.

Eliminating qualifiers makes your writing more convincing.

_________________________

A quick qualifier about qualifiers: Of course, qualifiers can be mandated by Compliance and/or Legal departments …there are rules must be followed. And keep in mind that even in places qualifiers are not required, qualifiers are useful tools (when used sparingly and intentionally) to add an element of honesty to make claims accurate and credible.

A Peek at the Future of Marketing

 

There’s a certain flavor of panic you only see in marketing departments these days: the “oh God, AI is here and I’m supposed to pretend I know what I’m doing with it” kind.

You know the look: Eyes like saucers. Slack window open. Fingers hovering over a prompt box like it’s a bomb defusal device.

And then you read something like this from Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy and suddenly the room goes still:

“A recent MIT Media Lab report showed that 95% of GenAI initiatives fail.”

Ninety-five percent. The same number you’d expect if the strategy were “throw spaghetti at the algorithm and hope it becomes a landing page.”

But Ramsøy isn’t here to mock us. He’s here to hand us a map. And it’s surprisingly simple: stop treating generative AI like a magic trick and start treating it like part of a relay team.

His formula goes like this:

Predictive AI => Suggestive AI => Generative AI (Human still holding the baton, for now.)

Predictive AI is the one with its shirt tucked in. It’s the adult in the room. It can tell you instantly if that ad you’re about to ship is a hero or a hazard. “Good to go” or “needs fixing” in seconds.

Then comes Suggestive AI: the artsy cousin with actual taste. It pulls from neuroscience, psychology, and design patterns and says, “Look, here’s how to make this thing work.”

Finally, Generative AI takes those suggestions (grounded in science, not vibes) and spins up new creative assets. Predictive AI tests them again. The loop tightens. The work sharpens. The guesswork evaporates.

And here’s where Ramsøy hits the gas:

“This entire process now takes minutes, not days.
Campaign materials can go from no-go to launch-ready
in the time it takes to grab a coffee.”

Minutes!

Predictive => Suggestive => Generative

A trifecta. A choreography. A closed loop. A system.

Blizzard

 

By the time we stepped out of Washington DC’s Union Station last night, the blizzard had already been at work for a few hours. Snow came down hard and heavy. The kind that looks cinematic and inviting until you have to walk through it.

The roads around the station were mostly clear ... traffic had bullied the snow into submission. We grabbed an Uber without much trouble.

The city streets were unexpectedly busy. In the nation's capital even a blizzard can’t fully cancel the instinct to commute ... headlights glowing, brake lights blinking, snow reduced to wet grit by the sheer force of movement. But once we crossed into suburban Virginia, the mood shifted. The traffic thinned. The slush gave way to actual snow.

Even with the windshield wipers at full speed, visibility narrowed to a kind of soft white blindness. The world outside the windshield looked like an overexposed photograph. We could feel the tires crunch through fresh layers, that brittle, granular sound that says, “You are no longer in control.” Every so often the car would start to hydroplane before the tires found their footing again.

I kept waiting for the driver to say, “This is as far as I go. This is unsafe.” It would have been reasonable. Sensible, even. But he didn’t. Maybe there wasn’t anywhere decent to stop. Maybe he was young enough to be shielded by that sense of invulnerability that weakens with age and experience.

When we turned into our neighborhood, the car pressed the first tracks into snow that hadn’t yet been disturbed. When we reached our house and stepped out of the car, the cold was immediate, complimented by the muffled quiet that only heavy snowstorms manage. We thanked him. He told us to stay warm. We told him to drive safely.

Bags in hand, we trudged up the driveway, trying and failing to keep snow out of our inappropriate for the weather running shoes. I turned back just in time to see the white Toyota Corolla dissolve into the white curtain of falling snow. After it vanished, I could still hear the low hum of the engine and the steady crunch of tires on new snow long after sight had given up. I like to think he was headed home. Everyone should be, in weather like that.

AI Didn’t Kill Writing. It Killed the Illusion of Exclusivity.

 

Remember when marketing writing was a craft? A noble pursuit? A thing you earned with late nights wrangling ideas with swipe files and too much coffee?

Then, BAM: AI walked in, kicked the door off the hinges, dumped a stack of “pretty decent” drafts on the table, and said, “Hey folks, we’re all writers now.”

And now everybody is.

Your cousin. That kid bagging groceries. Some 18-year-old with half a beard and zero life experience (but a ChatGPT window open in three tabs). They're all pushing out content that’s -- let’s be honest here -- not brilliant, not Pulitzer-level, not “my God, this changed me.” But it’s good enough.

And “good enough” is the new nuclear weapon.

The Myth of the Missing Human Spirit

Professional writers, including me, defend this revolution by chanting: “AI has no soul. No emotional intelligence. No experiential context. No human touch.”

We don’t want to see that every person using AI actually does have those things. Maybe not enough to write copy or content that converts at an acceptable level, but at least enough of them to sprinkle over a draft like parsley on a plate of microwaved ravioli and call it a meal.

And Now the Market Floods

You’re not competing with AI. You’re competing with everyone AI just leveled up.

People who used to be shut out of the writing world? They’re here now. and they’re cheap. Some kid living at home can charge one-third of your rate and still feel like he’s crushing life. He’s not paying a mortgage. He’s paying for Red Bull and Wi-Fi.

Meanwhile, many seasoned writers are watching their careers quietly deflate like a sad parade balloon.

This isn’t a prediction. It’s happening. Right now. Right under our noses.

So What the Hell Do You Do?

You’ve got exactly two lanes:

1. Become a Machine With a Human Heart

Use AI. Use it hard. Use it fast. Become the writer who can produce in a day what used to take a week ... but with judgment, taste, experience, and that little thing AI (and many inexperienced writers) still can’t replicate: Discernment.

or

2. Serve the Clients Who Actually Care

There’s a small, precious slice of the world that still gives a damn about quality. That knows the difference between “fine” and “wow.” Those clients are your people. And we can hope that when the the landslide of "it all sounds alike" copy clears, this group will grow in numbers.

Everyone else? They’re shopping at the Content Dollar Store. And the middle, once home to millions of “pretty good” writers, is getting crushed like a soda can under a semi.

The New Reality

AI didn’t kill writing. It democratized it. Put it on tap. Made it available to everyone with a keyboard and a pulse.

And when something becomes abundant, it stops being expensive.

So no, the sky isn’t falling. But the ground is definitely shifting. And if you’re still standing still, you might not like where you end up.

_________________________

Some additional insight from veteran copywriters: 

Doug D’Anna:

CHAT-GPT … Sure, it can help you produce copy without much skill. Anyone can ask it to write a headline.

But it cannot install in your brain the mind’s eye that sees the available means of persuasion. It cannot train you to perceive the available arguments in every selling situation…

The bottom line here is this:  AI will bury the writers who never learn how to think.

But it will massively amplify the writers who do. 

Jordan Ring:

If you already can't write your way out of a paperbag...you definitely can't escape with help from AI. Good writers: AI is good news. Bad or lazy writers: buh bye.

Your Call Is Important to Us, Just Not Right Now

I called my dentist’s office yesterday, during business hours, to reschedule an appointment.

Instead of a human, I got Sally. Sally introduced herself as an AI assistant that works “alongside the team”. She was polite with the upbeat tone of someone who has never once had a cavity (or even a bad day). 

After gathering just enough information, she told me that someone would call me back … a fascinating bit of modern logic: I reached out at a moment that worked for me, and the system responded by promising a conversation at a moment that almost certainly won’t.

Maybe I’ll be in a meeting. Maybe I won’t recognize the number and let it drift into voicemail purgatory with the robocalls and extended warranty offers. Either way, the loop resets with a cheerful message asking me to call back ... and if I do, I will once again encounter Sally, the gatekeeper of deferred human contact.

It’s like trying to shake someone’s hand and being handed a coupon for a future handshake instead.

I get it. Efficiency. Optimization. Streamlining. Words that sound positive and intelligent until you notice they usually mean one side gets convenience and the other gets a maze. Businesses love efficiency, and maybe this is efficient … for them. Fewer interruptions. Less staff time. A tidy system humming along like a Roomba that occasionally eats a sock but we still call it progress.

From my end, however, it doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like we replaced a simple, human moment with a perfectly organized delay.

We keep dressing inconvenience up in futuristic clothing and calling it improvement. We polish the surface until it gleams, and then we stop asking whether the thing underneath actually got better. The shine becomes the argument.

I’m not anti-technology. I like talking maps, movies on airplanes, and the ability to look up Marx brothers trivia at two in the morning. But somewhere along the way, convenience stopped meaning easier for humans and started meaning easier to manage humans. Those are not the same thing.

A real receptionist might put me on hold, sigh a little, shuffle papers, maybe even mispronounce my name. Imperfect. Slightly inefficient. Entirely human. And somehow, in all that friction, the task would get done in about thirty seconds. No voicemail ping-pong. No polite robot promising phone tag.

Progress should feel like a door opening. Lately it feels like an elevator panel where every button leads back to the lobby.

Maybe this is inevitable. Every generation invents new ways to save time, then spends the savings explaining why everything takes longer. Maybe Sally is the future, smiling her frictionless smile while we press numbers and wait to be returned to ourselves.

Still, I can’t shake the suspicion we’ve confused motion with movement, activity with action.
Because if I call a dentist during business hours and can’t reschedule my appointment, I’m not sure the system is efficient.

I am, however, pretty sure that it’s very, very proud of itself.

The Unbearable Wordiness of Being (Now with AI Assistance)

Once upon a time, email was the necessary evil that allowed us to communicate with people we didn’t want to talk to, without the messy intimacy of a phone call. It was quick, efficient, and blessedly ignorable. You could respond to your boss’s 800-word memo with a single, blessed “Sounds good.” You could “circle back” or “loop in” with minimal damage to your soul.

But now we have AI. And suddenly, every exchange feels like it’s being ghostwritten by the collective spirit of Emily Post and HAL 9000.

Are you excited for your coworkers to become way more verbose? To see every terse acknowledgment balloon into a novella dripping with artificial sincerity?

That “Sure thing” that once took three seconds to type will now arrive as:

“Absolutely, Scott! I couldn’t agree more with your insightful perspective on the Q3 outreach initiative. Your leadership continues to inspire not just results, but meaning.”

And oh, the joy of the inbox! Because who doesn’t want to live in a world where every small business owner, club organizer, and slightly unhinged neighbor can now generate sleek, hyper-personalized marketing copy at the push of a button?

The same algorithm that writes customer engagement emails for Fortune 500 brands is now helping your local lawn-care guy send out:

“Dear Valued Community Member, We here at Steve’s Turf Emporium appreciate the deep roots we’ve grown together.”

You used to be able to spot a spammer by the mangled syntax and questionable punctuation. Now you’ll be deleting messages that read like TED Talks.

And let’s talk about emotion. Remember when sincerity had that lovely, flawed human awkwardness? When you could tell your friend meant well, even if his condolence email read like it was typed through tears and misspellings?

Now you get to wonder if he wrote it himself or if he just clicked “Generate Message: Empathetic Tone.”

“Your loss is unimaginable, but please know that your strength in this difficult time is a beacon to us all.”

Lovely, touching ... and entirely machine-made.

We’ve entered the uncanny valley of correspondence, folks. The messages are smoother, the grammar impeccable, the tone perfectly calibrated. And yet, somehow, every word feels like it was written by someone who doesn’t quite mean it.

The worst part? The machines didn’t steal our humanity ... we handed it to them, neatly formatted, with a polite closing line and an optional P.S.

So yes, AI and email together are the ultimate productivity duo. We can all now communicate faster, better, longer, and with precisely the same amount of emptiness.

Sent from my AI.

Valentine's Day Rant

 

Valentine’s Day, oh Valentine’s Day: the holiday that convinces the world that love can be packaged in red wrapping, chocolate, and slightly awkward greeting cards.

Every commercial screams, “Show your love like never before!” But what does that mean? Send flowers? Buy overpriced jewelry? Present chalky candy hearts with goofy messages?

And chocolate. The ads imply that buying a heart-shaped box automatically turns you into a romantic genius. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. I can buy a chocolate heart the size of a small moon, but if I forget if you prefer dark chocolate over milk chocolate, congratulations ... you’re now emotionally traumatized.

Then there’s dinner. Every restaurant ad shows candlelit perfection: soft music, laughter, clinking glasses. Not me. I sit in reality trying to get a reservation, navigating menus I can’t pronounce, and praying the dessert doesn’t come with a “romantic” sparkler that sets off the smoke alarm.

And let’s not forget the singles. Oh, the singles-targeted ads. “You deserve love too!” they whisper, while simultaneously suggesting that self-love can be purchased in candle sets, bath bombs, or a subscription box of existential reassurance.

Valentine’s Day: where marketers make billions convincing humans that love is a product, chocolate is a solution, and social media likes are evidence of affection.