by Brian Schlick
Founder, Video & Content Strategist at SchlickArt
Over the last year, it feels like every business has been trying to figure out where AI belongs in their marketing.
I mean…AI is useful. It can help you brainstorm. It can organize your thoughts. It can summarize information, challenge an idea, clean up a messy outline, and it can help create an analytics report that used to take hours of research. I mean hell, it can build a full slide deck in 15 minutes that used to eat up half a day.
At SchlickArt we use it, literally every day.
But lately, I’ve been noticing something in the content I see from businesses in our community AND EVEN, at times, in our own marketing.
A lot of it is starting to sound the same. But the tricky part is, it’s not necessarily bad.
It sounds polished. Professional. Thoughtful, even. But sometimes it has that overly-marketed feeling. The kind of language that looks good on paper but doesn’t sound like something a real person would actually say to a client sitting across from them.
Words like “empower.”
“Unlock.”
“Elevate.”
“Move the needle.”
None of those words are wrong. We’ve used them. (Lindsay loves to "move the needle.") And plenty of good businesses have used them.
But when every business starts using the same phrases, the same rhythm and the same polished-but-vague ideas, the personality gets lost.
And when your personality gets lost, trust starts to fade.
I don’t think AI is the enemy of good marketing.
But I do think it has created a very easy trap.
AI can give you words. But it can’t tell when those words feel fake.
That's why one of the best things you can do right now is make sure your marketing has as much of YOU in it as possible.
Your perspective. Your values. Your way of explaining things. Your way of talking to the people you actually care about helping.
That’s the part your audience needs from you. And that's also the part AI needs from you, too.
Because once you understand how your personality shows up in your marketing, you can give AI better direction and edit your voice back in.
You become the final word.
Not sure how to show your personality in marketing? It doesn’t mean you have to be funny, loud, overly personal or over-the-top. But it's not always as easy as it sounds either. In the full blog, we break down the difference between personality and performance in the age of AI marketing.
Originally published by SchlickArt, a Santa Clarita-based marketing agency serving professional service organizations, growing businesses and personal brands.