AI Didn’t Kill Copywriting, Indifference Did

Over the last year, I've been seeing a disturbing pattern, and I'm tired of being quiet about it and just watching it happen.

In the stampede to integrate AI into everything, a lot of CEOs and other decision-makers have forgotten when great copy actually sounds like. They feed half-baked prompts into AI, get a barely-passable headline or paragraph back, and call it a day (looking at you, McDonalds).

I'm not wringing my hands over here because AI wrote it. What's scarier to me is that no one cares enough to notice the difference anymore.

Most decision-makers have forgotten how to tell great copy from mediocre copy (or even decent copy from pure filler) because they haven't read something that has made them feel or react in years.

They're over here optimizing dashboards and chasing conversion uplift instead of making connections, but you wanna know what the irony of all that is?

Connection is the very thing that drives that conversion uplift in the first place!

Yes, optimization and dashboards matter. But they only tell part of the story. They tell you what worked, and not why it worked.

A Matter of Taste

There was a time when leaders could spot a great line from a mile away. They knew when words had weight. They trusted their copywriters to know when something felt off, even if the leader themselves couldn't explain why.

Now, too many are disconnected from that instinct. They read to approve, not feel. Copy becomes a deliverable and not a dialogue.

But there's the rub, isn't it?

Because making people feel something would take longer, and we need to ship this out yesterday before our competitors beat us to it. Sitting with the words, maybe even changing them, well, that might be risky...too risky. Dashboards can't predict that kind of risk. Let's not go there.

Data and connection aren't enemies, and they were never meant to be.

Data shows you what connects, and copy is what creates that connection in the first place. You're flying blind without data, but without empathy, you're spouting the same old corp-speak as everyone else, hoping maybe this time it will be different.

What "Good Enough" Is Really Costing You

When you settle for "good enough", you're losing both tone and traction. No one bothers to remember a brand that sounds like everyone else, because that brand didn't take the time to bother to remember them.

The best-performing copy always has human fingerprints on it. Sticky and slightly smudged, imperfect but real. You can't prompt that into existence. You have to earn it.

So what's the fix?

I'm not saying "ban AI" or "burn the dashboards" -- not at all. AI can help you write. Data can guide you by showing you what works, but neither of those can decide what matters.

That's your job.

If you're a leader reading this, don't just approve copy because it sounds professional.

Sit with it. Does it make you feel something? Does it move you? Would it move you to buy, trust or believe?

The brands that will win after the AI dust has settled aren't the ones with the fastest prompts or the prettiest dashboards, but the ones who have the guts to care about words again -- because words move people, and people move metrics.