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The demand for creativity in advertising
I’m re-reading Breakthrough Advertising by Gene Schwartz. And right there in the introduction, he shares why over-reliance on AI for your writing will keep your copywriting mediocre.
Of course, AI didn’t exist when he wrote the book.
But if you keep reading I think you’ll see what I mean.
First, in order to understand the context, here’s what he shares that you’ll learn once you peak inside:
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“How to write a headline — and an ad that follows it — that will open up an entirely new market for its product
…an add that will give a new product immediate profit
…that will give an old product a brand new slant
…that will give a competitively battered product a new weapon — not only to protect itself against it’s imitators but to actually damage or destroy (his words not mine) the loyalty of their following.”
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I’m not totally sold on that last bit, but I do believe it is important to differentiate yourself from the next purveyor of similar products and services.
Anyway, then he whips out this little gem (it’s worth picking up a pen and piece of paper for this one so you can write it down and revisit it later):
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“These objectives cannot be achieved by following somebody else’s formula — no matter how successful it was for them. They demand creativity. They demand a brand new headline; a brand new approach to the market; a literal advertising ‘breakthrough.’ Hence the title of this book.”
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Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t use AI in your writing And I’m not saying saying that AI can’t help you be a better writer, or that it can’t help you generate breakthrough copy.
But on it’s own… never.
AI is very capable of putting together good sentences. However, because of what “breakthrough” copy actually requires, AI on it’s own simply can’t do it.
Breakthroughs come from refusing somebody else’s formula.
AI is, structurally, a formula-follower. It generates content by pattern-matching across what already exists and what already has worked. It can’t have a genuinely new observation about a market it has never touched, a customer it has never talked to, or a frustration it has never lived.
That’s one of the reason’s I write these daily emails.
It keeps my writing fresh. In the game. Always on the cusp of some new breakthrough as my subconscious mind explores the interconnectedness of every single thing in the entire universe.
Because that’s where breakthrough copy resides.
AI is fabulous at grammar, formatting, research, verification, syntax, clarifying the garbled run-on sentences that string together new ideas in that human messy way that needs clarity and refinement over time.
But one of the best ways, as far as I’m concerned, to write better emails, is to just start letting things flow. In that messy, natural, human kind of way.
And you can learn a bit more about how to do that by following this link inside the Email Sanctuary:
See you there,
Kevin Hood