We Got Good Antennae
Yeah, so Noah Hoffenberg, a top talent at the Republican called and asked if I’d do a column for the paper’s annual Outlook section. If you didn’t see it, this is the piece that ran in last Sunday’s paper and later went up on MassLive.
I had to tone down my wise guy lingo a bit, but what the hey. I think you’ll get a kick out of it. Keep your dukes up .
Hey, so around five years ago, right at the start of the COVID lockdown, I started sending out an off-the-cuff email every Friday to a list of friends and clients. I called it “Keep Your Dukes Up” because I wanted it to be upbeat and optimistic at a time when everything was going wacknuts. I didn’t think that I’d still be writing them today, but every week I look forward to the back and forth I have with the people who read it.
It's unusual to get an email from an ad guy who’s not trying to sell you anything. But I think the main reason these ditties connect with the people who keep reading them every week is that there’s a real human being on the other end of the line. Whether you know it or not, most of what appears in your email box is generated by AI, not a real person. Even a lot of the actual voices you hear in radio and TV spots now are AI generated. Now, I ain’t the smartest guy on the block. It took me six years at five different schools to earn my high school diploma. But I know how to tell a story with some humor and heart. AI ain’t got no soul, kiddo.
AI is doing lots of great things in science, medicine, tech, and lots of other fields. But when it comes to real creativity, which is what good advertising is all about, AI ain’t got it. Not yet, anyway. Sure, we use it sometimes for boilerplate content and research and basic design things, and once in a while as a joke we’ll ask it to come up with a headline or a compelling piece of copy. It strikes out every time. What it comes down to is this: If you want generic content, use AI. If you want engaging storytelling, use a real human.
I know there’s no way to defeat AI. It’s coming for all of us. They’ll tell you it’s about efficiency, but what they really mean is it’s about the buck. It’s like getting your products made in China. The more people do it, the harder it is to compete. Soon we’ll be paying a premium for a Created By A Human product the same way we do for Made In America.
When they asked my old buddy Jack Connors, founder of the ad agency Hill Holliday, about advertising today he said most of it is bad because creatives have been devalued. Why get a professional photographer? Just shoot it on your phone. Need voiceover on your TV spot? No one will notice if it’s a robot talking. At my agency, we’re fighting the good fight. We use real designers and voiceover artists and cinematographers. We write our own headlines and come up with our own creative strategies. If we use AI once in a while, it’s only a minor tool. But we swing the hammer, the hammer doesn’t swing us.
There are lots of good signs out there that people are hungry for real human connection. The success of longform podcasts, the resurgence of things like vinyl records and old school technology. There’s a new print-only newspaper called County Highway that I’m a big fan of. In the ad game there are more opportunities than ever to help our clients stand out with bold, original ideas in a sea of dull content. And there are goofballs like me out here trying to buck the system.
Keep your dukes up.
If you know someone who’d like these ditties in their inbox every week, have ‘em shoot us an email at darbyo@darbyobrien.com and we’ll add ‘em to the list.