AI Didn’t Create Your Slop Problem (But It Could Fix It)
Brand slop existed before GenAI showed up.
It’s convenient to blame Claude and ChatGPT. (ChatGPT might say “That’s a great insight!”)
But brand distinctiveness and differentiation were already in decline due to digital’s insatiable demand for marketing content in ever-greater quantities, coupled with increased business aversion to risk.
My colleague Larry Black memorably dubbed the slop situation an “[Entry Link: ocean of sameness]”: brands clustering around “safe, familiar messaging.”
And then came AI, which industrialized mediocrity. Because large language models trained on the least common denominator will dutifully reproduce it: slop at scale.
But here’s the good news: You can redirect AI and turn its massive power to your advantage. Here’s how:
- Use AI as a mirror. Start by seeing your content the way your audience does. Use AI to surface patterns — tone, topics, repetition, emotional flatlines — that have crept in over time. You’re not asking it to write; you’re asking it to diagnose. Feed it examples of your content and ask: What other brand can say this? If the answer is your competitors, well: You’ve got slop!
- Connect AI to your real strategy. As they say: Generic in, generic out. Ground your AI in the truth of your brand – your strategy, tone, value you bring your audience. By aligning models to real brand data – positioning, messaging frameworks, voice, and customer insights – we can transform AI from a content machine into a relevance engine. That’s how you scale distinctiveness, not just efficiency.
- Insert a “slop filter” into your process. AI can help you produce content faster. It can also recognize problems faster. Set quality controls that evaluate each idea, draft or campaign against brand criteria: clarity, tone, usefulness, distinctiveness. And keep humans involved at critical decision points. Think of it as brand QA for the AI age: your system doesn’t just make content; it protects what makes it yours.
- Reward distinctiveness, not velocity. You can automate content production. You can’t automate resonance. Shift your metrics from volume to value — measure whether audiences recognize, remember, and engage. That’s how you keep your brand from dissolving into the sea of “good enough.”
In the end, AI didn’t create your slop problem. It just made it obvious. So let AI help fix it. After all, your goal isn’t to make more content. It’s to make content that sounds more like you.