Done > Perfect: Why AI Slop Isn’t Our Biggest Problem
“BRO YOU GOTTA SEE THIS!”
Years ago my friend sent me a website for a brand who was selling hand-made leather goods from another county.
Wallets. Keychains. Coasters.
It was one of those "Help these people in a 3rd world country make a living by purchasing these hand-made items!"
At first I thought, "COOL!"
But then he pointed something out...
“Look closely…” he said as we scrolled the products together.
The leather stitching on the wallets looked like it was falling apart.
One of the keychains clearly had a button missing.
The irony we experienced was as thick as the “coasters” that looked more like pieces of bread you could purchase for $40 a set.
And my friend said something we still laugh about to this day...
“They should call this Hand-Made by Idiots.”
😂
I’ve been selling creative work since 2009.
I’ve sold t-shirts to Warped Tour and Brand Strategies to Enterprises.
As we descend deeper into the era of AI-Generated-EVERYTHING we have to hold fast to ONE truth about creative work that I believe has the power to preserve our businesses, marketing departments, and brands…
And that’s our POV on…
What Makes Creative Work Actually Good!
Just because you can make something, doesn’t mean it will be affective. Oh you, made a landing page in Framer. Does it convert? Oh you used photoshop to edit a photo. Does it suck?
When you say that you “make websites” or design brand identities or take photos, your prospects are all thinking the same thing: “But is what you make any GOOD?”
The same goes for in-house teams and businesses. “We had our marketing leader make all the sales decks with AI.” Yes, great…you saved money.
BUT ARE THEY GOOD?
WILL THEY WORK!?
My fear with AI, and all the other creative tools that are now more easily available to the masses than ever before is that our access to creativity in this unprecidented and mass democratization of creative tools is that we have fallen in love with the ability to “make” something while simultaneously losing the regard to measure whether or not it will be affective.
This truth goes for in-house marketing teams who are going to try to make their own stuff with AI to save money, as well as creatives who want to take over the world with their skills.
The same thing is happening at the highest enterprise levels with other kinds of AI, not just generated stuff. Businesses are feeling the pressure to cut cost, and are spending millions on pilots to “try stuff” with AI just because they can. Those pilots are resulting in absolutely nothing being actually put into production and it’s happening across major industries like healthcare and others.
Which leads me to my point:
It doesn’t matter IF you can make a thing.
What matters is whether or not the THING is affective.
Remember, you and me, we are NOT “making art.”
Creative services are a service. And that service needs to solve the client’s or the business’s problem who needs the creativity.
My friend who works in the D2C funnel building space said that right now she is getting pulled in to fix a bunch of marketing funnels where someone paid an AI expert a low dollar amount to build out all their email automations that go out to customers. The emails get written. The emails get sent. Boom. AI does it all with this expert in the loop. It appears as though everything works.
But that’s the problem… No ONE is reading the emails. No one is clicking “BUY.”
So my friend is now getting calls to come in as a writer and an seasoned veteran in these kinds of funnels to tear down and re-build everything the “expert” delivered. To find out why people aren’t clicking. To optimize and follow best practices to get people to do the one thing that matters…
BUY THE STUFF.
The best thing you, or me, or any leader can give a team (If they’re going to be forced to use AI to preserve budget) isn’t more tokens and a tighter timeline…
It’s a POV on what makes something GOOD. What makes something affective.
This is so much more than taste. This is so much more than having a standard for aesthetic quality. It’s about an all-encompassing philosophy on what makes some form of creative work either move a business closer to a goal or not.
What makes a brand identity actually WORK?
What makes an AI-generated landing page convert?
What kind of photo above the fold will cause someone to keep scrolling?
What makes a slide deck pieced together with a few prompts and the LLM of your choosing actually make a buyer want to see a proposal?
What makes an email campaign make someone want to download the case study?
I got an email three months ago…
“I paid $300 for this brand identity…but I don’t like it. Tell me what’s missing?” The email said.
He knows me. My team charges 75K, minimum, for this work so he knew I would have the feedback he was unable to put language to.
I knew within ten seconds of looking.
No story or spine in the messaging to connect it all.
The logo wasn’t scalable. It was cool..but would never work printed on anything small
No humans in the image gallery. Big NO for a brand that helps humans.
Stock fonts. Free to use. No hierarchy guidelines for how to use any of them on web.
The whole thing looked like it was thrown together with no care, no personality, and had nothing to do with the AI tool he was building.
I could go on and on. Perhaps he just got what he paid for, but to me it was a michrocosm of what’s happening everywhere.
We are equating the ability to make with the value of the made thing being affective.
“It’s a hand made wallet so you should buy it. Cuz it’s hand-made!”
Maybe it’s just because some of us care too much. Maybe it’s because we place too much value on the stuff we have formed our careers around.
But I think it’s bigger than that.
I don’t think this is merely a done > perfect problem. I am all for speed. Our team is using AI to crank out hundreds of deliverables per week for our clients. But the stuff WORKS. And we know why it all works.
The danger we are in is bigger.
I think we are in danger of sacrificing done on the altar of “Look I made a thing…” which isn’t a new problem.
AI didn’t create this issue, it just amplified it by giving everyone, their cousins, and their mother-in-laws access to bad taste.
This is deeper than taste. It’s about effectiveness. It’s about making a good investment and getting a GREAT return.
And the only way you can get a return out of ANY creative work, isn’t by whether or not it “gets done” but by whether or not the person or the team delivering it has a POV on why it’s good, why it will work, and why it will be affective.
Otherwise we’re all just selling wallets and coasters that look like they were made by, well… you get it.
For the love of humanity,
BT
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