"Show your workings."
You might remember that from maths lessons at school. I still hear it in the voice of my old maths teacher. It's a decent rule for writing in the age of AI too.
AI can write. It can summarise. It can come up with ideas. It can produce more content in five minutes than most people could in five days. Impressive, yes. It also creates a new problem. When everyone can produce content instantly, the rare thing is human judgement, and that changes things for anyone who communicates for a living.
The flood of words
Executives, customers, readers and audiences all face the same problem: too much to read, too much to process, too much noise.
Copywriting legend Drayton Bird once pointed out that leaders face mountains of words every day, and unless writing is well put together, communication simply fails. He said that long before AI. Today anyone can produce articles, emails, presentations, scripts and posts almost instantly, so the volume has exploded and attention is even harder to come by.
AI makes content cheaper to produce, and it makes it harder to stand out. If a machine can produce something acceptable, acceptable stops being worth much.
Think about what happens whenever a new technology becomes widely available. Email used to stand out, and now inboxes are crowded. Social media once gave you reach, and now algorithms filter almost everything. AI will go the same way. The moment everyone has the same tools, the advantage moves back to the person behind the message.
Over the years I've been lucky enough to spend time with some of the best minds in marketing. Some lesser-known geniuses, and people like Rory Sutherland, Russell Brunson and Drayton Bird. Different styles, different personalities, different ways of thinking. None of them sounds like software. What stands out every time is their personality, their emotion and their point of view, and you can't get that from a prompt.
Salesmanship in print
Claude Hopkins described advertising as salesmanship in print. It's a simple definition, and a good one. Selling is a conversation. You have to understand the other person's needs, fears, ambitions and desires, which takes empathy and judgement. Technology can deliver a message faster. The thinking that makes it mean something still has to come from somebody.
Information is everywhere. What people respond to is relevance: a message that feels like it was written for them. So understand the person you're speaking to before you write anything. What you do before the writing often matters more than the writing.
Machines can produce sentences, but people buy from people they believe. And trust comes from signs that there's a real person there: personal stories, honesty that isn't polished, strong opinions, real experience, a voice of your own and behaviour that stays consistent. A machine can copy a tone of voice. It hasn't lived anything.
Think about music. Streaming gave us unlimited choice, and people still travel across countries to watch musicians play live. Why? Because live feels human. When the world fills up with synthetic content, people start looking for the real thing.
Brand works the same way. Plenty of businesses think it comes from design, slogans or advertising campaigns. I think it builds up from small things over time. How your emails sound. How you handle problems. How you treat people. How honestly you talk. You can't fake that in a single campaign. It shows up through consistency.
How to be remarkably human
If you want to stand out in a world full of AI content, put your effort into the things machines struggle with.
Share real stories. Actual moments. Things that went wrong. Mistakes and hard lessons. Polished case studies all sound alike, and people recognise lived experience straight away.
Speak like a person. Corporate language hides personality, and personality is what people remember. Simple, direct language works.
Have an opinion. AI tends to average things out. People pick a side. You don't need to be controversial for the sake of it. Just be willing to say what you believe.
Show your workings. People trust a conclusion more when they can see how you got there. Explain how you reached an idea. Let people see the thinking.
Invite conversation. A good message starts a conversation. Questions help, stories help, curiosity helps.
A quick check before you publish
Especially when you've had an AI tool helping with the writing, I'd ask yourself a few things before anything goes out.
Did this come from experience, or just information? AI is very good at summarising what's known. You're the one with experiences. Did you include something you've actually seen, or learned the hard way? If not, add one.
Could anyone who does roughly what you do have written this? If so, add something that's only yours: a story, a moment, a belief, something you've noticed that nobody else has.
Does it sound like how you actually speak? Plenty of people write in a way they never talk, and it puts distance between them and the reader. Read it out loud. If a sentence feels odd when you say it, simplify it.
Did you say something real? AI tends to sit on the fence. Take a stance, or challenge something people assume is true.
Is it too polished? One strange thing about AI writing is that it's often too perfect, and perfect feels artificial. A slightly unusual phrase or your own rhythm tells people a person wrote it.
And did you write it for one person? Picture one business owner, one client or one reader. Would this help them think differently? If you'd never say it to them in a real conversation, rewrite it.
My maths teacher was right, as it turns out. Show your workings.
