As a marketer and a writer, reading marketing content that obviously came from ChatGPT or Claude can feel physically painful, or viscerally gross.
It’s like pre-chewed gum. It’s technically still gum, but all the flavour is gone.
Which is a problem, because marketing requires novelty, newness, and freshness if it’s going to be memorable.
And the biggest tell that someone’s using AI to churn out their marketing are lists and processes that feel too slick and too smooth.
Like, if a step-by-step process is coherent, consistent, and absolutely seamless, it’s probably never been actually practiced.
Because the real world, and real clients, have edges and outliers that real processes and real marketing account for. But ChatGPT doesn’t.
A real process can be reverse engineered back to the real client that inspired it. Every step can be traced back to the client that required it.
As an example, one of our clients once told us, “You helped me stop spinning around in circles, and walk forward in a straight line.”
This client had invested tens of thousands of dollars with another marketing partner with nothing to show for it but frustration.
And when we presented our first positioning draft to her, she said, “This makes me want to throw up.”
Because it was real, workable, and absolutely wrong for her.
So we changed it, and we changed our process to try to get to that point, that reaction. The thing that tells us what isn’t working so we can figure out what will.
That burr, that edge, that interaction with reality is what AI can’t give you. Not yet, at least, and maybe, just maybe, not ever.
So when you ask ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini for marketing advice, marketing language, marketing content, marketing whatever, you’re asking them to guess, to rehash, to regurgitate what someone else said about marketing before.
Because ChatGPT wasn’t there when anything happened.
Talking to a chatbot is like putting your tongue on a battery and thinking you’re using electricity.
The power is in what you do with it, not in ingesting it.
And the power of marketing is in making something new, not something someone’s already chewed.
Because the best marketing advice you can get doesn’t come from AI, no matter the model.
It comes from your clients and the real world they reside in.
Kelford Inc. is the marketing team that’s never at a loss for words. If you’re struggling with what to say and where to say it to attract ideal clients, we’ll show you the way.