Brands gone bland
The constipated corporate robot taking over
I had a juicy piece ready to go all about critical thinking, but I’m having to switch gears and write about ChatGPT (everyone’s favourite topic). I feel as though I haven’t been able to escape it the last couple of weeks — Business Insider calls it slopaganda lol — and it’s driving me hella mad. And no, not because I think it’s going to take my job.
A quick note to apologise for not sending anything out in a couple weeks. Like many others I’m sure, I’m struggling with the news cycle and trying to find meaning with my work when the world is in the state it’s in. It’s terrifying and triggering. I’m planning a few more lighthearted pieces to level out the hot takes, so if there’s anything in particular you’d love to read, please do let me know.
Like most other writers, I’ve got a lot to say about LLMs/AI/Gemini/ChatGPT/whatever you wana call it. Unlike a lot of the chatter on Linkedin, I don’t fear that AI will ‘take my job’ and I’m not finding myself any less busy because of it — I could even say the opposite. However, I do feel like the brands using it at the moment aren’t cognisant of how silly/stupid/lazy it’s making them look.
A couple weeks ago, I posted on Linkedin (I know I know, we all hate Linkedin but it’s where I get some of my best work projects, so let a girl live) about beauty brands — predominantly startups — using AI for every single one of their social captions.
It got more attention than I’d expected, but I’m not entirely surprised so I wanted to see if I could go a bit more into the conversation over here. Using entirely AI-generated content is rife in the beauty industry right now. And there are a few issues with this.
First, I want to talk about why AI-generated content with sloppy prompts sound so effing bad.
It’s not just X, it’s Y
People equate formulaic writing that’s free from mistakes as ‘good’ writing. LLMs are designed to identify patterns, currently with little understanding of how words flow. It doesn’t pick at words in the same way humans do. Like when you’re stuck on a particular sentence or paragraph and you have to fit the puzzle pieces back together until it clicks. Writing is more like a poem, even the technical boring stuff. Long sentences have the ability to keep the reader engaged, make them concentrate just that little bit harder and add those extra meaty details. Short ones keep us hooked. The snappy make-a-point-and-make-it-quick ones only work when they’re blended with long-uns. When words become a predictable pattern, they’re no longer interesting — and that’s exactly what’s happening.
This is also how words are used to sell. People don’t buy stuff because the language was technically perfect.
“In 2026, brands aren’t just writing copy, they’re crafting it.”
“It’s not just a trend, it’s transformation.”
“Too many products, too much stress, too little care.”
This is taken from an email I got. Overuse of the rule of three.
“There’s a major cultural shift happening.”
Over-explaining without ever proving the damn point.
Lists, lists and more bloody lists. We’re going to see more of this too, with ‘chunk’ content getting more important for ranking on SEO and GEO.
Formalising topics that needn’t be formalised. If I’m being pitched by an agency about a brand’s new eyeshadow palette, I don’t need ‘key takeaways’ or a ‘bottom line’ to conclude. On that same point, using words you’d never say out loud.
“The fix?” “The solution?”
This one hurts. I love a rhetorical question, even if they’re a tell of lazy writing.
The ‘quiet’ rise of something
My unofficial colleague and extra limb, Lucy from Lacquered, pointed out the ‘quiet’ overuse, and I’ve no idea how I hadn’t spotted it before.
There are many more, but for all of our sakes, I’ll stop there.
I know that I’m far from the best writer. Writing, actually, was never my strong suit, but I was bursting with ideas. You can teach someone to write, but you can’t teach them honesty, creativity and personality. That’s what makes me a writer; and being imperfect is what keeps people coming back for more.
The churn and burn is back, but it’s no longer beauty assistants doing it
Working through the churn and burn era (CABE™️) of digital content was humbling. We got to a place where substance was finally prioritised over speed. Now, I fear we’re entering CABE™️ again, but this time it’s back with the personality of an old tupperware lid.
Seeing a platform that I loved reading a few years ago now become a masterclass in AI churned content is genuinely very sad. Scrolling through the home page recently, I initially thought: ‘wowee so impressive they’re investing in their content good for them’. It took me all of about 5 seconds to scan the first article and realise that from start to finish, from ideation to hitting publish, it was AI written. A beautiful platform now a constipated corporate-sounding robot; it’s really disappointing, especially given it’s literally a content platform.
It’s not just brands, either unfortunately. I follow copywriters who are pretty big in the game and their whole Substacks/Linkedin articles appear to be heavily influenced/written by AI.
Humans do not want more, they want better (guys, that sounds like it could be AI ffs).
Convenience over connection is going to be the death of the beauty boom if we’re not careful.
But hope is on the horizon. I’m already seeing the impacts of businesses realising AI used as the entire lifecycle of content isn’t giving them the ROI they thought it would. Business Insider published “The hottest job in tech: Writing words” this week. Finally, people are realising that words are communication and communication is connection, and a system designed to spot and regurgitate patterns ain’t the golden ticket to sales.
As the story points to, storytellers are in high demand. Even from my work, I’m getting way more requests and work as a ghostwriter or general storyteller of a brand than ever before. One of the main reasons I’m being contacted “because you’re one of the only writers I trust that doesn’t use AI”. Marketing is the business of psychology, not perfectly predictable words - don’tcha know.
In the piece, Cristin Culver, founder of Common Thread Communications said: “If everyone’s a writer, then nobody’s a writer.”
Democratising writing for founders?
Being able to write clearly and coherently is a life skill that not everyone has access to. LLMs have enabled people to edit and organise their thoughts in a way that might not have been possible before. I’m wary of saying it’s democratised being a writer. There’s a whole argument to have there about the craft of writing, passive dependency on it and one’s ability to write prompts (which in itself is a skill) proving a ‘writing gap’ before anything has even been produced. But, it’s important to recognise that writing well is a massive privilege and having help doing so lowers a barrier of entry — which is even the case for brand founders and start-ups.
For legacy brands (i.e. beauty brands with a lotta money), I believe there’s no excuse to use entirely AI-generated words for consumer-facing content. If you have a junior team member who isn’t a strong writer yet feels the pressure to produce copy quickly, and therefore uses AI, get them some training. Typically, it’s a confidence issue, not a technical one.
I’ve been hired by multiple agencies to help their staff feel more confident writing and pitching. It’s not expensive and doesn’t take a lot of effort. In fact, it’s far cheaper to bring in some writing training than get ignored by dozens of journalists (and subsequently not get coverage) when they spot the pitches are entirely the work of chatters.
Writing aside, it’s fair to say that LLMs are doing incredible things in so many other areas. Like identifying patterns in medicine, helping streamline admin for healthcare professionals and enabling people to gain access to information where there may have been accessibility barriers. In the life cycle of writing though, we’ve got work to do.
Death by a thousand AI quotes
After a few conversations recently, I’ve realised that many people in the beauty industry are innocently using AI in their work and not spotting its shortcomings.
For example, being used to fact-check work or ‘clean up’ quotes from an expert for us journalists to use in our articles. Until recently, I (evidently naively) didn’t realise how often this was happening. This is bad for a number of reasons.
A journalist publishing quotes that were made up can get us in a lot of trouble — obviously! I would imagine that it rarely gets to the stage of being published because we (and the meticulous copy editors we work alongside) are trained to spot BS when we see it, but the fact a lot of experts and PRs don’t care about that is worrying. If you can’t give press quotes without using ChatGPT, you shouldn’t say yes to the quote request, end of.
It’s going to strip any authenticity and originality they have. For the most part, journalists know the answers to the questions they’re asking experts. The whole idea is to weave storytelling into the piece for the readers. To add credibility and real-world experience from the authority who knows best. A big part of this is keeping specific tidbits, personal experiences and insights that often come through from particular sentence structures or parts of the copy that might seem like they’re ‘going off on a tangent’. These tangents also make great ideas for other stories. An LLM didn’t go to medical school or spend hours upon hours dedicating their life to a certain topic. No matter the topic, experts typically write with passion and that’s exactly what elevates a piece.
It’s riddled with confirmation bias — like DUH. It’s trained to tell you what you want to hear. That in itself should be a big enough red flag to never use it in a definitive way, particularly if the text is being published.
It makes things up — “hallucinates” — including studies that don’t exist. I had to explain this to someone who has worked in the media a long time. Pardon my French, but I feel like I’m fucking hallucinating myself having to tell professionals who work in the business of communications this. It’s so crazy to me that smart people are seemingly putting blind faith in something that’s still very much in its infancy, and calling it a day.
The TL;DR… if you’re in PR, please don’t let your experts use AI to generate quotes or press. And don’t ask it to fact-check them, you should trust your ‘expert’ enough that what they’re saying is, indeed, fact.
Wrap it up, Tori…
Convenience over connection is going to be the death of the beauty boom if we’re not careful. We’ll see a clear divide between the brands that chose the arguably ‘harder’ (though if you’re smart about it, it really isn’t) route and those who chose the easy route. The latter will get 18 months down the line and realise engagement is at an all-time low and that their consumer hasn’t a fucking clue who they are anymore — because they’re the exact same as every other brand going bland.
Would love to hear your thoughts. If you read this long into my ramble, I’m as sincerely touched as I am impressed.
p.s. just a note that I’ve purposefully excluded anything on the darker side of AI. It’s made me spiral big time recently, especially with a lot of the other triggering news going on at the moment.
You're SO right. I've been in the beauty/skincare industry as an esthetician for 16 years now and really all that people want is transparency, quality, and essentially not to be lied to. Companies using AI completely, for marketing campaigns, product descriptions, articles, and even using AI models look scammy and untrustworthy.
As you said in your article, people don’t want more. We just want better.