Three (and a half) Ways To Prevent The Slop Tsunami
Everyone knows that the surest sign of a tsunami coming is when the tide pulls out drastically, far further than it’s supposed to. It reveals a part of the seabed that was previously hidden.
Fish flop around helplessly. Crabs scuttle. Onlookers gawp: they know this isn’t nature as usual, and they know it’s bad, but rubbernecking feels so good.
I think that this is exactly where we are today. Now. Generative AI has pulled back and revealed all the muck for us to see, but hasn’t fully hit us yet. We’re still early enough in what is happening that we can recognize it. Oh, sure - maybe at those islands off the coast, they’ve been hit. Maybe they’ve radioed a message to the rest of us: “It’s bad! Get out!” or maybe their communications stopped suddenly. On days when it seems like the only posts that aren’t ChatGPT-written engagement bait are posts complaining about ChatGPT-written engagement bait it feels like LinkedIn might be one of those islands.
But if it is not already here on this platform or a platform or space you love, it’s coming: an immense wave of generative AI slop that will drown us all. An automated mass of absurdity, beige-coloured copy, and yellow-tinged comics. Rushing waters of increasingly realistic videos that will make us question our creativity, sanity, and reality.
I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Partly because I’ve had a long fascination with the sci-fi concept of the AI (and for which I feel Optimistic Terror about, which you can read about here), but also because I know how quickly it’s coming for the marketing, advertising and strategy work that I do. Also because I’m in the midst of getting a certificate from University of British Columbia on the topic of AI technology.
Everything we see is going to look amazing and wild and it’s all going to just be so much sloppy shit that we’ll ignore it as much as we ignore everything today.
So how will the arts (both creative and commercial) survive this onslaught?
Well, the first is to have an actual idea. And I’m not going to get into that (mostly because I’m not an “ideas guy”).
But beyond that here are three (and a half) ways to avoid that slop tsunami, mixed in with some predictions.
🛠️ Show The Work - A few months ago I saw this incredible video of someone painting a scene at a tennis match. Like a lot of you, I’ve got a short attention span: Tweet-length news, 30s Reels with 3s hooks, and responses at the speed of Slack.
But this video still transfixed me. I wanted to see the end result. I admired the craftsmanship. I admired the artistry. I admired the human skill. I wanted to see where it would go.
I’m fairly certain that if I’d simply seen the end result I would have scrolled past. And I likely would have scrolled even faster if it had just been an image of the person proudly holding their art, as has become the standard. Showing the work made me appreciate it.
So what does showing the work look like?
Uncommon Creative Studio created an absolute work of art for BritBox to deliver on a “See It Differently” message. I’ve worked on projects for broadcasters before and know exactly how difficult it can be to stand out when you’re essentially trying to sell a commoditised service using someone else’s IP. Watch it here.
McCann Canada did a great spot for KIND granola bars. Instead of AI-ifying or Photoshopping a squirrel with its cheeks full of the nutty bar they did it for real, resulting in a much more memorable spot.
One pre-AI example of this that I love is the Subaru WRX “Pure Performance” video.
For as long as there has been both “Making” and “Videos” there have been “Making Of” videos - this isn’t a new concept. But I predict that how we start to tell that story of making will become more interesting, and in some cases will be the story itself.
We value things based on the effort it takes to create them. When everything can look the same, we’ll need to work harder to prove how much effort it took to create.
🎭 Do It Live Live events are extraordinarily hard to pull off, and we intuitively know how much effort they take.
We love when they’re done perfectly. But for some reason (or simply because we’re human) we also love when they’re done imperfectly. The pratfall effect might explain this: the theory that we give greater credibility to people or things when they’ve got little mistakes.
Netflix recognizes this, though they’ve been lacking a bit in execution. Both Pop The Balloon and John Mulhaney live were interesting experiments that will likely teach the streamer something without being long-lasting artefacts themselves.
Last year I wrote a blog post about how even then we were starting to reject the generative AI content we were seeing, and that a Ryan Gosling skit in Saturday Night Live was the real antidote we needed. I stand by that.
❤️ Human Drama - I don’t watch a lot of TV. And I’m not trying to be one of those “I’m too good for TV guys”, but I feel like I just haven’t had the time. Except, of course, for when my partner is watching TV. And it might be confirmation bias based on what’s happening in our own household, but it feels like the world’s biggest shows at the moment are Love Island, Love Is Blind, Love At First Sight, The Bachelor, and Bachelor in Paradise, followed closely by Squid Game (a scripted TV show based on the premise of a live event).
Reality TV isn’t new. And it isn’t newly popular. But I think it’s interesting how much more of it we’re seeing.
Even sports get this: Formula One’s more recent popularity can be heavily attributed to the Drive To Survive series, with it’s emphasis on the colourful personalities behind the cars. And I hate giving them credit for anything since they’ve openly and unabashedly embraced fascism in the United States, but the UFC has done a similarly spectacular job of making human drama both an entry point and a pillar of its offering.
My prediction is that our desire for real-life human drama will continue to grow: We’ll continue to absorb and crave reality TV and we’ll look for the human drama in the stories of our world. As AI plays a larger role as a day-to-day companion, we’ll look for humanity elsewhere.
So what does this mean for ads and brands? Spokespeople are back. And not just back, we'll start to see more about them. And if there are mascots, we’ll see brands give us a look behind the scenes to show us more who they are and the range of emotions and relationships they might have.
🔐 Be Exclusive - Human beings thrive on exclusivity. It forms the basis of our relationships (for the most part…(editors note: Insert joke about the Coldplay kiss-cam thing)), and we’ve researched and applied this thinking again and again to pricing and luxury goods:
The Veblen Effect says that demand for a particular good will increase as it’s price increases, which is a direct contradiction. We see this
And the Scarcity bias, where the more difficult it is to acquire an item the more we value it.
But for some reason, we’ve never applied this to our social media channels. We’ve said “Hey, we’ll take anyone!”. We’ve done it with the brands we’ve worked with, and for the longest time and for the most part we’ve done it with our own personal channels. The early days of MySpace and Facebook, as well as today’s LinkedIn, were simply an arms race to see who could acquire the most connections.
When the concept of a “Finsta” came out (a separate, private Instagram account for sharing with friends) it felt like we were starting to see cracks in the "share everything" mode of early social media. (I feel old just typing "finsta").
So how do brands or artists be exclusive in the era of social media? I think by creating invite-only communities or accounts. Don’t be for EVERYONE. Be exclusive. Make people want to be a part of it. This is tough to do, but done right it can give your audience the respite they need from public-by-default and the "is it or isn't it" questioning of who and what is real.
Some examples:
A lot of content creators are offering communities for their subscribers, where they can interact directly with the content creator and other people. Shout out to Rob and his Salmon Labs community! It’s a great example of this, though certainly not the only one.
I’ve also thought that exclusivity like this was a natural fit for sports brands. For example, what if the jersey sponsor for the Toronto Raptors had an Instagram account that they limited to just 19,700 followers, the exact capacity of the Rogers Arena?
A few years ago I worked on a new wine brand in Canada that wanted to target socially active and trendy 25-35s with “Crushable” red and white wines. I proposed that to launch they should create an exclusive (and invite only) Instagram account, mimicking the
Note that while this idea is Web 3-adjacent I am strongly against the NFT-ificiation of anything.
______
I might be wrong about the slop tsunami. If that’s the case: please go back to your regularly scheduled creation of concepts, copy, assets, designs, and files.
But I’m probably not wrong. AI is going to be transformative in the exact ways that we can predict. It will devour creative production. In the same way that the iPhone made everyone a photographer, it will make everyone a creator, musician, film producer, and artist. That doesn’t mean it will all be good, it will just mean more of it.
People who already know how to tell stories, how to create, how to craft, how to write, and how to think will use it to transform the work they do in ways that we can already see will make it better.
And it will also be transformative in ways that we can’t predict. The singularity is here.
In which case, heed my advice.
And also pay attention: I’m putting something together that I’ll be announcing here soon, and am excited about the potential of bringing some of these ideas to life for both clients and some personal projects.