Did Greta Van Fleet Make Your Brand Content?
A music nerd on integrity, the uncanny valley, and brands
I went to a workshop last week where a very smart, experienced marketing guy was extolling the power of AI to deliver the bulk of your brand content. He went through some use cases you’ve probably already considered: SEO content, landing page copy, ad headlines, images for posts, email content, CSR scripts, etc. The talk was smart, clear and thoughtful about how to use the tech. And, he was definitely correct: The tools could take over a lot of the burden.
As I was driving home, I was stuck in a little bit of a doom loop, thinking about the long term implications of millions of goobers hacking away at GPT-3 pursuing SEO glory, clogging up Google with terrible search results like a digital London Fatberg.
Dashboard time is thinking time and music helps me focus. Somewhere in between the notes I can often find the clarity I need.
I’m a music nerd (yes, the stereotypical dad-rock, cassettes-over-discs, three chords and the truth, Strummer-is-my-hero, twin guitar attack snob). And, like a good music nerd, I've cultivated my Spotify playlists like a well-loved bonsai tree. But, sometimes Spotify sneaks in some new stuff (or my sons add it) and this time it was Greta Van Fleet.
Greta Van Fleet on my playlist (or anyone’s) is a terrible mistake for a lot of reasons.
If you’re over 35, you probably don’t know Greta Van Fleet. Greta Van Fleet is to Zepplin like Bublé is to Sinatra, without the wink and sense of humor. They are skilled players. They work hard. They seem committed and they appear to be enjoying what they do. They are honest about their love of late 60s and early 70’s classic rock and over the course of a handful of records they’ve built hundreds of millions of listens and some fans. All those fans *can* be wrong.
They seem good because they have some talent, and the semiotics suggest they are “cool” and “authentic”. However, they are bad because they are so clearly mimicking something amazing (uh, Led Zeppelin) but without the soul of what made the original so important. That soul is hard to describe, but you know authenticity when you see it (though goddamnit, they try! even having the balls to take on “A Change is Going to Come” and it’s as bad as you fear it might be). As a result, even the songs that are actually interesting or have original ideas sort of suck a little bit.
(honest admission: Hardcore blues fans could probably make the same argument about Zep)
Listeners to Greta Van Fleet, if they have any awareness of who Led Zepplin is, will be slightly repulsed or uneasy in the uncanny valley of music. They just know something is off, somehow.
It’s the difference between skill and craft. Skill is impressive, craft is meaningful. Skill leads to efficiency; Craft leads to integrity; Greta Van Fleet are very skilled, but I don’t believe they have integrity.
Great brands should aspire to integrity.
Brands risk creating an uncanny valley feeling when they go too deep on GenerativeAI. Your users will know something is up, they’ll feel something is off somehow. If you’ve carefully invested in building equity for the brands over the years, this isn’t a good thing. On the other hand, if the brand is based on transactional efficiency, then its probably not going to an issue.
Sometimes, “good enough” is good enough.
I’m already seeing decay in brand messages in my own day to day. I’ve gotten “newsletters” from people I know that I’m pretty sure were written by a ghostwriter using GPT-3. It just doesn’t sound at all like the people I know. It’s clearly canned. I’ve seen product descriptions on brand sites that were clearly written by AI (syntax errors, non sequiturs). Images in promo emails are from Midjourney without any attribution.
When I see stuff like this, I give it a little mental downvote. As a marketing nerd I appreciate the skill and efficiency, but as a lover of great brands, I miss the craft.
The tools we’re using right now are primitives. They’re the worst AI tools we’ll use. What’s coming will surely be incredible and who knows how much efficiency will be created. But, brands should try to adopt them in ways that don’t undermine the integrity and care that goes into equity building.
Marketers should build skills with the tools, but know when to put them down and commit to something unique, done with craft, shooting for integrity. Don’t let Greta Van Fleet do the heavy lifting on your brand building.