• by Jon Bond , Op-Ed Contributor, Yesterday

Everyone talks about poor quality AI slop content, but what we are missing is the fact that most of the human content we see can only be labeled as "human generated slop."

The quality of creative work frankly sucks.

No one knows what a real idea is anymore.

Consultant and author Michael Farmer has nailed one of the the root causes: for the last 35 years -- every year -- agencies are asked to produce 2% more content and are paid 2% less.

That adds up. We’ve slowly gone from Michelin Star restaurants to drive-through McDonalds. 

The second cause is performance vs. brand.

Performance today is basically Old School direct response turned into digital.

Not to sound like the out-of-date old guy, but the brand part is not getting the attention it deserves, and part of it is branding branding.

"Brand" sounds like something very esoteric that doesn’t drive revenue.

A better term -- and one that is far more accurate -- is indirect response.

Branding improves response, but not always in the same way as performance marketers understand.

For example, if you buy premium quality video or TV compared to cheap/low quality stuff, the low quality media outperforms -- for a while.

But guess what, if you keep measuring, after a few weeks, the dreck media impact is nil, while the quality media continues to lift all boats, eventually surpassing the bargain bin buy.

Hence, brand is performance, it’s just not as immediate or direct.

I remember testing direct mail (remember mail?) acquisition for American Express, and you know what drove the best response? Having the Amex logo on the outer envelope. Same copy. Same offer. The brand name alone drove response.

This principle applies equally to creative work. Good work sticks in your brain and continues to create lift whilst crap work is gone  from your brain in minutes, if not seconds.  

All of which brings me back to AI.  AI can only copy what already exists. By definition, it won’t produce breakthrough ideas.

When as I began by asserting that most human work also is slop, that’s just fine because at least AI is making slop quicker and faster than humans.

But the elusive Holy Grail is still the Big Idea, which is original.  That’s still the province of top creative minds, some of whom don’t work in creative departments.

Once AI can do that, it probably won’t matter anymore because we’ll all be working for some massive AI brain, contributing our 9 volt battery selves to keep it running.  Til then, we need to rediscover the value of the brand.