Why AI might make us worse advertisers

Look, I'm not here to fear-monger about AI.

We're living in an incredible moment. The technology available to us right now, what we can automate, what we can create, what we can build, it's genuinely overwhelming in the best possible way.

If you're a creative person, this is a beautiful time to be alive.

But here's what I'm seeing as we build out more automations for our clients, as we hire and train new people, as we implement all these productivity tools everyone's talking about:

We're at risk of losing something fundamental.

The Flashiness Problem

It's so easy to get caught up in what's possible.

We can generate 50 ad variations in an hour.

We can automate our entire briefing process.

We can hit scale and volume that would've been impossible two years ago.

And somewhere in all of that, we forget the most important question:

Why would someone actually want to buy this product?

That's the thing about fundamentals. They're not sexy.

They don't make for exciting LinkedIn posts about your new AI workflow.

But fundamentals separate brands that build momentum from brands that just make noise.

What We're Forgetting Exists

Here's what kills me about the current AI obsession: we're so focused on the new tools that we're ignoring what already works.

There are books. Incredible books. Books on copywriting and advertising that built billion-dollar companies.

And just because we have AI tools now doesn't make those principles obsolete.

In fact, I'd argue it's more effective to read a book about advertising than to rely purely on automation tools.

Those books contain decades of tested principles. They explain the why behind what works. They give you the foundation that makes you dangerous with any tool you pick up.

But if you skip straight to "here's the prompt that generates hooks," you miss all of that.

What We're Teaching at Good Studios… and What We're Not

When I bring new people onto the team now, I'm laser-focused on one thing first: the fundamentals of advertising.

Not which AI tools to use.

Not which prompts work best in Claude.

Not the latest automation hack.

The fundamentals.

If your first experience creating ad copy is typing a prompt and getting AI-generated options, you never develop the intuition for what makes good advertising. You never build the discernment.

You learn to recognize what sounds good. But you don't learn why it's good. You don't develop the instinct that tells you when something will actually move someone to action versus when it just sounds clever.

I want someone on my team who understands advertising using AI tools. That's powerful.

I don't want someone who's just really good at prompting. There's a massive difference.

You always need to go back to the why.

People Haven't Changed

Here's what I'm trying to pass down to my team: read what worked in the past, because it's still going to work today.

Why?

People haven't changed.

The psychology that made people buy 50 years ago is the same psychology that makes them buy today. The principles of persuasion, the fundamentals of good copy, the understanding of human motivation, none of that is outdated.

Tools should allow you to execute at a higher level. They should help you move faster, test more, reach further.

But they shouldn't replace your thinking about what can we do differently.

The Middle Lane Is Getting Crowded

Over time, as more brands lean into the same AI tools, using similar prompts, optimizing for the same metrics, everything starts to look the same.

We're creating a massive middle lane of perfectly adequate advertising.

And if you want to build a real brand, not just a product that sells, but a brand that people remember and care about, you need to stand out from that middle lane.

That takes breaking rules.

That takes understanding what good advertising actually is, not just what AI tells you good advertising should be.

When you think about the brands that truly broke through, the ones that created that initial spark, that fire that turned into a movement, did they get there through automation?

No.

They got there because someone had a vision for something that didn't exist in the world yet.

Something that broke the mold.

Something that came from human intuition and taste and the willingness to try something different.

Don't get me wrong, automation absolutely helped them scale once they found that spark.

But the spark itself? That came from somewhere AI can't reach.

What This Means for You

I'm not telling you to abandon AI tools. That would be absurd, and frankly, you'd be leaving efficiency on the table.

But I am telling you this:

Don't let the tools replace your development of discernment.

If you're training a team, start with fundamentals first. Get them reading the books that built the industry. Teach them why something works before you teach them how to generate it faster.

If you're running your own creative, make sure you understand the principles before you automate the execution.

If you're building a brand, remember that standing out requires breaking rules, and AI is really, really good at following them. You need to be the one thinking about what's different, what's new, what stands out. Don't hand that thinking off to automation.

The technology we have access to right now is incredible. Use it. Just don't let it make you a worse advertiser in the process.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Reply here and ask for anything you need.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

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