Spend enough time online and you start to notice a pattern: marketing messages that don’t feel like conversations anymore. Instead, they read like lectures. Whether it’s LinkedIn posts, email campaigns, or brand blogs, the tone often feels less like an invitation and more like a scolding. “If you’re not doing this, you’re falling behind.”“If you […]
Spend enough time online and you start to notice a pattern: marketing messages that don’t feel like conversations anymore. Instead, they read like lectures. Whether it’s LinkedIn posts, email campaigns, or brand blogs, the tone often feels less like an invitation and more like a scolding.
“If you’re not doing this, you’re falling behind.”
“If you don’t use AI, you’re already irrelevant.”
“Here’s what leaders do that you don’t.”
This style of communication might get clicks in the short term, but it comes at a cost. It disconnects people from their audiences. Over time, people get tired of being told what they’re doing wrong. They aren’t looking for more judgment. They’re looking for understanding, connection, and genuine help.
Good copywriting doesn’t separate readers into winners and losers. It doesn’t create imaginary hierarchies where the writer is at the top of a mountain and the reader is struggling below in the ashes. It invites people in. It says, “We’re in the ashes together,” and “Here’s how we can move forward.”
The brands that succeed long-term aren’t the ones shouting the loudest about what people should be doing, or what they are doing that could be better. They’re the ones quietly building trust — word by word, message by message.
The trust that it builds is worth a lot more than a momentary spike in attention, or someone hitting that ‘read more’ on your LinkedIn hook.
One of the big contributors to this shift is how AI tools like ChatGPT are being used.
To be clear, AI isn’t the problem. It’s a powerful tool. The issue is when teams use it as a shortcut instead of a starting point or refining point. They grab the first piece of AI-generated copy and publish it without running it through any filter of human thought or brand voice.
The result is copy that feels generic, performative, and a little too eager to sound like what’s already trending. Everyone writes the same, because they are using the same pattern to produce it.
AI tends to mimic the loudest patterns it’s trained on — and right now, that’s a lot of aggressive, “thought leader/marketing guru”, style content. If you’re not careful, your brand voice can end up sounding just like everyone else.
Connecting copywriting is slower, it asks the hard questions and answers them with research and analysis that is easy to understand.
It’s about filtering ideas through the lens of, “Does this sound like us?” and “Would this actually help the person reading it?”
It’s about dropping the ego and instead writing the way you would talk to someone you respect — not preaching at them, not talking down to them, and not trying to impress them with how much you know.
It’s not enough for writing to be grammatically correct or structurally clever with hard sentence breaks. It has to make people feel understood. It has to lower defenses, not raise them. And most importantly, it has to serve the reader, not just the brand.
Anyone can write a headline that triggers a reaction. But real connection takes more discipline.
It means saying less about how smart you are and more about how you can help. It means avoiding the easy route of calling people out, and choosing instead to call people in.
The world is filled with AI-generated recycled opinions and templated lectures. The people that slow down, think deeper, and write with humanity will be the ones that actually get remembered and create the impact they wanted to see.Not because they shouted louder or said more — but because they spoke the truth in a way people could actually hear.
Write for people. Copy is read by the human eye, and I think the marketing gurus are starting to forget that.
