Why Marketing Is a Human Profession

Hey, it's Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Optimizely. Optimizely is the AI platform built for modern marketing teams, helping you create content, run experiments, personalize experiences, and optimize your website, all powered by Agentic AI. There's been a huge shift in marketing teams over the last year. AI agents are now part of the team, and this is what it takes to be successful in B2B marketing. They're in our meetings taking notes, and they're behind the scenes handling the work that used to eat up everyone's week. The teams doing this well are shipping higher quality output, running better campaigns, and actually getting the most out of everyone on their team. But what are AI agents and how should you be using them? What use cases work for B2B marketers? Check this out. If you're asking any of these questions, Optimizely is hosting a free virtual event on June 9th called Agents in the Mix. It's built for and by marketers who are experimenting with AI agents and wanna see what best in class actually looks like. Every session comes with demos of real agents built by and for marketers with no development required and practitioners sharing what's working for them right now. You will learn how to go from AI output to something worth shipping without the endless revision cycle. How one team built 8,000 personalized landing pages. Holy cow. How to distribute one asset across channels and audiences without starting from scratch every time. And if you want to do all this, you can go and check it out right now. Optimizely.com/exit5. To register for the event. Look, I think it's a great time to go deep on AI and really become one of those AI-native, AI-pilled marketers. And Optimizely, they have a great bunch of resources over there and really smart group of people to help you do this. So go and check it out, optimizely.com/exit5. They're gonna help you get smarter about building with AI. Hey, it's Dave. I wanna give a shout out to the team at Vector for sponsoring this episode. Vector is a contact-level ads platform. Look, You probably have anonymous buyers lurking in your funnel, people that you can't identify or follow up with, people you can't target with any real precision. So you end up throwing ads at job titles and hoping that the right person sees them. Vector fixes that. Instead of targeting job titles and crossing your fingers, Vector lets you build audiences from actual people, the ones on your site clicking your ads and checking out your competitors. And they just launched their MCP server that lets you connect AI like Claude and ChatGPT directly to their platform. It connects to your LinkedIn ads and site visitor data. So instead of clicking through dashboards, you just ask your AI a question and get an answer. Which ad creatives are fatiguing right now? Which companies are engaging but not converting? Which actually driving pipeline right now? What new ideas should we be running? This is an amazing way to use AI and Vectr together. It turns your data into something you can use in the moment. Head to vectr.co to learn more. That's V-E-C-T-R. Tor.co. And if they ask you how you heard about them, tell them Exit Five, please. See ya. You're listening to The Dave Gerhardt Show.

Exit Five! One, two, three, four. Exit Five! One, two, three, four. Exit Five!

Eddie's on the pod. I invited Eddie to come on the pod because Eddie is a great copywriter, and I love talking to people with copywriting backgrounds because a lot of the things that it takes to be a great copywriter are rooted in the principles of what makes good marketing in general and good business in general. And Eddie always has a creative lens and an interesting way of looking at things. And so we're texting about the pod and he's like, dude, I made, I made some slides. I got a whole thing we're gonna go through. And I'm like, yes, this is what I'm talking about.

Nice. Well, I appreciate that, Dave. And let me just say, it's great to be with you as well. I appreciate you very much. You know, you were one of the first people to, to show up consistently on LinkedIn and turn it into a platform for yourself and turn it into a place where— a place that enabled you to grow an audience and build a business. And, and so much of what you were saying was bolstering copywriting, right? And it was bolstering copywriters. And so I appreciate you very much for for what you did to promote this discipline and the people that practice it, and myself included. You've inspired me and a lot of other people, so I appreciate you, man. Thanks again. It's great to be here.

Yeah, dude. Thanks. That's cool. I appreciate that, brother. Yeah, you like— you worked— you worked in-house as a— as a copywriter. You know, you did all that stuff. Can you give people a quick, quick background? Because I know you from— we got connected when you were working at G2, but I wasn't super familiar with your background until last time we talked. And I think that's just interesting context for people to have.

Uh, yeah, for sure. So yeah, I was an English major. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write books, you know what I mean? And so my first job out of college was not writing books. It was sales.

It's like everyone's life story ever. You're like, so as a kid, I wanted to be in the NBA. And then my first job out of school was sales. I wanted to be a music producer. And then I went into sales. We've all done the same shit. Like I, That's what I think is so fun about this, this world that we've created beyond marketing is like you meet all these other people. So few people actually were like, you know, when I was a child, I wanted to be a CMO.

Yes. Yes. Well, yeah, you definitely work up to something like that, but you know, like writing was such a romantic thing for me.

Yeah.

And, but it's such an impossible thing to just do right outta school. I mean, the, you gotta, you gotta build up to it.

Well, it's a di— also you came out in a different era now, like that was pre-Substack, you know, like today I think you could, you could maybe make it the, the chance of making it as a writer maybe are higher because of the tools available.

That's true. That's very true. But certainly not when I graduated. I graduated in 2010. Yeah. So I was in inside sales at CDW. I was an account manager for about a year. Really did not like that job. It was a good job, but I really didn't like it. I really wanted to write. So I left that job, which again, was a good job. Like it paid well. I had insurance, perks, time off. But I left it on a whim for my first copywriting gig, which was a contract role. No insurance, no benefits, pretty bad pay, to be honest, but I was writing for a living. So that was, that was a win for me. And at first I didn't even realize I was, I was writing copy. Like it was this new department at a big company. It was called Career Builder. So it was basically a job board website and my job was to interview hiring managers and write their job ads for them. And they hired me on the back of my English degree. They were like, oh, like, you know, you're an English major, you know, you could put a sentence together. And they gave me this job. Yep. And so they didn't really think of these job ads as ads, I think, like that should entice people to apply, like in the traditional sense of an ad. They were just looking for young people with a modicum of writing experience to put words on a page and make it grammatically correct and stuff, you know? Yeah. And so that's kind of how I treated it until it became really clear to me that my worth in that role was based on how many times I can get people to click and apply for the position. So in other words, like, my job was to write something that would ultimately compel the right person to take an action. And that, in a nutshell, is direct response copywriting. So that's how I discovered this discipline. And then I became completely obsessed with it and started reading books and, and listening to podcasts and seminars and just, you know, learning as much as I could. And to make sure that I was internalizing the information, every time I came into an insight, you know, some principle or technique or concept that I could use at work or that I thought I could use at work, I would try to write about it or explain it in an article. Because I thought if I could write about this—

I love this, uh, story. It's making me just realize, like, that is what you just described is just like marketing. And so many people do this, you know. Brendan calls it, uh, checkbox marketing. I like that phrase that he, that he uses, Brendan Hufford. And it's the same thing. It's like, okay, so you work at this company. Yeah, we just need some guy to like write job posting because we need to hire somebody.

Yeah.

But then you actually realize that, like, the variable is like, wait, If I make a good, if I make this good, if I make this fun, funny, catchy, creative, it could be any of those things. You're like, people are actually gonna stop and reply. And I'm like, dude, that's the same thing I love about marketing. And, but so many things that we do, it's like, oh, we gotta do the company's webinar. Okay. So you write the webinar, right? When it's like, it's always this constant, like, how am I gonna actually get someone to respond to this? Dude, I think about this now. I coach my kids' Little League team.. And when I send out an email to the parents, I'm like, how can I get there? I literally am like, okay, there's, these are 8 other parents busy like me. The last thing they want is another freaking email about their kids that, uh, so how can I send this thing to them in a format that's gonna get them to like read it, understand the details, not have any questions. And like, I apply that to like those things too, writing emails to my kids' school. Those are like timeless, right? And that, that's why I love this, this topic. So it's cool to hear you as like a, a young guy just being like, dude, fuck it. Like, why do I— why am I going to do what they have always done? At least I'm going to try to like get someone to respond here.

Yes. Well, I, I wanted to be successful and it was clear to me that to be successful I needed people to apply to the job ads that I was writing. I mean, that's how it all started. And then like it started to snowball from there. But yeah, I mean, so, you know, that's how Very Good Copy started as I was writing these, these articles and trying to teach myself copywriting. And it started— it was a long Google Doc at first for years and years, actually. It was you know, 50, 60, 70 of these articles that I was putting into a Google Doc, not showing anybody. And then I finally did show somebody and they were like, you should put this online.

Oh, so you were just like writing your own stuff? You're like, the things you were learning about writing, you were just kind of compiling into this like master doc and it was just for you?

Just put it into a doc.

That's cool.

You know, I was an English major, so I studied narrative and, and so a lot of it came out as like, you know, I was framing these copywriting concepts and, and principles in personal stories. You know, something that happened to me that day, something that was going on in my life, with my family, with my friends. I was putting it into these stories. Yeah, because that's kind of what I was trained to do at school. And I didn't think that anybody would be interested in them because they were about me and my life. And, and so I didn't really have that perspective on it. But then somebody saw me writing one at a job. I was working at a bunch of agencies for a few years, and somebody saw me writing one and they were like, oh, can I read this? I gave them the doc. They said they read it over the weekend. They were like, you should put this online. So I made a blog and then somebody from HubSpot read it and they gave me a column at HubSpot and I started writing the HubSpot column. And then people from HubSpot were coming over, like readers from HubSpot were coming over and reading my blog and asking where they could subscribe. And it wasn't a newsletter yet, so they couldn't subscribe. So I made that. I made a MailChimp and, and I think MailChimp had like a 2000, it was free. You could have people having subscribers for free. Yeah. Yep. I was like, oh, this is great, I'm never gonna pay for this shit, you know.

Totally.

But now it's just ironic because now, you know, it's— newsletter is probably my— the list is probably my biggest business expense.

So yeah, do you have like something like 90,000 subscribers? You have 100,000 subscribers or something on that?

Yeah, it's been— the total numbers is up there. I sent it to less than that, but That's after I clean the list and make sure it's really healthy.

The bane of our existence. We're learning, literally.

Yeah, it's part of this part of the business.

And then like, we're like, we're sending this email out that's like, if you haven't— oh, we've noticed you haven't been engaged with our newsletter, so we're going to take you off the list. And like a bunch of people like, no, no, wait, I am. I just don't click anything. It's like, oh shit, there's this such a— there's so many layers to email. Anyway, that's, that's a side note.

That's cool.

And so it's been this constant— it's been this constant progression. Like, I think it's cool. A lot of people, you know, like, oh, how did you start? You know, the starting story for a lot of people is like, there was never some intentional path to like make money writing online and writing, you know, teaching people about writing. Like you did it for your own benefit. It's like literally a founder, a founder building a software, you know, piece of software to like solve their own problem. You built your master doc and someone told you it was interesting. That's cool.

Yeah, it was, um, it was a real happenstance organic thing, and I think it actually helped me because right now there's a lot of folks that are trying to like reverse engineer a number. You know, they'll, they'll go online and they'll say, I want 100,000 subscribers or 100,000 followers or something, and they'll, they'll do everything they can to the content to get that attention and get that, get those followers. And, and so fundamentally the content becomes something contrived and something that maybe that they even set out to create in the first place. Whereas like, I didn't really have that ambition in the beginning to build a brand or an audience or anything like that, to have a platform. And so it was very original to me, and I think that came through and helped me ultimately.

But okay, do you want to talk about— you sent me a link to this LinkedIn thing that I wrote about the narrative is shifting on AI. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? And then that will lead into some stuff you want to show.

Sure.

Or how do you tell me? You tell me. I don't know what you have, so you tell me how you want, where you want to go.

Okay. So you've put this post out last week. You know, basically you talk about how you're noticing more and more people push back on AI in the last couple of months.

Yeah, I'll just explain this. So if you're watching on our YouTube, Eddie has this, this post up, but I wrote this post last week and I said the narrative is shifting on AI. Have you noticed? And basically the feeling is I felt like over the last 60 days in particular, there's been more of a, more of a grumbling that I'm feeling from our community, from marketers in our universe, just like that's less like AI is awesome and more like, you know what, screw AI. I'm tired of this. I'm tired of this writing. I'm tired of this slop. Like there's, there's starting to be a something shifting. And, and, um, so we, we ended up doing a survey on this just to get sentiment on it, but I'm feeling this in my personal life and work. And so. I think there's a lot of power that's coming with AI, but I do feel like there's something shifting in the last 60 days.

Right, exactly. And then, and so at the bottom here, you ask, you know, why do you think that is? And so, so that's what this presentation is. I'm going to try to answer that question right now, at least from the perspective of— okay, and a marketer.

All right, I'm, I'm into that.

Let's go. One guy's perspective.

Take me, take me, take me on a journey.

So let me take you, let me take you back to 2021. My wife was pregnant with our first baby and my sister recommended we put something called a NoseFrida on the registry. Do you know what a NoseFrida is, Dave?

Okay, I do. And so NoseFrida, everyone thought we were nuts when we were doing NoseFrida. Now my sister's got a kid. There's like 5, 6 years of technology has evolved. You don't have to suck it anymore. You just put that thing in there and it goes, you seen like the new one?

No, no, no. I'm going to need to.

My wife's pregnant.

Oh my God.

Both of my kids, man. But it's the most weirdly satisfying thing too, when you can get over the gross factor, when you clear that nose out and they can breathe again. Oh man.

All right. So for, so for the folks that don't—

I got to tell, I got to take a screenshot of this and put it in our Slack. There we go.

Nice. Yeah. If you don't know what a NoseFrid is, it's a tube that you can use to suck out your kids' boogers when they're congested. Okay, so like, and my sister, we kind of have like the reverse situation here, Dave. Like my sister had kids first. She's got 3 kids and she was explaining to me how sanitary it is, you know, how there's like a booger catcher in the middle. So nothing ever goes in your mouth. Like you're just there to provide the suction, which apparently you don't even need to do anymore.

Looks way more primitive than it actually is.

Right, right. And, and I remember just being like, no, my thought was like, I'm never going to do that. You know, like childless Eddie was like, I'm not going to do that. And I remember that moment really vividly because after our son was born, when, when he was about 4 months old, I was laying down on the couch and I was holding him up and I was moving him up and down and we were laughing and just, you know, kind of having a good time. And then out of nowhere, this perfect cylinder of hot, partially digested breast milk comes out of his mouth, projectiles straight into my mouth. There was no spillage whatsoever. I felt like— I don't think a drop of it was lost. It just goes directly out of his stomach and straight into my mouth. Yeah, dude. And the thing is, like, I wasn't— I wasn't bothered by it, right? It was just another Wednesday to me, you know what I mean?

Dude, I would have such a weird— like, I could never be a vomit or poop guy. And I was like, there's no way. There's no way I'm going to be able to clean up my kid's puke. And there's just something about it when it's yours. It's like, it is what it is, you know?

Right. And, and what made it even more interesting was that a few months prior, I couldn't even wrap my mind around a nose Frida, right? And now here I am like eating my son's spit up and, and that was okay. And I didn't skip a beat and, you know, we laughed about it. My wife laughed at me basically. And then we, you know, we had dinner. And so like, it, it just goes to show the warp speed, like transformation that we go through as parents. And for me, that transformation began on August 2nd, 2021. That's the morning Kelsey's water broke. So we went to the hospital and went through triage and we— what did we do? We met our nurse and we got settled into the delivery room and we were told that this could be a long process, so we should get comfortable. And like, unfortunately, getting comfortable was pretty much impossible for Kelsey. But, you know, I didn't let that stop me. Like, I came prepared. I had downloaded Netflix on my phone. I had my snacks. I had my drinks. Like there was a nice recliner in the corner. So I had like the dad chair. I settled in. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, Dave.

Yeah, we have a whole— my friends and I, we have a whole, uh, the boy— the boys chat. We all have a group text, which has become a joke now. And, uh, gosh, this is a perfect example of like I wrote this on LinkedIn that people would come for me with the pitchforks. But if you can't hear the nuance and understand that's a joke. Yeah, there's a whole— there's a whole Reddit thread of like, you know, dad back. Like, you know, women have to go through giving birth, but like we have to sleep in this. We have to spend two nights sleeping in this god-awful chair. Like, what's, what's actually more painful?

Yeah, I know about that, Vic. Yeah. But anyway, so I, you know, I made the most of that, and I, um, I, I remember I turned down the lights and I put my headphones in. It was actually really peaceful in the room.

Listen to a podcast.

Yeah, hell yeah. Um, and it was the, it was the strangest thing though, because as soon as I pressed— it was Netflix— as soon as I pressed play on my phone, an alarm went off. And it was so confusing, like my Actually, my first thought was like, am I not allowed to watch Netflix while my wife is— like, I thought they were calling me out almost. And then I was like, no, obviously there's a, there's a fire. Um, this is a fire alarm because it was loud and piercing and there was this kind of red light flashing above the door. And so I thought there was a fire. And then, and then a nurse walked in and then another nurse and another, and then doctors started coming in and the room just started filling up really fast. It was like a SWAT team. Of medical professionals. And then suddenly there were like probably a dozen people in the room and the nurses were surrounding my wife and they, you know, began shifting her this way and that way. And there was just this, this feeling that like this dread, right? And I was kind of like backed into a corner and somebody pulled my sleeve and it was a doctor. And she said that the baby's heart rate had plummeted. I remember that was the word she used, which was really alarming. And then I looked at the monitor and the screen was all lit up red. And this all happened in like a matter of seconds. Like one minute my wife was resting comfortably and it was peaceful and she was like about to fall asleep, and the next she was like on her knees and being coached through this, this emergency. And before I could really like process what this meant, like the screen turned back to green And the alarm stopped and everybody just kind of took a step back and turned around and walked out. And the room cleared out basically as quickly as it had filled up. And then it was just me and my wife and the doctor. And she told us that the umbilical cord was probably wrapped around the baby's neck and that it was an incredibly volatile and dangerous situation that if it happened again, Kelsey would, would need an emergency C-section. And then. And then it did happen again and the SWAT team came back and the whole process repeated itself. And then it was green again. And then, uh, it happened again after that and the red screen came back and that's when the doctor was like, okay, we have to do this. And my wife signed the release form and then they just like that rolled her out of the room and told me to wait and said that, you know, we'll be back for you when she's ready.. And I remember sitting there alone in that room and feeling completely helpless in a way, like there was nothing I could do to make that situation better. And I was just there. And I remember the weight of this, the weight of this realization. It just came on so suddenly and so intensely, and it was so, so heavy. And it made me sick. And I'm not like— we were talking about religion, Dave, and like, I'm not a religious person. Like I said, I live a pretty secular life, but like in that moment, like with my back against the wall, I actually started to pray and I had no idea what I was doing. You know, I didn't know how to talk to God. So I just started to barter with him. I was like, yeah, God, please.

I've done that. I'm like, look, man, I don't really come here much.

I will suck every booger out of this kid's nose until he's 18. Like, please just let everything be okay.. And then he was born. And I remember the doctor lifting him up and I got my first glimpse of him over the blue curtain in the operating room, cuz it was a C-section. And I, and I instantly recognized him. Like, I, I remember it, like it actually took my breath away and I gasped because it just felt like I knew his face.

It was like, yep.

You know what I mean? Like when you, I remember thinking it was like when you run into somebody that you haven't seen in a long time. And they've changed, you know what I mean? Like, of course, like, time has changed them, but, you know, they're, they're the same person.

And you see— Yeah, like, you see that guy from high school that put on like 200 pounds, you're like, whoa, but you know it's him.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Except it was just— it was my baby. It was like my kid.

Yeah.

And I just felt like I knew him.

Surreal, dude.

Yeah. And they moved him into this, into the small room, and it was adjacent to— it was adjacent to the O.R. And that's where they like clean them up and measure them and weigh them. And then the nurse asked me to come in. And this is where I'll stop and I'll reference a certain experiment I did a few years ago. Uh, after he was born, I asked AI to describe the birth of its firstborn child. And then that's what I did. And then I, and then I challenged myself to write my own version, but using only as many words as the AI. So the AI came up with 88 words. I'll read it for you here. They wrote, meeting my firstborn child was a truly magical experience. It was a moment of joy and excitement that I will never forget. When I held my newborn for the first time, I felt a wave of love and warmth that I had not experienced before. I was filled with so much joy and pride that I was now a parent. My little one looked so peaceful and content in my arms. Seeing my baby for the first time was an unforgettable moment that I will cherish forever. And then since the—

bro, it just feels— it feels yucky knowing that it came from a computer.

Yeah, I feel you, man. But that, that's the 88 words. So since AI wrote 88 words, I wrote 88 words. And I wrote, uh, he's so quiet, I said, looking up at the nurse. She smiled behind her mask. We all wore masks, gowns too, gloves and hairnets too. Is that okay? I said. Is it okay he's not crying? Why isn't he crying yet? It's okay, said the nurse. He's quiet but alert, she said. Just look at him looking at you. I looked. He's looking right at you. He was. He was looking into my eyes. He's saying hello, she smiled. Hello, I said. I felt like crying. Hello, son.

That's beautiful.

I put this online, this kind of side-by-side comparison, and the response was, was pretty overwhelming. Got hundreds of thousands of, of impressions in the first day. And thousands of likes and hundreds of comments and the DMs and the emails. And so it was really overwhelming, actually. And the general consensus was that my version was better. Okay. And I think the answer to why it's better is the same answer to your question in this post, Dave, like around why, why is there more and more pushback to AI, especially among people who work in, you know, in marketing and copywriting and persuasion? But first, if it's cool with you, if you want to, I could break down some of the more technical things and then circle back to the big picture. Is that all right? Yeah.

Yeah. This reminds me of a related thing. I don't know if you saw this, but some guy— it's not the exact same, but it's an interesting story. This guy posted— he posted a picture of a Monet painting. Do you see this?

No.

So this guy took an actual Monet painting and he posted on X. And then— but he said, he said this, hey, I just generated an AI image in the style of a Monet painting. Please describe in as much detail possible which makes this inferior than a real Monet painting. And all the comments, everyone was like, because it was framed as AI, everyone was like, oh, you can tell. Look at the left, look at the left corner here. Like this brush mark is off that. And then later he was like, no, it was— that was the actual Monet, right?

Well, that's, that's an interesting conversation as well. But it's also you're tricking people, you know, like there's a there's, I think there's a lot, there's a lot of gray area there, but I think when it comes to writing specifically, and this isn't, this isn't the big thing, but I think it's the obvious thing around the writing being better. The AI version is just telling us things. This is kind of where I think it differs from, from art or like, you know, other disciplines. Like the AI version is just telling us things, whereas the human version is, is kind of filled with things that make writing feel rich and deep, and I'm going to show you what—

Yeah, your version gives us like, it gives you more space to let your brain imagine what that— it's like, it felt more like reading a story. One of the fun things about reading a book is your mind puts together what, what you think it is, and that might look different. My daughter and I were talking about this the other day, like, what do you think this character looks like? And she's like, really, I think he looks like this. And it's like, oh, that's cool. Hey, it's me, Dave. Our friends over at CustomerIO are sponsors of today's episode. They're a really cool company that helps marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. And they built their platform for marketers who actually care about the craft because marketing is a craft. It takes creativity, thought, and taste. Right now, everyone thinks they're magically a marketer because they have access to AI, and the result is kind of painful. More robotic emails, more noise, more bleh. AI isn't magic. It's not gonna fix bad strategy or write great copy for you magically. But the best teams also aren't ignoring it. They treat AI as infrastructure. When it's built the right way, it actually makes marketing feel more human, not less. And that's what Customer.io is doing. Their AI handles repetitive work like setup, orchestration, and tasks that should be automated so that you can focus on what actually matters, the craft of marketing, the strategy, the creativity. This is how good marketers are using AI right now, not to replace thinking, but to support it. If this landed with you at all, this idea about the craft of marketing, I want you to go and check out Customer.io. It's customer.io/exit5. Go and check 'em out. Customer.io/exit5. Hey, it's Dave. Look, I want to tell you about DRIVE 2026. This is our annual event we do for the ExitFive community. It's a 2-day B2B marketing conference in Stowe, Vermont. We built it for marketers who want to get smarter and actually connect with their peers. This isn't a generic industry conference. It's a small, intentionally designed event where the programming, the venue, and the schedule all work together to create the conditions for real conversations. Attendees spend 2 days getting into the tactical details of B2B marketing, what's working, what's not, and how the best teams are thinking about the problems that actually matter. This is all about workshops, sessions, and discussions that are built around participation, not passive listening. I want you to actually come and be there. If you're going to take the time to leave your family, leave the office, get outside of work, like actually be here, take notes, pay attention. It makes it all worth it. And here's the thing though, the B2B marketing stuff, that's what's going to get you to justify the ROI on your ticket. That's why you're going to be able to tell your boss that you want to go to this, but the best moments at DRIVE don't happen on stage. They happen at breakfast, on an afternoon hike, over a drink. After dinner, right? Somebody's gonna be roasting marshmallows at this place. It's that type of event. We designed this for, um, for disconnection. This is on purpose. Long breaks, unhurried meals, and opt-in activities where people spend time together outside the session room. Because look, we're all people. Where else in your life can you talk to someone else who understands your job as a B2B marketer? I go to my kids' swim lessons. I can't sit there and talk to the dad next to me about B2B marketing, but you can through the Exit5 community. And that's what DRIVE is all about. It's September 8th through 10th, 2026 at the lodge at Spruce Peak in over Vermont. Check it out, exitfive.com/drive to learn more about it. It's exitfive.com/drive, and I hope to see you there.

That's exactly right. Yeah.

And do you think, do you think like that's something like— yeah, that I kind of threw you off on the art thing, it was just a side joke, side, side story, not, not actually— it wasn't a good example to compare to this. But do you think there's something about writing though, like, because— communicate— is it because like Is there some tie to like us being cavemen and writing and the history of language and how we communicate? Is it something about that or is it just literally like the form of like text on a page just feels different?

Like at the end of the day, whether the AI made it or whether a human made it and somebody takes it like somebody interprets it whatever way they do it, I don't think that really matters. It's the effect that it has on you. I think we're talking about like the process of creation, like as the creator, as the writer, as the artist, if you're going through the process of it, then there will be a difference between the thing that was just prompted and created by the AI versus the thing that was, you know, the person that went through the process of creating that writing, creating that art, whatever it is. You know, if somebody looks at a Monet that was, you know, that somebody said was AI, they're going to see AI, you know, if somebody looks at an AI that somebody said was Monet, they're going to see a Monet, and it really does not matter. It doesn't matter at the end of the day because the perception is the, is the reality for them. Sure. So it is what it is. And that's the reality of the situation. That's the world that we're living in, whatever. But if you want to create the best work that you can create, then going through the process is important. I think I get this guy's point. I understand what he's saying and he's making a good point and he's making it well and It is what it is, and that's the truth. But who knows what that could have been if he had taken the, you know, if a real artist had taken the time to, to go through it, where, where it would have ended up. Maybe not the quality itself, but the idea and the concept would have been different. And I mean, I'm not an artist. I don't know anything about art. I can't really speak to that. But I know from an advertising standpoint, from a writing standpoint, If you have, if you go through the process of writing, that is where the work is done and it is going to be fundamentally different and many times much better than if you were to just one-shot it or go through a series of prompts because that process, that tedious kind of like working through the ideas. Like I'll give you an example. I'm working on a training right now. That I pre-sold a couple of months ago. And the way that this training started, what I thought it was going to be versus what it is now after several months of working on it, completely different. It's like two different— like it's the same thing. It's about sales emails. It's the same. It's the same topic. But the way that I envisioned it versus where it is now is completely different and 1,000 times better. It's like it started in New York and I'm in L.A. now. You know, and thank God for me going through that process because I guess in theory I could have just one-shotted it with ChatGPT or something, you know, could have just done that. Everybody has that option now, but it would have been 1,000 times worse. And so there's so much value in going through it and putting yourself through, through the motions, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

With AI, yeah, I think it can write coherently. But I don't think that writing is like it's poor competency. Like, I think it's— that's also clear based on like how often we say to ourselves, like, or hear others say like, oh, this sounds like AI wrote it, you know, like there's just this kind of like one-note flavor of AI writing that's, that's become extremely, I think, like recognizable and obvious and uninspired.

So what does it mean for, for people that listen to this, that, that work in marketing and do a lot of writing? Like, what does all this mean for them? What does it mean for us in our, in our jobs and our work?

Well, I think it means that not much has really changed. The tool is there now. We have—

but is it like you, if you want to win, if you want to stand out, if you want to get that subscriber, that customer, that whatever, you work for a nonprofit, you want the message to spread, is that you have to— because everyone, everything else, everyone else is going to be doing this, it's all going to feel like that. The opportunity, which is like your left, everything's going to feel like that computer-generated copy. The opportunity to stand out is to be the human-generated thing? Is that the opportunity?

Well, yeah, I think the bar has been raised, right? Like, there's now everybody, no matter where they are in the world, no matter how much, how well they, they, they speak a language, no matter what level of education they have or what level of experience or wisdom they possess, like, they're, they are, you know, it's been, it's been democratized. Like, the level of writing or the level of, uh, of creative expression in any, in any one discipline. So the bar has been, has been elevated, but now you just kind of, so now you just kind of roll with that and still go through your process, use these tools to your advantage, but still go through the process. It's not like I haven't been using AI to do my research or to, to help me along the way as I'm creating this training, but I'm still putting myself through the motions that I would have put myself through before AI. You know?

Yeah. What's interesting is like I— so for, for like writing, writing my newsletter as an example, I write my newsletter based on the podcast and what I do is I will say like, hey, this is my podcast with Eddie. Here are the 3— like I have notes on what I thought the interesting nuggets were. And like for the newsletter, it's supposed to be just kind of like quick hits, digestible stuff to get you to listen more or get some info. So it's like, pull out these 3 things, like, and I get the transcript and I take it from the transcript and I have those 3 things that I said with Eddie. But then I sit down after and I write the intro and I put my humor on it and I move things around and like, I feel like that is the writing process. Like what the first part is just like the research and getting my material. And I notice that the more I lean into that, like the personality storytelling, like the more that I use those, that types of copy, I get way more responses. And so there's definitely something that resonates with people or like even more recently, the stuff that I'm writing on LinkedIn, I'm trying to like lean into more my kind of just wild off-the-cuff writing style, like from my phone in my kitchen. I'm just noticing that that is generating more— it's getting more interest in responses. There's almost like becoming— it's like the new banner blindness is where like subconsciously blind to all of the kind of AI-generated, you know, email webinar invites, landing page copy, and you're more likely to have something stand out and resonate if you've kind of gone through that process. It's It's an interesting way to think about it because I think everyone is searching for like the fastest, most efficient, shortest cut way to do a lot of things. And you're basically remaking the case that like, like anything worth building in life or worth doing, it's oftentimes like the process that leads to, you know, the actual— something that's actually going to get the outcome that you want.

Yeah, there's no— I don't think— I don't think there's anything wrong with using AI to shortcut some things. But then there's definitely a problem with using AI to shortcut other things. Like, I think the research, like copywriting is kind of a misnomer to me. I almost, I always called it copy researching because that's what took up the bulk of, of my time on any one project is like going out, finding anecdotal information, finding anecdotal data from a market, understanding that market as well as I can. That was really time consuming and really tedious. And AI, just as an example, makes it so much easier to collate and collect a lot of data from a specific market, from all over the internet, put it together, see what the overlap is, see what the common themes are. That was— I wouldn't call it busywork, but it was definitely taking the majority of my time. And, and it was really hard. And it was, it was cutting, it was cutting the time that I had to actually write the promotion, write the piece. Now it's kind of flipped on its, on its head. Like now I can use AI to go out, find that information, find that anecdotal data, put it together in a really reliable way, and then give myself that much more time to put it together creatively. Um, and in a way that's inspired. And I think that's, that's the word here is like the writing is good, but it's not inspired. And maybe that's what I'm—

inspired for— yes, it has that charge in it, right?

Maybe that's what I'm talking about, you know what I mean? It's like, um, everybody can write now, but can you write?

There's a local little sandwich shop in my town and it's amazing. The lady makes some amazing sandwiches. But I could also go to Panera. I get a turkey bacon sandwich at Panera and it's gonna taste like one of those kind of, you know, big box store, off-the-shelf, gas station type of sandwiches. Which one's better?

Right. I mean, maybe. Yeah. Which one's better? I don't know what this— what this lady's shop looks like, but if the atmosphere in that shop is different, it's 10 out of 10.

She's amazing.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, there's— there's a lot of different variables.

All right. Do you have more— do you have more slides or are you done?

I have more slides. Let me get— let me go through some of the things that I think make writing inspired and I think need humanity to get there. So inspired writing has holes in it, right? And holes let the reader basically participate in the narrative. So it leaves room for the reader to, like you were saying earlier, use her imagination to access her own kind of experiences and wisdom and insert these things into the story. And that makes reading much more, I think, realistic and immersive. Experience. And so there's a few technical things that anyone can do to create holes, right? So you can frame the story in dialogue, which is simple, but not easy. I think you can use anti-description, which is basically not providing too much detail at all. And, and I'll show you what that looks like in a second. And then there's, there's subtext, which is basically like allowing the context, what's going on in the scene. To dictate the meaning behind the words. So, so for example, I don't have to tell you in this scene that I wrote that I'm anxious, right? Like you can tell based on what I'm saying, the observations I'm making, the questions I'm asking. That's the power of dialogue. It's basically, it's, it's how we get to know people in real life. You know, like you understand a person, who they are largely based on what they do and do not say out loud. You know what I mean? But like writing good dialogue that feels real, that feels like it came out of a real person's mouth, it's, it's really difficult. It's really hard. And sometimes humans can't, can't do it well at all, even when they're getting paid and the stuff they're writing is going on TV. You know what I mean? So this is a really hard thing to do, and it takes a grasp of the human condition and the context of the situation. And so this is something that AI struggles with a lot. Okay. And also with anti-description, I don't have to tell you I'm in a hospital, right? You can tell because I mentioned the nurse, right? I don't have to tell you about the environment. I don't have to tell you about, you know, the smells and the colors and the sterility of the hospital. You can tell because I mentioned masks and gowns and gloves and hairnets, right? So I'm not giving you a description as much as I'm giving you this, this kind of anti-description, small details that force you to color in the story based on your own experiences in a hospital, right? Creating an image that is like invariably more real and believable because it's coming from your own brain, like your own memory of that place. And so this process of filling in the details for yourself, exactly what you're talking about with your daughter, like even if they're not perfectly accurate, It's, it's not only engaging, but it's also like helping you conjure a more profound and like vivid image, almost like, like a, like a mind movie. And we've actually talked about this before on a call, Dave, about the Kholshov effect. It was this researcher, Lev Kholshov. Do you remember this?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Tell the story.

So Lev Kholshov did an experiment. He put an actor in front of a camera and he asked him to deliver an expressionless look, right? And then Kuleshov showed audiences a series of shots followed by the actor's expressionless face. So if you're not watching this, if you're listening to this, just imagine an expressionless face and then imagine Kuleshov showing this audience a bowl of soup, for example, and then the face, right? And then he would show them a small girl in a coffin, right? And then he would show them the same face of that actor. And then he would show them a woman on a fainting couch and then that same face. And what's interesting is that audiences were just amazed by the range of this great actor. They were so moved by his range, the way that he expressed his hunger in front of the bowl of soup and his grief at the child's death and his desire for the woman on the couch. Right? And so, what this proved is that in theatrical acting, the actor doesn't have to overdo it. Right? He doesn't have to project to the back of the house because the audience is already assigning the actor the emotions they think the actor is feeling. Right? Even though the actor isn't expressing anything at all. So, this expressionist— expressionless look in film and acting is a lot like what I call anti-description in, in writing. By giving the reader less, you're actually giving them more to imagine, to visualize, and, and more to experience, because the experience is happening in their head. And, you know, like, I, I mean, I'm not a technologist. I don't know where this stuff is going, but right now this is hard for the AI to do. It's hard for it to grasp, and it needs It needs a human touch there in order to really execute this effectively, I think, at least at a really high level. And as for subtext, because the audience knows this is my first child, that very last line, "Hello, son," actually takes on a completely different meaning, right? So ostensibly it's a, it's a greeting, right? But really it's, it's so much deeper than that, right? Like it, In this case, it's actually a transformation. It's the beginning of my life as a parent, as someone with this profound responsibility. And so I'm no longer that guy that's like, you know, like afraid of the nose freelo, right? Like I'm not that guy anymore. I'm someone else. I've become a different person. And you, the reader, are witnessing that. And I don't have to tell you this, right? I don't have to project this to the back of the room. You can feel it. Even if you can't put your finger on it, you can feel it. And I guess like that's enough. Like that feeling is enough to move people. And so that's something else that like the AI has a lot of trouble with. It's kind of like knowing where that line is between feeling it and expressing it outright. It's really, really hard for robots to do that. And it's really hard for people to do that. You know what I mean? So That's just one way that, like, leaning on, on the machines too much can really stifle your writing, stifle your expression. And, you know, we see that in the AI. All of this is in such stark contrast to what the AI does, which is basically, you know, spoon-feeding you the significance of the moment, the meaning of this moment. And, and you'll notice the AI's version is perfect. It's sterilized. It's like this amalgamation of ideal feelings and phrases. What do I like? Truly magical experience. Moment of joy and excitement. A wave of love and warmth. So much joy and pride. Unforgettable moment. This is what the AI is writing, and it's ramming the experience down your throat instead of inviting you to take part, right? Which is what good writing does.

Yeah, spoonfeeding is a perfect way to frame that.

Yeah. So back to your question, Dave, like why, why are people pushing back on AI? My perspective is I think, I think the real turnoff, especially folks in our industry, like marketers, copywriters, commercial storytellers, people who need to get under the skin and into the psyche of a market to exact some kind of change or compel an action. These folks understand that, like to quote Jeff Goodby, like a great ad is a mirror that you put in front of your audience, right? In other words, like, the, the best advertising is something people immediately see themselves in. It's something immediately relevant to their reality, what they've lived through, what they know to be true. And the truth about meeting your firstborn child is that it's, it's not always this rosy, idyllic thing, you know what I mean? Like the way the AI made it sound, right? Like, even if, if everything went perfectly, there's still fear and anxiety and doubt that can overshadow the beauty of it all, which sets in later. But in the immediate, it's, it's not always there. And that's especially true if things didn't go perfectly well, right? Like then, then the fear and the anxiety and the doubt is just through the roof, which is, which is what my version was. And, and, you know, of course the AI couldn't understand those feelings. Hmm. Why didn't it understand? Like, because the AI The AI didn't just, you know, watch the most important person in its life go through this incredibly hard and complicated labor, right? Because, you know—

It didn't go through the process. It didn't have to make the baby, like, you know, grow the baby, like, yeah.

Not at all. And it didn't have to witness this baby struggling to breathe inside my wife, right? It didn't have to, you know, it wasn't there during emergency surgery at 4 o'clock in the morning. People are, people are like the most incredible animals because every day we go through life with this knowledge that everything we care about and everything we love could be just completely taken away from us. And yet we, we go on anyway, right? Every day we persist. And, and sometimes we have moments that remind us of this reality, and that does something to us. Right? And that's why I wrote what I wrote. I wrote my truth and my reality. And because we all share the human experience, so many people understood that truth. They related to my version, to my experience, my way of expressing it, you know, which gave them, them room and space, you know, alongside me. And I think they were equally underwhelmed by the version put forth by the AI because it's just, it's just this computer and it's just regurgitating this sterilized version of perfection just didn't exist. Wasn't true.

All right, Eddie, good job. This is a well-needed message, a break from, a break from reality with Eddie.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. No, this is good.

Thank you.

I mean, yeah, you're gonna be, you're gonna be the first one that they take out, the robots. But I appreciate your, your speech there.

Well, what's your perspective, Dave? Tell me what you're, um, tell me what you're thinking. What are your first thoughts when somebody comes out like that?

Um, my first thoughts when, when, with AI?

I just told you something.

Yeah.

How did it, you know, how did it make you feel?

I think you're right. I think it, I think it does. Look, and I think there's plenty of people that are going to argue, like the real AI people are going to say this, you know, the models can do this and here's why and da da da. And I think But I don't think you're saying the same thing. I think what you're saying is like, the way I interpret is like, there's always going to be an opportunity to have like the handcrafted, handmade thing made by a human. And I feel like that with food, with buildings, with rest— whatever it is. And I think the same is true in, in marketing and writing. And there's some hard-to-define reason, but you can just feel it. And I think you're making that, you're making that case. And I, I totally buy into that because I'm a human. I still want a job, I would love to believe that like the made by human thing really matters, not just because of the like philosophical thing, like I'm team human and I want it to be made by my team, but just like I feel like there is something there that a robot type of thing can't hit on in the same way.

So there's no doubt that like it's, you know, there aren't going to be as many copywriters or there aren't going to, you know, there aren't going to be as many marketers there's going to be just, I don't know what, I don't know what's going to happen, but I do know that like whether I'm actually sitting down and writing this stuff myself and using my fingertips to type it or in however many years talking to, talking to a machine and telling it what to write, like there's like copywriting and marketing is a human profession because you, you need to tap into, you need to tap into the human condition to, to understand it. And to understand that market, to, to be able to—

I'm writing that down. Well, that's a really good— that's a good headline. Why copywriting is a human profession. Love that. That's it. Let's make that case.

It absolutely is. It's— copywriting is about empathy and understanding a market and understanding what people want, whether it's rational or not. Whatever it is that market needs, whatever it is that market wants, whether you agree with it. It's like the ultimate form of empathy. It's the ultimate exercise in empathy because for as long as you're working on that promotion, you're not yourself anymore. You're, you are actually trying to assume the consciousness of, of somebody else and their perspective and their worldview, who they are and what they want. And sometimes that doesn't follow that. What they want doesn't follow all the rules. You know, it's not something that you could just go and You can't just get it. You have to talk to them or you have to put it together somehow and you have to find an angle that is going to appeal to them based on whatever they're thinking.

So, sir. All right. We got it. We got to wrap. I got to jump. You got to go. Eddie. Eddie Schleiner, thanks for coming on, brother. We're going to link to all your stuff. Verygoodcopy.com. I love this topic. Something for us to think about. And I very much needed this session today. So thank you. Thank you, sir.

I appreciate you, Dave. Thank you for having me, man. All right, bye.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at Exit5, and you can go and check that out instead of leaving a rating or review. Go check it out right right now on our website, exitfive.com. Our mission at Exit Five is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing, and there's no better place to do that than with us at Exit Five. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day, asking questions about things like marketing, planning ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers, building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group, or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for 7 days, so you can go and check it out risk-free. And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out, learn more, exitfive.com, and I will see you over there in the community.