Issue #45: Is your AI marketing a microwave meal or farm-to-table?

Good morning.

“Stop putting the past on a pedestal and just make something that’s delicious.”

This weekend, I was thumbing through some books on my shelf and I happened across “The Unapologetic Cookbook” by Josh Weissman, and the quote above was the final line in his intro for the book.

His point?

You must master the fundamentals to make something great.

And you might be reading this thinking, “what does this have to do with AI Sam?”

Everything.

I need to use this issue to level with you. It’s going to look a little different than the usual Bionic Marketing Issue.

If you like the vibe, let me know, I’ll write more essays like this in the future.

If you don’t like it, tell your enemies.

Let’s get into it.

—Sam

Culinary Intuition and AI, Mastering the Fundamentals

Normally, I don’t pay attention to the AI complainers, but sometimes, you can’t help but see it. 

People complain that it’s all “hype” because they haven’t seen any concrete examples of AI applied in a way that will work for them.

And most of the time, these complaints come from copywriters, marketers, designers, and others whose roles touch content and messaging daily.

This makes sense. Writing, marketing, and design are three areas where AI can do the job, completely or to a large extent. People are understandably punchy about it.

But let’s take a lesson from chef Weissman, the intro of his cookbook says this:

“Cooking is an art form, it’s expressive… What I want is for people to understand that right now, the number one most important thing you can have in your cooking arsenal is not some weird newfangled device whose only task is to dismantle a single avocado and nothing else.”

I’d argue that the work you do with AI, especially as marketers and creatives, is nothing less than an art. 

Have you ever watched one of those competitive cooking shows where the chef breaks down a whole lobster in a matter of seconds? 

Do you know how many lobsters had to die throughout his career to give him that speed?

All of those shiny AI tools out there are just The Avocado Dismantler 5000 and mean nothing if you haven’t mastered your craft, they.

In the hands of the Head Chef, the Avocado Dismantler is a tool he can wield with years of honed precision of his craft. 

But hand it to the 16-year-old pimply-faced dishwasher and it’ll take him ten minutes just to figure out what end the avocado goes in.

Weissman’s intro goes on to explain that: “The most important thing is culinary intuition. If you understand how and why various cooking techniques and ingredients behave the way they do, then there is no boundary or barrier of entry for any idea you could ever have in food.”

Applied to AI, “culinary intuition” is the skills of:

• Curation (Selection)

• Perspective (POV)

• Discernment (Situational/Contextual Awareness)

• Judgment (Decision-Making)

• Tastemaking (Sense of Taste)

• Articulation (Expression)

• Wisdom (Right Thing, Right Time)

Just as a chef's mastery of culinary techniques and intuition for ingredients enables creative dishes, your command of these skills is the true "unfair advantage" with AI—not the tools themselves.

Think of curation and perspective as a chef selecting and combining ingredients. 

Discernment and judgment are like adjusting flavors and techniques to suit the dish. 

Tastemaking and articulation reflect the presentation and explanation of a culinary creation, while wisdom embodies the chef's ability to know what works best in each unique situation.

In this light, AI tools become like advanced kitchen appliances—useful for amplifying our efforts, but not the source of true innovation or quality.

At the same time, the tools are valuable. They enable you to do things differently, better, faster than before. And there’s a lot of value in the exploration and usage of them.

This is a paradox.

The real "unfair advantage" for marketers lies in mastering these human-centric fundamentals.

Much like a chef's advantage comes from their deep understanding of food, culinary technique, and their life experiences—not from owning a particular blender.

Another way to look at it:

There’s a certain tempo and timing, and movement, in cooking. You start boiling water, cut vegetables while you wait for the boil, put the salmon in the oven at a certain point—all for the sake of timing the convergence of ingredients into the same destination, at the right time: your plate.

Working with AI tools is very much like that. There’s a tempo. There’s movement. There are multiple things happening at the same time.

Your edge comes from your grasp and mastery of the fundamental skills and concepts that form your craft, not from access to AI tools.

Everything you’ve ever learned, every life experience you’ve had up until this point, every timeless literary or design principle you’ve burned deep into your brain since your first day on the job.

Those are the building blocks to your mastery of AI.

Let’s apply Weissman’s quote to AI: 

If you understand the how and why of the fundamentals that make up your craft, of the meat that makes up your actual prompts, then there is no boundary or barrier of entry to any idea you could ever have.

AI is there, as a tool at your disposal, you only have to provide it the foundation. And this foundation takes expertise, it takes experience.

Yet, I’ve seen a lot of marketers, designers, writers, and copywriters, whom I greatly respect, continue to push away from AI.

Because they fear that it somehow makes them less-than. The dismissal is usually “AI will NEVER do…” or “AI will NEVER be as creative as…” 

Meanwhile, there are research papers and discoveries every week that reveal these models are, in fact, being creative—sometimes very much like humans are, and sometimes differently.

I also suspect that there are a handful of you AI nay-sayers out there who are secretly reading this newsletter and quietly applying what you learn, without wanting to admit it. I’m glad you’re here.

Let’s explore where I think this fear comes from.

Originality and Influence in the Age of AI

“GenAI is plagiarism!” screams the vitriols of wary creatives on the internet.

This concern often stems from the notion that AI, by its very nature, is trained on historical information, the past original works of everyone who has come before. 

This somehow means that your outputs from AI must lack true originality, as they are simply Frankenstein’s monster of what someone else has already created.

And I suppose to a point, this is true, but is it the whole truth?

Does the output of an LLM not mirror the human creative process?

Let’s unpack this for a minute.

The criticism that LLM outputs are just plagiarism misses a key point about how these models function. During training, LLMs don’t store exact phrases or passages to regurgitate on command.

Rather, they use what they’ve learned about linguistic patterns to generate content based on probabilities—the likelihood of certain words following others.

Moreover, LLMs don’t have direct access to their training data when generating responses. They don’t "retrieve" specific articles or phrases—they generate new sequences of text based on their internalized understanding of language.

The outputs are shaped by the vast array of data they've been exposed to, but they are not replicas of that data.

So, when we talk about originality in AI, it’s important to recognize that while LLMs are trained on existing content, the outputs are real-time dynamic constructions of new text that emerge from learned patterns, not just a stitched-together mosaic of someone else’s work.

This is a far cry from simply copying. It’s more like remixing learned information and applying patterns from past data to create something original.

In other words, it’s not plagiarism. 

And also, is this not exactly how human creativity works?

Malcolm Gladwell, in his essay Something Borrowed, suggests that true creativity often involves building upon existing foundations, drawing inspiration from various sources, and understanding the historical evolution of ideas.

His essay details a time when Gladwell’s work was blatantly plagiarized by playwright Bryony Lavery in her Broadway show “Frozen” (the one about serial killers, not the cutesy animated characters your kids can’t stop watching).

I find Gladwell's exploration of creative influence offers a valuable framework for navigating the relationship that marketers and creatives seem to have with AI.

Gladwell argues that creativity rarely happens in a vacuum. Instead, it often involves drawing inspiration from existing sources, building upon established foundations, and recombining familiar elements in novel ways.

He cites numerous examples from the music world to illustrate this point:

• The Beastie Boys' use of a sample from James Newton's "Choir" in their song "Pass the Mic" highlights the blurred lines between borrowing, inspiration, and plagiarism. While the Beastie Boys ultimately won the legal battle over their use of the sample, the case sparked debate about the extent to which artists can incorporate existing material into their work.
  

• Gladwell's analysis of Led Zeppelin's music underscores how even groundbreaking artists draw heavily on their influences. Led Zeppelin's signature sound, often credited with revolutionizing rock music, was deeply rooted in blues traditions. Gladwell argues that without the freedom to mine these existing musical structures, Led Zeppelin's innovative music might never have existed.
  

• Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom Song" controversy demonstrates the concept of unconscious self-borrowing in creativity. When accused of plagiarism, a musicologist revealed that Lloyd Webber had unknowingly incorporated melodies from his own earlier works. Gladwell uses this case to highlight how artists can unintentionally draw from their previous creations, blurring the lines between originality and self-influence, and emphasizing the complex, multi-faceted nature of creative inspiration.

In this light, the acceptance that something brilliant can emerge from an amalgamation of existing ideas and structures becomes an important part of the creative process.

The tension lies in striking the right balance—respecting creative ownership while also allowing for the evolution and recombination of ideas that fuel innovation.

Gladwell suggests that a rigid focus on originality, taken to an extreme, can stifle innovation.

Just as a novelist might draw inspiration from classic literature, or a painter might incorporate elements from different artistic movements, AI developers and users often leverage existing datasets, algorithms, and even outputs from other AI systems as starting points for their creations.

This is where the concept of "transformative use" becomes critical.

Gladwell implies that what distinguishes truly creative work from derivation (or copying, or plagiarism) lies in the artist's ability to build upon existing foundations in a way that adds something new and meaningful to the conversation.

This might involve:

• Re-contextualizing existing elements: The Beastie Boys, for example, took a relatively obscure jazz flute sample and used it to create a completely different sonic landscape within their hip-hop track.
  

• Combining disparate influences: Led Zeppelin's fusion of blues elements with harder rock instrumentation resulted in a unique sound that pushed the boundaries of the genre.
  

• Adding a unique perspective or style: Even when drawing on familiar themes or techniques, artists can infuse their work with a distinct voice or aesthetic that sets it apart.

So, how did Gladwell respond to the plagiarism of his own work?

He confronted Bryony Lavery and arranged a face-to-face meeting with her at his apartment.

This rendezvous happened the day after she was grilled for plagiarism in the NY Times mind you.

Lavery began by apologizing profusely to Gladwell, and explained her creative process:

“What happens when I write is that I find that I’m somehow zoning in on a number of things. I find that I’ve cut things out of newspapers because the story or something in them is interesting to me, and seems to have a place onstage. Then it starts coagulating. It’s like the soup starts thickening. And then a story, which is also a structure, starts emerging.”

This explanation sounds a lot to me like most creative processes I’ve heard of.

How do you think I found the structure of the essay you’re reading right now?

I spent the last couple of weeks thinking and talking about these themes on social media and in other places.

As the week went on, anytime I read anything that seemed to hit on these themes, I saved quotes, snippets, and notes into a Google Drive file.

When I sat down to write, I had a repository of source material, ideas, and inspiration.

And do you know what I did?

I loaded it into NotebookLM, and I asked it to help me make sense of it all, to find my throughline, to help me bring clarity and structure to my thoughts.

It’s an excellent tool for sense-making, discovery, combination, and learning. 

For the copywriters, do any of you have a trusty swipe file you return to whenever you need some inspiration?

For the designers, do you save things that inspire you? Work that you find visually appealing? Art that brings you joy?

Can any of us say, with any certainty, that our work is always completely, entirely, original?

From one creative to another, Gladwell was sympathetic to the plight of Lavery stating:

“She used my descriptions of Lewis’s work and the outline of Lewis’s life as a building block…. Isn’t that the way creativity is supposed to work? Old words in the service of a new idea aren’t the problem. What inhibits creativity is new words in the service of an old idea.”

And to put our creativity in relation to our mortality: 

“Creative property has many lives—the newspaper arrives at our door, it becomes part of the archive of human knowledge, then it wraps fish. And, by the time ideas pass into their third and fourth lives, we lose track of where they came from, and we lose control of where they are going… I suppose that I could get upset about what happened to my words. I could also simply acknowledge that I had a good, long ride with that line—and let it go.”

If you're creative in any domain (copywriting, marketing, design, etc.), and the idea of implementing an AI-assisted creative process makes you feel uncomfortable…

This frustrating, uncertain period is an opportunity.

I may run an AI company, but I cut my teeth in direct response copywriting.

I’ve put in the hours, I’ve written sloughs of ad sets, emails, articles, you name it. I’ve done the old-school thing, I’ve hand-copied the Eugene Schwartz letters.

Which, by the way, do you know what the great Eugene had to say on the subject of great copy?

“Copy is not written. If anyone tells you ‘you write copy’, sneer at them. Copy is not written. Copy is assembled. You do not write copy, you assemble it. You are working with a series of building blocks, you are putting the building blocks together, and then you are putting them in certain structures, you are building a little city of desire for your person to come and live in.”

Gene is a god among men when it comes to copywriting, people love to quote him (and rip him off), ad nauseam.

He understood great copy, the kind of copy that beats all of the controls.

Why?

Because it’s a stroke of genius on the part of the writer?

No. 

What Gene was getting at was that this kind of copy is grounded in a sound understanding of the fundamentals, ie. how to harness the desire of your buyer, and what collections of words make people buy things.

He understood the psychology around buying behavior, the psychology of words, and the fundamentals that all great copy is built from.

How long has digital marketing been around now?

Since the dawn of the internet. That makes thirty-plus years of digital marketing in some iteration or another.

From Radio to Google ads there are hundreds of platforms, channels, and mediums to sell to your customers nowadays.

And you know what? The words we use to sell our products still haven’t changed.

We’re still using AIDA, and PAS, DOS frameworks on our sales pages.

We’re still following the same headline structures.

We’re still teaching Eugene, Claude, etc. in copy courses.

Why?

Because after all of these years, the fundamentals of buying psychology still haven’t changed.

These fundamentals will, however, take on new shapes and expressions in the Age of AI.

There’s alpha and opportunity in discovering what those new shapes are and using them—with AI tools.

Recently, my business partner and I acquired TypePrompt. 

It’s an AI-powered content tool engineered to craft hooks and short-form content for maximum attention capture, attention retention, and attention channeling.

We’ve decoded the strategies of leading influencers, virality, and engagement with the help of AI—and distilled them into customizable hooks and templates.

In the next few months, we’ll roll out updates, more hooks, and templates that are all based on what’s working now. It’ll never be jammed with “10,000 amazing hook prompts!!” or something silly.

The hooks and templates will be tested, validated, curated, and crafted for maximum leverage—using my decade-long experience with direct response copywriting, marketing, and CRO. 

Right now, and for Bionic Marketing subscribers only, you can get 33% OFF any annual plan (Creator or Creator Pro, either one).

Use this code: BIONIC33

(Copy it, it’s case sensitive, so all caps).

Again, that’s for the annual plan. See how TypePrompt works here.

The coupon is valid for 14 days.

You can of course sign up for a monthly plan, but there’s no discount on those.

By the way, this tool is a small piece of my path toward a 1P1B company (1 Person, $1 Billion). 

Not the tool itself, it’ll never be worth $1 Billion (hahaha, can you imagine?), obviously.

But as a tool in the toolbox of building other brands and properties—powered by AI.

Get 33% OFF any annual plan with BIONIC33. Valid for 14 days and then poof, it’s gone.

Get started with TypePrompt here.

Talk soon,
Sam Woods
The Editor