How would you promote a product in the age of AI “slop”?
I don’t want to rant here (but I probably will a bit)... 😀
Almost every ad visual, but also a lot of organic content on social media, is very generic and created by AI (I get it, it’s a cheaper and more scalable way of promoting). But when everyone does it, it becomes really hard to stand out and differentiate yourself.
I feel like it’s not just on the internet anymore, but even on TV.
So, how do you stand out in a time when there is an overload of information and AI slop everywhere around us?
The only possible solutions that come to my mind are guerrilla campaigns in physical spaces, whose impact is then amplified by social media sharing, basically some kind of mediated experience that people talk about online.
I know this will depend on the type of product, but how would you approach this?
Replies
PopShort.Al -Stream Short Drama
My contrarian take:
The problem isn't AI slop.
The problem is that most marketing was already slop before AI.
AI just made it cheaper.
People don't ignore content because it was generated by AI.
They ignore it because it's predictable.
Everyone is optimizing for production.
Very few are optimizing for insight.
The posts I save are rarely the most beautiful ones.
They're usually the ones that teach me something I didn't know five minutes ago.
In a world where everyone can generate content, originality becomes the moat.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@elara_thorn Was this written with the help of AI? :D
@elara_thorn @busmark_w_nika it definitely was lol
Go back to being REALLY human! I really like how @tyler_denk does this with @beehiiv
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@tyler_denk @lisa_steingold2 That's how beehiiv is growing so fast
Absolutely!
I think the problem isn’t just AI-generated ad videos. The real issue is that we’re constantly exposed to ads every single minute. People are just getting tired of advertising in general.
Personally, I don’t even watch videos that have “sponsored” labels anymore. And if a regular video contains hidden advertising, I usually notice it quickly and just close it as soon as I hear familiar marketing patterns.
Based on my own behavior, I’m also realizing that I’m hitting a wall when it comes to marketing the product I’m currently building.
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@selin_erkal We moved from TV to the Internet, not to see ads. But ads will find us everywhere.
@busmark_w_nika I can still remember the slogan and the jingle from a TV commercial I saw 15 years ago, even though the brand no longer exists. But I can't even remember an ad I saw five minutes ago. How can brands create the kind of lasting impact today that old commercials used to have—the kind that stayed in our heads and kept playing over and over?
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@selin_erkal Which slogan do you refer to? :) Which brand was it?
one way is to be visibly human.
not performatively human, not "written by a real person" disclaimers.
just actual opinions, actual mistakes, actual behind-the-scenes.
the bar for that is getting lower every day because most content has been smoothed into the same AI texture.
the guerrilla/physical angle you mentioned works for the same reason. it's inherently unscalable, which is exactly why it stands out. if something can be generated at volume, it's already losing the attention game.
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@riya_pariyar I am afraid that this is not more valid, because AI can mimic all of those. Even AI made backstage photos.
@busmark_w_nika fair point, and i'd slightly push back. yes, ai can mimic backstage photos, stories, even tone. but what it can't replicate is the creative direction behind it. the actual thinking, the weird angle you chose, the decision to do something nobody else is doing. and whether you use ai or go fully manual, that part doesn't change. the edge is always in the thinking process and the approach you bring to it. two people using the exact same tools can produce wildly different outcomes based on that alone.
Specificity is the antidote. Slop is generic by nature, so anything hyper-specific to a real person's real problem cuts through immediately. I sell AI prompt packs for specific niches like real estate agents and content creators. Not "AI prompts." That specificity alone does more than any ad campaign.
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@antwon_randolph2 okay, but it is customised service, isn't it?
I’d separate “stand out” into two jobs: getting noticed and being trusted after someone notices.
AI slop mostly breaks the second one. A campaign can be clever or physical, but if the follow-up page, founder posts, replies, and screenshots all sound like the same generic assistant wrote them, the trust leaks out fast.
For small teams I’d start with proof that is hard to fake: messy before/after decisions, specific customer language, founder tradeoffs, tiny product constraints, and examples of what you deliberately *won’t* say or do. Then use AI to package that material, not invent the personality from scratch.
So yes to guerrilla/IRL if it fits, but the durable moat is usually a recognizable point of view plus real artifacts behind it.
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@jim_jeffers I am afraid that people will start using AI (or AI will act on its own) and make mistakes to sound more "human". 😭
@busmark_w_nika Yes — the fake imperfection loop is already starting. The point is not “make it sound messier”; it is “make it traceable to something real.”
A typo or awkward sentence is not proof of humanity. A specific tradeoff, a real customer phrase, a screenshot with context, or a founder saying “we tried X and it failed for this boring reason” is much harder to fake convincingly.
ReplyMind
You've touched on something real here. Stop using AI for storytelling. Use AI to work faster. Use authenticity to stand out. We're building Leandeck with this exact philosophy. Specific stories > Generic optimization. That's the differentiator
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@moon10 I would say: Just use AI for research and polishing, but your story should be narrated by you.
I think specificity is the antidote to AI slop.
Generic content is easy to generate now, so what stands out is real examples, sharp opinions, customer language, and proof that you actually understand the problem.
One honest user story or specific lesson is often stronger than ten polished posts.
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@anton_bozh That's why I cherish mistakes in the posts ;)
I’d probably go the opposite direction of polished AI content. Show the real product, real use cases, real people using it, even if it looks a bit rough. The more perfect everything looks now, the easier it is to ignore. Human proof feels more valuable than another clean AI-generated visual.
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@farrukh_butt1 But nowadays, even with AI you can make content that looks unpolished (like "human-made") :D
AISA AI Skills Test
the differentiators people keep naming (authenticity, showing up) are real but AI will happily mimic the tone of all of it. the one thing it cant fake is a specific, checkable claim tied to you. slop is always unfalsifiable, "grow faster", "10x your workflow", nothing you could ever prove wrong. the stuff that cuts through is a claim someone could call you a liar over if it wasnt true: this exact number, this real before/after, this thing I shipped on this date. a generator wont produce that because it has nothing real to put on the line. so id promote with falsifiable specifics, not better vibes.
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@ozandag it feels like the only true thing is to show up IRL :D