| I'm at a conference this week with 500 content entrepreneurs. You know what everyone is talking about? Tools. Which AI model writes the best copy. Which workflow turns one piece of content into twenty. Which automation stack saves the most time. And I get it. The tools are genuinely incredible. I see something new every single day that blows me away. The speed, the quality, the things that are possible right now that weren't possible six months ago. I'm not dismissing any of it. I use these tools. I'm excited about these tools. But I keep looking around the room and thinking: if all 500 of us are using the same tools, running the same prompts, following the same frameworks... what actually makes any of us different? Not the tools. The tools are table stakes now. Two weeks ago, we talked about the skill that never changes. Last week we talked about why the message matters more than the medium. This week I want to talk about the thing that actually separates you from everyone else who has access to everything you have access to. It's your taste. And it's your judgment. 1. Think small.In the 1960s, every car ad in America looked the same. Big cars. Big claims. Big headlines. The louder you were, the more space you bought, the more you won. Then Bill Bernbach ran an ad for Volkswagen with two words: Think Small. It was quiet. It was self-deprecating. It made the product's biggest weakness, its size, the entire point. It broke every rule in the category. And it became one of the most celebrated ads in history. Bernbach once said: "It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors." That line was sharp in 1960. It cuts even deeper right now. Because Bernbach didn't win with a bigger budget or a better distribution channel. He won because he saw what everyone else was doing and did the opposite. He had taste and judgment. He knew that in a world full of noise, the unexpected is what earns attention. That's not a formula. You can't reverse engineer it. You can't prompt it. That's taste and judgment working together. Knowing what's surprising and knowing what will land with the specific people you're trying to reach. And it's the same call you're making every time you write a newsletter, build a landing page, or craft an offer. 2. AI raised the floor. It also flattened the ceiling.Let's be honest about what AI is doing well. It has dramatically raised the floor of content quality. Anyone can produce competent copy in seconds. Clean structure. Solid hooks. Professional tone. The baseline just got a lot higher, and that's genuinely useful. But here's what Bernbach also warned about: "In communications, familiarity breeds apathy." AI gravitates toward the statistically probable and a reversion to the mean. It pulls everything toward the center. The safe phrasing. The expected structure. The familiar arc. The more people use the same tools, the more everything starts to sound like everything else. When everyone's floor rises to the same level, competent becomes invisible. It doesn't offend anyone. It doesn't surprise anyone either. It just exists, gets scrolled past, and is forgotten. Creativity does the opposite. It violates precedent. It reframes the problem. It leans into a tension others are avoiding. It removes instead of adds. It trusts the reader to connect the dots. The Volkswagen ad didn't win because it had better adjectives. It won because it shifted perspective. It respected the reader's intelligence. It embraced constraint. In a category full of shouting, it whispered. That's what made it impossible to ignore. When everything reverts to the mean, the only content that cuts through is the content that breaks away from it. 3. Taste and judgment are the strategy.AI can generate ten directions for your next piece of content. It can give you ten angles, ten hooks, ten subject lines. All of them will be competent. Most of them will be safe. And that's exactly the problem. Intelligence is a commodity now. So is execution. AI gave everyone access to both. The work that matters isn't generating the options. It's choosing between them. It's knowing which angle will actually land with the specific people you're trying to reach. Which tension is worth naming. Which idea is bold enough to break away from the mean but true enough to resonate when it does. That's taste and judgment working together. Taste is the instinct for what's surprising. Judgment is knowing what's right for your audience, right now. So how do you build both? Start by paying attention to what stops you. When an email makes you feel something, don't just feel it. Stop and ask what it did. What was the first line? Where did it get specific? When did you go from skimming to reading every word? When a piece of content bores you, notice the exact moment you checked out. Your own reactions are the best classroom for developing taste. You already know what good feels like. You just haven't slowed down enough to study why. Judgment is built differently. Judgment comes from reps with your specific audience. Write something, send it, watch what happens. Not just open rates. Read the replies. Notice which line someone quotes back to you. Notice which piece gets forwarded and which one gets silence. Over time, you develop a feel for what lands with your people specifically. Not people in general. Yours. The combination is where the edge lives. Taste tells you what's boring. Judgment tells you what's brave in a way your audience will actually respond to. And the more reps you get, the faster you can look at ten AI-generated options and immediately know which one to throw away and which one to build on. Think about the content entrepreneurs you actually follow. The ones whose emails you open every time. They're not the ones with the best production quality or the most sophisticated automation. They're the ones who have done this work. Who know their audience deeply enough to surprise them. Who say the thing you were thinking but hadn't heard anyone say out loud. That's not a skill AI is going to replace. That's the skill AI makes essential. 4. Put it to work.Pull up the next piece of content you're about to publish. Before you hit send, ask yourself one question: is this surprising, or is it just competent? Could someone with the same AI tools and the same topic have produced something almost identical? If the answer is yes, you haven't added the thing that only you can add. Find the one place in that piece where you can make a braver choice. Say the thing more directly. Cut the paragraph that's playing it safe. Take the angle that might not work for everyone but will deeply resonate with the people you actually want to reach. Competent content is everywhere now. AI made sure of that. The bar for "good enough" has never been lower to clear. The bar for "I can't stop thinking about that" has never been higher. Creativity is the last unfair advantage. Use it. Go move someone. - Darrell from Copyblogger P.S. There are 3 ways Copyblogger can help you build your content business: Copyblogger Accelerator — A 60-day sprint for content entrepreneurs making under $10K/month. Darrell personally takes apart your positioning, offer, content system, and sales process, and rebuilds them with you. Next cohort begins April 2026. Learn more about the Accelerator. Copyblogger Coaching — 1:1 strategic coaching with Darrell for content entrepreneurs at $250K+ scaling to $1M. Diagnostic-first. Six-month commitment. Learn more about Coaching. |
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