Esse Quam Videri · To be, rather than to seem
I grade real AI-generated marketing against Anthropic's 4 D's of AI fluency. So far that's REI's backwards handlebars, Skechers on the test bench and the anatomy of generic. The Soul Crusade is small, well-dressed and always recruiting.
Most premium brands freeze between adopting AI too fast and too slow. The House Line is the way out: a simple matrix and four tests that decide what AI absorbs, what it assists, and what stays human, plus the standard AI-touched work must clear before it carries your name.
For five years, luxury houses converged on the same sans-serif logo and the same beige palette. That was the anomaly, since bold choices have always been luxury's DNA, and the blanding era is now cracking.
You can spot AI-generated LinkedIn content from across the room, usually because nobody told the tool what to sound like. This is a five-dimension rubric for diagnosing generic voice, and how to install it as a Claude skill.
Every company is scrambling to adopt AI for marketing, and most are skipping the foundational step. Without clear brand positioning, AI makes bad marketing faster, because positioning is the input for every AI system.
Most people treat AI like a blank-slate conversation every time, which is like briefing a new consultant from scratch on every call. A CLAUDE.md file fixes that, and this is how to set one up.
Most brands know what they say, what they sell and what their competitors are doing. Far fewer know what's true underneath, and this is how to dig for it.
The brands struggling most with AI tend to be the ones that hoped it could paper over a weak foundation. This is what happens when you automate mediocrity.
A brand that resonates across every channel usually says fewer things, more often. Volume without a clear signal is noise.
If something here struck a chord, I'd love to hear about it. Grab thirty minutes on my calendar and we can talk through what's on your mind, whether that's your brand, the AI question, or just the thing that's been bugging you about your category.
Give my brand soul →