Hey! Back again. On my usual rant. I guess that’s what I do now.
*For real—just last week, I heard myself saying to my tween, “Turn it down!”
Sigh.
But let’s get into it, this is the very realization that sparked my rant today:
The biggest lie we’ve been sold is that efficiency equals connection.
Businesses are optimizing for everything—marketing, operations, communication—but in doing so, sometimes suck the soul out of how they engage with real humans. Professional now means sanitized. Strategic often means safe.
And in an era where the Overit creative team can generate an image of me riding a glitter-covered bunny through a field of marshmallows in under 3 seconds, why do so many businesses still feel like they’re running on autopilot from 1986?
*Cueing Final Knight Rider Season*
I’ve watched companies throw technology at problems without actually solving them. They invest in fancy tools but deliver forgettable experiences.
It’s like buying a pair of badass shoes… and never leaving the house.
And if you know me in human form, you know what an absolute tragedy that is.
Technology can’t replace humanity
Right now, brands are automating their personality out of existence. But the ones who lean into being bold, fresh, and creative? They stand out like a hand-painted vase in a sea of plastic containers.
Most companies approach AI like a recipe—plug in the same inputs, follow rigid steps, and churn out the same bland casserole as everyone else.
Put boring in, get boring out.
Put humanness in? You get magic.
The more tech advances, the more we crave real human connection. That’s not a contradiction—it’s an opportunity.
But real breakthroughs? The kind that makes competitors nervously Google your name at 2 AM? Those happen when you treat AI as a creative sparring partner, not just a production tool.
AI can be the ultimate “yes, and…” collaborator.
It doesn’t get stuck in humanity, and that can also, at times, be really helpful.
It doesn’t protect its ego.
It just… goes there.
The smartest companies don’t start with technology and then try to force connection into it. They start with connection and work backward, using technology to enhance it.
Think about the brands you actually love. They don’t just sell you things. They make you feel some kind of way.
Technology doesn’t erase humanity—it amplifies what you put into it.
We once worked with a company drowning in customer complaints. Their knee-jerk reaction? Automate responses to make support faster (aka, slap a bandaid on it). Instead, we used AI to analyze emotional patterns and connections across complaints.
What we uncovered wasn’t just a faster fix—it was a completely new business opportunity addressing needs their customers couldn’t even articulate.
The difference? We weren’t asking AI for answers—we humans were using it to uncover better questions.
The Courage to Be Imperfect
Perfect is predictable.
Perfect is forgettable.
Perfect is boring as hell.
The best companies own their quirks. They don’t obsess over flawlessness; they obsess over consistency of character.
If your brand’s voice could be swapped with your competitor’s and no one would notice, you don’t have a strategy—you have a template. And templates don’t change the world.
Being More Human Is a Competitive Advantage
AI can analyze data, but it can’t feel anything.
It can recognize patterns, but it doesn’t understand why they matter.
That’s your superpower.
The businesses that win aren’t just collecting data—they’re developing empathy at scale.
Not just what people do, but why they do it.
One of my favorite ways to build audience personas is to go beyond the obvious:
- What’s their pre-show ritual before a concert?
- What drink do they order every time?
- What actor or musician do they always follow?
- What merch do they never leave without?
- Why do they do what they do?
That’s where the real connection lives.
Design for Delight, Not Just Efficiency
Most businesses are designed to get people to do something.
The best businesses are designed to make people feel something.
A lovely brand I worked with used AI to analyze customer interactions and surprise them with small, hyper-personalized touches. Not to sell them anything—just to create moments of delight.
The result?
Customers didn’t just come back.
They became evangelists.
That’s what happens when you use technology to create experiences worth remembering.
The Art of Adaptive Innovation
Innovation isn’t a destination—it’s a practice.
The most successful companies don’t just ask,
“How can we improve?”
They ask,
“What if we’re completely wrong about everything?”
One of my favorite AI exercises?
Generate the worst possible business models for your industry—then work backward.
Why are those ideas bad?
What assumptions are you making?
Where could you be wrong?
The best breakthroughs come from questioning the rules you didn’t even realize you were following.
Stop Optimizing the Boring—Amplify the Extraordinary
The future doesn’t belong to those who build the best algorithms.
It belongs to those who use technology to express the most compelling human truths.
As AI gets better at doing what machines do, the premium on what humans do—what they experience- empathy, creativity, storytelling—will only increase.
The businesses that thrive won’t be the ones using AI to replace humanity.
They’ll be the ones using it to express our human experience more vividly than ever before.
So here’s some challenges to you:
- Stop using tech to optimize the boring. Use it to amplify the extraordinary.
- Stop trying to remove friction. Start creating meaning.
- Stop asking “How can we automate this?” and start asking “How can we make this more profoundly human?”
Because in the end, technology isn’t the point. Connection is.
And the businesses that get that?
They won’t just survive.
They’ll define the future.
