Why AI is just the new cheap Chinese knock-off of marketing

One of my favorite marketing & merchandising case studies is: Christian Louboutin. I write a lot about it in my Markauteur book (not currently available for sale) especially. But the short version is, Stefania (who has a background in fashion, and saw all this first hand) was telling me how this French designer’s shoes are so horrifyingly painful to wear that customers sometimes have to literally get liposuction surgery on their feet to wear them. This is no joke either. They even have a name for it: “Cinderella Surgery” And yet, these prohibitively expensive (they ain’t cheap), “feet-mangling” shoes sell out the same day they drop — with people even getting depressed if they aren’t invited to the company’s sample sale, shoving matches & fights happening in line over who can buy them first, and thieves routinely stealing these bizarrely designed shoes out of other customers’ shopping bags while on the way to the counter to pay for them. Certain A-list celebrities have even been known to pay through the nose just to put a special kind of Botox on the balls of their feet, so they can more comfortably stand in this brand’s stilettos on the red carpet. Very strange. Not being a “shoe” guy, it’s all rather bizarre to me. But what is not bizarre is all the Chinese factory pirates who take advantage of the demand, ripping off the design, and hawking them in the typical mass produced, shoddy fashion Chinese factory pirates are known for doing — all the way down to finding the same shade of red paint for the bottoms. And what is also not bizarre is those shoes don’t fetch nearly as much money. If anything, they are balked at by the high roller customers. And they don’t make anywhere near the $50 million ol’ CL’s company gets last I checked. The reason: Nobody finds rip-offs as valuable as the real thing. Which brings me to AI: I have read all about how AI is going to radically change everything in marketing & copywriting — from content to design to marketing to copywriting to emails to everything in between. People think AI will write their books, and they are, but Amazon is already cracking down on it, and it won’t take the market long to spot it, and curate AI out, buying from authors and writers they know vs machines they don’t. Meanwhile, in la-la-land, the broccoli heads on Twitter have been insisting ever since I hopped back on the platform in February last year that those who don’t use AI (like fapGPT) are “not gonna make it” or whatever. And it’s all pure, unadulterated nonsense. Just another “mad dash” as the great Dan Kennedy recently wrote. The gullible will eat it up (and they are). While the craftsman at the game will profit immensely from it. No, not from using it. But from continuing to be craftsmen at what they do selling the genuine thing instead of the cheap, Chinese pirate factory content that AI can only produce - where even if it looks and behaves in a passable way, it still won’t be the same thing, generate the same engagement, make the same kind of money, or create the same kind of raving fanbase companies like Christian Louboutin do in the fashion world. I kinda wish AI would hurry up and do what all the AI shills keeps saying it can but clearly can’t. It’ll only make those of us writing our own copy, our own emails, our own content that much more valuable, that much more of a novelty, and, yes, that much more money. I’m always amused by the AI bois. They really do live in an alternate reality — I suspect for all intents and purposes they literally live on the internet. What’s especially amusing about that is these NPCs — they even all talk like each other, very bizarre — are always the ones to tell people to touch grass even as they clearly haunt social media 24/7, in echo chambers of other AI bois, all high on their own hopium and copium desperate that AI will liberate them from this dirty, nasty thing called… Work. It’s the only way to create, grow any kind of relationship. Relationships can’t be prompted, swiped, or hacked. Gotta work on ‘em. The only people who have anything even remotely resembling a “relationship” with AI are deviants who diddle robots. I have a lot more to say about this. Especially in the October Email Players issue where I answer a question from someone who asked if I would ever find some use for AI in my business. It goes beyond the obvious, and even the term “Artificial intelligence” — as I prove inside — is fake and a lie, just like everything else about AI when it comes any kind of content creation, service, or task that requires humanity and relationship building & growth. I suspect it will tick a few fapGPT bois off. But let’s face it: Nobody really cares what they think anyway. Not even the software they worship cares about them. And that, in and of itself, is telling… All right, the deadline to get in on time is in a few days. Here’s the link: []( Ben Settle P.S. Here’s a taste of what is inside the October issue: * A clever way (I first heard back in 1998 in an MLM training from a sales genius) to ‘hack’ your brain into becoming more successful, having a bigger business, being more influential, or whatever your goals are. * The case for purposely looking like an asshole to all your friends, loved ones, and business peers. (Especially useful and profitable if you’re a hopeless people pleaser, and you know it’s hurting your business, your income, and peace of mind.) * A powerful merchandising secret (used for decades by the billion dollar retail store industry) that the late, great Gene Schwartz used to create some of his most memorable and profitable ads. * A “crash course” on how to set up your merchant accounts on rotation… with no one account getting all the sales, staying off radars during launches, and protecting your business from being shut down by a nervous Nellie bureaucrat if you make too much money too quickly. (I also show you the exact services I use… a guy you can contact right away to get the ball rolling who also can help coach you through chargebacks… the ideal number of merchant accounts to have… the exact best time to shop for a new merchant account… and where to find people to help you with the tech side if you are not comfortable doing it yourself. This one part of the October issue alone can potentially be worth 100... maybe even 1000 times the price over time — not only in lower fees, but peace of mind, time saved, and the list goes on.) * Best place to put a link in an email if you could only put one in and HAD to make the sale. (I put all mine in the same place in 99.9% of my emails — but that does not mean YOU should, or that I even would put it there, in every case. See inside for my take on this.) * A NON-email goo-roo approved fact (whether they like it or not) about placing links in emails to help your business get the best inbox deliverability. * How Steve Jobs and Walt Disney approached their content and product creation for maximum engagement, sales, and user-experience. (That you can apply to your emails just like they did to computers and animation.) * A clever method of crafting emails (found in The National Enquirer in all places) that can help get more of your emails delivered, opened, read, and clicked. * A geopolitical insight (straight from a respected Israeli military historian’s work about what causes wars and genocides) you can apply directly to your emails to get more sales, have more influence, and seize more engagement in your niche. * A little known insurance salesman trick from the 1950’s that can help give qualified prospects on your email list almost no choice but to buy your offers. * A sneaky way to use email to know what people on your email list want to buy before they even do! * Advice for whether or not you should sell something right away after someone buys or wait a week or two. * Why I recommend avoiding probably 99% of copywriting books, courses, programs, or training created post 2005. * The paranoid copywriter’s 10-word secret that can help make your copy as engaging (and, thus, as responsive) as you possibly can from headline to close. * An insider look at what Gary Halbert taught one of his #1 students about what the most important part of advertising is. * My uncensored opinion (probably nobody wants to hear) on the latest bit of jargon used by copywriters: ‘dimension’. * The “Faustian” secret to getting zero (or, at least, nearly zero) opt outs and spam complaints. * The world’s greatest living copywriter’s secret to more than tripling your skill level at writing sales copy within a year or less. 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