Hernán Cerdeiro, CCO Americas, SAMY
We are swimming in an ever-growing ocean of content. Never have we had such an abundance of “stuff”. And it is being fed to us constantly through our algorithms, through socials, through every conceivable channel.
AI is, of course, at the eye of this content tsunami. It can generate a month’s worth of social posts before you’ve even finished your morning coffee. Every trend can be identified, replicated, and repackaged almost instantly. Brands can appear in more feeds, in more formats, and on more platforms than ever before.
But can anyone actually remember much of this content? Or is it just a sea of same? A torrent of slop.
This is the challenge facing marketers. We have managed to build an industry capable of producing an almost infinite amount of content, just as audiences are becoming overwhelmed by it.
What’s the answer? More abundance? More posts. More variations. More platforms, More attempts to keep up with the algorithm. More, more, more.
But sheer volume isn’t going to work. That’s not going to build meaningful cultural clout and presence. Instead, it will be the brands that will stand tall while amongst the depths of AI slop will be the ones with the clearest ideas – that are recognized and understood by the communities they want to reach, and who will ultimately carry them forward.
Be more meme
Simplicity is at the heart of every good idea, from concept to execution.
That doesn’t mean that the thinking behind it should be basic. In fact, sometimes creating something simple is harder than trying to make something complicated. It requires you to remove everything that gets in the way, the fat, the fluff, until the central thought becomes impossible to miss.
Consumers simply do not have time to decode every piece of branded content that’s put in front of them. They’re speed scrolling, surrounded by distractions and moving between different conversations and channels. If you need to explain to them why the content is relevant, then it probably isn’t relevant enough.
You don’t need to be complex to sound smart. You just need to be clear.
Take memes, perhaps the most powerful part of internet culture. A good meme communicates an entire attitude, emotion or shared experience or in-joke almost instantly. People recognize the format, understand the reference and know how to adapt it for their own communities.
But while the image may be simple, the cultural understanding of how to use it well is not.
And that understanding is a huge advantage. AI can produce thousands of executions, but it cannot compensate for the absence of a strong central idea that is rooted in a deeper understanding of a community.
Stop designing content to perform
Marketers have become very good at designing individual pieces of content to perform. It’s optimized to the inch of its life, ensuring that it follows platforms’ conventions, that it will be taken in by the algorithm, and then we track the immediate response.
All that matters, but it is encouraging us to think too narrowly. We need to be thinking longer term. Is this an idea, this piece of content, that can propagate?
A propagating idea moves beyond the original post, travelling between TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and the physical realm without losing its identity. Creators can interpret it. Communities can respond to it. It can be quoted, remixed or turned into something that the brand never anticipated.
This doesn’t mean you put the same idea everywhere. Each platform has its own behaviors, formats and dialect. A strong idea should give freedom for others (and the brand’s platform specialists) to build something that works for each environment while remaining connected to that original thought.
AI is here to stay, and it will continue to transform content production. Used well, it will make teams faster, help stretch ideas, and remove the repetitive work involved in feeding the always hungry, modern content ecosystem.
But brands cannot confuse content abundance with cultural impact.
You cannot manufacture community participation simply by generating more content for people to potentially see you. People participate when an idea gives them a recognizable role and feels relevant to the conversation they are already having.
This means resisting the call of the content ocean. Don’t jump on every trend. Don’t appear on every platform. You don’t need to fill every empty slot in your content calendar. You don’t need to be posting on “World Pasta Day” if you are a trainer brand.
It also means knowing what the brand stands for, understanding the communities it wants to connect with, and creating an idea that is simple and recognizable that will travel between them.
AI has meant that it is almost possible to produce anything. But it won’t be able to create something that takes a life of its own.
