Marketing is flattening — if you're flat

"Marketing is flattening" is the doomscroll take of the moment. Every CMO community, every newsletter, every panel: AI is going to make every brand sound the same, look the same, and blur into one giant beige blob. Mordy and Miruna think that take is missing the actual point — and quietly letting marketers off the hook.

Miruna's rant: AI isn't a person. It's a tool. And like any tool, the output is a function of what you put in. Going back to Amanda Natividad's line from Episode 1 — AI is a magnifying glass. Crap in, magnified crap out. Nothing in, magnified nothing out (a.k.a. bland AI slop). The "marketing is flattening" framing treats this like something happening to us, instead of a result of what we're choosing to do with the tool.

Mordy's piece of it: a lot of the flatness is coming from the top. Google, OpenAI, and the rest are pitching agentic in the most vanilla way imaginable — "use it to refresh content, fill brand gaps" — because they're optimizing for investor confidence, not creative use. If marketers buy that framing wholesale, the flattening is self-inflicted. The unflat work is still possible. It just requires you to bring your own creativity, judgment, and standards into the tool — not outsource them to it.

Bianca Dragan, Head of Marketing at Clove, joins with the frame that landed hardest in the episode: think of brand trust as a bank account. Every piece of AI slop you push out is a withdrawal. Do enough of those and the account closes. The real fear isn't that AI is flattening marketing. It's what marketers are willingly trading their trust balance for.

Transcript

Mordy Oberstein (00:00)

You hear that?

Of course not. And that's the whole point.

Welcome to Say It Anyway, where we say things about digital marketing you're supposed to kind of keep to yourself—and, wait for it—we say them anyway.

Mordy Oberstein (00:15)

Each week, we're taking an honest, maybe even uncomfortable look at something marketers need to know but might be too afraid to say.

I'm your host, Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Brand at SE Ranking, and I'm joined by the marvelous Miruna Dragomir, CMO at Planable.

Miruna Dragomir (00:30)

Hi, Mordy.

Again, we haven't ranted together in a while.

Mordy Oberstein (00:34)

Also, "Marvelous Miruna" sounds like a comic book character.

Miruna Dragomir (00:37)

It does!

You know The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? It's a great show.

Mordy Oberstein (00:41)

Wait... did you recommend that to me?

Someone definitely did recently, and I still haven't watched it.

I tuned out of Marvel after... honestly, I don't even remember which movie finally did it for me.

Miruna Dragomir (00:47)

Watch it. It's great.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with superheroes.

I'll send it to you.

Mordy Oberstein (00:54)

Good, because I was confused.

Anyway, today we're asking:

Is marketing flattening?

I hope not, because I don't like walking uphill. It hurts my legs.

Miruna Dragomir (01:14)

Well, marketing flattening is definitely one of the biggest fears people are talking about right now.

I'm part of multiple marketing communities—CMO groups, Heads of Brand communities—and this topic keeps coming up.

People keep saying brands are starting to sound alike, look alike, and eventually everything will become the same.

There'll be no differentiation anymore.

Everything will become boring.

We've been living in this AI world for a few years now, and honestly, I think we've become used to these apocalyptic predictions.

Every new technology seems to bring a new version of "marketing is dead."

But things usually balance themselves out.

I always go back to one of the most basic marketing theories—the marketing tactic efficiency curve.

Every tactic rises.

Everyone adopts it.

Then it stops being effective.

I think AI will follow the exact same path.

Not because AI will disappear.

Because we'll simply become better at using it.

If you're worried AI is going to kill your brand...

Don't let it.

AI doesn't have a personality.

It's your responsibility to create one.

It's a tool.

The differentiator isn't AI itself.

It's how well you use it.

Amanda said something in our first episode that really stuck with me:

AI is a magnifying glass.

Whatever you put into it gets magnified.

If you feed it garbage, you'll simply get better garbage.

If you feed it nothing, you'll get generic AI slop.

So stop blaming AI and take responsibility for what you're putting into it.

Mordy Oberstein (04:44)

I actually fell into this trap myself recently.

I've started talking to Claude almost like it's another coworker.

I prefer talking to it instead of typing prompts.

But then I realized something.

When you walk into a conversation with a real person, you naturally refine your thoughts together.

You pivot.

You adjust.

You react.

Claude doesn't do that.

It's not a person.

You have to do all of that thinking before you ask.

Once I started treating AI like a tool instead of another human, the quality of my results improved dramatically.

Miruna Dragomir (06:07)

Exactly.

The art of prompting was the biggest conversation when AI first appeared.

Years later, people still underestimate how important prompting really is.

People complain AI is generic.

People complain it hallucinates.

People complain it's flattening marketing.

But it's your tool.

Use it better.

Mordy Oberstein (06:48)

That's another thing.

Almost every AI company demonstrates AI in the most boring way imaginable.

"Generate content."

"Update content."

"Find content gaps."

Everything feels incredibly vanilla.

That's where the flattening starts.

We're not thinking creatively about what AI actually enables.

Companies like Google aren't optimizing for creativity.

They're optimizing for investor confidence.

And that's a very different goal.

Miruna Dragomir (08:22)

Exactly.

I was talking to our Creative Lead yesterday.

She said something I really loved.

People keep saying that because AI makes us faster, we should accept lower quality.

Her response was:

No.

If we had high standards before AI, we should become exceptionally good at using AI to maintain those standards.

Not lower them.

The fear that AI is flattening everything comes from a very passive mindset.

As if the future simply happens to us.

It doesn't.

We still decide how we use these tools.

Mordy Oberstein (09:15)

That's such a good point.

AI actually gives us opportunities to be more creative.

Here's a ridiculous example.

I couldn't attend SMX Boston, but I still wanted to troll Barry Schwartz.

Claude helped me quickly create a banner for a competition encouraging people to take selfies with Barry.

There was no way our design team would've had time for that.

AI made the execution possible.

The creative idea was still human.

Miruna Dragomir (10:22)

Exactly.

That's a perfect example.

It wasn't flat because you refused to make it flat.

Mordy Oberstein (10:27)

Speaking of avoiding flat marketing...

I asked Bianca Dragan what marketing teams should prioritize if they're worried AI is making brands more generic.

Here's what she had to say.

Bianca Dragan (10:49)

I think a lot of people would say taste.

Having good taste helps you build a better brand.

But I actually think AI slop is doing something even more dangerous.

It's eating away at trust.

You've spent years building trust through your content, your products, your events, your customer experience.

People open your emails because they trust you.

They attend your events because they trust you.

They agree to testimonials because they trust you.

When you optimize purely for volume because AI makes content cheap and fast, you're slowly withdrawing from that trust account.

Every mediocre piece of content is another withdrawal.

Eventually, people stop opening your emails.

They stop engaging.

They stop advocating for your brand.

Your boss might be happy because you're shipping more content.

But if you're only measuring quantity instead of quality, you'll eventually wonder why engagement has disappeared.

Trust is the product.

That's what we're compounding every single day.

Don't destroy years of accumulated trust with one week of AI-generated slop.

Miruna Dragomir (12:57)

I love that.

I've never thought about trust as a bank account before.

That idea goes far beyond AI.

Every mediocre interaction withdraws from that account.

Companies often publish AI-generated content simply because it's fast.

But very few stop to ask what that speed is actually costing them.

That's why Bianca's point resonated so much with me.

Mordy Oberstein (13:39)

I loved that metaphor too.

Marketing has always been communication.

Everything communicates something.

Your words.

Your tone.

Your consistency.

Your quality.

People aren't psychologically different because AI exists.

They still make unconscious judgments about brands.

They still decide whether they trust you.

Whether they believe you.

Whether they want to engage with you.

If your brand consistently communicates trust, people feel that.

If it consistently communicates shortcuts, they'll feel that too.

Eventually, you lose that connection.

That's exactly what Bianca was warning about.

Miruna Dragomir (14:57)

Exactly.

That's the fear we should actually be talking about.

Not whether AI magically flattens marketing.

But whether we choose to sacrifice trust ourselves.

So...

What are we clearly saying?

Mordy Oberstein (15:14)

We're clearly saying this:

Marketing is only flattening if you're flat.

Miruna Dragomir (15:18)

Mic drop.

Mordy Oberstein (15:22)

That's definitely a spicy take.

But I stand by it.

If you agree, go post it on social.

Tag Miruna.

Tag me.

Tag Planable.

Tag SE Ranking.

And say it anyway.

I think we've said quite enough for this week.

Join us next time as we ask:

Are all marketing jobs becoming marketing engineering jobs?

Until next time—

Don't keep quiet.