Are we witnessing a new wave of illiterate copywriters?
I came across an uncomfortable Twitter thread recently. (Yes, I may be a little late to the party, but I can’t stop thinking about what I had witnessed.) For context, a number of copywriters have been sharing brand campaigns and highlighting the illiterate copy associated with the brand.
To kick things off, the author of the thread, Kathleen @bingtoolbar, shared an image of an insert that came with an order of Rhode Skin and it caused a bit of a ruckus within the copywriter community.
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It was the second sentence of the insert that had everyone’s heads spinning:
“We believe in one of everything really good.”
The thread continued with professional copywriters chiming in, trying to make sense of it all.
One user blamed the bewildering sentence on Google Translate:
This sounds like Google translation gone wrong.
— Susexx Soldier (@SussexxSoldier) July 20, 2023
Another user theorised that the brain teaser could have been written by AI:
Most likely AI. A friend of mine who has been copywriting for over a decade was let go, along with her entire team, by a huge company and replaced by AI.
— Jamie Miller (@JamieTheMiller) July 19, 2023
While Ria Riaz joked,
Did chatgpt write this? 😂
— Ria Riaz (@RoastedKeyboard) July 19, 2023
But it doesn’t stop there. This thread blew up, making its way onto other social platforms where the discussion continued further. One user on TikTok with the handle, Stuff About Avertising, tried to make sense of the non-sensical. One theory the user shared was that the copy was “a minimalism play, like everything that’s really good, take one of.” Another example she gave is, “All of these really good things, I’ll take one of everything.”
Either way, whatever the intended message, it left the readers baffled.
It wasn’t long before the internet did its thing and discovered that Rhode Skin had posted a job opening on Linkedin…
Much needed! pic.twitter.com/tyxwDH0UdS
— Princess Leia of Manhattan ✨ (@zaddyvince) July 16, 2023
So why has this insert led to so much controversy?
As we know, the world is becoming increasingly more reliant on AI, particularly when it comes to copywriting. Because of how advanced AI is evolving in such a short period of time, more companies are opting for AI to lower costs and speed up the process. But what you save in money, you lose in quality.
