How AI Is Going to Leave Us All Cold – An Interview with Marketer and Author Michael Coleman

How AI Is Going to Leave Us All Cold – An Interview with Marketer and Author Michael Coleman

Audio Optometry: Seeing with Your Ears

This is a Smart Conversation blog post with a link to the video podcast where I (Yvonne DiVita) interviewed Michael Coleman about his books, A Better Message in a Mess-age: Audio Optometry and A Better Message in a Mess-age: The Future of Messaging.

The conversation revolves around messaging, marketing, advertising, sales, and all the things we entrepreneurs, business managers, and marketers or salespeople are in charge of in our businesses. Yes, “we” – even if you have a sales team or a marketing department or a fancy tech tool you use to help create sales, in the end, it’s really up to you/us to make our companies successful, and the only way to do that is to make more sales.

But how are you going to make sales if you don’t even know how to talk about your product or service so it stands out from the crowd?

Michael’s first book, ? ?????? ??????? ?? ? ????-???: ????? ?????????, covers the basics of creating those ‘better’ messages. Jordan Rich, podcast and production expert, seasoned interviewer, and author of ?? ???: ?? 50-???? ???? ?????? ???? ?????, says this about the Michael: “Mike is one of the most talented writers and audio production guys I’ve ever encountered. There are seemingly no limits to his creativity. Read and learn.”

During our discussion, we cover content from the book (I do a reading about halfway in) and you’ll hear directly from Michael how to ‘see with your ears.’

As in his book, Michael says we’re bombarded daily with bad messaging. Our time is being squandered with everyone racing down the same road – a road that leads nowhere because we’ve given up our individuality. No one is unique anymore.

I’m tuned into that – especially the word ‘unique.’ It’s become so overused it no longer means, “One of a kind, unlike anything else.” It means, “Do this to sound like everyone else so you’ll be noticed.”

The problem is, you won’t be noticed. You’re just buying into the idea of competition and need to sound like the next guy because – hey, look at all the people going into his store or talking about him online. He’s doing something right. You decide you should do the same. To your own detriment and creativity.

Getting Drunk On Words

Michael tells us people are drunk from AdSpeak – we’re just saying too much, putting 10 lbs in a 5 lb bag!

I asked how messaging has changed, how the advent of the internet is not improving our conversation, nor our ads, but instead, it’s brought us the exposure of 3-5 thousand messages on a daily basis.

We see messages from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. I am certain some of us see them in our dreams!

From the trucks we see driving by and the ads on their side panels to the websites we visit and the pop-up ads that come, one after another. It drives consumers away from total awareness. We don’t hear or see any of them anymore.

And, for those of us creating ads, that’s bad news.

In fact, in his book, Michael says, “Think about how commercials play over television and terrestrial radio. They’re not aired individually, are they? No, they’re not. During a scheduled break, they are grouped together in commercial clusters. Five, six, seven at a time, and depending on the program, they’re loaded in an even bigger clump.

“If you had a choice, where in this clump would you want your commercial to play, at the beginning, the middle, or the end? Marketing reps will manufacture plenty of convincing data, which positioning is best for you, I’m sure, and the cost will probably play a factor in this positioning. Because every brand and scenario is different, the placement and timing of your ad are significant elements to evaluate.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt Knew How To Give A Speech – AI Does Not

One of the things I enjoyed most in this interview is the way Michael turned everything around to evaluate how we’ve changed over the centuries, about how politicians and writers and speakers knew how to speak in the 1800s and the 1900s.

They knew the right words to use. Words we would think were ‘big’ words today. They studied and edited their work and spoke eloquently. They had a vocabulary far exceeding our own. At least, it seems so, sometimes. It seems that we’re been dumbed down over the years.

Especially in the last 20 years. In the last 20 years, people have embraced colloquialisms in favor of strong language – and I don’t mean swear words. I mean language with words of more than five or six letters each. Language that was almost like poetry at times.

Patrick Henry. “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death.” In March 1775, Henry spoke to a Virginia convention considering a breakaway from British rule. “The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms,” said Henry, who spoke without notes. “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

And from longer ago than the 1800s or 1900s, Socrates spoke,

Some one will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that to do as you say would be a disobedience to the God, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that daily to discourse about virtue, and of those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you are still less likely to believe me.

And so, we find ourselves today with unexamined lives and conversations full of buzzspeak and the buzz of text messaging speaks to us in syllables or acronyms but seldom in words and sentences.

And, rather than boosting our communication, the ‘future’ – which is here now BTW- is leading us astray into a field of dreams that says, “Don’t aspire to read Shakespeare. That’s for nerds. Don’t aspire to speak and write well – let them college graduates do that (and even they are failing, in my opinion). It’s not important. We’re regular folks. We are okay just like this. LOL CYA later” – of course, without punctuation because, as I was told recently, to add a period to the end of a sentence on a text was wrong.

We are surrounded by digital-speak – a language of communication that promises us we are okay because we fit in. And that’s what’s important. To be like everyone else. Go home, watch the Kardashians, and eat popcorn. That’s enough.

But is it? Is that where we are now? Is speaking well to communicate well a lost art? Are we to lose even our punctuation?

Of course, we couldn’t talk about the future of messaging without discussing AI. According to Michael, AI just leaves him cold. After all, as he said in a recent LinkedIn post, “AI has never cradled a newborn or fallen madly in love.” IT’s not a person and never will be. And if we trust it, we do so at our own peril.

Oh, it has its uses, he says, but crafting your marketing or sales message isn’t one of them.

I encourage you to buy and read Michael’s first book and remember to leave a review. You’ll want it in preparation for The Future of Messaging. Meanwhile, watch this enlightening video podcast – be prepared to take notes.

Follow Michael on LinkedIn.

Visit https://colecutsound.com/ to hear some of Michael’s voiceover actor work.

Visit his author’s website to download worksheets supporting his marketing books and message.

DM me on LinkedIn to be included in the launch of his second book, ? ?????? ??????? ?? ? ????-???: ??? ?????? ?? ????????? coming in September 2023.

NOTE: Michael is a client of Master Book Builders.

And now, on to the video interview: