Seasons greetings!

As 2025 winds down, here’s my big takeaway and a foundation of my strategy for ’26. I almost hate to say it because it’s so clichéd, but it’s AI stuff. I have to confess, the whole “AI” project feels a bit nefarious. Every glimpse I get of the industry of AI itself, the more turned off I am by the environmental impacts, the exaggerations of AI’s ability (some predicted that it would have killed us all by now), and the evil-villain antics of what we now refer to as the “tech oligarchy.”

I’ve also seen its direct impact on the marketing industry. Earlier this year, a friend lost her job when her agency, (heavily focused on content execution) was shuttered after losing all of their clients to AI in a matter of months. That wasn’t an isolated case. Throughout the year there were waves of layoffs across the industry, including executives and marketers at the largest tech companies in the world. Teams that once felt untouchable were suddenly gone. In roles that see so much employee churn between companies, it puts all marketers and creatives in a precarious position. I only hope that it also provides opportunities for those of us who are able to adapt intelligently and weather this trend.

There are some positive AI developments, IMHO. Here they are:

Coming out of 2025, one of the primary lessons I take from the year is how AI now shapes brand search, visibility, and discovery. In AI-driven discovery, better thinking and better writing perform better. This is really exciting to me. Content that is well written, with a real point of view and concise communication, gets discovered, cited, and reused. Signals like experience, expertise, authority, and trust actually matter here, which makes the ecosystem more reliable. It’s a real improvement over years of optimizing for SEO mechanics rather than clarity, accuracy, or value.

However, when abused, AI starts feeding on its own narcissistic reflection. This happens when people take machine-generated responses verbatim, without editing or consideration, and publish them as their own. A machine-written LinkedIn post, for example, teaches the machine what LinkedIn posts are supposed to look like, and before long, every LinkedIn post is the same drivel, in the same format. This is the inhuman centipede, consuming its own %$#& and increasingly making itself useless by amplifying errors and misinformation.

The term AI itself is a marketing angle, not an honest description. What we call artificial intelligence is not intelligence in any meaningful sense. It does not reason, understand, or form intent. It is a new mode of computing. Where previous systems were built around code and numbers, these systems operate through human language. That shift is genuinely powerful. Treating that capability as intelligence creates real risk. It encourages overtrust and the casual reuse of machine-generated answers, including their mistakes. It’s effective when we apply our intelligence to it, not when we try to replace our intelligence with it.

That’s the content side of it; product is a different discipline.

This came up clearly this year while building an AI feature into our software. The original goal was straightforward. Reduce friction. But the discussion quickly drifted toward making the agent conversational, as if AI needed to present itself as something you talk to. That framing introduced unnecessary complexity and novelty. It treated AI as a character rather than a tool and pulled focus away from the actual job to be done.

The final implementation was a hybrid. There’s a chat interface when explanation or guidance is useful, but when the task is simple the system just performs the action. Sometimes that’s a button click. Sometimes it’s a text input. The interface adapts to the task, not the other way around. The point was never conversation, it was simplicity.

Working with these agents is ongoing, closer to raising a child than configuring software. You test, watch how it behaves, notice where it goes wrong, adjust, and repeat. Simplification is usually what improves performance. When the agent has less to interpret, less to identify, and less to respond to, the results are cleaner and more predictable. Fortunately, our team in charge of prompt evolution is fantastic, and while they may have sprouted a few grey hairs this year, they learned and taught the rest of the team a lot.

Taken together, this isn’t about optimism or concern so much as being precise. AI is replacing thinking in some cases, and that’s where the problems show up fastest. The more it’s treated as a substitute for judgment, the more brittle and unreliable the outcomes become. AI shouldn’t replace thinking. It should amplify it, support it, and make good work easier to find and execute.

In discovery, that means clearer ideas and better writing are easier to surface. In product, it means usefulness holds up longer than novelty. Coming out of 2025, shortcuts are easier to spot. Volume without substance collapses faster. Work that’s thoughtful, well-written, and grounded in actual understanding travels further. AI doesn’t eliminate the need for judgment; it makes the consequences of avoiding it much more visible.

Here's one AI-based marketing tool that I'm pretty excited about in 2026:

Oleno. https://oleno.ai/ - This content tool raised my eyebrows. I never jumped on programmatic content automation for the reasons stated above. I haven't seen anything to convince me of the value in spitting out a mountain of mediocre-to-terrible content en masse. Oleno zeroes in on quality-over-quantity and conversion-focused content. Here's what the site says, "Oleno doesn't guess, improvise, or write from a blank slate. It builds every topic, angle, and article from your knowledge, your messaging, and modern visibility signals - SEO and LLM. The result is consistent, differentiated content that teaches your point of view and drives real demand." It's still in its infancy, but I'm very impressed so far. 

Thanks for reading. I hope there’s some food for thought in this wrap-up. I have no doubt that 2026 will be a wild year as well, and I hope it’s a healthy, happy, and prosperous one for you and yours.