Do you still sound like you?

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

— Dr. Seuss (American children's author and cartoonist)

Is AI terrifying or exciting? Yes.

In a week where there’s been news of AI potentially ending civilisation, I felt it’d be a good time to confront the topic head on.

In the space of just two years, the conversation around AI has moved far beyond “Have you tried ChatGPT yet?”

While a lot of AI discourse centres around big tech, there’s a lot going on in the charity and non-profit world. In fact, according to the Charity Digital Skills Report, 92% of large charities are using AI in some form.

If you’ve been following EcoSend for a while, you’ll know we have a deeply considered approach to AI. We have a categorically different mindset to the majority of the digital marketing industry in this regard.

Because while there is tremendous potential, our whole philosophy as a business is to leave the world better than we found it. So the vast array of concerns around ethics, sustainability, and our very existence as a species are worthy of at least a little consideration.

And even if we take a leap of faith and skip past the ethics, morals, sustainability, and humanity questions, there are some very practical concerns for any marketer or communications lead:

How do I get the productivity benefits of AI without everything we publish starting to sound like everyone else's AI-generated slop?

We can’t cover everything in one newsletter issue, so we’re going to focus on the practical application this week.

I’m going to assume you are already using AI in some capacity in your daily working life. If that’s not you, then feel free to skip this edition and we’ll pick back up next week.

Treat your voice as an asset

Across the sector, the same worry keeps coming up: the fear that much of marketing and digital communication is starting to sound the same. Smooth, polished, and, to be totally honest: bland. Empty, void, and emotionally flat.

"AI slop" has become shorthand for this: copy (and images and any other media) that's technically fine but emotionally totally forgettable.

I would call it: lacking soul.

Why AI slop is an issue for charity communications

For charities, AI slop matters — perhaps even more than in other industries.

You and your organisation work tirelessly to bring supporters to your cause. Your supporters are giving and donating from the kindness of their hearts. They don’t need to support you.

They give because something or someone made them feel something.

When your emails start reading like soulless slop, you risk losing the very core of what drives people to support you.

AI isn't necessarily the problem here, though. Because with the right approach, it can be used to help further your cause.

The real risk is using AI to create content without a point of view. To outsource your critical thinking and human connection.

While by no means exhaustive, here are a few ways we’re seeing experienced teams use AI to save time and produce more, while keeping their soul and applying care and craft to their work.

1. Write down what "sounding like us" means

If you work in a larger organisation, you likely have brand guidelines.

But while many focus on the logo usage and colour palette, very few have a guide to tone of voice that's actually usable.

A great task to help both your team and your AI underlings write more consistently is to pull together a one-page reference on your organisation’s tone of voice. You might want to cover:

• Five words you'd use, and five you never would.
• Three pieces of recent copy that sound exactly right.
• How you talk about the people you support (and some example of how you don’t).

This can obviously grow, but start small. It’s an internal asset that is so easy to avoid but once you have it, it can yield so many benefits. It can become a reference for every draft of every blog post, email, social media post, and web page — whether a person or a tool is writing it.

2. Use AI for scaffolding, not storytelling

There’s a common refrain I see on my journeys around the web:

AI was supposed to do the boring work so humans could do the creative work. Instead, AI is doing the creative work and humans are still doing the boring work.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Let AI do the jobs that don't need your soul. It can be a great sparring partner for ideation and creative ideas: subject line variations, restructuring a long report into a short email, generating first-pass summaries, suggesting alt text, and resizing copy across channels.

Focus your energy on the heart of the message. Make this real, make it human, be passionate. And use that as the epicentre for AI to work from — not the other way around.

So much time can be lost to the administrative aspects of digital marketing. Try to offload those parts and prioritise your energy on the really important, human aspects of the role.

3. Start from real material, not a blank slate

Generic inputs lead to generic outputs.

You likely have some extremely valuable assets and resources that are massively underused.

Create drafts based on the raw information only you have: real places, real stories, from real volunteers and staff.

Specific details that are unique to your organisation are how you escape the slop.

For example “A warm meal" is quite forgettable.

"Leah's first hot dinner in three weeks: shepherd's pie, with extra gravy" is a level of specificity and detail that AI just can’t guess or make up. And your readers know that.

4. Add a "would we say this out loud?" check

Before anything goes out, read it aloud.

That is another step… but it’s almost always worthwhile.

If it sounds like a press release, a LinkedIn post from a grifter, or a phrase you've seen on ten other charity websites, you probably want to rewrite it.

There are so many well established tells to look out for: “it’s not just X, it’s Y”, “in today's fast-paced world”, “we're thrilled to”, excessively flowery metaphors, and tidy lists of three that say… nothing.

5. Give your team permission to be imperfect

While I don’t like to admit it, some of the best-performing emails (in charities, non-profits, and for-profit businesses) are short, plain, and a little rough around the edges.

It might not always be appropriate, but in some situations, the best campaign could well be: A note from the CEO written on a train. A thank-you that sounds like it came from an actual person. A note from someone you helped relaid verbatim.

Polish isn't always the goal. Being believable and human is.

6. Measure more than open rates

If your tone of voice and digital marketing is working, you'll see it. It might not always be obvious but you will see it in places that can be hard to track: replies to emails, forwarded newsletters, and supporters quoting your words back to you.

Track those signals — perhaps just in a rough spreadsheet at first. They help to clarify whether people feel spoken to, or just spoken at.

The opportunity

As more and more organisations default to the same tools, they naturally default to the same phrasing and concepts. A distinctive, human voice is more valuable than ever.

The charities that thrive over the next few years won't be the ones who avoid AI. They'll be the ones that know exactly who they are, and don’t forget what connects them with their supporters.

Your supporters can tell the difference between soul and slop. Make sure they never have to wonder.

Until next time,

James

This week’s illustration is "Burchell's Zebras" by Louis A. Sargent, from Frank Finn's The Wild Beasts of the World (London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, c.1909), via the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Look at it for a second and the three zebras run together into one striped shape, which is how the herd protects itself. Look a bit longer and every animal's pattern is its own. You could say that's what this week's issue is all about: numerous pieces of content that all fits together, and each piece still has its own stripes.