TOV

Yeah, so 2025 was tough.

No denying it.

No pretending I was fine and weathered the storm – or denying there was even a storm in the first place. There definitely was. My figurative windows were rattling. It woke me up.

I might have been poorly prepared, or in denial for a little while, but in retrospect 2025 really was shit. The good news is, I know why. It was AI. It was all AI’s fault.

Okay. It was also me.

I spent most of 2024 raging against the mere concept, and 2025 trying to reconcile the reality: I might not like it, but it’s happening, and I’d better get my head around it quick.

So I did. I tried it. I gamed it. I use it.

I get it.

I’m still no expert, and I’m still deeply (and healthily) suspicious of it in wider context, for reasons I won’t go into here. But I fully appreciate that it’s a game changer for planning and generating basic content, and that I need to be familiar enough with it to stay relevant and useful in the industry I chose 19 years ago, and have thrived on since.

I love what I do, and think it matters now more than ever, but there’s no point in me being a luddite. It’s far harder to fix stuff that you’ve thrown on the floor and stamped on, than to understand its flaws and limitations and put it to use for the things it does better and faster than you – and the things you didn’t really like doing in the first place. The industrial revolution taught us that. The AI revolution is perhaps reminding us.

So, 2026…

For me, it’s about expertise and specialism.

I think it’s fair to say that ‘traditional’ copywriting is a generalist art, in that it pays to be good at lots of interconnected things, be objective, and be agile and objective enough to grasp the wider context of whatever you’re writing about, alongside who you’re ultimately writing it for. Those tenets – the skills of connecting, conveying and persuading in ways inspired by unique insight, interpretation and experience – will not change. And in the pure sense, they can’t be imitated.

With the proliferation of AI as a tool that can do so much of the donkey work, I think a decent copywriter’s true value will thrive in identifying and conveying genuinely human tone of voice, along with consistency of style and convention. I’ve been a TOV expert for many years, and also put brand-specific style and convention guides together to support those unique voices with clarity and relatable consistency. The stuff that differentiates, in other words. The stuff that ensures a brand stands out for genuine character, and for insightful, relatable communication that connects.

All of which is great, because, like I said: it matters now more than ever.

Sure, in very basic terms, it’s now almost impossible to tell a standalone piece of AI-generated copy from a human-generated one. Not at first glance or face value, at least. And in many cases, it doesn’t matter one bit. But humans always seek further connection, and relatability. They’d like to at least think that they’re not just being palmed off with the lightning-quick responses to a series of prompts. There’s endless slop out there that could be generated by anyone or any generative AI, but it’s not what any self-respecting or remotely ambitious brand wants to be known for – or overlooked because of. They’ve all got better ways to spend their marketing budgets than on throwaway socials, magnolia articles, and meh websites for websites’ sake.

The sweet spot for me lies in a combination. A hybrid approach, if you like, that sees the value in a great copywriter helping to develop a true, nuanced tone of voice and oversees the important stuff – but also helping you to use artificial intelligence alongside human creativity, insight and experience. That seems to me the clever way, in terms of ‘saving time and money’ without losing sight of who you are and what makes you unique. For obvious reasons (speed and efficiency, research, ideation, drafting, structuring), you’re more than likely going to use it anyway. So why not use it to your best advantage and get an expert writer* to help you game it to perfection – to scrutinise and re-write it to within inches of its life… so it actually sounds like you, and no one else?

*Here I am. Let’s go.