AI just gave your fuzzy brand a megaphone

May 18, 2026

Brought to you by The Art Of Positioning Podcast

Most people using AI for content right now are producing more.

And it's... fine. Competent. Grammatically solid.

Could've come from any of the other forty businesses doing exactly the same thing.

So the tools are working. That's almost the problem.

Why does our content feel like everyone else's?

In July 2025, MIT's Project NANDA published their State of AI in Business report: across 300+ AI deployments and interviews with 52 organizations, they found that 80% of businesses had tried generative AI, but only 5% were getting meaningful output from it.

The reason was that generic tools don't learn from or adapt to anything specific about your business. They amplify whatever's already there.

So if what's there is muddy, it comes out muddy.

Faster. In higher volume. Across more channels.

We're posting more than ever. Why isn't anything sticking? 👇

Laid off in the middle of the 2008 crash with a day’s notice and no savings cushion, Dave Marciniak did the one thing he could not afford to do: he started again.

That decision led him into landscaping, where he built a reputation for unusual work, the kind of projects that don’t just fill a garden, they change what people think is possible. But after 20 years, he hit the part of business no one likes to talk about: the point where being good at everything starts to work against you.

In this episode, Dave explains:

How he shifted his messaging toward clients who actually value design
Why so many landscape firms hit the same brutal wall around $3 million to $4 million
How one client grew from $20K–$40K jobs to $200K–$400K projects after repositioning higher

This one is for the owners who know they’ve outgrown the business they built, but haven’t figured out how to stop being trapped inside it.

Listen to the full The Art of Positioning Podcast episode here.

I've heard versions of this from pretty much everyone I've spoken to lately:

The content goes out and gets fine engagement.
Referrals keep coming, but the people who arrive aren't quite sure why they chose you specifically.
You're on calls explaining yourself to people who should've already got it.
The website and socials get tweaked.

And somehow none of it quite sticks the way you know it should.

Nothing's obviously broken, which makes it harder to fix. (If you've been nodding at the last few issues, like 'marketing's doing exactly what you told it to' and 'why your customers can't explain what you do' this is where those two are most poignant.)

That's what happens when there's no sharp, specific thing for any of it to attach to.

AI is just making that gap bigger, faster.

Like it's out here, removing that lag time between having fuzzy positioning and feeling the consequences of it.

So what happens if I just... keep going?

Every month this stays vague is another month of content that could belong to anyone:

More referrals arriving slightly off.
More calls that start with you re-explaining who you're for.
More budget going into channels that are technically working and somehow not moving anything.

AI doesn't fix that. It scales it.

And the longer it runs, the harder it is to untangle, because now that vague version of your brand is everywhere, louder than it's ever been. (This is also why trends are killing your brand equity is still one of the most-shared issues from this newsletter. The AI angle just makes it more urgent.)

So, let's fix it👇

🏏 Badass Tip

Try this. Copy and paste the prompt below into Claude (specifically Claude, it handles layered brand context better than the alternatives for this kind of thing, and I've tested a few).

You only need your website URL and two or three posts or pages. It'll do the research itself.

I want an honest assessment of how my brand comes across online. Not what I think it says, what a stranger actually sees.

Here is my website: [URL]

Here are 2–3 pieces of content I've put out recently: [paste or link]

Based only on what's publicly available and what I've given you:

1. What is the clearest, most specific thing this business stands for, and does anything about it actually distinguish it from competitors in the same space?

2. Where does the messaging become vague or interchangeable with what anyone else in this industry says?

3. If someone had the exact problem this business solves, and landed here cold with no referral, would they immediately know this was for them? What's creating doubt?

Be specific. Don't summarise what I've given you. Just tell me what you see.

Look. That output won't fix your positioning.

But it will show you, clearly and quickly, what a fresh set of eyes actually sees when they look at what you've put out there. Hecks, most people are genuinely surprised.

If it tells you something you don't like, that's a good spot to start.

And if you want to work through it properly, that's exactly what a Positioning Assessment does. the positioning test your competitors are failing (are you?) is a good read before you book one.

- B

Often, I see businesses hit a growth wall when their offers and brands don't complement or build on each other (to the point they end up unintentionally cannibalizing each other), so I put together two decades of knowledge from serving brands across various industries and built a tool intended to find the best solution for your brand mix and business goals.

It's a honed-in set of questions where you get direction right up front (best use of 10 minutes): Align your offers and brands today.