AI Marketing: Easier to Grow, Impossible to Scale (Why Mediocrity is the New Villain)

AI gives every small business a "B+" marketing team for free. But when everyone is a B+, no one is an A. The future belongs to the "Risk-Takers" who defy the hivemind.

Inspiration: Seeing thousands of AI-generated ads that all look perfect, sound perfect, and feel completely empty.

AI has fundamentally changed the physics of marketing. It lowered the Barrier to Entry to zero.

You used to need a designer for a logo, a copywriter for a headline, and a videographer for an ad. Now, you have Midjourney, ChatGPT, and Sora.

For a small business or a "Mom and Pop" shop, this is a miracle. They instantly get agency-quality assets for $20 a month.

Their ROI on early-stage growth explodes because they can finally look professional without the budget.

But there is a dark side to this democratization.

The "Hivemind of Mediocrity"

LLMs are trained on the "average" of human knowledge. They output the "most likely" token.

This means they are structurally designed to produce Regression to the Mean.

If 10,000 marketers use ChatGPT to write their ads, they will all get variations of the same "best practice" ad.

They will use the same hooks, the same structures, and the same professional tone. We are entering an era of Infinite, High-Quality Mediocrity.

The Competition to Scale

This creates a new problem: Differentiation. If everyone is "Good," then "Good" is no longer an advantage; it’s table stakes.

To scale past the noise, you need Asymmetric Ideas. You need the idea that an AI would reject because it’s "too risky" or "illogical." As Rory Sutherland argues in Alchemy, the magic happens in the outliers.

AI will tell you to run a logical, benefit-driven ad.

A human needs to decide to run a weird, emotional, or funny ad that breaks the pattern.

The Cost of Caution (Ad Inflation)

Here is the economic impact.

Because it is easier to make ads, there are more ads. This floods the auction on Meta and Google.

More bidders enter the market, driving up the cost of attention (CPMs).

If you rely on "Safe" (AI-generated) ads, your margins will get crushed by the rising cost of media.

You are effectively bidding on the same keywords with the same copy as everyone else, engaging in a race to the bottom where the only winner is the ad platform.

Conclusion: The Opportunity Cost of Safety

Risk-taking is no longer optional; it is the only way to survive.

The paradox is that the reward for a "Non-Traditional" idea is higher than ever because it stands out against the sea of AI beige.

However, the temptation to be safe is also higher. Why risk failing when the AI gives you a guaranteed "decent" result?

My Prediction: Most businesses will choose safety. They will slowly suffocate in the "Mid-Market Death Zone."

The winners will be the ones who use AI for efficiency, but rely on human insanity for strategy.