ale now!!!!!!!” messaging and started creating entire visual worlds that actually didn’t need a message attached to them at all. For a short, glorious time, shoppers bought into something real.  Like the sign for a step ladder at Bunnings, on which some creative member of staff had written “You’re not my real ladder”. Genius.  Along came AI The rise of the machine signalled a seismic shift in retail comms. The Pleasant Professional, once believed dead and buried, thrust its gnarled fingers through the dirt and is currently climbing out of the ground to stage an Oasis-level comeback. Only this time it’s ‘Pleasant Professional 2.0’. The same over-polite, over-polished voice – just delivered faster, at scale and with all the warmth of a liquor store beer fridge. “Dear ChatGPT. Please create me some awesome headlines for a stereo sale.” Ok, here’s some punchy, energetic headlines… Turn it up. Prices down. Dance floors start here. From bass to bargains. “Sorted. Thanks” This should alarm retailers In fact, it should alarm us all. But in this case, retailers especially because retail is a relationship industry. Shoppers remember how you made them feel, and ‘feeling’ is something that’s never going to come from a line of text written by a Grok, Claude, or GPT. If tone once again becomes uniform across every email, price tag and Instagram post, brands are going to start blending back into the shelves. And in the world of retail, ‘blending’ is just a polite way of saying ‘disappearing’. How to avoid the slide back to square one Put people first: Your staff are people. Your customers are people. Your products are designed for people. Your brand should revolve around, you guessed it, people. Keep your youness: Personality pulls ’em in, the same way that slightly wonky hand-painted “Easy on the nose. Rare. Refined. Occasionally questionable. Our gin (not Mike)” sign outside my local distillery always manages to pull me in. (Mike is the head distiller by the way.) Speed can’t replace substance: The rush to push content out, especially with a little (or a lot of) help from AI, risks bombarding customers with white noise, rather than giving them a reason to actually care. Slow down. Even if it’s just enough to make your words mean something. Stay unique. Stand out: If you rely on AI to write everything, your voice will start sounding like everyone else who is using AI to write everything. And if that happens, you’ll be giving shoppers all the reasons they ever needed to look elsewhere. The pleasant professional we do need Pleasant and professional will always have a place, but if that’s all your brand voice is, it doesn’t bode well. Retail is built on connection, not conformity. It’s about caring for your customer and making their day a little bit brighter. Refusing to force-feed them lines you copied and pasted directly from the free version of your local AI writer is a prime example of that. And while I do agree that AI makes a great assistant, the simple fact is that it’s not real. It is incapable of caring. It doesn’t know what resonates. It doesn’t get your vibe, your creativity or your voice. And it definitely won’t make customers love you.  So, if you really do have to use AI, just make sure you spend a little time scrubbing as much of the bland out of it as possible. Otherwise, those of us who spend money on things will be forever bound to the idea that this is as good as it’s ever gonna get…. “Hey ChatGPT. Please create me some fresh, interesting on sale now lines for a bedding sale.” Ok, here’s a fresh take on some ‘On Sale Now’ messaging for a bedding store…  Fluff it up for less. Cosy up to comfort, on sale today. Nighty-night prices.