Last week’s Monday Morning Memo included a photograph of a diamond pendant and the promise of a $1,000 cash prize to whoever could use AI to write the 60-second radio ad that would sell the largest number of that pendant for Valentine’s Day.

I was given that photo by a jewelry client. In a moment we will look at the 60-second radio ad I wrote for the client before I issued the AI prompter challenge. But first, here are 10 things I have learned from the advertising results (and lack of results) I have seen during my 40 years as an ad writer.

1. The most effective ads don’t sound like ads.
2. Most jewelry ads are filled with cliches and schmaltz.
3. The Large Language Models used by AI are educated by the most often used phrases.
4. This is why jewelry ads written by AI are filled with cliches and schmaltz.
5. Most of the ads written by AI are better than what the average citizen would write.
6. The average citizen has not received specific data about the results delivered by each of the thousands of ads they have written during the past 40 years.
7. My challenge to AI prompters included a photograph of the pendant, but none of the ads written by AI were specific to that pendant.
8. Specifics are more persuasive than generalities.
9. The non-specific ads written by AI sold only the idea of a diamond pendant; an idea that can be fulfilled by any diamond pendant sold by any jewelry store, anywhere.
10. Advertisers who use these “generalized” ads are not advertising for their store alone, but for all their competitors as well.

Q: Would the AI radio ads “work”?

A: If what you mean is, “Would they generate a result?” Then yes, but that result would not be the highest and best use of your ad dollars. Not by a long shot.

AI is great at a lot of things, but effective ad writing is not among them.

Radio cannot reveal visual images except in the imagination. That’s what makes radio the perfect medium to deliver this ad. It is the radio ad I wrote to sell that specific pendant:

JACOB: David, have you seen it?

DAVID: Oh yes! I’ve seen it.

JACOB: What did it say to you?

DAVID: There is only one thing it CAN say.

JACOB: Sometimes an artist will say something incredibly specific without using any words at all.

DAVID: We’ve all heard music that can tell a story without words.

JACOB: And we’ve all seen paintings that can tell a story without words.

DAVID: But this time a jewelry designer did it.

JACOB: The moment you see it, you know what it is saying.

DAVID: I understood the message immediately.

JACOB: [slowly] “The long and the short of it is we’re in this together.”

DAVID: “The long and the short of it is we’re in this together.”

JACOB: It has wit, and whimsy, and humor, and warmth

DAVID: and commitment.

JACOB: It made me smile when I saw it.

DAVID: Me, too.

MONICA: [SFX cell phone ring] Hello.

SARAH: Did they see it?

MONICA: Oh yes, they saw...