Your customer did not wake up this morning hoping your company would publish something.
They have a deadline, a decision they have been avoiding and an inbox full of people who would like fifteen minutes of their time. Somewhere between those things, your campaign has to earn a place.
That has always been the challenge in marketing. AI gives us more ways to attempt it. We can explore ideas, produce variations and adapt content with less effort. A thought that might once have stayed in a notebook can become an article, a video script and an email.
There is real opportunity in that. More people can express useful ideas. Smaller teams can pursue work they previously lacked the capacity to produce.
But the person on the receiving end still has the same day.
That is the tension I think businesses need to take seriously: our capacity to create content can grow much faster than anyone’s willingness to consume it.
The competition includes everything else your customer could be doing.
When planning content, it is tempting to look sideways. What are competitors posting? Which formats perform well? How often should we publish?
Those questions have their place. They can also lead an entire category into the same conversation.
Imagine five companies selling similar services. All research the best-performing posts in their field. All ask AI to identify successful hooks. All publish their version of the same advice.
Each company may improve its individual posts. Together, they give the reader fewer reasons to distinguish between them.
The reader’s alternative is not necessarily a competitor’s article. It is a message from a colleague, a problem that needs solving or the simple relief of closing the app.
We have to earn attention against that whole set of possibilities.
For me, a useful starting question is: what will someone understand, decide or do better after giving us their time?
If the answer is difficult to articulate, producing more versions will probably not solve the problem.
Being noticed is the beginning of a relationship.
A provocative headline can earn a click. A familiar frustration can earn a reaction. Neither tells us much, by itself, about what the reader will remember about the business.
I find it useful to think about what happens after someone notices us.
Do they recognise a situation they are dealing with? Does the content help them understand it? Is there a reason to believe our perspective? Does it give them something worth returning for?
Consider a company that advises businesses on growth. It could publish a broad claim about AI changing marketing. Or it could explain why a campaign attracts plenty of enquiries while the sales team struggles to turn them into customers.
The second subject gives a particular reader a reason to pause. It names a problem they may already have. The article can then demonstrate value through the quality of its explanation.
That is how I think businesses should approach attention: as the opportunity to become useful to someone specific.
Reach still matters. Entertainment and surprise still matter. But a business needs some connection between the attention it earns and what it wants people to know it for.
Otherwise, the next post starts from zero again.
The most interesting material may already be inside the business.
A customer asks a question your website never answers. A salesperson finds a better way to explain a difficult trade-off. A service colleague notices that people repeatedly misunderstand the same promise.
Those moments contain something a generic content brief often lacks: a real reason for someone to care.
Here is an illustrative example. A business sells a service on the promise of saving time. Its campaigns emphasise efficiency. But prospective customers keep asking how much work their own team will need to do before those savings appear.
There is an article in that question. Perhaps several. What does implementation involve? Where do projects become demanding? What should a buyer prepare? When might the change be more trouble than it is worth?
Answer those questions honestly and the business gives a buyer something useful. It also demonstrates that it understands the decision beyond the attractive headline.
At AiDU, this is where connecting marketing, sales and customer service becomes particularly interesting. Each team encounters a different part of the customer’s reality. AI systems can help bring relevant observations together, identify recurring questions and make them available to the people developing the next idea.
That still requires judgement. A single comment is not a market insight. Customer information needs appropriate handling. Someone has to challenge the interpretation and decide whether the business has a credible answer.
But it gives the creative work a much stronger starting point.
AI makes having a point of view more consequential.
When drafting becomes easier, a company has more opportunities to say something. It also has more opportunities to reveal that it has very little to say.
A point of view takes choices. What do you believe your customers underestimate? Which trade-off do you think your industry avoids discussing? Where does the standard advice stop being useful?
The answers cannot all be “it depends”, followed by a list of benefits.
A useful perspective explains what it depends on, why that matters and how someone might make the decision. It should survive questions from a knowledgeable customer. It should also leave room for disagreement.
AI can help develop that thinking. It can challenge an argument, expose missing assumptions or suggest a clearer explanation. The person directing the work must still decide which position they can defend.
For a business, this is a demanding but worthwhile use of the capacity AI creates. Spend some of the time saved on production investigating the question more deeply. Find a better example. Talk to the people closest to the customer. Remove the claim that sounds impressive but says very little.
Readers benefit from the extra thought, even if they never see how much work went into it.
Attention creates an obligation to deliver.
There is another reason to connect the content with the rest of the business.
A campaign creates expectations. Sales develops them. The customer eventually discovers whether the experience matches.
If content promises simplicity and buying is confusing, the business spends the attention it earned badly. If an article demonstrates deep understanding but the next conversation starts with generic questions, the experience loses continuity.
From an AiDU perspective, that makes attention part of a wider commercial system. We should care about what attracted the customer, what they understood, what they were promised and what happened next.
That does not mean every article needs a sales pitch. Some of the most useful content helps someone long before they are ready to buy. It means the business should be capable of living up to the impression its content creates.
AI gives us considerable freedom to produce, experiment and communicate. I am optimistic about what teams can do with that freedom.
I would use it to raise the standard of what we ask people to spend time on.
Before approving the next piece, ask: if someone gives us five minutes of their day, what will they get back?
