“Here’s what most people are missing: While everyone is obsessing over what AI can do, the real competitive advantage lies in distinctly human qualities that become more valuable, not less. Good taste, discernment, cultural context, and aesthetic judgement aren’t just nice-to-haves — they’re about to become the ultimate business differentiators in an AI world.” –Richard Dawson, Business Strategist
This notion of taste and discernment has been popping up in my LinkedIn feed a lot lately… and for good reason.
A lot of businesses are starting to realize if they trust AI over their own instincts, it can cost them.
Their content and sales messages start to feel flat… there’s a sameness from one company to the next. In a haystack, the needle is memorable… but you won’t remember any individual stalk of hay. They all look and feel alike.
Companies that give AI the final word in their content and marketing messages are just adding more stalks of hay to the stack.
To make needles, you need a person. Someone with empathy, real-life experiences, and the ability to make a critical assessment of what’s in front of them… someone who insists on having the final say, rather than yielding it to AI.
This is good news for you, as a writer.
It means, if you cultivate your sense of taste — if you become discerning about what separates adequate writing from good, and good writing from great — you can stand out like a haystack-sized needle in your market.
What, exactly, constitutes good taste?
First things first… good taste isn’t something you have to be born with. It’s not some innate part of your identity. It’s something you can develop and cultivate.
Good taste is more skill than gift. And skills can be honed.
If you’re going to hone your own sense of taste, it helps to have an idea of what good taste is. Unfortunately, it’s hard to define… but let’s take a stab at it.
Good taste is having a sense of what your audience wants and needs before they’re able to fully articulate it themselves.
It changes from audience to audience, will be different in one community versus another, and is informed by cultural norms, tensions, and expectations.
It’s not typically flashy, but cutting and insightful. And, while it may set trends, it’s not led by them.
To have good taste is to be attuned to your audience, while also being dialed into how things are changing in your industry, so you can predict what your audience will need to know in the near term.
At its most fundamental level, good taste is being able to know what is good.
It’s not a small ask.
So, how do you go about refining your taste as a digital copywriter and marketer?
Spend more time reading critically
One of the most reliable ways to refine your taste is to spend more time reading critically… especially within your industry and skillset.
If you work in the alternative-health industry and you write a lot of landing pages and email messages, spend time reading landing pages and emails from alternative-health companies.
But don’t just read them.
Critique them. What jumps out at you? What feels cliché or overdone? What do you want to steal for the next thing you write? What would you do differently, if given the same assignment?
Set up a file and take notes on what you think about the things you read.
Over time, patterns will start to emerge — that’s your taste taking shape.
AI Bonus Tip: If you want help picking out the patterns in your own notes, feed them into ChatGPT or your favorite AI tool, and ask it to list the recurring themes. Then think carefully about whether you find the assessment fair.
Pay attention to classics
Things that make it into the repertoire of broadly accepted classics usually do so because they demonstrate the restraint, refinement, and understated style that is often associated with good taste.
Being a classic doesn’t automatically equal good taste, but studying the classics can help you understand what makes something popular while also being sophisticated and timeless.
What kinds of classics should you pay attention to? All of them. Books, art, music, movies, fashion, architecture… it can all help you develop a sense of good taste and discernment.
Turn to people you trust
You likely have people in your life or industry who you associate with having good taste.
You might not have given it any thought, but, as you read that sentence, a few people probably spring to mind. My friend Margaret has impeccable taste, when it comes to style. My husband has good taste in music and aesthetics. Ann Handley demonstrates her taste in good writing over and over again in her newsletter, Total Annarchy.
Ask the people on your own mental list what they read and who they follow. For people in your industry, ask them what they think about foundational principles, as well as current and future trends.
Take what you learn from them and use it as a study guide in cultivating your own sense of taste.
Start implementing…
As a writer and marketer, you’re not just looking to identify writing and marketing strategies that are in good taste.
You want to bring good taste to your own work and to the projects you do for clients. That means not playing it safe. It means taking what you learn from your study of tasteful things and applying it to the things you make… writing articles, crafting social-media posts, creating videos, designing marketing campaigns.
It’s the only way to see your taste in action, to reflect on what you think of your own work, and to further refine your taste and approach.
But don’t be a copycat
Part of developing a sense of taste is developing your own sense of taste.
Often that means looking at the work of others and drawing inspiration from it, but also changing and adapting it to fit your own ambitions and take on the world.
It does not mean simply retreading what you’ve heard others say or seen others do — AI can already do that. It means carefully taking the things that inspire you, connecting them in new ways, and applying them in new situations to convey ideas that deliver insight and emotional impact.
Good taste as a leverage point
We started this conversation because there’s a lot of talk among experts right now about how good taste will be what sets you apart and makes you valuable against a background of AI-generated content.
So, cultivating your sense of taste is a first step. But then, how do you apply that in your business?
Brand voice: Think carefully about what defines you and your sense of taste and make sure that comes through in your brand voice. And then, help your clients to do the same. Even if they don’t have an eye for what’s good, you can still help them develop a personality within their messaging that conveys their humanness and value.
Use stories: Bring stories into your writing. Story is often at the heart of taste. Listen to a musician or an architect or a fashion designer and you’ll often hear them say, “The work tells a story about…”
Shape trends: Pay attention to trends and changes in your industry and apply your taste to them to give them shape for your audience. It’s a little meta, but that’s what’s happening with the conversation around taste and AI. People with good taste are looking at how AI is changing their industry and identifying what will matter to their audience in the near future. Good writing will stand out more than ever… but to recognize good writing, you need taste.
Care about the audience: When you genuinely care about the quality of your ideas and your work and how they will affect your audience — both your client and their customer — it’s hard to accept anything less than your best work.
When you bring a distinctive voice to your work, tell stories that move people, help your audience make sense of the changing world, and work to a high standard both for yourself and your audience, your work will become what people seek out… the needle in the haystack.
