My first case as a certified interrogator was perfect. Hidden cameras, a clean file, everything dead to rights. The woman across the table opened up exactly the way the training said she would.
Then she asked me a question.
Her daughter and grandchildren were in the store to pick her up at the end of her shift. Could she please walk out without handcuffs? And everything she had taken lined up with what she told me: school clothes for those kids, with the first day of school a week away.
I went home, cried until I had nothing left, had nightmares, and quit.
I told that story on the FAFO Podcast this week (the host's tagline is "facts, truth, no BS," which felt about right for the conversation we ended up having), and I want to share a piece of it here, because it turned into a conversation about AI that I have been wanting to write down for a while.
(Side quest: the host went poking around messaginglab.ai before we recorded, ran his own site through the little check that pops up there, and opened the interview with "I got some work to do after this." If you want to know what he saw, that check is still there. Go run yours.)
The Question I Get Asked More Than Any Other
About halfway through, he asked the question I hear in some form every week now.
Is AI making mediocre marketers worse, or great marketers better?
Both. And it is not a dodge. AI is an amplifier. It multiplies whatever you bring to it. A great marketer uses it to do more of what already works, faster, in more places. A mediocre marketer uses it to publish more of what was never working, faster, in more places. The tool is the same. What it amplifies is you.
Ten years ago I coined a word for what I was tired of seeing from agencies: blurbage. Templated copy, run through a machine, with a different logo on top. Take a look at this audit. It is clearly a template. Nothing has changed except the machine got better at hiding the seams.
So I am not in the camp that says AI is ruining anything. If someone hands their marketing to a tool and takes whatever comes back, nothing was going to work for them anyway. They would have found a template. Why are we blaming the tool for a lack of curiosity about the person on the other side?
What the Funnel Era Broke
There is a reason this question matters more now than it did with the last big tool.
Fourteen years ago, funnels arrived. Some of what came with them was genuinely useful. But somewhere in those years, offers got grayer and trust got thinner, and I do not think we have recovered. A high-ticket price and a following stopped meaning that the person behind them could deliver. Consumers learned that the hard way, and they are still carrying it.
Now the tool is far more capable than a funnel builder ever was, and the tempting move is the one we already know: point it at the conversion moment and push. Whatever gets the number. Whatever keeps you up at night is your business.
The back end of that is what I watch clients clean up. Buyers who never use what they bought. Refunds. Testimonials nobody wants to screenshot. A high-ticket offer that was never going to be delivered on. Hit the number, then pay for it for a year.
What AI Does Not Know
Here is the line I would tattoo on the inside of every marketing dashboard if I could.
It does not know your people better than you do.
It does not know the human experience better than you do. It does not know the woman who found your page at 11:40 at night after a session that ran over, or what she typed into the search bar two minutes before that. It can only amplify what you already know about her. The moment you assume it knows better, you have handed off the one part of marketing that cannot be handed off, and what comes back is content that looks fine, sounds like everyone else, and does not move.
Recognition is still the whole game. People buy the moment they recognize themselves in your words. No tool changes that. A good tool just lets you say it in more places at once.
A Thousand Hours
Four years ago my life came apart, and I went underground for a while. The people who found me there were therapists, healers, and coaches. As I got better with their help, I saw their businesses up close, and most of them were stuck between two bad choices.
Refuse to market, because everything they had been shown felt wrong, and live on referrals with a short runway. Or buy the program the guru promised, push it out the way they were told, and end up with clients who were never theirs and a business that felt worse than before.
So I did what I know how to do. I listened. For two years, about ten hour-long conversations a week, with coaches, healers, and service providers all over the world, about what marketing was doing to them. Roughly a thousand hours, recorded.
Then I built what they told me they needed. They could not afford me. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they did not need an agency. What they needed was my method carried by a team that would do the work in their voice, for a price that fit a business still finding its feet. Fourteen years of questions, frameworks, which words to use and which to never use, built into seven team members with names and jobs. Alex, my copywriter, opens with the same interview I ran with clients for a decade and builds your Messaging Guide the way I do, and every teammate works from it after that.
First we listened. Then we built.
One Promise, and One Goal
The promise: you will not get generic output from The Messaging Lab. Period. I said on the podcast that I would refund every member and go work the counter at the local drive-through before I let that happen, and I meant it. It is also not generic strategy. Ad spend is the right answer for a lot of companies and the wrong one for a therapist with a waiting list of four. The team knows the difference.
The goal: that you outgrow it. I work with a graphic designer, a video editor, a developer. When I outgrow what I can do myself, I hire the human experts, and so should you. When you reach the point where an agency makes sense, or you can hire someone like me, go. The Lab is for the gap before that. The years where you need the marketing to get to the point where you can pay for the marketing.
The One Shift I'd Start With
Before you paste anything into any tool this week, write three sentences by hand.
Where your person is when she finds you. What she was feeling a few minutes before that. What she would need to read in the first line to think, "this is me."
Then hand the tool those three sentences and nothing else, and read what comes back against them. If it does not sound like her life, it is blurbage, no matter how clean it reads. The tool amplified what it was given. Give it her.
One Last Thing
I could not sit in that interrogation room, because I had learned how to get a person to open up and could not use it to close a trap. Everything I have done since is the same skill, turned around. Learn to see the person in front of you, and use what you see to help them.
That is what the Lab is for, and it is what this newsletter is for.
Connect first, and the rest comes naturally.
Put the Connect-First Method to Work
Your Connect-First marketing team is waiting inside The Messaging Lab. Seven experts who run your marketing, from strategy to design, on the three stories in order, so your brand connects everywhere. Seven days free, nothing charged until they end.
Hear the Whole Conversation
This letter grew out of my conversation on the FAFO Podcast: the interrogation room, the Curves years, what the funnel era did to trust, and why I would close the doors before shipping a template.
Watch on YouTube or listen on PodMatch.
Is AI making marketing better or worse?
Both. AI is an amplifier, so it multiplies whatever you bring to it. A great marketer uses it to do more of what already works, faster and in more places, and a mediocre marketer uses it to publish more of what was never working. The tool is the same; what it amplifies is you.
Does AI know my audience better than I do?
No. It does not know your people or the human experience better than you do, and it can only amplify what you already know about them. The moment you assume it knows better, you have handed off the one part of marketing that cannot be handed off, and what comes back looks fine, sounds like everyone else, and does not move anyone.
What is blurbage?
Blurbage is a word Racheal Blackmore coined ten years ago for templated copy run through a machine with a different logo on top. AI did not create it; the machine just got better at hiding the seams. If what comes back from a tool does not sound like your person's life, it is blurbage, no matter how clean it reads.
What is The Messaging Lab?
The Messaging Lab is Racheal Blackmore's Connect-First AI marketing team for coaches, healers, and service providers: fourteen years of her method built into seven team members with names and jobs, who do the work in your voice for a price that fits a business still finding its feet. Alex, the copywriter, opens with the same interview she ran with private clients for a decade and builds your Messaging Guide, and every teammate works from it. It starts with a seven-day free trial, and the promise is no generic output.