Human Storytelling in an AI World
Thanks to everyone who joined Mark Smyth's session with us last week! If you missed it (or want a refresher), the full recording is below — but here are the highlights to get you excited to watch.
The big idea: AI has made content easier to create, but harder to create connection. That connection is exactly where our value as communicators lives now.
A few things that stood out:
🗳️ The polls didn't lie — 91% of us have used AI in the past week, and 91% have also caught something that was obviously AI-written. We're all in this together.
🎬 The Jobs vs. Gates clip sparked a lot of chat reactions (looking at you, "Gates is a robot" 😂). Same facts, two totally different ways of telling the story — and only one of them landed.
🛠️ Line of the day, courtesy of @Greg Hancock : "People don't buy a 3/8-inch drill. They buy a 3/8-inch hole." No notes.
📝 The ABT framework (And–But–Therefore) was the big takeaway tool — a dead-simple way to turn flat updates into stories people actually care about. We put it into practice live in the chat, and the examples people came up with were genuinely impressive.
💡 The hallway question: "Why does your role exist?" Mark challenged us to answer in outcomes, not activities — and DeMonica summed up why it matters: it takes us "from order takers to change agents."
The closing thought stuck with a lot of us: AI can create content all day. It takes a human to give that content meaning.
Watch the full recording for the framework breakdown, the before/after examples, and a bunch of great live ABT statements from the group — definitely worth the watch.
Let us know your takeaway from the session below ⬇️