I’m Joel Comm, a New York Times bestselling author who lives at the edge of marketing, crypto, and social media. After watching Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan riff on AI visuals, I walked away energized—and a bit uneasy. Their message is clear: prompts can now spin up work that looks like top-shelf brand creative. My take: that’s both a gift and a trap. We should use these tools to move faster, but we must anchor them to a style that’s ours.
The Promise—and the Trap—Of Prompting
Their core idea hit hard. AI can mimic the feel of elite campaigns with the right recipe. That power is real, but imitation is a dead end. Marketers who only chase brand lookalikes will ship content that blends into the feed. Leaders who shape a distinct style will win.
“When V3 dropped, we were seeing some really cool stuff.”
“This is like one for Apple… the kind of stuff that would take a long, long time and probably a lot of money to actually create.”
“Oh, this one looks like it’s PlayStation.”
“You know, like that that Jordan shoe, that Nike shoe.”
“It’s all about the prompting. You can see there’s a description, there’s a style, there’s a camera.”
That’s the heart of it. The right prompt can compress time and cost. You can test ten creative directions before lunch. You can pitch ideas with near-finished polish. But if your prompt aims for “Apple,” you’re training your audience to see you as “not Apple.”
What Works Right Now
The beauty of this wave is control. You’re not praying for luck—you’re steering the output. The model takes your brief and gives you tight variations, fast.
- Description: What the image should include and why.
- Style: Visual look, mood, and brand cues.
- Camera: Angle, lens, lighting, and motion hints.
That structure lets you “specialize” results for a brand feel. The risk is obvious. When you aim for someone else’s vibe, you build no equity. Worse, you may brush up against IP issues. Chasing a famous look is the shortcut that stalls your long game.
There’s a pushback I hear: AI makes work lazy and samey. It can, if the brief is weak. It doesn’t have to. In the right hands, it’s a force multiplier for smart direction. You still need taste. You still need a point of view. You still need the courage to say, “That’s us—not them.”
My Playbook For Responsible AI Creative
Here’s how I use this tech to drive speed without losing soul.
- Write a one-page visual creed. Colors, textures, shapes, emotion. No mention of other brands.
- Build a prompt library that maps to that creed. Lock in your own “description, style, camera” defaults.
- Prototype fast. Ten comps, one hour. Ship the one that feels most “you.”
- Audit for lookalikes. If it screams a famous brand, toss it and refine.
- Document wins as “style laws.” Turn luck into a repeatable system.
- Stress-test at small scale. Run micro-campaigns and watch lift, not likes.
This keeps the creative engine hot while protecting your identity. It also shields teams from messy legal gray zones. You can be inspired by Apple-grade craft and still make work that wears your own jersey.
Speed Without Surrender
Kipp and Kieran spotlight the upside: you can now match the polish that once needed huge budgets. I agree—and I’ll push it further. The real edge is not that AI can look like Apple; it’s that your brand can look unmistakably like itself, at will, at speed.
Use prompts to explore. Use style to decide. Borrow techniques, not identities. Nail lighting, composition, and mood. Ditch the brand cosplay. The audience can smell it. So can your future self, when you wonder why recall never sticks.
Marketers love new toys. I do, too. But tools don’t build movements. Clear taste, smart testing, and a living style guide do. That’s how you turn “cool stuff” into results that compound.
My challenge to you this week: rewrite your top three prompts so they point to your own style law, not a famous brand. Run a micro-test. Measure lift in click-through and time on page. Keep what feels true. Cut what looks borrowed.
Prompts are the gas pedal. Your style is the wheel. Press down hard, but steer with intent.
