Hey all, happy Fridizzle.

Sunday, we were driving back from our company retreat and got caught in a snow squall in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. Like, one minute it's fine, the next minute we can't see the road, and I'm pretty sure we're all going to die in a place called Kingsley.

We pull off and find this diner called Bingham's that's apparently famous for its pie, which we only know because there were approximately forty signs telling us so. We walk in, and every single person is wearing an Eagles jersey. And we're standing there—me in a quarter-zip because I'm a cliché, Maddie holding James—trying to figure out if we're welcome here or if this is a "locals only" situation and we should just go sit in the car and brave the hydroplaning.

James ends up getting the chicken noodle soup and immediately starts staring at this one table of Eagles fans. Just absolutely unbroken eye contact. I'm like, "James, buddy, we don't stare at strangers, especially not ones who tailgate professionally." He does not care. The guy was actually super nice about it, though: told Maddie all about how his girlfriend is pregnant. Meanwhile, our (almost … time flies!) one-year-old is still just drilling holes into this man's soul with his eyes.

Go Eagles?

Got raspberry pie. Squall lasted 45 minutes. Honestly, a great pit stop, would recommend if you're ever fleeing weather in rural Pennsylvania.

Anyway. Why you’re really here, let’s talk AI ads.

Last week, a client told us the products in our ads looked "too plasticky." They were like, "You're using AI, aren't you?"

We weren't. Those were manually created by our designers. Real humans. Real effort. Real Photoshop hours.

So we went back and redid them.
This time we used AI. Added one phrase to the prompt.

Client response: "Oh my god, this is so much better. The product actually looks real now."

The AI version looked more real than the human version. I don't know what to do with that information except share it with you.

Newsflash: you don't need a studio to make your products look great in ads. You don't even need a designer, apparently. You just need to know what to ask for.

Here's how:

AI doesn't make your ads look fake. Your prompts do.

Most people fire up Nano Banana, describe what they want, and hope for the best.
The output looks... fine. Clean. Competent. And completely soulless. It has that "AI sheen" that makes creative directors physically recoil.

The problem isn't the model. It's that you're asking AI to generate an aesthetic from scratch instead of reverse-engineering one that already works.

Here's what I did for that client: and what I now do for every brand before generating a single image.

Step 1: Find 5-8 ads from brands they love. Not competitors necessarily. Just ads with a visual vibe they're drawn to.

Step 2: Upload all of them to ChatGPT in one message. Ask:

Note: ChatGPT is the best at reverse engineering images. For everything else, there’s Claude.

Step 3: Look for the phrase that makes you go "oh, THAT'S what it is."

For this client, it was harsh natural light through the windows. Every ad they loved had the same sharp, high-contrast shadow thing. The kind of lighting that looks like someone shot it at 2 pm next to a floor-to-ceiling window in a Brooklyn loft (not that I would know what that looks like).

Cool, you've got your magic lighting phrase. Now what?

Most people just... remember it. Or write it in a Google Doc they'll never open again. And then three weeks later they're back to generating flat, soulless product shots because they forgot the phrase existed.

Here's what I do instead: I put it directly into the Claude Project for that brand.

If you're not using Claude Projects yet, it's basically a home base for each brand where you dump everything: brand guidelines, website copy, founder backstory, past ads, whatever. Claude remembers all of it, so every time you prompt, it's already working from that foundation.

👉 I discuss it in more depth in this post.

So when I extract a lighting phrase like "hard natural sunlight streaming through a window, creating sharp, high-contrast shadows": that goes into the project too. Now it's part of the brand's visual DNA. Every prompt I write for that client automatically inherits it.

This is the difference between "I made one good ad that one time" and "every ad I make for this brand looks cohesive and on-brand without me thinking about it."

Takes 30 seconds. Saves hours.

I've started keeping a list of these extracted phrases for different vibes, just because I know that while some of you are here for vibes, others are just looking for actionable prompts:

These aren't magic. They're just observations from ads that already work, turned into instructions AI can follow.

Try This Before Your Next Brief

It takes 10 minutes. It works embarrassingly well. And it might make your AI output look better than your manual work, which is a problem I genuinely did not expect.

Have a good weekend,

Will