Happy FridAIy.

My entire family descended on New York City this weekend. Sister, brother-in-law, two nieces, mom, her boyfriend, dad, stepmom. Nine adults, eleven including us (eleven!). Three children under five. One city that absolutely did not ask for this.

We saw the Rockefeller tree. It took about five seconds. Beautiful. Okay. Now what.

So naturally, we ended up at the American Girl Doll store—two nieces, remember (pay attention!)—where I discovered there's a very, very small Hot Wheels section hidden in the back. That's where all the dads were. Just a bunch of grown men crouched in a corner examining tiny cars while their daughters (or cousins) examine $200 haircuts for dolls. James and I fit right in.

Then, Grand Boucherie for lunch. Our go-to move with James is to hand him a giant baguette and let him go feral. They didn't have baguettes, but sliced sourdough worked. The kid housed some bread while the rest of us attempted adult conversation. We got 11 minutes before the wheels came off (not naming names).

Capped the weekend with a Beatles for Kids concert. James was probably the smallest kid there, but he was on Maddie’s shoulders (props to mom), absolutely losing his tentacles to Octopus's Garden. Just fully vibrating with joy.

He's such a Brooklyn kid, it's honestly a little concerning. Like, he's 10 months old, and I'm pretty sure post-show he already had opinions about which Beatles era is superior: way more into the Rubber Soul stuff than the early pop hits.

I don't know what we're creating here.

Anyway, let's get into it:

Last few weeks, I've been showing you how to create full static ads with Nano Banana Pro, the disposable camera aesthetic, the Easy Man workflow, all of it.

But here's what kept happening: I'd generate something that was 90% right, and then I'd need to change one thing. The background. A single icon. The product shot. Whatever.

And every time I'd try to fix it, I'd accidentally blow up something else. Change the hops, and suddenly the beer can look weird. Fix the beer can; now the background is different. It's like playing whack-a-mole except the moles are your creative assets and the hammer costs 15 cents per swing.

So I've been working on a workflow that lets you surgically edit individual elements without touching anything else.

It's embarrassingly simple. Which, honestly, tracks for most things that actually work.

Drop your ad into ChatGPT and ask:

"Identify only the product elements and graphic/illustrative elements in this ad. Exclude all text elements, headlines, labels, and composition notes. List only the physical products shown and any non-text decorative or illustrative visuals (such as icons, background graphics, textures, floating elements, or design motifs). Provide a numbered list of just those items”

That's it. That's the prompt.

It'll break it down into something like:

Now you have a map of everything you can surgically target.

Pick the element you want to change and ask ChatGPT:

"Give me a Nano Banana Pro prompt to change ONLY the [specific element] to [what you want] and change no other elements."

It'll generate something precise. No guessing. No prompt engineering on your part.

Feed that prompt into Nano Banana Pro with your original image. Set your aspect ratio. Hit generate.

Everything else stays exactly the same.

I tested this by changing floating hop icons to floating pickle icons.

Why pickles? I don't know. It was late. I was curious. I wanted to see if it would actually isolate just that element.

It did. The beer can stayed. The background stayed. The text stayed. The glass stayed. Just... pickles now, floating around a craft beer ad like some kind of fever dream.

I don't recommend the pickle thing. But it proves the point.

The real unlock here is being able to iterate without starting over.

Client wants a different background vibe? Isolate and swap.

Art director thinks the floating elements are too busy? Target just those.

You realize at the last second that "non-alcoholic" is spelled wrong in the AI-generated text? (Please let me know how I know this happens.) Fix that one thing.

It's the difference between "let me regenerate 47 times and pray" and "let me change exactly what needs changing."

Okay, here's the thing.

The workflow above, the element isolation, and the surgical editing, I've been testing it inside something we're building.

I've been heads-down on a platform that does something I've wanted for a long time:

It scrapes your brand's website, pulls reviews from across the internet, your site, Reddit, Trustpilot, wherever your customers are talking, identifies your highest-value customer personas, and generates ad concepts based on what's actually resonating with buyers right now.

So instead of guessing what angle to test next, you're starting from signal.

The platform looks at sentiment data across platforms, ranks it by relevance, surfaces the personas and motivations that actually matter, and then generates concepts with the right product, the right hook, and the right visual direction already baked in.

The ad concept I used as the base for today's examples?

Generated from the platform.

The persona targeting, the angle, the motivation?

All pulled from actual review data. I didn't sit there brainstorming "what would resonate with NA beer drinkers."

The platform told me: non-alcoholic beer lover, searching for the best NA IPA, motivated by a desire for a great alternative.

Then it generated the static.

Then I used the element isolation workflow to refine it.

That's the whole loop.

We're starting with a select group of beta testers now. It's not ready for a full launch; there are definitely edge cases, bugs, and things that need fixing, but it's at the point where I'm genuinely using it for real work.

Current placeholder name: SelfGen.

Which is... fine. It's fine. It's not great. It sounds like a prescription medication or a generator you'd buy at Home Depot.

So here's the deal: if you come up with a better name and I actually use it, you get free lifetime access.

I'm completely serious. Reply to this email with your best shot.

More to come on this soon.

Have a great weekend.

Will