technology | Jerry Courtney’s Sandbox

“Don’t go blaming the toolbox. You need the right tool for the job.”
– Bob the Builder

I grew up professionally in advertising agencies. For the first decade of my career, I was working on a wide variety of clients in a wide variety of industries with a wide variety of target audiences using a wide variety of media and technologies to go to market.

I was blessed to build and run a digital media team for most of that first decade. While the focus of the team was digital, we operated using a couple of key ideas.

First, we didn’t have to use any particular vendor, technology, or tool to solve a problem. We led with curiosity and finding the best combination of solutions to solve a problem.

Second, we believed in the adage, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Grounded in the first idea, we were continually learning and understanding new vendors, technologies, and tools, how they worked, what they did for us and our clients. But we fought the urge to do something new for the sake of it being new.

We weren’t against “test and learn”, but we also weren’t a team with a mandate to “test and learn”. We had to prove it and invest wisely.

The balance of these two ideas allowed us to stay on the cusp of new solutions while ensuring we had a plan in place for how new solutions would deliver against KPIs – including KPIs tied to the operational efficiency of the team.

Sometimes we were leaders in applying new solutions. Sometimes we were followers. But we ALWAYS were focused on delivering results to drive the business.

And we were ALWAYS continuously learning, optimizing our results, and removing the tools that were not contributing to our KPIs.

This meant we always had a full and refreshed toolbox for solving problems. We understood what each tool did, why it was in the toolbox, and when to use it.

Across the next two decades of my career – which has also included a wide variety of businesses in a wide variety of industries with a wide variety of target audiences using a wide variety of media and technologies to go to market (as well as a pivot into operational leadership) – these two ideas have remained with me.

When determining the best way to synthesize a set of solutions to make an alphabet soup of other solutions integrate to deliver the optimal solution for customers or the optimal operational efficiency of my teams, the ideas that (1) we do not have to use any given vendor, technology, or tool to solve a problem, and (2) “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” do and will remain relevant.

The following is not meant as criticism. It’s simply observation. And the continued curiosity I have as a communications and marketing strategist who enjoys writing to feed AI prompts just to see what comes back. In this instance, I was more curious about the meta nature of asking AI to use a generalized outline of a LinkedIn post with a prompt from a marketing professional about the positive use of AI in marketing.

It started out leaning into being sarcastic, and ended up with a good lesson in the end…yay, me for making that turn. Anyway…

Here was the prompt and the outline:

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Can you turn the following into an actual LinkedIn post by a marketing professional about the positive use of AI in the field of marketing:

Short declarative statement.

Follow up statement that is somewhat longer providing more context.

Now things begin. It may be a story. It may just be something about professional experience. It may be the start of a perspective about a trend that is occurring. It’s most likely in short sentences. Maybe even fragments. 3-4 lines here.

Now we’re getting into it. If it’s a story there may be some dialog or situational explanation. Could be a humble brag involving a child with an incredible amount of insight for their age. Could be an epiphany that occurred out of the blue in the midst of a status meeting or client presentation. If it’s trend related, there’s insight into how this trend, technology, etc. is either (a) derivative of something else, (b) will cure the common cold, or (c) should be feared, or you shouldn’t fear it.

This is the meat of the piece. It could be all one chunk of 6-8 lines. Probably going to be a series to 2-4 lines. Main thing is that if this whole piece were to be printed, it’s maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of one side of a page of paper, or half to 2/3 is above the fold.

Short call back to initial two lines.

Two potential endings: (a) If person is at least social media famous: Call out to book / training / podcast etc. (b) Working Professional: Open ended question because (i.) truly looking to engage or (ii.) seeking to be social media famous.

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And here’s what came back:

AI isn’t replacing marketers.
It’s making the good ones even better.

When used with intention, AI unlocks speed, insight, and creativity in ways we’ve never seen before. It’s not magic. It’s a multiplier. But only if you know what you’re multiplying.

The other day, I was reviewing a campaign brief.
Usual stuff—goals, KPIs, target audience.
Then I asked ChatGPT to push it further.
What came back wasn’t the answer. But it sparked better questions.
Ones we hadn’t thought to ask.

It wasn’t about writing copy. Or building a deck.
It was about stretching the thinking.
About reframing assumptions we didn’t know we were making.
One prompt later, our creative direction shifted—slightly, meaningfully.
And that shift got noticed. Internally. By the client. And most importantly, by the audience.

This isn’t a hand-off. It’s a handshake.
Between experience and acceleration.
Between strategy and synthesis.
Between human instinct and machine speed.

AI is showing us what’s possible.
But we still have to know what matters.

It’s not doing our job.
It’s helping us do it differently.

How are you using AI to stretch your thinking, not just your output?

#Marketing #AI #Strategy #Creativity #FutureOfWork

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Written language. Pictures. Printing press. Photography. Telephone. Recorded sound. Broadcast sound. Recorded video. Broadcast video. Cable systems. The Internet. Streaming video. Search. AI.

All means to various ends. All, as McLuhan said, extensions of man.

The main thing has always been and remains how people use the tools at their disposal to communicate, to learn, to entertain, to buy things, to make money.

After the main thing is how are communicators, marketers, entertainers, and the like making sense of the evolution, synthesizing the insights, and activating it to improve how work is done, improve the work itself, or improve connections with various audiences.

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