✍️ overheard at camp storyarb

The Standard is officially 30 issues old. 

If you’ve been here since the beginning, you might remember we once sent you the actual brief we used to launch this newsletter, with the scope, the structure, and the guardrails that keep us truckin’. 

30 sends later, we’re still using that Google Doc. Still get a creative brief for every issue. And still get the elusive edit: Can we punch up the copy? 

For issue 30, we’re pulling from you—every open-text response from our Trade Secrets: AI Marketing in 2026 survey. 

The numbers told us what’s happening. The comments told us what you actually think. Let’s get into it.

Welcome to Marketing Summer Camp. It’s late. The lake is still. Someone brought contraband LaCroix. And people are finally saying the quiet part out loud. 

Let’s take a wander from cabin to cabin to hear what your fellow marketers are whispering about.

Blue Cabin: The Pragmatists

These campers are calm, mildly annoyed, and drinking black coffee.

Translation: You don’t lead with your database architecture either.

“Speed, AI and technical advances don’t substitute for taste and properly reading the market,” adds a marketing leader at a mid-size fintech company.

There it is. The thing most LinkedIn posts will never admit. The anti-hype crowd isn’t really anti-AI. 

They’re anti-confetti. 

They want AI to feel like plumbing—necessary, invisible, expected. 

Yellow Cabin: The Lost Boys

These campers have more spreadsheets than all the other cabins put together. You can also hear them sighing loudly all the way from the mess hall. 

“Our messaging is not cohesive, clear, or simple,” says a marketing manager at a global fintech company. “It feels extremely fragmented.”

That fragmentation is often because of a disconnect between marketing and the larger organization.

This is a governance problem dressed up like a marketing problem. The deep frustration is about alignment. Or rather, the absence of it.

Green Cabin: The Compass Holders

This group is thoughtful, with a dash of self-awareness on top.

“Narrowing down our ICP has been the biggest needle mover,” explains one respondent. Simple. Surgical. Not sexy at all. 

“We communicate tangible outcomes (not just features), which helps our audience quickly understand what’s in it for them,” adds a C-level leader at a growing edtech co. 

Or the obvious, yet constantly overlooked:

Marketers already know what doesn’t work. Unfortunately, pressure + timelines + executive enthusiasm for buzzwords can override those instincts. 

Red Cabin: The Overthinkers

These campers like their ghost stories to be a mix of humor and existential dread.

“Knowing how AI search will evolve over the next year, it feels like we're in the early days of SEO again,” says a marketing manager at a mid-size martech company.

Remember stuffing keywords into footer copy and pretending it was strategy? Yeah. That. It sends a shiver down the spine. 

Or how about the respondent who said: “We worry that ‘normal’ folks don’t understand why our products exist.”

Or maybe our biggest fear:

Boo!

Campaigns that got us talking: Equinox dropped an AI-tinged campaign that’s as deliberate as it is unhinged. Is it polarizing? Yes. Is it a little unsettling? Also yes. But when most brands are playing it safe with AI, Equinox’s approach got people talking.

AI Spotlight: Among marketing teams struggling to hit their goals after launching AI products, 100% were already leading with AI language. Turns out using the word “AI” more doesn’t help at all. 

Stuff that makes us scroll back up: Ah, the two-speed life of social media managers—high-volume on the timeline, high-empathy in the replies.

So if your homepage currently reflects:

• C-suite pressure

• competitor copycatting

• half-tested assumptions

• your own existential dread about AI 

…we should talk.

Gmail keeps suggesting edits that remove all traces of our personality.

Original: “Let me know how that all sounds to ya!”

Suggested: “Tell me what you think.” 

Can’t a girl have a little joie de vivre these days? Stop trying to make all our emails wear khakis*.

Our AI report started as a question: How do you market something everyone feels pressured to talk about, but no one can talk about well?

Across one report, three special issues of The Standard, and 84 marketers, here’s the best answer we got: 

• Say what you mean. 

• Test what you’re unsure about. 

• Lead with the stakes for the buyer. No one else. 

Buzzwords come and go. But the teams who pause, test, and anchor their messaging in proof will always move forward with steadier footing.

See y’all at next year’s campfire.

— the storyarb writers’ room 🫡

Oh! And another thing... “Beige” has been used as shorthand for “boring” since at least the mid-20th century. Which is unfair to beige, but deeply relevant to business casual.

*No khakis were harmed in the making of this issue.