‘Slop’ Was the Word of the Year. Don’t Let It Describe Your Brand.

Last month, I stood in a breakout room at a franchise conference and played three videos for a small group of brand leaders. The first was an AI-generated ad: a woman with perfect abs, a glowing bottle of juice, four flavor names and nothing else. The second was an AI avatar reciting a consulting firm’s 18 years of experience. The third was a real franchisee. She had left health care burned out, and later kept her late husband’s business running in his memory.

I asked how the first two made them feel. One man said, “It had no emotional impact on me at all.” I told him we should put that on a shirt.

Then I asked who liked the third video. Every hand went up. One woman said she was smiling the whole time and could not explain why.

I can. Something happened in it.

Merriam-Webster named “slop” its 2025 word of the year, a word for the flood of low-quality digital content AI produces. The first two videos were slop. The third was a story. The gap between them is where your brand’s trust lives.

Watching is not the same as trusting

You can now make a talking-head video in 20 seconds for the price of a monthly subscription.

The mistake I see is confusing a view with belief. Research reported by eMarketer found that visible AI in marketing is about four times more likely to cost a brand trust than to build it.

There is also a trap waiting on the synthetic route. Label the video as AI, and viewers trust it less because it does not feel real. Hide it, and you look worse when they figure it out. Neither road leads to trust. The only way out is to stop needing the label.

So before anything goes live, stop asking whether people will watch it. Ask whether they will believe it.

The shortcut that costs more than a film crew

About once a month, a brand tells my team its owners are too busy to be on camera. Then someone offers a fix: a neighbor or a friend who is happy to play a franchisee. We say no, and we lose a few projects a year over it. A good interview takes about 17 minutes. If an owner cannot give you 17 minutes, you have a different problem.

Staging a person is not just inauthentic. It is risky. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule on fake reviews and testimonials covers ones generated by AI, and civil penalties now run more than $53,000 per violation. The U.S. Copyright Office has also concluded that purely AI-generated material is not protected by copyright. You may not fully own the ad you prompted.

I learned the legal lesson early. In 2019, I filmed my first franchise video. I did not even know what a franchisor was. I honestly thought the CEO kept misspelling his own name. The franchisee I interviewed was wonderful. She teared up and got real with me. At the very end, I had her look into the lens and say, “You could make millions.”

I walked out of that shoot thinking I was a genius. The first draft went to the CEO, and he called me. “Dude, we’ve got to talk.” Franchise disclosure rules tightly limit earnings claims, and I had just put one in a franchisee’s mouth. It never made it past that draft. Now I tell every brand to run every testimonial past its legal team before it goes out.

Give every story an arc

Nobody would sit through 90 minutes of Liam Neeson talking at the camera. We watch because, eventually, he has to go fight somebody. Something happens.

The AI videos in that room were a straight line. A real story has a setup, a struggle, a turning point and a resolution. For a business owner, that is life before, what was not working, the moment they decided to jump and what life looks like now.

That shape is also how people remember. Chip Heath, co-author of Made to Stick, has described an exercise where his Stanford students gave short persuasive speeches. Afterward, 63% of listeners remembered the stories. Only 5% remembered a single statistic. Your webinar slides are the 5%.

Years ago, a mother and son who owned a Mr. Rooter location told us, “We learned more going to training than we did going to college.” A brand can put “comprehensive training” on a slide forever. That one sentence lands because someone who looks like the prospect said it.

Film what they tell you, not just the interview

Here is the trick I give every team. Talk with an owner for 15 minutes and they will mention about 10 things they love about their life and their work. Write them down. Then go film them. If she loves dropping her kids off at school, be in the car the next morning. If he loves meeting customers, follow him to the job site.

Most brands film talking heads at headquarters because it is easy. We spend at least half of every shoot day outside the four walls.

Once, we cut real footage from a franchisee’s military service into his video. When he watched it, he cried. He said he never thought he would be happy again after war, and now he gets to see his family more. Every veteran who sees that video thinks, “That’s me. Maybe I can do this too.”

Proof is the new luxury

AI made content nearly free. That makes human proof more valuable, not less. Use AI to speed up the work, from transcripts to finding the best take. Never use it to fake the people whose lives actually changed.

This week, pick one owner. Ask for 17 minutes and three questions: what life looked like before, what made you jump and what changed. Write down everything they say they love, then go film it.

Then decide. Are you making slop, or are you telling a story?

Last month, I stood in a breakout room at a franchise conference and played three videos for a small group of brand leaders. The first was an AI-generated ad: a woman with perfect abs, a glowing bottle of juice, four flavor names and nothing else. The second was an AI avatar reciting a consulting firm’s 18 years of experience. The third was a real franchisee. She had left health care burned out, and later kept her late husband’s business running in his memory.

I asked how the first two made them feel. One man said, “It had no emotional impact on me at all.” I told him we should put that on a shirt.

Then I asked who liked the third video. Every hand went up. One woman said she was smiling the whole time and could not explain why.