Stop Trying to Be Creative With AI

We had a great conversation with Joel Salinas Frencia, founder of Leadership in Change and Cozora. He leads marketing for a major nonprofit and publishes insights on AI and marketing strategy. Subscribe to his newsletter here.

Joel's been in the trenches implementing AI across his organization—managing everything from organic search strategy (which drives 80% of their traffic) to automated social distribution across five platforms. He's not theorizing about AI. He's using it daily to solve real problems with limited resources.

In our conversation, we challenged each other on what actually works. Joel has strong opinions about "lazy AI users" flooding the internet with untouched AI content versus strategic users who understand their gaps and use AI to fill them. We discussed repurposing versus creating, natural evolution versus revolution, and why most marketers are still using AI tools at only 15% of their potential.

Listen to parts of the conversation in the audio below, then read the full exchange.

Want to collaborate with us like Joel did? Learn more here.

Now, here's what we have discussed with Joel:

Everyone's using AI wrong.

They're feeding it prompts for campaign concepts. Asking it to brainstorm taglines. Trying to generate "creative" content that sounds fresh and original.

And they're wasting time.

Here's what we've learned: AI's creative sweet spot isn't creation—it's repurposing.

Joel, who leads marketing for a major nonprofit, puts it bluntly: There are two types of AI users.

The first? "Lazy AI users." Flooding the net with untouched AI content. Volume over value. Slop.

The second group uses AI strategically. They understand their skills, identify their gaps, and use AI to fill those gaps.

Joel has a simple test: Look back six months. Are you more creative now than you were then—or less?

"If the answer is less, then you're just not using it well."

Don't use AI for creativity. Use it for repurposing.

Your team writes one substantial piece of content. That's where human thinking happens. Where your brand voice and strategic perspective live.

Then AI takes over.

We do the same at AI Ready CMO. Our daily newsletter and weekly deep dives? Written by humans. Every framework, every analysis, every opinion—that's us. But the social media distribution across five platforms? Custom bot. Zero social media manager.

I spent years at agencies. Ten people spent countless hours reformatting the same core message for different platforms. Soul-crushing. Expensive.

Today? We only write the newsletter frameworks and long forms. Nothing else. The bot handles formatting, character limits, and tone adjustments. It's not creating—it's translating.

AI handles the boring part. The part where you've already done the thinking and just need to execute across twelve channels.

Nonprofits and mid-sized growth companies face huge ambitions with limited resources. Unlike enterprises (with mediocre goals and infinite resources), smaller organizations want a massive impact but lack the staff or budget.

Joel's organization gets 80% of traffic from organic search. More donations than ever. But organic traffic dropped 40%. Could they hire five analysts? No. Could they use AI? Yes.

"I have a project in Claude," Joel explains. "It reads my RSS, takes the link, creates custom posts for Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, and LinkedIn. It's working smart. It's bad time management not to use that."

Your team writes one blog post. AI gives you three email versions, five social posts, a video script, and an internal brief. Three hours saved. Spent on the next strategic piece.

That's strategic AI.

We've been through this before.

Twenty years ago: digitalization panic. You didn't need to understand servers. Just that business would go digital.

Ten years ago: Web 2.0 panic. Sales happen through online conversations. People wrote blog posts explaining this.

Joel agrees: "You don't need to throw everything out. That's when AI implementation costs hundreds of thousands and has no ROI within six weeks."

Twenty years ago, a CEO didn't need to know how to build a website. Just: we need one, it needs to do X, Y, Z. Same with AI today.

"Most things will be automated in two to three years," I explain. "You don't need to understand the nitty-gritty. Just be able to work with it."

Joel sees this constantly: "It's 'I want AI in two weeks so I can put a sticker on my brand.' That's stupid."

The smart approach? "We're not revolutionizing everything. We're making improvements for more knowledgeable human decisions."

Leadership evolves from operator to system designer.

"Everyone talks about BS high-level keywords," I add. "But that doesn't help understanding or change."

Joel nods: "There's nothing new. It's just evolution."

Start with one workflow. Where is your team reformatting the same work over and over? That's where AI wins.

Creativity isn't going away. Strategic thinking isn't being automated. Brand voice still requires human judgment.

But reformatting your output for twelve platforms? That's over.

As Joel puts it:

Most marketers use these tools at 15%. They treat them like creative directors when they should treat them like production assistants.

AI isn't here to replace your creativity. It's here to multiply it.

Are you still trying to make it write your campaigns, or have you figured out how to scale the work you've already done?

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If you are interested in how leadership is changing in the age of AI, subscribe to Joel’s newsletter here. Or, follow him on LinkedIn for daily updates.

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