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Why emotion—not efficiency—makes copy and brands work
Chara frames great copywriting as the difference between simply conveying information and making people feel something. She critiques common AI marketing that leans on “efficiency,” arguing it misses what people actually desire. The chapter sets up emotion and humanity as the core advantage people still have, even as AI tools can generate competent text.
- •Copywriting can feel easy or impossibly hard depending on whether it lands emotionally
- •Many AI ads overemphasize “efficiency,” which Chara says is not a real emotional desire for most people
- •Good copy goes beyond information to make a reader feel something
- •In a world where AI can produce adequate copy quickly, creativity and human perspective become the differentiator
Smith & Diction’s studio model: small team, founder-led work
Mike and Chara introduce themselves and describe Smith & Diction as a design studio focused on thoughtful identities for imaginative clients. Chara explains their intentionally small-team approach: clients work directly with the founders, who also do much of the actual writing and design. The focus is on tight collaboration and connection rather than agency layers.
- •Mike describes the studio’s focus on thoughtful identities for imaginative clients
- •Chara oversees brand strategy, messaging, and copywriting while Mike leads design
- •They emphasize founder-led execution rather than leadership removed from the craft
- •Their small-team structure is positioned as creating closer client-team connection
Brand as perception: you have one whether you invest or not
Chara defines brand as how people see you and stresses that even minimal presentation communicates values. She argues that choosing not to invest doesn’t remove your brand—it just leaves it to audiences to decide. Branding, in her view, is an ongoing practice across every interaction, not a one-time deliverable.
- •Brand is simply how people see you, regardless of budget or intent
- •Even a plain bag with Sharpie communicates priorities and values
- •Not investing doesn’t eliminate your brand; it hands control to the audience
- •A brand toolkit is a start—brand is lived through daily interactions and experiences
- •Customer service and product moments can reinforce or undermine what design conveys
When brands become part of life: stickers, tangibility, and respect for attention
A speaker describes strong branding as something people would put on a notebook or car—beyond a transaction and integrated into identity. They emphasize designing brands with a tangible, “holdable” quality that pulls people in. Branding matters more as it gets easier to create products, and they argue products should respect users’ attention by feeling enjoyable and life-enhancing.
- •A good brand extends beyond transactions into personal identity and daily life
- •The speaker values making brand elements feel tangible and desirable
- •As making products becomes easier, brand increasingly differentiates what people want in their lives
- •Good product/brand experiences should respect users’ attention and feel uplifting
- •A core mistake is reducing brand to just logo, type, and color instead of broader creative systems
Verbal identity: translating strategy into consistent external language
Chara explains verbal identity as the outward-facing expression of internal strategy. It covers tone, personality, and the words used across website copy, social, ads, video, taglines, and headlines. Because words change frequently, she emphasizes setting guardrails that keep future writing consistently “on brand.”
- •Strategy is primarily internal; verbal identity bridges to external communication
- •Verbal identity includes tone, personality, and the actual language used across channels
- •Unlike logos/colors that may stay stable, words evolve often and need flexible guidance
- •The goal is not to prewrite everything, but to enable consistent future writing
Gamma and Contra: shaping tone and messaging for different audiences
Chara shares how verbal identity work played out for Gamma and Contra. For Gamma, the core idea centers on getting ideas out faster, and an “imaginative” tone unlocks more distinctive language. For Contra, she describes the challenge of speaking to two distinct audiences—freelancers and the people hiring them—while keeping one consistent tone and message concept.
- •For Gamma, the messaging roots in helping people get their ideas out there
- •Choosing “imaginative” as a tone word enables more playful, differentiated phrasing
- •Contra’s challenge is addressing freelancers and hirers with different motivations
- •The concept “get more creative” is designed to work for both audiences while staying consistent
The most common copy mistake: writing commands instead of desire
Chara argues many tech brands write what they want users to do (“buy now”) rather than making users want the product. She contrasts direct commands with advertising that builds craving and emotional connection. She returns to the critique of “efficiency” claims, pushing for benefits that feel personally meaningful.
- •Common mistake: writing the action you want instead of creating desire
- •Effective copy makes people want the thing before asking them to act
- •Tech marketing often defaults to generic CTAs and informational framing
- •Chara reiterates that “efficiency” messaging rarely connects emotionally with individuals
Copywriting in the age of AI: the human edge is emotion and storytelling
Chara describes how AI changes the landscape for people who write copy that sounds generic. She says the differentiator is emotional resonance—writing with a cinematic, storytelling mindset that strikes a chord. She rejects the idea that people don’t read, arguing they read deeply when the writing carries emotion.
- •If copy sounds like it could be machine-written, it will struggle to stand out
- •The key advantage humans retain is creativity and emotional understanding
- •Great copy uses storytelling/cinematic thinking to create feeling, not just clarity
- •People read extensively when content is emotionally compelling
- •She urges writing with heart to increase the chance of meaningful impact
Branding Perplexity: positioning an AI for everyone through citations and discovery
Chara describes the difficulty of branding Perplexity because its audience is essentially everyone. The team identified citations as a key differentiator, reframing the experience from a dead-end answer to a starting point for exploration. That distinction led to language centered on discovery and beginnings of knowledge.
- •Perplexity’s audience breadth made targeting and positioning unusually hard
- •Citations became the standout differentiator compared to other AI experiences at the time
- •The brand story shifted from “getting an answer” to opening doors to knowledge
- •Perplexity is framed as a starting point that leads outward into deeper discovery
- •This positioning culminated in a headline centered on where knowledge begins
Defining who it’s for (and not for): imagining the user as a character
Chara contrasts Perplexity’s universal audience with Gamma’s more definable sweet spot. She suggests it can help to identify who a product is not for, then focus on the people in the middle who benefit most. She describes audience empathy as treating the user like a character in a novel—understanding routines, needs, and context to find language that matters to them.
- •Some products are easier to brand when you can define likely users
- •It can be clarifying to explicitly identify who the product is not for
- •For Gamma, she imagines audiences such as educators and their real-world needs
- •Empathy-driven messaging comes from stepping into the user’s life and priorities
- •The goal is speaking to what matters to them, not what matters to the creator
Designing logos and color systems: pushing extremes, keeping a “strange” edge
Mike explains his process for shaping logos by exploring far extremes, then simplifying. He sometimes checks originality by asking online communities whether something resembles existing marks. He aims for logos with a small unusual quality, and he treats color selection as rigorous exploration rather than quick borrowing.
- •Logo process: push ideas to extremes first, then simplify repeatedly
- •He uses online feedback to sanity-check whether a logo already exists
- •He wants logos to have a small “strange” detail to be more ownable
- •He rejects overly generic geometric marks that feel interchangeable
- •Color work is treated as deep exploration, including practical considerations and unusual pairings
The story behind Smith & Diction: skateboarding, printmaking, and purpose-driven design
Mike shares his path from a skateboarding-driven love of brands to learning design tools and finding his craft. He describes frustrations with art school, later falling in love with printmaking and bringing that ethos into modern work. He recounts working with Chara as a design-copy duo, then at a mission-driven organization where design helped inspire action, before ultimately starting the studio.
- •Skateboarding shaped his early relationship to brand as identity and obsession
- •He left an early art school experience that felt unserious and later studied locally
- •Printmaking and poster-making became foundational influences in his design approach
- •Working alongside Chara united design and copy into a shared approach
- •A mission-driven workplace reinforced design’s power to motivate belief and action
- •He and Chara eventually started the studio with a focus on independence and making great work
How the studio works day-to-day: craft over meetings, resisting growth-for-growth’s-sake
Chara describes why the studio exists and how it stays focused: Mike refuses to present mediocre work, and the team structure minimizes meetings and distractions so designers can design. They discuss resisting the cultural pressure to scale endlessly, emphasizing a preference for staying small enough that Mike can keep designing on every project. The closing reflections return to a mindset of persistence, learning through failure, and continuing to push beyond safety.
- •Chara emphasizes the combined power of design and copyworking together
- •The team avoids excessive meetings and non-craft overhead to protect focus time
- •They do a single daily sync, then prioritize uninterrupted work on the craft
- •They push back on the expectation that a business must always scale aggressively
- •Maintaining a size where Mike can remain a hands-on designer is a core constraint
- •A speaker highlights persistence, embracing failure, and avoiding “safe” creative shortcuts
