How to Write Stronger Copy, Fix Weak AI Content and Make Every Word Work Harder.
Special Fall Pricing: Regularly $1,000 is now 50% off—$500. Enroll here.
AI can give you a headline, email, landing page, ad, or social post in seconds. But can it give you copy that is distinctive, persuasive, credible—and makes someone want to act?
That’s where human copywriting skills matter more than ever.
AI has made it extraordinarily easy to produce content that looks finished. It can be fluent, polished, and grammatically perfect—and still be generic, predictable, and completely forgettable. The challenge for marketers is no longer simply creating more content. It’s how to recognize what’s good, diagnose what isn’t working, and make it better.
In this practical two-module masterclass, you’ll learn the proven copywriting principles behind marketing that earns attention and drives action—and how to apply those skills to both human- and AI-generated content.
You’ll learn how to find the strongest idea, uncover the real customer benefit, write sharper headlines and openings, make claims more credible, eliminate clichés and marketing “waffle,” and edit with discipline.
You’ll also learn how to spot the telltale signs of weak AI-generated content: generic claims, predictable hooks, inflated language, repetitive rhythms, empty enthusiasm and words without a strong idea behind them. Then you’ll learn how to fix them.
Because AI can generate more versions in seconds. The valuable skill is knowing which version deserves to survive—and how to improve it.
This masterclass will help you become a better writer, a sharper editor, and a more confident judge of marketing content—whether it was written by you, a colleague, an agency, or AI.
The goal isn’t more content. It’s better content.
You’ll Learn How To:
- Find the strongest idea in a brief.
- Understand what makes people care, believe and act.
- Write stronger headlines, hooks and openings.
- Make claims credible through specificity, proof and detail.
- Recognize AI clichés, jargon and empty marketing language.
- Distinguish clever writing from commercially effective writing.
- Edit ruthlessly without destroying brand personality.
- Recognize when fluent copy is weak.
- Spot generic, formulaic and AI-shaped copy before your customers do.
- Develop greater confidence in your own creative judgment.
Why Attend?
- Sharpen your ability to judge copy, one of marketing’s most valuable and least taught skills.
- Learn the enduring craft principles behind copy that sells, persuades and earns attention.
- Build the confidence to originate, improve and defend your own writing.
- Gain practical editing techniques you can apply to your very next piece of copy.
- Become a stronger reviewer, approver and briefer of content, whoever or whatever wrote it.
- Use AI on your terms: accept it, reject it, rewrite it, challenge it, or switch it off and write something better yourself.
Flexibility to Fit Your Schedule:
Can’t make it to a live session? No problem. We’ll send the masterclass videos, workbooks, and supplementary materials shortly after recording so you can catch up, revisit, or reinforce your learning.
Module 1: Think Before You Write. Principles That Work.
Great copy begins with better thinking. One rule applies throughout: no asking AI what to write. You’ll use the most sophisticated creative tool in the room: your own brain.
Drawing on enduring copywriting principles, Module 1 explores the thinking behind copy that sells, persuades, and earns attention. Why should anybody care? What does the customer want? What changes for them? Why should they believe us?
You’ll develop the copywriter’s eye: why one headline is stronger than another, why one proposition immediately makes sense while another requires explanation, why a beautifully written paragraph can leave you strangely unmoved, when persuasion becomes hype, and when a sentence should simply be deleted. Generating another version is easy. Knowing which one deserves to survive is the skill.
You’ll also learn to move from features to reasons to care. Customers don’t buy features simply because they exist. They care about what those features change: what it is, what it does, why anybody should care.
Key Takeaways:
- Find stronger ideas in any brief.
- Identify meaningful benefits rather than listing features.
- Recognize weak propositions before time is spent polishing them.
- Write and judge stronger headlines, hooks and openings.
- Turn claims into something people can believe, using specificity, proof and evidence.
- Understand what gives copy commercial purpose.
- Above all, start knowing what good looks like.
Module 2: Write It. Cut It. Make It Work.
Writing is only half the craft. The rest is knowing what to do after the words arrive. Learn to write. Learn to judge. Then decide when AI deserves a seat at the table.
Where is the weak sentence? Does the claim deserve to be believed? Could 100 words become 60? Does this sound like an authentic person? Module 2 builds the discipline to improve your work after the first draft.
You’ll become the copy doctor. Before rewriting anything, ask: what’s actually wrong with it? That question sits at the heart of good editing and good judgment. You’ll then learn to edit like a pro: cutting without losing meaning, removing filler, replacing abstraction with specificity, strengthening weak verbs and claims, improving rhythm, killing clichés, sharpening calls to action and protecting personality and voice.
You’ll also take the Slop Test. AI has made mediocre, ‘acceptable’ writing extraordinarily easy to produce at scale. But AI didn’t invent bad copy; generic language, clichés, empty claims and corporate waffle existed long before ChatGPT. The difference is volume. We’ll examine the warning signs of plausible but underthought copy: empty enthusiasm, generic claims, predictable hooks, inflated adjectives, meaningless authority, familiar formulas, repetitive rhythms, and words without a genuine idea underneath them.
Finally, the blind test. We’ll look at contemporary marketing examples without initially revealing how they were produced. Human? AI? Human edited with AI? The better question is: does it work? You’ll gain a much stronger vocabulary for explaining why.
Key Takeaways:
- The Copy Doctor method: diagnose what’s actually wrong before rewriting anything.
- Editing disciplines that make every remaining word earn its place.
- 25 ways to make almost any copy better: rapid-fire techniques for copy that is nearly right but not quite working.
- 15 things to kill before you publish: the phrases, habits or suspiciously synthetic.
- The Slop Test for spotting plausible but underthought copy.
- A repeatable way to judge human, AI, and hybrid work by the only question that matters: does it work?
How to Convince Your Boss You Should Take This Class
This course will help you produce stronger work and make smarter decisions about AI-generated content. Here’s how it benefits your organization:
- Improve creative judgment: recognize stronger ideas instead of simply producing more copy.
- Create more distinctive marketing by reducing generic language, clichés and interchangeable content.
- Become less dependent on AI, with the confidence to originate and improve copy in-house.
- Make better decisions about AI content: know when machine-generated writing is genuinely useful and when it is merely plausible.
- Build a durable professional skill. AI tools will keep changing; the ability to recognize effective communication remains valuable.
The Presentations
- The workshops are hands-on and practical.
- The workshops are live so that you can ask your questions.
- Included are lots of examples, comparisons, and before-and-after rewrites.
- Proven techniques and checklists you can apply straight away.
Download Materials
- Recorded video of the presentation with slides and audio.
- PDF of the complete presentation.
Who should attend?
This workshop is ideal for marketers who write, commission, review, or approve content, including:
- Marketing and content managers.
- Copywriters.
- Digital marketers.
- Email and social media marketers.
- Brand and product marketers.
- B2B marketers.
- PR and communications teams.
- Agency professionals.
- Anyone increasingly surrounded by AI-generated content.
The Presenter:
Jonathan Gabay
Jonathan Gabay teaches AI in Copywriting, Brand Storytelling, and Video Scriptwriting and Production Using AI Masterclasses for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California.
Jonathan is an accomplished content writer, digital marketer, journalist, and lecturer renowned for collaborating with esteemed brands. He also serves as a trusted advisor to the media, offering insights into the latest developments in brand marketing and PR.
What sets Jonathan apart is crafting compelling brands and communication campaigns leveraging the power of AI.
Jonathan has published 17 books, including the university-level textbook Digital Marketing and AI Psychology, which explores digital marketing, artificial intelligence, and consumer psychology for students and marketing professionals.
Beyond writing and teaching, Jonathan advises many organizations on subjects spanning AI implementation, storytelling, video production, copywriting, crisis management, digital advertising, PR, marketing, and navigating the ever-evolving landscape of change. He is a senior lecturer at the University of West London, Oxford College of Marketing, and the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
From government entities to corporate giants and non-profit organizations to grassroots movements, Jonathan’s counsel is sought by those seeking to harness the transformative potential of AI and innovative digital marketing strategies.
Social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathangabay/
If you’re at all interested in AI and want to learn not to fear it but to embrace it, this workshop – and many of Jonathan’s other workshops – are for you. The ROI is so very obvious to me.
This course breaks down the key changes to marketing we need to know in this day and age. It gives you a guide on how to break into the public eye with your marketing.
