AI definitely gets attention for affecting the quality of writing and critical discourse. Some studies suggest that it’s actively making humans stupid. And editors are increasingly battling AI slop, often driven by enormous pressures to generate as much content as possible. Despite its popularity, the general consensus seems to be that AI isn’t a very good substitute for human writers—at least not yet.
It's an ongoing debate. The problem is that while everyone is distracted by AI’s impact on writing, an equally bad form of thought leadership—“deck talk”—has gone largely undetected.
Anyone who regularly reads business publications, blogs or newsletters has probably read “deck talk” before. A reader may even confuse it for AI. Imagine paragraphs of industry jargon strung-together, grand pithy declarations and questionable statistics woven between artfully crafted taglines and naked self-promotion.
These tactics work in short bursts within the context of a presentation page. It’s an optimized method of selling anything—from an idea to a service to a product—to a skeptical audience within a limited amount of time. But is it actually good writing? Even more importantly, is it thought leadership? Probably not.
Suffering from Success
Call it a side effect of the ubiquity of business culture. Presentations or decks are the default tool for communicating ideas in boardrooms, creative critiques or virtual meetings. It’s the air people breathe from bootstrapped startups to multinational conglomerates. And when someone spends every day successfully selling ideas using decks, it’s understandable they might think the tones, rhythms, language and format of presentations are also applicable everywhere else. But outside the context of the presentation, the conventions of the medium fall apart fast.
AI rightfully gets a lot of criticism for repetitive phrasing. But “deck talkers” will put each repetitive phrase on its own line—to give it unwarranted emphasis. A longform piece from someone used to writing presentations might bold, italicize and even capitalize random words and phrases like “Mission,” “Goals,” “Creativity” or “Insight.” The writer's piece might ask a long list of open-ended questions without providing any answers. Or the content might over-inflate something’s importance—calling even the most common insights “game-changing” or “revolutionary.”
Deck Talk and Thought Leadership
“Deck talk” thought leadership might reflexively spend too much time promoting a company or service when it should be promoting an important idea or perspective. There’s thought leadership that is largely made up of quotes from other people—taken from past interviews or even historical sources. This works in a presentation, using the quote’s authority to get a point across. But in a column, it’s just repeating what’s been said before without adding something new.
Like AI, all of these approaches obscure any genuine ideas or thoughts that might have come from a real person that’s passionate, knowledgeable and connected to a topic. Yes, the root of good thought leadership can start within a presentation. But it must go further—creatively, intellectually and in terms of personal investment.
The Self-Policing of AI and Thought Leadership
In the past, editors worked as gatekeepers to weed out this type of writing to maintain quality. But now, more businesses use thought leadership content to build trust and increase their visibility with AI agents. Plus, there’s endless platforms for self-publishing, making both AI writing and “deck talk” more prevalent across the digital landscape. And because AI then scans the internet and absorbs those bad habits, the overall quality of its writing is compromised even more.
The answer, of course, is to self-police; to make sure the message is strong and matches the medium. Here’s a few places the start:
- Be honest with yourself: This is the first, most essential step. There’s no shame in admitting that, while you’re a successful writer in other fields, you’re not as experienced (or practiced) when it comes to longform journalistic writing that elevates ideas. Like anything, thought leadership has its own flows and formats. Every audience and platform—whether a newspaper or Substack—has its own rules and expectations. Admit when you need help.
- Make it sound like you: Technically "professional" writing isn’t the same as good writing. Similarly, salesy hyperbole is no substitute for a solid point of view. As a general rule, if a piece of thought leadership sounds authentic to the writer's ideas and voice, it’s likely on the right track. If it sounds like it was created by a committee or too generic, it’s probably not adding value. Of course, it also shouldn't feel like disorganized thoughts or a diary entry either. Balance is important.
- Be accessible: Not necessarily to the layman, but it definitely shouldn't feel so laden with jargon or acronyms that it feels like another language. At the very least, your argument and the stakes should be clear enough to underscore why the thought leadership matters. The key is to find a way of making an argument that both informs and engages.
- Be original: There are times when someone has a really great thought leadership idea, only to find out that another writer has already covered the same ground. In a presentation, this might work in in the presenter's favor, helping to underscore the validity of their argument. But in thought leadership, it’s a signal that the writer should just find another topic to own or a new way to own it. For the same reasons, using the same statistics or expert quotes commonly used by others is a bad idea.
Whether it’s about business or culture, the world needs good-faith experts willing to surface new data, facts and perspectives. But it doesn’t need sales presentations masquerading as something more. After all, the more that thought leadership becomes solely a tool of self-promotion, the less vital it becomes.
Kiri Jewell is the founder of PR consultancy Lore.