EP8: The Great Flattening of Corporate Voice

Forty-nine. That's how many Fortune 500 shareholder letters used the exact same sentence structure in 2023. By 2025, that number hit 208. Same four words, different companies, different industries, different leaders. Barron's clocked it before Brett did, and once you see it, you can't stop seeing it. This episode is about what happens when communication, the one function nobody expected AI to touch first, starts running through the same model at the same companies at the same time. Brett's argument is simple: AI didn't kill original thinking, it made the average version of it free. Which means the leaders who still have a real point of view just became the scarcest asset in the building. In this episode: [00:00] Cold open: the shareholder letter pattern Brett spotted, and the Barron's data that confirmed it [02:00] Why almost no executive predicted communications would be the first function AI reshaped, and why that was always backwards [03:30] The Cision/PRWeek 2025 number: 67% of senior comms pros already use generative AI, and why the real story isn't adoption anymore [06:00] The PowerPoint problem: Gamma's 70 million users, 400 million decks built, and why a board-ready deck in under 60 seconds stops carrying any signal [09:30] The Fortune 500 companies named for overusing "it's not X, it's Y," including Progressive, Coca-Cola, Cisco, Accenture, and McKinsey [12:30] Why a model is built to write the most probable sentence, not the most original one, and why that's the whole trap [15:00] Microsoft's number: 80%+ of Fortune 500 companies already running AI agents inside their workflows [17:30] The line between using AI and sounding like AI, and where most executives are crossing it without knowing [20:00] Why the rare, original point of view is becoming the most valuable thing in business, not the most replaceable [23:00] The one job no leader should hand off, and why the companies refusing to flatten are the ones who own the next decade [25:30] Why Brett built BUILD, and who it's actually for If you've read a press release, a pitch deck, or a LinkedIn post this year that felt like it could've come from any company, send this to the person who wrote it. New episodes every week on Prompting Revenue. Connect with Brett: Work with Brett: https://brettjansen.ai/workwithbrett Join the BUILD Community: https://brettjansen.ai/community LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brettjansen