Show your fingerprints
Readers crave the human touch
I’d finally made it to Cranbrook, George Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth’s 319-acre monument to the Arts and Crafts movement outside Detroit.
I’d been promising myself a visit to this house, gardens and campus for 30 years. So when I found myself in Ann Arbor, helping University of Michigan communicators write messages that connected better with humans, I knew I had to make the pilgrimage.
I was so glad I’d come. The place is dazzling. Every inch is built by hand, by master architects, artists, craftsmen and designers — from hand-knotted rugs to hand-forged handles. No two doors are alike.
A reaction against mass production
The Arts and Crafts movement was a late 19th-century reaction to industrialization. The more machines cranked out mass-produced textiles, manufactured furniture and impersonal design, the more humans wanted things made by … well … humans.
Sound familiar?
We’re seeing the same thing now. The more we publish, post and press send on efficient, uniform and impersonal AI-generated content, the more humans crave … well … humanity.
It’s bring your humanity to work day.
That means your superpower right now is your humanity. As writers, we need to show the arts and crafts of our work. We need to write more content that’s made by hand.
That means:
- Sharing personal anecdotes. Tell the specific, quirky, slightly messy details of your own life and observations. Robots can synthesize information, but they can’t share a memory.
- Write about humans. There’s never been a better time for human-interest reporting. Robots don’t know any people. But you do.
- Lean into storytelling. Report and write narratives around actual human experiences, complete with tension, emotion and character growth.
Deliver evidence of the maker.
In a world filled with machine-made content, we need to step away from the assembly line. Leave your fingerprints on the page. Reveal the real person behind the message.
Go write something only you could have written.
👉 Let’s help your team members connect with your audiences with hand-crafted copy.
