How would you promote a product in the age of AI “slop”?
I don’t want to rant here (but I probably will a bit)... 😀
Almost every ad visual, but also a lot of organic content on social media, is very generic and created by AI (I get it, it’s a cheaper and more scalable way of promoting). But when everyone does it, it becomes really hard to stand out and differentiate yourself.
I feel like it’s not just on the internet anymore, but even on TV.
So, how do you stand out in a time when there is an overload of information and AI slop everywhere around us?
The only possible solutions that come to my mind are guerrilla campaigns in physical spaces, whose impact is then amplified by social media sharing, basically some kind of mediated experience that people talk about online.
I know this will depend on the type of product, but how would you approach this?
Replies
Some amazing art can be made with AI now, I reckon it is just and early messy phase, but AI can be leveraged to create much more than slop, something that previously only larger production companies could afford.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@sean_mcfadden But art has one flow... many people don't buy it out of necessity. It is like money spent on a hobby.
Go narrower, not louder. I launched a training app for one specific type of lifter today, and the only things that have moved the needle are unscalable: real conversations with personal trainers, individually tracked links so I know which human sent which sign up, and replying to every single comment myself. AI slop is generic by definition, so specificity is the moat. If your copy could belong to any product in your category, it now reads as slop even when a human wrote it. The bar is not "human made", it is "obviously made by someone who knows this niche".
the guerrilla-in-physical-space instinct is right but most people cant sustain it, its a stunt not a channel. the thing that cuts through slop isnt about better production at all. its usually just a real person attached to the thing, boring founder voice, ugly screenshots, replying to people by name. ai cant fake 'ive been awake since 4am fixing this for you' yet. the angle i keep coming back to with groundwork is that your earliest users are the least sloppy distribution you have, they vouch for you in a way no ad visual can because theyve got skin in it. but yeah for cold reach, pick one weird owned format and be relentlessly human in it.
We all love reading the "#1 Product of the Day" success stories. They are inspiring, but they often suffer from survivor bias.
Sometimes, the most brutal failures offer the best blueprints.
The day before Publora’s incredible #1 launch, we launched our own product, AEO Table. Our modest target was 50+ upvotes. We ended up with 9 upvotes and 2 comments. To make it sting more, most of those 9 upvotes came from our own team.
No secondhand theories here. Here is the exact post-mortem of how we screwed up, so you don't have to.
❌ Mistake 1: Zero Pre-Launch = Launching Naked
Product Hunt removed the "Coming Soon" shipping feature in August 2025, right before our launch. We didn’t do our homework on this change and assumed we could just build momentum on launch day. With zero pre-existing follower base on PH, we started from a dead stop.
The Lesson: Never rely on a platform's built-in discovery. Build your audience in your own backyard (Slack, Discord, newsletters) at least 30 days before you hit launch.
❌ Mistake 2: New Reddit Account + External Links = Global Shadowban
To drive traffic, we posted on r/bigseo using a brand-new Reddit account with external links included. The moderator manually removed it instantly. Out of panic, we immediately reposted on r/SEO. This triggered Reddit’s automated spam filter, resulting in a permanent Global Shadowban. Our account died on the spot, and our appeals are still met with silence.
The Lesson: Do not treat Reddit as a billboard. New accounts + links = instant death. You must warm up accounts months in advance, build Karma, and provide genuine value without being salesy.
❌ Mistake 3: All Channels at Once = All Channels Failed
We tried to be everywhere. On launch day, we pushed simultaneously to Product Hunt, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, our blog, and Indie Hackers. Six channels, and because our team was stretched so thin, we executed every single one poorly. Worse, the time we should have spent engaging on PH was entirely eaten up by Reddit damage control.
The Lesson: Omnichannel marketing sounds great until you try to do it with a small team. Pick 1 or 2 core channels to dominate, and let the others just be passive mirrors.
❌ Mistake 4: Friends' Same-Day PH Accounts = Worthless Votes (The Karma Coefficient)
When we saw our numbers stalling, we sent out emergency SOS messages to friends. They were amazing and immediately created PH accounts to upvote us. However, we completely underestimated PH’s Karma Coefficient algorithm. The system flagged these "zero-history, same-day" accounts as spam and filtered out every single vote.
The Lesson: Numbers don't lie, but algorithms are smarter. You need upvotes from established PH users with active history. Turning a bunch of newbies into a "friend army" on launch day will only trigger anti-cheat filters.
💡 The Takeaway
Success is great, but failure is the ultimate textbook. While we missed our target, this launch taught us more about the realities of international Go-to-Market execution than months of reading tutorials.
Hopefully, our 4 mistakes will save your upcoming launch.
Makers, what’s the biggest "hidden" mistake you’ve ever made during a product launch? Let’s swap some horror stories in the comments! 👇
My thought is build up a lot of audience before launch and create as much social media presence as possible. basically use everything you have and know ! Thats my next strategy would come back to you in a month and would let you guys know how it went :)
I build an AI ads tool, so I'm kind of the thing you're complaining about. Fair.
But the tools didn't make the slop. They just made it free to pump out the stuff that was always getting ignored anyway. That bland AI visual dying today is the same bland stock-photo ad that died in 2015. It used to cost money to make junk. Now it doesn't. So we're drowning in it.
What cuts through, after 12 years and a lot of wasted spend: being specific. A real number, a real moment, a real person saying something they mean. Slop feels like slop because whoever made it had nothing to say and let the model fill the gap.
And it has to feel native. Nobody's on the feed hoping to watch an ad. The rough thing that belongs beats the glossy thing that screams "marketing." That's why guerrilla works, it doesn't look like one.
The part that keeps me honest about my own product: I can help you make 100 ads a day. I can't make you interesting. That part's still on you.
memi
I think specificity is the antidote. Real screenshots, actual workflows, named constraints, founder notes, and opinionated positioning beat polished generic content. AI can help make assets, but the taste and proof still need to come from the maker.
Get promotion plan and schedule from Claude
Get content and best-seo marketing strategies and a social calendar from claude and Chatgpt
Use Gemini Studio for content design and support
Use Canva AI to create media
🤪 Hope I'm in sync with the trends and updates
Launching Cairn today as a 17 year old solo founder with $0. No paid hunters, no ad budget, just showing up in threads like this one. The irony of answering "how do you stand out in the age of AI slop" on my own launch day is not lost on me.