hemingwAIy

Hemingway had this thing called the "Iceberg Theory." He explained it like this:

"If a writer knows enough of what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."

The question isn't whether you can produce content. The question is: Do you know your customers well enough to decide what to leave out?

This matters more than ever now that everyone has access to Claude and ChatGPT. Every company can literally crank out endless content 24/7/365 for almost no marginal production cost. Pure AI slop.

But they will NOT have the editorial competency to make it matter. This is where marketing is headed, especially in B2B and SaaS.

The companies who win won't be the ones producing the most content. They'll be the ones with the editorial judgment to know what their specific customers actually need to hear - and the discipline to cut everything else.

This is why so much AI-generated content feels shallow. The models can assemble information, but they can't exercise judgment about what matters to your specific buyers. Only you can do that - if you've done the work.

If you're in content marketing, you should be having regular "brain drain" sessions with your SMEs. Live, in-person, or over Zoom - doesn't matter. What matters is extracting those insights and perspectives that can't be found through a Google search.

Then you should be talking directly to customers. A lot. Understanding their actual challenges, not the ones your marketing team imagines they have.

Only then have you earned the right to apply the Iceberg Theory.

The content that fails leads with what the company wants to say. The content that works leads with what the customer needs to hear - and leaves out everything else.

Brooks

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