The tl;dr of this blog is this: I recommend you avoid using AI flyers for your business/non-profit, especially for anything customer-facing. I’m not going to pretend like that’s a hot take. If anything, bashing AI flyers is low-hanging fruit, especially for someone like me whose business offers design services for hire.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think AI flyers are cutting into my business, so this is not meant to be a personal vendetta against them. I really do want your business or non-profit to be successful. I want you to reach the people most likely to benefit from your product or service. Running an organization is hard, so, of course, you should use any tools that can help you grow more efficiently.

I do not think AI flyers are the right tools for growth. Here’s why.

My Scientific Poll Concerning AI-Generated Flyers

I conducted a super scientific poll on Facebook regarding AI flyers. 64 beautiful people responded to this poll:

63% said AI flyers are slop and always bad
15% said AI flyers *are* mostly bad but sometimes good
18% said AI flyers can be useful but are sometimes bad
3% said AI flyers are mostly good but sometimes bad
No one said AI flyers are awesome

78% of respondents to my poll had at least a mostly negative view of AI flyers. In another Facebook poll conducted by a page called Magnolia County Resources, 97% of their 747 participants indicated they do not like AI flyers (the poll options were yes or no). Here is a screenshot of what Google’s AI overview said about the general cultural temperature toward robot posters.

Criteria for Good Business Growth Tools

Let’s establish criteria for what can be considered a good business growth tool.

A good business growth tool should include at least three of the following characteristics:

Improves efficiency by reducing the time spent on recurring tasks
Improves efficiency by reducing the number of people required to complete recurring tasks
Improves communication within the organization
Improves communication with existing and/or potential customers
Reduces stress and friction for the person or team members responsible for recurring tasks
Improves the brand’s reach and reputation

A good business growth tool should include no more than two of the following characteristics (but definitely not F):

Increases a person or a team’s workload without adequate compensation (i.e., increased pay, bonuses, or the removal of other tasks)
Increases the number of people required to complete recurring tasks
Makes a person or team dependent on the tool before it is fully proven to be efficient and effective
Hinders communication with existing and/or potential customers
Increases stress and friction for the person or team responsible for recurring tasks
Damages the brand’s reach and/or reputation

Disclaimer: These criteria are completely made up by me. If you have a different method for determining what tools to use for your business, or you would like to add to this list, please leave a comment below or on social media.

Digital Marketing Services in North Carolina and Beyond — Instead of including examples of ugly AI posters, here is a

Examples of Good Business Growth Tools

A tool is only as effective as its operator. [Maybe mention the comment on Facebook]

Paint sprayers can be far more efficient than rollers. Brad the Painter says it’s three to five times faster. I’m inclined to believe him. However, if you hire me to paint your living room, it would probably be a mistake for me to use a sprayer. I have some experience rolling walls, but absolutely no experience spraying. I doubt you want my first experience with a sprayer to be in your home. I’m going to make a mess either way, but my ignorance of spraying could be catastrophic, so don’t hire me to paint your living room if you want it done well.

Nevertheless, given coaching, time, and practice, I might be able to learn how to paint with a sprayer.

The tools listed below meet my totally scientific criteria, provided they are used well.

Industrial Dishwasher:

Score: 1, 2, 5, 6. No letters.

Numbers: An industrial dishwasher could definitely strengthen your brand’s reputation.
Letters: It is a proven tool if utilized effectively. However, you don’t want to trust it blindly.

Canva:

Score: 1-6. No letters.

Numbers: Canva can potentially meet criteria 1-6.
Letters: If implemented properly, Canva does not meet any of the letters

Clock-In Apps

Score: 1-3, maybe 5. Potentially E

Numbers: This is an internal tool, but clock-in apps can eliminate wasted time, automate payroll, and potentially improve morale. All things that could eventually help bolster the brand and improve your reputation.
Letters: Clock-In Apps do not totally eliminate the type of human error that stresses out supervisors around the world.

Do AI Flyers Meet This Scientific Criteria for Good Business Growth Tools?

Score: 1, 2, 3, maybe 5.
Letters: F, C, D, Potentially E and A

While AI flyers score well in the numbers, they get too many letters, including the dreaded F.

What AI Flyers Might Do Well

I cannot deny it takes far less time to design a flyer using AI. If spraying paint is three to five times faster than rolling it, an AI flyer is 1000 times faster than InDesign, 500 times faster than Publisher, and 50 times faster than Canva. Don’t fact-check those numbers.

You could replace your entire flyer-designing team with your AI of choice. You could keep one AI flyer maker in your organization who makes all internal and external AI flyers. That one person could make 50 AI flyers in the time it took for the team to make one in Canva. This could improve internal communication and reduce stress/friction for your marketing department, while still ultimately decreasing workloads.

Graphic Design Services Near Lake Lure, NC and beyond

If you are a one-person marketing department also responsible for payroll, scheduling, product development, and a host of other business responsibilities, I completely understand the appeal of using AI to design your social media posts. It is possible your audience is fine with AI-generated flyers. If communication is improved, efficiency is gained, and stress is reduced, it’s hard to say they are altogether bad.

What Makes AI Flyers Fail This Criteria

AI-generated flyers get too many letters to be a tool I would recommend for an organization. I cannot say for sure that they don’t or can’t work for you, and I would love to hear/see examples of how they have benefited your org; however, the opportunity to hurt your brand’s reputation is very real. I understand that the two polls I cited may not have convinced you that people don’t like AI-generated flyers, so I encourage you to pay attention to comments, do your own Google searching, and I am confident you will find that there is not much love for robot posters.

AI Flyers Are Ugly

Someone reading this might be screaming, “My AI flyers look awesome, and no one can tell I used AI, because I know how to use the prompts.” If that’s you, you’re the exception, and this blog is not really for you. If your audience really can’t tell you’re using AI and your graphics look like something a human would make, you are outside of the bell curve of the target for this post. Feel free to share your work in the comments.

For the rest of us who have not mastered the nuances of LLM graphic design prompts, our posters have a lot of the same issues:

AI flyers have too much text
AI posters have weird drop shadows
AI posters are often really dark, like Christopher Nolan Batman dark. Great for Batman, not super inviting for restaurants
AI flyers have posters within posters within posters - flyerception
AI flyers and LLM-generated content can still have hallucinations that make it even more obvious it’s AI

People Are Not Convinced They Like AI

Even if your poster communicates information while reducing the amount of time you’re spending creating social media posts, your audience may be getting the wrong message from your use of these tools.

AI Statistics:

Did I cherry-pick these statistics? Maybe. Could you find statistics that show that the very same people worried about AI are using it every day? Almost certainly. Does that justify your use of AI in creating posters about events and special offerings for your business? Sure.

The question that matters more than the three above: Will your audience apply the logic above to your AI-generated flyer when they see it while doomscrolling social media?

I think the risk outweighs the reward. The risk of your audience tuning you out and writing off your organization when you post AI-generated flyers is too high. I think you are better off using a crudely designed, human-generated poster.

Well, How Should I Make Posters?

So, I’ve convinced you to avoid posting AI-generated flyers; now what? Here are a few alternatives for communicating with your audience after you’ve fired your robots:

Canva Templates: This is more labor-intensive than AI, but a lot more user-friendly than Adobe. You can upload and save your brand, and your efficiency will improve with experience.
Empower Your Team: You may have a creative person on your team who would love to be empowered to design or even hand-draw your posters.
Don’t Use Flyers: You could consider posting real photos of your organization, product, or service and use the caption to communicate information you would’ve otherwise put on a flyer.
Hire a Professional: Obviously, this could be more expensive, but the investment may yield exponentially positive results.

Each of these options has implications for the social media algorithms, which would be worth talking about in a separate blog. However, with the options above, you don’t have to fear they will perform worse than AI-generated flyers.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

A Not-So-Hot Take On AI Flyers