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“Taste” in Marketing: What It Actually Means (And Why AI Cannot Replace It)
Taste in Marketing is the skill of knowing what to publish, what to cut, and what truly deserves attention in an AI-driven content world.
AI has made content stupidly easy to create. Anyone can spin up a blog post, a LinkedIn carousel, or a landing page in minutes. You already know this. We all do.
But here is the thing most people miss.
When creation becomes instant, creation stops being the advantage.
The real edge now is taste. Not tools. Not speed. Not hacks. Taste.
And no, taste does not mean being fancy, elitist, or trying to look smarter than everyone else. It is way more practical than that.
Taste is just the ability to look at ten ideas and know which one is actually worth publishing. And which nine should be thrown away.
That sounds simple. It is not.
What “Taste” Really Means in Marketing
When people hear “taste,” they think of art galleries, luxury brands, or some vague creative instinct you are either born with or not. That is not what we are talking about here.
In marketing, taste is judgment. Plain and simple.
It is the ability to consistently pick winners. To choose ideas, angles, and formats that actually land with real humans, not just look good in theory.
You might be wondering, how is that different from strategy?
Here is the difference. Strategy tells you what could work. Taste tells you what should be made right now, for this audience, in this moment.
Two marketers can have the same data, the same tools, and the same AI prompts. One ships forgettable noise. The other ships something people save, share, or talk about later. That gap is taste.
The Hidden Traits Behind Good Taste
Taste is not random. It is built from a few very unsexy things people rarely talk about.
First, pattern recognition. If you have seen enough great content and enough terrible content, you start noticing the difference fast. Not in a poetic way. In a practical way. You can feel when something is sharp versus when it is padded with fluff. You notice when an idea is stretched thin to hit a word count. You notice when a hook is borrowed instead of earned.
Second, a quality framework. People with taste are picky. Not because they want to be difficult, but because they know what “good” looks like. They value clarity over cleverness. Precision over buzzwords. Substance over noise. If a sentence does not do any work, it gets cut.
Third, context awareness. This one is huge and often ignored. Taste is knowing not just what is good, but what is good now. Trends matter, but so does audience readiness. Some ideas are great but too early. Some are overdone and already dead. Taste helps you read the room before you speak.
And then there is the boring part no one wants to hear. Reps. A lot of them.
Taste is compressed experience. Thousands of small decisions stacked on top of each other. Headlines written and deleted. Posts published that flopped. Others that unexpectedly worked. Over time, your judgment sharpens because you have made enough mistakes to recognize them early.
Where Taste Shows Up in Content (Everywhere, Actually)
Taste is not a single decision. It shows up in dozens of tiny calls you make while creating content.
It starts with topic selection. Just because something is trending does not mean you should touch it. Taste helps you skip viral noise and focus on ideas that actually align with your brand or expertise.
Then comes framing. You might be covering the same topic as everyone else, and that is not the issue. The issue is repeating the same points without thinking. Taste shows up when you pause and ask if you actually have a new angle, or if you are just rewording what already exists. Sometimes the best move is changing the angle. Sometimes it is not posting at all. Sometimes that means disagreeing. Sometimes it means simplifying instead of overcomplicating.
Structure is another giveaway. Some content deserves a clean template. Other ideas need a custom flow. Taste is knowing when a formula helps and when it suffocates the message.
Tone matters more than people admit. A distinctive voice is not about being loud or quirky. It is about sounding like a real person who actually means what they say. Taste keeps you from sounding like AI-generated wallpaper.
Even timing is a taste decision. Do you publish now to ride momentum, or wait until you have something genuinely useful to add? Silence, used well, is also a signal.
How You Actually Build Taste (No, There Is No Shortcut)
This might sound confusing, but taste is not built by creating more content alone. It is built by consuming better inputs and thinking about them properly.
You need to consume widely. Not just within your niche, but across domains. Old writing. New writing. Marketing, design, psychology, films, essays, even product reviews. The goal is not inspiration. It is calibration. You are training your internal bar for what feels thoughtful versus lazy.
But consumption alone does nothing if you do not analyze it. When you like something, ask why. When you hate something, dig into that too. Was it vague? Overhyped? Trying too hard to sound smart? When you can explain why something works or does not, taste stops being a gut feeling and starts being clear.
Then comes shipping. A lot. This part is unavoidable. You can not think your way into good judgment. You have to make decisions in public. Publish. Watch what resonates. Listen to comments. Notice where people drop off or lean in.
Feedback loops matter here. Not vanity metrics, but actual conversations. Replies. DMs. Real reactions from real people. That is where taste gets refined fastest.
And yes, polarization is part of the deal. If everyone mildly agrees with you, your taste is probably too safe. Strong taste attracts superfans and repels the wrong audience. That is a feature, not a bug.
Why Taste Is the Only Moat That Survives AI
AI can generate infinite content. That is exactly why most content now feels the same.
Algorithms reward volume for a while, but humans remember meaning. Brands that win long-term are not the ones publishing the most. They are the ones publishing the least amount of content that actually matters.
Taste is what lets you say no more often than yes. No to weak ideas. No to forced trends. No to content that exists just to exist.
This is where many brands mess up. They think consistency means constant output. In reality, consistency means consistent judgment.
AI will keep getting better at writing. That is inevitable. But it will not care what is worth saying. It will not understand cultural timing the way humans do. It will not protect your brand from slowly diluting itself with noise.
Taste does that.
To be honest, this is uncomfortable because it can not be automated. It can not be prompt-engineered. It can not be outsourced fully.
But that is also the opportunity.
In a world drowning in content, the brands and creators who win will be the ones who publish less, think more, and choose better.
That is what taste really means in marketing.