AI Made Marketing Bland. Creativity Is the Moat Now, Says WalletConnect’s Dayana Aleksandrova

You could probably date an internet era by its clichés. 2015 had “growth hacking”. 2021 had “wagmi”. 2023 had “delve”, though no human probably ever said that. But 2026 has a voice: agreeable, competent, faintly plastic… the result of thousands of brands typing in the same prompt.

Dayana Aleksandrova refuses to speak it. Before becoming Head of Social at WalletConnect, she wrote ads and landing pages for a living and produced interviews at Cointelegraph, long enough to know that sameness predates AI and that audiences never rewarded it anyway. People copy because copying feels safe, and the tools just made it effortless. In our conversation, we get into why AI was built for productivity, not creativity, why “relatable” beats “cool”, and why the best thing you can post is the one thing nobody can copy: yourself, slightly embarrassed.

AI was supposed to make everyone more creative, and somehow, everything came out looking identical. What does it take to stand out?

I’m not sure if AI was supposed to make us more creative. I think the goal all along was to make us more productive, and that’s very different. 

To stand out, you have to have original thinking and follow your own inspiration rather than copy (consciously or subconsciously) what others are doing. Videos that stop my scroll are actually the Jupiter short movies made with AI. They plug in characters from the company that everyone knows into scenes from movies like Inception and Pulp Fiction. That’s pretty original. 

Every website has the same hero section, every launch sounds the same, every post has the same cadence. Is this just a phase, or is the internet losing its “weirdness” for good?

People naturally tend to copy to be liked and accepted. I’ve seen this before. When I was running my own business as a copywriter and career coach on Instagram, all the coaches would buy the same visual template from a company called Tonic, and once again nobody would stand out. This isn’t a phase. It’s people playing it safe.

Your whole thesis is “be relatable, not cool.” Where did that come from?

I realized that all of the stories I thought made me “cool” (for example, moving alone at 16 years old to the US as an exchange student and ending up at a school in an ashram), weren’t at all relatable. People didn’t say it, but I could see their brain go “wow good for you.” You don’t want to alienate people. You want them to go like “omg me too!” The most mundane facts make you the most relatable, such as being an only child, being from a small town, etc. 

Why does a hyper-narrow, almost silly detail beat a polished positioning statement?

There’s a wow factor to something unique. And when you add the intensity of “this is my thing and IDGAF what people think,” it becomes cool. 

The trick with being hyper-narrow is to stick with it. You have to be so die-hard passionate about it, otherwise it would just seem out of place.

Sounding like yourself online feels risky. How did you get over the cringe?

I almost didn’t post my epic layoff post of 2025 because I was scared to put myself out there (a little embarrassed too). But you know what, when your back’s against the wall, you get brave real quick. In retrospect, it was the best thing I did. 

What’s your actual line with AI? Where does it enter your process, and where is it banned?

I use AI for productivity and to get things done faster when I’m editing videos. I use Notion, Opus, Claude, Grok, and the AI options inside Riverside. I’m testing a few tools to create my AI avatar and use it if/when realistic. But overall, even when I edit videos I find that AI isn’t as precise as I like it to be so I often go over the edges manually.

I don’t use AI to write because I’m a writer by talent and get way too perfectionist about it. I don’t think AI is good enough for quality writing yet.

A builder reading this may have zero desire to become an influencer. What’s the smallest thing they can do to be unmistakable?

Come up with a tagline, a catchphrase, or a unique aesthetic. You want people to look at something you posted and be like “oh yeah, that’s them!” Think about Bitcoiners with their laser-red eyes for example – it’s a symbol of the group they belong to. Or think of Mert’s bald head that gets memed over and over again. What’s one thing about yourself that stands out which you can lean into?

If you were starting from zero, in a feed full of AI content, what would you do?

I would speak on video and coach on something I’ve proven myself to be good at with an added sense of humor. I would create my own vocabulary, catch phrases, and methods to stand out. And I would talk about the way it feels to start from zero. Build in public, and you’ll attract attention.