Here's something that should bug you a little.
In a recent survey of 400+ promo professionals, 61% said they use AI daily. That sounds great until you dig into how they're using it and the answer is mostly writing assistance. Grammar. Subject lines. Maybe a paragraph rewrite.
Nothing wrong with that. But it's like buying a Swiss Army knife and only using the toothpick.
The design work? Barely touched. Client presentations? Barely touched. Product research, trend analysis, interview prep, slide decks? Wide open.
That's the gap Bobby Lehew walked attendees through in commonsku's recent AI + Promo webinar not with slides full of theory, but with his actual screen. His actual workflows. Eleven real examples across audio, video, writing, design, research, and presentation tools that he uses as commonsku's Chief Content Officer.
Bobby's been a distributor for 25+ years. He's lived the deadline-driven, fulfillment-kitting-packing life. He was part of the first wave of distributors who adopted e-commerce and built the company store model. So when a new technology wave hits, he doesn't theorize about it (he builds with it!). And then he shows his work.
Before any tools or demos, Bobby shared four insights from polling hundreds of promo pros at PPAI Expo. These set the stage for everything that followed:
When Bobby asked about agentic AI (where AI acts autonomously across multi-step workflows) most people didn't know what he was talking about. This matters because agentic AI is where the real time savings are hiding, and Bobby demonstrated exactly why during the webinar.
The overwhelming majority of respondents were only using ChatGPT . Bobby shared why he's moved heavily toward Claude and Gemini for different use cases, and what he's seen each platform do better than the others.
Writing and editing dominated. Design, product research, and client-facing work (the stuff that could genuinely change your week) were barely being explored.
Using AI every day means nothing if you're using it the same shallow way every day.
Bobby's phrase: "You can use it as a fancy typewriter and never grow beyond that."
A live poll during the webinar confirmed this. When Bobby asked what AI capability would most change attendees' week (not their year, their week) creating mockups and virtual proofs won by a wide margin.
Bobby spent real time on something most AI presentations skip entirely: what you should focus on before you open a single tool.
The premise is simple. We only get about four hours of peak cognitive capacity per day. And most promo pros burn through that tank by mid-morning: resolving supply chain issues, ideating with clients, submitting quotes, researching specs, handling billing. By the end of the day, there's nothing left for anyone else. Family, friends, yourself.
Bobby framed AI as what he calls an "Aegis" i.e the shield of the Greek gods. Not just defensive, but a proactive force multiplier. The idea: figure out what you're uniquely excellent at, then delegate the rest to AI so you can double down on your core.
He showed a visual of his own creative fuel tank — what his day used to look like versus what it looks like now with AI handling the periphery. The difference was dramatic.
His challenge to the audience: before you chase tools, decide what your role is in 2026. Are you the client relationship person? The creative? The builder? Then protect that energy and outsource the rest.
This is where Bobby shared his screen and walked through eleven real-world AI use cases. Not hypotheticals but his actual work.
Bobby showed how the skucast (350+ episodes) went from an 8-hour weekly production window to 2-4 hours using AI-powered audio editing. One click removes every filler word from a 30-minute episode. The tedious part is automated. The craft part isn't.
Before anything gets published, Bobby runs headlines through a scoring tool that grades them by clarity, SEO strength, and platform fit. Quick gut-check, takes seconds.
This one made people sit up. Bobby reads from a script when recording video, which means his eyes aren't on the camera. AI fixes that in one click. He showed the before and after live and the AI-corrected version? Looked like he'd been staring straight into the lens the whole time.
Using hours of skucast recordings, Bobby cloned his own voice and generated a narrated version of a blog post. The audience was split on whether it was really him.
PS: It was the AI
Bobby created a full video avatar of himself and played two clips side by side. The audience vote on which was the bot? Almost perfectly split 50/50.
Bobby got refreshingly blunt here: "AI can write better than most of you." He explained why (vocabulary math: humans use ~20,000 words, AI has 200,000+), what went wrong with ChatGPT's writing quality, why he switched to Claude for written communication, and how he built a brand voice guideline that any team member can use to write on-brand with AI.
This was the jaw-dropper. Bobby showed the evolution of how he produces The Backpack (commonsku's merch trends newsletter). AI browser for curation and then Notion for the writing (a voice prompt that takes those links and drafts each blurb in the brand's tone). Bobby walked through it live, from raw inbox to near-finished newsletter draft!
Bobby loaded every 2025 issue of The Backpack into AI and asked it to find recurring patterns he couldn't even remember writing about. AI surfaced trends across 25-40 issues that became the foundation for our year-end wrap-up. The application for distributors: do this with your clients' industries.
Imagine you're about to interview someone who's been on the Jon Stewart Show and Ezra Klein's podcast. You're not an economist. What do you do? Bobby loaded every one of Kyla Scanlon's newsletters into NotebookLM and came out the other side actually understanding what she's been thinking about lately. He also showed his Claude Project for the skucast. Type in a guest's name and company. Under four minutes: research brief, intro draft, questions tailored to that specific person. The homework that used to take hours, done before your coffee gets cold.
Bobby revealed they're building three tiers of eBooks for different distributor stages, all using what he calls "recursive prompting" i.e where one prompt kicks off multiple steps (research, outline, draft, self-edit, accuracy check, final output).
90% of the presentation the audience was watching was built by typing into Claude. Bobby demonstrated it live, including throwing a spreadsheet into Gemini and getting back a complete, designed slide deck with charts and analysis in about two minutes. AI even pushed back on one of his conclusions and cited the "paradox of choice" to defend its logic.
If there's one tactical shift Bobby wants you to make, it's to stop what he calls the "babysitter model" — where you prompt AI, watch it, don't like the result, prompt again, watch again, repeat until frustrated.
The alternative is recursive prompting. One prompt that triggers multiple steps: research this, outline that, draft it, edit it, check accuracy, deliver a finished result. One input, multiple outputs.
Bobby showed how this works for newsletters, eBooks, podcast prep, and presentations. It's the single biggest unlock he's found.
Here's the part that should make every promo pro breathe easier.
Bobby spent real time on a concept he called "taste" — adapted from an article in the publication Every.to. AI can process data and surface information. But taste (the ability to know what matters to your specific audience) is the human layer AI can't touch.
Bobby described reviewing AI-curated stories for The Backpack and filtering them through his knowledge of who actually reads it. That curatorial instinct isn't a nice-to-have. It's the whole game.
As a distributor, you have that same edge. You know the difference between what sounds good and what's going to actually land with your clients' industries. AI does the heavy lifting. You own the last 20%. And Bobby's argument is that 20% is where all the value lives.
Bobby also gave a peek at what the commonsku team is building into the platform itself. An AI Product Mockup Tool integrated right into the product configuration page, uses client art combined with supplier images to generate mockups.
On the roadmap: a description writer, auto art configurator, presentation generator, and shop generator.
Bobby's framing was key here: "The interesting thing about what we're building is it's inside the workflow."
These aren't disconnected tools. They're being built into the same system teams already use for EPOs, supplier collaboration, and sales.
commonsku has been rolling out AI features in stages:
from AI Recommendations Tool (live now) to an AI assistance layer and eventually intelligent agents across client, order, production, and finance workflows.
Bobby left the audience with a direct message: now is not the time for caution. Now is the time for risk.
He referenced Google's early policy of dedicating 20% of the work week to sandboxing ideas which produced Gmail, among other things. His encouragement to promo business leaders: codify that experimental time with your team. Try things, break things, report on what you learn.
His final remark: "Do more work in 2026 that feels like play."
Subscribe to the AI Promo Brief — AI developments filtered through the lens of the branded merch world, twice a month.
Subscribe to The Backpack — merch trends, culture, and style, twice a month.
Check out skucast episode 355 — Bobby and Eku break down generative vs. agentic AI, why one platform beats tool chaos, and the guardrails that actually make sense.
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