Ghostwritten or Ghost-Sounding? Critiquing an AI-Drafted Thought-Leadership Piece for Adyen

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Content Marketing

CoreAI Critique· 45 minutes

Adyen

Objective: Given an AI-drafted thought-leadership article for an Adyen exec, apply the lesson's common-mistakes checklist to find where it reads as generic brand content instead of a real POV.

Adyen's comms team ghostwrote a thought-leadership draft with an AI tool for a payments exec's byline. Before it publishes, you need to catch every place it reads like a press release instead of a person.

Score the draft against the lesson's common mistakes and rewrite the two worst-offending paragraphs.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Docs

FreeHighlight, comment, and rewrite flagged sentences

Free, built-in commenting for collaborative editing

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

Hedging every claim

A take qualified with 'it depends,' 'it varies,' and 'there are many factors' is not a take. A wrong but specific POV generates more useful conversation than a correct but vague one.

Given this 4-paragraph AI draft, which sentences hedge instead of commit, and how would you rewrite the worst offender?

Google Docs— Highlight every hedging phrase in the draft, comment a specific rewrite

Procedure

Read the 4-paragraph draft and highlight every hedge phrase ('it depends', 'in many cases', 'can vary')
Count hedges per paragraph
Rewrite the paragraph with the most hedges into one committed, specific claim

Sample output

Paragraph 2 (3 hedges): 'Fraud rates can vary significantly depending on many factors, and it often depends on the merchant's specific risk profile.'
REWRITE: 'Mid-market merchants with under $2M in monthly volume are overpaying for enterprise-grade fraud tooling they don't need.'

Healthy

The final draft has zero hedge phrases in its core argument paragraphs.

Unhealthy

Every claim is qualified enough that no reader could quote it back as a position.

What this means

AI drafts hedge by default because hedging reads as statistically 'safe' language. A human editing pass exists specifically to remove it.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
A draft paragraph contains 2+ hedge phrases	Rewrite it as one specific, falsifiable sentence before it goes to the named author for review	30 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Ghostwriting that sounds like a press release

If the named author would never say a phrase like 'in today's dynamic landscape' in a meeting, it doesn't belong in their byline. Readers detect inauthenticity faster than any algorithm.

Given the exec's real speaking style (short sentences, no jargon, one specific example per point), which sentences in the draft don't sound like her?

Google Docs— Compare the draft against 3 real quotes from the exec's past interviews

Procedure

Read 3 real quotes from the exec's past interviews or talks
Flag every sentence in the AI draft that uses corporate phrasing she wouldn't say out loud
Rewrite flagged sentences in her documented voice

Sample output

FLAGGED: 'In today's rapidly evolving payments landscape, merchants must leverage cutting-edge solutions.'
REWRITE (matches her real voice): 'Most merchants are still buying fraud tools built for a problem they don't have.'

Healthy

Every sentence in the final draft could plausibly be something the named exec would say in a meeting.

Unhealthy

The draft is fluent and error-free but reads like it was written by the comms department, because it was.

What this means

Voice-matching is a fact-check, not a style preference. A mismatched voice is the fastest way readers spot ghostwritten content.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
A sentence uses phrases like 'dynamic landscape' or 'leverage cutting-edge'	Cut the phrase and replace it with a sentence pulled from or modeled on the exec's real quotes	30 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A marked-up draft with every hedge phrase and press-release-voice sentence flagged, plus rewritten versions of the two worst paragraphs.

See a reference example

Sample output

Snowflake VP thought-leadership draft, critique notes (excerpt)

FLAGGED (hedge): 'Data strategy success can vary depending on many organizational factors.'
REWRITE: 'Most data teams fail not because of tooling, but because no one owns the decision to kill a dead pipeline.'

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Flags all hedge phrases and press-release phrasing in the sample draft
Produces two rewritten paragraphs that pass both checks