Prompt-and-Pray: Inside Nigeria’s New Era of Lazy Copywriting
Let’s be honest: something strange is happening in Nigerian marketing departments and agencies.
You’ve seen it:
An ad copy that feels like it was dragged straight out of an AI playground.
A headline that could have been cooked in 3 seconds with ChatGPT.
A “creative” that feels generic, lifeless, and painfully obvious.
It’s not strategy. It’s not insight.
It’s what I call the “Prompt-and-Pray” era of copywriting.
How We Got Here
Before AI tools exploded, Nigerian copywriters were sweating for every line. A GTBank campaign tagline would be debated for weeks. An Airtel jingle would go through five revisions before hitting the air.
Now? Someone types “write me a catchy copy for a cooking oil brand” into ChatGPT, copies the output, pastes it into Canva, and sends it to the client.
No nuance.
No cultural context.
No market research.
Just prompt, copy, paste, and pray it works.
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And guess what?
It rarely does.
Why Prompt-and-Pray is Dangerous
1. Culture Gets Lost in Translation
AI is great at structure, but terrible at cultural flavor. That’s why we see cringe-worthy campaigns where brands use American slang for a Nigerian Gen Z audience.
2. Everyone Starts to Sound the Same
If 10 fintechs are prompting AI with the same “write me a savings app ad,” you get 10 variations of the same boring copy:
“Save smart. Save easy. Save today.”
Zzz.
3. Data-Free Creativity
Good copy is not just words; it’s words + data. It’s knowing the difference between what Abuja mums respond to versus what Lagos tech bros engage with. AI doesn’t know this unless the human behind it does.
4. It Kills Original Thinking
Prompt-and-pray copywriting makes marketers lazy. Instead of thinking about consumer psychology, market tension, or competitive positioning, people outsource all the heavy lifting to AI.
But Let’s Be Fair: AI Isn’t the Villain
The truth? AI is powerful. The villain is lazy marketers who don’t know how to use it.
Great creatives are using AI as a springboard:
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to brainstorm 20 rough ideas in 2 minutes,
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to pressure-test their headlines,
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to find alternative wordings,
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to speed up iteration.
But they’re not copy-pasting. They’re curating, remixing, and layering culture on top of the prompt.
Case Studies: Where Lazy Copy Shows
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Banking apps: Half the new fintechs have the same copy on their Instagram bios: “Empowering your financial future, one step at a time.” Please. We’ve seen this 300 times.
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Food brands: A tomato paste ad that literally read “Redefining taste, one meal at a time.” When last did Nigerians ever talk like that over stew?
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Fashion e-commerce: “Style that speaks for you.” Whose style? Speaking to who?
This isn’t branding. It’s copy-filler.
The Real Copywriting Advantage in Nigeria
If you want to stand out in 2025 and beyond, you need three things AI cannot prompt for you:
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Cultural Codes
Know the slang, the music, the behaviors, the subcultures. AI doesn’t understand what “no gree for anybody” really means on the street. You do. -
Consumer Insight
A prompt won’t tell you that Nigerian Gen Zs love brands that sound like hype-men, while Millennials prefer brands that sound like mentors. -
Strategic Consistency
AI will happily give you a hundred random taglines. Only a strategist knows which aligns with a brand’s long-term positioning.
TL;DR
Nigeria is not suffering from AI copy.
Nigeria is suffering from AI copy without human thinking.
Prompt-and-Pray is killing creativity.
The SoroSoke Brand Tip:
Don’t fight AI. Out-think it. Use it to accelerate your process, not to replace your brain.
Because in this market, the brands who win are the ones who still make copy feel alive.
