I WAS QUOTED $3000 FOR THIS!!!
So I asked Opus 5.5 (medium) to create a launch video using Motion Graphics for us.
here's the prompt that one-shots it:
"Create a 15s motion-graphics film explaining {{PRODUCT}}. HyperFrames + GSAP, no voiceover, no footage.
Style: paper-light canvas, marker notes that draw on, real physics, huge kinetic type,
hard light/dark switches, a new idea every 1.5โ2 s, a sound on every hit.
COPY: read {{POSITIONING_DOCS}} first. {{ONE_LINER}} For {{AUDIENCE}}. {{WHAT_IT_DOES}}
Name what the product learns, never the abstraction.
RULES
- No chrome (scrubber, timecode, fps, headers). No animator jargon on screen
("squash", "stagger", "easing"...). Every word speaks to the buyer.
- No invented results: no %, multipliers, customer names or figures.
- Never use: {{BANNED_WORDS}}.
- Logo: real mark {{LOGO_FILE}} + "{{PRODUCT}}" in {{WORDMARK_FONT}}; never a boxed logo file.
CRAFT
- Colours {{COLOR_CANVAS}} / {{COLOR_INK}} / {{COLOR_ACCENT_1}} / {{COLOR_ACCENT_2}}; notes in the
accents; dark mode = charcoal matching the palette.
- Fonts {{BRAND_FONTS}}; Anton for kinetic type; Caveat handwriting via stroke-dashoffset.
- Real easing, squash/stretch, stagger, overlap, onion skin, smear, follow-through. Check the
HyperFrames registry first. Set every from-state at t=0 (seek-safe); never cover an exit.
One primary move per transition; no generic push/slide/rotate-swing.
- Music in sections: drums drop on the dark switch and while the ball is airborne, slam back
on the type and the logo. SFX: pops, pen scribbles, whooshes, logo sub-hit. CC0 or generated
only; log sources. Master -14 LUFS, -2 dBTP, re-measured after AAC encode."
6% of architects use AI routinely. 51% of contractors are actively evaluating it, 40% already have a budget line for it.
Same building. Same drawing set. Completely different speeds.
(AIA March 2025. Dodge + CMiC, 235 US contractors, late last year.)
everyone's reading that gap as "design is behind." I don't think that's the interesting part.
intelligence is about to be the cheapest thing in the office. $20/seat and dropping. eventually both sides have it and whatever edge came from access just closes on its own.
what doesn't commoditize is the stuff your firm knows and never wrote down.
point a frontier model at a drawing set, it reads text off it at ~95%. symbol understanding drops to 40-55%.
it sees W3 and reads a label. your office knows W3 is a rated partition. specific stud spacing, board, insulation, track, screws, finish. settled years ago. written down nowhere.
same with the waste % you add on board. same with the opening size you stopped deducting below. nobody voted on those. they live in whoever's been there longest.
so every project restarts from zero.
been building toward the opposite. projects that carry a brain. the dictionary, the assembly rules, the conventions nobody documented, sitting with the project instead of with a person.
ask it a number and it links you the page it came from. ask it something the record doesn't support and it just says no.
the refusing part is the part people trust btw. took me way too long to figure that out.
So I made a list of the forty questions that surface all of it. reply "Standards" if you want it.
three ways people find you now:
search. AI answers. recommendations.
most local businesses are thin on all three and great at the actual work.
get found, get recommended, get booked. in that order. that's the loop.
we went vertical agnostic on purpose.
plumber, med spa, law firm, roofer. different work, identical leak: demand falls out of the loop before it becomes a booked job.
the software doesn't care what you sell. it cares where you're losing the lead.
the spa across town isn't better than you. the hvac company outbooking you isn't better at hvac.
they just show up first in the answer, look more trustworthy on google, and pick up the phone when you can't.
better captured. not better.
there's a new shelf and most local businesses don't know they're not on it.
it's the AI answer. chatgpt, perplexity, gemini handing people a shortlist of who to call.
getting on that shelf is the new local seo. except the rules are different and barely anyone's optimized for it yet.
stop reporting impressions.
leads recovered. missed calls answered. booked jobs by source. biggest leak fixed this month.
that's the report. everything else is decoration.
old local growth stack:
seo vendor + ads vendor + website vendor + call tracking + crm + a monthly report
new stack:
visibility + capture + attribution
the difference isn't more software. it's being able to answer where the booked jobs came from.
the most expensive thing in a local business is the call nobody answered.
no voicemail. no record. no line item. just a customer who called the next name on the list.
it's invisible, which is exactly why it never gets fixed.
visibility without capture is just an expensive way to generate missed calls.
you can be the #1 answer in AI and still lose the lead at 7pm when the phone rings out.
everyone sells the ranking. almost nobody sells the part where the lead actually gets booked.
open chatgpt. ask it for the best in your trade in your city.
it just named someone. described why. maybe linked them.
that's a buying decision happening with no human in it. and your market already has winners.
are you in the answer or not. that's the whole game now.
a local business doesn't have a lead problem. it has a capture problem.
the demand is already there. people search for what you do every day.
it leaks in 3 places:
- the AI answer that never names you
- the google result that buries you
- the call that goes to voicemail
fix the leaks, not the demand.
we asked an answer engine: best med spa for botox in a mid size US city.
3 clinics came back.
the ones it named had: deeper treatment pages, richer FAQ structure, clearer local proof, more review language around the actual treatment.
AI search is not magic. it reads the evidence already around the business.
"AI visibility" is not SEO with a new label.
SEO got you ranked on a page of links.
AI visibility decides whether an answer engine names you at all when a patient asks for the best med spa in their city.
different game. different evidence. most spas are not set up for it yet.