Branding in the Age of AI

AI has already begun to transform the business world. From customer service to data analytics, hiring processes to supply chain logistics, AI will impact disciplines throughout organizations and across industries – but what will AI do for “branding”?

The big idea:

Lasting, differentiated brands have one thing in common: they tap into a shared and distinct human experience. Identifying and translating that experience into a digestible brand strategy requires more emotional, contextual intelligence than AI can muster. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be of use. Like many other categories, AI won’t replace brand strategists any time soon, rather, it will help them unlock new ways of working and elevate their capabilities.

The implications:

Here are 3 ways AI will evolve the future of branding…

1. Creativity & inspiration

To deliver a succinct, unique verbal and visual brand identity, strategists must first conduct massive amounts of exploration and ideation. AI can play a critical role in helping facilitate this ideation by accelerating manual processes and tapping into more robust data. From exploring topical tangents, to organizing ideation activities and outputs, to sourcing relevant data in real-time, AI can help teams focus more on idea-generating and less on information-gathering.

The action: Identify or develop AI-based prompts, tools, and activities to bring into brainstorm to get the most out of the relevant outputs from the technology while facilitating more effective and productive sessions.

2. Consistency & governance

AI can help adapt a core brand strategy into audience, channel, or market specific messaging more efficiently and consistently than is possible today. Whether it is translating copy for international executions, focusing messaging on a specific customer need, or revising an entire visual asset, AI removes subjectivity and develops content near-instantly – allowing strategists to be “on brand” faster and more flexibly than ever before.

The action: Expand brand voice and visual guidelines to include instructions for AI generated content to best interpret tone, vocabulary, and visual assets (e.g. color, graphics, typography, imagery, etc.). Understanding when and how to apply AI governance policies is also a critical first step in integrating AI into a brand team’s operations.

3. Brand measurement

Brand strategy is a dynamic practice and understanding a brand’s performance over time is critical to its success. AI can give strategists a more immediate and layered view into their brand health by automating and consolidating existing reporting processes. From real-time social listening data for more informed promotions and campaigns, to richer insight into annual brand equity and performance for more strategic brand planning – AI can remove the legwork from foundational brand measurement.

The action: Set up AI-driven analytics strategies that align with key brand objectives to get actionable insights sooner. Ensure AI reporting has a clear role in decision-making processes and is attached to specific, relevant brand strategy activities (e.g. social sentiment should inform campaigns, not reshape foundational brand strategy each quarter.)

The risk: If you’ve heard the benefits of AI, then you’ve no doubt heard that it comes with a unique set of risks. And in the world of branding, the main risk is a lack of ingenuity and originality.

Organizations that rely too heavily on AI to generate their brand strategies risk creating a “sea of sameness.” No matter the creativity of your prompt, AI can’t translate a unique, often unspoken, human need into a resonant strategy. Rather than painting in their own unique colors, AI-driven brand strategies will be told through shades of grey, which ultimately leads to stagnation and irrelevance.

The takeaway:

Despite AI’s growth, now is the time to double down on more “human” branding. Focusing in on ways to empower more blue-sky ideation and strategic exploration will unlock even more value from brand strategy teams. Combining the implications listed above with the ‘Augmented Intelligence’ approach outlined in our previous post Unlocking the Power of AI,  can help strategists use AI to unlock their creative ideas to give foundational, distinct brand insights more consistent, wide-reaching impact.

Future-proofing your brand for the “age of AI” doesn’t have to be a daunting task, it all starts with a conversation.

No matter where you are in your brand journey. we’re here to help. From developing the next generation of brand guidelines, to auditing and optimizing internal processes or brand assets, to evolving your brand from the ground up – our flexible, personalized approach to brand-building can help you turn massive transformation into an approach plan of action.

So, let’s get the conversation started! Get in touch.