AI is everywhere these days, and its rise has sparked many fierce debates in creative industries. Is AI a partner for us… or a replacement? The answer, for those looking to build authentic and lasting brands, is clear: AI is an incredible tool, but it’s a tool that a person must operate. The power of AI in brand marketing lies within a strategic partnership between automation and human authenticity.
Sure, it’s tempting to hand over all of your content strategy (from social media captions to website copy and SEO blogs)– to an AI language model like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. The promise of instant content is alluring! However, this is a dangerous path. While AI produces content fast (much faster than a human can write it!), it often lacks the ingredients that make content truly resonate with an audience.
Those ingredients, by the way, are a unique voice, genuine emotion, and original insights.
Telltale Signs of AI in Brand Marketing & Copywriting
There’s a good chance you’ve recently read something online that felt a little “off” to you, but you can’t put your finger on exactly why. Often, that feeling comes from content that an AI language model generated without any human refinement.
Here are a couple of the telltale signs:
Formulaic style
Because AI models are trained on massive amounts of data, they often reproduce the most common sentence structures and phrases that they’ve analyzed. This can make their writing sound repetitive, and it happens because AI models are not coming up with ideas on their own. They are generating language based on what they’ve seen most frequently in the data they’ve been exposed to. Your favorite AI doesn’t have a personal style or a unique way of writing, it’s just using the patterns that it has learned are statistically most probable.
This is why you might notice overuse of certain words– “fostering” comes to mind (e.g. “fostering connections”), “unwavering”, or phrases like “It’s not just (x)– it’s (y).” This language is technically correct, but it lacks the natural rhythm and variations of actual human speech.
A lack of original thought
AI is great at compiling information and summarizing existing knowledge. What it can’t do, by definition, is generate truly novel ideas or offer personal advice. If you come across a post full of generic advice you’ve seen a dozen times before, it’s probably because the AI rehashed the most commonly used points it found online.
Polished but impersonal
A human writer might intentionally use a contraction or an incomplete sentence for effect. AI often generates content that’s excessively formal and grammatically flawless in a way that feels unnatural. Because it is.
Vague, generic storytelling
Authentic storytelling is what builds an emotional connection between a brand and an audience. Using AI in brand marketing limits your ability to share an anecdote that will resonate with your audience. It might instead offer a vague and generalized story. Its content lacks the specific details and emotional weight that make human-written stories compelling.
Effective Human/AI Collaboration
Because it’s so prevalent, AI in brand marketing is unavoidable at this point. The goal, then, is to learn how to use it strategically. It’s not a replacement for creative professionals, but it can serve as an ideation and production assistant.
If you’re facing a blank page or a creative block, you can use AI to generate headlines, content outlines, or visual concepts. It cannot come up with unique ideas. But it can provide you with a starting point that helps you overcome that first hurdle and find a direction for your project. This can free up your creative energy for the important work of creating and refining!
P.S… if you’ve used AI in your visual designs, people can absolutely tell. And it doesn’t make you look good!
AI’s ability to generate usable imagery is still pretty lacking. In a pinch, you can use it to create variations on a visual idea. Theoretically, this can save the time a designer might spend sketching out an idea… but consider how valuable that time sketching can really be. Ask yourself: is it really worth it?
AI-driven content is everywhere. Its ability to generate content can be helpful. But currently, there’s a lot more “statistically safe” AI-generated content than real content backed by human experience and expertise. Human designers and copywriters bring real knowledge to the table. We’re capable of fact-checking information and providing valuable information to your audience. AI language models are notorious for providing incorrect information.
Is it Worth It?
Ask yourself: Do I want to contribute something new to this world to solve a problem my audience is having? Or do I want to come up with something a million other people are doing? Do I want to bring new ideas into the world, or do I want to play it safe?
Do I want to budget for a human designer on my project? Or do I want to use AI to complete it and risk doing a disservice to my audience?
As an example, the shoe company Skechers recently released some clearly AI-generated ads that ran in publications like Vogue. They faced backlash because these ads seem lazy and dishonest. The imagery also has nothing to do with the product that the company actually advertises. The product is a sneaker the company added into the image as an afterthought.
What happens when a company uses AI for image generation, and people spot it in your company’s content? It can easily lead to sense of distrust. Are your products legitimate, or just generated with Midjourney? It should go without saying that when customers start to question your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness, it’s a problem!
That’s not to mention the environmental impact of using AI. Data centers dedicated to AI use a lot of water and electricity. This means that they seriously affect grid stability and access to clean water.
As AI’s hold on the content we see every day continues to grow, it becomes clear that success won’t be defined by the people who ignore AI completely, but by those who learn to master the balance of AI-human partnership.
How Can AI Be Used Effectively?
Use AI to handle mundane, repetitive tasks and to provide variations on an idea to help you get started. But always remember that the final touch (the emotion, the story, the strategic insight) must come from a human. It’s this blend of automation and authenticity that will build brands that people notice, connect with, and trust.