New agencies started popping up last year claiming to do exactly what the title of this post asks. They promised to use AI to create brand strategy in a matter of hours, at a lower cost compared to a conventional project.
It did make us wonder what 2025 would be like for a strategy consultancy like ours, built on having brand experts with 30+ years experience.
As it turns out, the year has been stronger than ever (happily for us and hopefully for our clients too!).
Why?
Most marketing directors believe that expert advice and collaborative workshops will actually become MORE important in the AI age, according to our research (see below). This is especially true in the ambition setting, strategy crafting and action planning stages . Here, 85% of marketing directors say work will be all or mainly human-led.
We are finding that AI is creating an avalanche of insights and ideas. However, the quality is often mediocre. Hence, expert support and collaboration are needed to prioritise ideas and drive brand distinctiveness.
Where AI is helping is going faster and further in the early and mid stages of a brand strategy project, creating insight and idea “fuel”. On our side, we have custom designed brandgym.ai “agents” to help us do this for clients (see below). Agents include a Core Target Portrait tool and a Stakeholder Summariser. It’s early days, but initial results are promising.
The key to answering the question in the title of the post is perhaps the word “brilliant”.
Can you do brand strategy at the push of a prompt? Definitely. Will it be brilliant ? That, for now at least, is less sure.
In conclusion, we suggest AI for brand strategy is like an electric bike.
It helps you go further, faster.
But it needs human expertise to ride it to the desired destination!
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