Post developed with David Nichols, Group Managing Partner and Head of Invention.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were launching the latest edition of the brandgym book, looking at “how to reboot brand strategy for a digital age”. Fast forward a few years and we need to work on an even bigger rebooting of brand strategy, this time to harness the power of AI.
Much has been written about how AI is revolutionising the process of marketing execution, such as rapidly creating video content for online advertising and social media. But what about the more upstream part of marketing related to brand strategy? This is the area we’ve been exploring this year, trying things out, interrogating our current process with an open mind and seeing what tools there are to upgrade it.
This post is a first stab at sharing some of our thinking; very much a work in progress and fuel for debate. We focus on a big picture point of view, rather than a detailed analysis of tools and techniques.
Overall, we suggest AI is like “an Iron Man suit for brand strategy”. It can give you super-powers in multiple areas, allowing you to go faster and further. However, it still needs a smart marketer at the controls to define the mission, set the destination and ensure the delivery of objectives. Below, we share three more specific points of view that flow from this overall principle.
1. Clear guidance is critical for AI-led analysis
AI is great at burning through a huge amount of work very quickly, rather like an army of smart interns. However, like an intern, it sill needs direction from someone with expertise and experience. In most cases, AI won’t have knowledge of things such as corporate ambition and brand strategy, although this may change as more companies create their own internal, “walled garden” forms of AI. In addition, frequent check-ins are required to course correct and guide on which areas to dig deeper into. All of this means that prompt writing is an increasingly important capability to build.
2. AI is best used to augment human creativity, not replace it
Bringing ideas to life visually has always been a key part of our brand-led growth projects. It can access different thinking styles and helps both consumers and the teams inside a business see how ideas could become reality. Asking AI to create instant images takes only a few seconds and is fun to do. However, this usually produces work of limited quality with that artificial, “AI look”.
We’ve found a better approach is to give a clear brief to a talented, AI-literate creative. This is still faster than traditional visualisation. And because it’s cheaper per visual, we can go further on a project and visualise more ideas. And it produces much better results. Below left, is a “DIY” approach using Chat GPT 4.0 to visualise “cats debating the relative merits of dry and wet catfood” for the Meow Mix brand. On the right is what one of our brandgym Z team of young, AI-enabled creatives achieved. No contest in our book!
3. Expert facilitation of smart people is still important
AI-driven tools can not only analyse data, they can also develop and visualise brand positioning routes, innovation ideas or activation concepts in a matter of hours. However, someone still needs to make the right strategic calls and determine which direction to take. And that requires creative collaboration, getting smart people together to discuss, debate, prioritise and develop ideas. As a result, we believe that expert design and facilitation of meetings and workshops still has an important role to play.
Conclusion
We see huge potential to reboot brand strategy for an AI age. We believe it can augment human expertise, like putting on an Iron Man suit. AI will accelerate insight and desk work and allow us to go faster and further in creating and visualising ideas. However, smart marketers still need to collaborate creatively, using all these inputs to make the right brand strategy calls. They can understand corporate ambition, company culture, consumer needs and unseen potential in a way that AI can’t. For now at least!
