Brand Strategy , Insights

Using Artificial Intelligence to Build Your Brand: The Pros and Cons

By Andy Suggs

May 9, 2023

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is pretty damn cool. And very, very scary. Like any technology, at least for now, the person behind the keys still has a critical impact on what ultimately is generated by the digital brain.

As an owner of a branding agency, I am already seeing the impact on how we work and how expectations are shifting as artificial intelligence becomes more and more popular. Using Artificial Intelligence to build your brand can be a helpful tool if used wisely. Here are three common tasks required to create a brand, and our pros and cons on the use of artificial intelligence to help them:

Writing Copy

Pros:

- Say “Goodbye” to writer’s block
  
  With a few simple prompts, an email, caption, or any content you need can be written in seconds. Be sure to proofread before copying and pasting the content into your marketing.
- SEO-friendly copy
  
  As you get more strategic in your content development, weaving in certain keywords or phrases will be critical to improving your organic ranking. This doesn’t always come easily, but now you can simply drop your content into ChatGPT (or a similar tool) and ask it to repeat your desired keywords “X” number of times. Voila!
- Fewer typos & grammatical mistakes, but…
  
  Tools like Grammarly can help you write like a professional with fewer typos and more grammatically correct content. Just be careful with semantic suggestions. We expand upon this below.

Cons:

- Simply put, it isn’t always correct
  
  Just as the English language is difficult for people to learn, AI suffers the same fate. Context is often missed, and blindly accepting grammar and even some spelling suggestions can result in misphrased or confusing messaging.
- Lacks your brand’s (or any) personality
  
  Using generated content from an AI tool is great for inspiration, but remember your brand’s tone needs to be embraced. Qualities such as being approachable, witty or sophisticated are not provided in computer-generated content. AI is a great tool to get you started, but take what was generated and put your own spin on it. This is where your brand archetype comes into play.
- Using AI to answer common questions or topics may result in messaging similar to your competitors
  
  If your competitors also use artificial intelligence to generate copy for marketing materials or social efforts, they’ll likely have nearly identical copy. Here is a little trick to address this. Take the copy AI provides, but rewrite that as if you wanted to communicate those points to your best customer. If that’s Sara, then write copy for her knowing the questions she’d have and what she wants to hear. This will now be unique to you and your brand.

Designing Graphics

Pros:

- Visual Inspiration
  
  Just like writer’s block, sometimes a designer needs a little more inspiration to get the creative juices flowing. While this benefit of AI doesn’t yet hold a candle to a real human’s ideation, it will occasionally tap into a visual concept you hadn’t thought of.

Cons:

- Discount logo websites are using AI instead of real people
  
  We recently had a client who went the route of one of the discount logo sites. Quickly she suspected she was not dealing with a freelancer but an AI tool creating visuals based off of her prompts. Thankfully, this became obvious before she went too far in the process, but the company only gave her credit for future work and did not offer a refund.
- It just isn’t there… yet
  
  As mentioned before, AI has a long way to go before designers’ careers are in jeopardy. The best logos, in our opinion, are the ones that provide that “Aha!” moment, making them that much more memorable and unique. When relying on algorithm-based technology and scouring the internet for common themes, the likelihood of creating a memorable and ownable mark is nearly impossible. Or it ends up looking like crap.

Creating Videos

Pros:

- More efficient production costs
  
  We recently produced a video for a client that required a very complex and high-tech environment. The costs to build one would have been astronomical, but we found a local studio that creates virtual sets that, thanks to AI, are nearly indistinguishable from a real set.
- Better consumer insights
  
  AI tools can help you better understand HOW a customer engages with your video, leading to great opportunities for improvement. Where the viewer’s eyes focus, and when they back up or decide to bow out gives great clues about what is important to them. While this may have been done manually in the past, allowing computers to generate this information doesn’t just give you greater insights quicker, but also frees up those people to do other things.

Cons:

- Data isn’t viewed through a culturally aware lens
  
  Based only on the data at their disposal, artificial intelligence cannot circumvent negative human tendencies or be aware of recent social shifts. Thus, AI may unintentionally reinforce stereotypes or biases, causing your content to negatively impact some of your consumer groups. The technology just can’t grasp context or the discretion needed to not appear socially blind to current dialogues. Sure, you can revise as needed, but this can be time-consuming and troublesome.
- It has a very short shelf life
  
  Remember how amazing the first Toy Story looked when you saw it in the theaters? I mean, how could it look any more realistic?! Well, take a quick look at Toy Story 4 and you’ll see how far they have come. As this technology advances quickly, your AI-generated video may soon look outdated and a bit “cheesy.”

In Summary

In a world where “first” can unfortunately outdo “best,” use of artificial intelligence to build your brand is an easy way to attempt to cheat the system. And it is a great tool, but let’s be smart in how we utilize it. AI is new, and it will continue to be improved, but being aware of its shortcomings will empower you to get the most out of it without sacrificing the quality your brand deserves.

Interested to discuss further? Please reach out to us at hello@reckonbranding.com and allow us to make sure you’re getting the most out of your branding dollars.