Some of us love new tech. I certainly do. Whenever my Setapp by MacPaw subscription offers up a new piece of software, it’s all I can do not to drop what I’m doing and take it for a spin. The same goes for new iPhone features and gadgets of any kind.
And I am most certainly enjoying learning how to make AI work.
I am not alone. Many of your colleagues are the same. That’s not just a gut feeling: Recent Gallup research found that regular AI use among U.S. employees has nearly doubled in two years, from 21% to 40%. The problem is that most of them are doing it without the tools that create brand-building content, content that reinforces all your competitive differentiators.
That same Gallup research found that 44% of organizations have begun integrating AI tools, but only 30% have communicated general guidelines or formal policies for using them—a 14-point gap between adoption and direction.
Here’s what this looks like in real life: A well-meaning teammate opens Gemini at the start of a new day, types “make this sound like us,” and hits generate. It feels close, but the tone’s a notch too casual, and “innovative” made another cameo despite being banned from every version of the brand book since 2019. Then five minutes later, they add that content to a graphic they created in Canva using some of the HEX codes they arbitrarily pulled from the website.
The result is like a cheap knockoff of designer sunglasses you can buy at a gas station for $9.99. Your brand is worth far more than that.
You see, brand value is real money. Kantar’s newest BrandZ report puts the combined value of the world’s 100 most valuable brands at $13.1 trillion, up 22% in a single year, the biggest jump the ranking has ever recorded. For the first time, three brands broke the trillion-dollar mark simultaneously. What the winners have in common is consistency—showing up the same way, reiterating the same points—at every touchpoint, in front of every audience.\
Think that doesn’t apply to your smaller, lesser known brand? Au contraire. Whether you’re the leader in your niche or a ten-person firm nobody’s heard of yet, the math is the same: Your every touchpoint either adds or subtracts value from your brand.
“In a more skeptical media environment, brands need to be more recognizable, more credible, and more intentional about the contexts in which they appear,” says Kate Muhl, VP Analyst at Gartner.
Even if your colleagues manage to get their hands on your brand guidelines, that’s not enough. Those brand guidelines were never built for this scenario. They were written for trained designers and seasoned copywriters who’ve read the brand book twice and can explain, unprompted, why “innovative” sounds thin. AI doesn’t have that context.
As Monigle put it in December, “ChatGPT and Claude can’t interpret ‘make it feel welcoming.’ … If you treat AI like a creative hire who’ll figure it out, you’re setting yourself up for brand dilution at scale.”
AI only supercharges your marketing when it’s building your brand’s value at the same time. To do that, every prompt your team types and every tool your vendors touch must pull from the same clear, structured guidance, one that was written for AI, not for humans.
How are you thinking about AI and your brand today? I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants to know.
We’ve been thinking a lot about it at Spencer Brenneman and have launched a new service to address it. You can learn more here or DM for details.
This post was researched with help of Claude Sonnet 5 and proofread with Perplexity.
