How can we expect AI to help us do better branding if we don’t know what better is?

Feb 16
13 min read

AI won’t take the jobs of branding and marketing people because it doesn’t have one thing.

Yes, this image was made with AI + Photoshop

I was out for a walk to start my week today and with my AirPods in I was listening to the song, Baba O’Reily by The Who. The ups, the downs, the changes of tempo, it’s like a journey of symphony, rock and melody. I’d be cautious in saying it’s The Who’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, simply because that’s what it reminds me of as something similar. The thing about it is that Baba O’Reily couldn’t have been made by anyone other than The Who.

Pete Townsend, The Who’s guitarist and songwriter wrote this epic and maybe if The Who was making their songs now, rather than in 1971 when this song was released, Pete and the rest of the band would probably be creating songs with modern day tools like Pro Tools, Ableton or Logic Pro. And ‘who’ knows, maybe even AI tools to produce a sound that the band didn’t have access to, to add another layer to their music.

But here’s the point, when you have that creative ability, you’re not using tools like AI to make the whole thing, maybe only a very small fraction at best to fill the gaps in your process. Because these kinds of creatives have the experience and the skillset to create it and they have taste to know what is objectively and subjectively good.

So when these generative AI tools came onto the market, like ChatGPT, Claude and Google Gemini, and all the others, I’ve gotta say, I was pretty against them like many were, and many people still are. Mainly because these tools were objectively pretty rubbish when they first started to get some proper awareness. You could tell what had been made was with these AI tools and what they could produce wasn't coming close to being able to produce the level of work I could create. Fast forward 3-4 years to today and they have indeed become remarkably better, and I’ve found myself using them more and more, but not quite as you would expect.

How I use AI in my own process

I use generative AI to simplify thoughts and analysis, to solve calculations faster, to display my work into real world contexts (like a mockup of someone using a laptop and have it superimpose a website layout I’ve done, to put it on the screen), and even for logo inspiration generation.

Yes, I use it to help me come up with logo icons/symbols, also known as logomarks. But I use it in the same way you might get inspired by looking at images on Pinterest. Because here’s the thing, what AI generates is still pretty rubbish, particularly when it comes to logos. But it does tend to help spark ideas based on a concept I already have in mind or might have sketched. Meaning that I don’t use what AI produces verbatim like some might do, which is quite a problem, as they export whatever is produced and call it a job done without knowing any better.

A recent example of a logomark I was working on.

So instead, the way I use generative AI from time to time for logo inspiration, is kind of like having a junior designer coming up with 10-20 rough designs that get it about 50-60% there to visualise an idea that has already been thought of and directed in a prompt. So that I come along as the senior art director to find if there’s any merit in these rough concepts and then develop a far more resolved logomark in my own manual way with more sketches or in design tools like Adobe Illustrator. As I know it will then have all the hallmarks of being effective; works at small scale, isn’t too intricately detailed to be easily remembered, works in different colourways and compliments all the other visual assets and overarching concept that I produce when making a full identity for a brand.

So this is the big picture point. Knowing what looks good, what sounds good, if it’s actually correct, if it’s effective, does it work, does it feel real, and does it even elicit a human emotion and connection as a result. All these things are attributed to human expression, experience, emotion and the one thing AI doesn’t have, taste.

If I don’t know what I don’t know

I’m in the process of building a house right now, and I’m not naive enough to think I could build it myself, even if I had all the tools and resources that I could get from my local hardware store and from building suppliers. I’m definitely not going to rely on AI to tell me how to build it, or on the flip-side, use a cheap builder, or even use cheap materials. Because I want a safe, well-built home that holds its value.

In this context, the reality is, I don’t know what I don’t know. How would I be confident the floor plan is right or that it’s compliant to building codes, let alone that it’s been constructed properly? Of course I want a great house, but I also recognise the value of having it designed and built by people with real experience, skill and some taste for what works best.

When I flip this into the context of branding and marketing and said that if I wasn’t skilled at branding, based my own principles that align with my building a house example, it would reason to say that:

I’m not getting AI to develop my brand.
I’m not turning to a cheap designer on Fiverr to make me a logo for $5-$100 and say I now have a brand.
And I’m not using cheap tools like Canva to design a logo myself.

Because in this context, again, I don’t know what I don’t know. I wouldn’t know if it’s good beyond my own level of taste, and it might only be if I saw what a professional could make instead, to realise the difference.

And look, I completely understand when this branding and marketing stuff isn’t your jam. I’ve been around long enough to know what my strengths and weaknesses are, just the same as others who excel in so many other avenues than creative ones. To the point where some have seen what I do with Photoshop for example and wonder how it’s not magic…truely. I’ve also worked with plenty of clients who have admirably given their branding and marketing a shot themselves and decided to take the leap into seeking professional help for their brand. So it’s not lost on me to not take for granted what I can do for my own business let along other people’s businesses, while for others I know it’s more challenging if they were to do this themselves.

These are tools

So this is where AI tools are coming into the fold, to fill in those skill gaps. I know it has for me in certain ways. But I see these generative AI tools as just that, tools. It’s not making what it thinks you need, it’s making what you think you need, as you are prompting it to make something. Just the same as many graphic designers in the 80s saw desktop computer design tools like Photoshop being the death of their profession. Of course it wasn’t the death of graphic design. Instead, it became an amplification of what was possible for creatives to produce. To realise ideas that might have been impossible, or out of reach, or at the very least, making it more efficient to create - like if I can draw something directly on a computer rather than on paper and then have to scan it, that makes my process easier.

Now most of these consumer level generative AI tools focus on developing things that require creative thinking and creative skillsets, dunno why but that’s how it has progressed, rather than it doing your washing for you. It’s things like logo design, copywriting, photography, illustration, videography, animation, all the things. You see all these amazing results, and they are genuinely impressive, even though most times it’s still pretty rubbish and takes a 100 goes to get something that is somewhat viable. But you’ve gotta realise that the better results you see were ‘made’ (which is a pretty loose term when it comes to AI) by people with experience and taste that know what is good and also, how to make it good.

Coca-Cola for example, in the last two years have made their Christmas advertising commercial with AI video generation tools. For a company that big to have used AI is a bit beyond me when they’d have one of the biggest marketing budgets imaginable at their disposal to shoot or animate their commercial with people making the things from scratch. However, it still shows that it required a team of people to conceptualise the idea, ideate and tailor a narrative using the AI tools at their disposal. It reportedly took around 70,000 generations to get exactly what they wanted, which is a problem with AI in and of itself, but that aside, their team knew what shots were going to work and which didn’t to make their idea for the commercial a reality. How? Because they had experience in developing commercials, tv shows and movies years before AI came along. Some of them are Emmy award winners for past work. So again, there is still a level of expertise, skill and taste, even though the tools used have changed.

The leg up some small businesses need

While there are a heap of negatives when it comes to generative AI, from environmental to ethical and legal, I also can't ignore the balance of upsides, especially for small businesses. Because when there is still a level of experience, skill and taste in the mix, using these generative AI tools can have its advantages for smaller businesses that typically have a lower capacity (eg. time & budget) to be able to give their brand the best shot at branding and marketing efforts.

You can make viral campaigns where your brand looks like it's present in Times Square. You could add a filler bit of video between scenes to not then have to go back and reshoot a scene. You can add automatic subtitles to your videos. You can edit photos much edit photos much easier. You can transform one social media post in a landscape format that was made for LinkedIn and reformat it for a portrait version on Instagram.

One example I'm looking to do for a startup business client is bringing to life a mascot on the fly for it to be posed in different contexts like new photos or videos for social content, email marketing and their website, so that the mascot is context and messaging specific. This would have been out of reach for this client but it does allow them to potentially outdo their competitors as a newcomer.

For most small businesses, the things that can be done now with generative AI would have been unachievable tasks only a few short years ago because of the investment. So it does level the playing field quite a bit in terms of what is possible when your small business simply can't afford a much more significant investment for the nice-to-haves rather than the must haves. But as I'll keep saying, the result still needs to be good and we need to know what is good from a level of experience, skill and taste. Which is why many creatives are learning these AI tools to be able to offer a lower cost option if realistically required. However, the trade-off to keep in mind will likely be quality.

If you’re going to use these AI tools, does it mean a better result?

All that said, there are more and more platforms popping up as a ‘service’ to help you develop a brand, or a website, social media content, or a video shoot, all done for you by AI. So I’ll say it again, how do you know if what it produces is actually any good? It’s not to say what it produces is rubbish. But how do you know if it’s going to help and be effective, let alone know what to put in, in terms of prompts and references, for it to produce a potentially effective result? Because AI needs direction, it needs human input from people to produce something good with it as a tool.

It’s the same deal with other creative tools like Canva for example, that has been given to the masses for free as an accessible design and video tool that anyone can create with. Having Canva still doesn’t mean a total design novice can pick it up and produce something that looks awesome and is effective, let alone know if it does look good and is going to be effective. And that isn’t meant to be a knock on non-creative types that pick up these tools, as design for lots of people just isn’t their jam. It’s just a simple reality that is no different to me being able to pick up a heap of tools and building supplies and thinking I can design and build a compliant house. It takes experience, skill and taste.

Designers know how colours, fonts, images, patterns and layout work. They understand hierarchy, symmetry, contrast, spacing, form, function, and scale.

Copywriters know spelling, grammar, tone, pacing, structure, hierarchy, storytelling, character development and even things like keyword integration for SEO.

Photographers and Videographers understand light, composition, framing, direction, distance, and perspective, while capturing emotion, movement and sound.

Strategists understand facts, figures, goals, behaviours and turn them into insights, priorities and plans.

These are disciplines that take experience to know what works where, when, how and with who. To know how to outmanoeuvre the competition, to attract customers in new ways, to be in the right places at the right times that might be unexpected, to captivate attention like others aren’t, to connect with people so they actually pay attention to an ad, and to encourage and lead change in an organisation that hasn’t changed in decades.

Some of it might look so easy too and it’s not hard to see why many people try it themselves. But that’s the point, we make it look easy so it’s easy to understand, take notice of and use. So again it’s not hard to see why we turn to tools like AI because we reckon we can do just as good, maybe for a fraction of the price. Which might work, but hey, it might also be a pretty big long shot if the experience, skill and taste is missing.

What’s challenging these disciplines is that AI is being trained on all this stuff. But the broader truth is that it’s trained on what has been done before to then create the same thing again. So there's an argument to suggest that when it comes to us trying to do what hasn’t been done before, how can we expect to do all those things I mentioned before that are unique, creative and critically required for our brand to be effective and see our business to succeed if we’re just going use AI that is only going to do what has been done or what others are already doing?

Where there is still tremendous value in non-AI branding and marketing

What gives me confidence in the human value of developing a brand is when I first engage with a client. We sit down together and hash out what’s going on, what’s working, what isn’t, what could be better, who are they for, who are they against, and what success would look like. All the while picking up the little details and intricacies of their personality, their behaviours, the way they communicate, what excites them and annoys them, and I capture those details to help form the basis of a brand. Let’s be real, how would you capture that with AI? I compare it to what a psychologist does. They know how to probe, they pick up on personality quirks and what their patient responds to most, they know what to ask, adapt their approach based on the situation, and then know how to use that information to treat their patient’s needs in a tailored manner. And I fully believe businesses need this objective outsider that understands the nuances of our subjectivity as much as balancing what we need vs what we want, because most of the time you're too close to your brand and it's hard to work on yourself (your own brand).

If I take the example of my branding process further, I'm also imagining a concept for my client's brand that unifies all of those things identified in our initial sit-down and deliver that in an identity that instills a collective personality and purpose, a tone of voice and distinct message, in a visual language and iconography, and even in sound or smell. This is brand identity development that goes far beyond a logo and quite frankly, can’t be done with AI if we don’t know what to ask and look for in the first place and capture that human nuance. Because if you go into this blind, what you get from AI as a result is the difference between a Big Mac meal from McDonald’s, in comparison to a nutritious and delicious Italian meal made from scratch with a recipe iterated from years of experience in a 5-star kitchen. Both are food but one is a tremendously more valuable outcome, right?

Now that might sound like I’m putting all this on such a romantically high pedestal, but my belief is that a contributing factor for why so many businesses fail is because they don’t take their brand seriously enough in terms of how it is developed, maintained, evolved and utilised over time. It takes effort, time and money to get it to work for you and we often slack off or turn to cheaper alternatives just to tick a box and like I said earlier, we don’t know what we don’t know sometimes.

Why you should still invest in branding and marketing professionals

So here’s my thinking. When your brand can be as valuable as a sales team, or exponentially more when it helps you grow your business, are you going to go with the cheapest option, which might be AI? Or would it be more prudent to seriously consider a better brand of branding and marketing that is done with you by people that don’t just have experience, but demonstrate a proven level of skill (not matter what tool they use, even if it is generative AI) that shows effective results, and have a proper level of taste to know what is going to be good and objectively appropriate for your business? The latter would be ideal, right? Because you want the best for your business, especially if you see the value in having an effective brand.

But also when your success is shared with those who help you produce better branding and marketing, many branding professionals (especially the ones that have built a great reputation for what they do) they want to be in your corner to see you succeed because they’re always trying to figure out new ways to do better branding when a new challenge comes along.

So to know you’ve got something good. To know it’s got great legs to be effective. To have a better brand that helps you create better business success from experience, from skill, from taste. If this stuff isn’t your jam and you’re only using AI, how will you know?

My (honestly biased) tip? Give your brand the best shot you can. Go with someone that does this all day, every day. That lives and breathes it. That never stops wanting to develop and create better brands. I’m standing on top of this mountain, planting this flag, haha. But seriously, utilise their experience, their creativity and human understanding that captures the essence of your business and how it can captivate and connect with your customers through this thing we call a brand. Try a new brand of branding that goes well beyond what AI can.