How To Use AI For Your Brand Without Sounding Robotic

As AI continues to reshape the digital landscape, brands are increasingly turning to AI tools to streamline their work and strengthen their strategies. But as more brands adopt these tools, it’s important to use AI intentionally and responsibly. AI can be incredibly effective, but relying on it too heavily can make your brand feel repetitive, predictable, or disconnected from what makes it unique. Here’s how to use AI strategically while keeping your brand authentic.

Use AI To Find The Story, Not Write It

Instead of immediately asking AI to create something for you, use it to help uncover the information behind what you want to create. From analyzing data and identifying consumer behavior patterns to researching competitors and uncovering potential trends, AI can help brands find insights they may not have the time or resources to uncover on their own. Those insights can then inform the story, campaign, messaging, or strategy your team ultimately creates.

AI can be a powerful research and listening tool for brands that don't have the time to do all of that work in-house.

Stop Using AI To Make Everything Perfect

It’s no secret that AI is incredibly helpful in polishing work that you want edited. But sometimes, overusage of this can make your work seem repetitive and predictable. While it’s nice to make sure your work is structured, the AI algorithm can make it less memorable very quickly. Remember, your brand’s personality, messaging, tone, and even imperfections are what give your work that human touch. 

The goal shouldn’t always be clean-cut perfection, but it should be to become perfectly recognizable.

Give AI Specific Information About Your Brand

We all know generative tools can quickly come up with just about any answer to any inquiry, but AI works better when it knows your brand. You can upload, give, and inform these AI tools of your brand– its goals, voice, past work & campaigns, successes, history, and more– to fully ensure it's generating information that truly is necessary. 

Instead of putting in generic information, this information helps to avoid generic responses– tailored to your brand. The more specific the input, the more distinctive the output.

Use AI To Challenge Your Ideas

While it may be easier to have AI generate 10 quick ideas for your next campaign, it may be more strategic to have it challenge what you have already come up with. Let it point out what gaps you’re missing, suggest ideas you haven’t considered. Using it as a second perspective is a great way to open up your ideas and brand concepts to figure out what’s actually useful.

Instead of using AI as a writing assistant, you’re making it part of your strategic process.

Know When Not To Use AI

Everyone always talks about just how much AI should be used in everyday tasks, but there are moments when human-led communication is invaluable. There are moments when AI should take a back seat and human judgment should lead. Think crisis communications, client responses, personal or emotionally sensitive stories– these moments require your brand’s authenticity. 

This isn’t to say we should never use AI, but using strategic AI means knowing when human judgment should lead.

Using AI shouldn’t make your brand look and sound like everyone else. It should help you understand your audience, uncover opportunities, challenge your thinking, and strengthen the strategy behind your work.

The brands that stand out won’t necessarily be the ones using the most AI. They’ll be the ones using it most intentionally.

Looking for a way to integrate AI into your brand’s strategy? The McRae Agency combines strategic AI with PR, marketing, social media, and communications to help brands work smarter while keeping their strategy distinctly their own. Sign up for our newsletter or contact beth@mcraeagency.com for a complimentary consultation today.