AI is a tremendous invention that has changed a multitude of sectors and industries, but what about brand management? Is it a good idea to do something so important to your company using artificial intelligence? Under some specific conditions that we mention below, yes. Read on to see how AI can fuel your brand management.
First off, we need to explain one thing. By no means are we saying that you can hand over managing your brand to AI. You can’t. Brand management is one of the crucial aspects of your business, and it simply needs to be done by experienced human experts who understand your brand, your business goals, and your target audience.
However, this doesn’t mean that AI cannot play any role in your brand management. In fact, when implemented and managed properly, it can be a vital support to your brand management efforts. Let’s dig a bit deeper into that.
How can AI be used for brand management purposes?
There are at least four areas in which AI can boost your brand management:
RESEARCHING AND SIMPLIFYING COMPLEX TOPICS AND ISSUES
This refers especially to IT companies but not only. A large part of brand management is managing its communication so that different audiences can understand what you want to convey. Journalists, potential clients and even investors and other stakeholders don’t necessarily have to understand every single aspect of your work. That’s why it’s important to tailor brand communication to different target groups so that your message can resonate with them.
AI can help you with adjusting your communication to different target groups, e.g., by simplifying complex technical topics or summarising available data in a transparent and understandable way. As a result, you can achieve a better, wider understanding among the target audiences that are vital to your business.
ENSURING INCLUSION
Nowadays, accessibility and inclusion are important topics that affect the way your brand is perceived. Over 60% of consumers said they were willing to take action after seeing diverse/inclusive messaging:
This way, you can adjust your messaging and create a more inclusive and accessible brand image for your customers.
BRAINSTORMING
AI can help you scan your messaging and copy looking for potential gender/race/other bias or lack of inclusive language. Brainstorming plays a big role in every brand management process. In fact, it’s indispensable, especially at the beginning, when the brand is in its infancy. In such a situation, AI can help you brainstorm different ideas, look at matters from different perspectives, and get new suggestions that can take your brainstorming to a new level.
All you need to do is ask a selected AI tool (e.g., ChatGPT) to come up with a few initial ideas to serve as a jumping-off point for further brand management work. Sometimes, ideas generated by AI can be really refreshing!
Source: ChatGPT
Of course, it’s always just a starting point for discussion, not a ready-made recipe for your brand, but it’s still a big work facilitation.
GENERATING BRAND IMAGERY
Today, the brand is not only about the text but also about visual elements. You can use tools such as DALL-E or Midjourney to come up with creative images that can guide your brand management work. All you need to do is describe what you need and the AI tool will do the rest. It can be a nice change from standard and overused stock photos.
Source: https://www.popsci.com/technology/artificial-intelligence-art-statistics/
What are the advantages of using AI in brand management?
The advantages of using this technology are far more numerous than just simplifying and accelerating work. In fact, AI can help you with your brand’s messaging and customer experiences (CX), too. Let’s see how:
AI ENHANCES CX
Nowadays, customers are looking for fast and personalised interactions. According to a study conducted some time ago by Aberdeen, brands that use AI in customer experience management enjoy:
- Higher customer retention
- Higher customer satisfaction
- Improvements in customer effort scores:
Thanks to AI, your brand can design more personalized brand experiences and leverage predictive analytics to see what your customers will expect or be interested in soon. As a result, you can be much better at anticipating your target audience’s needs and interests, enabling you to get more satisfied and loyal customers. And isn’t that what brand management is all about?
Plus, you can use AI to analyse all the feedback and insights coming from the market and your target audience to design a brand that resonates with your potential clients by focusing on matters that are important to them.
Predictive analytics can help you:
- Anticipate customer behaviours and habits
- Predict market and customer trends
- Quickly react to changing market conditions
- Understand your audience better
STREAMLINED CONTENT CREATION
Again, we’re not saying that AI should generate content for you, but it can help you with the process. AI works brilliantly when it comes to summarising texts and ideas, generating ideas and main talking points for new pieces of content, and verifying whether the given piece of content is effective from the marketing and sales perspective.
With AI’s support, it’s easier to create high-quality content that resonates with your audience (including different segments within it) and helps you build the perfect brand image that meets your business goals. AI aids bran managers in understanding what people like or don’t like, so they can make better content and connect with their audiences more effectively.
IMPROVED SOCIAL LISTENING
Today, almost all social listening tools out there utilise AI to deliver better and more insightful suggestions to brand managers. With an AI-powered social monitoring tool you can track reviews, social media posts, and other mentions to see how people perceive your brand. With such a tool in your tech stack, you can be far more effective at monitoring your brand’s performance and image online. This way, you can also:
- Adjust your brand’s image and positioning according to market needs
- Protect your online reputation
Source: https://brand24.com/blog/social-listening-tools/
Disadvantages of using AI for brand management
As we’ve already mentioned, AI has its downsides and limitations. That’s why when it comes to something as delicate as brand management, you need to be well aware of potential pitfalls that can hinder your brand management efforts. Here’s what to avoid:
LACK OF HUMAN TOUCH
You surely don’t want your brand to sound robotic or inhuman. AI has no creativity, no real-life experiences and no understanding of the human nature. That’s why if you want to build an authentic and successful brand, you need to relay first and foremost on human experts. Treat AI as a supplement and support for your work, not the replacement of human brand experts because this would be highly detrimental to your brand.
LACK OF CREATIVITY
This point is closely tied to the previous one. Because AI doesn’t really think, it cannot produce anything creative or innovative. It can only use and mix whatever is in its database. That said, if you’re looking for a brand-new perspective, you need to rely on human creativity.
INABILITY TO ADAPT TO REAL-LIFE CONDITIONS
AI cannot really see and understand what’s going on with your brand. It operates in a void where it has access only to training data and the information you feed it with and nothing else. AI doesn’t know what’s going on in the world or in your sector, so you need to be careful and double-check everything AI produces for you.
BIAS AND DISCRIMINATION
Unfortunately, while AI can be used to detect bias and discrimination in your brand’s messaging, it can also be discriminative itself. For example, brand analysis conducted by AI can lead to a conclusion that a specific audience segment will not be profitable to your company, so it should be completely removed from your brand’s communication. As a result, your brand may be perceived as discriminative, and that’s not what you want, correct?
Of course, developers and scientists are still working on ethical AI, but you need to double-check all the suggestions and ideas generated by AI to ensure there is nothing in there that could lead to discriminatory practices in targeting consumer segments.
How to use AI brand management: 4 principles
EMBRACE DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING
Nowadays, we have access to a tremendous amount of market and customer data. You can leverage AI to analyse those insights and get tons of in-depth information that can help you improve your brand management practices. With data-driven insights, you can:
- Understand your target audience
- Spot trends and patterns in the market situation
- Anticipate and react to customer behaviour and habits
This, naturally, streamlines your work and makes your brand management more effective.
FOCUS ON PERSONALISATION
Personalisation is where AI shines. Use it to provide your customers with personalised messaging, offers and ads that resonate with their interests and needs. Through personalisation, you can get more loyal and satisfied customers who will frequently be coming back for more because they know your brand can provide exactly what they need.
MAKE SURE YOU ARE ETHICAL IN YOUR BRAND MANAGEMENT
Use AI to check whether there are any practices or communication forms that your target audience can view as discriminatory. Eliminate all such signals from your brand messaging and focus on transparent and inclusive language.
DOUBLE-CHECK EVERYTHING AI PRODUCES AND NEVER RELY JUST ON IT
Keep this one sentence in mind at all times: AI is a tool not a replacement for your brand management team. Always check everything that AI produces for your brand, and never copy-paste it without checking if it’s 100% correct and acceptable from the brand management perspective.
Wrapping up
By harnessing the capabilities of AI, brands can get valuable insights into consumer behaviour, preferences, and patterns, thus allowing for more personalised and tailored brand experiences. At Admind, we understand the potential that AI brings to the table but at the same time, we don’t neglect the human potential and the importance of this invaluable human touch.
However, if you’re interested in implementing AI in your brand management efforts, we have something special for you! We’re organising a webinar on how to incorporate AI in brand management. We invite you to take part in it as we’re planning on sharing tons of valuable suggestions and insights!