AI as the analyst, humans as the strategist: The rise of transformational brands

April 30 2025

Powerful brands create emotional connections that defy logic and surpass reason. Iconic brands go even further than this. Many become an emotional addiction. 

These brands seamlessly integrate their purpose into their very 'being'. Values and beliefs guide their choices and preferences. Principles define their behaviours and decisions. They have distinct 'personalities', and they consistently build emotional connections that grow trust and loyalty.

Research shows that while people may rationalise their choices, their emotional connection to a brand ultimately drives long-term loyalty. "Mere consumer satisfaction with a brand is not sufficient to establish a continuous relationship. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an emotional bond beyond satisfaction to provide consumer loyalty." ¹

As AI becomes more powerful and pervasive, brands that have established purposeful and authentic strong emotional connections are well-positioned to bridge the gap between data, human emotion, and intuition. But, in isolation of a cohesive blended AI–human strategy, companies risk losing relevance and diluting their brand position.

Whether you are a start-up company, a scale-up enterprise, or a mature organisation, a high-impact, blended brand strategy has become imperative for transformational brand building.

An unprecedented opportunity

As AI grows, creating blended brand strategies in today's environment increasingly requires an understanding of the complementary roles of AI and human intelligence.

AI's ability to create predictive analytics, perform real-time content optimisation, and reduce time to market is well understood.

As humans, we excel at grasping complex situations, nuances, and issues that require emotional intelligence, which require a deep understanding of culture and social dynamics.

Strong brands are built when human cognitive processes are integrated with AI’s analytical strengths, in ways that demonstrate authentic, lived emotional experiences that AI alone cannot simulate.

There is some argument that AI can generate genuine novelty and new knowledge and, in turn, that AI and computational models of cognition will replace human decision-making under uncertainty. However, AI's data-based prediction differs from human theory-based causal logic and reasoning. AI uses a probability-based approach to knowledge and is largely backward-looking and imitative, whereas human cognition is forward-looking and capable of generating genuine novelty².

Is it possible to develop a collaborative approach that allows humans and machines to cut through complexity and work better together?

AI’s ability to consistently understand complex patterns in data with AI’s ability to consistently understand complex patterns in data with speed, scale, and precision means it can anticipate what might trigger a human memory of a brand experience (positive or negative) even before we realise this is happening. This memory encoding (the process by which we place the things that we experience into memory) is formed through repeated exposure, emotional resonance and consistent brand messaging.

The core idea-that powerful brands can deeply influence memory and behaviour at a subconscious level-is consistent with Neuromarketer, Douglas Van Praet’s published work, Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing where Van Praet describes how repeated brand exposure and emotional engagement can embed brands into the unconscious mind, making them feel like "second nature" and part of a person's learned behaviour, suggesting that once brand associations are encoded, reversing them is difficult.

Poorly positioned AI content can negatively damage brand perception and harm brand equity. Left unchecked, AI can confidently 'hallucinate' and produce inconsistent content. Once this AI content becomes embedded in human subconsciousness, it exhibits remarkable persistence comparable to deeply encoded personal memories.

Without strong emotional and contextual relevance, these mistakenly generated memories and incorrect brand associations are not easily erased.

The biggest risk of all…

Without a collaborative approach, pervasive AI-generated brand strategies can seed negative associations that contradicts company values and overlook a brand's purpose – the core of why a company exists. There is a real risk that a “hollow” brand is perpetuated – the company does not really represent what the brand purports. Brand authority may be compromised, diluting market positioning and eroding brand equity.

Surveys show that many companies falling behind when implementing AI initiatives mistakenly prioritise technical issues over the human factors critical to success. Approximately 70% of these challenges are related to people and processes, while 20% are due to technology issues, and only 10% involve AI algorithms. Interestingly, the concerns regarding algorithms often take up a disproportionate amount of an organisation's time and resources. ³

Technology need not be considered an alternative to human labour. While some tasks can and should be automated, humans and machines work better together in many cases than they can alone. CSIRO's Collaborative Intelligence (or CINTEL) Future Science Platform develops the science needed to facilitate this collaboration, combining human creativity, adaptability, and values with narrower but powerful AI. ⁴

Setting the foundations

How can organisations ensure AI-generated content aligns with their brand values and purpose?

What strategies can organisations implement to integrate AI and human intellect effectively within their brand-building initiatives?

How can organisations measure the effectiveness of their integrated AI and human approach in building brand loyalty?

True magic happens when AI predictions and human intelligence complement each other

Polanyi's paradox, named after philosopher Michael Polanyi, suggests that much of human knowledge is beyond our explicit awareness. Summed up in the phrase "We can know more than we can tell," it highlights that many tasks depend on tacit knowledge—intuitive understanding that is hard to express in rules or data. This paradox underscores the challenges in artificial intelligence and automation, where tasks requiring human intuition and creativity are difficult to program.

Aligning AI with brand values requires thoughtful design and collaboration across disciplines. By accepting AI as an extension rather than just a tool, brands can leverage its capabilities to redefine customer experiences, build loyalty and advocacy and increase brand equity.

The future of brand building lies in how businesses rethink and reorganise brand strategies, workflows, processes and cultures in ways that connect and optimise the best of AI and human intelligence. Brands that balance AI's predictive power with the deep nuances of human cognitive thinking and causal reasoning will thrive as technology evolves. This will result in a powerful partnership that combines the best of both worlds.

References:

Ghorbanzadeh, Davood, and Atena Rahehagh. ‘Emotional Brand Attachment and Brand Love: The Emotional Bridges in the Process of Transition from Satisfaction to Loyalty’. Rajagiri Management Journal, 1 January 2021. https://doi.org/10.1108/RAMJ-05-2020-0024.
Felin, Teppo, and Matthias Holweg. ‘Theory Is All You Need: AI, Human Cognition, and Causal Reasoning’. Strategy Science, December 2024. https://doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2024.0189.
‘AI Adoption in 2024: 74% of Companies Struggle to Achieve and Scale Value’. BCG, 24 October 2024. https://www.bcg.com/press/24october2024-ai-adoption-in-2024-74-of-companies-struggle-to-achieve-and-scale-value.
‘Collaborative Intelligence Future Science Platform’. CSIRO, n.d. https://research.csiro.au/cintel/.
‘Global Consumers Demand Greater AI Transparency and Explainability From Businesses, According to RWS Research’. Business Wire, 4 March 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250304609512/en/Global-Consumers-Demand-Greater-AI-Transparency-and-Explainability-From-Businesses-According-to-RWS-Research.
Price, Rande. ‘AI Can Produce Content. But Can It Tell a Good Story?’ Digital Content Next, 19 November 2024. https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2024/11/19/ai-can-produce-content-but-can-it-tell-a-good-story/.
McGuire, Jack, David De Cremer, and Tim Van de Cruys. ‘Establishing the Importance of Co-Creation and Self-Efficacy in Creative Collaboration with Artificial Intelligence’. Scientific Reports, 9 August 2024. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-69423-2.