At this point, it’s safe to say most marketers have been asked to implement AI in their content marketing workflows to accelerate processes and ultimately, get more done. That’s what many AI tools are promising the C-suite, anyway, and they love to hear it.

But as a marketer, you know all too well that quantity ≠ quality.

Without sufficient human input at every stage of the content process, quality quickly begins to slip, which can be disastrous for your page’s authority score and for maintaining an authentic, distinct, human brand with heart. 

So, how do we balance the demand for “boosting content creation efficiency with AI” and protecting our brands’ integrity? This question was the primary theme explored at the recent AMA Wisconsin virtual panel, “Branding in the Age of AI: Balancing Innovation with Identity,” featuring panelists Emilie DiFranco, VP Marketing at Marketri, Alex Martinez, CEO of MartiniWorks & Founder of MetaMartini, and Chad Dern, VP Marketing at Steinhafels.

Keep reading to get key tips from these three marketing pros on how we can strike that balance. 

How Marketers Can Balance AI Innovation and Human Creativity

1. Remember that AI is a Teammate, Not a Replacement

Across the board, all three panelists agreed: AI works best when it supports, not replaces, human creativity. 

For Alex, it’s what he calls “a buddy over the shoulder” that helps his relatively lean team audit and fact-check often technical content and expand creative output when industry demand spikes. But he made it clear that he never lets the AI do the work. 

His team builds structured prompts, feeds it detailed information, and still takes the time to carefully review all output for both accuracy and opportunities to infuse human creativity. 

Chad agreed with this mindset, sharing that since his industry sees new promotions and products rolling out constantly, using AI to streamline the creation of product visuals and ad content has been extremely helpful. However, he and his team work hard at each step to preserve the human element, starting with real product photography, building 3D models, and then using AI to generate lifestyle scenes. They’re also not afraid to be hyper-critical of whether or not the final product accurately reflects the brand, because as Chad said, “You need the human touch at each step.”

To Emilie, investing in the human element has extended to hiring a full-time creative writer. As she put it, “It seems a little counter-intuitive to hire a full-time creative writer at a point where people think copywriting is going away, but it’s the creativity that’s going away. So we need to infuse that creativity back into everything that we’re doing.” 

And while she uses AI for audience and market research to better understand the customer, she still prioritizes 1:1 interviews with customers. After all, this is where emotional, personal stories come from, and that’ll never stop being a powerful marketing tool.

2. Don’t Leave Brand Voice to AI

One of AI’s weaknesses is learning and maintaining a distinct brand voice. Even if you provide writing samples and full context in your prompt, it’s very easy for AI to slip back into its “AI speak” writing voice, and everything will start to sound the same. 

Emilie shared that your best bet to counteract this, in addition to meticulously proofreading and updating everything AI writes, is to establish custom AI channels for each brand you write for. This way, you can feed it contextual information and other feedback, and since it’s in its own channel, it’s more likely to learn from it and produce improved output over time.

Alex also emphasized the importance of training your team to spot infamous “AI speak,” terms, sentence structures, or emojis that AI defaults to, from the rocket emoji 🚀 to the word “elevate” to the phrase “In the *insert industry here* landscape” to em dashes. If your content includes these elements, it blends in with the crowd at best, and at worst, your audience may even pick up on AI’s presence in your content, unaltered at that. 

3. Strike a Partnership Between Optimization and Emotional Connection

AI-driven performance tactics can be impactful, but over-relying on them can backfire. Alex shared how posting high quantities of AI-generated content that isn’t trained adequately leads to diminishing quality. Google will notice, too, when your content doesn’t answer any questions and visitors promptly bounce, and it’ll tank your site’s authority score as a result. “Doing it wrong is easy to see,” he said, “And doing it right is hard to notice.” With this in mind, Alex recommends focusing on quality over quantity and using AI to enhance their creative process, not replace it.

On the retail side, Chad agreed. His team uses AI to support performance marketing efforts like search and digital ads, but never at the expense of brand integrity. “Brands have emotion and feelings, things you can touch and feel that a computer can’t really understand,” he said. As a result, he and his team regularly have to question AI’s ideas, as they often don’t reflect the brand’s identity strongly. You and your team are the key to balancing the benefits of optimization and emotional connections with your audience.

Another layer of optimization when it comes to AI is a website’s AI-readiness. Emilie pointed out that AI is shifting the traditional metrics we use to define a website’s success, like traffic. If your users are increasingly using AI tools like ChatGPT and the new AI functionality built into Google itself, you need to respond to that need by making your website AI-ready. For a quick win, Emilie recommended adding an FAQ page that positions questions in words that humans would use. This way, AI will be more likely to find your answer and suggest it to the user.

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