How an established brand offers an AI advantage
Creating a consistent, recognizable brand is good for building a strong business.
Beyond the logo, a brand consists of all the various elements that define the essence of a business including its voice, personality, values, market fit, target audience, vision, mission, visual design and more.
With the emergence of new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, it’s even more imperative for businesses to invest time and resources into building a strong and unique brand. AI, while smart and efficient, lacks the spark of human ingenuity, creativity and strategic thinking. It is missing that special touch that draws people in and encourages them to engage with a brand. People naturally gravitate towards businesses they know, like and trust. That’s where the magic of the human element comes in – it’s the secret sauce for building trust, brand loyalty and standing out in a crowd.
Now, with user-friendly programs like ChatGPT and so many others, it has become tempting to whip up large quantities of copy for things like social media, email and blogs with a few clicks. However, doing so without a deep understanding of your brand may result in sounding like just another business using generic, computer-generated words. Quantity does not necessarily equate to quality. To preserve the unique voice and essence of your brand, it’s important to understand the power of a solid brand strategy.
Using brand specific prompts
For savvy business owners, crafting prompts specific to their brand provides a clear AI advantage. A well-written prompt may include a brand’s voice, personality, values, and/or insights into their target audience. Doing this will help AI to generate content with a voice, a personality and a set of values created for a specific audience that generally can’t be replicated by just any robot on its own. The more detailed brand information that is fed to AI, the better and more unique the resulting content will be.
Describing a brand’s voice with simple words like positive, inspiring, strong, assertive, elegant, sweet, humorous, warm, welcoming, edgy or irreverent adds layers to the brand’s personality. It gives the brand a distinctive tone that speaks directly to the audience, ensuring that the generated copy sounds authentically aligned with the business.
Knowing the brand’s values is like setting a moral compass for AI-generated content. This ensures that the content aligns with the ethical principles of the business – principles that echo across every aspect from branding and marketing to team building and customer service.
Understanding the business’s target audience helps in prompting AI to generate content that resonates deeply with them. Some questions to ask when evaluating a target audience include:
- What does the audience value?
- What are their goals?
- What pain points do they have?
- How does the business help them?
A well-crafted brand strategy equips businesses with the ability to tailor AI-generated content specifically for a target audience in a way that is relatable, authentic and trustworthy.
Compare the difference between a basic prompt and a branded prompt in this example:
Basic AI Prompt: Write five social media posts for a residential realtor in South Dakota.
Branded AI Prompt: Write five social media posts for a residential realtor located in South Dakota who values connecting with clients and providing a warm and personalized experience. Keep the wording simple and write it in a voice that is welcoming, calm and poised. Write posts geared towards helping Midwestern families with young children who value style and functionality.
Instead of thinking of AI as a replacement for human efforts, think of it as a techy sidekick enhancing those efforts. As a business owner juggling multiple hats, AI can be an ally in handling routine tasks, freeing up mental bandwidth for critical decisions and creative sparks. AI can become a great tool when used well.
The magic lies in the specificity of AI prompts, and those specifics can be guided by the direction of a well-defined brand. The business owner who invests in their brand strategy, ensuring it is fully aligned with their voice, personality, values and audience, can then fully use AI to their advantage, feeding it with the unique brand qualities that they now understand and can articulate for AI prompts.
Melissa Heckel
Melissa Heckel is the owner of Branch Creative Co. She has a heart for entrepreneurship and serving business owners—bringing their passion and purpose to life through strategic business branding, web design and graphic design services.
