Marketing Against the Grain’s Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan made a sharp point many teams miss: AI can speed up content, but it can’t stand in for taste. I agree with their take. AI is a force multiplier, not a substitute for judgment, empathy, or brand soul. That’s the line brands keep crossing, and the blowback is real.
What Big Brands Are Getting Wrong
Coca-Cola’s heavy AI push shows the risk. The holiday work had slick tech, but critics saw an emotional miss. As the hosts put it, even Coca-Cola’s own team has framed the real problem: scale without losing voice, and accuracy without losing heart.
“Maintaining brand voice at scale, knowing when the AI output is technically correct but emotionally wrong… trying to really find the craft within what AI is creating.”
That’s the core job right now: curating and coaching AI, not worshipping it. And it’s why the role of an AI content strategist is rising; not to crank out prompts, but to protect the line between useful and lifeless.
Contrast that with Unilever’s stance. They’re not chasing volume. They’re chasing relevance.
“This isn’t just about pushing out more content. It’s about starting with a deep, deep understanding of people’s needs and desires, and then you have to have the creativity to create campaigns that cut through.”
That quote nails the order of operations. Audience first. Creative next. AI last. Flip that order and you get content that looks right and feels wrong.
The Real Job: AI Content Strategist
Bodnar and Flanagan are clear: the best brands won’t hire more prompt writers. They’ll hire editors, producers, and strategists who guide models with taste and guardrails. AI needs a human creative director. Without that, you’re building a content farm, not a brand.
Some teams argue that speed wins. Speed only helps if the message lands. If it backfires, you pay twice—first in budget, then in trust. I’ve shipped software, courses, and campaigns for decades. Faster without smarter is just a faster way to fail.
My Playbook For Using AI Right
Here’s how I run AI inside content and campaigns across crypto, marketing, social, and online business. It’s simple, and it works.
- Define tone with examples: 10–20 anchor pieces tagged by voice and intent.
- Start with a human brief: audience pain, promise, proof, and plot.
- Draft with AI, edit like a hawk—cut clichés and add a point of view.
- Test empathy: “Would this move someone to act?” If not, redo.
- Use AI for variants, not vision. Vision stays human.
These steps protect brand voice while keeping output high. They also train your team to spot when AI sounds right but feels empty.
Evidence That Hits Home
Kipp and Kieran point to the same tension I see with founders and CMOs: AI produces on-brand phrases that miss the human pulse. When they say Coca-Cola is still “trying to figure out the right balance,” they’re speaking to a larger truth. No model knows your promise to your customers. Only your team does.
Some push back and say models will fix this with better fine-tuning. Maybe they’ll get closer. But brand voice is more than style. It’s timing, taste, and what you choose not to say. That restraint can’t be automated.
Want proof? Study campaigns that stick. They break pattern. They bend format. They take a risk your competitors won’t. AI is trained to predict the next likely token. Great work often chooses the unlikely one.
The Move Smart Brands Make Now
Hire or train an AI content strategist. Give them two mandates: protect the voice and raise the floor on quality. Pair them with a creative lead who owns the big swing ideas. Measure outcomes, not output. If your dashboards only track volume, you’ll reward noise.
And put this sentence on the wall: “Emotion before automation.” It will save you budget and brand equity.
Final Thought
Marketing Against the Grain is right: this moment favors teams that think, not teams that spam. Use AI to clear the brush, then do the hard work of craft. If you lead a brand, set the bar now.
My call to action: appoint a single owner of voice, implement a human-first brief, and require empathy checks before anything ships. AI can help you scale. Only you can make it matter.
