This post was created in partnership with Manifest
AI is rapidly changing how content is produced and how brands connect with customers. It’s also helping behind the scenes, providing better asset tracking and automating manual tasks.
During an ADWEEK House Austin panel co-hosted with Manifest, industry leaders discussed how brands can use technology to deepen emotional resonance rather than just simulating it.
The duel vs. the duet
Laura Kowalski, SVP of strategy at Manifest, kicked off the conversation, suggesting that brands should view AI as an orchestrator for human creativity.
“We aren’t thinking of human intelligence vs. artificial intelligence as this great duel. It’s much more of a duet,” Kowalski said. “We see that, together, these two forces need to cooperate. And we are the wonderful orchestrators that can create beautiful music if we harness the power and accelerant of AI with our human thinking.”
As automation scales content, a brand’s story has to be strong enough to stand out. Steve Slivka, chief experience officer at Manifest, emphasized that “having a strong point of view, a strong story, a strong signal that you’re trying to get out into the world becomes more and more important because we are able to iterate that almost infinitely.”
“So for me, my focus is strong, potent stories that we can tell, that can hold together as we scale these stories in a myriad of different ways,” Slivka explained.
Beating the BS detector
This need for authenticity is extremely important in high-stakes industries like healthcare. D.J. Willard, senior director of strategic marketing at Priority Health, noted that consumers have a sharp intuition for inauthentic automation.
“I think, in general, consumers—our members—are incredible BS detectors. They’ll automatically be able to recognize when you’re not being authentic or you’re not being true to the brand that you pretend to be, and they will help define it for you,” Willard said.
Kowalski predicted that as the industry leans into synthetic data, the pendulum will swing back toward traditional human research.
“I think what’s going to happen is we are going to go back to some of those foundational elements that we’ve relied on in the past, like ethnographic research,” she explained. “We can have these personas evaluating creative, but it’s all synthetic, and there has to be a way to get at new, rich insights.”
Beyond remarkably average
To survive in an automated world, brands are moving beyond good enough content. Slivka noted that “earnest storytelling” is backed by real behavior.
