indigo insights

The role of AI in building brand advocacy

How new technology can empower everyone to champion your brand

By Jeremy Bonner, Executive Creative Director

The role of creativity in branding has always walked a fine line between art and strategy. We’re tasked not only with shaping ideas but also ensuring they resonate with audiences across channels, geographies, and journeys. As we look to the future, generative AI is reshaping this landscape—not by replacing human creativity, but by amplifying it in ways that were previously unimaginable.  I believe the true strength of this technology lies in its ability to scale, rather than replace human creativity.

Human expertise in creativity is a must

At its core, branding is storytelling—and the best stories come from human experience. They’re layered with emotion, cultural nuance, and an innate understanding of an audience’s desires and needs. Human originality, the spark of an idea birthed from unique perspectives, simply cannot be replaced. And it shouldn’t.

AI can certainly help us mimic styles, generate content, and even predict trends, but it lacks the context that makes a piece of creative truly meaningful. It doesn’t understand why an image of a mother’s embrace evokes a sense of warmth or how a visual identity can symbolize the history of courage and freedom that represents an entire culture. These nuances—infused by a designer, writer, or strategist—are the soul of a brand. And just like humans, brand souls evolve over time. Which is why we strategically grow, nurture, and adapt these brands as culture shifts. Generative AI, when used thoughtfully, can only help us enhance this soul. The tension, then, lies in ensuring that human ingenuity remains central to the process while leveraging AI to expand the possibilities of what we can create.

Empowering brand advocates

Brands are not just logos and colors. They are an entire identity, a way of being internally and externally with customers. Every individual within an organization—from the CEO to the sales representative—is a brand advocate. Yet, many lack the tools, skills, or resources to represent their brand effectively. AI can help change that. By generating illustrations, templates, copy suggestions, or even motion B-roll, AI enables employees and partners to create content that’s both meaningful and aligned with the brand’s vision.

For instance, The US federal government is using generative AI to empower anyone in the organization to create a painterly pictogram of the subject they need. First landing on performance.gov, you can see how unexpectedly vibrant and diverse the experience feels with its pictogram generations. Sustainability, community, law, energy, roads—you name it, and generative AI can make it. The result? A more unified brand presence and a workforce empowered to contribute creatively without the fear of “getting it wrong.”

Pentagrams illustrator’s acrylic paintings that established the art direction.

Testing the iteration to lock in their prompt structure and methodology.

The performance.gov has over 1400 pictograms and counting on the site.

Generative AI the tool of our generation

To many, AI represents the harrowing end to human creativity. But for a creative like me, I prefer to think of AI as a metaphorical new brush to play with. Just as photography didn’t replace painting, AI won’t replace designers, writers, or strategists. It will, however, redefine their roles. The future creative process for brands will see creatives as the visionaries, the bespoke creators, the art directors, the curators, the editors, and the storytellers who guide AI to scale and expand upon their visions.

To harness this potential, we must approach AI with intentionality. We’re not stepping away from the craft of making incredible works; we’re just using machines to enhance our ability to realize quick thoughts, iterate, refine, and scale brand systems just like when digital tools came about in the 90’s. The brands that succeed in this new era will be those that marry the irreplaceable artistry of human creators with the transformative scale and ubiquity of AI.

Generative AI is a tool—and like all tools, its value lies in how we wield it. By democratizing the creation of brand assets, AI ensures that everyone, regardless of skill level or resources, has the ability to contribute meaningfully to their brand’s story. It allows us to scale without compromising quality and empowers more people to participate in the creative process. The brands that can find the balance between hand crafted beauty and hyper scaled generation will reach and connect with audiences like never before.