GOOD for Business, edition 2

So, for this week’s GOOD For Business, we’d like to give you our view of the role of AI for those brands aiming to engage their audience through brand purpose or a cause.

AI can streamline a process and even provide stimulation for creatives, but it will never be able to understand the Lived Experience. Some of the greatest brands and ad campaigns have a powerful human truth at their heart, creating a strong connection between the brand and audience.

At GOOD, our approach identifies that powerful human truth through understanding the Lived Experience of the audience we are trying to engage or represent. That human truth is the inspiration for creative development, very often co-created with the audience. As an agency, we spend a lot of time listening to, speaking with, and observing the people our clients are trying to engage and represent to find the human connection between themselves and the brand.

Will AI replace or ever understand the feelings of Lived Experience? Can it replace what it feels like to be hungry, the feeling of being told you have cancer, the anxiety people feel about the climate crisis or the fear of having enough money to pay the mortgage? AI may get close, but can it ever truly understand what it is to be human?

We are experts at B2H (brand to human) connections by creating and leveraging a strong sense of belonging, agency and ownership, often arising from our co-creation process, working with the target audience to connect their feelings with the brand values and offer. What would people think if they found out that their emotions have been manipulated to simulate these feelings of human connection using an algorithm? Because in the age of transparency, they will find out.

AI tools are undoubtedly making it easier for creativity to flow, and from a planning perspective, sifting through the mountain of information no doubt provides stimulus to creatives. But at the end of it all, it is the communication of lived experience that makes us human. AI feels some way off usurping that position.