This post was created in partnership with Dash Social
AI has made it easier for marketers to produce content at scale. The bigger challenge now is creating content that reflects a brand’s identity and performs.
During an ADWEEK House Advertising HQ panel co-hosted with Dash Social, Jenny Rooney, chief brand and community officer at ADWEEK, spoke with Hannah Graham Rose, head of creative AI strategy at Dash Social, and Natasha Fishman, CMO at Marquee Brands, about what separates brands when everyone has access to the same technology.
Quality is the new constraint
Rose said marketers face more content demands than ever, and AI tools have helped teams meet them. The constraint now is the quality of what those tools produce. She compared generic AI to a new restaurant chef hired only to get food on tables faster without knowing the family recipes, so plates keep coming back to the kitchen.
“If you’re continuously prompting these generic models without the proper context and the quality output, then you’re actually creating more rework,” Rose explained.
Fishman pointed out that a brand’s heritage, legacy, and institutional knowledge distinguish the brand, and people supply all three of those elements. Marquee Brands manages a portfolio of 24 brands, including Martha Stewart and the 100-year-old Laura Ashley. When Fishman pictures AI on her organizational chart, she sees it as a strong assistant that helps accelerate work, not one that can bring a brand’s DNA.
People bring something else that AI can’t replicate. “It’s the judgment, it’s that integrity that’s more important than ever, and also what audiences see through right away,” Fishman noted.
For Fishman, AI offers opportunities to free employees from routine work and make room for more creative thinking. But in the case of the Martha Stewart test kitchen, an AI agent cannot taste the food or recreate the experiences and real-life moments that inspire new content.
Giving AI context to create better content
Brands can improve AI output by combining their unique brand knowledge with social intelligence, which provides up-to-date information about how audiences respond to their content, Rose shared. She described social intelligence as “your audience in the room.”
Brand guidelines provide direction, Rose explained, but they can’t tell marketers how consumers currently feel about a brand. Combining that guidance with social performance data gives AI more context and creates a continuous learning system.
Fishman described how Marquee uses that information. With 350 partners worldwide and social channels in markets including China, Korea, and India, the company must account for differences in language and culture. Dash Social helps the team quickly identify its best-performing content and work with local partners to produce more of it while maintaining each brand’s identity.
For Rose, that’s where brands can distinguish themselves from competitors using the same AI tools. “Your competitors don’t have the same audience. They don’t have the same history. They don’t have the same context,” Rose explained.
Fishman emphasized that brands must use those advantages to meet and exceed consumer expectations. AI can deliver information faster, but marketers still have to decide how to use it.
