While generative AI has been around for some time, it gained significant public attention in 2022 with the release of the popular artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, which reached over 100 million users within two months.
Since then, generative AI has become a crucial element in communication strategies for organizations and brands across various fields.
Businesses and entrepreneurs are actively exploring ways to leverage generative AI to create cohesive and compelling narratives that convey their identity, mission, vision, and values. In addition to enhancing organizational narratives, generative AI also saves time and resources, enabling brands to compete in the fiercely competitive digital space by incorporating techniques that boost creativity, efficiency, and consistency.
While generative AI holds numerous creative possibilities, it also raises concerns such as ethical issues, lack of human-like creativity, bias, and inaccuracy. Some creatives worry that AI could be used to replicate their work, and they are seeking ways to protect themselves against this rapidly advancing technology.
Earlier this year, hundreds of music artists, including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, and Camila Cabello, signed an open letter urging digital music developers to “cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.”
However, progressive communication enthusiasts who view generative AI as an enabler are continually learning how to utilize it to assist their creative process. They stay informed on emerging ethical guidelines and transparency issues related to AI usage, maximizing its potential while avoiding pitfalls. They are curious to explore AI’s positive possibilities and the various ways it can be leveraged to ideate, plan, and amplify creative communication goals.
Some companies and for-profit organizations have the resources and budget to generate personalized, data-driven brand narratives and may prefer to avoid the uncertainties of an AI tool that is still evolving.
However, for organizations with limited funding, sponsorships, or grants, generative AI offers a cost-effective solution for curating engaging content that promotes adopted narratives, fosters memorable interactions, and enhances top-of-mind awareness among target audiences.
With the right text prompts, generative AI can produce engaging, relevant, and relatable content in various formats, including audio, video, written content, and images, all aligned with adopted content plans.
The digital space remains a fertile ground for brand visibility, housing a vast audience, especially on social media, and offering a dynamic platform for bold brand storytelling.
However, the digital space also suffers from information overload, and many entities struggle to curate enough content to achieve significant visibility.
To ensure organisations do not fall behind in sharing their narratives across different platforms, AI can be leveraged to create diverse content styles and formats that communicate an organisation’s values. Content elements like relatability, humour, and freshness boost engagement and reach, helping businesses achieve top-of-mind awareness. AI-generated content that aligns with current trends and topics is another effective way to push brand narratives.
Through social listening, brands can stay informed about relevant topics, and generative AI can be utilized to create content that aligns with these trends, promoting reach and influencing target audiences.
Beyond the quest for visibility in the competitive digital space, organizations and entrepreneurs can amplify their branding objectives using generative AI.
Incorporating generative AI into content strategies significantly increases the production of diverse branding content resources that can be iterated and shared across different platforms.
Exceptional branding is achieved when target audiences and the general public can connect a specific identity and feeling to a product or service. By inputting valuable insights about a brand’s essence—such as tone, colour, and style—into generative AI, branding objectives are promoted.
Storytelling, a powerful branding tool, can be enhanced with generative AI to generate tailored stories where messages, visual elements, preferences, and behaviours align with established branding goals.
Emotional connections through storytelling can also be channelled using generative AI, infusing intentional targets and narratives into stories that resonate with the target audience on a deeper level.
AI has emerged as a revolutionary tool, one that forward-thinking organizations and entrepreneurs are exploring and adopting to generate content resources that align with and promote their organizational narratives.
While AI is not without its concerns or lingering apprehension within the creative space, it remains a digital innovation that cannot be ignored by anyone aiming to stay ahead of new innovations. By studying and researching the myriad possibilities, organizations can effectively incorporate this technology into their communication strategies and achieve their organizational goals.
Harriet Uzoka is an AI Content Strategist
