Is AI Quietly Rewriting Your Brand?

Emily Page (00:01):
Before we begin, here's a story about good intentions and bad automation. A time when technology tried a little too hard to be helpful and ended up reminding us what humans do best. Here's Doug with the story of a tiny paperclip that taught one of the biggest companies in the world a very human lesson.

Doug Downs (00:31):
In 1997, Microsoft believed it had built the future. The company unveiled a friendly digital helper named Clippy. He was a smiling paperclip who popped up whenever you opened a Word document. "It looks like you're writing a letter. Need some help with that?" Clippy was always eager to help.

Microsoft's vision was noble. They wanted computers to feel personal, intuitive, even human. But the world didn't see it that way. Within months, Clippy became the most disliked feature in software history. He interrupted users, misunderstood context, and offered advice nobody was asking for. People didn't see a helpful assistant, they saw a machine pretending to know them, pretending to understand their story.

Microsoft had all the right data. They studied how people wrote. They coded tone and intent. But what they missed was meaning. They mistook interaction for relationship. They thought they could automate empathy. By 2001, Clippy was quietly retired.

(01:38):
 He lived on as a punchline, a symbol of technology trying too hard to be human. Microsoft learned the hard way that convenience cannot replace connection. Knowing what people do is not the same as knowing who we are.

Today, AI is our new Clippy. It writes our posts, our press releases, our stories. It makes everything faster and easier. But if we let it speak for us without knowing who we are, we risk becoming the next brand that sounds helpful but hollow.

Today on Stories and Strategies, it looks like you're trying to protect your brand story. Need some help with that? My name is Doug Downs.

Farzana Baduel (02:28):
And my name is Farzana Baduel. Our guest this week is Nick Usborne, joining today from Montreal, Canada. Hi Nick.

Nick Usborne (02:36):
Hi there. Thank you for having me.

Farzana Baduel (02:38):
How are things in Montreal?

Nick Usborne (02:40):
Wet, but otherwise great.

Farzana Baduel (02:44):
Sounds just like London. Now Nick, you are the seasoned storyteller who moved away from copywriting to brand protection with a pen sharpened by over 35 years of crafting words for giants like Apple, Citibank, and The New York Times. You are the instructor in Montreal who helps writers and marketers not just say things but stand for things. Teaching that story is who you are, narrative is what you say, and voice is how you say it.

Doug Downs (03:15):
Oh, I love that. So Nick, we have story, narrative, voice. They each play their unique role in how every brand communicates. Explain that for us. What is the real difference, and why does it matter so much in the age of AI-generated content?

Nick Usborne (03:32):
Alright, I like the question. There are probably two or three parts there. So I used to look at brand as a fairly simple thing if I go back a few years or decades. But with the arrival of AI, it really made me look a lot more closely, particularly when people were starting to use prompts to write content, emails, and PR releases.

I wanted to find a way to create prompts that really addressed the problem head on, and that is how I came to divide things up with story, narrative, and voice, because they all need to be addressed when you're prompting with AI.

Story is who you are. It is your founder story, your origin story. It is Steve Jobs and Wozniak in Steve Jobs's family garage. It is case studies and other customer stories.

(04:30):
 The stories are unique to individual companies. Then comes the narrative. Narrative is the things you always say, the five or six truths you always speak. That could be as simple as a tagline or a mission statement. It is the things that define you when you share those messages.

The voice is how you say it. If you are an accountant, you probably want to be authoritative and fairly formal. If you are a teenage fashion company, your voice will be very different.

You need to figure these things out, your story, your narrative, your voice, and you need to define them because when you are prompting, if you focus on just one or two, you are going to run into trouble.

(05:22):
 That is one of the things I am trying to address head on. Most companies are heading into trouble because they write prompts for narrative, "Here is what we are going to say." They write prompts for voice, "Here is how we are going to say it." But I track this daily, and I have studied it, and less than 10 percent of companies even consider story when developing prompts for AI.

So as companies use AI to create content at scale, they are running into problems with their brand because they are not addressing the full scope of story, narrative, and voice.

Farzana Baduel (06:11):
Now, a lot of people have been talking about the productivity gains that come from using LLMs like ChatGPT, and they are happily producing tons of content. All of a sudden, we are swimming in this tsunami of AI-generated content on LinkedIn and other channels.

What is the negative aspect of that in terms of losing that authentic brand voice through content generation? Because earlier, when we had a conversation, you mentioned the term brand drift. Could you explain that for us? What does that mean? What is the downside of using AI? And also, since a lot of people are not going to give it up, how can you still use it wisely to reduce brand drift?

Nick Usborne (07:00):
The first thing that happens is you fall into what I call the sameness trap. You are using the same large language model. You are using the same top fifty prompts you heard about on LinkedIn or the top twenty prompts you heard about on Facebook or wherever. Inevitably, the output begins to sound the same. Unless you are careful with large language models, they are trained on everything.

Doug Downs (07:26):
And

Nick Usborne (07:26):
The output is generally a fairly general version of everything. It is not unique. So unless you are careful, if you use large language models at scale, you are going to produce content and communications that are very similar to your direct competitors, which is obviously a disaster. You have a huge productivity gain, but you have this erosion of what is unique about the brand because the story is not there.

The narrative is the same as everyone else. Everyone is saying, "Make our content authoritative but accessible." There is the voice. So people are saying the same thing. You fall into this sameness trap and that absolutely happens. Companies have spent decades, sometimes a century, establishing a unique brand. So yes, there are productivity gains, but you have to be much more organized and structured in how you use these tools so that you can protect your brand as well as enjoy the productivity benefits.

Doug Downs (08:33):
We have a new client coming on with a new podcast and the focus is using AI to build your small business called The Hustle Lab. Shameless plug for it. My client did a very informal survey at a cocktail party. Imagine ten people in the room. He wanted to know, what is your familiarity with AI? He found one person who does anything AI, they will not touch it, they do not go near it. If it has AI, they do not go near it. Then the next four people he spoke with have never used it.

My point is there are people who, when they know something has been generated by AI, audio, video, or script, they do not want to go near it. So that is part of the story here. If you are leveraging AI to build or tell your story, you are exposing yourself to a massive weakness unless you are leaning into that.

Nick Usborne (09:34):
It is true, which is why I say you cannot be haphazard or casual about this. You have to be very clear about how you are using these models and you absolutely have to have that human in the loop, that human input. At the moment, lots of companies are generating content at scale, and it is like a conveyor belt in a factory where the boxes are flying off the end into the back of the FedEx truck, but no one is doing any quality control. That is what is happening with AI output right now.

Doug Downs (10:04):
Do you think it is because we feel threatened by the machines that might take over? Is it fear?

Nick Usborne (10:10):
Is that why we do not like it? I think we are defensive about our brands. Recently, Cracker Barrel changed its logo and had huge pushback, which eventually became politicized, but before that point, people did not like it when their brands changed or shifted. People are very possessive. Like I say, it is part of popular culture, and you can almost define yourself by the brands that you support. Generationally, my kids are interested in different brands than I am, so when brands misbehave or they drift, we take it personally. We do not like that. So yes, companies absolutely have to be very careful and sensitive to their customers when they play around with this.

Farzana Baduel (10:56):
You mentioned earlier that you talked about story in a really interesting way. You described story as the moat, the protection around a brand’s castle. Maybe a good moat is one that harnesses the creativity that, at the moment, the LLMs cannot produce because they are reductive and based upon the large language set they have, as opposed to human creativity.

Nick Usborne (11:33):
Alright, we have got another two hours then. At least a couple of things here. One is the moat. The only thing that can give you a moat is story.

(11:43):
 I can steal your narrative. I can steal what you say. I can steal your voice, your audio, your video, but I cannot steal your story. I cannot steal the founding story of Starbucks or Apple or any other brand or even you as an individual. You have a story that is unique to you. The story is the moat, and that is why you protect the story.

In terms of creativity, I get nostalgic because when I started out in the industry, creativity was king, and today data and LLMs are king. One of my favourite creatives and agency founders was John Hegarty, I think now Sir John Hegarty.

(12:28):
 He used to say that the thing about a brand is that it is unique in that it lives in someone’s mind. That is where you get into somebody, the brand. That is why we are sensitive to brands. We do not like when brands misbehave or change because in our minds, they are part of us.

If I go back, my brands may have been Levi’s and Coca-Cola when I was young. Young people today have different brands that define that time in their lives.

Creativity absolutely matters. When you automatically use LLMs, they are reductive if you just ask a question, wait for the output, and publish it. But if you actually use it as a creative partner, and if you are a creative, there is an opportunity for a new type of creative person, one who works with a large language model.

I get my large language models to be incredibly creative, and I play with them. The other day I had a dream and there was this ridiculous phrase in my dream that made no sense to me as a human. I put it into ChatGPT and said, "What do you make of this?" and it came out with some really interesting observations.

Doug Downs (13:40):
What was it?

Nick Usborne (13:41):
Oh my goodness, what was it? It was something to do with revealing patterns and history. It was some crazy phrase that made no sense, but it popped into my mind as I was waking up.

Doug Downs (13:52):
If my story is my most precious thing, which as you have described, I think it is, it is important for me to get out in front and tell my own story. How hard is it when your story has already been told by others and it is influential? That is where the moat is on fire, and it is impossible to put water in the moat.

Nick Usborne (14:16):
Wait a minute, I am not understanding the problem. If you have a story that is successful and being told, you can repeat it.

Doug Downs (14:21):
People are already telling my story, and it is like politicians. They want to tell their own story, but others are already telling it, and it is not the story you want out there. They are setting your moat on fire and you cannot fill it up.

Farzana Baduel (14:39):
So like disinformation.

Doug Downs (14:41):
It is disinformation, or even if it is accurate information, it is portraying my blue sides when really I am purple. I am not completely blue.

Nick Usborne (14:54):
I think the secret weapon against all of that is to be more transparent. Share your own vulnerability and flaws, the things that other people do not talk about. Then people can listen to you and think, that is not what the other person says, because the other person is talking blue, blue, blue, and you are saying, I am a little bit purple-blue. Transparency and honesty are helpful in that regard.

Doug Downs (15:24):
Love that. Nick, thanks so much for your time today.

Farzana Baduel (15:28):
Now before you go, we have a question for you that was left behind.

Jessica Hope (15:33):
My question would be, when was the golden age of public relations?

Nick Usborne (15:37):
It depends what seat you are sitting in, but I would say, because I am not public relations but I am communications, so I kind of get it. I would say in the past, I would go back to the mid-nineties, up to the arrival of the internet and early days of email. I will tell you why.

I do not think practitioners of PR are any less good at what they do today than they were before. They are probably better. The problem is one of noise and competition.

(16:03):
 If we go back to the early nineties, we had TV, radio, billboards, magazines, newspapers, and that was pretty much it. That was all we saw each day. Then came the web, and up until 2000, not much changed, but after that, it took a slice of attention. Then we had social media and the smartphone. Now our whole day we are glued to messaging.

Now we have large language models creating content at scale, and we have a gazillion new messages. So however good your PR statement or event is, I probably will not even hear it because there is so much noise. That is the challenge. It is not the quality of the work or the people, it is the noise you are competing with.

Farzana Baduel (17:06):
Nick, I think you may have agreed with Jessica Hope, who asked the question from WIM. I think she also believed that the golden age was in the past.

Doug Downs (17:21):
I guess I see the glass as half full. I see those challenges, the many channels, the noise, but to me that is what creates opportunity. The communications experts who tap those well, they excel.

Excellent. We need more people like that, whether it is coffee, matcha, beer, scotch, or wine. I have no idea, your turn Nick, what question do you want to leave behind for our next guest?

Nick Usborne (17:49):
I was thinking about a question. This is not exactly on topic, but it is related. Imagine tomorrow a family member, a friend, or a neighbour walks into your home wearing a pair of Meta glasses or any other brand that is AI-enabled and has video and audio. What do you do? Do you say, "Cool, come on in," or do you say, "Leave that at the door"?

Doug Downs (18:19):
You know what I would ask them? "What is that? Are you recording anything?" I think I might say, in my home, I am more comfortable with you taking those off.

Nick Usborne (18:29):
Me too.

Doug Downs (18:31):
And your shoes, please. You are in Canada. How about you?

Farzana Baduel (18:36):
I think I would just say, can I try it?

Nick Usborne (18:40):
I might do that, but if we are sitting down to a family dinner or something, I do not want someone recording that. I do not want that going back to the Meta database. I do not want Mark a...

Doug Downs (18:50):
There is a security and safety thing here.

Farzana Baduel (18:54):
But it is also like during COVID. Everyone started using Zoom, and suddenly you could record the video and then use Otter to transcribe everything. I noticed we were using it relentlessly, and then all of a sudden, clients did not like it. Some felt comfortable, others did not feel psychologically safe. It created a strain in video calls.

It is interesting that we went from, this is great technology, nobody has to take minutes, to, what are the ethics around it? Should we ask permission from everyone in the room? Later, some people did not feel entirely comfortable.

Nick Usborne (19:41):
And should I be careful about what I say? Because instead of it being a conversation between us, now it is recorded forever.

Doug Downs (19:48):
At some point, they will have Meta contacts, and I will not even know when someone steps into my home that they are recording something. That will happen.

Most countries make that illegal. You cannot step into my home and start recording.

Nick Usborne (20:05):
They are recording your room. The camera will see that your stove is over ten years old. You will look at your phone, and ten minutes later you will see an ad for a stove. That is what will happen.

Farzana Baduel (20:18):
Dystopian, unless it is a really good stove and targeted well.

Doug Downs (20:24):
True. A good offer and there is a special 50 percent off.

Nick Usborne (20:29):
Exactly.

Farzana Baduel (20:31):
Thank you, Nick.

Nick Usborne (20:32):
You are welcome. Thank you for having me.

Farzana Baduel (20:38):
That was a fascinating adventure in Storyland from master storyteller Nick Usborne. Three takeaways I gleaned. Number one, story is the moat. Your story, not your slogan or tone, is the one thing competitors cannot steal, and it is what protects your brand identity. Number two, he taught me that brand drift is real. Relying too heavily on AI without human creativity and oversight erodes authenticity and makes brands sound kind of samey. Number three, creativity is the new differentiator. True value lies in using AI as a creative partner, not a replacement. Do not be lazy. Spar with it. Riff with it. Human experience keeps stories unique.

Doug Downs (21:39):
I love it. I still think it is hard when someone else is trying to tell my story for me, especially in politics or when there is brand conflict with competitors. If someone else is distorting my story, it is hard for me to overcome that.

Farzana Baduel (21:55):
It is, especially if they have more power or reach. If you are trying to tell your story and you have five hundred followers on Instagram, and someone else hijacks or misframes your story with five hundred thousand followers, how can you protect it? Your story is important, but so are the channels to amplify it, and that is not going away.

Doug Downs (22:31):
If you would like to send a message to our guest Nick Usborne, we have his contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of Curzon Public Relations, JGR Communications, and Stories and Strategies Podcast.

If you liked this episode, please leave a rating or review. That is great social proof for the podcast’s story. Thank you to producers Emily Page and David Olajide. And lastly, do us a favour and forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.