AI and brand strategy: the bar goes up, not down

How do AI and brand strategy relate to each other? Simple: AI makes execution cheap, and precisely because of that, your brand becomes more valuable. The bar doesn't go down. The bar goes up.

That's not my conclusion, but that of Beau Broekaart, a student at HAN University. He researched what AI is changing about the marketing profession and sent me his dissertation and article. I read them both, and he put it more sharply than most keynote speakers, consultants and podcasts combined. Here's what stayed with me, with my own layer on top.

AI and brand strategy have become inseparable. Precisely because AI makes the average cheap, your own point of view is the only lasting competitive advantage.

Why does the bar go up because of AI and brand strategy?

The central conclusion of Broekaart's research sounds simple: AI doesn't replace the marketeer. The bar goes up.

That distinction is everything.

AI takes over the execution work. Copy, analyses, campaign variants, product information. Faster, cheaper, more scalable than ever. That makes the average cheap. And precisely because of that, the above-average becomes distinctive.

So the question isn't whether you use AI. The question is what remains after AI has taken over the execution. Broekaart's answer: direction. Brand character. Interpretation. Commercial logic. AI and brand strategy aren't competitors. They're a tandem. AI accelerates. You steer.

I recognise that from my own practice. AI writes alongside me on my copy, thinks alongside me about strategy and builds alongside me on my clients' websites. The work goes faster than ever. But no tool has ever determined what I think about something. Every piece of copy that's usable is usable because there's a choice underneath it that I made myself. The execution has moved. The choice hasn't.

The risk nobody says out loud

This is where it gets interesting. And this is where the caveat sits that I've never heard put so clearly anywhere else.

If everyone uses the same tools for content, optimisation and targeting, it's all going to look the same. Same tone. Same structure. Same appearance. Technology becomes a leveller that undermines differentiation. Broekaart puts it like this:

Competitive advantage lies less in execution and technology, and more in the combination of data, strategy and positioning.

That's not advertising for the brand strategist's profession. That's simply what happens. If AI can copy your execution, the only thing that can't be copied is your perspective, your brand, your point of view, your character. You don't lay that foundation with a tool. That's what the Brand Direction Programme is built for: first know who you are, only then accelerate.

Those without that foundation will soon compete on volume. And volume is precisely what AI delivers without limit.

Conversations tell you why. Data tells you what.

This is the sentence from his research that stayed with me most.

In an analysis of a retail podcast, Broekaart observes that personalisation based on purchase data isn't the same as understanding what a customer needs at that moment. A customer who bought denim doesn't need to see denim again. Sometimes a complement to the outfit makes more sense. The data tells you what someone bought. Not why.

And that why doesn't always come from dashboards. It also comes from conversations. On the shop floor. On the phone. At intake.

That's how it works for me too. Every brand programme I facilitate begins with a conversation, not with a dashboard. The moment when an entrepreneur tells you why he started in the first place yields more strategy than a quarter's worth of click data. Qualitative customer insight, the kind you don't get from a funnel, is just as valuable as click data.

Sometimes more. That too is part of AI and brand strategy: knowing which insights don't come from a system.

Start small, but start

Broekaart's advice for SME businesses is pragmatic: start small, but do start. Look at which processes already cost time. Which data you already have but never used. Which content always requires too much work.

Make sure the basics are in order before you deploy AI. Customer data, analytics, clear objectives. Garbage in, garbage out. That has nothing to do with AI. That has to do with doing business.

His sharpest warning: those who only learn execution become vulnerable. Those who understand how customer behaviour, data, systems and commercial choices interconnect actually become more valuable. AI and brand strategy only work for those who dare to choose what they are.

A student who looked beyond his assignment

Broekaart's research is qualitative, based on three expert interviews and a podcast analysis. He's open about that himself, and that openness makes it more credible, not less. He spoke with Bob van Leur (Bakerson), Menno Dings (B32 Groep) and Nino Adamo (Rinnovo Consultancy, lecturer and author). Three people who know the profession from the inside.

And he formulated his own point of view on it. That's precisely what AI can't do. That's why AI and brand strategy are aligned: AI gives you tools. The point of view is yours.

Finally

That's where the core of AI and brand strategy sits: the tools change at lightning speed, the question of who you are doesn't. I wrote earlier about what no algorithm will ever take over for you, and Broekaart's research confirms that line from a completely different angle. Want to know where your point of view sits? Just send me an email. No form, no funnel.

Sources

Beau Broekaart, De marketeer tijdens het AI tijdperk. Research report and article, HAN University of Applied Sciences, 2026.