How Should Your Brand Be Using AI?
Last Updated: August 7, 2025
AI is a polarizing topic these days.
If you spend any amount of time on LinkedIn, for example, you’re bound to see loads of posts about it: everything from new tools and applications to prompts to try, zealous predictions, cautionary pronouncements, and—as unlikely as it may seem—fierce debates about whether humans are capable of using an em dash (spoiler: we think they are!).
With all the conversation surrounding AI, it can be easy to consider yourself either for or against.
But whatever else may be the case, two things are certain: AI is here and it’s significant. So we feel the best position to take is one of curiosity. And it’s in that spirit that we’d like to offer a few thoughts.
How We’re Using It
First, a disclaimer: we’re far from AI experts. Like most of the brands we work with, we’re in an ongoing process of testing both its capabilities and its limitations, while simultaneously trying to keep up with the rapid pace of development.
So acknowledging that some of this is bound to change, here are a few of the use cases we’re enjoying the most right now (and a few cautionary thoughts as well)!
Research - AI can be a great way to begin researching a topic. It can help you quickly establish an initial direction as well as pull together a set of primary sources. Although, as you may have heard already, the answers AI comes up with are only as good as the sources it’s drawing from; the way AI assimilates and summarizes information also isn’t always accurate. So while AI can be a great way to form and explore an initial hypothesis, make sure to test it thoroughly using plenty of primary sources.
Brainstorming - If you’re like most people, you’re probably using it for this already. On any given topic, AI can generate a list of ideas within seconds. And if you don’t like any of the options on that list, it can generate a second, third, or even a fourth list on command.
Many of the ideas it comes up with will be bad. Although some of them probably won’t be. This is another situation, however, where you need to be thoughtful about how (and when) to use AI, especially if you’re looking for ideas that are fresh or novel. AI is an expert at repurposing the text and ideas it’s been trained on, but because of that, the ideas it generates likely already exist in some form or other.
Automation - Many of your favorite tools and platforms probably already have AI integrations to help automate certain tasks. There’s also a growing list of AI agents you can train to perform tasks, adjust to changing environments, and even make decisions on your behalf… In much of the work we do, a lot of the insight and ideas come from our own exploration, so we’re a little wary of outsourcing too much of “the process.” But when it comes to tasks like data entry and processing, it can save you a lot of time, which you can then devote to more enlightening parts of the process.
Notetaking - We love AI notetaking companions. The one we use generates a video recording, a searchable transcript, and generally spot-on highlights that each hyperlink to relevant moments during the conversation.
But depending on the model you’re using, you should be careful discussing sensitive information. Many notetakers have free and paid versions. The paid versions typically feature stronger encryption and more access controls. Most notetakers we’re aware of don’t train their models on customer data or share that information with third parties, but it’s still a good idea to check yours to be sure. And, of course, if there are particular topics that are especially sensitive—such as financial data, trade secrets, etc—it’s still a good idea to pause the recording.
Writing - Regardless of what you think of the current AIs’ writing ability, a lot of people do use them for this. While we haven’t personally found AI helpful for drafting content (more on this in a second), it can be great for editing and helping you push through moments of “stuckness.”
The reasons we don’t like it for drafting are twofold: first, to get something we feel okay about, it usually requires a lot of prompting, review, and regenerating text. For most things, it’s quicker to simply draft it ourselves. But the more important reason is that, in so many ways, writing is thinking. We write to express our thoughts, of course, but we also write to explore and refine them, and even if we have a pretty good idea of what we want to say up front, if we rely on AI to develop it for us, the result—in both style and substance—will be different from what it would be if we’d gone through that process ourselves. And we would have missed out on the opportunity to learn from it.
For that reason—when it comes to writing, at least—we prefer to use AI as a conversation and editing partner, not a co-writer.
(Not so) Final Thoughts
There’s no denying that AI is a powerful tool, and it will very likely become even more powerful with time. To be effective and competitive, we must remain curious about it and its applications to our work, whatever that may be.
But now more than ever, it’s important to recognize the unique values that distinguish technology and humanity. AI is useful for a lot of things, but we think it will always be most effective when it is guided by emotional intelligence, practical experience, and expert intuition.
No matter how powerful the current AI models become, they’re operating inside a closed system. So as humans, we must do everything we can to embrace and leverage our openness.
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