AI Can’t Sound Like Your Brand Until It Understands Your Brand

One of the biggest misconceptions about AI is that it can magically create great marketing with little to no context. The reality is that AI is only as effective as the information you give it. We recently ran a simple experiment to prove the point…

Our first prompt was intentionally basic:

“We’re starting a new premium bottled water company, but instead of plastic bottles, we’re using cans. Write me an elevator pitch.”

A super-simple, incomplete prompt, we get it… but it’s pretty accurate to how many people work with AI. Here’s what ChatGPT gave us:

“We make premium spring water for people who believe even the simplest things deserve better. By replacing plastic bottles with infinitely recyclable aluminum cans, we’re delivering a cleaner drinking experience with a lighter environmental footprint, proving that great water doesn’t have to come wrapped in yesterday’s packaging.”

Is it bad? Not at all. In fact, it’s reasonably well-written. The problem is that it sounds like almost every other bottled water brand on the market. It talks about sustainability, premium quality, and better packaging. There isn’t anything wrong with the message, but there isn’t much that’s memorable about it either.

Unfortunately, this is where many businesses stop when they’re partnering with AI. They generate content, review it, and settle for good enough, generic messaging.

We decided not to settle for our experiment. In our next prompt, we gave the AI more context:

“Cool. Now, let me introduce the brand a bit more. It’s like Liquid Death, bringing a new level of edge and boldness to this category. Think of Liquid Death’s tagline, ‘Murder Your Thirst.’ Look at their website, and then rewrite this pitch with that in mind.”

This was a seemingly simple shift, but right away, the output changed.

One option came back with: “Most water brands want to help you find your inner peace. We want to help you kill your thirst.”

Another opened with: “We took the world’s most boring product and gave it a backbone.”

A third declared: “Our premium canned water delivers pure hydration wrapped in a brand with enough attitude to punch a hole through an aisle full of identical plastic bottles. Drink up.”

Suddenly, the content had a personality. The product, the audience, and the AI tool hadn’t changed. The only thing that did change was the context we shared with the system. When we added information to our prompt and educated the system about the brand’s personality, the shift was immediate.

This is the challenge small businesses (and even large players) face every day. Most sit down with AI and immediately start asking for blogs, social posts, emails, website copy, and sales materials. The problem is that the AI doesn’t understand their personality, their voice, their perspective, their customer experience, or what makes them different from everyone else in their industry.

As a result, AI does what it’s designed to do. It leans into pattern recognition to fill in the blanks using industry norms. The output is professional, grammatically correct, and even usable. It’s also frequently forgettable.

That’s why discovery is such a critical part of the process. It’s an investment in teaching the system who a brand is, before generating content. This is where we uncover the stories, beliefs, differentiators, customer insights, personality traits, and communication styles that make a company unique… the insights that become the ingredients that power every future prompt.

Think about it this way. The first prompt we gave AI above provided it with information about the product. The second prompt we shared with AI gave it information about the personality behind the product. Personality changes everything, and as you can see, the results show.

At the end of the day, AI doesn’t create your personality, it amplifies it… and if you haven’t defined it, AI has no choice but to make you sound like everyone else. Make and take the time to help it understand who you are… your results will show.