What role should AI play in shaping our brand direction?

Use AI to expand the information available about your market, audiences and current brand performance. The Frameworks argues that AI can synthesise large amounts of data to surface industry trends, identify potential audience segments and highlight opportunities or anomalies. AI can also help explore what-if scenarios, giving leaders a broader set of possibilities to consider.

The useful distinction is between informing a direction and establishing that a direction will work. Generated scenarios and predictions belong among the inputs to judgment, rather than being treated as established facts about the future. The Frameworks also describes a diagnostic role for AI: identifying brand weaknesses, inconsistencies and gaps. That analysis can inform decisions about positioning, value proposition and target audience, but it cannot replace the work of defining those foundations. Use AI to clarify the options and the questions each option raises, rather than asking it to settle your brand strategy.

Keep opportunity selection and risk judgment human. The Frameworks distinguishes between AI identifying an opportunity and leaders deciding whether to pursue it. The same division applies to risk: AI can flag potential problems, but people must decide which risks are worth taking in pursuit of the brand's ambitions. Its argument is that analytical support needs human imagination, empathy and a clear strategic point of view.

A 2025 study reported by the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, found that ChatGPT-assisted brainstorming produced significantly lower idea diversity in 37 of 45 statistical comparisons across 5 experiments involving brainstorming tasks. A long list of plausible options therefore deserves scrutiny for shared assumptions, not just differences in wording. Ask whether the alternatives genuinely represent different directions and whether human perspectives have challenged the patterns AI has drawn from past data. Leaders remain responsible for choosing where the business should compete, what it should prioritise and which commitments it should make.