During my early years at a London advertising agency, one of the people I followed closely was the copywriter, John Hegarty. Now Sir John Hegarty.

He was always good for a memorable quote.

This one resonates with me, deeply.

“Always remember: a brand is the most valuable piece of real estate in the world; a corner of someone’s mind.”

Think of the great brands… Coca-Cola, Levi’s, Apple, Ford, Nike, Disney, Amazon, Google. And many more.

They really do own a corner of our minds. They leave an indelible mark. Like a cerebral tattoo.

These brands endure because they are protected.

Fast forward a few years and I was working as Creative Director at an ad agency in Toronto. We pitched for and won a slice of the Apple account. Within days a massive white binder landed on my desk. Serious thud factor.  It was the Apple Style Guide.

So many rules! What we could and couldn’t say. How much white space was required surrounding the logo. Page after page, after page.

On the one hand, having to work to a style guide was a pain. It felt like a creative constraint. On the other hand, we recognized its value.

Because “…brand is the most valuable piece of real estate in the world.”

The threat to your brand in the world of AI.

Today the lure of AI content is almost irresistible.

What took days or weeks and cost you thousands of dollars can now be done in minutes, and cost just pennies.

Do the math, and it’s hard to say no. Particularly when you see your competitors grabbing eyeballs with a torrent of new content… text, audio and video.

So, perhaps reluctantly, you dive in. And you hold your breath.

Messaging that used to be tightly controlled by a small number of gatekeepers has become something of a free-for-all.

You try to establish some controls, but content is flying off the end of the conveyor belt too quickly. Nobody has time to check every word.

Soon, although you’ve put some guardrails around the prompts people use, you see some messaging that is a little “off-brand”.

You’re seeing brand drift. Nothing terrible at first. But an erosion nevertheless.

Before you know it, those small moves away from your brand truth are compounding, and a brand positioning that has taken years or decades to establish is being lost.

And as you brand story drifts, your audience notices, and loses trust.

It feels like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

You can’t tell everyone to stop using AI. And you can’t stand by while your brand is being diluted to the point of losing value.

What are you going to do?

The answer to that question lies at the core of what I’m building here at Story Aligned. 

My mission is to help companies and organizations scale their AI content without losing their brand voice or story.

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