This edited extract is from Digital Branding by Daniel Rowles ©2025 and is reproduced and tailored with permission from Kogan Web page Ltd.
For those who might solely get a really feel for somebody’s character by them telling you issues about themselves, we could find yourself with a really shallow understanding of them.
We may have issue believing within the character that has been constructed – and we could begin to query the motivations behind what they’re telling us about themselves.
That’s precisely the state of affairs of business branding that makes use of broadcast channels similar to TV.
A character is sculpted, after which we’re advised what the character is. We don’t get to debate, have interaction with, and actually perceive the true character.
Digital media now means, nonetheless, that the dialog is now not a technique. I can problem, ask questions, and develop a more true image of the model. I can see via a sculpted model and begin to see it for what it really is.
This is usually a scary factor for a lot of conventional manufacturers. It may also be an enormous alternative.
AI And Branding
Synthetic intelligence (AI) has had a profound affect on the world round us in very current months and years.
Issues that have been science fiction, or not less than extraordinarily troublesome to do except you had enough experience and assets, are actually made doable with instruments obtainable to everybody.
These AI-based instruments and their utility can have a big impact on our digital branding.
This may be so simple as giving us the chance to create a greater consumer expertise by utilizing machine studying to assist us optimize an internet site expertise (for instance, by giving someone content material that’s personalized for them particularly) or by producing a picture that follows our model pointers utilizing generative AI.
Nevertheless, past these AI instruments that assist us change into extra environment friendly and simpler, we additionally discover ourselves confronted with new dangers and moral challenges.
Let’s take a real-world instance. Utilizing a low-cost device like Eleven Labs, I can create a totally convincing deepfake of my very own voice. I can then kind in any textual content I need and get the deepfake voice to learn that textual content.
The voice sounds precisely like me, and I may even generate the identical speech a number of instances, and every time it can sound barely completely different and have ever so barely completely different intonation, simply as I’d if I learn the identical factor a number of instances.
To check the standard of this voice, I changed a section of me talking on the Digital Advertising Podcast, which has over 150,000 listeners. No person observed.
So if I can deepfake myself, do I have to even trouble recording podcasts anymore? Do I would like to tell my listeners?
Legally, I don’t need to, however I’d counsel ethically I ought to. If I belief you, and I out of the blue discover that after listening to your voice for a while, that it wasn’t actually you, it can injury my belief.
AI offers our manufacturers an enormous quantity of instruments to enhance what we do, however we additionally have to be cautious how and after we use these instruments, so we don’t injury the belief in our manufacturers.
Any use of AI must be finished mindfully, contemplating the affect it could have.
International Soapbox
If a model is basically the character of one thing, digital media offers us the power and alternative to grasp the true character of one thing.
We will then use that understanding to assist information us in our decision-making processes.
It is a nice alternative from a buyer perspective.
For instance, it signifies that as an alternative of being placed on maintain for an hour when phoning a name centre and having little selection however to tolerate it, I can now go straight to certainly one of many social media channels and make my frustrations very clear and really seen.
I now have a worldwide soapbox with entry to the entire different potential prospects on the market, and I can affect a worldwide group’s model in a manner that was not doable earlier than (or, not less than, was extremely troublesome).
That extremely seen criticism then turns into a part of different folks’s model notion (pretty or not), and out of the blue, the years of constructing a model could be tumbled in a short time.
It is a very a lot modified surroundings for companies to function in – in the event that they ignore this alteration, then it could result in issues.
This skill to have interaction with and analysis right into a model may also be checked out from a fair less complicated perspective.
Maybe I’m researching shopping for a automotive or a B2B service. I can now do quite a lot of analysis and inform my determination earlier than I converse to the automotive dealership or service vendor.
Once I do make this last step, I’m much more knowledgeable and have developed a reasonably in-depth notion of the model earlier than I have interaction instantly with them.
Actually, from the data I gleaned on-line, I could have opted out from even contemplating sure manufacturers.
That info could have been on a third-party web site within the type of a overview or remark from somebody I’ve by no means met, however I could belief it over the voice of the model itself.
Social Media Fail
This fast-changing surroundings and the gradual tempo of companies to adapt to it’s main the social media catastrophe tales that we see every day on-line.
Most social media disasters reveal a lack of expertise of the best way to virtually use a selected social media channel or present a perception that the model can manipulate the channel in a roundabout way and get away from this want for authenticity and transparency.
The opposite frequent theme is that of failing to grasp the modified function of the model on this two-way dialog.
Conventional Model Metrics
Historically, a model has been measured by asking questions and making an attempt to evaluate what somebody thinks of a model, and making an attempt to work out what this implies in regard to potential gross sales.
There’s a variety of various methods of taking a look at this, however usually, we’d take some form of pattern survey of our viewers and see what their attitudes have been earlier than and after publicity to some type of advertising.
This survey would ask a variety of questions, and there are many completely different approaches, however essentially, we’d look to reply the next questions:
- Are you conscious of the model?
- Do you just like the model?
- Do you plan to purchase the model?
- If in case you have bought, do you plan to do it once more?
Primarily, we’re assuming that if we will get extra folks to reply positively to every of those questions, we’re more likely to get extra gross sales.
This could nonetheless be an especially legitimate course of, however solely when successfully built-in into an general strategy.
Sum Of All Experiences
Primarily, digital branding is the character of our group, service, or product created by the sum of all experiences that a person has with that model.
This nonetheless consists of issues similar to visible id, however now additionally consists of far more essential and influential touchpoints similar to social media interactions and on-line critiques.
Your brand could make you recognizable, however it’s your general model that decides what I keep in mind you for.
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