Reflecting on CES

Before their first CES, Kimberly, Katie and Julie were forewarned: it can be overwhelming. So too, has been the conversation since. While insightful, the sweeping themes and takeaways that have flooded our feeds can be hard to absorb, and even harder to put into action. 

So rather than write a new version of the same old put-AI-in-its-place piece, we’re sharing three specific ways we’re putting what we learned at CES into practice. 

No more “no time for discovery.” 

For years, the pressure for immediate ROI meant many clients bypassed the crucial role of Discovery, forcing teams to "hit the ground running" based on top-down directives. Now, AI changes the game by rapidly processing and synthesizing vast amounts of data, removing the excuse of not having enough time for human expertise to properly assess and arrive at critical insights. By absorbing massive amounts of information and uncovering key themes, AI  offers strategists a faster foundation from which to assess a brand’s challenges beyond internal bias and surface assumptions. This promotes intentional, deliberate decision-making and creates more breathing room to align internal stakeholders on the what and how. Investing in the clarity that Discovery offers makes teams more flexible and efficient long-term, allowing them to pivot when needed without disrupting the external customer experience. Discovery is essential, AI has made it more efficient so humans can be more insightful.  

Welcome Agentic AI to the team.

If you’ve worked with us, you know Genuine becomes an extension of your team. Well, after CES, we’re making room for one more team member: agentic AI. Not as a replacement for a human, but as a collaborator with the ability to contribute real value. 

So don’t be surprised if we list agentic AI, whether on your side or ours, as being responsible for a task, as opposed to being grouped in with the tools. Why? Because this isn’t a tooling shift, it’s an operating model evolution that changes how work is structured, governed, and executed. A human must always oversee and assess that work, but we’re seeing companies like McKinsey going so far as to give agents name badges and emails. We’re not there yet, but we’re all in on efficiency.

Another thing you’ll know if you’ve worked with us is that we don’t do one-size-fits-all approaches. To determine how an agent can support your team, we’ll ask questions like:

• Do you have synthetic audiences we can build upon, instead of just static personas?
• Are you using agents to inform your content development? What type of governance do you have in place to ensure you are scaling responsibly?
• Who is responsible for overseeing — and orchestrating — your content strategy across all channels and audiences?
• Who is responsible for developing SEO and AEO to ensure consistency across the board?
• Do you, or, would you consider using adversarial agents (AKA “hater agents”) to test out your creative briefs and ideas?

Suffice it to say, if you’re open to innovate, we’ve got an idea for you. 

Al can make it easier for brands to scale, but it can’t make brands. 

Your brand creative can’t scale unless your brand is built on a strong, clear foundation. We have to dig deeper than a logo, colors and general best practices. Without a distinct positioning, personality, voice and visual identity, AI can’t make content that will stand out in the sea of same. We understand brands’ appetite to use AI to reduce costs as they scale, but remember, you get out what you put in. 

While AI won’t build you a strong brand foundation, it can certainly help you strength test it. At CES, we were especially inspired by companies who used AI to:

• Inform (and test) creative briefs, ensuring that the insights were solid and distinctive enough to allow human creativity to take campaigns to another level.
• Codify explicit and implicit brand rules into their content development to scale modular content more consistently.
• Create an evolving canvas of insights combining agents and synthetic audiences to inform campaigns on an ongoing basis, rather than relying on static briefs. 

This thoughtful approach is how we see AI adding brand-level value. Because without a clear, distinct, and unified brand identity, sharing more content faster and more broadly will create more fragmentation and distortion, as opposed to resonating with audiences in a way that is truly distinctive, memorable, and reflective of the original intent.

Here’s the gist: the opportunity is bigger than adopting more technology. It’s using it more intentionally.

We’re already applying this lesson to our work. And we’d love to work with you. If you’re curious about using AI to enhance your brand, drop us a line. We’ve got many more ideas where these came from.