Branding in the Age of AI and Mistrust

In 2019, the internet marveled at the first convincing deepfake of Barack Obama. Today, you don’t need a Hollywood studio to create that level of manipulation. You just need an app.

We’re entering an era where I can no longer assume the words I read are human.

And if I, someone who spends my life thinking about storytelling and brands, feel that flicker of doubt, imagine how consumers feel.

We’ve entered an era where the biggest threat to brands isn’t obscurity. It’s unbelievability.

The Mirage of Efficiency

AI promises efficiency, scale, and personalization at a fraction of the cost. No more blank pages, no more bottlenecks, no more creative blocks.

But here’s the danger: efficiency has no taste.
AI can remix, rephrase, and replicate, but it doesn’t know who you are. When every brand leans too heavily on the same tools, they all start to sound alike. The sharp edges are smoothed away. The result? A voice without identity.

And a brand without identity is just noise.

From Storytelling to Story-Proving

For years, marketers worshipped the power of storytelling. Tell a great story, and people will follow.

Not anymore.

In a world saturated with synthetic media, audiences don’t just want stories; they want proof.

• Patagonia doesn’t just say they’re sustainable; they behave like it. They repair jackets, give away profits, and invite customers to buy less. Their brand is believable because their story is written in action.
• Lego doesn’t just celebrate creativity; it invests in education, inclusivity, and sustainability. Parents trust them because they prove their purpose, not just advertise it.

Trust today isn’t a claim. It’s a demonstration.

Loyalty Rewritten

Traditional brand loyalty, the kind that meant buying the same toothpaste your parents bought, is gone. Economic pressures, rising prices, and constant misinformation erode it every day.

But loyalty hasn’t vanished. It’s shifted.

People are less loyal to logos and more loyal to values, behaviors, and experiences.

That’s why Lego earns it. That’s why Patagonia earns it. Because they don’t just tell stories, they prove them daily.

Loyalty now lives at the intersection of memory and evidence.

The Human Guardrails

So where does AI fit in? The smart brands aren’t rejecting it. They’re setting guardrails.

Heinz recently ran a campaign where they asked AI to draw “ketchup.” No matter what prompt you gave it, the algorithm always produced a Heinz bottle. The brilliance wasn’t the AI itself, but the self-awareness: Heinz used the machine to prove what people already believed, that they are ketchup.

Contrast that with Coca-Cola’s AI-generated ad. Beautiful visuals, yes. But it landed cold. It felt like a demo of the technology rather than a demonstration of the brand’s values.

The lesson? AI can be the co-pilot, but it can’t be the captain. It can scale, but it can’t supply meaning.

The New Currency

When information can be faked at scale, trust becomes the rarest commodity. Not trust as a campaign slogan, but trust as daily behavior.

The future of branding won’t be decided by who adopts AI first. It will be decided by who uses AI to make their human voice clearer, truer, and more trustworthy.

Because in the age of AI and mistrust, visibility is cheap. Believability is priceless.

And yet, despite all this, I feel a strange optimism. Because when everything can be faked, the real becomes more valuable. The brands that commit to proving who they are, in their actions, their ethics, their behavior will not just survive this era. They’ll thrive.

That’s what gives me confidence about the future of branding: the more machines flood the world with imitation, the more humanity will matter.

If this resonated with you:

• Explore these ideas more deeply in my book The Mentor Brand: How Great Companies Become Irreplaceable Brands
• Get weekly reflections like this in The Real Hero newsletter
• Join me in person at the Story-Driven Lab in Madrid (Sept 26–28), a three-day experience to practice the craft of storytelling and learn how to hold attention in ways that last.