Member Exclusive: Brand voice in the AI era

Here's where to focus to make your brand stand out in a flood of AI slop.

Michael Lamp, chief digital officer at Hunter and advisor to Ragan's Center for AI Strategy, said the modern communications function calls for two distinct creators: AI-assisted writers and AI-never storytellers. Each serves a different role in protecting brand voice.

For CCOs inside large brands, what are the clearest warning signs that their team is producing AI-driven volume rather than strategic content?

One of the easiest ways to deduce slop from cream of the crop before anything even goes live is by embracing a newsroom approach with your team. Have folks pitch content ideas and speak to the content they’ve produced. Ask them questions about a blog post, a GIF or a 3-minute animated video. If they can’t explain not only the final product but also the journey in getting there, your team might be overly delegating their duties to AI.

In the wild, there are also tell-tale signs. I’d encourage you to look beyond the cartoon-style, brushed animation motifs and em dashes to spot things like repeating sentence structure, an over reliance on lists of threes or overly qualifying language, such as ‘let’s dive in’ or ‘it can be difficult to navigate the complex world of…’ Intros and transitions penned by AI are easier to spot than a bulleted list of five phrases.

What governance changes should senior communications leaders implement now to prevent AI slop from creeping into their ecosystem? 

Think like a professor. Ask for citations early and often to ensure work is researched. The easiest way to catch someone using AI from start to finish is to ask for their bibliography, and not just a list of sources. It should be a list that coincides with research as it was used. This is also a good way to get folks in the habit of checking their math even when they use AI for good.

I also think comms pros can learn from the creative arts sphere re: portfolio-style work reviews. Get your teams together to share their work and speak about it.

In your experience, where are brand teams most overestimating AI and underinvesting in editorial judgment?

Even folks who don’t use AI to solve blank canvas syndrome often use it as a silver bullet proofreader, and it’s not always great at that. Context is often lost. Think about how many times you correct Microsoft Word’s spell check because it didn’t understand some of the nuances of language.

Folks should think of AI as the meat in their writing sandwich. Give it your loose notes or an idea, let it make that better or more on brief/on brand, but maintain human-in-the-loop as the bread of your AI sandwich.

Own the problem, set the guardrails and ultimately proof and check the work. The last line of defense before something hits human eyes should always be a human who can help determine what someone will do with the information once it’s received. Will this lead to more questions? Do we have answers to those questions? Where might someone visit next to get more information? Is our answer there?

As brands fight for distinctiveness in an AI-saturated environment, what separates companies that feel authoritative from those that feel algorithmic?

One of the things we’re looking at is AI optimization vs. AI influence. It’s one thing to get your content seen by LLMs and then relayed as answer. That’s visibility, and it’s still the first step.

But beyond a series of optimized press materials or outreach to the most cited journalists, true authority is gained when you see LLMs not only dispense facts and information about your company but also speak the language of your brand.

Are key messages making their way into iterative questions in response to common queries? A car manufacturer that specializes in a type of electric vehicle would see their authority gaining steam when aspects of their electric innovation turn up not just as an answer, but as a recommendation from the LLM on how to search more smartly: “Have you considered looking at vehicles that offer X or boast Y?”

Companies should also pay attention to which types of chatbots visit their websites. Are they learning bots, aimed at training LLMs on how to talk? Are they retrieval bots, focused on gathering information on demand? Or are they indexing bots, organizing the surface of the internet for easier navigation?

All are important but seeing which bots visit which portions of your website can help you learn where you are training robots vs. answering questions.

When should a brand hire a senior storyteller and when is the smarter move to upskill and elevate someone already inside the organization?

I’m a huge proponent of upskilling in the agentic era. I don’t think it’s "or" but rather "and" and "when."

Comms units have recruited from traditional journalism for years, but I think we’ll see this trend increase. A senior newsperson could help reinvent a culture of storytelling and work with traditional corporate comms (mid to junior-level) staff to teach them how to be the human antidote to machine-writing.

The modern comms function needs a mix of never-AI writers and always-AI writers, the new "church and state," if you will. These individuals should be writing for separate audiences but under the leadership of a CCO who recognizes the value of both and how to ensure they work together.

How should CCOs rethink content metrics if their goal is long-term influence and trust rather than short-term output?

Visibility reporting through AI is still a great way to do this. If you increase visibility because of a singular effort, that’s initial success. But if you sustain that visibility with net-new mentions via LLMs each week or month, then you’re creating real influence on the platform.

Further, we can look beyond sheer visibility and ascertain favorability based on how the brand is discussed and where in the answer. If I’m aiming to show long-term influence via LLMs, I’m pulling visibility and citation reporting over a longer time horizon (say, 6-9 months) and proving that our mentions have increased in both volume and placement. I’d also aim to secure coverage in as many of the top 10 cited sites as possible.

If you were advising a Fortune 500 CCO, what’s the first structural change you would recommend in order to avoid becoming part of the AI content glut? 

I’d work with them to implement a measurement and feedback loop so we can better adjudicate what’s already in market, how it’s impacting LLM visibility, and social listening/media perception. Let’s look at the last five earned placements, as well as the most recent five owned (blog) articles.

Identify both positive and negative feedback signals to land on a net-favorability rating. A positive example would be increased visibility in AI search or the creation of positive UGC on social.

On the negative side, what if a blog post not only doesn’t drive citation strength on LLMs but also drives negative earned media or negative sentiment from social listening? When you view content through this lens, you can start to identify best practices for your organization, as well as what’s working against you or creating the perception of slop.

Interested in the future of AI and communications? Your Council membership includes free enrollment in Ragan's Center for AI Strategy. Contact the Council Concierge at [email protected] with questions.