As record-breaking heat baked Washington D.C., marketers, PR professionals, communicators, and other creative wizards from across the country kept their cool inside the sleek and expansive Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at the Mid-Atlantic Marcom Summit earlier this month. A panel of marketing executives from across industries, including government, sports entertainment, and consumer products, kicked off the Summit with their take on the trends to track, beginning with the big B: Branding.
A core part of creating audience connection and loyalty, branding is increasingly tied to organizational success metrics, and some marketers and communicators have moved into C-Suite roles to drive critical cross-functional integration and visionary thinking. Branding isn’t just a starter, it’s the main course that serves as your story to help create market distinction and build a tribe within your community.
Other sessions echoed the idea of branding as part of an executive approach; it’s not enough to engage in tactics that merely measure awareness. Marketers need to target moments, not just markets, and know your customers’ values to build trust, earn belief, and turn your audience into advocates. That was a core message at the Brand Movement Model session, which invited us to think like a CMO and ask key questions as part of strategic muscle building:
- Is our brand strategy an outgrowth of our business strategy?
- Where does the customer experience break our brand promise?
- What stage are our best customers in, and which way are they moving?
- Are we measuring motion or meaning?
The best brands operate at a higher level to move from attention to retention.
Reduce AI Brain Drain with Guardrails
Aside from the sessions on the changing role of MarCom and PR practitioners, AI as an assistant—not ‘sole proprietor’ of your content strategy—was another session theme. For the last two years, Adopt AI has been a mantra preached by tech gurus and executives at conferences, government agencies, and companies worldwide: adopt, or your business will perish. But at this year’s Summit, how to adapt AI to fit within human-driven policies and guardrails was a stronger message. Hyperrealism in AI-generated content is out. Authenticity and the human touch is in, especially when building trustworthy brands.
Thought leaders from PR, non-profit, corporate, and tech proposed a new playbook that ensures a tool is never the final decision maker, and policies are established to regulate your AI usage in the absence of federal guidance. When developing good governance, ask what is the benefit/who can benefit? And more importantly, who can be harmed? A thoughtful, deliberate approach is crucial.
Good governance is also defining trusted, authoritative sources of information for your organization, including your team, leadership, and other stakeholders. Evaluating your sources can reduce the risk of AI slop and deepen trust with your audience. Additional vital considerations include:
- Who are the SMEs in your organization?
- What is the vetting process with your SMEs to validate accuracy and prevent common AI-related errors?
- Who has the final authority?
Creating guidelines will help you avoid delegating to AI, which is important at a time when AI agents are given a level of power and trust not even humans are afforded.
The Marcom Summit concluded on a high note: AI is a remarkable tool that can help us collaborate better, deputize content when needed, establish time-saving workflows, and create in ways we couldn’t do before. But as marketers and communicators continue to integrate branding and storytelling into C-Suite decision making, it’s clear that harnessing AI’s full potential requires a human at the helm guiding its’ nascent outputs to deliver mission-fulfilling outcomes.
