AI Can Make Your Marketing Look Good. Will Anyone Remember It?

Evan White featured in Senior Executive on AI, creative judgment, and building a distinctive brand.

Picture a conference exhibit hall. Six booths. Six glowing gradients. Six versions of “The Future of Work.”

Somewhere, a seventh company is approving the same design.

I recently contributed to a Senior Executive article on distinctive visual marketing in the AI era, where I put it this way:

“Professional is easy. Memorable is hard.”

I’m excited about what AI makes possible creatively. But before approving another campaign, I want to know what someone will remember about the company behind it.

“Nice graphic” is a fairly expensive outcome if nobody remembers whose graphic it was.

Start with something your customers recognize

For HR tech and B2B brands, I’d start the creative brief with a specific customer moment.

The recruiter opening Monday morning’s inbox to find three hiring managers asking for updates. The HR leader trying to explain a policy change before the questions start. The founder preparing for a product launch while the messaging is still being debated in twelve different documents.

There’s material there. Frustration, relief, ambition, humor. Something a buyer can look at and think, “Yep. That’s my Tuesday.”

Give your creative team that situation to work with. Describe what the person is feeling, what your company helps them do, and what you want them to understand.

That’s a much more useful starting point than “make it modern.”

Give the unexpected idea a fair hearing

Here’s an exercise I’d put into the next campaign meeting: ask for three concepts.

One that makes the product easy to understand. One built around a painfully familiar customer experience. And one that makes the room pause for a second.

That third concept still needs to serve the business. Random weirdness is easy enough to find on the internet for free.

But it deserves a discussion before someone says, “Our competitors don’t do that.”

That might be a reason to look closer.

Connect the creative to the conversation

From a PR perspective, I want the campaign image, the spokesperson’s interview, and the customer story to support the same idea.

If your campaign promises simplicity, show someone explaining the product clearly. If it celebrates practitioners, give those practitioners a meaningful role in the story. If the creative makes a bold claim, have the evidence ready when a reporter asks about it.

Try this at your next review: put the campaign visual beside your proposed interview talking points. Can you explain how they belong together in one sentence?

If you can, you have something to build on.

Read the full Senior Executive article here.

Want help giving your brand a clearer point of view—and turning it into stories people remember? Let’s talk.