The Dos and Don’ts of AI in Marketing: Where We Draw the Line
AI is changing the way businesses work, and some of what it can do is genuinely useful.
Smart automations can eliminate repetitive tasks, connect systems, improve follow-up, and give small teams back hours they were spending on manual work. We're all for that.
At PAC, though, we draw a clear line between using AI to make a business more efficient and using AI to create the strategy, ideas, and original work that represent a brand.
We believe creative strategy and execution should be human.
Good marketing needs to give people a reason to notice your business, understand what makes you different, and trust what you're telling them. As more businesses gain access to the same generative tools, relying on those tools to create the work that's supposed to make you distinctive starts to work against that goal.
Our approach is this: use technology to remove unnecessary work and make businesses run better. Keep talented people in the parts of marketing where originality, judgment, perspective, and authenticity matter most.
Here's where we draw that line, and why.
DO: Use AI to Make Your Business More Efficient
Plenty of business tasks don't need to be original. Nobody needs a beautifully handcrafted process for moving a new lead from a website form into a CRM.
This is where AI and automation can add real value.
Businesses can automate lead follow-up, connect systems, organize information, improve reporting, and reduce the administrative work that takes up valuable time.
The benefit goes beyond speed. Good automation makes a business more responsive and consistent. Leads are less likely to fall through the cracks, teams have better access to information, and routine processes no longer depend on someone remembering every step.
More importantly, technology can free people up to spend more time on work that requires their experience and judgment.
A strategist can spend less time organizing information and more time interpreting what the research means. A marketing team can automate reporting and focus on understanding why the numbers changed. A photographer can spend more time creating the images a client needs instead of managing repetitive administrative tasks.
Efficiency should support expertise, not replace it. That's exactly the kind of problem we want AI solving.
DON'T: Let AI Decide What Makes Your Brand Different
Creative strategy involves far more than generating ideas.
Before we develop a brand or plan a website, we need to understand the business behind it. Who are you competing with? What does your audience care about? What are you known for? Where are the opportunities to position you differently? What should someone understand about your business that they won't get from the company down the road?
Finding those answers takes conversations, research, observation, and judgment.
Sometimes the most valuable part of the process is noticing something that doesn't fit the obvious category story and realizing that's exactly what makes the business interesting.
Generative AI is very good at recognizing and reproducing patterns. That makes it useful for many tasks, but pattern recognition isn't the same thing as differentiation.
If ten similar businesses use the same widely available tools to develop their positioning, messaging, and brand ideas, there's a real risk that everyone ends up gravitating toward similar territory.
The output may be polished and perfectly competent, but competent isn't the same thing as distinctive.
We'd rather have a strategist ask another question, dig a little deeper, and find the detail that's actually worth building a brand around.
That work takes more time, but that's also where much of its value lies. Isn't standing our pretty much the whole point?
DON'T: Substitute AI-Generated Design for Original Creative Work
A brand identity is more than a collection of attractive colors, fonts, and graphics.
Good design is intentional. Every part of the visual system should be doing something.
A designer considers the audience, competitive landscape, brand positioning, practical applications, and the visual territory other businesses already occupy. The choices that follow should make sense for that particular business.
AI can generate attractive imagery and design concepts remarkably quickly. But attractive isn't necessarily original, appropriate, or strategically effective.
The ability to produce something visually appealing in seconds doesn't replace the thinking behind a successful brand identity.
And there's another consideration: how customers perceive the work.
In a study of 2,000 consumers across the US and UK, digital asset management company Bynder found that 50% correctly identified AI-generated copy. More significantly, 52% said they become less engaged with content they suspect was created by AI.
Respondents also associated AI-feeling website and social media copy with perceptions of brands as impersonal, lazy, or untrustworthy.
Those findings concern written content rather than visual design, but they raise a relevant question for branding: what happens when audiences start questioning how much original thought went into the work they're seeing?
For a business trying to build recognition, credibility, and trust, that's worth considering.
DON'T: Replace Real Photography and Video With Synthetic Versions of Your Business
If we're marketing a business, we want to show the business.
We want to see the people who work there, the product someone will actually receive, the destination they're considering visiting, or the team they're thinking about trusting with a project.
Real photography and video do more than make marketing look good. They give people something tangible to connect with. They show the people, places, products, and experiences behind the promises a business makes.
That matters enormously for businesses built around relationships, expertise, hospitality, services, community, or experience.
Research from the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions adds an interesting perspective.
In one experiment, researchers showed participants identical advertising content but told one group the image was a photograph and the other that it was AI-generated.
The ad described as AI-made was viewed more negatively, particularly on emotional measures, and participants were less inclined to engage with the advertised product.
A second experiment found a similar pattern. Participants were shown identical ads labeled either AI-generated or human-generated. The AI-labeled versions were rated as less natural and less useful, and participants reported lower willingness to research or purchase the products.
Nothing about the actual creative had changed. The perception of how the work had been made influenced how people responded.
That doesn't mean every AI-generated image will damage a brand, or that synthetic imagery has no legitimate creative applications.
But when we have the opportunity to show the real people, places, products, and experiences behind a business, we'd rather do that.
Authenticity gives people something AI can't manufacture: a genuine view of who they're dealing with.
DON'T: Produce More Content Just Because AI Makes It Easy
Generative AI has made it remarkably easy to create more. More blog posts. More captions. More emails. More graphics. More variations of the same campaign.
But does your audience actually need more from you?
The temptation to equate volume with marketing progress isn't new. AI just makes it much easier to act on.
If five blog posts can be generated in the time it once took to develop one, publishing all five can start to feel productive. But the more important question is whether any of them are adding something useful.
Every post is another interaction someone has with your business. Producing a larger volume of average content doesn't automatically build a stronger brand.
Interestingly, the Bynder study found that when participants compared AI-written and human-written articles without being told which was which, 56% preferred the AI-generated version.
AI is clearly capable of producing readable, engaging content.
The distinction emerged when people suspected content was AI-generated and began making judgments about the brand behind it.
That should give marketers something to think about.
When good-enough content becomes incredibly easy to produce, specificity, expertise, personality, and original thinking become even more valuable.
Sometimes the more effective choice is to publish less and have something worthwhile to say.
DO: Invest in What Makes Your Brand Authentic
As synthetic content becomes increasingly common across websites, search results, advertising, and social media, the details that make a business recognizable become more important.
A photograph taken inside the actual business. A founder speaking naturally on camera. A customer story that could only have come from that organization. A point of view shaped by years of experience. Copy that reflects a genuine understanding of the industry.
These are the things that give people a clearer sense of who you are and why they should care.
The Nuremberg Institute's research suggests that trust is already an important part of how people respond to AI in marketing. Across its survey of consumers in the US, UK, and Germany, only 20% reported trusting AI itself, while 21% trusted AI companies and their promises.
Researchers also identified a trust penalty when advertising was labeled as AI-generated, even when the content was identical to an ad presented as human-made.
That doesn't mean businesses should avoid AI altogether. Consumer attitudes will continue to evolve, and different applications of the technology will be received differently.
But the findings reinforce something we've always believed about good marketing: authenticity has real value.
Use AI where customers benefit from a faster, smoother, better-run business. Invest in the people, ideas, and original work that help customers understand who you are.
Our Rule for AI at PAC
We're excited about what AI can make easier.
We build smarter workflows, automate repetitive processes, connect systems, and look for practical ways technology can save time and help businesses operate more effectively.
Where we draw the line is using AI as a substitute for original creative strategy and execution.
Our brands are developed by strategists and designers. Our websites are created by developers. Our videos are created by videographers. Our creative direction comes from people who take the time to understand the business, its audience, the competitive landscape, and the goals we're working toward.
Because marketing is about far more than knocking out content. The work needs to make your business recognizable, communicate something true about who you are, and give people a reason to remember you.
We believe technology should make the work behind great marketing easier, without replacing the people who make the creative work worth paying attention to.
Use AI to make your business more efficient. For better results, keep your creativity human.
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