A human-first approach is essential to integrating AI into brand copywriting successfully.
With AI developing rapidly, multiple platforms (Jasper, copy.ai) offer high-quality written content: “Upload your brand guidelines, tone of voice, an example of copy you like, etc., and we’ll create copy that sounds just like you!“
The challenge is keeping the copy creative and engaging so it cuts through the crowded digital noise, attracts attention, and connects with its audience. Generic won’t work, it needs to resonate and feel authentically on brand, as if the founder of the brand you love crafted it.
One of my favourite brands, Lemonade Dolls, does this time and again with creative campaigns that promote brand loyalty through innovative, interesting marketing that protects and reinforces brand values.
Coupled with projects that genuinely give back to the community, Lemonade Dolls has become a well-loved brand that isn’t delivering tokenism; it’s delivering something meaningful that has built trust to drive strong brand loyalty.
The Attest 2026 market research into consumer behaviour found:
“Trust is more fragmented than ever. While consumers engage more through social media and experiment with AI tools, they do so with caution shaped by age, outlook, and broader institutional disillusionment…Consumers are looking for leadership from brands that feels tangible and local, not abstract or overly politicised”
Trust is a key value all brands need. Without trust, brand loyalty disappears, and brands face customer defection and a fragile financial environment where sales are hard to forecast, and growth investment is much riskier.
As the 2026 Deloitte consumer research found, “creativity and trust remain at the core of successful consumer engagement”.
This feels promising: consumers are seeking authenticity, honesty, and creativity, you don’t have to offer the best, but you do have to tell your story through truth.
For marketers, this creates an opportunity to build a brand narrative rooted in honesty.
As a small business, it can be difficult to understand how and when to use AI to help streamline operations. Here are our top three tips:
- Copy – editing and honing
AI is a brilliant copywriting tool when you start with a human-generated first draft. Write down the content and essence of what you want to say, then use AI to shape paragraphs and sharpen the final edit. You can also utilise AI to include outbound links to facts and research – just make sure you fact-check the facts, as AI can and does lie sometimes!
- Consider plug-ins
Paid tools like Grammarly will help ensure every word of copy you write is honed and edited – whether you’re producing website copy for customer consumption or day-to-day emails. As a tool that can have several ‘users’, it will help you from a companywide perspective, supporting brand governance to ensure all brand comms are grammatically consistent and error-free. Once again, don’t just accept suggested amends – they don’t always make sense!
- Creative ideas and storyboarding
Generating a stream of new, engaging brand content/stories/customer e-shots and social posts can be challenging, even for the most creative copywriting team. AI can be a very helpful tool during a creative session. Take time to build a detailed prompt about your brand (add links to your website and/or products), then ask AI to build a list of potential brand stories by tapping into relevant seasonal days, events and industry trends.
This is often a great starting point that you, as the brand experts, can use to develop targeted content and engaging hooks.
Whether you focus on the heritage of a high-quality legacy brand or lean into the disposable truth of a fast-paced, fast-turnover global retailer, the key is to build the brand narrative around truth. Do that, and you’ll naturally resonate and connect with your target consumer.
Don’t be afraid of AI to assist with this, but assist is the critical word, truly authentic copy needs human governance because it is vulnerable, shares emotions and behind-the-scenes realities through a transparency that builds an emotional bond with the audience.
AI isn’t emotionally sophisticated and can’t adapt to different ideologies, ethics, values and geographical regions to foster deep connection. Only humans can do this.