AI is transforming how brands connect with their audiences, powering hyper-personalised content, tailored recommendations, and data-driven experiences. But as automation takes the wheel, is the soul of brand identity being left behind? With algorithms shaping tone, messaging, and even design, some marketers are questioning whether personalisation at scale is eroding the uniqueness that gives brands their edge. FutureWeek spoke to Martech leaders to delve into the potential cost of AI-driven personalisation – and what it means for brand identity in the age of automation.
“AI-powered personalisation is a double-edged sword for brands. On one side, it enables incredibly tailored, relevant content that speaks directly to individual consumers – driven by real-time behavioural signals and contextual data. Brands can dynamically adapt creative elements like copy, visuals, and product recommendations to meet people where they are, making every interaction feel more intuitive and engaging.
“On the other side, the sheer scale of personalisation can make it harder to maintain a clear, consistent brand identity. When content changes from person to person, there’s a risk of creative fragmentation – where core brand elements become diluted or disconnected across touch-points. The solution lies in setting strong creative parameters for AI to work within – clear brand guidelines that define tone of voice, visual style, and messaging. This ensures that every piece of personalised content still feels recognisably ‘you’.”
Christena Garduno, CEO, Media Culture
“AI has become a game-changer for brands looking to deliver hyper-personalised ad content at scale. From dynamic ad variations based on user behaviour to AI-driven copywriting and visual generation, brands are leveraging machine learning to create marketing that feels personal, relevant, and timely. Platforms like Meta, Google, and even independent AI tools now allow for real-time audience segmentation, ensuring consumers see content that speaks directly to their interests, behaviours, and even emotions. But while AI-driven personalisation unlocks incredible potential, there’s a fine line between customisation and brand dilution. When personalisation happens at scale, there’s a risk of content becoming so fragmented that the core brand identity weakens. If every consumer sees a different version of a brand’s message, what remains consistent? What makes the brand instantly recognisable?
“This is where strong brand foundations become crucial. The key isn’t just in using AI to optimise engagement—it’s ensuring a brand’s voice, visual identity, and core messaging remain intact across every personalised experience. Successful brands set clear creative guardrails that allow AI to work within predefined aesthetics, tone, and storytelling elements, rather than replacing them. From an agency perspective, we work with brands to integrate AI as a tool, not a crutch – ensuring personalisation enhances rather than disrupts brand equity. AI can generate content, but strategic human oversight is non-negotiable. At the end of the day, personalisation is about creating meaningful connections, not just automated content variations. The brands that succeed will be the ones that use AI to enhance their story, not dilute it.”
Ryan Doser, VP of Inbound Marketing, Empathy First Media
“Brands are using custom versions of tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity to build hyper-personalised ad content at scale. By creating their own GPTs or Projects, brands can train these models with internal data. This includes brand voice, writing samples, audience segments, past campaigns, etc. This will ensure that the outputs align closely with how the brand already speaks to customers.
“Brand identity can be jeopardised when personalisation at scale overshadows the core messaging that made a brand recognisable in the first place. Evaluate Nike for example, people connect with its bold/motivational tone and clear messaging around high performance. If Nike personalised every ad so heavily that it started sounding like a generic fitness brand, it would lose its brand identity. The sweet spot is using AI to tailor content within the guardrails of a brand’s identity. Brands can maintain a strong, consistent identity while using AI at scale by building Custom GPTs, Projects, or Spaces (Perplexity) that are trained on their own content, tone guidelines, and internal customer data. Instead of generic AI outputs, you’re producing content that stays on-brand while still feeling personalised.”
“The bigger risk of brand dilution comes earlier in the process. If AI is driving idea generation and content refinement without proper oversight, weak or off-brand messaging gets amplified at scale. Guardrails matter because misaligned content threatens credibility. And once brand identity starts to slip, it’s an uphill battle to get it back in line. There are various techniques and tools that can be used to mitigate this, and brands will have to work out which are most appropriate for their exact context and needs across all aspects of their brand.
“It depends how far you want to go with your personalisation. If AI is handling minor tweaks, like adjusting copy or tailoring messages, success hinges on high-quality data, refining prompts, and building confidence in your outputs before scaling. The sharper the inputs, the more reliable the results. For deeper personalisation (think rewriting or heavily reworking content), an accurately trained model is even more critical. Training a model extensively on brand guidelines, key messaging, and tone guarantees consistency – or an alternative method I’m seeing a lot of enterprises adopt is a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) approach. If you don’t get this step right, personalisation risks fragmenting brand identity instead of strengthening it.”
Georgia Harrison, GM UK & VP Customer Success, Braze
“In 2025, AI innovation will continue to surge, and agentic AI will lead the pursuit of both productivity and performance. However, as AI takes on a greater role and is trusted with more data, brands must embrace a rigorous experimental mindset. They need to balance the integrity of brand identity and urgency whilst ensuring that neither the competitiveness nor what makes them unique is lost along the way.
“The most exciting use cases for AI are not huge data machines and automation, but rather creativity. As humans, our brains are naturally geared towards creative expression. With AI, we can expect to see a new wave of creation through various channels including video, voice, imagery, music, sculpture and more. This offers far more opportunities to create a strong brand identity that resonates with consumers through personalised content at scale.”
Yogin Patel, VP of AI Engineering, Sprinklr
“AI-driven personalisation has transformed how brands engage with consumers, as it enables hyper-targeted content across platforms. Brands now use AI to generate dynamic ad creatives, personalise email marketing based on individual behaviours, and tailor website experiences in real-time. For example, a global retailer might use AI to serve different homepage layouts based on browsing history, while a streaming service curates unique promotional banners depending on user preferences. However, when content is over-personalised at scale without oversight, a brand’s core identity can become fragmented. If every interaction is hyper-specific to an individual, how are consumers supposed to recognise a consistent brand voice?
“To overcome this, AI needs to act as a brand guardian, not just a content generator. AI models should be trained within well-defined brand guidelines, to ensure that every personalised interaction aligns with the company’s tone, values, and visual identity. One example would be successfully implementing AI-driven content frameworks that incorporate pre-approved messaging structures and sentiment analysis to guarantee consistency. Additionally, AI-powered governance tools can flag content that strays from brand guidelines, preventing shifts in messaging across campaigns.
“Striking the right balance between AI-driven personalisation and brand consistency requires a thoughtful blend of automation and human creativity. AI can optimise engagement through data-driven content generation, but strategic oversight remains crucial to ensure that personalisation reinforces, rather than erodes, brand identity. When done right, AI permits brands to be relevant without losing what makes them unique. This turns personalisation into a competitive advantage rather than a risk.”
Mo Cherif, AI and Innovation VP, Sitecore
“With the rise of AI, some marketing teams worry about being replaced. However, AI does not enhance creativity directly, it creates more space for it. The real challenge is preserving authenticity and brand identity amid automation. The risk is clear: when AI becomes too predictive, customer trust collapses. Brands risk dissolving into algorithms rather than entities with distinct personalities.
“To maintain a consistent brand while leveraging AI, companies must preserve a human touch. They can do this by treating AI like a team member, not a tool. Just as they would onboard a new employee, brands need to train AI to understand their voice, tone and values. This requires developing clear brand guidelines, refining AI-generated outputs through human oversight and creating a unified AI strategy across all touch-points. Additionally, transparency is key. Brands should signpost when AI- generated content is used to ensure that personalisation enhances rather than replaces human connections.”
