How Branding Thinking Unlocks Two AI Payoffs

18 hours ago

7 min read

The promise was transformative. The reality, so far, is complicated. After several years of aggressive AI investment — billions deployed in platforms, tools, training, and pilots — several studies have shown that many organizations are not seeing the returns they were sold. The frustration is real and rising.

By David Aaker, Vice Chair of Prophet

There is no question that AI has enormous potential to create outsized value for organizations. It can be realized externally through AI-driven disruptive innovation or internally through AI-driven organizational transformation. Branding or brand thinking can impact both, but in each case is not called on despite its potential to address challenges that hold back the hoped-for ROI benefits.

Branding adds value by enabling communication and activation through names, taglines, stories, or brand programs that are memorable, informative, and relevant, and that provide energy, differentiation, credibility, and inspiration.

We will consider both, explain why they can have enormous impact on strategy and operations, discuss why branding will make a difference, and why branding is underused or misused.

AI-Driven Disruptive Innovation

The first payoff is external: creating new disruptive offerings that will establish marketplace leadership or neutralize competitors' leadership. Disruptive innovation has been turbocharged by AI; more of them are now scaling faster with greater impact, as the Figure shows.

Many organizations have the potential to create meaningful disruptive innovation. To realize that potential, however, branding must become a critical enabler. Too often, it is underappreciated, underprioritized, and under-resourced because disruption leaders are typically focused on technical details, constrained by time and resources, and lack branding expertise or insight. It is also the case that the thought leaders in disruption come from outside marketing.

Brand has two mission-critical jobs:

To position the disruption: identify the “customer must-haves” that make it new and distinctive. In this role, the brand becomes both the positioner and the exemplar—representing the disruption and guiding its evolution as it improves and adapts.

To build barriers to competitors: creating branded differentiators that express what makes it special, quickly scale the business to attract customers most likely to value the innovation, or continually improve the brand and its connection with customers so the disruption remains a moving target.

Brands and Supporting Brands

In practice, branding works at two levels in disruptive innovation and in most contexts. The first is the offering brand itself, which could be a new brand or reframing an existing one — its name, its positioning, its tagline, what it stands for. The challenge is to give the offering a clear, ownable identity.

Supporting brands make up the second level, each with its own identity and communication program. They may serve as branded differentiators that show what makes the disruption distinctive, or as branded credibility builders that address reasons customers may hesitate to buy. They can be rooted in the offering itself or in the customer relationship. The essential point is that they are clearly branded.

Branding in Action--Adobe

Adobe, founded in 1982, has long been a leader in design, anchored by flagship products such as Illustrator and Photoshop and supported by a strong marketing organization. In 2013, as the company sought to signal its relevance in the digital and cloud era, it introduced Creative Cloud as a radical new way of providing tools and services for creatives worldwide. The name built on Adobe’s creative identity while adding forward momentum through the “Cloud” concept. Creative Cloud upgraded Adobe’s programs, shifted the focus from individual applications to an integrated design system, and introduced a subscription model. The Adobe brand continued to provide assurance, while Creative Cloud told the new disruption story. Subscribers grew from zero in 2013 to more than 30 million by 2024, and Adobe’s stock, which traded below $30 in early 2012, rose more than 1,200% in the decade after the launch.

Then in 2023, generative AI created a second relevance challenge. Adobe’s answer this time was to adapt Creative Cloud and Adobe to incorporate generative AI across their offerings. A key branded differentiator was Firefly — a new brand nested within Creative Cloud, giving Adobe’s AI capabilities a distinct identity.

Firefly, the Adobe AI brand, has three brand pillars. First, it provides commercially safe datasets that include licensed and public-domain content. Second, it has broad creative scope. Over twenty dimensions of generative content, including lighting, tone, and much more, can be activated. Finally, it is woven into all its programs, including Adobe Express, which enables AI-driven design without requiring familiarity with the core programs.

Under Firefly is a set of eight or so supporting brands, each doing specific strategic work. They are either branded differentiators that reinforce Adobe’s claim to lead the creative AI marketplace or sources of credibility that make them relevant. Each time the Firefly brand appears in this context, it is strengthened in its scope, visibility, and credibility.

The set includes:

Firefly Custom Models — enables enterprises to train AI on their own brand assets, addressing the deepest anxieties: “is it on-brand?” and “are we legally exposed?”
Firefly Video Model — introduced as “the industry’s first commercially safe AI video generation model.”
Firefly Boards — an AI-powered visual workspace where teams brainstorm, organize, and iterate on an infinite canvas — generate and edit images and videos, arrange them into storyboards, and align on ideas before moving to final production

Firefly led that charge for Adobe. 45% of Creative Cloud subscribers actively used Firefly within twelve months of launch, with 70% engaging weekly. Adobe became the early market leader in AI design tools.

Takeaway

The key to disruptive innovation is to go beyond gaining relevance, although that is critical, to creating and communicating real, tangible, credible areas of advance. The “must haves” can be in the form of providing an offering or relationship delivered in a new and novel way, or that is clearly superior. It also has to deliver the promise, and the promise needs to be valued by and communicated to customers.

AI Transformation Inside the Organization

The second AI payoff is internal. It involves transforming how the organization operates by utilizing AI throughout to become more informed, more creative, more efficient, and, ultimately, to ensure that operational functions and people serve the strategy more effectively. It is affecting most organizations. It is not uncommon to see estimates of potential efficiencies of from 30% to 50%, especially in service companies such as banks and consultancies.

This effort is too often being throttled not primarily by technology but by culture: the resistance, confusion, and inertia of people who must change how they work. Culture cannot be mandated. It must be earned. Culture change means getting the attention and engagement of employees who have long been flooded with programs aimed at making them more creative and productive, all while managing demanding jobs. It is easy for them to avoid new “mission-critical” AI programs that demand time, effort, and changes to well-developed ways of operating.

Branding and brand thinking can help major organizational transformations position, communicate, and activate a new culture and the programs that support it. The goal is to move beyond descriptive labels and narratives, using brand thinking to inspire employees and motivate their engagement. That means treating transformation as a brand-building opportunity—using the same tools that create customer visibility, engagement, and connection to motivate employees and teams throughout the AI transformation.

Introducing brand thinking is neither natural nor easy because it is often off the radar. The culture change and organizational transformation books and models are far removed from branding and marketing, as are the HR and operations executives managing the transformation.

Branding helps employees understand, believe in, and commit to the new AI transformation. It clearly and credibly communicates what is different, what is possible, why it matters, and what is in it for employees. Branding tools apply, but now in the context of the relationship between the organization and employees, rather than customers. Some examples.

The brand name. The brand name, because of its visibility, can be an important opportunity to position and frame the AI initiative on its own. The brand used by some organizations to represent their AI platform illustrates.

General Mills’ MillsChat is warm, approachable, easy to remember, and signals that it is designed for the General Mills team.
PwC's “My AI” suggests that it is personalized to the user.
Goldman Sachs’ “GS AI Assistant” carries the firm’s prestige initials and implies a professional relationship.

There is always a concern that the name might be confining. If the AI initiative evolves to include agent development and use, will these names still work, or will a brand change or new brand be needed?

Branded leadership roles. Successful transformation requires leaders not only at the top but across the organization. A branded role or symbol can help recognize these leaders and give them status, identity, and a sense of community. Goldman Sachs, for example, created an “AI Champions” program, appointing employees in each business group to promote AI adoption and identify relevant use cases for their teams.

Branded programs. The AI initiative will need a team of branded programs to provide clarity, sources of credibility, and differentiation, all owned and actively managed to perform and evolve.

· Morgan Stanley built a clear internal “AI @ Morgan Stanley” AI brand portfolio that included: the AI @ Morgan Stanley Assistant, AI @ Morgan Stanley Debrief, and AskResearchGPT.

· P&G has a brand set that includes chatPG, askPG, imagePG, and insightsPG.

· JPMorgan Chase had an early differentiator with Connect Coach, which provides Private Bank advisors with research summarization, report drafting, and investment idea generation. It contributed to a 20% year-over-year increase in gross sales for asset and wealth management between 2023 and 2024.

Branded training programs. The core of most AI transformation is a training program that provides the tools to elevate AI competence and engagement. Such a program will benefit from a brand that represents its mission. Its impact can be enhanced if a meaningful certification is attached.

· JPMorgan Chase’s “AI Made Easy” signals to employees a low barrier to entry (Easy). The name helped create a community, a credential, and a moment of belonging.

· Walmart embedded its AI training inside “Live Better U” — an existing employee education benefit associated with certificates of personal advancement.

Takeaways

Branding, or even brand thinking, can help far more than just influence the value of an initiative or program name; it can suggest branding tools and methods to energize, position, activate, and inspire. Such thinking can generate brand-building options, such as events (which may or may not be recurring), employee contests, employee signature stories, recognition programs, and the creation of a community atmosphere. The key is to move beyond descriptive labels and invest in building assets supported by branded differentiators. This is what branding does.

If you want AI to deliver the promised ROI from either disruptive innovation or organizational transformation, put your brand hat on.