Building Unbreakable Brands

Meghan Lynch (00:09)
Everywhere you look right now, there's AI-generated content. Some of it's helpful, but let's be honest, a lot of it sounds exactly the same and it's not that great. For family businesses that pride themselves on authenticity, it raises a big question. Can we and how do we use AI to scale our brand without sacrificing everything that makes us unique? In this episode, I'm going to share two keys for generational brands that make all the difference. How AI can actually strengthen your differentiation and how it can multiply your reach if you have the right brand structure in place. Get those two right and AI stops being a threat to your reputation and starts becoming a powerful brand tool.

(01:11)
Welcome to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast for business leaders with a generational mindset. I'm Meghan Lynch. I'm an advisor to family businesses and CEO of Six-Point, a brand strategy agency that helps generational brands honor their past while evolving for the future. Today I'm back with another solo episode. This time we're going to talk about AI, but from a generational stewardship perspective. AI is now a predictable part of almost every strategic conversation, but in generational family businesses, the tenor of it is a bit different. The three questions I hear the most are, number one, about risk. How do I understand and manage the security risk of AI while still allowing my team to use it? Two is about visibility. How do we make sure our company and brand is showing up the way we want to in AI generated recommendations? The third is about quality.

(02:17)
Our team wants to implement AI to help with content creation for our brand, but can we use it and not sacrifice the quality and authenticity? That last question is the one I'm going to tackle today. For the other two, I'm going to interview some experts in IT security and AI authority marketing in our next two episodes.

Can you implement AI tools to scale your family brand and still have authentic content that really connects with your customers? I think this is such an important question and I'm glad, although I'm not surprised that family business leaders are asking it. Your reputation, your values, your family's legacy, those are things that you cannot afford to dilute. But for family businesses that have already committed to integrating AI into their business and their brand, I think the fear that starts creeping in is not about is this going to work.

(03:17)
They're actually starting to worry about what if this works too well at creating content that doesn't actually reflect who we are? Is it going to potentially move us backwards instead of forwards? What I see is that when generational businesses have really strong foundations, AI does move them forward. It can amplify your uniqueness and scale trust and your reputation and make your brand stronger than ever. So in this episode ... So in this episode, I want to share two pillars that you need to have in place in order to guard against brand creep and make AI a more effective tool.

(04:04)
The first is a strong moat of differentiation built as protection for your brand. The second is a tight structure to your brand so that you can multiply your reach with consistency. But before we get into that, I want to start with the fear. When leaders tell me that they're nervous about AI, what I hear them saying is exactly what I love to hear. I don't want my brand to sound generic. I don't want it to lose authenticity. So they are right on point. If your brand is weak, AI will absolutely expose that. It just accelerates whatever foundation it's built on. If your differentiation and your structure aren't strong, AI just creates more of the same generic content that everyone else is pushing out. But the flip side is also true. When your brand foundation is strong, AI can become a powerful amplifier. It can help you scale your reputation and create consistency at a level that would have been impossible with just your internal team.

(05:14)
So let's talk first about differentiation. Warren Buffett describes differentiation as a moat that surrounds and protects a business. I really love this example because I think that it's such a great visualization of exactly the power of what differentiation does. The deeper and wider your moat, the harder it is for competitors to chip away at your value. Of course, Warren also says that most businesses' moats aren't worth a darn because they aren't truly and meaningfully different. Surprisingly enough, AI can actually make this moat stronger. If your brand is already meaningfully differentiated, AI allows you to push out more content at scale that reinforces exactly what makes you unique. Using AI to amplify a truly differentiated brand position will help you stand out in a flood of generic content.

(06:19):
If you do this consistently, it will make your competitive advantage even more obvious to customers, employees, and partners. But if your moat is not very strong, if your brand isn't clearly differentiated, then AI just accelerates sameness. You churn out more content faster, but it sounds like everyone else, and that erodes your moat.

(06:47)
For example, one manufacturer we worked with used to be differentiated with claims about the benefits of their products. They could talk about how they made people feel and what they enabled. But when we started working on their custom GPT so that they could integrate AI into their content creation, we started to look more closely at what competitors were saying. And it turned out that there were a ton of Me Too brands that have popped up in the last 18 months, making the exact same claims with really similar looking advertising.

(08:00)
So we had to shift their differentiation to more technical information about the product that proved that they were different. Claims that were patent-protected so that they could ensure that other brands couldn't say the same thing. And we had to teach their GPT all of the technical details of their products so that it could use detailed, accurate, and legally protected proof points. This was a great example of moving from a fairly weak moat to a strong moat.

(08:32)
The second key is structure. By structure, I mean having really clear guidelines, your brand voice, your tone, the proof points that you use, your messaging guardrails. When that structure is strong, AI becomes a force multiplier. It can create consistent content across multiple platforms. It can empower non-marketers on your team to contribute without going rogue, and it can reduce the burden on leadership to be the only voice of the brand. This means that trust and reputation don't just live in one or two people. They scale across the entire team and market. But if your structure is weak, AI can create chaos. You end up with mixed messages, inconsistent tone, and content that erodes trust. Instead of multiplying your voice, it can really quickly fragment it. The easiest way to create a strong structure is to make sure that you have a comprehensive, documented brand guide that reflects not only who you are now, but also where you're going.

(09:55)
It should be slightly aspirational so that you can grow into it. We want to amplify a message that creates opportunities, not one that keeps you stuck where you are right now. Also, you need to be talking to your customers. For example, we recently worked with a second generation service business that was looking to expand into new geographic markets. AI was a great tool to fuel that expansion without creating a lot of additional overhead, but it would also be easy to enter new markets operating on the same assumptions about their legacy customers. So we created a system and a structure around the voice of customer research, interviewing customers at regular intervals throughout the year, surfacing insights, and then feeding that information into their GPT so that the customer always stays at the center of the content and so that the system has new sources of concrete, relevant, and detailed information so that it stays on target as they expand.

(11:07)
This allows the brand GPT to also serve as an on- demand focus group for their team. Do you want to know how a customer might respond to a customer service email? You can ask the GPT and get the customer's viewpoint before you send the email, not after. So every communication can be more effective and on target and customers feel seen and heard by the brand.

(11:34):
This is why brand foundations matter so much. If your differentiation is strong, AI will protect you. If your structure is strong, AI will amplify what your customers value the most. In both cases, these are opportunities to strengthen your reputation and to increase enterprise value. So here's my challenge. Before you ask how to use AI, ask whether your differentiation and structure are strong enough to guide it.

AI is not a panacea for your brand. It's going to serve as an amplifier of both the strengths and weaknesses. So the stronger your foundation, the more powerful AI becomes as a tool to extend your reputation and drive growth and sustainability generations into the future. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of Building Unbreakable Brands.

(12:42)
But before we wrap up, I wanted to get Henry's thoughts on AI as our voice of the next generation. But before we wrap up, I wanted to get Henry's thoughts on AI as our voice of the next generation. Welcome, Henry. Hi, Henry.

Henry Lynch (13:25)
Hi.

Meghan Lynch (13:27)
I am looking forward to having a conversation with you about AI and I'm curious what you think about AI generated content.

Henry Lynch (13:39)
I think most of it is not very professional, but also some of it just is funny and then just isn't funny at all. And it's really just random slop.

Meghan Lynch (14:04)
What makes it not professional to you?

Henry Lynch (14:08)
Just the fact that if you're making content with it, that you're not putting in any time or effort.

Meghan Lynch (14:37)
Can you think of any helpful ways that businesses could be using AI?

Henry Lynch (14:44)
Yes. So, we talked to Mitzi Purdue, who not only has a very famous name, but also founded a nonprofit company that helps people in Ukraine who are experiencing after shock and they use AI as a therapy tool, which I think is extremely creative and helpful.

Meghan Lynch (15:33)
Yeah, it's really cool. I think that it's a good example of a business or solving a problem where ... I know when she was talking about it, she was saying that they need to do that because there aren't enough human therapists in the Ukraine for all of the people who need therapy. And so it's kind of using AI to solve a problem when you need more people, but you don't have the people.

What do you think are some downsides of AI that business leaders should be aware of maybe that they're not thinking about?

Henry Lynch (16:18)
Off the top of my head, probably just some advice would be don't rely on it because not all of it takes exactly what you say because sometimes it could be copyright issues or it could just be it doesn't understand what you're saying. So if you're going to use it, you want to use it wisely.

Don't use it every time you see a problem.

Meghan Lynch (16:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Henry Lynch (16:47)
Because sometimes you have to deal with the fact that it's your problem to solve.

Meghan Lynch (16:52)
Yes. That is really good advice.

Henry Lynch (15:56)
Yeah.

Meghan Lynch (16:58)
And do you have a joke for us?

Henry Lynch (17:02)
I do.

Meghan Lynch (17:05)
Let's hear it.

Henry Lynch (17:07)
What's an AI's favorite type of music?

Meghan Lynch (17:12)
I don't know. What is an AI's favorite type of music?

Henry Lynch (17:16)
Algorithm and blues.

Meghan Lynch (17: 18)
Ah, of course. Makes sense since you're the musician in the family that you would pick that one.

Henry Lynch (17:25)
I'm sure. So if people want to learn more about how Six Point can help make sure that their brand is using AI responsibly, where can they do that?

Meghan Lynch (17:36)
Well, I'm glad you asked, Henry. We built a short, free AI effectiveness assessment to help you determine exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are and how ready your brand is to integrate AI tools effectively. So I would really encourage them to take that assessment.

Henry Lynch (18: 08)
Thank you so much. We'll link to that in the show notes.

Meghan Lynch (18:15)
All right.

Henry Lynch (18:17)
I'll see everyone on the next episode.

Meghan Lynch (18:21)

If this has helped you think differently about AI and how to implement it, definitely stay tuned for our next two episodes in which we continue this AI miniseries with a deep dive into both security and visibility. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time on Building Unbreakable Brands.