Sunday Quickie: Your Brain Outsmarts AI (Just Ask Burger King)
Real insights can't be generated, only lived. Fast-food giant gets it - do you?
In Sunday Quickies I share how brands show up in the world and shape our experience. I share a quick exposé/spotlight on a brand.
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Today’s quickie was going to be “Bye Bye Skype, I’ll Miss You!” - but then three seemingly unrelated experiences - a DM on LinkedIn, a post on Substack, and a Burger King UK campaign - merged in my mind late last night, inspiring a different direction.
It all started on Tuesday when a Marketing student DM’d me on LinkedIn. She was curious about my career journey, how I see B2C and B2B brand strategies evolving, and what skills will be most valuable in the future.
Brilliant questions, but the GenAI style was cringe, and it really boiled my blood. It literally came up as 100% AI-generated on QuillBot 🤮
There’s something inherently tragic about using Gen AI to DM someone personally.
(And she could actually BE a bot! LinkedIn is full of spammers. Terrifying!)
I invited her to communicate with me in her own words.
She acknowledged:
Indeed, that message was made with the help of AI, but thank you for addressing it!
Really quite sweet. (Still AI.) OK, so I’m thinking about how to answer her questions. In response to what skills will be most valuable in the future? I replied:
One of the most important thinks you can do is learn to think for yourself, and write by yourself. And use AI to expand on your capabilities, not replace them - so you first have to explore what your capabilities are, or what you want them to be & then cultivate them within yourself.
We're bombarded with terrible AI content that is so lacking in originality & ingenuity, the easiest way to stand out is to cultivate your own thinking, & learn how to think critically.
One of the best ways to do this is sit quietly by yourself, close your eyes, and explore your projects/ challenges/ goals in your mind, even for 5 mins, and down your thoughts & ideas with pen & paper.
I love technology, but YOUR brain is the most powerful technology. Use it, and develop it.
Then last night I stumbled upon a post that got my cogs turning. Long live long form.
Adrian Barrow, [@adobarrow] in AI Is Re-Writing The Rules of Brand Strategy, shares a powerful insight when he realised: “the most valuable insights come from reimagining what we need to know rather than processing what we already know.”
He continued…
This is the intelligence paradox: as AI improves exponentially at climbing strategic mountains, human wisdom becomes increasingly valuable in deciding which mountains to climb in the first place. — Adrian Barrow
The question isn’t…
… whether AI will replace you, but rather whether you will evolve beyond the capabilities that AI can replicate. — Adrian Barrow
But here’s the kicker. Your life experience is the raw input…
The thousands of patterns you've observed, the countless strategic challenges you've navigated, and the deep cultural understanding you've developed aren't obsolete assets but the raw materials from which your irreplaceable capabilities emerge. — Adrian Barrow
Then BAM 💥
Rather than resisting the oncoming tide of machine intelligence, I'm convinced that success will come to strategy professionals who embrace its power but transcend its limitations. — Adrian Barrow
Transcend its limitations.
Then I remembered Burger King UK’s ‘Bundles of Joy’ Campaign featuring mothers enjoying a Whopper postpartum (immediately after giving birth). I mean, how on earth would AI ever understand how ravenous a woman is after X number of hours in labour?!!! Let alone turn it into a meaningful insight.
The print, OOH (outdoor), and social film caused a polarising stir, but the human insight is unmistakable. The photos and film are all real moments in real women’s lives, adding the IRL ‘trend’ to the mix. Burger King were really on a roll with this campaign.
“I knew we had something special when we came across the images of real mums treating themselves to Burger King after birth,”
— Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes, deputy ECD at BBH told Creative Review
Real, raw insights can’t be generated by AI, only lived. How ironic that a fast-food giant gets what most people - including creatives - have forgotten about the power of human experience.
Use your brain. Human Intelligence (HI) is your superpower.
Slow read Adrian’s article over coffee ☕, it’s simply brilliant.
Typos are my way of checking that you're paying attention - or proof that my brain moves faster than my fingers. (Jury's still out.)
Loved your Sunday Quickie, Stephanie.
You're dead right—HI is completely different from AI.
Human intelligence is "trained" on the real, beautiful, conflicted and often very messy experience of being alive: in the world, among others, in our own heads, etc. It's a fundamentally different way of knowing from the way machines work.
/A