AI Isn’t Replacing Strategists: Why the Future of Brand Thinking Is More Human Than Ever.

AI has dominated headlines and become a staple in most of our lives. I am sure, like myself, many of you have been experimenting with Generative AI this year, to see exactly how it can support you in your work, and play a role in other aspects of your life.

Beyond function and process enhancements, issues and pitfalls, there have been a number of debates increasingly about what it’s unintentionally revealing about us, the way we function socially, our increasing need for quick dopamine response and worrying increases in reliance on AI for friendship or companionship. And while the narrative continues to swing between fear, excitement and backlash, one truth is becoming increasingly clear to me:

AI cannot write a strategy. But it is transforming how the best strategists work.

Whether this is my hopefulness to keep my job, but from trying to break my own model I constantly come back to the same point of thinking generative AI is a thinking multiplier, a tool that accelerates research processes, helps to support the broadening of our perspective with access to wider sources and quicker simulation of facts, while allowing people to amplify the parts of strategy that will always be fundamentally human, empathy, imagination, divergent thinking, compassion, and connection.

Here’s how I see AI mattering for the future of brand strategy.

• AI can speed up strategy insight review and assimilation - but it cannot speed up thinking strategically

• AI can synthesise vast amounts of information in seconds. It can generate thought-starters, test hypotheses, challenge assumptions and widen the field of view.

Strategy is not information. Strategy is understanding, nuance, and judgment. It’s interpretation, intuition, imagination, empathy, sense-making, narrative, cultural understanding and choice. These are human abilities that AI tried to emulate but can't quite seem to master; they remain firmly out of AI’s reach. What AI can do is expand and accelerate everything around the strategic process, allowing strategists to spend more time thinking, doing what only humans can: shaping meaning, identifying tension, reading context, connecting emotionally and crafting powerful brand stories. This forms the basis of my hypothesis on where AI truly adds value.

Ways AI is impacting my strategy work.

In my personal exploration of tools, I have identified four ways AI has impacted my working processes.

• AI can reduce the time I spend on manual research, category scans, cultural analysis and early framing. Let me be clear, this does not mean compressing thinking or human analysis time - in fact, these aspects may extend as using AI tools offers the ability to scan and reach more extensive data sources; however the time our brains need to review and consider information strategically is the same, to get to great strategy we must avoid trying to compress thinking time or using AI to do our thinking, it simply does not work.

• AI expands what we can create, and therefore what we can offer. AI unlocks additional layers of insight without increasing cost, increasing both value for clients and revenue potential for us.

• AI acts like a room full of alternative viewpoints. Our work becomes more rigorous, not less. More explored, more tested, more comprehensive. But we need to mind the gaps and biases here.... however, when used right, this becomes a significant strategic advantage. I am finding that I can use AI to be more iterative, to work with a design thinking mentality, to transform strategy from a static deliverable into a living, breathing ecosystem, increasing client value and creating new commercial opportunities.

The Twist: AI Might Be Making Us More Human Again

Beyond how AI is changing how I work, a bigger cultural shift is underway, one that matters deeply for brands. Last weekend in New York, protesters rallied against the AI companion “Friend,” a wearable device sold as an emotional support partner. The backlash was fierce. Subway ads were defaced with lines like:

"AI wouldn’t care if you lived or died.”

Reviewers compared the device to “wearing your senile, anxious grandmother around your neck.” The founder staged a protest to “own the narrative” only to watch people destroy an effigy of the device while chanting:

“Get real friends.” “Fuck AI.”

The message was unmistakable: People are comfortable using AI for convenience.

They are not ready to outsource emotional connection. And perhaps this backlash signals something unexpected: AI might be pushing us back toward real humanity.

We’re Living Through a Loneliness Epidemic That AI is Adding To.....

As highlighted in Contagious' recent trend briefing, loneliness is one of the defining emotional undercurrents of modern life. In the US 15–24-year-olds now spend 70% less time in person with friends than their 2003 counterparts. In the UK, research from Ipsos in the UK, in partnership with JOE media, suggests that one in three (36%) 16-34 year olds in Britain say they feel lonely at least once a week. One in ten (11%) young people say they feel lonely at least once a day. This is despite three quarters (75%) of 16-34 year olds saying they have ‘many’ friends, with young men (81%) more likely than young women (69%) to say that they have many friends. In Japan, “hikikomori” describes young people isolating themselves from society entirely.

AI is compounding this problem with companions marketed as a solution. Loneliness has become a defining challenge of our time. With the evolution of online technologies from early social media platforms to today’s generative AI and large language models people have found new ways to connect, share, and seek comfort.

The latest chapter in this story of the rise of AI companions promise empathy, conversation, and companionship. From Replika and Snap’s My AI to ChatGPT’s persona-driven companions, these chatbots are marketed as accessible, nonjudgmental partners in a world where genuine human connection often feels out of reach.

Yet recent research from Psychology Today reveals a striking paradox: The very tools people adopt to feel less lonely may, over time, deepen their sense of disconnection.

In their research, Psychology Today's study on the mental health effects and evolution of AI companions, results show people often turn to these systems because they feel isolated, anxious, or detached from real-world relationships.

Initially, AI companions appear to help. The use of these AI companions can lead to increased affective expressiveness, users open up, share emotions more freely, and articulate feelings they might otherwise suppress.

However, linguistic patterns also revealed a troubling shift: increased expressions of loneliness and even suicidal ideation. The same AI companions that help users overcome loneliness may inadvertently intensify it when a real human connection is absent. The evolution of the human-AI companion relationship follows fascinating patterns that echo human relationships, as described by University of Texas researcher Mark J. Knapp in 1978, in his relational development model.

1. At first, people experience genuine relief and emotional comfort. The companion “listens,” remembers details, and responds with warmth, offering a sense of being heard that can be difficult to find in everyday life.

2. But as emotional reliance deepens, many gradually withdraw from real-world and in-person human contact.

3. Over weeks and months, users can feel heightened loneliness and decreased engagement in the physical world. The comfort that once felt supportive can quietly transform into dependence.

AI Is Also Destroying the Digital Spaces We Built to Connect In

Generative AI has flooded the internet with slop, creating disconnection and isolation, no longer is social media enabling social connections; it is creating greater isolation and greater fragmentation. And AI is degrading the quality of online content. Spotify removed 75 million AI-generated tracks in a single year. Social feeds are now clogged with auto-generated, low-effort content.

As Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian said:

“So much of the internet is now just dead… botted, quasi-AI… LinkedIn slop.”

The result? People are spending less time online and craving more time in the real world. As Coca-Cola’s global head of AI design predicts, social platforms will eventually be dominated by generative agents, pushing people back toward real, live interactions.

Even the biggest digital-first brands see the shift. Duolingo’s CMO recently said:

“The trend is to get back in places where people can interact with your brand in the real world, not just through a phone.”

Heineken is already acting on this, turning unused rooftops in Seoul into community spaces rather than creating more digital content. The future isn’t more screens. It’s more humanity.

What This Mean For Those of Us Who Work in Brand Strategy?

In my nascent view and experience of experimenting with generative AI tools over the last 12 months, and following the impact and changing role of AI in wider society my view is AI won’t replace the human parts of strategy work, in fact:

I believe it actually challenges strategists to be more human than ever, to think beyond our own biases more and the biases of AI. It requires up to apply a greater ethical standpoint in our work and to challenge and question our thinking in new ways, and to consider the impacts that AI is having on the world and how we play a part in ensuring we help brands to respond and counter any negatives that AI is having on society in human ways.

It's a rallying cry to be more human to help people connect and ensure brands are playing thiei part in supporting human connections and real work interactions, and to work harder at getting to authentic, real-world strategies that activate in the real world and differentiate brands. But it will reshape what brands need to focus on:

1. More human content - In a world of AI-generated slop, humanity is the differentiator.

2. More real-world experiences - Connection is the new convenience.

3. More emotional intelligence - AI can produce words only humans can create meaning.

4. More cultural awareness - Understanding the emotional undercurrents shaping behaviour will matter more than ever.

5. More intentionality - If everyone can create content, the winners will be those who create content that feels unmistakably human.

AI Won’t Replace Strategists - It Will Replace Strategists Who Don’t Evolve.

The future of strategy is human + AI, not human versus AI.

1. AI can expand and accelerate the lens and the research input.

2. Humans need as much, if not more, time to reflect and distil what matters - to create the insight and strategies.

3. AI widens the canvas - Humans paint the meaning.

And in an unexpected twist, AI might be doing something powerful for brands:

AI is pushing us back toward the things that matter most - connection, emotion, meaning and humanity.