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Less time spent searching, interpreting, and correcting. More energy for communication that strengthens the brand. AI opens up new possibilities, but to reap its benefits, you need clear guidelines, reliable content, and effective workflows. Here are five practical tips to help you lay the groundwork—from how brand kits can help to what should be created with AI and what should be reused as-is.
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12
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A strong brand needs to remain consistent in all interactions with the audience—on the website and in campaigns, but also in sales presentations, quotes, emails, digital meetings, and reports. Much of the brand work is carried out by employees whose primary responsibilities are entirely different from communications and design. Until now, much of the responsibility for putting the brand into practice has fallen on individual employees. Find the right template. Locate an up-to-date image. Interpret the guidelines. Adapt the content. Insert the correct email signature and Teams background. And come up with their own solution when they lack the time, knowledge, or tools.
When many people do this every day, discrepancies arise. Old presentations become the starting point for new ones. Outdated messages live on, and ad-hoc solutions spread among colleagues and departments. Externally, the brand’s impact is weakened when its messaging and communication pull in different directions. Internally, time is spent searching, recreating, and correcting. The marketing and communications team must review and manage every detail to maintain brand consistency.
AI creates opportunities to transform that work. When approved resources and clear guidelines can be applied directly in production, it becomes possible to automate repetitive tasks, streamline work, and help more people create content of higher and more consistent quality. The marketing department can focus more on developing the brand, while employees receive better support in using it.
But to reap those benefits, organizations need to establish the necessary frameworks now, as AI becomes part of everyday life. Which sources should be used? What changes can AI make? What should be reused exactly as is? And who is responsible for ensuring that the results are accurate?
Without clear answers, old problems risk carrying over into a faster production pace. With the right conditions in place, AI can instead make it easier to create communication that is consistent—both in style and content.
One tool that can help many organizations is a brand kit: a collection of approved brand resources and guidelines that can be used immediately when creating materials. For example, it may include logos, colors, fonts, images, templates, and instructions on tone of voice.
Microsoft’s Brand Kits are one such tool. For example, an organization’s resources and guidelines can help Copilot create PowerPoint presentations that adhere to the brand. This shortens the path from guidelines to finished material.
At the same time, day-to-day document work involves more than just creating new content. Employees also need to be able to insert a completed, approved company presentation, reuse a specific section of text in Word, or update a report’s tables and charts from Excel. Such tasks require support for reuse, content management, and automation.
A brand kit can help AI create content that aligns with the brand. The organization also needs tools that make approved content accessible and ensure that recurring tasks are reliable—even when AI isn’t being used.
When these features work together, it becomes easier to both create new content and use content that has already been quality-assured. Here are five tips for building that holistic approach—and the pitfalls to avoid.
AI needs clear instructions and useful resources. Therefore, review how your brand is described. For example, what do “personal tone” or “modern visual language” mean in practice? Supplement general principles with specific rules, approved examples, and clear boundaries.
Gather current templates and resources and test how well they work in the tools used to create the content. Start with a common use case, such as sales presentations, and develop the support based on actual results.
The Pitfall: Assuming that AI interprets a graphic manual exactly as you do. Vague guidelines leave room for variation even when used by AI.
A presentation may have the right colors, fonts, and logo, but still contain last year’s figures or an outdated product description. A consistent visual style and accurate information are two different quality requirements.
Determine where approved facts, messages, and content should be located. Appoint individuals responsible for keeping them up to date, and establish procedures for replacing or removing older versions. It must be clear to both people and AI which version is current.
The Pitfall: Confusing a professional appearance with reliable content. Errors aren't always easier to spot just because the material looks polished.
AI can be a valuable tool for drafting, summarizing, and tailoring content to the audience. However, not all content should be rewritten. A legally approved text, a verified financial table, or a quality-assured company presentation may need to be reused in its final, approved version. Therefore, distinguish between content that may be edited and content that must remain unchanged. Let the purpose and the need for accuracy guide your decisions.
The Pitfall: Using generics for tasks that actually require exact reuse. Even a minor rewording can change the meaning or render a previous approval invalid.
For the support to work in everyday life, three layers need to be interconnected.
In practice, different tools can contribute to different aspects of the overall picture. A brand kit gives the AI access to the brand’s resources and guidelines. A platform like O365|TemplateExtender can make ready-made slides, text sections, and templates available directly in Office and automate the transfer of data from Excel to reports in Word. This combination can provide support for both new drafts and tasks where the content must be reproduced exactly.
Let the marketing, IT, and business teams define the requirements together. Marketing needs to provide brand guidelines, the business team needs to provide accurate content, and IT needs to provide the technical infrastructure and access.
The Pitfall: Treating the implementation as an isolated tool-related issue. A fire kit is of limited use if employees still have to search for relevant content or guess which version is the correct one.
Determine what employees can finalize on their own and what needs to be reviewed before use. Internal meeting materials and financial reports require different types of reviews. Make it clear who is responsible for the facts, the message, the format, and final approval.
Also check for digital accessibility. The right colors and fonts do not guarantee the correct reading order, heading structure, alternative text, or usable tables.
The Pitfall: Either trusting everything AI creates or letting the market scrutinize every result in detail. The benefit arises when clear rules make more tasks autonomous and the scrutiny focuses on what requires human judgment.
AI can bridge the gap between how a brand is intended to function and how it is actually used. More people can receive better support, repetitive tasks can be streamlined, and the marketing team can free up time for strategic tasks.
The foundation for this needs to be laid now: clear rules, up-to-date sources, useful resources, and a shared responsibility for quality.
The easier you make it to do things right, the greater the opportunity AI has to strengthen your brand in every new piece of content that is created.