Everyone Thinks Audiences Want AI. Do They?

A 2023 Ipsos study found that only 37% of people globally say they trust AI. Meanwhile, 77% of consumers say they're concerned about misinformation from AI. That's not a niche worry. That's your audience.

And yet here we are, watching brands slap "AI-powered" on things like it's a selling point when the people they’re trying to sell to have very clearly complex, and mostly not in a good way, feelings about AI.

The Technology Is Not The Story

Here's what we’ve learned from years of making brand films, TV ads, and social content that people actually watch…

Nobody watches a Nike ad and thinks "impressive use of anamorphic lenses." (Unless you’re a DoP!) They think "I want to run a marathon." The craft is invisible. The emotion is everything.

Is AI exempt from this rule? Do audiences want to know if your creative team used Midjourney or Sora? Right now, AI-generated ads are failing spectacularly, because it looks like AI-generated content and audiences are becoming way more discerning. It has that particular smooth, weightless, slightly-wrong quality that the human eye clocks immediately, even if the brain can't name it.

What Audiences Actually Want

They want to feel seen. They want to laugh, or cry, or be surprised. They want brands to be honest with them and not waste their time. They want to feel like someone thought about them specifically, rather than generated content AT them.

This is not a new insight. It's been true since the first cave painting. What's new is that the tools for faking that feeling have never been more accessible, which means the temptation to shortcut it has never been higher. Are brands giving in and shortcutting their way out of favour with their audiences?

Is There A Version Of AI That Audiences Are Fine With?

They're fine with it when it's useful. When Netflix recommends something good. When Spotify builds a playlist that actually fits the mood. When a brand uses AI to respond faster or personalise something in a way that genuinely helps them. That's AI in service of the human. That's AI doing the boring bit so the interesting bit can happen.

What it doesn't look like they're fine with is AI as the spectacle. AI as the story. AI as proof that your brand is innovative while the creative itself is...lacking.

So Who Is The AI Conversation Actually for?

Mostly, it's for the internal stakeholder who needs to feel cutting-edge or team feeling like they need to ‘do AI’ but not working out why or how. For the LinkedIn post announcing the campaign. For the trade press headline.

It is not, in most cases, for the 28-year-old who's going to scroll past your content in 1.3 seconds because nothing in the first frame gave her a reason to stay.

If your audience research is "everyone's talking about AI," you don't have audience research, you have vibes, and vibes do not a reliable marketing strategy make.

The Bottom Line

Do audiences want AI? Some of them, sometimes, for specific things. Mostly they want good work that respects their intelligence, reflects something true about them, and gives them something worth feeling. Effective, moving, creative storytelling.

That's still the job. The tools change. The job doesn't.

What would your audience respond to? Book in a consultation with our audience-obsessed team.