How do we use AI to do more without our brand sounding like everyone else?
When everyone uses the same AI, everyone starts to sound the same.
Watch · the keynote trailer
Marketing and comms teams who lead on AI with confidence — more reach from small teams, a voice that stays recognisably theirs, a person signing off, and nobody left behind.
Conference keynote · All-hands · Leadership away-day
About this session
Your marketing and communications teams now have a powerful new tool, and so does everyone else. That’s the problem. When every organisation drafts with the same few models, the output starts to converge: the same rhythm, the same safe phrases, the same polished but forgettable lines. AI makes it easy to produce more, and just as easy to sound like everybody.
This session gets the room excited about AI by showing what it can genuinely do for them, while making the case that what keeps a brand distinctive is its people: their judgement, their stories and their perspectives. It isn’t hype and it isn’t doom. It’s a practical, human look at how to use AI to do more without giving away the thing that makes you worth listening to.
It comes from doing, not theory. As a very small team I’ve used AI to build my own website and its AI assistant, turn more than 200 podcast conversations into searchable content and quotes, and produce a book. I’ll show what worked, what I hand over, what I keep, and where it went wrong.
What we explore
The session is built on six ideas, each one something people can recognise in their own work the next morning.
The sameness trap. When everyone uses the same models, everyone starts to sound the same. Fluent isn’t the same as distinctive, and “perfectly fine” is exactly what people scroll past. A brand is most exposed when its voice is new or still settling, after a rebrand, a merger or a change of direction, because there’s less of the real thing for people to recognise.
Comms leads, not follows. Marketing and communications are already the guardians of voice and trust, which makes them the natural owners of how AI speaks for the organisation. That means being open about where AI is used, agreeing clear guardrails, and making sure a named person reads and signs off what goes out.
A critical friend, not a compliant one. AI is built to be helpful, and helpful often means agreeable. Ask it whether your draft is good and it will usually say yes. Ask it to read as a sceptical customer or your toughest critic and you’ll learn something. Practical prompts for spotting the generic, the off-brand and the claim you can’t stand behind.
Belonging is the brand. Distinctiveness comes from people: local stories, real customers and many voices across teams, places and countries. Output that flattens those voices into one, or quietly repeats bias in images and language, erases what makes a brand worth noticing. Who’s shown, who’s missing, and who did we ask?
Nobody left behind. Skills vary across every room, and that’s the point. A new digital divide opens when the confident race ahead and everyone else goes quiet. Teams move faster when it feels safe to experiment, ask the basic question and share what worked, including what went wrong first.
More reach, honestly. What a small team can now do: the first drafts, the repurposing, the research sweep, the routine work that eats the week. What to hand to AI, what must stay human, and how to tell the difference, so people get time back for the work only they can do.
Think, feel and act differently
Think differently: AI is a tool for reach, and your people are the source of what’s distinctive. The two work best together, with a human deciding.
Feel differently: excited rather than anxious, and confident that there is a place for every skill level in the room.
Act differently: leave with one change each, whether that’s a prompt that challenges, a sign-off step or a story only you could tell, and a way to know whether it worked.
Who this is for
Marketing, communications, brand and content teams, and the leaders responsible for them, in any sector. It works especially well for organisations that have recently rebranded, merged or reorganised, for teams spread across divisions, sites or countries, and for small teams being asked to do more with less.
It’s a talk, not a hands-on workshop, so it works for every level of AI confidence in the room. Discussion is built in rather than left to the end, and the session can be shaped around your own brand, tone of voice and examples.
Go deeper
Watch · Joanne in conversation
Joanne answering live questions on AI
A short reel of Joanne answering audience questions on AI at the LexisNexis Risk Belonging Conference in September 2026 — unscripted, in the room, the same way she'd answer yours.
Risk Belonging Conference 2026, LexisNexis Risk — September 2026
Bespoke to your audience — but well-trodden. Delivered for LEGO · NHS England · Unilever · John Lewis · lululemon.
“Warm, engaging and genuinely enlightening and insightful. As a speaker, Joanne is an incredible knowledge bank, with a sense of humour!”
