When AI makes creative cheap, what becomes the new competitive edge?

A brand can produce dozens of polished video ads, product images, and regional language adaptations in a single afternoon easily, and its competitors can do exactly the same. Therefore, when production becomes cheaper for everyone, producing a larger number of creatives is not a meaningful advantage anymore.

I see a lot of excitement around how quickly marketers can now create content using AI. And I understand why. It is genuinely useful. But I think we are paying too much attention to how much we can create and not enough to what we are actually communicating.

For me, the bigger question is not how many ads I can create. It is what exactly I am trying to communicate, to whom, and why would they care?

Let's take a footwear brand as an example.

AI can create ten different ads showing the same pair of shoes, with different backgrounds, models, and headlines. But should the brand talk about comfort, design, price, or durability?

If customers are buying those shoes because they can wear them for ten hours without discomfort, that is a much stronger starting point than simply asking AI to create ten attractive advertisements.

And this is where I believe the real competitive advantage lies.

When I am planning marketing for a brand, I need to understand its product, its category, what has worked in the past, what has failed, why customers buy, what competitors are doing, and where the business can actually afford to compete.

AI can help me analyse all this information if I give it the right context. But I cannot expect it to automatically understand my business better than I do.

Even after understanding all of this, I still need to decide what I want consumers to remember about the brand. What reason am I giving them to believe my claims? Why should someone choose my product over ten similar alternatives?

These are marketing decisions, not creative production tasks.

And I think there is another important competitive advantage emerging beyond what we communicate. It is how easily consumers can discover us.

Earlier, marketers largely focused on being visible across Google, social media, and marketplaces. Today, someone might discover a product through Instagram, compare alternatives using ChatGPT or another AI search platform, check reviews on Amazon, and then decide where to buy.

With developments like Google's Universal Commerce Protocol and AI-assisted shopping, I believe these journeys will continue changing.

For brands, this means discoverability needs much more attention.

Accurate product information, visibility across relevant platforms, credible reviews, useful content, and a consistent brand positioning will all matter. I don't think brands can afford to depend on just one or two channels for consumers to discover them anymore.

But I also wouldn't confuse being discovered with being preferred.

Someone finding my brand through an AI recommendation doesn't mean they will buy from me. I still need to give them a compelling reason to consider me, trust me, and eventually purchase.

So yes, I want to use AI to create more content, experiment faster, and reach people across different formats. It would be foolish not to.

But I don't want the number of creatives my team produces to become the measure of how good our marketing is.

If someone asks me what gives a brand a competitive advantage today, I'd rather explain why its customers choose it and how easily new customers can find it than show them a folder of 100 AI-generated advertisements.

(Apurv Singh is the Founder and CEO of HQ Digital, a strategic digital marketing agency that focuses on integrating data and creativity to solve customer lifecycle management.)