The past few years have unleashed a flood of ads so instantly forgettable that even seasoned marketers have begun whispering a heretical question — do brands still have a strategy, or have brand heads quietly misplaced the instruction manual? It’s a bit like declaring maps obsolete because Google Maps exists — technically bold but intellectually shaky.
The confusion is understandable. In an age where AI can manufacture blogs, captions, and eerily profound quotes, execution hasn’t just taken centre stage but has staged a decisive coup, escorting strategy out of the building while everyone applauds the efficiency. The truth is that strategy isn’t dead. It’s the only thing that hasn’t been mass-produced, templated, and discounted.
For some time now, brands have been lifting heavy in what can only be described as the performance marketing gym. Daily workouts include pay-per-click sprints, search engine optimisation deadlifts, re-targeting marathons, and email funnels with the emotional warmth of a tax notice. The dashboards, of course, are immaculate. Customer acquisition costs are shaved thinner than a startup’s runway, click-through rate is climbing, and someone is whispering “optimise” with religious intensity.
And yet, the brand itself remains as memorable as a Wi-Fi password at a budget hotel.
Consider Byju’s. Once a masterclass in storytelling — selling aspiration and transformation — it slowly wandered into a performance-marketing labyrinth. Discounts multiplied, messaging shape-shifted, and acquisition became a full-contact sport. The result wasn’t just financial turbulence; it was narrative fatigue. When your story changes more frequently than your notifications, audiences eventually mute you.
Now place that next to the Tata Group. You won’t catch them sprinting after every algorithmic trend or remixing their identity every quarter. Their strategy — anchored in trust and continuity — behaves like a constitutional value. Whether it’s steel, software, or salt, the story doesn’t wobble. In a world obsessed with reinvention, consistency starts to look rebellious.
Globally, the pattern is obvious. Nike isn’t selling shoes; it’s selling guilt about skipping leg day. Apple has turned minimalism into a belief system where even a charging cable feels philosophical. These brands aren’t winning because they use AI better, but because AI has made everything else look the same.
The real shift is that AI has flattened competence.
Today, anyone with Wi-Fi and a decent prompt can generate “high-quality content”. The problem is that high-quality now means “technically correct and emotionally forgettable”. It’s like listening to a perfectly structured speech that leaves no trace in your memory. Without strategy, AI becomes a highly efficient machine for producing things nobody remembers.
And here’s the paradox — as content becomes infinite, meaning becomes scarce.
Consumers, whether buying service as a service or skincare, don’t follow neat funnels. By the time they land on your website, they’ve already checked reviews, skimmed AI summaries, lurked on Reddit, and read at least one brutally honest comment. If your strategy hasn’t shaped perception before that moment, performance marketing is just escorting strangers into a conversation they’ve already decided to leave.
India’s D2C boom makes this visible. Brands like MamaEarth initially rode performance marketing with precision. But over time, differentiation blurred. When everyone claims to be “natural” and “consumer-first”, the words stop meaning anything. AI didn’t create sameness; it scaled it.
On the flip side sits Zomato. Its voice — playful, self-aware, sometimes chaotic — isn’t accidental. It’s strategic. So even when AI enters the mix, Zomato doesn’t dissolve into corporate mush. It still sounds like Zomato. That’s not a creative trick but strategic insulation.
Even AI systems are reinforcing this. Models increasingly prioritise distinctiveness, authority, and consistency. If your brand sounds like everyone else, AI treats you like everyone else. So no, strategy isn’t dead. It’s just far less forgiving.
There was a time when vague purpose statements and committee-designed logos could pass. Today, ambiguity is punished instantly. If your strategy cannot clearly answer who you are, why you exist, and why anyone should care, the market — and the machine — will replace you with someone who can. Of course, knowing this is easier than acting on it. Strategy requires patience, and patience has limited appeal in quarterly earnings calls.
So how does one avoid becoming a high-performing, low-meaning brand?
First, institutionalise consistency. Not the dull kind, but the kind where your worldview doesn’t swing every time a new CMO discovers a dashboard. Strategy should outlive campaigns, and the people running them.
Second, develop an allergy to noise. Just because AI can generate 100 ideas doesn’t mean you need 100 ideas. Most brands would benefit from doing less with more intent. Strategy is disciplined omission.
Third, treat storytelling as infrastructure. The best companies don’t bolt narrative on; they build around it. This is why even technical firms are hiring writers and filmmakers. Humans don’t remember features, they remember feelings.
Fourth, rebalance performance and purpose. Performance marketing isn’t the villain, it’s just been over-promoted. Its job is amplification, not identity creation.
Finally, measure what matters. Not everything valuable appears on a dashboard. Trust, recall, and cultural relevance are slow metrics, but they compound. And when the algorithm inevitably changes — as it always does — these are what endure.
And when the algorithm inevitably wakes up on the wrong side of its code and rewrites the rules, the brands built on tactics will scramble like traders on a bad Monday — refreshing dashboards, rewriting copy, and rediscovering panic as a core competency. The ones built on strategy will keep going. When the noise resets, meaning doesn’t need an update. It may be a good idea to have the following on every CMO’s wall: When everyone can create anything, the only unfair advantage left is knowing exactly why you exist.
The author is a Fortune 500 advisor, startup investor, and co-founder of the Medici Institute for Innovation.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.