Should You Double Down on AI?
2025 was the year the giants stopped experimenting with AI and started building their businesses on top of it. The headlines all echo the same message: double down or fall behind.
But “doubling down” is meaningless if you don’t know where to place the bet. Looking at how the biggest players moved this year, three clear strategic playbooks emerged.
Playbook 1: Efficiency as a Weapon
These brands used AI to remove cost and friction. They didn’t chase creativity—they chased speed, scale, and margin.
- Klarna: Leveraged AI all the way to an IPO. Their assistant now does the work of 800 agents, collapsing support costs while keeping response times low.
- Unilever: Used digital twins to cut content production costs by 87% while doubling output speed, turning what used to be a bottleneck into a competitive advantage.
- Intuit: Built an internal “Marketing Studio” that can generate full campaigns in under an hour, compressing weeks of work into a single working session.
What this playbook is really about:
- Automating repeatable workflows
- Standardizing quality at scale
- Protecting margins in a world where everyone is producing more, faster
You need this foundation to survive. Without it, your cost structure will eventually lose to someone who builds AI into their operations instead of bolting it on.
Playbook 2: Scale the Story, Not the Storyteller
These companies use AI to extend creative reach—not to replace human imagination.
- Disney: Invested $1B to partner with OpenAI, licensing characters to tools like Sora. The goal isn’t to replace storytellers—it’s to let fans and creators play in Disney’s worlds at unprecedented scale.
- Mattel: Deployed AI as a force multiplier for design, accelerating toy ideation and exploration so human designers can spend more time on what’s actually worth making.
- Coca-Cola: Leaned into “hyper-real” AI-generated video for global holiday campaigns, using AI to localize, remix, and scale a core creative idea across markets.
What this playbook is really about:
- Turning a strong brand story into thousands of tailored expressions
- Giving creative teams superpowers instead of cutting them
- Meeting audiences where they are, in every format, without diluting the core idea
You need this to compete. As AI lowers the cost of content, the brands that win will be those that can scale distinctiveness, not just volume.
Playbook 3: Small Story. Massive Lesson.
CaliBBQ, a California restaurant chain, replaced phone operators with an AI agent. The system handled 150 calls and drove an 18% lift in sales.
Why it worked: not because humans were removed, but because they were freed.
- Staff spent less time on the phone and more time with guests in the restaurant.
- Orders were captured consistently, upsells were applied reliably, and no call was missed during rush.
- The AI handled the repetitive work; humans handled the emotional work.
This is the quiet pattern behind the loud headlines: the best AI deployments don’t erase humans—they reposition them.
The Verdict
You need Playbook 1 to survive (infrastructure).
You need Playbook 2 to compete (scale).
But you need Playbook 3 to win (humanity).
The biggest mistake brands make is using AI to replace human connection. That path leads to efficiency—and mediocrity.
The right question isn’t “Should we double down on AI?” It’s:
Where can AI remove friction so humans can create more value?
If you get that answer right, AI stops being a threat to your brand and becomes the most powerful amplifier it’s ever had.
