George Perry, Global Business Development Director at Identity, on why the rise of AI is making human experience more valuable, not less, and what that means for brands serious about building lasting equity.
Something interesting is happening in the conversations I’m having with leading brands right now. Amid all the noise around AI, a counter-narrative is quietly gaining momentum. It has significant implications for how brands show up in the world.
Human-made is becoming a badge of honour.
AI isn’t the enemy of human experience
That might sound counterintuitive at a time when AI is reshaping almost every corner of our industry. But the brands I speak to aren’t rejecting technology. They’re using it to do something smarter: to make human experience more valuable, not less.
The research backs this up. Lippincott’s 2026 brand trends analysis identifies “human-made” as a resurgent driver of both brand equity and price premium. As AI-generated content becomes ubiquitous, audiences are developing a sharper instinct for what feels real. Authenticity, genuine human creativity, craft, and connection, is becoming a differentiator in a way it hasn’t been before.
The most human channel in the mix
For brands investing in live experience, this is a significant moment.
Experiential has always been the most human channel in the marketing mix. You can’t fake a great event. You can’t automate the feeling of stepping into a world a brand has built for you, being part of something that only exists in that moment, with those people, in that space. That’s irreplaceable and right now, its value is rising.
What this looks like in practice
What I’m seeing is brands becoming far more intentional about where the human element sits in their experience strategy. AI is doing useful work: personalising journeys at scale, optimising logistics, surfacing data that makes creative decisions sharper. But the experience itself – the storytelling, the atmosphere, the moments that create genuine connection – that’s where brands are investing more, not less.
The smartest brand leaders understand that AI and human experience aren’t in opposition. AI handles the infrastructure. Humans deliver the meaning.
Raising the bar for agency partners
This is also changing what brands expect from their agency partners. The conversations I’m having increasingly centre on strategic value — how experience builds long-term brand equity, not just campaign metrics. Brands want partners who understand their audiences deeply, who can build worlds around a brand idea, and who can make those worlds feel unmistakably, irreducibly human.
At Identity, that’s exactly the territory we operate in. We’ve always believed that experience changes everything, and in a world where AI is raising the floor on what’s possible, the human ceiling is what sets the best brands apart.
The human-made premium is real. The brands that recognise it earliest will be the ones that benefit most.
