Every December, I become best friends with my delivery drivers. Like many others, I’m waiting on Christmas gifts, last-minute panic buys, and the occasional “I deserve this” order. On paper, every courier promises the same thing: delivery. A simple A-to-B transaction. Nothing complicated. But we all know the truth.

Some couriers are dependable and place your parcel in a safe place if you're not home. Others, let’s say, have a very creative interpretation of “delivery.” Parcels left on random corners, delivered to the wrong address completely, or mysteriously missing altogether. Every time it happens, I can’t help but think: if you opt for the cheapest service, don’t be surprised when your parcel embarks on an unexpected journey.

And that’s how I feel about AI in marketing right now.

Yes, AI can absolutely deliver something from A to B. It can write content, generate ideas, create visuals, and even sound human. But the real question isn’t “can it?” It’s: how well? Like my Christmas parcels, AI content can turn up in the wrong place, missing half its context, or lacking the care you hoped for. It’s fast and cheap, but it doesn’t consistently deliver the quality your brand deserves.

I’m definitely not averse to using AI; I actually love it. It’s clever, quick, and effective at getting the ball rolling. But on its own, it has the emotional depth of a teaspoon. AI doesn’t understand your brand history. It doesn’t grasp your tone of voice. It doesn’t know your audience as you do. It doesn’t see the bigger picture.

I’ve recently spent time experimenting with AI image generators. The results have ranged from “wow, that’s impressive” to “no way can I use that!”

Ask an AI to create a simple branded image, and you’ll often get something that nearly hits the mark… until you notice the details. Hands with six fingers. Faces that look right at first glance, and deeply wrong at second. A beautifully crafted product shot, until you zoom in and realise the text resembles alien hieroglyphics.

It’s not that AI does a bad job. It’s that AI doesn’t understand yet. It’s brilliant for inspiration and rapid exploration, but it’s still a long way from the precision, consistency, and brand safety that businesses actually need.​

And here’s the thing no one wants to admit: cheap often ends up costing more. Just as choosing the cheapest courier means more hassle, chasing, and replacements, choosing AI-only often means more rewrites, corrections, and concerns, such as “this doesn’t look right” and “why does this sound like a robot having an existential crisis?”

This is why human talent still matters. A lot.

At Tiga, our team uses AI as a tool rather than a magic wand. It helps speed things up, sparks ideas, and expands possibilities, but the craft, the storytelling, the originality, and the magic still come from real human brains. With personality. With judgment. With taste.

When brands work with agencies like Tiga, they’re not just paying for a handful of words or a visually appealing image; they’re paying for strategic thinking, brand storytelling, and content marketing that resonates with the right audience. The kind of creativity that comes from experience and an understanding of human behavior, rather than algorithms.

AI mimics. Humans originate. And right now, that difference matters more than ever, especially if you don’t want your brand voice delivered to some random corner of the internet.

Until AI catches up,  I’ll continue to appreciate its wonders and track my parcels like a hawk. Because it turns out, some things still require a human touch.