The organizations getting the most from AI aren't using better prompts. They're teaching it a better story.
When I started a narrative consulting company, I immediately confronted the fact that most people were going to see what I did as obsolete. I’d go to networking events where they were telling people to produce entire books with AI as a way of proving “expertise.”
As much as the thought made me want to gag, I had to admit generative-AI had become an essential part of the workflow. Even mine. I used it as a brainstorming partner. I know I’m somewhere in between Pre-K and 3rd Grade when it comes to the coloring books in my house, so I use AI to generate illustrations or design templates.
But I reached a point a lot of ChatGPTers and Claudettes reach: Elliot (the name I gave my first AI assistant) and I started to have some real falling outs. I was spending more time explaining why it was wrong or missing the point than I was getting anything out of it. It got so bad, Elliot and I broke up.
So when I started with Felicia, I took a different approach. I onboarded her.
Before I wrote any prompt, I uploaded a database of source material: a message house that details my company’s unique value proposition, core messaging pillars, product promises and primary soundbites; my brand guidelines that explain COJA’s color palette, logo, typography and tone. I sent her examples of my ICPs and high-level pain points that COJA has solutions for, and proof points that show we have.
Felicia still gets things wrong. She still makes assumptions I have to correct, and I still push back when she misses the nuance. But because she understands how COJA thinks, those conversations have become refinements instead of rewrites. She's no longer guessing who we are. She's working from a foundation we've already built.
AI can only communicate what you’ve already taught it.
If your organization’s voice lives inside the executive director’s head, AI can’t access it. If your messaging changes depending on who’s writing the email, AI has no consistent pattern to follow. If your story is spread across grant proposals, annual reports, websites, strategy decks, and years of institutional memory, AI cannot assemble those fragments into a coherent narrative.
Humans eventually learn those unwritten rules because they ask questions, observe conversations, and absorb context over time.
AI can’t do that.
A lot of organizations just go with it, hoping that in all the volume they can create with generative-AI, something will stick. The risk in doing that is they’re speaking to a consumer base that grew up online, and those consumers aren’t buying it—literally or figuratively.
Recent research has found that when people believe content was generated by AI, they often perceive it as less authentic and less trustworthy. Other studies suggest the problem is particularly pronounced when communication depends on human connection rather than simply conveying information. In other words, AI may be perfectly capable of explaining what your organization does. Convincing people why it matters is another challenge entirely.
Organizations have spent the last two decades trying to solve the problem of visibility. The internet rewarded frequency. Social media rewarded consistency. Now AI rewards volume.
None of those things guarantee recognition.
In today’s attention economy, your audience isn’t evaluating your communication one piece at a time. They’re assembling an understanding of your organization from dozens of encounters across websites, social feeds, news coverage, podcasts, emails, videos, and conversations. Every interaction either reinforces a recognizable narrative or adds another disconnected fragment.
AI cannot decide which of those fragments deserve repetition. It can’t determine which story best represents your organization. It can’t choose the evidence that builds credibility or the language that creates trust. It can only amplify the decisions you’ve already made.
The challenge isn’t keeping up with the attention economy. AI has largely solved that problem.
The challenge is giving people a reason to stop paying attention to everyone else.
Can Your Story Scale?
At COJA, we help organizations build the narrative infrastructure behind every piece of communication. That means clarifying the story, documenting the voice, aligning the message, and creating a narrative that remains recognizable whether it’s delivered by your executive director, your communications team, or AI.
Technology can scale communication. Only a clear narrative can scale recognition.
If your organization is using AI to produce more content but still struggling to break through the noise, let’s talk.
