How artificial intelligence is shaping the future of brand management: a qualitative study by DiALOGiFY, the University of St. Gallen and Rivella shows how generative AI turns marketers from manual campaign operators into AI orchestrators, across all four phases of the campaign process.
AI changes not only what campaigns can do, but who runs them. Marketers no longer delegate to agencies and tools, they actively orchestrate their own AI systems: steering, validating and refining what the machine delivers. Consumer data from direct dialogue becomes the brand's most important asset.
The qualitative multi-method study combines a semi-systematic literature review, interviews with marketing experts and a case study in the Swiss FMCG market. It examines how generative AI reshapes roles, tasks and human-machine collaboration along the entire campaign process, from planning through content creation and execution to monitoring and learning.
The case is the TWINT cashback promotion "Chat with Pat" by rivella/FOCUSWATER with DiALOGiFY: snowboarder Pat Burgener guides consumers through a dialogic brand experience as a virtual brand avatar, with entry via QR codes on the bottle. Personalized dialogues replaced generic one-way communication, and marketing opt-in rates exceeded expectations by 50 percent.
Read the FOCUSWATER case study →"Consumer data has become our most important asset for building trust and tailoring experiences."
Instead of static personas from periodic workshops, AI generates data-driven JTBD personas from first-party data and runs campaign variants early. Planning becomes prompt-driven and iterative, while the team evaluates relevance, creative fit and compliance.
AI drafts dialogues, campaign copy and gamification mechanics as modular variants, the team curates and validates. Human-in-the-loop processes secure brand safety and compliance, while micro-segmentation steers adaptive content by interest and segment.
The QR code on the bottle leads straight into the dialogue, AI orchestrates the omnichannel journey adaptively and checks availability and prices in real time. Quality, coherence and engagement remain a human job: at sensitive moments, the human takes over.
Embedded surveys and behavioral analytics close the feedback loop inside the live campaign. Insights flow into optimization and into the next campaign in near real time: delayed reporting becomes a data flywheel.
AI makes intuition-driven planning obsolete: strategies emerge from live data and scenarios, while human creativity is reduced to steering and sense-making.
AI saturates campaigns with hyper-personalized content, but without human curation, brand identity and ethical guardrails collapse.
Campaign execution is no longer manual; AI runs the show. Marketers act as orchestrators who intervene only to protect strategic intent and coherence.
Optimization has shifted from afterthought to always-on AI. Marketers who fail to interpret and govern these live insights risk damaging customer relationships.
The complete journal article was published in Marketing Review St. Gallen, issue 1/2026 (Thexis), including methodology, literature base and the full rivella/FOCUSWATER × DiALOGiFY case study.
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