AI and data have become part of everyday business. Companies now have access to information that can help them understand customers, improve decisions, and work more efficiently. Still, having all that information does not always make it easier to know what customers really want.
This is an area Katja Maggio, Founder of usawa.ai, has spent considerable time exploring. Through her work, she looks at the connection between brands, people, culture, and technology, with a focus on finding new ways for businesses to grow and stay relevant.
We spoke with Katja about what businesses may be missing in their growing reliance on data and AI. She discusses why human behaviour still matters, what makes a brand different when everyone has access to similar technology, and why purpose, emotion, and good judgement will continue to matter as AI takes on a bigger role in business.
1. Businesses have unprecedented access to data, AI, and automation, yet many still struggle to create lasting competitive advantage. Why do you believe technology alone is no longer enough to build future-ready brands?
For the past decade, we have largely assumed that better decisions, stronger brands, and competitive advantage would come from more data, better technology, and greater automation, enabling organisations to decide faster and with greater confidence. Yet many organisations that have invested heavily in data and technology still struggle to translate those investments into distinctive customer and business value. The reason is simple: as data becomes ubiquitous and intelligence increasingly accessible, competitive advantage no longer comes from technology and data alone. It comes from how organisations use them to understand business dynamics, exercise judgement, and identify opportunities worth pursuing.
2. In an increasingly AI-powered marketplace, what aspects of human behaviour do you think organisations still underestimate, and how does that affect their ability to connect with customers in meaningful ways?
Organisations increasingly place value on what can be easily measured. They privilege behavioural data because it is observable and scalable: it tells us what people do. They undervalue what must be interpreted, including motivations, frictions, emotions, cultural meaning, and context. These dimensions are less visible, harder to codify, and often dismissed as subjective. Yet they are what help explain why people behave as they do. While dashboards capture clicks, purchases, frequency, and conversion, they rarely reflect the triggers shaping those behaviours.
This matters because similar behaviours may reflect very different underlying motivations, tensions, or needs. By prioritising behavioural data in isolation, organisations risk becoming reactive, optimising what is visible while missing what is meaningful. They may become highly effective at eliciting responses without becoming better at earning emotional engagement.
3. Many companies are becoming more efficient through technology, but efficiency doesn’t always translate into differentiation. What, in your view, makes a brand genuinely distinctive when competitors have access to similar tools and data?
Technology can make brands faster, more efficient, and more responsive through automation, but it cannot determine on its own what a brand should stand for, how it should become more relevant, or what reason it should give people to choose it. These are strategic choices: which jobs the brand should help people accomplish, which tensions to address, where to create value in people’s lives, and how to build mental and physical availability. AI can accelerate discovery, experimentation, and execution, but it cannot substitute for the choices that define the brand.
A distinctive brand does more than communicate differently. It combines a clear value proposition with a meaningfully different point of view, distinctive assets, and ownable experiences that consistently reinforce one another. It is equally clear about where to compete, what to amplify, and what not to pursue.
4. Culture shapes how people interpret trust, value, identity, and belonging. How can businesses better understand these cultural dynamics, and why do they matter more than ever in shaping brand relevance?
Culture is the lens through which people interpret meaning. It shapes what feels trustworthy, valuable, aspirational, familiar, or irrelevant. Yet organisations often treat culture as a matter of local execution rather than as a dynamic system of meanings, codes, and expectations that shapes categories and the roles brands can credibly play within them.
Brands can uncover these dynamics by combining semiotic analysis with ethnography, social listening, behavioural evidence, and local expertise. The objective is not simply to identify what is trending, but to understand how underlying category meanings are evolving and how emerging narratives are reshaping customers’ perceptions, expectations, and needs. This intelligence helps brands distinguish the shifts that truly matter from passing noise and respond in ways that are both relevant and credible.
5. As AI increasingly automates communication, content creation, and customer interactions, how can brands preserve authenticity and emotional resonance rather than becoming more transactional?
Brands become less transactional when they create emotional connection and value beyond the immediate exchange. AI can remove friction, improve responsiveness, and personalise interactions, but emotional resonance comes from understanding the role a brand plays in people’s lives and designing experiences that feel meaningful and distinctive.
Authenticity is not primarily about tone of voice. It comes from coherence between what a brand promises, how it behaves, and the value it repeatedly delivers. It also depends on remaining relevant to people’s lives. AI should strengthen that relevance, not substitute for the human understanding on which it depends.
6. Dashboards have democratised access to information, yet more visibility does not always lead to better decisions. How can leaders distinguish signal from noise and translate data into meaningful strategic choices?
Dashboards have democratised access to data, but they can also create an illusion of control. Tracking more metrics does not necessarily result in greater clarity: teams can become absorbed in performance indicators while losing sight of the business questions those measures were meant to inform.
To win, brand teams do not simply need to see more; they need to interpret, prioritise, and simplify. Leaders should ask which data matter, which assumptions sit behind them, what trade-offs they reveal, and what decisions or actions they should change. Data becomes valuable when it sharpens decisions. Without that focus, organisations can become increasingly busy reporting performance without becoming better at deciding what matters.
7. Many organisations invest heavily in digital transformation, yet lasting customer loyalty remains difficult to achieve. What role do purpose, emotion, and shared meaning play in building relationships that technology alone cannot create?
Technology can reduce friction and encourage purchase and repeat purchase. But triggering transactions is not the same as building a relationship. Lasting connection develops when a brand becomes part of people’s routines or identity and stands for something relevant and emotionally resonant.
Purpose matters when it is expressed through consistent actions, not simply words. Emotion creates memory and attachment, while shared meaning allows people to see the brand as part of a wider community, ritual, or belief. Technology can support these relationships, but it cannot create meaning without human understanding and intent.
8. Looking ahead, how do you see the most successful organisations balancing technological capability with a deeper understanding of people, culture, and human experience?
The most successful organisations will not see technology and human understanding as opposing forces. They will use AI to broaden the line of sight, accelerate discovery, and remove low-value work, while keeping professionals responsible for interpretation, judgement, empathy, and strategic decisions.
This requires investing not only in technology, but also in the capabilities around it: data expertise, cultural intelligence, customer understanding, collaborative ways of working, and effective governance, all of which help keep teams close to customers.
The balance will vary by industry and task, but advantage will increasingly come from combining machine scale with human depth across the organisation.
9. If business leaders were to rethink one widely accepted assumption about growth in the age of AI, what would you challenge, and what should they focus on instead to build brands that remain relevant for the next decade?
I would challenge the assumption that more automation, more intelligence, and greater speed will automatically translate into growth. As AI makes content creation, analysis, and execution increasingly accessible, over-reliance on AI-enabled workflows risks flattening creativity, eroding the human touch, and accelerating sameness.
The brands that use technology to augment human understanding, empathy, and creativity will be best placed to create experiences that are meaningfully different, memorable, and difficult to replace. In a marketplace where content, information, and personalised interactions are abundant, those qualities will earn attention and create lasting value.
“Competitive advantage comes from how organisations use data and technology to understand business dynamics, exercise judgement, and identify opportunities worth pursuing.”
