- AI can generate communications content, but human judgement remains essential to strategy, reputation and crisis management.
- Communications goes beyond content production to include stakeholder analysis, context, timing, relationships and risk assessment.
- The push for always-on content can create a “sea of sameness” when businesses prioritise volume over meaningful insights.
- African communications requires local knowledge, cultural fluency and an understanding of diverse markets, media ecosystems and economic realities.
- AI is most useful as a communications assistant; experience, expertise and judgement remain critical differentiators. *
I have spent three decades working in journalism, media, and strategic communications. I have built businesses. I have advised global NGOs, entrepreneurs, innovators, founders, and corporate leaders.
I have worked through mergers, acquisitions, rebrands, restructures and crises, helped shape narratives for complex business, political and social moments on the continent, many of which never appeared in a headline. Worked with whistleblowers, investigative journalists, CEOs, founders, board members, and executive teams.
I have sat in rooms where one sentence could change the fate of a company. Yet increasingly, after almost thirty years in this profession, I hear the same response:
“Can’t AI just do that?”
- The communications strategy.
- The media plan.
- The social media strategy.
- The thought leadership article.
- The press release.
- The corporate narrative.
- The CEO profile.
- The stakeholder messaging.
- The crisis response.
Just ask AI. Fine. Go ahead. But do not be surprised when your business starts sounding exactly like everyone else’s. Because here is the uncomfortable truth; communications has never been about writing. It has always been about judgement.
The iceberg problem
Most business leaders only see the visible part of communications.
The press release. The LinkedIn article. The interview. The campaign. The social media post. The media coverage.
They see the output. They never see the thinking beneath it.
What they do not see is the stakeholder analysis. The political context. The competitive landscape. The journalist relationships built over decades. The boardroom conversations. The reputation risks identified before they become a problem. The countless discussions that happen behind closed doors. The advice that prevents a crisis before it starts.
The communications professional is often the person asking uncomfortable questions nobody else wants to ask; Should we say this? Should we launch this now? Have we considered the impact on employees? Will regulators have concerns? How will investors react? What happens if this becomes tomorrow’s headline?
That is communications. The writing is simply the visible evidence of the thinking.
Communications is not content
Somewhere along the way, businesses started confusing communications with content production. They are not the same thing.
Communications is not a content calendar. Communications are not posting for the sake of posting. Communications are not publishing something because the algorithm expects it. Communications is understanding business, understanding risk, understanding people, understanding timing, understanding influence, understanding power.
Communications is understanding when to speak. More importantly, it is understanding when to stay quiet.
The dangerous obsession with always on
The industry has become obsessed with being always on. Always publishing. Always posting. Always commenting. Always reacting. Always visible.
Why?
Most organisations do not have something meaningful to say every day.
And that is okay.
The better question is:
- Do we have something worth saying?
- Does it solve a problem?
- Does it answer a question?
- Does it introduce a genuine innovation?
- Does it help customers make a better decision?
- Does it improve understanding?
- Does it move an industry forward?
Because if the answer is no, silence is the better strategy.
A thousand pieces of content saying nothing create far less value than one genuinely useful insight.
The death of expertise
What concerns me is not AI. AI is a tool. I use it.
Most experienced communicators use it. What concerns me is the growing belief that expertise has become optional.
Need a strategy? Ask AI.
Need a media plan? Ask AI.
Need a communications campaign? Ask AI.
Need thought leadership? Ask AI.
Need crisis advice? Ask AI.
We have somehow convinced ourselves that because information is widely available, expertise no longer matters.
Experience does not work like that. Experience is not information. Experience is pattern recognition. Experience is understanding what happened before. Experience is knowing why a clever idea will fail. Experience is recognising a risk before anyone else sees it. Experience is understanding consequences.
No prompt can replicate that.
Africa is not a prompt
This matters even more in Africa. Because Africa is not one market. It is dozens of markets.
Hundreds of cultures. Thousands of communities. Different media ecosystems. Different political realities. Different economic pressures.
A campaign that works in Johannesburg might fail completely in Lagos.
Messaging that resonates with middle class consumers in Nairobi may be irrelevant in Lusaka.
A digital strategy developed in London might make perfect sense in a PowerPoint presentation and completely miss the realities of consumers navigating high data costs, infrastructure challenges, and entirely diverse cultural contexts.
The most successful brands in Africa have rarely won because they were louder. They won because they understood local realities better than their competitors.
Consider how mobile money transformed financial behaviour across East Africa. The success was never about technology alone. It was about understanding how people moved money, supported families, and conducted business.
Consider the rise of community radio across Africa. Despite the growth of digital platforms, trusted local voices remain influential because trust is built through relevance, not reach.
Consider the brands that enter African markets with global playbooks and identical messaging. Many disappear because they assumed standardisation was a substitute for understanding.
Local insight still wins. Context still wins. Cultural fluency still wins.
What happens when things go wrong?
The belief that communications are easy, tends to disappear the moment a crisis arrives.
When the journalist calls. When the whistleblower emerges. When the regulator starts asking questions. When investors become nervous. When employees challenge leadership publicly. When customers lose trust.
Nobody asks who can produce the fastest LinkedIn post.
Nobody asks who has the best prompt. They start looking for people with judgement.
People who understand media. People who understand relationships. People who understand stakeholders. People who understand reputation. People who have seen similar situations before.
Suddenly expertise matters again.
We are creating a sea of sameness
The irony of the AI revolution is that while businesses have never had access to more tools, many brands are becoming less distinctive.
The same language. The same phrases. The same structures. The same optimism. The same jargon. The same corporate wallpaper.
Everybody sounds intelligent. Nobody sounds original. Everybody is creating content.
Very few are creating meaning. The risk is not that AI will replace creativity.
The risk is that businesses stop valuing the experience, judgement and insight that make creativity valuable in the first place.
So, use AI. Absolutely
Use AI to speed up research. Use AI to test ideas. Use AI to challenge assumptions.
Use AI to improve efficiency. Use AI to remove repetitive tasks. Use AI as an assistant.
Just do not confuse the tool with the expert. A hammer does not build a house.
A spreadsheet does not create a business strategy, and AI does not understand your organisation.
It does not know your customers. It does not know your leadership team. It does not know your history.
It does not know your politics. It does not know your risks. It has not built relationships.
It has not earned trust. It has not sat through decades of mistakes, successes, crises, failures, and reinventions. It has not developed judgement.
People have. AI becomes available to everyone, that judgement becomes the most valuable differentiator of all. Because communications is never about words. It is never about content, and it is certainly never about volume.
It has always been about understanding people, context, and consequences.
AI can write words. But it cannot replace judgement, and judgement is still what moves businesses, protects reputations and builds trust.
* Summary created by AI
Ingrid von Stein is CEO & Founder of Indigo Zebra Communications.
