AI can be bought. Differentiation cannot.

“You press the button, we do the rest.”

By Andreas Reinbolz & Thomas Nisters

 

“95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly, and at almost no cost be handled by AI” (Sam Altman – quoted in Brotman, Adam, and Andy Sack, AI First, 2025).

Two quotes, one sentiment. Only, “You press the button; we do the rest” was George Eastman’s slogan for the first Kodak camera in 1888. It made photography accessible to everyone, claiming “any schoolboy or girl can make good pictures.” The complexity of a transformational technology would disappear behind a simple user action.

Since then, generations of photographers, from Robert Capa to Annie Leibovitz, have used the simplicity of imaging technology to create incredible art. While artists like David LaChapelle thrived on each new iteration of imaging technology, Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

So, what is the secret? The tool? Or the unique human angle they found to apply the technology? The dominant AI narrative wants us to believe that technology will make expertise and human perspective in the mix less relevant.

That promise goes down well in the pharmaceutical industry. Launch teams are under pressure to move faster, spend less, create more content, coordinate more markets and still build brands that win. Companies are building AI capabilities in-house and pressure their agencies for discounts. Tech companies and consultancies are united in their promise: press the button, get the result.

Yet pharmaceutical company leaders need to ask themselves: if everyone is pressing the same button, why would their results differ?

 

AI is rapidly becoming infrastructure. It can scan literature, synthesize evidence, identify patterns, generate hypotheses, produce content and model scenarios quickly. This creates huge value. Like every major technology before it, AI will eliminate large amounts of manual work.

But value and differentiation are not the same thing.

As AI becomes easier to access, standing out becomes harder. Products with the same indication and mechanism of action do not automatically warrant the same strategy. Evidence, market realities, physician perceptions, and patient pathways differ. And most importantly, the business context of those who own the brand differ. But these differences only help if someone knows how to reflect them in the insights driving the strategy.

If left on their default settings, common tools tend to emphasize what is average, expected and already codified. They do not invent. They choose the most likely option, which can be useful, but is also inherently convergent. Large language models can show what is to be expected in a situation. It cannot tell you what should make your company, your brand, or your strategic choices distinctive.

AI cannot define ambition, weigh competing priorities, nor replace conviction, commercial judgement, and risk-based decision-making. Strategy is not content output. It is an act of judgement. The bolder the choice, the more unprecedented the situation, the less likely AI alone will deliver the solution.

So, if everyone is using the same tools, what will make the difference?

 

Human interaction is where differentiation is created.

Competitive advantage will not come from access to AI but from the quality of thinking that surrounds it.

In pharmaceuticals, that thinking is developed through human interaction. It starts with listening: to patients, HCPs and carers. Often, the most important signals are not in the direct verbal response. They need to be uncovered through empathy, observation and the kind of active listening that no model can replicate.

Then comes deliberation. Commercial, medical, access, analytics and regulatory perspectives must challenge each other based on real world experience, and organizational knowledge. AI cannot easily infer this perspective from generalized data alone. These conversations reveal where the real friction lies, which evidence is likely to change minds, which local nuances matter, and what will work for this organization.Human interaction is where differentiation is created.

This is also why external advisory capability matters even more in the age of AI. The role of an advisor is no longer simply to provide information, it is to help define the right problem, challenge the obvious, connect signals across functions and transform conversations into judgement. The aim is to build the foundation of direction on which AI can accelerate the output.

 

This applies across the entire value chain: strategy, scientific exchange, creative development, content production, review and approval. At every stage, AI can strengthen the workflow. But the direction, the judgement and the distinctiveness must come from people. The companies that win will not be the ones with the best tools but the ones that are best at turning common technology into uncommon choices.

That is the difference between automation and advantage.

Kodak gave everyone a better way to take a picture. But it was the photographers – the ones who could see beyond the obvious – who created something no camera could produce on its own.

AI will do the same. The question is whether you are building the capability to see what others cannot.