In an era where algorithms shape audience attention and artificial intelligence enables virtually anyone to create content, the question arises: what truly distinguishes great brands from the average today? This is precisely what Radim Malinić will address at this year’s Branding Conference. Malinić is one of Europe’s most renowned creatives, founder of the London-based studio Brand Nu, author of multiple internationally acclaimed books, and host of the Daring Creativity podcast, which is listened to in over 160 countries.
On 18 September at Sarajevo’s Zetra, under the tagline ‘Brand New Control’, Malinić will speak about preserving brand identity in the age of AI, content hyper-production, and algorithms that increasingly dictate the rules of communication. In this interview, he reveals why he believes AI will not replace creatives, why many brands voluntarily surrender their own identity, and what will constitute the ultimate competitive advantage in the future
Brands today have more tools than ever, yet many are increasingly similar. In the era of AI tools and generative design, what constitutes a true competitive advantage for a creative professional today?
The strange irony of this moment is that the more tools we have, the less distinctive the output becomes. And I think that tells us something important — that the tool was never really the advantage. What constitutes a true competitive advantage right now is the depth of your belief. A brand that has done the inner work and knows what it stands for, why it exists, and what it refuses to become will always cut through, regardless of what everyone else has access to. A Forever Daring brand doesn’t compete on capability. It competes on conviction, which AI cannot generate because it was never taught.
Many brands today optimise their content for platforms. Are they losing control over their own identity because of this?
They are not losing their identity. They are trading it. Slowly, willingly, and usually without realising it. Platform optimisation is seductive because it offers metrics in exchange for meaning. You get reach, and you surrender resonance. The brands that endure are the ones that treat the platform as a distribution channel, not a creative director. The question I ask is: who is setting the brief? If the algorithm is setting the brief, the brand has already abdicated. Control begins with the decision to stay the author of your own story — even when the platform punishes you for it.
AI allows anyone to create visuals, campaigns, and content. When everyone can create, what remains under the control of creatives?
What remains, the thing I find genuinely exciting rather than frightening, is judgment. Creatives have always been more than makers. They have been the people in the room who could look at something and say, “This is true” or “This isn’t us.” That capacity doesn’t come from a prompt. It comes from years of questioning, failing, choosing, refining. When creation becomes democratised, the rarest thing is not the ability to make something. It’s the ability to know what’s worth making, and why. In my upcoming book, Daring Forever, I write about what I call ‘permission’: the internal authority to trust your own eye. That is what remains irreducibly human.
In the future, will the greatest competitive advantage be the ability to create or the ability to make creative decisions?
It will, without a doubt, be our decision-making! And I don’t think it’s particularly close. The act of creation will become cheaper and faster every year. But the decision, what to make, for whom, in service of what belief, that will become more valuable as the noise grows louder. The brands and creatives who will matter are those who have developed what I call a Daring Forever sensibility: a trained instinct for what is true, what is necessary, and what deserves to exist. You can prompt your way to a visual. You cannot get to a position by prompting.
When we talk about “Brand New Control”, what do you think is most important to keep under one’s own control, regardless of technological changes?
There’s no other place to find and control, and that is the truth (of any brand). Not your tone of voice guidelines, not your brand book, not your visual system — though those matter. The thing that must never be outsourced or automated is the act of finding your truth and deciding how it is felt. That is the work I return to again and again across all our brand projects. The finding is an act of courage, the making is an act of craft, and both require a human being willing to go deep enough to discover something worth saying. A brand that holds onto its truth holds onto everything. A brand that loses it has nothing left to protect.
If you were launching a brand-new brand from scratch today, what would you invest your initial budget in: design, content, community, or something else entirely?
Honestly, I’d start with clarity — and then I’d build a community around it immediately. Because here’s what I’ve come to believe: the brands that will endure are not the ones with the biggest reach, they’re the ones with the deepest belonging. We’re already seeing it. Micro platforms with a clear, uncompromising voice are pulling like-minded people together in ways that mass channels simply cannot replicate. When you know your truth, and you speak it without hedging, you don’t need to chase an audience — you attract people. Design can wait. Content can evolve. But that early community, gathered around something real, becomes the living proof that your brand means something. It becomes the thing that holds when everything else shifts. Get the truth right first, build the room for the right people second, and the rest follows with a coherence that no budget alone can buy.
Radim Malinić is only one of the major international names coming to Sarajevo for the Branding Conference this year. Early Bird registration fees can be secured until August 1, and all information about the conference, speakers and applications is available at www.branding.ba.
