Why People Don’t Trust AI Marketing – and What To Do About It 

There's a scene in 13 Going on 30 I think of often. Jennifer Garner's character, Jenna Rink, has her life turned upside down when she wakes up as a 30-something the day after her 13th birthday. She has her dream job as a fashion magazine editor, but soon discovers she's been stealing stories from a competitor's publication. She instantly course-corrects with the passion and genuine love she had for fashion as a teen, executing a nostalgia-filled, yearbook-style spread to save the magazine. 

Over the years, she missed during the time jump, her character fell into the trap many of us do — looking for an easy out in her career to get a job done faster or cheaper. This is exactly what the current age of AI feels like. Ideas feel ripped off from something else; everything looks the same; the public is wary and distrustful; and no one is moving the needle. 

At the same time, there is a wide understanding that if we don’t learn how to use this technology, we might get “left behind.” As a fast-paced B2B marketing agency, we’re right in the midst of this with you; here’s what we’re learning about when and where using AI is effective, beneficial and avoids sowing distrust for a client’s brand.

People don't necessarily mistrust AI. They mistrust how it's being used.

Here's the thing nobody quite says out loud: the backlash against AI-generated marketing isn't always about the technology at face value. It's about what happens when the technology is the whole process instead of a part. 

A 2024 Bynder study found that more than half of consumers say they become less engaged when they suspect content is AI-generated — even though a majority actually preferred the AI-written sample over the human-written one in a blind test. Read that twice. The content itself often tests fine. It's the suspicion of a shortcut that kills trust. That same study found consumers who spot AI-generated brand content are likely to describe that brand as impersonal, untrustworthy, lazy, or uncreative.

That's not a knock on AI. That's a knock on people using AI like their marketing agency. 

And the public already feels this tension, even if they can't always name it. Pew Research Center's 2026 findings show that half of U.S. adults say the increased use of AI in daily life makes them feel more concerned than excited, a share that's grown since 2021. But it's not blanket distrust — Pew's data also shows Americans are notably more open to AI playing a role in analytical tasks, like data analysis, than they are to trusting it with things that feel human, like creativity or relationships.

People trust AI to help. They don't trust AI to be the expert.

The case for hiring people who know what they're doing

When companies join our roster of clients, they trust us to bring our expertise to the table. That expertise now includes knowing how to leverage AI — and let me be clear, we're not interested in AI for AI's sake. 

We're interested in what it frees us up to do better. Bynder's CMO Warren Daniels put it well: as more marketers lean on AI, the priority should stay on what he called "the human touch." That's not a nice sentiment. It's the actual differentiator. We aren’t using AI to do our jobs, we are still very much producing the content that has helped our clients attract new followers, increase their engagement, rank higher, and more. AI’s role in the production process is shaped exclusively by us.

Here are a few places where our expertise comes in handy:

• Building a system vs visiting a vending machine: Our team members work together within the LLM systems, loading and building context, training it on brand guidelines, and adding pertinent info from the client (always with permission) so we’re not starting from step 1 with every request.   
• Instructing the LLM on what role it should have: You can tell Chat GPT or Claude NOT to do your job. Instructions might be along the line of “Don’t write for me, but help me outline,” “Condense this feedback into a bulleted list, but do not draft a response,” “Give me compelling headline suggestions for a graphic based on this blog, but don’t offer design advice.” Prompting like this helps us to keep AI in the helper position and our team in the expert position.
• Repetitive or time-consuming tasks: Logo retrieval, data clean up, and consolidating feedback in a way that makes sense to production members are a few tasks that no one is getting that excited about. And this isn’t the work that truly matters in the end, but it does help us get there. Experts are transferring these tasks to AI so that they can focus on the bigger tasks. 
• Going above and beyond: Many team members have an “If only I had time…” running list full of things they’d like to work on when they get relief in their resourcing calendars.   Progress has been made on many of those items because we’ve been able to work faster on other projects using the above methods. It’s these unexpected use cases that are making a big impact on the way we work.

How we use AI at Four Columns

AI is never the final touch in our process. It’s also never the first. 

Our process looks like this: HUMAN → AI → HUMAN → PUBLISH. 

Our team is the first touch within a project that is pre-loaded with brand guidelines, tone and voice notes and client context. We’ve also worked within our platform so that the first AI output isn’t immediate; it’s informed by a back and forth and a refining, pushing it further. When it does come back to us, we refine the product with our expertise.  

An example: we have quarterly brainstorm meetings for one of our clients to come up with video content. Meetings of this type are the most energetic and collaborative moments we have as a team. Creativity remains at the forefront. Each individual is pulling from their own experience and taste, what they’ve seen work based on the content they consume, and what they know will land based on the audience. 

After those meetings, AI can help outline the structure for scripts or videos or can take them and turn them into a shoot schedule based on overlapping props or subjects. That’s not taking work away from anyone. Our team is getting to do the parts they enjoy and that they are experts at, leaving AI to help us get from concept to final faster.

If you're a small team using AI — here's where to look closely

When you approach AI alone, you don’t have the checks and balances of a full team. Nearly every content piece we produce goes through a minimum of 4 departments — strategy, account management, communications and creative — where each person touching the deliverable brings a literal “human touch” and their own unique expertise to weigh in and make something better. 

If you are an individual at a company tasked with “using AI” to “do marketing,” you have to be all those people at once. That often leads to a process that looks like: AI → COPY → PASTE → PUBLISH. That is a stark contrast to our process mentioned earlier: HUMAN → AI → HUMAN → PUBLISH. 

You may have heard that “it’s all about the prompt. What you put into AI is what you get out.” Without any of the expertise of an agency employing the tactics outlined earlier in this blog, the prompts are probably going to be quite similar, leading to a very similar product. Just like the matching cover stories in Jenna Rink’s world in 13 Going on 30, matching content raises suspicion. That sameness of content and flyers today is “the AI tell” that instantly garners “slop” comments. That’s not helping anyone’s brand. 

Here are a few tips from our approach to AI that you can employ if you don’t have the resources to work with an agency: 

• Create projects or return to similar chats where you are building context vs. starting from scratch. 
• Be your brand’s ambassador. AI may create a flyer that is technically what you asked for, but just feels wrong or not like your brand. Keep refining and don’t hit publish until the piece stands up to your brand standards. 
• Prompt with the end in mind. Tell AI not just what you need but how you plan to use what you are asking it to create/do for you.

Trust is earned by the how, not the who

The agencies and the individuals who earn trust right now aren't the ones avoiding AI or the ones leaning on it entirely — they're the ones who know exactly where the line is. AI and LLM technology is rapidly advancing and evolving. This blog is not meant to make a grand statement on AI usage and the societal impacts down the road. What we’ve outlined is how we are staying on top of this emerging technology and crafting an approach that helps us to remain the experts we are while also becoming a better and more efficient resource for our clients.

And with that, I end with Jenna Rink’s final presentation speech, which sums up the importance of keeping the human touch in every part of the process while working with AI: “I know this is different. I mean, from anything we've ever done. And I know you might hate it and think I'm completely crazy...but I won't care. Even if I get fired — and I don't mean that disrespectfully — t's just that I've realized something. Who are these women? Does anyone know? I-I I don't recognize any of 'em. I want to see...my best friend's big sister and....the girls from the soccer team....my next door neighbor. Real women who are smart and pretty and happy to be who they are. These are the women to look up to. Let's....let's put LIFE back into the magazine and...and FUN and laughter and silliness. I think we all...I think all of us want to feel something that we've forgotten or turned our backs on because maybe we didn't realize how much we were leaving behind. We need to remember what used to be good. If we don't, we won't recognize it even if it hits us between the eyes.”

Sources referenced:

• Bynder, "How consumers interact with AI vs human content"
• Pew Research Center, "Key findings about how Americans view artificial intelligence" (March 2026)

Maggie Griffin is the Creative Director at Four Columns Marketing. She attended Baylor University and graduated with a BA in Medical Humanities, and completed the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core Honors Program. She has over 13 years of experience in creative fields, from developing curriculum and leading after-school art programs to graphic design and social media management for departments within Baylor’s Division of Student Life, to freelance branding work. She joined Four Columns in 2020.