Human First, AI Second: The Difference Between Showing Up and Being Remembered

Between the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, and the NBA All-Star Game, winter 2026 drove an influx of competitive campaigns with significant budgets. Super Bowl LX ad rates hit a record $8 million for a 30-second spot, and Milan Cortina 2026 became the highest-grossing Winter Olympics of all time. For many marketers, these tentpole events can feel like a shortcut to relevance, with the promise of bigger audiences and outsized impact.

However, short-term scale alone doesn't solve for the authentic connection needed to win audiences long term. Looking back at the Super Bowl, while a handful of brands stood out, many campaign executions felt hollow and forgettable within days. Spending millions on a big stage doesn't guarantee lasting relevance if there's no human story at the center.

This lesson matters more than ever as brands set their sights on the next wave of major sports events. The upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup and LA 2028 Olympics will bring generational platforms, and audiences want to see themselves reflected in a brand through a real emotion, a relatable struggle, or a story that earns its place in culture. That's the secret sauce no artificial intelligence can replace.

As marketers look at how to make the most out of a high-stakes campaign investment, a winning strategy will be to start with a human-centered story and then using AI to amplify it across channels and time. That's how brands can get more out of a multimillion-dollar investment than just a few seconds of airtime.

A Human-Centered Story is Your Greatest Competitive Edge

Audiences are exposed to more content than ever, and they've gotten good at ignoring what doesn't feel relevant or what feels like AI slop. A recent Gartner survey found that 50 percent of consumers actually prefer brands that don't use generative AI in consumer-facing content, and 68 percent frequently question whether the content they see is even real. To make a campaign stick, you need a story people can actually connect with.

It means starting with the person on the other side of the message. What do they care about? What are they feeling? What will make them act? Whether you’re speaking to consumers or business buyers, the goal is always to create something a real person can see themselves in. This is what I call a business-to-human (B2H) mindset, which is critical for marketers today.

A strong example is Align, the maker of Invisalign, which got this right with its NFL campaign building on the #SmileSquad. The brand used NFL player partnerships to tell a more personal story of confidence, performance and self-expression to give teenagers a reason to see themselves in the message while giving parents an emotional entry point alongside them. The campaign gives the brand reach, credibility, and lasting relevance, all because the idea underneath it feels human.

AI is Your Force Multiplier, Not Your Quarterback

Once a brand has a strong narrative, AI becomes a powerful way to amplify its investment and extend what's already working across channels and over time.

After Align created connection through players, it scaled its NFL storytelling by using AI to convert player testimonials into written content that lived on a dedicated page where fans could keep engaging long after the initial activation. Align launched its NFL site in six weeks to meet peak-season demand and the campaign generated more than 1.5 billion impressions and, more importantly, it kept the brand relevant well beyond a single moment in time. What resonated was the human story, and AI helped scale its impact.

Playing the Long Game

As major sporting events get more expensive and more crowded to participate in, simply showing up is no longer enough. Big-budget moments may buy fleeting attention, but they don’t earn relevance or longevity on their own.

AI can help a campaign reach further and last longer, but it needs a strong human-centered idea to work with. Start with a story worth telling, and AI becomes the engine behind a campaign's staying power. For brands, that’s the key to turning a high-cost campaign moment into long-term relevance that lasts beyond the final whistle.

Elizabeth Maxson is the chief marketing officer of Contentful, a content management platform trusted by more than 4,200 companies around the world.