AI will turn your business and brand into kitsch, and when you are kitsch, you cannot be premium

• 21.07.2026.
• Technology

Many companies took digital marketing seriously only when a force called the COVID pandemic disrupted their “we've been doing it this way for years” ways of sales and business operations. And while digitalization and digital transformation are still on shaky legs, like a child just taking its first steps, we are already witnessing a plague of AI instant-solutions. Those that will, in the best-case scenario, cost you more money than you planned, and in the worst, even the survival of the business itself.

If you are among those who fell into that trap and think that AI is a sacred cow, so even these few lines of the article are already annoying you, give yourself a chance anyway and read it to the end. I don't guarantee anything, but there is a chance it will open up some new perspectives that can save your budget, business, and team. And that is my core intention.

Deeper than a trend

Over the last four years, this is my 41st article for Čarter.hr. Every single one of them is on topics of strategy, digital transformation, technology, marketing, sales, excellent customer experience, operational processes, and leadership. Repetition is the mother of learning, so I will, once again, repeat the basics. And that is because I am rooting for you, micro, small, and medium business owners, and I want you to survive on the market! And the key to that is not in the tool, but in understanding the basics and true adaptation.

Digital transformation is the way a company changes how it works, makes decisions, and creates value with the help of technology, not the tool itself or a project with an expiration date. It encompasses everything I wrote about in the mentioned articles and technology in all of that is just the “cherry on top”. What lies underneath, namely how people work and think, is the place where true change happens. AI, which many leaders are riding hard on and thinking it is a sacred cow, is only one segment of that whole. More precisely, the youngest technology in it.

At the beginning, I mentioned a toddler who is just learning its first steps. Well, nobody forces a child to run before it learns to walk, but we hold its hand, let it stumble, fall, and get back up again. We watch over it step by step until independence. With AI, it is almost the same. That is why I simply cannot understand why leaders expect this tool to run a marathon for them, while they themselves have not yet stood stably on their own two feet.

Numbers don't lie

In 2025, MIT found that despite an estimated 30 to 40 billion dollars invested in generative AI, as many as 95% of generative AI projects bring no measurable effect on profit. According to S&P Global, the share of companies that gave up on most of their AI initiatives in 2025 jumped from 17 % to 42 % in just one year. And Gartner predicts that by the end of 2027, more than 40 % of agentic AI projects will be canceled due to costs, unclear benefits, and weak controls.

It sounds bad, but what is more important is that this is not a new story.

Digital transformation, as a broader context, is just as bad. And it has been for years. I wrote about that in previous articles as well; according to BCG, only about 35% of projects of this nature reach their planned goals. The difference between those that succeed and the others lies in people, leadership, and the way of working. None of the mentioned numbers have a direct connection with technology, but with us - people!

A house is built from the ground up

AI has no place in your business if you do not have digitized processes from which it learns; organized, clean, and connected data that feeds it, systems that keep them together in a meaningful way (CRM is a classic example here), and people who know how and want to use it.

It is not a magic carpet floating in the air, but a new floor of a house standing on what you built underneath it.

Your foundations are the basics of basics: strategy, brand, design, marketing, sales, customer experience. On the ground floor is digitalization: converting paper and manual work into digital form. On the first floor live processes and technology like CRM and ERP. And only then are you at a place where you can start making informed decisions and changing the very way of working and doing business.

AI comes after all of that! As another floor that you build on only when there is stability and a structure underneath that can carry it. Many leaders treat it as the front door to business transformation or, even worse, as its ultimate goal. Realize that it is just another tool.

Buying a tool does not mean you know the trade

Through my work with leaders of micro, small, and medium entrepreneurship, I have seen many digital transformation projects and implementations of various tools that started with drive and enthusiasm, only to end up in a drawer and with people leaving the organization. And almost always the reason is one of three mistakes that go in circles.

The first: you think you are ready because you paid for a license and/or a consultant. As if you bought a concrete mixer and already consider yourself a mason. A tool in hand is not skill in head. Learning to work with it is yet to be done, and that knowledge is not bought, but acquired. Most leaders do not even know what exactly they would automate, because there are actually no processes; everything is in the head, in habit, in “we've been doing it this way for years”. With such settings, AI never brings order and progress, but only brings already existing disorder and chaos to light.

The second: you expect magic. “AI will manage my marketing and write offers, while agents will handle sales while I drink my morning coffee and think about the meaning of life.” It won't. It yields results only on a narrow and clearly defined task, for which you must have prior knowledge because otherwise you will not be able to recognize and assess whether what it offered you is usable at all.

And the third, about which most keep quiet, and is the most expensive of all: you think you have clean and neat data. You don't. They are scattered across various unconnected spreadsheets, tools, emails, and planners. AI will be only as good to you as what you “feed” it with. If you put garbage into it, you will get garbage back - just a little more nicely packaged. And precisely because you skipped the basics, as I already mentioned, you won't even know how to recognize that mess.

All three mistakes have roots in human beings, and that brings us full circle. AI, or any technology, on shaky foundations will not help you be premium, but will turn your brand and business into kitsch. And kitsch gets recognized. Because lies, as you know yourselves, have short legs.

So what are you to do then?

If you want to know where to start and what you can do today, contact me for a non-binding, informative conversation. Together we will see where your foundations are solid, and where they need to be built up before you even think about CRM, AI, and agents.

And if you prefer to start on your own and at your own pace, keep following me, in the next article I write about CRM strategy sprint and CRM strategy adoption, services with which I build precisely that foundation.

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