Every few years, a new technology arrives that promises to change everything. And every few years, organizations rush toward it as fast as they can, usually without the guardrails, governance, or even the basic understanding needed to use it responsibly and effectively.

We’ve watched this movie before.

In the early days of the web, companies threw up websites with blinking banners and visitor counters because “everyone else was doing it.” Then social media arrived, and corporate accounts launched into the void with no strategy, no content governance, and no appreciation for how quickly things can go sideways at scale.

We told ourselves that we would learn.
Yet here we are again.

AI Is Today’s Version of “Just Build a Website” or “We Need a Facebook Page”

Generative AI has sparked an extraordinary wave of experimentation, especially in marketing. Brands see others using the tech and worry they’ll fall behind if they aren’t doing the same. The result? A surge in AI-produced ads, images, and experiences that often feel more like technology demos than meaningful brand expressions.

But here’s the real déjà vu: organizations aren’t skipping the hard parts… they’re skipping the boring parts.

• The policy.
• The governance.
• The risk modeling.
• The clarity about when humans should lead and when technology should support.

That’s the central premise of The Power of Digital Policy: emerging technologies unlock extraordinary opportunities, but only when organizations balance innovation with the operational foundations that make it sustainable, safe, and reputationally sound.

When they don’t? We get exactly what we’re seeing now.

Case in Point: AI-Generated Ads That Resemble 2003 Pop-Up Ads in Spirit

McDonald’s recent AI-generated holiday spot is a perfect example. The ad agency proudly proclaimed that a team worked around the clock for seven weeks, generating thousands of clips and stitching them together into something “cinematic.”

Instead, the public recoiled. Comments mocked the incoherence. The video was delisted after backlash. And a production company defended the work as if the criticism were a misunderstanding of art rather than a predictable outcome of unclear purpose, poor creative governance, and an overreliance on novelty.

Coke’s AI holiday ad earned similar groans. And this is not a question of AI ethics or long-term existential risk—it’s a basic failure of design, audience understanding, and internal controls.

Again: we’ve been here before.

Case in Point: AI in Drive-Thrus Solving Problems No One Asked To Solve

Restaurants are also racing headfirst into AI-driven automation, with similarly predictable results. Taco Bell’s voice-ordering AI behaves more like a bored teenager on a headset than an efficiency tool, except the teenager is arguably better at understanding the menu. McDonald’s scrapped its first attempt after repeated failures, and Wendy’s has admitted to high rates of human intervention.

The pattern is identical to the early web:

• adopt first,
• ask questions later,
• scramble to explain missteps along the way.

Not because the technology isn’t promising—AI absolutely has real potential—but because the rollout prioritizes novelty over readiness, optics over operations, and “can we?” over “should we?”

The Lesson We Should Have Learned by Now

Technology doesn’t fail organizations.
Organizations fail themselves when they use technology without the structures needed to support it.

Twenty-five years of digital transformation should have taught us that:

• Innovation without governance creates brand risk.
• Automation without clarity creates service failures.
• Content without standards creates reputational damage.
• “Experimentation” is not a strategy.

Enterprises do know how to do this right—they’ve been doing it in pockets for decades. The challenge now is doing it consistently across AI initiatives.

AI Success Isn’t About Being First—It’s About Being Prepared

The companies succeeding with AI today aren’t the ones using the technology the loudest. They’re the ones using it the wisest:

• Clear use cases
• Strong data foundations
• Human oversight
• Defined risk boundaries
• Policies that help teams innovate safely
• A governance model that moves at the speed of technology rather than the speed of bureaucracy

That balance, between opportunity and risk, is the entire argument of The Power of Digital Policy. These aren’t new lessons. They’re the same ones we learned from the web, from mobile, from social media, and from every “next big thing” since.

We just have to decide whether we’re willing to apply them.

Because if we don’t, we’ll keep getting AI-driven holiday ads that viewers quite literally cannot stomach.

And nobody wants to repeat the worst parts of early digital experimentation, least of all the organizations spending seven sleepless weeks producing something their audience wishes had never existed.

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