They forgot who'd be looking
This is the bit that gets us. Bedminster is home to Upfest, one of Europe's biggest street art festival. Some of the best street artists around have painted its walls (I've even been lucky enough to meet a couple of them). Bristol's full of artists, writers, poets, musicians, and people who make things for a living.
And someone put up an AI mural. On their street. Of their city.
Even if all of the details in the mural were correct, it would still have gone down badly. For a lot of the people walking past, AI art threatens how they pay the rent. Seeing it on their local pub felt like being told their work doesn't matter. That's what Caroline Maggs meant when she called it "political".
The mistakes just made it easier to laugh at.
Stick the same thing on a wall at a motorway services and we probably wouldn’t have seen such a strong reaction. It became a story because of where it went up and who saw it.
So before you decide how to make something (AI, a freelancer, your nephew with Canva), work out who's going to see it and how they'll feel about the way you made it.
They forgot their own values
Here's the awkward bit for Punch. Read their website and community comes up again and again. Their pubs are "the community's pulse". The money they spend goes on "boosting local suppliers". And, in their own words: "Everything we do involves the community, that's mainly why we operate."
A local artist is a local supplier. Bedminster has plenty of them. Maggs said the collective was "saddened and angered" that the pub didn't choose "to support handmade work".
We doubt anyone at Punch set out to snub the neighbourhood. More likely, someone needed a quick fix for a tatty wall, and nobody stopped to ask whether it matched what the company says it stands for.
That's the trap. Values tend to get checked on the big stuff, like a rebrand or a campaign launch. The small, quick decisions slip through. And those are often the ones people actually see.
Using AI can do more harm to your brand than good
Bristol's reaction isn't a one-off. Most of these studies are from the US, but the NIM one covers the UK, too.
- Advertisers misread people. In IAB's latest survey, 82% of ad executives thought Gen Z and Millennial consumers felt positive about AI ads. Only 45% did, and that gap grew by five points in a year.
- The word "AI" puts people off. A Washington State University study of more than 1,000 US adults found that "AI" in a product description made people less likely to buy. Lead researcher Mesut Cicek put it down to lower "emotional trust".
- Labels change how people see the same ad. The Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions showed people identical ads, some labelled as AI-generated. The labelled ones came across as less natural and less useful. They did better for high-tech products and worse for traditional ones, and a local pub is about as traditional as it gets.
Big brands get caught out, too. McDonald's Netherlands pulled its AI Christmas ad within days last December, after people called it "creepy" and "inauthentic".
It comes back to the saying “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. It’s important to ask why you’re doing something and who for. Even if it is for something as simple as a mural.
