As the saying goes, history repeats itself.
When the internet first arrived in the workplace, many companies were unsure how it would fit into business. Some dismissed it as a distraction, while others adopted it without thinking through policies or costs. Over time, frameworks and best practices emerged, and what once felt uncertain became the foundation of global commerce.
Email, cloud computing and mobility followed similar arcs: disruptive at first, then indispensable. Each wave paired opportunity with risk. The same is true today with artificial intelligence. AI is not a cure-all; it is a powerful toolkit. To use it well, promotional products industry organizations need clear, durable principles.
Here are recommendations, grounded in past lessons, to guide adoption now.
Protect Data First
AI thrives on data, which makes security the first priority. A simple way to frame decisions is the “CIA” triad: confidentiality, integrity and availability. Confidentiality protects sensitive information. Integrity ensures data is accurate and unaltered. Availability ensures the right people can access what they need when they need it.
When evaluating AI platforms, especially codeless ones, ask where data is hosted, who has access and how customer data is segregated. Certain providers offer dedicated infrastructure, similar to private clouds, with stronger isolation than purely shared environments.
Leaders should decide, explicitly, what is “secure enough” for their risk profile.
Costs Count
Every major shift introduces a new cost model. With the cloud, businesses learned pay-as-you-go billing. With AI, the core unit is the token – a small chunk of text the system reads or generates. Pricing scales with volume of text processed, not hours or storage.
That can deliver value quickly, yet escalate costs just as quickly. A long document, a customer chat or an automated workflow can process thousands of tokens in seconds. Before broad rollout, set budgets, track usage and decide which problems merit AI. Guardrails prevent surprises and keep experimentation sustainable.
Start Small & Grow With The Technology
When mobile apps emerged, few firms rebuilt entire businesses on Day 1. Pilots with clear objectives let teams learn without overwhelming operations or budgets. The same approach works now.
Jeison Ortega
CTO, Charles River Apparel
Start with a defined use case, a success metric and a review date. Scale after real outcomes, not hype. This step-by-step path keeps momentum while tools mature and employees gain confidence. It also positions you to adapt as quantum computing expands AI’s capabilities in the coming years.
Anonymize To Protect
Security is not only about where data lives. It is also about how it is handled. Feeding raw customer or employee information into AI tools creates avoidable risk. Wherever possible, anonymize your inputs.
Technology helps. Data loss prevention systems from major cloud providers can flag sensitive information before it leaves the organization. Controls matter, but training matters more. Make it clear what can and cannot be shared with AI systems. As with email and internet adoption, people remain the biggest vulnerability and the strongest defense.
Trust Your Vendors (But Verify)
One of the fastest ways to benefit from AI is to leverage enhancements inside the tools you already use. If a software provider has earned your trust to manage customer data, process transactions or run campaigns, you can extend that trust as it integrates AI features.
Treat this as informed trust. Ask vendors for security documentation and controls you recognize from other services: SOC 2 reports, data-processing agreements, data retention limits and clear statements about whether customer data is used to train models. For most organizations, the quickest wins will come from unlocking new capabilities in existing platforms rather than building from scratch.
Set The Rules
When email became common, companies wrote usage policies to reduce risk and set expectations. AI is at the same stage now. Every organization should define a clear AI policy that reflects its workflows, obligations and risk tolerance.
A good policy lists approved tools, defines what data may be used, describes how outputs are reviewed and assigns ownership for oversight. Without this guidance, employees will experiment in ways that may affect compliance, security or reputation. By setting rules early, leaders guide innovation while protecting the business.
AI feels new, but the pattern is familiar. The internet, email, cloud computing and mobility reshaped work because leaders paired opportunity with frameworks. The same will be true now.
Begin with the CIA triad, manage costs deliberately, start small and scale on results, anonymize sensitive data, lean on trusted vendors with verification and set clear policies.
The promo companies that apply these principles will not just keep pace with this wave of technology. They will harness it.
Ortega is the chief technology officer at Charles River Apparel and a member of the PPAI Technology Committee.
