TL;DR
- Qualcomm’s AI agent checks content against 1,200+ Snapdragon trademarks automatically
- Legal/brand team workload reduced 30-40% while compliance improved
- Agent built by a marketer (not engineer) in 4 weeks; became #1 most-used at Qualcomm
- Best for: Large enterprises with complex brand guidelines, trademark requirements, regulated content
- Key insight: Brand governance can shift from bottleneck to enabler with AI automation
Qualcomm’s AI agent checks every piece of marketing content against 1,200+ Snapdragon trademark terms—automatically routing exceptions to humans and handling routine compliance in real-time. Built by a marketer in four weeks.
Before the agent, every piece of Snapdragon content required manual review.
One thousand two hundred trademark terms. Each with specific usage rules. Each requiring exact compliance.
“Snapdragon” itself has requirements. Product names, feature names, technology descriptors—all trademarked. All needing correct capitalization, proper context, required disclaimers.
A marketer writes a blog post. Legal reviews it. Brand team reviews it. Changes get requested. The marketer revises. Review again. More changes.
The content eventually publishes. Three weeks later. If everything goes smoothly.
“Before agent-based workflows, every piece of content required manual legal and brand review,” the team explained. “A bottleneck crushing velocity.”
Qualcomm couldn’t publish fast enough. Not because writing was slow. Because review was manual.
The Trademark Reality
Qualcomm isn’t paranoid about trademarks. They’re legally required to protect them.
Trademark law is unforgiving. Fail to consistently enforce usage rules, and competitors can argue the trademark has become generic. “Aspirin” was once a trademark. So was “Escalator.” Companies lost them through inconsistent enforcement.
Qualcomm’s 1,200+ terms aren’t bureaucracy. They’re legal assets worth billions.
But enforcing consistency across thousands of content pieces, dozens of teams, and global markets? That requires either:
- An army of reviewers
- A smarter approach
How Writer’s AI Agent Transformed Brand Compliance
Brent Summers isn’t an AI engineer. He’s a Staff Manager in Qualcomm’s marketing department.
He built an agent on Writer’s platform that transformed brand compliance.
The workflow:
- Content intake. Writer creates or imports content into the system.
- Automatic trademark check. AI scans against all 1,200+ terms instantly.
- Real-time guidance. Writers see corrections directly in Microsoft Word—no separate tool, no lookup tables.
- Intelligent routing. Based on content type, the agent routes through appropriate review gates.
- Exception surfacing. Only items requiring human judgment get escalated.
- Compliance tracking. Everything logged for audit and reporting.
“Four weeks from idea to scaled deployment across hundreds of users,” the implementation timeline showed.
The agent became the #1 most-used at Qualcomm. Built by a marketer, not an engineer.
The Platform Foundation
Qualcomm deployed Writer’s enterprise AI platform.
The setup:
Brand terms database. All 1,200+ trademarks uploaded with usage rules, contexts, and required disclosures.
Microsoft Word integration. Writers get guidance inside their normal tool. No context switching. No separate review step.
Automated compliance verification. Content gets checked before surfacing for review, not after.
Agent workflows. The AI doesn’t just flag problems—it orchestrates the entire compliance process.
“With Writer, I’m able to analyze 200-300 data sources within seconds,” said Andrew Perng, Marketing Analyst at Qualcomm. “It’s incredibly easy to use the platform to summarize, identify key themes, analyze sentiment, and apply the right format and corporate voice to my reports.”
The Results
The numbers validated the approach.
30-40% workload reduction for legal and brand teams
Improved compliance despite less manual review
Faster content velocity across all marketing channels
Hundreds of users onboarded in weeks
“My workload has been reduced by 30-40% and my output is better than before,” Perng reported.
The legal team didn’t become obsolete. They became strategic. Instead of reviewing every comma placement, they focused on genuinely complex issues—new product launches, partner agreements, market-specific requirements.
The Governance Model
Qualcomm’s CMO Don McGuire emphasized that AI adoption started with protection, not experimentation.
“The first thing we did was we developed an adoption model and a governance model that protected us first and foremost and provided a vetting process for AI tools,” McGuire explained.
The approach:
- Cross-functional stakeholders. Legal, IT, marketing, and business units all involved in AI governance.
- Vetting process. Tools evaluated before deployment, not after problems emerge.
- Protection first. Security and compliance requirements established before efficiency gains pursued.
This governance-first approach enabled aggressive deployment. Because the foundation was solid, the expansion could be fast.
The Pattern: Atomization and Compliance
Qualcomm’s use case represents a broader pattern in enterprise content.
Content atomization: One “hero” asset (white paper, product announcement, major campaign) becomes dozens of derivative pieces—blog posts, social updates, email sequences, regional variations.
The problem: each derivative needs the same compliance as the original. Multiply trademark checks by content volume.
AI solution: Compliance happens at creation time, not review time. The system prevents violations rather than catching them.
This pattern applies wherever content volume exceeds review capacity:
- Financial services with disclosure requirements
- Healthcare with FDA marketing rules
- Technology with trademark protection
- Regulated industries with mandatory language
The Non-Engineer Builder
Perhaps the most significant detail: Brent Summers built Qualcomm’s most-used agent without engineering background.
“Built by a marketer, not an engineer.”
This matters because it demonstrates the accessibility of modern AI platforms. The people who understand the problem—marketing professionals who live with brand guidelines daily—can now build the solutions.
The technical barriers that once required months of development and engineering resources have collapsed. Platforms like Writer provide the infrastructure; domain experts provide the knowledge.
Four weeks. One marketer. Hundreds of users. The #1 agent at a Fortune 500 company.
The Competitive Advantage
Fast content isn’t just convenient. It’s competitive.
Marketing windows are narrow. Product launches have specific dates. Competitive responses need speed. Seasonal campaigns don’t wait for legal review backlogs.
“Content velocity increased while compliance improved,” Qualcomm reported.
Before: velocity and compliance were tradeoffs. Go fast, risk errors. Be compliant, move slowly.
After: velocity and compliance became complementary. AI handles routine compliance instantly; humans handle exceptions quickly. The bottleneck vanishes.
The Template
Qualcomm’s experience offers a blueprint for brand governance transformation:
Centralize brand rules. All 1,200 terms in one database. No scattered style guides or tribal knowledge.
Integrate at point of creation. Microsoft Word integration means writers never leave their tool. Compliance happens in flow, not as afterthought.
Route intelligently. Not all content needs the same review. The agent understands content types and routes accordingly.
Surface only exceptions. Human attention is scarce. Reserve it for genuine complexity.
Measure what matters. Workload reduction (30-40%) and compliance improvement both tracked.
Empower domain experts. The marketer who understood the problem built the solution. Engineers weren’t the bottleneck.
One thousand two hundred trademarks. Checked automatically. Every time. In seconds.
That’s what brand governance looks like when AI handles the routine and humans handle the exceptional.
