Ep.5 Brand Selection: Will AI agents choose your brand?

Pim

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to another new episode of Brand Focus, a podcast about brands that want to grow in times when growth is anything but a given.

 

And uncertain times are exactly what we are living in. For brands, growth is not easy. That is simply because there is a combination of different factors that make growth more difficult. Take the loss of consumer trust, for example. We are dealing with economic uncertainty, wars around the world, and pandemics that are only just behind us. Brands are also dependent on algorithms, on Google, on Meta, and on TikTok. Data and privacy regulations make it harder for brands to grow. And of course, there is AI, the big cloud hanging over companies.

 

But is that a beautiful white cloud with the sun shining behind it? Or is it a large dark cloud? That is the question. There is a lot of uncertainty around it, and that makes it difficult for brands to take a clear position. It makes it difficult to grow. And that is what I want to talk about today.

 

The fact that AI is having an impact on the industry is, I think, obvious by now. You recently saw that reflected very clearly in another industry: Wall Street. A report went viral among analysts. It was the Citriny Research report. Maybe you saw it. The markets reacted very strongly to a story that went viral among analysts and financial specialists, particularly in the United States.

 

The report sketched a future scenario about the impact of AI on the economy and on several industries in 2028. It was, in a way, a fictional story written by an analyst, supported by a report suggesting that a number of companies would suffer heavily from the rise of AI. Many jobs would disappear. AI would take over a huge amount of work. And it also introduced a new term: Ghost GDPR. That term gave a name to a gut feeling that had been circulating in the market for some time.

 

Because there are plenty of analysts who believe that AI is creating a massive bubble. At the same time, there are also many people who argue the opposite, precisely because the companies benefiting from AI today are posting strong profits. So there is uncertainty around AI, even on the stock market. But what you saw in response to that viral blog post by the analyst is that the market really did react.

 

American stocks in particular fell quickly. Software and tech companies took major hits. The market even dropped by several percentage points over the course of a few days, and according to some, around 200 billion dollars in market value was lost in a short period of time. So the market responded to a hypothetical scenario as if it were actual news.

 

And I think that captures the broader feeling around AI very well. There are real questions about what kind of impact AI is going to have. To answer that question, especially when it comes to the marketing profession, it is interesting to look at where AI is already having a tangible impact today.

 

As I see it, there are two dimensions. First, there is the production impact, meaning the production side of marketing: translating copy, generating images, analyzing data. And second, there is brand experience: how AI experiences your brand. Those two dimensions are worth separating.

 

If you look at a company that went through a successful AI transformation, Klarna is an interesting example. Klarna is a Swedish payment provider, founded about twenty years ago, and perhaps one of Europe’s scale up success stories. They recently went public.

 

About three years ago, Klarna positioned itself as the ultimate example of AI success. They announced that they would save significant costs in marketing, around 10 million, by using AI for translations, image generation, and data analysis. They developed an AI assistant that had an impact across all customer interactions. Hundreds of customer service employees would be replaced. They also made major progress in the speed of bringing campaigns to market. It received major media coverage and generated a lot of enthusiasm. That example further fueled the AI hype among marketers.

 

But a year later came the reality check. The CEO admitted that there was a downside to blindly trusting AI. Cost savings had become too dominant, and the quality of service had suffered as a result. Brand experience and customer satisfaction declined.

 

Eventually, Klarna announced that it wanted to bring people back. So it is not as simple as saying that AI will take over everything. It is about a combination.

 

AI has a huge impact on production, but when it comes to how the brand is experienced, there is still work to do. At the same time, developments are moving incredibly fast. What used to take a year now happens in a week.

 

Agents such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are changing the way consumers interact with brands. Where people used to use Google to compare and select, these systems now do that for them. Agents compare, select, negotiate, and act in the interest of the user. That means that as a marketer, you are no longer designing only for people. You are also designing for rational systems.

 

That raises the question: what does the future of marketing look like when AI helps make decisions? Who are you still designing your brand for?

 

If an AI had to choose today, would it select your brand? Are you attractive, or are you interchangeable?

 

Traditional marketing revolves around emotion, storytelling, and persuasion. But agents do not respond to symbolism. They respond to structure. Creativity remains important, but it is no longer enough. Without demonstrable superiority, creativity becomes decoration.

 

We are moving from emotional preference to structural superiority. That means your brand does not only need to be attractive. It needs to be demonstrably better.

 

The future is hybrid. You need to design for people and for agents. You need to create emotional resonance and win rationally.

 

That requires a new type of brand architecture. For people, the brand needs to feel like a story. For agents, it needs to function like a system.

 

For AI, other pillars become important: verification, category, predictability, and ranking.

 

Marketing therefore becomes less about promise and more about proof.

 

Visibility alone is no longer enough. What matters is whether you are selected.

 

If you are not included in the shortlist, you are effectively invisible.

 

And that may be even worse than being rejected.

 

Because if you are not selected, you often do not even know that you were never part of the consideration set.

 

That is why marketers should not focus only on the production side of AI. They should focus especially on the question: how do we make our brand selectable for both people and agents?

 

Because the future is hybrid. And if you do not organize for that, the market will do it for you.

 

That is it for today. See you next time.