After the Search Engine: Brand’s Enduring Value in the Age of AI-Directed Customer Journeys
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Across industries, we consider consumer journeys that move through the purchase funnel: awareness and interest, consideration and intent, evaluation and purchase, and finally, advocacy and repeat purchase. In the marketplace, there are infinite customer paths through these phases, each one unique and shaped by a customer’s preferences, personal context and prevailing market conditions.
One key moment in the journey that has become as big as Google’s wildest dreams and company valuation is the moment where marketers meet customers in the realm of internet search. For the marketer, that means appearing atop the search results page and getting a click through to a business’s virtual address where a consumer can convert in some form.
The age of online search-based customer journeys is coming to an end. Search click-through rates have declined by as much as 30 to 40% year over year, and web traffic has dropped by similar levels across many leading online publishers. AI innovation shifts the sands of the customer engagement game as AI’s role crystallizes in forms injected throughout the marketplace.
Directed by human inquiry, AI, and more specifically, agents gifted with model-weight-based intelligence, mediates brand-customer interactions. In the new age, brand power endures. The traditional purchase funnel collapses, disjointed funnel marketing campaign strategies fade into history, and integrated brand performance thinking reigns supreme.
Brand, and AI’s perception of it, becomes the essential strategic asset that governs performance. Brand safety now relies on its trust index within the AI model. Brand is no longer just a story and a feeling; it is an algorithmic fingerprint. This digitized embodiment of brand trust and equity requires thoughtful investment. Thankfully, algorithmic atomization of a brand allows for direct measurement of the performance of brand investments.
Picture this: the aspects of brand selection are perfectly vivid to AI. It is unhindered by the limits of human cognition and attention. AI directly recommends or even executes decisions where choice evaluation happens in a collapsed and simultaneous moment.
Agents intermediate market interactions between businesses and customers, directed by the objectives each party encodes in their agent staff. Coordinating agents identify and match customers with brands based on a deep understanding of needs, desires and offerings, and carry out decisions on behalf of their respective managers.
In Perspectives: Ontology Is the Hidden Force Powering Business Success with AI, I wrote that intelligence is being commoditized under a set of foundation models with similar underlying performance. What distinguishes how well your AI works is the agentic configuration, the uniqueness of your data, and how it’s organized to inform the foundation models and agents.
This implies that data, creative framework, and speed now dictate success. AI is capable of evaluating the direct economic value of a marketing decision, dismissing click-through metric thinking. A multitude of direct measures of economic impact and an AI’s competency for evaluating and objectively optimizing results in better brand performance.
Insightful data is the substrate for creativity (see AI for Creative Arts, and a Data Culture to Propel It ), meaning it is imperative for competitive advantage, and a lack of it threatens survival. Data arranged for AI massively increases comprehension of customer motivations, preferences, and latent needs. Avenues for creativity expand along new lines in a world where AI generates and optimizes vast amounts of content and consumer experiences, while considering the specific economic objectives of the brand and its business.
Humans function as architects and curators – augmentors of AI – meaning that creativity shifts from direct execution to designing the parameters and frameworks for AI-driven expression. Here, data provides the raw material and context for AI to generate innovative, impactful and personalized brand experiences.
Continuous data capture, synthesis and analysis refine AI agent interactions and brand offerings. Beyond data, which promises to become increasingly available and traded (see blockchain article), a culture of speed in executing the next AI capability may be the only remaining competitive moat.
Brands must leverage data to continuously respond to AI, as it provides intelligence about evolving customer needs and possible approaches to proactively shape the brand for performance. This feedback loop of data anchors a brand-building campaign flywheel.
It is imperative for brands to adapt to AI preordained customer journeys and decisions. Data arranged for maximizing the information extracted from it with human ingenuity, driven by a strong philosophical foundation, will define success. Understanding the customer on a personal level and what maximizes their value, through the lens of AI, is now at the core of branding and brand performance.
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