AI Mindshifts: The Death of Brands

Issue 192, December 26, 2024

Let’s take a moment over the holidays to fantasize about the future. It’s a future that is all about you – that is to say, your favorite future. We present a mash-up of several emerging, predictive threads that you might want to start thinking about before it’s too late.

What we are suggesting today might be surprising considering how we have repeatedly focused on (more like beating the dead horse) the importance of the human factor in critical thinking, honing problem-solving skills and raising caution about how our fast adoption of artificial intelligence requires guardrails. There are some fundamental shifts occurring, and the AI train has already sped out of the station. What’s interesting is that humans have quickly changed and adapted in some unexpected (and scary) ways. With our embrace of technological prowess, there are clearly benefits and consequences.

As we race towards the end of the year and the promise of a new calendar, let’s lay out a few facts — some that may shock, some may come with agreement. These new trends are consequential for organizations in their pursuit of success and genuine relationships with stakeholders, including the workforce, customers and fans.

Marketing Is Dead

AI, the game-changing technology that is reshaping our world, is just lifting its head, a sleeping giant. Here is a reimagined AI future.

It’s holiday time and you are hosting a private party for your most important stakeholders. You consult your personal AI assistant and ask for recommendations for a menu factoring in all the dietary preferences of your guests. Voila, the menu appears within minutes along with local resources to cater the event. Then you ask it for music selections for the evening. You add to it clever interactive activities to entertain and amuse your guests. Your AI assistant creates and designs the video invitation, manages the guest list and sends reminders before the event. Additionally, it writes your opening remarks and suggests discussion topics to keep the conversation going during dinner. And as a final touch, it recommends holiday gifts, each personalized for individual guests.

Now, imagine this experience as a marketing campaign for an upcoming event. AI specialist Christopher S. Penn describes, “This is what a world of infinite content on demand looks like. Any content you want, machines will generate it for you when you want it, exactly how you want it, in the format you specify. What’s notably absent from these scenarios? Marketers. Other than a few ad spots here and there, there’s no opportunity for us to be participants in any of these AI-mediated interactions. Marketing has been cut out of the picture in a world where generative AI can make you anything you want. Now, to some people, this might be a dystopian nightmare. To others, it might be heaven on earth. But regardless of extremes, a future in which consumers can have exactly the content they want when they want it, is very, very near.”

We can prepare or duck our heads in the sand. But this AI-assisted marketing future is already happening, and it would be prudent to start experimenting with it now. All of which leads us to our next point, how do you get the attention of your stakeholders in this fragmented, distracting media/communications landscape? It’s not just cutting through; it’s mattering to your audience.  As Penn says, “Marketing will not thrive in an environment where consumers have infinite options for excluding marketing content. We often say as part of our marketing strategy that we need to market where the audience is, and for the most part, marketing is failing miserably at that. Not because we’re not marketing in the physical or logical places where audiences are, but because the content we’re providing isn’t where their minds and hearts are.” And here’s something even more challenging, how can you be relevant to your audience and their hearts and minds if brands are dead?

Brands Are Dead

Think about how you communicate with your audience. Chances are you lead with your brand … your organization. But there is something dramatic going on in our society today that would suggest brands are not resonating with stakeholders. Ed Elson, Scott Galloway’s 25-year-old co-host on Prof G Markets has some advice: “America has fallen out of love with brands and in love with people. This is evident in every corner of American life — from politics and business to technology and media. People are the new brands.” We would suggest this shift is broader and deeper than an American phenomenon. People are magnets anywhere social media is present and anywhere a web browser or app offers immersion.

The supporting evidence for this shift is a disturbing trend among employees/customers: “12% of Americans say they have zero close friends, up from 3% in 1990. Meanwhile, half the country says they’re struggling with loneliness. These numbers took off when Apple put computers in our pockets, and they’ve been climbing ever since,” according to Elson.

To reiterate, AI is here to save the day in every way, but we are slowly becoming isolationists as a result. In a case of technological determinism, this is not by choice but a result of our mutually dependent tech relationships. Weirdly, our dependence on technology fuels more trust in people than brands and it is propelled by loneliness. We seem to be more interested in the idea of people than the reality of being with them physically.

So, what does that mean to an organization dependent on customers to consume its content, attend its events and buy its products? If there is truly an epidemic of loneliness in our country it extends far beyond the lives of Gen Z, it touches everything, from the media we consume and the products we buy to the relationships we (don’t) form, according to Elson. And here’s the kicker he says, in a society of lonely people, there is a lot more to love in a person than a brand.

We’ve written about the loneliness and mental health factors affecting our young and society in general. It is an expansive trend spawning mental health apps and platforms, now infused with AI. Need counseling? Want someone to talk to? Well, AI is here for you.

Elson’s theory distills these issues to a simple thought: “Everyone you know is craving a friend.” Enter digital technology and social apps and channels that actually amplify the situation. We search for people on social apps, and we attempt to find those who like us or those who want to be liked.  We make friends, post likes, become immersed in endless TikTok videos and spend time with our preferred influencers. We love to scroll through pictures of people doing happy, stupid and mundane things. It’s a behavior pattern of what we have become in a very brief 20 years. What happened before devices were put in our hands? How did we fill time? Were we isolated and lonely? Did we have no friends?

The Business Implication

Here’s how this affects our business strategies. Elson explains, “For lonely people simply seeing someone is not enough. What we really want is to know them, to understand them, to be familiar with the intimate details of their life and for them to understand us. In other words, we want a friend.  Research shows Gen Z views their favorite influencers in the same way they view their friends. We know what clothes they wear, what food they eat, and what brands they buy. This has radically transformed the retail economy, so much so that 40% of us now consult an influencer before we make a purchase.”

There is a term for this phenomenon called a parasocial relationship, defined as “a relationship a person imagines having with another person whom they do not actually know,” according to Tech & Science dictionary. And that brings us back to our future dependence on our AI assistants and how they may enable our relationships with our customers and provide roadmaps to making connections that are personal, not branded.

Making Connection

If brands are really dead, how do organizations connect in a personal way? John Rossman writes “The customer is king again. 2025 will bring a resurgence in sky-high consumer expectations. This reflects a shift back to pre-pandemic standards. Customers paying inflation-generated premiums will demand greater quality and attentiveness at a minimum, showing the most loyalty to brands offering more than just price-based incentives. They’ll spend the lion’s share of their hard-earned dollars on experiences that reflect brands’ core values and on companies that cultivate loyalty-driven relationships.” That is a lot to unpack but it is the result of economic and consumer trends that have been unfolding as we have come out of the pandemic. We have changed and our loyalties and allegiances have also shifted.

So, practically speaking, how do you promote a product, for example, based on a single customer’s preferences, rather than a broad marketing outreach? It isn’t rocket science, but it requires planning, critical thinking and moving out of most marketers’ comfort zones. As Penn says, “Figuring out what your audience wants is as simple as asking them.” That requires talking to them, listening actively to them and observing them. You need to know their interests and where they spend time. It is not making broad brushstroke assumptions about who they are; you really need to know them. That may sound intrusive, but if you can make them happier to hear from you and experience your content, you’ve got a better shot at making them loyal, repeat customers.

By surveying and collecting data from customers, you can “build an AI-enabled Ideal Customer Profile that you can use with the generative AI tool of your choice to have always-on access to your customer’s mindset. Incorporate all the qualitative and quantitative data you gathered in the first two steps,” says Penn. Then develop an action plan with individuals or coteries that share similar profiles.

We have added to Penn’s suggestions that speak to the changing role of organizations that have been structured on transactions and purely selling products. That ship is sailing, at least for the time being.

• Launch a private online community for your best customers. These special interest groups address the specific needs, interests and concerns of an affinity group.
• Offer unique, customized experiences with a private link/login.
• Provide access to thought leaders in your organization’s ecosystem to address individual or group interests.
• And be sure to practice the power of iteration to refine and improve your personalized, customized offerings. It is and will remain a nearly constant cycle of refinement.

The Person Behind the Brand

So, if brands are to be superseded by people, how does an organization finesse that? Love it or hate it, but social media is the ticket for making organizational leadership personal and more authentic.  Elson says, “CEOs need to ditch highly polished press releases and embrace TikTok instead. TikToks show us who is running the company in a way press releases can’t. Spotify’s Q2 earnings update this year came in the form of a short selfie video filmed by CEO Daniel Ek. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein did the same. Memo to CEOs: Brands, logos and press releases do not resonate with us anymore. We are interested in your people — who they are, what they care about, and what they have to say — not your brand.”

A more intimate message from leadership is an acquired skill for most. Resistance to less formal communication needs to be overcome. Today, media is the message and social is the platform of choice for scores of customers, stakeholders and employees.

The bottom line is to think about how to communicate benefits with a personalized messaging. The products and services you offer can be contextualized by each customer. Your brand is the backdrop, not the opening line, and it can be positioned in context of how it is part of stakeholders’ lives, not how their lives are part of your brand.

Although it may sound like an egocentric approach to marketing communications, as President Bill Clinton once said, “To have a friend you have to be a friend.” Simply said, become a friend to your stakeholders and build a meaningful professional friendship throughout their careers.

Get “The Truth about Transformation”

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