Is AI going to make branding obsolete?
PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!!1
But really, is it?
I don't think so. But I’m pretty sure that the high-speed development of increasingly versatile LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT will alter our approach to branding MASSIVELY.
The main reason I see for this right now is that the future of consumerism is tightly linked to AI, which will have obvious impacts on brand strategy and design. Just look at the impacts of AI on the way we search on the internet (think Gemini-integration on top of Google searches).
Recent data compiled by Bain & Company* suggests that...
👉 ... 80% of US consumers rely solely on AI-recommendations for about 40% of their searches and will not go through the trouble to do additional, manual research
👉 ... HubSpot has found that traffic to many company websites has decreased by up to 30%
👉 ... at the same time, AI referral traffic to company websites is growing by about 40% every month
👉 ... traffic from gen-AI to retailer websites has increased by over 1000% (!) since February
This turns traditional digital customer journeys on their head, as we consumers outsource friction to our robot helpers. Robot helpers we trust more than the influencers we built unhealthy parasocial relationships with, and probably more than our actual friends, which we won’t be telling all our darkest secrets (unlike our new machine-brain bestie).
More and more, the main voice we will collectively listen to for advice on what and where to buy is going to be an AI-generated one.
“Brands won’t need to build trust anymore, but deliver on a trust-advancement bestowed upon them by our AI-companions.
So, while direct website visits will go down even further, none of that makes a well-constructed brand experience less important — quite the contrary, actually.
It just needs to be engineered with a different focus.
Brands won’t need to BUILD trust top-of-funnel as much, but instead DELIVER ON a "trust-advancement" they’ve achieved by well-executed AIO (AI-optimization, the art of making LLMs organically mention you and your product).
A trust which can be very easily lost if the transition from AI-guidance to brand infrastructure doesn’t live up to the expectations of the consumer.
So, if you're building a product, marketing funnel, website or e-com business today, not only is it vital to take this high speed change of our whole shopping infrastructure into account, it can actually give purpose-driven startups a massive leg up — bigger entities will likely be much slower to implement for this massively changing landscape, and will struggle to keep up.
Two questions I don’t have answers to yet: Is this the dawn of the Swiss-army-knive-brand-creative? And how will other, less digital branding touch points evolve because of AI?
If you have thoughts on that, please share in the comments or send me a note. I’d love to nerd out about this with you.
* here's the link to the full report: https://lnkd.in/eZK8kQFW