When AI chooses the product, does brand still matter?
It’s a question a lot of business and marketing leaders are, and should be, asking — and with good reason. The value of brand is one of my favourite debate topics over a glass of wine or cup of coffee, so when I read Scott Belsky’s recent opinings on the topic, I leaned in.
Scott Belsky (Chief Strategy Officer at Adobe, founder of Behance, and long-time future-gazer) writes the excellent Implications newsletter. In a recent piece called “The sway of brand in the age of AI,” he explored just this topic – What happens to brand when AI starts making purchase decisions for us — not just suggesting, but actually choosing.
It’s worth taking a closer look.Because if Belsky’s right — and if our own instincts at Cognitive Union are right — then the next few years are going to separate the brands that just look good from the ones that mean something.
The Age of AI-Powered Buying Agents
Let’s start here:
What happens when your customer outsources their decisions to a machine?
According to Belsky, we’re entering a world where we’ll all have highly personalised AI agents — tools that know our preferences, values, budgets, and behaviours better than we know them ourselves. These aren’t just recommendation engines. They’re decision-makers.
“Why would you ever trust a company’s heavily biased product descriptions,” asks Belsky, “when you can summon the knowledge of humanity coupled with a highly trained agent that is deeply attuned to your likes and interests?”
Your AI won’t just help you shop. It might advise you not to.
It might say: “You’ve got three moisturisers open already.” Or: “Hold off booking Italy — prices drop next month.”
That’s a shift. And it raises some big questions for brands.
Does Brand Still Matter?
Argument One: Brand Matters Less
- AI removes emotion and bias.
- Decisions become hyper-rational.
- Differentiation disappears in a sea of sameness.
- Your personal AI agent just picks “the best deal” or “the best fit” based on data.
In this world, brand loyalty fades. Features and price win.
A commodified race to the bottom.
But…
Argument Two: Brand Matters More
- AI makes everything appear equal.
- Consumers look for meaningful differentiation.
- When everything feels the same, story, values, myth and meaning become the signal.
I really concur with Belsky’s words:
“As humans, our natural tendency when something becomes abundant is to seek scarcity and meaning-infused versions of everything — signified by brand.”In other words, AI might do the filtering, but brand still does the convincing.
The New Battleground: Visibility and Meaning
So how does a brand survive — or better, thrive — in this new AI-powered world?
It needs to fight on two fronts:
1. Be visible to the machine
Just like websites adapted to SEO, brands now need to adapt to LLMO (or AEO as Avinash Kaushik is suggesting) — large language model optimisation.
There’s already a growing field of AI visibility platforms like Profound, helping brands understand:
- Where their products appear in AI recommendations
- How their competitors rank
- Which prompts surface their brand (or don’t)
If your brand isn’t showing up in those recommendation sets — it’s not just invisible.
It’s irrelevant.
2. Be meaningful to human beings
AI might narrow the choices. But the final decision still taps into emotion.
We trust what feels aligned, not just what’s statistically “best.”
And that’s where brand matters more than ever:
- Why does this product exist?
- What story does it tell?
- What values does it reflect?
- What meaning does it offer?
The “Meaning Economy” Is Coming
Belsky calls it the meaning economy — and it’s coming fast.
In a world of:
- Zero-cost content
- Mass commoditisation
- Infinite product choice
…the things that don’t scale become the most valuable.
“The science of business is scaling,” Belsky writes.
“But the art of business is the things that don’t scale.”
Your story.
Your founder’s voice.
Your ethics.
Your cultural role.
Your tone, your community, your creative edge.These are the raw materials of brand in an AI world.
Not add-ons. Not optional.
Essential
The Big Shift: From Awareness to Integration
In the past, brands fought for awareness.
Now, they need integration.
You want to be:
- Integrated into the AI buying agent’s preferences
- Present in the top 3 options it returns
- The one that feels like “you” to the customer, even when the customer isn’t the one doing the searching
That’s not just marketing.
That’s deep brand architecture.
It’s reputation, consistency, personalisation and trust — all stitched together.
So What Should Brands Do?
Let’s keep it simple. If you want to remain relevant in the age of AI agents, here’s what you need to get serious about:
| Area | Action |
| AI Visibility | Optimise content for LLMs. Think beyond Google. Build partnerships with platforms like Profound. |
| Structured Brand Data | Make sure your product attributes, benefits, reviews and pricing are machine-readable. |
| Creator Content & Meaningful Stories | Don’t just sell. Say something. Share why you exist. Bring real people and real context into your brand story. |
| Values-led Branding | Make your values easy to understand — and impossible to fake. Your customer’s AI will be looking. |
| Own the Touchpoints | Be present in the moments that matter. This includes TikTok, ChatGPT plug-ins, WhatsApp AI chats, and anywhere else your customer might be getting recommendations. |
Try This – 5 Prompts to Reflect or Share with Your Tea
- What would your brand’s “why” look like if a language model had to explain it to a stranger?
- How discoverable is your brand in ChatGPT or Perplexity today?
- Could an AI buying agent explain your unique difference to a consumer?
- How emotionally resonant is your brand story in an age of rational machine choice?
- What do your customers feel about your brand — and can that survive the machine filter?
In the age of AI, brand is not dead.
But it is evolving — fast.
You’re not just talking to humans anymore. You’re talking to machines on behalf of humans.
That means clarity matters. Meaning matters. Values matter.
Because the AI might do the filtering.
But meaning does the final convincing
Cognitive Union is a progressive, boutique learning and performance consultancy. We work with forward-thinking businesses. Transforming their people. Shaping their culture. Helping them embrace change and take on the world. Find this blog useful? Sign up to our email newsletter (bottom of this page) where you can receive articles like this and other insights (not publically published), and you can also follow us on LinkedIn.