Society is experiencing the next tectonic change with AI, and it’s shifting us from an attention to intimacy economy. We’re entering a world where meaningful interpersonal experiences, and emotional and psychological relationships, are increasingly mediated via LLMs and AI agents. While social platforms anger and attention grab, AI agents coax and counsel via a constructively oriented two-way exchange that’s changing the very nature of interaction between human and machine, brand and buyer. 

And it’s a world where brand meaning and power, creative quality, and cultural resonance are even more critical to demand generation. AI doesn’t change the rules for brand growth, it amplifies them. Yet as Kantar data makes clear, there’s been a sharp decline in brand equity in Australia in the last decade. Weak brands aren’t going to find strength in AI tooling and efficiency seeking – they simply won’t show up.

Brands will achieve more or less intimacy depending on how effectively they use and augment strategy and decision making with AI. Whether it’s getting closer to culture and audiences, transitioning from insights to intelligence-based strategy and action plans with a clever blend of people and machine, or reinventing the creative and content supply chain, meaningfully different brands are going to be the ones who recognise AI is rewiring how they’re discovered and chosen – and act accordingly.kantar

In this series of content, we explore modern concepts into what using AI effectively looks like in concert with brand, creative and strategic intelligence to drive how brands grow.