AI is changing how consumers find and choose brands. Are marketers keeping up?
Professor Stefano Puntoni's recent Harvard Business Review article on AI's dual disruption of marketing has sparked important conversations across the profession. He is right that two revolutions are happening simultaneously: one in how consumers search for information and another in how purchasing decisions are being made. Having spent over twelve years as a Marketing Director before transitioning into academia, there are practical dimensions here that deserve closer attention from chartered marketers.
The search revolution is already here
The first shift is one many of us are already feeling. Consumers are increasingly turning to AI chatbots rather than traditional search engines to research products and services. For marketers who have invested years in building SEO capability, this is not a minor adjustment. It changes the mechanics of brand visibility.
But it also changes something subtler: the nature of the information consumers receive. A traditional search engine presents a list of options and lets the consumer navigate. A chatbot synthesises, summarises and often recommends. The consumer's experience of "finding" your brand is fundamentally different, and that has implications for how they relate to it afterwards.
If your marketing strategy still treats search as a game of rankings and keywords, you are solving yesterday's problem. The new challenge is understanding how AI systems interpret, organise and present your brand to consumers who may never visit your website at all.
The decision revolution is just beginning
The second shift Puntoni describes is even more significant. Consumers are beginning to delegate purchasing decisions to AI agents. Not just research, but the actual act of choosing.
This raises questions that go beyond marketing tactics. When an algorithm selects your product on a consumer's behalf, what does brand loyalty even mean? How does post-purchase satisfaction change when the buyer did not actively choose? What happens to advocacy and word-of-mouth when the decision was made by a machine?
These are not hypothetical questions. They are becoming real strategic challenges, and marketers need to start thinking about them now.
A practitioner's perspective on what to do
It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the pace of change, so here is where I would focus energy.
Audit your dependence on traditional search - This is Puntoni's first recommendation and it is the right starting point. Understand what share of your traffic, leads and conversions flows through search engines. That number represents your exposure to the first revolution.
Experiment with generative engine optimisation - This emerging discipline focuses on structuring content so AI systems can process and cite it. It is still early days, but the marketers who start experimenting now will build a significant advantage. Track how your brand appears in AI-generated responses. You might be surprised by what you find.
Double down on what makes your brand human - Community, emotional connection, lived experience, trust built over time. These are the dimensions that are hardest for AI to replicate or intermediate. In my work with clients through my consultancy, I consistently see that brands with genuine human connection outperform those that rely purely on information delivery, even when the information is excellent.
Think about the algorithm as a buyer persona - If an AI agent were evaluating your product, what structured data would it need? How would your value proposition translate into the factors these systems weight? This is a new discipline and it requires collaboration between marketing, product and technology teams.
Invest in your own learning - The academic research on AI and consumer behaviour is producing new insights at remarkable speed. As CIM members, we have access to professional development resources that can help us stay current. I would encourage fellow marketers to go beyond the trade press and engage with the scholarly work being produced at leading business schools. The findings are directly applicable to practice.
This is a leadership conversation
One point Puntoni makes that I want to amplify: this is not a marketing department problem. These twin revolutions cut across technology, content, product, customer experience and commercial strategy. They require senior leadership attention and cross-functional coordination.
Chartered marketers are exceptionally well placed to lead this conversation. We understand both the strategic and the tactical dimensions. We know how to connect customer insight with business outcomes. And through our CIM qualifications and CPD, we have the framework to keep learning as the landscape evolves.
The next few years will test our profession in new ways. But for marketers who are willing to engage with the complexity, adapt their thinking and invest in their development, the opportunities are genuinely exciting.
By Kamila Miller MCIM Chartered Marketer, Communications Ambassador, Greater London Regional Group and author of 'Data-Driven Marketing Strategy' (Kogan Page). She is also a doctoral researcher at Henley Business School, University of Reading.