Welcome to ‘the next normal’

The launch of the iPhone heralded more than the arrival of a shiny new, buttonless device. It heralded the arrival of an entirely new value exchange based on apps, not websites.

I also remember the November that followed 15 years later. This time, because it brought the launch of ChatGPT, undoubtedly the most consequential tech launch since the creation of the World Wide Web in 1989.

These three moments of discontinuity have redefined commerce. Before the World Wide Web, our interface with brands was at Phase one: it relied on ads and direct marketing when we weren't shopping, and point of sale and sampling when we were. This was normality.

Phase two: this brought the arrival of the interactive customer experience, driven by websites and the power of ecommerce. This became the new, new normal. Whole markets were disintermediated and patterns of behaviour transformed. We no longer had to go shopping to go shopping, and a new set of marketing skills were required to master the ascendant force in brand short-listing, Google Search. SEO became a communications imperative.

Phase three: the new behaviours evolved from selective to pervasive. The smartphone and the app connected us to the internet like an umbilical cord. App design and brand ecosystems shaped the next generation of customer experience. The new, new normal had arrived.

Phase four: November 2022 happened and this phase hit us like a freight train. Generative AI is a technology which, some argue, poses an existential threat to our business. Will the machines take over the art of making ads?

My answer is that in some cases they will take over the function of making ads (currently heading towards 10% of the work we produce and probably peaking just below 50%), but they'll never take over the art. That's because they have no real intelligence. It's a fake version of the real thing (thus the A in AI). Synthetic intelligence will always require human imagination to unlock it, and this will become a new dimension in the art of advertising for those who embrace the opportunity.

Besides, AI's generative capability, and the threat it poses to artisanal craft skills, is a mere parlour game when compared with the more fundamental impact it will have on brands and markets. Because the real drama won't lie in how brands present themselves, it will lie in how they are discovered. We are rapidly seeing the demise of the search engine, and the rise of something even more omniscient. The answer engine.

Agentic search [search powered by AI], and agentic AI, are already rewriting the rules of brand discoverability. According to a forecast by Semrush, agentic search will overtake traditional search towards the end of 2027. But that is only part of the story. The impact of AI agents will be so profound that I'm not going to call Stage four the new, new, new normal. It deserves something more discontinuous than that. Let's call it the "next normal".

We are at the front edge of a seismic change in communications, at the heart of which will be the need for brands to co-exist with agentic LLMs. As opposed to becoming their victims.

This means understanding how LLMs are trained, how they assess information, and how your brand can best present itself simultaneously to the end user (a human) and the agent (a machine). One obvious first step is to give your brand a GEO (Generative AI engine optimisation) fitness test. Your website might be fantastic for consumers, but does it have the data heft for an information-hungry LMM? If not, you will soon start losing traffic.

LLMs look for authority, relevance, and endorsement, and they weight their training data accordingly. First hand, direct sources have high authority (thus the 125% jump in Reddit's share price in the last year). News stories drive relevance, which means LLMs' search for innovation and first moves.

Traditional media have a key role to play here. For instance, LLMs will turbo-charge the relevance of industry magazines (10 guineas please, Gideon). The right headlines and third party coverage in established media channels will help to shape the agentic narrative.

The impact of the Next Normal is far too deep and wide to chart in one Campaign article. It will reshape many, if not all, our old media habits and planning principles. What it won't reshape are the fundamentals of branding. In fact, all it will do is intensify them.

Pure, unadulterated brand fame, and the mental availability it bestows, will be ever more valuable. As will superlative levels of service design and branded utility. In the Darwinian game of capitalism, it will be the fittest brands that survive. And LLMs will be an accelerator of their fitness.