If you’re like me, you’ll already be asking your AI assistant to filter, curate and recommend products. And for now, the ultimate purchasing decision still rests with us, the human consumer. But this is your signal that a dramatic shift is imminent – and your marketing approach will need to evolve accordingly.
Soon, we’ll no longer be marketing only to humans, but to a new customer class entirely: AI agents acting on behalf of humans, with the authority to decide and to buy. This ability for agents to transact on our behalf represents a huge shift. So what do you need to know to prepare?
A new kind of customer
Human beings are gloriously inconsistent. We buy aspirationally. We contradict our values. We impulse-purchase at midnight. Emotion, identity, nostalgia and tribal belonging drive so much of our behaviour and good marketing has always known how to speak to those impulses.
AI agents will act with a different set of goals, closer to a diligent researcher than an emotion-driven consumer. They will trawl vast quantities of data, weigh trade-offs with perfect recall, and make purchasing decisions that align tightly with their owner’s stated needs, preferences, constraints, and values. They will be, in effect, super-rational extensions of the customer’s will.
This means marketers must now think about two layers of persuasion: the human, who feels and the agent, who verifies.
The human will still respond to story, symbolism, community and emotion, but the agent will look for evidence, clarity, structure and proof. It will not be moved by the theatre of marketing if the facts beneath it do not stand firm.
Why values will matter more, not less
It may seem unlikely to focus first on values when dealing with AI agents, but your values are about to become even more important.
For years, brands have declared their values in the kind of nebulous language that doesn’t really mean anything much at all. With AI agents mediating choice, this imprecision will quickly become a weakness. These systems will search for logical structure and behavioural consistency. They will test the evidence for each stated ‘value’ and judge brands accordingly.
The AI will ask: Does this product deliver the benefits it claims? Does this company act according to the principles it professes? Does its behaviour align with the customer’s worldview? It will look far beyond the brand campaign: into supply chains, policy documents, employee reviews, investor reports and public discourse. Marketers must therefore assume that every part of the organisation is now part of the brand, because every part will be visible to the agent.
Brands will need to express value in story form for us, and in structured proof for the agent. Emotion to win attention. Evidence to win the transaction.
Stories + evidence: how to market to both humans and AI agents
That duality, emotion and evidence, will define the next era of marketing. Craft will still matter. Creativity will still matter. But underneath the storytelling, brands will need to be structurally coherent, values-aligned and radically transparent because AI agents will reward those that are. At WPP we’re already doing this by informing and testing our campaigns with reference to both human and agentic audiences. This makes sure we’re resonating emotionally with customers but also backing the brand promise with the hard evidence an agent will be looking for.
Beyond shoring up their values, preparing for the agent-driven commerce era will also require brands to:
• Optimise for agent experience (AX): Can an agent easily parse your product information? Can it validate your pricing, availability or terms without human intervention? The smoother the AX, the more likely an agent is to recommend or transact with your brand.
• Engage with agents as channels: Agents will be embedded in web browsers, operating systems, productivity suites and vertical-specific tools. Marketers should treat these integrations as strategic channels, ensuring their brand is the most agent-friendly option in the market.
• Prioritise third-party validation: Agents will be able to triangulate and validate claims across many sources and independent verification will carry more weight than self-promotion. Cultivating reviews, mentions in trusted sources and inclusion in recognised datasets will matter more than ever.
The mindset shift marketers need
This is not a minor tactical adjustment. It is a philosophical one. Marketing can no longer be the glossy surface of the organisation; it must become the connective tissue between what the company believes, what it delivers and what it can prove.
The question for marketers who want to drive growth in this next era of agentic commerce is simple: When an agent is choosing on behalf of your customer, why will it choose you?
