A Revolution That Will Shape Brand-Consumer Relationships
The Rise of Consumer Agents
The Rise of Consumer AI Agents
Hello!
Thanks for coming back to UNCX.
Bi-monthly, I unpack the disruptive shifts in consumer behaviours, tech, digital engagement, marketing, and branding. (On weekends, I curate my best reads, videos, and ads from the last few days.)
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Takeaway
Customer engagement is about to be redefined.
By the customer.
When our personal AIs are smart enough to handle the tasks consumers don’t want to do, what’s left is real customer engagement—those steps, those moments when customers want to be engaged.
Consumers will automate and eradicate today’s high-load cognitive effort, restoring our time to what’s meaningful and engaging.
Brands that embrace experiences that give value and personalised incentives will thrive.
Brands that don’t will find themselves invisible to AI agents and their user.
Your Brand's Next Customer Isn't Human
Apps are still the primary tool for getting things done today.
But their days are numbered.
The question isn't if consumer AI agents will transform your business but whether you'll be positioned to thrive when they do.
Because AI agents will swarm over our consumers.
We’re busy today discussing how AI agents will transform our organisation in marketing, branding, personalisation, and efficiency.
But I want to discuss a more significant transformation—disruption by our customers, with the emergence of customer-side personal AI agents.
In this edition, I’m covering:
AI as a gatekeeper of consumer decisions
Time Well Invested v. Time Well Saved
The Experience Economy Reborn Through AI
AI Will Bifurcate of business models
AI Agents’ control of customer data
The Experience API
Creating more Time Well Invested
Your next customer won't be scrolling through your website or comparing prices manually—they'll be delegating these tasks to their AI agent. This isn't science fiction. It's an emerging reality that will reshape how brands and consumers connect.
Consumer-side AI agents will fundamentally empower customers and alter the power dynamics of every marketplace, including yours, mine, and every brand.
These digital intermediaries won't just assist consumers—they'll transform how purchase decisions happen, data flows, and how your brand will operate.
The New Gatekeepers: AI Will Disrupt Our Customer Relationships
For decades, we've been controlling the customer journey. We've crafted marketing funnels and messaging, designed our experiences, and leveraged data to influence our marketing decisions.
That power is reversing. Marketing and experiences are reversing.
Our existential challenge?
How to engage customers when customer AI agents control the conversation?
It’s a rewiring of commercial relationships.
We’ll need new strategies for capturing attention, building loyalty, and protecting privacy in an algorithm-mediated marketplace.
Customer loyalty programs, personalised experiences, and marketing-driven engagement have long influenced consumer behaviour. But AI agents will flip this dynamic, shifting power to consumers AI agents by making purchasing frictionless, hyper-efficient, and detached from traditional branding. The consumer's agent will negotiate prices, filter out or ignore marketing messages, control the sharing of personal data, and judge purchase decisions based on cold, rational analysis—not emotional brand connections.
Imagine: Consumers not constantly interacting with your brand experience anymore but instead instructing their agent with simple commands like:
"Find me the best flight to Tokyo under £1,000 with a window seat and shortest layovers."
The agent will execute autonomously, bypassing websites, messaging, and loyalty schemes, and will focus solely on objective value.
Using only US and UK data, I’ve crudely estimated that about 60% of our buying is in the ‘commodity’ category. McKinsey reckons these agents could influence up to 75% of consumer purchase decisions by 2030. MIT Technology Review (2023) suggests consumers would delegate up to 60% of their routine purchasing decisions to their agents if the technology were available today.
Time Well Spent vs. Time Well Saved: The New Consumer Paradigm
Consumer engagement falls into two main types:
Time Well Invested – Experiences where consumers genuinely want to engage (travel experiences, entertainment, immersive brand interactions, personal growth etc)
Time Well Saved – Transactional consumption, where the consumer wants to optimise for efficiency (grocery shopping, bill payments, routine purchases, etc)
AI agents will aggressively optimise for "time well saved," eliminating friction, cognitive effort, and unnecessary engagement wherever possible. This automation of decision-making means traditional marketing approaches become ineffective when AI is both gatekeeper and buyer.
The Experience Economy Reborn Through AI
It sounds counterintuitive, but consumer-side agents represent opportunity. When routine decisions are automated, more of a consumer’s attention pivots to Time Well Invested. Experiences become more time-available and valuable for consumers—brands can adapt to win the commoditisation or experience game.
Companies delivering memorable experiences will generate higher customer retention rates and command premium pricing above industry averages.
Compelling experiences carry weight over optimisation, efficiency, and value. Think Disney, Apple, and Peloton. They’ve built empires not on product specifications but on emotional connections and immersive experiences that resist commoditisation. These brands don't compete on price—they compete on feeling.
In the AI agent era, the opportunity lies in creating:
Community-based experiences: Building belonging and identity that transcends product utility
Personalised transformation: Not just products but personal growth and identity enhancement
Ritual-based interactions: Creating habitual, emotionally satisfying moments that consumers actively seek
Status and self-expression: Enabling consumers to signal values, their self-identities, and their hyper-individualism through brand association
All generations (especially Gen Z, the next decade’s largest market cohort) prefer buying experiences over products.
Great experiences create competitive moats that resist commoditisation. That won’t change in a new AI-mediated world.
When consumers search for happiness, satisfaction, purpose, excitement and other experiential factors over material possessions, brands that tap into this psychological need will thrive in the age of AI agents by creating moments consumers won't ever want to delegate.
The AI-Driven Bifurcation of Commerce
As brands, we will have a choice.
Be a commodity – compete primarily on price, specifications, and efficiency
Be an irreplaceable experience – develop offerings so distinctive that consumers instruct AI agents specifically to the brand
The greatest risks are if we’re built on habit, mild preference, or marginal advantage.
Research (Baymard Institute) shows that AI recommendations reduce brand loyalty by up to 40% for products where features can be objectively compared. (Maybe you’re thinking, ok, so let’s make it difficult for the AI agent to compare features. But that won’t work. The AI agent will ignore brands that aren’t transparent).
The Efficiency Trap: Why Internal AI Focus May Be a Strategic Misstep
Automating processes, optimising supply chains, and enhancing internal efficiencies are essential, but don’t let your inward focus distract you from the more existential threat of consumer-side AI.
A McKinsey's Global AI Survey revealed that 56% of companies use AI for internal process optimisation, yet only 23% are preparing for how AI will transform customer acquisition and relationship management.
Yet the preparation window is closing fast.
This is strategic vulnerability.
Unless your deliberate strategy is to win on price and efficiency as a commodity provider, internal optimisation won't save you from disruption. AI may perfect your operations, but you’re letting customer relationships crumble beneath you.
The commodity path is viable—but it must be deliberate.
Amazon and Walmart have built empires on operational excellence and relentless efficiency. SHEIN's ultra-fast fashion supply chain enables rock-bottom pricing. These companies are intentionally positioned themselves to win the efficiency game.
For everyone else, focusing solely on internal AI optimization is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic—incremental improvement to a business model that may soon hit the iceberg. According to Forrester, companies that fail to adapt to AI-mediated customer relationships risk losing 20-30% of their customer base by 2027.
The imperative is obvious: unless your explicit goal is to be the most efficient commodity provider in your category (a valid but challenging strategy that probably requires massive scale), your investments should prioritise creating distinctive experiences that resist commoditisation.
Don’t solve yesterday's problems while tomorrow's disruptors are rewriting the rules of your industry.
The Death of Data: When AI Agents Control Consumer Information
Perhaps something even the most disruptive? Consumer AI agents will soon shield consumers’ data, blocking the insights that today are powering our personalisation and marketing strategies.
By 2027, sophisticated personal AI agents will manage identity permissions and consent. Consumer agents will negotiate data-sharing terms on their behalf. Without direct consumer data, we lose our predictive powers and personalisation capabilities.
First-party data strategies become obsolete
Personalisation requires explicit user permission
Advertising effectiveness plummets as AI filters "irrelevant" content or refuses a data share as it sees no winning value in your offering.
Machine-to-Machine Commerce: Are You Ready?
Our future will need "agent-friendly" brand strategies.
Messaging optimised not just for humans but for AI systems.
Machine-readable brand promises: Structured, factual data that AI can easily interpret
Automated negotiation capabilities: Dynamic pricing and value-based service models
API-first architecture: Allowing AI agents to interact directly with your offerings
Accenture reckons companies with API-first approaches generate around 13% higher market valuations as they become more accessible to digital intermediaries.
The Experience API
Designing for Both Human and AI Engagement
Tomorrow we’ll need to master a dual architecture—one for AI efficiency and another for the human experience.
I call this the "Experience API" approach, creating a seamless interface between the rational world of AI decision-making and the emotional world of human experience.
Some brands already embrace this dual strategy:
Spotify: Their algorithms serve both human discovery and AI-based efficiency while creating community experiences through shared playlists and social features
Sephora: Their Beauty Insider program combines loyalty points (which AI agents can optimise) with experiential rewards like masterclasses (which appeal directly to human desires)
Mastercard: Their "Priceless" experiences platform extends beyond transaction processing to create memorable moments that transcend commodity payment processing
The Experience API concept requires brands to structure their offerings into:
Core functional attributes: Easily parsed by AI for rational comparison (price, specifications, delivery time)
Experience attributes: Emotional, sensory, and community benefits that create human value beyond specifications
Programmable preferences: Ways for consumers to instruct their AI agents to prioritize specific brand experiences
Brands that bridge the two realities—designing for AI intermediaries and authentic human experiences—will create a sustainable competitive advantage. This isn't about choosing between efficiency and experience; it's about simultaneously architecting your brand to excel at both.
But that’s tough to deliver.
Real-World Impact
The Rental Car Scenario
Imagine a business traveller booking a rental car. Today, they visit multiple websites, compare options, and decide based on price, convenience, and loyalty.
Tomorrow, their AI agent will launch an autonomous negotiation process with all available rental companies:
"I need a premium car available at the airport from March 10th at 10 AM to March 15th at 8 PM. Factoring in base price, loyalty incentives, exclusive perks, and AI-exclusive offers."
Rental companies must respond within seconds, knowing competitors received the identical request. The AI doesn't browse—it expects structured offers it can analyse instantly.
The winning company isn't necessarily the cheapest. Instead, the winning offer aligns with the consumer's preferences for convenience, perks, and personalisation.
When Will This Happen?
Significant shifts are already underway. $billions are already being thrown at AI agents.
(After all, it’s a big opportunity for AI developers to monetise their vast investments).
OpenAI's chief product officer, Kevin Weil, recently said, "2025 is going to be the year that agentic systems finally hit the mainstream. And if we do it right, it will take us to a world where we spend more time on the human things that matter."
The Essential Brand Transformation
To thrive in an agent-mediated world, we must:
Move beyond features and price to create unique experiences AI can't commoditise
Redefine loyalty through trust and value that compels AI agents to recommend us
Develop agent-friendly infrastructure for seamless machine-to-machine commerce
Build direct value relationships that bypass algorithmic filtering
The Time to Act? Now.
This disruption is accelerating:
By late 2025/early 2026: Basic personal AI agents will manage routine purchases and filter marketing messages
By 2027: Sophisticated AI agents will negotiate with brands on consumers' behalf
By 2030: AI-to-AI commerce will be the dominant form of transaction in many categories
There’s a narrowing window to establish your position in this new ecosystem. Commodity, Experiential, or Hybrid?
Final Thought
Embrace it—create experiences worth seeking out and values worth programming into AI preference settings.
When consumers automate away the cognitive load of routine decisions, what remains is what truly matters: meaningful engagement on the consumer's terms. Get this right, and you’ll survive the AI revolution and lead it.
My related episodes on consumer disruption may interest you:
Next Week: The Death of Data: When AI Agents Control Consumer Information + Personal Agents and Digital ID Timelines
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