Brands are increasingly adapting their marketing strategies to accommodate two distinct audiences: human consumers and AI agents. As AI agents begin to make purchasing decisions based on specific criteria, companies must ensure their product descriptions and brand messaging remain legible and consistent for both machine and human readers.
Toby Coulthard, chief product and growth officer at the AI platform Jacquard, suggests that startups have an advantage in this transition. Unlike established companies that must retrofit existing guidelines, new brands can define a clear brand voice and explicit rules for content generation from the outset to ensure AI agents interpret their messaging correctly.
Marketing teams are advised to treat product descriptions as core brand assets, as these are frequently processed by AI agents during product discovery. Additionally, brands should test how AI tools summarize their communications, such as email content, to ensure the core message remains intact before it reaches the end user.
Finally, the focus of marketing metrics is shifting. With AI simplifying content production, measuring output volume is becoming less relevant. Instead, companies should prioritize tracking business outcomes, such as conversions and revenue, to accurately assess the effectiveness of their marketing efforts in an evolving retail landscape.
