AI: The New Brand Preference Engine

The traditional marketing funnel is dead as AI becomes the primary brand preference engine. Marketers must now engage both humans and machines, focusing on “priming” and “proving” to build trusted brands.

The familiar dilemma of modern life often leads to a quick search, a dive into the digital abyss for answers.

But where once the omnipresent Google held sway, a new oracle has emerged, whispering recommendations that are increasingly shaping our choices, from the mundane to the monumental.

Consider the seemingly trivial question posed to a generative AI in 2025: “What should we drink on a Dalston dive bar expedition on a Thursday night with cooler, younger clients, to avoid a hanxiety-filled Friday, with a board presentation to write?”

The answer, a surprisingly practical suggestion of neat Patrón or margaritas, coupled with hydration and sleep tips, actually worked.

This anecdote isn’t just a quirky tale; it’s a microcosm of a seismic shift, illustrating how millions are now bypassing traditional search engines, turning instead to AI for product advice, personal hacks, and ultimately, their brand preferences.

ChatGPT, and its ilk, are no longer merely influencing; they are rapidly becoming the primary preference engine of our era.

The implications for brand and marketing strategy are nothing short of revolutionary.

For decades, the industry has clung to a foundational, almost sacred, concept: the marketing funnel.

A seemingly logical progression from awareness to interest, decision, and finally, conversion.

It was clean, rational, and linear, a comforting roadmap in a chaotic market.

We all knew its limitations, its inherent flaws in capturing the messy reality of human behavior, yet it provided a useful framework for planning.

But in 2025, the very ground beneath this venerable model has crumbled.

The time, it seems, has come to “kill the funnel.”

This isn’t hyperbole; it’s a stark reality borne out by extensive research and the evolving digital landscape.

Consumers are no longer dutifully marching through predefined stages.

They are skipping steps, outsourcing their research and shortlisting processes directly to machines.

What might have been dismissed as futuristic speculation just a few months ago is now a demonstrable truth: roughly 50% of shoppers across major Western markets (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia) are leveraging GenAI for e-commerce tasks.

Even more strikingly, over 60% of Gen Z and millennials in the U.S. are using AI to manage their finances.

Leading venture capitalists and tech visionaries are openly contemplating a future where AI “superagents” render traditional apps and user interfaces obsolete.

While the pace of adoption varies with purchase complexity – 47% of travel shoppers confidently use AI compared to a modest 17% in grocery – the overarching picture is clear: the conventional customer journey is collapsing.

And with it, the strategies painstakingly designed to navigate it.

The profound implication is that brand building now demands a dual focus, addressing two distinct yet intertwined audiences: humans and machines.

To thrive in this new reality, marketers must master two parallel modes: “priming” and “proving.”

Priming is the art of cultivating long-term predisposition within the human psyche.

It’s about building familiarity, cultural relevance, and emotional affinity, irrespective of whether a consumer is currently “in market” for a product or service.

This involves the timeless elements of compelling brand building, reimagined for the 21st century: emotional storytelling that resonates and travels; distinctive, memorable brand codes and consistent assets; genuine participation in cultural currents, from TikTok trends to Discord communities; and community-led content that people genuinely want to remix, share, and integrate into their lives.

It’s about crafting experiences that build genuine brand belief through action, not just through advertising.

Brand health, in this context, is measured by “equity” metrics – tracking progress in influencing human perceptions and memory structures.

This is, in essence, best-practice “upper funnel marketing,” but with a crucial shift away from interruptive advertising towards a coherent ecosystem of authentic, useful, and entertaining content and experiences.

Proving, on the other hand, is where the human and machine worlds converge.

It’s about providing the verifiable evidence and signals that both discerning humans and deep learning algorithms trust.

This is what surfaces when a potential customer – or, critically, an AI assistant – is evaluating a brand’s credibility, relevance, and recommendability.

Proving necessitates high-quality, up-to-date product and brand information consistently available across the digital landscape; a clear, undeniable alignment between a brand’s promise and its actual customer experience; a wealth of independent reviews and credible endorsements; high-authority media mentions and expert takes that validate its claims; and, crucially, the swift correction of any misinformation or inconsistent signals.

Brand health here is measured by “entity” metrics, tracking how effectively a brand influences its representation and retrieval within large language models (LLMs).

This “proving” layer is the digital gatekeeper, determining whether an AI assistant champions a brand or dismisses it entirely.

The true genius of this new paradigm lies in its dynamic interaction.

Where the defunct funnel assumed a linear, one-way path, priming and proving form a constant, self-reinforcing loop – a “flywheel.”

In this model, robust priming makes AI recommendations feel inherently more trusted by humans, as the brand already occupies a favorable space in their minds.

Simultaneously, exceptional proving strengthens those memories and impressions, not just with humans but with the very machines that are increasingly mediating our decisions.

Recalling the Dalston dive bar scenario, the individuals involved had likely been “primed” by seeing Patrón’s “Nothing to Hide” platform.

The subsequent “proving” came when the LLM recognized and validated bartender advocacy for the same brand, influencing their choice.

This isn’t about guiding people down a predetermined path; it’s about constructing a powerful, self-perpetuating system where emotional equity and informational credibility continuously compound.

Ultimately, the brands destined to win in this new era of AI-driven decision-making will not do so by attempting to “hack” a single channel or reverse-engineer the intricate ranking logic of a specific LLM.

The pace of innovation in AI is so relentless that today’s clever workaround could be tomorrow’s obsolete tactic.

Instead, the clues point to a more fundamental, enduring truth: focus on helping humans.

As Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT, recently observed, while AI is still in its “MS-DOS phase,” the ultimate experience is being optimized to help people thrive, not for superficial engagement metrics.

It logically follows that the brands favored by these evolving systems will be those that embody usefulness, trustworthiness, and genuine interest.

These qualities have always been the bedrock of great brand building.

However, we cannot afford to underestimate the paradigm shift now occurring, where these essential attributes are increasingly co-determined by hyperintelligent machines.

The flywheel, once known as the funnel, is already spinning, gathering momentum.

For Chief Marketing Officers and brand strategists, the message is clear and urgent: embrace this new reality now, or risk watching competitors harness exponential growth from a system you failed to understand.

The future of brand leadership is not about controlling the journey, but about becoming an indispensable, trusted partner in an AI-mediated world.