AI makes marketing faster. It doesn't make brands stronger.

I attended a marketing conference recently, and one thing stuck with me above everything else: we've gotten very good at optimising for clicks. But Gen Z barely clicks, and they have enormous buying power.

That disconnect matters.

AI has made average marketing cheaper and faster. But it hasn't made brands more interesting. If anything, it's accelerating a race to the middle, more content, more optimisation, more efficiency, less soul.

What I keep coming back to is this: if AI makes average marketing easier for everyone, then the only real competitive advantage left is distinctiveness. Human emotional communication. A brand that actually stands for something.

Maybe we should be spending less time on click-through rates and more time asking whether anyone would actually miss us if we disappeared.

Share of Search. Upper funnel. Brand. These aren't soft metrics anymore - they're survival.

AI can optimise performance. It won't save a boring brand.

Before the event started