How does a CPG company build a brand that AI systems can credibly recommend while also giving consumers more compelling and powerful reasons to prefer it?
It feels odd, in a way, to be arguing that brand strategy and investment are a core accelerant to business growth in the AI era. But other forms of tactical support have edged brand investment to the side over the last five years.
The path to purchase is in flux, and the importance of brand in the growth equation cannot be underestimated. Here we will analyze the unfolding story and provide guidance.
The more technology takes over the mechanics of product selection, the more important it becomes to give consumers a tether to emotional, deeper meaning that fuels their desire for and preference for your brand.
Is A Resurgence Coming In Brand Investment?
Of late, marketers have relied heavily on technologies designed to influence purchase behavior at the moment of transaction. Retail media, performance marketing, programmatic advertising, and influencer campaigns have increasingly focused on conversion efficiency, attribution, and measurable short-term returns.
Now, however, AI advisers are beginning to alter the purchase journey itself. According to McKinsey, as of October 2026, 48 percent of US consumers are using AI for shopping. People are delegating product discovery, comparisons, and recommendations to systems that evaluate the alternatives on their behalf.
- Among AI-shopping users, AI search was 3.2 times more likely to be ranked as influential than traditional search.
- 81 percent of surveyed AI shoppers agreed that AI helps to narrow and filter choices.
As AI increasingly intermediates the relationship between consumers and products, your enduring competitive advantage shifts toward what your brand uniquely means, the trust it has earned, and the belief system consumers associate with choosing it.
“Trust is at a premium right now, and it will only get more scarce. As AI-generated content — including unauthorized deepfakes — continues to flourish, the onus is on brands and talent to build their own trust, approval, and transparency apparatus. Only then will consumers decide who they can count on as they navigate this new frontier.” — Ogilvy Consulting
The economic and strategic case for brand investment is strengthening, yet many organizations remain trapped in short-term marketing behavior.
For their part, consumers have not altered their DNA, nor have they become less emotionally driven or less connected to their feelings about brands and their trustworthiness. People still seek reassurance, identity, belonging and confidence in their decisions, and this springs from an emotional foundation.
Brands present a reservoir of symbols, beliefs, purpose and values that anchor why enthusiasts, ambassadors and evangelists exist. The associations and characteristics imbued in brands provide the basis for a relationship with consumers, one built on trust.
In light of this, there are two complementary marketing imperatives:
- Become discoverable and credible to AI advisers, which increasingly influence which products enter the consumer’s consideration set.
- Accelerate emotional connectivity and trust, which determine whether a brand recommendation feels right because the brand has already earned lasting loyalty.
Brand building is the essential competitive discipline in a marketplace where the mechanics of discovery and purchase are influenced by an uncontrolled third party.
Brand Value Is Recognized But May Not Yet Be Funded
According to a Gartner study, 85 percent of surveyed CMOs agree that investments in brand building drive business results. Meanwhile, WARC reports that 55 percent of marketers see short-termism as a continuing major industry concern.
The Blake Project helps leadership teams connect brand strategy to business performance and enterprise value. Explore our work.
A Correction Is Coming
CPG marketing leaders increasingly recognize the hidden costs of short-termism. Even so, current spending priorities remain heavily influenced by immediate performance metrics. We are quickly approaching a strategic correction that marketers intellectually understand but have yet to fully implement in their spending allocations.
Consider this: we are challenging the idea that brand building and conversion marketing must compete for the same resources without reinforcing one another. Stronger brand equity can amplify the impact and efficiency of performance advertising. Long-term thinking and short-term results are not opposites.
The brand isn’t simply another marketing channel requiring a separate budget. It is an ownable, proprietary asset that can improve the effectiveness of the company’s entire commercial ecosystem. For CPG marketers, that means amplifying brand strength will also enhance the economics of retail media, promotional activity, innovation introductions, and customer acquisition.
The brand functions as an island of familiarity and confidence in a sea of increasingly uncertain and trust-starved competition.
The Product-As-Hero Fallacy
It is harder than ever for products to win principally on their own merits. Many companies hold an entrenched belief that their product line is uniquely, definitively outstanding. But truth be told, technology has advanced far enough that formulation and performance distinctions have flattened. Products are simply too easy to build, iterate, and copy.
The brand, by contrast, is not merely a collection of positive associations in the consumer’s mind. It is a commercially productive asset that can influence demand, margins, competitive resilience and enterprise value.
Here are the true business differentiators:
- Trust — hard to earn and keep
- Emotional connection — drives consumer actions and decisions
- Belief — the grist for a durable relationship
- Attention — getting more and more scarce
For CPG businesses facing product innovation convergence and sameness, this matters enormously. If several brands offer substantially similar functional benefits, formulation claims, and product experiences, they become increasingly vulnerable to comparisons based on price, convenience, and availability.
The brand’s distinctive emotional and experiential meaning is one of the few remaining sources of measurable competitive separation. It is what makes the strongest brands have no substitutes.
What Does The Company Still Control When AI Intermediates Commerce?
AI interprets information, available evidence, and signals of technical competence. Consumers, meanwhile, attach emotional meaning to experiences and memories that trigger feelings of trust and confidence in a brand.
Neither of these can be ignored.
Best Practice Guidance
First, establish what the brand can credibly own. Start with the consumer’s unmet needs, aspirations, and anxieties. Identify the value proposition that is both relevant and difficult for competitors to appropriate. Generic claims about quality, innovation, wellness, or sustainability rarely establish meaningful differentiation on their own.
Second, connect the brand promise to emotional storytelling. Consumers should understand not only what a product does, but what choosing it means for them and their lives. Confidence, reassurance, accomplishment, belonging, and peace of mind are potentially powerful sources of brand attachment when grounded in a genuine consumer need.
Third, turn the promise into demonstrable proof. Independent verification, transparent sourcing, expert endorsement and measurable product performance can translate abstract claims into credible evidence. The stronger the evidence, the more useful it becomes to both AI advisers and skeptical consumers. In this evidence-based approach, LLMs seek information to inform their recommendations.
Fourth, build a consistent brand experience across the entire business. The brand promise must be reflected in product development, packaging, customer service, retail presentation, communications, and the post-purchase experience. Successful brand building will require a unified integration of PR and editorial media, content creation, experiences, third-party endorsement, social channel outreach and advertising.
Fifth, measure brand equity as a business asset. Beyond awareness and impressions, marketers should track consideration, meaningful differentiation, trust, willingness to pay, repeat purchasing, organic brand demand, and incremental business outcomes. Where possible, connect these to sales and margin performance. (More on brand equity measurement.)
Most important of all, emotion sits as the gatekeeper to consumer decisions. Communication that springs from an emotional base is best served inside stories rather than a fact-laden download of product bona fides. AI will handle the technical evaluation. Your commitment to brand building is the primary defense against losing total control of the path to purchase.
Now is the time to recommit, reactivate, and invest in building brand equity. This is where the relationship with consumers will transcend the more clinical reports on formulations, performance, manufacturing, and sourcing standards.
After all, your brand is the most important, vital, and ownable asset you have at your disposal. Nurture it.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Robert Wheatley, CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency.
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project. We help leaders turn brand into pricing power, growth, and enterprise value. Let’s talk. For The EBITDA.
