25/02/2026
AI: You can't buy your way out of this.
Yesterday we brought together some of the sharpest minds in AI, marketing and technology to talk about what it actually means to market in a world of autonomous agents. Buyers and bots.
Here's what we walked away with:
1. AI is now a channel. Treat it like one (Brittany Fox)
Not a trend. Not a threat. A channel with its own funnel, its own logic, its own way of evaluating you. Every piece of content now needs to answer two questions: can it convert a human, and can it convert a bot? Start with Jobs to Be Done.
2. We've been here before (Ruth Haffenden)
SEO. Digital transformation. Social. Every time the market panicked, every time the fundamentals won. Stay calm. But clean up your house. Content debt is now a liability and that legacy messaging from 2019 is quietly undermining your AI visibility right now.
3. Human opinion has never mattered more (Ruth Haffenden & Ben Cooper)
The great irony of the AI era: what other people say about you, reviews, articles, testimonials, is becoming your most powerful marketing asset. AI is a truth machine. If what you say and what others say about you is consistent, AI amplifies it. If it isn't, AI ignores you.
How your brand is experienced by the customer in all of your touch points is now more important than ever. People will train their agents based on personal preference.
4. Challenger brands have a head start (Ruth Haffenden & Ben Cooper)
No legacy content. No mixed messaging. No years of contradictory campaigns to unpick. This might genuinely be the golden age for challenger brands.
5. AI ownership has to come from the CEO down (Ben King)
Who actually owns “AI readiness” inside an organisation? It must come from the top down. Yes, there will be work to be done by marketing, product and tech but the CEO must own driving it. Not a fringe team. Not a working group or committee.
One small thing you can do today.
Go search for your own brand in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude. Actually look at how AI describes you. Then give your team the tools and time to experiment. Learn by doing. The brands that start now, even imperfectly, will be ahead of the ones still waiting for a strategy document.
Thank you to our extraordinary panel and to everyone who showed up at 7:30am, you're our kind of people.
Read the full breakdown on our blog: https://ap1.hubs.ly/y0Drkg0