When I announced the first BRXND in 2022 it was because even at that point I believed in a few core truths about AI:

1. Even if the models never got better than they were then (GPT 3.5), there was still 10 years of work to integrate this technology into organizations and brands.
2. The marketing industry was already focusing on the wrong stuff: more worried about what it would mean for producing TV commercials than the huge swaths of other less creative work that actually make up the day-to-day of most marketers.
3. AI will fundamentally reshape the way consumers build preference and purchase brands.

The math is clear: these are the fastest growing platforms in history and consumers everywhere are increasingly relying on them to help them make decisions about what to buy. Whether it is a vacation, a new backpack, or facial cleanser in the aisle of Target, people are consulting their intelligent companion for all kinds of decisions.

There is a not-hard-to-imagine future where the most important job of a marketer is to convince the model it is worthy of its user's attention and dollars, and, even further, where the LLM just has its own credit card and makes the decision on a consumer's behalf. We talk about agents, but we do not always think of that term literally.

At this year's BRXND we want to raise this conversation. While we continue to explore the ways marketers integrate AI into their work, we must also push past the technology into culture to consider what marketing looks like in a world where every decision is mediated by an AI model.