Preparing Your Brand for Agentic AI

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Over the past two decades brands learned to optimize their keyword strategies so that they would appear at the top of search engine results. They now face a new challenge: optimizing for AI. Many consumers already use LLMs to research products or compare prices. A July 2025 survey of 750 U.S. consumers, conducted by the management consulting firm Kearney, found that 60% of shoppers expect to use agentic AI to make purchases within the next 12 months. Every major AI company is developing agents in anticipation of mainstream adoption. To cite one example, OpenAI is collaborating with payment processors like Stripe and PayPal and retailers like Walmart and the shopping platform Shopify to facilitate purchasing within ChatGPT. It is laying the groundwork for an automated and complete customer journey. That means companies will soon be managing their brands in an era when agentic AI, built on top of LLMs, works on behalf of customers, completing transactions without human assistance.

Most brands are unprepared for this shift. Executives will have to ask themselves critical questions, such as: How do we adapt our communications strategy when our primary audience may not be human? What happens to brand relationships in a world mediated by AI agents? How can we prepare for a future in which both sides of the customer relationship are increasingly managed by AI? This issue won’t be solved with a simple technical fix. Companies must fundamentally rethink how brands, customers, and AI interact.

The Three Types of AI Agent Interactions.  Most consumers aren’t delegating the act of purchasing to AI yet. But they are increasingly using LLMs like ChatGPT the same way they use Google: for prepurchase research. They’re asking about product features, comparing options, and reading AI-synthesized reviews before making their own buying decisions. 

As AI agents become more prevalent, the traditional relationship between brands and consumers is giving way to a new set of interaction modes—some mediated by AI and others driven entirely by it. In addition to direct, human-to-human engagement, three emerging types of interaction are beginning to coexist in the marketplace.  In the first type of relationship, brand agents engage directly with human customers. Unlike traditional AI chatbots that simply answer questions, these agents help consumers explore products, make decisions, and access services in new ways.  In the second type, consumer agents act on behalf of individuals across multiple brands.  In the third type, full AI intermediation, AI agents interact autonomously on both sides of the transaction without direct human involvement.

Brands must evaluate which aspects of traditional customer relationships to preserve and which ones to evolve. To guide this shift, brand managers should focus on three critical stages of agentic adoption. First, determine if you need to deploy an AI agent at all. Second, if you do, you must persuade consumers to use your brand’s agent instead of their own. And third, for consumers who prefer their own AI agents, you must ensure that these autonomous intermediaries choose your brand.

The rise of AI agents is fundamentally redrawing the contract between companies and consumers. Connections that once formed the foundation of brand relationships are being reshaped, often mediated, and sometimes entirely managed, by AI. To succeed, companies must operate effectively across the full spectrum of encounters—from fully human exchanges, to interactions with brand agents and consumer agents, to fully autonomous AI intermediation.

Consumer use of agents will vary based on a customer’s relationship with the brand and the nature of the product or service. Even within a single brand, a consumer might prefer mixed modes, such as delegating routine tasks to consumer agents, consulting brand agents for detailed inquiries, and concluding important transactions with human associates. Consider which options work best for your customers, and use them at the right times to help your brand succeed.

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