Bear with me on this one because I think it's genuinely unsettled.
If a buyer's AI agent researches vendors, evaluates options, makes contact, negotiates terms, and returns a recommendation, but a human ultimately signs the contract... who was the customer during all those steps?
It matters more than it sounds.
If the customer is the human, then the agent is just a tool and you optimize for what the human ultimately cares about. But the human never experienced any of that journey. They just got a shortlist.
If the customer is the agent, then you need to think about what makes a company legible to a machine. Not persuasive to a human. Legible to a machine. Clear structure, accurate data, no ambiguity, no spin.
The marketing playbook was built for human psychology. Urgency. Social proof. Emotional resonance. None of that works on an agent. An agent doesn't feel FOMO. It doesn't respond to a testimonial from a brand it recognizes. It reads what's there and forms a structured view.
I don't think there's a clean answer yet. But the companies treating agents as just another distribution channel for human-optimized content are going to run into a wall.
would love to hear whether anyone has thought through this more formally.
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