AI Is Changing How Customers Choose — Here’s How Brands Win in 2026 (Best of the Show: Revisiting Episode 478) cover art

AI Is Changing How Customers Choose — Here’s How Brands Win in 2026 (Best of the Show: Revisiting Episode 478)

AI Is Changing How Customers Choose — Here’s How Brands Win in 2026 (Best of the Show: Revisiting Episode 478)

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 As I’ve mentioned in the past, last year was not about incremental change. Nope. It was all about dramatic change. We all started off last year “playing with AI.” Today? The question is if and when AI assistants and agents will be the norm for every interaction we have with our customers. What do we need to do to act accordingly? How do we create experiences that work whether we’re talking with human beings or with machines acting on behalf of those human beings? Most importantly, how do we build brands worth asking for by name when people might not see the brand until their AI picks it for them? In this “Best of the Show” episode, I try to answer these questions and place them into an actionable framework you can use, right now, and make sure your customers & and your business & both get to enjoy the benefits AI can bring. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. AI Is Changing How Customers Choose — Here’s How Brands Win in 2026 (Best of the Show: Revisiting Episode 478) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links AI and Zero-Click Search: The Real Story (Episode 467)Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy (Thinks Out Loud 456)In the Age of AI, Brand Isn’t Everything. It’s the Only Thing (Episode 472)The Rise of Agentic AI Among Your Customers (Episode 466)Will Agentic AI Kill Your Content Marketing? (Episode 470)Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 449)Digital Reset: Build Customer Relationships Big Tech—and AI—Can’t Touch (Thinks Out Loud 458)Digital Reset is Here (Thinks Out Loud 461)Rethinking Your Website in the Age of AI (Episode 473)AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455)What Changed in AI and Marketing This Year, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next (Episode 478) Buy the Book — Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech. You can learn more about it here on the site. Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today. Past Appearances Rutgers Business School MSDM Speaker: Series: a Conversation with Tim Peter, Author of "Digital Reset" Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you.Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it. The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer FocusStrategyTechnologyOperationsCultureData Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunesSubscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 19m 08s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes, the Google Play Store, via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: AI Is Changing How Customers Choose — Here’s How Brands Win in 2026  Welcome back to the show. I’m Tim Peter. This week looks a little different than normal. I’ve been traveling and speaking like mad, and instead of pushing out something rushed or half baked, I wanted to make sure you still got something that actually moves the needle for you and your business. Because as you’ve seen, marketing is at a turning point. AI is not just another trend. It is an entirely structural shift in how customers discover brands, how they make decisions, and how businesses like yours continue to grow. So today I’m bringing you one of the most important episodes. We’ve recorded a conversation that pulls together what changed, what matters, and what comes next for anyone responsible for growth, brand or customer experience. This isn’t a conversation about tools. It’s about how to make sure your brand still gets chosen when AI assistance and agents do more of the choosing. Even if you’ve heard this before, give it another listen with fresh ears, because the future I was talking about then is already here. Let’s dive in. If you think back to the beginning of 2025, we were ...
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