If AI can produce the consensus view in seconds, your point of view is the job.
That’s why I think this episode of Inspiring Futures with Mike Mallazzo, General Manager at Alephic, is worth your time. Mike went from investigative journalism into tech, spending time at LinkedIn, Dynamic Yield, and PayPal’s agentic commerce team, and he has a sharp, often contrarian take on what brands need to do now that AI agents sit between them and their customers.
Why it’s worth a listen:
Brands now have two audiences. Mike argues that marketing leaders have to decide how much of their job is marketing to people and how much is marketing to agents. He calls it the biggest platform shift since social.
A POV is your protection. LLMs drift toward consensus. Mike's test: if you never break the rules or hold a contrarian opinion, you’re easy for AI to replace.
Generic insight is dead. AI will always beat people at “view from nowhere” summaries. What’s left for us is original reporting, lived experience, and taste.
Strategy’s roots still apply. We get into how 1960s account planning thinking is shaping frameworks for marketing to agents, and why journalists’ instinct to find the real truth makes for great strategy.
Unwritten brand knowledge meets AI. What happens to brand judgment when agents start making decisions that used to happen in meetings?
These are also the questions at the heart of BRXND, the AI and marketing conference Alephic is involved in, in New York this November.https://www.brxnd.ai/
