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A Website Alone Isn’t Enough For Today’s Digital Shoppers

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By Karan Sharma

If you think that just having a good website for your business can bring in customers, it’s time to rethink. Yes, a website plays an important role: It showcases your products, shares essential information and introduces your brand to potential customers. But times have changed, and today’s digital shoppers expect more than just an online presence. What matters now is the experience customers have before, during and after visiting your site.

What Today’s Digital Shoppers Really Expect

An Omnichannel Experience

Let’s say a customer sees an ad for sneaker boots on Instagram while watching a video on an over-the-top (OTT) platform. They click the ad, browse the boots in the brand’s mobile app, add them to their wish list and then later read reviews and complete the purchase via an email link, the app or in-store. For a shopper, this is a single shopping experience, even though it spans multiple platforms.

To create this kind of experience for your customers, focus on how you can connect with them across channels. For example, you could use a customer data platform, enable cart synchronization across devices and include product links in ads. Also, integrating your customer relationship management (CRM) platform with sales and marketing data can give you a complete view of customer behaviour.

Mobile-Friendly Apps And Websites

A lot of customers’ browsing, product comparing and purchasing takes place on mobile now. Yet there’s still a noticeable gap between what shoppers expect and what the mobile experience delivers. Many mobile journeys still feel slow or disconnected due to issues like slow loading, incomplete product details or complex checkout. Customers might not complain; they’ll simply leave or avoid revisiting the app. To retain them, focus on fast-loading pages, clear menus, smooth navigation and organized inventory.

Retargeting

Retargeting is a highly effective way to reengage shoppers after they leave your website. But this strategy performs best only when ads are relevant. Make sure your ads recommend products based on customers’ interests and that they’re shown with limited frequency.

To implement this strategy, start by using dynamic pixels, which are tracking tools embedded on a website or app, that collect real-time data about customers’ actions, such as what they browse, what they add to their cart and what they’ve bought before. Using this data, you can group audiences and automatically deliver personalized retargeting ads.

Push Notifications

Push notifications about order status, price drops, new offers, fresh stock or saved items are a smart way to keep shoppers informed and engaged without being an interruption. But make sure the notifications you send are relevant and personalized to customer preferences. For example, instead of sending a “New stock is here” alert, you could notify a customer that an item saved to their wish list has dropped in price.

A Quick Checkout

One thing I always recommend is providing a smooth checkout experience for your customers. Nobody wants to deal with complicated forms, forced account creation or other unnecessary steps during checkout. When checkout is simple and hassle-free, with multiple payment options, it increases the chances of quick purchases. Plus, it leaves customers with a positive impression of your brand.

Real-Time Support When It Matters

Customers frequently ask questions about a product, pricing, order status or delivery. But if they don’t get immediate answers, they often leave. Therefore, assisting with live chat, messaging, chatbots or in-app support features is essential.

When customers get real-time support, they are more likely to continue their shopping rather than leaving it incomplete. Also, it helps your brand stay ahead of competitors who do not provide timely support.

AI Shopping Assistants

I have observed that brands that ignore AI-driven shopping are not losing customers; they’re becoming invisible over time. Today, in the digital age, many customers use AI assistants to find products, compare prices and make informed decisions. For example, instead of navigating multiple stores, a customer might simply ask the AI, “Find me the best-rated boots under $100 that can be delivered by tomorrow.”

To stay visible in this landscape, focus on the updates that help AI systems find and recommend your products. For example, structure your product data using clear schemas and consistent attributes, update inventory in real time, improve titles and descriptions, and clearly display pricing. AI looks for accuracy, clarity and freshness when deciding what to surface to customers.

Community Engagement

Today, many shoppers check product reviews or learn about the brand through real customer experiences before purchasing. They visit platforms like YouTube, Reddit and social media communities. To win over this audience, provide real customer experiences, authentic reviews and transparent feedback that shoppers can trust. In my experience, brands that are real to their customers are the ones that earn respect, loyalty and long-term trust.

Simple Returns

I’ve noticed that customers often abandon their carts just because they are not sure about the return process. They think that if they have issues with the item and they want to return it, the process will be too complicated, time-consuming or frustrating. Brands that make returns simple, clear and with timely updates encourage customers to make their purchase more confidently.

Final Thoughts

In today’s digital marketing era, just building a good website and following trends aren’t enough. You need to consider what customers expect and what touchpoints make their shopping journey enjoyable and convenient. When you align these digital touchpoints, you can deliver a strong, consistent experience that supports sustainable growth and repeat purchases.

Feature image credit: getty

By Karan Sharma

Find Karan Sharma on LinkedIn and X. Visit Karan’s website.

COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based). Karan Sharma is a digital commerce expert and the co-founder at Kinex Media Inc, a creative digital agency in Toronto. Read Karan Sharma’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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The Creepy Uncanny Valley Of Targeted Online Marketing

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By Hank Campbell

Personalized online ads must work for the same reason advertising must work; it wouldn’t be a trillion-dollar industry if it didn’t work. Even supplements and organic food are only $140 billion, and those are really popular things that don’t work. Advertising is not popular at all but good luck succeeding without it.

Yet there are limits for what people accept without being uncomfortable. In robots and animation, that has long been termed the ‘uncanny valley’ – where something is not lifelike enough to look real but too lifelike to be acceptable. Some digital marketing has its own uncanny valley; where it becomes unsettling. Examples are people who say they mentioned something in the presence of their Amazon Echo and then ads on Facebook began to target them.

It’s technically impressive, but even more creepy. You feel like you’re walking around London and being monitored all of the time, except on your phone.

It doesn’t backfire on the technology backbone, it backfires on the companies in the ads, making you less likely to buy that brand even if you expressed interest in the general product. We all recognize we are under constant surveillance but resent when it becomes too obvious, according to a recent paper.

With over 1,800 online participants across three studies, the authors targeted some with advertisements for things like Nike sneakers and fabricated headphones after those were mentioned. The control groups were not digitally targeted. Then people rated how uncomfortable they felt and the authors created a Component Process Model of Creepiness.

It is pretty on-the-nose, even for the humanities, this was an online experiment using people paid through Amazon Mechanical Turk, not the normal population, but 75 percent who expressed discomfort were concerned about the manipulation and surveillance aspects of the technology. These are surveys, not behavior, and therefore only EXPLORATORY, but on a 7-point scale for intent to purchase, the authors said a 1-point increase in discomfort meant willingness to purchase the product by half a point.

Like people who declared they are boycotting Paramount Plus because the company is buying Warner Brothers Discovery but never subscribed to either, their opinions mean little. Bud Light, on the other hand, had a very real, very dramatic turn in revenue when they sought to use advertising to do more than sell beer.

That is what needs to be considered. If someone is searching for a product, they probably want to buy it, and for most people price/value overrules the fact that they got a targeted ad after searching for it on another device. Some of us even game the system; if I see something I might like but it is from weird name in a Facebook ad, I click on it and then click back, knowing a few minutes later a company that isn’t some Chinese drop-shipper will advertise it to me.

So companies are probably still smart to target people digitally, even considering blowback. Because advertising is about, as car executives in the 1960s said, “moving the iron”, not being worried about whether or not someone is annoyed. If your recents are decent and your price is competitive, you are winning just the same.

By Hank Campbell

Sourced from Science 2.0

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Tactile Design: Texture and Touch in Modern Branding

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By Jeff

Tactile design is reshaping branding, packaging, and digital UI with texture, embossing, and material surfaces that make design feel as good as it looks.

Screens have flattened everything. Swipe, tap, scroll — interaction is mostly frictionless now. But a countermovement is gaining ground. Designers across branding, print, packaging, and even digital interfaces are leaning into texture. They are making surfaces that suggest weight, grain, and resistance. They are designing things that feel like something.

This is tactile design. It is not a single aesthetic. It is an approach — a commitment to material honesty and sensory depth. When a brand prints its identity on uncoated stock with debossed letterforms, the paper’s tooth becomes part of the message. When a package uses kraft board with a blind-embossed logo, the roughness and the relief tell a story about craft and care before the product is even opened.

Tactile Design in Branding and Packaging

The most effective tactile design in branding starts with material selection. Studios working across print and packaging consistently reach for surfaces that have presence: cotton rag stock, duplex boards, textured uncoated papers, and natural materials like linen and wood pulp. These choices carry meaning. An uncoated cream paper reads handmade. A heavy coated board reads luxury. Kraft reads honest and sustainable.

tactile design brown paper tag with twine

Finishing techniques add the next layer. Debossing presses type or imagery into the surface, creating a recessed impression that readers touch without thinking. Embossing does the opposite, raising forms above the sheet. Foil stamping adds metallic contrast while still referencing physical material. Letterpress printing, with its characteristic ink bite and impression, turns the act of reading into a physical encounter with the page.

Tactile Design in Digital and UI

UI designers have long experimented with material metaphors — subtle noise overlays, paper-grain backgrounds, and linen-pattern interfaces that recall physical surfaces. The goal is not skeuomorphism for its own sake. It is warmth. A slight texture on a background removes the sterile coldness of a pure flat surface. It grounds the interface in the physical world.

tactile design sustainable packaging cardboard

Haptic feedback in mobile design extends this logic. A well-timed vibration when a button activates does not just confirm the action — it adds a moment of physicality that flat audio feedback cannot replicate. As displays improve and surface materials evolve, tactile design will bridge the screen and the hand more precisely.

The best tactile work understands that texture is not decoration. It is communication. Every grain, every impression, every surface choice sends a signal about quality, intent, and care. The studios and designers pushing this work are not chasing a trend. They are recovering something that flat digital design left behind.

By Jeff

Sourced from abdz-do

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Real talk, real people: why Creative Boom IRL is the community you’ve been waiting for

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By Tom May

From Belfast to Brighton, creatives are swapping algorithm feeds for real conversation… and loving every minute of it.

If you’ve ever felt invisible in your own industry (heads down, working solo, scrolling through feeds and wondering where all the energy went), Creative Boom IRL might be what you’ve been looking for.

Creative Boom IRL is a series of free, informal gatherings for creative professionals happening in cities across Britain. There are no talks, no panels, no sponsors and no agenda. Just a relaxed venue, a drink in hand, and a room full of designers, illustrators, photographers, writers, strategists and other creatives who actually want to talk to each other, face to face.

Events are hosted by local volunteers from The Studio, Creative Boom’s private online community. And they’re open to all creatives, whether you’re freelance, in-house or running your own studio.

Manchester
Manchester
Durham. Photographer: Steve Atkinson
Durham. Photographer: Steve Atkinson
Natty Harris (Bristol)
Natty Harris (Bristol)
Leeds. Photographer: Michael Godsall
Leeds. Photographer: Michael Godsall
Sheffield
Sheffield

In a moment, we’ll share what’s been going on around the country in more detail. But first, for the uninitiated, how did this all come about?

How it began

Creative Boom was founded in 2009 as an online magazine celebrating creative work and the people behind it. Over the years, it has built a loyal following among designers and other creative professionals. But by the mid-2020s, that audience was increasingly telling us that algorithm-driven social platforms were letting them down.

Carefully crafted posts were vanishing into the void. Engagement had become performative. The genuine sense of connection that had once made the internet feel exciting was harder and harder to find. So in early 2025, we launched The Studio: a private, distraction-free space with no likes, no algorithms and no self-promotional noise. Just real conversations among people who are serious about their craft.

It grew fast, reaching over 4,500 members within months. Online events with industry leaders followed: intimate sessions on positioning, brand building, goal-setting and more. But members kept asking the same thing. When do we get to actually meet in real life?

Enter Creative Boom IRL.

Getting out there

The inaugural event in Manchester in April 2025 set the tone perfectly. Hosted at Common on Edge Street, photographer Pip Rustage welcomed 27 members for an evening that felt more like bumping into old friends than networking. No talks, no agenda, no awkward elevator pitches; just good people in a good space.

Durham. Photographer: Steve Atkinson
Durham. Photographer: Steve Atkinson
Birmingham. Photographer: Dray-Darnell Gonzales
Birmingham. Photographer: Dray-Darnell Gonzales
Belfast
Belfast
Leeds. Photographer: Michael Godsall
Leeds. Photographer: Michael Godsall
Emily and Kirsty (Sheffield)
Emily and Kirsty (Sheffield)

It worked. Conversations sparked, details were swapped, and everyone asked the same question on the way out: when’s the next one? From there, the momentum was unstoppable. Events rolled out across Britain, and the appetite was real.

In Sheffield, co-hosts Emily O’Brien and Kirsty Grafton took things into their own hands. Based at the newly opened Leah’s Yard in the city centre, they found a willing venue in Hop Hideout, whose owner, Jules, agreed to open exclusively for their events, for free. “There wasn’t much opportunity for creatives to meet each other that weren’t too industry-specific, expensive or cliquey,” says Emily. “So many people came to the first event as their very first creative industry event.”

The Sheffield events have since grown into a genuine community, with one particularly lovely outcome. Laura Poole, creative academy coordinator at Sheffield College, used her connections from the meetups to bring local creatives into the college to deliver lectures, set live briefs and run workshops; directly inspiring the next generation.

Kirsty sees the in-person element as the crucial ingredient. “Getting together in real life adds something extra,” she says. “We have the kind of chats you just wouldn’t have with a new connection on LinkedIn.”

Further north in Durham, Clare Lavelle of Aniseed Creative was determined to put her region on the map. “Durham is not particularly known as a creative hub, even though there’s plenty of creativity here,” she says. Her first event drew around 15 creatives on a rare boiling-hot summer’s day in the North East. Weirdly, many of them had already worked with the same people or in the same places.

Now regularly attracting 20–25 attendees, the Durham events have led to real connections. “I wouldn’t probably be co-hosting Billy No Mates alongside another local designer, Laura, without it,” says Clare. “A couple of local artists have connected up, and designers and marketers have been exchanging details for possible collaborations. It’s become a lovely community in a short space of time.”

Clare Lavelle (Durham)
Clare Lavelle (Durham)
Manchester
Manchester
Manchester
Manchester
Birmingham. Photographer: Dray-Darnell Gonzales
Birmingham. Photographer: Dray-Darnell Gonzales
Belfast
Belfast

In Leeds, designer Brett Kellett—who freely admits he hates networking—was talked into hosting by his relentlessly optimistic co-hosts Vicky Zaremba and Kate Campbell. “What matters is building community,” he says. “As someone who recently moved back to Leeds, it starts to turn something that can feel impenetrable and forbidding into something human.” At one event, he bumped into a former London colleague, now one of the founders of acclaimed Leeds studio Edna.

Meanwhile, in Birmingham, brand and packaging designer Louise O’Kane of LULACREATES has been quietly building something special at Kilder Bar near Moor Street Station. Her third event was the turning point: a buzzing room of design graduates, creative directors, photographers, videographers, illustrators, fashion designers and sound engineers. “A genuine cross-section of the creative community,” she recalls. “I felt utter delight.”

The need for each other

Brighton, famed as a creative hub, delivered from the start. Co-hosts Emily Penny of Becolourful and Michelle Mariathasan Holland of Make More Happen drew over 60 people to the Projects co-working space, complete with a beautiful sunset from the roof terrace. “I was slightly nervous we weren’t offering formal talks or structured entertainment,” says Michelle. But it turns out creatives don’t need programming; they need each other.”

One attendee travelled from Portsmouth and ended up meeting other Portsmouth creatives at the event. They all got the train home together. That’s exactly what it’s about. As Emily says, “Chance meetings can and do change futures.”

Birmingham. Photographer: Dray-Darnell Gonzales
Birmingham. Photographer: Dray-Darnell Gonzales
Emily Penny (Brighton)
Emily Penny (Brighton)
Leeds: Photo by Jemma Mickleburgh
Leeds: Photo by Jemma Mickleburgh
Gregg Reid (Belfast)
Gregg Reid (Belfast)
Louise O'Kane (Birmingham)
Louise O’Kane (Birmingham)

In Bristol, senior designer Natty Harris has created a space where there’s genuinely no pressure to impress. “The last ones were still here at 11pm, and I had to kindly nudge them to leave!” she laughs. “Numbers and social handles were swapped, which is really lovely.” The response has been one of overwhelming gratitude from a freelance and remote-worker community that had been longing for exactly this kind of no-agenda gathering.

Over in Belfast, meanwhile, creative director Gregg Reid of Hundred Studio put £250 behind the bar at the Ulster Sports Club taproom and welcomed 50 people through the door. In the process, he was struck by the realisation of just how much creative talent the city contains: people working on blockbuster films, boutique hotels and global brands, often without knowing they were just down the road from each other. “It was killer to get loads of people in one room and not only realise how similar we all are, but to understand the real scope of our work,” he reflects.

In London, motion designer Michela Bruno and Benji Wiedemann, ECD and co-founder of brand consultancy Wiedemann Lampe, co-hosted the capital’s first event. Michela, who moved from Italy in 2011 and has worked remotely ever since, says Creative Boom IRL has filled a long-felt gap. “I work from home, always alone, but my creativity is fuelled by collaboration,” she explains. “I badly wanted to meet other creative people in person.”

Leeds. Photo by Jemma Mickleburgh
Leeds. Photo by Jemma Mickleburgh
Birmingham. Photographer: Dray-Darnell Gonzales
Birmingham. Photographer: Dray-Darnell Gonzales
Belfast
Belfast
Sheffield
Sheffield
Durham. Photographer: Steve Atkinson
Durham. Photographer: Steve Atkinson

Benji, in turn, was struck by how faithfully The Studio’s warmth translated into the physical world. “The vibe was genuine,” he reports. “It was all about openness, kindness, compassion and above all fun.” Benji and Michela run London’s event along with senior designer Arianna Cerroni and creative coach Ivy Malik.

Why this matters

Right now, the creative industry is having a tough time. Budgets are tighter, timelines are shorter, freelance work is drying up, and the AI conversation is impossible to ignore. Against that backdrop, Creative Boom IRL offers something both simple and badly needed: the reminder that you are not alone. As Emily O’Brien puts it: “Work right now is hard. Having this space to share that ‘it’s not just you’ really helped everyone feel reassured.”

Most importantly, Creative Boom IRL events are free, welcoming and deliberately low-key. There’s no agenda and no need for a pitch. Clare Lavelle in Durham puts it best: “It’s not your typical networking. It’s just making creative pals.” Come join us!

Bristol
Bristol
Brighton. Photography by Alex Bamford
Brighton. Photography by Alex Bamford
Emily Penny and Michelle Mariathasan Holland at IRL Brighton
Emily Penny and Michelle Mariathasan Holland at IRL Brighton

Feature image credit: Jemma Mickleburgh

By Tom May

Sourced from CREATIVE BOOM

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GB News whines that brands are ‘scared’ of advertising with them

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By Amelia Hansford

GB News is being urged to ‘reflect’ on the type of content it produces after a host complained about an advertising boycott yet again.

Presenter Nana Akua claimed during an episode of The Interview that potential advertisers were being “scared off” by human rights groups that argue the news and opinion channel is pushing division in the UK.

During an interview with former professional football coach, Steve Harrison, the 54-year-old said: “We’ve been through the whole thing where, you know, there was this [call], ‘Well, they’re horrible, don’t advertise with them’. Some were scared off from advertising on the channel.”

GB News has reportedly lost over £131 million since its launch in 2021 as major brands join a boycott started by the political pressure group Stop Funding Hate, which argued the channel uses “fear and division” to gain viewers.

The broadcaster has routinely come under fire for airing anti-LGBTQ+ views. Most notably was GB News host Josh Howie’s remark that the LGBTQ+ acronym includes “paedos,” as well as is on-air apology that denied the existence of trans people.

GB News host Josh Howie in the studio.
GB News host Josh Howie. (GB News/Instagram)

Stop Funding Hatemade a call to boycott the right-wing broadcaster in February 2021 – four months before the broadcaster officially launched – calling for prospective advertisers to pull support in the lead-up to its first broadcast.

Major brands including Ikea, Nivea and OVO Energy pulled advertising almost immediately following the channel’s launch, with many more pulling their sponsorships over the next few years.

During the broadcast, Harrison claimed that advertisers were “complicit” in the channel’s losses for “not standing up to Stop Funding Hate.”

Responding in a post on social media, the political pressure group called on GB News to “reflect on whether the content of GB News might explain this reluctance” for brands to advertise on the channel.

GB News
L-R: Former GB News hosts Laurence Fox, Dan Wootton and Calvin Robinson. (GB News)

“We’ve seen time and time again that when enough of us speak out & urge advertisers to avoid GB News, companies will respond,” they added. “This only works because it’s also very clear how toxic an environment GB News is – advertisers can see that the public has a point and is right to be concerned.”

Akua’s comments came just a week after fellow GB News host Charlie Downes claimed she was not truly British, despite being born in Newcastle.

During a heated debate, Downes claimed that Akua was not truly British because, in his view, “there’s a difference between someone who has come here within the last five years and gotten themselves a passport and somebody like me whose family have been in this country for thousands of years.”

The pair clashed after Downes claimed that Britishness is not defined by a “set of abstract, corporate values like democracy,” claiming instead that it was defined by what he called the “ancient peoples” of Britain.

Akua responded by citing Cheddar Man – a Mesolithic human male whose skeleton was found in Cheddar Gorge and is believed to be the oldest complete skeleton of a human found in Britain. In 2018, DNA analysis found that Cheddar Man was Black.

After Downes said he disagreed because of his Christian beliefs, Akua responded: “You might believe that, but science says otherwise.”

Feature image credit: GB News host Nana Akua (left) spoke with Steve Harrison (right) on the channel’s issues with advertisers. (screenshot/Facebook)

By Amelia Hansford

Sourced from PinkNews

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Why brands can become emotional lifelines in times of crisis

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By and

The rain hasn’t stopped for hours. Wind rattles the shelter’s windows as the storm outside swells, flooding the streets they used to call home. In a crowded gym, a family of four sit huddled together on makeshift beds pushed side by side each other. The parents wrap donated blankets around their shoulders; the teenagers lean against each other. Someone suggests a movie: something light, something old. They settle on a childhood favourite, a worn-out Pixar film, its colours flickering softly on the phone screen. Familiar voices, the opening music, the brand logo before the title… For a few minutes, it feels like the flood damage caused to their home no longer matters because they are together.

This is not just nostalgia. Research shows it is a form of collective coping. When the world feels unstable, why do we cling to familiar household brands and family rituals?

A study in everyday survival

In our recent research published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, we explored how families use everyday brands and consumer rituals to restore a shared sense of identity after major life-changing disruptions.

Drawing on interviews and the diaries of 22 French families during the Covid-19 lockdowns, we found that major life disruptions, sudden collective shocks like pandemics, wars, or natural disasters, destabilise shared identities. When crisis strikes, family units don’t merely adapt their routines; they rebuild who they are together through consumption.

Brands act as scaffolding for reconstructing “who we are together”. Products, platforms, and rituals, from Netflix series to board games to family meals, become tools for resilience and belonging.

And this pattern extends well beyond Covid. In an era of growing environmental volatility, it matters more than ever. According to global risk reports, the number of natural disasters causing major economic losses is at record highs. As more and more communities around the world face upheaval, these small, mundane gestures of consumption are likely to become even more vital.

How we make sense when the world stops making sense

The study identifies three-way people use shared consumption to soothe anxiety and reclaim a sense of belonging.

1) Ritualised structuring: re-creating routine

When time feels suspended, people rebuild daily habits through familiar brands. This can involve watching the same show every night at eight to mark family time or deciding that Tuesday night is reserved for a sisterly chat over WhatsApp while watching a cooking show. Even a simple coffee in a beloved mug every morning can signal the start of “normal” life again.

These rituals restore predictability and reinforce family structure: who does what, when, and with whom?

2) Collective revalorising: rediscovering shared fun

Shared consumption becomes a new form of togetherness. Families dust off old board games like Monopoly and Cluedo. Parents can cook with kids using brands that “belong” to the household (e.g. Nutella pancakes, Lego projects). The activity is not about the brand itself; it is about reasserting family character traits: “We’re playful,” “We’re resilient,” “We do this together.”

3) Intergenerational romanticising: reviving lineage

Families can also turn to the past for comfort, rewatching classics from childhood, cooking passed down recipes, or creating family newsletters to share stories across generations. These rituals ease anxiety by reconnecting with lineage and continuity. A form of quiet resistance to the fear that the future is slipping away.

Together, these practices form a kind of psychological architecture: a way to impose meaning, order, and belonging amidst chaos.

What brands really mean in a crisis

Not all brands can play that role. The ones that endure crises often do so not because they shout louder, but because they embody stability, shared experience, and emotional legacy.

During an economic downturn or after a parent’s layoff, trusted retailers can become family anchors and symbols that life can still be rearranged. A brand like Ikea, for example, could help families adjust to smaller homes by buying back larger furniture and offering adaptable, modular pieces that transform rooms into communal areas. That kind of gesture does more than move products: it helps families reimagine togetherness and regain a sense of control.

In climate disasters, local brands can strengthen communities and become symbols of solidarity. After the 2025 Texas flash floods, Walmart offered free meals to affected families. Initiatives like that could go further, for example by creating spaces where families gather, connect, and rest. The value is not just in the food; it is in rebuilding collective morale.

Even in political upheaval, cultural and media brands provide continuity. National broadcasters, for instance, can help by reviving beloved classic films that families can watch together. A subtle act of collective reassurance, reminding people of their shared cultural heritage.

The insight is simple but powerful: during disruption, consumption is not escapism. It’s sense making.

Belonging as a Business Asset

If brands can become emotional lifelines, it is because consumption in moments of rupture is not mindless escapism. Sharing a meal, lighting the same candle, queuing up the same movie… these acts whisper, “We’re still ourselves.”

The brands that subsist are not the ones that dominate conversations, but those that quietly fit into our family coping mechanisms. Our research shows that brands become vectors of family history, creators of gathering occasions, and delineators of individual, relational, and collective times and activities. They are, in effect, identity technologies which act as everyday anchors for group belonging and continuity.

As societies face mounting major challenges, from climate anxiety to digital disconnection and geopolitical tension, the emotional dimension of the marketplace will matter more than ever. When the world falls apart, the brands we hold onto are not about consumption at all; they are about remembering who we are.

Feature image credit: Unsplash

By and

Sourced from The Conversation

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AI Is Here To Stay, But So Is Authentic Human Intelligence

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By Nancy Marshall

As artificial intelligence continues to disrupt industries from law to media to public relations, you don’t need me to sing its praises. AI is most likely here to stay, and all of us—from agency owners to entry-level employees—need to accept our new reality.

If you fail to embrace AI, you will fail to adapt to a rapidly changing workplace. The most appealing workers know how to integrate AI into their daily workflows to broaden the horizons of their productivity, and the best employers know it.

However, we can’t overestimate AI either. There is (still) much more to the modern workplace than the power of large language models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. Especially in fields like PR and marketing, many agencies are going all in to automate their processes with AI, but people are going to keep craving the human touch (yes, still). Agencies that double down on real, authentic relationships will be the ones that win because they will stand out more and more.

Countless surveys prove this. Whether we’re making a complex purchase, working with customer support or consulting a real doctor, we are human beings who want to see and speak with other people. Our need for social contact may have changed in recent years, but most people don’t want to just talk to bots all day.

Call it “the other AI,” or “authentic intelligence.” Being more human—from understanding human tendencies to communicating with personality—has emerged as a major competitive advantage for leading brands. We’re seeing companies lean into emotion as a form of brand personality, which is a key to breeding familiarity and loyalty. Remember: In order for people to know, like and trust you, they need to feel like you actually see eye to eye with them as a fellow human, like you’re on their same wavelength.

Trust is perhaps the most important currency for business leaders. You need people—from customers and clients to employees—to see you as someone who is operating in good faith, with people’s best interests at heart. When brands become overly automated with AI, they often lose their emotional resonance, and they may inevitably lose trust as their competitive advantage blends into what every other brand is doing—automating and automating some more.

In my experience, relationships always outperform algorithms. I have always placed a premium on developing real, human connections with people, whether it’s a vendor or a governmental official. When you see people you know, it’s best to smile, look them in the eye, give them a firm (but not too firm) handshake and tell them you are glad to see them. That type of personal connection will last for a long time and resonate more than any LLM response.

Empathy drives engagement. If you know what people are going through, and let people know you care, they will want to stay in touch with you. A journalist I’ve known since the 1990s recently broke her ankle, and her daughter was nearly killed while crossing the street. She was feeling very down in the dumps, so I sent her flowers with a handwritten note. That gesture will surely beat any bot telling her to feel better online. Hopefully, it keeps our relationship strong for the next 30 years.

People need to associate AI with amplification. It has the potential to make us more productive and keep us more informed, bringing out the very best of our humanity. AI amplifies human energy, but it does not replace us, and there is immense value in relying on smart humans for their brainpower to build and manage relationships.

Relationship management takes time. You have to be into networking and connecting for the long haul, and not just for instant gratification. You can’t just request a new connection on LinkedIn and expect them to become a new client or colleague overnight. And you certainly shouldn’t have a bot approach all of your LinkedIn contacts to pitch them new products and services.

Getting lazy with AI is not the right approach. Dehumanizing yourself, at the expense of others, is never the answer.

The right approach is to amplify your humanity with AI. Lean into artificial intelligence, but don’t forget authenticity along the way.

Feature image credit: Getty

By Nancy Marshall

COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)

Nancy Marshall, The PR Maven has been in PR for 35 years. She talks about growing your audience with media relations & personal branding. Read Nancy Marshall’s full executive profile here. Find Nancy Marshall on LinkedIn and X. Visit Nancy’s website.

Sourced from Forbes

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How Your Business Can Survive — And Thrive —When AI Takes Over Shopping

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By Tomas Gorny

A recent report shows what might be the biggest shift in the history of consumer activity: AI is starting to take over shopping. Everything your business has done to build brand loyalty is at stake.

AI agents “can behave differently from human shoppers: they prioritize price, user ratings, delivery speed, and real-time inventory over brand familiarity or loyalty,” Boston Consulting Group reports. “This has the potential to reshape how retailers compete and how purchase decisions are made.”

There’s no time to waste in meeting this new reality. This year, 52% of consumers plan to use generative AI for online shopping, according to Adobe. Some will use it to simply get a list of options, and may pick their favourite brand from among them. But when they see those options listed together without brand identities or logos, price is even more likely to be the differentiator.

And soon, agentic AI will take on even more of the buying process. It’s like having “a personal shopper who deeply understands your preferences, lifestyle, and budget, effortlessly curating tailored product recommendations from thousands of options,” BCG says. “Your shopper seamlessly anticipates your needs, secures the best prices, and completes transactions autonomously.”

The way business works today, organizations will lose a lot through “disintermediation,” in which consumers bypass a brand’s e-commerce platform altogether, the report adds. “The growth of zero-click search and agent-driven interactions is eroding direct traffic—along with the retailer’s ability to observe, influence, and understand consumer behaviour at scale.”

There are steps businesses can and must take now to prepare.

Your Own Agentic Experiences

The most important step is to create your own platforms that make consumers want to come directly to you. These platforms must offer all the same end-to-end shopping as third party AI applications like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

The good news is that your business has a big advantage in this battle: proprietary information about customers. By combining that information with the power of AI, you can provide experiences that make people want to shop there.

Building an agentic experience requires taking all the data you have about each individual customer and using it to personalize their journey, making them feel recognized and valued. That means leaving nothing on the table. Be sure to gather every piece of information from every interaction your brand has ever had with each customer, across any and all channels.

A well designed Unified Customer Experience Management (UCXM) platform can achieve this. It serves not only as a way to consolidate information, but also as a system for everyone across a company to collaborate. This way, people across different functions access the same records; update them in real time; and contribute to finding solutions to customer challenges.

Since these tools keep learning over time, they become more precise and successful, guiding each customer to their best possible experience. Everything about an agentic experience can be hyper-personalized, from an agent’s voice to its manner of speaking to the products and services it recommends.

Building a ‘moat’

“To drive revenue growth and improve ROI, business leaders may need to commit to transformative AI possibilities,” McKinsey says. “As the hype around AI subsides and the focus shifts to value, there is a heightened attention on practical applications that can create competitive moats.”

Your brand is like its own castle. The experience of going to it can be so enjoyable that customers keep visiting. And by ensuring that competitors can’t get in — that they’re unable to access your precious customer data — you keep the experience distinctive.

Of course, this is not the only part of the solution to the seismic shift ahead in how people shop. BCG notes that brands must also work to ensure discoverability on popular AI tools, through both “earned visibility” and paid opportunities.

On this, brands have an opportunity as well. Adobe found that when people arrive at a retailer’s site from a generative AI source, they are 10% more engaged, with 32% longer visits and a 27% lower bounce rate. “This indicates that with AI tools, shoppers are becoming more informed and focusing on the most relevant retailers during the research/consideration phase,” Adobe’s report said.

With a UCXM in place, your brand can know exactly how a customer arrived at your site each time, and use that to tailor their experience.

As with so many other revolutions, the AI revolution presents an opportunity. By developing new strategies, you can compete and win in new ways. The key is to see the possibility — not just the problem.

Feature image credit: Getty

By Tomas Gorny

Sourced from Forbes

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