Is Emotional Advertising on the Brink of Extinction with the Rise of Agentic AI?

If you have been following CES this year, you have probably already heard all about the next disruptive wave of AI - agentic AI - and how it has the potential to change the future by giving everyone their own personal AI agent. These always-awake, all-knowing AI agents would go beyond answering simple questions and managing your packed diary; they would be able to make purchase decisions on our behalf without our input. 

As someone whose career is built on crafting advertising that persuades people to purchase everything from subscriptions to shavers, this potential future has me thinking - and staring at the ceiling at 3am. 

In recent years, our industry has had many conversations about rational vs. emotional advertising. At this point, I hope we all agree that emotional advertising works wonders. After all, in The Long and Short of It, Binet & Field proved emotional campaigns are more profitable than rational ones. 

But what happens to emotional advertising in a future where humans strip decision-making of any humanity and outsource it to entities that run purely on logic and algorithms?

AI agents don’t feel happy, sad or outraged. They don’t experience FOMO or peer pressure. They won’t be swayed by tear-jerking stories or Chris Hemsworth’s charm. Instead, they make decisions based on cold data like price, reviews and performance.

In this possible future, it’s easy to imagine that the traditional marketing funnel will start to crumble like a dry biscuit on a hot day. With rational robots doing the shopping, the top of the funnel - and perhaps even the middle - becomes virtually obsolete, which would effectively kill emotional advertising, leaving our industry with little but facts and rational RTBs. If that bleak scenario doesn’t make you question your career choices, I don’t know what will.

Now, before you hand in your access pass, add ‘Open to work’ to your LinkedIn profile and call your mum with the news about your impending career pivot, let me tell you why I’m personally not worried just yet.

While I can imagine a world where people allow an AI agent to add loo roll and toothpaste to the next Tesco delivery without human input, I’m sceptical about bigger, high-involvement purchases. When it comes to purchases that carry risk or impact how people present themselves to the world - like cars, phones and clothing - I suggest humans tend to be a bit more … well, human about it, and they simply don’t trust AI enough to make those decisions. 

According to KPMG’s Trust in Artificial Intelligence study, three in five people are wary of trusting AI. With such low trust, I believe the likelihood of people outsourcing meaningful purchases to AI agents remains about as high as my chances of winning Olympic gold in synchronised swimming. Sure, some people might use AI agents for research and recommendations, but completely handing over the keys? I highly doubt that will ever happen!

Of course, trust in AI might skyrocket faster than a SpaceX rocket on its way to Mars. But until that happens, emotional advertising will remain a powerful tool for creating impactful and effective campaigns. So, let’s all put our access passes back in our pockets, and keep telling entertaining stories, pulling heartstrings and occasionally making people cry.