Your precious logo and that vaunted 'brand story' you've poured thousands of euros into to make you feel important? I have bad news. In five years, they'll be worth exactly nothing. When artificial intelligence starts shopping for people, it won't be looking for your expensive prime-time TV commercial. It'll just be looking at raw data. And if the algorithm can't see you, you're dead in business. That's the demise of brands - caused by the AI algorithm.
Look, the market – and especially technology – doesn’t care about your feelings. It doesn’t give a damn about your nostalgia for the “good old days” and manual transmissions. The world has changed while you were choosing a font for your business card. This is the decline of brands – and it will cause it AI algorithm.
The Pathology of Comfort: Why We Are Ideal Victims of Algorithms
Let's be brutally honest: Artificial Intelligence (AI) won't win because it's necessarily smarter than us, but because we're fundamentally lazy. This is the pathology of modern man, and especially of our national sport. We complain that inflation is unbearable, that wages are shamefully low, and yet we unhesitatingly pay a 20% surcharge on cold pizza delivered just so we don't have to put on our shoes and step outside.
We are slaves to convenience and prone to taking shortcuts. And that is exactly what fuels algorithms – we are willing to sell our freedom of choice (and our data) in exchange for the ability to continue to vegetate on the couch. We pay for time, even when we are broke. And here is a trap that you cannot see because you are looking at a screen.
The Death of “Lojze” and the Reign of Data
"Siri, I'm hungry. Something that won't give me heartburn and that goes with that wine I bought yesterday."
And you know what happens? An algorithm will decide what you eat. Not you. And certainly not a brand. If “Inn at Lojzet"is not optimized for AI if the algorithm doesn't know that Lojze grills the best ribs in the region... Lojze does not exist.Lojze is dead.
The winner will be the one who sits at the “toll booth” of data. Amazon, Google or some new AI agent that you haven't heard of yet. This means the end of the world of brands as we know it. When AI buys for you – from washing powder to a new car – it will look for the "best in terms of parameters", not the one with the prettiest commercial with smiling people. And we Slovenians will again looked like calves at the new door and wondered why our “traditional” business models were failing.
“Nokia Syndrome” and False Security
Remember how people clung to their homes twenty years ago? Blackberry and phones Nokiabecause "I really need physical keys"? Where are these people today? On iPhones, where they tap on the glass. It's the same with AI today. Technological evolution doesn't ask for permission. It simply runs over those standing in the middle of the road.
Don't be a Slovenian "ziheraš"
So what should you do (instead of going to the hospital due to stress)? Don't be that typical Slovenian "sit-in" waiting for the state to pass a law on AI regulation. Instead of analyzing your neighbor's new facade this weekend and wondering where he got the money, open ChatGPT.
Don't be afraid of him. If you say “NO” to technology, you are dead in business. The only word allowed at this point is “MAYBE.” Because in ten years, your grandchildren won’t be talking to waiters. They’ll be talking to an algorithm. And they’ll probably be married to virtual influencersbecause it will be cheaper and less fluid than a real wife or husband.
The world is accelerating at an exponential rate. Either you get on the train, or you stay on the platform waving a handkerchief at your past. Yours, Jan.
