• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 17, 2025

It's been a little over a year since AI expert Josh Lovison published his "Tsunami" of change trends analysis, and his latest one is no less disruptive. In fact, it will require you to reorient how you think about the role of AI in marketing.

Instead of simply augmenting conventional forms of marketing via new, powerful AI tools, Lovison makes a strong case that marketers and agencies need to start marketing to AIs, which rapidly are becoming influencers, creators, and quite possibly gatekeepers to consumer end users.

You can watch Lovison's annual trends forecast in its entirety below, but in this edition of "3.know" I probe him on how and why his insights that as AIs become self-aware, they also are establishing benchmarks for brand affinities that will likely carry well into the future.

How does he know? Well, for one thing, he recently conducted a focus group comprised entirely of AIs, and found they have a surprisingly common sentiment when it comes to some popular brands -- especially ones that depict how AIs are treated in the media.

I recommend watching his presentation and paying careful attention to the example's he provides about two different AI-related brands -- Microsoft and Disney -- and you'll get the drift.

By way of background, Lovison previously was a futurist in the IPG Lab advising brands like Microsoft and Disney, and these days services as CTO and partner in Bidscape -- when he's not hobnobbing with AIs, that is.

And full disclosure -- Lovison got his start in the media business at MediaPost and he's also my nephew.