Axios House: AI can't replace brands' bonds with customers, marketers say
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Photographer Nicolas Gavet for Axios
CANNES, France — Brands hold an advantage in two areas AI hasn't mastered — consumer relationships and trust, marketing executives said at a June 23 Axios event.
Why it matters: As AI becomes a gateway for shopping, brands risk losing direct consumer connections, making trust, loyalty and first-party data more important than ever.
Axios' Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn moderated the Expert Voices roundtable, which was sponsored by Mastercard.
5 big takeaways from the conversation:
- Agentic commerce is in the discovery phase. The seven "wonderful, pioneering nerds who love this stuff and are figuring it out … [are] going to become a million people. But it's not going to become everybody, and not tomorrow," DoorDash chief marketing officer Tim Castree said.
- Large language models haven't figured out customer behavior, and that's where brands still have an advantage, Ulta Beauty chief marketing officer Kelly Mahoney said. "The winner is going to be the one that understands the customer" and how to leverage their data, "that can then work with the agents."
- Marketers can use existing data for unexpected storytelling, said Jonnie Cahill, PepsiCo Beverages' U.S. senior vice president and chief marketing officer. He cited how "'I have a headache' is leading to 'Gatorade' because the No. 1 cause of a headache is dehydration."
- Trust isn't a logo or a tagline, said Fox News Media chief digital and marketing officer Jason Klarman: "It's a relationship that a consumer has," and "people begin to trust you if you are consistent with them and you deliver on that promise on a regular basis."
- Companies that rely on real-life interactions can use AI to improve the experience for team members and consumers, Taco Bell global chief brand officer Taylor Montgomery said. "We thought it was going to be an efficiency play, and actually it's really helped us improve our customer experience," he added.
Content from the sponsor's remarks:
Mastercard chief marketing and communications officer Jill Kramer said the one thing she's been hearing discussed repeatedly at Cannes is agentic commerce and the questions around it.
- "Data … is your currency, it's your relationship," she said. "How do you create more of a connection and a web, so that you're getting the data cues you need from other places?"
