How do brands create authentic touchpoints when an ever-increasing amount of content is artificial?
Dennis Herhausen: Authenticity is not created through more content, but through the deliberate reduction and focussing of the content posted. Strong brands set clear priorities, focus on relevant touchpoints and content, and design these consistently and meaningfully. In an AI-filtered journey, brands become filters themselves: they help customers and their AI agents to decide what is important and what can be ignored.
Which signals actually promote trust today and which destroy it?
Dennis Herhausen: Trust is created through consistency over time, clear recognisability and visible actions, not through promises. Transparency, reliability and the courage to not make empty claims are the key signals of trust. In contrast, arbitrariness, opportunistic adaptation to trends and a discrepancy between the brand message and actual behaviour have a destructive effect.
How do companies maintain their brand integrity when algorithms and platforms control visibility?
Dennis Herhausen: By deciding what they won't do. Brand integrity means defining clear guidelines, i.e. which messages, images and tonalities are non-negotiable? If companies try to cater to the algorithms at all costs, they will lose their brand. Successful companies don't control channels, they control the decisions they make – even if that means less reach. Brand integrity is created through a clear brand logic.
Why do many brands fail to stand out?
Dennis Herhausen: Because they don't want to irritate anyone. Many brands are visually interchangeable, cautious in terms of the content they post and strategically over-optimised. In an AI-filtered world, this is fatal: algorithms favour clarity. Those who do not take a stance are not recommended. If you want to be relevant to everyone, you are not relevant to anyone – neither to people nor to AI agents.
The European Trend Day considers itself as a place where science and practice come together. If you had to give decision-makers a single guiding question as a takeaway to make marketing meaningful again, what would it be?
Dennis Herhausen: What clear signal are we sending to people and AI agents to ensure that they consciously choose us?
Clarity, focus and trust are vital cornerstones for recapturing attention in an AI-influenced future. At the European Trend Day on 25 March at the GDI, we will discuss what is needed to achieve this with Dennis Herhausen and other internationally renowned experts from science and industry.