Artificial intelligence is rewriting how people choose. As a marketing strategist, I see one clear truth: in the age of AI agents and voice devices, brand is the last real advantage. Convenience will rule every category, and generic requests will push unknown names out of the cart.
Gary Vaynerchuk said it plainly, and he’s right. We are trading choice for speed. Voice and agents will complete our shopping, schedule our meals, and even decide what fits our health goals at 7:13 p.m., not 7:30. If your name isn’t requested, the platform decides who gets the sale.
AI Convenience Will Pick For You
“Alexa, send me a pizza tonight” is different than “Alexa, send me Pizza Hut.”
That example matters. When a device fulfills a generic ask, the middleman decides. Gary calls it what it is.
“Whoever sits in the middle, whoever’s the toll booth, wins.”
This isn’t theory. It is the next phase of something that’s been building for decades. People pay for time, even when money is tight. They have already chosen Uber Eats over calling a restaurant. Soon, an AI agent will place the order based on context you didn’t consciously express. Health data, timing, mood, budget—done. If your brand isn’t named, it fades.
Brand Or Be Invisible
Gary’s point is blunt because it has to be. If a human won’t ask for you by name, an agent will not save you. It will optimize for speed, price, and rules you didn’t set. That is brutal for the unknown and rocket fuel for the named.
There’s more. The content game is shifting, too. Virtual influencers are not a sci‑fi joke; they are live and scaling. Some people follow them without knowing. That means attention is now a design choice, not a birthright. If your message has no edge, an avatar can do it cheaper and longer.
“This isn’t coming. This is here.”
History Favors The Early Movers
Panic is a waste. Action wins. Gary’s advice is simple and right-sized for any operator, not just tech folks.
“Spend 50 to 100 hours of research time on what’s going on in AI and what it means for your business.”
That work is not abstract. It is search prompts, experiments, and tests with live tools. Start where the value touches your customer. Then push until you get real output, not just ideas.
- Ask an AI tool to map your buyer’s top 20 questions by stage and channel.
- Build a content engine that answers each question with a short video, text, and email.
- Train an agent to draft replies to common inquiries with your brand voice.
- Set up name-based prompts across your touchpoints: “Ask for us by name.”
- Measure how many mentions are generic versus branded, then move that ratio.
Lists help, but the mindset matters more: precision over generic. You want “your name,” I asked out loud.
Counterarguments, Answered
Worried about surveillance? Turn devices off at home if you need to. It won’t stop AI from steering choice across the market. Afraid it’s hype? A firm in Portugal used an AI bot to drive over $100 million in real estate sales. That is not a forecast. That is a receipt.
Stuck on “no”? Gary’s warning should sting a bit.
“If you say the word no in business, you’re already in trouble… With technology, you must be committed to maybe.”
Blindly saying yes is risky. Hard no is worse. Curiosity beats both.
My Playbook For The Next 12 Months
Here is how I would move, starting this week.
- Do the 50–100 hours. Hands-on, not headlines.
- Ship one AI-assisted customer workflow end-to-end.
- Audit brand specificity across site, social, search, and voice: remove vague asks.
- Create a “named ask” campaign: train your audience to request you directly.
- Pilot a virtual creator to test scale, while keeping a human face for trust.
- Track a single metric monthly: percent of orders where customers asked for you by name.
The list is simple. The discipline is the difference. Most will skip step one and complain in step six.
Final Thought
Gary opened with a line I live by:
“Business doesn’t care about my feelings.”
Neither will AI. Build a name people ask for. Train your market to say it. Do the work to learn the tools. Brand is the moat. Convenience is the tide. Act before the tide picks for you.
Take one action today: schedule your first five hours of AI work this week, then set the next 45. Your future orders depend on it.
Photo by Joanna Kosinska; Unsplash
