Based on insights from 30,000 global consumers and 20 experts, dentsu’s Consumer Vision: Mothers of Reinvention report maps out a near future where, assisted by personal AI agents that unlock their potential to acquire new skills and motivated by a higher premium placed by culture on human originality, consumers strive to reinvent themselves.
In this context, brands will win by moving from serving expressed needs to helping people pursue reinvention, acting more like mentors/wayfinders than vendors.
What does this mean when it comes to marketers aspiring to designing media for people?
Design for the proxy, but speak to the human agenda
The report describes how 77% consumers expect they will be living across multiple platforms at once via AI agents and expecting brands to cater to those proxies. That suggests media will have two audiences:
- the agent that filters, compares, and executes; and
- the human behind it, who is using those tools in service of bigger goals.
Media design shifts from one message to one person to coordinated signals across touchpoints that remain coherent as the agent recombines them.
Raise the bar from relevant to distinctly personal
A core tension is rejection of generic, automated slop and rising expectations for differentiated outputs. Eighty percent of consumers want AI tools to create things different from everyone else, and 77% of them say they’ll have less tolerance for generic/repetitive brand messages as AI gets more precise.
For media design, personalization can’t just mean swapping a product shot or headline; it needs to feel contextual, specific, and earned, with a clear value exchange for any data or attention it asks of people.
Build trust through proof vs. relegating it to a comms layer
The report explicitly flags that, as consumers are increasingly relying on AI-enabled applications in most aspects of their day-to-day, baseline assumptions about trust are eroding and guardrails need rebuilding.
It also notes that as algorithms become more individualized, 9 out of 10 consumers think it will be more important for brands to be consistent with values and actions.
Practically, media designed for people becomes media designed to withstand scrutiny: consistency across channels, clearer provenance/authenticity signals, and fewer moments where the experience feels like disjointed.
Shift from conversion journeys to catalyst experiences
The report reframes the customer journey as a catalyst experience: not only meeting the need expressed by audiences engaging with your brand but rather provoking new behaviours that help consumers reach their next horizon as they seek to reinvent themselves.
For media, that points to planning around reinvention states (speaking to the unspoken goals and aspirations that motivate audiences’ behaviors) rather than static segments. The creative job is less drive the next action and more to communicate how the brand is there to help someone progress in a way they can recognize as their progress.
Check out the full report for more insights.
