Brand Is The Last Advantage
"The fixation with performance marketing has been a detraction from investing in the brand. When AI takes away the heavy lifting, what is exposed is branding."
Thirty years building, advising, and investing at the intersection of brand, technology, and transformation.
Jason Warnes started at AKQA in 1998 in the pioneering days of digital. He spent 15 years there, including four in Berlin running the VW and Audi account, working across BMW, Mini, Land Rover, Ferrari, Sainsbury's, and Microsoft.
From AKQA he moved to Deloitte Digital as Partner, spending five years running digital consulting and CX transformation for major corporations. Then to WPP as Global Client Lead on Team Volvo, running multi-agency integrated teams across Volvo, Shell, and BP.
He now works independently as a marketing advisor and investor. His core conviction: as AI commoditises performance marketing, brand is the only remaining source of genuine standout.
"If you don't have the branding, in this world of ubiquitous optimisation, there will be no standout whatsoever."
"When AI takes away the heavy lifting, what is exposed is branding. If you don't have it, there will be no standout whatsoever."
Performance marketing will be commoditised. Brand cannot. As AI levels the executional playing field, the only companies left standing are the ones people have a reason to choose.
"Technology has to be in service of solving a problem. Otherwise it just sits unused. That principle is from 1998 and has never changed."
The brief he answered to join AKQA asked him to name something not possible five years ago that is now. He applies that question to every tool and platform.
"The brands that appear favourably within AI models are the ones that will win. You have to optimise to AI, not to the search engine."
Most brands have not yet adjusted their visibility strategy to reflect where discovery is actually happening. The shift from search to LLM is structural and already underway.
"AI makes the smarter people smarter and the creative people more creative."
Stay close to the conversation.
New guests and insights. No noise.