What happens when AI moves from helping customers choose to choosing for them? At our latest Empathy Lab Session by EPAM in Amsterdam, marketing leaders explored the shifts reshaping their world, from Digital Product Passports to the future of commerce.
Yet despite the variety of topics, one theme surfaced again and again. As keynote speaker Jaap Kooij put it: "Your agents are brilliant. On their own." In other words: the organizations generating the greatest value from AI are using agents AND they're building better connections between them.
Why AI marketing still struggles to create business value
Many organizations have already embedded AI into their marketing operations: brief-writing assistants, content generation tools, compliance checks, insight summaries, media optimization engines… And these work! You can produce a great brief in a fraction of the time. But you've only made one part of the process faster.
Too often, AI projects remain disconnected from one another. Insights don't flow into planning. Content isn't informed by performance data. Customer experiences remain fragmented across channels. The result is a collection of useful capabilities that never quite become a system. Or, as Jaap framed it in Henry Ford-style: "You built a faster horse. You didn’t shorten the journey."
What comes after AI efficiency? Building value through connected systems
A recurring theme throughout the evening was the need to move beyond efficiency-focused AI initiatives. The first wave of AI marketing investment focused on doing existing work faster (creating content more quickly, producing more assets, accelerating workflows). But speed alone doesn't create a competitive advantage.
Alexandra Jorge challenged attendees to think beyond productivity gains and focus on how to use AI to create, measure and scale value across the entire customer journey.
“Start by empowering the owner of the AI tool. Design for the user, with the user. Make it part of the solution, not an add-on. Then scale for quality, not speed.”
Alexandra Jorge, Director, Marketing Consulting
How Digital Product Passports can create new customer experiences
The conversation then shifted from marketing operations to customer experience as Ward de Kruiff welcomed Dhruvin Shah, Head of Strategy & Planning, Global Customer Engagement at HUGO BOSS. Dhruvin is also driving the company's Digital Product Passport project.
For many organizations, Digital Product Passports are still viewed as “a regulatory thing we have to do”. Ward and Dhruvin demonstrated how a Digital Product Passport can become an ongoing connection between product, brand and customer. By combining transparency, authentication, sustainability information, ownership services and personalized experiences, Digital Product Passports create opportunities to extend engagement long after the point of purchase.
Using examples from HUGO BOSS, Dhruvin illustrated how connected products can deepen customer relationships while creating new opportunities for brands to deliver value.
“This isn't just about ownership. It's about participation. When customers understand the story of their product – its journey, its impact – they don't just value it more. They become part of its narrative.”
Dhruvin Shah, Head of Strategy & Planning, Global Customer Engagement, HUGO BOSS
Agentic commerce is changing how customers discover brands
The evening concluded with a look at agentic commerce, presented by Nicolas Borgis through the lens of Sephora's digital transformation journey.
For years, commerce has revolved around search bars, category pages and digital shelves. Today, consumer behaviour is beginning to shift to conversational interfaces. As Nicolas challenged the audience: "When the agent answers, are you the answer?"
Sephora's own moves show just how quickly that shift is becoming real. The brand became the first prestige beauty retailer to join Google’s UCP/AP2 infrastructure and has also launched a native Sephora app in ChatGPT, putting it directly into the environments where AI agents are beginning to shape discovery and purchase.
One of Nicolas's observations captured the challenge perfectly: “An AI recommends what it can reliably describe. If your catalogue is not machine readable, you are not losing the ranking. You are not in the set at all. Brand equity does not fix that. Paid placements are now appearing on these surfaces, but they only amplify products the agent can already read. Machine-readable data is every brand's first priority.”
What marketing leaders should take away from Empathy Lab Amsterdam
If there was one message that connected every discussion at Empathy Lab Amsterdam, it was this: AI marketing is entering a new phase. We’ve moved beyond simply gaining access to AI capabilities. The challenge now is connecting them in ways that genuinely improve how brands understand, serve and engage their customers.
The technology is moving quickly. Our whitepaper, The Growth Suite, explores how to connect the dots across people, data, technology and AI to drive shared business outcomes. Download it here, or get in touch with our experts if you need help getting started.
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