Everything. Everywhere. All at once

My mate bought a vacuum between TikToks. Twelve minutes from "I need a hoover" to "done, bought." No trip to Carrickmines, no asking friends which one they'd recommend, no proper comparing of models. Just need, algorithm, click, confirm.

Funny thing is it feels normal. Search engines figured out what he needed. Reviews told him which one worked. Price alerts told him when to buy. The whole thing happened in the time it takes to scroll past three cat videos.

How many categories is this happening in? If your brand isn't in the algorithm's shortlist, you're not even in the conversation.

Most marketing departments are still planning like it's 2019. We map out customer journeys that take weeks. We optimize funnels that assume people research and consider and evaluate. We compete against brands in our category, on the same shelf, pitching to the same buyer persona.

Yet my nine-year-old twins won't even consider restaurants under three stars. Not because they've had bad experiences. They just expect the algorithm to do the choosing for them. When they need to know something, they open my ChatGPT app before they google. That's their normal.

I'm watching a generation grow up where human choice and algorithmic filtering have blurred into something I don't fully understand yet. And I think most of us are missing what this means.

Visibility used to be about reach. Buy enough media, get in front of enough eyeballs, build enough awareness. As if that wasn't hard enough, now the algorithm decides who gets seen. And it optimizes for signals we barely track: speed, reviews, clicks, freshness, engagement, behavioural data we can't see.

Your beautifully crafted positioning statement? The algorithm didn't read it. Your brand strategy deck? Irrelevant. The system cares about whether people click, how long they stay, what they do next.

The brands that win aren't the biggest or loudest. They're the ones with better ratings, faster loading times, clearer descriptions, more recent reviews. The algorithm doesn't care about your brand equity. It cares about click-through rates and user behaviour.

My mate didn't choose between Dyson and Shark and Henry. The algorithm chose three options. He just clicked the middle one. Not a bad decision. I've a Shark.

My neighbour still drives to Currys, asks seventeen questions about hoovers, then buys whatever the salesman recommends. Purchases still happen that way, slowly, with consideration, with human advice. But for how long?

The exceptions are spreading. And when they happen, everything we think we know about customer behaviour breaks down.

I won't lie. I'm not that pleased about all of this. But it's not hype. Of course there's AI hype, but it is also real.

Specs won't save you when this happens. Everyone has the same functional benefits. The algorithm will surface three options that solve the same problem, at similar prices, with similar ratings. The only thing left to compete on is meaning. Emotional relevance, clarity of stance, something that makes people remember you when the options blur together.

Three things seem clear. We need to understand how algorithms actually decide, not just reach and frequency, but the behavioural signals that drive visibility in the first place. We need to make meaning our competitive advantage, because when everything else is identical, emotional relevance is what breaks the tie. And we need to build for both worlds, because some customers still take weeks to decide while others choose between TikToks.

For now, the diagnosis matters more than the solution. We're not just competing with other brands anymore. We're competing with whatever the algorithm thinks is more relevant at that moment.