PRESS RELEASE: Traditional Marketing Is Done, and Marketers Need To Adapt Or Risk Invisibility

Artificial Intelligence has caused a significant shift in consumer behaviour, making it necessary for marketers to broaden their strategy.

25 August 2025— The rise of artificial intelligence has caused a dramatic shift in consumer behaviour. As a result, marketers can no longer rely on traditional channels to grow and sustain their brands, says Matt Hodgson, Founder of Bring Digital Performance Agency (https://bring.au).

“I’ve never seen such a huge shift in my 30 years of doing this,” says Hodgson, who has led digital marketing transformation efforts with some of Australia’s most prominent companies in sectors ranging from travel to pharmaceuticals. More and more consumers are now using Gen AI to conduct research on products and services and relying on that information to make their decisions.

Because of this shift, ‘there’s more hygiene required to ensure that the brand presence and information on those platforms is what the CMOs want the consumer to consume,” Hodgson says. To do this, they need to start thinking about whether consumers are finding the brand on these platforms in the first place.

Then they need to assess the information that the Gen AI is giving. What message are they sending, and what are potential consumers doing with that information?

This is a new practice that marketers are trying to wrap their heads around, says Hodgson. And while some are embracing the practice, others are fearful. To stay relevant, he explains, CMOs can no longer afford to rely on traditional channels or depend on a single strategy.

He gives the example of a business that has relied solely on paid search traffic and chooses to ignore any content strategy. That business runs the risk of being invisible. Not only are consumers more likely to turn to Gen AI before clicking on a paid search result, but there’s also a lack of clarity on how paid search results will sit alongside Gen AI.
Tips for staying relevant in the age of AI

Hodgson acknowledged the tall order for CMOs to adapt their strategy in a constantly shifting landscape. He recommends that marketers start with the following steps:

Embrace the use of AI in organisations

One of the ways to get comfortable with AI is to start using it internally. One effective use of AI is feeding the platform data and using the technology to analyse it. This can streamline activities like research and client reporting.

This is something that Hodgson has experienced and seen at Bring. Previously, end-of-month reporting was a multi-step, laborious process. Generative AI, Hodgson explained, can do the heavy lifting of analysing the data, which has saved his team hours of administrative work.

Get leadership buy-in

The next step is to get leadership buy-in. Just like any technology, AI adoption requires time and resources. For marketers, Hodson suggests that they start by demonstrating what happens when a customer searches for their business on a platform like ChatGPT. “Do they show up? If they do, is the result a true representation of their business and services? Who else appears?”

Hodgson also suggests incorporating as much data as possible during conversations with leadership. For example, data from SimilarWeb shows that in Australia, website traffic from Chat GPT has increased 54.05% in the past six months. This is an effective way to showcase potential returns that AI can bring to the business.
Start small

As with implementing anything new, Hodgson recommends taking baby steps. In an organisational setting, this might mean testing it out in one specific team before rolling it out across the entire company. Hodgson suggests giving teams enough autonomy so that they can learn, but still having some guardrails and structure in place.

Adopting AI, Hodson believes, is ultimately like “riding a wave or a tsunami.” The conversation that marketers should have is how they can face it head-on and embrace it, so that their brands can continue to thrive in the years to come.

***

About Bring
Bring combines SEO experience, local knowledge, and advanced tools to provide SEO strategies. The agency brings over 30 years of experience in digital performance marketing and SEO, and has worked with CMOs and marketing directors across Australia from a wide range of sectors. For more information, visit https://bring.au/