The Business Leader’s
Uncommon Growth Playbook

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The Business Leader’s
Uncommon Growth Playbook

Contact Us

How to grow in an ever-changing world? The Uncommon Growth Playbook for a New Era

There’s never been more risk to, or opportunity for growth than there is today. Today’s business leaders face a profound intersection of disruptive cultural, technological, political, and economic forces that can upend longstanding business models overnight. The traditional approach to growth and innovation that worked over the past 20 years has been upended as disruption is not just coming from new products, but new business models and cultural movements traveling at warp speed, entirely changing the rules of the game.

Our research confirms that this is not only possible amid this disruption but is already being proven. In our “Uncommon Growth in Uncommon Times” study, Prophet identified 179 S&P 500 companies that have delivered what we call Uncommon Growth. We characterize this as exceptional growth (averaging 2x their industry peers) that is sustainable (maintained over five or more years), and durable (persisting through disruption). These companies span industries, sizes, and stages. They aren’t outliers by luck. They’ve made deliberate choices that set them apart.

Through work with organizations around the world, we’ve defined five plays that enable leaders to attain Uncommon Growth. These five plays represent critical shifts in how leaders gather intelligence, frame their market, design their businesses, target customers, and build internal momentum. Together, they distinguish today’s uncommon growth leaders:

01

Always-On Human Insights

Shifting from discrete, periodic research, to always-on, agentic intelligence that informs faster, sharper decisions on an ongoing basis

02

Future Back Innovation

Shifting from in-category focus to evaluating the frame of reference and identifying markets that don’t yet exist

03

New Business Models

Shifting from a product and service only focus to orchestrated platforms and AI native offerings that create and capture value across every point of engagement

04

Customer Ecosystem Management

Shifting from singular customers to understanding ecosystems and the customer coalitions that multiply value for everyone involved

05

Culture as Catalyst

Shifting from stated values on paper to a purpose-built culture that drives collective action and accelerates growth

06

The Bottom Line

This is not a linear formula. It’s a new and essential toolkit that leaders can tailor to their business model, organizational maturity, and industry, and each is designed to drive speed to understanding and impact, using both analysis and embedded AI.

Throughout this playbook, you’ll find examples, measurable impact and actions to move from ambition to outcome. Uncommon growth is not a theory. It’s the disciplined execution of the right moves, at the right moment, for your unique organization.

PLAY 01

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Always-On Human Insights
From Discrete Research to Agentic Intelligence

Today’s customers aren’t just changing faster—they’re living through a world that changes around them every day. New technologies, shifting expectations, cultural moments, and economic pressures continually reshape how people think, choose, and buy. For growth leaders, the challenge isn’t a lack of data. It’s developing a deep enough understanding of people to keep pace.

The opportunity for growth leaders is unprecedented—but realizing it requires rethinking how organizations build empathy with customers and translate that understanding into action.

The companies that win won’t simply collect more data. They’ll have greater organizational empathy—the ability for every product manager, marketer, strategist, and executive to more deeply understand the people they serve and create experiences that feel genuinely relevant.

To drive uncommon growth, leaders must build empathy with their customers and treat customer intelligence as a live utility — not a periodic input. This requires a fundamental shift from discrete research to market sensing and customer intelligence, executed through three core actions:

Go deeper to understand people more

1. Go deeper to understand people more completely.

Organizations have access to richer sources of customer understanding than ever before—from first-party data to qualitative research and the broader economic, cultural, and social forces shaping people’s decisions. AI makes it possible to connect these signals into a more complete picture of customers, helping businesses move beyond knowing what people do to better understand why they do it—and anticipate what they may do next.

2. Expand insights across more people.

AI can extend trusted research methods across vastly larger populations and datasets, allowing organizations to validate ideas, uncover emerging trends, and identify opportunities with greater speed and confidence—without sacrificing rigor.

Expand insights across more people.
Put customer understanding into everyday decisions.

3. Put customer understanding into everyday decisions.

Insights create value only when they’re used. Instead of sitting in reports or dashboards, customer intelligence should be continuously available to the people making strategic, product, marketing, and commercial decisions. AI-powered insight agents can deliver relevant customer context at the moment decisions are made, enabling teams to act faster, with greater confidence and a stronger connection to customer needs.

Related Prophet Solution:

Growth Strategy

Always-on insights in action: Uber

Uber’s AI platform has 5K models in production, serving 10 million real-time predictions per second at peak. Uber leverages “always-on” insights and AI agents to optimize customer experience and service. The company’s first quarter of 2026 saw revenue grow by 14% to $13.2 billion with trips growing 20% year-over-year, suggesting that when insights are always-on and embedded in the product, the distance between a customer need and a business response drops to near zero.

The organizations that close the gap between insights collection and access—evolving their organizations to deploy AI as a powerful enabler of human insights —will be the ones that define the next era of consumer intelligence. Move beyond just asking what your consumers need — and start asking why they did it, what they might do next, and what you should do about it right now.

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PLAY 02

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Future-Back Innovation
From Category Growth to Future Markets

The biggest future growth opportunities are unlikely to sit squarely within your current category; they’re forming at the edges of it, shaped by forces most companies haven’t yet acted on. Taking share from competitors, extending product lines, entering adjacent geographies: these moves still matter. But they are increasingly insufficient to deliver uncommon growth.

The reason is structural.

CEOs spend approximately 36% of their time in reactive “firefighting” mode while devoting only 10% to 15% to long-term planning. This misalignment is exacerbated by market pressures, as 78% of financial executives admit they would reduce discretionary spending on R&D or maintenance to meet quarterly earnings targets, even if they knew it would destroy long-term value.

Consequently, the window for organizational survival is shrinking; the average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 has dropped from 33 years in the 1960s to just 15 years today. The gap between short-term execution and long-term positioning is widening — and the companies pulling ahead are closing it deliberately.

The shift is from today’s category growth to future markets and entirely new frames of reference for the category you operate within: The imperative for growth leaders is to identify where disruption and emerging customer needs are opening entirely new markets and opportunities and capitalizing on them with conviction. There are three critical components to understanding future markets and frames of reference that can also become an ongoing discipline within the organization:

5 drivers of change to identify future areas of demand: Social; Technology; Economic; Environmental; Political

1. Understand the drivers of change to identify future areas of demand.

Mapping the social, technological, economic, environmental, regulatory, and political forces reshaping your industry is critical, both to build an understanding of how it affects your category today and to explore emerging categories. Working deeply with subject matter experts enables leaders to understand the trends that define where demand is heading, not just where it sits today.

2. Define future markets and identify challenges.

An initial analysis into forces at play and demand opportunities enables leaders to frame future markets to dive into, mapping the competitive dynamics and customer needs.

3. Define your target destination.

Framing potential attractive markets for growth based on your business realities enables leaders to align on a target destination for uncommon growth. With a clear picture of the business you need to become, organizations can then work backward — progressing potential business models through stage gates of desirability, viability, and feasibility.

Future-back thinking creates real friction with boards and teams focused on near-term results. But the value isn’t in the scenarios themselves — it’s in the concrete strategic bets they open to chart a sustainable and robust path to growth.

Related Prophet Solution:

Go-to-Market
Innovation

Future markets in action: NVIDIA

In fiscal 2018, gaming represented roughly 57% of NVIDIA’s revenue, with data centers accounting for under 20%.i NVIDIA bet early that its GPU architecture would power large-scale AI training — and committed to that destination years before the market reached critical mass. By fiscal 2026, data center revenue hit $193.7 billion — 90% of total revenue — and full-year revenue reached $215.9 billion. That transformation was the result of reading the forces of change early and building toward a future most competitors hadn’t yet recognized.

The question is not whether your category will be disrupted. It’s whether you’ll define what comes next — or arrive late to a future someone else built.

i https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165410105000571

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PLAY 03

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New Business Models
From Products and Services to Platforms

Here’s a question most growth strategies don’t ask: what happens after the sale? For the majority of businesses, the answer is surprisingly little. The product ships, the service is delivered, and the customer relationship goes quiet until the next transaction. That silence is one of the largest untapped growth assets in business today — and the companies compounding value fastest have figured out how to fill it.

The pattern is consistent across industries: the highest-value businesses aren’t winning primarily on what they sell.

They’re winning on the depth of the relationship they maintain while customers are actively using what they’ve bought. That relationship generates proprietary data, deepens engagement, and creates switching costs that a lower-priced competitor simply can’t replicate. The shift is from products and services to platforms — business models that let you observe, interact with, and add value for customers during the time between one purchase and the next.

You don’t need to be a technology company. You need to create the conditions under which your business stays connected to customers during what we call the Use Journey. Execution follows a four-stage progression:

You need to create the conditions under which your business stays connected to customers during what we call the Use Journey. Execution follows a four-stage progression: Start with in-use visibility. Build the ability to see what customers are actually doing with your product after the sale, which is the foundational data layer most traditional models completely lack. Create interactive value. Develop touchpoints, tools, or services that add real value during active use, deepening the relationship and generating behavioral signals you can learn from. Personalize and grow. Use what the platform learns to tailor and expand the value delivered to each customer over time, which will drive increasing satisfaction and share of wallet. Attract through proof. Let the richness of the platform experience and data-validated results become your most powerful acquisition tool to draw new customers through demonstrated value, not just marketing.

1. Start with in-use visibility.

Build the ability to see what customers are actually doing with your product after the sale, which is the foundational data layer most traditional models completely lack.

2. Create interactive value.

Develop touchpoints, tools, or services that add real value during active use, deepening the relationship and generating behavioral signals you can learn from.

3. Personalize and grow.

Use what the platform reveals to tailor and expand the value delivered to each customer over time, which will drive increasing satisfaction and share of wallet.

4. Attract through proof.

Let the richness of the platform experience and data-validated results become a powerful acquisition tool to draw new customers through demonstrated value, not just marketing.

The biggest friction will be organizational: most businesses are structured around product sales cycles, not ongoing engagement. A platform model requires investment in data infrastructure and continuous value delivery before the financial return is fully visible.

Related Prophet Solution:

New Business Building

Platforms in action: The New York Times

The New York Times evolved from a print newspaper into NYT, a multi-product digital platform — bundling news, cooking, games, audio, and sports into a single subscription. Digital-only subscription revenues grew by approximately 14% to $1.43 billion, with bundle and multi-product subscribers now representing approximately 51% of the digital base. The company didn’t grow by writing more articles — it grew by redesigning its relationship with readers across more of their daily lives.

The critical question isn’t “What new product can we launch?” It’s “How do we stay valuable to the customers we already have — and make that value visible to everyone we haven’t yet reached?”

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PLAY 04

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Customer Ecosystem Management
From Customers to Customer Coalitions

Most growth strategies focus on two things: acquiring more customers and keeping the ones you have. Both matter enormously. But they share a blind spot that limits how much value your business can create and capture.

The blind spot: your customers don’t exist in isolation.

Every customer is surrounded by an ecosystem of influencers, from providers to creators, advisors, and communities, who shape their decisions before, during, and after the purchase. The companies building the strongest competitive positions today aren’t just serving customers. They’re connecting the parties around them into coalitions where everyone exchanges value, and where the business sits at the center.

This is the shift from customers to customer coalitions: moving beyond a one-way value exchange between company and buyer and instead facilitating a “better together” network where participants make each other more valuable. The result: lower acquisition costs, higher lifetime value, and stickiness that a marginally better product from a competitor can’t easily break.

Executing this shift requires focusing on three areas: 

1. Precision archetype scaling.

Growth in a coalition isn’t about scale for scale’s sake — it’s about the right mix of participant types: users, providers, creators, sponsors, and influencers. Identify which personas fill gaps in the ecosystem and create a self-sustaining growth loop. Are the right providers balanced to customer demand in a given market?

2. Multi-dimensional value exchange.

Look beyond the direct value your company delivers and design for the lateral value members provide to one another. When you engage the same person in multiple ways — a user who also reviews, recommends, and advocates — you drive significantly higher spend and create differentiation competitors can’t replicate.

3. Tiered ecosystem loyalty.

Move from transactional discounts to recognition systems that reward specific behaviors — quality, consistency, responsiveness — rather than just volume. This lets you capture premium needs at higher margins while remaining accessible at the entry level.

The friction here is real. Investing in peripheral ecosystem participants can feel indirect when teams are measured on near-term revenue. But the payoff is a self-reinforcing system that compounds over time.

Related Prophet Solution:

Campaigns & Experiences

Customer coalitions in action: Airbnb

Airbnb’s competitive advantage isn’t inventory — it’s the coalition. Guests rely on reviews, host interactions, and experience recommendations when deciding where to stay. Approximately 41% of U.S. hosts qualify as Superhosts, earning at least 29% more than standard hosts — a tiered recognition system that incentivizes quality, raises satisfaction, and drives the reviews that attract more guests. Beyond hosts, Airbnb builds a customer coalition by engaging creators and local communities to share authentic experiences, creating a network of advocates who drive trust and influence through their own voices and networks. That self-reinforcing loop helped Airbnb reach $12.2 billion in FY2025 revenue with 533 million nights and experiences booked — built not on a better product alone, but on a coalition that compounds value for every participant.

The question isn’t just “How do we serve our customers better?” It’s “Who are the parties around our customers that make the experience better — and how do we bring them together?”

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PLAY 05

Culture as Catalyst
From Stated Values to Purpose-Built Culture

Every organization has written its values on a slide or poster. Very few have a culture that accelerates growth. The gap between what a company says it believes and how people inside it behave is where most growth strategies quietly die.

The evidence is consistent: research shows that approximately 70% of digital transformations fall short of their objectives.

The failure is rarely due to a flawed strategy or insufficient funding. Instead, it is most often rooted in organizational and cultural resistance — the antibodies within an organization that reject the very changes leaders are trying to implement. You can invest in the sharpest strategy and the most advanced tools, but if the culture isn’t built to absorb and act on them, the organization will default to what it already knows.

The shift is from stated values to purpose-built culture: a culture deliberately designed to champion bold bets, move with speed, and sustain momentum long after the initial energy of a new initiative fades. This isn’t about writing better values statements. It’s about rewiring how the organization operates.

Organizational Ambition

Defining a compelling ambition for the organization aligning purpose, strategy and culture — enabled by the right behaviors

Leadership Enablement

Clarifying what is expected of leaders, providing them with the skills and tools to demonstrate change and build trust with their teams

Employee Ignition

Sparking employee interest, passion, and accountability by showing them what great looks like

Executional Excellence

Unlocking people and work through systemic change in service of delivery against strategic objectives

Three moves make this real:

1. Decentralize growth ownership.

Uncommon growth cannot be a top-down mandate. Empower people at every level to identify and act on opportunities — and to challenge legacy processes that slow the organization down. When growth ownership is distributed, the company becomes a network of sensors rather than a hierarchy waiting for direction.

2. Operationalize experimentation.

Move beyond “permission to fail” toward active incentives to experiment. Reward the process of discovery, not just the outcome. If your performance reviews only recognize hitting quarterly targets on legacy products, the culture will never champion the new — no matter what the values slide says.

3. Build momentum loops.

Shift from annual planning to rolling cycles that redirect resources toward what’s working in real time. Leaders must move from managing performance to evangelizing the behaviors that produced it.

The tension is real: protecting the core business while funding the future creates friction. Culture must provide the permission to reconsider your own business when the evidence points forward — and the resilience to sustain speed without burning people out.

Related Prophet Solution:

Culture as Catalyst

Culture as catalyst in action: e.l.f. Beauty

e.l.f. marked its 29th consecutive quarter of net sales growth and market share gains, with net sales of $1.63 billion for fiscal year 2026, an increase of 25%. The company’s willingness to experiment with emerging platforms — it was one of the first beauty brands on TikTok and has since expanded to Roblox and Twitch — reflects a cultural DNA that rewards speed and experimentation over perfection. That consistency isn’t a single product hit — it’s a culture that moves at what e.l.f. calls “e.l.f. speed,” where purpose and performance reinforce each other daily.

You cannot program growth into a spreadsheet. You need a human-centered transformation model and a culture supportive of change, which can only come about through nurturing people — and cultivating the systems, skills, incentives, and norms that shape how they show up every day.

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06 THE BOTTOM LINE

The journey to creating Uncommon Growth starts today

Every growth move describes a shift that successful Uncommon Growth companies have already made — and that their competitors, in most cases, have not. The distance between those two groups is widening. Not because companies lack talent or capital, but because they’re still running plays designed for a world that no longer exists. None of these plays require you to rebuild your company from scratch, but each one requires you to challenge an assumption your organization has been operating on for years. The companies achieving uncommon growth aren’t waiting for perfect conditions. They’re building the capability to grow without them.

The playbook is here. The question is what you do next.

Prophet’s Uncommon Growth Playbook and practice areas are led by a multidisciplinary team of experienced growth leaders across strategy, insights, innovation, experience, and AI solutions—all with an eye on speed to impact.

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Authors

Mike Leiser
Chief Transformation Officer, Senior Partner

Jay Milliken
Global Lead of Growth Strategy, Senior Partner

Jackie Wilhelm
Associate Partner

Erin Weissert
Partner, Insights & Analytics

Jo Roberts
Associate Partner, Business Design

Alan Casey
Senior Partner

Ted Moser
Senior Partner

Daniel Jarosch
Senior Partner

Jan Döring
Partner

Paul Teuton
Partner

Tony Fross
Partner

Alice Guizol
Associate Partner

Gordon Smith
Senior Partner

Shane Kosch
Associate Partner

BLOG

Closing the Value Gap in Health Tech

How clear value stories can position health tech companies to earn greater trust and premium valuation.

Healthcare technology companies face a paradox: the market has never been more bullish on the sector — recent research showed that AI-enabled companies now capture 55% of all health tech funding and command a 19% premium on deal size — yet public health tech companies still trade at a meaningful discount to cloud peers, despite roughly 2x the revenue growth and free cash flow margin. 

Strong businesses still lose value when the story is unclear: The gap isn’t just a business problem; it’s a narrative problem. Most health-tech companies have a brand platform in one deck, a product story in another, an investor narrative from the CFO’s team, and a sales pitch from field marketing. Individually, each is internally logical, but collectively incoherent and hard for teams to articulate. Too often, companies speak in higher-order benefits without ever making clear what they actually do, where they play, or why they should win an organization’s business. 

We recently sat in a room where a health-tech company pitched its full suite of services. After they finished, our client simply asked at the vendor: “So what is it that you actually do?” 

A Story of Value connects the story across audiences: What closes this gap for clients is a Story of Value: a coherent narrative spine that captures who the company is, the tension it resolves, how it creates value, and why that story justifies premium valuation. When the narrative is properly modulated for priority audience groups, it retains its core value while ensuring resonance for each audience.  

Five Moves That Make a Value Story Credible

Health-tech companies that get this right will: 

  • Define a clear frame of reference first. Before reaching for elevated positioning, companies need to answer a basic question: what do they actually do? Name the competitive set, the outcomes, and where they play. In our work with a major healthcare financial services company, the challenge was moving beyond its best-known role in facilitating payments transactions toward a broader frame: bridging gaps in the healthcare financial system, improving the financial experience of healthcare, and aligning the interests of payers, providers, and members. That shift created a stronger platform for growth. 
  • Name where AI creates defensible economic value. Being AI-enabled may now be table stakes; it cannot be the whole story. The real question is where AI creates advantage that compounds over time and is difficult to copy. In our work with a major virtual care platform, we saw how quickly AI language can flatten into sameness: personalization, insights, integration. What created credibility was not broader AI rhetoric, but specificity — which data, improving which workflow, producing which measurable result. 
  • Ensure the human touch is inextricably linked to AI. In healthcare, meticulous care around data is paramount, especially when it comes to AI use. In helping shape the story for that same virtual care platform, one important choice was to frame AI as an enabler of people, not a replacement for them, with clinician oversight built into the moments that matter most. The important move was not just having that governance mindset internally but making visible to the market where automation stops and expert judgment begins. 
  • Thread a single narrative across every audience. Investors, buyers, clinicians, and patients should all recognize themselves in the same core story, with the emphasis adjusted for each audience. We saw this in our previously mentioned work for a healthcare financial services company: by anchoring the company in bridging gaps across the healthcare financial system, the story could resonate across payers, providers, and members without splintering into disconnected messages. One framework, many expressions. 
  • Build a system of proof — and earn your claims over time. Sophisticated healthcare buyers are not rewarding ambition alone; they are asking for evidence. Large employers and health systems want proof before integrating new tools and systems, especially when AI claims are involved. In our work with a patient financial engagement platform, the strongest story was not AI for AI’s sake, but AI tied to operating outcomes: higher collections, lower cost-to-collect, faster cash flow, and fewer billing calls through intelligent support. That kind of results-backed proof makes innovation more credible because it connects technology directly to measurable value. 

In the age of AI, the margin for narrative incoherence is zero. The companies that answer the market’s implicit question, “why this company?”, with one credible, evidence-grounded Story of Value will earn the multiples, the deals, and the trust, outpacing competitors without a clear articulation of what they do and why it matters.

AI: Augmented Intelligence

FINAL THOUGHTS

Healthcare leaders are operating in an environment where innovation alone is not enough. To earn trust — and the premium that comes with it — companies need a narrative that is as disciplined as their strategy: clear in its frame of reference, specific in how value is created and grounded in evidence. The strongest stories do more than describe a business; they help the market understand why they should care. 

Interested in pressure-testing your current story? Let’s discuss how a Story of Value can strengthen your organization’s positioning, market confidence and growth. 

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In Health Tech, AI Doesn’t Win Deals – Outcomes Do

How clear value stories can position health tech companies to earn greater trust and premium valuation.

Every healthcare service and technology company now claims to be AI-powered. What once signaled innovation now reads as category shorthand. According to a recent McKinsey survey, 85 percent of healthcare leaders are now exploring or have adopted generative AI capabilities—making “AI-powered” closer to table stakes than a point of distinction. Meanwhile, buyer skepticism is rising in parallel: a national survey from Ohio State University and SSRS found that public openness to AI in care dropped from 52 percent to 42 percent in just two years. The presence of AI alone no longer earns attention. Buyers want to know what it actually does, where it matters, and why they should believe it will work in the environments in which they operate. 

The market is saturated with undifferentiated AI claims. That shift has created a new messaging challenge. In many health-tech companies, AI is described at one of two unhelpful extremes: either as a broad aspiration that could apply to almost anyone, or as a technical capability that only product teams can decode. The result is a value gap. Companies may be making real investments in data, models, and intelligent workflows, but their market story still fails to answer the most important buyer question: why should this matter to me? 

The Three Places Companies Tend to Tell Their AI Story

From our work across healthcare, data and technology businesses, we see a consistent pattern. AI messaging tends to land in three places, but only one of them creates real differentiation.

  • First, there is AI in the product: copilots, smart features, clinical suggestions, intelligent routing. These capabilities are increasingly expected, but rarely distinctive. Nearly every competitor either has them or claims to. Framed this way, AI becomes a feature label, not a market advantage. 
  • Second, there is AI in the business: internal efficiency, lower cost-to-serve, faster processing, better staffing. This can be an important part of the investor story. But it is usually the wrong lead message for customers. Buyers care about whether those gains translate into better service, better economics, or better outcomes for them. 
  • Third, there is AI as a driver of customer value. This is where differentiation begins. The message shifts from what the technology is to what it changes: which workflow improves, which decision gets smarter, which friction point is removed. In this mode, AI is not the headline. The headline is the benefit it generates. 

The hardest claims to copy are not capability claims. They are claims rooted in proprietary data, embedded workflows, measurable results, and a trust model that holds up in practice.

A Simple Test for Whether Your Message is Working

We saw this clearly in a recent messaging engagement with a major virtual care platform. Like many companies in the category, it faced a familiar risk: its AI language sounded too broad to be credible and too similar to what others were already saying. Terms such as personalization, insights and integration were directionally right, but too generic to carry the story. What sharpened the narrative was greater specificity — which data made the system smarter, which moments in the care journey improved, how the technology helped care teams act sooner and engage the right people. Just as important, the company needed to show where clinician oversight remained essential and where governance was built into the system. In healthcare, trust is not supporting detail. It is part of the value proposition. 

This points to a simple pressure test: if you remove the phrase “AI” from your message and it no longer says anything meaningful, you are describing the technology, not the advantage. If the story remains compelling without the term — because it communicates workflow impact, outcomes, proof, and trust — then the message is doing real strategic work. 

In Healthcare, Credibility is the Differentiator

The companies standing out today follow the same discipline. They name the user and the workflow. They quantify the effect. They make clear why their data or delivery model gives them an edge. And they treat governance and responsible use as visible parts of the story, not footnotes for legal review. In healthcare, where the standard for credibility is structurally higher, vague AI rhetoric does more than blur differentiation. It can actively weaken trust.

 

Organization & Culture

FINAL THOUGHTS

In health tech, AI may be necessary, but it is no longer enough. The companies that stand out will not be the ones that talk about intelligence most loudly. They will be the ones who explain most clearly how intelligence creates better care experiences, stronger engagement, greater efficiency, and more credible outcomes. 

If your organization is investing in AI but struggling to turn that into a story customers trust, it may be time to pressure-test the narrative. We work with healthcare services and technology companies to clarify where AI creates real value, how that value should be

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AI Is Transforming Marketing in Healthcare–Is Your Team Ready?

How leading healthcare and technology brands are piloting AI to transform their marketing—and what it takes to do it right. 

AI isn’t just another tool in the marketer’s toolkit. It’s fundamentally changing how brands understand audiences, create content, and drive growth. Across our recent working sessions with healthcare and health-tech organizations, one truth surfaced consistently: the brands that win with AI won’t be the ones that move fastest, but the ones that move most thoughtfully. 

Today, most marketing leaders are already experimenting. Generative AI is in active use across content, analytics, and enablement, and investment is accelerating as CMOs see early ROI. But speed without strategy creates noise, not growth—especially in healthcare, where trust, accuracy, and consistency matter as much as efficiency. 

The real shift isn’t just technological. It’s organizational. Marketers are evolving from storytellers to systems architects, responsible for building infrastructures that balance real-time responsiveness with long-term brand equity. AI can accelerate that evolution—but only if human judgment remains firmly in the loop. 

The Shared Reality: What Healthcare Marketers Are Wrestling With

We hosted work sessions with four healthcare organizations’ marketing teams. Despite playing different roles in the healthcare ecosystem across organizations, a common set of tensions is emerging as AI moves from experimentation to scale. 

Human insight versus machine output. 

AI can generate content, insights, and recommendations at a speed no team can match. But machines optimize for patterns, not meaning. Ensuring that AI-generated outputs resonate emotionally, reflect lived patient experiences, and align with brand purpose remains a core challenge.

Brand consistency at speed. 

As content volume explodes across channels, teams are struggling to maintain a consistent voice, tone, and visual identity—particularly in decentralized environments. The risk isn’t just inefficiency; it’s brand dilution that erodes trust over time.

Data security and privacy.

Healthcare marketers sit on highly sensitive data. Feeding proprietary or patient-related information into public models without guardrails introduces unacceptable risk. Governance, enterprise-grade tools, and thoughtful data design are prerequisites—not downstream fixes. 

Internal resistance and uncertainty.

Fear is real: concerns about job displacement, confusion about where to start, and fatigue from too many tools slow adoption. Successful AI transformation depends as much on change management as it does on technology. 

Why These Challenges Matter More Than Ever

Digging deeper, these tensions reveal structural issues that AI is exposing—and can help solve if addressed deliberately. 

Being data-rich but insight-poor.

Many marketing teams have access to enormous volumes of data but lack intuitive ways to query, connect, and act on it. AI creates the possibility of natural-language interfaces and real-time insight generation—but only if data is clean, connected, and governed. 

Scaling content without diluting credibility. 

Healthcare brands are under pressure to publish more, faster, across more channels. The opportunity is scale; the risk is losing clinical rigor, thought leadership, or emotional authenticity. AI raises the floor—but only if brand standards are embedded into workflows. 

Decentralization versus coherence. 

Large systems often operate across hundreds—or thousands—of digital properties and contributors. AI can be a force for standardization, reuse, and quality control, but without shared frameworks, it simply accelerates fragmentation. 

Knowing where to start. 

Nearly every organization asks the same question: Which use cases actually matter? Leaders are increasingly prioritizing opportunities based on desirability, viability, and feasibility—then piloting quickly with small, focused teams before scaling. 

The most forward-looking teams aren’t asking how AI can replace work. They’re asking how it can elevate it. 

Marketing Excellence

FINAL THOUGHTS

AI is not replacing the marketer. It’s redefining what great marketing looks like. 

Think of AI as a multiplier. Strong strategy becomes faster. Strong creative becomes more personal. Weak foundations simply fail faster. The healthcare brands that invest now—in the right use cases, the right guardrails, and the right human–AI collaboration models—will be the ones setting the standard over the next three years. 

The question isn’t whether AI belongs in your marketing strategy. 

It’s whether your marketing strategy is ready for AI. 

Ready to explore what human-centered AI can do for your marketing team? Connect with us to discuss a kickstart workshop to help your team identify the pilots that will be most valuable to helping you reach your brand and business goals. 

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The Retail Store as a Platform: Designing for Commerce, Curation, Connection, and Culture

The most forward-thinking retailers are engineering immersive, multi-faceted platforms that curate commerce, foster human connection, and cultivate culture.

For decades, the narrative surrounding physical retail has been one of disruption and decline, a story pitting brick-and-mortar against the digital juggernaut of e-commerce. But this binary view is obsolete.

The future of retail isn’t about the store versus the website; it’s about the store acting like a website—or more precisely, like a platform.

The most forward-thinking retailers are no longer just designing places to transact; they are engineering immersive, multi-faceted platforms that curate commerce, foster human connection, and cultivate culture.

Why a Platform?

To understand this shift, we must first dissect what a platform business truly is. Unlike traditional linear businesses that create value in a straight line (make a product, sell it to a customer), platform businesses create value by facilitating interactions and transactions between distinct, interdependent groups. Think of Uber (connecting drivers and riders), Airbnb (connecting hosts and guests), or the Apple App Store (connecting developers and users).

Their core asset is not inventory, but the ecosystem and the data that flows through it.

They thrive on network effects: the more participants on one side, the more valuable the platform becomes to the other.

So, how does a physical retail store transform into this kind of dynamic platform?

It ceases to be a mere point-of-sale and becomes a curated, multi-faceted ecosystem where the retailer acts as the orchestrator, not just the owner.

Read this later? Download this guide as a PDF 

Currently, only a handful of retailers operate stores with this mindset; some fashion brand houses and others like South Korea’s Gentle Monster, Nike’s House of Innovation, and Starbucks Reserve Roastery locations come close. So, how can other retailers turn physical stores into dynamic platforms?

Gentle Monster, Shanghai flagship
Gentle Monster, Shanghai flagship; art and technology meet fashion and beauty (Source: Gentle Monster) 
Gentle Monster, Shanghai flagship; art and technology meet fashion and beauty (Source: Gentle Monster) 
A full customization wing lives in The Arena, delivering on Nike’s pioneering DIY spirit. (Source: Nike)
The latest selection is continually rotated throughout the store. (Source: Nike)
With Shop The Look, customers can scan the code at the foot
of a mannequin and shop the entire outfit, which can then
be purchased immediately through Instant Checkout. (Source: Nike)
The Nike Speed Shop uses local data to stock its shelves, and re-stock them
based on what the community wants. (Source: Nike)
Starbucks Reserve, Tokyo Roastery (Source: Starbucks) 

The Store as a Platform for Curated Commerce

In a traditional model, commerce is straightforward: the retailer stocks what it predicts will sell. The platform store, however, reimagines the floor as a dynamic marketplace.

This means inviting third-party brands, both digital natives and local artisans, to “plug in” to the physical space. These brands become the “producers” on the platform.

For example, a Target or a Nordstrom isn’t just selling its own inventory; it’s hosting a rotating cast of pop-ups and exclusive collaborations. The physical store can become a living, breathing showroom for DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) or new-to-market brands seeking tangible customer touchpoints, and for established brands to test new concepts, as well as the in-store media promoting store-brands and those of the partners or suppliers.  

Target partnered with Museum of Ice Cream to launch
a pop-up shop in NYC (Source: Yuliya Kim for Adweek)

Over the years, Target has launched dozens of shop-in-shop partnerships with brands and designers to expand its relevance, driving traffic and revenue in important categories.

The retailer’s role shifts from dictator of assortment to curator of experience. They provide the stage—the prime real estate, the logistics, the foot traffic—and take a fee or revenue share from sales.

  • This model can de-risk inventory, ensure a constantly refreshed and novel assortment, and turn the store into a destination for discovery, not just routine replenishment.
  • The commerce becomes a value-added service within a larger experience.
  • And this new curated commerce is supported by both digital tools allowing more seamless online-offline integration.

Collaborations Context:

The store becomes a vessel of collaboration with other culturally relevant brands or personalities, but in the context of the store’s brand experience. The immersive aspect blurs the line between the partner’s equities and the store’s brand, creating an exciting “equity flow” between the parties that can be felt by the customer, shaping brand memories that drive future visits.

Seasonal Sensations:

Shifts in visual merchandising are not just about decorating for the season but being relevant to the consumer mindset regarding everything else going on in their lives. The “platform” shifts its language, its visual effects, and particularly its in-store media content, messaging, creative, and promotions to align with consumer attention.

The Store as a Platform for Human Connection

This is where the physical platform truly outshines its digital counterparts. E-commerce can be transactional and solitary.

  • The store-as-platform is designed for social and educational interaction, creating a powerful network effect between customers, staff, and brands.
  • The “users” on this side of the platform are the customers seeking connection and knowledge.
  • The “providers” are the store’s staff, brand ambassadors, and even fellow shoppers.

Staff as APIs:

In a platform store, associates are not just cashiers or stockers; they are “Application Programming Interfaces” (APIs)—human endpoints of data and expertise. Armed with AI-enabled tablets that access real-time inventory, customer purchase history, and product information, they can offer hyper-personalized service. They are stylists, tech gurus, and guides who facilitate a deeper relationship between the customer and the brand ecosystem.

The “platform” also leverages digital tools to supplement the store staff, such as “endless aisles” providing vastly expanded assortments with minimal inventory carry, and visualization tools (magic mirrors and mobile-enabled AR applications) to streamline trial supported by the personal guidance of staff.  

Nordstrom store associate with tablet (Source: Nordstrom)

The next generation of “clienteling” will be AI-enabled.

Community as Content:

The store itself becomes a venue for events—workshops, maker classes, fitness sessions, or panels. A REI store hosting outdoor survival classes or an Apple store holding Today at Apple creative sessions aren’t just selling products; they are selling proficiency, passion, and community.

These events create recurring reasons to visit, transforming the store from a shop into a clubhouse. The connections formed here—between customer and expert, and between customer and customer—create immense loyalty and a defensible moat that Amazon cannot easily replicate.

REI indoor photo of class or activity (Source: REI)

Building community programming around shared interest drives trips and loyalty.

The Store is the Clubhouse:

As loyalty programs evolve to be more about access to experiences and not just collecting points, the store environment can play a key role in evoking a sense of belonging.

Location-based programming as described above is only the start, as technology unlocks better forms of recognition (opt-in facial recognition and geo-location using signals from mobile devices–or even using simple card swipes or RFID readers), more personalized attention can be brought to loyalty program participants, rewarding frequent visits with in-the-moment promotions, access to preferred store hours, and even the provision of food and beverage amenities…

Not by Bread Alone:

As noted above, in creating a platform orientation to the store, the execution should at a minimum deliver a “more reasons to go and more things to do when you are there” experience. Food and beverage offerings provide that always-appreciated and often-desired complement to a shopping trip.

Aligning the offer and assortment with the brand’s personality (think Ralph’s, the Ralph Lauren café attached to many of its stores globally), and should be tuned to be feasibly operated.

Ralph’s Coffee café at Shaw Centre, Singapore; Ralph Lauren setting up coffee shops adjacent to its stores. (Source: Grazia)

The Store as a Platform for Cultural Cultivation

The highest function of the retail platform is to move beyond utility and into identity. It becomes a stage for cultivating and broadcasting a specific culture. Platforms like Instagram or TikTok don’t just host content; they shape trends, language, and aesthetics.

Similarly, a retail store can act as a cultural touchpoint. It’s a three-dimensional manifestation of a brand’s worldview.

A Glossier store isn’t just a place to buy makeup; it’s an Instagram-ready shrine to millennial-pink aesthetics and community-driven beauty. A Patagonia store isn’t just for outdoor gear; it’s a hub for environmental activism, complete with repair workshops and advocacy materials.

  • In this model, the transaction is almost a byproduct of cultural participation.
  • Consumers, especially younger generations, don’t just buy products; they buy into beliefs. The retail platform allows them to physically immerse themselves in those beliefs.
  • The store curates not just products, but a vibe, a value system, and a tribe. This cultural capital is the most powerful form of branding, creating evangelists who wear their purchases as badges of affiliation.  
Glossier Philadelphia (Source: Glossier) 
Glossier District of Columbia (Source: Glossier) 
Glossier store with customers taking Instagram photos (Source: BoF) 

Being in the cultural conversation drives targeted relevance. 

The Store as a Media Platform

In today’s retail environment, the store itself is being reimagined as a dynamic media channel, where digital screens transform passive aisles into immersive content experiences. Gone are the days of simple promotional loops; these networks now deliver curated, high-quality content ranging from brand storytelling and recipe tutorials to lifestyle documentaries and live social media feeds.

This content serves a dual purpose: it captivates customers, increasing dwell time and enhancing brand perception, while simultaneously functioning as a highly targeted, daypart-driven advertising platform.

Brands can purchase screen time much like a digital out-of-home network, delivering contextually relevant messages at the precise moment of purchase consideration, effectively turning the physical store into a broadcast studio for targeted, shopper-centric media.

This evolution into a media platform allows retailers to monetize their physical footprint and customer attention in new ways, generating high-margin revenue streams beyond product sales.

  • The data captured—such as dwell times, engagement metrics, and correlation with sales data—creates a powerful feedback loop, enabling both retailers and brands to refine messaging in real-time for maximum impact.
  • Ultimately, the store-as-media-platform model elevates the shopping journey from a mere transaction to an engaging, informative, and entertaining experience.
  • It represents a profound convergence of physical and digital worlds, where the environment not only sells products but also tells stories, builds community, and operates as a sophisticated, measurable media entity in its own right.
Store endcaps fitted with screens (Source: AdAge) 

POS media can drive disproportionate selection opportunities for brands and a meaningful revenue stream for the retailer.

Designing the Platform: Data as the Foundation

Underpinning all four of these dimensions—Commerce, Curation, Connection, and Culture—is data. A platform is useless without a feedback loop. In-store sensors, Wi-Fi analytics, mobile app interactions, and transaction data provide a rich, nuanced understanding of how people move, dwell, and interact within the physical space.

This data informs everything: which pop-up brands drive the most footfall, which workshops lead to the highest basket size, which product placements create the most social media buzz, and even how loyalty can be manifested in the store.

  • This allows retailers to iterate and optimize the “user experience” of their physical platform with the same agility (but perhaps not the same speed) as a digital product team.
  • This closed-loop system ensures the store remains relevant, responsive, resilient…and productive.
Hema Market uses data to track freshness and food safety information, ensure in-stocks on popular items and manage 30-minute delivery windows for in-store purchases. (Source: Freshippo)

Hema Market leverages its fully integrated online-to-offline data ecosystem to deliver a seamless, hyper-personalized customer experience. It unifies digital and physical shopping, enabling real-time analysis of individual preferences, purchase history, and even dwell time.

This data powers dynamic in-store digital signage and an AI-driven replenishment system, ensuring popular SKUs are never out of stock. The result is a frictionless journey where customers receive relevant offers, enjoy accurate 30-minute delivery windows predicted from historical traffic and order data, and find stores curated to their neighborhood’s tastes—transforming raw data into intuitive, time-saving convenience.

The Transaction as an Outcome, Not the Goal

The store of the future is not a warehouse. It is a networked platform. Its success is measured not just in sales per square foot, but in engagement per visit, the strength of its partner ecosystem, and its cultural resonance.

By designing for commerce as a curated service, for connection as a core utility, and for culture as a key differentiator, retailers can build physical spaces that are not just surviving the digital age but thriving within it. The transaction is no longer the singular goal of the store visit; it is the natural outcome of a valuable and valued platform experience.

Download this guide as a PDF.

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Business Strategy

FINAL THOUGHTS

Retail’s next chapter will be written by stores that function as platforms — shaping commerce, curation, connection, and culture, with the transaction as the outcome rather than the aim.

Prophet helps retailers design these experiences to deepen relevance, loyalty, and drive uncommon growth.

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Beyond the Hype: Why AI-enhanced brands still need human creativity

In a world of infinite AI content, human-driven distinction is the only remaining competitive advantage.

AI has quickly moved from the margins of creative work to being central to how brands develop content, communicate, and ultimately compete. AI models have evolved from little more than highly trained toys to equalizing tools that are deeply entrenched in business and leisure.  
 
From the nearly $2 trillion AI bubble—echoing the pattern and amplifying the scale of the dot-com bubble of the 90s—to the more than 600 AI mergers and acquisitions in recent months, to social media feeds littered with AI images that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing: the hype is undeniable. But the hype has peaked. The conversation has shifted away from what AI can do to the results it can actually deliver. A shift that’s given way to agentic AI—systems that don’t just respond, but reason, plan, and act. 
 
And adoption is widespread. So much that operationalizing agentic workflows at speed and scale is no longer a “nice to have” for brands, but the growing standard. 

“Artificial intelligence is not a substitute for human intelligence; it is a tool to amplify human creativity and ingenuity.”  

— Fei-fei Li, AI Innovator, Researcher, And Professor

The Verbal Branding team at Prophet has been both pioneering and living this new reality.  Yes, adapting and streamlining workflows and wielding new tools that sharpen our skillsets, but more excitingly, seeing new ways that we can accelerate the creative cycle, and push brands forward.  

And in this world of AI-enabled creative, there are a few principles we are currently living by to ensure creative expressions are just as meaningful, but relevant.  

Content Homogenization Will Proliferate 

Even as automation threatens various sectors, creative problem-solving roles, like brand strategist and writers, will survive and thrive with increased productivity from AI (according to a Forrester report on U.S. advertising agencies). In fact, freelance communication jobs have grown by 25% as more AI-adjacent positions in machine learning begin to decline.  

Because, without humans to create and guide, the race to innovate with AI will become a “race to the middle.” If models are trained on AI-generated content or generally draw from the same pool of sources, it all blends, the lines blur, and the friction that brands need to be memorable is lost in a sea of sameness. It’s become so obvious and average that 82% of people can spot AI-generated content—overusing cliches, repeating sentence constructs, and using perfect grammar while lacking feeling entirely. 

Even AI companies know that a human touch makes content compelling. OpenAI’s first brand campaign was shot, unironically, on 35mm film, creating an authentic and slightly unpolished atmosphere that avoids the sometimes too-sterile look of all-AI visuals.   

As companies continue to leverage AI in bigger and bolder ways, one central theme is clear: AI-created content isn’t inherently strong. But AI-enhanced content can be.    

Creative Rigor Will Lead in the Era of AI 

Now more than ever, businesses must harness the power of brand building: their most visible and often most valuable business asset. Defining the foundations of a brand is too critical to be relegated to AI, but these tools can be used to scale branded content consistently and effectively.   

Going forward, brand systems must be AI-native. Keeping the same rigor, insights, and creativity that ensure brands meet a given moment, while also staying easy to activate by people and augmented by AI. All without sacrificing originality and intent.  

Prophet’s Perspective on AI in Creative

We’re developing AI products that support our clients’ ambitions—and embedding AI in the Prophet creative process itself. Not outsourcing our thinking by any stretch, but allowing us to stretch our creativity.  

From consumer fashion brands to B2B institutional investors to iconic entertainment platforms, we’ve helped brands create and adopt agentic AI in several high-touch, high-effort marketing endeavors.  

  • Automating how users submit requests for, evaluate, and even generate new descriptive names for products and features  
  • Developing and training AI agents with fully developed brand voice and brand messaging guidelines  
  • Pulling multiple agents together into custom interfaces for multi-modal content creation and governance (e.g., defining briefs, writing content, and scoring drafts against brand inputs)  

Whether building custom agents on their preferred platforms or on Prophet’s own, we ensure brand communicators not only have the ability to execute content at scale but have an operationalized means of ongoing brand education. Meaning, that as the brand evolves, so will the people that make it and the AI that scales it.  
 
With an orchestrated network of specialized agents working across an entire content workflow, human minds can continue to focus on what only they can do. The thinking, the instinct, and the creativity it takes to make a brand feel genuine. Drawing on our own uniquely human experiences, exploring nuance and shades of gray, and regularly straying from convention with unexpected words and turns of phrase that make people smile. This leaves the channel adaptation, consistency checks, and stress-testing to AI and the ambition, nuance, and originality to people. 

Organization & Culture

FINAL THOUGHTS

Even amid the new reality of a breakneck pace of change, human imagination steadies brands with what makes them distinct. As AI capabilities get smarter, faster, and stronger, they can help us push the bounds of what we’re able to create and do.  
 
Staying relentlessly relevant means staying at the helm, leading with strong, expertly developed verbal identities and using AI to inspire rather than imitate—or replace—creativity. The brands that win the next decade will have compelling voices and AI-powered content operations built to express them at scale—with precision and without creative compromise.  
 
Prophet, and the many creative humans who comprise it, builds to win.

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Why Reassurance Matters More Than Status in Today’s Premium and Luxury Market 

Seven insights from our latest Consumer Generation research.

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Luxury in Germany is becoming less about dreaming big and more about feeling safe. After years of economic instability, global conflict, and social strain, German consumers are recalibrating what “luxury” really means.

These insights come from Prophet’s latest Consumer Generation Premium and Luxury Study, based on a survey of 1,000 German consumers spanning Gen Z through Baby Boomers. First launched in 2018 and now conducted for the fifth time, the research explores shared patterns and generational differences across values, luxury perceptions, brand and product expectations, buyer journeys, purchasing behavior (including AI), and, of course, the implications for business.

Since we began studying this market, the shift has become unmistakable. What once centered on material ambition has steadily given way, across generations, to a desire for reassurance. In 2026, stability now outweighs status and upward mobility, with financial independence, relationships, and health defining what premium truly means.

One explanation is that in an era of heightened uncertainty, consumers are retreating toward what they can physically own, control, and secure.

According to Jörg Meurer, Partner at Prophet, “The current data is heavily influenced by a “poly-crisis” environment, including economic uncertainty, global conflict and political instability. These macro-factors are now directly reflected in consumer sentiment and core values.”

Preview the highlights.

This shift is most visible among Millennials. Once seen as the generation driving cultural and economic change, they now show broad fatigue. Nearly every value and life priority dimension has weakened, suggesting mounting pressure, overload, and disillusionment rather than confidence or momentum.

Gen Z shows a different but equally telling shift, stepping back from activism and traditional success. While their core idealism remains intact, many feel caught between strong values and a growing sense of powerlessness to effect real change in an increasingly volatile world. Instead, more are turning inward, placing greater emphasis on personal meaning and belief systems, including religion. This signals a move from trying to change the world to trying to understand it.

Baby Boomers, by contrast, remain the most stable cohort. They continue to value heritage brands, high‑end service, and familiar luxury codes, while maintaining relatively strong environmental and sustainability beliefs. In a volatile environment, they are the segment most anchored in continuity.

While luxury brands still attract consumers, loyalty is weakening. Across generations, brands remain important reference points, yet only Baby Boomers stay truly loyal. Buyers are more selective and cautious: quality, durability, functionality, design, and great service still matter, but expectations are lower than in the past.

At the same time, premium customers are questioning price markups for image and emotion, becoming more price‑sensitive. Interestingly, visible logos and statement luxury are making a comeback, with fewer purchases being made, but each one obviously carrying more symbolic weight.

According to Meurer, “As expected, AI is transforming every stage of the luxury buying journey and is not just a “youth play” but also widely adopted by older generations, such as the growing willingness across all generations to let AI agents make purchasing decisions.”

For brands at the premium end of the market, there are profound implications with regard to brand management and their go-to-market strategy.

  1. Reassurance beats aspiration: Consumers aren’t looking to be dazzled. They want brands they can trust, that feel stable, clear, and genuinely useful.
  2. No one‑size‑fits‑all consumer: Growth requires sharper segmentation: Gen Z seeks purpose and agency, Millennials want convenience and relief, and Boomers value recognition and reliability.
  3. Brands must prove relevance, not just heritage: Brand equity still matters, but history alone doesn’t sell. Luxury brands must turn their promise into clear performance, problem‑solving, and everyday relevance.
  4. Practical value defines modern luxury: Convenience, wellbeing, and service now drive premium appeal. Saving time, reducing complexity, and delivering comfort through high‑touch (often AI‑enabled) service increasingly shape buying decisions.
  5. Technology must be useful and credible: Consumers expect tech to solve real problems, not just impress with innovation.
  6. Convenience is the new luxury – wellbeing is the business: Convenience-led products and services that save time and reduce complexity, while enhancing physical and emotional wellbeing, are becoming the defining expression of luxury for a new generation of consumers.
  7. The same logic applies to employer brands: In a climate of crisis fatigue, employer attractiveness is increasingly defined by stability, purpose, development opportunities, and psychological safety. Reassurance a core value proposition not only for customers, but for talent as well.

Luxury is entering a reassurance era, where trust, usefulness, and stability matter more than spectacle or status. Brands that adapt to this shift, across generations, channels, and technologies, will be best positioned to stay relevant in uncertain times.

Marketing Excellence

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Premium, Lifestyle, Luxury: Holding Ground in a Polycrisis

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The Leadership Choices Behind M&A Winners  

Four areas that shape value creation.

Despite growth being the primary rationale behind most M&A deals, too often, transactions close without creating a stronger business. Harvard Business Review estimates that 70–90% of deals fail to realize their intended value.

Recent Prophet research offers a useful lens on why. We analyzed the S&P Composite 1500 and identified 179 companies that outperformed their industries by delivering exceptional, sustained growth between 2019 and 2024. 

On average, these companies delivered 27% annual revenue growth, compared with 6% for others. We then looked more closely at the Uncommon Growth companies that were active in M&A, alongside major transactions in the past five years, to identify the choices that distinguish stronger performers.

The differentiator is rarely the deal itself, but what companies do after the strategy is set. Top performers move beyond treating M&A as a financial event, using it instead to build a business that is more relevant, more capable, and better positioned than either company alone.

M&A, in other words, is often a driver of uncommon growth rather than separate from it. So which choices do the winners make that reliably shape value creation?

1. They Articulate the Story of Value Early – and Create Immediate Narrative Clarity for Investors, Employees and Customers 

M&A winners give the market a clear reason to care, articulating early a concise story of value that explains why the deal happened, what it unlocks, and how it will make the combined business more compelling. The strongest stories are not abstract or purely financial; they specify the core capability, adjacency, or platform advantage the transaction is meant to create.

This clarity provides investors with a basis for belief, helps employees understand what is being built, and equips commercial teams to talk about additive value that the deal creates with prospects and customers. When the value story is vague or overly technical, attention quickly shifts to back-end mechanics while the growth case remains unclear.

In some of the strongest cases, M&A did more than add capabilities or revenue. It helped shift the company’s frame of reference in the market. For example, Xylem used the Evoqua acquisition to move from being seen more narrowly as an equipment and infrastructure player toward a broader water technology, treatment and services platform with stronger recurring-revenue characteristics. Nasdaq used Adenza to reinforce its shift from market operator toward a higher growth, more software and solutions-led financial technology and infrastructure business. In both cases, the deal supported a stronger investor narrative around quality of growth, business mix and margin potential. 

2. They Define and Actively Manage Brand Portfolio and Architecture Logic 

Ambiguous brand portfolios create friction by confusing customers, diluting commercial focus, duplicating investment, and slowing execution.

M&A winners are deliberate from the outset about brand portfolio and architecture: which brands to integrate, which to keep distinct, and the role each should play in supporting growth. They do not leave these questions unresolved or assume they can be addressed later. When managed well, brand architecture clarifies the offer, helps leadership prioritize investment, and gives the organization a disciplined path for building, combining, or retiring brands over time. Importantly, they also treat brand architecture as a living system, to be actively managed as the business evolves and priorities shift.

Our research shows that top performers made these choices explicit and followed through. Home Depot preserved the SRS brand and operating model, which delivered $6.4B in fiscal 2024 sales. Extra Space, by contrast, consolidated under one brand after concluding dual brands lacked payoff. UBS made the clearest call, retiring Credit Suisse entirely. The common thread is not one brand versus many, but early, deliberate choice and sustained execution. 

3. They Treat Brand as an Operating System, not Just a Communications Asset 

The best M&As do not treat brand as a late-stage communications wrapper. Rather, brand functions as an operating system: the organizing idea that connects business ambition, market confidence, and internal alignment. It defines what the combined company stands for, how it creates value, and how decisions should be made—across client engagement, sales, talent, partnerships, and leadership behavior.

Used this way, brand shapes integration rather than decorating it. It guides how the business is integrated, how the new company is perceived, investment decisions, and can inspire confidence. Done well; it turns a transaction into more than a legal or financial event, providing a unifying logic that supports execution and growth.

Our research shows that top performers used brand to drive growth. Carrier positioned Viessmann as a premier brand and platform in sustainable climate solutions. UBS applied the same principle at far greater complexity when migrating Credit Suisse, using a clear brand narrative, “Banking is our Craft” to reinforce reputation, retain and grow client assets. 

4. They Strategically Align Culture and Performance 

Culture is one of the clearest differentiators between deals that build momentum and those that stall. While hard to measure in a short financial window, its effects surface quickly. When leadership is unclear or behaviors misaligned, value creation slows. When leadership creates a post‑deal environment that is coherent, purposeful, and well led, the organization can forge ahead.

Culture should not be treated as a soft topic or parallel workstream, rather a catalyst for success. Leaders define the values, behaviors, and ways of working that guide the combined company, shaping collaboration, decisions, and change. Further, in industries experiencing talent scarcity or where there’s heightened competition to attract in-demand talent pools, culture becomes a critical source of advantage.

Our research shows that this discipline translates into execution. Companies such as Xylem, Emerson, and Globus Medical made culture visible through integration outcomes, achieving early synergies and strong post‑close performance. This reinforces broader evidence that effective cultural management materially increases the likelihood of value realization.

M&A Growth Acceleration

FINAL THOUGHTS

M&A does not create uncommon growth by default. Even well-conceived deals fall short when leadership treats them as financial events followed by cleanup.

The success of M&A transactions hinge on deliberate choices by leadership: what the combined business stands for, how it operates, and what customers and employees should experience. When those decisions are made early and executed consistently, M&A becomes more than a transaction. It becomes a platform for uncommon growth.

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Chinese Brands Going Global: Five Strategic Shifts to Unleash Growth  

As Chinese brands expand into the global market, they must move from exporting products to building brands and shaping consumer trends to drive uncommon growth with lasting competitiveness. 

With the global talent dividend, fast-evolving AI technologies, and reshaping of consumer journeys, Chinese brands have entered a period of accelerated growth on the global stage. Companies are moving beyond simply “going out” in geographic terms and into a phase of “going in”—deep local embedding—where China’s manufacturing strengths are integrated with the ambition to build world-class brands. 

As a result of our experience helping Chinese brands develop overseas growth strategies, we’ve identified five strategic shifts critical for success. 

1. From “Channel Push” to “Brand Pull” 

Chinese companies excel at pushing products efficiently into channels through their mature supply chains and precise e-commerce operations. However, over-reliance on channel push can turn the brand into an “invisible supplier,” weakening its identity and meaning that would resonate with end consumers.  

In the next phase of global growth, Chinese brands are adopting a dual-engine model—protecting channel advantages while building brand strength. Consumers not only can buy the products that are accessible or affordable, but also want to buy, enabling more sustainable, long-term growth. 

For instance, DJI established a clear, innovation-led brand identity early, standing for reliable, creator-friendly aerial imaging while operating a comprehensive distribution network. This helped it earn trust, mindshare, and premium positioning across major international markets. 

2. From Product Function to “Differentiated Value 

Chinese companies are strong at solving problems, but often less so at creating meaning. Many brands communicate primarily through functional narratives—features, specifications, and prices, pushing them into price-based, homogeneous competition. As a result, they fail to make a distinctive impression on local consumers’ minds.  

To create meaningful values, brands must move beyond functional performance to define differentiated benefits by understanding different consumer segments and consumption scenarios. The goal is to shift from being seen as a substitute option or commodity to becoming a preferred or premium choice in the category. 

As BYD expands into Europe, it complements channel execution with a clear sustainability-led brand promise, reinforced through brand campaigns and initiatives such as sustainability festivals and participation in major climate-focused events. These efforts help the brand build meaning and trust beyond functional vehicle attributes. 

3. From Hero Product to Product Portfolio 

A single successful product can ignite growth, but it can also limit expansion if the company gets ‘locked’ into one item. Brands should take a future-back approach early—designing hero products with a value proposition that supports long-term, sustainable growth. In this way, the hero product is not only a sales driver but also sets expectations for what the brand stands for.  

From that center point, the brand can build a cross-category product matrix that offers solutions for diverse consumer needs. Only by building a tiered product portfolio can brands create a clear path to scale in global markets. 

A good example is Xiaomi, which built global awareness through cost-effective smartphones but anchored its expansion in a consistent “tech enthusiast” identity—using that credibility to grow into a broad, tiered ecosystem spanning everyday smart-home appliances and devices as well as more advanced innovation bets such as robotics and electric vehicles. 

4. From Platform Traffic to Omnichannel Experience 

Many Chinese companies have become e-commerce experts that master the algorithms of platforms such as Amazon or Shopee. But this growth model contains a major risk: consumers may only remember buying something “on Amazon” while having no connection to the brand itself. These brands struggle to build meaningful brand equity, thus losing the ability to re-engage and retain customers throughout the full customer journey.  

In the next phase of growth, brands must think beyond driving sales on e-commerce platforms and reimagine their digital storefront as a core brand-building base, and from there, create true omnichannel experiences. The strategic shift is from short-term acquisition to long-term customer engagement—building repeat purchase, advocacy, and a more defensible competitive position. 

5. From Fragmented Voice to Consistent Messaging and Execution 

As AI plays a larger role in discovery and evaluation, consistency across all touchpoints becomes crucial. AI and large language models scan internet-wide data to model brand perception: when official messaging, user reviews, and real experiences are highly consistent, the brand is given higher weighting and is more likely to be recommended; when messaging is fragmented or contradictory, it is treated as ‘noise.’  

Brands today must be consistent inside and out, extending what they stand for across every touchpoint. Consistency over time builds credibility and improves conversion, retention, and reputation in the age of AI-driven recommendations. 

Business Strategy

FINAL THOUGHTS

The new era of globalization is not only about entering more markets; it is about elevating brand strength for uncommon growth. In more competitive environments, a brand’s staying power depends on whether it has real clarity, consistency, and customer preference—not only operational strength. 

That staying power is built through: 

  1. Brand pull to complement channel strength
  2. Differentiated value beyond product function 
  3. A future-back product portfolio rather than a single hero product 
  4. An omnichannel customer experience to reduce platform dependence 
  5. Consistent messaging and execution to build credibility in an AI-driven buying process 

When Chinese enterprises extend their manufacturing capabilities into these five areas, they can move from exporting products to building brands—and shape global consumer trends with lasting competitiveness.

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Beyond the Big Name: How to Choose a Strategy Partner for Uncommon Growth

The shift from optimization to transformation.

The consulting landscape is undergoing a fundamental shift. Historically, many of the relationships between an enterprise and a management consulting firm were anchored in efficiency. It was about “optimization”—squeezing more value out of existing assets, cutting costs, and refining legacy processes. However, in an era defined by volatility, shifting consumer expectations, and the rapid rise of generative AI, incrementalism is no longer a viable strategy. 

Today’s market demands transformation, not just optimization. At Prophet, we were built specifically to bridge the gap between traditional management consulting and creative agencies—a gap that has only grown more significant as growth, digital, and brand strategies have become inseparable. As we have evolved our own capabilities, we have observed that while many firms are capable, few are “fit for purpose” in a world where the speed of change outpaces the speed of traditional strategy. This guide is designed to help leaders across functions identify the characteristics of a partner who doesn’t just solve immediate problems but unlocks long-term opportunities. 

Shift 1: The Growth Mindset — Moving from Common to Uncommon 

The most significant trap in modern strategy is “Common Growth.” Most firms rely heavily on historical data to predict future performance. This results in linear, mostly predictable outcomes that are easily replicated by your competitors. If everyone is looking at the same data through the same lens, everyone arrives at the same conclusion. 

To break away from the pack, businesses must seek “Uncommon Growth.” This is growth that is: 

  • Sustainable: Focused on building internal capabilities to ensure that it is a rolling thunder of moves rather than chasing one-off tactical wins. 
  • Faster: Compressing the time between a raw insight and market execution, with strong strategy still in between. 
  • Smarter: Utilizing advanced data and AI, combined with expertise, to identify hidden patterns that competitors miss. 
  • More Human: Ensuring the strategy resonates emotionally with both employees and customers, especially in an increasingly AI-driven world. 
  • More Actionable: Actively eliminating the “strategy-to-execution” gap. 

The Litmus Test: Ask your prospective consulting partner: “How will this firm’s vision for our strategy make us fundamentally different and uniquely positioned, rather than just slightly better versions of our current selves?” 

Shift 2: Proven Experience — The Intersection of Category and Corollary

A frequent question in the RFP process is: “Have you done this in my specific industry?” While industry depth is a baseline requirement, relying solely on industry experts often leads to “groupthink.” 

True innovation usually happens at the intersection of category and corollary. Over our 30 years of global experience across industry categories, we’ve found that the solution to a retail challenge often resides in a healthcare model, or a CPG breakthrough that might be inspired by a tech platform’s user experience. Whether working within highly regulated sectors like financial services or navigating the complexities of companies grown through M&A or private equity, the best partners bring a “cross-category, cross-use case” perspective. They’ve seen how different industries solve similar problems and can adapt those lessons to your unique context. 

The Litmus Test: Look for a firm that both understands your industry and can explain how a successful solution from a completely different sector might be adapted to solve your specific challenge (i.e., how does your hospitality experience influence my healthcare challenges I am trying to solve?). 

Shift 3: Fluency in Business Strategy and Economics 

A strategy that doesn’t move the P&L is just a dream. A partner must demonstrate a profound understanding of your business model’s unit economics from day one. There must be a balance between the “art” of brand building and the “science” of financial impact. 

Consider our work with T-Mobile. The “Un-carrier” movement wasn’t just a marketing pivot or a clever slogan; it was a fundamental business model shift with a financial outcome. It changed the way customer lifetime value (CLV) and churn were calculated in the telecom industry. By building a rigorous business case for the C-suite and the Board, the strategy didn’t just win attention—it changed the EBITDA trajectory of the entire company, and in this case, the industry. 

The Litmus Test: Evaluate whether the firm brings both creativity and data-driven economic rigor. Do they speak the language of the CFO as fluently as they speak the language of the CMO? 

Shift 4: Speed to Impact — The Agile Strategy

The days of the six-month discovery phase are over. In today’s world, a half-year study is a death sentence for innovation. Clients now require “Speed to Impact” but with a strong strategic foundation. 

Modern partners should work in sprints, delivering “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP) strategies that can be tested, measured, and iterated in real-time. This requires a robust ecosystem of capabilities and also a willingness to test, learn, modify, and scale quickly. For example, our AI Accelerator Network is a curated group of partnerships designed to help clients move from concept to market at breakneck speed and high quality. 

The Litmus Test: Ask, “What is the shortest path to a ‘win’ that proves this strategy is working?” Check if they have the executional chops alongside the strategic chops to provide hands-on support in getting that idea to market. 

Shift 5: Internal Socialization and Leadership Alignment

Even the most brilliant strategies fail due to internal friction. A consulting firm must be as skilled at managing stakeholders and organizational politics as it is at analyzing spreadsheets. 

A true partner doesn’t just hand over a deck; they help you “sell” the strategy internally. They build it with you and key stakeholders. They create a narrative that the C-suite can rally behind, and that the frontline can actually execute. This requires a deep commitment to change management, at all levels, providing the tools and the storytelling necessary for the program’s long-term success. 

The Litmus Test: Does the firm have a concrete plan for aligning your leadership team, or do they expect you to do that heavy lifting alone? 

Shift 6: Cultural Fit — Working “With” You, Not “At” You

Finally, there is the “vibe” test. Some firms work “at” you—they deliver a finished product from a “black box” and disappear. Others work “with” you, becoming a seamless extension of your team and your organization. 

Look for humility and pragmatism. Choose a firm that spends more time listening to your frontline employees and your customers than they do presenting its proprietary methodologies. A human-centered approach to consulting means respecting your company’s unique culture and values while pushing you to evolve. 

The Litmus Test: During the pitch, do they ask curious, probing questions about your culture and past project successes and failures, or is the entire session a one-way presentation of their credentials? 

Organization & Culture

FINAL THOUGHTS

Choosing a strategy partner is one of the most consequential decisions a leader can make. The “safest” choice — the biggest brand name — can be one that delivers “common” results. The best partner is the one that combines the rigor of business strategy with the imagination of a creative studio, all in service of delivering uncommon results. 

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2025 Environmental Impact Report

Progress begins with understanding. At Prophet, we’ve spent years tracking our environmental footprint to measure our impact and guide our journey toward meaningful change. This report provides a transparent, data-driven look at our progress and the actions we’re taking to achieve our sustainability goals.

Read the report

Environmental responsibility demands more than ambition—it requires clarity, discipline, and action.

As expectations rise, many organizations grapple with balancing meaningful progress and operational realities. At Prophet, we believe true impact comes from focusing on what’s measurable and achievable.

Our 2025 Environmental Impact Report marks a pivotal step in our climate journey. By conducting a comprehensive greenhouse gas inventory across scopes 1, 2, and 3, we’ve established a transparent baseline. With improved data quality and alignment to global frameworks like CDP and EcoVadis, we’re building a foundation for long-term accountability.

The data reveals where our impact is most concentrated: people-driven activities such as travel and purchased goods and services. These insights are shaping how we integrate environmental considerations into our daily operations, client work, and community engagement. This report reflects where we stand today and how we’re preparing for the work ahead—with purpose, precision, and progress at the core.

Explore our approach to environmental accountability →

Business Strategy

The AI-Powered Consumer: Why Use Is Surging While Sentiment Slides

Consumer AI use is skyrocketing. But enthusiasm? It’s quietly heading in the other direction.

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The AI-Powered Consumer: Why Use Is Surging While Sentiment Slides

Consumer AI use is skyrocketing. But enthusiasm? It’s quietly heading in the other direction.

Prophet’s latest AI-Powered Consumer Study, based on roughly 2,000 consumers in China, Germany, Singapore, U.K. and the U.S., reveals just how mainstream this technology has become and AI’s growing influence in everyday life as consumers’ deep and personal advisors. 

Yet, as usage surges, new questions and complexities are emerging. Our new research reveals we’ve arrived at a fascinating moment: While consumers are embracing AI’s capabilities, they are also seeking greater trust, value and human connection from these innovations. This signals a landscape of enormous possibility, where the real challenge is harnessing AI to deliver both breakthrough utility and experiences that truly resonate.

What We Learned:

01

AI usage is exploding in ways nobody predicted.

About 73% of consumers are now using GenAI, up from 45% in 2024. And they are not just using it for search but for tasks like uploading medical records for health advice or simulating future versions of themselves to predict how their purchase decisions will affect them over time. More than half view autonomous agents taking action on their behalf (e.g., making smart purchases) as genuinely helpful.

02

But at the same time, enthusiasm is falling.

Despite growing use, overall excitement about GenAI has declined. As AI becomes part of daily life, consumers fear a loss of the human experience, with the majority of consumers anxious about losing human connection and concerned about AI driving decision-making that requires human judgment.

03

The next frontier is already becoming visible.

Consumers want AI that understands them deeply and simply works in the background on their behalf – proactive, ambient and emotionally intelligent. Two-thirds want AI that anticipates their needs without being asked. The era of prompt engineering has given way to something more intuitive and human-like, and we already see the major AI platforms innovating in this area.

What does this mean for businesses?

AI agents will soon know your consumers on a deep and personal level, naturally embedded into their daily lives as key advisors and decision-makers. Today’s businesses need to win with both consumers and their agents to drive growth and create experiences that deliver both indispensable utility and emotional connection. 

Consumers Are Using GenAI in Ways That Were Previously Unimaginable. And They Are More Than Ready for Agents.

Consumer GenAI use jumped from 45% to 73% from early 2024 to 2026 and has grown in every market. But what’s even more striking is the incredibly varied nature of how AI is being used. Before they shop, people are searching for product recommendations, making pre-purchase search the top use case across all five markets, cited by 61% of consumers. When it comes to new product discovery, 41% of consumers use AI to discover products they didn’t even know existed but have the potential to solve problems in their lives.  

GenAI adoption surges across generations with millennials continuing to lead​

Gen-Z adoption increased from 50% in 2024 to 79% in 2026; Millenials are leading with an increased adoption of 82% in 2026 vs 53% in 2024; Gen X had an adoption of 42% in 2024 and are not far behind Gen-Z with a 74% adoption in 2026. Lastly, baby boomers doubled their adoption from 24% in 2024 to 49% in 2026

Base: General population, 18+ years old. Gen-Z 18-27 (863), Millennials 28-43 (1733), Gen-X 44-59 (1520), Baby Boomers 60+ (1319)

But the story doesn’t stop at pre-purchase. Consumers are using AI throughout the entire journey. At purchase, for example, 29% say they use AI to monitor discounts and make purchase decisions. Post-purchase, 37% use AI to create product reviews. We also see consumers using AI in ways that many of us may never have predicted from the average consumer. Examples include:  

“I’ve set up a specific prompt sequence in Gemini that helps me plan my trip itineraries and find more local spots instead of just the usual touristy malls.”

–Gen Z, Singapore

“I’ll use Claude or ChatGPT to run through “what-if” scenarios when I’m weighing a big purchase. When I was debating a VR headset, I had AI help me weigh the long-term utility versus initial excitement. It helped me stay grounded and avoid impulse buys.” 

– Millennial, U.S.

“I recently used AI to upload my X-ray results and asked for an interpretation – it helped me prepare for when my physician gave me a call later that day.” 

– Boomer, U.S.

AI use is more personal and sophisticated than many expected, and people are increasingly willing to share deeper, more personal data when the value is clear. This shift challenges brands to keep pace as consumers turn to AI for meaningful, data-driven experiences that go beyond the traditional engagement models most brands are currently delivering. 

When it comes to agentic AI – the systems that take autonomous action on a consumer’s behalf – consumer appetite is real, with 54% of people already viewing these agents as helpful. Here are the top five use cases consumers want, reflecting the demand for agentic AI, particularly in the commerce space. 

Top 5 Agentic Use Cases Consumers Want

Discount monitoring and purchasing tops the list at 60%, followed by practive customer service prevention and experience coordination each sitting at 54%. Automatic needs-based purchasing follows at 53% and offer negotiation sits at 49%

“I can’t imagine using a search engine again. AI seems to anticipate what I want and need”

– Boomer, UK

“I can’t imagine using a search engine again. AI seems to anticipate what I want and need.”

– Boomer, U.K. 

Brands face a real threat. The risk of disintermediation is rising, with AI agents increasingly positioned to own more of the consumer relationship and make decisions on their behalf. The landscape continues to evolve rapidly—for example, OpenAI recently pivoted to scale back native in-app purchasing, while Google continues to invest in new agentic features (e.g., DoorDash delivery through Gemini). But through this rapid change, one thing is clear: Agentic use cases such as those above present clear potential to deliver value to consumers, and therefore likely where we can expect to see innovation continue to shift.   

As AI becomes woven into daily life, businesses must design for both humans and AI agents —integrating seamlessly within consumers’ evolving agentic ecosystems. To unlock competitive advantage, leaders also need to innovate their own AI-driven businesses and experiences. Through these evolutions, success depends on evolving operating models that actively manage and empower both human and AI agents. Winning organizations will proactively upskill talent, adapt business processes, and embed dynamic human–AI collaboration at the core. 

What This Means for Marketers and Business Leaders

Design for humans and their agents. As AI agents take a greater hold in consumers’ lives, the potential impact on direct-to-consumer engagement is enormous. With consumers continuing to rely on and delegate to AI agents, who may be getting to know them on a deep and personal level, brands need to reimagine how they will attract, engage, and win with both consumers and their agents.  

Own the agent, own the relationship. Brands also need to decide where to offer their own agents to consumers, providing a critical advantage in driving full-journey engagement and data capture. 

Prioritize AI change management and shifts in operating model. Building and/or integrating with AI agents for real consumer value requires a significant organizational shift, actively rethinking roles, capabilities, and ways of working around human/AI collaboration models. 

The imperative for brands is to deliver distinctive value that meets consumers’ aspirational use cases, or risk losing direct access to their audiences. The brands and platforms able to create genuine, scalable value for consumers — and the agents acting on their behalf — will shape the next era of growth. 

But what do businesses need to do to actually deliver that distinctive value? We explore this question in the next section by examining a key tension for consumers as this technology permeates daily life. 

A Paradox Emerges – Usage Is Growing, While Enthusiasm Declines

28%


Average increase in adoption of AI use cases along the consumer journey

30%


Fewer consumers believe GenAl will be so integrated into their lives that they’ll rely on GenAl for most decisions

Here is the tension at the heart of this research: consumers are using AI more than ever, but they’re feeling less good about where it’s all heading.  

Overall excitement about GenAI has dropped approximately 7% since our previous 2024 study. More significantly, the belief that GenAI will become so integrated into daily life that consumers will rely on it for most decisions has fallen by a striking 30%, signaling a meaningful shift in consumer psychology.   

This trend signals that GenAI has entered what Gartner calls the “trough of disillusionment,” the natural dip in enthusiasm that follows inflated expectations in any technology cycle. But with AI, there’s a specific emotional driver that makes this moment distinct: people feel anxiety over the impact that AI might have on humanity and fear the loss of the human experience.

71% of consumers are concerned about inaccurate information from AI driving decision-making; 63% of consumers are worried that over-reliance on AI could cause a loss of human skills; 61% of consumers are anxious about losing human connection

71% of consumers are concerned about inaccurate information from AI driving decision-making; 63% of consumers are worried that over-reliance on AI could cause a loss of human skills; 61% of consumers are anxious about losing human connection

“I use AI to help me track and set alerts on price shifts – but I do wonder if I’m now losing out on actually enjoying the experience of shopping. It’s also a fear of losing the ability to be spontaneous, without a screen telling me the best time to click buy. I don’t want to reach a point where I can’t make a simple decision without asking the app first.“

– Singapore, Gen-Z

A mistake would be to interpret this data as a reason to slow down AI investment. AI brings enormous benefits to consumers, as shown by the accelerated adoption we observe. But what this data does signal is the need to redirect AI investments, from delivering yet another chatbot focused on efficiency to innovation that speaks to this core tension for consumers, offering real value with both functional and emotional benefits.

The brands winning right now are doing just that, deploying AI to solve genuine pain points while elevating trust and empathy in the brand relationship through the experience delivered. 

Some favorite examples:

ASOS

ASOS recognized that online shopping can be high-anxiety and isolating, with uncertainty around fit, style, and self-expression creating real barriers. Its AI features address not just the transactional side, but the emotional experience too. Virtual Try-On lets shoppers upload a photo or choose from 20 diverse AI-generated models spanning a range of body types, sizes, and skin tones — reducing self-doubt and making the experience more inclusive. Style Match lets users upload images of friends or creators to instantly find similar looks, transforming shopping from a solitary task into something social and culture-driven. Together, these features blend utility with empathy, earning ASOS a more meaningful place in consumers’ lives and building ongoing engagement.

BANK OF AMERICA

Bank of America’s Erica is an example of how AI can address functional consumer needs while building a more trusted, empathetic brand, using a strategy Bank of America calls “High tech, high touch.” For consumers, money is a highly emotional topic often intertwined with self-worth and identity. Erica acts as an always-on, proactive financial copilot, providing insight and guidance along consumers’ key moments of truth (e.g., proactively detecting fraud, flagging spikes in monthly bills, or recognizing a milestone toward a financial goal). Under the hood, sentiment models monitor markers of frustration, allowing AI to adjust its tone and escalate to a human specialist when needed. Interactions focus not only on executing financial management tasks but providing peace of mind, which strengthens the brand resonance and relationships.

STARBUCKS

Starbucks’ Green Dot Assist found a meaningful way to use AI to augment staff rather than displace them, improving service by elevating the human warmth that defines hospitality. These AI agents work alongside baristas, providing instant access to recipes, equipment troubleshooting and operational information. That speeds service and improves accuracy, enabling staff to focus on what humans do best — delivering genuine, emotionally resonant service.

What This Means for Marketers and Business Leaders

Do not stop at utility and efficiency — generate emotionally resonant value propositions, and invest behind the experience. Look beyond delivering yet another chatbot and focus on how AI can help solve real consumer pain points. The winning formula for agentic value propositions is both functional utility and human experience.   

Think of AI as a critical layer augmenting consumers’ ecosystem (not the whole story). Brands navigating this well are treating AI as an integrated layer within an omnichannel journey. It should augment human and community interaction, not replace it.

The Next Frontier: Emotionally Intelligent, Ambient, Anticipatory AI

We asked consumers about emerging AI capabilities that do not fully exist yet, and the responses painted a clear picture of where the next wave of consumer AI is heading. 

Three connected themes came through strongest:

Emotionally Intelligent AI.

67%

of consumers want AI that guides purchase decisions based on their personal values and preferences – not just price. 

That’s slightly more appealing than purely price-driven agent decisions (60%). Among heavy AI users, 47% already envision GenAI providing emotional support and companionship “similar to a trusted friend.” People want to feel understood.

Ambient AI.

62%

of consumers want AI that quietly notices things in their environment, and provides help proactively, vs. having to constantly ask the AI questions.

That’s slightly more appealing than purely price-driven agent decisions (60%). Among heavy AI users, 47% already envision GenAI providing emotional support and companionship “similar to a trusted friend.” People want to feel understood.

Anticipatory AI.

66%

of consumers want AI that can “read between the lines” to meet their real needs, not just what they literally ask for.

The prompt-response model that defines most of today’s GenAI interactions is already feeling outdated to consumers who’ve experienced more fluid, intuitive systems, mirroring what’s happening in enterprise AI. Consumers don’t want to become prompt engineers. They want AI that already knows what they need.

“If my flight to Singapore to go see my daughter gets cancelled, I don’t just want a list of flight numbers. I need AI to help understand the stress of that moment and prioritize the flight that is going to keep me most comfortable vs. just picking the fastest or cheapest option” –Boomer, Germany “I’d love my home assistant to know when I’ve had a day of back-to-back meetings, and help handle the mental load I feel. It could help order groceries or send a quick update to my wife. Maybe it could shift my environment – news summarized on the kitchen hub – drop me into the PM headspace so I can be present with the family when I’m off the clock.” – Millennial, US Together, these signals point to an AI future that is less about answering questions and more about living alongside consumers — emotionally attuned, context-aware, and proactively useful. It's these capabilities that can both help make AI more useful to consumers and bridge the critical sentiment gap we're currently observing. What This Means for Marketers and Business Leaders Build your innovation roadmap around emotionally intelligent, ambient, anticipatory-AI. The brands that anchor their next 12 to 24 months of AI development and partnership on these three themes will be the ones that lead the market in closing the sentiment gap and driving sustained growth. Prepare for a world beyond chatbots. If your AI strategy still centers on getting consumers to interact with a chatbot or type queries into a search bar, you are designing for the previous wave. The architecture of consumer AI is shifting toward systems that observe, infer and act. Start preparing your data structures, content and consumer touchpoints for that reality now.

“If a flight to Singapore I have to go see my daughter gets cancelled, I don’t just want a list of flight numbers. I need AI to help understand the stress of that moment and prioritize the flight that is going to keep me most comfortable vs. just picking the fastest or cheapest option.”
–Boomer, Germany

“I’d love my home assistant to know when I’ve had a day of back-to-back meetings, and help handle the mental load I feel. It could help order groceries or send a quick update to my wife. Maybe it could shift my environment – news summarized on the kitchen hub – drop me into the PM headspace so I can be present with the family when I’m off the clock.” 
–Millennial, U.S.

Together, these signals point to an AI future that’s less about answering questions and more about living alongside consumers — emotionally attuned, context-aware, and proactively useful. It’s these capabilities that can both help make AI more useful to consumers and bridge the critical sentiment gap we’re currently observing.

What This Means for Marketers and Business Leaders

Build your innovation roadmap around emotionally intelligent, ambient, prompt-less AI. The brands that anchor their next 12 to 24 months of AI development and partnership on these three themes will be the ones that lead the market in closing the sentiment gap and driving sustained growth.

Prepare for a world without prompts. If your AI strategy still centers on getting consumers to interact with a chatbot or type queries into a search bar, you are designing for the previous wave. The architecture of consumer AI is shifting toward systems that observe, infer and act. Start preparing your data structures, content and consumer touchpoints for that reality now.

Wrap-Up: Top Five Things to Do Right Now

AI is a moving target. But with so much at stake, growth-focused leaders can’t afford to wait and see. We recommend prioritizing:

01

Re-architect consumer journeys for human and agent ecosystems. 

Establish your brand’s role and how it will create value within consumers’ evolving ecosystems of communities, creators, and agents. Map every touchpoint and ask: how does this work when the “consumer” is an AI agent acting on someone’s behalf? Where does humanity need to be elevated?

03

Innovate AI-enabled businesses, offers and experiences that resolve consumers’ core tensions. 

Businesses that own the agents will have a structural advantage in maintaining consumer relationships, driving full-journey engagement, and capturing data. Decide where those opportunities exist for you and innovate value propositions that deliver technical utility and emotional connection.

05

Drive organizational change toward AI-human collaboration. 

New capabilities, roles, ways of working and culture will be required to manage emotionally intelligent agentic ecosystems at the speed and scale the market demands. Engaging the best talent in an increasingly automated environment requires a new approach. Driving organizational change should happen as soon as possible, while your strategy is being set. 

02

Operationalize your brand to be discoverable and resonant with AI agents and the human trust signals they rely on.

Audit your content, data, and trust signals for LLM performance. Is your content answer-driven? Are you in the conversation with communities and creators? Evolve your owned assets and influence the external signals LLMs rely on. 

04

Move from periodic to always-on consumer emotional intelligence. 

AI agents act on real-time signals and are getting to know your consumers on the deepest level  — your brand should too. Make consumer intelligence a continuous input to cross-functional decision-making and blend primary research with AI-enabled tools to create a new way of doing business. 

See Our AI Solutions

Wrap-Up: Top Five Things to Do Right Now

AI is a moving target. But with so much at stake, growth-focused leaders can’t afford to wait and see. We recommend prioritizing:

01

Re-architect consumer journeys for human and agent ecosystems. Establish your brand’s role and how it will create value within consumers’ evolving ecosystems of communities, creators, and agents. Map every touchpoint and ask: how does this work when the “consumer” is an AI agent acting on someone’s behalf? Where does humanity need to be elevated?

02

Operationalize your brand to be discoverable and resonant with AI agents and the human trust signals they rely on. Audit your content, data, and trust signals for LLM performance. Is your content answer-driven? Are you in the conversation with communities and creators? Evolve your owned assets and influence the external signals LLMs rely on. 

03

Innovate AI-enabled businesses, offers and experiences that resolve consumers’ core tensions. Businesses that own the agents will have a structural advantage in maintaining consumer relationships, driving full-journey engagement, and capturing data. Decide where those opportunities exist for you and innovate value propositions that deliver technical utility and emotional connection.

04

Move from periodic to always-on consumer emotional intelligence. AI agents act on real-time signals and are getting to know your consumers on the deepest level  — your brand should too. Make consumer intelligence a continuous input to cross-functional decision-making and blend primary research with AI-enabled tools to create a new way of doing business. 

05

Drive organizational change toward AI-human collaboration. New capabilities, roles, ways of working and culture will be required to manage emotionally intelligent agentic ecosystems at the speed and scale the market demands. Engaging the best talent in an increasingly automated environment requires a new approach. Driving organizational change should happen as soon as possible, while your strategy is being set. 

The Bottom Line

AI agents will soon know your consumers on a deep and personal level, embedded into daily life as advisors and decision-makers. A central question for every growth leader right now is how to win with both consumers and the agents acting on their behalf.

The data is clear: consumers are ready. They are using AI in ways we didn’t anticipate, and they are hungry for AI that goes further. But they are also anxious. They don’t want to lose the human connection that enriches their experiences and makes their relationships meaningful.

The brands that close that gap—evolving their organizations to deploy AI as a powerful enabler of experiences that are both highly useful and emotionally resonant—will be the ones that define the next era of consumer relationships.

Ready to understand what this means specifically for your business? Prophet’s team of growth strategy, consumer experience, and AI experts can help you translate these insights into a clear path forward and action. 

Contact us to start the conversation, or explore our AI and growth solutions to learn more.
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Authors

Chan Suh

Chan Suh
Senior Partner, Chief Digital Officer

Chiaki Nishino
Senior Partner, President

Lauren Papes
Associate Partner

Alan Worley
Principal, Insights & Analytics

Uyen Dang
Manager, Insights & Analytics

About the Research

Online Quantitative Survey

Participants N=2015 people aged 18 who used at least one AI tool in the past 6 months for personal/consumer reasons 

Fieldwork dates: Jan 2026 – Feb 2026

Markets: China, Germany, Singapore, United States, United Kingdom 

Our study included a representative sample of the general population for each country, across a wide range of AI usage and familiarity. 

Survey samples are nationally representative in each country.   

The focus of the research was unpacking consumer attitudes, behaviors, and future aspirations for generative and agentic AI.  

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