Who Owns Trust When Machines Choose

The customer isn’t just human anymore. Agents are already learning our preferences, comparing offers, and making choices that used to hinge on emotion and brand memory. We sat down with Ben Wiener, global head at Cognizant Moment, to unpack how this rewires the entire go-to-market stack—from data foundations to creative expression—and why marketing plus IT has effectively become the business. We dig into the real preparation work: consolidating and governing data so AI can act responsibly and effectively. Ben breaks down how organizations can fund the future by letting AI handle code cleanup, content migration, and workflow orchestration, then reinvest those savings into agent-ready experiences. We explore the move from omnichannel to omnibuyer, where humans, agentic buyers, and AI-assisted shoppers take nonlinear paths and demand different signals of value. That triggers hard questions about personalization, privacy, and compliance, especially in finance and healthcare, where trust is the currency. What happens to preference when machines choose? We examine whether platforms, brands, or consumers will own the agent; how pay-for-preference could influence ranking; and why transparency standards will make or break adoption. Ben makes the case for brand-consistent AI personas that carry tone, empathy, and guardrails into machine-mediated interactions—like a great salesperson who’s consistent yet adaptive. Creativity doesn’t disappear; it scales. Relevance, speed, and ethics become the competitive layers that separate resilient brands from those left behind by algorithmic selection. If you care about data strategy, customer experience, AI governance, and the future of brand loyalty, this conversation will sharpen your roadmap. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs to hear it, and leave a review with your take: who should own the consumer agent—platforms, brands, or users?