Beyond automation: Rethinking consumer engagement for an agentic world

As brands adopt agentic technologies, much of the industry’s focus remains on executing the same processes faster and with fewer manual steps.

However, the true opportunity lies in rethinking the work itself to remove long-standing constraints in media planning and activation. This shift from simple automation to adaptive, intelligent advertising, was the central theme at a recent MARKETING-INTERACTIVE roundtable hosted in partnership with Locala.

Marketers from the automotive, FMCG, retail, healthcare, hospitality, and finance sectors gathered in Singapore to dissect the complexities of the modern media landscape and explore how agents can unlock greater granularity and responsiveness.

The data and planning gap

The first major hurdle identified was data fragmentation and the struggle to achieve a unified view of the consumer across physical and digital touchpoints. While many brands possess vast amounts of data, tying offline purchases to online exposures remains a significant challenge.

Christophe Collet, chief executive officer of Locala, pointed out the industry must move away from the “last click attribution” model, which often results in brands paying to repeatedly expose their own existing customers rather than intelligently capturing new market share.

Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, Collet emphasised the need to understand local consumer behaviour to optimise media spend effectively. This sentiment resonated across the room, where multiple attendees noted that applying a uniform strategy across diverse markets leads to significant media waste.

Vincent Pang, managing director for APAC at Locala, highlighted this complexity, explaining that a brand’s business potential and consumer preferences can shift drastically from one neighbourhood to the next.

For example, understanding whether a consumer visits a specific pharmacy branch in one district over another requires hyperlocalised intelligence. By assessing these store dynamics and the true business potential of each area, Locala helps brands determine exactly where to prioritise their media investment and how to adapt their activation strategies for the local context.

Breaking the silos of traditional workflows

With these granular insights available, the conversation shifted to how internal structures and external partnerships must adapt to act on them.

The value of agentic tools extends far beyond merely saving time; they empower marketers to translate local intelligence into concrete strategic choices and seamlessly carry those decisions through to activation. Consequently, the traditional media workflow, often characterised by rigid planning models and manual reporting, is ripe for disruption.

While acknowledging the indispensable role of media agencies, several marketing leaders expressed a desire for a shift in the current commercial model. The consensus was that AI and agentic tools should not simply be used to complete tactical tasks faster, but to elevate human intelligence and strategic thinking.

As one participant noted, if agencies and brands can automate workflows and connect cross-channel insights more seamlessly, it will fundamentally change the advertising ecosystem.

Janine Diaz, global media activation lead for APAC at Volvo Cars, shared how she uses AI agents to evaluate hundreds of distinct campaigns across six markets. By training a co-pilot to review media plans against the brand’s specific guardrails, she effectively removes monotonous and repeatable tasks from the process.

“We only know what we know, and that’s the beauty of AI,” Diaz said. She added that AI helps her team understand the trade-offs of different media decisions before they are executed.

Agile content and adaptive activation

To truly leverage agentic tools, brands are also rethinking their content pipelines. Inez Fun, global digital director at Unilever, explained how its Beauty & Wellbeing division evolved its content production operations through Beauty AI Studio to help the organisation operate more effectively in a social-first marketing landscape.

By deploying this Gen AI bespoke model, Unilever Beauty & Wellbeing now creates seven times more content, and four times faster, enabling brands to operate at the frequency, relevance, and responsiveness required for social-first marketing.

However, Fun noted that achieving these outcomes requires an intentional operating model design and change management to fully embed AI into ways of working.

Similarly, FairPrice is utilising generative AI to drive highly personalised omnichannel engagement. Nghi Le, head of customer growth at FairPrice, shared how the retailer uses AI to tailor push notifications and dynamic QR code vouchers based on individual preferences and basket sizes, delivering an improved shopping experience that helps customers maximise savings across their everyday purchases.

Despite these technological leaps, the human element remains irreplaceable. Adora Chou, chief marketing officer at Guzman y Gomez, reminded the room that AI cannot manufacture cultural nuance, noting that a successful brand campaign in Australia might carry an entirely different and unintended meaning when launched in Singapore.

As the discussion concluded, the overarching takeaway was that agentic tools bring clarity to complexity by planning around each brand’s unique business context.

Grant Gudgel, chief marketing officer of Locala, brought the discussion’s threads together – bridging Collet’s point on acquiring new market share with Pang’s emphasis on neighbourhood-level differences.

The true value of these platforms, Gudgel summarised, lies in their adaptability. By turning local intelligence into responsive media strategies, brands are able to adapt to local opportunities and changing conditions. Each campaign builds on the learnings of previous ones, continuously refining media strategies to better address each brand’s specific business objectives and drive growth.

This roundtable and article were made possible by our partner Locala. Locala is the operating layer for Adaptive Advertising, enabling brands to continuously adapt their national strategy to the unique business realities and consumer behaviours of every market. Powered by AI agents, Locala turns market insights into smarter media decisions to plan, activate, and measure high-performing omnichannel campaigns.

Since its inception in 2011, Locala has worked with leading brands across more than 50 countries. With over 200 employees worldwide, Locala has offices in the United States, France, Belgium, the UK, Singapore, Malaysia, Italy, Canada, and Dubai. Founded in France, the birthplace of GDPR, Locala has built its platform and services with privacy at the core, helping brands reach consumers effectively while protecting their essential right to privacy.

To learn more about how Locala can help you increase engagement with your customers, go to asklocala.com.

To request for a demo, click here: https://asklocala.com/en/request-a-demo/