Chatbots. The useful scourge. Sophisticated, sure. Also, if you're like me, they have become increasingly integrated into your normal ordinary everyday. (Also, if you are not like me, no reason to get bent and twisted about it.)

Here's the thing: they are beginning to emerge as a whacky new frontier for brand influence.

I know, I know..more click bait-y crap and, say it with me — “slop”.

After your aggrevation settles, can you imagine how these contrivances could become useful to you? I wish I didn't have to live in a world where the hose for the shower thingie popped off, but if I do then having a robot study the specific problem with the specific make and model thingie and explain to me how to fix it before I set myself up for a plumber call, well..bummer for the plumber sadly, but now the household is happy.

Now these AI-driven conversational agents are not just tools for customer service; they are becoming personalized brand ambassadors that can engage with consumers in real-time, providing tailored recommendations, support, and even entertainment. Brands that leverage chatbots effectively can create deeper connections with their audience, enhance customer loyalty, and drive sales in ways that traditional marketing channels cannot match.

And inevitably — the ads. Which is a whole n'other can of worms. But the point is, if you are a brand, you need to be thinking about how to optimize for this new festival tent in which your people can drop into your world.

The point of doing this Signal to Strategy exercises and sets is to get your organization thinking about how an emerging signal can be useful for strategy assessments, reviews, reflections – and to wonder about the implicadtions for your business.

I do this kind of work with organizations probably very much like yours, so if you want to talk about how to make sense of this new frontier and how to optimize for it, let's talk. Let's work together →

Signal — Chatbots are emerging as key influencers in digital marketing, prompting brands to prioritize answer engine optimization.

Possible/Plausible/Probable/Preferrable Artifacts From The Signal's Near Future
Farmers Market Association – a local food network promoting farm-to-table practices; opportunity: use AI to enhance local food sourcing transparency
Teresa & Tito's Tamale Stand – a beloved local vendor at the farmers market; opportunity: an agentic chatbot that tells stories about the origins of their business, how they got started, takes orders, helps manage their workflow back at the commercial kitchen.
Giganto – a global e-commerce conglomerate reshaping digital commerce; advantage: direct line to consumers via AI chatbots, challenge: maintaining control over brand messaging as inevitably it goes awry because brand managers do not have the expertise to train the agentic bots which are like young puppies that are not quite housetrained; a cadre of brand bot trainers emerge; some are better than others.
Arts & Culture Organization – a community-focused museum/community nonprofit that is trying to attract new kinds of audiences; opportunity: engage audiences with an augmentation of the typical calendar or event program through AI-curated events, constraint: balancing traditional and digital outreach. Like going to see Dudamel the other evening and wanting to wander into the story of this rare Beethoven symphonic Missa Solemnis - happy to read the program, but also wondering and wandering into a world where Walt Disney Concert Hall is in some near future and creates an tiny portal that helps me sense-into the work in other ways than stopping at the end of a program essay.

The Pentagon has threatened to sever its relationship with Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence company, over a dispute about implementing safety safeguards in AI systems. According to Axios, the disagreement centers on how to ensure AI technologies meet strict security requirements. The standoff highlights growing tensions between tech firms and government agencies as AI systems become more integrated into national defense. If unresolved, the Pentagon could block Anthropic from key contracts, impacting the company's involvement in future defense projects.

I remember visiting the IFTF back when I was a professor at USC and marveling at their “decadal” books — the future 10+ years out. They were printed and had this kind of gravitas in their materiality.

I also remember feeling — 10 years seems like a long time..I wanted to do futuring for or to the near term. Hence — Near Future Laboratory.

Now, whether you know/like it or not, in today's chaotic kinetic world, the traditional concept of foresight is clearly being challenged. With volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity becoming the norm, classic foresight assumptions no longer hold true.

The stability, rationality, and continuity once expected have dissolved, leaving us in a state of ‘liquid modernity.’ As trust declines and competing realities emerge, foresight risks becoming nothing more than narrative crafting. This shift prompts a critical question: is foresight still possible, or has it become obsolete in a world of chaotic change?

Neuma gives AI a 'breath', turning software into something alive. It's the animating force of our digital future.