Post–Memorial Day Reset: 4 Ways Brands Can Grow in the Age of AI Agents
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Happy Memorial Day Weekend!
Ok so, we’re back? The thing is, May has felt…quiet.
Maybe it’s the exhaustion of a year that has already brought so much change. AI agents for creativity, productivity, and revenue. Learning how to work alongside tools like Claude. Relearning what it actually means to build a brand in 2026 when every platform, playbook, and customer expectation seems to shift overnight.
The reality is: we’re all dealing with attention overload - not just consumers, but operators, founders, and marketers too.
And when everything is changing, noise becomes the default.
So for the long weekend, let’s simplify.
Grab a coffee, settle into your favorite chair (or yacht, if that’s your speed), and consider this some lighter reading on what winning brands are actually doing to navigate overwhelming change - while adapting in ways that still feel authentic to who they are. ☕️
1. Pick One KPI That Matters for the Next 90 Days
A lot of the time, we think we need to boil the ocean.
AI has thousands of use cases, but not all of them matter or move the business forward. That’s the trap.
Every tech company will pitch you a hundred things to automate, optimize, and experiment with. Before you know it, your team is overwhelmed, scattered, and exhausted - with lots of activity but little progress.
The reality? AI should reduce workload, not create more of it.
The best place to start: pick one KPI the whole team rallies around.
For some brands, that’s first-time customer acquisition. If that’s the goal, everything ladders up to it. Retention improving? Great. Repeat purchases increasing? Amazing. But you’re not adding tools, building agents, or chasing initiatives that distract from the outcome.
AI works best when it amplifies focus - not fragmentation.
2. Understand Use Cases: Where AI Agents Actually Create Leverage for Brands
One of my favorite founder posts recently came from Aliett Buttelman, founder of Fazit - the beauty brand that quietly exploded in popularity.
She shared how AI has changed how she works:
“I downloaded Whisper and started dictating instead of typing. I talk faster than I think, and think faster than I type.”
Most founders are still thinking about AI as a writing assistant. That’s maybe 5% of the opportunity.
Instead: Treat AI like a department.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Customer Experience
Have AI draft responses using historical CX tickets, FAQs, and tone guidelines. Team reviews it and suddenly response times shrink and quality becomes more consistent.
VP Retail
Feed AI your:
Brand book
Decks
Retail guidelines
Past partnership materials
What used to take half a day becomes a ten-minute review.
VP Sales / Wholesale
No VP of Sales yet? Prompt to analyze weekly sales performance:
What’s moving
What’s stalling
Which retailers need follow-up
Which SKUs deserve more attention
SEO/GEO
Brands are beginning to optimize for discovery inside tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity - not just search engines.
The question becomes: How does my brand become recommendable to machines?
Growth: CRO & Retention
The highest-leverage moments for revenue generation in DTC happen across the customer journey.
AI agents can now understand real-time customer intent - identifying hesitation points, predicting when a visitor is most likely to convert, and autonomously driving first-time purchases across Shopify and CRM.
The real advantage comes from a connected system of agents that follows customers beyond checkout: turning first purchases into repeat purchases, replenishment, cross-sells, and subscriptions to drive greater profitability.
Site Visitor → Intent Signals → Hesitation → Abandonment → First Purchase → Repeat Purchase Intent → Replenishment / Cross-Sell → Subscription
🔌 If your focus is on "Growth: CRO & Retention”, you can set up off-the shelf agents in 10-mins. Book a call to learn more.
3. Three Off-the-Shelf AI Agents Your Team Can Use This Week
🔌 Hundreds of the world’s emerging to leading brands across beauty, food & beverage, home & decor, health & wellness, and fashion, are using 3 AI agents that have generated millions in new revenue after a 15-mins setup. Book a call to learn more.
Agent that acquires more first-time customers: Map the highest-leverage entry points across your site and deploy ambient agents that understand visitor intent in real time - personalizing experiences, identifying hesitation points, and converting more first-time customers when purchase intent is highest.
Agent that increases repeat purchases: Identify repeat purchase intent before it happens by understanding browsing behavior, historical purchasing patterns, and timing signals - autonomously driving replenishment, cross-sells, win-backs, and higher customer lifetime value.
Agent that audits your CRM channel: Continuously audit CRM flows to identify missed revenue opportunities, broken logic, weak segmentation, and timing gaps - then recommend or autonomously optimize replenishment, subscriptions, win-backs, and lifecycle messaging based on real customer behavior, not static automation.
4. What Success Actually Looks Like: Measuring ROI Fast
Here’s a tighter, sharper version with stronger flow and less repetition:
Just because you’ve adopted AI - built workflows, launched projects, or started co-working with tools like Claude - doesn’t mean you’re closer to achieving your company’s goals.
The lifeblood of any business is still the same: KPIs, funnel performance, and revenue.
Most AI has no direct revenue impact. It may save time, lower costs, or create beautiful assets you’re excited about. But what is the actual outcome? What changed in the business? Do you know?
The better question is:
What is the one KPI the team is rallying around - and how can AI help us move it?
If done well, AI shouldn’t just create efficiency. It should improve outcomes, increase ROI on time, and drive measurable impact on the bottom line.
Curated Intelligence
Anthropic’s Path From $1B to $19B ARR - Lenny’s Newsletter Read More
Key Takeaways from The Lead Summit 2026 - ClickZ Read More
Inside the 2026 WWD Beauty CEO Summit - WWD Beauty Read More
Why Shein’s Everlane Acquisition Matters - Business of Fashion Read More
Oura Files for IPO: What It Signals - Business of Fashion Read More
Grounded Insights - Brand Interviews With Your Favorite Founders
From Zero to $12M Raised: How Babba Rivera Built a Category-Defining Brand Read More
Jake Karls (Mid-Day Squares): How a Founder Built a Retail Breakout Brand Read More
🔌 Lean team, real revenue. Ground AI runs as an autonomous revenue system inside your CRM and tech stack - driving repeat purchases, capturing missed demand, and contributing meaningful topline revenue. 15-minute setup. No engineering lift. Book a demo.