Reimagining Brand Experience In the Age of Intelligent Collaboration
By David Kessler, Founder and CEO, Starfish
For over three decades in the branding industry, and twenty-three years leading Starfish, I’ve seen many waves of change: Digital transformation. Social storytelling. The data revolution. The rise of the “in-house” agency.
But AI blows all of that out of the water; it’s catalyzing the most profound organizational shift since the Industrial Revolution. In a recent article, McKinsey stated, “We’re entering the agentic era, one in which humans and AI agents collaborate side-by-side to create value, shaping a new paradigm of work and creativity.”
Right now, agencies and organizations are reimagining how human creativity, empathy, and intuition, the very core of branding, coexist with machine intelligence to build something richer, faster, and more emotionally resonant. At Starfish, our belief has always been that brand experience is the sum total of what people think, feel, and instinctively believe about you, in their heads, hearts, and guts.
- The Head engages logic and clarity — it answers what a brand stands for
- The Heart engages emotion and empathy — it answers why it matters
- The Gut engages instinct and belief — it answers how it feels to trust it
That doesn’t change in the age of AI. But the systems that shape those experiences do.
Emotion Remains the North Star
In our prior white paper, “Protecting Your Brand’s Soul in the Age of AI,” we argue that AI can simulate tone and expression, but it cannot feel human emotions.
Because of that, feelings like empathy, intuition, and the lived human experience remain our creative domain. It’s the very thing that gives brands their soul, and it’s the defining factor that separates meaning from noise.
While AI can accelerate the head and assist the heart, only human creativity can bring them together in a way that moves the gut; that visceral, emotional place where brand trust truly lives.
That’s where we will lead, not by competing with intelligence, but by integrating it around the emotional center of brand experience.
Meet the New Creative Partner
McKinsey describes the agentic organization as one that “Unites humans and AI agents into dynamic, outcome-driven networks that replace hierarchical silos with fluid, intelligent collaboration.”
In this scenario, our clients’ businesses will evolve into a hybrid human–agent ecosystem that embeds intelligence at every operational layer: Marketing. Customer service. Product innovation and more.
For a service-based agency like Starfish, that shift redefines the concept of partnership. We’re no longer hired to “make things.” We’re hired to design systems of differentiation, to help clients align their brand’s emotional DNA with their intelligent operations, ensuring that as they scale, they don’t lose authenticity, humanity, or soul.
We’ll work alongside them, helping to architect the integration between intelligence and emotion, data and meaning, automation, and most importantly, the experience they feel when connecting with the brand.
Branding & Creative Agency 2.0
The next era of branding will be defined by teaming and how we orchestrate the connection between human intention and machine capability. Agentic AI doesn’t just expand what we can do; it transforms how we think, collaborate, and create value.
For agencies, this means evolving from linear processes to living systems that are adaptive, interconnected, and continuously learning. The agentic agency won’t just deliver campaigns or guidelines; it will design and manage intelligent brand ecosystems that evolve in real time. Thereby ensuring that meaning and humanity remain constant even as intelligence scales exponentially.
At Starfish, this is our path forward. We’re building a new model that integrates AI Agents across every workstream. This model will surround our creativity, amplify our research and insights, accelerate our imagination, and operationalize empathy at scale.
For sure, we’re not alone in feeling that the future will certainly be interesting.
Written By: David Kessler
Starfish is a branding and creative communications agency that ignites powerful customer connections through the discipline of brand experience.
David Kessler
Starfish CEO | Global Marketing Executive | Brand Strategist
