Sad reality: A small set of CPG / DTC brands will use this rise in Instinct / Muse to take advantage of price-insensitive consumers. When you're selling to a real person, you can't just double your price overnight. You need better branding, a ton of ad spend, premium photography, an expensive website, etc... All of the things that signal "premium" to a real person. It's a whole effort Selling to agents is completely different. The entire concept of brand and performance marketing as a lever to raise price is non-existent. And when the consumer is price-insensitive and **specifically instructing the agent to look for premium products**, we've seen evidence that **Price-point itself** is used as evidence to justify the product being premium. If your brand relies on holiday / gift shopping surges, you might be able to double your prices overnight and actually get an **increased rate of recommendation** from AI personal assistants. (assuming your on-site content is set up right, your offsite mentions describe you in the right way, and you have a small but positive set of reviews, etc.) Pricing strategy as a whole for DTC brands I think will need to get re-solved in the next 5-10 years.

saddest stat i've ever read only 5% of the time left after they turn 18 think about it. 18 is right when they're starting to learn agentic workflows and AI-powered optimizations if you stop hanging out with them then, you're missing out on a ton of learnings smh