Leaders from The Estée Lauder Companies, Nestlé, Atlassian, Anthropic, Virgin Australia, Standard Chartered Bank, Unilever and more brands shared how AI is changing the way customers make decisions, and the way marketing teams work in the era of AI
LONDON, Nov. 11, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Profound, the AI marketing platform used by 16% of the Fortune 500, has completed its first Zero Click World Tour, which convened nearly 2,000 marketing leaders across three cities in eight days. At Magazine London, Jones Bay Wharf in Sydney, and Raffles Singapore, leaders from global brands across retail, financial services, travel, consumer goods and technology explored how AI is changing their customers, their teams and how they measure success.
Global Brands Share How AI Is Transforming Their Marketing
Zero Click London featured speakers from The Estée Lauder Companies, Nestlé, De Beers Group, Bank of Ireland, Barclays, LinkedIn, Anthropic, Accenture Song, On, The AA and Greenpark. Zero Click Sydney’s line-up included Atlassian, Virgin Australia, Reddit, Rippling, Princess Polly, ahm Health Insurance and TBWA. Zero Click Singapore featured Standard Chartered Bank, Unilever, L’Oréal, DHL Express, Singtel and iQuanti.
Across the tour, speakers described AI moving from scattered pilots to programmes owned at leadership and board level, with the work now reaching product, customer service, PR and risk teams, in addition to marketing.
AI Agents Become a New Customer for Every Brand
At each event, James Cadwallader, Co-Founder and CEO of Profound, argued that AI agents are becoming a new category of audience for brands, and that marketers will use AI every day to make their work more effective. He pointed to ChatGPT passing 1.2 billion weekly active users, and Gartner's prediction that one in five online purchases will be made by an agent by 2030. He also said that context, not volume, is what separates good AI-assisted marketing from poor output.
"In three cities, we heard the same thing from very different brands. AI is now part of how customers decide what to buy, and marketing leaders are rebuilding their teams, their content and their measurement around it. What stood out was how quickly this has moved from experiments to the boardroom," said Cadwallader.
New Research on How People and Agents Shop
Profound's research team presented new findings at each event, based on thousands of real commercial AI conversations and the browsing journeys that followed. Commercial conversations on ChatGPT grew 119% between June 2025 and June 2026, compared with 63% for informational queries. Most shoppers (60%) name no brand when they start, and journeys that begin with AI reach a purchase in a median of 5.2 days. The team also showed how personal agents such as Meta's Muse narrow product choices, and sometimes brands, before they start searching.
"One business made money because their product appealed more to an agent than another business," said Josh Blyskal, Head of Insights at Profound. "Every single brand, product, service is going to be subject to this level of agentic decision-making. The mandate is to make yourself legible to the agent. The agents are here, and they are transacting on behalf of customers."
Championing the Marketing Engineer
As AI takes on more of the repetitive work in marketing, Profound championed the Marketing Engineer at every stop. The role lets experienced marketers build the workflows and AI agents that handle that work, so teams can spend more time on judgement and creativity. More than 200 people applied for Cohort Zero, a Marketing Engineer training held in London the day before Zero Click London, and more than 100 took part.
"A Marketing Engineer is part builder and part artist," said Nick Lafferty, Founding Marketing Engineer at Profound. "The artist understands the brand, the audience, the product. The builder connects the right data and tools, designs the workflow around the problem, and decides when a human needs to make a decision. Marketing Engineers are marketers first."
Dylan Babbs, Co-Founder and CTO of Profound, conducted a live product demo and announced AI Marketer in Microsoft Teams, Slack and email, alongside Profound Slides, Creative Studio and Profound Ads.
Singapore Becomes Profound's Asia Pacific Headquarters
Zero Click Sydney and Zero Click Singapore were Profound's first events in Asia Pacific. Following the Singapore event, Profound established Singapore as its Asia Pacific headquarters. The company will open an office in Singapore's Central Business District in Q4 2026 and plans to hire for more than 15 roles over the next 12 months, including a General Manager for Asia Pacific.
The move reflects growing demand from brands across the region. New Profound analysis of 1.8 million anonymised ChatGPT and Gemini conversations from users in Singapore found that the share of conversations about researching, comparing or buying products and services grew 23% between January and September 2026.
Sessions from the tour are available on demand at Zero Click Unlocked.
About Profound
Profound is an AI marketing platform where teams research, plan, create content, and measure results with AI agents. Its AI search analytics show how brands appear in Answer Engines. Learn more at tryprofound.com.
Media Contact
Layla Baradaran
Source: GlobeNewswire
Leave a comment
Comments are closed on this post.