Brand Equity is getting harder to hold.
Deloitte's new paper on agentic commerce for consumer products is worth the fifteen minutes, mostly because it concedes more than its conclusion admits.
The mechanics are laid out clearly. AI agents treat products without a clear, verifiable advantage as interchangeable, even in categories that have historically supported a premium. Retailer-owned agents may rank products on margin and own-label economics, on a shelf suppliers largely cannot see. The damage shows up in mix and realised price before it reaches revenue, so most brands will find out late.
Deloitte frames this primarily as a readiness problem, addressed through better product data, APIs and ecosystem partnerships. My read is that readiness gets a brand onto the agent's shortlist, while whoever owns the replenishment trigger controls the default. Most commodity brands don't own that trigger; their retailers and platforms do. US store-brand sales grew 3.3% in 2025 against 1.2% for national brands (PLMA/Circana), close to three times the rate.
The paper also recommends that brands launch subscription and replenishment pilots. That advice deserves more scrutiny than it gets, because a subscription run on someone else's platform trains consumers to delegate choice and hands the default to whoever owns the system.
Follow that logic far enough, and it ends somewhere uncomfortable for everyone who builds brands for a living. Over the next few weeks I'll publish where I think it goes, starting from the question this paper leaves open: what happens to a brand when the consumer still prefers it, but no longer makes the purchase decision?
Cowan & Associates is a Dublin-based advisory firm that builds commercial decision systems, diagnostics, and intelligence for FMCG and Retail brands. It works with CEOs, founders, boards, and PE-backed leadership teams through commissioned Brand Diagnostics, Brand Clarity™ workshops, and retained Advisory mandates, drawing on 35+ years' operating experience across 900+ consumer brands.
Strategic Briefings is the firm’s published intelligence. Each briefing makes a dated call that can be proved right or wrong with public evidence, and we grade every call publicly on its stated return date, including the ones that go against us. We do this to demonstrate our pattern recognition and judgment for our clients.
The firm is led by managing partner Michael Cowan. For brand diagnostics, workshops, and advisory enquiries, email: enquiries@cowan-associates.com
