Head, heart & hands: How CMOs should prepare for the AI-reliant consumer

Jim Lecinski is a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and author of “The AI Marketing Canvas” (Stanford Press, 2026), in which this concept first appeared. The opinions expressed are his own and may not reflect those of Google.

Marketing leaders have spent much of the past year thinking about how AI changes their work. How should teams use AI? Which use cases matter most? What about workflows? They all matter. But frontier CMOs now also need to consider how AI is changing the customer.

A durable pattern in that change is starting to emerge. Consumers use AI to think things through, feel reassured, and get things done, or as I think of it, for help with head, heart, and hands. They’ve learned that AI can be fast, patient, plainspoken, available at any hour, willing to explain the same thing five different ways, able to sound empathetic and understanding, and increasingly able to move from advice toward action. In short, consumers are learning what truly intelligent help feels like, and they’ve begun to rely on it.

That shift shows in the data. Generative AI reached 53% population-level adoption in three years, far faster than the personal computer or the internet, according to the Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) 2026 AI Index. The report also says that the annual value of generative AI tools to U.S. consumers has reached $172 billion, with median value per user tripling between 2025 and 2026.

For marketers, the question is where customers expect this new kind of intelligent help. How can we meet them as they use AI with their heads, their hearts, and their hands?

Head: AI helps consumers think through complex buying decisions

The first pattern is cognitive. Consumers are using AI to help them figure out hard things. They ask AI to explain what they don’t understand, summarize complexity, compare options, walk through trade-offs, translate product jargon into plain language, pressure-test choices, and advise them before they act.

This “head” behavior grows where decision risk and mental load are high: in confusing or emotionally loaded choices, time-consuming research, jargon-heavy categories, and purchase journeys where the consumer doesn’t feel confident. Head behavior often happens in areas like healthcare, travel, technology, automotive, insurance, education, home improvement, beauty, wellness, financial services, and many B2B decisions. In each case, the customer may ask an AI assistant to explain the category, compare alternatives, simplify the decision, or suggest the questions to ask next.

Consider a consumer shopping for a new electric vehicle. She can ask AI to compare three models on range, charging time, incentives, total cost of ownership, safety ratings, and fit with her daily driving habits. In minutes, AI can explain unfamiliar terms, surface trade-offs, and turn a confusing field of options into a manageable short list. AI’s assistance here can shrink the time from initial research to purchase readiness.

For marketing leaders, the implication is clear. Identify where customers are mentally overloaded, then make sure your content, data, claims, product information, pricing, availability, and proof points are current, clear, and easy for both consumers and AI systems to understand, compare, and evaluate. When AI helps customers reach a decision faster, brands should also be prepared to remove friction from the final steps toward purchase.

Heart: AI helps consumers feel better about buying decisions

The second pattern is emotional. Consumers are using AI for reassurance, support, tone, continuity, and the feeling of being heard. Stanford HAI’s 2026 AI Index points to this emerging emotional utility. Among users of AI companions, 11.9% cited always-available support as a primary benefit, while 9.9% cited having a safe space for emotional expression. Increasingly, consumers are discovering that AI responses can sound patient, responsive, even understanding. AI can help them rehearse a difficult conversation with a salesperson or customer service agent, make a stressful situation feel more manageable, or prepare them to ask sharper questions that make them feel more confident as buyers.

Consider a parent buying life insurance for the first time. The decision can involve unfamiliar language, difficult or even uncomfortable personal questions about family and financial security, and a conversation with a human insurance sales agent that could feel intimidating. AI can help explain the terminology, rehearse the questions to ask, identify areas of uncertainty, and help the customer enter that conversation feeling more prepared, relaxed, and in control.

For CMOs, the opportunity is to close that vulnerability gap. Brands should identify the moments when customers feel uncertain, exposed, or overwhelmed and design those experiences around clear explanations, reassuring tone, transparent next steps, continuity across interactions, and easy access to a human when the customer wants one.

That raises the standard for customer experience. In high-stakes or stressful buying moments, consumers will judge the brand experience by whether they feel respected, reassured, and appropriately supported. CMOs should ask where customers need reassurance as much as information, what tone the brand should use in those moments, what AI should remember to be helpful, and when the experience should hand off to a human because the stakes feel too high.

Hands: AI helps consumers get things done

The third pattern is practical. Consumers use AI as an extra set of hands. They ask AI to do things for them: build shopping lists, compare travel options, find deals, draft messages, organize tasks, plan dinner from the ingredients on hand, and handle ordinary work from daily life.

Consider a traveler planning a family vacation. AI can already compare destinations, flights, hotels, reviews, prices, cancellation policies, and loyalty benefits against the family’s budget and preferences. It can narrow hundreds of options to a short list and recommend an itinerary. Increasingly, the next step will be for AI to act on that recommendation by making reservations or completing transactions with the consumer’s approval.

This is the path toward agentic commerce: AI that helps search, compare, short list, select, and eventually transact. Stanford HAI indicates that AI agents’ performance has improved sharply on real computer-task benchmarks, even as reliability remains uneven. More and more, the consumer request to AI is shifting from “tell me what to do” to “help me get it done” and “do this for me.”

For marketing leaders, that means preparing the brand for more assistant-led customer journeys. Product data, pricing, availability, reviews, policies, and transaction paths need to be structured, current, credible, and easy for intelligent systems to understand and act on. CMOs should ask which tasks customers want AI to handle, where they still want direct control, and whether the brand is ready for a customer who may arrive through an AI assistant rather than a traditional search or website journey.

The new consumer expectation: Intelligent help

Across head, heart, and hands, the larger pattern is the same. Consumers are relying on AI to reduce mental effort, manage uncertainty, feel supported, and get things done. That creates a new customer experience standard.

For CMOs, the action agenda is clear.

• Head: Map the AI-before-brand moments. Where are customers already using AI to explain the category, compare options, evaluate claims, read reviews, draft questions, or narrow their choices before they reach your website, app, store, sales team, or service channel?
• Heart: Redesign the high-friction moments. Where are customers confused, anxious, overloaded, or simply trying to complete a task? Those are the moments in which brands need to provide the right mix of clarity, reassurance, transparency, and human hand off.
• Hands: Prepare for more assistant-led journeys. Make sure your content, claims, product data, policies, reviews, availability, pricing, and proof points are structured, current, credible, and easy for both people and intelligent systems to understand, evaluate, and act on.

Your team is already thinking about how AI can make marketing more productive. The next leadership challenge is to ask how AI is changing what customers expect from your brand. CMOs who start to answer that question now will be better prepared to design AI-enabled customer experiences that are easier for customers to understand, easier to act on, and easier to trust.