Your brand isn’t broken. It’s just not machine-readable. By now, every executive has accepted that AI is going to change how we operate.

What many haven’t yet grasped is this: it’s also going to change how we market. We’ve entered a new phase of digital transformation – one where the first impression of your brand isn’t made to a human but to a machine. AI agents are now parsing, summarizing, and deciding how (or whether) your brand reaches consumers.

And they’re doing it faster than we’ve been updating our playbooks. This isn’t some future-forward hype. It’s already here.

It’s a machine-readable world, and most brands are still speaking about reaching their customers in digital channels (web, search, social). With the launch of Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, MCP (model context protocol), and the growing ecosystem of AI-native infrastructure, the plumbing is forming for how brands will reach their customers in the future. These protocols are the new connective tissue of the new internet, one where brands communicate to customers via AI agent proxies.

In other words, we’re building our web experiences for the wrong consumer: the human. That’s a problem. But it’s also an opportunity.

When I talk to CMOs, CTOs, and CEOs around the world, the same theme keeps surfacing: digital behaviors shift rapidly. SEO traffic is off by more than 30%. Reaching gen Z and gen alpha is near impossible in traditional marketing channels, and controlling your brand in ChatGPT, Claude, etc, requires new thinking.

Leaders are watching new AI platforms reshape customer journeys in real time, and they’re all asking the same fundamental question: what’s next? The new audience: machines We see more than a new interface – we see a new audience. That audience is machines.

For the first time, brands can create experiences that transcend personalization; they’re predictive, proactive, and powered by AI. Imagine a branded agent that shops better than any in-store associate. Or booking a dream vacation just by sharing a few images.

This is what agentic systems make possible. The only limits? Your imagination — and how well your brand is designed to speak ‘machine.’ If your brand isn’t set up to be machine-legible — logically deterministic and AI protocol-aware with structured messaging and design — it’s not just underperforming.

The machines are in full control of how it appears. That’s why we’ve reimagined what brand infrastructure means for an AI-first era. It’s no longer just about creative or code but brand orchestration.

It’s about designing experiences that are legible to people and machines, making sure your brand shows up – accurately, contextually, consistently – no matter who (or what) is on the other side of the screen. We have developed a method to define brands through 26 unique identifiers that can be discretely articulated for humans and machines to understand them equally. Protocols are the new platforms At Cannes, you’ll see the usual parade of brilliant work — and much of it deserves the spotlight.

But the brands that thrive next year won’t be the ones with the biggest stage presence. They’ll be the ones who have embraced the idea that protocols are the new platforms, the ones who are already designing for endpoints, not just eyeballs. Marketing to humans still matters, but understanding how to market to machines is how you will reach those audiences in the future.

This shift isn’t meant to replace human experiences but expand them. At Code and Theory, we’ve always believed the best ideas live at the intersection of creativity and technology. Now, they must have a foundation in machine readability, and from there, we can infuse imagination and emotional resonance.

We’re ready to help you become protocol-ready, agent-optimized, and future-proof — not just with theory but with real, applied systems that let the world’s most ambitious brands stay discoverable, actionable, and emotionally resonant in a world of intelligent intermediaries. So the real question is: is your brand ready to speak machine?