Wharton’s Americus Reed II explains why identity permission — the willingness to make a brand part of how we see ourselves — is increasingly important for marketers in the age of AI.
For many years, business leaders have been preaching that we live in the attention economy. The premise was simple: Information and data is abundant, human attention is scarce, and the companies that win are those who get really good at capturing it. That logic has affected advertising, media strategy, social platforms, political campaigns, higher education, and the creator economy.
For a long time, it was mostly right. But artificial intelligence and endless algorithmic media are changing the economics of attention itself. Attention can now be manufactured, rented, optimized, targeted, and scaled. Influencers rent their audiences to brands. Algorithms learn what keeps us on the platform. Generative AI can produce hundreds of variations of a message in seconds. Information and content are becoming even more abundant.
Attention is of course still very important. Organizations still need people to notice. But there is a difference between something being needed and something being scarce. And I think the truly scarce resource is and has been shifting for some time.
I call it identity permission: an individual’s willingness to allow a company, product, institution, technology, or community to become part of the story that consumer tells about themselves. Attention means “I see you.” Identity permission means, “I see myself in you.” That almost subtle distinction could become increasingly important for business.
What Happens After Attention?
Think about some seemingly unrelated marketplace phenomena. Why does an insulated cup become something people collect, photograph, display, discuss, and line up to purchase? Why can a character such as Labubu become a global phenomenon? Why can an athletic apparel company such as Alo become shorthand for an entire lifestyle? Why will consumers pay extraordinary premiums for luxury objects whose functional benefits alone cannot explain their prices? On the flip side, why does an entire generation take something as mundane as pickles and create community for “good girls”?
Certainly, these things captured attention. But millions of things capture our attention every day and disappear just as fast. If attention alone created long-lasting economic value, every viral sensation would become a durable and steady business. But they don’t.
Artificial intelligence and endless algorithmic media are changing the economics of attention itself. Attention can now be manufactured, rented, optimized, targeted, and scaled.
The more interesting question is what happens after attention has been captured?
My research on identity starts from the premise that consumption isn’t merely an economic act. It can also be an act of self-definition. People use products, brands, affiliations, experiences, communities, and increasingly technologies to answer some very basic questions: Who am I? Who am I not? Who do I want to become? And who do I want other people to understand me to be?
That means another question can sit beneath an apparently ordinary decision: Does engaging with this make me more like the person I want to become?
A Stanley tumbler can carry water, but once it becomes socially meaningful, it can carry identity as well. Luxury brands have understood this phenomenon for generations: a handbag transports objects while simultaneously transporting social meaning. Higher education works surprisingly similarly. Students acquire knowledge, credentials, and networks, but for many people their university becomes something they incorporate into the description of themselves long after graduation. AI may eventually operate in the same way. As AI systems become differentiated by personality, philosophy, capabilities, and communities of users, choosing a particular AI could communicate not merely what tool I use, but something about what kind of person I believe myself to be. These are radically different categories, but they share a common psychological possibility: an external organization has been granted permission to participate in the construction or expression of the self.
Attention Can Be Engineered. Identity Permission Must Be Earned.
This is where the distinction becomes strategically important. Organizations can buy impressions, optimize clicks, rent an influencer’s audience, and engineer the conditions for virality. What they cannot simply do is declare themselves part of someone’s identity. That permission must be granted. And it can also be withdrawn. This may help explain why some corporate controversies generate reactions that seem wildly disproportionate if we look only at product performance. If I simply use your product, changing your positioning, spokesperson, values, or cultural meaning may be mildly interesting. But if your brand has become part of who I am or want to be, the same change can feel surprisingly personal and sometimes like outright betrayal: You didn’t merely change what your brand means. You potentially changed the meaning of something I was using to describe myself.
The AI Paradox
This leads to a counterintuitive implication of the AI revolution. We might assume AI will make identity less important because machines can personalize almost everything. However, I suspect the opposite. Imagine a marketplace in which almost every competent organization can produce attractive advertising, customized communications, sophisticated presentations, persuasive product descriptions, compelling images, and endless social content. As those capabilities become ubiquitous, producing more information becomes a weaker source of differentiation.
If attention alone created long lasting economic value, every viral sensation would become a durable and steady business. But they don’t.
What becomes scarce is meaning — and particularly the ability to connect all that information to someone’s conception of themselves. AI can generate infinite messages. It cannot simply manufacture my willingness to say, “This is me.” That permission remains psychological and more and more sacrosanct.
What Marketers Should Do Differently
For marketing leaders, identity permission suggests at least three practical shifts. First, look beyond mundane attention metrics. Awareness, impressions, clicks, and engagement remain useful, but they don’t tell you whether people have incorporated your organization into their self-concept. Look for stronger behavioral evidence: Do people recommend you without compensation? Defend you? Display your symbols? Develop language or rituals around you? Accept inconvenience to remain associated with you?
Second, understand what people believe association with you says about them. And not just clients and customers. Employees evaluate what working somewhere communicates about them. Students consider what attending an institution allows them to become. Donors support causes that enact valued identities. Identity permission is therefore not simply a marketing asset; it can be an organizational asset.
Finally, and perhaps the most important point here: treat identity permission as something borrowed and not as something owned. A product, brand, service, or organization can spend decades accumulating meaning and destroy some of it surprisingly quickly if its behavior becomes inconsistent with the identities of the people who granted it permission in the first place.
The attention economy isn’t disappearing. Attention remains and will always be the doorway. But organizations risk optimizing yesterday’s scarce resource if they mistake getting noticed for becoming meaningful. These are not the same thing. In fact, one could argue that the next great competitive battle may not be for share of attention. It may be for share of identity. And unlike attention, identity permission cannot simply be captured. It has to be earned.