Brand Intelligence: Navigating the Transformation in the AI and Web3 Era

By Baohong Sun, Dean’s Distinguished Chair Professor of Marketing, CKGSB

Brand Intelligence: Navigating the Transformation in the AI and Web3 Era explores how AI, data and Web3 are transforming marketing — and what brands must do to build stronger, more intelligent relationships with their customers. The book is published by Springer in its Future of Business and Finance series and is available now — order it on Amazon.

Professor Baohong Sun argues that as digital platforms come to control much of the access to consumers and their data, brands face a critical turning point. Rather than chasing individual technologies, Brand Intelligence presents a framework for turning marketing into an intelligent system of growth: transforming brands into data-driven, continuously learning ecosystems built for the age of AI and decentralization.

“The most valuable asset in the digital age is not technology, but the ability to learn faster than the market. Brands that depend on third-party platforms have outsourced that learning. This book shows how to bring it back home.”

— Professor Baohong Sun

Rethinking Marketing in the Age of AI

Digital transformation has given companies unprecedented access to technology, but also created a new dependence: for many brands, marketing runs primarily through third-party search engines, social media and e-commerce marketplaces, which control much of the customer relationship and data.

Professor Sun argues that brands need to move from digital dependence to digital sovereignty — not by abandoning third-party platforms, but by combining their reach with the deeper relationships and first-party data built through brand-owned channels. The book explores this shift through four interconnected themes:

1. From Digital Transformation to Brand Intelligence

Many businesses have invested in digital transformation to automate processes and cut costs. Professor Sun argues the next step is intelligent activation: connecting customer touchpoints, then activating that data through analytics and AI to improve the User Journey, User Experience and User Lifetime Value.

2. Building Brand-Owned Ecosystems

Brands need greater control over their users, data and customer experiences — connecting communities, online stores, smart products, physical stores and apps into a continuously learning network built on connectivity, intelligence and community. In this model, brands accumulate strategic assets, such as relationships and first-party data, that grow more valuable over time.

3. AI, Algorithms and Intelligent Marketing

AI is accelerating the shift from campaign-based marketing to systems that analyze, decide and act continuously. Professor Sun describes a “Command Center” combining customer data with algorithmic decision-making to turn insight into action — and argues that as agentic AI matures, brands with proprietary data will be best positioned to compete.

4. From Consumers to Participants in the Web3 Era

Brand Intelligence also examines how Web3 could reshape brand-customer relationships, as blockchain and tokenization create new possibilities for digital ownership and shared value. Professor Sun describes a shift from communication to collaboration — combining the scale of centralized intelligence with the participation enabled by decentralized models.

Building an Intelligent System of Growth

Traditional digital marketing emphasizes reach, impressions, clicks and conversion. Brand Intelligence proposes a broader, self-reinforcing model built around Brandnetics™ — an integrative framework linking users, data, technology, algorithms and communities — and an omni-domain approach combining third-party platforms for reach with brand-owned ecosystems for deeper relationships and loyalty.

Through examples including Nike, Starbucks, Sephora, Wayfair, KFC and STEPN, Professor Sun shows how these ideas apply across communities, e-commerce, apps, smart products, physical stores and decentralized environments — arguing that success depends not on buying attention, but on building intelligence. The book is written for executives, investors and policymakers navigating this shift, as well as scholars studying how marketing is evolving.

About Professor Baohong Sun

Professor Baohong Sun is the Dean’s Distinguished Chair Professor of Marketing at CKGSB and Director of its Research Department on AI+Web3 Marketing Innovation. Previously Carnegie Bosch Professor of Marketing at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, she holds a PhD from USC, and her research has been cited by The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time and Bloomberg.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Digital Technologies and Marketing Innovation
Chapter 2: Platform Enterprises
Chapter 3: Consumer Decision-Making Process and Brand Experience
Chapter 4: Building Brand Intelligence
Chapter 5: Online Community
Chapter 6: Online Store
Chapter 7: Smart Products and Smart Stores
Chapter 8: Mobile Applications
Chapter 9: The Command Center and Intelligent Marketing
Chapter 10: Omni-Domain Marketing and Brandnetics™
Chapter 11: Web3 and Participatory Marketing

The book takes readers from the foundations of Brand Intelligence to the real-world design of brand-owned ecosystems and intelligent marketing, before looking ahead to how AI, Web3 and participatory models could reshape the future of value creation.

Get the book

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View the book on Springer