From Attention to Influence

Imagine, for a moment, a near future.

You need a new car. But instead of toggling between reviews, TikTok, and comparison sites, you ask your AI assistant. It searches, evaluates, shortlists, recommends, maybe it even checks out for you.

Convenient? Yes.
Slightly unsettling for marketers? Also yes.

For decades, marketing has been anchored on a single objective: winning attention. Scroll-stopping content, views, click-through rates, engagement, these have long been the signals that defined success.

But that foundation is shifting.
Today, attention is no longer a guarantee of impact. It is increasingly filtered, curated, and quietly decided by AI. The question facing marketers is no longer simply how brands reach people. It is how brands remain discoverable, distinctive, and trusted in a world where both humans and machines shape decisions. Because in that moment, influence shifts. It no longer sits purely in media spend or creative execution. It sits within systems that interpret meaning, assess credibility, and guide choice.

This is the uncharted territory we are stepping into.
For human audiences, the objective remains familiar: does the brand resonate, persuade, and ultimately drive purchase?For machine audiences, the criteria are different: is the brand’s content structured, contextualised, and clear enough to be interpreted accurately and recommended with confidence?

Effectiveness now operates on two fronts. Can it influence people to choose your product, and can it influence systems to recommend your product?

This tension, and opportunity, sits at the heart of this panel.

With industry veteran David Soo bringing together perspectives across the ecosystem, the discussion features renown marketer, Lim Imun, straight talking content creator, Mr. Money, media and strategy specialist, Su Ling Chan, and the platform that brings together communities, TikTok.

Together, we will unpack what it means to move from attention to influence, what brands may be underestimating, how discovery is being reshaped, and what it takes to stay relevant as journeys become less predictable and more algorithmically mediated.

Because if the rules of brand visibility are being rewritten, quietly but decisively, then this is not a conversation to sit out of.

If you are thinking about how your brand stays visible not just in feeds, but in recommendations, not just in culture, but in code, then join us.

Come with questions. Come with skepticism. But most of all, come ready to rethink what influence really means in this next chapter of marketing.

By: Su Ling Chan
& David Soo