Think about the last time you had a need that could be fulfilled by a brand and its products or services.

Maybe you were in need of a new tool to fix something in your house or you needed a specific outfit for an event. In these cases, your mind likely turned toward a few options that you’d either heard of or were a customer of in the past.

In other words, you had a consideration set in mind based on your previous experiences as a consumer.

The consideration set has been a topic of much scrutiny over the years. According to McKinsey’s “Consumer Decision Journey”, originally published in 2009 and now immortalized on LinkedIn pages and term papers alike, suggested that the traditional marketing funnel was misaligned with how shoppers made decisions, as they often added brands as they progressed toward purchase, not removed them as the funnel analogy suggests.

A 2015 update to McKinsey’s study focused on using automation and personalization to optimize and consolidate the journey in real time, while a recent 2026 take from McKinsey offers recommendations on how to prepare for a future where AI agents act on our behalf to make purchase decisions. How far we have travelled, indeed, from adding brands to handing over the proverbial keys to AI.

For automotive marketers, the challenge remains the same, which is ensuring your brand or dealership is one of the few that is ultimately considered when a purchase decision is close. For simplicity’s sake, keeping the “Three C’s” of brand consideration in mind is a good start: compatibility, consistency, and credibility.

Compatibility

According to a Harris Poll, 82% of shoppers want a brand’s values to align with their own. This is especially true among younger generations like Gen Z, who are increasingly making purchase decisions based on honesty, trustworthiness, and consistency according to YouGov findings. Compatibility with one’s value system is often discovered in the awareness or discovery phase of purchase, making automotive lifestyle campaigns imperative as an evergreen approach. This means focusing on digital channels like social media, where shoppers can engage with content before they begin the core active shopping experience. According to BrightEdge, connected TV (CTV) is also proving to be an effective channel for brand discovery followed by AI queries, as data generated from Budweiser’s 2026 Super Bowl ad revealed that post-game AI queries spiked in the month after the game, with most of these queries suggesting that consumers were using AI to discover more about the brand itself vs. its products.

Consistency

Consistency in the auto industry can manifest itself through marketing personalization. This is where auto brands and dealers can win over younger shoppers, through connecting some of the broader brand-level initiatives with local activations in markets with a dealer presence.

Tactically speaking for auto marketers, this could mean leveraging Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data to measure linear exposure to Tier 1 brand messaging and following up with the same households with dealer-level reinforcement of brand values, amplifying them through community events or initiatives.

Another way to ensure a consistent approach to digital marketing is through leveraging omnichannel creative with a similar look and feel across each device and tailored to the context in which it’s delivered. For example, starting a sequential messaging strategy at a household level with a CTV ad with video focused on a full lineup of a brand’s SUVs, and delivering subsequent messaging across desktop and mobile devices with the same video message and additional tabs detailing the top features and local offers for each individual vehicle within the lineup.

This consistent, spaced approach ensures recall and retention of the messages, and most importantly, increases the likelihood of purchase per findings from Stanford researchers.

Credibility

Brand credibility has long been cited as a leading indicator of consideration. A seminal 2004 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research by Tülin Erdem and Joffre Swait confirmed that brand credibility significantly increases the probability of a brand being included in a customer’s consideration set, making this a key focus for marketers.

The methods in which brands gain credibility may be shifting, however. Auto brands and dealers often rely on peer reviews from sites like Facebook, Google, or Yelp to generate credibility amongst shoppers, but recent research from the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer indicates that peer trust is declining amidst political and economic polarization, while expert trust remains high.

A takeaway for marketers is to include third-party credibility in any advertising, such as editorial snippets for a specific make or model from highly trusted endemic auto sites or publishers. While peer reviews aren’t going away, this is a sure-fire approach to gain consumer trust in an era where trust is at a premium.

The three C’s of brand consideration are core tenants of marketing that will likely outlive any technological advances, including AI agents purchasing cars on our behalf, which at this rate, may actually happen before AI can drive us to the grocery store.

 

 Jim Johnson is Lead of Industry Solutions at VDX.tv