Jonathan Gabay
Trust between brands and the people they sell to has eroded faster than marketing functions can rebuild it. Generative AI now writes the copy, targets the audience and shapes the campaign, and consumers know it. The commercial question is no longer how to be seen, but how to be believed.
Jonathan Gabay is a brand and marketing psychologist who helps organisations understand why consumers trust, choose and stay loyal to a brand, and how AI is rewriting that calculus.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jonathan Gabay
- He writes the textbooks the field uses. Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) and Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology (Routledge) are professional references, not bureau-circuit titles.
- He reads brand crises in real time on BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and Sky, which means his commercial diagnosis comes from sustained exposure to live reputational damage, not case-study retrospectives.
- He treats AI in marketing as a trust problem, not an automation problem, and connects ethics, prompt engineering and consumer psychology in one argument senior marketers can act on.
- His Saatchi & Saatchi Direct origin is creative, not academic, so the strategic frame stays tied to what actually moves a customer.
Biography highlights
- Author of Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) and Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology (Routledge, 2024), professional textbooks used by marketing students and practitioners.
- Former Group Creative Head, Saatchi & Saatchi Direct.
- Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and accredited brand journalist.
- Senior lecturer in crisis management and prompt engineering; teaching record at the London School of Economics, Management Centre Europe and Newport University.
- Course leader on digital psychology programmes for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California.
- Regular media commentator on branding, political PR and AI for BBC (including Newsnight), CNN, Bloomberg, Sky, Channel 5 and ABC.
Biography
Most brands now compete on a question they have not faced before. Not how to reach an audience, but whether anyone still believes the message when they get it. Generative AI has industrialised marketing output and consumers have responded with a sharper, quieter scepticism that no media spend can buy past.
Jonathan Gabay has spent three decades on the inside of that question. He started in creative work at Saatchi & Saatchi Direct, where he became Group Creative Head, then moved into the analytical side of the same problem. Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) sets out how social psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience explain why consumers trust some brands and abandon others, and what CEO reputation does to both.
His 2024 Routledge textbook Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology extends the argument into the AI era. The book is used as a professional reference by marketing students and practitioners, and treats AI not as a productivity tool but as a force that changes the psychological contract between brand and buyer. He teaches the same material as a senior lecturer in crisis management and prompt engineering, with course work at the London School of Economics, the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California.
The commentary record matters because it is unusually current. BBC Newsnight, CNN, Bloomberg, Sky and Channel 5 use him to read live brand and political PR crises as they unfold, which is why the keynote material is closer to a working diagnostic than a finished case study.
Key speaking topics
- Brand psychology and consumer trust
- AI ethics in marketing communications
- Digital trust and online consumer behaviour
- Crisis communications and brand reputation
- Political PR, propaganda and persuasion
- Prompt engineering for marketers
- CEO reputation and brand storytelling
Ideal for
- CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams rebuilding trust under AI
- Communications, PR and corporate affairs leaders facing reputational risk
- Boards and executive teams of consumer-facing brands
- Marketing and brand functions integrating AI into customer-facing work
Audience outcomes
- A working model of how consumers form trust in brands and what AI changes about it
- A clearer view of where AI use crosses the ethical line that customers actually punish
- Sharper diagnosis of brand and reputation crises drawn from live media cases
- A practical reading of where prompt engineering and marketing psychology meet
- Confidence to make defensible commercial calls on AI in marketing communications
Talks
A keynote on digital trust, synthetic content and the growing difficulty of knowing what, or whom, to believe.
Key takeaways:
- How AI is changing persuasion, reputation and public confidence
- Why earned trust now outperforms claimed trust as a commercial asset
- What organisations must do to be believed, not merely seen
How organisations can use generative AI without losing character, credibility or a recognisably human voice.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI strengthens communication and where it flattens originality
- Why trust is becoming a brand’s most valuable asset
- How to keep a human voice in AI-assisted marketing
A direct examination of bias, accountability, transparency and the commercial cost of losing public trust.
Key takeaways:
- The difference between AI principles and AI decisions customers can feel
- Where ethical lines in marketing AI actually get punished
- Practical choices that protect reputation
How AI is reshaping professional identity, workplace confidence and the psychology of change.
Key takeaways:
- Why the fear of obsolescence behaves the way it does
- How individuals and organisations respond with realism rather than panic
- Using AI as a tool without letting it define professional worth