For decades, brands mapped the “customer journey” like a well-behaved road trip: a clear starting point, a few waypoints, and a logical path to purchase. But the reality in 2025 looks nothing like that tidy funnel. If today’s consumers are going anywhere, they’re not driving — they’re buzzing, hopping, swiping, streaming, buying, pausing, searching, and sharing — all at once.
It’s time to retire the metaphor of the journey and embrace a more powerful one: the Flight of the Bumblebee. It’s unpredictable. It’s nonlinear. And it’s exactly how modern consumers behave. As Sadie Thoma from Google put it, consumers today don’t progress in steps — they scroll, stream, shop, and search in overlapping and messy patterns. Marketers who keep mapping a journey are trying to use a GPS in a world that now runs on radar.
This shift isn’t just semantics. It’s strategic. Brands that reframe their marketing around customer activities — not linear journeys — will unlock more value, capture more demand, and stay relevant in the AI-powered age.
The Illusion of the Journey
Customer journey mapping was built for a different era. It assumes a fixed path — awareness, consideration, decision — where brands intercept consumers with timely nudges. But digital has changed the rhythm. Social feeds, streaming content, peer reviews, DTC channels, in-store prompts, and algorithm-driven recommendations have fragmented attention and multiplied decision paths.
At Vivaldi, we’ve long studied this evolution and described it as the “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Consumers dart between channels and moments. A product seen on TikTok can lead to a Google search, a Pinterest board, an in-store try-on, a YouTube review, and a WhatsApp group chat — all before a final purchase is made on Amazon. There is no single path — only a web of activities.
The most successful brands no longer try to force consumers down a funnel. Instead, they embed themselves into the natural rhythm of the lives of consumers.
From Journey Thinking to Activity Thinking
The insight that marketers must adopt now is this: Activities are what people actually do. Journeys are what marketers wish people would do. AI finally gives us the ability to analyze real behavior — at scale, in real time, and with context.
Our CEO, Dr. Erich Joachimsthaler long ago postulated in the book: Hidden in Plain Sight, published by the Harvard Business School Press that understanding the activities of the consumers that underlie a complex web of needs, need states and values is at the core of deeper and richer customer understanding.
Our view is that activities of the consumers are motivated by goals that consumers seek to achieve in their daily lives. They set priorities and perform activities to achieve these goals within the contexts of their lives.
Journeys make marketing more efficient, understanding activities create genuine new consumer value
This view emphasizes a deeper and richer understanding of consumers, and not just more insights to define more the persuasion or influence needed to convert consumers along funnel stages or customer journeys. One of the approaches we usually use in our work has been pioneered by Nobel prize winning economist, Daniel Kahneman, known as the Day Reconstruction Method.
In the recent LinkedIn conversation between Sadie Thoma of Google and Derek Rodenhausen of BCG, the two marketing leaders picked up on the enormous opportunity in shifting toward activity-based marketing. Derek described how BCG is building “influence maps,” not funnels — tools that measure which activities actually influence outcomes across platforms, not by traditional stages like “awareness” or “conversion.” We believe they are right, when it comes to activation and execution of your brand, innovation or marketing strategy, influence maps help to guide resource allocation of budget spending across media and platforms.
As Sadie explained, Google organizes consumer behavior around four fluid, overlapping behaviors: streaming, scrolling, shopping, and searching. These are not siloed steps. They are ambient behaviors that define modern life. Consumers move fluidly between them — often within minutes, sometimes all at once.
This is not a journey. It’s a cloud of action. The brands that thrive meet consumers in those actions, not before or after.
The Vivaldi View: AI That Creates Genuine Customer Value
In our 2024 global report AI: Unlocking Genuine Customer Value, we interviewed over 160 senior executives and found that while 75% have launched some form of AI adoption, only 10% see meaningful impact. Why? Because most AI strategies are trapped in productivity mode — internal use cases, cost cutting, and automation of back-office workflows.
But AI’s real power is on the demand side — to help companies understand, participate in, and shape the activities of their customers.
We introduced the idea of “customer activity systems” — a holistic view of how people live, work, and interact with products and services. It’s where AI can deliver exponential impact: by uncovering new behaviors, designing intelligent products and services, and personalizing the interaction field between brand and customer.
When viewed from this broader activity perspective, brands aren’t merely means of making marketing efforts or conversions to purchase more efficient. When brands are built on a full understanding of the customer activity system, brands become multipliers and amplifiers of an entire business system, even an entire ecosystem. Then, brands grow in acompounding fashion, much like interest compound in a savings account.
AI can — and should — become a value amplifier, not just an efficiency tool.
What the Best Companies Are Doing
Leading brands in 2025 are doing five things differently:
1. Mapping Activity Fields, Not Journeys
They use AI to understand how people behave — not where they are in a funnel, but what they are doing and why. These maps surface real opportunities to meet people in the context of action.
2. Building Intelligent Systems Around Key Activities
They invest in AI systems that create value in moments — not just push messages. From smart product recommendations to real-time support, these systems learn and improve customer interactions over time.
3. Creating Interaction-First Marketing
Marketing is no longer storytelling alone — it’s story-doing. These brands build marketing campaigns around core customer activities, using data and AI to ensure timing, relevance, and personalization.
4. Shifting from Performance Metrics to Participation Metrics
They measure engagement not just by clicks or views, but by participation in valuable activities — reviews written, communities joined, features used, shares made.
5. Redesigning Their Business Around Demand
Most importantly, they use AI not to make their current model more efficient, but to reimagine what their business could become by owning more of the customer’s life and activities.
The Strategic Case for Customer Activities
A journey mindset narrows your field of vision. An activity mindset opens it.
If you build a journey map, you’re probably looking at the world through a sales or marketing lens. But if you map out customer activities — like how people learn a new skill, commute to work, plan a vacation, manage their health — you discover far more opportunities to engage, co-create, and solve real problems.
Amazon doesn’t just map buying journeys. It maps life activities. Shopping, watching, reading, listening, eating, hosting, gaming — they aim to serve all of it. Same with Apple. Same with Google.
These companies don’t just reduce friction. They reshape activity systems, embedding their brand into the rhythm of everyday life.
The Role of the Modern CMO
As Sadie Thoma said, the modern CMO is becoming the Chief Change Management Officer. To succeed, they need to guide their teams beyond traditional planning — and toward a more dynamic, responsive, activity-based operating model.
Derek Rodenhausen echoed this: “You can’t just buy an AI tool and expect transformation. You have to think about your operating model.”
That means:
- Cross-functional teams centered around customer activities
- Agile content production and personalization
- Real-time media planning driven by influence, not impressions
- Continuous learning through AI-driven insights
- Organizational alignment on demand-side growth
It’s a leadership challenge as much as a marketing one.
Reframing Vivaldi’s Holistic Brand Model
At Vivaldi, we’ve always emphasized a holistic growth model — connecting brand, business, and customer in a system of mutual value creation. With AI, this model gains new power.
By rethinking strategy around activities, you can design products that solve real needs, services that adapt to behavior, and brand systems that are relevant in every micro-moment.
It’s not about interrupting the journey — it’s about enabling the activity.
That’s what we mean when we say: AI should unlock genuine customer value.
So What Should You Do?
If you’re a business leader, here’s the takeaway:
- Stop mapping journeys. Start understanding activities.
- Use AI not just to predict behavior — but to participate in it.
- Build systems that enhance customer actions, not just track them.
- Reimagine your business not as a process, but as a platform for value creation.
Don’t Follow the Path. Create in the Swarm.
In 2025, there is no map. No linear process. No perfect funnel. There’s only movement — buzzing, darting, fragmenting, and converging.
The brands that will win are those that understand the swarm. That know when to act. That show up in moments that matter. That use AI not to push harder but to embed deeper.
It’s not about the journey. It’s about the activity.
And that’s where the future begins.