Your Brand Still Matters. AI Just Changed Who You Need to Convince.

For most of my career in marketing, we have been trying to get brands into people's heads.

Awareness. Consideration. Preference.

Make someone remember you when they finally decide to buy.

Now imagine the person doing the remembering isn't a person.

It's an AI.

That's the slightly bizarre marketing problem we're walking into.

A new study of more than 3,600 shoppers in the US and Europe looked at what happens when AI recommends products. When presented with several options, 65% clicked the brand they already knew. Only 24% chose the product AI labelled its best match. (Bazaarvoice and Kiri Masters research)

I love that.

We have spent the last couple of years wondering whether AI would kill brands.

Consumers appear to be saying:

*Thanks for the recommendation, robot. I'll take the one I've heard of.*

AI can recommend you. It can't make people trust you.

This matters because an entire new marketing industry is currently being constructed around getting brands mentioned by AI.

SEO has acquired some new acronyms.

GEO. AEO. AI visibility.

Companies are racing to understand what ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI systems say about them.

That's sensible.

If people increasingly ask an AI which running shoe, hotel, bank or software platform they should choose, you probably want to be in the answer.

But getting mentioned and getting chosen are not the same thing.

Check it. 👇

The same research found 94% of consumers do additional research before buying an AI-recommended brand. (Bazaarvoice and Kiri Masters research)

So much for outsourcing the whole customer journey to the machine.

AI might create the shortlist.

Humans still want receipts.

The machine is becoming a new middleman

This creates a strange new dynamic for marketers.

We now need to influence two audiences.

The machine needs enough credible information to understand and recommend the brand.

The human needs enough familiarity and trust to act on that recommendation.

Those aren't necessarily the same job.

An AI system might care about structured information, independent references, reviews, product data and authoritative content.

A human might remember an advert from five years ago, something their friend said, a sponsorship, an experience in a shop, or simply the fact that they've seen your logo enough times not to think you're dodgy.

AI may change how brands get discovered. It doesn't remove the very human need to trust what we buy.

That should be mildly reassuring to anyone who has spent the last few years being told that brand marketing is about to die.

In fact, Marketing Week's recent research found 59% of B2B marketers surveyed say their businesses understand the value of brand building, with some marketers explicitly describing a growing “human premium” as AI expands. (Marketing Week)

I suspect the mistake now would be choosing between brand building and AI visibility.

We need both.

Make sure the machines know who you are.

But don't forget that eventually a human being may still have to hand over the credit card.

And apparently, we're not quite ready to take a robot's word for it.