From Top of Mind to Top of Model
Getting noticed in the Age of AI
Marketers used to fight for top of mind. In the AI era, the slugfest is for top of model. If machines can’t find you, people won’t remember you.
The shift: from interruption to inclusion
For decades, building brands was like Stewie calling for Lois: interrupt and repeat. (If you missed it, Family Guy, Season 5, episode 6). Buy a TV spot, show up in the middle of “Friends,” and pray three exposures per month got you lodged in memory. Byron Sharp later reminded us only 5% of prospective buyers are ever in-market at a time, so “always-on” became the mantra. Expensive, but doable.
Along came Google. SEM and SEO flipped the script making the task less about interruption, more about intention. Then AI muscled in. While Google still handles 14 billion searches per day, some marketers are seeing a double-digit drop in traffic. Digiday noted on August 15 that “many brands report 10-25% year-over-year CTR declines even where rankings are stable.” And with LLM uptake now over 50% of American adults, that trend can only accelerate. A new consumer habit is forming overnight.
Today, people don’t search “best running shoes.” They ask, “What’s the best shoe for my first half-marathon?” And the answer doesn’t come as ten blue links or a banner ad. It comes as advice that sounds like the coach you always needed.
If your brand isn’t in the model’s memory, you don’t exist.
AI doesn’t search
LLMs aren’t hunting links. They’re spotting patterns in billions of words—what shows up together, again and again. That’s why “Nike” is glued to running, shoes and Jordan. It’s not search. It’s recall. More like eavesdropping on a familiar conversation than ticking a checklist.
How to gain AI cred
Models reward brands that get talked about often, positively, and in credible places.
Crocs, once the shoe that made the fashion statement, “I give up”, are now hot. Collaborations with Justin Bieber and KFC/Jibbitz (yes, the fried-chicken-scented charms sold out in 30 minutes) give them cultural velocity that LLMs love – and double-digit sales growth that hit $4 billion in 2024.
Allbirds, once a media darling, is fading fast—not because the shoes failed, but because the conversation cooled (as did sales: $170 million down 25%).
High-end furniture designer Herman Miller dominated the word ergonomic across major publications such as CBS, CNET and The Independent, nearly 300 times in 12 months and charmed the pants off LLMs.
If people aren’t talking about you, machines won’t either.
You can’t bribe algorithms
Paid reach used to guarantee visibility. Not anymore. A Coke Super Bowl ad or social stunt on Tiktok may trend for a week, but it won’t change AI training data. Earned mentions do.
Hoka, R.E.M. Beauty, and Cocojune showed up in Vogue Business and Bain’s Insurgent Brand Reports, and beat out their bigger competitors in AI responses. Similarly, Olipop and Poppi, two “prebiotic sodas,” rode wellness media chatter straight into the same recommendations as Coke without Coke’s billion-dollar budget.
The new brand health checklist
Brand health metrics still matter, but the scoreboard looks different. Strong brands today:
Show up in diverse contexts. Reviews, articles, forums, social chatter.
Keep product info structured. Wikipedia, Wikidata and retail product specs are aligned.
Use consistent naming. One product, one name, everywhere.
Dyson nails it. Ask AI for a reco of the “best cordless vacuum” and Dyson shows up every time because its product descriptions are uniform and its context is strong. Roomba, Shark and Samsung less so. Even subtle changes to the nomenclature of a product or service is an invisibility cloak for a brand in the LLM world. Marketers need to think more like a PR specialist than a traditional ad guy.
Updating classic measures
Differentiation → Distinct Language. Instead of a USP, marketers win with repeatable language and tone. Hoka talks about “running without pain.” Oatly’s cheeky voice makes it “irreverent plant milk”.
Relevance → Right Conversations. Better to dominate a few forums than spray everywhere.
Salience → Conversation Speed. The faster the chatter, the bigger the recall. Think in repartee versus monologue.
Trust → Trusted Sources. Patagonia’s credibility isn’t built on ads but on validation across NYT, Reddit, and sustainability awards.
The Bottom Line
Channel planning used to be “right message, right place, right time.” In the AI era it’s: distinctive voice, reputable place, high velocity.
Marketing isn’t dying; it’s mutating. Paid media still matters for human attention. But if you want machines to remember you, fight to be top of model. Because in the years ahead, the brands consumers hear about will be the ones machines can find.
Ignore that, and you’ll be forgotten by both.