Last week we hosted a panel discussion in Manchester on how AI is reshaping the way brands get discovered.
Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who came along, it was great to see a full house for our first ever event up North.
And an even bigger thank you to our fantastic panel. A special shoutout to Tom Fry, our CTO, who stepped in at the last minute when Claire, our CEO, was unfortunately taken out by the flu. Not exactly the easiest way to end up on a panel, but he did a brilliant job alongside Hemant Patel (Anumana) and Munya Hoto, fractional CMO.
Here are a few of the key themes that came out of the session.
One of the biggest shifts we discussed is that AI search doesn’t just look at the question. It looks at the person asking it. When someone searches on Google, everyone roughly gets the same set of results. The algorithm might personalise things slightly, but broadly speaking the answers are similar.
With your LLM of choice, it’s different. These systems build context about you over time. They know things like your job role, your industry, the type of company you work at, the kind of problems you usually ask about. And that context shapes the answers you get.
There’s a trend doing the LinkedIn rounds at the moment where people are asking ChatGPT to generate an image of them at work using only the information it has about them.
When I tried it, ChatGPT produced an image of me stressing over a press release with my dog next to me. Which, to be fair, probably came from my endless queries about how to train him.
The point is: these systems remember things about you. So when someone asks a question like: “Who are the best cybersecurity providers?” The AI isn’t answering that question in a vacuum; it’s answering it based on who it thinks you are.
That’s why knowing your ideal customer profile has never been more important. You need to get uncomfortably close to understanding your buyer - their role, their pressures, their priorities and their problems.
Because search answers aren’t just shaped by the question anymore, but instead by the person asking it.
Munya works with a lot of VC-backed companies, and one interesting point he raised was that AI discoverability is starting to matter earlier in a company’s journey.
Increasingly, investors are asking questions about distribution and visibility. If you’re building a content strategy without thinking about how AI systems will discover and interpret that content, you’re missing a piece of the puzzle.
We even had a slightly controversial moment where someone suggested that traditional SEO might start becoming… less central. There were a few SEOs in the room who looked mildly horrified at that point, but the reality is that buyer behaviour is shifting.
If buyers are asking AI tools for recommendations, then being visible in those answers becomes critical. Otherwise, you’re not even in the room.
One analogy that really resonated during the session was the idea of restaurant recommendations.
Years ago, if you were travelling somewhere new and wanted to find a great restaurant, you’d ask friends for suggestions. Then Google came along and you’d search for places yourself, probably using TripAdvisor or reviews to help you decide.
Now imagine instead asking a trusted friend who knows your tastes perfectly. They know what food you like, your budget, where you’re staying, whether you like something casual or fancy.
That friend just gave you the BEST restaurant recommendation of your life.
AI systems are becoming that friend. They take context from your question and pull together signals from multiple sources to recommend the best option. In B2B, those signals come from places like:
Which means if your brand isn’t showing up in those environments, it becomes much harder for AI to recommend you.
If most of your budget is going into things like paid social ads or blog campaigns, but the sources influencing AI answers are earned media, analysts and community conversations, are you investing in the right places?
One idea kept coming up again and again during the panel. If buyers are asking AI tools for recommendations, then AI visibility becomes part of the buyer journey. And if you’re not visible there, you’re simply not considered.
That doesn’t mean throwing out everything you know about marketing or comms.
But it does mean thinking differently about:
If you’d like to see how your brand shows up in AI answers, you can explore it yourself.
We’re offering a free two-week trial of Agentcy’s AI Visibility module, which shows:
You might be pleasantly surprised, or you might discover there’s work to do. Either way, it’s something you need to see.