Brand positioning thrives in nuance, understanding, judgement and creativity. When Nike told you to just do it, you didn’t wonder, “Do what?” When you found out Red Bull gave you wings, you didn’t ask if that meant you were flying or dying.
Brand positioning was built for a world where people observed, compared, shopped, sifted and clicked. That world is shrinking. Remember in school when your teachers made you show your work? There’s no work anymore, just answers. Brands don’t get a chance to stand apart from the competition and explain themselves. Because AI doesn’t evaluate the way humans do. It matches questions to answers.
If a brand is not clearly understood as a solution to a specific problem, it doesn’t get considered at all. The new mandate is to define the problem, resolve it instantly and make it clear why no one does it better. Differentiation still matters, but only if the brand earns its way into the answer key first.
Read more of Jaclyn Hesse’s bylined piece in The AI Journal.
