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Thursday, folks. One more after this.
Somewhere in your company, a person writing the annual report has never seen the brand book. Until recently that barely mattered. Nobody reads the annual report for tone of voice.
The models do, more or less. Ask one about a retailer, Digiday wrote last week, and it pulls from the company's site, product pages, press coverage and financial filings "with little regard for who wrote what." Even the annual report, Digiday says, is "brand copy now as far as the LLMs are concerned."
Vincenzo Rilli, global CMO of Ikea Retail, told Digiday the job now covers "other elements that go and get fed into the algorithm." The interview was arranged by Dentsu, around its CMO survey.
His version of the job is "using LLM, for example, to distribute your brand not to create your brand." Ikea, he argues, is well placed because it has said the same thing for years: "beautiful, affordable furniture for many people." Six words, and a model can repeat them back.
The brands in trouble, in his view, are the ones that switched propositions to hit a sales number. A model can't work out what they stand for.
It's the least futuristic AI answer I've heard in a while. Emotional connection, a distinctive proposition, consistency at every touchpoint, which he says he learned at Unilever. He sees AI carrying those basics "in a faster scale in a more local relevant way."
Phase one at Ikea was productivity, adapting local content faster. Phase two, whether AI helps his marketers make better decisions, is "still in the phase of learning." On creative, he thinks marketing is "still not there." For now, AI is "a companion."
Some of the creators Ikea relies on are its own staff. "Some of them have a million views on TikTok," Rilli said. Try sending that crowd a brand book.
Ikea's line holds, he says, because one proposition has run for years across every touchpoint. Yours has to survive the investor relations team, the PR agency, the help center and a product page somebody wrote in 2019.
Who signs off the words in your next annual report, and have they ever met your brand team?
Today’s sponsor:
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TALK ON THE MARKET
Neil Patel, founder of NP Digital, on twenty years of link building:
It's a poll of what 500 marketers believe, with no method in the post. From someone who writes "We spent 20 years building backlinks", 3% is quite a number to post.
Want to see case studies of AI-powered campaigns? We publish a daily edition on the most creative use cases of AI in advertising.
Interested in AI innovation across Europe? We publish a weekly round-up on AI-Ready Europe:
NUMBERS MATTER
51.5%. That's the share of ChatGPT's holiday citation weight going to retailers' newsroom and help pages, which BrightEdge assigns to communications and customer support, in BrightEdge's analysis published last Friday. On Google AI Overviews it's 18.1%.
Four retailers, from a company with search tools to sell. When did anyone last update your returns page?
DAILY PROMPT
Our AI Brand Positioning Workshop, for writing the one line every department should be using:
You are a brand strategy consultant running a positioning workshop for [COMPANY NAME] in the [INDUSTRY] market. Work through the full sequence below, research anything you need, and flag where your evidence is thin.
## Current State Assessment
Ground your analysis in the material I attach ([ATTACHED FILES]: win/loss notes, pricing page, sales deck, analyst coverage, customer interview transcripts) plus your own web research on the competitive set:
- Company: [COMPANY NAME]
- Industry/Market: [INDUSTRY]
- Primary Products/Services: [PRODUCTS]
- Current Annual Revenue: [REVENUE]
- Target Customer Segment: [TARGET AUDIENCE]
- Key Competitors: [3-5 COMPETITOR NAMES]
## Workshop Framework
Work through these positioning elements in order:
### 1. Market Reality Check
Pull current positioning language from each competitor's public site and recent announcements. Map which positions are already owned, which are crowded, and where white space remains. Cite your sources.
### 2. Brand Essence Definition
Define the core of what makes [COMPANY NAME] different. Consider:
- Unique capabilities or assets
- Founder/company origin story elements
- Technology or methodology advantages
- Customer outcomes that matter most
### 3. Target Audience Clarity
Build a detailed profile of the primary decision-maker for [TARGET AUDIENCE], drawing language from the attached customer evidence rather than generic persona patterns. Cover their:
- Key business challenges?
- Decision criteria?
- Perception of current solutions?
- Unmet needs?
### 4. Positioning Statement Development
Craft 3 alternative positioning statements using this format:
"[COMPANY NAME] is the [CATEGORY] that [UNIQUE BENEFIT] for [TARGET AUDIENCE] who [KEY MOTIVATION]."
Each should emphasize a different competitive advantage.
### 5. Proof Points & Differentiation
For each positioning option, identify:
- 3-4 proof points that validate the position, marking which are already evidenced in my files and which we would need to build
- How this differs from competitor positioning, quoting their actual language
- Potential messaging pillars that support it
### 6. Recommendation & Rationale
Recommend the strongest positioning based on:
- Market demand and size
- Company capability to deliver
- Defensibility against competitors
- Resonance with target audience
- Longevity (5+ year relevance)
Provide a 2-3 sentence rationale, then list the three questions you would want answered before we commit.Add the annual report to the attached files and see whether the position it recommends matches your brand book.
CMO CORNER
Don't be the loudest in the room. Be the clearest.
The CMO who can say the proposition in one plain line, every time, gives the investor relations team something to copy.
We provide consulting services for CMOs on AI strategy for marketing teams through our Teamless offering.
TOOL UPGRADE
If the models read everything with your name on it, check what they read:
AISEO — best for teams trying generative engine optimization, with tools that analyze how LLMs interpret and cite content. Try AISEO here →
Surfer SEO — best for content teams that want real-time writing guidance built from what top-ranking pages do. Try Surfer SEO here →
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LEARN THIS
When the brand includes every page anyone publishes: the AI Content Operations Framework. Five layers of content operations, one of them on keeping brand voice intact when AI drafts.
→ We publish workshops, courses, guides, manuals, and more on AI marketing for free. Browse our learning resources for free.
BRAND SLOP
Kiwibank, New Zealand's state-owned bank, launched Buck, a green-wooled sheep mascot. The bank says artists created her and AI only animated her, per Creative Bloq.
Then an all-caps post on X declaring lust for the sheep was seen by more than 4 million people. Kiwibank filed copyright takedowns, the Free Speech Union called it censorship, and John Oliver called the response "completely counterproductive," the Guardian reports.
The takedowns kept the joke alive. When your mascot goes viral for the wrong reason, who writes the reply, legal or brand?
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