I’ve said it for years in my training sessions, podcasts and blogs — digital levelled the playing field.
And it did.
For the first time, small brands could stand shoulder to shoulder with global giants.
If you knew your customer, moved fast and showed up well online, you could win.
Smaller, nimbler brands built direct relationships with customers and took market share from slower giants.
They didn’t have bigger budgets — they simply showed up better.
They understood their audiences, spoke their language, and were visible where it mattered.
Now, the landscape has shifted again.
AI hasn’t created a new playing field. It’s just made visibility harder — and more important — than ever.
The playing field is still level — it’s just that some brands are miles further up it.
And now AI has changed the pace of the game entirely.
It’s no longer about catching up.
It’s about leapfrogging.
The illusion of “done”
For years, big organisations thought they’d “done digital”.
New tech. New teams. New channels. They ran D2C experiments. They hired agencies and bought tools.
Then they quietly pulled back when it got hard.
They shifted focus back to retailers, dabbled in social, and told themselves they were still “digital-first”.
But the truth is — they stopped listening, in fact were they ever really listening at all?
Many still can’t answer a simple question:
“When customers go looking — wherever they look — do they actually find us?”
That’s the real test of digital maturity.
It’s not whether you’ve built the tech stack, or trained the teams, or run the pilots.
It’s whether your brand consistently shows up in the right places, with the right message, in the customer’s voice — not yours.
AI hasn’t changed that rule.
It’s just exposed who’s been following it all along.
Meanwhile, the smaller, digital-native brands (and the occasional large, forward-thinking one) just kept going.
They stayed curious.
They listened — really listened — to their customers’ wants, needs and behaviours.
They adjusted in real time. They invested in content that answered real questions. They kept their listings accurate and their language human.
They showed up — consistently — with best practice baked into everything they did.
And because of that, they stayed visible at exactly the right moments in the customer journey: when people were searching, comparing, and deciding.
That’s how they won.
Not through budget or luck — but through discipline, clarity and proximity to their audience.
Fast forward to today. Customers are discovering products through search, social, and increasingly through AI-powered answers.
And many big brands are realising:
“We’re not even in the conversation anymore.”
The new reality of discovery
Discovery today is messy.
Customers might start with a search, shift to social, ask a friend, or type a question into an AI tool.
They don’t think in channels — they think in moments.
If your listings, content and messaging aren’t aligned to those moments, you’re missing sales you never even see.
And here’s the irony: many businesses still act as if visibility is someone else’s job.
Search teams own SEO.
Marketing owns creative.
Commerce owns product pages.
Meanwhile, the customer moves seamlessly between them — and notices when you don’t.
The result? Beautiful campaigns that don’t convert.
Perfectly optimised product pages that no one visits.
And AI-generated answers that mention your competitors, not you.
AI isn’t the disruptor. It’s the mirror.
AI isn’t here to replace search.
It’s becoming part of it — shaping how people ask, explore, and decide.
It doesn’t create your relevance.
It reflects it.
If your content is clear, structured and written in the customer’s language — AI can find it.
If it’s inconsistent, outdated or unclear — it can’t.
That’s why best practice has never been more important.
That’s the brutal simplicity of it.
Visibility isn’t about chasing algorithms or the latest AI trend.
It’s about creating content and experiences that earn their place in them.
We’ve made digital too complicated
I’ve been in digital for more than 25 years, across every acronym you can think of — SEO, PPC, UX, CRM, D2C… you name it. Alongside the latest trends; link building, being told that SEO doesn’t matter any more, keywords are dead.
But at the heart of it, nothing has changed.
If you understand your customer — their wants, needs and triggers — and you show up for them, you win.
Full stop.
Yet most organisations still get lost in the mechanics:
too many dashboards, not enough dialogue.
They’re head is to focused on the hard sale of conversations and how they can use the latest trend or tool.
And they’re wondering why performance flat-lined.
The catch-up moment
Many organisations are now in catch-up mode.
Not because they ignored digital — but because they never embedded it.
They built digital departments instead of digital confidence.
They treated AI as a project, not a principle.
Meanwhile, digital-native challengers continue to thrive — fast, customer-obsessed and adaptive.
They’re not asking “How do we fit AI in?”
They’re asking “How can we make this easier, faster, more human for our customer?”
That’s what The Digital Reawakening™ is about: helping organisations catch up, clean up and show up.
Not through jargon, but through clarity, consistency and capability.
It’s why I’ve built a new programme that meets organisations at three levels:
- Leaders 101 — Winning in Digital with AI.
For senior teams who need clarity, not code. Understanding how discovery drives growth, and how to steer the ship. - Next Level Down — Showing Up Through the Journey.
For heads of marketing, eCom and brand to align around one simple question: when customers go looking, do they find us? - Best Practice — Implement and Scale.
For teams to embed the habits, workflows and content quality that make visibility automatic — wherever people search.
When those three layers align, you don’t need to chase visibility. You naturally appear where customers are looking.
This isn’t theory. It’s the practical stuff that separates the brands who talk about transformation from the ones who deliver it.
So what now?
AI hasn’t rewritten the rules of marketing.
It’s just raised the bar on execution.
Small brands are already running — customer-centric, agile, data-literate.
If you’re a larger organisation, you don’t have the luxury of slow learning.
You have to leapfrog — build the right foundations, and move faster than the wave.
Because in an age where discovery is constant, being found is everything.
And being forgotten happens faster than ever.
My take
Digital levelled the playing field.
AI has highlighted the gap to many brands now and turned it into a race.
You can’t sit it out.
You can only decide whether to watch — or leap.
That’s what this new chapter is about.
Not fear. Not hype.
Just clarity, confidence, and the courage to show up — brilliantly — wherever your customers are looking.
Want to make waves and leapfrog your competitors? Drop me a message and lets chat.
Cognitive Union is a progressive, boutique learning and performance consultancy. We work with forward-thinking businesses. Transforming their people. Shaping their culture. Helping them embrace change and take on the world. Find this blog useful? Sign up to our email newsletter (bottom of this page) where you can receive articles like this and other insights (not publicly published), and you can also follow us on LinkedIn.