Last Tuesday at SxSW London, a panel discussion titled “You Are Not Who You Think You Are” laid out compelling shifts about the way our digital presence is shaping our reputations, and how LLM’s are the next vanguard in that process.
No matter what/who we think our brands stand for… we probably aren’t represented that way. And the same is true for individuals too.
The talk was hosted by Marina Chilingaryan, Director of Social & Community at NoGood, with panellists Jim McKelvey, Co-Founder of Block (formerly Square), and Mostafa Elbermawy from Goodie AI. However… have you spotted the glaring error in the main image of this post? They purposefully had their names misrepresented on the screen behind them to make the point! None of them were represented correctly!
The conversation tackled a rapidly emerging question: When AI and search engines are the ones deciding who gets seen, who gets chosen, and who gets ignored… how do you make sure you’re showing up the way you want to?
The message is clear for brands and individuals alike. If you think your reputation is based on who you are, you’re already behind. It’s based on how you’re understood. And increasingly, that understanding is being shaped by algorithms & LLM’s, not people.
Why you should care
In the old world, you wrote your brand narrative. You pushed it out via ads, websites, PR and content. You could mostly control the story. When search engines became a significant driver in consumer decision making, you could take steps to optimise your presence so the engines recognised you. In the rapidly morphing new world? AI engines are writing the narrative for you.
When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini or Perplexity a question—”What’s the best B2B strategy agency?” “Who’s leading in AI-driven marketing?”—they’re relying on an LLM to pull in relevant content, infer credibility, and return results in seconds. You might be brilliant, but if the LLMs don’t know it (or worse, get the wrong impression), you’ll never even make the shortlist.
Jim McKelvey has been exploring how to measure that. He’s developed a tool—PWR Score—that helps visualise how your name, your brand, or your company is represented by large language models. You type in a person, product, or company, and it shows how the major LLMs interpret your digital footprint.
This tool is in its earliest stages, but as it evolves it, and many others that will inevitably follow, could provide a live reputational index.
And this matters more and more because this is yet another area in which the classic marketing funnel is collapsing. According to Mostafa Elbermawy, large language models are outperforming search engines in decision-making influence. He cites as an example, that when ChatGPT recommends a hotel, consumers are twice as likely to book it compared to when it appears on Google.Every phase of the funnel—from awareness to decision—is starting to happen within the LLM.
The Shifting Rules of Discovery
This changes everything for marketers.
Because if someone asks “Who should I talk to about AI agents in marketing?” and you or your brand aren’t visible to the LLM, you don’t exist in that moment.
What makes this more complex is that LLMs don’t crawl the web the way Google does. Each engine behaves differently. Some weigh Wikipedia heavily, others tap trusted news sources, others rely on forum content, or third-party reviews. Some are regularly updated; some less so. What this means is that your marketing content strategy now needs to account for LLM discoverability, not just SEO.
And because LLMs don’t just retrieve, they generate, your brand narrative is constantly being reshaped depending on the query, context, and what the model knows about you at that moment.
In other words, it’s dynamic, fuzzy, and very hard to control.
So What Can You Do?
Let’s start with three simple, immediate actions:
1. Audit your digital footprint
Use tools like PWR Score to see how AI models are interpreting your brand. Don’t just Google yourself—ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity about you or your company. See what comes up. If it’s inaccurate, outdated or non-existent, that’s your red flag.
2. Optimise content for AI discoverability
Create content that clearly signals who you are, what you do, and why you matter. Make sure your website is crawlable, your metadata is structured, and your language aligns with the way your audience searches and queries AI. It’s not just about ranking. It’s about being understood. Think through the entire “funnel” or purchase life cycle.
3. Build trust signals
AI models rely on third-party validation. Make sure your brand shows up in reputable media, is cited in expert blogs or journals, and has a consistent presence across platforms. Testimonials, thought leadership, case studies—they all feed into how LLMs shape your story.
Final Thought
We’re entering an era where reputation is increasingly outsourced. You don’t just tell people who you are. You have to train the machines to see you that way too.
For marketing leaders, this is both an opportunity and a wake-up call. The next frontier of brand strategy isn’t just search engine optimisation. It’s LLM optimisation. And those who understand it early will shape the narrative the rest of the world sees.
Because if you’re not shaping your digital identity for AI… someone—or something—else will.
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 publically published), and you can also follow us on LinkedIn.