A recent webinar for the Institute for Public Relations, titled “Al-Powered Answer Engines: Shifts in Digital Reputation Building,” brought together expert panelists from Phyusion, InfluenceAI, Axicom, and Dell Technologies to discuss the impact AI-powered chatbots are having on brands’ digital reputation. Of particular concern was the potentially detrimental effect these large language models could have on shaping brand perception and redirecting search traffic away from brands.
Define the term “Answer Engine”
In the context of this discussion, “answer engine” refers to commonly used chatbots for large language models of AI, such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude, that produce content summaries in response to a user’s question. While a traditional search engine produces recommended links, answer engines provide definitive answers.
“What’s really fundamentally different about how search is changing and reputation is changing is that your user asks a question, and then in a very natural language, they get a very concise, concise answer given to them in a completely different form. It’s not a bunch of different links,” says Samantha Stark, founder, Phyusion and moderator of the conversation. In addition to providing users with information about a brand, company or service, which may or may not contain false or misleading information, these summaries also bypass organic search results.
Stark foresees a massive shift in how brands’ digital reputations will take shape among the public, citing a Gartner study that predicted a 50% drop in organic search for brands over the next four years as more consumers embrace AI-powered search. “When you look at the end of it, it results — for brands specifically — in a potential big loss in organic traffic,” she says. “It also means that the search terms they use… need to change as well.”
More than a productivity tool
Brian Snyder’s experience as Global President of Digital at Axicom is that not all leaders treat these AI-driven developments with sufficient urgency. “Brand marketing and corporate communications leaders are, for the most part, just now starting to pay attention to how consumers and other stakeholders may experience their brand through AI in the future and how their brand appears in these AI response engines today,” he says.
More often, the focus is on using AI to supercharge his team’s work, a view he refers to as an “inside-out” approach to AI. He urges marketing and communications professionals to instead look “from the outside in,” considering how AI can change the way consumers and other stakeholders experience brands.
Caitlin Rourk, Senior Consultant, Corporate Affairs, Dell Technologies, believes that the onus is on communicators to lead the charge and “aggressively lean into this new world…to understand how LLMs prioritize and process different types of data, and go beyond this focus of traditional search, she says, “From a risk perspective, we also need to consider how the threat landscape has changed with respect to the potential for disinformation or disinformation.”
In addition to encouraging attendees to leverage technology tools to monitor your specific AI-powered reputation, the panelists outlined five ways marketing and communications professionals can proactively manage digital brand reputation amid the transformation brought about by AI-powered response engines.
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Use AI response engines for reputation research
The communications team at Dell Technologies uses response engines to discover reputation trends. “They help us conduct research. They help us get instant feedback and insights into public perceptions,” says Rourk. “They help us do market analysis, at breakneck speed. All of this can shape what we do… to manage our reputation in general.”
Rourk also makes sure it’s part of Dell’s problem and crisis management planning. “This has to be woven into everything we do. We’ve really tried to see this as a new dimension, just like any other dimension that we consider, any lens that we look through, when we consider our communications strategy and content strategy, both for good and for the potential many negative consequences that can come with the shift,” she says.
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Monitor how your brand appears in response engines
The first step in monitoring how your company, brand, product or service appears in these response engines is to perform an audit. Determine if you like what’s being communicated about your brand and also how it measures up against competitors within responses about your category, says Snyder.
And then set a vision for the future. “What is the change that you want to create in these AI response engines?… And then you have to align all of your communications across marcomm disciplines to influence these AI response engines going forward,” Snyder says. “Start with a review, set a vision, adjust plans, coordinate execution, and then measure your progress along the way.”
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Be vigilant about all marketing and communications messages
While AI content creation tools like Jasper and Adobe Firefly are used to speed up her team’s work, Rourk warns that this can lead to a “quantity over quality mindset.” “We forget that we don’t really step back and say, well, is this really the most compelling content that we can put out there? Are we really showing and putting our best foot forward as a brand?” she says. “For us, it’s been about monitoring the messages we put out.”
“Start looking with a critical eye at every piece of content your communications and marketing functions put out,” advises Snyder. “Ask yourself, what questions can this content be used by an AI answer engine to answer? And then optimize your content to act as a resource for AI answer engines to use to position your brand the way you want to they’re going to position it.”
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Have an infrastructure in place to adapt to rapid AI changes
From a process perspective, Rourk recommends that internal teams have the infrastructure in place to manage and adapt to rapid technology changes supercharged by AI. “Prepare your teams to work like a well-oiled machine, because that’s the only way teams will be able to survive this and keep their heads above water,” she says.
Amidst all the benefits of leveraging new AI technology for efficiency, there is some benefit to going back to basics, says Rourk. Otherwise, from a pure crisis and case management perspective, it could feel like a game of mole. “Because of the pace … and the volume of things coming through from a social listening standpoint, you have to have thresholds in place to account for this.”
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Lean heavily on earned media
Earned media is more important than ever, says Snyder, because AI response engines are trained on this content—and it informs how your brand appears. “There’s a reason these AI companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars licensing earned media content, because they know it’s authoritative, it’s expert, it’s authentic, it’s trustworthy,” he says.
Echoing Rourke’s comments, Snyder encouraged going back to basics. Ask yourself, “what are the proven marketing things that we’re doing? Take another look at your Wikipedia presence … bring those things together and make sure they’re all aligned in the same direction, that is, how do we feel about getting our story told – and how it is captured by these AI response engines – to better position us with our stakeholders.”
Kaylee Hultgren is Content Director for PRNEWS.
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