How to Build an AI-Admired Brand: The New Playbook for Brand Building in the AI Era

For more than two decades, marketers have focused on one primary question:

How do we make our brand memorable to people?

Today, a new question is emerging:

How do we make our brand memorable to AI?

This reflects a fundamental shift in how information is discovered and consumed. Increasingly, people are turning to AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot to search for information, compare providers, evaluate products, and seek recommendations.

In many cases, the customer journey no longer begins with a search engine. It begins with a conversation.

At SCB 10X, the venture capital arm of SCBX Group focused on disruptive technologies, we closely observe how emerging technologies reshape industries and business models. Since 2016, we have invested more than US$500 million globally in startups building breakthrough innovations across AI, blockchain, and fintech. One trend has become increasingly clear: as AI becomes the first layer of discovery, brands must rethink how they build visibility, credibility, and influence in the digital world.

Discovery Has Moved into the Chat Window

For years, brands competed for visibility on search engines, social media platforms, and digital advertising networks. Success was measured through impressions, website traffic, engagement rates, and conversions.

Generative AI is changing this dynamic.

When users ask AI assistants for recommendations, explanations, comparisons, or market insights, they often receive a direct answer without ever visiting a website. AI systems synthesize information from multiple sources and present a concise response within seconds.

As a result, being referenced by AI may become just as important as ranking on the first page of a search engine.

If AI does not recognize your organization, misunderstands your expertise, or fails to associate your brand with a relevant topic, you may never enter a customer's consideration set.

This creates a new competitive reality. Brands are no longer competing solely for human attention. They are also competing for AI recognition.

The Rise of the AI Journey

Traditional customer journeys typically follow four stages:

Awareness → Consideration → Purchase → Advocacy

AI follows a different path:

Discovery → Validation → Association → Referencing

AI first discovers information from websites and authoritative sources. It then evaluates credibility through trust signals and third-party validation. Next, it associates organizations with specific topics and areas of expertise. Finally, it decides which sources to reference when responding to users.

This distinction is critical.

Customers choose brands. AI chooses information sources.

Organizations that want to remain visible in the AI era must ensure that AI can easily find, understand, trust, and reference their content.

The Four Pillars of an AI-Admired Brand

Historically, brand building focused on how people perceive a brand. In the AI era, organizations must also consider how AI systems perceive them.

Four attributes are becoming increasingly important.

1. Discoverable

AI must be able to find your brand.

This requires accessible content, a well-structured website, clear information architecture, and visibility across authoritative digital platforms. If AI cannot find your information, it cannot recommend you.

2. Understandable

AI must clearly understand who you are and what you do.

Organizations often struggle with inconsistent messaging, vague positioning, or overly complex descriptions. The clearer the positioning, the more accurately AI can categorize and describe the organization.

3. Authentic

AI looks for signals of trust and credibility.

Media coverage, industry recognition, expert commentary, partnerships, customer success stories, and third-party validation all help strengthen confidence in a brand. In an era where content can be generated instantly, authenticity becomes an increasingly valuable differentiator.

4. Citable

AI systems are more likely to reference content that contributes original knowledge.

Research reports, proprietary data, industry analyses, benchmarks, market maps, and unique frameworks provide information that AI can use as authoritative sources. Organizations that create knowledge are more likely to become sources rather than simply consumers of information.

Together, these four dimensions increase the likelihood of achieving two critical outcomes:

AI Recognition: AI accurately understands who you are.

AI Recommendation: AI includes your brand when users ask for recommendations or expertise within a category.

From Brand Awareness to AI Recognition

For decades, brand leaders have measured success through awareness, preference, and reputation.

While these metrics remain important, a new challenge is emerging:

Does AI know who you are ? and does it understand you correctly?

A brand may be highly respected within its industry, yet still be misunderstood, miscategorized, or overlooked by AI systems.

In the AI era, visibility alone is no longer enough. Brands must ensure that AI accurately associates them with the topics, expertise, and categories they want to own.

The next step is even more valuable.

When users ask AI platforms for the best companies, experts, products, or partners in a category, does your organization appear in the answer?

This is where AI Recognition evolves into AI Recommendation.

Organizations that consistently produce authoritative content, earn third-party validation, and establish strong topic ownership will be far more likely to be surfaced when AI systems generate recommendations.

The Future of Brand Building

The next decade of branding will not be about choosing between humans and AI.

Successful brands will need to earn the trust of both.

They must continue building emotional connections, trust, and relevance with people while simultaneously ensuring that AI systems can discover, understand, validate, and reference their expertise.

As AI increasingly becomes a gateway to information, organizations must evolve from being merely visible online to becoming trusted sources of knowledge.

The brands that succeed in this new environment will not necessarily be those with the largest advertising budgets. They will be the organizations that consistently produce valuable insights, establish authority within their domains, and become the sources that both people and AI systems rely upon.

Because in the future, the brands that AI understands best may become the brands that people discover first.

Thanandorn Panichnok is Head of Branding & Community at SCB 10X, where he leads brand, communications, and ecosystem-building initiatives. He has over 10 years of experience in branding, marketing, and communications across the consulting, financial services, and technology sectors.