A recent Institute for Public Relations webinar, titled “Al-Powered Answer Engines: Shifts in Digital Reputation Building,” gathered expert panelists from Phyusion, InfluenceAI, Axicom and Dell Technologies to discuss the influence that AI-powered chatbots have on brands’ digital reputations. Of particular concern was the potentially detrimental effect these large language models can have on shaping brand perception and redirecting search traffic from brands.
Defining the Term ‘Answer Engine’
In the context of this discussion, “answer engine” refers to widely-used large language model AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity and Claude, which produce content summaries in response to a user’s question. While a traditional search engine produces recommended links, answer engines provide definitive responses.
“What's really fundamentally different about how search is changing and reputation is changing is that your user is asking a question, and then in a very natural language they're getting a very concise, succinct answer that is given to them in a very 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 include 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 survey that predicted a 50% drop in brands’ organic search in the next four years as more consumers embrace AI-powered search. “When you look at the end of it, that results—for brands specifically—in a potential big loss in organic traffic," she says. "That also means the search terms they're using… need to change as well.”
More Than a Productivity Tool
In Brian Snyder’s experience as Global President of Digital at Axicom, not all leaders are treating this AI-powered evolution with adequate urgency. “Brand marketing and corporate communications leaders are, for the most part, just now starting to pay attention to how consumers and other stakeholders might experience their brand through AI in the future and how their brand shows up in these AI answer engines today,” he says.
More frequently the focus is on using AI to supercharge their team’s work, a view he refers to as an “inside out” approach to AI. He urges marketing and comms professionals to take the “outside in” view instead, which considers how AI may change how consumers and other stakeholders experience brands.
Caitlin Rourk, Senior Consultant, Corporate Affairs, Dell Technologies, believes it’s incumbent on communicators to lead the charge and “aggressively lean into this new world... to understand how LLMs are prioritizing and processing different types of data, moving beyond this focus of traditional search,” she says. “From an opportunity for risk standpoint, we also have to consider how the threat landscape has changed with regard to the potential for misinformation or disinformation.”
In addition to encouraging attendees to leverage technology tools to monitor your specific AI-driven reputation, panelists outlined five ways in which marketing and communications professionals can proactively manage digital brand reputation amid the shift brought about by AI-powered answer engines.
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Use AI answer engines for reputational research
The communications team at Dell Technologies uses answer engines to help spot reputational trends. “They help us conduct research. They help us get instantaneous feedback and insights into public perceptions,” Rourk says. “They help us do market analysis, at breakneck speed. All of that can shape what we do... to manage our reputation generally.”
Rourk also ensures it’s a component of Dell’s issue and crisis management planning. “This has to be woven into everything that 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, as we consider our communication 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 shows up in answer engines
The first step to monitoring how your company, brand, product or service shows up in these answer engines is to perform an audit. Determine whether you like what’s being communicated about your brand and also how it measures up relative to competitors within responses about your category, says Snyder.
And then set a vision for the future. "What's the change that you want to create in these AI answer engines?... And then you need to align all of your communications across marcomm disciplines in service of influencing these AI answer engines going forward,” Snyder says. “Start with an audit, set a vision, align plans, coordinate execution, and then measure your progress along the way.”
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Be hypervigilant about all marketing and communications messages
While AI content creation tools like Jasper and Adobe Firefly are being used to expedite her team’s work, Rourk warns that this can lead to a “quantity over quality mindset.” “We forget that we're not really going back and saying, well, is this really the most compelling content that we can be putting out there? Are we really showing up and putting our best foot forward as a brand?” she says. “For us it's been being hypervigilant about the messages that we're putting out.”
“Start looking with a critical eye at every piece of content that your communications and marketing functions are putting out,” recommends Snyder. “Ask yourself, what questions might this piece of content be used by an AI answer engine to answer? And then optimize your content to serve as a resource for AI answer engines to use in positioning your brand the way that you want them to position it.”
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Have an infrastructure in place to adapt to rapid AI change
From a process standpoint, Rourk recommends that in-house teams have the infrastructure in place to handle and adapt to rapid technology changes supercharged by AI. “Prepare your teams for working like a well-oiled machine, because that's the only way that teams are going to be able to survive this and keep their head above water,” she says.
Amid all the advantages of tapping new AI technologies for efficiencies, there’s some benefit to getting back to basics, Rourk says. Otherwise, from a purely crisis and issues management perspective, it could feel like a game of whack-a-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 into earned media
Earned media is more important than ever, Snyder says, because AI answer engines are being trained on this content—and that informs how your brand shows up. “There's a reason that these AI companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars licensing earned media content, because they know that it is authoritative, it's expert, it's authentic, it's trustworthy,” he says.
Echoing Rourk's remarks, Snyder encouraged going back to the basics. Ask yourself, "what are the tried and true marketing things that we're doing? Taking another look at your Wikipedia presence… bringing these things together and making sure that they're all aligned in the same direction, which is, how are we getting our story told—and the way it gets picked up by these AI answer engines—to better position us with our stakeholders.”
Kaylee Hultgren is Content Director for PRNEWS.