The Hourglass Problem: Brand Strategy for AI Search
Big bold ideas draw in people and generate attention. But people are only one audience, and equally important is content for AI systems that don’t care about creative decisions, cultural resonance or love of a brand. AI agents care about technical specifications, page structures, product details, support options and return windows. Satisfying both of these audiences requires that companies go big and take risks to engage people while also meeting the strict requirements of AI platforms.
Communications Strategy
The Hourglass Problem
Brands over-invest in two extremes and starve what holds them together
For decades, companies structured spending around two endpoints: buying fame at the top and harvesting clicks at the bottom. The middle, where specifications, support, terms and reviews live, was ignored.
Brand advertising, paid media, creative campaigns and awareness spend
The Starved Middle
SEO, conversion optimization, retargeting and performance marketing
AI evaluators surface the middle
Autonomous tools that inform purchasing decisions do not respond to creative identity or brand familiarity. They read structured data: specs, pricing, terms and reviews. A weak middle makes a brand invisible to the systems influencing buyers before any human sees an ad.
Be bold
Creative risk-taking earns human attention and builds a distinct identity worth remembering.
Be boring
Accurate, structured operational content lets AI systems find, evaluate and surface the brand.
Comms governs both
Communications must audit the operational core as a reputational asset, equal to any paid campaign.
Why Brand Strategy Matters for AI Search
Even when a person makes the final decision, they increasingly rely on choices and analysis generated by an AI tool. This is true in large B2B purchases with long sales cycles but also impulsive consumer purchases, and everything in between.
Decades of brand familiarity and distinct creative cannot help a brand if autonomous tools never surfaced it in results because the product information is unclear, uncompetitive or unavailable. But at the same time without a memorable creative identity, a company or product is forgettable and nothing more than a placeholder to the people who make purchasing decisions.
The Hourglass Problem in AI Search
Over the last few decades, businesses of all sizes structured their resources like an hourglass. At one end they focused on buying fame and at the other is harvesting clicks. For a time it worked because repetition is effective and people make impulsive clicks. Because this worked, companies starved the middle of the hourglass, the product specifications, support, terms and conditions and reviews that took more effort to maintain and whose results couldn’t be immediately quantified on a dashboard.
Decades of this structure left many companies without the distinct brand identity consumers gravitate toward or the clear documentation and proof to survive autonomous evaluators. Continuing to invest in the top and bottom of the hourglass without fixing the middle only keeps the business invisible.
Brand Strategy for the Hourglass Problem
Be bold.
Be boring.
The communications department responsible for creating and sharing bold creative expression must also govern the middle of the hourglass, the operational core. Its role is auditing it not than running it. Treating spec sheets, cancellation terms, reviews, return windows and pricing structure as critical reputational assets equal to paid ads and the logo is the only way to successfully navigate this two-sided system.
If it does not already exist, a business must directly integrate product development, e-commerce infrastructure, customer service and other “middle of the hourglass” functions with communications as the connective authority, to eliminate any discrepancies between what the company promises and what it delivers.
AI Search Brand Strategy Takeaways
- Winning requires taking creative risks to earn peoples’ attention while also publishing accurate, structured content for machines to digest
- A business without a distinct creative identity is forgettable
- Communications departments must audit the operational middle to ensure the business lives up to its promises