AI isn’t just changing how brands communicate—it’s redefining what brands are. When 73% of marketing teams use generative AI, brand identity becomes a negotiation between human intent and machine interpretation. AI is an active agent shaping consumer perception.
Brands aren’t built—they’re inferred
Brands face a critical challenge: maintaining control over their narrative in an ecosystem where algorithms actively interpret—and often redefine—brand meaning.
“Brand mentions are the new backlinks in the age of AI search. While Google counts links, AI counts conversations. The game has shifted from link-building to voice-building.” Britney Muller
Consumers are increasingly discovering brands through AI-curated summaries, voice search, and visual recommendations, rather than traditional brand-controlled messaging, paid keywords or influencer PR packages. AI now decodes meaning from behavioral residue left across fragmented digital ecosystems, forcing CMOs to engineer brand architecture for machine cognition as well.
The New Rules of Brand Legacy
Legacy without machine readability becomes nostalgia
The iconic design house Hermès, founded in 1837, emerged long before the advent of electricity and artificial intelligence. They are a testament to the fact that iconic design becomes an AI brand narrative when properly encoded. The "H" buckle isn't just a logo—it's a machine-readable semaphore broadcasting luxury credentials across every AI that parses it.
For modern enterprises, the mandate is brutal: architect brand assets that function as both human status symbols and machine learning features. Those who master this duality will own the next era of search. Multimodal AI doesn’t parse campaigns—it reverse-engineers cultural relevance from data exhaust. Hermès’ 188-year dominance reveals the new law: distinctive design DNA becomes training data by default. The real battleground lies in four perception gaps exposed by the Johari Window framework. Originally developed by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in 1955, the Johari Window model reveals four perception zones that now define brand visibility in AI ecosystems. For enterprise organizations, understanding these zones isn't psychological navel-gazing—it's savvy marketing calculus.
The Psychological Window of Brand Control
AI doesn't need backlinks to understand brand authority, it focuses on contextualizing brands, much like humans do. The core mechanics of the Johari Window framework, help reveal perceptions gaps for brands that are adopting AI yet struggling with misaligned brand narratives. Originally designed to map self-awareness in interpersonal communication, it can be used as a window of brand control. The framework’s endurance lies in its ruthless exposure of how all entities – people, brands, AI systems – are partially blind to how others perceive them. Perception is collaborative – reality forms through mutual awareness gaps.
“Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool”. - Eric Schmidt, Google CEO 2008.
We’ve evolved Luft and Ingham’s original model into a strategic control panel for enterprise brands:
Modern brand architecture exists in a tension field between declared intent and algorithmic inference. Your brand isn’t what you declare—it’s what AI infers from the digital footprint you leave behind.
Speaking of shadow brands, Semrush Enterprise is in open beta.
The 2025 CMO Mandate : Brand Assets Must Become Training Data
AI is a brand ambassador. It does not function with keywords, hashtags, backlinks or any of the typical online marketing components. For example, Google’s Contrastive Captioner (CoCa) model can extract meaning from images, classifying them without any need for text descriptions. The CMO mandate is to equip their team to become sophisticated behavioral semiotics engines, decoding the language of customer actions and transforming them into actionable insights:
- Eliminate guesswork through always-on consumer pulse checks
- Your brand assets must become training data for AI
- Shorten insight-to-action cycles and weaponize structured context as a competitive moat
- Audit algorithmic perception gaps: future-proof marketing ops via integrated dashboards tracking cross-channel impact
- Convert every product shot, infographic, and retail footprint into structured training signals for LLMs
- Voice search narrative drift
- Competitor's latent semantic positioning
Just as Google now processes images, videos, and local signals alongside text, AI Optimization from Semrush Enterprise helps enterprise teams synthesize disparate data streams into coherent narratives. The real power lies not in any single dataset, but in the connective tissue between conversations, actions and the power of your brand.
Decode Your AI Brand Footprint: Join the waitlist for beta access to AI Optimization.
Modern Brand Architecture
Global brands don't optimize for algorithms—they become AI’s reference point.
A luxury brand’s products may appear in AI-generated fashion recommendations even if the brand never explicitly marketed them for that purpose. Known for its exclusivity and timeless designs, Hermès is a perfect illustration of a high-end haute couture house that might appear in AI-generated fashion recommendations without actively pursuing such placements.
So how does it happen? AI systems process and relate various data types. By processing text, images, and audio in concert, LLM ecosystems decode context with human-like sophistication.
AI is rewriting brand visibility rules and branded content must be monitored and optimized across multiple formations to maintain control over your brand narrative in AI-driven environments. CMOs need access to a multidimensional dataset to:
- Monitor exactly how LLM ecosystems interpret products, retail footprints, and cultural signals—not just text mentions. Hermès-level brands maintain narrative control through AI's associative memory, not keyword density.
- Detect emerging context clusters in AI-generated recommendations faster than traditional social listening. For example, your Spring '25 collection could dominate wedding attire suggestions without a single "bridal" campaign.
- Track how some blended behavioral signals inform AI's perception of your brand's emotional signature
AI Recognition of Iconic Pieces
Hermès was born in 1837. This enduring brand didn’t need aggressive digital strategies to become synonymous with luxury—its iconic design and cultural significance did the work organically. Systems trained on fashion data would likely recognize Hermès products due to their distinctive designs and cultural significance. An iconic brand beats a technically optimized website and carefully curated keywords. Here’s how:
- The Birkin bag's unique shape
- The "H" belt buckle
- The intricate patterns of Hermès scarves that my father loved to buy my mother.
These elements are so well-known in the fashion world that an AI might include them in style recommendations without Hermès actively participating in AI marketing strategies. But in a world where AI drives search, even the most recognizable brands must ensure their visibility aligns with their value. In enterprise marketing, intelligence fragmentation is a death sentence. Don’t let your brand’s legacy get lost in fragmented workflows or outdated tools.
AI Optimization empowers your teams to amplify what makes your brand iconic. Join the Waitlist!
Organic Presence in Fashion Data
Hermès’ 188-year narrative isn’t just great marketing—it’s structured context that teaches algorithms how to weigh scarcity vs accessibility in product recommendations, which craftsmanship markers justify luxury pricing and why heritage depth correlates with perceived authenticity for humans. Their products frequently appear in:
- Street style photography
- Celebrity outfits
- Fashion editorials
- Social media posts by influencers and fashion enthusiasts
This organic presence in fashion imagery and discussions online provides ample data for AI systems to learn about Hermès products and their styling. Hermès is known for its traditional approach to marketing, focusing on craftsmanship and heritage rather than aggressive digital strategies. However, the brand's products might still appear in AI-generated recommendations due to:
- High-value association: AI recognizing Hermès items as markers of luxury and style
- Versatility: Classic pieces that complement various outfits
- Aspirational appeal: AI systems identifying Hermès products as desirable additions to a wardrobe
This scenario demonstrates how a luxury brand's reputation and product distinctiveness can lead to AI visibility, even without the brand's direct involvement in marketing initiatives tailored to this. The implication is clear: brands must ensure consistency in how they are visually and verbally represented across AI-driven ecosystems. AI Optimization from Semrush Enterprise helps enterprise teams map elements (Birkin silhouettes, "H" buckles) that resonate across consumer markets.
Join the Waitlist for AI Optimization, Go Beyond Human-Only Branding.
The New Rules of Brand Legacy
Brand legacy in the AI era isn’t about preserving the past—it’s about engineering the future. The brands that survive won’t just adapt to AI—they’ll become its reference code.
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Close the AI Training Loop
Quantify what makes your patterns/designs algorithmically distinctive. Create assets that improve AI’s training while resisting commoditization. The Birkin’s trapezoidal shape serves as both status symbol and machine learning anchor.
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Become a Data Philanthropist
Flood ecosystems with structured context about your differentiators. Hermès relies on experts and AI to identify counterfeits of their product. They make it very easy for machines to spot a real Birkin from a pale imitation.
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Enforce Semantic Precision
Detect and assess AI’s misinterpretations of brand ethos (e.g., luxury ≠ exclusivity alone; craftsmanship ≠ "expensive"). Hermès' saddle-stitch patterns now train models to recognize artisanal mastery through thread tension variability and leather grain irregularities—not price tags.
The future belongs to brands that weaponize their legacy—even a recent one—as living data. Hermès’ "H" buckle isn’t a logo—it’s a semaphore for machines. Your brand’s next chapter won’t be written by marketers. It’ll be inferred from the cultural footprint you leave behind.
Rewrite Your Brand's AI Narrative, Join the AI Optimization Waitlist.
