🪞 The paradox of being recommendable

Every marketing blog I’ve scrolled through lately seems obsessed with the same question: “How do you get AI to recommend your brand?”

Here’s what strikes me about this entire conversation: we’re optimizing for the wrong thing. We’re chasing AI visibility like it’s the goal, when really it’s just the scoreboard.

And in doing so, we’ve walked straight into a trap.

The harder you try to optimize for being mentioned, the less worth mentioning you become.

The optimization trap

Think about how AI models actually work. They surface what people naturally talk about, reference, and value. They recommend based on genuine signals—the brands that show up in discussions, get referenced in quality content, solve real problems people care about.

You can’t hack your way into that. Not in the long run, anyway.

When you optimize directly for AI visibility—implementing tracking tools, gaming ranking factors, focusing on mention metrics—you’re treating it like a system to manipulate rather than an outcome to earn.

You’re investing in being seen rather than in being valuable.

Consider hotels for a second. DoubleTree by Hilton greets guests with a fresh, warm cookie at check-in. And if you want a less posh example: that small, central London hotel near Piccadilly competes by having rooms that aren’t as claustrophobically tiny as the next-door budget option.

Neither of them is optimizing for “hotel recommendation algorithms.” They’re creating offers and experiences that their key target audiences actually value and tell their friends about.

Why we chase it anyway

Look, I get it. This isn’t about marketers being naive or incompetent.

It’s about pressure.

Your peers are all talking about AI visibility. Your CEO heard about it at a conference. Your board asked about your “GEO strategy” in the last meeting. There’s this gnawing fear that if you’re not actively optimizing for this, you’re falling behind.

Our psychology also works against us here. New technology triggers our novelty bias. The measurability of AI mentions is seductive compared to the fuzziness of “customer delight.” FOMO is real when everyone’s racing toward the same shiny object.

Plus, we’re all stuck in a bit of a marketing echo chamber. We talk about the new stuff constantly because we already know the old stuff. So it feels like AI visibility is THE conversation. But when you actually talk to customers? Their decision-making is way more nuanced. Sure, they might use ChatGPT for research, but that’s one touchpoint in a much more complex journey.

What actually works

So what’s the move for experienced marketers trying to navigate this tension?

I think it comes down to two practical pivots:

First, change your decision-making filter. When evaluating any new initiative, ask yourself: “Are we optimizing to be mentioned, or optimizing to be worth mentioning?” It’s a simple question, but it cuts through a lot of noise. One approach treats AI as a game to win. The other treats it as a reflection of genuine value.

Second, educate internally. When leadership pushes for AI visibility metrics, you need to reframe the conversation. Help them see the paradox. Give them this lens, and suddenly the pressure shifts from “track our AI mentions” to “make sure we’re creating something people actually want to talk about.”

Third, turn back to your audience. If you asked your customers how they make decisions, you’ll probably discover that their journey involves AI but isn’t dominated by it. You should be paying attention to how real people in your market actually behave—not just what other marketers are theorizing about.

***

The fundamental truth hasn’t changed: you can’t optimize your way into genuine recommendations.

Do the work that makes you worth talking about. Create products and experiences that people naturally want to share. Build content that’s actually valuable enough to reference. Deliver on your promises in ways that surprise and delight.

AI visibility will follow. Not because you gamed the system, but because you earned it.

Worth matters,

📆 Do you have a content system in place for 2026?

I’ve always been obsessed with strategic focus and I was so excited to meet someone of the same persuasion. Adriana Tica is a fellow marketing strategist and ruthless prioritizer and together, we’ll show you how to succeed more while doing less content. We’ll share:

How to translate business goals into content goals that actually map to revenue
How to decide what content is worth creating
Smart distribution and repurposing principles to make content work harder
How to free yourself from algorithm dependency
How to measure and optimize your content performance

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👌 Handpicked stories for you

Here are some interesting things I stumbled upon this week while reading, writing, researching, and being a generally curious marketing person on the internet:

💼 Three for work

10 ways your peers and mentors are using AI today – swipe them to grow your copy business | Some great AI use cases for copywriters in here! I especially loved the point about directing clients (or your team) how to use AI for better copy feedback – it’s a smart way to prevent surface-level feedback slop.

The Architecture of Authority: An 8-Task Workflow for Engineering a High-Performance Content Hub | This is really practical and actionable advice for becoming the authority on a topic. It is a long process, but at the end, you get specific ideas and an action plan for creating content that positions you as THE expert to follow.

$7,500 positioning service as a $50 DIY process | I rarely find LinkedIn posts that are worth sharing these days, but this is one of them. Lawrence shares the step-by-step process for positioning his offer following FletchPMM’s process. You can use it as a guide for figuring out your positioning, too.

👀 Two for fun

This font salvaged from the bottom of the Thames | Getting inspiration from the past is a great strategy and there’s no better example than digitizing a forgotten analog typeface.

This map of ancient roads | Apparently, we have a ton of data on the roads the Ancient Romans built – I got a kick out of seeing where they were in my home city.