For the last 12 months, I have been compiling a working encyclopaedia of the best thinking on how generative AI is reshaping brand visibility and commercial outcomes. For communications professionals, the early GenAI hype has now given way to a healthy wariness about a permanent fixture that is both opportunity and nemesis.
Monthly chatbot visits are already north of seven billion, approaching ten per cent of traditional search traffic, and close to half of Copilot’s conversations are commercial in nature. People are now researching, comparing and buying products inside answer engines, highlighting why both brand visibility and the quality of this citation in those environments matters. The second point is moot, and Hard Numbers’ work with Onclusive shows that when your brand shows up in generative search, highly positive earned sentiment makes you around three times more likely to win head‑to‑head commercial comparisons.
The paradox for me is that many communicators still see GenAI as a black box they are “keeping an eye on” rather than a channel their teams must use and drive now. Right away, that usage accountability gap is an own goal. Boston Consulting Group estimates that communications could reclaim 26–36 per cent of its time through GenAI today, rising to 34–47 per cent once teams redesign their workflows.
The mandate is set. If you are a head of communications wondering where to start, here are five moves that will help take you from GenAI Zero to Hero.
1. Reset the mindset: your earned‑first superpower
The first move is not a tool; it is a mindset. We are in the midst of a communications reset with the storyteller back at the centre, framing stories that both humans and algorithms recognise as credible. Muck Rack’s Generative Pulse shows that the vast majority of sources cited in AI answers are non‑paid third‑party sites – journalism, industry outlets, government databases, niche publishers – and that a small group of outlets account for a disproportionate share of citations. In that environment, earned attention does not just build reputation; it defines how machines surface and recommend you.
Communications teams need to stop treating this as someone else’s problem and see it as opportunity. Narrative architecture, operational fluency, media literacy and getting the story straight across constituencies are the critical bridge between human stakeholders and machine discovery. No one else in the organisation is trained for that.
2. Follow the thread: benchmark where you stand
New terrain requires a ball of string to remember the route we have travelled. For GenAI, that means continual measurement and refinement. Expand beyond traditional media and keyword rankings into generative and “zero‑click” surfaces, and track where your brand appears there over time.
A quarterly AI search benchmark is a good starting point. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot and rigorously ask the questions your buyers would ask: “Who are the leading X providers?”, “What is Y known for?”, “Who should I hire for Z?”. Capture where and how your brand appears, what is missing, which competitors show up, and which sources are cited. Treat this as a baseline you intend to move, just as you would share of voice or reputation scores. What gets measured gets managed, even if the dashboards are for now imperfect.
3. Get your own house in order: machine‑readable credibility
You must also provide both people and models with content that is worth repeating. AirOps’ analysis of more than half a million brand pages retrieved by ChatGPT shows that only 15 per cent are ever cited; 85 per cent are ignored. Pages with clear title–query alignment more than double their citation chances, and readable language and mid‑range domain authority tend to outperform jargon‑heavy pages on huge but bland sites. Ahrefs’ earlier work points in the same direction: branded web mentions – how often and how widely you are discussed – correlate more strongly with AI visibility than classic backlinks.
For comms, this is low‑hanging fruit. Sharpen your “about” pages, FAQs, leader bios, case studies and thought leadership. Then think like an LLM: is your explanation of who you are consistent, precise and easy to lift? Does it exist in places that models treat as trustworthy such as LinkedIn, Wikipedia, YouTube transcripts and relevant Reddit communities? The goal is not more content; the goal is targeted, machine‑readable credibility.
4. Put LinkedIn and Reddit on the front row
Next, accept and embrace the other entities where the new gatekeepers get their inputs. Semrush’s citation work across ChatGPT Search, Perplexity and Google’s AI experiences recently put Reddit as the most cited domain (around 11.3 per cent), LinkedIn second (about 11 per cent), followed by Wikipedia and YouTube. This is where real people argue, explain and recommend, and it is feeding generative search.
LinkedIn’s own engineering team has recently confirmed that its rebuilt feed uses LLM‑based embeddings to model topical expertise and engagement history, which means regular, high‑quality contributions on your core themes travel much further than sporadic broadcast posts. Your executives’ LinkedIn presence is therefore a discovery channel, not a vanity project. And if you are absent from the LinkedIn and Reddit conversations that define your category, then AI systems will happily learn from whoever is there instead.
5. Assign real ownership and protect experiments
Finally, none of this happens by osmosis. Both the IPR and Cision point to the same organisational problem: responsibility for AI search visibility sits across SEO, brand, comms and product, which means it risks being nobody’s job. The fifth move is to assign ownership and protect experimentation.
Give a named person or team a 90‑day mandate to own generative visibility: map where you are, prioritise the prompts and categories that matter most, identify the two or three biggest proof gaps, and run structured tests on what gets remembered and repeated. Borrow from marketing’s 70:20:10 rule; keep the engine running, but ring‑fence time and budget for GEO experiments rather than waiting for a crisis to force change. The slow‑lane reverie – that “everyone else is behind, we will catch up later” – simply means the ten per cent who are already doing this will soon be lapping you in visibility, trust and influence.
This is no time for wallflowers
Five moves, starting with mindset, are enough to get moving.
Your ability to connect across cultures and audiences, to turn complexity into explanation and trust, is exactly what will enhance your position in the organisation and keep you shoulder to shoulder with other disciplines in a genuinely integrated team.
This is communications’ moment, not its demise.