The Future of AI Search Belongs to Ultra-Relevant Brands

Search as we’ve known it is disappearing. For two decades, brands fought for keywords, backlinks, and domain authority to rise through Google’s blue links. That world is ending. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are replacing the act of “searching” with the act of “asking.” People no longer sift through ten blue links. Now they get one synthesized answer. This means that brands aren’t just found, they’re chosen. And the critical question is: Which brands will AI trust enough to serve up first?

Why “Different” Doesn’t Matter Anymore
For decades, brand strategy has obsessed over differentiation: finding the one thing that sets you apart. But here’s the truth: AI doesn’t care if you’re different. It cares if you’re relevant. Differentiation is subjective. Relevance is objective. When someone asks AI for “the best mortgage lender for first-time buyers” or “the fastest way to launch a brand internationally,” the engine isn’t parsing who has the most creative origin story. It’s parsing who has the clearest, most consistent signals of solving that problem. Differentiation may win awards. Relevance wins discoverability.

Ultra-Relevance: The New Competitive Edge
At Fazer, we call this Ultra-Relevance. It’s the ability for a brand to align itself so tightly to solving the customer’s hero pain point that it becomes the obvious, instinctive choice. Ultra-Relevance is not about being everything to everyone. It’s about solving one critical problem better than anyone else, so well that both customers and AI engines know exactly who to trust.

Think of it this way: AI search is essentially a judgment engine. It looks across billions of signals and decides who provides the clearest, strongest answer to a problem. If your brand hasn’t defined its hero pain point and broadcast it with clarity, AI will pass you over. In other words, AI search rewards clarity of problem-solving, not creativity of difference.

De-Positioning: The Engine of Ultra-Relevance
So how do brands achieve Ultra-Relevance? Through a methodology we call De-Positioning. Instead of chasing differentiation for the sake of it, De-Positioning identifies your customer’s biggest pain point — their hero problem — and aligns every aspect of your brand strategy around solving it. When executed properly, De-Positioning does two things simultaneously:

1. 1. It makes you ultra-relevant to customers, because you’ve solved their most pressing issue.
   2. It makes competitors irrelevant, because you’ve reframed the battlefield around the problem you own.

This is exactly what AI is looking for. Large language models are trained to surface trustworthy, clear solutions. Brands that embody De-Positioning show up in AI search because they’ve built a trail of consistent, problem-solving signals. So when Byron Sharp argues for “mental availability,” De-Positioning adds the missing piece: mental advantage. The ultra-relevance it delivers makes you not just known, but the preferred choice.

Case Study: Look Who’s Winning in AI Search Today
We can already see this shift in action. Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity about sustainable sneakers, and Veja consistently appears. Why? Because Veja has built its entire brand — from supply chain to storytelling — around solving one hero pain point: radical transparency in sustainable fashion.

Their Project Veja site (project.veja-store.com) openly documents materials, factories, workers, and environmental impact. Instead of hiding complexity, they surface proof at every step.

That clarity makes it easy for AI engines to recognize Veja as the trusted answer when consumers ask for sustainable or ethical sneakers. This strategy is the future unfolding in real time: brands that own a hero pain point solution and back it with evidence are emerging, while those chasing “differentiation” are fading into irrelevance.

What the Data Says
The evidence backs all of this up. According to Forrester, companies that align to solving customer pain points see measurable ROI:

• • +41% revenue growth
  • +49% higher margins
  • +51% stronger customer retention

Gartner projects that by 2027, 80% of brand discovery will begin inside AI interfaces rather than traditional search engines. And Edelman’s Trust Barometer found that 63% of consumers choose brands that “best solve my problems” — a signal that relevance, not difference, drives both choice and loyalty. So the message is clear: solving pain isn’t fluffy-soft strategy, it’s financial. And now, it’s the only way to stay visible in AI search.

Gartner projects that by 2027, 80% of brand discovery will begin inside AI interfaces rather than traditional search engines. And Edelman’s Trust Barometer found that 63% of consumers choose brands that “best solve my problems” — a signal that relevance, not difference, drives both choice and loyalty. So the message is clear: solving pain isn’t fluffy-soft strategy, it’s financial. And now, it’s the only way to stay visible in AI search.

What Brands Must Do Now
If the future of AI search belongs to ultra-relevant brands, how do you make sure you’re one of them? Here’s the playbook:

1. Audit Your Discoverability
Map your digital footprint against your customer’s hero pain point. Does every page, post, and piece of content reinforce your role as the solver? Or are you muddying the waters with generic claims and fluff

2. Simplify Your Signals
AI engines don’t reward complexity. Strip your brand narrative down to the core problem you solve. Remove competing messages. Make it impossible for AI, or a human, to mistake your brand for anything else.

3. Build Proof Into Your Brand
AI values evidence. Case studies, testimonials, third-party citations, and data. These aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re fuel for discoverability. Every claim you make should be backed by proof.

4. Invest in Structured Content
FAQs, Q&A pages, schema markup, and clear topic clusters. These give AI the structured input it needs to recognize your authority. If you’re not feeding the machine in a machine-readable way, you’re invisible.

5. Link Strategy to Execution
Ultra-Relevance isn’t just a messaging exercise. It must run through your brand strategy, marketing campaigns, and sales motions. If your story fractures between departments, AI will pick up the noise and downgrade your trustworthiness.

The Future Is a World Without “Search”
Look just a few years ahead. Instead of typing queries into Google, consumers will simply ask their AI assistant: “Book me the most trusted doctor in New York,” or “Find the best B2B payments partner for my startup.” The assistant won’t present ten links. It will present one clear answer or give you several clear options.

In that world, brands not optimized for AI discoverability simply won’t be options. They won’t be seen, considered, or chosen. They’ll be invisible. The implications are massive. Marketing funnels will collapse. The fight for shelf space will be replaced by the fight for answer space. The brands that survive will be those that feed AI engines the clearest, most consistent signals of problem-solving relevance.

The Risk of Irrelevance
Here’s the hard truth. Brands that cling to differentiation as their main brand strategy will disappear from AI search. If your brand strategy is built on “being different,” or “standing for a purpose” that isn’t directly tied to solving your customer’s pain, AI won’t surface you. And if AI doesn’t surface you, your customers won’t either. We’re in a world of infinite choice. Invisibility is death.

Claiming the Future
The future of AI search will not belong to the most creative story. It will not belong to the boldest design. It will not belong to brands that are “different.” It will belong to the ultra-relevant. The brands that understand hero pain points and how to solve them with precision, and broadcast those solutions with clarity and coherence at every touchpoint.

That’s why at Fazer we built De-Positioning not just as a brand strategy methodology, but as a discoverability strategy. De-Positioning ensures that when AI is asked a question, your brand is the obvious answer. And in the future of AI search, only solver brands will survive. Ultra-Relevance isn’t optional. It’s the algorithm.