By: Todd Irwin
AI isn’t inventing new rules. It’s simply removing the tolerance for vague ones. Brands used to survive on emotional resonance and creativity. Even when their value propositions were unclear. But that cushion no longer exists. AI doesn’t care about ambition. It cares about clarity of solution. And most brands aren’t nearly as clear as they think they are.
For most of my career, brand strategy lived in a world that rewarded creativity. If a brand sounded compelling enough, looked distinct enough, or told a story that resonated emotionally, it could win, even if its value prop was vague. Meaning could be suggested. Differentiation could be implied. Purpose could be claimed. But that environment no longer exists. AI has not invented a new form of brand strategy. What it’s done is quietly and decisively remove the tolerance for unclear brand storytelling. AI search systems do not admire ambition or infer intent. They do not respond to performance. What they do is evaluate what is actually there. And in doing so they expose something the branding industry has avoided for decades: that most brands were never as clear as they believed they were.
This is not really a technology story. This is a strategy story.
For years, branding benefited from friction. People recognized a problem, had to search, compare, interpret, and then ultimately decide. In that space, brands were all about persuasion rather than proof. Tone, personality, and narrative could have carried the weight that clarity should actually have. A strong campaign or a compelling mission statement could compensate for a fuzzy value prop. AI now collapses that space. When an AI system is asked to help someone decide what to buy, which brand to trust, or which option to choose, it does not browse the way a human does. It synthesizes. It compresses. It resolves. What used to be multiple stages of consideration are reduced to a single judgment. And the criteria behind that judgment is remarkably simple: which option most reliably solves my problem?
What used to be multiple stages of consideration are reduced to a single judgment. And the criteria behind that judgment is remarkably simple: which option most reliably solves my problem?
This is why AI search is not just another channel layered on top of the old funnel. It is a decision engine designed to remove vagueness. It does not reward brands for being attractive. It rewards them for being dependable. That shift alone changes how brand strategy must work. Over the past few decades, much of branding and marketing drifted to performance. Purpose statements floated above the business rather than shaping it. Visual systems signaled creative taste, but not usefulness. Language was optimized for internal alignment or industry applause rather than customer clarity of solution. I think of this as brand theatre: the appearance of meaning without the discipline of solving.
Brand theatre worked in a human-filtered world because people could be influenced by emotion, symbolism, creativity, and novelty. But AI does not process brands that way. It looks past emotion and performance, searching only for evidence of solution. It asks whether a brand consistently behaves like the solution rather than just a promise. When that consistency is absent, or experience contradicts the message, the brand is not rejected. It is simply excluded. No backlash. No debate. Just removal. One of the most misunderstood consequences of AI is its effect on choice. There is a comforting assumption that AI expands options, that it gives people access to more possibilities and better discovery. In fact, AI does the opposite. It compresses choice.
Faced with a crowded market of similar offerings, AI does not present a long list or invite exploration. It narrows aggressively. It filters out murkiness. It extracts options that do not clearly justify their existence. What remains is a short list or a single answer. This creates a harsher reality for brands. Being one of many is no longer a position. Sitting safely in the middle, competent, credible, but indistinct, is no longer viable. Brands that cannot clearly communicate what problem they solve, and why they are the most reliable solution, are filtered out before the customer ever engages. This is not a media failure. It’s a strategic one.
For decades, differentiation sat at the center of brand thinking. Be different. Stand out. Own a space. But differentiation is easy to manufacture, and even easier to replicate. AI recognizes patterns at scale and speed humans could never match. It does not confuse originality or creativity with value. Anything a brand expresses that doesn’t include clear utility simply registers as noise.
AI recognizes patterns at scale and speed humans could never match. It does not confuse originality or creativity with value. Anything a brand expresses that doesn’t include clear utility simply registers as noise.
What AI consistently rewards is clarity. Clarity of solution and clarity of outcome. The brands that survive AI-mediated scrutiny are not the most creative. They are the clearest. They are the ones that reduce uncertainty. The ones that make the decision feel safe. This is where De-Positioning becomes unavoidable.
De-Positioning is often misunderstood as an aggressive or adversarial strategy. The name sounds combative. But in practice, it’s the most customer-centric move a brand can make. To ‘de-position’ is not to attack competitors. It is to solve a problem so thoroughly that alternatives lose relevance. When the brand becomes the obvious answer to a specific customer problem, its competitors need not be named. They simply fall from consideration. This is exactly how AI systems operate. They don’t compare endlessly. They resolve relentlessly. They surface the most credible solution, then collapse the rest. And here’s the thing: De-Positioning has always been aligned with decision-making. AI has simply made that alignment definitive.
AI is exposing the weakness of traditional positioning language. Territories that describe intent rather than outcome reality. Aspiration rather than behavior. AI does not evaluate what a brand says it wants to be. It evaluates what the brand consistently proves itself to be across product decisions, service behavior, and customer experience. When brand promise and reality diverge, the gap becomes impossible to hide. That is why coherence and integration are no longer branding ideals. They are structural requirements.
Now, it’s tempting to treat this shift as a communications problem. To assume that better messaging and more sophisticated storytelling can restore perception. And that instinct is understandable. But it’s wrong. AI does not index slogans. AI indexes systems. Brand strategy in the age of AI can’t live on the surface. It must be embedded in how the business truly operates. No campaign can fix a business model that doesn’t solve a clear problem. That makes this a leadership issue, not a marketing one.
So, the brands that endure will be led by the executives who’ve made a clear strategic decision about the problem they exist to solve and have aligned their organizations to consistently deliver that solution. That takes discipline. It takes grit. It takes saying no. It takes coherence across functions which have historically operated in silos. It requires resisting the urge for fake marketing performance and committing instead to delivering solutions. The alternative is not stagnation. It is invisibility.
The brands that will define the next decade will not feel louder or more expressive. They will feel obvious. They will be the brands customers, and AI systems, trust to remove friction, reduce risk, and provide clarity of solution at the moment of decision. They will not rely on persuasion. They will simply appear when needed. They will be brands that lean into the power of De-Positioning.
The brands that will define the next decade will not feel louder or more expressive. They will feel obvious. They will be the brands customers, and AI systems, trust to remove friction, reduce risk, and provide clarity of solution at the moment of decision.
AI has not killed brand strategy. It’s killed the illusion that branding could exist independently of usefulness. It stripped away performance and rewarded substance. Brands will not be remembered just for what they say. They will be remembered for what they fix and how they fix it. This is the real competitive advantage. And it’s why de-positioning is no longer optional.
This is the exact price for becoming relevant.
