The Great Flattening: Growing a Distinctive Brand in the Age of AI

Wresting Back Control of Your Brand

Large Language Models (LLMs) strip brands down to text on screens, making content the centerpiece of the experience. If you’re not proactively shaping that experience, the machines will do it for you — and you may not like what they say. This is the age of AI flattening. And it’s already begun. 

In this new landscape, brands risk losing the very things that make them valuable: the brand drivers that create premium positioning and long-term equity. The antidote? A distinctive brand voice. 

Distinctiveness and mental availability are the primary drivers of brand growth.  

Source: Kantar Brand Z global database 

This is not just theory — it’s backed by decades of marketing science and reinforced by the realities of how AI systems surface and summarize brand content. Brands that are not clearly positioned, consistently expressed, and meaningfully different are at risk of being reduced to sameness.

Distinctive Brands Resist AI Flattening

Well-positioned brands resist AI flattening by anchoring themselves in clarity, consistency, and relevance.  

1. They are known for something clear and ownable.
   AI systems summarize and synthesize. If your brand’s positioning is vague or overly broad, it will be reduced to generic category descriptors rather than showing up as distinct in your segment. If your brand is sharply defined — if it owns a specific idea, value, or benefit — then that distinctiveness is more likely to survive the compression.
   
   For example, a brand that is clearly positioned as “giving outsized advantage” will be surfaced in AI-generated responses about value and insight. A brand that simply says “we provide smart legal services” will be lost in the noise. 
2. They show up consistently across channels and contexts.
   AI learns from patterns. If your brand voice, tone, and message are consistent across your website, social content, reviews, and third-party mentions, AI is more likely to reflect that identity accurately. Inconsistent or fragmented messaging, on the other hand, leads to diluted or contradictory representations. Well-positioned brands invest in governance — ensuring that every touchpoint reinforces the same core idea. This consistency becomes a signal that AI can recognize and replicate.
3. They are reinforced by data and visibility.
   Positioning isn’t just about what you say — it’s about what others say about you, and where you show up. Brands that are frequently mentioned in authoritative sources, structured content, and user-generated reviews are more likely to be included in AI outputs.
4. They train the machines before the machines define them.
   LLMs don’t inherently understand your brand. They learn from what’s available. Brands that proactively train AI systems — by feeding them structured data, tone guidelines, and messaging frameworks—take control of how they’re represented. 

This is especially important for brands in niche or complex categories, where nuance matters. Without training, AI will default to the most common denominator. 

This is where processes like Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) come in. GEO gives you a sense of whether your positioning is being picked up and echoed by AI systems accurately. Rather than let the algorithms own your brand position, take back control training the LLMs to talk about your brand with your tone and voice. 

Distinctiveness Is the New Urgency

AI isn’t coming for your brand. It’s already here — reshaping how people discover, understand, and experience it. The question isn’t whether your brand will be affected. It’s whether it will be flattened or fortified. 

The path forward isn’t about chasing trends or overhauling everything. It’s about doubling down on what makes your brand unmistakably yours. 

Curious how your brand is showing up in AI-driven experiences? One North can help you explore your current footprint and get the robots on your side. 

Photo Credit: Robert Clark | Unsplash