Five Ways for Brands to Win in Chat
A few days ago, I was at an investor conference focused almost entirely on consumer packaged goods: cereal, snacks, beverages, household staples. Traditional CPG.
And yet one of the dominant conversations wasn’t about pricing, supply chains, or retail expansion. It was AI!
More specifically, it was about how large language models are beginning to influence what consumers buy. One stat stood out above everything else: roughly 25% of consumers are already using AI tools to get recommendations for products they can purchase in stores. That number is likely headed much higher over the next few years.
That changes everything. For decades, brands fought to win at the shelf. Then they fought to win in search. Now they have to win in chat.
A Short History of Shopping
In the 1990s, shopping was physical. Consumers walked aisles and made decisions based on packaging, placement, and price.
In the 2000s, the internet began shaping decisions before shoppers entered the store. Search engines and retailer websites became influential.
In the 2010s, smartphones compressed the decision window even further. Consumers researched products in real time, often while standing in the aisle.
Now we’ve entered the next phase: conversational commerce.
Consumers increasingly skip search entirely and ask AI directly:
“What’s the healthiest cereal?”
“What’s a better alternative to this snack?”
“Which pasta sauce has the cleanest ingredients?”
Instead of ten blue links, they get one synthesized answer.
That means the interface for discovery is no longer the shelf or the search engine.
It’s the answer layer.
1. Turn Your Website Into an Answer Engine
Most brand websites were designed for human browsing.
Now they also need to be readable by AI systems.
Brands should clearly explain:
what a product is
who it’s for
why it’s different
how it compares to alternatives
The clearer the explanation, the more likely it is to appear in AI-generated recommendations.
2. Structure Content Around Questions
Consumers interact with AI conversationally, not through keywords.
That means brands should create content that directly answers questions people actually ask:
Is this healthy?
Is it worth the price?
What’s the best option for kids?
How does this compare to competitors?
Brands that mirror natural language queries are more likely to surface in AI outputs.
3. Own the Comparison Narrative
If brands don’t explain how their products compare to competitors, AI models will do it for them.
That’s risky. The winning brands will proactively publish:
comparisons
rankings
“best for” use cases
nutritional breakdowns
feature differentiation
In the LLM era, comparison content becomes strategic infrastructure. If your gun shy on having your competitors ranked on your own site, then you might as well give up now. You won’t win in the new world of Answer Engines!
4. Build Strong AI-Readable Entities
AI models don’t just recognize keywords. They build associations.The strongest brands consistently reinforce the attributes they want associated with their products:
low sugar
high protein
premium ingredients
affordable
sustainable
family-friendly
Over time, these associations shape how models describe and recommend products.
5. Optimize for Zero-Click Decisions
In many cases, the consumer will never visit your website.
The AI summary is the customer experience. That means your brand messaging needs to survive compression into a few sentences inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or other systems.
Brands now need to think not just about what humans read, but what machines summarize.
The Bottom Line
We are entering a world where a growing percentage of purchase decisions happen before a consumer reaches the aisle. That is a fundamental shift.
The brands that adapt earliest, by structuring information clearly, shaping AI-readable narratives, and optimizing for conversational discovery, will become the default recommendations inside the systems consumers increasingly trust.
For decades, brands competed for shelf space. Now they’re competing for answers.