Our Group Media and Influence Director Chloe Singleton joined the stage at Meltwater's first ever London Summit, following previous editions in New York, Australia and Singapore, for one of the morning's most talked-about sessions: Generative AI and the Future of Brand Visibility. She was in good company, alongside Laura Thomas from Unilever, Alicia Edmonds-Smith from Snap Inc. and Jenny Force from Meltwater, in front of a packed room.
The panel tackled a question that is quickly moving to the top of every marketing and comms agenda. As more people turn to AI assistants to discover brands, compare products and make decisions, how does your brand actually show up in the answers?
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) came up again and again across the day, and the conversation has clearly moved on. Brands are no longer asking whether AI visibility matters. They accept it is central to planning, and the questions now are practical ones: which sources are shaping how AI describes a brand, and how can teams strengthen their visibility and credibility in these new environments?
The panel brought together perspectives from very different seats, from global consumer brands to platforms to the monitoring and intelligence side, with Chloe sharing what she is seeing across eight&four's media and influence work. The common thread was that AI answers don't come from nowhere. They are built from what's already out there: earned coverage, owned content, reviews, partners, analysts and, increasingly, the voices of creators and experts that audiences already trust.
For Chloe, GEO arrived on eight&four's agenda as part of how the agency itself has been evolving. That has meant shifting capabilities and investing in educating ourselves, so we can cut through the noise and make sure we can realistically deliver on GEO and AI visibility goals for clients.
From a media and influence perspective, she argued that GEO broadens what we mean by influence. Content is no longer judged only by how many people saw it or clicked on it, but by how it contributes to the wider ecosystem. That challenges measurement, as new layers like citations, source visibility and share of AI answers come into play. But Chloe was clear that brands shouldn't chase the dragon: "Citations are only valuable if they appear in the right context, with the right audience, and reinforce what the brand wants to be known for. Otherwise it's just another vanity metric."
That is why GEO can't be handed to one person with a new tool and ticked off the list. How a brand shows up in AI answers is shaped by comms, content, product marketing, partnerships and social, all at once. It needs orchestrating across the whole team, with everyone understanding what GEO is, why it matters and the part they play in it.
Chloe's closing thought for the room was that we've only scratched the surface of what's possible with AI and where the space is heading. Her advice: know what you're trying to achieve and keep coming back to it throughout the process. If you're trying to be 'LLM ready', ask yourself why, and what that actually means for your brand.
A big thank you to Meltwater for having us, and to Laura, Alicia and Jenny for a brilliant conversation.
