The marketing industry is in danger of building for the LLM
recommender rather than the person being recommended to, and that's a mistake we've made before.
Marketers spent 20 years being told to become "customer obsessed." Now a significant chunk of marketing content is obsessed with pleasing algorithmic intermediaries instead. That's the same trap brands fell into with SEO, social media algorithms, and Amazon search ranking. The customer kept getting pushed one step further from the centre. LLMs are just the latest and most powerful version of that displacement.
When brands optimised for search, they produced content nobody wanted to read. When they optimised for social algorithms, they produced content that performed but didn't convert (much social content optimises for attention metrics that don't correlate with commercial outcomes). If brands now lose focus on their actual experience in favour of generating the kind of review-friendly signals that LLMs reward, we’ll end up in a very mediocre middle of ‘good enough’ customer journeys.
Don’t treat LLM visibility as the destination. Visibility is a happy byproduct of a great experience. Brands that genuinely serve people well earn those trust signals without chasing them.
Consider the real, human need for a holiday. The person asking an LLM for a cruise recommendation still has to get on the ship. Everything that happens after — the experience, the loyalty, the word of mouth — is entirely human. No amount of LLM optimisation compensates for a bad product or a frustrating experience. LLMs are the new starting point of the customer journey, but the industry's current proportion of attention is wrong. Don’t forget that the LLM drops the customer at the gangway, but everything that matters happens on board.
Chartis partners with leading brands to navigate the shift to AI-driven discovery without losing sight of what matters most: the customer. Because in the end, trust, experience, and outcomes drive real growth. If you’re thinking about what comes next, we’d love to help.