My Marketing Playbook Changed. Here’s Why.
My Marketing Playbook Changed. Here’s Why.
Lola Gaidhane | Marketing Manager, Samsung India
The Playbook That Stopped Working
A few years ago, my marketing playbook was relatively straightforward. Launch a product. Run campaigns. Partner with creators. Generate PR coverage. Drive traffic to the website.
The assumption was simple: consumers search, brands show up, consumers decide.
But today, that is not how discovery works anymore.
Increasingly, consumers are not searching for products. They are asking questions.
Instead of typing “Best washing machine in India,” they are asking ChatGPT: “I live in Mumbai, in a family of 5. My clothes take forever to dry during monsoons. Should I buy a washer dryer?”
The difference may seem small. But for marketers, it is massive.
Consumers are no longer looking for products. They are looking for answers. And AI is deciding which brands become part of those answers.
The objective has shifted from: How do consumers find us? To: How does AI understand us?
The Unexpected Winner: Credibility and Conversations
One thing I have learned while working in Gen AI marketing is that AI does not care how much media money a brand spends.
AI looks for signals. Reviews. Comparison-based content. Community forum verdicts. PR articles. Expert opinions. Customer experiences. Thought leadership. Consistent messaging.
The brands that explain themselves clearly are often the brands that AI understands best.
What Brands Are Still Getting Wrong
Most brands are still optimising for Google’s algorithm instead of AI’s understanding. They are creating content around keywords, while AI picks brands that answer real consumer questions with depth, credibility, and context.
The shift is from product-feature-led marketing to owning the conversations around your brand.
GEO marketing is not about being found. It is about being understood by AI and recommended to consumers.
Where This Is Headed
This is not a trend. It is a structural shift in how consumers and brands meet each other.
The brands that will win are the ones building credibility signals that AI can read, not just ad campaigns that humans scroll past. The ones that move from keyword optimisation to answering questions with genuine depth. The ones that understand that in an AI-mediated world, being recommended is worth more than being visible.
The playbook has changed. The question is whether your brand has changed with it.
Lola Gaidhane is a Marketing Manager at Samsung India. This piece was published as part of the Draupadi on the Dais Opinion Series.