A brand manager opens ChatGPT and types in her brand's category. Her brand is in the answer. She smiles, closes the screen and thinks: I'm doing well. Or her brand isn't there. This. Has. To. Change.
In 2026, that's the new check. You used to google yourself. Spot your ad online, or on the street. Now you ask AI.
Except: how much does one answer tell you?
Mike Sonders of Contender looked into it. He had ChatGPT answer twelve prompts about B2B software. A hundred times each. Across those hundred answers, about 44 different brands showed up. Only around five appeared in at least 80 percent of them. In the competitive categories, nearly three in four brands showed up in fewer than one answer in five. (Search Engine Land)
One draw tells you nothing
Search for yourself in AI and you're playing the lottery. If your brand is in there, that has as much to do with luck as with availability. And if you use an AI that has learned from your behaviour, you're kidding yourself even more.
The pattern in niche categories
The same study found more. In niche categories, 21 percent of brands appeared in at least 80 percent of the answers. In competitive categories, 7 percent. The more focused the question, the more often the same names came out on top.
We can't look inside the model. What we can see is who gets named, and that the stable names mostly sit with the focused questions. A brand that clearly stands for something is easier to name than a brand that is a bit of everything.
What we do with it
With clients, we start with the boring part. Before anyone talks about prompts or structured data, we ask a smaller question: finish this sentence. You should talk to [brand] if you need ______.
Put that sentence to three people who know the market but not the brand. If they give you three different answers, you know what needs doing. A clear story is the only thing in this whole conversation you fully control. That's what a workshop is for.
In your category too, five names win every time. The rest get the crumbs. Time to make choices.
