AI, or artificial intelligence, is revolutionizing and disrupting pretty much every area of business and life. For example, in pet food, manufacturers are using AI to streamline production, collect processing data and train new plant floor workers. On the nutrition side, AI is helping pet food companies, especially those with a direct-to-consumer business model, collect and mine customer data to refine and customize pet diets as well as develop new products.
And with pet food marketing, AI can also aid with collecting and analyzing consumer data, along with enhancing targeting of messages, boosting pet owner engagement and refining product strategies. Yet when it comes to marketing brands and products, AI may be proving a double-edged sword, according to one expert.
“What happens when agentic AI [an autonomous system] steps in as the authoritative source of information and credible recommendations about brands, products, claims, technology, formulations, ingredient sourcing and emerging health/wellness issues — bypassing any need to visit your website at the start of an exploratory journey?” wrote Bob Wheatley, founder of Emergent, which bills itself as “the healthy living agency.” He was writing about human food, but the question and concern apply to pet food as well.
“Think for a moment about the implications of a super well-informed digital advisor making trusted recommendations to consumers based on its own assessment of your brand and product strengths versus competitive choices,” he continued, in his Emerging Trends Report. This could happen — may already be happening — without your influence or involvement.
AI: Trusted information source?
Besides its pervasiveness, AI also tends to happen behind the scenes, so to speak; many people may not even be aware the platform, program or website they’re on is using AI. And, in an era of uncertainty and anxiety, when consumers are seeking a sense of control and assurance, an autonomous AI agent may seem to offer that.
“It’s quite possible that this pipeline from mountains of aggregated data digested and served up in conversational recommendation form could become a trusted partner — when everything else often appears to be self-serving, biased and requires burning mental calories to unearth and evaluate,” Wheatley warned.
Fortunately, he added, there are tools to help brands and companies monitor and understand what AI agents may think they know about the brands — though, ironically, when I googled for any specific ones, I also got Google’s own AI-generated explanation of such tools!
To seek such a tool or platform, or simply to learn how this concept of agentic AI might apply to your brand, Wheatley suggested asking questions such as what it says about your brand, product line, company, formulations and claims, and whether what it says is accurate and presents your brand in the best possible light.
Optimize your own marketing and communications
More importantly, to help guard against AI possibly defining and promoting your brand for you — and to ensure any AI-generated representations of your brand are accurate and convey the story you want to tell — make sure your own marketing and communications are optimized. To that end, Wheatley advised to consider what large language models (LLMs, what most AI platforms are built on) prioritize:
- Language. “LLMs like to navigate rich, conversational text such as blog posts and newsletters” over webinars or embedded images, he said.
- Agentic-optimized structure. LLMs can more readily synthesize and summarize prioritized lists, definitions and guides.
- Clean, scrapable web sites. “Accurate, fully indexed websites are better than keyword optimization or navigating older legacy pages designed to elevate site authority,” Wheatley wrote.
- Third-party earned authority. This means coverage in publications, media and commentary by experts outside of your company, which “helps confirm, verify and validate your brand story and value proposition.”
- Deep customer conversations on spaces outside of your website. As in, external reviews and forums that generate authoritative mentions, backlinks and credibility.
Note: Petfood Industry is using AI for specific, limited tasks, including to create illustrations such as the one above, but not to write articles or blog posts such as this.
