Brand Energy: How Brands Win in the AI Era

For decades, brand building followed a predictable, linear playbook. Brands bought attention through paid media, controlled the narrative through ‘big moment’ campaigns, and moved consumers down a well-defined funnel. It was a stable, human-managed system where the loudest voice often won, enabling brands to directly and consistently drive relevance.  

But that system is changing–people are engaging with brands and content more rapidly, across more devices, and more channels. This is leading to higher levels of discernment (and in many cases, skepticism), all of which is being dramatically accelerated by AI performance, adoption, and exchange.  

Today, brand building happens within a mosaic of algorithmic feeds, micro-cultures, and AI-mediated discovery. Attention is no longer buyable in bulk; it must be earned in seconds and maintained through big and small interactions and experiences. In this new reality, the competition isn’t just other brands—it’s everything competing for consumers’ attention. 

At Prophet, our research has historically shown that relevant brands significantly outperform the S&P 500 revenue growth, over the short-term and long-term. Today, achieving that relevance is harder than ever. To win, brands must now move beyond static positioning and generate what we call Brand Energy. 

What is Brand Energy?

Brand Energy allows businesses to thrive in both human-driven and AI-mediated contexts. It is the combination of two distinct forces: energy that emits, which broadcasts an unmistakable point of view and shows up in culturally relevant places, creating spaces that showcase your brand and what you offer while giving people language to express who they are. And energy that attracts, which draws in communities that share your values and sparks curiosity about what comes next, making people want to be part of your world while providing a space and platform for individuals and groups to champion your brand. 

Brand Energy is a substantial competitive advantage, but it needs to be created and managed with care; it’s not about being the loudest or splashiest, it’s about creating and sustaining energy that is: 

• Compelling: Reflecting a sharp POV that cuts through and resonates with its audience 
• Consistent: Delivering reinforcing signals, across touch points, that compound recognition 
• Coherent: Maintaining connection and alignment between story, product, experience, and culture 

When brands deliver this energy, the benefits are significant and enduring. Brands build predisposition with consumers and customers, creating an advantage for future purchase decisions. This means greater: 

• Pricing Power: commanding a premium even (and especially) when functional benefits are comparable 
• Staying Power: maintaining market presence and relevance as culture evolves 
• Pulling Power: continuously attracting, engaging and retaining consumers and creating real, lasting loyalty and advocacy 
• Stretching Power: earning the right and the permissibility to enter new categories, forge new partnerships and deliver new experiences 

Simply put: creating and sustaining Brand Energy is a key driver of Uncommon Growth, across multiple critical growth levers. 

In a hyper-competitive, increasingly AI-mediated world, the big questions are around HOW to do this. Winning now requires new ways of thinking, working, and acting. 

The Seven Modern Mandates for Driving and Sustaining Brand Energy

To cut through the noise, marketing leaders must pivot from traditional management to a more dynamic approach. Here are the seven mandates defining the next generation of brand leadership: 

1. Start With an Unapologetic POV

Appealing to everyone resonates with no one.  Modern winners plant a clear flag—from Anthropic’s conviction that AI should be built around human-centered safety to Tracksmith’s belief in running as a serious amateur craft, not mass fitness culture. These focused points of view help consumers and agents quickly understand what the brand stands for, attracting true believers while screening out the rest. If people cannot easily see themselves in your perspective—or reject it—it is not sharp enough to be noticed. 

2. Think Beyond Your Category

You are no longer competing within a siloed industry—you are competing for a ritual, a moment, a slice of attention with consumers. The New York Times stopped thinking of itself as just a newspaper and started competing for daily “habitual attention” through games, cooking, and audio, all laddering up to a shared idea of intellectual discovery and curiosity. Define your broad domain – one that extends far beyond your core product and service. 

3. Animate Brand Behavior

In a fragmented ecosystem, a brand is built by a repeated pattern of animated behaviors, not one “big bang” campaign or effort. Each touchpoint should reinforce the same distinct character, whether it’s Nutter Butter extending its surreal “Nutterverse”, Letterboxd amplifying its cinephile character across its reporting to social content, or Jacquemus carrying Mediterranean fantasy across campaigns and experiences. Actions speak louder than ads, and LLMs especially look for proof in repeated behaviors. 

4. Build in Public

Winning brands are now inviting their customers into the brand-building process—earning trust through transparency (and even vulnerability). Burger King is rebuilding a fading brand in plain sight by making the turnaround itself the marketing; having its president take unfiltered customer calls to reinvigorate the brand. Transparency is an ‘always-on’ expectation. 

5. Cultivate Co-Creation

You don’t own your narrative; you curate it. In a world of online remixes, stitches, influencer reactions, and click-bait news headlines, brands no longer own their narrative like they did before. Brands like LEGO and Fujifilm understand this, curating participation rather than resisting it: LEGO turns fan ideas into commercial products, while Fujifilm gives photographers the ability to share film recipes and tutorials. The result? A brand that consistently reaches customers in their feeds with high-trust, organic content, building effortless brand equity that compounds over time. 

6. Win Decisive Moments

The traditional customer journey has collapsed. Discovery, proof, and purchase now happen simultaneously. Rhode wins because it embeds dermatologist co-signs and “one-tap” checkout directly into the discovery feed. Trust and transactions must be seamless. 

7. Expect to Flex 

Brands must treat real-time data as a creative input and act accordingly, quickly. Whether it’s Taco Bell using comments sections as creative briefs or Vaseline turning viral TikTok “hacks” into verified brand moments, the ability to pivot at the speed of culture is the ultimate competitive advantage.