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Brand perception is notoriously hard to measure, and AI is only complicating the equation. Few know this better than Rachna Shah, CEO of KCD, who says that over the past year, a growing number of larger fashion houses are approaching the agency expecting generative engine optimization (GEO) strategies — marketing practices designed to help brands surface within AI search results — to be baked into their PR plans.
“It first started coming up over a year ago, especially during new business proposals,” she says. “A lot of larger global strategic brands are asking us how we’re utilizing AI insights, looking at GEO and analyzing it — the appetite from brands is definitely there.” KCD has long worked with tech and social data analytics provider Launchmetrics to provide its clients with MIV (media impact value) rankings that track metrics like reach in search and how much social conversation brands are gaining. Shah says the brands that typically paid closer attention to these rankings are the ones that came knocking on KCD’s door first for AI visibility metrics.
“It’s all so new that we had to say to brands we’re also starting to learn about this, and we’d discuss with them how they’re exploring it internally, too. But you couldn’t really see or measure it, the data didn’t really exist,” explains Shah.
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Launchmetrics began mapping out a way to bring the AI search conversation into its broader MIV dashboard for KCD and others. Now, alongside New York Fashion Week, it’s launching a new metric called AI Visibility (AIV), designed to help brands track and understand how they’re represented within LLM responses from platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
Now, the Launchmetrics brand ranking from major events on the fashion calendar, like NYFW, will consist of both a brand’s MIV and AIV scores, as well as showing the share of value they’ve scored from MIV versus AIV. The dashboard will also feature a callout section for brands that stand out in AI search; tell brands which editorial voices cite their brands in AI search; and compare brands’ AI search results in different cities. Launchemtrics CMO Alison Bringé says this is designed to give brands a way to quantify their AI discoverability, see what the LLMs are presenting about their brand to consumers, and track how it compares with their general MIV.
At the same time, Launchmetrics was having broader industry discussions with brands and agencies who were noticing that PR and earned media were increasingly recognized as the primary drivers of how brands appear in AI-generated search results. An increasing share of fashion buyers also said they were beginning their search via AI-powered platforms, according to Bringé.
“It almost feels a bit cliché now, because everyone’s been saying it the whole summer, but PR is definitely the new SEO,” Bringé says, citing multiple industry studies revealing that over 80% of what LLMs cite about a brand today traces back to earned media. Launchmetrics defines earned media as what voices that aren’t a brand’s paid channel say about the brand — for example, press, podcasters, Substackers, celebrities, influencers, and consumer conversations.
“It’s our job to help brands understand their performance, and for the last decade, the metric has been media impact value, which really showed their visibility and virality,” says Bringé. “Now, we’re seeing how the relationship between editorial voices and deeper storytelling is really influencing the LLM search result, so we’re bringing a new intelligence layer in to connect the dots between MIV and how earned media is influencing LLMs.”
The platform’s chief strategy officer, Arnaud Roy says that while building the AIV metric, he found that, because LLMs rely on fresh media content to answer real-time questions, they cannot resolve from training data alone — editorial coverage from authoritative press outlets carries significant weight in shaping AI-generated responses. Launchmetrics says this dynamic reinforces the value of PR strategy, with Bringé citing Gartner’s prediction that PR budgets will double in the coming year as brands prioritize their presence in AI-generated narratives.
Roy and Bringé expect budget reallocation to draw primarily from SEO and search engine marketing, while Shah is encouraging brands to split their media budget across more diverse surfaces.
“It’ll be interesting to see how brands learn about what media works for this and if it’s right for them,” Shah says. “I think it’s very important how it’s showing us that there’s multiple ways of storytelling. That there’s value in deeper storytelling across multiple surfaces like podcasts, Substacks, and longer features. I’m not always privy to brands’ budget allocations, but we’re certainly providing budget implications for what that broader media landscape looks like.”