Enterprise CMOs have spent the last decade building growth engines around three levers: creating preference, proving value, and controlling narrative across markets, channels, and stakeholders.
But a new gatekeeper is now compressing all three into a single moment: the answer—where AI systems pre-frame your category, credibility, and competitors before your team ever gets a meeting.
It’s a single paragraph inside an answer engine—delivered with confidence, sometimes with citations, and often shaped by which market the buyer is in. The same question asked in the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Japan, or France can produce a different shortlist, a different framing of “what you’re known for,” and a different set of “credible alternatives.”
That’s not a UX detail. It’s a market-access shift.
You don’t just rank anymore — you get represented
Three mainstream systems illustrate the new dynamic:
ChatGPT Search can automatically decide to search the web (or you can manually enable it), and it returns timely answers with links to sources.
Gemini can be grounded with Google Search—meaning responses can be tethered to what Search retrieves, with citations.
Perplexity explicitly searches the internet in real time and summarizes results with sources/citations.
Same prompt. Different retrieval stacks. Different “truth construction.”
So the brand challenge is no longer only: What do we say? It’s also: What does the world say about us, in this market, through this engine, at this moment?
Locality isn’t translation — it’s the ranking system beneath the answer
Here’s the part many global brands underestimate:
Localization in answer engines isn’t mainly “German vs Japanese language.” It’s which local sources get retrieved and trusted—and what those sources emphasize.
Google is unusually explicit about how location-sensitive relevance works in the underlying ecosystem: local results are driven largely by relevance, distance, and popularity/prominence.
If an answer engine is grounded in Search-like retrieval (or shaped by web prominence patterns), then “market conditions” show up as:
the competitor set local sources keep comparing you against
the proof points local publishers repeat
the risks and regulatory frames that dominate local discourse
the availability and channel reality that actually determines purchase decisions
This is why the same brand can become a different “mental category” across markets—even if your global positioning never changed.
Three brands that make this obvious: UPS, Toyota, Santander
If you run a shortlist-style question across engines and markets, you’ll often see a pattern: the core identity stays stable, but the decision frame shifts. And frames drive enterprise decisions.
UPS: one brand, multiple buyer realities
UPS is not “just delivery.” It positions itself as a premier package delivery company and a leading provider of global supply chain management solutions, with a presence in 200+ countries and territories. It also has distinct capability surfaces—like UPS Supply Chain Solutions (logistics, distribution, customs brokerage, freight) and network constructs like UPS Access Point locations for pickup/drop-off convenience.
Now watch what happens when “local web reality” gets involved:
U.S.: UPS is often framed through domestic parcel reliability, e-commerce returns, and operational scale—because that’s what’s most visible in everyday buyer behavior.
Germany/Europe: UPS can increasingly show up through specialized B2B narratives—like healthcare logistics and cold-chain capability—especially when local coverage amplifies it. (UPS’ planned acquisition of Germany-based Frigo-Trans to expand cold-chain healthcare logistics across Europe is exactly the kind of market-specific proof point that can change the way the brand is summarized.)
Brazil: buyer questions tend to pull more heavily toward cross-border logistics, customs, and international reliability, because those are frequent decision constraints in-market.
Japan: the competitor set and buyer priorities can skew toward speed, precision, and international express framing depending on what local sources emphasize.
France: depending on what’s most prominent, UPS can be summarized either as an enterprise logistics partner or as “one of several delivery options,” with local incumbents shaping the comparison set.
None of those are “wrong.” But they’re not interchangeable. And in an answer-engine world, you don’t get to control which one becomes the default unless you build the local proof layer intentionally.
Toyota: the universal story, locally rewritten
Toyota is a masterclass in how the same brand equity (“quality, reliability”) gets translated into different buying logic:
In the U.S., the frame often becomes total cost of ownership, resale value, and segment leadership (SUV/truck/hybrid conversations).
In Germany/France, it can tilt toward emissions, urban fit, and “pragmatic hybrid choice” versus domestic champions.
In Brazil, it may be anchored in durability and serviceability—what survives real operating conditions.
In Japan, “domestic champion” context can shape the competitor set and credibility cues.
Answer engines are simply compressing what the market’s sources already signal—then presenting it as the truth.
Santander: the ultimate “representation risk” brand
Santander is the clearest example of why CMOs should care about market-based representation.
In the U.S., Santander US describes itself as a diversified business incorporating multiple financial companies, including Santander Bank, N.A. and Santander Consumer USA, among others. And the retail footprint is explicitly concentrated in the Northeast (branches/ATMs), which can strongly shape “what Santander is” when a U.S. buyer asks an LLM.
In Germany, Santander’s own German site positions it as a bank for private and business customers offering accounts, cards, and loans—so local queries can quickly anchor it as a consumer/retail banking and financing player. And on the strategic roadmap, Santander has publicly discussed integrating Openbank with its consumer finance operations in Europe starting in Germany—another local narrative that can “tilt” summaries toward digital banking + consumer finance.
In Brazil, Santander’s local presence is strong enough that it often becomes “a major bank you do business with,” not “a Spanish financial group,” and Santander corporate communications have described Banco Santander (Brasil) as the largest foreign bank in Brazil.
Same brand name. Multiple category anchors. Different competitor sets. Different trust cues.
That’s the point: in answer engines, category anchoring is destiny. If the model anchors you in the wrong category for that market, you don’t just lose consideration—you may not even be eligible for the shortlist.
What this means for CMOs: brand is becoming a knowledge discipline
Three implications are worth bringing to your next exec meeting:
Consistency becomes distributed truth, not messaging. Your brand book can’t prevent narrative drift if your market footprint is fragmented, outdated, or thin. Answer engines synthesize what they can retrieve.
You now compete for inclusion, not clicks. In answer engines, the primary scarcity is not traffic. It’s being mentioned at all—and being framed correctly.
Localization becomes a market-access system. Local proof, local prominence, local comparability, local constraints—these determine the paragraph you get.
The play: build a Local LLM Reference Layer
This isn’t about “gaming” models. It’s about making your brand legible, provable, and locally coherent.
Run a quarterly LLM Representation Audit Pick 25–50 buyer-intent prompts per category (“compare,” “best for,” “risk,” “compliance,” “integration,” “TCO,” “alternatives”). Run them across:
ChatGPT with Search
Gemini grounded with Google Search
Perplexity
Score by market:
Share of Answer (are you mentioned?)
Frame Accuracy (are you described in the decision frame you want?)
Competitor Correctness (who are you grouped with?)
Misconception Rate (recurring inaccuracies)
Proof Quality (are there credible local sources backing claims?)
Publish market-specific canonical truth assets One per priority market (and per key segment), designed to be usable by humans and retrievable by machines:
positioning + category definition
proof points that matter locally
constraints (availability, regulation, operating model)
competitor comparisons (the frame you want buyers to use)
FAQs buyers actually ask in that market
Engineer prominence the ethical way If local prominence shapes retrieval, then PR, partners, associations, and customer proof aren’t “nice-to-have.” They’re retrievability infrastructure.
Install governance Treat narrative drift as a measurable risk, not a subjective comms debate. Create a cross-functional cadence (Marketing, Comms, Product, Legal) to correct high-impact misconceptions and refresh canonical market assets.
The uncomfortable CMO question
If your buyers stopped visiting your website tomorrow, would the world still describe your brand correctly—in every market that funds your growth?
Because in an answer-engine world, “brand” is no longer only what you say. It’s what the internet can prove about you—locally, consistently, and at the exact moment the buyer asks.
