Making Waves: LinkedIn content’s value, “Chicken wine”, and the future of “Search”

1) AI search is changing the value of LinkedIn content.

Semrush analysed 89,000 LinkedIn URLs cited by ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode and Perplexity. The finding: LinkedIn is not just a social channel. It is becoming a source layer for how AI explains brands, topics and people.

Original posts and articles, especially educational pieces, are most likely to appear. Mid-length posts and focused long-form articles do well. Frequent posting helps. So does credibility. But huge engagement is not the deciding factor.

That should change how brands think about LinkedIn.

Company pages still matter, but more than ever so do individual experts. Employees, founders and subject-matter specialists can help shape how AI systems understand a category.

The opportunity is simple: publish clear, original, useful thinking consistently. Not just for followers today, but for discoverability in AI answers, reputation and brand demand tomorrow.

Why it matters: LinkedIn content shapes what AI tools say when buyers ask questions. Brands that publish consistent, specific expertise create a larger surface area for discovery, trust and category.

2) Being chosen is the ultimate goal.

Marketing has become very good at earning attention. But attention is not the same as being chosen.

That’s the sharp point in Neil Bennett’s campaign article titled: “‘Chicken wine’ proves that being remembered matters more than being noticed”. His example is simple: his wife asks him to buy “the chicken wine.” Not La Vieille Ferme. Not the rosé with a crafted positioning. Just the bottle with the chicken on it.

That is brand memorability and that leads to choice.

Consumers do not store brands the way marketers construct them. They store shortcuts: colours, characters, sounds, shapes, packs, rituals, phrases and odd cues that help them recognise something quickly and retrieve it when buying.

Many brands fall down here. They optimise for attention, category convention and polish, but neglect recall. Work can look “right” and still disappear.

System1’s research on distinctive brand assets backs this up: sonic cues, characters and strong visual context tend to drive faster recognition than formal assets like logos, fonts or written brand names alone.

Why it matters: Do not only ask, “will people notice this?” Ask, “what will they remember, and will it help them choose?” The strongest brands build memory shortcuts that are distinctive, repeated and motivating. Sometimes the asset consumers remember is not the one the brand planned. That is the point.

3) Bring some creativity and imagination to your promotions

Promotions are one of marketing’s biggest levers, across acquisition, loyalty, CRM and merchandising. But too many brands still default to the same answer: take money off.

That works in the short term. But repeat it often enough and you train people to wait for the next deal.

A new Talon.One report argues for a better path: Creative promotions that build value beyond price.

They introduce eight “Creative Currencies”: utility, game, cultural, social, aspirational, purpose, consistency and counterintuitive. Each taps into a different human motivation, from solving real friction to creating shareable moments, joining culture, supporting causes or adding play.

The point is not to stop discounting. It is to design promotions with the same imagination and discipline we apply to brand campaigns. Because the best promotions do more than shift stock. They create participation, memory, loyalty and margin, and give customers a reason to come back next time.

Why it matters: Every promotion that creates emotion, utility or participation can build brand value as well as sales. In a market trained by discounts, creative promotions give brands a way to drive short-term action without becoming cheaper, more forgettable, or easier to replace later.

4) Entertainment launches are no longer just media moments. They are cultural platforms.

Disney’s partnership strategy for the second season of Rivals is a great case and point. Rather than relying on standard product placement, Disney is building collaborations that let brands join the story in ways that feel relevant, entertaining and additive.

Waitrose is a great example. Its Rivals-inspired range turns the show’s 1980s excess and rivalry theme into products people can buy, debate and share: competing flavours across sandwiches, crisps, cocktails and ice cream.

The smart bit is that the partnership does not sit outside the content. It extends the world of the show into everyday culture.

For streamers, that creates buzz beyond trailers and paid media. For brands, it offers a shortcut into fan conversation, nostalgia and social participation.

Why it matters: As attention fragments, brands need ways to enter conversations people already care about. Authentic entertainment partnerships can create reach, relevance and social currency at once. When the fit is strong, the brand is not interrupting fandom. It becomes part of the experience audiences want to discuss and share together organically.

5) Google hasn’t just changed Search. It has changed what Search is for.

At I/O 2026, Google unveiled plans for huge transformation of its search engine.

The new direction is less “find me the best link” and more “do the job for me.” A longer, AI-ready search box. Agents that monitor blogs, news, social, finance, shopping and sports data in the background. Generative interfaces that build visuals, simulations, tables, graphs and dashboards inside the results page. Mini apps you can create in Search with plain language.

That is not an update. It is a repositioning. A “rewriting the contract between Search and every brand, publisher, and business that depends on it.”

For 25 years, Google was the gateway to the web. Now it wants to become the destination: reading, summarising, monitoring and building before you ever click away.

Google’s AI Mode (the conversational search experience) reportedly has 1bn monthly users, while ChatGPT has 900m weekly active users. AI Overviews are already linked with big drops in click-through: 58% for top-ranking pages, 61% for organic results, and around 58% of searches ending without a third-party click.

For brands, the split is brutal: known brands get helped; unknown brands get buried. Branded AI Overview queries are reportedly up 18% in CTR; generic ones down 34–46%. Because in AI search, being cited may matter more than ranking first ever did.

Why it matters: SEO is no longer just about visibility. It is about memory, trust and citation authority. Build a brand people search for by name, create content AI can confidently reference, and reduce dependency on Google traffic. In an answer-first world, direct demand is the moat. Ranking is no longer enough alone.

The red thread running through all of this seems to be ‘retrievability’. The ability of a brand to be found, cited, remembered, chosen and talked about when it matters. Visibility alone is not enough. Brands need useful expertise that AI can reference, distinctive assets people can recall, partnerships that enter culture naturally, and direct demand strong enough to survive an answer-first search world.

Want to discuss any of this in more detail? Get in touch with our Strategy Director Mark Brighton on LinkedIn or email.