VML’s Heather Physioc: AI Search Requires Brands to Tell a Consistent Story
NEW YORK — Search engine optimization built its playbook around keywords and links. AI-powered discovery requires something different. Brands need a coherent, corroborated story that holds up across every surface where their content appears, because AI systems are cross-validating sources in ways that traditional search never did.
“To be discoverable today means that brands are able not only to be found in a list of links, but they are chosen, recommended, hopefully eventually transacted upon,” Heather Physioc, chief discoverability officer at VML, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at EMARKETER’s Future of Digital event in New York. “It’s all about having this consistent story that shows up about your brand no matter when, where, why, or how people search.”
The fragmentation problem is where most brands are falling short. A brand’s website, social media, earned media, and retail experiences often tell slightly different versions of the same story. In traditional search, that inconsistency was largely invisible. In AI search, corroboration is everything.
Content breadth and depth matter more than keywords
The questions consumers now ask AI platforms are more specific, more nuanced, and more numerous than anything SEO was built to handle. A brand optimized for a handful of high-volume keywords may be completely invisible when a user asks a layered, follow-up-driven question.
“The breadth and depth of their content is not sufficient in this new era to answer all the personalized, nuanced, specific questions that people are suddenly able to ask,” Physioc said. “We need to have a deeper, richer understanding of what it is our customers need and want and how they’re going to use these tools so that we can create more content and experiences that serve those needs better.”
Trust signals are a competitive advantage
One in 10 Google AI overviews contains an error. At Google’s scale, that represents hundreds of thousands of mistakes every minute. As AI platforms push toward paid media and compete for loyal users, accuracy and trust become existential priorities.
“People know that they can’t fully trust these LLMs. As these platforms want to move toward paid media and be the platform that wins all the users, people need to trust the results,” Physioc said. “As that trust gap starts to get closed and these platforms get more sophisticated, that enables the next steps that push us toward that autonomous, agentic shopping era.”
For brands, that dynamic translates into a clear imperative. Credentials, expertise signals, and third-party validation will increasingly determine which brands surface in AI-generated short lists.
AI visibility requires a center of excellence
Owning AI discoverability inside an organization means breaking down the walls between search, social, and PR. The strategic and organizational challenge is as significant as the technical one.
“The AI discoverability landscape is requiring different channels to collaborate together like never before,” Physioc said. “It should live in a center of excellence where you bring the best of different expertises like social, search, and PR to the table to figure out how a story or message can come to life regardless of what channel it’s in.”
Executive sponsorship is not optional. The level of coordination required across teams and channels demands organizational commitment from the top down.
“Structuring your information in a retrievable way while giving humans a reason to believe and algorithms evidence to validate — that’s the trifecta that I think is going to win,” Physioc said.
You’re watching Beet.TV’s coverage of EMARKETER’s 2026 The Future of Digital summit. For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
NEW YORK — Search engine optimization built its playbook around keywords and links. AI-powered discovery requires something different. Brands need a coherent, corroborated story that holds up across every surface where their content appears, because AI systems are cross-validating sources in ways that traditional search never did.
“To be discoverable today means that brands are able not only to be found in a list of links, but they are chosen, recommended, hopefully eventually transacted upon,” Heather Physioc, chief discoverability officer at VML, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at EMARKETER’s Future of Digital event in New York. “It’s all about having this consistent story that shows up about your brand no matter when, where, why, or how people search.”
The fragmentation problem is where most brands are falling short. A brand’s website, social media, earned media, and retail experiences often tell slightly different versions of the same story. In traditional search, that inconsistency was largely invisible. In AI search, corroboration is everything.
Content breadth and depth matter more than keywords
The questions consumers now ask AI platforms are more specific, more nuanced, and more numerous than anything SEO was built to handle. A brand optimized for a handful of high-volume keywords may be completely invisible when a user asks a layered, follow-up-driven question.
“The breadth and depth of their content is not sufficient in this new era to answer all the personalized, nuanced, specific questions that people are suddenly able to ask,” Physioc said. “We need to have a deeper, richer understanding of what it is our customers need and want and how they’re going to use these tools so that we can create more content and experiences that serve those needs better.”
Trust signals are a competitive advantage
One in 10 Google AI overviews contains an error. At Google’s scale, that represents hundreds of thousands of mistakes every minute. As AI platforms push toward paid media and compete for loyal users, accuracy and trust become existential priorities.
“People know that they can’t fully trust these LLMs. As these platforms want to move toward paid media and be the platform that wins all the users, people need to trust the results,” Physioc said. “As that trust gap starts to get closed and these platforms get more sophisticated, that enables the next steps that push us toward that autonomous, agentic shopping era.”
For brands, that dynamic translates into a clear imperative. Credentials, expertise signals, and third-party validation will increasingly determine which brands surface in AI-generated short lists.
AI visibility requires a center of excellence
Owning AI discoverability inside an organization means breaking down the walls between search, social, and PR. The strategic and organizational challenge is as significant as the technical one.
“The AI discoverability landscape is requiring different channels to collaborate together like never before,” Physioc said. “It should live in a center of excellence where you bring the best of different expertises like social, search, and PR to the table to figure out how a story or message can come to life regardless of what channel it’s in.”
Executive sponsorship is not optional. The level of coordination required across teams and channels demands organizational commitment from the top down.
“Structuring your information in a retrievable way while giving humans a reason to believe and algorithms evidence to validate — that’s the trifecta that I think is going to win,” Physioc said.
You’re watching Beet.TV’s coverage of EMARKETER’s 2026 The Future of Digital summit. For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
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