How Absolut Uncovered the AI Search Gap
Generative AI is not just reshaping how people search — it’s rewriting what they find. And Absolut Vodka is one of the first brands to take this shift seriously.
When the team behind Absolut discovered that nearly 70% of ChatGPT’s mixology answers didn’t mention a single brand, they saw both a blind spot and an open door. In a landscape where search is moving from links to language, the battle for visibility is no longer about ranking — it’s about being referenced.
From Search Engines to Answer Engines
According to Ipsos data shared at the 2025 ESOMAR Congress, ChatGPT has already become the fifth-most-visited website globally, surpassing both X and Wikipedia. It’s expected to hit 1 billion users by the end of 2025, with search accounting for more than half of all usage.
This signals a fundamental change for marketers.
Consumers are no longer typing keywords into Google — they’re asking full questions to AI models. And those answers are being shaped not by SEO, but by the data sources AI trusts most.
Absolut’s Experiment: Seeing the Brand Through AI’s Eyes
To understand how ChatGPT represents Absolut compared to its competitors, the research team at Ipsos and Pernod Ricard analyzed 10,000 AI-generated answers to 4,500 proxy questions.
They identified over 3,000 data sources, finding that Reddit and Wikipedia play a major role in shaping AI responses. Nearly half of the questions (42%) were about cocktail recipes — a perfect context for a brand like Absolut to dominate.
But the findings weren’t fully reassuring. ChatGPT’s portrayal of Absolut was missing some of the brand’s strongest traits: its heritage, progressive values, and connection to music culture. The only area where creativity appeared consistently was the design of the bottle — a sign that AI understood the visuals, but not the values.
The New Brand Imperative: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
For Pernod Ricard’s head of consumer insights, Elena Franceschini, the message was clear:
“We need to be in control of the narrative. We need to know what GenAI is saying about the brand.”
Her advice? Treat AI like a new media ecosystem — one that brands can (and must) influence strategically. The goal is not to game the algorithm, but to feed it with credible, brand-owned content across the platforms it learns from.
What Marketers Can Learn
Absolut’s research reveals a roadmap for all brands navigating this new terrain of Generative Engine Optimization:
- Predict questions, not just keywords. What are consumers asking AI about your category?
- Audit your AI presence. See how GenAI describes your brand today — not your website ranking.
- Create authoritative, source-backed content. Publish on platforms AI models rely on, like Wikipedia and Reddit.
- Shape narratives at the source. Don’t just optimize for clicks — optimize for answers.
Bottom Line
As search becomes conversational, brand equity will depend on how AI perceives you. Absolut’s proactive approach marks the beginning of a new marketing discipline — one where owning your story means training the machines to tell it right.
