As people move away from traditional search engines and turn to AI tools for answers, Leah Nurik, Co-Founder and CEO of Brandi.ai, joins host Mike Maynard to explore how this change is transforming the way brands build visibility.
Leah shares how her background in tech and agency leadership led to the creation of Brandi, a platform that helps companies influence how AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude understand and present their brands.
She explains why Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is emerging as the new SEO, how brands can take control of their visibility in AI-driven search, and what it takes to stay relevant as the rules of digital discovery evolve.
Leah also discusses the human side of marketing in the AI era, and why critical thinking, creativity, and authenticity still matter as much as data and algorithms.
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About Brandi
Brandi is the first intelligence-driven platform built on Generative Engine Optimization for brand visibility. It helps improve brand presence in AI-generated answers from engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. In today’s landscape—where brand discovery increasingly happens through generative AI—Brandi provides the insights and tools to help your company earn recognition as a trusted answer.
About Leah Nurik
Leah Nurik is CEO and Co-Founder of Brandi. Leah has worked with over 400 growth-stage software companies in her 20-plus year career. She’s held senior strategy, product, and marketing leadership positions at Motorola, Symbol Technologies, Infowave, and others. She also founded and led Gabriel Marketing Group, an award-winning global public relations, branding, and integrated marketing agency focused on B2B SaaS companies. Leah’s expertise spans digital, public relations, content marketing, product marketing, and go-to-market strategy.
Time Stamps
00:00:17 – Guest Introduction: Leah Nurik
00:02:07 – Jumping from agency leadership to developing Brandi
00:03:19 – What is GEO
00:09:13 – How can brands use Brandi to boost AI visibility
00:15:45 – What markets does Brandi support
00:16:38 – What is Brandi’s go-to-market strategy
00:18:34 – The future of AI search
00:23:52 – Best Marketing Advice Received by Andy
00:24:22 – Advice for New Marketers
00:26:07 – Contact details and Brandi demos
Quotes
“The paradigm of internet search is completely shifting. If you’re not on the train, you’re not leaving the station.” Leah Nurik, Co-Founder and CEO at Brandi.
“Generative AI search will overtake traditional search. Ignoring it is like buying a horse when everyone else is driving a car.” Leah Nurik, Co-Founder and CEO at Brandi.
“AI can get you about 85% of the way there, but you still need that human overlay to make the content authentic and mission-driven.” Leah Nurik, Co-Founder and CEO at Brandi.
“The marketers who will thrive in the age of AI are the ones who can think critically, solve complex problems, and bring human creativity to technology.” Leah Nurik, Co-Founder and CEO at Brandi.
“Brandi allows you not just to measure and monitor your brand’s performance, but also to influence how AI defines your market and how you’re represented in those conversations.” Leah Nurik, Co-Founder and CEO at Brandi.
“Our codified intelligence engine is what sets Brandi apart. It decodes customer pain points, listens to market conversations, and delivers real, directional advice marketers can act on.” Leah Nurik, Co-Founder and CEO at Brandi.
Follow Leah:
Leah Nurik on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahgabriel/
Brandi’s website: https://mybrandi.ai/
Brandi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mybrandi/
Brandi on X: https://x.com/mybrandi_ai
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
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Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
Transcript: Interview with Leah Nurik at Brandi
Speakers: Mike Maynard, Leah Nurik
Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today. Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today, I’m joined by Leah Nurik. Leah is the founder of Brandi, a GEO tool. Welcome to the podcast, Leah.
Leah: Hi, Mike. So great to see you.
Mike: It’s great to have you on the podcast. What we’d like to do at the start is get the guests to explain a little bit about their career. So can you tell us a little bit about what you’ve done and why you chose to found Brandi?
Leah: Sure. I started my career in marketing and public relations. I worked for a variety of agencies during the dot com time. And then I worked for a variety of software companies running corporate communications, product marketing and marketing. And then I went and worked for Motorola Enterprise and I ran their go to market strategy for their emerging markets division at the time when mobile and mobile enterprise or enterprise mobility was on the up and coming list of technologies that enterprises were investing in. And then I founded my own agency called Gabriel Marketing Group, which serviced over 400 companies, helping them. They were mostly in the B2B tech space and sustainability tech, climate tech, and SaaS business. And we helped them grow and scale and build their brand and awareness. And then out of that came Brandi. As we saw a need for generative engine optimization and the emergence of AI influencing brand awareness, we created this platform that empowers brands and their agency partners to help increase disability across all the different platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Sonar, and Cloud.
Mike: So it sounds like a big jump going from running an agency to actually developing a software product, even if you’ve been working with SaaS clients. So, I mean, how difficult was it to make that jump?
Leah: You know, my background was originally in product marketing and I worked for a variety of SaaS companies. So, I mean, it’s never easy to build an innovative, cutting edge product, especially in like a new world, like AI, but God, it is fun. And it’s tiring and fun and involves a lot of sweat and a lot of critical thinking and a lot of relationship building with development partners and all that. But we’re having a great time. We’ve already secured a number of customers. We just recently launched. We were in stealth mode for a while. I mean, it’s not easy building a software company. If it was, everybody would do it. But I’m lucky enough that I’m surrounded by a group of super duper innovative, smart people that have all different types of expertise, including development, security, ad tech, martech, and then also the folks who are domain experts in content creation and digital marketing.
Mike: So I’ve heard a bit about geo or AO, this optimization around AI chatbots and AI tools. I mean, can you explain a little bit about why so many people are getting so excited about it and why people are talking about it as the next SEO?
Leah: Because the paradigm of what we knew of internet search is completely shifting. So for example, today, you can go into chat GPT and you can start at the top of the funnel, like whatever it is that you’re searching for, whether you’re searching for, you know, B2B solutions in the tech space like a CRM processing platform, or if you’re looking for something to target cellulite or wrinkly skin or where to go on vacation, you can go into ChatGPT and start at the top and then in less than five minutes be at the bottom with a short list of vendors or possibilities that you can then either continue iterating on and investigating through these AI engines, or you can go and do your independent research. So that’s why it’s important, because search is completely shifting. Also, even if you do still go type things into Google first, if you’re still using that paradigm, which I myself do often, now I’m getting gen AI summaries. And here in America, now you just have the option to go deep into AI mode, where it’s the very similar experience with chat GPT. So if you’re not on the train, you’re not getting out of the station, that’s for sure.
Mike: I love that analogy. I mean, how easy is it to get on the train? Is it possible to influence what these AI models are actually showing in their results?
Leah: Absolutely, 100%. So, you know, it’s really like Greenfield right now in the sense of like it’s 1998 of the internet, but you absolutely can influence it. And so that’s what Brandi does. So Brandi allows you to not just measure and monitor your performance and where your brand is being mentioned, but also cited in developing the narrative for a market. I think that both of those things are important. So the difference between a mention and a citation is, OK, I type in, what are the best creams for wrinkly skin? And it might give me 10 creams by name. And then there’s a narrative in there that it assumes it knows what wrinkly skin is. It assumes it knows what the best solution to wrinkly skin is. And it makes assumptions. So what’s interesting is that brands actually have two paths that are equally important. One is, how do I influence the definition of wrinkly skin, or how do I influence the definition of what the optimal B2B CRM platform is, so that AI understands that these are the requirements for that? And then How do I get mentioned in the answers? So both are super important, right? I mean, you know, working with these innovative technology companies, so many of them, they’re redefining the way problems get solved. So if you’re not influencing the definition of a market or the definition of a problem or the definition of a solution, you’re also missing an opportunity. And then of course, it’s great to have your brand mentioned in the answer itself. So what Brandi allows you to do is to figure out where are you performing now, and then exactly how to fix it.
Mike: I mean, one of the things is we see these new announcements of the new AI models, they’re not coming every day. So does it take a long time to actually influence what’s in these AI results?
Leah: It doesn’t. That’s what’s crazy. If you have the right strategy, and so much of the strategy is influenced by owned content, and owned content that speaks to the problems, the pain points, of what the people who are searching for are looking for, and then the formatting of the content itself. And then there’s some technical optimizations that need to be done in the background when that content is posted. All of these engines now have live search. So I mean, you’re looking probably at seven to 10 days or even sooner. So for example, Yesterday in our demo account, I was giving a demo to a prospect and I was going through the demo account and I clicked on one of the citations and it took me to a citation from the day before. One day. And that owned content was showing up. So I tell our customers, look for your content to start being ranked within like seven to 10 days, at least within four weeks. But once I think you get going, which we’re not sure about how the black box works, but I think that the more I’m going to get to a conclusion, this is a hypothesis, Somebody asked Sam Altman, but from all of our experience, what we’re seeing is that the more you optimize your site and the more that you get content that is readable, the sooner you get ranked and you get read. But I can’t confirm that I don’t work for these engines, but I can just tell you anecdotally that that’s what we’re seeing. But if you start from scratch and you don’t have any optimization and you start doing it, you’re looking within seven to 10 days most likely of seeing cited content.
Mike: That’s amazingly fast.
Leah: It’s way faster than traditional SEO, that’s for sure.
Mike: Absolutely. I mean, let’s walk through maybe how it’d work. Perhaps you could use the example of CRM, because obviously, Leah, you know I’ve got no idea about wrinkly skin.
Leah: Absolutely not, Mike.
Mike: So if somebody was using Brandi, can you just walk through the main steps they’d take to work out how they can appear more frequently in these answers?
Leah: Yeah, so step one, it’s all about query, right? So the key is to identifying the queries that are the most likely queries that your customers are searching for. So with what we’ve done with Brandi is we did a ton of research and we have an underlying intelligence driven platform that has codified the intelligence of identifying markets, identifying your customer pain points, prospect pain points, listening to what people are talking about, cross-referencing it with, you know, unbiased media analysts and all that kind of thing. And then establishing what the rules are and most common type of natural language querying is. And so we give you a starting point, a jumping off point, in order to do your research of what the most likely prompts are. So that’s the first step, is really looking at what are the most likely queries, and then comparing how you’re doing against your competitors. So that’s one. So now you know where you are. Am I coming up at all? What prompts am I coming up for? Who in my competitive network or my competitive universe is coming up more than me? And then what you can do is, you know, you get so much robust data. with Brandi, like exactly what prompts are you showing up for, but then what are the most influential domains? So you can look at, from a PR perspective, for example, you can see what media outlets are the most cited in generative AI results. So then you can make sure that your PR strategy is aligned with the outlets in addition to what else you’re doing, but it’s aligned with the outlets that are the most authoritative according to Gen AI. In addition to that, you can also take a look at the domains that are like native advertising or more like directories and review sites, especially for B2B, CRM and that kind of thing. When it comes to B2B tech, we see that like review sites are super duper authoritative. So from a overarching marketing perspective, you can take a look at that type of PR activities and customer campaigns that provide validated third-party earned type mentions. So that’s one. And then on the other side, incredibly, especially within B2B, there is such a pull of owned content. So for example, what Brandi does is it uses that intelligence listening engine to go out and actually based upon the most likely roles, personas, it generates the right type of content that AI loves. And it gives you a whole bunch of content ideas that are aligned with the type of content that AI likes to read. And then what ends up happening is once you decide what pieces you want to create, it gives you outlines and ideas and directional advice on what it is that you need to do and to craft and to create and then how to optimize it accordingly for formatting and then headers and all that kind of stuff so it’s readable by the machines.
Mike: I mean, that’s a lot of things that it’s going to walk you through. And obviously there are similar products on the market. So why do people pick Brandi? Where do you excel?
Leah: Oh, well, one is that codified intelligence engine. So we really have an exclusive tech edge. You can decode customer pain points and listen to market conversations, and it’s all embedded in the product. So it serves up directional advice based upon that intelligence. I don’t know of any other platforms out there that do that. In addition to that, this product, what I hear from prospects all the time and when they’ve looked at other kind of competing products, which I don’t know of any products that are as complete as the one we have. I’m not, you know, I’m not making that up and selling. I’m serious. I don’t know anybody who’s doing all the things that we’re doing. But what I hear from prospects so often when they look at our product, they go, OK, I can tell this was built by domain experts. I can tell this is built by marketers and people who really understand it. So there is a codified domain expertise that’s in the product that is so focused on, it’s great to have data and you want that data in order to measure against your KPIs and see the value and see the influence you’re having. But data is only so good as long as you can influence it and make it better. And so our product isn’t just about the metrics, although the metrics are super duper deep, but it gives you the directional guidance to go there. The people who built this product aren’t just domain experts in marketing and ad tech, but they’re technologists, they’re AI experts, they’re prompt engineers, people with incredibly deep domain expertise across all of those sectors. So you have a product that’s highly scalable, highly reliable, and the performance on it is very fast and it’s easy to use from a UX standpoint. We really have that, like I said, the thing that absolutely sets us apart as well is that platform. The codified intelligence don’t know anybody out there that can do that. We also do implementations that allow for influencing tone of voice. integrating additional context into our listening engine to provide even more directional guidance based upon what you know as a customer. So we have that flexibility on the back end if people and brands want to actually influence the intelligence engine as well as part of an enterprise product license. And then the automation of the content optimization, and then combined with traditional digital SEO optimization, which is kind of a checkbox, but you wanna make sure that you’re optimizing around traditional search too, is so easily embedded in the product. So we cover the content optimization, the readability, and then the technical and SEO optimization on the backend.
Mike: So that’s quite a lot. How does that apply across different markets? I mean, are your customers just focused in the B2B tech sector or is this a product that applies to everybody?
Leah: It applies to everybody. Everybody has this problem. So we actually have two different instances, one for B2C and one for B2B. So, you know, B2C type what is traditionally in the B2B tech space where we call like funnels, like top, middle, bottom. The B2C space has very specific terminology. We also have different sentiment modules for B2C and B2B because they’re reflected differently. And there really isn’t anybody who doesn’t need the product. I mean, that’s how early we are in this game, in this AI game and seeing where the world is going. But B2C and B2B, both need it, and Brandi works for both.
Mike: That’s really cool. So I mean, it sounds like a great product with a lot of opportunity. And this is obviously a marketing podcast. So I’m really interested to know, you know, you as leading Brandi, what’s your go to market strategy for the product?
Leah: Well, we’re going direct to brands. We have a focus on working with agencies. So, you know, I think that when you have a new market where the technology is uncertain and people are trying to figure out a complex landscape, They go to the people who do this full time and are, you know, eating and breathing it and innovating. So agencies, I think, will play a real important role. Also, you know, with agencies, agencies have the ability to layer on services like, you know, generative engine optimization content services. So these traditional digital marketing agencies that want to shift, you know, to adding more value added services on top of what they’ve traditionally done, will find themselves in a good situation by having their clients utilize Brandi. So that’s one side, but we also go direct to brands, we have SaaS type, you know, monthly packages, for smaller brands. And then we also are in the process of closing and working with some large enterprise deals. So it’s been pretty exciting. Like I said, we’ve been in stealth mode. So we’re really, we’re trying to go out and get feedback from the market for a long time prior to publicly launching the product to ensure that the product met the needs of companies that were smaller brands or had a couple of products, and then also we’re creating a scalable platform for companies that had multiple, multiple brands and were large global companies as well.
Mike: So you’re obviously on the leading edge of some of the things that are happening in marketing, Leah. I mean, what do you think is going to happen over the next five years? And how important is this move to AI search going to be?
Leah: I mean, I don’t have a crystal ball. The world’s pretty crazy. But I have 100% confidence that generative AI search will overtake traditional search. It’s already the case that the majority of people are using generative engine search over traditional Google search. And even if you were to go to Google, you still are getting generative AI summaries. So you’re not getting the classic list of, okay, this is the company that’s appearing first in the search results because it’s not the first thing you see when you go and you do a Google search. And Google has already said that they’re going to just increasingly replace that with AI summaries. So, I mean, there’s no denying it. If you deny it, then it’s just like, hey, you wanna buy this horse versus riding around in this brand new mechanical thing that we call an automobile. You can do that, but you’re not going to get there very quick, as fast as the person that’s in the car.
Mike: I love it. I love that analogy. So if there’s a CMO or a senior marketer listening to this, and they’re thinking, I’ve got to do something. I mean, obviously, other than using Brandi, which clearly goes without saying, what else should they be doing to make sure that they’re still going to be successful in the age of generative AI?
Leah: So, you know, when it comes to generative AI, I think that every senior marketer CMO needs to figure out what the data is that matters to them and needs to report on it accordingly. Right now, it is relatively difficult to link AI search results to inbound traffic. And you can often see, you know, okay, this came from chat GPT, but you don’t always get a link. So you need to understand what data matters to you and measure it accordingly, and then make it clear that these are the targets, this is what’s valuable to the board, as well as to your peers in the C-suite. So that’s important so that you know what you’re measuring and what you’re looking to accomplish through it. The other thing is, I think that every company needs to decide how they feel about content being written by a machine. So we made a conscious decision to not include content creation in the sense of AI writing your content within Brandi. And that’s for a variety of reasons of which I will expound upon, if that’s okay, Mike. One is that a lot of companies, especially larger companies, have invested in their own learning models. And so they may have trained their models in a way that they’re getting really great content out of that. That is a starting point for their writers. Then it’s smaller brands. You still might have somebody who’s publicly using like a free version of ChatGPT, who’s throwing messaging documents and things like that in there and a couple of ideas. which is not owned anymore once they put it in there by the brand. So we’ve also heard talk around Google actually watermarking results, things like that. So I think that there needs to be a philosophical conversation as well as taking a look at the infrastructure and resources that companies have in what they’re going to do in generating content. I am of the belief that AI can get you about 85% there, but you still need that human overlay in order to make the content great. And by great, what I mean is it’s awesome if it’s readable by machines. It’s amazing. That’s why we build Brandi, to make sure that it is. But it’s also always about the human experience. If I’m going to read something that is not written well, and it doesn’t speak to my pains, really, and it sounds like it was written by a machine, my view of the brand isn’t necessarily as positive from a sentiment standpoint. So, you know, I might be like, they’re trying to trick me. They’re just putting it in here and answering this and it’s not real. It’s not mission driven. It’s not authentic. So I think it is really important for every marketing organization as they go into this Gen AI era to have a philosophical conversation with themselves to figure out what does their brand want to do and what mission do they have. And it would be very easy for a lot of companies to stray from their mission when things can be easy. But we must always remember as marketers that the people who make the decisions of what they’re going to buy have to have shared values. and principles with the brands that they buy from, whether it’s HubSpot for B2B, SMB, CRM, or whether it’s, I don’t know, Go Beauty for wrinkle cream. So that’s a conversation that needs to happen, I think.
Mike: And that’s a really positive way, I think, to end because there’s certainly a future for us humans there in terms of getting that value-driven content. It’s been really interesting talking to you, Leah, but I’ve got a couple of questions before you go. We like to ask everybody. And so the first question is, what’s the best piece of marketing advice that someone has given to you?
Leah: The best piece of marketing advice? So I would say, and this is, I’d also think a piece of leadership advice, but it pertains to every discipline, especially marketing. Recognize what you don’t know and search out the domain experts who do.
Mike: Fabulous, I love that. Really clear, really succinct. The other question we like to ask is if you were talking to somebody who was just beginning their career and starting a career in marketing, what advice would you give them?
Leah: That could be its own podcast in the sense of how the marketing industry is changing because of AI and what does it look like for careers going forward. But I think that one thing that is incredibly clear in the age that it’s happening and starting to happen right now with generative AI is that those professionals and people who are cultivating their critical thinking skills and their skills for logic and the ability to solve complex problems are the people who will go far. And I mean, that’s always been the case. But I think as a society in general, we’ve tended to put so much value on technology and engineering and vocationally driven education. But in this new world, it’s really the people who are going to solve the complex generative AI problems on the marketing side are those people who can think critically. They can understand how to put logic and prompting together. And so I would say to those who are hiring, look for those liberal arts majors. and don’t pass them aside when they have history, philosophy, and English degrees, because those are the people who are gonna probably give you the best prompts. And if you’re a marketer, go take some philosophy classes.
Mike: Fascinating advice, I think that’s brilliant. Leah, before you go, I’m sure people will have listened to this, they’ll have heard about Brandi, they’ll have heard about GEO, and they’ll be interested to know more about the product and maybe even get a demo. So how could they get hold of you to ask questions or maybe find more information on Brandi?
Leah: Thanks, Mike. So if you’re interested, please go to mybrandi.ai or email me directly at Leah at mybrandi.ai.
Mike: Leah, it’s been fascinating. Thank you so much for your time and thank you for talking about Brandi.
Leah: Thank you for having me. Have a great day.
Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you’d like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.
