AUTHOR: KIERON MOLLOY & MARC HOLBROOK
READ TIME: 4 MINS

AI has changed how corporates are understood – and with the narrative slipping into the control of LLMs, it’s never been more important to design for clarity and credibility. Here, Creative Director Kieron Molloy and Senior Digital Strategist Marc Holbrook explain why it is so important to balance how they’re perceived by machines and people, and where to start. 

Corporate visibility used to be a question of reach. Could people find you? Were you showing up in search? Was your website clear and compelling enough? That world hasn’t gone. But it has changed.

Today, first impressions are increasingly shaped before anyone reaches your owned channels. Investors, employees, analysts, journalists, partners and customers are using AI tools to summarise companies, compare competitors, interpret performance and interrogate sustainability claims.

Zero-click discovery is becoming the norm: 60% of Google searches end without a click, rising to 70% with AI Overviews, 78% in ChatGPT, and 95% in Google AI Mode.

In this environment, your organisation is no longer understood only through what people see. It’s also understood through what machines can read, interpret and repeat about you.

That creates a new challenge for corporates. It’s no longer enough to be visible. You must now be legible by AI. That means being consistent, credible, and structuring your story for machines while remaining meaningful for people.

The businesses that will truly own their future will design for machines to understand them and for people to trust them.

From being found to being understood

AI is changing how corporate information is discovered and delivered. AI tools do not simply point people towards content. They aggregate, summarise and disseminate it. They turn annual reports, corporate websites, sustainability disclosures and investor information into direct abbreviated answers.

That means the first version of your organisation that a stakeholder encounters may not be the one you thought it would be. It’ll be a machine-generated synthesis of the information available about you.

So now, the question is not only ‘Can people find us?’ but also ‘Can AI understand us?’. And when it does, is it reflecting back what you hoped to see?

Does it understand your business model, strategy and progress? Does it connect your ambition to evidence? Does it sound current, credible and specific – or outdated and incomplete? If the answer is no, it’s a problem.

How and where to create clarity through design

For corporates, two assets carry particular weight: the annual report and the corporate website. Together, they form the core evidence base through which audiences understand who you are, what you do, how you create value and why you can be trusted.

For people, these assets create understanding, positive sentiment and trust. For AI, they provide source material. So, it’s crucial that they work together to re-enforce the same story.

Where to start? Here are three key considerations for corporate communications in the age of AI:

IMPLEMENT STRUCTURE

In an AI-shaped information environment, clear structure influences how reputation is built and maintained.

Headings, summaries, metadata, page hierarchy, accessibility, information architecture, internal linking, source clarity and data consistency all play a role in how information is understood.

ENSURE CONSISTENCY

If the annual report tells one story, the website tells another, and sustainability content uses different language again, the organisation becomes harder to understand – in other words, easier for AI to misrepresent. Remember, AI won’t necessarily resolve unclear complexities and competing narratives in your favour – it’ll make up its own mind.

CONSIDER BOTH AUDIENCES

At Conran Design Group, we have always helped people navigate complexity through design by implementing order, hierarchy, emphasis and meaning – and in the age of AI, that role becomes even more important. But the challenge isn’t to design for machines instead of people. It’s to design in a way that serves both.

The best corporate communications will not become colder or more mechanical in response to AI. They’ll become richer and more intentional. Because the same qualities that help AI interpret a company – clarity, consistency, accessibility and evidence – also help people trust it.

Find out how your corporate story is being understood

Conran Design Group’s Trust Lens is a proprietary diagnostic that reviews your annual report and corporate website to assess how clearly, consistently and credibly your organisation is presented in an AI-shaped information environment.

The result is a clear view of how you are performing as connected sources of corporate truth and what needs to change to improve clarity, visibility and trust.

To understand whether your organisation is designed for machines to understand and built for people to trust, speak to Conran Design Group about The Trust Lens – and let us help your organisation own its future.