This article was based on the interview with Spotlight’s Deena Zenyk on customer advocacy when AI builds the shortlist by Greg Kihlström, Marketing AI Adoption keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
The B2B buying journey has always been a complex, multi-touch affair, but the last few years have introduced a new gatekeeper that is fundamentally altering the landscape. For decades, marketing leaders have focused on reaching buyers where they are: analyst reports, industry events, peer communities, and search engines. We’ve meticulously crafted narratives and optimized content for human consumption and search algorithms. The goal was to earn a spot on the buyer’s coveted shortlist. Today, that shortlist is often half-formed before a human prospect ever speaks to a human salesperson, and increasingly, it’s being compiled not by a person, but by an AI.
This new reality presents a formidable challenge. What happens when the most important “reader” of your customer’s glowing testimonial isn’t the buyer themselves, but the large language model that will summarize it for them? When an AI synthesizes everything from G2 reviews and community threads to your own press releases, narrative consistency is no longer a “nice-to-have” communications goal; it’s a strategic imperative. This shift requires more than just a new line item in the marketing budget for “AI optimization.” It demands a new operational model for how organizations manage their influence across every customer-facing function. It requires, as customer advocacy expert Deena Zenyk puts it, a move from siloed influence to intentional orchestration.
The Imperative of Influence Orchestration
For as long as modern businesses have existed, we’ve talked about breaking down silos. It’s a concept so well-worn it borders on cliché, a perennial goal that often remains just out of reach as departmental priorities and P&Ls take precedence. Yet, the rise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) may finally provide the forcing function needed to make cross-functional alignment an operational reality rather than a corporate ideal. When an AI is crawling every public-facing asset to form an opinion about your brand, the uncoordinated messages emanating from marketing, sales, customer success, and PR are no longer just inefficient—they are actively detrimental.
Zenyk argues that this new environment requires a deliberate, unified approach she calls “influence orchestration.” It’s the recognition that functions like analyst relations, influencer relations, and customer advocacy can no longer operate in their own swim lanes, executing on a top-down message in isolation. They must be coordinated to project a cohesive narrative into the market.
“The shift today about where influence sits is that it needs to be distributed across the different functions within the business that have anything to do with the market. That’s what we call influence orchestration at Spotlight, which is about that kind of intentional coordination of message, of narrative, of influence out into the B2B buying journey… We can no longer operate as silos.”
This isn’t just about making sure everyone is using the same slide deck. It’s about a strategic alignment of who is saying what, through which channels, and to what end. Are your customer advocates speaking the same language as the industry analysts you brief? Is your influencer content reinforcing the key value propositions highlighted in your latest case studies? The AI doesn’t care which department an asset came from; it only cares about the signals it receives. Inconsistent or contradictory signals weaken your narrative and reduce your chances of being favorably represented when a prospect asks, “Who are the top three vendors for X?” Orchestration ensures you are “beaming those messages out now in a whole new era,” one that rewards cohesive narratives.
The Rise of the Chief Influence Officer
If influence orchestration is the new strategic imperative, who is the orchestrator? A grassroots movement among well-intentioned team leads is unlikely to succeed. Everyone is busy, with their own KPIs and motivations. True orchestration requires top-down support and a clear owner—someone whose remit is to connect the dots between disparate teams and ensure the narrative remains strong and unified. This thinking has led Zenyk to predict the emergence of a new executive role dedicated to this very function.
“I think future state, and when I say future state, but the world is moving a mile a minute, this could be 12 or 18 months, you would be looking to see roles emerge in organizations that are, like, VP of Influence, Chief Influence Officer, people who have that remit now so that participating and collaborating cross-functionally and outside of your silos isn’t just a nice to have… but it is that operating, operational imperative for the business. You need someone to guide that.”
The ideal candidate for such a role isn’t just a master communicator. They are a strategist who understands the mechanics of AEO, the psychology of influence, and the internal politics of the organization. They are the “keeper of the message,” but their job is less about policing brand guidelines and more about empowering the experts in analyst relations, customer advocacy, and influencer marketing to move the levers effectively. The value they bring is clear and measurable. As Zenyk points out, for the first time, customer advocacy and other “soft” influence functions can directly see their impact. The success of a Chief Influence Officer would be tied to the company’s visibility and sentiment within the answer engines—a metric that can be tracked, analyzed, and directly correlated with a position on the AI-generated shortlist.
From Broad Advocacy to Precision Advocacy
While the context has changed dramatically, the foundational principles of building strong customer relationships have not. Zenyk, co-author of The Messenger is the Message, emphasizes that the core methodology of effective customer advocacy—what she calls DNA (Discover, Nurture, Activate)—remains as relevant as ever. You must still understand your customers (Discover), invest in their success (Nurture), and then mobilize them in ways that benefit both parties (Activate). What has changed is the “Activate” step. In the age of AI, broad, unfocused asks are no longer sufficient.
The new approach is “precision advocacy.” It requires a deep understanding of which channels and formats the AI models are prioritizing, and then activating the right customer voices in the right places at the right time. This is a far more surgical approach than simply asking every happy customer to write a review.
“Liz and I are working on a methodology now called precision advocacy, being very, very specific in how you are looking to activate your customers. But yeah, that’s the piece that hasn’t changed, and the context in which it’s applied today is slightly different, but still the methodology remains.”
Precision advocacy might mean identifying a customer who has seen success with a specific, underrepresented feature and asking them to post about it in a particular Subreddit that you know the AI is scraping. It could mean working with a customer to produce a video testimonial, but ensuring it’s properly formatted with chapters and a full transcript to make it easily digestible for an LLM. It’s about looking at your existing content not just through a human lens, but through the “eyes” of the answer engine. As Zenyk notes, “You don’t have to greenfield everything. You can look at some of the stuff that you’ve already got and start to optimize it.” This shift requires customer marketers to become more technical and data-driven in their activation strategies, transforming advocacy from a relationship-management function into a key driver of AI-era visibility.
The Final Word: The Human Element Persists
In the rush to optimize for the machine, it’s easy to lose sight of the ultimate audience. We are not, as Zenyk wisely cautions, simply “marketing to machines.” The AI is a conduit, a new and incredibly powerful channel, but the end goal is still to connect with and persuade a person. The fundamentals of human psychology, trust, and relationship-building haven’t been deprecated. If anything, they’ve become more important. An authentic, human story from a credible peer will always carry more weight than a perfectly optimized but soulless piece of marketing copy, whether it’s read by a person or synthesized by an algorithm.
The work of customer advocacy—of genuinely understanding what matters to your customers and investing in their success—remains the bedrock of sustainable influence. The tools and tactics are evolving at a breathtaking pace, but the core principle is timeless. The AI may build the shortlist, but a human still makes the final decision. The brands that will win in this new era are those that master the science of influence orchestration while never forgetting the art of human connection.
