How Stanley 1913 is adapting its marketing for the AI search era, without losing a ‘human touch’

AI Strategies // August 13, 2026 How Stanley 1913 is adapting its marketing for the AI search era, without losing a ‘human touch’ By Krystal Scanlon Adapting to AI search is a muscle memory problem, not a hacking problem — at least that’s how Stanley 1913 sees it.

The brand could chase quick wins the way some competitors have, gaming its way into AI recommendations. Instead, it’s playing the long game, treating this less as a sprint than a marathon it needs to actually train for. That means rethinking not just what Stanley 1913 says about its products, but how it’s structured.

To do so, the brand is building clearer links between product features and customer benefits, adding product-level FAQs and care instructions, usage guides around the kinds of questions people actually ask AI engines — on gifting, hydration, fitness, travel, hosting, lifestyle.

“It’s about ensuring our authentic brand experiences translate into natural-language answers without losing the human touch,” said chief brand officer Kate Ridley. The gap became obvious around occasion-based marketing.

Stanley 1913 had built plenty of visual content around Mother’s Day, Teacher Appreciation Week and Nurse Appreciation, but it was heavy on imagery, light on explanation. Or as Ridley explained, “We weren’t necessarily writing copy that was really detailing the use, the occasion and why it was a great gift option.

Now we recognize that’s actually really important for LLMs.” The realization couldn’t have been more timely. Already, more than four in 10 (42%) of U. S. adults now use AI chatbots to search for information, according to Pew Research Center. Stanley 1913, by its own admission, wasn’t built for that shift.

Its marketing has done real work on brand awareness through influencer- and creator-led visual storytelling, but that content was built for humans, who can infer meaning from an image, a vibe, a face they trust. LLMs, on the other hand, aggregate what’s already out there on the open web.

Without the underlying detail, a brand won’t surface, no matter how strong its social presence is. The stakes are bigger than a new search channel. Stanley 1913’s website received 6. 6 million global desktop and mobile visits in July 2026, a 35. 5% increase compared to July 2025, according to data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb.

As that digital audience has grown, so has the number of platforms where consumers can discover a brand — which makes the question of how Stanley 1913’s product information travels across the web increasingly important. That’s also why Stanley 1913 isn’t treating this as an SEO or e-commerce side project.

It’s a cross-functional effort spanning content, SEO, e-commerce, technology, PR and marketing — reflecting the fact that AI platforms pull from product data, brand storytelling and third-party sources alike. Ridley said the brand is “actively building out dedicated LLM guidance and measurement frameworks so everyone stays aligned.”

On the infrastructure side, Stanley 1913 has been testing Shopify and Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol to bring its product catalog directly into chat conversations, and using structured data to keep product information consistent for both traditional search and AI agents.

Working with partners including Yotpo’s Discovery product, the brand is building a baseline for how often it appears in LLM conversations and how frequently its products get cited.

“Stanley did an incredible job of reintroducing its brand to consumers via human creators and influencers,” said Debra Aho Williamson, founder and chief analyst at Sonata Insights. “Now, brands like Stanley are recognizing that they need to think of AI platforms as influencers of a different type.

They are becoming important places where consumers discover new brands, learn about them and then make purchase decisions — the same roles human influencers play.” The work extends beyond Stanley 1913’s own site, too.

Since LLMs lean on third-party sources — earned media, affiliate coverage, reviews — the team tracks which sources agentic search tools treat as authorities and directs its efforts accordingly.

Culturally-led campaigns, like Stanley 1913’s recent Kacey Musgraves partnership, feed into that by generating press coverage and conversation beyond the brand’s own channels. None of this replaces what Stanley 1913 was already doing. “We’re not moving away from one and towards the other,” said Ridley, talking about social versus AI platforms.

“We need to do both to make sure we’re providing as much detailed information about our products as possible.” But specifically for the LLMs, “you have to have the information there for it to do its job,” she added. Copy link