How Beiersdorf Built a Leading AI Reputation: Lessons From Jonas Gödde
Most large organisations are still working out what AI platforms say about them.
Beiersdorf, the parent company of brands like NIVEA and Eucerin, started acting on it early. It was recently ranked second out of all DAX 40 companies in FTI Consulting’s AI Reputation Monitor.
Jonas Gödde, Head of Digital & AI Communication at Beiersdorf, joined Charlie Marchant, CEO of Exposure Ninja, on The Growth Leaders Series podcast to share what sat behind that ranking: technical changes, around 150 updated pages, and a lot of work bringing experts from across the business together.
Trust Is the Growth Metric
Jonas’s team looks after Beiersdorf’s digital channels, including social, the corporate website, and the internal intranet. They also own everything else digital, from AI transformation to how AI platforms receive and repeat Beiersdorf’s messages.
But the commercial goal is not measured in product sales alone.
“Our main KPI is trust that we’re working on as a communications department, as a corporate affairs and corporate communications department for Beiersdorf,” says Jonas Gödde.
Trust shapes the behaviour of every stakeholder group. Consumers buy products. Talent chooses to join. Employees stay and deliver.
Some stakeholders have a more immediate financial impact than you might expect. As Jonas Gödde puts it: “We have analysts who are, like, kind of looking at our financial performance and whatever they say that can have an impact on how our share price is.”
That broad stakeholder view is why AI visibility mattered so much to Beiersdorf. Every one of those groups now forms impressions through AI platforms, so what AI says about the company has a direct bearing on trust.
Start Before the Plan Is Perfect
Charlie asked Jonas what made the biggest difference to Beiersdorf’s AI reputation. His answer started with mindset, not tactics:
“I’m really about just doing it and trying our best and finding the way how we can do something at least, and not just think about, okay, we have to find the perfect way and then the perfect strategy, and then also have the perfect set of KPIs already that we can measure our success.”
New technology comes with unknowns. Teams that wait to resolve all of them before starting tend to be overtaken by those that begin with what they can control.
Jonas is also realistic about where this works. “I’m fully aware that this doesn’t always work and sometimes you just have to do the nitty-gritty work.”
For Beiersdorf, the place to start was the asset the team had full control over: the corporate website. Being an early mover came from choosing a lever they could pull straight away, rather than waiting for complete certainty.
Treat AI Visibility Like an SEO Project
Beiersdorf did not invent a new discipline for AI. Jonas and the team applied what already works in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), explaining, “We kind of approached it as a SEO project in general.”
That meant two strands of work:
- Technical SEO fixes and adjustments, following the same rules used in SEO.
- “Bringing our house in order when it came to content”, so the website clearly and accurately reflected the company.
For marketing leaders unsure where to begin with AI Search, this is a useful reframe. The foundations of SEO, technical health and clear, well-structured content are also the foundations of how AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews understand your brand.
AI Is a New Stakeholder
The most distinctive idea in Jonas’s approach is how he positions AI itself: “For me now, AI is a new stakeholder that we have to kind of create content for.”
Right now, Jonas sees AI as a bridge. People find information about Beiersdorf in AI platforms, read it, and that shapes their behaviour as consumers, candidates, employees, or analysts.
He does not expect that to last. “For sure the agents will decide on themselves and interact with our content.”
If AI agents begin acting on behalf of people, the content they read becomes the content that makes decisions. Treating AI as a stakeholder now, with its own content needs, prepares the brand for that shift rather than reacting to it later.
Write for Humans and AI at the Same Time
Creating content for a new stakeholder raised a practical tension. Simpler language helps AI interpret a page, but it can alienate human readers.
“We want it to be a great page for humans, but also great page for AI,” says Jonas Gödde.
Beiersdorf moved towards much simpler language than before. The risk, as Jonas explains, is that it “could look just not great for someone reading the page as a human because they think, ‘Okay, what do you think about how I read content? Do you expect me to not know anything?’”
The answer was not to pick one audience. It was to find the middle ground between them.
Optimising purely for AI can damage the experience for the people you are ultimately trying to win over. The pages that perform best serve both readers at once.
Use Guidelines to Upskill, Not Just Review
AI-friendly content was not a focus for the wider team before the project began. With so many pages and contributors, reviewing every page individually was not realistic.
“We needed really good guidelines, and this is kind of how we then upskilled everyone with these guidelines.”
The guidelines, created with Exposure Ninja’s team, gave every contributor the same rules to apply. Jonas then provided ongoing consulting as channel owner for the corporate website and project owner.
“This was the only way it could get effective, because again, it needed to be good for AI, but it needed to be good for humans as well.”
Guidelines turned a one-off content project into a capability the organisation now holds. That is what makes the work scalable beyond a single round of updates.
What This Means for Your AI Search Strategy
Beiersdorf’s approach is transferable to any large organisation that wants to influence how AI talks about it:
- Start with what you control. Do not wait for a perfect strategy or KPI set. Begin with the assets you own, like your website.
- Build on SEO foundations. Technical fixes and well-ordered content underpin both search rankings and AI visibility.
- Treat AI as a stakeholder. Create content with AI’s needs in mind, especially as agents begin interacting with brands directly.
- Serve humans and AI together. Simplify for clarity, but never at the cost of respecting your human readers.
- Scale through guidelines. Shared rules let subject experts contribute consistently and build long-term capability across the team.
If you want a strategy that improves how your brand appears across AI Search and Google, and turns that visibility into qualified leads and revenue, we can help. Book a consultation call with our team, and we’ll provide recommendations based on your marketing, website, and goals.
About The Growth Leaders Series
The Growth Leaders Series is a mini podcast series from Exposure Ninja. In each episode, Charlie Marchant sits down with a growth leader from one of the world’s most innovative brands to explore how marketing leaders are adapting to changes in search, AI, demand generation, and brand growth.
