Brand Story
What the company says
The one story the brand intends the market to understand: your owned positioning, claims, categories, and evidence.
Our Methodology
In Formation™
Companies go to market. Humans feel. AI reasons. Winning organizations align all three.
In Formation™ is Targence’s methodology for understanding whether your brand story, customer reality, and AI-generated narrative are reinforcing one another or pulling apart. It asks one central question: Brand, people, and AI: do they tell the same story?
The Three Voices
What In Formation measures
Each lens captures a different source of truth. The In Formation methodology works by comparing all three at once.
People’s Voice
What buyers verify
Customers and those who represent them express sentiment, share experiences, hedge, and feed the external authority signals that shape reputation.
AI Answers
What machines reason
The verified evidence layer machines trust to form answers: training data, structured claims, proof, and the entity data AI cites with reason.
Diagnostic Framework
Each misalignment pattern is a different diagnosis, with a different prescription.
Not every gap means the same thing. In Formation shows which voice is out of step, what that pattern means, and what kind of work is required to close it.
People + AI agree · Brand differs
The blind spot
The market has reached consensus without you. This is not an AEO problem. It is an internal alignment gap. We are the advisors who tell you the AEO campaign you wanted would have been wasted.
RX · Strategy Work
Brand + People agree · AI differs
The lagging machine
The model learned from stale or wrong sources. The truth is on your side; AI just has not absorbed it. This is often the cleanest fix and the highest-ROI engagement.
RX · AEO Remediation
Brand + AI agree · People differ
Borrowed time
The most dangerous quadrant. AI may echo your content today, but models weight third-party voices more every year. Over time, AI drifts toward your users.
RX · Product, CX & Expectations
All three differ
Full misalignment
No shared story anywhere. Brand, buyers, and machines each tell a different one. Every vertex needs work, in the right order.
RX · Full Diagnostic Engagement
Why timing matters
P and A are coupled. AI models learn from what people say online; people form opinions from what LLM models say. Gaps do not sit still, they compound. Fix early and the flywheel works for you. Wait and it works against you.
Findings Framework
Full alignment means brand, people and AI are all In Formation.
The framework rolls up what In Formation finds across the core categories that shape perception.
Each category is scored across Brand, People, and AI. The verdict shows where the narrative is already working and where the next move needs to happen.
In Formation™ scorecard
| Category | Brand | People | AI | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owned Content | ✓ | ✓ | ◐ | Winnable |
| Earned Media & Proof | ✓ | ✓ | ◐ | Winnable |
| Product & Positioning | ✓ | ◐ | ◐ | Contested |
| Community & Voice | ✓ | ◐ | ◐ | Contested |
| Visibility & Signals | ✓ | ◐ | ◐ | Contested |
| Website & Access | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | Contradicted |
| Ideal aligned state | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | In Alignment |
In Alignment = full alignment across all three
Contested = partial alignment with meaningful gaps
Winnable or contradicted = fixable, but for different reasons
Contradicted = misaligned
See if your brand story, people, and AI are aligned and saying the same thing.
Request a Targence demo to see how the In Formation™ methodology becomes evidence, priorities, and a clearer next move.
Book a Demo