I’ve long argued that strategy is not performance but clarity, coherence, decisiveness and judgement- not theatre but consequence. The problem was that when it came to my website I had begun to conclude that much of what I actually do for clients was implicit, rather than explicit. I’m not naïve - a website is not a substitute for reputation, relationships, conversations, and referrals. But with AI increasingly mediating reputation and discovery, the ambiguity was beginning to feel untenable. Besides, if my work couldn’t be parsed clearly by a machine, it was unlikely to be understood clearly by a human either.

So over the past month and in between the day job and shipping a manuscript, I re-engineered my website. Not as a vanity exercise in making things look pretty, but as an act of strategic housekeeping.

Optimising for AI-readability actually turned out to be not just a technical exercise, but an occasionally brutal forcing function for precision and clarity. It demanded explicit language, coherent structure, visible hierarchy, consistent naming… and some code I didn't understand, but my trusty developer did.

The rebuilt site makes explicit that my practice sits at the intersection of brand, narrative, and organisational commitment, and that its purpose is not mere decoration but consequence and advantage. It names the problems, the instruments, and outcomes delivered. Nothing has changed in my work itself, just its findability and legibility.

I reflect that what I did to my own website applies to brands just as directly (my old strategy partner in crime Andy Bateman has written some rather excellent words on this recently). If a model cannot clearly summarise what your brand stands for, what makes it different, and why someone should choose it, the issue is very probably not the model. It is usually that the brand itself lacks articulated clarity. AI-readability is simply a new stress test for an old discipline: say what you are, mean it, make it legible, and let your decisions prove it. I will never get tired of quoting Dolly Parton – "find out who you are, and do it on purpose ".

If this way of thinking about strategy resonates - if you are wrestling with clarity, coherence, conviction, or competitive focus - the new structure is there to explore: emdub.co

***

Martin Weigel is a brand strategist, former Chief Strategy Officer at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, and founder of EMDUB. He helps companies find their superpower - and turn it into action.

Strategy, Legibility, and Machines