We read what AI says about your brand. Then we work out what to do about it.

brand·lore is an AI perception advisory for marketing and comms teams. We diagnose how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity describe a brand against its competitors, publish reproducible studies of what AI cites and recommends, and bring twenty years of comms judgment to what happens next.

Why this exists

Reputation is being written in AI answers. Most brands have never read them.

For twenty years Sean sat in comms rooms where the output was easy to count and the outcome was not. Coverage, share of voice, impressions. None of it told a CEO how the company was actually understood.

AI answers changed that. When a buyer asks ChatGPT which vendor to shortlist, the answer names brands, ranks them, and explains why. It is opinionated, it is repeatable, and it is written without the brand's input. Household names turn out to be invisible in their own categories. Hallucinated facts sit next to real ones. The story gets told either way.

brand·lore was founded in 2026 to read that story and make it useful. We measure what AI says today and we say so plainly. We do not promise to move a model, and we are wary of anyone who does. What we can do is show a comms team exactly where the gaps are, which sources AI is leaning on, and which of those a team can actually work.

How we work

Three habits. Every engagement.

01 · Surfaces

The same questions, four surfaces

Every read runs the questions buyers actually ask across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. Discovery questions with no brand named, comparison questions with the brand named, and the category questions that decide who counts as an authority.

02 · Framework

Eight Surfaces, not one score

Four visibility surfaces (Presence, Position, Coverage, Authority) and four perception surfaces (Sentiment, Characterization, Accuracy, Relativity). A brand can be everywhere and described wrong. One number would hide that.

03 · Evidence

Reproducible, data attached

Studies ship with the protocol and the raw runs, so anyone can repeat them. When a result is ten queries in one category, we say ten queries in one category.

Read the latest study

SUBJECT · STEVENS, S. FOUNDER HOBOKEN, NJ FRAME 1 / 1 Sean Stevens, founder of brand·lore

OPERATOR // FOUNDER PORTRAIT · 2025

The founder

Sean Stevens

Founder · brand·lore · Hoboken, NJ

Sean Stevens is the founder of brand·lore, an AI perception advisory for marketing and comms teams. He runs reproducible studies of what AI assistants say, cite, and recommend across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, and publishes the raw data with every one.

He spent twenty years in communications before that. He started agency-side at Atomic PR and Grayling, representing NCAA, PayPal, Sony, NETGEAR, and TrueCar, then led Amazon retail PR as a vice president at Weber Shandwick, where he helped architect the first global Prime Day campaign and led the team behind the Prime Now rollout. From 2017 to 2024 he was Vice President of PR and Communications at Kobalt Music Group, where he built the global comms function and led PR for AWAL, Kobalt's recording division, through its sale to Sony.

He was quoted in Forbes in June 2026 on communicators and AI, and his work has been featured in The Comms Stack. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

20 Years in comms

07 Years running global comms at Kobalt

2026 Founded brand·lore

Press

In the press.

Forbes · June 2026 Communicators Are Gaining Technical Edge With AI, Setting A Bar Others Must Meet By Cody Luongo. Sean on why the technical bar for comms moved instead of dropping.

The Comms Stack · September 2026 The skincare shelf study, written up by Dan Lewis What ChatGPT replaced Reddit with, one category at a time.

Press kit

Attribution line

Sean Stevens, founder of brand·lore, an AI perception advisory for marketing and comms teams

Short bio

Sean Stevens is the founder of brand·lore, an AI perception advisory for marketing and comms teams. He spent twenty years in communications, most recently seven as Vice President of PR and Communications at Kobalt Music Group, and now runs reproducible studies of what AI assistants say, cite, and recommend.

Long bio

Copies the three paragraphs above as plain text.

Style note

brand·lore is lowercase with a middle dot. Use Brandlore only if your style guide forces it. Founder, not founder and CEO.

Download headshot (JPG, 660×880) sean@getbrandlore.com Book 30 min

Start with what AI says today.

30 minutes, no deck. Bring a brand and a question. You leave with a read on where it stands, whether or not we work together.

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