Most conversations about AI search in higher education center on visibility: how do we show up in ChatGPT or AI Overviews? Jarrett Smith opens this episode with a different question, sparked by a paradigm-shifting moment auditing a school he knew inside out. The AI tools weren’t just surfacing search rankings, they were holding up a mirror to the institution’s actual brand, with eerie accuracy. In this episode, we explore how AI search often reveals the gap between what schools claim to be and what they actually are, and why that gap is getting harder to market around.
Key Takeaways
- AI Search as Brand Mirror: LLMs synthesize every Reddit thread, review, and social mention about your school into a portrait that’s often uncomfortably accurate.
- You Can’t Out-market a Weak Product: Information that used to sit buried five pages deep in Google now surfaces directly in conversational AI answers, making it much harder to paper over experience gaps with clever messaging.
- Real/Real Beats Real/Fake: Drawing on Pine and Gilmore’s authenticity matrix, the strongest brand position is being genuinely what you say you are.
- AI as Institutional Therapy: An AI audit can be the catalyst for honest internal conversations that admissions teams have wanted leadership to have for years.
Episode Highlights
- [00:30] Why AI search is more than a visibility problem.
- [02:35] The paradigm shift: when an AI audit nailed a school’s brand with 90% accuracy.
- [04:39] Every Reddit thread, every Facebook post: how AI digested higher ed’s digital paper trail.
- [07:39] Brand mentions over backlinks: why AI visibility is a winner-take-all game.
- [10:32] The apostle of authenticity: Jeff Kallay on Pine and Gilmore and the real/real matrix.
- [14:16] You can’t be amazing at everything: the case for serving one audience undeniably well.
- [18:24] Institutional therapy: using AI as a catalyst for honest internal conversations.
- [20:04] A glimpse of the future of brand and market research.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore: The foundational book Jeff Kallay references on why experience is the marketing.
- Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore: Pine and Gilmore’s follow-up, source of the real/real vs. real/fake matrix Jeff discusses.
Transcript
Jarrett Smith (00:03):
Hey everybody. Welcome to the enrollment brief. Scott, Jeff, how you doing guys?
Scott Rhodes (00:10):
Good. How are you, Jarrett?
Jarrett Smith (00:12):
Good man. Jeff, you just got back from being on the road, traveling all around.
Jeff Kallay (00:17):
And going back out.
Jarrett Smith (00:19):
And going back out. As always, the consummate road warrior.
Jeff Kallay (00:21):
Two more clients ahead.
Jarrett Smith (00:23):
Oh man. It never stops.
Jeff Kallay (00:25):
And I hope it’s the last trip and no more winner coats, Jared.
Jarrett Smith (00:30):
That would be lovely. That’d be lovely. All right. Well, so it’s my turn to do the topic today and it is 2026. So of course the marketing guy’s going to be talking about AI. We got to talk about AI. And specifically what I want to talk about is AI powered search. So using tools like Claude or GPT to sort of replace the traditional web search. And of course, even traditional web search has AI piled on. If you’re using Google, of course, AI overviews and stuff like that is definitely showing up in the search results. In a lot of the circles I run in and a lot of the conversations I have with clients, when it comes to AI search, the conversation is really centered on visibility and your school’s visibility within a given platform or set of platforms. That’s not what I want to talk about today.
(01:31):
What I want to talk about today is this sort of hidden aspect or just less mentioned aspect of AI search and that is the intersection of AI search and your brand and your reputation and looking specifically at what AI tools are saying about your school to people who search for you and also how it can be a really useful tool for understanding what the market thinks about you and where you can improve. So can I give you guys a little backstory on like how I got here because I kind of had an epiphany moment. So we’ve been studying AI search for a while. This is not super new, but over the last few months I’ve had the opportunity to do some AI audits for schools that I know really well. And I had like this paradigm shifting moment and I use that word like once a year because it’s super cheesy, but it was like a total paradigm shift.
(02:35):
So I was working with a client and helping them run an AI audit and it happened to be a school that I knew really well. We’ve been working for them for years. All of us on this call, we’ve all been on their campus a lot over the years, constantly talking to marketing admissions and faculty and students and all of that. And I’ve run brand surveys for these guys. We know who they are and like what their issues are. So I’m working on this diagnostic forum and we’re using these various tools and a lot of the AI search tools now have these like brand health features. So it’ll like tell you, “Here’s where you’re strong, here’s where you’re weak according to the AI search.” And honestly, I’ve seen that a lot and I was always kind of skeptical about it, but because I knew the school so well, I could look at what the tools were saying and instantly kind of be like, “Oh, that’s on, that’s on point.
(03:34):
That’s a little off, but not that off.” Oh, and by the end I was like, “This is like eerily on point.” Shocking. I would say I give it like a 90%, definitely like an A in terms of the accuracy of what it was saying. And it just kind of occurred to me. I’m like, “Wait, this isn’t just about how do we sort of game, not game the system, but how do we optimize the site and get more visibility and all of that? ” That’s kind of the typical mindset. I was like, “Oh, this is intelligence for the school and telling them things maybe that they sort of knew, but like the market’s confirming it. And then my brain just kind of melted down with sort of the implications of this. So that’s what I want to talk with you guys about today. So I guess I’ll start with the first one, which is Scott, you and I have talked about this a little bit, which is AI now has digested the entire digital paper trail of every school for like going back potentially years.
(04:39):
And so now every angry Reddit thread, every pissed off Facebook post,
(04:47):
Positive, negative, it’s all been fed into the machine and stuff that prior to these large language models and AI powered search might have been buried five pages down the search results. Now that has an opportunity to be pulled forward for your brand. And I just think, wow, okay, that’s kind of scary. But I think one of the implications here is I think it’s going to be increasingly hard to market your way out of a bad product. So I don’t know. Sky, one question I had for you was like, as a former VP EM, if you were back in your shoes and you had these kind of tools at your disposal where you could see, get a sense very quickly of like what the total market is saying about your school, what would you have done with that?
Scott Rhodes (05:38):
I think the first thing I would do now, especially after listening to you, is I’m going to go out to multiple AI tools and run my own litle AI reputation audit and find out what is my school known for? What are some of the pros and cons? Is my school worth the cost? What are the best programs? And then I’ll be looking for patterns like, ” Are school expensive? Is it regional? Is it limited outcomes? Are we differential? Is there one program that stands out, others that don’t? “Because ultimately that’s your AI brand that’s coming to life. And so I think I would then go from there and start thinking about what the school is saying. Or do those things align with what we’re actually saying? Because if we’re saying,” Hey, we’re career focused, we’re experimental learning, we’re personalized, but AI says we’re a regional liberal arts, small campus, supportive environment, they don’t line up.
(06:42):
So then we have a positioning problem and then where do you go from there? How do you fix that problem? “Because AI will, from the research that I’ve been doing and reading is that they’re just going to flatten that and then put you with similar schools and there’s no clear differentiation that’s taking place or positioning. So I think schools need to be clearer about their career outcomes. And this goes back to our first couple podcasts, employee pipelines, program strength, hybrid models, adult learner focus, whatever your institution is, I think you need to position the institution and make sure what you’re saying and you’re putting out there and all of your program pages and all the pages on admissions that it’s aligning with what AI is saying or not. Figure that out and then get more information out so that it is positioning it correctly.
Jarrett Smith (07:39):
Yeah. Scott, when I started really thinking about some of the brands that I know well and what these diagnostic tools were kind of spitting back, I instantly went to like, this is like core positioning kind of work because like from a visibility standpoint, it’s all the big usual suspects that you would expect that like dominate visibility, like the category leaders, especially if you’re competing in the online space it’s like the greatest hits of all the stuff. And that’s because one of the most important factors in your visibility is just like total brand mentions across the web. And so whether it’s in SEO days, we used to be like, ” Oh, we need a link back to our website. “But the models are just digesting text. So you don’t even need a link back to your website. It’s just how many times have you been mentioned and that’s like seriously weights how visible you are.
(08:38):
But so these like smaller schools, so there’s sort of that winner take all kind of aspect to that and it’s a small school, you can’t really do much about that. Yeah, of course Western governors or SNU is going to outclass you in terms of total mentions all the time and you don’t have the budget to fix that. But one thing that you can also see in a lot of these tools are like what people are asking for and sometimes they’re asking like really specific questions like, how does this school compare to that school? Or eight week terms, how is that better or worse than say like a self-paced model or something like that and or do students actually, I was looking at one of our clients and it was, do students actually use their four year career planning program or is that like just something on their website?
(09:35):
And so then it occurred to me, I was like, oh, if I was going to go to their website and try and answer that question myself, like could I? Are there any statistics on how many students actually participate in the program? I think in their case, it’s actually like 100% or very close to it, but that’s nowhere to sort of leave that out. And so the model then doesn’t really have a way of answering that question for somebody that’s asking. So yeah, super, super interesting. Jeff, to me, I instantly thought about you and the apostle of authenticity and how-
Jeff Kallay (10:12):
That was my title at one time.
Jarrett Smith (10:15):
It’s a good one. Now you’re the
Jeff Kallay (10:16):
Apostle of
Jarrett Smith (10:16):
Fun.
Jeff Kallay (10:17):
But
Jarrett Smith (10:17):
You haven’t
Jeff Kallay (10:18):
Forgotten about
Jarrett Smith (10:19):
Authenticity.
Jeff Kallay (10:20):
Yeah. When Scott hired me at Target X, I was the experienced evangelist. Remember because we used to have all those new economy, remember that term, new titles, and then I became the apostle of authenticity.
Jarrett Smith (10:32):
But thinking about this and the congruence between what you say and what you actually deliver and how AI platforms may be able to start pointing out these gaps pretty easily, I just thought about
Jeff Kallay (10:46):
It. Yeah, no, thanks for that. I mean, one, I’m a sci-fi geek and all this AI, I keep having flashbacks of Battlestar Galactica re-imagined where artificial intelligence was created by humanity, became sentient and bad stuff happened, but there’s a prequel to it of how it came about and Kaprica and it created technology that grabbed everything about you that’s out in what we would call … And then put it into a robot who became an angry, rebellious child. And when you were talking, Jared, all that was playing in my mind. So everyone knows I’m influenced by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore’s book, The Experience Economy, but it’s really funny in those world and realms when we go to events like Scott and I have been to an authenticity event with Jim Gilmore at Look in Cleveland, I’m really more about their other book, Authenticity. And so two things here that I love what AI is doing, right?
(11:50):
You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free That’s like Lee College grad here, right? John 8:32, but what Pine and Gilmore reference is Shakespeare, right? This above all to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night to the day thou cannot then be false to any man. And AI is bringing about truth and sometimes I’ll look at Scott and we’re talking about clients and I’m like, all of our clients have in higher ed, truth, lux, Veritas and their motto and I think at a base level AI is calling them out on it with this right here. And so part of me, Scott, when you were talking, I felt like would you not … I also think this is about internal marketing and messaging, right? If you’re a vice president of enrollment, look. And I mean, you have to reveal that truth to your leadership team, to your faculty and staff and say, “What are we going to do about it?
(13:04):
” Because ultimately, Jared, what I say is the experience is the marketing and AI is bringing all this to life. So I think some people might find this freaked out, but the liberal arts guy in me is like, okay, truth is coming to light. And we’re all seeking that right now. We don’t trust institutions, things are in chaos. And ultimately families want the truth. I’ll circle back around to one of the most frequently asked questions on campus tour is, what is it you don’t like about this place? And AI is kind of bringing that to life in this search here. But ultimately there’s a whole matrix of fake, real, real, fake, fake, fake, real, real. And if you, I don’t know, can we post it in the notes or whatever, but ultimately we want to be real, real. It is what it says it is and is true to self.
(14:00):
And that’s what you all were saying. If your careers, you say you’re about careers, but are you really real fake so you want to be real, real and that’s my rant this early morning.
Jarrett Smith (14:16):
Yeah, no, I think it’s super interesting. And one other thought I had kind of going back to a strategy piece is like, you can’t be amazing in everything. Nobody can afford to over-index on all attributes. So the real hard part about deep strategy is you have to decide where are we going to be sort of status quo and meet the standard that’s kind of the average for our industry, and then where are we going to over-index? And I think there’s like a real opportunity for especially smaller schools that are trying to stand out regardless of AI search, I think this would be a good thing to do, but I think it becomes even more elevated in a world with AI search where it’s like, but if you can zero in on a particular audience and is there something we can do to become undeniably great in serving that audience or in some other attribute?
(15:12):
So it’s like, could you be the undeniably best school for neurodivergent learners or undeniably great at serving the military audience or co-op programs or whatever it is, then those platforms, and even better, if you can get other people to recognize that and repeat a coherent story about you, then you have an opportunity to stand out. And I think Jeff, to do what you’re talking about, which is also like be really what you say you are in a really meaningful way
Jeff Kallay (15:52):
Because I mean, prospective students are seeking the truth. They’re overwhelmed by all the information and they want to in everything from the outcomes and careers to the culture of the place to are my people here and yeah, they’re seeking that truth. I mean, we have all these conversations, you get a new president and they want to become the Harvard of or they want to be … And I’m like, why can’t you just be what, to your point, Jarrett, what you do and what you say is great. And I’m going to throw them under the best and this goes back to our last podcast. I mean, I blame faculty for a lot of this because faculty often don’t teach to who they truly have. They all want to act like they’re teaching it in Ivy and they want Ivy Caliber students instead of transforming first gen and other kind of students.
Jarrett Smith (16:51):
Yeah. Jeff, you reminded me how many times have I seen in a strategic plan we want to become the school of first choice. School. And it’s like, really? First choice for like everybody? It’s wild.
Jeff Kallay (17:13):
So to that point, Jared and Scott, thinking about some of our clients who want to be first choice or being all the things to all people, back to this internal, do you think Scott and Jared, this can help a school find its DNA and soul and who it is to the I known self be true and then present that too?
Scott Rhodes (17:36):
Absolutely. I think this is a real opportunity for schools to finally fix some of these glaring issues that they have ignored faculty said are not true or staff are saying it’s not true, but the students continue to complain about it. Here it is right in front of you, you can’t argue with it anymore. We have to address it. Here’s the facts, here’s the data. I think that’s a real opportunity for schools to position themselves and fix things that have just been brushed underneath the rug for years and years and frustrated admissions and for years because they’ve continued to hear them and they’ve do the research and they’re constantly talking to students and current students and are trying to make changes. I think this could bring some really good change finally.
Jarrett Smith (18:24):
Yeah. And I think it’s worth saying-
Jeff Kallay (18:26):
Institutional therapy. Sorry, Jr.
Jarrett Smith (18:29):
Therapy. It can be I think a good catalyst for some of these conversations and some self-reflection as an institution. I think I have to say what you see in some of these models though, there’s a little asterisk next to it
(18:47):
In that not everything they say is like perfectly accurate. I will say for this client that I know really well, there was some stuff that I saw being brought up in the diagnostic tools that was like, “Man, that’s like five or six years old. That is not relevant anymore.” So it takes a grain of salt. But you know what, brand perception surveys, traditional brand perception work isn’t an exact science either. And so one of the other implications I think about this guys is that I think this is a window into the future world of like market research and market intelligence where you may not necessarily need to go out and spend six figures on a big segmentation study and brand perception study and you may be able to do this much faster and cheaper and maybe more frequently without even having to necessarily survey a whole bunch because we’re finding survey rates are declining, people are tired of being surveyed and I don’t know, I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but I see how we could be as things evolve.
Jeff Kallay (20:04):
I think this dance that I do with AI, right ying and yang, is it evil? Is it going to take over? Is it going to see us as parasites and wipe us off the face of the earth too? It is a truly powerful tool and all of this like, wow, that to me is really exciting because this whole discussion to me again is about it’s bringing truth to the forefront.
Jarrett Smith (20:38):
Jeff, it’s such a good point and there’s an economist that I’ve been listening to, her name escapes me, but she has studied AI for a long time and one of the points she continually makes is yes, AI will be able to replace certain things that a human has to do right now, but that doesn’t mean people are going away because once one problem gets solved, it’s not like all your problems go away. Typically, you end up with 10 more things. It’s like, “Okay, check, we got this done. Now there’s like 10 other things that I can do now that I don’t have to worry about this other thing.” And so I think with these sorts of tools, there’s an opportunity to be constantly advancing the frontier of like, what can we focus on now? Where can we apply our judgment and creativity now because we don’t need to spend six months trying to diagnose a particular problem.
(21:40):
We can get there faster. I just think that’s an interesting opportunity there. So we’re kind of coming up on time guys, but I think just for any marketers listening to this, I would just suppose that, hey, yes, you need to be thinking about AI search and what you can do to increase your visibility. Absolutely, super important, but also really challenge everybody to begin looking at that as sort of a mirror to the school and potentially a catalyst for some internal reflection at the institution that can ultimately end up making what you deliver better for our students. So thanks guys. Thanks for your time.
Jeff Kallay (22:25):
Thanks, Jared. Thanks, Jared.
