The Context Cloud
You brand, they brand, we all brand.
The context cloud is a new name I came up with for an old concept to describe everything tech companies know about us.
But now it's different because large language models (LLMs) can expand on core terms using vast dictionaries of semantically similar words compared to manual similarity tagging that would have been required in the past.
So what is a context cloud exactly?
It's basically everything your favorite social media networks, search engines and AI chatbots know about a person, place or thing.
Today they are all isolated so Tiktok, Instagram, Google and ChatGPT will all have fragmented and slightly different versions of what it thinks make up the essence of you or your brand.
It might be helpful to think of a context cloud as a series of emojis that most closely represent the nuances and complexities of a specific personality.
What good is a context cloud?
These services knowing everything about you isn't just to provide you with more relevant content, results and responses. It can also be used to sell you things!
But what else can it do? It can give you a compatibility score between your personal context cloud and literally anything else.
It can also find things for you that are most closely related to your context cloud.
Prompts to try
Show me a string of emojis that represent my personal context cloud based on everything you know about me and explain each one.
What is the ideal self that I aspire to be, based on my personal context cloud?
Is <insert brand> a brand for me based on my context cloud?
Describe the context cloud of <insert brand> and infer the ideal self a typical consumer of this brand aspires to be.
How context clouds affect your brand
If backend LLMs run by OpenAI, Meta, Bytedance and Google can't understand your brand’s context cloud then theyr’re not going to be able to properly match your brand to ideal customers.
For LLMs to get a clear understanding of your brand's context cloud, it's essential to have lots of content that explains who the ideal self is that a typical consumer should aspire to be, and why that customer feels seen aligning themselves with your brand.
This is especially important for intangible brands like tourism destinations where it's essential for the future customer to see themselves aligning with the brand to make them want to go there.
Yay context clouds! 🪶🪶🪶