3 in 10
people have asked an AI tool for a product recommendation in the last three months.
The brand-building playbook for the AI era.
In the recommendation economy, where people and AI own the front door for brands, the future belongs to those that are consequential in people's lives.
Why Is This Book Yellow?
most iconic brands are inconsequential. they just don’t know it yet.
Your next customer won’t search for you.They’ll ask about you.
Three in ten people have already asked an AI tool for a product recommendation. The answer they get isn’t built from your ad budget. It’s built from what people say about you when you’re not in the room: the reviews, the recommendations, the friend who won’t stop talking about a brand they love.
That changes the job. Being known isn’t enough. Being liked isn’t enough. The brands that get recommended, by people and by the machines that learn from them, are the ones people bring up, stand behind and would genuinely miss.
Most brand playbooks were written for a world where you could buy your way into the consideration set. This one is written for the world we’re actually in.
28 of 73
brands we tested earned all three behaviors among their own users. Many of the rest are household names.
65%
higher Impact for consequential brands™: people stay when a rival matches quality, and pay more.
What’s in the book
Built on two waves of national research with 1,000 U.S. consumers each, 73 brands across 14 categories and conversations with more than 25 CMOs and senior brand leaders, Why Is This Book Yellow? introduces the Consequential Triangle: three behaviors, not feelings, that separate the brands people default to from the brands people fight for.
- TTalkability. They bring it up.
- DDefensibility. They stand behind it.
- IIndispensability. They’d feel its absence.
The Consequential Triangle
Three behaviors, measured in what people do, not what they say they feel. A brand is consequential only when it earns all three.
- Talkability
- People mention the brand unprompted, recommend it and make it part of their own story.
- Defensibility
- People defend the brand when it’s criticized and stay loyal when a rival matches it.
- Indispensability
- People would feel a real gap in their lives if the brand disappeared tomorrow.
all three, at once. no partial credit.
I
What Makes a Brand Consequential
- The three tests: Talkability, Defensibility and Indispensability
- Why there’s no partial credit
- The eight types of brand connection, and which one you are
- How 73 of the country’s best-known and fastest-growing brands actually scored
II
The Detours
- Why visibility, including AI visibility, isn’t consequence
- How category sameness hands the sale to price
- Why reassurance isn’t the same as defensibility
- The false finish lines: purpose and admiration
III
Building Consequence
How to earn all three behaviors on purpose, whether you’re a legacy brand, a scaling brand or a startup.
- How to read your category’s codes and break the right one
- How to create an Eruption
- How to build the Trust Bridge
- What the consequential advantage is worth, and how to keep it
Order the book
plus: about the research behind it all.
Is your brand consequential?
Find out, and see how you stack up against the most formidable brands in the study.
Take the Consequential Brand Evaluator →
12 questions. honest answers only.
What people are saying
“
This is the definitive book on brand building in the AI context.
Angie Schneider
“
If you are a CMO, this is your new blueprint.
Theodore Franklin
“
I've learned so much by reading this book. I own my own business and didn't realize how much the rules of getting chosen as a brand are changing.
Donna DAngelo
About the author
Loretta Markevics
Loretta Markevics has spent her career challenging conventions, building businesses, and shaping some of the world’s most recognizable brands. A marketing futurist, serial entrepreneur, and author, she has led nine-figure agency businesses within global advertising and PR holding companies and built her own seven figure agency and e-commerce business: Sēd, an independent strategic and creative agency, and The Farmers Finds, both founded in 2022 and still thriving. Her work spans iconic brands including Procter & Gamble, Diageo, HP, IHG, Pfizer, McDonald’s and Novartis, alongside emerging startups she has helped transform into successful businesses.
Now, Markevics is taking on one of marketing’s biggest assumptions: that being known means being valuable. Her new book, Why Is This Book Yellow?, introduces the breakthrough concept of Consequential Brands, challenging businesses to move beyond awareness and become brands people talk about, defend, and genuinely miss when they’re gone. Drawing on original research and decades of experience, she argues that in a world of infinite choice, AI-driven discovery, and diminishing attention, visibility alone is no longer a competitive advantage.
Markevics is bringing that philosophy to life through Yellowjacket (yellowjacketagency.com), her new strategic consultancy, launching in conjunction with the book, dedicated to helping companies build brands that don’t simply compete for attention but become consequential to the people they serve.
For Markevics, success has never been about following the established rules of anything. It’s about recognizing when the rules have changed and having the courage to write new ones. Through her businesses, research, and thought leadership, she’s written a new playbook for what it takes for brands to win in the recommendation economy.
25 years of telling brands to stop playing it safe. this time I took my own advice.
Follow Loretta
For more information, to book speaking engagements or to request interviews, go to lorettamarkevics.com.
Award-winning. Recognized across the industry.
Top 10 Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs to Watch
Female Entrepreneurs Breaking Barriers
PR Week 40 Under 40
Top Woman in Communications, Trailblazer
2023 Top Boutique Agency Winner Sēd
Cannes Lion Winner
SABRE Award Winner
Effie Award Winner
Jay Chiat Award Winner
Event Marketer Award Winner
The Drum Award Winner
The American Business Awards Best Female Entrepreneur — Business Services
It’s yellow on purpose.