Deana Burke, co-founder of the media company Boy’s Club, created a fake natural deodorant to see if agentic AI might recommend it to potential customers. It did.
If you regularly hit up ChatGPT or Claude for recs on what running shoes or sunscreen to buy, you’re not alone. According to a survey from the Bain Consumer Lab, part of the consulting firm Bain & Company, 30% of respondents said they were using AI for product recommendations and to comparison shop. But what exactly goes into those recommendations? How do ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini decide which products to push?
Those are some of the questions that Deana Burke, co-founder of the media company Boy’s Club,has been trying to answer. And that’s how she decided to create a fake deodorant brand.
“Morrowen is a fake natural deodorant brand that I built a website for and indexed,” said Burke. “And then it got picked up by ChatGPT with browsing three weeks later.”
Burke’s goal was to see if she could influence what she calls the “AI shelf” — the products and brands that AI will push when asked to help us choose what to buy. With Morrowen, she found it was possible, especially by taking advantage of really niche product categories.
“Part of the ingredients that my AI and I concocted was this thing around colloidal oatmeal, and that being the main active ingredient,” Burke said. “And Morrowen did rank above brands that were very legitimate brands.”
“Marketplace” host Kristin Schwab spoke to Burke about her Morrowen experiment, and what it took for her to get AI to recommend it. To listen, hit the play button above.
