---
id: "entity-brooks"
type: "entity"
entityType: "organization"
canonicalName: "Brooks"
aliases: ["Brooks Running", "Brooks Sports", "\\\"Brooks Sports", "Inc.\\\""]
source_timestamps: ["¶2", "§ AI Recommends What It Can Interpret", "§ Three Practices to Build AI Recall Share"]
tags: ["case-study", "athletic-apparel"]
related: ["concept-interpretable-brand", "concept-problem-literacy", "concept-evidence-base"]
sources: ["geo"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-geo"
originDay: 3
articleStem: "hbr-new-25-get-ai-to-surface-your-brand"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/06/how-to-get-ai-to-surface-your-brand"
sourceTitle: "How to Get AI to Surface Your Brand"
---
# Brooks

**Brooks** is a relatively small running-shoe brand that serves as the primary case study for an [[concept-interpretable-brand|interpretable brand]]. Under CEO Jim Weber, Brooks **exited adjacent categories** to focus exclusively on technical performance and biomechanical research — proprietary technologies include **GuideRails** (support/stability) and **DNA LOFT** cushioning.

By cultivating an ecosystem of coaches and clinicians to explain their solutions (the [[concept-evidence-base|evidence base]]), and by teaching runners to use specific terminology — overpronation, gait deviation (the [[concept-problem-literacy|problem literacy]]) — Brooks made itself highly legible to AI systems, allowing it to reliably **beat [[entity-nike-d25|Nike]]** in AI-generated running-shoe recommendations despite being far smaller.

The authors' punchline: Brooks didn't build an interpretable brand *for* AI — it built one for human experts who needed to explain choices to real runners, and that turned out to be the same thing (see [[quote-human-experts-ai|the quote]]).

> Enrichment note: Brooks markets GuideRails and DNA LOFT / DNA LOFT v3 (nitrogen-infused EVA) in explicitly technical terms (energy return, joint-load reduction), and specialty running media (Doctors of Running, Run4It) publish detailed gait/overpronation/cushioning reviews. In live head-to-head LLM tests for queries like "best running shoes for overpronation and knee pain," Brooks Adrenaline/Glycerin models often surface alongside or ahead of Nike, supporting the authors' pattern.


## Related across articles
- [[entity-nike-d25]]
- [[entity-paynter-jackets]]
- [[entity-the-ordinary]]