Machiavellian Marketing in the Age of Generative Engines: A Strategic Framework for GEO

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence systems marks a structural shift in how information is produced, interpreted, and consumed. Search engines and recommender systems no longer function solely as retrival mechanisms, but increasingly operate as interpretive agents that synthesize, contextualize, and construct knowledge for users. This shift has given rise to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), a strategic practice focused on influencing how generative systems select, structure, and reproduce information within their outputs. Unlike traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is concerned with ranking and visibility, GEO operates at the level of epistemic mediation, shaping not only what is surfaced, but how reality itself is framed. This paper situated GEO within the Machiavellian Marketing Framework (MMF), which conceptualizes marketing as a system of perception engineering rather than transactional persuasion. From this perspective, generative systems become new arenas of symbolic power, where influence is exercised through narrative authority, semantic dominance, and the strategic encoding of worldviews into algorithmic knowledge structures. The paper argues that in the age of generative engines, marketing compmetition shifts from attention acquisition to control over meaning, positioning GEO as a foundational strategic domain for future influence architectures.