Why PR is having its glow-up moment

A few years ago, it felt like media relations had lost some of its shine.

Marketing attention was shifting towards creators, social platforms and channels where impact was easier to measure. PR still mattered, but it was often harder to draw a straight line between earned media and commercial value.

Then AI changed the equation.

Because PR has an outsized impact on the way that large language models understand brands, categories and expertise. Muck Rack found:

• 94% of links cited by AI tools are non-paid media

• 82% come specifically from earned media

• 27% of AI answers cite journalism, rising to 49% when a query requires recent information

Suddenly, PR has found itself connected to one of the newest metrics marketers care about: Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO.

That matters because consumer discovery is changing. For the past two decades, online discovery has largely been built around search.

You Google something. You get a page of links. Brands compete for visibility through SEO, paid search and content.

AI has introduced a different behavior.

People are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or another AI platform a question and receiving one synthesized answer.

So the job for marketers becomes less about how a brand ranks (although that remains important) and more about how do we become part of the AI answer?

Ideally asked 809 Australians about how they’re using AI and found:

• 50% have used AI to research a decision before committing

• 48% of under-25s used ChatGPT the last time they researched something

• 60% are using AI more than they were 12 months ago

And as AI adoption scales, that behaviour is only becoming more important.

This is where communications gets interesting.

Why AI ❤️ PR

AI needs receipts.

To generate an answer, AI systems draw on information from across the web. Credible third-party sources help them understand what information exists, what deserves weight and which organisations are associated with particular topics. Essentially, if you have a trusted news site say it instead of your website, you’re passing AI’s sniff test.

That puts PR in a powerful position.

For decades, communications teams have been building exactly this kind of authority: media coverage, expert commentary, original research, external validation and credible points of view.

And that job doesn’t change. But now, we need to think about two audiences when we’re creating content.

The first is the one we have always cared about: the human reader.

The second is the systems synthesizing information for that human.

Think about the article you are trying to land in The Australian because you want to reach senior decision-makers. That same story can also become a piece of evidence AI systems encounter when forming future answers about your company or category.

For communications teams, that is a significant shift.

Stop chasing mentions. Start building authority.

It changes how I think about PR strategy.

The goal cannot simply be to get your brand mentioned as many times as possible. The bigger opportunity is to become a credible source on the subjects you want to own.

If you want your brand associated with a topic, you need to contribute something useful to the conversation around it.

Bring original information. Have a clear point of view. Add evidence. Give journalists, creators, customers and increasingly AI systems a reason to reference you.

That is why I think original research is becoming one of the most powerful tools communications teams have.

Instead of constantly commenting on conversations other people started, brands can create the source material those conversations are built around.

One strong piece of research can become a media story, a LinkedIn post, an executive point of view, a sales asset, a video, a customer conversation and a source that continues to exist online long after the original campaign ends.

We are seeing it ourselves at Ideally

At Ideally, we use original research to fuel our own PR engine.

When I joined almost a year ago, one of the first priorities was to take PR much more seriously and build our approach around using research to fuel the broader content ecosystem.

We identify the subjects we want to become known for, then consistently find something useful and original to say about them.

Recently, for example, we have been researching how GLP-1s are changing the way consumers eat, drink, shop and spend. We have also created research alongside brands and agencies, turning shared questions into stories both sides can own.

That research feeds PR, social, thought leadership, sales and content.

Since adopting that approach, we’ve achieved some big results:

• 880% increase in PR coverage

• 22% increase in website traffic

• 284% increase in LinkedIn followers

• 570% increase in AI brand mentions

They are numbers I’m proud of, but more importantly, they point to something bigger.

PR finally has another way to prove its value

For years, communications teams have talked about the long-term value of reputation, credibility and earned authority.

AI is making some of that value much more visible, and in vogue.

PR can influence what people read today. It can influence what appears in search. And increasingly, it can influence the information AI systems draw on when people ask who to trust, what to buy, which companies matter and what is happening in a category.

That gives communications a much bigger role in how brands are discovered.

And if AI continues to become the interface between consumers and information, the people responsible for building authority are going to have a much bigger seat at the table.

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Lindsay Bennett is the communications and content lead at Ideally.

This article is part of EIN Presswire’s Guest Posts series: outside perspectives from inside PR and communications. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of EIN Presswire.