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AI can speed PR production, but it can't secure coverage on its own. CMOs should invest in trusted journalist relationships, distinctive stories, proprietary data, and credible spokespeople. Integrating earned, owned, and paid channels extends each story’s reach. Use AI to research, repurpose, and amplify genuine insight while building visibility with both people and AI systems.
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AI can write a press release. Build a media list. Draft 27 personalized pitches before you finish your first cup of coffee. So, PR should be easier than ever, right? Not quite. One Huddler using AI-assisted outreach reported, “a little traction, but not enough.” Another paused her PR support, thinking AI could help fill the gap, only to see little evidence that it moved the needle. There’s the paradox: AI can automate much of the work of PR, but not necessarily the results.
After three recent Huddles on earned and owned media, I kept hearing variations of the same refrain. “Those relationships with the trades are gold,” one CMO said. Another concluded, “Investing in the right PR person with industry connections, that’s key.”
While AI is rewriting the marketing playbook at warp speed, it may also be making the decidedly human fundamentals of PR more valuable.
Journalists have always been busy. It’s worse now. First, because there are fewer of them (MuckRack reports a 45% decline in the last 20 years). Second, because their inboxes are flooded with AI-generated pitches. Thus, the odds of generating interest from a reporter you don’t know are very low. One Huddler described getting meaningful pickup primarily through “trade publications that we have a direct relationship with.”
Another went further: “Since AI can’t create relationships…a PR agency is more important now than they ever have been.” AI can find a reporter’s email address. It can’t make them answer it.
Which puts a premium on the right PR investment. One CMO switched from a large agency to a boutique firm that “really understands the market.” Another hired a former journalist who understood reporters, deadlines, and the value of plain English; eventually, her company became a go-to source for trade publications.
Pro Tip: Hire a former journalist. Their unique skills are invaluable write (pun intended) now.
Relationships open doors, but they can’t make a boring story interesting. One CMO with a sophisticated PR engine attributed much of her success to having “a unique position, category, or story that nobody else is telling.” Her company coined a term using the suffix “-maxxing” that described a problem in the AI era, landed the idea in tech publications, and extended it into blogs and social. The term even started showing up in LLM results associated with the company.
This brings us back to one of PR’s oldest rules: have news or make news. As another Huddler acknowledged, “I don’t feel like we have good enough stories to really generate that earned media.” This is a challenge every CMO should be able to solve with imagination and, possibly, help from AI. Not to write the story, but to identify gaps that others in the industry haven’t covered.
A distinctive story is good. A distinctive story backed by data is better. One CMO described thought leadership and primary data that had been sitting largely untapped as “media gold.” With PR now integrated into campaigns, her team can identify those nuggets earlier and build earned media around the same growth priorities driving the rest of marketing.
And proprietary data has an obvious AI-era advantage: it’s proprietary. An LLM can summarize everyone else’s research in seconds, but it can’t magically produce your customer insights, product telemetry, or original study. Original data gives your experts something new to say, your PR team something credible to pitch, and your owned channels something worth amplifying.
Note: Let’s call this approach “data journalism,” a term I happily “borrowed” from Katrina Wong, CMO of New Relic (who will be joining us at this year’s Super Huddle).
One of my favorite Huddler stories involved hiring a former journalist. She understood reporters, spoke plain English, respected deadlines, and moved quickly. “We wound up becoming the go-to source for several trade publications,” the CMO explained. None of these skills are particularly new. Their relative value, however, rises when generic content becomes infinitely abundant.
The same applies to executives and subject-matter experts. One CMO expanded her podcast program because it let the company tell its evolving story while giving spokespeople “a little bit of a lower-risk environment” to sharpen their skills. That’s a nifty twofer: build external authority while developing internal communicators. Your executives don’t need to become influencers, although that would be nice. They need to become credible sources worth quoting.
Pro tip: If your execs never had media training, there’s no time like the present to make that happen.
Another encouraging theme was the breakdown of old earned/owned/paid silos. One CMO moved communications under the leader responsible for campaigns and solution marketing, turning PR into a more “customer-centric driver of growth.” Another used a major industry event to generate roughly 70 press pickups, then carried the same story into webinars, events, paid media, blogs, case studies, and testimonials.
Think less “PR campaign” and more “PR flywheel.” One Huddler described “lightning strike events” with coordinated activity before, during, and after the moment, bringing together content, spokespeople, influencers, and social. “Social becomes the flywheel for a lot of that content,” she explained. Earn attention once, then make that attention work overtime.
Pro tip: All of your creative content will be stronger with a compelling positioning. Our friends at Firebrick will be hosting positioning workshops at this year’s CMO Super Huddle.
None of this means PR teams should put down their AI tools and dust off the fax machine. One Huddler championed the age-old practice of starting with a strong long-form asset and turning it into blogs, social posts, and other pieces: “Just have your content work harder for you.” AI makes that dramatically easier, especially when the starting material is original research or genuine expertise.
That feels like the right division of labor. Humans create the insight, build the relationships, and establish the authority. AI helps research, package, optimize, repurpose, and amplify it. In other words, use AI to multiply what makes your brand interesting, not manufacture interesting out of thin air.
Pro tip: Our friends at Pepper describe all of this as “Search Everywhere Optimization” (SEO) and are offering a free & highly strategic audit - let us know if you’d like to connect with them.]
Okay, not really. But PR now has an audience that never subscribes, clicks, or fills out a form: LLMs. One Huddler noted that her newly coined category term was already appearing in Claude and tied to her company. Another CMO said her team is deliberately trying to get “as many third-party experts, customers, journalists and consultants talking about us as possible” as part of improving AI discoverability.
The measurement is still evolving, so I wouldn’t toss your PR dashboard into the Hudson just yet. But one Huddler offered a wonderfully old-school formula for this very new world: “Build the relationships, find the channels, have the right content.” AI may change who or what discovers your brand. It doesn’t change what makes your brand worth discovering.
And that may be the best reason yet to reinvest in PR.
Final Note: If you need help with your PR, our friends at Bospar are happy to help you think through your strategy.