Essays & Analysis
PR Insights
Senior, founder-led thinking on PR strategy, media relations, AI search, digital PR and brand-building.
Topic
Audience
Tag
Showing 47 of 69 posts
- AI & Search Visibility
How PR Earns Your Brand a Citation in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews
AI search tools cite earned media, not adverts. Here is what the research actually shows about what gets cited, the mistakes to avoid, and the practical steps that earn a brand a citation in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Founder Visibility & Thought Leadership
How to Know If Your Founder Story Is Actually Newsworthy
Not every founder milestone deserves a press release. Here is the seven-point news-values test journalists actually use, worked examples for each, and the self-test I run with founders before we pitch anything.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Founder Visibility & Thought Leadership
How to Prepare for a Media Interview When You Have Never Done One
A first media interview goes wrong for one of two reasons: no message, or too much message. Here is the message-mapping process, the questions to expect and the pre-interview checklist I use with founders before their first interview.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - PR Strategy & Hiring
What a Senior Hospitality PR Hire Says About Specialist, Founder-Led Counsel
A global communications firm just added an 11-year Hilton veteran to lead one specialist practice. Here is what that hire signals about the kind of PR counsel serious travel and hospitality brands are choosing, and the questions to ask before you hire your own.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
What Does a PR Consultant Actually Do Before Pitching Your Story?
Most of a PR consultant's work happens before a single email reaches a journalist. Here is the step-by-step process, what the research says about why targeted pitching works, and what you should expect to be asked before anyone pitches on your behalf.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
Why DNA-Discovery Stories Keep Earning Global Media Coverage
In late July, MyHeritage published another family-reunion story that closed a decades-long circle. Here is the PR mechanics behind why these human-interest stories keep travelling as far as they do, and how to pitch one responsibly.
Marketing LeadersRead essay → - AI & Search Visibility
AI Governance Just Became a Live PR Story, Not Just a Policy One
This week's AI governance news signals a new communications risk for every company using AI. Here is what founders and comms leads should do about it now.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - AI & Search Visibility
Gen Z Is Punishing Brands for AI-Generated Marketing. The Problem Is Not the AI
72% of Gen Z have punished a brand over AI-generated marketing, while 82% of advertising executives believe that audience feels positively about it. The trigger is not the AI. It is being found out.
Marketing LeadersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
How Media Embargoes and Exclusives Actually Work, and When to Use Each
An embargo and an exclusive solve different problems, and picking the wrong one costs you either the coverage or the relationship. Here is how to set each one properly, and what to do in the ten minutes after an embargo breaks.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
How to Build a Press List From Scratch When You Have No Media Contacts
A working press list starts from relevance, not volume. Here is the process I use to build one from zero, verify every name, and keep it from going stale.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
What Makes a Media Pitch Subject Line Get Opened, and What Makes One Get Deleted
A journalist decides on your subject line in about a second, in a preview pane, before reading a word of the pitch. Here is what earns the open, what earns the reply, and why optimising for one costs you the other.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Founder Visibility & Thought Leadership
Newman's Own Just Made Its Own Paperwork the Story. Most Companies Never Do
Newman's Own has given away 100% of its profits since 1982 and only now made it the headline. Here is the diagnostic I use to find the fact a business already owns and has quietly decided is not interesting enough.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - PR Strategy & Hiring
Do You Need a PR Agency or a Freelance PR Consultant? How to Decide
Choosing between a PR agency and a freelance PR consultant comes down to seniority, budget and speed. Here is how to decide, and where a boutique model fits.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Crisis & Reputation
What WestJet's Strike Resolution Teaches About the Second Half of a Crisis
Most crisis plans stop at the disruption. WestJet and CUPE's resolution is a clean, current example of why the second half of a crisis needs just as much care.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Crisis & Reputation
What to Do When a Journalist Gets Your Story Wrong
A wrong fact in coverage is fixable, but only if you ask the right person for the right remedy. Here is the first-hour checklist, the correction email that works, and what the IPSO route actually involves.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Crisis & Reputation
Your Company's First AI Crisis Won't Look Like Your Last One
A fully autonomous AI ransomware attack has just been documented. Here is why AI-era companies need a crisis plan built for incidents no human triggered.
Marketing LeadersScale-UpsRead essay → - Founder Visibility & Thought Leadership
Are CEOs the New Brands? What Cannes Lions 2026 Revealed About Leadership Visibility
Cannes Lions 2026 confirmed it: the leader is now part of the brand. Why founder visibility is a growth lever, not vanity.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Campaigns & Creativity
Cannes Lions 2026: The Campaigns to Watch and Who We Think Will Win
A senior PR read on the 2026 Cannes contenders, the work likely to win, and what it signals about earning attention.
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Campaigns & Creativity
Claude's Super Bowl Ad Won the Cannes Film Grand Prix. Here's the PR Lesson
Anthropic's Claude took on the market leader and won Cannes' oldest category. The PR lesson: conviction beats spectacle.
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Campaigns & Creativity
The Craft Comeback: Why Handmade Beat AI at Cannes Lions 2026
In the most AI-saturated Cannes yet, the standout winners were deliberately handmade. Why craft and a human touch won.
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
Creators Took Over Cannes 2026. Here's What It Means for Your PR
Creators are now a core marketing channel, not a side tactic. What the Cannes 2026 creator surge means for how you earn attention.
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - AI & Search Visibility
Does AI Content Actually Pay Off? The 2026 Shift From Output to Return
As AI makes content nearly free, the premium is shifting to earned human trust. What Cannes Lions 2026 revealed about AI that pays back.
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Brand Building
Earned Media vs Paid: Why Earned Attention Wins in 2026
Buying reach is easy. Earning relevance is the harder, more durable win. A senior PR view on earned media in 2026.
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - AI & Search Visibility
The Marketing Funnel Is Collapsing: What TikTok's Cannes 2026 Play Reveals
Discovery, consideration and conversion now happen in one place. What TikTok's agentic AI and the compressed funnel mean for founders.
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Brand Building
The Marketing Industry Is in Flux: 5 Cannes 2026 Shifts Founders Should Act On
Leaner teams, substance over spectacle, AI, craft and creators. Five Cannes 2026 shifts and what founders should do about each.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Brand Building
Reach vs Effectiveness: What Marketing Spend Is Worth in 2026
The smart money is moving from reach to effectiveness and cultural credibility. What Cannes Lions 2026 revealed about brand value.
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Founder Visibility & Thought Leadership
Why PR and Marketing Leaders Should Be at Cannes Lions, Not Watching From Afar
Most people follow Cannes through recaps. The real value is in the room. A senior PR view on why attending still matters.
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - PR Strategy & Hiring
PR Agency vs Freelance PR Consultant vs In-House: Which One Does Your Business Actually Need?
Most businesses do not have a PR problem. They have a PR structure problem. They know they need visibility, credibility and coverage, but they pour budget into the wrong delivery model and conclude that PR does not work. The model matters as much as the work.
FoundersMarketing LeadersStartupsScale-UpsRead essay → - PR Strategy & Hiring
How to Hire a PR Consultant Without Wasting Money
Plenty of founders have a story about money spent on PR with little to show for it. Almost always, the problem was not the discipline. It was the brief, the fit or the expectations. Hiring a PR consultant well is a skill, and getting it right is the difference between coverage th
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - PR Strategy & Hiring
How to Brief a PR Consultant So You Actually Get Results
The quality of a PR engagement is often decided before any pitching begins, in the brief. A sharp brief gives a consultant everything they need to find angles, reach the right journalists and move fast. A vague one guarantees months of polite activity and little coverage. Briefin
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - PR Strategy & Hiring
PR vs Marketing: What's the Difference and When You Need Each
PR and marketing are often treated as the same thing or, worse, as rivals competing for the same budget. They are neither. They are different disciplines that do different jobs, and knowing which one your business needs right now saves money and prevents a lot of frustration.
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - AI & Search Visibility
How to Get Your Brand Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
A growing share of buyers no longer start with a Google search. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google\'s AI Overviews, and they act on the handful of brands those systems mention. If your business is not part of that answer, you are invisible at the exact moment a decision is fo
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - AI & Search Visibility
Answer Engine Optimisation: How PR Shapes What AI Says About Your Brand
Search engine optimisation taught a generation of businesses to compete for a ranking. Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is the discipline that replaces it as people shift from searching to asking. The goal is no longer just to rank a page. It is to shape the answer an AI gives
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Digital PR & SEO
How PR Supports SEO and Search Visibility (Without Paying for Links)
Search visibility and PR are often run by separate teams who barely speak. That is a missed opportunity, because earned coverage is one of the most powerful and durable ways to improve search performance, and it does it without buying a single link. Understanding the connection l
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - PR Strategy & Hiring
How to Measure Whether Your PR Is Actually Working
Most teams know their public relations is doing something, yet very few can say with confidence what that something is worth. The result is a familiar pattern: a folder full of coverage, a vague sense of momentum, and no clear answer when a finance director asks what the budget a
Scale-UpsMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
How to Make Your Story Newsworthy Enough for Journalists to Care
Every week journalists delete hundreds of pitches about news that is news only to the company sending it. A new hire, a minor update, a rebrand: significant internally, invisible externally. The gap between what a business finds exciting and what a reader finds interesting is whe
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Crisis & Reputation
Brand Reputation in the AI Era: How to Protect What Machines Say About You
Buyers increasingly meet your brand through a machine before they ever meet your website. They ask an AI assistant what your company does, whether you are any good, and how you compare to alternatives, and they take the answer at face value. That answer is assembled from whatever
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Digital PR & SEO
Digital PR Explained: How Earned Coverage Builds Authority and Links
Digital PR sits in a confusing middle ground for many people. Some treat it as a fancy name for link building, others assume it is just traditional press work done online, and both descriptions miss what it actually is. Digital PR is the practice of earning credible online covera
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Founder Visibility & Thought Leadership
Thought Leadership That Drives Leads, Not Just Likes
Plenty of so-called thought leadership earns a flurry of likes and then disappears. It feels productive, it strokes the ego, and it changes nothing about the pipeline. Real thought leadership does something harder. It shifts how a specific audience thinks about a problem, and it
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
Press Release vs Media Pitch: Which One Gets You Coverage
Ask ten people the difference between a press release and a media pitch and you will get ten fuzzy answers. The confusion costs coverage. These are different tools built for different jobs, and using the wrong one, or using both badly, is why so many announcements vanish without
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Campaigns & Creativity
How to Plan a PR Campaign That Cuts Through the Noise
Most PR campaigns fail before a single email goes out. They fail in the planning, where a vague ambition to raise awareness substitutes for a real objective, and a scatter of activity substitutes for a single sharp idea. Cutting through a crowded media landscape is not about doin
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
Media Relations 101: How to Build Relationships That Lead to Coverage
Coverage rarely arrives because of a single clever press release. It arrives because a journalist trusts that you understand their work, respect their time, and have something genuinely useful to offer their readers. Media relations is the long game of earning that trust, and the
FoundersStartupsMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Campaigns & Creativity
What Cannes Lions Teaches You About Campaigns That Actually Work
The world\'s biggest celebration of creativity is easy to dismiss as a parade of big budgets and expensive parties. Look past the glamour, though, and the work that wins tends to share a set of principles that any founder or marketer can use, regardless of how much money sits beh
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Campaigns & Creativity
Creative Effectiveness: Why Some Campaigns Sell and Others Just Get Noticed
Plenty of campaigns get noticed. Far fewer actually sell anything. The gap between the two is where most marketing budgets quietly disappear, because attention is easy to mistake for effect. A clever execution can rack up views and shares while moving no one closer to a purchase.
Marketing LeadersRead essay → - Campaigns & Creativity
What Wimbledon Teaches Brands About Earning Attention Without a Sponsorship Badge
Two weeks each summer, the attention of the British and international press concentrates on a few acres of south-west London with a force that money alone cannot buy. The brands with official rights, the watchmaker, the carmaker, the champagne house, secure their place on the bro
Marketing LeadersFoundersRead essay → - Campaigns & Creativity
How an AI Feature Became the World's Most Downloaded App: What Deep Nostalgia Got Right
Deep Nostalgia, the MyHeritage feature that animated still photographs of relatives who had long since passed, became the number one most downloaded app globally on both iOS and Android. It did so not because the technology was unprecedented, but because of what the technology le
FoundersMarketing LeadersRead essay → - Media Relations & Pitching
How to Launch a Product the Press Has No Reason to Cover
Most products launch into silence, and the reason is rarely the quality of the product. It is that a product, by itself, is not a story. A new device, a new formula, a new range, a new app: each is an input that a story can be built around, not a story in its own right. The press
FoundersMarketing LeadersStartupsRead essay →