The role of public relations in AI: earned media and owned media’s increasing importance

Like many orga­ni­za­tions, AI has been at the fore­front of con­ver­sa­tions late­ly. Bell­mont Part­ners’ Bri­an Bell­mont and Brid­get Nel­son Mon­roe, along with mem­bers of our AI task force, col­lab­o­rat­ed on the fol­low­ing insights about pub­lic rela­tions in AI. 

Good­bye, Haley Joel Osment. Hel­lo, Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger. At this piv­otal moment, AI often feels less like the adorable kid in Steven Spielberg’s “AI: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence” and more like the arrival of the sen­tient Skynet from the Ter­mi­na­tor movies: ter­ri­fy­ing, unre­lent­ing and intent on elim­i­nat­ing human­i­ty.  

OK, maybe that’s a tad dra­mat­ic – but there’s no deny­ing the world is chang­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly and quick­ly thanks to AI, and the mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­try is no excep­tion. In fact, earned media and owned media have an increas­ing­ly large influ­ence on the way AI sur­faces infor­ma­tion to users (more on that in a bit). 

PR and AI: pros and cons 

First, we’d like to acknowl­edge that as pub­lic rela­tions strate­gists and prac­ti­tion­ers, we live firm­ly at the inter­sec­tion of the pros and cons of AI. On one hand, for us writ­ers, design­ers, con­tent cre­ators and for­mer jour­nal­ists, AI-gen­er­at­ed con­tent makes us wary for all the well-known rea­sons and risks (and, in fact, our inter­nal AI pol­i­cy encour­ages its use as one form of research or brain­storm­ing, but pro­hibits its use for draft­ing client deliv­er­ables and using inputs that put client con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and pri­va­cy at risk). On the oth­er hand, we’re also experts in brand vis­i­bil­i­ty, aware­ness build­ing, thought lead­er­ship and rep­u­ta­tion – all impor­tant in today’s AI search results.  

While it can feel like the Wild West (not to men­tion “West­world”) out there, the good news is that orga­ni­za­tions that already have – or are build­ing – a com­pre­hen­sive pub­lic rela­tions pro­gram are well-poised to nav­i­gate this trans­for­ma­tion­al AI change, and thrive.  

The role of earned media and owned media in GEO and AI results 

The way we search is already under­go­ing a mas­sive rev­o­lu­tion – Gart­ner pre­dicts that tra­di­tion­al search engine traf­fic will drop 25 per­cent by next year, los­ing share to gen­er­a­tive AI Large Lan­guage Mod­els (LLMs) like Chat­G­PT, Gem­i­ni, Per­plex­i­ty and Claude. Now, in addi­tion to keep­ing SEO best prac­tices in mind, brands will also need to cater to GEO (Gen­er­a­tive Engine Opti­miza­tion).  

That’s where earned media and owned media come in: Accord­ing to research from Hard Num­bers in Decem­ber, LLMs rely on edi­to­r­i­al media for a whop­ping 61 per­cent of their con­tent about brand rep­u­ta­tion. Sec­ond place? Owned media, with a still sub­stan­tial 44 per­cent. “The rise of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was expect­ed to dis­rupt tra­di­tion­al media’s influ­ence on cor­po­rate rep­u­ta­tion,” the report not­ed. “Instead, it’s rein­forc­ing it.”  

With earned and owned media play­ing an out­sized role in feed­ing AI search, PR agen­cies like ours are help­ing clients exe­cute a com­pre­hen­sive mul­ti-chan­nel com­mu­ni­ca­tions approach. Dur­ing this fast-mov­ing tran­si­tion, it’s more crit­i­cal than ever to engage audi­ences with trust­wor­thy and accu­rate con­tent, while ele­vat­ing a company’s voice to be a part of – and often lead – con­ver­sa­tions.  

What’s old is new again  

Today’s con­ver­sa­tion seems rem­i­nis­cent of the Peri­od­ic Table of SEO Ele­ments that orig­i­nal­ly came out in 2011(!) – that includes a broad mix of ele­ments that did, and con­tin­ue to, impact and influ­ence tra­di­tion­al SEO. And just like in the ear­ly days of SEO, there’s not 100-per­cent agree­ment yet on exact­ly how much the var­i­ous, nuanced types of media hits or owned media sources are pri­or­i­tized over oth­ers in AI search results (and some out­lets are even strik­ing deals with Ope­nAI). But like SEO, AI rewards cred­i­bil­i­ty, author­i­ty and accu­ra­cy – major pri­or­i­ties for PR prac­ti­tion­ers and jour­nal­ists no mat­ter what the chan­nel.  

Some pun­dits are declar­ing from the rooftops that “PR is rel­e­vant again!” But I’d argue that the basic tenets we’ve always fought for, focused on and deliv­ered for our clients have nev­er gone away: build­ing trust, author­i­ty and third-par­ty cred­i­bil­i­ty with key audi­ences. These have always been a crit­i­cal cor­ner­stone of any suc­cess­ful PR ini­tia­tive – and now, these PR strate­gies, tac­tics and out­comes hap­pen to be exact­ly what GEO pri­or­i­tizes, too. Clients are also mov­ing in that direc­tion. We’re see­ing ear­ly indi­ca­tions that mar­ket­ing bud­gets are shift­ing toward bol­ster­ing earned and owned media. 

How a PR agency can help brands nav­i­gate AI vis­i­bil­i­ty  

The oppor­tu­ni­ties are many. At Bell­mont Part­ners, we’ve been help­ing clients nav­i­gate the fast-mov­ing world of AI for more than a year, assess­ing and mit­i­gat­ing risks and com­pli­ance, and build­ing process­es designed for today and tomor­row.   

We take a human-first, strat­e­gy-dri­ven approach to AI, cre­at­ing indus­try-spe­cif­ic approach­es and strength­en­ing earned media ini­tia­tives, audit­ing and bol­ster­ing owned con­tent – all while mon­i­tor­ing con­ver­sa­tions across plat­forms, assess­ing gen­er­a­tive and tra­di­tion­al search vis­i­bil­i­ty, eval­u­at­ing and imple­ment­ing data-dri­ven insights, and being flex­i­ble enough to adjust along the way. 

We know that no two brands are alike when it comes to their inter­nal and exter­nal process­es, poli­cies, under­stand­ing and com­fort lev­el with all things AI. That said, orga­ni­za­tions that aren’t tak­ing the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties AI brings seri­ous­ly may have to get used to hear­ing anoth­er line made famous by the Ter­mi­na­tor: Has­ta la vista, baby. 

If you have ques­tions or you’re inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about PR’s role in today’s AI land­scape, our team would be hap­py to chat. Drop us a line at info@bellmontpartners.com.