Why editorial coverage shapes AI recommendations…

Forever and a day, earned media was viewed as a non-paid and powerful, credible layer in the brand marketer toolbox. It served as a highly intrusive form of communication that already nailed the attention of its audience. Journalism offers a respected third-party voice that intrinsically administers trust and belief in an environment where consumers increasingly tune out self-serving selling messages.

Now the brand communication game plan is evolving as the rapidly escalating use of agentic AI operates as a source of direct guidance and recommendations on purchase decisions. LLMs learn and then report after crawling sources used to inform their analysis.

Editorial media is performing a dual role as a third-party validation of claims made by brands, while also serving as a supplier of important information that teach LLMs. The next time a consumer asks an AI chatbot for a recommendation on pet food, nutritional beverages, or electric vehicles, the advice they receive will be subtly shaped by the journalism the brand PR team has secured.

Editorial coverage is no longer just about influencing brand perceptions. It now plays a foundational role in training and informing the AI models that millions are relying on for trusted guidance.

The rise of Agentic AI and its insatiable need for trustworthy data

AI systems —like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Pi—are operating as autonomous agents and advisors that provide people with personalized recommendations, context, and insights. These systems rank and recommend based on patterns of trustworthiness they consume through crawlers. These unseen digital knowledge vacuums do this by prioritizing sources considered authoritative including consumer, business and trade media.

Key to managing the agentic AI voice is knowing that LLMs perform their ranking and recommending through data they encounter in ‘patterns of trustworthiness’. LLMs train on vast datasets that include publicly available text across journalism, Wikipedia, Reddit, and the open web. The models are continuously updated through tech called ‘Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback’. News stories, product reviews, and media analysis all contribute to that learning loop.

Are you managing the loop?

Here are some examples of trusted teachers in LLM training sets:

• Editorial media publishers and broadcasters like CNN, Bloomberg, NYT, Reuters, The Guardian
• Trade publications (via open-access syndication or licensed content)
• Company press releases published by high-authority domains (PR Newswire, BusinessWire, etc.)  — now elevated in their importance

The influence of PR multiplies from people to platforms

Coverage by respected editorial outlets delivers not only consumer-facing credibility but input data that engages AI-generated opinions and summaries. Unlike social content or ads, published editorial stories live in perpetuity across syndicated news wires, re-aggregated media platforms, and crawled databases.

A well-placed story in Food Dive or Forbes can ripple across multiple LLMs as they use that content to better understand product categories and brand claims.

“If you’re not appearing in credible editorial sources, there’s a good chance the next AI assistant won’t know much about you—or worse, it may learn something inaccurate.” — Noah Giansiracusa, author of “How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News”

Practical implications for brands

In addition to analysis of the levels of influence on brand reputation and belief, and the legacy data collection around non-paid impressions, Public Relations now stands at the front gate of managing GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) outcomes.

Trade coverage isn’t just about reaching trade partners.

Business media isn’t just about informing investors.

Consumer media isn’t only about building awareness of product benefits.

All of these are also working in tandem to bring your brand background to AI crawlers. This can be organized, optimized and delivered with intention and best practices towards assuring agentic AI recommendations are correctly, accurately, fully telling your brand and product story.

New goals for PR

Not just about reach or impressions – it now includes visibility in trusted training data ecosystems. GEO best practices will put greater emphasis on the value and importance of —

• Trade media coverage as a resource for more, in-depth analysis thorough reports on new product innovations, key messaging, positioning and other important information that vertical media typically report on.
• Thought leadership articles and by-lined op-eds often published in the same trade channels. These stories convey added texture and leadership for your brand and its role in culture, innovation, research and social issues.
• Data-backed press releases. Releases start out as invitations to a story. Now their importance advances as a device for informing AI advisers. This means press releases should go on the wires regardless of whether the story topic warrants broad distribution, because again, crawlers are consuming the output of credible news platforms like BusinessWire and PR Newswire. Note: LLMs like facts, reports, charts and other data that gives your story context and proof.

Audit and optimize for “AI crawl-ability”

An entire new area of best practices is surfacing to better assure earned media is optimal in this environment of influencing agentic learning:

• Accurate brand/product naming
• Structured context (quotes, data, headlines)
• Syndication and backlinks to brand content

Enabling alongside an ecosystem of owned and aligned content

Same rules apply to owned and social channels with the same considerations in how stories are told and what information is presented in a supporting, confirming role. Strengthen the signal by pairing PR wins with:

• Company blogs optimized for GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
• Expert-authored LinkedIn content
• Wikipedia/Google Knowledge Panel upkeep

Here’s an example of how this might play out

1. A pet food brand lands an article in Pet Age about ingredient sourcing.
2. The article is crawled by Perplexity and Anthropic’s Claude.
3. Six months later, those same AI systems cite the article when users ask about “sustainable dog food.”
4. Result: organic traffic has moved from Google to conversational AI, driving new customer recommendations from a trusted voice.

The significance of this shift brings new meaning and value to the importance of earned media outreach campaigns, alongside efforts to assess, manage and monitor what LLMs think they know about your brand and business (more on this vital topic in our next issue of ETR). A third party is now showing up between your brand and the consumer to provide trusted guidance, without consumers ever visiting your web site.

You can immediately visualize the importance of managing how your brand shows up in agentic AI recommendations — and the ability of your earned media strategies to help influence those assessments.

If this story raises questions about how best to optimize and adjust your strategies to stay relevant in the agentic AI game of influence, use the link below to ask questions.

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Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. For more information, contact Bob@Emergent-Comm.com and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

What does AI believe, say, recommend about your brand and business?

What happens when agentic AI steps in as the authoritative source of information and credible recommendations about brands, products, claims, technology, formulations, ingredient sourcing and emerging health/wellness issues – bypassing any need to visit your website at the start of an exploratory journey? Think for a moment about the implications of a super well-informed digital advisor making trusted recommendations to consumers based on its own assessment of your brand and product strengths vs. competitive choices. We’re standing at the edge of nothing less than a transformative shift in how people and trade partners get information, find solutions and make decisions.

To succeed in the era of LLMs, brands must now optimize for AI agents—not just customers.

• More than 50% of Internet traffic is now populated by non-humans — AI crawlers operating out of sight on a subterranean highway of digital data collection, scouring every available channel to train and inform LLMs so they can be instantly summoned to dispense informed recommendations.
• Unlike any previous technology generation such as Google search, AI speaks to its users in an authoritative, empathetic voice while supplying answers and a point of view. Yes, this is a machine, but we say it again — with solutions and recommendations — from a source that isn’t your brand saying it. A smart source that over time will get more and more familiar with customer needs, aspirations and desires. It never forgets, never sleeps and remembers every detail about preferences, concerns and prior conversations.

Will consumers and trade partners make decisions, form impressions based on what they read or hear from an AI guide? Likely. Could this become reflexive and embedded behavior? Yes.

Managing agentic AI in the battle for trust and influence

What does AI know and believe about your brand and product line?

Your company?

Your technology expertise?

What will it say about your formulations and claims?

What will it recommend?

Is the narrative accurate?

Is your brand story presented in the best light possible?

What portion of your key messaging came through?

What’s missing?

Will your customers trust this on-tap source and rely on it?

This is not a phase, a passing fad or a novelty. It is business infrastructure, and it’s about to change everything including your strategy, marketing and comms game plan.

Over the past 30 years, the phrase “Google it” emerged with the revolutionary idea that any answer was just a web inquiry away. Over the past few years we’re also hearing, “Ask your AI.” Google search links still require effort and time to investigate, collect, digest and assess.

This week I requested AI help to find a hotel near the University campus where my daughter will attend this fall as we prepared to join her freshman orientation. In seconds I got a list of options, then a filter of those choices based on AI’s assessment of the best deal, location and quality plus an offer to assist with booking. Follow-up questions for clarity were answered in seconds with refinements. The process was easy, painless, quick, convenient and presented in an authoritative and helpful voice.

• I went with it. Done and done. For a travel and hospitality brand, or any other business really, you have to be concerned about the presence of a machine that doesn’t behave like a machine gaining a recurring trusted role as arbiter and sage of risk-free choice.

All of this potentially happens without anyone first visiting your web site or social channels. This begs the question of how to control and enable your brand narrative — when an unseen army of AI bots are hoovering everything available, good or bad, right or wrong to formulate its own assessment of your brand and business from what it collects.

An AI mandated moment of truth

The AI agent era flips the script—you don’t search for information – that information comes to you through an intelligent liaison that knows what stakeholders want.

We’ve reported previously on the pervasive levels of uncertainty and anxiety consumers are facing right now. What do they want above all? The return of certainty and a sense of control. Can agentic AI offer a resurgence of perceived control? It’s quite possible that this pipeline from mountains of aggregated data digested and served up in conversational recommendation form could become a trusted partner — when everything else often appears to be self-serving, biased and often requires burning mental calories to unearth and evaluate.

New platforms designed to monitor, gain intel and help inform LLM crawlers

If you want to know the details of what LLMs believe about your brand, new tools have emerged to help bring detailed understanding of what AI agents think they know about your business. From there you’re in a better position to design content that is AI crawler friendly. This will help assure your brand, claims and formulation story is coming across correctly, supplemented with monitoring to see how that plays out in real time.

Out of fear of losing control over brand IP, some businesses may be tempted to erect digital barriers to bot crawling access. However, that also risks ceding future control and diluting the ability to manage a conversation that’s gaining increasing traction among consumers who are going to get more and more comfortable with seeking out AI sponsored advice.

Better to manage this than leave it alone and hope your brand is properly presented, recommended and the story being told is accurate and complete.

With that in mind, LLM engines prioritize the following brand content characteristics:

• Language. LLMs like to navigate rich, conversational text such as blog posts and newsletters, more so than webinars or embedded images.
• Agentic-optimized structure. Prioritized lists, definitions, and guides make it easier for LLMs to synthesize and summarize information.
• Clean, scrapable web sites. Accurate, fully indexed web sites are better than keyword optimization or navigating older legacy pages designed to elevate site authority.
• Third-party earned authority. Outside publications, external media and expert commentary can help confirm, verify and validate your brand story and value proposition.
• Deep customer conversations away from your site. The presence of external reviews and forums generates authoritative mentions, backlinks, and credibility.

Elevating importance of earned (editorial) media to credibility and trust

Whatever your brand states and claims remains an assertion – of what you want people to believe about your brand, business standards, unique strengths and added value. Running alongside the advice of agentic AI, and also a part of its assessment structure, is the increasing importance of third-party credible endorsement.

Journalism and reporting are third party evaluation of what you claim from a respected source. Earned media will play an increasingly important role in the agentic eco-system, operating in two directions as an added authority in what LLMs process, and as an independent voice that validates and verifies what you want stakeholders to believe. PR has always been important resource for credible third-party evaluation. Now it has added gravitas in the system of informing LLMs and also providing a trusted resource consumers also look to for affirmation.

The one-two punch of LLM crawler optimization and earned media outreach forms a formidable strategic foundation for brand storytelling in the era of AI advisory.

Next gen strategies to manage an LLM informed future

LLMs can circumvent brands, cutting them out of directing the consideration process before they even know a consumer is investigating. Thus, why adapting current strategies to engage LLM crawlers can build a virtuous, holistic solution. Optimized web content, earned, and social media leads to better AI references, greater trust and engagement, and prioritization in LLM assessments.

Considerations on the AI crawler journey

It’s time to systematically evaluate how LLMs will impact customer consideration, and how that will change go-to-market strategies. Engaging with new AI crawler intel, analysis and impact tools can help build a fluid map of the customer buying journey alongside an AI-engaged buyer journey, and how brands will show up in AI-powered search engines. While LLMs and AI-powered search are constructed on similar inputs, they can produce radically different results and outcomes. An LLM scorecard can help your brand identify the areas of greatest need and inform the tools designed to secure the optimal brand story and recommendation.

Adapting your strategy to engage LLMs will create a virtuous eco-system: Strong internal, earned, and social content will lead to more AI references, greater trust and engagement, and further prioritization in LLM queries.

If you’re wondering how these developments will impact your business and what’s the best path to navigate an agentic AI informed future, use the link below to ask questions and start an informal conversation.

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Important to respect the human sitting on other side of the screen…

The Super Bowl attracted a bit north of 123 million viewers, the greatest aggregation of human eyeballs in one place at one time, and thus the reason why 53 TV spots aired at a $7 million per 30-seconds clip. It is an unprecedented event where advertising is as much of a contact sport as the action on the football field. People tune in specifically to consume the ads — what an amazing impact opportunity-in-the-waiting, but nevertheless not often optimized largely due to an absence of sound strategy on how people make decisions and take action.

• David Ogilvy once famously remarked that if attention was all that mattered then you could put a ‘gorilla in a jockstrap’ in an ad. Yet that’s not what drives real effectiveness. He knew it and built a global agency powerhouse on that model of respect for consumer insights, perhaps now forgotten in the age of ‘can you top this’ over-reach with the display of so many digital bells and whistles.

Moreover, the Super Bowl ad is just the tip of the spending iceberg when looking at the total costs of gargantuan celebrity contact fees, massive production budgets and the veritable supermarket of extensions in packaging, retail tie-ins and social media on and off ramps.

Yet in astounding fashion, sound strategy is mostly absent from this festival of short form cinematic spectacle. The temptation to pursue attention at the expense of real relevance is just too great. In circa 2024, the ad party turned into a conspicuous mish mash of celebrity faces, much like excessive name-dropping at a Hollywood cocktail party. It’s no secret that all-too often the celebrity brand will outshine the product brand. So why does it go this way?

Guess what, emotion drives behavior

The neocortex area of the human brain governs our decisions and the actions we take. As much as we would all prefer to believe that people are logical beings who make decisions based on facts and information, instead we respond to emotional cues – how we feel in the presence of a brand. Yet too few of the ads we saw were designed with intention to drive for that kind of authentic connectivity. Given the huge one-shot spend level, you’d think it would be different.

Yes, a different approach is needed

In 2023’s super game, the highest rated commercial was a total outlier from a small pet food company called The Farmer’s Dog. This high-level and instructive achievement in strategic brand communication was the polar-opposite of the celebrity dragon-riding special effects we witnessed this year. Here Farmer’s Dog offered a story well-told that traced the poignant and touching relationship between a dog and young girl owner, charting the course of their life’s journey together. Not a word was spoken. No celebrity cameo. No green screen special effects wizardry.

It was an emotional, heartfelt, memorable celebration of the incredibly powerful and important relationship between a person and their dog. There was no recitation of production formulation features or superior ingredient claims. The brand wasn’t shouted in every frame. It didn’t need any egregious self-promotion to get the message across. It was supremely effective because people left it with an emotional connection. We all recognize that unique bond between pet parent and furry family member. The pet food existed as an enabler of pet wellbeing on life’s pathway.

Desperately seeking attention

Creating content for an engaged audience is just different than trying to capture an audience with some wild content. Too many brands seeking attention at the expense of sound strategy. The truth is human beings are feeling creatures who think not thinking creatures who feel. If you want to manage perceptions of your brand, and yes that should be a goal, then you really need to manage emotions. If your objective is to assure communication is remembered, to have impact, then emotional gravitas is paramount.

Proper use of the world’s greatest ad venue to deliver boldness

Way back in 1984, Apple used the setting to unveil their new Macintosh computer with a historic ad that captivated the world’s attention. It was a bold and also controversial strike, so much so the Apple Board was wary of showing it right up to the telecast. It aired and both ad history and the upstart Apple brand was made. It was a powerful message about democratizing the power of creativity and expression in the hands or everyone – railing against the dictates of the “establishment.”

Speaking of bold, what about sustainability and ESG in the midst of uncertainty?

Nearly every major brand in the food, beverage and lifestyle worlds is working hard to address their sustainability bona fides and emissions performance. It is by definition an opportunity for a brand to focus on higher purpose, mission, reputation and value beyond transactional thinking. Yet we don’t see that showcased here. We have entered a new era where brands are expected to have a point of view, a belief system and to be standard bearers of change. We remain hopeful that someday soon, a progressive brand will take advantage of the super venue to convey what people seek – a healthier, safer planet.

Guidance going forward

Put the consumer at the center of your planning and thinking and work backwards from there. Recognize that shameless self-promotion makes a brand the hero of any story told, and by doing so casts the brand in direct competition with the consumer who sees themselves each and every day as the hero of their life’s journey. Celebrate your consumer and their wishes, needs and aspirations like Farmer’s Dog did with such excellence. This is sound strategy. Your brand deserves this approach to spending effectiveness and outcomes, whether at the Super Bowl or in routine quarterly brand and business support.

If this post gets you thinking about how best to optimize and improve your planning for improved communications effectiveness, use the email link below to ask questions and start and informal conversation.

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Decline of digital advertising reflects consumer trust implosion

If there’s one true north to guide marketing best practices in the era of consumer control, it is this: never lose sight of the human being you wish to court and retain as a user. According to global market research firm Ipsos, 69 percent of consumers no longer trust advertising, especially digital forms. Why has digital advertising fallen so hard and fast? A combination of algorithm driven pummeling that makes the entire experience annoying, followed by the rise of ad blindness (your ad is scenery and nothing more) and blockers, amplified by general decline of brand trust as consumers instead seek out verifiable and credible independent sources for guidance on which products to buy.

What lies at the base of conventional ad solutions is the absence of any real relationship- creating mechanism. So we ask the defining question – does acquiring awareness constitute the driver of a reliable, meaningful consumer-to-brand relationship? The answer is a resounding NO. Buying perceived digital engagement is a false promise. There are better and more effective ways to build business. Hold on while we take you to a new way of thinking, planning and operating.

We have entered a new era in marketing powered by earning authentic relationships with consumers built on trust. This new paradigm is fueled through creating authentic, personal, helpful, useful, valuable content. In this article we will reveal the formula for real connection, real relationships that deliver growth and retention of highly engaged brand fans and ambassadors.

First, we will explain how a digital ad frenzy led to rapid expansion of online ad spending, now tracking a downward spiral as consumers run as fast as they can away from it.

Digital ad magic and stars in marketers’ eyes

Perhaps the most impressive point about the emergence of digital advertising was the newfound ability to measure clicks to assess engagement outcomes. Followed closely by the deployment of cookies to track online behaviors and thus work to tie impressions to conversions.

For the gardening products brand, instead of buying 100 million impressions from Home and Garden that may include consumers who don’t have any affinity for gardening, you could intentionally focus on buying 100 million impressions aimed at avid horticulture fans. Sounds enticing and so we’re off to the digital races.

New types of intrusion emerge

The arrival of programmatic tech to unleash algorithm-sourced buying brought automation to precision audience and behavioral targeting. Retargeting permitted advertisers to follow consumers around the Internet like a persistent stalker. In the midst of this evolution cost declines led to a rapid fire, constant drumbeat of repetitive ad interruptions. Now you see me and now you see me again, and over here, and there and everywhere. Don’t you love me? Nope, sorry.

People live their lives online to acquire three things: information, entertainment and social connection. E-commerce serves alongside to digitize transactions and satisfy the ultra-convenience opportunity of armchair consumption. That said no one wants to be bombarded constantly with disruptive ads and popups.

Apple nails the consumer sentiment towards tracking and disruption!

Consumer-led backlash follows rapid rise of social proof

According to eMarketer, consumer trust in digital ads has dropped to 38 percent. A Hubspot analysis reveals that only 7 percent of consumers say they intentionally click on a digital ad while 34 percent say any click on a banner ad was a mistake.

The antidote to digital disruption and interruption is the emergence of user-generated testimonial content – said another way, users who help users with first-hand reports of experiences and assessments of products and services. Alongside this development is the expansion of category experts, subject matter professionals and influential tastemakers who are speaking on behalf of brands in a more authentic and humanized voice.

Independent social proof is respected by consumers for the very reason they trust the voices of peers before they will believe the assertions and claims of digital ads and brand self-promotion. Social channels can be an amazing, powerful, effective resource for advocacy and ambassadorship when managed with an eye towards encouraging user sharing.

Too often these days social is deployed as another broadcast channel for product promotion rather than cultivating a community of like-minded people who share their own experiences and outcomes. Social can be a far more credible and believable mechanism to validate what you want consumers to trust and understand about your products. You just have to be intentional in how that channel resource is developed.

The new marketing eco-system built on trust

There are four key pillars to successful marketing outcomes at a time when attempting to buy awareness through conventional ad platforms is falling away. They include:

1. Marketing partnerships: B-to-B colabs, media-driven content alliances and influencers
2. Social channel refinement: engaging passionate advocates as UGC ambassadors
3. Earned media: PR-driven outreach through editorial media channels
4. Branded content creation: built on an education-centric model, not a promotional one.

Partnerships fuel brand growth

• Partnerships with aligned brands work because they add value to the consumer experience and make intuitive sense. When Quantas Airlines and Airbnb team up to “Fly there. Live there.” they combine assets that create a seamless traveler experience. Similarly Spotify aligns with Ticketmaster to amplify the fan experience from digital music to live performances with click-thru simplicity. These combinations work because they are complementary, sensible and add user value.

• Right now the triopoly of Facebook, Google and Amazon together control 90 percent of digital advertising inside their walled gardens. As a result premium media channels are cultivating and expanding their content partnership opportunities with brands to build podcasts, newsletters, videos and other tools. These colabs allow brands to gain access to their audiences and tell stories with the imprimatur of the media brand alongside yours.

• Influencers are a valuable resource of endorsement from citizen category experts who bring their audiences to the table for colabs and reviews. Fabletics activewear brand partners with lifestyle influencer Marla Catherine. The brand accesses her 1.6 million subscriber YoutTube channel to connect fitness fashion endorsements to their online shop platform. A win and a win.

There are rules here with respect to vetting influencers that make strategic sense and align with your brand – all based on building trust and relevant connections with consumers.

Social channel strategy

Brands should encourage user sharing of content and experiences. Developing an ambassador program that links back to periodic content creation helps ensure a flow of useful, credible posts that tell the brand story through the eyes of enthusiastic believers. Amplify this with category expert voices and content that offers guidance, coaching and instruction. Yes, there’s room for your BOGO promo but that should not be the leading voice in your social channel calendar.

Earned media

Editorial coverage of your brand takes advantage of the consumer’s belief that editorial media is an unbiased third-party channel that reports more than advocates. HBO satirist John Oliver recently took TV chat show and news programs to task for fake editorial segments that were paid for and passed along scurrilous information to viewers about unreliable products. Frankly, this pollution of church and state type separation between ad and editorial isn’t good for anyone.

Branded content creation

The voice of your brand should be founded on a relationship-building platform that emphasizes coaching, guidance and enablement that’s relevant to the consumer’s lifestyle journey. YETI coolers does this beautifully with outdoor adventure videos that mirror the lifestyle interests of their core users via compelling, authentic even cinematic storytelling. If you are a food brand and can help users with exploration and creativity in the kitchen, you have a useful voice in their lives. This is how relationships are built – through help over hype.

Trust is the anchor

In a world devoid of trust, consumers want to connect with sources of information and guidance that puts their best interests first, is centered around credible voices (their own) and provides value that enhances their experiences. If you devote energy and attention to cultivating this trust forward marketing eco-system, you will be on the path to authentic, sustainable relationship creation. The outcome is reliable engagement, connection and importantly, sustainable business growth.

So stop chasing eyeballs and start winning hearts!

If this post inspires you to consider fresh thinking on creating more effective marketing outreach, use this link to start an informal conversation with us.

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