Posted in PR and Communications,
Gartner has made a bold prediction: by 2027, businesses will double their spending on PR and earned media. The reason is simple. Search has changed, and the old rules of visibility no longer apply.
For twenty years, brands built their visibility on their own terms: a well ranked website, a slick set of keywords, a strong Google presence. That world is fading. AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity do not send people to your website. They read the web on your behalf and hand back a verdict. And when they do, over 95 percent of what they cite is unpaid content rather than advertising, with more than a quarter of it coming straight from earned media.
This is not a small shift in tactics. It is a change in who gets to decide whether you are credible. You can no longer simply tell people you are excellent at something. AI checks what you say about yourself against what everyone else says about you, and it trusts the second version far more than the first.
That is why PR matters more now than it ever has.
For years, paid advertising gave big, well funded companies an advantage that startups and SMEs simply could not match. Outspend the competition and you could buy your way to visibility.
Generative AI search does not work that way. AI engines are not ranking who paid the most. They are looking for credible, third party validation: press coverage, expert commentary, genuine reviews, real world proof that you know what you are talking about. A large advertising budget cannot buy that. A sharp, authentic voice can.
This levels the playing field. A founder with genuine expertise and a clear point of view can earn the kind of coverage that AI engines trust, often faster and more cheaply than a corporate competitor ten times its size. The businesses that win in this new landscape will not be the ones with the biggest media spend. They will be the ones with the clearest story, told consistently, across the right channels.
Get clear on what you are genuinely good at. AI rewards consistency and credibility, not breadth. Pick your ground and own it.
Have a real point of view. Vague marketing lines do not survive contact with an AI engine checking your claims against the rest of the web. A distinctive, well argued opinion does.
Get it disseminated and amplified properly. Knowing your story is only half the job. Getting it in front of journalists, podcasts, panels and third party platforms, consistently, is a specialist skill. This is where a professional makes the difference between a good idea nobody hears and one that becomes part of how AI understands your brand.
Whether you are a startup finding your voice for the first time, or a corporate business facing something more complex, the principle is the same: authority is no longer something you can claim for yourself. It has to be earned, and it has to be heard.
If you would like help finding that voice and getting it amplified, get in touch with The Work Crowd. We would love to help you make the most of this shift, rather than be left behind by it.