As many PR professionals know, the landscape of their business is changing rapidly due to the requirements of generative AI. The old search engine model has now been replaced by what AI says about your company and brand. In this episode of the “Can You Hear Me?” podcast, co-hosts Rob Johnson and Eileen Rochford discuss “Why PR must own AI visibility.”
Resources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cmo/2026/06/03/gaining-visibility-in-the-ai-search-era/
https://www.prweek.com/article/1960195/reputation-age-ai-why-pr-own-ai-visibility
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Rob Johnson: Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the Can You Hear Me? podcast. I'm Rob Johnson, president of Rob Johnson Communications.
Eileen Rochford: And I'm Eileen Rochford, the CEO of the marketing and strategy firm The Harbinger Group. So for decades, communications leaders have understood one simple truth: if you're not visible, you're not relevant. Today, that first point of visibility is not a list of blue links in a Google search. It's an answer generated by an AI assistant. And increasingly, that single answer is the only answer your audience ever sees about you.
Rob Johnson: And that has changed—I mean, it's such a major change and when you're not aware of it, you're heading down the wrong road. And so, generative AI is embedded in everyday workflows. PR has quietly moved from just influencing narratives to determining whether those narratives exist at all. AI visibility is now a critical reputational imperative, and this new reality we're talking about can be a little jarring.
Eileen Rochford: Absolutely, especially if you haven't been paying attention nor realizing kind of the deeper implications of this very, very rapid shift. What's happening, I think—our take is that it's a battle between old school and new school tactics out there. The old marketing environment, which was dominated by organic search, where brands competed for clicks—in an AI-driven world, brands now compete to be cited by large language models (LLMs, in other words). LLMs synthesize the entire web into a single, authoritative response, which includes, you know, citations from various sources. And if you're left out of those citations, you're now invisible. And I think that's what we're really here to sound the alarm about and to talk about for our listeners who could be a few steps away from, maybe the, you know, directly in the marketing sphere and seeing or or from realizing the implications of this. And that's what we're going to dive into today.
Rob Johnson: And I don't think that we're suggesting to marketing professionals that you're not aware of this at all. We just want you to make sure that you understand to the degree that it is happening. That's the most important point.
Eileen Rochford: Yeah. And even more so in the C-suite, I think, Rob. It's like, I think marketing professionals know about this. I think it's really the C-suite that—they may, so think think about, you know, others in the C-suite, they're experiencing AI summaries in from, you know, the results from the searches that they're conducting on a personal basis daily, and possibly in the in the, you know, search research that they're conducting or work that they're doing even for their jobs. It's very, very possible that they're seeing those summaries, but it was such a shift that it was like initially kind of subtle and a little confusing. It was almost like the way Google was presenting information just changed just a little bit. And they kept dropping it down the page and dropping it down the page, and then moving up these summaries. And then all of a sudden, it felt like to me, I was telling clients, "Have you been looking at that? Do you know what that is?"
Rob Johnson: Right.
Eileen Rochford: Those summaries mean that all of that work we did to get you up higher or even onto, you know, page one of summaries, and higher than on that list, it means that largely a lot of that work almost doesn't matter now. And we have to rethink everything as a consequence.
Rob Johnson: That is so true. And to drive this point home, Eileen, a recent article in PRWeek, which was authored by Meltwater CEO John Box—a Box, really drives this point home. He believes this shift is fast becoming a critical component of brand reputation, which means it belongs to PR. AI is completely rewriting that what marketers accepted as gospel about online search. And while Google algorithm updates used to feel huge, right? They are now minor, to your point, compared to this AI shift. Meltwater, by the way, is a global software company that sifted through millions of AI responses and found that nearly half—48%—of all citations in AI-generated responses come from news sources. On ChatGPT specifically, that number jumps to 66%. This means high-authority journalism establishes the facts AI models rely on. Now, here's the big difference from a traditional SEO. Traditional pillar content could drive traffic for years. In contrast, AI visibility demands recency. 58%, in fact, of AI citations are for content under a year old. So, it's very, very new.
Eileen Rochford: It is, and that's it in a nutshell: news sources, recently! That's what it comes down to.
Rob Johnson: Right.
Eileen Rochford: To end up in those summaries, you need to have news coverage from credible sources, and that includes trade media, absolutely, in the last year. So, if you have been ignoring your PR strategy and treating that as a nice-to-have rather than a must-have, it is time to flip that narrative right now. Because it will catch up to you in no time, and you are going to start seeing your website traffic come to a grinding halt in the next three, four, five, six months. And you're going to be looking at your CMO and everyone else related that that drives traffic to your website and saying, "What the hell is going on?" Well, we're telling you right now what's going on. If you have been neglecting PR, it's time to stop neglecting PR and pay a heck of a lot of attention to having your spokespeople prepared to speak to media, have your story straight, be accessible, and get out there and tell that story, and, you know, do it like your life depends on it right now. And you're going to have to keep doing it because recency means that it expires.
Rob Johnson: Well, you know, the other thing, too, that's interesting is, you know, everybody said, "Well, AI, it's going to get rid of all these marketing jobs and PR and this and that." And I know plenty of PR people, and I know that you do, too, who were leery and concerned about this. And now it feels like, "Oh, yeah, AI's here, but man, the rules have changed." And you really need to have somebody with that expertise to help you drive your brand.
Eileen Rochford: Yeah. And the distinction here is, you know, you hear AI and you think the—you know, the use of it. Like, "How do how will I use all these different AI capabilities across my enterprise to be more productive, do more, you know, less time, higher quality," whatever. Take your pick. That's what you think initially. What we're talking about is the answer engine aspect, the summaries that happen when you are posing questions within Chat, Claude, Gemini, whatever place you like to do it, doesn't matter. Google, if you, you know, are kind of like accustomed to doing Google searches to find things and you're still doing that, you're getting answer engine summaries now. So, you used to get that long list and be able to do some of your own deductive reasoning about what what amongst this list is, um, relevant, you know, resonates with me, or that I'm drawn to, or I think, "Oh, that seems like a credible resource." They're doing it for you now, and you literally have no say in it. So, you're served up a select chunk of citations. And those citations come from news media. In some places, the data shows almost 85% of the time the citations are are are comprised of almost exclusively news media citations. So, whatever you did on your website for optimization, it's not anywhere near as important as it was. You have to keep doing it because none of this exists in a vacuum, and we're going to get to that in a second. So, I'm going to transition to this next point because I think it's a good bridge to that none of this exists in a vacuum.
So, while news dominates, AI large language models draws draw heavily from social and community platforms. And this is good news because this is another place where as communicators, as business owners, business leaders, you can have an influence. So, social and community platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit alone, those account for nearly 50% of AI citations as well. This is really encouraging news, because we're talking about how, you know, there's a whole picture that you've got to fill in here and all the things got to—you have to have common messaging across them. Okay. So, this means tier-one media coverage isn't the only metric anymore. Tier one—that's that's critical that you hear that. It's the tier-one part that I want you to hear. Reputation is built across a distributed ecosystem. Now, we've always known that to be somewhat true, but today it's even more important, all right? So, that ecosystem of earned media, owned channels, social chats, online reviews, and niche publications including trades—so PR teams have to expand their definition of influence, right?
Unlike traditional search engine optimization with periodic updates, AI ecosystem systems are changing constantly, continuously, every minute, every second of every day at lightning speed because it can—it can work 24/7 unlike humans. So, the speed is is, um, honestly, it's mind-boggling.
Rob Johnson: It is.
Eileen Rochford: Um, so the models retrain, the retrieval systems evolve, and partnerships are shifting overnight, and and all that linkage, you know, is is just—they're it's finding they are finding more information and connections. And so the answer the summaries that are being served, they can change as quickly as literally overnight. So, what does all this mean? It means if you only rely on one thing, like SEO or just PR, you risk disappearing at a time like this. That's just the truth. So, the fix is broad digital authority across multiple channels. That's the short answer. I'm going to give it a little more color, and that is that broad digital authority across multiple channels, it has to be consistent. So, what you what you show in in in in the what the LLMs see from you, company, on your LinkedIn page has to match what your executives, your spokespeople, your experts are talking about in the media, whatever outlets where, you know, they're cited. There has to be consistency, tie back there. Same thing back on your website—what what is, um, said about your experts, your spokespeople in their bios on your website, that's another place to look for. Is all of this consistent? Is the story that I'm telling across these places linking up, tying off? If it's not, it actually hurts you. That's really important to remember. So, there's ways to go out and, you know, do basically audits to see: the spokespeople we're putting out there, the stories that we're, um, you know, pushing, advocating for for being told in the news media, do those messages match these other places, the information that you have on YouTube, on your company page, on your executive's personal profiles on LinkedIn, on your company page on LinkedIn? All of the things—you have to check it all because if there is a disconnect and they think, "Wait," LLMs see, "Wait a second. This person's coming out of nowhere talking about this, you know, new, very timely thing, but but none of their history of their posts or their content that that is current on LinkedIn is hitting those same message points or similar message points, even usage of the same similar words is key. None of what's in their bio indicates they're an expert in this space." You have to make sure that all of these things connect and that consistency across, um, this spectrum is maintained. And that's a full-time job now.
Rob Johnson: Well, think about the the platforms that you have to keep an eye on, and then think about the point you made a second ago about how quickly things change. You know, the Google way of doing it was like, "Hey, my SEO is good. I'm good for weeks and months, right?"
Eileen Rochford: Yeah.
Rob Johnson: And and now it's like, no, it's changing, you know, every news almost every news cycle because it can. And that's the point we have to make. So, not only do you have to be giving proper attention to these different channels that we're talking about, but you also have to be far more vigilant, perhaps, than you once had to be, because the rules are changing every night, every morning, every week. And and if you go to sleep at the wheel, man, you're you're you're going to be invisible, as we've been saying.
Eileen Rochford: Yeah. Yeah, I'll add to that, Rob, that I think, um, the need for, uh, a strategic lens is crucial at this point. Again, going back to the consistency of message, so your message should always drive from what is your strategy. You know, who who are you trying to reach? Why are you trying to reach them, with what message, etc., etc. And if you have that nailed, then you can much more easily be certain of how to check for consistency of message across all of those different places that I was just mentioning. But if not, and you're just going from, you know, whack-a-mole message to message, you won't be able to keep up. So, tighten your focus on strategy first for your communication. Um, get that strategy nailed, and it'll be far easier and more effective and productive when you go to make sure, "Is our message consistent in all these different areas?" for sure.
And then another thing I'll add is, when it comes to PR, um, recency, we cannot underscore enough like the crucial aspect of recency. So, if you think about it, PR is no longer like a 12-month, you know, contract with your PR agency. You have to have a constantly renewing engine of PR stories that you're pitching and landing that are strategic, so that your pipeline never gets old. Because the second something hits, you know, the expiration date that's between 9 and 12 months, if you have stopped doing your PR, everything will plummet if we keep along on the trajectory that we're at right now. So, a a a really smart, um, you know, story-driven PR strategy is, strictly speaking, the most crucial that I think it's been in like 10 years right now.
Rob Johnson: Just so it's just so dramatic. That's why I that's why we're we're kind of like, "Hey, guys! Hey, pay attention! It's changed dramatically." And and again, we don't think that people don't understand this. We just want to them to know how far along this is so that you don't you don't get caught, and you don't become insignificant in the LLM world, right?
Eileen Rochford: Yeah, and it's going to be pretty easy to kind of have the pipeline dry up, um, in this in this environment, you know, the way that things are shaping up. So, yeah, it is—it's a bit of a rallying cry, if you will, to our listeners. And if you've been sitting on the fence or if you've been hearing, you know, your clients or your leadership teams say, "Well, let's just wait and see how this goes." Well, you're going to have to kind of get the Right! Get get a little, you know, confidence, courage, build it up and say push back. It's it's now's the time. Um, it was okay to do that six months ago, I think, and now I think it's not at all. Okay. Yeah, that they that's expired for sure.
Rob Johnson: So, you know, we can identify the problem, we just did, in many different ways. So, now we want to come up with solutions. What can we leave with all of our listeners here so that they have a a game plan? So, what must those PR pros do? They must move from campaign thinking to ecosystem orchestration. And that is a fancy way of saying they must understand how AI systems source and prioritize data, monitor brand appearances across different models, identify gaps and inaccuracies before scaling, and then align PR content and digital teams under a unified strategy. Is that is that enough for you? [Laughs] That's a lot!
Eileen Rochford: [Laughs] That's a lot! And I mean, again, all all credit to John Box of Meltwater for definitely coming up with the the "ecosystem orchestration," which I particularly love. Who doesn't love a good turn of phrase, right?
Rob Johnson: Oh my gosh.
Eileen Rochford: It's beautiful, the way it rolls off the tongue. Um, but the concept is kind of beautiful, for real. So, if you if you think along those lines, those are all the things that you just listed, Rob, um, that it's all it almost becomes not a checklist, but certainly like if you think about it as a sphere, all the all the elements, you know, linking across that sphere, and all of them equally important, um, that's how you to me it screams of like a retooling of even your how you allocate your team's resources and responsibilities. Like take a whole step back and think, "We are probably doing things the way we were, you know, a year ago, and if we're going to do it this way, the way that Rob just described, we're going to have to change the roles that people have on our marketing team as well." So, this is a it's definitely an opportunity to just take that step back and think, "How can I use the, um, talent that I have on my team and refocus their time, their energy, their skills, and their expertise so that we can monitor and make progress in all of these areas equally and consistently?"
Rob Johnson: You know what I like about this on a different kind of a different level? There's been so much discussion since AI came to everybody's, uh, consciousness, that it was going to take all these jobs. And will it take jobs? Yes. But more importantly, it is—you were talking about retooling responsibilities and things of that nature. It is using the tools that you now have that you didn't once have to make you a more efficient worker, to to to read the tea leaves and to understand that a different day is here from a PR perspective, from a SEO perspective, and everything else. And it is shifting those responsibilities. So, we're not sitting here talking about, "Oh, AI can go and do that." You know, as a as a worker, you're paid for your ideas. You're paid for your expertise. And now, what we're suggesting is, that PR expertise, that marketing expertise, you're going to be flexing different muscles.
Eileen Rochford: Yeah, for sure. And and flexing them in conjunction with, ideally, new knowledge that you've acquired about how to use AI, in in my opinion, the most important way, agentically. So that, exactly. So, and I also, um, recently read—this is pretty interesting. I think this was Sarah Evans, um, mentioned this on LinkedIn—that raises for people in marketing communications who have done the work to learn how to operationalize AI in the marketing communication function, um, and use it particularly agentically, their raises are 65% higher on average so far in 2024. So, when we're battling for not only dollars in, you know, salaries, and we're also battling for the butt in the seat, if you want to earn the higher raise, learn how to use these tools in marketing communications, um, particularly in the agentic, uh, capacity. So, um, okay, that's a lot! But I love it. I think, you know, you're sounded—it's going way more than you look.
Rob Johnson: That's a lot. That is a lot. I want to say I want to say one thing before we jump on uh move forward. I was just having a conversation with a client today, a very big client, who was talking about the people that are adopting it are getting to your point about the raises, I was just hearing that today from a client who was like, "Here's what we've done to, you know, to enhance our AI and that sort of thing." And they're trying to get people to want to experiment with it, to want to, you know, embrace it, to want to use it. And it's not just an IT thing. It's a you thing. And and so what you just said about the raises aligns perfectly with what I just heard today about, are you resisting it or are you an early adopter and are you an enthusiastic adopter of it? Because those are the people that are getting ahead. I just wanted to add that, then we can move on.
Eileen Rochford: Yeah, it's so true. Good point. Yeah. I'm loving seeing like like the the differences in, you know, across personalities and skill sets and things, um, both at in our client organizations and our on on our own team. It's just fun to see, but the people who are, you know, diving in and reading the case studies, taking all the classes in in marketing communications—there's so many available, like on HubSpot Academy, um, and even like Asana has a whole bunch, too, just about, um, marketing communications, um, you know, how to do kind of content management and content marketing more effectively and efficiently. Just another example, again, agentically. Uh, the people who are doing that are coming out, you know, just looking fantastic these days. So, every keep keep at it. It's worth it. It's it's, um, just like any change, it's it's a little scary, but it's hard, too, because it means, "Oh, gosh, now I have to go—" It feels like having to go back to school, but trust me, it's like it's just a layer on top because you have all of the basic skills. This is and and the really, you know, the vast amounts of knowledge, this is just like a layer on top to make it kind of, uh, you know, plus your abilities in, you know, a 10x way. It's it's fantastic.
Rob Johnson: Sure, sure.
Eileen Rochford: All right. So, on that note, [laughs] as we wrap things up here, just a little note of encouragement, just reminding everybody in the, you know, particularly the PR field, those of us, uh, out there, that we are in a new phase where reputation isn't just about what people say, it's about what machines say on our behalf. And they are machines, by the way. Don't start saying "thank you" to your Alexa, please. It drives me bananas. Um, even though this change may seem daunting, the foundational skills of PR—and this remains true always, everybody—those foundational skills of PR: credibility, storytelling, relationship building, they are exactly what matters most, weirdly, for AI visibility. It's just that the tools to manage all of it are finally here, and that's amazing. So, it's again, you know, we're Rob and I are genuinely, inherently positive people, so we are looking at this as a positive thing for all of us, um, and encourage you to do so, too. I think it's just going to make, um, genuinely it has made using learning, not resisting, but embracing and diving in to take classes and force myself to really, um, open my mind to, "God, what could I do with this? What could our teams do with this on behalf of clients?" It has been I I now find that I'm more excited about going to work this year than I have been in a really long time. So, think about it that way. Kind of like a whole new world.
Rob Johnson: I I just I feel like a kid in a candy store sometimes. And and I'm not naive to the people that push back on it a little bit, but I think we've given you enough information here which shows if you're an early adopter, if you're somebody who is enthusiastically doing this, if you're learning new things, you're teaching yourself new things where you're realizing all of the ways that this can complement what you do as a professional, that's going to make you even better. And and when people don't understand that, it frustrates me for them. They can do whatever they want to, but the point is, it is such an amazing tool. Like I sometimes, you know, if I'm going down to my home office down the hallway and and I realize I got to do some content creation, and I don't know where it's going to lead—I know what I have to do, but I don't know how it's how I'm going to get there exactly, and I'm relying on, you know, the AI components and really trying to give it good instruction and and obviously we always talk about the human element, so, you know, we need to repeat that. But I think it's exciting. And and I just, you know, it's it's a brave new world, it's uncertain, it's sometimes scary, but it's also if you just sit there and think about, this isn't going away. If you ignore it, it's it's here to stay. So, are you going to be the solution or, you know, are you going to get on the train or are you going to get run over by the train? I I'd rather get on the train and be part of the solution, frankly, but that's, you know, these are all different personal values.
Eileen Rochford: Yeah, for sure. But one of the best things about it, uh, from like where I sit, is—and this is I can attribute this, um, to Paul Roetzer from SmarterX, he always says it's a thought partner, and and it is. It's a thought partner. I never have it do my thinking, but I have it give me new information that's been analyzed, synthesized, summarized, that gets me thinking in a new direction. One of my very favorite things to do is to take, you know, hundreds of articles about dense topics and maybe some difficult topics that a client is grappling with, and link or give all of those links to, you know, I always love NotebookLM, or sometimes Gemini for something like this, but—and to describe: "Here's the situation, here's the industry, here's what's happening. I need you to summarize all of this coverage and give me the breakdown of tone, message, tell show tell me regionally how this is taking shape across the United States so I can see the differences in coverage." It's just, and what comes back, I could never do that on my own.
Rob Johnson: It definitely fills in the blanks. I mean, you know, you have your own your own smarts and your own thought process really gets you going.
Eileen Rochford: Yeah.
Rob Johnson: But when you need to really fill that out, that's where I to me, that's where the magic is there. That thinking about things that I might not otherwise have thought of. And so I'm thinking more broadly than I might have thought just on my own.
Eileen Rochford: Yeah, yeah. But again, what we're really here to underscore is the, um, the fact that if if you're not paying attention to using PR as a strategy to ensure your inclusion in summaries that are dominating the responses within the LLM environments and within, you know, your search engines, um, that's where you're missing the boat right now. Your people need to learn how to effectively use AI in your marketing communication function, for sure, but leadership teams, you need to realize if I don't have an active, story-based PR strategy that ties back to my business strategy in place now, well, I I'm I need to get one established this year and running by the fall, because your website traffic's going to jump off a cliff real soon. So, that's kind of brings us back to what we were here to talk about today, and we as, you know, we like to meander a bit, but I want to remind everybody that's what we're here to do.
Rob Johnson: That's exactly right. That is the bottom line. That's the mic drop, and that's a perfect way to segue to our conclusion. That's going to do it for another edition of Can You Hear Me? I'm Rob Johnson. If you would like to comment on the podcast or suggest a topic, please contact us at our Can You Hear Me? podcast page, or check out our newsletter, both are on LinkedIn. And please check out our website at canyouhearmepod.beam.ly. We'll leave that address and all the relevant information in our show notes.
Eileen Rochford: All righty. And I'm Eileen Rochford. If you liked what you heard today, please consider giving Can You Hear Me? a positive review wherever you get your podcasts, like Apple, Spotify, etc., etc., as your reviews help other listeners find our show. Thanks everybody, we appreciate you!