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| Lauren Hill |
Brand awareness isn’t what it used to be. In today’s AI-shaped search environment, traditional digital touchpoints—organic search, social sharing, even paid visibility—are losing their power to consistently connect brands with audiences.
As generative AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity reshape how people search, discover and decide, a new challenge has emerged: brands aren’t just competing for clicks—they’re fighting to be mentioned at all.
This is to say: if your brand isn’t showing up in AI-generated answers, it’s already behind. And if people don’t see you, they won’t trust you.
The new discovery landscape: zero clicks, less control
The way audiences find and evaluate brands has changed. The process by which AI tools synthesize answers instead of returning a list of links is rapidly becoming the new default for online discovery. These AI responses are shaping the future of how people seek and process information, meaning traditional search cannot be the only levers that matter anymore.
As a result, brands face three key threats:
Fewer branded touchpoints: AI summaries often omit links altogether.
Loss of narrative control: AI chooses which brands to mention, often without input.
Shrinking attention windows: If you’re not named in the first response, you’re likely invisible.
This isn’t just about organic traffic drops. It’s about losing credibility at the earliest—and most influential—stage of the buyer journey. And when 81 percent of the buying journey happens before your prospect even speaks to you, that loss of credibility is actively compressing your margins.
Brand awareness isn’t just reach—it’s recognition and authority
Awareness still matters—but the rules of building it have shifted.
In the generative AI era, being seen isn’t just about showing up on a list. It’s about being perceived as credible, relevant and trustworthy—by people, machines and your broader buyer network. And increasingly, that trust is conferred by third-party sources: news articles, analyst commentary, interviews, citations in blogs and more.
| This article is featured in O'Dwyer's May '25 PR Firm Rankings Magazine |
AI models are trained on content that demonstrates high E.E.A.T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness). That means a thoughtful quote in a trade publication, a leadership profile or a mention in an analyst roundup can carry more weight in determining whether your brand appears in AI-generated results than a top-three Google ranking ever did.
That’s not just an SEO issue—it’s an awareness opportunity.
PR’s expanded role: fueling visibility in an AI-first world
This is where PR earns a new seat at the table—and a more strategic one than ever before.
For years, public relations has been tasked with generating awareness through earned media and amplifying brands across social. But today, it’s doing far more: shaping the inputs AI uses to decide what’s credible, what’s mentionable and what deserves to be surfaced.
PR is no longer just about human perception; it’s now central to how machines understand and elevate your brand.
Here’s how PR directly fuels AI visibility:
Earned media coverage in reputable publications increases the likelihood that your brand will be cited in AI-generated outputs. These outlets are often part of the content libraries or web-crawled training data that AI tools rely on.
Thought leadership from named executives—especially when published with bylines or in Q&A formats—serves as clear evidence of expertise and authoritativeness.
Influencer relations and mentions in analyst reports, industry awards or even niche podcast interviews create digital trails that are crawlable, structured and full of contextual relevance.
Contextual associations: PR helps pair your brand with strategic themes and keywords, making it easier for AI to recognize and retrieve your brand in response to relevant prompts.
It’s a new kind of influence: not just getting in front of people, but embedding your brand in the authoritative, verifiable ecosystem AI platforms pull from.
Content alone isn’t enough; it has to be built for AI
Of course, PR can’t carry the full load alone. Connected content still matters but only if it’s aligned to how AI thinks.
AI tools don’t just reward high-volume publishing—they prioritize clarity, conciseness and source quality. If your blog is bloated with jargon or buried in brand-speak, it won’t get picked up. If your expertise lives in PDFs, videos without transcripts or unstructured long-form content, it’s likely invisible to generative systems.
Instead, brands should:
- Use FAQ, “how-to,” and comparison formats to match query styles.
- Optimize metadata and structured data (schema).
- Ensure authorship is clear, consistent and expert-backed.
- Repurpose earned media into crawlable, SEO-aligned web content.
These strategies not only make your brand more AI-visible; they make your expertise easier to validate. When paired with PR, they ensure both the source and the substance of your brand are aligned to visibility.
Agencies are the connective tissue between PR, content and search
To succeed in the AI-first era, brands must operate across disciplines. And agencies are uniquely positioned to connect those dots.
True discoverability today requires cross-functional alignment—PR for earned credibility, SEO for structural discoverability. and content strategy for message control.
The most forward-thinking brands are already:
- Auditing where and how they appear in AI summaries.
- Measuring brand mentions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.
- Prioritizing media outreach to sources known to influence AI training sets.
- Partnering with agencies to proactively build AI-discoverable narratives.
This isn’t future-proofing. It’s future-building. And PR is at the core of that foundation.
In an AI-first world, visibility without trust is meaningless
The rise of generative AI isn’t just a tech trend—it’s a fundamental rewrite of how brand awareness works.
Today’s smartest brands aren’t treating visibility as a marketing KPI—they’re treating it as infrastructure. Because if people can’t find you, they won’t trust you. And if AI can’t find you, people won’t either.
Visibility now lives at the intersection of credibility and structure. PR puts your brand in the right places. SEO ensures it’s seen. And integrated content keeps the story consistent across platforms.
In this new landscape, showing up isn’t enough. You need to be the answer.
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Lauren Hill is Vice President of Marketing and Head of Data & Analytics at PAN, where she leads the agency’s marketing team and oversees measurement and analytics.
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