Editors’ Note: I would be remiss not to share that the topic of this column is the thesis of my upcoming book, “The Storyteller’s Advantage,” which hits bookshelves September 23. If you’d like to pre-order because this resonates with you, please use the discount code FARR20 and order from the link here. And if you order right away, there’s a sale at Barnes & Noble to unlock further discounts.
I’ve spent my career writing about healthcare and working in healthcare communications, most recently at the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). In this age of AI, many are concerned that AI will replace aspects of public relations, particularly given its ability to generate creative content. But I’m here to share that I believe that the opposite might be true. Because of AI, public relations — and in particular, human-led editorial work — will be more important than ever.
Let’s take a step back in time to May 14, 2024, when Google officially integrated AI Overviews into its search engine. Most news coverage of this update focused on the model’s high energy usage and occasionally incorrect results. Less covered in the media was how this update would force the public relations sector to adapt.
As journalism jobs have vanished and newsrooms continue to shrink, PR has shifted from press releases and high quality reporter pitches to SEO. For companies, that has meant trying to show up as high on the list of Google search results as possible by paying tribute to the algorithm using keywords, responding to popular searches, and other optimizations. Too many companies pursued this strategy, paying PR firms to play around with backlinking and other tactics instead of being strategic about what to cover and how to share information. The result is that the companies blow huge budgets on SEO with little to show for it, rarely getting the press coverage or meeting the KPIs that they’re looking for.
Now that the top Google search result is an AI-generated response pulling from several different sources that the model has decided are most authoritative, building a brand that rises above the noise has become even more imperative — and challenging.
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