That's What I Call Marketing S4 Ep23: AI & The Evolution of Search, Building A Legacy Series
PR has always been about influence. Coverage, credibility, shaping the conversation. But in 2025, PR is becoming something bigger: the infrastructure that powers discovery itself.
In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, we unpack the collision of PR, SEO, and brand building in the age of AI search. Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other tools are no longer sending users to ten blue links. They’re generating answers directly in the results. And those answers don’t come from nowhere.
Research shows that 89% of AI summaries trace back to earned media sources. Trusted outlets. Independent stories. Journalism that carries weight. Which means PR isn’t just a “nice to have” for reputation anymore — it’s becoming the raw material that decides whether your brand even shows up in the customer journey.
Across this conversation, we explore what that means for marketers:
- Why PR and SEO can’t live in silos, and how the brand newsroom model makes them work together.
- How to build visibility when there’s no guarantee of a click — and why being named in the answer might be more valuable than a referral.
- The role of blogs and owned content in the AI era — why they still matter, even if they never rank.
- How attribution is breaking down, and what marketers can do to rethink measurement when direct traffic and PPC get over-credited.
- Practical tactics: answering every related question in your content, writing for bots as much as for humans, and creating proof that compounds rather than one-off case studies.
- Why creative PR still matters more than ever, and how to structure stories that journalists — and machines — can’t ignore.
This isn’t a theoretical debate. It’s a frontline look at how PR is changing, why credibility is the most valuable currency in marketing, and what teams need to do to stay visible in a world where discovery is shifting beneath our feet.
If you care about where marketing is going, how to keep your brand discoverable, and why PR is entering a new golden age, this is the episode for you.
1:50 – The “oh shit” moment: Google AI Overviews
7:48 – PR as trust signals in AI
13:01 – Discovery beyond Google
15:35 – Blogs still matter
23:17 – Attribution is broken
31:22 – SEO becomes a brand function
44:08 – Writing for bots, not humans
49:20 – Don’t chase every shiny channel
57:00 – Building a Legacy
The Building A Legacy Series are in partnership with Legacy Communications
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