How AI is rewriting the rules of PR and marketing – and why teams must rethink everything

The marketing and communications world is currently in the midst of its most dramatic shift in decades. The rapid rise of generative AI has fundamentally changed how people evaluate brands and make decisions. Yet, it appears that most teams are still trying to understand what this means for their day-to-day work. For all the hype surrounding AI, many marketers and PR professionals are still left with the same core questions. Which strategies still matter? Which ones need to change? And, perhaps most crucially, where do we even begin?

In a recent conversation among industry experts, How AI is rewriting online visibility and why PR holds the key, a webinar hosted by one of broadcast tech’s leading PR and marketing firms Bubble Agency, one theme emerged clearly. The playbooks that guided PR and content marketing for the last 15 years are no longer enough. As the webinar’s host, Bubble’s vice president of strategic accounts, security and IT, Veronique Froment puts it, generative AI is changing ‘how people find information and make decisions,’ while much of the industry has been flooded with ‘a lot of noise without too much clarity.’

Joining Froment for the webinar were Simon Douglass and Tom Hastings. Douglass, formerly of Google, is the founder of Curated Digital, and his work focuses on how AI, LLMs and evolving search ecosystems are reshaping discoverability and how marketers can adapt through data, authority and PR-led visibility strategies. Hastings is the founder of Beta Shift, which is a consultancy that is helping brands and marketing professionals adapt to the practical realities of AI. Formerly a global agency leader, he now helps teams use AI to improve visibility, creativity and decision-making across marketing and communications.

Myth-busting: Is SEO dead?

Hastings wasted no time tackling one of the most persistent misconceptions: “I think we’ve all heard the term SEO is dead. I don’t agree with that term.”

Instead, he argued, AI is not killing search – it’s shifting it. Large language models (LLMs) are changing how visibility is earned, but the core principles of credibility and authority are more important than ever. The difference is that AI is now interpreting those signals rather than a traditional search engine.

Where early SEO once allowed quick hacks and technical shortcuts, today’s environment demands patience and consistent presence across trusted sources.

Hastings emphasises: “Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is not a hack. It’s not something that can be done quickly – it’s all about aligning your brand with the sources that LLMs like ChatGPT trust and it requires a considered strategy.”

The rise of GEO

Generative engine optimisation, otherwise known as GEO, is quickly becoming central to modern visibility strategies.

As Douglass puts it, “I’m not really a fan of the word GEO. It feels like someone tried to invent SEO for AI, but it seems like it has stuck, and I’m seeing more and more people using it.”

At its core, GEO means ensuring a brand’s entire digital footprint, not just its entire website, is clear, consistent and present across the sources LLMs rely on. Those sources are rarely a brand’s own channels.

“Earned media carries more weight than own content as far as LLMs are concerned,” Douglass continues. “It’s about who’s talking about you off your website.”

Product reviews, trade press coverage, structured profiles, awards listings, bios – these matter more than ever because AI models are seeking certainty. They look for repeatable and credible signals across the web and elevate brands that appear trustworthy. LLMs, in other words, see brands as collections of structured facts rather than marketing narratives.

“They see names, relationships, signals. If they’re messy or inconsistent – that’s going to be surfaced in the LLMs,” Douglass adds.

This certainly warrants a wake-up call for PR teams: your work is no longer just about influencing journalists and stakeholders. Instead, you’re shaping how AI perceives a brand.

Why do Reddit, reviews and trade press suddenly matter more?

One of the most fascinating trends discussed was the ways in which LLMs gather information. A few months ago, internal tests revealed something surprising: Reddit and Wikipedia were disproportionately influencing AI answers.

“The stats that were coming out were saying that the LLMs were surfacing Reddit and more worryingly Wikipedia,” Douglass continues. “It’s been interesting to see what’s happened with Reddit, there’s a been a real pile on of people building Reddit strategies.”

But chasing a single platform is a dangerous mistake.

“There’s no magic bullet in marketing,” Hastings adds. “Treating any single channel as the game changer is really risky.”

Still, Reddit’s role highlights a broader trend. AI favours sources that feel authentic, recent and user generated. For consumer brands, this makes review sites, comparison platforms and community discussions extremely valuable. For B2B companies, trade press and industry analysts tend to carry more weight.

Hastings stressed the importance of the sentiment: “The brands that are surfacing towards the top are the ones with an elevated reputation – those with higher reviews on trusted review sites. Therefore, ensuring that you have a review strategy in place is super important across the board, not just in AI marketing but also traditional SEO and other marketing channels as well.”

PR, SEO and content

This is where the discussion turned practical. AI visibility isn’t just a technical issue; it’s a structural one. Hastings, reflecting on his agency experience, noted how siloed marketing teams often are.

“There has been a tendency for teams who are specialists in particular channels to be really siloed. Because of that previous performance model where everyone’s focused on reporting from their own platforms, you could get away with it but unfortunately, I still see it happening today. Teams that should be talking to each other aren’t doing it.”

In an AI-driven world, this lack of coordination isn’t just inefficient, it harms visibility.

Douglass encapsulates this well, stating that, “The trap is teams working in parallel instead of together. PR is telling one story. SEO might be chasing keywords, but AI systems don’t separate that. The story is the same.”

This demonstrates the fact that LLMs don’t see departments. They see a brand footprint and expect coherence.

One of the most actionable parts of the webinar was a simple tactic shared by Douglass, which is to ask the AI why it answered the way it did.

“You can actually ask the LLM why it’s put it there – why that one is number one – and why it hasn’t put your brand in the running.”

Sometimes, the answer reveals outdated training data. Sometimes, it reveals a visibility gap. But in every case, it gives teams a direct path to improvement.

“If the model returns nothing about you it’s not an AI failure. It’s a visibility gap.”

Hastings adds that identifying and correcting problematic citations can quickly shift AI perception. This is PR and SEO in a new form: influence the sources and you influence the model.

AI in marketing and PR for amplification

Of course, marketing teams want to know what they can measure today.

“Some of the new tools coming out are offering AI visibility, which monitors where you’re being cited,” says Hastings.

But he also warns that keyword rankings (long established as the bread and butter of SEO reporting), may soon become ‘less relevant or even redundant’, as search behaviour becomes more natural language and LLM-driven.

Hastings also reinforces how difficult attribution has become, as ‘measurement is becoming more challenging, marketing mix modelling is a good option for bigger brands.’

Perhaps the most reassuring insight of the entire conversation was also the simplest.

“AI isn’t replacing PR. AI amplifies what PR produces,” concludes Douglass.

It’s evident that in a world where LLMs reward clarity and consistency, the brands that will win are the ones already doing the fundamentals well. No hacks, no shortcuts – but strategic and rigorous marketing.

And more than ever, it’s clear that marketing teams must work as one. AI may be complex, but its expectations are simple.

Click here to watch the full webinar: How AI is rewriting online visibility and why PR holds the key.

Check out the rest of the December Signal here.