What Still Earns Coverage in the Age of AI: My PR360 Conversation

I sat down with Todd Perry on the PR360 podcast for a wide-ranging talk about building an agency, where companies go wrong with PR, and how AI is changing the way brands get found. Thanks to Todd and the team at Global Results Communications for having me on. What follows are the parts of our conversation most useful to any CMO or CEO considering their next move in PR, lightly edited for length.

Why Does Keeping Great People Keep Clients?

Q: What was the most important decision or strategy you followed that helped Uproar scale from a boutique agency into something nationally recognized?

A: There are a couple of pieces to it, but the one that really helped our growth is this – we were very careful to hire the right people, and once we hired them, we kept them. If someone is fantastic, you do everything you can to keep them.

Q: When ownership changes, like with the Moburst acquisition, do clients freak out a little, or are the people you built up so immersed that clients don’t notice a difference?

A: I’m actually more hands-on now, because the bigger company has HR, finance, everybody else. And they asked us to stay on, because they want clients to feel like they still have the same people. My two senior VPs have been here eight and ten years. That’s a huge thing in PR. When you keep switching people on an account, it stinks for the client. So we try to provide the best culture and environment we can, because if we keep our employees, we keep our clients. We don’t do long-term contracts, and our average client has been with us about five years.

Can AI and a Cheap Tool Replace Your PR Team?

Q: You’ve taken clients from launch all the way to becoming billion-dollar businesses. How is it that some companies totally botch their launches?

A: I assume it’s when they try to do it themselves. Now we have ChatGPT, and these web services pop up saying they’ll put out your press release for 300 bucks a month. You get what you pay for. Can ChatGPT write a press release? Yes. Is it going to be great? Probably not. And putting a release on the wire is about 5% of the actual effort it takes to get coverage. What you’re really paying an agency for is the time it takes to write the release, put great pitches together, know the media, build the media lists, and pick up the phone and actually pitch. You can do it yourself, but it’s a lot of work, a lot of time, and it’s a skill.

Q: And whoever these tools are, they don’t have the relationships you’ve built over the years.

A: Relationships are very important. I’d add that even an agency without experience in your exact market can do it, because all relationships start somewhere. What matters is finding someone with the right skill set who’s a good fit. They’ll build the relationships.

How Did a Struggling Kickstarter Become a $2 Billion Brand?

Q: Are there any campaigns you’re particularly proud of, and what’s the lesson you learned from them?

A: I always go back to a company called Hyperice. This was very early on for us. They came to us with a Kickstarter, and media hates a Kickstarter because there’s no actual product on the market and no guarantee there ever will be. Their first product was a foam roller with the center drilled out and a vibrating core inside. I was running eight or nine miles a day with sore legs, and after ten minutes on that roller I had fresh legs. It was amazing. We did a media tour up to New York, desk side, and got big-name, top-tier fitness media to try it, and they all wrote about it. The Kickstarter was already going, and it was failing, and we ended up finishing at four times their goal. They landed on the cover of Forbes, they were in Sports Illustrated, and they just kept growing. Now they’re about a $2 billion company.

Why Is AEO Suddenly in Every PR Conversation?

Q: We’re in the AI era now. How do you think AI is reshaping how brands manage and defend their reputations?

A: The keyword for 2026, and I’m hearing it all day, every day, is AEO, answer engine optimization. For forever, we’ve talked about SEO and keywords and tricking Google into ranking you higher. With AI, you can’t trick it. The biggest thing these platforms rank for is earned media, third-party validation. They want a trusted media source to cover you, preferably national, for the reach. If you’re getting major national coverage, you rank better on the ChatGPTs and the Geminis. AEO is critical, and if your agency isn’t talking about it, I’d ask them some questions.

Q: Does that change your messaging? If a client is getting earned media and you want it to do well in AEO, do you change what they say in an interview?

A: There are still keywords. We have a client called Jeff’s Bagel Run, a growing bagel brand at about 24 locations now and heading past 100 across the country. AEO is a big focus for them. If you’re a bagel brand, we’re talking bagels, and we’re saying Jeff’s Bagel Run, because that’s the name. It’s still keywords, but now you have to get them into trusted sources and into the outlets that rank. The content matters, and so does making sure it lives in validated media.

Q: Every guest gets the big one at the end. What’s your thought leadership philosophy?

A: You do need to be an expert in whatever you’re running, but you can’t do everything yourself, so have someone great helping you propel your brand and get you out there. And my personal philosophy the last couple of years has been simple: say yes. If an opportunity comes to me, whether I know it will be good or not, I say yes, because every one of them could lead to something amazing. If you don’t try, you never get there.

That say-yes mindset is how I ended up on this podcast, and I’m glad I did. The through-line across everything we covered is the same. PR still runs on trust, timing, and relationships built long before you need them, and that same earned coverage now feeds the AI tools your buyers use to size you up. If you want to talk through whether your program is built for that, from the media relations work that earns those placements to why earned media now shapes AI visibility and building executive authority over time, we would love to chat with you. Thanks again to Todd and PR360 for a great conversation.