The biggest PR story of the coming year isn’t “AI vs humans.” It’s how machines and humans will work together.

This matters most for the people doing communications on the ground: founders wearing the comms hat, in‑house teams, and even marketers who suddenly find themselves “doing PR too.” Is that you? Even if it’s not, you’re going to learn a lot from this episode.

AI is baked into modern PR and wasn’t that fast? Research, media monitoring, trend spotting and first draft content are faster and easier than ever.

AI tools have the scary ability for bad actors to create deepfakes of people, voices and their likeness well enough to confuse customers, employees, investors and even reporters. This means you should:

Do you like getting automated phone calls? Does it make you feel a connection to the company calling? I didn’t think so. Take that principle and use it with AI. Everyone feels a since of icky when they read a post or email pitch that is clearly written by AI and has no human touch.

So use AI as a drafting assistant - not a replacement for humans.

It’s hard enough to get people to respond or even open your emails. Why add the nail in the coffin with AI written pitches? Don’t forget, journalist will gladly block emails that are clearly automated and AI written. Humans want humans to pitch them. Not machines.

The way people find information is shifting from search engines to generative engines—AI assistants and chatbots that summarize the web. That’s where Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) comes in.

To show up in AI answers, your brand and founder needs to be:

If you want AI to “know” your brand, you need to give it something trustworthy to find.

As AI content is beginning to flood every feed, people are craving real humans and real stories. It’s called AI fatigue, and it’s real. So founders, now is your time to shine.

Audiences trust people more than a faceless company. They want to know:

That is why founder‑led PR and human‑driven comms are having a moment. A clear, honest founder story will do more for trust than another polished brand campaign.

Great ways to lean into the human side:

You build trust faster by consistently showing the human element, the creative thinking behind the process, having a point of view, and expressing opinions.

Humans are listening and machines are too. Your job in 2026 is to speak clearly to both.

Do this now:

Share your founder story on purpose. Write a tight version (3–5 sentences) you can use in media pitches, on your About Us page, and in podcast/email outreach. Focus on the problem you solve, why it matters, and what makes your approach different.

Next Time: Newsletters and their role in Public Relations

Get PR techniques from recent news.

Here’s an example of why Marketing and Comms need to be best friends! Marketing comes up with the idea for the way to attract more customers and public relations lets the media know about it.

Here is the press release for the campaign. You can see CNBC interviewed representative from Chick-fil-A since the quote they used in the article is different from quote given in the press release.

The PR department (or PR agency) would have written the press release, distributed it, wrote pitches to different outlets, followed up, booked any interviews, provided media training and preparation materials for the interviewee, handled all incoming inquiries, and arranged for additional b-roll (television) or approved images, what else am I forgetting?

You can see why it’s called earned media. You really work hard to get it!

💫 Pro Tip: Reporters will love you even more if you make thier work easier by sharing content such as high quality images, videos, graphics, hashtags, product descriptions and links to your owned media. You can provide them directly or make them available on your website’s newsroom page.

✍️ Key PR Takeaway: Communications Teams (aka Public Relations) should do just that, communicate. Not only with their public, but also with their internal teams, like marketing. Together the two can make lasting changes for their company. If you have the daunting task of doing both–you got this!

Useful PR Resources.

You can set up to 1,000 Google Alerts for free to monitor your brand, your name, your website, your competitors or see what’s happening out there in your industry with keywords.

It requires a free Google Account and is easy to setup. Step-by-step instructions can be found here.

Setting up effective alerts requires strategic keyword selection and proper configuration to avoid noise while capturing relevant results. Make it even more useful with the following tips.

Use quotation marks around phrases to search for exact matches, such as "your brand name" or "your product name".

Add a minus sign before terms you want to exclude to filter out irrelevant results, like Jaguar -animal to avoid wildlife content.

Combine related terms using Boolean operators like AND or OR to broaden your search, such as AI OR artificial intelligence.​

Click Show options to customize frequency (as-it-happens, daily, or weekly), sources (news, blogs, web, video, discussions), language, region, and result volume. Choose Only the best results to minimize noise or All results for comprehensive monitoring. Start with daily or weekly frequency rather than as-it-happens to avoid email overload.​

Create email folders or labels to categorize alerts by topic, client, or priority level. Set up email filters to automatically sort incoming alerts and keep them separate from your regular work emails. Review and adjust your alerts regularly by editing keywords, sources, or frequency through the Google Alerts dashboard.

Meet Haru, the 5 month-old gray tabby, who is living his best life with his litter mate sister. Haru has discovered house plants, and those strange trees that come into the house in December are super fun to run around and destroy. I met Haru at a coffee shop, his sister was at home while he was out on a big adventure. Thanks for the pets Haru and we loved giving you attention.

Starting off a new year, I hope this week is kind to you.

Until next week, keep your shades on and stay cool.

Your fellow Seeker,
Keren

🕶️

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