Let’s talk about what’s actually happening in our industry right now. Because there are two very different conversations happening in the PR world, and I think it matters a lot which one you’re having.

One group is asking: Is PR dead? Is this skill set we’ve built our careers around even relevant anymore in the age of AI?

The other group just had their best quarter ever. Because of AI.

The difference between those two groups? It’s not experience. It’s not who their clients are. It’s not even whether they’re using AI. It is one thing. And it’s probably not what you think.

We’re asking the wrong question

Here’s where I think the conversation goes sideways. We keep asking, is PR dying? That is the wrong question. The right question is: which PR is dying?

And I’ll tell you exactly what’s dying. It’s commoditized PR. The kind that’s totally interchangeable, same service, same deliverables, same pitch to every client regardless of industry. The “if it works, keep doing it” playbook. That approach is getting harder every single day. And honestly? It should. It was never really a sustainable business model, because you’re not carving out any deep expertise, any real niche, any secret sauce that makes you genuinely sought after.

What AI is doing isn’t killing PR. It’s accelerating a reckoning that was probably already coming. And now it’s coming a lot faster.

The signal in all the noise

Think about what’s happened to content in the last 18 months to two years. Content is flooding every platform. Every brand, every business, every solo operator now has access to tools that can produce content at scale. That’s great in a lot of ways. It saves time, it gives us options. But the problem is that the internet is now just full of noise everywhere you look.

And when everything is noise, true signal becomes scarce.

Earned media, what we do, what I teach inside The Pitch Lab, is one of the last forms of signal that can’t be easily faked. AI can write a blog post. It cannot manufacture a placement in a trade publication where a journalist decided your client’s story was actually worth telling. That kind of coverage is what’s signaling authority to AI models right now.

Here’s the thing that most people in this industry haven’t fully absorbed yet. The way people find information is completely changing. AI-powered search doesn’t pull from everywhere equally. It pulls from high-authority sources, the exact outlets where we’ve always been placing our clients. Which means the work we’ve always done is now feeding directly into how our clients show up in AI search results.

I was so excited when I saw this in Inc. magazine a couple weeks ago. Gartner did a study predicting that PR and earned media budgets will double by 2027, due to the rapid rise of generative AI search. Google AI overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity. These AI models are all pulling from authentic third-party editorial content. The very thing we know how to get for our clients.

The market is splitting. And you get to choose your side.

What’s happening right now is a bifurcation. Agencies built around volume, more pitches, more placements, more deliverables, more more more, are getting squeezed. Because volume isn’t the same as value, and not all placements are created equal in the eyes of AI.

But the agencies built around depth? Clear positioning, authority-building media targets, outcomes tied to actual business results? Those agencies are finding that their work is more valuable than ever.

The agencies that are growing right now have stopped trying to be everything to everyone. They own a category. They’re the PR agency for funded fintech startups. For sustainable consumer brands. For health and wellness founders building personal brands. They are not generalists who happen to have a few clients in those spaces. They are the recognized expert for that type of client.

And here’s why that specificity is everything. When you have it, two things happen. Clients come to you already convinced you’re the right fit. They’ve done their research. They know what you do and who you do it for, and they know that’s exactly what they need. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And that specificity is what allows you to charge accordingly, not because you’re more expensive, but because you’re the only logical choice.

What AI can’t commoditize

People talk a lot about AI tools, and yes, we use AI in our business too. Not to write pitches, but to build processes, streamline operations, and make things run leaner and smarter. But here’s the truth. It’s not the tools that make this business model more valuable.

It’s the depth. The specificity. And the big word you’re going to keep hearing from me: the authority.

Those are the things AI cannot commoditize. And building that kind of agency is entirely possible. I’ve worked with hundreds of agency owners inside my Agency Accelerator Mastermind, and I’ve watched so many try to fix a positioning problem with a pricing fix, or try to solve a pipeline problem by launching a new offer. And maybe it works once, or a little bit. But it doesn’t really fix the problem, because the foundation has to come first.

(By the way, for anyone who’s been listening to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know I went to law school. I was a lawyer. And the skills that overlapped when I made the switch to PR? Storytelling. Taking a set of facts and making your case. Differentiating your client and helping them stand out. It’s persuasive writing. It’s sales. But what we weren’t taught, and what this era of AI is demanding, is how to build the kind of deep expertise that makes you genuinely stand out. That’s what I’m obsessed with right now.)

Over the next few episodes of this podcast, I want to walk you through exactly what those decisions are. Not the tactics. The decisions. Because the foundation has to come first.

Join me. This is going to be good.

On June 20th, I’m teaching a free live masterclass called How PR Agency Owners Are Making Themselves More Sought After Than Ever in the Age of AI. This is the second time I’ve taught something around this topic, and we have added so much since last year when it was already fire. We are overdelivering on this one even though it’s completely free, because that’s just what we do.

I’m going to walk you through the complete system: positioning, pipeline, pricing, the AI tools that are making great PR agencies leaner and more profitable, and how to position yourself as the agency that gets your ideal clients landing in those AI recommendations, because of the very thing you already know how to do.

If this episode resonated with you, if you’ve been feeling the squeeze and wondering if it’s just you or if it’s the market, I want you to hear this clearly. The market isn’t dead. It’s just asking a different question now. And you’re already equipped to answer it.

Grab your free spot at jenerationacademy.com/may. I promise you will walk away with something powerful. See you on June 20th.