As audiences increasingly turn to AI tools for answers, the conversation examines why earned media is becoming more important than ever and how communications professionals can adapt to a rapidly changing landscape.
Drawing on research, data and practical examples, the episode looks at AI visibility, the future of search, and the steps PR teams can take today to remain relevant, discoverable and influential.
At the centre of the discussion is a simple question: if your audience is getting answers from AI, how do you make sure your organisation is part of the answer?
It's a practical look at one of the biggest shifts facing communications professionals today.
Transcript:
Jack Murray 00:00
John, welcome to Inside Media Relations, the podcast for PR people serious about getting their
stories covered. In this episode, the first answer: Why AI is changing the value of earned media. We're looking at how AI is reshaping visibility, discovery, and influence, and why earned media
is more important than ever. I'm joined by Johnny Brentwood, Global President of Data
Analytics at Golan. We will explore how brands are adapting to a world where audiences are
increasingly getting answers from AI systems instead of search engines. We'll discuss AI
visibility, generative engine optimization, and what communications need to do to remain
visible in the AI age. Let's get inside media relations. Johnny, welcome to the show. Good to see
Jonny Bentwood 00:46
you. Good to see you, and thanks for having me on.
Jack Murray 00:47
Yeah, so Johnny, we've known each other for a few years through the International Conference
Network, and let's start this. Let's start this chat in a cave in Bulgaria, where we were a couple
of years ago, we went, we were brought by a mutual friend on a road trip in Bulgaria,
Jonny Bentwood 01:07
and who thought the world of data and measurement was boring,
Jack Murray 01:10
exactly. Yeah, I didn't quite.. it was roasting that day, was a little bit trepidatious at the start as
we went down the ravine. I thought, where are we going? Well, we got to talk on that day about
some of the work that you do at Golan, and your career path has been really interesting, and
I'm really interested to tease - I'm interested at the start, just to tease out what you do, like,
and I know some of it is about communication measurement, it's about data leadership and
data science leadership, strategic consulting, looking at future trends. If you know that feature
in the Sunday Times, A Day in the Life, where people describe kind of a normal day, if one
exists in your world, what does it look like?
Jonny Bentwood 01:53
You know, not even my mum really understands what I do. She still thinks we're working
advertising, but I'm very clearly in the data business. I was in the data side before it's a thing,
but if I tried to think about how I describe my job, think of it in terms of I want companies to be
data driven in their communications, so all that time people are working in marketing and
think, hey, this sounds like a really cool idea. Well, it may be a cool idea, but I want to make
sure that cool idea is baked in solid data. Is it the right message for the right audience? Are we
going to hit them in the right way, in the right place, where they hang out? Being data driven
makes us better, makes us smarter, and it's not just about how did we do, it's making sure we
do well in the first place.
Jack Murray 02:40
If we start at the start, and when I was a corporate PR practitioner, before I got into the
software world, one of the one of the greatest mysteries to me, when I'd meet a prospective
client, and it never got any easier, where they'd say, oh, can you do some public relations, can
you communicate for me, and we'd sit down, and I'd say, what do you want to achieve, and
would try and explain to the client that if we design it to be measured, we'll be able to measure
the progress, and that notion of at the start of a campaign knowing what you want to measure,
knowing what, like in sporting analogy, we know what the cup looks like, we know what the
trophy looks like. Is it correct in saying that in a lot of these cases, like understanding what
you're trying to measure is a good place to start. It
Jonny Bentwood 03:21
is, but you'll find that people don't know where to even start thinking about that. So, you need
to, I always say, write for the reader, put it in terms of the person you're speaking to
understand, so everyone understands the purchase funnel, the customer journey. Now, let's go
back to that question, but what are we trying to achieve? Now, the first step is awareness, so if
people aren't aware of you, then okay, that's what we're going to be measuring, and the kind of
metrics you look at, that may be share of reach across your tier one audiences. Now, if they're
aware of you, the next stage in that funnel is consideration: should I buy this product or that
product, Coke or Pepsi, Burger King or McDonald's, and then it's a differentiation play. If that's
the objective, then the KPIs are around consideration. It's around engaging people who really
believe in that point. If they understand who you are and how you differentiate, then the next
stage is affinity. Do they like you? And that's the case of the KPIs there would be around
sentiment and love and trust of that brand. The next stage is that action or purchase, are they
going to buy from you, and the KPIs around that, and finally, are they recommending you the
advocacy? So to ask you a question, What are you trying to achieve? Well, let's see where you
are in the customer journey, and that defines the KPIs you should go for,
Jack Murray 04:35
and in a like a fabled agency like Golden, that's been, you know, one of the most famous PR
agencies that was ever created, and it's probably what is it 80 years old now, from from when it
started. Like when clients come in, have you've - I'm assuming you've created analysis
frameworks, you've created things that can plug and play, and then you tweak them as people
come in, based on what their needs are. What does that look like when a new piece. Business
comes in,
Jonny Bentwood 05:01
you know, the skeleton remains the same. It adapts to the current need. I think about how we
measure now and how we measure 20 years ago. A lot of the core principles remain the same.
The problem is the world has changed.
Jack Murray 05:13
Yeah,
Jonny Bentwood 05:13
and so we've had to bring in new approaches with it. Gen AI being a great example, because
we're now marketing and looking at more channels than we ever have done, so the concept
remains the same, but I always like to think if people are just using measurement to evaluate
the past, being descriptive, yeah, that I give ourselves a mark of four out of 10. What we need
to do is move from descriptive to prescriptive, so just to measuring the outcomes, what we do
is descriptive, measuring what we should be doing is prescriptive, and if it can be even better
by going from prescriptive to predictive, which is anticipating the future, so we can get there
first.
Jack Murray 05:50
And do you still think, like, you know, one of the greatest pitfalls of public relations is the soft
nature of it? And sometimes I think that the industry sells itself short because, you know, if it's
not going to execute properly, or if it's not measuring properly from the start, of course, it'll be
soft, but if you, if you, you know, obviously there are unintended consequences to being
proactive, but if you go with a full measurement framework, and you're intent on taking the
ruler out at the start, and you design something that can be measured, obviously you're going
to be able to give harder data and hard success metrics to people.
Jonny Bentwood 06:22
Yeah, we should be made accountable for what we do. If we don't set clear goals, then people
just going to do the wrong stuff. And we also need to be honest. I'd say we need to embrace
the ugly baby, say, you know what, what we're trying to achieve, it didn't work.
Jack Murray 06:36
Yeah,
Jonny Bentwood 06:37
if we do some bullshit metric, then we're going to make sure we repeat that same mistake in
the future,
Jack Murray 06:42
so you mentioned Gen AI, and you know you've, you've got a lot of domain expertise in this
new area of generative engine optimization, and I want to talk about that, and you have a
manifesto, and when I heard it first, I'm, I'm a sucker for a manifesto, I love, I love a good
clarion call to action. Could you read the manifesto first? Because when I heard it, it really
plugged me into the new reality of AI, what it means for communicate communicators, and this
for public relations communications, the huge opportunities there to to reframe ourselves and
to be completely aligned with this new wave.
Jonny Bentwood 07:22
Yeah, pretty delighted to. The world has changed. Every audience you've ever communicated
with now has a machine in front of them. Power has shifted from publishers to platforms, from
editors to algorithms, now the organizations that understand this shift will lead, the ones that
measure but don't act will disappear. We are no longer competing for headlines, we are
competing for inclusion. We are now marketing
Jack Murray 08:00
to machines, I love it, and it's just that notion of like when you, when, when I heard you read it
the last, like, the first time, I thought, God, that, that, that so simplifies everything. Talk to me
about inclusion, and talk to me, you know, you also have, you know, you've very, very clearly 4f
for visibility, and this notion of if I'm a, if I'm a practitioner now, and I'm a communicator. Talk
to me about the importance of being visible in Claude and perplexity in Chat GPT, and what
that means to drive the objectives and the things that are underpinning the communications,
and I suppose then it's a big question, and then you know the methods by which I can make
that easier for myself.
Jonny Bentwood 08:48
Well, let's just say why it's important first. I mean, people have been talking about Genia for
years now, and it sort of came about when I realized that people picking up their phones and
they were scrolling past all those results that came in, and say, oh yeah, that sponsored they
bought those keywords, and they scroll past them. That's called zero click. It doesn't go
anywhere. But now people pick up the phone, they ask that same question to Gen AI, and go,
bloody hell, that's perfect. I'm just going to accept that first answer, and I find that shocking.
What that actually means is people have gone from critical thinking, where they sort of scroll
past those results, to anchor bias, where that first answer that comes in, they go, 'yep, I love it.
Now, I prefer to live in the reality of where we are rather than where we'd like to be. I'd love
people to apply more critical thinking, but they don't, and so, knowing they're going to accept
that answer that Gen AI comes back with, it's so critical that we influence the results of that
first answer. And what I've done is I've put together a framework, I call it the 4f's that has to be
practical, so that anybody who listens to this can think I know what I can do. Tomorrow to make
a head start into be influencing that results that come in,
Jack Murray 10:05
and before you go into the four Fs, it's important to say, like, earned media is hugely significant
in this new world. Tell us a little bit just about the data behind that.
Jonny Bentwood 10:14
So, we have looked across millions of different citations, hundreds of different brands, and
there's a few stats that always come out. The most shocking one is that around 70 to 95% of all
AI citations are driven by earned media. That's incredible.
Jack Murray 10:34
It is incredible.
Jonny Bentwood 10:35
It's not coming from advertising, it's not coming from paid discovery, it's coming from earned
media. Around 8% typically comes from social media, and you know what, that's not it's not
Instagram, it's not TikTok, it's not Snapchat, it's Reddit, it's YouTube, it's LinkedIn, and the final,
just a few small percentage points is on owned media, your own websites, so that huge chunks
coming from earned media,
Jack Murray 11:05
as you said, that's the pitch we're playing on now.
Jonny Bentwood 11:07
Well, PR has traditionally been the people in the background, it's like this is incredible, the most
impactful impact in modern times on Gen AI. The biggest influence is PR, because who
understands PR more than who understands earned media more than PR? That's what we do
day in, day out, and we know how to make a difference.
Jack Murray 11:28
And isn't this a huge shot in the arm to the profession? And you know, there was there was a
whole thing about us losing ground to search engine optimization, and that being the, that
being the place where the marketeers were, and this huge blurred area, and it seems from the
way this discussion is framed now that there's huge power in the core skills of public relations
in the current context.
Jonny Bentwood 11:52
I really feel sorry for the people who are SEO based, because their time is up. I used to last year
when I talked about it, was 65% of searches with zero click. That 65% of SEO goes nowhere.
The CEO of Condi NAS said last week that they're expecting it to be 100% of searches go
nowhere. SEO is dead. I'm really sorry, but there's a new game in town, and that game is Geo
Generative Engine Optimization.
Jack Murray 12:24
So, tell us about the four, the 4f in helping people to, I suppose, to frame their outreach and
how they can get better.
Jonny Bentwood 12:33
The first F is, can you be found? It's as simple as that. So, think about the things that may mean
you can't be found, so if you've got a paywall on your website, you can't be found. Axios, I had
a six grand subscription to Axios. They gave me a refund because they took away their paywall
because they want to be found. If your site is built on JavaScript, like lots of websites are,
because it's beautiful, it's great for humans, it's rubbish for machines. Gen AI cannot read
JavaScript, so what about the URL? Can you, what can you do to optimize that URL to make it
more visible for Gen AI? So all these things make a difference. So the first,
Jack Murray 13:18
here's a
Jack Murray 13:18
good example earlier on where you even included the current year in a URL. If
Jonny Bentwood 13:23
you just put dash 2026 at the end of your URL, it increases your chance of being cited by Gen
AI, along with a few other tips by 11.4% So, number one, can you be found? Get rid of paywalls,
get rid of JavaScript on your main content pages, improve your meta description, optimize your
URLs. Those things make a huge difference. The next step is the feel of what you're saying. You
know, all my working life people have talked about message pull through as a key thing we
want to do is the customer using the language of my brand, and that was great. Not anymore.
What we've got to do now is adopt the language of our customer. It makes sense. I have no
idea why we don't do more of it, but if someone asks a question, what is the best widget in
Dublin? If my answer is the best widget in Dublin is this, it's almost a carbon copy of the
question. That's why Jenny, I would pick it. So, if we can copy that same language,
Jack Murray 14:22
and it's interesting on feel like I know what our customer success people, with the consent of
the of the users of Media HQ, we record a lot of calls, and the best marketing material is to use
that is to describe your product the way the users are talking about it.
Jonny Bentwood 14:37
Yeah,
Jack Murray 14:37
talk about their problems in their terms. Who knew? Like
Jonny Bentwood 14:40
Eureka,
Jack Murray 14:41
yeah, and you gave a good example earlier of of of FAQs being framed in different ways.
Jonny Bentwood 14:48
Yeah, so I mean, I'd like this comes down to the format, the third F. Now, in the format, what we
need to do is remember how Gen AI works. It's got a quarter of a second as soon as it's. Add
your question, your prompt to scour the world and come back with an answer. Now, if you write
your content, if you want to get the first answer, you need to answer first content. So, if you
write it in a way that is most likely to get picked up, so if people ask your question, is that
question written as an FAQ? If people say, should I buy this or that, if you list it as I've got a
listicle explaining why we're good and why we're bad compared to our different competitors.
Jenna would just love to copy and paste that, so that format is going to be fantastic. So, think
how-to guides, FAQs, expert quotes, user-generated content, take all those things with listicles
and blogs, things that it can copy, h, h formatting, TLDRs, Gen AI loves that the fourth F is
freshness. Gen AI has a recency bias, that amazing piece of content, that white paper I wrote
that I published in October last year. Great, but something that gets published last week is
even better, Gen AI likes that freshness, that recency bias, and this is one of the hardest things
for practitioners to think about, because we work in tentpole moments, we think about summer
holidays, back to school, Valentine's Day, Christmas, and we think about those tent pole
occasions, and we'll do something for that moment in time, that tent pole, but what do you do
in between those moments? That's why we need to have a rolling thunder, that always on
approach that is churning content out for the machine,
Jack Murray 16:31
and it's that it's that PR scale of a hook and something that's interesting, and something that
you know, like I have an equation that says a raw idea plus an angle equals a story, so once
you hook it in with an angle or a hook, it becomes interesting.
Jonny Bentwood 16:46
Well, the thing is, I'm going to disagree with you here. Yeah, actually, I don't care what you just
said. Yeah, because I'm not this rolling thunder is not for you.
Jack Murray 16:53
Yeah,
Jonny Bentwood 16:54
I'm chucking out content only for the machine to read,
Jack Murray 16:57
okay?
Jonny Bentwood 16:57
Just as much as I'm putting a press release on the wire, not for journalists. No, I'll call the
journalists up. I know them. I'm putting it on the wire. Going to 5000 websites, it's for the
machine. We need
Jack Murray 17:09
to, so think machine can read it. It's a gateway to everyone else seeing it.
Jonny Bentwood 17:12
Yeah, totally. Go
Jack Murray 17:14
through that gate first.
Jonny Bentwood 17:15
We need to not only market to humans, we've got to market to machines, and all these
different activities we can do to make a difference is fantastic. So, yeah, do your tempo
moments for humans, churn stuff out for machines. Now, those are my four Fs.
Jack Murray 17:31
You have a fifth F.
Jonny Bentwood 17:32
I do have a fifth,
Jack Murray 17:34
and it's the one with the F star, star, star.
Jonny Bentwood 17:38
Can I say the F star star,
Jack Murray 17:40
off you go.
Jonny Bentwood 17:41
Okay, the most important F of the law is because people feel overwhelmed by all this, what
they've got to do. It's just fucking get on with it, because people just aren't doing anything.
Jack Murray 17:53
Yes,
Jonny Bentwood 17:53
people
Jack Murray 17:54
inertia
Jack Murray 17:54
is still, it's still a big thing.
Jonny Bentwood 17:56
It is a big thing, and people say, "Oh, that so far had no one is doing anything. I have been
analyzing brands across the world from Fortune 50 companies. No one is doing a good job, and
I think people are waiting for the perfect plan. Forget it, just do one little thing. Maybe
tomorrow that YouTube video you've got, you're going to put the transcript in. That's amazing.
Well, I couldn't make a huge difference when
Jack Murray 18:18
you, when we talked about this earlier, and you said that I was on the chat to the office, and I
said, every episode of this podcast, can you please upload all of the transcripts, so that they're
going to be much more easily found. Exactly. Yes.
Jonny Bentwood 18:31
Also, stick it on your website as well. I mean, do everything you can to be found by Gen AI, but
just start. Just do a few little things, marginal gains make a big difference,
Jack Murray 18:42
and do you find, like, one of the things I find, and, like, look like you, I've been evangelizing
using technology for 20 years now, but, like, it can take some people get it really quickly. One
of the good things about the dawn of AI is that if you've been hiding under a rock, very few
places to hide now that it's, it's, you know, it's not coming, it's here, and it's been here for a
while. So, like giving people a framework, or you know, a way in which they can, and people
have to change their work processes, I suppose, to, and that can be hard.
Jonny Bentwood 19:15
It is going to be hard, because we need to, we've got to, we've got a different way of working
now, and those old school PR practitioners who say this is how we do it. You go wake up
because there's a whole new way of working. I don't care how wonderful creative your idea is if
you're getting killed by someone else because you're not turning up in the first dancer. To be
clear, though, I'm not saying stop doing those wonderful PR activations. I'm saying you need to
do something as well.
Jack Murray 19:43
Yeah, you have times that you have to have a game plan for this other thing.
Jonny Bentwood 19:46
Yeah,
Jack Murray 19:46
yeah, this
Jonny Bentwood 19:46
is an additive, not of a placement approach.
Jack Murray 19:49
You also have a theory on if we're 12 months from a commercial point of view of the impact of
where AI is going to be and how it's going to be driving commerce to. A little bit about that,
about where the hockey puck is going on that,
Jonny Bentwood 20:04
so this is my vision bit here. Um, you can come in here and tell me I got it completely wrong,
but I'm thinking about where we're going, and it's sort of.. remember a few things that I've said.
I've talked a little bit about the rolling thunder, I've talked a little bit about the importance of
being that first answer, so I'm going to extend that thinking. The first that I've got for you is
that we need to recognize that, and especially in the consumer space in the UK, Ireland, US, a
third of all prompts that people ask in the consumer space are generating a shopping
experience. What that means is that when you go there, it actually says at the bottom, hey,
here are some products that actually do what you're looking for. That's new. Now, out of those,
a third of the people who are looking at that from that category in the Gen Z space actually go
and buy that's still a small percentage, a third of a third, it's a tiny amount of a specific
demographic, but that's going to grow. This is a genetic commerce. This is why I think it's
important, and I think it's going to be groundbreaking in the PR industry. PR has historically had
a tough time because we are too far away from the euro from the money spent and that's why
a lot of the paid advertisers go we did this it click there they bought that and they got that clear
link between action and outcome and we try in the PR space to sort of talk about different
outcome metrics but nothing as good as dollars spent. So, now let's go back to the agentic
commerce. A third of all prompts are generating a shopping experience. A third of those people
are buying in agentic commerce. Well, what influences that scenario? Said earlier, 70 to 95% is
earned media. Well, who influences that? That's us. Yes. So, where's the future? We are lower
funnel visibility, lower funnel agentic commerce. We are going to be focusing there because PR
suddenly has the greatest influence on dollars spent, and that can be directly attributed to the
work that we are doing, and we're not saying stop the other stuff. Advertising marketing to
humans still has its play, but for marketing to machines, this is PR's moment.
Jack Murray 22:34
So I said to someone earlier today that I love hanging out with you, and I love listening to you,
because, like, it's almost like a full semester module, when I look, when I listen to one of your
keynotes, that that transaction of of knowing how to how to give value, and we started with the
manifesto, we spoke about the four Fs. I want to bring you to another piece of work, and we're
not overloading the viewer and the listener here, because I love practical action plans. Your
takeaway on 10 ways that PR people can now influence. Let's go. Let's do a quick run through
on, you know, you were saying people need to change their workflows, they need to get on it,
they need to start now. Let's, let's run through that list of 10 ways to influence now. Do you
want to kick it off?
Jonny Bentwood 23:22
Yeah. Number one, engage with your new tier one AI media list. Like it's obvious we already
understand the concept of a tier one media list. Now you need to have your tier one gen AI
media list, different group of media, but you engage with them in different way. But there's so
many tools out there that will help you define which media should be speaking to that gets
highly cited in Gen AI, so you engage with them, it's a no-brainer.
Jack Murray 23:49
You curate your list and you create your content in the formats that you said you may not be
speaking to journalists, you may just be sending stuff over, and that's fine, but it's a whole
different media list. Number two, optimize data-rich press releases and blog posts with
structured markup distributed on wire.
Jonny Bentwood 24:06
I'm going to send out press releases on the wire all the time. We did this for Mountain Dew in
20 minutes. Chat GPT was recommending us for that query. I am not talking about press
releases for journalists. I don't put them on the wire for journalists, because journalists don't
read those necessarily. I'm doing it for the machine. It goes to 5000 websites. It's genius.
Jack Murray 24:30
And when you optimize it, is the structure and the form of it really different or just slightly
different?
Jonny Bentwood 24:36
It's really different. The contents all there, but I put things in a slightly different order, think of it
like TLDRs, bullet points, things that Gen AI can copy and paste without having to rethink what
you're doing.
Jack Murray 24:48
Number three, answer first content, build FAQ pages, how to guides, answer common AI
queries.
Jonny Bentwood 24:56
If you want to get the first answer right, answer first. First content, and your FAQs shouldn't be
about you. It should be the questions that your customers are asking, even if it's not just about
your brand. How-tos, if you're in the food place, recipes, anything listicles, just do the answer
first. Content
Jack Murray 25:16
number four: position executives as quotable experts and create versus competitor content.
This is interesting.
Jonny Bentwood 25:24
Two parts, there. So, the first bit around quotable experts, Gen AI loves stating facts. It loves
even more saying an expert stated something as facts. So, you've got experts in your
company, use them. You've got advocates, use them. But if you think the second part of this
was versus content, so let's say I am in the I'm looking for some technology. If I go to SAP
website, it's like buy me, buy me, buy me, have a demo of me. If I go to g2 which is a reference
point, it's highly sites talks about different technology, it says, well, you could pick SAP, and this
is why it's good and bad, or you could pick this company, which is why it's good and bad, or this
company, why it's good and bad. Gen AI is going to go to that firm g2 to say, here's a bunch of
content compelling good and bad for different companies. It makes it easier for Gen AI to give
the answer.
Jack Murray 26:18
Number five, produce or sponsor YouTube short form videos with transcripts,
Jonny Bentwood 26:23
so simple thing everyone can do tomorrow. Every YouTube video you've got, stick the
transcript in there. If you say, 'Oh, I've got, I've got subtitles, forget that, that's JavaScript,
Jenny, I can't read it. Now, a load of people in PR form do influence work with influencers that
are going to put stuff on Instagram or TikTok. It's like, great, continue to do that. Add a clause,
put it in YouTube as well. Make sure you've got the transcript, even happy from, say, sponsored
by my brand. It's great, you're included with a transcript,
Jack Murray 26:56
and the technology is powerful enough to consume it, and to and to find what's useful.
Jonny Bentwood 27:00
Even though Jenny, I can't read a video, it can read the transcript, and for Google approach,
when people go there, it loves going to YouTube as the highest sites and individual bit within
the Google Gen AI platforms.
Jack Murray 27:11
This was a real, this was like a real moment for me when I heard this about Reddit number six,
engage Reddit and Quora communities with listicle style answers, the power of that,
Jonny Bentwood 27:22
so we've got to be careful with Reddit here. Let's make no mistake, Reddit is ridiculously
important. It's ridiculously important, even if you weren't doing Gen AI, but there's an approach
to do it. Let's talk about how we do it. Well, first of all, get your brand as a verified brand on
your own page. You can say whatever the hell you like, you can't get banned for it, so verify
your own brand and publish stuff on your own page. If there's a sub domain about your brand,
if it isn't one, sorry, create one, you can own that and moderate it. But if there's a community
already being there, fish where the fish are, go to that community, but critically contribute,
don't talk about yourself, contribute and add value. Do it regularly, and it's going to make a
huge difference.
Jack Murray 28:07
And you have to be careful once you promote, you're out.
Jonny Bentwood 28:09
If you promote, you're out. If you jump in, then don't come back for six months, you're out. The
community on Reddit are harsh, but they like having value, so contribute and add value.
Jack Murray 28:20
Number seven, and this is when we spoke to when we spoke earlier. I said to you, God, it's
amazing how we go back to the fundamentals. Number seven: use your own website, meta
description, URL, reduce JavaScript, agent analytics.
Jonny Bentwood 28:35
So look at the beginning, I said just a few percentage points are influence AI citations and
owned media. I predict over the next few years that's going to become from a few percentage
points to double digits, maybe even to 20th percentile. But there's things we can do: make your
meta description rich, look at your URL slugs, keep them tight, lowercase no more than six
words, add 2026 at the end of it. If you've got key content and it's full of JavaScript, get rid of
that JavaScript, and just as much as you've got Google Analytics to understand human traffic,
make sure you've got the equivalent. Understand when Gen AI is indexing your page, whether
your page is training the Gen AI or whether you're being cited. Key metrics that make a huge
difference.
Jack Murray 29:21
Number eight: Amplify your presence on review sites and Wikipedia.
Jonny Bentwood 29:24
God, I hate Wikipedia. I totally hate that. It's just impossible to make a change. I have to accept
the fact
Jack Murray 29:31
you talked earlier about trying to change an address for a client, and it was impossible.
Jonny Bentwood 29:35
It took a year, because Wikipedia won't just take my word for it. They have to find an earned
citation to validate it, so if I do it in the right way, you can change it, but accept the fact that
Wikipedia is a massive influence, and you need to play the long game in getting it done. The
same thing I added review sites on there, because that's user behavior. We talked before about
expert quotes, so stuff like TripAdvisor G. To booking.com all these things make a big
difference.
Jack Murray 30:03
One question on Wikipedia. So, if you're getting high-quality earned media, the way to activate
the earned media, so that the Wikipedia editors use it, I'm assuming there's a, there's a
strategy around that, as opposed to it being there and it being activated.
Jonny Bentwood 30:17
Yeah, for Wikipedia, it's a point, you say you've got this structural comment here, I want you to
replace it with this factual comment to validate this point is accurate. Please refer to this
Guardian article that validates it. That's the approach to do it. It's for long game, it's important,
but don't expect to manipulate Wikipedia. Don't expect to do it fast.
Jack Murray 30:37
We're on the, we're on the home straight now. Number nine, monitor citations and fix negative
responses, and publish frequently for recency.
Jonny Bentwood 30:46
Yeah, Jenny, I can get it wrong. You ask a question, the result comes up, and it's actually taking
someone's erroneous content from a website that from four years ago. Well, you got to know
about that. If it's important to you, identify the content that's incorrect, so we can fix it, and the
recency bias. I'm going to say again and again and again.
Jack Murray 31:07
Last but not least, then where we started off, start, but don't wait for perfect,
Jonny Bentwood 31:13
the most important thing of the lot. Do not wait for that perfect plan. Don't be so intimidated by
all the things you can do, you don't start, just get on with it, just do one little thing tomorrow,
because your competitors aren't doing it. I was doing some stuff in the esthetic space for one of
my clients. The number one cited source was not any of the top 10 multi million dollar
companies that influences what esthetics you should get. You know what it was. It was a mum
and dad blog that is written from a New Jersey esthetic walking clinic, and they were so sick of
people saying, 'Do I buy this treatment or that treatment? So they wrote blogs like, 'These are
the top five treatments. This is what's good or bad about each of them. That was a one-sided
source. So in this multi million dollar industry. If a mum and dad blog post is the most important
source, it shows how no one's even started yet. Don't be intimidated, thinking everyone's quite
far ahead. No one's doing jack.
Jack Murray 32:11
Yeah, now if you ever get tired of the data analytics and the geo, you should definitely get a job
in motivation, PR motivation speaking. Like, there's there's such value in what you're sharing
here from an educational point of view, like the structured education within public relations
communications tends to lag way far behind what's what's happening for practitioners, like
when I hear all this stuff, I get so excited, so motivated, so delighted that I'm doing what I'm
doing. Do you think it'll take long for people to catch up with what's happening?
Jonny Bentwood 32:48
You know, what scares me. It scares me that PR have been so subservient historically to other
marketing disciplines in this, in a similar way to SEO. Other marketing disciplines are going to
say, yeah, we're going to own this,
Jack Murray 33:03
yeah, and there's a land grab for all,
Jack Murray 33:05
there's a
Jonny Bentwood 33:05
land grab going on at the moment, and I want PR to take it seriously,
Jack Murray 33:09
and when you like, you work with multidisciplinary teams, and you have marketing, you've
SEO, and you've social, you've brand managers, like, how, like, how does that all hang
together, like, I, the tension is different with different teams,
Jonny Bentwood 33:22
and I've seen the land grab, and I've also noticed something else. The light, anyone can read
the same PowerPoint slide until one question is asked, and so tell me more about that, and
that's when the earned media, the PR teams take over and shine, because they know this stuff.
Jack Murray 33:39
Yeah,
Jonny Bentwood 33:40
and that, because
Jack Murray 33:41
you live
Jack Murray 33:41
and die,
Jonny Bentwood 33:42
we live and die every day. I
Jack Murray 33:43
like sometimes when I'm evaluating staff from different teams, I always say, like, I always go
back to this, this age-old thing. I said, give me journalism, give me public relations, you're only
as good as the last good story you wrote, you're only as good as the last good bit of coverage
you got. It's very simple, if you're not getting, like, if, when I was working as a PR practitioner, if
I wasn't getting good-earned media, what was I doing?
Jonny Bentwood 34:05
Well, the fact is, companies around the world, every one of them is talking about AI
transformation at the moment, they're thinking, how can we bring AI into our company to be
smart, to be more efficient? I don't care about that, I'm talking to those same companies that
good that you're doing that AI transformation. I want to talk about sales. We can help make a
difference to your bottom line, because this is how people, your customers, are that sync, your
stakeholders, your B2B colleagues. This is making a difference,
Jack Murray 34:38
and you're going to design data frameworks to capture all that information, I'm sure
Jonny Bentwood 34:42
the data framework is as simple as anything, but there's key metrics that count. What is your
share of visibility across the most important topics that we're talking about? What position are
we in ranking within that? How are we perceived versus our competitors in terms of sentiment
in the lower funnel aspect of. What percentage of prompts are generating shopping
experiences, and this is our visibility position change? What merchants are recommending our
products, and out of all the merchants, how much are they the most important merchant in all
recommendations? There are new metrics we can be thinking about that no one's even
considered before, but I also want us to get away from some of the vanity stuff that's going
around, so stuff like the number of citations is a vanity metric, it means nothing. We've got to
make sure that at the outset we are using the correct data points. Amec, the PRSA have all
gone up together and say this is where how you measure Gen AI because we've got to do it
right from the beginning,
Jack Murray 35:44
and when you're, I suppose it's when the prompt goes in that you know you're in the rankings,
that like that's that's the most important thing. The
Jonny Bentwood 35:53
most important thing is you in the first answer,
Jack Murray 35:55
you're in the first.
Jonny Bentwood 35:55
I'm trying to get brands to pay attention, and a lot of them are trying to do the same job, the
way they've done it for years, and it's just trying to get them to think differently. We're not
saying what you're doing is wrong, but we got to do something extra.
Jack Murray 36:08
How are you measuring that now, like with the platforms, like about where people appear in
rankings, and that?
Jonny Bentwood 36:14
So, I use there's plenty of tools out there that my personal preference is a tool called Profound.
It's a great way to understand the questions that people are asking, as well as the visibility of
core topics, but I want to just talk a little bit about memory, because this is where a lot of
people are getting wrong, they're treating everything equally. So, let's say I wanted to buy
something earlier today, I had a great slice of pizza, where was it from?
Jack Murray 36:39
Bambino,
Jonny Bentwood 36:40
Bambino, it's like an American pizza in Dublin. It was great, and if I asked Chat GPT about
where I can get a bambino, it sort of learned that, okay, maybe I'm after a discount thing, I'm
after fast food, so maybe in a couple of weeks' time I want to go out for dinner and ask a
recommendation. It may be suggest other kind of more economical fast food Instagram exciting
kind of restaurants, because it remembered what I asked for last time. We need to take
memory into account. We've got to be careful, so think about where the audience is, and let's
think about what kind of phones do they have.
Jack Murray 37:16
Yeah,
Jonny Bentwood 37:17
so if you're in the States, you've typically got an iPhone, they're going to iPhones use Chat GPT
because it's been built into it. Therefore, I would think about that as the main platform in the
Nordics. It's more Google,
Jack Murray 37:30
okay? Because
Jonny Bentwood 37:31
they've got Android phones, so think about the phone they've got. If in business it tends to be
more Copilot, so think about the audience and build that into how you're doing your
measurements.
Jack Murray 37:41
We finish every episode with the rapid fire round, so let's get into it. We have five quick fire
questions to really get a sense of you as a communicator. Question number one, What is one
media moment that has changed how you work?
Jonny Bentwood 37:55
This would have been around 20 years ago when I was working at Edelman, and people were
saying, yeah, we've got to measure these influencers, and everyone only did it by how many
followers they had. I thought, but why are we doing it that way? Surely we'll be talking about
relevance and engagement, and I thought, let's not do it the way it's always been done, let's do
it differently, and that pivoted my career immediately.
Jack Murray 38:18
Okay, and so that was around, like, a social media index,
Jonny Bentwood 38:21
it was. It's called a social media index, and it became a little meme in its own right.
Jack Murray 38:25
Brilliant. Question number two: Give me one example of something that failed that you learned
from,
Jonny Bentwood 38:32
that having the best data isn't - doesn't mean anyone listens
Jack Murray 38:35
to it. Okay,
Jonny Bentwood 38:36
it makes no difference how smart you are, makes no difference how insightful you are, if you
don't write for the reader, it's just as important to be a good storyteller as it is about having a
great insight. The real art is taking stuff away, so all you've got left is a clear defined story,
Jack Murray 38:52
so you're using the data to tell the story.
Jonny Bentwood 38:54
Use the data, but you don't need to kill people with hundreds of graphs and charts. I'd be really
happy with one picture and six words.
Jack Murray 39:02
Number three, what one universal belief about public relations do you think is wrong or
overstated?
Jonny Bentwood 39:07
You know, people think PR is about spin. The best PR actually does the opposite, it removes the
spin, it's about making the truth interesting, clear, and impossible to ignore,
Jack Murray 39:18
and it's a lot more like it's easy to categorize it as spin into a box, all the detail we've discussed
since the top of the program. Number four, what is one piece of advice that you wish you'd had
earlier in your career?
Jonny Bentwood 39:30
I would say be interested, not interesting. If you're interested in things you seek learning
continuously, learn continuously, think why, how, what could be different, is this the best way?
If you're interesting, it's just telling more stuff. Be instant in things.
Jack Murray 39:44
Curiosity is a superpower. I said to my head of HR, like, if you know, we could all retire with a
huge bank account. If we could actually invent a universal curiosity test that got good
employees in the door, and we've experimented with it in many different ways. Is most recent
one was we got people in for a design job and we gave them two hours of discovery, but didn't
tell them what they were trying to discover, so they literally had to ask a whole load of
questions.
Jack Murray 40:11
That's great.
Jack Murray 40:11
And at the end of the discovery period, if they hadn't done the discovery, they would fail
whatever test was coming, and that was the most effective one we did. Actually,
Jonny Bentwood 40:18
I love that.
Jack Murray 40:19
Yeah. Last question, then what book do you think everyone in your job should read?
Jonny Bentwood 40:26
It's not a book about data or PR, it's The One Minute Manager, it's a short book by Ken
Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, and it basically summed up as you can get a lot done in one
minute, and that conciseness, that smart brevity is really important, one minute praise, one
minute thinking, one minute goals. Just think about what you can do. It doesn't need to take a
huge ream of information. Be focused.
Jack Murray 40:49
You've, uh, you have a very complex job, and you have a lot of reports, and a lot of people that
you work with. I'm assuming taking that sort of focus helps you manage, manage in those sort
of situations.
Jonny Bentwood 40:59
It really does. Like, I mean, the thing that I really focus on with the people around me is the
values of them. It's not the skill, and that sort of is a bit of a weird concept. I mean, I've hired
people who are infinitely smarter than me and have failed in the company because they don't
have the same values, you know. The culture at Golan, we like to say we're the, we're the kind
people who kick ass, nice people who kick ass, and it took me a while to get that.
Jack Murray 41:26
Yeah,
Jonny Bentwood 41:26
yes, we should kick ass. We should be the best at what we do, and our bar
Jack Murray 41:31
is high,
Jack Murray 41:32
and like, if you're hungry and you're curious, I often said, like, to people, sometimes I said,
stepped up, don't get confused here, like, we're all here to do good work. Sometimes things will
get in the way, but that's okay.
Jonny Bentwood 41:41
But if you're not kind, oh man, what a toxic environment.
Jack Murray 41:45
No, exactly.
Jonny Bentwood 41:45
We want people to be there for each other. Yeah, so that value system is important to me as
well.
Jack Murray 41:50
And actually, just back to the curiosity thing, I always find it really easy to manage curious
people, because they'll come and they'll say, "Hey, Johnny, you asked me to do such and such
yesterday, I've this, this, and this done. Now, the four questions about the other thing, and by
the time the conversation is over, you fully know where that person is. You know exactly their
position on the map, and you know where they're going.
Jonny Bentwood 42:08
Want people to think, I really do. I want people to question, to challenge. What I don't want is
someone I call it like that seagull, they just swoop in shit on it and fly off. I mean, I want people
to be considered. I want people to think about it, and say, what about this? I love that, that
interest, that curiosity.
Jack Murray 42:28
Johnny, that is a great sentiment on which to end this chat. Heartfelt thanks, very interesting,
engaging, loads of detail, and really rich content that people will be able to plug in. Thanks for
joining me today.
Jonny Bentwood 42:39
Thank you for having me. It's been great.
Jack Murray 42:40
Thanks for listening to Inside Media Relations. If you liked the show, please like and subscribe,
and tune in next time.
