When Gartner predicted last month that global PR and earned media budgets would double by 2027, the communications industry celebrated. Madelain Roscher, Founder and CEO of PR Worx, ranked South Africa’s number one PR agency, did not.
Writing in Bizcommunity, Roscher argued that doubling a chronically inadequate budget misses the point entirely. “We are not talking about a trend. We are talking about a fundamental restructuring of how the world finds, verifies, and trusts information about your company. AI search has just delivered the reckoning for that thinking, and it is going to be brutal for the brands that are not ready,” she said.
The numbers behind her case are stark. Google’s AI Overviews now serve more than 2.5 billion monthly active users. Only 32% of Google searches result in a click to a website. The majority of people asking questions about a company are getting AI-synthesised answers and going no further.
Gartner’s own research shows that more than 95% of cited links in AI-generated answers are non-paid mentions, with nearly a third originating directly from earned media. Paid advertising does not feature. Brand-owned social posts barely register.
For African brands, the implications are significant. Across the continent, communications functions have historically been among the first budgets cut and the last to be elevated to strategic counsel.
Companies building a regional or global presence without a credible, independently verified public record are not just invisible to potential partners and investors. They are being defined by whatever fragmentary information AI can find about them.
Roscher’s warning to companies tempted to respond by generating more content is direct: that is the wrong answer.
AI search rewards authority built over time, not volume. “This is not a communications department issue,” she wrote. “It is a C-suite strategic imperative.”
Read the full op-ed here: https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/the-quiet-revolution-that-just-made-pr-the-most-powerful-discipline-in-business-286767a
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