Provoke Podcast: Jeff Hicks

0:01Jeff Hicks: The Provoke Podcast brought to you by Provoke Media and produced by the international broadcast specialist, Marketeers.

0:16Hi everyone and welcome to a very special episode of the Provoke Media Podcast. We're now just days away from the APAC Summit here in Singapore. I'm Camilia Das, APAC Editor at ProVault Media, and today, ahead of the conference, we're exploring one of the most significant shifts facing communications professionals. Over the past two years, much of the conversation around AI has focused on adoption, how to use it, where it fits into our workflows, and what it means for productivity. But that conversation is evolving. The bigger question now is, how is AI changing the way people discover, trust, and engage with information?

0:52As traditional search increasingly gives way to AI-powered answer machines, success is no longer simply about being searchable. It's about being sightable. Brands aren't just competing for clicks anymore. They're competing to become trusted sources that AI platforms choose to reference. So what does this mean for communicators? How should organizations rethink their approaches to content, reputation, and visibility? And what skills will communications professionals need to succeed in an AI-first world? Joining me to unpack these questions is Jeff Hicks, Chief Product and Technology Officer at PR Newswire.

1:28Jeff leads the organization's product and technology strategy with a particular focus on how AI-powered tools are reshaping content creation, distribution, and brand visibility. He has also been closely involved in industry conversations around generative engine optimization and what it takes for brands to remain discoverable and credible in the age of AI search. Jeff, welcome to the podcast and thank you for joining me. The conversation around AI has evolved significantly over the past year. From your perspective, what's changed most and why has visibility become such a critical issue for organizations today?

2:04Thank you, Camelia. Yes, it's an interesting question. Over the last year, I've seen a number of changes in a couple of areas. AI search is reshaping brand discovery first. So there's new behaviors, new roles, new opportunities. Audiences are increasingly turning to AI-powered experiences for answers. You know, just think about in your own personal life, you'll probably go into Tets, CPT, or Claude, or Google and ask you an answer. And you get the answer back from the AI search engine. So for brands, visibility now depends on what are the AI systems mentioned in sight and understand your brand.

2:48So it's really changing this whole discovery, consumer discovery journey. So I like to think of it as from links to answers. The old discovery journey was about search. It was about getting a number of links back. It was clicking on a link, reading an article, reading the web page. And then making a decision. Maybe you buy a product or maybe you do some more research. The new journey is now asking a question to one of these AI search engines. AI synthesizes the information to formulate the answer and provides that answer. And then you have that answer. You may not ever click on a link. So it's really changing this discovery journey.

3:31The second main area is just changing how communicators have to communicate and do their job. Now they have to be more cognizant of how AI is representing their brand and how they're showing up in these answers. Very true. I mean, I use AI for quite a lot of things. And you're right when you say that, you know, I don't ever click on a link anymore nowadays. Because, I mean, if AI is going to synthesize all that information for me, then why do I need to go to a link? So it really matters about being visible and being the first thing that AI is able to get from you.

4:08Jeff Hicks: Yeah, exactly. So that kind of brings me to my next question. With some of the new language emerging around this shift and terms that many communicators may still be trying to get their head around, you know, we're hearing terms like answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization, GEO. What do they actually mean? And why should communications professionals care? These are important new acronyms. And in some cases, some people will try to lump them together. I like to break them apart and think of them a little bit differently. Answering denoptimization or AEO is really all about the answer.

4:46You want your brand to be the answer to the question that's being asked. So it's interesting because then you have to think about what kinds of questions will consumers ask about my brand or my company. Those questions might be unbranded. They might ask some generic question without even mentioning your company or your product, or they might ask a specific question about your brand or your product. So answering engine optimization is thinking through all of that and making sure that you're optimizing content to be the source of those answers. Generating engine optimization, or GEO, that's the optimization to try to get citations.

5:28So you want your content, your press release, your earned media, your website or your blog, your newsroom to be a trusted source of information and to get citations within AI search. A citation is when you do, you ask AI a question and it will provide the answer and show a link or show links from the sources of information that were used to answer that question. So, when ZEO or Generative Engine Optimization is trying to get your information cited as part of those sources. That's a really good way of putting it. But, you know, I think what I'm curious about is what that actually looks like in practice.

6:10So, you mentioned that, you know, brands kind of need to know what questions consumers are asking about their brands. In practice, how do they go about this? yeah so a lot of times you know there's different ways to do it one common way and we do this within our platforms is to use Google search keywords as a proxy for volume so if you understand if you can understand what users are searching for around a brand or around a topic around the company then you can use those to formulate questions about those topics And so that's one way to get started. And then just think about, you know, the different kinds of questions that you would ask if you were looking for your brand or you were trying to discover, you know, create a list of those and then use those to make sure that the content that you're creating answers those questions.

7:08Got it. Okay, and I kind of want to bring the conversation kind of back to what we were talking about at the beginning, where, you know, one of the discovery journey issues that we're facing now is that people receive the information they need without actually elabiding that original source. So many people now talk about the zero click challenge. What impact is that having on brands, publishers and communicators? And, you know, how can they change what you're doing? Because, you know, I'm a journalist, like I need to know how that works. Yeah, so zero click is interesting, right? In this, you know, I described kind of the older discovery journey where, you know, you do a search and you get a series of links.

7:54A lot of people say they're bully links, right? In Google, you get a list of the top 10 links. And so now, you know, without those links, there's nothing to click on, right? So it's called zero click. The impact, though, has been really interesting because since users are getting those answers without clicking, it decreases the traffic to your website. So a lot of the companies I talk to are seeing 20 to 30 percent reduction in website traffic. And so this is a big challenge if you depend on driving traffic to your website to maybe get sales leads or to get consumers to buy your product or maybe to show the ads or, you know, to leverage advertising, to monetize the content on your site.

8:41This is a big deal and a threat to your business model. And so the upside, though, is that the AI search engines are referring traffic to these sites, it's just a much lower percentage. So while the traffic reduction is around 20 % to 30%, you might get an additional traffic of around 1 % to 2 % from AI. And those users are often much more valuable and much more convertible. I've seen some statistics saying that they converted at four to five times the rate of traditional search referrals. So, you know, this zero-click challenge is a big one. It's reducing that website traffic. And you've got to find a way to replace that and make sure that you are providing the answer for your brand and getting your content out there.

9:35I agree. I mean, I used to, you know, eyeballs used to be the greatest asset as a journalist. They used to be how many eyeballs can you get on your article. But now it's not even about that. It's about can you get cited on AI? Are you showing up, you know, in people search, what are the best PR agencies in the APAC region, for example? You know, but I kind of want to make this a little bit more tangible for our listeners. What characteristics make a piece of content more likely to be self-installed, you know, even cited in an AI-generated response? Like, what do brands need to be doing? Yeah, so they need to create well-structured content.

10:14and we often recommend in a piece of content maybe put key takeaways at the beginning, summaries, use headings and bullets, use formatting. Think about what makes it easy for you to read a piece of content. If you've just got a long list of techniques, that's very difficult to read, right, to understand the hierarchy or how things are structured. It's the same for AI. It's no different. So having that well-structured format, Following the Google guidelines for EEAT is still important. So EEAT stands for expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness. Those are traditional SEO guidelines, and those are still important.

10:53But now there's additional things that need to be done beyond those. One of the interesting things we've seen is that a lot of our customers are including FHUs in press releases, which is something that had not been done before, but they're including the answers to the questions that they want AI to pick up on. And AI is really pulling those answers directly into their systems and using those answers and citing that press release content because it has those FAQs in it. So that's a very easy thing to do, that we're seeing a lot of really good response from AI search visibility and picking those FAQs out of a press release.

11:42Yeah, I mean, even for VOLC, you know, we started, especially for learn form articles, we put in key takeaways at the beginning. And, you know, I've seen different websites try different things like AI generated summaries and, you know, things where they read it out to you on AI. And I think those are really helping to increase visibility. But, you know, before we go further, is there a common misconception about how AI platforms find and select information that you think, you know, communicators just need to let go of? I think, you know, just realize that traditional SEO will not be enough. You know, to win the AI search game, you have to go beyond traditional SEO.

12:26So all those principles and metrics don't apply, but now you have to do more. So you have to optimize the content for AEO and GEO now. And there's a whole new area of measurement and metrics, right? So some of the metrics are things like share inventions, you know, or is your brand present in the answer? Is it mentioned in the answer? The sources, what content sources are used to provide the information about your brand? is the information accurate? You know, AI makes mistakes, right? And sometimes it will make up an answer if it doesn't have the content to know the answer, right? It'll try to be helpful and make up an answer.

13:08So that's something to be aware of. You know, just the sentiment of the answer and then where do you rank? Like you're showing up in the answer, you know, a list of maybe the five recommendations for a brand or a product. but you want to be number one. You don't want to be the last one in the list. So I think those are some of the things, you really have to go beyond traditional SEO. This is a whole new ballgame with additional optimization techniques and additional metrics. But I like that you said that thing about establishing what the facts are about your brand so that AI can put it in. Because you're right, AI does hallucinate a lot and it does fill in the gaps.

13:54And so if you are, as a brand, are not plugging in those gaps, misinformation is going to be spread, right? So what I'm interested in is, you know, how press releases have been used. So, you know, press releases are traditionally kind of used to establish this official searchable record of company news, right? Like, that's why, you know, we still use them. But how is their role evolving in this AI-first information environment? Yeah, so the press releases is an AI source of truth. It does a number of things. It helps improve your visibility across the Internet because it's distributed typically on a very wide network.

14:35It builds brand trust with a part-time signals like a network like Peer Newsletter. It has a very high domain authority and is very well trusted by people in AI. I like. It delivers information in an AI-friendly format. You talked about the structure, the key takeaways, all the best practices for a press release are ideal for AI to be able to parse and understand. And it helps drive our media as well. It's a way for journalists to pick up that information and write articles about it. You know, I think the one thing that we've seen is that companies are rethinking their price release strategy to include new concepts like the FHUs and to think about it not just as like a kind of an earnings release or a boring corporate announcement, but really a way to provide thought leadership.

15:30So we have a number of brands that we work with that will do, you know, studies or surveys or, you know, have some proprietary data that they will structure so that they can provide thought leadership in a certain area. And that type of content in a press release is not replaceable, right? So AI depends on it to pull it in, and that prevents that misinformation I talked about earlier. So, you know, when these press releases provide this type of information for brands and organizations, it is a source of truth for AI. And AI doesn't have a substitute for it, so it depends on it and it helps you build that authority.

16:15And I like that you mentioned earned media because I'm also quite curious about that because I know, you know, in the SEO generation, you know, third-party coverage was very important. So how important is earned media in this new landscape? You know, can credible third-party coverage actually make a brand more likely to be recognized and cited by AI platforms? Yeah, we use a best practice called multi-channel application. So our platform, Amplify, is designed to help our customers create and distribute content across multiple channels. So one of those that are in media channel will often pick up from a press release or from a media pitch and take that.

17:01And as journalists or trusted sources create additional content from that original piece, Hayas sees that, right? And so it provides validation of that content and validates that authority, and it makes it more impactful. And so a lot of times we'll see both the press release and the earned media will be cited by Hayas because they reinforce each other. I don't know. I like that you said that you talked kind of about, you know, it reinforcing each other. So I have a more personal question, right? Because whenever I search something on ChatJPT, I notice that it pulls from so many different sources.

17:40Like you can see the thinking process, right? It's pulling from so many different sources and they end up with one singular answer. So how can organizations or brands maintain control over their narratives when they're no longer controlling that final output? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm glad you mentioned narrative because, you know, I think that the brands that are going to be successful are the ones that are going to focus on their narrative to plan out their narrative, to create a well-crafted narrative that's optimized for both people and AI systems, where their brand or their company is portrayed accurately, where they help shape the inputs and where they're characterized positively.

18:29And so that is an important part to consistently publish that information because the AI models or the AI search engines, they are constantly learning as new models come out, they are trained on additional data, right? So if there's a lot of data about your narrative out, on the internet, as new models come out, they will build that into their thought process and it will just become a part of their knowledge, right? And so that becomes almost as important as the citation as well because the citation is going out to get any new information to add to that knowledge base, but that knowledge base is built over time by brands consistently publishing and telling their story or their narrative.

19:23So then in that case, do communication teams need to start beginning to monitor how the organizations appear in the eye-generated answers, you know, the same way that they currently monitor media coverage and search rankings? Yeah, absolutely. We've put together kind of a simple scorecard and we provide reporting in our platform to help teams do just that. It's looking at, you know, is their brand present? So is it, you know, is the brand mentioned? Sometimes that's referred to as mentions. Is the brand cited? You know, is their content cited? And what are the sources of information that are being cited?

20:04Because a lot of times you'll see, you know, not only a press release, certain media, but you want your own website to be cited as well. You want your own website to be viewed as a trusted source of information, your own newsroom. In some cases, social channels, LinkedIn, Reddit, other social channels can become very important in terms of providing information. So all of those things have to be measured, right? Because in order to change something, you need to measure it and understand where it is. Is that basically the new PR value? What's that? Is that the new PR value in a way? The new PR value?

20:48Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like share mentions. Yeah, a lot of us do look at share of voice, right? How do they show up and what percent of the voice do they capture? Now it's share of mentions. What percent of the AI mentions do they capture? I like that you kind of brought up your brand scorecard, you know, because I think a lot of communicators need very practical ways to actually measure in this environment. We no longer have the ruler where we're measuring a newspaper anymore. So what advice do you have for communicators listening in? Are there meaningful ways to track citations, visibility, accuracy, or share voice across AI platforms?

21:31Yeah, I mean, there's tools and solutions that do this. So we provide a search intelligence solution called Trejan that allows brands to understand what AI is saying about them and to provide recommendations on how to shape that narrative. all the content optimization is built into our Amplify platform to help brands amplify their narrative and their story to the world. So I think that's a very important piece. I would say a year ago I talked to some customers who were trying to do this manually. They were just going out and typing in to 10-CVT or FOD. That was very 23. Putting the answers in a spreadsheet, you know, but that gets pretty difficult pretty fast, right?

22:26You know, like it doesn't scale. So having an automated solution to do this is very important. Yeah, I remember in 2023, everybody was kind of going in there and typing, oh, my brand is the best. Apple is the best iPhone, you know. Exactly. But I think that's quite interesting because then it brings us to the point, you know, just smaller organizations actually have the opportunity to compete more effectively in AI-generated results? Or, you know, are we only going to see established brands with larger digital footprints and the resources and the ability to feature in AI search and to populate that?

23:03You know, will they continue to dominate? Yeah, I think the allowing landscape gives smaller businesses a great opportunity. And we see that with the clients that we work with. We work with a member of small, medium businesses as well as the world's largest enterprises. And so for both of that, the same best practices and principles are built into our platform that they apply for both of them. And so with the small businesses now, they have a chance, if they're doing a good job of publishing their narrative, shaping those inputs to AI, They can show up and we see that happen time and time again with smaller competitors coming into the market and showing up well in AI and able to capture mentions and citations from those larger brands, established players.

24:01And I mean, OK, so to a follow up question of that, right, like from an APAC perspective, you know, we have so many different languages, cultures and media ecosystems. And there are many smaller brands that are, of course, trying to become global. So how does AI discovery affect how these organizations operate across multiple markets and languages? Is consistency more important or does content still need to be highly localized? localized? The localized content is important, but I think having a consistent brand narrative is equally important or more important now because, you know, one of the things that I would say is in your content, it tries to pull out entities, right?

24:49So how do you describe your products? How do you describe your company? And so if you're not consistent in that, in the way that you talk about things, it makes it very difficult for AI to understand what those are. And I think having those in a consistent way but localized provides that input to AI in those local regions that helps shape those inputs that it needs to provide information about your brand. So does that mean that brands kind of need to focus less on hyperlocalization and kind of focus more on the globalization strategy. Like, for example, writing in English versus in Japanese, for example, is there a Japanese brand?

25:33Or avoiding, like, local slang as they populate their websites. Yeah, definitely avoiding kind of some of the slang terms or even using different abbreviations or acronyms or things like that. That can be confusing. I think from a global perspective, we're seeing, you know, a lot of global companies that are distributing, you know, localized content into the different regions where they need to. And then AI can pick that up in those regions in kind of the language that people will be asking and viewing. And that's the advice that PR Newswire is kind of like, you know, giving communicators, I suppose.

26:23Yeah, exactly. We see a lot of creators now, you know, doing more international releases in different regions to give their message, especially as trying to become more of the global, you know, get into a global market or in certain regions. And then, you know, seeing AI pick that information up from those releases in those areas. And I mean, like a lot of the things that we've been talking about has also, you know, been talking about, like evolving language and the way that we talk about things. But who do you think should be responsible for AEO and GEO within an organization? Is this primarily a comms function or, you know, a marketing function, a tech function or something that requires all three?

27:08All of the above. I think, you know, what we're seeing is all of those players within a company have a role in making it successful, right? So, you know, from a marketing perspective, it's very important to kind of transition, you know, from SEO and geo or adding on to SEO and Oceania and geo. Communications of PR is more important than ever. Gardner published a study earlier this year that said that PR and our media budgets, they're predicting that PR and our media budgets will double by 2027 because of the impact of AI search. So the PR becomes more important than ever. So I think it's all of those.

28:01I think all of them working together and collaborating. That's one of the reasons we built our Implify platform is so all of those teams can work in the same platform and create content and collaborate together and do it in a consistent way that's optimized for AI. Yeah, because I think that's what a lot of people need, right? Like nowadays, they're not sure where it sits and who's in charge of this. So I think having one platform is helpful. Yeah. That's why we build out our Amplify platform for that reason, to allow those different teams to come together in a single secure environment to leverage AI, to optimize for AI, and do that in a single place, help them plan out, create the content, distribute the content, and then measure the results.

28:51How does that work, though? Yeah. Can you just explain it out just to, you know, if nobody's ever heard of the Amplify platform? Yeah, so our Amplify platform allows customers to plan campaigns, So look at what's happening in the industry to use AI to give them some ideas for what's trending, what's going on in their industry, what's happening with their competitors to help them build out a full multi-channel campaign that could consist of different pieces of content. and then to create that content within the platform. So, for example, the comms PR team would take the press release and help create the press release and optimize it for Radio Geo.

29:38The marketing team might work on the blog. Other teams might work on an article to publish. Other teams might work on media pitch to pitch to journalists for media. and so all of that can be done within the same platform and leveraging the AI built into the platform to help create that content and a consistent brand voice as well which is very important. When I mentioned earlier that consistency across the different content pieces that's very important to AI and also very important to your brand as well to maintain a consistent brand voice. Very true and I think having one place to do that all is pretty important for brands as they move forward.

30:22And I guess that is extremely helpful for communicators as well. Now, as we wrap up our conversation, we've had a great chat, but I want to take your advice. Let's do a key takeaway as this is while we end. If communications teams wanted to improve its visibility in AI-generated answers tomorrow, what are the first three practical steps it can take? What are some of our takeaways? Yeah, so visibility is going to go to the brands that are actively shaping those that they all want forms from. So first of all, think about the questions that you want to be answered, the answer to. Plan out your narrative.

31:10Create and optimize that content. Use some innovative concepts like put an FHC in your press release, you know, to answer those questions. and then distribute that content through trusting channels like a press release, like your own website and like current media. And then finally, report on the new metrics that help shape AI visibility. And then amplify your story to the world, but to people in AI systems. I'd encourage you to get started today. AI is reshaping communications rapidly, but it's not too late for you to get started and go out there and tell your story to the world and amplify it to the world, but people and AI systems.

31:58Jess, thank you so much for joining me and for sharing your insights. And to everyone listening, the conversation is going to continue at the Provoke Media APEC Summit in Singapore on 18th August. So you can join us for a full day of thought-provoking discussions with communication leaders from across the region, followed by the Into Sabre Awards, the APAC Sabre Awards, and our Agency of the Year's celebration in the evening. We hope to see you in Singapore next week, and until then, thank you for listening.

32:31Jeff Hicks: You've been listening to the Provoke Podcast, brought to you by Provoke Media, and produced by the international broadcast specialist, Marketeers.

32:44You