Brands are at their most memorable when they’re distinctive. We know that brave work commands attention. But the latest PR battleground is a place where creative courage is outranked by other factors. 

Here, Smoking Gun’s Chief Storyteller, Carl Stroud, shares his thoughts.

This is, of course, the wild world of Large Language Models. It is inside ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini where the fight is on to be the brand they choose to recommend. 

And the advice? Feed them what they like: rational messaging, trusted citations, neat little proof points that answer every conceivable use case.

All very sensible. All very beige.

Because in the rush to please our new machine overlords, we risk sanding down the rough edges that make a brand interesting in the first place. 

The fundamental element of great PR has never been data – it is unbridled attention-grabbing, scroll-stopping creativity. And that, of course, is something LLMs fundamentally can’t grasp.

That is because they don’t understand meaning. They don’t think; they predict. They’re the world’s most efficient copywriters – and the least interesting ones.

Ask an AI to describe five British beer brands and you’ll get the same adjectives every time: crafted, authentic, refreshing. You’d think every pint in Britain was poured by a bearded man called Tom in a converted railway arch.

Type in “beauty brand mission” and you’ll get the usual sermon: empowering confidence and committed to innovation.

The biggest danger ahead is that we create a giant feedback loop – where EVERYTHING sounds exactly the same.

The irony is that the more we polish messaging to appeal to algorithms the blander it gets. And that risks sparking a doom spiral where beige becomes the benchmark.

In essence we’re sleepwalking into brand language being written by a spreadsheet. 

And in the process, we risk losing the very thing PR exists to protect: distinctiveness.

Yes, of course, we need to feed LLMs the right information to increase brand visibility and discoverability. But we risk sliding back onto the same slippery slope that defined the SEO era – where rational messaging takes the front seat and creative storytelling gets shoved in the boot.

In our rush to be AI-ready, we risk becoming creatively sterile. Because great PR has never been about rational messaging alone. It’s about uncovering those cracks where the light gets in. 

It is transforming proof points into something emotionally charged, unexpected and unforgettable. 

Our role isn’t to echo what the algorithm expects – it’s to surprise it. To keep stories human, messy, funny, moving and unpredictable.

As the race to optimise content for AI gathers pace, as an industry we have to maintain focus and continue to find new ways to keep brand work unpredictable, emotionally intelligent and unmistakably human.

Brands that sound like someone, not something are the ones that audiences remember.

And the brands that win the next decade won’t be those who use AI best, but those who sound least like it.

AI is reshaping brand discovery. Don’t get lost.

Through the power of earned media, combined with the techniques of performance marketing, we help you play to the rules of modern visibility – while never compromising on brand storytelling that’s memorable, intelligent and unmistakably human.

Our PR, influencer and social media campaigns move audiences to action and help you to achieve your business goals. 

Need a comms strategy to capitalise on the opportunities and avoid the trip-ups of AI-visibility? Speak to Smoking Gun.