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Earned media budgets are set to double by 2027, and no wonder: earned coverage accounts for 80–90% of all citations across LLMs and AI search. AI may be driving discovery, but it is getting its directions from traditional PR strategies and tactics.
Last week the BLUE team gathered at the Frontline Club in Paddington to debate “Who’s steering? AI, authenticity, authority, and the credibility race in maritime, energy & carbon communications”. It came just nine months after our London International Shipping Week panel concluded that AI lacks the judgement to replace human insight, that communicators have a duty to be vanguards of credibility, and that authenticity, not automation, is what algorithms and audiences reward.
This time, BLUE’s leaders across Brand, PR, Digital Marketing and Insight, reconvened to explore whether recent advances in modelling accuracy and the wider rollout of AI tools have changed those answers, and whether more sophisticated AI models and the influx of generated content are reshaping brand reputation, discovery and the craft of communication itself.
If you couldn't make it, here’s what we discussed…
First, some needed reassurance. Asked what organisations need to do differently to manage reputation in an AI world, our Director Amie Pascoe was happy to be blunt: "not much!"
Even during a time of enormous technological change, the fundamentals of good communications have not changed at all. You still need:
· A clear understanding of who you want to engage with and influence
· The messages you want to communicate to them
· And the channels they pay attention to
So, has AI changed how maritime and energy brands should approach communications? In principle, not really. The fundamentals above still matter most for building visibility and reputation. What has changed is where they take effect: discovery methods now run through machines that judge credibility for themselves, and the types of proof that they prefer are increasingly drawn from independent, third-party sources.
So, if you are relying on owned content alone, your discoverability will likely suffer. Post-AI, the same fundamentals for good content still apply, but there is a higher burden of proof required.
Content is still king, but the crown now goes to authority over volume.
In traditional SEO, the phrase “Content is king” was used to justify volume-oriented strategies: posting 10 blogs to keep up with rankings or posting daily on social media to stay visible to the algorithms. When anyone can generate a blog in under a minute with AI, volume of output is no longer a barrier. That model doesn’t work anymore.
Instead, AI search rewards credibility and authenticity. Recently, Semrush analysed 42,000 blog posts and found that content detected as AI-generated falls away as you climb the rankings. In other words, the top-ranked content is still human and expertise-led.
Our Associate Director and Digital Marketing Lead, Katie Dean, explained what this shift means for content strategy:
“One authoritative, sourced, validated piece with real data and a clear point of view will do more than 50 soulless, keyword-stuffed AI posts.
So content is still king, but only for content that earns its authority. Everything else is noise, and AI-powered algorithms & LLMs are getting better at telling the difference."
Have GEO & AEO replaced SEO?
Traditional SEO optimises a page with keywords, metadata and backlinks to earn a click from a list of links. AEO and GEO now exist because that list is gone: ask an AI and you get a single synthesised answer, built from sources the model already trusts.
AEO (answer engine optimisation) positions your content to be that answer to a specific, high-intent question. GEO (generative engine optimisation) builds the broader authority that enables LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini to cite you. The goal isn’t to rank links, but instead to be a source the AI trusts enough to name.
The signals have changed too. SEO had crawlers judging one page. GEO weighs your media coverage, event presence, social engagement and owned content, and favours data, quotes and genuine points of view validated by trusted third parties. Keyword tricks don’t work on LLMs. Currently, 84% of AI citations are from earned media, meaning that GEO rewards what has always been the fundamentals of strategic, integrated communications.
So, is SEO dead? No, Katie was clear. Organic search remains the biggest source of website referral traffic, even as McKinsey reports brands losing 20–50% of theirs to zero-click AI answers. Good SEO means structured, authoritative, credible content, and that is exactly the foundation AI is looking for. "You don't replace SEO. You build on it."
What the data shows is that visibility now rests on credible, well-told narratives that prove real expertise. Unfortunately, the tool everyone is reaching for to produce those narratives can inadvertently undermine it.
AI is designed to do things faster but not necessarily better. The human thought process is what makes writing meaningful and impactful. It is how we formulate argument and reasoning and how we make the right judgement about what we are saying, because the friction, stopping and backtracking forces us to work out what we really mean. And if we should say anything at all!
When a draft does not feel right, it is usually your judgement telling you the thinking underneath it is not finished.
Hand that struggle to an AI, and ten times out of ten it’s going to hit publish even if it has only produced "some speedily whipped up nonsense”.
Our Associate Director and Insight Lead, Rhys Thomas, highlighted the importance of cultivating instinct and discernment in the face of mass content generation:
"You have to know what good looks like to create good content." That knowing is built through years of reading, writing and editing; precisely the skills that are being eroded by an absolute reliance on AI. If the machine's output becomes your reference point for good, then everything will become an echo chamber of “AI slop”.
AI can generate a logo and visual identity in minutes, but it has no knowledge of how a company is truly perceived, what clients value that competitors aren't delivering, or where real differentiation exists. In maritime and energy, that insight lives in private conversations - between a shipowner and a broker, a procurement lead and a technical advisor - that no model has or can realistically ever index.
That work matters more, not less, in specialist markets because AI's data problem gets worse the smaller the sector gets.
AI-generated brands also converge in what’s been referred to as ‘the race to the middle’. The same tools will create the same outputs based on the same prompts – eroding the differentiation that drives brand value. Strategists exist to stop that, turning research into a genuinely distinctive, defensible position rather than a generic one.
As Mark Stokes, Director and Brand & Creative Lead, puts it:
"AI-generated brand is everywhere and genuinely differentiated brands are rare. Human input and authenticity are now an algorithmic advantage as well as a commercial one."
Half of all AI citations draw on content published in the last eleven months.
Recency matters. Earned coverage from this year is worth far more than a backlink strategy built three years ago, which means every month spent without building real press coverage is a month competitors have the chance to get ahead.
This challenge is magnified in specialist markets like the maritime, marine leisure, energy and carbon sectors, where competition is tough and the need for differentiated brands is even more apparent.
Deep expertise used to set you apart. Now, proving it consistently across every channel decides whether you are seen at all.
The brands that win are not the ones publishing fastest with AI. Instead, winning brands are the specialists that AI already cites.
The companies that dominated Google for fifteen years were the ones that decided, around 2008, that this new thing called ‘SEO’ mattered before their rivals did. The same window is open now, and the difference is that the inputs are much harder to fake, because you cannot feign genuine expertise.
As Amie points out:
"The full discipline of PR and communications has never carried more strategic weight. PR is a frontline commercial capability."
Audit your AI visibility. Ask the major AI models and search tools where (and for what) your brand is present, how it is being defined, and which sources they are drawing on. If you are not there yet, you will have still undertaken the first step in measuring the problem.
Assess your current PR strategy. Are you following a defined thought-leadership plan? What is your share of voice in the media? With nearly 90% of AI citations drawing on earned media, coverage and commentary in trusted media titles has never been more important.
Treat your leadership bench as a media programme. AI models cite people, not just companies. Bylines, podcasts and panel commentary under your executives' names are compounding assets.
If you're looking for support on developing a fit-for-purpose communications strategy, get in touch with our team today.
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