Why do different LLMs say different things about your brand

Why Do Different LLMs Say Different Things About Your Brand? (And How Comms Teams Can Take Control of the Narrative)

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Ask ChatGPT what your company does best, then ask Perplexity, then Gemini, then Claude. If you have never tried this before, brace yourself: these LLMs won’t deliver four identical answers. Instead, each will provide a different narrative, drawn from a different combination of sources, shaped by each model’s idea of what matters about your organisation.

For years, brand reputation management meant controlling what showed up on page one of Google and landing coverage in the right titles. While that work still matters, those forming opinions about your organisation now are less and less likely to be scrolling search results, and increasingly likely to be asking an AI assistant directly, taking its answer at face value.

Dr Anne Gregory quote on LLMs

Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is becoming as important to comms teams as SEO ever was.

There’s one crucial distinction, however. As Purposeful Relations’ Stuart Bruce shared at our recent event ‘How AI is changing the way we communicate’, SEO was an instance of a power channel and mechanic – that might have been expected to sit beneath certain comms functions, at least in part – ultimately belonging entirely to a different part of the business. It is not yet clear which function in an organisation will ‘own’ GEO’; perhaps, given the pervasiveness of the tech, the answer is everyone.

Either way, understanding why models disagree about your organisation is the first step to making sure that what they are sharing about you is the story you want to be told.

The New Reality of Brand Perception in the AI Era

Stakeholders, journalists, and prospective clients are increasingly skipping the click-through altogether, and instead simply asking an AI assistant to summarise who you are, what you are known for, and who your competitors are, and then acting on whatever answer they’re given.

That would be manageable if every model gave a consistent answer… but they don’t. This can fragment your narrative exactly where you have the least control. If Claude surfaces a crisis from five years ago, while ChatGPT is citing your most recent earnings report, stakeholders forming a first impression of your organisation are working from two different stories, and both of them could be sourced from something your team didn’t write or sanction.

The 5 Reasons LLMs Diverge on Your Organisation

Models don’t disagree at random. Each divergence has a mechanical cause, and understanding it is what makes the problem solvable rather than just frustrating.

1. Different RAG and real-time search sources

Most modern LLMs don’t rely purely on pre-trained memory, but search live web indexes. Gemini leans on Google-indexed news and content; Perplexity draws heavily on Reddit, Wikipedia, and niche industry forums; and ChatGPT relies substantially on Bing’s index (given the financing and ownership role of Microsoft). If your PR strategy only targets traditional financial media, for example, you might dominate the narrative on one model, while disappearing, or being mischaracterised, on another that is pulling from consumer forums and social discussion instead.

2. Training cutoff dates and fine-tuning data mixes

Base models are trained on web snapshots taken at specific points in time. A model without live search (i.e. Claude or Deepseek) switched on may still be describing your organisation through the lens of a merger, rebrand, or crisis that has long since been resolved. Although it should be noted that even models with the mechanic enabled often won’t utilise it as part of their retrieval unless they land on a clear reason to. This kind of historical narrative lag can keep echoing an outdated version of a narrative.

3. Authority and citation weighting

LLMs assess source trust differently, weighing citations, structured data, and domain authority. Wikipedia, and Wikidata entries, as examples, are central to this. If a competitor has a clean Wikidata presence and citations from high-authority domains, models will associate them with the keywords that matter faster than a brand that’s relying on marketing copy alone.

4. Model architecture and safety alignment

System prompts, temperature settings, and the reinforcement learning each vendor applies post-training all shape tone and emphasis. Claude tends to be more cautious and caveat-heavy, often surfacing risk alongside reward. Gemini leans into consumer and Google-ecosystem data. ChatGPT tends to synthesise a broad sweep of top web summaries. The same facts are presented with very different tones depending on a searcher’s LLM of choice.

5. Prompt context and user intent

Even the way a question is framed changes the answer.

‘Is [organisation X] reliable?’ and ‘Compare [organisation X] to [Competitor]’ pull from different sub-vectors of a model’s embedding space. This means two stakeholders asking about the same company, in slightly different ways, can walk away with meaningfully different impressions.

How to Audit and Align Your AI Footprint

None of this means AI narratives are beyond influence. Inputs must be managed with the same rigour comms teams already apply to press coverage. Indeed, coverage itself is one of the strongest shaping forces.

Start by mapping your AI source footprint: work out which outlets, review sites, and publications are actually being cited when each major model discusses your organisation. From there, the shift from SEO to GEO means writing press releases and corporate updates with clear entity-attribute statements — plain, factual descriptions of who you are and what you do, rather than flourishes and adjectives that a model has no structured way to parse.

It also means making sure your strongest media placements land in outlets that LLMs actually index and cite, not just the ones with the biggest print circulation (don’t forget tier 2 and trade titles — LLMs are proven to value them). And where a model is clearly pulling outdated or negative information from an obscure forum or a stale article, the fix is to out-publish it: build fresh, authoritative citations in high-weight outlets until the newer, more accurate narrative is what gets surfaced.

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Monitor what LLMs are saying to control your story

Lumina, our intelligent AI suite built for modern PR and comms teams, is designed to evolve traditional media monitoring into genuine narrative intelligence for the AI age. Lumina AI View is built specifically to track what tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are saying about your organisation, which sources are shaping those answers, and how your AI citation footprint stacks up against that of your competitors.

Lumina AI View gives comms teams three things they currently have almost no visibility into: citation source tracking, so you can see exactly which outlets are driving your narrative across each model; competitive AI benchmarking, so you can compare your citation strength and share-of-voice against industry peers; and narrative shift detection, so you get an early warning when citation patterns move because of breaking news or a shift in sentiment, before it becomes a bigger problem.

Lumina AI View

LLMs usher in a major change in the comms space, but PR & comms teams are far from powerless. In fact, through the quality, authority, and distribution of the sources feeding it, they can have a massively meaningful impact on the organisation or business in question.

Get in touch to register your interest and see what Lumina AI View can do for your organisation’s AI visibility today.

Lumina AI View launch

The battle for AI visibility: Why Tier 2 titles shouldn’t be overlooked by PR and comms

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PR and comms professionals have never had more channels to manage, but also perhaps less clarity about which ones actually matter. Budgets are stretched, newsrooms are shrinking, and audiences are fragmenting across platforms that didn’t exist a few years ago. And now, there’s a new stakeholder to consider in AI.

Large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are increasingly mediating between organisations and the people trying to understand them. Ask an LLM about a company, a campaign or a crisis, and it will synthesise an answer from whatever it can find across the web — comparing owned claims against journalists, government databases, academic institutions, and industry bodies.

For comms teams, this is a huge challenge, and one without a universally agreed strategy for winning visibility within them. Tier 1 national coverage still matters, but it isn’t automatically the most influential source feeding an AI-generated answer.

Here is why Tier 2 titles deserve a bigger share of PR and comms attention in this new landscape…

LLMs reward quality and specificity, not just prestige

When an LLM assesses how credible a piece of coverage is, size of masthead isn’t the deciding factor.

As Vuelio’s Executive Director of AI Strategy Ngaire Crawford summarised during a recent Vuelio roundtable on managing reputation in the AI age:

‘The quality of the coverage will really inform whether the model uses it as a source. It needs to help answer the question with clear facts and validated endorsement… sometimes smaller sources are surfaced because there simply isn’t that quality in more reputable publications.’

Ngaire Crawford quote on LLM answers

A focused, well-sourced article in a niche title can do more work for an LLM than a broad, generalised piece in a national paper, because it gives the model something concrete to cite.

Trade and specialist press are becoming a go-to source for LLMs

This plays out clearly in sector-specific research. For Vuelio report ‘The role of AI, LLMs, and earned media in shaping reputation‘, Head of Insights Strategy Amy Chappell looked into supermarket citations across LLM platforms. She found that the sources doing the heaviest lifting were trade titles like The Grocer and the Grocery Gazette, not the national press.

Earned media for supermarkets in LLM answers

Purposeful Relations’ Stuart Bruce, speaking during Vuelio’s ‘How AI is changing the way we communicate‘ panel, saw the same pattern:

‘It’s not necessarily going to be your tier 1 titles. It could be trade press. It could be expert blogs. And that’s because LLMs know that it is a specialist source – this is going to be where to find reliable information.’

If your sector has trusted trade or specialist outlets, they should be core to your outreach and not an afterthought.

Local media is getting an unexpected AI-driven boost

After more than a decade of decline, local press may be finding an unlikely source of renewal. Speaking during Vuelio webinar ‘How to build an AI comms strategy: Lessons from regulated industries‘, SSE plc’s Ross Easton saw a silver lining for a subsector PR and comms professionals have often overlooked:

‘AI is giving a kind of renewal to those local outlets, because their content is being picked up, and often it’s not behind paywalls.’

He anticipates more licensing deals between publishers and AI providers as a business model develops, concluding: ‘I do think that earned media is still a really important place to invest time and effort, absolutely.’

Local titles are often more accessible to AI crawlers than paywalled nationals, and closer to the communities an organisation most needs to reach. Well worth a fresh look for comms teams weighing up where to invest limited outreach time.

Freshness and relevance signal reliability to AI models

LLMs hold vast amounts of historical data within their static models, but when a user asks a time-sensitive question, the engine has to look outward for real-time information.

‘They’re going to be looking for really up-to-date, recent information. You’re constantly feeding the beast and making sure that your information out there is recent,’ says Stuart Bruce.

In practice, that means refreshing web pages regularly and labelling any that are out of date. Trade press and specialist titles tend to publish more frequently and specifically on a given organisation than national outlets can, giving comms teams more chances to keep their evidence base current — a signal that an organisation remains an active source of information, not one the model only knows through outdated mentions.

Multiple touchpoints beat a single big splash

Perhaps most importantly, LLMs build confidence in a fact through corroboration.

As Stuart Bruce put it during Vuelio webinar ‘AI as the new PR & comms stakeholder‘:

‘AI creates content in the same way a journalist or an analyst might, by synthesising countless bits of information from across the web. The more touchpoints the AI finds to verify a fact, the more likely it is to include it.’

Stuart Bruce on LLM answers

He illustrates this with a university industrial dispute where the AI’s narrative ended up dominated by the trade union’s perspective: the union had provided multiple touchpoints (website statements, social media and media quotes) while the university responded only to journalists.

‘The trade union gave them half a dozen quotes. The university gave them one. It just wasn’t credible,’ Bruce notes.

A strategic mix of Tier 1 and Tier 2 placements, reinforced across owned and earned channels, builds a corroborated footprint; a feat one big splash would struggle to achieve.

None of this diminishes national coverage. But it does mean comms strategies built solely around Tier 1 hits are leaving potential visibility undiscovered, at exactly the moment AI platforms are becoming a meaningful route through which people discover and evaluate organisations. The real challenge is knowing which sources are shaping how AI represents you, and where the gaps in your evidence base are.

This is what Vuelio’s Lumina AI View was built to solve — an AI visibility solution specifically geared towards PR and comms. Lumina AI View helps you understand what AI knows about your organisation, and where it learned it from, tracking the sources that models such as Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude cite when representing you and revealing where you stand, and how to impact this.

Brand relevance is perhaps less than ever the preserve of Tier 1 publications alone. Tier 2 titles, be they trade press, specialist outlets, expert blogs or local media, are proving just as capable of shaping how AI talks about an organisation as the biggest national mastheads, sometimes more so.

By ensuring your earned media strategy is continuous, highly credible, and verified across multiple digital touchpoints, you can make sure your organisation, and the clients you work with, are indexed by the algorithms, and also trusted by them.

Find out more about Vuelio’s AI View.

Charity roundtable

Why Communications Must Lead on AI Reputation: Inside Vuelio’s Charity Roundtable

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Vuelio recently hosted a roundtable with a group of our charity clients, bringing together senior communications and media professionals for an open, peer-led discussion on a rapidly growing challenge: managing organisational reputation within Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs).

The roundtable brought together experts from leading charities, including the British Heart Foundation, Age UK, and the Stroke Association. The discussion explored how charities are navigating the emerging risks and opportunities associated with AI-driven search, reputation management, and organisational visibility in an increasingly AI-mediated information landscape.

Following a quick AI jargon-buster with Vuelio COO Kyle Lindsay, the conversation quickly moved to a broader strategic question:

As AI increasingly becomes another way people discover and understand organisations, what role should communications play in stewarding organisational reputation and public understanding?

For the senior communications and media leaders around the table, one thing was clear: AI is increasingly influencing how audiences discover, understand, and form opinions about organisations.

Rather than focusing solely on how organisations can optimise for AI, the discussion explored what this shift means for communications. AI hasn’t created an entirely new discipline for communicators, but has introduced another audience – one that interprets, combines, and redistributes information about organisations, often before someone has visited a website, read a news article, or spoken to an expert.

Drawing on the experiences, concerns, and practical approaches shared during the roundtable, here are key insights to help communications teams better understand what this shift means for organisational reputation, measurement, and future communications strategy.

1. AI is changing how reputation is formed

For decades, the path a supporter or journalist took to find your charity was predictable: Question → Google → Click → Read. Today, that journey is changing. Millions of active users are bypassing traditional search engines entirely, going straight to platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.

Instead of receiving a list of links, users get a synthesised answer.

‘People are reading the synthesised answer, not the article. Reputation often now forms inside the AI response.’ – Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy, Vuelio

If a major donor or a journalist queries an LLM about your cause tomorrow morning, they will likely absorb that generated snapshot before ever reaching your website or reading the original source material. Increasingly, the first impression of your organisation is being formed within an AI-generated answer rather than through a direct interaction with your own channels.

That doesn’t replace traditional media relations or stakeholder engagement. It does, however, introduce another place where organisational reputation is formed – one that Communications teams increasingly need to understand and measure.

2. Who owns AI reputation?

‘If ChatGPT gave a highly inaccurate answer about your organisation tomorrow, who owns fixing it?’- Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy, Vuelio

Is it IT? Digital? SEO? Marketing?

The consensus around the table was clear: while AI itself spans multiple business units, reputational challenges firmly sit within Communications and PR.

If your website had a typo, communications might not patch the code. But if that typo damaged your public standing or made its way into a journalist’s brief, comms would lead the response.

That perspective closely reflects Gartner’s recent view that communications is evolving beyond distributing messages towards stewarding public understanding across media, search and AI.

Rather than introducing an entirely new responsibility, AI reinforces many of the responsibilities communications teams already have: building trust, earning third-party credibility, shaping organisational narratives, and ensuring they are accurately understood.

Because LLMs synthesise information from multiple trusted sources rather than relying on a single source of truth, their understanding of an organisation is only as strong as the wider evidence ecosystem surrounding it. That makes consistency, credibility, and corroboration increasingly important – not just for the audiences communications teams have always engaged with, but for AI as well.

The role of communications isn’t to control every AI response. It’s to understand, influence, and measure the information ecosystem shaping those responses.

3. Understanding AI’s Information Ecosystem

Different AI models can return different answers, and different questions about the same organisation can surface different sources. Even the same prompt may produce differing responses over time as the information landscape evolves.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t patterns. While each platform has its own approach to retrieving and synthesising information, there are often consistent themes in the types of sources, organisations, and evidence that influence AI-generated answers. Rather than trying to optimise for one individual response, the discussion focused on understanding those broader patterns and the information ecosystem shaping them.

That ecosystem can include:
– Owned content
– Earned media
– Government and regulatory information
– Academic and research institutions
– Reference sites
– Industry bodies
– Partner organisations

The balance between these sources isn’t fixed. It changes depending on the organisation, the sector, the country and, perhaps most importantly, the question being asked.

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‘Our own analysis demonstrates this. While individual responses vary, the broader evidence ecosystem influencing an organisation often shows clear and measurable patterns.’

This was one of the reasons the group discussed treating AI as another audience rather than another search engine. Just as different stakeholder groups consume information differently, AI-generated answers are shaped by different combinations of trusted evidence depending on the context.

Understanding those patterns is becoming increasingly important. It provides a blueprint for ‘winning’ AI, but also helps communications teams understand how their organisation is being interpreted, identify which evidence is shaping those answers, and measure how that evolves over time.

4. Trust is built through corroboration

There is a common misconception that Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) or ‘AI SEO’ is a game of technical tricks. The roundtable data debunked this. LLMs do not simply parrot your press releases, but look for corroboration.

When synthesising a profile, an LLM compares your owned website claims against trusted third parties: journalists, government databases, academic institutions, and industry bodies. High-quality earned media footprint can heavily influence how these systems talk about you.

‘Earned media hasn’t become less important in the AI era. It’s arguably become more important because it increasingly influences the systems people are using to access information.’ – Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy, Vuelio

This led to one of the most interesting debates around the table – what actually makes earned media influential in AI-generated responses. Is it simply coverage in the biggest, most recognised publications, or does the prominence and substance of an individual article matter more?

We took that question to Vuelio’s Executive Director of AI Strategy, Ngaire Crawford. Her view was that the answer is both:

‘The quality of the coverage will really inform whether the model uses it as a source. It needs to help answer the question with clear facts and validated endorsement, so quality absolutely comes into it. Sometimes smaller sources are surfaced because there simply isn’t that quality in more reputable publications.’

For communications teams, that’s an important distinction. The objective is to go beyond securing coverage in the largest publications to build a strong, consistent evidence ecosystem around your organisation and your cause.

It’s another reminder that there is no definitive blueprint for ‘winning’ in LLMs yet. The models continue to evolve, and their weighting of different signals isn’t transparent. What remains consistent is the importance of producing accurate, trusted and well-corroborated information across the wider information landscape. And those are principles communications teams have always understood.

Practical Tips for Comms Teams:

The discussion concluded by moving away from theory and towards practical application. If AI is becoming another audience, what does that mean for day-to-day communications planning?

The consensus wasn’t that communications teams should completely rethink their strategies. Instead, it was about building on the principles they already know work.

Build a consistent evidence ecosystem

AI-generated answers are shaped by information from multiple trusted sources. Consistency across owned content, earned media, thought leadership, research and partner organisations helps reduce conflicting narratives and gives AI a stronger evidence base from which to build an understanding of your organisation.

Understand which sources shape AI’s understanding

Rather than focusing solely on traditional media lists, consider which publications, organisations, and evidence sources are consistently influencing AI-generated answers about your organisation and your sector. Those may include national media, but they could also include trade publications, academic research, government sources or trusted industry bodies.

Think beyond coverage

Communications teams have traditionally measured success through metrics such as coverage, reach, and engagement. Increasingly, there’s also value in understanding how that coverage contributes to the wider evidence ecosystem influencing AI-generated answers.

Keep humans in the loop

While AI can support research, planning, and content creation, the discussion reinforced that authenticity, judgement, and critical thinking remain essential. AI can accelerate communications, but it shouldn’t replace the expertise required to build trust and protect reputation.

Final Thoughts: Measure, Don’t Speculate

The session concluded with a shift toward measurement. Because AI systems are probabilistic and non-deterministic (meaning the same prompt can yield a different answer on a different day), tracking reputation requires a systematic framework over time, which is what Vuelio’s “AI View Score” is designed to do. Bringing several visibility signals together into one easy-to-track metric which can be shared internally to inform not only the Communications team but the wider stakeholders.

Throughout the roundtable, one theme consistently emerged: AI doesn’t replace the fundamentals of good communications, but expands them.

Just as communications teams have spent years measuring media reputation, stakeholder influence, and campaign effectiveness, AI introduces another audience whose understanding can also be monitored, measured and learned from.

Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy at Vuelio, said:

‘The goal isn’t to optimise for individual AI responses but to understand how your organisation is being interpreted over time, in the same way we’ve measured media reputation for years. AI simply introduces another audience whose understanding we now have the opportunity to measure and impact.’

Rather than asking whether an organisation can ‘win’ individual prompts, the discussion focused on understanding broader patterns: which evidence is shaping AI-generated answers, how that changes over time, and where communications teams have opportunities to strengthen organisational reputation.

Because AI systems continue to evolve, there will never be a single definitive answer to what AI says about an organisation. That’s why measurement matters. Looking beyond individual responses to understand the wider information ecosystem gives Communications teams a more meaningful way to track reputation, identify emerging trends and make informed strategic decisions.

This is the thinking behind Vuelio’s AI View. Rather than focusing on isolated prompts, AI View helps organisations understand the wider evidence ecosystem influencing AI-generated answers, bringing together visibility, authority, freshness, sentiment and dominance into a measurable framework that can be tracked over time.

Ultimately, communications has always been responsible for helping organisations earn trust, build credibility, and shape public understanding.

Get in touch with the Vuelio team if you’d like to see how AI View can help you understand your organisation’s visibility in AI-powered search. If you’re also interested in attending future roundtable events, just let us know – we’d love you to join us.

Regulated webinar

The reality of building an AI comms strategy for regulated industries

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Artificial intelligence is now a core operational reality for PR and communications, but for those working in highly regulated environments, or those with clients that do, the challenge of using these tools effectively comes with an extra layer of complexity.

To unpack what that means in practice, we were joined by three comms leaders from some of the UK’s critical infrastructure sectors for our latest webinar, ‘How to build an AI comms strategy: Lessons from regulated industries’.

Watch the full webinar here.

Bringing insight and experience from the space, energy, transport, maritime, and aviation sectors were SSE plc‘s Group Head of External Comms Ross Easton, First Rail London‘s Communications Manager Dana Raer, and Viasat‘s Senior Communications Manager Richard Jones.

Together, the panel explored how comms strategies are shifting under the weight of AI and LLMs; the realities of getting buy-in in regulated sectors; why the human touch still can’t be replicated; and what all of this means for earned media and crisis communications.

‘Google it’ or ‘AI it?’ How the emergence of AI and LLMs has changed comms strategies

For Richard, the first major shift concerns the sheer volume and noise of information, and filtering through the avalanche of content being shared:

‘We’re all having to factor in much more mass-produced AI content that companies are putting out, but also that journalists are receiving – there’s a lot more AI content, and pitches being delivered by automated AI systems’.

Journalists are being inundated with AI-generated contributions via AI-powered outreach, and the digital landscape is saturated. This brings extra challenges for comms professionals tasked with managing and protecting the flow of correct information. Adding to this obstacle is AI’s new role as an informational gatekeeper. Where audiences would ‘Google it’ if they needed information, people are now ‘AI’ing it’ instead.

‘The way that we track and monitor is changing to deal with the inconsistencies or incorrect information that LLMs are sharing with customers, stakeholders, and regulators,’ explained Richard. And the risk of incorrect narratives doesn’t just come from outside of organisations – comms teams themselves must be cautious about what they’re putting out into the world:

‘My sector is not only highly regulated, but very highly technically complex. We have a fleet of satellites around the world and deal with a lot of highly sensitive, secure projects for governments. Absolutely, we want to accelerate our use of AI. But we also have to do it in a careful way – comms itself has much more of a responsibility now.’

Sharing a perspective from the energy sector, Ross framed the shift around changing audience behaviour:

‘A statistic from Bain & Company found that about 80% of consumers now rely on AI written summaries for about 40% of their searches.

‘You’ve got to be optimising your content for those Large Language Models.’

Bain & Co statistic on AI

That means paying attention to channels that might previously have been overlooked:

‘You’re paying much more attention to things like Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is a source that AI will go to and find information’.

For Ross, it’s also about legacy content: SSE is rebuilding its website while managing an archive of news. He advises comms teams to think about ‘what is on your web estate, and who is saying what about you’.

Dana mentioned LinkedIn as another useful source for LLMs, and emphasised the importance of an organisation’s own communications and messaging. Even though First Rail London doesn’t rely on its website to drive business (‘we are the operator of the London Overground… people come to us directly’), AI is factoring this website content into its answers:

‘If the public are asking ChatGPT about the London Overground and if the service is good, I have to include LLMs as a way to monitor perception. I’m doing my own audits of Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude.’

Is it a challenge to get buy-in on AI from internal stakeholders in regulated industries?

Dana didn’t hesitate: ‘I don’t think there is a need for buy-in. Everyone’s sold, to be honest. There’s not much need for convincing’.

Her approach, from a comms perspective, has been incremental: ‘speeding up processes, getting them in my workflows, briefing all people or employees on what we can do, what we cannot do. Just this morning, I saw a news story about people sharing Google Docs on Anthropic Claude and them appearing later on in Google searches… it’s such an unregulated sector that you really have to be careful what you put out there’.

Richard agreed on internal stakeholder appetite for AI innovation, in his sector — ‘I don’t really remember a colleague internally saying, “I don’t like to use that AI stuff”‘ — but pointed to a deeper change in the comms function itself:

‘Previously, with any kind of new software, it would be a comms team asking the IT team, can we just roll this out faster? But now, it’s important for us to be the reputational managers and raise these internal questions of how we should be using it. Thinking about potential reputational risks – that’s our job.’

Ross was more cautious on whether or not everyone is sold on AI optimisation in the energy sector: ‘Definitely not’.

SSE has policies restricting external tools and sensitive data, alongside GDPR considerations, and uses a protected internal tool instead. The more significant internal challenge is guidance, not access:

‘I think the bigger challenge internally is showing people how to use AI in the best possible way. AI is there as a guide for us in the same way that a sat nav is to a London cabby. It’s not there to replace our knowledge, or our experience.’

His team utilise internal agents that review tone of voice on press releases before they go out, but Ross stressed: ‘It’s not rewriting it for them, but acting as a coach’.

AI can’t replicate the ‘human touch’ — how vital is authenticity?

For Dana, authenticity is an intrinsic part of communicating for a public service network:

‘Trust, in general, is really hard to win, but it can be lost so easily through one comment to the media.’

She was direct about the limits of AI-generated tone in a crisis:

‘It requires empathy. You need common sense and good judgement, and that comes from years of experience that the AI platforms don’t have. AI is fantastic to draft that first blank page, but it cannot take responsibility for the final one.’

Richard advised not underestimating the public’s capacity to spot AI work: ‘You must act as though your audience is highly intelligent because the likelihood is they are’.

He described the ‘sandwich approach’ to AI taken at Viasat — human direction, AI-driven legwork, human review.

On developing the next generation of PR professionals in an AI-first world, Ross was clear that experience-sharing can’t be automated away:

‘Time investment is so important, particularly for people new into a career. This really needs to be something that we focus on as AI takes over a lot more of workplace life.’

What does this mean for media outreach?

Dana highlighted Google’s continuing influence, despite the wide shift to ‘AIing’ for information:

‘There are about 10 Google searches for one AI query… for now, most people still Google more.’

But she was equally clear that AI and LLMs rely heavily on earned media, also pulling heavily from organic content, websites, and LinkedIn. She raised a note of caution on the latter, however…

‘The language people use on LinkedIn has become very similar and repetitive. Many journalists are steering clear of LinkedIn as a source at the moment’. She added that many journalist contacts are ‘really reluctant to use any form of AI’ themselves, and equally reluctant to work with PR professionals who lean on it too heavily.

On how AI is impacting the media, Ross sees a silver lining for a subsector that has been struggling for over a decade now: local media. A category PR and comms professionals shouldn’t overlook…

‘AI is giving a kind of renewal to those local outlets, because their content is being picked up, and often it’s not behind paywalls’. He anticipates more licensing deals between publishers and AI providers as a business model, concluding: ‘I do think that earned media is still a really important place to invest time and effort, absolutely’.

Richard agreed that trusted, established outlets will also only grow more valuable:

‘Your BBC, your Guardians, your Financial Times – those with really high levels of awareness will become more important and more trusted, because people will have less trust for other news sources.’

He was careful to frame AI visibility as just one KPI among several:

‘The BBC might help me with GEO, but I still want to show up in those publications because that gets to actual humans directly – actual humans still read the BBC.’

How does AI factor into crisis communications?

Dana cited a stark statistic on crisis: a BBC and EBU study found that ‘45% of AI responses to news questions had at least one significant issue’.

BBC and EBU AI statistic

Her position on using AI in a crisis was staunch: ‘For crisis communications, I’ll never recommend using AI. You’re speaking to people and people want to hear from people’.

Richard pointed to a coming shift in how crisis statements need to be written, given how audiences now seek information: ‘A lot of your customers will immediately be opening their phones and saying to their favourite AI platform, “What’s going on with the trains? What’s going on with Viasat satellites, what’s going on with SSE?”‘

This has real implications for internal education, particularly with senior leaders and colleagues who may be less familiar with AI platforms and how they’re best used:

‘You don’t want to wait until the issue or the crisis happens to raise that point. Make sure there’s alignment on it and agreement on it, so that everyone’s on the same page of what we’re trying to do.’

Watch the full webinar here, and find out more about media outreach in the age of AI in our Vuelio report ‘The role of AI, LLMs, and earned media in shaping reputation‘.

How to build an AI comms strategy: Lessons from regulated industries

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Artificial intelligence is now a core operational reality for the PR and communications industry. But for organisations operating in highly regulated landscapes, the rules of engagement are unique and filled with as many challenges as opportunities.

This webinar explores how AI is being integrated to strengthen communications, streamline workflows, and manage reputation and the flow of information within rigid regulatory boundaries.

Expertise comes from SSE’s Group Head of External Comms Ross Easton, First Rail London’s Communications Manager Dana Raer, and Viasat’s Senior Communications Manager Richard Jones.

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  • How to manage the strict boundaries required in highly regulated environments while utilitising the efficiencies that AI can offer.
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Downing Street

Burnham’s first few weeks: What 500+ Perspectives Reveal About the New PM

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Andy Burnham has been Prime Minister for barely a week, and the UK media has already produced a staggering volume of coverage on him. Main themes: tax cuts, prison releases, a Scottish Labour resignation, and a running argument about whether any of it is actually funded. This is a week of coverage that would usually take a government months to generate.

We ran media coverage from 21–28 July through Vuelio‘s media intelligence tool Lumina, which uses AI to surface the stories getting the most traction, the different angles being taken on them, and the people and organisations driving each narrative. Across this single week, it picked up more than 100 distinct stories and more than 1.9k separate perspectives – a lot of noise for one Prime Minister’s first days in office, and a useful case study in how quickly a political narrative can splinter once it hits the press.

Here are the stories and perspectives that stood out…

The VAT Cut That Split the Party Before It Split Public Opinion

The single biggest story of the week, by media volume, was Burnham’s decision to scrap the 5% VAT on domestic electricity bills. Downing Street framed it as a straightforward cost-of-living win: a Prime Minister acting fast to give households breathing space. Burnham, Chancellor John Healey, and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds all leaned into the same language of significant statements of priorities.

But the story that actually spread was the one about how it’s being paid for. The government said the £850 million cost would come from scrapping the Digital ID programme. Then Darren Jones, a sacked minister and Starmer loyalist, publicly pointed out that Digital ID was never funded in the first place, so cancelling it wouldn’t actually free up any money. That single social media post turned a tax-cut announcement into a story about Labour infighting on day two of the new government.

Consumer champion Martin Lewis added his own dose of realism, warning that the average £45 saving would likely be wiped out entirely by an expected rise in the energy price cap the same month the cut takes effect. Between Jones undermining the funding claim and Lewis undermining the actual benefit, what should have been a clean early win turned into a week of ‘yes, but’ coverage.

Anas Sarwar’s Exit Turns Into a Scottish Labour Civil War

If the VAT story was about funding, the Sarwar story was about loyalty, and it generated the most media items of any single event in the week, with over 1,700 pieces of coverage. Anas Sarwar resigned as Scottish Labour leader to take a ministerial post in Burnham’s government and a seat in the House of Lords, just weeks after leading the party to its worst-ever Holyrood result.

The reaction from within his own party was brutal. Scottish Labour insiders and MPs deemed it ‘failing upwards’ and ‘shameful’, with one Executive Committee member branding it a reward for five years of failure. First Minister John Swinney piled in from the SNP side, calling out the ‘incredible hypocrisy‘ of Sarwar accepting a peerage after previously saying he had no interest in the Lords and wanted to abolish it. Reform UK and the Scottish Conservatives joined the pile-on too, meaning the story would not leave the pages of the main papers quickly.

There is also a quieter but sharper angle running underneath: several commentators framed Sarwar’s promotion as reward, since he was the most senior Labour figure to publicly call for Keir Starmer to go, effectively paving the way for Burnham. Whether or not that is fair, it is the kind of narrative that sticks as it’s simple and plausible – exactly the sort of narrative communicators need to watch for.

The Prisoner Release Scheme Becomes a Test of Burnham’s Nerve

The early release scheme controversy generated two overlapping stories worth close to 1,500 media items combined, driven almost entirely by the case of PC Andrew Harper. His widow Lissie Harper and mother Debbie Adlam gave the story its emotional core, calling the policy ‘deplorable’ and an insult to justice.

Prime Minister halts plans to release some prisoners early

In 2024, the Labour government announced separate and temporary emergency measures to release some prisoners early to ease overcrowding.

Burnham paused the scheme within days, framing it as a necessary act of listening to victims. But the perspective that latterly carried the most weight for the press wasn’t the victims’ campaign or the Conservative’s demand for emergency legislation (though Kemi Badenoch made plenty of noise), but the operational one. Former justice secretary Sir David Gauke and prison governors warned that pausing the scheme without a plan would risk running prisons out of capacity by November, and causing unrest among inmates who were told they’d be released. A tension that Burnham now has to manage, with a policy that is politically convenient to pause now, but could bring substantial risks if suspended longer-term.
A surprising key driver of the story – Sally Jameson, a Labour MP and former prison officer, seemingly without a justice brief, becoming a spokeswoman for the prison release scheme’s cancellation in the press.

Pubs Get a Tax Break, Others Are Annoyed

The 20% business rates cut for pubs, clubs and live music venues produced the widest spread of reaction of any story this week, and it serves as a lesson in what can happen when helping one part of an industry and not the rest. Pub landlords were broadly pleased, though many said the estimated £1,100 annual saving barely covers rising insurance and energy costs.

What caught the attention of the press was who got left out. Restaurant chain Leon’s co-founder John Vincent called the policy unfair for excluding restaurants and cafes on the same high street. Hotel groups, beauty salons, pharmacies and convenience stores all made similar complaints. Even the vape industry pushed back on being labelled ‘anti-social’ to help fund the cut.

Burnham Government Unfunded spending

Commentator, journalist, and tax lawyer Dan Neidle was one of the key spokespeople quoted in the press on this issue, tapped to comment in newspaper reporting and YouTube commentary. Spokespeople outside of the political sphere can be a useful resource for the media and drive a narrative.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies added a structural criticism that is also worth flagging for anyone advising on this space long-term: rather than reforming the business rates system, the government is picking specific sectors each year, which the IFS says makes the whole system more arbitrary, not less.

Devolution, Welfare, and the Premiership Verdict

A few smaller but connected threads round out the week. Burnham’s ‘No 10 North’ launch in Manchester drew both genuine enthusiasm from northern business groups and accusations of being a ‘gimmick’ and a ‘coup’, particularly after it emerged the building had been made ready with suspicious speed.

It’s worth flagging a disconnect here for anyone working in public affairs: the shift in political concentration that No 10 North represents is a significant story within that world, given its direct impact on lobbying access and stakeholder engagement. But the media’s interest was narrower – less concerned with what this means for the machinery of government long-term, and more focused on hunting for the conflict angle (the ‘gimmick’, the ‘coup’, the suspiciously fast building work). For public affairs teams, that’s a reminder not to rely on general media coverage as a proxy for how significant a structural change actually is.

His £2 bus fare cap and hints at tightening PIP eligibility for young claimants both split Labour’s own backbenches, with left-wing MPs already threatening the kind of rebellion that sank Starmer’s welfare reforms.

Overhaul of Government unemployment policies

And running through all of it is the broader question of who Burnham actually is as a leader. Polling shows better initial approval than his predecessors, but deep public scepticism about whether he’ll deliver anything lasting. As one Times commentator put it, the public wants to know if this is a genuine reset or just a more charismatic version of the same problems.

What This Means for Communicators

There are a few elements here worth taking into any planning session over the following week.

Funding mechanisms are now a bigger media risk than the policy itself. Every announcement this week that promised a saving was immediately met with ‘how is this paid for’, and that question outlasted the positive news cycle.

Communicators should also watch out for the excluded party narrative. Any targeted support measure will generate its own counter-story from whoever wasn’t included, often within hours.

Internal party dissent is being amplified faster than ever. A single social media post from a sacked minister reshaped a national funding story in real time. If you’re advising a client with internal critics, assume they’ll surface quickly, and plan your response before they do.

Final Thoughts

Burnham’s first week shows how fast a clean policy win can fracture into a myriad of competing storylines once journalists, opposition MPs, industry bodies, and disgruntled colleagues all get their say. The stories that travelled furthest weren’t always the biggest announcements – often, they were the smaller signs of stressors: an unfunded claim, an excluded sector, a broken promise about the House of Lords.

What’s just as telling as the stories themselves is who was driving them. A backbench MP with a prison officer background, a sacked minister’s social media post, a tax lawyer providing commentary to broadcasters – none of these are obvious spokespeople, yet each one shaped a national narrative. For comms teams, knowing the story is only half of the job. Knowing which individuals and organisations are actually driving each perspective – and why – is vital for stakeholder engagement strategies, from who you brief early to who you monitor closely for potential sources of reputational risk.

To see what Lumina can surface for your organisation’s coverage, take a look at what it can do.

Political Database

How a single Political Database helps Public Affairs professionals navigate the shifting course of UK politics

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With Andy Burnham in situ as the new Prime Minister, and a rapid cabinet overhaul still settling, public affairs and policy professionals once again find themselves operating in an entirely altered reality.

With the traditional playbooks quickly falling out of date, the informal networks, the historic understandings of who holds sway over specific briefs, and the maps of parliamentary influence must all be drawn again from scratch. Staying informed requires an authoritative, data-driven understanding of the new corridors of power.

Public affairs teams need a reliable Political Database to support their monitoring of the new cycle, and fast-shifting stakeholder maps.

The Real Cost of Fragmentation

In an era of political flux, fragmented data is a major liability. When crucial information is scattered across static spreadsheets, outdated contact sheets, and siloed tracking tools, teams inevitably drop the ball. A Public Affairs team might know what policy announcement has just dropped, but without deep, integrated intelligence on the stakeholders driving it, their response will be reactive rather than strategic.

The path a political message takes across today’s media and policy ecosystem is highly unpredictable. A policy shift announced in the morning can ripple through select committees by afternoon, trending on social media before it even hits the floor of the House. To navigate this complexity, communications and policy teams need a single source of truth – a centralised platform where political monitoring, stakeholder profiles, and interaction tracking work in unison.

Without this integration, public affairs professionals risk building campaigns on yesterday’s assumptions, targeting figures who no longer hold the brief, or missing the subtle emerging networks of influence that truly shape legislative outcomes.

Unrivaled Intelligence at Your Fingertips

Recognising this shift, we have completely revamped Vuelio’s Public Affairs suite, putting an upgraded Political Database at the heart of the platform. Curated, verified, and meticulously maintained by our expert in-house Policy Research team, the database contains over 55,000 active contacts across every tier of governance, giving public affairs professionals unrivaled access to the UK’s shifting political architecture:

7,000+ Parliamentary Contacts: Go well beyond basic emails. Vuelio provides detailed, comprehensive profiles of elected and appointed officials across the UK Parliament, devolved assemblies, and the EU. Profiles map educational backgrounds, voting patterns, APPG memberships, committee seats, staff details, and Special Advisers (SpAds).

30,000+ Civil Service Contacts: Direct access to the key administrative stakeholders across central government departments, local authorities, regulatory bodies, and arms-length agencies who draft the details of upcoming policy.

19,000+ Local Government Contacts: Total visibility over regional leadership, elected councillors, and key council officer roles across the country — vital for organisations navigating local devolution and regional campaigning.

This data does not sit in a vacuum, but is fully integrated into Vuelio’s ecosystem, allowing you to instantly pivot from identifying a critical stakeholder to logging an interaction or tracking their recent speech or social media contribution.

Vuelio Political Database contact

Campaign management: From Data to Action

A database should go beyond information storage to supporting your engagement strategy. The revamped Vuelio suite enables teams to turn data into cohesive, measurable outreach:

Advanced Stakeholder Segmentation: Move away from generic mailing lists. Build custom stakeholder maps, filter by specific interest groups, and manage relationships using a clear Red/Amber/Green (RAG) status framework to see exactly where your advocacy stands.

Centralised Interaction Management: Maintain a secure, searchable corporate memory. Vuelio automatically links every meeting note, briefing sent, and email exchange directly to the stakeholder’s profile, ensuring compliance with GDPR while giving your entire team a single, unfragmented history of engagement.

Targeted Distribution and Tracking: Disseminate branded, personalised policy briefings directly through the platform. Detailed engagement analytics show precisely who opened your correspondence and when, allowing you to automatically generate highly targeted follow-up lists based on real-time interest.

Capitalising on the New Political Era

As the Burnham administration takes shape and new lines of influence harden across Westminster and the civil service, the organisations that succeed will be those that possess a clear view of the changing landscape.

Success in Public Affairs requires moving beyond reactive tracking and embracing active, data-driven engagement. By grounding your strategy in a dynamic, fully integrated Political Database, ensure your team is always targeting the right figures, measuring the real impact of your advocacy, and successfully driving your mission forward.

Want to see how the revamped Vuelio Political Database can transform your stakeholder strategy? Book a briefing today.

Factoring AI, fragmentation, and uncertainty into your comms strategy

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With AI now integrated into the very fabric of the media and informational landscape, the rules of PR and corporate communications are being rewritten. But are traditional PR skills a thing of the past?

To unpack what is changing in comms and what will endure in this AI-enabled era, Vuelio hosted an expert panel discussion.

Event panel - Amy Chappell

‘How to Factor AI, Fragmentation, and Uncertainty Into Your Comms Strategy’, hosted by Vuelio’s Head of Content Marketing Alex Bryson, brought together three industry leaders, each offering a distinct perspective on the evolving requirements of the profession. Pearson‘s Director of Financial Communications Laura Ewart, who brings 20 years of experience in financial, corporate, and executive communications, provided a practitioner’s lens on the pressures of modern, high-stakes environments. Diego Bironzo, a Vice President at Edelman Intelligence, offered deep experience in navigating reputation management and trust in the wake of crises, providing a strategic view on how brands can maintain authority in an AI-mediated world. Representing the measurement and intelligence side, Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy at Vuelio, joined the conversation to share findings from our curated media analysis and observations from her breadth of experience in the PR and media landscape.

Is AI an accelerant, rather than a paradigm shift?

While AI is often discussed as a revolutionary force, the panel noted that its primary immediate impact has been to intensify existing trends.

‘My view is that AI, at least at the moment, is not so much a paradigm change when it comes to comms, but an accelerant,’ said Diego.

‘This technology has accelerated some of the shifts we’ve been seeing for a number of years as digital became more prominent… including speeding up story cycles and fragmenting audiences. As a result, increasingly, we’re also seeing the effects of “context collapse”: the messages that, for my grandparents’ generation, would have been mediated by mass media, now are appearing completely unmediated, distributed across platforms to various audiences, traveling in unexpected ways.’

Amy explored how AI is changing the way people access information and form opinions about organisations. While reputation has always been influenced by a mix of media coverage, expert commentary, and stakeholder discussion, AI platforms are increasingly becoming another route through which people discover and evaluate information.

Amy examined the role of AI and LLMs as a mediator for messaging and the news cycle:

‘Using Vuelio’s AI View tool, it’s possible to look into citations of organisations mentioned across the major LLM platforms. In this example, one thing that stands out is the different sources that are feeding the LLMs – earned media overwhelmingly dominates AI citations.

‘AI and LLM platforms, seemingly, at least in this sector, aren’t just looking for the most recent coverage. In this example, we found that LLMs weren’t looking for the most recent; it was a combination. A crisis that happens one week doesn’t automatically affect how LLMs cite organisations the next.’

Amy found that the sources feeding into the supermarket citations were mainly trade titles – The Grocer, the Grocery Gazette, for example. For each new story, or campaign, traditional ‘Tier 1’ titles aren’t automatically going to be the first port of call for LLMs.

‘Clear messaging and spokespeople are still so important to have. So, if Tesco or Sainsbury’s continue to target those types of publications that are feeding the LLMs at the moment, that may have a positive impact on their reputation in the future.’

The emergence of AI as a stakeholder

One of the most significant shifts identified by a growing number of PR practitioners is AI’s active participation in the information ecosystem as a stakeholder.

‘Increasingly, what we’re seeing is AI ultimately being another audience,’ said Amy. ‘In terms of what LLMs are serving about organisations, it’s almost another consumer base.’

Diego expanded on the implications for brand management: ‘I like the idea of treating AI as an additional audience, a stakeholder, because LLMs play a role in mediating your message, adding a layer of interpretation before your content is served up to audiences. As a consequence, perceptions can be shaped from a number of different signals, and these are increasingly harder to keep control of.’

But this doesn’t just have an impact on brand reputation – Laura emphasised the financial implications:

‘AI is an audience as well as a tool, especially in financial comms, where investors are using AI to synthesise lots of data. You’ve also got AI bots, which are automatically trading without humans in the loop – so you need to think of it as an audience when you’re putting your press releases and your content together.’

The strategic necessity of human authenticity

As AI platforms become central to how information is served, the demand for high-quality, authentic human content has increased. When audiences and algorithms alike are flooded with synthetic noise, trust becomes a primary differentiator.

Laura Ewart

‘Over the past year, there has been a growing expectation upon PRs to use AI in their everyday comms, but it’s not just about knowing how to prompt an AI, it’s also about how to use your critical thinking and judgment to know how and why you’re going to be using AI,’ Laura said.

Where critical thinking is needed, and PRs luckily have this in their wheelhouse already, is in channel selection.

‘For actually getting cut through, we’re finding the best things to do are op-eds, comment pieces, and podcasts. People are looking for voices they can trust and which they feel are authentic, and I think that’s why we’ve seen the rise of the podcast.’

Diego echoed this focus on the human element, noting that earned media has become ‘more relevant than ever’ because of the way it feeds into AI search and interpretation:

‘Increasingly, an authentic and culturally relevant message is becoming more and more important, and that’s the kind of content that people are going to want to see. It needs to be both informed by data and insights as well as have that “human in the loop” touch for authenticity and empathy.’

Practical Integration

As organisations look to position themselves within this new infrastructure, the panel stressed the importance of factoring Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) into strategies.

Regarding how to appear in AI search results, Laura advised a long-term approach:

‘Think about how you can tailor your content to adjust for AI search – there’s lots of different tips and tricks that we’re learning as we go along. For example, LLMs draw from FAQs a lot, so that’s something to think about for website content.’

Diego added that this requires consistent monitoring:

‘People are at the stage of establishing a baseline of where they appear in searches on GEO, being mindful of the fact that answer engines are highly dynamic and constantly changing. It’s important to start understanding what is the baseline, what behaviors and sources shape answers, and think about how it impacts strategy, how we can start to feed the right type of content to LLMs.’

The Future of the Profession

Ultimately, the consensus among the panelists was that AI will not replace the PR professional, but rather demand a more sophisticated, intelligence-led approach to strategy.

Amy summarised the outlook:

‘I’m a big advocate in thinking that AI has actually increased and enhanced the role of the PR. Human skills are going to be increasingly important. It’s still about trust, so getting out there, meeting with journalists, and building relationships with them will continue to be really key.’

As the industry moves through these stages of maturity, from narrative stewardship to influence intelligence, successful comms teams will be those that treat AI as a central stakeholder, prioritise evidence-led communication, and double down on the human connection that algorithms cannot replicate (for now…).

Find out how LLMs are representing your brand and clients in their answers with Vuelio’s AI View.

For more on how AI is changing the way we communicate, check out key insights from our previous Vuelio panel event with Purposeful Relations’ Stuart Bruce, the British Heart Foundation’s Nicole Yost, and JournalismAI’s Tshepo Tshabalala.

Vuelio for Public Affairs

Navigating today’s interconnected landscape: Introducing Vuelio’s revamped suite for Public Affairs

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In an environment where policy and campaign issues traverse multiple channels simultaneously, every single touchpoint alters the message. Vuelio understands the importance of evolving to meet this modern multichannel challenge, which is why we have revamped our product suite for public affairs.

Adding to over thirty years of experience partnering with public affairs professionals, policy teams, and campaigners, additions to Vuelio’s integrated platform supports teams tasked with turning communication challenges into strategic clarity.

The power of a unified ecosystem: Why integration matters

In today’s fast-moving environment, tracking the media and political landscape using disjointed, siloed tools will mean missed insights. Audiences are increasingly fragmented, and lines of influence intersect in ways they never have before. A single message can prompt a cascade of media requests, social media posts, parliamentary questions, and stakeholder feedback. Without a unified platform, teams can spend hours trying to connect these disparate data points.

Vuelio’s revamped suite resolves this complexity by serving as a comprehensive corporate memory and single source of truth. It functions seamlessly across a number of core pillars to deliver actionable insights directly into your workflow.

Core pillars of Vuelio for Public Affairs

1. Advanced Political Monitoring

Our updated Political Monitoring service offers deep, real-time tracking across the entire legislative spectrum. We monitor Westminster alongside the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru, Northern Ireland Assembly, and the Greater London Assembly. Coverage includes daily schedules, active debates, tabled questions, committee proceedings, and votes.

Beyond central government, the tool extends to regional government consultations, council press releases, and announcements from think tanks, charities, and trade unions. To help you catch key commentary before it hits official channels, the service automatically tracks the social media accounts of political figures and the top 50 political journalists.

2. Live Broadcast Monitoring

Waiting for official parliamentary transcripts can put your organisation on the back foot. Vuelio’s revamped Broadcast Monitoring ensures you receive instant alerts on what is happening on Parliament Live TV, straight to your inbox and in-platform. Mentions and context summaries are delivered as they are broadcast, complete with analytics for instant trend analysis. For specialised campaigns requiring deeper evaluation, our in-house experts are available to build bespoke reports.

3. Comprehensive Podcast Monitoring

Podcasts have emerged as an incredibly influential medium for political discourse, with parliamentarians and key stakeholders regularly appearing as guests or engaging as listeners. To give you complete oversight of the conversations shaping public opinion, Vuelio now actively monitors high-profile and niche political podcasts within our platform suite. This includes news-making programs such as The Rest is Politics, The News Agents, Newscast, and Electoral Dysfunction.

4. A carefully curated Contacts Database

At the heart of the platform is a verified Political Database containing over 55,000 detailed profiles. Maintained by our policy team, it includes:

Parliamentary Contacts (7,000+): Detailed profiles for elected officials across all UK Parliaments, Assemblies, and the EU. Profiles include contact details, political/educational backgrounds, committee memberships, staff details, and Special Advisers.

Civil Service (30,000+): A broad set of civil servant officer contacts from central government, local government, regulators, and arms-length bodies.

Local Government (19,000+): Elected councillors, council leadership, and key council officer roles.
The system also allows you to add private stakeholder contacts with custom categorisations while remaining completely GDPR compliant.

5. Specialised policy expertise

We understand that software is only as powerful as the human intelligence backing it. Vuelio provides access to an in-house team of policy researchers with deep sector specialisms.

As part of the service, you can opt to receive exclusive scheduled publications tailored to your needs:

Horizon Scanning Planners: Including the Parliamentary Planner (covering APPGs) on Thursdays, followed by the Devolved Planner and Sector-Specific Horizon Scans on Fridays.

Daily Briefings: Westminster Daily, Devolved Daily, and Today’s Political Headlines delivered every morning.

Set Piece & Weekly Updates: Full analysis and stakeholder reactions to events like the King’s Speech or the Budget, alongside researcher summaries and transcripts of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) every Wednesday.

6. Stakeholder Management & Engagement Tracking

Our fully integrated Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) system allows teams to track, log, and analyse outreach efforts collectively. No two stakeholders are identical, which is why our system provides customized stakeholder mapping, custom user-defined fields, and a clear Red/Amber/Green status system to evaluate relationships.

Built-in distribution tools allow you to send branded, personalised emails directly from the platform using asset libraries. You can then evaluate individual engagement using time and date-stamped interaction statistics, making it easy to see who opened your correspondence and instantly generate targeted follow-up lists.

Ready to transform your Public Affairs strategy?

The policy environment is too fast and interconnected to navigate with siloed data. Vuelio combines cutting-edge multi-channel monitoring, a massive verified contact database, and dedicated human expertise into a single source of truth.

Kelly Scott quote

Explore the next generation of public affairs technology. Trial our services to experience how integrated intelligence can elevate your influence.

How to get media coverage

World Cup info, weather-related experts, and gardening gurus: How to get UK press coverage in June 2026

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With a big summer of sport ahead and a packed political calendar across the globe, journalists and broadcasters will be busy and in need of case studies, expert comment, and more from the PR and comms sector. To help with your media outreach, here is insight on what they’ll need based on media requests from the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service (now included in the Vuelio platform).

World Cup fever

The FIFA World Cup kicks off on Thursday and journalists have been trying to get ahead with their coverage as 1.5% of the requests in May featured the keyphrase ‘World Cup’. Around 1% of these also contained the keyword ‘football’ as the Women’s Cricket World Cup also begins this week on Friday.

Enquiries have been looking at various angles when it comes to World Cup coverage including England/Scotland fans prepping for the World Cup and flexi working companies, money saving tips for those planning to travel out there for it, and the rarest and most valuable World Cup football shirts. These requests have come from journalists at BBC News, The Sun, Insider Sport and Which? Money.

Going forward? With this being the longest World Cup in terms of schedule and amount of matches, journalists will be looking for plenty of insight throughout June and into July when the tournament eventually finishes. Locations to watch the matches, case studies of fan experiences and football experts are the most likely to be in demand and could get you featured in both broadcast media and national press.

Weather forecast looking popular

The common stereotype is that Brits are obsessed with talking about the weather and in May that was the case with journalists using the service. Just under 2% of the requests last month contained ‘weather’ in them. ‘Heatwave’ cropped up in 1% as well, as the sudden summer sunshine got everyone talking.

Publications including The i paper, Ideal Home, Daily Star, woman & home, and PA Media all sent weather-related requests last month. These included changes to make now to improve your sleep in warm weather, an expert to comment on the link between stormy weather and neurological conditions, and a nutritionist to give advice on the best and worst things to eat and drink during a heatwave.

Going forward? While the British weather may not be predictable, we can predict more weather-related requests this month, based on the fact that just over 2% of requests in June last year focused on this. Enquiries tend to focus on experts, but these can often be associated with other topics such as health and gardening, rather than purely on weather conditions themselves.

Gardening gurus in demand

Gardening as a keyword always performs on the Journalist Enquiry Service throughout the year and last month was no different as it cropped up in 4% of the total. This also coincided with the Home & Garden category being the third most popular on the service, behind Health and Women’s Interest & Beauty.

Enquiries are mainly looking for experts, but these are still for a variety of topics and last month that included sustainable garden ideas, the best shrubs to give your garden a hotel look, rainwater harvesting, and how to protect gardens from plant thieves. Journalists at House Beautiful, Country Living, Amateur Gardening, The Daily Mirror, and The London Standard all sent an enquiry in May.

Going forward? In June 2025, gardening was even more popular as a keyword when it appeared in over 6% of the total requests. We expect to see a similar volume of requests for June this year. While experts are the most in demand from journalists, there will also be opportunities to get garden products featured too and hopefully get coverage in a consumer media title.

Other opportunities for PRs in June and beyond

Travel, like gardening, is another keyword that does well throughout the year but with the summer holidays in sight then June often sees it reach its peak. Last year, 6% of the total enquiries featured ‘travel’ in them. 3% also contained ‘holidays’ and ‘hotel’ also appeared in just over 3%. From expert comment on the top holiday destinations for 2026 to case studies of nightmare weekend getaways, there will be plenty of media opportunities for those in the travel sector to get featured.

While the schools don’t break up till mid-July, journalists will already be looking for back-to-school information from this month onwards. In June 2025, 2% of the enquiries that month featured ‘school’ as a keyword. These vary from looking for information on new clothes and stationary for the next school year to expert advice for parents who will be sending their kids off to primary school for the first time or moving onto secondary school. Have expert comment and information ready if you want to secure national press coverage.

Want to get the most out of the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service? Find out how here.

Media requests embedded into Vuelio

Perfect pitch: Maximising media coverage with Vuelio’s connected platform

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2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service, which has been connecting PR & comms teams seeking media coverage with journalists and broadcasters in need of sources since its launch in 2001.

To meet the changing needs of the media community, the service is now integrated into Vuelio, providing the thousands of PR and comms teams using the platform daily with another way to reach the press.

Journalist Enquiry Service in Vuelio

Whether you’re looking for expert commentary, supporting statistics, products for review, or filming locations, our connected network helps you share relevant responses with influential media contacts.

Here are just some of the benefits of a fully-connected media suite:

Jump on opportunities, without losing the strategic view

Part of managing a busy press office is balancing the short-term urgency of media deadlines with the longer-term planning often required for a successful comms campaign. PR professionals spend hours building targeted media lists, studying forward features lists, and conceptualising campaigns for future roll-out. But breaking news doesn’t stop for strategic planning.

When short-turnaround editorial opportunities arise, disjointed workflows and platforms can mean missing windows of opportunity. By combining real-time journalist requests with a comprehensive Media Database in one place, communication teams can keep an eye on a stream of editorial asks directly from the workspace where they are already designing their outreach campaigns.

While you are proactively identifying long-lead opportunities or constructing media lists for a future launch, you are presented with an instant view of what reporters are investigating.

Because media professionals frequently operate under intense time constraints, often requiring commentary, case studies, or information within a matter of hours, having these urgent alerts integrated into your main platform ensures your entire team can respond quickly.

Fulfill a writer’s immediate request without losing momentum on your broader campaign strategy, or juggling multiple browser tabs and separate software programs. Secure high-value placements that might otherwise have slipped away.

The ability to connect relevant spokespeople with the right media

Securing impactful media coverage means providing the precise expertise a writer or broadcaster needs to complete their story.

The integration of the Journalist Enquiry Service within the Vuelio platform makes matching internal corporate talent or client spokespeople with these precise needs straightforward. Rather than researching which topics are currently front-of-mind for various media outlets, PR professionals receive verified requests that outline exactly what kind of expert opinion is required.

The platform’s filtering framework, spanning industry sectors including healthcare, finance, consumer technology, and retail, enables PRs to filter incoming requests down to the specific categories that matter most to their organisation or client base. Instead of scrambling to find an angle, immediately identify an exact match between a journalist’s requirement and your spokesperson’s specialised knowledge.

Deeper insight, for longer relationships

If you ask media professionals about their biggest frustrations when dealing with the public relations industry, the answer is almost unanimous: irrelevant, untargeted pitches. To stand out in the clutter of a packed inbox or voicemail, a pitch must be hyper-relevant. But achieving that level of personalisation and targeting requires deep contextual knowledge.

This is where an embedded Media Database is essential. When a request from the Journalist Enquiry Service arrives within the platform, it is linked to a wealth of intelligence regarding the individual who sent it, and the publications they work for. With a click, PR professionals can find a comprehensive profile of the journalist, offering detailed insights compiled by our in-house research team.

Patch, past coverage history, preferred communication methods, and even career history can be invaluable, particularly when a journalist’s initial enquiry is brief or ambiguous. By analysing their specific beat and recent articles, read between the lines of a vague request to understand the angle they are pursuing. Tailor your response to align with their editorial style and the demographic of their media outlet: providing a tailored, highly specific contribution significantly increases the likelihood of your content being picked up. More importantly, it demonstrates to the journalist that you respect their time and understand their audience, laying the vital foundation for a trusting, ongoing media relationship that extends far beyond a single news cycle.

Closer connections with the media, via a connected platform

The future of successful public relations relies on breaking down the barriers between different communication workflows as much as it does on connecting the myriad of platforms that make up the modern media landscape. Moving away from separated software systems and adopting a unified ecosystem allows communication professionals to work with greater speed, accuracy, and strategic insight.

By integrating the real-time opportunities of the Journalist Enquiry Service into the extensive data suite of the Vuelio Media Database, PR professionals are given a complete toolkit for modern media engagement. React to urgent newsroom demands without sacrificing long-term campaign planning, match expertise with active editorial needs, and utilise deep media intelligence to construct your pitches, and build connections.

Find out more about the Journalist Enquiry Service here. 

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Earned media in an AI age

Is earned media the solution for comms in the age of AI Answers?

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Artificial intelligence has evolved from an experimental tech-stack tool to become a vital part of the fabric of daily reality for public relations. Alongside pitching stories for human-made editorial calendars, comms practitioners are navigating a deeply fragmented media ecosystem where generative engines like Large Language Models (LLMs) fundamentally alter how information is created, distributed, and consumed.

For years, the PR industry measured success by the strength of a clipping or the positioning of a link on a Google Search results page. Today, the interface between brands and audiences has changed. The fast rise of agentic browsers and AI companions that summarise the web has boosted media intelligence from a supporting function to a mission-critical part of the comms infrastructure.

To survive in this new reality, communication teams must understand the new role of earned media; the primary fuel powering the AI answer engines that shape brand reputation.

How generative engines are rewriting the search playbook

The traditional digital marketing funnel is facing an existential crunch. According to Nic Newman’s ‘Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2026‘ report for the Reuters Institute, publishers expect traffic from search engines to decline by 43% over the next three years. This sharp downturn follows recent dramatic declines in referrals from social media platforms. The culprit at the centre of this disruption? Google’s AI Overviews.

Now appearing at the top of roughly 10% of search results in the United States and rolling out globally, these AI summaries have driven a massive surge in zero-click searches — scenarios where users get their answers directly on the search page without ever clicking through to a corporate website or news source.

This shift is heavily driven by changing consumer behaviours. Data from a January 2026 study ‘Navigating the Shift: A Comparative Analysis of Web Search and Generative AI Response Generation‘ highlights that Google’s AI Overviews now reach 2 billion monthly users across 200 countries, with referral traffic from AI platforms growing by 357% year-over-year. Crucially, the way people search has evolved: 57.9% of searches triggering AI Overviews are now phrased as full questions, and queries of eight words or longer have a 57% probability of generating an AI-synthesised response rather than a traditional list of blue links.

Reuters Institute report statistic on LLMs

These platforms do not return ranked document lists but synthesise answers, reason over retrieved evidence, and selectively cite sources they judge to be authoritative. And what these engines consider authoritative is, increasingly, earned media.

A 2025 Semrush AI Overviews Study revealed that while Google attempts a balanced sourcing approach (41% earned, 34% social, and 26% brand content), standalone AI engines lean overwhelmingly on earned content. Anthropic’s Claude concentrates most heavily on earned media at 65% (and a mere 1% on social), followed by OpenAI’s GPT-4o at 57% earned media.

SEMrush report statistic on LLMs

To highlight this trend further, Gartner’s ‘Top Predictions to Inform 2026 Comms Strategies‘ and Purposeful Relations’ ‘The Impact of Generative Relations and Communications‘ reports both validate that AI search engines heavily favour citing earned, shared, and organic owned content over paid channels. More than 95% of links cited within these platforms are non-paid mentions, with earned media accounting for 89% of those citations. Journalistic content alone accounts for 27% of citations, skyrocketing to 49% for queries requiring real-time, recent information.

Ultimately, LLMs rely on the credibility that traditional PR has spent decades cultivating. However, simply securing a mention is no longer enough. As Nicole Yost, Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) pointed out during Vuelio’s recent in-person event ‘How AI is changing the way we communicate‘, the challenge has evolved. Managing communications for a major healthcare charity means navigating an environment where AI is used not just to draft messaging, but to predict trends and actively counter misinformation. Nicole observes:

‘Various studies have shown that AI is using earned media for its content. But how do you differentiate and cut through the noise, is the question. Earned media is having a moment. I was talking to some colleagues earlier, and they’re saying it’s everywhere, all over LinkedIn, it’s “PRs’ time” and all that. But, only if you can cut through the noise, be really trusted and credible, are you going to have an impact on your brand.’

Panel at Vuelio event 'How AI is changing the way we communicate'

Making your earned media count for LLMs

While the data paints a glowing picture for the resurgence of PR, communications teams must avoid treating these statistics as a one-size-fits-all victory. Context, nuance, and strategy matter more than raw volume.

Stuart Bruce, PR Futurist and Co-founder of Purposeful Relations — a management consultancy specialising in advising in-house comms teams, international bodies like the OECD, and charities on AI adoption — urges a grounded perspective.

Reflecting on the sudden flood of vendor reports, Stuart notes:

‘All these reports that have been coming out say that LLMs favour earned media in terms of where they get information from, and where they put their citations. That’s partially true.

‘Our white paper analysed the multitude of reports that have been published throughout the year (anybody that’s selling an LLM tool published a report to justify them to marketing). One said that 95% of LLM citations are from earned media. Another one said 43%. And yes, the importance of earned media is absolutely on the rise, but it’s really important to realise it’s not the only one, and it is very different between different sectors.’

To make earned media truly count within AI summaries, communications strategies must move past old-school broad message distribution. The focus must pivot toward building earned proof, shaping the credible, factual raw material that both human audiences and intelligent machine agents use to determine who is genuinely trustworthy.

A strategic roadmap for modern PR: Treating AI as a stakeholder

If LLMs are actively mediating how the public understands your organisation or your clients, you can no longer treat them as neutral tech tools; they are actually a brand-new audience. Stuart suggests a distinct shift in how teams approach Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), breaking it down into three flexible, strategic pillars tailored to organisational needs:

1. Build an AI Stakeholder Map

‘The first thing you need to do is to actually understand the space,’ Stuart advises. ‘We describe AI as a stakeholder, because we wouldn’t start trying to influence stakeholders until we fully understand them.

‘Do you have your stakeholder map? Trying to create that is actually really difficult when it comes to LLMs, because there are several of them, and then they’re all going to be saying different things.’

Comms teams must map which models their audiences use and audit how their brand currently surfaces across different engines.

2. Constant recency and the power of niche media

LLMs possess vast amounts of historical data within their static models, but when a user asks a time-sensitive question, the engine must look outward for real-time information. ‘So, if you want to influence what’s not in the model, they’re going to be looking for really up-to-date, recent information — you’re constantly feeding the beast and making sure that your information out there is recent,’ says Stuart.

This will markedly change media targeting strategy:

‘The second thing to consider is, what does that mean? Does that include your website? That might mean just refreshing a page, updating a page, but also things like labelling if a page has out-of-date information. AI needs to be taught that. It needs to understand relevance, and that’s basically where earned media comes in. It’s not necessarily going to be your tier-one titles. It could actually be small, niche titles. It could be trade press. It could be expert blogs. And that’s because LLMs know that’s a specialist source, this is going to be where to find reliable information.’

3. Establish multiple touchpoints for reputation

An isolated piece of coverage will no longer be effective on its own. AI models look for cross-referenced consistency across the web to validate a claim. Stuart provides a practical example:

‘You might have a spokesperson featured in the Daily Mail, but if that’s the only reference to them, AI is not necessarily going to consider them a credible spokesperson. If they were available on your website, if their LinkedIn profile constantly talks about the same thing, if they’ve spoken at conferences, if they’re in earned media, they instantly become a credible source. You’ve got to have those multiple touchpoints.’

Shifting trust: When audiences believe AI over brands

The urgency of this strategic pivot becomes clearer when considering how rapidly public trust is transitioning. During a recent Vuelio webinar ‘AI as the new PR & comms stakeholder‘, Dr Anne Gregory — Professor Emeritus of Corporate Communication at the University of Huddersfield and a leading international researcher who has directed the Global Capability Framework — highlighted how deeply this machine mediation influences public perception:

‘AI is much more than just an assistant; it is a powerful actor in the information ecosystem.

‘It mediates our engagement with organisations and individuals, and evidence is emerging that AI is often believed more than other traditional sources.’

This observation is backed by hard data. Purposeful Relations’ report, in partnership with 72Point, surveyed 5,000 UK adults to uncover modern attitudes toward media, news, and generative tech. The findings regarding trust were eye-opening: While scientists and technical experts predictably ranked highest at 80%, AI answers achieved a 44% trust rating.

‘So 44% of people trust that LLM answer: they’re not necessarily going to go to your website,’ Stuart noted.

This creates a reputational hazard if your infrastructure is lagging. Dr Anne issued a stark warning for teams slow to adapt to this shift:

‘Even though we know these summaries are often incomplete and biased, we tend to believe them. If we don’t regard AI as an influential stakeholder, we could be putting ourselves in jeopardy.’

The new toolkit for AI visibility

To transition from traditional communicators into central corporate strategists who manage reputation in this new climate, PR professionals need tools built specifically for their workflows. They cannot rely on legacy search engine tools designed purely for digital marketing or paid media.

‘Vuelio is launching something soon, which will be another tool that will help you to understand that,’ revealed Stuart during our latest event.

‘The tools that are coming from the PR space are a lot more useful to PR people than some of the ones that are coming from the digital marketing and the search space. They understand the pressures, the trends, the type of information that we need to know.’

This targeted innovation underpins Vuelio, providing an AI Visibility solution that’s specifically geared towards PR & Comms.

Lumina AI View helps you understand what AI knows about you, and where it learned it from. By tracking the sources that models such as Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude cite when representing you, it reveals where you stand — and how to impact this.

The battleground for brand relevance has officially shifted. By ensuring your earned media strategy is continuous, highly credible, and verified across multiple digital touchpoints, you can ensure your organisation, and the clients you work with, are not just indexed by the algorithms, but trusted by them.

Find out more about Vuelio’s Lumina solutions here. 

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Panel at Vuelio event 'How AI is changing the way we communicate'

How AI is changing the way we communicate: Balancing AI efficiency with human authenticity in PR

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AI is changing the way the creative industries communicate, with PRs, public affairs practitioners, marketers, and the media all battling to keep pace with innovation. To explore these changes, Vuelio’s latest in-person event brought together a panel of comms and media industry experts to provide perspectives on the challenges and opportunities that AI poses to modern communications.

The discussion was framed by an urgent reality, as Stuart Bruce, PR Futurist and Co-founder of Purposeful Relations, warned the audience:

‘Communications is standing on a precipice. Historically, we have not been an innovative industry. Both the scale and the speed of AI adoption needs to be a lot faster. AI is impacting you because organisations around you are using it — your competitors, your peers, your users, your customers. If you’re not understanding those shifts that are happening in society, in the economy, you are going to be left behind. We’ve got to get our act together quickly.’

Our panel featured leaders at the intersection of technology and storytelling. Nicole Yost, Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), provided the in-house viewpoint, sharing how a major charity balances the efficiency of AI with the critical need for trust in healthcare. Tshepo Tshabalala, Manager and Team Lead at JournalismAI (LSE), brought a global perspective on how newsrooms are responsibly implementing AI. Joining them was Stuart Bruce, who advises small agencies to international bodies on AI adoption and the emerging field of AI as a stakeholder.

Embracing the speed of change while retaining trust

The consensus among the panel was that AI has fundamentally accelerated the pace of communication, but that this speed comes at a cost to credibility. This mirrors broader trends in the industry that were at play before AI proliferated to its current extent (but have been magnified by its arrival), such as the spread of misinformation and the sheet volumes of content and stakeholders across channels; organisations must be increasingly strategic to ensure their messaging remains effective against this backdrop. Nicole highlighted that the BHF has made proactive moves to plot a direction through this changed landscape:

‘AI is changing how we work… It’s making everything faster. We’re finding that there’s so much content and data out there. How do we get hold of all that, and make sure we’re part of that conversation?’

She warned that this speed is a double-edged sword: ‘Content is abundant, but trust is scarce. One of the things that we’re noticing is that issues can escalate much more quickly with AI — misinformation can spread much more quickly, and it can often look very credible, which is dangerous.’

Tshepo-Tshabalala-Vuelio-panel

Tshepo observed a similar tension within journalism.

‘There’s a lot of noise, and noise comes in the form of misinformation. What’s also challenging is that we are both consumers and producers of content. When I was still a journalist in the newsroom, there was a bit of gatekeeping in terms of who could be a producer of content. Right now, anybody with a microphone is a podcaster, anybody with a phone can create content.

‘So, the challenge is not only from AI, but also from humans. Journalists are competing with the regular person who just picks up their phone, records, and uploads it onto the internet.

‘Right now, as a consumer and producer of content, I struggle to trust. It’s challenging for the people who don’t have journalist training where you are told to read widely, listen to everything, and then make your judgment.

‘The other challenge is that journalists are no longer just working in one silo – I now have to work across websites, social media, and with AI. That makes it a lot easier, in the sense that I can produce one article and then change that into various formats – a podcast, Tiktok, an Instagram post – but that adds to the problem of noise, a lot of information.

‘In combination with all this, AI is a double-edged sword: it’s good and bad for the media industry.’

AI as a stakeholder: A new mapping exercise

One emerging concept discussed was the idea of treating AI models not just as tools, but as stakeholders in their own right. This requires a shift in how comms teams approach media monitoring and SEO, moving toward Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

Stuart emphasised that traditional assumptions about earned media may no longer hold true for every brand.

‘100% you really need to do that stakeholder mapping exercise first,’ Stuart said.

‘For a trade body that we’ve just worked with, earned media was the third most important for them. Number one was owned media. You really have to do that mapping exercise and not just believe the hype.’

This strategic mapping is central to modern PR, where practitioners must understand how their brand appears in AI-generated answers.

Stuart warned that while data sources for traditional social listening are robust, mapping AI stakeholders is more complex because ‘none of the AI companies tell you how many prompts they’re getting on this topic. It’s telemetry’.

What can help make sense of this murky area are tools designed to bridge the data gap:

‘Vuelio is launching something soon that will help you to understand that (I’ve had a sneak peek),’ said Stuart.

‘Tools that are coming from the PR space are a lot more useful to PR people than some of the ones that are coming from the digital marketing and the search space – they understand the pressures, the trends, the type of information that we need to know.’

Authenticity and the resurgence of human storytelling

As AI-generated content becomes the norm, the panel suggested that ‘human’ elements (emotion, lived experience, and authenticity) will become a premium currency.

Nicole shared how the BHF uses human stories to cut through the digital noise:

‘Including case studies and real stories in your messaging is more valuable than ever, because it’s that human story, that human touch, that AI can’t replicate,’ she said, sharing the story of the BHF’s 65 red benches campaign, which featured real people with heart conditions.

‘Storytelling, the craft of that… human emotion and connection, authenticity, is having a resurgence. There is backlash against LinkedIn posts obviously written by AI, for example.’

Stuart agreed, suggesting that AI’s best role is as a creative spark rather than a final author:

‘Too often, we use AI for content creation, and that’s not actually the most useful place for it,’ he argued. ‘You, as a human, can write a more powerful story. Where AI comes in is you can create a prompt that suggests improvements, sparks ideas. That creative element right at the start cannot be replaced.’

Navigating Misinformation and Brand Equity

The rise of AI has made the battle against misinformation a top priority for PR professionals. This is particularly vital for organisations like the BHF. Nicole explained, ‘It’s a vulnerable moment for people when they’ve just been diagnosed. The last thing they need is nonsense coming through from the wrong source’.

To combat this, the BHF has worked with fellow organisations like Cancer Research UK and the Patient Information Forum on initiatives like Pif Ticks to signal trusted information to both humans and Large Language Models (LLMs).

As Tshepo noted, brand equity is increasingly tied to individuals.

‘Brands are struggling to remain as trusted brands, especially now that there’s a plethora of platforms, news organisations, news websites that are coming up, with everybody claiming that they are independent. People are trusting humans more than anything, especially with the rise of TikTok; a lot of people prefer trusting a human more than a brand.’

Building AI expert teams with training and ethics

Adopting AI is a cultural shift as well as a technological upgrade. The panel debunked the myth that AI proficiency is strictly the domain of younger members of the comms team:

‘There is no correlation with age and AI literacy whatsoever,’ Stuart said. ‘In fact, often, there is reluctance among younger people, because they’re the ones that are most afraid that AI is going to take their job.’

Both Nicole and Stuart stressed the importance of formal governance and training. The BHF has implemented bespoke training for all staff on areas like prompt engineering. Without such training, Stuart warned, ‘you open yourself up to lots of risks in terms of people using AI tools badly or unethically. You’ve really got to have that governance and training in place’.

The future of media relations

The relationship between PR and the media is also being rewritten. Reach plc’s use of its AI tool Guten to rewrite content for different titles serves as a prime example of how publishers are automating the newsroom. For PRs, this means transparency is paramount.

‘That transparency, and credibility, is a really big issue that the PR industry should be taking notice of,’ Stuart said. He suggested that future media lists might need to be split: ‘maybe you want to double your top tier media list: ten for AI, and ten for the humans’.

Tshepo concluded that the future belongs to those who can communicate with both:

‘AI can do a great job of analysing your site, what’s wrong and what’s good about it, what’s bad about it, about SEO and GEO. What it’s not as good at is actually helping you to create that compelling content that is going to work for both machines and humans. The reality is that, even in journalism, we are going to have to learn how to produce content for both; creating in a way that AI can read, and humans are going to love.’

Key Takeaways for PR and comms professionals from the experts

  • Conduct AI Stakeholder Mapping: Don’t assume your traditional media hierarchy still applies. Identify where your brand surfaces in LLM responses and prioritise the platforms (owned or institutional) that feed those models.
  • Lean into Authenticity: As AI scales content production, human-first storytelling, case studies, and emotional connection will be your greatest differentiators.
  • Invest in Governance and Training: Move beyond ad-hoc AI use. Implement formal guidelines and training to ensure ethical use and to help teams overcome the fear of displacement.
  • Prioritise Trust and Transparency: Use tools to monitor misinformation and work closely with publishers to ensure your content is cited correctly by AI agents.
  • Write for Two Audiences: Modern PR requires a dual approach — optimising content for machine readability (GEO) while maintaining the creative spark that engages human readers.

Want more on the growing influence of AI on PR and communications? Catch up with Vuelio webinar ‘AI as the new PR & Comms stakeholder‘.

Media trends from May from the Journalist Enquiry Service

Summer in focus, wellness experts and Father’s Day gift ideas: How to get UK press coverage in May 2026

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In a busy and constantly changing news cycle, knowing what to pitch when can be difficult. The ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service (also now part of the Vuelio platform too) gets hundreds of journalists using it each month looking for experts, case studies and more. To help with your media outreach, here is what the media were searching for in April and how you can secure coverage in May and beyond.

Summer in sight

Journalists, especially those that work on consumer and trade magazines, often look to get their content well in advance of publication and that’s why one of the main keywords for April was ‘summer’. Nearly 7% of the total requests this month contained ‘summer’, despite the change of season still being a month or so away.

Top themes in media requests for May 2026

It’s a pretty broad topic and requests varied from looking for luxury UK summer spa packages, to advice on how Britons can keep their gardens from drying out, as well as healthy recipes and a medical expert to speak about hay fever and summer cold symptoms. Journalists have sent requests from outlets such as Ideal Home, Capital FM, The Caterer, Newsweek, HELLO! Fashion, and The Times.

Going forward? The amount of summer-related requests will only continue to rise in May and beyond and last year over 7% of all requests included ‘summer’ in them. The focus from journalists tends to be more on topics such as gardening, travel, fashion, beauty, and food & drink but there should be plenty of opportunities to hook onto a news story.

May 2026 - What are journalists asking for?

Health & wellness experts in demand

It’s currently Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK and journalists have already been keen to not only cover ‘mental health’ but also ‘wellness’ too. ‘Mental health’ cropped up in 1.5% of all requests in April and ‘wellness’ appeared in just over 2%.

Both of these topics are regularly sought out by journalists on the service and last month wellness requests included looking for an expert in advertising/marketing in the health/wellness medical space and wellness retreats that fit into the ‘quietcation’ holiday trend. While mental health enquiries included asks for information on mental health support for retail staffers and a psychologist or therapist to talk about loneliness.

Going forward? Personal health and wellness is normally in demand around this time of year, and in May 2025, ‘wellness’ appeared in 2.5% of the total requests. This remains a priority topic for journalists this year and they tend to focus on getting experts to share their tips and advice. Make sure yours are ready to provide comment and you could feature in Psychologies, PA Media, Men’s Health, Red magazine, or Conde Nast Traveller, as they all sent enquiries last month.

May 2026 - which journalists are sending media requests?

Gift guide items needed for Father’s Day

It’s still over a month until Father’s Day in the UK (21 June) but journalists have already been sending in plenty of requests around the celebration. 2% of all enquiries in April were for ‘Father’s Day’ and categories like Men’s Interest and Consumer Technology performed well as a result of this.

The majority of requests are for products to feature in a gift guide but there is some variety in here with journalists looking for everything from gadgets and tech, to grooming products and food and drink. There are also several enquiries seeking experiences including travel and family days out and wine/whisky experiences. Bella, Great British Food, Travel & Retreat, woman & home, and Dadsnet all sent requests last month.

Going forward? The number of enquiries around Father’s Day will only rise this month – in May 2025, it cropped up in nearly 3% of the total requests. This is a great opportunity to get products featured in consumer media titles or share information about experiences or days out.

Other opportunities for PRs in May and beyond

The FIFA World Cup is now less than a month away from starting but journalists have already been keen to cover this football extravaganza with just over 1% of enquiries in April featuring ‘world cup’. Enquiries so far have ranged from looking into the financial situation behind the ticket prices to wanting information about the best places to watch the tournament at. If you’ve got football experts or former players, there is a good chance of media coverage in the lead up to the World Cup.

It’s not quite festival season yet but again, the media have been looking to get ahead of this and last month around 1% of the enquiries contained the keyword ‘festival’ in them. This is likely to ramp up in May (in May 2025, ‘festival’ cropped up in 2% of the total enquiries) as the first few music festivals and events take place. Journalists tend to look for products to review as festival essentials and accessories so have these ready to send out and you could get featured in a national media title.

Want to get the most out of the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service? Find out how here.

PR opportunities on the Vuelio Media Database

PR opportunities for media outreach: Updates on Vuelio for May

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Welcome to the May edition of our regular deep dive into what’s happening on the Vuelio platform. Here is everything you need to know about the latest Media Database enhancements, media moves, and the editorial trends currently dominating the Journalist Enquiry Service…

Extra outreach opportunities on the Vuelio Media Database

The Vuelio Research team’s commitment to data hygiene and expansion remains the backbone of the platform. In May, we saw substantial activity across both global and domestic markets.

Global outreach at a glance

  • 8,246 global contacts added.
  • 2,407 UK contacts updated for total accuracy.
  • 601 new outlet news feeds mapped.
  • 1,195,845 total media outlets now live on the platform.

Top growing international markets

Our Researchers have been busy verifying outlets across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. If you are planning international campaigns, take note of the growth in these key territories:

  • United States: +1,389 outlets
  • Italy: +575 outlets
  • South Korea: +525 outlets
  • France: +445 outlets
  • Brazil: +355 outlets

UK database spotlight

Within the UK, we have created 804 new positions and updated 2,157 existing roles. This includes a healthy mix of sectors:

  • National Press: 195 new roles; 469 updated.
  • Regional/Local Press: 100 new roles; 415 updated.
  • Magazines: 111 new roles; 348 updated.
  • Broadcast: 54 new roles; 407 updated.
  • Freelance: 45 new specialists added.

Project spotlight: National Press enrichment

The headline news for May is the completion of a National Press enrichment project, focusing on contacts and opportunities for PRs. We know that for many of our users, the national newsrooms are the holy grail of coverage; this project was specifically designed to bolster our coverage of the UK’s most commercially significant titles, ensuring that when you search our platform, you’re met with verified, high-value journalist data.

Alongside this, we’ve continued our global maintenance to ensure your international outreach remains as precise as your local campaigns.

We have added over 180 verified journalist contacts across high-profile national outlets, including:

  • The Times & Sunday Times
  • The Guardian & Observer
  • Daily Mail & Daily Mail Online
  • The Daily Telegraph
  • Financial Times
  • The Independent
  • Sky News
  • Associated Press

This ongoing commitment to national press enrichments means the platform will reflect newsroom reshuffles, new columnists, and beat changes at pace, giving you a distinct advantage in your outreach.

What journalists want now: Trends and insights

The Journalist Enquiry Service processed around 2,000 media requests in May, with consumer media leading the charge. If you’re looking for a hook for your next pitch, these are the themes currently filling up journalists’ news and features:

1. Summer lifestyle and travel planning

Journalists are already commissioning heavily for the summer holidays. We are seeing a high volume of requests for outdoor activities, seasonal lifestyle features, and travel advice.

If you have travel clients or outdoor products, the time to pitch is now.

2. Home and spring refresh

The Home category on the Journalist Enquiry Service remains a core editorial pillar. Requests are focused on interior design, cleaning hacks, and practical home improvement.

3. AI & digital transformation

In the B2B and tech space, AI has moved beyond a niche topic to the mainstream. We are seeing constant requests for expert commentary on how AI is impacting the workplace and specific industry sectors, so get your pitches ready to send to journalists writing about this.

AI is also impacting PR and comms – don’t forget to catch up with our latest Vuelio webinar ‘AI as the new PR and comms stakeholder‘.

4. Health, wellness & outdoor fitness

As the weather improves in the UK (we hope…), editorial focus has shifted toward running, seasonal health trends, and manageable wellness routines.

Industry news: People on the move in the media

Keeping track of who is sitting in the editor’s chair is vital for successful media relations. Here are some significant moves from the last month:

  • BBC Radio 2: Sara Cox has been announced as the host of the weekday Breakfast Show (6:30–9:30 am), launching this summer.
  • ASOS: Jazmin Duribe has been promoted to Senior Editorial Manager. She is particularly interested in hearing about exhibitions, films, TV, and fashion news for their culture roundups.
  • The Guardian: Micha Frazer-Carroll joins as Assistant Editor and writer of The Long Wave newsletter. Her focus is on international Black stories across politics, arts, and lifestyle.
  • Family Traveller: Harriet Mallinson is the new Editor of Familytraveller.com. She is looking for family-friendly events, products, and media stays worldwide.

Want more media moves as they happen? Sign up to our weekly Media Bulletin for updates.

Industry Challenges

On broader shifts in the media landscape, announcements of job cuts and restructures at Bauer Media Group and the BBC, and Ian Katz (Chief Content Officer at Channel 4) set to step down this autumn underlines how a live platform is more effective than static media lists. As newsrooms consolidate, knowing exactly who is still on each journalist beat is paramount.

Proactive planning: May action plan for PRs

To make the most of these updates within the platform, we recommend the following steps for your May outreach:

  • Refresh your National media lists: With over 180 new contacts added in the Enrichment Project, your existing lists for The Times or The Telegraph may be out of date. Re-run your searches to find new targets.
  • Leverage summer media request leads: Align your experts with the demand for Summer lifestyle-related contributions. If you have a spokesperson who can talk about outdoor wellbeing or seasonal travel, get them in front of the journalists currently using the Journalist Enquiry Service. Requests to PRs are now directly flowing through into the Vuelio platform, giving you more opportunities to get in touch and connect with journalists.
  • Explore international markets: If your brand has a presence in Italy or South Korea, now is the time to explore our expanded database in those regions.

The media landscape is moving faster than ever, but with the right intelligence, those shifts become opportunities rather than obstacles. Ensure you are utilising the latest verified data on the platform to make your next campaign your most successful yet.