Jackson Wightman | Public Relations for Technology Companies

Feb 02

How Edward Bernays Might Attack a Foe in the LLM Era

By Jackson Wightman AI & Search (GEO), Industry Commentary, PR Strategy No Comments

I just finished the Edward Bernays episode of the Founders podcast. If you don’t know Founders, go check it out, and thank me later. Bernays, who is often cited alongside Ivy Lee as the Founder of the PR profession, was a complicated person. He did some ethically questionable things and…

Jan 28

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Measuring Narrative Drift Index (NDI): A Practical GEO Framework / Part Two

By Jackson Wightman AI & Search (GEO), Industry Commentary, PR Strategy No Comments

Part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 can be found here Editor’s note:This is part two of a two-part series on narrative drift. Part one established why narrative drift is a GEO-presence problem and how it forms. Now we are into quant-ville This piece focuses on how to detect…

Jan 27

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Narrative Drift: A GEO-Presence Problem / Part One

By Jackson Wightman AI & Search (GEO), PR Strategy No Comments

This piece is Part 1 of a two-part series on narrative drift and the problem of AI-mediated brand meaning. It is possible both parts of the series are complete shit. I can't quite decide, but I am certain the bigger problem I'm addressing is real. Part one explains what narrative…

Jan 19

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You Can’t Optimize What You Never Created: PR, Demand, and the 2026 Growth Gap

By Jackson Wightman Industry Commentary, Influencer & Performance PR, PR Strategy No Comments

“Our marketing spend has to focus on tactics that drive sales.” Well, sure. I get it. Unfortunately, it’s usually a synonym for, “We focus on bottom-of-funnel performance marketing tactics where attribution is easy.” For a few reasons, many consumer tech CMOs continue to define marketing effectiveness almost exclusively by activities…

Jan 16

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Share of Explanation: Influence belongs to the brands that shape LLM understanding

By Jackson Wightman Uncategorized No Comments

For most of my 25 years in PR, many brands and folks in the biz have assumed visibility equals influence. If a brand appeared frequently enough, in the right outlets, influence would follow. That logic was always spurious, but it breaks down badly in the AI-search era. As search, research,…

Jan 09

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Swimming through marketing bullshit at CES

By Jackson Wightman CES No Comments

I’m back from CES. Thankfully, still not dead. The show drove home a few reminders about things I am hoping we see less of this year: “AI-powered” everything. From freaky dolls to sex toys do we really need AI in all the things? I guess so, but perhaps we can…

Jan 02

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From Attention to Memory: The Central Theme of Tech PR in 2026

By Jackson Wightman AI & Search (GEO), PR Strategy No Comments

I’m not much for year-end reminiscing, and I’m usually pretty bad at predicting the future. But as I get ready for another CES, I feel unusually confident about one thing. 2026 is going to lock in a real shift in PR. We’re moving out of the attention era and into…

Jan 02

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Narrative Consistency Score: The Most Important PR Metric for 2026

By Jackson Wightman PR Strategy No Comments

Noise for the sake of noise has always been stupid. Now, in the era of LLMs as the primary gateway to the internet, it is flat-out dangerous. We see a lot of consumer tech companies “doing good PR” and getting coverage. It appears as though everything is fine, yet, when…

Jan 02

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The Brand Narrative Stack (aka RAG Bot Candy)

By Jackson Wightman AI & Search (GEO) No Comments

Attention and volume are dying Gods. Narrative consistency is the usurper that’s likely to inherit and restore their broken down palaces. As we know, AI search engines are basically pattern-matching monkeys working at a ridiculous scale. They draw from what already exists. This is why top consumer tech companies are…

Dec 15

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How to Navigate CES 2026 Media Showcases: A Complete Guide to Handling Media at Pepcom, ShowStoppers, and CES Unveiled

By Jackson Wightman CES, PR Strategy No Comments

CES is almost here. Yikes. I say that every year, because it’s a big one for the team at Proper. We’ve got more clients than ever attending the major media showcases this year, so they’ve been top of mind. Events like CES Unveiled, Pepcom, and ShowStoppers offer a chance to…