I’ve come across a higher-than-normal amount of companies unwittingly torpedoing their PR programs of late.
Important to note, these are not dummies. Their troubles stem from the fact that consumer tech PR is a competitive game undergoing significant change.
It got me thinking about the main things that kill tech PR programs in 2025.
Here are 3 that jump out:
1) Premium-priced products with weak creative and poor auxiliary assets.
By all means, sell your tech product at a high price. But understand if you do, there is going to be a lot more scrutiny from the media and wider public. Research we conducted about the buying behaviors of US tech consumers in Q1 2025 (surveying 1001 Americans) spoke to the primacy of price as a purchase decision factor.
This means everything around the product has to be done in a way that conveys “premium.”
Strong creative is non-negotiable if you want to price high. The collateral damage involved in getting this wrong is real. I cannot tell you how often this year we’ve seen well-engineered products get no love from the media because the creative didn’t feel premium.
You must invest in strong brand assets if you want to price high. Likewise, you have to ensure supporting assets like instruction manuals and owner’s manuals use grammatically correct, clear English.
The best engineering in the world cannot make up for bad branding and poorly executed supporting assets around a product.
2) Ignoring the interplay between AI search and earned media.
The latest data I’ve seen (Muck Rack, Dec 2025) shows journalistic sources appear in over 25% of AI answers across major LLMs, which are now the main gateway to discovery online. You have to target media that LLMs will scrape. New, seemingly weird, outlets matter now and merely chasing impressions and vanity titles is played out.
Do not hire any PR person – whether in-house or agency – who does not know about how AI search and core PR activities are intersecting. You would be surprised by the number of PR people who are clueless about this.
Muck Rack found that there was only a two percent overlap between the journalists most scraped by major LLMs and the journalists most pitched by PR teams.
While Generative Engine Optimization is a new thing, best practices are emerging and your PR team should know them.
3) Impatience.
Unfortunately, impatience ain’t going anywhere. It is part of life in PR and has been undermining programs for a long time
PR efforts take a long time to get started and show results. Your PR team are not software developers or engineers you can beat the fuck out of to speed up processes. Do not expect coverage for 3 months after you start with an agency.
This is not performance marketing that can be turned on and off like a faucet.
If these issues are occurring in your organization, know that they are highly fixable and can be turned around. My team and I are around to chat. Also let me know if you see other PR program killers lurking out there.