Stop Writing Media Strategies
Imma hold your hand while I say this – if your ‘media strategy’ is still a channel plan with a media list, you are probably solving the wrong problem. I say that with love, and we have all done it.
The question is no longer just where can we place this story? It is how does this story actually move? Who notices it, who checks it, who gives it credibility, who retells it, and is it visible to LLMs?
It won’t have passed you by that attention has massively fragmented (!). Most stories are no longer even met directly from the source, but through platforms, creators, comments, search, forums, AI summaries and via the tiny 6.5-inch screen we all desperately try to maintain a healthy relationship with.
That changes the job of earned. Social and video networks now outrank publisher sites and apps for online news, 54% to 51%, and AI is becoming a new front door to information, with nearly 9 in 10 AI citations coming from earned media. With all this immense change, earned can no longer just mean media relations in the narrowest sense. It is not only about where a story lands, but where it travels, who carries it, how it gets checked and whether it survives being retold. Where we once relied on legacy media as a megaphone, we now need to think more microphones.
Those microphones only work if the story is worth picking up, and stories are only worth picking up if they carry culture. There is a ‘human journey’ to real influence and it’s centred around three things that keep feeding each other: culture, reputation and influence. Culture decides what people care about. Reputation decides whether they believe you. Influence is what happens when they choose to carry the story on. When it works, the loop keeps moving, shaping what a brand means and why it matters.
This is why ‘influence strategies’ should be replacing ‘media strategies’. Media absolutely still matters but it now sits within a much bigger system, and stories need to encourage and withstand being retold.
Measurement needs the same reset – but that’s a whole other post. For now, let’s just say we clearly have to stop worshipping ‘more reach’ and ‘yoy volume uplift’ (no seriously, please). The better question is whether the work shifted visibility, trust, conversation, behaviour or reputation.
My favourite thing is – influence is still earned, and the craft of earned still holds. But let’s think less blanket coverage, more patchwork quilt.
