The world…it is a’chagin’! All you have to do is open Linkedin, and you are met with a flurry of “experts” saying PR is dead. Long live marketing!
And sure, the lines between PR and marketing are becoming increasingly blurred, especially for those of us who do more than earned media. But PR isn’t dead. Far from it.
Things are definitely changing. If you spend your days pitching media and having less success than in the past, it’s because earned media has gotten even more challenging. And, let’s be real, traditional media relations probably is going the way of Google+ and Vine. But the entire industry is made up of more than earned media, so you don’t have to cry into your milk just yet.
However, you do have to understand how the media is shifting, how brands are taking back control of their own narratives, and what role you play as it all evolves around you.
“The Press Doesn’t Advance Business”
In a recent email, Vanessa Friedman, the chief fashion critic at The New York Times, revealed that she was excluded from the pre-spring collection that Oscar de la Renta showed. When she saw that the event had happened because she saw it on TikTok, Friedman said she reached out to Alex Bolen, the CEO of Oscar de la Renta. She wanted to understand why she wasn’t invited to the show.
He responded, “I don’t much see the point of engaging with the fashion press when they require a different show than what we require to bring to our customers. I don’t know that having the press advances our business interests. We don’t really engage with magazines at this point. We don’t have editors in to try to convince them to pull clothes. It’s not our priority. We want to focus on our customers and inspire them to buy.”
I don’t know that having the press advances our business interests.
Oof.
The Reach of Social Exceeds Traditional
There is something to be said for this, though. I searched “Oscar de la Renta pre-spring 2025” just on TikTok, and there are hundreds of videos about the show (and the dresses are gorgeous—I am coveting a couple of them). Guess how much of the content is shared by traditional media? None. Not one.
Instead, you will find videos from people who participated in the event, such as the makeup artists and the florists. Influencers provide behind-the-scenes looks at what happens before the models walk the catwalk. Fashion students offer their takes on the show. Artists recreate the designs in watercolors and colored pencils. Lots and lots and lots of people who love what they see give insight to their followers. And, because the traditional media weren’t there, there was a lot of content shared by those who were there.
For instance, Allure shared the Rare Beauty videos of their experts getting the models ready for the show because they were not there, and that’s the best they can do to get the information out to their audience.
I did some quick math to see if the views could compete with the reach of traditional media. As of this recording, there were more than three million views. While that number doesn’t compete with the circulation of the big fashion magazines, we know that more than three million people watched the videos. We have no idea how many subscribers actually read the articles. We can make some assumptions, of course, but the writing is on the wall.
Earned Media In 2024 and Beyond
At the same time…it’s silly to sidestep traditional media, who still have a place when it comes to helping brands create awareness and credibility. There is no reason that Friedman and her colleagues couldn’t have been invited to the show, even if Bolen doesn’t believe that having them there would advance their business interests.
This comes back to the age-old conversation about correlating brand reputation and awareness with sales. It can’t be done, at least not seamlessly and effortlessly. And it’s challenging to say, “Well, the New York Times has 141 million subscribers” when you can easily tell how many TikTok videos advanced business interests.
But brand awareness and reputation still matter. Yes, influencers, fashion students, artists, and consumers help with that, but traditional media provides credibility that almost no one else can do.
They should co-exist.
This demonstrates a massive shift in earned media and how we should approach our work. It’s why the PESO Model© is so important because it allows you to fully integrate a program that reaches audiences wherever they are—reading Vogue or W or watching TikTok videos made by strangers.
As Corporate Silence Prevails
It’s not just the fashion industry experiencing a shift in earned media. Columbia Journalism Review recently analyzed how many organizations are opting out of commenting on articles. Or, as author Paul Farhi calls it, the “growing trend of corporate silence.”
They set out to learn how many organizations no longer respond to journalist requests, so stories are forced to run with “Company X did not respond to a request for comment.”
They found this: “A Nexis database search of hundreds of news sources for the term “did not respond to a request for comment” returned 728 mentions in May 2014. The same search for May 2019 produced 1,590 hits. In May of this year, the number had grown to 3,616, indicating a fivefold increase in ten years.”
The phrase appears in news stories about every subject in all sorts of media outlets—from newspapers to blogs. The rising tide of nonresponses coincides with the rise in what we discussed earlier—or what many journalists call the Beyonce movement. This is when the subject of any news, starting first with celebrities, bypasses the journalist to publish their own news.
It’s not the full story, though. Having experienced times where a story has run with “Company X did not respond to a request for comment,” I can tell you that those reporters unequivocally did not call for comment. They just ran the story and used that phrase to make it look like they called and we didn’t respond.
And Media Becomes More Fragmented
Unethical reporting aside, it does represent a growing trend. PRSA agrees that the nonresponsive surge signals a shift in earned media. This shift says, “Hey, I know we used to rely on you, but we’re good now. Thanks.” They believe they can achieve their business objectives without engaging with journalists, just as Oscar de la Renta has done. It’s shortsighted, but it’s a trend we need to consider in our earned media efforts.
Compounding the issue is the increasing fragmentation of information. A recent report by Axios revealed that there are now at least 12 distinct media bubbles—or places where people get their information, depending on age, education, income, where they live, and more.
Each bubble caters to different audiences with divergent realities and interpretations of events. This fragmentation means that even if an organization engages with traditional media, the message may only reach some of your audience. Gone are the days of reaching most of your target audience with a handful of media outlets.
The Answer Lies In the PESO Model
Of course, this presents a unique challenge—and an opportunity. How do you ensure your message is heard in an environment with so many splintered audiences?
The answer lies in…dun dun dun…the PESO Model!
One of the biggest changes we made earlier this year with the refreshed model was expanding earned media to include more than earned media. It’s still earned so it doesn’t include most influencer marketing, but it does include TikTok news anchors, content, and the micro-influencer who has a lot of sway but doesn’t have millions of followers.
This allows you to share your news where it resonates with your target audiences—newspapers, evening news, blogs, podcasts, social media, late-night talk, or broadcast news.
Traditional media relations, on its own, may no longer be effective, but when integrated with new ways of reaching target audiences, you can continue to build strong, credible brands.
Earned Media Strategy Remains
And that’s the moral of the story: the tools are changing. The world is evolving faster than ever. It sometimes feels like we can’t keep up. But do you know what stays the same? The strategic reason we do what we do: building relationships, creating compelling narratives, building trust, and maintaining credibility.
I’m not at all surprised Alex Bolen, like every other CEO in the world, wants to focus on the things he can directly correlate to sales. We’re going to have a reckoning in a few years when these leaders realize that the things they’ve ignored—brand awareness, trust, reputation, authority—are the reason they’re no longer on the radar.
Until then, integrate other earned opportunities into your traditional media relations approach and bide your time.