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AI Agents will increasingly be acting as personal shoppers rather than merely surfacing your brand in relevant searches.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know AI search is an important part of online discovery for brands now.
Ummm right …. but what is AI PR again?
In days of yore (you know, before every marketing conversation turned into an AI conversation) PR and SEO often operated in separate, yet decidedly interwoven lanes.
Coverage from major media could help build a brand’s visibility, reputation, and, when it included useful links, its search presence.
SEO guys and gals focused attention on keywords, site structure, structured markup, and boring metadata.
PR teams focused on building relationships with the public and the press, generated colorful storylines, crafted creative imagery that captured the attention of an adoring audience, and sometimes managed social media accounts as well.
But as you know, all that is changing. Efforts to improve visibility in AI-driven discovery are often called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI search features can draw on web searches, product information, and other sources to synthesize answers.
Earned media and third-party credibility can give those systems outside information about your brand. But your own website still has a job to do. Product facts, pricing, availability, and clear answers to customer questions help establish whether your product actually fits what someone is looking for.
» For an alternative perspective on how information can be manipulated, see Anthony Vinci’s Opinion essay in The New York Times this week. And for a brand-level reminder that lore needs a paper trail, here’s my recent post.
AI shopping tools can also help consumers move from recommendations to purchases. In some approved integrations, shoppers can check out without leaving the AI experience. In others, the AI tool sends them to the retailer’s own checkout. The retailer can still handle payment, fulfillment, returns, and customer service.
» Note: Outside shopping agents are not being welcomed everywhere. More on this below.
So, AI PR is indeed a thing. Think of it as public relations with another audience in the mix: the AI systems helping people decide what to read, trust, and buy.
AI can gather information from various spaces before making a recommendation to shoppers.
The Anatomy of the Marketing Shift
Traditionally, pages were optimized for search engines whose algorithms were constantly being updated. Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo were all like traffic cops → directing people toward pages their systems considered relevant. Your website’s accessibility, content, links, and overall usefulness helped determine whether traffic arrived at your digital doorstep.
Now, when a consumer asks an AI tool for “the best clean skincare lines for sensitive skin,” it can gather information from multiple sources and deliver a synthesized answer. The evolution of the “Google search” is becoming more like convincing an overworked middleman that your products fit the customer’s needs, while giving it credible reasons to include them in the shortlist.
That’s where PR can help.
Your website explains what you sell.
Outside coverage adds context, corroborates your story, and introduces your brand to people and systems that might otherwise overlook it.
Those outside sources might include editorial coverage, consumer reviews, and independent digital communities. Think Vogue, Allure, People, a respected trade publication, or a genuinely useful conversation about a product. Their value depends on the relevance and quality of the information, not simply the size of the masthead. And a review or forum comment isn’t automatically unbiased just because it appears outside your website.
In other words, the public footprint traditional PR has spent decades building can also become source material for AI discovery. PR now has a role in search visibility that extends into AI-generated answers.
The Structure vs. The Trust
It helps to view the online marketplace like a garden. Your technical SEO is the structural framework, aka a trellis. It helps search systems access and understand your pages. Clear product descriptions, accurate pricing, and well-organized information help them understand what you actually offer.
But your PR is the eye-catching boxwood: an established presence that helps anchor your brand’s reputation. Credible coverage and outside recognition can give people, and the systems answering their questions, more reasons to take your brand seriously.
Neither the trellis nor the boxwood guarantees an AI recommendation. But together, they give your brand a stronger foundation.
The Trellis (Technical SEO) | The Boxwood (AI PR) |
|---|---|
Helps systems access and understand your content. | Provides outside coverage and corroboration. |
Clear site structure, accurate product facts, and appropriate schema. | Earned media, relevant reviews, and credible third-party discussion. |
Helps communicate what you sell and whom it suits. | Helps establish why your brand deserves consideration. |
One useful reality check: Google says existing SEO fundamentals still apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode. There’s no special AI schema you need to add to qualify. Appropriate structured data is useful, but it should match the information people can actually see on the page.
The Takeaway for Lifestyle Brands
If you’re the manager of a lifestyle brand or the founder behind one, PR has another potential contribution to make. A feature in a boutique lifestyle magazine, a deep-dive interview, or a useful discussion in an online forum can become information an AI search tool finds and draws on.
That does not mean every mention becomes model training data. Finding an article during a search and incorporating it into a model’s training are different processes. Nor does a placement guarantee that your brand will be cited or recommended.
To compete in AI discovery, lifestyle brands need a strategy that feeds both sides of the equation:
Keep your framework clean: Make your pages accessible, use appropriate schema markup, and maintain clear product information. Keep prices, availability, descriptions, and product feeds current wherever your catalog appears.
Build earned trust: Seek relevant external coverage and genuine customer feedback. When credible third parties discuss your product, packaging, and brand narrative, they reach human readers and create additional sources that AI search tools may consult.
And there’s now another practical tool in the mix. In its September 16 update, Google announced wider availability of AI performance insights in Merchant Center, including in the U.S. Retailers can use these insights to compare their brand’s share of voice across surfaces including AI Mode and AI Overviews.
The same update encourages richer conversational product attributes in merchant feeds. For a lifestyle brand, that’s a useful reminder to explain the needs, occasions, and preferences your products serve, alongside the basic specs.
The control that AI agents have over customer data is of concern to many retailers.
But Not Everyone Wants an Outside Robot Rifling Through Their Customer Data
Yes, and …. just when you were all psyched to spend the weekend launching into a new marketing plan for 2027, here comes a new wrinkle.
While lots of retailers are scrambling to get their digital ducks in a line, The Wall Street Journal has been reporting that many retailers are taking different approaches to outside AI shopping agents.
WELCOMING OUTSIDE AGENTS: The Journal reports that Walmart, Gap Inc., and Best Buy have publicized partnerships with Meta’s Muse. Its reporting also describes QVC and HSN as welcoming agentic shopping.
RESTRICTING OUTSIDE AGENTS: The Journal reports restrictions at Amazon, eBay, and Kohl’s. Amazon has its own AI shopping assistant, Alexa for Shopping, formerly called Rufus. The disagreement is partly about whose agent gets access and under what conditions.
CHOOSING APPROVED INTEGRATIONS: Tapestry, owner of Coach and Kate Spade, illustrates the distinction. Although the Journal describes restrictions on agents completing purchases on its brands’ websites, Tapestry announced on September 16 that U.S. shoppers can buy Coach and Kate Spade products directly inside Google Search, including AI Mode, and Gemini. The integration uses Google Pay and requires explicit consumer approval for each transaction.
There’s another plot twist: OpenAI announced in March that it was shifting toward product discovery and allowing merchants to use their own checkout experiences. Its merchant page describes purchases being completed on merchant-owned websites or apps. Some consumer documentation still mentions Instant Checkout for eligible products and merchants, so the arrangement depends on the experience and integration. AI shopping is evolving in more than one direction.
Concerns about control make sense in terms of branding and customer loyalty. Retailers have spent enormous amounts building customer relationships, loyalty programs, first-party data, and branded shopping experiences. When an outside AI agent inserts itself between retailer and customer, it can influence which products even make the shortlist and how the customer experiences the purchase.
Restrictions on outside shopping agents don’t mean an AI tool will never recommend those retailers’ products. I personally have purchased a fair number of items for my office from Amazon recently, based on recommendations from Gemini. I still prefer to complete those purchases directly through Amazon, where I can confirm my shipping benefits and other account perks.
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Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co
a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 29 years.