Catherine F.

Timeless. MarComms. Read my essay, 'On Psychomarketing: The Psychology Behind Financial Storytelling'⬇️

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

I just published an essay on #psychomarketing explaining how storytelling in private markets engages the brain to build trust and drive conviction.

I share frameworks and tactics that actually work from my experience in the alts.

Read here ➡️https://t.co/zM4VBgR1mx

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

Watch my podcast episode where I talk about all things #psychomarketing, trust and being audacious! ⬇️
https://t.co/Lo8i0wwxQU

[𝕭𝖎𝖗𝖉𝖞 𝖛𝖘 𝕭𝖆𝖇𝖞𝖑𝖔𝖓 @mary_got_grace]

don't use ai to write, use your childhood trauma like the rest of us

[Sheila of the Most High @sheilatebra]

I see exactly why Jesus often withdrew regularly. People will literally drain you if you let them.

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

I wrote a piece on what it feels like to have to work for a title you already hold.

On womanhood, identity, and the tension between being as you are and becoming what the world responds to ⬇️
https://t.co/c6YAgy8YqO

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@TheChiefNerd lol

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

So many good nuggets for comms (& marketing) people⬇️

[Carly Martinetti @PRcarly]

PREDICTION: Gartner says that PR and earned media budgets will DOUBLE by 2027... and the reason why should matter to every marketer still pouring money into paid channels.

Their latest report lays it out: mass adoption of AI as a replacement for traditional search is going to force a fundamental reallocation of marketing spend away from paid, toward earned.

THE EVIDENCE:
Between the first half of 2024 and first half of 2025, ChatGPT traffic grew 608%, while Google and Bing both declined.

Muck Rack's research shows that more than 95% of links cited in AI-generated answers come from non-paid sources, with half of all AI citations coming from content published in the last 11 months. And per Semrush, AI search visitors convert at 4.4x the rate of traditional organic search.

We've been watching this play out with our own clients... one saw 38% of their leads this year come directly from earned media surfacing in ChatGPT queries (we got them in the NYT, WSJ, Wired, Forbes, TechCrunch, and others).

WHAT THIS MEANS:
Gartner is essentially telling CMOs: the channel your customers use to find you is changing to AI; and earned media is what AI trusts.

Brands still treating PR as a "nice to have" line item below paid media and SEO are in store for an awakening (I was going to say “rude awakening” but that would be… rude).

For PR teams already doing the work, every placement you secure isn't just building credibility with human readers anymore; it’s informing the AI systems that are increasingly deciding which brands get recommended and which ones don't exist.

And for marketers who spent the last decade buying their way into "earned-looking" content... native ads, sponsored posts, advertorials pretending to be editorial... AI is seeing right through it.

THE NEW REALITY:
We're watching a once-in-a-generation shift in how people discover brands.

The companies investing in real earned media (that is, true third-party validation) are the ones building a moat.

Every month without it?

Good luck catching up.

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@elizarose159630 This!

[Carly Martinetti @PRcarly]

NEW RESEARCH: A team at the University of Toronto ran over a thousand consumer queries through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google, then classified every single source each engine cited as Brand, Earned, or Social.

If you work in PR, marketing, or comms, you need to see these numbers:

THE FINDINGS:
In U.S. consumer electronics queries, AI search cited earned media 92% of the time. Brand-owned content? Single digits. Social media? Essentially zero.

In automotive, it was 82% earned. Again, zero social citations.

Compare that to Google's traditional results for the same queries: roughly 39% brand, 15% social, and 45% earned.

A balanced mix.

But AI search isn't balanced.

When someone asks ChatGPT (and others) about your product category, the answer is being built almost entirely from third-party journalism and editorial coverage.

AND IT GETS WORSE:
Per a recent @Ahrefs analysis, Google's own AI Overviews now correlate with a 58% reduction in click-through rates for top-ranking pages.

And @PewResearch found that users click results only 8% of the time when an AI summary appears, versus 15% without one.

Even traditional Google search is starting to behave like AI search. And AI search overwhelmingly trusts earned media.

WHAT THIS MEANS:
The playbook that dominated the last decade:
- SEO-optimized owned content
- Sponsored posts
- Social media "thought leadership"

…is being structurally devalued by the technology billions of people are adopting right now.

Meanwhile, the thing many CMOs have been quietly deprioritizing? Earned media.

Real journalist relationships. Genuine third-party validation. That's now the primary currency of AI visibility.

And most companies are still pouring budget into the channels AI ignores while cutting spend on the one channel AI actually trusts.

If you don't have a real earned media strategy (NOT a content marketing strategy dressed up as PR) you're already falling behind in the most important search shift in a generation.

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@Nithya_Shrii Amen to this

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@Nithya_Shrii ‼️

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@OrevaZSN This!!!

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@AuthorGFAllen ✨

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@Pejuola_a This!

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@sundeep I noticed this too!

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@ansamenow ‼️

[Felix @FMwenge]

Do the work.
Do it well please.
Let them complain about other things, not the quality of your work.

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@uzoart Yes, yes and yes ✨

[Catherine F. @Catherine_Efe]

@jack Agreed