Sword and the Script

04/28/2026

People who download content don’t read it for about a week later. The time between download and consumption grew from 38.5 hours in 2024 to 47.7 hours in 2025. That works out to 5.96 days, or about a week later.

Registrations for gated content dipped in 2025; prospects and customers download gated content and read it a week later.

04/21/2026

You researched the reporter.

You wrote a custom and personalized pitch.

The subject matter is something the reporter covers and it's a hot topic.

You hit send...and nothing happens.

Should you follow up? Here's what the data says.

https://www.swordandthescript.com/2026/04/follow-up-pr-pitches/

Surveys of reporters consistently show that a majority say one follow-up, a few days later, is okay, but being too aggressive will get you blacklisted.

04/14/2026

Survey of 897 reporters: 9 in 10 journalists say they delete these PR pitches

However, no response isn’t the same thing as “not interested,” it’s more like a “not right now.”

https://www.swordandthescript.com/2026/04/journalists-pr-pitches/

It takes time to build familiarity and prove your relevance in media relations; no response isn’t the same thing as “not interested,” it’s more like a “not right now.”

04/07/2026

The economic outlook for marketing from the latest CMO survey:

Point No. 3: Businesses have doubled down on customer marketing
The report traces policy uncertainty to shifts in marketing spend:

“In response to this uncertainty, almost half of marketers are pulling back their targeting strategies to focus on increasing the loyalty of their existing customers rather than pursuing new customers, especially new geographic markets. Growth spending is following a similar pattern with companies spending almost 60% of their budgets on market pe*******on strategies that focus on selling more of existing products and services to existing customers. This inward orientation is a consistent theme across the 2026 findings.”

This also shows up more clearly later in the survey, with findings around customer retention. Marketing leaders rate their company’s customer retention efforts higher than customer acquisition efforts. This is especially prominent in the B2B marketing sector as both B2B product and services outperformed the overall average.

https://www.swordandthescript.com/2026/04/economic-outlook-marketing/

Marketing doubled down on customer marketing as economic optimism fluctuates; businesses see more value in marketing, as the functions influence and responsibilities grow

03/31/2026

Summary of PR technology news for Q1:

1. Signal AI acquires Memo for readership data

2. Muck Rack rolls out new AI features for media relations

3. Onclusive finally sews its acquisitions together

4. PR tech briefs: Meltwater, Notified, TVEyes, Prowly, Omnicom

5. New vendor survey data and reports

Signal AI acquires Memo; Muck Rack rolls out new AI features; Onclusive sews its acquisitions together; plus PR tech briefs

03/26/2026

This idea is a good reminder that a poor plan executed well tends to outperform a perfect plan executed poorly

https://monthlymarcom.substack.com/p/the-faux-expert-crisis-doers-top

03/24/2026

Hold the utopia!

Study finds AI-generated content performs poorly in search.

An experiment using generative AI to produce a whopping 2,000 articles and evaluating the results over 16 months found that all that AI content generated a measly 1,062 clicks.

That's less than one click per article over 1.5 years!

https://www.swordandthescript.com/2026/03/ai-generated-content/

Search Engine Land

Generative AI content is indistinguishable and pushes prospects and customers toward familiar brands and trusted sources

03/17/2026

10 things PR teams need from clients to do good work

1. Access to information
2. Responsiveness, especially to reporters
3. Impeccable timing
4. Let PR lead new announcements
5. An appetite for risk
6. A bias for action
7. Be open to feedback
8. Avoid second-guessing pitches
9. Consistency and patience
10. Honesty

Good client management skills are essential; however, even the best PR professional in the world is only going to be as good as the client’s collaboration.

More: https://www.swordandthescript.com/2026/03/good-pr-work/

03/10/2026

Gartner is pretty optimistic about PR.

The analyst firm sees generative AI replacing traditional search and it believes PR is the best function to help businesses navigate LLMs. The company predicts earned media budgets will double.

Analyst firm sees generative AI replacing traditional search, believes PR is the best function to help businesses navigate LLMs; predicts earned media budgets will double

03/03/2026

There’s little tolerance for mistakes in business, which is also a mistake https://www.swordandthescript.com/2026/03/business-mistake/

The next time a team or individual contributor fails spectacularly, put your criticism aside and instead ask them this question: What did we learn from this mistake?

02/24/2026

Easy cliff notes for busy PR professionals from:

- State of PR Report by Meltwater
- State of AI in PR by Muck Rack
- State of Digital PR by BuzzStream

The latter has a stat that's a real head turner:

>>> 16% of PR respondents said they pay for backlinks!

Don't do that. It's not worth the pain you will eventually get.

https://www.swordandthescript.com/2026/02/state-of-pr-statistics/