The PR playbook for getting recommended by AI with Unusual AI’s Keller Maloney

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In this episode, Keller Maloney joins host Jason Mudd to discuss why PR drives AI recommendations and how earned media and brand trust shape how AI models talk about brands.

Tune in to learn more!

Meet Our Guest:
Our episode guest is Keller Maloney, co-founder of Unusual, a platform that helps brands understand and influence how AI models perceive them. Keller has a background in AI interpretability research and works with marketers and PR teams navigating AI as a new audience.

Five things you’ll learn from this episode:

1. AI as a new audience: Why PR has to persuade machines, not just humans
2. Why the AI era goes beyond traditional SEO
3. How AI determines and delivers recommendations
4. The two key hurdles brands must overcome for AI visibility
5. PR’s renaissance: Thriving in an AI-driven world

Quotables

“If you give AI models clear claims, real proof, consistent messaging, they reward your brand like a human reviewer would. You can just do what PR folks have always been excellent at doing, which is building a brand.” — Keller Maloney

“The first thing that you need to make sure of when marketing to a customer is awareness. If they don't know you exist, then there's no hope in having them buy your product. The second is specificity, to actually get recommended. When ChatGPT is having a conversation with a specific user about their specific problem, in order for that model to recommend you, they need to know that your product or your solution is the best solution for their user's very specific problem.” — Keller Maloney

“The real key is earned media. It’s like convincing a human. Earned media and a corroboration across trusted sources goes a really long way in helping these models find out about your brand and then determine that you are legitimate enough to consider as a recommendation for their customer.” — Keller Maloney

“Getting more AI recommendations looks a lot more like PR than anything else.” — Keller Maloney

“The things that help an AI model refer to your brand are the same things that help humans refer your brand, which is strong brand presence, earned media trust, and presence across sources.” — Keller Maloney

“The best PR work is helping people, educating people. Steve Jobs is famous for saying, ‘Advertising helps with sales, but good PR educates.’” — Jason Mudd

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More about Keller Maloney
Keller Maloney is the co-founder of Unusual, a platform he built with his co-founder Will to help marketers understand and influence how AI models perceive their brands. Their work takes classic PR principles and applies them to a new audience — artificial intelligence. A Los Angeles native, Keller went to Princeton University, where he earned All-American honors in water polo.

Guest’s contact info and resources:
Keller Maloney on LinkedIn

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• On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.
• On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.