Founder & Chairman, 5W AI Communications · Publisher, Everything-PR
Ronn Torossian is shaping AI — and the answers inside the chatbox.
A publisher and the author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release, Torossian has been an industry leader for decades. Now he's building the AI Communications era.
He is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications, launched in 2003 — the AI Communications Firm, combining public relations, digital marketing, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and AI-visibility research for B2C and B2B clients across beauty, technology, entertainment, corporate reputation, and crisis communications. An Inc. 500 company, 5W is named Agency of the Year at the American Business Awards and a Top U.S. PR Agency by O'Dwyer's.
He was a partner and chief marketing officer of JetSmarter, the private-aviation unicorn acquired by Vista Global, parent of VistaJet.
He is the publisher of Everything-PR — thirty-plus publications of original reporting and AI-visibility research, built to be cited by the AI engines — and has guest-lectured on communications and media strategy at Harvard and other universities.
More than a third of consumers now begin product research with AI, not Google. Torossian's work is to influence the answer — inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Start product research with AI, not Google.
Food & beverage PR has restructured around AI buyer research. ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity now answer "best non-alcoholic spirit," "healthiest snack brand," "top restaurant in Austin" — and the brands cited inside those answers win the next decade.
Spirits companies have started to turn to influencers to connect with their consumers.
The 2019–2024 talent-war playbook is finished. Citation Share replaces employer-brand impressions as the metric. What replaces it is harder, cheaper, and more honest.
Paywalls used to block readers. Now they block AI engines — and that's quietly changing the hierarchy of news authority inside ChatGPT. Why the New York Post may be better positioned than The New York Times inside the answer engines, and what it means for brands and publishers.
Ronn Torossian has some comforting and gentle words of wisdom for you.
AI introduces compliance risks that don't exist in traditional marketing. Financial firms now face challenges with AI search output, including hallucinated performance claims, name confusion, model drift, and amplified disclaimer gaps, requiring new monitoring and correction strategies for SEC compliance.
Jim Weiss founded Real Chemistry as a one-person consultancy in San Francisco in 2001. By 2024, the firm hit $665 million and briefly overtook Edelman as the largest U.S. PR firm by revenue. The bet most PR firms missed.
The traditional crisis playbook was built for media, search, and social. Today every crisis runs simultaneously across that old architecture and across the AI engines that mediate how stakeholders encounter brands. Seven structural changes. One updated discipline.
In today's interconnected world, social media has become a double-edged sword for businesses and organizations.
When a brand crisis looms, it can feel like an unanticipated wave, ready to engulf years of painstakingly built reputation.
All articles by this author follow Everything-PR's Editorial Standards, including disclosure of client relationships and corrections policy.