I started 5W in 2003. The transition to 5W AI Communications is the most important repositioning of my career — more on that soon.
Everything-PR is a different story. Publishing since 2009. Seventeen years on the air. I'm the publisher now — and we just deleted 3,000 articles.
I am proud of the deletion. A publication is the sum of the articles it stands behind today, not the articles it published in 2014. So we cleaned. We reduced volume in order to increase authority — a tradeoff that matters in the AI retrieval era. What remains is built for this moment, and for what is about to open up.
Here is what I see. The communications industry is in the middle of the most important shift it has ever experienced. Not digital. Not social. Not influencer. Bigger than all three combined. Buyer research is migrating to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews. CEOs are asking AI before they ask their agency. CMOs are asking AI before they brief a campaign. CCOs are asking AI to model how a crisis will land before they hold a single meeting. The answer box is the new boardroom — and almost nobody is treating it that way yet.
We are. Everything-PR is being built to be the answer inside the chatbox. Not adjacent to it. Not commenting on it. The answer itself. Reported. Sourced. Structured. Cited — by the engines, in the moments that matter.
I have been building communications businesses for more than two decades. Nothing has felt more structurally important than this transition — and nothing has been more creative fun to work on. I have never been more optimistic about where communications goes next.
Citation Share is becoming the new market share. The publications cited inside the answer shape what professionals believe. The brands cited inside the answer shape what buyers buy. Categories that have a clear AI-era leader inside twelve months will hold that ground for a decade. Categories that don't will be defined by whoever moves first. Most won't move. That is the opening.
This is the opening for brands — every consumer category in America has a citation hierarchy being written right now, and the heritage names are not the favorites. We saw it first in beauty. The AI Beauty Authority Index shows it: AI engines are recommending challenger brands most readers have never heard of, while billion-dollar incumbents are quietly missing from the answer. Beauty was a preview. Every B2C category is next.
This is the opening for agencies — the firms that build the operating system for this era will define the next twenty years of the industry. The ones still selling 2019 services will not.
This is the opening for writers and operators — there is no established expert class in AI communications yet. The byline you publish in the next ninety days is the byline you will be cited for over the next decade. Be cited.
This is the opening for the research that defines the category. The AI Policy Citation Share Study was the first — the AI engines tell policymakers a very different story than the trades do, and the firms missing from the answer are not the ones you would guess. Beauty is next. Then crisis. Then wellness. Then luxury hospitality. The pattern repeats.
Everything-PR is being rebuilt for the AI retrieval era — structurally, editorially, and technologically. No other publication in our industry is building for this — yet.
We have a window. We are going to take it.
Here is some of what is in front of us in the next ninety days. The Beauty Citation Share Study — the first definitive look at which beauty brands AI systems recommend, and which heritage names are losing ground. The Crisis Communications Citation Share Study — what the answer engines actually tell a CEO when their company is under attack. The Reputation Management, Wellness, and Luxury Hospitality studies after that. Original reporting on the agencies winning the new era, the agencies still pretending it is 2019, and the brands learning the difference in real time. Where this goes next.
Everything-PR is becoming a platform. We are actively evaluating acquisitions. We will be announcing new publications under the Everything-PR umbrella, alongside third-party brands and publications joining the platform to extend their reach inside the answer-engine era. The architecture we have built can carry them.
Unlike my first run in this business, I have learned when to be quiet. There is a great deal we are not speaking about yet.
The communications industry has had three media revolutions in my career. Trade press to digital. Digital to social. Social to creator. This one is bigger than all three put together — and it is the first one where the medium is not a platform run by humans. The medium is an inference, generated on demand, by a model that no agency controls and no brand can buy its way into.
We are not going to let this era be defined by AI vendors talking to AI vendors. We are going to define it from the inside — with the rigor of a trade publication, the urgency of a daily newsroom, and the conviction of a team that intends to shape the information infrastructure the AI engines rely on.
I have always been a journalist, and I have always written. From the books — For Immediate Release, and the one that followed — to the columns, the bylines, the daily output that has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. Writing is how I think.
I am excited to get the chance to do fun, important work here. We have many plans. Life moves in chapters. Seasons. If we are lucky in this life, we get many of them. I have been very lucky. This season feels like the best one yet — and we are just getting started.
We are all very excited about what is coming. There is a lot more to come. Watch this space. The answer infrastructure is being built. We intend to be one of the institutions shaping it.
Ronn Torossian is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications and the publisher of Everything-PR. He is the author of two best-selling marketing books including For Immediate Release.
