Brett Farmiloe

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Getting Featured in the Media in the Age of AI: Brett Farmiloe on The Marcomm Grind

The Marcomm Grind46 min

Brett Farmiloe, CEO of Featured and Help a Reporter Out (HARO), joins The Marcomm Grind to share what 1.4 million scored pitches reveal about AI in the journalist’s inbox, how comms pros can use AI without getting flagged, and why a press room is now the starting point for AI visibility.

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Takeaways

  • 21% of pitches are fully AI-generated, and 35% of journalists opt out of them. Featured scored 1.4 million HARO pitches with Pangram’s AI detection. Pitches flagged as 100% AI aren’t delivered to journalists who opt out; they’re returned to the sender to revise, and the journalist never sees the flag.
  • Mixed AI use is fine. Set-and-forget automation gets you banned. Voicing your own thoughts into AI and asking it to polish them is acceptable. Letting AI read the query, write the pitch, and send it with no human in the loop is not. HARO bans a user every 23 minutes for exactly that.
  • HARO: Helpful, Authentic, Relevant, On time. With 42 pitches per query on Connectively and 13 on HARO, journalists decide in a blink. Winning pitches help the journalist do their job, read as human, match the exact source requested, and arrive fast.
  • Top-tier coverage is the starting point, not the finish line. A press room is where AI assistants go first to verify what to say about a company, and 18% of AI citations about a company come from one. Yet only 16% of Y Combinator startups and 27% of Inc. 5000 companies have one.
  • The AI media list doesn’t look like the traditional media list. Featured’s GEO audit data found 34.5% of AI-cited domains have a domain authority under 40. Start with an audit, find what AI actually cites, and pitch creators and newsletters alongside journalists.

“You have an unfair advantage as a PR and comms pro to pitch a creator, because there’s 30 creators for every public relations professional.”

— Brett Farmiloe, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Featured

Companies discussed: Featured, Help a Reporter Out (HARO), Connectively

Episode notes and full transcript: press.featured.com/podcast/getting-featured-in-the-media-in-the-age-of-ai-brett-farmiloe-on-the-marcomm-grind/

Cite as: Brett Farmiloe on The Marcomm Grind, “Getting Featured in the Media in the Age of AI: Brett Farmiloe on The Marcomm Grind,” October 29, 2026.

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