PR is changing quickly, with AI reshaping daily workflows, new questions emerging around Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and increased pressure to prove business impact.

Muck Rack, a PR and communications platform used by thousands of companies (including Double Forte) for media relations monitoring and measurement, surveyed 1,115 PR professionals to gather insights for its 2026 State of PR Report. The final report reflects input from participants across agencies, brands, non-profits, consulting firms, and other organizations.

Below are five key takeaways from the 2026 report that stood out to our team.

1. AI Has Officially Become Part of the Standard PR Toolkit

Generative AI has moved firmly into everyday workflows across industries. 80% of PR professionals now use it regularly, up from 77% last year. Another 8% plan to explore it, leaving only a small share of the PR industry without any plans to adopt this technology.

AI and automation also remain the top area expected to grow in importance over the next five years, selected by 61% of respondents. For PR teams, the focus is shifting from whether to use AI to how to apply it responsibly, improve efficiency, and protect the quality and accuracy of communications work.

Double Forte also strongly urges professionals and agencies to deploy clear policies, protocols, and training around AI in the workplace to ensure these tools are being used ethically and maximizing the team’s capabilities rather than hindering them.

2. GEO is Gaining Traction

Nearly 73% of respondents consider GEO at least somewhat important to their communications strategy. Still, many organizations still lack a clear structure for managing it, with 29% reporting no one owns GEO within their organization, while another 13% are unsure who does.

PR and communications teams are most commonly named as the owners, but only at a rate of 24%. We know that earned media results (owned by PR teams) and owned website content (no dominant owner) are the key drivers of GEO results.  This points to a need for closer coordination across communications, marketing, SEO, and content teams as organizations determine how to manage AI visibility, content authority, and measurement.

3. Thought Leadership Continues to Grow

While media relations remains the foundation of PR, with 84% of respondents saying it accounts for at least a quarter of their job, thought leadership now ranks second at 51%, up six percentage points from last year.

This growth reflects the expanding role PR teams play in shaping executive platforms, developing expert perspectives, and translating company knowledge into relevant commentary. Strong thought leadership also supports media relations, owned content, executive visibility, and broader reputation goals.

4. Measurable Results Remain the Strongest Proof of PR’s Value

Nearly 70% of respondents reported that producing measurable results is the most effective way to demonstrate PR’s value to clients and company leadership. Other approaches, including improving executive visibility and delivering creative solutions, ranked significantly behind.

This reinforces the importance of defining success at the start of a program. Beyond impressions, PR teams now have access to an array of measures such as sentiment, message pull-through, share of voice, search visibility, and audience engagement. The strongest reporting connects these factors to business and communications goals.

5. Authority is Becoming Part of AI Visibility Strategy

PR teams are increasingly treating credibility as a key part of their AI strategy. 55% are securing coverage in high-authority publications to improve visibility in AI-generated responses. Half are also creating more authoritative or data-driven content, while 50% are optimizing content specifically for AI searchability.

This gives earned media an added role beyond reaching readers in the moment. Coverage in respected national, regional, trade, and niche publications can also help establish a stronger body of credible information about a brand for AI search engines to pull from. For many organizations, smaller industry outlets hold significant value because of their subject-matter expertise and relevance.

Want to hear more about the current state of PR and how to use these learnings to your company’s advantage? Reach out to the Double Forte team to learn more.

There’s been a lot of doom and gloom in the wine industry lately. But one surprising bright spot has emerged, and it’s not organic wines, canned wines or Rosé. Surprisingly (or not surprising if you keep reading), it’s flavored wine. That is, wine infused with natural flavoring made from non-grape materials, as opposed to traditional wine, which gets its flavors from grapes and winemaking techniques.

In a beverage category that is so closely tied with tradition, history and terroir, the very thought of flavored wine will make many wine enthusiasts and critics stick their nose up. With the wine industry’s overall decline, however, we can’t ignore what’s working. According to The Drinks Business and Nielsen IQ data, flavored RTD wine cocktails grew 15% year over year, along with wines with higher alcohol by volume (around 16%), which grew 8.9%. Comparatively, still wines declined -5.8% overall.

What is interesting about flavored wine is what it says about today’s consumer. Its rise reflects a broader shift in consumer behavior towards prioritizing clarity, familiarity, convenience, and immediate gratification when purchasing beverages. Below we explore what’s behind the growing popularity in flavored wine and why it’s important to consider when marketing to today’s consumer.

Flavor is Trending Across the Beverage Category

Late last year, in our 2026 Food & Drink Trend Forecast blog post, we predicted that 2026 would take flavor trends to new levels, and that prediction has certainly proven true across the beverage space. It’s not just flavored wine that’s trending. According to CSP Daily News and Nielsen IQ data, “flavored alcohol beverages—including flavored malt beverages (FMBs), hard seltzers, prepared cocktails and wine-based cocktails—accounted for roughly 21% of total beer, wine and spirits sales in U.S. convenience stores in the year through April 18.”

As we look to bring new consumers into wine, producers must consider that flavor is key to influencing younger legal drinking age (LDA) consumers’ purchasing decisions. Beyond traditional wine and beer, younger consumers have many more beverage options than ever before. Fruity or easy-to-understand flavor profiles dominate alternative beverage categories, so it’s not surprising to see Gen Z and Millennial consumers looking for similar flavor profiles when it comes to wine. Considering the myriad of choices, flavored wine could very well serve as a gateway to bring more members of this younger demographic into the category.

Flavor is Straightforward

Wine can be confusing. Wine labels can quickly become overwhelming to anyone walking the wine aisle. According to research from Wine Market Council (WMC) and Quini, “24% of wine drinkers say label information rarely helps them choose a wine,” as reported by Wine Business Monthly. Similarly, 34% of these wine drinkers “report buying a bottle they expected to match a flavor or style they liked—only to be disappointed.”

Because flavors are often familiar and easy to understand, flavored wines simplify the wine shopping experience by stating more directly what consumers can expect when they take their first sip. This kind of clear communication and marketing may be especially important for younger consumers who are newer to wine and approach it in a different way than previous generations. Rather than relying on centuries of tradition and prestige to appeal to wine consumers, it is important for marketers and brands to meet consumers where they are and understand their needs and wants. In an industry facing declining consumption and headwinds, innovation will be essential to wine’s future.

Value Matters More Than Ever

In today’s unpredictable economy, value matters. Consumers want confidence that what they are purchasing will deliver the value and flavor they expect. As consumers become more selective about where they spend their money, some want products that pack a bigger punch, as alcohol also factors into a perception of value for their purchase. The Wine Group is innovating to reach this higher alcohol wine consumer. In a recent interview, CMO Helen Kurtz told The Drinks Business “People looking for a serious kick with their wine tend to also want ‘high fruit and flavor cues, so we introduced several new lines, like MAD DOG by MD 20/20, FUEL by Franzia, and the new Dulce Sol Spiked Aguas Frescas line.’”. This is just one example of the many ways wine companies are providing innovative products for flavor-conscious consumers.

Whether flavored wine becomes a lasting segment or not, its growth reflects a broader shift in how consumers approach beverage purchasing. Today’s drinkers increasingly value clarity, familiarity, and accessibility over tradition alone. As presented in a recent blog post on agility in food & beverage marketing, emerging trends are highly important for marketers to understand in order to appeal to current consumer preferences. For wine marketers, understanding this shift in consumer behavior will be critical to attracting the next generation of wine drinkers.

Launching a new wine brand? Reach out to our team to discuss how we can help you build a strategy that appeals to your target consumer.

By Alexis Dowling

By Catherine Bormann

How brands show up online has fundamentally changed. For years, brand visibility strategies were built around traditional search engines and keyword rankings.

Today, discovery is increasingly happening through AI-powered platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other large language models that generate answers rather than lists of links. These systems synthesize information from what they deem trusted sources to shape brand narratives in real time and influence how audiences understand companies, products and expertise before they ever visit a website – if they click through to a website at all.

This shift has major implications for brand visibility, reputation, and growth, and the data clearly shows the direction of change:

  • Consumer behavior is shifting. According to McKinsey, 50% of consumers already use AI-powered search, and the shift could influence $750 billion in revenue by 2028.
  • Public Relations investment is growing. Research from Gartner predicts the mass adoption of AI search will drive a 2x increase in PR and earned media budgets by 2027 as organizations adapt to how information is surfaced.
  • Visibility is being reshaped. New data from Muck Rack shows that more than 89% of links cited in AI-generated answers come from earned media sources, not brand websites or paid content.

Together, these signals point to a new reality: visibility is no longer driven primarily by keywords or paid placement but by authority. This shift is closely tied to changing user behavior. People of all ages are rapidly changing how they discover brands, turning to AI platforms (if they know it or not in the case of Google’s AI search)  for recommendations on what to buy and who to trust. 

As a result, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is emerging to address how brands are represented in AI-generated responses and which authoritative sources shape those answers. Because these systems pull from multiple trusted sources, visibility now depends on consistent presence across a broad content ecosystem.

As we’ve discussed previously, Why a Surround-Sound Strategy Is Essential for Brand Visibility, brands must build consistent presence across multiple channels to influence perception and discovery. That approach is now even more critical as AI systems pull from a broad ecosystem of trusted sources.

So how can brands understand how they show up in AI-driven search?

We recommend organizations conduct what we call a Generative Visibility Audit, a new type of assessment that evaluates how a brand appears across AI platforms and answer engines. A growing number of free tools provide a strong starting point, offering visibility snapshots that reveal how brands are represented, which sources are cited, and where gaps or inconsistencies exist. This helps communications teams assess accuracy, authority, and narrative control in generative search environments.

Once brands understand how they appear in AI-driven search, the next step is optimizing how they show up.

Keyword strategy still matters, but its role has evolved. Instead of focusing solely on search rankings, PR and marketing teams must understand the questions audiences are asking and how those questions shape AI-generated responses. Tools such as AnswerThePublic and PageAudit, along with other AI visibility and monitoring platforms, provide insight into emerging queries, conversation themes and how brands appear across generative search environments. These tools help organizations align messaging with real audience intent and identify opportunities to strengthen visibility and authority.

With this shift in mind, brands must rethink how they build visibility and authority. A strong content ecosystem is no longer optional – this is what creates the “surround sound” effect. Owned channels such as blogs, newsletters, and websites must work alongside earned media to create credible signals that AI platforms trust. Within earned media, trade and industry coverage plays an especially important role. While it is often seen as less glamorous than mainstream press, it carries stronger authority signals and heavily influences how brands appear in AI-generated results.

If you want to understand how your brand shows up in AI-driven search and learn more about our Generative Visibility Audit, contact the Double Forte team to get started.