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If you love the media -- then The PR Pace is the podcast for you. Brought to you by Pace Public Relations, an award-winning PR firm based in NYC, founder + host Annie Pace Scranton will break down each week the biggest news stories through a PR lens. We'll also bring you ground-breaking interviews with entrepreneurs who have successfully leveraged the media to enhance their career, plus, an inside look at how it all works by talking to real journalists and producers.
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 0:00
Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining the PR Pace podcast today. We're talking about one of the biggest shifts happening in media relations right now, the intersection of PR, AI, and visibility. My guest is Brett Farmelo, the founder and CEO of Featured, and the entrepreneur behind the acquisition and relaunch of Help a Reporter Out, which we all know as Harrow. Brett has been at the center of how journalists and publicists connect for years, and now he's building what he calls the first true AI for PR platform, essentially a Chat GPT for PR. In this episode, we're going to get into what happened at Harrow? Why journalist request platforms are evolving, and what AI-generated pitching means for the future of earned media. Welcome to the podcast, Brett.
Speaker 1 0:52
Thanks for having me.
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 0:53
So, you've had a front row seat to the evolution of media relations over the last several years. I have too. So, before we get into what's next for us publicists, I am sure my die-hard PR professionals are really wondering about Harrow, and maybe you can just walk us through, like, what happened to it, why you decided to acquire it, and what's the vision for the platform. Now it's been around for so long, and it's, it's something that a lot of us out there really rely on.
Speaker 1 1:24
Yeah, so a little backstory with Arrow, founded in 2008 was acquired in 2010 and it ran for 14 years into until April of 24 when it was brought into a platform and rebranded as Connectively. Connectively got shut down or discontinued at the end of 2024 We saw that news and reached out and said, "Hey, would you be interested in selling Hero and Connectively? And we acquired both. We brought Hero back in April 2025 and it's original same three times a day email newsletter format that connects journalists with sources for stories, and it's been rocking. It is my favorite brand that that I've got, just because it's got nostalgia and every PR and journalist heart, and the intention long term is just to keep it exactly the same, like it is a perfect product in terms of product market fit, where people love getting those emails, they open them every day, they respond to stuff that's relevant, and our job as the owner and operators to ensure that quality and trust remains central to the platform. So, there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that we do to make sure that those connections between journalists and sources are authentic and helpful, but long term it's just going to be the boring same old harrow that people rely on.
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 2:51
Well, boring is not exactly a word I would use to describe it. Reliable, useful would be a couple of different ways I would, I would categorize it, but tell us about your background, because obviously, like acquiring a platform is probably something that many of my listeners have not experienced personally themselves, but there's a lot of M and A talks and activity and our sector right now, so just curious about your background and sort of how that dovetails into, you know, PR, but then also the business side of it and your acquisitions.
Speaker 1 3:32
Yeah, so actually started my career as a financial auditor, then launched a career education website that was acquired. Went to go work for the acquire for a number of years before breaking out and launching my own marketing agency, and that was by accident. I got my website to rank on page one of Google for the term digital marketing company, and started a digital marketing company, and ran that for 10 years, servicing primarily small businesses with their search engine optimization needs, and then ended up selling that agency at the end of 2021 to focus full time on future.com So, you know, this is my fourth business that I've started up. One was kind of an acqui-hire, one failed miserably, one got acquired, and then hopefully, you know, there's a good outcome for what we're working on now.
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 4:23
So, how, like, do you feel like the market is oversaturated because there are more than a few platforms that are similar to Harrow journalist request platforms? Do you think it's too saturated the market, and how do you feel like Harrow fits into that dynamic and like kind of separates itself from some of the others out there.
Speaker 1 4:49
Here's what I've learned from talking with PR professionals, is that they will go where the leads are, and I think that they should, they should subscribe to as many different platforms. As they, as they can, to get those opportunities that are right for their clients, so that's why you're seeing probably more platforms spring up, is, and I think that there's still opportunities to do so, it just gets at some point, like you said, saturated, it gets confusing, and, and too much to monitor, and too much to maintain for a standard solo practitioner, so I think that you know from what we're seeing, I always say, you know, go subscribe to our competitors, go subscribe to Harrow, subscribe to Connectively, because you need to be in front of where those opportunities actually are,
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 5:35
and and so where do you think the opportunity is for you to make money on a platform like that, because I keep getting targeted and hearing about various like browser extensions that are AI powered that have the capacity to provide up to date journalist and media databases. I'm not sure about journalists' requests right now, but what's your sense there? I think, like, a lot of us in the industry are feeling at times a bit overwhelmed because there's so many different types of platforms and databases that we could be subscribing to, so just wondering if you have any thoughts there?
Speaker 1 6:21
Yeah, I think the, you know, back to the saturation point, I think it's just going to become even more saturated because it's easier than ever to build and launch products. So, I think that this also bodes really well for PR, because it - the more saturation there is, the more products and brands that are looking for visibility, the more PR is needed to rise above that to get connected with customers, but I think that in terms of the PR practitioner and thinking about all the tools and services that are available, I think it goes back to the problems of what does the PR professional face, and you mentioned out-of-date data as one, that's one that I've heard pretty frequently, but for us, I think that the problems that we've heard time and time again is not enough opportunities to get my client featured, and then not enough time to do all of the monitoring of, because every PR person subscribed to, like, their journalist database, their podcast pitching mechanism, their favorite journalist request platform, their second favorite journalist request platform, Substacks. It's a lot to subscribe to. So, how do you really combat the time issue that a lot of PR professionals are facing? And I think those are the core problems to solve,
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 7:35
is which leads me into my next question, is that, is that the track you're thinking about for the Chat GPT for PR, because, like, I just.. it gets hard when you have, when you're somebody like myself, who every morning, before I even wake up, I have, like, 15 emails from different newsletters I subscribe to, right? Am I.. am I alerts from monitoring from different platforms? And then the journalist request emails start coming in, and it makes it so hard to do work beyond that sort of like monitoring aspect on a daily basis. And so, can you tell us a little bit about what you're, what you're building?
Speaker 1 8:16
Yeah, definitely. So, Featured is a co-pilot for PR, and exactly what you're experiencing, where you've got 15 different emails in your inbox before you even start work. What if you just had one? What if you had a unified platform that monitored across podcasts, journalists, journalists' requests, speaking opportunities, byline article opportunities, all of these different things? If you had a co-pilot that monitored all of those different opportunities and were able to surface the relevant ones, and then be able to take actions to give you a starting point, that's essentially a lot of the manual work that's being done today that AI could actually really assist professionals with, so that's I think where we're moving towards as an industry is being able to leverage AI as a thinking assistant and monitor, and more importantly, a co-pilot to make it so that PR professionals can focus on stuff like relationships, strategy, and, you know, taking the actions to get their clients featured.
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 9:20
Love it. How are you marketing yourself? Like, how are you finding PR professionals podcasts like this? I bet, but are is it challenging to get in front of of folks like myself because there there is so much going on in the sales funnel out there that's being put in front of all of
Speaker 1 9:39
us. Well, our go-to market is we own Harrow, so you know almost every PR professional that I know is subscribed to Harrow, so and Harrow's a newsletter ad-supported product, so we've got a lot of newsletter ads that are that are going out, and you know, I think that over time it's also a really close-knit community, like when someone finds something that. Works, they tell their peers, so I think that that's the name of the game for any product builder, is build a product that solves a problem, and people will share it.
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 10:10
So, let's talk about the feedback you're getting from the journalists who utilize Harrow and Featured. A big point of contention and debate is the use of AI obviously not just in our industry, in every industry out there? What is, what is the real feedback from journalists on how much, or they hate the use of AI and pitches, or maybe that's not true.
Speaker 1 10:37
Yeah, I think that it, there's a divide on both sides, there's real fatigue from AI pitches, because there's tools that enable more and more AI pitching, and there's no human in the loop, and that spams inboxes, and that's not good for either side. We're seeing a divide of journalists, where some, and I would say probably the majority, are opting out of AI pitches entirely, so on Harrow and featured and connectively we run every pitch through an AI detection, and anything that's flagged as 100% a journalist has an option to withhold that message from their inbox, so we're seeing about 35% of those journalists opt out from those 100% AI pitches entirely, but the interesting thing is I speak with journalists who actually don't care that some pitches are written by AI, and they don't care because their goal is to get connected with the right source, and if AI gets them connected with the right source, then the next logical step is, okay, let me line up an interview. Let me talk with this person about the story that I'm writing, and then let me get what I need to keep moving forward. So, in that sense, AI is being embraced as this incredible connector, and the people that use it right for matching and monitoring, I think that's where the opportunity is, but right now it's still early in terms of trying to figure out how it's how it's being used and I think there's a lot of mistakes being made and journalists are pretty vocal about when those mistakes are being made in their inbox,
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 12:12
yeah, I mean I heard and I agree with everything you said, we we host a lot of lunch and learns from journalists just in a continual effort to keep educating ourselves from the journalist and media and producer perspective, as all of this is evolving and changing in our industry, and it really is a mixed bag of, like, you know, if some journalists absolutely hate it, and some are like, you know, what if it's if the pitch is in my lane, and it's something that's interesting, like I'm still going to be interested in it, you know. Even, and I think, like, you know, my, my, where I feel like there's a hard line is when you're pitching an authored piece, like an op-ed or a contributed article. I think the use of AI should be extremely minimal, and then only in the editing stage of it, because as of right now, I don't know what you're hearing or seeing out there, but it feels like the AI detecting platforms are also not getting it right half of the time.
Speaker 1 13:18
Yeah, it gets harder and harder with each model release, because these model builders are getting better and better, so AI detection as a whole, I think, is very challenging and very like alienating. Everyone's got, you know, their own AI detector that they're like, well, this is right, and sometimes you see a battle of AI detection tools go out, and I think I don't think that's a great use of time for really anyone. I think that AI detection tools as a score and a metric should be a signal, but not the ultimate determinant. So, if you're not harrow, it's like, okay, great. When we see AI detection come through, it's a, it's a signal for our team to look at it, like there needs to be a human in the loop, no matter what, and so I think that that's been a really important decision that we've made. Yes, it puts more, you know, manual review time from our team to make sure that quality and trust keep moving forward with Harrow, but it's a, it's a necessary ingredient.
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 14:18
I agree with you, obviously, on that, and, and sort of, then just going back to something you said earlier about how you landed on the first page of Google, and, and that's kind of part of what blew you up, and obviously in the, in the before times, that was known as SEL. Now, Geo is the buzziest of all buzzwords in PR at the moment, what have you learned, seen, you know, or can can offer as advice for how PR teams should be thinking about AI visibility different from traditional media coverage or previous SEO strategies?
Speaker 1 15:00
Yes, it's so cool. It's such a fun time, like to look at geo and AI visibility, and look at the new front page of the internet, and now it's, you know, not search results, it's it's your favorite AI model, and LLM. So, I think that, like, I don't have the answers. I think that there's a couple different things that I've seen that shape things pretty well from a PR perspective. One is just press releases, like I'm super surprised to see how quickly a solid press release can inform LLMs on what your brand is and what it's about. So, I think that that's a secret weapon. I'm also seeing, you know, earned media just as a whole getting mentions on some of these trusted platforms that either have relationships directly with LLMs or don't. Those earned media mentions are a huge factor, it seems like, in getting AI visibility. So, over the last couple of years, like we've seen a dramatic rise in adoption of featured of helper reporter out, because more and more people want to get these earned media mentions, and then the third piece I think is just looking at existing citations and looking at, like, if you do a geo audit, which the future.com now has, you can basically say, hey, like, what kind of visibility do I have for this particular prompt, and you could look at all the different citations that that do get visibility on those LLMs, it could do some outreach, like you could correct articles, like for us, we just brought back connectively, and half the internet is saying connectively is dead, so it's like reach out to all of those people to be like, hey, we have an update for you. Here's the correct information. Would you mind updating your article, so if it's already being cited, and then there's an update to that piece, that's another great way to get visibility.
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 16:51
Totally, absolutely agree with you there. And when you say press releases, though, I've obviously heard this a bunch of times. Do you know if the press release needs to be placed on PR Newswire, or is it the same searchability, or whatever, that for the LLMs? If the press release is on the client's website, in like their news section,
Speaker 1 17:19
I find, so we just, we just announced two days ago that we brought Connectively back, and we sent out a press release, and we did not use PR Newswire, we used another service, and it got placed on AP News, on Yahoo, and This Is Insider, then a few other different spots. I ran a test the next day, perplexity and other LLMs that had updated that information based off that press release, so we were able to not use PR Newswire, but when we announced featured as the co-pilot for PR next week, we are going to use PR Newswire, and we'll have a good A/B test for that. So I think that generally speaking, if you're landing a press release on authoritative outlets, then you need to choose a newswire that you know can land you there. I don't think that your blog, your company blog, is going to be - it's a necessary ingredient, but I don't know if it'll have the immediate, in like immediate being ingested in terms of these LLMs,
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 18:24
yeah. No, that makes sense. Well, I am gonna definitely dig deeper into Featured. And good luck on your launch next week. Thank you for making the time to come on the podcast today. Please tell our listeners how they can reach out to you and learn more. Featured is featured.com but how can they reach out to you if they want to have a conversation?
Speaker 1 18:48
Yeah, I'm available on LinkedIn, and like you said, featured.com is launching next week as the copilot for PR. We've got Help Reporter out and connectively.us that is now back and functioning as heroin a platform, so if you don't want emails every day, then Connectable is your spot, so and appreciate you having me on.
Annie Scranton, Founder and CEO, Pace Public Relations 19:08
Yeah, thanks so much.