Media Minefield launches AI-focused REO to manage executive reputation
Media Minefield introduced an AI-specific REO (reputation engine optimization) service built to influence what tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini say about company leaders. The goal: make AI-generated answers about executives consistent with the organization's values and the leader's track record.
Kristi Piehl, the company's founder and CEO, says the playbook has changed. Buying search ads and keeping a polished website won't carry the result set inside AI chat systems. "Google search and the way that ChatGPT function are so different," she said, and the tactics that worked even a year ago don't land the same way today.
Why this matters for PR and communications
People trust people. Audiences are giving more weight to what a CEO says in public than to brand copy or campaigns. They see a leader's posts as experience and perspective, not spin. That puts a spotlight on executive content, consistency, and digital footprints.
Silence has a cost. If a leader is quiet, AI systems surface what's available: Glassdoor reviews, lawsuit mentions, old incidents that live on public records. Those items can crowd out the leader's current work, values, and contributions.
What Media Minefield's REO does
The service focuses on influencing the information AI platforms prefer to summarize. That includes strengthening credible signals about an executive, expanding high-quality mentions across third-party sources, and ensuring consistent facts and context show up wherever AI systems look.
In short, it's about message control without saying "no comment" to the internet. You architect the data, content, and proof points that AI uses to answer reputation-defining questions.
What PR teams can do now
- Audit AI answers: Ask ChatGPT and Google Gemini basic and pointed questions about your CEO and executive bench. Screenshot baselines.
- Lock down the facts: Ensure titles, bios, awards, media hits, and key dates are consistent across the website, LinkedIn, press pages, and major databases.
- Build an executive hub: Create a leader page with a clear bio, media kit, approved headshots, long-form Q&A, and links to reputable third-party coverage.
- Publish first-person content: Short posts, op-eds, and interviews beat boilerplate. Thoughtful commentary on industry topics gives AI better material to cite.
- Win credible citations: Pitch informed takes to respected outlets, podcasts, and associations. Third-party validation travels further in AI summaries than brand posts.
- Use clear structure: Add schema/structured data for Person and Organization pages so facts are machine-readable.
- Address sensitive topics with context: If past incidents surface, publish factual, human responses that reflect current values and actions.
- Maintain a steady cadence: Weekly or biweekly leader activity (posts, talks, bylines) sustains fresh signals for AI platforms.
- Monitor shifts: Re-check AI answers monthly, and after major news cycles, to catch changes and course-correct.
The bigger shift: from links to answers
Traditional SEO chased clicks. AI platforms deliver direct answers, often blended from multiple sources. That compresses reputation into a few sentences. Your job is to feed those systems with accurate, timely, and human content that reflects the leader you want people to meet.
How this reframes executive comms
Leader reputation is now an always-on channel. It needs strategy, editorial standards, and ongoing measurement like any other. PR teams that treat executive content as a core product will outperform those who treat it as occasional PR.
Where Media Minefield fits
Media Minefield's REO helps executives and comms teams engineer the inputs that AI uses to summarize a person's reputation. The intent is straightforward: make sure what people read in AI answers sounds like the leader you know, not the worst fragment the internet remembers.
Upskill your team
If your team is refreshing skills for AI search and executive comms, explore practical training paths here: AI courses by job role.
The takeaway is simple: publish like a person, prove it with third-party signals, and keep the facts consistent everywhere. If you do that, AI will do what it does best-summarize-and it will summarize you fairly.
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