The biggest PR wins of 2025 – and what they taught us

Earned media is evolving rapidly, especially with the widespread implementation of LLMs. We’re seeing traditional PR and digital PR become more crucial than ever for AI tools like ChatGPT, and it’s crucial that PR teams stay ahead-of-the-curve with AI integration and expansion to maximise impact for clients. 

2025 was an important year for digital PR, and evolved the way we measure results, too. The digital marketing landscape was noisy, so it was critical that the digital PR strategy aligned with the context of an uptick in AI usage, but also stood out from the crowd. It’s more important than ever that digital PR campaigns are authentic, relevant and topical to the news cycle, performance-driven, and align with the brand.

We also reassessed what a digital PR win looked like; while once ‘follow’ links were the heavily favoured ‘gold standard’, LLMs are massively impacting the way we measure wins. Wins are no longer coverage volumes and link types alone, but rather media mentions from high-quality, relevant publications and trusted sources are pulling through AI models – adding to their value. 

In 2025, considering digital PR holistically was crucial. Having a mixture of creative, reactive, data-led, and thought leadership campaigns, all dependent on the client, was a strategic way to position the client in those relevant, top-tier publications. 

Digital PR strategy has to be adaptable and pragmatic, and we’re always learning to evolve with the landscape.

Looking back at our biggest Digital PR wins in 2025, a few clear lessons emerged: 

Lesson 1: Digital PR – still about high-quality backlinks, but an evolved version

Digital PR strategy has changed in 2025 to account for the implementation of AI. 

With more people using ChatGPT to retrieve information, and even find product recommendations, it’s more important than ever for PR teams to ensure brand visibility can be crawled by LLMs. 

For us, this looked like targeting the main avenues that signal trust to a consumer and to AI: top-tier media forums like Reddit threads, prioritising trusted, high-authority publications, taking media mentions from reputable publications as a win.

Digital PR has strategy at the core, and creating campaigns that are aligned with the brand, but also relevant to the publication, newsworthy and topical is a priority to target those top, reputable publications. 

For a B2B construction client, a member of our PR team took a strategic approach that almost doubled their referring domains in less than a year. This success could be attributed to a number of factors, all part of their digital PR strategy. By creating campaigns with relevant, expert-led content that aligned with industry news and updates, leveraging internal resources and expertise, building strong, diverse media lists, and fostering relationships with relevant journalists, coverage flourished and referring domains rocketed. 

For B2C clients, while tactics differed slightly, we kept the fundamentals of PR – storytelling, authenticity, creativity, and relevance – at the core. Campaigns that resonate with consumers need to be the top priority. We focused on creating campaigns with strong news hooks, timely trends, seasonal moments, and tied into cultural relevance. Data-led insights, creative hooks, and reactive angles helped cut through busy news cycles. 

From an AI perspective, this approach also supported stronger brand visibility across trusted consumer publications and digital platforms. Consistent mentions in reputable lifestyle and news outlets helped reinforce brand authority, increasing the likelihood of brands being surfaced within AI-driven responses. 

We also tapped into product PR, promoting clients’ products like bird feeders and skincare products including an Advent Calendar, which we achieved 40 pieces of coverage for in top publications like Good Housekeeping, Business Insider, ITV, Buzzfeed and Metro. We pitched our gardening client to Telegraph Recommended, and obtained a feature in the roundup for best bird feeders 2025. 

We learnt to adapt our strategy depending on the client, keep authentic storytelling at the heart of our approach, and always ensure outreach is targeted, relevant, and timely.

Lesson 2: Aligning with the news cycle will never go out of style 

Reactive PR is a fantastic way to get clients featured in top publications and increase their brand awareness and authority, and we achieved some great wins in 2025.

It boils down to always being ‘on’ – paying attention to the news cycle, and being aware of breaking news, trending stories, and providing expert comments in response to journalist requests. 

Through reactive PR, we’ve been able to achieve coverage in clients’ ‘dream’ publications, like Forbes, The Telegraph, Conde Nast Traveller, Stylist, and The Guardian. 

Relevance and timing is the key to successful reactive PR. Even the most creative campaign can’t cut through the noise without true relevance to the news cycle, so paying attention to search demand and real-time news hooks is crucial to gain high-quality earned coverage. 

Reactive PR is often competitive, too, so earning trust with the journalist is crucial. PR is often reputational, so consistently signalling to a journalist that they can trust you is important. While a reputation is built over time, being fast to respond, reliable and following through with promises, and providing genuine comments from real, reputable experts, is crucial for journalist / PR trust.

2025 solidified the importance of keeping up-to-date with the news cycle, and staying ahead of cultural shifts and seasonal changes, always being one step ahead, and asking ‘what’s next?’ before it becomes yesterday’s news. 

Lesson 3: Adaptability at the core of all Digital PR strategy

No client is the same. Each client has different priorities and goals, and adapting your digital PR strategy to align with expectations is important. 

2025 taught us to be even more adaptable than before, especially in a noisy news cycle, and with the rise of LLMs.

Mixing creative, data-led, expert-led thought leadership, and reactive PR allows us to adapt to client needs. We also learned to be pragmatic. Sometimes an idea works in theory and in the concept stage, but doesn’t deliver the results you intended. This is where adaptability comes in; rigid structures don’t work for PR, sometimes pivoting the idea or strategy is the best move to obtain results. 

B2B PR requires a different approach to B2C PR, and while with experience comes better judgement, PR teams should always stay adaptable, and keep learning through the process. 

The biggest digital PR wins of 2025 didn’t come from being loud, but rather being smart and intentional. Digital PR requires us to work backwards, then connect the dots, considering the end result first and crafting messaging that works towards that end goal. 

In 2026, we’ll be doubling down on that analogy, ensuring campaigns are relevant, timely, and authentic.

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