What AI Can't Pitch

There's a moment every publicist knows. You've spent three days crafting the perfect pitch. The story is tight, the timing is right, the journalist is exactly right. You hit send — and nothing. Crickets. Then, two weeks later, you pick up the phone, catch her between meetings, say four sentences out loud, and she says: “Oh, that's actually interesting. Send me more.”

That moment — that four-sentence conversation — is what no AI tool on earth can replicate. Not yet. Not ever, really.

I say this as someone who genuinely loves technology. I was an early adopter of AI tools in my practice. I use them to research, to brainstorm, to stress-test a pitch angle before I send it into the world. They make me faster and, honestly, sharper. But there is a fundamental misunderstanding rippling through the communications industry right now, and it goes something like this: if AI can write the press release, find the journalist, and send the pitch — what exactly are we paying a publicist for?

Let me tell you.

The Rolodex on My Shelf

I still have my Rolodex. It sits on my shelf, not as a joke, but as a reminder. For a long time, a significant part of my value as a publicist was the ability to produce — quickly, confidently — the direct line of anyone who mattered in Canadian food media. That number wasn't in a database. It was in my Rolodex, and before that, in my head. It came from years of showing up, following up, and never wasting anyone's time.

Today, AI can surface a journalist's contact information in seconds. What it cannot tell you is that she prefers a text to an email, that she's working on something big and isn't taking new pitches until March, or that the best way to get her attention is to lead with the consumer angle, not the industry one.

That knowledge still lives where it always has: in relationships.

“You're Not Seriously Pitching Me Lentil Soup in July.”

A few years ago, I was working with a pulse industry client — the commodity boards behind Canada's beans, peas, chickpeas, and lentils. Canada, it turns out, is one of the world's largest growers of pulses. Most Canadians have no idea.

I called a food journalist I'd known for years — smart, seasoned, not easily impressed — and she stopped me mid-pitch. “Saskia. You're not seriously pitching me lentil soup in the middle of summer.”

Fair. But I wasn't pitching lentil soup.

I was pitching lentil fritters at a rooftop party. Chickpea burgers at a backyard barbecue. A cold pulse salad with charred corn and a tahini dressing that would make you forget every pasta salad you'd ever eaten. I was pitching the idea that these little flavour sponges — mild, versatile, protein-packed — could do almost anything you asked of them, and that most Canadians were sleeping on an ingredient their own farmers had been growing for decades.

She wrote the story. It ran in summer. People were surprised to learn Canada grows more lentils than almost anywhere on earth.

That pitch didn't come from a database. It came from knowing my client's story well enough to find the angle she didn't know she was looking for — and from knowing her well enough to stay on the line when she pushed back.

The Connections No Algorithm Makes

Some of the work I'm proudest of has nothing to do with press releases. It's the connections — the unexpected combinations of people and ideas that create a story bigger than any single brand could tell alone.

There was the evening I brought a group of journalists to a dimly lit cocktail bar to meet the bartenders who were quietly revolutionizing sustainability behind the stick — and introduced them to the founders of a craft distillery making vodka from milk permeate, a dairy byproduct that would otherwise go to waste. Food rescue. Fermentation. A seriously cool spirit. The story told itself; I just put the right people in the room.

There was the national food writing awards ceremony that had always been a lovely, quiet affair — until we rolled out a red carpet. Literally. A red carpet, a step-and-repeat, photographers. Suddenly, it felt like the Oscars of Canadian culinary writing. The same event, the same people, the same awards — transformed by a single gesture that said: this matters, and so do you.

That is what strategic communications actually looks like. Not a press release. Not a media list. A point of view about what a moment could be — and the relationships to make it happen.

The Automation of the Obvious

AI is extraordinarily good at the mechanics of PR. It can scan a database of 50,000 journalists and surface the 12 most likely to care about your oat milk brand. It can generate a press release in 40 seconds that is grammatically correct, properly formatted, and entirely forgettable. It can monitor your brand mentions, flag a brewing crisis, and draft three response options before your morning coffee.

All of this is real. All of this is useful. None of this is media relations.

Media relations — real media relations — is the art of understanding what a journalist needs before they know they need it. That knowledge is not in a database. It lives in relationships, in conversations, in years of paying attention.

Trust Is Not a Deliverable

Here is the other thing AI cannot do: earn trust.

Not the trust of consumers — though that matters too — but the trust of the journalists, editors, producers, and podcasters who are the gatekeepers of public conversation. That trust is built over time, call by call, pitch by pitch, cup of coffee by cup of coffee. It is built by never wasting someone's time. By knowing the difference between a story and an announcement. By occasionally calling a journalist to say, “I don't have anything for you right now, but I thought you'd want to know about this” — and meaning it.

You cannot automate sincerity. You cannot prompt your way to a relationship.

The Reckoning

The PR industry is having a moment of reckoning, and I think it's overdue. For years, too many agencies sold volume: more press releases, more pitches, more coverage reports with impressive-looking numbers. AI has made volume cheaper than ever. You can now generate more content, send more pitches, and track more mentions than any team could manage a decade ago.

But here's what's happening at the same time: journalists are drowning. Newsrooms are smaller. Editors are more protective of their attention. The signal-to-noise ratio in their inboxes has never been worse. In that environment, the publicist who sends 500 AI-generated pitches a week is not gaining ground — she is poisoning the well.

What cuts through is not volume. It is relevance, timing, and trust. And those things require a human being who actually knows what they're doing.

What We Bring to the Table

I have spent more than two decades helping food and agriculture brands get found, get heard, and get remembered. The tools have changed enormously. The fundamentals have not.

Great PR still starts with a great story. It still depends on knowing who needs to hear it and how to reach them in a way they'll actually receive. It still requires someone who understands the cultural moment, reads the room, and knows which door to knock on.

My Rolodex is a relic. My relationships are not.

AI can find the doors.

It takes a real human to open them.