AI PR — Enterprise & Regulated Markets
Coverage proved you exist. Your buyer needed proof you’ll last.
In your category, coverage is the one thing that isn’t scarce. We run a strategy no other firm runs — one that decides which voices carry you, in what order, and what each one has to prove before the next one matters. We’ve run it three times. All three companies exited.
Or email Mark directly: mark@northernpixels.com
Building AI into a physical, scientific or hardware product? Start with Deep Tech PR instead →
Enterprise brands we’ve won for startups nobody had heard of.
- Shell
- The New York Times
- Apple
- Caterpillar
- CNN
- Gartner
- AT&T
- Discovery
- Toyota
Why you were right to want this
Forrester’s own summary: B2B buying is a process of confirmation, not selection.
of B2B buyers begin the process with at least one vendor already in mind
begin with a single preferred vendor
Source: Forrester
You were right to want press. In a category with forty companies describing themselves the same way, being the name already in mind is the whole game — and it is decided long before anyone runs a process. The instinct was correct. What you were sold to satisfy it wasn’t.
What you actually bought
You didn’t buy the wrong thing. You bought the same thing every other company in your category bought — which is precisely the problem.
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01
Volume is the strategy.
In a category where a dozen companies announce something every week, each additional announcement makes you less distinguishable, not more. The agency’s output is measured in placements, so the agency produces placements. The incentive points directly at the thing that harms you.
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02
The scorecard measures the wrong scarcity.
Impressions and share of voice were useful proxies when coverage was hard to get. In AI, coverage is abundant. Measuring how much of an abundant thing you accumulated tells you nothing about whether anyone changed their mind — and the scorecard is written by the party being measured.
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03
They pitch your model. Your buyer is underwriting your company.
Agencies write about the technology because technology is what’s interesting. An enterprise buyer in a regulated market is not evaluating your technology in isolation. He is deciding whether to attach his name to a vendor: whether you’ll exist at renewal, what happens to his data, who is liable when it fails, whether anyone like him has done this already. None of that gets answered by a story about your model.
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04
Senior pitch, junior delivery.
You met the principal. You work with a coordinator and a media list. That coordinator cannot tell the difference between a story that makes you sound impressive and a story that answers whether you’re a wrapper on somebody else’s model — and the second one is the only kind that moves an enterprise deal.
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05
Nobody on the team has sat through a procurement review.
The people running your programme have spent their careers in agencies. They optimise for stories that get published. They have never watched a deal die in security review, or in legal, or in the meeting where one committee member decides the risk of being wrong about you is larger than the upside of being right.
Three questions for your current agency
You don’t need an audit to find out where you stand. Ask these on your next call.
Question one
“In our last six months of coverage, who is quoted besides me and our investors?”
Open your last funding announcement and count. In most AI coverage, the only two voices vouching for the company are the founder and the person who invested in the founder — the two parties with a direct financial interest in the claim being true. Your buyer can see that as easily as you can.
Question two
“When a buyer asks whether we’re just a wrapper, what published thing answers that?”
If the answer is a blog post you wrote, you don’t have an answer. You have an assertion. The question is whether anyone with no stake in you has said it.
Question three
“Which of our competitors’ announcements this quarter could have run with our name swapped in?”
If the honest answer is most of them, your coverage isn’t separating you. It’s confirming you belong to a set.
What we sell instead
The deliverable isn’t coverage. It’s separation — being the one name in your category a buyer can defend choosing.
Coverage is how that gets built, and how it gets proved. But the unit of work isn’t the placement. It’s the voice: who, in what order, and what each one has to establish before the next one carries any weight.
| A PR agency optimises for | We optimise for |
|---|---|
| Mentions | Named people willing to vouch |
| Announcement cadence | A sequence of proof, in order |
| Reach | The eleven people on the committee |
| Positioning you as an AI leader | Answering the wrapper question and the durability question |
| Coverage your team can share | Coverage your sales team can send mid-deal |
Proof
What this looks like when it works.
Got an unknown company written into the definition of a new category, so that every buyer researching the category encountered them as the reference point rather than as one of the entrants.
Recognised as a best B2B co-marketing partner. An iPad field-displacement programme that put a startup’s name inside Apple’s own enterprise motion — third-party validation that no amount of coverage buys.
Documented deployment inside Fortune 500 operations. The reference a buying committee actually asks for: has anyone like us done this, and did it survive contact with their procurement.
Testimonials
All three companies exited.
“Northern Pixels was instrumental in shaping our foundational marketing strategy and catapulting us onto the global stage, firmly establishing our position as an emerging category leader.”
Eric BergeronFounder & CEO, OptoSecurity
“Mark and his team significantly boosted our brand awareness, trust and credibility. We became the leading enterprise solution in our category.”
Alvaro PomboFounder & CEO, TrueContext
The mandate
What the mandate covers.
- Trust mapping — identifying the finite set of people whose word moves your buyers
- Analyst relations, including category positioning
- Earned media sequencing
- Category definition
- Regulator, standards body and association credibility
- Advocate development
- Executive visibility
- Sales-ready assets built from earned proof
PR is where trust starts. It isn’t where it ends.
What it costs
Founder-led — Mark MJ Scott runs the engagement personally.
Founder-led
Mark MJ Scott
Founder & President, Northern Pixels
Most people selling you AI PR have spent their careers in agencies. I’ve spent mine inside startups — as the marketing leader who still had to make the number after the coverage ran.
Three exits as the founding marketing leader: companies acquired by Toyota, Battery Ventures and AppDirect. 60+ Global 500 brand engagements. 100+ innovation programmes. Work with the Canadian Space Agency and Rolls-Royce. Recognised by Apple as a best B2B co-marketing partner.
FAQ
Common questions.
What is enterprise AI PR?
Building third-party belief in an AI company that an enterprise buyer has never heard of, so that when procurement, security and legal each get their turn, the validation is already in place.
How is this different from regular AI PR?
Regular AI PR competes for attention in a category saturated with it. This competes for the specific named voices that a regulated-market buying committee treats as evidence.
Why doesn’t traditional PR work for AI companies?
Because it optimises for volume in a market where volume is abundant and separation is scarce.
What should we measure instead of impressions?
Whose belief you earned. How many independent, financially disinterested voices have said your name in public; which placements your sales team has used inside live deals.
We’re pre-revenue. Is it too early for analyst relations?
No. Category position is easier to establish before the category has settled, and harder to change afterward.
What does it cost?
$15,000 per month.
Your category will consolidate around a handful of names buyers can defend choosing.
That gets decided in the next eighteen months, by people who don’t work for you.
Or email Mark directly: mark@northernpixels.com