If you’ve ever tried to get a brand’s name out there and earn trust, you’ve likely worked with teams leaning on traditional PR strategies. That typically means writing media releases, cold-pitching journalists, and investing serious time into building relationships. And even then, getting a journalist to fully grasp what your brand actually does? That’s a whole other challenge.
Getting a journalist’s attention has never been harder—especially when PR pros outnumber them 7 to 1, according to Cision.
For years, companies have tried to bypass the traditional PR gatekeepers by publishing their own blogs. But brand-owned channels aren’t exactly where audiences go to discover new ideas. That’s why so many company blogs end up buried and unread.
Trying to drive traffic to those channels is like asking a friend to take a dozen backroads to your house every time they want to visit. Sure, they could make the trip—but it’s not easy, it’s not obvious, and after a while, they stop showing up.
That’s why Stacker built a better way to get brands’ stories where audiences already are: on the media and SEO superhighway. We call it earned reach—a modern strategy that distributes brand stories through trusted media outlets instead of letting them die on corporate blogs.
Just as Google helped define the category of search engine optimization, Stacker is introducing a new category: earned reach. This strategy lets brands maintain full control of their message—while actually getting that message seen on trusted media outlets. It's the bridge between brand storytelling and real audience visibility.
Traditionally, media has been split into three buckets: owned media (like blog posts on your company site), earned media (organic coverage written by journalists), and paid media (ads or sponsored content).
But that model hasn’t kept pace with today’s media landscape—where newsrooms are under-resourced and brands are fighting harder than ever to be seen.
That’s where earned reach comes in. It’s a new category that blends the control of owned media with the credibility and scale of earned media—designed for a world where traditional PR just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Earned reach rests on two foundational elements: brand editorial and a scalable distribution platform.
On the editorial side, earned reach is not about branded content masquerading as journalism. It’s about brands producing high-quality, data-driven stories rooted in their own first-party insights. These stories are built to inform, not to sell—crafted through a rigorous editorial process that prioritizes clarity, credibility, and news value. There are no product plugs or CTAs—just well-sourced content with a brand byline, transparently labeled and designed to engage readers on its own merit.
The second component is distribution at scale. Through Stacker’s modern publishing platform—functioning as a digital evolution of the traditional newswire—these stories reach thousands of news outlets across the country. For publishers, especially those in under-resourced newsrooms, this provides access to relevant, ready-to-publish content. For brands, it means their stories aren’t limited to the confines of owned media; they’re discoverable across the media landscape where audiences are already reading and searching.
In short, earned reach empowers brands to act like publishers—with the editorial standards and the distribution muscle to match.
In Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets, author Al Ramadan argues that great category design isn’t just about offering a better solution—it’s about reshaping how people think about the problem. He references The Innovator’s Dilemma to make the point: “Listening to customers leads you to constantly build better, but never to build differently. And different is what creates new categories. Better leads to a faster horse; different leads to a Model T.”
Airbnb is a perfect example. It didn’t simply improve the hotel experience—it reframed the entire concept of travel accommodations. By giving travelers the option to rent real homes instead of settling for dated hotels or awkward BnBs, Airbnb created a new category—and with it, a new expectation.
Earned reach follows the same path. It doesn’t just refine PR or repackage content marketing. It challenges the notion that brand storytelling must live in blogs or hinge on journalist interest. It reimagines how brands gain visibility—by giving them editorial credibility and a clear path to reach broad audiences at scale.
Earned reach isn’t just a refinement of traditional PR—it’s a fundamentally new model that delivers faster, more measurable results. Here’s how it stacks up:
But the benefits don’t stop with brands. Earned reach creates ripple effects across the media ecosystem—giving time and focus back to the people who need it most:
In short, earned reach isn’t just better for brands—it’s better for the whole system.
PR isn’t dead—but it’s overdue for reinvention. In a landscape where attention is scarce, newsrooms are stretched thin, and brand blogs echo in empty rooms, earned reach offers a new way forward.
It gives brands the tools to tell meaningful stories, the platform to distribute them at scale, and the credibility to show up in trusted media—not just in marketing channels.
If you’re ready to stop shouting into the void and start showing up where your audience actually is, it’s time to see earned reach in action.
Brendan Collins is VP of Sales at Stacker, where he helps brands unlock the power of earned media through scalable content distribution. With a decade in ad tech and sales leadership at Cybba, Drift, and Placester, he brings a sharp eye for growth strategy—and the occasional avalanche survival skill.
Featured Image Credit: Photo Illustration by Stacker // Canva