Scott Baradell spent the early part of his career in newspapers, which gave him an unusually clear view of how editorial credibility works — and how rarely branded content earns it. When he founded Idea Grove, he built a firm around genuine earned media: pitching, placing, and amplifying stories that meet real journalistic standards.
But as the media landscape shifted, the limitations of traditional PR became harder to ignore. Certain clients had executives who were unavailable for media interviews. Others were reluctant to engage in newsjacking or stray too far from tightly controlled messages.
For clients like these, even a strong PR agency could find its options narrowed.
The Challenge
Something bigger was changing in the way clients defined success. The calls Idea Grove was fielding started to sound different. Clients weren't just asking to be featured in publications anymore — they wanted to show up when someone asked ChatGPT or Claude about their industry. And the data was pointing in one clear direction: the vast majority of citations in large language models trace back to earned media.
The agency needed a vehicle that could generate credible, editorial-quality placements at scale — something that worked for difficult-to-place clients, fit within a mid-market budget model, and contributed to the kind of authoritative online presence that AI systems actually surface. Finding that vehicle, and figuring out how to deploy it without creating friction in the client relationship, was the challenge.
Finding Stacker
Scott came across Stacker through CEO Noah Greenberg’s LinkedIn. Stacker’s model caught his attention. As a trusted editorial wire for corporate content, each brand story had to meet real journalistic standards. Newsrooms that chose to distribute these stories chose to run them editorially– not as sponsored content tucked into a corner of the site, but in the places that readers were actually paying attention.
"What I was hearing was essentially that [Noah] had created the equivalent of an Associated Press wire for corporate content— news you can use, produced by brands, but that meets the quality standards of a newswire,"
— Scott Baradell, CEO @ Idea Grove
He connected with Stacker, worked out a package, and ran his first campaigns. The early results were strong enough to keep going, but the more important decision came on the business model side.
Seeing the value that Stacker was driving for his clients, Idea Grove sought for ways to scale Stacker’s offerings across all of their clients, making it accessible to companies of various sizes across their roster. The results Baradell saw with Stacker made him certain that this was a model that would help his clients scale-- he refused to let an extra cost create friction that could prevent his clients from meeting their goals.
So Idea Grove absorbed Stacker into its retainer pricing and stopped asking clients to approve it separately. If a campaign made strategic sense, they ran it.
The question stopped being "will the client pay for this?" and started being "which clients would benefit most?"
"We do what it takes to make our clients successful. And what was making them successful was earned media that actually showed up— in outlets people read, and increasingly, in the places AI systems look."
— Scott Baradell
The Results
Across 13 Stacker campaigns, Idea Grove generated 3,400+ total pickups and 268,000+ estimated views. Every campaign landed placements in outlets with domain ratings above 80 — including the Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee, The Kansas City Star, The Charlotte Observer, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. The reach was consistent, not concentrated in one breakout story: high-authority placements appeared across all 13 campaigns, giving Idea Grove's clients a repeatable foundation for building online credibility.
The proof points that mattered most to Baradell weren't always the headline numbers. One that stood out: a client's Stacker story surfaced organically in a ChatGPT response — unprompted, in the middle of a relevant industry query. Another: multiple instances where journalists at other outlets lifted quotes from Stacker bylines and included them in their own editorial coverage.
"We've had multiple examples where another media outlet pulled a quote from a Stacker story. It's being read — other journalists are reading it and grabbing things out of it for their own stories."
— Scott Baradell
Those moments did something that raw pickup numbers can't always do: they showed clients that the coverage was real. For an agency that had spent years explaining why earned media matters, having a story appear in ChatGPT results or spark follow-on coverage from another outlet was concrete, shareable evidence.
The shift in client demand has tracked closely with these results. A year ago, Idea Grove's new business calls were primarily driven by clients seeking traditional media coverage. That's changed.
"A year ago, they were calling for media coverage. Now, increasingly, they're calling because they want to be showing up in Claude and ChatGPT."
— Scott Baradell
Idea Grove has since renewed its Stacker commitment— increasing their package for additional stories. The decision reflected both the performance data and the direction the agency sees the industry heading: toward a world where PR, SEO, and content are not separate disciplines, but a single integrated system, and where earned media is the connective tissue holding it together.
In 2025 alone, Idea Grove grew 36% and boasted a 90% client retention rate. Stacker’s thrilled to be part of that success story.
In Summary
For Idea Grove, Stacker became infrastructure built into the agency's pricing, its client selection criteria, and its broader thesis about what visibility means in an era shaped by AI. Across 13 campaigns and 3,400+ pickups, the model has validated itself. And with 20 more stories on the way, Idea Grove is betting it's only going to matter more.
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