Michael Bates is Head of Organic Media at Herd, a performance marketing & Shopify development agency in Yorkshire. Michael has spent the last ten years leading global marketing strategies for brands including Emirates Airlines, Hallmark, and Savills across SEO, Content & Digital PR. https://speakerdeck.com/drmrbates 2026-04-27 07:10:58 -0400 <em>Digitaloft Digital PR Summit 2026</em> It's easy to get caught up in the hype whenever a transformative technology, channel, or platform arrives. Whether it's TikTok, Reddit, or AI search platforms, the underlying mechanisms of brand building remain the same. The truth is, we've never been in control of how our brands are known, discussed, or represented and our audiences and platforms are far too smart to take what we say at face value. So the marketer's job isn't to tell people who the brand is, or what they do, but to lead audiences and platforms towards amplifying and creating the narratives that align with who we want to be. TL;DR AI hasn't changed marketing, it's a reminder that most of the time our audience is asking someone else about us rather than accepting what we say at face value. <em>Digitaloft Digital PR Summit 2026</em> It's easy to get caught up in the hype whenever a transformative technology, channel, or platform arrives. Whether it's TikTok, Reddit, or AI search platforms, the underlying mechanisms of brand building remain the same. The truth is, we've never been in control of how our brands are known, discussed, or represented and our audiences and platforms are far too smart to take what we say at face value. So the marketer's job isn't to tell people who the brand is, or what they do, but to lead audiences and platforms towards amplifying and creating the narratives that align with who we want to be. TL;DR AI hasn't changed marketing, it's a reminder that most of the time our audience is asking someone else about us rather than accepting what we say at face value. Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/drmrbates/who-tells-your-brand-story-online-digitaloft-digital-pr-summit-2026 https://speakerdeck.com/drmrbates/who-tells-your-brand-story-online-digitaloft-digital-pr-summit-2026