I am not a stock picker. I run a public relations firm. But I wanted to know. In this noisy world, does the way companies announce AI initiatives make any impact? Turns out it does…a lot.
To test the thesis, we first analyzed 449 S&P 500 companies that had announced AI initiatives over the past few years. It turns out that five dimensions determine whether the market values that news.
Did the CEO personally own the story, showing importance?
Did the company name a real use case instead of a partnership logo, making it real?
Did it show 90-day follow-through by releasing additional information or updates?
Did it earn tier-1 media coverage, adding credibility to the story?
Did it demonstrate board-level governance through action or response?
With the criteria set, we then measured each company's stock against its sector benchmark ETF over the 90 days following the announcement. The 13 companies in our highest tier beat their sector benchmarks by 10.8%. The weakest tier lost 2.2%. That is a 13-point swing, and it holds even after we strip out Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia, so this is not just a story about the companies everyone already expects to win at AI.
I want to emphasize these findings because the market is pricing your communications strategy whether you intend it to or not. And the public company findings translate to private companies as well. If you are making unanchored announcements, you could be eroding your company's value.
The reward for getting it right is real, but it does not last forever on its own. A strong announcement buys you roughly one quarter of goodwill. What happens in the other three quarters depends entirely on whether you deliver on what you said.
So if you announce before something is real, or if you let a communications team or a legal department write around the specifics, the market and every other audience treats it as noise, sometimes destructive noise. And once that happens, you do not get a second first impression on the same initiative.
So if you are a CMO sitting on an AI story right now, whether your company is public or private, we now know what separates the tier that wins from the tier that gets ignored.
If you have an AI announcement coming and want a second set of eyes on how it will land, before you hit send, let's talk. Read the full study, the complete company ranking, and the eight narrative techniques the best communicators share at The AI Communications Advantage Study.
Greg Matusky is the Founder and CEO of Gregory, recognized as Agency of the Year by PR Daily, and host of The Disruption is Now, a podcast about how AI is reshaping the future of communications, work, culture, and the economy. Subscribe to the podcast on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Inquire if you’d like to be a guest on a future episode.