Barron’s recently looked at thousands of corporate documents, earnings calls, SEC filings, and press releases and found one sentence construction showing up everywhere since 2024. A phrase that barely existed two years ago, now all over corporate America.
The phrase is: “It’s not just X, it’s Y.”
You’ve seen it. You’ve probably written it.
A publication called State of Brand, which covers brand strategy and communication trends, has a name for what’s causing it: the Great Flattening. When everyone routes their communications through the same AI models, everyone starts to sound like everyone else. Shareholder letters, press releases, pitches all are starting to sound like the same voice.
PR pitches are not immune to this. If anything, they might be ground zero.
In this solo episode, I get into why it’s happening and what to do about it. I’m also sharing a framework I call the POINT Check, which is five questions you can run any pitch through before you hit send.
The POINT Check
P | Plain language. Read your pitch out loud. If you stumble or cringe, rewrite it the way you’d actually say it. Then strip out the client name and ask yourself: could this have come from any PR person? If yes, it needs more of you in it.
O | One clear reason you’re emailing this person. Not flattery. Not “I loved your recent piece.” A single sentence that makes the relevance obvious. Why this reporter, why this story, why now. AI cannot do this part for you.
I | Interesting angle first. The story goes in sentence one, not paragraph three. If you can’t write a sharp “after” version of your pitch, the angle needs work before the writing does.
N | No over-explanation. A pitch has one job: make the journalist curious enough to reply. It does not need to answer every question. Cut anything that’s there to make you feel thorough.
T | Test it against the “so what.” Before you send, ask: why would a journalist’s reader actually care about this? What’s the tension, the stakes, the reason it matters right now? If you can’t answer that in one sentence, the pitch is not ready.
Resources
State of Brand: The Great Flattening
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify