The Three Circles - Earned, Owned and Paid.

We're known for the three circles.

How These Guys I Know approach Owned, Earned and Paid.

If you’ve ever worked with us, you’ll know they’re the first slide in our onboarding deck - Earned, Owned, Paid.  

We’ve always framed our approach like that - though, to be honest - we've sometimes felt a bit old-fashioned rolling out the owned, earned, paid model when kicking off with a client.

And the model, since being introduced in the early 2000’s, has come under loads of scrutiny from marketing and brand academics for various reasons.

But, we’ve stuck with it because it just seems to click. It frames the opportunities really nicely - it’s easy to understand and act on.

There’s almost always an "a ha" moment in the eyes of our clients. 

Case in point - in focusing on owned media, one client realised the side of their building was a media asset they already owned. Nek minute... there’s a billboard on the side of the building. And, hey presto. A highly effective media channel they completely control - building awareness, elevating the business and costing nothing in media spend. 

Paid media is pretty straightforward too. If you want it, you can buy it. More on that another day. 

But Earned Media has always been my favourite place to play.

You have to think creatively. It's challenging. The opportunities are endless. And the payoff can be huge. Earned media rewards good thinking. And we love to think.

Right now, Earned Media is having a moment.

Because everyone wants to show up in AI Search. 

But……

There is a tendency to define Earned Media as PR (which is not correct) - simplifying the relationship between PR (which is a form of earned media) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) as simply one equation -

GEO = PR.

Which misses a scary amount of nuance. 

We love PR (Seriously. Double your PR budget. It's some of the best money you'll spend. We're huge advocates - and you can read more about that on our site).

But thinking GEO = PR is the entire equation is dangerously over simplified and incorrect.

Showing up in generative search has become essential for businesses. PR influences that. 100%. But so do other parts of the earned media equation. 

Channel strategy and distribution. Social media. Content creation. Community advocacy. Strategic partnerships. Industry influence. Word of Mouth (driven by Customer Experience). Even Employee engagement.

All of these contribute to earned media too.

Each requires attention and specialist expertise to reach full potential in this space. 

Owned media also plays a role - your website, your content, your expertise - and how easily AI systems can discover, understand and trust what you've published. Your website is still discovered via SEO. Which means SEO, no matter how much our eyes might glaze over talking about the technical side of it, still matters too. (The dark art is far from dead.)

Then, even if you've nailed SEO and GEO - and your organic rankings are through the roof, you still have to convert that attention into customers. That's the customer journey, it’s about user experience, messaging, sales - other pieces of the puzzle entirely.

AND, ideally (as brand strategists - we need to say this) - you need to make sure that absolutely everything you are doing - even for short term results is driving valuable long term brand strategy - or you’re not really building anything at all. 

So, it’s not as simple as it seems. 

Here's something we prepared earlier.

Amongst other areas of focus (including longer term brand strategy), we worked with our friends at Passive Fire NZ to get them sitting pretty in the top spot in both SEO and GEO. Here they are - sitting pretty in the top spot for organic search / SEO. 

And here for GEO / AI Search -

SEO ensures they rank highly when someone is actively searching for a passive fire partner via Google. GEO has AI recommending them as the best in the category no less. And rightly so. 

PR wasn't a major part of this strategy. I think we did one story.

But, when lots of pieces work together, this is the outcome. Visibility, Recommendation and Trust - built through many different parts. 

Of course, then you have to maintain it.

But that's a story for another day!

These Guys I Know specialise in integrated communications - that is, we work in all three circles - paid, owned and earned. If you'd like to see how the three circles apply to your business - we would love to chat. 

Slide into our DMs or reach out at hello@theseguysiknow.co.nz.