Turning AI research into stage-winning PR pitches

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Most conference pitches miss because they're built on hunches. Sarah Okrent, a corporate PR and comms lead at an advertising agency, built an actionable report that replaces guesswork with signals. She did this inside our six-week AI Upgrade for PR and Communications Professionals cohort and used it to target high-impact stages like SXSW while setting up downstream earned media.

Sarah's job isn't just coverage. It's getting execs and brand reps onto stages where the talk sparks press, blogger attention, and quotable moments that travel. She needed a system that told her which topics, formats, and hooks actually get approved and talked about, so her pitches weren't generic and her speakers didn't vanish after the panel.

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The Practical AI Workflow

Sarah applied her learning from the cohort by going way beyond our expectations. She treated ChatGPT 5.0 like a strategist to help land her clients speaking gigs on one of tech's biggest stages. She started with the POP framework: Persona, Objective, Parameters. Then forced clarifying questions before any heavy outputs. She ran two tracks: one long chat for messy exploration and clean tabs for focused research sprints. That split kept context tight, cut scrolling, and made it easy to compare versions without losing good ideas.

The Revelation

She pulled all session descriptions from SXSW 2024 and 2025, then tracked what earned post-event mentions from press, bloggers, and third-party recaps. Patterns were blunt: sessions with a tight claim, visible proof moments, and built-in tension outperformed flat panels. Using those signals, she produced a shortlist of pitch concepts and pushed the model further to generate forward-looking recommendations for 2026, not just a recap of what worked yesterday.

The System

A one-page brief that names the audience pain and promised outcome in one line each
A scan of 15–25 adjacent sessions with title, format, audience level, and downstream coverage
A scoring model across novelty, credibility fit, quote potential, media hook, and format strength (1–5, no ties)
A cut to the top seven with punchier titles, one killer stat per talk, and a proof artifact a speaker can hold on stage or show on a slide

What Broke, How it Got Fixed

Paywalls and vendor propaganda: she labeled sources as press, recap, vendor, or blog and downgraded vendor claims unless independently verified
Over-aggressive regenerations: she used targeted edits and clean tabs to protect strong elements instead of rewriting whole drafts
Generic voice: she finished with a brand-tone pass so the output sounded like her spokesperson, not a machine

Why This Matters

Conference slots are leverage machines when the story has traction. Her system gives PR teams a way to pick topics with real signal, package them for approval, and pre-bake quotables that journalists can lift without digging. One good session can anchor a quarter's worth of narrative, clips, and links.

Sarah's Upgrade

Sarah called the system she built a

"collaborative and positive workmate"

An unsiloed strategist, creative, and PR rolled into one AI copilot. Speed improved. Language tightened. Judgment stayed human.

If You Pitch Stages, Try This Out

Start every project with a POP brief and force the model to ask questions before writing.
Run a two-track workflow: one long chat for brainstorming, clean tabs for research sprints.
Label sources for bias and demand a ranked list with one-sentence "why this wins" rationales.
Score without ties and cut to seven. Rewrite titles for heat. Add one stat per talk.
Package three forward-looking recommendations so you're pitching where the conversation is going.

Craft Behind the Wins

At The AI Upgrade, we coach practitioners to ship prototypes to level up their work, not to talk theory or take notes. You get the guardrails, prompts, and reviews to turn vague ideas into working research systems, pitch engines, and executive-ready one-pagers, fast.

Join the Next Cohort

If you place speakers, manage thought leadership, or chase earned media, this approach is a blueprint you can run inside your team.

Join the next AI Upgrade for PR and Communications Professionals cohort and leave with a working system you can show to clients and execs. Learn more and enroll at The AI Upgrade.

Kris Krüg is co-founder of The Upgrade Academy, recovering photographer, and professional instigator of creative chaos. He's spent 20+ years watching technology either amplify or stifle human potential. He's chosen amplification.

Peter Bittner entrepreneur, AI product thinker, new media journalist, and UC Berkeley lecturer, is the methodical yin to Kris's creative yang, turning chaos into deployable systems. Together, they've empowered hundreds of professionals.