David A. McInnis, a pioneer in News Marketing and founder of PRWeb, has announced the release of his new book, "Brand Equity: AI, News Marketing, and People: The New Brand Equity Stack." This is the second title in a practical series that began with "News Marketing." The book argues that brand equity is no longer solely defined by what people remember, but also by what retrieval systems—such as AI-powered search engines—can find, trust, and reuse when someone asks a question in a relevant category.
McInnis defines brand equity as the accumulated trust, recognition, and preference that resides in the minds of others, and the commercial advantage that this stored goodwill creates: higher prices, faster conversion, cheaper marketing, stronger talent and press, resilience after mistakes, and a higher exit value. For decades, this asset seemed reserved for companies with television budgets and research firms on retainer. However, the landscape of distribution, measurement, and discovery has transformed. Small and mid-sized businesses can now build equity on purpose and prove its growth without requiring an eight-figure media buy.
The central framework of the book is what McInnis calls the "new brand equity stack": AI, News Marketing, and people. AI accelerates research, drafting, and multi-format content creation. People and culture ensure the brand remains authentic at the point of contact. News Marketing serves as the credibility and findability engine in the middle. McInnis writes, "AI makes the process faster. News Marketing makes it credible. People make it believable. Measurement makes it honest. Preference is the point of brand equity. Generic sludge does not create preference."
The connection to News Marketing is deliberate. "News Marketing," the first book in the series, explains how McInnis has practiced visibility for nearly thirty years: by placing news on the open web in a structured, timestamped, entity-clear form, treating the press release as a seed rather than a fax to a gatekeeper, and then amplifying the same true story across formats so that customers, journalists, search engines, and AI systems can find it. Laura Sturaitis, EVP (Retired) at Business Wire, endorsed the book, saying, "With his previous book in this series, News Marketing, and now Brand Equity, McInnis has literally written the book(s) revealing the tried and true marketing methods and strategies that have delivered for top-tier companies, organizations and leading brands."
McInnis outlines how News Marketing accomplishes five critical tasks for brand equity simultaneously: third-party validation, familiarity through repetition, authority signals, a living public newsroom, and durable retrieval assets that ensure AI systems deliver accurate answers. He notes, "Advertising buys attention. News Marketing banks proof." The book's practical sections delve into the anatomy of brand equity, including awareness, associations, perceived quality, loyalty, and findability. It includes a monthly Brand Equity Dashboard that uses free and low-cost signals, as well as strategies on pillar development, social proof, consistency, culture, and a comprehensive twelve-month plan. Three chapters walk through News Marketing in full: how to write and cadence press releases, how to turn one release into an AI-optimized multi-format package, and how to read modern newswire reporting without fantasy metrics.
McInnis is clear about what AI cannot achieve. It will not choose pillars, attend customer calls, decide what is newsworthy, or earn the third-party validation that makes a claim believable. Tools amplify strategy; they do not replace it. "Brand equity is not magic, not luck, and not the exclusive property of companies with famous logos," McInnis says. "It is the predictable output of a repeatable process: deliberate visibility, in consistent themes, validated by third parties, structured for retrieval, measured continuously."
David A. McInnis has spent more than three decades building tools that help small businesses be heard. In 1997, he founded PRWeb with the simple idea that press releases should be public, searchable assets that anyone could find. PRWeb helped tens of thousands of small and midsize companies gain online visibility and was later acquired by Vocus, which merged into Cision. He went on to co-found Newsworthy.ai with Mark Willaman and to launch NewsRamp, platforms that extend News Marketing into the AI era with provenance, self-hosted releases, and multi-format distribution. McInnis is widely credited with pioneering News Marketing as a discipline. He holds a BA in International Studies from Texas State University and is based in Boerne, Texas.
The book is written for operators who want a field manual, not a prompt cookbook. It is the second book in McInnis's series after "News Marketing," and it shows how measurement, AI tools, brand pillars, proof, culture, and a News Marketing cadence turn reputation from a byproduct into an asset under construction. "Brand Equity: AI, News Marketing, and People: The New Brand Equity Stack" is available now as a free download for a limited time and for purchase on Amazon.com.
