David A. McInnis, the founder of PRWeb and a pioneer of News Marketing, has released a new book, Brand Equity: AI, News Marketing, and People: The New Brand Equity Stack. The book, the second in a series that began with News Marketing, argues that brand equity is no longer solely about what people remember, but also what retrieval systems can find, trust, and reuse when someone asks a question in your category.
McInnis defines brand equity as "the accumulated trust, recognition, and preference that lives in other people's heads," and the commercial advantage it 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, McInnis contends that the landscape of distribution, measurement, and discovery has transformed, enabling small and mid-sized businesses to build equity on purpose and prove its growth without an eight-figure media buy.
The book's central framework is what McInnis calls the "new brand equity stack": AI, News Marketing, and people. AI accelerates research, drafting, and multi-format work; people and culture make the brand true at the point of contact; and News Marketing serves as the credibility and findability engine in the middle. "AI makes the process faster. News Marketing makes it credible. People make it believable. Measurement makes it honest," McInnis writes. "Preference is the point of brand equity. Generic sludge does not create preference."
This link to News Marketing is deliberate. McInnis has practiced visibility for nearly thirty years by putting 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 amplifying the same true story across formats so customers, journalists, search engines, and AI systems can find it. Laura Sturaitis, EVP (Retired) at Business Wire, praised the series: "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. "Advertising buys attention," McInnis writes. "News Marketing banks proof." The book includes practical sections on the anatomy of brand equity, a monthly Brand Equity Dashboard using free and low-cost signals, 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."
The book is written for operators who want a field manual, not a prompt cookbook. 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 is available now as a free download for a limited time and for purchase on Amazon.com.
