Poorly announced initiatives lose 2.2% against their sector benchmarks, while effective announcements perform 10.8% better
ARDMORE, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The S&P 500 companies that communicated their AI strategies most effectively outperformed their sector benchmarks by an average of 10.8% in the 90 days after their announcements, according to a new study from Gregory, the global communications firm.
The weakest communicators in the study lost 2.2% against their sectors over the same window. The 13-point gap held even though companies at the bottom of the scoring range had genuine AI programs. What separated the tiers was how the story was told.
“The biggest difference we saw across AI announcements was the level of commitment and follow-through,” said Greg Matusky, CEO at Gregory. “Every top scorer had a CEO who owned the story personally, named specific use cases with real business stakes, and shipped something within 90 days of the announcement. The lower tiers left AI to an earnings call conversation or a press release with vague plans, and the market treated those announcements as noise.”
The pattern also survived the removal of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia: excluding all six mega-cap technology companies, strong communicators still beat weaker ones by 11.3 points at 90 days.
Gregory scored 449 S&P 500 companies on the quality of their primary AI strategy announcements between 2022 and 2025, assigning each an AI Communications Quality Score (ACQS) from 0 to 20 across five dimensions: CEO ownership, named use cases, 90-day follow-through, tier-1 media coverage, and board governance record. The firm then measured each stock's return against its SPDR sector ETF at 90, 180, and 365 days from the announcement date.
Only 13 of the 449 companies scored — fewer than 3% — earned an 18 or higher. Those top scorers shared identifiable habits. Their CEO personally authored or announced the news, often in a high-profile setting, like a CES keynote. They had concrete numbers to convey scale, named partners for third-party validation, a named product or platform, and concrete examples of the product in action. All of this was conveyed in a past-present-future narrative arc that anchored AI to historical comparisons the audience already understood.
The full study includes the complete ranking of the top 100 companies by ACQS, tier-level performance analysis, and a breakdown of the eight messaging techniques the highest scorers share.
Download The AI Communications Advantage Study at GregoryAgency.com.
About Gregory
Named the Agency of the Year by PR Daily in 2025, Gregory is a global public relations firm with offices in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and London. Learn more at gregoryagency.com.
Contacts
Media
Matt McLoughlin
SVP, Gregory
matt@gregoryagency.com
