Inside James Luctamar’s Approach To PR In A Credibility-First Economy

Scroll any founder’s LinkedIn feed and you’ll see the same thing: visibility everywhere, but very little earned trust. According to James Luctamar, a digital PR strategist and founder of PR firm LUXN in New York, this shift has fundamentally changed how brands should think about visibility.

Some brands respond by shouting louder. Others publish more content. Some go full-in on both, but neither fix the real underlying issue. “For many businesses, visibility alone isn’t enough anymore. Luctamar says. “The real challenge is being believed.”

LUXN’s approach reflects that reality. Instead of chasing what most legacy PR firms do (continuously chasing mass exposure) his firm focuses solely on strategic positioning: getting founders and brands featured in the right publications, with the right narratives, in front of the people who actually make the decisions.

Why Traditional PR Feels Old

Many PR agencies still rely on a book of outdated tactics. Think broad press releases, think unfocused pitching, and success measured by mentions rather than factual outcomes. Luctamar discovered that “the issue isn’t effort. If your story isn’t positioned correctly, coverage won’t translate into opportunity.” LUXN reframes PR as a business tool rather than a publicity exercise, aligning media exposure directly with credibility, trust, and inbound demand, measuring success against these parameters.

From Corporate Stability to Digital Authority
LUXN was founded during the uncertainty of the COVID period, as businesses rapidly moved online. As that shift accelerated, James identified differences in how companies approached early authority versus short-term visibility. That experience shaped LUXN’s philosophy. “PR stopped being a nice-to-have,” he explains. “It is now the core infrastructure for positioning and growth in any market.”

From Public Relations to Positioning Relations

Luctamar describes his company’s methodology as ‘Positioning Relations.’ The goal is really quite simple: ensure that when someone researches a founder or brand, the narrative already supports trust. “When someone Googles you,” Luctamar says, “the story should already be written.”

How Credibility Changes Buying Decisions
Here’s the truth: Most buying decisions today are made way before a sales conversation ever happens. By the time a prospect fills out a form, replies to emails, or agrees to a call, they’ve already done their homework. How? By using Google, asking Chat GPT, skimming headlines, and looking for signals that answer a simple question: Can this person be trusted?

This is where earned media quietly does its work.
When a founder or brand appears in credible publications, it can change the psychology of the decision. Skepticism? Drops. Price resistance? It softens. Conversations start at a higher level. Now, instead of asking “Why should I believe you?“, prospects arrive asking ‘How can we work together?’

Luctamar sees this shift happening everywhere – brands with strong media positioning don’t just get more attention; they get better attention. Fewer tire-kickers, much shorter sales cycles, and higher-quality inbound. “PR works upstream of sales,” Luctamar explains, “It pre-validates you before you ever speak.”

And in crowded, digital markets, where expertise is widely claimed, this pre-validation is often the difference between being considered and being ignored.

Looking ahead: The Future of Digital PR

Luctamar believes digital PR will continue to move toward personalization and accountability, with generic ‘loud’ campaigns simply fading out, to be replaced by tailored narratives and measurable outcomes as becoming the new standard. “PR used to be about hoping for impact,” he says. “Now it’s about engineering it.”

Today, LUXN operates as a seven-figure digital PR firm, helping founders turn visibility into influence and credibility into growth following their ‘Positioning Relations.’ In an overcrowded market that continues to be even more dense, Luctamar’s view is clear: attention fades, but credibility compounds.