PR Futurist | Stuart Bruce | Purposeful Relations

Welcome

Are you ready for an AI media trainer?

This edition of PR Futurist has a few more stories than usual. That's probably an indicator of just how fast things are moving at the moment in communication technology and AI. This is the short version, as we'd curated even more interesting stories (most of those you can see in the Flipboard edition).

What do you think is the most important story we've covered in this issue? Is it that AI is now 82% more persuasive than humans? Or is that AI means either eight million UK jobs are at risk or a £306 billion boost to the economy depending on how the UK handles it?

Or maybe it's that there is now an AI tool that can analyse a video of an interview or presentation to provide feedback and tips for improving it? An AI media trainer?

As always, we'd love to know what you think. And if you spot any interesting news or research that you think should be in the next issue of PR Futurist then let us know.

Stuart Bruce

News

AI in PR and journalism roundtable

Later this month Stuart is one of the expert speakers at a roundtable breakfast buffet hosted by PRWeek Top 10 consultancy 72Point. It's at The Ivy on 23 April. Find out more about the AI in PR and Journalism roundtable and register here.

Karen Marshall

How the flip do I keep up?

As well as the fortnightly PR Futurist you're reading now there is also a Flipboard version of PR Futurist. We usually flip new content into it a few times a day. It's usually just flipped straight into the magazine, without any commentary.

The best and most important news and views we'll always cover in the fortnightly PR Futurist, with some commentary or analysis.

You can subscribe to PR Fururist on Flipboard here.

Karen Marshall

PRCA Digital Group Leaders' round table on AI

Tim was recently invited to join the PRCA Digital Group Leaders' group for lunch to participate in a round table discussion on the opportunities and threats of AI for communications.

In a wide-ranging discussion, a number of issues were discussed, including:

Introducing new technology as pervasive as AI needs excellent change management. The successful adoption of AI is a people issue, not a tech issue.
We should positively engage with the ethical issues AI raises, as principal advisers on an organisation’s reputation.
There is currently a first mover advantage for large organisations that have significant capital to invest. Smaller organisations need to be smart in the way they use off-the-shelf AI to keep up, something that Purposeful Relations can help you with.

Thanks to the co-chairs, Candace Kuss, Danny Whatmough and Kate Matlock for the invitation and the PRCA staff for the organisation.

Stuart Bruce

Will you be at the PRovoke EMEA Summit?

Next week Stuart and Tim will be at the PRovoke EMEA Summit in London on 17 April. It promises to be a great event. The global summit in Washington DC that they both attended was definitely a hit with lots of great speakers and attendees to network with. Let us know if you're attending the London summit.

Karen Marshall

Davos Communications Summit 2024 goes online on 12 June

The World Communication Forum Association is running this year's Davos Communications Summit as an online event on 12 June. It's free for WCFA members and €45 for non-members (although my tip would be to join first as that way you get discounted membership and attendance at the summit.)

We're still finalising speaker slots so if you know of a great speaker then let me know ASAP.

Stuart Bruce

Corporate affairs

AI is already 82% more persuasive than humans

AI is already better at changing people's minds than the average human, according to new research.

Yes, you read that right. A key objective of lots of communications campaigns is change what people know, think or believe. It turns out that AI can be far more persuasive than humans.

In a test by EPFL Lausanne some humans debated with other humans, while others debated with AI. In human vs human debates people tended to strengthen their positions. In human vs AI debates AI did 21% better.

When humans and AI were given background (gender, age, race, education, employment, political orientation) then humans became worse! However, AI's personalised responses became a staggering 82% more effective than humans.

I suspect if AI was pitted against experienced comms professionals with expertise in behavioural psychology, stakeholder relations and messaging then they'd fare better. What AI will be doing to beat most humans is using that body of knowledge and expertise that comms professionals have.

I've seen, and worked on, other examples of how we can use AI to help create more effective communications and campaigns. This is research that helps validate the approach.

Stuart Bruce

AI chats can reduce belief in conspiracy theories

More research showing how persuasively effective AI can be. It can reduce belief in conspiracy theories by 20%.

Stuart Bruce

Data, measurement, analytics

WTF visualisations

This site is wonderful. It's a collection of terrible data visualisations from misleading bar charts (familiar to anyone in UK politics that has ever seen a Liberal Democrat bar chart), to confusing pie charts and impossible to decipher colour schemes. And some are just too weird for words.

Tim Bailey

Crisis communication

How "prebunking" misinformation works

One of the best presentations at the AMEC Global Summit in Miami last year was by Carmen Romero, Deputy Assistant Secretary General for NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, One of the topics she talked about was how NATO effectively uses prebunking to combat misinformation.

This article looks at how prebunking works.

Stuart Bruce

Research and reports

Does AI mean eight million UK jobs are at risk or a £306 billion boost to the economy?

Respected think tank IPPR has published a comprehensive report claiming that up to eight million UK jobs are at risk from AI. That's the worst-case scenario where jobs are replaced by AI. The IPPR also modelled a central and best-case scenario. The best-case scenario is about using AI to adapt and augment jobs. It claims this approach could lead to an economic boost for the UK of 13% or £306 billion a year.

The best-case scenario is the approach we're taking with clients to help them introduce and use AI effectively. It's all about augmentation to make tasks faster or more efficient. It's about helping people to do better work. You can download the full report from the IPPR website.

Stuart Bruce

CIPR launches survey on views and experiences of PR and comms profession

The CIPR's State of the Profession report is one of the most important pieces of research about the public relations profession in the UK. The survey for this year's report has just been launched. Please take a few minutes to complete it. It's for everyone who works in public relations, communications and corporate affairs, not just members.

Stuart Bruce

"Your gen AI is a new brand" - so get it right before your customers see it

Earlier this year Avasant published a report on the blockers and drivers of generative AI projects. Jon Reed at Diginomica has published a follow-up article looking at issues such as:

Cost of implementing AI
Tackling AI bias
Reputational risk of AI - "your gen AI is a new band"

Stuart Bruce

Research to improve use of LinkedIn

How to make LinkedIn work? Most of the PR and communications training I do through Purposeful Relations or third parties like the CIPR is about strategy, planning, measurement or management. The exception is the LinkedIn for Public Relations and Corporate Affairs course which is as all about how you can use it and practical tips for using it effectively for corporate communications and public affairs.

Research like this LinkedIn Trends Study is useful to help make sure the practical tips are up to date as tactics and techniques change as LinkedIn adds and removes features and tweaks its algorithms. It analyses more than one and half million LinkedIn posts to try and identify what works.

Stuart Bruce

How under-35s’ interest in news has collapsed

This is a long-read article that potentially has profound implications for PR and comms.

The TL;DR is under-35s aren't interested in news and we need to do something about it.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech tools

AI to improve media interviews and speeches

I recently had a fascinating meeting with Varun Puri, the CEO and co-founder of AI-startup Yoodli. It's potentially an incredibly powerful tool for public relations and communications. Yoodli analyses a video (either speaking live or recorded) to provide advice and tips on how to improve a media interview, speech or presentation.

Potentially uses could include media training, media interview preparation or for lobbying to prepare for going before a Select Committee or meet an MP, civil servant or minister.

You can train it on your expertise and knowledge so the advice it gives is based on what you would advise, rather than just from generic knowledge.

It does more than I've mentioned here and is already being used by some impressive companies.

Let us know if you're interested in how you might benefit from Yoodli, as the website doesn't tell the whole story when it comes to public relations and corporate affairs.

Stuart Bruce

SparkToro helps you understand audiences and stakeholders

SparkToro is an interesting tool that's been around for a while. It helps you to understand your audiences and stakeholders. It has just launched 'V2' with some impressive new features.

There are lots of SEO tools to help you identify and optimise keywords, but SparkToro takes an alternative approach. It can show:

Data about who is searching - demographics, gender, age, professions, geography, skills, interests etc.
Which social networks are more or less popular with your audiences and stakeholders.
What searches your audience uses and what questions they are asking

If you want to try it out it has a freemium model (although quite a restricted one) which allows five free searches a month..

Stuart Bruce

AI, digital and social

Use ChatGPT instantly without an account

OpenAI claims "we’re making it easier for people to experience the benefits of AI without needing to sign up." I'm not convinced this is a benefit. Firstly, signing up to a free service isn't much of a barrier. Secondly, it's only to access GPT-3.5. It means people can potentially have a quick play with an old model without really knowing what they are doing and then mistakenly conclude AI doesn't work.

Stuart Bruce

Financial Times tests its Ask FT AI chatbot

The FT has created an AI chatbot trained on decades of its own articles. Chatbots for media and corporate sites could soon become commonplace. If a company or organisation has published lots of information, why wouldn't it want to make it more accessible and easier for people to find answers to their questions.

It potentially becomes a part of framing. Most issues have multiple angles with arguments for and against. An AI chatbot trained on a company's position and messages could potentially help to frame an issue if that's where stakeholders first start to explore it.

Even if they already have views the research from EPFL Lausanne that shows AI is already 82% more persuasive than humans means the AI chatbot could help to persuade people of a company's position.

Stuart Bruce

Microsoft 365 marketing head on the future of AI in our profession

Microsoft is leading the field in workplace AI so it's interesting to learn the views of Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Microsoft 365 and Future of Work marketing at Microsoft, on how marketing and communications professionals should adopt it.

Her view is it needs a bold test-and-learn approach. She identifies workflow efficiencies and supercharging creativity as two key opportunities. She reminds us that it's not enough to consider just individual productivity but that AI will totally transform the marketing and communications function.

The total transformation is why it's not optional for PR and comms leaders to take a strategic view of AI adoption.

Stuart Bruce

Stable Audio creates full three minute music tracks from a single language prompt

Stability AI is probably best known for Stale Diffusion, its text to image AI tool. It has now released Stable Audio 2.0 to create "high-quality, full tracks with coherent musical structure up to three minutes long at 44.1 kHz stereo from a single natural language prompt".

Stuart Bruce

CommTech newswatch

How much do media monitoring tools really cost?

One of the challenges of assessing media monitoring tools is the opacity of pricing. Rarely do vendors publish prices transparently. Instead, many work on aggressive commission driven sales models where there might be a 'list price' but it's negotiable behind closed doors.

Prowly is one of the exceptions as it operates as a traditional SaaS (software as a service) company and publishes its prices. Like many SaaS companies it runs aggressive SEO led marketing campaigns where it compares itself with competitors.

This article compares the publicly available pricing of Prowly with the secretive pricing of Meltwater. It also lists example pricing for Cision, Muck Rack and Propel. Obviously Prowly comes out as both cheapest and most feature rich. It wouldn't be publishing the article if it wasn't!

We've met the Prowly team, both face to face at the PRovoke Global Summit in Washington DC, and to run through a detailed demo of the product. It's certainly feature rich and one that's worth adding to your longlist when comparing the myriad of providers.

Tim Bailey

Notified launches mobile app and platform improvements

Notified has announced improvements to its PR platform. These include new Android and iOS apps to make its media monitoring and social listening more accessible when on the move. It has also improved the analytics reporting in GlobalNewswire to make it easier to brand as well as improving the search in its media database.

Stuart Bruce

"Readership-driven" reporter database now available

Memo claims its Reporter Intelligence tool is the "first and only readership-driven reporter database", Previously access to the tool needed a full subscription to its Memo Readership Dashboard, but the Reporter Intelligence tool is now available as a standalone product.

Stuart Bruce

Get in touch

The Final Word...

Purposeful Relations is a specialist advisory company that helps in-house communications organisations and agencies navigate the changing commercial landscape. We are experienced in the areas of measurement and evaluation, technology management, and are currently helping several organisations adopt AI into their day-to-day work.

Most importantly, we have sixty plus years of experience to share with you. To start a conversation, contact us and book a call.

The AI image was created in Copilot for Microsoft 365.