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Podcast Host, Doug Simon is CEO at D S Simon Media. D S Simon Media is a recognized innovator in broadcast public relations and the creator of the industry’s first AI-Powered Broadcast Media Tour™. Clients include top brands in healthcare, technology, travel, financial services, food and beverage, consumer goods, entertainment, retail, and non-profits. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the firm has won more than 100 industry awards.
Contact Doug at dougs@dssimonmedia.com.
TRANSCRIPT:
DOUG: So today, we’re gonna dive a bit into the AI tool kit and specifically building your own AI tools. Shira, why should communicators, PR people be looking into building their own AI tools? What’s the most important reason?
SHIRA: One, it’s future of our industry. I mean, well, thank you for having me today. Let’s start with that. I’m so excited to be on with you, but AI is the future of our industry. It’s the way that you’re gonna stay relevant, but it’s also so exciting. For the first time, you can build a tool that fits your exact needs built on your materials. We’ve never been able to make these bespoke tools before, at least not an affordable price and now that’s available to everybody.
DOUG: Yeah. And you’ve actually created some tools yourself that helps you do the work. Could you maybe share an example of one of the tools that you’ve built?
SHIRA: Yeah. I’ve built a lot of tools for my agency to help us be more efficient and more consistent in the services we provide our clients. One of the tools is a LinkedIn thought starter. First, you build an executive voice profile. It’s based on your writing or your clients. It’s your LinkedIn posts, your emails, op-eds, whatever you wanna input. It also lets you say things like, I am never sarcastic in my posts. And then each week, it asks you five to eight different questions. It might be, what television show is sticking with you this week? Is there an article you’ve read? Is there a piece of advice you gave a colleague? It takes your executive voice profile and the content you input. It then layers in something that looks for AI tells, so no em dashes. No, it’s not this, it’s this. And it produces five to eight different potential LinkedIn posts, which you can then make sure it sounds authentic and uses your voice.
DOUG: Communicators need different skills now. They need the understanding of communication, messaging, sharing, but they also have to figure out almost become software engineers within this AI arena.
SHIRA: You just have to start. You talk to Claude and tell Claude what you wanna build. Tell Claude to ask you questions, and you build it you build it together. I mean, that sounds kind of weird because it’s a robot. It’s not real. It’s in your computer, but as experienced communicators, you know what the problem is you’re trying to solve, and then you have tools with the AI bots to solve it together.
DOUG: Whatever your perspective is on AI, it’s here. And it’s outlasting the metaverse as an example. So, are you encouraging people both at your firm and just in general since you’ve got an audience here on the podcast that they really need to be embracing it?
SHIRA: I did not choose to live in this world that was AI centric. It’s probably not the world I would wanna choose, but it’s where we are. And so, I really encourage everyone to move beyond just prompting and figure out how these tools work, start building. It’s gonna be your differentiating factor in the marketplace. I don’t think PR has ever changed as fast as this moment, And so, you have to get comfortable with them. And there’s no other option to stay relevant in our field.
DOUG: Yeah. And we’ve seen it really speed up the process of creating presentations, graphics when you sort input of the info you might have from a study and research, how do I create that visually? And like, bam, you’ve got a first draft. What are some of the areas that you’re seeing where it’s impactful? Maybe if there’s one or two that’s sort of surprising or unexpected.
SHIRA: The idea that it can consume all of these research reports and pull out top line findings is really extraordinary. You do need a human eye because AI makes a lot of mistakes. I use it frequently in new business to review RFPs. We have proposal tools where we have a library of past proposals and improved language. So, you can upload the RFP, add additional prompt language, and it pulls in all our generic language, and then we just have to spend time on the creative pieces of it, but I’ve also seen it take an RFP and come to absolutely the wrong conclusion. It always uses the most basic conclusion. So, again, like, these tools are helpful and they all need human oversight.
DOUG: I don’t know if you’ll agree with this, but it perhaps it’s through the gap between sort of senior PR people and people just starting out or even students is sort of narrowing with these tools so universally available. Are there things seasoned communicators need to learn from students and others maybe just starting their careers?
SHIRA: Yep. So, I’m also an adjunct professor at USC, because I don’t like to have free time. And I learn things from them all the time, and they are gonna be AI natives. I think it is a challenge for them. When I start my class, I tell them, it’s up to you if you learn anything because the class could be done by AI. So, it’s a choice they have to make every day. I never had that pressure. My younger colleagues and my students teach me a lot about internet culture, and influencers, and memes, and you can definitely layer that in AI, but they teach me what is culturally happening. Right? They’re mostly not reading The New York Times. So, how are you reaching out to news influencers? My Gen Z colleagues have made incredible tools. One of the one of the coolest ones is we have a candidate, and they uploaded all of their policy statements into a database.
DOUG: A political candidate, not a job candidate, just to clarify.
SHIRA: Sorry. Yes, a political candidate. So, the political candidate’s policy statements, then you take all these surveys from third parties that are deciding who to endorse, and you could much more quickly, make sure that the policy statements we’re putting out on behalf of the surveys are accurate. Thanks to these databases. It used to be you’d have to, like, look up each policy one by one. And that that was, you know, a thirty-year old maybe at most, and she just knew that it had to be done.
DOUG: Yeah. That’s amazing. I’ve gotta give a little fight on shout out to USC where my oldest son graduated from Annenberg, I did have a chance to be a guest lecturer there, which is quite fun. I do that at NYU now, which is great for their grad program. It’s fun. Are there any final thoughts that you think people really need to grasp? If they come away with just one message from this conversation, stuff they need to start doing right away, what would it be?
SHIRA: People are so scared of opening up Claude Code, but you don’t have to work in terminal anymore. You can work directly in the interface. Claude Code, Claude Cowork, those are the ones that are gonna really change your professional life. And Claude can teach you how to do it, you don’t need to be scared of it.
DOUG: Great. Well, we’ll certainly be asking Claude what it thought of this conversation when we get to post it online. Thanks so much for being with us.
SHIRA: Thanks so much for having me.
