PR’s Top Pros Talk… Communicating to a Broader Audience About AI

The first episode of our series “How PR is Promoting AI” features Chris Hook, Senior Group Director of Communications and Marketing at Cadence Design Systems. Chris describes how he tested the messaging for the launch of the first AI powered supercomputer for design. Chris also shares how communicators can effectively tell stories about AI being used in products and services.

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TRANSCRIPT:

DOUG: AI is everywhere. It’s being talked about, you need to use more of it, etc. but if you’re a brand that is actually utilizing AI within your products, how do you go about communicating it? Chris Hook is the person with the answers from Cadence. Chris, thanks so much for being with us.

CHRIS: A pleasure to be here, Doug.

DOUG: Great and full disclosure, we recently completed a media tour for you where you were announcing the first AI-enabled supercomputer.

CHRIS: Yeah, the first AI-enabled supercomputer for design. So, this is a really new initiative that we have, the millennium platform. And, really, what makes this special is its ability to accurately model using computational fluid dynamics. It’s optimized, for example, chassis for race cars or the optimal cooling for the data center or the physical property of Levi’s Stadium itself, which, of course, we were doing our satellite media tour from Levi’s Stadium. Levi’s is also a partner of ours, and we’ve been working to help, make, their data center and their facility more efficient really, by modeling its physical dynamics and helping them to optimize it. Now, I think it gets arcane really quickly when you start talking about CFD and what that means. I think for the but as you start to bring that to a broad audience, really what you’re talking about is how we’re making things, how are we making consumer devices, buildings, cars, automobiles better, faster and cheaper using AI because that’s really what it’s about at the end of the day, it’s not, just about the cool factor of AI. And there’s always, a market for that story, but it’s really, how are we going to change, the lives of the everyday viewer?

DOUG: How did you approach thinking of a way to just launch? And obviously, you did a lot more than the media tour on that, but what was the approach is that how do we get people to understand what this means? How do you go about that? Is there a specific process you use?

CHRIS: The running discussion leading into the millennium launches. Look, let’s go and call up our moms, or better yet, somebody else’s mom. And you know, shoot for someone sort of in the kind of retirement age and, and say, look, we’re going to tell you, I’m going to tell you all about what’s going on with this computer. And, you know, judge the reactions from that. I know one of our spokespeople did that. She said, okay, I’m going to call up my mom and tell her all about it and see what’s resonating and what’s relevant, what isn’t. There’s another saying that I’m sure you’re familiar with. It’s if you can’t explain it to a ten-year-old, you don’t really understand it yourself, and it shouldn’t be anywhere near broadcast. So, I think you have to if you really have to go in there with, how are we going to democratize it, but do it in a way that that keeps engagement. So, it’s like, okay, we have to simplify it, but if we don’t keep it really, really, really concise, we’re going to lose a broad audience.

DOUG: Now we see here AI being talked about all the time. And you raise the idea of asking your mom, which seems like a pretty good piece of advice, but a lot of times companies are looking to reach younger audiences, and maybe they’re more facile and aware of it, or maybe not. Sometimes we make false assumptions. Do you look at targeting different age audiences and other audiences differently?

CHRIS: Yeah. Well, absolutely. I mean, we look at different age audiences. I think we look at obviously, you know, we’re a very technical digital twinning company, very much focused on really B2B. So, a lot of our narrative is focused on, okay, it’s the automotive manufacturers or it’s the aerospace and defense companies and, we’re speaking largely to engineers or people who manage engineers or have an engineering background. So, a lot of our narrative is very trade-focused, is very technical. Our focus is very customer-focused, very user-focused. I think where we’re starting to evolve and other companies like us are starting to evolve this. Okay, that’s great. We have to do that, but now we have an opportunity to go that one level up and or two levels up and tell that story to a broader audience, but most of the time, I would say we’re delivering a very technical narrative.

DOUG: One of the things that’s interesting, a lot of people, and they hear AI, they think ChatGPT and great. You can put some questions in, and get answers quickly, but you’re actually looking at and it’s probably not just you. Many companies are looking at how it’s sort of spearheading and shepherding product development. Is that a key part of where you see AI being used, and where else do you see that it might be going that we don’t know about?

CHRIS: Absolutely. And it’s really interesting that you mentioned, you know, ChatGPT, that really is um, you know, often people will say, well, I don’t really understand AI, but oh, I know, I know, ChatGPT. So, you know, we have some technology called Cerebrus that allows chip designers to use AI to develop semiconductors, higher quality, quicker time to market, and at a lower cost. So, what I do with when I’m talking to, family members or abroad, uh, marketing audience, I said, look, you understand ChatGPT. Think of what we’re doing here is CHIPGPT um, using large language models, natural language commands to sort of simulate and optimize chip designs.

DOUG: And we have seen a large curiosity in the media and campaign seems more and more about what organizations are doing about AI, what they’re surveying about AI, how it’s going to help employment or hinder employment. There’s a lot of issues involved. Does that come into play when you’re coming up with your communications plan? Because there might be sensitivities out there, whether accurate or not.

CHRIS: Well, we have to be very careful. I mean, for example, we are deploying more and more AI tools inside the company to help with things like, um, you know to help with things like, like, sort of like, say, crafting a blog or crafting a story or. And it’s not that you take the human element out, but AI is sort of becomes your copilot, your assistant, and you have to be very careful because you have to say, okay, well, where was that algorithm trained? Was it trained on our own material? Is it trained on open-source material? Is it or is it trained on copyrighted material? So, you never want to be in a situation where you’ve leveraged AI to help you create a piece of content, but then you find out later that it’s done something in violation of a copyright. So, you have to be very thoughtful and, and have a deep partnership with your, your legal team. Okay. Well, what you guys have done, the research, you’ve really drilled into it. What are the risks of using technology A versus technology B? So, we try to be very, very cognizant of that. You know, we’re kind of in this wild west of AI and AI content creation, but how do we make sure that at the end of the day, we’re not going to get a product that infringes on copyrights?

DOUG: Yeah. And that form of AI almost seems like it’s Google search on steroids if you will. Do you have any final thoughts, or pieces of advice for other communicators or their brand? Or maybe on the agency side for working with companies that are deploying AI? Any advice for them?

CHRIS: Most AI technologies, um, at least the highest value AI technologies are right now typically B2B technologies in a lot of ways. I think that if you’re marketing AI from a B2B perspective, I think you always have to have this parallel track of, okay, let’s not confuse our customer message, with our press message. Let’s make sure that whatever we’re doing, sort of from a core user marketing perspective, that we can abstract that up and tell it to a broad audience because, you know, you rely on your employees, to help get your message across. You want to engage them, you want to engage their families. You want the word of mouth about your technology to get out there. You want to be able to engage a broad cross-section of media and other audiences. You want to be able to engage investor audiences. So, what I would say is, as you’re thinking about your core user messages, absolutely be thinking about how do we abstract it to a higher level.

DOUG: That’s fantastic advice, Chris. Thanks so much for sharing your great ideas.

CHRIS: Well, it’s great talking to you, Doug.

DOUG: The 49ers definitely had a great season even though they couldn’t get the big one. I know you’re a sponsor of them as you mentioned.

CHRIS: Yeah, I mean it was it was hard to it was hard to watch. It was so disappointing, but, Doug, we will get them next year.