Why Communicators Should Embrace AI

>> Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and others.

TRANSCRIPT:

DOUG: John, it’s great to be talking with you. Congratulations on your recent honors at the PRSA New York event. Well deserved, but thank you.

JON: To you as well,

DOUG: Appreciate that. Went fishing and caught a fish. So that’s a good thing. But where should communicators start when it comes to investing in AI? And I know you hold it as really not just important but critical.

JON: Yeah, it’s mission critical nowadays and that’s a great question. I think what happens and I you know, we have our own AI department here, a group that counsels of all the segments of our business from our operations, our supply chain, our marketing, our communications, our legal HR, and so on, but I think how it works is I think you should begin small, you know, test one or two clear use cases so that you, you will get a chance to kind of dip your toe in the water. For those who are still a little skeptical or more likely afraid of it. I think it’s important that you do that. You choose AI tools that solve real. For us, it’s communications, challenges, speed, personalization, analysis. Make sure that your data and content systems are clean and connected. Set guardrails, define what AI can draft and what humans approve. I think that’s very critical. And I think, you know, it’s interesting because so many people are so fearful nowadays. Doug, I think there’s a lot of trepidation. I’ve sat through several meetings recently and several of our events in the industry. And I just think that folks are, you know, it’s they know they need to use it. They know they need to adopt it, but I just think there’s a lot of trepidation because I think it might be overwhelming for them. But again, if you start small, you really establish the guidelines and what you’re really looking to achieve. I think that makes a big difference. Think human and AI technology should enhance creativity. It’s not there to replace it, right? It’s never going to replace a human being.

DOUG: Couldn’t AI in effect be programmed to have empathy? I know in some of our systems here in the country, depending on your political perspective, people say we’re not lacking too much. We’re not seeing empathy is a strong point. So, AI can, but you touched a little bit about the importance of it for improving the speed, the ability to personalize content, which seems ironic to some specific cases, examples of how it’s being used to benefit. Maybe some areas we’ll get into next on where you’re not really using it as well.

JON: I believe that there really is no reason for anyone in the industry, if they have AI, to write the first draft of anything. Doug. So, whether it’s a press release, a speech, whether it’s FAQs, whether it’s posts for various social media outlets, I think that is something, you know, AI, as long as we’re asking the right prompts, which is a whole other class now. I think that we can really, in many ways create or at least set up to create the materials that we need to support our narrative. So, I think from a speed perspective that happens very, very quickly. Everything I said was a first draft because I do believe, you know, for us, we know exactly what we want. We know exactly how to say it, and we know exactly what are the desired results. So, AI is not going to do that for you. And when I say empathy, I mean more of a mind. If I’m creating an internal communication, I know what are the sensitive areas for our employees, and I know the information that they need to know so that they feel valued and also understand their role in the overall success of the company. And so, that’s something AI is not going to do for you. What AI also does when it comes to media pitches, as well as press releases and so on, or even identifying outlets, whether it be podcasts or broadcast or social, digital, whatever it is, it allows us to personalize the pitch, and it does it in a way that actually individually personalize it, where it will, if you’re able to provide some of the articles that a reporter has recently written, it will be a kind of cover that and also say, hey, I had the pleasure to read your article in Glamour or wherever it was, and I think this story would be applicable or be interesting to you. So, it allows us to do that also. And then at the end of the day, it really does help us with analysis, right? I want to make sure it’s not just about impressions as we all know it, share a voice. It’s our key messages getting through. How are they getting through? What are the next steps? And that’s where the analysis comes into play. So, Doug I think that is where I think those are, how that is how the best communicators today are leveraging AI. It is interesting because, you know, something you and I talked about before, which is AI will not replace communicators, but communicators who know how to use AI will lead the way. You can’t be a great human leader without using AI. Nowadays it’s everywhere and it’s only going to get stronger and more effective. So I, you know, track what works, learn and scale smartly. And that’s kind of, you know, again, starting small, set your guardrails, but also track what’s working. Learn from maybe some mistakes you made or some missteps you made and then scale. And then you’ll see that, you know, we didn’t start at our company spreading it across the entire enterprise. We started in some specific areas and then it grew from there. And now, as I said, it’s our own service group within our organization.

DOUG: Yeah, it’s for operations and comms. That makes sense. I remember years ago speaking at a conference and someone asked me what’s the best media pitch? And I said, how is your daughter’s softball game? Is the best pitch, because if you’ve got a relationship, you’re in good shape. And we were talking earlier about AI and its connection with earned media. You mentioned the pitch. And, you know, we’ve been talking about the AI-Powered Broadcast Media Tour™ that we’re starting up, where you can kind of identify the queries that people are asking and making them the content. How important is it that now the content in your earned media relates to what people are actually asking about to improve discoverability?

JON: It’s everything, to be honest with you, Doug, and that’s one of the things that we were talking about, your new offering. You may not know this reporter, or you may not know the media person that you’re working with or the producer that you’re working with, but it will allow you to see what’s most important to them and how we can tailor our output to really match what they really care about. I mean that, you know, you’re really in many ways you’re loading the deck, but that’s in a great way because you’re not wasting time or energy. We already know the newsrooms nowadays are so busy. They’re no longer are, you know, you no longer have a team supporting an on-air personality and have, you know, the chance to go through everything and ask the questions and come up with the questions and so on, we’re able to give it to them. Thanks to great prompting, you can not only give them what they’re looking for, but all the answers that they need. And that, I believe, is just an incredible add to our audience, which is what we’re always about, right? We want to make it as easy as possible for them to cover our stories, but also make it compelling. I think what we’re talking about and what your new offering does, is it makes it that much more compelling and personalized to these specific producers and reporters.

DOUG: What are some of the biggest challenges communicators are facing when integrating AI into the workflows? You’ve touched on a lot of processes that you need to get there, but what are challenges? What surprised you? Maybe that you want to try and work around?

JON: Well, I think some of the some of the tools that we have maybe a little dated, some of the systems may be a little dated as well as the workflow. So, I think that’s what I’m hearing from a challenge with AI in communications, ensuring that your employees are trained and competent using AI. We’re doing quite a bit. We have every employee here has ChatGPT, a corporate enterprise model, as well as a Copilot, which we’ve been using since the inception of that, maintaining a human tone and authenticity and automated content. We don’t want it to sound like it’s emotionless that we don’t care, or inauthentic. We want to make sure that we capture that tone and authenticity in the content, that we provide them all content, so that it’s consistent and it’s done in the way that they wish to hear news from the company. Protecting data privacy and accuracy. Those are my legal team is working on that constantly right now. Who’s owning what ChatGPT puts out? I mean, I, I know that in the music industry and a lot of folks are using lyrics. Now, my son goes to USC, Thornton School of Music. He’s a junior.

DOUG: Fight on

JON: Yeah. Fight on, my brother, but that’s a big issue right now, right? If you’re going to ask ChatGPT to write a lyrics for a song? Well, and I write that song. Who? I put the music to it, or I change some of the words around who owns it? I mean, right, you did add to it. You have to believe that that where the source from which it came from also has ownership there. I also think with us and it’s very important and this is something else. Our legal folks are working on data privacy and accuracy. We’ve got to protect that, and so you set clear ethics and usage guidelines as well, so that everyone knows, what we can do and what we can’t do and, and how we should not use AI, but, you know, measuring ROI for us, has always been a bit of a challenge. It’s still for sure to this day. So, when you add AI to it, you know, how is it really going to work for you? Is it really proving the real impact? And I do believe actually we can use AI to figure that out. Yeah, but it’s going to be something that we need to constantly, constantly, you know, be focused on. I’ve been doing this now for more than three decades, and we’re not much further than I think we were, you know, years ago or a decade ago or two decades ago. We’re still using impressions, begrudgingly using impressions, but that’s still part of the measurement system that we provide others. And I think it’s got to be so much more than it is. And that’s why I’m talking about share of voice. Are your key messages getting across? How are we doing versus our peers? That’s the kind of information, I think, that can get closer to an ROI than just your impressions. And the last thing of all, as far as a challenge in AI and communications, avoid the overreliance on it. You know, AI is the copilot. Copilot. It’s not the pilot. You’re the pilot, right? To quote the Tom Hanks movie, “I’m the captain now”, right? You are the captain. You’re the pilot. So, use it, but don’t overuse it because you know, again, there is something very special that we as communicators bring to the table, and that is authenticity. That’s the sensitivities that we understand. It is the skills, talents, abilities and experience that are very unique that we all bring to the table. And so, you never want to downplay that. And just because it’s easier hand in something your first draft of something because you know it, it allows you to check something off your to do list. Do not over rely on it, but use it effectively. Use it efficiently. It will have quite the impact, as long as we’re not, we’re not overusing it.

DOUG: Yeah. And it’s interesting because one of the things that sort of piqued my interest is the idea that with all these major advancements have happened, you know, the internet, social media came in where it’s a bit different is in the past is like, oh, we need all these young people to help out. Now the thinking is, oh, with AI, we don’t need the entry level young people anymore. Well, good luck figuring that out. If you’re not going to be utilizing the people that were AI native from the time they were 15, 14, or 12. It’s a whole different perspective.

JON: So true. That is so true. That’s why human intelligence is so important here. The only way that we as communicators can become obsolete, frankly, Doug, is if we ignore technology and we ignore the innovations that are before us, that are at our disposal, that we can use. Because keep in mind, if you’re not using it, someone else is. And that unfortunately it’s going to give that other person a competitive advantage. And if you are looking for your first job, if you are looking to join either an agency, or a corporation, or a concern, you know you need to know everything. You need to use all the tools at your disposal in order to get the desired results for your company, your brands, your executives, your concerns. And so that is where human intelligence is always going to exist. We just have to make sure that we continue to challenge ourselves to be better tomorrow than we were today versus yesterday, right? And that’s incumbent upon all of us to figure that path out, but I agree with you. I hear from so many people that it’s going to impact entry level jobs. And the truth is, it certainly doesn’t have to. I mean, I know having once been an entry level communicator, I brought a lot more to the table than just whatever, just my output. And, you know, it’s, for instance, I’ll give you. I started in the agency business working at Medicus PR. It’s where I met many years ago, AI is not going to do new business for you. It will help you with your proposal. It will help you, you know, define audiences. It will help you define media outlets as well as, social media is also and create calendars, but it’s not going to. It’s not going to overshadow that. And it’s never going to take the place of that. We bring a lot to the table. Don’t ever forget that. And that’s it. Gets back to what I keep saying, which is, don’t fear this. You have to embrace it. The more you work with it and you can start very, very small. The more you work with it, the more you’re going to be more comfortable with it, and the more you can leverage it and use it to improve and enhance your output and what you bring to the table. So, it’s really it really is a win win and needs to be seen that way. It is not to be feared. It’s a very similar because you said it before, Doug. It reminds me very much of the internet, right. In the 90s, I remember, we launched I was at Pepsi at the time and we launched Pepsi World, which was our it was our first website. It was like, that must have been like ‘95, ‘96. And Shack was our first squatter, which meant he was the first personality on the website. And, you know, you would have thought that we had just created sliced bread at the time. We’ve come a long way from that, but I will also say, I remember a lot of people back in the day calling that a fad. That was no fad and AI is no fad.

DOUG: Well, this is great. You’ve clearly brought a plethora of human intelligence to this conversation, probably aided by AI somewhere in the background in your life, because your use of it, but it’s been such a pleasure to speak with you.

JON: Right back at you, Doug. Thanks so much for having me. This is a great conversation. I love the work that you’re doing with your team. And yes, if anyone wants to reach out to me, they can link in with me at John Harris on LinkedIn or at @jonharris on Instagram and X, and they can even look me up on Facebook as well. I usually accept everyone’s inquiries and we’ll get back to them as well.