✅ Monday briefing: BBC backlash, influence business, PR measurement, SEO and earned media, AI feedback, GPT-4 launch, AI goes mainstream, AI and PR workflow, and more...
Industry insight, insight, artificial intelligence, and tools
Public relations is often wrongly blamed for an organisation’s failure. This weekend we watched an actual public relations crisis play out.
Business issues that hit the newspapers and television are typically blamed on poor media management.
The fallout from Gary Lineker's tweet criticising the government's use of asylum-related language is a public relations disaster impacting relationships between the government, BBC, talent, football, and the public.
The BBC has walked into a culture war. The anger on both sides of the debate is polarised and typical of political discourse in much of UK society.
The social media policies for BBC employees are excellent. The inconsistency in the application of these policies and the political affiliation of senior executives are less good and do not hold up to public scrutiny.
A public consultation by the BBC on the disclosure of political affiliation and public commentary by all staff and suppliers may be the only way out. Lineker and other BBC talent will need to rein in their social media use in the meantime.
It's a beautiful game.
Industry
🖼️ INFLUENCE BUSINESS: The Influencer Marketing Trade Body has joined CAP to represent the influencer marketing sector. CAP is responsible for rules on UK advertising. The move is a shift towards professionalism for the influencer marketing sector. Source Scott Guthrie.
📏 PR MEASUREMENT: A paper in Public Relations Review calls out poor measurement practice. Public relations needs to overcome its obsession with media and channels and shift to audience centric approaches used in management. It calls for engagement between theory and practice, and teaching and industry. Source Jim Macnamara.
Insight
🔍SEO AND EARNED MEDIA: New analysis highlights the relationship between earned media and search engine optimisation. Sixteen companies own the website brands that receive three billion clicks a day from Google for generic search terms. The report is packed with insight for public relations practitioners. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
👶CHILDCARE SUPPORT: It was inevitable that a survey of 4,000 women about childcare would find that the majority needed additional support. Childcare is not a women’s issue but a business one. Equality needs male and female voices to lobby for solutions. Source Sarah Waddington CBE.
Artificial intelligence
😕 AI FEEDBACK: Microsoft is building confidence metrics and user feedback into its GPT tools in order to counter inaccuracies and misinformation. It is inevitable that platforms will deflect regulatory obligations for the use of AI tools to end users. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
🆕 GPT-4 LAUNCH: The fourth generation of the GPT dataset launches this week. It promises to improve natural language capability and be capable of generating text, image, video and audio. Expect another burst of innovation in AI tools. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
👍 AI GOES MAINSTREAM: A motorist used ChatGPT to reduce a parking fine. The RAC reported how the AI tool wrote a successful letter of appeal. The tool has also been used to generate objection letters for planning applications. Source Stuart Bruce and Alan Morrison.
🔰 WIRED ON AI: Wired has published a guide for the use of AI in its content. It won’t use tools to generate articles, images or to edit content, but it will use them to suggest headlines and story ideas. It is also experimenting with AI for data analysis. Source Micheal Greer.
Tools
🧰 AI AND WORKFLOW: The launch of AI tools based on the GPT-3 dataset is overwhelming. A common approach to innovation is breaking down workflow into discrete tasks to see how it might be disrupted by new technology. Here’s an example based on writing a press release. Source Stephen Waddington.
🗒️ MEETING MINUTES: The Fireflies bot distributes the minutes of a meeting within 30 meetings of it ending. It joins online meetings as a guest and generates a transcript. It provides analysis of the share of conversation and sentiment, however it’s bit overzealous in determining actions. It will no doubt learn. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.