✅ Monday briefing: Waddscon on AI in PR, issues radar, Google Analytics switch, GPT3 Google docs, TikTok for text, IP overreach, British Gas fury, and more...
Waddscon (1-2pm, Thursday, 23 February) on Exploring the impact of AI on marketing, media, and public relations 🎟️
I hope that you'll be able to join us for the next Waddscon (1-2pm, Thursday, 23 February) when we’ll be joined by four practitioners to talk about the potential impact of AI on PR.
We’ll explore the explosion of GPT3 tools, digital creative, media analysis and measurement, and the potential impact on society and the future of work with Andrew Smith, Mark Rofe, Maya Koleva, and Bruno Amaral.
All income generated from the event will be donated to our local foodbank in Newcastle. Please follow this link to buy tickets.
Tools
📡 ISSUES RADAR: Factmata (Andrew Bruce Smith and Darryl Sparey), NewsWhip (Stuart Bruce and Rod Cartwright), and Social360 (Ed Coke) are all recommended as monitoring services. These tools take the temperature of issues and topics which might be an area of risk for a brand. Spotted Nigel Sarbutts.
🔢 GOOGLE ANALYTICS SWITCH: There are less than five months left before Google shuts down Google Analytics 3 (GA3). Starting March, anyone who hasn't yet set up a GA4 property will get one created for them by Google. If you intend to stick with GA, you should proactively take control of your GA4 set-up. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
💬 GPT3 GOOGLE DOCS: A Google Docs extension enables the use of ChatGPT directly from within a document. It enables direct queries to OpenAI for research, translation, summaries, and content suggestions. It’s one of the best ChatGPT applications and integrations that we’ve seen so far. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
🔤 TIKTOK FOR TEXT: Artifact, variously described as TikTok for text and Google Reader reincarnated as a mobile app, has opened in private beta. The start-up, launched by the founders of Instagram, uses a discovery and recommendation engine to serve articles. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
Artificial Intelligence
❗ CHATGPT RECORD: ChatGPT, the popular chatbot from OpenAI, is the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to analyst UBS. It is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, two months after launch. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
🔍 BING AI ENGINE: The search bar on Bing will become a chat box once the integration of ChatGPT is complete to encourage natural language. The search engine will respond in a chat bubble with concepts and ideas. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith and Stuart Bruce.
Good and Bad Practice
🚫 IP OVERREACH: A waste collection firm in Brighton called Lord of the Bins has been served notice by lawyers for the Lord of the Rings franchise to change its name. Middle-earth Enterprises claims that customers of the waste company might believe that it was endorsed by Lord of the Rings. Spotted Tricia Fox.
🛢️ BRITISH GAS FURY: British Gas debt collectors broke into the homes of vulnerable customers to fit prepayment meters according to an undercover investigation by The Times. The company which claimed "This is not who we are — it's not how we do business," has stopped the practice while Ofgem launches an investigation. Spotted Sarah Waddington CBE.
👔 TWITTER AS EXEC COMMS: Tesla boss Elon Musk did mis-tweet when he posted in August 2018 that he was considering taking the company private. A jury in San Francisco agreed with his defence that he had funding in place, despite Musk saying that users don’t necessarily take his tweets seriously. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
Industry Insight
➕ PR MORE THAN COMMS: There is a latent insecurity within public relations practice because of a lack of management knowledge, professional standards, and fear of public misunderstanding. We use alternative phrases to describe practice. This is a mistake that leaves us open to encroachment from other professions and critical attacks. Source Stephen Waddington.
😬 REGULATORY FAILURE: Former CMA boss Lord Andrew Tyriehas criticised regulators for failing to protect consumers from renewal penalties, not being ready for the energy price shock, or stopping the discharge of effluent into rivers. The peer said that it had contributed to the crisis in capitalism. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
😃 DATA AS SINGULAR: The Financial Times style guide has announced that data will no longer be plural and will always be singular. Source Stephen Waddington.
Media
📻 RAJAR RESULTS: Radio listening data for Q4 2022 finds that radio has almost the same penetration (89%) of the UK population as the Internet (94.8%). The total average number of weekly hours listened to radio is more than a billion. On average a listener tunes into 20.3 hours of live radio per week. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
💲 PAYWALL JUMPING: Zette allows you to access premium digital news from 100+ publishers behind article paywalls, with a single subscription. The service is free to trial for 30 days and costs from $9.99 for 30 articles per month. Source Alex Waddington.
The latest Wadds Inc. podcast is a timely conversation with AI expert Katie King. We talk about AI and its impact on the public relations profession and discuss tools, risk related to data and ethics, the division of labour between practitioners and machines, skills, and the UK as a centre of excellence. Source Stephen Waddington.