✅ Please and thank you, ChatGPT
Your week ahead in management, media and public relations
Humans Needed More Than Ever, published by the CIPR in September 2023, argued that AI was a useful tool for helping practitioners work more efficiently and effectively, but there was limited evidence that AI would replace roles.
A challenge is that tools can only be mapped directly onto a small number of public relations tasks, such as brainstorming, editing and writing. Other skills require adaption and innovation.
At Wadds Inc., we recently published a report, The Use of AI in Corporate Communications and Public Relations: The Story So Far, highlighting this as a significant barrier to adoption alongside governance issues.
Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson discussed the impact of AI on copyrighting on their For Immediate Release pod this week. They believe that AI is already impacting this area of marketing and public relations practice.
AI-generated copy for generic content is often good enough for corporate applications.
The relationship aspect of public relations is often cited as an argument against AI's impact. Indeed, the CIPR Humans Needed More Than Ever report makes this case, suggesting that professional public relations capabilities are the least likely to be undertaken by AI.
After reading an interview in Fortune this week with Replika CEO Eugenia Kuyda, I can’t help thinking that this may be a relatively short-lived perspective. The Replika chatbot supports personal relationships, from loneliness to coaching, and from mental health and wellbeing to romance.
Prof Lee Edwards from the London School of Economics made a related point in a recent presentation about her research on the adoption of AI tools by public relations practitioners. She said practitioners are already anthropomorphising AI tools, describing them as co-workers.
We’re in a period where we’re trying to adopt AI tools to workflow. It is challenging at scale. The Wadds Inc. report suggested that Microsoft Copilot and enterprise large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are the most likely forward.
As soon as these issues are overcome, disruption will be rapid. If you're not already, I recommend to skill up and get ahead of the game. I’ll be speaking at the PRMoment event on Tuesday, 2 July in London along with 12 expert practitioners about these issues. Use the code WADDS10 to grab a ticket with a ten per cent discount.
Have an excellent week.
UK General election
😞 TRUST AT RECORD LOW: The latest British Social Attitudes report reveals record-low public trust in Britain's government. 45% "almost never" trust governments to prioritise national interests and 58% doubt politicians' honesty. Brexit disillusionment, NHS dissatisfaction and cost-of-living struggles have eroded confidence. The next government faces the daunting task of restoring faith in the political system. Source: National Centre for Social Research.
🗳️ ELECTION INTEGRITY: The Electoral Commission has advised voters to think critically about campaign material ahead of the upcoming UK general election. It urges political parties and campaigners not to mislead voters, especially when using generative AI. Source: Electoral Commission.
📊 MISLEADING CHARTS: Political parties increasingly use misleading bar charts on election leaflets to encourage tactical voting. These charts often mix data from different sources and years or rely on outdated information to support their claims. The practice raises concerns about the integrity of political campaigning and voter manipulation. Source: BBC.
Industry
🏆 CANNES WINS: Public relations agencies had unprecedented success at this year's Cannes Lions with Golin, Ogilvy PR, Weber Shandwick and Edelman all winning Grand Prix awards. This felt like a breakthrough moment for the industry at Cannes after years of being overshadowed by advertising agencies. Source: PRovoke Media.
🎖 CANNES CAN: Public relations agencies have relied heavily on purpose-driven campaigns and consumer surveys, ignoring brand theory and data to demonstrate the effectiveness of other differentiation strategies. Agencies should consider provenance, attitude and utility to develop more diverse and impactful brand-building campaigns. Source: David Brain.
🔍 INVESTIGATING INEQUALITY: Socially Mobile has received a CIPR grant to investigate the barriers preventing female practitioners from progressing or causing mid-career exits. The research aims to identify issues and provide interventions to accelerate industry equality. This initiative addresses the ‘Missing Women’ phenomenon in the industry, seeking to improve gender representation at senior levels. Source: Socially Mobile.
Media
📺 VIDEO EXPANSION: The Daily Mail has launched a long-form video strategy, producing original series for home TV viewing via YouTube. The Mail's Global Video Studio aims to create "blockbuster" content, attracting millions of views and new commercial opportunities. This move reflects the growing importance of video content in digital publishing strategies. Source: Press Gazette.
📈 MEDIA TRUST RISES: The Reuters Institute's Digital News Report shows UK trust in news increased by 3% to 36%, below the 40% global average. The BBC ranked as the most trustworthy UK news brand, while The Sun was least trusted despite slight improvement. The findings highlight the ongoing challenges and gradual progress in rebuilding public trust in news media. Source: Reuters Institute.
Social media
🤝 IMPROVING SOCIAL: Social Element launched a "Make Social Better" campaign at Cannes, advocating for collaboration between brands, agencies, and platforms to address the increasingly dark nature of social media. The agency's leadership, including founder Tamara Littleton and co-global CEO Ashley Cooksley, have a history of working on internet child safety initiatives dating back to 2005. Source: Social Element.
📣 NEWSLETTERS EXPANDED: LinkedIn has expanded newsletter access to all members and introduced new features. Updates include a redesigned interactive reading experience, integration with Microsoft Designer for AI-powered cover images, improved subscriber email notifications, the ability to embed member profiles and pages in articles and staging links for pre-publication URL viewing. Source: LinkedIn.
Artificial intelligence
🤖 AI DECEPTION: A WIRED investigation found that Perplexity AI surreptitiously scrapes websites, including those that have blocked its crawler, and generates summaries that sometimes make things up. The AI search startup appears to access content without permission and approximate article information from search engine snippets when unable to directly access the articles, resulting in inaccurate and fabricated information. Source: WIRED.
I’m heading to the CIPR Excellence Awards event on Wednesday evening in London. Look out for us and say hello if you’re attending.
Thank you to all of the members of our community for sharing and debating the stories in the newsletter this week: David Edmundson-Bird, Steve Earl, Leanne Hughes, Ben Lowndes, Tamara Littleton, Alan Morrison, Maria Nikova, Andrew Bruce Smith, Alex Waddington and Sarah Waddington CBE.
This newsletter is sent to 3,500 corporate communications and public relations practitioners weekly. If you would like to discuss working with us, please hit reply.
Just what I was looking for, thank you - now booked onto the AI in PR day next week (thank you for the discount!). Looking forward to it. Anita
Only just catching up with your paper on AI and its potential for integration into PR, marketing, etc. I'm relieved we are finally talking about how to "join 'em" as there's still definitely a feeling of feeling 'beaten'with regards to AI, particularly in the copywriting community. But, like you say, when the disruption comes it will be rapid, so we have to be ready.
On another note, it's wild (but unsurprising) that parties are STILL using misleading data and charts to channel their views ahead of the election. Just shows we haven't come very far since the infamous Brexit bus.