If you’re reading this then the chances are that you’ll be in PR and you’ll have noticed the problems you face are multiplying and going off in different directions. The chances are that you’re facing a “credibility crunch.”
Here’s where it starts. You can use AI to write a press release in seconds, but so can everyone else. This has led journalists to become more cynical than ever – only last week on Reddit I was engaging with someone who’d had a pitch rejected by a journalist because a piece of software had identified it as AI-generated (he was quite annoyed because he’d written it himself).
At the same time, AI search engines (like Perplexity and Google’s SGE) are prioritizing “original expert opinion” and “lived experience” to rank brands. So AI content doesn’t help and false positives when people use software to root out the non-human stuff are a real problem.
(We will pause here to reflect that the journalist using software to detect AI was also using AI so more than a little hypocritical – OK, as you were.)
So PR professionals are under immense pressure to put their executives forward as “thought leaders” because they’re human and then we’re back to the spokespeople being terrified by a live mic or cynical journalist with a difficult question. Many will resort to going really bland and slipping into what I think of as “corporate droid” mode in which case you might as well have gone to AI in the first place.
Help your spokespeople to be human
This is where it’s worth getting help and by all means I have a vested interest. There can be good reasons to opt for external input: someone like me can say something to a C-suite director without having to bump into them in the lift the following day, I will have a different set of experiences to most internal PR professionals and probably more experience as a journalist.
If you want to keep it internal, though, be aware that the needs of media training have changed quite a bit. Here are some examples”
- Podcasts are a thing so chattier approaches are more acceptable than they were. Just check what’s happening on popular TV; if you’re in the UK then you might be aware that “The Apprentice” is back but instead of the audience-based review aftershow “You’re Fired” we have the podcast-ish “Unfinished Business”. You can read my thoughts on why “podcast” is becoming a meaningless term here but the informality is probably here to stay.
- A consequence is that changing topics in an interview and steering away from uncomfortable areas is still a thing but an audience can spot a clunky change of gear at several paces.
- Journalists and other media professionals increasingly expect a personal side to an interview. Not only will they appreciate it but a good interview full of engaging stories and individual content will feed the algorithms and help AI-based searches to find it. Until they change it all again.
The same goes for your own pitches. Not only is using AI to generate them a bad idea but it’s worth checking to see whether your style sounds a bit robotic so you don’t join my contact on Reddit and get the boot for being AI when you’re not!
