PR Futurist | Stuart Bruce | Purposeful Relations - 🚀 PR Futurist #55 | AI sorts 20th anniversary | Comms survey deadline

Welcome

💒 How AI found the restaurant for our 20th wedding anniversary dinner!

Welcome to PR Futurist on this sunny February Monday morning. Our latest edition brings a reminder that it's your final chance to complete our global communications survey to have a chance to win your place at the PRovoke Global Summit. I just got the new Bing and my first try came up trumps for organising our 20th wedding anniversary dinner! Plus useful tips on making that Friday crisis call less of a panic call and goodbye Excel and hello Airtable. Enjoy!

News

Global communications survey is closing next week

We'll soon be closing our global survey looking at how communications, public relations and corporate affairs professionals use technology and think about it.

If you still haven't had chance to complete it yet then please do ASAP here. Everyone who completes it can enter a draw to win a pass to the PRovoke Global Summit. It's arguably (we think so!) the world's most important communications conference. You can see details of last year's summit in Washington DC here.

Karen Marshall

I'm in on the new Bing, are you? It found our 20th wedding anniversary restaurant!

I've already got access to the new ChatGPT powered AI version of Bing. First impressions are impressive. The first question I asked was:

"What are some romantic restaurants in Leeds for a 20th wedding anniversary dinner?"

One of its answers was Chaophraya, which is the restaurant that is now in the building where we had our wedding reception. The restaurant was then called Homarus. It wasn't one that we'd already thought about.

I'm taking it as an omen that I'm going to like the AI-powered Bing.

It adds a new Chat button at the top where you can ask your AI questions. It references the source of its answers, so the accuracy isn't too different to traditional search where you still need to use your common sense to assess them.

If you want to join the waitlist, then follow the link and sign-up. You've got nothing to lose. If you do start experimenting with Bing, then make sure you're signed up to Microsoft Rewards where you earn points for searching. When you're signed into Google or Microsoft, they are both collecting your personal data to provide you with more relevant information... and make money. Rewards is Microsoft sharing some of the rewards of monetisation with you, instead of doing what Google does and keeping it all itself.

Stuart Bruce

AI

10 things to now about AI in journalism

All 10 of the things to know about AI in journalism also apply to public relations and communications. The precise detail might differ, but the headline tips are the same.

AI is not what you think
AI is not stealing your job
You may not need AI
You need a strategy
Tools: Buy, build, or...
Unicorns exist
Collaboration is essential
You need a space to experiment
Understand AI to report on it
A transformational opportunity

If you need help to understand AI, creating a strategy, selecting and using tools, collaborating, experimenting and transforming then get in touch.

LinkedIn now shows your newsletter under your profile and adds SEO features

LinkedIn is increasing its focus on helping you publish newsletters by increasing their prominence in search results. If a LinkedIn creator offers a newsletter, it will now appear under the author's name with a prominent Subscribe button. It also lets you set an SEO title and description. It will soon also let you schedule posts.

If you're looking to up your LinkedIn game, then get in touch. We offer bespoke in-house courses for PR and comms teams to help them and to help them support other employees and especially the C-suite and directors.

You can subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter here. It's not a regular thing and usually just picks three or four 'highlights' of the last few months.

What does Microsoft new AI-powered Bing mean for your business?

It seems the world is a buzz with excitement and fear about ChatGPT. Meanwhile Microsoft is getting on with launching practical real world uses that we can all benefit from.... and benefiting from its multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI.

Simon Bisson is a seasoned Microsoft watcher and provides a great analysis of what it's all about and what it might mean for you.

Stuart Bruce

Corporate affairs

ESG, defined and explained

Do you struggle to differentiate your CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) from your ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance criteria)? Do you need a case to put ESG into the centre of your organisation? McKinsey has written an article providing a compelling case for the need to take ESG seriously, including data on the impact it is having on investment and its likely longevity.

Tim Bailey

'This industry is on steroids': Comms leaders share transformation lessons from Davos

A report on the PRovoke Media/Weber Shandwick roundtable at Davos makes for interesting reading. The discussion reads as a set of high-level views on a number of compelling contemporary issues for public relations, such as data, AI, measurement—what it’s good for, or not.

One point that caught my eye was the use of ‘agile’ teams within the communications function of organisations, particularly bringing in people with skills not traditionally considered to be needed. The intention was to create a better understanding of how to communicate key messages and make them effective with diverse skills, such as data science and technical media skills. This use of skills and knowledge not usually seen in communications is, we believe, something all organisations should be considering.

Tim Bailey

Trust, Risk and Resilience report - where are we now and where next?

In PR Futurist we often share the latest research and reports, but we know that many of you don't have the time to read and digest them all. We have to as we use their findings to help advise our clients.

Rod Cartwright Consulting has gone one step further and published an excellent summary of the key findings of five major reports on trust and risk. The World Economic Forum Global Risks Report, Iposos Global Trustworthiness Monitor, Page Society Survey of Chief Communications Officers, The Conference Board C-Suite Outlook and the Edelman Trust Barometer.

Stuart and Rod often work together on each other's crisis and reputation clients.

Tim Bailey

CommTech tools

Free comms calendar and planner

Everyone loves a calendar and it is not too late to get inspiration from the nice people at Mailmodo who offer key campaign date ideas in most calendar formats.

The screenshot is of the Airtable version. If you're not already using Airtable you really should be, especially as the base version is free. Find out why in the next story or just try it now!

Although rather bizarrely I didn't receive the download email to any of my own domain email addresses I tried. They didn't even end up in 'junk', simply never arrived. I did get it via my rarely used personal Gmail address.

Stuart Bruce

Don't use Excel or Sheets for lists and data - use Airtable it's 💯 times better!

Do you use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets for storing lists or data? Stop now. Stop right now.

Airtable is a proper database that's incredibly easy to use. The default view is just like a spreadsheet, but you also have grid, calendar, Kanban, form and more. It has multiple data formats including check boxes, users, long text, attachments, dates, percentages and more.

Try it now for free and let us know what you think.

Stuart Bruce

https://airtable.com/invite/r/UsYD4iZW

Data, measurement, analytics

What do the most 'successful' PR campaigns look like?

We often get asked for benchmarking data for public relations and corporate communications. The reality is that the most valuable data isn't available as it is about impact on the business or organisation.

Even crude output data can be hard to find. This is an interesting analysis of 1,500 campaigns. It identifies the 'best performing categories', campaign types (quiz, tool, study, report, expert comment etc), campaign formats (microsite, blog, table, map, data viz etc),

Stuart Bruce

Crisis communication

Crisis PR lawyer shares top tip for handling that Friday call from an investigative journalist

If you've ever done real crisis communications, you'll have had that Friday afternoon call when an investigative journalist is giving you an opportunity to comment on its expose. The journalists have had days, weeks or months to investigate, but give you hours to respond.

Crisis PR lawyer Jonathan Coad shares his tip for using the IPSO code and the law to defend yourself. I also share another effective tactic.

Stuart Bruce