PR Futurist | Stuart Bruce | Purposeful Relations - 🚀 PR Futurist #63 | Friends predicts AI? | Want a Bluesky invite? | NatWest Farage crisis | Creative AI?

Welcome

School's out for the summer

School's out for the summer In some parts of the world, but PR Futurist is back ready to help you as we took our summer break in July.

A bit of 90s nostalgia as we look back at how Friends might have predicted AI and computers of the future. We miss Friends, so any excuse to have another look, but tell us what you think of this clip and tell us if Ross (or the writers) had a crystal ball.

Are you on Threads or Bluesky yet? Read on to find out more about them. Bluesky is invite only and we've got a tiny number of invites so let Stuart or Tim know if you want one. But only ask if you're going to use it, as they are in such short supply people are selling them!

Stuart's AI masterclass received glowing reports from those who attended, but don't worry, you can still catch up with the latest on how AI can help you and your company, as well as what the risks are of not getting the right advice or not engaging at all. Don't miss the video.

News

Did 'Friends' predict the future of AI?

In a 1999 episode of Friends Ross Geller made some predictions about the future of computing. Watch the clip and let us know if you think he was right?

As a PR Futurist people sometimes expect me to predict the future. I don't. What I do is keep track of the latest trends and developments as they impact public relations, communications and corporate affairs. There's far too much change for busy professionals to follow so it's hard to sift the hype from the essential knowledge.

Our AI for comms and PR workshops, training and consultancy are proving extremely popular. We don't predict the future, but we do explain what's happening with the AI revolution and the immediate actions you need to take to avoid getting left behind.

If you want to book an AI for comms workshop, then let us know quickly as we only have limited availability around our consultancy clients, so slots are filling up.

Stuart Bruce

Let's talk about why ROI should be Socially Unacceptable

Socially Unacceptable is a brand-new podcast from award-winning PR and social media agency Prohibition PR. In the second episode it invited Stuart as a guest to talk about "world-class PR campaign measurement".

It was great fun for Stuart to record as the Purposeful Relations team worked with Prohibition PR's founder Chris Norton more than a decade ago as Chris was one of the first recruits at the PR firm that Stuart co-founded.

It's fantastic to see him and his team doing so well.

Karen Marshall

AI

AI masterclass video now available

Stuart recently ran an AI for comms masterclass for the World Communication Forum Association in Davos. His co-presenter was Aaron Kwittken, founder/CEO of PRophet and CEO of the Comms Tech Unit at Stagwell Marketing Cloud.

The masterclass proved popular with attendees from around the globe and lots of people catching up with the recording later. One of the attendees, the COO of a PR company in Ghana, wrote up this summary.

Tim Bailey

AI can't be creative... or can it?

Last week I ran two workshops on AI for comms for a global client. One of the questions was about if AI can be creative. My answer was it depends on your understanding of creativity. Lots of ideas and things that are called creative are just mixing existing ideas or things in a different way. That's crudely what large language models or AI does.

If we're talking about business creativity then this research found that ChatGPT-4 generated more, cheaper and better business ideas than folks in an innovation class that has generated many successful start-ups.

Stuart Bruce

AI rewrites 50 of the world's most famous brand slogans. Which do people prefer?

And while we're talking AI creativity this is what would happen if we got AI to write corporate slogans.

Branding experts are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop these slogans and branding and it's something that AI can't do as well.

Think again. A survey of 1007 Americans found that 46% of them preferred AI’s rewritten slogans to the expensively crafted versions by branding and marketing experts.

Still think you can afford not to learn how to use AI for comms?

Stuart Bruce

Top UK universities publish guiding principles on generative AI

All 24 vice-chancellors of the UK's research-intensive Russell Group universities have signed up to a set of guiding principles to ensure that students and staff are AI literate.

The world is quickly dividing into three AI camps. The first is those companies and organisations imposing bans. They are foolish and massively increasing their risk as bans simply mean people find ways to do it surreptitiously. The second is those that are rapidly adopting policies that recognise AI is here to stay and they need to introduce guidance on how to use it safely, ethically and responsibly.

The third are those who still haven't even started to adapt to the new reality of AI.

Tim Bailey

Ex-Google AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton thinks AI has or will have emotions

In last week's AI for comms workshop another attendee asked if I thought AI could have empathy. I'd earlier shared some of AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton's warnings about being used by malicious people. I replied that at the moment AI couldn't do the feeling of empathy well. Hinton's latest pronouncements are predicting AI will do emotions.

If you want to run an AI for comms workshop we're now taking bookings for September.

Stuart Bruce

Are you on Threads or using TikTok's new text posting feature?

Are you on Threads yet? In case you've been living under a rock Threads is the new text based social media platform from Meta. It's a straight up Twitter (sorry I must remember to call it X) competitor.

Now it's extremely rudimentary, more like an Alpha product launch than even a Beta. It gained users extremely quickly as the sign-up process was so easy as it's a spinoff from Instagram, so it just uses your Instagram profile and network to get you started. However, usage quickly plummeted.

I'd surmise this is because it is an early product so lacks essential features that enables people to follow content, they are interested in. However, it's adding features rapidly. Between the first draft of this story and this one it added a 'Following' tab. Instead of seeing a feed full of rubbish (sorry, things the Meta algorithm thinks you should be interested in) you can now just look at 'threads' from accounts you follow.

Meta isn't the only platform rolling out text features as TikTok has also just launched a text posting feature.

Let us know about what you think about these new launches and if you're persevering with Twitter. Our take is that despite the problems at Twitter/X it's still the platform where you'll find journalists, politicians and other influencers that corporate affairs professionals need to understand and interact with.

You can find me on both Threads and TikTok as stuartbruce. In fact, that's my user name on just about every platform including Twitter/X, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Bluesky.

Stuart Bruce

Are you on Bluesky?

In all the hype about Threads you might have missed the hype about Bluesky. It doesn't have the marketing might of millions of Instagram users flooding to join, but is probably the closest to a genuine Twitter/X competitor there is.

Not surprising, as it's the brainchild of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Bluesky has built its app by making it exclusive and invite only while it's in beta. When I got my invite, it just had 80,000. It's now up to nearly half a million.

The quality of discussion on Bluesky is better than Threads, but it is still missing most people in my Twitter network.

You can follow me on Bluesky at @stuartbruce.biz (one of the smart things about it is you can tie it to your own domain to prove it's you).

We have a tiny number of exclusive Bluesky invites. Hit me up if you want one.

Stuart Bruce

Corporate affairs

Start-up helps companies track supply chain risks

A new start-up has developed an innovative way to track supply chain risk and help companies stay on top of their ESG commitments. Too often the ESG focus is on the E for environment, while the S for society and G for governance are relegated to second and third place.

ES3G aims to tackle both the S and the G. Workers at suppliers download an app that surveys them on how they’re being treated. It asks them about any harassment, discrimination, modern slavery, child labour, health and safety, cleanliness, pay, and working time issues.

This means it is providing a governance tool to tackle a society issue.

I found out about ES3G through the excellent PreSeed Now newsletter by Martin SFP Bryant.

Stuart Bruce

Crisis communication

What can we learn from NatWest's Nigel Farage crisis?

In the UK last week's news was dominated by the resignation of NatWest's CEO after it emerged, she was responsible for leaking false details about why ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage had his bank account closed.

Stuart has identified some quick crisis communications lessons from the NatWest and Coutts' Farage farrago.

Karen Marshall

CommTech newswatch

Microsoft announces Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing

Microsoft's Copilot launch is getting closer as it has announced pricing. It's a bit steeper than I'd been anticipating as the monthly cost per user is $30 for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium customers. This makes the AI add-on more expensive than an actual Business Premium subscription! For us it will double our Microsoft subscription cost, which is undoubtedly good for Microsoft and hopefully good for us if it improves our productivity as much as we think it might.

Stuart Bruce

PRophet releases AI-powered multi-pitch generator and biography generator

PRophet was one of the CommTech companies already doing amazing things with AI before ChatGPT launched and the hype took over. The risk was that as a trailblazer it might be eclipsed as bigger established players added AI to their offers.

In fact, PRophet is a great example of why being an early adopter is essential as while other CommTech vendors rush to add rudimentary AI to their offers PRophet is developing and launching even more powerful AI tools.

PRophet was a partner in our Global CommTech Report research. The research found that 43% of the surveyed communications professionals intend to increase their investment in communication technology within the next 12 months, with 71% viewing AI as an opportunity for the industry.

Before you go and have a great summer 🏝🏜

Before you go, don't forget to watch the clip of Ross from Friends' hilarious prediction on AI and tech and brush up on your AI knowledge with Stuart's masterclass video.

Whilst at PR Futurist we're back from our summer break, we hope if you're also lucky enough to be going on a summer holiday or not we hope you have a great summer!

Professional practice

GC Modern Communications Operating System

The UK Government Communication Service (GCS) has just published a new version of its Modern Communications Operating Model (MCOM). MCOM 3.0 brings together all the guidance and policies on how to lead a modern communications team including how to design a team structure; write a campaign strategy; evaluate campaigns; respond to a crisis and much more.

It's designed for public sector communication professionals, but most of its content is just as relevant and useful for private or third sector communications. I've done work on behalf of GCS (which is part of the UK Cabinet Office) and often use its publicly available guides with private sector clients.

Stuart Bruce