PR Futurist | Stuart Bruce | Purposeful Relations - 🚀 PR Futurist 79 | 🥻Meta fights India election deepfakes | 🎥AI tool shortens videos |🌀Loop

Welcome

With the early spring sunshine here to start the week there is lots for us to report on that we are keeping on top of at Purposeful Relations so we can help you. This is a year of elections and so much focus is placed on the US by the tech giants. So it's good to see Meta fighting the use of deepfakes and misinformation ahead of the Indian election. Vidyo.ai is a nifty tool which changes long form videos to short clips for social media such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Why not experiment with Microsoft Loop - it's a useful mix of knowledge management, task tracking and collaboration. Could it help improve your planning and tasks?

News

Nine top tips for using AI to write news releases

PR Moment is running a series of articles focusing on using AI for different aspects of PR work. In this one it investigates how AI can be used to help write news [press] releases. Stuart provides a comment and makes a recommendation (spoiler it's PRophet - a tool that predicts how likely journalists and media outlets are likely to be interested in your story).

Karen Marshall

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Crisis communication

Air Canada forced to honour a refund policy made-up by its chatbot

The astounding part of this story isn't that the AI chatbot got it wrong (it's early days and still an experiment) but that Air Canada refused to do the moral thing and honour the mistake.

Stuart Bruce

Meta is fighting deepfakes and misinformation in India ahead of 2024 elections

I'm often concerned that US big tech companies take US elections and politics more seriously than those in other democracies. This year is the year of elections with an unprecedented number of people voting. Most of them will be well before the US presidential election in November. It's good to see Meta taking action in India and in other democracies.

We'll see how effectively these companies do it.

I'm particularly interested in the Indian election as I've visited Mumbai and New Delhi several times and worked with some amazing Indian public relations professionals. The photo shows the Gateway to India in Mumbai.

Stuart Bruce

Woolworths CEO storms out of car crash interview after bad answer to easy question

This interview clip of Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci will be used by crisis communication and media trainers for years (it's already in my decks). Banducci answers a question badly and then asks the interviewer if that part can be taken out. The interviewer reminds him the interview is on the record, so obviously no it can't. Banducci then walks out of camera shot where his PR team can be heard telling him he had to finish the interview.

A few days later Banducci was forced to resign as Woolworths financial performance worsens.

Woolworths in Australia has a track record of reputational problems. Bad business decisions over several years have caused it major reputational issues. It was so bad that PwC recommended the way the bonuses for directors are calculated should be changed. It replaced sales per square metre with a reputation score calculated by RepTrak.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech tools

Who doesn't love Answer the Public, the spin-out business from Coverage Book? Well they are back with a shiny new tool. It's still in beta so expect some rough edges, but my first impressions are good.

CoverageImpact lets you upload a spreadsheet list of your media coverage and overlay it with impact data such as sales, share price, web visits, search trends or other data.

Anyone that's heard me talk about measurement and evaluation knows I'll always caveat this approach with a warning about causation and correlation. But the smart folk at Coverage Book are ahead of me as in the FAQs they link to an article explaining that issue. Thanks Gary and Stella for linking to my article - which is available as the original on my blog and on CIPR Influence Online!

You can also watch a video podcast about it with Coverage Book founder Gary Preston and director Stella Bayles.

Did I mention it's free!

Stuart Bruce

New AI video tool to make short clips from long videos

Another nifty AI powered tool I've found is Vidyo.ai which repurposes long form videos into short clips for social media such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

I've been looking at using it for politicians to make short viral clips from longer speeches. For example, taking an MP's full speech from Parliamentlive.tv and using Vidyo.ai to quickly edit quick clips.

Stuart Bruce

Four public affairs CommTech tools

Public affairs specialist Stuart Thompson has published a useful podcast where five public affairs monitoring and database tool vendors explain their offers.

We hear from the 'old-timers' DeHavilland and Dods, as well as 'new kids on the block' PolicyMogul, PoliMonitor and Vuelio.

Stuart Bruce

Microsoft Loop—a knowledge and collaboration break through?

If you are a Microsoft 365 user and you have not come across Loop yet, it really is time to experiment. It is Microsoft's alternative to Notion. Loop offers a useful mix of knowledge management, task tracking and collaboration framework. We have been using Loop at Purposeful Relations since it came out of beta (we experimented before) and the killer feature for us is the ease of collaboration such as the synchronising of tasks across multiple documents to Planner and To Do.

Planning and task management have always felt like a neglected step child in Office 365, but Loop, along with the announced changes to Planner due next month, could be game changing. I can see a time in the near future where Loop becomes the core knowledge management tool for us. Has to be better than folders full of PowerPoint and Word files.

Tim Bailey

Using Obsidian for stakeholder mapping

Ever since university I have had a day book, a paper journal, in which I write down the things I need to remember. Initially it was a lab book, full of experimental details, later a way of not having 50 Post-It notes that inevitably got lost.

In the last year though, my trusty Moleskine has been gathering dust. I have finally found a digital solution I can trust. Obsidian is an open-source knowledge management application that stores data in text files. I have it installed on several devices and synchronise the text files via iCloud.

The article makes an interesting case for using Obsidian for stakeholder mapping, something that it can easily do. The how-to references some of the more advanced features within Obsidian, so if it is new to you, I would recommend this guide as an excellent starting point.

Tim Bailey

Professional practice

Enhancing trust in the communication of statistics

A fascinating article by Simon Baugh, chief executive of the UK's Government Communication Service, where he explores the need to and how to communicate statistics clearly and honestly.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech newswatch

Microsoft signs deal to use Copilot to interrogate Meltwater monitoring data

AI is having a big impact on PR and communications, but I wasn't expecting this partnership between Microsoft and Meltwater. Meltwater's news release is a classic example of corporate gobbledegook (they should get AI to write it in English) but once you cut through to the substance it becomes interesting.

It means Meltwater customers can use Copilot to interrogate Meltwater data. Sort of. The big problem is that it's only for M365 enterprise licences which rules out all but the largest PR firms.

It's an issue we'll be watching closely at Purposeful Relations as there's a risk that the gap between what huge PR firms and the majority of smaller firms can do will widen. The cost of communication technology already means there is a gap as many of the tools are simply unaffordable to small and mid-size PR agencies. We're working on tools and approaches to help reduce that gap and enable mid-size firms to reap the benefits of AI and technology.

Stuart Bruce