🚀 PR Futurist #86 🏔️ Davos and AI 🌍 Global leaders on social 📈 Data driven comms

Welcome

Data, Davos, AI and global leaders on social media

This week Tim is speaking at the online Davos Communications Summit while Stuart is delivering an in-house AI workshop to a leading financial services company.

Last week Stuart attended the DataComms conference and awards where he saw some great case studies that we'll use as insight and inspiration for some of our clients.

This issue also looks at how big management consultancy firms are rapidly embracing AI at a pace that's far outstripping corporate affairs consultancies and PR agencies. We also share some research that reveals which world leaders and governments are using social media the most.

News

Tim speaks about AI in PR at the online Davos Communications Summit

There's still time to register for Wednesday's Davos Communications Summit 2024. This year's summit is online ahead of next year when it returns to in person in Davos. This year's key themes are the AI revolution, modern public relations and data-driven insights.

Speakers include: our own Tim Bailey; Paul Holmes, founder and chair of PRovoke Media; Raina Lazarova, cofounder and COO of Ruepoint and newly elected chair of AMEC; Mary Beth West, senior strategist, Fletcher Marketing Services; Professor Sharon Bowen, Artificial Intelligence Institute, University of South Carolina, Global Strategic Communication Consortium.

The Davos Communications Summit 2024 starts at 2pm CET (or 1pm GMT) on Wednesday 12 June. Registration is free.

Stuart sits on the global executive committee of the World Communication Forum Association and is its Regional President for Europe.

Karen Marshall

Corporate affairs

UN Secretary-General António Guterres demands PR agencies drop fossil fuel companies

In a speech last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called communicators working with fossil fuel clients "Mad Men fueling the madness." Guterres's comments highlight two key issues for the public relations and corporate affairs profession.

The first is the fact he made them demonstrates how important a role we play in world affairs. The second is that there is a profound misunderstanding of what genuine professional public relations and corporate affairs really is.

Guterres's view is clearly that it's all spin, publicity and promotion hence his Mad Men analogy. Mad Men is great TV but has little to do with corporate communications.

For public relations professionals to refuse to work with or engage with fossil fuel company would be incredibly damaging to working towards net zero and combatting climate change. Our role should be to help those companies with the incredible challenges of change and working with multiple stakeholders to speed up the journey towards net zero.

If a fossil fuel company is a climate change denier and actively refusing to innovate then absolutely the profession should boycott them. But to refuse to help those who are innovating and changing would be morally apprehensible as the profession becomes part of the roadblock to net zero rather than the accelerant we should be.

Stuart Bruce

UK election podcasts and newsletters

Now that the UK general election has finally been called the PR and public affairs industry has been quick off the mark to launch newsletters and podcasts to bring you the low down and help you make sense of it all.

One of my favourites is by CommTech company Onclusive which has created the Politicomms - "an election podcast for comms pros, by comms pros."

Have a listen and let us know what you think or if you've got an interesting perspective why not offer yourself as a guest?

Stuart Bruce

Get in touch

Book our AI workshop for your Lunch and Learn

As well as delivering AI transformation projects for clients Stuart is being kept busy running AI workshops and delivering keynote speeches both in the UK and overseas. Contact us now to book your slot.

Tim Bailey

Data, measurement, analytics

Winners of the Communicate magazine DataComms awards

I spent last Wednesday at the Communicate magazine DataComms conference and evening awards ceremony. Brand and corporate winners included Aramco, Novartis, Merlin Entertainments, Honda Europe, DP World, Arriva Rail, GSK, and SC Johnson which also picked up the Grand Prix award for best overall entry.

It's worth noting that this was an excellent awards ceremony with great food and a great entertainer and awards compere. Andrew Thomas and the Communicate team did a fantastic job.

Pictured are Sonya Cullington, Darryl Sparey, Richard Bagnall and me!

Stuart Bruce

AMEC Communication Effectiveness Awards now open for entries

The AMEC Global Communication Effectiveness Awards is a dedicated awards programme for communication measurement excellence. Now in its 21st year the awards "highlight, recognise and celebrate exceptional work, and provide a showcase of the importance of research, data, measurement, insights, and analytics."

If you've done some great planning, measurement and evaluation work then why not consider entering. The awards ceremony is in London in November.

Tim Bailey

AI, digital and social

PwC is accelerating adoption of AI with ChatGPT Enterprise in US and UK and with clients : PwC

Given the enormous sums they charge and influence they wield it's always worth watching what the management consultants do. PwC has signed a deal to become OpenAI first reseller for ChatGPT Enterprise. It also claims to be the largest user of the product.

It's an intriguing move as I wonder how this will affect the independence of the advice given by PwC as OpenAI is only one of many players. What happens when another enterprise AI solution is the better answer?

At Purposeful Relations we're deliberately platform agnostic to maintain our integrity and enable us to provide the best advice. The only exceptions are some 'point solutions' where there aren't any realistic competitors, and we often have relationships with the founders to enable us to have input into their development.

Stuart Bruce

Why AI will make you a better, more human comms professional

When I spoke at PRWeek's flagship PR360 conference one of the other speakers on AI was Cision's VP of AI Strategy Ant Cousins. In a promoted feature Ant shares some of what he talked about.

It's always good to listen to Ant as he shares many of the same ideas and approaches that I do when working with clients on AI. One of Ant's points about the AI opportunity is it gives PR professionals more time to do “the things that humans were built for doing”.

Stuart Bruce

Research and reports

Research ranks heads of state and government and foreign ministers on social media

Twitter, or X as we are now meant to call it, is traditionally the most powerful and effective social media channel for world leaders. Despite its issues it is still important, even if there is more experimentation on other platforms and emerging platforms.

X is still the most used social media platform by governments: 190 of the 193 UN member countries have an official presence on the platform – only Laos, North Korea and Turkmenistan don’t have any social media presence. The leaders of 187 countries have a presence on Facebook, 178 are present on Instagram, 173 have a channel on YouTube and 163 are on LinkedIn. The governments and leaders of 106 countries are on TikTok and 87 have set up accounts on Threads over the past nine months.

Heading the rankings is recently re-elected Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. He has 276 million followers and subscribers on his XTwitter personal account and an additional 72 million on his institutional account @PMOIndia. The Indian leader leads by a wide margin on the main channels – Facebook, Instagram, 𝕏, WhatsApp, and YouTube – but he is neither on Threads nor on TikTok, a platform which is banned in India. Given that India is the world's largest democracy this isn't particularly surprising.

The UK barely makes any of the lists and only heads two lists. Foreign Secretary David Cameron is the most followed foreign minister on Facebook and LinkedIn. Rishi Sunak is the fifth most followed world leader on LinkedIn (after Canada, India, UAE and France).

The most followed world leader on Telegram is Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky where Ukraine is also the most followed government.

Overall President Emmanuel Macron is probably the most impressive world leader on social media as he tops several lists and has a strong presence on multiple channels.

There are some who are experimenting on emerging channels. French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are on BeReal. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is the leading world leader on BlueSky.

The EU Commission is active on Mastodon with more than 100,000 followers, but apart from Germany and Switzerland there isn't much else happening. As Mastodon originated in Germany this isn't surprising.

In 2007 Stuart ran one of the world's first Twitter campaigns for a senior politician and since then has worked with politicians and governments in the UK, Europe, Middle East and Asia to develop strategies, policies and training. Talk to us to find out how we could support you.

The picture shows French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on BeReal.

Tim Bailey

CommTech tools

Use AI to create informative guides

ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini are the AI tools that get most attention, but they aren't the only ones you need to know. Perplexity has launched a new feature "for easily transforming research into visually stunning, comprehensive content." It creates what are probably best described as Wikipedia style pages, but prettier.

It's rolling the feature out gradually so you might not see it in your Perplexity account yet. The launch announcement has several interesting examples.

Perplexity might not be the best-known AI tool, but one of the ways it's aiming to change that is with this new video which has also been aired as a TV ad.

Stuart Bruce

Professional practice

AMEC announces Ruepoint's Raina Lazarova as its new chair

AMEC has announced Raina Lazarova as the new chair for 2024. As chair, Raina will lead the AMEC board of directors to continue to deliver on its mission to define, promote and advance best practice in communication measurement and evaluation, research, analysis, evaluation, data and insights.

Raina Lazarova is the co-founder and COO of global media intelligence organisation Ruepoint.

She takes over from outgoing chair Aseem Sood, CEO, Impact Research and Measurement Pvt in India.

Stuart Bruce

Former PRCA director Steve Miller Joins CIPR

PR industry veteran Steve Miller, who recently left the PRCA and ICCO after 14 years, returns to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations to grow its corporate and agency membership.

Stuart Bruce