🚀 PR Futurist #93 🎧 Amazing AI audio 🔥 AI in a crisis 🫒 What can PR learn from olives?

Welcome

This is an amazing AI audio tool

This issue's CommTech tool highlight is truly impressive. Click on this link to listen to a conversation about this issue of PR Futurist created using Google NotebookLM. What makes is so impressive is it is 💯 AI generated and didn't even need a prompt. Let us know what you think.

This issue is packed with research from the CIPR, Edelman, and Multiverse, as well as calls to participate in research by us and PRovoke Media, and the PRCA census.

On Tuesday Stuart is part of a PRWeek expert panel discussing the role of AI in managing a communications crisis (which if you've heard him speak before, you'll know is a misnomer as they are rarely PR or comms crises). Last week Tim spoke about AI at Inside Housing Communications Conference.

We also look at the UK Government Communication Service's Innovating with Impact Strategy, Framework for Ethical Innovation, and Generative AI policy which is finally public.

You can also read about Microsoft's Copilot Wave 2 update which looks impressive and shows just how it can help people to work smarter.

The Multiverse research highlights the alarming data skills gap plaguing the UK economy, costing an estimated £57 billion in lost productivity. This skills deficit is mirrored in the PR industry, where organisations often fail to fully capitalise on expensive software due to inadequate training.

We also spotlight Ukrainian startup Osavul, which is leveraging AI to combat disinformation.

Finally, Stuart will be attending the Labour Party conference so please let him know if you want to catch-up to discuss the intersection of AI, tech, and communications or just a general chinwag.

News

Meet me at Labour Party conference

I'll be at Labour Party conference and am keen to meet up with any readers who are there who want to chat about AI, tech, data, analtyics, measurement, reputation and relationships. Or indeed who just want to have a crack (West Cumbrian for chat, in case you're thinking it's something else).

Message me if you want to meet or keep an eye out for me at some of the fringe meetings. I've got lots in my diary, but probably won't make them all. If it has AI, tech, digital or skills in the title then it's probably on my shortlist!

Stuart Bruce

The role of AI in managing a comms crisis webinar

Stuart is one of the expert panelists on a PRWeek webinar this Tuesday 24 September at 2:00pm BST.

Topics to be discussed include:

How AI can enhance communication strategies and campaigns.
AI tools that can assist in crisis management, particularly in situations where misinformation spreads.
Ethical considerations for PR professionals when using AI technologies.
The future of AI in communications and PR.

Find out more on our website or register here.

Karen Marshall

Stuart Bruce appointed to PRCA PR and Communications Board

The Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) has announced its new PR and Communications Board to serve as a fundamental forum, providing strategic guidance to the PRCA while acting as a think-tank for the industry.

Purposeful Relations co-founder Stuart Bruce is one of the board members alongside senior members from BT, Ministry of Justice, Genomics England, Aviva, RED and Edelman.

It is chaired by Jonathan Curtis, Chief Commercial Officer at Grayling. Other members include: Shayoni Lynn, Lynn Global; Danny Whatmough, RED; Stephen King, Middlesex University Dubai; Omawumi Ogbe, GLG Communications; Mark MacGregor, Penta; and Nigel Sarbutts, The PR Cavalry.

The board is dedicated to consulting with the sector's most senior practitioners on key issues, offering insightful commentary, and developing best-practice guidance for PR and communications professionals.

Karen Marshall

How AI can drive more effective and impactful communication strategies

Last week Tim Bailey was one of the two experts on an Inside Housing Communications Conference panel discussing how AI can drive more effective and impactful communication strategies. His fellow panelist was Ben Verinder and the panel was moderated by Inside Housing editor Martin Hilditch.

Coincidentally Ben's company Chalkstream did the research for the CIPR excellent State of the Profession report.

Thanks to Jacob Wrigglesworth of Resource for the photo.

Karen Marshall

Get in touch

Book your AI for Comms workshop

As autumn starts we still have some days available to run AI for comms and corporate affairs workshops in November and December. We've run face to face and virtual event on AI and comms for a host of different organisations including BAE Systems, NICE, Network Rail, Allianz, Skipton Group, Sage and for PR agencies.

Let us know ASAP if you want to snag one of the remaining dates.

Data, measurement, analytics

Can we always measure what matters? #QTWTAIN

In the 1980s, famously American Airlines removed one olive from each salad served in first class and saved $40,000 that year.

I'm passionate about the need for the communications and corporate affairs profession to plan and measure better. But it's important this is done in context. Numbers and data points alone aren't enough for effective public relations and corporate affairs which are based on relationships and reputation.

We need to understand how to interpret and use data effectively to help make better decisions. The data doesn't dictate. As this article points out lots of stuff that matters we can't measure or track.

This means your measurement and evaluation can't just follow templates such as the AMEC Integrated Measurement and Evaluation framework. It needs to be based on sound principles and bespoe to your organisation and how it works.

Stuart Bruce

Crisis communication

Ukrainian AI startup to help defend companies from disinformation

Disinformation and misinformation is one of the biggest threats facing today's PR and communications leaders. Osavul is an innovative Kyiv-based start-up that began life fighting Russian propaganda with AI. The startup is now bringing its counter-disinformation expertise to the business world and providing a potentially useful tool for corporate affairs.

Stuart Bruce

AI, digital and social

Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 adds powerful new features

The big AI news of last week was the announcement of Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2. Copilot sometimes faces criticism for not being as 'good' as alternatives and this brings it upto speed with developments elsehwhere. New and improved features include:

Copilot pages - a canvas for AI collaboration unlocking talent and expertise.
Copilot apps - an easy way to automate and execute business processes.
Excel - use AI to create complex formulas, visualise charts and conduct advanced analysis like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, and visualizing complex data—all using natural language, no coding required.
PowerPoint - use Copilot as a partner to create creative first drafts in minutes and all within corporate brand guidelines. Teams - comprehensive AI analysis of what's said in a the meeting and the backchannel meeting chat. It helps ensure all questions are answered and there are no loose ends. Outlook - identifying, analysisng and summarising the most important emails. Word - quickly reference other documents, files and emails from within Word without the need to keep searching and switching apps. OneDrive - quickly find exactly what you need just by describing it.

Copilot was already powerful, saving two to four hours a week, now it's even more so. The critics of Copilot miss the point. Microsoft 365 is the backbone of most enterprise and business IT systems.

AI represents a massive change in society and the economy. Therefore introducing it into a company isn't just about technology but mainly about change management. Copilot provides the safest and securist way to introduce AI and ensure widespread adoption for maximum benefit.

Microsoft's announcement video shows off some of the new features.

Stuart Bruce

Google says UK risks being ‘left behind’ in AI race without more data centres and reformed copyright laws

Google has sounded an alarm that the UK risks being left behind in the AI race if it doesn't build more data centres and reform copyright law. Personally I'm confident the new Labour government will tackle the first and chancellor Rachel Reeves has already started to modernise planning laws to help grow the economy.

I'm not as confident about it sensibly reforming copyright law. Many of the powerful vested interests of copywright owners are attempting to block modernisation. It is right to be looking at how we ensure creators of copyright material should be remunerated, but wrong to link this to blocking access to content. I'll be making this point to ministers, SpAds and MPs I see at the Labour Party conference.

Stuart Bruce

Research and reports

CIPR's State of the Profession reveals AI as biggest challenge

On my PR Futurist blog I've written a long read article analysing and providing opinions on the CIPR's State of the Profession research which has just been published.

Not surprisingly it identifies ‘artificial intelligence and its impact’ the top challenge facing the PR industry.

Take a read and let me know what you think.

Stuart Bruce

UK economy suffers an estimated annual productivity loss of £57 billion due to a lack of data skills

A new report details the substantial cost of the data skills deficit: the UK economy suffers an estimated annual productivity loss of £57 billion due to a lack of data skills within the workforce.

Some of the key points to note are that data-related tasks are no longer confined to specialised data teams. On average, workers now dedicate upwards of 14 hours weekly to data-related activities, encompassing roles such as nurses, accountants, social workers, and warehouse managers.

Despite this, more than half of workers possesses minimal or no skills in simple tools like Excel, let alone more powerful ones such as Microsoft PowerBI, and Tableau. It makes the point that expertise in maths is not a prerequisite for training in how to use them effectively.

The report shows organisations invest billions into software, but then squander it by failing to invest in skill development to use it effectively. Generative AI mean the stakes are even higher. A company's capacity to use AI is dependent on the ability of its people to use it effectively.

The economy wide report confirms what we see regularly in the PR and communications sector. Agencies and teams are spending hundreds of thousands on tools and software yet often barely scratch the service of what they could be doing with them. The mention of Excel in the report is ironic as we often see it being used for a variety of tasks for which it is entirely unsuitable and made even more so by it being used badly!

Stuart Bruce

Complete the PR and Communication Census 2024

Hot on the heels of the publication of the CIPR's State of the Profession report we have the PRCA PR and Communication Census 2024. Please spend a few minutes to complete it and provide us with some invaluable industry data.

As a new member of the PRCA's PR and Communication Board I can assure you that we'll look at the results and use them to refine our thinking and ideas about the future of the profession.

Edelman’s 2024 AI Landscape Report captures some of the enterprise tools

Edelman has published an AI Landscape report that it claims helps to make sense of the vast generative AI market and evaluating which tools are available and worth investing in is challenging and time-consuming. It says that Edelman has "done all the necessary vetting, so you don’t have to" to "learn which tools are the most enterprise-ready for a variety of marcom initiatives, and why."

This sounded exciting. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite live up to the hype and the 'vetting' misses out some excellent enterprise-ready tools and includes some which are mundane and not as useful to corporate affairs. If you know nothing about the market, then it's a useful guide. If you have a reasonable knowledge, you won't find anything useful or insightful.

Stuart Bruce

Edelman's 2024 Connected Crisis study is much better

This month it looks like Edelman reports are like buses and all come at once. In contrast to the AI report this one is useful and appears to have some interesting insights into risks in a volatile world.

Take a look for yourself.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech tools

Google's new AI voice tool will astound you

It's not often I play with a new AI tool and it exceeds my expectations. The audio feature in Google's NotebookLM is astounding.

It takes your content such as a document, report or URL of a newsletter and turns it into a 10-15 minute conversation discussing and explaining the contents. Take a listen to what it did with the last edition of PR Futurist. In just a few minutes it created this amazing AI summary with AI generated voices.

And this is AI podcast of the edition you're reading now.

It's massively better than the previous AI voice tool we used to create podcast versions of the newsletter.

And it's free. And it's the first release so will get better. At the moment you can't choose AI voices or edit the summary. If it had those two features it would be even more amazing. And I'd definitely be willing to pay for it.

Please listen (it's only 10 minutes) and let us know what you think.

Stuart Bruce

Professional practice

GCS Innovating with Impact Strategy now publicly available

The UK Government Communication Service has now made its Innovating with Impact Strategy, Framework for Ethical Innovation, and Generative AI policy public. It was launched within GCS in May 2024 and has been informing some of Purposeful Relation's innovation and AI work with GCS members.

It's built around three core pillars:

Empowering responsible innovation - Ethics at the heart of the approach and developing tools to provide confidence to explore new approaches and minimise risk.

Culture of innovation - A culture of innovation to encourage people to identify, test and scale innovative ideas using networks and collaboration to build skills and confidence to innovate.

New tools and platforms - this includes the development and roll out of the GCS AI co-pilot, a conversational AI tool for GCS members.

Our advisory board member Professor Emeritus Anne Gregory at the University of Huddersfield and Delivery Partner for the GCS Advance Leaders Programme said: “It’s clear GCS is a trailblazer on this in the public sector globally. I do quite a lot of work in the AI space and what GCS does compares incredibly well. Most documents give guidance (the ‘what’), but not many go on to detail on the ‘how’. The GCS Innovating with Impact Strategy, Generative AI Policy and Framework for Ethical Innovation documents are some of the best I’ve seen”.

Stuart Bruce