I promise that headline was the last ironic use of Gen Alpha slang you’ll hear from this elder Millennial.

But Generation Alpha, those born between 2010 and today, are rising. And they speak in their own unique way that PR professionals should understand — if only so they can avoid using it in a “how do you do, fellow kids?” sort of way.

New data from Morning Consult delves into the unique terminology this cohort uses, and we’ll break it all down. But first, let’s talk about Gen Alpha, and why you should already be paying attention to this generation of children.

About Gen Alpha

Gen Alpha is profoundly shaped by technology. The same could be true of both their Gen Z and Millennial ancestors, but Generation Alpha has a particular affinity for smartphones and tablets. They’ve never known a world without these touch-based devices.

Many are dubbed “iPad kids,” often derisively, for their parents’ habit of simply handing them devices to entertain them in social situations — and their frequently negative reactions when the stimulus is taken away. Their young lives were also profoundly shaped by the coronavirus, which caused many of them to spend their formative years in varying levels of lockdown and isolation.

Their economic impact is beginning already and is only expected to grow: by 2029, they’ll account for $5.46 trillion in spending. They’re also an extremely brand-savvy generation, and not necessarily the brands you might expect. As social media sites like TikTok and Instagram give kids more direct contact with adults, they start gravitating toward the same kinds of products that their elders enjoy. These are more likely to be Sephora and Ulta skincare aficionados rather than Toys R Us kids.

But it isn’t all about glowy complexions. Gen Alphas are also big gamers, and that love extends beyond the games themselves and into following their favorite streamers and chatting about their favorites. And they’re more likely to play on a cellphone than a fancy console.

Now that we’ve gotten to know Gen Alpha more, let’s dive into how they talk.

New generation, new slang

Every generation develops its own unique vernacular that they love and that profoundly irritates and befuddles the adults in their lives.

Gen Alpha is certainly no exception.

Morning Consult’s survey found that 29% of the parents of Gen Alpha (who are mostly Millennials, with a few Gen Zers thrown in for good measure) have heard their children use language they did not understand. This percentage increases as the child grows older, with 43% of parents of 8-10-year-olds scratching their heads over the words coming out of their children’s mouth. Children who socialize online are also far more likely to use confounding phrases than those who don’t (47% vs 23%).

And what are some of these neologisms the youths love so much?

You may have heard some of these. Heck, you may have used some of these. There aren’t bright generational lines around these terms; for instance, GOAT (Greatest of All Time, used to describe someone or something that’s very good) has been used in sports for years.

But let’s take a quick look at what these terms actually mean.

Bet: A term of agreement or being game for something: “Bet, let’s go!” Depending on tone, however, it can also be used to express doubt, according to Dictionary.com.

GOAT: As previously mentioned, this means the Greatest of All Time. It’s pronounced just like the animal and the adjective “goated” can also be used as a descriptor, USA Today reported. You might also see the goat emoji, which indicates the same thing.

Sus: Short for “suspect” or “suspicious” and conveying the same idea. While the slang term grew in popularity due to its use in pandemic-era game Among Us, it’s been around for nearly 100 years, Merriam-Webster said.

Bussin’: Something very good. Originates from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) on TikTok, according to Today.com.

Cap: Another AAVE term, cap means bragging or lying. No cap, however, means something is true or real.

Rizz: Dubbed the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year 2023, rizz means charm or attractiveness, particularly in a romantic sense. It possibly derives from the word “charisma.”

Gyat: Business Insider explains this is a compliment for a girl with a nice behind.

Sigma: Usually used in the phrase “sigma male,” it means an independent man or a lone wolf, according to Dictionary.com.

Lore: In this context, lore means the story behind something. It’s often used to describe the worldbuilding of TV shows and video games, according to very reputable source Urban Dictionary.

Ratio’d: Someone is ratio’d when the ratio of the replies on a piece of social media content is much bigger than the likes or shares on that post. Typically, it means someone did something dumb and is getting dragged for it.

Fanum tax: Named after streamer Fanum, this refers to stealing part of someone’s food.

If you choose to use these words, make smart decisions.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post By the Numbers: The slang Gen Alpha uses, no cap appeared first on PR Daily.

Alysha Light is the founder of Flight PR. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

When it’s time for companies to name their next CEO, they often look to their C-Suite. CFOs, CMOs, CSOs, CTOs and even general counsel are the usual suspects who are in the running by default. Meanwhile, their chief communications officers colleagues are rarely considered. It begs the question: why are the very leaders who have mastered the art of storytelling and understand stakeholder engagement better than anyone so often left out of a company’s succession planning?

Perhaps they are a little too good at their jobs. CCOs spend their days crafting the perfect messages, mitigating crises before they explode, thinking endlessly about optics, working across almost every department, and essentially, making everyone else look good. They’re the unsung heroes toiling in the background who clean up the messes and smooth over the blunders. In a world where a company’s reputation can be its biggest asset or its biggest liability, you’d think corporate leadership would hold this role in higher esteem.

In my 15+ years in the PR industry, I’ve crossed paths with many outstanding comms pros, but I only know one who made her way to the CEO seat: the indomitable Jill Kelly, who is wrapping up a two-year tenure as CEO of EssenceMediacom. What’s stopping others from forging a similar path?

Comms pros need to end their inferiority complex 

While the corporate world has yet to fully recognize the value of strategic communication as a key driver of sales and business success, communications professionals are guilty of buying into the false belief that our skills aren’t just as suited for the top ranks as our colleagues in finance, marketing, strategy, or engineering roles.

To get more insight, I asked Becca Chambers, CCO at San Francisco-based ControlUp, an IT monitoring software and digital employee experience provider, for her thoughts.

“Today, successful leaders need so much more than inside-out knowledge of their companies,” she said. “They need skills like authenticity, connection, heart, empathy, and the kind of creative thinking that translates data into differentiators, challenges into opportunities, and companies into iconic brands.”

Chambers added: “The skill sets that make a great CEO today look very familiar—because they’re the exact skill set of a great (CCO). CCOs (need) to understand nuanced market dynamics, competitive landscapes, internal and external brand reputation, positioning, audience motivations, and how to navigate through a crisis. They need to be relentlessly strategic and relentlessly human. That’s why companies that win in this next phase of business will be those that seek CCO-like qualities of their top leaders—those who listen, strategize, and connect the dots. I can guarantee that we’ll be able to tell which companies do, and which don’t.”

Indeed, we live in an era where brands are built and burned at the altar of public opinion; where a single post or statement can send stock tumbling, and yet, the very people who navigate these treacherous waters daily are seen as unfit to hold a company’s highest-ranking position. Who better to lead a company than someone who’s made a career out of employing their listening skills, reputation management, change management, building support and trust, and cross-functional acumen?

As Son Pham excellently puts in this Raconteur piece, the corporate world increasingly recognizes reputation management, a core competency of any successful CCO, as critical to an organization’s success. Leadership, adaptability, and crisis management are areas where CCOs excel, given their day-to-day responsibilities involve navigating stakeholder interactions and shaping public perception. These skills can define a successful CEO, particularly when corporate reputation can be a company’s biggest asset or its greatest downfall.

It’s time to normalize comms leaders ascending to the highest ranks.

As communications leaders, we bring much more value to a company’s bottom line than the crises we avert and the media we generate. By expanding how we view a CCO’s contributions and nurturing their well-developed leadership capabilities, the corporate world can tap into a more diverse pipeline of potential CEOs already well-versed in one of the most critical aspects of today’s business: communication.

The post The case for elevating CCOs to CEO roles appeared first on PR Daily.

Sean O’Leary is vice president at Susan Davis International.

Everything about the site looked legitimate.

The reporter had a headshot. The article properly shared the news. But the use of one word gave away the fact it was all generated by artificial intelligence.

Earlier this year, our agency sent out a press release for a client about three new leaders joining the company. As we reviewed the news clips, a new site popped up in our results. We hadn’t heard about the site and were initially excited.

Then we read the lede. The company had not hired a “trio” of new leaders – it had hired a “trinity” of new leaders. There’s not a human reporter alive who would ever refer to three new business leaders like that.

Indeed, it wasn’t a human reporter. Everything about the article was AI-generated, including the “headshot” of the “person” who “wrote” the story.

The phenomenon of AI-generated news is not new, as evident by the Sports Illustrated scandal late last year when the once-revered outlet was reduced to publishing AI-generated articles and attempting to sneak it past an unsuspecting public.

Most would agree that journalistic best practices would indicate a proper news outlet should make the reader aware if AI was responsible for the article they’re reading. But what if the entire outlet is AI-generated?

For PR professionals, we almost always want to expand the media footprint for our clients, and more sources of coverage are good. For this particular article in question, there was nothing wrong with it, other than the bizarre use of the word trinity. It showed up in Google News. It showed up in our media monitoring. There was nothing negative.

On one hand, I should be happy as a PR professional. We got an extra article for a client that was delivered to people around the world. For a majority of the general public, they do not know they’re reading an AI-generated article.

On the other hand, there’s a helpless feeling. An AI-generated news story can be good, but what if it’s bad? What if it starts needlessly sharing incorrect or unfavorable coverage to the masses?

As we enter the AI age of news media, here are a couple of tips for PR professionals.

Educate your clients on the AI media landscape

Even the savviest communication leader can be fooled by a strong AI-generated article. The first step in approaching AI-generated news is to educate everyone involved about what’s going on. Although they may be aware of AI news articles, they may not have experienced one personally.

For most AI-generated news, there is no action item beyond education. An article in these publications does not register on the same level as a legitimate, established outlet, but the average person reading these articles may not know that. As long as the news is correct, it’s simply bonus coverage.

Review every AI-generated article

However, just because one AI-generated article was good does not mean they all will be. While it’s always best practice to review articles to ensure your client’s news is presented factually and correctly, it’s even more critical with AI articles.

One such instance happened last fall, when an AI-generated news article popped up about a client’s annual sustainability report. Unfortunately, the AI-generated article published a story on the 2022 annual report as if it were released in 2023.

This was not an easy correction, as AI reporters are notoriously hard to track down. Instead, our team had to reach out to multiple salespeople at the site until finally reaching a human being who could remove the article completely. Ultimately, we were successful and there was little to no impact of the false article – but it was a warning sign.

Stay current with AI trends

By the time you read this article, there might be a new AI trend emerging in journalism. We’re only starting to scratch the surface of generative AI, with altered photos impacting Presidential campaigns and the most famous pop star on Earth.

There will be more AI-generated news sites, more AI-generated news articles, and more AI-generated news reporters. That much, I know. The rest? I’m not sure.

AI has the potential to completely upend and disrupt the news media. For public relations, that means our industry could be upended and disrupted too.

We can’t predict the future of AI. We can be prepared.

The post PR pros must prepare for the rise of AI journalism appeared first on PR Daily.

Figuring out the best medium for reaching external audiences is never easy. There are so many factors to consider: who you’re trying to reach, the messaging, the timeline and the budget.

But when we take a step back from specifics and look at the big picture, what are the best tools for reaching an audience?

This is one of the dozens of questions the Ragan Communications Leadership Council Benchmark Report answered. Hundreds of communicators shared their insights into all aspects of their practice, from how their teams are organized to their views on AI. Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council members can view the full 66-page report. But as an Insider, let’s give you a little, well, inside scoop.

Social media still reigns supreme

The survey asked respondents to choose the three most effective tools for reaching external audiences. Perhaps unsurprisingly, social media remains the No. 1 way of reaching a broad audience. Seventy percent of respondents said it was the most effective tool for reaching external audiences. It’s logical, of course: More than 62% of the world’s entire population uses social media, and 91% of Americans do. Given the wide variety of social platforms, it’s all but assured you’ll find a niche that your audience calls home and where you can deliver effective messaging.

However, there are drawbacks to social media, too. X has been in a constant state of upheaval for more than a year now; TikTok’s continued existence in the United States is in peril; and other platforms leave communicators scrambling to adapt to changing algorithms.

In other words, never put all your eggs in one basket.

That, perhaps, is why the second most effective method of reaching audiences is the much-maligned press release at 43%. While perhaps not as effective as it was in the glory days of media relations, this is still a tried-and-true method of getting important news out to a large number of people quickly, whether that’s through the press, by posting on a news wire service or putting it on your own website.

Going one step further and into owned media, brand journalism storytelling/website were the third most popular methods for reaching external audiences at 28%. As traditional media has continued to decline, creating avenues for artfully telling your own stories has become more important. Using SEO, social media and other techniques for helping audiences discover your content gives you a unique sense of control over your own story without the need for a middleman.

Rounding out the top five responses were speaking opportunities and conferences (22%) and email (20%, notably down from 25% in the 2023 survey).

All of these platforms give strong opportunities for storytelling and drawing audiences into a deeper, more intimate connection with your brand.

Which of these media do you find most effective for reaching external audiences?

To view the full report, become a member of Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council.

The post These are the most effective external comms tools, according to Ragan’s Benchmark Report appeared first on PR Daily.

Google has opened a new line of attack in its never-ending war against low-quality content and spammers.

On March 5, Google announced its newest core update. These broad updates make major changes to the all-important search algorithm that dictates what you see when you do your Googling. Small changes in the algorithm can make or break a site, rocketing it to front-page traffic or dooming it to obscurity at the bottom of page 5 forever more.

The March 5 update focuses specifically on low-quality content and spam, including several different abusive practices that make Google searches less useful. Among these are site reputation abuse (when a high-quality site hosts low-quality, third-party content that then surfaces based on the site’s reputation) and expired domain abuse (squatting on a domain that was formerly home to a trusted site and using it as a repository for low-quality content).

But above all, this content update strikes at what Google calls “scaled content abuse.” Here’s how Google defines it in their announcement:

We’ve long had a policy against using automation to generate low-quality or unoriginal content at scale with the goal of manipulating search rankings. This policy was originally designed to address instances of content being generated at scale where it was clear that automation was involved.

Today, scaled content creation methods are more sophisticated, and whether content is created purely through automation isn’t always as clear. To better address these techniques, we’re strengthening our policy to focus on this abusive behavior — producing content at scale to boost search ranking — whether automation, humans or a combination are involved. This will allow us to take action on more types of content with little to no value created at scale, like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content.

Reading between the lines: AI-generated content is getting better. It’s hard to tell if something is automated, but it doesn’t really matter if the content isn’t helping people find answers to their questions.

“Marketers can’t have nice things,” said Derek Chew, founder and CEO of FMDM, an Orlando-based creative and media agency. They thought generative AI would change the game overnight – and it did, but for the worse.

Chew gave the example of starting a website that shares winter vacation ideas. All the content is created with generative AI. Another person does the same. Then another. Suddenly you have 100 people creating sites with the same generic content, completely obliterating the usefulness of search results for winter vacation ideas.

“Suddenly, everything is just spam because the AI is probably going to write the same thing for you as for the 100^th person,” Chew explained. “There’s really no uniqueness at some point when it becomes a mass adoption. Then it becomes very low-quality content.”

Chew points to the irony of Google, a company which itself pushes generative AI tools, in suddenly needing to crack down on the kinds of content its tools make possible.

“They’re fixing their own problem,” Chew said. “And they’re not fixing a problem that is new. They’re fixing problems with low quality content, what they call unoriginal content. They’re trying to keep spam out of your index. If I were to read between the lines, my hypothesis is that Google has enabled a new type of spam, a very high-class, high-level procured spam. And now they’re trying to fix it.”

How to protect your content from algorithmic changes

The biggest takeaway from this update, Chew says, is that, “Good things don’t come easy.”

“It’s really having that patience to really deploy the best and time-proven strategies for content,” he said. “And honestly, if you’re working with a brand that doesn’t have the patience to develop content, it may not be the right client to work with.”

That isn’t to say that there aren’t good reasons to use AI in content creation. Chew notes it’s a great tool for brainstorming and researching. But it just isn’t where it needs to be to create helpful, original content – especially at scale.

So the best way to keep yourself safe from this newest algorithm update is to simply keep creating content that answers real questions in plain language using smart experts and judicious use of AI.

And really, that’s always the best strategy.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Google has changed its core algorithm again. Here’s what you need to know. appeared first on PR Daily.

More than two months after a door blew off a Boeing 737-9 plane, sparking a series of safety disasters for the aircraft giant, sweeping leadership changes have been announced.

Effective immediately, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Stan Deal will retire from the company, handing the reigns to COO Stephanie Pope. At the end of the year, Dave Calhoun, president and CEO of Boeing as a whole, will step down. Finally, Board Chair Larry Kellner will not stand for re-election, paving the way for Steve Mollenkopf to take his place and lead the search for the next CEO.

“As you all know, the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident was a watershed moment for Boeing,” Calhoun wrote in an email to employees, which was also published on Boeing’s website. “We must continue to respond to this accident with humility and complete transparency. We also must inculcate a total commitment to safety and quality at every level of our company.

The eyes of the world are on us, and I know we will come through this moment a better company, building on all the learnings we accumulated as we worked together to rebuild Boeing over the last number of years.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing’s stock ticked up 2% in pre-market trading in the wake of the announcements, a notable bump for a stock that has plunged 25% this year.

Why it matters: There is a point at which trust can no longer be repaired with the same leadership team. Boeing had reached that point.

Airline CEOs had requested what the WSJ calls an “unusual” meeting with Boeing’s Board to vent their frustrations over a seemingly endless string of manufacturing issues which have led to blown out doors, missing panels and malfunctioning seat switches. The company’s biggest customers losing faith in leadership was a death knell for the current guard.

The communications around the sweeping changes are bland and to-the-point, with little reference to the ongoing crisis, save a few oblique references, such as “(Calhoun) will continue to lead Boeing through the year to complete the critical work underway to stabilize and position the company for the future.” The rest is largely the departing and incoming leaders thanking each other.

While the communications might not signal much of a path forward, the leadership decisions certainly do. The head of the most affected business unit is out today, but Calhoun will give some runway to transition the company. A new board chair will lead the search for the new CEO.

Who will they choose? Who can step into such a role? And how will he or she help usher in a new era of trust for Boeing?

It’s going to be an interesting year.

Editor’s Top Reads:

• Days after Princess Catherine announced she is undergoing treatment for cancer, the British media is blaming Americans, both in the media and on social media, for the conspiracy theories that festered while the princess was out of the public eye. The New York Times noted that the infamous British tabloid press was unusually restrained even as wild rumors circulated online, and that English papers refused to publish some photos of Catherine that American-led TMZ was happy to publish. But there was also an acknowledgement from experts that the royal family’s silence and the release of an edited photo allowed for those rumors to run wild. As we wrote on Friday, it’s almost impossible to balance an individual’s right to privacy with the voracious appetite of the public. But the release of that doctored photo certainly seems to have tipped the family’s hand into revealing information, perhaps before they were ready to.
• Axios has identified 12 news bubbles that define how Americans receive information. Developed based on conversations with influencers, media executives, C-suite leaders and more, the list includes categories like “Musk-eteers” (a mostly male group who love X, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan); New Age Grandmas (older women who use Facebook primarily to keep up with the grandkids – but who sneak a little news in, too); and Passive-ists (those who just don’t consume much news at all). The entire list is worth reading and absorbing for PR professionals who often must pop into several of these bubbles to reach their target audience. Expect the news sphere to continue to fracture, making the role of media relations ever more complicated.
• The European Union continues to investigate and penalize American tech giants for allegedly failing to comply with its new, sweeping Digital Markets Act, CNN reported. The DMA is intended to increase competition and choice in the digital spaceand means big changes for major players already in the space. Among the investigations underway:
  • Meta’s option for customers to pay a monthly fee to remove ads may not be enough for the EU, whose commission wrote that, “the binary choice imposed by Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ model may not provide a real alternative in case users do not consent, thereby not achieving the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by (large companies).”
  • Apple and Google may be hampering other companies’ ability “to freely communicate and promote offers and directly conclude contracts, including by imposing various charges.”
  • Google may not be doing enough under the act to ensure that competing services show up in search results versus its own products, such as Google Flights.

It all could spell major changes for these companies – both in Europe and back in the United States, which seems to be following the EU’s lead and launching several antitrust investigations of its own.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post The Scoop: Boeing undergoes major leadership changes amid escalating crisis appeared first on PR Daily.

Ryan J. Taylor is the Founder and CEO of 440 Strategies in Washington, D.C.

Walking the highwire that connects politics and business is complicated, and mistakes can have real consequences. This is especially true every four years during the race for the White House. As a result of today’s bitterly divisive political environment, both large and small companies risk finding themselves in the crosshairs of presidential campaigns like never before. No company or industry is immune. Posts on social media, off-the-cuff remarks or coordinated campaigns by the candidates’ teams can affect a brand’s reputation, customers and profits. Being called out is something companies should prepare for proactively. To survive this storm, businesses need these four key strategies.

Know your strengths and your weaknesses
Every company should identify potential vulnerabilities that might attract political attention. It’s a good idea for each executive to review their respective business lines and corporate communications to understand the potential pitfalls. We live in different times now; any past mistake or oversight a company makes is fair game on the campaign trail. This is an involved process, especially for large, multinational companies, but the time invested pales in comparison to the cost of having to launch a crisis communications effort if caught unprepared. When business leaders do this work in advance, they’ll have a plan on hand, complete with a way to pivot from defending their brand to going on offense. That way, they can emerge from contact with the campaign trail with a larger, more loyal customer base and stronger market share.

As an example, in 2017, President Donald Trump slammed Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s clothing line. Obviously, the post generated a lot of media attention and speculation about Nordstrom’s future. The company stood firm in its decision and communicated clearly that the decision was tied directly to sales performance. Nordstrom’s response was decisive, concise and difficult to argue with. Most importantly, the company avoided alienating the president’s supporters while simultaneously endearing itself to its existing customer base.

Do no harm
One of the most obvious ways to avoid being dragged through the mud while the entire world watches on national television is to avoid becoming ammunition for political adversaries in the first place. This seems easy on the surface but requires diligent work to understand potential points of contention.

A great way to figure out what’s going on is to keep an eye on public sentiment through polling, focus groups and social media analysis. Science and art go hand in hand when it comes to using this analysis to plan scenarios and assess risks. Anticipating political events and examining potential outcomes from all relevant angles is another avenue to consider since those inflection points can have a huge impact on businesses, brand reputations and customers. These scenarios include government policy changes, public reactions to company statements and actions, and potential boycotts and protests.

Make a plan but stay flexible
There is an old adage that says, “prepare for the worst, hope for the best.” Nothing could be truer for business leaders with the 2024 presidential election just over the horizon. Start by setting up clear lines of communication and appointing spokespersons who know the company’s values and what’s going on in politics. At this stage of the planning process, pre-approved messages should be written to counter points of possible contention or to provide context for past mistakes. But remember, sometimes silence can be just as an effective response to political criticism.

In the past, one line of defense usually involved showcasing charitable giving practices, DEI and CSR commitments, or pro-environmental programs. This strategy used to work, but in today’s campaign cycle could create additional headaches. Rather than reflexively engaging, instead focus on the company’s core business and consider the following questions:

1. Do the critics matter?
2. Will the controversy blow over?
3. Is the best counter a rebuttal or a redirection?

The answers to those questions will determine whether the best course of action is to release additional statements, pitch the CEO to be on television or opt for silence to avoid adding additional fuel to an otherwise dying fire.

Make some friends
There is power in numbers. Creating a network of key stakeholders, like employees, customers and community leaders, is crucial in times of crisis. This alliance of third-party validators, which sometimes includes a bevy of strange bedfellows, can be a buffer against political hostility. Building this coalition and maintaining it will take time, treasure, and persistence. It starts by communicating regularly with them paying attention to their concerns and addressing their issues promptly. Taking these steps will foster goodwill, strengthen the company’s position in the community and ultimately defend it against political attacks.

Lastly, companies must be willing to engage in constructive dialogue with politicians, regardless of political differences. Taking a defensive stance invites unnecessary conflict and is at odds with the whole purpose of running a business, which is to make a good product that people want while turning a profit with the help of a well-trained team of employees. Ultimately, the ability to engage in meaningful discussions can turn potentially damaging situations into opportunities for business growth.

This isn’t rocket science, but it will take diligent work and potentially difficult internal conversations. Having a crisis communications plan, conducting risk assessments, building a strong network and engaging in constructive dialogue make it possible to handle political crossfire and come out stronger on the other side. A company’s ability to weather storms like these is more than just a strategic advantage, it’s a necessity for its long-term success.

The post 4 ways business leaders can prepare for presidential criticism appeared first on PR Daily.

Kennyatta Collins is a freelance brand strategist. Follow him on LinkedIn.

The emergence of new social media apps has blessed us with tools and features to enhance how we communicate. After Elon Musk purchased Twitter and subsequent changes led to a mass exodus of users from the platform, Threads became the ideal destination for many social media marketers, including Hubspot. The customer platform saw the Meta-owned network as a unique alternative that provided what many enjoyed about the early days of Twitter and Instagram.

Chi Thukral, Hubspot’s senior team manager of brand social, has adeptly navigated the changing social media landscape while spotting opportunities for deeper connections for the brand’s audience. Her latest social media strategy positions the text-based app Threads as a core platform for building stronger connections with the Hubspot audience.

“When it first launched, it was a special moment where everyone was exploring it, people were having fun and brands were just showing up as people. You could see how much the audience enjoyed that, and we decided to keep that going,” said Chi. Hubspot entered the platform in proper form with a meme and caption that spoke to the mood of many social media managers at the time.

With almost a year on Threads under her belt, Thukral shares how to get the most out of Threads, especially when looking to connect with Gen Z, extend the lifespan of your visuals and maintain relevance.

Threads is not Twitter

“Sure, Threads is a Twitter competitor, but that’s a completely different audience there. It might lean closer to your Instagram audience or even your LinkedIn audience, but you can’t assume it’ll match your Twitter audience,” says Thukral. Being born of Instagram, Threads naturally skews to a younger demographic than Facebook or X, as 61% of users fall within Gen Z and Millennial categories.

Similarly, user behavior on Threads takes root from years of Instagram use, so it’s just as important to consider when building a strategy around it. “Things that are going viral on Twitter don’t necessarily go viral on Threads,” Thukral said.You have to think more in line with what would work on Instagram now and what would have worked on Instagram when great copy and long-form captions were a thing.”

The value is in the visuals

Even though it’s touted as a text-based app, Threads is built to harness the power of visual storytelling, combined with text to build deeper context for narratives. “Because of how many people are using Threads from Instagram, we know that visuals work well. Threads is the one platform where you can include 10 mixed media in one post and build a digital storyline,” said Thukral.

Hubspot’s strategy takes advantage of this by extending the lifespan of graphics and visual media that may have worked well on Instagram and repurposing it for their growing audience on Threads.

“Because Threads is tied with Instagram, people are switching between those two so easily,” Thukral explained.”So when people are enjoying our content on Instagram, they can head to our bio and engage with it even more on Threads and vice versa.”

 

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Experimentation is essential

The name of the game is experimentation, and that has served Hubspot well, especially when it comes to connecting with Gen Z and resonating with their tone of voice.

“This is where the Gen Z audience is at their purest form,” said Thukral. |”With Threads still being a small pool, they’re comfortable sharing memes and expressing themselves more freely, so we are embracing that too.” Hubspot freely engages with its audience by using memes and tapping into cultural moments with commentary that coincides with the broader conversations of the day.

An added benefit is the brand enjoying increased relevance while becoming more approachable to its target customers due to relationships being built over shared interests.

“We’re keeping the same energy, especially in the replies and comment section, to keep that vibe going. That way if you’re going to hit the comment section, audiences can feel like we’re having fun just like they are,” Thukral said.

 

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View on Threads

 

Enjoy the ride

As Threads continues to welcome more users around the world, we’ll continue to see more creative ways people are using the platform to express themselves. Being in flow with the pace of the platform works to your advantage as an increase in relevance improves connections and audience synergies across relevant channels. Thukral points out Threads is more akin to early Instagram or even Tumblr in the way users engage with each other and share their experiences.

“Threads is a great place where people can still engage with long captions, share unique visuals and lean more into goodwill rather than being hyper-critical.”

How long that lasts, we won’t know. For now, however, it pays to enjoy the experience and contribute to helping the audience do the same.

The post How Hubspot brings it all together on Threads appeared first on PR Daily.

Following weeks of speculation and questions, Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed Friday that cancer was found following her January abdominal surgery and has been undergoing chemotherapy, the BBC reported.

Many communications professional have been watching the Princess Catherine situation closely after an edited photo of Catherine and her three children was retracted by wire services, causing a PR scandal and deepening the mystery around the princess’ absence.

But the reason is now all too clear.

Catherine said in a video message that the unspecified form of cancer was discovered after a previously disclosed abdominal surgery. She needed time to recover from that operation and has only recently begun chemotherapy, she said.

Read more: After the Princess Catherine photo disaster, have this conversation with your clients

In the video message, she said, “William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family.”

“I am well and getting stronger every day,” she added.

A message from Catherine, The Princess of Wales pic.twitter.com/5LQT1qGarK

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 22, 2024

In addition to Catherine’s diagnosis, her father-in-law, King Charles III, is also undergoing treatment for cancer.

Why it matters: It’s not easy being a royal. Yes, they get fairy tales and fancy lives but lose all semblance of privacy.

We now know that the radio silence and lack of public appearances by the princess were due to serious illness rather than something more nefarious. But while a regular person has the right to conceal their illness if they choose, that same luxury is simply not afforded to a monarch-to-be.

In the absence of information, the frenzied, fevered rumor mill filled in the blanks with the worst, most conspiracy-laden theories possible.

From the outside, it’s impossible to say who drove the PR strategy of silence, though a dignified lack of comment has long been a hallmark of the royal family. But it’s possible that Catherine herself, striving to keep some autonomy over herself and her family, insisted on waiting to reveal the news until it became clear that the scandal would not subside without a clear, direct explanation of what had been going on with one of the most visible women in the world.

It’s a horrible, heartbreaking situation. There’s no real way to win here. The conspiracy theories won’t end, especially not with cancer cropping up twice in the same family at the same time. Catherine will continue to have to fight for any shred of privacy, as even her medical records were breached.

It’s all a sad, weary echo of the life (and death) of Princess Diana, Catherine’s late mother-in-law whom paparazzi hounded until the very moment she was killed by their voracious appetite for another photo of her.

It also calls to mind another recent scandal over the non-disclosure of a medical condition. Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, came under fire for failing to disclose to the White House or his temporary replacement that he had been hospitalized for cancer surgery.

All of this demonstrates how messy and complicated communications can be when it comes to a personal health issue.

There are no easy answers here. No finger-wagging maxims about what you should always do in these situations or what you should never do. Only that if you find yourself in a situation where you are helping a principal, client or even a friend deal with whether or how to disclose a medical issue that is impacting their official duties, lead with empathy. With listening. By releasing what information you can while fighting like hell to preserve as much privacy as the client wants.

There will be times when this balance is difficult — even impossible — to maintain. When stakeholders’ right to know will outweigh an individual’s own personal tragedy.

If that day comes, be as kind, as sensitive and as understanding as you can be.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery for Princess Catherine and all those battling cancer.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Princess Catherine reveals cancer treatment after weeks of PR unrest appeared first on PR Daily.

Not so long ago, Reddit was a fairly lawless place. Yes, moderators oversaw some of the thousands of subreddit communities with an iron fist, but others allowed some of the worst abuse, hatred or even criminality the web has to offer a place to thrive.

That’s changed radically. Reddit is now one of the buzziest companies on the New York Stock Exchange, closing at $50.44 after its first day of trading, which means a market cap of $9.5 billion.

New York Times columnist Kevin Roose lays much of the success for the booming stock at the feet of a major shift in moderation policies in the last few years.

Roose points to three key factors that allowed Reddit to clean up some of the nastier corners of its website, and how its content efforts succeeded when many other social media companies have failed, creating environments that are unsafe for both users and brands.

1. Rather than trying to ban individual bad actors, Reddit deleted entire online communities that caused repeated problems. Granted, part of this is possible due to Reddit’s unique format that is built around communities. This wouldn’t work on a site like X, for instance. But Roose says that by getting rid of entire subreddits, it either forced bad actors off the site or forced them to clean up their act.
2. Reddit outsourced content moderation to volunteers. Each subreddit is governed by a team of moderators who are charged with enforcing both the site’s rules as well as any unique rules of that particular community. While this can cause issues, such as a wide-scale moderator revolt last year over API changes, Roose credits this volunteer army with much of the site’s turnaround.
3. Finally, as Roose puts it: “policed behavior rather than morality, and it did so without worrying too much about being seen as capricious or biased.” While Meta in particular has bent itself into a pretzel trying to appear balanced to largely conservative critics, Reddit simply banned the bad behavior, whatever side of the spectrum it came from.

Why it matters: Reddit is becoming an increasingly attractive option for brands. Due to the IPO, they’re rolling out tons of new ad options, tools and analytics to woo brands, making it an attractive place for both paid and organic social activity.

Reddit is also becoming an increasingly important search tool. Roose notes that he often adds “reddit.com” to his Google searches to help him find relevant information from real people amid the myriad of posts on the site. Google has taken note of this and is now partnering with Reddit in a variety of ways, including to train its LLM.

To be clear, there are still plenty of dark corners of Reddit. There’s porn galore, for one thing. But for many brands looking to connect with customers, it’s now worth a look, whether for simply monitoring to see consumer sentiment or being an active participant in relevant communities.

Editor’s Top Reads:

• Glassdoor, a site long known (and hated by employers) for giving workers the ability to anonymously review their workplaces, is accused of adding real names to profiles without warning or consent, even if those names weren’t provided during the setup process. One user says her name was added after she had a call with customer service, and she was told the only way to remove it was to delete her entire account, TechCrunch reported. This poses a challenge for the website: it can be difficult to be honest about an employer, especially a powerful one, if your name is attached. From a PR perspective, Glassdoor is adding few details on what’s changed, why or how they’ll move forward to rebuild user trust.
• The Walt Disney Company is waging what Axios has dubbed “the most expensive proxy battle in history” as it fends off a challenge from Nelson Peltz. Because so many retailer investors have bought into Disney, the company must case a wide net to get its message out ahead of the vote. It’s turning to social media ads, dedicated social media pages, phone calls, landing pages, videos and more. Peltz is also fighting back with his own digital assets but also traditional media relations, including a profile in the New York Times. Whose public relations will reign supreme?
• The Department of Justice and 16 attorneys general offices are suing Apple, alleging it engages in antitrust behavior to keep its iPhone at the top of the cellphone game. Among the issues cited in the suit are how iPhone handles texts with rival Android (those infamous green bubbles), blocking developers from creating tap-to-pay technology that could compete with its own and more, The Verge reported. This is all part of a broader antitrust movement against big tech companies in both the U.S. and the European Union. But if the suit is successful, we could see increased competition and options on cellphones — which could lead to cool new tools for many communicators.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post The Scoop: How Reddit went from unmoderated mess to hot IPO appeared first on PR Daily.

Off the record, on the record, on background. The terms are commonplace for PR professionals but are often used incorrectly. And that can be very dangerous.

I’ve dealt with various record requests as a PR rep, as an editor and as a reporter myself. These terms can be confusing. Use the below guide to ensure you understand – but perhaps more importantly, include this as part of your media training for clients and principals. A confident executive saying “well, this is off the record, BUT” could well wind up as front-page news tomorrow.

Basic definitions

On the record is the default status for talking to a reporter in a professional capacity. It means anything you say in an interview can be quoted and reported on, with your name attached. You should assume that anything you say to a reporter is on the record unless they have stated otherwise.

That part is important, so let me repeat it, this time in bold: you should assume that anything you say to a reporter is on the record unless they have stated otherwise.

Off the record is, of course, the flip side of that. Nothing in that conversation should be included in coverage, either as a direct quote, a summary or a reference. Nothing.

Finally, the last status is on background, which is the most complicated terminology. On background often means that the information may be used either via quote or a summary, but without a specific name attached. This is often used to not put the focus on a person, such as attributing a quote to “a company spokesperson” as opposed to “Jane Doe, head of communications.”

A less common term you may hear is “deep background.” The AP defines this as, “The information can be used but without attribution. The source does not want to be identified in any way, even on condition of anonymity.” This is often used when a journalist needs to speak to a subject matter expert to understand a topic enough to write about it with authority, but the identity of that expert doesn’t necessarily need to be in the story.

When in doubt about the definitions of any of these terms, ask up front.

A journalist’s obligation

In a perfect world, a journalist will always make the record status of a conversation clear. I like to tell people upfront, “I’ll be using this in an article, so everything we discuss is on the record. Is that OK?” It’s also fine to make it clear that nothing you say is on the record: “Hey, this is just a getting-to-know you chat, so let’s stay off the record unless we both decide something comes up that’s worth reporting on. Is that OK?”

But not all reporters do this. So again, assume that anything you say to a reporter is on the record unless otherwise negotiated.

Because going off the record or on background is always a negotiation. And it must happen before you say whatever you don’t want to be reported.

Reporters have an ethical obligation to preserve a source’s trust by respecting agreements about going off the record or on background. Breaking that rule is considered a deep faux pas. But that does not mean you can simply preface a statement by saying, “this is off the record” and expect that to be respected. Both sides must say yes.

There have been several high-profile situations, including one that involved Elon Musk, where sources sent emails to reporters flagging information within as “off the record.” But because the reporter in question never agreed to be off the record, they published the contents of those emails. They were within their ethical rights to do so. You also generally can’t say something, then backtrack with “that was off the record.”

It’s rarely to your advantage to go off the record with a reporter. Even if they can’t report what you told them off the record, they can investigate it and try to find an on-the-record source. But if you do want to give it a try, approach it like this:

“I’d like to go off the record with my response because…Will you accept those terms until we both agree to go on the record again?”

Get a clear yes or no. And if it’s a no, then move on. Change topics.

The trouble with background

Again, background is the squishy middle ground between on and off the record. Some  journalists have grown sick of it.

In 2021, The Verge updated its public ethics policy to change its stance around “on background” reporting. As the outlet’s editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, wrote at the time:

There are many reasons a reporter might agree to learning information on background, but importantly, being on background is supposed to be an agreement.

But the trend with big tech companies now is to increasingly treat background as a default or even a condition of reporting. That means reporters are now routinely asked to report things without being able to attribute them appropriately, and readers aren’t being presented with clear sources of information.

This all certainly feeds into the overall distrust of the media, which has dire consequences in our current information landscape, but in practice, it is also hilariously stupid.

It’s worth reading the full story for some deeply cringey examples of PR professionals demanding to be on background in ridiculous ways. Don’t be one of them.

The Verge clarified that it will only accept on background requests “at our discretion and only for specific reasons that we can articulate to readers.”

While it may be awkward for PR professionals, it’s good for journalism. The public’s ability to evaluate the credibility of a source by knowing who they are is vital. If you aren’t comfortable with putting a name to your spokesperson (whoever they may be), you need to reevaluate your strategy.

Remember: reporters are not your friend. They are professionals there to get a story. Most aren’t out to burn you either, but protect yourself and your organization by deeply understanding and aggressively negotiating these terms.

Get more expert insight into smartly working with the press during PR Daily’s Media Relations Conference, June 6 in Washington, D.C.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post How to safely go off the record with a reporter appeared first on PR Daily.

Time and again, research reminds us that Hispanic Americans are one of the most diverse groups in this country. While we discuss them demographically as one homogenous group, Hispanic people can identify as many races, be domestic or foreign-born, trace their origins to 20 different nations, and speak a variety of languages, including Spanish, English or the plethora of native languages spoken in Central and South America.

Read more: How Black Americans get news

By the same token, the way this group likes to get their news can vary widely, according to data from Pew Research. By understanding these patterns and preferences, PR professionals can better reach and influence this critical demographic.

English, Spanish or both?

One of the first questions a PR pro must answer is which language will best reach their target audience. A slight majority (51%) of all Hispanics prefer to get their news in English. Only 24% of people who identify as Hispanic prefer their news primarily in Spanish, while 23% have no linguistic preference.

However, the data grows more complicated as we dig a bit deeper.

Hispanic people born in the United States overwhelmingly (79%) prefer to get news in English. Since more than two-thirds of Hispanic Americans are native-born, this is significant. Only 3% of American-born Hispanics prefer to get their news in Spanish, while 17% are fine with either language.

To put it plainly, English (perhaps combined with some Spanish) is the most important language for reaching the largest chunk of the American Latino population.

These numbers shift when we look at Hispanic immigrants, but not as dramatically as you might expect. Twenty-two percent of immigrants prefer to get news in English, while 47% want Spanish instead. An additional 31% have no preference.

The bottom line is that being granular in your targeting and better understanding what segment of the Hispanic population you’re targeting will help you choose the most effective outlets to target, or what language to use in social media and other materials.

The most popular news sources

About half of all Hispanic adults get news from Latino-specific media at least sometimes, the survey found. Again, we see a significant split between immigrants and American-born people, with 69% of immigrants preferring Hispanic news sources versus just 33% of native-born. But it’s clear there is still utility in pitching outlets like Telemundo, Univision and others, especially if aiming for that immigrant population.

Most Latinos prefer to get their news from various digital sources. Twenty-one percent prefer social media; 19% go directly to news websites or apps; 18% use search; and 7% like podcasts. Twenty-three percent have a preference for TV, and just 4% each prefer print or radio.

But those are preferences. Most Hispanic people receive news from multiple sources, and their consumption broadly echoes that of Americans as a whole, with 87% getting news at least sometimes from digital sources; 62% from TV; 48% from radio; and 32% from print. So don’t be afraid to experiment with a broad range of new and old-school media to reach this audience. But perhaps veer a bit more toward digital sources overall.

Interest in news

One challenge to reaching Hispanics through media relations efforts is that many simply don’t follow the news. Just 22% say they follow the news closely all the time, a 6-point YOY decrease. Seventeen percent never follow the news at all. These numbers lag news interest in other ethnic groups, a disparity Pew Research attributes, at least in part, to age. Latinos tend to be younger than other demographics, and young people simply don’t follow the news as closely.

This might present opportunities for media relations with sources other than hard news outlets. Think influencers, podcasts, social media or more entertainment-focused news sources.

There are challenges to connecting with the Hispanic market in media relations, just as there are with any group. But with smart targeting, cultural awareness and creativity, it can always be done.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post By the Numbers: A nuanced portrait of how Hispanic Americans get their news appeared first on PR Daily.

You might think of writing voice as some fancy literary technique that only applies to novels and that you haven’t thought about since your last English class. But voice is a critical part of communications writing as well.

Voice colors the way your writing is received. It helps people understand how they should emotionally respond to a piece. The same ideas can come across very differently depending on the words you use. For instance:

“Our CEO is moving on to a new adventure! We’re grateful for all she’s done over her years of service. Please join us in wishing her the very best.”

Compared to:

“Our CEO has accepted another role. We wish her the best.”

The first is friendly, excited and positive, even though it’s conveying news that could be seen as destabilizing. It uses exclamation marks, positive language and a genuine call to action at the end.

The second is colder. More to the point. It makes it feel like something is being left unsaid. There might be times when that’s what you want, so it’s important to know how to switch between voices based on the specific piece you’re writing.

But how do you know what voice to use when? It starts by understanding the emotion you want to evoke, your audience and the purpose of the piece you’re writing.

Use the checklist below to help determine your voice for a given piece.

Defining your voice as a business writer

In the world of business, your voice depends on what you’re creating. To determine your voice, ask yourself these questions. Check all that apply.

The purpose of this piece is to:

• Evoke emotion.
• Tell a story.
• Give details.
• Share a vision.
• Give good news.
• Break bad news.
• Rally the team.
• Build excitement.
• Fill in your own: _________________________.

I want my writing to make readers feel:

• Informed.
• Understood.
• Enlightened.
• Heard.
• Excited.
• Energized.
• Cooperative.
• Driven.
• Competitive.
• Determined.
• Cautious.
• Emotional.
• Empathetic.
• Grateful.
• Inspired.
• Fill in your own: _________________________________.

My audience is _____________________________________.

My voice should be:

• o Informed.
• Understood.
• Enlightened.
• Heard.
• Excited.
• Energized.
• Cooperative.
• Driven.
• Competitive.
• Determined.
• Cautious.
• Emotional.
• Empathetic.
• Grateful.
• Inspired.
• Fill in your own: ________________________________.

The post How to define your voice in communications writing appeared first on PR Daily.

This story has been updated to clarify that Griner has not conducted one-on-one interviews since her return. 

Securing the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner from wrongful detention in Russia was a monumental feat of politics and negotiations.

But PR also played a critical role.

“It was about screaming from the mountaintop and trying to have the public and ultimately the government and White House pay attention to us, because we knew that without the government support and the support of the White House, she probably wasn’t going to come home,” Calder Hynes told PR Daily. Hynes is senior vice president of global communications at Wasserman, the sports and entertainment talent agency that has represented Griner for years.

Wasserman coordinated efforts to release Griner from her nearly 10-month imprisonment in Russia, a massive undertaking that required working with not only the government, international attorneys and hostage experts, but also the WNBA, USA Basketball and the court of public opinion.

In an interview with PR Daily, Hynes and Griner’s longtime agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas revealed how they worked to first keep the incident quiet – and then how to ensure every American viewed Griner as their sister, daughter or neighbor.

This story was in part developed based on reporting from “Inside Brittney Griner’s Russia arrest, detainment and release,” written by ESPN’s T.J. Quinn, for details around Griner’s arrest and detention. All quotes with Kagawa Colas and Hynes are from interviews with PR Daily.

An early morning call and an international incident

Kagawa Colas was awakened early one morning by a call from a colleague. There was a problem. The information they had was slim, just a text from Griner’s wife, Cherelle, that the basketball star had been arrested as she returned to Russia to kick off her play with UMMC Ekaterinburg due to her possession of two marijuana vape cartridges.

Brittney Griner and Lindsay Kagawa Colas after Griner’s release from Russian detention. Photo provided by Wasserman.

At first, this was just another problem to solve. A day in the life of a sports agent.

“We were still hoping that this was going to be a sports diplomacy issue that could be solved,” Kagawa Colas told PR Daily. “Some misunderstanding. She has a prescription for this medically prescribed cannabis oil. I’m sure we can figure this out.”

“The initial (PR) approach was, let’s try to keep this out of public knowledge. Move past it,” Hynes recalled.

But the timing meant that this would be more than a minor drug bust. Griner was detained on Feb. 17, 2022.

One week later, Russia invaded Ukraine.

From quiet to loud

For more than two weeks, few people outside Griner’s immediate circle knew of her detention. But on March 5, Russia itself broke the news of her detention, forcing her team’s hand.

“That was one of those early signals that she was a political pawn,” Kagawa Colas said. “And they were going to start using this as a negotiation.”

That began a new, cautious phase of efforts. The team wanted to correct misinformation and advocate for Griner, but they didn’t want to exacerbate the situation unnecessarily.

“It was more about being factual, trying to provide the public and the press with what they needed, keep them close, while at the same time not trying to go out there with an agenda or pushback about why she’s there, or why she isn’t, or what the treatment is in regards to her safety,” Hynes said. “We couldn’t really start a back and forth with the Russian government.”

But the months of Griner’s confinement dragged on. By August, she had been sentenced to a staggering nine years’ incarceration. By November, she was transferred to a Russian labor camp, where she was tasked with carrying bolts of cloth — she was too tall to perform the sewing other women did — and breaking ice. The cold weather required her to cut her trademark locs after they kept freezing.

At home, the campaign to bring her home began to ramp up.

“Early, it was ‘be quiet,’” Kagawa Colas remembered. “‘Let’s not raise her value. Let’s see if we can resolve this quietly.’ Then it was, ‘if we want to keep her visible and make sure she’s a priority at the White House, how do we do that without compromising the White House and compromising the negotiation?’”

One issue — and opportunity — was Griner’s identity. She is Black. She is a lesbian. She presents in ways that are gender-nonconforming. That allowed Biden’s political opponents to turn her into a wedge issue to strike at the president, with the fires further stoked by Russian-backed bots on social media. The more controversy around her, the more she could be used as a pawn by Vladimir Putin and his regime. But the team had to speak up. The time for silence had passed.

“How do we simultaneously decrease her value in a trade to make a trade easier, while also ensuring she’s a priority? That is a needle to thread,” Kagawa Colas said.

The answer was a campaign that emphasized unity.

‘BG is for everybody’

The Wasserman team decided that Griner’s multi-layered identity was an asset, not a liability.

“Maybe you can’t see yourself in Brittney Griner, but we’re going to tell you why you actually can,” Kagawa Colas said. In the PR campaign, they emphasized that Griner is the daughter of a veteran and a former law enforcement officer. Her favorite holiday is the Fourth of July. She’s an American hero, having won two Olympic gold medals for her country.

But her Blackness and her sexuality were not avoided either. The Wasserman team said these were obvious reasons that she was detained. As a result, Black women in media became some of the most valuable and powerful voices in the campaign.

“They intimately understood the story,” Hynes said. “And they understood the challenges more easily. They were much more understanding and open to covering the story with a little bit more of a personal connection. But more than anything, we didn’t need to go through all the explanation to them about the lesson. The whys of all this.”

And some did use Griner’s identity to tear her down or even say she should remain in Russia. But the Wasserman team tried to stay above the fray, pointing out that Griner has rights as an American and if you believe in those rights, you should be advocating for her.

The other challenge was that Griner, locked up in Russia, could not speak for herself. She needed advocates. One of those was Kagawa Colas. The other key player was Cherelle Griner, Brittney’s wife.

“Cherelle was just an average American person, had not been a public figure, had not been in the limelight, had not done any media and not really engaged,” Hynes said. “And we were all of a sudden asking her to do an interview on ‘Good Morning America’ with Robin Roberts.”

The Wasserman team helped with media training, giving Cherelle the tools she needed as quickly as possible to succeed in a difficult role. From looking the part to telling her emotional story clearly, she got a crash course — and succeeded.

“Talk about a person who has the utmost strength in all this,” Hynes said. “Cherelle just really delivered.”

Beyond the media relations, there were rallies and events in Arizona, where Griner still plays with the Phoenix Mercury WNBA team, and partnerships with the NBA. Every measure was meant to ensure that attention stayed on Griner and the public remained invested in the effort to bring her home. #WeAreBG was used as a rallying hashtag to encourage others to advocate for and see themselves in Griner, used by both regular people and celebrities like NBA star Carmelo Anthony to keep her name in the news.

 

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A post shared by Carmelo Anthony (@carmeloanthony)

And then in December, nearly 10 months after Griner was stopped at customs in Moscow, officials reached a deal. Her freedom was secured in exchange for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer serving a federal prison sentence.

Freedom

When Griner was returned to the United States and reunited with her wife, the team took a moment to celebrate.

“It was overwhelming. It was confusion. It was excitement. It was just pure joy,” Hynes said. “I got very emotional, and I cried because I don’t think I understood how much pent-up emotion I had over this.”

But the moment of celebration was brief. There was still a great deal of work to do.

Even choosing which photo of Brittney and Cherelle reuniting would be released to the media had to be carefully orchestrated.

“We wanted to balance both the historic significance of the moment, the personal, emotional side that grounds the story, and I think they’re the most compelling,” Hynes said.

Brittney Griner reunites with her wife Cherelle after spending nearly 10 months in detention in Russia. Photo provided by Wasserman.

The military and the government were involved, necessitating time and sensitivity as Griner readjusted. But there were also hundreds of interview requests pouring in. So far, Griner has stuck to press conferences and has not yet sat for one-on-one interviews.

“We all realized very quickly that obviously getting her home was the goal, but in her larger story and for our dealing with her, if you want to put it in the context of a PR campaign, it was actually only the first phase. It’s on to this whole next chapter of Brittney’s life,” Hynes told PR Daily.

But overall, Hynes said the campaign reaffirmed his belief in the power of PR to accomplish important things.

“It was gratifying that it seemed like a true-blue PR campaign, even today, can have a really tangible impact on this really positive outcome.”

The return

Griner returned to the court for the 2023 WNBA season, where she shot a career-high 61.8% and was again named an All-Star. Her memoir, “Coming Home,” will be released later this year.

“Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets,” Griner said in a statement about the book. “But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare.”

A documentary with Disney and ESPN on her experiences is also forthcoming. And so, Kagawa Colas says, is a new emphasis on activism and helping other people who are wrongfully detained, including Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich.

“We’d like to think that awareness around wrongful detention has been raised,” Kagawa Colas said. “And we helped people gain a better understanding of how important it was to do whatever is necessary to get Americans home. I hope that’ll be a part of her legacy, how many people have come home in the wake of her detention and our campaign bringing her home.”

Because as Hynes pointed out, basketball is only one part of the greater arc of Griner’s life.

“(The detention) is a core part of her identity. Her whole image and persona is just shifted now and long term for her. A lot of this is about setting her up for what she wants to do when she’s ultimately done playing. Who is she gonna be?”

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post The PR team who helped bring Brittney Griner home on how they kept her in the headlines appeared first on PR Daily.

After a fairly quiet period of updates last week, social media platforms are announcing a ton of new features. Some might cause you to raise an eyebrow, but others could seriously up your social media game.

Let’s get into it.

LinkedIn

In a move that will be either prove to be brilliant or a miserable failure, LinkedIn confirmed it will incorporate gaming into the professionally focused app, TechCrunch reported. Expected to be simple puzzle games similar to the massively popular Wordle, app researchers found that it’s possible that employees from different companies will be able to compete together against other organizations. This could be a great tool for internal team building — or an awkward fit for a platform that’s meant to be all business.

In more traditional LinkedIn news, the app is tweaking its collaborative articles function on the feature’s one-year anniversary. The AI-generated prompts allow users to share their experiences on a variety of topics.

New features for collaborative articles include:

• A focus on prompts that ask people to speak to personal experience.
• An “unhelpful” button to help weed out low-quality content.
• Updates to the algorithm that matches users to prompts.
• A mobile experience that now mirrors the desktop design.
• Expanded distribution that can match organic content.
• A collaborative article search filter.

Finally, new thought leader ads will allow companies to sponsor any post from a first- or second-degree connection, not just those from employees. The creator must approve the sponsorship before it appears, but this could be a unique way to surface content that matters, even if it wasn’t made by you.

TikTok

Even though TikTok’s future in the United States is in doubt, the company is still rolling out plenty of updates and even contemplating a whole new app.

Blog The SpAndroid did some digging and discovered strings of code that seem to indicate a separate TikTok Photos app in the works. That’s right, after years of Instagram chasing TikTok, TikTok is now creating its own Instagram clone. Photos can already be posted in TikTok itself, but this would create a new option. TikTok has not confirmed the app yet, but it’s certainly an interesting concept for marketing and PR pros to watch.

TikTok has also rolled out a new library of Sounds for Business — Voice Clips. These clips, voiced by popular creators on the app, are on a variety of small business-related topics and are free to use. Whether or not you’ll want to is another question. Take a listen for yourself.

Finally, TikTok unveiled a new Creator Search Insights tool that helps show what people are looking for on the app, which is now one of the world’s most popular search engines. The results are searchable by topic and  also show “gap topics,” or content users search for but for which there isn’t a great deal of content, creating a unique opportunity for creators.

Instagram

There are no new concrete announcements of new Instagram features this week, but plenty of intriguing hints leaked by the intrepid users who hunt through code for insight into coming attractions. Here’s a quick rundown:

• A survey hints at some new features that may be implemented into Meta’s Verified program, including the ability to add links in Reels, a dedicated customer service phone line and priority advertising reviews, among others.
• Instagram may soon allow you to attach files to DMs, though this feature might only be available for businesses.
• Photo Carousels could expand to 15 photos.
• A Spins feature could allow people to add their own audio and text to your Reels footage.

If any of these come to pass, you can read about it right here.

Snapchat

Snapchat is giving users the ability to opt-out of a core part of its functionality: the disappearing DM. Currently, if you want to save a message, you must do it manually each time. But in a feature currently in testing, users could choose to save all DMs from a conversation forever. Users would have the ability to change settings on each conversation so you don’t have to save every message from everyone, and in-chat notices would ensure everyone in the conversation knows how the messages will be handled.

Reddit

In a move that is certain to enrage Reddit users, the soon-to-be public company has announced a new set of ads that’s quite difficult to distinguish from organic content. Dubbed free-form ads, advertisers can share multiple media types in a single ad. “As our most native ad format yet, free-form ads are designed to look and feel similar to the type of content redditors share with each other, inviting maximum engagement from the community,” according to the announcement. These will likely be great for advertisers, but do be aware of the backlash from the notoriously advertising-averse community.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post New social media features and updates to know this week appeared first on PR Daily.

The rocky real estate market endured another seismic shift Friday when the National Association of Realtors agreed to settle a massive lawsuit brought by homeowners. As part of that settlement, a century-old rule requiring home sellers to foot a 5-6% commission to be split between buyers and sellers agents in order to be included in the Multiple Listing Service will end, the Washington Post reported. The NAR also agreed to pay $480 million in order to settle multiple class action lawsuits.

While a federal judge must still approve the settlement, there is already widespread speculation about what impact the settlement will have on the housing market. NAR critics are celebrating the settlement, claiming it will reduce housing prices. Research and advocacy organization Consumer Federation of America estimates it could save Americans a collective $30 billion a year.

But naturally, this presents huge challenges for real estate professionals, who suddenly must prove their worth in ways they’ve never had to before.

So far, the NAR has released a dry, detail-oriented statement describing the settlement and denying wrongdoing.

“This will be a time of adjustment, but the fundamentals will remain: buyers and sellers will continue to have many choices when deciding to buy or sell a home, and NAR members will continue to use their skill, care, and diligence to protect the interests of their clients,” said NAR President Kevin Sears in the statement.

Why it matters: This represents a unique challenge for an entire industry. After a century of having an intense degree of control over the Multiple Listing Network (MLS), a critical tool for buying and selling homes, to protect realtor compensation and allow buyers to use an agent at no cost to them, everything seems set to change.

NAR will have a difficult battle ahead. Not only must they educate consumers on why a realtor is worth their money, they must convince members of the profession to stay when their compensation is suddenly uncertain. Some estimates suggest that as many as two-thirds of the country’s 1.5 million realtors could leave the profession. It’s certain that compensation models will change drastically, with the Post suggesting that a-la-carte pricing, flat-fee pricing and reduced services will likely all be on the table.

This is certainly a frightening moment for realtors. But a strong, fast PR campaign can help them convince a cash-strapped public of the need for their services. By focusing on positioning real estate agents as trusted guides in a complex and expensive process, they might be able to usher in a new — albeit different — era for the industry.

Editor’s Top Reads:

• Boeing’s woes continue to compound by the day. No, this isn’t a repeat of a Scoop item from last week. A Boeing 737-800 flying for United safely landed — missing an exterior panel. Unlike the infamous Alaska Airlines flight that lost a door in flight in January, no one noticed the panel was missing until the flight was parked at a gate in Medford, Ore.. It was also discovered that a known faulty switch cover was the cause of a frightening incident on a Latam Airlines 787 Dreamliner that injured 50 people. A flight attendant bumped the seat switch (which should have been covered), causing the pilot to lurch into the controls and cause a sudden change in altitude. Every mounting incident chips away more at trust from both airlines and the public, not to mention the government. Boeing must move quickly to explain these incidents and how it will fix things. At the moment, the company is still bleeding, badly. It must staunch the flow before it can begin to heal.
• If a TikTok ban does become law, that’s unlikely to be the end of the story. The Wall Street Journal notes that a free speech battle would likely ensue if Chinese-owned ByteDance is faced with a choice between selling the company or ending distribution in the U.S. How successful that suit would be remains an open question, with many of the free speech matters involved still untested in American courts. In November, however, a judge ruled that the state of Montana could not ban TikTok, since Tiktok “provided a unique form of communication for some users, and Montana hadn’t justified its move to cut off the platform entirely.” According to the Wall Street Journal. First we’ll see if the bill passes the Senate; then we’ll see how courts respond. Have you brushed up on your Reels strategy lately? No reason, just asking.
• In vitro fertilization is presenting a messaging quandary for Republicans who have long argued that life begins at conception, NPR reported. The popular treatment helps couples conceive by implanting fertilized eggs — but often leaves some of those eggs unused when children are successfully conceived. Republicans’ messaging that life is made the moment a sperm cell meets an egg cell has worked within the party, leading to a brief ban of IVF in Alabama, though that was quickly walked back via legislation. Still, the party is now left attempting to reconcile its messaging with the popularity of the treatment among many families struggling to conceive. Watch for how this continues to play out in the upcoming election.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The death of John Barnett, the Boeing employee who exposed the company’s shoddy safety practices, spotlights the enormous pressure that corporate whistleblowers face.

Barnett, a former quality control engineer, was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in his truck in a hotel parking lot in Charleston, South Carolina, where he was testifying in a deposition about the safety of the company’s aircraft. Barnett tried to raise concerns internally, but was ignored and eventually transferred, the New York Times reported.  He retired in 2017, but went public with his story in 2019.

It’s an experience Sherron Watkins knows well. Watkins is the former vice president of corporate development at Enron who spoke out about the energy company’s fraudulent accounting practices. That, in turn, led to a 2001 SEC investigation that brought down the company and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, and sent several former executives to prison, including former CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

“I’ve certainly met a lot of people with whistleblowing experience and the actions against a whistleblower are very, very predictable” Watkins said. “Enron was attempting to do all those things to me, but they imploded too fast so my period of suffering the same fate as most whistleblowers was shorter.”

From a communications and PR perspective, whistleblowing incidents are fraught with their own set of personal and professional risks. But they’re also an opportunity to set up or reinforce safe channels for employees to report misdeeds and prevent internal concerns from blowing up into a public crisis.

[Related: Join Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council, exclusively for communications leaders]

The plight of the whistleblower

“Most whistleblowers don’t have much power and they’re speaking about wrongdoing in a very powerful organization,” Watkins said. “And the powerful organization is trying to discredit them, maybe fire them, blackball them, spread rumors about them and also isolate them. And that … is probably when they’re at their lowest.”

Sadly, it’s not unprecedented for someone to take their own life. Watkins pointed to the example of Enron executive Cliff Baxter, who killed himself in January 2002. While not technically a whistleblower, Baxter, the company’s vice chairman, had protested the suspect transactions and retired when that went nowhere. He was later sued along with all the company executives.

Baxter expressed concern that he “was painted with the same brush as the bad guys,” Watkins said. “His suicide note said, ‘Where there was once great pride, now there is none.’”

So, what’s a communicator to do?

A moral decision point for PR and comms

Whistleblowers become enemies to the company when they go public, Watkins said, and PR departments will be pressured to follow the company line and attack the messenger.

“That was happening to me at Enron,” she said. “The PR people were ready to start smearing you, dropping little things, use other people to smear you.”

“I think that’s morally demoralizing for PR departments to be forced to do that kind of stuff, but they are nine times out of 10, if they’re working for a company that doesn’t want the truthtellers’ information out there.”

Just as whistleblowers face personal and professional risks, so do PR and comms professionals charged with crafting a response. It’s potentially a career terminating move to fight back against leaders dead-set on retaliation, Watkins said, and circumventing executives by going to the board of directors is problematic.

“I don’t have the right answer for PR folks,” she said, but suggested trying to slow responses down, using influencing skills to get people on your side and playing devil’s advocate to executives. “A lot of the problem within Enron is they really thought they could bluff their way through things.”

One other option is to hire an attorney and become a whistleblower yourself. The whistleblower program created under the Dodd-Frank Act, passed by Congress in 2010, offers protection and a cash payout from the SEC if the company is found to have engaged in wrongdoing.

Set up a safe channel to report wrongdoing

One way companies, and communicators, can support whistleblowers is by taking preventative steps and setting up safe channels for employees to report bad behavior, like a private tip hotline. These reporting channels should be managed by a third party and ensure that tipsters remain anonymous in order to be effective, Watkins said.

“Companies ought to strive for having a really good robust system where you never try to figure out who is blowing the whistle,” she said. “Instead, you investigate what they’re reporting and you fix it. In that situation, the person doesn’t bear the brunt of whistleblowing, all the negatives. They’re never discovered (and) they see the company correct it.”

That approach builds employee loyalty, but it’s also just good business. Watkins cited studies by George Washington University professor Kyle Welch that prove that companies with robust reporting systems have a higher return on investment and lower litigation costs.

Share what you’re doing with tips

It’s at this point that communicators can make a difference by strengthening the lines of communication between employees and company leaders. Comms teams can report on what’s being shared via the hotline, express thanks to those reporting it and how the company is addressing any issues raised.

“From a communication standpoint, it’s very important that the communications internally from upper management speak to the good ideas that have come out of the hotline system, the problems we averted that came out of the hotline system,” Watkins said.

That kind of preventative approach to wrongdoing is preferable to the other option: an employee going to the media or the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“That means they’ve tried internally and it’s falling on deaf ears,” she said.

Leadership matters

From Watkins’ perspective, things have improved greatly in the 20-plus years since the Enron debacle. The Dodd-Frank Act and the SEC’s creation of the Office of the Whistleblower following the 2008 financial crisis have forced companies to clean up their act.

“Companies should adopt the philosophy that, ‘We might as well know where our skeletons are, know where the elephants in the room are and correct it ourselves,’” Watkins said. “Preventative is better than being exposed.”

More broadly, the bigger message is that safety and accountability actually can save the company money in the long run. That’s where communicators can play an important and influential role. Boasting about their fantastic employee hotline is a critical first step in having an effective internal reporting system, according to Watkins.

“Leadership matters and what the leaders are saying really matters,” she said. “What they’re rewarding (and) what they’re talking about is just so important.”

Sherron Watkins is a distinguished advisor, business ethicist and member of the advisory committee for Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council, our members-only group of senior level communications leaders. Members also have exclusive access to in-depth resources, including insights from Watkins and a whistleblowing compliance kit.

Mike Prokopeak is director of learning and council content for Ragan Communications. Follow him on LinkedIn.

The post Enron whistleblower Sherron Watkins on what communicators should know in wake of Boeing tragedy appeared first on PR Daily.

Maddie Knapp is a senior media relations strategist at Intero Digital Content & PR Division, formerly Influence & Co. 

AI in public relations isn’t just changing the game — it’s completely rewriting the rules. In 2024, AI’s imprint on PR will be profound, offering tools and techniques that are reshaping how we pitch topics, monitor media, and build relationships. A 2023 Muck Rack survey found that 61% of PR pros were already using AI or planned to explore it.

Now, understanding how to use AI in public relations isn’t about technology taking the wheel; it’s about us driving smarter, with AI as our supercharged GPS.

Custom GPTs: Tailoring pitches with AI precision

Custom GPTs in PR are like having a secret weapon in your arsenal. These AI-driven tools are designed to create content that fits your exact needs, illustrating how to use AI in PR. Let’s break down their impact across four key pitch types:

1. Expert pitches: Think of custom GPTs as your expert whisperer, crafting pitches that sound like they’ve come straight from the horse’s mouth. AI can analyze the latest trends, reports and expert articles, ensuring your pitch reflects current industry insights. It can even mimic the tone and style of industry leaders.

Imagine you’re preparing a pitch about sustainable energy. While you might not be the top expert in this field, you can still create an impactful and authoritative pitch. Start by gathering a diverse range of recent articles from reputable publications on sustainable energy. This collection should include various formats like opinion pieces, news reports, and interviews. Use ChatGPT to analyze these articles, focusing on their language, style, recurring themes, keywords and overall tone. The goal here is to understand how sustainable energy topics are typically presented and discussed in your target industry.

Then, train a custom GPT model using these insights. This model will learn to replicate the writing style, thematic focus and tone observed in your research. By doing so, your custom GPT can generate pitch drafts that resonate with the style and substance of existing industry content. Your pitches will be more aligned with industry standards and targeted to your audience. This strategy enhances your efficiency, allowing you to focus on refining and personalizing your pitch rather than starting from scratch.

2. Data-driven stories: AI’s ability to process and analyze large datasets is unparalleled, helping to identify compelling patterns and trends and turning them into narratives that are both informative and captivating. These stories can be used to back up claims with hard data, making your pitches more credible and authoritative.

And by analyzing a journalist’s past work and preferences, AI can tailor pitches that resonate on a personal level. It moves beyond throwing darts in the dark to using a guided missile that hits the bullseye of relevance and engagement. Personalized pitches cut through the noise, increasing the likelihood of your story being picked up.

Let’s say you are leading a supply chain company’s PR. To make an impact, start by gathering all kinds of related data. You want the nitty-gritty on how global supply chain hiccups are playing out, how the company is excelling in logistics, and what customers are saying. Next, use AI to sift through the data and unearth nuggets that prove that the company is outperforming the chaos better than the competition. With these insights, craft a pitch that’ll make a big splash, showing off stats and numbers that back up your claims. This approach does more than tell people that the company is top-notch; it shows them.

3. Announcements:Need to make a quick announcement? AI’s efficiency ensures your news hits the mark, fast. Whether it’s a corporate update, an important event, or a crisis response, AI can quickly digest the necessary information and produce clear, concise and impactful announcements.

Imagine you’re the PR strategist for a tech company that is about to announce a huge partnership with another organization that will optimize technical systems. The main goal is to spread the word in a way that is catchy, fun and gets everyone buzzing. Use AI to take a deep dive into the latest market trends, competitor news and past successful announcements. Next, give AI all the exciting details about the partnership so it can craft an engaging announcement that nails all the key points while keeping it on-brand.

AI can take the messaging one step further. You know the message needs to hit different notes for different folks. AI can help you spin your message a few ways — more in-depth for the technology crowd and more formal for the business audience. The message ends up sharp, adaptable and in sync with your target audiences.

4. Influencer collaborations: The best part about using custom GPTs is that the more information and feedback you give them, the better they perform and the more personalized they become. And personalization is where AI really flexes its muscles. A custom GPT adapts to different influencer styles, making sure your brand message harmonizes with their content, style and audience engagement. This ensures that your message is not only consistent with your brand, but also resonates with the influencer’s followers.

Let’s say you are a PR professional working for a healthcare company that just released a wellness app. The goal is to drive consumer interest through the influencer market. After identifying a diverse group of influencers, AI can analyze the content and engagement style of each influencer, understanding what kind of messages resonate best for their followers. Using GPT insights, you can craft customized content for each influencer’s style and the specific media platform. As the campaign evolves, GPT monitors performance and suggests adjustments to maintain relevance. The approach ensures the wellness app’s message resonates with diverse audiences and enhances engagement across platforms.

Incorporating AI and PR strategies means striking a balance between automated efficiency and human ingenuity. AI can assist in heavy lifting, allowing us to focus on strategic aspects. This year, let’s harness AI to make our content more efficient, impactful, emotionally resonant, and ethically sound. That’s a narrative we can all get behind.

The post How to use custom GPTs in your public relations practice appeared first on PR Daily.

The battle over the fate of TikTok in the United States continues to rage. China is already signaling that it will not meekly permit the sale of one of its most prized homegrown assets, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Chinese government’s communications with ByteDance, owner of the uber-popular app, indicate the government would see the app banned in the U.S. before they allow its sale to an American company.

And who would buy the app is an open question. Many are interested, of course, but there are obstacles. CNN reports that obvious  suitors like Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft or Amazon could face antitrust concerns were they to purchase TikTok.  But several groups of buyers are also interested, including one led by former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and another by former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, reports indicate.

Remember: a sale isn’t yet imminent. The bill to force a sale or face a ban has passed the House but faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Still, let’s gaze into a crystal ball of what could happen if push comes to shove and TikTok suddenly disappears in the U.S..

A similar scenario played out in India in 2020. The reasons for the ban were different, resulting in fallout from border skirmishes between India and its neighbor China. In retaliation, TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps were banned overnight, leaving 200 million users of the app without their favorite scrolling habit.

CNN reports that initially, several homegrown apps sprung up, trying to become the new home for all those users. But they eventually fizzled and the big players in the microvideo space, such as YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, ultimately reaped the rewards.

But others simply couldn’t match the magic of TikTok.

“The way one was gaining reach and followers on TikTok is [still] incomparable to any other platform out there at the moment,” Clyde Fernandes, executive director— artist management at influencer marketing and manager firm Opraahfx, told CNN.

Why it matters: If TikTok is banned, there will be no exact replacement. Just look at how many competitors have tried to match the glory days of Twitter – and all have fallen short.

But that doesn’t mean its function as a PR, marketing and influence tool can’t be replaced. As India found, Shorts and Reels already have essentially the exact same function, albeit without that magical algorithm that keeps users constantly scrolling. If you aren’t already posting short-form content on these alternative platforms, this is the time. Don’t wait until everyone is trying to build an audience there.

It’s entirely possible the Senate will get cold feet and this will all blow over. But the very uncertainty of this ongoing situation and how many different near-death blows have struck TikTok mean it’s inherently unstable and unreliable. Don’t rely on any one platform for your social media and PR success. Keep a healthy mix of tactics going, and always have your plan B ready to roll.

Editor’s Top Reads:

• In other high-stakes international acquisition news, Nippon Steel, Japan’s largest steel manufacturer, seeks to buy U.S. Steel, and American politicians aren’t happy about it, NBC News reports. President Joe Biden says that U.S. Steel should remain owned by, well, the U.S., while Nippon Steel is taking a smart PR tactic of claiming that the acquisition would strengthen the U.S. against China. “Through increased financial investment and the contribution of our advanced technologies to U.S. Steel, Nippon Steel will advance American priorities by driving greater quality and competitiveness for customers in the critical industries that rely on American steel while strengthening American supply chains and economic defenses against China,” a statement from Nippon Steel reads. It’s a clever PR tactic, even if exporting steel manufacturing [exporting ownership of one of the biggest companies, not exporting actual manufacturing?] to another country to strengthen America’s national security seems counterintuitive. We’ll continue to see how the U.S. and Japan wrestle with the court of public opinion.
• Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s OpenAI are also duking it out in the PR realm – and Musk is winning, according to Business Insider. Legal experts agree that a recent lawsuit from Musk against OpenAI for forsaking its non-profit roots will likely be dismissed, but it’s still striking blows against the AI giant. The media coverage generated for Musk’s own xAI due to the lawsuit has rocketed him ahead of the competition, helping the public and other stakeholders become familiar with his competitor – and fast “Elon Musk is the best PR stuntsman I’ve ever seen,” Kyle Arteaga, CEO of tech PR company The Bulleit Group, told Business Insider. “Elon doesn’t care about winning this lawsuit, all he’s doing is stealing OpenAI’s media attention and putting a sliver of doubt in developers’ heads.”

  We’re not recommending lawsuits as a PR tactic – but be aware they could be used against you.

• Finishing off on a lighter note, collaborations that combine seemingly unrelated products into creative (and often disgusting) mashups are becoming more and more popular as both a PR tactic and a way of driving actual sales. The BBC points to products like Hidden Valley Ranch flavored Burt’s Bees lip balm and Kentucky Fried Chicken Crocs as examples of how going “unhinged” can pay off with both earned media and earned sales A collab between Absolut vodka and Heinz for a vodka-infused pasta sauce resulted in 500 million earned media impressions and 7.1 million organic impressions on TikTok. What partnerships exist that you can tap into, even if they seem insane?

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post The Scoop: This is what happened when India banned TikTok appeared first on PR Daily.

Gabriel De La Rosa Cols is a principal at Intelligent Relations.

The recent release of a doctored photo of Princess Catherine, formerly known as Kate Middleton, and her family sparked widespread concern about the use of digital editing tools. But it also showed the ease with which conspiracy firestorms can arise from seemingly innocuous actions. 

If you haven’t heard the story, several news agencies, including the Associated Press and Reuters, recently shared a family photograph of Catherine, Princess of Wales. The photo seemed to have been intended to prevent any more speculation over her health after she went virtually missing from the public eye since her abdominal surgery two months ago. However, those news agencies later retracted the photo and reported that there was evidence of photo manipulation. 

Since then, a number of conspiracy theories have emerged about the state of the British Royal Family, Catherine’s health and pretty much anything else trolls can think of. And an apology from Princess Catherine insisting that the edits were merely the result of her own amateur efforts did nothing to stop the conspiracy storm. 

So what happened here? And what should public relations professionals do to prevent similar incidents for their clients in a time when photo manipulation and AI-generated images are making it harder to know what is real or fake? 

Loss of credibility

Clearly, media entities that are rightly focused on maintaining their credibility won’t stand for doctored images or anything else that might indicate a lack of honesty. The moment various publications realized the photo was doctored, not only did they retract it, but the photo immediately became a fantastic example of what not to do if you want a good relationship with the media. 

Even after the retractions, the image did plenty of damage: the same media entities that published the image were beset by conspiracy theorists. As a result, some media companies have watched their credibility lose ground to unscrupulous actors who just want to foment rumors. 

This should matter to us because part of our job as public relations professionals is maintaining good relationships with media entities and journalists. We’re here not only to help our clients, but also to make sure the stories we ask media personnel to promote are credible and won’t hurt their reputations. Needless to say, if we fail in that mission and it results in a similar PR fiasco because of an edited or AI-generated image or a false story, we’re going to have a very hard time convincing the same reporter or publication to view our client as a source in the future. 

Basically, we need to avoid anything that looks like a lack of transparency on our part. The problem with Princess Catherine’s picture wasn’t that an amateur photographer decided to touch up a photo. The problem was the appearance of dishonesty, and that’s something that will really hurt the public image of any brand or famous spokesperson involved. Unfortunately, these types of incidents will continue to happen as more public figures and brands place a greater emphasis on digital technologies and/or AI-generated images. 

Avoiding the firestorm

PR professionals are responsible for ensuring the authenticity of the content they send to the media on behalf of clients. Of course, you might not even be aware that your clients are using AI or editing to change images until some news station takes an issue with a photo you’ve sent over. But I think it’s fair to say that the Princess Catherine story at least gives you some leverage to open a discussion with your clients about the need to be cautious. 

For the most part, edited images or images made with AI can suggest that your client has something to hide. So even if your pictures are a bit grainy or outdated, that’s preferable to something that clearly reveals that it has been edited. 

You can also look for signs of an edited image yourself. In the case of the Princess Catherine image, there were clearly misaligned and missing objects. An AI-generated image often has smooth or blurry textures, colors, or unnatural lighting. If you discover an image has been edited or could give the impression of being edited or AI-generated, you might need to ask for a new image you can share. 

Remember, if this is a mistake a high-powered PR team meant to protect royalty from criticism can make, then it’s also a mistake any of us could fall into. If you suspect your client may have doctored a photo, make sure not to send it out to the media. And maybe sit down and discuss how recent events have shown it’s just better to be transparent from the start. Your clients will thank you in the end.

The post After the Princess Catherine photo disaster, have this conversation with your clients appeared first on PR Daily.

Muck Rack’s annual State of Journalism report is a must-read for any By the Numbers fan. It’s chock full of useful data on how journalists work, the state of their industry, their views on AI and much more.

But let’s be real. You’re mostly curious about the section on pitching and why you aren’t getting any darn responses.

The problem with pitching

Here’s the good news: Journalists value PR pros. The survey, which received responses from more than 1,100 journalists, primarily from the U.S., found that 70% believe that journalists are at least somewhat important to their work. After all, PR pros can help reveal interesting trends, connect reporters to experts, offer viral promotions and more.

But that doesn’t mean pitches are always helpful. In fact, 49% of respondents said they seldom or never respond to pitches. Twenty-four percent said they respond about half the time, 18% usually do and 8% always do.

Cheers to the 8%.

And it certainly isn’t due to lack of pitches that journalists aren’t responding. Forty-nine percent of respondents said they get at least six pitches per day, with 12% contending with a whopping 21 or more pitches every day. Perhaps those who are combatting 100 or more pitches on a weekly basis can be forgiven for not always giving a response.

But by far and away, the biggest reason journalists don’t respond to pitches is that they simply aren’t relevant to their coverage area. Seventy-nine percent cited lack of relevance as the top reason they’ll deny a pitch, which reveals a serious problem with targeting in the PR industry.

“Spray and pray” is not an effective pitching method. If you’re still reporting how many pitches you’re distributing, you’re measuring the wrong thing. Better to distribute a handful of pitches to vetted journalists rather than risk becoming one of these forgotten, mis-targeted attempts cluttering an inbox forever.

So, what does make for a good pitch besides smart targeting?

There isn’t an easy formula for this. The vast majority (83%) do prefer to be pitched 1-1 via email rather than in a mass barrage or via phone. But beyond that, there’s little consensus for a day of the week (64% say they have no preference) or time of day (44% say before noon, but that leaves plenty who prefer a time after noon). There is a preference for shorter — 65% prefer pitches that are less than 200 words. And a slim majority (51%) say you should only follow up once, preferably within 3-5 days.

Beyond that, you’ll likely want to focus on building a relationship and just ask your identified reporters when and how they want to be pitched. Every journalist is a unique human being with their own personal preferences and job requirements. The best thing to do is simply to ask — and to be empathetic.

Because journalists are dealing with a lot.

A journalist’s life in 2024

Everyone is busy. Let’s get that out of the way. But journalists are becoming even more intensely worked as their numbers dwindle while the pile of news to be reported on seems to grow ever larger.

Muck Rack’s survey found that 36% of journalists have dealt with layoffs or other downsizing at their organization in the last year. Sixty-four percent work more than 40 hours a week, and 79% report working outside the standard 9-5 hours. Many (46%) do all this for less than $70,000 per year.

They’re also turning in a great deal of work, though the exact volume of the stories they produce can vary widely. Thirty-six percent produce a reasonable five stories or less per week, but 22% are responsible for 11 or more, a massive workload. Add that on top of their bulging inboxes and it all makes for a difficult, stressful career.

Read the full Muck Rack report here.

To further hone your pitching, join us for PR Daily’s Media Relations Conference in Washington, DC June 5-6.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.

The post By the Numbers: What journalists really think of your pitches appeared first on PR Daily.

AI continues to shape our world in ways big and small. From misleading imagery to new attempts at regulation and big changes in how newsrooms use AI, there’s no shortage of big stories.

Here’s what communicators need to know. 

AI risks and regulation

As always, new and recurring risks continue to emerge around the implementation of AI. Hence, the push for global regulation continues.

Consumers overwhelmingly support federal AI regulation, too, according to a new survey from HarrisX. “Strong majorities of respondents believed the U.S. government should enact regulation requiring that AI-generated content be labeled as such,” reads the exclusive feature in Variety. 

But is the U.S. government best equipped to lead on regulation? On Wednesday, the European Parliament approved a landmark law that its announcement claims  “ensures safety and compliance with fundamental rights, while boosting innovation.” It is expected to take effect this May.

The law includes new rules banning applications that threaten citizen rights, such as biometric systems collecting sensitive data to create facial recognition databases (with some exceptions for law enforcement). It also requires clear obligations for high-risk AI systems that include “critical infrastructure, education and vocational training, employment, essential private and public services, certain systems in law enforcement, migration and border management,” and  “justice and democratic processes,” according to the EU Parliament.

The law will also require general-purpose AI systems and the models they are based on to meet transparency requirements in compliance with EU copyright law and publishing, which will include detailed summaries of the content used for training. Manipulated images, audio and video will need to be labeled.

CNBC reports:

Dragos Tudorache, a lawmaker who oversaw EU negotiations on the agreement, hailed the deal, but noted the biggest hurdle remains implementation.

“The AI Act has pushed the development of AI in a direction where humans are in control of the technology, and where the technology will help us leverage new discoveries for economic growth, societal progress, and to unlock human potential,” Tudorache said on social media on Tuesday.

“The AI Act is not the end of the journey, but, rather, the starting point for a new model of governance built around technology. We must now focus our political energy in turning it from the law in the books to the reality on the ground,” he added. 

Legal professionals described the act as a major milestone for international artificial intelligence regulation, noting it could pave the path for other countries to follow suit.

Last week, the bloc brought into force landmark competition legislation set to rein in U.S. giants. Under the Digital Markets Act, the EU can crack down on anti-competitive practices from major tech companies and force them to open out their services in sectors where their dominant position has stifled smaller players and choked freedom of choice for users. Six firms — U.S. titans Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and China’s ByteDance — have been put on notice as so-called gatekeepers.

Communicators should pay close attention to U.S. compliance with the law in the coming months, diplomats reportedly worked behind the scenes to water down the legislation.

“European Union negotiators fear giving in to U.S. demands would fundamentally weaken the initiative,” reported Politico.

“For the treaty to have an effect worldwide, countries ‘have to accept that other countries have different standards and we have to agree on a common shared baseline — not just European but global,’” said  Thomas Schneider, the Swiss chairman of the committee.

If this global regulation dance sounds familiar, that’s because something similar happened when the EU adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016, an unprecedented consumer privacy law that required cooperation from any company operating in a European market. That law influenced the creation of the California Consumer Privacy Act two years later. 

As we saw last week when the SEC approved new rules for emissions reporting, the U.S. can water down regulations below a global standard. It doesn’t mean, however, that communicators with global stakeholders aren’t beholden to global laws.

Expect more developments on this landmark regulation in the coming weeks.

As news of regulation dominates, we are reminded that risk still abounds. While AI chip manufacturer NVIDIA rides all-time market highs and earned coverage for its competitive employer brand, the company also finds itself in the crosshairs of a proposed class action copyright infringement lawsuit just like OpenAI did nearly a year ago. 

Authors Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian and Steward O’Nan allege that their works were part of a datasite NVIDIA used to train its NeMo AI platform. 

QZ reports:

Part of the collection of works NeMo was trained on included a dataset of books from Bibliotik, a so-called “shadow library” that hosts and distributes unlicensed copyrighted material. That dataset was available until October 2023, when it was listed as defunct and “no longer accessible due to reported copyright infringement.”

The authors claim that the takedown is essentially Nvidia’s concession that it trained its NeMo models on the dataset, thereby infringing on their copyrights. They are seeking unspecified damages for people in the U.S. whose copyrighted works have been used to train Nemo’s large language models within the past three years.

“We respect the rights of all content creators and believe we created NeMo in full compliance with copyright law,” a Nvidia spokesperson said.

While this lawsuit is a timely reminder that course corrections can be framed as an admission of guilt in the larger public narrative,  the stakes are even higher.

A new report from Gladstone AI, commissioned by the State Department, consulted experts at several AI labs including OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta offers substantial recommendations for the national security risks posed by the technology. Chief among its concerns is what’s characterized as a “lax approach to safety” in the interest of not slowing down progress,  cybersecurity concerns and more.

Time reports:

The finished document, titled “An Action Plan to Increase the Safety and Security of Advanced AI,” recommends a set of sweeping and unprecedented policy actions that, if enacted, would radically disrupt the AI industry. Congress should make it illegal, the report recommends, to train AI models using more than a certain level of computing power. The threshold, the report recommends, should be set by a new federal AI agency, although the report suggests, as an example, that the agency could set it just above the levels of computing power used to train current cutting-edge models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini. The new AI agency should require AI companies on the “frontier” of the industry to obtain government permission to train and deploy new models above a certain lower threshold, the report adds. Authorities should also “urgently” consider outlawing the publication of the “weights,” or inner workings, of powerful AI models, for example under open-source licenses, with violations possibly punishable by jail time, the report says. And the government should further tighten controls on the manufacture and export of AI chips, and channel federal funding toward “alignment” research that seeks to make advanced AI safer, it recommends.

On the ground level, Microsoft stepped up in blocking terms that generated violent, sexual imagery using Copilot after an engineer expressed their concerns to the FTC.

According to CNBC:

Prompts such as “pro choice,” “pro choce” [sic] and “four twenty,” which were each mentioned in CNBC’s investigation Wednesday, are now blocked, as well as the term “pro life.” There is also a warning about multiple policy violations leading to suspension from the tool, which CNBC had not encountered before Friday.

“This prompt has been blocked,” the Copilot warning alert states. “Our system automatically flagged this prompt because it may conflict with our content policy. More policy violations may lead to automatic suspension of your access. If you think this is a mistake, please report it to help us improve.”

This development is a reminder that AI platforms will increasingly put the onus on end users to follow evolving guidelines when we publish automated content. Whether you work within the capabilities of consumer-optimized GenAI tools or run your own, custom GPT, sweeping regulations to the AI industry are not a question of “if” but “when”.

Tools and use cases 

Walmart is seeking to cash in on the AI craze with pretty decent results, CNBC reports. Its current experiments surround becoming a one-stop destination for event planning. Rather than going to Walmart.com and typing in “paper cups,” “paper plates,” “fruit platter” and so on, the AI will generate a full list based on your needs – and of course, allow you to purchase it from Walmart. Some experts say this could be a threat to Google’s dominance, while others won’t go quite that far, but are still optimistic about its potential. Either way, it’s something for other retailers to watch.

Apple has been lagging other major tech players in the AI space. Its current biggest project is a laptop that touts its power for other AI applications, rather than developing its own. But FastCompany says that could change this summer when Apple rolls out its next operating systems, which are all but certain to include their own AI. 

FastCompany speculates that a project internally dubbed “AppleGPT” could revolutionize how voice assistant Siri works. It also may include an AI that lives on your device rather than in the cloud, which would be a major departure from other services. They’ll certainly make a splash if they can pull it off.

Meanwhile, Google’s Gemini rollout has been anything but smooth. Recently the company restricted queries related to upcoming global elections, The Guardian reported. 

A statement from Google’s India team reads: “Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun to roll out restrictions on the types of election-related queries for which Gemini will return responses.” The Guardian says that even basic questions like “Who is Donald Trump?” or asking about when to vote give answers that point users back to Google searches. It’s another black eye for the Gemini rollout, which consistently mishandles controversial questions or simply sends people back to familiar, safe technology.

But then, venturing into the unknown has big risks. Nature reports that AI is already being used in a variety of research applications, including generating images to illustrate scientific papers. The problems arise when close oversight isn’t applied, as in the case of a truly bizarre image of rat genitalia with garbled, nonsense text overlaid on it. Worst of all, this was peer reviewed and published. It’s yet another reminder that these tools cannot be trusted on their own. They need close oversight to avoid big embarrassment. 

AI is also threatening another field, completely divorced from scientific research: YouTube creators. Business Insider notes that there is an exodus of YouTubers from the platform this year. Their reasons are varied: Some face backlash, some are seeing declining views and others are focusing on other areas, like stand-up comedy. But Business Insider says that AI-generated content swamping the video platform is at least partly to blame:

Experts believe if the trend continues, it may usher in a future where relatable and authentic friends people used to turn to the platform to watch are fewer and far between. Instead, replaced by a mixture of exceedingly high-end videos only the MrBeasts of the internet can reach and sub-par AI junk thrown together by bots and designed to meet our consumption habits with the least effort possible.

That sounds like a bleak future indeed – and one that can also change the available influencers available to partner on the platform.

But we are beginning to see some backlash against AI use, especially in creative fields. At SXSW, two filmmakers behind “Everything Everywhere All at Once” decried the technology. Daniel Scheinert warned against AI, saying: “And if someone tells you, there’s no side effect. (AI’s) totally great, ‘get on board’ — I just want to go on the record and say that’s terrifying bullshit. That’s not true. And we should be talking really deeply about how to carefully, carefully deploy this stuff.”

Thinking carefully about responsible AI use is something we can all get behind. 

AI at work

As the aforementioned tools promise new innovations that will shape the future of work, businesses continue to adjust their strategies in kind.

Thompson-Reuters CEO Steve Hasker told the Financial Times that the company has “tremendous financial firepower” to expand the business into AI-driven professional services and information ahead of selling the remainder of its holding to the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).

“We have dry powder of around $8 billion as a result of the cash-generative ability of our existing business, a very lightly levered balance sheet and the sell down of [our stake in] LSEG,” said Hasker. 

Thompson-Reuters has been on a two-year reorg journey to shift its services as a content provider into a “content-driven” tech company. It’s a timely reminder that now is the time to consider how AI fits not only into your internal use cases, but your business model. Testing tech and custom GPTs as “customer zero” internally can train your workforce and prepare a potentially exciting new product for market in one fell swoop. 

A recent WSJ feature goes into the cost-saving implications of using GenAI to integrate new corporate software systems, highlighting concerns that the contractors hired to implement these systems will see bottom-line savings through automation while charging companies the same rate. 

WSJ reports:

How generative AI efficiencies will affect pricing will continue to be hotly debated, said Bret Greenstein, data and AI leader at consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. It could increase the cost, since projects done with AI are higher quality and faster to deliver. Or it could lead to lower costs as AI-enabled integrators compete to offer customers a better price.

Jim Fowler, chief technology officer at insurance and financial services company Nationwide, said the company is leaning on its own developers, who are now using GitHub Copilot, for more specialized tasks. The company’s contractor count is down 20% since mid-2023, in part because its own developers can now be more productive. Fowler said he is also finding that contractors are now more willing to negotiate on price.

Remember, profits and productivity are not necessarily one in the same. Fresh Axios research found workers in Western countries are embracing AI’s potential for productivity less than others – only 17 % of U.S. respondents and 20% of EU said that AI improved productivity. That’s a huge gap from the countries reporting higher productivity, including 67% of Indian respondents, 65% in Indonesia and 62% in the UAE.

Keeping up and staying productive will also require staying competitive in the global marketplace. No wonder the war for AI talent rages on in Europe.

“Riding the investment wave, a crop of foreign AI firms – including Canada’s Cohere and U.S.-based Anthropic and OpenAI – opened offices in Europe last year, adding to pressure on tech companies already trying to attract and retain talent in the region,” Reuters reported. 

AI is also creating new job opportunities. Adweek says that marketing roles involving AI are exploding, from the C-suite on down. Among other new uses:

Gen AI entails a new layer of complexity for brands, prompting people within both brands and agencies to grasp the benefits of technology, such as Sora, while assessing its risks and ethical implications.

Navigating this balance could give rise to various new roles within the next year, including ethicists, conversational marketing specialists with expertise in sophisticated chatbots, and data-informed strategists on the brand side, according to Jason Snyder, CTO of IPG agency Momentum Worldwide.

Additionally, Snyder anticipates the emergence of an agency integration specialist role within brands at the corporate level.

“If you’re running a big brand marketing program, you need someone who’s responsible for integrating AI into all aspects of the marketing program,” said Snyder. “[Now] I see this role in in bits and pieces all over the place. [Eventually], whoever owns the budget for the work that’s being done will be closely aligned with that agency integration specialist.”

As companies like DeepMind offer incentives such as restricted stock, domestic startups will continue to struggle with hiring top talent if their AI tech stack isn’t up to the standard of big players like NVIDIA.

“People don’t want to leave because when you don’t have anything when they have peers to work with, and when they already have a great experimentation stack and existing models to bootstrap from, for somebody to leave, it’s a lot of work,” Aravind Srinivas, the founder and CEO of Perplexity, told Business Insider, 

“You have to offer such amazing incentives and immediate availability of compute. And we’re not talking of small compute clusters here.”

Another reminder that building a competitive, attractive employer brand around your organization’s AI integrations should be on every communicator’s mind. 

What trends and news are you tracking in the AI space? What would you like to see covered in our biweekly AI roundups, which are 100% written by humans? Let us know in the comments!

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Justin Joffe is the editorial director and editor-in-chief at Ragan Communications. Before joining Ragan, Joffe worked as a freelance journalist and communications writer specializing in the arts and culture, media and technology, PR and ad tech beats. His writing has appeared in several publications including Vulture, Newsweek, Vice, Relix, Flaunt, and many more.

The post AI for communicators: What’s new and what matters appeared first on PR Daily.

Beki Winchel is senior director of content & engagement at Spiro.

This year, it seems AI is all that any marketer can talk about.

The trending technology has become more accessible than ever, forcing brands to get on board—or get left behind.

As both excitement and fear over AI continue to swirl, IBM’s Program Director, Executive Programs & Event Experiences Erin McElroy, and Spiro’s Global Chief Marketing Officer Carley Faircloth uncovered opportunities for savvy brand marketers to use AI to strengthen relationships with their key audiences.

Here’s what you can glean from their conversation at Brand Innovators’ Leadership in Brand Marketing Summit at SXSW:

Using AI to evoke empathy

When you move past consuming to creating, real brand impact can happen.

“You can always tell when you’re watching a marketing campaign that’s really just trying to sell you and then you can tell when you really feel something — when you’re really moved,” McElroy said. “To truly get the value out of AI, we need to continue like we have with other technologies to be creators… We don’t want to be consumers; we want to be creators of AI.”

In a digital brand experience, IMB’s watsonx Assistant team used the company’s AI to simulate what it’s like to be a call center agent — which can be a frustrating experience for both the agent and the customer.

Using gameification, The Contact Center Challenge, placed users in the role of the customer service assistant. For the average participant, it took roughly 45 seconds for frustration to mount over the volume of requests coming at them.

That’s when the watsonx Assistant stepped in, automating some tasks with complex look-ups, natural language and self-serve answers. At the game’s end, participants were shown how they did without the AI, how much the assistant helped when they began drowning in requests, and how much easier it would have been to use AI from the beginning.

A recent McKinsey & Company report revealed that Gen AI can boost productivity in customer care functions by 30% to 40%. But it’s not just a benefit for the company: Gen AI increased issue resolution by 14% an hour and reduced handle time by 9%.

The research shows that automating tasks that don’t require the human touch enables contact center and customer service agents to focus on understanding customers and what they need.

Yet, the numbers don’t give you the feeling of mounting stress as you struggle to handle calls —or the sigh of relief when the tech streamlined tasks. IBM’s experience did. And that more powerfully cemented into B2B customers’ minds and hearts that AI can help customer service agents better focus on and delight customers.

McElroy shared that a COO from a large retail brand went through the experience, commenting that they didn’t understand the value with previous sales pitches of the technology. But after completing the game? “Now I get it,” the leader told McElroy.

“That just meant a lot to me in terms of the power of our experiences,” said McElroy. “We really have an opportunity as experiential marketers to help people understand what’s going on…people remember that, more than a great pitch.”

Experientializing tech to cultivate emotion and relationships

“Whenever we get a brief around a particular novel technology, the challenge for us on [the agency side] is really experientializing that technology in a way that will break through,” said Faircloth. “At the end of the day, it’s about the experience.”

McElroy agreed, adding that it comes down to what you as a brand marketer are trying to accomplish and how it meets your business goals.

“We become more effective marketers and more effective businesspeople when we step back and look at what is truly going to bring value — not just sell, promote or perform,” McElroy said. “The things that perform the best are the things have heart and have that authenticity built into it.”

Faircloth pointed out that it’s all about intention when it comes to the authenticity in your approach.

“It really is about knowing the audience,” Faircloth said. “It’s something we as marketers all strive for and talk about. We do a lot of work understanding the psychographics and demographics—all the things that play into it. We all have to tap into the mind of our consumer.”

McElroy said that understanding your audience is a crucial fundamental for effective AI efforts.

“What is the why behind what you’re doing?” she asked. “When you inform your strategy that way, then the tools start to work for you.”

Moving from AI experimentation to practical brand application

There’s another crucial element to using AI effectively in brand experiences and marketing campaigns: Integration across your organization.

“Surrounding AI, there’s a lot of talk a lot about benefits, risks, data and the whole “garbage in/garbage aspect,” Faircloth said. “What we don’t hear a lot about is organizational preparedness — from experimental, to competent, to adoption, to integration.”

That is often a sticking point, turning the tech from a flash in the pan to a consistent strategy and way of working adopted throughout the organization. How can you move forward on the path of AI integration, regardless of the industry you’re in?

McElroy says it all comes down to being intentional with your strategy and understanding what kind of data you want to capture.

“I think a best practice, no matter what platform you use, is one that will let you own your data because it becomes your intellectual property,” Erin said.

She continued: “This allows you to be a value creator with AI, because you’re taking your own enterprise data and putting it together with the data your [AI] platform offers to create something new.”

It’s important to point out that though data is paramount, it won’t replace marketers actively tuning into and understanding audience behavior shifts.

“That to me is the winning proposition,” McElroy said. “When you’re listening, you end up with a good result.”

The post How IBM unlocks the heart of AI through brand experiences appeared first on PR Daily.

At their worst, speeches can be cold recitations of facts and figures that no one will remember past the moment they’re spoken.

At their best, they can be soaring oration that change hearts, stick in minds and impact the world.

Which they are depends in some measure on the person delivering it. But even the best orator on the planet can’t turn a dry speech into a masterpiece. Good speeches begin at the writing table, but the very best speeches begin with a story.

During Ragan’s recent Public Affairs & Speechwriting Virtual Conference, Michael Ricci, former speechwriter and director of communications for House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, and Nick Lanyi, media relations and crisis communications expert for RCG, explored how to use speechwriting to project optimism and stability in even the most difficult times. The keys are in emotion, empathy and storytelling.

“Just the insecurity, the stress of everything going on in the world requires some empathy,,” Lanyi said. “But it can’t be faked, it’s got to be there. Sometimes words alone will be helpful, but you want to encourage your principal to be able to convey that.”

Why storytelling matters

Speechwriting, Lanyi notes, is a unique form of communication. People can’t follow along with what you’re saying in real-time. They can’t rewind or re-read. They have to be in the moment.

“If all you’re talking about is abstract concepts or lists or descriptions unrelated to anything human, people are going to lose interest,” Lanyi said. “Whereas if you have a story that is about people struggling to try to achieve something important and the ups and downs they go through, people’s brains actually literally get turned on. They’re emotionally connected and they’re much more likely to hear what you have to say.”

These stories can follow a very simple arc, not so dissimilar from the classic Hero’s Journey:

• Find stories involving human beings (occasionally cute animals!) that speakers can use to demonstrate what they’re talking about. It gives the audience someone to root for.
• Show what that person wants to accomplish.
• Show what stands in their way.
• Show what happens – the good and the bad.

Not everything is a story, but it can make an argument come alive.

“Almost every practiced politician is going to talk about healthcare or the economy and then very quickly talk about real people doing stuff,” Lanyi said.

Indeed, finding a humanizing figure is such a hallowed part of politics, it even has its own name: Lenny Skutnik. Read more about the real Skutnik and the speechwriting trope.

The importance of a villain

Of course, all great stories need a villain. At a minimum, this is an obstacle that the person in the story must overcome to triumph: an industry, your competition, broader economic trends. But Ricci found that personifying that villain has greater impacts.

When he worked for then-Speaker of the House John Boehner, the natural villain was his Democratic counterpart, Senate Leader Harry Reid. But for a long time, Boehner wanted to maintain good relations with Reid and avoided naming him in speeches. Instead, the villain was the nebulous “the senate.”

But once the speechwriting team was given the greenlight to make Reid a proper villain, the messages hit more directly. The response was stronger on social media. [Any specific figures to back this up?-MK]

“When people see the good and the evil in your story, it has more impact,” Ricci said.

Ultimately, facts rarely change people’s mind. Emotions do. Building speeches around humans is the surest way to get people to remember and act.

Watch the full presentation below.

The post How and why to craft speeches based around emotion appeared first on PR Daily.

Social media was fairly quiet on the updates front this week — but Google made up for it with some major changes, including core algorithm changes. Take a look at what’s new, what will make your job easier and how you may need to re-learn how you use X.

X

The platform, long known for its microblogging, is now getting … regular blogging. The new Articles on X feature is available for Premium+ subscribers and Verified Organizations, according to an announcement posted last week. The posts will have basic formatting options as well as video and image embed capabilities. The articles will appear directly in followers’ timelines, which could be an interesting way of getting more eyeballs on a notable post.

X owner Elon Musk announced that a new, “very clean” timeline will soon roll out, nixing some of the most basic controls, including the like, reply and repost buttons. Only view counts will be shown, with other functions available via touch controls: “Swipe right to reply, left to favorite, tap & hold for all other actions,” Musk posted. No word on how this functionality would play out on desktop.

Threads

Threads has now rolled out its in-stream camera option and drafts functionality to all users, bringing it more in line with most other social media platforms.

Reddit

Reddit is rolling out a new suite of tools for businesses on the community-based social platform. Currently in beta testing, Reddit Pro will eventually serve as a dashboard to help organizations build an organic presence on Reddit, according to the announcement.

Features will include:

• An AI tool to help organizations find relevant conversations, subreddits and topics to engage with.
• Organic post analytics.
• Publishing tools, including scheduling and drafts.
• A dashboard to help measure overall organic engagement.

Naturally, there will be easy integration to put paid boosts behind posts.

In early testing with brands including the NFL, Wall Street Journal and Taco Bell, brands saw a 35% boost in organic engagement when using Pro.

This is a big move forward as the platform continues to position itself as more advertiser-friendly ahead of its IPO.

TikTok

TikTok will begin rolling out a subscription offering to all creators on the app. Previously, the option was available only to LIVE creators. While initially only available by invite only, subscriptions will eventually roll out to all, giving creators a new revenue stream and new community engagement options.

As Congress yet again rattles its saber about banning the clock app, TikTok has deployed a pop-over to ask users to contact Congress and demand that the app stay, including an easy “call now” option.

But Business Insider reports that this tactic may have backfired.

It worked all right: people did call, with some offices receiving more than 50 calls on the matter. Though they called to support TikTok, the move apparently led some wavering representatives, especially among Republicans, to push for opposition to the app.

We’ll see if this is really lights out for TikTok.

Google

Not exactly social media, but news you need to know anyway: Google has made another core algorithm update. While Google never gives full details on how its algorithm works, it says the major changes this month were designed to keep spam and low-quality results out of search engine results pages.

“This update involves refining some of our core ranking systems to help us better understand if webpages are unhelpful, have a poor user experience or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people. This could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries.”

This and previous updates reduce low-quality results by up to 40%, Google said.

Among other changes:

• Google will focus on penalizing large-scale, low-quality content creation in a way that’s agnostic about whether it was created by humans, AI or both. “This will allow us to take action on more types of content with little to no value created at scale, like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content.”
• The search engine is also cracking down on otherwise great websites that offer low-quality content a home. “We’ll now consider very low-value, third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner to be spam. We’re publishing this policy two months in advance of enforcement on May 5, to give site owners time to make any needed changes.”
• Finally, Google will deal with expired domain abuse, where spammers purchase expired domains that formerly had great reputations and proceed to fill them with low-quality content, banking on the former owners’ credibility to help them get clicks.

As always, the best way to deal with Google algorithmic changes is to focus on solid, human-centric content.

Google is also overhauling how it views Marketing Mix Models, analyses that help businesses measure their effectiveness across platforms. As cookies begin to fade from the modern internet, MMMs could be an alternative for better understanding user behavior.

Meridian will be Google’s new open-source MMM, focusing on increased accuracy, transparency, actions you can act on and education.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has spruced up its “interesting views” feature to see who’s creeping on your profile. Social media expert Matt Navarra reports that you can now more easily sort views to see if someone may be able to help you find a job, is a LinkedIn influencer and more.

The networking app has also announced new career development tools. Next Role Explorer will help people understand their job journey and what skills they need to level up, even creating customized Learning Plans to help them get there. They’re also making it easier for users to find and express interest in internal roles so they can grow in their current company rather than looking elsewhere — surely a powerful tool for keeping talent in-house.

YouTube

YouTube will now only show video recommendations if you’re logged in or have watched a few videos to fuel the algorithm, Android Police reported. Otherwise, you’ll be greeted with a blank screen.

For more social media insight, joins us at PR Daily and Ragan’s Social Media Conference at the Walt Disney World resort, March 27-29!

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.

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