Adapt or Die: PR in the Age of AI

Doug Downs (00:09):

There's been an evolution in the world of finance. For a long time, accountants were the people who kept track of the numbers, kind of like a scorekeeper in a game. They record what happened in the business, hoping to report those numbers when it was time to file taxes or manage cashflow. But things are changing today. Accountants aren't just looking back at what happened. They're helping businesses plan for what's next. Think of it like this. Accounting used to be like looking in the rear view mirror. Accountants could tell you where you'd been and how you got there, but now with tools like Xero, businesses can access their financial data anytime. So accountants are shifting their focus to look forward almost like a GPS. They're guiding business owners to make smarter decisions based on what they want to achieve. Just as accountants are shifting to advisory from keeping score, public relations professionals are going through a similar change with AIcoming in to manage and track lots of data. PR isn't just about counting media mentions or impressions or tracking numbers anymore. The role of PR pros is growing into something bigger. We'll need to be strategic advisors, helping organizations plan how to connect with people and build trust. As we enter this new era, PR professionals will focus more on advising than on numbers, becoming trusted guides for companies, navigating a fast changing world today on stories and strategies, trading calculators for compasses.

(01:58):

My name is Doug Downs. Just as we get started, I want to thank Sam B Guia and Sam. I hope I'm saying that right. Sam left us a rating and a review on Apple Podcast. Sam says, "This podcast is a breath of fresh air. For anyone curious about the real value of public relations, it breaks down PR as more than just a slick sales tactic and redefines it as a meaningful human-centered field." Sam, that's a home run. Thank you for that. My guest this week is Adrian Cropley joining today from Melbourne. Hey, Adrian.

Adrian Cropley (02:33):

Hey, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me. Doug.

Doug Downs (02:36):

Summertime in Melbourne ice cream cones, only sandals, no shoes. How hot is it where you are?

Adrian Cropley (02:43):

Well, we would like to say that it's sandals no shoes, and this is Melbourne. Now, I think you can relate to this. The weather is changeable. It's a little bit like being in Calgary is the Chinook. So sometimes it's 40 degrees and then it can die. Kind of drop to about 14 degrees.

Doug Downs (03:03):

Oh, so you can go from sweating in one minute to where's my cap or my to the next minute?

Adrian Cropley (03:09):

Exactly. But it's actually a beautiful day in Melbourne today. So nice and sunny and T-shirts are on,

Doug Downs (03:15):

Shirts are optional. Shirts are optional. Adrian, you're the founding partner for the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence. Over 30 years experience helping leaders and organizations communicate with purpose. You're an SCMP and an accredited business communicator. You're A B, C, also a past chair of the International Association of Business Communicators, or IABC. And you've got your own podcast. A View from the Top.

Adrian Cropley (03:41):

I know, but I tell you what, there's that whole fear when you're on somebody else's podcast.

Doug Downs (03:47):

Yeah, what are they going to ask? And I don't have the edit here, right? They could edit anything they want. And now with generative ai, Adrian, I can literally do anything I want, but I won't.

Adrian Cropley (03:58):

You can. How about your mercy? Are you recording the voice and then you can have me talking about something totally different

Doug Downs (04:03):

Later. Something you're tempting me now. So AI kind of figures into my first question here, because with generative AI emerging so strong, the idea of people in public relations being focused on numbers or collecting data like impressions for crying out loud, that's starting to shift. And now I'd say we're in a world where this move toward a stronger advisory role, it's now adapt or die. How do we make that shift?

Adrian Cropley (04:36):

I love the statement you say when it's adapt or die. I remember about five years ago, I was doing a little bit of work in an organization around change, and in one of their canteens, I think it was, there was a postop on the wall that it says change or die. And I went, wow. I think that's just a little bit too full on. But I think you are right. The reality is if we do not change as public relations and communication professionals in this new world of ai, we will become irrelevant When AI can produce the information, the communication, the press release, all of these things, people will move to it. Now, we will always say as professionals, nobody writes as good as we can do. The reality is nobody has the context. AI gets close to writing really well, but it does make some shit up, right? It really does it hallucinates and I'm sorry, are we on kids' time? I shouldn't have said shit.

Doug Downs (05:41):

No shit is perfectly acceptable on this network.

Adrian Cropley (05:44):

Okay, great. Fantastic. But this is the thing that we're dealing with AI is it's not so much us that says, well, it's not as good as I would put together or whatever. But we've got to collaborate with AI because our organizations and the people within our organizations and customers will be using AI to produce their communication. And so that fight for relevance has never been more to the fore that it is now in this environment with AI.

Doug Downs (06:18):

Okay. So that means we're in a land of opportunity here. Absolutely. And risk, as you think through those, what are the main opportunities here short term next five years, as well as the risks if we don't change?

Adrian Cropley (06:34):

And in fact, I just got off a call before, which was our AI forum at the centre. We have this get together once a month with communication professionals to talk about the things that concern them with AIor the opportunities they've been using in developing AIwithin their organizations develop. I think the biggest opportunity that we have is being part of the development of AI and AI tools because if AI tools are being used for communication, why are we not part of that development? Because most of the development's done by the tech people. Then you've got all of these biases and you've got all of where it's pulling sources from and what data it's collecting. We need to be part of that conversation to be able to inform how a tool is developed and therefore then deployed within an organization, which is a much more strategic context, rather than, oh, my organization has put in this new tool.

(07:38):

So wouldn't be better, more valuable if we were part of that as communication professionals. So there's one opportunity. The other opportunity I think that is really clear is being able to have a conversation with the executive of the organization about AI and its use within the organization. So that advisory role becomes quite critical because there's a whole layer of ethics and governance, biases, understanding of the different audiences that we have within our organization and our customer base, and it's all valuable information that we have. So can we collaborate with the organization to advise them on the use of AI from a communication and PR standpoint? So I think they're two really big opportunities.

Doug Downs (08:31):

Well, so I'm wondering if you think it's going to be easier or more difficult for younger people in PR to stake their claim? Here's why I think it might be harder because how do they assume an advisory role coming out of college or university at 22, 24, 25 years old and they don't have 30 years of corporate living experience? And I suppose I could flip that around and say, well, maybe there's also an advantage here in that they don't have all the old habits that you and I have so easier or harder.

Adrian Cropley (09:09):

Well, but I think you've nailed it in terms of there is, there's an opportunity, but there's also a risk certainly for younger people coming in because that open mind to explore and unpack and play with those tools and having a greater insight because they've grown up with these AI tools now means that they've got so much value to add in the organization in terms of that insight. I think for the older communication professionals, it is absolutely going to be about that strategic advice and that sound. So I think there's a real complimentary skill that can become out of organizations having both the more seasoned professional, but the young and up and coming PR professionals working together to really get under the hood When it comes to AI and AI tools, I think some of the risks that we have for AI, and just going back to the question before is that there is a real risk of not keeping up.

(10:22):

And what I mean by that, it's kind of give kind of a blanket statement, but how that is shown. You see some of the government entities now and some organizations are literally locking AI down and they're saying, well, we don't do AI because our IT department have not really got their head around and therefore we cannot use it. The real risk is our Publics are using AI outside of the firewall of an organization, but they're using organization content. So they're bringing that in and they're playing with it in their environment and then they're putting it back into the organization. So it means all of this data is then going out into the wider world. And what we are not doing is having those conversations with the organization, the early conversations around governance of AI, how can we be using it now even though it's locked down, you can't just say it's locked down and we're ignoring it. It's locked down, but your people are still using it. So what's the rules around that while you're getting your head around? So we can't fight the fact that IT departments need to speed up and get your security or your cybersecurity in place and then start using AI. But we kind of have to say we need to start having these conversations now as PR professionals to work with organizations even when they're locked down from AI because it's already happening.

Doug Downs (11:56):

I actually had a chance to work for a firm that was creating natural language processing software, specifically targeting accounting firms, and that's where I became quite acquainted with the entire move within the accounting world to get away from being the numbers collector to an advisory role. And it is the exact same thing that we're talking about here. I would only say the conversation has been happening for way longer in public relations. So I know there's going to be some pushback here. There are going to be people who resist this. When we talk about shift to advisory, we're talking about shifting PR metrics from simple outputs to outcome-based analytics focused on sentiment and behaviour because that's how humans operate. How do you think pros can make that transition effectively and what new tools or skills are they going to need to be able to deliver on them?

Adrian Cropley (12:54):

Look, I can't help but say being part of the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence is that we have to focus on being strategic in that communication. And that means the same with measurements and we've been espousing for years that we've got to move from the out output measures to the out

Doug Downs (13:15):

Comes

Adrian Cropley (13:16):

Now. I think AI is going to make that much easier because you've got AIthat now can look at your analytics in terms of user behaviour and give you much more robust. We've got to stop looking at clicks and likes and click-throughs and how many views and things like that irrelevant

(13:41):

Information. They feel good because they're numbers, but it's the old PR way of looking at things. Now we've really got to go, well, is this communication resonating with the audience? If it is, what are they doing as a result of it? What does that action do in terms of business outcome or business result? And I think that's where we've got to move them. Now. I was just talking to an organization a couple of weeks ago that will traffic AI here in Australia and they're looking at tools now or they've implemented tools where it's agnostic to everything else that's happening in the organization. So it's not the analytics coming out of a specific tool. It's a tool that looks at all your systems and it starts bringing back data that starts telling you about your audience behaviour across a number of channels, what people are actually engaging with, how long do they spend there? And they've started creating these dashboards that talk about return of investment for communication. This is how long somebody's spending in an area, this is where they're referring to, or even things like this is their purchase power, all of those sorts of things and bringing it back to you in one dashboard. So I think the future is about tools that are bringing that information to you so you've got control over those outcome-based measures.

Doug Downs (15:13):

So my next question was about how do we trust the data? And you've kind of answered it and have a variety of sources and look for the common threads and themes and especially have agnostic data, but we live in a world of misinformation and mistrust. Adrian, you've got your facts and I've got my facts right and my facts are going to be better than your facts.

Adrian Cropley (15:35):

We're not going to talk about Donald Trump facts are we?

Doug Downs (15:39):

Or Democrat facts, right? Or Kamala Harris facts. I'm agnostic on that. So let me shift it to more of a human perspective then, because I think the answer is get your numbers from a variety of sources and look for the common threads. How do we overcome the human tendency to mistrust the data if your information doesn't agree with what I've already concluded? Adrian, you've made a mistake.

Adrian Cropley (16:02):

I think there's a key word here, and it's transparency. The reality is we will not trust the data because we are not actually in a trusting environment because there are far too many examples where the data has been wrong, all the facts have been wrong. I think the turning point will be when we are much more open and transparent about the information and where it is coming from and the sources of where it's coming from helps people be much more informed and feel a bit more secure in that data. I don't think we can ever blindly just accept that the data is right unless we know where it's coming from and the sources where it's coming from. And I think that's the key now is transparency and open communication around things like ai. And I'll give you a little example. One of the things we often toy with is when we do images, and now AI can generate any image you want and literally anything from deep defect, but just making sure that we are letting people know it is from AI automatically gives the context. Not that you shouldn't trust it, but you acknowledge that's where it's

Doug Downs (17:27):

Created

Adrian Cropley (17:27):

From. So rather than feeling misled, you feel informed about where that dietary is coming from.

Doug Downs (17:35):

How do executives hire PR leaders and junior level PR people? Has that changed? Will they be looking for different skills, different attitudes, different fit?

Adrian Cropley (17:48):

I think so. Has it changed? Probably not right now. Should it change? Absolutely, it should because there will be this need for more advisory type skills, interrogation skills as in deep, deep thought, interrogating things like data. Are we looking for people with great writing skills anymore? Personally, I don't think so. But being able to sort out context and sort out is this the right audience? Is this hitting the right mark? So I think a lot more of that strategic skill is needed and that's what they need to hire. When we went through the era of social media, they want to hire a lot more communication professionals with the technical background that that's no longer as relevant now because technology doesn't actually matter to become very user-friendly. Now it's actually back to the humanistic skills and the people skills that we're trying to go for.

Doug Downs (18:57):

Love this. So much to think about here. I appreciate this today.

Adrian Cropley (19:01):

Yeah, lots to think about.

Doug Downs (19:03):

Absolutely. Adrian, in our previous episode, our guest, Raphael Labbe of Wiztrust left a question for you.

Raphael Labbe (19:11):

I would like to know what you are excited about in PR because we talked a lot about threat in that episode. And of course it's interesting and I love talking about it, but there's so much happening. I said adaptability and I would love, I don't know who it's going to be the next one, but what they're excited about, what makes their interest in PR can go for five more years.

Adrian Cropley (19:38):

I've actually excited about this change that we are now being faced with.

Doug Downs (19:43):

Yeah,

Adrian Cropley (19:43):

I find AI exciting. I don't find it the threat. I find the challenges in it is really exciting. So to be able to get the head around, see this evolution that our role in communication I

Doug Downs (19:57):

Think is really exciting. I can't think of a bigger change in our industry. I've been around for 30 years, give or take. I think you're 35. Sorry, I don't mean to date you there, but there's some

Adrian Cropley (20:11):

No, not at all. But you wear it much better than I do.

Doug Downs (20:15):

Oh my goodness. So I can't think of a bigger change. If you were to go way, way, way back, I'm sure somebody would say something about computerization and that when we started using email and computers that, oh, we weren't just advertising on TV and we didn't advertise in the newspaper anymore. I suppose that was a pretty monumental shift. But this generative AI, it's like hiring a new employee who can be brilliant on Wednesday and all of a sudden be taking LSD on a Thursday and hallucinating something wildly fantastic. So I got to watch 'em like a hawk. But they're terrific.

Adrian Cropley (20:54):

And what's more is AI will be an employee in the communications department. We face reality. It may not be the physical person, but I mean, we are dealing with things now, and I've been working with an organization in the US where we're programming basically an AI not program. We are teaching an AI to learn strategic communication skills

Doug Downs (21:21):

Really.

Adrian Cropley (21:22):

So you then end up with a partner in your business or an employee in your business that you can give the information to, and they're going to bang out strategic communication plans. And so they will help the organization put these plans together so you don't have to keep doing it for everyone.

Doug Downs (21:40):

How interesting. So you provided the context, the KPIs, the business plan, the voice and tone and values, E

Adrian Cropley (21:46):

Messages, audiences. Yeah.

Doug Downs (21:49):

Oh, how interesting is that?

Adrian Cropley (21:51):

And it comes out with the plan.

Doug Downs (21:53):

Awesome. Your turn. Adrian, what question would you like to leave behind for our next guest?

Adrian Cropley (22:00):

I'd really like to leave behind. What's the thing that scares you the most about our future in PR?

Doug Downs (22:10):

Any thoughts on that yourself?

Adrian Cropley (22:12):

For me to answer that one?

Doug Downs (22:13):

Yeah. Any thoughts? Yeah.

Adrian Cropley (22:15):

Yeah. I think I'm scared that I won't be around long enough to see the next evolution.

Doug Downs (22:21):

Yeah. Yeah. We'll just be getting our teeth sunk into this one and we'll both be in our seventies.

Adrian Cropley (22:27):

That's it. But hopefully it just makes my life easier. When I retire, I can just talk to SIRI and everything gets done

Doug Downs (22:34):

Right. For me, it would be speed and volume. The idea that I wake up now to about 40 emails in my inbox, maybe a text or two, and that's just me getting out of bed so far into the Western hemisphere that others in Europe or even Australia, they've sent me messages overnight for me, but I'm behind to start my day now with generative ai, the amount of content that's going to be flooding people, I am going to ignore things. I can barely stay afloat. Now with all the messaging, right?

Adrian Cropley (23:10):

I think it's not far off before all of us have an AI assistant that's managing our lives and filtering out that stuff and just giving us the things we've requested. Just give you the best beach to go and sit on rather than give me all of this data that you're throwing at

Doug Downs (23:28):

Me. I said I wanted almond milk in my coffee. I do not like oat milk. Love this. Exactly. Great spending time with you, Adrian.

Adrian Cropley (23:37):

It's been wonderful. Thank you so much, Doug, for having me.

Doug Downs (23:41):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Adrian Cropley, we've got his contact in the show notes and check out the link to his podcast. It's a good one. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. Check out our YouTube channel. Full episodes are now on YouTube. Thanks to our producer Emily Page. And lastly, do us one favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.