Is AI a Hero or a Villain for Public Relations and Marketing in 2025?

Doug Downs (00:06):

No doubt you've heard of the prophecy abilities of Nostradamus and even Leonardo da Vinci, but have you ever heard of Mother Shipton. A witch they called her. A prophetess. Others claimed, but who was this mysterious woman from the Misty Valleys of Yorkshire? Ursula Southfield, later known as Mother Shipton, was born in 1488, near the cave and petrifying, well that still bear her name today. Her birth was said to be unusual, some claimed supernatural. Her mother, an unwed teenager, refused to name the father, sparking wild rumors, abandoned and ridiculed for her crooked appearance. Young Ursula grew up on the fringes of society, but from these humble outcast beginnings, a legend was born as an adult, Ursula gained a reputation as a soothsayer. Her peculiar insight into events both local and far reaching was the stuff of whispers and wonder. Her rhymed predictions, cryptic and lyrical became famous.

(01:13):

She foretold plagues and fires, royal intrigues and even the English reformation. But one prophecy stood out for its uncanny foresight. In rhyming verse, she spoke of carriages without horses shall go, and accidents filled the world with woe. Mother Shipton lived centuries before the advent of the automobile, and yet her words seem to describe precisely what would unfold as motor cars came to dominate the roads carriages without horses. And as for accidents, the era of the horseless carriage would tragically see its fair share. Many of mother Shipton's prophecies, including the famous horseless carriage rhyme were only written down long after her death. Some believe her name was attached to popular sayings to lend them credibility. Yet the power of her legend endures. She died in 1561, but her cave remains a tourist attraction dripping with mystery in calcified relics. Her name lives on not just in the stories of her predictions, but in the wonder of a world eager to believe in the extraordinary today on stories and strategies just as mother shipped and predicted horseless carriages. Centuries in advance is PR and marketing. About to shift gears in 2025.

(02:52):

My name is Doug Downs, and just as we get started, I got to thank you. I received a note on YouTube to one of our videos called it a very insightful podcast. This is from Clip Fuse one. Reputational management is the most powerful weapon in a risk communication professional's arsenal. It's the icing on the cake that makes C-Suite executives sit up and take notice. That's part of the message from Clip Fuse one. Our YouTube publishes full episodes now, so check it out if you get the chance. My guest this week is Frank Strong joining today from Atlanta, Georgia. Hey Frank.

Frank Strong (03:28):

Hey, Doug. Thanks for having me.

Doug Downs (03:29):

Is it cool off in Atlanta come December or we're heading toward into January here. What's it like?

Frank Strong (03:38):

Yeah, it has been cold last week. It's been below freezing, so twenties Fahrenheit about right around zero if you're on Celsius, but it warms up and that's the problem with the south is you get a week of subzero weather and then it's 60 degrees and it's the subzero weather in 60 degrees and it's like that all winter long. And whereas we, except when it's 40 degrees and raining, and that happens a lot too.

Doug Downs (04:01):

Oh, wow. And so we're recording here in sort of mid-December. This publishes December 31st, so we're going to have sort of two audience mindsets here. The audience that is listening on the day of release is either rushing around like mad and trying to get ready for New Year's Eve, or they're totally chill and they're ready for New Year's Eve. And the other half of the audience is it's the new year and it's the time for resolutions and all that stuff. So time for us to look forward into 2025.

Frank Strong (04:32):

I think it's awesome. We'll have one foot in 24 and one foot in 25.

Doug Downs (04:36):

That sounds good. Frank, you're the founder and president of Sword and Script Media. That's a business focused on public relations, content marketing, and social media for the B2B market space with a core competency and technology, your whole company, the way you started to make your living as you do today, it started as a blog.

Frank Strong (04:55):

It did

Doug Downs (04:56):

15 years. That's amazing. And then it just grew organically and here you are. Yeah,

Frank Strong (05:02):

I got a quick story there if you want. I know why I started that thing. If you looked at my background, I was a reserve reserve component of the military, the US military for 23 years. And I got called, deployed to the sandbox in 2007, and my soldiers were talking about this thing called MySpace, and I didn't know what MySpace was, and I was getting, I was mid thirties, I was getting kind of older, maybe this deployment happened, if I may get home, maybe I'll get married, settle down, have kids, all that kind of thing. So I was like, what's this MySpace thing? And they were like, oh, sir, it's a place to meet girls and party. And when I came home, social media had really taken off. LinkedIn was coming out, Twitter was coming out. I didn't really understand it. I knew that I had to, and so I started a blog to figure this stuff out. It was a tool of professional development. I started to get a following 10 years later, eight years later, nine years, something like that. 2016, I made it a business and I was like, I can a new website or I could just use the blog, which by the way, epitomizes what I do for clients. Everything that I do. I eat my own dog food on a daily

Doug Downs (06:06):

Basis. Everyone who subscribes to your blog and you also have a newsletter or to your newsletter, I'm one of them. You sent out an email inviting us to give our predictions for what we think will happen in PR and marketing throughout 2025. I did fill it out and I don't know if my prognostication got to you. That's a separate thing, but yeah, I did fill it and I got it exactly right. So if you've lost it, it's a shame. But that's all good, Doug. I don't

Frank Strong (06:34):

Have it, but if you send it to me, I will add one posts post,

Doug Downs (06:37):

Let hear what all the others say, and then I'll send What did you hear the macro level, what did you hear?

Frank Strong (06:43):

A lot of stuff on ai, A lot of conflicting views. In fact, that's the biggest observation I have is that we don't have any consensus on what AI is going to do. There are people that are all in going to change the world, solve world hunger. Nobody's going to have to work universal basic income. And then there's the flip side of that is the Gartner perspective. We're about to go through the trough of disillusionment. It's been overhyped. It's a good tool, but it is still a tool and it has limits and we're starting to bump into the limits of what AI can do on an LLM basis.

Doug Downs (07:15):

So if you were to divide respondents into two camps, the ones that commented on ai, what percentage would you say are utopian on ai and what percentage would you say are somewhat dystopian on ai?

Frank Strong (07:30):

I, I'm going to take the easy way out and say a third, a third, a third about probably 33% all in 33%. Like this is terrible and 33%, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. That's not a right way to characterize that. That's not fair. We're not sure undecided

Doug Downs (07:46):

TBD? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. We

Frank Strong (07:47):

Were from PR. I got to be more careful in that words

Doug Downs (07:49):

You've published and there's a link to the report. There's a link right in our show notes just below Frank's name, so check that out. But you've sent me some of the comments that you received and I've got a few here in my handy little, I'm going to read some of these to you. I'd love your take on some of this, if that works. Okay, so headline, the AI Reckoning is coming, the deluge of AI tools has created a frenzy over implementing them in our businesses, but the risks are also becoming more prevalent, begging the question, is there enough AI for all of us to still be authentic and unique marketers and communicators? Good comment.

Frank Strong (08:29):

Yeah, that's Stacy Miller. She's a VP of comms at Autocare Association. Longtime friend, one time coworker years ago. I think she's right. I think two things. One, I think transparency and authenticity are back in fashion this year. People do not want to be read to off a teleprompter. They do not want a lot of polish.

Doug Downs (08:50):

I've heard once you can fake authenticity, you're pretty much set.

Frank Strong (08:54):

Yeah. I don't think that's going to be true anymore. I think people are getting really smart to it, and AI has enabled that because it's so highly polished. People see right through it. The second thing I'd say on that is that Gartner Magic, not the Magic Quadrant, but their market report, they have this trend that shows how adoption goes up. You hit the peak of inflated expectation that it plummets to the trough of disillusionment or people are upset and then you get on this plateau of productivity. It's an interesting model to look at how products are adopted and get used, and I think they said at the beginning of last year, we were heading into the trough at Disillusionment. I don't think we're quite there, but I think we're probably going to hit that. It doesn't mean AI is terrible. It just

Doug Downs (09:31):

Means we're trying to figure out how to use it. Okay. Another comment, headline is truth or sorry, transparency as a competitive advantage. While truth has forever been a core component of communications brands, brands that prioritize the truth and transparency in 2025 will rise to the top. I don't disagree. I agree more with the portion that says there's absolutely nothing new about that, and it's always been the case, so why are we talking about it now? Is it because there's so many tools to disillusion us that we're entrenching on the transparency thing?

Frank Strong (10:06):

Yeah, that's Nikki little senior VP at Franco. I think she's right. You're right too. It hasn't been around. It's not new. It's been around forever, but very few people do it.

Doug Downs (10:16):

Yeah. We're always trying to put our best face forward, right? We're always trying to guild the lily, so

Frank Strong (10:21):

To speak. Yeah, I haven't heard that expression, but I'm buying

Doug Downs (10:24):

It. It's really old. Okay, I'm going to skip to number eight. Human expertise may be expiring. That's the headline given the never ending pressure to produce more content, because more content is exactly what every enterprise needs right now. I don't know if there's sarcasm in there. There may be not. The indexed web only contains only about 2.25 billion pages with total data volume growing by about half a zettabyte per day, and I'm lost on the zettabyte. Right. That's cool. With less resources, budget and people, the temptation to rely increasingly on AI generated content will become overwhelming. I agree. That's my stamp.

Frank Strong (11:11):

Yeah, so that's Tom Pick. He runs Web, which is a consulting firm, been around a while. I think that the 2.25 billion pages he cites. He's basically saying Google only indexes a very tiny portion of the web. The web is too big for us to know, right? It's like the observable universe. The universe is huge, but we can only observe part of it. Hubble telescope can only reach so far. I think the authenticity piece is right on, and here's why. When people talk about generative AI and they say this pejoratively, but there is some truth to it, that is a glorified autocorrect. It's a probability engine. It's predicting what order words will appear in based on what it's adjusted. My response is going to be these words because that's what people usually say more often than not, and that is by definition an average. So that means if more and more people are going to use it, then everybody is saying just the average thing.

(12:12):

When we know that the key in marketing and communication, the PR is differentiation. We want to be different. We want to highlight why we're different, better, faster, cheaper, all those sorts of things, and I do think that's going to take some level of authenticity. I think ai, it has gotten better, but I don't quite share the same optimism that Tom has for the fruition. I think it's a good tool. I think we can use it to make a first draft, brainstorm ideas, summarize findings, rewrite headlines, give me 10 tweets for this blog post. Those are good uses, but I think that's kind of reached the end of that for generative of AI in its current form.

Doug Downs (12:49):

Yeah, I agree. Let me push you a little deeper on this whole authenticity piece as let's say I'm your audience. Do I want you to be your authentic self or do I want you to be a seemingly authentic version of yourself that agrees with the things I already agree with? And there's a subtle difference, and I think I've seen it, not to get political here, but I think I've seen it in some political campaigns where we're crossing over into, even if I really don't agree with that candidate, man, that candidate was, that's who they are. Or they are big podcasters like Joe Rogan. I certainly don't agree with everything I hear from Joe Rogan, but I respect the what out of him for having the gonads to say what he says. He's his real self.

Frank Strong (13:39):

No, I agree. I think we chit chatted about this a little bit earlier. He's a really good conversationalist and you can't fake the funk for a three hour podcast. Your true self is going to come through, and that's what I think is kind of magical about it. And then if you listen to him, he's not interviewing people for the audience, he's interviewing for himself and just by doing it, he's trying to learn information. It's valuable for the audience in terms of being yourself. I'm going to go out on a limb here and make an analogy. I struggled with algebra when I was a freshman in high school, could not get my head around it. It was different. I don't know if it was the teacher or what, but I had to take it again next year, and I took it with a music teacher who also taught math, who took at a very different approach, and I picked it up.

(14:21):

I got it, man. I passed. I understand it. It's not that hard. I think that is the benefit of being authentic because people learn in different ways. They'll connect in different ways. Too many people in CorpCom and PR and marketing, they want to stay on message and you can only use their words. I think that's the wrong approach. The message can be the same and you can say it very different ways, and that's the advantage of having someone be authentic. There are guardrails, right? You don't want someone going off the rails. You don't want someone cussing. Look, common sense applies here, right? The litmus test. But I think we do want people to be authentic, to explain things in their way because that's how you can reach and connect with an audience who may understand the way that that person is explaining it where they didn't understand or the previous person had explained something.

Doug Downs (15:07):

As I do interviews, sometimes I pre-identify chapter markers just to let you hit a chapter marker right there because I think that is real authenticity. Okay, I'm going to do number 12 for the feedback. The headline is, the role of public relations gets harder. Oh, good. Sadly, PR people will have to work even harder to distinguish themselves and their clients from the vast amount of lies and alternative facts that will be present for at minimum the next four years. Bit of a political slant there, but that's cool. They have their say, but right. Overcoming disinformation incredibly hard. Yeah,

Frank Strong (15:45):

A hundred percent. So that's Peter Shaman. He probably doesn't need any introduction. His new sources of sources is the new hero, if you haven't heard that. Yeah, I mean, I think he's right. Peter and I may not be completely aligned politically, but I think he's right about the information. It's very easy to generate content with generative ai, and it doesn't have to be truthful. In fact, we know that it hallucinates, right? That gets lots of headlines. I think that's an anomaly. I think it's outside of the normal distribution. I think more often than not, it gets it right than it gets it wrong, but it's still the potential to happen without any malicious effort. If you put some malicious effort behind, that's a real problem for public relations and PR pros, and it doesn't have to be political. I've seen companies get into it. We were chit chatting before the call. I'm not going to name any names, but they're two companies that I know in the intent data space that are in a bitter battle right now, and that they go back and say things back and forth, and that could be disinformation. Someone's might believe it. Shape a view, shape an opinion. I mean, what are the hallmarks of propaganda? You say the same message over and over and over again until people start believing it.

Doug Downs (16:52):

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Number 13, trust in influencers gets tested. I'm not going to read the full script here. This is a tone that's been happening the last few years, and I wonder your thoughts on it because there's different levels of influencer, right? There's the Hollywood influencer, a hundred percent agree. I think the Hollywood level influencer, there's big time doubt because they don't walk among us. They perform for us.

Frank Strong (17:21):

I agree,

Doug Downs (17:21):

But I think the micro influencer, the influencer in my niche, there are some of them. I want to record conversations with them and I want to put them out on my podcast and generate transcripts from my conversations with them. So your thoughts. Yeah,

Frank Strong (17:36):

Yeah. No, I agree with that. I definitely think there are levels. I'm with you on the actors. They need to be. In reality. I think that's true of politicians and in many cases it's true of academics. They kind of get into this bubble. You need to expose yourself to information you don't agree with, just to keep it real. You don't have to agree with it, right? What is the Aristotle's quote? What is the sign of intelligence when you can entertain an idea without necessarily accepting it, something to that effect. I'm paraphrasing, but I think that's true here. I think if you are an influencer and you make a mistake because you're just accepting money and people are going to doubt you. On the other hand, I think if you're an SME and your industry is overwhelmed with information, you can play a really important purpose.

(18:18):

That's what an SME is supposed to do is help you filter down the noise so you can create a short list. I wrote into this some of the time, I don't know if you know this, but I write about at least once a month, all of the PR technology vendors, not all of them, many of them, there are just more than I can absolutely get my head around, and I do that because I don't think anybody in the trades covers it with the depth and breadth that it needs. And technology's becoming more important to public relations. And I used to work for a vendor, so I think I have some expertise. Sometimes I get approached by vendors that want me to do PR work for them, and I'm super hesitant to do that because I don't want it to call into question my integrity or my credibility. If I did that, I'm not opposed to it. Look, you got to make money. We're all in business. I don't make money from writing those posts. That's a labor of love. Then you'd have to disclose it absolutely got to be disclosure. It's a requirement from the FTC in our country in the United States, and I just think it's the right thing to do. People ought to know what your ties are, what your affiliations are, and that goes for everything. If you're doing medical testing, if you're putting out research for supplements, journalists, yeah, everybody,

Doug Downs (19:28):

Absolutely. Yep. It's refreshing to hear that attitude still exists actually. And that comment, by the way, from Scott Rosenblum, president and founder from Level pr. Let's do one more. It's all about consistency. My prediction for 2025 is that forward-thinking businesses who understand AI-based search will put an emphasis on instituting a consistent public relations program that from our mutual friend Michelle Garrett in Columbus, Ohio,

Frank Strong (19:56):

Could not agree with Michelle Moore. We kicked that around all the time. I love to use a fitness analogy. If you take your whole team to the gym today, you're going to spend one hour in there. People are going to lift a certain amount of weight, they're going to run a certain amount of distance, they're going to have a certain level of energy burn, of calorie burn, and it's going to be finite and it's not going to be a lot, and the next day they're going to be sore. But if they keep going back, if they're consistent, they will be able as a team to burn far more hours or far more calories in that hour than they were before because they're in shape. They're going to lift more weight, they're going to run further, they're going to run faster. And the same is true with content.

(20:33):

Everything from ideation to review and approval and publication. There's that whole process in there, and you've got to get the team to exercise so that you can do that effectively. People in my world are always looking for scale. How are we going to scale? Let's do this at scale. Get your team in shape, put some process in place. It doesn't mean the process doesn't have to trump the creative elements of it, but you got to have a process. You got to exercise it. And by the way, if you write the process down, you can also spot the problems and then go in and fix them. Things change. You get ai, maybe the process doesn't work anymore. Maybe there's a role for AI in here, proofreading, headline, suggestion, whatever the case might be.

Doug Downs (21:13):

Awesome. Check out that link in the show notes for the rest of the comments, some dynamite ones. Frank, I really appreciate this today.

Frank Strong (21:20):

Yeah, thank you for having me. It's wonderful.

Doug Downs (21:22):

Hey, I got one more for you. In our previous episode, our guest, Brian Porter from the University of Pittsburgh left a question behind for you.

Brian Porter (21:29):

Most of us in most businesses and industries are, if we haven't already, we're going to have a situation where we have AI generated content that we know is good, and we know people will like, but given biases against AI generated content, they're not going to like it if you tell them it's AI generated. So as a business and as an audience, what should we do when we are producing content and outputting text? Do we have an obligation to say that it was AI generated and as an audience, are we okay with things being generated by AI and maybe not always being disclosed as ai? Do we care and should we care?

Frank Strong (22:18):

Yeah, I think we should. I think you have to disclose when you use AI and then your audience will tell you whether they approve of it or not. If you're not getting the same traffic, I think the trap you run into is what we talked about earlier. You start saying the same things everybody else is saying, if you want to be different, I think disclosure is an absolute requirement.

Doug Downs (22:40):

People have to see it, that AI at least played a role in generating this, and then you could sound like everybody else. Yeah, I know I drink. Yep. Perfect. Okay, your turn. What question would you like to leave behind for our next guest?

Frank Strong (22:54):

Okay, I got to go dig this one up. I do have it right. I pulled it up right here. All right, here we go. In B2B marketing, the account management model often puts sales between customers and marketing and public relations people. This makes, talking to customers very challenging as a salesperson is disinclined to spend a chip on a marketing reference when they can save it for a sales reference. Yet, speaking to customers is essential for marketing. You can't be effective at marketing without the perspective of customers and products. There are numbers of studies that showing that only a minority of marketing and PR folks connect with customers directly or recently or often. So my question is how do we fix this? How can we connect marketing with customers in a B2B model without disenfranchising sales? Call it windshield time.

Doug Downs (23:44):

FaceTime.

Frank Strong (23:45):

Yeah,

Doug Downs (23:46):

FaceTime. Sure. Awesome. Frank, this is gold. I really appreciate it. Have a great 2025. I hope to have you on the podcast again sometime in this new year.

Frank Strong (23:56):

Anytime, Doug, I'm

Doug Downs (23:57):

Honored. Thank you for having me. So here are the top three things I got from Frank Strong in this episode. Number one, AI's polarizing future, a divided Outlook. Frank says, feedback on AI's impact shows a split amongst respondents, roughly one third are optimistic, one third are skeptical, and one third are undecided, reflecting a lot of uncertainty about its role in marketing and PR. Number two, authenticity is key. The fight against over polish. With AI creating polished content, audiences are craving genuine and transparent communication, making authenticity a crucial differentiator for brands. And number three, consistency is the new scale forward-thinking. Businesses that focus on maintaining consistent PR efforts will outperform competitors akin to building strength and endurance during regular exercise. If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Frank Strong, we've got his contact information in the show notes, stories and strategies as a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts, you can absolutely kick off our new year on a bright note. If you go into the show notes for this episode at the very top, and click the link for leaving us a rating. It takes one click and it makes our day, makes part of our year. Leave a five star rating if you could. Thank you as always to our producer Emily Page. And lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.