What Does AI Mean for PR Agencies? Where Hodges has Landed on this Much-Discussed Topic
Seemingly overnight, AI went from sci-fi fodder to a topic of conversation in virtually every home, business and classroom. The public relations and marketing field is no exception, in fact, quite the opposite.
The promises of AI are only rivaled by the concerns and questions that accompany it. As an agency that organizations rely on for our expertise, time and talent, it’s easy to see how AI brings about some existential concerns.
For the past year, we’ve piloted a handful of tools, attended webinars and workshops, and read a bevy of articles–all to get our arms (and minds) around what AI means for THP and, by extension, our clients.
All this testing, research and discussion ultimately has boiled down to a four-word credo:
For Direction, Not Deliverables
No one is immune to writer’s block. We all struggle to get our minds moving on certain projects. All of us routinely want to fast-track cursory research as we’re getting up to speed on a topic.
This is where we’ve seen AI’s true benefit, freeing up our team to focus on more meaningful work for our clients.
Sometimes, our prompts result in an outline or direction that tracks our thinking, which allows us to snap into action. Just as often, it seems, we get something generic and/or entirely off-base. But seeing what you don’twant to say can help crystallize what you do want to say.
Well before AI came into vogue, our team has always advocated anything that makes us more productive, agile and capable of turning around quality, strategic communications counsel. From the fax machine to email, from press conferences to Facebook Lives, part of our job is to identify and get ahead of the tools posed to shape our industry.
We see AI platforms as another arrow in our quill to help us hone our work–but not to circumvent that process.
“Think of AI like an Intern”*
One of the earlier podcasts I listened to compared AI tools to interns. Some are spot on; some need a lot of coaching, and many fall somewhere in between. Regardless of their abilities, the work they do always needs to be reviewed by someone on your team before it goes out the door.
While I still broadly agree with this sentiment, I do couch it with a (big) asterisk: interns are real people, employed by our agency. This relationship (and their work) is clearly defined by well-codified intellectual property and HR laws. They aren’t individuals who can be infinitely scaled to work for anyone at any given time. There is no confusion about who “owns” the work they produce, which remains a BIG question in the AI space.
Just like our full-time Hodgers, our interns are selected based on their talent, passion and how they share and exemplify the values anchoring our culture and our people. Their great work doesn’t threaten the value we offer clients. It’s something we celebrate.
It’s easy to say because nothing we’ve seen from an AI tool has come close to high-quality work from an intern, but “celebrating” AI-produced content in a similar fashion too easily could beg the question from a client, “Why do I need to you when I can just as easily access the same tool?”
AI is the Worst It’ll Ever Be
We’ve also heard that AI, in its current state, is the worst it’ll ever be–meaning it’s still in its infancy and will only get better. If it seems like we’re down on the effectiveness of AI tools, that is hardly the case. AI can be remarkable at jumpstarting brainstorms, outlining a blog post or providing a snapshot of a trend or issue.
We’re not necessarily foreseeing a straight “up and to the right” trajectory; Hodges is excited about AI’s evolution and the opportunities it presents. Meanwhile, stay tuned for our next blog post on the topic: my crystal-ball predictions for exactly how AI will impact the profession!
Greg Surber
Greg Surber, APR, is a public relations strategist through and through. He works on a variety of accounts, leading research projects and content strategies, but he also has extensive experience with more traditional PR efforts including national and trade media relations campaigns.
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