OPINION
PR goes Big Data: The Future of Media Relations in the Age of Automation
Information: This is a blog post I wrote for an internal company blog whilst working as a PR Assistant.
AI is science and PR is art.
At its core, the industry is about creative storytelling-the kind that drives and informs everything from publicity stunts to campaigns. A digital tool would be hard pressed to build trust between brands, customers and the media, something that requires a definite human touch. Consider Crisis PR: a bot would be unable to represent a client effectively without devolving into the realm of advertising because it cannot rely on human judgement to balance representation.
So should we call it a day and rest assured due to the fact that our jobs are all safe for the foreseeable future? (After all, according to data compiled by Oxford’s Martin School, PR professionals are among the least likely to get replaced by robots, with only 3% of roles to be automated.)
Yes and no.
The profession will still continue to exist as a whole but that doesn’t mean that it won’t have to undergo a seismic shift to stay relevant in the current times. Just consider the way in which newsrooms are starting to leverage targeted algorithms and newsbots. Nowadays, AI assisted reporting goes beyond merely compiling earnings reports (as AP did in 2014), transcribing notes or translating texts.
Forbes “Bertie”, its internal CMS which provides journalists with writing prompts after analysing their past stories, most recently developed software that writes draft outlines of news stories. With the advent of Robot Reporters and the shrinking of newsrooms, an important function of PR is threatening to grow obsolete-namely, the targeting of journalists via press releases. We may have to learn how to write and target press releases specifically for bots.
More than that, as bots provide journalists with everything from story threads to the names of likely interviewees for stories, PR practitioners may find it even harder to engage with journalists on behalf of their clients-classic media relations, defined as maintaining good working relationships with reporters, could be at its very end.
This is where the data train comes in.
Rather than merely reacting to current developments in the newsroom, the industry needs to be proactive and discover the power of data analytics for themselves. Instead of writing press releases based on selective information provided by clients, PR professionals need to get access to the entirety of in-house company data. By structuring and incorporating those complex data sets in databases which journalists can connect to their AI programs, PR can stay one step ahead of the game (as well as the scouring bots!). The onus will be to create a trove of newsworthy information that is reliable and trustworthy, transforming the role of a PR practitioner to that of a gatekeeper. When you can get media professionals to rely on your data, that has been approved by clients and vetted for legal risks, it gives you a means of control on what is being reported that is unprecedented as of yet.
We may still be a few years off the mark for this development, especially given the fact that issues of man power and the exact amount of reliance on data over communication as a business model needs to be considered, but there are still ways of making use of consumer data to gain actionable insight for clients, for example by helping professionals probe demographics for effective campaign work.
Knowledge is power and the future of agencies may very well be determined by how tech savvy they are. The verdict: We don’t need to turn into data scientists by tomorrow but we do need to invest in tools and learn the methodology so we don’t turn into sitting ducks.
