Why PR needs to take care with ChatGPT

How do I introduce another article about ChatGPT and not have you stop reading? Well, a smart Roman once said that Rome would be undone by its own folly and overindulgence. “The enemy is within the gates”, cried Cicero to his inattentive audience. Now, in harking back over 2000 years for my references, I appreciate that I’m reinforcing my luddite credentials when writing about the new bot on the block.

If you are one of those who stretched the holiday to the Australia Day ‘finishing line’ and missed the razzamatazz that greeted the arrival of Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, let me explain. In summary, it’s a chatbot which demonstrates artificial intelligence (AI) at the level that’s exciting some of those with serious tech pedigree, including Elon Musk and Bill Gates. The latter has been so enamoured that Microsoft has just made a multibillion dollar investment in the business behind the bot - OpenAI. This is a piece of technology that does some impressive tricks; in geekspeak it’s what’s known as a large language model, so words are its thing – song lyrics, film scripts, essays. It has unnerved education authorities to the extent that Queensland and New South Wales have banned the bot from state schools. They are not alone; New York public schools had already implemented a similar ban.

So, what’s with the Romans and what does ChatGPT’s arrival mean for PR? Well, I mention Cicero as we, as a profession, should firstly, be mindful of how the technology is used and secondly, how those uses are interpreted by others. Despite the whiff of resistance to the writing, I do believe ChatGPT can, in principle, be a useful development for communicators. However, its introduction needs to be managed very carefully by practitioners and their governing bodies alike. Otherwise, that enemy will be firmly ensconced within our gates.

Quite simply, irrespective of the financial attraction of having robots do the work of people, the profession cannot afford to fully embrace the technology as here lies a path of diminishing returns. ChatGPT and other AI applications present an opportunity for the industry, but as a profession we need to be careful that this doesn’t only benefit the opportunists. I fully recognise that there are some aspects of our roles that could be automated such as the monitoring reports, but our adoption of the technology must be measured. The technocrats will talk in terms of technology’s inevitability and so we should steal a march on those other forces threatening the PR space, but ours is a people industry. Lest we forget the P in PR. Rest assured, I’m not returning to my luddite tendencies and bashing bots out of fear, but making a different point, which is that the indiscriminate implementation of ChatGPT and everything that follows will shape they way we are perceived by others, including clients. We can’t throw the baby out with the bot water, as it were. A move that puts technology before people will ensure that we produce tech-oriented outputs, which, unquestionably, will be tactical in nature. As I said, parts of the work we do – such as the monitoring – can be done by machine, but there’s a huge difference between monitoring, and analysing the contextual factors that underpin a client’s coverage, which is when we plainly need the people. It’s the people; our people, who produce the strategic magic. The ability to read the seemingly incongruous, from political debate, consumer behaviours, Hollywood reference points and changing norms to produce compelling strategy. It’s strategy that will ensure the industry’s long-term future, not tactics.

The mid-term economic forecast for agencies and in-house teams will continue to be challenging, but the allure of technology and its apparent promises need to be weighed against the potential cost of losing people and what they can do. Employment expert, Professor David Autor recently said that “AI will help [our] people use expertise better, meaning that we’ll specialize more.” The difficulty with that point is that specialisation takes time to accrue in the first place.

I urge us not to rush into the ChatGPT carnival, otherwise in returning to Cicero, “we may have  our own criminality to contend with”.

This article was first published by Mumbrella (www.mumbrella.com.au)

Put the face to the vaccine

The vaccines are coming. More precisely, Covid-19 vaccinations are already being administered in large parts of the world at varying speeds, while it will be March before the Australian Federal Government have their needles at the ready.

The exercise is a mammoth communications exercise, which is made harder by the determined levels of suspicion levelled at the idea of vaccinating. Way before Covid-19 became the viral poster child, the World Health Organisation listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the biggest threats to global health. The Covid conspiracy chorus, fed by a ragbag of intransigent celebrities has done nothing to soothe the situation. To that end, a recent survey by the Associated Press found that a quarter of US adults “weren’t sure” if they wanted to be vaccinated against Covid. Granted, the picture in Australia is far less recalcitrant, but the reality is there are people who have misgivings about vaccinating, whether that is borne of fear or ideology, which brings me to my argument.

It’s the people, stupid, or in campaign terms, it you want ‘em to vaccinate, tell ‘em about the people who made it. Scientific and medical breakthroughs have always been about the people, whether it’s Fleming and penicillin; Christiaan Barnard and his hearts, or Crick and Watson and DNA. As an audience, we can relate to these individual stories and so they become memorable. Their efforts talk to attributes which the rest of us crave – tenacity, wisdom, and inventiveness. We go as far as holding them up to our children as emblems of hard work and possibility – “look, what you can achieve if you try hard enough!”.

For communicators, their magic, quite simply, is they have a face. We can subsequently, personalise campaigns and with personalisation, comes greater trust. We can see the whites of their eyes and they look like you and me. Audiences tend to find it harder to distrust individuals, versus the organisations they work for.

Astra Zeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and BioNTech are superbly effective businesses, who all do important work; in fact, they do very important work – their products can keep us alive - but the ‘body corporate ‘is deemed far less trustworthy than the individual men and women who run them. Case in point, Edelman’s widely reported Trust Barometer found that 50% of respondents in Australia questioned if “capitalism did more harm than good”. It is easier for audience members to feel empowered enough to condemn big (read profitable), faceless organisations; especially with names that would suggest they come from other planets. The fact that the vaccine breakthrough was engineered and managed by these institutions (together with Oxford University) is not contested but framing the story in corporate terms loses sight of those individual exertions and emotions we can all relate to at times of such challenges. And as any discerning communicator knows, if our audience can connect with our campaigns, their levels of engagement will be far more meaningful. Pharmaceuticals work furiously at an image of control and dispassionate efficiency, but in undermining any resistance to the vaccine, it’s a must that they get behind the polished livery and show us the blood, sweat and tears.

The staying together message will be needed more than ever when we get back to normal

“We’re in this together” quickly became the collective mantra in the face of the pandemic. From politicians, national broadcasters, and celebrities, the script remains the same.

This came as no surprise. At times of national-scale hemorrhaging, the messaging will always speak to solidarity and unity, whether it’s virus attacks, or terrorist attacks. It works, on the whole, despite the chorus of togetherness being occasionally undermined by a palatial backdrop enjoyed by said celebs.

The more intriguing question is when do we stop being in this together? The closer we edge to a sense of normality, many businesses will strain every sinew to revert to the individualism of old and return the spotlight onto personal indulgence, but it will be an ill-advised business that throws themselves too soon into such a position.

I strongly believe that the corporate messaging needs to continue to appeal to those consumer obligations, before the treats kick in. Which begs the question, what are these new obligations? We’ve readily obliged and stayed indoors and kept our distance, but now, more than ever, we need to be in this together to fix the country; the national economy has the frailty of a newborn foal.

The importance of consumer spending when it comes to the resuscitation process is not lost on me, but this is not an anti-spend message which I put forward, it is a stakeholder message. How so? Our messaging can help achieve growth in different ways. My argument is that a messaging strategy that taps into these inherent consumer obligations to re-build the nation will have far more reputational kudos for the businesses behind them, than one that points solely to the idea of individual needs.

Let’s make this a little more material – as an airline, hotelier, or cruise line operator – you can pitch the escapism line to your potential customers, or there is something more shared in purpose, which plays into a more collective responsibility and talks of the benefits personal travel and tourism plans have for others. The smart messaging will be mindful of the pandemic’s brutal effects on an industry’s eco-system – the vendors, suppliers, and contractors - and If we’re truly in this together, will make the consumer think about how they spend.

It’s not a new approach; some of the recent bushfire campaigns talked up the need to visit those affected regions, but the scourge of Covid 19 comes after those earlier difficulties.

People are tired and need a break  - they need to dream, but I would argue the smarter move in terms of those corporate narratives would be to hold off on the dream building and focus on making the togetherness message a reality.

That reality, however, can only be achieved if corporate actions speak louder than words. At a time of widespread uncertainty and growing mistrust, businesses will need to walk the walk if this idea of inclusiveness is to land. So, best not to talk about being in it together if creative tax avoidance practices or offshore labor arrangements are a feature of the organizational strategy – the regeneration narrative soon caves in.

We face an unprecedented mutual situation – the smart businesses out there will use it to cement their communal credentials; they will continue to bring people together and in turn, start the national recovery process. There will never be a better chance to highlight the value which togetherness brings, as we’ve all felt the loss when it’s gone, and as a message, it has to be now because it won’t work any time later.

This article first appeared in Mumbrella: https://mumbrella.com.au/

Covid 19: Who should tell us when it's right to go back to normal?

How long? That’s the question we all seem to be asking at the moment. How long will it be until we can get back to normal? The pragmatists are leaning towards the 4-6 months mark; the optimists, sadly, not much less. 

Fundamentally, we don’t know, but what appears to be consensual is that a vaccine is some way off. So, what are we to do as PRs? We are in the middle of a public information program, which reiterates the need for the right collective and individual behaviours, which usually comes in the shape of stopping us from doing the stuff we used to do.

However, people and markets can only take so much in the way of inertia. We can only ‘not do’ for so long, which brings me back to the role played by public relations as this sobering situation continues. A crisis, as we know, tends to drag out – there isn’t a finishing line. It typically goes from the ‘big bang’, to a prolonged process of introspection, lower productivity and distrust. People and markets won’t wait until we’ve got to a point of zero activity with coronavirus; there will be an overwhelming urge to get back to normal when that curve has started to move in the right direction. Governments and businesses will, undoubtedly, be led by science and economics – the first tends to have far more patience than the second in these situations – but who’s to say when the time is right to do normal again? This is when PR should jump at the opportunity to play ‘corporate conscience’. It’s a thankless role, but one we are as suitably qualified as anyone else within the organisation, if not better, to carry out. To be clear, this is not about showing bravado and yelling it’s ‘business as usual’ before we’re ready; no, this is about recognizing that the actions compelled by having a conscience could also mean that we are confident enough to say, ‘we’re still not ready’.

The time spent in enforced exile away from the office is good for us as PRs; it’s at this time that we’ll get the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the ‘public’ of public relations (albeit at a distance). Former US General and CIA Head, David Petraeus once said that decision making during times of uncertainty, needs to be far less top-down, and “pushed outwards and downwards” towards where new information is originating.  This immersion is critical if we’re to get a sense if this information and how people are feeling. It’s only then can we make those right conscience calls.

Ghosts in the machine and the Marriott hack

Last week brought another large-scale security hack. This time it was the hotelier, Marriott that was the subject of unwanted attention. More precisely, it was their recent acquisition, the Starwood group, which was targeted. The business operates a number of well-known brands, including W Hotels, Sheraton, Westin and Aloft. The size of the operation goes some way to rationalise the scale of the breach, which is reported to have impacted as many as 500 million Starwood customers. To put the numbers into context, that’s second only to the 2013 attack on Yahoo, which affected 3 billion users. A distant second place, I recognise, but even so, these are astronomical numbers.

I don’t bring this up in terms of the crisis response; in fact, the Marriott actions to date have been laudable, including the neat idea of giving those who have been affected, the opportunity to use a web monitoring tool for up to a year to gauge whether there is unauthorised use of their personal details.

No, from a crisis communications perspective, the real interest lies in what was happening ‘upstream’. What I mean is that the Starwood hack is four year old! Its defences were breached in 2014, which is two years prior to the Marriott acquisition. The Marriott systems, apparently, are not affected. My point being – as is invariably the case with crisis communications – is that this is a crisis preparedness issue.

In short, mergers and acquisitions have always had their challenges for the reputation specialist, whether they were cultural differences, the inevitable job losses, or market volatility. The Marriott case, however, is illustrative of the inherent sensitivities of corporate acquirement in the digital age; principally the fragility (or not) of the systems, security and associated employee behaviours that’s characteristic of the newly purchased asset. To be clear, I don’t point the finger at Starwood, but make the point to best demonstrate the changing nature of reputational risk, and more importantly, to highlight a need to involve communicators sooner rather than later if an intrinsic threat – however feint - exists. The process of due diligence is tightly marshalled, typically, due to the sensitivities of the circumstances, but it’s vital that a link is established between those who delve ‘under-the-bonnet’ in the first place, and those of us who are tasked with managing the brand and any innate frailties thereafter.

This piece first appeared on the Mumbrella website: https://mumbrella.com.au/dear-brands-i-think-we-need-to-talk-about-data-557759

Would a crisis by any other name make you click?

Being someone who supports organisations in terms of their respective reputations, I’m acutely aware that I have a rather slavish relationship with crises. To clarify, it’s in my professional interest to keep abreast of business mishaps, cynical misdeeds and product failings the world over. I gauge the context and privately evaluate the response. I tell you this as I feel I’m moderately qualified to say that crisis is getting too big.

That last point needs some explanation. Crisis, as a concept, has grown exponentially in recent years. For a simple illustration, check out the Google Books Ngram Viewer, which shows use of the term has virtually doubled since the end of the Second World War. The irony that crisis was less talked during the turbulence of D-Day and the Third Reich than it is today, can’t be lost on us.

To be clear, crises sadly happen, but not at the rate at which the crisis circus – namely the media, insurance firms and some aspects of the public relations industry would let us believe. Crisis has been industrialised as it can be inordinately profitable for those who purport to have the credentials to help. Crisis – as is the case with terrorism – is increasingly being applied with indiscriminate flair to a range of events and situations. In recent weeks, we’ve had the media refer to the crisis in Syria, the crisis afflicting German football, the Thai cave crisis and crisis talks in regards to the NEG – that’s the National Energy Guarantee to the unitiated. My concerns with the broad-brush approach primarily relates to the inherent associations with the word, crisis. Our understanding of the world is shaped by the way the world is labelled. We perceive crisis to be big, calamitous events, and subsequently, we expect big repercussions if they are not managed effectively, such as the loss of senior people and a plummeting share price. It’s a short step indeed from ‘crisis’ to that other favourite media omen, ‘embattled’. Crises call for accountability. The English language is fantastically accommodating in its breadth, and to that end, to read about the Thai Cave Accident, or the Plight of the Thai Cave Boys would have been as accurate a reading of the situation as we had, but I guess they’re not as exciting, nor are they as exacting in their demands if things go wrong.

This article first appeared on the Mumbrella website

Orthodox thinking will be the death of agency

The prophetic George Orwell once wrote that “at any given moment, there is an orthodoxy – a body of ideas – which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question and a genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing”.  Orwell’s sentiments, have, sadly, never been as resonant as they are today.

We live in an age when it is becoming increasingly difficult to have a nuanced conversation about a seemingly growing number of non-sensitive issues, whether it’s same-sex marriage, immigration, Islam, or Israel. Clearly, there are others – the list is not exhaustive – but the substantive point is the corrosive effect that this new norm has on our relationships and our future welfare.

To move from the conceptual, the idea of not being able to fully debate an issue is particularly problematic for creative work spaces, especially agency-side, whose point of differentiation is the imaginative value of their work to the client. We need to give voice to all of the feelings provoked by such issues during the creative process if we’re to achieve great work. A campaign’s objective is to persuade its target audience; that audience doesn’t think homogenously, so nor should we.

I would go as far as saying that our creative leaders – whether it be advertising, PR, or marketing – are obliged to push these boundaries, and not revel in the harmless and the anodyne. Pushing those boundaries undoubtedly takes courage, but it’s vitally important that we try as conservatism is a deadening force in creativity. Clients are increasingly risk averse, but creative leaders cannot allow that to influence their creative process. Political and economic disruption in recent years has shrunk the creative space; it can’t afford to get any smaller.  

Leaders cannot do this alone, but their freethinking will prove to be the catalyst for others to join them in looking to achieve better work. Ultimately, it’s critical that the dissenters and the heretics are embraced by business for a brand to stand any chance of succeeding. It is only with these people on board do we achieve a fuller understanding of the issue (and views) at hand, and only then can teams produce an honest depiction of such matters.

It has to be said, that I don’t look to undermine the real feelings that some people may have about such issues, but to acknowledge the need to legitimise all aspects of the debate irrespective of its flavour. So, I’ve done the easy bit of identifying the potential problem – what about the solution? The idea of having a richer creative business means we need to assess how our corporate cultures can be loosened; whether that’s in the shape of recruitment or our brainstorming sessions. For instance, we need to recognise the benefits of appointing those who don’t quite think and sound like us in terms of personal viewpoints; I would also urge us to rethink the notion of collective problem solving as the reluctance to voice ideas among team members is a lot more widespread in such situations.

The heretical ones need to be welcomed and orthodoxy has to be challenged. The dissenter can, ironically, bring us closer together as team members; they can also open our eyes to those threats that have yet to emerge and the opportunities that we cannot see.

This article first appeared in Mumbrella

Is Storytelling in PR worthless?

Naturally, there will be exceptions to the rule, but on the whole, the industry is not equipped to produce compelling stories. I recognise that’s a bold, if not heretical, claim which is in need of some supporting arguments, so here goes.

PR professionals, as with the rest of the communications community, have been slavish to the idea of story, but we haven’t been astute enough to recognise that we tend to do it wrongly. Here’s what I mean, as practitioners we rely on conventional rhetoric to persuade. We mirror our clients, who have been trained this way; as creative writing guru, Robert McKee says, we build our case on facts, stats and quotes from authorities. We see it as an intellectual process, because we can’t see it any other way. Subsequently, we miss the vital component that make stories persuasive – the emotion!

Which begs the question – why do we miss it? As I said, this is partly down to producing what we think the clients want – a safe, logic-driven, data-based approach that typically leaves audiences cold at best. Ultimately though, we can’t do this properly, because as practitioners we’re schooled to keep those emotions in check.  This is especially the case with agency staff – I include myself here as a former agency man – who are immediately alerted of the paramount need to keep clients happy. I’m not saying that agency folk lack maturity per se; of course not, there are some brilliant minds at work here, but I fear they reflect their environmental upbringing which is essentially about one thing – profit. If we don’t fully explore our feelings in this space, including the reality of failure and the uncertainties of a tech future, how can we expect to produce rich, meaningful narratives for others?

Disruption is affecting us all at dizzying speeds, businesses are feeling increasingly vulnerable, so it is incumbent on us as professionals to embrace greater emotional exposure – to demonstrate how we feel - to produce stories and relationships that are reflective of our growing sensitivities and befitting of a more engaged audience.

This article first featured in Mumbrella on the 19 December

Erasing Your Revenge Porn Past

Yes, I’ve succumbed to the lowest common denominator to best grab your attention. How shameful to stoop so low, when I’ve been schooled to present an accurate reflection of the subject matter in question. Call me the clickbaiter. There are, I hasten to add, mitigating circumstances. Namely, generating your interest in the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, but hang on there, it is important. You can read more here.

Developed by various parts of the European Union (EU), the regulation intends to strengthen data protection for those inside the European community. It comes into play from the 25th May 2018 and also incorporates the transfer of data outside the EU. It should be on any discerning corporate reputation specialist’s radar. Without getting into the regulatory minutiae, this is essentially about addressing the perceived imbalance in terms of data control, between the general public and big business; whereas it’s perceived that the latter has too much control, so it’s only right that citizens enjoy more power over their own personal data and thus the new, all-governing regulation – hurrah.

Now, it’s a broad piece of governance, but there’s some interesting aspects in there, including a soundbite to thrill the ears of any sci-fi aficionado – get this, the ‘Right to Erasure’ – it’s made for a lyric, but I digress. Individuals can require the “controller” – say, Google – to erase data. It’s not altogether new; it has been with us for a few years; there was a landmark case in 2014, when the European Court of Justice ruled against the Big G, in the case of Mario Gonzalez, who unfortunately requested that a link to a Spanish paper about an auction for his foreclosed home for a debt that he subsequently paid, be removed. He won, but his misfortune lies in the fact that his case was first and so he has very little chance of being forgotten for the next few years.

Now, this gets more interesting I feel, in light of the fact that any request to erase is hindered by the subjectivity of the notion of ‘public interest’. For instance, the individual who contracted HIV a decade ago would claim that such a story has very little in the way of public interest and I would have sympathy with this view. However, the story would have far more interest for the individual’s health insurer. So, who’s to make these big decisions about our personal histories and playing the arbiter in terms of public interest? Yes, you’ve got it - the so-called data controllers – unelected organisations will have court-like influence to change the record, or not, without the fundamental checks on their own power. Grave new world, anyone? As always, comments welcome.  

The London acid attacks - are Muslims involved?

It was reported late last week that a couple of miserable bastards have carried out a number of acid attacks across east London. It’s believed that the majority of those targeted are food delivery drivers; that much I learnt from the Daily Mail’s UK edition. What I didn’t learn from the Mail, The Guardian, or the broadminded Independent was whether this was an attack motivated by racial, or religious hatred. The ‘M’ word – Muslim – was almost conspicuous by its absence, especially considering the recency of another attack on cousins Resham Khan and Jameel Muhktar – yes, you guessed it, Muslims.

To raise this argument without appropriate context would appear loaded, but I bring it up in view of the Sydney Morning Herald’s report of the same incident, which you can read here. To quote, reporter Henrietta Cook, “the incidents follow a spate of recent acid attacks in east London, which have left some Muslim residents fearful about leaving their homes amid speculation that they [the attacks] may have been motivated by racial, or religious hatred”. Now, either Henrietta knows more than her UK counterparts, or they are having to be far more circumspect in light of the sensitivities and the proximity of the attacks. I suspect it’s the latter. The facts need to be fully checked before you run the risk of ensuing panic in certain communities.

However, in view of the fact that the police officially treated the attack on Khan and Muhktar as a ‘hate crime’ and the importance of the public service remit of the media to keep publics fully informed, particularly when there’s a threat to human health, it would appear fully justified to include this aspect of the narrative. I will follow future coverage closely.