This week in PR (12 July newsletter)

The people issue

There’s a thread linking the two dozen content links in this week’s roundup - people.

We talk a lot about concepts (such as ESG); we often discuss ideas; we’re focused on technology. But ultimately, public relations begins and ends with people.

This theme emerged from a podcast interview between Maja Pawinska Sims and Rod Cartwright discussing his analysis of a series of reports on reputation, risk and resilience.

Referring to what he calls the human imperative, Cartwright said:

All communication is ultimately about human outcomes. It doesn’t matter what risks and threats there are, they ultimately make themselves felt in human form – whether it’s anxiety, depression, absenteeism, the hit on productivity.

He also observed:

Oddly, given that we’re called public relations, there’s too much focus on reputation and not enough on relationships.

Where does the value lie in a public relations consultancy? There will be some value in client relationships (‘goodwill’) but It’s unlikely to have much in the way of intellectual property or physical assets. Its assets are its people and its culture. So it’s good to see another example of the employees gaining recognition.

To mark 15 years of W Communications, Warren Johnson has announced:

Some huge news for me and the agency today: I’ve sold the majority of my shares in W Communications to an Employee Ownership Trust, set up to benefit all W employees. Many offers have come in to buy W over the years, but a sale only made sense to me if it meant my team and colleagues benefited in the long term. The option of an EOT was clearly the best way to benefit all parties and set the foundation for another 15 years of growing the agency, a job I aim to continue doing for a long time - or as long as my blood pressure will allow.

Nor is this theme limited to consultancies. Emma Short, a corporate communications director, wrote about listening, empathy, and employee voice.

I derive unparalleled satisfaction from listening to others, understanding their challenges, and helping to distil the insurmountable into the scalable. It’s the reason I’ve joined and chaired many employee forums over the years. It’s the reason I champion employee advocacy. And it’s fundamentally the reason I’m unequivocal about compassionate internal communication that amplifies the employee voice.

‘Listening to others, understanding their challenges, and helping to distil the insurmountable into the scalable’: that’s a perfect summary of the public relations process, whether we’re talking about client-consultancy relationships or employee engagement.

Let’s try this out on one social media channel. PRCA trainer Sophie Cross reminds us in a piece titled LinkedIn is for humans that this channel is 20 and what for so long seemed a stagnant and static CV channel has become a vibrant channel for business engagement.

Try to imagine LinkedIn as an in-person networking event. You won’t get anywhere by lurking in the corner watching, but equally, you won’t get anywhere if you walk up to random people and broadcast some stats or a sales pitch about your business. Make yourself known, be friendly, and remember that people do business with people they like, and business is based on reciprocity.

'People do business with people they like'. So be more human - which is more important than ever in the age of AI.

Australian commentator Trevor Young helpfully segments social media content creators into two types: reputation content creators and independent content creators.

REPUTATION CONTENT CREATORS - these are established business owners selling their own products and services; they create content to build visibility, trust and reputation in the marketplace with a view to supporting their commercial goals. INDEPENDENT CONTENT CREATORS - these individuals essentially run micro-media businesses; they build their audience first and then work out ways to monetise that audience.

Back to AI. Andrew Bruce Smith continues to deliver an AI masterclass for free on LinkedIn. This week he’s been arguing provocatively about the effects of generative AI on Kahneman’s two types of thinking (‘thinking fast and slow’). Note: it’s you and me doing the thinking, not AI.

Generative AI helps with fast (or system 1) thinking because it allows us to create content quickly and it will confirm our biases, creating an echo chamber.

But generative AI will hinder our slow (or system 2) thinking because over time it will weaken our ability to think critically.

Author Ethan Mollick produced similar findings from a study of AI use within Boston Consulting Group. While the team using AI outperformed the team of consultants working without AI in most tasks,? in one area the use of AI was a hindrance: the unaided humans outperformed the group that had begun to rely on AI at the expense of their critical faculties.

That also suggests the way forward with assessment in higher education. There’s little point assessing something that’s easily accomplished by AI such as an essay. So assessment should focus on the critical analysis of texts to reveal bias, hallucinations and potential misinformation. The human piece.

Or to describe this in a different metaphor, it’s like a traditional publishing model in which you had many authors but fewer editors. The authors were the creators (the intuitive fast thinkers), but the editors were the decision makers (the deliberative slow thinkers).