Abstract
This article discusses the concept, benefits, application, impact and role of artificial intelligence (AI) in public relations (PR) industry. It examines the application of AI-based systems and their role as strategic disruption in the PR industry. This article is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews of 31 PR professionals and is grounded in the insights from the review of relevant research papers, articles, and case studies. It highlights the developments in research and practice related to AI application in the PR industry. AI-powered systems can scan social media and are smart, intelligent and experts in handling queries. These AI-enabled systems can post responses on social media in real time for the client and manage the crisis. With AI, PR professionals can save time spent on mundane activities like creating media lists, scheduling meetings and sending follow-up emails. Mass personalization and customization using AI are improving the effectiveness of PR activities. It is too early to say whether AI will act as strategic disruption in the PR industry. Based on the insights and discussion in this article, the PR professionals and researchers can make decisions on whether to invest in AI tools and solutions.
Purpose and Introduction
In the last decade, there have been digital innovations in the fields of marketing communications. Now, with artificial intelligence (AI), computers and machines can perform tasks that typically required human intelligence. One such function in the field of marketing communications that is witnessing the growing application and is at the brink of the AI revolution is public relations (PR). PR, as a function, ensures that organizations communicate the right message at the right time and in the right place to the right audience. Organizations are focussing heavily on delivering smart solutions to its stakeholders to achieve organizational goals. With the adoption and application of AI tools and technologies, organizations can measure the value of PR efforts and ensure alignment with their business’ overall mission and goals.
In the context of PR, AI has the potential to automate and perform various tasks. These tasks include writing data-driven stories, organizing and updating media lists, aiding in crisis management, converting and transcribing audio into text, following and predicting media trends and monitoring and managing social media.
AI is impacting and transforming our society, commerce and everyday personal life, rendering them unrecognizable from just a decade ago. Most of the industries are witnessing a significant change in working and functioning due to the adoption of AI in work processes and systems. The PR industry comprising numerous small and big agencies is at the verge of undergoing several AI-powered transformations. Experts think that the PR industry is yet to rediscover itself in the age of AI. Social media and smartphone technology have created several opportunities and challenges in the context of data management and usage. AI with its self-learning capabilities offers PR professionals a tool not only to harness insights from this massive data but also a system to respond autonomously to tweets, queries, grievances, posts and other messages on the social media. The day-to-day work of PR professionals includes drafting strategies, designing campaigns, writing and distributing press releases, handling PR crisis and creating dossiers. Some of these activities are tedious and time-consuming. Dealing and working with data regularly for multiple clients consume much time of these PR professionals.
The technological development in the last decade has altered aspects of work and relations between stakeholders within the PR industry. Experts say that the PR industry is witnessing significant changes due to technological developments in the past few years. AI as a new technology, although still in its early stages, is grabbing headlines in the mainstream media due to the changes it is bringing in the functionality, systems, management and workflow processes in the PR industry.
Few of the PR agencies use AI to accomplish some of the daily tasks. Some of the PR tools already use AI and machine learning to capture and deliver quality information. The AI-powered tools are aiding in finding, scheduling, managing and reporting on social media content more feasible for PR professionals. To maintain a positive brand image and a healthy relationship with stakeholders, a PR professional draws out a specific communication plan and uses direct and indirect media to reach out to the target audience. PR professionals are also typically involved in analysing, interpreting, understanding and influencing public opinion about the brand and the company.
In future, AI will do more of mundane work like creating media lists, scheduling meetings, and sending follow-up emails and, in turn, save the valuable time of PR professionals. With AI, the PR professionals can use their precious time more creatively for relationship building, strategy development, trust building and storytelling.
AI by its inherent traits of associated smartness and intelligence helps in adding context, specificity, relevance and personalization to the necessary process and methods in the PR industry. AI has overcome significant challenges like the delivery of customized solutions at mass and individual levels. AI also facilitates the measurement of the effectiveness of the campaigns and helps in overcoming the possible hindrances or challenges.
This article throws light on the concept and benefits of AI, its related application, impact and future challenges in the PR industry in the AI-powered age. It helps in assessing the effects of AI in the PR industry. It tries to explore the possibility of strategic disruption by specialist agencies with AI-powered solutions of the existing large PR agencies and agency networks. It also explores the potential of AI assistants in developing smart, engaging and productive work solutions in the PR industry.
Literature Review
Gregory (2004) discussed that the Internet and electronic communication had transformed PR. Rather than focussing on the current practice, PR professionals need to consider social and relational issues while understanding a new technology (Kent & Saffer, 2014). AI is attracting attention in the communication industry (PRs and advertising) as practitioners, and lately, scholars have started recognizing AI’s productive potential. AI’s rise is leading to concerns related to its impact on jobs. All kinds of organizations, including their in-house PR teams or PR agency, are increasingly using AI to enhance their capabilities (Galloway & Swiatek, 2018). PR practitioners struggle in dealing with the application of social media and the Internet on PR practice (Robson & James, 2012). Social media has gained prominence in the field of PR as a channel for communicating with public and stakeholders and also for nourishing relationships with them (Verhoeven, Tench, Zerfass, Moreno, & Verčič, 2012). It is essential for PR professionals to understand how technologies are changing public behaviours for providing ethical and responsible advice to their organizations. PR professionals should avoid flooding the online environment with content that is irrelevant for public (Valentini, 2015).
There is a lack of skilled people to deal with the challenges arising due to new media (Tench, Zerfass, Verhoeven, Vercic, Moreno, & Okay, 2013). Few papers discuss the role, application and AI in the PR profession. In the past, the studies have focussed on the role and application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the PR field. Some of the reviews have discussed the challenges faced by PR professionals in adapting to emerging digital technologies such as social media (Wigley & Zhang, 2011). The breadth and depth of information available on the Internet and the velocity with which new data is generated is resulting in newfound challenges. Macnamara, Zerfass, Adi, and Lwin (2018) concluded that despite the paramount importance attached to digital platforms and social media, PR practitioners have low to moderate capabilities in new media usage.
Navarro, Moreno, and Al-Sumait, (2017) confirmed that PR professionals decide the content to be published and activities to be carried out on social media in alignment with their perceptions rather than stakeholder needs. Research has demonstrated that the use of digital media is important for understanding the expectations of different publics and for improving the effectiveness of communication (Kent & Saffer, 2014; Moreno, Navarro, Tench, & Zerfass, 2015).
The developments in digital, resulting from hyper-connectivity, rise of smartphones and interconnected devices is changing the life of PR professionals. In today’s environment, some of the core skills needed for a PR professional include writing, problem-solving, critical thinking and new media skills (Tench et al., 2013). AI is expected to challenge the foundational concept of PR, including the moral compass of PR (Tilson, 2017).
Chartered Institute of Public Relations came up with a report suggesting that automation will take away only a few PR tasks (Valin, 2018). The rise of AI has raised issues like job losses, ethical issues and machines controlling humans. AI is expected to affect a part of jobs to higher or fewer degrees depending on the type of work (Chui, Manyika, & Miremadi, 2016). Some of the PR professionals have developed AI anxiety. AI anxiety is one of the future impacts of AI on PR. AI anxiety refers to the ‘fear of the stability and the capabilities of AI’ (Johnson & Verdicchio, 2017).
Communication specialists are under pressure to unlearn old manual skills and learn new digital capabilities to survive in the new work environment. Past researches have tried to highlight the importance of digital skills (Van Deursen & Van Dijk, 2010). AI can free up practitioners’ time, allowing them to focus on crucial strategic work (Yaxley, 2018). Few studies have investigated the specific digital skills communication practitioners need to learn in today’s AI era. Good news is that rather than becoming AI experts, PR practitioners need to use AI to offer PR solutions to clients (Galloway & Swiatek, 2018).
None of the studies has tried to find out whether PR professionals are prepared and skilled enough to survive and prosper in the AI-powered environment in the future. None of the papers has investigated how digital or AI is going to impact the agency–client relationship, and whether AI has the potential to disrupt the PR industry or not. To communicate with the younger public, older generation PR professionals need to acquire digital literacy (Cismaru, Gazzola, Ciochina, & Leovaridis, 2018). Till date, the AI-enabled task automation has been given prominence in the literature (Galloway & Swiatek, 2018). Before 2018, not much scholarly material related to AI and PR was developed and discussed at the PR bodies like Public Relations Academy, but since 2018, the number of conferences focussed on the application of AI in PR has increased multifold. Pavlik (2007) briefly discusses AI’s use for monitoring news media coverage by using natural language processing.
In a review paper published in 2015 which has reviewed the nexus between PR and ICTs, and digital, social and mobile (DSM) media, over a period of 35 years covering 155 published articles showed that 63 different terms were used in the context of DSM, and the top five by frequency of use are social media, Twitter, websites, the Internet and web sites in two-thirds (95) of all titles (Verčič, Tkalac, & Sriramesh, 2015). Interestingly, none of them used AI in the title. The preceding study also supports the notion that there are not enough published peer-reviewed papers available on the impact of AI application in the PR industry. Therefore, the current study aims to explore the benefits, limitations, challenges, implementation and impact of AI adoption in the PR industry. It also tries to examine the potential of AI as a strategic disruption and impact of AI on an agency–client relationship.
This study aims to address the following research questions:
RQ1: What is the general perception and attitude of PR professionals towards AI applications? RQ2: Which applications of AI are meaningful in the PR industry? RQ3: How is the adoption of AI going to impact the job of PR professionals and client–agency relationship? RQ4: Does AI have the potential to be a strategic disruption in the PR industry?
Materials and Methods
This exploratory study uses a qualitative research strategy. Qualitative interviews can be categorized into three different types: unstructured, semi-structured and structured. In this study, semi-structured interviews have been used for collecting qualitative insights from the experts and professionals working in the PR industry. In a semi-structured interview, the interviewer asks several pre-set but open-ended questions (Ayres, 2008). In this interviewing method, predetermined questions are asked systematically, and necessary probes are used to get valuable insights about the issues which the interviewer is studying or exploring. A pilot study was conducted with 10 respondents to ensure the validity and propriety of questions. A discussion guide (Annexure I) with open-ended questions was framed and finalized based on the responses of the pilot study. The time duration for which interview lasted is about 25 minutes. The recording device was used for capturing the interviews with prior permission and proper annotations.
Participants
The PR professionals working in the PR agencies were recruited for the study by using purposive and snowball sampling. Marshall et al. (2013) suggested that for the qualitative research based on grounded theory, a sample size between 20 and 30 interviews, and 30 at times is sufficient. This argument was further supported by Goulielmos (2004). The assumption of 30 samples is based on the principle of circularity. This principle suggests that after a certain number of interviews, one starts getting repeated responses and no new insights are generated. The researcher found that no new ideas were produced after the twenty-fifth interview, which indicated data saturation in the study. The sample size was limited to 31 respondents for this qualitative research.
In total, 31 PR professionals from entry level (10), mid-level (14) and senior position (7) were interviewed for this study as they are the people who are in a place to comment on the application of AI in the PR industry. Entry-level PR executives were selected as participants because prior studies like the one conducted by Lee, Sha, Dozier, and Sargent (2015) suggest that young practitioners are often the ones performing social media tasks. The millennial generation has the Internet and other technologies at its disposal, and, therefore, are more comfortable with new technology (Deal, Altman, & Rogelberg, 2010). Moreover, the young executives are doing a lot of digital courses before joining the job and are more open to learning new digital skills, including AI-based systems and processes.
The education and experience profile of the participants is further broken down as per the level. At the senior level, out of the seven participants, two are graduates, four have a postgraduate degree and one has a postgraduate diploma. The average experience of the participants at senior level is 10.1 years. At mid-level, out of the 14 participants, 6 are graduates, 6 have a postgraduate degree and 2 have a postgraduate diploma. The average experience at mid-level is 4.2 years. At entry-level, out of the 10 participants, 5 are graduates and 5 are having a postgraduate degree. At the entry-level, the average experience is 1.45 years. For this study, we have defined entry-level PR professionals as having less than three years total experience, mid-level as having between three and eight years of experience and senior level as having more than eight years of experience. We have done this classification based on responses related to classification during the pilot study.
Interview Questions
A recruitment questionnaire was used to judge the suitability of the participant for the study. Thirteen questions were used to anchor the responses and ranged from their general perception about AI to particular questions about application and impact of AI adoption on jobs, client–agency relationship and potential of AI as a strategic disruption.
Procedure
The interviews were recorded with prior permission, transcribed and analysed. Based on Creswell’s (1998) guidelines for coding of the data, the responses were categorized and coded to understand patterns in the data. Using inductive approach, the emerging categories were further grouped to identify themes to capture the central idea of the responses. The transcripts were then summarized on an excel sheet to identify patterns in the reactions of all the interviewees. Two coders were used to check the inter-coder reliability of the codes, categories and themes.
Analysis and Results
The following summary has been written and presented using research questions as a base. From the coded data, the emerging themes are identified and given as follows:
RQ1: What is the general perception and attitude of PR professionals towards AI applications?
Majority of the PR professionals felt that they are aware of AI and know about the application of AI in the PR industry in general. They are of the view that AI has impressively taken over so many platforms in marketing, but specifically in the context of the PR industry, still AI application is in its nascent phase. In general, PR professionals feel that they are quite acquainted and exposed to the new digital technology, and they are sceptical about the penetration of AI in the PR industry. From the interview data, it emerges that the PR industry is slowly taking steps towards the adoption of the latest technology, but there are specific areas where the need for the AI tools is becoming inevitable.
One of the senior-level PR experts said, ‘I feel, with passing time, the AI and its need will just increase, and I am looking forward to it’.
A senior-level PR executive said, ‘Many western PR agencies are into full-blown use of AI in their day to day activity, and have proved that AI generated content is useable without discrepancies and minimal error’.
Cumulatively, the respondents agree on the need for AI adoption in the PR industry, especially when it comes to dealing with the mundane task.
One of the PR professionals said, ‘The PR professionals, especially my colleagues in developed countries, are really into AI, we see how much easier it has made our personal lives, and are surely looking forward to making our work life simpler as well’.
One of the mid-level PR professionals said, ‘There have been advantages in the PR through digitization like the ability to analyse data, churn the data as per your need. Analysing is much easier now with higher credibility and less consumption of time’.
One of the entry-level PR professionals said: ‘The Indian PR industry has coped pretty well through digitization, and the whole new age of the internet and I am positive that even with AI, the PR people will grow and learn’.
One of the mid-level professionals said, ‘Hard to say about AI, but agencies are trying their best to lead their way up the area of digitisation’.
PR professionals believe that adoption and penetration of new digital technologies lag due to lack of strategic intent, especially when it comes to technology like AI and its acceptance.
RQ2: Which applications of AI are meaningful in the PR industry?
Experts believe that AI can assist the PR industry in much needed digital transition for its development in sustaining itself in the digital age. The following applications are useful for building a case for AI adoption in the PR industry.
Assist PR Managers in Designing Campaigns
With AI, PR managers can take decisions grounded in data and insights. AI can assist managers in scanning social media and other data points in the fraction of time that humans need to accomplish the job. AI can help make decisions related to starting of campaign, content, channels, influencers and targeting.
One of the entry-level PR professionals opined that ‘as a PR professional, who has to deal with client’s needs and their audience’s needs and demands, content strategy is one input that AI can provide us to make our lives easier. Giving us a clear picture of demands and possible trending demands can help us plan better’.
Various social media platforms are using AI to customize and personalize newsfeeds and posts. Major e-retailers are using AI to send offers to the users based on their browsing behaviours. News and recommendations are being tailored with AI to suit our past purchases, needs and preferences. AI systems have also helped PR agencies in creating opportunities for clients regarding earn media.
AI Can Automate Tactical Tasks
Typically, PR professionals spend much time on tactical and repetitive tasks like scheduling, preparing meeting notes, creating and meeting deadlines and following up with clients as well as influencers.
Menial tasks such as answering mundane emails, checking the calendar and formulating reports can eat up hours of valuable time. Personal involvement in these tasks leads to delays, errors and frustration.
One senior PR manager said, ‘The automation itself will be a stir in so many different ways. Automated update of media lists, scheduling updates of media rounds and numbers, will have a major impact on the functioning of the PR professional’.
AI assistance leads to automation of mundane and repetitive tasks; PR professionals can spend more time on strategic and creative activities and be more productive.
AI Can Lead to Current and Relevant Insights
With AI, it is easy to make sense and draw conclusions out of data coming from a variety of sources like social media, website traffic and other digital touch points. PR professionals can make use of these insights generated from the data to make informed and active decisions. AI systems can keep messaging to the point, with ideas based on analysis of Big Data and other relevant trends.
A senior PR professional said, ‘Data crunching, data updating, follow-ups, drafting detailed client needs and progress are major areas where AI will impact’.
One of the mid-level PR experts said, ‘These AI tools could be very useful in analysing, interpreting the various forms of communications data that is required to serve the clients with useful insights’.
AI Can Help Identify and Tailor Content for Influencers
Using influencers is common these days, but identifying them and adapting material for building engagement and loyalty is a huge challenge. AI can assist in determining and engaging these influencers and relevant stakeholders.
One of the senior-level PR experts said, ‘AI enables PR professionals to pitch more effectively to the relevant influencers and specific journalists. With AI, PR professionals and clients can get the hang of the overall trends and can select the right influencers, at the right time and on appropriate channels’.
AI Can Create Accurate Personas
With AI, it is easy to know the choices and preferences of the buyers. AI these days is being used to develop buyer personas and also to create engaging content for these buyers. AI helps to know the choices, buying patterns, habits, influences, pain points and point of failures. With AI-based personas, companies can create and deliver targeted messages.
An entry-level PR professional said, ‘The primary goal of PR is to match the word to the target audience, and AI systems can decipher the digital DNA and core characteristics of the target group’.
AI systems can create offers and messages to suit the individual client in real time.
AI can be used to Identify and Respond to the Crisis
AI-driven systems can track reactions, sentiments and results. By monitoring and engaging in conversations, brands can resolve queries and issues of disgruntled stakeholders and avoid any potential negative buzz or backlash. Negative messages these days spread like wildfire and can result in a full-blown crisis. With AI-powered machine involved social listening, PR professionals can get timely alerts to deal with a dilemma. AI-powered devices can even respond with relevant messages to control the negative word of mouth and avert a full-blown crisis.
AI-Assisted Measurement and Reporting
PR agencies and clients can ensure a precise analysis of the coverage with AI-assisted tools. AI technology has helped improve reporting with substantial efficiency as a result of its ability to scan and analyse the social posts and news articles.
Another expert opined that ‘AI will analyse campaigns in a better way, become more targeted in the communication and also measure the impact of any campaign. PR people would do better with AI tools than without it’.
One of the senior PR professionals said, ‘Content filtration, post-campaign analysis, spotting potential trends could be some major pointers’.
RQ3: How is the adoption of AI going to impact the job of PR professionals and client–agency relationship?
From the review of articles and the analysis of expert, interviews following current and potential applications of AI in the PR industry emerged. The adoption of AI in PR range from the content creation to the automation of repetitive tasks as well as to management of communications in times of crisis, and measurement of results.
A senior-level PR expert said, ‘News tracking, campaign’s productivity analysis, content reliability, identification of trends can be few of the potential applications’.
Content Creation
AI can facilitate PR agencies and their clients with content creation. AI can scan various data sources and produce high quality and engaging white papers, case studies, data sheets and posts. Clients or PR agencies can use AI-powered systems like Wordsmith, which is a natural language processing platform. Wordsmith can create content on financial results for sensitive reporting. These AI-powered programs can identify the style of the publisher and write stories using relevant financial information quickly and reliably. Such automated earnings stories first appeared in 2014, and now significant players such as Dow Jones, Bloomberg, Reuters and Associated Press (AP) have either tried or used AI for financial journalism. With AI, AP’s coverage of earnings releases has gone up from an average of 300 per quarter in 2014 to 4,700 in the first quarter of 2018 (Ashwell, 2016).
Automation of Menial and Repetitive Tasks
PR professionals waste much time on mundane daily tasks like updating calendars, scheduling meetings, preparing meeting agendas, and on follow-ups. PR executives can use the time saved from these day-to-day activities in conceptualizing campaigns. With AI tools, it is possible to manage and automate several menial and repetitive tasks.
To quote a PR professional, ‘With the help of AI tools, there can be a huge improvement in work towards tracking, analysing, and monitoring news, at initial stages’.
AI assistants can manage calendar and schedule meetings. AI assistants can automatically share the blog post on social channels and save tweets mentioning a particular brand to a spreadsheet. AI can create efficiencies by connecting to various apps to make smart assistants even smarter.
Manage PR Crisis
Before the dawn of AI, PR teams were monitoring the web and maintaining dossiers, which were tedious and time-consuming. It was challenging to track negative comments and more challenging to predict the potential of a single negative feedback that could escalate into a full-blown PR crisis.
A PR professional said, ‘Crisis management should not be going to AI. It’s a sensitive area to give away to technology. It is too sensitive of an issue for the client to be dealt without any human support or interventions’.
Another senior PR professional opined, ‘As far as crisis management is concerned, given how sensitive of an issue is, the spotting time and analysis time can be reduced through AI, but again, human intervention is critical in this case’.
A mid-level PR professional said, ‘I don’t think the clients will be comfortable with AI managing the crisis. The Indian market is too sensitive for a technological response’.
In the era of AI, things are a lot easier. TensorFlow, Google’s machine learning framework, allows the clients to predict the social media crisis with 80 to 90 per cent accuracy (Cohen, 2017). With this knowledge of crisis management, PR agencies can predict and start doing damage control.
There are AI tools like PRISMA Crisis Intelligence that are available in the market for innovative PR crisis management (ClusterTech, n.d.). These tools monitor conversations on social media and alert the managers in case of a negative mention. These AI-powered systems can track sentiments hidden within comments. These systems are even able to process complex texts in multiple languages.
One of the PR professionals said, ‘It can help in post-crisis management and evaluation. As to how our crisis management campaign worked, where all it lacked and what could have been done for better and more effective results’.
Another senior-level PR expert said, ‘Crisis management is still a very controversial area in PR. Only the high-level management gets involved in this, and with experts, because in this area, clients expect zero negligence and highest results. So I don’t know how AI will help, but they can come with some tools for predicting a possible failure, that might be helpful. AI first needs to prove its credibility in various areas before it can be implemented in such sensitive areas’.
A mid-level PR expert said, ‘In crisis management, data crunching and analysis is a major task, so if that can be done through AI, then nothing like it. Analysis and identification of the target audience can be one of the areas in crisis management’.
Managing Agency–Client Relationship
The client–agency relationship is integral for the success of any campaign. The client–agency relationship begins with the appointment of an agency for managing the PR function for the client. The agency is expected to provide services and meet the communication needs of the client. From the interviews with PR professionals, it has emerged that the client–agency relationship is primarily based on achieving transparency, trust, responsiveness, speed, agility and accuracy. Sincerity and honesty are essential for the success of such a relationship. For a client, it is necessary to disclose all information about the product and the organization. The bills and charges must be paid well in time. For maintaining a good relationship with the agency, the client should approve and monitor the progress on the proposals of the agency. Managing the timeline and budget for a particular campaign is essential. The most important part is the real-time measurement and monitoring of the campaign for both the client and agency.
AI, with its unique intelligent capabilities, can assist in managing the client–agency relationship. AI helps in being transparent in tracking and addressing the problems and issues quickly and painlessly. AI assists in collaboration between the agency and client with clear lines of communication for open and controlled sharing of information between both the parties for strategic alignment. AI also helps in aligning all teams on the process, timings and critical aspects of project management. AI helps in meeting deadlines and building an influential team culture for trust, loyalty and openness. AI also assists in setting and meeting expectations. AI is most useful in conducting regular reviews for identifying issues or weak spots with qualitative as well as quantitative inputs. AI can also assist in implementing key action points and for attributing responsibility to team members as well as meeting deadlines.
A mid-level PR expert said, ‘It emerged that agency-client relations will change with the adoption of AI and will be more efficient, transparent and responsive’.
One of the entry-level PR professionals said, ‘Right now I guess the clients are more interested in social media, which is completely different from AI as of now. Clients still prefer traditional PR, at least from the corporate point of view. Social media is a separate area of focus for them’.
Another senior-level PR professional said, ‘Client-agency relation, I feel, is always performance based. And moreover, the requirement of the client is also a very tricky business. Technology-oriented clients are actively keeping tabs on such innovations. So before they start to make such demands, we will have to be one step ahead of them in adopting AI’.
A senior PR expert said, ‘We have come across tools in the west, where the agency has set up a legitimate interface where all the discussions and tasks are put up, and the teams from the agency and the teams from the clients can log into it to see the progress of results. Such AI tools will provide more transparency and so much trust. Client-agency relation will mostly become more transparent and smoother, so yes, that might be one of the plus points’.
Automated Measurement
With AI solutions capturing and visualizing data in the extensive and comprehensive form leads to faster report-production process. In the absence of precise measurement, clients and agencies both struggle to prove the impact of PR efforts and investments.
A mid-level PR professional said, ‘AI systems are quickly able to assess the sentiments of social posts and news articles of clients and their competitors, and even offer recommendations’.
AI-powered analysis from TrendKite offers insights from over 4.7 million publications on the impact of PR, key message pull-through and sentiment analysis of data that was tedious and time-consuming to analyse manually (TrendKite, n.d.). AI systems can understand and quantify PR’s full influence on web traffic to gauze the share of earned media influences. AI-assisted PR attribution gives concrete, quantifiable performance metrics that help PR agencies and clients.
AI and Journalism
AI is creating ripples amongst journalists as automatic news writing and distribution of the content, without human intervention is happening. In 2016, the Norwegian News Agency launched a project to generate automated football news coverage. AI in journalism is rapidly not only expanding coverage but also reducing the time duration of the whole process; the Associated Press was able to expand the number of companies it reported to from 300 to 4,000 using AI to generate reports on corporate earnings within a limited amount of time (Ashwell, 2018). AI can instantly react to real-time data with the outlines of a story or any cue given to it. Reuters, one of the largest news providers, has partnered with Graphiq, a service that uses AI to build and update data visualizations (Reuters, 2016). AI facilitates local and regional news companies to create compelling content. In future, it is possible that more prominent news agencies may lose audience share to a few dynamic smaller new agencies that can use AI effectively. In the era of AI, PR agencies will have to adapt to the new dynamics to respond and meet the needs of the AI-powered journalism.
When a mid-level PR professional was asked about AI and journalism, he said, ‘Journalist, I feel will have a more difficult time accepting the AI aspect as they still very, much into the writing and are used to old school ways of functioning, but clients, on the other hand, I feel will be very proactive and positive as their work will hopefully be done faster and with minimum human error’.
One of the senior PR professionals felt that ‘Journalist will not accept AI shortly. Journalists have major issues in trusting the PR professional; trusting an AI tool would be like expecting something impossible’.
Another PR professional said, ‘The relation between PR and journalists has still been tricky. There are always fire and ice kind of relations; I don’t think the journalists will ever be mentally ready to give their work off to the AI’.
A senior PR professional said, ‘Journalists will not be able to trust the content created by AI. Not at least till the time some major groundbreaking advancement is visible. This is because AI can go wrong and will only interpret on a data basis. They would prefer a human rather than machine work because of the credibility and emotional quotient. Hence humans cannot be replaced’.
Based on the responses, it can be concluded that AI professionals are pessimistic about the acceptance of AI by journalists.
RQ4: Does AI have the potential to be a strategic disruption in the PR industry?
First, let us review what disruption means. As per Christensen, Raynor, and McDonald (2015), ‘Disruption describes a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources can successfully challenge established incumbent businesses. When mainstream customers start adopting the entrants’ offerings in volume, disruption has occurred’. In this case, for AI to be a disruption, it is necessary that the majority of the PR agencies and clients are adopting AI for PR processes, functions and solutions.
There was a mixed response to this question during the interviews. Most of the professionals felt that AI is still in its initial development and application stages in the PR industry. Commenting on AI as a strategic disruption is still too early. But they are positive about the prospects of a smaller agency powered with AI disrupting major agencies and networks.
One of the experts said, ‘There would be a major disruption in content development, crisis communications and learning the aspect of professionals’.
Another expert said, ‘Every innovation is a disruption and causes a shift, somewhere or other. So will be AI, but whether it is in a positive or in a negative shift, we may have to wait and watch’.
Overall based on the responses, it can be concluded that AI has the potential to be a strategic disruption shortly.
Implementation Issues
AI is a strategic driver and change agent in the PR industry. Technology companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple have integrated AI as an intelligence layer into their products as well as systems. AI-driven systems are smart and can unlock the power of all the social media and other data. Depending on the need, the PR agencies can employ AI for various functions like mining social data, managing media lists and influencer database, to engage influencers, create content, manage crisis, and have a leading reputation.
One mid-level PR professional said, ‘Costs of implementation will be high, but so will be the value added as a result of implementation. I don’t think every PR agency will be able to afford it’.
Another professional said, ‘Cost will be high but again, the agency needs, and client profile will dictate the adoption decision’.
A senior PR expert said, ‘Introduction of anything new in any sector, is costly, but we need to focus on the bigger picture than just installation charges’.
From the review, it has emerged that agencies and clients should take care of the following implementation issues while adopting AI-driven systems for successful integration (Marvin, 2018).
PR agencies should first develop familiarity with the current AI solutions and developments in the market.
PR professionals in the agency should familiarize themselves with basic concepts of AI.
PR agencies should create a digital backbone as a base for AI-driven system.
PR agencies should be clear about the tasks that the AI system can automate.
PR agencies should be aware of the available AI capabilities and their influence on the existing PR services, internal processes and systems.
PR agency should calculate the potential business and financial impact of the AI system.
The agency needs to involve the managers and top-level executives in significant AI-related adoption decisions.
The PR agency should assess the existing capability of a technology and business process angle before adopting and implementing an AI system.
Before going for a full-scale AI implementation effort, the PR agency should try to set up a pilot project with a consultation with external consultants.
The agency should clean the existing data. A small amount of current data can be used for training the new AI system.
PR agency should arrange for local, fast and optimized storage during AI system design.
The PR agency should use the AI system for daily and routine tasks.
The agency should maintain a balance between the AI systems operational efficiency and creative potential of humans.
Agency should build flexibility in the new AI-based system for future hardware and software changes.
PR agency should focus on training and reskilling the existing employees for making full use of the new AI-powered systems.
PR agencies should ensure adherence to the privacy and security norms for handling personal data as per the law of the land.
Challenges
Finding suitable AI talent with AI compatibility is a massive challenge for PR agencies. It is challenging to find professionals with advanced programming and analytical skills having PR domain knowledge. Finding talent with both technical and management skills is a massive challenge in itself. It is difficult for PR agencies to measure and predict the returns on investment (ROI) in AI. Since the ROI on AI leads to individual gains in the long run, it is difficult to assess the short-term impact on profitability. Initial purchase and maintenance of an AI solution at times are expensive and extensive. AI needs sufficient data to pick up on patterns, to learn from them and optimize the generating system accordingly. Without the availability of massive data, the ability of AI is limited and is not entirely reliable. Lack of structured data is a significant challenge in the development and implementation of an AI system. AI also has difficulty with unstructured data. Structured and organized results of sports games or earnings data can be easily translated into articles by using AI. Lack of understanding of the state-of-the-art AI systems and interoperability with various clients are also two of the hindrances.
Verifying the authenticity of data is also a considerable challenge. AI cannot understand whether the input it received is accurate or inaccurate. If AI gets fake or erroneous data, the corresponding output will also be false. With AI, publishers can include metadata and references for checking the facts and sources.
A mid-level PR professional said, ‘Most of the PR agencies and their clients are still sceptical about the reliability and are not able to trust the standalone AI systems’.
With AI attributing and defining copyright and fair use of the content generated may also be a challenge. AI also potentially poses a new conflict in cases where learning is from artistic works such as articles, paintings or music having respective rights owners.
Discussion
The new wave of AI technology is predicted to disrupt many essential industries, including PR. PR professionals and experts are still in a dilemma with various aspects of AI. Are they faced with several questions like will AI replace humans in managing press relations? Will AI system create content from scratch? Will the new technology detect and interact with the best target audiences? How fast can AI predict PR crisis? How far will AI go regarding customization and maintenance of relations with key stakeholders? Will the platforms supported by AI have the ability to handle a full-blown crisis? Can the smaller PR agencies leverage AI to adapt, grow and disrupt the more prominent players?
From the exploratory research, it has emerged that the majority of the PR professionals are aware and positive about the application of AI in the PR industry in general. In the context of the PR industry, AI application is still in its nascent phase. Majority of PR professionals personally felt that they are quite acquainted and comfortable with the new digital technology, and this is in line with the findings of previous studies. Still, few of the professionals are sceptical about the adoption of AI in the PR industry. From the results, it emerges that the PR professionals are slowly taking steps towards the adoption of the latest technology. With AI, PR managers can make decisions based on data and insights. AI has a vital role to play in all the stages of a PR campaign starting from gathering insights, developing content, selecting channels, influencers and distribution of content. AI has an essential role to play in news tracking, campaign analysis, fact checking and identification of trends as important applications. In times of crisis, AI can help with data crunching and analysis.
Further, AI can help in the analysis and identification of the target audience and make the whole process of crisis management more efficient, effective and timely. Client–agency relationship will be positively impacted by AI adoption. AI tools will bring transparency and trust. With AI, client–agency relationship is expected to be more transparent and smoother. AI-assisted PR measurement gives concrete, quantifiable performance metrics, which will help and assist both clients and agencies. It is interesting to note that journalists are not very enthusiastic about the use of AI in their profession. Based on the responses, it is fair to conclude that AI can be a strategic disruption shortly.
Contribution to Theory and Practice
Research should open directions for theory development and offer guidelines for practitioners. Prior research has focussed on the application of the Internet, digital, social and mobile in the PR profession and PR industry. There is a shortage of research in the field of AI application in PR. This exploratory research opens new directions for scholarly research. There is a gap that this research has attempted to fulfil by exploring the AI applications and their impact in the PR industry. This research opens up new dimensions for empirical research related to the application and impact of AI in the PR industry. Till date, only exploratory research has been done in the field of AI application in the PR industry or profession. Results from this study demonstrate the benefits associated with AI application in PR. Numerous applications of AI in the PR field have been discussed in the article.
Further, model development and testing can be done using empirical industry. AI should be used strategically to meet the goals of PR professionals in maintaining a positive relationship with publics in the competitive marketplace. This article has also explored the potential of AI as a strategic disruption and how AI will impact the client–agency relationship in the PR profession and open a new area for research. Researchers can look at the potential impact of AI adoption in the client–agency relationship. In future, scholars can further re-evaluate the potential of AI as a potential strategic disruption in the PR industry.
As a contribution to PR practice and industry, this study opens up avenues for PR professionals and agencies that want to implement AI to meet the client needs. These agencies can expect an increase in ROI, increased conversions, increased revenues, efficient and quicker reporting and precise measurement. The PR professionals can save time spent on menial tasks and use them on creative conceptualizations of the campaigns. AI spares the agencies with a lot of time and resources that can be used in building more creative, innovative and customized PR solutions. This research also discusses the issues that need to be taken care of during implementation of AI-driven systems for successful integration with existing systems.
This research highlights the skills needed by existing employees of PR agencies that can be acquired through learning and development or a broader understanding of AI-based cognitive machines. It is crucial for employees to realize their potential for up-skilling for the current tasks in the AI age.
Future Scope
Some of the grey areas in the application and adoption of AI and the PR industry are yet to be uncovered. It is expected that new players with innovative technology will come up with solutions that will create new norms and pathways in the PR industry. These new players with newfound flexibility, adaptiveness and contextualization can reform the existing PR practices. The rise of AI in the PR industry is ensuring the reduction of errors, which could be attributed to humans, which in turn increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the work done. AI systems with algorithms can quickly analyse massive data and create content. Experts think that humans and AI in the workplace will coexist. The collaboration between humans and AI will lead to smarter, creative and innovative work over time. Data and human supervision are both relevant for an AI system for learning, adaptation and efficiency. Finally, to embrace AI’s possibility, it is vital to understand what AI has to offer currently in the PR industry and how it can be further enhanced for more critical tasks without any substantial breach of trust and privacy. The healthy symbiosis of human–AI in the PR industry is essential for both to coexist successfully.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.