Migis Hotel Group

The Changing Role of PR in AI-Driven Marketing Strategies

When we think back to the early 2000's, everyone was keyword stuffing their websites.

I can recall a friend whose dad bred golden retrievers, and he created a basic geocities websites where he hid a bunch of white text stuffed with keywords like "best golden retriever breeder in the USA". That kind of stuff worked back then.

As Google became more sophisticated, how it perceived "authoritative content" changed. This is where we started seeing the proliferation of blogs on business websites, and other content creation strategies intended to improve SEO visibility. One can imagine the goal from Google's end was to actually reward content creators rather than algorithm manipulators.

In the age of AI we are seeing the ability of these platforms (whether a traditional search engine or an AI) to get even better at rewarding good content. Of course, there will be times where an AI prompt will be answered with a false sense of authority, usually derived from a Reddit comment or two. But at the end of the day, AI wants to provide real, authoritative content to users. And this is where real journalism and PR comes into play.

Balancing AI-driven Insights with Human Judgment and Storytelling

AI can tell you what is happening. But people still need to decide what that means and what story to tell about it.

AI might summarize 5,000 reviews and find recurring themes. But AI cannot understand the emotional subtleties of a community, a brand, or a person the way people do.

“Use PR as a mouthpiece to articulate the soul of your business, and simply let AI digest that PR and communicate it to others who might be interested in it.”

The danger is when marketers allow AI to make the leap from information to meaning. Human judgement is still key to determining whether the insights an AI finds actually align with the values and long-term vision of a brand. The best marketers will use AI as a research assistant, while reserving the responsibility for interpretation, creativity and brand stewardship to real people.

PR That Helps Brands Maintain Authenticity and Trust

Rather simply, you maintain authenticity and trust by being authentic and trustful in first place. PR cannot simply become AI generated content intended to improve AI visibility, this becomes a "serpent eating its tail" situation and this is pretty much every artist, journalist, or writer's worst nightmare.

This is what the dead internet theory is about. That a majority of content is created by bots and AI, is commented on and engaged with by other bots and AI's. It's like a bunch of NPC's talking to themselves in a video game. If there is no real person around to observe it or engage with it, did it even really happen?

Preserving Meaningful Human Connections in the AI Era

There is an old-timey IBM quote that basically says "computers cannot be held accountable so they cannot make management decisions".

In regard to marketing, a key management decision is the representation of the soul of a brand or business. Key foundational documents like brand voice guides, brand style guides, design guidelines, all these cannot be AI generated. These need to be derived from the soul of a business. Once a business has a soul, AI can help a marketer articulate it, but the AI cannot be "creating" the soul itself.

There are plenty of exceptionally talented REAL people who can help you build a human connection to your brand through intentional design: and then when real people are telling real stories about their engagement with that soul/intentional design in digital spaces, AI will pick up on it. The more authoritative the voice telling the story, the more visible it will become in AI spaces. But a lot of individual people telling a similar story is authoritative in its own right.

Keeping PR and Communications Credible in an AI-driven Future

In a world of AI, PR should absolutely remain an authentic human contribution to it, a source, per se. AI is not supposed to be its own greatest source. Humans and their experiences are supposed to be.

AI is used a lot because it's easy and has a veneer of professionalism. But we've all read something that was clearly AI generated and immediately were repulsed by it. At the end of the day, people don't like AI generated content. Go into any social media space and see if people actually want to see AI content. A local group in my region focused on sharing info about local businesses recently had a poll and 98% of people wanted the page to ban AI generated content. 

Don't use AI to create your graphics. Don't use AI to tell you what your business should look like or how it should communicate. Just because it's easy and cheap doesn't mean you should do it. Use PR as a mouthpiece to articulate the soul of your business, and simply let AI digest that PR and communicate it to others who might be interested in it. To me, it's really that simple.