 PRSSA ICON’s first Sunday breakout session featured an insightful analysis of the power of creator and influencer marketing from Brandi Boatner, IBM’s digital and advocacy communications manager.
During the session, Boatner touched on how public relations professionals can utilize influencers/creators through the power of relationship building. “We must add creators to the mix and how we build relationships with influencers who generate content,” Boatner said. The creator economy is growing exponentially in the United States as one of the predominant industries. Companies utilize creators to get messaging and products in front of audiences and communities. Despite this, we must remember to distinguish between influencer marketing and creator marketing, Boatner said. “Influencers can become celebrities unto themselves with more recognition, leading to a stigma,” Boatner said. “The term ‘creator’ represents an authenticity that was formerly associated with ‘influencers.’” When working with creators, it is important that companies are open and honest with them to avoid any bad blood between the two. “Make sure creators are disclosing paid partnerships,” Boatner said. “It could be costly for the creator and reputation damaging for the brand.” In addition, companies must use engaging and interactive content when using creator marketing to reach their audience. “Static posts aren’t going away, but Instagram is prioritizing reels,” Boatner said. “Marketers and communicators should utilize the tactic to ensure their content gets in front of audiences.” Ultimately, public relations professionals and creators are a perfect match and influence is at the table. Communicators must think creatively about how to maximize and profit from this partnership.
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 Eve Krejci
In one of the first sessions at ICON 2023, Alexandra M. Merceron, the current Executive Vice President for Rubenstein, a strategic communications & reputation management firm, and Lecturer at Columbia University, spoke about AI. Her session covered the history of AI, its flaws and features, the legal and ethical problems regarding AI and what to expect from it in the future. History of AI: The session began with how AI has been a part of lives for longer than anyone realizes. Take Siri, for example, she mentioned. “It’s always been around, but now it's in our faces,” said Merceron. Many corporations, including Forbes and The New York Times, have created their own AI platforms used within their ranks. “Bertie” is a publishing platform designed by Forbes in 2018 that has various artificial intelligence features intended to make writers more effective. Introduction of ChatGPT: Merceron stated that 2021 was the turning point for AI, as OpenAI introduced GPT3 that year. GPT3 is a neural network machine learning model trained using internet data to generate any type of text. It required a small amount of input text to create large volumes of relevant and sophisticated machine-generated text. In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a similar text-based AI model, which became the fastest technology to reach 100 million users. Flaws and Features: The main feature of ChatGPT is to respond to prompts and questions and compose various written content, including articles, social media posts, essays, code and emails. While ChatGPT is a cutting-edge technology platform, it has flaws. For example, Merceron mentioned that ChatGPT can output morals, values and ethics, making its information biased. Some data also comes from users and Wikipedia, which can create results with skewed biases. Who Uses AI and How: Companies and other organizations, like Nike and Netflix, as well as the general public, use ChatGPT. Companies such as Facebook and Google are also hopping on the AI bandwagon by creating their own platforms. Newsrooms and PR agencies are progressively using it more and more to increase the quality of work and help manage their organizations. The more people use AI, the better it gets, so when these organizations utilize the different aspects of ChatGPT, it improves the data it gives back. “The more times you go into the tub, the more likely you are to pull out something great,” said Merceron. Ethical and Legal Issues of AI: As AI is not a person, the issue of copyright comes into question. If someone creates something with AI, do they have any rights over it? As decided by federal courts, if something is created by AI, copyright laws do not protect it because these laws only apply to human beings. Another issue with AI is the fact that it can eliminate jobs. For example, background actors can now be generated by AI. This calls into question whether or not the people whose faces were analyzed to use for the AI-generated background actors are entitled to financial compensation. The courts must decide these questions and situations as time passes and more problems arise.  Alex Zito
The emergence of artificial intelligence has revolutionized numerous industries and public relations is no exception. The shift is so profound that Greg Matusky, a seasoned PR professional with contributions to PR magazines, articulated that we have transitioned from the “information age” to the “age of intelligence.” Matusky believed that AI could not attain sentience. “I never thought AI would be able to be sentient, but I was proven wrong, and my theory has already gone out the window,” said Matusky. AI may not be sentient in a traditional sense like a human, but it is slowly revolutionizing itself to become a software assistant. “You can talk to AI using a natural language model, meaning you’re talking to it just like your client,” Matusky said. “This isn’t software; it is an assistant that you should talk to.” Storytelling is an important aspect of PR, and many wonder what it means when machines can tell stories outside of human nature. “Embracing AI doesn’t mean letting go of our humanity; it means amplifying it to tell stories that resonate on a new level,” Matusky said. He emphasizes the significance of human touch. “The information age is over, and the age of intelligence is upon us; we need to maintain our position as storytellers because it is the only way we are going to get there,” Matusky said. Other sectors have embraced AI more quickly than the PR industry, something that Matusky noted numerous times. While it may seem like a missed opportunity, it can be taken as a time to learn from other sectors’ successes and build upon them. “In the dance between AI and PR, it’s not about leading or following, but working together to embrace a new world of technology, creativity and innovation,” Mastusky said. |
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