In the fast-paced, crowded business world, credibility is the one thing that can cut through the noise. A solid PR strategy can impact consumer behavior, purchasing patterns, and customer sentiment. “The need to quickly establish trust and credibility for its clients is greater than ever,” says Danielle Sabrina, celebrity publicist and founder of Society22 PR, a top 10 ranked national and global agency headquartered in Los Angeles. The agency works with companies at every growth stage, from early-stage start-up through IPO, and credits its ability to scale operations and deliver high-impact campaign results for its prestigious clients primarily due to Artificial Intelligence (AI).
AI, a subset of computer science that focuses on machine-driven intelligence, has become a massive topic in the media in the last year, with everyone rushing to implement it into their workflows. However, Society22 has embraced cutting-edge AI technologies since 2015 to find new and innovative ways to generate data-driven results, which has attracted cult favorite brands like RedBull, as well as celebrities and professional athletes.
Using AI To Gather Research And Information
AI made a significant impact when the company was taking a client in “The buy now, pay later (BNPL)” industry public. According to Society22 PR, the BNPL industry has often faced negative perceptions due to concerns about encouraging overspending and debt accumulation. However, through a strategic AI-driven media campaign, the agency could identify real-time conversations and data points advantageous to reporters. Ultimately they were able to reshape public opinion leading to a successful IPO.
Automating Tasks That Don’t Require Creative Thinking
“AI allows our team to utilize their full creative power, and we spend very little time on tasks that have little impact on our client’s campaign. We can quickly generate 100 potential headlines based on current events and trending topics, and our entire team can utilize their storytelling abilities to create interesting and compelling stories the media love.
This year alone, we’ve landed clients in over 10,000 articles and secured our clients on national news shows like CBS Good Mornings with Gayle King and ABC & NBC news programs. Many opportunities are full feature stories highlighting our clients’ incredible impact on their industries. Without AI, our team would spend more than half their time gathering data,” explains Sabrina.
Generating Content Ideas And Trending Topics
Earlier this year, the company helped their client Tapcart launch LeBron James’ app for Uninterrupted – capturing hundreds of conversations around sports, technology, and fashion, all using AI. After gathering the conversations and data points, the team ran them against current events to produce a media campaign that resulted in tremendous coverage.
The company said because they could quickly identify reporters that had covered similar topics in the last 30 days and capture conversations from consumers, they were able to craft the perfect stories. If they couldn’t utilize AI, most of their time would have been spent on market research and tedious tasks like manually pulling media lists. They could focus on developing a strategic creative strategy by minimizing tedious administrative tasks.
Pitch Optimization Using Data
The company also uses AI for what they call “pitch optimization,” which allows them to quickly analyze the historical performance of pitches, identifying which elements led to successful media coverage and which fell short. The team says they meet twice weekly to review the current successes and failures to optimize the content and structure of pitches, making them more compelling. A practice Sabrina says has increased the agency’s rate of successfully securing media coverage by over 30%. “We’re able to deliver far more media opportunities for our clients without additional costs to our agency or clients,” added Sabrina.
In addition, data can provide you with a competitive edge in capturing the share of voice (SOV) from your customers. The company uses analytics to see how its competitors measure, what kind of content they are putting out, and gaps in the industry conversation to formulate a strategy to give its customer’s a competitive advantage.
“I’m also glad to see how accessible AI is to everyone now. When our agency first invested in AI tools back in 2015, it was one of the largest investments in my business I had ever made. We’re still one of the few PR-focused agencies that maximizes the use of technology. The bottom line is you simply cannot deliver the results necessary in today’s crowded landscape for your clients without fully embracing the tools and technology to optimize campaigns,” explains Sabrina.
Traditionally, extensive market research and subjective analysis that took hundreds of hours of manual time shaped PR campaigns. However, AI-driven analytics and automation tools can now provide data-centric information from social media, news articles, blogs, and customer feedback. This data deluge enables PR teams to comprehensively understand the public sentiment surrounding a brand or product, empowering them to tailor their messaging for maximum impact.
AI advancements are occurring at an unprecedented rate and the implementation of AI-powered tools has proven to be a game-changer. Agencies can now monitor public perception in real-time, quickly identifying potential crises, opportunities, and quickly scale. This real-time monitoring allows PR professionals to craft responses that resonate with public sentiment and defuse potential crises before they escalate.
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