The PRovoke Global Summit in Washington DC was a roller coaster of ideas and insight about the public relations and communications industry. There were so many excellent speakers, panels and discussions that it’s hard to identify the highlights.
Entrepreneurs’ Forum
The PRovoke Global Summit started with the Entrepreneurs’ Forum aimed at independent PR agencies around the world. As helping independent communications agencies to modernise and improve is one of Purposeful Relations’ core services this was an insightful day.
Whenever we help comms agencies identify areas for improvement, we can be certain that one area that can always be improved is measurement. So, it’s not surprising that the day started with a panel on measurement and proving the value of public relations. It was ably chaired by Julian Boulding, president of global independent agency network thenetworkone. His panellists were former AMEC chair Richard Bagnall, Steve Behm of Real Chemistry, Stephanie Crockett and managing director of thenetworkone Helen Anderson.
Julian started by acknowledging the challenges facing the world which impact on our industry – debt (government, corporate and personal), climate change and AI. Both Stephanie Crockett and Steven Behm tackled the theme of ‘perma-crisis’ and Stepanie pointed out that one in five CEOs is currently navigating a crisis. This is an area where the value of measurement and analytics is often overlooked.
Richard Bagnall cautioned against focusing on activity metrics and emphasised the need to focus on the contribution to what has been achieved. He also reminded us that humans are complex creatures. As public relations is about relationships and reputations it means measuring it is also complex.
Other key takeaways from this panel included:
- Agencies face challenges in measuring and determining attribution for their clients, but attribution isn’t the way to prove value.
- Proving value is difficult when clients lack the internal capability to connect and understand. CMOs focus on outputs and activity because they can control them and can’t control outcomes or impact.
- Clarity and focused objectives are critical.
- Creative examples of measurement include CEO popularity and employee retention after a crisis.
- Need to make more extensive use of testing, optimisation, and behaviour forecasting.
- CEOs and the C-suite will pay for help predicting future outcomes rather than simply reporting on past performance.
The Entrepreneurs’ Forum also addressed the other key issues facing independent communications agencies including purpose, attracting and retaining talent and growing an agency.
From Barbie to geopolitics
Day two of the PRovoke Global Summit showed just how broad the range of issues that corporate communicators must face really is. The day started with a panel on Barbie and “she-conomics” as well as panels on disinformation, geopolitics, inclusion, the climate crisis, AI and ESG.
Is pink the new black was the question addressed by Sex & the City author Candace Bushnell and Ashley Etienne former deputy assistant to President Joe Biden, communications director to vice president Kamala Harris, and communications director and senior advisor for Nancy Pelosi. A date clash meant I missed Jen Psaki at last year’s PRovoke Global Summit, so it was particularly exciting to hear Ashley Etienne. The conversation was moderated by Weber Shandwick CEO Gail Heimann.
Gail started by reminding us that this summer wasn’t just about the Barbie film phenomena (the first billion-dollar revenue film to be directed by a woman), but also Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour (I got tickets, my job as a Dad is complete), the Women’s World Cup and Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour.
But beyond the summer’s successes there lurks the dark spectre of a continuing gender pay gap and a lack of female leadership in business and politics.
The highlight for me was Ashley Etienne sharing anecdotes about Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives and first woman to hold the position. Ashley shared a story about Pelosi meeting Trump in the White House and Trump being his usual misogynistic self. Pelosi told Ashley that the best way to deal with this was for women to develop a counter punch.
Disinformation and the destruction of truth
Fake news isn’t a new phenomenon, but never at the scale and speed we’re seeing now. This is the topic addressed by AnnaMaria DeSalva, CEO of Hill & Knowlton and Mark Listes, CEO of Pendulum Intelligence.
Mark reminded us that creating disinformation and misinformation no longer needed the resources of a country or corporation but that a 20-year-old with an iPhone and TikTok account could create a disinformation story that goes viral within hours.
We include disinformation in crisis communications planning and Mark effectively explained why this is so important. He said that the threat landscape was no longer just affecting large corporations and high-profile entities but that everyone and everything was now susceptible to a disinformation attack.
“Today, we have the best access to fake information of all time. The threat target landscape has really expanded in scope. The world of this doesn’t happen to me because I’m not big enough or not in the news, doesn’t exist anymore.”
Mark Listes, CEO of Pendulum Intelligence
He emphasised the need for proactive engagement before an attack occurred and the need to respond rapidly to threats. This means a well-prepared crisis communications plan, and the right tools to monitor and navigate the information landscape.
AnnaMaria highlighted how CEOs and boards are now taking reputation risk more seriously. She explained how companies are not only forming committees to better manage reputational risks but are also including reputation within the remit of audit committees.
The future of AI in communications
The Atlantic’s CEO Nick Thompson and Corey duBrowa (Starbucks, Salesforce, Google CCO and now BCW CEO). What’s not to love?
In this fascinating conversation we were straight back into the theme of disinformation and fake news. Corey shared how BCW has developed an in-house tool that uses cognitive AI to evaluate disinformation threats and use generative AI to message against those threats.
The previous day was all about independent agencies and Corey’s revelation about BCW’s disinformation tool highlighted just how important it is for independent agencies to get to grips with AI if they are to remain competitive.
Nick Thompson is enthusiastic and energised by the potential opportunities for AI. He encouraged everyone to use it every day. He has used it to create a book for his children about the “animal World Cup’ and used AI to wite anthems for the animals.
“You should be using it every day. I am very confident it is going to be important to all of us, and I tell my people, you don’t have to use it in your work, but please just learn.”
Nick Thompson, CEO, The Atlantic
This is the approach we’re encouraging clients to take. It’s inevitable that PR professionals will need to use AI as AI isn’t coming to take their jobs, but it is coming to take the jobs of professionals who don’t use AI. Before using it professionally they should be experimenting with it personally.
I’m sceptical about the moans from publishers about AI using their content as it appears to be the same myopic approach they took to search and social media. Instead of embracing the opportunities they ignored it and attempted to build defences.
It was refreshing to discover that the CEO of one of the world’s most respected publishers shared my cynicism. He compared AI’s large language models to a person going into a library and reading every issue of The Atlantic. He said we wouldn’t want to stop people doing that and we wouldn’t even stop them copying some of it.
“We are going to lose money because of this. That doesn’t give us a right to an equivalent amount of money. Change happens. There were parts of the publishing industry that got mad at Google for stealing our traffic and wanted compensation for that. There are people who say Google stole our ad money. My reaction to that is, you’re saying they out-competed us.”
Nick Thompson, CEO, The Atlantic
Nick also expressed concern at the direction that regulation and legislation was taking. The requirement for safety testing AI large language models is skewed in favour of the big technology companies with armies of lawyers. That’s why the big tech companies were at the White House, to protect their interests at the expense of innovative, scrappy start-ups that are essential to a competitive market.
Marketing can’t protect your brand or your reputation
Before we left for the PRovoke Global Summit, I was following the story about UK retailer Marks & Spencer’s unfortunate stumble into geopolitics. M&S released its Christmas TV advert which was quickly interpreted as being anti-Palestinian.
One scene showed discarded red, silver and green Christmas hats burning in a roaring fireplace. People were quick to highlight the resemblance to the Palestinian flag. Defenders were quick to point out that the advert was shot in August, long before the current outbreak of renewed violence and that the hats were simply traditional Christmas colours.
Despite being true neither of those are a valid defence. The timing of the release of the advert and use of the scene was entirely in the control of M&S’s marketing and advertising team. Any corporate communications professional could have spotted this as a potential issue. It’s yet another example of marketing focusing solely on its narrow remit and missing the bigger picture that corporate communications professionals are responsible for.
I was reminded of this while listening to a session on the need for chief communications officers to have a deeper understanding of global geopolitics. The session focused on multinationals, but the Marks & Spencer example shows that even companies operating in a single market need to be more aware of politics and culture.
“For companies and organisations to stay on top, it’s not enough for communications folks to kick this to general counsel – in the past we tracked regulations, legislation, foreign policy and elections and now we need to understand stakeholder opinions.”
Pam Jenkins, chief public affairs officer, The Weber Shandwick Collective
My big takeaway from this session was the reminder that public relations needs to always have direct access to the CEO and board to advise on the reputational and relationship implications of decisions. The M&S advert fiasco highlights why corporate communications should have oversight over marketing and advertising.
Richard Edelman recommends pre-buttal
The second day saw us return to the theme of global conflict with the opening keynote covering the Israel Palestine conflict and the closing keynote covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The day started with Edelman chief executive Richard Edelman in conversation with Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. It was an interesting discussion, but like much of the second day was rather too focused on the US, which isn’t necessarily reflective of the rest of the Western world, yet alone the rest of the world.
During the conversation Richard Edelman also talked about the benefits of ‘pre-buttal’ rather the rebuttal. This a strategy where a company or organisation is proactive at identifying potential attacks and pre-butting them by putting its messages out first in order to set the narrative. Despite Richard’s enthusiasm this isn’t an Edelman thing. It’s a strategy that is used extensively by NATO. At the AMEC global summit in Miami earlier this year I heard Carmen Romero, deputy assistant secretary general for NATO’s public diplomacy division explain how NATO’s communications strategy included ‘prebunking’ to prevent Russia creating a fake narrative that needed to be debunked.
Brands need to understand what it means to be over 50
The surprise hit of the three days for me was Martha Boudreau, ARRP’s chief communications and marketing officer. The ARRP is a powerful US lobbying group and its real name used to be the American Association of Retired Persons.
Martha highlighted the stupidity and prejudice of marketing teams that are obsessed by youth. She reminded us of the size and spending power of older demographics.
It’s perhaps not surprising that marketing and advertising lacks the ability to target broader age ranges as the teams running the campaigns often lack diversity and inclusion. A team staffed exclusively by younger people can’t possibly have the experience and expertise to target all age ranges. The irony is that it’s much easier for older people to understand younger people than it is the other way round, as older people have the lived experience and empathy that younger people can never have.
The future of AI – opportunities and risks
Jeremiah Oywang is someone I’ve known virtually for years. He joined Twitter (now X) in December 2006, a few days before me. We’ve both always been involved in the latest developments in digital and social communications.
The first thing that struck me about Jeremiah’s keynote on the opportunities and risks of AI for communications is the similarities with my own keynote on AI for communications. However, I shouldn’t have been surprised as if I look at the tiny handful of PR practitioners around the world who actually get AI for comms then we’re mainly taking similar approaches.
Jeremiah started by emphasising the scale and speed of what’s happening. He used the same startling data that I do by revealing that ChatGPT took just five days to reach one million users, compared to five months for Spotify and two years for Twitter. ChatGPT hit one hundred million users in just two months.
One example that he revealed was that a leading global pharma company is already generating 15% of if its content using AI. It’s not an example I can use as without knowing which company and more about how I don’t think there is much corporate communicators can learn from this.
Jeremiah’s excellent keynote ranged over the wide range of opportunities that AI provides for corporate communications. As I sat listening to him talking about the things that I usually talk about I was struck by the size of the task that confronts us. Public relations professionals aren’t renowned for embracing the future or new ways of working and they are now facing changes much more revolutionary than anything that has gone before.
Perhaps the most important point Jermiah made was that asking search is rapidly being usurped by asking AI. This has profound implications for corporate communications. Many corporate communicators still struggle with the importance of search on reputation and relationships despite the fact it’s more than 15 years since Richard Edelman said Google is the world’s largest reputation management engine.
“If corporate communications hasn’t yet adapted enough to the importance of search and social media then how is it going to cope with the even more rapid emergence of AI.”
Stuart Bruce, PR Futurist, co-founder of Purposeful Relations
The theme of Jeremiah’s keynote was best summed up by a remark in the follow-up conversation with Gloria Vanderham, CEO of Bliss BioHealth and Bill Jewell, chief information officer at the US Chamber of Commerce:
“You can’t learn to drive a car while in park. Start now.”
Gloria Vanderham, CEO, Bliss BioHealth
Stand with Ukraine
The final session of the PRovoke Global Summit was a keynote by Natalya Popovych, founder of PR agency One Philosophy, but perhaps better known for her role as co-chair of the Ukraine Communications Support Network and on the board of Business for Ukraine.
Natalya reminded us that despite more recent events taking our attention that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was still an ongoing horror. She urged corporate communications professionals to go much further in counselling clients and employers to withdraw from Russia. She reminded us that companies active in Russia were paying taxes, both directly and via their employees, that were being used to fund the Russian invasion.
Global SABRE Awards 2023
The PRovoke Global Summit finished with the presentation of the Global SABRE Awards at a gala cocktail reception and dinner. I’ve previously judged the SABRE Awards so know how high the standard of entry is and how hard it is to win the international region categories.
As Paul Holmes explained the 40 entries that made it through to the global awards were already outstanding winners in their own right.
Some of my favourites from the evening (not necessarily in the same order as the countdown from 40 to 1) were:
- Outhorse your email by Visit Iceland and M&C Saatchi Talk
- Mercy Ships with APO Group
- Helping Amigo Loans survive by Lansons
- Persil with Golin
- The lost letters of Hawkins Wilson by Ancestry and Weber Shandwick
- Vaseline with Edelman
- Dove keep the grey for Unilever by Edelman Canada
- Honest Eggs by BCW Australia
- A year of transformation for Mobile Premier League
- And HP Streetcode for HP by Edelman (which was the overall winner).
Read more about the PRovoke Global Summit
You can read more about all of the sessions on the PRovoke website where the team has written individual articles on each of the sessions.
