The PRovoke Influence 100 is always one of its most interesting annual features. It identifies the top 100 most influential in-house communicators around the world. PRovoke has published four in-depth insight analyses of the list including one on roles, diversity and AI.
I’ve done my own analysis of what the PRovoke Influence 100 says about AI and its impact on communications and public relations. Only 37 of the 100 provided answers to PRovoke’s questions so I anlaysed those interviews to understand attitudes towards AI.
AI was most often mentioned in answer to the question “What are the communications industry’s biggest challenges and opportunities in the year ahead?”.
Six in 10 said AI is the communications industry’s biggest opportunity.
AI was seen by most as an opportunity, but several recognised AI’s significance as both an opportunity and a threat.
Paul Matthews, Head of Communications at Unilever said:
AI represents both an enormous opportunity and challenge. The opportunity is to be even more impactful and effective in how we work, and to play a critical role in helping to guide organisations through the enormous change it brings. The challenge will be doing this well, responsibly, and keeping up with the enormous pace that AI is transforming the landscape.”
Charlotte West, VP Global Corporate Communications, Lenovo said:
AI is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity. The industry needs to get to grips with what it means for our function and craft (beyond the hype), what efficiencies it can really bring, and how we need to manage the risks that go with that.”
Alex Burnett, EVP, Chief Communications Officer at Adnoc was another to highlight both challenges and opportunities:
Adapting to AI will be the biggest challenge – avoiding knee jerk reactions. Adapting to AI will also be the biggest opportunity – harnessing it’s potential to support data-led communications, augment creativity and enhance efficiency.”
He also said he admired the communication industry’s ability to embrace AI, but was disappointed by AI hype.
Dominic Redfern, EVP Strategic Communications & Brand at Shell said:
With AI adoption and integration continuing at pace, the industry will be challenged to build greater levels of trust. This presents a significant opportunity for corporates and PR agencies to engage more, identify areas of concern and enable the communications profession to establish thought leadership in a space with profound implications for our industry.”
Another to recognise AI as both an opportunity and a challenge is Valerie Tan, SVP Corporate Communications, CSR & Media at Emirates. She says we can’t escape AI in any discussion.
Anna Burr, VP Corporate Communications of Lego sees it as being about:
“harnessing the benefits of AI to remove the grind while staying alert to its risks, especially around disinformation.”
Some communications leaders are already ahead of the game. When asked “What have you most admired about the communications industry over the past year?”, Andreas Bartels, Head of Communications at Lufthansa in Germany said “the ability to adapt to AI.”
Bartel’s perspective isn’t reflected in most research data which shows the PR and communications industry is slow to adapt. But it perhaps reflects his position at Lufthansa and his ability to embrace more effective ways of working by using AI.
Also in Germany Jan Ranau, Chief Corporate Communications Officer of Adidas highlighted the rise of AI as the key challenge with his opportunity being “the importance of live communication.”
Kate Cronin, Chief Brand Officer at Moderna astutely identified a trend that we are witnessing at Purposeful Relations. In-house teams appear to be far more astute than agencies at recognising the significance of AI and investing in the training and technology to take advantage of it. She said:
The biggest challenge and opportunity is how to integrate AI into our daily work routine. Some agencies are doing it but overall, I feel we are leading it more. This is an opportunity for the entire industry to lead the way… disappointed that comms isn’t leading the AI charge.”
One communications leader who is always nimble and willing to experiment is Sujit Patil, Chief Communications Officer at Godrej Industries Group in India who shares my excitement and frustration that “conversations around use of generative AI are on a rise and experimentation is visible” but also that “the pace is slow”.
Jonathan Adashek, SVP Marketing & Communications at IBM identified AI and corresponding skills for his opportunity and challenge, but also echoed Sujit’s and my convern and said he was “disappointed at how people are adopting AI and other new technologies.”
PRovoke’s insight on AI
Last year, for the first time, PRovoke asked its Influence 100 about the extent to which their teams were using generative AI tools. Then just 5% said their teams were using generative AI regularly. That has jumped to 23% today. But 44% still say either a little or not at all.
The PRovoke insight article also highlights some other key positive themes such as:
- Improving productivity
- Creating more creative personalised content
- Making basic tasks easier to free up time for strategic work
- Using data and analytics more effectively
- Segmenting and understanding stakeholders and audiences
AI’s role as a ‘co-pilot’ to augment, enable and assist rather than replace was a common theme.
Some of the concerns about AI that they expressed included:
- Risk to entry level roles
- Lowering creative quality
- Disinformation and fake content
More opinions from the PRovoke Influence 100
In the USA Allyson Park, chief communications officer at Walmart identified AI as one of four key trends:
I’m seeing four trends – an increasingly complicated stakeholder ecosystem, the disruption of news, the rise of AI and new threat environments – which all will present challenges and opportunities.”
Bea Perez, EVP, Global Chief Communications, Sustainability & Strategic Partnerships Officer at Coca-Cola said:
AI. We now know that ChatGPT can write a press release that rivals that from a human being, but the depth and breadth of the technology is unknown, and with misinformation driving news cycles, AI will be a critical part of fact-checking and ensuring credibly.”
Torod Neptune, SVP, Chief Communications Office at Meditronic believes AI can help PR and communications to have more impact:
The focus on value creation over nice-to-do work is our biggest challenge. The greatest opportunity is fully deploying AI across our discipline to enable this shift.”
From the Middle East, Brian Lott, Chief Communications Officer of Mubadala in the UAE believes we can “use AI to help our profession get smarter.”
Lena Goh, MD Public Affairs at Temasek in Singapore recognises the opportunities presented by AI and said:
With the advent of AI, it will disrupt many jobs – but importantly it will also help to provide many new higher value work. Our fellow practitioners will need to upskill and pivot, and get comfortable with leveraging on AI tools and applications to help them with building their insights pre-emptively. This will in turn help the PR industry to add more business value to their organisations.”
All the large management consultants are beavering away charging millions to impart AI advice to their multinational clients and governements. Meanwhile Ramiro Prudencio, Partner, Global Director of Communications at McKinsey & Co believes the communication industry’s biggest challenge and opportunity is:
Managing the incorporation of AI tools, upskilling teams, and driving real organizational value.”
Another to recognise the importance of AI skills and training is Lavanya Wadgaonkar, Corporate VP & Chief Communications Officer at Nissan:
“Talent will remain a challenge as we integrate new skill sets with AI, while it also opens up a new world of opportunities.”
As it’s a technology company it’s perhaps not surprisng that Stella Low, Chief Corporate Affairs & Communications Officer at HP is already embracing AI with her teams while also recognising the risks that need to be mitigated:
Generative AI presents a significant opportunity in the coming years. In the next year, we will continue to focus on educating and inspiring our teams, developing use cases for incorporating gen AI into communications, and transitioning to a model where gen AI can handle routine tasks, freeing up our teams to focus on more meaningful work. However, there are also challenges to consider, such as regulatory issues, the potential for increased fake news, and the need to ensure that gen AI is used responsibly.”
Finally Rohit Bansal, Group Head of Communications at Reliance Industries in India had a novel take on relaxing. When asked “How have you switched off from work and maintained wellness over the past year?” he said it was by signing up for courses in artificial intelligence.
What does six in 10 comms leaders saying AI is the communications industry’s biggest opportunity really mean?
The emphasis on AI by the world’s most influential communication leaders is inspiring. Hopefully their views will turn out to be influential and the public relations and communications industry will listen to them. However, the risk is that once again the profession will be slow to learn, change and adapt, just as it was with the advent of SEO and social media.
At Purposeful Relations we see demand for our in-house AI for comms workshops and masterclasses, so we know that at least some in-house communications and PR agencies want to learn about AI.
If reading the views of members of the PRovoke Influence 100 have inspired you to find out more about how you and your team can use AI then get in touch.
