Hearts & Minds: As search declines and chat rises, media relations finds new relevance

Sam Altman once claimed that one day 95 per cent of marketing will be done by AI. Of course, the OpenAI founder may have been engaging in a degree of product and self-promotion, but there is no doubt that robots will have a growing influence on advertising copy.

At this year’s Cannes ad-land fest, just finished, TikTok, Meta, Google and the rest were parading tech that can produce ad content. That’s bearing in mind that a large proportion of the $1trn that goes on ads annually is spent on hum-drum campaigns, rather than the award-winning groundbreakers and the Hollywood-quality epics.

Within that context, it would seem that comms days are also numbered. But one of the lessons from Cannes, reports The Economist, is that comms – and more specifically, the art of media relations – will be more necessary than ever.

After reporting that advertising is likely to return to formats such as billboards – as AI allows highly effective measuring of eyeballs and purchases, making marketers question the value of the most expensive channels and slots – the magazine says this: ‘Another unexpected winner is old-school public relations.’ Why? ‘Because as ‘consumers switch from search-engines to chatbots, brands need to persuade LLMs to speak highly of them. The most effective way to do that is to influence the sources that the model pays most attention to, such as news articles.’

To which there can only be one response, and it is a Friday: Yes, yes and yes! Think about it, though, and it is obvious that comms has a healthy future. While great claims are made for AI’s brilliance and its myriad uses, LLMs certainly, are little more than super-fast search engines. Others, doubtless the more tech-minded, may disagree and argue there is a tonne of genius involved but it still comes down to a high-speed trawl of everything that is out there. Companies, if they want their brands and reputations to shine, must ensure that what the chatbot is trawling is as good as it can be.

It's similar to the now time-honoured conundrum of trying to guarantee that what Google sees, what journalists and the public read, puts a company or individual in a favourable light. The best way to accomplish that is to make the published material as positive as possible. Crudely and definitely non-tech, you want the healthy stuff to rise and to swamp.

Have an even better weekend.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.