The power of AI in communications: Basic applications to strategic implementation

In this episode, Shel Holtz joins On Top of PR host Jason Mudd to discuss AI in corporate communications.

Tune in to learn more!

Our guest

Shel Holtz leads communications innovation at Webcor, a premier commercial construction firm. As Webcor’s senior director of communication, Holtz pioneers AI integration in corporate communications. He brings over two decades of Fortune 400 experience and strategic communication expertise to help organizations navigate digital transformation.

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the episode here:

5 things you’ll learn during the full episode:

1. Strategic AI implementation in PR workflows
2. Advanced prompting techniques for superior AI-generated content
3. Cutting-edge AI platforms for diverse media creation, from visuals to audio
4. Essential guidelines for ethical AI use in communications
5. Career advancement strategies in an AI-enhanced PR landscape

Quotables

• "AI is transforming PR fundamentally. It's not about uniform implementation but personalized workflows that enhance strategic thinking." — @ShelHoltz
• "The future belongs to communicators who leverage AI for enhanced productivity while maintaining human creativity." — @ShelHoltz
• "Strategic AI disclosure builds trust. Be transparent when AI use could influence audience perception." — @ShelHoltz
• "AI liberates PR professionals from routine tasks, enabling focus on high-value strategic planning." — @ShelHoltz
• "Success in modern PR requires mastering AI as a strategic tool, not fearing it as a replacement." — @ShelHoltz
• "Effective AI implementation requires understanding both technology capabilities and human communication needs." — @ShelHoltz
• "Tomorrow's PR leaders will be those who strategically combine AI efficiency with human insight." — @ShelHoltz
• "I'm definitely leading the charge of AI within my organization, showing examples and inspiring others instead of thinking the old way." — @JasonMudd9
• "We can produce more volume than before at a greater quality using AI. That's what makes us more valuable to our clients." — @JasonMudd9

Resources

• LinkedIn: Shel Holtz
• Website: holtz.com
• Twitter: @ShelHoltz

Additional Episode Resources from Axia Public Relations:

• Listen to more episodes of the On Top of PR podcast.
• Find out more about Axia Public Relations.

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Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:09:29

Announcer

Welcome to On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer.

00:00:09:29 - 00:00:29:28

Jason

Hello and welcome to On Top of PR. I’m your host, Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. Today, I'm joined by a special guest, Shel Holtz. He is the senior director of communication at Web Core, a leading commercial general contractor and builder based in California with nearly 50 years of experience, Shel is a seasoned expert in strategic communication.

00:00:30:01 - 00:00:54:06

Jason

He is a certified Strategic Communication Management professional and has held several communication roles at fortune 400 companies for over 20 years. Shell worked as an independent consultant, advising major corporations worldwide on integrating digital technologies into their communication strategy, enhancing internal communication and leveraging social media shell. Welcome to on top of PR.

00:00:54:09 - 00:00:57:19

Shel

Thanks, Jason. Pleasure to be here. Appreciate the invitation.

00:00:57:21 - 00:01:15:18

Jason

Yeah, I'm glad to be here and glad you're here too. And today we're talking about the power of AI and communication. It's a topic I feel like we can't exhaust enough right now, especially as you and I were talking before the recording. How, you know, shockingly, some people are just still, you know, resistant and, not even getting involved in AI.

00:01:15:21 - 00:01:32:26

Jason

And I think we'll get to that a little bit later in the episode, because I sense we both have strong opinions about that. So the first, you know, for our topic today, The power of AI and communication, let's talk initially about kind of, basic uses of AI for communication professionals show.

00:01:32:28 - 00:02:01:21

Shel

Sure. And there are a lot. And for communicators to figure out what the best use cases are for them, they need to conduct R&D. You need to be the researcher in your organization. As as I've been telling anyone who will listen, this is really the first technology that has been introduced into the business world that is not used uniformly the same way by everybody in the company.

00:02:01:22 - 00:02:25:13

Shel

When we looked at the introduction of email, we looked at the introduction of web browsers. For example, it rolled these out and you could train everybody to use them the same way. And then they were able to do their jobs using these tools with AI as it is configured today, which and we're talking about generative AI here, right?

00:02:25:16 - 00:02:50:19

Shel

Right now it's all chat bots. It's it's ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and perplexity and tools like that. Those are the text to text. There's multimodal as well, and there's text to video and text to image and image to image and all of these different permutations of generative AI. It's all personal use. It's how you're going to use it when you're sitting at your computer.

00:02:50:21 - 00:03:12:18

Shel

Nobody needs to teach you how to enter text into a text field. How do you use it in your job? What? You need to invite it to the table for everything you do. And figure out where it adds value in the workflows that you're engaged with every single day. So I can't sit here and tell communicators how they're going to use it on the job.

00:03:12:18 - 00:03:37:08

Shel

I can certainly talk about how I use it as a communicator in my job. And, you know, it's in tons of ways. The last thing I do with it, though, is, is writing. Most people talk about it as, a writer. I think it generally is mediocre. With good prompts, it can be pretty good.

00:03:37:10 - 00:04:04:11

Shel

I have used it in my writing process. So when I talk about a workflow, I've outlined what my workflow is for an article, starting with identifying a topic and ending with adding Subheads and and doing an edit. And I have experimented with AI the for each step of article writing, and I've identified where in the workflow it fits, and I have adjusted my workflows to accommodate that.

00:04:04:11 - 00:04:28:14

Shel

So I have added the idea that I'm going to analyze the analytics that we have internally on our intranet to find out what kind of articles people are reading, so that when I have to write an article about something, I am able to adapt it into, the style of something that we know people are interested in. To give it that angle.

00:04:28:17 - 00:04:58:07

Shel

If I'm going to interview a subject matter expert on a topic that I have no particular knowledge, if I work for a construction company and I'm not an engineer. So I talk to a lot of people about a lot of things where I have no background and no knowledge and no expertise. I'll go to one of the frontier models and I'll say, I'm interviewing a project director about this aspect of construction of this kind of a commercial facility.

00:04:58:09 - 00:05:22:02

Shel

Might be a hospital. It might be some infrastructure project. I have these questions listed that I'm going to ask. What questions am I not asking that I should, in order to get to the information that I need in order to produce a really useful and interesting article for people? I'll play devil's advocate if I'm doing a, communication change program.

00:05:22:04 - 00:05:51:10

Shel

We're introducing, Workday at Web Core. We have been going through this, for pretty much the last 7 or 8 months, in phases. So this is a change, communication effort. And I'll say, here's our strategic plan for change. For the introduction of workday, which consolidates several tools that people were using to record their time and, and other HR and finance and accounting, activities.

00:05:51:12 - 00:06:15:04

Shel

This is the case that we are making to employees. What pushback can I expect? Invariably asking for new interview questions, asking for, the the the model to play devil's advocate. I'm going to get answers that I hadn't considered. I'm going to get a lot of answers I did consider that I'd already thought of, but I'll get 2 or 3 questions to ask.

00:06:15:04 - 00:06:39:15

Shel

Or 2 or 3. Reasons that employees might not buy into the argument that we're making that I hadn't considered before. So, you know, you think of it as kind of like a really smart intern that can take on tasks that you assign it with a certain amount of, of guidance and, and good input and, and hand-holding. It can produce some great results.

00:06:39:17 - 00:07:01:00

Shel

I use the image generators, on our intranet. Because the intranet that I inherited when I came there, it's a platform that I hate with a fire of a thousand suns. And one of the reasons is, that it requires a banner image for every article. And it doesn't matter how small the how short the article is.

00:07:01:02 - 00:07:30:09

Shel

It can just be an announcement of something you still have to have. That that, landscape banner image or it throws up a gray rectangle. We're a very visual organization. We're building things. But not every article lends itself to a visual. A photo from one of our projects. And, you know, I've sort of been confined to stock photo services, and, you know, a stock photo looks like a stock photo.

00:07:30:12 - 00:07:57:20

Shel

But now I'm able to go to, you know, Midjourney, for example, or Dall-E three, or or, you know, any of the image generators, that are out there doing amazing things now and give it information about the abstract topic that I'm writing about. It could be, for example, new sustainability regulations for building in California, that that are focused on carbon reduction.

00:07:57:22 - 00:08:23:21

Shel

It could be the fact that we are building up our internal expertise around mechanical, electrical and plumbing MEP with core and shell experts. But we think that we would be of greater value to clients if we had equal expertise in MEP. So there are articles like this we did wondering Construction inclusion Week that was about advocating on behalf of black employees.

00:08:23:21 - 00:08:52:21

Shel

And we have, a senior executive who has been advocating for years on behalf of a black employee in our technology function, and she has risen up to become the VP, the highest ranking person running the the technology team. So we did interviews with both of them and needed an image, to convey this idea. And, they had both talked about this notion of being the only person in the room who looks like you.

00:08:52:23 - 00:09:12:24

Shel

So I was able to work, I think it was with Midjourney, through several iterations to finally get to something that really spoke to that concept of being the only person in the room who looks like you and how that must feel. And one other example I'll give you is, we do, an April Fool's article every year.

00:09:12:27 - 00:09:33:00

Shel

This year we announced that we're acquiring a commercial treehouse builder. There's no such thing as a commercial treehouse builder, but I needed images of commercial tree houses and, got photographs, that that actually fooled some of our employees into thinking that this was, real and not an April Fool's story. Just knocked me out. I couldn't believe that.

00:09:33:03 - 00:09:55:28

Shel

We also use, text to voice for all of the articles that we are doing now that are focused on AI in particular. We're converting those to audio so that employees have the option to click a play button and listen to it instead of, reading it. And we have plans to do that ultimately, with every article that goes up on the internet.

00:09:55:28 - 00:10:17:10

Shel

But for right now, we're using it for demonstration purposes, with, just, the AI focused articles. But, I mean, this really just kind of scratches the surface of what I'm using AI for on the job. I use it, I would have to say hourly, there's hardly anything there. I haven't found a way that I can help me.

00:10:17:13 - 00:10:18:04

Jason

Right.

00:10:18:04 - 00:10:38:02

Jason

Yeah. My biggest challenge has been, just, input overload. Right where you have so much input that it actually takes a little bit longer to, to accomplish it within. And, we've been doing the text, to voice feature on our blog for a few years now. And, you know, I'm not sure what the redemption is on that, but it's a nice feature to have.

00:10:38:05 - 00:10:45:06

Jason

You know, I know I've wanted to listen to our have content read to me while I'm on the go or something like that. So I'm sure that's helpful.

00:10:45:24 - 00:11:03:06

Shel

Yeah. I mean, you know, project engineers spend their days in front of computer monitors with spreadsheets and drawings and headphones on. And we've actually listening to music and some of them are, and some of them are listening to podcasts. And if, if they can do their work and listen to a podcast, they can do their work and listen to an article.

00:11:03:06 - 00:11:11:26

Shel

So we're hoping that it actually, I mean, if, if 20 people listen instead of read, that's 20 people who might not have read the article before.

00:11:11:27 - 00:11:21:01

Jason

That's exactly right. Good point. Good point. Well, let's talk about prompting generative AI and, how do you prompt AI for optimal results?

00:11:21:03 - 00:11:44:05

Shel

Well, I think first we need to distinguish between asking a question and prompting, asking. I think people have adopted this notion of prompt as what you do with AI. I think what most people are doing is asking questions. They're querying, they're not prompting. Prompting is a process. And there's a number of different ways to go about it depending on what you're trying to accomplish.

00:11:44:07 - 00:12:15:26

Shel

I would say that the best prompts start off with assigning a persona to the AI, so that it provides its answers through the lens that you have told it to. I will say that you are, and you depends on what I'm asking it to do. You are a marketing professional who has won multiple international awards for your business to business marketing campaigns.

00:12:15:29 - 00:12:48:18

Shel

So by doing that, you are affecting how it's going to access the tokens that are in the neurons. That it uses to predict the next token. And, and it it's going to give you a better, less generic answer. You've probably heard people say, I can always tell when I has written something because it sounds like I, that's when you say write something about X as opposed to priming it with, with these, with a prompt.

00:12:48:21 - 00:13:27:15

Shel

And then, you know, the more detail that you can give it, the more that you can get it to frame its responses a certain way, the better those responses are going to be. There's a great example of this, that Christopher Aspin shared on LinkedIn, where basically he wanted one of the frontier models to write the, country music lyrics for a song about McDonald's French fries, and how they're so great when you first get them in, they're hot, but five minutes later they're just okay because they're cooling off.

00:13:27:18 - 00:14:02:13

Shel

And 20 minutes later they're soggy, terrible cardboard. Yeah. Right. Right. So he started off, by saying you are a Grammy winning lyricist who specializes in country music lyrics. What are the characteristics of a successful country music song? And it produced a list and he said, great. Now, based on that, which of these characteristics are unique to country western songs that you wouldn't find in other genres of songs?

00:14:02:13 - 00:14:35:23

Shel

And it did that. And he continued this questioning process, until what he had was a final document that was rather long, that had detailed information about the characteristics of, you know, chart busting country songs. Then he pasted that document in and said, based on all of this information, right, the lyrics to a country western song about McDonald's French fries and how they're so great when they're hot, but then they go bad.

00:14:35:25 - 00:15:13:10

Shel

And it did a great job. And I think he used pseudo to put that to country western music. You could hear it, on LinkedIn, but what he said is anytime you wanted to write country western lyrics, now go back to that document and paste it in so that it has all of that information. It's all prime and prompted to produce something that is relevant and, you know, narrowly focused and and effective as opposed to, you know, just say, write a country western song and have it come back with something generic and awful.

00:15:13:12 - 00:15:35:11

Shel

The other things to keep in mind in prompting is don't settle for the first response that you get, continue to ask questions, challenge it, ask it to try again, and explain why, and and treat it like it's a person. It's not, you. I think it's important to keep that in mind. These are not people.

00:15:35:11 - 00:15:59:12

Shel

These are neural networks. They don't have lived experience or empathy or any of that. I mean, all the things that you've heard people talk about since this, all, erupted about two years ago with the launch of, the initial ChatGPT, service. But if you treat it like a person, you're going to get better results.

00:15:59:12 - 00:16:24:01

Shel

In fact, I have found that being polite to it pays off. I read somebody suggested that if you tell it that you're on a tight deadline and that your career rides on this, it's going to give you better answers. Who cares? In fact, you know, we talk about the tendency of AI to hallucinate, to make stuff up, right?

00:16:24:03 - 00:16:49:16

Shel

And, you know, part of that is if it doesn't have a definitive answer in its training set, it's going to want to give you an answer because its interest is in satisfying you more than it is interested in being accurate. So so it'll make stuff up. But the the the more you prompt it, the more information you give it, the less inclined it's going to be to do that.

00:16:49:18 - 00:17:00:15

Shel

So, you know, have that conversation, and, and, and provide all the detail you can and, and make it frame its answers.

00:17:00:17 - 00:17:20:25

Jason

Yeah. That's good. I, I like what you're saying. The one thing, and I've had the same experience, you know, the more you prompt it and give it background and input, the better. And, you know, you said you can always tell when someone uses AI. I think the clarification is you can always tell when someone uses AI without giving it that good background, because we've definitely produced content.

00:17:21:03 - 00:17:51:01

Jason

I personally produce content that no one knows the wiser that it's, you know, AI generated because of so much prompting and revising and things like that. So, I got to say, you know, I see days where it feels like days where I is just not sharp. And, and I don't know if it's the operator, but, you know, like, even yesterday, my car has, full self-driving mode, and it was acting terrible yesterday and much better the day before kind of thing.

00:17:51:03 - 00:18:02:26

Jason

And so I, I just wonder what happens at times where I feel like your the prompts just aren't as helpful. Or the, the response you're getting or the output you're getting is not as spot on.

00:18:02:28 - 00:18:24:06

Shel

I wish I had a good answer for you. What I tend to do when I'm seeing one of the models struggling is I'll just bounce over to one of the other ones. Right. And I have a tendency, for example, if I, if I'm working on an article and I'm looking for help with writing, I'm trying to find the right word or the right phrase, and I'll share.

00:18:24:06 - 00:18:30:07

Shel

I tend to use clod for that from anthropic. Right. They each tend to have

00:18:30:07 - 00:18:39:01

Shel

their strengths. But if if one of them is acting wonky, I'll just flip over to one of the other ones. Because they're not sharing the same,

00:18:39:01 - 00:18:48:03

Shel

you know, servers, the same chips. So I find that they, they don't all go that way at the same time.

00:18:48:03 - 00:18:49:13

Shel

Sure. I make.

00:18:49:13 - 00:18:51:07

Jason

Change. I'm glad I asked.

00:18:51:07 - 00:19:03:15

Shel

I'm glad to have. Yeah. And in order to do that, I am paying for the pro accounts for all of them. And I'm doing that out of my own pocket because I don't want it to come off my my meager budget, I gotcha.

00:19:03:17 - 00:19:14:07

Jason

All right, so we've already talked a little bit about different AI platforms, for creating various forms of media. And I'd like to come back to that on the other side after we take this quick break. So.

00:19:14:07 - 00:19:38:25

Announcer

You're listening to On Top of PR with your host, Jason Mudd. Jason is a trusted advisor to some of America's most admired and fastest growing brands. He is the managing partner at Axia Public Relations, a PR agency that guides news, social and web strategies for national companies. And now, back to the show.

00:19:38:25 - 00:19:56:01

Jason

Welcome back to On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mode. I'm joined by Shell Holtz, and we're talking about AI and the power of AI in the communication profession. So we were just getting into the different AI platforms for creating various forms of media. You've mentioned a few already. Are there any others you wanted to share with our audience?

00:19:56:04 - 00:20:16:25

Shel

I have been having a great time with Suno, which is for music creation. I just used it yesterday. In fact, we had a grand opening of an office, and I shot some video and photos and put together a video and needed a music bed. And rather than spend an hour and a half listening to Licensable music, I just told it what I wanted.

00:20:16:25 - 00:20:33:01

Shel

It created a four minute song and I just popped it right in instrumental and it just worked fine. Took me a, maybe 3 or 4 minutes. So. And right now, Suno is still completely free. They don't even have a paid version yet, so. And they've just released a new version. It's remarkable.

00:20:33:03 - 00:20:39:20

Jason

Nice. Well, I'll be sure to make a note to tell my team about that. Any other recommendations?

00:20:39:22 - 00:21:03:29

Shel

Runway. If you're looking to do video, video is still a five second, ten second clips. You're not going to produce a training video with, services like, runway. These are going to be nice transitions, or CGI type shots that you're not able to get with your camera. But, it can be nice for that sort of thing.

00:21:03:29 - 00:21:35:02

Shel

There's also, some services like Cynthia, and gamma. Cynthia will create an entire video training program based on a little bit of input from you. I asked it, just as an experiment to create a, an explainer on internal podcasts. And it gave me, like a seven minute presentation with two speakers and, and some nice, some, some footage, that it grabbed and, it did a nice job.

00:21:35:02 - 00:21:54:07

Shel

Gamma will create, PowerPoint presentation. And again, I experimented with that. I said, create a PowerPoint presentation about why dogs make better pets than cats. And it gave me 12 slides with images and and attitude. Yeah. It was, amazing. This this this stuff is just remarkable.

00:21:54:10 - 00:22:02:17

Jason

Okay. That's very helpful. We also want to kind of share with the audience about having a backup plan and preparing for AI platform shake up.

00:22:02:17 - 00:22:05:28

Jason

What do you expecting there, or what are you cautioning about that?

00:22:06:08 - 00:22:39:06

Shel

Well, I, I I think you need to understand, when you're using AI, that there are still pitfalls and be prepared. I mean, this is something that I have baked into. I talked about workflows. So if if I'm using AI in my workflow, not only do I have to add AI to the workflow as a tool for this particular communication activity, I also have to add the fact that I'm going to have to verify that the AI was accurate in the output that it gave me.

00:22:39:09 - 00:23:10:06

Shel

I'm going to have to check it for bias, because the data that it is trained on has bias baked into it, and therefore it has been trained in a biased way and can produce biased results. So all of those are things that you have to consider when you're planning to use this for communication. And of course, if you become overly reliant on it and the darn thing goes down, which I haven't seen, I haven't seen, like, the Twitter fail.

00:23:10:06 - 00:23:22:19

Shel

Well, type of frequency with these tools, but, it's always possible. Yeah. You make a need to be prepared. Yeah, you need to be prepared. Be prepared?

00:23:22:21 - 00:23:44:20

Jason

Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned earlier about how, you know, I is like an intern. I use that example all the time. And, you know, the intern that doesn't quit, after getting frustrated with, you know, 6% of revisions and always being told to go back, you know, go back and try again. And that's probably my favorite thing about it, is it's the worker that's available 24 seven, 365 without complaints.

00:23:44:20 - 00:23:56:17

Jason

And no matter how much you know, and I'm always polite to it, I always think to myself, why am I being so polite? You know, but it's it's just kind of one of those things. It's in my nature to try to be polite and appreciative. So.

00:23:56:19 - 00:24:18:03

Shel

Yeah. And I think that's a good thing to teach kids, too. Otherwise they'll start treating everybody the way they treat the AI. Yeah. And of course, what we're looking at now is the agents coming out, starting next year, this whole concept of a genetic AI, which rather than query response, you're going to assign it a task and it will take multiple steps on its own.

00:24:18:10 - 00:24:24:13

Shel

Right. Actually using your screen, to book flights or.

00:24:24:14 - 00:24:24:27

Jason

Right.

00:24:24:27 - 00:24:28:14

Shel

Nice, you know, post social media items or what have you.

00:24:28:17 - 00:24:47:06

Jason

You're reminding me of the meme where people were like, I don't need AI to to replace my job. I just need to do my dishes in my laundry. Right. So that's what I want to. All right, let's talk about disclosure and ethics of using AI in communication. And we will also put a link to, an episode that I did about this previously as well.

00:24:47:06 - 00:24:50:09

Jason

But. So what are your thoughts there on disclosure and ethics? Sure.

00:24:50:09 - 00:25:09:15

Shel

And I wrote a LinkedIn article about this because, there are people out there saying that you need to disclose when you used AI every single time, no matter what it was. And I think that's ridiculous. Yeah. I think you need to disclose whenever the use of AI, if people don't know that you used it, could lead them to be deceived.

00:25:09:18 - 00:25:30:25

Shel

Or, you know, thinking that, something was real that wasn't, I'll give you an example of when I did not disclose the use of. Well, first of all, I don't disclose that I used AI for those banner images. Right. Yes. Errors. I don't just I didn't disclose that I used a stock photo service before that or a graphic artist.

00:25:30:28 - 00:26:02:11

Shel

But I got a request from one of our executives to synthesize a long document. It was the result of a brainstorming session with all of the companies leaders. I was in that meeting. It was a squat analysis. And, I was looking at easy two and a half days of work, to right handle the the several hundred bullet points and consolidate and eliminate duplication and put them all in the same tone of voice and categorize them into right categories with the right labels.

00:26:02:14 - 00:26:28:05

Shel

And then it occurred to me this was, in the April following the release of ChatGPT. So April 2023, and I took all of the strings, I scrubbed them so my company's name wasn't anywhere in that document, nor was our parent company's name, nor were any executive names or project names. And then I basically gave it the instructions that the executive had given me.

00:26:28:08 - 00:26:49:17

Shel

And it did a great job. I had to pull up the original documents side by side. And I made some changes that had deleted a few things that I needed to have in there. There were a couple labels that were not right. There were a couple of bullets that needed to be put in different categories. I repeated this for all four, elements of the Swot analysis.

00:26:49:19 - 00:27:23:13

Shel

And then married them up into a word document. Did I tell the executive that I use AI to do this? Now, first of all, he wouldn't have cared and I wouldn't have told them that I'd used Excel, to crunch some numbers that I used. Right? Right. On the other hand, if our CEO gave a speech and I used AI to have him give that speech in his own voice in Italian, for employees in Italy, if we had any, I would absolutely disclose because he doesn't speak Italian.

00:27:23:13 - 00:27:40:02

Shel

And I don't want anyone to be deceived. I don't want anyone to think that, he speaks Italian, or I'll tell people that, this is AI that we employed so that you could hear the CEO in his own voice give you the same remarks that he gave to, our American employees in English.

00:27:40:04 - 00:27:56:28

Jason

Yeah. That's good, that's good, I like that. All right, so the last thing we want to talk about during our time together is, you know, the question, I think a lot of people are asking or maybe not asking, which is will I lose my job to AI? And I know we warmed up with this discussion a little bit about our views.

00:27:57:05 - 00:28:00:09

Jason

Personally. So I'm looking forward to talking to you about that.

00:28:00:12 - 00:28:24:11

Shel

Yeah. It's possible that you'll lose your job to AI, especially as, a genetic AI, kicks in and can handle, complete tasks that communicators handle. This has always been the way with new technology. You're also going to find that there will be thousands and thousands of jobs that didn't exist five years ago in AI.

00:28:24:11 - 00:28:43:15

Shel

I mean, if you consider today, how many people are working in web development, how many people are working in social media? These are jobs that didn't exist. There's a label for this. It's called creative destruction, and it's always taken place. I don't think most communicators are at risk. There are a lot of other jobs that I think are hugely at risk.

00:28:43:15 - 00:29:15:24

Shel

I think paralegals, insurance claims adjusters, these are jobs where I can do all of the work that these folks do. Communication has too much invested in it that requires that human element. And and AI in general requires a human, in the loop. Anyway, so I think that the communicators who are going to be best positioned to keep their jobs are the ones who know how to use AI to do it, to be more productive.

00:29:15:26 - 00:29:51:12

Shel

And this is, you know, basically all of the uses that I have shared with you today, are uses that make me more productive. I'm spending less time on drudgery and more time on strategy and creativity. Yeah. And I think you can hear the leaders of organizations, or the leaders of comms departments, are going to get to the point where they're going to know somebody doesn't know how to use AI because of the amount of time it's taking them to do something, right, that, you know, if you used AI well, you know, the drudgery part of this would only take a couple of minutes.

00:29:51:12 - 00:30:01:12

Shel

Why did it take you three hours? So you know, the old line I've been hearing for years now is that you're not going to lose your job to AI. You're going to lose your job to somebody who knows how to use it.

00:30:01:20 - 00:30:10:05

Jason

Yep. That's right. And that's exactly what we were talking about earlier. Like I said, I was on a panel with other communications professionals. And while I was observing a panel, I should say,

00:30:10:05 - 00:30:16:25

Jason

and I think all 3 or 4 of them were just like, I don't I don't use AI. I don't know if it's ethical, you know, I don't think it's ready yet.

00:30:16:26 - 00:30:27:11

Jason

And they had all these reasons. And then they assured the audience that I was not going to take their jobs. And I just thought to myself, it's not going to take the jobs of people who know how to use it, but it it will take your job if you refuse to use it, I think.

00:30:27:14 - 00:30:46:23

Shel

Yeah. And there are there are copywriters on Madison Avenue who are already out of work, thanks to, you know, I so it's, you know, there's a lot of work that we do in communication that just needs to be good enough. And what does I do if it does good enough for a lot of things. So if that's the kind of work you do.

00:30:46:26 - 00:30:49:18

Shel

Yeah. Yeah. I think you have a reason to worry.

00:30:49:20 - 00:31:17:14

Jason

Yeah. I don't know if I'm unique in this, show, but, you know, I'm definitely leading the charge of AI. And within my organization and showing examples and doing video recordings of how I'm using it to help inspire others to use it. Instead of thinking the old way and and realizing that, you know, I become more valuable to my clients and the organization that I work at, if I can use AI and still produce quality work and in fact, ideally produce more volume than I did before, add a greater quality.

00:31:17:16 - 00:31:37:02

Shel

Yeah. And there are more and more PR tools emerging around this. Aaron Quick and has profit, which is amazing. Give it a press release. It'll find all of the reporters who are writing about that sort of thing and craft all of the pitches to those reporters that you can then go in and revise. It'll send them.

00:31:37:04 - 00:31:41:01

Shel

So I'll just timesaver. It's just makes us more productive and more effective.

00:31:41:04 - 00:31:52:23

Jason

Yeah, exactly. So this has been a great episode. Thanks for being here with us today. And, we'll be sure to post the episode notes that have links to the various things we talked about. For those that are interested.

00:31:52:26 - 00:31:56:27

Shel

Yeah. I had a great time. Appreciate the conversation.

00:31:57:00 - 00:32:12:29

Jason

Yeah, I really enjoyed it, too. All right. Well, with that, this has been another episode of On Top of PR. We want to thank our special guests, show hosts, for joining us today. And thank you for taking the time to tune in and, invest in your career and getting more familiar, with the power of AI and communication.

00:32:13:06 - 00:32:20:12

Jason

If you found this episode helpful, would you do us a favor and either leave us a review or share this episode with a friend and colleague who you think would benefit from it. With that, this is Jason Mudd signing off hoping that today’s epsiode helped you stay on top of PR.

00:32:20:12 - 00:33:16:03

Announcer

This has been On Top of PR with Jason Mudd presented by ReviewMaxer. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode and check out past episodes at ontopofpr.com.

About your host Jason Mudd

On Top of PR host, Jason Mudd, is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands and fastest-growing companies. Since 1994, he’s worked with American Airlines, Budweiser, Dave & Buster’s, H&R Block, Hilton, HP, Miller Lite, New York Life, Pizza Hut, Southern Comfort, and Verizon. He founded Axia Public Relations in July 2002. Forbes named Axia as one of America’s Best PR Agencies.

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