AI has made a significant impact on Public Relations and the marketing world writes Geetika Bangia, PR & Corporate Communications, Philips India.

Remember the days when collecting daily news was a mammoth task? It may sound alien to the millennials, but monitoring news and sending media report till a decade back meant marking, cutting newspaper clips, typing, and emailing it. This was an everyday task of almost every public relations executive and let’s be honest; no one liked it much. After all, it took heaps of time and delayed the other work, but it was essential. But now this process has changed drastically and become quicker and simpler. Time has travelled quite a distance.

The credit for this can be given to the digital age, and the new tools that are changing the way communications is done. Let’s take the example of artificial intelligence or AI as we commonly know it. From personal to professional, AI is seeping in every corner of our life, making things more simplistic for us. For instance, voice assistant AI technology, Alexa or web mapping service like Google maps that we routinely use, is powered by AI.

However, apart from the daily application, AI has also made a significant impact on Public Relations and the marketing world. Along with the core process of communication, interaction and writing skills, PR professionals are slowly integrating artificial intelligence. This technology helps in generating data-driven content, in handling crisis management, and foreseeing media trends.

The other benefits that PR pro can realize with the use of AI are:

· Data-Driven PR Campaigns

AI is programmed to comb through a colossal amount of data and find out the features that can eventually lead to a successful PR campaign. This eliminates the guesswork that was earlier done by professionals when devising a campaign. Instead, now decisions are made on facts and insights. AI allows PR professionals to make data-driven decisions like evaluating the best time to start a campaign where to deploy it, which bloggers to engage, and so on.

· Automate day-to-day Tasks

AI technology automates repetitive tasks that require limited creativity. It enables many automated functions such as scheduling calendars, creating meeting notes, setting due dates, and send out follow-ups. This saves significant time and resources.

· Sentiment Analysis and Crisis Management

Let’s face it. Being prepared for any crisis is crucial. In today’s world, an online crisis can go global as fast as an illness. PR professionals should, therefore, look at using AI for crisis management and sentiment analysis. AI scans a plethora of elements and forecasts serious threats, likely to result in a failure. As it can even understand human emotions, we should use it for sentiment analysis. It allows professionals to realize the difference between various tones, vocabulary, and language context, thereby helping in the launch of campaigns.

· More targeted, dynamic journalist and social influencer outreach

Creating an effective influencer ecosystem is the need of the hour. In today’s scenario, when each one of us is struggling for time, PR professionals need a quick solution that will help them curate relevant lists or tailor their message to suit the requirement of each influencer directly. This is where AI helps in finding specific influencers to match the brand’s requirement. It even helps in sorting out which influencers have higher open and response rate towards your brand and the consumer that can enable in implementing an effective campaign.