Nicole Rodrigues is the founder and CEO of NRPR Group and is a strategic digital advertising and marketing professional with over 20 years of experience.
With the new year in full swing, many executives and professionals are anticipating another season of economic uncertainty and potential industry change. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, recently coined the term "slowdown" to describe the snail-like growth we expect this year. Fortunately, it's one step away from the long-awaited recession, and many innovators are emerging to shake things up and shape new ways of doing business in a period of economic recovery and reshaping. One area at the forefront of this business evolution is artificial intelligence, meaning creative artificial intelligence within traditional business ecosystems and functions.
Industry leaders and analysts predict that this year will be the year of investments in artificial intelligence, with more than 160 startups focusing on this particular technology. As they capture more market share and increase brand exposure, it's important for AI leaders to create a compelling story behind their work, why and how their offering excels in the face of such fierce competition.
As PR and marketing professionals, we are an invaluable ally who can help these leaders effectively communicate their brand stories with humanity and empathy, two key attributes of our work that many audiences expect from AI leaders. By mastering the art of communication and understanding how nuanced, layered and personalized each marketing message needs to be to resonate with a specific audience, we can become a trusted advisor to that audience. Even with a large financial turnover, we understand that a company's public success depends on smart and compassionate communications that transform messaging aimed at investors into a campaign that can engage consumers. The storytelling skills learned here can make or break our client's business. Let's find out how.
Create and share your story
A company's core story is everything to targeting the right audience and attracting new customers or brand adopters. Our first PR and marketing efforts should be to position the client's brand, highlight the specific issue or problem their AI technology solves, and the key differentiators that make their approach particularly effective. It goes beyond marketing jargon and just hashtags, catchy keywords or catchphrases. It's about creating a coherent, cohesive story that can speak to those it serves. As PR professionals, it's our job to cut through the acronyms and industry jargon to humanize the story and make it appealing to the common man without sounding silly.
This brand story should convey your AI client's business values, purpose and vision. It must create a strong emotional connection with their demographic base. This way, people learn who's behind the company, how it's built, and why it's important to try the product/service.
Extending the brand story involves delivering and amplifying the message consistently across all marketing and communications efforts across multiple channels and media, from the client's website and social media posts to their published articles. It's up to us when we believe in crafting the right value propositions, story angles and impactful stories to reach offline audiences and increase brand awareness.
Communication training for managers
Once the story is created, we need to help leaders figure out how to understand their story and share it openly with confidence, clarity, and precision. The messaging framework is just the starting point. Executive media training helps your audience listen, repeat and engage. It's about helping CEOs tell their story in their own words and in a way that feels natural to them. It's about finding a delicate balance between what's digestible for the average person and what can increase their understanding and resonate with experts.
This may include in-depth texting and messaging training and practicing difficult questions before embarking on cold-blooded media interviews and other public appearances. Leaders need to understand that there is nothing wrong with humbly asking for help with things that need to be done, it only pays off in the long run.
Customize your strategic marketing plan
Many companies go through multiple communication plans and try to figure out how to best attract attention and build credibility before spending thousands of dollars on a generic marketing plan that doesn't fit their brand philosophy or specific audience. This cookie-cutter approach is the last thing AI leaders need to do going into this season. They must rely on PR and marketing experts to develop a prismatic, multifaceted approach that aligns with their goals, drives brand adoption, and fosters a broader cultural conversation. This is where messaging and storytelling come into play. But like any good PR strategy, they need to be flexible and adaptable.
We must regularly monitor and measure the results of our efforts and adjust campaigns or advertising as necessary. This ensures that our strategy resonates with both the media and the general public and that our clients receive the attention they deserve, which can be fed back to investors to support future funding rounds.
The economy may be in a slow growth phase right now, but AI will continue to grow because it is a valuable addition to the way we live and do business. Enterprises continue to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence, and AI startups are trying to capture larger pieces of this growing pie. With PR and marketing expertise, we can make the difference in creating lasting change between a disappearing or neglected business and technology taking over our lives.
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