← Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Loading summary
Transcript186 lines
- [00:00]
A
If you've ever wondered why AI moves so fast but somehow still misses the point, this part could be for you. This is part one of our live recordings from the AI for PR conference in London. I managed to get five people into the basement and record a quick 10 to 15 minute interview with each of them. First up is Andrew Bruce Smith, who's
- [00:18]
B
had more appearances on the show than
- [00:20]
A
my co host, Will Ockendon. I interviewed him six weeks ago and
- [00:23]
B
he said, so much has changed, Chris.
- [00:25]
A
So that's going to be a fascinating chapter. Then I spoke to Johnny Bentwood, chief Data analytics Officer at brand new PR agency Golan Ketchum. Johnny actually pioneered GEO before most people even knew what it was. Then we have a man who I've been connected to since 2007 and we've never actually met, James Crawford, MD of PR Agency One and board director at AMEC. And James and I have a fascinating conversation about Geo AMEC and what the demonstratable impact can be from, from PR and Geo.
- [00:55]
B
And the one question you should be
- [00:57]
A
asking every Geo vendor before you sign anything. So let's get into it. Enjoy.
- [01:11]
B
Andrew, thanks for doing this. I mean, literally, I've grabbed you from upstairs and pulled you downstairs to help teach me how to podcast professionally and we're both holding mics. You've literally, We've just literally dropped the episode from. We recorded it seven weeks ago, seen as we're at the AI conference, AI for PR conference on the south bank of the river in London. So what's changed? You said, oh my God, Chris, I can't believe this. The show's gone pretty much, I think we've had two and a half thousand downloads already. The show is flying off the shelves. But the issue was we talked about Claude Cowork, which you and I both use a lot. So much has changed in those six weeks that we spoke. So you said we should have done it, we should have just issued it that week. So if you had to do it now, what's happened in the last six weeks then that you do think that you could talk about that's changed?
- [02:00]
C
Ah, an easy question to start with. I better get it straight in my own mind about what's, what's actually occurred. Well, you can take it from different, different levels, different perspectives. I mean, from the pure technology perspective, we've seen, for example, Codex, which is effectively OpenAI's equivalent of coworkers, or rather Codex was originally aimed at programmers. OpenAI was now very envious of the massive success of Anthropic's kind of cowork and have effectively turned Codex into OpenAI's version of cowork. OpenAI already saying that they've seen 1 in 5 users using codecs, I.e. normal people, not programmers, using codecs to create agents and using it for knowledge work. So that's happened in the last few weeks, I guess. The big story of the last week or two, of course, was Fable, which was Anthropic's allegedly kind of cut down stroke guard rail did, if that's even a word, guardrail did version of Mythos, which we did mention.
- [03:17]
B
Is it Mythos Mythos or is that a Greek lager?
- [03:20]
C
It's all the above, yeah. Yes, Mythos. Just to remind ourselves, which we did mention on the previous podcast, which was a new model from Anthropic which was apparently so powerful they couldn't possibly let everybody have access to it.
- [03:36]
B
Oh yes they can.
- [03:38]
C
Well, Fable came out, actually, it was on my birthday and people very, people got very excited. People running around starting building things with it and just describing all the amazing things they could do with it. Unfortunately by Friday. So three days later, the US government slapped an export control on it, basically saying that no non US citizens would be allowed or should be allowed to use Fable. So slightly complicated for Anthropic to actually enforce that. So they've just denied access to it to everybody.
- [04:13]
B
Well, I can exclusively reveal on the podcast that I did use it for about two days.
- [04:17]
D
There you go.
- [04:19]
E
It was all right.
- [04:21]
B
I didn't try and hack any banks, so I don't know.
- [04:23]
C
And I think that, and again, we can go down the rabbit hole on this, but there's no question that in terms of its capabilities on certain fronts, even in a couple of days, that people had access to it, that yes, it was clearly very, very powerful. But we are in this kind of now limbo state where it sounds as though, yes, Anthropica are kind of furiously kind of talking to the US government saying, look, this is a rather drastic action to take. But again, it has raised that whole issue of, of sovereignty. What happens if you become so reliant on an AI system and a government somewhere can literally pull the plug on it?
- [05:06]
B
It's crazy.
- [05:06]
C
What will you do then? So I think that has, it's focused the minds, I think of a lot of organizations going, hang on a minute, what can we do to ensure that if we are going to use AI systems that we can make sure that we're in control and not at the mercy of a third party? So yeah, it's kind of hard to comprehend that that's happened in the last week or so. So that's just, again, crazy times that we live in.
- [05:34]
B
And probably by the time we get this out in the next week or so, it'll bloody have changed again. So what you hit? So the AI for PR conference, Me and you seem to always move in the same social media and PR spaces. So what are you going to be talking about today on what you're here to talk about today? Well, AI, obviously.
- [05:50]
C
Well, yeah. Yes. I mean, the conference is basically aligned with the book, the ampr, Stephen Mornington, Ben Verender, who kind of pulled this all together. I'm actually doing a double header with Will Vickery and I'm focused on my chapter. Stephen and Ben admitted that I'd had the toughest job for the book because
- [06:16]
E
I. I swear, you had the toughest
- [06:18]
B
job in the previous book that we wrote together.
- [06:21]
C
I'm a sucker for punishment. I mean, back in last August, I had to complete my, my draft of the chapter talking about the AI technology landscape and where was it likely to go for the next 12 to 18 months?
- [06:36]
B
Oh, my God, I need to read this.
- [06:38]
C
And I feel, I feel reasonably pleased myself that I think I got it largely correct. Directionally. There was a lot of emphasis on agentic AI. I didn't have a crystal ball, so I couldn't have specifically foreseen the rise of cowork so forth in January. But yes, I think I feel comfortable that I kind of understood where things were moving. So the talk is focused on a mix of same thing. Where are we now? Where's it going? But more importantly for people attending the conference, it's about practically, you know, what can we do? You know, what should we do in relation to using AI applied to the work of comms and PR professionals everywhere.
- [07:25]
B
Yeah, obviously, we've had you on the show. This is your fourth appearance. This is a quick appearance on the show and thanks for doing it and obviously with friends as well. But I just want to say, what's your hot tip for people that work in pr? Now, AI wise, what's your hot tip for working in PR and using AI in a paragraph or two?
- [07:45]
C
Well, I mean, I could say this because it's not a spoiler alert for my talk this afternoon, but number one, and I've said this all along, that you don't start with the technology. The tendency is to go, AI, it's tech. What's the best tool for X? And I've said along, it's the Wrong way to approach it. You approach it from what is the work that we do? Yeah, start with the work. Start with the work first and understand that and then try to figure out, well, what can, what should we apply it to? I think that the whole thrust has been to treat AI as a technology issue. I mean, I exaggerate for effect, but the classic approach is, oh, AI, let's get it to kind of figure out what to buy. They go, let's buy a bunch of co pilot licenses. We've ticked the box, everybody's got AI now there's so many people nodding end of, end of. Yeah. Or you know, training is basically a glorified product demo. It bears no relation to the work. And this would apply not just communications, I mean any department. With respect, does the IT department know in granular detail what the comms team do? Do they know what the finance team does? I suspect not. And that's not their fault, that's not their role. But it's not rocket science. I don't think just understanding the nature of the work, although I guess if I was being cheeky, that that is part of the problem. Most organizations don't actually know how the work gets done. Management think they know, but they don't really know. And they don't really have those kind of deep understanding of how it gets done because it relates to things like AI agents. Now the kind of consensus view is, well, if you understand the workflow and you've got a kind of standard operating procedure and it's all beautifully kind of detailed and written down, you could just give it to your AI agent and of course it will now miraculously understand what to do.
- [09:41]
A
Yeah.
- [09:42]
C
I would suggest that if you ask any PR team, any agency, or any in house team anywhere and say, are all your processes beautifully written down and fully detailed, the answer will be no. Because no one's ever really properly done that.
- [09:56]
B
No, we're not McDonald's. That's why the PR industry is a McDonald's.
- [10:00]
C
And comms is broadly speaking falls under the umbrella of knowledge work. And you're right, if you're in a factory, you could just stick up a camera and just analyze what people do.
- [10:12]
B
Yeah.
- [10:12]
C
If you did that with a comms person, with respect, you probably spot them sat at a computer for five hours, tapping away at a keyboard, gazing out of the window, going to make a cup of tea in the kitchen. But the work is going on, you know, a lot of it, well, most of it probably is going on inside their head. So how do you get that head. Do you even want to do that? Is it even possible? So this comes back to this just, I guess, dividing line between what can, can and should we use AI to be applied to versus what still remains firmly in the realm of the human being, which I've said all along is expertise, experience, creativity, strategy, judgment, taste, call it what you will, that's definitely what ultimately has value. I've worked in comms for nearly 40 years. I mean, we've moaned all along about not having enough time to strategize, to be creative, to have more brainstorms, to build relationships, all those things. I still say that the real value of AI is in removing the grunt work or reducing the time that human beings have to spend. This stuff needs to get done. But let's be honest, if you had a choice of letting the machine get on and do that bit of it, freeing up your time to focus on the things that really are useful, valuable, etc. I take that every time. And that's, I guess, partly what I'm going to try and get across to people today.
- [11:38]
B
Yeah, I mean, I'm with you. I'm bought in. But I mean, I said to somebody, if someone actually sits me on stage today and says, chris, do you think AI has made you do less work and you're focusing? I'll be like, actually, I spend more time talking to Cowork or talking to Gemini or talking to Copilot or Chatgpt. I've got all of them. And I test all different things for research and I find myself testing things, oh, that works on that one. It doesn't work on that one. This works that, and then. And then you find yourself iteratively. And I know that's how we both were. And not everybody out there does work the same way.
- [12:11]
C
I think we have to remind ourselves. I mean, it is kind of crazy that. I mean, your cowork literally came into the world on the 12th of January this year. That's barely six months ago. This has all happened in the space of six months. You look back through history and be like, this would have taken years for these things to have developed. And we're still the same human beings we were from 10,000 years ago living in a cave. Our brains are still pretty much the same brains we had then. Our poor brains trying to deal with this sort of rate and pace of change is pretty tough. So I don't think we're too hard on ourselves. But I think you're right. We are very much in the early days here, and we're all learning and you kind of. I learn. You learn by doing.
- [13:01]
B
Yeah, me too.
- [13:03]
C
There's kind of no way around it in a way. I know people want to have the kind of quick solution but unless you actually put some time in yourself.
- [13:11]
A
Yeah.
- [13:12]
C
To kind of viscerally understand it. That's. I think it's only then do you get those kind of light bulb moments when you realize, oh, now I get it. Now I get it.
- [13:21]
B
Yeah, I 100% agree, mate. Well, I realised we've got to go and go into the conference and you've got to speak to people. So thanks, thanks for coming on the show but we're going to get you back on. I think we should have like a regular Andrew Bruce Smith slot where we get you with it. Here's the latest updates from the last six months. Careful what you wish for. Thanks, Andrew.
- [13:41]
C
Take care.
- [13:47]
E
Johnny Bentwood, welcome to the show.
- [13:48]
D
Thank you. Really appreciate you having me on.
- [13:50]
E
So Jonny, let's just get your title wrong because the first marketing mistake we've got in here is your job title in the. So what is your job title, please?
- [13:59]
D
I'm the chief data and analytics officer for Golan Ketchum. Not Golan. Golan. Ketchum is a new company that was formed at the merger of Golin and Ketchum on June 10. So we are eight days old.
- [14:12]
E
Eight days old. We won't get into the name change and how you. How they came up with it because that's fascinating.
- [14:18]
B
But.
- [14:19]
E
So what is fascinating is what you're going to talk about today. So you're speaking this afternoon on Geo, is that correct?
- [14:24]
D
Yeah. And it's incredible how many people are getting this wrong and I want to just talk to your audience about what we can do to get it right.
- [14:33]
E
Okay, so when you say people are getting it wrong, what are they getting wrong?
- [14:38]
D
There's a few parts. First of all, if you ask any company, the boardroom of talk about AI, they're all having the same discussion. They're all talk about AI transformation, they're all talking about bringing in copilot and what can we do to optimize efficiencies? What can we do to look at our workflows? I go, who gives a crap? Seriously, I care about the bottom line and the first mistake that everyone's thinking about is all about AI is AI transformation. It means nothing if people aren't buying your stuff.
- [15:07]
B
Correct.
- [15:07]
E
Yeah.
- [15:07]
D
Okay, so what can we do to help influence people buying from you? Now let me give you a few data points. First of all 75% of people go to Gen AI before they go to Google. Out of those, more people trust the answer of Gen AI than their peers. Now it's not just a consumer space in the B2B space, it's in the 90th percentile. So what does all this mean? It means that whilst everyone else talks about AI transformation, when people are looking to make a decision about what to buy, they're going to Gen AI. And this is where it gets a bit freaky. In the past, if I picked up my phone and did a search in Google, I would scroll past all those results and I go, yeah, well that's been sponsored. They bought those keywords. That's bollocks. And the right, that shows critical thinking and I love that. But now what happens is people ask the same question to their Gen AI of choice and they look at that first answer that comes up and goes, bloody hell, that's perfect. I'm just going to accept that. And this goes back to the question you ask, what people get wrong. They're so concerned about AI transformation, they're not thinking about how do they make sure that when their audience, when their stakeholders go to Genai and ask a question, they are listed in that first answer because people aren't going anywhere else.
- [16:25]
E
Okay, yeah, because you've got Genai, you've got Geo aeo, kind of same thing, Answer engine optimization. There's lots of tools out there that tell you, or claim to tell you where you appear in search and how you're going to, you're going to appear versus your competitors. So for instance, we've got a prohibition, we've got HubSpot, which we can use to analyze us and where we are and that's got an AEO built in tool that you get part of the paid platform. But when you look into it, what it's doing is guessing what you're going to get because how can it predict what 15,000 people are going to be doing in terms of searches? So I just wondered what your take on these tools out there, which one? Are they all guess? Is it all guesswork or are any of them factually, statistically correct?
- [17:16]
A
This is a message from the show's sponsors. Prohibition pr. We're Yorkshire's biggest PR agency and we specialize in delivering amazing video content and podcasting content. And we guarantee we can get your podcast, whether new or created by us, or if you've already got one, into a top 20 category in any, any country. Just drop me a line if you're interested in that. But meanwhile, we've got loads and loads of free stuff. We've got an entire events catalog packed for you with more than 15 webinars available free and on demand. Whenever you want to watch them or listen to them, it's me and the lovely Will talking through all sorts of topics from social media, public relations, content marketing, video execution, you name it, we talk about it. We've also got two live events coming up, both in June, July. So the June and July ones is from creators to closers. It's all about influencer marketing and influencer ambassadorship and all that. We've got another event in September and October called how to Create Scroll Stopping Content that converts. Bit of a mouthful but amazing. All completely free. So if you want to come along to our events for free, this is your bag. You enjoy the show. First of all, give us a like and subscribe and please, please give us
- [18:25]
E
a review because we've got about 20 and we've got like 365,000 downloads, so
- [18:30]
A
it'd be nice to hear from you. I'll give you a shout out, but
- [18:33]
E
if you want to listen, if you
- [18:34]
A
want to register for the events, you can go to prohibitionpr.co.uk and click on upcoming events. Really easy to do. Register and yeah, will and I'll see you there and we'll have a chat with you. Thanks for listening, we really appreciate it. Thank you. Enjoy the show.
- [18:55]
D
So there's a lot of snake oil out there. Yeah, there's a lot of people claiming to solve the world and some things that do a pretty good job. Look, the point is, big data is better than no data. I prefer to take the results of a synthetic approach where it goes out there and asks a bunch of questions thousands of times a day to see those results come in. That's how the majority of engines work and that's pretty good. But there is data out there. There are tools I quite like. Profound. It's got a billion and a half actual user prompts, so we know the questions that people are asking. And let's make sure we judge opposition visibility relative to our brand's peers across the occasions that matter, across those topics that count.
- [19:38]
E
Okay, cool, interesting. And so what do you think of AEO versus geo? Is it even a debate or should we just ignore the whole thing and concentrate, Concentrate on getting people to buy our stuff from being visible.
- [19:50]
D
If people are having that debate, they're having the wrong conversation. I don't care. Seriously. The only thing I care about is are you listed in the first Dancer. Now, the nomenclature, what you call the industry, it's not going to make any difference to your bottom line.
- [20:03]
E
Yeah.
- [20:05]
D
Look at the outcome, not the vocabulary.
- [20:08]
E
So what sort of stuff are you going to talk about later when you're on stage?
- [20:11]
D
Well, there's a few things I'd like. Whilst everyone else has been talking about the theory. Yeah, about AI, I'm going to talk about practical things that everyone can do.
- [20:20]
E
Excellent.
- [20:20]
D
I'm just going to give you a bit of a highlight into a few of those things. I like to think of it as the four Fs. The four Fs are your grounding principles that anyone can do to make sure they are listed in that first answer. The first one is can it be found? It sounds simple, but if your content can't be found, it's invisible to Gen AI. So all those websites that have got a password, New York Times, Bloomberg, well, they can't be found. In fact, I had a subscription to Axios, cost me six grand. They gave me a refund because they made their entire content publicly available. They wanted to be found. Anything that's got loads of JavaScript, it can't be found, it's invisible. Anything that's got poor meta descriptions or poor URL structures makes it harder to be found. So the first F, if it can be found, great. Next F. What about the format? The format is so critical. It's not just about writing to how humans would like it, you need to write how machines like it. So TLDRs, bullet points, summarizations, there's different structural formattings that work.
- [21:31]
E
TLDRs for the audience listening too long to read correct.
- [21:36]
D
Too long, didn't read.
- [21:37]
E
Too long, too long, didn't read yet.
- [21:39]
D
Give me a short sentence summary about everything because Genai has just got a quarter of a second to scour the world and say this is what you need to know. So if you can make it into a quick, easy snapshot, a sentence summary and four bullet points, well, Chennai is probably going to take that over trying to devour millions of pages. If you've got that easy format, it's going to take it. So that's the second F and that could be FAQs, it could be listicles, it could be all kinds of things in that kind of format. The next step is feel. For years, as long as I've been in this industry, we talked about message pull through as something we want to do. Our customers talking about our messaging and if we do, we give ourselves a tick marks no more. We've got to stop thinking about our message, pull through and start thinking, are we pulling through the messages of our audience, of our stakeholders? We've got to be using our customers language, not our language. For example, if someone asks a question, what is the best blue widget for this device? And my answer on my webpage is, I've got the best blue widget for this device. It's a copy. It's an exact message copy. Well, Genai says, well that's semantically similar. I'm going to take that. So we've got to be looking at the semantic similarity. The fourth F is freshness. Genai has a recency bias. So the stuff that you publish today is more authoritative than what was published six months ago. So we need to get away from these tentpole moments which PR lives in, and start thinking in Rolling Thunder. What can we always do to get on top of it? Chris, I've got a fifth F if you want, but it's a little bit salty. It's a little bit salty.
- [23:21]
E
It is, is it?
- [23:22]
D
Regardless, the fifth F is just fucking get on with it. Seriously. Because too many people just talking about what to do.
- [23:28]
E
Yeah.
- [23:28]
D
And no one's doing anything.
- [23:29]
E
Yeah. Paralysis by analysis.
- [23:31]
D
Yeah. So even if it's just tomorrow, taking every one of your YouTube videos and putting a transcript on whether it's every influencer that you've worked on in TikTok and Instagram, so you have to put it on YouTube and put the transcript, whether it's looking at your URLs, making everything lowercase, no more than six words after the domain and adding 2026, that increases your chance of being found by 11.4%. So just get on with it. Do marginal gains to make a difference.
- [23:58]
E
So what's your day to day then? What do you do day to day at Golden Ketchum?
- [24:02]
D
So I'm the chief doctor Nom let's officer and I advise the world's largest companies how to be a data driven comms organization. Now, whether that is using data to inform what they should be doing, whether it's using data to evaluate the outcomes of what they're doing, this is all part of it. But my clients like PepsiCo, they've really leaned into making sure not only are they marketing to humans, but they're also marketing to machines. And we're hoping to drive and make a difference in both those avenues.
- [24:31]
E
Right. Okay, interesting. And so the hot, the hot tips are basically transcripts where you can on your YouTube channel or anything that you can make more visible. I had a Little bit of a play around with the show. Right. So the show I heard a friend of mine called John Evans and he talked about him. He'd said the world's best market put the world's best marketing podcast by. By John Evans and somebody had Googled it or used generative AI and left him a really nasty message on a review on his thing because they said this can't be the world's best market. But he just. The world's best marketing podcast. He took a little bit of offense to him, messaged him and this guy thought it was genuinely the world's best marketing podcast. And it is a very good marketing podcast.
- [25:15]
D
You can game Gen AI and it's okay if you call it that. If people ask the question, what's the world's best marketing podcast? Well, it may come up with that because it's. Is it semantically similar? You've just seen there how important the semantics are. But for general tips, I like to say is follow those four Fs and just get on with it. That's the most important tip of the lot.
- [25:37]
E
Okay, cool. And anything else that you're covering later, is that. Is that. Is that the crux of what you're going to be talking about?
- [25:43]
D
Those are the main things that I like to focus on. But if we have a look at other areas that are important as far as Gen AI goes, I think there's some common mistakes that people make. And the first one is people just thinking, well, I can just look at what's on my own website or I can just look at sending out press releases. Now all those things are great. We talked about websops you've got most control over. Well, typically that's only about 5 to 10% of what influences Gen AI. A press release is fantastic. I never but like putting press releases on the wire. If I've got something that's really good, I'm going to call that journalist. But when you stick it on the wire, I'm not marketing to journalists, I'm marketing to machines. It goes to 5000 websites and gen AI loves large language.
- [26:30]
E
So you're endorsing newswires, then you think
- [26:33]
D
you should totally love it. But I'm not expecting a single journalist to pick up on it. And that's okay. I want to write blog posts every single week and I come back and check my analytics in a year and I want to be really happy that my readership is zero.
- [26:47]
E
Nice.
- [26:48]
D
Okay, we've got to stop thinking about old ways of thinking.
- [26:52]
E
Yeah, okay.
- [26:53]
D
I want to be able to look at earned media. I've got my Tier one media list. We've all got that in pr. Keep going with it. You now need to have a tier one gen AI media list. You're going to be engaging with this lot in a different way. You're going to be talking about less about education, editorial and more about comparison formats. I'm going to be thinking about what can I do on social. Social, the big things. What are you doing on Reddit? Ongoing strategy. Community engagement. Not community. Look at me. You're going to get banned overnight. I'm going to be looking on LinkedIn and writing Pulse articles. Not by the brand, but by individuals. I'm going to be on Quora. I'm going to be updating my wiki, Wikipedia. There's things you can do that make a difference, but it's not just one thing. It's doing lots of different things all together, continuously.
- [27:44]
E
Yeah. And also the world's best marketing podcast. You listen to it right now. It's embracing marketing mistakes. Final question. And it's fine if you haven't got one, Johnny, because I know this is a quick 10, 15 minute chat. Have you made any mistakes in your career that you'd love to. To share and put that and get off your shoulders?
- [28:03]
D
I've made so many mistakes. I turn into the thing that I really think about. I was very, very early into the area of jio. So much so you may have heard of a company called Profound. I was Profound's very first customer.
- [28:17]
E
Amazing.
- [28:18]
D
I realized this GEO thing was important. I spoke to this guy called James Cadwaladr and I said, I've got this idea. He said, I've also got this idea. He showed me me a PDF of what he was thinking of creating. He needed a customer. So he said, right, we'll be your customer. And with that, he got the funding to form the found.
- [28:34]
E
Wow.
- [28:35]
D
I'll tell you the mistake I made. I could see the future. I could see it was really big. Yet everyone in PR is all about, hey, you've got to innovate, Chris. You probably tell your team to innovate
- [28:46]
E
and what happens on the wall at work.
- [28:48]
D
Everyone needs to innovate.
- [28:50]
E
Yeah, it's.
- [28:51]
D
I think, I think it's a bloody stupid mistake at times because what happens is everyone innovates and there's innovation, saturation. Everyone's got the shiniest new toy, the best thing ever, the thing that's going to solve this. And the problem is when something is truly groundbreaking, it can get lost in that saturation, that's what scares me about innovation at times. I'm not saying don't innovate but I'm saying you sometimes need to be able to find a way that innovation is tight. You know when you go to a restaurant and there's a 14 page menu, it's like this is a sign of a bad restaurant. When you go to a restaurant it's one page, it's got eight things that were fresh that morning. It's going to be great. We need to have a tighter shopping list so there's not saturation, so people can see the wood from the trees.
- [29:42]
E
So you're saying you made the mistake by having too many, too many products, Is that what you say?
- [29:46]
D
There were way too many things and when I was speaking to my different client leads, but hey, this is, what's, this is really important. Well the day before they were told something else is really important and the next week something else is really important. How would I get to say look, this is the one you can't see. But I know this is really important. So my big mistake is I got lost where we could have been first.
- [30:07]
E
Yeah, I still think, I still, I still think I know we're in the, we're in the PR sphere today and everybody here is AI related. I still think there's a lot of people like marketers out there that don't really know what GEO and AEO is.
- [30:19]
D
This is the exciting bit for pr.
- [30:21]
E
Yeah, me too. That's what I think.
- [30:23]
D
You know what, I've been in rooms with cross functional teams, multi billion dollar companies, you know, Fortune 50 companies and you've got the advertising people, you've got the paid media, you've got the SEO, you've got all the different, different teams and everyone say we want to own this space and everyone is justifying why they should do because they've all got a seat at the table and they can last at a veneer level until one person asks a follow up question and they've got no depth. Now remember, 80% of all AI citations is driven by earned media. And who understands earned media more than pr? This is why we have the right to own this space. Whilst everyone else is talking about it, we're the ones who influence it. And that's before we even get to the future because a third of all citations, a third of all questions that people ask in the consumer space are creating a shopping moment. That is when you say I've instant about this and it's well, you can buy any of These three things here now in the Gen Z audience, a third of those people actually buy. Then what does this mean? It means that PR historically is top funnel. Awareness, consideration, affinity. Now people asking a question a third of the time, it's creating a shopping experience, a third of those people are buying. We are now going from the question to people buying. And the biggest influence on that purchase
- [31:48]
E
funnel is public relations. I think this is the biggest opportunity for us.
- [31:55]
D
And PR's like, get a grip, guys, this is our moment.
- [32:01]
E
Head of marketing and CMOs out there, I don't think they realize that PR is 80%. I looked through, I was on a call the other day, one to one with Vilio. They were showing me their. I've used various Geo and AEO tools and they were showing me their item and they jumped into some examples and I was, can I stop you there? Can we just look at what's driving the citations? And it was 80%. To use your number, it was exactly 80% of earned media. And to use your. To reiterate your point, you just made there, it was two months out, three months out, six months out and a year. So all the PR that you've had done in the last year is now influencing how people are finding you. But that message isn't coming out of the PR industry. I don't think they're making it loud enough.
- [32:49]
D
Well, make it loud. I need to tell you what it's not. It's not SEO.
- [32:52]
E
No, it's true.
- [32:53]
D
The CEO of Conde Nast, he says he has told his teams to expect search to be 0, 100%, 0 click. Which means people go in there and they will get no traffic from search. SEO is dead. There's an $85 billion market and it's over.
- [33:13]
E
But they're the ones with a bloody big budget saying they'll switch it. So are they going to eat our lunch? Are we going to get it?
- [33:20]
D
In 1910, horses were the biggest form of transport. Volume does not mean trends.
- [33:26]
E
Okay, yeah, true, true, Johnny, honestly, brilliant. I could literally do a full hour with you, but I don't want to take up too much of your time. That was brilliant. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
- [33:35]
D
Thank you so much.
- [33:35]
E
Thanks, mate. James Crawford, welcome to the show.
- [33:43]
F
Thank you very much.
- [33:44]
E
So, James, how long have we known each other?
- [33:46]
F
We've known each other digitally. Must be getting on 20 years. Twisters. What, 2008?
- [33:53]
E
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [33:54]
F
We've never met in real life, which
- [33:55]
E
is very strange, but we've been at awards dues, been Awards do.
- [33:59]
F
Yeah, been at awards dues, but we've never really sat down, had a chat
- [34:02]
E
and we've sort of jousted online during the days of the sea SEO rankings we were just laughing about, which is kind of why we're here today. So you're talking about geo and I know it's quite interesting because when you come to these conferences you see the best practice and there's quite a lot of people talking about AMEC, even though I would say 70% of the PR industry don't use AMEX principles. And then I've just seen your example, the Barcelona principles and using GEO as part of that. So which I thought was quite interesting because at prohibition all of our clients are AMEC measured properly, which is good. And then we should join. We're using geo. We've got three tools that we've built in AI as well for clients. But in terms of geo, and I've just been speaking to somebody else, Johnny, about it, so I thought I'd talk to you as well. A lot of it is made up as in it's predictions of what you will end up in you in the search. I just wondered how are you guys doing geo? How are you? How are you selling it to clients? Because I think the industry has done a bad job. When I say the industry, I don't mean the marketing, I mean the PR industry has done a bad job of the biggest opportunity that we've got since social and probably bigger than social, because 80% of things are now cited by PR. Yeah, example. So yeah, I just wondered how you're selling it. That's my question.
- [35:27]
F
I think it's very nascent at the moment, so there's lots of people doing it in lots of different ways. So we've been watching it for obviously the past three years, big interest in search and wanting to make sure we, from a personal point of view, make sure that my business continues to get traffic from these types of things and then obviously applied it to clients and so on and so forth. It quickly became apparent that when it comes to visibility tracking, you know, there is no universe of prompt data, right? So there's no, there is no Google AdWords tool telling you what volume there is there. And there's no way of knowing what people are asking. So people are basically asking, putting the finger in the air and having a guess. And there's very various panels that kind of give you hundreds of millions of prompts. But you know, how have they got that data? Is it, you know, still 0.00% of all prompts. So, and then. And how you set that up through various tools like Profound or Semrush or Peak or whatever it is to track the outputs. Is it done by the AI or is it done via Google Chrome Instance? All this sort of stuff. So my understanding of it from the very beginning was it's kind of directional. I use the word telemetry actually, rather than measurement. In the early days and then we saw all those reports of, you know, Reddit is the number one source of AI, or it's the Guardian today. Oh, it's actually not pr, it's search. You know, every single person had a different take on that report and it just shows you how varied the approach is. So I thought there must have been a better way. And as a board director of AMEC as well as managing director for PR agency, One set to kind of create some principles to get people away from pushing another vanity metric on the industry. Because we've just got rid of ave, so we don't
- [37:12]
D
ask.
- [37:13]
E
I think we should do a non PR poll. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna poll our listeners and find out how many people, how many people's boards still ask for AVEs even though the PR agency doesn't want to give it.
- [37:23]
F
Yeah, and there's a lot we do get asked for it. And then, you know, the, the next one was impressions, wasn't it? And yeah, you know, there's loads of other strange fantasy metrics out there and we can't get away from it. And so sometimes clients can't afford it and you just have to work with what you've got. But I was really interested in making sure that we got the best practice there and putting in place. I wanted to call it a framework, but it's not a framework, it's the AMEC GEO principles, a temple for people to innovate around. I wanted something that would work for PR people, for measurement professionals and also for vendors, for vendors to get behind the inclusives of this world, whoever it might be. Profound. So we set about having hundreds of conversations, capturing lots and lots of data, speaking experts across the piece, how they were working and alighted on the fact that what you really need to do is not run before you can walk. Focus on what we're calling the upstream signal, the unstructured data of earned media, social media, anything that's on the Internet that shapes the environment that LLMs source.
- [38:29]
E
Yeah, it's fascinating to me because what Johnny was saying, I mean, he said he gave this stat that 80% of citations come from earned media. And I was like, I can literally tell you that statistic is true because I was on a demo with the guys from Boolio just last week. They're showing me the kit that they want me to use and comparing it with our kit and stuff. And there was an example and it had 80%. 80% of the citations were from earned media. But they were over three months, six months and a year. That was my point to Johnny was like, I just feel like we've not made as big a splash pr that that is such a big opportunity that if you're a marketing person, you think actually if we invest some money in PR this year, by the end of the year we're gonna have a big impact on AEO Geo and the amount of sales. You would think the actual impact on the business. You're saying it, I'm saying it, Johnny's saying it. But it just seems to have been got lost in the industry.
- [39:31]
F
I don't know, I think it's a growing area. But we've got to remember that the SEO community also think that SEO is the biggest driver of.
- [39:39]
E
Well, Johnny's SEO's dead.
- [39:41]
F
Johnny's as a SEO zed. And that's, you know, good on Johnny. I like Johnny's big pal of mine, good clap. We have some good chats about these things. I'd argue contrary. It's actually 50, 50 perhaps because we've got to remember that LLMs, when they need recent data, what do they do? They search for information and we've got data. I couldn't give you an absolute percentage figure that shows that the websites that are most visible in search get cited more often too. So it's actually a blend of the two. But you're right, the reason, I think the reason why it's not getting as big a cut through as possible is because when say Google talks about LLMs, it talks about webmasters and search and people think, oh, it's a search thing, but it's not a search thing. Because the search community get what they get wrong is they kind of mention about the technical side of it and they mentioned, then you mentioned brand mentions almost as a throwaway. And even brand mentions is the wrong thing to look at because it's not the mention that is helpful but it's the context around that mention, the messages, the brand attributes and who's saying it, the third party endorsement that really counts. So the search community have got it wrong and I don't know if they can really grasp reputation and that's why I think this is our playing field now. If with digital pr, we all know about SEO and digital priority, it kind of became a bit of a slave to the SEO agencies and got mechanical.
- [41:09]
E
But digital PR is just PR now.
- [41:11]
F
It is, yeah.
- [41:12]
E
They're not two different things.
- [41:15]
F
Yeah, it's just pr, but we could talk about digital PR as a second. We might go off on one there. But point being, I think the SEO community were better at commercializing that than the PR industry and did a really good job of it. I think that shipper's sales. Anyway, point being, this is our game now and we've got to not just walk up, not be kind of like SEO is dead, but bring the SEO community in because we need their data to understand if a website is technically set up to rank true. What is ranking? What does it say about the brand? There's a lot of data there that I think PR people aren't necessarily set up to get get. So there's a job to work hand in hand.
- [41:58]
E
Yeah. And there's a lot of very good SEO providers out there. We work with a couple of the biggest in the country. But yeah, I do think that what I did find, I used to teach on the PR degree in Leeds University and the biggest recruit, it was quite fascinating. I talked seven years as just a part time thing while I run prohibition and it was fascinating to watch when SEO really started to take off because I was teaching the digital PR integrated PR as part of what I was and slowly but surely the fastest recruiter of all our students were the SEO agencies. So it'll be interesting to see if they've moved them out of being sat in a chicken like doing certain tasks and not being able to do the full PR job because they've got a very niche area of expertise. Now if I'm an SEO guy, if I'm the owner of a cmo, sorry, if I'm an MD of a search company, right now I'm recruiting PR people.
- [42:56]
F
Yeah, I think it should be, but I don't think they necessarily. They're a really good SEO agencies like the propeller nets of this world, right. Who really get it. And I'd argue they're PR agents, but they definitely came from that search community. But there's lots of people who kind of just treated PR as like a, a numbers game of, you know, spamming out press releases and crappy surveys and stuff. And yeah, I think those days are gone. I don't know if necessarily the, the MDs of those agencies are set up to truly understand reputation as well as now. The PR agency founders are so. And therefore. But can the PR agency founders bring in the. The technicals?
- [43:38]
B
Yeah.
- [43:38]
F
In the same way. Do they have that in their skill set? I don't know. It's gonna be interesting.
- [43:43]
E
We need a blended approach.
- [43:44]
F
We do need a blended approach.
- [43:45]
E
And so my show is all about mistakes. Is there any mistakes that you've made in your career that you're proud to share, that you've never talked about? Go through your Rolodex? Because I've got tons, literally while I've been doing this show.
- [44:02]
F
I've got loads. Some I'm probably not allowed to mention.
- [44:06]
E
It's recorded.
- [44:09]
F
There's nothing criminal, I'd say. I don't think some. Andy Barr was first for me when it came to online PR and connecting the dots with the digital PR piece. I definitely launched PR agency One in 2011 with a search conference to do that and I didn't push it hard enough. I regret having not having really gone all in on it. Do you know what I mean? And then when SEOBR somebody called it digital PR at some point, I was like, I don't call it that. Mainly because I didn't rank for digital pr. Expressing o pr. I missed that gravy train. I kind of regret that because I think I could have made a lot of money. That's probably my number one regret. Number two regret is probably I've got a good, profitable business, but I think if I was a bit more grown up in the early days, I probably could have done a lot better. But I had a really good time. I was, I was, you know, the culture of the agency has been fun and I've loved every minute of it. So a few regrets, kind of commercially in terms of. Not kind of really. I see some people who've really pushed it and growing their businesses and done brilliantly, but are they happy? I don't know. Let's pretend they're not.
- [45:17]
E
That's the thing. Like, you can. You can literally throw it. Like, I. My wife calls me a workaholic. She says she doesn't make anyone as driven as I like, love it, but actually I've tried as I've got a little bit older, I'm trying not to work as hard because I don't think more clients, more money, more problems, more. And actually you can just suck it all off. And I could go off and do podcasting or become a consultant on my own and do all right. And I live a nice quiet life. But I know I'm not gonna do that.
- [45:45]
F
No, no, I think you're right, I do. The thing is, I find running my business fun.
- [45:50]
E
So I win.
- [45:51]
B
Most of the.
- [45:51]
F
The time I will. Most of the time. There was a three years ago when the Ukraine war kicked in, that was not fun. But when the Ukraine war kicked in three years ago, that was like dark days for the PR industry and there was like. There wasn't much of business about. And yeah, I think it's worse now with the.
- [46:06]
E
I. I think what the government. I mean, I'm not to get too political on this, but I think what the government did to the NI and the hospitality sector, because we've got a lot of food and drink clients and we've seen so many clients go bust. Not because of the. As a big contributor is the NI the tax implication. Not many people are really on it. They're not really hearing about it. If you look at your local pubs, they're struggling. I just think that. I think the government should do something about that. I do think they made a mistake.
- [46:31]
F
I think you're right. We don't really have much in the hospitality space, but I can see that being impacted, especially the NI thing. I mean, we're seeing it. I mean, with the graduate roles. We used to bring on graduates and train people up and now the. So the entry level sort of living wage is not far off and account managers, you know, and that gap has been compressed.
- [46:51]
E
Has it stopped you from hiring somebody?
- [46:53]
F
I've been focusing on hiring more kind of seasoned, kind of.
- [46:57]
E
Exactly. Same.
- [46:57]
F
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [46:59]
E
There you go. That's exactly. And that they should listen to what we're saying there. That's two business owners of similar size agencies, both reputable businesses, not recruiting because of tax implant. It's the tax and the minimum wage.
- [47:12]
F
It's the affordability of for a year because people don't stick around as long as they used to. You might get two, three years out of somebody the first year. A graduate is, I don't want to say useless Graduates. You are great. But you know, you learn. You are learning and they are brilliant. I think young people are fantastic. But yeah, there's a big risk there with that.
- [47:35]
C
So.
- [47:35]
F
And actually what I found as well, poor old recruiters. I spend probably about 30 grand a year, 40 grand a year on recruiters. LinkedIn ads now brings in. I spend about. Spend about four grand on LinkedIn ads for jobs. Last year got some amazing CVs, fantastic, you know, account. It's people with one, two, three years experience and therefore, you know, I've not had to. Usually what put me off hiring the more experienced people was also the extra recruitment. 20 or 10% on what you paid on top. So, you know, now I can get them directly through, through LinkedIn ads.
- [48:12]
E
And what I find, I mean, this is. This is probably not even for the podcast. But what I find Quite annoying about LinkedIn ads recruitment though, is that really, like, we're based in Leeds, right. So we want people. I mean, you can have some people anywhere, but basically we recruit in within an hour's drive of leads, you know, not even Manchester, where you guys are, really. Some people do do that, but they don't last very long if they.
- [48:34]
F
I've got a hard and fast rule about that, actually. They've got one guy who commutes him from Liverpool, bless him, he's working really hard and he's still with me and he's still doing it. Yeah, I would normally it would have been a no.
- [48:43]
E
Yeah. My issue with LinkedIn ads, you get all sorts from like Glasgow.
- [48:51]
F
Yeah. 100. You clearly see in the ads, I don't know what it's wrong in Manchester or London.
- [48:55]
E
Yeah.
- [48:55]
B
And you see, you put.
- [48:56]
E
Are you willing to live there? And you speak to them, they're like, oh, yeah, it's a bit far.
- [49:00]
F
Is that right if I come in? No, it's not.
- [49:02]
E
All they've done is click one button to apply for a job. Anyway, this isn't really helping our listeners.
- [49:06]
F
No, no. I don't know, we can cut that for somebody else.
- [49:08]
E
James, thanks for coming on the show.
- [49:10]
F
Really great. Great to meet you after all these years. I've been following your business prohibition for donkey's years. You do some really great work and it's from a marketing perspective, also really visible and good proposition. Good sense of the digital impacts of the work you do. So, yeah, one of the good guys over here, by the way.
- [49:30]
E
I mean, for someone like you to say that, that's great. I mean, it's just weird that I've known you for like so long but never actually met you. That's the weird thing about social. That's the great thing. And the weird thing about social media.
- [49:41]
F
Yeah, isn't it? It's a completely weird thing. It's so weird. I was getting onto Internet dating a bit of a tangent, but, right. I was at a. Oh, God, it was a comedy night and, you know, comedian asked, how did you meet? A couple hinge. You know, such a depressing way to have actually met someone. And now social media We've only just met after 10 years, but hinge is a bit quicker. I'm not sure we're going to be on Hinge, but you know what I mean, the technology is a weird kind of friction. So we've known each other, but not actually in the chat.
- [50:12]
E
Yeah, I know. And like when I talk to people at the conference today, like, I know what I've known once. I've met him loads of times. I actually wrote a chapter in the social media handbook in 2012. I think that was on crisis, digital crisis management back in the day. But what's fascinating is I've never seen his. I've never met, I've never been on his boat. He's got a boat, right? And he shares pictures of his boat and he's like. I can see him thinking, it must be a bit weird because people know inside your life even though, you know. Yeah, you know, you've let them in your window through social media.
- [50:46]
F
But yeah, no, it's funny, I've. I've never been invited on Wads's boat. Wads, invite us to your boat.
- [50:51]
E
Sarah, invite us to your party boat.
- [50:53]
F
Yes, have a party. Let's have a party.
- [51:05]
A
Thanks for listening to Embracing Marketing Mistakes. You've reached the end of the podcast. Hooray. What can you possibly do to help Chris and will the providers of this show? Well, what you can help us by doing is just please give us some feedback. Positive, negative, constructive. Well, hopefully not negative, but if you could give us a review somewhere, five star review, preferably wherever you get your podcast, it will really help for people to find the show because there's loads
- [51:29]
E
of other people out there that we'd
- [51:31]
A
love to hear about it. And the guests that come on here, we want to give them as much visibility as possible. So, yeah, I want to just thank you personally for listening to the show. I really appreciate it because it's a bit weird. We record it in Leeds and wherever you are around the world, from Peru to Estonia to Russia to Africa, I want to thank all of you for listening, really appreciate it. So, yeah, if you like the show, please give us a review because it means a lot. So thanks a lot and enjoy the rest of your week. See you next week.