Karolyn Raphael is President & CEO of Winger Marketing, a marketing and PR agency known for its strategic B2B campaigns and media training.
“First, be human” has been a core principle of my marketing and public relations agency for decades. It’s taken on a whole new meaning in the AI era.
Originally, it meant taking a human interest in our clients, becoming an extension of their teams, amplifying their missions through authentic storytelling and supporting work-life balance for our staff. It still means all of those things, but now it also means defining and protecting what stays human as AI becomes increasingly integrated into our work lives.
A Leadership Framework For The AI Era
Balancing AI efficiency and human trust is a new leadership imperative that crosses every department and function. The decisions are not as simple as “Where and how do we use AI?” The counterpoint to those decisions is “What stays human?”
Answering one question without the other leads to lopsided strategies and higher exposure to risk. For example, publishing AI-generated content without human editing or source verification can lead to misinformation and mistakes. Some companies are learning the hard way that not everything can be outsourced to AI (registration required).
Balancing AI Efficiency And Human Trust
When it comes to PR and content creation, the trick is to leverage AI’s speed without losing human authority, wisdom or experience. Striking this balance enhances production efficiency and content credibility. Missing this balance, in the worst-case scenario, can damage brand reputations that took years to build.
I recently had the chance to present a workshop on using AI in your PR strategies at an American Marketing Association Chicago event. What came up frequently in our discussion was that most teams don’t have any clear direction on when it’s okay to use AI and when it’s not. It seems that most companies haven’t established clear policies and guidelines around AI use in brand voice.
A 5-Question Evaluation Framework
To help PR and marketing teams make decisions about using AI, here’s a five-question evaluation framework for determining how to integrate AI into a PR strategy or content creation.
Question 1: What does AI do best for us?
AI is great for early-stage development and operational tasks. It’s an efficiency tool for first drafts and outlines and a resource for brainstorming. It can also support back-end analysis like search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword research and headline testing.
Question 2: What must stay human?
This is an important question for any leadership team to ask. We advise our clients to keep the human element in PR strategies and communications that are high-stakes, high-authority or highly nuanced. This includes executive thought leadership, crisis communications, commentary on financial earnings, company values and personal stories. It’s important for regulated industries to take additional caution when using AI for content and communications.
Question 3: Does it pass the trust filter framework?
With the first two strategic questions answered, you can move into tactical implementation. At my agency, we’ve developed a trust filter framework, which is essentially a checklist of questions to ask before creating any PR or marketing content.
Before developing content, check whether the material requires:
• Judgment
• Risk assessment
• Emotional intelligence
• Ethical consideration
• Legal accountability
• Brand positioning clarity
If the answer to any of those questions is “yes,” keep the content creation human.
Question 4: Does it follow the trust architecture framework?
The trust filter framework works for individual pieces of content, and the trust architecture framework works for broader content plans and PR strategies. In the AI era, trusted PR requires three layers.
• Layer 1: Operational Efficiency
Efficiency is no longer a competitive differentiator; it’s a must-have. AI can jump-start the content creation process, enhancing speed and scalability.
• Layer 2: Human Editorial Authority
Layer two is the human-only level. Maintain executive oversight, strategic narrative control and final approval to ensure accuracy, credibility and authority.
• Layer 3: Transparency Infrastructure
Transparency infrastructure is likely to become increasingly standard over time. In the early days of social media influencer marketing, we didn’t have standards or requirements for disclosing when influencers were being compensated for promoting a product on their personal accounts, and now those standards are common.
Establish standards for:
• Authorship clarity (specifying when content or images were generated by AI and when they weren’t)
• Source verification and fact-checking protocols
• Brand voice governance
• Metadata integrity
Establishing documented standards now puts you ahead of the curve and can increase the trust factor even further.
Question 5: Are we maintaining our core values?
This is an executive reflection question. Upholding personal and brand values is part of a leader’s role.
AI can draft, summarize and optimize, but it can’t take responsibility. It can’t exercise judgment under pressure. In other words, AI can generate content, but only humans can generate trust.
We are using AI judiciously at my agency, but “First, be human” will always be the value we live by.
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