In an increasingly fake world, Truth Matters Most, and Public Relations, which at its core builds credibility, positive reputation and positions professionals as thought leaders and brands among the best of the best, is strongly positioned to tell the truth.
Why Truth Matters Most
There is no doubt that the rise of AI offers significant benefit to businesses from an efficiency and productivity point of view, enabling organisations to work more optimally and keep up with the competition in a world that is speeding up because of innovative new technologies. At what cost though?
With the rise of fake content which, when placed in the wrong hands holds enormous, and not necessarily good, power, there is an opportunity and frankly need to tell the truth.
At Cultivate, we believe in and foster original thought and insight among our clients, helping them to espouse their expertise, experience and unique opinions that cannot be replicated by tech. With the advent of Google’s Gemini for instance and ChatGPT, among other AIs, ‘traditional’ digital tactics like SEO are dying while an online keyword approach is losing relevance and weight. Fortunately the truth prevails and a quest for original content and authoritative thought on and offline is becoming non-negotiable. Outsourcing one’s brain to GenAI – which everyone else has access to, means there is a real risk of sounding and/or looking very similar to another brand – will fall flat inevitably as competitive brands become homogenised and same-samey in message, and Thought Leaders start to say very similar things leading to a lack of differentiation and loss of a clear market positioning. As two key bedrocks of marketing and building businesses, if not unique, this error can undermine the efforts of an organisation to carve out and own a competitive space in its sector.
To us the writing is on the wall. Instead, cultivating in-depth, proper, accurately substantiated (who knows if AI’s search results are accurate and 100% fact-checked) and authentic thought, positions products and people as true originals that use the power of their minds, expertise and experience, rather than that of a machine’s.
At Cultivate this creation of originality drives us and helps our clients – be they businesses, organisations or individuals – to be profiled and trusted as intelligent, informed and genuine champions of their industries. Fake cannot beat Truth. Coupled with a deep interlink with the current news agenda of the day, producing content of substance is possible, and very necessary. This is what inspires us and allows us to work with incredible people and brands that value and engender originality of thought.
Together, we help to identify and create key, unique insights and build an inimitable narrative for every client, package this into media-friendly formats for editorial publication to ultimately create trusted, credible reputations that are real and engender the power of influence to drive key stakeholders to act, change perceptions or carve out an industry niche of their own.
Without using PR’s broad range of communications strategies and solutions that generate earned – i.e. trusted – exposure across platforms, the truth will continue to succumb to the deluge of fake content that is machine-made versus having been created by a human who has an EQ, understands sentiment and knows how to talk to others in a trustworthy, nuanced and engaging way. Else, a ChatGPT or other LLM-generated piece may sound solid, be produced instantly and make the “author” look intelligent, but the fact is, a human mind is far superior to that of an AI tool when it comes to creating and sharing factual, substantiated, timely content that newsjacks current affairs, giving it up- to-the-minute context, and most importantly, being completely original and exclusively one-of-a-kind. The alternative is that brands and businesses, products and people will begin to sound and say similar, if not the same things which erodes authenticity, credibility and originality.
In an era of Generative AI where SEO and Google Ad ranking is becoming obsolete, having visibility is not about creating volume or virality. Rather memorable, original thought that communicates a strong point of view, and being an industry authority or expert won’t just cultivate uniqueness but also strongly enhance the chance of PR-led content being picked up by Google’s Generative AI Search, which pulls from reputable sources to answer search questions.
It's a significant game-changer for sure, but one that truly unlocks the power of Public Relations which is extremely exciting for the industry and its practitioners. It’s PRs time to rise and shine.
