Friday, October 02, 2015

Why are PR jobs so special

Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, recently predicted that within 20 years most jobs will be automated. PR commentator Tom Foremski explored the idea and came up with some controversial thoughts for PR.


“Public relations has been pulled into the modern world (complaining about the extra work of social) but not much has changed. It’s still very much a hand-crafted, artisanal business, its use of technology is a Twitter hashtag and a dashboard of likes and shares.

"But without a significant tech component PR is at a big disadvantage because it can’t scale, it can't grow without growing more people. This lack of technical components is also why valuations of PR firms are low compared to their revenues.

"And it makes PR firms vulnerable to competitors outside their field that can figure out and automate technologies of promotion.”

Why are PR jobs so special that some of the work won't be automated?


Well, there is nothing stopping us, we can automate. That is what this book is about. But the warning that if PR does not do it, someone else will is not a hollow statement in Tom’s article. Since he wrote it, AP Dow has started to write articles automatically - up to 3000 each quarter!

"Much of the promise of artificial intelligence is yet to be realised, but in some areas it's already proving its worth. Meet the robot journalists that one day might steal my job,"  Stephen Beckett, BBC Click TV.

"Tencent publishes word-perfect business article on inflation, complete with analysts' comments, crafted in a minute by a computer programme," He Huifeng. South China Morning Post.





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