Spotlight on industry events, maximizing content lifecycle, and normalizing AI
It’s that time of year again – the silly season has come to a close and PR and Marketing activity is quickly ramping back up to a familiar pace as we close off Summer and prepare to enter the final quarter of the year. The ‘Summer Lull’ is firmly in the rear view mirror!
With client events to support, an AI makeover, and a textbook lesson on maximizing content lifecycle, holidays have been swiftly forgotten and it’s all about closing September and preparing for Q4.
Timely events provide the perfect thought leadership springboard
In-person events are returning as a staple to the PR and Marketing industry post-pandemic, and they’re here to stay! Our data movement client would agree, as a large portion of their PR and Marketing focus this month has centred on their attendance at one of the largest global tech conferences for data streaming and modern, event-driven systems in San Jose, USA! Not only did our client attend, host a booth, and a keynote session with their SME – they took advantage of the media awareness of this event to launch a product update. And we were of course quick to exploit the opportunity.
After pitching out a timely press release, the team jumped at the opportunity to sit down with our client’s SMEs to interview, plan, and draft an accompanying byline to address current industry pain points and introduce our client’s product. The release produced the top line messaging, with the article providing the long-term deeper dive into the value of the new solution.
Themes aren’t a one-stop shop but can fuel content pipelines across the board
Talking of industry events, the IBA team was invited to our risk and insurance technology client’s insurance conference in London this month. It’s an industry under the spotlight at the moment with lots of change, so we were keen to attend to gain some key industry insights that could shape our content pipeline for the remainder of the year!
With plenty of key notes and interactive sessions to sit in on, we put our fingers on our keypads and gathered our notes to take to our bi-weekly themes meeting. As we look to close out 2023 and begin plans for 2024 (already?!), our internal themes meetings are vital to keeping track of new industry themes and ideas we can span across multiple client accounts. Timely industry research is essential, and the topics we collected from the insurance conference have accelerated the hot topic tracking process and already set us in good stead for 2024!
Talking of themes, top mentions at this year’s conference go to vendor ecosystems, omni-channel approaches to CX, navigating prices in a time of economic instability, brand equity – and the biggest marketing buzzword of 2023 so far … generative AI of course!
AI fatigue given a refresh
As we are all too aware, ChatGPT made history as the fastest growing online platform when it was launched in November 2022. Now, almost a year since launching, it is a dominating topic in the world of PR and Marketing. If our clients aren’t talking about it, we are! With the IBA team racking up just shy of 30 AI-themed placements this year alone across different client accounts, we also have our own CEO’s thought leadership campaign with 14 placements (check out our latest placement here) We’re now blazing a trail on the use of generative AI with our Head of Client Service’s new article on the role of AI in PR 5.0, published as I write in a top tier PR and Marketing publication! AI it seems still needs a human voice!
With such a saturated pool of AI content already online – we’re looking at use cases – AI in action to help solve real industry pain points. Standout content for media placement needs to attack specific market trends, issues and pain points, and offer a unique solution. So we’ve been drafting a thought leadership piece for our North-American enterprise software client about how AI software assists with mitigating skills shortages and the placements have been rolling in!
The AI content lifecycle lives on
Yep – we’re still on the AI bandwagon! Bit of a gimme this month for coverage when our enterprise software client announced the acquisition of an AI software company that provides automated, high-speed data analysis to the manufacturing industries. The media rarely miss a good story and they leapt on this one! Our media contacts jumped at the opportunity to share this news, with the IBA team gaining an impressive 30 placements in top-tier industry media across the globe!
We’re out of the AI starting blocks and we’re off!
As I wrote in our previous monthly round-up blog, the IBA team spent the silly summer season productively, by ‘leaning into the lull’ to set us in good stead for the rest of 2023 . With international events, themes brainstorming, and new AI strategies on our storyboards, we’re off and running!
Caitlin Goldsmith is a PR Executive at IBA International
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