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If you’re like me and running a business, sometimes you need some time before testing out the newest trend in social media or the new technology everyone’s talking about. So here I am with my personal grain of salt about what I understand of AI and ChatGPT.

If you haven’t done it yet, log on to ChatGPT and try asking this amazing tool what’s on your mind. No doubt you’ll be bowled over by how fast and how well it answers.

My first question was: “What is artificial intelligence?” I got a pretty long answer at first, so then I asked ChatGPT for a shorter answer in French and English. Within seconds, here’s what came up on the screen:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of machines to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence, such as reasoning, perception, learning, and interaction with the environment. It is a field of computer science that enables machines to analyze data, make decisions, and learn from experience without human intervention.

What role will artificial intelligence play in public relations?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to have a significant impact on the field of public relations. Here are some examples of roles that AI could play:

Data analysis: AI can be used to analyze massive amounts of data, such as social media, blog comments, and press articles, to help PR professionals understand how people perceive their company or brand.

Task automation: AI can be used to automate repetitive tasks, such as responding to journalist inquiries, which would free up PR professionals to focus on more strategic tasks.

Strategy development: AI can be used to help PR professionals develop more effective strategies by analyzing data and providing insights on market trends, target audiences, and competitors.

Communication personalization: AI can be used to personalize communication based on individual consumer preferences, which can improve the effectiveness of PR messages.

What does ChatGPT stand for and can you give me a shorter answer?

Sure! ChatGPT is short for “Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” which is a fancy name for a conversational AI language model.

I understand that the power of such a tool can be frightening, but I can’t help seeing its advantages. Especially when it comes to understanding the trends and what’s on our contemporaries’ minds and to quickly find out what the media or your potential clients are interested in.

With this, you can:

answer more quickly and simply instead of basing yourself on perceptions;

save some money if you don't have the resources to pay for expensive market studies;

focus on tasks that create value, like new services.

As ChatGPT told me:

However, it's important to note that AI will not completely replace PR professionals, but rather it can be used as a tool to enhance their work and efficiency.

So these new tools are ours to make good use of.

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We're all aware that since the pandemic, companies around the world have been facing hiring challenges. Between you and me, how could it be otherwise when every business sector has had massive layoffs?

So it's time to quit complaining and get on with it. I'm one of those bosses who has figured out that you have to be in permanent hiring mode and that recruiting young talent who have just finished their studies—if you give them a little time—can quickly prove to be more efficient than an employee who says they have three years of experience but who's bounced from job to job without ever really digging in. That means we'll just have to train them anyway.

I can hear you saying, what? You train employees who might very well not stay with NATA PR? And my answer is yes! Plenty of them are going to leave, often six months or a year in, whether we train them or not. Yet I have to say, since I've made peace with constantly training and hiring, more than 70% of our new hires have stayed with us for more than a year. And if they do leave, it's often to go back to school, to travel since that wasn't an option for this new generation, or sometimes to choose another profession.

I too benefit from this ongoing training by rethinking every move we make at NATA PR and how we can develop processes to make what we do here crystal-clear and easy. And you know what? My training sessions with my employees have become the basis of the NATA PR SCHOOL, where I teach you media relations, simplified.

The first thing we do with our young hires is:

• Show them a completed activity report. This is often an annual report that shows the number of interviews, articles and mentions we got for a client.

Step two:

• Teach them what we did to get those results (e.g. nine press releases + products + two virtual presentations).

Step three:

• Bring them to the front or centre stage to draft an initial email introducing a product, service or company—what we call the brief—which they'll then send out in an email. Centre stage is sending emails and sometimes making phone calls. What are we going to say or write? What is essential?

That's already 50% of the work. The next step—Step 3 in our model—is to identify what I call the “real” influencers. It's just a question of finding who's interested in the product or service you're selling.

Yes, we have powerful tools to run media searches, but just like you, we'll Google it. Sometimes, reaching out three times to journalists/influencers whom we've done research on to find out if they've recently written about the same type of subject is better than sending out a thousand cold emails to a list of contacts you got from a friend.

According to CISION's annual State of the Media Report, the #1 complaint of journalists is the low volume of interesting emails (barely 25%) based on the business sectors they write about. So you'll understand that there's no point in sending them an email about a new clothing collection when they only write about electric cars.

But will you get more from them if the information you're sending them is related to the topics they cover?

So now it's your turn to include simplified PR in your marketing plan. Enrol in our programme and I'll teach you our fast and effective method that will only take an hour or two of your time each week.

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Public relations, the way we do it here at NATA PR, means creating events for product launches, new collections, and more. You might wonder when an event is necessary and whether it’s worth the time and money invested. 

Well, a public relations agency can help you see things more clearly. Since I took my first steps in marketing, I've been very keyed in to allocating budgets to get people talking about something new. And yes, sometimes you’ll get identical results without an event, in terms of media coverage or influencer mentions.

If someone’s trying to sell you on an event at all costs, ask your agency to propose an event-free strategy and see what they come up with.

It’s hardly news that convincing journalists and influencers to attend a product launch can be tough. The brands who have the resources will try to outdo each other, offering press trips to idyllic locales. But what if you’re a local brand with, shall we say, limited resources?

You’ll have to be creative and come up with an event that will provide, say, new content that adds on to what the journalists and influencers are saying.

We were asked to come up with an event for the launch of skin care products for post-menopausal women.

Of course, beauty reporters are interested in the topic—they want to share the new products and trends with readers and subscribers—but why should they bother to attend when they can receive the new products and information from the comfort of home?

Here again, the NATA PR Six-Step Model is so useful to us, and Step 1 answers the question: Why should they bother to attend?

Here are some answers that spurred us to propose a custom event for our client:

1. Journalists want to meet experts
2. Journalists/influencers love discovering new thingsJournalists/influencers are looking for original new content

Our ideas:

After custom skin care, women in menopause or post-menopause are looking for makeup solutions, and often have to update their wardrobe.

So, we designed a three-part event:

1. A skin care expert came to talk to us about mature skin, what’s in the new products and how effective they are.
2. A celebrity makeup artist who works with mature women came to talk to us about makeup tips.
3. And a fashion designer talked to us about mature women, who are the focus of their clothing designs.

The designer agreed to let us host the journalists in their store, which we set up for the event. Working together with the cosmetics brand, a portion of the cost of the clothing was covered by the beauty brand, and the journalists could choose a blouse and a pair of pants in their size.

This event, which was carried off with the most limited of budgets, was a real success.

So yes, events have their purpose, but be sure you’re clear on your objectives and priorities before you embark on the adventure, because the cost could rival a wedding. So you can imagine the astronomical sums that some brands invest in these events.

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In the previous two episodes, I told you how I found public relations at the Opéra de Montréal and the Analekta record company.

So let’s move on to when I was head of marketing and communications at Parasuco Jeans and hadn’t yet chosen to go all in on public relations. I’m telling you my story in three acts, just to show you how, years later, I developed the basis of what I teach you at the NATA PR SCHOOL.

So when I was at Parasuco Jeans I discovered the impact magazines have on fashion. Even now, even in their online version, the major magazines like Vogue, Elle and Marie-Claire are instrumental in sharing fashion trends. I quickly learned how to take advantage of these fabulous glossy print magazines for Parasuco.

Several fashion stylists quickly figured out they could contact me to come and borrow clothing from upcoming collections. Thanks to the connections I made, Parasuco even made the cover of ELLE Canada.

That’s when I understood how profitable it was to trade services: I’d open up the showrooms for them where upcoming collections were presented to buyers. Journalists and stylists could borrow pieces from future collections and take photos to publish them in the pages of their magazines. Eureka! Sure, it took time and energy, but the results were amazing and well worth the investment.

Images and pictures are just as crucial today, because plenty of outlets will talk about new products if the brand sends them high-quality images. In the past, the major magazines would produce practically all the images that appeared in their pages, but nowadays if you don't have the images they're asking for, you simply won’t make it into the magazine.

So this is where Step 4 of the NATA Model becomes clear: Give them the tools they need. Images and videos are fundamental tools. And this is what we teach you at the NATA PR SCHOOL.

Now it’s up to you to include PR in your marketing plan. If you want to discuss it in person with us, get in touch now at www.natapr.com.

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In episode one of this three-part series, I told you how I found public relations at the Opéra de Montréal, where I began my career in marketing and communications.

Today’s episode covers phase two in my PR discoveries because, despite my success in spreading the word about Opéra dans la rue and the Opéra 18-35 programme, several years would go by before I moved fully into public relations. My first loves were marketing and communications, and I stayed on that path for a few more years before launching NATA PR.

After four years with the Opéra de Montréal, I made a quick detour into the world of theatre at Espace Go, once again as marketing and communications director. Then I moved back into music with Analekta, one of Canada's top independent classical labels.

As marketing and communications director, I was asked to take special care of the company’s star performer: Angèle Dubeau. She’s a classical violinist who is still a top name in Canada, even today. Angèle knows how to stay accessible to her fans and give them the performances and recordings they want.

So I was still laying the groundwork for the NATA six-step model. Step one, which is figuring out why journalists would talk about Angèle Dubeau, was often a cinch. During those blessed CD years, she would put out a major new release each year.

It didn’t take me long to see that we needed a catchy title, but most importantly, to alert the media. Sending out a press release about a new classical album is one thing, but these weren’t Celine Dion’s latest hits!

So I had to set goals and sometimes do four to ten calls before I got any calls back from reporters. This was a time when there were still journalists who covered nothing but classical music, and a national radio station—CBC/Radio-Canada—that was entirely devoted to it.

The updates and alerts were incredibly effective. At Analekta, I discovered the various points that public relations and sales had in common. Because there too, to attract interest, I had to make a real effort, and do some things repeatedly.

The phone was my best tool. I would prepare my main message and my secondary messages. I always left very short voice mails, repeating my name and phone number twice, very slowly. The voice is a force I liked using, as I’m doing today with the podcast.

It was also at Analekta that I figured out I could get a feature story for a new item or event. Gregorian chant was having a moment, and Analekta’s founder had the brilliant idea of contacting the monks of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, less than two hours outside Montreal, to propose a recording project. It was a first for the monks, and they were eager to do the project. Gregorian chant—as they still practise it today—is sublime. The record brought their musical practice to a lot of people.

When I was wondering who would actually want to talk about this project, I thought about the newscast, and a culture reporter named Paul Toutant. I proposed he do a story on site during the recording. And just as I thought, he was very receptive. However, he requested an exclusive on the piece.

Since it was the major news show and millions of people tuned in every night, it didn’t take me long to realize this was a good idea. Exclusives are a key strategy, and in this case it was very lucrative. It made the album a smash hit.

This award-winning story got a lot of attention––more than eight minutes of a one-hour major news show!

I’m delighted to say once again that my passion for public relations goes back more than 30 years, and that after 10 years of working at many companies as marketing and communications director, I created the NATA PR SCHOOL so I could teach you the ABCs of public relations—which are still the same today—so you can easily integrate them into your marketing plan while combining them with your social media.

Now it’s up to you to include PR in your marketing plan. If you want to discuss it in person with us, get in touch now at www.natapr.com.

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This program is based on my own discovery of public relations several decades ago. I know from experience that if you pay attention and learn the fundamentals of PR, as I did, you can easily do it yourself. If you’re a small company with few human resources, or a startup, you can use PR to make yourself known, to grow and to attract investors.

I studied classical music at university, combined with postgraduate education in arts administration. I began my career at the Opéra de Montréal as a young intern, where I quickly found the marketing and communications department. It was a real wake-up call for me. I still love marketing and promotion. For three years I had the good fortune of working as marketing and communications manager, and I had a public relations expert on my team.

As I have a very creative mindset, I founded two new programs during those two years: Opéra 18-35 and Opéra dans la rue—a programme to make subscriptions accessible to the next generation of opera fans, and a mini-festival to bring opera to a wider audience.

Since the head of public relations in my department was very busy promoting the regular season, I decided to jump in and do the PR for these two programs myself.

Pressed for time, I wondered how I could get these two new programs talked about in short order. This is where I came up with the steps in our six-step method, the first of which is: Why would they be talking about you?

I’m not nostalgic, but it is amazing to see, as we travel down our path, whatever it is, how the bases of what we create are often already in place. So it didn’t take me long to figure out that I could contact local TV, radio and newspapers to talk to them about these new events. If you’re a regular listener, you know how interested reporters and influencers are in whatever’s new.

I even gave interviews on the radio, where they wanted to talk to me about Opéra dans la rue, this free mini-festival that was so accessible.

I also found out, at the start of my career, that journalists like talking directly to creators and entrepreneurs. So they were surprised to see that I was the one contacting them, and some of them were curious to hear me talk about my projects.

I understood that one of their mandates was to tell the people about what's new—in this case, a public service that could interest their listeners and readers. I was responding to step one in the NATA model: why would people talk about my project? As you’ve realized by now, in the case of Opéra dans la rue, the reasons were:

1. A free event open to the public
2. An initiative to help people discover opera
3. Activities for everyone

I’m delighted to say that my passion for public relations goes back more than 30 years, and that after 10 years of working at many companies as marketing and communications director, I created the NATA PR SCHOOL so I could teach you the ABCs of public relations—which are still the same today—so that you can easily integrate them into your marketing plan while combining them with your social media.

Now it’s up to you to include PR in your marketing plan. If you want to discuss it in person with us, get in touch now at www.natapr.com.

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What are the benefits of advertising and public relations? And what’sthe difference? This is the fourth episode in which I help you answerthose questions, and continue to share what I know to help you tellthem apart.

My ultimate goal is still to help you make informed choices when you’redeciding how to integrate public relations and advertising into yourmarketing plan.

Yes, public relations is always less expensive than advertising. This maysurprise some of you – but a Facebook campaign can quickly add upto tens of thousands of dollars.

Obviously, if you’re just starting out and have a newly launched product outthere, your budget won't let you do that kind of advertising campaign– it wouldn’t make sense. However, public relations and socialmedia are within your reach.

At NATA PR, which I founded more than 20 years ago, I’ve seen plentyof trends and schools of thought emerge along with social media. Someclients believed that influencers were the new, and the onlyworthwhile, brand ambassadors. However, every day we still seeproducts and companies partnering with the artists, athletes andcelebrities who often make headlines in mainstream media.

Others who would swear only by the Facebook ad, which of course generatesthem sales, hadn’t figured out that investing in their reputationwould probably have helped them last longer.

Since the advent of social media, the lifecycles of promotion fashions andtrends have sped up considerably. That’s why you may have heard of360o campaigns, which simply means getting yourself seen and promoted onseveral platforms, not just investing everything in one likeFacebook, even if it’s very profitable for you in the short term.

New brands can launch cheaply online and, if these young companies alsosucceed in getting talked about, they can quickly start to eat intoyour market share.

But let’s get back to our point. We're talking about spending here,specifically how much less public relations can cost you thanadvertising. During the pandemic, when many people believed theInternet and online sales would continue to skyrocket, some of ourclients hired digital marketing agencies to continue boosting theironline results. Some of those agencies had even recommended that ourclients take the budget they had for public relations and give it tothem.

So I crunched some numbers to find out how much the most recent onlinead campaigns by that agency had cost versus our PR results, e.g. thecost of acquiring new subscribers to their newsletter vs. a publicrelations campaign. Some of you will tell us that it's not the samething, and we agree 100% – but here are the results:

It cost our client between $5 and $10 per new subscription, per emailacquisition. As for our reputation campaign, it figured in cents:$0.005 per potential reader/listener/fan.

Several big brands that retain the services of NATA PR are investing solelyin two areas: social media and public relations.

Naturally, there's no magic formula that works for everyone all the time. But wehave convincing case studies and, as I like to repeat, largecorporations don't hire a public relations agency just for fun –but to get results.

So it’s up to you to include PR in your marketing plan. If you want to discuss it in person with us, get in touch now at www.natapr.com.

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Public relations and advertising get very different results. We’re on episode four now, and we’re still talking about what makes PR different from advertising. To find out more about how PR is different from advertising, please listen to our three previous episodes.

One vital element that only public relations will give you:

If I ask you to name the celebrities you know who aren’t in your circle or your industry, you’re going to realize that you know them through the filter of media and social media. You know them because the media talk about them.

For those of you who follow this podcast, you’ve often heard me mention Elon Musk’s name. I know it’s an extreme case, but it illustrates nicely how Elon Musk came to be known and succeeded in developing his reputation using public relations, not advertising the Tesla.

The same is true of every celebrity, but also for the business people in your community or in your country who you know because you’ve read articles about them in the media you consume.

So, if you choose to include PR in your marketing plan, the number-one reason should be:

Sure, PR will ultimately help to boost your sales, because consumers are more willing to purchase what they know or what they’ve discovered through the media and social media. But be careful not to get confused, because the role of PR is actually to “get you known.”

Advertising never plays that role. Advertising has many advantages, the main one being to generate sales.

Here’s what Wikipedia tells us:

Advertisingis a form of mass communications, the goal of which is to attract the attention of a target audience (consumer, user, voter, etc.) to persuade them to adopt a desired behaviour, such as purchasing a product, voting for a candidate, or conserving energy.

Public relations is an amazing tool for increasing a brand's credibility, regardless of what industry you're in. It gives consumers more confidence in your products.

Public relations adds to this long-term cumulative effect, which increases your online presence. By combining social media, press releases to journalists and organic collaborations with influencers, all our clients see their reputation grow, which does a lot for their future sales.

The top luxury brands like Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Gucci, along with the global brands like Nike, Adidas and New Balance continue to get themselves talked about, to maintain their reputation from one generation to the next. Yes, social media plays an important role here, but the media, which are also online, still play a critical role which lets them hold onto that precious reputation and their reach among their customers.

At NATA PR, we’re not anti-advertising—quite the opposite. We believe that combining PR, advertising and social media can produce amazing results.

So it’s up to you to take advantage of this, and include PR in your marketing plan. If you want to discuss it in person with us, get in touch now at www.natapr.com.

And most of all, don’t forget to add a comment if you think our podcast is helpful.

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How do you tell advertising and public relations apart? When and why should you use one or the other—or both? This is the third episode in which I help you answer those questions and continue to share what I know to help you tell them apart. The ultimate goal is to have you integrating public relations and advertising into your marketing plan.

Are you wondering whether public relations lasts? Know that any journalist who grants you the privilege of talking about you or your product leaves traces, especially online:

When you spend your time and your budget on public relations and influencer awareness, it can take time to see results, and they’re not always immediate—but they do last. Anyone doing an online search for your product will see those articles pop up and will get information about you.

I recall an exchange with a young marketing professional, to whom I was explaining what it is we do, and he told me: “We have a client who does exactly what NATA PR offers its clients. Journalists and influencers regularly talk about this brand, which brings a steady stream of visitors to the website. And what they ask us to do is simply “retarget” their visitors.

In other words, the brand in question had hired this digital marketing professional for a retargeting campaign, to offer the brand’s products again to all visitors to the company’s website. Here again, you see advertising becomes much more effective when you offer potential customers the products of a brand they’ve already heard of.

And this digital marketing pro went on to say: “That’s exactly what’s happening, they’ve integrated public relations into their plan; it’s the best organic part of their marketing plan!”

This means that the brand succeeds in getting talked about without paying journalists and influencers.

So advertising is much more transient, although it’s very powerful in this case:

At NATA PR, we’re not anti-advertising—quite the opposite. We believe that combining PR, advertising and social media can produce amazing results.

So it’s up to you to take advantage of this, and include PR in your marketing plan. If you want to discuss it in person with us, get in touch now at www.natapr.com.

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What are public relations and advertising for? We’re continuing to look into this area, which we began in the previous episode. If you can’t tell one from the other, you’re not alone—even the pros sometimes get confused.

Advertising students and trainees often skim over the topic of public relations in their coursework. Since it isn’t often considered a major component, they’re only taught the basics—but it’s a powerful tool that should be part of every good marketing plan.

As we discussed in the last episode, advertising and media relations are both promotional, but they get different results:

As I’m writing these words, I’ve just been won over by an ad for an “Ultrasonic cleaner” for cleaning eyeglasses and jewellery. Since it’s reasonably priced ($24.98), I figured I could just get it now to try it out and, if the quality wasn’t the best, I wouldn’t have lost much.

You see how the ad seduced me. This product solves a problem: I wear glasses practically 24/7 and I’ve always wanted one of those little devices.

Longbefore I saw this ad, I’d seen lots of the little boxes in magazines and on social media. You know those quick videos where they show you that if you dunk a tarnished piece of jewellery, you instantly see a cloud of filth detach from the item and float in the liquid. When you lift out your jewellery, it’s clean as a whistle and sparkling too.

That’s right where the ad could have pressed the “want” button for me, because I was feeling a compound effect. A backlog of images and information that only PR can provide, combined here with social media.

A couple of years ago, we took advantage of the opposite effect to grab the media’s attention about a steamer for smoothing wrinkles out of clothing. The brands T-FAL and ROWENTA were selling appliances like the TOBI, whose ad was causing a stir in a small market, and the ROWENTA was more effective.

I had pitched a public relations campaign to our client, and we’d approached magazine editors as well as editorial stylists. We’d shown them our appliances and they had had a chance to use them. These approaches netted us some good press, and I remember that the SEB group, which distributes and sells its brands in North America, had named us as an example and that we had been one of their case studies at international meetings.

You see, when I talk about combining the strength of PR with social media and advertising, this is a perfect example.

So it’s up to you to take advantage of this, and include PR in your marketing plan. If you want to discuss it in person with us, get in touch now at www.natapr.com.

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