“Marketing is a one-way street. Public relations, however, is a two-way street that allows communication back and forth with audiences.”
This quote echoes a message that bounced around the walls of the PR agencies I worked at early in my career.
The sentiment is accurate, but its spread fell short, likely because its arbiters were PR practitioners (LOL).
But all these years later, as a result of generative AI use in marketing — particularly its application in customer experience and engagement efforts — the idea has experienced a resurgence of sorts.
Of course these days most conversations focused on applications of generative AI in marketing revolve around marketers coping by calling themselves “prompt engineers” and CEOs exploring ways to gut content creation budgets.
But lurking underneath these developments is the message those old PR sages relayed to me so many years ago: the best way to engage prospects and create customers is via two-way conversation.
A give and take — a dialogue instead of a monologue.
Because for too long, organizations have have been standing on a ledge shouting in one direction, never considering any other way of doing things.
And unless we change course, it’s easy to imagine the nightmare ahead of us: short-sighted marketers forever shouting one-way messages into the void without ever considering that customers are actually seeking a “two-way street” exchange of information with organizations.
Oh, and that void? It’s now expanded to infinity in size due to the ever-growing, endless amount of garbage produced by generative AI.
Read More
