Charting the Path: The Future of AI in PR with Paula Phelan, COO of Intelligent Relations

0:28Welcome to the AI Chat Podcast. prominent figure in Silicon Valley for years. So we are going to be diving in. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today, Paula. Oh, such a pleasure. It's great being here. Thank you. I would just want to kind of kick this off and kick it over to you to maybe talk a little bit about your background and maybe what got you interested in, you know, coming into the tech space in general. And yeah, what was kind of your journey there? Oh my. Well, that goes back a ways. So at the end of the day, I'm a software developer, started out in Unix and in the Wayback Machine.

1:04So I come at it as a technologist and worked as an engineer for many years. And basically, over time, worked with a lot of PR agencies. And when I say that, it's HP and a bunch of large companies as well as small startups. And my last startup went public. We were all happy and good. And my area of expertise is mostly in infrastructure type software solutions. So when I realized at one point, all the PR agencies I worked with really didn't understand technology or couldn't articulate it clearly enough to be able to come up with good positioning and messaging. So I started an agency specifically designed to address the needs of technology companies and did that successfully for 30 years.

1:53life was good brought tons of technology to the market um and at the end of the day i couldn't help feel there's got to be a better way to do this and i like are you familiar with the term trad fi i love this it's it's traditional finance okay so now we have trad pr so traditional pr is absolutely effective it works however there's a lot of tedium involved and there's a lot of no matter how many processes you put in place, how much workflow you really manage, I always came up against, I wanted to be implementing machine language. I wanted to be doing things. Again, my background is engineering.

2:34I thought we can fix this. We can make this more efficient. And so when AI came into being, I went, this is the answer. This is where I want to go. And so I turned away from traditional PR and started working on an AI based solution. And while I was doing that, I ran into a friend of mine who was already a couple of years ahead of me thinking the exact same thing so that's how i was introduced to intelligent relations and it's been really exciting it it is a a perfect application of ai to a traditional something it's like introducing computers to accounting right it's so obvious it's like yeah makes a lot of sense we can really see improved productivity and you still need to know how to do accounting.

3:20So same thing here. You still need to know how to do PR, but we can make it so much better, so much more efficient. That's amazing. And I think that's so cool that you were able to, obviously you had this idea and you saw this incredible implication. You were able to find someone that had been working in this space and kind of jump in and start working on that. So I understand that at Intelligent Relations, you guys have been working on something called Preston. Would you mind telling everyone a little bit about what Preston is and how that's kind of making some big waves in the PR industry? Absolutely.

3:53Pleasure. And one of the things, since a lot of your audience is very focused on AI, so let me just say, Preston is an AI PR platform. So a lot of the things that we traditionally would do in PR is embedded in the platform. So we're using open AI, a number of public and proprietary AI algorithms. That's sort of the core of our solution. From that, in that platform, one of the first things we started doing was media monitoring. So currently we have 40 million articles in the platform that are part of our data lake that we can call on to be able to truly understand what people are writing about.

4:33We have a finger on the pulse of everything that's going on in terms of news, trends, all of that. We can see that. It's a three-pillar solution. So one is technology, and that's the AI in the platform. The other one is media. So part in the platform, we are also tracking several hundred thousand journalists. Wow. Journalists, editors, broadcasters like yourself, and be able to identify exactly what they're writing about, speaking about, where their areas of interests are. So at that point, once we have all this knowledge about their outlets and publications and such and the knowledge of the individuals, media is our second pillar because the journalists are so important.

5:21are, for instance, you wouldn't want somebody reaching out to you talking about farming and agriculture. Not that farming and agriculture isn't important, but you want, and that traditionally is what happened. There was this concept of spray and praying. You would have PR people just reaching out to anybody, no matter what their beat was, what they cared about, et cetera. So the platform is actually able to marry that element. We have a client, This client is working on focusing on ultrasound, right? A handheld ultrasound solution. I can be able to take all that information from their website, all their information, put it into the platform, and then it can marry up the relationship between the client and the journalist who actually cares about ultrasounds and handheld devices and medical equipment and all of that.

6:15It's great. until now the only way to make that happen is somebody with years and years of experience who knew who writes about it who knew what the issues were so you would have to have a very um sophisticated group of people who had one set of knowledge now you can give in a lot of individuals that knowledge and add to it and take it beyond just that one one silo of information somebody might know. That's amazing. I'm sorry. That touches on the third pillar, which is you still need talented PR people so that at the end of the day, AI is a technology. You still need people to drive it, to focus it, to put it in a good direction.

7:04Just do it on its own. That's amazing. Something that I actually really love about this concept that you guys are working on, I feel like with AI, so often we hear like, for example, like I'm in marketing. That was kind of my focus of study for most of my professional life. And so often when I think of AI, I think like, oh, you know, this AI is going to just write like a million articles on a million topics and just create like so much, like almost like more fluff in the world. You know, what I love that you guys are doing is it's actually more focused, right? Because the previous model was you send an email out to as many journalists as you possibly can find and just hope that someone's going to be the right fit for you.

7:41But what you guys are actually doing is focusing this. You're cutting out a lot of that bloat. You're cutting out a lot of that unnecessary stuff. And by just doing very small, specific, precise outreach to journalists and connections, however you do that, you're really making the whole thing more effective. Journalist lives are way easier. They're not having to go through a million emails that are irrelevant. You don't have to send a million emails that are relevant. Absolutely love it. What tell me a little bit about because I know you were thinking about your own thing. You came and joined Intelligent Relations.

8:09I saw on your LinkedIn that you were an advisor for them for a bit. Tell me about some of your ideas that you had, you know, kind of thought and brought to this place that you're really excited that are being implemented. You know, I got to tell you, I get excited. Can it be every day? At least once a week by some real aha moment. It's like, oh my goodness, we can do this. I really believe the limitations of AI are only our own imagination, right? It can do so much. And at this point, prompt engineers are a real thing. And I regularly go to the people on the team and outside people to say, and what are you thinking about?

8:49And how are we doing? Each of us comes up with something new every week, which is exciting. It really is like early years in some of the technology. I would say one is to just really get a pulse on, and we have this, of those journalists who we've identified is, actually, it's not just key journalists. In each field, we're looking at key journalists, and we know what they've written about. When was the last time they wrote? Was it two hours ago? Was it two months ago? What was the focus of the peace, all that. So we can be knowledgeable before we reach out to the person and actually say to them, I saw that you just wrote about, um, Oh, the, the, the, the lovely podcast you just had of, uh, uh, working with sound to improve people's lives and, and, uh, uh, health and wellbeing.

9:44Oh yeah. You know, we could go out and find somebody who specifically is writing on that topic, whether it's a mental health or an ability to improve in your job, we can identify that person very specifically and then reach back out to them and say, have you thought about expanding your original piece with these other elements? So that's something that I have never seen anywhere that is a real value add that you wouldn't be able to do unless you wouldn't, period. You wouldn't be able to do it. How many publications and podcasts can you listen to in the morning before you start doing your work?

10:22Right. That's incredible. Okay, so I have to ask you because I've heard that Preston, am I correct in saying that it has AI-assisted pitch writing tools? Yes, it does. What kind of data is that trained on? What does that look like? How does that work? Talk to us about that because that sounds absolutely incredible. I, for one, right, like I said, I have a background in marketing. I have done a bunch of different PR things in the past, outreach to journalists and all sorts of things. And I just can't help but feel like what you guys are building here would have been so nice to have five years ago.

10:55But I'm happy you guys have created it today. Well, no, it's right. This really is very new. I'll be honest. It goes right to that aha moment. So when I'll do a demo of the product and such, and we'll have AI, we'll come up with a campaign, a theme that we want to focus on.

11:18Some sort of sustainability, an ESG theme that we're working on, right? And at that point, it'll come up with a generic email pitch or outreach email that we would usually do. And then what we do is we identify these are the, it brings up a collection of media that cares about that topic. And we can read through each. And this is where we do stop and we read through. And it depends on what the topic is, but ESG is big. So let's say there's 50 editors, right? And I read through what they've been writing on and what they care about. And then from there, I pick 10 of them that may be appropriate, five, whatever it's going to be.

11:54And then the platform will generate an email dedicated to each one of those people. And in the beginning, it'll say, I saw your article at such and such a time on this topic, and I thought you'd be interested in. And so it provides that connectivity that doesn't exist anywhere else, as far as I know yet. I'm sure it will at some point. But right now we have it. And it is it provides that connectivity back to the editor saying, I actually do know what you write about. I actually am paying attention. And that is the AI because individuals can only stretch so far. But AI can stretch much further.

12:37That is incredible. I love that. Can you give like an example maybe where Preston kind of successfully matched a client with a journalist and that led to some impactful media coverage? Do you guys have any like case studies or, you know, exciting things where you saw this in action? every now and then i've got a bunch of them but every now and then it's like we'll have we on occasion a client will come to us who has been challenged in getting any kind of visibility in the past and um and so i gotta be careful how but anyway we have this wonderful wonderful client which is uh everest uh ice and they they create ice machines you go and buy ice outside of your convenience store in your shopping supermarket or whatever what kind of PR do you do on an ice machine right right okay and so this is this is the kind of thing that gets most people AI was able to connect us the the product was able to connect us with people where it made sense where um you know and of course you need the PR person too so if we're talking summer fun then the program is going out and finding all the people who are writing about summer activities and fun activities or new drinks, right, where you're going to need ice or all of those kinds of elements.

13:55And then also, I mean, again, you need the PR person, but we can put in, okay, but what about in terms of improving an ESG angle? And then AI will come back and go, yeah, there's several angles here. And these are things that we can also be able to reach out on, right? So it's that combination of the three, the technology, understanding the media, and really well-versed professional PR people. That is incredible. So I have a question about essentially the accessibility of PR. Has companies like Preston and kind of the AI technology that we're seeing here, I can definitely understand that this is making PR a lot more impactful.

14:36Do you think that this is something that will impact the affordability or do you think at the moment it's probably the same price as before, but it's just able to be a little bit more impactful and more specific, a lot more impactful? It's an excellent question. And I can, this was one of the things that attracted me to it. So for years and years, I had a lot of friends who would be in startups and whatever, and they'd say, can't you help us? Can't you do PR? And I just couldn't do it because I couldn't afford it. There was no way I could get under$10 ,000 legitimately and still be able to pay my staff and have all the tool sets and such that I had.

15:13I just couldn't do it. Because of having this platform, we charge half of that, right? And we even have a starter package for real startups at$2 ,500 a month. And I could never touch that. I could never even get close to that in a traditional, a trad PR solution, right? It really makes... And there's a reason to want basic coverage if you are a startup because your VCs need to see it. If you're trying to raise money, you know, you're funding. And just some awareness when a prospect of yours is looking for you and they Google you, you want something to come up. So there is a real reason why startups need some level of PR.

16:00But you can't afford$10K a month minimum. You just can't when you're a startup. So it really fits that piece of the market very nicely. So to answer your question, yes, indeed, it halves the price. That is absolutely incredible. My wheels are already turning with all the people I know that are interested in getting PR that are going to be going over to Intelligent Relations. That's incredible. So I know that you guys have both managed and also a full service option. Can you talk about what types of companies generally opt for each, what the difference is there? Sure. And, you know, we just touched on it.

16:33So the managed option is very basic. It's the basic platform, which is once a month we get together, we come up with several campaigns, we send those out, and we coordinate the PR activity, setting up the meetings, and also writing content, so for thought leadership and such. So that's part of managed. There's one piece of thought leadership, whether it's a press release or a bylined article. So what we're trying to do is get a couple pieces of coverage each month that are solid, that you'll be able to reuse with the sales teams will be able to go out and use, that you'll be able to use for education for your customers.

17:17But it's basically providing third-party validation that you exist. That's the 2500 managed service version. The full service version is all the things you would usually expect from a PR agency. So, you know, calls every couple of weeks. You're working on strategy all the time. You're doing awards, speaking opportunities, analysts, all of the other pieces that would go into that so that you have much more of a day to day activity going on. So that's the difference. OK, so I have a question because this comes up a lot with AI specifically is like, do you guys do you guys work with handling like data practice?

17:54privacy security around your, your companies or customers data. Is that ever an issue? Right? Because like, I can only assume, for example, let's say you have Apple as a client and they want to do like a bunch of PR for like a new product they're coming out, but it's perhaps a confidential product. There's something like that. Is, is there a way that you guys manage data privacy and security and in kind of these AI platforms? absolutely and and uh anytime apple wants to come come by and be a client of mine again i'd be happy for it so well we have some listeners from apple so uh i'm sure um uh it's imperative you have to have that kind of security you can't if you're in the pr business There is always going to be material you don't want to get out into the wild before it's been approved and or having to be able to maintain, you know, SOC 2O, SOC 2, all of those elements, right?

19:02You need to be able to acknowledge GDPR, all of the things that both privacy from a client perspective, but also privacy on our outreach. Security is very key. And in fact, a number of our existing clients are security clients. So we are very up to speed at any given moment of meeting the requirements of those clients because they tend to care a lot about that stuff and just making sure it's all very specific. But we needed to right from the beginning. That was built in the security elements. That's incredible. Very, very key, like you mentioned. So I know that you jumped on to this project. You were an advisor at the beginning and it had been running for a little bit.

19:48But can you talk a little bit about, I mean, just based off of what you've seen, your time advising and now, you know, being in this full time, what have been some of the biggest challenges that intelligent relations had to overcome? Right. Like perhaps with the software, maybe that was with the clients, but what has been the most difficult kind of aspects to to get going with this company? So, you know, for a while there, I was really talking about where it's an old phrase, but we're building the plane while we're flying it. So early on, we had this open to the world. Everybody had access to it and people were using it and all this.

20:24And that was great. But the challenge is we were making so many updates every two weeks. There was something cool and new being added. And that's great for us on the inside managing it. But on the other side, if you're used to your button being over here, you want it there the next time you want it as opposed to the bottom left-hand side. here. So the UI updates that were being made were just too significant to be able to have it out to the mass group. So that was probably the biggest thing right out of the gate. But again, AI just takes my breath away of how much you can do, how quickly. And even the changes and updates I've seen to the platform in just a few months has been dramatic.

21:08That's amazing. Yeah, I'm sure to you, it seems like you've come so far for a lot of people seeing where it's at today. I mean, it's incredible technology. Can you talk a little bit about the future roadmap for intelligent relations? Is there any, you know, upcoming features or expansions that you're excited about that people can look out for? That's an excellent, so every day, every day there's something new. I mean, seriously, it, and the truth is a lot, a lot of it's being driven by our, our, our clients, right? Things they want to see a lot of really sophisticated reporting we have access to all the data all this information so now we got to turn them into pretty pictures i mean we've got some nice little pie charts and stuff but elevating thinking of apple elevating the the visuals right elevating because right now we're just doing it all for ourselves for the most part but how do you how do you turn this into something that is pretty it's not as pretty as it could be how's that i know that's not a value add for most people but i think that's one of the things that i anticipate moving forward

22:13and and there are a lot of fun elements in it I mean just they're just fun things and I know we have this blog capability in it and social media generator content generator and of course you could do that with charity of course but ours has some special sauce in it and I haven't talked to the engineers where this special sauce came from. But I love the responses. It's much better than chat GBT. And I'm not quite sure why, but those are fun things that are just there. And those are just the fun things. That's not the hard stuff that's coming along. So the things we focus on now is always expanding on the journalist database, expanding on the media monitoring we're doing and just making everything much more efficient all the time.

23:00That is incredible. Very, very cool. And I think, you know, some of that secret sauce really does um just make the like would make makes a platform more exciting more delightful and really does uh have a lot of value add also i think the ux is always a big deal um for myself i love a beautiful platform and like i will forego a couple of missed features if everything looks really nice sometimes so and maybe that's just me but um you know my i have a PhD in psychology and it's specifically around UX. So it matters a lot, that piece of it. Okay. I'm happy to find another fellow UX lover. So on the podcast, we have a lot of AI entrepreneurs, investors, and enthusiasts working in a lot of Fortune 500 companies on AI.

23:47Is there any piece of advice you can give people that are currently listening that are probably working on AI systems and implementing AI. Is there any advice you can, I know that's such a general question, but you could give on, you know, really building out quality AI features as you guys have done so well over intelligent relations? This may sound like not the answer you're looking for, but it comes to mind the moment you said it. Keep talking to other people doing AI. I you know I have these calls um every week with one or two people and I think I don't have that much new to talk to you about you know maybe we shouldn't do this call right because everyone's trying to capture back their half hour or whatever right every time I get on the call these people I learn something and they learn something from me and it's like it AI is so new we're all learning those of us who are yeah right you heard that thing that now chat gbt has dropped 40%.

24:44Yeah, but the 60 % of us who are using it are jazzed and we all are learning something different. I am just shocked at that. It's like I'm working with a friend right now. We're building a mobile app and we both went at it the same way with the same criteria and came up with completely different solutions. And that's AI. So talking to other people, that's the answer. Yeah. That's amazing. I love that. That is really great advice. I will say, so for anyone, thank you so much, Paula, for coming on the show today. For anyone that is interested in trying out Preston or perhaps contacting you, what is the best way for them to do that?

25:27Intelligentrelations.com. I'm Paula at IntelligentRelations.com. You can sign up, get going right away. So that's the place to go. Amazing. And I'll leave a link to that URL in the description of the show notes for anyone listening. You can go find it there. But again, Paula, thank you so much for coming on the show today. To the listeners, thanks so much for tuning into the AI Chat Podcast. And I hope that you have an amazing rest of your day.