You Can Quote Me

I recently had to help a client with a regulatory issue. There was a great deal of discussion about how to handle this, as we would need to respond to a statement by the regulator which the client was not happy with.

There were lots of suggestions from lawyers and senior executives  – a detailed explanation of what we felt the issue was, background briefings, social media posts etc. But I argued that the media is time poor and lacks resources, that we cannot be sure that the few journalists who might understood the background would be around to write, or even if they’d call us before writing, and then there was the problem of artificial intelligence summarising the arguments for rapid digestion.

Others have mentioned the issue of AI in communications, so I won’t go down that rabbit hole. But in this instance I suggested we needed a strong, short and direct quote to cut through the noise – a sound bite if you will.

So I wrote one and stuck it at the top of our response. It was quoted in all the major media that ran a story, was run on social media and had the impact we desired.

It struck me that this is one thing AI can’t do (yet). It can replicate decent writing, it can speed up search, it can challenge your assumptions, it can summarise your arguments but it can’t write a good quote.

We all have our favourite quotes but I always go back to that king of political spin, Sir Tony Blair. When announcing the Good Friday agreement, which brough peace to Northern Ireland, he said: “A day like today is not one for…soundbites…but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders.”