PR and Tech: a Crisis of Truth

With PR Specialist Mark Pinsent

Mark Pinsent, founder of Atelier d’Idées, discusses the impact of AI, social media, and the “Post Truth” landscape on PR.

Let’s start off by asking you a little bit about your background.

Back in the late 80s I completed a degree in Information Computing Science. So I got a grounding in technology. But I’d always fancied myself as a bit of a marketer. I got my first job in London for a very small PR agency. I’d written to about 100 companies asking for a starting position, and this one took a chance on me. That was my entry point to PR.  

But after my first couple of jobs, my academic background in technology [became blended] with a bit of experience in PR and communications. This was towards the mid-90s and was quite an attractive mix to the UK tech-focused PR agencies which were exploding—many agencies were growing exponentially fast. It was crazy. I joined Text 100 [now Archetype] and spent 8 very enjoyable years there. Which included meeting my now wife!

I moved out of the UK with my wife and baby daughter [in the early 2000s] and we moved to France, where I’m still based. I started freelancing for agencies, a number of which I then ended up working for on a more permanent basis, including Edelman, Weber Shandwick, and Shine Communications [now part of The Academy].  

In 2013 I joined Metia. I’d known the founder, Steve Ellis, for years, and he’d been early in growing into digital marketing. Working there broadened my experience and helped me understand more about integrated marketing and how comms could play a part in that.  

And then in 2017 I joined the Hoffman Agency as European Managing Director. Lou Hoffman, the founder, wanted to build out the European end of the business, and it was an attractive opportunity for me to build something almost from scratch. 

Eight years later, I set up my own consulting business, Atelier d’Idées, which I’ve been running since. And I recently stepped back into Metia on a part-time basis as a creative director, while still doing a few bits and bobs with other people.

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What do you think are some of the biggest recent challenges to PR and communications?

The obvious one, and I will probably come back to it, is AI, and it’s something that you’ve got to speak about. But, related—though I don’t think this is prompted as much by AI as by the broader political and social climate—I think lack of trust in what people are reading and seeing is a huge issue. It’s come over years and years of people becoming less trustful of organizations or businesses or politicians or the media, etc. And that’s pretty disastrous for all of us.  

If people can’t or won’t believe what they’re reading or seeing, however historically credible the source might be, if anything can be dismissed with, “I don’t believe it; it’s fake news,” then I don’t know where that leaves us. It creates a huge issue for brands to distribute content if part of the audience is always going to say, “I don’t believe a word of it.” And I don’t know that we always help ourselves in that. As somebody who’s worked in the PR sector for many years on the B2B side, I think it’s less prevalent there. But we’ve always known that campaigns have been run on extremely flimsy evidence—for example, a ‘survey’ which is the result of an email to everybody in the office to see what they think about a particular subject.

I think I’m a little bit cynical about whether the PR industry as a whole can be the bastion of truth and authenticity. Anybody who’s been in the industry for years knows it’s not always been the case. The industry hasn’t always pushed out the most robust content and stories on behalf of its clients. 

But it does seem to have reached another level of mistrust, and I think it feeds that polarization where people, if they don’t want to believe something, then they just don’t believe it. And through social media, etc, it’s almost negated the opportunity to have a rational debate with anybody. Everybody starts with their own position, and nobody moves off their position, and anything that counters that position, they just don’t believe or will try and find a piece of evidence that refutes it. I think that’s a negative trend, and it’s obviously one that we need to resist.  

But it makes it very difficult for organizations who have to navigate their way through that environment. Now you could say, it’s not difficult if you’re an organization to push the truth and make sure you’re being authentic. And I think that’s true, but I think then there are cases where you’ve still got to respond to the opinion or the views or content that’s published about you which may not be true or is less than transparent. So it takes time and energy to respond to people who aren’t trusting your message.  

I think that that has been an issue for a while, and then you bring AI into it which magnifies that issue a hundredfold. Now we can all see fake content that has been treated by consumers as real. I know the guys at Hard Numbers, Darryl Sparey and Paul Stollery. They published a piece of research recently where they tricked LLMs into believing that Darryl was the best dressed person in the PR industry, just to make a point that you can’t trust the stuff that LLMs are telling you. 

So yeah, we’re in a kind of weird world at the moment where there’s a lot of mistrust and there’s a lot of fakery out there which exacerbates the issue.

Do you think that there’s a way forward?

It’s really hard. At heart I’m a really optimistic person. But it’s difficult at the moment to see how we course correct. Every day you see something which is making it easier for somebody to create something fake that looks incredibly real and authentic. Or people are pushing out stories about companies which aren’t true, or politicians are just happy to brazenly lie and claim it as fact. 

It does feel that we are in this strange “post-truth” world where everybody treats everything as false and untrue or claims it to be so to fit their agenda. And it is difficult to see how we do course correct on that because these tools aren’t going away, and people will use them for nefarious means. 

But this is the thing that the guys at Hard Numbers pointed out. I was doing a bit of research for a client’s software campaign, and I’d started searching on LLMs who the leaders were in the sector. I immediately saw what has clearly become a tactic, where companies publish blog posts headlined “the top 10 providers of financial software as a service,” with themselves at number one and their competitors in the next five or so places. And those posts were being picked up by LLMs as a credible source for who were the leaders in that market sector. And I saw that’s clearly become an established tactic for gaming LLM results, and none of it was based on particularly robust data.  

We are in this world where people are starting to use these tricks, and people always jump on them to see if they can game a system that’s going to give them a commercial advantage. It’s a worry, I’m going to be honest.

Quite a lot of people talk about the efficiencies that AI might bring. And that’s all well and good, but what people have talked less about is that there’s a verification “tax” on using AI, which means you have to spend time double-checking the sources, making sure they are credible and that you should be citing them. 

Where do you see the role of critical thinking in all this, and what do we need to do to bolster it?

I think that is one of the huge issues: that people’s critical thinking skills are being eroded when they’ve got what appears to be a very competent answer engine in front of them. But if there’s a silver lining on the dark cloud of fake results or hallucinations, then it’s that people hopefully will become aware, look for credible sources of information, double check things, and think “where did this result come from?”  

And I think we’ve got to persuade people that they have to be doing that verification. Quite a lot of people talk about the efficiencies that AI might bring. And that’s all well and good, but what people have talked less about is that there’s a verification “tax” on using AI, which means you have to spend time double-checking the sources, making sure they are credible and that you should be citing them.

It’s interesting because, as someone who’s been in the PR industry for years, every national newspaper spun stories and positioned things in the way that suited their agenda. The people who read them, did they check the sources or look to find the real story? No, they didn’t. 

I don’t think it’s a new thing that people take what’s pushed to them as content as the truth. But I think at the moment it feels more dangerous because there’s more ways to create and push out messages that are untrue and have them gain traction.

You always used to know in the UK that if you were reading the Guardian you were going to get a slightly left-wing viewpoint. If you’re reading the Telegraph you’re going to get a right-wing viewpoint. So you used to read them both and try to work out where the actual story was, whereas now I think it’s almost impossible to do that. 

But you’ve got to try. You’ve got to say “where’s this data coming from? Can I find another source to verify what I’m reading here? Does it look credible?” And we just have to try to convince people that this is an essential part not only of our jobs but of life. Because critical thinking is a skill that everybody should foster. Whether they do or not is a different matter.

What role do you think social media—and in particular the rise of internet trolls—have had in eroding public trust?

Overall, I think it’s been horrendously negative. Any troll, anybody who’s out there trying to create a negative reaction, doing whatever they can to provoke is not a positive [for society]. The problem is: If the platforms haven’t encouraged that directly, then the algorithms certainly have because negative reactions and outrage are more engaging than anything positive. 

So trolls have gathered great traction in social environments. And of course, the people who are their victims suffer greatly. I think there are huge mental health issues people experience who find themselves on the end of trolling at any scale, whether it’s the equivalent of schoolyard bullying or whether it’s sustained dangerous activity online. We read about the results every day, sad stories about kids who’ve gone to dark places because they’ve been the victim of online abuse and trolling. 

I was around when the Internet arrived, during the dot-com boom, and also when social media arrived. I’ve seen a huge amount of positive technology and its impact, but it seems like a lot more negative results have emerged since social media arrived. Also there seems to be less motivation to rein stuff in; it’s allowed to go unchecked and be developed unencumbered by regulations. 

I think this is particularly the case with AI. With social media, there’s been some action, but with AI, there seems to be a general lack of desire to rein it in. It feels like it’s moving forward fast, and, the more it’s allowed to do that, the more these tools become both potentially positive and potentially negative. 

[For example, there are the people] who’ve been victims of fake porn. It’s just horrendous. And unfortunately as soon as you give a powerful tool to just anybody, some will use it for bad things and some for good things. Such is the way of human kind.

What responsibilities and also what levers do you think public figures and businesses still have to restore public trust?

I think of Stephen Fry and social media. He was one of the first [prominent people outside Silicon Valley] to say basically, this is amazing. I now have a direct channel on which I can go to people that want to listen to me or want to follow me. I don’t have to be filtered through the media.

And I remember reading that and thinking, that’s amazing for anybody who’s a personality or got a following; they now can communicate directly to the public. And you’d like to think that the majority of such people will use that position in a responsible way, in an authentic way. And you’d see people doing that, responding to stuff about them that’s been written and all and think, well, that’s great. And when you see it coming from an individual public figure, you’re perhaps more inclined to trust it because they’re putting themselves out there. 

It’s a little bit harder for organizations because everybody’s already got a sense that organizations portray to the outside world an image of themselves which is massaged or finessed or polished. So I think it can be a little bit more difficult for organizations to cut through that mistrust, if there is a mistrust there. But they should absolutely try, and they need to be authentic.  

And then there’s the flip side of it. [If you’re] doing bad stuff, you could be found out. People will reveal it, saying, “this business is doing this.” And you’re never going to re-establish trust with the public if, every now and then, there’s a story that says your sustainability credentials are in the trash because of a sweatshop in the Far East, etc.

But the levers are the same one that anybody’s ever had, and that is communications. It’s putting messages out there. It’s using the platforms and the channels that you have at your disposal. But really having the discipline to be as authentic as you possibly can in what you’re pushing out there and honest and transparent as far as you can be. I don’t think that’s changed. You’ve got to try and stick to it as an organization and be disciplined in how you communicate.

I’d say to those looking to enter communication, absolutely understand the tools available to you, but also understand how to work with them in a responsible way, in a way that’s going to get the best output, and find ways to demonstrate that.

What advice do you have for younger generations that are eyeing a career in PR?

Well, that’s a big question at the moment, isn’t it? I’ve got a daughter who graduated two years ago and a son who graduated two weeks ago. And it’s really difficult for young graduates at the moment to find themselves roles.  

But if I were to give general advice to someone looking at communications, I’d say understand the tools. Understand the ways that AI is being used. Sharpen your critical thinking skills. It’s probably too easy these days for a young person to walk into a role and use AI, and use various tools and think that they’ve got a head start. You need to find ways to show that you’re wanting to understand the things that will give you good judgment, experience and critical thinking. Do research projects and analyze what you’re finding. 

I do think that employers will eventually want to see, if they are hiring young members of staff, some technical capability. They don’t want people who are afraid of using AI, but they want people who understand its limitations and can work within them.  

So I’d say to those looking to enter communication, absolutely understand the tools available to you, but also understand how to work with them in a responsible way, in a way that’s going to get the best output, and find ways to demonstrate that. One of the positives about AI is that you can spin up your own projects really easily. So think about a really interesting little project to work on yourself.  

I’m helping Metia out with some interviews right now. [We’re interviewing] slightly more senior people, so they’ve got genuine work to look at. But if I was interviewing for entry level roles, if somebody came through the door and said, look, I haven’t got experience, but what I’ve done is used AI to do this little project. I’ve spun up a new idea or a campaign idea. This is how I used it. These were my ideas, this is the way I refined it with AI, and this is the research I did. Now I think that would be really interesting for somebody to walk into an interview with something like this. 

And you can do that now so easily. We can all sit there with a Claude or ChatGPT subscription and get a long way from zero to proof of concept. So demonstrate that you’re thinking in the right way. Show how you understand what the new environment looks like and that you can work within it, even if you’re basing that on not a real case study, but something that you’ve done yourself while you’re in that period of looking for a job and applying for positions. 

And who knows, in doing that, you might land on something and think, you know what, this could be something in its own right. You know, why don’t I go and do this thing instead of looking for a job?  Because I think people will need to be looking flexibly at what they do and how they spend their time and how they earn a living. So have a play and see what you can come up with and use that as evidence of how you work and think.

Was there anything that you wanted to say that we didn’t cover?

It’s hard because you want everybody to be optimistic and feel that there’s a rosy future and people will be able to find good, rewarding positions. And I know it’s difficult at the moment, but I do think at some point we will get a level of correction. It won’t swing all the way back to humans doing all of the work, but I do think there’ll be a correction that really allows human qualities to be valued. 

And yes, AI is there to do the heavy lifting and can really help, but I think that people who continue working on those genuine, useful human qualities of creativity, critical thinking, and judgment, etc., will continue to have a unique selling proposition (USP) and advantage.  So, even though, when you get into a discussion like this, some of it sounds pretty dark and dystopian, I think we’ve still got to stay positive about it, and I’m sure we’ll come out of it okay.

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About Mark Pinsent