T2B Tag: communications

Social-First Employee Partnerships

Do you remember when, a few months ago, a Chick-Fil-A employee got in trouble for posting favorable TikToks about their sandwiches?

She resigned soon thereafter and immediately signed a deal with Shake Shack for THEIR chicken sandwich.

Unless you work at a big pharma company with a really, really good in-house cafeteria, your colleagues probably won’t be posting about chicken on their lunch breaks.

But they may want to post about a day in the life at the lab bench or the moving remarks from a visiting patient advocate.

Many of us communicators have been trained to be SO careful that you may start to feel butterflies in your stomach at the mere mention of these scenarios.

In this age of mixternal communications, where there’s no longer a brick wall separating internal and external, a key opportunity to promote our orgs’ values, goals and messaging is through employee ambassadors via – you guessed it – their PERSONAL social media accounts.

You may have to be the bearer of bad news to Legal when you inform them that, no, in fact you should not require employees to seek approval every time they want to mention your company’s name in a social post.

The risk is there, sure, but in our role as communicators, we can mitigate this by actually encouraging colleagues to post by providing positively-oriented guidelines and resources.

That’s the difference between a list with a bunch of red x’s and suggestions for what type of content is not only permissible but invited.

This is one of those instances where, instead of being the gatekeeper, we can be a supporter, a champion of change, and an advocate for both employees and corporate.

Driving the AI Change Management Conversation

The Marketing AI Institute’s annual “State of Marketing AI Report” came out last week.

Among the nearly 1,800 marketers surveyed, they found a year-over-year uptick in both enthusiasm for and adoption of AI.

The institute also highlighted, though, the pressing need for more formal training and guidance to support this profound shift in the way we work.

Zooming in on one aspect of this infrastructure, researchers found that, although more GenAI policies have been rolled out since last year, still, a total of only a little more than a third of companies overall have adopted a formal policy.

In an industry rife with SOPs and best practices, inserting ourselves into the conversation about yet another policy can feel exhausting and daunting.

However, an org’s core AI policy has the potential to function as an arbiter of a consequential workplace dynamic change.

And if we’re not careful, there could be implications for company culture, too, an especially dangerous possibility we need to keep in check in an industry that prizes innovation and forward-thinking.

In some ways, the introduction of AI is classic change management: share a vision, tell a story, make it inspiring, show not just tell the path forward and what the future could look like.

Striking that balance of ensuring there’s not an over-reliance on comms to drive the actual transformation for full AI adoption with our responsibility to help drive the conversation as comms counsel is delicate.

But as the connection nodes that all of us are, we’re up to the task, to advocate for governance frameworks that allow for individual experimentation and creativity.

Authenticity’s Premium in the Age of AI

The flood of AI-generated content isn’t coming, because it’s already here.

Microsoft and LinkedIn reported that three-quarters of global knowledge workers are using AI on the job.

While there are obviously many pros to using AI in our role as communicators, we really need to be careful when it comes to content generation.

In this year’s annual communications trend radar, researchers at the Academic Society for Management & Communication call this issue “information inflation.”

They say, “The value of information is diminishing due to the continuous surge in the volume and accessibility of data and content.”

Sure, there are a few tell-tale signs of AI-generated copy.

As one example, senior AI researcher and lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology Dr. Jeremy Nguyen found an exponential increase in the word “delve” in papers on PubMed in 2023 and 2024, coinciding with ChatGPT’s widespread adoption.

We’ve also noticed an uncommon volume of other words like “tapestry” and “weave,” as well as disproportionate usage of “not/but also” sentence constructs in AI-generated copy.

Despite signs like these, it’s getting harder to tell if content has in fact been AI-generated.

Researchers at Cornell recently showed that GenAI text detectors’ accuracy rate hovers around 40%, but that that already-low rate gets cut in half when machine-generated content is manipulated.

Though it’s possible to use AI tools to enhance our outputs, unique points-of-view and writing styles with character will be even more critical to demonstrate authenticity in our communications, to build credibility, and to reach the intended audience.

AI’s Impact on the Way we Work and How We Hire

Where biopharma comms veterans today can say they remember waiting by the fax machine on PDUFA dates, pretty soon, we’re going to be the ones saying,

Back in my day, we had to Google.

The 2024 edition of the Ragan Communications Leadership Council Benchmark Report says that “survey respondents highlighted gen AI as the top specialization that communicators will need to future-proof their roles.”

Some, like Cision’s Director of AI Strategy Antony Cousins, say that “80% of your job will change,” and “the tasks in the 20% which you wish you had more time will become more of a focus.”

But what does that look like exactly?

Comms thought leader and researcher Stephen Waddington says there are several categories in our profession where AI, right now, can help:

“Editorial assistance, content creation, professional support, education, creativity, and research, analysis and decision-making.”

Conor Grennan, Chief AI Architect at NYU Stern, posits that this fundamental shift in how we work will consequently impact who we hire and how we hire them, too.

Where we’ve historically hired for specific skills and experience, he suggests through his “AI-Ready Hiring Matrix” that, instead, focusing on critical thinking, adaptability, AI proficiency, communication, and creativity will become more important.

The jagged frontier is not only that – jagged – but it’s evolving by the second.

It’s all too easy to feel overwhelmed by the speed of change.

So, our call to action is to lean into the possibilities instead.

Overlooked Nonconfidential AI Applications

The reality is that there are already troves of publicly available information – and therefore, opportunity! – to leverage AI for a surprising number of comms scenarios, even in biopharma.

Before we go any further, let’s be clear about two things:

First, this is NOT a call to skirt your company’s or clients’ compliance or security guidelines.

And second, we are neither claiming to be AI experts nor legal experts.

With that out of the way… Training data for AI platforms is often kept secret, and copyright law is still TBD for a lot of this, but it’s safe to assume that anything in the public domain could be referenced or used to train AI systems.

So, why not take advantage?

We recommend taking inventory of public materials that you can use on your own to equip AI tools with context, tone, format, style, and voice.

Only a FEW examples include corporate website copy, past social media and blog posts, press releases, earnings call transcripts, and medical meeting presentations.

Much of our comms work is confidential, of course.

But using public materials for future plans or recycling previously released content with AI assistance are great use cases.

Let’s say you’re writing a series of follow-on social posts for leaders on your team to amplify key messages from a recent press release.

Or maybe you’re doing research for scenario planning and want to take into account outcomes with peers and competitors.

There’s so much more.

The point is, regardless of how AI-prepared your org is, you can still adopt these game-changing tools.

AI is NOT Coming for Your Job

At this point, we’ve all heard what’s become a trite sentiment, “AI won’t take your job but someone who knows how to use AI will.”

And maybe you’ve heard about Sam Altman’s prediction that AI will do “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today” within about five years.

Do we think this is all true?

Eh, sort of.

The best characterization we’ve seen is this one by Wharton Associate Professor Ethan Mollick:

“Experts in a field are going to be the best users of AI in that field.”

Yes, while you can use AI as your intern to draft a press release or administrative assistant to clean up documents, the explosive productivity and creativity gains in our profession are seen when this technology can be appropriately directed to target very specific and refined outcomes.

After all, someone has to be able to tell if an output is missing something, or if it’s garbage or on-point.

That’s only possible through good old-fashioned, on-the-job experience.

So, if anything, we have to be even MORE proficient in our craft as biopharma communicators, not less.

Reactions to this take?

Avoiding the Inaction Trap

Whether to start a new DEI initiative at your company or with a client can sometimes feel like a game of chicken.

The leadership team might be saying, “Well, employees aren’t asking for it.” Or “No one seems unhappy.” Or the classic, “III haven’t heard anyone complain. No one’s said anything to ME.”

And then on the other end, there might be whispered frustrations in the lab or in the break room: “I know we changed our logo on social, and I read the email, but what else are we doing?”

There were lots of good nuggets coming out of this month’s Comm Convo with LGBTQ advocate Lex Clay, and here’s another one: “Inaction acts sort of as a vacuum for something worse to fill it.”

Avoid the trap.

Regardless of where you sit in your org, comms touches everything.

And we can use that–as an excuse if need be–to catalyze change, even if it means doing it covertly. We have that power.

Maybe it’s a meeting of the minds and you don’t call it an ERG yet. Maybe including optional pronouns in email signatures is part of the next brand resource refresh.

The most effective DEI programs are going to be those where leaders walk the talk, YET employees feel empowered to start–and to lead–grassroots initiatives.

It’s when those two things meet in the middle that we see progress.

Creating Safe Spaces

We as communicators hold ourselves to high standards and because of that, often feel the weight of our orgs’ and clients’ stances on our shoulders.

Slow or lack of DEI-related progress can be frustrating.

Last week’s Comm Convo with LGBTQ+ advocate Lex Clay reminded us, however, of the power of leading by example to create safe spaces – which we are usually in a position to do as comms practitioners.

Those actions that you might perceive as little could make a world of difference to someone in an underrepresented or marginalized community, he said.

Visible examples here are wearing a small pride pin, having a sticker in your office, or adding pronouns to your Zoom name and email signature.

He also pointed out that how we typically comport ourselves and being sensitive to the issues, showing compassion, does not go unnoticed.

Lex spoke of a world in the future when maybe we no longer need awareness days and months because we as a society have built the infrastructure to truly support representation, and also integration, of diverse communities.

Until then, though, yes, while we can continue to do our part to advocate for systemic change, we can still make an impact by creating safe spaces for friends and colleagues, and not taking for granted those so-called small actions.

This week, we challenge you to think twice about those day-to-day actions that could facilitate safe spaces. Use your position as a face of the company or a speaker for leadership to model and inspire inclusive behavior.

As Lex said, “The people who need the help or the comfort will know that you’re safe.”