Media intelligence in crisis with Meltwater’s Chris Hackney

On Top of PR with Jason Mudd podcast: media intelligence with Meltwater’s Chris Hackney and show host Jason Mudd episode graphic

In this episode, Chris Hackney joins On Top of PR host Jason Mudd to learn how to track, interpret, and leverage media coverage.

Tune in to learn more!

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the episode here:

5 things you’ll learn during the full episode:

What media intelligence is and how it strengthens PR strategy
How to turn media monitoring into measurable business insights
Why PR professionals must embrace data-driven storytelling
Which metrics matter most when evaluating earned media coverage
How Meltwater is evolving its tools to meet the needs of modern communicators

About Jessica Pantages

Our episode guest is Meltwater’s Chris Hackney, vice president of enterprise sales. Chris brings nearly two decades of experience in digital media, SaaS technology, and public relations. At Meltwater, he works closely with communications leaders and enterprise organizations to help them gather, analyze, and act on media insights that drive strategic decisions.

Chris has a deep understanding of the evolving PR landscape and the growing need for measurement and accountability in earned media. He frequently works with clients to strengthen their media intelligence capabilities and align communications with business outcomes. His insights help brands better understand their reputations, competitive positioning, and media performance in a fast-moving digital environment.

Quotables

“Media intelligence helps you move from reporting what happened to influencing what happens next.” — @ChrisHackney
“PR needs to speak the language of the boardroom. That means data, context, and outcomes.” — @ChrisHackney
“The goal isn’t more coverage — it’s the right coverage that moves the needle.” — @ChrisHackney
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure. And that includes reputation.” — @JasonMudd9
“Media monitoring tools have evolved. It’s time PR pros evolved with them.” — @JasonMudd9

Resources

Episode Resources:

Additional Resources from Axia Public Relations:

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Our On Top of PR sponsors:

Production sponsor: Axia Public Relations, one of America’s Best PR Agencies, according to Forbes Magazine

Presenting sponsor: ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews

Coffee Sponsor: Fans like you fuel our efforts using buy me a coffee.

Episode Highlights

[00:02:01] Media Intelligence and Actionable Insight
"Media intelligence is much more than just monitoring. It's really about how do I take what's being said in the media, social or editorial, and turn that into actionable insights for the brand or the organization."
[00:05:36] Crisis Playbooks and Thresholds
"Every brand should have a crisis playbook and that should include what thresholds do we need to hit for the PR team or the comms team to be involved?"
[00:08:09] The Role of Social Listening
"Social listening is often the tip of the spear for us. It's where we hear something start to emerge and then we go validate it across editorial and traditional media."
[00:13:48] How AI Scales PR Insight
"What we're seeing is that AI is starting to allow us to scale our insight. So now I can go from identifying a story to understanding its tone, topic, themes, entities, and even emotional impact."
[00:18:05] The Real Value of PR Measurement
"The value of measurement in PR isn't just to report up the chain. It's to inform how we're performing and where we should go next."

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Transcript

00:00:00:06 - 00:00:14:01

Chris

00:00:14:01 - 00:00:24:18

Chris

It's never been a greater time to to plug in to the collective, narratives happening around you and understand trends and things important to your business and decipher those and insights.

00:00:24:20 - 00:00:26:17

Chris

So on the other side, I think people's

00:00:26:17 - 00:00:37:03

Chris

understanding of the world as it relates to them will go way up because of AI, but discerning what's real and not in those worlds and how it comes after your own brand is going to be a big issue.

00:00:37:03 - 00:00:47:02

Announcer

Welcome to On Top of PR with Jason Mudd.

00:00:47:02 - 00:00:56:23

Jason

Hello and welcome to On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. Today I'm joined by Chris Hackney. Chris is a seasoned technology executive with more than 25 years of experience

00:00:56:23 - 00:01:00:14

Jason

in B2B, SAS, specializing in public relations and communications.

00:01:00:17 - 00:01:29:17

Jason

As chief Product Officer at meltwater, he leads the development of innovative media and social intelligence solutions. Drawing from his leadership role at PR focused companies like Trend, Kite, incision. Chris's career reflects a commitment to leveraging technology to enhance PR strategies and outcomes. Today we're talking about using media intelligence to navigate PR crisis and economic uncertainty. This is a very timely topic, Chris.

00:01:29:17 - 00:01:31:15

Jason

Welcome to on top of PR.

00:01:31:17 - 00:01:34:11

Chris

Oh, thank you for that intro, Jason. Pleasure to be here.

00:01:34:14 - 00:01:57:05

Jason

Yeah, I'm glad to be here too. And really good to get connected with you. Obviously meltwater is a prominent brand in the industry, and we want to make sure that, we have an opportunity to talk about, you know, some of your organization's, ideas and, and recommendations in the marketplace. So, you know, media intelligence is something that we've been talking about as a profession for decades.

00:01:57:05 - 00:02:13:02

Jason

Obviously, it's a critical part of PR not the only part of PR, but certainly very critical. So, kind of at a high level, we'll talk about, with with us for a minute about media intelligence. What are some of the trends and, best practices that you're seeing out there?

00:02:13:05 - 00:02:35:01

Chris

Yeah, it's it's a real good starter question for this, just around everyone. From our perspective, you know, it's the trend is it's complicated. There's a lot going on in this space that used to be, much more, you know, straightforward exercise to do media intelligence. But today, media intelligence is blending with social. The landscape is extremely fragmented.

00:02:35:04 - 00:02:54:01

Chris

And the news cycles are running faster and harder than they ever had before. Much less the idea of, am I dealing with a real person, a real journalist, a real influencer, or is this a bot, or other, device generating news that I have to deal with? So, you know, for brands and companies, it's never been more complicated.

00:02:54:03 - 00:03:02:17

Chris

Luckily, we're here and others are here to bring solutions, but, the trend is is definitely complicated. In every respect.

00:03:02:20 - 00:03:42:01

Jason

Yeah, it feels like the, you know, I get to talk to, industry conferences and all the time. And the one thing I'm always telling them is that, you know, PR is still fundamentally the same. Just the tools, responsibilities and demands have made it more intense. So, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. And in the modern era of, the profession, we are always finding and getting access to more and more powerful tools that, in theory, make our job easier, but also make our job, you know, more risky because one click of the wrong button and suddenly, you know, you've sent out a mass email to the entire wrong audience, or

00:03:42:01 - 00:03:51:26

Jason

maybe a rough draft or something like that. And I don't suspect that's going to change as we get more and more technology and we start adopting more and more AI tools.

00:03:51:29 - 00:04:11:20

Chris

Yeah, I would agree. And the nature of the job hasn't changed at all. Right. We right professionals need to understand the narratives around us. We need to understand who's driving those. And we need to understand the audiences that are impacted, by those who are affected. But the fragmentation of this, the speed of it is just lightning quick compared to what it used to be.

00:04:11:20 - 00:04:27:25

Chris

And so if I'm like an airline and I have a customer service issue that turns into a social story, that turns into a news story. Like it all happened within 12 hours. And I have to parrot even if that's at Saturday night, on my Saturday night and I'm already home. Yeah. To that.

00:04:27:28 - 00:04:46:15

Jason

Yeah. And I would say 12 hours might even be a little too generous. Right. I mean, it can move very quickly. So I think you're exactly right. So. Well good. The two kind of topics, takeaways we wanted to talk about today was navigating quickly and in a developing crisis and the use of AI to understand narrative. So let's jump right in and talk a little bit about navigating quickly.

00:04:46:22 - 00:04:51:06

Jason

And to developing crisis. Chris, what are some of your thoughts and recommendations there?

00:04:51:09 - 00:05:17:29

Chris

Yeah, the biggest thing we have, obviously, is you need to understand what's going on first. And being alert and quickly when things are developing. So with any developing crisis, it's understanding where the anomalies, the spikes are, where they're coming from, who's driving them? Is very, very important. It's where our tools and others come in. Not. But I would say past that, and a lot of your PR professionals who listen to this, I'm sure, understand the basic metrics and things you'd be looking at.

00:05:18:02 - 00:05:34:04

Chris

I think the number one issue we get into with a lot of our clients, though, is you get to a point of decision making, right? Is this something the crisis of the day, and is it something we need to act on, or is it something we let pass, and continue to monitor? And I think most of them are very good at the core metrics.

00:05:34:04 - 00:05:56:16

Chris

If this is certain setting certain, hitting certain thresholds, we go or no go. But I think the thing they mostly miss, which is the biggest thing that really either hurts, a client, or has them miss an opportunity is they don't understand them, their brand themselves. And whether the the discussion that's going on is something that is core to their brand reputation or not.

00:05:56:22 - 00:06:19:08

Chris

I, and what I mean by that is we've seen this with certain brands like the Budweiser incident and others, right? If it's something that is attacking the core of what your brand is supposed to stand for, it is absolutely something that can do brand reputation harm. Immediately. And I when it comes to reputation, there's, there's the old quote of to, to thine own self be true.

00:06:19:11 - 00:06:35:17

Chris

I know yourself before you act. So if you're Patagonia, I'll go to the other side of the aisle on this. If you're Patagonia and you've got something that is showcasing that Patagonia has an issue on an ecological issue that is absolutely to the core of who you are as a brand, and you have to react to it.

00:06:35:19 - 00:06:50:23

Chris

And I so I think we have very good people who are disciplined on the metrics and the threshold to those, but they have to be absolutely tied in as PR professionals into the brand and what it stands for, and be ready to understand that as a criteria for how they act.

00:06:50:25 - 00:07:15:14

Jason

Gotcha. Yeah. So when we're talking about navigating quickly in a developing crisis, you know, what are some of your thoughts, Chris. Kind of on like how do you react? What might be too quick, what's not quick enough? And what tools do you sense that our audience needs at their disposal to have the intelligence that they need in a timely manner, but also deep enough intelligence that they can make informed decisions?

00:07:15:17 - 00:07:31:02

Chris

Yeah. And what we generally advise on our side is to have a playbook. Right. What are the thresholds and criteria by which things get escalated at your company? What are the things that start to bring in? It's not just a PR issue, it's a marketing issue. It's a senior executive issue. What teams are you bringing in at each of those levels?

00:07:31:04 - 00:07:47:04

Chris

If you don't have a playbook ready? It's just a recipe for disaster. And we see this in other areas, too. Cybersecurity is a great area where it moves lightning fast and you need to have these same playbooks. But on the PR side, you have to be prepared. And obviously a lot of this starts with right tools, right?

00:07:47:05 - 00:08:13:01

Chris

You can't be blind. As you go in, that's where a tool like my water and others can come in. You also need to understand, in these developing processes who is driving the conversation, and who is reacting to it. So are these key players that are considered industry experts or consumer, influencers? Or is this just another hot shot being taken in your brand?

00:08:13:03 - 00:08:33:13

Chris

And as those narratives develop from those sources, are they being picked up by what we call amplifiers? Are there typical people who are social nodes or editorial nodes that usually turn a small story into a big one and give it legs, over suspend a sustained period of time. And so what we'll start to look at is are you looking at those graphs?

00:08:33:13 - 00:08:51:24

Chris

Are you seeing those amplification effects and then do you have a playbook ready for when it hits certain inflection points? If you can monitor at that level and have the playbook ready on your side to execute, you can be in generally good shape. It's every situation is different. Some of them need to go straight to, executive level and core decisions.

00:08:51:27 - 00:09:00:02

Chris

Some can fly by on a random Wednesday. But at least you have the ground game in place, to be effective in how you manage it.

00:09:00:04 - 00:09:06:03

Jason

So, Chris, what are some of the ingredients that you're recommending in, this, playbook?

00:09:06:05 - 00:09:32:22

Chris

So the ingredients are basically first, you start with your metrics, right? What are our thresholds by which we we cross the chasm into an issue that needs to be elevated? Typically you're looking at brand reputation areas that are most important to that brand and, key inflection points on reach, and engagement around those. You're also looking at key parts, that social graph that you consider influencers in your space, or spaces for your audience if you're more of a consumer brand.

00:09:32:24 - 00:09:55:11

Chris

But the other side of that, very clearly is a guidebook on who to bring in when, and what decision criteria happen to go from. Is this a social response? Quick social response? Is this a full PR response? Is this all the way up to an executive response? Through our teams. So you have to know at the gates at each of those tiers, that you're ready and be ready to pull those triggers.

00:09:55:13 - 00:10:03:02

Chris

And like you said on the United Airlines, one, five, 12 hours might be too long. It could be within an hour. Right. Or is this something we're waking up the CEO for?

00:10:03:09 - 00:10:03:19

Jason

Right.

00:10:03:21 - 00:10:08:07

Chris

Starting to go, viral across many channels, and we need to react.

00:10:08:09 - 00:10:29:27

Jason

Yeah. Yeah. So what we'll do for our audience is we'll put a link in the episode notes to our ten steps to, crisis planning and preparation. I think that'll be helpful and related to this topic. So our audience can go there and grab a copy of that. Let's talk about kind of the right tools or the tech stack that you would recommend for, navigating quickly in a developing crisis.

00:10:30:00 - 00:10:49:03

Chris

Yeah. And and I'll speak broadly on that. I mean, obviously, as you as you look at these crises, you have to think of tools that hit on all these layers. The first layer obviously is the listening monitoring one. Are you understanding and getting detail on the the conversations as they happen? And I think there's a there's a really important point.

00:10:49:03 - 00:11:11:00

Chris

This is a conversation we're having with a lot of our PR customers right now. There tends to be an onus on the editorial side still. We live in a social world. But there's still an onus on editorial sources. We think that's really, really important. But you're missing most of the story if you're not tying social listening in at the same time as editorial listening.

00:11:11:03 - 00:11:32:24

Chris

And what we're actually seeing a lot of right now is that there is cross discussion of conversations in both directions at a rate you've never seen before. Right? So it's more likely nowadays that a conversation is starting in social editorial groups or monitoring social. Picking up on those for their stories and then driving an editorial discussion on the back end of it.

00:11:32:26 - 00:11:51:22

Chris

So if you're not seeing the social side, you're going to miss the first cycles of that news story because you didn't even know it was a new story yet. So what we're really pushing hard is listening, monitoring. Make sure you have something that is effective at both ends of that spectrum, understands how both ends play together and how things amplify through, those cycles.

00:11:51:24 - 00:12:09:01

Chris

Once you get the listening monitoring piece, you need to understand who the players are. You need to understand both, on a journalism side, from a media relations, text tech stack standpoint. Who are these journalists? What do they cover? What are the key questions? Are they, you know, are they are they friends, or foes?

00:12:09:07 - 00:12:28:05

Chris

Typically. Do they put a target on you or not? And know where those targets exist? And then the same on the the social influencer side. It's not enough to just know who the journalists are. You really need to understand who the influencers are that are amplifying these and these discussions in social channels. So you need to understand the narrative of the people.

00:12:28:08 - 00:12:49:29

Chris

And the last one I'll come back to again is the audience. Are these people who are influential, but are they actually influential with the people that were going to impact your business? Right. If it's an influencer with, I know teenagers and your core audience, if your product is moms, maybe that's not a big deal that in in a teenager influencer world, you're getting hit in a few directions.

00:12:50:01 - 00:13:09:25

Chris

But if your core audience is moms and it's going through the mom blogosphere, that's got to be an issue for you. So you have to understand, is this influencer, narratives and people in the areas that matter to you in the core of what your businesses. If you have all three of those elements, then what you need is a workflow in these systems that connects them.

00:13:09:25 - 00:13:28:22

Chris

All right. So can I see the progression of narratives through people into audiences and then what the impact of that is. So we usually say, hey, systems like ours are really great at that. To bring all three of those together and then give you the same type of platform that you need to start to take action now that I'm smart.

00:13:28:23 - 00:13:43:09

Chris

Now that I've got intelligence, what are the actions I need to start taking? Do I need to put out releases? Do I need to reach out to journalists? Do I need to do an influencer campaign? How do I get my story out through my channels? And once I might have as a brand.

00:13:43:11 - 00:13:55:02

Jason

And Chris, any thoughts on, like, you know, the timing? Is there a scenario where it's too soon to respond or or you've waited too long? Is there any best practices that you or your organization recommend?

00:13:55:05 - 00:14:23:18

Chris

So we usually say, more is better, right? Too often the greatest damage is when companies leave something, out there for too long and they're always nervous to get into a discussion, prematurely. What we've generally told them is the best practice, especially given the pace of social and especially the pace of with AI, fake news and other things going on, is to understand what's getting traction and just jump in, not defensively, but to tell your side of the story.

00:14:23:21 - 00:14:46:29

Chris

Right? And just act like a fact checker on all these things. It's not about putting the beautiful PR touch on it, but it's about having a human voice in this conversation with the rest of the human voices going on and acknowledging it. Hey, we know this is a conversation that's happening. We would like to at least spell out the facts as we have them, and insert that into the conversation and continue to have, a voice as it progresses.

00:14:47:02 - 00:15:06:05

Chris

Too many brands are relying on, you know, eight layers of approvals or a 24 hour cycle before they even get into the discussion. And by then, the damage is already there. And the key facts as people understand them. I've already metastasized, right? People believe the story and it's hard to dislodge them from it.

00:15:06:07 - 00:15:28:10

Jason

Yeah I think that's really good advice. I think part of the challenge is that, you know, you said acknowledge it and have a conversation about it. The the sentiment I feel like is in the marketplace is that and you said, you know, don't be defensive, but I think just even having attempting to have a conversation, there's almost this perception that you're just being defensive.

00:15:28:10 - 00:15:42:11

Jason

Right? And it's so hard to do both emotionally and to do it with emotional intelligence, and do it in a meaningful, conversational way. You know, where people are just quick to say, you know, oh, you're just being defensive or, you know, of course that's what you're going to say.

00:15:42:11 - 00:16:00:29

Chris

Right, exactly. And again, I think a lot of the defensive or non defensive comes down to tone. Right. Hey what tone we're taking if you're going in and you're saying hey we appreciate people's concerns in this regard. If I use the Patagonia example again right. Hey at Patagonia our our philosophy has always been X. And we appreciate if anyone feels like we're not living up to that.

00:16:01:01 - 00:16:19:16

Chris

Here's what we know about this situation and our, our stance on it. That's fine. Right. That if you go in and you start attacking, the story itself, or you attack the people driving it, you're going to lose them and they're going to start to feel like it's it's a it's a defensive stance. And so I think that tone and how you approach it is probably the most important part.

00:16:19:16 - 00:16:28:25

Jason

This episode is brought to you by Audible. Enjoy 30 days free of Audible Premium Plus by going to ontopofpr.com/audible.

00:16:28:25 - 00:16:53:12

Announcer

You're listening to On Top of PR with your host, Jason Mudd. Jason is a trusted advisor to some of America's most admired and fastest growing brands. He is the managing partner at Axia Public Relations, a PR agency that guides news, social and web strategies for national companies. And now, back to the show.

00:16:53:12 - 00:17:03:06

Jason

Chris, I want to just take a step back. You mentioned, social listening and monitoring, news listening and monitoring. For our audience sake, how do you define the difference between listening and monitoring?

00:17:03:08 - 00:17:20:14

Chris

So it's a good question. So listening to us is more of the, the reactive element, right. Hey, let's just make sure we gather all the things that are coming in at any given time. It's a little more of a raw form, right? I want to make sure I understand everything that's happening in X meta environments. TikTok on social.

00:17:20:19 - 00:17:43:12

Chris

Understand what the Wall Street Journal and other publications might be saying in editorial. It's more of that raw form. Monitoring is more of the idea of, hey, I'm starting to filter that, right? What I really want to understand is these elements that are important to my brands, in that huge listening environment. And I want to start to set up things like alerts and other things around spikes in activity or anomalous activity.

00:17:43:14 - 00:17:53:03

Chris

So think of it more as I'm constantly tracking what's happening and then creating action paths off of the spikes and other activity, I might see that I want to go.

00:17:53:06 - 00:17:59:13

Jason

So would it be safe to kind of think of listening is more micro and monitoring is more macro?

00:17:59:16 - 00:18:08:28

Chris

Yeah, I would say from a, from a how we act. Yes perspective. But the listening it starts macro in the sense that it's trying to catch everything all in one.

00:18:09:01 - 00:18:16:27

Jason

Yeah. And then would that also be listening is kind of like having raw data and monitoring is more like having insight from that data.

00:18:16:29 - 00:18:18:14

Chris

Exactly correct.

00:18:18:16 - 00:18:35:22

Jason

Yeah. Excellent. Okay. And then, you know, as you were just talking earlier about those same things, right? The social listening, the news listening, the social monitoring, the news monitoring it. Is that a capability integrated into the core offering of, of, your your platform?

00:18:35:25 - 00:18:55:26

Chris

Yeah, it's it's the thing we we take particular pride in here in meltwater is that we're, we're excellent on both sides. And it's it's not easy to be excellent on both sides. You know, with editorial content, you're pulling from tens to hundreds of thousands of sources in real time across the world. That's a unique skill that we're we're really, really good at.

00:18:55:28 - 00:19:14:19

Chris

On the other side of it, you're pulling from, maybe 20 to 30 global social channels. But you have to have strong relationships. You have to be tied into their APIs. You have to have, a working knowledge of how to discern the most detail out of those existing APIs. So it's not a lot of fragmentation.

00:19:14:22 - 00:19:25:16

Chris

But there's a huge amount of volume. And relationship building. You need to, to be a trusted partner of theirs, and have that access that we have.

00:19:25:19 - 00:19:38:06

Jason

My perception of, of your organization is that it's well known for reporting and even maybe more specifically, visually reporting. Is that still one of your key differentiators?

00:19:38:08 - 00:19:57:11

Chris

Yeah, yeah, it's a very it's a very, very big one for us. Obviously if, if you can't discern and, insight quickly, it's kind of hard to gather much value from that insight. And so we've taken a lot of pride in how we visualize, those insights, bring them forward, and also make it easy to digest for your broader organization.

00:19:57:13 - 00:20:23:14

Chris

The hardest thing for you as a PR professional is to have the rest of your organization and across central partners, really understand why you're trying to do something and to what end? So that visualization is extremely important. And for us, this has been an area where our AI advancements, have been huge. The ability to do more visualizations in the fly chart graph and put it in your voice in a much quicker fashion, is has been hugely helpful for our clients.

00:20:23:15 - 00:20:25:08

Chris

This last year.

00:20:25:10 - 00:20:47:25

Jason

Well, perfect. That's a great segue into our second takeaway, which is the use of AI to understand narratives. So, feel free to take the lead on. Do you want to walk through kind of, the advancements you've made, at your organization with this offering, or do you want to talk through, some of the, challenges and dynamics that we face, with the use of AI to understand narratives?

00:20:47:27 - 00:21:08:19

Chris

Yeah, I can talk about it in the more general sense first, and then use that as a set up to to where we are. Okay. You know, the general perspective on this is, is a little bit of what I mentioned upfront. You've got this very quick news cycle fragmentation, hard understanding of who's driving it, whether that's real people or bot armies and other things like that.

00:21:08:21 - 00:21:34:19

Chris

That challenge is perfect for AI to come into, because what you have is a, a wealth of data that needs to be analyzed extremely quickly. And this is where we say, hey, there's nothing been invented in the world history that can do that quicker and better than generative AI right now. And so as news cycle speed up, and other things are happening in the universe, it gives us the tools, to go and be effective even in that new world order.

00:21:34:21 - 00:21:58:05

Chris

So that's why we're really excited about AI is it's, we've got all the data in the world. How do you structure it? How do you bring it forward? How do you get that one insight that's really, really critical at that moment? And then you take that, through the white channels. So from our perspective, just to bring it down a little, a level from a water perspective, why that's really important for us is historically, of all the things I've been talking about.

00:21:58:08 - 00:22:19:00

Chris

There's a lot of hardship and getting those things set up properly. Right. If I'm a brand, I'll keep going back to Patagonia. And I want to monitor and listen to everything going on and filter. That's a lot of work. Through boolean searches and keyword searches that I had to do, the exact right thing to find right conversations about us.

00:22:19:00 - 00:22:20:18

Unknown

I can now do that for you.

00:22:20:18 - 00:22:27:19

Unknown

You don't need professional grade people to set that up. Iterations and going through iteration after iteration to get it right, to eliminate the noise

00:22:27:19 - 00:22:37:07

Chris

We've got, what's called a research assistant built into our systems. That absolutely does that fully and on your behalf treats you as a reviewer. And lets you do that in minutes.

00:22:37:07 - 00:23:08:11

Chris

What used to take weeks to get right. The same thing with enrichments, right? We look at things like sentiment analysis. This has been a, a plague upon this entire industry since it was started. Is the conversation positive? Negative. Neutral? How do sarcasm play into this, especially as you get into things like social? The learning cycles of AI are making us 100 times better at enrichments like that, so that there's a real power to knowing the sentiment of millions of conversations in real time and be able to act on them.

00:23:08:18 - 00:23:30:10

Chris

And so as we go through these layers of who we are and what we're supposed to deliver as value, you're just layering in AI at every step to make an extremely powerful. And then last thing on this is that right now we have a cavalcade of AI assistants, what I call a assistance in the system, helping you on a conversational level, just like ChatGPT build these things out.

00:23:30:13 - 00:23:47:10

Chris

But we're very close to the point of moving to full AI agents, where you as a human are reviewing their work, but they're going off and doing the work for you in a multi-step tasks. You have to evaluate these things and then bring you back what you think, needs to be acted upon.

00:23:47:12 - 00:23:54:00

Jason

Yeah, that's very, exciting and thorough. And, how do you say scary at the same time?

00:23:54:03 - 00:24:09:22

Chris

You know, it is. But you know what? We what I what I really have a heart, like a deep conversation with a lot of our clients on is I have never met a client who's ever said, you know what? I've got all the resources I need around me. Like I do my team. Usually it's. I'm a team of one, and I wear 17 hats.

00:24:09:26 - 00:24:25:16

Chris

Right? And so what we usually have a conversation on is like, don't think of AI is here to take your job. Right? That's that's where people go first, right? It's the first scary thing that hits them. It's more of think about this, as you've always said, if I could do so much better if I only had these resources around me.

00:24:25:19 - 00:24:42:04

Chris

Yep. Well, now you're getting those through digital teammates, right? Yeah. So think of it as connecting who you are and honestly focusing on the strategic creative elements you always wanted to in your role as having to do spreadsheets and pour through data that always put your time for.

00:24:42:06 - 00:24:50:16

Jason

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, Chris, I'll put you on the spot. What's new and what's next, do you think for, the profession?

00:24:50:18 - 00:25:10:15

Chris

You know, for the for the profession? I think I think the thing that's most pressing is really figuring out what's real and what's not. When it's coming at you, I think we're about to with AI. The negative side for me of AI is we're going to enter a world where you can't trust your eyes and you can't trust your ears.

00:25:10:18 - 00:25:36:25

Chris

And that's going to be really hard. When we talk about all the things we just talked about in crisis management, to discern what's a real news story, what's really something that your executive doing something versus someone creating a fake video of an executive or company or representative of your company doing something. And if someone deploys that nefariously, they're going to set up content tracks that then have bot tracks amplifying it quicker than you can respond.

00:25:36:27 - 00:25:54:24

Chris

And so if I was ever a brand, I might. My fear right now is that you could do everything right. And if someone puts a bull's eye on you, you're going to still have some issues helping people discern that that's not real. And with response in in instantaneous time to refute it.

00:25:54:26 - 00:26:19:09

Jason

Yeah. I think that's going to be a much bigger deal than, I wouldn't say than we realize, but than we've ever had to deal with before and use already deep fakes and, and videos being created that, you know, just aren't real. And it's only going to get, you know, more realistic, and more concerning and the more prominent the individuals are, you know, the more likely they are to be targeted.

00:26:19:11 - 00:26:47:01

Jason

And at the same time, you know, we can't, you know, stop being active, in our public communication and our public appearances, whether it's through video like this or creating reels or speaking at conferences. But all of that public exposure opens you up to having your persona, you know, intimidated, and, your, your image replicated, and so it's an interesting time to be in this business, for sure.

00:26:47:03 - 00:27:11:15

Chris

Yeah. And, and to put a more positive spin on that, by the way, on the other side of it, like, we have a ton of clients, especially from PR and marketing working together who have been focused on trend analysis, things like that, right, beyond just the crisis management piece. But let's get ahead of these things. It's never been a greater time to to plug in to the collective, narratives happening around you and understand trends and things important to your business and decipher those and insights.

00:27:11:17 - 00:27:24:05

Chris

So on the other side, I think people's understanding of the world as it relates to them will go way up because of AI, but discerning what's real and not in those worlds and how it comes after your own brand is going to be a big issue.

00:27:24:07 - 00:28:06:06

Jason

But yeah, that's some good thoughts there, Chris. You triggered me to point out that, you know, the advice I would give to our audience is to spend some time, monitoring what's happening in, in the marketplace. Right. What other brands are going through as far as, crisis and challenges. And then they should role play, prepare to test and tweak, so that when something like that happens in their organization, not if but when or something similar happens, they've done enough reps and role playing and practicing as a team, that they're ready, and equipped to, you know, with scripts, with steps with you know, a phone tree or contact sheet

00:28:06:06 - 00:28:15:10

Jason

or whatever it might be, to go through those simulations and, you know, be a better and more prepared organization, when, a real crisis happens.

00:28:15:16 - 00:28:29:23

Chris

Yeah. And that's why I, I love that the exactly what you said. That's why I love the parallel with cybersecurity, because that's exactly what you do in cybersecurity, right? It's called a red table exercise. We we're going to pretend this is real. We're going to run a scenario. We're going to do it multiple times so that it's muscle memory.

00:28:29:25 - 00:28:40:07

Chris

By the time something real happens. And I do think PR teams and others are going to have to start to do that based on the the speed of the news cycle, and all the things we talked about.

00:28:40:10 - 00:28:46:02

Jason

100%. Chris, what is new and next with, with meltwater.

00:28:46:04 - 00:29:08:05

Chris

Yeah. It's a really exciting time, to to be here and to be one of our clients. We actually have our big customer conference coming up next month. We're going to be, bringing to market, a few big advancements. One is on the listening monitoring side. We've got a new, world class product, integration, that's coming forward that will bring the best of all those worlds.

00:29:08:05 - 00:29:34:27

Chris

I was talking about, together with powerful insights and analytics. But the other is we are, we have, for the last 18 months, been out building out incredible, AI features. We are now debuting a host of AI platforms, and agents, powering those, both in our platforms. And at last year's conference, we announced our partnership with Microsoft, and our integration with Copilot and teams.

00:29:34:29 - 00:29:55:28

Chris

We are now bringing that fully to market, so that all our insights move into, your teams in Microsoft Office environments, so that you can get meltwater without ever logging in. So we're really excited to bring that forward. Microsoft has been an incredible partner of ours. And we're we're looking forward to bringing that to the rest of our, our client base.

00:29:56:00 - 00:30:05:18

Jason

Nice. That sounds great. Chris, if somebody is interested in getting more familiar with, meltwater and exploring these capabilities, we discussed, how do they best do that?

00:30:05:20 - 00:30:26:28

Chris

So, obviously, easiest way to go. There is our website, meltwater.com. You'll see our full product suites, and details through that. Anyone can easily, request a demo or more information. I will tell you our teams are are by the stand by and very happy to talk to you. If there's an interest in further in that conversation.

00:30:27:00 - 00:30:35:15

Jason

Perfect. And, Chris, as we're wrapping up, if somebody in our audience is interested in connecting with you or have follow up questions about what we talked about today, what's their best way to reach you?

00:30:35:17 - 00:30:54:00

Chris

Honestly, the best way is LinkedIn. You know, just hit me up on, on on there. I am very responsive, fairly active on posting as well. But it's obviously the easiest, to get in touch with me. Or obviously you can connect with us directly, through normal email channels with meltwater.

00:30:54:03 - 00:31:13:28

Jason

Perfect. All right. Well, Chris, I appreciate you, joining us today for another episode of On top of PR. This was a good conversation. I appreciate you sharing your insights and, kind of allowing us to look towards not only, you know, current challenges, but also towards, future challenges and how to better prepare our organizations.

00:31:14:00 - 00:31:23:17

Jason

Whether that's our employee, employers or our clients, for these types of, you know, evolving technologies and new opportunities as well as new challenges.

00:31:23:19 - 00:31:37:21

Chris

Now, it was a real pleasure. Jason, thank you so much for the the invite and the time. And yeah, like I said, it's an exciting time to be in the space. I think those who, really understand where it's headed and get ahead of it are going to be incredible at the work they do. So, but appreciate the time to talk about that.

00:31:37:23 - 00:31:57:22

Jason

Yeah, I totally agree with you, Chris. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. So with that, this has been, another episode of On Top of PR and if you have enjoyed this episode or you know, someone who would benefit from it, please take a moment to share it with them. And, encourage them to, consume the same content that you just were part of.

00:31:57:24 - 00:32:03:28

Jason

If you have any questions for Chris or myself, feel free to reach out to us on social media. And, we just appreciate the opportunity and you allowing us to help you stay on top of PR, be well.

00:32:03:28 - 00:32:59:19

Announcer

This has been On Top of PR with Jason Mudd presented by ReviewMaxer. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode and check out past episodes at ontopofpr.com.

About your host Jason Mudd

On Top of PR host, Jason Mudd, is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands and fastest-growing companies. Since 1994, he’s worked with American Airlines, Budweiser, Dave & Buster’s, H&R Block, Hilton, HP, Miller Lite, New York Life, Pizza Hut, Southern Comfort, and Verizon. He founded Axia Public Relations in July 2002. Forbes named Axia as one of America’s Best PR Agencies.

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