Curiosity Corner

Using AI in Your PR Campaigns (Without Losing What Makes You Human)

Everyone’s talking about AI. Some of your peers are using it daily. Others are quietly hoping it turns out to be a fad. The truth, as ever, sits somewhere more interesting in the middle.

AI won’t replace the relationships at the heart of good PR. It won’t replicate the instinct that tells you a story is ready to pitch, or the judgement that knows when to hold back. But used thoughtfully, it can make your campaigns smarter, faster, and more effective — freeing you to focus on the work that genuinely requires your expertise.

Here are some top tips to get you started:

1. Understand What AI Is Actually Good At

   Think of AI as a bright but brand new intern. Enthusiastic, quick, and genuinely useful — but they need briefing, they need checking, and they’ll confidently tell you something completely wrong if you don’t stay on top of them. You wouldn’t let an intern send a press release without reading it first. The same rule applies here.

   AI is genuinely useful for tasks that are repetitive, drafting-based, or require processing large amounts of information quickly. It’s less useful — and potentially counterproductive — when you need emotional intelligence, nuanced stakeholder relationships, or strategic positioning. The intern doesn’t make the big calls. That’s still your job.

2. The Prompt Is Everything — And Most People Underestimate This

   AI tools don’t know your organisation. They don’t know your tone of voice, your values, your beneficiaries, or the specific way your community talks about the issues you address. Left to their own devices, they’ll produce something competent, safe, and entirely interchangeable with every other charity working in your field.

   The quality of what you get back is directly determined by the quality of what you put in. Before you write a single prompt, give the AI the things it cannot know unless you tell it — your tone of voice, your organisation’s context, your audience, and what you want the reader to feel or do. Think of it as the briefing conversation you’d have with that new intern on their first day: they’re capable, but they know nothing about your world yet.

3. AI Cannot Write a Press Release. You Have to Teach It How.

   A press release is not a news article, a blog post, or a marketing leaflet. It has a specific structure for a specific reason: journalists are busy, sceptical, and receiving dozens of pitches a day. If you ask an AI tool to write one without guidance, you’ll likely receive something that reads like a promotional announcement — and journalists will notice.

   A strong press release follows a clear structure:

   • A headline that reads like news rather than a marketing strapline.
   • An opening paragraph that answers who, what, where, when, and why without preamble. If a journalist reads nothing else, this paragraph should tell them the whole story.
   • A body that provides context and supporting detail in descending order of importance.
   • A quote from a spokesperson that adds genuine perspective rather than restating the facts above it.
   • Notes to editors with background about your organisation and contact details for follow-up.

   Give AI this structure explicitly, along with your voice and the angle you’re leading with. Then review the output carefully — every fact, every claim, every framing decision.

4. Let AI Handle First Drafts, Not Final Copy

   Across all content — press releases, social posts, newsletters, supporter communications — the same principle applies. Use AI to get a blank page filled, then edit aggressively. Add your voice, your specificity, your humanity. AI drafts the skeleton; your team builds the body.

   It’s also worth knowing that AI can repurpose content efficiently. A single well-crafted press release can become a newsletter introduction, three social posts, a website story, and a LinkedIn article — without your team producing each from scratch.

5. There Are No Shortcuts When It Comes to Placing Your Story

   This is where AI creates the most dangerous false impression. Good media relations are relentless and personal. When you have a story to place, that means picking up the phone. It means sending a carefully crafted, personalised email — not a generic pitch blast. It means tracking down journalists on social media, engaging with their work, and making contact thoughtfully before you ever need something from them. It means messaging publications and editors on LinkedIn with genuine, considered outreach — not automated connection requests with a pitch attached. The charities that consistently achieve coverage treat journalists as people rather than distribution channels. They reach out personally, follow up, and make it easy for a busy editor to say yes. AI can write a pitch template. It cannot make the call, and it cannot read the room. That remains entirely yours — and it is arguably the most valuable skill in PR.

6. A Quick Note on Which Tools to Consider

   The three tools most commonly used for communications work are ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini. Each has its strengths, and the landscape shifts regularly enough that any firm recommendation would be out of date within months. Worth knowing: Claude offers a Projects feature, which lets you store your organisation’s context and tone of voice so you’re not re-briefing from scratch every time. ChatGPT is widely used and familiar, which lowers the barrier to getting started. On data and privacy, most consumer plans across all platforms default to using your conversations for model training unless you opt out — if you’re working with beneficiary information, donor data, or internal strategy, check your plan settings before you start. The best tool is the one your team will use consistently and responsibly.

This Week: Your 5-Point AI Readiness Audit

1. Write down your organisation’s tone of voice in three sentences. If you can’t articulate it, an AI tool won’t be able to infer it. This is the foundation for every prompt you’ll write.
2. Test a tool with a low-stakes task.Ask it to draft a social post about your last news story — but give it a detailed brief. Notice what it gets right, what it misses, and what it couldn’t know. That gap is your editorial job.
3. Audit your press release template against the structure above.Does your headline read like news? Does your opening paragraph answer the key questions immediately? If not, refine the template before you involve AI in drafting.
4. Map your media relationships honestly.List the journalists and editors who would recognise your name if you called. If that list is shorter than you’d like, relationship-building is your PR priority for the next quarter.
5. Identify where your team loses the most time to repetitive communications tasks.Research, first drafts, and repurposing are the highest-value areas for AI support — and freeing time there means more capacity for the relationship-building no tool can do for you.

AI isn’t going to replace the communicators who understand what makes a cause worth fighting for. But for charities and social enterprises working with limited time and resource, it offers something genuinely useful — more capacity to do the human parts of PR well.

Used thoughtfully, it’s not a shortcut. It’s a lever.

Want to talk through how to integrate smarter communications approaches into your next campaign? Book a Curiosity Call.