PR Daily

Smaller companies face an uphill battle when competing against industry leaders that have decades of brand recognition and much larger advertising budgets. Simply getting a consumer to try an unfamiliar good or service can require an enormous amount of effort. Rather than trying to outspend their larger competitors, smaller brands often have to find ways to outmaneuver them.

Sirui Hua, head of audience and analytics at NowThis, is the infrastructure behind the storytellers, the person who makes sure great work finds the audience it deserves. At NowThis, Hua leads audience strategy and AI innovation for the global video brand, building tools that support creators and turn data into faster, smarter creative decisions.

In the last few years, we’ve all been trying to learn how to incorporate AI into our daily work flows. We’ve learned to create tight prompts that bring in context, role and desired outcome. We’ve created custom GPTs that know our preferences and can deliver time after time. Now, many of us are working on building agents that can autonomously do our bidding even while we sleep. These are important skills that stretch us all as professionals. Learning them is important, let’s not sell them short.

What started as a fun yet functional screensaver in 2017 has become one of Roku’s biggest points of differentiation. As the purple cityscape of Roku City scrolls by, viewers hunt for Easter eggs referencing famous TV shows and Hollywood films. They make memes and generate their own fan art. Roku City is mentioned on X every 11 minutes, according to data from Roku.

Chicago’s Jeppson’s Malört has turned its notoriously bitter taste into its biggest selling point. Rather than trying to make Malört seem more appealing, the brand embraced customer descriptions such as “fermented back sweat” and “moist dumpster residue” to reach new audiences, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company’s “My First Malört” campaign encourages people to try it and share their reactions, however bad they might be.

Organizations are quick to highlight their latest AI tools but, increasingly, that’s not the message audiences want to see. “They want to know how you’re using it, why you’re using it and what it means for them,” said Gerry Rodriguez, EVP and U.S. head of brand purpose and impact at Edelman, during Ragan’s Crisis Communications Virtual Conference. The problem isn’t AI itself, Rodriguez said. It’s the trust gap surrounding it. “The rise of AI isn’t really what caused the trust crisis,” he said.

Oatly’s latest look book is filled with colorful photography, trend stories and recipes for drinks inspired by flavors from around the world. Inside, readers can find beverage forecasts and high-end designs. It’s a unique product in the beverage market, but one that was absolutely intentional, said Jeremy Elias, an executive creative director at Oatly. He explained that the look book was part of a broader effort to give customers more ways to engage with the brand.

Meta launched Muse Spark 1.1, an upgraded AI model that’s been designed to handle more complex tasks across apps and services. It can plan projects, use computer tools, write and fix code, understand images, video and audio, and delegate work to other AI agents. Meta says it can also remember information across different tasks and adapt when instructions or conditions change.

Within the first hour of riding along with Hillsborough County animal control officers, Christian Lampe knew he couldn’t tell the story with a short video.

A coalition of record-label and artist groups is urging streaming platforms, such as Spotify and Apple Music, to add tags to music generated with artificial intelligence. The group is proposing two distinct labels: One would identify tracks that are fully generated by AI. The other would identify AI-assisted tracks created primarily by humans. “Fans want to know whether and how generative AI has been used in the music to which they listen,” members of the coalition said in a joint statement.