AI can make communicators more efficient at many tasks, but one assignment beyond the jagged edge of AI capabilities has been pitching the media. AI-written pitches often miss the mark for a variety of reasons, but future AI advances could finally thread the needle.
One promising sign for AI pitching is PodPitch, an AI tool that creates outreach lists and pitches for podcasts. PodPitch founder Parker Olson joined Greg Matusky on The Disruption Is Now to talk about the friction of pitching, the promise of autonomous agents, and what we can learn from mushrooms.
Their conversation gets at the core of what it means to use AI effectively and how it’s cutting through some of the most time-consuming manual tasks in PR.
Watch now:
Key takeaways
AI can automate repetitive PR & marketing tasks
Parker explained how he built PodPitch to take over the process of researching and pitching podcasts, a task Parker said was “horrible” and “painful” to do manually. Greg noted AI’s potential to automate other repetitive tasks like drafting templated responses to media queries based on pre-approved talking points, reducing back-and-forth friction with stakeholders.
Data integrity could extend the “jagged edge” of AI’s strengths
While Greg acknowledged AI’s prowess at generalizable tasks like email writing, he expressed skepticism about its ability to craft effective, nuanced media pitches since it lacks training data in that domain. He referenced the “jagged edge” concept of AI excelling in some areas but failing in others requiring more context and judgment. Parker agreed media pitching was challenging for AI currently, but spoke about how important data integrity and access to the right data will be to pitch effectively with AI.
Autonomous agents will simplify media research and pitching
Autonomous agents could operate continuously to help communicators, updating contact information and tracking media mentions in real-time, two tasks that traditional tech providers struggle to offer. Such advancements could dramatically streamline PR workflows, reducing costs and increasing the accuracy and timeliness of media outreach efforts.
Key moments:
● How AI supercharged influencer outreach (3:39)
● The horrible process of manually pitching podcasts (9:21)
● Parker’s learnings about PR (12:02)
● Greg walks through the best uses of AI in PR (16:50)
● The holy grail of autonomous agents (19:20)
● The importance of data integrity to AI capabilities (21: 18)
● Can AI-written pitches be successful? (24:45)
● How fungi can help us solve complex problems (29:18)
● How AI might help us find other forms of intelligence all around us (31:42)
