NEWS

Why is CommTech becoming increasingly important, especially in PR? Should we worry about our jobs as communications professionals because of ChatGPT? And doesn’t artificial intelligence perhaps have its own agenda after all.

For 99 percent of communications managers, reputation is very important or important. So for almost everyone. That’s according to a survey conducted by AG CommTech in October 2022. Wow! With such a clear vote, one would expect that reputation is measured and managed in many companies – in other words, that there is a reputation management system.

The Excellence Forum #54, which took place at Henkel in Düsseldorf at the end of November and is considered the ‘elite circle’ among CommTech enthusiasts, had given itself the heading ‘Data Wellness’. A title that initially triggers question marks.

“It doesn’t suit us. The classic newsroom doesn’t fit Sennheiser!” After saying this sentence out loud for the first time, we were somewhat relieved, because at least we knew what we didn’t want.

Communications lags behind in data usage overall. The situation is only worse for IC, as a recent survey by Meltwater and the IMWF confirmed. Without data no KPIs, without KPIs no measurability, without measurability no value creation, without value creation no raison d’être.

Communication is lagging behind in the digitization of its core processes. This is not a new insight. In the CommTech Blog, Thomas Mickeleit sheds light on the situation and offers six practical tips on how to accelerate digital transformation.

Should journalists be part of the stakeholder journey? We encountered this question again and again in the course of our CommTech work. My clear opinion is: yes, we must even understand it as an essential part of it. But we need standards and a transparent approach.

The use of digital technologies, challenges in internal workflows or the implications of the stakeholder journey: Topics that were discussed at the University of Leipzig at the beginning of April under one question: Where is CommTech headed?

Thomas Mickeleit knows his way around newsrooms. As head of communications at Microsoft Germany for many years, he was an early adopter of the newsroom model and ran it successfully. As a consultant, he now helps companies digitize their communications, including the introduction of newsrooms.

When we asked communications executives in the CommTech WG at the start of the initiative about the biggest hurdles in implementing tech tools, data protection ranked at the top. WG 8, led by Tanja Irion and Kay Nungesser, has meanwhile looked into this in depth and gained some interesting insights.