New products and problems across PR software land [PR Tech Sum No. 60]

Three PR software providers are getting a jump on the new year with AI-infused products for professional communicators; Bloomberg reports on more struggles for Cision

The challenge with generative AI is probability. It’s stringing words together based on how probable it is they will appear together based on the context.

High probability means everyone is saying the same things. If differentiation is crucial to marketing communications, then saying the same thing is the opposite of what we need.

This isn’t a new problem. Everyone knows it. AI hallucinations still get headlines.

What I hadn’t considered is that something similar is happening to software code, according to this podcast interview between Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field and The Wall Street Journal.

Just like AI can be trained to write copy, AI can be trained to write code. The code too can be highly probable which is why the creative and design are what differentiates software products, Dylan said, rather than word choice.

That landed with me because most of my paid work is around B2B SaaS and software. I just hadn’t thought about software that way. We talk about usability, but we don’t often attribute that to design. Ever since the iPhone launched, we’ve taken well-designed software for granted. I wonder if we are doing that with words too.

And now on with the PR Tech Sum.

1. New PR software tool Dazzle launches

If a PR firm and a European legaltech company entered a joint venture, Dazzle would be the outcome. That’s sort of what happened too when a Zurich-based PR firm named SlicedBrand linked up with legal tech firm Xayn (pronounced “Zane”) to develop Dazzle.

Dazzle aims to tap SlicedBrand’s PR know-how to train a “variety of LLMs” created by Xayn to create AI that is specific to the work of communications and PR. “Generic chatbots like ChatGPT can also only take you so far,” according to the press release.

More specifically, the company says its chatbot, “Dazz” can interpret “complex requests” and “the nuances of your PR needs.” So far, it’s getting early positive mentions.

Some of the things Dazzle can do include the following:

Give it instructions to research;

Summarize “bios, beats, article summaries, social media handles, contact details”;

Build a current media list based on AI scans of recent work;

Learn your preferences and recommend contacts that should be on your list;

Collaborate on media lists, “exchange comments, assign pitches, update the outreach status, or share them with clients and managers to report your progress.”

Ayelet Noff, who owns SlicedBrand and is the Co-Founder and CEO of Dazzle, summarizes the catalyst for the business idea as taking the “growing grunt work” out of PR. The company is also thinking about reducing off-topic PR pitches, which is a good thing because many PR software companies do not mention this when launching new products.

I’ve had the opportunity to speak with Ayelet and Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, PhD who is an AI advisor to Dazzle, and the founder and CEO of Xayn. The pair provided a demo and answered questions I had.

The part that stood out to me was the chatbot Dazz: from my perspective, it’s more of an interface than a chatbot. That’s a very different approach and one reason why you might want to consider PR software that was made recently – in the era of generative AI.

We have used keyboards and touch screens to interface with technology ever since the Graphical User Interface (GUI) was created. Some PR software vendors have discussed a voice interface for PR software as AI adoption grows, but I have yet to see this come to fruition.

The product has a limited premium version to trial – and premium pricing starts at $175 a month which is a little more than $2k a year.

2. Propel launches 2.0 version of PR platform

Software startup Propel announced version 2.0 of its software with another dose of AI. The new edition of its all-in-one software uses AI to keep media lists updated, automatically write personalized email pitches and monitor results in real-time.

The announcement elaborated noting that its AI helps:

“identify the right journalists based on their latest coverage”;

“generates personalized introductory paragraphs for each journalist, based on their recent work”; and

“track campaign effectiveness…into journalist engagement, campaign performance.”

In January of 2024, I spent some time with the company and published a product briefing on Propel that’s worth reading if you’ve shortlisted the company. At that time, the company said it had raised $5.5 million in venture funding and had roughly 500 customers. It recently published a case study with the CCGroup, which is a B2B tech PR agency out of London.

Propel is often on my list of recommended tools PR folks should check out. They have transparent pricing with small, medium and large options. They also offer a free trial. Finally, the company has many short product videos online where you can take a look – without registering for a demo or speaking to a salesperson.

3. New media monitoring tool: AlphaMetricx

There’s a new kid on the media monitoring block: AlphaMetricx. The software product was made by a Dallas-based company called InfoVision, which provides technical services for IT transformation and modernization.

According to a press release, AlphaMetricx delivers “AI with custom large language models (LLMs) to identify expert media insights, streamline workflow, and provide a customized user experience.”

The product offers monitoring of “traditional and social media monitoring of online blogs, forums, and reviews.” In addition, a dashboard-style view is customizable with “curated visual widgets… to compile into data reporting and newsletter digests.”

The press release also introduces a “PR Impact Score” and a “PR Message Congruence metric.”

The score strives to “understand the importance and overall quality of media coverage. Users can customize values including brand reach, brand prominence, brand spokesperson and brand strength to calculate this.”

The congruence metric aims “to measure the true impact of PR narratives and their potential to connect on a deeper level with the target audience.”

Those things sound interesting but there’s still plenty of work to be done. The holy grail of PR measurement is still linking outputs to a desired behavior, which for most businesses means sales.

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4. More challenges for Cision

“Platinum Equity-backed Cision Ltd. disclosed to some lenders that it created a new holding company on Nov. 1” of 2024, according to reporting by Bloomberg. The article says lenders believe this is a “first step before an asset sale or collateral transfer.”

Bloomberg also reported that its CEO, Cali Tran, who joined following Cision’s acquisition of Brandwatch, vacated his position. If true, he follows other former CEOs including Abel Clark who left at the beginning of 2023, and Kevin Akeroyd, who left in 2020.

Trade publication PRWeek later reported that Cali was “moving to the position of chairman less than two years after he was hired as chief executive.” It added, “Cision named CFO Prasant Gondipalli as interim CEO as it searches for a permanent replacement” citing an unnamed spokesperson.

It’s worth noting CEO job isn’t the only turnover. Many C-Suite executives have churned.

Executive turnover aside, Cision has had other struggles lately too. For example, in my view, it was late for the AI race. I also don’t think its new products have gained the market traction they need. They shut down the HARO brand – a small part of the business but a psychologically compelling and massive brand with a legacy that was important to their customers, the PR community.

They later also closed HARO’s successor Connectively (try Source of Sources, or SOS as an alternative).

The financial problems aren’t new either. Last summer, the publisher Dow Jones sued Cision for breach of contract over $173 million.

The subsequent reporting by Bloomberg, which I cited above, said the company is facing “distressed” levels of debt:

“Cision, which owns corporate announcement disseminator PR Newswire, has $2.5 billion of debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Its $1.2 billion first-lien term loan due in 2027 is quoted at nearly 66 cents on the dollar, up from August’s low of 52 cents but still at distressed levels.”

Analysis: In my opinion, the situation Cision is sad, because it’s got a lot of history in PR, but inevitable because of the course it’s been on for years.

I’ve watched closely as the company has tallied up the 20-something acquisitions over the last decade plus. Few of those deals made strategic sense to me. I always felt like, with every acquisition, the company was promising a big vision that never quite materialized.

And then, instead of executing, they ran off and did another deal. And another. And another.

That approach to M&A was also expensive. By all outward appearances, it has long since run out of momentum. The loss of momentum means a loss of options.

How does this all turn out? I don’t see anything good. From where I sit looking out at PR software land, sadly, the only winner here is going to be the lawyers. While I can’t imagine the PR landscape without Cision, I’m beginning to wonder, unfortunately, if that’s a real possibility.

This of course is all just my opinion and I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Either way, you can and should seek out other opinions on this matter.

To that end, I reached out to Cision several times before publishing this blog asking the company to share their side of the story. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never received a response.