The heart of PR still beats human

Tshegofatso Lebethe is an account director at Tribeca Public Relations. Source: Supplied.

ChatGPT

We all know what that means, right? Yes, our dear friend ChatGPT was in the building.

To be honest, I didn’t set out to write another AI piece. But it felt like the responsible thing to do. Everywhere you look, someone is predicting that AI will save us, replace us, or swallow us whole. And in the communications world, the conversation is even louder. Every second headline promises to automate media relations, “reimagine” brand storytelling, or churn out press releases faster than you can say “draft for review.”

But when I sat down to gather my thoughts, something unexpected happened: I started thinking about the good old days. Not out of nostalgia or resistance to change. AI is clever. It’s fast, efficient, and when used well, it frees us up to focus on the parts of our jobs that really matter..

But I realised I didn’t want to write another “AI will change everything” narrative. I wanted to talk about what AI can’t change, no matter how powerful it becomes.

So instead of writing about algorithms and automation, I’m using this moment to revisit what makes PR… well, PR.

There was a time when media lists weren’t downloadable. You built them by knowing people, not exporting them. You earned coverage through relationships, not keywords. You pitched with a phone call you rehearsed three times, not a well-timed mailer with flawless metadata.

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Those days taught us things no model, no matter how advanced, can replicate:

• Instinct: That quiet feeling that something will land, even if the data says maybe not.
• Timing: Not the “optimal posting hour,” but the human kind: the sense of when to push, pause, or pick up the phone.
• Story sense: The skill of peeling back corporate language to find the idea worth telling.
• Relationships: Not “contacts,” but people, who’s on deadline, who hates PDFs, who still wants to receive a desk drop and who secretly loves a quirky angle.

Good old days

But let’s be honest. The ‘good ol days’ were not always good. We romanticise them, but we forget the media lists living on Excel sheets that crashed at the worst moment, the press drops that required Olympic-level logistics, and the late-night media monitoring sessions where you found yourself manually opening 17 tabs at 2am. AI frees us from that. And it should. The craft evolved because it had to, that’s progress.

So where does this leave us? Somewhere between nostalgia and innovation. AI isn’t here to replace the heart of PR, I believe it’s here to return us to it. To give us back the time to understand people, tell great stories and build trust. The parts that still matter and always will.

PR has never just been about outputs, metrics or mentions. It has always been about people, understanding them, listening to them, earning their trust and telling stories that matter. If AI helps us do more of that, then perhaps the future of PR looks a lot like the past… just with fewer Excel crashes and slightly better Wi-Fi.

So yes, as I wrote this, I left font, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. Did I leave grammar errors too? Absolutley. Because I wanted to remind you, just briefly, of the small imperfactions that remind us there’s still a human on the other side, even when technology exists to try to perfect everything.

And with that said…If you like the approach in this article, I can tighten it, make it more playful, more corporate, or push it toward industry insight and stats. Would you like me to do that next?