The Benefits of Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Public Relations and Marketing

I spoke with Amy Juers, the CEO of Edge Marketing, a marketing and PR agency serving the legal, accounting, and professional services industries. We discussed the benefits of leveraging artificial intelligence in public relations and marketing, how it enhances client service, and the best practices for AI implementation.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals, a podcast hosted by industry analyst Ari Kaplan,

(00:07):
which shares ideas, guidance and perspectives from market leaders shaping the next generation
of legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan, and I'm speaking today with Amy Jurer's, the CEO of Edge Marketing,
a marketing and PR agency serving the legal, accounting and professional services industries.

(00:30):
Hi, Amy, how are you?
Great, Ari. Thanks for having me today.
I'm looking forward to our conversation, so tell us about your background and the genesis
of Edge Marketing.
I actually started my career in legal marketing for a company called COREM, Litigation Services,
and they actually did document management scanning, coding, OCR.

(00:52):
Every e-discovery work more with papers, so that kind of dates me a little bit, but
that's okay.
And I started in the market to put it there, and then I moved over to an agency that was
formerly called Legal Voice.
I don't know if you remember that name.
We have some ties back in those days, right, Ari?
And took over the agency in 2006.

(01:12):
We branded it to Edge in 2007, and we started as a PR agency, but I was my strength for
more on the marketing side, traditional marketing side, and so then that about the firm to really
grow to be able to offer more services beyond PR.
And so that's how we've been building over the years.
So we do everything stupid to nuts, marketing, PR, and specifically for the industries that

(01:36):
you mentioned.
You recently announced a brand refresh and AI launch at Edge Marketing.
Why was this the right time for that shift?
This is a bold new chapter for us.
We've been doing what we've been doing for a really long time, and it was time to evolve.
I just felt this energy inside of me.
It even started last summer or earlier last year, and feels like something's changing,

(02:01):
and we really dug deep to figure out what's going on.
And the market just felt different.
And I believe because of AI, and people are starting to use it more, and okay, when AI first
came into the market, we weren't quite sure about it.
We did some testing with it, and we're like, "Oh, boo, this is terrible."
We were creative.
We're artists, and we like things to be authentic and creative, and so it really wasn't exciting

(02:29):
back then.
But right now, I just feel like the software is there to where we can...
It's going to operate how we want it to operate so that we can then help our clients just
that much better, that much faster.
How will you be using AI?
Today, we have AI kind of affecting probably about 80% of our workflows.

(02:50):
So when I first started thinking about this, and my team in our brainstorming collaborating,
we looked at every step of our processes from a lead coming in, or marketing our own personal
brand to the market to get services all the way through client services, delivery, reporting,
analytics, and just what are all of those steps?

(03:13):
And where can we apply AI to?
And it's literally across the board, all right?
We're about 80% of the way there.
We couldn't wait any more.
We had to announce it, and we're so excited about it.
We just feel like now is the time because we feel like this...
We had specific criteria that we wanted our AI software to meet, and we feel like we've

(03:34):
found the perfect combination, and so it was just time to rock and roll.
Where will your clients and prospects benefit most from your new strategy?
Our software is taking the data that we feed it about our client, any kind of data, any
kind of articles or intellectual property, or any kind of intelligence.

(03:58):
And the AI is working off of that data set only, but it also has elements of curated content
of workflows, strategies, processes, and systems that marketing professionals use and
work with.
And so it's just really taking the best of two worlds and putting them together.

(04:21):
So it's our clients, voice, and our clients, persona, and their intelligence, mirroring
that with hundreds of curated marketing and PR expertise elements and pulling those
together and really making magic happen.
So they're going to feel like what is coming from Edge is much more precise, much more

(04:44):
untargeted with their brand voice, and that's what's going to be getting out in the market.
Not only the voice itself, but actually the campaigns and the strategies and the workflows.
It's just...
It's very comprehensive.
And we feel like we're really smart, and we're very experienced.
Obviously we're doing this quite a while, but this just allows us to work that much faster
too.

(05:05):
So the clients, going to...
Let's take for example, a client would come to us and say, "Hey, we want to rebrand our
company.
We want to reposition our company."
Like what Edge just went through in the last couple weeks.
Can you help us through that?
Yes, absolutely.
So the old way, we would go through interview processes, which we would still do, but then
just really ingesting that information and that data and then coming back to the client

(05:27):
with position statements by our personas, story brands, all those elements, it's...
We can just get to that much faster, and what that ultimately means is that our campaigns
can hit the road faster, and the clients are going to feel the effect of our services
that much quicker.
What challenges did you need to overcome to achieve this implementation?

(05:48):
The biggest thing was finding the right tool.
And we had really strict criteria.
And so the biggest thing was the security of the client's data and information.
So chat, GPT, you go and use it, and you can't put a press release on it that you're drafting.
If you're doing a press release in chat, that's about a merger acquisition or a product

(06:11):
launch.
Guess where that data can eventually go or it goes.
Or like, we can't do that.
So we had to find a tool that ultimately just had that security.
Not only security by keeping the data on one server, but you're not sharing data between
clients or anything else either.
That was the biggest obstacle.
I came so close to wanting to just build our own because I was not finding it.

(06:37):
And I also bring that marketing element into it too.
It's just like a huge bonus.
So yeah, so we just really, that was probably the biggest obstacle.
I had so many sleepless nights trying to find that solution.
And then once I did, it was like the skies opened up and it's done.
I was like, show drill and I'm like, thank goodness.

(07:00):
So that was probably the biggest challenge.
How will this change the way your team serves your clients?
How we're going to start engaging with the clients is going to be a little bit different
because we're going to almost in a way go backwards before we go forward.
So we need to get information from them in order to make our system intelligent.
So we're going to start with foundational pieces every time.

(07:20):
And we do now or before AI, but we're really truly going to dig deep into that initial foundational
setting with the client or can and hand with them to make sure that whatever messaging we're
developing, whatever foundational pieces are set that it truly is what they want because
then we can just build off of that campaigns and everything else.

(07:41):
So I think mostly what they'll see and feel from us are messages and campaigns that they
will resonate with them, but also with their audience that they're trying to reach to.
And we did have some that before, but this is just going to be more precise, that much
quicker.
They're going to, they're going to feel smarter.
We're going to feel smarter.

(08:01):
Chat GPT passed the bar exam, right?
I can't pass the bar exam anyway.
So I just feel like they're going to really appreciate our turnaround times.
They're going to appreciate the quality of the content and campaigns and also the results.
Before we launch this, we did some test campaigns.

(08:22):
We're like, we need to make sure this works.
We need statistics to talk to our clients about just to make them feel comfortable with
what we're advising and telling them whatever else.
And just in a few simple things that we did through our software, we saw double digit
percentage growth of click-throughs and views and opens and whatever.
It's just, it's, I wouldn't say it's night and day, but that's, gosh, it's just pretty

(08:44):
amazing.
And it's a real tangible result that we have seen come out of this.
So I think that's what the clients are really excited about just getting there that much
quicker, being that much smarter than their competition and, and having all of these
systems, but also our expertise backing that up.
We're not using us to tell us exactly what to do all the time.

(09:07):
We're challenging it or challenging ourselves and we're always reviewing.
And I think what really helps is if you do chat and you say, right, me?
I have blog post about the top five things to watch for in 2025 for you to discovery.
You're going to know what's chat if you just take it and put it on your blog.
And so we're not doing that.
We're using the original content, but we're also using our critical eye because we know

(09:30):
these audiences.
We know that they're very particular about words and word choices and how things are
stated to them.
So we're going to give it that critical view review edit before anything gets in front of
the client's eyes.
So I think the combination of the tool and our expertise is something that I feel is really

(09:53):
unmatched.
And I think that our clients are just going to be overwhelmed with the light and see the
fantastic results that will produce for them.
Where do you see public relations in marketing headed?
That's a good question.
I feel it in the image comes to my mind.
You've seen the movie, The Incredibles and the little boy, his name is Dash and Dash at the

(10:17):
end, he's running a race and he's looking back at his dad and he's slow down.
I just feel like we're also excited.
We want to be like him and just speed everybody in the race.
But I also feel like there needs to be that the pull back a little bit too.
It's just just because you have these tools doesn't mean that you can put rather than one
article a month or one blog post month 20 like more is not always better.

(10:39):
So I think that us as professionals, we need to understand.
We know what that threshold is today, but with AI, you can obviously do a lot more, but
we also don't want to overuse it in a way that it becomes annoying or just noise.
So I think marketing PR, yes, it's a great tool asset to have, but also you need to use it

(11:00):
wisely so that it doesn't have the opposite effect.
You just need to be real cognizant of its power and also just the right combination, the
right way to use it.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking with Amy jurors, the CEO of edge marketing, a marketing and
PR agency serving the legal accounting and professional services industries.

(11:24):
Amy, thanks so very much and wishing you the very best of luck with your rebrand and
a lunch.
Thank you, Ari.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for listening to the reinventing professionals podcast.
Visit reinventingprofessionals.com or Ari Kaplan advisors.com to learn more.