Artificial Intelligence for a new generation of Public Relations (PR): smart digital assistant for start-ups and SMEs to maximise results of press releases within the EU-28 and beyond

Project Information

PRsuite

Grant agreement ID: 836279

DOI

10.3030/836279

Project closed

EC signature date 14 December 2018

Start date 1 December 2018

End date 31 May 2019

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

COMUNICAE SEEDRELEASE NETWORK SL
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PRsuite (Artificial Intelligence for a new generation of Public Relations (PR): smart digital assistant for start-ups and SMEs to maximise results of press releases within the EU-28 and beyond)

Reporting period: 2018-12-01 to 2019-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

EU INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIETAL PROBLEMS: Start-ups and SMEs are struggling to bring their message out into the market. Due to immediate and constant pressure to generate sales, these companies mostly focus their marketing activities in advertising as they don’t have the resources to sustainably implement Public Relations (PR). Press releases are an essential part of PR to inform about product launches, market achievements, news about the team, event promotions, etc, to regularly reach and build trust with current and potential customers by means of journalists, editors and influencers in all type of traditional and social media. It has been quantified that PR is x8 more effective that advertising, but in today’s massive mix of multi-channel and fragmented media world, the complexity has increased considerably for creating content together with well-segmented and timely distribution of press releases. Full-Service Providers (FSPs) act as one-stop-shop for the entire lifecycle of press releases but are prohibitively expensive for most SMEs, which must coordinate and manage several specialised tools to cover their needs. This problem significantly increases during the internationalisation of these companies when handling press releases in different languages.
OUR SOLUTION: The technology developed by FSPs still relies on internal staff to service their clients, making the service expensive and not available 24/7. Our PRsuite is the only service that has automated the entire lifecycle of press releases. We are now incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) analysis for augmenting the capabilities of PR professionals to open a new generation of press releases. We are not competing against FSPs, but several of them are our distribution partners as we allow them to open and serve the largest customer segment: start-ups and SMEs.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Following the SME instrument phase 1 approval, Comunicae has conducted a feasibility study of the PRsuite project, which concept has been tested for technological, commercial, regulatory and economic viability, as summarized in the next points:

- Product development feasibility study (task 1): We have defined the specifications for new software features and services as part of the technology maturation tasks to be implemented during the Phase 2 in the new Accelerator program. These features and services will be developed in five languages (Spanish, German, French, Italian and English) and will be piloted with 10 clients (start-ups, SMEs and PR agencies that are currently working at EU level). We have confirmed the intent of these clients to be involved in this large-scale piloting.

- Market and commercialisation feasibility study (task 2): We carried out a deep market search at EU and Global level, identifying trends and end-user needs. We also identified competitors and implemented a competitor analysis. All this information was fed into task 4 to carry out the financial and economic feasibility study and to build up the business plan.

- Regulation, IPR and FTO study (task 3): In the study we have analysed regulations about press releases and other type of content with regard of financial and relevant inside information of the company. This regulation does not affect to SMEs: they can do these distribution as they want unless they are listed companies. Consequently, we have analysed how this regulation affects listed companies in the EU stock markets, which are mostly large enterprises. We have also studied alternatives for IPR protection and to ensure our FTO.

- Economic and financial feasibility study and Business Plan (task 4): In this task we focused the market study in our two main segments address by the PRsuite: European SMEs with international presence in another EU country and Agencies at global level. We have established our optimal international pricing strategy switching from pay-per-press-release model to a monthly subscription fee as a flat rate to all the services provided by the new PRsuite, e.g. not only for press releases but as well for content creation, distribution and motoring for other types of publications (e.g. articles, white papers and social media among others). We quantified our TAM and build up 5-year projections quantifying as well estimated market share in these segments.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We have fully completed the Phase 1 Feasibility Study, which has confirmed our intentions to develop our solution further and will drive a follow up with a Phase 2 proposal within the new acceleration program.

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