Blog post
June 24, 2019

China’s Omni-channel Marketing Boom

Why is Omni-channel marketing so important? 

Omni-channel marketing provides a seamless experience, regardless of channel or device. This allows customers to engage with a company in a physical store, a website, mobile app or social media.

With more than 600 million internet users and more than $US899 billion in online spending, China is the world’s biggest online shopping market and one of the most digitised countries. As the e-commerce market continues its meteoric rise, it’s now more important than ever for businesses to implement omni-channel marketing strategies that deliver a consistent experience across online and offline platforms.

Whether it’s insurance or luxury brands, the omni-channel marketing experience is essential for businesses looking to thrive in China.

A look at the e-commerce landscape in China today

report by EY found that in 2010 only 23 per cent of China’s urban population shopped online. Last year, China’s consumers accounted for 42.8 per cent of the world’s e-commerce sales and this is projected to rise to nearly 60 per cent in 2020 – almost triple what it was a decade prior.

The increase in smartphones in China has contributed to this growth in e-commerce. The same EY report found that in 2014, there were more than 780 million active smartphone users across the nation, and around 25 per cent of customers made purchases through their mobile phone on a weekly basis. Even in rural areas, which have less than 20 per cent internet penetration, more than 60 per cent of consumers are e-commerce users.

Tips on creating a successful omni-channel marketing strategy

Given the prominence of e-commerce in China, it’s essential to have a strategy in place that creates a seamless experience across third-party websites, your own website and any bricks-and-mortar stores you may have.

If you want to implement an omni-channel marketing strategy for your business in China, here are a few tips to help it thrive.

1. Be on third-party websites, but do it well.

China’s top 10 favourite websites are all e-commerce sites – including TMall, JD, 51Buy and Amazon China. In order to reach the maximum number of consumers, it’s important to be on third-party websites. To protect your own brand identity and image, it’s vital to collaborate with third-party providers to make sure your brand’s merchandising, pricing and product descriptions are consistent with your other sales channels.

2. Ensure a consistent customer service experience.

As customers access your business through multiple touchpoints, it’s essential that their experience is the same no matter where they go. Whether a customer orders from TMall, receives their product from a third-party delivery company or complains over the phone, it’s imperative they receive the same level of service to avoid conflicting experiences with your brand. To do this, identify the key touchpoints with customers in your business, and focus on creating processes and controls to ensure these experiences are up to your business’s standard. It doesn’t hurt to try a mystery shopper either, to help you identify any holes.

3. Focus on the data.

Consumers behave differently on third-party websites than they do in stores, over the phone and at an online store. In order to ensure you’re getting the most out of your different sales channels, dive into your data to see which channels are performing best and where further investigation or improvement needs to be made. Key insights to look for include abandoned shopping carts on your own website versus on third-party websites, which products are popular on different channels, satisfaction rates and exchanges or returns on third-party sites versus your own.

Ultimately, China’s growing e-commerce market holds an incredible amount of promise for local and global businesses.
With the right omni-channel strategy and attention to market innovations, businesses stand the best chance of capitalising on the booming online shopping industry.
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Another year draws to a close and 2018 fast approaches, but it's business as usual at Isentia offices across the globe. Mediaportal is now available in Korea and Taiwan, and Asia Pacific continues to be a highlight for Isentia’s Media and Intelligence business.

We spoke with David Liu, Chief Executive, Asia, and Sean Smith, Chief Executive Media & Intelligence, to get their insights on how Isentia will continue their expansion into Asia.
Isentia's growth in Asia Pacific has been positive for the business for some time. With the recent launch of Mediaportal in Korea and the addition of Taiwan to the portfolio, can you share your thoughts on the journey in Asia so far?

David: From my point of view, if any company wants to launch in a new country, the key is a flagship brand, or product. What we would like to see is Isentia moving from more than just a company name but to a strong and recognisable brand. The exciting aspect about our future in Asia now is that we have a product that can really help us to build our presence in the market. The launch of Mediaportal in Korea and Taiwan really marks the beginning of a new chapter in the launch of Isentia in Asia.

Mediaportal is a very powerful tool that provides a lot of clarity to our clients on what our capabilities are. Anybody can say ‘we monitor media’ but with Mediaportal, what we can do means so much more and it’s going to make it easier for us to continue to build the brand in the region.

Especially with the capabilities Mediaportal brings:
• Metadata applied to local sources
• Multilingual content when it’s available
• A user interface in English, Korean and Traditional or simplified Chinese

Having this portal in very unique countries like Korea and Taiwan, where the media landscapes are not in line with any other international market, gives us the insight and confidence to expand our services further and faster. As a business we haven’t actually changed anything that we can do at the core, but it’s much easier for the team to tell the story of what we can help clients achieve.

How have clients received Isentia’s new product offering in Korea and Taiwan?

David: The reception in Korea has been incredibly positive. The fact is, the decision making processes in companies in these markets are typically longer than most countries, so there’s still a lot of opportunity there for us to sign on more clients than we already have. I’m confident it’s going to be a real breakthrough for us.

Taiwan is just as promising! We’ve recently launched and already signed our first round of clients. They’re coming over from competitors after seeing a demo of a prototype. So you can see that there was already a buzz building there. Of course, the client services team are really excited about Mediaportal, too.

Sean: The other key point to add to this is that this is the first time we’re taking a single platform approach to Asia. We’re simplifying what we do by retiring a series of smaller platforms and outputs & providing a superior, whole-of-company approach. In doing this we will give our clients the best media intelligence service and make it more seamless to our clients to go get regional or global servicing.

The important thing to emphasise again is that we’re delivering a Mediaportal experience which has been adapted to the client needs of each market. Mediaportal will have a multilingual UI and be able to receive content and data from any Asian language.

Sean, I know you’re heading over to Hong Kong and China really soon, can you tell us a bit more about what that trip will entail?

Sean: My time in Hong Kong and China will focus on getting both these markets ready for Mediaportal. There’s a big change management process that David and I need to work through in order to enable our teams and ensure a successful release of Mediaportal.

Launching in Korea and Taiwan was exciting because both were new markets, and there was no legacy to contend with. This isn’t the case when we go live in Hong Kong and China. We’ll introduce a new platform, and a key challenge will be enabling our people and clients so that Mediaportal is easy for them and improves the service. We already deliver the market leading media intelligence service in Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. We now want this to be the reality in Hong Kong and China.

So we are coming together to build the internal culture and knowledge. What David brings is the skills, expertise and leadership in doing business in Asia, while I bring my experience in Media and Intelligence – we meet in the middle and will work towards a shared goal of releasing Mediaportal in Hong Kong and China and all other markets. Isn’t that the plan David?

David: [laughter] We’re really happy with the way we have structured this because what we have is someone who really understands Mediaportal through his experience and leadership in Media and Intelligence. The support in implementation, positioning and communicating the value of Mediaportal is fantastic and will really help our teams to expand their knowledge.

As we see digital connectivity continue to grow across the region, it’s easy to see the potential in this diverse and unique region. What’s your take on the media landscape and the growth in Asia Pac.?

David: Well as you you’ve already pointed out, the landscape has been rapidly changing and becoming more digitized. I think the difference in Asia is that the capturing of data is actually easier than before because there is less print (print media requires more complexity to capture and costly) and maybe less in broadcast. A notable change in the media landscape is that there is more online news and social –with the digital growth, everything is moving on to the cloud. If you’re not using a platform with the power of the cloud, how will you contain all the data?

Another key point, as well as fast paced growth, is the demographics across the Asian population. For the most part, it is a younger subset. For example the median age of the Vietnamese population was 30.4 years in 2015. This has a big impact on the adoption curve to digital and how media is consumed now and into the future.

What does it take to succeed? And what can we do to bring all that together?

Sean: We know Mediaportal is a great product and that our clients in other markets use it successfully every day to help manage the media and stay informed. Getting the change process right will be critical. We need to make sure our people become experts at using Mediaportal and understand how to show case to our clients so that they can see the benefits it will bring to them as professional communicators.

Secondly the media market is very different in Asia, not just as a region, even as we look country to country. As David has pointed out it is more digitally driven – so online news and social media will be key. Isentia has always had depth of content and data and in Asia this will be no different. In addressing this, we have got to be smarter – the volumes of data in Asia are infinitely bigger. Managing volume and noise for our clients is that we do, by getting the relevant sources to our clients at the right time.

Can you outline what each of you view to be the key competitive advantages that Isentia have over other key players in market?

Sean: We have the greatest reach and can provide our clients with the relevant content and data that they need to stay informed. We do this through a single platform (Mediaprotal) and clients can access this through the web, mobile apps or any device. Importantly Isentia monitors any media type - whether it is print, broadcast, radio or online news - we cover it all. Our clients will have the confidence that they are fully informed. This is unique, as what I see of most other players in the market is they only cover one or two media types.

Another key difference is what Isentia does with all that content and data, through our relevance engines. We make sure that we get the right information to our clients at the right time. We shield them from the noise!

Lastly, it is the strength of our people, we are local and operate in every country. Our teams will understand the media landscape and clients in each country individually.

How do you both collaborate and come together to bring some of Isentia’s strategic objectives to life?

Sean: We talk all the time! We have regular meetings and when needed I spend time in Asia. We stay connected and touch base on all the important points and have very open and robust conversations about what we need to do.

Again, we both bring different strengths to this partnership. David has the Asian knowledge, like people and sales, whereas I bring a range of experience across media intelligence, and that’s how we build a better business.

David: I think we have only one goal and is to make sure that we deliver the best client experience – that is how we really grow Isentia. We understand the client needs locally and I think Sean and his team contribute different industry knowledge and product insights so that our teams can deliver.

“Powered by Technology. Inspired by people” – What does this mean to you?

David: We’re in the business to help clients solve problems. We need our people to understand the client problem and the approaches we can take to help them solve it. But when it comes to implementation, we need technology to help with the complex media landscape world. I doubt any company successfully performs without technology and people going hand in hand.

Sean: I think it’s getting the best out of both. Our service is powered by technology, especially when you talk about the scale and volumes we now encounter. Our people help guide our clients through that busy 24/7 media landscape, and add value to what technology cannot already do.

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Blog
Breaking Boundaries In Media Intelligence

Another year draws to a close and 2018 fast approaches, but it’s business as usual at Isentia offices across the globe. Mediaportal is now available in Korea and Taiwan, and Asia Pacific continues to be a highlight for Isentia’s Media and Intelligence business.

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Earlier this year, Kris Wu, 27, a Chinese singer and actor made history by becoming the first artist from mainland China to perform at the Super Bowl. The NFL also named him official Super Bowl LII ambassador for China. As one of the most influential young celebrities in China, Kris is also the first non-British brand ambassador for Burberry, and ambassador for the 2017 NBA All-Star Game in New Orleans.

To target the world’s most populated market and to be better engage with over 200 million millennials in China, more and more multinational brands are collaborating with young Chinese celebrities.  Especially those with high commercial value and significant social media influence. For example; Michael Kors partnered with Yang Mi, while Bally is working with Tang Yan, and Lancôme choose Zhou Dongyu as a brand ambassador.

Isentia’s recent social media analysis report “The hottest young Chinese celebrities that luxury brands should be following” reveals some of China’s young rising stars that may be next on the brand collaboration watch list, given their commercial value, reputation and highly visible lifestyle.

Download the full report now or read on for a sneak peek!

Case study:

SK-II partner with Leah Dou (窦靖童)

Leah Dou, born in 1997, is the youngest brand spokesperson for SK-II. Known for her rebellious, edgy but also cool attitude, including a distinctive chin tattoo, Leah is somewhat of a departure from the Japanese skincare brands traditional brand representatives.

As the daughter of China’s famous musician Faye Wong and Dou Wei, Leah is a unique Chinese celebrity and according to Isentia’s analysis, after a month from the launch of the “Your statement, your bottle” SK-II campaign, it contributed to 21% of SK-II’s social buzz.

In the past two years, SK-II has increased its marketing efforts in China by leveraging e-commerce and social media tactics crafted for the local market. SK-II’s Changing Destiney campaign has successfully aroused resonance among the Chinese consumers, and sales roared 50% in 2016 from April to December.

Tinna Nien , SK-II’s senior PR manager said in a media interview that to quickly adapt to the China market demand and tap into the millennial consumers, SK-II works with Leah to create diverse brand images, as she is not just represents young consumers but also symbolizes independent values.

However, the collaboration didn’t work for everyone. According to Isentia’s social media analysis, netizens expressed an ambivalent view on choosing Leah Dou as a brand ambassador as they felt she wasn’t a ‘right match’ with the brand.  Sentiment then hit bottom and also triggered discussion around the push to be ‘younger’ and label those over 25, unmarried to be ‘leftover women’. Large amounts of Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) however continued to blast positive articles and posts towards the SK-II x Leah Dou collaboration and KOLs followers expressed supportive opinions. The sentiment peaked and lasted around 10 days. Over 114 KOLs leveraged for promoting #‘生而由我,从心所欲BE THE PERSON YOU DECIDE TO BE #, SK-II seamlessly leveraged the KOLs to promote Tmall, Duty free and offline promotions.

China’s top rising stars:

So who are the ones to watch?

The raising social media e-commerce and fan economy creates a new direct-to-consumer model that enable brands efficiently convert the leads. In Chinese, people call the celebrities who are good at promoting and selling products via social media to their fans ‘Dai Huo Huang Di or Huang Hou’ (King or Queen of product sales). According to Isentia social media analysis, the brand or event co-mentions ratio of King or Queen of product sales could up to 20% to 40%.

Using our powerful media listening tool, along with bespoke framework and extensive keyword iteration list, Isentia’s award winning media analysis team identified the latest popular influencers based on real data and their ability to impact sales through brands collaborations.

Celebrities born after the 1990s have become popular on Weibo since they garnered high buzz volumes thanks to TV dramas and shows. “孟子坤 Meng Zikun”, “周震南Zhou zhennan”, “马伯骞 Ma bosai” and “赵天宇Zhao tianyu”, were all known thanks to the TV show “The coming one” (明日之子.

 To view the full celebrity rank and download the full report, please visit:

https://www.isentiawire.com/white-paper-download-the-hottest-young-chinese-celebrities-that-luxury-brands-should-be-following/
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Blog
China’s young rising stars, their commercial value and the brands that are collaborating with them

As one of the most influential young celebrities in China, Kris Wu is the first non-British brand ambassador for Burberry.

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Following our webinar on 5 May, our panelists respond to the questions we didn’t get to on the day.

How comms leaders need to adapt to this new AI shift at the workplace?

AI is already shaping your organisation’s reputation — whether you’re managing it or not.

On 5 May, Isentia brought together three leading voices in communications and insights for a conversation about what’s really happening on the ground as AI reshapes the workspace. Catherine Arrow (Executive Director, PR Knowledge Hub), Russ Horell (Isentia APAC’s ex-Chief Revenue Officer) and Ngaire Crawford (Isentia and Vuelio's Executive Director for AI Strategy in PR & Comms) explored how communications leaders are navigating AI conversations with executives and boards, where pressure is increasing across risk, measurement and strategic advisory, how teams are adapting workflows and decision-making in response to AI influence, and where do communicators see the right opportunity.

The session saw many questions popping up from our audiences that we couldn't really address them all. So we went back to our panelists and asked them to respond. Below, Catherine Arrow and Ngaire Crawford share their thoughts on what attendees most wanted to know.

Catherine Arrow, Executive Director, PR Knowledge Hub

Catherine Arrow is the Executive Director of PR Knowledge Hub, a professional development and training organisation for public relations practitioners. A veteran of the communications industry with deep expertise in strategic counsel, crisis and issues management, and information disorder, Catherine is known for her clear-eyed thinking on the intersection of AI, reputation and organisational responsibility. She is a trusted voice on what AI actually means for practitioners — not in theory, but in practice.

Q1. Comms professionals often have an idea of how AI can help us, but often the C-Suite have other (less informed) ideas. Do you have examples of how you’ve tactfully pushed back or diverted focus back to where you feel it should be (outcomes focused)?

One of the main difficulties is that organisations and their leaders seldom have a clear picture of what they already have at their fingertips when it comes to AI. Many organisations, for example, use the Microsoft suite and may already have access to Copilot, but what can actually be achieved depends on the licences, payments and subscriptions in place. At the same time, leadership teams are influenced, as we all are, by the level of hype that has bubbled to the surface over the last 12 months. Too often, AI is regarded as a passive tool that lives inside a box and as practitioners we have a role to play helping leaders move beyond that limited view. We need to help them understand not only the functional use of particular tools but the bigger picture, to understand the impact AI may have on the organisation’s decision-making, relationships, reputation and licence to operate. The issue is whether the organisation understands the consequences of handing decisions, or the appearance of decisions, to AI in ways that may affect stakeholders, employees, communities of interest and others connected to the organisation’s activities.

So, when I need to tactfully push back or redirect the conversation, my starting point is usually a set of simple questions. What are you trying to achieve with this? How does it align with your organisational outcomes? Is it being applied ethically? Do you understand the consequences? What could it do to your reputation, relationships and ability to maintain your licence to operate?

That approach allows the conversation to move away from the excitement of the new shiny tools and back towards purpose, responsibility and organisational impact. From there, you can begin to workshop the options, discuss the implications, consider the real costs and identify the areas that need attention before AI of any kind is deployed.

Q2. How much is AI picking up on social media commentary as part of its description of organisations?

Yes, AI picks up social media commentary but it will only pick up what it can access. Generally, that means publicly available commentary or material available through an API connection or approved data source. So, in terms of general digital chatter, yes, AI can identify and interpret some of that activity.

The difficulty is that we have to be careful about what it is actually reading. You can already see this in some AI overviews and AI-generated summaries, where the system may refer to “chatter” or online discussion without always digging deeply enough into whether the original sources are genuine, reliable or themselves AI-generated. So we end up with AI nested inside AI, nested inside AI.

That creates a bigger problem for communication and engagement. People are increasingly using AI to generate and optimise social media content but that is not the same as engaging with people. At the same time, many platform algorithms are designed to reward optimised content. The result is a circular loop where AI feeds AI, which feeds AI again. Human language, judgement and connection get pushed aside.

People can become immune to this kind of content because it does not sound like the way we speak to each other, nor does it reflect the way genuine relationships are built. Then, when conflict or outrage is layered on top, the environment becomes even harder to interpret.

So the short answer is yes, AI can monitor social media commentary. The longer answer is that it often does so in ways that require considerable caution, human judgement and a much deeper understanding of what is being surfaced, amplified and missed.

Q3. How are you maintaining credibility in a landscape flooded with AI-generated content?

Personally, I try to maintain credibility by doing my best to remain human. That is probably the best advice I would give to others as well. Use your own intelligence to understand the people and communities you want to engage with. Do not use AI as a barrier between you and them. Use it as a handy tool. Let it help you edit where necessary, test an idea or explore an angle, but do not hand over your voice, judgement or identity. The same applies to imagery. If you are creating images with AI, treat it as a collaboration rather than giving the system an idea and simply running with whatever it gives back. AI-generated imagery carries assumptions and bias, so we must question what is produced and make conscious choices about what we use.

For me, maintaining credibility and authenticity means being yourself and not allowing AI to suffocate your identity. That will become harder to do as digital twins, synthetic voices and other tools make it easier for organisations to use it as a mask. The real challenge is not so much maintaining credibility. It is about maintaining humanity, empathy, kindness and a genuine wish to connect with others beyond the AI-intermediated space.

Q4. Globally, it would be interesting to learn how each country’s culture is reflected in the messaging as filtered by LLMs.

Different AI systems can reflect, distort or flatten cultural context in several ways and one of the biggest concerns is the continental drift between the major model providers. Many of the systems most widely used are strongly shaped by US language, culture, law, commercial assumptions and social norms. At the same time, Chinese models are being developed within a very different political, linguistic and cultural environment – much better at APAC languages for example. So the question is twofold: whether an AI system is “accurate” and “accurate according to whom, trained on what, governed by which assumptions and optimised for which worldview”?

Training data matters enormously. In the early days of the general release of generative AI, we saw certain words and phrases appear everywhere. “Delve” is one example, and “dive into” is another. These were signals of the linguistic patterns embedded in the data, the training process and the reinforcement layers shaping outputs. When those patterns are repeated at scale, they begin to influence the way people write, speak and frame ideas. Over time, that blunts understanding, with distinctive voices, local idioms and cultural ways of knowing pushed towards a generic machine-mediated style.

There is important work being done by Māori researchers and others on the cultural impact of AI, particularly in relation to language and data sovereignty, indigenous knowledge and the right of communities to determine how their knowledge is represented, protected and used. The research is still developing but the concern is real. AI systems can absorb, repackage and reproduce cultural knowledge without context, consent or accountability. They can also misread or flatten concepts that do not translate neatly into dominant languages or Western knowledge structures.

That is why the homogenisation of culture and language is something we need to understand and contest. In many ways, AI becomes a form of digital colonisation. Knowledge is scraped, curated, classified and reproduced by systems that may have no meaningful relationship with the people, histories or communities from which that knowledge came. In some instances, it risks rewriting history, or at least a narrowing of it, where contested, local or marginalised perspectives are buried beneath the most available, most optimised or most dominant version of events.

So, different AI systems may distort cultural context by privileging dominant languages, simplifying complex meanings, mistranslating concepts, omitting local histories or reproducing the worldview of their developers and training environments. They may flatten culture by making everything sound the same. And that presents a real danger, not only for communication professionals but for society more broadly, because shared understanding, cultural memory and social cohesion all depend on our ability to recognise difference, preserve nuance and respect the knowledge that communities hold for themselves.

Q5. Where can we find Catherine’s upcoming sessions on misinformation and AI?

The Managing Information Disorder session will stream live on 2nd July. Please register here.

In case you can't make it, you can always signup and access the live recording. As part of the session, you will also receive the Information Disorder Framework and the practical tools that accompany it, designed to help you recognise and respond to misinformation, disinformation, mal-information, narrative attacks, deepfakes and other risks in the current information environment.

If you would like to know more about AI, the AI in Public Relations – What’s New, What’s Next and What Now? session is also available. It is designed to help you get up to speed with the latest developments, understand what they mean for public relations practice and identify what you need to do next.

You can also access some of the resources Catherine mentioned during the webinar, including the Chaos Compendium, which is freely available. It exists to help you think through what is happening now, prepare your organisation for the months ahead and take practical steps to manage the risks, issues and pressures already coming into view.

Ngaire Crawford, Executive Director, AI Strategy

Ngaire Crawford is Executive Director for AI Strategy, with a mandate spanning both Isentia and Vuelio to ensure the Group’s AI strategy is coherent, credible and commercially effective. A driving force behind Isentia’s insights and measurement capability for a number of years, Ngaire is a well-respected voice across the communications measurement industry — with customers, at industry events, and in the broader conversation about the future of PR and communications. Her curious, thoughtful approach, deep expertise in measurement, and early adopter mindset with AI have helped shape much of what Isentia is building.

Q1. What are some of the top errors or mistakes you see communications leaders make in regards to AI?

If we assume people are already off the first rung and past treating AI as a workflow assistant for drafting and summarising, the more interesting mistakes tend to start after that.

The one I’d put first is assuming this is a more neutral information environment than it actually is. It’s a tempting thing to believe after years of algorithmic outrage, the idea that AI hands everyone a calmer, more balanced version of events is genuinely appealing. But I don’t think the echo chamber disappears with LLMs; it just gets dressed differently. Social platforms built echo chambers by amplifying whatever made you angry. LLMs have a gentler version of the same habit, they’re built to be helpful and agreeable, so if you ask a leading question you’ll often get an answer that politely validates your framing. And the more personalised they get, the more pronounced that becomes. So when you’re thinking about how your audiences are forming views through these tools, what matters isn’t just what the system “says” — it’s who’s doing the asking, how they’re asking, and what the system has already learned about them.

And then a more practical one: getting the order of operations wrong when you build out intelligence capability. The instinct to bring more of this in-house is understandable, but it often gets handed straight to a data or tech team, and however good the pipeline they build, you can end up with something impressive that produces information nobody quite knows how to act on. What’s signal versus noise for this organisation, what’s actually useful to a comms leader — are communications questions, not engineering ones. Sort those out first and the technology tends to slot in behind them; do it the other way round and you usually get the impressive-but-unusable version.

Q2. Would it be accurate to say content with an overt evidence base will “perform” better in an AI information environment?

The thing is, “perform” is doing two jobs. There’s visibility (does evidence-rich content get cited more?) and there’s reputation (when you do get cited, is the picture the system paints one you’d actually recognise?) They’re not the same question, and an evidence base does fairly different things for each.

On visibility, it’s, broadly yes. Well-sourced, clearly structured, quotable content does tend to get picked up more, there’s research pointing that way, though honestly it’s mostly from controlled studies and it moves around a lot depending on the topic and the platform. But what’s getting rewarded there is just clarity, good sourcing, consistency, authority. Which is less a shiny new lever and more the basics of communications.

Reputation is where “perform better” can start to lead you astray. Getting cited isn’t the same as being represented well. You can have a flawless evidence base, get pulled into an answer, and still find that answer describes you in a way you’d never have approved because the model’s also leaning on everything everyone else has said about you. You can definitely nudge your visibility, but how you’re represented is downstream of your whole information environment, and that’s a slower, longer term shift.

So yes, a real evidence base matters, but not because it’s a button you press to perform better. It matters because being genuinely worth referencing is what trusted sources cite, and it’s those sources, built up over time, that shape how these systems talk about you. What I’d be wary of is treating an “overt evidence base” as something you manufacture to game your way in.

The conversation continues

What comes through clearly in both Catherine’s and Ngaire’s responses is that AI is a shifting set of conditions that communications professionals need to understand, question and actively work within, not just hand over.

The organisations that will navigate this well are not necessarily those with the most sophisticated AI tools. They are the ones asking better questions earlier, about purpose, about accountability, about what it means to remain genuinely credible and human in an environment where both are increasingly easy to fake.


If you missed the webinar or want to revisit it, access the recording here. Watch this space — there’s more to come.

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Blog
Inside the AI Shift: Your Questions Answered

Panelists from Isentia’s “Inside the AI Shift” webinar address some of the audiences’ unanswered questions on maintaining credibility, AI leadership and evidence-based content performance.

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There is a new frontier where public perception is shaped: Large Language Models. Right now, LLMs are answering critical questions about your organisation. What are they saying? And more importantly, which sources are shaping those answers?

To navigate this landscape, public relations professionals don't need generic tools, but rather technology that speaks their language, and addresses the realities of a changed media and informational landscape.

That is why we're unveiling Lumina AI View, the latest addition to our intelligent suite of AI tools from Isentia. Trained specifically on the workflows and challenges of modern PR & communications, Lumina AI View helps you understand exactly what AI knows about you, and how it learned it.

A new standard for AI visibility

AI View tracks your citation strength and source quality alongside those of your competitors, giving you a clear view of where you hold authority and where you have gaps.

Lumina AI View maps your AI reputation from the ground up, allowing you to:

  • See which sources matter: When tools such as ChatGPT or Gemini discuss your organisation, which outlets do they cite? Track your source footprint over time and view the impact of key target media on how you’re discussed. We measure your citation strength and source quality alongside those of competitors, giving you a clear view of where you have authority and where you have gaps.
  • Gain industry-specific insight: Your competitors get cited from Financial Times and Bloomberg. You get cited on Reddit. Each brings opportunity – and risk. Discover how you measure up against industry standards, and target the sources that actually influence how AI represents you.
  • Catch narrative shifts early: AI responses change when new sources appear, sentiment shifts, or old controversies resurface. Get alerts when citation patterns change suddenly, before they impact the way you’re perceived by stakeholders.

Measure your progress: From media monitoring to full media intelligence

Lumina AI View is built on the principle that insights get stronger with repeated measurement. To help you maintain a clear view of your reputation, our proprietary scoring system provides regular updates that show you:

  • Evolving trends in how sources cite your organisation
  • Competitive standing and benchmark metrics
  • Where models differ in information presented, and sources cited 

Whether you run it weekly, on-demand, or whenever you need a check-in, patterns will emerge, trends will become clear, and you will build a baseline that makes any sudden narrative changes both comprehensible and the prerequisite to action.

Lumina AI View is part of Lumina AI, a comprehensive suite of AI tools built specifically for communicators. Our Lumina suite evolves traditional media monitoring into narrative intelligence, enabling you to truly understand how perceptions form, evolve, and impact your reputation.


Get in touch to register your interest and see what Lumina AI View can do for you.

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Blog
Introducing Lumina AI View: AI Visibility Built for PR & Comms

Lumina AI View, the latest in Isentia’s AI suite, is trained on PR & comms workflows to help you understand what AI knows about you — and how it learned it.

Ready to get started?

Get in touch or request a demo.