On today's episode of Signal in the Noise, we sit down with Guga Peccicacco, PR & Communications Manager at Infor, a cloud-based, industry-specific enterprise software.
In this insightful conversation, we cover Guga's fascinating background before his move to PR & Comms. He also shares some of his favorite hot takes, like why Guga believes we're in the golden era of PR, why PR needs to talk more business rather than fluff, and much more.
Below is just a snippet of the conversation. For more episodes, check out the Spotify channel to listen or the YouTube channel. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
" Technology is not the differentiator anymore - it's more accessible than ever. So what is the differentiating factor for companies if it's not technology, right? [...] Whatever's left, to me, is reputation." - Guga Peccicacco, Infor
Dan Gaynor: Let's talk about a few of the big trends that are going on in the industry. Speaking of how challenging your job is, I think it's only getting more difficult in the macro context as well because there's, between the obvious political disruption and economic upheaval. [...] It's very difficult to help keep your company out of the fray and to continue business as usual without intersecting with some of these difficult challenges. [...] Why do you think, especially with technology advancements accelerating as fast as they are, it's better than ever to be a PR professional?
Guga Peccicacco: Technology used to be the differentiating factor for companies, right? So you had this technology, and then you lead a market, or you're very different from your competitors. But with Gen AI and whatever's happening, like the fast advancement of technology, things are leveling out. Take, for instance, Open AI launches something, and then comes Anthropic, which launches pretty much the same functionality two or three weeks later. And then comes Gemini and Google to do the same.
Technology is not the differentiator anymore. It's more accessible than ever. So, if you look into companies, what is the differentiator factor for companies if it's not technology, right? If you put that together with whatever Gen AI is doing, you don't know who's producing the content anymore. You don't know you have fake news going everywhere. Like we can see videos, we can see clone videos, clone images, clone voices. Whatever's left to me is reputation.
" I see people going towards those places they trust, they know they're comfortable with, they know there's a reputation behind it. And reputation is where we thrive." - Guga Peccicacco, Infor
GP: I see people going towards those places they trust, they know they are comfortable with, and they know that there's a reputation behind it. And reputation is where we thrive. So, to me, if you're in PR and communications, you should feel really happy right now.
But you need to prepare yourself, right? Because we are a very kind of old school industry. We do things the same way we've been doing things in the last 20 years. So, what we need to do is prepare ourselves to surf this wave for the next 10 years. And even if you look into performance marketing. There's this whole kinda of a battle between performance and awareness.
So, if you're looking at the cost-per-click, which is the main indicator for the performance market, it has doubled its price in the last two years and will keep doubling in the next two years and the next 12 months. And it's going to keep doing that because it's a beating business, right? So, the more companies beating, the more expensive it gets.
So what do you do? You build your brand. Again, it falls on our lap, right? It's kind of like, 'Performance, you had your last 10 years, 15 [years]. Now it's our turn.'
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Signal in the Noise is a podcast dedicated to helping today's business leaders navigate the complexities of decision-making by leveraging data and groundbreaking technology—first and foremost, artificial intelligence (AI). You can also watch the interview on our Signal AI YouTube channel here.