Decision Inc. Australia Streamlines Media Analysis and Sentiment, Leveraging AI and Automation for Watterson

Solution Overview

The Client

Watterson, a North Sydney-based boutique public relations and marketing communications consultancy, has served clients across technology, sustainability, business, building, and consumer sectors for 30 years. Known for its long-standing support of the technology industry, Watterson needed a way to enhance its media monitoring and analysis processes amid rapid growth.

Watterson monitors media coverage to understand client perception, sentiment analysis, and to flag negative coverage. However, the manual process was becoming increasingly cumbersome and costly. The agency sought a solution to automate these tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce costs, ultimately enhancing client value.

The Challenge

Over five years, Watterson’s client base grew from 14 to over 50, each with unique media monitoring needs. Managing diverse data streams and formats from various sources required extensive manual data entry to compile a single source of truth. This process was labour-intensive and diverted valuable resources away from consultative tasks.

Watterson leveraged a combination of external data streams (manual searching/Google alerts along with two third-party suppliers) to ensure it achieved a holistic view of coverage for each of its clients. However, the varied formatting from different sources meant that manual data entry was required to encapsulate all clips and sentiment into a single source of truth, often an Excel spreadsheet that would then be exported to a PowerPoint for reporting processes.

“With a smaller client base, media monitoring was manageable,” said Cameron Wells, Director at Watterson. “But as our client base expanded, the process became overwhelming. We needed a solution to automate this work and focus our resources on delivering greater value to our clients.”

Watterson turned to Decision Inc. Australia, known for its expertise in AI applications, to develop a solution that could streamline their media monitoring process.

The Solution

Decision Inc. Australia collaborated closely with Watterson to identify essential data inputs, such as client keywords, exclusions, regions, and titles. The goal was to develop an AI-driven application capable of ingesting and analysing media coverage, summarising stories, and assessing sentiment. The solution needed to be flexible, allowing manual uploads for missed coverage and customisation to Watterson’s specific needs.

Finding and compiling relevant data based on limited keyword input was a significant challenge. Decision Inc. Australia implemented a service to combine these keywords into comprehensive search queries, classifying coverage as either self or competitor. This process utilized XPath and Base64 decryption to gather and organise basic details, enabling Generative AI (GenAI) to process the articles efficiently.

GenAI was then employed to perform sentiment analysis and generate summaries, identifying key themes and assigning sentiment ratings. While sentiment analysis and summarisation are fairly common tasks, the real innovation lay in automating the data retrieval and processing workflow. This automation allowed users to generate detailed reports of relevant articles for specific clients over defined periods, saving substantial time and effort.

Within weeks, Decision Inc. Australia developed a proof of concept, which Watterson approved. They quickly moved to create a cloud-based application leveraging AWS Bedrock Services and Cohere, designed to automate media monitoring and sentiment analysis.

The Outcome

The new application drastically reduced manual data entry, freeing up resources and allowing Watterson to reallocate budgets to more impactful tasks. The reliance on third-party suppliers decreased, along with the associated costs.

“We’re still in the early stages, but we can already see the potential to take on additional projects each month without the heavy lifting,” said Wells. “This tool is transforming how we operate, giving us more time to focus on delivering value to our clients.”

“Watterson now has complete control over their media monitoring and analysis,” said Tony Butler, Managing Director of Decision Inc. Australia. “They can track and analyse any coverage, including competitor trends, with just a click, without impacting their budgets.”

The speed and efficiency of reporting have also improved significantly. Watterson can now generate coverage updates instantly, eliminating delays caused by third-party suppliers.

“We can deliver reports faster than ever, reducing the impact on our clients’ budgets,” said Wells. “The AI-driven insights provide detailed and accurate sentiment analysis, helping us achieve better outcomes for our clients quickly and cost-effectively.”

This innovative approach to media monitoring and analysis demonstrates the significant benefits of integrating AI and automation, highlighting how process improvements can drive productivity and deliver greater value to clients.

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