Transcript for Cutting Through podcast Season 2 Episode 8

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Jonathan Holt   This is Cutting Through, the podcast for corporate digital communicators. I'm Jonathan Holt, and today on the podcast we've got a very special guest, Lukas Preuss. He's Digital Communications Manager at Bosch, the Germany-based and very global technology and services company that does everything from dishwashers and refrigerators to all sorts of solutions and technologies for industry.

Bosch is currently joint number one in the Corporate Digital Communications Index, alongside food and beverage company Nestlé, who we heard from a couple of episodes back. It's a come-from-behind story in that Bosch has risen quickly up the Index over the past few years, with Lukas driving that rapid improvement. We've invited him onto Cutting Through to talk about how he's done it, what he's working on now, and to get his takes on the direction of travel in corporate communications during these continually earth-shattering times. Lukas, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Lukas Preuss   Hi Jonathan. Hi Scott. Nice to have me.

Jonathan   Also with us is podcast regular Scott Payton, CEO at Bowen Craggs. Hi, Scott.

Scott Payton   Hi Jonathan, hi Lukas.

Jonathan   Scott, I know that you are very familiar with the Bosch digital estate, so to set the scene, would you mind telling our listeners what it is about Bosch's approach that has set it up to be ranked so highly?

Scott   Yeah, Bosch has an online presence that does two very difficult and very important things really, really well. And it does those two things at the same time.

So number one, I hope you agree, Lukas, but number one, Bosch has created a really, really coherent and consistent online presence across websites and social media. And consistency has always been important in corporate digital communications, it's always been important. But when it comes to visibility in AI search, consistency and coherence is absolutely vital. So it's got a really consistent and coherent online presence.

But at the same time, Bosch has managed to achieve this consistency without sacrificing personality, authenticity, distinctiveness, and a sense of fun.

Bosch does those two things which are difficult in themselves and it does them both at the same time, which is even harder, and also Bosch's online presence is fizzing with inventiveness and creativity across the web presence, across YouTube and other channels. So I could go on, but they're some of the things that have fuelled Bosch's well-deserved place at the top of the Index.

Jonathan   Well, Lukas, you heard Scott say mention AI search there and of course that's the topic that's been on many corporate managers digital managers' minds for the the last many months. And I just wonder has AI search changed how you're doing things at Bosch?

Lukas   So I think what changed is that people increasingly ask AI on what they are really looking for. So instead of just typing keywords into search engines and then coming to our website, often for especially the high-intent users, they just want to get the information straight away. So what we did is that we not only focus on being then ranked or listed in one of these links which Google or other search engines provide, but it's more creating content that answers also the real questions for the users, which is structured information and not only focus on keywords, for example, anymore. So good content for us has always been important. And AI now also rewards simplicity, clarity even more for us.

So this is a few things which have changed for us now with the rise of AI.

Jonathan   Are there specific particular audiences or visitor groups that you think are being most affected by the rise of AI search? And how are you adjusting things at Bosch to serve those audiences well?

Lukas   So I said before, I think all the high-intent information seekers, they are the ones who we should serve with AI because the main information is give them the information they are looking for from our source, so what we are wanting to say and give them out as an as an output. So, it is from students researching employers. It could start with okay, which companies are a good first stepping stone into the business life. It could be journalists gathering background information of a certain topic, business partners exploring technology information or where can I find the latest information on where I should send my invoices to, etc. 

But what I think doesn't change are the people who come to a website because they want to have an experience, who want to get involved even more with one certain company where a single answer from a search engine is not enough. For example, they want to know what the CEO of a company is saying. What are the benefits of working there? Are there real examples? Experts giving their opinion. And I think there the website can be, we often hear it, a source of truth to be there.
And yeah, this is how we also pinpoint our audience. Some audiences we want to give a directly quick answer. This is where we will do with generative AI search. Other people we want to hook on the website, give them a reason to be there. And this is working out quite well for so far for us.

Jonathan   I wanted to ask how important you think FAQs are in feeding AI search. There's obviously been a lot of focus on that, in these early stages of adjusting to the new AI search realities. How are you thinking about it at Bosch? 

Lukas.  Often people think FAQs are the kind of golden nugget for generative AI because it seems they're quite easy to set up. So just put them on the, place them on the website, have structured information for them, and then we have the experience, yes, ChatGPT, Perplexity and co. are using them.

But it's not the only way to deal with this. So I would suggest every company, yes, think about having FAQs on your website. There could be FAQs on a certain topic, but also you have to think about the overall company-wide FAQ list. Other than that, don't just focus on I am doing now an FAQ list for generative search engines.

First thing always in your mind is I'm doing it for people. The questions I'm writing and the answers should focus on the user's intent. So ask the question the users really enter. And this is quite often difficult because often in companies you have these kind of feeling, uh, do I make myself naked now because I proactively speak about things I maybe don't want to push outwards. So it's a quite interesting and difficult topic.

But back to your topic, back to your question. Yes, I would suggest every company think about at least FAQs on your website. It's kind of low effort in this current age and so far it helps a lot, but it's not the only thing.

Jonathan   If FAQs are not the only answer to serving AI search well, what are some of the other things that you're prioritising? 

Lukas   So, first of all, having structured content is really important. Secondly, as also said before, write it as still that you are targeting a human to read it, not a machine. Because I think it's getting really bad if we think as communicators, we produce content, maybe with the help of machines for machines, and really completely knocking out the human touch in it.

For authority and clarity, which is really important, content quality is showing a specific or multiple levels of thought leadership in your website.

Those could be on an editorial part. For example, we have our special featured topics, which for example showcase our thought leadership in autonomous driving. There we have an editorial, we link out every kind of story we did. We have experts talking, which also brings me then to the third or fourth point already. Having like a CEO blog, even though Bosch is not changing the CEO. I think it's really important to have these kind of content on your website where the higher management is then speaking to the public, maybe also to to your colleagues, because not always everything is behind closed doors on internal platforms, but on the also on the external platform.

So yeah, everything which helps with content quality, authority, brand visibility really helps in the in the age of generative AI.

Scott   When you were talking Lukas about an immersive experience, that you want to get people on the hook and give them an experience, I guess, above and beyond what they might get from the AI search answer, that was very much the case for your new annual report this year. I know in April you launched an annual report online experience, which is very innovative, new and it integrated multimedia storytelling into the annual reporting content. Could you talk a bit about what the thinking was behind that?

Lukas   Yeah, so traditional annual reports are often treated as a pure compliance thing, massive dry PDFs that only a few analysts will look at. But we as a global purpose-driven company, we thought maybe we are missing an opportunity here. So it shouldn't be only that the annual report is looking backwards to the last year and what we achieved, but also leaning forward and saying what is the soul of the company? And we wanted to explain why our innovation matters.

So we search for a theme and we said, okay, "For Tomorrow. Today", what can we do with our jobs, our actions, our technologies right now at the moment, for the future. And our inspiration was to have these kind of or turn this regulatory requirement into a digital storybook where we can really demonstrate what kind of technologies we are working with at the moment and how they can improve hopefully the daily life of everyone else.

Scott   What has always struck me about Bosch's online storytelling is it is, and this sounds, might sound silly, but they're genuinely interesting stories. So what is, what's the kind of the process behind, you know, finding a genuinely interesting story and producing it. Do you produce them in house? How do you find the stories and how do you produce them?

Lukas   So first of all, I'm really happy and proud that you say it because we take a big pride in our content marketing and storytelling approach. Over the last few years it changed a little bit. So first it was we're working with an agency together, and now I would say nearly 90% of all of our stories are produced in house, or at least our the lead, project lead and so on, is produced in house, and then we get freelancers on for some certain topics.

However, so how does it work? Our project lead, he has the task of first finding in our big company, 40,000 people working there, the technologies which could be interesting to showcase off. Then with this plate of okay, here we have all these new technologies, we have to pick which can be important or which can which are relevant for the target groups, but also which fit our strategic shift. Maybe we want to showcase our expertise in autonomous driving. 

Then we also have to look on the global approach. We want to showcase stories around the globe. And each year we then select a number of cases. For example, I think it's roughly around eight to nine stories. And then we make a collaboration between people of my team, so which is Digital Channels who has a real expertise in how do we tell the stories, also on digital channels, if it's multimedia, for example, video storytelling approaches, and then we connect with our colleagues from the internal communications who are really professional at writing the stories. And then it's like a since two years a really good collaboration between us two.

The one part is giving more the visual idea behind it, the other one the storytelling, the other one the text and so far we are really happy with the outcome and that is also one part of the job I really enjoy. I'm not only the channel owner of the Bosch.com I'm also taking some of the stories myself on. So this year I was in Spain with the eBike engines, the new PX engine and really wanted to showcase if a professional rider who usually is not taking a e-moto e-engine for a bike.

If we send her to a desert, how is she doing in a couple of days? What does she experience, all the challenges? So storytelling always comes from what does the people really see? Authentic stories, people, experiences, feelings, yeah, and it's great joy.

Scott   Can I ask what's the most popular story you've ever done?

Lukas.  Difficult to say because all the stories perform kind of similar. Some perform better on social media, others have more reach on the website because they're more likely to be found via Google, for example. So it really depends on the topic itself. I can only say the topics or some of the stories I produced I enjoyed the most, and the feedback on social media was quite nice, is always when there is a real person, often not an expert from Bosch but more like kind of the end user is testing it and it was one time a Uber driver in New York City which we followed and now also the the eBike profess or the bike professional in Spain. As soon as you feel they are really the passion behind the people when you have them in front of the camera and their eyes get big sparkle because I speak about their topic, about their product which they use, those topics like kind of hit hard.

Scott.  I was reading some new documentation from Google, which was providing AI search optimisation advice, or, and it was a kind of technical recommendation. And one of the, a big part of the recommendation is to provide, as you say, authentic viewpoints and unique expertise.

Bosch.com has a big section full of profiles of your research experts at the company. And I think that's been around since before AI search. Are you finding that kind of your rich content on Bosch's experts, human experts, are you finding that that is performing well?

Lukas   So the massive problem or challenge we have so far is there are limited tools where you can really check what is working with generative AI or AI search at all. It can't really or it's definitely not a problem to have these kind of things, but it was because it was already quite nested into our research section of the website and then the profiles, it was always intended for people who really want to dig deep into a topic and have the or find like a a thought leadership where Bosch is there. So I can't really answer that it also helps with AI, it’s definitely not not helping with AI. So that's why we are also keeping it as it is.

I think what is more important is having these people then also speak on social media channels because especially with Google AI, often social media posts are linked in the answer and replies, so corporate influencers is another whole topic which is getting more and more traction.

Jonathan   Bosch has is sort of singular among a lot of the companies that we follow in sometimes using humour on the site. I think that's often tied to marketing campaigns, and maybe sort of marketing agencies are perhaps more just sort of naturally gifted in that or more daring in that sphere than most corporate communicators. But what what do you think is the role of humour on the corporate channels, including social media I guess. does it have a role and how can how can people do it well well if they're daring to experiment?

Lukas   Yeah, so humour is a is a sharp sword, if you can say it like this. You have to know when to use humour. Not every topic is suitable to communicated with humour. So job cuts, for example, or really difficult decisions or phases a company is going through it.

But to be for example, because you said or asked about social media, to be really successful on social media, you either have to entertain the target group or to educate them, provide a real value. And especially for the first part, entertaining, humour can be a really good point of of attention seeking or grabbing the people. And even in difficult times, humour is sometimes the thing which still motivates you and helps you to look forward to and not like go down to your basement and bury your head under the sand.

So yeah, often when we try to produce content, we often have like a wink of your eye, a wink of an eye in it, or going a little bit more funny into this system. But there are also topics where we strictly say, okay, this is not a topic which we want to cover with humour, where we really need to be serious, and then we are communicating more in a neutral kind of way.

Jonathan   Well, let's take a short break and we'll continue our conversation in a few moments.

[Interlude] A new era of corporate communications is here and the good news is that the digital team is in the forefront, like never before. The bad news is that, the digital team is in the forefront, like never before. At Bowen Craggs, we only do corporate digital communications advice and we’ve got all eyes on the twists and turns and opportunity zones in this particular corner of communication, working with many of the world’s largest corporate brands all over the world. For our latest insights on everything from AI search to how corporate estates are evolving, visit our website, bowencraggs.com. [end of interlude]

Jonathan   Customers are a big focus in Bosch.com in a lot of the stories that we've been talking about and on the homepage and really all the way threaded through. That's also an audience that a lot of corporate digital communicators seem to not quite know what to do with. And what do you think it takes to serve customers well today, particularly on corporate digital channels where customers are perhaps not only there to find out about products and services.

Lukas   Digital communicators often make a mistake in drawing like a hard line between corporate reputation and product marketing, but to a customer, there's no distinction between the one or the other, it's only one Bosch.

So to serve our customers well on our corporate website, we wanted to provide like a really seamless transition. And we know customers, especially in a in a corporate construct like Bosch are so diverse and they have specific kinds of needs, and we can't serve all of the needs on our corporate website. So, what we wanted to do is really specific. Often customers really want one special use case. They want to find the manual or the service to a specific kind of product. So, what we did is we welcome them on our site, but then we quickly show them the direction to the right door where they can maybe leave to another Bosch website for the business unit, for example, or give them more information on it. 

However, other people who are more there to enjoy their stay, you can think of like we could giving them a good cup of coffee and say, sit down, let me explain you a little bit about this and this topic. So it doesn't matter which kind of target group comes to our website, if it's customers or others.

Our job is always to like give them the respect they deserve, give them the information they deserve, and then show them the right path to whatever their the target was.

Jonathan   Is AI search changing those dynamics? I mean, presumably a portion of customers who are curious about a company and its services or products now are never reaching the website. And so that proverbial coffee they're having with ChatGPT or Gemini rather than you know with the Bosch.coms of the world. How are you thinking about that change?

Lukas   We have to get away from the idea that traffic on our website is everything. At Bosch we never really cared too much about the traffic alone. So in the last couple of years it was more like interactions. So how many pages did he visit, how long or how how far did he scroll on the website, did he read the content or even make like a conversion point at some point.

For communicators, I think it's important to know and also to convince your management the important thing is that you deliver your message. And it doesn't matter if it's on your website or on ChatGPT and co. So what we are looking at, and it is difficult because the tools are missing yet.

Is how do we really measure the impact on search engines? How often are we cited as Bosch on these kind of channels? And we are looking at different kinds of options here. Just to name a few, it's like Profound. But it's really difficult because you have to think every the answer could be different when another user from a different machine is using it if he's in a different country, what or even if he asked the engines, AI engines different kind of stuff beforehand because the engines also learn you as a profile and what you would like to have as an answer. So it's a really complex field here and I think this is also something in the future we have to look forward to.

Scott   We talk a lot about the, you know, what the leaders in what the world's best companies for online corporate communications have in common. And we often kind of say, well, budgets are different, team structures are really different, industries are different, use of agencies is often quite different, lots of different things. But the thing that that companies like Bosch have in common with other world leaders is a commitment to continuous improvement. Never kind of settling for the status quo and always looking forward, like your new annual report does, and looking to the future and thinking, what can we do better? How can we innovate? How can we change?

So when it comes to deciding what you're going to improve, and the priorities for improvement. How do you plan your improvement process for the next year? And how do you decide, what are we going to do now? What are we going to leave for another day?

Lukas   At Bosch we don't rely on just gut feelings. We kind of run our digital corporate websites and estate like an engineer of products, which we are as a Bosch company. So data-driven and user-centric. First of all, yes, we rely on benchmarking, particularly the Bowen Craggs Index. And when we get the report, then our real work starts. So we break down the which is it 26 different kind of metrics from construction to how well we serve media, jobseekers and customers down. And then we have a like a full board of small and big ideas and improvements. And I guess it's every year around 50 to 60 kind of small work projects we have. And then we also track our strategic agenda. So we align both sometimes so which is also strategically important which is maybe could be done in the in the near future because often it's also if you wait a little bit other technologies rise up and can even handle these problems even better. So continuous improvement is not like one big project, it's more like hundreds of small improvements over time. And then it's also always checking impact versus effect.

So how much do we have to invest in it? Some ideas sound exciting but only help with a really tiny audience. Others are quite small and quick to be done, but help or improve the experience of millions of users. 

Jonathan   Do you think the skillsets that are needed within a corporate digital team are changing in light of all the big changes that are happening in the communications landscape

Lukas   We are always talking about AI, but AI is really changing the way we work. So with budgets shrinking and AI hopefully helping us to still have the same output with less budget, I think it's really important that everybody is getting familiar with different kinds of AI tools to to support themselves.

So the job of the future communication department will not only be to steer agencies, but to steer agents, to have agents that do the work for you and you come in as the judgement, the human touch. And I think the job will be even more difficult and more to do because we have maybe less people do the job. And then in the background you have a lot of agents with different kinds of help and you have to bring all of these or stitch all of these pieces together to make like a holistic approach.

But our biggest challenge is that we don't define our profession just by the tools we use. Because as soon as we did it or do it, people will ask the question: do we really need communicators in the future? So what will change is yes, the way we produce, publish, edit, with the help of AI, it will be faster and much cheaper. But a corporate website isn't just valuable because it’s full of text or social media channels because they post every day.

It is more that we as communicators help the organisation to build trust, explain decisions, be close to the management to say or help them to give an idea what the outside world really thinks about us as a company, engage with stakeholders and protect our reputation. So this is a challenge we have really have to do. So on the skill check skillset, yes, we all have to know how to work efficiently with AI. But also position ourselves to still make a good value for the company.

Jonathan   Bosch is very good at imagining the future in storytelling and multimedia. There are stories on Bosch.com right now, which kind of paint a picture of how technology is going to change the future. So what do you think if you can hazard a guess that corporate digital communications and specifically the corporate website might look like five years from now? Will it be radically different?

Lukas   So on the on the front end, I would say 98 percent of all websites will still look like today, if you think about the whole world wide web. We have to think that we are the front runner here in this kind of discipline. And maybe our websites will change a bit in the next five years, but the overall website on the web will still look like the same today.

A more massive drop will maybe come or more massive change will come within maybe the next 10 years. So sometimes we often overthink how fast we really are, but working in big corporate companies sometimes the wheels turn slower than we maybe think.

But what we will see in the next couple of years, because it already started a couple of years ago, is headless CMS. So a decoupling of content and the channels which we then distribute it. Because there will be also then be an API for search engines as well as so there will be a website, there will be search engines, maybe display ads in the city, for example. So this is something we will really wanna will see in the next future. I think we will see a rise again of conversional AI on websites. I mean we had already this kind of high peak with chatbots like in the last couple of years, where these chatbots was were kind of not dumb but not as intelligent as we are now used with ChatGPTs and codes. But with these new kind of development we were seeing, I think, we will see definitely see a rise of of conversional AI on on websites.

Jonathan   Well, Lukas, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. It's been a really, really stimulating conversation.

Lukas   Thank you very much Jonathan. Thank you Scott. I'm looking forward to the to the future because it's either…  it's going to be bright. I said you have to be optimistic. With the help of AI,  we will see a lot of changes and our job won't become more easy, but also less dull.

Jonathan   And more winks, hopefully, into the future.

That's it for this episode of Cutting Through. That's also the end of this second season of Cutting Through. I wish everyone who's in the northern hemisphere a good summer and we'll see you soon.

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