DUO’S GLOBAL STUDIO:

Content, Digital & Design Services and Training for Global Agencies and Tech Brands.

Upskill your team | Diversify your revenue

Go Digital with DUO Studio

Ready to bridge the gap from traditional PR to digital marketing? DUO Studio offers a clear roadmap designed specifically for agencies looking to diversify revenue and equip their teams with essential digital skills. Our structured three-step journey provides the strategic insights, practical training, and expert support you need to confidently navigate the digital landscape and deliver measurable results for your clients. This isn’t just about adding new services; it’s about transforming your agency for the digital age.

Agency Owner Learning Forum

Strategic insights for agency leaders. Join our online forum to discuss the challenges and opportunities of pivoting your agency from traditional PR to an integrated digital marketing model.

Employee Handbook Training

Equip your team with essential digital skills. Our comprehensive employee training program, based on our internal Digital Handbook, provides your staff with the practical knowledge needed for digital PR and marketing.

DUO Studio Service

Access expert content, design, and digital marketing support. Our Global Studio provides on-demand access to senior-level specialists to bridge skills gaps and support your team during your digital journey.

Case Studies

DUO uses digital marketing and quality thought-leadership to strengthen Telviva's brand
Integrated digital marketing and PR campaign builds targeted brand awareness for Braintree
Ecentric: PR is the foundation for real return on investment through lead generation
Using integrated B2B and B2C PR to elevate Armata's cybersecurity expertise and credibility
Strengthening brand credibility and driving lead generation for Telviva through PR and digital marketing

Agency Owner Learning Forum

Agency owners’ digital pivot and revenue diversification course – September 2025

This training is essential to help PR agency owners strategically transition to digital, driving growth and diversifying revenue streams by optimising the journey from PR to lead generation. It equips you to effectively transform workflows using digital tools and AI to deliver measurable results and business efficiency for clients.

Details

The course will begin in September 2025 and run monthly for 10 months. (10 sessions)
The course will be online and hosted on Google Meet for one hour once a month from 2 pm CET
Recordings will be shared with paid guests only
£2,400 for the course – invoiced monthly at £240 for 10 months

Course themes

The Strategic Imperative: Driving Digital Growth & Diversifying Revenue in PR
- This theme directly addresses the core business question: Why the move from traditional PR to digital PR for agency owners and clients?
- It will focus on explaining the strategic necessity of the pivot for agency survival and growth in the evolving media landscape.
- Discussions can include identifying new revenue streams enabled by digital services (e.g., SEO/AEO, content marketing, social media management, lead generation).
- Positioning the pivot not just as an operational change, but as a way to optimise the journey from PR to lead generation, demonstrating tangible business value for clients and the agency’s own bottom line.
- AI will be introduced here as a catalyst accelerating this transformation, enabling new efficiencies and capabilities that support digital growth and service diversification.
Transforming Workflows: Leveraging Digital Tools & AI for Business Efficiency
- This theme focuses on the practical implementation, framed in terms of operational efficiency and how it supports profitability and service delivery.
- It involves mapping current PR workflows and identifying opportunities for integrating digital tools and AI to streamline processes.
- Examples from the sources, such as using AI for rapid drafting of digital assets like assisting with media list management, and automating essential reporting tasks like compiling media coverage summaries, creating monthly performance reports, writing client update emails, and tagging coverage, can be presented as ways to reduce costs and free up time for higher-value digital strategy work.
Delivering Tangible Results: Mastering Digital Content & Optimisation for Client Impact
- This theme directly connects digital activities to measurable client outcomes, which is crucial for justifying new services and revenue streams.
- It focuses on creating content that resonates with your audience in the digital space.
- Explaining the difference between AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) vs SEO: what AI needs to find your content and how to write it becomes a key method for demonstrating value through increased digital visibility.
- Showcasing how AI can assist with content optimisation, such as structuring copy for AI assistants and proposing metadata, FAQs, summaries, and backlinks, is framed as a way to enhance the agency’s ability to deliver measurable digital results, while always emphasising maintaining human voice while boosting digital visibility and ensuring human-quality output through layered AI/human reviews.
- Discussing Social media measurement and impact, and an introduction to Google Analytics are fundamental to demonstrating this digital impact.
Building a Future-Ready Team: Skills, Culture & Responsible Technology Use
- While AI is a part of this, the focus here is broader: equipping the team for the entire digital landscape, understanding that the team’s capability is key to successful digital growth and revenue diversification.
- The responsible use of technology, including AI, is a critical component of being future-ready. Topics covered in the sources like Ethics, Risks and Reputation, understanding the importance of the walled garden for data security, and using AI Watermarks and Authenticity Checkers along with human judgment, source checking, and internal style/tone reviews, are crucial for managing the team’s adoption of digital tools safely and credibly.
- Reinforcing the value of empathy, authenticity, and human nuance, particularly in sensitive areas like crisis communication, underscores that technology supports, but does not replace, essential human PR skills, which are still core to client relationships and trust.
Measuring Success & Demonstrating ROI in the Digital Age
- This theme brings it back to the business impact. It’s about effectively measuring and reporting on digital activities to show clients the value of the services and justify the agency’s pivot and diversification.
- Covering measurement, reporting, and demonstrating digital PR impact. Utilising tools and techniques for understanding metrics like social media measurement and impact, and using Google Analytics allows agencies to provide data-driven results.
- Reiterating how AI can assist with compiling media coverage summaries, creating reports, and tagging coverage is framed as a way to produce more efficient and data-rich reports that clearly demonstrate performance indicators and the impact of digital strategies

These themes explicitly link the digital pivot to core business objectives like growth and revenue diversification, positioning digital tools and AI as essential components of how the agency achieves these goals, rather than being the end goal themselves.

These discussions and perspectives should strongly resonate with agency owners looking to lead their teams through a commercially successful transformation.

Employee Handbook Training

From Traditional to Digital PR and Marketing Excellence (AI-Enabled) for employees – September 2025

This course is designed to equip PR professionals with the essential skills and knowledge to transition effectively into the digital PR and marketing landscape, leveraging AI tools to enhance capabilities and drive measurable results.

Details

The course will begin in September 2025 and run every two weeks over 10 months. (20 sessions)
The course will be online and hosted on Google Meet for one hour twice a month from 2 pm CET
Recordings will be shared with paid guests only
£2400 in total for the year – 2 sessions per month
Invoiced monthly at £240 for 10 months
(10% discounts available for group bookings of 5 or more)

Course themes:

Understanding the Digital Shift: Why Digital PR and Marketing?
- Exploring the reasons for moving from traditional PR to digital PR for agencies and clients.
- Defining the scope of Digital PR and Marketing in today’s landscape.
- Discussing how AI is a catalyst accelerating this transformation and becoming a fundamental tool.
Strategic Planning and Goal Setting for Digital Campaigns (AI-Enhanced)
- Mastering the “Concept, Content, Implementation” recipe in a digital context.
- Defining and setting SMART campaign goals and expected outcomes.
- Integrating AI for strategic content creation and planning:
  - Using AI for ideation, thematic content planning, and trend analysis.
  - Aligning AI-assisted content with business goals.
  - Creating AI-generated content calendars and pillar plans.
  - Leveraging AI to analyse client data (transcripts, briefing packs, etc.) for angles, vulnerabilities, and strategic development.
- Framing planning around results orientation, aligning AI-driven strategies with the need to demonstrate measurable outcomes.
Advanced Digital Content Creation and Optimisation (Leveraging AI Tools)
- Focusing on creating content that resonates with the digital audience.
- Utilising AI tools for everyday content tasks:
  - Prompting Mastery: Structuring prompts for accurate, brand-safe content, guiding tone, and building a prompt library.
  - Using AI as a “co-worker” or “creative tutor” for idea generation and drafting.
  - Rapid drafting of digital assets like press releases, emailers, and blog posts for human editing and authentication.
- Deep dive into Content and SEO Optimisation using AI:
  - Understanding AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) vs SEO and how AI finds content.
  - Structuring copy specifically for AI assistants (Google, Bing, Gemini).
  - Using AI to propose metadata, FAQs, summaries, and backlinks.
  - Maintaining a human voice while boosting digital visibility.
- Considering Design and Imagery best practices for digital platforms.
Effective Digital Listening and Real-time Monitoring (Enabled by AI)
- Understanding the positive and negative impact of effective listening in the digital space.
- Implementing AI sentiment tools designed to detect issues rapidly.
- Exploring tools like Grok-2 (with access to X data) for real-time social media sentiment tracking and campaign monitoring.
Modern Media Relations in the Digital Age (AI-Supported Workflows)
- Refining media list management using AI for segmentation and refreshing.
- Tailoring pitches to journalists tone and recent coverage with AI assistance.
- Automating first drafts of follow-ups and thank you notes.
- Using AI for automated journalist matching based on databases and client data.
- Conducting live media sentiment analysis using AI tools, emphasising the necessity of paid tools behind a walled garden to ensure client data privacy and compliance. This reinforces DUO’s strict guidelines on protecting client information.
Crisis Communication Simulation and Response in the Digital Age (AI-Assisted)
- Using AI to simulate crisis scenarios and draft holding statements.
- Generating tone-appropriate replies from multiple perspectives.
- Pre-testing stakeholder responses.
- Utilising AI to identify areas of risk (reputational, regulatory, brand consistency, media backlash).
- Creating timely custom crisis statements using AI tools and pre-approved templates.
- Addressing the critical decision point of “Speed vs integrity: when to automate and when not to” in digital crisis scenarios.
- Crucially, reinforcing the “importance of the human” in navigating digital crises.
Integrating AI into Digital PR Workflow
- Focusing on practical application using your existing toolset.
- Mapping current PR workflows and identifying AI opportunities within your context.
- Providing practical guidance on using AI tools within Google Workspace (e.g., Gemini 2.5 Pro for collaborative writing, planning, and document generation).
- Demonstrating how AI can assist with tasks managed within Monday.com, such as compiling media coverage summaries, creating reports, writing client updates, formatting recaps, and tagging coverage.
- Showcasing the specific use of NotebookLM (integrated with Google Labs) for processing client transcripts, briefing packs, and meeting notes to generate strategy notes, soundbites, angles, and trend links.
- Exploring low-code/no-code integrations using tools like Zapier or Google Workspace to build confidence without compromising data.
Ethics, Risks, and Responsible AI Use in Digital PR and Marketing
- Addressing AI best practices (for now) and the Risks that need to be discussed with clients.
- Covering how to avoid plagiarism, hallucinations, and over-automation.
- Discussing the ethical use of AI-generated content and when disclosure is required.
- Navigating authenticity, transparency, and brand trust in the digital age.
- Highlighting the importance of the walled garden for data security, connecting this directly to your AI policy on not sharing sensitive data externally via insecure means like Gmail.
- Increasing awareness of bias, deepfakes, and digital imposters.
- Reinforcing the value of empathy, authenticity, and human nuance in digital communications.
- Introducing AI Watermarks and Authenticity Checkers: understanding watermarks (e.g., Google SynthID), exploring authenticity checkers (e.g., GPTZero), identifying risks and limitations (false positives, bias).
- Mapping where and when to use authenticity tools in the PR workflow.
- Creating team-wide protocols for verifying, editing, and transparently labelling AI-generated content, aligning with your value of transparency in processes.
- Emphasising the use of detection tools alongside human judgment, source checking, and internal style/tone reviews.
- Building client and stakeholder trust through transparent use of AI and clear processes.
- Developing internal guidelines for flagging and approving content.
Building a PR Assistant (DUO Specific)
- Setting up an AI assistant focused on processing client-related documents within a secure Google Drive environment (e.g., using NotebookLM).
- Extracting relevant information like quotable soundbites, campaign angles, and journalist leads from client interactions.
- Integrating findings (potentially via Google Sheets) into your reporting dashboards or Monday.com-type workflows.
Measurement, Reporting, and Demonstrating Digital PR Impact
- Understanding social media measurement and impact.
- Introduction to Google Analytics.
- Using AI to assist with compiling media coverage summaries, creating reports, and tagging coverage to demonstrate results.
- Connecting AI-assisted reporting and data tagging to the requirements for demonstrating outcomes and performance indicators in your Job Descriptions and Performance Agreements.
- Utilising Case Studies to showcase successful digital campaigns.
The Human Element, Culture, and Continuous Development
- Emphasise throughout that AI is a tool to augment, not replace, human critical thinking, creativity, and relationships.
- Discuss how digital transformation and AI training support personal development plans and employees taking ownership of their growth, aligning with HR handbook principles.
- Reinforce that final content quality relies on human-quality output through layered AI/human reviews and is subject to human judgment.
- Underline that employees are measured on results only, and effective use of digital tools, including AI, contributes to these results.
- Connecting ethical AI use and data privacy practices to your company values and policies on professionalism and secure data handling.
- Highlighting the importance of the onboarding process and continuous training in grasping essential digital skills and processes within your organisation.

This training provides a pathway to becoming a proficient Digital PR and Marketing practitioner, with AI woven in as an indispensable set of tools and techniques for achieving excellence and efficiency in the modern digital landscape, all while adhering to operational requirements, ethics, and performance culture.

Grow Your Success Story Here

The DUO Studio brings you South Africa’s finest creative minds, wrapped in a service model that adapts to your needs. Whether you’re a tech PR agency looking to scale its resources or a tech brand seeking exceptional talent without the need to recruit, we’re ready to help write your next chapter as and when you need us.

Start optimising your investment with world-class creative expertise at competitive pricing.

The DUO Global Studio provides quality, cost-effective content, digital and design services for global agencies and tech brands. Leveraging the expertise of a carefully curated team of senior-level specialists, the DUO Studio works as a trusted partner, deeply integrated into a client’s briefing and ideation process.

The DUO Studio offers a comprehensive suite of services, including the aggregation of best fit resources – such as copywriters, graphic designers, digital marketing specialists and researchers– for each unique project.

We offer content creation, implementation, quality assurance and dedicated client relations.

As a demand-led new business unit to award-winning DUO Marketing + Communications’ deep industry expertise, the DUO Studio delivers tailored and nuanced, expert technology digital marketing and PR content.

Tapping into South Africa’s renowned tier-one talent pool and operating on a flexible, consultant-based model, DUO Studio offers its specialist services at highly competitive rates due to a favourable exchange rate.