November 16, 2025 • 44 mins
Imagine walking into a crisis room with a complete first-draft playbook—roles, spans of control, holding lines, and a 48-hour plan—ready in minutes. That’s the promise we explore with Chris Hamilton and Peter Heneghan, veterans of 10 Downing Street, BP, and AstraZeneca, and now the co-founders of Albie.ai. Their take isn’t hype: it’s a grounded, human-first approach to using AI as a co-pilot that speeds up the work without sacrificing judgment, empathy, and trust. If you're a comms professional, you won't want to miss this very grounded discussion around incorporating AI into your resource mix.
We talk about why AI in communications is different from past tech shifts. The web and social took years to mature; AI is arriving on top of mature infrastructure and accelerating everything at once. Chris and Peter argue that general-purpose tools like Copilot, Gemini, and Claude have a place, but comms teams also need domain-specific workflows that reflect how we plan, align, and respond—especially under pressure. They unpack their 20‑60‑20 method: set up with context and guardrails, let AI generate structured drafts fast, then apply rigorous human review to ensure accuracy, tone, and strategic fit.
Whether you’re in corporate affairs, media relations, or issues management, you’ll leave with usable ideas to future-proof your function and keep humans at the helm. If this episode sparks ideas or pushback, we want to hear it—subscribe, share with your team, and send us your questions or experiences so we can build on them next time.
Reach Chris Hamilton or Peter Heneghan at https://www.albie.ai/contact
We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tom Mueller (00:06):
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Leading in a
Crisis Podcast.
On this podcast, we sharestories from the front lines of
crisis communications.
I'm Tom Mueller.
Quick shout out to ourlisteners who have helped the
podcast be named to the top 10best management podcast in
Texas, as rated by the goodfolks at SpeedSpot, which is a
(00:28):
content aggregator and a mediarating firm.
So we're very thankful for thatrecognition of our efforts here
at the podcast.
And we're sort of steadilyclimbing their ratings system
over there.
On today's show, we're going todive once again into the realm
of artificial intelligence inthe communications and crisis
(00:52):
management space.
As you know, we like to diveinto AI issues here on the
podcast when there's somethingnew and exciting evolving here.
And if you read the FT or theWall Street Journal, you know
there's always somethinginteresting going on in this
space.
So today, no exception.
Our guests with us are foundersof a company known as I'll
(01:15):
be.ai, which focuses its effortson helping communicators be
more efficient and impactfulusing AI tools.
So our guests are the foundersof that firm, Chris Hamilton and
Peter Hennigan, both of whosecareers are just steeped in
digital comms and leadershiproles.
(01:35):
So, Peter and Chris, welcome tothe podcast.
Chris Hamilton (01:38):
Thank you.
Tom Mueller (01:41):
Hey, I'll get into your backgrounds a bit more in
just a little bit, but I want tojust kind of open it up right
away.
What's the top-line sales pitchfor albi.ai for those
communications professionals outthere today.
Peter Heneghan (01:56):
Chris, did you want to kick off?
Chris Hamilton (01:58):
Yeah, sure.
Well, you I think you youstarted to get at it, Tom, uh,
in your great uh intro there.
But really, we're targeting uhcorporate affairs and
communications teams.
Uh, and what we want to do isreally help them harness AI, but
in a strategic, safe, um, butalso swift way.
So, in other words, reallytrying to accelerate teams at
(02:21):
the moment, they're in a reallyoften in a very experimental or
pilot mode with AI.
There's been so much noise, somuch talk about it.
There are a lot of people outthere offering a lot of
services.
Often it's quite kind oflong-term and theoretically
based, and we're really tryingto help people in a very
practical way um learn how tothe best ways to to to um try
(02:45):
out AI, to embed it in the waysuh of working, and really start
to understand how strategicallyover the longer term it's going
to be helpful and change the waythat we work.
Because that's something thatwe believe very fundamentally
about AI is that you know it'snot the same as a lot of the
technology uh revolutions thatwe've seen, even just in our
(03:06):
careers, relatively short asthey've been, including
obviously the rollout of theweb, social media, um obviously
the ubiquitous nature of umsmartphones and similar
technology.
You know, AI is sweepingthrough everything, and it's
going to sweep through corporateaffairs and corporate
communications, absolutely nodoubt about that.
And people have got to gettheir head around it, and we're
(03:28):
here to help them with that.
And we do that by combiningexpert advisory, so we'll come
in and talk to leadership, toteams about what AI means for
them.
Training, learning, anddevelopment is our is our big
pillar, and then what we'rereally excited by uh is our
purpose-built AI platform, ourthe Albi platform, which really
(03:48):
helps teams uh modernize howthey how they create, how they
align, and how they respond.
And you you touched obviously,and we know that a big focus of
of the podcast is on crisiscomms, and that's that's really
important to us and a really keypart of our platform.
So maybe we'll get stuck intothat in a little bit.
But in short, we makecommunications faster, smarter,
(04:09):
uh, and better, and help teamsbecome more confident in in the
AI era which we're now entering.
Peter Heneghan (04:16):
And uh Tom I'd add that where we're coming from
is we've got deep expertise,domain expertise in
communications.
You've got people who are outthere who are AI experts, or
people who have communications,we bring both of them sort of
seamlessly together.
And I think where a lot ofcommunications people we go on
and speak to, they haven't quiteclicked that this isn't just an
evolution.
(04:36):
When we talk about the web, wetalk about the smartphone, we
talk about social, they had timeto grow.
Like the web took a long timeto really get going.
All that infrastructure is nowin place, and we're now plugging
in intelligence into that, andthen that's the kind of
lightning bolt moment where itall comes together really
quickly.
(04:57):
And I I'm excited and a littlebit worried about our profession
because we know what we're goodat, but we're not quite tech
technology focused.
We hope we can helpcommunications teams bridge that
gap, and our specialism iscommunications.
We're not trying to go off anddo operations and HO or other
areas, we're sticking in ourlane, and I think that's why
(05:17):
we'll we should have somesuccess in that space.
Tom Mueller (05:20):
Yeah, that's one of the fascinating things as I've
researched your company a littlebit, is your focus on
communications.
And of course, that's where Ispent my career.
And Chris and I bumped intoeach other at BP in different
types of comms roles uh overtime.
Uh but you both actually havevery interesting backgrounds to
me.
And uh it uh I think the thingthat struck me is that you both
(05:42):
worked at 10 Downing Street indigital communications
leadership roles there.
Uh that to me sounds likecrisis communications every
single day, right?
When you're and just in a highstress, high pressure type
environment, there's alwayssomething going on.
(06:03):
So it just strikes me you'vegot really, you know, sort of
great backgrounds for that.
And Chris, I know you've um youknow spent time at BP in very
senior digital comms role.
Tell us a little bit more aboutyour background.
Chris Hamilton (06:17):
Yeah, sure, Tom.
So uh I started out injournalism actually.
Um, and in fact, my very firstjob was with a news agency
called the Press Association,which is a big, probably the big
national agency here in the UK.
So think of it like a kind ofReuters or an AP, but mainly
focused on on UK domesticcoverage.
Uh and then in 2000, I rememberseeing an ad for uh that the
(06:40):
BBC had put in the print editionof Media Guardian, um, where a
lot of media jobs were wereadvertised back then for
reporters to join its then uhfledgling online news service,
the BBC New BBC News Online asit was known, exciting.
And I thought it would be agreat place to take the skills
I'd learned at PA and apply themin this new media, and and
(07:02):
especially when it came to, forexample, storytelling using
images and graphics and data andum animation and had different
ways of telling stories in thisnew media.
It was it was amazing, it wasan amazing experience.
And I stayed there for 14 yearsin a variety of different
roles.
I ended up running the socialmedia operation um as social
media was becoming a really bigthing.
(07:23):
I did a short time at an adagency, and then this role came
up at at 10 Downing Street.
Um, and I thought, well, thatwasn't part of the career plan,
but what a place to work, right?
For us in the UK, I mean, orglobally, that black door, which
is so famous, you know, what itwould be like to be walking
through there as your place ofwork.
And I just wanted to get thatexperience, and and I was up for
(07:46):
the challenge.
So in I went.
Um and yeah, I mean, I rememberwithin uh just a few short
weeks, uh, one uh an absolutelyawful tragedy uh which still
resonates uh in the UK to thisday was um it's called the the
Grenfell Tower disaster.
It was this huge tower block uhwent on fire.
Um, absolutely uh horriblestory.
(08:09):
Horrible story.
Um I was pitched into that forthe first time in a
non-journalist role.
I was kind of on the inside, ifyou like.
Uh the government stood up agold command uh communications
operation, which I was part of.
Um, and that for me, that Imean, talk about in at the deep
end again in terms of being onthe inside of a crisis like
that.
And there were several otherover uh experiences of that over
(08:29):
my time in 10 angst, and we candive into some of those.
But yeah, that was like yousay, uh you certainly that sort
of high pressure, kind ofcrisis-like uh environment that
was there most days, um, wassomething that I learned a huge
amount from and was a was a hugepart of my career.
And then, yes, went on to BP,where I met you, of course, Tom.
Um, and again, a a differenttake on crisis um and that the
(08:52):
the the approach that companytakes, that in-depth approach
that it takes quite rightly tocrisis response, incredible
learning experience there.
And then my last part of mycareer was at AstraZeneca.
Um, they just come out of thepandemic when I joined, lots of
lessons learned from that.
Uh, and then yeah, a few monthsago, uh joined up with uh with
Peter, and we've just launchedour new business at Albi.
Tom Mueller (09:13):
Okay.
Peter, give us a quickthumbnail of your experience.
It's led you to this point inour evolving universe.
Peter Heneghan (09:21):
Yeah, um, I think myself and Chris, there's
quite a lot of parallels.
So I I I was grounded, Istudied journalism, but I didn't
become a journalist.
I went to the BBC, worked incommunications, corporate, and
then I got an opportunity towork directly with the um the
news team during the 20, the2008 financial crash.
(09:41):
And it was the BBC werebreaking all sorts of stories at
the time.
So although I was wet aroundthe years, as they say in
Ireland, um I learned I learnedvery quickly like what great
journalism looked like.
Um and during that time also,the BBC, and then I subsequently
went on to a place calledChannel 4, I was causing crisis
(10:02):
for other people because ourjournalists were unlocking
stories about you know the goodand the great doing things they
shouldn't have been doing.
So I was able to see it fromboth sides what a crisis like to
the BBC, but then when you doon to others, true journalism,
fact check and all the rest, theimpact of that.
So crisis has always been thereor thereabout, but my big
(10:23):
obsession has always been whereis the future of communications
going?
So I was a very early adopterof social media.
Um, I remember getting reallyexcited about Twitter when I
first arrived, thinking, oh mygod, this is bringing people
together in new and interestingways.
Um, and then I got approachedby BuzzFeed.
So I'm actually in New York.
We're on our first I'm on myfirst international trip with
Albi.
(10:44):
And uh BuzzFeed's office werejust around the corner,
actually, from here, uh near uhthe Flat Iron District.
And uh I remember going inthere.
In fact, you may not hear, butthere's a fire um engine going
past at this moment in time, sothere may be an actual crisis
somewhere nearby.
Um but I I learned so muchabout how to storytell in new
(11:05):
and interesting ways, and that'skind of where um Chris got back
involved.
He said, Will you come in andspeak to the team about how do
you enable social media in anenvironment that was during the
Brexit situation the trees ofmake the government?
And sadly, we weren't able toget anything off the ground at
that time, but when he wasleaving, I applied for the role,
(11:26):
and then suddenly I thoughtthey were gonna say, Yeah, yeah,
right, mate, you're not gettingthat job.
Suddenly I'm in charge of a40-person team.
We have a rapid responsemissing disinformation unit,
we've got um content creators,it's an incredible setup.
And I remember Chris saying,Look, handing over to you now,
but things are gonna get a loteasier.
(11:46):
Four months later, my bossrings me up and says, Peter, I
need you in the office now.
We're locking down the country.
COVID.
So we spent a whole timethrough COVID, uh, and I could
get onto that later maybe.
But the one thing for me thatreally, really stood out was as
I was leaving government, thisthing called social um called
(12:08):
AI, and I could just see it wasutterly going to transform how
we communicate and the speed atwhich we operate, and that's
where I've kind of focused thelast three years of my career,
working with all sorts ofinteresting organizations like
the United Nations, the AGIO,uh, and many others in between.
So that's kind of where I'vecome to so far.
But I'm obsessed with thefuture of communications and
(12:30):
also how do you deal with acrisis as fast and as effective
as possible.
Tom Mueller (12:36):
Well, this yeah, it's fascinating to hear your
journeys uh because you're youknow climbing the ladder of AI,
technology, and knowledge alongwith the rest of us.
But this to me is like afast-moving train going by.
And you guys with your venturenow have sort of grabbed on to
that train and are rolling withit and then trying to leverage
(13:00):
that now to bring value forothers who may not be quite at
that knowledge and experiencelevel with it.
And of course, you know,anybody tells you they've got
the answers on AI, you know,they're fibbing to you, right?
It's all evolving, we're alltrying to figure it out.
But now you guys, you guys haveput a stake in the ground with
(13:22):
your venture, Albi.ai, and um,and it's fascinating to see, and
I I just love to seeentrepreneurs, you know, diving
into the deep end and grabbinghold, and let's see where we can
go with it.
So what um as you're talking toorganizations out there and
kind of selling your services,where do you see the main, or
(13:45):
where do your clients typicallysee the most value in what you
guys are bringing in?
And I'm curious if they'reskeptical or clamoring for help.
Uh Peter, when you're talkingto clients, what are you what
are you hearing from them?
Peter Heneghan (14:02):
It's kind of twofold.
It's either some bigorganizations, their their
C-suite has basically said, geton board or else, right?
They're the perfect clientbecause they've essentially been
mandated to get on board withAI.
Um there's more of them comingabout, but uh we're still seeing
a lot coming the other waywhere it's very much they're in
(14:25):
the awareness.
So we have this kind of road to2030 mapped out, and most
people are in the the awarenessand experimental stage.
We're trying to get them to isthe redesign of their
communications function to takeadvantage of the technology.
Um a lot, so we're either beingbrought in on high to say, can
you audit and help us do thewhole lot?
Which we love.
(14:45):
And by the way, we're we'reglobal by default as well, so we
can work anywhere, we can workin multiple languages.
Um, and then the other thing wewe do is more tactical.
Can you come in and do aworkshop with our team or a
short audit?
We're happy with that as wellbecause that's a stepping stone
up, so it's awareness,experimentation, and then they
(15:06):
might they might be ready thento take that leap, or they may
not be for another year, wedon't know yet.
But the fact is you have to winover people's trust, it's also
a cultural thing, it's workculture and technology combining
here.
Uh and if you don't get thework culture set up right, the
whole thing can fall apartbecause staff won't go with you
on that journey.
So I'd say that is, but Chris,you jump in, I may have missed
(15:27):
some stuff as well.
Chris Hamilton (15:28):
No, no, I think I think what you said is is
exactly spot.
I just pick up actually, Tom.
You mentioned, I thought it wasa great point you made about
uh, you know, no one knows theanswers yet.
And obviously, we know some ofthe answers.
Um, and we we hope that ourposition, our experience in
terms of our backgrounds, youknow, Peter touched on that
point that we're bothcommunicators and kind of and
we've got that AI digitalexpertise, puts us on the front
(15:48):
foot, but absolutely no doubt.
And this is one of the thingswe stress, and I think one of
the what where people you talkabout where people see value
when they work with us, it'sthat we are approaching this
from a, you know, we're going ona journey with them.
Um, we don't come in with amandated, you know, this is how
it's going to be, you should usethis tool, this is the process
you've got to, you know, whatthe when we work with people, we
(16:09):
want to find out how do theywork, what are their priorities,
what's their strategy, what'stheir mindset like when it comes
to technology uh and and AI inparticular, and let's work with
you on that.
And then the other thing Ithink which is very much allied
to that is you know, thehuman-centric approach.
Like, yeah, we've both been,you know, it you know, what did
you want to call it, dabbling intechnology, you know,
(16:31):
innovators, you know, driven byum by the where where our
profession is going, but we arevery, very mindful of both the
human uh role that needs isabsolutely paramount paramount
when it comes to AI, um, andthat is human-led.
It's unfortunate that Microsofthave are using the term
(16:51):
copilot, right?
Because copilot is a great termfor what AI should be.
It's a copilot, it's aco-intelligence, it shouldn't be
something that that takes overby any means.
So I think it's reallyimportant uh to stress that.
And then again, the final pointon this, but also sort of ally
to all of this, is that that youknow, we talk about how
everything's changing, you know,we talked talked about AI
(17:12):
sweeping through, and and andyou know, and it is, it's it's
going to affect every singlepart of the profession,
everything we do.
But at the same time, nothingchanges.
And what we mean by that isthat the fundamental principles
and approaches that have uh beenabsolutely core to
communicators, whether that'syou know, accuracy, trust, the
(17:32):
ability to empathize, to buildrelationships, um, all of those
things uh are still absolutelyfundamental.
And we're not these kind oftech AI, you know, evangelicals
who are saying basically you canget rid of your entire
function, be replaced by robots.
It's the antithesis of that.
And I think again, going backto a question, that's where
(17:53):
people see value and they workwith us that that that is our
approach, and we're not uhcoming in and making these grand
claims about what AI is and howit's going to take over
everything.
I think it's really, reallyimportant.
Peter Heneghan (18:05):
I should add, um, myself and Chris were
utterly horrified.
We saw this advert uh billboardum which was in New York, and
I'll get on to it next, but uhit basically said you've
employed your last human.
I walked past, Chris, I haven'teven told you this, I walked
past it yesterday.
No, it's still out there.
Yes, it disgusted me.
(18:26):
It's like, no, this is anaugmentation of your work.
Like, Tom, your work in crisisthat you have expertise on in.
You using AI technology willenable you to be like at least
2x, maybe 4x, your ability to dothat at the pace you need to do
it at.
But if you didn't have thoseyears of grounded experience,
the technology ain't gonnacompensate.
(18:48):
It may kind of, but you'll knowyour gut feeling will tell you
whether what the AI is readingout should be said.
Like in some crisis, the firstthing you do is nothing.
It may be, I don't mean donothing as in don't plan
anything, it's the opposite.
You may say nothing.
Because there may be 50 othercompanies who are being impacted
by the same cyber attack, andwhoever blinks first and speaks
(19:11):
becomes the news story.
You'll know that because you'rea comms crisis expert.
I won't.
Tom Mueller (19:17):
So I love that analogy.
This is great.
Um, yeah, because there's a lotof judgment that goes into you
know, and nuance to you knowwhat is our you know,
positioning need to be on this.
This is a very sensitive issue.
And you know, we can throw itover to the AI tool and you know
(19:38):
get some help with a statement.
But uh, you know, boy, thoseare far from perfect at this
point in time.
Chris Hamilton (19:45):
And um, you know, to the I was just gonna
just to jump in, I was gonnasay, you know, it's a small
point, but one of the things youknow, most people are probably
aware by now that you know a lotof the AI tools we use are by
default, they are designed toplease us, right?
So they're designed to youknow, people have started to
spot this.
This is one of the reasons whyyou have to be careful, for
(20:05):
example, when you knowrelationship advice is something
that that people are startingto use AI for a lot more.
And you have to be carefulbecause the AI is in a nutshell,
it was always gonna take yourside, right?
You know, it's very seldom isit gonna say, well, you're but
you know, what about the otherside of the story?
Um, but uh anyway, getting awayfrom the relationship side, the
point I was gonna make is thatum often we find when you're
(20:27):
using these products to helpwith uh campaign with crisis
response, because they defaultto wanting to please you, they
will also default to action,right?
And as Peter just said, and aswe all know, and I Tom, you will
certainly know more thananyone, you know, action is one
option, right?
As in pro act pro action,proactively saying or doing
(20:48):
something in response to acrisis.
You know, staying silent,planning, getting your ducks in
a row, doing everything you needto do, absolutely do all of
that.
But AI will often default toput this statement out, you
know, say say this thing, gopublic with this.
Um, and obviously, yes, you'reright, it can definitely help
you with crafting that, and wemaybe we come back around to
(21:09):
what our product helps you within that space.
But yes, it's very importantthat you know the kind of um
doing nothing, at leastpublicly, is in the mix, and AI
is not necessarily geared tothat.
Tom Mueller (21:21):
So let's do Chris, let's circle right back to the
product now and uh you know,walk us through a little bit of
you know how you see, and andmaybe we start with, you know,
you go into a client and um uhyou know what's what are you
what are they looking for?
What are you bringing?
Where's the real value thereonce again?
Chris Hamilton (21:41):
Yeah, well, look, I'll I'll let uh Peter
take up the reins in a secondbecause um he's been working on
the product even from before Ijoined and knows it inside out.
What I will say is when we goin, the first port of call is
that you know we're notnecessarily saying that Albi
platform, although we are veryproud of it and we think it's uh
fantastic and is absolutelybest in class, um, is always
(22:01):
gonna be the solution that youknow a lot of big companies are
gonna be able to take on rightoff the bat, right?
Because uh whether you're youknow you might be uh baked into
whether it's uh a copilot or youknow the Google workspace
workspace platform.
Um uh and so obviously we'renot gonna come in and say we're
gonna be able to replicate that.
And there are many things thatCopilot, Gemini, Claude can do,
(22:23):
um, which they're very, verygood at, uh, and it's the right
right road to take.
But I think there is risk in,and if we sometimes do see this,
in, but hey, we've got Copilot,why do we need anything else?
Right?
And of course, what we'll needto remember is that those are
very powerful general purposetools.
And as we all know, generalpurpose tools are very good at
(22:44):
general purpose activity, butwhen it comes to specific
activity and s and and andprocess sets, you really need to
be thinking hard about whetheryou've got the right uh tools in
your arsenal.
And we all know about um, youknow, specific tooling that that
we need.
I think one of the things, justbefore I hand over to Pete to
talk a bit more specificallyabout the AWI platform, one of
the things that we're veryconscious of is you know, the
(23:06):
comms tech the comms tech marketis is pretty immature, right?
So if you think about it, andwe've we've done a little bit of
research on this, and we've gota chart that shows, you know,
there are thousands of Martech,you know, marketing technology
products out there, right?
They've got an absolute youknow feast of options to choose
from when it comes to toolingand technology.
(23:28):
In the comms space, it's much,much smaller, it's tiny by
comparison.
And I think one of the thingsthat AI is bringing in that that
comms professionals really needto kind of get on board with
and be aware of um is you know,we're probably not gonna catch
up with with the Martech world,but you know, comms tech is
gonna become much more of athing.
And we think we're really wellplaced in that.
We think a lot of what thefunctionality and what people
(23:49):
are gonna get out of the AWIplatform um is really gonna make
a difference and is somethingthat can work alongside a
copilot or a Gemini reallyeffectively.
But yeah, Peter, do you want totalk through a bit more about
you know when we're engagingwith clients what they're
looking for?
Peter Heneghan (24:01):
Yes, yeah, and I think before I get on, like
Chris mentioned there, if yourchief technology officer says
you can only use co-pilot, wewill make that work for you
because we want to be agnosticin that respect, so we know how
to use all the main core coretools, um, and there may be good
reason, or there may bebureaucracy that you can't get
beyond that.
But at the same time, we'vebeen building out the Albi
(24:23):
platform, and essentially whatwe've done is we mapped out
every aspect of a communicationsrole.
And a lot of this was ininspired actually by our time in
um during COVID.
During the COVID pandemic, webrought together a COVID
communication resilience hub,and we had media relations, we
had uh social media and digital,we had Bayful Science, um
(24:48):
strategic communications andothers, and there was a team of
about 200 people.
We're essentially trying toturn that into a single product,
so it will help you write yourpress releases and your
briefings, it will do you knowsome sentiment analysis, but not
not at a high, high level, butsometimes you only need to touch
on that.
It will do some of your mediamonitoring.
(25:09):
We've now started to buildagents which will help you do a
crisis plan, uh, but it's builton the best in class government
frameworks and behavioralscience.
So if you gave me any crisisright now, I will come back to
you in five minutes with a15-page document.
What to do in the first fewminutes, what to do in the first
48 hours, holding linestatements.
(25:30):
It's it's eight, it's thetwenty we call it 2060-20.
20% human, 6% AI.
That final 20% is utterlycrucial.
That plan is fantastic, butit's not the finished product,
and that's when it's back overto you.
Say, like Tom, if you you wereusing our tool, you would
finesse it, change it, butyou're then going into your your
(25:51):
kind of crisis meeting fullyprepared, as opposed to you've
just got a phone call, can youget into the office now?
And you're you're kind of stilltrying to get your your act
together.
This will get there muchquicker.
The same with strategy if youhave a campaign, whether it's a
tactical campaign or a majorcampaign, we can spend half an
(26:11):
hour using our products, youwill have your entire plans,
maybe even some of yourcreative, ready to go.
So that whole point of thespeed at which you can now do
this, built on frameworks andcommunications at its best, is
is what we sort of aim at.
Tom Mueller (26:26):
Yeah, that's it's truly amazing the the time that
you can save with tools likethis, right?
That you could, if we've got aspecific incident that's
developing now, we can plug insome of those criteria and
parameters and output arecommended plan or strategy
within a couple of minutes.
That's uh that's a littlescary, actually.
(26:49):
Maybe you don't need that wholecomms department anymore.
Peter Heneghan (26:53):
But I don't know.
I I'm the opposite.
I think it allows if you have ateam and they're more
generalist.
So I did a I did a conferencein Chicago about four months
ago, and it was full ofcommunications leaders from the
university sector.
It just happened that you know,after the Trump admit
(27:14):
administration had come in, theDNI stuff, there was just almost
this perfect storm of stuffhappening, and the teams just
were not ready for it.
So they were desperate to learnhow AI could help them better.
It's too like what we'rebuilding would enable really
good generalists to become nearexperts at what they do rather
than it replaces them.
I think that's that's the mainthing.
(27:36):
We're not we don't encouragelosing losing team.
What we encourage is becomebetter at what you already do.
Chris Hamilton (27:42):
I I think the value, just to jump in there, I
think the value, yes, obviously,you know, there are cost
pressures um that where we cansee that, right?
It's really clear what's goingon.
But I think if you look at itin the longer term, I think the
sense approaches to see AI assomething that can a free your
people up to do what they'rereally good at.
(28:03):
So that's buildingrelationships, pitching,
negotiating with people, um,ideating.
Um, you know, one of the thingscommunicators have, and this is
almost unique in a in a lot ofbusinesses, right, is that 360
view of what's going on.
That's the externalenvironment, you know, the
knowledge they have internallyis absolutely huge.
Those corridor brush buys withthe C-suite, picking up
(28:26):
information, knowledge ofcampaigns and activities, right?
There's a whole load of inputsthere, like let's call it data
inputs, right?
And AI is never going to beable to replicate that, it just
doesn't have that same exposureto all of those different
inputs.
Whereas your your uh you knowcons professional team we have
there is is get is much moreable to um uh to to integrate
(28:49):
all of that and then use the AIto help.
And I think freeing people upto spend more time with the
C-suite, to uh spend more timewith the materials, to spend
more time meeting journalists orstakeholders, um, spend more
time on the ground at events andso on.
That's I think ideally is whereleadership should be thinking
about it.
And rather than great, I canyou know get rid of half of my
(29:12):
team because AI is going to doit.
I think that that to me iswould be would be extremely
risky.
Tom Mueller (29:17):
Right.
So you've got um, yeah, clearlyit's uh you know, I come back
to the the co-pilot term that umMicrosoft uh seems to have
captured so well, but I thinkyou're right, they've they've
got that uh that name down.
And ideally, you know, ifyou're a comms professional or
comms VP, you want to have sometype of an AI tool that's
(29:40):
helping your teams be moreeffective and work faster.
Now, when uh when you guysknock on the door of a potential
client, um clearly, you know,there's just uh boy, there's a
lot of potential value here.
What are some of the concernsor the The maybe misconceptions
(30:01):
that people have about this.
We talked about, you know, hey,I can downsize my team, I can
save cost.
But aside from that humanelement, what are some of the
you know the misconceptions thatyou're seeing out there about
tools like this?
Chris Hamilton (30:17):
Uh shall I go first, Peter?
Yeah, I mean, just justgenerally speaking, to start
with, I think hallucination doescome up a lot.
And I think for comms people,that's I mean, I think everyone
is kind of aware of this, butyou know, considering our our
craft, our our trade, I thinkthat it's unsurprising that's
something that comes up a lot,right?
Trust recognition, it's kind ofat the heart of what we do.
(30:39):
And the fact that we're being,you know, I think there's a bit
of a feeling of, oh, we're beingtold to use these tools, yet
when I've used it, you know,it's spat out this nonsense.
It doesn't know who our CEO is.
It's, you know, it's made upthese facts.
Tom Mueller (30:51):
Yeah, there are some very real examples of that
out there.
With uh uh, well, there was acourt case here in the in the US
a few months ago where the thejudge or one of the staff used
AI to help prepare briefs, andthe AI tool made up court cases
to cite as part of this brief.
And so, yeah, the hallucinationthing is real.
(31:14):
But again, that's a vote infavor of keeping those humans
involved and exactly.
Chris Hamilton (31:19):
And you know, that by the way, that that
example you talk about, we wetalk about that example.
Uh so yeah, with that that madeits way across the Atlantic.
It's something we're aware.
There's another examplerecently that a lot of comms
folks are aware of, uh, whichwas one of the big four
consulting firms prepared areport for the Australian
government, and it was coveredbecause it turned out they had
to give some of the money they'dbeen paid for the report back
(31:42):
because there were mistakes inthe report, driven not by the
use of AI, and that's one of thethings that kind of irritated
me about the coverage of thisstory.
That shouldn't have been theframing, in my view.
It wasn't the fact they'd usedAI.
I'd want them to be using AI.
The problem was they didn't useit in the right way, they
didn't deploy a 2060-20 starframework where the human looked
over the final report anddouble-checked the sourcing of
(32:05):
some of the citations that weremade in the report, and that was
the problem.
They'd used AI, and it it hadhallucinated as apparently some
of the some of the facts made inthe report and even sourced
them.
And of course, as humans, we'rerushed, we think AI can do
everything.
We see a very credible looking,whether it was a quote or a
data point, there's a littlefootnote number down at the
(32:26):
bottom of the page, it has thefootnote, it all appears very
credible, right?
Whereas in fact, what you needto do is check those kind of
things um to make sure thatthey're right.
So that hallucination issomething uh that comes up.
And I think our answer to thatis um one, the kind of the bad
news is we are gonna have to getor we we need to get used to it
(32:46):
because unlike uh most of thetools that we've been kind of
trained to use, whether it'sGoogle or a lot of the products
we use in in our work and ourhome life, um, they you know,
there is it's not a kind ofbinary, you know, it doesn't
know AI doesn't know anything,right?
It's based on probabilitiesaround the you know uh framing,
the the ordering of a series ofof words.
(33:09):
It doesn't know whethersomething is right or not.
Having said that, obviouslyit's in the companies, you know,
whether it's open AI or Metroor anyone else, it's in their
interest to try and reduce theinstance of hallucination.
But there's a lot we can bedoing, right, in terms of the
prompting that we do.
So the more detailed theprompt, the better response
you're gonna get, the morecontext you add.
And this is something we talkto teams about all the time, you
(33:31):
know, have your and yourreport, have your strategy
documents, have your tone ofvoice, have your have your um a
style guide uh as part of eitherbuilt into your tooling, and
that's something that the Albiplatform absolutely allows you
to do, or upload it to theprompt as you're making it, and
that way you will always getmuch more uh much high quality
(33:53):
results and much less instanceof hallucinations.
Tom Mueller (33:55):
Okay, so yeah, so hallucination is a big one.
Any other uh sort of issues,questions?
Peter Heneghan (34:02):
Peter, what's what do you what do you I think
uh the other thing is staff umoften feel under undermined or
worried or anxious, and I thinkI would say, and I say this with
sincerity, I think one of ourstrengths is we're taking a
human approach.
Um other AI companies who arecoming from an AI first rather
(34:24):
than a communications arebasically going, all right, this
will replace all your staff,you know, you're gonna save a
load of money.
You you may lose staff, you maydecide that you don't need as
big a team, you can streamlinein certain areas, but that's not
the reason for doing this.
You want the ultimate goal hereis that your communications
protects your business orpromotes your business.
(34:46):
That's where you want to beplaying in that space.
And if that requires a few lessstaff working more smartly with
technology, so be it.
But that's we're not here to dothat.
But until you get people overthat hurdle, um, that's the
problem.
And the other thing I thinkstaff always think that they
know best.
And why wouldn't they?
(35:06):
They've been doing a job formany, many years.
But when you show them how touse AI effectively and they
already have that deep ingrainedexpertise in communications,
that's the perfect solution.
Because they if you get ajunior member staff who still
has to learn the ropes, givethem the AI tool, suddenly they
think they're they've jumpedthree or four grades.
(35:26):
They haven't, so there's afalse sense of uh ability.
Well, it's almost the oppositewith the more senior people, but
once they learn those keybasics, how to prompt more
effectively, plug in the rightdata, they're off to the races.
They really succeed after that.
Tom Mueller (35:42):
Okay, yeah, it's fascinating.
I I love your your commentthere, Peter, about a junior
staffer suddenly feeling veryempowered with this.
And the fact is the experienceuh you know in the room still
counts for a lot when you'redealing with communications
issues, external facing issues,and particularly around crisis
(36:04):
communications, right?
Let's let's kind of turn andfocus on the crisis
communications aspects for abit, because there's you know,
there's always some key factorshere around uh you know
communicating in a crisis, andof course, measuring sentiment
from what's happening in theexternal world is a part of
that.
Um, but also getting the toneof your statements, press
(36:27):
releases out appropriately is isthere.
So, how do you frame albotai inin the crisis realm here now?
What's the where do you see thereal value uh when we're
dealing with crisis?
Peter Heneghan (36:43):
Yeah, I'd I'd say so we've built an agent
specifically on best in classgovernment crisis.
So a few years ago, the the thedictionary uh word of the year
was perma crisis.
I don't know if you rememberthat.
So myself and Chris hadbasically worked through crisis
(37:04):
after crisis after crisis.
Even after COVID, we had twomonarchs, uh, a monarch and uh
the Duke of Edinburgh passingaway.
Major moments for our country,a crisis um in that we plan for
years to do this.
So we we are well versed in howto deal with a crisis.
The UK government hasframeworks, we we added in
(37:27):
behavioral science as well.
And the behavioral sciencecomes in.
How can you put out a messagewhich actually is empathetic in
understanding of the situationbased on the severity?
So I think our product allowsyou to put in any crisis.
I always joke about the recentone of that company where the
Coldplay concert and then thechief executive was caught on
(37:51):
KissCam with the HR lead.
Like you can't make that up.
Like you would not, youcouldn't say, I've got a top
dust down a book, and it's like,right, here's how we deal with
our CEO Kiss and HR later at aColdplay concert that's gone
viral.
R2 on the other hand, becauseit's built off of frameworks, it
very quickly enables that planto be written out.
(38:12):
What we couldn't do, which iswhere there's limits, is and
this is where creativity comesin.
Whoever taught Gwen and Paltrowfronting their um advertising
after the event genius.
We are looking at that andgoing, is there a way of getting
all the best and can lineaward-winning work into a model
(38:32):
and also saying as a kind ofcurveball, would you consider
this?
We haven't got there yet, butin terms of a first draft crisis
plan, we can get you there in amatter of minutes, which is a
starting point to build off ofnever the end product.
Chris Hamilton (38:46):
Just to be clear, Tom, what we're talking
about here is a product that'syou know most uh big companies,
right, would uh certainly shouldhave a their own uh crisis
response framework.
I'm sure that's one of thethings you talk to, you know,
when you're when you go whenyou're talking to your clients,
right?
Have a plan ready to go.
Um the idea is that uh the Albiplatform can take that plan um
(39:07):
and have it sitting there in thebackground along with
information about the company,as much as you want.
And then whether it's you'rerunning a scenario, an exercise,
or of course the real thing,you can come to the platform,
the framework's already inthere.
So everything that you need inorder to respond to a crisis,
whether that's your initialdraft statements, the team, the
(39:28):
response team you want to setup, the um spans of control, the
reporting lines, theauthorization, all of those
pieces are already in there andare just sitting there waiting.
Uh, you know, there's no kindof, as Peter says, the kind of
reaching for the shelf, right?
And sort of blowing dust offthe off the off the book, and
then, oh no, hang on, thishasn't.
I mean, obviously, you stillwould still need to keep the
(39:49):
framework updated, but it's mucheasier to update, right?
And you you take it down, youcan just put in literally one
line about what the crisis is,whether it's the cold play
example Pete just referred to,or whatever it is, a sudden um
hit to your profits, or somekind of uh accident, it doesn't
matter what it is, you can saythis has just happened, how
should we respond?
Now, remember what we're sayingis you wouldn't take that, and
(40:12):
by the way, it's mind-blowing.
I'm still every time I see wewe give a demo, you know, we did
a demo just last week to agroup of comms leaders, and you
know, they were literally jawsdropping as they saw the detail
and the speed and the depth ofthe response that that came out
of the product.
And I think they were justimmediately imagining what that
would be like in a realsituation.
We're not saying you're gonnatake that report, you know, kind
(40:35):
of ping it off in an email orprint it out if that's still,
you know, go into a call withthe C-suite and say, here I've
got my plan.
You're still obviously going towant to look at that, make sure
it's up to scratch, and putyour own experience and and
creativity into it.
Uh, but in terms of getting youthrough those first few hours
of a crisis response, absolutelyincredible.
Tom Mueller (40:54):
You know, as you talk to comms leaders out there
at various levels, I um youknow, I can't help but feel a
little bit depressed about thechange that's coming, the speed
of change that's coming, and youknow, trying to grab it and and
(41:15):
run with it.
Um boy, there's a just apsychological impact on this.
And I guess you see that whenyou're talking to groups of
people with jaws dropping andseeing that.
Chris Hamilton (41:25):
But um, you know, what's yeah, I mean, I I I
I know what you mean, and Isuppose I feel that I've been
through that several throughseveral cycles, right?
You know, I worked back at theBBC when the the web was coming
in, and we had you know peoplewho were absolutely steeped in
the highest quality, you know,broadcast um skills and
(41:46):
experience and as a profession.
And there was a lot of, youknow, as the as the sort of
power and the the implicationsof the web became clear, I think
that sort of you know, anxietywas is palpable.
And one of the things we talkabout when we go into teams is
and we we confront head on, youknow, we're very open about, you
know, it's not surprisingthere's anxiety, but I think
there are ways to to mitigatethat.
(42:07):
And I do think a lot of there'sa lot of onus on leadership,
and we've touched on some ofthis already today, but a lot of
onus on leadership on inhandling it in the right way.
And I think it's important tobe positive and proactive about
AI, but also be clear with yourteams about what's involved and
what the expectations are.
Um, I think that's one thing.
I think it's you know incumbenton leadership to help people to
through this.
I think it's also incumbent onindividuals, you know.
(42:29):
One of the it's a it's amassive cliche, but still think
it's true, which is that AI isnot going to take our jobs, it's
someone who knows AI betterthan us.
So I think there is it's amindset shift around um, you
know, in the same way thatwe've, you know, in our careers,
right, how many bigtechnological shifts have there
been?
It's been massively acceleratedcompared to you know the
(42:50):
decades preceding.
Um, and you know, we've we'vegot to deploy that same
sensibility and that samecuriosity while you know
guarding what we're good at andwhat experience has taught us
about what's important andmaking sure that we deploy those
in the right way when we'reintegrating that technology into
our into our work life.
Tom Mueller (43:10):
All right.
Well, Chris, Peter, appreciateyou guys coming on and sharing
your growing expertise in the AIrealm with our listeners here.
This is clearly a space we'reall going to keep watching as
time goes by.
And uh, we certainly wish youguys the best of luck with your
venture.
And uh would love to have youback on the podcast again the
whole year from now, just to seewhere you are and see what's
(43:33):
the latest tech that's happeningthere.
So thanks for joining us today.
Chris Hamilton (43:38):
Not at all, Tom.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
It's been great uh to be on.
Thank you for giving us theopportunity.
And yeah, love to be back.
Um, we'll see you next year.
Tom Mueller (43:47):
And that's gonna do it for this episode of the
Leading in a Crisis Podcast.
Thanks for joining us.
Um, if you'd like to email theshow, you can drop me a line at
Tom at Leadinginacrisis dot com.
And we'll see you again soon onanother episode.
Take care.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Leading in a
Crisis Podcast.
On this podcast, we sharestories from the front lines of
crisis communications.
I'm Tom Mueller.
Quick shout out to ourlisteners who have helped the
podcast be named to the top 10best management podcast in
Texas, as rated by the goodfolks at SpeedSpot, which is a
(00:28):
content aggregator and a mediarating firm.
So we're very thankful for thatrecognition of our efforts here
at the podcast.
And we're sort of steadilyclimbing their ratings system
over there.
On today's show, we're going todive once again into the realm
of artificial intelligence inthe communications and crisis
(00:52):
management space.
As you know, we like to diveinto AI issues here on the
podcast when there's somethingnew and exciting evolving here.
And if you read the FT or theWall Street Journal, you know
there's always somethinginteresting going on in this
space.
So today, no exception.
Our guests with us are foundersof a company known as I'll
(01:15):
be.ai, which focuses its effortson helping communicators be
more efficient and impactfulusing AI tools.
So our guests are the foundersof that firm, Chris Hamilton and
Peter Hennigan, both of whosecareers are just steeped in
digital comms and leadershiproles.
(01:35):
So, Peter and Chris, welcome tothe podcast.
Chris Hamilton (01:38):
Thank you.
Tom Mueller (01:41):
Hey, I'll get into your backgrounds a bit more in
just a little bit, but I want tojust kind of open it up right
away.
What's the top-line sales pitchfor albi.ai for those
communications professionals outthere today.
Peter Heneghan (01:56):
Chris, did you want to kick off?
Chris Hamilton (01:58):
Yeah, sure.
Well, you I think you youstarted to get at it, Tom, uh,
in your great uh intro there.
But really, we're targeting uhcorporate affairs and
communications teams.
Uh, and what we want to do isreally help them harness AI, but
in a strategic, safe, um, butalso swift way.
So, in other words, reallytrying to accelerate teams at
(02:21):
the moment, they're in a reallyoften in a very experimental or
pilot mode with AI.
There's been so much noise, somuch talk about it.
There are a lot of people outthere offering a lot of
services.
Often it's quite kind oflong-term and theoretically
based, and we're really tryingto help people in a very
practical way um learn how tothe best ways to to to um try
(02:45):
out AI, to embed it in the waysuh of working, and really start
to understand how strategicallyover the longer term it's going
to be helpful and change the waythat we work.
Because that's something thatwe believe very fundamentally
about AI is that you know it'snot the same as a lot of the
technology uh revolutions thatwe've seen, even just in our
(03:06):
careers, relatively short asthey've been, including
obviously the rollout of theweb, social media, um obviously
the ubiquitous nature of umsmartphones and similar
technology.
You know, AI is sweepingthrough everything, and it's
going to sweep through corporateaffairs and corporate
communications, absolutely nodoubt about that.
And people have got to gettheir head around it, and we're
(03:28):
here to help them with that.
And we do that by combiningexpert advisory, so we'll come
in and talk to leadership, toteams about what AI means for
them.
Training, learning, anddevelopment is our is our big
pillar, and then what we'rereally excited by uh is our
purpose-built AI platform, ourthe Albi platform, which really
(03:48):
helps teams uh modernize howthey how they create, how they
align, and how they respond.
And you you touched obviously,and we know that a big focus of
of the podcast is on crisiscomms, and that's that's really
important to us and a really keypart of our platform.
So maybe we'll get stuck intothat in a little bit.
But in short, we makecommunications faster, smarter,
(04:09):
uh, and better, and help teamsbecome more confident in in the
AI era which we're now entering.
Peter Heneghan (04:16):
And uh Tom I'd add that where we're coming from
is we've got deep expertise,domain expertise in
communications.
You've got people who are outthere who are AI experts, or
people who have communications,we bring both of them sort of
seamlessly together.
And I think where a lot ofcommunications people we go on
and speak to, they haven't quiteclicked that this isn't just an
evolution.
(04:36):
When we talk about the web, wetalk about the smartphone, we
talk about social, they had timeto grow.
Like the web took a long timeto really get going.
All that infrastructure is nowin place, and we're now plugging
in intelligence into that, andthen that's the kind of
lightning bolt moment where itall comes together really
quickly.
(04:57):
And I I'm excited and a littlebit worried about our profession
because we know what we're goodat, but we're not quite tech
technology focused.
We hope we can helpcommunications teams bridge that
gap, and our specialism iscommunications.
We're not trying to go off anddo operations and HO or other
areas, we're sticking in ourlane, and I think that's why
(05:17):
we'll we should have somesuccess in that space.
Tom Mueller (05:20):
Yeah, that's one of the fascinating things as I've
researched your company a littlebit, is your focus on
communications.
And of course, that's where Ispent my career.
And Chris and I bumped intoeach other at BP in different
types of comms roles uh overtime.
Uh but you both actually havevery interesting backgrounds to
me.
And uh it uh I think the thingthat struck me is that you both
(05:42):
worked at 10 Downing Street indigital communications
leadership roles there.
Uh that to me sounds likecrisis communications every
single day, right?
When you're and just in a highstress, high pressure type
environment, there's alwayssomething going on.
(06:03):
So it just strikes me you'vegot really, you know, sort of
great backgrounds for that.
And Chris, I know you've um youknow spent time at BP in very
senior digital comms role.
Tell us a little bit more aboutyour background.
Chris Hamilton (06:17):
Yeah, sure, Tom.
So uh I started out injournalism actually.
Um, and in fact, my very firstjob was with a news agency
called the Press Association,which is a big, probably the big
national agency here in the UK.
So think of it like a kind ofReuters or an AP, but mainly
focused on on UK domesticcoverage.
Uh and then in 2000, I rememberseeing an ad for uh that the
(06:40):
BBC had put in the print editionof Media Guardian, um, where a
lot of media jobs were wereadvertised back then for
reporters to join its then uhfledgling online news service,
the BBC New BBC News Online asit was known, exciting.
And I thought it would be agreat place to take the skills
I'd learned at PA and apply themin this new media, and and
(07:02):
especially when it came to, forexample, storytelling using
images and graphics and data andum animation and had different
ways of telling stories in thisnew media.
It was it was amazing, it wasan amazing experience.
And I stayed there for 14 yearsin a variety of different
roles.
I ended up running the socialmedia operation um as social
media was becoming a really bigthing.
(07:23):
I did a short time at an adagency, and then this role came
up at at 10 Downing Street.
Um, and I thought, well, thatwasn't part of the career plan,
but what a place to work, right?
For us in the UK, I mean, orglobally, that black door, which
is so famous, you know, what itwould be like to be walking
through there as your place ofwork.
And I just wanted to get thatexperience, and and I was up for
(07:46):
the challenge.
So in I went.
Um and yeah, I mean, I rememberwithin uh just a few short
weeks, uh, one uh an absolutelyawful tragedy uh which still
resonates uh in the UK to thisday was um it's called the the
Grenfell Tower disaster.
It was this huge tower block uhwent on fire.
Um, absolutely uh horriblestory.
(08:09):
Horrible story.
Um I was pitched into that forthe first time in a
non-journalist role.
I was kind of on the inside, ifyou like.
Uh the government stood up agold command uh communications
operation, which I was part of.
Um, and that for me, that Imean, talk about in at the deep
end again in terms of being onthe inside of a crisis like
that.
And there were several otherover uh experiences of that over
(08:29):
my time in 10 angst, and we candive into some of those.
But yeah, that was like yousay, uh you certainly that sort
of high pressure, kind ofcrisis-like uh environment that
was there most days, um, wassomething that I learned a huge
amount from and was a was a hugepart of my career.
And then, yes, went on to BP,where I met you, of course, Tom.
Um, and again, a a differenttake on crisis um and that the
(08:52):
the the approach that companytakes, that in-depth approach
that it takes quite rightly tocrisis response, incredible
learning experience there.
And then my last part of mycareer was at AstraZeneca.
Um, they just come out of thepandemic when I joined, lots of
lessons learned from that.
Uh, and then yeah, a few monthsago, uh joined up with uh with
Peter, and we've just launchedour new business at Albi.
Tom Mueller (09:13):
Okay.
Peter, give us a quickthumbnail of your experience.
It's led you to this point inour evolving universe.
Peter Heneghan (09:21):
Yeah, um, I think myself and Chris, there's
quite a lot of parallels.
So I I I was grounded, Istudied journalism, but I didn't
become a journalist.
I went to the BBC, worked incommunications, corporate, and
then I got an opportunity towork directly with the um the
news team during the 20, the2008 financial crash.
(09:41):
And it was the BBC werebreaking all sorts of stories at
the time.
So although I was wet aroundthe years, as they say in
Ireland, um I learned I learnedvery quickly like what great
journalism looked like.
Um and during that time also,the BBC, and then I subsequently
went on to a place calledChannel 4, I was causing crisis
(10:02):
for other people because ourjournalists were unlocking
stories about you know the goodand the great doing things they
shouldn't have been doing.
So I was able to see it fromboth sides what a crisis like to
the BBC, but then when you doon to others, true journalism,
fact check and all the rest, theimpact of that.
So crisis has always been thereor thereabout, but my big
(10:23):
obsession has always been whereis the future of communications
going?
So I was a very early adopterof social media.
Um, I remember getting reallyexcited about Twitter when I
first arrived, thinking, oh mygod, this is bringing people
together in new and interestingways.
Um, and then I got approachedby BuzzFeed.
So I'm actually in New York.
We're on our first I'm on myfirst international trip with
Albi.
(10:44):
And uh BuzzFeed's office werejust around the corner,
actually, from here, uh near uhthe Flat Iron District.
And uh I remember going inthere.
In fact, you may not hear, butthere's a fire um engine going
past at this moment in time, sothere may be an actual crisis
somewhere nearby.
Um but I I learned so muchabout how to storytell in new
(11:05):
and interesting ways, and that'skind of where um Chris got back
involved.
He said, Will you come in andspeak to the team about how do
you enable social media in anenvironment that was during the
Brexit situation the trees ofmake the government?
And sadly, we weren't able toget anything off the ground at
that time, but when he wasleaving, I applied for the role,
(11:26):
and then suddenly I thoughtthey were gonna say, Yeah, yeah,
right, mate, you're not gettingthat job.
Suddenly I'm in charge of a40-person team.
We have a rapid responsemissing disinformation unit,
we've got um content creators,it's an incredible setup.
And I remember Chris saying,Look, handing over to you now,
but things are gonna get a loteasier.
(11:46):
Four months later, my bossrings me up and says, Peter, I
need you in the office now.
We're locking down the country.
COVID.
So we spent a whole timethrough COVID, uh, and I could
get onto that later maybe.
But the one thing for me thatreally, really stood out was as
I was leaving government, thisthing called social um called
(12:08):
AI, and I could just see it wasutterly going to transform how
we communicate and the speed atwhich we operate, and that's
where I've kind of focused thelast three years of my career,
working with all sorts ofinteresting organizations like
the United Nations, the AGIO,uh, and many others in between.
So that's kind of where I'vecome to so far.
But I'm obsessed with thefuture of communications and
(12:30):
also how do you deal with acrisis as fast and as effective
as possible.
Tom Mueller (12:36):
Well, this yeah, it's fascinating to hear your
journeys uh because you're youknow climbing the ladder of AI,
technology, and knowledge alongwith the rest of us.
But this to me is like afast-moving train going by.
And you guys with your venturenow have sort of grabbed on to
that train and are rolling withit and then trying to leverage
(13:00):
that now to bring value forothers who may not be quite at
that knowledge and experiencelevel with it.
And of course, you know,anybody tells you they've got
the answers on AI, you know,they're fibbing to you, right?
It's all evolving, we're alltrying to figure it out.
But now you guys, you guys haveput a stake in the ground with
(13:22):
your venture, Albi.ai, and um,and it's fascinating to see, and
I I just love to seeentrepreneurs, you know, diving
into the deep end and grabbinghold, and let's see where we can
go with it.
So what um as you're talking toorganizations out there and
kind of selling your services,where do you see the main, or
(13:45):
where do your clients typicallysee the most value in what you
guys are bringing in?
And I'm curious if they'reskeptical or clamoring for help.
Uh Peter, when you're talkingto clients, what are you what
are you hearing from them?
Peter Heneghan (14:02):
It's kind of twofold.
It's either some bigorganizations, their their
C-suite has basically said, geton board or else, right?
They're the perfect clientbecause they've essentially been
mandated to get on board withAI.
Um there's more of them comingabout, but uh we're still seeing
a lot coming the other waywhere it's very much they're in
(14:25):
the awareness.
So we have this kind of road to2030 mapped out, and most
people are in the the awarenessand experimental stage.
We're trying to get them to isthe redesign of their
communications function to takeadvantage of the technology.
Um a lot, so we're either beingbrought in on high to say, can
you audit and help us do thewhole lot?
Which we love.
(14:45):
And by the way, we're we'reglobal by default as well, so we
can work anywhere, we can workin multiple languages.
Um, and then the other thing wewe do is more tactical.
Can you come in and do aworkshop with our team or a
short audit?
We're happy with that as wellbecause that's a stepping stone
up, so it's awareness,experimentation, and then they
(15:06):
might they might be ready thento take that leap, or they may
not be for another year, wedon't know yet.
But the fact is you have to winover people's trust, it's also
a cultural thing, it's workculture and technology combining
here.
Uh and if you don't get thework culture set up right, the
whole thing can fall apartbecause staff won't go with you
on that journey.
So I'd say that is, but Chris,you jump in, I may have missed
(15:27):
some stuff as well.
Chris Hamilton (15:28):
No, no, I think I think what you said is is
exactly spot.
I just pick up actually, Tom.
You mentioned, I thought it wasa great point you made about
uh, you know, no one knows theanswers yet.
And obviously, we know some ofthe answers.
Um, and we we hope that ourposition, our experience in
terms of our backgrounds, youknow, Peter touched on that
point that we're bothcommunicators and kind of and
we've got that AI digitalexpertise, puts us on the front
(15:48):
foot, but absolutely no doubt.
And this is one of the thingswe stress, and I think one of
the what where people you talkabout where people see value
when they work with us, it'sthat we are approaching this
from a, you know, we're going ona journey with them.
Um, we don't come in with amandated, you know, this is how
it's going to be, you should usethis tool, this is the process
you've got to, you know, whatthe when we work with people, we
(16:09):
want to find out how do theywork, what are their priorities,
what's their strategy, what'stheir mindset like when it comes
to technology uh and and AI inparticular, and let's work with
you on that.
And then the other thing Ithink which is very much allied
to that is you know, thehuman-centric approach.
Like, yeah, we've both been,you know, it you know, what did
you want to call it, dabbling intechnology, you know,
(16:31):
innovators, you know, driven byum by the where where our
profession is going, but we arevery, very mindful of both the
human uh role that needs isabsolutely paramount paramount
when it comes to AI, um, andthat is human-led.
It's unfortunate that Microsofthave are using the term
(16:51):
copilot, right?
Because copilot is a great termfor what AI should be.
It's a copilot, it's aco-intelligence, it shouldn't be
something that that takes overby any means.
So I think it's reallyimportant uh to stress that.
And then again, the final pointon this, but also sort of ally
to all of this, is that that youknow, we talk about how
everything's changing, you know,we talked talked about AI
(17:12):
sweeping through, and and andyou know, and it is, it's it's
going to affect every singlepart of the profession,
everything we do.
But at the same time, nothingchanges.
And what we mean by that isthat the fundamental principles
and approaches that have uh beenabsolutely core to
communicators, whether that'syou know, accuracy, trust, the
(17:32):
ability to empathize, to buildrelationships, um, all of those
things uh are still absolutelyfundamental.
And we're not these kind oftech AI, you know, evangelicals
who are saying basically you canget rid of your entire
function, be replaced by robots.
It's the antithesis of that.
And I think again, going backto a question, that's where
(17:53):
people see value and they workwith us that that that is our
approach, and we're not uhcoming in and making these grand
claims about what AI is and howit's going to take over
everything.
I think it's really, reallyimportant.
Peter Heneghan (18:05):
I should add, um, myself and Chris were
utterly horrified.
We saw this advert uh billboardum which was in New York, and
I'll get on to it next, but uhit basically said you've
employed your last human.
I walked past, Chris, I haven'teven told you this, I walked
past it yesterday.
No, it's still out there.
Yes, it disgusted me.
(18:26):
It's like, no, this is anaugmentation of your work.
Like, Tom, your work in crisisthat you have expertise on in.
You using AI technology willenable you to be like at least
2x, maybe 4x, your ability to dothat at the pace you need to do
it at.
But if you didn't have thoseyears of grounded experience,
the technology ain't gonnacompensate.
(18:48):
It may kind of, but you'll knowyour gut feeling will tell you
whether what the AI is readingout should be said.
Like in some crisis, the firstthing you do is nothing.
It may be, I don't mean donothing as in don't plan
anything, it's the opposite.
You may say nothing.
Because there may be 50 othercompanies who are being impacted
by the same cyber attack, andwhoever blinks first and speaks
(19:11):
becomes the news story.
You'll know that because you'rea comms crisis expert.
I won't.
Tom Mueller (19:17):
So I love that analogy.
This is great.
Um, yeah, because there's a lotof judgment that goes into you
know, and nuance to you knowwhat is our you know,
positioning need to be on this.
This is a very sensitive issue.
And you know, we can throw itover to the AI tool and you know
(19:38):
get some help with a statement.
But uh, you know, boy, thoseare far from perfect at this
point in time.
Chris Hamilton (19:45):
And um, you know, to the I was just gonna
just to jump in, I was gonnasay, you know, it's a small
point, but one of the things youknow, most people are probably
aware by now that you know a lotof the AI tools we use are by
default, they are designed toplease us, right?
So they're designed to youknow, people have started to
spot this.
This is one of the reasons whyyou have to be careful, for
(20:05):
example, when you knowrelationship advice is something
that that people are startingto use AI for a lot more.
And you have to be carefulbecause the AI is in a nutshell,
it was always gonna take yourside, right?
You know, it's very seldom isit gonna say, well, you're but
you know, what about the otherside of the story?
Um, but uh anyway, getting awayfrom the relationship side, the
point I was gonna make is thatum often we find when you're
(20:27):
using these products to helpwith uh campaign with crisis
response, because they defaultto wanting to please you, they
will also default to action,right?
And as Peter just said, and aswe all know, and I Tom, you will
certainly know more thananyone, you know, action is one
option, right?
As in pro act pro action,proactively saying or doing
(20:48):
something in response to acrisis.
You know, staying silent,planning, getting your ducks in
a row, doing everything you needto do, absolutely do all of
that.
But AI will often default toput this statement out, you
know, say say this thing, gopublic with this.
Um, and obviously, yes, you'reright, it can definitely help
you with crafting that, and wemaybe we come back around to
(21:09):
what our product helps you within that space.
But yes, it's very importantthat you know the kind of um
doing nothing, at leastpublicly, is in the mix, and AI
is not necessarily geared tothat.
Tom Mueller (21:21):
So let's do Chris, let's circle right back to the
product now and uh you know,walk us through a little bit of
you know how you see, and andmaybe we start with, you know,
you go into a client and um uhyou know what's what are you
what are they looking for?
What are you bringing?
Where's the real value thereonce again?
Chris Hamilton (21:41):
Yeah, well, look, I'll I'll let uh Peter
take up the reins in a secondbecause um he's been working on
the product even from before Ijoined and knows it inside out.
What I will say is when we goin, the first port of call is
that you know we're notnecessarily saying that Albi
platform, although we are veryproud of it and we think it's uh
fantastic and is absolutelybest in class, um, is always
(22:01):
gonna be the solution that youknow a lot of big companies are
gonna be able to take on rightoff the bat, right?
Because uh whether you're youknow you might be uh baked into
whether it's uh a copilot or youknow the Google workspace
workspace platform.
Um uh and so obviously we'renot gonna come in and say we're
gonna be able to replicate that.
And there are many things thatCopilot, Gemini, Claude can do,
(22:23):
um, which they're very, verygood at, uh, and it's the right
right road to take.
But I think there is risk in,and if we sometimes do see this,
in, but hey, we've got Copilot,why do we need anything else?
Right?
And of course, what we'll needto remember is that those are
very powerful general purposetools.
And as we all know, generalpurpose tools are very good at
(22:44):
general purpose activity, butwhen it comes to specific
activity and s and and andprocess sets, you really need to
be thinking hard about whetheryou've got the right uh tools in
your arsenal.
And we all know about um, youknow, specific tooling that that
we need.
I think one of the things, justbefore I hand over to Pete to
talk a bit more specificallyabout the AWI platform, one of
the things that we're veryconscious of is you know, the
(23:06):
comms tech the comms tech marketis is pretty immature, right?
So if you think about it, andwe've we've done a little bit of
research on this, and we've gota chart that shows, you know,
there are thousands of Martech,you know, marketing technology
products out there, right?
They've got an absolute youknow feast of options to choose
from when it comes to toolingand technology.
(23:28):
In the comms space, it's much,much smaller, it's tiny by
comparison.
And I think one of the thingsthat AI is bringing in that that
comms professionals really needto kind of get on board with
and be aware of um is you know,we're probably not gonna catch
up with with the Martech world,but you know, comms tech is
gonna become much more of athing.
And we think we're really wellplaced in that.
We think a lot of what thefunctionality and what people
(23:49):
are gonna get out of the AWIplatform um is really gonna make
a difference and is somethingthat can work alongside a
copilot or a Gemini reallyeffectively.
But yeah, Peter, do you want totalk through a bit more about
you know when we're engagingwith clients what they're
looking for?
Peter Heneghan (24:01):
Yes, yeah, and I think before I get on, like
Chris mentioned there, if yourchief technology officer says
you can only use co-pilot, wewill make that work for you
because we want to be agnosticin that respect, so we know how
to use all the main core coretools, um, and there may be good
reason, or there may bebureaucracy that you can't get
beyond that.
But at the same time, we'vebeen building out the Albi
(24:23):
platform, and essentially whatwe've done is we mapped out
every aspect of a communicationsrole.
And a lot of this was ininspired actually by our time in
um during COVID.
During the COVID pandemic, webrought together a COVID
communication resilience hub,and we had media relations, we
had uh social media and digital,we had Bayful Science, um
(24:48):
strategic communications andothers, and there was a team of
about 200 people.
We're essentially trying toturn that into a single product,
so it will help you write yourpress releases and your
briefings, it will do you knowsome sentiment analysis, but not
not at a high, high level, butsometimes you only need to touch
on that.
It will do some of your mediamonitoring.
(25:09):
We've now started to buildagents which will help you do a
crisis plan, uh, but it's builton the best in class government
frameworks and behavioralscience.
So if you gave me any crisisright now, I will come back to
you in five minutes with a15-page document.
What to do in the first fewminutes, what to do in the first
48 hours, holding linestatements.
(25:30):
It's it's eight, it's thetwenty we call it 2060-20.
20% human, 6% AI.
That final 20% is utterlycrucial.
That plan is fantastic, butit's not the finished product,
and that's when it's back overto you.
Say, like Tom, if you you wereusing our tool, you would
finesse it, change it, butyou're then going into your your
(25:51):
kind of crisis meeting fullyprepared, as opposed to you've
just got a phone call, can youget into the office now?
And you're you're kind of stilltrying to get your your act
together.
This will get there muchquicker.
The same with strategy if youhave a campaign, whether it's a
tactical campaign or a majorcampaign, we can spend half an
(26:11):
hour using our products, youwill have your entire plans,
maybe even some of yourcreative, ready to go.
So that whole point of thespeed at which you can now do
this, built on frameworks andcommunications at its best, is
is what we sort of aim at.
Tom Mueller (26:26):
Yeah, that's it's truly amazing the the time that
you can save with tools likethis, right?
That you could, if we've got aspecific incident that's
developing now, we can plug insome of those criteria and
parameters and output arecommended plan or strategy
within a couple of minutes.
That's uh that's a littlescary, actually.
(26:49):
Maybe you don't need that wholecomms department anymore.
Peter Heneghan (26:53):
But I don't know.
I I'm the opposite.
I think it allows if you have ateam and they're more
generalist.
So I did a I did a conferencein Chicago about four months
ago, and it was full ofcommunications leaders from the
university sector.
It just happened that you know,after the Trump admit
(27:14):
administration had come in, theDNI stuff, there was just almost
this perfect storm of stuffhappening, and the teams just
were not ready for it.
So they were desperate to learnhow AI could help them better.
It's too like what we'rebuilding would enable really
good generalists to become nearexperts at what they do rather
than it replaces them.
I think that's that's the mainthing.
(27:36):
We're not we don't encouragelosing losing team.
What we encourage is becomebetter at what you already do.
Chris Hamilton (27:42):
I I think the value, just to jump in there, I
think the value, yes, obviously,you know, there are cost
pressures um that where we cansee that, right?
It's really clear what's goingon.
But I think if you look at itin the longer term, I think the
sense approaches to see AI assomething that can a free your
people up to do what they'rereally good at.
(28:03):
So that's buildingrelationships, pitching,
negotiating with people, um,ideating.
Um, you know, one of the thingscommunicators have, and this is
almost unique in a in a lot ofbusinesses, right, is that 360
view of what's going on.
That's the externalenvironment, you know, the
knowledge they have internallyis absolutely huge.
Those corridor brush buys withthe C-suite, picking up
(28:26):
information, knowledge ofcampaigns and activities, right?
There's a whole load of inputsthere, like let's call it data
inputs, right?
And AI is never going to beable to replicate that, it just
doesn't have that same exposureto all of those different
inputs.
Whereas your your uh you knowcons professional team we have
there is is get is much moreable to um uh to to integrate
(28:49):
all of that and then use the AIto help.
And I think freeing people upto spend more time with the
C-suite, to uh spend more timewith the materials, to spend
more time meeting journalists orstakeholders, um, spend more
time on the ground at events andso on.
That's I think ideally is whereleadership should be thinking
about it.
And rather than great, I canyou know get rid of half of my
(29:12):
team because AI is going to doit.
I think that that to me iswould be would be extremely
risky.
Tom Mueller (29:17):
Right.
So you've got um, yeah, clearlyit's uh you know, I come back
to the the co-pilot term that umMicrosoft uh seems to have
captured so well, but I thinkyou're right, they've they've
got that uh that name down.
And ideally, you know, ifyou're a comms professional or
comms VP, you want to have sometype of an AI tool that's
(29:40):
helping your teams be moreeffective and work faster.
Now, when uh when you guysknock on the door of a potential
client, um clearly, you know,there's just uh boy, there's a
lot of potential value here.
What are some of the concernsor the The maybe misconceptions
(30:01):
that people have about this.
We talked about, you know, hey,I can downsize my team, I can
save cost.
But aside from that humanelement, what are some of the
you know the misconceptions thatyou're seeing out there about
tools like this?
Chris Hamilton (30:17):
Uh shall I go first, Peter?
Yeah, I mean, just justgenerally speaking, to start
with, I think hallucination doescome up a lot.
And I think for comms people,that's I mean, I think everyone
is kind of aware of this, butyou know, considering our our
craft, our our trade, I thinkthat it's unsurprising that's
something that comes up a lot,right?
Trust recognition, it's kind ofat the heart of what we do.
(30:39):
And the fact that we're being,you know, I think there's a bit
of a feeling of, oh, we're beingtold to use these tools, yet
when I've used it, you know,it's spat out this nonsense.
It doesn't know who our CEO is.
It's, you know, it's made upthese facts.
Tom Mueller (30:51):
Yeah, there are some very real examples of that
out there.
With uh uh, well, there was acourt case here in the in the US
a few months ago where the thejudge or one of the staff used
AI to help prepare briefs, andthe AI tool made up court cases
to cite as part of this brief.
And so, yeah, the hallucinationthing is real.
(31:14):
But again, that's a vote infavor of keeping those humans
involved and exactly.
Chris Hamilton (31:19):
And you know, that by the way, that that
example you talk about, we wetalk about that example.
Uh so yeah, with that that madeits way across the Atlantic.
It's something we're aware.
There's another examplerecently that a lot of comms
folks are aware of, uh, whichwas one of the big four
consulting firms prepared areport for the Australian
government, and it was coveredbecause it turned out they had
to give some of the money they'dbeen paid for the report back
(31:42):
because there were mistakes inthe report, driven not by the
use of AI, and that's one of thethings that kind of irritated
me about the coverage of thisstory.
That shouldn't have been theframing, in my view.
It wasn't the fact they'd usedAI.
I'd want them to be using AI.
The problem was they didn't useit in the right way, they
didn't deploy a 2060-20 starframework where the human looked
over the final report anddouble-checked the sourcing of
(32:05):
some of the citations that weremade in the report, and that was
the problem.
They'd used AI, and it it hadhallucinated as apparently some
of the some of the facts made inthe report and even sourced
them.
And of course, as humans, we'rerushed, we think AI can do
everything.
We see a very credible looking,whether it was a quote or a
data point, there's a littlefootnote number down at the
(32:26):
bottom of the page, it has thefootnote, it all appears very
credible, right?
Whereas in fact, what you needto do is check those kind of
things um to make sure thatthey're right.
So that hallucination issomething uh that comes up.
And I think our answer to thatis um one, the kind of the bad
news is we are gonna have to getor we we need to get used to it
(32:46):
because unlike uh most of thetools that we've been kind of
trained to use, whether it'sGoogle or a lot of the products
we use in in our work and ourhome life, um, they you know,
there is it's not a kind ofbinary, you know, it doesn't
know AI doesn't know anything,right?
It's based on probabilitiesaround the you know uh framing,
the the ordering of a series ofof words.
(33:09):
It doesn't know whethersomething is right or not.
Having said that, obviouslyit's in the companies, you know,
whether it's open AI or Metroor anyone else, it's in their
interest to try and reduce theinstance of hallucination.
But there's a lot we can bedoing, right, in terms of the
prompting that we do.
So the more detailed theprompt, the better response
you're gonna get, the morecontext you add.
And this is something we talkto teams about all the time, you
(33:31):
know, have your and yourreport, have your strategy
documents, have your tone ofvoice, have your have your um a
style guide uh as part of eitherbuilt into your tooling, and
that's something that the Albiplatform absolutely allows you
to do, or upload it to theprompt as you're making it, and
that way you will always getmuch more uh much high quality
(33:53):
results and much less instanceof hallucinations.
Tom Mueller (33:55):
Okay, so yeah, so hallucination is a big one.
Any other uh sort of issues,questions?
Peter Heneghan (34:02):
Peter, what's what do you what do you I think
uh the other thing is staff umoften feel under undermined or
worried or anxious, and I thinkI would say, and I say this with
sincerity, I think one of ourstrengths is we're taking a
human approach.
Um other AI companies who arecoming from an AI first rather
(34:24):
than a communications arebasically going, all right, this
will replace all your staff,you know, you're gonna save a
load of money.
You you may lose staff, you maydecide that you don't need as
big a team, you can streamlinein certain areas, but that's not
the reason for doing this.
You want the ultimate goal hereis that your communications
protects your business orpromotes your business.
(34:46):
That's where you want to beplaying in that space.
And if that requires a few lessstaff working more smartly with
technology, so be it.
But that's we're not here to dothat.
But until you get people overthat hurdle, um, that's the
problem.
And the other thing I thinkstaff always think that they
know best.
And why wouldn't they?
(35:06):
They've been doing a job formany, many years.
But when you show them how touse AI effectively and they
already have that deep ingrainedexpertise in communications,
that's the perfect solution.
Because they if you get ajunior member staff who still
has to learn the ropes, givethem the AI tool, suddenly they
think they're they've jumpedthree or four grades.
(35:26):
They haven't, so there's afalse sense of uh ability.
Well, it's almost the oppositewith the more senior people, but
once they learn those keybasics, how to prompt more
effectively, plug in the rightdata, they're off to the races.
They really succeed after that.
Tom Mueller (35:42):
Okay, yeah, it's fascinating.
I I love your your commentthere, Peter, about a junior
staffer suddenly feeling veryempowered with this.
And the fact is the experienceuh you know in the room still
counts for a lot when you'redealing with communications
issues, external facing issues,and particularly around crisis
(36:04):
communications, right?
Let's let's kind of turn andfocus on the crisis
communications aspects for abit, because there's you know,
there's always some key factorshere around uh you know
communicating in a crisis, andof course, measuring sentiment
from what's happening in theexternal world is a part of
that.
Um, but also getting the toneof your statements, press
(36:27):
releases out appropriately is isthere.
So, how do you frame albotai inin the crisis realm here now?
What's the where do you see thereal value uh when we're
dealing with crisis?
Peter Heneghan (36:43):
Yeah, I'd I'd say so we've built an agent
specifically on best in classgovernment crisis.
So a few years ago, the the thedictionary uh word of the year
was perma crisis.
I don't know if you rememberthat.
So myself and Chris hadbasically worked through crisis
(37:04):
after crisis after crisis.
Even after COVID, we had twomonarchs, uh, a monarch and uh
the Duke of Edinburgh passingaway.
Major moments for our country,a crisis um in that we plan for
years to do this.
So we we are well versed in howto deal with a crisis.
The UK government hasframeworks, we we added in
(37:27):
behavioral science as well.
And the behavioral sciencecomes in.
How can you put out a messagewhich actually is empathetic in
understanding of the situationbased on the severity?
So I think our product allowsyou to put in any crisis.
I always joke about the recentone of that company where the
Coldplay concert and then thechief executive was caught on
(37:51):
KissCam with the HR lead.
Like you can't make that up.
Like you would not, youcouldn't say, I've got a top
dust down a book, and it's like,right, here's how we deal with
our CEO Kiss and HR later at aColdplay concert that's gone
viral.
R2 on the other hand, becauseit's built off of frameworks, it
very quickly enables that planto be written out.
(38:12):
What we couldn't do, which iswhere there's limits, is and
this is where creativity comesin.
Whoever taught Gwen and Paltrowfronting their um advertising
after the event genius.
We are looking at that andgoing, is there a way of getting
all the best and can lineaward-winning work into a model
(38:32):
and also saying as a kind ofcurveball, would you consider
this?
We haven't got there yet, butin terms of a first draft crisis
plan, we can get you there in amatter of minutes, which is a
starting point to build off ofnever the end product.
Chris Hamilton (38:46):
Just to be clear, Tom, what we're talking
about here is a product that'syou know most uh big companies,
right, would uh certainly shouldhave a their own uh crisis
response framework.
I'm sure that's one of thethings you talk to, you know,
when you're when you go whenyou're talking to your clients,
right?
Have a plan ready to go.
Um the idea is that uh the Albiplatform can take that plan um
(39:07):
and have it sitting there in thebackground along with
information about the company,as much as you want.
And then whether it's you'rerunning a scenario, an exercise,
or of course the real thing,you can come to the platform,
the framework's already inthere.
So everything that you need inorder to respond to a crisis,
whether that's your initialdraft statements, the team, the
(39:28):
response team you want to setup, the um spans of control, the
reporting lines, theauthorization, all of those
pieces are already in there andare just sitting there waiting.
Uh, you know, there's no kindof, as Peter says, the kind of
reaching for the shelf, right?
And sort of blowing dust offthe off the off the book, and
then, oh no, hang on, thishasn't.
I mean, obviously, you stillwould still need to keep the
(39:49):
framework updated, but it's mucheasier to update, right?
And you you take it down, youcan just put in literally one
line about what the crisis is,whether it's the cold play
example Pete just referred to,or whatever it is, a sudden um
hit to your profits, or somekind of uh accident, it doesn't
matter what it is, you can saythis has just happened, how
should we respond?
Now, remember what we're sayingis you wouldn't take that, and
(40:12):
by the way, it's mind-blowing.
I'm still every time I see wewe give a demo, you know, we did
a demo just last week to agroup of comms leaders, and you
know, they were literally jawsdropping as they saw the detail
and the speed and the depth ofthe response that that came out
of the product.
And I think they were justimmediately imagining what that
would be like in a realsituation.
We're not saying you're gonnatake that report, you know, kind
(40:35):
of ping it off in an email orprint it out if that's still,
you know, go into a call withthe C-suite and say, here I've
got my plan.
You're still obviously going towant to look at that, make sure
it's up to scratch, and putyour own experience and and
creativity into it.
Uh, but in terms of getting youthrough those first few hours
of a crisis response, absolutelyincredible.
Tom Mueller (40:54):
You know, as you talk to comms leaders out there
at various levels, I um youknow, I can't help but feel a
little bit depressed about thechange that's coming, the speed
of change that's coming, and youknow, trying to grab it and and
(41:15):
run with it.
Um boy, there's a just apsychological impact on this.
And I guess you see that whenyou're talking to groups of
people with jaws dropping andseeing that.
Chris Hamilton (41:25):
But um, you know, what's yeah, I mean, I I I
I know what you mean, and Isuppose I feel that I've been
through that several throughseveral cycles, right?
You know, I worked back at theBBC when the the web was coming
in, and we had you know peoplewho were absolutely steeped in
the highest quality, you know,broadcast um skills and
(41:46):
experience and as a profession.
And there was a lot of, youknow, as the as the sort of
power and the the implicationsof the web became clear, I think
that sort of you know, anxietywas is palpable.
And one of the things we talkabout when we go into teams is
and we we confront head on, youknow, we're very open about, you
know, it's not surprisingthere's anxiety, but I think
there are ways to to mitigatethat.
(42:07):
And I do think a lot of there'sa lot of onus on leadership,
and we've touched on some ofthis already today, but a lot of
onus on leadership on inhandling it in the right way.
And I think it's important tobe positive and proactive about
AI, but also be clear with yourteams about what's involved and
what the expectations are.
Um, I think that's one thing.
I think it's you know incumbenton leadership to help people to
through this.
I think it's also incumbent onindividuals, you know.
(42:29):
One of the it's a it's amassive cliche, but still think
it's true, which is that AI isnot going to take our jobs, it's
someone who knows AI betterthan us.
So I think there is it's amindset shift around um, you
know, in the same way thatwe've, you know, in our careers,
right, how many bigtechnological shifts have there
been?
It's been massively acceleratedcompared to you know the
(42:50):
decades preceding.
Um, and you know, we've we'vegot to deploy that same
sensibility and that samecuriosity while you know
guarding what we're good at andwhat experience has taught us
about what's important andmaking sure that we deploy those
in the right way when we'reintegrating that technology into
our into our work life.
Tom Mueller (43:10):
All right.
Well, Chris, Peter, appreciateyou guys coming on and sharing
your growing expertise in the AIrealm with our listeners here.
This is clearly a space we'reall going to keep watching as
time goes by.
And uh, we certainly wish youguys the best of luck with your
venture.
And uh would love to have youback on the podcast again the
whole year from now, just to seewhere you are and see what's
(43:33):
the latest tech that's happeningthere.
So thanks for joining us today.
Chris Hamilton (43:38):
Not at all, Tom.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
It's been great uh to be on.
Thank you for giving us theopportunity.
And yeah, love to be back.
Um, we'll see you next year.
Tom Mueller (43:47):
And that's gonna do it for this episode of the
Leading in a Crisis Podcast.
Thanks for joining us.
Um, if you'd like to email theshow, you can drop me a line at
Tom at Leadinginacrisis dot com.
And we'll see you again soon onanother episode.
Take care.
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