🚀 PR Futurist #109 🏆 Folgate partnership with Purposeful Relations 📚 Two must read reports ⚖️ AI and corporate governance 2 June 2025

Welcome

Big news, an apology and £120 free AI tool if you act today

First, an apology for the recent sporadic publication of PR Futurist. It's a result of public holidays and an emergency visit to hospital by me! Nothing life-threatening (I hope!) but a short stay in hospital last week and a return visit to Accident and Emergency yesterday has disrupted the routine a little.

The big news is that Folgate Advisors has chosen Purposeful Relations as its first corporate partner (see below for the full story). We're really excited by the vision of David Gallagher, Mark Hume and Dave Scott. They are all ex-senior honchos at Omnicom/Ketchum. It increases our capability and capacity to help our clients by both broadening and strengthening our offer. I'm happy to do a quick call to see how we might be able to support you and your team.

I think today is the last day to take advantage of an offer from UK mobile provider O2 to get one year of free access to Perplexity Pro. Perplexity is fantastic, so you really don't want to miss it. See the story below to find out about Perplexity's new features and the O2 offer.

The two things you must read this week (in the order they were published) are Global Alliance's report on AI and communications and Rod Cartwright's Reputation, Risk, and Resilience report.

A longer read (although Rod's report is as long as a book!) is a new book - The Power of Trust: or why PR ethics matter. It is edited by Maxim Behar, President of the World Communication Forum Association; and Christina Forsgård, Ethics Chair of ICCO. It includes chapters from numerous global experts, including David Gallagher and me.

Other stories this week are a great explainer by our global advisory board member Becca Caddy on how AI large language models actually work; a speech by the UK's Head of Civil Justice on the need to embrace technology; how CEOs use AI for financial statements; AI and corporate governance tools; and five excellent resilience tips by departing UK Government Communication Service (GCS) CEO Simon Baugh.

Finally, next week me and Tim will be in Vienna for the AMEC Global Summit. Let us know if you're going, and we can catch up over a coffee, beer, wine, or Negroni.

Stuart Bruce

News

Folgate Advisors chooses Purposeful Relations as its first corporate partner

Folgate Advisors, an international advisory firm, has chosen Purposeful Relations as its first corporate partner. The corporate partnership will help in-house teams, agencies and consultancies in communications improve their performance through access to the two firms’ combined consulting, training and analytics services.

Folgate Advisors is a specialist consultancy focused on moving communication forward. It was founded in October 2024 and identified by PRWeek as one of the “new PR agencies to watch in 2025”. Its founders are a trio of former senior Omnicom executives: Mark Hume, former President and COO International, Ketchum; David Gallagher, former President, Growth and Development, International, Omnicom PR Group; and Dave Scott, CFO International, Ketchum.

The collaboration leverages Purposeful Relations’ CommsTransform™ framework, focused on AI and technology; measurement and evaluation, data and analytics; professional development and learning, with Folgate’s compound knowledge approach to client growth and development in areas including finance and operations, talent and culture, and investment, among others. In addition to giving clients access to a wider range of support services immediately, the two firms will co-develop new solutions to address rapidly evolving industry challenges and opportunities.

Stuart Bruce

AI

How does ChatGPT understand you and know what to say?

It’s not magic – here’s how ChatGPT actually thinks (sort of). This is a great explainer by Becca Caddy of how 'tokenisation' which includes why AI can give different answers to the same question and why it sometimes appears to make stuff up (hallucinate).

Becca is a member of Purposeful Relations' global advisory board.

Stuart Bruce

UK's second most senior lawyer says "Those who do not embrace the use of technology will simply be left behind.”

Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls, the UK's second most senior lawyer, has made another speech encouraging the legal profession to embrace AI and technology. His message was stark:

“Those who do not embrace the use of technology will simply be left behind.”

He was talking to lawyers, but it's equally true for public relations and communications, or any other profession.

It's not his first call to action. Last year I wrote an article about another speech by Vos where he argued that it's unethical for lawyers not to use AI as they have a duty to do their best and it's impossible to do so unless they are using AI.

Thanks to Karl Milner, Director of Communications, Marketing and Engagement at North London NHS Foundation Trust for spotting this one.

Stuart Bruce

Corporate affairs

Reputation, Risk, and Resilience 2025 is a call to action to rethink your approach to crisis communications

The third edition of the Reputation, Risk, and Resilience report reinforces its position as the de facto authoritative source of insight and analysis on global challenges we must prepare for. Author Rod Cartwright analyses 11 major risk reports to identify 10 critical themes.

I'm not going to share the themes here, as it's such important reading I want you to download it and take a look yourself. Rod's big takeaway is that "we need to fundamentally rethink crisis, reimagine risk and re-engineer preparedness."

Inevitably, one of the 10 themes is about cyber (in)security and the "double edged sword of AI evolution".

“AI tools are increasingly enabling the proliferation of false information and empowering more sophisticated cyber attacks.”

The other side of the AI sword being that we are working with several companies that provide sophisticated AI tools to detect and defend against threats of disinformation and misinformation.

The reports Rod has analysed are: World Economic Forum Global Risks Report; Ipsos’ Navigating Through Turbulence Report; Deloitte Corporate Affairs Report; The Conference Board C-Suite Outlook; Edelman Trust Barometer; Page Society CCO Views into 2025 Page-Harris Confidence in Business Index; Business Continuity Institute (BCI) Horizon Scan Report; AXA Future Risks Report; Lloyds Register Foundation World Risk Poll Report’ Oxford University GlobeScan Global Corporate Affairs Survey; and the Gallup State of the Global Workplace report.

I've worked with Rod on several complex and sensitive issues management projects - him supporting my clients and me supporting his clients.

You can download the full Reputation, Risk, and Resilience here (behind an email gateway, but I promise Rod's not going to spam you and the report is gold dust).

Stuart Bruce

CommTech tools

Generate status reports in minutes with Project Manager agent in Planner

Microsoft Planner will soon be able to automatically generate status reports. We haven't had a chance to test it yet because, as with most Microsoft 365 new features, it takes time to roll out across licences. Potentially this could be a great time-saver and frustration-reducer... as I'm sure there aren't many of us who enjoy writing status reports!

Stuart Bruce

Corporate governance, technology and AI

At Purposeful Relations, we're doing a lot of thinking and research around AI, technology, and corporate governance. I've included three useful nuggets we've found and/or explored recently.

Global Investigative Journalism Network's free tools to track corporate misconduct around the world. "several free tools now track and aggregate penalties for corporate misconduct in an ever-growing total of 59 countries around the world, offering investigative reporters both authoritative details and abuse patterns at a glance, and easy ways to poke holes in greenwashing or public relations-polished claims about good governance."

Proofpoint - an AI-powered digital communications governance platform.

DragonGC - AI enhancements to a corporate governance, compliance, and shareholder communications platform.

Stuart Bruce

Perplexity adds ability to generate spreadsheets, dashboards, and more

Perplexity is my 'favourite' AI tool, and it just got a whole lot more powerful. The £20-per-month Pro plan can now craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more.

Perplexity is often billed as a super-powered AI alternative to Google search. But even before this, it was a whole lot more. The pro plan includes unlimited use of deep research. The reports aren't as detailed as ChatGPT or Gemini, but are generated faster and nearly always give you enough information to ensure you're better prepared. The problem with longer reports is often they are more detailed than you need for the first stage of research.

Get Perplexity Pro for free if you act today

I think you still have time to take advantage of an offer from O2 in the UK to get Perplexity Pro for free via its My Priority awards scheme. It's worth about £120 a year. I had this fantastic tip from a delegate on one of my AI training courses. If you don't have an O2 contract then don't despair as Martin Lewis' Money Saving Expert site explains how you can get O2 My Priority by using a pay as you go sim and putting just £10 credit on it. Once you've created an account and signed up you have access.

Stuart Bruce

Case studies

FTSE 250 CEO uses AI to edit and improve his financial results statement

Eben Upton, CEO of Raspberry Pi, used the Claude AI chatbot to check and improve the draft copy of his company's latest financial results statement. He used Claude to "conduct a “tone analysis” of the document, to say how it felt the microcomputer business was doing, on a scale of one to a hundred."

It gave it a 70% score so he asked Claude to do some single word swaps. It didn't go well as it inserted so much "breathless hyperbole, the score bounced to almost 100 per cent". He stripped out the word "exceptional" to get what he felt was a more realistic 89%.

Use of AI as an assistant is becoming increasingly common. While companies are using AI to help improve financial statements and annual reports, analysts and investors are using AI to imporove how they interrogate them.

Stuart Bruce

UK government to launch AI tool to speed up public consultations

An AI tool has been used to review public responses to a government consultation for the first time and is now set to be rolled out more widely in an effort to save money and staff time.

Stuart Bruce

Research and reports

Comms failing to provide leadership for AI

The most alarming finding from the new Global Alliance report on AI and communications is the failure of communications to provide leadership around AI. Six in 10 (57.5%) have no leadership role in AI activities and just one in 10 (8.2%) are taking a leadership role in AI governance and strategy.

Read my article on my PR Futurist blog for a full analysis of the report.

Stuart Bruce

Workers optimistic but overwhelmed by AI - study

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the workplace is both game-changing and overwhelming for UK workers, a study has found. More than 4,500 people from almost 30 different employment sectors were polled as part of the research, which was commissioned by Henley Business School.

Stuart Bruce

Professional practice

The Power of Trust: or why PR ethics matter

A new book explores the critical role of ethics in public relations and communications. It is edited by Maxim Behar, President of the World Communication Forum Association, and CEO of M3 Communications; and Christina Forsgård, Ethics Chair of ICCO and founder of Netprofile. It features contributions from numerous global experts including Ana Adi (Germany), David Gallagher (UK), Johna Burke (USA), Justin Green (Ireland), Nataliya Popovych (Ukraine), Nitin Mantri (India), Philippe Borremans (Belgium) and more.

Stuart contributed a chapter that looks at the difference between ethics and morals and some of the ethical questions and discussions about AI.

Karen Marshall

Five top tips for personal resilience in PR and comms by GCS CEO Simon Baugh

Simon Baugh, the chief executive of the UK Government Communication Service, is sharing five tips he has learned for managing resilience in some of the challenging roles he has held. This is ahead of him stepping down from GCS to return to the private sector.

Tip 1 - Wu Wei "I’m often asked how I have managed my resilience in the jobs I’ve done. So I thought I’d share five tips I’ve learned. Number 1: Wu Wei."

"If you prefer a Westernised version, then think of Star Wars: “Use the Force, Luke.”"

Tip 2 - Find your purpose

"When I first started out in my career, I thought progression meant a bigger title, a better salary, or a job that sounded impressive to other people."

*Tip 3 - Make time to breathe

*Tip 4 - How you think is how you feel

This is my personal favourite, but I haven't seen tip 5 yet!

Stuart Bruce