Asia-Pacific Summit:“Everyone Is Talking About AI Productivity, But What About Capability?”

(MENAFN- PRovoke) SINGAPORE - The conversation around use of AI in communications needs to shift from productivity to capability, value and joy, according to in-house and agency leaders speaking at the PRovoke media Asia-Pacific Summit this week.

The session brought together Sanjay Nair, global AI marketing lead at management consultancy BCG, Ramya Chandrasekaran, chief communications officer at multinational QI Group and Elan Shou, global chief growth officer for Asia at Ruder Finn.

Nair began by acknowledging the dual nature of AI's impact on communications:“AI is a double-edged sword,” he said.“It's a massive transformative opportunity, but at the same time, it's a real threat to the value we as communicators bring to the table.

“We need to be careful about asking ourselves what is it we do that will be valuable in years to come. It's content production, analytics, social listening and measurement, and beginning to develop GPTs that can automate repetitive tasks. To me, all of this helps us to stay in the race but not necessarily win the race, because the pace of change is so fast – we have to continuously be curious to learn about these technologies, and be able to use them, but also as organisations we need a culture of experimenting, learning and being agile.”

He admitted there was“no easy answer” to the question of how to keep up with the proliferation of AI tools, except to“stay curious and keep experimenting”, and focus on the value that humans add.“Creativity is taken care of, strategy is taken care of, so where do you add value?

“There's no substitute for expertise and relationships and that is the value that we as in-house or agency consultants bring, but need to be smart about using these superpowers to enhance these to create impact.”

Nair emphasised the need for PR professionals to continually adapt:“This is changing on a six-monthly basis-forget about a two-to-three year basis. Don't get too comfortable thinking that if we have mastered ChatGPT, the problem is solved, because it's not.”

He said the next phase of AI that communicators would have to get to grips with was AI agents:“Software is being automated to make decisions on your behalf, without humans not in the loop. It's an interesting space, and changes how we think about value, business and skills. We have to be conscious that it's not easy to crack.”

Nair also suggested reframing the conversation around AI:“Everyone is talking about productivity, but what is the impact of AI on capability?”

He said BCG conducted an experiment with data scientists and consultants and looked at their ability to do basic coding. Without AI, data scientists were scoring 100% and consultants around 30%; with AI, that jumped to 86%.“What does that tell you? Whether agency or in-house, you can have significant extra capability with existing talent. This has implications for how we think about organisational structure, training and staffing.”

Another way of looking at AI, Nair suggested, was to focus on joy rather than fear:“Many conversations around AI are framed in terms of fear, how switch that to get people within an organisation to feel happy about these tools, especially if they are hearing about how they need new skills and their jobs will be automated – it is quite scary for a lot of people.

“It boils to how we position the AI journey within our organisation. Many have mistaken it as a productivity play, but haven't really focused on the joy that it brings to your work experience – it removes a lot of toil that you don't like, the repetitive and mundane, and brings joy because it enhances what you do on a day-to-day basis. If you think of it as a journey where you are continually learning and growing as a individual and a professional, suddenly you see people more open to adopting and keeping pace with it.”

Nair shared an initiative at BCG where employees were encouraged to embrace AI through a“black belt system,” offering micro-trainings and fostering the creation of custom GPTs.“We've had 6,000 GPTs built in three-to-six months. People suddenly clicked – the stuff I don't know, I can build as a GPT and automate it. They didn't see AI as a threat anymore, but as something that brings joy and improves their longevity in the profession.”

Another aspect of this was organisations thinking about how to use the time saved by AI:“A very simple thing most organisations haven't done is figure out what to do with the time saved. If generative AI can save five to 10 hours in a week, what do you do with that? If it's just a productivity conversation, it's about doing more with less, but if it's a conversation about using those hours for more work-life balance or training, that's a win for both the individual and the company.”

At QI Group, Chandrasekaran echoed Nair's sentiments around continuous learning, pointing out a widespread lack in understanding of how to effectively use AI tools within the profession.“There's a whole world outside of ChatGPT and a gazillion different tools available that make life easy," she said. "The challenge is a lack of appropriate training in some of these tools, or even a lack of understanding that training is required.

“People are getting too comfortable with just using ChatGPT and a few ancillary tools, but they don't realise these will become obsolete so quickly as newer and more sophisticated models keep coming... the only way to overcome fear is to quickly catch up and learn.”

Chandrasekaran said organisational change was required to fully embrace AI:“One of the first things I had to do was change the mindset of my team that AI is the domain of IT teams. We have really pushed everybody to start experimenting. Everyone is using it for content generation, but we need to go beyond that.

“Now we're building GPTs for our brand voice, which will allow everybody to access the knowledge base to generate things that are in line with the brand voice. We're also churning out virtual brand ambassadors for products. We're doing some cool things, but we have to constantly push people to stay curious, keep experimenting, and show that AI is for everybody.”

At Ruder Finn, Shou agreed that there was too much reliance on basic AI tools that would soon be outdated:“The concern is that we don't know what we don't know. We realised from our trainings in China, for instance, that our team thought AI was fundamentally just ChatGPT: they think it can help with content and they don't need to learn English anymore, and they don't know AI can do a lot more than that.”

Shou also addressed the broader implications of AI for the agency model, particularly the roles of junior staff.“AI removes the arms-and-legs work to give you more time for more interesting work,” she said. However, she was concerned about the potential loss of training opportunities for junior staff, who traditionally gained experience through repetitive tasks now being automated by AI:“If you don't have juniors, where do senior staff come from?”

Shou said one solution to this was to encourage younger colleagues to take the lead in adopting AI tools:“Middle management is usually the most reluctant to change – ask younger kids to take the lead on test projects.”

In terms of value, Shou said she was not worried about whether AI efficiencies would impact the agency timesheet model of charging clients:“It's all about the end result. What really matters is the value you provide the client. In marcomms we used to say sales can't be impacted by PR, but it's not the same anymore – brands are asking for traffic, conversion and sales. You have to stand with them to understand what they are looking for, and how you can add value.”

But as an agency head, Shou did sound one note of concern:“An agency is a marketplace, we see clients doing lots of wonderful, different things with AI, so we can learn from them. But then, are clients ahead of us? They could be, in some areas.”

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