Leading the Conversation: Rethinking Communications in the Age of AI 

Published

At the 2025 Robert Peterson Roundtable, hosted at IMD in Lausanne, Greg Prager, President, Weber Advisory, EMEA and Alphonse Daudré-Vignier, EVP, Corporate Affairs, led a session titled “Communicating in the New World: Rethinking Messaging, Segmenting Audiences, and How AI Might Help Deliver the Right Message to the Right Audience.”

 

The discussion explored how communications professionals are adapting to a fast-evolving landscape, where media, technology, politics, and public expectations intersect, and how AI is reshaping core functions within communications teams.

 

Adapting to a Changing Landscape

 

The fundamental challenge of communications, delivering the right message to the right audience, is more complex than ever. Today’s environment is marked by audience fragmentation, declining trust in institutions, and rapidly shifting digital platforms. Misinformation and coordinated bot activity further distort public discourse, weakening the influence of credible voices.

 

For example, Weber Shandwick’s analysis of recent global policy debates showed that inauthentic sources amplified negative narratives about institutions like the UN and WHO, with approximately 20% of the discourse linked to bot-like behaviour. These dynamics raise the stakes for communicators, who must now cut through noise with greater clarity, credibility, and precision.

 

In this context, AI offers valuable tools to help navigate complexity. When applied with strategic intent, AI supports real-time signal detection, accelerates content development, and enables more informed decisions. At Weber Shandwick, we pair AI with human judgment, ensuring data-led insights are translated into communications that resonate, mitigate risks, and advance broader strategic goals.

 

From Demonstration to Application

 

In their session, Greg Prager and Alphonse Daudré-Vignier shared how AI is moving from pilot projects to becoming a foundational element of modern communications. Through real-world examples and live demonstrations, they showed how AI is already enhancing both day-to-day execution and long-term planning, enabling teams to align more effectively with audiences, and manage reputation more proactively.

 

Today, Weber Shandwick Geneva applies AI in key areas, including:

 

  • Reputation Intelligence: Social listening, issue detection, stakeholder mapping
  • Sentiment Analysis: Monitoring narrative shifts and audience sentiment
  • Message Testing: Simulating audience reactions through synthetic personas
  • Crisis Simulation: Modelling scenarios to support faster, more confident response

 

These capabilities are actively informing campaigns and helping teams work with greater speed, precision, and adaptability across markets.

 

A Leadership Imperative

 

The session emphasised that AI adoption is not simply a technological upgrade, it is a leadership challenge. For senior communications executives, the key questions are no longer “if” AI should be adopted, but “how” to do so responsibly and effectively. Discussions focused on how to assess tool transparency, safeguard quality, build governance frameworks, and strengthen internal capabilities through training and partnerships.

 

Small-group conversations gave participants the opportunity to reflect on these questions within their own organisations, reinforcing that responsible AI integration must be grounded in strategic oversight and guided by a clear vision.