AI in PR

Will Ockenden 0:00

It's unethical for PR people not to use AI Really.

Chris Norton 0:03

Yeah, it's unethical for them not to use it Not to use it.

Stuart Bruce 0:05

They've got a duty to do their best for clients and you can't do that. If you're not using AI now, you are not doing your best.

Will Ockenden 0:12

Back onto soaking wet wishes, do that. Oh yeah, well, go ahead. What's your take on that then?

Stuart Bruce 0:20

And what can businesses learn from that is, actually have decent corporate affairs people? I mean, for f***'s sake. I can answer that.

Chris Norton 0:30

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the only show for senior marketing professionals that celebrates the biggest marketing mistakes and fails, helping you learn practical lessons from other people's misfortune. Also, you can double your return on investment and achieve record revenue. This week's show is our anniversary show. It's our first birthday. So thanks If you've been listening from the very beginning. Thank you very much for joining us. And to celebrate our first birthday, we thought we'd bring along our first ever guest, which is Stuart Bruce. He's also my ex-boss, so he gives me quite a lot of abuse.

Chris Norton 1:02

In this episode, Stuart and I and Will go through the various aspects of AI and how it's changed in the last 12 months and how he's integrating it into a lot of organisations in the UK. Stuart also goes into the general election and some of the lessons that you could learn from the communications campaigns that each of the parties is doing, which is quite interesting because there's been some major faux pas. So, as always, sit back, relax and let's listen to how you can use AI as part of your marketing in 2024 and how you can make the most out of a creative campaign. Hi everybody, Welcome back to Embracing Marketing Mistakes. This week we celebrate one year of the podcast and to celebrate that, there's no better way than bringing on our first ever guest and my ex-boss, PR powerhouse and futurist, Stuart Bruce. Thank you very much, Chris.

Will Ockenden 1:55

I'm looking forward to this. Have you brought us any presents, or anything like that, stuart, for the anniversary?

Stuart Bruce 2:01

I was expecting it the other way round. Yeah, I thought I'd turn up here and there'd be a birthday cake in the middle of the table okay, um, so last time that you're on the show, first of all will wasn't here were you?

Will Ockenden 2:12

you, you were away. I think I was on holiday, wasn't I?

Chris Norton 2:14

yeah, so um you didn't do the first interview.

Will Ockenden 2:16

What a level of commitment. That is first ever episode.

Chris Norton 2:19

Now I can't make it and so last time we talked about like of stuff, we covered the Amec measurement framework which we use at Prohibition, but we also covered AI. Obviously, loads has happened in that in the last 12 months, so it'll be interesting to get your thoughts on what you've been up to really. So what has the last 12 months been like for Stuart Bruce and Purposeful Communications? Oh no, purposeful Relations, that's it.

Stuart Bruce 2:44

Pur purposeful communications, oh no, purposeful relations. That's it, purposeful relations. I think the big change we've seen is 12 months ago, everybody was talking about AI. The difference now is people are doing AI. Just one quick example I did a new business call this morning with two different PR agencies so two new biz calls. Before I came here In the time it took me to drive from home to the office, one of them emailed back to say, yes, they wanted to go ahead with an AI transformation project. So they've got about kind of 60 odd people. Yeah, we're going to kind of go in, we're going to look at what the team does, we're going to look at how they can use AI effectively, put a training programme in place, but just to kind of. You know, a year ago I would have loads of those calls but nobody was willing to invest the time or the money to actually do it. And I hope there's a recognition now that you've got to.

Will Ockenden 3:36

You know, unless you're investing, and if you look at what some of the big global agencies are doing.

Stuart Bruce 3:40

You know, you've got publicists investing 300 million euros. You've got mid-size agencies in New York investing millions. We're not talking about that. We're talking about tens of thousands and it can make a dramatic difference to how agencies or in-house teams operate and people are now doing it rather than thinking about it or talking about it.

Will Ockenden 4:02

And when you say they're doing it, are we moving beyond just being competent at ChatGPT? Because I think initially people felt they were doing AI, but really they weren't. Were they? It wasn't terribly sophisticated.

Stuart Bruce 4:13

No, I think there's a lot of confusion in the market as to what AI actually means, Because I mean, there's all sorts of things. Lots of people had a play, but they had a play with the free version of ChatGPT, which was 3.5. 4 is 10 times better. So if you played with it then and were disappointed, well duh, that's why, Because you were using a useless version. But it's also more fundamental. Lots of people say okay, the focus is on generative AI. It can create images, it can write copy for you. It can't.

Stuart Bruce 4:46

I mean it can create images. It can write copy for you. It can't. I mean it can if you're not very good at creating images or you're not very good at writing, but in a PR agency you've got. You know, usually you've got a lot of PR team. You've got loads and loads of passionate writers who are really, really good at it. That can do it quickly. That can do it really high quality AI ain't going to come close to them.

Will Ockenden 5:01

So why on earth would you use AI to do?

Stuart Bruce 5:03

that there's 101 other things you can use AI for where you'll get benefits, and one of the things we would love to quantify is what that productivity improvement is, because there's loads of studies out there that range from between about 10% to 40%, but they're not from the PR sector, so we can't conclusively say this is the productivity saving. But I don't think you'd be able to anyway, because with our work with in-house teams and clients, there's such a disparity between how people work, how they structure their teams.

Will Ockenden 5:33

It's going to vary massively anyway.

Stuart Bruce 5:35

But that saving is not in creating content, it's in other things.

Chris Norton 5:39

So what is the, what's the number one thing that marketing agencies are asking for? Then, because you're right. The content that it spews out is, even with a, refined. If you create or craft your own custom GPT and spend I don't know you can spend between 10 minutes and an hour doing it and the content can be, I would say, graduate level. But the analysis side of it can be a lot better than that yeah, so I think you kind of touched on it there.

Stuart Bruce 6:08

So the type of things that we're looking at are things like compliance checking. You know, if you've got, if you've got to produce copy that's got to comply with certain regulations, the team can still create it. But then the actual compliance checking can be done by a custom gpt or a custom co-pilot or things like, you know, prepping for a media interview. You know you can actually it can be really good at helping you to kind of brainstorm the questions but also think about responses. But even then they're quite rudimentary uses. You know there are some amazing tools like point Solutions out there that do specific things. So I had a call with the CEO of an ex-Google person, a company the other day where they do AI presentations.

Stuart Bruce 6:56

So basically it'll take a video of like I'm talking here. It will kind of give me tips for how it could be better.

Stuart Bruce 7:00

It will point out kind of things that I got wrong, but it's also listening to what I say, so it will do the follow-up questions, so you can actually so say you've done. You couldn't replace a media trainer but say somebody's been media trained but then they haven't actually had a media interview for six months and they're a bit rusty you could quite easily use the AI tool to kind of refresh them and upskill them.

Will Ockenden 7:23

Or if you're a big global organisation you've got maybe hundreds of media spokespeople.

Stuart Bruce 7:28

you know you can't constantly refresh them all, so this is a really good way of kind of doing it.

Will Ockenden 7:33

Right, ok, and are you seeing any kind of particular sectors that are particularly, you know, interested in or adopting AI more than others?

Stuart Bruce 7:44

If you want an exemplar of who is the best in talking specifically about AI for PR and comms, it's government.

Will Ockenden 7:51

The Government.

Stuart Bruce 7:51

Communication Service is doing some amazing stuff. You know they're doing just the way their ambition for what AI should be able to do there's a really good quote by Simon Bohr, who's the chief executive of GCS, where he basically talks about how you know it's a ridiculous notion that PR, people commerce people wouldn't use.

Will Ockenden 8:13

AI.

Stuart Bruce 8:14

You know it's as ridiculous as saying you wouldn't use the internet or you wouldn't use email, but it actually kind of it goes further than that, because there was a really interesting talk recently by the UK not the UK, because it's a different legal system England and Wales' second most senior law chief, and he was actually saying that it is unethical for lawyers not to use AI.

Chris Norton 8:43

Really, yeah, it's unethical for them not to use AI Really.

Stuart Bruce 8:46

Yeah.

Chris Norton 8:46

It's unethical for them not to use it, not to use it. So you would run a contract, so a legal contract, through AI and say pick me the legal loopholes that you can find.

Stuart Bruce 8:57

The use cases might vary, but the reason he was saying it would be unethical not to use it is lawyers have got a duty to do their best for clients and to do it as cost effectively as possible and all those types of things, and you can't do that if you're not using AI. Now you are not doing your best, and that got me thinking. So I actually had a look at the CIPR code of conduct. Here we go and guess what. It's unethical for PR people not to be using AI, because exactly the same Is that our headline for the episode it's unethical for PR people not to use AI.

Will Ockenden 9:29

So in the legal profession, surely I mean, this is a bigger conversation but that's going to have a profound impact on billable hours, isn't it? And profitability for law firms.

Stuart Bruce 10:45

It is because law firms operate in that kind of billable hours model. And this is where you kind of come into. You know, what model should PR agencies be using? And should you know, lots still operate on that kind of billable hours model, which personally I have never been in favor of. There are certain use cases of things like you know, if you're doing crisis comms, it's very hard to come up with anything other than billable hours, because to say in advance kind of what you're going to be doing, etc. Is just impossible. Um, but this whole kind of concept of charging by value, um, is something that's kind of coming to the fore more. But even then that that's not a simple concept, because it's all very well to say charge by value, you know, so you're helping a client to double its sales whoa, we're qu're quids in. That's loads of value. But if your competitor's not charging by value and they're charging by the hour, they're a lot cheaper and they can only increase it by 50%. It's still more cost-effective. The ROI for the client is still better.

Chris Norton 11:43

So if you're like an in-house marketer, right, and you've got suppliers and you've got contracts maybe with a marketing agency or somebody like that, can you now like put in your, get your pdf of your, your contract from your agency, put it through one of the relevant bots?

Chris Norton 11:58

um, one of the artificial intelligence tools claude gemini, copilot whatever you want whichever one you want to choose, whatever your flavor is, and then can you say, uh, find me a loophole to get me out of this contract, or can you? Can you ask it because what is the point of what is going to be the point of lawyers then? If that, because that's ultimately what they're there to advise you, based on the legal clauses and if it does that, then what added value are they going to add?

Stuart Bruce 12:24

sorry lawyers out there, if you're listening I think it's going to be similar to the added value that we as PR professionals add. You know that kind of strategic input and okay, this is what the law says, but actually there are wider implications in terms of your relationship with the society or your relationship with the client. So there's still lots and lots of added value that they could offer. And then also you go into you know there are different types of lawyers. You know often it's not about contracts, it's actually avoiding that dispute

AI in Legal Industry Benefits

Stuart Bruce 12:54

in the first place, so it's about relationships. You know there's something called dispute resolution. You know where you're avoiding going to court. So I think there's lots of scope. But some of the kind of the more mundane things yeah, you know, and it's almost it gives the lawyers the talking points that they're going to use in that discussion.

Will Ockenden 13:12

It doesn't actually do the talking how much I know, traditionally an issue with ai um has been kind of hallucination or misinformation or whatever it might. However, we want to refer to it. If we are using ai in the context of a highly regulated legal document, for example, or any other application where accuracy is paramount, can we trust it 100? Because until we can trust it 100 and it's 100 useless. Well, this depends on who uses it?

Stuart Bruce 13:41

so that so also, I mean like like to use chris's prompt. I don't think that would work. I don't know what the right prompt would be, but I'm fairly sure that wouldn't give you what you wanted prompt would be, but I'm fairly sure that wouldn't give you what you wanted. Um, and there was actually another lawyer that did he kind of um. He's one of the uk's kind of.

Stuart Bruce 13:57

I did it again uk's, england, wales's um, most prominent experts on intellectual property, and he used it to write part of a judgment. Um, and then he gave a speech at a law conference where he found it jolly useful is what he said. But the point is the reason he could do that. He was a speech at a law conference where he found it jolly useful is what he said. But the point is the reason he could do that. He asked it a question he knew the answer to it would have still taken him like half a day to write this judgment, but because he asked it the right question and then could look at it and because he's an expert, no instant if there was a mistake or not, it was a time-saving for him.

Chris Norton 14:31

If you or.

Stuart Bruce 14:31

I tried that we wouldn't have a bloody clue. So you use AI to do stuff you know how to do and to make you better at it so it's a tool that enhances our experience and our knowledge, and I think that's one of the reasons why Microsoft have got it right by calling it co-pilot, because that's what it is it sits next to you, helping you, or menting what you do, making it better-pilot, because that's what it is.

Stuart Bruce 14:52

It sits next to you, helping you or menting what you do making it better, making it easier, making it faster. It doesn't replace.

Chris Norton 14:57

Well, I was talking to Andrew Bruce Smith the other day. He's going to come on the pod because we've got him. He's coming to do some. He's coming up and we've got a pod with him and I was talking to him and he said that his view and I'll get him on the show to ask about it again but he was saying that Copilot is just a bit and I'm paraphrasing shit. He's just like it's still not. And I've seen you raving about Copilot online, like saying that because we were talking about it, we were saying it's price prohibitive at the moment.

Chris Norton 15:36

You've got to pay for a license per person. I get the a co-pilot and it's going to save you time and money, but is it? Is it 20 or 30 dollars per person in your business? And then for the advanced features there's an additional fee. Right is that? Is that right kind?

Stuart Bruce 15:43

of it's about 25 pounds per person in kind of uk money right per month, but it's an annual license fee.

Stuart Bruce 15:50

So you're paying the full year in advance Lovely. And when you consider Microsoft itself is only about 12 quid for the suite. You're actually paying twice as much to get Copilot yeah. So yeah, it looks expensive, but then when you actually break that down you know and actually work it out, you know if it's the cost of one person and you've got 10% productivity improvement, you're easily getting ROI from that. So that's kind of one thing. The shock is because you're paying in advance. That's what makes it expensive, not the actual kind of monthly fee.

Chris Norton 16:27

I wonder if they'll drop the price, whether they've put it up so high because for early adopters, like we, would use it, but whether they're going to let the laggards and the price is going to drop.

Stuart Bruce 16:37

I think we've got to kind of wait and see. I think there's a lot of change happening in this market at the moment. But then you kind of mentioned a couple of things. You mentioned kind of advanced features. The advanced features I think you're probably talking about something called Copilot Studio which is like $200 a month, and it basically lets you create custom GPTs, exactly the same as you can with ChatGPT, which does it for free now, by the way.

Will Ockenden 17:00

Custom.

Stuart Bruce 17:00

GPTs have been opened on the. No, no, that's to use them. Yeah, you can use them, but you can't create them.

Chris Norton 17:06

If you want to create custom GPTs, you've now got to pay the $20 a month. Yeah.

Stuart Bruce 17:10

So they did that, but it's not $20 a month, because $20 a month is for the personal version.

Chris Norton 17:15

Oh, okay, if you wanted to use $25 a month.

Stuart Bruce 17:18

Yeah, but that's the personal version. Oh, okay, if you wanted to use the business version, so you're using it as a team. That's $10 a month extra. Okay, so it co-pilot if you're using the same ones. I think that's where a lot of people get confused.

Chris Norton 17:33

Basically, this is the do you want to use your Samsung phone or do you want to use your Apple phone?

Stuart Bruce 17:37

Well,

AI Integration and Innovation in Industries

Stuart Bruce 17:37

it is kind of, but actually there's something more fundamental. So I would agree with Andrew that kind of performance wise. Sometimes chat GPT is kind of outperforming co-pilot. But you've got to remember they're both based on the same language model. They're both the open ai gpt model. Yeah, so there's not that much difference because it's the same model, um. But the big advantage that co-pilot has in terms of roi and productivity is it's right there in front of you. So it's it's it's so tightly integrated that teams use it more. You know, if you've got to go to another app and remember to go to another app, oh, maybe I can use AI for this.

Stuart Bruce 18:17

That's actually quite For early adopters? Yeah, they will For most people. Are they going to remember, are they going to be bothered, are they going to want to learn how to use something else? But if you're in kind of PowerPoint and you want to do a summary, you know, create a PowerPoint slide off a Word document and you just kind of say, create a PowerPoint off this file, boom, and it's right there in front of you. Or if you're in Outlook I mean, I went on holiday kind of recently, came back to the usual hundreds of emails. I thought, oh, you know, it's going to be morning's work to plough through these Asked Copilot to summarise them, it pulled out the dozen that needed action. On one of them it even said you might not want to prioritise this one because the deadline was Friday and you've already missed it.

Chris Norton 19:02

It literally and does it give you. Does it also generate replies for you as well?

Stuart Bruce 19:06

You can, based on your you know you could use it to do that. I'm kind of, for me that's not necessarily a use case, but that's summary. I mean, in that particular case it didn't save me the three hours because I looked and I thought, okay, I don't really trust it, so I then went, you go back to it. No, no, but the thing is after I spent the three hours ploughing through them, I thought it doesn't do that.

Will Ockenden 19:27

It was right. It doesn't miss a single thing. I suppose it's like auto-drive technology in a Tesla, isn't it? You're? Still not quite sure. Yeah, people will be using it, but it will take a year or two before people genuinely trust it.

Stuart Bruce 19:39

I think it'll be more than a year. See one of my tweets earlier today where I made exactly that point when I was talking about auto-driving cars, the AI and the technology. Is there People? No way Are people going to accept it, use it. That cultural change is going to take a lot longer.

Chris Norton 19:54

I've got a friend who's got a Tesla Model 3 and they've got the auto-drive feature and he drives it to Leeds from Harrogate every day and just presses the button and reads whatever he's reading, let's the car drive him. It starts, stops and it's just and I'm like you trust that to do that, and he's like Well, yeah, someone got caught on the M1, didn't?

Will Ockenden 20:11

they Sat in the passenger seat hands behind their head, while the car drove on the M1.

Chris Norton 20:17

But I was in the car and he pressed it and he said watch and I was like but that actually poses a parallel with AI.

Will Ockenden 20:24

So if a Tesla, if an auto-driving car hits and kills someone.

Chris Norton 20:30

Other brands are available.

Will Ockenden 20:32

Who's to blame? And I suppose the same with ai. So you know, if a legal document, um, I suppose it's always going to be the, the human operative, isn't it the person operating the machinery?

Stuart Bruce 20:44

yeah, and, but that's why, before you know, one of the first steps you need before you start using ai is you need to have that policy in place right you and it and it's.

Stuart Bruce 20:53

It's not kind of one-size-fits-all policy, because different organizations need different ones, but unless you've got that in place, then there's no way a team can be confident about doing even quite simple things, because they need to know, kind of what the parameters are. I mean this whole one about transparency. What does that actually mean? Everybody says, oh, you should be transparent about using AI. Well, is that transparent about using AI to do grammar checking? Is it transparent about if you do the first draft of something using AI but then you change 10%?

Will Ockenden 21:27

of it. Should we be transparent? We've used Google to help inspire an idea yeah, exactly, or gone to the library for inspiration.

Stuart Bruce 21:34

Well, going to the library for inspiration is a really good one, because another thing that people talk about is the fact that it's ingested all this copyright content. Okay, so I was in Washington DC last year at the Provoke Global Summit and the CEO of the Atlantic was there, you know, talking about kind of AI, and the analogy he used is if somebody went to a library and they read every single back issue of the Atlantic and they copied a few pages of it and then they wrote another article off the back of that because the stuff they'd learned and were inspired by, he'd be ecstatic. That's exactly what he published at the Atlantic, for he wants people to do that Now. He then said, yeah, we need to come up with some sort of financial arrangement so we're getting some sort of recompense for that happening. But in terms of, do I want to stop them? Absolutely not. I want to encourage it, and it's interesting that since then, the Atlantic has actually signed a deal with OpenAI, so they now are getting that kind of financial compensation.

Chris Norton 22:39

Which they should do if it's using content, um, interesting, interesting, and there's a lot going on. I mean not not very, very recently. Apple have now done a deal to have um open ai as part of it, as part of its platform. I can't help but feel that apple have just slept, slept, walk into and the ai oblivion, because apple led the way for so many years. You know the, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and now, like I saw someone talking about the fact that their iPad, they launched a new one not too long back and all it was was a little bit thinner.

Stuart Bruce 23:07

Well, you say that, but Apple isn't an innovative company, so it wasn't the first MP3 player, it wasn't the first smartphone.

Chris Norton 23:14

It wasn't the first MP3 player.

Will Ockenden 23:15

It wasn't the first smartphone it wasn't the first tablet.

Stuart Bruce 23:18

What they're good at is kind of repackaging it. Well, it's not even quality. It's about repackaging it into a format that people want.

Will Ockenden 23:25

Yeah, because the iPod came out in 2011,. And you're right, there was MP3 players that had the ability to play podcasts before that, but it was only after the iPod came out in 2011,. And you're right, there was MP3 players that had the ability to play podcasts before that, but it was only after the iPod came out that the term podcast was coined. Yeah, exactly, and so the influence they have is profound, isn't it?

Stuart Bruce 23:43

It is, and so I wouldn't write them out the game at the moment, other than it's quite interesting that they've partnered with OpenAI when Microsoft is the biggest investor in OpenAI.

Chris Norton 23:54

That's what I thought.

Stuart Bruce 23:55

That's the bit that.

Chris Norton 23:55

I. It's bizarre, isn't it? It's like the two worlds have combined there.

Will Ockenden 24:01

So the other big thing, I think, which will be on the minds of our listeners and I'm fascinated to hear your thoughts about it Obviously, the last 12 months, lots happening politically. So we've got an Irish election. We've got an Irish election. We've got the UK election in July. Us is it November, november, november, 2025. And already in the UK election we're starting to see kind of social media and marketing activity and I'm sure a lot of our listeners are thinking, okay, what can? What have we seen so far? And often you see real innovation, don't you? And from kind of political campaigning. What's your take on this? You know, what can the marketing and comms industry learn from what's happening at the moment in this space?

Stuart Bruce 24:37

Well, I think probably the most fascinating thing is, if you look back historically at big elections, there's nearly always new things have emerged that PR and marketing can actually draw from and we can use in the kind of corporate or the consumer space that's not actually happening as much at the moment. We're not seeing that same level of innovation. We are seeing some of the kind of the dangers you know. So you know, in the UK we've had examples of deepfakes being used already.

Deepfakes, Politics, and Social Media

Stuart Bruce 25:09

There was one during kind of the local and mayoral elections where there was a kind of deepfake audio of Sadiq Khan.

Chris Norton 25:15

Yeah, I remember that.

Stuart Bruce 25:16

At the Labour Party conference last year there was a deepfake audio of Keir Starmer. There's been one during this election campaign of Wes Streeting, but not as many as kind of people feared. But also, you know, people get very concerned about kind of deep fakes and kind of you know, and for people that haven't come across the term deep fake before, there's kind of two types. One is a deep fake video where AI is basically being used to make it look like a real person is saying something or doing something they haven't actually done.

Chris Norton 25:51

The first example of that was the Tom Cruise. Well, the biggest example, so that was the Tom Cruise, or the biggest example so it was that Tom Cruise guy who's not the real Tom Cruise, which looks amazing.

Will Ockenden 25:58

He was doing magic tricks, wasn't he? Yeah, it was the most surreal, it was very weird, it was so surreal, yeah, it was really weird. And then there's been a million Gordon Ramsay ones, with him doing pet dog food adverts.

Stuart Bruce 26:16

Yeah, but that same technology can be used for good. There's a really good one quite a few years ago now of David Beckham where he's talking about malaria and he's doing it in about a dozen different languages which he quite clearly doesn't speak, and it's all done by AI and it's really realistic. That's clever. Yeah, for awareness raising. It was amazing. But I think one of the other dangers is we should not let AI blind us from other kind of traditional risks.

Stuart Bruce 26:41

You know so there was a video doing around at the moment of Joe Biden at the G7 summit and he appears, and the edits that are appearing they show him kind of wandering off, as if he doesn't know what's happening, into nowhere, and then I think it's the Italian prime minister has to come back and rescue him and pull him back to the other G7 leaders. Except it's an edited video, what he's actually doing is talking. They've just watched a parachute display and he's talking to one of the display people that had landed. He was squatting on the ground, kind of unpacking his shoot-up, which you can't see in the way they've done the.

Will Ockenden 27:19

I've noticed Donald Trump posting an awful lot of content about Joe Biden tripping over, and you're right, it's all very carefully edited and footage out of context.

Stuart Bruce 27:30

Yeah, anything to show him as kind of the doddery old geezer that feels like dirty tricks, though, yes.

Will Ockenden 27:33

Anything to show him as the kind of the doddery old geezer that feels like dirty tricks, though no, it is dirty tricks Ethically. Where do we stand on that, hasn't?

Chris Norton 27:37

America, yeah, but American, sorry America. But election campaigns have always tried to discredit the other person.

Stuart Bruce 27:44

Yeah, in the US it's big, big budgets and it is a lot dirtier than you get in the UK. So here, if you're seeing kind of dodgy tricks, most of them are going to be by third parties or individuals rather than actual mainstream political parties who can't really you know, quite rightly, don't want to do that. I think the kind of go back to Will's original question. The big learning that I would take so far is if you haven't done, if companies haven't done things like updating their crisis comms policies, you know, 10 years ago we were saying you had to update them for social media. Now you absolutely have to have ways of combating disinformation and misinformation and deep fakes, because you know you don't need to be huge to be a threat from this, because I mean the implication is your chief exec could appear praising a competitor or being crude on camera or speaking inappropriately.

Will Ockenden 28:42

I mean there's no reason why activist investors, for example, might create deep fakes of a chief exec. I mean the threat's real, isn't it?

Stuart Bruce 28:50

Oh, absolutely, and there are actually real examples out there of not just kind of reputational threats like that we've talked about. You know, there was one where there was the UK MD of a power company got a call from the German CEO of the parent company asking him to transfer £250,000 to a Hungarian bank. This was real-time conversation. It had the German accent and it sounded like the CEO, except he wasn't. He was talking to an AI. It was fraud. That's terrible.

Will Ockenden 29:21

The other thing I've seen which I'm really keen to get your view on now. I've noticed the Labour Party Instagram account has really lent into using memes, which feels actually like they're trivial. In some cases it feels like the memes are kind of trivialising some of the issues. I'm sure you've seen that. Do you want to kind of explain what they're doing and what you're taking it?

Stuart Bruce 29:42

as Well. I think there's a couple of interesting things that I've seen Labour doing, and I'm also going to ask you both something in a minute, because that's not what the made Labour digital campaign's about.

Chris Norton 29:58

Change. Going to ask you both something in a minute, because that's not what the made labour digital campaign's about. So change, yeah, you know that. That. See, you've got that. You've got the big message. Yeah, yeah, change, yeah, not strong and stable anymore. Conservatives are not doing that, one are they.

Stuart Bruce 30:03

But the the stuff on instagram and the stuff on tiktok is about understanding the audiences they're on there, um, and actually creating content that's of interest. You know so for me, I'm not a bit. You know, I'm a social media fiend. I absolutely spend, you know, I I want every single platform going. Insta is the one that kind of leaves me a bit cold. I'm just not a big insta fan, uh. So this stuff I've seen it, but kind of because I have to look at it just to see what's happening. Um, tiktok, on the other hand, absolutely love a huge tiktok. Okay, yeah, I definitely get lost in there. Um, and what labor. You know labor's doing a lot on tick tock as well, but that's not because they they see it as there's a huge pool of votes there. What they're actually doing is creating content that the people who are on tick tock might share on a whatsapp group or a facebook group, um, so that's who they're really trying to reach. They're trying to create content that you might share with people Just trying to make noise.

Chris Norton 31:00

Basically Some of it's funny.

Will Ockenden 31:02

Actually. Some of it's quite good, but some of it feels like a middle-aged social media manager trying to be relevant to Gen Z.

Stuart Bruce 31:11

But that actually goes into that sharing thing.

Will Ockenden 31:15

Actually, if you're sharing that with parents or you're sharing well, actually that is what's going to appeal to them, yeah that's an interesting because actually, um, you know, the one group um in my personal network who still share lame social media memes tends to be you aunties, uncles and parents.

Stuart Bruce 31:33

You know people but but it's also you know. I mean, what can kind of corporates learn from the election? There was a really good example last week where the conservatives had a kind of meme of that. They could have this poster, um showing angela rayner, um and um, and then kir Starmer was a glove puppet and in the caption they kind of said about Angela's pulling his strings. So everybody started sharing it, pointed out how stupid they were because it was a glove puppet. Duh, that's what they were trying to get you to do. They deliberately made the ad bad and put a mistake in it so people would share it.

Will Ockenden 32:13

You're still sharing the message they wanted to get across a deep understanding of social media, actually, doesn't it? Yeah?

Chris Norton 32:19

it shows the power of mistakes everybody as well it does. Yeah, well, I mean the um the.

Will Ockenden 32:23

You know the research suggests your social media ad will perform better and get more clicks.

Chris Norton 32:27

If there's a spelling mistake, yeah

Stuart's F*ck Up - Twitter ruins political campaign

Chris Norton 32:29

that's my excuse and I've been living off that for years.

Stuart Bruce 32:33

But you know I was at the Datacom's conference last week and one of the examples being shared was Budweiser and you know he had that kind of whole thing about kind of using, kind of where they got into this whole thing, the whole thing about the trans and they got loads and loads of flack for it.

Stuart Bruce 32:52

But what was quite interesting is all of the spikes in people talking about. It is when Bud said something. So when they responded, every single time they did it, they were increasing the attention and there could have been an argument where actually they could have responded once and then shut up. Right, okay.

Chris Norton 33:12

Interesting, that is interesting.

Will Ockenden 33:13

Now we'll move on, a kind of a We'll move on from politics in a moment. It's an interesting topic.

Chris Norton 33:19

The reason why it's interesting is because Stuart was involved in the Labour Party's social. You've been involved in the Labour Party for years and here we are now on the cusp of maybe the revitalisation of the Labour Party. Are you involved this year?

Stuart Bruce 33:36

in any way. I'm not as actively involved as I've been previously. So way back back in 2007, I ran what was nearly the world's first

Lessons in Campaigning and Communication

Stuart Bruce 33:47

political campaign on Twitter.

Chris Norton 33:49

Is this the fuck-up?

Stuart Bruce 33:50

It might be there we go.

Will Ockenden 33:51

Seamlessly segueing into it. I love it. It might be Se go seamlessly, seamlessly, I love it.

Chris Norton 33:55

It might be media training that oh dear.

Stuart Bruce 33:57

So oh, am I going to talk about the fuck up?

Will Ockenden 34:00

yeah, go on. Okay, you've got to, you've got on the show, you've got so back in 2007.

Stuart Bruce 34:06

Um, I was the director of communications for alan johnson, who was standing deputy leader of the labour party, and Twitter was brand new. You know, I'd only joined it in kind of December, actually, no, no, on the 2nd of January 2007. I can remember when I joined, and by about March April, I had this idea of how we could use it in a political campaign and we would have been the world's first using it with a senior figure. But Senator John Edwards in the States then used twitter to announce his bid to be the democratic candidate for president, and he beat us by about two weeks. Uh, we already had the plan and I was like, oh, we're not gonna be the first anymore and you could have just done a tweet saying this is my first treat, yeah, before hashtag ed bonds so anyway, so we have this plan to use twitter, but there was, and there were, several reasons for it.

Stuart Bruce 34:52

So one the fact is, twitter was so new so you weren't going to reach your stakeholders, your audience, with it. It just you know, it wasn't a platform you'd use for that. So people say, why on earth would you use it then? Well, we used it for kind of two main reasons. One was to actually get attention for the fact we were doing something innovative and we were pushing the boundaries of campaigning and we were willing to learn and experiment, and that would become a news story, and it did.

Stuart Bruce 35:19

You know, we, you know, we had things like a full page in the guardian about it. We had like other news stories. So that was one of the objectives. It was to drive media coverage because it was innovative. The second was and this is the fuck up is at the time Twitter had you could actually get tweets by text message Okay, yeah, SMS, or send them by text message SMS. You didn't actually need a smartphone or the Twitter app. So we had to reach about 200,000 or maybe even more, I can't remember the number Labour Party members and one of the things we were doing was, good old post, we were posting a leaflet out to them. But how do we keep up that communication? Ooh, I know we can send them free text messages using Twitter. So we included details of how people could subscribe. In the gap between us printing the leaflet and it going to the post and it arriving on people's doormats, Twitter withdrew the service. How long was that? What was that? It was like about a week, Okay.

Chris Norton 36:21

So literally, so not long then.

Stuart Bruce 36:23

Oh no, no. When we approved the copy, this was a blooming good idea. By the time it lands on people's doormats, it was a bloody bad idea, or 200,000 of them, yeah, and that was an example. So lesson learned don't rely on free services or something important, yeah.

Will Ockenden 36:38

And did you realise after the mailer had gone out? Did you get loads of complaints? I mean, at what point did you realise? Oh shit.

Stuart Bruce 36:45

Well, no, no, it was. Yeah, it was when the news story came out, because it was like, literally, as it was like the day or maybe a day before that, they were due to land on people's doormats. Did we get many complaints? No, because actually this was kind of early days, because no? One could tweet you yeah exactly, it was early days, so it was quite hard for them to complain.

Chris Norton 37:04

Good, that's what we like.

Will Ockenden 37:05

That sounds awful, actually, doesn't it? So you could tweet, but you couldn't actually look at Twitter. Yeah, look at twitter. Yeah, no, no, you could, because you could get me.

Stuart Bruce 37:12

You could get replies by text message oh, right, yeah um, so they withdrew both sides, yeah, right they literally just turned it off overnight. There wasn't even like a notice period so on onto this.

Will Ockenden 37:24

There's been a few other back to the kind of the campaigning, um. There's been a few other fuck-ups I can think of and I think there's some more parallels here with business leaders. So we've obviously seen rishi sunak soaking wet. I'm having an interview, um he then can only get wetter he then, um, you know he's done a number of other things and inevitably we'll probably do more things. He left the d-day commemorations early, didn't he?

Chris Norton 37:50

yeah, that was, that was a big fuck up.

Will Ockenden 37:52

So what's your take on that? And and also kind of um, is there parallels for chief execs that are putting themselves out there?

Chris Norton 37:59

um, you know, I've got a second a supplementary question to that, because what you mentioned there is interesting because these are different strategies we're talking about in comms and political ed davy and the lib dems going with our last silly pr just silly stunts like falling off paddle boards Typical Boris Johnson. On the what?

Will Ockenden 38:17

do you call it? What was that? Because they're the challenger brand, in effect, aren't they? So have they got to do that stuff? That's a really long question for you to break down.

Stuart Bruce 38:25

No, let's deal with the Lib Dem one. First, because I actually think their strategy is really smart, because in this election it was going to be impossible for them to get cut through. You know the fact that Ed Davey's been doing these things and most of the time you actually know what his message was, I mean the paddleboard. What was his message?

Chris Norton 38:46

I don't know, I didn't see it.

Stuart Bruce 38:49

Ok, go on, will, don't let us down, he's going to go on.

Will Ockenden 38:53

Will, don't let us down. What issue was he? Trying to highlight the the the water, the the water company issue yeah, the sewage.

Chris Norton 39:01

Ask me that again and we'll do that. Start with the paddle board. No, no, I prefer that version. Let's use that version. Let's use that version. At least I could, at least I could, at least I knew the answer. You're better than you. The clean water from the sewage industry? Yeah, I've got you. I've got you, yeah.

Stuart Bruce 39:14

Yeah, and you know so, every time he's done it there has actually been a hard message behind it, and usually that message has got some cut through. So I think it's incredibly smart.

Will Ockenden 39:24

And he's got a disproportionate share of voice. Really isn't he for a party that's yeah absolutely, and the thing is as well.

Stuart Bruce 39:32

They're targeting specific seats. They could, depending which poll you believe, they could be up to 50 seats, but these are going to tend to be seats where they're taking them. It's kind of straight Tory Lib Dem challenges and sometimes they're a long way behind. So actually getting that cut through and that attention is really important.

Will Ockenden 39:53

And I think they're doing a really good job of it.

Stuart Bruce 39:54

brands can learn from that, can't they? Oh, absolutely, I mean this all well also, it's not. I think part of it is kind of doing these silly stunts.

Chris Norton 40:00

It's not taking yourself too seriously, yeah yeah, it's not as long as your message, as long as your, your sensible political message does get through yeah, as long as there's a purpose behind it and then you're not just doing it for the sake of it.

Stuart Bruce 40:12

And I think sometimes I mean I have this. I can't kind of talk about who it is, but I had this conversation with a client last year where, god, their brand guidelines look like they've been written by a robot, um, but a very aggressive robot and you were like you can't do this, you can't do that, you must do this seriously. Who out in the real world cares?

Chris Norton 40:35

nobody. I always think that was brand guidelines and there is, there must be this amount of you know space around this logo.

Will Ockenden 40:41

On this background, there is a shift towards kind of humor in tv advertising and branding. You know, and you're right, it sometimes people do. Humor is a good way to get cut through, isn't it?

Stuart Bruce 40:52

no, absolutely is, and I think we should see kind of more, even in kind of quite serious spaces, you know. I mean it can be nothing more serious than some of the things the Lib Dems were talking about, yet they could do it effectively. So, yeah, I want to see more kind of brands and corporates embracing that, not just in the consumer space.

Will Ockenden 41:14

You know this whole cliche about people buy from people. Same applies in corporate and B2B, so back on to soaking wet Rishi. Sunak. Oh yeah, what's your take on that then?

Stuart Bruce 41:24

And what can businesses learn from that? Where do you even start? I think the number one thing businesses can learn from that is actually have decent corporate affairs people. I mean, for fuck's sake, I can answer that.

Chris Norton 41:34

What idiot thought that doing a shoot outside when it's raining, when they've got an inside, they spent all? Boris and the team spent all that money on the inside.

Stuart Bruce 41:42

Okay, now actually, bizarrely, I'm going to defend them on that.

Chris Norton 41:45

Ooh, okay.

Stuart Bruce 41:46

Because they couldn't use that inside that new space because that's government and this was a political announcement.

Will Ockenden 41:52

Oh, okay, because that's government and this was a political announcement.

Stuart Bruce 41:53

So you can see, when the lectern came out onto Downing Street, because it didn't have the crown, it didn't have the crest on the front. That's how you knew it was going to be the election announcement because it was a political thing and lots of people were flagging that about why didn't they use it. It's because they couldn't.

Will Ockenden 42:06

Were they worried about a Steve McLaren Wally with a brolly comparison?

Stuart Bruce 42:16

Well, but the thing is there are loads of he could have stood there with a brolly, yeah. So shortly after it I shared this picture of Obama showing you can look cool with a brolly in the rain. Yeah, and then and one example is a friend of mine, Kia Dawson he did a photo call with Ed Miliband where it was in the rain and it was like a really cool framed shot and you had kind of Kia standing there in the background holding the bully over the bacon sandwich.

Stuart Bruce 42:38

No, it wasn't the bacon sandwich, ed Miliband, so you could have done it. Why they didn't? I think because there's so many of them. Okay, we know there are comms people in the team. Are they any good? We don't know that bit. Are they being listened to? We don't know that bit. Are they being listened to? Um, we don't know that bit. I. I think the the big takeaway for for corporates is you actually need to take this stuff seriously. You know it is. You know it is not minor. This actually is having an impact on the polls. You know so it's not kind of frippery on the side. Actually, the way, the way you do these things really does matter. So not only do you need really good people in the team, you actually have to listen to the advice that they're giving you.

Will Ockenden 43:19

And it's understanding what. Yeah, it's understanding what now, in this online world, can start trending and can start being shared.

Chris Norton 43:25

Also, the bloody visual, the actual visual of you getting piss wet through. Stood outside number 10 dad's room. What plonker said that was a good idea. Like you stood outside 10 Dad's Drink. What plonker said that was a good idea. Like you stood outside. Like Stuart and I, when we worked together, would have gone. Rishi mate, you're going to look like a wet fish. Stood outside getting wet, talking about I mean, because that's all you could hear was and he was just getting wet and wet and I just I was looking at him and I stopped listening to what he was saying and thought he looks like he's getting drunk. Is no one going to give him an umbrella?

Stuart Bruce 43:55

It was ridiculous. But the thing that's so astounding is there's such, you know, some. Often these mistakes are quite hard to spot. So there was another one that went round where he was standing in front of a kind of display on the wall and it looked like he had Mickey Mouse ears. Now that, to be fair, you probably have to be a commerce person or somebody that's used to doing protocols to spot that one.

Will Ockenden 44:19

But Le.

Stuart Bruce 44:20

Broly in the rain.

Chris Norton 44:21

You didn't need any expertise whatsoever to work that out, and I do feel a little bit sorry for Rishi, because there's another one as well that he dropped a day later, which was he was in Wales and he turned around to some Welsh people and went. Are you looking forward to the Euros? He was in Wales and he turned around to some Welsh people and went.

Stuart Bruce 44:33

Are you looking forward to the Euros?

Chris Norton 44:34

And they were like Rishi they're not in the Euros.

Stuart Bruce 44:37

Yeah, yeah, but I think there's two different issues here, so some of them are mistakes by you. Know the things? Why on earth isn't there a team sorting these things?

Will Ockenden 44:45

out.

Stuart Bruce 44:46

I think things like the thing about the kind of the Sky TV dish and the Wales in the euros is more to do with him. Yeah, actually not being prepared enough no, no, it's not about him not being. Is this is him? You know he doesn't.

Will Ockenden 45:00

He doesn't relate to the kind of the challenges that normal people have got. The common touch has he? And yeah, you know, the sky tv comment what the multi-billionaire, the appropriate way to feel that would have been to admit he's. He's from a. He's fortunate enough to be from a privileged background, but he empathises and he knows people who did struggle when you know, did and do struggle, instead of kind of scoffing and laughing and fudging it. I mean, he's a poor communicator, essentially is what it comes down to.

Stuart Bruce 45:28

No, absolutely. And I just want to kind of go back, because you also mentioned D-Day, oh yeah, the commemorations, yeah, I mean, leaving that early is not even in the same category as the others, and I have knocked on doors since then for the Labour Party and you don't need to say people will bring it up organically, they will talk about it Because they're angry about it. They are angry about it, they are upset about it yeah, I thought it's a massive own goal. That.

Chris Norton 45:59

Yeah.

Stuart Bruce 45:59

And for me it kind of resonates slightly differently because you know lots of people can talk about grandparents or whatever that were at D-Day. So my granddad was in Burma D-Day. He was kind of fighting the Japanese in the Burmese jungle. So D-Day doesn't kind of resonate with me in the same way, but it does resonate with a lot of people. And then just things like you know, rishi Sunak's constituency is Richmond and if you've ever kind of driven up the A1, you'll see as you're

Impacts of Politics on Business Communications

Stuart Bruce 46:29

driving north you've got a Catholic army base on your right. It's the UK's biggest army base in his constituency.

Stuart Bruce 46:42

I mean the political thing.

Chris Norton 46:43

it's interesting how it's all panning out. It's labours to lose, really, isn't it? And then the only thing that is happening now is our good friend Mr Farage is making a return and apparently just yesterday they overtook the Conservatives and they're saying now, if you've got a vote, put it towards reform. Whatever you think of him whatever you think of Nigel Farage and I've got my own opinions on him but whatever you think of him, he is a good communicator. He seems to tap into something.

Will Ockenden 47:10

He's Marmite, isn't he, and is that because he's another challenger brand? He can do anything and say anything in the way that perhaps the mainstream parties can't I can just say, yes, you can answer the question.

Stuart Bruce 47:28

For me there will. Uh, yeah, it's the fact that. So two things is one he's relatable. Yeah, so love him or loathe. He doesn't look like the kind of stereotypical politician. But there's also the thing that actually the Lib Dems share they know they're not going to be in power. They can say or do whatever they want. They're never, ever going to need to kind of fulfil or kind of live up to it, and it gives them a lot more leeway. And you know, if you looked at kind of Labour's manifesto launch, it was okay, you know, but that's actually what it needed to be. You know you weren't meant to get any stellar, exciting moments out of it. You just needed to look at Keir Starmer and the shadow cabinet team and say, yeah, I can imagine them in government.

Chris Norton 48:10

I don't think you have to imagine much longer. To be honest Fascinating.

Will Ockenden 48:15

Fascinating. I don't think you have to imagine much longer, to be honest. Um, fascinating, fascinating insight, and I think how have we got to politics? Well, I just think that the parallels you know, the parallels that business can learn from that and those own goals you know and and in retrospect, a lot of it seems so obvious. But you absolutely need to cover this stuff off and identify risk points and risk factors. I mean it's. It just shows a massive lack of awareness really doesn't it?

Chris Norton 48:35

Yeah, absolutely. You've attended a lot of summits recently, and you've attended the Amex Summit. So what's changed from last year to this?

Stuart Bruce 48:45

year, okay. So yes, I was at the Amex Summit in Sofia and I think there were lots of. Every time I go, um, the thing that about amic is I don't learn a great deal, because there's such a strong community that a lot of people, if they've got interesting things to say, they've already shared them in blog posts or articles or podcasts or something. So I don't necessarily learn lot. But what you do get by going and talking to like-minded people and listening to the speakers is I think we all have imposter syndrome and you think, is this advice I'm giving clients really the best advice? And you kind of go there and you listen to people and it inspires you to kind of come back and sometimes you've got to give. You're trying to convince clients to do things that are really difficult, you know, and they don't necessarily want to do it, and I always come back inspired of being able to kind of push them and persuade them that actually what I am saying is the right thing to do and you know, and thinking of new ways to get them to listen. So that's kind of one thing, but a kind of couple of other themes that emerged is one was this whole thing about the difference between reputation and brand, or reputation and relationships and performance, marketing, and just an acknowledgement of how important reputation and relationships are. And it's all very well looking at things like last click and attribution and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah which, yeah, you can do, but but that is never, ever going to be enough.

Stuart Bruce 50:18

You've, you're always going to need that kind of foundation to build from um, and I think we're doing a lot more now about thinking, okay, so how do we use data and analytics for that foundation? How do we use it to understand who our stakeholders are? How do we use it to inform behavior? And I think kind of one of the key things for me is put yourself into a client perspective and you're the CEO or you're the chief finance officer. Which are you going to be willing to pay most for? Somebody that can say, okay, this is what we did for you and this is how much money it's made. So you're kind of giving them some historic information. Or when you're using data and analytics to provide insight and say, if you do this, this is the opportunity you've got, this is what you could make. That is far more valuable in the C-suite than this historic reporting that we're too often focused on.

Will Ockenden 51:14

And is there a kind of an incremental movement towards measurement? You know it is, is the amec framework. Are these kind of annual summits? Are they actually driving better practice? Are we actually getting anywhere?

Stuart Bruce 51:24

yeah, we are. I think it is a slow process, slow process, um, but we are getting there, and I think the reason it's a slow process was actually encapsulated by one of the presentations, which was Professor Jim McNamara, who's kind of a leading light academic in kind of comms measurement, and he ran a session that was an hour long where he claimed we were all going to earn a third of a PhD in an hour.

Stuart Bruce 51:53

Quite an amusing concept, and I think we did, but it was a brilliant session.

Stuart Bruce 51:59

One of the things that he kind of covered in that, and Tim Bailey, my business partner, kind of turned to me and said this is what we do, and it is it's exactly what we do with clients, but we don't explain it in the same way as Jim did. He explained it far more clearly, in a much better way than we've been doing, and basically he talked about something called the three of theory of change and that's about if you're measuring and you guys do this because we've, you know, you're using, you're using some of this here at prohibition yeah, um, is you don't start by measurement at the end and thinking about, kind of you know how you're going to. You start by thinking, okay, what result do we want to achieve? Yeah, yeah, is it sales, Is it recruitment, is it staff retention? You start with the result.

Stuart Bruce 52:40

Yeah, and that's what Jim's kind of you know one hour was all about was how, getting you to think about okay, if that's the result we want. You know what are the changes. What do we need to put in place to get that change to?

Stuart Bruce 52:52

get to that result.

Will Ockenden 52:54

Yeah, good.

Will Ockenden 52:55

Yeah, and I think we've obviously worked with you to develop our own NAMIC proposition at Prohibition. I think we have found it such a fantastically useful planning tool and often being so clear on what result we want to get, etc. We can actually build in those measurement elements at the start of the campaign, because there's nothing worse than getting to the end of the campaign and thinking, shit, how are we going to measure this? We haven't even got the capabilities to do that. So, as a planning tool and we started rolling it out amongst our clients and probably a third of our clients now now use it. And yeah, I don't know my question.

Stuart Bruce 53:31

It's a rambling r, that no no, so you didn't have the

Value of Client-Centric Approach

Stuart Bruce 53:35

result in mind when you started.

Will Ockenden 53:36

Yeah, that's exactly right. I should have used Damek for that question.

Stuart Bruce 53:39

But no, just seriously. I mean I don't want to kind of blow your guys' troubles for you, but actually the fact that you're taking this approach with clients gives you a real competitive edge. Because I'm just constantly astounded when we kind of see some people out there and you think seriously, that's kind of your approach to working with clients and you think that's going to add value for them and that's going to give them something that's worth paying big bucks for. You're actually walking the talk and doing it.

Chris Norton 54:06

Yeah, we always ask somebody when they come on this show.

Stuart Bruce 54:08

as you know, you've been on it before if you were us, who's the next person you'd?

Will Ockenden 54:16

invite on this show and why actually I'm going to say jim mcnamara, yeah jim's a deep dive into amic.

Stuart Bruce 54:21

Yeah, jim's a really good guy. He's based in sydney, so you'll have to shuffle your time zones around a bit.

Chris Norton 54:26

And what? Which businesses are you working for? Um?

Stuart Bruce 54:29

he's a professor. Oh, I'm gonna get the right they've got. They'll get the name of his university. Right, it'll be upset. It's the university of technology in sydney so um fascinating chat.

Will Ockenden 54:39

Stewart, thank you very much for that, and we look forward to having you on in another 12 months when we can look back at the election and we can look at how um advanced we all are with ai brilliant.

Chris Norton 54:48

Look forward to it I'll have just replaced him with AI by then.