Your AI + Comms Transformation Guide

Being the 'Humanizer' is Your Only Career Insurance Policy

Today, CNBC reported that OpenAI now has more than 3 million paid business account users on ChatGPT – up from the 2 million it reported in February, earlier this year.

This signals that AI continues to grow its influence in the way businesses work, including automating and developing communications programs, messaging, content, and materials.

I’m going to hold your hand while I say this … for comms people, AI is no longer a nice to have. It’s going to fundamentally change the way we work – it will change literally every job, every material, and every process that we currently develop and manage.

If you’re a comms person that is not using AI, or not trying to learn how to use it today, your career is in big trouble. This is no longer theory – it’s common sense.

Here’s just a few of the predictions I have for Comms People in the world of AI based on what we’re seeing today:

• Comms teams will still exist at large companies, but will be significantly smaller. People who are being laid-off from full-time roles at large companies will have a hard time finding new jobs in other large companies because of this.

• At Startups, comms will no longer be a full time job. A comms person will be tapped-in when they need you to build a strategy or system for a moment in time or provide council.

Here’s Comms People’s big opportunity: Comms People are the humanizers of the beige content AI creates.

We’ll bring life, depth, and color back into a world of content where everyone is using the same list formats, emojis, and grammatical structures. It’s now our job to help brands find Dorothy over the rainbow, and to turn brands and executives back into living, breathing, caring beings.

I saw a quote recently that said, ‘slop slop everywhere but nothing here to drink.’ AI content slop is already swirling around us. Our biggest strength will be to create real narratives for brands and executives without AI, and then use those narratives to feed authentic, humanized, independent brand language into AI systems and projects to help propel your original thinking into AI-generated systems and content that leverage your original thoughts.

This poses a huge opportunity for comms consultants to become a highly skilled, highly efficient team of one.

Consultants who are skilled in how to develop AI products and systems to serve their clients will be the winners across the communications industry. You’ll use AI to do your job faster, while remaining the expert communicator who can humanize language and provide counsel, becoming less of a press release machine, and more of a business therapist.

Think of this this way, with thousands of startups popping up across the US every year (and will likely accelerate due to the access AI gives us to easily create businesses overnight), if you have the right systems and products in place, instead of serving 4 clients, you can serve 20.

This means we also need to reimagine how we think about our services and pricing as comms consultants.

If we set up AI systems to serve our clients faster, we no longer need to charge them a $10k per month retainer. Instead, what if we could charge them $2k per month for access to the materials and systems you’ve set up for them, and charge additional fees for when they need the extra council. Monthly, you’re still making the same amount, but with less work, and more strategic support (which is the fun stuff anyway!).

What I mean by strategic support, is the human piece of the messaging and communications puzzle.

The relationships. The metaphors. The human experience. We are the humanizers.

In all honesty, we don’t know what’s going to happen to our jobs – and I’m not just talking about comms people. Everyone’s job is at the mercy of AI – from truck drivers, to receptionists, to pharmacists, to lawyers, and accountants. But this is why I find communities like Comms People so incredibly important — so we can help educate, inspire, and debate how to remain not only relevant, but vital in the age of AI.

We’re at a critical point in the history of our industry where we need to lift each other up through educated and innovative thinking so we can survive and come out on the other end stronger and smarter.