The Winning Enterprise Playbook for CCOs in 2026

Hello everybody. Happy Thursday. Welcome to today's webinar discussion hosted by the team here at Clipbook. We're really excited, so we'll go ahead and jump right in. Jim, are you ready?

Let's go.

All right. Awesome. We'll start with some really quick intros. To introduce myself, my name is Adam Joseph. I'll be your host today. I'm the founder and CEO here at Clipbook. At Clipbook, we're an AI research and analysis platform for communications teams. And since our launch a couple of years ago, we've grown to support over 200 enterprises globally. And today for our discussion, we have an absolute legend in global communications joining us, Jim O'Leary. I'll introduce Jim in a moment. I'll say our topic of discussion today is the winning enterprise playbook for CCOs in 2026. We'll be discussing how communications leaders should be thinking about the year ahead amidst geopolitical volatility, artificial intelligence acceleration, AI acceleration, and really major shifts in media and influence writ large. And to speak to that topic, set of very simple topics I think we'll cover, we have our good friend Jim O'Leary here with us today. If you work in PR communications, you've probably heard of Weber Shandwick. You've probably heard of Jim O'Leary. He really needs no introduction, but I will say Jim is the global president and North America CEO of Weber Shandwick. One of the world's leading global communications firms. Weber Shandwick represents over half of the Fortune 100. Jim himself is one of the most influential leaders in the communications industry with decades of experience advising some of the most influential leaders globally. So we're in for a really insightful, engaging discussion. Let's go ahead and get started. For our audience, just a quick reminder, please drop your questions into the Zoom Q&A function. Drop them as they come up. I'll read them. We'll dive into them throughout the conversation. Jim, to turn it over to you, you just returned from Davos last month. I know it's a huge moment for CEOs, CCOs globally, for many communications professionals. And I read a great story actually from Axios and Eleanor Hawkins, who wrote about how CCOs and the communications function are really shining at Davos. It was really a breakthrough moment in many ways. You're back in Chicago now. What are your reflections? Tell us about the time in Davos.

Yeah, back in Chicago. It was a very interesting Davos. Right. And by the way, Adam, obviously, thanks for, thanks for having me on. Delighted to be here. Appreciate the kind introduction. And congratulations on your most recent fundraising round. Well done. So, so look, I think when it comes to Davos, this year was arguably the most consequential Davos that I have been to in the past decade. And I'll tell you why I think that's the case. And then maybe we'll talk about like some of the themes emerging from it and what it means for comms because all of these things relate to each other. So first, as it relates to Davos, typically Davos, at least in recent decades, certainly the decades that I've been going, Davos was defined by a number of things that held true. It was defined by a focus on multilateralism. It was defined by a focus on a key set of issues around climate, around sustainability, around responsible AI more recently, around like cooperation, collaboration between business and society and government and NGOs, and could be a little bit clubby and insular at times, but it was very much— that's the classic Davos mold, right? And then enter this year's Davos, which was effectively two Davoses happening at the same time. So there was the Davos I just described, which is the classic Davos, and then there was mega Davos defined by President Trump's delegation. Coming in focused on unilateralism, focused on America First, came in clearly ready for battle and pushing on all of the issues that we all read about and those of us who were there experienced pushing on Greenland, pushing on NATO, pushing on Venezuela, any number of others. And there's a couple ironies here, right? The first is that these two groups were in the World Economic Forum. They're a forum. And the theme of the WEF annual meeting, the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Dallas this year, the theme was a spirit of dialogue. And of course, there was very limited dialogue between these two groups, between the two Davoses. There, there was an enormous amount of dialogue happening, but it was primarily where these groups were speaking past each other to different audiences outside of Davos. And I guess in some ways this reflects what's going on in the world of polarization in general. I guess maybe the ultimate irony, too, was the fact that all of this was occurring at the same time actually did make this year's Davos annual meeting arguably the most consequential in a long time. That was kind of like the macro overlay of Davos. Set that aside for a minute. In terms of the issues in Davos that were most top of mind to CEOs, and then the implications of that on, on our profession. Two very clear issues that rose to the top. I was at this lunch, I guess it would've been maybe Tuesday, Wednesday in Davos hosted by Alan Murray. You guys know Alan Murray from Wall Street Journal. He leads the CEO Council there. And the two issues that were most talked about and by the CEOs that were at this lunch were geopolitics and AI transformation. And so from a geopolitical perspective, I think the takeaway, and a group of CEOs effectively said this during the lunch, is that CEOs nowadays, many of them essentially need to be geopolitical actors, global geopolitical actors in a way that previously they just didn't have to. And in many instances, CEOs weren't necessarily trained for this. Certainly, I don't know how much of a business school focus it is at the average business school to be a global geopolitical actor, but it's increasingly a key aspect of the job and one that a lot of CEOs are still trying to figure out how to navigate. Set that aside for a minute. Then second, no surprise, AI transformation. And by the way, no surprise on geopolitical either, given that what was going on with the two Davoses, the Trump administration, Trump administration and China, Trump administration, Russia, right? All of the rest of it. On the AI transformation front, this one was quite interesting. And I think the main observation is it related to see the CEOs in the room, the same lunch. And then I heard this throughout the week because I met with and spoke with a number of our clients and a ton of CEOs, which is, of course, the best part of Davos. It's like arguably the most concentration of power that you'll see over the course of a year in a single week, which is why so many people go there. On AI transformation, here's my takeaway. I think that in previous technology transformations, most CEOs felt like it was essentially something that was assigned, they would assign to the chief technology officer. And I think that it's very clear that AI transformation is not something that CEOs feel like can just be simply assigned to the chief technology officer. They feel very personally accountable for the success or failure of the AI transformation of the businesses they're running. And there's some great data that came out of BCG during Davos, actually, about this. And I think, what did they find? By the way, BCG, your former employer, great company and client of ours.

I've got my BCG coffee mug here.

That is excellent. They're a great client of ours and I need one of those coffee mugs too. BCG had this data that they released and it essentially found that, and I'm going to paraphrase it, but I'm sure people will be able, you can go to Russell Dudner if you really want more, all the detail on this. He's at BCG, he runs communications there among other things. 75% of CEOs feel personally accountable for AI transformation to such an extent that 50% of CEOs feel like if they are unsuccessful in driving a transformation at their organization, they will be personally held accountable and potentially lose their jobs as a result of not being successful. And so AI transformation, geopolitics, this is kind of like the macro context, right? And then of course, and I'm sure you'll ask me about this, but there's specific implications for each of these as it relates to our profession. And I think those are going to be the defining trends of 2026.

Yeah. Now, so looking at Davos, where there's the two Davoses, as you described, right?

Yeah.

Davos, there's MAGA Davos. For a big company that wants to stay, say, multilateral, wants to break through over the next 5, 10 years through administrations, right? This is a dicey context. And it's also really one which is high stakes. They're going to the, one of the most salient power stages in the world, as you described. It's really press heavy. Media heavy. It's a massive market signal, especially for public markets.

Yep.

What's actually a victory for them coming out of Davos? What is the home run? What is that? Where are they playing offense? Where are they playing defense?

I think that a victory this year will probably have been defined more by some of the less public business deals that they did, whereas in the past it might have been a balance of that and then some more public commitments made, particularly around some of the key issues that in recent times have come under a little bit of pressure, particularly in the United States, right around things like DEI, ESG, et cetera. And in the past, the typical playbook for a multinational CEO focused on global business would be to come in and to do whatever type of dealmaking that they were doing, a bunch of business meetings with other senior-level people who were all happened to be in Davos that week and then make a few announcements. And I think that this year there was less of the announcement-making and arguably maybe even more as a result of the business dealings. So I think that's probably how a lot of them would define a win. I think for our profession, let me tell you about some wins, because this is where it gets arguably a little more interesting for the people who've joined this discussion today. When I look at geopolitics and I look at the fact that CEOs effectively now many of them need to be geopolitical actors. I see that as an opportunity for our profession, right? So if you're a, if you're a CEO, you are a geopolitical actor. Who do you turn to for counsel? Who do you turn to for support as you are navigating all of this complexity? And you look at the functions across your organization and of course there's functions like legal and then there's other functions like communications or government relations. Right? There's regions that historically might have been a little bit less active in certain things like this that are now getting arguably more pressure, but as a result of that, arguably more opportunity to shine and create value. And so I see that as a good thing. And I think that it's a, a way for our profession to continue to exert more influence across the C-suite as CEOs are under more pressure to be geopolitical actors. Second category on the AI transformation front, Adam, this is your business, right? But I see this as a huge opportunity for our profession. I think that if I remember correctly, and this is separate research also from BCG. So I'm doing a little, I guess apparently I'm doing a bit of a BCG commercial right now. They put out good research and you can drop it into the, you can put this into the show notes or whatever. I think that they did some research where they looked at like all of the functions that were, that were going to be impacted by AI transformation and determined that like the communications function was one where 80% of the tasks and activities that a communications function did sat in what they called the AI collaboration sweet spot. AI collaboration sweet spot being where the combination of humans and AI together create a force multiplying effect. And with that as context, I would argue that the opportunity for our profession to deliver increased value as a result of using AI as a force multiplier, as a result of using AI to power the function in a way that creates arguably greater scale, precision, speed, any number of other things that are still even more aspirational than those. I think this presents our profession with a really strong opportunity too.

To that note, I would love to shift gears a little bit and talk about what is the role of the modern chief communications officer? What does that really look like in 2026? And it's interesting, Davos is such an interesting, salient reflection of how the role of the CCO has actually evolved, right? And how it's changed.

Yeah.

Point, increasingly reporting right to the CEO, managing a much more complex inter-functional set of considerations. If it's geopolitics, if it's risk and compliance, if it's trust and safety, AI transformation, so on and so forth. Maybe we can just start from the top, like looking at the last 3, 5 years of our profession, right? How has that role of the CCO really changed and evolved?

So I think it's evolved in a number of ways. Many of them are positive. So first, we're seeing more chief corporate affairs officers than we had previously. I think the latest data suggests that more than 25% of the Fortune 100 have Chief Corporate Affairs Officers. This is oftentimes, though not always, an elevation beyond just the communications function for a communications leader or a public affairs, government relations leader over a combined function of those, sometimes inclusive of maybe a sustainability or ESG, if they're still calling it that. Yeah.

The CCO role evolving to the head of corporate affairs, that pillar.

Yes.

Communications, public affairs, ESG, sometimes investor relations, et cetera. Exactly.

Yeah. And so I would argue that is the result of the fact that that role's more materially important than it's ever been. And so that's why some of those things are being collapsed together. I also think that in general, given the pressures that CEOs are under, and you've seen the data, I don't remember what the latest cut looks like. Directionally, it's something along the lines of the CEO topple rate is arguably higher than it's ever been. And CEOs are either leaving or being fired at a rate faster than they had been in the past because they have to do everything they had to do in the past. But then they also have to do so many things on top of that, including navigating geopolitical risk and transformation and pushback against things that in the past 5 years were being championed, maybe around social issues and racial justice issues and public health issues and all the rest. CEO's job's tougher. Role more important as a result of that, helping navigate the complexity, arguably more materially important. Overall, that's the, I think the direction of travel. I do think that if, based on all the CCOs that I was spending so much time with in Davos, in addition to the, call it the classic CCO skillset, on top of that, what is in today's world even more important? So certainly we're seeing more communications leaders, corporate affairs leaders, you know, come out of politics. I think this is of course a reflection of the fact that like these lines that used to be a little bit more silent are blurring. And having, if your company is going to be embroiled in potential political situations, like it or not, it's certainly helpful to have someone who, you know, who has a background in politics. So we're seeing that definitely much more focus on AI fluency. Than in the past. And this is not a surprise either. By the way, this is not universal. None of these are universal. There's plenty of heads of communications who are not either of the two things that I just mentioned, but this is what we're seeing more of. And for something looking at trend lines, right? And then, and this has always been the case, but it's probably even more so now, but like business acumen, right? Like understanding the business, not just understanding the communications side of the business, but actually understanding the business of the business. Always arguably one of the most important things to have that type of credibility and influence across the C-suite. So I think that those are all super important. Also, the two— call them skills, I might maybe call them that in today's world are rising up, have risen up. You have resilience in the same way that corporate resilience has risen in order of importance. I think communications ability, communications leader ability to be resilient in the face of complexity, challenge, etc. Is a top priority. And then I would argue agility, just given the pace at which things are changing, the pace at which inbound is coming in and going out. And if I want to use terms that sometimes can get a little bit jargony and overused, but are correct, I would say resilience and agility rise to the top of that list.

Jim, I have to say one of my favorite like hobbies throughout the week is just to sit there and scroll LinkedIn and Sima, and I probably spend what like a, I don't know, my 22-year-old counterpart does on TikTok. That's like me on LinkedIn.

And yeah.

On LinkedIn, one of the things I keep seeing are job postings from like big AI companies, think OpenAI, from Anthropic, from big tech companies around the chief storyteller or something to that effect. And these are executive roles, right? These are paying $400,000 a year. And I'm curious, I know you've commented a little bit on this generally, but in terms of where's the CCO function really moving? How does the storytelling function really play into that? How do you see that as, as where, where the fuck is really going?

Yeah, for a very long time now, the CCO and the communications function has always played a central role in crafting and telling a company's story. And arguably for the AI companies, that's even more important in today's world because they're facing a bit of an uphill battle on a couple of different narrative threads. And they want to get out ahead of that and rightfully so. They're also faced, they also have some narrative tailwinds as it relates to some of the financial narrative threads. So they want to capitalize on those. I have a number of friends and former colleagues who are now working at some of the companies that you mentioned. I think obviously it's a very interesting time to be in the middle of all of that, given where things are headed and the current race towards IPO that we're— horse race towards IPO that we're seeing is, I guess, another factor that you could layer into that too. Yes, storytelling central to what we do has been for a while and in the current environment is no less important than it's ever been. The way to go about it is what's changing, right? Media's changing. Used to be traditional media. Now we see traditional media in many instances on the decline, though not all. And we see the rise of essentially individuals as media, right? Using social, as you just said, you're scrolling LinkedIn, you're looking at what essentially is a bunch of individual publisher people publishing. And half the time, you know, nowadays individuals as media are just as credible as institutions as media. And then AI as media. And then what do you do as a communications professional to influence AI in the same way that you're influencing social media and all the rest?

Yeah. Yeah. And no, 100%. You know, what's interesting here is that the aperture of what the CCO is actually focused on is constantly this moving target, right? There's faster crises, there's misinformation, there's a more fractured, high-stakes, high-velocity media landscape, which On the other hand, keeps us focused on what's happening this hour, right? This hour, this week, really today. And then there's also these questions of what are the arcs of geopolitical instability and volatility? How do we manage our relationships with different nation states? And in kind of this context, I'm curious, what is the conversation that CCOs are having around balancing short-term reputation wins versus really long-term stakeholder demands and just when they're being pulled in multiple directions really simultaneously? What does that mean for the organization that they build and their function and internally with partners like Weber Shandwick and otherwise?

Yeah. Yeah. So certainly you got to be able to do both those things at the same time. And in a moment of an excessive amount of inbound, call it perpetual issues management, perpetual crisis management, the balance can sometimes shift towards fighting the fires. You never want to get in a position where you're just playing whack-a-mole the whole time, though it can feel like that. I think the clients that we see successfully balancing this, they just have teams that can do both simultaneously, and that's what they do. And I think that there's teams that have— can do that in the classic way. There's also teams that are using AI and tech to do that in a way that previously was impossible. We have clients that have full-blown Agentic Crisis and Risk Management systems that effectively have an entire suite of custom agents that are built to monitor issues, analyze the trajectory of those issues, assign a threat level to those issues, assign crisis team members to, to each of those issues, and then generate in an automated fashion based on project knowledge that's been encoded from both our side as well as our client side, the initial set of responses all in real time, whether that's like a proposed response in terms of a statement or a release or engagement with employer or engagement with workforce, engagement with policy. Makers, et cetera. And of course, that type of system is set up in a way where there's a combination of people with decades worth of crisis experience working alongside the agents that have been automated to essentially bring a degree of speed, scale, precision to the work that previously was just impossible. Yeah.

So to that end, you look at the PR team, the communications team, where they're focusing their direct investments, right? Of their, their resources. Where are they overinvesting? Where are they underinvesting? How do you think about, hey, here's how we really future-proof communications organization?

Yeah. So where are they overinvesting and underinvesting? Let, let me reframe it slightly and say, where are they, where are we seeing more investment versus less? And where are we seeing investment that might be better placed in the places that are different than they currently are? So certainly there is more investment in agentic AI than, than ever before. And I see that, and that's a very good thing. The flip side to this is there's also overinvestment in AI tools that are not good. And like, I'm, I'm a very big proponent of building what essentially is like an agentic spine or an agentic AI spine to power the work for our clients. On an individual client-by-client basis. I am not a proponent, and I see this time and time again, of people just defining AI as we're rolling out, we got this tool. I'm not going to name the tools. I almost did, and I would have regretted that. We got this tool and—

Not ClickBook, to be clear.

Not ClickBook. You guys, I would not be doing this if I was not a fan of ClickBook. Let's talk about some tools that are universally you know, seen as maybe a little bit subpar. In fact, I even heard Jim Cramer complaining about one of them on CNBC this morning that many people have access to. So there's a lot of tools that, a lot of AI tools or tools that are branded as AI tools that just don't anywhere near live up to any type of hype. And so people use them and they're very disappointed. Now take some tools, bundle them together with some custom tech and orchestrate that agentially. And now we're talking about something that I, I'm a little bit more interested in. But like a couple off-the-shelf tools, I don't think so. I find, I find that to be almost less useful than the AI prototypes or AI like experimentation. Right? So I think that over the past couple of years there was a lot of AI experimentation. I think that was a good thing. I think the people who are still primarily just doing the experimentation versus orchestrating at scale, they're missing out on where the future of the profession is going. So that, that's how I feel about AI. Very bullish. Also have a love-hate relationship because I feel like there's a lot of misses there. So that would be number one in terms of both a good investment as well as a bad investment all on the same answer. Yeah. Where else? Like I said, I do feel like there are increasingly more and more communications leaders that are clients of mine who've come out of political background. And I think in the current environment, that's a very smart investment. And so that's, I'm not surprised that's happening. The places that traditionally have been invested in that I think should be continued to be invested in are, and this is connected to AI with specific, I think analytics. I think we have a client, we have some clients that have almost like communications operations functions within the comms function that are doing things like analytics, AI transformation. That's where the digital tools sit. I think that's smart. Certainly we need people and most of my clients clients have people who are adept at navigating what seems to be in, like, the pendulum is swinging around important decisions at the intersection of business and society. And 5 years ago in 2020, that might have been navigating the complexities of COVID social justice movement, racial justice movement. Swung this way last year, swung back on DEI, ESG. A lot of companies started to rethink, or at least talk about that a little bit differently. Maybe more focused on inclusion and belonging, et cetera. I think the events in Minneapolis, recent events in Minneapolis have brought the proverbial question of to weigh in or not to weigh in back to the forefront. I do not see a number of clients and companies jumping to weigh in the same way that they had in 2020. I do think that many are considering that from a risk management perspective more than anything else in the current environment. So I think that's important. And then arguably some of the skills that have always been important will continue to remain important. They just may not require the same level of investment as they did previously, because that some of that will go to AI investment or tech investment or wherever it is. Right. And so clearly you still need people who are very good at writing or certainly good at reviewing the writing that your AI agents have done for you now and critical thinking and analysis and all of the rest. And then of course, alignment, right? So much of what you do as a CCO is working across the C-suite to try to gain consensus and alignment around certain things that are going on, which is a soft skill that certainly no AI agent is in the foreseeable future is ever going to be able to replace, which I would argue is the same case for other skills that are arguably so human that I don't know if they're ever going to be replaced. Things like intuition or instinct or judgment or creativity. And these are the things that, these are the skills that the communications leaders the past and in many instances the present and in the future, that's going to remain a high priority for them.

Jim, out of curiosity, what is your personal AI stack? What tools do you like? What models are you using?

Yeah.

ChatGPT for your weekly therapy, like I know some people are doing, or yeah, what's the—

Yeah, so no, I do not use ChatGPT for my weekly therapy. We have our own, we have our own AI spine that we have built. It's called Halo. Yeah. It's powered by Google Gemini Enterprise. Everyone in our company has access to it now, and it's loaded with an entire custom suite of agents that are specific to all of the tasks that people do, whether that is tasks related to writing or analysis or intelligence gathering and the rest. But beyond that, it also has custom agents that are specific to domain, like sectors, energy sector. Or industrial sector, whatever it is, healthcare, technology, financial services. And then we have them that are specific to clients themselves, right? So we have certain clients that they want everything in, in a very specific way, as you might imagine, as all clients do. And so rather than having to teach every single person on the team over and over again how to do that, we just have agents that do that. So you can pull something together, run it through the agent, and it'll say, this is not exactly how this client wants it. They want it this way. Here's how we would redo it. And so that's another thing we've done. Beyond that, or as part of that, my personal AI system that I have had custom built focuses on, call it 5 main things for oversimplification's sake. So first, I have tech that captures the majority of the discussions that I'm having throughout the course of the day. Via summaries and it feeds those into—

Is this an internal tool or is this an off-the-shelf tool?

Yeah, we have, we, we have off-the-shelf tools that can exist in a secure internal environment. Got it. But nothing that we're using is just off-the-shelf, like ready to go. So it's, it might be like off-the-shelf sitting within Halo. With its— in a very secure environment with its own customized orchestration layer on top of it so that it is synced with everything else going on, right? In the system. And for example, what else would be going on? You'd have maybe meeting summaries feeding into your own personal miniature LLM that might be some version of a workspace that you can query, that you can organize, that you can link to your email via connectors, right? Which of course with Google Gemini Enterprise, you could do that with like your Microsoft Outlook. You can customize with any project knowledge that you want. So you load that in and then you essentially have like your own digital brain or miniature LLM that represents you, which I think is increasingly important. So I have all of that. I also have an entire suite of custom agents that, that I have had built for me. And they do all of the things that you might expect them to do. And they do so in the secure environment where, and they all talk to the other agents. And so what does that look like? I have some, I have an agent that's trained on my voice for like writing. I have an agent that does competitive analysis and feeds it to me in real time. I have agents that represent people, not people individually, but like audiences that I'm maybe meeting with or talking to. That I will run things by before, for a tire kick, before I will meet with those audiences. If I need to see if something's gonna resonate with the CEO I'm meeting with in a certain sector, maybe I'll run it by a CEO agent that's gonna give me some feedback about the things that I'm thinking before I then go meet with the actual CEO, which I find highly effective. The reality is, and I have a number of other ones too, the thing is though, what is each of these things individually? They're fine. They're good. They're fine. And they're helpful. But when you combine them together with some off-the-shelf tech, with some custom tech, and you orchestrate them agentially, the force multiplying effect is orders of magnitude better than just the individual uses for all the tools, which is why I have such a love-hate relationship with the tools, as I was saying earlier. Cause I find that if you just, if you just think you're gonna get a single tool and it's gonna game change the way you work, it's not. But I will say if you do it in the way that's right, you get it to the, the 10-yard line and then the final 10 yards, the hardest. But if you dial that in, then it changes the equation for you. And so for me, I think I save maybe like an hour or two a day from a productivity perspective, which is great. It gives me more time to be with clients, gives me more time to do things that are strategic and creative, gives me maybe more time to see my kids. But in addition to all of that, which is just the productivity improvement, I also find that I am able to automate routine tasks so I don't worry about them and instead focus on such high, much, much higher priority things and be sharper when I'm doing so. And that's, I think, where the, the real power of my AI system exists.

And, you know, Jim, you're probably one of the most one of the most AI-native communications leaders in the world, if not the most. And I'm curious, leading the organization at Weber Shandwick and the team, like, what does it take to really drive effective adoption of your AI tools really across the full team? And it's actually funny, even at Clipbook, right, we're a 40-ish person company.

Yeah.

In offices, we're an AI company, but even internally for us, right, we're seeing sometimes there is a little bit of a learning curve for our team, which is, and for a massive company, it's like such a hard standard to keeping it. So yeah, what does that look like? You get that new 22-year-old associate on the team, like getting them using Halo, getting them using even the more simple tools for where there are natural use cases for AI. How are you really driving the organization forward with—

Yeah, it's not necessarily the 22-year-old that is going to be the challenge here. Fair enough. So the way that I have gone about this, the way that we have gone about this, is the system that I, that I had built for me. I then went and had a version of that system built for every single member of my ELT. And we, and we trained everybody on it. And then we're cascading that down like level by level, right? So that eventually it will cascade it to the entire organization, that, that system approach, that training protocol alongside of it. And then simultaneously we've given already everybody access to Halo, no matter what level. And we have people who are effectively like agentic leads. I have someone who's an agent lead for just my office of the CEO, but we're adding agent leads for domains for large client teams. And their role is to make sure that there's an entire suite of agents to do all the things that a large, huge pharmaceutical company needs to have done, which will then superpower the team that does that work. And so, you know, so it's a combination of like very client-driven as well as top-down as well as bottom-up. And I don't know if that is a silver bullet answer, but that's how we're doing it. And it seems to be working right now. And I think that the reality is, I don't believe AI transformation is something that can be driven in the same way as previous enterprise technology transformation. Yeah. It's not like the rollout of a new SAP system or Workday or a CRM or anything like that. And people who try to approach it like that, I think are failing. And I would encourage them not to.

Yeah. Yeah. What do you, what is the biggest misconception you're hearing from CCOs about AI? What is, what is the biggest, uh, it just seems like CCOs seem a little bit off or wrong about how we're, they're even thinking about their approach there. You don't have to name names.

Let me start with CEOs. I think the biggest misperception at the CEO level, it's two things that they're related to different parts of AI transformation. So one is that CEOs expected AI transformation at the enterprise level to be more like any previous technology transformation at the enterprise level, which is not how it works. That's number one. I think CEOs also, as it relates to their own personal AI transformation, CEOs are used to getting things that are essentially like fully ready for primetime by the time they get it. And I don't think it works that way. As I've already said, with a personal AI system, you get it maybe 90% of the way there, and then the last 10 yards are the hardest. And dialing it in requires the personal involvement of the person at the joystick in addition to their team. And a lot of CEOs struggle with that. They expect it to be perfect when they get it. They don't have the energy, the appetite, desire, or whatever it is to put the work in to get the last 10 yards. And so as a result, it's— they're dissatisfied with it as CEO. Set that aside for a minute. CCO, I think that there is a misperception. There is a false choice that some people create where it's like AI versus humans, or like AI can't do what I can do. AI is not going to replace me. AI can never replace me. And, and I think that when you make it like an AI versus human scenario, you miss the point. Currently, at least, until maybe we hit AGI or superintelligence. I'm not even going to go there in this discussion because that, that then the entire equation changes should we achieve that. And setting aside that, I'm just talking about the reality of today or the foreseeable future. It's not like AI versus human, right? I was recently talking to someone at one of our global town halls about this. Adam Joseph, who said something very wise, which was, people should not be worried about being replaced by AI. They should be worried about being replaced by people who are better at using AI than they are. And that is central to my thesis on AI, which is that AI is a force multiplier for people. And it allows people to be across more things. So there's greater scale. It allows people to move faster, so there's greater speed. It allows people to do things more precisely at scale and at speed, which is why it's more— creates more precision in many instances. And these are just the immediate-term, already-realized benefits of AI, not even the, the call it midterm benefits, which we can talk about too. And I think that when I encounter people who don't quite understand that when I'm talking about AI, I'm not talking about AI as a replacement for legions of people. I'm talking about AI as essentially a force multiplier for teams. Then that, that's one of the main misperceptions, right? Because it's very easy to fall into the trap of humans versus AI or AI coming for our jobs. And the existential questions and threats make for maybe more sensational media, but those type of discussions find a bit tired at this point. They've been had now at length. And I think that the CCOs who are doing the most successful AI transformation, yes, they, they are very focused on being inclusive of the human element in that transformation. But what they're much more focused on is like, how do I do the things that I'm on the hook for as a communications leader just better using the, using AI? Can I do monitoring better using Clipbook? Can I manage issues, crises, and risk better using Weber's Agentic Risk Management System, right? Can I tell my company's story better by predictively identifying the direction of travel narratives that are important to me and the way that we can slide into them using AI? Any number of things. And again, like, those things are not things that are done without humans. The human in the loop, particularly the— I hate to use like the AI term, but I just did, so I'll now embrace it. But like human in the loop, right? Human at the beginning, human at the end. Like you gotta have that. And then obviously it points along the way too. As of right now, at least, again, like I said, until super intelligence is upon us or not, like you still need the human at the beginning of the process and then you definitely need a human to quality control at the end of the process. Because we all know that the tech is, even the best of tech is wrong and can hallucinate. There's just too much risk removing a human from the beginning and end of the process, as well as key steps along the way.

It's funny, the dynamic that you just described is something we see at Clipbook quite a bit, right?

Yeah.

We're talking to a CCO or a CEO. There's kind of two reasons you might introduce an AI tool into your suite. Yes, there might be cost savings, right? Or automation efficiencies, so on and so forth. I will say, you talk to a CEO or CCO, that's like a small part of the equation, right? Because there's kind of a, actually a limit to how much you can actually, like how much value you can capture there, right? It's like, by definition it's caught, you can what, take it down to zero? That's, that doesn't mean that much. What they're actually really excited by is what are the capabilities that the technology unlocks for you, right? For the business.

Right.

There's no cap or ceiling to the upside that you can have in building new capabilities that can inspire your growth more and more rapidly, help you play better offense in being more proactive from a strategic communications perspective, or to preempt a massive risk that might impact the P&L writ large, let alone just across a single function.

Yeah.

So just to your point, I think 100% agree. Yeah. And I think it's, but on the other hand, I will say for people out there, it's scary, right? It's scary. It's happening really quickly. Decisions are happening around them, sometimes out of their control. Certainly have a lot of empathy for the dynamic just to—

Yeah, I have a lot of empathy for it too. And I do realize that it can be scary. It's like the more, it's more scary for those less familiar, I feel. And I feel like the more that you can see the power of what the AI can do, the less scary it is. Is because you just, I don't know, I'm sure Adam, you do this too, but I'm using a ton of AI in my personal life now too. Not again for my weekly therapy session, but for a number of things that I, and I find it to be, I find it to be incredibly helpful. And I think people similar to if you're trying out some vibe coding or something, 6 months ago, I was like, I want to learn how to vibe code. And I was not able to successfully do so despite the fact that I should have been. Now with Claude Code, all of the rest, like, you know, I think pretty much anyone can do some decent vibe coding if they put their mind to it. And I'm never going to be much more than the most basic amateur vibe coder, but having done so and experimented with it, I understand it in the context with which I need to.

Yeah, 100%. So Jim, I do want to shift gears for our last few minutes here. The clipbook we often talk about, right? That's very familiar to many on this call. That every communications team, PR team, public affairs team has some poor 22-year-old intern or associate named Derek. And at Clipbook, we worship Derek in many ways because he's the poor soul that maybe 5, 10 years ago was stuck with all of the worst work that exists with our segment, right? The manual research, analysis, tracking, really doing kind of the most manual, routine, painful workflows.

But many of us, Adam, as interns enjoyed doing that kind of work, but I don't want to interrupt the flow of your story.

I hear you. I know kids have it easy nowadays, but So I guess I wanna ask a couple of questions, really channeling that energy of our beloved 22-year-old associate Derek.

Sure.

And we'll do this in a lightning round format, but maybe before I jump into the lightning round, I do wanna just ask you like one thing. You've had an amazing career. You're the CEO and one of the most like pivotal important organizations in communications globally. Tell me a little bit about the journey and what made you successful. And maybe we can try to do the 2-minute version of this, cuz I know that's a big, big topic to, to peel off, but would love to see. Yes, sure. So look, what are, what are the most important important things.

Certainly on the agency side, if I were giving advice to an agency person, I would argue always lean aggressively into clients, client work, and that first and foremost. Certainly innovation, pushing the boundaries of what's possible, shaping the future, if not of the profession, then certainly of, of whatever the thing that you're working on is. I think those are all super important. I would say if you were trying to pin me down to a single line, a one-liner for like my advice to the 22-year-old Derek who is no longer doing media monitoring and analysis and is now instead probably like reviewing the results of Clipbook's media monitoring and analysis before it gets shipped up the chain. Maybe someone older than 22 would be doing that, but anyway, you get the point. Yeah. My advice to someone junior in the profession. Is to create your own opportunity. Right? And so like in the environment we're in, and even before the environment we were in, like this has probably always been arguably true, but unless you get lucky with a great manager, which happens a lot, or unless you work at a place where this is automatic, which is not many places, but it does exist.

Like Weber.

You have to create your own opportunity. Right? And so in the agency world, That oftentimes when you're a 22-year-old, at least historically meant and still does, find a way to be part of a new business pitch versus just the client work that you're doing, right? Or go embed on site with a client full-time so you can fully immerse yourself into what they're doing. On the client side, that might be, and this could work on the agency side too, that might mean do a rotation outside of the US, right? Or get experience across multiple sectors. So that you can better understand the value that comms provides within each of those. There's any things like that, but fundamentally, I think it's about creating your own opportunity to go for it.

Yeah, I love that. So last couple seconds here. Excuse me. We're going to do the Derek lightning round. I'm going to rattle off a few questions for you, Jim, and we'll, these are more fun questions. We're going to channel our 22-year-old in Derek and rock and roll. Are you ready? You ready to buckle down?

Let's go. All right.

First question, what's the most interny thing you've done as a senior leader?

The most interny thing that I've done as a senior leader?

Yes. Like the most, this is like the intern task that somehow ended up on the, on the desk of the CEO or otherwise.

Oh, I don't know. I, well, I read so much, I consume so much media and I share it that I, in real time, oftentimes that I may as well be the intern we were describing doing the media monitoring. Because I, if I see some, I'm reading the Journal every morning, which I am on my own, and I'm sharing that with some of the stuff that I see in it with other people. I'm, I still am the Derek precisely that you were describing.

Yeah. That's great. We need to get you your own Clubbook subscription beyond the other one.

Yeah. I actually have an agent that aggregates news for me based on topics that I have pre-identified and sends it all to me in the rest. But I still, despite that, still go to wallstreetjournal.com and a few other places. And I like to consume media in a native environment at times. Versus having algorithmically fed to me. I think it's important to understand it in the context within which, like, what an editorial team is trying to serve up.

Totally. Totally. Okay. What is the most memorable, fun, quirky campaign or brand that you've worked on or that you've seen in your career?

Well, here at Weber, certainly we're very proud of, and I have a personal affinity for the now somewhat famous Pop-Tart edible mascot, which you probably are familiar with. A staple during college bowl season now for multiple years running. This is something that our team here at Weber conceived of and had tremendous success with and has now become a bit of our— there's lore, there's lore associated with it. And the idea of just having a mascot that was a Pop-Tart that died and was eaten, I certainly— quirky, quirky and smart and very effective.

I love that. Did you ever get to put on the mascot suit? A suit or a t-shirt?

Yeah, I probably am not gonna do that, but bravo to the people who have.

If, imagine you have a free Times Square billboard in the center of heart of Times Square. What's the one piece of PR wisdom or advice that you'd want to, to put on there?

I guess in today's world, we talk about earned and earned media, and I think you gotta, needing to earn attention versus paying for attention. Versus buying attention in today's world is a key and central aspect of the modern attention economy.

So I'd say that ironic for a New York Times, or sorry, Times Square billboard ad placement to that answer, but right.

There you go.

Great. Okay. Last, last question for you. If Weber Shandwick had a mascot, what would it be and why?

Aside from an edible Pop-Tart? No. So Look, I think one of the things I love about this place, so maybe the mascot is, I don't know, a unicorn. Is that like a, is that a viable option? There are a few places that have the, that have the global footprint that we do, that have the scale that we do, and that have the, the quality and sophistication of work and the level of clients that we have across so many different areas, right? So like our health business. Second to none, representing more than 80% of like big pharma, right? Our tech business, a massively growing part of our portfolio, similar ambition there. And then the 3 main capabilities that we bring to the table, modern corporate advisory, which is our Weber Advisory arm. This is a place where the work at the intersection of business and culture that we do for clients is arguably more material than it's ever been, higher stakes than it's ever been. And you're going to be hard pressed to find another agency, I think, out there that does that with the same level of the same modern practice that we do, especially when you then layer in our second major growth capability, which is our Weber.io business. And Weber.io essentially is digital tool tech data and AI. And it powers a lot of our Weber advisory work. And it also powers a lot of the third part of our business, which is Weber Create, which is the creative side of our business. And of course, just being at the forefront of the profession and able to power both the creative side of our business, as well as the modern corporate advisory side of our business with digital tools, tech data, and AI, as well as some of our sector-specific business, like I mentioned with health and tech and others. You look across all of that and you're going to be hard pressed to find, I think, other agencies that are able to do all those things at the same time for such a, for such a group of, for a group of clients that I am just so proud to be able to work for, right? As you're beginning this call, we represent so many of the Fortune 100, so many of the Fortune Most Admired list, and we have average client relationships that are decades long, and we're really proud of that. And that's why I guess I'm going to say unicorn.

As a San Francisco venture-backed company, I say I do have a special, like, soft part in my heart for unicorns. Yeah. Listen, Jim, I'll just say congratulations on all your success and everything that you're doing at Weber. Thank you so much for joining us today. I know that we're just over time here. Yes, thank you. This was such a treat. For our audience, before, but before we run, we'll just have a final plug. If you were on this call, if you're part of a communications team or public affairs team, of course, the team here at Clipbook would love to meet you. Reach out anytime at clipbook.com or reach out to me directly at adam@clipbook.com. But again, thank you. Happy Thursday, Jim. And thank you again for joining us.

Yeah, back at you, Adam. Thanks for having me.

Have a good one. Take care.

Take care.