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| Kathy Bloomgarden |
Artificial intelligence has rapidly become a defining force in marketing and communications. AI shapes how information is discovered, how narratives travel, and how reputations are formed. Search behavior is shifting in real time. Influence is fragmenting across platforms and communities. Large language models increasingly mediate what audiences see, believe, and act on.
Yet many agency structures still reflect an earlier era, one where technology could be layered onto existing ways of working rather than embedded into how work is conceived, executed, and evolved.
That gap is now impossible to ignore.
AI Requires a Structural Reset
What our industry needs now is an immediate reexamination of structure, upskilling of talent, and re-assessment of how work is designed, executed, and delivered to clients. AI must be treated as a core operating capability, paired with a mindset that encourages learning, experimentation, and adaptability.
This challenge extends well beyond communications. Enterprise leaders across sectors have reached similar conclusions. Boston Consulting Group’s 10–20–70 framework highlights that meaningful AI impact depends far more on people and processes than on algorithms alone.
Communications agencies now face that same structural imperative.
And while off-the-shelf platforms have a role to play, they also rarely reflect the full complexity, nuance, and sector-specific demands of our work.
The goal can’t simply be to scale tools, but to build AI into the agency’s operating foundation. Because in a landscape where relevance is fleeting and reinvention is constant, that structure will determine whether AI becomes transformational or remains merely tactical.
At Ruder Finn, this foundation has been developing over several years through our rf.TechLab, a dedicated team of engineers and technologists focused on incubating emerging technologies and solutions for the communications industry. These capabilities span GEO, influencer intelligence, and predictive analytics, to name a few. Today, custom AI solutions are already integrated into 88% of Ruder Finn’s core U.S. client accounts. And with the launch of our new AI Accelerator, which is dedicated to productizing new tools and solutions purpose-built for enhancing our client outcomes, we anticipate that number to reach at least 95% in 2026.
Talent, Judgment, and the Human Advantage
But this evolution only reinforces the importance of the human algorithm. AI creates efficiency, accelerates insight, enhances precision, and reimagines outputs, but creativity, cultural intelligence, and relationships will always remain central to effective communications. The work that resonates most strongly pairs advanced tools with strong human oversight, strategy, and context.
That’s why talent transformation is such a critical dimension of this shift. As AI reshapes how work gets done, agencies must rethink recruitment, training, and career paths. The demand is growing for professionals who combine communications expertise with fluency in AI systems, data, and emerging platforms.
Through the AI Accelerator, we are introducing a new AI Accelerator Trainee program alongside an AI-focused track within our longstanding Executive Trainee program. This is in addition to ongoing upskilling and training initiatives underway across the agency. These initiatives reflect a belief that AI capability must be broadly distributed across the organization, so strategists, creatives, technologists, and account teams all share responsibility for helping shape how AI tools are applied in client work.
Independence, Flexibility, and Speed
Structural flexibility plays a meaningful role in how agencies adapt. As an independent agency, we have the freedom to build, customize, and deploy AI solutions at the speed and in the manner we deem necessary to remain ahead of the curve.
The implications for our industry are significant. Clients expect more, and faster. Communications leaders are being asked to understand not only what to say, but how information is surfaced, interpreted, amplified, and measured in an AI-mediated environment.
As the pace of change accelerates, the defining advantage will belong to organizations that treat AI not as a destination, but as an evolving horizon that is embedded at the core of their business, integrated into every aspect of how they think, work, and grow.
AI will continue to reshape how our industry works, often faster than we anticipate. When that technology is paired with curiosity, cultural intelligence, and embedded into the foundation of our structures, communication will become more precise, more powerful, and more human.
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Kathy Bloomgarden is CEO of Ruder Finn.
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