Tim Donahue, who was recently promoted to senior managing director, is one of PLUS Communications’ top digital strategists and tech innovators. In recent months, Tim has spearheaded AI-powered projects that are transforming how we work. In this edition of “AI Innovators,” we’re spotlighting Tim’s leadership and contributions to our firm and our winning culture.
“Tim’s been at the forefront of digital strategy and AI innovation for over a decade, but his leadership inside PLUS Labs has spurred the whole company forward,” said Partner Chris Georgia. “I can’t wait to see the new AI innovations Tim will introduce to our firm in the months and years ahead.”
“Tim is a rockstar and the glue that holds together our digital team,” said Partner Joe Mansour. “Tim has led the charge on experimenting with and evangelizing the benefits of AI to our team members. Our future success hinges on PLUS’ ability to effectively drive AI adoption across our service offerings and on behalf of our clients. Tim is at the forefront of these efforts and his leadership on AI deserves recognition.”
“I can’t say enough positive things about Tim,” said Partner Chandler Bair. “He’s a tireless worker, a brilliant digital strategist and a great team player. I’m inspired by Tim’s leadership on AI. He is proving himself to be a strong mentor to our junior team members and to our partners who also want to learn how to use AI more effectively.”
Read this Q&A to learn more about Tim Donahue’s AI leadership.
Different models and tools have different strengths. ChatGPT and Gemini remain my go-to across the board, while Claude has been incredible for generating code, Structured Query Language (SQL) queries and more complex scripts. I’m trying to follow the competitive landscape closely, particularly the potential of Google’s fully interconnected AI ecosystem and how the upcoming Gemini 3.0 will reshape the “model wars.” Meta’s AI stack is also evolving quickly. Their open-source approach and focus on scalable model training have made notable strides in customization, optimization and accessibility. Furthermore, our team gains significant advantage by using OmniAI, which provides immediate access to the latest frontier models and has greatly enhanced our team’s productivity.
On the creative side, ElevenLabs and NotebookLM have been game changers for realistic audio and narrative generation. Longer term, I think we’ll see these specialized tools start to merge creative tones and technical structures to bridge the gap between storytelling and internal systems.
We’ve seen massive gains in how we manage and interpret data for our reporting. We’ve used AI to help overhaul our reporting infrastructure. We have team members generating and utilizing SQL queries that they never would have been able to do before without help from our developers. This alone has saved us dozens of hours of staff time in a single week.
We’ve also worked on creating specific workflows for audio-to-text translations and then sentiment and analysis to categorize and tag the responses related to our client goals.
After experimenting with different tools like Google’s NotebookLM, which can generate natural audio from text that flows creatively, we started to look for ways we could insert this type of tool into our workflows. We started small by building AI guides and overviews for our team internally.
PLUSCast came from a simple observation: how can we use this new technology to enhance our clip packages? Clients don’t always have time to read every article or even longer clip packages, but nearly everyone can fire up a three-minute audio clip and listen. PLUSCast integrates with our clip offering and aggregates relevant client stories to create a script and audio file which is typically a three-minute, high-level summary of the latest news.
Within about two hours, we had a working prototype. The only issue was it was all manual, which wasn’t a sustainable solution. After spending the next few days plugging in and testing different tools into the workflow, we were able to fully automate the process. Now, the AI handles both the script creation and voice generation with the context of the client’s goals and priorities. We just curate the content. The whole process for creating the PLUSCast, from script creation to finished audio, is done in fewer than two minutes. It’s a great example of AI improving not just speed, but format and experience. PLUSCast is currently in active beta testing for a few clients, but we have numerous upgrades and enhancements to improve the offering.
We see PLUSCast as a proof of concept for what’s next in digital storytelling with the enhancement of AI, turning static content into living, dynamic formats that adapt to how audiences consume information.
The shift from AI tools or chats to full automation. We’re starting to move beyond “ask-and-answer” chat models towards AI that can actually understand context, connect data and, most importantly, act autonomously (with a human in the loop when needed).
The idea that you can have an AI “agent” embedded in your workflow that understands your team’s structure, your goals, your voice and can help anticipate needs or surface insights before you ask—that’s where we’re headed.
We’re still early here, but this phase is about integration: connecting AI to our internal databases, to reporting tools, to creative production systems.
The biggest risk is complacency—assuming we’re “caught up” just because we’re using AI.
The reality is, the landscape changes weekly. There’s a new model, a new tool, a new integration constantly emerging. If we’re not continuously testing and learning, we risk missing what’s next.
Don’t overthink it, start small and work your way up, but starting now is the most important thing.
I think there’s a big misconception about AI in a lot of ways. Most of the tools and things I’ve seen people build aren’t impossible without AI but they would take a lot more time or technical experts to build.
Instead of asking our development team to build me an app, I can have AI write the basic structure in a brainstorming session. It makes you a multi-faceted staffer without the formal training.
And finally, have realistic expectations and don’t wait for perfect use cases. This space is moving too fast for perfection. Treat AI like your number two that’s smarter than you but needs your direction. It won’t do your job in five seconds but can make your limitations into strengths with the right prompting.
There’s still a lot of room to evolve PLUSCast, especially around curation, personalization and delivery. I’d love to make it an even more robust and automated system.
Beyond that, we’re building internal tools that connect multiple platforms—things like our marketing tools, reporting tools, advertising tools and customer relationship management systems (CRMs)—into a single AI-powered hub. Once those systems start talking to each other through AI, it unlocks enormous potential for speed, accuracy and insight.
AI isn’t replacing what makes our work good. It’s amplifying it.
The real opportunity isn’t in what the technology can do. It’s in how we work with it around people, processes and ideas that already work. The teams that learn how to harness AI into their daily workflow are the ones who will stay ahead.
"*" indicates required fields
