By PLUS Labs

Jim Wildman is a managing director at PLUS Communications, where he leads integrated advocacy and advertising campaigns for prominent trade associations, industry coalitions and Fortune 500 companies. Prior to joining PLUS, Jim was a journalist at National Public Radio (NPR) where he produced news segments from combat zones around the world. Now he uses his steadiness under pressure to help our clients navigate public affairs challenges and bolster their reputations.

Jim is leading PLUS’ efforts to embed artificial intelligence deep into our winning culture. Jim is building artificial intelligence (AI) tools and agents to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of our client teams.

“Jim Wildman’s commitment to innovation is making PLUS stronger and providing our clients with a new competitive advantage,” said Partner and Head of Public Affairs Tamara Smith. “Jim has developed several agents that harness the power of AI to make our business smarter and more efficient. His leadership is making a difference and strengthening our culture of innovation.”

Read this Q&A with Jim Wildman on his usage of AI.

What Excites You Most About Where AI Is Heading?

My career has tracked with revolutions. When I started as a journalist, we were still cutting tape. Then the digital revolution changed everything, and storytelling was transformed. Overnight, the process of connecting with audiences was faster and more precise. Creativity blossomed. We experimented with new ideas. Our craft evolved.

Today, AI is helping us broaden our craft once again. I have meetings this week to train colleagues on tools that accelerate editorial workflows, driving a process that moves from concept to first draft in new, more efficient ways. We are experimenting with a rapid message-testing capability that allows us to assess resonance and clarity early in our development process. Traditional clips packages are now made into podcasts that simplify reviews and deepen comprehension.

None of this replaces human judgment, experience or accountability. AI tools don’t govern words or dictate creative, but they do help us explore more possibilities. The result is stronger thinking that helps us extend our expertise to connect with audiences in powerful ways.

How Are You Currently Using AI to Make Yourself and PLUS More Efficient?

I use AI to speed up, sharpen, and scale my work processes. This helps most in the early stages of strategic analysis – assessing the width and breadth of a client challenge – so that I’m able to explore more options for a way forward before committing to a recommendation.

I’m developing tools to accelerate research, distilling large amounts of credible reporting into fast, readable briefs and one-pagers. I’m using vast archives of PLUS materials to map the full spectrum of stakeholders in a crisis, identify pressure points, and, with direction, help manage tailored lines of engagement.

The value isn’t simply producing words faster than we could before. It’s about getting to the strategy phase of client work sooner, with strong, smart materials already in hand. This means we can do what we do best, sooner and advise our clients through whatever challenges are in their way.

What’s Your Biggest AI Success Story?

Since arriving at PLUS, I’ve led a Words Matter workshop for incoming colleagues to develop authentic writing for audiences in a way that ladders up to client objectives. Years of writing scripts on deadline – and years of watching editors change this and that on deadline – clarified what works, what doesn’t, and why.

I coded these lessons into a first draft writing assistant that guides users through a thoughtful series of steps to identify objectives, voice, point of view, narrative arc and all the other ingredients needed to build writing worth reading. The tool keeps writers inside smart editorial lanes and saves extraordinary amounts of time, leaving more room for humans to polish, revise and shape into client-ready material.

This first experiment in developing an AI agent taught me a lesson that left me wanting to develop more: these platforms can be powerful collaborators as extensions of the experience we have worked so hard to build.

What Is a Challenge About AI?

One challenge with AI is becoming too dependent on AI only. It is an incredible tool; however, it is not always correct, and human expertise must remain at the core of everything we’re doing. “AI can read that 15-page report for you.” “AI’s political analysis is good enough.” “Here are AI’s quick suggestions for crisis messaging.”

So, we are proceeding with caution, imposing necessary guardrails and continuing to produce the human-driven work that our clients expect and deserve.

What’s the Next Big AI Project You Want to Work On?

The next phase of innovation and growth is training AI to help us look forward, to see around corners. We lay out the patterns we’ve learned in our decades of crisis work – and the AI platform helps us connect dots that might otherwise stay hidden. 

I’m working on an AI system that helps us look wider before we look deeper. It scans a broad universe of developments across politics, policy, reputation, legislation and regulation, then helps identify threads that could lead to opportunities or risks.

I’m most excited about this tool because it adds value to our work in any practice area, helping focus our expertise and response as new client fires emerge.

How Do You Approach Staying Current With AI Developments? What’s Your Strategy for Keeping Up?

There are plenty of smart people and smart news outlets tracking the dizzying array of AI developments. The only way for me to keep up is to spend time inside the platforms themselves, building new tools, revising existing ones and experimenting with new ideas for work. This effort not only separates what’s interesting from what’s useful, it’s what gives me insight to actually understand what the AI reporting is telling me.

What Advice Would You Give to Colleagues Who Are New to AI?

AI will never replace me. I raced through too many war zones on deadline for my instincts to ever falter. Your version of that narrative is true, too, however new you are to AI.

Firms across the country are racing to integrate AI into their businesses. This intense push trickles down into industry trend articles, bullets for staff meeting agendas and checkboxes for your annual review. It can be overwhelming.

So, consider the navigation app on your phone. You probably use it every day. It maps a path from here to there, saves time, and takes care of the details while you can continue that conversation with your son in the back seat.

Your AI thinking should work the same way. What critical task are you doing every day that, if sped up or simplified or handed over to a smart assistant, would free you up to focus on the bigger picture – adding value to the firm and to your future? This is where your AI work can begin.

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