0:00

What would you do if a client came

0:00

to you and said they no longer

0:03

needed your services because they're

0:03

going to use chat GPT instead?

0:08

This is the situation today's

0:08

guest Ana Pista faced recently.

0:13

If you don't know Ana, start

0:13

getting to know her now.

0:16

She's the founder and CEO of

0:16

Ardent Communications based in the

0:20

Philippines, and she's a seasoned PR

0:20

expert with more than two decades of

0:24

experience having honed her skills

0:24

while working for big companies like

0:27

hewlett Packard and Microsoft, she played

0:27

a pivotal role in transforming ardent

0:32

communications into the Philippines

0:32

leading technology, public relations firm.

0:37

Now, Ana's contributions to the Global

0:37

Alliance for Public Relations and

0:41

communication Management have been

0:41

nothing short of groundbreaking.

0:45

In 2024, she became the first Filipino

0:45

elected as a director of the organization,

0:50

which highlighted her commitment to

0:50

advancing the PR profession worldwide.

0:55

She's a dedicated advocate for the

0:55

advancement of public relations

0:59

and has been a key player in

0:59

shaping the future of the industry.

1:03

Ana's Tanya in the Public Relations

1:03

Society of the Philippines, where

1:06

she currently serves as the vice

1:06

president -external has solidified

1:11

her reputation as a leader, while her

1:11

role as a speaker at the World Public

1:15

Relations Forum in China in 2023

1:17

also reinforced her status as

1:17

an industry thought leader.

1:21

I met Ana at the IABC APAC Fusion event

1:21

recently in Manila, and I was blown away

1:26

by her expertise and insights into the

1:26

impact of AI on the PR and comms world.

1:32

So I could not wait to get her on this show. I. In this conversation, we cover

1:34

how to deal with clients who want

1:38

to use AI instead of our services,

1:40

using AI in our own practices, the

1:40

ethical considerations, and so much more.

1:45

If you work in comms, pr, marketing,

1:45

or anything in between and AI

1:50

is encroaching on your world,

1:50

you want to listen to this one.

1:54

So without further ado, here's Ana.

2:00

Hello Ana, and welcome to the show. Hello, Mel.

2:04

Really it's a privilege having being here,

2:07

Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you

2:07

after meeting you and seeing you

2:10

speak at the Fusion Conference in

2:10

Manila a couple of weeks ago now.

2:15

But before we get into all of that,

2:15

can you tell us a little bit about

2:18

you, what you do, and how did you

2:18

come to develop your expertise?

2:23

All right. So I'm Ana Pista. I I found I'm the founder and

2:25

CEO of Ardent Communications.

2:29

Ardent Communications is the premier

2:29

technology PR in the Philippines.

2:34

Everything is happening in the country.

2:36

Technology is coming in, most

2:36

of the brands are coming in.

2:39

We were at the forefront of doing

2:39

things for most of these clients.

2:43

There is where we started offering

2:43

PR for a very niche market,

2:48

actually, which is technology. So we were doing that for

2:49

about a decade, and then we

2:54

realized to expand our services.

2:56

So right now it's not just

2:56

technology accounts, but almost all,

3:01

industries covering all industries,

3:01

pharma, utilities, and all that.

3:05

So we have expanded that for

3:05

over two decades of servicing our

3:10

clients at Ardent Communications. Oh, congratulations.

3:14

It's a huge thing to start a business

3:14

and keep it going for that long.

3:17

So well done. How did you get into pr?

3:20

How did you decide that

3:20

public relations was for you?

3:23

Oh, that's a good question. I actually it was an accident.

3:28

I. I'm part of literature major, so

3:28

I was wanting to teach in college

3:34

literature, English, stuff like that.

3:36

And then when I graduated, a friend

3:36

of mine was supposed to be interviewed

3:41

in a Edelman affiliate in the

3:41

Philippines, already got hired, he

3:45

called me and he said that, Ana,

3:45

would you want to apply for a PR firm?

3:50

And I said, what's that? What do they do?

3:52

So am I qualified for that?

3:54

And then he said, just

3:54

go in the interview.

3:56

Please take my spot because I'm

3:56

already hired by another agency.

4:00

So I did, and when I got there, it's like

4:00

a, the interview became a conversation.

4:06

You felt that it's your eureka moment

4:06

that, oh, this is what I want to do, this

4:10

is the things that I've been doing since I was little, taking the

4:12

lead, doing script, leading

4:16

the glee club and all that. Doing programs and that.

4:18

And then writing a press release, being a

4:18

features writer of the school publication.

4:24

So it's okay this is cool. So I said, okay.

4:27

And then I was hired and then

4:27

I didn't know Edelman and I

4:31

didn't know that it's the biggest agency when it comes to PR.

4:34

So I got the job, and I landed

4:34

being an account executive.

4:38

And from there I started loving it.

4:40

And then one good thing happened

4:40

after the other, I got pirated

4:45

by HP, Hewlett Packard oh, wow. Yeah.

4:47

Yeah. My knowledge is really on tech pr.

4:50

So they hired me as an in-house pr, but

4:50

then after seven months, I said, I still

4:55

want to be in an agency environment.

4:59

So I don't want to be limited

4:59

with just doing one account, but

5:02

I wanted to all sorts of account.

5:04

It's it, I find it so

5:04

exciting and exhilarating.

5:07

So I resigned and I have no fallback.

5:10

But then a group of friends of mine asked

5:10

me to put up a publication business.

5:15

And I said, I don't like publishing,

5:15

so I'll go with you if you go with

5:19

me with, putting up a PR agency. And then all their faces light

5:21

up and I said, oh, I might

5:25

have said the right word. So we, from there, we started, like we

5:26

incorporated we we put up the agency

5:32

and then we've got the Canon Philippines

5:32

as the first client of Oh, okay.

5:38

That's awesome. And then from then on most of the tech

5:40

PR that I've managed in the past, of

5:45

course, they know me and they heard about

5:45

me putting up an agency or I have an

5:49

agency already, and they called me and

5:49

they said, can you service us as well?

5:54

So that's how it started. So yeah we practically managed most of

5:55

the brands that, for technology yeah.

6:02

Oh wow. Fantastic. And it is funny how our careers

6:03

wind and shift like that, isn't it?

6:07

Like it, yes. I was the same as you when

6:08

I started in internal comms.

6:10

I was like, what's internal

6:10

comms like that's not a thing.

6:13

What's change? What's that? It wasn't like that when we were at uni.

6:18

There was nothing like that, so That's great. Yeah.

6:21

So I'd love to chat to you. You shared a story about how a client

6:23

wanted to stop using your services

6:27

in favor of artificial intelligence.

6:30

Can you tell me what happened? Alright.

6:33

As we have technology clients and because

6:33

they're technology clients, they are

6:38

pretty much aware of the what's available,

6:38

tools and all that in the market.

6:42

And then they said that in one of

6:42

the meetings they mentioned that they

6:47

will not renew the contract with us. Because they're about to

6:49

renew the following month.

6:51

They should be renewing their contract with us. And they said that, we won't be

6:53

renewing the contract with you because

6:59

we think that AI can do the job. So the creation or press

7:01

releases, and all that.

7:04

And then the distribution as well. So because they thought that what we only

7:06

do for them aside consultancy they're

7:10

not thinking about the consultancy we

7:10

provide them, but more of the output.

7:15

Like for example, you write a story, you

7:15

seed it to the media, and then they get

7:19

outputs and then you report it to them. To them it's as simple as that.

7:22

We don't do our job that way. There's a lot of thinking, there's

7:24

a lot of strategizing and all that,

7:27

and that's what they pay us for. And at the end of the day, it's very

7:29

hard to to argue because we know very

7:33

well that yeah, he's right, that he can,

7:33

they can produce the story out of AI.

7:38

And and then we go back to, went back

7:38

to the office and talk about that.

7:43

And then probably a week after this story

7:43

about mi, Microsoft, MSN, came up with

7:50

a story about this basketball player.

7:53

They create an a press release. They distributed the press release

7:55

that is out of AI, made by AI.

7:59

It was a disaster. The headline says useless,

8:01

basketball player.

8:03

So it's like really? When I saw that, I said to

8:05

my team, okay, we need this.

8:09

We need to present this to the client

8:09

and show her that this is what's gonna

8:14

happen if they're fully dependent on AI.

8:18

So we, for that meeting, I presented,

8:18

we justified, we, and then that

8:22

was an opportunity for us to. To tell them this isn't

8:25

just what we do for you.

8:28

In fact, this is what we do for you. This is the list of how we handle

8:30

the things that we do for you.

8:33

And this is what we are

8:33

paid for The man hour.

8:37

And then was able to explain you

8:37

are given a seat on the table.

8:40

And fortunately for us they got convinced

8:40

and they renewed it alate like six months

8:45

only because supposed to be 12 months.

8:47

So they were like still thinking of

8:47

okay, we think that AI will work.

8:52

And we think that this will work for us,

8:52

but they gave us another chance to renew

8:57

the contract for another six months.

8:59

And so we did. So it happened. So those things happened.

9:03

In fact it's not just one client. There's another client of the same story.

9:07

But yeah, again, that's

9:07

how we approached it.

9:10

That's how we present it to them, and

9:10

that's how we tell them that, oh AI is

9:14

only as good as the data you put in it. So there, there is really a

9:16

need for human intervention.

9:19

There's really a need for inputs because

9:19

it's like a machine made article and it's

9:24

not gonna be good for your reputation. No, and I think that's a really good

9:27

point, isn't it, around the reputation

9:30

damage that can happen and the article

9:30

you mentioned, but there's also

9:34

been some other really big examples

9:34

of where people have relied on AI

9:40

and it's done more harm than good, like

9:40

lawyers and journalists and newspaper

9:44

editors, and that reputation piece is just

9:44

something they don't think about, do they?

9:50

It's not their first. Their first thought.

9:52

It's just how can we be cheaper

9:52

and more cost effective?

9:55

Without thinking, actually, if we

9:55

damage our reputation, it's gonna

9:58

cost us more in the long run. Yeah true.

10:01

How does your team now use AI?

10:03

Because obviously it's such a big thing. It's part of our lives every day now

10:05

it's only going to get bigger and yes,

10:09

you're advising clients to still have

10:09

that human element, but are you yourselves

10:12

using it and how are you using it? Yeah.

10:15

Fortunately for agencies like us, because

10:15

for agencies are mostly young blood,

10:20

they are the, they are digital natives

10:20

and they pretty much know how to use it

10:24

better than the Gen Xers, so to speak.

10:27

But then the Gen Xers, the decision

10:27

makers are actually the one putting

10:31

context, the right context to things

10:31

that they do the consultancy and

10:35

all, because they aren't there yet.

10:37

So they are very good at using AI.

10:39

In fact, they're the ones in our office

10:39

whenever there's a task that we are to

10:44

do, they are the one recommending a tool.

10:46

They're, that they're that knowledgeable.

10:49

We can do a for example, in one of the

10:49

meetings one of them said that, we need

10:53

to produce this video and we only have

10:53

one week to produce this, so we better,

10:57

put things together and all that. And then somebody from that

10:59

brainstorming meeting said that

11:02

we can do that in six hours.

11:05

And then I was like, oh. And then I tried hearing from her and

11:06

said, but, and then we have to get a a

11:10

person that can do the voice and all that.

11:13

Oh, AI can do all of that. Yeah. In fact, we can choose this and that.

11:17

I was so amazed I didn't

11:17

know of that tool.

11:19

Yeah. And then she mentioned it and then,

11:20

okay let's give it a try and then mind

11:25

you, in six hours, the video was done.

11:28

Oh wow. Yeah, and I was like, so surprised.

11:30

And then she even asked me, what do

11:30

you want to be the voice of this video?

11:36

A girl or a boy, and then we,

11:36

there's a rationale behind it.

11:39

And then how young the voice should be.

11:42

. How it should sound,

11:42

and then I have options.

11:45

So I was like, so amazed.

11:47

And then I said, I okay, for

11:47

this particular client is the

11:50

target market, so this kind of

11:50

voice and it should be female.

11:54

And that was created in 40 minutes.

11:58

Wow. We chose the voice, we chose the kind of

11:58

voice and the tonality and everything.

12:03

And then that's it. We finished with a with a video production

12:04

and we didn't pay for the voice.

12:09

We didn't pay for cameras and

12:09

everything else that usually

12:13

it'll take us two weeks to do. Yeah. Yeah. And it took us like, like

12:15

six hours to finish that.

12:20

But the, of course, the editorial

12:20

synopsis, the how it should go and

12:23

all that was done, that's when we

12:23

put like a lot of time for that.

12:27

But when it's ready, it can be produced

12:27

in a video in in fact, six hours is quite

12:32

long because that's one when they're

12:32

still asking me for decisions and stuff.

12:37

But if they did it their own themselves

12:37

and decide on their by themselves, then

12:41

it's, I think it's just three hours. Wow.

12:43

So that's how technology

12:43

and this AI is helping us.

12:48

We work smart efficient, faster,

12:48

and with, much lesser cost.

12:54

Yeah, I love that example. And I think it points to the

12:55

fact that AI is it's getting

12:59

smarter, it's getting better. I use it all the time myself too.

13:02

Like in Canva, there's some

13:02

awesome AI tools in there.

13:05

I was playing with a new one

13:05

this morning before we jumped

13:08

on this call called Manus ai. Oh, and I asked it to create a animation

13:10

based on a podcast script that I uploaded.

13:17

It's not good. It's really not good because it's

13:20

a trial and it's always Exactly.

13:24

Trial and error and practice. Exactly. Yeah.

13:26

And it will learn. Yeah, it'll get better.

13:29

But Mel, you asked me about that. My take on that is that the young

13:31

ones are very, are digital natives.

13:35

They can really, they know what

13:35

tools, what are the available tools.

13:39

In fact, they can select which

13:39

one is cheaper, which one is

13:42

free, which one is better. They can tell us on those things.

13:46

But that's where we have to

13:46

intervene in terms of what, how

13:50

to put quality in what they do. Yes.

13:52

Yeah. 'cause we still lack that. And that's when the marrying part.

13:56

Happens like us, we might not be that

13:56

knowledgeable or aware of all these tools,

14:03

and we're not even actually the one using

14:03

it ourselves, and they're the ones using

14:08

that because they're the ones working on

14:08

the client and they're the ones servicing.

14:12

But it's important that we should,

14:12

should be the consultants and the one

14:16

that tells them how to do it better.

14:19

And the human side, you know how to

14:19

humanize it because me, I myself, I can

14:24

tell if the article they made this little

14:24

90% Oh yeah, it sounds like a robot.

14:30

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And then to be honest,

14:31

it's harder to edit.

14:35

A, an article that was made out

14:35

of AI because you know that they

14:39

didn't, their heart's not into that.

14:41

And it's easier to edit something

14:41

that you write from your

14:45

own, your own take on things.

14:47

And then it's easier to edit. So that's where we are

14:48

having difficulty on that.

14:52

So it's taking us a while, but still

14:52

it's more efficient, faster, quicker,

14:57

and as what our masterclass, last week

14:57

emphasized treat it like an intern.

15:03

I like that. If you treat it like an intern, it's

15:04

like you tell them what they need

15:07

to do, what they need to provide

15:07

you, and then it's easier to produce

15:11

whatever you need to produce. Like it could be a campaign or a, an

15:12

article or a research on something.

15:18

So you are the ones instructing

15:18

the AI, the tool and you have

15:23

to introduce yourself as who you

15:23

are and what you need from him.

15:26

And create the right prompt. And then you then that's when you

15:28

get the right, detail that or info

15:32

that you can use for your work. Yeah, I love that concept of

15:34

treating it like an intern.

15:37

I think that's very clever. Thank you for sharing that.

15:40

But I do want to ask you, 'cause

15:40

I know you're part of the Global

15:43

Alliance for PR and Communications

15:43

Management, which for our listeners

15:46

who don't know what that is, it's a

15:46

collection of different organizations

15:50

from around the world, including IABC, which I'm part of.

15:53

And you are part of the Public Relations

15:53

Society of the Philippines as well.

15:57

I know that you and some of your

15:57

colleagues at the Alliance are working

16:00

on the ethics piece of AI at the moment.

16:03

What are some of the ethical challenges

16:03

that you think people struggle with

16:08

when using AI for comms and PR? All right.

16:11

It's very tricky because you can either

16:11

use it to, to spread misinformation and

16:16

disinformation because I've, as I've

16:16

said, you can use it in such manner and

16:21

you could produce the material quite

16:21

very easily and quicker, faster, smarter.

16:27

And and then the other part is doing it

16:27

right, and being very ethical in doing it.

16:33

There's a spread of misinformation,

16:33

disinformation, deep fakes, and all that.

16:37

And you want to be part of the

16:37

PR community that is responsible

16:41

in doing things ethically. As our cry for Global Alliance, for

16:43

example, we want to be the advocate

16:48

of being a responsible communicator.

16:50

And being a responsible communicator

16:50

is not just doing it right, but

16:54

telling others how to do it, right. And in the office for example

16:57

we have to self-regulate.

17:01

Because, and we tell our clients

17:01

that, because you always, at the end

17:05

of the day, you always have an option

17:05

or you can choose whether you use the

17:10

tool to earn more money and do things

17:10

quicker and do on the, do things on

17:14

the other side and be part of the

17:14

misinformation and disformation, and

17:18

you can choose the other one also. And of course we're towards the

17:20

ethical way of doing things.

17:23

So Global Alliance is one of the

17:23

organizations that pushes that principle

17:28

of being a responsible communicator.

17:31

So in the office, for example

17:31

especially in the Philippines

17:34

there's only cybersecurity and data

17:34

privacy law and, you can really

17:40

do the deep fakes and all that. And you won't get criticized for it.

17:45

And the sad thing is people wouldn't

17:45

determine actually what, which is the

17:49

fake and which is not somehow, because

17:49

that they're not that critical with that.

17:53

They just look and, 78% of Gen Z here, the

17:53

source is actually social media platform.

18:00

So whatever you put in there they are

18:00

not there to say, oh, that's difficult.

18:04

That's not true. That's not, and so us as a responsible

18:05

communicator, we should be watchful

18:10

of that, and we should be a proponent

18:10

of like really protecting that.

18:13

Especially for the young ones

18:13

whose source of information is the,

18:18

all the social media platforms. Yeah.

18:20

In the office we do self-regulation.

18:23

For example we tell the client. This is 90% AI.

18:28

We tell them, I'll try it because

18:28

we want to set the expectations and

18:31

then when we, there's crisis we tell

18:31

them that this is not facts, and we

18:38

tell them we, we are consultants and

18:38

we tell them how to respond to that.

18:43

So we do a lot of social media listenings,

18:43

because you can never go wrong with data.

18:48

We practice outsourcing the right

18:48

partners to provide us with the best

18:54

social media listening tool and provide

18:54

consultancies to the client relying on

18:59

that social media listening tool that

18:59

we did and the result that we acquired.

19:03

So it's more on, in the

19:03

Philippines, honestly, at

19:06

this point is self-regulation. Yeah, that's interesting.

19:09

And I. It is and you will see this from

19:09

being on the Global Alliance too, it is

19:15

so different wherever you go in the world. Like in Australia, we do have the

19:16

Australian government issued AI

19:20

ethical guidelines, but they're not, nobody's held to account to those, maybe

19:22

under other kind of laws or similar laws.

19:26

But even now we are seeing 'cause

19:26

we're coming into a federal election,

19:31

there have been deep fakes pop up about

19:31

the opposition leader, but they're

19:34

on a platform not run in Australia.

19:37

It's run out of China. So then you have this whole legal

19:42

barriers across borders that

19:42

you've gotta contend with as well.

19:45

And as you say, if people aren't educated

19:45

in how to think critically about the

19:49

content they're seeing, and to be able

19:49

to spot AI in action, then we have

19:54

a really big challenge on our hands. Yes, that's right.

19:57

That's right. Especially for for the

19:58

country, for our country,

20:01

like the election is coming, we're this

20:01

May, it's election time and as responsible

20:06

communicators, we should be watching that.

20:09

We should be telling the younger ones

20:09

how to protect themselves from getting

20:13

influenced by wrong information and stuff

20:13

like that, but you can only do so much.

20:17

So it's good that organizations like

20:17

IABC and Global Alliance and PRSP,

20:23

it's actually our job to to push this.

20:26

Because otherwise they can shrug up

20:26

your shoulders and say it doesn't matter.

20:29

People are, especially the Gen

20:29

Zs and the Gen Alphas are really

20:33

very knowledgeable right now. No, you can still, they can still

20:35

get easily influenced by information.

20:39

So if we're not gonna be at the

20:39

forefront of this, if we're gonna do the

20:43

campaigning on being ethically responsible

20:43

and then pushing the responsible

20:48

communication, agenda, then yeah.

20:50

It's gonna be a sad sad sad future for us.

20:54

And I think you've just

20:54

struck a chord with me there.

20:57

We've been talking a bit in recent

20:57

months about how you demonstrate

21:00

the value of communication. Particularly when you're in a

21:02

business or to your clients.

21:05

And I think one of the things that

21:05

we can demonstrate as you've been

21:09

talking about there, is that we are

21:09

guardians of the truth in a way.

21:12

That sounds very dramatic, but we are the

21:12

ones who can be that first line of defense

21:17

between what is real and what is fake.

21:20

Being able to educate people and being

21:20

able to protect reputations by being the

21:25

people who are best positioned to protect

21:25

reputations in this world that we're in.

21:32

That's right. That's right. I've got one last question for you, Ana.

21:35

What advice do you have for other PR

21:35

and comms professionals who may be

21:40

worried about being replaced by AI?

21:43

Okay. I always say that again AI is only

21:44

as good as the data you put in it.

21:50

So you're still the one that's

21:50

putting the work out there.

21:53

It's just a tool to help you out. Now it's gonna replace your job if

21:55

you won't study and upskill because

22:02

another person would take your place,

22:02

the one that's knowledgeable about AI.

22:06

So it cannot replace a job because

22:06

it needs a lot of human intervention.

22:12

Especially with the works that we do,

22:12

it's about reputation management, so

22:17

how could you put reputation if we

22:17

just, depend on a robotics type of

22:21

material that comes out of a tool.

22:24

So it's still you that's working on that. And then obviously once you are

22:25

using it, you would know that,

22:29

oh, this is the difference. If you continue using AI, actually

22:30

you would realize that Yeah

22:34

it's, it uses a very common word.

22:36

For example, journey is always there, yes. And you would know that it's 90% ai.

22:41

Not really, it should be other way

22:41

around 10% AI and the 90% human touch.

22:46

So it won't replace our job because

22:46

the more likely we are the ones or

22:51

originating doing things like this, but

22:51

you will be replaced if you will not

22:57

upskill and you will not learn the tool

22:57

and you were not aware of the tool, of

23:01

course, definitely you will lose your job.

23:04

In fact, in the Philippines right now,

23:04

when we hire new grads, it's part of the,

23:10

the thing that we look into the resume

23:10

is the knowhow in terms of using tools

23:16

and AI because we have to upskill, we

23:16

have to know how it's being used so that

23:22

you'll be more, you can work smarter,

23:22

faster, quicker, and more efficient,

23:28

but it won't replace what we do.

23:30

It won't replace the kind of effort and

23:30

think, thing that we do for our clients

23:36

because all that we do is really from

23:36

the knowledge that we put together.

23:40

And the tool is just helping us aid aid

23:40

is just aiding us to, to deliver that.

23:46

Yeah. I think that's really good advice. Thank you.

23:49

And I have three questions I

23:49

ask every guest on the podcast.

23:52

Are you ready for those? Okay, let's go.

23:56

Okay. First one, what is one of the best

23:56

communication lessons you've ever

24:00

learned, and how did it change the

24:00

way you approach communication?

24:05

Okay. It's always being

24:06

truthful, in what you do.

24:09

And you can never go wrong

24:09

with that because, and you

24:12

have to believe what you do. When you're a consultant and you

24:14

tell a client of what they need to

24:17

do, you should be believing that. And it should be something that you

24:19

have really worked on as a consultant.

24:25

And because if you do not believe

24:25

what you say, then all else will fail.

24:30

Yeah. And it happened to me. For example, crisis.

24:33

Very well. That this is what the

24:33

client should be doing. But then there are some clients that are

24:36

very stubborn and then you would go with

24:40

the flow because that's what you wanted. And then at the end of

24:41

the day, you never listen.

24:43

You never listen to what your mind is

24:43

saying that this is the approach to this.

24:47

You do not, never insisted it. If you're not part in the

24:49

discussion on the table.

24:52

So what happened was, it has become

24:52

a much bigger crisis afterwards.

24:56

So you have to trust your gut. You have to put it out there

24:58

because that's what you're paid for.

25:02

That's what you have to do. So yeah you just stand on what

25:03

you know you should be doing and

25:08

giving it to the client and make

25:08

sure that they listen to you.

25:12

And if they don't, then you are

25:12

ready to tell that, okay, we said so.

25:16

I love that. That's really good advice for anybody

25:16

who's working either externally

25:20

as consultant or internally and

25:20

advising people in-house as well.

25:24

Next question, what's one thing

25:24

you wish people would do more of

25:28

or less of when communicating?

25:31

All right. That's a tricky question.

25:34

They should be, again I, it

25:34

should be representing you.

25:41

It should be you. Authentic you.

25:44

And in order to aid you with how you want

25:44

to present it, you have to always study.

25:49

You have to always back yourself with

25:49

back your, back it up with research.

25:54

And you have to be prepared whenever

25:54

you do that, you have to be backed up

25:58

with data, with facts and all that,

25:58

and then stand your ground and be

26:03

very ethical and be very authentic.

26:07

I love it. And I think authenticity and

26:07

communication is something we often

26:11

have to coach leaders in a lot as well.

26:13

Especially new leaders

26:13

who aren't confident yet.

26:17

. But it comes across when they're

26:17

not authentic, you can tell.

26:20

Okay. Last question. Who do you turn to for

26:22

communication advice?

26:25

Oh, okay. Of course, that's the reason why you have

26:26

experts in the field, organizations like

26:32

IABC, Global Alliance, and you would only

26:32

know that what you're doing is efficient

26:38

and good when you are echoing that

26:38

with fellow experts and communicators.

26:44

So you should not be closing your doors

26:44

with opportunities to work, collaborate

26:50

and do things with fellow communicators.

26:53

And you should not stop yourself

26:53

from joining organizations because

26:58

it'll help you see things beyond

26:58

the four corners of your agency, you

27:05

would see it in a different light. Like for example, I would go

27:07

to Malaysia and it's very near

27:10

Philippines, but it's different.

27:13

They are, they're all different things

27:13

there, and you could learn more from them

27:16

and then you could bring it home and do it

27:19

in the Philippines, for example. And then you could also compare, for

27:21

example, responsible communication.

27:24

I'd be like, oh, in Europe there's

27:24

the GDPR, but in the Philippines

27:28

there's only this and that. So then you mirror, and then you

27:29

help see the good things of how they

27:34

implement things and bring it home. And that's why it's global.

27:38

You can present, represent your

27:38

company as a global company.

27:42

That those things keeps on upskilling,

27:42

keeps on learning, keeps on

27:47

collaborating with fellow experts.

27:51

Yeah, and I think the great part about

27:51

joining these organizations is obviously

27:55

get to meet people around the world. That's how I met you.

27:57

That's always fun. Ana, thank you so much

27:59

for your time today. If people wanted to connect with you

28:00

and learn more about what you do,

28:04

how can they get in touch with you? Okay.

28:06

They can email me at

28:06

ana.pista@ardent.com.ph, I am now

28:12

a CEO and of ACE or a AI Center of

28:12

Excellence, and we are doing workshops

28:17

for AI and, they can also reach out to

28:17

me at ana.pista@centerofexcellence.ai

28:25

Amazing. Thank you so much, and we'll put a whole

28:26

bunch of links in the show notes as well.

28:29

Ana, it's been absolute pleasure. Thanks for joining us on

28:30

Less Chatter More Matter.

28:34

Yeah, thanks Mel. You're doing a wonderful job.

28:36

I hope you, get to do this as often

28:36

because we need someone like you

28:41

oh, thank you.