About
Applied Comms AI exists because communications leaders need practical guidance from someone who's actually building these systems, and testing them with real organisations and implementing them in client work.
Applied / Comms With AI is a working notebook on AI in communications: what a senior practitioner built, ran and got wrong, written up so you can borrow the bits that work.
It is the publication arm of Comms With AI and has run since June 2025, with each article (40+ so far) emailed to subscribers. That is all the email you get.
Who writes it
I am Michael MacLennan. I spent five years as Director of Social Media Strategy, Digital and Comms at Brunswick Group, led digital at Red Bull and Barclaycard before that, and started out in newsrooms at The Herald and STV. In 2024 I founded Faur, in 2026 I launched Comms With AI, and I hold a Professional Certificate in Machine Learning and AI from Imperial College London, which means I build the systems I write about.
How every piece is made
Each article follows the same shape: The Brief (three bullets you can read in twenty seconds), The Story, and The Practice (two or three things you can do the same day). And each is made the same way: my argument and my examples, drafted with Claude, every claim checked against its source, and a final edit by me. Where a piece was made differently, it says so. Where something did not work, it says that too. The ethics policy sets out how AI is used and disclosed here.
Nobody has the full picture on AI in communications. What this publication can offer is direct implementation experience and a commitment to showing the work.
Where it fits
Comms With AI is the platform: templates, workflows and tools a comms team can use the same day, and a double winner at the 2026 AI Comms Awards. Applied is where the thinking behind them is worked out in public. Faur is the consultancy, for organisations that want senior, human-led help with AI adoption across the whole business. Most of what is tested here ends up in the Comms With AI library, and what Faur learns in client work ends up here, with the client's details removed.
Start here
Three pieces readers come back to:
- AI in crisis comms: help or hindrance? Where AI earns its place in a crisis (monitoring, drafting) and where it does not (judgement, empathy).
- A complete new business pitch and comms suite in under an hour: testing Claude Skills and Projects A full pitch suite built in one sitting, with the parts that needed a human to fix.
- Five layers of AI tooling, and the comms job each one is for From the free chat window to the autonomous agent.
The full archive is under Learning and experiments and Interviews.
What to expect
One piece at a time, when there is something worth saying, and a straight account of what happened. If that sounds useful, the sign-up is just below. Questions, disagreements and guest suggestions go through the Contact page.