Within two years the number of people who are using AI in the UK has doubled. This compares to the eight years it took for half the country to be using the internet. This figure includes a mix of work, home, education, curiosity and other factors.
Almost twice the number of 16-year-olds are using AI compared to 55-year-olds
With 79 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds now using AI the younger generation are adopting the tools at a far greater rate than older people. By definition, senior communicators who are older are at risk of being left behind. This is not something to outsource. It’s something to understand. There are some great online explainers from the likes of Google and Microsoft out there.
75 per cent read AI summaries in search
Google has switched from a traditional listing to a summary generated by AI for many searches. We have had SEO – search engine optimisation. We now have the age of GEO – generative engine optimisation. That’s techniques for placing your answers into AI summaries not just on Google but answers from large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot.
44 per cent are confident they can identify AI content
If less than half of us are not confident that we can identify something made by a machine this poses questions. Are we likely to be taken in by AI deepfakes and disinformation? Yes, we are.
85 per cent use mainstream news
The majority of people use our 300-year-old tradition of journalism. But within that, while a fifth always trust it the same number always question it. We would be wrong to think that the liberal tradition of journalists holding decision makers to account will always be with us. This needs work.
49 per cent now post or comment on social media
This figure marks something of a collapse. Last year, the figure was 61 per cent. If we are retreating from active social media use what else are we doing? The overall figure of social media use – 89 per cent – hasn’t changed much.
78 per cent see news regularly on social media
Social media once again has become an established source of news. While four in five see news in their feeds a third of people will also share it.
For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape.
In the olden days there was just one type of YouTube. That was landscape clips that lasted less than 15-minutes. You can still see the sediment of this period if you go searching for it.
The 15-year-old Bullseye episode that’s split into two 14-minute parts. That’s from then.
Now, there’s many ways to watch how to skin a metaphorical cat.
One of the glorious things about Ofcom is they don’t just publish reports they also publish selective data that goes into them.
So, here it is. I’ve read the 154,000 lines of data that went into the video on demand survey to unearth some absolute gems.
We know that video is significant in the media landscape.
We know that YouTube is the most popular social media channel in the UK and used by 43.6 million people. That’s 94 per cent of all internet users.
But how are we using it?
What length of YouTube clips do we watch… and why does it matter?
Traditional short-form video still tops the charts on YouTube. That’s clips less than 15-minutes. Ofcom research shows that 57 per cent of the UK population have watched this length of clip in the last 12-months.
What’s interesting are the YouTube Shorts data. Shorts is the vertical platform to challenge TikTok and Reels. Here, the data skews strongly to a younger demographic. Seventy per cent of 13-to-17-year-olds watch this platform.
As we get older, the traditional short-form content performs strongly. More than half of 18 to 50-year-olds will watch this.
Live streams are measurable but are not really cutting through to much more than a tenth of people. They perform best with 13 to 17-year-olds.
What’s also interesting is the longer-form content. Again, almost half the population watch clips longer than 15-minutes long. Full length films and full TV programmes perform less strongly. Around a fifth of people up to the age of 64 will watch this kind of content.
What can public sector communicators take from this? Well, maybe its worth looking at cross-posting Reels or TikTok content to Shorts would be one lesson.
But it would be a mistake to think that 15-minutes of someone dull lecturing you is the answer.
What types of genre perform well on YouTube in the UK?
The real detail in the Ofcom study can be found in the type of content we are watching on YouTube in general.
From the breakdown, music has regained the top spot but how-to guides are the most profitable type of content for public sector communicators. The new recycling bin launch can best be communicated through a ‘how to’ film.
Here, you may not always be looking at what the organisation wants to tell people this week. There may also be value in finding content that people want and making that. A chat with customer services or the webteam may show the less glamorous areas where an explainer can work.
As ever, the question ‘who is your audience?’ is vital.
By knowing the age of the audience you can better frame content.
The ‘how to’ route offering timely practical help is a powerful and underused tool in the comms toolbox.
A few years ago, an author I admired asked me to drop him a note the next time I was in London. So, I invented a spurious reason and met him.
We had connected on Twitter and the author was interested in what was happening with social media in the public sector.
We met in the South Bank Centre cafe a stone’s throw from the London Eye.
At that point in time, I was in the wave of militant optimists who were looking to make the social web work for social good. We chatted over a cup of coffee and the conversation turned to bringing people along.
Back then, I thought that you should spend time with everyone because anyone could see the possibility of those tools.
The author didn’t.
At the time, I was surprised. It took me several years to see he was right.
His argument was that in a room of 10 people you can see a lightbulb go on over maybe two or three people. They are the enthusiasts. Fired with enthusiasm, they will scheme and experiment and take things forward. A further two or three may do similar between 9am and 5pm. They are the followers.
Then there were the rest.
The author said he didn’t bother with them because they would probably never see the light. They are the laggards.
A few weeks ago, I thought of this conversation. In the last 20 years there has been the financial crash, two significant changes of Government, an energy crisis, war in Ukraine, war in the Middle East, Brexit, COVID institutional reorganisation and the rise of AI.
Working in the public sector over the last 20 years has seen pay freezes and a loss of earning power. On a good day, you get called an idiot twice an hour online.
There is no question that ever more change is coming.
Should we expect everyone to be enthusiastic?
Not really.
We can hope people are in the first group of enthusiasts.
We can maybe bring people along to be in the second group.
But we don’t have any right to expect this to happen.
There will be people in the third group who have had enough.
I’m always keen to show them the door to a better path. I’m realistic enough to know that some people have just had enough.
“Communicators used to write for journalists. Now we also have to write for machines that summarise us.”
As a former journo who has spent time as a press officer this made me stop. It made me look into what AI summaries are and how much I should actually be bothered.
What is an AI summary?
Of Course, I asked Google.
And Google gave me an AI summary of what an AI summary is.
“Google AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries at the top of search results that provide quick answers, combining information from multiple web sources using generative AI.”
So far, so good.
But all this did remind me of some BBC research on the wild inaccuracies that can be found in AI summaries.
“Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45 per cent of the time – regardless of language or territory.”
So, if the BBC says almost half of AI summaries had at least one problem , what does that mean for public sector comms?
Pondering, I asked ChatGPT Deep Research to come up with a reading list.
Deep Research is the functionality that allows deeper research with links. A snap answer comes in seconds. Deep Research comes in maybe five or six minutes but when I’ve used it its been worth it.
Incidentally, while I used ChatGPT some models of Copilot also have Deep Research functionality on many of their models.
In summer 2025, AI summaries in Google search accounted for 15 cent of all UK search results, research shows. Pew research from the US also shows the figure rises to more than 50 per cent for a search term of ten words or more.
People click less to a webpage when they see an AI summary. Data from Pew says that there’s a 40 per cent reduction in the people who click to around nine per cent of all search users.
I went back to the original LinkedIn post that suggests this prompt so you can see what a summary would look like.
“Assume this content will be summarised by AI assistants for busy executives and decision makers. Rewrite it so the core message, positioning and credibility signals remain intact even when condensed to three sentences.”
The idea of this is that you can see how an AI summary might look.
Using Copilot and the prompt, the summary cameback:
Here’s a rewritten version that keeps the core message, positioning and credibility signals intact even when later compressed to three sentences:
Community‑group audiences respond best to practical, hyper‑local content that solves real problems, reflects everyday life, and feels genuinely rooted in the place it serves. New research from Public Sector Comms Headspace and Altrincham HQ shows that posts offering useful information, celebrating local people, and fostering belonging consistently outperform generic announcements or corporate messaging. The findings give comms teams clear, evidence‑based guidance on what to prioritise if they want to build trust, engagement and meaningful community connection.
Broadly, this works. Corporate messages don’t work as well. But quoting Public Sector Comms Headspace and Altrincham HQ? The first is a Facebook group I’m admin of. The second is a PR agency just outside Manchester I’ve not heard of. Neither are quoted in the blog.
Hello there, AI hallucinations.
But this is one experiment so maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Answers to simple questions will be up against AI, the piece says. That’s things like ‘how to change a bike chain,’ The answer to a more detailed and local problem is less likely to be summarised. That means specific public sector content may not be affected.
So these may see inaccurate AI summaries rebound on the organisation as a media query.
So what?
There is some good guidance on using AI in the public sector from tools like the UK Government AI Playbook. But there is nothing I could find on advice on inaccurate AI summaries.
Maybe its to the BBC research that we need to look. When they looked at inaccurate news summaries they discovered that the audience blamed the tool and the platform that was mis-quoted.
“Audiences look for signs that responsibility is being taken in practice: provenance that travels with the summary, working links back to the reporting, timestamps and update notes, and timely corrections where the summary is actually encountered. They also expect the fix to be reflected wherever the summary appears, not just in one place.”
But if text cannot always be relied upon, would video also work to communicate the right information?
AI disclaimer: I used ChatGPT Deep Research to explore the subject and provide links for further reading. I used Copilot to test the prompt to summarise a blog post and Google search to give me a definition of AI summaries.
For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape.
I’ve not done much lately on what content works in Facebook groups.
So, I thought I’d take a look.
But first a recap.
Two thirds of the UK population use Facebook.
Half the population are members of Facebook groups.
Facebook groups are the most important single source of local government news for 25 to 64-year-olds un the UK, say Ofcom.
It’s down to the admin whether or not they let pages into a group.
Just 1.9 per cent of Facebook timelines are posts with links, say Meta.
All these bullet-points mean your Facebook page which was once a go-to destination is marginalised and struggling for attention.
One way to get people back to your page is to take out Facebook ads. But that’s expensive.
I’m suggesting that its cheaper to take your content yourself to where the eyeballs are.
I know from training that some comms people really hate the idea of sharing content to a Facebook group. I get why. It takes time and can be messy.
But it works.
What was the plan?
For this research, I looked at the Quarry Bank and Saltwells News Network Facebook group. This is a community group in the Black Country with 2,200 members.
There are two broad types of content I looked at.
Original content posted directly into the group.
Content shared from a Facebook group into the page.
What Facebook group content works best?
It’s not even close.
Content posted directly into a group without a link works best.
This type of content received 23 times more reach than that posted onto a Facebook page then shared into a group.
On average, in the research an original post got 6,400 views. For a Facebook group pf 2,200 that’s not bad. That compares with 300 when a page cross-posts into the group.
Here’s a top five of each type of content
Top five original content posts
These posts were added directly to the Quarry Bank and Saltwells News Network Facebook group.
Abnornal tests led to the death of Quarry Bank man – 89,000 reach. Images from the BBC news story posted to the group with a summary with the link in the comments.
Old coach companies of Quarry Bank – 13,000 reach. A carousel of historic images.No link.
Disgust at Trump’s commentsdenigrating British veterans – 10,000.An image of the Remembrance Sunday event at Quarry Bank park.No link.
Bank of trees being marketed for a drive through restaurant – 8,800 reach.A carousel of images from the site. Link to the estate agents’ post in the comments.
Release of sewage to a Quarry Bank stream – 7,800 reach.A summary of a news story and image. Link in the comments.
Top 10 Facebook page posts shared into the group
These posts were shared into the group from other Facebook pages.
Appeal for NHS equipment – 600 reach.A cross post from a Dudley NHS page.
Fire fighter recognised – 500 reach.A cross post from West Midlands Fire Service.
Indoor car boot sale in Quarry Bank – 500 reach.A cross post from a community group.
Grit bins dumped by Dudley Council – 500 reach. A cross post from Alex Ballinger MP.
Bike charity – 500 reach.A cross post from a Quarry Bank charity.
So, the moral of the story is to join Facebook groups where you can and share content directly.
One impediment may be the idea that you use an expensive social media management tool to schedule things. Hey, it may even be able to post into groups if you pay extra. The lesson from this snapshot is not to bother.
Evidence shows that a real person’s voice can cut through. ‘Lexi’s Letter’ was written by a young patient directly to health professionals on how a patient like her wants to be treated. Six months to the day Lexi passed away a campaign to promote her letter has been launched with the support of her family. Those resources are also being shared for other health professionals. If you are an NHS comms professional you can help.Touch Design’s Kirsty McKenzie who was involved with the project has written about it.
Hearing the quiet voices: what Lexi taught us about working with young patients and families
Young patients often tell us what they need, sometimes clearly, but often quietly. The real challenge for NHS teams is not whether children and young people have something to say, but whether our systems, processes and pressures allow us to truly hear them.
Across the NHS, teams are under increasing pressure to improve communication, emotional support and the overall experience of care for children and young people. Targets, pathways and performance measures matter, but they can easily crowd out the lived experience of the patient, particularly when that patient is young, anxious, or navigating care alongside their family.
Evidence shows that when patient experience is communicated through real stories rather than just metrics, it can drive engagement and change professional behaviour. An NHS study has reported that patient stories improve understanding of patient experience and help embed patient-centred values into everyday care.
Lexi’s Letter is not a policy document or a set of recommendations. It is a personal, honest account of care, written from a young patient’s perspective, with all the emotional clarity and vulnerability that brings. When we worked with Lexi and her family, the most important lesson was simple but profound: authentic patient voices cut through in ways that professional language never can.
Rather than interpreting experience on behalf of patients, Lexi’s words allow NHS professionals to listen directly. The tone, the pauses, the feelings behind the sentences, these are the things that are often lost in surveys, dashboards and reports, yet they are exactly what shape how care is experienced.
Working with patients and families, not just about them
A key learning from this work was the importance of involving both the patient and their family as genuine partners. Lexi’s experience did not exist in isolation; it was shared with those supporting her. Making space for that wider perspective added depth and honesty, and reminded us that for young people especially, care is almost always a shared journey.
This approach is supported by UK public health evidence. Government analysis of public health communications shows that co-producing messages with communities and patients increases trust, relevance and engagement, and that behaviour change is more likely when messages are created with people rather than for them, particularly in minority and harder-to-reach groups.
For NHS communications, this reinforces a crucial point: patient voice is not an add-on, it is a mechanism for engagement and change. This kind of collaboration requires trust, time and care. It means being prepared to listen without immediately fixing, defending or reframing. It also means accepting that what we hear may be uncomfortable, but that discomfort is often where the most meaningful improvement starts.
From story to shared reflection
Lexi’s Letter was created to help with exactly this challenge. It gives clinicians, communications teams and patient-experience colleagues a simple, emotionally resonant way to reflect on care through a real patient voice. Used in team discussions, training sessions or quality-improvement work, it creates space for empathy, reflection and honest conversation.
We know from national campaigns that patient-led narrative can drive measurable behaviour change. The #hellomynameis campaign, started by UK clinician Kate Granger, used a patient story to promote a single communication behaviour: clinicians introducing themselves to patients. The campaign achieved over 400,000 staff sign-ups across more than 90 NHS organisations, alongside over 2.5 billion impressions, demonstrating both large-scale engagement and explicit clinician commitment to behaviour change.
Lexi’s Letter works in the same way, grounding reflection and improvement in something human, specific and real.
What has been especially striking is how the letter helps teams slow down. It encourages professionals to step out of problem-solving mode and reconnect with why experience matters, not in abstract terms, but in the voice of one young person.
Encouraging others to use the resource
This is not a story to be read once and set aside. The real value of Lexi’s Letter lies in its use. The assets were created so teams can actively work with them, to prompt discussion, challenge assumptions and ground improvement work in something real and human.
It is already helping teams start powerful conversations about communication, emotional support and what “good care” really feels like from a young person’s point of view. If improving children and young people’s experience of care is on your agenda, this is a resource worth exploring, and, more importantly, using. Please get in touch.
Kirstie McKenzie is managing director of design agency Touch Design who worked on the ‘Lexi’s Letter‘ project.
It’s a flowchart to help you with your online campaign.
There’s two parts to it, the moment when you are about to post online and then once you have posted.
You are about to post online
Even before posting, think about the topic. Is it a hot topic? Do you have concerns about sustained abuse?
And then to actually posting and engaging.
You have posted online
Trace through to see if you are getting comments. Are they positive and well researched? Are they malicious? Have they broken a house rule? Are they unhappy?
By having a process you can make sense of what can be a stressful episode.
I came across an old YouTube clip this week and I’m so glad I did.
It’s called ‘leadership lessons from a lone dancing nut’.
It baffled me then entertained then enlightened me the first time I saw it 14-years ago.
TLDW: One of the most important things you can ever do is be the first person to support someone doing something good.
The clip is here.
Do watch.
To quote the narrative spoken by Derek Sivers who posted the video:
First of course, a leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he is doing is so simple it’s almost instructional. This is key. It must be easy to follow. Now here comes the first follower with a really crucial role. He shows everyone else how to follow. Notice how the leader embraces him as an equal so it’s not about the leader anymore it’s about THEM the plural. It takes guts to be the first follower. You stand out and you brave ridicule yourself. The first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint the first follower is the spark.
Now here’s the second follower… this is the turning point. It’s proof the first has done well. Now, it’s not a lone nut and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news. A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see followers because new followers emulate followers.
Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point. Now we have a movement.
Leadership is really over-glorified… there is no movement without the first follower. When you see a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.’
When was the last time you supported a lone dancing nut?
Refreshingly, there is a new language of filmmaking that people are ravenously consuming.
Gone are the days when the public would wear a public information film where someone talking seemingly for hours.
The act of the scroll has democratised film consumption.
If you are not grabbing attention people will leave.
Here’s examples of films to inspire you.
There’s an array of approaches from the traditional to the quite bold.
Use this as a library of options.
When you see one out in the wild, save it. You never know when it’ll come in handy.
The voxpop
How: Send someone out with a microphone to speak to real people.
When: When you want your audience to see themselves reflected on the screen with some third party endorsement.
Example: South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue here talk about the peer pressure of jumping into open water while drunk. Four hundred people a year in the UK drown with 13 to 17-year-olds most at risk.This approach mimics the trend of influencers going out onto the street for some candid chats.
The lucky shot
How: Keep your wits about you to capture something special. There is no shot-list for this. Just quick thinking.
When: Sometimes golden things happen that can create softer content that has no call to action. Do you know what? That’s fine.
Example: The National Trust are a well-resourced comms team which does LinkedIn really well. This cute shot of a squirrel scampering was too good to miss. This will get views. That means your post necxt week will get more attention.
Multiple shots then voiceover to tell a story
How: Gather lots of different pieces of footage. Then add the voiceover laterwhen you know what the narrative is.
When: You know you have a story to tell but you don’t have an interviewee who can perform at the drop of a hat.
Example: London Ambulance Service took footage for a day-in-the-life of a paramedic. Quick edits and a voiceover make this work. Note the shots are GDPR-complaint too. So, you don’t see the vehicle collision, just the paramedic.
The interview illustrated by cutaways
How: There’s a sit-down interview to allow the interviewee to speak candidly without a script. This works well when the subject is personal or isn’t used to speaking on camera. You can then illustrate it with B-roll you can shoot. He talks about meeting patients? You see him meeting patients.
When: When you have a personal story.
Example: Here, NHS England interview a surgeon who has returned to work after a tree fell on him while he was out cycling. It’s a powerful story posted to LinkedIn underlined by the cutaways that move the story onwards with pace.
The scripted walk and talk
How: You write a script and then the subject delivers it line-by-line and shot-by-shot.
When: When you have a story that may need an injection of pace that comes with multiple shots. When your subject needs to get to the point without waffle.
Example: Oxford City Council are masters at this approach. Here, a fairly arcane subject is made engaging by a crisp script and being out and about. Say bye-bye to dull Councillor videos.
The meme
How: The CapCut app is brilliant at providing short memes that you can slot your own images or footage into.
When: When you need to post but you don’t have the footage. This works better on the more leftfield TikTok rather than the more conservative formats of LinkedIn or Reels.
Example: South Downs National Park use this Hollywood actor’s response as a basis for their clip on TikTok.
A POV (point of view)
How: Simply take out the phone and film yourself walking up that hill, through the town centre, across the bridge. Whatever you like.
When: When you need to show what you’ll get if you take that walk with a voiceover added later.
Example: In this influencer-shot video, a walk in the Lake District is shown. The scenery is the star.
The trend
How: One approach to filmmaking gets built upon and built upon.
When: The half-life of the trend is days and hours rather than weeks and months. This is about swiftness and originality not being the 95th.
Example: Turangi Fire and Rescue in New Zealand were not the only ones to parody this glamorous Bentley promotion. They mimic it shot-by-shot for comic effect.
The two shot
How: The vertical approach for video now allows to shots one above the other to make it visually more engaging.
When: When you maybe have a piece to camera and other supporting footage.
Example: Here. BBC News uses a piece to camera and supporting footage to illustrate it.
That’s nine approaches.
Many more are available.
What have you seen?
For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape.
