The decisions that shape a company’s future rarely happen only when the company is present. A prospective customer may consult a colleague, a procurement team may weigh alternative suppliers, or an AI assistant may assemble sources and recommend a shortlist. The company is absent; judgments about it continue. Our Tuesday essay called this the “Third Room.” Today we ask who will be capable of building influence in that new environment.
Public relations has always been about decisions. Its essential purpose is to shape how stakeholders understand, trust and choose—across situations, relationships and media. Media relations, public affairs, reputation, issues management and crisis communications are important precisely because each can affect a different decision. Visibility alone is neither the purpose nor proof of success.
AI introduces a more complex challenge. We must continue to understand human stakeholders. We must also understand AI systems as influential information interfaces that select, summarize and recommend sources—without confusing them with humans who bear legal and moral responsibility. Most importantly, we need to understand the interaction: people consult AI, AI processes information created by people, and people then act on, challenge or circulate its answers. Influence is now formed across Human, AI and Human × AI.
The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2025 documents the emerging use of AI chat interfaces for news, alongside significant public concerns about accuracy, transparency and trust. Becoming visible in an AI answer is therefore not the same as becoming trusted. The challenge for the profession is to build a repeatable framework: identify the decision and stakeholder, develop credible evidence, govern consistent source information, examine how AI interprets it, and verify the outcomes in the real world.
This is not a sudden change of identity for VM | VOCAL MIDDLE. Since our founding in 2014, we have asked how a professional services business can create value beyond the capacity of any single team or assignment. Our longer-term direction is a platform business, combining intelligence, professional services, technology products and an ecosystem of specialists. Our evolving IMAGE QUOTIENT (IQ) thinking concerns external image assets and market interpretation, while our Capacity & Capability (CNC) thinking concerns internal resources and execution. These are developing management systems, not a claim that every component is already a finished product.
The person needed to connect them is a Business Manager: someone who defines the real problem, assesses evidence, decides what matters, understands the limits of different tools and partners, allocates resources and owns outcomes. AI PR, in this sense, is first a professional capability and mindset—not merely a job title. It combines the craft of public relations with data, AI and commercial judgment to solve business problems across Human, AI and Human × AI.
Why VM Academy, and why now? Because the work did not begin today. Our Public Relations Strategy Open House began in 2019, inviting students to examine real strategic decisions rather than memorise execution techniques. The same year, our founder wrote about the emerging-talent program, recruitment experiments and practical development. VM’s published sustainability page records historical cumulative figures of 73 featured themes, 3,000 attendances, 52 cross-sector participating companies and four cities connected remotely. These are historical website figures, not new 2026 outcomes.
VM Academy gives this longstanding work a clearer structure. Incubator helps students, early-career consultants and career changers learn to frame questions, analyze stakeholders, test approaches and assume professional responsibility. Our Strategy Open House provides an important foundation for this path. Accelerator is designed for experienced professionals with industry insight, commercial relationships or leadership experience. Rather than restarting their careers, they can combine existing strengths with AI PR thinking, cross-functional collaboration and opportunities to build new services, partnerships and markets. Earlier professional conversations, including the VM Future Salon, offer another foundation to develop thoughtfully.
The 2025 Microsoft Work Trend Index reported that 82% of surveyed leaders saw that year as a pivotal moment to rethink key aspects of strategy and operations; it also explored teams combining people and AI agents. [5] Our conclusion is not that a new tool will replace professional judgment. It is that judgment, orchestration and accountability must become more deliberate as execution becomes easier to automate.
VM Academy is therefore not an attempt to rename old programs and call it transformation. It is a commitment to make our methods clearer, preserve evidence of how people grow, and create two complementary paths for future decision-makers. Markets change. Services evolve. Organizations must keep learning to make better decisions.
We welcome conversations with experienced professionals who can help build this future, particularly AI PR Business Managers who can connect public relations, data, AI and business outcomes, and regional ecosystem builders who can develop ximu markets and partnerships. For current openings and forms of collaboration, please refer to VM’s official recruitment channels. The next generation of influence will belong not simply to those with more tools or information, but to those who can make sound choices—and stand behind them.
By VM Academy
References
Reuters Institute, Digital News Report 2025
首席布爾喬亞專欄，2019
百人開箱，2019
北風中的暖流／開箱會歷史成果
Microsoft, 2025 Work Trend Index
Further Reading
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