The Brief
- What changed: Applied, the notes, tests and interviews I have published since June 2025, now lives on Comms With AI at commswith.ai/applied. All 44 pieces moved with their original dates, and every old appliedcomms.ai address takes you to the same piece here.
- Why it matters for comms: a test is most useful sitting next to the thing it tested. Of those 44 pieces, seven linked to a template in the library. From today every piece names the template, toolkit, tool or phase it puts to work, and a template that has been tested shows the dated test on its own page.
- The takeaway: expect fewer long reads and more short, dated notes – one test, one result, the method, and the prompt to copy.
The Story
Applied started in June 2025 as a newsletter about trying AI on my own communications work. Sixteen months later it holds 20 articles, 14 experiments, six interviews and four shorter pieces. The interviews are with Barney Evison, Joyce Higgins, Neal Mann, Rik Turner, Ben Verinder and Elif Güvençer, and this month brought the Comms AI Pentathlon, a blind test of eight AI assistants on five comms briefs.
All that time it lived on its own site, and since the start of this year the templates have lived on Comms With AI. A reader who found a useful test had to cross to another site to find the template, and a reader on a template page had no way of knowing it had been tested at all.
The audience told the same story. Applied’s own email list on Ghost was about 40 people. The LinkedIn edition of the newsletter had nearly 600 subscribers. The readers were already somewhere else, so the publication has followed them.
So, three things change.
Shorter, dated notes come first. Most new pieces will be notes: one test, one result, 150 to 400 words, with a method line under the byline saying which model, which version, where it was run, how many times, and what went in. Longer pieces when a subject needs the room, in the usual shape.
Every piece is tied to the work. Each one carries a “Put it to work” card pointing to the template, toolkit, tool or phase it used, with a button to copy the prompt where there is a template. A template that has been tested shows the dated test on its own page, under “Tested in practice”. Today that is one template, the AI tool register; every new note adds to it.
One name, one place. The LinkedIn newsletter is now the Comms With AI Briefing, landing Fridays: what changed in AI, what it means for comms, one thing to try, and the latest notes from my own tests.
A word on how the move was made, since that is rather the point of Applied. The Ghost export was converted to the new site by a script, and the pieces were then gone through by hand. Every one of the 80 old addresses, 154 requests in all, was tested on a rehearsal domain before the real one was switched over. And around 150 images that had no description for screen readers now have one. Claude did most of the heavy lifting; I checked it, and you will find the occasional seam.
What does not change: the Leader Interviews, the experiments, and writing up what did not work as plainly as what did.
The Practice: what you can put into practice today
- Find the tests for the stage you are at. Filter Applied by phase (Strategise, Create, Govern, Monitor or Transform) and read the three most recent.
- Check the template you use most. Open it in the library and look for “Tested in practice”. Where a dated test exists, it sits under the related templates.
- Get it by email if you prefer. The Briefing lands on Fridays; the signup is at the foot of this page.
Coming up: Advocate and Sceptic: Billy Partridge on AI and Human Judgement, a Comms With AI Leader Interview, Wednesday 28 October, 12:15 to 13:00 GMT, online and free.