Delphi launched in spring 2023, six months after ChatGPT gave birth to the modern AI era. So from day one, AI has been part of our thinking, our client work and our processes as a business.
It’s fair to say that the rate in development in AI is unprecedented, with new tools and features emerging all the time. In this blogpost we wanted to take a step back from those day-to-day changes and outline what clients can expect from Delphi when it comes to AI.
How we think about AI
We view AI as a transformational tool in our work for clients – the most significant any of us have seen in our careers. But our priority is always to ensure AI works for us, not the other way round.
We use AI to amplify what we do, whether it’s brainstorming a new idea, surfacing audience sentiment or identifying white space in messaging. But AI isn’t just about speeding up or streamlining current work – it also helps us do things we’ve not done before. These exciting new capabilities mean we can add more value to our clients than ever (we outline some of this below).
Importantly, we will never outsource our thinking or our craft to AI wholesale. AI should not replace critical thinking by humans. Setting objectives, deciding strategy, and developing copy and creative are all areas where AI can play an important role as an input – but the Delphi team are in charge of them, with our experience, judgement and taste all determining the ultimate output.
We describe this as senior expertise powered by smart automation. It’s a model that helps us move faster and think deeper for clients.
Our AI operating system
Delphi’s offering is based around an AI-powered operating system that we’ve built from the ground up. We call it Fennel OS – so named because Prometheus carried away fire from Olympus in a fennel stalk – and it’s a suite of AI tools that every team member has access to and uses as a core part of their daily work.
Within Fennel, we’ve used Claude Code to build four tailor-made products that shape what we do:
- CXO Panel – our synthetic C-suite audience insight tool, based on a corpus of nearly 100 real C-suite interviews, that allows us to understand senior enterprise leaders and ground our work in their attitudes and experiences.
- Echo – brand monitoring that lets us track how your company and competitors show up in LLM results, enabling cutting-edge idea generation and measurement rooted in GEO.
- Agora – social listening that surfaces conversations in communities your audiences care about, helping us to tap into their needs and concerns.
- Slate – a custom tool for drafting questionnaires, allowing us to drastically speed up the research process for clients.
These four brilliant tools are supplemented with two external products, SE Ranking for SEO insight and Sparktoro for audience research, that ensure our recommendations, content and media strategy are always relevant and targeted.
In addition to the Fennel suite, we live and breathe AI in our processes too, streamlining the daily admin load and freeing up time for our team to focus on creativity and strategic thinking. We’re constantly on the lookout for what’s next, testing new AI tools and offerings against the problems our clients are facing. That said, our current third-party tech stack and use cases include the following:
- We have a corporate subscription to Claude to ensure data security and confidentiality for all clients. Claude is our key tool for ideation and analysis in our Planning team.
- Within our growing Creative team, we use Figma and Adobe’s AI in the creative development process.
- In our PR team, we use Sparktoro and Athena to shape media outreach and track impact on LLM outputs. We’ve also created a series of personas in Claude aligned to some of our key media targets to stress test external engagement and pitch ideas.
- Fireflies transcribes and summarises our calls, cutting down significant admin time across the team, while Microsoft Copilot enhances our day-to-day workflows.
Our AI work for clients
AI is increasingly central to our client work too. For one of our largest global clients, our media strategy and campaign development is all built on GEO-led insight, allowing us to be more targeted in our outputs and measure our impact through increased visibility in AI engine results. This has completely revolutionised their comms approach.
We also provide weekly content intelligence report for clients that provide feedback and ideas via social listening. We advise clients on how to factor in new search and audience content journeys to ensure our work has greater impact through LLMs.
Last but not least, we’re helping clients tell their AI story too. Delphi works for AI-native tech businesses and those with an AI story to tell as this technology redefines every organisation and industry. This spans innovative cybersecurity firms and data platforms built on AI, to enterprise SaaS firms reinventing themselves for a new generation. Through that work the Delphi team has developed an intuitive grasp of the fast-paced AI narrative in the cultural conversation.
What’s next for AI in communications
AI will always be at the heart of Delphi’s work – and that’s an ongoing commitment. Fennel OS has already transformed our activity and our value for clients. But it’s also a constant work in progress and we continue to optimise each tool, and explore new ones we can create with AI’s evolving capabilities to respond to client needs. As new capabilities develop, we’ll remain agile and keep experimenting with what helps answer clients’ biggest brand and reputational challenges.
Pete Marcus
