AI in PR: Why agencies must start building and not just talking

Fight or Flight has recently launched its own media training tool. powered by AI, Media TrAIner. Here its creator Dan Bird, talks PRmoment through the process and calls on PR firms join the likes of Lewis PR, The Romans and Boldspace (and Fight or Flight) in building AI products for their clients.

Lessons from building our first AI SaaS product

Pick your platitude to start an article about AI: “AI is transforming everything.” “This is the biggest shift since the internet.” “Agencies need to adapt or die.”

We’ve all heard them. There’s a lot of hype, a lot of concern, and a lot of unknowns. But what we still don’t hear enough of is honesty — real transparency about what’s actually working when comms teams use AI, and just as importantly, what isn’t. Those conversations matter. Because beneath the noise, something exciting is really happening: AI is opening up entirely new opportunities for agencies to build and sell products, not just services. And that shift could reshape agency revenue.

We’ve already entered the era where comms professionals need to be part technologists. I loved Becca Williams’ article on PRmoment about our entering the age of the communications technologist. I totally agree as it's not enough to just be consulting on AI technology. It’s no longer enough to simply advise clients on AI or bolt a few tools onto existing processes. Agencies will need to build, experiment, and create their own intellectual property.

Building transparently and jointly with clients has consistently produced better outcomes than building in isolation. Whether we’re developing something bespoke or adapting an off-the-shelf model, involving clients early and sharing each misstep has ensured that tools solve real problems, reflect real workflows, and get used beyond novelty value.

This principle became the foundation for our first AI product.

At this year’s PRmoment Masterclass: AI in PR, I outlined the learnings from creating Media TrAIner, our AI-powered tool for improving spokesperson performance. It didn’t begin life as a product but it began as a simple question from trainers and clients: How do we make spokespeople more effective while making training more efficient?

Teams wanted execs to better understand what might be written after an interview. Trainers wanted a consistent, fast way to evaluate performance without spending hours rewriting notes or simulating headlines manually.

So instead of drafting a complex roadmap or launching a glossy beta, we built a minimum viable solution, something functional that addressed a specific pain point. Then we handed it to clients and trainers and asked them, honestly, to break it.

What followed was months of transparent testing, direct feedback, blunt conversations about what wasn’t good enough, and rapid iteration. Every improvement was shaped not by theory, but by how people were actually using the tool day to day.

Once the LLM had become part of our daily work, clients were requesting for direct access themselves so we made the decision many agencies will face soon when creating quality AI tools: can we turn it into a product?

As the first self-serve AI SaaS product launched by an agency, we had to learn totally new things like pricing, global billing, onboarding, customer support, updates, and a product roadmap.

Overall, these three lessons stand out:

1. Products must solve problems, first and foremost: if only one client needs it, it’s a tool. If many clients need it, it can become a product
2. Perfection is the enemy of progress: our earliest versions were simple but good enough for ongoing feedback from clients
3. The right build partner makes or breaks your first product: agencies often try to do everything in-house but we recognised early that we’re not software engineers (yet!) so found a technical partner

Media TrAIner is our first first SaaS product, but it won’t be the last. If we can be as open about our failures as our successes, we’ll move faster and we’ll build things that genuinely push comms forward.

Dan Bird executive vice president, global head of innovation and AI, Fight or Flight.