#PRAXIS12 Adrian Warr Calls communicators to “Embrace the Science, Unleash the Art” in the Age of AI
At PRAXIS 2025, the audience was transported to a galaxy far, far away – not in fiction, but in the reality of today’s communications landscape. Adrian Warr, CEO – South Asia Pacific, Burson, opened with a powerful provocation: “Storytelling has a dark side.” In his keynote, “Story Wars: AI the New Hope?”, Warr noted that he wasn’t here to glorify storytelling, but to unpack its risks, explaining how stories can inspire, but also mislead, distort, and divide. Our defence will be human creativity, unleashed and empowered by AI.
“Three dangerous forces are corrupting storytelling today – laziness, bias, and misinformation,” he warned, adding that “everything is politicised, zombie narratives thrive, and complexity has made us silent.” This context has created a paradox for communicators: truth is debatable, facts struggle to cut through, and stories are weaponised. His call to action? “Embrace the science, unleash the art.” Technology can give us confidence and capacity tell better stories.
The communications industry must get faster at distilling vast quantities of data into insights, more agile in narrative creation, and more flexible in context. Creativity must be unblocked — and AI can be the co-pilot. “AI isn’t replacing humans – it’s giving us the courage to move faster without losing meaning,” he said, encouraging communicators to explore AI tools not as threats, but as accelerators for insight-led creativity.
His striking example, a campaign called SATO 2531 from Japan. This study promoted gender equality but targeting Japan’s law requiring women to change their last name after marriage, a law that is found could eventually lead to all Japanese citizens having the same last name, ‘Sato’, by 2531.
Warr highlighted how the campaign demonstrated the power of storytelling through simple, singular idea that acts as a heuristics for a deeper meaning, its emotional provocation, its relevance and its virality. But above all he noted how its use of data combined with creativity was core to its success.
In conversation with Shefali Sapra of Diageo, Warr dove deeper into the human dimension of the “Story Wars.” The biggest challenge, he noted, is not technology – it’s the human side. Organisations must protect the soul of storytelling, safeguard creative skillsets, and nurture cultural understanding even as they adopt AI.
When asked why corporate storytelling often falls flat, Warr was candid: “Corporate communications teams have long been forced to be risk averse, if you can’t quantify upside versus downside, you’ll always err on the side of caution. This restricts creativity and bold thinking. And that correlates to a limitation on resource in corporate communications functions, they haven’t been invested in as much as they should. Add to all that the sheer volume of narratives, the white noise which makes it harder to cut-through. But with AI, this is set to change.”
The session closed on a hopeful note, reminding communicators that speed and quality must co-exist and that creativity cannot be sacrificed for convenience. His final line summed up the spirit of his talk: “Embrace the science, unleash the art… and live happily ever after.”
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
