Comms With AI and Founder Michael MacLennan Win Double at Inaugural AI Comms Awards

Comms With AI, the practitioner-built AI platform for communications professionals, has won Gold for Best Innovation in AI Tools for Communications, while its founder Michael MacLennan was named AI Communications Leader of the Year (Agency), at the inaugural AI Comms Awards in London last week (18 June 2026).

The double win caps a fast first year for the Edinburgh platform, which launched publicly in February 2026 and was built solo by MacLennan using Claude Code. Comms With AI gives communications teams a complete operating system for AI-powered work: 62 ready-to-deploy templates, seven workflow toolkits, 44 reviewed AI tools, and a five-phase methodology covering how teams strategise, create, govern, monitor and transform their communications. The free library is now used by communications professionals across the UK, US, Australia and Germany.

The platform was designed to close a specific gap. Most AI tools aimed at communicators are built by engineers, and most general AI guidance stops short of the day-to-day reality of running a comms function. Comms With AI instead mirrors how teams actually plan and deliver work, pairing tested AI prompts with human review checklists so that speed does not come at the cost of judgement.

In its Gold citation for Best Innovation, the judging panel described Comms With AI as a platform that “mirrors how communications teams plan and deliver work, combining templates, AI prompts and human review checklists to support consistent, high-quality outputs” and that “addresses a clear gap in the market by providing a strategic, practitioner-built operating model for external communications professionals.” The judges called the work “simple, specific and scalable”, with one noting it is “an innovative tool grounded in strong communications use cases and delivering real results.”

In naming MacLennan AI Communications Leader of the Year (Agency), the judges said he “has established distinctive models for how AI capability can be built, tested, and shared within the communications profession.” They singled out “his commitment to hands-on AI implementation and his willingness to share learnings openly, including when experiments fail”, noting that, working independently and without large-agency infrastructure, he “has produced highly transferable methodologies that are already shaping how communications professionals adopt AI.”

“To win on both counts, for a product I built solo this year, is beyond what I ever could have imagined,” said MacLennan, who also runs the Faur consultancy and drew on twenty years at Red Bull, the BBC, and STV, plus an Imperial College London certification in Machine Learning and AI in 2025. “Most AI tools for communications are built by engineers who have not run a comms team – this one is built by someone who has, and the leadership award says something about what the industry needs right now: calm, practical judgement about AI, not hype.

“What I care about most is that this is useful. The whole library is free, it is tested by someone who has sat in the chair, and it is built in the open. If it helps comms teams make better, calmer decisions about AI, that is the win,” MacLennan added.

Both awards arrive days before Comms With AI launches its first vertical, Leader Comms With AI, on Monday 22 June, built for the senior communications leaders accountable for how their teams use AI. A second vertical, Founder Comms With AI, launches in July, with a paid tier following later in 2026.

The AI Comms Awards, hosted by Communicate Magazine, recognise excellence in the use and creation of artificial intelligence within communications. This was the first year the awards were held. The full winners list was published by Communicate Magazine: Winners of the AI Comms Awards 2026 revealed.