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A full-service agency with journalistic roots
newskontor sees itself as a full-service communications agency: its portfolio spans strategic consulting, traditional press relations, content creation, and interviews, as well as social media management across all platforms, internal and external newsletters, original podcast formats, and video production.
Because the agency's two managing directors, Marco Cabras and Franz von den Driesch, come from financial journalism, finance is a core focus: banks, fintechs, brokers, and other financial services providers make up a significant share of the client base, alongside clients in tech, insurance, healthcare, and other sectors.
Many people on the newskontor team have a journalistic background and know what makes writing work, both for print and online, where content must be readable for people and visible to search engines. As the team has observed, this perspective translates naturally to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): those who understand how content is structured for search quickly recognize the parallels with visibility in AI-generated answers.
An international study as a compass for the industry
Rather than simply using AI, newskontor has made it the subject of original research. Together with thenetworkone, an international network of communications agencies, newskontor initiated a global study on AI adoption in PR agencies.
The most striking finding was not about usage itself, but about the gap between aspiration and practice. Many agencies consider it important for their clients to appear in language model responses, yet few systematically track whether, or how well, that actually happens.
The most surprising finding was the gap between 'We want our clients to appear in LLM answers' and 'We actually measure that'. A relatively large share of respondents consider it important but don't track it at all.
This ability to look at their own industry with an analytical eye also shapes how newskontor approaches AI tools internally: not as passive users, but as a team that wants to understand what a system genuinely delivers.
The path to nuwacom
The starting point was about a year ago: two team members completed the IHK certificate course "AI Online Marketing Manager" and brought the topic into the company. Together with senior management, the team decided to systematically evaluate AI tools on the market. nuwacom was the first tool newskontor tried. After testing two other providers, the team stayed with nuwacom.
Before that, individual colleagues had already been working with various LLMs and early agents, but without any shared framework. Some used ChatGPT, others Gemini, and every time a request came up, someone had to decide which information was public enough to share safely. Client names could not be entered into the tools directly. The workarounds involving aliases and informal agreements cost time and gradually eroded AI enthusiasm across the team.
That is exactly what drove the decision to adopt nuwacom: a unified, privacy-compliant solution that the whole team could use easily, regardless of individual AI experience levels.
How newskontor works with nuwacom today
nuwacom has already established itself across several areas of newskontor's editorial work:
Editorial agents for writing tasks: The team has built its own agents and feeds them existing texts for style analysis, ensuring consistent, on-brand output for each client.
Shared projects: newskontor typically works in teams of two or three per client. nuwacom projects make it easy to share and reuse conversations, knowledge, and outputs across the team.
Meeting notes: Given the high volume of client meetings, the automatic summaries and searchable transcripts provide real relief in the day-to-day.
Content strategy and ideation: AI serves as a sparring partner for research and brainstorming, particularly for more complex tasks such as preparing roadshows or editorial plans.
The meeting summaries are a huge help in daily work. We can add to or edit them as needed and share them quickly and easily with everyone involved.
First testing phase: Workflows and Apps
newskontor is among the customers that deliberately use nuwacom in areas where the platform is still under active development, providing valuable feedback for the product team.
For a news format published three times a week for one client, the team built a multi-step workflow: one agent researches topics, an editorial agent drafts the text, an SEO optimizer revises it, and a proofreading agent does the final check. newskontor and nuwacom are currently working together to improve the freshness of sourced content, and the team plans to retest the workflow after further product improvements.
In parallel, the team is experimenting with the new Apps feature. An initial internal prototype for managing leave requests already demonstrates how small custom applications can be built with modest effort and no coding knowledge required. Details such as user permission assignments are still being fine-tuned, and this is precisely where newskontor, as an early tester, is contributing directly to the feature's development.
The idea of a fully AI-assisted magazine, from topic selection through to final human editorial review, is among the future concepts the team is pursuing as nuwacom's workflow capabilities continue to grow.
A culture that connects AI and editorial responsibility
To keep AI use transparent and accountable, newskontor has documented an internal workflow that defines how humans and AI should collaborate. This framework has been signed off by senior management, forms part of the onboarding process for new team members, and ensures that editorial review of every output always stays in human hands.
Team adoption has not been automatic, but there is no real resistance either. By the agency's own assessment, no one on the team fundamentally rejects AI. What varies is the pace at which individuals are exploring its potential. Senior management addresses this actively by consistently positioning AI as a complement to human work, not a replacement.
"We do not believe AI will make people redundant. We believe that people working with AI will simply produce better results in the end."
Marco Cabras, newskontor
"The creatives are and will remain the experts in their field. The point is to use AI where it gives us and our clients a real advantage."
Franz von den Driesch, newskontor
What comes next
The collaboration between newskontor and nuwacom goes beyond tool adoption. Both sides plan to build visibility together: a podcast episode on AI in the PR industry is in preparation, alongside shared formats such as informal afterwork events with short talks in the Rhine region.
With its focus on the heavily regulated financial sector, newskontor also brings a perspective that is relevant for future joint appearances, particularly on topics such as data privacy, shadow AI, and the safe use of generative AI in regulated environments.
For newskontor itself, the next steps mean gaining more experience with Workflows and Apps as these features continue to evolve, deepening the documented human-AI collaboration model within the team, and further establishing the agency's voice as an informed, analytical perspective on AI in the PR industry.
Conclusion
newskontor shows how a communications agency with journalistic roots does not just use AI but actively shapes it: through an original international study on the industry, a documented framework for human-AI collaboration in daily work, and a willingness to co-develop new features such as Workflows and Apps while they are still in testing. For nuwacom, newskontor is more than a customer. It is a sparring partner that demonstrates, from real-world practice, where AI in communications can go.
About newskontor
newskontor is one of Germany's leading communications agencies, with a journalistic ethos and a focus on finance and fintech, technology and innovation, Mittelstand, associations, law firms, crypto/blockchain, and sustainability/ESG. Founded in 2011, the agency is today run as a full-service operation by co-founders Marco Cabras and Franz von den Driesch. Its services range from positioning and PR strategy to day-to-day PR, content creation, social media strategy, and management, as well as crisis and event communications. The team of 17 PR consultants, writers, designers, and social and digital specialists is based at the agency's headquarters in Dusseldorf.