Leon Communications bolsters team with new appointment

The Ogilvy Group China has named Yong Yuan as Chief Executive Officer of the Group.

In the new role, Yong will oversee people, clients and growth across The Ogilvy Group in China, fostering collaboration across its public relations, influence, advertising, digital experience, and social capabilities. He will also strengthen alignment across the Group’s agency portfolio, including Ogilvy and Grey. Both agency brands will retain their distinct identities and continue serving clients independently.

Yong will report to Chris Reitermann, Chief Executive Officer of WPP Greater China. He brings experience in brand building, client development, and people leadership, and previously served as President of Ogilvy Advertising China.

Commenting on the appointment, Chris said, “I have had the privilege of working closely with Yong for 15 years and have seen firsthand the leader he has become. His strategic vision, integrity and unwavering commitment to our clients and people have earned him the trust and respect of colleagues and clients alike.

"His appointment reflects our long-term commitment to developing leadership from within and empowering proven talent to make an even greater impact. It gives me immense pride to see Yong step into this role, and I have every confidence in his ability to lead The Ogilvy Group China into its next chapter of growth. I look forward to continuing our partnership as we create even greater value for our clients.”

Yong added, “As I take on this broader Group leadership responsibility, I look forward to working closely with our teams across Ogilvy and Grey to strengthen collaboration, unlock new opportunities for our clients, and create an environment where our people can do the best work of their careers.” 

Miles Alexander has been appointed Communications, Marketing and Public Affairs Lead - Infrastructure, Australia at global engineering, construction, and project management firm, Bechtel. He made the move after more than five and a half years at Thrive PR + Communications, where he was most recently Group Account Director.

In the newly created role for the region, Miles will help promote and build Bechtel's reputation within Australia's infrastructure and engineering sector. His remit will span the full marketing communications gamut including media relations, executive thought leadership, owned and paid media strategy, strategic partnerships, and industry engagement.

On the new role, Miles said: "I'm incredibly excited to be stepping into this new role within Bechtel's global Infrastructure business. Few companies can point to a legacy of shaping nations through infrastructure, and in Australia that legacy began more than 70 years ago and includes some of the country’s most transformative projects in energy and mining as well as the soon-to-be-opened Western Sydney International Airport.

"For a communications professional, the opportunity to help tell the stories behind projects of such scale and significance is a privilege.

"I'm looking forward to shining a spotlight on the extraordinary people across Bechtel whose expertise is helping customers deliver critical infrastructure that creates jobs, strengthens economies, enhances resilience, expands access to energy and essential services, and leaves a lasting positive impact for communities." 

Burson has released The Credibility Paradox, a report exploring how audiences believe AI-generated answers about brands and companies. The research moves the discussion around Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) beyond visibility and cited sources, positioning it as a strategic reputation opportunity focused on believability.

The agency, partnered with AI marketing platform Profound, to field thousands of reputation-related answers across seven major AI answer platforms. The study evaluated 85 companies against the eight levers of Burson’s Reputation Capital framework: Innovation, Creativity, Workplace, Products, Financial Performance, Governance, Citizenship, and Leadership.

Responses were assigned a believability score for three audience groups: General Population, Opinion Elites and Business Decision Makers. The agency used its proprietary Decipher tool, developed with cognitive AI company Limbik, to produce more than 55,000 believability forecasts.

Key findings from the research:

• AI rewards proof, not positioning

The research found that fact-based claims tied to innovation, products, and workplace culture consistently performed better than claims linked to more subjective areas such as leadership, governance, and citizenship. The report said this points to the importance of a strong mix of earned, owned and social content for GEO, as AI places weight on independent corroboration from media coverage, reviews and conversation.

• Workplace is an underused credibility lever

Workplace-related answers were the most believable among the general population. Burson said this finding is consistent with large language models’ reliance on independently verifiable sources such as talent platform reviews, labour reporting and earned media.

• Leadership is AI’s toughest credibility test

Leadership-related prompts ranked among the least believable across every industry studied. The industries that scored higher - Aerospace and Technology - had a common thread. Their proof came from governance structures, business performance and external validation, rather than executive messaging alone.

• Believability changes by audience

The report found that a narrative that appears credible in an AI-generated answer may not land equally with customers, investors, employees or regulators. Business Decision Makers rated AI-generated answers 10 per cent more believable on average than the general population. Burson said more specialised audiences were more receptive to innovation-led narratives and the business context behind them.

For communicators, rather than treating earned media, owned content, and social engagement as separate workstreams, Burson said the framework takes a holistic approach. The aim is to build an ecosystem of independent, credible voices whose coverage and commentary reinforce a company’s narrative over time.

“In today’s zero-click world, LLMs have become the new gatekeepers of reputation - how brands are discovered and evaluated. But visibility is not credibility,” said Corey duBrowa, CEO, Burson.

“AI synthesises, summarises, and delivers information directly to audiences. Showing up in these LLMs is necessary but not sufficient. Our role is no longer just to make clients visible, but to build an evidence ecosystem so robust that the answers AI constructs are believable to the audiences that matter most. This research is our playbook for turning the credibility paradox into a competitive advantage.”

"As AI becomes an increasingly influential layer between companies and their stakeholders, it is shaping not only how brands are discovered, but also how they are understood and evaluated. The real opportunity for organisations is not simply to secure share of answer, but to ensure those answers are grounded in evidence, backed by credible sources, and believable to the audiences that matter most,” said Red Surtida, APAC Head of Intelligence & Transformation.

"In a region as diverse and complex as EMEA, GEO is fundamentally a reputation challenge, not just a visibility one," says Bryn Tweedale, Senior Director, Digital Marketing, Burson UK. "Visibility in an AI-generated answer is just the beginning, as the true benchmark is if the underlying reputation translates across borders. This study makes clear it has become a test of ensuring a brands' hard-won reputation remains credible and consistent, no matter which market an AI delivers it to."