New Clients, Colleagues, and Questions for AI: Q3 2026 at Mashup Communications

What happens when an AI mentions a brand but associates it with incorrect facts? This is a question currently occupying many communications professionals – and at the same time, it describes one of the key areas Mashup Communications is currently working on: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), reputation management, and traditional PR need to be considered together if companies want to be visible not only in search engines, but also in ChatGPT and other AI systems – and, above all, represented accurately.

At the same time, the past quarter shows just how broad the range of services offered by Berlin-based PR and storytelling agency Mashup Communications has become: from GEO consulting and reputation management to PR strategies and media placements, as well as storytelling, data storytelling, and AI workshops. On top of that came three new clients, numerous publications, a new video project, and a summer party where the new trainees secured the first title of their agency careers.

GEO Consulting and Reputation: When AI Visibility Alone Is Not Enough

With two expert articles published by Finanzwelt and DAS INVESTMENT, Mashup Communications has further strengthened its positioning in recent weeks in the field of Generative Engine Optimization for banks, asset managers, and other companies in the financial sector.

At the same time, GEO has become an integral part of Mashup Communications’ strategic PR work for new clients. As part of the onboarding process, an initial GEO status assessment is carried out: How often does a company appear in AI-generated answers relating to its core topics? In what context is the brand mentioned? And how visible are competitors in response to the same questions?

This analysis reveals at an early stage which topics, messages, and external signals communications work should focus on. For companies, generative AI is changing not only the question of whether they are found, but increasingly also how AI systems classify their brand, expertise, and reputation.

Mashup Communications placed another key focus with Miriam’s presentation for iBusiness titled “Beyond Visibility: Reputational Risks in the GEO Era”. The central question was what happens when generative AI systems make companies visible but reproduce outdated, incomplete, or incorrect information in the process.

Generative AI models construct brand perception from a wide range of historically accumulated signals. Many of these pieces of information can no longer be traced back to a single source or corrected directly. For communications work, this means: GEO does not end with visibility. GEO must also take reputation management into account.

“Visibility is the new supreme discipline everyone is talking about right now. But the truly uncomfortable question is: visible for what? Reputation management in the GEO era means also taking the errors and blind spots of AI systems into account.”

Miriam Schwellnus, Expert for GEO and Brand Storytelling at Mashup Communications

In this way, Mashup Communications is expanding traditional public relations by adding another perspective: Alongside media presence, thought leadership, and digital discoverability, it is becoming increasingly relevant what image of a company emerges in AI-generated answers.

At this intersection of GEO consulting, PR, positioning, and reputation management, Mashup Communications sees a growing field of responsibility for corporate communications.

New PR Clients from Leisure, Healthcare, and Digitalization

Mashup Communications’ client portfolio has also continued to grow.

Following a lengthy pitch process, a leisure park in the Berlin region chose to work with the PR agency. The win was followed by a kickoff and the development of a communications strategy. Mashup Communications is now beginning its ongoing PR work for a company from the leisure and tourism sector.

At the same time, the agency began working with a healthcare scale-up. In a joint kickoff workshop, the project team developed the foundations of the PR strategy: target groups, key messages, and potential communications topics for the coming months.

For a newly acquired digitalization consultancy, the first publicly visible results have already emerged. silicon.de published an article examining how artificial intelligence is currently changing software development.

This means Mashup Communications’ PR work for its new mandates also spans a wide variety of B2B and B2C segments – from leisure and healthcare to digitalization, IT, and artificial intelligence.

Media Relations and PR Successes for Clients in Logistics, Marketing, and Consumer Protection

For a warehouse automation provider, several specialist logistics publications picked up the message that automation can reduce warehouse emissions by up to 25 percent. The multiple placements also highlight an important component of successful B2B PR: Data, study findings, and concrete figures create journalistic hooks and can give a specialist topic relevance across multiple media outlets.

Media relations also generated attention for Creditsafe. Tagesspiegel Background published data from the business information provider on the economic situation of agricultural businesses and placed it in a journalistic context.

Another Mashup Communications client, SELLWERK, worked with IT lawyer Thomas Feil to show readers of Deutsche Handwerks Zeitung how skilled-trade businesses can deal professionally with online reviews.

On the topic of telephone fraud, a guest article written jointly with Thomas Wrobel of Clever Dialer was picked up by CHIP. Particularly interesting in this case was the combination of corporate communications, consumer protection, and a psychological perspective: An interview with Adrian Stanciu, a psychologist at the University of Luxembourg, explored why certain life situations can make people more susceptible to telephone scams and what role their personal environment plays.

For Mashup Communications, this reflects a recurring approach to PR work: Specialist topics are not communicated solely through products or corporate messages, but are expanded to include data, societal perspectives, expert knowledge, and concrete relevance for the respective target group.

Knowledge Transfer as a Service in Its Own Right: Workshops from Healthcare to Insurance

Another central service area for Mashup Communications is teaching storytelling methods for companies, associations, and communications professionals.

Five workshops were held across five different industries during the past quarter – an impressive workload that rested primarily on the shoulders of one colleague: Nora was involved in almost every one of the five formats, sometimes on her own and sometimes in tandem with other team members.

Together with Jenni, she delivered a healthcare storytelling workshop at Forum Institut alongside external expert Mathias Furch. The focus was on how complex scientific data and product information can be presented in a way that makes them understandable and relevant without losing their technical substance.

Jenni and Nora also once again worked as a duo to deliver a two-day in-person workshop on “Storytelling with AI” for an insurance company in Baden-Württemberg.

Nora was also in demand among pharmaceutical companies and associations: Together with Julia, she led a workshop including a “Corporate Campfire” and a story-listening exercise for a pharmaceutical company. This was followed by a data storytelling workshop for an industry association representing the digital economy and another for an association within Germany’s statutory health insurance sector – both designed and delivered by Nora alone.

The industries in which Mashup Communications provides storytelling and communications training therefore range from healthcare and pharmaceuticals to the digital economy, statutory health insurance, and the insurance sector.

The common methodological core remains the same, but the application does not: Storytelling works across industries above all when methods, examples, and exercises are tailored to the respective specialist audience.

Video and Original Content Formats: Videos, Webinars, and Live Storytelling

Storytelling at Mashup Communications has long since expanded beyond text and traditional media relations. For a retail company just outside Berlin, Linus produced a video covering an employee event. The project shows that Mashup Communications uses video as a standalone format for internal communications and employer branding – not merely as an addition to traditional media relations.

Alongside workshops for external participants, Mashup Communications has also expanded its own training and content offering. Our newly qualified consultants Katrin and Linus hosted their first one-hour live webinar on Storytelling on Social Media.

The premiere therefore not only brought new content to external audiences, but also provided practical experience for the agency’s own consulting work: from dramaturgy and presentation to technical preparation and the question of how storytelling expertise can be communicated effectively in a digital live format.

Team Development at Mashup Communications: New Trainees and Internal Training

Team development is not a side issue at Mashup Communications, but a dedicated area with its own structure. Two new trainees, Greta and Gregor, have joined the agency – a deliberate step toward developing the company’s own next generation of PR and consulting talent. Both are going through a structured onboarding process.

Responsibility for the trainee program lies not only with our Head of Onboarding, Julia, but also with Jenni, Senior Consultant and Head of Trainees – a role that Mashup Communications deliberately institutionalized to ensure that the training and support of junior employees is not handled as an afterthought, but organized with clear responsibility.

A parallel professional development initiative shows that team development at Mashup Communications is not a one-way street: Jenni herself completed a two-day leadership skills seminar to further develop her own role as a manager and trainer.

And Then There Was the Summer Party

For all the work on GEO strategies, PR campaigns, media placements, and storytelling workshops, team building was not neglected during the past quarter either.

At the summer party, the entire Mashup Communications team gathered at the farm of team lead Manja – complete with tents, a barn dinner, and a farm Olympics featuring wheelbarrow racing, an egg-and-spoon race, shoe throwing, and several quiz rounds.

It remained a neck-and-neck race between the teams right up to the end. In the end, the new trainees came out on top. For Greta and Gregor, their first two months at Mashup Communications therefore brought not only an introduction to PR, storytelling, and agency life, but also their very first title together.