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Always think about thinking ©
In one of the most consequential conversations in The Piar Podcast series, host Tan Sukhera sits down with Dr. Frank Buckler—author, researcher, and CEO of SUPRA—to confront an uncomfortable truth: correlation is not causation, and the measurement frameworks PR has relied on for decades have been building false confidence on spurious relationships. Frank, who began researching AI in 1994 and developed causal AI methodology through his PhD work, explains why you cannot measure causality—you can only infer it—and shares devastating examples of companies optimizing for the wrong things because they accepted "the lazy why." The conversation reveals how a lottery company discovered their entire targeting strategy was backwards: older people play more lottery not because age drives behavior, but because time accumulates habituation and winning experiences that correlate with age. Frank explains how causal AI builds an "inner mechanics machine" that enables counterfactual reasoning—simulating scenarios that never happened, war-gaming future outcomes, testing campaign components before launch. For PR leaders, this changes everything: as execution gets relegated to AI, the human advantage becomes decision-making, critical thinking, and the ability to interpret causal findings, communicate them to leadership, and inspire action based on truth rather than assumption.
Frank Buckler's work is built on a simple idea. Growth comes from understanding what truly drives success and not from copying generic best practices. With a background spanning marketing, engineering, management consulting, and corporate leadership, he sees patterns others often overlook. He began researching AI back in 1994, driven by the question of causality. do people buy? and his PhD work developed a causal AI methodology that remains Supra's foundation today. Evidence first, informed by knowledge and not assumption.
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Tan Sukhera is a strategic thinking partner, a super connector of people & ideas, and perpetual student of the communications craft. A Canadian with a Marketing Communications background and former TV news anchor, Tan held roles at leading multinational media monitoring organizations before founding Piar. That work revealed something important: measurement was largely solved, but the cognitive blind spots where CCOs unknowingly leave gaps in their armor remained unaddressed. Over two and a half years, Tan invested six figures unlearning why his assumptions about the industry were wrong, drawing on behavioral science, decision theory, mathematics, and AI-assisted human-in-the-loop approaches to build systems, lenses, and frameworks that sharpen strategic judgment. As CEO & Co-Founder of Piar and lead workshop facilitator, he works with business leaders around the world on high-stakes decisions.
