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Communication professionals today face an environment characterized by rapid change, emerging technologies, and evolving workforce expectations. In Circle of Fellows episode 121, “Evolving Roles and Strategic Goals,” a panel of Fellows from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) explored how communicators can adapt to emerging challenges while staying aligned with their organization’s objectives. From navigating the impact of AI to addressing ongoing change and strengthening internal communication, this discussion offered insights on keeping your strategies relevant in a digital-first world. The Fellows tackled significant issues facing the profession, including leading change within organizations, supporting business adaptation in an unpredictable global landscape, and keeping pace with a transforming workforce. Whether you’re refining your strategic communication goals or looking for practical ways to enhance your impact, this conversation delivers guidance you can put to work immediately. The session was recorded on Thursday, October 23, with Fellows Laurie Dawkins, Mike Klein, Robin McCasland, and Martha Muzychka, with Shel Holtz moderating. About the Panel Laurie Dawkins, ABC, MC, SCMP, Fellow, is vice president of Communications & Engagement with the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA), one of the largest public sector health-care organizations in western Canada. She leads a team of close to 50 communication professionals in delivering timely, strategic and meaningful internal and external communications, media relations, crisis communications and C-suite counsel to meet the needs of more than 29,000 employees and 5.5 million citizens who turn to PHSA for specialized health-care services provided by BC Children’s Hospital, BC Cancer, BC Emergency Health Services, the BC Centre for Disease Control, and more. Laurie has more than 25 years’ experience in the communications industry, and holds the professional designations of Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) and Strategic Communications Management Professional (SCMP). In 2017, she was delighted to be named a Master Communicator of Canada (MC) by the IABC-Canada. She has hands-on experience in partnering with First Nations and Indigenous leaders to co-create communication strategies that are foundational to PHSA’s organizational vision to “Boldly create an equitable, anti-racist and culturally safe health care system where everyone thrives.” Mike Klein is the Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Magazine, Founder of #WeLeadComms, and a communication consultant specializing in internal and social communication based in Reykjavik, Iceland. A former US political consultant, Mike shifted direction toward internal communication while pursuing his MBA at London Business School.  Since then, Mike has been one of the leading voices for empowering communication professionals, and advocating a focus on internal influence and social connection as drivers of communication, integration and performance. His 2011 book, From Lincoln to LinkedIn remains relevant as organizations recognize that personal credibility and connection are critical to communication success in a world where content volumes are increasing and instability flourishes. Raised in Chicago, Mike has lived and worked in seven different countries, and is also a Fellow of the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence and the Institute of Internal Communication. Robin McCasland, IABC Fellow, SCMP, is Senior Director of Corporate Communications for Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). She leads the company’s communications team and the employee listening program, demonstrating to senior leaders how employee and executive communication add value to the business’s bottom line. Previously, Robin excelled in leadership roles in communication for Texas Instruments, Dell, Tenet Healthcare, and Burlington Northern Santa Fe. She has also worked for large and boutique HR consulting firms, leading major communication initiatives for various well-known companies. Robin is a past IABC chairman and has served in numerous association leadership roles for over 30 years. She was honored in 2023 and 2021 by Ragan/PR Daily as one of the Top Women Leaders in Communication. She’s also received IABC Southern Region and IABC Dallas Communicator of the Year honors. Robin is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and a Leadership Texas alumnus. Her own podcast, Torpid Liver (and Other Symptoms of Poor Communication), features guest speakers addressing timely topics to help communication professionals become more influential, strategic advisors and leaders. She resides in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, Mitch, and their canine kids, Tank and Petunia. Martha Muzychka, ABC, MC, speaks, writes, listens, and helps others do the same to make change happen. Martha is a strategic, creative problem solver seeking challenging communications environments where we can make a difference. She helps her clients navigate competing priorities and embrace communication challenges. Martha offers strategic planning, facilitation, consultation services, writing and editing, qualitative research, and policy analysis. Her work has been recognized locally, nationally, and internationally with multiple awards. The post Circle of Fellows #121: The Future of Communication: Adapting, Leading, and Aligning appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Things change fast in the digital world. On the other hand, business tactics can be slow to adapt. Crafting content with the intent of “going viral” has been part of the communication playbook for more than a decade. There was never a guaranteed approach to catching this lightning in a bottle, but that didn’t stop marketers and PR practitioners from trying. That effort is increasingly futile, as the social media companies that host the content have altered their algorithms, and people are paying attention to different things these days. This has led several marketing influencers to suggest that it’s time to move on from the attempt to produce content specifically in the hopes that it will go viral. Neville and Shel share some data points and debate whether going viral should remain a communication goal in this short midweek episode. Links from this episode: Is Going Viral Dead? Evaluating the effect of viral posts on social media engagement We Don’t Care About Viral Marketing Anymore The Viral Effect: Unpacking the Influence of Viral Marketing Campaigns on Generation Z’s Purchase Intentions The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 27. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript Neville Hobson: Hi everyone, and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 485. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz, and it is time to stop making going viral the point of our work. I’m not arguing that reach is irrelevant. I’m arguing that virality as an objective is a strategic dead end. High variance, low repeatability, and increasingly disconnected from outcomes that matter. I’ll explain right after this. For years, viral success stories seduced communicators, and I’m among them. There’s a thrill in watching that graph spike, but we’ve learned a few hard truths. First, virality is unpredictable by design. Platforms tune feeds to maximize their goals, not yours. Second, even when you catch lightning in a bottle, the spike rarely results in any kind of durable advantage. A new peer-reviewed analysis of more than a thousand European news publishers on Facebook and YouTube, published in the journal Nature, found that most viral events do not significantly increase engagement and rarely lead to sustained growth. In other words, the sugar high fades, and it fades fast. Meanwhile, veterans of content-led link earning have publicly stepped away from virality as a North Star. Fractal, an agency that once made viral part of its brand, now says flatly, and I’m quoting, “We don’t care about viral marketing anymore, and neither should you.” Their pivot is toward durable metrics like authority, affinity, and relevance. You might think that’s a vibe shift, but it’s not. It’s a strategic correction. Even the classic research on viral ads, the eye tracking work that taught us how emotional arcs and brand cameos drive sharing, was never proof that you can plan a viral outcome, only that certain creative choices improve your odds at the margin. Helpful craft guidance? Yeah, sure. A basis for corporate OKR? That’s objectives and key results? Nope. Layer on platform dynamics and the case gets stronger. Meta’s shift away from news culminating in the shutdown of CrowdTangle, the very tool journalists used to see what was going viral, has reduced transparency and made spikes harder to both trigger and to verify. When the scoreboard moves behind a curtain, playing for highlight reel moments becomes folly. In some markets, we can literally watch viral news get deprioritized. In Australia, publishers report Facebook engagement at all time lows as memes and creator posts fill the feed. If the feed favors entertainment over information, it also favors retention over reach. Your viral playbook ages out fast in that environment. The New York Times captured the cultural angle. The internet that rewarded sudden mass attention is giving way to one that rewards depth: revisit rates, creator loyalty, community momentum. A share count trophy doesn’t impress the algorithm anymore. Sustained, meaningful engagement does. So what should replace viral as the goal? Let’s cover a few things. First, it’s designed for compounding attention, not explosive attention. Planned content is a series, not a stunt. Build episodic formats: office hours, ask me anythings, recurring data notes, anything that trains the audience to keep coming back. The scientific finding I studied earlier is the tell. Durable growth comes from consistency, not from lucky breaks. Second, shift your KPI set. Trade shares and views as headline metrics for return rate, session depth, qualified traffic, assisted pipeline, issue literacy, whatever truly maps to your business or reputation outcomes. Neville Hobson: . Shel Holtz: Fractal’s rationale for de-emphasizing virality in form of authority and affinities is a good model. Third, optimize for platform fit, not platform luck. Where audiences actually engage, optimize to the native behaviors that correlate with retention. A quick example outside our usual stomping grounds, science communities now see richer discussion on BlueSky than on X because the culture and mechanics favor constructive back and forth over dunking. Smaller network, higher quality signal. Build earned elasticity into distribution is the fourth tactic. Yeah, keep a line item for opportunistic amplification. Creator partnerships, timely collaborations, paid boosts that extend life for posts that deserve it. But treat amplification as gasoline for a fire you’re already tending, not a match you light and hope it sets the world on fire. Fifth, prepare for attention risk, not attention gain. The wider your message travels, the less control you have over how it’s interpreted. Your plan needs counter message, clarification assets, and issues response baked in. Meta’s data opacity only raises the bar for preparedness. So when does a viral goal still make sense? Well, there are edge cases, awareness blitzes for entertainment launches, urgent public interest alerts, or short run stunts designed to trigger specific behaviors. Neville Hobson: Hmm Shel Holtz: like getting signups during a defined window of time. Even then, the viral moment has to be tethered to a post-moment system, a next step path, a nurture stream, community onboarding, so the spike has somewhere to go. If you’re still writing, “go viral” on a brief, cross it out, replace it with create repeat engagement among the right people, increase qualified discovery, or raise message salience with priority stakeholders. Those are hard, unsexy verbs, but they’re the ones that move the work forward. And if you’re thinking, “we’ve always chased reach, why change now?” consider the evidence. The platforms don’t reward virality the way they used to. The data windows are narrowing and the best research we have shows spikes don’t stick. Plan for compounding attention. Let virality, if it arrives, be a bonus, not the business model. Neville Hobson: Good assessment, Shel. I had to admit, I was thinking about the two words, viral marketing. And what came to my mind, as it’s not a topic I’m kind of thinking about every day, was what we saw a decade ago, which was spontaneous stuff that largely wasn’t planned, although much of it was planned, but didn’t really work. Things like, for instance, I reminded myself today and I looked at the video, the Chewbacca mom back in 2016, I think it was, that was a surprise hit. I mean, really, it was natural. It was spontaneous. It wasn’t planned. It was brilliant. It was wonderful, actually. But it perhaps illustrated the point you’ve just made, which because that wasn’t part of any kind of plan at all, it was spontaneous. So it didn’t have any kind of road to go down. It just corrupted and grabbed lots of attention. And that was it. The guy whose name I can’t recall nor his company, but who was interviewed on the BBC, sitting in his home office, business suit and tie and all that, and his two little children burst in. One was a little toddler and one was even younger, who came in on like a baby stroller. And then the maid came in behind to drag them out. And all the time the interviewer was asking the questions and he was saying, “I do apologize. I’m very sorry about this.” It was super. And that went viral. I think it was. Yeah, he was in lockdown. So he was doing that. So that that would end about 2020. So I think the, you know, the that time was one where these ideas were emerging, that the the kind of places where you could stimulate this weren’t as widely Shel Holtz: That was during COVID, right? When he was doing the broadcast from home. Neville Hobson: covered as they are today and there’s more of them today. But apart from that, the whole landscape has shifted and mindsets have shifted even. Knowing that this is going to be our topic today, I actually asked Google is something I do quite often, just a simple provocative question, is viral marketing still a thing? So Google search, was not GPT or perplexity, none of that. And the AI overview result was actually quite interesting. Yes, viral marketing is still a thing, says Google, but it’s evolved to be more sophisticated and integrated into social media strategies. While going viral is never guaranteed, it says, the core concept of creating engaging content that people want to share spontaneously remains a powerful tool for brand awareness and can be boosted by social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and X. And that, I think, makes total sense to me, that qualifier of it, which we didn’t hear very much a decade ago when Chewbacca Mom and the BBC interview guy were the stars of the online world. But that to me always made sense that you don’t do something from a business point of view, just get it out there. Yet lots of people did precisely that without any seeming strategic approach to what was the outcome they were expecting of this other than to get thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people sharing it or commenting or liking it or whatever. What were you going to get from all of that? Where’s your strategic aspiration in that regard? That’s different now. And I did take a look at Fractal’s piece that was actually published back in 2021. That’s quite old. But nevertheless, I’ve seen others saying that’s it, viral marketing’s done. And I think it’s more nuanced than that. You need to qualify it. One thing I did like from the Nature report, the analytical report, almost academic report, Nature did, was defining, or they say, identifying two primary types of viral marketing, which I’ve not really heard many people talking about. They call it a loaded type virality, which manifests itself after a sustained growth period, growth phase, representing its final burst, followed by a decline in attention. The second one is the sudden type virality, with news emerging unexpectedly that reactivates the collective response process. And they talk about quick viral effects fade fast, while slower processes lead to more persistent growth. So this is now a far more evolved and attractive proposition to consider this. So I would say just based on my quick Google AI overviews read up and skimming parts of this Nature report that I think I don’t think it is time to drop going viral from the list of marketing. I’d say you need to prep yourself for the new way of doing this or a more effective way of doing this as part of your marketing strategy. Don’t you think? Shel Holtz: No, I don’t. We’ll disagree on this because if you look at both of the examples you shared, the Chewbacca mom and the guy on the news. Neville Hobson: But don’t forget that was 10 to 15 years ago. Shel Holtz: Yes, it was, but neither of them were trying to go viral and neither of them were representing a brand that wanted to expand reach. They both just happened to catch the attention of people who said, “this is really fun or amazing. I’m going to share it.” And then other people shared it. I remember even at the height of the viral video craze, the agencies that said, “we can help you go viral,” basically were saying, “we think we have cracked the code on what makes things go viral. We are going to develop our videos so that they conform with those things. And maybe one out of 10 that we produce will go viral because there’s also some secret sauce that we haven’t been able to decode yet.” And now on top of the difficulty you had planning for something to go viral back then, now you have the algorithms that aren’t rewarding the kind of content that it did reward 10 years ago when those kinds of videos did go viral. I mean, think about Oreo 10 years ago, 11 years ago when I think it was their 100th anniversary and they had the hundred days of Oreo with different sort of memes about Oreos. And they would replace them with something unplanned when there was a breaking news event and they could come up with a way to design one of these images so that it was consistent with the news that was breaking. And a couple of those went viral. I don’t think they would today. I don’t think the algorithm would necessarily reward them the way they did back then. So I think if you create something that’s clever and entertaining and it happens to go viral, or even if you bake in some of the things that you hope will make it go viral, that’s fine. But I don’t think that should be your plan. I think your plan should be those other things that I referenced, getting people to come back, having repeat visitors and slowly building the audience, building the community. They’ll share, but it doesn’t need to go viral at that point in order to deliver the kind of ROI that marketers are looking for. Neville Hobson: So I think the AI overview bits and pieces that Google popped up from a number of sources say all of that, actually. I mean, all those examples from a decade or more ago, I don’t think are relevant today because of the fact things have changed along the lines that you’ve said. But I think I like the way in which this summary talks about why viral marketing is still relevant, that actually says all the things that you’ve just said. Emotional and entertaining content, share worthy ideas, timely and relevant, audience engagement, that’s what you’ve got to aim for. They also talk about, those by the way, what the results of this search say are the key elements of modern viral marketing. That’s what you said. So whatever you call it, maybe the viral needs to be pushed away into the shadows a bit more, I think, because… Shel Holtz: especially post-COVID, Neville Hobson: Yeah, so, you know, I still hear people not much, I have to admit, but I saw someone writing about it on, I think it was LinkedIn, about creating a viral video. And thinking that you’ve never been able to create a viral video, you’ve been able to create a video that may go viral, but people tend to not quite see that point of view. So what’s changed that I say, using the video as an example, you create a piece of content that you get amplified through social media and set aside algorithms for a second. That’s emotional and very entertaining. Lots of people like it. And it’s part of your plan of other things you’re doing around product X or whatever it might be. And platforms today make it easier than they were even 10 years ago for content to spread quickly. As Google AI says, acting as a force multiplier for marketing efforts. So I think there’s still mileage in looking at this method of, let’s call it viral marketing. It still has legs in my view, if you approach it the right way and create it or look at it in terms of what you describe, which fits exactly what Google’s AI overview says. This is not about Chewbacca mom or BBC interview guy where it was spontaneous. People thought it was terrific and they shared it. That was it basically. It still shows up, by the way, when you do and the BBC interview guy says he’s indelibly got in his resume now, the BBC interview guy, as it’s called. So people are you without one, right? So I think it is worth considering it. Maybe don’t call it viral marketing. This is really part of your overall marketing strategy that you employ all the things you mentioned and all the stuff that’s mentioned here to. And indeed all the stuff that the Nature report mentioned too about the two types of viral marketing. So I think it’s got legs still. Shel Holtz: In terms of brands, I’m trying to think of something that went viral in the last few years and something that they wanted to go viral. There’s been plenty that has been spread around that I’m sure they wished hadn’t gone viral. But I can’t think of a marketing effort that has taken that path in the last few years. I just can’t think of one. So I’d rather put my energy elsewhere. Neville Hobson: Maybe they’re not doing it. Yeah, they’re not doing it the way they did it before then. So they’re doing it, they’re calling it something else. Shel Holtz: I remember there was one, I remember reading an interview, I think we talked about this on the show at the time, even though it’s probably a decade ago. He spent money to have a video go viral. That was what the agency planned and it didn’t. And he was upset until he started getting a lot of lead generation response. It turned out that it had only been seen by about 1,500 people, but they were the right 1,500 people, because of the tags, was a very technical video, and it actually led to return on investment. I remember somebody saying, “having a hundred people see your video is a win if your target audience was the U.S. which has a hundred members.” So how much reach do you want? You want to reach the right people. You don’t want to reach everybody who’s not going to buy your product or spend money on your service. I’d rather target, I’d rather build an audience. I’d rather focus on episodes and recurring content that brings people back over and over and over again. Maybe one of those will go viral and if it does, it’s a win. Neville Hobson: Well, I think you’ve actually then differentiated that quite well, because the example you gave of the agency who tried to plan the viral video or plan the video to go viral, I don’t know quite, I’m not quite sure how you would do that, to be honest. Is the issue there? What you described in terms of the actual outcome, which sounds like it was accidental, they certainly didn’t plan that. But again, that’s what 10 years ago, I think you mentioned. So now I’m pretty sure that that would not be the case. It would not be done that way at all. They would, I would imagine if they were doing this now, would be definitely well structured, well thought through as part of their marketing activity. And maybe the viral wouldn’t appear anyway. Shel Holtz: could be, but if anybody has planned for something to go viral out there and had success with it, drop us a line. We’d love to know about it. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release. The post FIR #485: Is It Time to Stop Trying to “Go Viral”? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Hollywood erupted in debate and discourse when a company unveiled a completely AI actress, Tilly Norwood. The public relations industry may be having its own Tilly Norwood moment with the introduction of Olivia Brown, a 100% AI PR agent that will handle all the steps of producing, distributing, and following up on a press release. Is this PR’s future, or just part of it? Neville and Shel engage in their own debate in this short midweek FIR episode. Links from this episode: Olivia Brown AI – Your 24/7 PR Superagent Introducing Olivia Brown: AI Agent for PR Teams | Fery Kaszoni posted on the topic | LinkedIn Fresh concerns over using AI in PR – where do we draw the line? | City Road Communications AI in Journalism: What Reporters Really Think About Artificial Intelligence Nearly a quarter of corporate press releases are probably written by AI now The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 27. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript Shel Holtz: Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 484 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. Neville Hobson: And I’m Neville Hobson. A new name is stirring debate in UK public relations. Not a person, but an AI agent called Olivia Brown. Launched by Search Intelligence, an SEO and digital PR agency, Olivia Brown promises to automate the entire PR process from brainstorming ideas to writing press releases, identifying journalists, and even following up with them automatically. For £250 a month, it’s marketed as a digital PR assistant that can cut campaign time from 16 hours to one, according to its founder, Ferry Casone. Is this the future of PR? We’ll explore that question right after this. Journalists and PR professionals are sounding alarms about Olivia Brown. Press Gazette reports that Olivia Brown has already been flooding inboxes with AI-generated press releases, complete with invented expert quotes and relentless follow-ups, all camouflaged to evade AI content detectors. Alastair McCapra, the CEO of the CIPR, calls this a threat to the very foundations of the profession, arguing that instant automation erodes judgment, relevance, and trust—the cornerstones of ethical communication. Dominic Pollard at City Road Communications goes further, saying this kind of technology flips PR upside down. Instead of starting with a genuine story, it fabricates one designed to match a publication’s existing output—what he calls coverage for coverage’s sake. Supporters, meanwhile, frame Olivia Brown as an amplifier of authenticity, not a diluter of it. On LinkedIn, Cassone describes it as a tool that frees up time for creative thinking while improving productivity. Beneath the surface, Olivia Brown isn’t just about automation. It forces us to confront a deeper issue: when AI can generate stories, quotes, and even relationships on an industrial scale, where does that leave trust, the single most valuable currency in our profession? Let’s unpack what this means for communicators, for journalists, and for the fragile relationship between authenticity and efficiency in the age of AI-driven PR. I’ll start with this question: Is this the future of public relations or the beginning of its undoing? Shel Holtz: Are you asking me? Yeah, it’s somewhere in between, I think. This does not trouble me very much. This is a situation where you have a tool that primarily cranks out press releases. It does some work preceding that, but ultimately it’s about cranking out press releases. We have discussions happening—you and I have discussed these conversations in previous episodes—about whether the press release is dead or not. I happen to believe it is not. But there is far more to public relations than press releases. This is touted as a tool for the agency, not for the client. It’s my understanding based on the little I have read of this that you pay £250 a month to the agency for them to use this on your behalf. It’s not an interface that’s available to the client. Is that right? Neville Hobson: No—the whole website area, the whole dashboard thing—it’s way beyond just press releases, really it is, according to what they say themselves. Shel Holtz: OK, because all I’ve read is this LinkedIn post, and it makes it sound like it’s an augmentation of what the agency does. Either way, I’m largely untroubled by this. Some people will use it. Some people will recognize the value that you get out of having a human PR agency doing your public relations work for you. I don’t know how adept generative AI is at this point at building relationships over the long term. It seems to me that outside the memory that some of the large language models have that recall previous conversations, you don’t get the benefit of having worked with someone over time and getting to know them and getting to know the issues and the challenges and the triggers and these types of things. But some people who maybe have less of a budget will use it. It could be a gateway, in fact, from using an AI public relations agency, if you will, to working with a broader mixed group of humans who are using AI in their work. But the fact is that we have some data that can support this. First of all, research has found that most journalists are untroubled by PR people using AI. There was one from Cision this year that showed that a majority of journalists are not strongly opposed to AI-generated pitches—about 27% are strongly opposed. Concerns that arise are around factual errors, but that’s on the humans in the agency to address. There is other research that says a quarter of press releases that are being distributed right now are already written by AI. So we’re going to see press releases written by AI. We’re going to see PR professionals using AI to help them in their work. And then you have Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, joining a chorus of voices who anticipate that there will be billion-dollar companies run by AI with no humans in them at all. I don’t know how soon that’s coming, but I believe that it’s likely at some point. I don’t see this as an authenticity challenge as long as there’s a human reviewing what’s going out before it goes out—whether it’s a PR person or the client. This is going to happen. But is it going to replace traditional public relations? I don’t see that. This is that old Mitch Joel line of “along with,” not “instead of.” Neville Hobson: Okay, so you don’t feel uncomfortable about the fact it makes up people, makes up quotes, fabricates stories and all that. Shel Holtz: This is a problem. No, I don’t feel comfortable with that. That’s something that has to be addressed. I can’t believe that they actually released it. Neville Hobson: That’s at the heart of their service. That’s what they do. I’m reading Ferri Cassoni’s post on LinkedIn where he gives the steps of a typical “what happens.” Client joins the agency—meaning him. The PR exec starts a new campaign with Olivia. It’s all about how much time all this takes, but Olivia comes up with 100 ideas in five minutes. A PR executive selects five of those ideas. The PR exec goes to the client and asks for expert tips for the five campaigns. The PR exec copy-pastes the expert tips into Olivia. It writes up five press releases with the client’s tips in five minutes. PR exec double-checks the content, tweaks it, and adds their own sprinkle to it if they want to. Once the release is written, Olivia scans 30,000 news articles on news outlets likely to pick up the story and identifies hundreds of journalists for each story separately with high accuracy, creating a personalized, on-the-fly media list—hours saved up to 20, it says. Olivia sends the expert tips via email to all those hundreds of contacts for all five stories. Olivia follows up in two days to see if journalists need any extra info regarding the stories—hours saved, one. And it doesn’t say this, but others have commented, then relentlessly keeps emailing all those journalists: “Have you read it yet? What do you think? Are you going to run it?” Without Olivia, all this would take 16 hours, and with Olivia, it takes one hour. I mean, come on. This is crazy, in my view. If this is the future of PR, I do not want to be part of this, I tell you. You’re right—we’ve seen automated press release stories before. I’m not sure we reported it on FIR, but I wrote a blog post about this podcasting tool that’s industrial scale—creating podcasts completely run with AI presenters and so forth. I think I read it’s 3,000 shows a week. It blasts them all out, and it’s already all over Spotify. So that is part of our future, I suppose. Is it the future we think it should be? I’m not sure. It troubles me hugely, Shel. I have to tell you that this is out there because many people—you know this as well as I do—are just going to take what it does and blast it out. That’s most of the criticism I’m seeing. So I’d love to hear from a client or someone who is reputable using this, saying what experience they got and how they feel about it. But right now, it seems to me this surely cannot be the future of public relations. Shel Holtz: And like I say, it’s not the future of public relations—it’s part of the future of public relations. Right now, as I have said probably 500 times on this podcast, anybody can hang up a shingle that says “public relations” and do work that they claim is sound, professional public relations work with absolutely no background in it. We see press releases written by humans—and we know they were written by humans because we saw them before AI was around—that are just awful. This is just another way to produce awful press releases, but it’s also a way to speed up a process with people in it. So yeah, you’re going to get slop. You’re going to get really bad stuff. You’re getting that anyway from the industry. If professionals can use this to speed up the process and give better outputs on a quicker schedule to clients—with that human intervention of checking the facts—and I’m not necessarily saying it’s this one, this Olivia Brown, but something like it that does a better job of research and fact-checking… I mean, Ethan Mollick just posted over the weekend that people claim, “I use ChatGPT-5 and it makes stuff up.” And he says, not if you use ChatGPT Thinking—it makes up far less. But they don’t know to go in and do that. So we need a tool like Olivia Brown that knows how to basically fact-check and think about what it’s doing rather than just spew the first thing that comes into its digital mind. But this is not the be-all and end-all of PR. Even looking at this entire process outlined in this LinkedIn post, it’s still ultimately about sending out press releases and checking with the reporters. You know that there is public relations work that goes far beyond press releases. There’s PR work that never involves sending out a press release. There’s crisis communication. There’s reputation planning and the kind of work that we do around building or shifting reputation. I always like to remember the case—I think it was Burson-Marsteller working with, I believe, StarKist Tuna—that was caught up in the boycott of canned tuna as a result of the dolphins that were being caught in the nets. The activists who were looking for a change in the rules on how they caught tuna initiated this boycott. StarKist already had policies around dolphin catches. They were already on the side of the activists, but their product was caught up in this. Working with Burson-Marsteller, they were able to get the word to the activists in a negotiation with both parties at the table in the same room—could be done over Zoom now, I suppose. They came to the conclusion that, “You’re the good guys,” so the boycott was amended to say “except StarKist.” There wasn’t a single press release involved there. And Olivia Brown is not configured to do any of that. So I don’t think traditional public relations is going anywhere. This is just a further enhancement of the automated press release concept. We interviewed Aaron Kwittken—he’s doing that with Profit. All this does is add the ideation at the front end and the journalist contact at the back end. Other than that, it’s the same product. I just don’t see it as that big a deal. Neville Hobson: But it makes up people; it makes up facts. That’s at the heart of it. This is what’s here now, and that’s what it’s doing. Shel Holtz: Olivia Brown—this particular product—is not good. The concept is fine. That’s what I’m saying. Neville Hobson: I’m not talking about the concept. The concept is this—this is what’s on the market now. The point is to talk about this in the context of what’s happening right now. It’s attracting a lot of comments here in the UK—maybe it hasn’t hit the US radars yet—but most comments I’m seeing are very critical. Shel Holtz: If it makes up people, it’s problematic. It’s the first shot out of the gate. Neville Hobson: This is not a good thing at all. The notion of this—industrializing PR for coverage’s sake—automates the entirety of it, including the follow-up to journalists, the relentless pursuit of answers. What about your reputation when people start thinking, “I don’t like these people; they keep hitting me up with all this stuff”? Is this the answer to your dreams to get that coverage you’re after? And never mind how you do it—the means justify the end, right? Shel Holtz: Well, this is version 1.0 of Olivia Brown, right? They’re going to get feedback and presumably come out with 1.5 that addresses some of these things. I’m not defending Olivia Brown. Neville Hobson: I wouldn’t hold your breath on that, Shel. I wouldn’t. Shel Holtz: You’re going to have press releases with fabrications get called out, and people are going to point to Olivia Brown as the source of the releases that led to that coverage. You’re going to have clients who are going to be upset when they’re called on the carpet for inaccurate or completely fabricated content. Either this thing is going to be a dramatic failure as clients publicly turn on it, or they’re going to make tweaks and improvements—the way most software is improved. Either way, you’re going to see other people look at this and go, “I can do this better.” And we’ll see more of these. We’ll see some that start to take on other elements of public relations. PR is going to be AI–human hybrid—there’s no question about it. And the workflow that’s outlined in the LinkedIn post seems ripe for AI augmentation. But they’ve got to fix the problems with this. No question. It’s unacceptable to be fabricating in public relations. Accuracy matters. Neville Hobson: I don’t see any signs whatsoever that that’s on the radar to do. This is the product. Your point about AI and automation—I don’t disagree with that at all; that’s what we’re going to see. But this, though, is a whole different thing, it seems to me. Shel Holtz: We should ask them. Let’s interview their CEO. Neville Hobson: Yeah, maybe. I’d like to find out what others say about them—if they’re using them—to see if there’s anything worth talking about. Is this so revolutionary that we would want to do that? So anyone listening who uses Olivia Brown and would like to share their experience, do get in touch. We’d love to hear it. Shel Holtz: fircomments@gmail.com. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release. The post FIR #484: Is Olivia Brown the Tilly Norwood of PR? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini address a listener’s question about the opportunities for growing an agency through outbound sales. They discuss the challenges of outbound sales, particularly in a small agency environment, and highlight the importance of building relationships and a strong brand. Both suggest that agency owners focus on networking and proactive relationship-building rather than traditional cold calling. They emphasize a multi-faceted approach to business development that includes content marketing, warm introductions, and maintaining an active online presence. Ultimately, they advocate for a shift in mindset from outbound sales to relationship cultivation to achieve sustainable agency growth. [read the transcript] The post ALP 285: Outbound sales & your agency appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Kenvue’s stock tumbled when U.S. President Donald Trump, with Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., standing behind him, declared that its product, Tylenol, leads to autism in children when taken by mothers during pregnancy. As social channels were flooded with misinformation supporting the evidenceless claim, it’s easy to imagine the stock continuing to slide, mirroring the trajectory launched by attacks on Bud Light. Remarkably, the stock recovered after one day, thanks largely to Tylenol’s savvy and almost perfect response to the crisis. Tylenol isn’t the first brand to find itself in President Trump’s crosshairs. It is unlikely to be the last. In this short, midweek episode, Neville and Shel explore what the company got right, and what other companies can do to prepare for their turn in the glare of the presidential spotlight. Links from this episode: The US President Called Your Product Dangerous. What Do You Do Now? – Darden Report Online How Companies Can Respond To Allegations Their Products Are Dangerous Tylenol says old post ‘taken of out context’ by White House  Tylenol maker responds to Trump’s acetaminophen claims Tylenol is Just the Latest Brand Trump Has Picked a Fight With Tylenol’s Maker Shows How to Respond to Crisis Tylenol maker shares rebound a day after Trump’s unfounded claims about its safety Lawsuits against Tylenol’s maker get a boost after Trump’s comments Tylenol Issues Clarification After White House Resurfaces 2017 Tweet on Usage During Pregnancy ‘Highly concerning’: Major medical groups react to Trump’s claim that Tylenol is linked to autism The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 27. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript @nevillehobson (00:00) Hi everyone, and welcome to episode number 483 of For Immediate Release. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK. Shel Holtz (00:07) And this is Shel Holtz in the U.S. If you manage a brand today, here’s a scenario you actually have to plan for. A single, high-profile figure with a massive audience declares your product dangerous without credible evidence. And the story just blows up across cable, X, TikTok, the news. This is not a hypothetical. That’s where Tylenol found itself after President Trump asserted that acetaminophen taken during pregnancy can lead to autism. The claim doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny, but it did what these claims always do. It spread, it stuck, and it spooked people. So what do you do when your product is suddenly the villain of the day? The Darden School at the University of Virginia framed the choice starkly. You can keep your head down and hope the cycle moves on, or you can push back fast, clearly, and repeatedly. Their advice leans hard to option two, anchored in what they call the four Ts. timeliness, transparency, trust, and tenacity. Respond quickly, show your work, over-communicate the facts, and stick with it longer than the news cycle would suggest. Importantly, don’t get into a personality contest with the attacker. Keep it respectful but firm, and put your history, your standards, and your science front and center. Crisis pros will recognize that playbook. Forbes Crisis columnist Edward Siegel made a similar argument the same day. Assume confusion is your default environment. Get your narrative out immediately and synchronize legal, medical, and corporate voices before the vacuum fills with speculation. He also stresses preparation. If you wait to write the plan until you’re trending, you’re already too late. So how did Tylenol’s maker Kenview do? On speed and tone, they moved quickly and they stayed in their lane. In on-air and short-form video responses, they reiterated a constant message. Acetaminophen remains the recommended first-line option for pain and fever in pregnancy when used as directed, and their guidance has not changed. No name-calling, no politics, just reinforcement of established guidance and a promise to keep sharing facts as they have them. They also benefited from credible third parties saying what they couldn’t credibly say about themselves. And I remember this from my days at Allergan. We had a medical advisory board made up of ophthalmologists that we could turn to to make public statements. They didn’t receive money from us. They were volunteers, but they were tied to us. They were familiar with our products and could be very, very helpful as credible third party voices. In the Tylenol case, major medical organizations publicly pushed back on the claim. @nevillehobson (02:39) and Shel Holtz (02:53) emphasizing the lack of evidence for a causal link and the potential risks of not treating fever during pregnancy. That chorus was immediate and visible in mainstream coverage, which matters because parents weren’t going to go spelunking in PubMed in the middle of a scare. They wanted to hear doctors on the six o’clock news. Another thing Kenview got right, they didn’t let market rumors set the narrative. While the stock dipped on day one, as you might expect, It rebounded the next day as cooler heads and clearer information landed. That’s a reminder to communicators that investors are another primary audience in these moments. You can’t let medical misinformation turn into a capital market story because you were slow to brief. There was also a potential booby trap that Kenview navigated reasonably well. An old context-free social post about pregnant women avoiding Tylenol started recirculating. and was seized on by partisan accounts as an aha proof point. The brand clarified the context and restated its guidance. The lesson for the rest of us is that social archeology is part of the crisis prep. Now, you need a rapid old posts review the moment a story breaks so you can get ahead of whatever’s about to be resurfaced. Zooming out, there are broader takeaways for communicators whose brands could be targeted by a political figure or anyone with a megaphone and a base. First, build your science bench before you need it. You want independent credentialed experts ready to validate or correct claims within hours, not days. That means pre-briefing medical societies, key opinion leaders, and credible third party validators about your safety data and your monitoring plan. The Darden piece got it right. Facts alone rarely win the day, but facts delivered by trusted humans stand a fighting chance. Second, Treat employees as a primary audience. In moments like this, they’re your most important ambassadors and your most vulnerable stakeholders. Darden explicitly calls out the need to communicate aggressively with your own employees. Give them the message, the FAQs and the why, and equip managers to handle tough conversations at the school gate, the church picnic, and inside the store aisle. Third, scenario test the politics. This is not a normal product risk issue, it’s identity content. You can expect pylons, boycotts, and gotcha screenshots. Prepare neutral, values-based language that focuses on consumer safety and evidence, not the personalities involved. Resist the temptation to litigate the attacker’s credibility. Let other people do that. In this case, RFK, there are plenty of people piling on him. You don’t need to do that as the brand. Your brand should sound like the adult in the room. Fourth, integrate legal early, but don’t let them throttle your speed. You can say quite a lot quite fast without increasing liability. Reaffirm established guidance linked to authoritative sources, explain how you evaluate safety signals, and spell out what you’re doing next. The clock is your biggest risk variable. Finally, run an always-on listening program that’s tuned not just to your brand terms, but to the themes and communities. that could turn you into the next culture war football. When the first sparks fly, rapid response should include fact cards, short explainers on video and exec posts that can be embedded by newsrooms and creators alike because that’s how information travels now. So what kind of grade would we give Kenview? On the essentials, speed, message discipline, reliance on credible third parties and investor signaling. I think it’s a solid B plus, A minus. There’s room to go further on pre-bunking misinformation with evergreen explainers that can be resurfaced instantly and on employee and retailer toolkits for frontline conversations. But in a modern misinformation storm, their posture, firm, factual, and unflappable, was the right one. And for the rest of us, the homework is clear. Write the plan now, build the bench now. and decide in advance how you’ll sound when that moment comes because at some point for some brand it’s coming. @nevillehobson (07:10) It’s quite a story, isn’t it, Shell? I mean, it’s listening to how you explained it all, thinking this is probably one of those moments for any large brand, I suppose, who could think that could be us because you have a critic in the form of the U.S. president who comes out with things, says things. And as all the reporting I’ve seen talks about with that, shred of car sign evidence to back up his claims. but plenty of factual information has been around for long time that challenge it totally to dismiss it all. Could that happen to, let’s say, know, Ford Motor Company, one of their carts where President Trump is going to say this car is dreadful, they’ve had 50 recalls, which isn’t true, of course, and people have died needlessly through car accidents because they didn’t take care of whatever. The next day or the day after it’s dismissed as but in the meantime, you know, 50 buyers across the US aren’t going to buy that truck anymore. So things like that. It’s that’s the environment, isn’t it? You can’t, you can’t plan for that normally. But we’re not in a normal landscape, are we? If this kind of thing goes on. Shel Holtz (08:16) No, not at all. And the Darden piece did make the point that you need to prepare for boycotts. They’re going to happen in this environment. this response that we saw from Darden and from others in terms of how Kenview, the maker of Tylenol, handled it, focused on products that are science-based. There are other products out there that are more engineering-based or based on some other field. that could easily become targets as well. And we talk about Trump with this type of behavior, but remember this is something that his secretary of health and human services presented to him that then he then presented. And I think what you’re going to see in the post Trump Republican party is respect for his playbook. And you’re going to see this kind of behavior continue. under a prospective president Vance, for example, or at the state level with the governors. And I don’t wanna limit this to the political right. I people who see this working on the extreme left could end up employing the same tactics. You can’t look at this as a communicator, as a political thing, even though that’s exactly what it is. which is why the advice from Darden, which is exactly what Kenview did, was don’t engage at the political level, engage at the scientific level, engage at the fact level, but stay away from pointing fingers or getting into a one-on-one argument with a political figure. @nevillehobson (09:47) The difficulty though, particularly in the United States, I would say, Sheldon, is that we’re at a moment where everything is polarized completely. And so you’re out there with facts, scientific evidence, the works. And there is this group over here who’ve got their spin on the facts and they’ve got loud voices and a lot of people listen to them. potentially, I would argue inclined to listen to that kind of denial, like the anti-vaxxers and all these conspiracy theorists. So we would bring out those kinds of people, in which case, it’s almost like you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t. If you don’t say anything, you’re damned. If you do say anything, you’re damned. But I think that that’s the additional challenge. And I would say you still got to go out there with factual scientific backed information or whatever, as advised by the the folks you’ve been quoting. But it’s not a not a pretty place to be a player in. Because it could go horribly wrong. Your jet your attention is on you no matter what. And is it your story that people are paying attention to or the other guy’s story? Or is it a big question mark, people start then questioning all the scientific evidence which has already happened with this. So I seen quite a bit. here in the UK of talk about this in the mainstream media, plus in medical journals, too. The medical journals actually have been extremely forthright in their dismissal of Trump’s claims, which is really mirroring what others are saying in dismissing it. There’s no evidence to prove this. Yet I wonder, as we’ve talked before, and it’s kind of the basics of how you plan a crisis communication. approach, I suppose, where logic isn’t what is going to work. Ultimately, it’s the emotional element. I don’t know what that translates as something like this. You got to stick to your guns, of course. And if you do have facts, you shouldn’t not produce them simply because others criticize them and saying they’re denying them saying this is fake. So and in fact, challenging those people logically just doesn’t make much sense, I think. So it’s probably a storm. Somehow you have to weather. And I think there are examples you mentioned already on how you would do that. But I think you would you would likely be wise to assume or to say that we need to look at the worst case scenario here, not the best case scenario. What’s the worst case that could happen that it turns into a complete trashing of your company and all your brands, for instance. And there’s fake evidence being produced all over that. Yes, it does kill people if they take your product, this kind of thing. So it’s not an enviable place, but that is the landscape, isn’t it? With regard to almost anyone with a brand and a good news story or making a product that’s beneficial to people, there are people coming out of the woodwork who have all sorts of things to say to trash what you’re doing and the fact that your product is not safe at all. It’s a hell of an environment show, that’s a fact. Shel Holtz (12:42) It is, but it’s the environment we’re living in. So being prepared, I think, is critical these days. I didn’t check, and I probably should have. When Tylenol was owned by Johnson & Johnson, they had a credo. It was four stakeholder audiences in the order that the company prioritized them, and patients were first. And you may remember, of course, this is not the first crisis that Tylenol has faced. @nevillehobson (12:45) you Shel Holtz (13:08) Back in the 80s, there was the product tampering in the Chicago area that led to several deaths. And even though we tend to look at this now a little more idealized than the response actually was, it’s still a case study that is taught in business schools everywhere that they eventually pulled the product nationally, even though there was no evidence that. there were any tampered products outside of the Chicago area. And their public statements were that we’re doing this because our credo says that we put patients first and we’re not willing to put anybody at risk. The shareholder, by the way, was last on the credo list. think was employees were second, the communities in which they operate were third and shareholders were last. And their philosophy said, if we take care of the first three shareholders will be just fine. And in fact, when they reintroduced Tylenol, it was with a safety cap that they innovated. And that led a lot of customers of other pain relievers to switch to Tylenol because their product didn’t have a safety cap. By the time the competition caught up and developed their own safety caps, these were all now Tylenol customers. So the shareholders ended up just fine. @nevillehobson (14:12) Hmm. Shel Holtz (14:21) And I like that approach. But the point is that what they ended up appealing to, even though they might not have characterized it this way, was the emotions of the public. It’s, they care about us. And I think as long as you can maintain that emotional connection that we care about you, not just putting out scientific data. And I think this is where a lot of that third party comes in. These people want women to suffer with fevers and pain during pregnancy when there is no evidence that taking Tylenol will hurt. I’m waiting for that first report of somebody who would not take Tylenol, developed a fever and died or miscarried or what have you emerges. You know the media is gonna be all over that when it happens. So again, there’s so many dimensions involved in preparing yourself. The nice thing about @nevillehobson (14:47) Yeah. Shel Holtz (15:10) This story that I don’t think Kenview had to worry about was a lot of the third party reporting. You saw the doctors that the cable networks typically go to when there’s a medical related story and they were so contemptuous of this report that anybody who’s watching and of course the wrong people weren’t watching, but you didn’t need to hear from Kenview in order to understand that This is bunk. I mean, it was third parties who made the point that autism existed before Tylenol did. So if Tylenol is responsible for this, where did all these previous cases come from? And for those who suggest that, well, there has been an increase in the number of autism cases, that’s not true. There’s been an increase in the number of diagnoses because autism is not that old a diagnosis and as more and more doctors. recognize it, they are making that diagnosis. So leaving that information for third parties to convey while you stay in your lane, as Darden put it, I think is a good idea if you’re the type of organization that has those third parties available or already on the hook to go out and speak on your behalf. @nevillehobson (16:20) Yeah, I think one other thought that one of the links you shared is an Adweek report that Yahoo News reported that the headline says it all really, titles just the latest brand Trump has picked to fight with. And there are a handful of things that will be in recent memory for every listener to this podcast. We’ve talked about some of these on previous episodes. John Deere, the agricultural equipment manufacturer. that Trump threatened them with 200 % tariffs on everything that they want to sell in the US if they move manufacturing from Iowa to Mexico because of the tariffs. They went ahead and did it anyway. I’ve not seen what the consequences were for them, but they went ahead and did it anyway. Macy’s, the department store, Mexican immigrants are bringing drugs and bringing crime and were rapists in America. That’s what Trump was saying about that. So that’s a deal with that. Apple, well, they’re talking about manufacturing in China with the phones. Thailand, we’re discussing now. Boeing, talks about them. Jaguar cars, he has strong opinions about their new logo and rebranding. That’s extraordinary for a politician, nevermind someone who’s the president of a country with those kind of opinions. But he’s different kind of person. And I guess the latest probably, this American brand, Cracker Barrel, we have a similar brand here in the UK, but it’s not to be confused with this one, that he talked about that he described it as woke, the rebrand that when they went through this rebranding, they should go back to the old logo, he said on more than one occasion. And people are trying to figure out why why why he bothered him so much. Anyway, it did. And he said they should admit a mistake and go back to the old one and the restaurant chain. did in fact go back to the old logo. So that’s the nature of things. So hence, you’re a big brand, you’ve got high visibility, you need to factor this into your crisis plan. Shel Holtz (18:13) Yeah, it must frustrate a lot of brand managers to hear advice to stay in your lane when the person attacking you is in every lane all at once. We’ll absolutely not stay in his lane. So yeah, and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of Four Immediate Release. @nevillehobson (18:25) Extraordinary.   The post FIR #483: How Tylenol Handled a High-Profile Falsehood appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the impact of AI on small agencies, focusing on the high expectations and possible disappointments it poses. They reference a recent article from The Atlantic, which highlights a study showing that AI can sometimes decrease efficiency. They caution against overhauling business models based solely on AI’s current capabilities, stressing that while AI can assist with tasks and improve efficiency, it cannot fully replace human judgment and creativity. The conversation extends to the challenges of integrating AI without sacrificing the development of new talent and ensuring that the evolving role of AI adds value rather than causing disruption. [read the transcript] The post ALP 284: Avoiding your agency’s own AI bubble appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how to handle situations when the problems affecting an agency’s client relationship stem from external contacts like procurement, IT, or the sales team. They emphasize treating client contacts as allies and not enemies, and provide strategies to navigate bureaucratic hurdles and internal politics. The discussion covers creative problem-solving techniques such as using MSAs, having biweekly calls with VPs of Sales, and understanding cultural differences. The importance of having a collaborative approach and pre-building relationships to effectively manage challenges is also highlighted. [read the transcript] The post ALP 283: What to do when your client contact isn’t the problem appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

We’ve all heard of AI slop by now. “Workslop” is the latest play on that term, referring to low-quality, AI-generated content in the workplace that looks professional but lacks real substance. This empty, AI-produced material often creates more work for colleagues, wasting time and hindering productivity. In the longform FIR episode for September, Neville and Shel explore the sources of workslop, how big a problem it really is, and what can be done to overcome it. Also in this episode: Chris Heuer, one of the founders of the Social Media Club, is at work on a manifesto for the “H Corporation,” organizations that are human-centered. A recent online discussion set the stage for Chris’s work, which he has summarized in a post. Three seemingly disparate studies point to the evolution of the internal communication role. Researchers at Amazon have proposed a framework that can make it as easy as typing a prompt to identify a very specific audience for targeted communication. Communicators everywhere continue to predict the demise of the humble press release, but one public relations leader has had a very different experience. Anthropic and OpenAI have both released reports on how people are using their tools. They are not the same. In his Tech Report, Dan York looks back on TypePad, the blogging platform whose shutdown is imminent; AI-generated summaries of websites from Firefox; and Mastodon’s spin on quote posts. Links from this episode: Neville’s remarks on the human-centered organization, along with Chris Heuer’s original LinkedIn post Building a Shared Vision: Organizations Advancing Human-Centered AI Defining the Human Centered Organization The Birth of the H-Corp The Effects of Enterprise Social Media on Communication Networks AI misinformation and the value of trusted news Corporate Affairs is Ripe for AI Disruption AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity AI ‘Workslop’ Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable AI “workslop” sabotages productivity, study finds AI isn’t replacing your job, but ‘workslop’ may be taking it over workslop: bad study but excellent word An Explainable Natural Language Framework for Identifying and Notifying Target Audiences In Enterprise Communication How smart brands are delivering Netflix-level personalization with AI We Tested a Press Release in ChatGPT. The Results Changed Everything. LinkedIn post from Sarah Evans on press release performance in AI search results Sarah Evans’ 10 PR myths Ethan Mollick’s LinkedIn post about how people are using AI for work Here’s How People Use AI, Per OpenAI, Anthropic And Ipsos Data OpenAI and Anthropic studied how people use ChatGPT and Claude. One big difference emerged. Anthropic Finds Businesses Are Mainly Using AI to Automate Work How people actually use ChatGPT vs Claude – and what the differences tell us Links from Dan York’s Tech Report Typepad is Shutting Down Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons in $1.38B all-cash deal On Firefox for iOS, summarize a page with a shake or a tap Introducing quote posts Quoting other posts – Mastodon documentation The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 27. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript Shel Holtz:Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 482 of For Immediate Release. This is our long-form episode for September 2025. I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California. Neville Hobson:And hi everyone, I’m Neville Hobson in the UK. Shel Holtz:As I mentioned, this is our long-form episode. That means we’ll be reporting on six topics of interest to communicators. Interestingly, I think all of them are connected either directly or indirectly to artificial intelligence. I also have Dan York here with an interesting report. You and I both have a few things to say about one of the topics that Dan is reporting on. As always with our monthly episode, we have some housekeeping before we jump into the topics. Neville, you’re going to catch us up on the items we reported on since the last episode. And we have some comments on some of these reports. That’s an opportunity to remind everybody that we love your comments—please participate in this podcast by sharing them. It doesn’t have to be about something we reported on; you can introduce a topic. This used to happen all the time in the early days of the show—someone would say, “Why don’t you guys talk about this?” and we would, and it became the content of the show. So please leave a comment on the show notes or on LinkedIn—which is where most of our comments come from these days. People leave a thought or some feedback on our announcement of the new episode. You can also do that on Facebook in multiple places. And you can always go to the website and record a comment—there’s a button that says “Leave voicemail” and you can record a 90-second comment. Or send us an MP3 file to fircomments@gmail.com. Lots of ways to participate in the show, and we really hope you will. We’ll share some of the comments we received in the last month, Neville, as you remind us what we talked about. Neville Hobson:Indeed. September was kind of an odd month because you were on holiday for two weeks and we didn’t do any live recording during that time, but we had a couple of short recordings tucked in our back pocket to publish in the interim. Let’s share what we did since the last monthly episode for August—that was on the 25th of August, episode 478. Our lead story explored when corporate silence backfires and how communicators can help leaders make better choices. We also discussed AI PR deepfakes and more, including Dan York’s report. That was a 90-minute show like this one is likely to be. Episode 479 on the 1st of September—“Hacking AI Optimization vs. Doing the Hard Work.” Amid the rise of GEO, we discussed how brands are seeking workarounds to appear in AI-generated answers, but shortcuts don’t build trust. Old-school PR and marketing still matter. We got a comment on that one, right, Shel? Shel Holtz:We did, from Frank Diaz, who’s become one of our loyal listeners. He said, “This was my conclusion as well. Once I filtered everything…” He shared a checklist on mastering AI citation strategy for SEO on LinkedIn. We’ll include a link in the show notes for context. Neville Hobson:On the 9th of September we published episode 480, “Reflections on AI Ethics and the Role of Communicators.” You had already gone on holiday. This was a conversation between Sylvia Cambie—who was a guest co-host back in July when we interviewed Monsignor Paul Tighe from the Vatican about artificial intelligence—and me. We picked up where that interview left off with reflections on AI dignity, what really matters, and what caught our attention. Interestingly, that episode got more listens and downloads than the interview itself—perhaps because people were catching up after summer. Episode 481 on the 24th of September—so you can see a nearly two-week gap there—“The M-Panic: AI Writing and Misguided Assumptions. Can Tone and Authenticity Survive AI Polish?” We dove into the “M-kerfuffle” that’s had communicators divided much of this year. You also explained how you turned 28 blog posts into a forthcoming book with AI’s help—classic AI-assisted writing in action. We had comments too, didn’t we? Shel Holtz:We did. Daniel Pauling wrote that the dash doesn’t solely come from training data—a point I’d made, saying the reason you see so many dashes is because the training sets include a lot of dash-heavy content. Daniel said it also comes from how generative AI is programmed to be more friendly and what it associates with friendliness. He referenced a post where he went into detail—we’ll include that link. John Cass had a thoughtful comment about how writing wasn’t rigid in the 17th century—Shakespeare even spelled his name multiple ways—arguing that language is a visual representation of speech and we should speak the language of our audience, not the textbook. He suggested anxiety around AI and writing often comes from our best writers, but human creativity is collective. I noted that Chris Penn recently wrote that AI won’t hurt creativity because creative people will keep creating. We saw that on a cruise art auction: people bidding thousands on works by young artists. The creative impulse persists. John replied that’s true, though some high-level creatives feel AI disrupts their thinking—maybe true for a few people; not everyone thinks the same way. Neville Hobson:Good essay-comment from John. And between all of that we recorded a new interview just before you went away—Stephanie Grober in New York, quite an authority on GEO—Generative Engine Optimization. The anchor for the conversation was: is GEO the next SEO, a passing fad, or good comms practice in disguise? We talked about what GEO means for communicators today and what to do about it. That was published on the 16th of September. So we had five podcast episodes since August—not bad, considering you were away half the month. Shel Holtz:Not bad at all. We are a content machine. And that machine continues with Circle of Fellows—the monthly panel among IABC Fellows. I was at sea for this one; Brad Whitworth moderated a discussion about what it means for communicators that hybrid appears to be winning as the preferred workplace configuration. Priya Bates, Ritzi Ronquillo, and Angela Sinickas participated. It’s up on the FIR Podcast Network. The October episode sounds great: number 121. I’ll moderate at noon Eastern on Thursday, October 23. The topic: evolving roles and strategic goals. The description from Anna Willey: communicators are adapting alongside new tools and channels; strategic goals must align with organizational objectives as they impact brand reputation, enhance internal communications, and address ongoing change. Panelists so far: Lori Dawkins, Amanda Hamilton-Atwell, and Mike Klein, with a fourth to be named. You can join live and participate or catch the podcast. That wraps up our housekeeping—we managed to do it in less than 13 minutes. Right after this, we’ll be back with our Topics of the Month. Neville Hobson:Our first topic for September: Throughout this year we’ve returned again and again to one central theme—AI must be about people, not just machines. Whether we were talking about the future of work, managers’ roles in an AI-enabled world, or the Vatican’s perspective on AI ethics (“the wisdom of the heart” in our July interview with Monsignor Paul Tighe), the question has been the same: How do we ensure technology serves humanity rather than the other way around? That’s the context for Chris Heuer’s latest work. Chris is an internet pioneer and serial entrepreneur—many of you will know him from the Social Media Club nonprofit he founded in the early days of social media, which reached 350 cities globally. Building on an online brainstorm Chris led on September 17—more than 50 people connected worldwide to discuss defining human-centered organizations, which I joined and wrote about on LinkedIn—Chris has published a follow-up titled “The Birth of the H-Corp” (H for humanity). It’s a bold attempt to define what organizations owe humanity in the age of AI. The central concern: efficiency has become the dominant corporate narrative. He cites Shopify’s CEO saying managers must prove why AI can’t do the job before hiring another human. We referenced that in an FIR episode this summer. That kind of AI-first thinking risks eroding human dignity. Chris argues for an alternative: organizations must enable humans rather than replace them, reinvest AI gains back into people, and make empathy and ethics structural rather than optional. What’s powerful is the recognition of tensions—for example, how AI can hollow out junior roles and undermine leadership pipelines. Participants flagged cultural sovereignty—the idea that AI shouldn’t just reflect Silicon Valley’s worldview but the diversity of human society. Chris’s goal is to draft an H-Corp manifesto later this year—likely November—likening this to the naming moment of social media: a concept that crystallizes shared ambitions and sparks a broader movement. It won’t be perfect, but it could serve as a north star for organizations that want to put human flourishing at the center of AI adoption. For communicators, this is an important conversation: How do we frame the internal narrative so AI isn’t just about productivity and cost-cutting, but about augmenting human potential? How do we give shape to something like H-Corp so it doesn’t remain an ideal but becomes practical reality? It’s not about resisting AI or slowing progress; it’s about making deliberate choices so organizations put people at the center of change. Will communicators, leaders, and organizations seize the opportunity to shape AI for human flourishing—or let the technology shape us by default? Could H-Corp become a rallying concept as ESG or CSR did—or will it get diluted into corporate sloganeering? What role should communicators play to keep it real and practical? I bet you’ve got ideas. Shel Holtz:Of course—otherwise why would we be here? First, I think AI is less responsible for this situation than the general nature of business, especially in a capitalist society. I’m not going to get philosophical about capitalism—I’m a proud capitalist. I like making money and would like to make more. If the goal of an organization—especially a public corporation with fiduciary responsibilities—is to earn a return for investors, then when AI comes along it makes complete sense that leaders ask, “How does this help us maximize returns?” Reducing costs and staff and having a machine work 24/7—of course that’s where leaders go first. It doesn’t mean that’s what organizations should do, but I get why they do it. Also, with any new technology, the first thing we do is what we were already doing—but better. The earliest uses no one had thought of come later. I don’t think generative AI has been around long enough for that next phase yet. We’re still using it to do what we’ve been doing; later we’ll discover new, more human-centered applications. For some organizations that will come; for others, it won’t—they’ll stay focused on maximizing profit. Another issue: most organizations aren’t tackling AI strategically in its early days. There’s ample data showing people aren’t looking at this holistically. I was just talking at my company about the entry-level construction job—project engineer. Much of that role may be automated. Submittals, for example, take time and expertise; AI could produce them in minutes with the right inputs. Does that mean fewer project engineers? Our conversation was: how do we redefine the role so they still learn what they need to move up—project manager, project director, superintendent, whatever? The job won’t be the same, but it remains foundational. Same in communications: the entry-level comms role won’t be the same job in five years. Does the job go away—or do we rethink it? Smart organizations will rethink it—that’s a humanistic approach because we’re not dispensing with the role; we’re redefining it. Neville Hobson:It’s a big topic. I don’t disagree that some companies will shut their eyes to anything beyond “we use this to make money.” But the conversation—at the heart of what Chris is talking about—is helping organizations see the people. Language matters, too—how we talk about “replacing” versus “augmenting” can devalue human work. Another argument from the brainstorm: human-centered talk often defaults to privileged voices and excludes marginalized groups. There’s a perception that there’s one version of AI—English, global north. What about the global south? Some countries have launched Spanish-language chatbots relevant to their populations; ChatGPT may not be the relevant tool for them. We should stimulate conversations in organizations: “Yes, but think about this as well.” That can create discord, but it’s necessary. This idea is worth promoting: don’t devalue people. Put them first. Yes, aim for profit—but how do we help our people help us make that profit? People suffer in change; they’re often last in line when tech is deployed. Let’s bring empathy back into organizations. The landscape is changing at light speed—new capabilities, “pulse” updates to mobiles, etc. I think Chris Heuer’s offering could become a rallying concept. With influential voices like the Vatican and others globally, maybe it gathers steam. Shel Holtz:It could. My skepticism is about incentives. Leaders are obliged to produce maximum returns. How do we connect the dots so they see something in this change aligned with their goals? That’s what I want to see in the manifesto—most manifestos dwell on what’s wrong and not how to fix it. Neville Hobson:Right—so the H-Corp manifesto expected in November becomes the template to address those questions: how do we include X, Y, Z? I sensed a groundswell of willingness on the Sept. 17 call. It’s a small group; getting the word out may persuade others to get involved. You’ve got to start somewhere. This could be a rallying concept. Shel Holtz:I’ll predict that in November this will be a theme for one of our FIR episodes. Neville Hobson:Maybe we interview someone—perhaps Chris. Shel Holtz:Could be Chris. Neville Hobson:If this strikes a chord, go to the Humanizing AI Substack (link in show notes), read Chris’s post introducing the H-Corp manifesto, and see if you want to get involved. It’s open—share ideas and see what happens. Shel Holtz:One thread running through much of our coverage is how digital tech is reshaping organizational communication, minute by minute. Three new reports over the last couple of weeks are fascinating on their own; together they create a big picture communicators must grapple with. First: a major new study of enterprise social media (internal platforms like Slack, Teams, Viva Engage). Researchers studied 99 organizations adopting Microsoft Viva Engage (which grew out of Yammer). Enterprise social media made communication networks denser, more connected, and more democratic. Employees didn’t just talk to the same people—they formed new ties, especially weak ties across teams that spark ideas. Leaders and employees connected more directly, and influence was more distributed. Viva Engage, unlike siloed Teams channels, enables more open conversations around broader themes. This change breaks down silos and fosters innovation—critical when hybrid/remote work can leave people isolated. Second: Boston Consulting Group estimates more than 80% of corporate affairs work, including communication, could be augmented or even automated by AI. The biggest gains come when organizations redesign processes around AI—not just bolt it on. For communicators: think proactively not just about writing faster, but re-imagining workflows with AI in the mix. Third: VoxEU points to a serious risk: as AI makes it easier and cheaper to produce plausible misinformation, the value of trusted, credible information goes up—externally and internally. If employees can’t tell what’s credible—about competitors, market conditions, or even their own company—their decision-making is compromised. If misinformation creeps into internal channels, it can spread quickly through the very networks making us more connected. Put together: enterprise social media can make networks open and innovative, but they’re vulnerable if we don’t ensure accuracy and trust. Hovering over that is BCG’s reminder that AI will disrupt a huge portion of what communicators do. The challenge: if we don’t take responsibility for credibility and quality, AI will amplify misinformation and mistrust. The opportunity: use AI thoughtfully to improve connection and personalization while leaning into our role as stewards of trusted information. Connection without credibility is fragile; credibility without connection is limited. Our job is to deliver both. Neville Hobson:Big challenge. The VoxEU report on AI misinformation and trusted news stood out. One interesting finding: once misinformation was identified, people didn’t disengage—they consumed more. Treated individuals were more likely to maintain subscriptions months later. The report’s conclusion: when the threat of misinformation becomes salient, the value of credible news increases. How do you put that in place inside an organization? Shel Holtz:I remember my first corporate comms job at ARCO. Our weekly employee paper had bylines so employees knew who to call with story ideas. Bylines also establish credible sources—names employees learn to trust. As networks flood with information, people will gravitate to known credible voices. The same is true externally with content marketing: put a person behind the content so audiences recognize trustworthy outputs. We’ll need to build credibility with our reporters, thought leaders, and SMEs—internally and externally—so they become beacons of trust amid misinformation. Neville Hobson:VoxEU (focused on media) says if outlets maintain trust, the rise of synthetic content becomes an opportunity: as trust grows scarcer, its value rises, and audiences may be more willing to pay. Translate internally: employees won’t “pay,” but they will give attention to reliable, trustworthy writing—especially when the author is identified and credible. That seems like common sense. Shel Holtz:Agreed. Some employees don’t care what’s going on; they just do their job and go home. But if they’re overwhelmed with plausible-sounding contradictions, internal communications can become the trusted voice. People who didn’t pay attention before may start following channels and authors they’ve come to trust—if we consistently produce credible content. Neville Hobson:One line from VoxEU’s conclusion fits perfectly: the threshold to trustworthiness rises with the volume and sophistication of misinformation, meaning media outlets can’t stand still; they must continually invest in helping readers distinguish fact from fabrication, keeping pace with AI. Fits internally, too. Shel Holtz:Combine that with the other two reports: use enterprise social networks as channels for credible information and conversation, and use the BCG disruption to redefine our work so our time remains valuable even as 80% of tasks change. Neville Hobson:Okay, another buzzword: “work slop”—content that looks polished but is shallow or misleading, created with AI and dumped on colleagues to sort out. Harvard Business Review argued work slop is a major reason companies aren’t seeing ROI from AI; 40% of employees are dealing with it. But there’s a critique in Pivot to AI saying the data came from an unfiltered BetterUp survey—calling HBR’s article an unlabeled advertorial that shifts blame onto workers while pitching enterprise tools. So two threads: “work slop” is a brilliant label for a real problem; but some coverage may itself be work slop. Questions: Is work slop a real productivity killer or just a catchy buzzword? What responsibility lies with leadership vs. employees? And how should we treat research that blurs into marketing? Shel Holtz:I think it’s real, though I don’t know that it’s as dire as painted. The first time I saw “work slop” was from Ethan Mollick on LinkedIn. He echoed Pivot to AI’s point: the term can shift blame onto employees told to “be more productive with AI” without leaders doing the hard work of rethinking processes or defining good use. Poor output becomes “AI’s fault”—that’s not leadership. For communicators, we should advocate responsible AI use from the top down, not just coach employees to cope. Also, this is new-tech déjà vu. Remember desktop publishing? Suddenly every department cranked out a newsletter—because they could. It created information overload until companies set guidelines. Today, many orgs haven’t offered training, guidance, or frameworks for AI. People are experimenting—good!—but without prompt skills or evaluation skills, they’ll create work slop. We’ll see a lot of it until organizations get strategic about AI and define expectations and verification. We even did an episode on “verification” becoming a role—someone checking outputs for accuracy and credibility. We’ll see if that shakes out, but that’s where work slop comes from. I don’t think it’s a long-term problem; it will resolve like the 86 departmental newsletters did. Neville Hobson:How do we address the eruption of AI-generated content? Even if it isn’t outright wrong, it’s too much to read—hurting productivity. Shel Holtz:Organizations need a strategic approach. Our CEO often says there will be a day the switch flips; if you’re not ready, you’re irrelevant. The orgs allowing prodigious work slop haven’t reached—or acted on—that conclusion. They need governance, training, and clear “assist vs. automate” boundaries. Neville Hobson:Thanks very much, Dan—terrific report. TypePad caught my attention. I was on TypePad from 2004, moved to WordPress in 2006, kept TypePad as an archive until 2021. Interesting—and urgent—to hear it’s ending. Migration is easy except images; that’s not trivial. I know three people still on TypePad with no idea the door’s about to shut. Good callout. Shel Holtz:I was never a TypePad user, but many early influential blogs were there—Heather Armstrong’s Dooce, PostSecret, Freakonomics before it became a podcast. We’ve been doing this long enough to cover birth, life, and death. Neville Hobson:We have. Dan also mentioned Mastodon introducing commenting—probably a big deal. I’m not hugely active there. What do you think? Shel Holtz:I still have a Mastodon instance—interested to dig in. I was more intrigued by the Vimeo item. They’ve struggled to define a niche in YouTube’s world—often pitching private, high-quality business video hosting. I still get pitched. But one constant headache in internal comms is getting the right message to the right people. If you’ve ever sent a company-wide update because you weren’t sure who needed it—or spent hours hunting down the right list—you know the pain. That’s why a research paper from Amazon’s Reliability and Maintenance Engineering team caught my eye: “An explainable natural language framework for identifying and notifying target audiences in enterprise communication.” In plain terms: a system that lets you ask in natural language who should get your message, then the AI not only finds the audience but explains how it got there. Example: “Reach all maintenance technicians working with VendorX’s conveyor belts at European sites.” The system parses that, queries a knowledge graph of equipment, people, and locations, and returns the audience—with reasoning (“here’s how we matched VendorX… here’s how we identified European facilities…”). Explainability is critical; in safety contexts you can’t trust a black box. Implications: we struggle with over- and under-communication. We over-broadcast because we don’t trust lists; we miss people who need the info. A framework like this could make targeting as easy as writing a sentence—with transparency you can trust. It mirrors marketing’s move from “Hi, {FirstName}” to real context-aware personalization. Employees aren’t different from customers: they don’t want spam; they want relevant comms. Challenges: privacy concerns about graphing people and work, the need to validate reasoning, and data quality (titles, records). But it’s a blueprint for rethinking audience targeting—imagine HR or IT change comms targeting precisely with explainability. It’s research, not a product yet, but communicators should watch this closely. Neville Hobson:Good explanation. I couldn’t find a simple one online—Amazon’s site doesn’t surface it well. Amusingly, an AI Overview explained it best, which is a good illustration of why traditional search is fading. My question: is this live at Amazon? Shel Holtz:I don’t think so—it’s a framework for consideration. Presumably they’d build it for Amazon first, then maybe market or license it. If you’ve worked in internal comms, you know targeting is hard; the info you need often isn’t accessible. This gives you the ability to do it—and verify it. I can’t wait to try it someday. Neville Hobson:Calendar marker set. Share that AI Overview with me—I’ll screenshot it. Shel Holtz:Copy and paste works, too. Neville Hobson:In recent episodes we’ve explored how the press release keeps reinventing itself. Far from dead, it moved from media distribution to SEO—and now, according to Sarah Evans (partner and head of PR at Zen Media), into a generative-AI visibility engine. In a long read, she describes testing a press release about Zen Media acquiring Optimum7, distributed via GlobeNewswire, then tracking how it was picked up not just by news outlets but by AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Meta AI. Within six hours, ChatGPT cited it 40 times; Meta’s external agents 17 times; Perplexity Bot and Applebot twice. Evans said there were 61 documented AI mentions in total in that period. Implications: press releases aren’t just reaching journalists or Google—they’re feeding AI systems people use to ask questions and make decisions. The key metric becomes: is it retrievable when AI is asked a critical question in our space? We’ve covered this angle a few times—from “Is PR dead (again)?” to the reinvention of releases for algorithms—and now this: the release as a tool for persistent retrievability and authority in the age of AI. If AI engines are the new gatekeepers, how should communicators rethink writing and measurement? What do you think, Shel? Shel Holtz:I’m glad you’re citing Sarah Evans—she’s terrific. We should invite her on the interview show. In another post—“10 PR myths I’m seeing”—she debunks “Press releases don’t matter.” She says they matter more than ever. We’re seeing early results with releases averaging about 285 citations in ChatGPT within 30 days. That suggests LLMs treat press releases as credible sources—especially when picked up in reputable places. She also talks structured information. Gini Dietrich recently suggested having a page on your site not linked anywhere—meant for AI crawlers—with structured/markdown versions of the content so AI can better understand and apply it. Bottom line: press releases aren’t going anywhere. Every time someone proclaims them dead, they persist. (Side rant: embargoes aren’t real unless we agreed in advance.) Neville Hobson:I ranted about embargoes recently too. One question: what does retrievability mean for communicators? If AI engines, not journalists or search engines, arbitrate visibility, how do PR teams measure success differently? Are AI citations more valuable than traditional pickups? Shel Holtz:Both are valuable. Search has declined, but not to zero—not even to 50%. People still search. Some haven’t adopted AI for search; some queries are better served by ten links than an overview. (When we were in Rome, I searched for restaurants open before 7 p.m.—classic Google links job.) Sarah Evans’s myth list also says “Choose traditional or modern PR” is false—the strongest strategies use a dual pathway. As Mitch Joel says, “and,” not “instead of.” Neville Hobson:Worth reading Sarah’s Substack—and the link you’ll put in the notes—to make you think. Shel Holtz:Absolutely. I’ll probably be doing a press release in the next week or two—can’t say more, but it’s coming. One more debate: how people actually use AI. Ethan Mollick argues people lean on AI for higher-level cognitive tasks—framing, sense-making, brainstorming—rather than just automating grunt work. Recent usage studies from OpenAI and Anthropic offer fresh data. OpenAI’s analysis of ChatGPT usage shows augmentation—writing, editing, summarizing, brainstorming, decision support. “Asking” (decision support) has become the largest slice—aligning with “thinking partner.” Anthropic paints a different enterprise picture for Claude: businesses use it chiefly to automate workflows, coding, math-heavy tasks, document processing, and reporting pipelines. Automation exceeds augmentation; some quantify ~three-quarters of enterprise use as automation patterns. Zooming out, Forbes’s overview with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Ipsos notes adoption is broadening fast, trust is uneven, and behaviors vary by context. ZDNet frames it succinctly: ChatGPT is mostly used for writing and decision support (often non-work or para-work tasks), while Claude skews toward structured enterprise automation—coding and back-office flows. So where does that leave Mollick’s claim? Both realities are true depending on the user and context. Among general knowledge workers, AI is a thinking companion; among engineering/operations teams and API-wired apps, AI acts as an automation substrate. Implications for communicators: AI is in the room at the idea stage—become editors, synthesizers, and standard-setters. Automation is marching into comms-adjacent workflows—govern quality, provenance, and accountability. Don’t pick a side; design for both—declare the “assist vs. automate” boundary, instrument the pipeline with checks and tags, build a “thinking partner” prompt bench, and mind the labor story by narrating changes transparently. Neville Hobson:Good advice. ZDNet’s split between personal and non-personal use was interesting. I’m a mixed user—lots of research that’s kind of work-related. I use ChatGPT mostly; not Claude lately. One note: I used ChatGPT for coding when I rebuilt my website on Ghost—editing theme templates with Handlebars. ChatGPT was astonishingly good—especially after GPT-5—at brainstorming workarounds and generating CSS/JS tweaks that worked perfectly on first publish. Claude also pinpointed issues following theme dev instructions. For a non-coder, that was huge confidence. These tools were brilliant alongside Docker and VS Code. I’m impressed. Shel Holtz:No question ChatGPT does very well with code; all frontier LLMs do. Claude currently tops some benchmarks (SWE-Bench, HumanEval, etc.) and is marketed heavily to developers, with strong APIs and tool integrations. OpenAI pushes ChatGPT more broadly—consumer and enterprise—so you see “what should I wear tonight?” and recipes alongside enterprise tasks. I’ve read that Gen Z uses AI to make basic day-to-day decisions—fascinating. Neville Hobson:The report says ChatGPT usage hit 700 million weekly users as of July. Growth is relatively faster in low- and middle-income countries. Early users were ~80% men; now about 48%, with more active users having typically feminine first names (their method). Useful metrics—but what does it mean to the average communicator? Hopefully they don’t walk away thinking “ChatGPT is only for coding.” Shel Holtz:Right—the point is not either/or. There are two valid use modes—collaborative and automated. Provide resources, tools, policies, guardrails, and governance so people can use both modes effectively. You can’t have a Wild West; you need standards you can support. But beware of swinging too far. I spoke to a company restricting staff to an internal AI that can’t do what NotebookLM does—hamstringing themselves. Organizations need to be pragmatic. And that will wrap up episode 482, our long-form episode for September 2025. Neville Hobson:Market conditions will impact that approach, I bet. Okay. Shel Holtz:Right now we’re planning to record our long-form October episode on Saturday the 25th or Sunday the 26th—depends on Neville’s schedule. Either works for me. That episode will drop Monday, October 27. We’ll have short mid-week episodes in between, maybe even an interview—we’re lining up one or two. Until then, that will be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release. The post FIR #482: What Will It Take to Stop the Slop? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

As hybrid work transitions from pandemic necessity to permanent business strategy, communication professionals face a dual challenge that’s reshaping the entire profession. Not only must they master the art of reaching and engaging a distributed workforce scattered across home offices, co-working spaces, and traditional workplaces, but they must also learn to function effectively as hybrid communication teams themselves. In the September Circle of Fellows panel, four IABC Fellows and moderator Brad Whitworth, SCMP, IABC Fellow, will explore both sides of the hybrid communication equation. You’ll discover strategies for creating inclusive, impactful messaging that resonates equally with remote and in-office employees, avoiding the common pitfall of defaulting to those who are physically present. The panel will share proven approaches for maintaining a consistent brand voice and organizational culture when your audience is experiencing your company in fundamentally different ways. Equally important, the discussion will delve into the operational realities of leading communication teams in a hybrid environment. Learn how to foster collaboration and creativity when your team members may never be in the same room, how to maintain the strategic thinking and relationship-building that drive communication excellence, and how to ensure that hybrid work enhances rather than hampers your team’s ability to serve the organization. Whether you’re leading a fully distributed team, managing hybrid operations, or advising executives on how to communicate with their own hybrid workforces, this conversation will provide practical frameworks and real-world insights from communication professionals who are successfully navigating this new reality. About the panel: Priya Bates is a senior communication executive who provides strategic internal communication counsel in order to ensure leaders, managers, and employees understand the strategy, believe in the vision, act in accordance with the values, and contribute to business results. She is president of Inner Strength Communications in Toronto and previously served as senior director of Internal Communications at Loblaw Companies Limited.   Ritzi Villarico-Ronquillo, APR, IABC Fellow, is a Fellow of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), an Accredited in Public Relations professional, and a senior leader in Philippine organizations and in IABC. She held key roles as VP for Communication and Corporate Affairs in the manufacturing sector, and was PR Head for Communication and Publications, Advertising and Special Events, and General Public Programs in the energy sector. A multi-awarded communication professional, she has experience across corporate, community, associations, advocacy, and academia. With more than four decades of experience to date, she is a consultant, adjunct faculty, professional lecturer, training professional, speaker, and mentor on communication and public relations in prestigious educational institutions in the Philippines. She is a graduate of the country’s national university, the University of the Philippines’ College of Media and Communication, a center of excellence in the field. She is a contributing columnist of PR Matters, a weekly column of IPRA Philippines in the Business Mirror, a national broadsheet and online news platform. Angela Sinickas is the founder of Sinickas Communications, which has worked with companies, organizations, and governments in 32 countries on six continents. Her clients include 25% of the Forbes Top 100 largest global companies. Before starting her own consulting firm, she held positions from editor to vice president in for-profit and government organizations and worked as a senior consultant and practice leader at Hewitt and Mercer. She is the author of a manual, How to Measure Your Communication Programs (now in its third edition), and chapters in several books. Her 150+ articles in professional journals can be found on her website, www.sinicom.com. Her work has been recognized with 21 international-level Gold Quill Awards from IABC, plus her firm was named IABC Boutique Agency of the Year in 2015. She holds a BS degree in Journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MS in Leadership from Northeastern University. The post Circle of Fellows #120: Hybrid is Winning. What Does That Mean for Communicators? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel dive into one of the hottest debates in communication today: what happens to tone and authenticity when artificial intelligence steps into the writing process? From the surprisingly heated arguments over the humble em-dash to fresh research on AI’s “stylometric fingerprints,” we explore whether polished AI-assisted prose risks losing the human voice that builds trust. Along the way, we look at how publishers like Business Insider are normalizing AI for first drafts, how communicators are redefining authenticity, and how Shel used AI to turn years of blog posts into a forthcoming book. Links from this episode: Human-AI Collaboration or Academic Misconduct? Measuring AI Use in Student Writing Through Stylometric Evidence Distinguishing AI-Generated and Human-Written Text Through Psycholinguistic Analysis Some people think AI writing has a tell — the em dash. Writers disagree. AI is breaking my heart: Why authentic writing matters more than polished words The Em-Dash Responds to the AI Allegations Business Insider reportedly tells journalists they can use AI to draft stories The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 29. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript Shel Holtz (00:01) Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 481 of Four Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. @nevillehobson (00:08) And I’m Neville Hobson. In this episode of For Immediate Release, we’re going to explore the question of tone and authenticity when artificial intelligence becomes part of the writing process. That seems to be a bit of a hot topic these days from what I see online. AI tools don’t just generate text. They also polish, rewrite, and shift tone to make communication sound warmer, more professional, or more concise. But what happens to authentic voice when AI smooths the edges? Do we risk losing individuality, nuance and trust if everything starts to sound the same? We’ll talk about that right after this. It’s a debate playing out among communicators. This year, the humble M-dash has become a flashpoint. Some insist that overusing M-dashes is a dead giveaway of AI altered text. Others push back saying that’s nonsense and unfairly stigmatizes a perfectly good mark of punctuation. Washington Post ran a feature in April with the headline, Some people think AI writing has a tell. The M-dash writers disagree. Then in August, Brian Phillips wrote a lyrical defense in the ringer. pleading, stop AI shaming our precious kindly M-Dashes, please. And McSweeney’s even joined him as satire, publishing the M-Dash response to the AI allegations written from the dashes own point of view. That is really, really very amusing, worth a read. The fact that such debates exists highlights how sensitive people are to the signals of authenticity in writing. Fresh research in 2025 suggests this is more than speculation. Some recent studies show that AI leaves stylometric fingerprints in writing that can be detected, raising questions about authorship and voice. A stylometric fingerprint is the unique combination of statistical linguistic features within a piece of text that identifies its author much like a human fingerprint. AI can make writing clearer and more polished but risks homogenizing style and raising ethical questions. Beyond academia, commentators argue that polished words without voice risk-leaving communication hollow. And while researchers are busy analyzing stylometry and psycholinguistics, communicators are having a very different kind of debate about punctuation. So while academics study the fingerprints AI leaves on writing, the popular imagination has latched onto something much simpler, the punctuation choices we make. The M-debate may be tongue in cheek, but it speaks to a serious point. How sensitive we’ve become to the signals of authenticity in text right down to a single line on the page. For communicators, the challenge is not whether to use AI, that ship has sailed, but how to preserve authenticity when tone shifting tools are in the mix. The call to action is to define what authenticity means in your context, decide which writing tasks AI should support, and ensure human voice and accountability remain front and center. In the end, and authenticity aren’t about perfectly polished words. They’re about whether people believe there’s a human voice and accountability behind the message. Your thoughts, Shale? Shel Holtz (03:19) I have a lot of thoughts on this, ⁓ beginning with, well, at least it’s not the Oxford comma, because that’s a source of debate without artificial intelligence. The dash has found its way into AI outputs because of the AI inputs. The training sets include this massive corpus of writing that has been scraped from the web. @nevillehobson (03:28) Don’t start on that. Shel Holtz (03:49) that includes dashes. This is what it learned from. It saw a lot of ⁓ dashes used in writing, and that’s a pattern that it recognizes. It recognizes where they’re used and implements it in the outputs it creates. It did not think to itself, you know, I haven’t seen many dashes in my training set. That’s a shame. I’m going to start using more of those. That’s absurd. When I was in college, I had a part-time job setting type. Yeah, I’m old enough that I actually set type. And I remember learning when to use the ⁓ dash based on the copy that I was transcribing into typeset. And there were a lot of them, even back then, when most people were still working on typewriters. So I think this notion that it’s a tell is ridiculous. It’s, as you quoted somebody saying, a perfectly serviceable bit of punctuation. But let’s go beyond this notion of punctuation. mean, leave it to communicators where we have some really weighty issues to deal with that we’re going to spend most of our time talking about punctuation. I think this is one of the reasons leaders don’t take communicators very seriously. They’re thinking about business decisions and we’re thinking about ⁓ letting and kerning and things like that. We really need to get more focused on business outcomes and how communication and the use of AI contributes to that. This is what the Business Insider has done. Business Insider, I don’t know if you saw this, it’s a very recent announcement, have ⁓ officially given permission to their journalists to use AI to write the first drafts of their articles. They were already… @nevillehobson (05:44) Yeah. Shel Holtz (05:47) allowed to use AI for research, but not for any of the drafts they produced. Now they can produce the first draft. Now, why was that decision made? I’m not privy to what was going on in the mind of the president of Business Insider who made this decision and communicated it through internal memo to her staff. But I have to believe a couple of things are in play. First of all, journalism is in financial difficulties and you need fewer people to crank out more stories. And if you can get it done faster by having AI generate a first draft, you then go in and fact check and clean up and apply your own writing to, I’ve done this, I’ve done first drafts in AI. And by the time I’m done rewriting, it’s a completely different piece. Still took me about an hour and a half less than it would have if I had had to sit there and write the first draft. I don’t do that for every kind of article or other material that I need to produce, but on some things it just makes sense and it makes life easier. But the other reason I think Business Insider decided to go down this road is because AI is getting better at producing these kinds of drafts and it’s going to continue to get better. In the world of business, and I’m sure you’ve had this experience Neville, I know I have, is outside of the world of communication when you are dealing with people in other parts of the business. And I don’t mean this in any sort of pejorative way. This is not an insult. These people are brilliant when it comes to the areas of specialization that are the focus of their jobs. But they can’t write their way out of a wet paper bag. They’re terrible, terrible writers. And if using AI can help them write a memo, write an email, write a report, write an article, better than they could have on their own, I think we’re at a point where that’s fine. And as I say, it’s going to continue to improve. If AI can generate a good first draft now, how many months or years before it can generate the good final draft? I heard Casey Newton talking about this on Hartford saying, yeah, maybe ⁓ there’s not going to be work for us journalists anymore when the AI can write all the drafts. don’t think that’s necessarily the case because the research still involves talking to people and that sort of thing. the writing with AI is getting to the point where I think this is a very transitive conversation that we’re having about authenticity and human writing. think AI is fully capable of doing this in a lot of circumstances and we need to stop our hand wringing about it and figure out how to do it well. So that it produces the best results we can possibly deliver for our clients and our companies @nevillehobson (08:50) I agree. But we’re talking about human beings here who don’t exhibit some of that sometimes. I think the key thing to me is this kind of phrase I found last on my own mind, AI assisted writing. That’s actually pretty accurate phrase to describe in a sense what we’re talking about here. The issue of tone and authenticity is really the point that I’m keen to explore, where voices more than grammar, for instance, AI can clean up text, sure, it can improve text. And you could argue that’s a subjective way, phrase, improve. Others might not see it as improvement. And therein, you get into rabbit holes, without question, which is where we’re at in a lot of this, I think. But AI can clean up text. But I think authenticity demonstrates itself through word choices, rhythm. even the imperfections. I did something the other day that ChatGPT5 assisted me with, and I thought about this when I mentioned that. Did I assist it or did it assist? No, it assisted me because I asked it to do things. And I noted, kind of taken aback slightly, that on the first draft of what it did, it told me what it was going to do. And it said, I’m going to give this to you in your tone of voice. And it did. And I read this, goodness, I could have written this myself. And that did take me back a bit. Maybe I’d not noticed that before. But that example also prompted a lot of my thinking into leading up to this discussion today. Because tone ⁓ and authenticity or rather tone, yeah, I mean, it is authenticity. even though the debate is still there about what defines authenticity, I’ve had discussion that with lot of people is what do mean authentic? What does that actually mean? And it means different things to different people. I think this discussion or debate or whatever we might call describe it is likely to be one of those never ending ones, the dash, you mentioned the Oxford comma, that’s been around for decades, it’s still a major issue for some people. But being clear on this, And for the reasons I think are quite clear, you mentioned, you know, the large language models, they scrape all this stuff off the off the internet, and it’s got m dashes in, it’s got all this stuff. No one really noticed that until recently. Most people don’t even think about that. I see writing and I even used to use this where I didn’t do m dashes, because that’s not in my background of writing. I do, for instance, on a keyboard. using WordPerfect back in the day, I might do double hyphen that would convert that into an M dash. I never thought of that even, I didn’t even think about, hey, that’s an M dash, I didn’t even notice. So I don’t like M dashes, actually, the formal way people use them, or the historical way which I see AI doing the same, you got a word, there’s another word, and there’s an M dash in between, and then they’re touching the word. I don’t like it. I don’t like the look of it. So I don’t use M dashes, I use N dashes mostly. when I do my writing. So this looks neater in my mind and I don’t care about it’s some ⁓ grammar geek is looking at that thing here that alters the meaning of what you’ve written. No, it doesn’t. Shel Holtz (12:19) Yeah, and just to point out when I was doing typesetting, and I don’t remember what the rules were because I was 19 at the time, but there were definitely rules about the M dash is used in these conditions and the M dash in those conditions. I don’t remember what they were, but they existed. @nevillehobson (12:22) Sure. I know, of course there are rules, of course there are rules. So, but today in 2025, we’re looking at something that is, I guess, out of out of anyone’s control. Now, this this thing will evolve the language. I’m pretty certain of that, particularly. And typically we talk about the English language. The same thing applies in other languages, but English language as the world’s most spoken language. meaning not native, it doesn’t matter, second language, third language doesn’t matter. It’s different everywhere. And so the rules are shifting. So, you know, I look at ⁓ the economist guides, the APs guide and all this, and indeed, I’ve got a copy of the AP guide from 15 years ago. don’t think anyone follows that now. It’s different. It’s different what you see now. So the ⁓ the web we’re at now is ⁓ beyond ⁓ can you say the the use of AI? I mean, it’s a given, as I mentioned in my intro, whether to use AI that ship has sailed long time ago. But we’re talking about preserving authenticity that exercises a lot of people in right, hence the criticism. I did read a piece by ⁓ I’ve forgotten who it was. It might have been Anne Handley, I think might have been the grammar girl actually talking about this recently. That’s right, right, exactly. Shel Holtz (14:00) That would be Minyung Fogarty. @nevillehobson (14:04) that ⁓ was pretty ⁓ bullish about the use of this in ways that we shouldn’t be wasting energy and time talking about this. Yet there are many people, because I see them talking about it online and social networks, who are convinced that an end dash anywhere they see an AI has written it. And I don’t think we’re to be able to get rid of that anytime soon. In which case, my advice is just do not worry about that. No one, know, right, ignore them. Shel Holtz (14:28) Yeah, ignore them. Ignore them. I recently finished the first draft of a book. people who have been following writing. Oh, no, I’ve finished lots and lots of books reading, no, writing. This is a book on employee communication. And it is based on a series of 28 blog posts I wrote based on a framework I developed about 10 or 11 years ago. @nevillehobson (14:39) Do you mean reading it or writing it? Reading it or writing it? Writing it. Right, okay. Shel Holtz (14:58) to aid me in the consulting work I was doing at the time. I wrote all these blog posts before AI was available to help you write. So they’re all in my voice, but they’re blog posts. They’re not book chapters. So I didn’t have the time between my full-time gig and FIR and a couple of volunteer activities that I have to sit and rewrite everything. I started, I tried, and it was just way too time consuming. And I was listening to Chris Penn talk about how he did a book that Amazon could not challenge him that it was his, even though he leaned heavily on AI for the work. I didn’t do what he did because I already had a first draft with those blog posts, but I adapted his concept. So here’s what I did. I first created a very hefty document that contained a lot of what I have written. ⁓ I still had PDFs of a couple of the books I had written before. I had all of my blog posts, ⁓ many, many articles, this type of thing, even transcripts from some FIR episodes. And I put them in a PDF. And then I created a document ⁓ that said, these are approaches I take to writing. These are words and phrases that I use. I do a lot of parenthetical statements. And here are things that AI tends to do in writing that I never do and don’t do any of this. And then I created a gem over on Gemini called Write Like Shell. And I loaded both of those documents into it. This was just for this book. And then chapter by chapter, and I started off by giving it the instruction that I’ve got 28 blog posts. I need to turn them into chapters of a business book. I also need to update case studies because many of these are 11, 12, 13 years old and no longer relevant. And I need to come up with the kinds of elements that you see recurring in chapters of a business book. So I’m going to give you my blog post one at a time using these documents that I have shared, my corpus of my writing and my instructions on my writing and AI writing and how to apply that. Rewrite this post. as a book chapter. And I was knocked out at how well it did. I still needed to spend an hour on editing and rewriting and making revisions. But I ended up doing that for 28 chapters. Is that an AI written book or is that a shell written book? I would argue that that’s my book. It based what it did on my writing. It did its new version based on how I write. And then I went back and made sure it was my writing. @nevillehobson (17:48) Right. Shel Holtz (17:55) So, you know, when we talk about using AI to write, the question is, what is your process? Are you saying write this and then you go publish it? I would never do that, but I think there are a lot of people who do. @nevillehobson (18:03) Right. No, no, ⁓ I agree with you. In fact, what you described is to my mind fits precisely the the label of AI assisted writing. That in my mind, what you’ve just explained is what’s the difference between what you did and between what you might have done if you’d hired a human being assistant to help you do this? What’s the difference? The AI is faster. Is it accurate? Well, you only you will know that and you’re going to review it all anyway. And this to me is is is totally fine. And you’ve got no you would have no alarm about well, should I kind of write this chunky paragraph explaining that I’ve done it like this? No. Why? Why would you do that? Because similar tools have existed until now that were nowhere near as good as this. I mean, I think if some of the grammar assistance you get from even in Microsoft Word back in the day, we’re Grammarly now that’s evolving that uses AI. And it’s, ⁓ you know, we got all these tools. Right, you’ve got all this there, which kind of neatly circles back to the main issue here, which is tone and authenticity, how do you still bring that along? And I think that is something where the the the user, the prompter, the communicator, whoever who is Shel Holtz (19:01) Yep. Hemingway is another one. @nevillehobson (19:25) engaging with the AI is his or her absolute responsibility to set the parameters for the AI in that context, to educate the AI on you. I’ve done that a lot. spent a lot of time on chat GPT. And that was one of my big bug bears, by the way, about chat GPT five, it seemed to have forgotten half of what I told chat GPT four about. So I’ve redone all that with chat GPT five. And I can see that in how it ask me questions, how it prompts me and how responsible I ask it to do stuff like that. So that to me is is one way in which you can be confident yourself that the tone and authenticity of your AI assisted writing is okay. And that really is really what it comes out is not about creating a kind of a corporate manual for everyone has to follow. And I think it’s also to do with the comfort levels you have in your perception of that. piece of writing or reading that someone has written that may have been assisted by AI may not more than often than not, it’s likely to have been assisted by AI. What is wrong with that? Well, a of people find something wrong with that nevertheless. So go back to right. Shel Holtz (20:38) Yep. And again, I think that’s that transitory issue that I think we face. I think in three or four years, no one’s going to be talking about @nevillehobson (20:45) No, I’m sure you’re right, Shell. I mean, I think now we’re seeing things emerging in these academic papers. One of the examples I mentioned about stylometric fingerprints. think we’ve hopefully I think we’ve passed now through the phase of people saying, hey, I’ve got this software tool that could tell instantly if something’s written or not. No one cares about that unless you are being deceitful and seriously trying to game something. You ain’t going to succeed with that even. So things have changed. Things are evolving real fast. And people’s if you like, expectations are evolving too, particularly the younger you are. And according to one of the papers I read, younger audiences are comfortable generally speaking with AI polish, but care deeply about whether a message feels authentic. And that’s what we need to be paying attention to. So help in defining authenticity is one job communicators could take on. We’ve got through the training, yes, we know, here’s how you do this with this LLM. Here’s what you could do with that. Now let’s pay attention to the tone. Are you paying attention to that? So I think the kind of road is shifting in a slightly different direction than otherwise we might expect because of this. And the academic research seems to be backing this up as well. Things are changing fast, it seems to me, and you’ve got to be on the case. Shel Holtz (22:03) Yeah, and by the way, I have sent this first draft of my book to a group of thought leaders in the employee communication space. I asked them for their input. You know, what needs to be fixed? Is it terrible or should I proceed with this? And if you like it, please write a testimonial. ⁓ And so far, not one person has come back to me and said, I could tell you used AI in this. Not one. So, you know, if you do this right, if you use it as a tool and do it right and come up with a workable process, I guarantee you all those people who say, can tell when it was written by AI, they can tell when it was written by AI by somebody who didn’t know what they were doing when they prompted the AI to write something. That’s what they can tell. @nevillehobson (22:32) Maybe we should ask them. Yeah, that’s the watchword, I think. And so, by the way, I see this year, I think there’s been at least six books published about internal communication. So everyone’s on a book bandwagon. I hope yours is gonna be slightly different, because they’re all saying the same thing about strategy, what’s important, how to use AI. Yours will be different, right? Shel Holtz (23:13) Mine does, I think it barely references AI. No, mine is about a framework for how to, if you read those other books and you go, okay, I understand the models and I understand how to develop a strategic plan, but I still don’t know how to apply this on a day-to-day basis. The framework is how you do that. One the very first things I say in the book is you’re not going to learn the models of internal communication in this book. @nevillehobson (23:30) Perfect. Shel Holtz (23:42) Go back and read something fundamental, then come back and read this to figure out what to do with all of those models that you’ve learned about. So yeah, it’s different. @nevillehobson (23:51) Cool. Excellent. Shel Holtz (23:54) So hope people like it. ⁓ If I actually, I don’t know how I’m gonna publish it yet. I don’t know if I’m gonna self publish this or look for a publisher. I’m waiting for the feedback from the thought leaders that I have sent it to who have agreed to read it. ⁓ But it wouldn’t be done. And this is the point. It wouldn’t be done if I didn’t have AI to help. It would still be sitting there as 28 blog posts. So, you know, criticize it all you like. ⁓ It works. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of Four Immediate Release. The post FIR #481: The Em Dash Panic — AI, Writing, and Misguided Assumptions appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.