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In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the frequent occurrence of receiving offers to buy agencies and how to handle these communications. They share their own experiences of receiving such emails, including the prevalence of fraudulent or unserious offers. Gini describes her method of vetting these emails, such as examining URLs and LinkedIn profiles, and emphasizes the importance of legitimate connections within the industry. Chip provides further insights into the credibility of business brokers and the typical behaviors to watch out for. Both caution against making emotional decisions and underscore the necessity of due diligence, patient decision-making, and listening to one’s gut feelings. They conclude by highlighting the importance of proper advice and support for making sound decisions in the agency selling process. [read the transcript] The post ALP 276: How to handle unsolicited agency acquisition emails appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

There’s a new brand of influencer. Faceless creators wield their influence while never appearing on camera, while VTubers — virtual YouTubers — employ AI-generated avatars instead of showing their faces. This is no flash-in-the-pan trend. One network of faceless creators grew from 5,000 to 21,000 creators in just three months, with some raking in as much as $40,000 per month from brands eager to add their content to the mix. There are numerous reasons this shift is happening, from social networks like TikTok elevating its algorithm over follower counts (enabling someone with few followers to see a post go viral) to the ability for brands to pay for performance instead of impressions. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel look at the pros and cons of faceless creators. Links from this episode: WTF is behind the explosion of faceless creators?  Faceless creators and VTubers are reshaping influencer marketing There’s a Rise of Six-Figure Faceless Creators The Rise of Faceless Creators: How AI Avatars Are Redefining Digital Storytelling Faceless influencers are becoming famous online 10 Best Faceless YouTube Niches to Start in 2025 5X: The five seismic shifts that will reshape communications and marketing over the next five years Influencing Without the Influencers Liquid Death Commercial Made with AI The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28. 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 and Shel’s 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 For Immediate Release. This is episode 471. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK. Shel Holtz (00:07) And I’m Shel Holtz in the U.S. And there is something going on that’s quietly shifting how brands reach audiences. Faceless creators, social media influencers building massive reach without ever showing their faces. This isn’t just another social media trend. This is a fundamental change in content creation and monetization. And we’ll dig into it right after this. So let’s start with what we’re actually talking about. Faceless creators publish videos and clips without appearing on camera. Affiliate network grew from 5,000 to 21,000 faceless creators in just three months. Top performers are pulling in 30,000 to $40,000 a month from brand deals. Man, I’m in the wrong line of work. But here’s where it gets interesting. Many of these faceless creators are students or part-timers running multiple accounts, posting hundreds of pieces daily, some of them posting as many as a thousand posts per day. They’ve cracked the code, if you will, on algorithmic discovery, understanding that in the attention economy, volume and optimization often trump polish and personality. Three forces created this explosion. First, have platforms like TikTok that have deprioritized follower counts. Algorithmic feeds boost engaging content regardless of creator size. A faceless account with zero followers can reach millions of people. Second, AI democratized production. You can call it AI slop, but text to video bots, AI thumbnails, multilingual dubbing, mass content production is now scalable by one person who’s got the right tools. Third, performance-based compensation. Creators are getting paid on views and conversions, not flat fees. Brands can experiment at scale without upfront investment. VTubers, virtual YouTubers, use AI avatars and motion capture to create remarkably human personalities. Blue, and it’s spelled B-L-O-O, has millions of subscribers and seven-figure revenue. It editing, thumbnails, and multi-language dubbing. Brands aren’t just attracted to the novelty. They want autonomy, cost efficiency, and creative control. No scheduling conflicts, no scandals, no contract renegotiations, just consistent on-brand content at machine speed. This isn’t just about marketing. It’s also organizational communication. Scalability and ROI are becoming non-negotiable, but authenticity trade-offs are real. The lack of a human presence raises questions about trust in and alignment. Best practice is emerging though, and that’s to blend human content with virtual elements, have virtual influencers interact with real people, or introduce faithless content through recognizable human voices. The most successful organizations embrace new formats without abandoning the human elements that build trust. Mass production can border on manipulation. AI generated content poses authenticity challenges we’re only beginning to understand. When virtual influencers promote products, are consumers aware they’re engaging with AI? What transparency is required? These aren’t abstract questions. They’re practical challenges communicators have to address now before regulators step in with solutions that could stifle innovation. So what does this mean for organizational communicators? First, First, experiment, but do it strategically. Explore faceless formats and AI-assisted production, but anchor everything in your organization’s values. Second, maintain trust. Use hybrid models, faceless clips introduced by named team members. Embed real testimonials and human voices. Third, measure performance. Shift towards CPC, leads, click-throughs. Test faceless versus traditional content to understand what works in your niche. And finally, lead on transparency. Disclose AI-generated content, avoid misleading impressions. In a landscape where trust is fragile, transparency isn’t just good ethics, it’s good business. Now, the bottom line here is that the rise of faceless creators signals content as productive, scalable, and detached from identifiable faces. This isn’t replacing human storytelling, it’s complementing it. The organizations that will thrive will blend deficiency with authenticity, scale with soul. Whether your voice is faceless, virtual, or distinctly human, it needs strategic alignment and authentic connection. The question isn’t whether to embrace these formats, it’s how quickly you can use to learn them effectively while maintaining the trust that great communication requires. And by the way, Neville, just yesterday I read an article that didn’t specifically call out faceless creators, but it made a point that this type of content that the faceless creators are producing is something that you actually don’t need a creator to do. You can do it in-house and a lot of companies are starting to bring some of that work back in-house. So an interesting trend. @nevillehobson (05:26) Yeah, there’s lots, lots about this that I find fascinating. By the way, you mentioned Blue, a virtual persona, and you spelt it out B-L-O-O. That’s actually the name of a toilet cleaner here in the UK, spelt like that. So I just sort of mentioned that as a just saying kind of thing. Yeah, so I was reading through the eMarketer report on this. It’s quite interesting, their take. One thing they said struck me as an obvious that Shel Holtz (05:39) Ha! @nevillehobson (05:56) some may grasp, I certainly did. AI slop, more of it now because of this. But they do qualify that. They say concerns are definitely valid, more AI slop, but the creative shift is equally very clear indeed. Production is being automated and value now lies in ideas and execution. Yeah, you could see that. I find it interesting the trend away from influencer identity, i.e. promoting the individual who is the creator through to promoting what has been created. So if it’s about a brand or it’s a theme or something topical, that’s what you see and hear, not a talking head or some person who’s the prominent focus. It’s the actual message. That’s the thing. So that’s one of the reports I read say that is emulating TikTok. to a certain extent. And I think fine, if this is a trend, then this does add a new dimension to the content that you will encounter in various places online. You mentioned the Vtube. I think it’s great. Vtube, the virtual tube. it’s super. Faces, creators and Vtubers. E-Marketer says they’re redefining the creative space. I can see it. My only worry is is precisely going back to concerns about AI slop is that this therefore makes it easier to to literally deluge everything with slop. But you have to also accept, as I do, that one man’s slop is another man’s venison steak or whatever you might want to describe it as. So it’s like all things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I just think, though, that this is likely to open the floodgates to to AI generated content of dubious quality. It’s a bit like whenever I turn the TV on during the daytime, which sometimes happens at lunchtime, I want to see the TV news and rather than see it all online all the time. That’s when it seems to me in the UK that it’s poor quality slop all over TV at that time in terms of advertising. The ads you see, are usually about cremation services, pet insurance, or other things that niche audiences might want. Insurance for seniors, how to pay for your funeral ahead of time, all that kind of stuff. That scripting is dire. Clearly, I’m not the target audience, although I’m probably in the right age bracket for that. But you’re now seeing this likely to be the case online too. I think, though, you mentioned something quite interesting, that it opens equally another avenue. to user generated content within organizations. So VO, you mentioned VO3. But again, I raise the question to myself more than anything that does that mean we’re gonna see more dubious quality content coming at us in waves that you can’t ignore it everywhere? I noticed things a lot on LinkedIn, Facebook in particular, and luckily they have a way to say, us about this ad. And I said, don’t want to see that anymore. It’s just dreadful. And it goes away. I think I can’t see that lasting that long, to be honest. your exposure is diminishing in quality. And this will accelerate that because it’s already diminishing in quality, arguably, certainly on LinkedIn. So will this also kickstart, perhaps, explorations and experimenting by real influencers online into niche communities? away from the slop. Who knows? But nevertheless, I agree with eMarketer in particular, because they mentioned quite clearly, this is absolutely a trend. It’s gaining momentum. It’s been around a while. Now seems to be the time for this to pick up steam. One of the other links you shared from Axios, an interview with Jim O’Leary, the CEO in North America of Weber Shandwick, the big ad agency. that he says, he talks about five things, the attention economy, creator economy, stakeholder economy, experience economy, intelligence economy. I mean, these are all great things, but they’re all being not led, but pushed along fast by influences and influence. So this then is taking that in a different direction. So Basically, what I see from all of this and from the links, the reports that you shared, and your own assessment of it all, is that this is upon us. You could say if you don’t pay attention to it, you’re going to be overtaken by those who do and that probably is a valid point to make. I would argue too, though, that you only need to pay attention to it if this is something is value to you, your brand, your messaging, everything. That said, though, if you say no, it’s not, then you do risk being overtaken because I don’t think you can say no it’s not. You have to explore how it is and realize that this is upon us. So it is an interesting time. I just hope we are not overwhelmed with the slop though. Shel Holtz (10:48) Yeah, Jim O’Leary says that creators are no longer just a media channel, their culture itself, their content consistently outperforms brand owned content because audiences trust them more. The new reality is that brands must co-create with those who shape culture, measuring actual influence over vanity metrics. And it’s important because creators increasingly drive earned strategies, capturing attention that attracts traditional media coverage and fuels broader cultural conversation. I think he’s absolutely right. ⁓ about that. In terms of the AI slop, I think we’re going to be experiencing a deluge of that whether there are faceless creators or not. On the one hand, you hear about the one creator who’s cranking out a thousand pieces a day. On the other hand, if you’re get paid for this, you’re gonna have to get impressions. And that means it has to be something that people are gonna wanna look at. And I don’t wanna minimize @nevillehobson (11:28) Exactly. Shel Holtz (11:45) the problem that is posed by AI slop. But there’s also a lot of really good content being produced with this. I just saw yesterday a speculative TV commercial. It’s not really being aired, but it’s for a real product. It’s for Liquid Death, which is a canned water product. I don’t know if they have it in the UK, but it’s popular here. @nevillehobson (12:07) We’ll see that. Shel Holtz (12:08) know, skull and crossbones type of logo. But it’s a guy being pulled over on a highway by a sheriff type who walks up and says, do you know why I pulled you over? And the sketchy type in the car says, is it because of my busted taillight? And the cop says, no. He goes, is it because of the human trafficking? And he’s showing the family that he’s got tied up in the back. And the cop goes, And they just keep going through. @nevillehobson (12:12) Listen. Shel Holtz (12:35) these different scenarios of really horrible crimes that he’s committed and the cop says, no, it’s because it’s your birthday, And gives him a cake. And they tell you that the entire commercial, which looks incredibly professional, was made with Google’s VO3, the entire thing. So it is very likely that we’re going to see high quality content coming out of this space. It’s not all slop just because it’s coming from AI. @nevillehobson (13:01) No, it’s not. I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s not all slop. Of course it’s not. That’s absolutely right. I agree with you that it’s likely to be that way. So this is upon us. There will be good things amongst all the slop, but we’ll see more slop. There’s no question about that. I just wonder, though, you mentioned the guy who’s cranking out a thousand pieces of content every day. I’m reminded of our conversation with Craig Silverman recently about people who do that in the mobile phone farms out in Southeast Asia with workarounds to get around the limits imposed by platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to limit you to a certain number of posts. This breaks all those limits. So I doubt respectable agencies like Web of Shamwick are going to be doing that kind of thing. But nevertheless, that’s going to be part of the landscape too, because therefore you’re going to have people breaking all the current rules. If your brand is associated with a rule break, don’t think you want to go there. So it may force some changes there, I suspect. So it would be a good thing, I’m sure. Shel Holtz (14:03) Yeah, if they’re in fact breaking rules as opposed to dishing this out to multiple brands who are pushing it out through different accounts if you’re just the creator. @nevillehobson (14:08) They seem to be. So the argument then is it may be legal, but is it moral? mean, that’s how the argument’s going to go, or ethical, know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it’s an interesting development. Shel Holtz (14:19) Well, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. I’d need to know more about what that that creator is doing. But yeah, I find it fascinating and certainly something worth paying attention to as this landscape just continues to shift. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of for immediate release. The post FIR #471: Can You Be Influential and Anonymous at the Same Time? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

How do we prove the real value of communication in an age of fragmented media, AI-driven analysis, and relentless demand for results? In this episode of FIR Interviews, we talk with Richard Bagnall, a Board director at AMEC, the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, and a global authority on comms measurement, about the newly released Barcelona Principles 4.0 – the most comprehensive update yet to the world’s leading framework for communication neasurement and evaluation. From embracing transparency, ethics, and impact, to the contentious advertising value equivalents (AVEs) metric, this conversation is a must-listen for anyone serious about elevating the role of communication in modern organisations. The conversation centres on Richard’s insights into the thinking behind the update, what has changed since version 3.0, and why these principles matter more than ever in a fast-evolving media and technology landscape. Among the key themes discussed: Why setting measurable objectives remains fundamental to meaningful evaluation. The shift toward understanding stakeholder audiences as active participants, not passive targets. The need for comprehensive measurement across all relevant channels – digital, offline, internal and external. Balancing quantitative data with qualitative insights to deliver context and meaning. AMEC’s strong and unambiguous stance against advertising value equivalents (AVEs) – and why they’re still showing up in client requests. The growing influence of AI tools, including how they support (and challenge) ethical and transparent measurement practices. How comms professionals and organisations can adopt the principles practically, regardless of size or budget. Richard also highlights AMEC’s tools and resources – including the Integrated Evaluation Framework and Measurement Maturity Mapper – to help organisations move from outdated metrics to strategic, outcomes-focused evaluation. Listen now to hear why Barcelona Principles 4.0 is not just an update, but a call to action for the global communications industry. About Our Conversation Partner Richard Bagnall is Co-Founder of CommsClarity Consulting Ltd, Board Director of AMEC, the global trade body for communications measurement, and a non-executive Director at Milk & Honey PR. He is a globally recognised expert in PR and communications measurement, planning, and research, with over 30 years’ experience. He has led several of the sector’s most respected media intelligence and evaluation firms, including Metrica, Gorkana, PRIME Research, and CARMA, and has advised many of the world’s top brands. He now applies this experience at CommsClarity Consulting, which he co-founded to support PR agencies, in-house teams, and media intelligence firms with strategy, best practice evaluation, insight generation, and business scaling. For the past decade, Richard has advised the UK Government’s Strategy & Evaluation Council and co-authored its Digital Communications Capabilities Review. A long-serving leader at AMEC, he chaired the organisation for six years and has been a driving force behind many of its best-known resources, including the Integrated Evaluation Framework, the revised Barcelona Principles, its PR Planning Guide, and Measurement Maturity Mapper. Richard is a Fellow of AMEC, the PRCA (Public Relations and Communications Association), and an Honorary Fellow of the CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations). His lifetime commitment to improving communications evaluation has earned multiple accolades, including the CIPR President’s Medal, the SABRE Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement, AMEC’s Don Bartholomew Award, and induction into PR News’ PR Measurement Hall of Fame. Follow Richard Bagnall on Linkedin. Links from this Interview: Barcelona Principles v4.0 https://amecorg.com/resources/barcelona-principles-4-0/ The Definitive Guide: 22 Reasons to say No to AVES: https://bitly.com/saynotoaves AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework: https://www.amecorg.com/amecframework AMEC PR Planning Guide: https://amecorg.com/amecframework/home/supporting-material/planning/ AMEC’s Measurement Maturity Mapper (M3): https://m3.amecorg.com/ All AMEC resources, including case studies: https://amecorg.com/resources/ AMEC Online College: https://amecorg.com/amec-college/ CommsClarity Consulting: https://www.commsclarity.com Video Version The post Richard Bagnall on the Barcelona Principles 4.0 appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Copyright challenges and intellectual property issues are consistently recognized as a serious, top-tier concern when it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI). It may not be the top concern — that’s usually related to fake news and the trustworthiness of content, followed by privacy concerns — but many creators are upset and worried about the integrity of their work when it’s used as fodder for new training models. The courts will inevitably weigh in — in fact, one already has, with a federal court ruling in Anthropic’s favor, asserting that its use of authors’ books without compensation constitutes fair use due to the transformative nature of what Claude, Anthropic’s LLM, does with them. More lawsuits and more rulings are indeed coming, and legislation and regulation are also likely. However, Creative Commons has always preferred a voluntary compliance approach, grounded in a logical framework. In 2004, Creative Commons (under the guidance of Lawrence Lessig, a prominent American academic, attorney, and political activist known for his work on intellectual property law, campaign finance reform, and the social and legal implications of technology) developed such a framework that allowed people publishing on the web to designage how others could use their content. (This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution/share-alike license.) Now, Creative Commons is proposing a similar approach to AI, with a framework that would empower creators to signal their preferences for how their content is used and reused. The nascent framework is currently open for public comment. In this brief, midweek episode, Neville and Shel examine the proposal and the role communicators can play in shaping its final form. Links from this episode: CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI – Creative Commons Introducing CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI – Creative Commons Creative Commons debuts CC signals, a framework for an open AI ecosystem | TechCrunch CC Signals on GitHub The Venice Pledge from the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management “Human Authored Certification” from the Author’s Guild Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, from the U.S. Copyright Office Authors Call on Publishers to Limit Their Use of AI AI Watch: Global Regulatory Tracker The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28. 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 and Shel’s 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 470 of Four Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. @nevillehobson (00:08) And I’m Neville Hobson. In this short form episode of For Immediate Release, we’re looking at a new development from Creative Commons that’s aimed squarely at the intersection of AI, copyright and open knowledge. It’s called CC Signals, and it could become a defining tool for how content is treated in the AI era. Creative Commons is the nonprofit behind the well-known Creative Commons copyright licenses. that enable creators to share their work and use that of others legally and openly. This new project is their response to the rise of AI and the vast amount of public web data being used to train AI models, often without clear rules or consent. We’ll explore CC signals in lay terms and what it means for communicators right after this. For more than 20 years, Creative Commons has enabled millions of creators to share their work while retaining rights through open licenses. But now with AI models scraping the internet at scale, there’s a new challenge. How can content owners set clear expectations for whether and how their work should be reused by algorithms training AI models? That’s where CC signals comes in. It’s a proposed framework that lets data set holders express preferences for how their content can be reused, for example, in training AI based on legal, technical, and ethical guidelines. In simple terms, dataset holders means any individual organization or platform that owns, manages, or has control over a collection of data that could be used to train AI models. Rather than locking everything down behind paywalls or blocking bots entirely, CC Signals offers a middle path, a way to sustain the open web by encouraging responsible AI use. It’s built on values like recognition, reciprocity, and sustainability, echoing the same ethos that shaped creative comments copyright licenses two decades ago. For communicators, this matters. First, it’s a story about the governance of knowledge, how it’s shared, who benefits, and what kind of AI future we want to support. Second, it’s an opportunity to engage with new norms to advise organizations on data sharing policies and to help shape a framework that could become foundational in the age of machine learning. CC signals is not just a technical tool, it’s also a social contract built on fairness and the shared benefit of respect for creators, clearer norms for AI developers, and more sustainable access to open data for all. The framework is currently in very early development. Creative Commons is gathering public feedback and input now, aiming for an alpha launch in November 2025. We’ll have a link to the website in the show notes. So, Shell, I think this is worth taking part in shaping and developing new tools, new norms, and new forms of cooperation for the age of AI. Shel Holtz (03:07) As long as there’s something like an open comment period, think anybody who has an interest in this should certainly participate. Creative Commons has the credentials to undertake this. I’ve been using Creative Commons licenses since they first became available. My blog is on a Creative Commons license. Virtually every presentation I deliver uses an attribution license. This podcast. is licensed under Creative Commons. So I think they do really good work. Remember, the core principle behind the Creative Commons concept was that it has to be a defensible case in court. You can’t just say this is a thing and then have somebody violate your license, take them to court and have it thrown out. This is valid legal underpinnings that they have. with the work that they do. So I’m really happy to see them doing this. Of course, it’s not the only initiative of its kind out there right now. The Authors Guild has one called Human Authored Certification. It’s supposedly a certification system for authors and publishers to label books and other written works as human authored. There’s a U.S. Copyright Office initiative on AI. There’s an open letter from authors to publishers. and various licensing and regulation proposals, probably the most interesting recent development in all of this is Barts versus Anthropic. This was a case in the US where a judge granted summary judgment in favor of Anthropic over the question about whether using copyrighted books to train its large language model constitutes fair use. And the court said, yup, it does. It’s quintessentially transformative. offering a potential shield for AI companies facing similar copyright challenges. So the legal system is already weighing in and how owners of content in a system. And I think it’s really fascinating that Creative Commons acknowledges that AI needs this content, that AI needs access to all of this material in the open web and copyright. needs rethinking in order to accommodate this. What did they say? think I wrote it down. Ideas, facts and other building blocks of knowledge cannot be owned. Expanding copyright to control AI training risks stifling innovation and access to knowledge. The future depends on shared expectations and responsible use. And then they go on to say, of course, that any viable solution needs to be legally grounded, technically interoperable and backed by the collective action of humans. @nevillehobson (05:44) Thank Shel Holtz (05:58) So I think this is a great initiative. I hope it goes somewhere. Even the original Creative Commons never really took off the way I was hoping it would. It works for those who use it, but I don’t know how many people out there creating content even know it exists. Yet we need these conversations, we need these options, and you never know, given their track record in producing a quality product. This might be the answer for a lot of people. We’ll have to see how it shakes out. But you’re absolutely right. Way in. @nevillehobson (06:33) Yeah, I mean, they are soliciting ⁓ feedback from anyone and everyone who has an opinion. OK, as I mentioned earlier, this is very early stage development. So much of the feedback I’m seeing on the GitHub and there’s a link to that in the show notes ⁓ is early stage feedback from very technical people. It’s focused a lot on that. So persevere. The point of, I guess, talking about this in the way we are is this is look beyond the technicalities. ⁓ they, Creative Commons has published a project page that summarizes it all. They say for the technical detail, click here, as it were, and you can then go to some and really get down a rabbit hole in the technical aspects of this. But for us normal folk, communicators, we need to understand it more simply. And this is why it’s worth having this conversation today about this, I think, to kind of say, you said something interesting because this might be in my view throughout too. I started using Creative Commons myself back in 2004. literally when they started. And like you, everything I share publicly with anyone that I’ve added my intellectual property to carries a Creative Commons license. One of the beauties of CC licenses is that the thing you normally confront straight away when you come across one is written in plain English, literally no legalese. It’s at pains to point out quite clearly that that’s not the contract. You need to read the legal one. And they have published a variety of different types of contract back by legal definitions of the terms they’re using and how it all is supposed to work that are valid in different legal jurisdictions. So it’s not limited to one jurisdiction. Like you mentioned, what’s going on in the US, that’s US law only. This is valid in many other countries. In fact, the one I use is an international license that is valid in multiple countries. So if… This leads to something like that. That, I think, would make it very attractive. But the simpler it is to understand and use, the more likely it is that it will get pick up. Like you, I’m disappointed that Creative Commons copyright licenses never really rocketed into the stratosphere as it seemed they might. There were some notable lawsuits, legal challenges, 2000s. that ⁓ didn’t really kind of gain the headlines that it might have done, I suppose. But it showed that these test cases that you could, it did have the legal teeth behind it all. So this though, like I said, this is ⁓ in the development stage and it does present, I believe, a great opportunity for communicators to help shape the development of this. So not all the techies are in there, it needs that. And that’s where we step into the thing too, because you can help shape the framework that could become that foundation that I mentioned earlier. So it’s a great opportunity. Shel Holtz (09:34) It is. And a couple of thoughts. One is ⁓ one of those test cases with the Creative Commons involved Adam Curry. In fact, I think it was the first one, the pod father. Yeah, he had a photo that was ⁓ licensed under Creative Commons. Somebody used it in a way that violated that license. He took them to court. I believe it was in the Netherlands and won. ⁓ He won. So that was the first test case. The. @nevillehobson (09:42) the famous one actually the famous one. Yeah, that’s right. In Amsterdam, yeah. He won it. Shel Holtz (10:03) The plain language behind the Creative Commons, think, is important. And they also use visual cues. They have different icons for the different licenses. So they go to great pains to make it easy to understand these things at various tiers. In terms of communicators getting involved, I absolutely agree that we should. The question is how? ⁓ beyond commenting, is it possible to band together? I’m thinking of the Venice pledge that came out of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communications. This is the umbrella organization that represents most of the communication associations in the world, IEBC, PRSA, CIPR, CPRS. all of those ⁓ organizations belong to the Global Alliance. And they just a couple of weeks ago released the Venice Pledge, is there, and they’re asking communications professionals and companies in fact, to sign onto the pledge. And it’s a set of principles around ethical use of AI. So I’m wondering, is it possible for the Global Alliance to weigh in on this representing? ⁓ all of the communicators out there as opposed to or in addition to everybody going in and sharing their own comments. @nevillehobson (11:28) In addition to in addition to so so so they totally could do that. Someone representing that global alliance goes there, clicks that link, starts a conversation there. But I think you’re absolutely right. And that bring it back to the Creative Commons Copyright Alliance is maybe that was one of the issues behind its lack of mega stardom, as it were, that there wasn’t this kind of thing going on at the time. But that was a different era here. Everything’s online and everywhere. When this is huge about what the pros and cons are of all this. So ⁓ they would be a good candidate in light of the Venice principles, which I think you discussed that in a previous episode, A monthly, I think you raised that. So, right. So ⁓ that must be relevant to this. ⁓ So this is definitely the moment for this because it’s early stage. They’re looking for feedback. They want suggestions. They want input from anyone who cares to suggest these things. Shel Holtz (12:08) I think the Venice Pledge, yeah, and the principles in the pledge. @nevillehobson (12:28) This is the time for this. Shel Holtz (12:29) Well, I happen to know a couple of members of the Global Alliance Board, so I think I’ll pass this along to them. Well, I think a couple of them listen anyway. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release. @nevillehobson (12:33) Give them the link to the podcast.   The post FIR #470: Creative Commons Proposes an AI Copyright Solution appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the challenges of dealing with team members who may not be enthusiastic about the clients or the work your agency is doing. They cover whether agency owners should be concerned if their employees dislike the job, the consequences of ignoring such issues, and the importance of alignment between client work and employee satisfaction. They also emphasize the need for transparency in the hiring process and preparing employees for potential pivots or shifts in the agency’s focus. Gini shares her personal experience with pivoting towards the PESO model, and both hosts advise on involving team members early in the process to avoid misunderstandings and to gather valuable feedback. The episode underscores common themes such as the significance of communication, transparency, and knowing your financials in successful agency management. [read the transcript] The post ALP 275: How to handle your team when they don’t love your clients appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how agency owners should handle situations when an employee resigns. They explore the emotional reactions owners might have, the importance of maintaining professionalism, and the need to gather more information from the departing employee. They emphasize the value of a cooling-off period to devise a rational plan and the potential for restructuring the team. Chip and Gini also talk about seeking feedback from remaining team members to ensure a smooth transition and mitigate the risk of more employees leaving. They stress seeing an employee’s resignation as an opportunity to learn and improve the business. [read the transcript] The post ALP 274: Turning employee departures into opportunities appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

A growing body of research suggests employees are more disconnected than ever. What are internal communication teams getting wrong? Also in this long-form monthly episode for June 2025: Buzzstream interviewed over 150 digital PR pros to assess the state of digital PR. It looks a lot like it did five years ago. Social media has overtaken television as Americans’ primary source of news. Chief Communication Officers are in a precarious position, expected to anticipate and address political and societal upheaval, often sharing information executives don’t want to hear. Pope Leo XIV has called for an ethical AI framework in a message to tech execs gathering at the Vatican. In his Tech Report, Dan York looks at Mastodon’s updated terms prohibiting AI model training, announcements from TwitchCon, and the impact of Texas’s mandatory age verification law on Internet privacy and security. Links from this episode: State of Digital PR Report (2025) Social media overtakes TV as main source of news in US, analysis finds Study: CCOs Take On Growing Political Risk Pope Leo calls for an ethical AI framework in a message to tech execs gathering at the Vatican Pope Leo Takes on AI: Communicators Should Pay Attention Pope Leo Takes On AI as a Potential Threat to Humanity Employees lose over a month each year dealing with ineffective internal communication Frontline workers feel so disconnected, nearly half don’t know who their CEO is Gen Z is killing office small talk— with 74% of employees struggling to speak to coworkers Work Schedules Fail Millions of U.S. Employees Breaking Down the Infinite Workday Creators Turn to Agentic AI to Manage Fan Engagement Links from Dan York’s Tech Report: Mastodon updates its terms to prohibit AI model training | TechCrunch Ten Years of TwitchCon: Here’s What We Announced in Rotterdam Age Verification Law Weakens Internet Privacy and Security The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28. 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 and Shel’s 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 (00:02) Hi everyone and welcome to episode 469 of Four Immediate Release, the monthly long form episode for June 2025. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK. Shel Holtz (00:13) I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California in the U.S. We’re very happy that you have joined us for our monthly review of what’s going on in the communications slash technology space. And there is always a lot going on, always. And I heard about a lot of it recently. I was at the IABC World Conference in Vancouver, small conference, only about 600 people, I think. There are… Definitely some challenges facing the world of associations in general and IABC in particular. But as usual, the content at the conference was excellent. There were some really good sessions on things like driving AI adoption in the organization presented by ProSci, the change management research organization with some really revealing data, some very interesting stuff. For example, Neville, the number one driver of adoption of AI in an organization is the very visible and vocal support from the most senior leadership of the organization. That’s the top factor. And in a lot of organizations, those guys don’t have a clue what this is or how it @nevillehobson (01:18) big surprise there. Opportunity for communicators, would say that signifies Shell. Shel Holtz (01:29) It absolutely is. So we have these topics that we are going to jump into here shortly, but Neville, first, why don’t you remind everybody what we have already posted since our last monthly episode. @nevillehobson (01:43) Indeed, some good discussion we had on a handful of topics since the last month of show that was 466 on published on May the 26th. And we led in that one gain AI features. No surprise to anyone, I suppose, in every single episode we’ve been doing throughout this year, I think really. But we started with the topic on AI. Not only are AI chatbots still hallucinating, we said by some accounts it’s getting worse. And we had a conversation about LLMs and hallucinating and so forth also in that episode. A handful of other topics too, including one I’ve been reading even a more about in the past week or so. So Google’s new tool for making AI videos with sound following the one with text, that’s VO3. these seem to be coming out of the woodwork from a variety of players mid journey, most recently this past few days. So expect to hear us talking about it on FIR during the course of July, I think. Shel Holtz (02:37) Yeah, I don’t know if you’re aware, I was hearing about this on another podcast that these VO videos are being strung together with themes and shared on TikTok and they’re going viral. I can’t remember what the themes are, but they’re kind of silly and fun. But yeah, the VO3 has really led to this explosion of these videos being shared. @nevillehobson (02:51) Yeah, there’s a of that. A lot of that. Yeah. There’s around a dozen such tools currently, according to who was at the verge, if I recall correctly. And I’ve heard of half of them. So new things are appearing left, right and center. The mid journey one just a quick aside, I coughed up some money just so could try it. Blimey, I tell you, this is extraordinary. That you upload a static image and it creates a five second video from that you just prompted a bit. or not as you as you prefer it’ll do something. And I’ve done a poor about half a dozen of these that I’m going to stretch together into a single video I saw a couple on LinkedIn to people doing similar things. So for 10 bucks a month, it’s worth it to discover what this can do. So expect to see lots of silly stuff out there. But there’s a great learning for what everyone else is doing. So it’s definitely another phase in these tools. Shel Holtz (03:43) Yeah. I have a Mid Journey account. haven’t tried that yet, but you’ve been able to do that on PyCo, which I’ve been paying for for a while. So it’d be interesting to see how it works on Mid Journey. Yeah. @nevillehobson (03:50) Give it a shot. Sure, there are a number of tools that you could do that. This one I’m seeing in the tech press is saying, wow, over this particular one. So it’s offering something, I suppose. Go and give it a shot. So we also talked in this episode, this is a bit of a kind of a roundabout way to get to what we talked about in the last monthly. We talked about a new global alliance report on lack of strategic leadership about AI’s ethical use. AI again. Shel Holtz (04:01) Yeah, I’ll have to go give it a try. @nevillehobson (04:18) and a few other topics, plus Dan York’s tech report about a number of services online shutting down and other new ones starting up. So pretty full episode that came in at 104 minutes. No, wait, one hour 43. What’s that? Yeah, 100 and whatever. Anyway, one hour 43. So nearly an hour and three quarters. Yeah. No, it’s not an hour and three quarters almost. So that’s a hefty but good one, Donna. Thank you for that. So Shel Holtz (04:33) Yeah. We’re communicators. Math is not our strong suit. @nevillehobson (04:45) But that was that one. Since then, we talked in 467, June the 5th, that was Mary Meeker’s Trends Report on AI. Mary Meeker, many of you will know this, venture capitalist, and former Wall Street securities analyst, best known for the annual Internet Trends Reports that she used to publish a decade ago and going back into the 2000s. Serious credibility. But she released a new one. dedicated entirely to AI, 304 slides, not the most slides she’s had as a deck. One of her internet ones was 600 slides, substantial content. But this is worth a read. We talked about it. She has credibility, as we said in the show, credibility as strong as hers is likely that this report will become the defining source of truth about the state of AI. So it’s definitely worth taking a look at the report and listen to that episode to get our take in what she had to say. And then finally, 468 published June 17th, new threats to reputation. We said, while a company’s reputation doesn’t appear as a line item on a profit and loss statement on a balance sheet, it is nevertheless a critical intangible asset that significantly influences financial performance and long term success. So in this episode, we looked at some recent research. and reports to zero in on the newest reputation challenges and how communicators should face them. So you’re up to date now with that little wrap up. Shel Holtz (06:12) We also had an interview drop. @nevillehobson (06:15) We did. Yes, we did. That was a really good conversation we had with Craig Silverman. We’ve interviewed Craig twice before on this episode, but you’ve got to go back to 2008, 2012 to get those interviews. So well over a decade ago. And here’s Craig. We talked to him about Indicator, his new venture that is all to do with fighting digital deception. and he explains how he does all that. He explained how indicator came to be the challenge of launching a media startup and what kind of impact he hopes to achieve. He also shares practical insights for communicators facing the growing threat of coordinated inauthentic behavior, fake reviews, and AI generated information very timely. That was a good conversation. Almost three quarters of an hour, we talked to Craig about that and it was some really good insights he shared. So very much worth a listen. Shel Holtz (07:10) could have gone on longer. I had questions when we wrapped up. But yeah, Craig is a journalist, trained journalist, and had spent five years at ProPublica reporting on disinformation and misinformation. So was a logical step to move into this independent journalism that he’s doing with his partner. So yeah, definitely worth a listen. @nevillehobson (07:12) It could have. Me too. Right. And you might, if you know of Craig, you might remember back 15 years ago, he published a website that was called Regret the Error, pointing out errors made in media reporting that led to a book deal. And I’ve got the book. It’s nice, a nice look back in time to see what that was all about. But that was a good conversation we have with Craig, must admit. Shel Holtz (07:47) Me too. Yeah Also published since last month is episode 117 of Circle of Fellows, the monthly panel discussion with IABC fellows and a moderator, also a fellow, usually me, sometimes Brad Whitworth, talking about a topic of interest to communicators. This one was different. We did this one live at the IABC World Conference. We had… three of the five new fellows up on stage. The other two weren’t able to make it. And then we had eight fellows in the front row of the audience. So we had a camera aimed at the stage. I was at the lectern and the three fellows in chairs. And then Brad was out in the audience with a microphone and his wife, Peg Champion, was following him around with a camera. And all of this was feeding into StreamYard, which we used to do Circle of Fellows. And I was able to do the camera switching seamlessly. And this was all questions from the audience. So it wasn’t on a single topic. We went an hour talking about issues that were on the minds of communicators. It’s really interesting episodes. So that’s available both as a podcast and a YouTube video. We’re also preparing for episode number 118, returning to the usual format. This one’s on communication leadership. The panelists include one of our brand new fellows, Mike Klein, along with Robin McCaslin, Sue Heumann, and Russell Grossman. This will be at noon Eastern time on Thursday, July 17th. So if you’re interested in hearing the perspectives of some senior communicators on leadership and communication, Tune into that or catch the video or audio replay later. And with that, it’s time to turn to our reports as soon as we pay these bills. There was a time when digital was something you bolted on to your PR efforts. Neville, you undoubtedly remember those times where should we do something digital? Should we have a website to go with this? I remember when TV commercials had URLs appearing at the bottom and it was, wow, look at that. They’re showing their URL on a TV commercial. PR now is digital. mean, calling it digital PR is almost ridiculous. It’s just at the center of how we communicate. And BuzzStream’s latest state of digital PR survey is out. And if you’re wondering where the industry is headed, this year’s survey pulled in answers from 150 digital PR pros across the globe. I guess that means there are PR pros who are not digital PR pros, which is a little worrisome, but there’s a lot of food for thought here. So let’s start with the basics. What’s working in digital PR these days? The clear winners are data-driven hero campaigns and good old fashioned expert commentary. It turns out about 95 % of the professionals out there lean on these two tactics. You need both the big attention grabbing home run campaigns and the steady reliable singles. And Neville, I apologize for the baseball metaphors. I don’t know the equivalence in cricket. ⁓ @nevillehobson (11:14) No, that’s okay still because I probably don’t either, so that’s fine. Shel Holtz (11:18) Okay, I should have gone for football so you could have done rugby, right? It’s always nice though to see that stats back up what so many of us already are doing and just feel intuitively is the approach that works. Almost half of respondents say digital PR is actually more effective than it was a year ago. More links, more visibility, better results. But, there’s always a but. 72 % also say it’s gotten more challenging at the same time. If that feels like a paradox, it is. Blame it on everything from industry layoffs to Google’s never-ending algorithm updates to the growing army of competitors in the digital space. Basically, the pressure cooker has been turned up to 11. Now, what about budgets? It’s not exactly a free-spending landscape. Most digital PR teams are working with less than $10,000 a month and Only a handful, about 4%, have more than $20,000 to play with. The cost per link, which is how a lot of these teams still measure value, typically stays under $750. Here’s something interesting. A full quarter of respondents are generating 40 or more links per month. If you’re into link building, that’s a pretty solid haul for your money. And interestingly, link building is still at the heart of most of these digital PR campaigns. So what does success look like in digital PR? It is still all about the links. Not just any links, quality links are more important than they’ve ever been with 87 % of PR pros saying that’s their number one metric. Tools like RF’s domain rating and Moz’s domain authority are the go-to yardsticks for measuring those links. And when it comes to relevance, two thirds of practitioners say they check the page title when the link appears. Little detail, sure, but one that says a lot about the evolution of the craft. Patience remains a virtue. Around half of those surveyed say it takes three to six months to see meaningful results from a digital PR campaign. For some, it’s even longer, think six to eight months before you really start to notice the uptick in authority or referral traffic. If you’re in a hurry, Digital PR probably isn’t for you. Follow-up emails deserve a quick mention here. A massive 98 % of respondents say they send at least one follow-up, and the data shows that it pays off. Sending a follow-up boosts your reply rate by 85%. So consider that a best practice. The best results come when you follow up within a day. Open and reply rates both peak right after the first message. Now here’s why all this matters. Digital PR isn’t just about backlinks anymore. It’s about driving organic traffic, raising brand visibility, sparking social buzz, and even helping organizations weather a crisis. Done right, digital PR delivers a kind of surround sound effect for your organization. One campaign, multiple touch points. The big takeaway in 2025 is that digital PR is harder than ever, but also more rewarding. It’s also about mixing hero campaigns and expert commentary, following up quickly, measuring what matters and above all, being patient. Because if there’s one thing this year survey makes clear, it’s that digital PR is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. The other thing that occurs to me, Neville, and I think where we’re probably going to end up talking, is it’s all still about referral traffic to drive folks to a website. And we know that’s on the decline because of AI. And I was… really struck that they’re still talking about success in terms of backlinks and not a word about showing up in AI search results. So Neville, what was your take on this study? @nevillehobson (15:15) probably mirrors much of what you’ve said, although I have to say I got really down a rabbit hole at the very start where it’s saying where I’m saying, why are we calling it digital PR, particularly if the definition that I’ve seen all over the place, including an organization called Digital Marketing Institute, that It’s PR, right? And you talk about digital channels, isn’t that a bit of a misnomer now, because everything’s digital. If it’s defined by the channel, that makes less sense to me, even more so. So I think in the report early on, they asked, they have a little section called expert opinions, a little drop down, where one of the questions at the start was, how does digital PR compare to traditional PR? And the quote I liked, and you’ll understand why in a second, is from Will Hobson, hi Will, US VP of PR, Rise at Seven. He says, the lines are getting more blurred, but in my opinion, digital PR is just PR. Our activity needs to be brand relevant, but also culturally relevant while being closely tied to business objectives. Now, you can apply that to PR, and I agree. So we haven’t moved on from… not calling it digital PR, which emerged when all this was kind of new about 15 or so years ago, where we had digital PR. And I always had a problem as well with digital marketing, where you slap the word digital in front of a job description or a job title or some kind of activity, and it sounds super cool and new and fresh and amazing. We need to stop doing that, because if you then look at these definitions, so the Digital Marketing Institute says, Digital public relations is a strategy used to increase awareness and visibility of your brand using online channels. That’s the first part of it, to which I would say, but isn’t that what PR does? Let’s call it traditional PR for differentiation. Isn’t that what PR does? Digital PR is similar to traditional PR, they say, but it offers the opportunity to reach more people in a measurable and targeted way. I don’t know what that means, but that doesn’t make sense to me either. I’m not going hang up on this because I’m not, but it just struck me is that we’ve to stop calling it digital PR. I think your point, though, to kind of focus on this major issue is that exact one about links driving traffic to websites and so forth. I did think that they had the report show some interesting aspects related to SEO that are very much in the the dane of domain of this is how we’ve always been doing this. This is not new. So that makes sense to me. The syndication, no follow, I found interesting. But I guess the main point is, though, if we’re going to call it Digital PR for the purposes of this article, I’m OK with that. When you get into some of the kind of slicing and dicing of what they came up with, which teams do you work with more closely if you’re in Digital PR? And that I didn’t find surprising that the number one by huge number was SEO, the folks who do SEO, followed by marketing and then PR. So traditional PR is third on your list of people you work closely with. Surprised me a bit to see in this result that strategy was way down the list. And I would have thought that if you’re gonna, know, surely we’re talking about being strategic. to, well, not to coin a phrase, of course, but I hear that all the time. But I would have thought that would have been higher. And it, you know, I could slice and dice this, but I don’t think that would add to our conversation. I think there are things we can learn from this survey, without doubt. But to me, it was obscured by this thing about digital marketing. And I think things are moving so fast that the kind of feeling I get from some of this is that this is not on top of these changes that are moving fast. And I’m thinking in particular about what you and I have talked about in a variety of episodes of this podcast over the course of this year on things like Google Overviews, the role of AI in all of this that is going to interfere with all of these traditional sounding plans, it seems to me. So the future, according to this, to my mind, doesn’t look very rosy as changes upon us. And this doesn’t look like it’s addressing change. Shel Holtz (19:18) Yeah, I don’t see them making any pivots here to get ahead of this. And one of the things that one of the speakers at the IABC conference said, I mean, it’s an old line. He just sort of changed the words. He said, when change is coming at you, the best companies start running. And you don’t have to be faster than the change. You just have to be faster than your competitors. The old line being when the bear is coming at you, you run, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other campers, right? ⁓ But as I think about the term digital PR, I guess I can see the distinction in the respect of PR as being a reputation management and relationship building activity. @nevillehobson (19:47) Ha ha ha ha. Shel Holtz (20:06) I spend a lot of time on the phone with people, which is not digital. There are PR people, chief communication officers, for example, executive communicators who are coaching their leaders to prepare them for delivering testimony before Congress or preparing them to make a pitch to a city council or a zoning board. There’s a lot of PR that goes on that isn’t digital. I think what we’re talking about with this is outreach, right? And when we’re trying to get our message out, so PR messaging is all digital these days, but there’s a lot of relationship building and reputation building that doesn’t happen online. It happens over the phone, it happens face to face. So I guess we could say that’s the distinction. @nevillehobson (20:57) Yeah, but you got to bear in mind one thing. So if you’re a smartphone, which is digital, then this digital PR, okay, digital outreach is what you’re doing. No, I mean, seriously, this one of the numbers here, again, not to belabor this point, because this could be a whole separate discussion all by itself. But the number one tactic in the in the in the report that we’re discussing, which of the following tactics you consider to be part of digital PR? Shel Holtz (21:03) Yeah @nevillehobson (21:21) The number one, 99.4 % of people said, pitching data-led content. So it got me thinking. But that to me is crazy because whatever you’re doing in public relations, when you slap a word like traditional or digital in front of it, you are invariably going to be pitching data-led content or data-driven content, whatever. You’ve used data, or rather you have data, and you have used tools to extract meaning from that data. leaves your pitch. So these kind of narrow definitions to me are obscuring the value of these activities and dressing them up with a word that is wholly unnecessary. So Will Hobson’s got my vote where he says he doesn’t think this is, we should not call it that, we just call it PR. Shel Holtz (22:05) Yeah, I don’t disagree. I am thinking back to an old, old case study. This was when, I can’t remember who was behind it, but there was a call to boycott the tuna industry, the canned tuna, because of the inadvertent dolphin catch that was happening. were scooping up dolphins in the nets and dolphins were dying. @nevillehobson (22:10) Ha ha ha! Shel Holtz (22:30) and they were just throwing them overboard because all they wanted was the tuna. And StarKissed objected, and I think it was Burson Marsteller that they hired. And Burson Marsteller got the StarKissed people together with the people who were behind the boycott. And StarKissed said, look, we’re already doing all kinds of things to prevent dolphins from being caught up. in the sweep of tuna. Look at our numbers, look at our tactics, the things that we have implemented as procedures to avoid this. And the group came back and said, okay, yeah. And they went out and said, boycott tuna, except StarKiss, they’re already good guys. That was negotiation. That was getting people at the table. So today, communicating the outcome of that would clearly be digital, but the actual effort @nevillehobson (23:12) You Shel Holtz (23:21) was getting people together at a table to hash things out. That’s still PR. @nevillehobson (23:27) So you just defined why we shouldn’t be differentiating it, because that sounds totally confusion to the activity. It’s all just PR, it’s relationship building. These are methods you use to get your message out or engage with someone or whatever it might be. It doesn’t define the activity itself. Indeed, it talks about which channel. it channel if you wanted to say it’s that? Shel Holtz (23:33) It’s all just PR. @nevillehobson (23:51) But it doesn’t help any at all, in my opinion. I would argue that you could apply the digital advertising, digital marketing, digital whatever. It is not helpful. So I’m we agree on that, Shell. And I thank Will Hobson for prompting this part of our discussion on this podcast. Hope you’re a listener, So let’s see. This is a good digital story, this one, Shell Ethic. Social media overtakes TV as the main source of news in the US. Shel Holtz (24:16) Do we need to call it social media? It’s all just media. ⁓ just… @nevillehobson (24:19) Well, this is another conversation, right? I I’m as guilty as everyone for calling it social media. Indeed, I often talk about social media marketing. So, is it just marketing? mean, it’s okay. my God. Yes, absolutely. So this story I’m going to share is actually kind of a subset of a huge report from the Reuters Institute, the latest global report that was published actually just literally a week or so ago. Shel Holtz (24:30) Every company is a media company. @nevillehobson (24:47) in June. But one of the clearest signs of how radically the news ecosystem is changing comes from that report. And that’s a bit I want to talk about. For the first time, social media has overtaken television as the main source of news in the US. And by the way, there we have to use the word social to differentiate it from just general media, right? According to Reuters, 54 % of Americans now get their news from platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. compared to 50 % who still rely on TV. Now, I’ve been hearing for a long time that, you know, more Americans get the news online than anywhere else. This seems to provide clear evidence of that perspective. And it comes from a highly credible source at the Reuters Institute. I found the reporting, which I’m referencing by the Guardian was really good at summarizing the whole thing in a way that helps me discuss it with you rather than all the huge chunks of data that’s in Reuters report. But this isn’t just a shift in platforms, it’s a shift in power, according to The Guardian. Influencers and podcasters, not journalists, are increasingly shaping what news gets seen and heard. Joe Rogan, the famous American podcaster, alone reached more than a fifth of Americans in the days after Trump’s reelection. mean, a fifth of Americans? That’s got to be in the least, what, close to 100 million, if not more, people. especially among younger men, a demographic traditional media often fails to reach. That shift brings both opportunities and deep concerns. Trust and transparency are now front and center, as news increasingly comes from personalities rather than publications. AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini are starting to become news sources themselves, particularly among under 35s, yet users are already questioning their accuracy and reliability. There’s also a darker undercurrent. Globally, news avoidance is rising fast. In the UK, nearly half the population say they sometimes or often avoid the news altogether. And I tell you, I’m in that group. It’s the highest figure in the study, that UK statistic. Many feel overwhelmed by negativity or simply tune out from what they see as repetitive or irrelevant coverage. In my case, it’s both in this context. So as a center of gravity shifts from institutions to individuals and from owned newsrooms to algorithm driven feeds, what does this mean for trust, for civic awareness and for the role that communicators like us still have to place to play? What do you reckon, Cheryl? Shel Holtz (27:16) there is so much to unpack here. Let’s start with the fact that people are avoiding the news. I just heard an interview Kara Swisher interviewed Nicole Wallace on her podcast, On with Kara Swisher. For those who don’t know Nicole Wallace, she was the press secretary for President George W. Bush. She worked in the upper echelon of the John McCain presidential campaign. @nevillehobson (27:18) Mmm. ⁓ Shel Holtz (27:41) She grew disillusioned with the Republican Party and has voted with the Democrats in the last couple of elections. And she is the host of Deadline White House, which is a two hour Monday through Friday news program on MSNBC. And she told Kara Swisher that she understands why people are avoiding the news. It’s relentless. You watch an hour block. of news on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, wherever you prefer to go. And it’s an assault of nonstop distressing stuff. She has, Nicole Wallace, started a new podcast through MSNBC. And it’s not 100 % news. It’s interviews with A-listers just about whatever they want to talk about. She said it always… finds its way to some news, but it’s not news from beginning to end. And people are hungry for that. And that’s one of the reasons they’re turning off the relentless assault of news and opting for either something that has less of it, is more entertaining and soothing and comforting, or presents the news through a filter that is equally comforting in their bubble. Interestingly, as you mentioned, a fifth of Americans listen to or watch Joe Rogan. I was reading that he is turning away from Trump lately in his commentary in the episodes where he is political because he’s not always, but that’s going to be an interesting thing to watch to see if he wields the kind of influence that can sink the poll numbers even lower than they are. But you mentioned using AI tools for the news. I do that, not exclusively, but ChatGPT has the ability to set up tasks. And I have set up tasks to get the latest news on trends in elements of the industry where I work. And every day I check and every now and then I find something really, really interesting and good out of that. @nevillehobson (29:48) Yeah. Shel Holtz (29:51) It supplements my other monitoring of the media environment. So it’s just one more source and occasionally it reveals something that I wasn’t aware of. But fundamentally what worries me most about this is the selectivity that people may not be aware they’re being subjected to if they… go to these other sources for news. And frankly, know, watching MSNBC or CNN or Fox is the same. The only way I find out what’s going on in the rest of the world is to watch the BBC. That’s where I find out what’s going on in the Sudan, for example, or in Colombia, because they don’t cover that on the cable news stations in the US. They’re laser focused on the four or five stories that are going to gin up the most outrage among the audience right now. So it’s all the current politics and that’s what’s turning people off. And I think if the media wants to maintain an audience, they’ve got to figure out how to bring people back, how to make these more palatable because what’s missing is the gatekeeper. And I understand that people don’t like the idea of the gatekeeper. I can pick for myself what I’m interested in. But if somebody isn’t saying this is important and you need to know about this, this is what was great about reading a newspaper, the old fashioned newspaper is even if you weren’t that interested in the story, you saw the headline and you knew what was going on. Maybe you read the lead and now you knew what was happening in that part of the world that could have an influence on you and your life at some point in the future. Because when you are curating the news, by following the TikToker who presents the stuff in a style that entertains you, what aren’t you hearing about that you should be hearing about? And somehow we need to get back to having somebody who can curate what’s important. So at least you have a superficial knowledge of what’s going on beyond what’s in that bubble. @nevillehobson (31:54) Yeah, that makes sense. Although I argue you could say that particularly the younger generations who are getting the news at such a TikTok, they it’s like they don’t care what they don’t know. And they don’t want someone telling them you should know this. that that that’s a trend without any doubt. In which case, the way you address that, then, is to find a gatekeeper if you like a source that would be trustworthy enough for them to pay attention to. And that’s what needs to happen. Shel Holtz (32:07) And that’s worrisome. Well, exactly. @nevillehobson (32:20) I mean, there’s some other metrics that pop out of the kind of a big picture we’ve just kind of discussed that I think, yeah, we need to be really cognizant of what the changes are that are happening here. So the rise of news influencers, we touched on that. And we’ve talked about this a lot in recent episodes. We podcasts, there’s YouTube, there’s TikTok creators. I hear the word creator a lot, influencer a lot in this context as well, particularly among the younger demographics. So Joe Rogan, as I mentioned, according to this report, he reached 22 % of Americans that week, as I mentioned after Trump’s inauguration. But I’ve read also separately, he himself has been critical of some of the people out there who are so-called sharing news and stuff like that. So is this a generational thing that I say to myself? I suspect it is largely. But the challenge for or for all of us, I suppose, are the shifts in the platforms. So there’s some statistics from Reuters, YouTube at 30%, Instagram and WhatsApp at around 20%, TikTok 16 % are major players in news dissemination. X is losing liberal users and gaining right leaning ones. There’s no surprise there. But that again, that that has a big impact on this big picture. The challenges of publishers, according to Reuters, struggling to adapt to video-driven and personality-led content, struggling to adapt to it, not dismissing it or combating it. They’re really struggling with that. Losing commercial value and visibility on platforms they don’t control. Facing a bypass of scrutiny as populist politicians speak directly to people through influencers. Now, that is definitely something that we’re seeing a lot happening over here in Europe, certainly. News avoidance, we just discussed that, is rising. 40 % globally, at least sometimes, are avoiding it. That’s up from 29 % in 2017. So in five years, 29 % to 40%. That’s a big rise. So the interesting thing I find about the emerging role of AI, to your point, you mentioned that younger users are turning to chat bots like GPT, chat, GPT, Gemini, forgetting the news, not setting up a program that delivers a news to you. but actually getting the news from those chatbots. I do that occasionally, but I don’t say, I’m done, I’ve got my newsfeed. No, no, no, I’ll do it for something specific where I want the benefit of either perplexity, which was good at this, or I’m not using that so much anymore. Gemini’s most interesting how it’s doing this is finding stuff that I know enough about my own use of those platforms that generally speaking, and this is a very general comment, I trust what chat GPD tells me, not blindly. Let me tell you that I check most things, not every single thing. But if I’m getting something that I’m going to make use of in some form, I will double check it myself. And I have encountered recently a couple of things where it’s made a mistake. So what do we call that hallucination or whatever? And I’ve challenged it and said, you’re absolutely right. Thank you for pointing that out. I made a mistake. I get that just like a human being might do. So that’s how I tend to regard it. But this is something that… Shel Holtz (35:26) Well, the data says that these days they’re making fewer mistakes than humans undertaking the same task would make. They’re not perfect, but they’re better than we are. @nevillehobson (35:35) But well, that’s probably true. So I think that’s a that’s a good way to approach it that many of the critics I see about chat GPT notably don’t seem to do it this way, which is to be literally you think of your AI assistant as a person as a colleague you’re working with, and you’re asking it to do a task as you would a colleague to do or a hired contract or whatever it is that you’re doing. Don’t just say to yourself, this is just a program doing stuff. Think of it that way. And when you challenge it, don’t worry too much about, you know, working for hours on getting a prompt, talk to it conversationally. I do that all the time. And it works well, I find. But this is, this is a useful report. And the reporting I’ve seen not just in the Guardian, but elsewhere that zero in on particular aspects of this are worth paying attention to. And I think the one thing I would say that you could argue is not emerging anymore. It’s kind of with us. There’s concerns that persist about the accuracy, trust, and transparency in AI-generated news. And that’s something we need to pay close attention to, not to circumvent it or think, now, no, it’s there. That is part of the landscape. So if the younger users, according to surveys like this one, are turning to this, we’ve got to understand that. and make changes according to our planning and be part of the changes that are happening and the shifts that we are seeing right in front of our eyes. That’s what we need to do. Shel Holtz (37:01) Yeah, so there’s two angles on this. One is the mainstream media, the TV news media needs to figure out a way to bring people back, those who are avoiding the news to make it desirable to want to watch this. I don’t know if it’s changes in formats or what. We as communicators need to understand how to get the news into the heads of the people who we want to hear this. And that means identifying the influencers, the podcasters, getting stuff on YouTube so that people will find it, making it easier for people to find. And getting into those AI-generated search results. Interestingly, I’ve heard recently that the AI-generated search results, particularly the Gemini overviews or the Google overviews, are heavily dependent on Reddit and Quora. both of which are other sources that people are going to for news. And these are not places where you can just post your news. You have to go in there and engage. So another opportunity for a strategic shift in the communications department. @nevillehobson (38:10) Lots to pay attention to I think. Shel Holtz (38:12) Yep. Well, there’s another major shift happening right before our eyes in the role of the chief communication officer, a shift that’s only accelerating as political risk becomes business risk. A new study by United Minds that was reported on Provoke Media shows that CEOs, I’m sorry, CCOs are no longer merely putting out fires, providing executive counsel and developing… basic PR strategies, they’re expected to anticipate political and cultural turbulence and shape organizational strategy accordingly. The study makes it clear that CCOs are now business drivers, not just messengers. In volatile contexts, think fractured politics, rising cultural tensions, corporate affairs leaders are being brought into the room to offer strategic counsel. They’re expected to flag risk. convene cross-functional war rooms and guide public positions. As Ben Kalovich from United Mains puts it, with an audience of one in DC that can and will quickly strike, CCOs need to lead their organizations to make the right decisions. That’s a weighty responsibility and one that requires a shift from reactive communications to proactive leadership. In companies that embrace this new model, the CCO serves as a kind of stabilizing board voice, a steady hand while other leaders overreact to daily political noise. Interestingly, that’s kind of what the Melbourne mandate called for, what, 13 years ago from the Global Alliance. They called for PR to be at the center of maintaining that steady guidance through political turbulence and social turbulence. Anyway, the organizations set up frameworks, monitoring political signals, introducing decision protocols, and convening diverse teams early. And the result of this is anticipation of contentious issues like DEI or AI regulation and the ability to respond with unity and credibility rather than scrambling under pressure. Not every organization is embracing this shift, though. In more traditional companies, communications is still seen as downstream messaging. Boards and CEOs may say they want early risk warning, but when the CCO raises a flag, they end up getting marginalized. As Dave Tovar of Grubhub noted, CCOs are caught between expectations, knowing they should warn but lacking authority to influence outcomes. Picture it. telling the company the winds are shifting but not being allowed to change course. This tension between leadership resistance and expectations creates a double bind. Leaders may resist expanding CCOs remit, preferring to keep them in a PR silo, but then when political or reputational risk escalates, they demand answers. The CCO is stuck, expected to prevent or manage a crisis but without the platform or agency to do it. That gap undermines both credibility and governance and risks turning strategic warning into a career killer if leadership ignores it. We’ve seen indicators that the pressure on CCOs is rising. A recent Axios survey reported a 10.5 % turnover rate among global CCO roles in 2024. That’s up from 8 % the year before. Why? Because these roles are expanding and not every executive ready or empowered to lead with that level of complexity. A lot of these folks are hired for the moment and then find themselves lacking when volatility demands broader strategic competence. That signals a growing divide between what companies want and what communicators are equipped or intend or invited to deliver. So for CCOs navigating this evolving role, there are a few paths forward. One, step into the advisory space. Build political risk frameworks and cross-functional coalitions before these crisis emerge. Second, map your internal networks. Engage peers in legal, government affairs, HR, trust and influence are built pre-crisis. And finally, translate your role. Reframe your value not as PR, but as strategic insight, especially to boards and CEOs. But if none of this sticks, leadership… both expects and empowers, reducing resistance has got to be an area of focus. @nevillehobson (42:47) Yeah, that makes sense. It’s a complicated picture you’ve outlined there, Cheryl, I think. But it makes sense for the Chief Communications Officer, in particular that role, to be truly strategic as a valued advisor, a counselor, more than just the words that we see banded about about what the role of a communication professional is. he’s a counselor or advisor to senior leadership. This goes much, much deeper than that. And I think it’s not new, the depth of this, but in the context of where we’re at today with all the things that are going on in the world that could, well, not so much could impact us, but that we ought to be paying attention to because this is the world in which we are doing business and living. Political risk is a business, is a valuable… attribute for somebody to be able to provide guidance and insight to leadership on in a way that they are trusted by those leaders to do that. So if you want to get a seat at that table that we hear about as a trusted advisor, this is a route. But it’s complicated, really is high risk and what you outlined the reality of human behaviors and the ways in which we engage with others in a work environment. be marginalized, you’ll be sidelined, you will not be supported, you’ll be sabotaged, all that stuff, if you don’t do it right. And that sounds a pretty trite way to say it because it’s wider than that. But you need to have all your ducks lined up. You’ve got to have support. You need to have that network to support you. And you need to show your value in supporting others. I this is a diplomat’s role as well. I think I don’t know anyone. Just going through my mind, I know a number of people with the CCO title in large corporations as well, but not anyone I could think of who I could say, yeah, this person will be a role model for this kind of role. doesn’t mean to there aren’t any, I just don’t know any at the moment. But I think this is a natural evolutionary step for a CCO in a large enterprise in particular, particularly in a, let’s say controversial to some industry, pharmaceuticals comes to mind, actually armaments comes to mind, although that’s probably a… a hot one to be in that right now in that you don’t need to try and persuade customers to buy your products. But the way in which you are able to navigate the political risk is key. you know, I couldn’t offer more than what I just said, Shell. I think it is a it is a fascinating topic to be discussing, given the context of where we’re at in the world. Shel Holtz (45:08) Yeah, the report didn’t list industries that are struggling with this more or less than others, but I suspect one of the toughest places to be a CCO right now is in big tech because you have CEOs, many of them, I’m not going to say all of them, but many of them now see themselves as entitled to rule the world. And are they going to listen to a CCO who says this particular cultural issue is going to affect us negatively if we don’t get on the right side of it or if we don’t communicate it effectively with key stakeholder audiences, they’re going to do what they want to do. And I imagine that’s a tough place to want to be strategic in terms of what this report is talking about. @nevillehobson (45:53) I agree, to which so that adds even greater urgency to one element of the CCO’s activities, which is building strong alliances with senior people in the organization. So it’s not just he or she alone going to the CEO saying, this is what we need to do. He or she’s got the backing of many people that also have an influence with that CEO. It’s easy to discuss this. And I realize that it probably isn’t easy actually in real life to put this into practice. But that’s what you’re probably going to have to do, I would say. Do you to say thanks to Dan? I see, I should just notice he’s uploaded it now to… Shel Holtz (46:29) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve already downloaded it, but clearly I haven’t listened to it. You’re up next. Do you want to say? no, I’ll do it. then then we’ll. @nevillehobson (46:44) No, can, you think, Dan, yeah. Shel Holtz (46:53) Hang on, just need a time code. Thanks for that report, And also, Dan, congratulations on your job change. I don’t know, Neville, if you heard about this, but Dan is now the chief of staff to the head of the Internet Society. So just big shout out. That’s a tremendous move and congratulations on that. @nevillehobson (47:10) indeed I did. I saw Dan posting about it. So let’s talk about something unusual and increasingly important that’s happening at the intersection of faith, ethics, and technology. At the second annual Rome conference on AI held last week at the Vatican, attended by executives from Google, OpenAI, Meta, and more, Pope Leo XIV made a bold call. AI must be developed within an ethical framework that upholds human dignity, not just innovation for its own sake. He’s positioning AI ethics as a signature issue of his papacy, something that’s been widely reported in some of the mainstream media, notably the Wall Street Journal just a few days ago. He’s doing this in the same way Pope Leo XIII, so one number less than what Pope Leo XIV is and some hundred years in between, once defended factory workers during the Industrial Revolution. But this time it’s not about wages or working hours, it’s about what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines. Crucially, he’s not rejecting technology, he’s confronting its unregulated ambition, warning against the illusion that access to data equals wisdom, and calling attention to the risks to children’s development, justice, and even spiritual well-being. What stands out is how Pope Leo is reframing AI, not as a technical or economic issue, but as a spiritual and societal one. He’s using the church’s global moral influence to challenge the Silicon Valley narrative, especially the idea that salvation might one day come from code rather than grace. And this brings us as communicators into the frame. As I explored last week in a post on my blog, referencing a deeply analytical report by the Wall Street Journal, we have a strategic role to play here, not just translating complex technologies, but interpreting what they mean for people and society. We’re often the ones asking the hard questions about trust power and impact inside organizations. So when the Vatican calls for ethical restraint in the face of AI’s rise, it’s not just a headline, it’s a reminder that we too need to help shape the values that drive technological progress. The church is offering one model of how to do that through moral clarity, digital diplomacy, and deep reflection on human dignity. This is not just a church versus tech story. It’s a lesson in how moral authority, strategic dialogue, and long-term vision can influence how the world adopts powerful technologies. Communicators can draw on this in multiple ways, elevate ethical concerns internally, lead with principles, not just performance, and frame AI not as a product, but as a public conversation about who we are becoming. The Vatican is showing that digital diplomacy doesn’t require dominance. It requires clarity, conviction, and credible values. Shel Holtz (49:53) . @nevillehobson (50:09) That’s a strategy worth studying, I think. Shel Holtz (50:12) It is, and this is going to be an interesting dynamic as Pope Leo makes this the centerpiece of his papacy, at least in the early days, because it is at odds with at least the US government, the current administration’s position on AI, which is all gas, no break. They think that we need to accelerate development and adopt the Zuckerberg philosophy of @nevillehobson (50:19) Yeah. Shel Holtz (50:38) go fast and break things. And it’s troubling. And it’s good to have that voice out there, but then you have JD Vance, the vice president of the United States, who is a Catholic. I believe he’s a convert to Catholicism. And he’s out there saying, go, go. It’s build, build, build. Get this stuff way out ahead of what every other country is able to do. @nevillehobson (50:52) Yeah, I read that. Shel Holtz (51:03) The Pope interestingly has some allies and it would be interesting to see if the church does ally itself with some other institutions that are promoting the same message. One of these is the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management. This is the umbrella organization. In fact, we’ve mentioned them, I think a couple of times so far in this episode. They’re the organization that represents the world’s public relations and communications associations. They represent close to 400,000 communicators worldwide. IEBC is a member, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations is a member, most of the world’s associations are members. And they have just released the Venice Pledge, so-called because it was hammered out. in Venice. In fact, they say it’s result of a collaborative AI symposium workshop session held in Venice, Italy, hosted by the Global Alliances European Regional Council in partnership with Therpy, the Italian Federation of Public Relations as part of the Global Alliances Technology Trends and Communication Transformation Month in May. This was signed by the board, passed by the board in July. Let me read this just so everybody can understand what they’re saying here and see how it aligns with what Pope Leo is saying. The Global Alliance defines responsible AI as the ethical, transparent, and human-centered development and application of artificial intelligence strategically deployed to support, not replace, human judgment, creativity, and communication. It emphasizes accountability, fairness, and accuracy while minimizing bias, misinformation, and harm. Responsible AI upholds privacy and data protection, reflects professional and organizational values, and ensures proper attribution, governance, and human oversight to maintain trust, integrity, and societal well-being. The seven responsible AI guiding principles are ethics first, human-led governance, personal and organizational responsibility, awareness, openness, and transparency, education and professional development, active global voice and human centered AI for the common good. And they are asking communicators to sign the pledge. We will have a link to this in the show notes. And if this is something that you agree with, by all means, give it a click and sign the pledge. It’s fairly benign. I don’t see anything particularly controversial there. It is though, think entirely aligned with what Pope Leo is saying and very much at odds. with the US government’s approach to AI, along with the approach being taken by most of the big players in the industry. @nevillehobson (53:52) So I just want to go back to Leo, actually, because this is not an agenda we’ve got yet. So pledges and so forth, I believe, are way too soon for that kind of thing. But I get what the Global Alliance is doing. What this story is about, really, is about the change that is happening, the way in which the Catholic Church is engaging with hitherto people who are highly critical of what they are saying. So big tech in particular and continuance of a let’s call it digital diplomacy that started around 2020. So five, five years ago under Pope Francis that has led to meetings with the leaders of all the big tech companies that the big six, I suppose you could argue if not including some others, I’m sure. And this meeting recently that I mentioned is another step forward in that journey where they’re looking to, I guess, illustrate the value of principle dialogue. Although I think it also highlights the limits of voluntary codes and the need for firm accountable governance. And that’s the bit that I think is going to be the critical one. Can Leo as the head of the Catholic Church? move the needle on that, where we have a lot of talk around the world about regulation, for want of another word, and various things happening, but that hasn’t really moved any needles yet. But I think Pope Leo is going to be a far more tech savvy, regulation minded voice than his predecessor, who was not. as informed. Both pontiffs shared a deep concern that I’ve read a lot about that, that innovation without ethics risks eroding the very dignity it promises to enhance, and that’s their starting point. So communicate, as you and me and all the others listening to this can help bridge that gap to increase the understanding of that. But I think the fact that the Vatican is is taking this, it’s certainly not news headline making everywhere, but increasingly I’m seeing reporting on these steps that the Vatican is taking. So as I mentioned over the past decade, actually, they’ve held private meetings with tech leaders. So Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Brad Smith, Eric Schmidt, and others more recently. Many took place under the umbrella of the Minerva dialogues. That’s another grouping of meetings that took place privately. convened by a number of very influential voices, senior church leaders in the Vatican, and they’re continuing. And they moved from, reportedly, from enthusiasm about connectivity to deeper concerns about AI. So you’re seeing a convergence meeting of minds on certain aspects of this. So concerns about AI, misinformation, polarization, and this phrase I plucked from a Vatican report, the nature of truth. I thought, they should get Donald Trump in there then if you want to talk about the nature of truth. Vance would do, I suspect. But the point to me, though, is that I think this is a massive shift in possibilities over this broad topic that everyone in the whole world seems to be struggling with. And yes, we can have pledges. Like you, I think from what you said, I’ve not read it myself, it doesn’t seem to be anything in there that would cause a conflict to anyone. you’re pledging that you would follow these things and you are likely, in fact, I can’t imagine anyone is going to say no to that. Anyone you’re to take seriously and say, no, I’m not going to follow these things. Of course you are. But that’s not, well, he’s not a person in our circle of conversational focus even. But I think what we’re talking about here is a sea change that is only just emerging into the public space. And it’s Shel Holtz (57:17) Elon Musk wouldn’t sign on to that pledge. @nevillehobson (57:34) early days yet. mean, Pope Leo has only been in the role for what, two months, less than that even. But we’ve got the moves the Catholic Church make. And the reason why I think it’s so significant is they’re engaging with Silicon Valley on the one hand. They are now promoting quite strongly the ethical frameworks that they have had discussions with various people on. So another one, the Rome call for AI ethics, this body in the Vatican called the Pontifical Academy for Life. That’s a pledge that Microsoft, IBM and Cisco have signed and that was launched in 2020. That laid out the principles of transparency, inclusion and responsibility. But one thing I found interesting, Charles, Google and OpenAI have not signed it, not yet. So that highlights the unresolved tension between tech autonomy and ethical oversight. So there’s a hurdle to get over at some point. But shaping global discourse. This is something I remember this Pope Francis, he spoke at the 2024 G7 summit warning of a technological dictatorship and calling for legally binding treaty on AI governance. The 2025 G7 meeting in Canada has just happened. No news about that. But I think Pope Leo undoubtedly is going to carry that mission forward. But here’s the thing. Firmer, more technically informed posture. He’s going to talk like he knows the topic he’s talking about. So these to me are converging into something quite interesting. Symbolic and narrative power is another one. And this pope is very savvy on all of this. So for instance, referring back, you remember this, I’m sure you will. AI generated image of Pope Francis in a white puffer coat went viral in 2023. It exposed the public’s vulnerability to deep fakes and the church’s symbolic visibility in digital culture. But rather than dismiss it as a joke, Pope Francis used the moment to amplify concerns about truth, trust, and the limits of data, which is an example of value-led narrative shaping. So all these elements are happening. So I think Pledge is great. And I think it’d be good for other professional bodies to either support this as a single initiative or come out with their own. Where is the harm in doing this? It’s not affecting anything that’s going on here. think it’s, let’s not forget. This is aimed at a wider societal grouping as opposed to narrow demographics, let’s say. But this to me is a very interesting time and we are seeing the possibility, I believe, and there’s me with my always my glass half full view of a big change happening that can only be a good thing. Shel Holtz (1:00:10) Yeah, and I don’t disagree with the thing that you said. I think you asked if this is moving the needle. And my answer is the likelihood of this moving the needle increases with alliances, if you can bring more people into this fold. And I think if you look at what the Global Alliance is doing and put the request to sign the pledge aside, just saying this is our code of ethics when it comes to @nevillehobson (1:00:13) Okay. Shel Holtz (1:00:36) dealing with AI and we are asking communicators to abide by this. That is entirely consistent with what is, I mean. @nevillehobson (1:00:42) So do you remember conversations we had a year or so back about, we don’t need code of ethics for AI because we’ve got a code of ethics. And I think this illustrates actually why we do need something specific for AI. ⁓ Exactly. Shel Holtz (1:00:53) Yeah, I think they’ll come together at some point when AI has become so routine and is just a part of life. But right now, yeah, I agree, especially because of the risks that we’re seeing. I still in my heart believe that if you read IEBC’s code of ethics, PRSA, CIPRs, it’s all covered there, but it’s not explicit, it’s implicit. And right now what we need is for things to be explicit. @nevillehobson (1:01:00) Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So there’s lots for communicators to absorb in all of this. So if you’re interested in the devil being in the detail, there’s the we’ll have links or there are links in the show notes for this episode for that Wall Street Journal piece I mentioned, it’s lengthy, extremely deeply analytical. It’s behind a paywall, unfortunately, but there are probably ways you can get into it. There’s also a linked article I wrote about my blog, which I found rather fascinating. It was from the Catholic Health. I’m not a sudden conversion to reading religious publications, by the way, but in the focus of my interest, I’m encountering these stories. But they had an interesting analysis of transhumanism. Now, I have a number of deeply Catholic friends whose eyes rolled when I told them about this story, because this to me is a major issue for the Pope to grapple. grapple with where transhumanism, if I understand it correctly, is all about. It’s not salvation you’re going to get from a God when you die. It’s likely to be from computer software and software engineers or the new priests. mean, that’s the take I’m reading from the Catholic Herald’s article. I don’t agree in any shape or form with that. But it’s nevertheless, it’s a point of view. And that’s part of the conversation too. So you got to take care of that. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes if you want to read it. But Wall Street Journal piece, this piece, CNN article, which is talking about the meeting that just happened this past few days. And then of course, there’s our conversation. there’s a lot to unpack from this. And if you have comments to share, we definitely want to hear what you think. Shel Holtz (1:02:48) Yeah, and you know, we’ve been talking about this for years and years, but now it’s coming to pass. I just read in the New York Times about a guy who has about two months left to live and is working with his son to create a digital version of himself that the family can continue to interact with after he’s gone. So, you know, this is something that we anticipated. It’s here. So what does that do to the idea of mortality? @nevillehobson (1:03:06) Well, boy. That’s right. You’re absolutely right. Shel Holtz (1:03:15) There’s so many philosophical issues to address. I’m concerned about internal communications. Internal communications is where I spend most of my time. It is what I’m most passionate about in the communication space. And you hear a lot these days about how internal comms star has risen. It was the pandemic that… @nevillehobson (1:03:16) Well. goodness. Shel Holtz (1:03:39) It was the catalyst for that as communications became more important to senior leadership. And now we’re more strategic and we have the seat at the table and blah, blah, blah. And all of the data that we’re seeing about problems with connection in the workplace suggest that we’re not doing as good a job as we’re giving ourselves credit for. This growing disconnect inside the work place is sapping productivity, its undermining culture, and frankly costing companies a lot more than they realize. So let’s talk for a couple of minutes about the hidden costs of internal disconnection and what smart strategic internal comms leaders can do to close these gaps. Let’s start with a stat that jumped out at me from a recent Axios HQ report, a stat that gets right to the heart of one of the biggest problems I see with what internal communicators do every day. The data says employees lose more than a month of work every year just trying to find information. Clarifying confusing updates or waiting on other people to respond. We’re talking about 41 work days per year per person. Do the math and that’s about $20,000 in lost productivity for every employee. All that time chasing down answers or trying to interpret vague emails adds up. And let’s be honest, this is not just a minor nuisance. For most organizations, it’s a massive silent drain on resources and much of it’s preventable. So what’s the fix? It starts with clarity and consistency. We need to deliver the right information at the right time in the right way. That might mean tighter, more concise updates. Maybe it’s a centralized digital hub where people know they’ll find what they need. Maybe it’s just making sure leaders are trained to write and speak with a little more empathy and a lot less jargon. But it also means that internal communicators absolutely must start devoting some of their attention to how communication happens within the organization between other people and between departments and functions, not just the formal messaging between leadership and employees. When was the last time a communicator that you knew did a process audit to see what messages are being sent? by processes. This ought to become a key area of focus. Now, the same Axios report had another stat that’s alarming. Eight out of 10 employees say the quality of internal communication affects how well they understand company goals. But only about 9%, that’s just one out of every 10, feel they’re fully aligned with those goals. That’s not just an internal comms problem, that’s a business problem. If people aren’t clear on where the organization is headed or why it matters, how can we expect them to bring their best to the table? And if internal comms isn’t about alignment, I don’t know what it’s about. Here’s where internal communicators can make a real difference. And I’m not talking about an all hands meeting or a CEO memo. Short frequent touch points from leadership, weekly what’s important notes, town halls that actually allow employees to ask questions. And maybe most important, managers translating those big picture goals into the realities that their teams face every day. Now let’s talk about frontline workers, people in retail, healthcare, logistics. Fast Company shared some eye-opening findings from a WorkVivo study. Nearly half of frontline employees don’t even know who their CEO is. This is just staggering to me, although based on a personal experience, it’s not all that surprising. When I was running communications at Mattel, we did quarterly CEO town halls, but only for manager and above because we didn’t have a space big enough for everybody. And I convinced leadership that let’s do a second one. And they said, okay, we’ll bring all the people from below manager into the other one. So they weren’t going to be mixed groups, which is what I had in mind. And so they had the second town hall. The CEO got up, did his dog and pony show, same thing he had done for managers and above. And afterwards, a group of admins walked up to him and they were just so effusive. They said, this is so wonderful. It’s so great to be included. We never get to hear this stuff. We understand so much more of what we’re hearing about. Now we just have one question. Who are you? He didn’t introduce himself. He assumed. @nevillehobson (1:08:09) You Shel Holtz (1:08:15) Now, I’m the CEO, of course everyone knows who they are. And at the front line, that’s one hell of an assumption. So even more employees in this research say the broader company culture doesn’t really apply to them. And only 9 % are truly satisfied with internal communication. If that doesn’t sound like a crisis for communication, I don’t know what does. So what can communicators do? Well, for starters, we have to get creative about reaching people who aren’t sitting at a desk all day. More mobile friendly platforms, digital signage, even a quick weekly video from the CEO specifically for the frontline. And crucially, two-way communication channels, places where frontline employees can get, ask questions and get real answers. Now, Here’s a twist, and I apologize, I know this is a longer report, but there’s a lot of this stuff happening out there. According to a recent piece from the New York Post, Gen Z employees, those just starting their careers, are shying away from office small talk. In fact, three out of four say they struggle to strike up conversations with coworkers. It might be tempting to chalk this up to generational differences or social anxiety. I think it’s deeper than that. As more work moves online and hybrid, those water cooler moments, as we’ve talked about frequently in the past, aren’t happening organically. And that’s a problem because informal interactions is where trust is built and where silos are broken down. Internal comms can help here too. Can’t force small talk, but we can create spaces for it. Slack channels for non-work chat, virtual coffee breaks or interest groups, let people connect over something other than deadlines. We just launched a new intranet. It has communities, and I made a point of setting up some communities that are not work related. Share pictures of your pets. We have one that somebody set up about video gaming, and this is where you’re going to have the opportunity for those kinds of interactions and for people to meet. Then there’s the infinite work day. This is a term that came out of Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, and it describes a world where work bleeds into evenings and weekends. especially for remote and hybrid teams, Gallup reports that millions of employees are stuck with unpredictable schedules, making it hard to find work-life balance or plan family time. Role here for internal communicators too. We can model and promote boundaries, publicly acknowledging that it’s okay to log off at a reasonable hour and celebrating leaders who actually do it. We can make sure employees know about resources for mental health and wellbeing and check in regularly through pulse surveys or just simple, are you doing moments. And we can recognize how different employees from different generations perceive this issue, especially given the micro targeting of employees that’s increasingly possible with AI. For example, I learned at the IAVC World Conference that Gen Z is not millennial 2.0. They’re not interested in work-life balance. They’re interested in work-life blend. That seems to me to necessitate a different messaging to millennials than we’re sending to Gen Z. So all of these issues share in common symptoms of disconnection to information, to leadership, to each other, to the mission of the company. That’s why internal comms isn’t just a nice to have and why we have to stop resting on our laurels. We are the nervous system of the organization and when it breaks down, everything suffers, productivity, culture, retention. So my challenge to communicators who work in the internal comm space, audit your channels and messages, who’s being reached, who isn’t, and what’s getting lost in translation. Design your strategy for real inclusion, not just efficiency. make it two-way and make sure that the voices of the frontline and Gen Z and everyone in between are actually being heard and measure your impact. It’s not about how many emails you send, it’s about how much time and confusion you save. @nevillehobson (1:12:27) quite a story, Here we are in 2025, and you’ve outlined stuff. I remember hearing about all this stuff in the early 90s. And the bit about not knowing who the CEO is is truly staggering, I have to admit. So if that’s a picture that is part of the bigger picture, let’s say, then that doesn’t look good for communicators, I must admit. To throw into this mix, The question my mind listened to was, OK, fine, this is all great. What do you do? How do you do this in a hybrid workplace? Meaning work from home sometimes, work in the office other times, or as we hear occasionally, there’s some companies where some people don’t go in at all, others where the climate is forcing people to go in, so the environment is not a good place. I read on LinkedIn and I didn’t bookmark the person who posted this, unfortunately. But Mark Reed, the CEO of WPP, the advertising agency speaking at South by Southwest in London last week, said, he talked about hybrid working in the future of the workforce with AI, blah, blah, essentially said people are happy when they’re in the office. Which, which which I’ve seen people commenting. I’ve seen people commenting on what I mean, are you nuts? Are you stupid? Or what? You know, is it without any any any explainer, as I understand it, nothing to say here’s the data that supports that view. Shel Holtz (1:13:34) That’s just not true. The data says that’s not true. @nevillehobson (1:13:48) But if you’ve got a CEO saying stuff like that, then that doesn’t look good at all for being able to achieve some of the things you outlined in your call to communicate or call to internal communicators. But it’s right. Shel Holtz (1:14:02) It’s another disconnect, those employees in the office going, what, are you nuts? How’s it possible to align with your CEO when your CEO is making statements like that? @nevillehobson (1:14:07) Right. Yeah, yeah. mean, PR week has a good thing about it. If you subscribe, it’s behind the paywall. And the link in the LinkedIn piece that I saw wasn’t to that. It was to something else, but I’ve not been able to find it. I’ll see if I can. But the fact disconnect is the right word because everything you talked about is about disconnects. And if we sort of know what they are, surely it’s fixable, right? Shel Holtz (1:14:33) I would hope, you know, I heard the theme of this year’s IABC conference was connect. And I heard some people making fun of that. Everything is called connect. Hell, my intranet is called connect. But I think it’s an apt theme for this year, considering disconnect is one of the primary issues that we’re dealing with. People are disconnecting from the news. People are disconnecting from their organizations. They are disconnected from things they want to be connected to because they’re not being provided with the information, the data, the resources to be connected. This is serious connection really needs to be a focus for communicators right now. @nevillehobson (1:15:11) Yeah. Yeah, and that plays into everything we’ve talked about over the last months, particularly starting with Edelman’s trust barometer, trust in organizations, trust in leaders of organizations diminishing. And this adds to that, particularly if, I mean, I can picture it, Shell, a large organization that has people out in the field or in factories or whatever it is, they’re not at a desk, so they’re not going to be exposed to easy communication. you need to build that in. It reminds me of something I did when I was working at Mercer in the early 90s with a client. It was a company called Marion Merrell Dow that was in the pharma business. They had a sales force who were completely not getting any of communication that employees got. So we developed a kind of radio station for them and recorded stuff that was mailed to them on cassette tapes. Because these are sales guys in cars, they could put the cassette tape in the cassette player in the car. That’s analog stuff for you. But surprisingly, to me, I recall highly effective communication based on surveys that we did. But that idea was bold at that time for that company, the industry they were in. It requires, in my view, just using that as purely as an illustrative example, requires boldness to change these things in an organization. That to me is something that is squarely within the realm. of a communicator to do something about it seems to me. there’s, you know, there’s a not a roadmap exactly, but there’s a plan that you could see what you need to do. So why not do it? Easy as pie, right, Shell? Shel Holtz (1:16:53) That’s why everybody’s doing it already. @nevillehobson (1:16:55) You got it. So let’s talk about AI again, actually. And this story of Anquod interesting in Digiday. They talk about a new way of automation is quietly reshaping how content creators engage with their audiences. That’s forcing communicators and marketers to think differently about trust control and what authentic really means. So Digiday’s report that was published on the 20th of June. highlights the growing use of agentic AI by influencers. We’ve talked about agentic AI before, but just briefly, agentic AI is AI systems that don’t just respond to prompts, but acts with autonomy, engaging people in comments and DMs using the creators voice tone and even catchphrases related to this particular story. The result is that creators are seeing real gains, less burnout, more responsiveness, and deeper fan engagement. Agentic AI is redefining online interaction. helping creators stay present without being overwhelmed. But says Digiday, there’s a cost. Advertisers are growing cautious with some now adding clauses to influence a contracts to ban AI generated content altogether. The concern is that AI, no matter how well trained, could undermine the authenticity of the relationship between creator and audience or even misrepresent the creator, especially in sensitive brand context. And then there’s the ethical dimension. As agentic AI starts to simulate personality and build relationships, how should we think about its role? What happens when fans form connections with a chatbot, even if it sounds just like the person they follow? Despite concerns, creators argue that AI interaction has improved their relationships with fans, made them more responsive and enhanced engagement metrics, qualities brands still value. Still, communicators are now in new territory, navigating contracts, brand trust, and audience expectations all at once. It’s no longer just about producing content. It’s about managing relationships that may now be co-authored by machines. Which brings us to the larger point. As AI becomes a co-pilot in content and conversation, how do we define authenticity? How should brands and communicators navigate this new hybrid territory? What do you make of that show? Shel Holtz (1:19:09) You make sure that there’s still a human in the loop providing that oversight. mean, you tell me whether you think this is an apt analogy, but there was a time when animation was done by hand. Each cell was drawn and painted. There were the people who did the main illustration and then the inkers who filled everything in. My dad worked for Disney. So I used to… @nevillehobson (1:19:12) Yeah. Shel Holtz (1:19:33) get to see some of these. even have some cells. I have a cell from 101 Dalmatians, which was a hand drawn, hand painted motion picture. And then along comes computers and suddenly it’s all coding that’s going into this. You look at anything that Pixar has done and everybody of course sings the praises of the genius of Pixar. And it’s the new way to deliver. @nevillehobson (1:19:38) Ha Shel Holtz (1:19:59) animation. mean, how much does that take the humanity or the authenticity out of the equation or the creativity? And I got to tell you, Michelle and I, we were feeling like we just needed to turn our brains off. And we saw on one of the streaming channels that there was a full length Looney Tunes movie and it starred Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. And the description said it was 100 % hand drawn in the old Warner Brothers style, the Fritz Freling, Chuck Jones style of animation. And we said, cool. And we watched it for about a half an hour and we looked at each other and we said, the animation is incredible. It is just like it was in the 40s and the 50s. And it is just amazing. The movie is terrible. It’s not. funny, it’s stupid, it doesn’t have any of the wit and charm that, or the grown-up humor that you turn to Warner Brothers cartoons for. Does doing it the old way guarantee that it’s going to be authentic and credible? No, I think human creativity exhibits itself in the output, regardless of the tools that you are using. @nevillehobson (1:21:11) Thanks Shel Holtz (1:21:18) So if you are using agentic AI as a tool, how you use it and the controls that you exercise over it and how you partner with it as opposed to simply abdicating everything to it is going to determine whether the output is authentic and credible and clearly something that was driven by a creator as opposed to, you know, the slop that we’re seeing. filling TikTok and YouTube these days. @nevillehobson (1:21:52) That’s a good, that’s a good argument you’ve made. I’m going to think about that. But I tend to agree with what you’re saying. Add another dimension, which we touched on at the beginning of this show, which is what we’re seeing with these newer tools coming out now with text to video, text to video, literally. The one I mentioned from Mid Journey, to my mind is still spinning with what I did with single photographs of two things in particular. One was a selfie of me. and the other one was a cartoon, very aimed at young toddlers type of style of a bunny rabbit. And I didn’t really tell it to do much, but I was blown away by what it came back with. So imagine that being employed with something like this. In fact, it’s mind boggling to think that through because that is what’s going to happen actually. So, right. Shel Holtz (1:22:49) sure, but it’s just a tool like computerized @nevillehobson (1:22:52) Right. Right. Shel Holtz (1:22:52) animation that makes it easier for you to realize your human vision. @nevillehobson (1:22:57) Right, but you mentioned AI slop. And again, this now does it not come back to the beauty in the eye of beholder? One man’s slop is another man’s art, I would argue. We’re going to see a lot of that. Shel Holtz (1:23:07) we absolutely are. But I think we’re going to also see a lot of remarkable creative stuff that where these tools helped the creator achieve their vision. So I don’t care what tools somebody uses if it comes out as what they had envisioned. I want to see what they envisioned, regardless of whether they drew it by hand or used AI agents. I don’t care. @nevillehobson (1:23:12) Agree, agree. Right. with you 100 % on that. I think exciting times are coming, Shil. Shel Holtz (1:23:35) Exciting times are coming indeed. And we’ll have to wait till next month to see what exciting times have transpired between now and then. Actually, we’re going to be doing a few midweek episodes between now and our next episode, which we’re going to record on July 26th. It’ll drop on Monday, July 28th. So look forward to that. Keep an eye out for the… @nevillehobson (1:23:37) you Yeah. Shel Holtz (1:23:59) midweek episodes. Also keep an eye out for an interview that we are planning to record this coming Thursday with Richard Bagnell, who is the volunteer head of Amec, that’s the International Association for the Measurement of Public Relations and Communications. And they have just come out with their most recent update to the Barcelona principles. This is essentially a code of ethics for measurement. I remember the original Barcelona principles, which was the first time we saw an official body say AVEs are bad, no advertising value equivalencies. And that’s something I intend to ask him. Yeah, there are public relations agencies that still offer them. And when I asked the president of one of them, he said, our clients want them. @nevillehobson (1:24:29) Yep, we talked about it. And they’re still with us. He’s still using it. Shel Holtz (1:24:49) So rather than educate the clients about why they’re bad and why they’re better metrics, the clients want it, so we’re going to keep giving it to them, right? One of the questions I will undoubtedly ask. So that’ll be coming up within the next month too. In the meantime, we hope that you’ll leave a comment somewhere about something that you have heard here or something that you would like to share. We had no comments this past month. Send a comment to fircomments at gmail.com, include up to a three minute audio. @nevillehobson (1:25:06) That nice. Shel Holtz (1:25:16) comment, record that audio comment on our website. Just click the send voicemail link over on the right hand side of the page and you can record up to 90 seconds. You can record as many of those 90 second clips as you want. You can leave comments on the show notes. You can leave comments where we share the announcements that an episode has dropped on LinkedIn, Facebook, threads, Mastodon, Blue Sky. We’re pretty much everywhere except X. Which is interesting because I have been hearing more and more that the AI community, and I’m talking about the CEOs and the AI engineers and the strategists, they’re mainly on X. Most of the communication between these people is happening on X. And that’s what the AI podcast ends up saying is, know, the CEO of Anthropics said this on X and Sam Altman said that on X. I may need to go back to X just to be able to stay up to date with what’s happening in AI. @nevillehobson (1:26:13) If only you mentioned that just as a quick aside, that’s been going through my mind a lot because some things I’m interested in, mostly from a personal point of view, I tend to, when I’m researching, find links or insights on X more than any other platform. And that feels, gives me a major dilemma because I quit X, we all did. Are I going to go back? I don’t know, but that’s, yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Shel Holtz (1:26:29) Yeah, it really, really does. I’m gonna have to find a way to curate so that what I’m seeing is the AI stuff and avoiding however that algorithm pushes that vile stuff at you. I don’t want that, but I do wanna be where these AI thought leaders are sharing their thoughts. mean, know, Ethan Molyks on LinkedIn, which is great, and Chris Pan and a bunch of other people, but apparently X is the hub for all of this. that… @nevillehobson (1:26:40) Yeah. Yeah. Shel Holtz (1:27:02) will be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.   The post FIR #469: Is Internal Communication Failing? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip speaks with Ken Jacobs, principal of Jacobs Consulting and Executive Coaching, about providing constructive feedback to team members. They discuss the importance of leadership coaching in the PR and communication space and the challenges of becoming a good leader without formal training. Ken emphasizes the necessity of providing constructive feedback that builds trust and respect, as well as the importance of listening and asking open-ended questions. Chip and Ken also highlight the continuous process of coaching and the significance of maintaining open communication with team members to encourage their growth and success. [read the transcript] The post CWC 111: Providing your team with constructive feedback (featuring Ken Jacobs) appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

While a company’s reputation doesn’t appear as a line item on a profit and loss statement or a balance sheet, it is nevertheless a critical intangible asset that significantly influences financial performance and long-term success. A strong positive reputation fosters trust among consumers and B2B customers, leading to increased customer loyalty, premium pricing power, and greater resilience in times of crisis. It also makes the company more attractive to top talent, reducing recruitment costs and improving employee retention. A favorable reputation can also enhance relationships with investors and partners, providing better access to capital and more advantageous business opportunities. The public relations profession is in the reputation business. Yet there are new threats to reputations that aren’t yet on most practitioners’ radars — and if they are, they haven’t found their way into plans and strategies. For example, companies that succumbed to political pressure to back away from their DEI commitments have suffered reputational damage, while those that stood by them have seen their reputation scores increase. That may have something to do with general support for DEI, but research found that customers crave consistency from the companies they do business with, and the sudden U-turn away from DEI commitments leadership previously touted was viewed as a failure of integrity. Add to that the surge of disinformation and job loss AI is already bringing to the business world, and it’s clear we’re facing a new world of reputation management. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel look at some recent research and reports to zero in on the newest reputation challenges and how communicators should face them. Links from this episode: Culture wars and scandals drag down corporate reputations Companies that kept DEI commitments saw higher reputation scores in 2025 New York State Updates WARN Notices to Identify Layoffs Tied to AI Is AI Damaging Your Professional Image? Musk and AI among biggest threats to brand reputation, global survey shows The disinformation storm is now hitting companies harder M&S is taking reputational damage from cyberattack: research The Reputational Risk Index The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, June 23. 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 and Shel’s 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 (00:02) Hello everyone and welcome to for immediate release. This is episode 468. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz (00:08) And I’m Shel Holtz. We talk a lot on this show about brand and reputation, how to build it, how to protect it, how to recover when things go sideways. Reputation matters. A lot of brands make knee-jerk decisions based on short-term objectives, only to suffer reputationally as a result. Reputation isn’t fluff, it isn’t vanity. A good reputation builds resilience. It buys you the benefit of a doubt, ⁓ a bank of goodwill for when things go wrong. It attracts talent, it boosts your stock price, it shapes policy outcomes and partnership opportunities. And increasingly, it reflects how well your organization aligns with societal values, not just what you say, but what you do. Lately, the rules for reputational risk have been changing. Traditional threats are still around, scandals, product failures, bad leadership decisions. But now we’re seeing new ones emerge, many of them tied to technology and politics in ways that communicators may not be fully pro- prepared for, but can’t afford to ignore. Let’s start with the latest Axios-Harris poll on corporate reputation, because the shakeups there are dramatic. Tesla, which once topped the list of most admired companies, has fallen all the way to 60th. Boeing, with its safety mishaps and culture issues, and now the crash of an Air India 787 Dreamliner, well, Boeing sits near the bottom of the list. And what’s especially interesting here is how much of this decline has to do with cultural alignment or misalignment with public sentiment. Axios points to companies being dragged into culture wars, and it’s not hard to see why. The Trump administration’s ongoing pushback against DEI efforts is having a reputational ripple effect. Companies that backtracked on their DEI commitments or tried to stay neutral are paying a price. Patagonia, Microsoft, and Costco, on the other hand, have increased their reputation scores precisely because they stayed the course on equity and inclusion. They didn’t cave and the public noticed. This tells us something we probably already knew. Authenticity matters. People don’t expect companies to fix every problem, but they do expect them to be consistent and to have a spine when it counts. In 2025, wishy washy doesn’t cut it, especially with younger generations. Now, let’s add technology to the mix because it’s getting harder and harder to talk about reputation without AI finding its way into the conversation. Case in point, New York State just updated its Warn Act notices. These are the documents companies have to file when they plan a mass layoff. Now, if you’re laying people off because of AI, you have to say so. It becomes public information. So not only do you risk headlines like, Company X replaces workers with AI, You’re also potentially triggering employee backlash, customer concern, and stakeholder scrutiny. All of that’s in the reputation column. Think about that for a minute. Laying off people because of a merger or a downturn is one thing, but layoffs tied directly to AI? That’s a reputational landmine. And I’d argue it’s a signal to communicators to get involved early. Make sure there’s a story ready to be told, one that frames the decision in terms of responsibility future readiness and long-term growth, not just cost cutting. Lay the groundwork with your stakeholders on your company’s strategic approach to AI so nobody’s surprised when hiring takes a dip or layoffs are announced. And AI’s impact isn’t just organizational, it’s personal. A piece out of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business explores how your AI tools at work could actually hurt your professional image. If your coworkers or managers see you using AI to generate ideas or speed up tasks, they might assume you’re less competent or less committed, even if the output is amazing. We’ve been telling people to embrace AI, to use it to be more efficient. But if the perception is that you’re cheating or cutting corners, then your individual reputation could take a hit, even if your actual work improves. Now this creates a tension. Organizations want employees to be innovative and tech savvy, but our workplace culture hasn’t caught up. Consequently, we need to help employees not just use these tools, but frame how they use them. Communicators can play a key role here in educating both employees and leaders, especially managers, about responsible AI use looks like and why it’s not a threat to human value. The threats to reputation are evolving. culture wars, political pressure, layoff transparency, AI ethics, it is not the same game that it was a decade ago. And if communicators don’t help organizations see it, prepare for it, and respond to it, we’re going to be stuck playing defense. So be proactive, let’s help our organizations walk the talk, and let’s remind leaders that in 2025, reputation isn’t just a brand asset, it’s a survival strategy. @nevillehobson (05:16) summary there, Shell. I mean, there’s so many statistics to pay attention to, to get a sense of what’s going on. I asked the question to myself, is reputational damage on the rise? And I’m kind of guided by some things have been happening recently here in the UK, which I’ll mention later. The short answer, yes. And you’ve explained it, reputational risk is increasingly volatile and high stakes. So ⁓ we’ve got a Canadian survey, and I don’t have the name of the survey company right to hand. That was done in February. Nearly one in three companies reported reputational harm in the past year. They’re citing inflation, geopolitical uncertainty and strikes as triggers. The Exos-Harris poll you mentioned, that’s kind of interesting. found some other statistics to add to what you said. That poll shows 46 % of companies experienced lowered reputation scores and that’s up from 37 % the year before. consumers under pressure and rising costs and price quality concerns are the main reason for that. What’s driving it overall? That’s a huge answer for that could take us hours to get through everything. It’s so wide ranging economic stress, digital age, disinformation, you touched on that cultural, political polarization, ethical failing, cybersecurity. I’ve got something to say about that in a bit. But the interesting thing too is that ⁓ the ⁓ The Reputational Risk Index Q1 2025 report that just came out has a really interesting list of the top reputational risks. And what struck me was how three new ones are at the top of this list and the rest of the top 10, the seven, they’ve been around for years. But these risks are fast moving and they’ve replaced what was there before. Those top three won’t surprise you. Number one is AI misuse, harmful or deceptive use of AI, including deepfakes, misinformation, biased decision making or unethical applications that cause harm or manipulate public perception. Number two, this kind of made me, my goodness, association with Elon Musk, instances where an individual company or entity is associated with, targeted by or publicly criticized by Elon Musk. So it kind of rubs off on you that kind of social like he insults you on X for instance, or does something that brings your name into association with him. That’s not good at all. So that’s number two, that’s the interesting thing. Number three, this. Shel Holtz (07:54) And that one is interesting because it’s kind of damned if you do and damned if you don’t, right? Whether you’re on his good side or his bad side is just the connection to him. @nevillehobson (07:58) You got it. You got it. No. Yeah, exactly. So he’s now departed the White House apparently and has gone back to look after his business interests. Does that mean this will change? Unlikely, I would say. But the third one doesn’t surprise me. ⁓ DEI backtracking. The rollback of regulations, policies or initiatives designed to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, which aim to ensure fair treatment of full participation for all individuals. If you backtrack on that after you said this is what you’ve implemented. that will hit your reputation. And that’s your damned if you do or damned if you don’t, I think in light of what the US government is trying to do. So those three are the top reputation risks. The others, anti-competitiveness, defamation, breach of contract, copyright infringement, whistleblowing, price fixing, opioids crisis have been around for a while. But that illustrates, I think that kind of complements ⁓ what we’ve said so far in this. And it’s really quite interesting. I think this I mean, there’s so much that we could talk about on this show. It’s it’s kind of hard to, you know, keep a keeper, keep it focused on on what we need to say. But I think you mentioned communicators. And that’s my focus to what is the role of communicators of this. And, you know, there’s four things that struck me what can companies do and the communicators working for those companies defend against disinformation, ⁓ rapid monitoring of online discourse. lead with ethics and transparency in your business. ⁓ No longer optional, some of these things, including DEI, and that’s going to be difficult for some organizations, I suspect. Value-based pricing and quality, as inflation bites companies seen as fair in pricing and product, remain trusted. Crisis preparedness, from digital AI enabled threats to executive misconduct, layered crisis and reputation defense plans are vital. And I’ve seen people talking about that in the last week, actually, that kind of layered approach to it all. I mean, there’s lots more we could talk about there, but there’s so much happening that can be damaging. And the one that I do want to mention, which I’ll do in a minute, is ⁓ an event that happened here in the UK that I wrote about. I’ve talked about it quite a bit online, as many others have. It’s a global story, even though it’s a British company, Marks & Spencer, the big retailer. that was hit by a cyber attack in April and it’s still ongoing. ⁓ We’ll talk about that in a bit if you’d like, but they are looking at a cost estimated by experts about 300 million pounds as the cost for not paying the ransom to the hackers. But the consequences have been severe. Interesting though is what was the reputational damage? And there is no single answer to that. So I’ll talk about it a bit, but… All that stuff about the top three and anything surprising there to you about the fact that these are the new ones that are the big deals for people now? Shel Holtz (10:58) Well, I have to admit that I was surprised to see association with Elon Musk so high on the list. That is such a tremendous reputational risk that it’s number two. How many people, how many companies in the grand scheme of things are at risk of association with Elon Musk? So I found that interesting. But other than that, no. And, you know, the whole @nevillehobson (11:04) You Shel Holtz (11:25) discussion around disinformation, think is one that we, that’s a drum beat we need to keep up because I don’t think most organizations have even started looking at the methods they will use to identify it ⁓ when it strikes them. So this is one, think it’s going to become a bigger problem really fast. And I think a lot of companies are going to get hurt before we start to see, for example, consulting organizations with disinformation practices. Have you heard of one yet? A PR agency or a marketing agency with a disinformation practice or a disinformation center of excellence? I haven’t. So. @nevillehobson (12:06) No, I haven’t. haven’t. But that’s an interesting one, because I think it’s quite complicated for organizations to realize, partly because I think some of the things that you hear about, and there’s a really good story I’m to mention in a minute that was in the Financial Times the other day, that talked about, as the headline called, the disinformation storm is now hitting companies harder. And much of it is appears to be kind of opportunistic by bad actors to quote that euphemism of people who do things and say things and take actions that can damage you with surprising velocity that come out at you that completely unexpected and in disinformation largely untrue yet the stories out there. Good example, we see FT quotes, a company called Aalef Foods, Danish company. the UK’s biggest dairy cooperative. have tankers going around all the farms collecting the milk to make butter and so forth and so on. They learned this the hard way after recently announcing a trial of a feed additive aiming to reduce methane emissions in dairy cows. Some customers pushed to boycott milk products. A social media storm ensued featuring unfounded and bizarre claims that the additive was part of a plot to depopulate the world by creating fertility issues. ⁓ That’s in line with, you know, 5G is a conspiracy of Bill Gates to and, you know, all that stuff went on and it sticks with something like he still see reference to this. This is all the foods, though, is illustrative of that type of fast moving event. And social media plays a huge role in this is is is not can be is very damaging. And they suffered damage as a result of this. There’s other examples I mentioned, too. And it includes a survey by Edelman, they say. of 400 top communications and marketing execs found that 1810 worry about the impact of disinformation on the businesses. So 80 % fewer than half feel prepared to tackle those risks. What we just talked about. Shel Holtz (14:10) Mm-hmm. And I suspect that some of those who feel prepared actually aren’t. @nevillehobson (14:16) Yeah, exactly. So let’s talk, let’s talk a bit about impacts then on all of these things. And I can use the Marks and Spencer example, because it is very illustrative. Yeah, it’s very illust… No, it’s very illustrative. Shel Holtz (14:17) So, yeah. I was actually hoping you would because here’s something that wasn’t, other than not having a robust ⁓ defense in place to prevent the hack in the first place, this is something that was done to them. @nevillehobson (14:38) Well, yeah, this is at the heart of it because it was a cyber attack that began towards the end of April and severely disrupted their operations to the extent that everything you could do before as a customer with online purchasing, the so-called click and collect, looking up your orders, seeing something in stock, reserving it or that was gone. You couldn’t do any of that. Worse, I suppose, for those folks who don’t do online, they go to the stores, you couldn’t use contactless payment at all. The machines are all offline because of the risks and there were horror stories emerging of ⁓ people, know, pen and paper to write down orders and take stock from one warehouse to another in their own cars so they could keep stock levels going stuff like that. No deliveries. They were halted. Some stores went cash only wouldn’t take anything you could manually do your cars, but they wouldn’t. The loyalty apps, 18 million members was not working. Recruitment systems and internal logistics were severely impacted by this. Staff, as I mentioned, staff reported manual workarounds like checking freezer temperatures due to IT shutdowns. I the systems were all shut down. So the hacking group behind it, apparently called Scattered Spider, is known for using social engineering and targeting major corporations with ransomware. I’ve not seen anything new on this since it was first mentioned about three weeks ago, but the speculation is that they got access to Marks and Spencer systems through a supplier, through an employee they tricked into getting them to log in and that then gave them access to all this. Here you’re not allowed to pay ransoms for things like this is illegal, so they didn’t, but they were quite robust in not doing yes, we’ll weather this storm. That is a pretty bold move and attracted serious criticism. I wrote a post not long ago that was very critical of Marks and Spencer and their communication with customers. Now knowing what I do know from the latest developments, I don’t really feel that I would change that. I might tone it down a bit because they did communicate, which I didn’t disagree with. I just said it wasn’t very effective. They were following a plan they didn’t communicate to anyone. So how would you know even what was happening? Here’s a reputational impact they have suffered already. It’s actually interesting, in one sense is nowhere near as bad as many people were speculating. There’s a damn good reason for that. But let me just run down the list of some of these things here. So the reputational impact, according to research from the Maru consumer research firms, big, big in the UK here, and obviously, Marks & Spencer is a big client, brand advocacy dropped. So those who would recommend Marks & Spencer fell from 87 % to 73 % during this period. Trust erosion. Those who would definitely give Marks & Spencer the benefit of the doubt in future issues dropped from 39 % to 32%. Shopping decisions were affected. Between 25 % and 32 % of consumers said they’d shop elsewhere due to the disruption. But broader trust remained more stable. Overall trust, so people saying they’d either definitely or probably trust Marks & Spencer, dipped only slightly from 84 % to 82%. That’s quite telling. what that means is that that trust, people are still willing to kind of lend them that trust in spite of all of this. So experts analyzing all this, including Maru itself, talking about the incident shows that even long established trusted brands are vulnerable to cyber attacks. That’s the number one takeaway, they say. Shel Holtz (18:27) Well, yes. @nevillehobson (18:28) They also say Marks & Spencer has significant reputational credit in the bank, but must act decisively and communicate clearly to recover the trust they have lost. And I see lots of people giving them unsolicited advice on that on social networks, which I think is not helpful at all. They’re not stupid. mean, they know this. Don’t need people doing that kind of thing. Give them something new. But I think the implications that Maru concludes in their reporting is that this particular attack underscores cyber risk as a growing reputational threat, especially when it disrupts core services and affects logic schemes, as this one did in a way that you honestly couldn’t imagine. They were offline for six whole weeks. You couldn’t do anything at all. And my wife, Laura, for instance, buy stuff from Marks & Spencer online. She went somewhere else to get a blouse she was interested in. Not the same. So does that mean she’s now tempted by this other firm? I hope not, because it was even more expensive than Marks & Spencer. So go back to Marks Spencer. But you know, the point is that even loyal customers may waver when trust is tested by operational failure. And that was a thing that the communication, I remember getting the customer emails and the messages pop-ups in the app, we’re all about we’re on it. We’re on it. We’re sorting it. Don’t worry back soon. I mean, that was a kind of soft messaging that, in my opinion, waste of time that doesn’t help you at all. Although, is that really true, given the metrics that Maru has come up with in terms of the overall brand trust? Maybe they’re banking on that, they’ll weather this through until the £300 million hit is showing on their account books, and they put in place ways to deal with customers. One suggestion I saw a lot, which I thought would make sense is they need to offer something to customers as a kind of a recompense, if you will, as a gift of some kind, and don’t try and, you know, layer it all with marketing talk or any kind of thing, just a selfless gift as a way of saying, thank you for your support and your trust or whatever it might be. I don’t know what that would look like via the loyalty program wouldn’t be a bad idea. Some of the stuff they do with that loyalty program is called sparks are pretty lame, must admit, you know, free donuts in the food stall, if you spend two pounds, that kind of thing, do something bit more meaningful. So that might help. Shel Holtz (20:53) Yeah, socks, underwear, you know. @nevillehobson (20:55) the stuff that Marks and Spencer are renowned for, I tell you. yeah, so transparent crisis communication, swift action can mitigate long term damages, they’re concluding, ⁓ employer, I suppose. I mean, these make total sense to me. They seem that way to you. Shel Holtz (20:58) That’s exactly right. Well, they make sense. mean, this was a crisis communication. And if ever there’s an opportunity to take a reputational hit, it’s during a crisis. And they did not behave like a company in crisis. They showed little empathy for the customer telling you we’re on it ⁓ doesn’t make me feel better about whatever it is that I’m dealing with as a result of this, whatever it is I plan to do that I can’t do whatever. inconvenience or difficulty it creates for me. ⁓ I don’t want to be one of those people giving Marks and Spencer advice, but I would have ⁓ flooded the zone with empathy for one thing. And I would have turned the spotlight on frontline employees who were dealing with this every day. So you could see, more than just we’re working on it, to seeing somebody actually working on it, somebody dealing with taking cash and saying, We’re trying to serve as many customers as we can as all this gets sorted out. But I would have really tried to shape the reputation through content marketing as this was going on, rather than just popping up messages saying, we’re still working on it. @nevillehobson (22:28) Yeah, I mean, that is interesting what you say about employees and my experience, which could be throughout the whole chain, but it was certainly in one store that I visit near where I live. I went in there to buy something because I couldn’t do it online. So I went in there and I talked to one of the employees at the cash point where you pay and said, how are things going with all this and what I was left with. She was very reassuring and all that. It seemed to me highly scripted. It’s like they’d had a presentation, she’d memorize the top three things to say with a smile. Now, I don’t want to imply that it’s fakery, not at all. Was that enough, though? I don’t know. It didn’t really sit well with me, I must admit. But then again, I may not be the best kind of typical customer for that point of view. They were doing something in that regard, but none of it seemed like it was a plan almost. It seemed to me anyway, just looking at what I saw in communication, what I saw being reported. the press what I saw about the CEO interviewed saying he and his team are working night and day constantly 724 to fix all this that to me did not sound right Shel Holtz (23:37) Yeah, next thing you’re going to expect is the CEO to say he just wants to go home. ⁓ Like like Hayward during the BP golf spill. ⁓ Yeah, I guess the bottom line for all of this, though, is I’m as we’re talking and I’m seeing all the threads pulled together is whether it’s a crisis as Marks and Spencer experienced that was a cyber crime or @nevillehobson (23:42) Yeah. Right, exactly. Shel Holtz (24:05) a behavior like all of those companies that clawed back their DEI plans because Washington made it clear that it was going to make life hard for them if they didn’t. The companies that are suffering are the ones that are not standing by their values. And I think ultimately that’s what it comes down to, along with developing new plans and new workflows and new thinking. around how to deal with this, because certainly with AI and the ability to create fakery that is hard to detect, we’re gonna need to have those new plans. But I think if organizations are consistently true to their values and show that they have a spine when those values are challenged, they stand to do pretty well reputationally. Those that don’t, don’t. And that’ll be a 30. @nevillehobson (24:59) Exactly. Shel Holtz (25:00) for this episode of Four Immediate Release.   The post FIR #468: New Threats to Reputation appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini highlight the challenges and potential pitfalls of over-relying on AI for content creation in PR and marketing. They discuss instances of AI-generated content gone wrong, such as the fake book list published by the Chicago Sun-Times and poorly crafted AI-generated pitches. The hosts emphasize the importance of human oversight, individuality, and storytelling in maintaining quality and building relationships with the audience. They also delve into Google’s EEAT guidelines and how PR professionals can leverage their expertise to stand out in search rankings. Finally, they discuss practical ways to efficiently use AI while ensuring the content remains authentic and relatable. [read the transcript] The post ALP 273: Ensuring AI is an asset — not a liability — for your agency appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.