AI has shifted from being purely a productivity story to something far more uncomfortable. Not because the technology became malicious, but because it’s now being used in ways that expose old behaviors through entirely new mechanics. An article in HR Director Magazine argues that AI-enabled workplace abuse — particularly deepfakes — should be treated as workplace harm, not dismissed as gossip, humor, or something that happens outside of work. When anyone can generate realistic images or audio of a colleague in minutes and circulate them instantly, the targeted person is left trying to disprove something that never happened, even though it feels documented. That flips the burden of proof in ways most organizations aren’t prepared to handle.

What makes this a communication issue — not just an HR or IT issue — is that the harm doesn’t stop with the creator. It spreads through sharing, commentary, laughter, and silence. People watch closely how leaders respond, and what they don’t say can signal tolerance just as loudly as what they do. In this episode, Neville and Shel explore what communicators can do before something happens: helping organizations explicitly name AI-enabled abuse, preparing leaders for that critical first conversation, and reinforcing standards so that, when trust is tested, people already know where the organization stands.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 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 [email protected].

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. 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: Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 500 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz.

Neville Hobson: And I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz: And this is episode 500. You would think that that would be some kind of milestone that we would celebrate. For those of you who are relatively new to FIR, this show has been around since 2005. We have not recorded only 500 episodes in that time. We started renumbering the shows when we rebranded it. We started as FIR, then we rebranded to the Hobson and Holtz Report because there were so many other FIR shows. Then, for various reasons, we decided to go back to FIR and we started at zero. But I haven’t checked — if I were to put the episodes we did before that rebranding together with the episodes since then, we’re probably at episode 2020, 2025, something like that.

Neville Hobson: I would say that’s about right. We also have interviews in there and we used to do things like book reviews. What else did we do? Book reviews, speeches, speeches.

Shel Holtz: Speeches — when you and I were out giving talks, we’d record them and make them available.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, boy, those were the days. And we did lives, clip times, you know, so we had quite a little network going there. But 500 is good. So we’re not going to change the numbering, are we? It’s going to confuse people even more, I think.

Shel Holtz: No, I think we’re going to stick with it the way it is. So what are we talking about on episode 500?

Neville Hobson: Well, this episode has got a topic in line with our themes and it’s about AI. We can’t escape it, but this is definitely a thought-provoking topic. It’s about AI abuse in the workplace. So over the past year, AI has shifted from being a productivity story to something that’s sometimes much more uncomfortable. Not because the technology itself suddenly became malicious, but because it’s now being used in ways that expose old behaviors through entirely new mechanics.

An article in HR Director Magazine here in the UK published earlier this month makes the case that AI-enabled abuse, particularly deepfakes, should be treated as workplace harm, not as gossip, humor, or something that happens outside work. And that distinction really matters. We’ll explore this theme right after this message.

What’s different here isn’t intent. Harassment, coercion, and humiliation aren’t new. What is new is speed, scaling, credibility. Anyone can use AI to generate realistic images or audio in minutes, circulate them instantly, and leave the person targeted trying to disprove something that never happened but feels documented. The article argues that when this happens, organizations need to respond quickly, contain harm, investigate fairly, and set a clear standard that using technology to degrade or coerce colleagues is serious misconduct. Not just to protect the individual involved, but to preserve trust across the organization. Because once people see that this kind of harm can happen without consequences, psychological safety collapses.

What also struck me reading this, Shel, is that while it’s written for HR leaders, a lot of what determines the outcome doesn’t actually sit in policy or process. It sits in communication. In moments like this, people are watching very closely. They’re listening for what leaders say and just as importantly, what they don’t. Silence, careful wording, or reluctance to name harm can easily be read as uncertainty or worse, tolerance. That puts communicators right in the middle of this issue.

There are some things communicators can do before anything happens. First, help the organization be explicit about standards. Name AI-enabled abuse clearly so there’s no ambiguity. Second, prepare leaders for that first conversation because tone and language matter long before any investigation starts. And third, reinforce shared expectations early. So when something does go wrong, people already know where the organization stands. This isn’t crisis response, it’s proactive preventative communication. In other words, this isn’t really a story about AI tools, it’s a story about trust — and how organizations communicate when that trust is tested.

Shel Holtz: I was fascinated by this. I saw the headline and I thought it was about something else altogether because I’ve seen this phrase, “workplace AI abuse,” before, but it was in the context of things like work slop and some other abuses of AI that generally are more focused on the degradation of the information and content that’s flowing around the organization. So when I saw what this was focused on, it really sent up red flags for me. I serve on the HR leadership team of the organization I work for. I’ll be sharing this article with that team this morning.

But I think there’s a lot to talk about here. First of all, I just loved how this article ended. The last line of it says, “AI has changed the mechanics of misconduct, but it hasn’t changed what employees need from their employer.” And I think that’s exactly right. From a crisis communication standpoint, framing it that way matters because it means we don’t have to reinvent values. We don’t have to reinvent principles. We just need to update the protocols we use to respond when something happens.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I agree. And it’s a story that isn’t unique or new even — the role communicators can play in the sense of signaling the standards visibly, not just written down, but communicating them. And I think that’s the first thing that struck me from reading this. It is interesting — you’re quoting that ending. That struck me too.

The expectation level must be met. The part about not all of it sitting in process and so forth with HR, but with communication — absolutely true. Yet this isn’t a communication issue per se. This is an organizational issue where communication or the communicator works hand in glove with HR to manage this issue in a way that serves the interest of the organization and the employees. So making those standards visible and explaining what the rules are for this kind of thing — you would think it’s pretty common sense to most people, but is it not true that like many things in organizational life, something like this probably isn’t set down well in many organizations?

Shel Holtz: It’s probably not set down well from these kinds of situations before AI. Where I work, we go through an annual workplace harassment training because we are adamant that that’s not going to happen. It certainly doesn’t cover this stuff yet. I suspect it probably will. But yeah, you’re right. I think organizations generally out there — many of them don’t have explicit policies around harassment and what the response should be.

I think the most insidious part of how deepfakes are affecting all of this is that they flip the burden of proof. A victim has to prove that something didn’t happen, and in the court of workplace opinion, that’s really hard to do. It creates a different kind of reputational harm.

Neville Hobson: Yeah.

Shel Holtz: From traditional harassment, the kind we learn about in our training — you know, with he said, she said type situations — there’s a certain amount of ambiguity and people are trying to weigh what people said and look at their reputations and their credibility and make judgments based on limited information available. With deepfakes, there’s evidence. I mean, it’s fabricated, but it’s evidence. And some people seeing that before they hear it’s a deepfake just might believe it and side with the creator of that thing.

The article does make a really critical point though, and that’s that it’s rarely about one bad actor. The person who created this had a malicious intent, but people who share it, people who forward it along and comment on it and laugh about it — that spreads the harm and it makes the whole thing more complex and it creates complicity among the employees who are involved in this, even though they may think it’s innocent behavior that just mirrors what they do on public social media. And from a comms perspective, that means the crisis isn’t just about the perpetrator, right? It’s about organizational culture. If people are circulating this content, that tells you something about your workplace that needs to be addressed that’s bigger than that one individual case.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. And that’s one of the dynamics the article highlights that I found most interesting — about how harm spreads socially through sharing, commentary, laughter, or quiet disengagement. Communicators need to help prevent normalization — this is not acceptable, not normal. They’re often closest to these informal channels and cultural signals. That gives communicators a unique opportunity, the article points out.

For example, communicators can challenge the idea that no statement is the safest option when values are being tested. Help leaders understand that internal silence can legitimize behavior just as much as explicit approval and encourage timely, values-anchored communication that says, “this crosses a line,” even if the facts are still being established.

It is really difficult though. Separately, I’ve read examples where there’s a deepfake of a female employee that is highly inappropriate the way it presents her. And yet it is so realistic — incredibly realistic — that everyone believes it’s true. And the denials don’t make much difference. And that’s where I think another avenue that communicators, especially communicators, need to be involved in. HR certainly would be involved because that’s the relationship issue. But communicators need to help make the statements that this is not real, that it’s still being investigated, that we believe it’s not real. In other words, support the employee unless you’ve got evidence not to, or there’s some reason — legal perhaps — that you can’t say anything more. But challenge people who imply it’s genuine and carry that narrative forward with others in the organization.

So it’s difficult. It doesn’t mean you’ve got to broadcast a lot of details. It means going back to reinforcing those standards in the organization, repeating what they are before harmful behavior becomes part of, as the article mentions, organizational folklore. It’s a tricky, tricky road to walk down.

Shel Holtz: And it gets even trickier. There’s another layer of complexity to add to this for HR in particular. And that is an employee sharing one of these deepfakes on a personal text thread or on a personal account on a public social network — sharing it on Instagram, sharing it on Facebook — which might lead someone in the organization to say, “Well, that’s not a workplace issue. That’s something they did on their own private network.” But the deepfake involves a colleague at work, and we have to acknowledge that that becomes a workplace issue.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, it actually highlights, Shel, that therefore education is lacking if that takes place, I believe. So you’ve got to have already in place the policies that explicitly address the label “AI abuse.” It’s a workplace harm issue. It’s not a technical or a personal one. And it’s not acceptable nor permitted for this to happen in the workplace. And if it does, the perpetrators will be disciplined and face consequences because of this.

So that in itself though isn’t enough. It requires more proactive education to address it — like, for instance, informal communication groups to discuss the issue, not necessarily a particular example, and get everyone involved in discussing why it’s not a good thing. It may well surface opinions — again, depends on how trusted people feel or open they feel — on saying, “I disagree with this. I don’t think it is a workplace issue.” You get a dialogue going. But the company, the employer, in the form of the communicators, have the right people to take this forward, I think.

Shel Holtz: But here’s another communication issue that isn’t really addressed in the article, but I think communication needs to be involved. The article outlines a framework for addressing this. They say stabilize, which is support and safety; contain, which is stop the spread and investigate — and investigate broadly, not just the creator. I mean, who helped spread this thing around? Yeah, that’s pretty good crisis response advice.

But what strikes me is the fact that containment is mentioned almost as a technical IT issue when it’s really a communication challenge. Because how do you preserve evidence without further circulating harmful content? This requires clear protocols that everybody needs to understand. So communicators should be involved in helping to develop those protocols, but also making sure that they spread through the organization and are aligned with the values and become part of the culture.

Neville Hobson: Okay, so that kind of brings it round to that first thing I mentioned about what communicators can do before anything happens, and that’s to help the organization be explicit about standards. Name AI-enabled abuse clearly so there’s no ambiguity and set out exactly what the organizational position is on something like this. That will probably mean updating what would be the equivalent of the employee handbook where these kinds of policies and procedures sit, so that no one’s got any doubt of where to find out information about this. And then proactive communication about it. I mean, yes, communicators have lots to address in today’s climate. This is just one other thing. I would argue this is actually quite critical. They need to address this because unaddressed, it’s easy to see where this would gather momentum.

Shel Holtz: Yeah. So based on the article, you’ve already shared some of your recommendations for communicators. I think that updating the harassment policies with explicit deepfake examples is important. This is the recommendation I’m going to be making where I work. I think managers need to be trained on that first-hour response protocol. Managers, I think, are pretty poorly trained on this type of thing. And generic e-learning isn’t going to take care of it. So I think there needs to be specific training, particularly out in the field or out on the factory floor, where this is, I think, a little more likely to happen among people who are at that level of the org. I don’t think you’re going to see much of this manager to manager or VP to VP. So I think it’s more front line where you’re likely to see this — where somebody gets upset at somebody else and does a deepfake.

So those managers need to be trained. I think you need to have those evidence-handling procedures established and IT completely on board. So that’s a role for communicators. Reviewing and strengthening the reporting routes — who gets told when something like this happens and how does it get elevated? And then what are the protocols for determining what to do about it? And include this scenario in your crisis response planning. It should be part of that larger package of crises that might emerge that you have identified as possible and make sure that this is one of them.

Yeah, this article really ought to be required reading for every HR professional, every organizational leader, every communication leader, because as we’ve been saying right now, I think most organizations aren’t prepared. What the article said is the technology has outpaced our policies, our training, and our cultural norms. We’re in a gap period where harm is happening and institutions are scrambling to catch up. Time to stop scrambling, time to just catch up, start doing this work.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I would agree. I think the final comment I’d make is kind of the core message that comes out of this whole thing that summarizes all of this. And this is from the employee point of view, it seems to me. So accept that AI has changed how misconduct happens, not what employees need. Fine, we accept that. Employees need confidence that if they are targeted, the organization will do the following: take it seriously, act quickly to contain harm, investigate fairly, and set a clear standard that using technology to degrade or coerce colleagues is serious misconduct. Those four things need to be in place, I believe.

Shel Holtz: Yeah. And what the consequences are — you always have to remind people that there are consequences for these things. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #500: When Harassment Policies Meet Deepfakes appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) responded to member requests for a statement about the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota with a letter explaining why the organization would remain silent. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel outline the key points in the letter, where they disagree, and how they might have responded.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 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 [email protected].

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. 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:

Neville Hobson Hi everyone and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 499. I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz And I’m Shel Holtz. At its core, this podcast is about organizational communication, which leads us to occasionally talk about the associations that aim to represent the profession. So today, let’s talk about PRSA (the Public Relations Society of America), which recently signaled a move to remain apolitical—retreating into a shell of neutrality when members were clamoring for them to speak up on controversial issues.

Specifically, I’m talking about the silence from PRSA regarding ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operations in Minneapolis. Now, before you roll your eyes and think this is just another partisan squabble, stop right there. This isn’t about immigration policy; it is about the integrity of public information—the very foundation of our profession. We’ll dive into what PRSA said and how I responded after this.

PRSA leadership, including Chair Heidi Harrell and CEO Matt Marcial, sent a message to members claiming that remaining apolitical protects the organization’s credibility. The letter framed this stance as a means to focus on its core mission. Leadership asserts that while they have commented on sensitive issues in the past, the current “complex environment” demands greater diligence, effectively reserving public advocacy only for matters that directly and significantly impact the technical practice of public relations or its ethical standards. By shifting the burden of advocacy to individual members and requiring chapters to vet local statements through national leadership, the society is attempting to build a “firewall against unintended risks.”

In other words, they’re betting that professional neutrality is the best way to maintain trust across a diverse membership, even if it means stepping back from the broader social fray. Now, I have a different perspective. In fact, I’ve published an open letter to PRSA leadership on LinkedIn, arguing that their own Code of Ethics doesn’t just permit them to speak out—it actually demands it.

Consider the “Free Flow of Information” provision in the PRSA Code of Ethics. It states that protecting the flow of accurate and truthful information is essential for a democratic society. In Minneapolis, we have federal officials making public statements about the killings of U.S. citizens—statements that are being credibly disputed by video evidence and eyewitness accounts. When government officials systematically misrepresent facts, that is a professional standards issue. It is not political to distinguish a truth from a lie. It is, quite literally, our job.

PRSA argues that they want to maintain trust across a diverse membership, but let’s be clear: silence is a statement. It’s a message that says our ethical commitments are only applicable when there’s nothing controversial to address. Don’t believe for a minute that neutrality will save your reputation. Silence in the face of documented misinformation erodes trust among the very members who look to the Society to model the courage we’re expected to show our clients every day.

The PRSA Ethics Code mandates a dual obligation: loyalty to clients and service to the public interest. It doesn’t say “serve the public interest only when it’s convenient or not controversial.” When federal agents are accused of violating nearly a hundred court orders and detaining citizens unlawfully, truth in the public interest is eroding fast under the weight of official silence. If PRSA won’t defend the standard of truth when it’s being trampled by powerful federal agencies, who will?

I am not suggesting that PRSA needs to become an immigration advocacy group—I am decidedly not. But I am suggesting a path forward that reaffirms our values without wading into the partisan muck. PRSA could and should issue a statement that affirms the vital importance of truthful government communication. They should issue a call for transparency when official narratives conflict with documented evidence, and they should reaffirm that all communicators have an obligation to accuracy over mere advocacy.

The fact is, our profession depends on a broader democratic society that functions on truthful information. When that foundation is threatened, our standards are implicated, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. And let’s keep in mind, PRSA has members working in federal agencies that may require them to participate in the distribution of false information. Professional associations aren’t tested during the easy times. They’re tested when standing up for a principle actually costs something. PRSA’s current diligence looks a lot like retreat. We should be leading the charge for accountability, not languishing in a state of denial.

The comments to the LinkedIn article I posted show a membership that is anything but neutral on the need for ethical leadership. I’ll make one more point here: this approach to determining when advocacy is required translates nicely to businesses that have retreated from taking stances on societal issues, despite the Edelman Trust Barometer’s continued demonstration that it’s an expectation of their shareholders.

Neville Hobson It’s an interesting one, Shel. I’m reminded of discussions we have had on this podcast previously about the role of businesses to take a stand on issues that are societal but demand some kind of response in some form. This fits that, I think. Your response on LinkedIn was very good; the path forward you outlined is strong.

I did like it when you mentioned the word “courage.” This demands that in the face of fear or apprehension. All those words could apply to the potential minefield PRSA would be wandering into if they stepped away from being “apolitical.” Could there be a response from those federal agencies themselves? Or perhaps a negative reaction from the administration and the White House? That may be a driver behind it. Yet, this sort of situation has arisen before. We’ve talked about the notion of professional bodies taking stands on issues.

The way you’ve framed the issue as ethical and professional—it’s hard to argue against that. This is not a partisan thing. I see you’ve got over 120 comments on LinkedIn to your article. Did you hear anything from PRSA directly, or are they silent?

Shel Holtz No. In fact, a few people who have had issues with PRSA in the past told me they appreciate me posting an open letter because PRSA has historically ignored those. I’m not necessarily expecting to hear anything from them. I don’t hold any leadership roles there, so there’s no reason they should think I’m someone special to reach out to.

But you talk about professional organizations; related to all of this, we recently had the arrest of two journalists reporting on an activist group that interrupted a church service led by a pastor who also has a role with ICE in Minneapolis. It was arguably an illegal action for this group to do that, but two reporters went in with them to cover it and they were both arrested based on an order from the U.S. Attorney General.

The associations that represent journalists were pretty quick with their statements. PRSA talked about making a statement when there is something that is “technically related to the profession.” That would certainly apply in the case of these journalists. But still, the journalism associations were quick, and there was no concern that members might take issue or that the administration might make life miserable for them. They had the courage to take a stance consistent with their codes of ethics.

One member of the PRSA board, whom I know personally, did leave a comment questioning why I singled out PRSA. Why not the Page Society? Why not the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators)? My answer was: they didn’t send me a letter telling me why they’re not saying anything. But I absolutely think every communication association should be advocating for truth in public communications. That’s our job.

Neville Hobson I think the fear of a strong, negative, almost threatening reaction from the administration and the White House is at the heart of this. They have “form” in ignoring ethics or international agreements—they’ll tear up those bits of paper because they say it’s “fake” or “rubbish.” Maybe that’s behind a lot of this.

What you’ve given them is a challenge: will PRSA apply its own ethical framework when doing so carries reputational and political costs? You mentioned others saying PRSA has a history of ignoring public letters. You see this with other professional bodies who are reluctant to take stands, interpreting “taking a stand” as “advocating for a cause,” which they don’t do. I would argue this is splitting hairs because the argument is about upholding standards.

Enlisting support from other professional bodies might be the safest approach—not asking them to take a stand on a specific political issue, but to reassert the point of truthful communication, transparency, and professional accountability. Someone has to do something to address this. This is an opportunity. I understand the reluctance, but I would counter by saying you need to have courage. You represent communicators across the United States, probably Canada, and elsewhere. Who else will do this if you don’t? What would you like to see happen as a result of this discussion?

Shel Holtz I would like to see the professional associations have a conversation on their staffs and their volunteer boards and decide how they’re going to proceed in a way that conforms with the values they purport to espouse.

I understand that PRSA issued the letter because they had been flooded with member requests to do something. A week or so ago, a letter was issued through the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce by 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based businesses—companies like 3M, Target, and UnitedHealth Group. Some people praised it, but most thought it was weak and “milquetoast.” It called for de-escalation but never named ICE or the immigration issue at all.

In the meantime, Target is still under pressure from customers and employees to say something. There was an arrest made by ICE inside one of their stores that traumatized employees who witnessed it, and the company has said nothing. It’s similar to Home Depot, which has had arrests in its parking lots and has remained silent. This disturbs stakeholders. You don’t need a position on immigration policy to talk about tactics that are affecting your community and your business. That’s fair game. That’s where the framework for a statement has to be focused: what is the impact on your business and where does this align with your values?

Neville Hobson It’s interesting. 3M and Cargill are global businesses. That “milquetoast” route was probably the safest way to navigate the tightrope, but it doesn’t really help much other than attracting criticism for being weak. I can equally understand that no one there wants to point fingers in a way that might not advance the discussion, but it doesn’t lead us anywhere.

Shel Holtz Well, look at organizations like Patagonia, which has actually sued the administration, and their sales and profits are doing just fine. There may be a lot of fear that isn’t backed up by substantial consequences. If you look at the streets of Minneapolis these days, you can see where public sentiment is. It’s fine for business to be on the right side of this.

Neville Hobson It is a very tricky situation. Every one of these companies has a statement defining their values, and surely what we’re seeing on the streets of Minneapolis would offend those values. No one’s willing to be counted. Maybe it needs a “safer” avenue—redefining or restating values in public and linking them to these events without naming names. But currently, we only have what we see on the news, and it’s not pretty.

Shel Holtz No, it’s not. The businesses that have a direct connection to this and remain silent are going to be remembered for it. This doesn’t mean every business needs to make a statement—if you’re not based in Minnesota, perhaps it’s unrelated to your standards for public comment.

But going back to PRSA: when you have federal officials making false statements to the public, and you have an organization that advocates for ethical communication, I think that demands a position. That is the framework for businesses and associations to look at: where is the alignment that should lead you to stand up and display that kind of courage?

Neville Hobson Where indeed?

Shel Holtz That’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #499: When Saying Nothing Sends the Wrong Message appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this FIR Interview, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz speak with crisis and risk communication specialist Philippe Borremans about his new Crisis Communication 2026 Trend Report, based on a survey of senior crisis and communication leaders.

The conversation explores how crisis communication is evolving in an era defined by polycrisis, declining trust, and accelerating AI-driven risk – and why many organisations remain dangerously underprepared despite growing awareness of these threats.

Drawing on real-world examples, including recent AI-amplified reputation crises, Philippe outlines where organisations are falling short and what communicators can do now to close the gap between awareness and action.

Philippe Borremans is a leading authority on AI-driven crisis, risk, and emergency communication with over 25 years of experience spanning 30+ countries. As the author of Mastering Crisis Communication with ChatGPT: A Practical Guide, he bridges the critical gap between emerging technologies and high-stakes communication management.

A trusted advisor to global organisations including the World Health Organisation, the European Council, and multinational corporations, Philippe brings deep expertise in public health emergencies, corporate crisis communication, and AI-enhanced communication strategies.

He is the creator of the Universal Adaptive Crisis Communication framework (UACC), designed to manage complex, overlapping crises. He publishes Wag The Dog, a weekly newsletter tracking industry innovations and trends.

Follow Philippe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippeborremans/

Relevant links

https://www.riskcomms.com/

Shel Holtz

Neville Hobson

Shel Holtz

Philippe Borremans

Shel Holtz

Philippe Borremans

In fact, moved away from Belgium, lived four years in Morocco, working in public relations on a more, a bit more strategic level. And since then I’ve been specializing in risk, crisis and emergency comms. So that’s actually the only thing I do. It’s mainly around all the things that could happen to either a private sector organization, a government or a public organization.

Shel Holtz

And that same analysis said that one of the biggest risks that AI introduces is an inherent bias toward negative information. What happened with Campbell’s is that coverage spread really fast across social media and traditional news outlets when this email surfaced. That created a flood of new content that AI systems were happy to start ingesting ⁓ and reinforcing. So when people started searching for 3D printed meat and questions about whether Campbell’s uses real meat, AI didn’t correct those perceptions. It surfaced fragments of context. It pulled language from the company’s own website that referenced mechanically separated chicken. I don’t want to know what that means. And all of this muddied perceptions instead of clarifying things. What should communicators be doing? What didn’t Campbell’s do to protect itself from this? It really is a new reality about how information is gathered up and then shared back out?

Philippe Borremans

Neville Hobson

Philippe Borremans

Shel Holtz

Philippe Borremans

So that was for AI. Another one, which I was really afraid of and unfortunately confirmed is exercising. Do organizations actually exercise their plans? They all have a plan somewhere, but we know it’s just a plan and it’s the first thing that goes out of the window when something really happens. But do we exercise? Do we do crisis simulations, tabletops, large scale simulations and only 26.5 % of the respondents here test at least annually? 9.8 reported they never tested and then you’ve got the whole middle who test from time to time when they feel like it probably. Public sector was a bit different than private sector but still that is worrying because I know from experience having worked in this field now for the last 15 years

Good crisis communication or risk communication or emergency communication is about… It’s a muscle, right? If you don’t exercise it, whatever your plan is, it will not work. You need much more an agile approach, which comes from training and simulation exercises, than a rigid protocol plan. You need a plan, I’m not saying you don’t need it, but what will get you through a crisis is your agile approach because things change all the time. And that is only possible to get there, it’s only possible through exercising and we see that it’s not the case. Another one linked to AI. Everybody in the survey said, and it was really on top of when I asked about the biggest risks, AI, going wrong, AI risks related to AI. So fakes and what have you, deep fakes, etc. But only 3.9 % said that they had a tested gen AI crisis protocol. And 27.5 said they had no protocol and no plans in place to face an AI generated crisis. So it’s right on top there. Everybody’s afraid of it. Nobody’s planning for it. Again, an interesting insight I found.

Neville Hobson

Philippe Borremans

Neville Hobson

Philippe Borremans

So already there, I’m very cautious about using trust as the…you know, the mantra or the silver bullet. But once we understand what we’re talking about and agree on it, to me, it’s very simple. It all starts with and ends with completely and completely understanding your different audiences. We always talk about stakeholders. Sure, they are important. But from a communications point of view, from trust building, and I think

At least that’s my analysis from the Edelman Trust Barometer report as well. They talk about segmented audiences finally, we, I hope now finally most communication professionals understand that the general public doesn’t exist. We need to segment our audiences. And it’s understanding those through and through. Knowing what their context is. Knowing what their definition of trust is, what their relation is with your organization. Only then can you start building plans looking at how you would approach this in the context of a crisis. That’s what I think about this.

Shel Holtz

Philippe Borremans

manage or on a global scale. But I think it’s much more about the profession as communicators. First of all, understanding the environment. Not a lot of communicators truly understand polycrisis and permacrisis concepts and how it actually translates into communications. It’s thrown out there and geopolitics and what have you, but how does that translate to your day-to-day work for your organization? So that’s already, I think, a gap. And then once you understand that, what can you actually do to minimize that impact from a communications point of view? We only have so much that we can actually work on. That means we need to work with other departments as well and probably with industry associations, cetera, et cetera. We are not the, you know, we cannot solve everything. But if we actually already start knowing what we can do in our corner and understanding the global environment now, which is not easy. Then already we can take the first steps. I’m always amazed when I work with clients, they all have media and social media monitoring platforms. And they actually think that for them, that’s intel, that’s the insights they need. Most of the time I tell them, well, yes, you need that part, but you have nothing around predictive analytics. You have nothing on horizon scanning. You have nothing on. So there’s huge gaps in there. And that’s actually the new things that you need in a world which is changing all the time.

Shel Holtz

Philippe Borremans

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Neville Hobson

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Cybersecurity is interesting as well because there’s a lot of pressure to integrate that now into crisis management teams simply and not because people think that’s the best way to do it, because it’s becoming the law within the EU. It needs to be integrated. It’s the law. You have no choice. So there’s a couple of things moving, but it’s more on the pressure of law and ISO quality norms and what have you, than actually understanding, yes, we all need to sit around the same table and let us all do our own jobs that we’re good in. We can translate stuff. You do the operational stuff.

Shel Holtz

Philippe Borremans

Unfortunately, if it’s about online mis-dis and malinformation, there’s only two techniques that work. And even then, those two alone will just create a small protective layer because it’s very difficult to take online. But pre-banking and inoculation are the only techniques that work for the moment. Other ones, is, and they’re being talked about like, let’s increase media literacy. Well, that’s first of all, up to up. I mean, it’s not our responsibility. I think as communicators, we have other things to do. It’s probably the responsibility of the government, institution, Ministry of Education, but then we’re off for the next three decades.

Neville Hobson

Philippe Borremans

I’m making it very simple now. Something is brewing, things are getting organized, we could have something coming towards us, which could be deep fake and what have you and what have you. So first listening so that you have your alert system done in place. Then on the defense side, it’s actually also having what I call a truth bank. That’s a database or an Excel sheet, whatever. I can’t believe I said Excel sheet, a database where you have actual proof that your communication assets are yours, authentic and come from you. Because we are getting into an area where at one point in time, will, an organization will be questioned. Yes, you can say that press release is yours, but is it actually yours? You can say that that video of your CEO is actually true, but how can you prove that? We call me in an area as far as that. So you actually need to do it.

And you know, I’m a big defender and also user of blockchain technology. It’s very simple today. You can actually, you know, actually prove without irrefutable doubt that some pieces of communication are yours. Example of a bank in Belgium. Already years, every single press release they send out is stamped through a blockchain system so that they can actually prove it’s theirs. And they started to do that more than five years ago because they had fake press releases going out. And that wasn’t even AI driven. That was just someone who got very creative.

So first listening, then protecting your assets, making sure that you can prove it yours, and then countering. But countering depends on the situation. If it’s a rage farming attack, for instance, it’s no use in going against the originators, the people, the bad actors. That’s no use at all. You need to focus on the…

Neville Hobson

Philippe Borremans

So a very practical example, imagine that a retail company decides to make unisex uniforms. Men and women dress the same. We don’t make a difference. You could think, wow, gay, why not? Taken out of context, that means that it could be translated by bad actors in, look, they don’t want women to be women anymore. look, the whole woke context, they would reframe that and then target that message. It’s just out of context, but target that message proactively to communities online who are much more conservative, who have a much more conservative worldview. They would then be triggered by rage, start to spread it, and then actually you have that whole system. That’s rage farming. And why did we come to rage farming? Lost my…

Neville Hobson

Philippe Borremans

Shel Holtz

Philippe Borremans

But then how do you translate that into actual practical things in operational stuff? How do you upskill your team, your communications team today? Right. So that they can actually face all these these new issues. How do you change and adapt your crisis communication, preparedness planning? How do you integrate that? Those are the kind of practical questions that probably don’t trickle down. And of course, if down there you have more junior people, they maybe wouldn’t know the best way to go about it. That’s my feeling.

Neville Hobson

Philippe Borremans

I have a a small micro simulation platform that I coded myself. I do workshops with that. It’s an half an hour exercise. It’s a lunch and learn time, right? Get people around the table with a sandwich and say, okay, what is the crisis that we’re going to role play today? Half an hour, you get feedback. Fine. You can do that every single week. People find it fun, but it trains the muscle because it’s based on real scenarios and it’s real feedback and etc. Tabletop exercises. You have many different forms and formats. They can range from one hour to three hours. They can be functional exercises. They can be completely invented exercises. And let’s not forget, mean, communications people have no experience at all.

They’re actually simulation kits you can pay for and they’re not expensive and download, read through the manual and go through the motions. That also trains you maybe as a non-specialized communicator on what it actually means to manage and to do good simulations. But the most important thing is it doesn’t have to be the big thing. You can do micro simulations on a very regular basis, make it fun. You can do tabletop exercises every quarter, hopefully with an executive team, but put it in the agenda. And if you are in certain industries, I would actually say, well, you need a full scale simulation exercise every year if you’re in the petrochemical and what have you industry.

The point is you can actually position this not as a cost center exactly as a corporate insurance does. We know based on research and facts that organizations who train their plan first of all get through a crisis much quicker but rebuild after a crisis much quicker and that’s where the money goes. If it takes you two years to rebuild that’s a lot of money. If you can shorten that by half or even more. That is the actual game you do. And that comes from training, training and training. There is a reason why I was in the Navy. There’s a reason why the the captain of the ship, you know, did fire exercises every single day. And after the, you know, the 52nd, you go like, why are we doing this stupid thing? But actually, when you have a fire, you know why.

Shel Holtz

Philippe Borremans

And that’s why I’m a strong believer in working much more, again, you need plans, you need protocols, fully agree, but you actually need an agile communications team. We know things go very fast, they come from every single corner. You need that mindset. You need that agility muscle in there. And then teams are actually ready to take what comes and move at the moment.

And I do see a link. Another thing which is very difficult for communicators from my generation because we were trained like that, at least I was at PR school, I was trained that you do not communicate until you have all the facts. It took me a couple of years to switch that. When I work for the UN agencies during the pandemic and other epidemics, you actually need to communicate without having all the facts. And it’s very uncomfortable. It’s very contra training. But that’s what everybody in communications today should have that skill, because most of the time you will not have all the facts, and the facts will change day after day after day after day. So you need that muscle again, that agility. That’s the most important thing I think today.

Neville Hobson

Shel Holtz

Philippe Borremans

What if this tomorrow happens? What would we actually do? What would it mean for our audiences, for our executives, for our stakeholders? And how do we translate that? Not in a big plan and a long, you know, SOP, but simple steps. And most of the time it will not be a, you know, a communications team of 25 people. It will be one, two, maybe just split up the rows.

What do we do if tomorrow there’s a deep fake popping up? How will we do the triage? Because you don’t have to react to everything. And if we decide to react, who are the first people that we need to inform? Sometimes it’s getting really the very basics in place. It’s already much more than 90 % of the other people that are actually not looking at this for the moment.

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Philippe Borremans

Shel Holtz

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Philippe Borremans

Shel Holtz

Neville Hobson

The post AI risk, trust, and preparedness in a polycrisis era appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer focuses squarely on “a crisis of insularity.” The world’s largest independent PR agency suggests only business is in a position to be a trust broker in this environment. While the Trust Barometer’s data offers valuable insights, Neville and Shel suggest it be viewed through the lens of critical thinking. After all, who is better positioned to counsel businesses on how to be a trust broker than a PR agency? Also in this episode:

Links from this episode:

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 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 [email protected].

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. 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: Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 498 of For Immediate Release. This is our long-form episode for January 2026. I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California.

Neville Hobson: And I’m Neville Hobson, Somerset in the UK.

Shel Holtz: And we have a great episode for you today, lots to talk about. I’m sure you’ll be shocked, completely shocked that much of it has a focus on artificial intelligence and its place in communication, but some other juicy topics as well. We’re going to start with the Edelman Trust Barometer, but we do have some housekeeping to take care of first and we will start with a rundown of the short midweek episodes that we have shared with you since our December 2025 long form monthly episode. Neville?

Neville Hobson: Indeed. And starting with that episode that we published on the 29th of December, we led with exploring the future of news, including the Washington Post’s ill-advised launch of a personalized AI-generated podcast that failed to meet the newsroom standard for accuracy and the shift from journalist to information stewards as news sources. Other stories included Martin Sorrell’s belief that PR is dead and Sarah Waddington’s rebuttal in the BBC radio debate. Should communicators do anything about AI slop? And no, you can’t tell when something was written by AI. Reddit AI and the new rules of communication was our topic in FIR 495 on the 5th of January, where we discussed Reddit’s growing influence. Big topic, and I’m sure we’ll be talking about that again in the near future. On that day, we also published an extra unnumbered short episode to acknowledge FIR’s 21st birthday. Yes, we started out on the 3rd of January 2005 and that’s a lot of water under the bridge in that time, Shel. And I think we had quite a few bits of feedback on that episode.

Shel Holtz: People dropped in and shared their congratulations. There were way too many of them to read and many of them were very, very similar. Just to share one, this is from Greg Breedenbach who said, “Congratulations, what a feat. I’ve been listening since 2008 and never got bored because you managed to keep it engaging and relevant. Thanks for all the hard work.”

Neville Hobson: Great comment, Greg, thank you. So for FIR 496 on the 13th of January, we reported on the call by the PRCA, the Public Relations and Communications Association for a new definition of public relations. We explored the proposal’s emphasis on organizational legitimacy, its explicit inclusion of AI’s role in the information ecosystem, and the ongoing challenge of establishing a unified professional standard that resonates across the global communications industry. That had a few comments.

Shel Holtz: That got a few comments. Gloria Walker said, “Attempts have been made from time to time over the decades to define and redefine PR. Until there is a short one that pros and clients and employers can understand, these exercises will continue. Good luck.” And Neville, you replied, you said, “You’re right, Gloria. This debate comes around regularly. One interesting precedent was the Public Relations Society of America led effort in 2011 in a public consultation to redefine PR. That process was deliberately open and received broad support from professional bodies and their members around the world.” And Philippe Borremans out of Portugal had a comment. He said, “Thanks for the mention of my comments. Hope it helps in the definition exercise.” Philippe, of course, wrote a LinkedIn article in response to the definition. There were some other comments in this episode, including one from Marybeth West. You can go find that on LinkedIn. This was a rather lengthy exchange between Marybeth and you that is just too long to include here.

Neville Hobson: Great. And then in FIR 497 on the 19th of January, that’s just a week ago before we record this current episode, we unpacked the latest AI radar report from BCG, used to be known as Boston Consulting Group, that says AI has graduated from a tech-driven experiment to a CEO-owned strategic mandate. We examined this evolution that places communicators at the center of a high-stakes transition as AI moves from pilot phase into end-to-end organizational transformation. One comment we had to that:

Shel Holtz: From our friend Brian Kilgore, who said, “Haven’t read the report yet, but will soon. Sometimes when I read a link first, I can’t get back to the comments.” But he continues to say, “I once took a job that was structured by Boston Consulting Group. My employer used the BCG report as the basis for the job description. It worked out well.”

Neville Hobson: Excellent. So that’s where we’re at. Some good stuff since the last episode. And of course, now we’re about to get into the current.

Shel Holtz: And yesterday I published the most recent Circle of Fellows, the monthly panel discussion with members of the class of IABC Fellows. This one was on mentoring. It was a fascinating conversation featuring Amanda Hamilton-Atwell, Brent Carey, Andrea Greenhouse, and Russell Grossman. The next Circle of Fellows—mark it in your calendar because this one’s going to be very interesting and maybe even controversial—this is going to be at noon Eastern time on Thursday, February 26th and it’s all about communicating in the age of grievance. This will feature Priya Bates, Alice Brink, Jane Mitchell, and Jennifer Waugh.

Neville Hobson: You’re such a tease, Shel, with that intro, I have to say. So yeah, go sign up for it, folks. I’d also like to mention that in December, IABC announced the formation of a new shared interest group, or SIG, that Sylvia Cambier and I are leading. It’s called the AI Leadership and Communication SIG. And I’m delighted that we have attracted 70 members so far. I’m also delighted to share that our first two live events are scheduled for February. On the 11th of February, we’re hosting a webinar for IABC members to introduce the SIG, explain why we formed it, what it stands for, and how it approaches AI through a leadership and communication lens. Then on the 25th of February, as part of IABC Ethics Month, we’re hosting a webinar on AI ethics and the responsibility of communicators. This is a public event open to members and non-members that explores the challenges and responsibilities communicators face when introducing AI, including transparency and trust, stakeholder accountability, and human oversight. We’ve included links in the show notes so you can learn more about these events and sign up as well if you’d like to.

Shel Holtz: Sounds great, I’m planning to attend those, schedule permitting. And that wraps up our housekeeping. Hooray! It’s time to get into our content, but first you have to listen to this.

Neville Hobson: Our lead discussion this month is the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, which landed last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with a stark framing: trust amid insularity. But before we get into the findings, a quick word on what the Edelman Trust Barometer actually is. Many of you literally may not know why this is significant. The Edelman PR firm has published the Trust Barometer every year since 2000, making this its 26th edition. It’s based on a large-scale annual survey across 28 countries, tracking levels of trust in four core institutions: business, government, media, and NGOs, alongside attitudes to leadership, societal change, and emerging issues. Over time, it has become one of the most widely cited longitudinal studies of trust globally, not because it predicts events, but because it captures how public sentiment shifts year by year.

After more than two decades of tracking trust globally, Edelman’s core finding this year is that we are no longer just living in a polarized world, but one where people are increasingly turning inward. That’s that word “insularity” I mentioned earlier. The report suggests that sustained pressure from economic anxiety, geopolitical tension, misinformation, and rapid technological change is reshaping how trust works. Rather than engaging with difference, many people are narrowing their circles of trust, placing greater confidence in those who feel familiar, local, and aligned with their own values, and withdrawing trust from institutions or people perceived as “other.” At a headline level, overall trust is broadly stable year on year. The global trust index edges up slightly, but that masks important differences. Trust continues to be significantly higher in developing markets than in developed ones, where trust levels remain flat or fragile. As in recent years, employers and business are the most trusted institutions globally, while government and media continue to struggle for confidence in many countries.

What is notably sharper this year is the distribution of trust. The income-based trust gap has widened further, with high-income groups significantly more trusting than low-income groups. Edelman also finds growing anxiety about the future. Fewer people believe the next generation will be better off, and worries about job security, recession, trade conflicts, and disinformation are at or near record highs. A defining theme running through the report is what Edelman calls insularity. Seven in 10 respondents globally say they’re hesitant or unwilling to trust someone who differs from them, whether in values, beliefs, sources of information, or cultural background. Exposure to opposing viewpoints is declining in many countries, and trust is increasingly shifting away from national or global institutions towards local personal networks: family, friends, colleagues, and employers. Compared with last year’s focus on grievance and polarization, the 2026 report suggests a further step from division into retreat. The concern is not just disagreement, but disengagement—a world where people are less willing to cross lines of difference at all.

In response, Edelman positions trust brokering as a necessary answer to this environment—the idea that organizations and leaders should actively bridge divides by facilitating understanding across difference rather than trying to persuade or convert. This concept sits at the center of the second half of the report. It’s also worth noting that Edelman’s framing, particularly around trust brokering and the role of institutions, has attracted a number of critical responses. We’ll highlight some of those critiques in our discussion alongside our own perspectives and what this year’s findings mean in practice. Taken together, the 2026 Trust Barometer paints a picture of a world where trust hasn’t collapsed, but it has narrowed, becoming more conditional, more local, and more shaped by fear and familiarity than by shared institutions or common ground. That raises important questions about leadership, communication, and the role organizations are being asked to play in society. So let’s unpack what Edelman is telling us this year. What stands out in the data where it feels like a continuation of recent trends and where this idea of insularity marks something more fundamental in how trust is changing? Shel?

Shel Holtz: Well, we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that this annual ritual has attracted a torrent of criticism over the years. Criticism raises some uncomfortable questions about what we’re actually measuring and, more importantly, whose interests the barometer serves. Now, none of this minimizes the value of the data that has been collected. For the eight years that I have been working for my employer, I have extracted points that I think are relevant and share these with our leadership. I’ve already undertaken that exercise this year. So what I’m about to share with you is a critique, but I don’t want anyone thinking this means you should ignore the report. It just means you should apply some critical thinking as you go over this information.

And let’s start with the most fundamental critique: the methodology and sample selection. Clean Creatives, which is a climate advocacy organization, has documented how Edelman’s country selection appears strategically aligned with the firm’s client base. The United Arab Emirates, for instance, was only added to the trust barometer in 2011, conveniently right after they became an Edelman client in 2010. And wouldn’t you know it, the barometer regularly finds that trust in the UAE government remains among the highest in the world. And by the way, that’s a quote, “remains among the highest in the world,” findings that are then dutifully promoted by state media.

Consider the question: is the trust barometer measuring trust or is it manufacturing it for the C-suite? The issue gets even more problematic when you look at the top of the leaderboard. Six of the highest-ranked governments in recent editions—China, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, India, and Singapore—are rated by Freedom House as either not free or partly free. Researchers studying authoritarian regimes have identified what they call autocratic trust bias. It’s a phenomenon economist Timur Kuran calls “preference falsification.” In other words, people don’t exactly feel free to reveal their true opinions when they might face some sort of prosecution for indicating that they don’t trust their government.

And here’s where David Murray’s recent critique hits the nail on the head. David is a friend of mine. He’s a friend of the show and he has been an FIR interview guest. And he published a takedown of what he calls this wearying annual ritual. David points out the sheer absurdity of Edelman’s latest focus: insularity. The 2026 report claims that seven in 10 people are insular, as you mentioned Neville, retreating into familiar circles. Edelman’s solution, as you mentioned again, is the trust brokers. And of course, the report finds that employers are the ones best positioned to scale this trust brokering skill set. But as Murray observes, there’s something deeply hollow about a global PR machine using AI and always-on monitoring to lecture us on the human skill of listening without judgment. It’s a case of “human hires machine to reassure self he is human.”

Now consider Edelman is a $986 million global PR firm whose stated purpose is to evolve, promote, and protect their clients’ reputations. So when the research concludes year after year that business must lead and that my employer should be the primary trust broker, you have to ask: is this research or is this a pitch deck? Is Edelman documenting a phenomenon or are they selling a solution that just happens to require companies to hire more communications consultants to teach conflict resolution training? There’s also the question of academic rigor. Despite its massive influence, Edelman hasn’t made the full data set available to independent researchers. When their 2023 findings about polarization were criticized for lumping democratic and authoritarian countries together, they produced a reanalysis, but only after removing data from China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. And, surprise, the core finding—that business must lead—remained intact.

The conflict of interest concerns extend even further. Edelman has been documented working with fossil fuel giants like Shell, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil. They were one of the largest vendors to the Charles Koch Foundation, yet the barometer presents findings about climate change and business ethics without disclosing these relationships. Peer-reviewed research found Edelman was engaged by coal and gas clients more than any other PR firm between 1989 and 2020. When a firm with that client roster tells us that business is the only institution that is both ethical and competent, we should probably raise an eyebrow. Look, I’m not saying the underlying trends—polarization, information chaos, erosion of truth—aren’t real. These are very serious shifts in our reality, but we need to be critical observers of the research. We need to ask who benefits from the conclusion that employers should step into the void left by failing democratic institutions and who profits from the narrative that CEOs, not citizens, should lead societal change? The Edelman Trust Barometer has become the ultimate gathering of elites at Davos telling each other what they want to hear. It provides a veneer of data-driven legitimacy to corporate overconfidence. But if we’re serious about rebuilding trust, we might want to start by questioning the research that so conveniently serves the interests of those who are producing it.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, that’s quite a scathing analysis. I read David Murray’s blog post, really, really good, entertaining read in his inimitable style. One that actually mentions some points that are really right up there with some of the critiques you raised from your narrative—a post by Sharon O’Day. Sharon’s a digital communication consultant based in Amsterdam. I think she’s on the button with most of what she writes. I read her content on LinkedIn frequently. She’s got about 82,000 followers on LinkedIn, so she’s got some credentials and credibility. She talked about this, where her headline is the one that kind of sets the scene for what she writes in an article for Strategic Global. She says, “Employers are the most trusted institution—that should worry you,” says Sharon. She goes into a description of what the report is and what the big finding is about “my employer is now the most trusted institution.”

She warns before internal communicators rush to embrace “trust brokering”—Edelman’s proposed solution to all this—we should ask what kind of trust are we actually talking about? She goes on to summarize what, in her view, Edelman gets right about this. The trust barometer lands strongly, she says, because it tells people what they already suspect, but with graphs. I did like that little bit there. So she talked a bit about the seductive appeal of trust brokering. And I thought this was a sharp analysis. Edelman’s solution is trust brokering: help people work across difference, acknowledge disagreement, translate perspectives, surface shared interests. Employers as the most trusted institution should facilitate this. You can see why this resonates, she says; it offers organizations a constructive role without being overtly political. For internal communicators, it suggests evolution from message delivery to dialogue facilitation. It fits our existing narratives nicely, she says.

But the problem isn’t that this is wrong. It’s that it treats trust as primarily a relational challenge, when in most organizations it’s fundamentally structural. The core weakness, says Sharon, is assuming trust is an emotional state that can be rehydrated with better listening. She says trust is a systems problem, in fact. Workplace mistrust is often entirely rational, she says. People distrust organizations because they’ve watched restructures framed as “growth,” AI introduced without safeguards, workloads expand as headcount contracts, risk pushed downwards while control stays at the top. That’s a pretty keen assessment, I think, of reality in most organizations. And she notes being asked to engage openly feels less like inclusion and more like exposure. Frame trust as sentiment and the solution defaults to messaging. Understand trust as system behavior and the role shifts towards making systems legible: how decisions are made, where constraints sit, what won’t change.

And she then talks about when insularity becomes moral judgment, reminding us this now applies to 70% of people globally, according to the trust barometer. The danger: this subtly relocates responsibility. If trust is low because people are insular, help them become more open. But what if mistrust is entirely rational? And she warns again that trust isn’t a moral virtue; it’s a calculation people update based on what organizations do, not what they say. Trust in an employer is not the same as trust in a democratic institution. It’s shaped by dependency as much as belief. Your employer controls your income, your professional identity, and often your healthcare and visa status. That changes the dynamic.

So she winds up talking about the hard truth. The most worrying thing is that people trust their employer more than anything else—is that they may not have anywhere else left to put it. That’s not a mandate to become society’s repair shop, says Sharon. It’s a warning about what happens when you’re the last institution standing and you cock it up. For communications, a task isn’t to become trust brokers. It’s to tell the truth about the system people are inside, how it works, where constraint sits, what won’t change and why. Trust collapses when people stop expecting honesty about how decisions get made and who benefits.

I think, though, that last bit in particular is a hard truth dose of reality. I suspect where in a sense she’s saying—I’m interpreting her words here—that communicators are part of the game, let’s say. They are not telling the truth about the system people are inside. And that’s quite an indictment to slam that down on the table in the midst of this. Yet, I think it’s a valid point to raise for discussion, whether you disagree or agree. It’s worth considering what she says. Are we all who work in large organizations in particular to communicate what the organization is doing, what the leaders are saying, what’s happening… are we simply regurgitating the top-down perspective of an untruth? Maybe that’s one way of putting it. So it adds to the questioning of Edelman’s motives or their responsibilities. I think what you noted—people like David Murray saying—have done a pretty good job at that. I’m not questioning that aspect of it all.

I have found, largely, what Edelman talks about to be valid, notwithstanding those questions about their motives and often undisclosed relationships. Because after all, they interview each year 20,000-plus people in God knows how many countries. And these aren’t folks who have axes to grind themselves in the same way, let’s say, if it’s alleged that Edelman does. So I think it has credibility in that regard. I’m equally aware of a lot of the criticism about this that questions the credibility. I don’t do that the same way others do. I have found, and indeed the same with this current report, value in the information that Edelman have put together that they are sharing. So it’s useful to get a sense of this, particularly the annual changes in sentiment that we’ve reported on this in For Immediate Release throughout the years. I can remember actually being at the very first Edelman Trust Barometer when Richard Edelman was in London—that was in 2000, I think, or 2001. Beginning of the century, 26 years ago anyway. So it is interesting, Shel. And I think the criticisms are worthy of debate, not dismissing them unless you are quite clear you’ve got something else to say. The report is a dense document. It’s quite detailed. I found a good place to start to get a sense of what it’s all about is the top 10 findings, the snapshot views of each of the top points that is under the heading “Trust Amid Insularity.” So it’s definitely worth paying attention to, putting it in the context of what the critics say.

Shel Holtz: And frankly, the longitudinal nature of this research—what David Murray called “wearying”—is actually where much of the value comes from: the ability to track change over time in any research. I mean, you look at engagement studies that companies do among their employees. If you couldn’t see how any element of that survey has improved or declined over time, it’s of far less value than getting this one snapshot in time for a single survey. So there’s great value there. And like I say, I think there’s great value in a lot of the data in this survey. I mean, the fact that the focus is on insularity should not be any surprise. We’re seeing this every day. It’s interesting that… I think it had to be 35, 40 years ago, IABC’s Research Foundation, the lamented long-gone IABC Research Foundation, did a study on trust. And I remember the definition that they gave trust. We were talking earlier about the definition of PR; the definition of trust is pretty fixed. It’s the belief that the party in question is going to do the right thing. And so it’s that simple. And the question becomes: what is the right thing? Among people who are inside their bubbles, that insularity, what do they believe the right thing is? And that is probably very different from people who are in a different bubble.

And this, I think, is where that “trust brokering” idea has some legitimacy, even if it may not be presented in the best way. I think telling the truth is… that’s not what we need to be doing in order to address this. If we’re not telling the truth, then we simply have no stake in this game. You can’t go anywhere from there. But if you’re telling the truth, how do you get that into the heads of the people who are not paying attention to you? They’re listening to people who say you can’t trust them. And I think that comes through engagement, not through publication, not through telling. To some extent through listening—you must do that to find out what their issues are, what they do believe. But at some point you have to start engaging with people. I mean, the profession is called Public Relations, not Public Content Distribution. And those relations have to have some give and take, some two-ways. So if you have people who don’t trust you and are misinterpreting or are listening to false information being delivered by people who have an interest in taking your organization or your institution down, you need to reach out to those people and start to engage them. And I absolutely agree with whoever it was said that this is the direction that we need to be heading in. I think they were talking about internal communications being more dialogue, but I think that’s true of the external side too.

Reaching people who are in bubbles is extremely difficult. I’ll tell you, I was having a conversation—this is a friend of mine who I have learned is on the opposite political spectrum from me. And I told him, “You know, I watch Fox News on a fairly regular basis. I find it important to know what the people on the other side of the political spectrum are hearing, what they believe, what they think, so it can inform my view of things.” It doesn’t change it, but it certainly informs it when I’m having conversations or I’m considering how to reach somebody. I said to him, “You ought to be doing the same. You ought to be watching some of the media that presents the views that are contrary to your own and understand them.” And his answer to me was, “Stop watching Fox News.” He felt that I should stay in my bubble. So this is a pretty entrenched perception that people have. And it’s become very ingrained in the cultures of these insular regions, if you want to call them that. How do you reach people? I think that’s the challenge for people in communications right now: how do you reach the people who just are not interested in hearing what you have to say? They want to hear what your critics have to say, and that’s all they’re listening to.

Neville Hobson: Yeah. That makes sense. And indeed, that I think supports one of the key elements of this latest report, which is that traditionally in organizational communication, part of your goal is to get everyone lined up with the same message. We’re all singing off the same sheet and it’s all unified and we go forward. This is a change. This is not about that. It’s not about aligning people who are different; it is about understanding the differences and still being able to engage with them, recognizing their differences. And that makes complete sense to me in the current geopolitical environment, because I believe that what we’ve seen over the past few years—and the driver for this unquestionably is what’s happening in the States since Donald Trump became president for the second term—that as Mark Carney spoke in his speech at Davos at the World Economic Forum, that this isn’t a transition, we’re going through a “rupture.” I’m not sure I… it was very good, very good. I’m not so sure it is that—maybe it is a transition, it doesn’t matter what you call it—but the reality is that people are afraid in many countries. Just watch the TV news and you’ll be scared most days, particularly when you see things that you couldn’t imagine happening in some of the countries where it is happening, notably in the US, what’s happening there with crackdowns in various parts of society. It’s truly extraordinary.

I think that is a big influence on this insularity, people withdrawing. Yet I think where it talks about people wanting to engage with people with similar views, similar beliefs and so forth, not different beliefs… I seem to remember a few years back—I’ve forgotten which year it was—when the Edelman Trust Barometer of that particular year published something that was quite radical, where the most trusted person in the world, if you will, is “someone like me.” I remember that. This is that, is it not? It’s someone like me, except the dynamics are very, very different to what it was back then. And I think one of the things I feel that this is a thing to really pay close attention to, which is aligned with what you said about engaging with people outside of different individual bubbles, is that recognition of difference. It is the fact that people need pushing in the right way. And it is the fact—and again, this comes back perhaps to Sharon O’Day’s critique—that we’re not telling the truth. That we need to tell a different version of the truth, if that doesn’t sound kind of weird. There is always more than one version of the truth. And I think: which one do you trust? And that’s, I think, a big challenge for communicators because it surely would be easy for a senior-level communicator, particularly if they’re an advisor to the C-suite, to see when the messaging coming out of the C-suite is simply not the right messaging. Not saying that they’re not telling the truth, far from it. What they believe as the truth may not actually reflect what is happening. And that’s where listening really becomes key.

So it means, I suppose, that communicators can rethink this whole structure in light of what Edelman’s saying, but not exclusively because of this. But take a look at this: one of the key findings, the first one that Edelman mentions, “insularity undermines trust.” And that’s something that I grabbed from this when I wrote my blog post about this—a kind of reflective post I wrote a few days ago—of what insularity, when people withdraw into themselves and stop engaging with others with different views, they often can undermine the authority within an organization of what the leaders are trying to do by not cooperating, by just simply not doing it or even actively dissing it or whatever it might be. Is that a new thing? Maybe it’s not, but it certainly has a mass impact if you see that sort of thing going on. “Mass-class divide deepens” is another one that they talk about—the gap between high and low-income groups. So these are the bigger picture issues in our society. And yet we’re seeing things going on because of these changes in geopolitics, I suppose, that this is not a good thing. And institutions are falling short. The four big institutions I mentioned at the start are falling well short on addressing this.

The phrase “trust brokering”—I really don’t like that, to be honest, Shel. It sounds gimmicky. It sounds like a catchphrase that someone’s come up with, which I suspect is what’s prompted a lot of the criticisms of it. I’ve even seen some people say, “Wait a minute, trust broker… isn’t that what communicators have been doing for years?” Now we’re calling it trust brokering. So we need to get past this kind of labeling confusion, I think, and look at what we must do to help leaders in particular do the right thing in their organizations and how they’re communicating things and enable, if you like, empower properly communicators to take all this forward. But there’s lots to pick from this report, I think, Shel.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, I wonder how many PR agencies are going to announce soon that they are launching their “trust brokering units” now available to engage in your organization. I’m going to invoke the IABC Research Foundation one more time. Their seminal work was the Excellence Study—Excellence in Public Relations and Communications Management—outstanding effort. And the primary work that came out of that was a review of the literature on all of this. So a lot of academic stuff. It’s a rather lengthy book. I’ve read it; I still have it; I still refer to it. But one of the things that I learned when I was reading this way back when it came out is this notion of “boundary spanning.” It’s an academic term from PR in the academic world. And it suggests that public relations people really need to understand the perception and the perspectives of the opposition so well that when they talk about it in the organization, people are going to be suspicious that the PR people have switched sides. You understand it so well that you can basically talk like the opposition does and convey their concerns and their critiques as if you were one of them. I don’t know how many public relations people are doing that these days. Given the results of this research, it seems to me that boundary spanning is becoming a necessary tactic for public relations practitioners. I think it’s important that if that’s not something that you have looked into and this is the work that you do as a communicator, something to pay attention to.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I would agree with that. So there’s lots to absorb in this. We’ve touched on the kind of prominent points, but there’s one that struck me as an interesting one on Edelman’s list of the top 10 issues. There’s a tenth one. There’s a last on their list: “Trusted voices on social media open closed doors.” And I thought that’s an interesting take on that. They say people who trust influencers say they would trust or consider trusting a company they currently distrust if it were vouched for by someone they already trust. Think about that. That’s interesting, because we’re seeing separately to the Trust Barometer, influencers as a group, let’s say broadly speaking, under threat for lack of credibility in many cases. Some of the face-palming things that I’ve read about influencers doing or saying in recent months has been, you know, face-slap—you whack your hand on your head. But this is true, in my view, that that makes sense to me. And maybe that is an easy way for communicators to engage with people, maybe in slightly more open ways than they have in the past to enable that kind of thing. So again, it’s a thought point, if you like, that’s worth considering, even though it’s not high up on Edelman’s top 10 list—it’s the 10th. Worth paying attention to though, I think.

Shel Holtz: Absolutely. And you see the opinion polls showing a shift in support or lack of support for one thing or another based on what some of the prominent influencers are saying when they change their view. Looking at the “bro-verse” in the podcast world—people like Joe Rogan, for example—who were very supportive of Donald Trump when he was running for president, and you look at the independent vote and it was very supportive of Donald Trump. And the bro-verse has shifted with what’s going on in Minneapolis and some other cities. You’re hearing Joe Rogan say, “What is this? The Gestapo in the streets now?” And now you’re starting to see that shift in opinion among independent voters away from Trump. Now this is a correlation, not a causation. But still, it’s interesting and seems to validate that 10th point among those top 10 from Edelman.

Neville Hobson: Agree. So lots to unpack here. We’ve touched… we scratched the surface basically and shared some opinions of our own. There’ll be links to the report and some other content in the show notes if you want to dive into it.

Shel Holtz: And we’re going to switch gears now and talk about artificial intelligence for at least the next two reports. These are very complementary reports—the one I’m about to share, then after Dan York’s report, Neville, your story, very, very complementary. So let’s get started. There is a striking disconnect happening in corporate America right now, and it comes down to a shift in perception. Leaders think their AI rollouts are going great, while the view from the cubicle is “not so much.” Let’s start with the numbers. A Gallup survey of over 23,000 workers found that 45% of American employees have used AI at work at least a few times. Sounds encouraging, doesn’t it? But wait—only 10% use it every day. Even frequent use sits at just 23%. So despite a year of this breathless hype and massive corporate investment, actual day-to-day adoption remains marginal. And here’s what may be the most telling statistic: 23% of workers, including 16% of managers, don’t even know if their company has formally adopted AI tools at all. Now, think about that. Nearly a quarter of your workforce is so disconnected from the organization’s strategy that they can’t say whether one even exists. This gap suggests that shadow IT problem where employees are using personal tools like ChatGPT while remaining completely unaware of their employer’s official path forward is what we’re probably seeing in a lot of organizations.

The adoption pattern breaks down along predictable and frankly troubling lines. Usage is concentrated where you would expect: Technology organizations (76% of employees are using AI), Finance companies (58%). But in retail and manufacturing, those numbers crater: 33% in retail and 38% in manufacturing. AI is languishing in the same place as it always does—among the people already closest to the technology. Now, contrast this with JPMorgan Chase, which has become the poster child for successful enterprise AI adoption. When they launched their internal LLM suite, adoption went viral. Today, more than 60% of their workforce uses it daily. That’s six times the national average. Now, what did JPMorgan do differently? Their chief analytics officer, Derek Waldron, says they took a “connectivity-first” approach. Instead of giving employees a login to a generic chatbot and calling it a day, they built AI that actually connects to the bank’s internal systems—their customer relationship management package, their HR software, their document repositories. An investment banker can now generate a presentation in 30 seconds by pulling real internal business data. The bank also understood the Kano model of satisfaction. They made the tools genuinely useful and voluntary. They didn’t mandate usage. They bet that if the tool solved a problem, word would spread organically. They also ditched generic literacy training for segment training—that is, teaching people how to use AI for their specific work.

Now here’s where things get a little uncomfortable. JPMorgan has been candid about the consequences. Operation staff are projected to decline by 10%. While new roles like context engineers are emerging, the bank hasn’t promised that everyone will keep their job. Meanwhile, at most other organizations, we’re hitting a “silicon ceiling.” BCG, formerly Boston Consulting Group, found that while three-quarters of leaders use generative AI weekly, use among frontline employees has stalled at 51%. The problem is a leadership vacuum. Only 37% of employees say their organization has adopted AI to improve productivity. A separate Gallup study found that even where AI is implemented, only 53% of employees feel their managers actively support its use. Then there’s the trust issue. Nine in 10 workers use AI, but three in four have abandoned tasks due to poor outputs. The issue here isn’t access; the issue is execution. People don’t know how to prompt or critically evaluate the results. Worse, 72% of managers report paying out-of-pocket for the tools that they need to do their work using AI. In response, some companies are taking a hard line. Meta has announced that starting in 2026, performance reviews will assess AI-driven impact. In other words, AI use is no longer optional at Meta. So where does this leave us? We have bullish leaders making massive investments while their workers are either unaware of the strategy or worried that using AI makes them look replaceable. The fundamental problem is that companies are deploying AI as if it’s just another software rollout. And it is not. It requires rethinking workflows, investing in specific training, and building tools that connect to real business data. The gap between AI hype and actual adoption isn’t going to close until organizations figure that out.

Neville Hobson: There’s a lot in there, Shel, that is interesting, I have to say. I think JPMorgan is a use case that’s definitely worth studying what they’ve done. I’m reading the article that appeared in VentureBeat talking about that. It talks about “ubiquitous connectivity”—great, two words put together—plugged into highly sophisticated systems of record. You mentioned how integrated this was to all their internal systems. So you can see some things there that you don’t hear some other companies explaining things that way. The forward-looking approach… so they’ve got leaders who are treating this the right way. It talked about, as you said, they didn’t just enable this and then say, “here you go.” They literally developed it as an ongoing thing in conjunction with employees, which is really good. I think, though, that the alarm bells ring in the first part of your report, when you were talking about how employees say they’re fuzzy on their employer’s AI strategy, with many not knowing whether their employer has one or not. I’d like to think that that’s not the majority, but I fear I may be misplaced with that view, because the ones that don’t do this—in other words, they do it the right way—are the ones who are reaping the benefits. And there are lessons, simple lessons, to learn from that.

Workers who use AI tend to be most likely to use it to generate ideas and consolidate information, Gallup says in introducing their survey report. That makes sense, doesn’t it? That they are… so you’ve got to enable that in an organization. I think there’s more we’ll talk about this when we get to the report you mentioned that we’ll talk about after Dan’s report that expands on this quite significantly. But there are some lessons to be learned from some of the things we discussed on this podcast in recent episodes. You mentioned Boston Consulting Group, where we’ll talk a bit more about the survey they did that paints a very different picture on this. Still, I have to say I’ve seen other reporting, including some of the ones you shared here, where it does talk about the huge gap between the views of leaders and organizations compared to the opinions of employees in those organizations on the state of AI and the benefits it’s supposed to bring. I think the Harvard Business Review report you shared as well—there’ll be links to that in the show notes—that says, “Leaders assume employees are excited about AI; they’re wrong,” says the Harvard Business Review. And they’ve got some really good credible data here to back up that review. The higher you sit in the organization, the rosier your view. Is that not true of many things in an organization, I wonder, that you’re insulated from some of the reality? Is there something communicators can do to alleviate that little problem? I suspect so. These are disconnects that do not help the organization if you really do have blind spots like that, I think. So it’s good to see this. The HBR talks about a survey they did—1,400 US-based employees. 76% of execs reported their employees feel enthusiastic about AI adoption. But the view from those employees was not that at all—just 31% of them expressed enthusiasm. That’s a bit different to what the execs are saying. So I wonder how we get to that reality and then add that to the climate of trust we discussed in the Edelman Trust Barometer and the landscape’s looking like a very tricky one for communicators in a wide range of areas. Add this to that list of concerns.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, this report has really been focused on adoption among employees. You’re going to take a different spin on this after Dan’s report around the perception gap between executives and employees. But I think it comes down to mismanagement of the rollout of AI in, I would have to say, most organizations. And I think it’s a lot of different factors contribute to this, but leaders need to be paying more attention to what they want from AI. I mean, is it really just evaluating tools that have AI baked into them that we can bring into the organization? Or is it rethinking the organization writ large based on what AI can do in a more organic way? I love the point out of JPMorgan that an analyst can now create a deck in 30 seconds because the AI has access to all the internal data. That’s valuable. An employee can say, “That is something that is worthwhile to me.” Whereas you give them access to Copilot because you have an Office 365 contract in your organization and everybody has access to it and say, “Here’s Office 365, godspeed.” And you provide basic training to everybody that says, “Here’s how you write a prompt and here’s how you look for hallucinations and blah, blah, blah.” But it doesn’t tell somebody in a particular role what this can do for them. They’re going to leave that saying, “Okay, I think I can craft a good prompt now. Why would I want to do that? What would I prompt for?” I think this requires much more attention on the part of leadership and much more commitment to viewing this as a change initiative that has to be led from the top.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I think your point you mentioned earlier about this being to do with adoption and rollout as opposed to perception… but they’re both connected according to Harvard’s report anyway. They talk about: “When organizations see AI adoption as a way to make work better for employees and communicate that as opposed to as a pursuit of efficiencies and productivity, AI efforts gain traction.” And that’s repeated in many of the surveys that we could talk about. They communicate a shared purpose, involve employees in shaping the journey, and move people from resistance to enthusiasm. Makes total sense to me. The report also, the Harvard report, talks about employee-centric firms. I thought every firm was an employee-centric firm, but maybe I got that wrong. Employees on average are 92% more likely to say they are well-informed about their company’s AI strategy and 81% more likely to say that their perspectives are considered in AI-related decisions. That’s a huge percentage, I have to say. 70% more likely to feel enthusiastic and optimistic about AI adoption, reporting emotions such as empowerment, excitement, and hope rather than resistance, fear, or distrust. Communication, execution—that’s the kind of pathway, I suppose, or execution and communication, both hand in hand. So it’s… slow employee adoption of AI is clearly the norm, by my judgment, based on what you’ve been saying, what I’ve listened to, what I’m seeing in some of these reports. Makes me wonder: surely it’s a known status, if you like, that communicators can get a hold of and do something about, I would have thought. So would we expect to see a change in that area? I hope so.

Great report, Dan. Thanks very much indeed. I enjoyed listening to your assessment of Wikipedia over the past 25 years. I’m a huge user of Wikipedia and I’m as conscious as you are and many others of some concern about the challenges Wikipedia is facing with misinformation, disinformation, AI, the works getting involved. Looking with interest at how Wikipedia is addressing some of those things. I receive a lot of communication with you; I’ve been a donor for years to support Wikipedia. I’m pleased to see them, I guess, recognizing the shifting landscape and doing something about including AI in some form in terms of the editorial or the editing elements of content on Wikipedia. It’s a challenge without question. So your take on being an editor all those years is interesting, Dan. I’ve done a bit of that, nowhere near as much as you have. And it is interesting… I come across things I read on Wikipedia—I do read it quite a bit when I’m looking for information—that I will see something and think, “That’s not right.” And I might propose an edit in the talk pages. Rarely do I dive in and edit unless it’s something so obviously wrong, unless I’ve got… if I don’t have a source I can cite. So yeah, it’s interesting. And I remember you mentioning before your live editing streams on Twitch. They’re pretty cool. Yeah.

Shel Holtz: I remember watching those during the pandemic. That was fun.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, so great recap, Dan, thanks very much, worth listening to. So let’s continue the conversation then on the views of CEOs, how they differ from employees in AI introduction. I’m going to reference a Wall Street Journal story that talks about a survey seeing that “CEOs say AI is making work more efficient; employees tell a different story.” Much of the public narrative around generative AI in organizations has been framed as a productivity story—one where AI is already saving time, streamlining work, and delivering efficiency at scale. We’ve touched on a lot of that in your earlier report, Shel, our conversation there. But a recent Wall Street Journal report suggests there’s a growing disconnect between how senior leaders perceive AI’s impact and how employees are actually experiencing it day to day. So the Journal’s reporting draws on a survey by the AI consulting firm Section, based on responses from 5,000 white-collar workers in large organizations across the US, UK, and Canada. The headline finding is stark: two-thirds of non-management employees say AI is saving them less than two hours a week or no time at all. By contrast, more than 40% of executives believe AI is saving them eight hours a week or more. There’s a disconnect, it seems to me.

Beyond time savings, the survey highlights a clear emotional divide. Employees are far more likely to describe themselves as anxious or overwhelmed by AI, while senior leaders are more likely to say they feel excited about its potential. Many workers say they are unsure how to incorporate AI into their roles, and that whatever time is saved is often offset by having to check outputs, correct errors, or redo work. At the same time, companies are continuing to invest heavily in artificial intelligence, betting that it will drive future productivity and profit growth, even as evidence of near-term financial returns remains limited. Separate CEO surveys cited by the Journal suggest that only a small minority of leaders say AI has yet delivered meaningful cost or revenue benefits. The Journal also points to real-world examples where ambitious AI deployments have required human correction or reversal, reinforcing the idea that in practice, AI adoption is uneven, unpredictable, and highly dependent on context, skills, and judgment. This picture sits alongside other research we’ve discussed on For Immediate Release. In FIR 497, we talked about BCG’s AI radar report—that’s Boston Consulting Group—which argues that AI has moved beyond experimentation and is now a CEO-owned strategic mandate. That same research also places communicators at the center of managing expectations, trust, and organizational change. We’ve also seen consistent findings, including in the report you highlighted, we discussed literally a few minutes ago on slow employee adoption of AI, showing that while awareness of AI is high, employee adoption and understanding lag well behind leadership ambition.

Taken together, this raises an important tension. At the top of organizations, AI is increasingly seen as transformational and inevitable. On the ground, many employees are still grappling with how it fits into their work and whether it’s genuinely helping them do their jobs better. So what does this divergence between executive optimism and employee experience reveal about how AI is being introduced, communicated, and governed within organizations? Is the human side of AI adoption the real constraint on its promised productivity gains?

Shel Holtz: It’s all of this data is fascinating. And one of the things that strikes me is that we tend to look at data from research, surveys, reports, studies about AI in business. What about people just generally—what do they think about AI just as people living their lives? And there was a study that came out from Pew—this was just last September, so this is current data. I know four months is a million years in AI life, the AI life cycle. But still, this is fairly recent data. And what they found—and I’ll skip numbers and just give you some highlights here—that, and this is a study out of the US, Americans are much more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life. A majority say they want more control over how it’s used in their lives. Far larger shares say AI will erode rather than improve people’s ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships. People are open to letting AI help them with their day-to-day tasks, but they don’t support it playing a role in personal matters: religion, matchmaking… more open for data analysis, like weather forecasting, things like that. But they also think it’s important to be able to tell if pictures, videos, or text were made by AI and humans, but they don’t trust their own ability to spot AI-generated stuff. Now, what you have to think about when you hear that this is how people who are just out there living their lives and outside of the context of work, this is how they feel—then they go to work. And they’re told, “AI, it’s going to be great.” And they bring all of these perceptions from their regular lives into the office, into the workplace. And that’s an impact, too. And I think this is something that internal communicators and leaders have to take into account when… I mean, this expectation that AI is going to make your job easier, it’s going to make your product better, whatever your output is, it’s going to make that better… it’s just going to make everything rosy. And you’ve already got these biases based on perceptions just from life. We have to take that into account in our communication. I don’t think this was something anybody was thinking about when we were first introducing it because there was no research yet. It was as new to people living their lives as it was to people doing their jobs. But now you have these perceptions that have been formed about AI as just something that’s there as part of life. And if we don’t factor that into the communication that we do around AI in the workplace, we’re going to struggle to get people to trust this and to figure out how to employ it to make their work better and to support the goals of the organization.

Neville Hobson: Yeah. So the big question then is: what needs to move the needle for communicators then to grasp this challenge, let’s say? I think when we discussed BCG’s AI Radar report, where the clear message there was “AI is now no longer just experimenting and experiments and is now CEO-owned strategic mandate.” So CEOs are taking over control of that. Certainly, with the investment going into AI and organizations. And indeed, one of the findings in BCG’s report was how success in deploying AI and the ROI on that deployment is now a core measure for CEO performance, it said. Well, that takes it up to a whole different level. So it presents opportunities, I think, for communicators to help that CEO achieve the goals he’s going to be measured on by communicating to employees. So this kind of circles back to what we were discussing earlier. And I think if employees on the ground are still grappling with how it fits into their work—and let’s set aside the survey saying CEOs are in charge of all this now, this is great, everything’s going to be wonderful… reality right now today, if they’re still grappling with how it fits into the work, then that needs to be addressed. And you’ve introduced an interesting element to that picture, Shel, where employees of an organization are exposed to all the negative commentary about this externally in their lives generally. They bring that to work with them and encounter what they see there. And they hear the CEO saying, “this is all great.” So these are genuine issues that must be addressed, otherwise, as you say, trust is going to be lacking all the way. And you put that in the context of Edelman’s Trust Barometer and trust and shifts in that… and it’s not a pretty picture at all, I don’t think.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, in the framework for internal communications that I developed—it’s the subject of the book that I’m working on—one of the key roles on a day-to-day basis for internal communicators is consultation, and that’s consultation up the organization. And I think this is an instance where that role is paramount. We need to be talking to our leaders about this. The fact that the BCG radar report says that this has become a CEO issue doesn’t mean that every CEO has done that. I think there are a lot of CEOs who see this—still see this—as an IT issue. And even if they’re using it in their jobs, they don’t think it’s something that they need to be leading; it’s something they think that their CIO needs to be leading. And I think we need to present this data to our leaders. I think we need to talk about why this needs to be led by the business and not one of the support teams. Consultation is what we need to be doing at this stage in addition to maintaining the drumbeat of why this is effective and how you can use this with the frontline employees who are actually going to be using these tools to make a difference in the organization.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I would agree with that. So therefore the answer to the question I posed when they finished the intro to this—is the human side of AI adoption the real constraint on its promised productivity gains?—I guess would be yes.

Shel Holtz: I would say absolutely yes, and I think that’s where organizations need to be shifting their investments. And I think I saw data that says they are shifting their investments. I think something like 60 or 70% of what organizations are investing in AI is now focused on the people in the organization.

Neville Hobson: That’s a good move.

Shel Holtz: Yep. Well, let’s leave AI behind for a bit and talk about something a little more strategic in the internal communication world. And that’s “alignment,” which has become one of those corporate North Stars that everyone nods at, but few organizations actually achieve. And there’s a paradox at the heart of this. The very act of trying to force alignment—meetings, memos, check-the-box town halls—can make the disconnect worse. Let me start with three simple definitions that frame the alignment problem. Let’s start this discussion with these definitions, courtesy of Stephen Waddington, whose PR credentials are far too many to list here. He says that leadership is the role of setting strategy and goals. Management is the process of measurement and continual improvement against those goals. Execution is delivery against those goals. All right, a pretty simple model there, right? Leadership, management, and execution. But here’s what happens in practice: one of these three almost always breaks down and more often than not, it’s alignment—the invisible thread meant to tie strategy, management, and execution together is what frays first.

Now Zora Artis, who has been a guest on FIR interviews, and Wayne Asplund have been studying the alignment problem for years. Their latest research, the CLEAR Leaders Project, revisits strategic alignment because despite how important it is, the same problems keep recurring. They conducted confidential interviews with senior leaders across communications, HR, strategy, and operations to explore how alignment is understood, practiced, and experienced in organizations today. And here’s the uncomfortable finding: seven years after their previous benchmark study, the gap between alignment in principle and alignment in practice is just as wide as it always has been. It’s universally valued yet almost never achieved. Now think about what this means. We’re not getting better at this and we should. I mentioned before that consultation is one of those daily activities in the ring around my framework circle. So is alignment. And despite all the strategy decks, the town halls, the carefully crafted vision statement, this problem persists. Why? Because senior leaders live inside the strategy. They’ve shaped it, debated it, and refined it, but that proximity breeds a dangerous assumption: the closer you are to a strategy, the more you assume its clarity is shared. What leaders often hear as consensus is actually silence. And in too many organizations, silence is misread as buy-in. Now here’s the thing about strategy: it doesn’t cascade like water; it distorts as it moves. It’s shaped by language, culture, experience, and hierarchy. A strategy that’s crystal clear at the top becomes a muddled set of ideas by the time it reaches teams on the ground. Ownership gets lost, accountability blurs, execution slows.

Now, Zora and Wayne’s original 2018 study of more than 200 senior communicators found that only 35% felt their organization was aligned to its corporate purpose. Only 40% used corporate purpose as a key part of employee communications. Think about that. We define the purpose of the organization; only 40% use that purpose as a part of their communication with employees. Now, fast forward through a pandemic, through massive technological disruption, through all the lessons we supposedly learned about clarity and communication, and the numbers still haven’t meaningfully improved. So what is this paradox? The very mechanisms we use to create organizational scale—you know, we subdivide work, we create functional specialization, we establish hierarchies—these are the mechanisms that fragment the information, decision rights, and incentives that guide individual decisions. We create silos to manage complexity, and those silos then work against our ability to align. Research from Strategy and Business frames it differently but arrives at the same place. When strategies aren’t implemented effectively, leaders tend to view their people as “irrational.” But workers and managers are actually rational actors. Their choices reflect sensible decisions in the context of what each of them knows and understands. The problem isn’t the people; it’s the organizational environment that’s encouraging decision-making that conflicts with overall objectives.

Fortune magazine estimates 70% of CEO failures are caused not by flawed strategic thinking, but by failure to execute. Most management teams don’t fully appreciate the role of the organization in undermining performance. They lack time or resources to understand how the organizational models actually work. They’re frustrated by their inability to realize objectives, but they rarely identify the interacting assumptions and misaligned incentives built into their own structures as the root cause. Here’s where the research gets really interesting. Artis and Asplund’s work reveals that alignment isn’t a noun, it’s a verb. It happens through repeated behavior, not bold declarations. The temptation is to treat alignment as a messaging issue: clearer cascades, sharper narratives, better packaging. But alignment isn’t about communication tactics; it’s about leadership behavior. In today’s environment, the traditional playbook of strategy decks, town halls, and posters on the wall simply doesn’t work anymore. The challenge is how consistently leaders live and lead the strategy every day. That requires holding the tension between spread and clarity, decisiveness and dialogue, direction and dissent. It means slowing down when speed tempts shortcut thinking, inviting challenge when comfort suggests consensus, being consistent in action as well as intent, and most critically, checking for understanding, not just repeating messages.

There’s also the “shallow versus deep” alignment problem. Shallow alignment is tactical: agreeing on plans, checking boxes. Deep alignment is about the fundamental “why.” Organizations need both, but they often confuse one for the other. They think because everyone showed up to the strategy offsite and nodded along that they have alignment. Six months later, they’re baffled when nothing has changed. Artis’ research through the pandemic showed that organizations that thrived had articulated a strong sense of purpose and used it to guide decision-making. Airbnb’s Brian Chesky spoke about their purpose as their North Star, giving them permission to morph their business strategy in response to threats and opportunities. Yet a McKinsey study found that while 82% of companies affirm the importance of purpose, only 42% thought their purpose statements had any actual impact.

So what’s the way forward? Well, first we have to stop treating strategic alignment as a communication challenge to be solved. It’s an ongoing act of leadership that demands humility, curiosity, and deliberate behavior. The best leaders aren’t the ones who shout the strategy the loudest; they’re the ones who stay aligned when pressure hits, who listen when they assume, and who practice alignment as part of their everyday leadership. Second, communicators need to fundamentally shift their role. As Zora and Wayne’s research shows, communication professionals have an enormous, mostly untapped opportunity here, but only if they move from being seen as tacticians to being seen as strategic advisors. That means being the function that surfaces misalignments, the conflicting incentives, the information gaps, the unclear decision rights, and working with leadership to fix them. Third, leaders need to acknowledge that you can’t communicate your way out of structural problems, but you can use communication to identify them. Alignment requires examining the organizational environment, not just restating aspirations or exhorting people to do better, but actually changing the conditions under which people make decisions. The alignment paradox won’t be solved by better PowerPoints. It requires recognizing that leadership is a practice, not a position. And it requires understanding that the very things that make organizations functional at scale are the same things that make alignment extraordinarily difficult. The question for every leader is whether you’re willing to confront this paradox honestly or whether you’ll keep mistaking silence for consensus and proximity for clarity.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, that’s a very interesting analysis, Shel. I think Zora and Wayne have done some good work here from just reading Zora’s Substack post about this. A couple of things struck me from this, which I guess puts it in perspective for people perhaps who don’t work in large organizations, because this is clearly geared to that. And yet alignment doesn’t require it to be a large organization. And I say that because I’ve gone through an alignment myself as a sole person last year. I did a webinar for IABC for the consultants group on this exact topic. It’s kind of swapping balance—it’s not about balance; it’s about alignment. They’re two different things. I did like a couple of things that leapt at me from Zora’s post. She talks about: “Alignment doesn’t fail because leaders lack intent. It weakens when shared clarity, ownership, and accountability diverge and commitment isn’t strong enough to hold together. When that happens, effort increases, but traction declines.” That is to the point precisely about eight years later where nothing much has moved well. She also says, “Alignment demands humility,” and I think this is the bit that resonated most with me: “Vulnerability and sustained commitment. Requires leaders and their teams to slow down, invite challenge, and stay open to perspectives that complicate the narrative.” And that to me was the kind of bottom line of this whole argument: slow down. It’s examine things with better purpose than you have had before. Choose to do things if you can because they matter, not just because they’re available or because they’re going to make you a lot of money, although that’s hard in a large organization, I think.

I think it’s something each one of us needs to pay attention to, not just if you’re an employee in a large organization, to start your own shift—to look at what you are doing as a consultant or as a communicator in an organization and how aligned is it with your own values and those of your organization. I don’t think people do that properly—maybe “effectively” might be the better word than properly. So this is a valuable piece of research that has some great points to zone in on and consider in your job as a communicator, indeed, as you as an individual person. To me, the biggest one is velocity. Get rid of velocity; slow down. Take more time on things. Resist the temptation where velocity equals “busy.” Well, it doesn’t. Busy-ness may be not the same thing at all. Indeed, in Zora’s article, she quotes someone saying, “Ego, fear, hubris, and speed push in the opposite direction.” That relates to humility, vulnerability, and sustained commitment. And absolutely true. You see it in large organizations in particular. So there’s a lot to learn from this. It talks about “Why is this intensifying now?” Dynamics aren’t new; becoming more consequential, says Zora in her piece. Strategy cycles are shorter. The context leaders operate in is more complex. Decisions are made faster, with less time for shared sense-making. Misalignment is more likely, therefore, in which case, slow down. If you say it enough, you will slow down. Resist pressure to speed up even. Not always easy. It depends on many factors. If you’ve got a leader you’re working with who subscribes to this view of “it’s not about velocity, it’s about taking the time to consider things and discuss it with others, shared sense-making,” as the article says, it’s worth doing. So this is something that, like you, I would say I’d look forward to reading this report when it comes out in February.

Shel Holtz: One of the things that jumped out at me as I was researching this for the report was the whole idea of structure of the organization being a hindrance to alignment. And I don’t know how many organizations have ever undertaken a “structure audit.” And the structure was created in order to have work that is similar done in one place. It does create those silos of… I think leaders are confident that the structure that they have created is the right one for the organization, but have they tested that structure against other things that are important to them? And I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a structure audit. I’ve never heard those two words used together. It may be time to develop one and say, “Yes, we understand the structure works for our process of getting our product out, for example, but what does it do for these other four things that are priorities in the organization? Are they hindrances? And do we need, as a result of this, to make changes to our structure so these four other priorities gain more traction? Or do we need to rethink how we are implementing these priorities so that they will be effective given the structure that we want to maintain?” But I don’t think anybody’s thinking about that right now at all. And I think it’s something to be raised.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, indeed. I think the Substack article talks about that a bit, saying, “Alignment is a discipline for leaders and teams. Without commitment, it shows up in moments and disappears when it’s tested.” So yeah, plenty to pay attention to here, Shel, I think. So let’s talk about something I think is quite an interesting topic. One we’ve talked about before on For Immediate Release, but not for a few years probably. And this is all about Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta as it was renamed some years ago from just Facebook, and his recent “U-turn,” as the media are describing it—what that means for the future of virtual reality. So for several years, Zuckerberg placed a bold bet on virtual reality and the metaverse as the next major computing platform. That vision reshaped the strategy and even the name of Meta as the company poured tens of billions of dollars into Reality Labs, launched VR headsets, and promoted immersive virtual worlds as the future of work, social connection, and everyday computing. That vision now appears to be undergoing a significant reset.

In January, multiple reports confirmed that Meta is making deep cuts to its Reality Labs division, laying off around 1,500 employees, roughly 10% of the unit. According to the Wall Street Journal, the move reflects a deliberate shift in investment away from the metaverse and towards AI, particularly AI-powered wearables such as smart glasses. Reality Labs has reportedly lost more than $77 billion since 2020. Eye-watering numbers here, Shel. And consumer-facing platforms like Horizon Worlds have struggled to attract sustained engagement. I’m sure Zuckerberg’s glad he’s got that clause in the contract that says they can’t fire him for any reason whatsoever. But coverage from Futurism is even more blunt than the Wall Street Journal. It’s framing the layoffs as a clear signal that Meta’s consumer metaverse ambitions are being wound down after years of underperformance. Entire VR game studios have been shuttered. And while some platforms remain active, they are doing so at a far smaller scale as capital and leadership attention pivot decisively towards AI.

A more nuanced perspective comes from The Conversation in an analysis by Per-Ola Kristensson, professor of interactive systems engineering at the University of Cambridge. He argues that this apparent U-turn does not mean immersive technology itself has failed. Instead, it reflects the limits of fully immersive virtual reality as a mass-market everyday computing platform. Drawing on years of academic research and user studies, Kristensson notes that while VR works well for specialist use cases—such as training surgeons, engineers, or pilots—it performs poorly as a general-purpose work environment. Extended use is associated with higher workload, lower perceived productivity, increased fatigue, anxiety, and usability problems. In short, VR can be impressive, but it is often too immersive, uncomfortable, and impractical for routine daily work. Crucially, The Conversation suggests that what we’re seeing is not the end of immersive computing, but a shift away from VR towards augmented and mixed reality—less immersive technologies that layer digital information onto the physical world rather than replacing it entirely. Products such as Microsoft’s HoloLens are cited as examples of this approach, where virtual information supports real-world tasks rather than pulling users into a separate virtual space. This distinction matters because much of the current retrenchment is about the consumer metaverse—the idea of mass adoption of shared virtual worlds for socializing, working, and entertainment. On that front, the hype has clearly run ahead of reality. By contrast, business and enterprise use of immersive technologies are not disappearing. Credible reporting and research continue to show steady, if unspectacular, adoption in areas such as training and simulation, product design, digital twins, remote maintenance, healthcare, and specialist education. In these contexts, immersive tools are judged by whether they improve safety, accuracy, learning, or cost efficiency, not by whether they attract millions of daily users.

In other words, what appears to be collapsing is a grand consumer vision of the metaverse, not the underlying technologies themselves. The center of gravity is shifting from spectacle to practicality, and increasingly towards combinations of AI, augmented reality, and task-specific immersive tools, rather than all-encompassing virtual worlds. Shel, I know you’re a fan and a user of VR headsets. Why don’t we look at this moment—what this moment really represents—whether Meta’s pullback marks the end of virtual reality as a serious platform or simply the end of a particular story about it. And what this tells us about how emerging technologies mature once the hype cycle collides with everyday reality.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, until I developed this back problem and I’m confined from doing a lot until it’s addressed, I was pretty much a daily user of VR with the Meta Quest 3. I use several apps and they’re all workout apps. I have to say that the only thing I’ve been using it for the last few years is working out. I don’t exclusively work out with the headset, but that’s always how I start. And I always start with the same app. It’s called Supernatural. Supernatural was an app that was in the Meta app store, but it was a separate company and Zuckerberg wanted it. He wanted these companies to be part of Meta so that he could showcase them as part of his effort in the Metaverse. Now Supernatural employed a bunch of people. It had what they call choreographers—these are the coders who create the workout routines so that they work right and they’re synced with the popular music that are in these workout sets and they’re in categories: it’s rap, it’s classic rock, it’s metal, it’s classical jazz, soul, R&B. And you would pick either a boxing or what they call a flow workout. And there are coaches—there are six coaches who would guide you through these, lead you through the warmups and the cool downs. And there’s a Facebook group for people who use the app; it has about a hundred thousand people using it. The estimate is that there are about a hundred and thirty thousand people who use the app, Supernatural, on, I think, a monthly basis—active monthly users.

And most of those 1,500 who were fired from Reality Labs at Meta were the coaches and the choreographers and the people who make Supernatural go. They’ve made the point that the app is going to stay and all the workouts that have been created up to this point—and there are, I think, thousands of them—will remain available. But I don’t know how long it’s going to stay because they’re going to have to renew the music licensing. This isn’t the music you hear on other workout apps from artists you’ve never heard of that isn’t requiring licensing through the big music licensing organizations. This is popular music. This is today’s top artists and the top artists of the classic rock era and the like. So it’s expensive to license that music. And when that rolls around, I don’t know if we’re going to continue to see this music available. And I think the whole thing is going to fall apart. There’s a tremendous effort among the users of this to get Zuckerberg to bring it back. There’s a petition and all kinds of other efforts going on. It’s all being discussed in the Facebook group. But what’s important to keep in mind is the 1,500 people who were cut are working for apps that either Meta created or acquired that are consumer-facing. There are still 15,000-plus people on the payroll there. So this is not an exit from the metaverse or the virtual reality world; this is a refinement of their approach.

It’s also important, I think, to consider the broader landscape because Meta is not the only one doing this. And by the way, you mentioned Horizon Worlds, their metaverse. It’s awful. You know, if people go in there and say, “Is this what the metaverse is?” Forget that. I mean, I can absolutely see that, but it’s not. It’s not the only effort out there. Apple is still refining the Vision Pro ecosystem to define this whole spatial computing space. Nvidia is doubling down on the industrial metaverse with their Omniverse platform—this is for digital twins for global manufacturing. Digital twins are going to be huge, and that’s definitely an element of the metaverse. Epic Games is building a massive persistent universe in partnership with Disney, which will probably be more appealing than Horizon Worlds. I mean, I’ve got to believe between Epic and Disney, you’re going to get something better than Meta was able to conceive. The pivot to AI isn’t a distraction or a move away from the metaverse and VR. It’s actually the fuel for it. Generative AI is finally solving the two biggest hurdles the metaverse faced: the massive cost of 3D content creation and the “empty world” problem. By using AI to populate and build these spaces instantly, Meta and its competitors are finally making the tech scalable. They’re not retreating; they’re just waiting for their AI tools to finish building the world they promised us. So I still remain bullish on the metaverse and virtual reality. The fact that it seems to be going through a decline right now is just a dip in the chart. I think you’re going to see that trend rise again. And I think AI is going to play a big part in this. And by the way, NPCs—non-player characters in video games—AI is going to be jet fuel for non-player characters. So I think: watch this space. I think it’ll probably be a few years. I remember Matthew Ball, who wrote the book on the metaverse, said we were 10 years away. That was what, three years ago? So, I mean, we’re still seven years in his timeframe. And because of what’s happening with AI, that may accelerate it, but I think it’s actually going to extend it to probably 12 or 13 years because the focus has shifted. But I think as these two factors, AI and the metaverse/VR converge, you’re going to see an explosion of this stuff down the road.

Neville Hobson: You could be right. I think there are other players, you’re right. For the time being, though, for the moment, it appears that Meta is ditching this to concentrate on the current thing that so many people are putting their focus on: AI generally and wearables is what they’re now going to pay attention to, according to these reports. I did like Kristensson’s analysis of it all, particularly his view that this doesn’t really work for business use and certainly not for consumer use without competitive technology that appeals to people and others who are doing it, such as you’ve outlined. The reality, though, is that they have announced these layoffs and their shifts that they’re making to their division, and they’re not supporting it anymore at the moment, according to all the media reports that I’ve seen about all of this. Doesn’t mean to say that couldn’t change—that may change—but that’s the picture right now. And I think the limited research that I’ve done on particularly business use of virtual reality has far more promise. And indeed, the way in which the mention of that was couched from one of the reports about this: “pretty unsexy stuff going on with business use of all this.” Yet there are excellent results being reported by a number of companies. I remember reading a few months ago, which I posted about, I think, on LinkedIn, what BMW is doing with its car-building metaverse, where they’re modeling new models in a metaverse where the guys on the production lines are increasingly robots, but they’re to be run by humans, and the designers and the marketers and others all get together in a virtual world to discuss planning of a new model. That’s definitely something that they’re seeing results from, that kind of thing. I remember, as you will, Shel, let’s go back into the deep mists of time to a place called Second Life. Hey, all the auto companies—all of them, literally the big ones, particularly the American ones—were there with the virtual cars. I’ve still got a virtual Pontiac somewhere up there on Second Life, which is still there probably in 2026. I haven’t logged in since, so I’m going to make a point of doing that this weekend to see what’s going on, to see if I need to upgrade my fashion, clothing, or whether it’s still valid. But that was the early stages of things that we now call a metaverse. And the tech has moved on significantly and Second Life has moved on significantly with improvements to their platform. But it is one platform that doesn’t appeal to everyone, yet it’s there still with thousands of users. So there is room for all of these things. And you mentioned the book and projecting 10 years—it might be longer than that. I think it might be quicker than that even, because things are moving so fast with all of this. It’s hard to tell, but it is worth paying attention to both from a communication and business perspective. But also if you’re interested in how this tech is moving along generally, keep an eye on this because I think we are likely to see AI playing a bigger role, such as you suggested, than has been the case to date. So it’s kind of: watch this space, basically.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, and in terms of the consumer use, one of the things that I was pointing out in a conversation I was having on the Supernatural Facebook group is that Meta in particular has done just a god-awful job of marketing these apps. When Supernatural was shut down, there was an article written by one of the users who’s also a Bloomberg reporter, so it got a fair amount of attention. He thought the move was fairly stupid to shut it down, given that it has a hundred thousand paying users. And I made the point in a discussion around this that, well, you know, they have not done a good job at all of marketing this. This is an app… I mean, you look at what people were saying when it was shut down in the group, and a lot of them were saying, “I never exercised before this. And I was skeptical when I tried it. But now here’s my before and after picture, right? And I weighed 250 pounds here and I’m 145 now.” There was a lot of that—people saying, “I never worked out before this and this is what led me to it.” And it’s because it’s fun and it’s because of the affinity we have with the coaches and blah, blah, blah. And Meta never took advantage of any of this. They never went out there and talked about how this can change your life. And there are other workout apps out there—Les Mills Body Combat and Fit XR and several others. So it’s not just a Meta problem. It’s the companies that make these, because these other apps are not owned by Meta; they’re just in the store. And there’s no marketing that I see for any of these that would bring people in. And you have to believe that somebody who’s never used this… and there are a number of people who said, “I bought my Quest headset so I could do Supernatural after a friend showed it to me.” That’s the gateway to other apps and to other tools and people finding, “Well, maybe there is some utility here. Maybe I do like playing VR games,” or what have you. And they just haven’t done this. And I have to say, it’s not surprising because Meta’s marketing has never been good for anything. But it seems to me that this whole virtual reality space, the marketing has been poor from the beginning.

Neville Hobson: Yeah. So let’s also throw into the pool here of memory lane stuff… I was a huge fan and a regular user literally on a daily basis of Microsoft’s Kinect—K-I-N-E-C-T—that I used totally and only for fitness: jogging in place, all the exercises, the works. And I was really unhappy when they canned it and got rid of it all and that whole ecosystem building around that. That must have been around 2009, 10, 11—that kind of timeframe. But my Kinect worked brilliantly on the TV I had, the Sony TV at the time. Absolutely super. I miss that because I’ve never really used any of this technology since then for exercise. Whereas that’s what I used it exclusively for—my Kinect. Running alongside my virtual trainer—I could see it on the screen, both of those. That was really cool. So things go on. But it is interesting though, Shel… you wonder why on earth did the company shut this thing down that was making tons of money, they had a community, etc. There are other forces at work here that lead to those kinds of decisions. And it may not make sense, but if you’re inside that organization, it probably does because there’s something else going on they haven’t announced publicly or whatever it might be. So hence my own view: I’m not as bullish as you are about this from a consumer point of view, any of this. Not yet, anyway. I think something’s got to work out further on this.

Shel Holtz: But my bullishness is along a long horizon. It’s not something imminent. Yeah.

Neville Hobson: No, I get it. I get it. And yet I wonder if we might see something happening. And I’m now thinking more of the other forces at work in the world generally about the changes that are going on in trust, stuff like that. What impact will this have? We’ve got you mentioned Nvidia doing some stuff. We’ve got other players, particularly in China, who are working with technologies that can do this kind of thing in China where they’ve got what—a billion people who could take advantage of all this. So there’s so much going on. Worth paying attention to all of it, I think.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, I’m looking forward to checking out this persistent universe that Epic Games and Disney are working on because you know that AI is going to factor into that and the ability to keep the world creating new places and wherever you turn, there’s going to be something new. It’s going to be good. I would put money on that. That’ll bring this episode of For Immediate Release to a close. Just a couple of quick notes before we go. First of all, later this week, we’re dropping our FIR Interview for January. It was a really good interview with Philippe Borremans, who we mentioned earlier. He left one of the comments that we read early in the show. Philippe specializes in crisis communication and we talked to him about crisis and AI. Really interesting interview. He’s got tremendous subject matter expertise. So if you deal with crisis communication, this is one that you don’t want to miss. In terms of today’s episode, we do hope that you will leave comments. Most of the comments we get are on our LinkedIn posts announcing the episode, and we’re grateful for you sharing your comments there. You can also email them to us at fircomments at gmail.com.

We would still love to get an audio comment one of these days. We used to get those all the time. They actually drove our discussion for much of the show. We haven’t had one in probably a couple of years, but you can actually record one right on the FIR website at firpodcastnetwork.com. There’s a link on the right-hand side—it says “send voicemail.” Just click that. You’ve got 90 seconds to get your message across. Record more than one, I’ll put them together. You can leave comments directly on the show notes on the FIR website. You can also leave comments in the Facebook FIR group or the FIR page or to either of our posts on Facebook or on BlueSky or on Threads because we share the release of each episode in all of those places. Also your ratings and reviews on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts are greatly appreciated. Our next episode will be next week. That’ll be a short midweek episode. We’ll continue to produce those, but our next long-form monthly episode will be released on Monday, February 23rd. Until then, that will be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #498: Can Business Be a Trust Broker in Today’s Insulated Society? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The latest BCG AI Radar survey signals a definitive turning point: AI has graduated from a tech-driven experiment to a CEO-owned strategic mandate. As corporate investments double, a striking “confidence gap” is emerging between optimistic leaders in the corner office and the more skeptical teams tasked with implementation. With the rapid rise of Agentic AI — autonomous systems that execute complex workflows rather than just generating text — the focus is shifting from simple productivity gains to a total overhaul of culture and operating models. In this episode, Neville and Shel examine this evolution that places communicators at the center of a high-stakes transition as AI moves from a pilot phase into end-to-end organizational transformation.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 26.

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 [email protected].

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. 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: Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 497 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz.

Neville Hobson: And I’m Neville Hobson. For the past couple of years, AI in organizations has mostly been talked about as a technology story—a set of tools to deploy, experiments to run, and efficiencies to unlock. It was often led by IT, digital, or data teams, with the CEO interested but not always directly involved. The latest AI Radar survey from BCG suggests that phase is now over.

For the third year running, BCG has surveyed senior executives across global markets—nearly 2,400 leaders in 16 markets, including more than 600 CEOs. The standout finding isn’t just how much money organizations are spending on AI, or even how optimistic leaders are about returns. It’s something more structural.

Nearly three-quarters of CEOs now say they are the main decision-maker on AI in their organization. That’s double the share from last year. This is not a minor shift; it’s a transfer of ownership. AI is no longer being treated as another digital initiative that can be delegated at arm’s length. CEOs recognize that AI cuts across strategy, operating models, culture, risk, governance, and talent. In other words, AI isn’t just changing what organizations do, it’s changing how they run. Half of the CEOs surveyed even believe their job stability depends on getting AI right.

We’re also seeing a striking “confidence gap.” CEOs are significantly more optimistic about AI’s ability to deliver returns than their executive colleagues. BCG describes this as “change distance.” People closest to the decisions feel more positive than those who have to live with the consequences.

The survey identifies three types of AI leadership: Followers (cautious and stuck in pilots), Pragmatists (the 70% majority moving with the market), and Trailblazers. Trailblazers treat AI as an end-to-end transformation and are already seeing gains. What’s accelerating this is the rise of Agentic AI. Unlike earlier tools, agents run multi-step workflows with limited human involvement. This raises the stakes for governance and accountability.

This is where communicators come in. If AI is now a CEO-led transformation, communication can’t just sit at the edges. It’s not just about writing rollout messages; it’s about helping leaders articulate why AI is being adopted and what it means for people’s roles and sense of agency. Is this the shift that turns ambition into transformation, or does CEO confidence risk becoming a blind spot?

Shel Holtz: Excellent analysis, Neville. I think there’s data in this report that is incredibly heartening. One of the characteristics of the “Pragmatist” CEOs—who represent 70% of the responses—is that they are spending an average of seven hours a week personally working with or learning about AI. I’ve never seen that before. When we introduced the web or social media, CEOs weren’t using it personally. This immersion is very helpful for the communicators who need to tell this story.

What’s troubling, though, is that 14-point confidence gap between CEOs and their managers. I don’t think this is just “resistance to change.” If the people implementing the systems are less confident than the person funding them, are we headed for an “AI winter” of unmet expectations?

Communicators need to become translators. Our job isn’t just selling the vision; it’s bridging a reality gap. If managers are skeptical, a CEO’s “rah-rah” AI speech will backfire. We have to translate that vision into operational safety for the staff while advising the CEO on the actual temperature of the workforce.

Neville Hobson: You’ve said that well. Communicators sit right at the center of whether AI transformation is trusted or resisted. This is a different picture than before. The senior communicator now has an unspoken challenge to assume a recognized leadership role to close that gap.

The appeal here is that you have a landscape ripe for a communicator to take the lead. You don’t have to sell the idea to the leadership—they already have the budget and the will. You can concentrate on persuasion and diplomacy to make sure the support is there throughout the organization. CEOs are going to need support on how to fulfill this aspect of their job.

It’s also interesting to note that confidence gaps are widening. The 2026 Edelman Trust Report also speaks to these issues regarding the relationship between people and organizations. The communicator is going to have to write a brand-new playbook.

Shel Holtz: Absolutely. And for the “Trailblazers,” the report suggests AI will lead to flatter, cross-functional organizational models. This puts middle managers at risk. If Agentic AI can plan, act, and learn multi-step workflows, what happens to the layer of management whose job is coordination and oversight? Is the CEO leading us toward a future where the “human middle” becomes redundant? How do you communicate with people who fear the technology will put them out of a job?

Neville Hobson: Unquestionably a challenge. Many CEOs recognize their own jobs are on the line, too. This isn’t petty cash; we are talking about massive investments. Communicators must help employees understand this shift in structure. It’s not a CIO-led digital transformation anymore; it’s a CEO-led business redesign.

Shel Holtz: To complicate things, 90% of companies say they will increase AI spending even if it doesn’t pay off in the next year. This is a “burn the boats” strategy. At what point does commitment become a sunk-cost fallacy?

Neville Hobson: To summarize, the main task for communicators is helping leaders articulate why AI is being adopted. We need to bring the human element in firmly as a foundational element. AI transformation will fail or succeed as much on meaning and legitimacy as on technology.

Shel Holtz: It’s an organizational change process. If the CEO owns it, they are the chief spokesperson and must articulate the vision while maintaining two-way communication. We also have to look at the strategic plan. If the direction of the industry is shifting, organizations may need to change their very aspirations and strategic goals, which requires considerable communication.

Neville Hobson: Fun times ahead, communicators.

Shel Holtz: And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #497: CEOs Wrest Control of AI appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Neville and Shel dive into the ambitious new definition of public relations proposed by the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA). Sparked by a two-and-a-half-page draft that reframes the discipline as a senior strategic management function, Shel and Neville debate whether this comprehensive document serves as a vital “PR for PR” or if its length and academic tone move it closer to a manifesto than a practical, portable definition. The conversation explores the proposal’s emphasis on organizational legitimacy, its explicit inclusion of AI’s role in the information ecosystem, and the ongoing challenge of establishing a unified professional standard that resonates across the global communications industry.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 26.

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 [email protected].

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. 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:

Neville Hobson Welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 496. I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz And I’m Shel Holtz. Neville, how would you define public relations?

Neville Hobson The very short way I would define it—and this is a very old definition I seem to remember from the CIPR before it was called the CIPR—is the custodianship or the stewardship of the relationships between a brand or a company and its publics. That’s how I define it.

Shel Holtz I like it. PRSA defines it as a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.

Neville Hobson I could have said that, but I just wanted to give you the quick version.

Shel Holtz Yeah, well, that works. But now we have the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) proposing a definition that positions public relations as a senior strategic management discipline focused on reputation, trust, legitimacy, and long-term value. In this framing, PR exists to help organizations and individuals navigate complexity, reduce uncertainty, manage risk, and build durable relationships with the people and institutions that affect their ability to operate and succeed.

It emphasizes two-way engagement, board-level counsel, data and insight, crisis preparedness, and societal impact. It explicitly extends PR’s remit into shaping the information ecosystem in an AI-driven world. Now, that’s a summary of the definition; the definition itself consumes two and a half pages of text. It’s available as a PDF and open to comment by PRCA members, according to the organization’s CEO, Sarah Waddington. In a LinkedIn post, she said the draft definition draws on academic research and a thematic analysis of recent sector commentary following her Radio 4 Today debate with Sir Martin Sorrell, which we talked about here a couple of weeks ago.

A two-and-a-half-page definition is a lot, and that’s kind of the point. The definition is designed for the environment in which many senior practitioners find themselves right now. The language of foresight, volatility, legitimacy, and uncertainty isn’t an accident; it’s meant to reflect how closely public relations work is increasingly tied to leadership decision-making. In that sense, this definition does something a lot of us have argued for over the years: it situates PR at the strategic heart of the organization rather than treating it as a delivery function.

It also aligns with a broader international view that PR is fundamentally about relationships and long-term organizational health, not about outputs like press releases or media placements. As you might expect, there have been reactions. Philippe Boromans, a former president of the International Public Relations Association and an upcoming guest on FIR Interviews, shared on LinkedIn that the definition reads less like a definition and more like a manifesto—ambitious and comprehensive, but maybe trying to do too much.

Historically, definitions that have endured tend to revolve around a single unifying idea. Think about the emphasis on mutually beneficial relationships in PRSA’s definition, which they adopted in 2012. That kind of conceptual anchor makes a definition portable—it’s easy to explain, teach, and remember. By contrast, the PRCA proposal advances a lot of important ideas all at once: trust, legitimacy, engagement, value creation, behavior change, and societal impact. These are all part of PR, but without a clear organizing principle, it’s hard to find something to hang your hat on.

There’s also the question of tone and accessibility. The language is unapologetically corporate and at times delves into the academic. That may resonate with board advisors and consultants, but definitions also serve students, people starting their careers, and those in the nonprofit or public sectors. A definition that primarily reflects the experience of the profession’s most senior tier risks narrowing its usefulness. One critique I find particularly important is the exclusive reliance on the concept of “stakeholders.”

Neville Hobson Yep.

Shel Holtz Public relations is always engaged with broader publics, too—communities, citizens, and audiences whose perceptions matter even when they don’t fit neatly into a stakeholder map. Leaning too heavily on stakeholder language nudges the discipline closer to management theory and further from its roots in public engagement.

And, of course, there’s the AI dimension. The definition explicitly calls out PR’s role in shaping the information ecosystem and ensuring organizations are represented accurately in AI-generated outputs. Some see this as an overdue recognition of how information now circulates, while others question whether embedding AI so directly risks dating the definition.

If you work in PR, you should read this proposal less as a final answer and more as an aspirational statement. As a description of what PR could be at its most strategic, it’s compelling. As a concise, durable definition, it may need sharpening and a cleaner central idea. Definitions are tools to help us explain our value and align practice across borders. This proposal doesn’t settle the challenge, but it moves the conversation forward. Neville, what do you think?

Neville Hobson I agree. I’m looking at the PDF now. I’ve not read the whole thing yet, so I will do that and likely write some comments. The first thing that grabs my attention is that it doesn’t explicitly state the author, though I assume it’s Sarah Waddington. It says a new definition is needed to reflect the modern operating environment and illustrate how integral the discipline is to success. In short, the industry needs better “PR for PR.” I agree with that 100%.

The 10-second definition I gave you earlier is woefully inadequate for today. It’s interesting looking at this document; it’s very standalone. Philippe Boromans mentioned in his blog post that it looks like it begs for more dialogue, and I agree. I don’t see it as complete at all.

Shel Holtz Sarah did invite members to comment on it. I think the consultation runs through the end of the month.

Neville Hobson She’s likely going to get comments from non-PRCA members as well since it’s on LinkedIn. Looking at the core principles she mentions—relationship-centered, not output-focused—that is very much in line with how conversations are shifting from inputs to outcomes. I remember about 15 years ago when PRSA led a charge to redefine PR in the US. It was picked up by practitioners here in the UK, there was a lot of dialogue, and then… nothing happened. Hopefully, this will be different.

I think she would be wiser to make this completely open, not just restricted to PRCA. The praise the PRCA will get is for taking the initiative. I’m wondering if they’ve engaged with other professional bodies to join them. It requires a lot of dialogue, and that’s the point of doing this. My only hang-up is the restriction to members. I’m not a PRCA member—I’m with IABC—but I support what they’re doing. As for her BBC interview with Martin Sorrell, it was clear he was talking utter rubbish, so it’s good to have these discussions.

Shel Holtz I certainly have nothing but praise for initiating the conversation. However, I agree that two and a half pages is not a definition; it is a manifesto. Imagine a two-and-a-half-page definition in a dictionary! I remember the Melbourne Mandate and the Venice Accords from the Global Alliance—those were more about purpose statements and AI positioning. I’m not sure all of that belongs in a definition, but as a spark for conversation, this is a good move.

Neville Hobson It’s too soon to see the full weight of public opinion on this, but we do need a new definition. I don’t see it as a manifesto, but it is incomplete. It would have benefited from an intro saying, “This is a first draft, we seek your feedback.”

Shel Holtz When I think of a definition, I want it to be something everyone can remember. You should be able to get the concept down and be 90% there with the wording. No one is going to memorize two and a half pages. This sounds more like the outline of a textbook.

Neville Hobson The CIPR website defines PR as “the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics.” That’s been around for decades. It adds to my feeling that we need something more effective. But a PRCA definition only works if the whole industry is singing from the same hymn sheet.

Shel Holtz I wonder if the PRCA is a member of the Global Alliance. That would be the place to adopt a definition so that all member associations embrace a consistent version. I’d also like to see the notion of “professional” public relations included, which is why I support certification—to signal that you are a professional and not just someone who says, “Well, everyone can communicate, so I can too.”

Neville Hobson That’s the rocky road no one wants to go down! We’ve been there so many times. People resist change. It needs someone to take a very strong lead to get this on the public agenda. It reinforces my view: excellent initiative by the PRCA, but it needs to be industry-wide, otherwise, we just end up with multiple conflicting definitions.

Shel Holtz Undoubtedly. Listeners, take a look at the proposed definition; we have a link to the PDF and Sarah’s post in the show notes. Let us know what you think. What would you change? We’ll share your views on an upcoming edition. And that will be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #496: A Proposed New Definition of Public Relations Sparks Debate appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In which Neville and Shel take a few minutes to acknowledge FIR’s 21st birthday.

The post FIR 21st Anniversary Celebration appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Reddit, the #2 social media site in the US, has surpassed TikTok to become the #4 site in the UK. It has no algorithm that forces you to see what’s most likely to keep you on the site; it just lets users upvote what they think is most interesting, valuable, or relevant. Every topic under the sun has a subreddit. Several organizations, from Starbucks to Uber, have taken advantage of it. So why is it absent from most communicators’ list of social media platforms to pay attention to? Neville and Shel look at Reddit’s growing influence in this episode.

Links from This Episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 26.

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 [email protected].

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. 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: Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 495 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz.

Neville Hobson: I’m Neville Hobson and let’s start by saying we wish you a happy new 2026. We’re recording this in the first week of January, so it’s a new year. Last week the Guardian reported something that might surprise people who still think of Reddit as a noisy corner of the internet best avoided. In a deep analysis, the paper noted that Reddit has now overtaken TikTok to become the fourth most visited social media site in the UK, with three in five UK internet users encountering it regularly, according to Ofcom, the industry regulator. Among 18 to 24-year-olds—the Gen Z cohort—it’s one of the most visited organizations of any kind. And the UK is now Reddit’s second largest market globally, behind only the US.

That growth hasn’t happened because Reddit suddenly reinvented itself; it’s happened because the wider internet has changed around it. Google’s search algorithms now prioritize what it calls “helpful content,” particularly discussion forums. Reddit threads increasingly surface high in search results, and they’re also being cited heavily in AI-generated summaries. Reddit has licensing deals with both Google and OpenAI, which means its content is being used to train AI models and then redistributed back to users as part of search and discovery.

At the same time, users, particularly Gen Z, are actively seeking out human-generated content—not polished brand messaging or single definitive answers, but lived experience, contradiction, debate, and advice that feels like it comes from real people dealing with real situations like parenting, money, housing, health, and sport. Jen Wong, Reddit’s chief operating officer, described this as an “antidote to AI slop.” Reddit, she says, isn’t clean; it’s messy. You have to sift through different points of view, and increasingly, that is the point.

For communicators, this raises several important points. For a start, Reddit is no longer a niche platform you choose to engage with or ignore. It’s become part of the discovery layer of the internet. People may encounter your organization, your industry, or your issue there before they ever see your website or your carefully crafted statement. Search visibility is no longer just about content you own; it’s about conversations. Conversations at search engines and AI systems are now amplifying its scale.

Many organizations are still quietly hoping Reddit will remain hostile, chaotic, or irrelevant enough to ignore. That stance is becoming harder to justify when government departments are hosting AMAs (“Ask Me Anything”) and major public narratives are forming in plain sight. Finally, lurking is no longer neutral. Silence can allow perceptions—accurate or not—to solidify without challenge, context, or correction. So the question for communicators isn’t whether Reddit is for them, it’s whether they’re prepared for a world where human conversation, amplified by algorithms and AI, shapes reputation just as much as official messaging does. Look at the Omnicom layoffs announced not long before Christmas and the significant role Reddit played as a communication channel parallel to official company communication. We discussed this in depth in FIR 492 just a few weeks ago.

So, Shel, this feels like another signal that the ground is shifting under communicators’ feet. Where would you start unpacking what this means?

Shel Holtz: Well, if the ground is shifting, it’s because communicators weren’t standing in the right place in the first place. Reddit has been a significant and important platform for a long time. I’ve been advocating for communicators to start taking advantage of it for many years. I’m glad to see it getting this kind of attention, and there are a lot of reasons to consider using this in multiple ways—including the fact that AI is now relying on Reddit for some of the content that it’s trained on.

Let’s look at just a couple of things about Reddit. First of all, the people on Reddit are very committed to the communities that they are part of. This is not a “drop-in” community like we see on LinkedIn, nor is it tight, insular communities like you see on Facebook. These welcome new people, but they’re looking for people who are very committed to engaging, sharing, and contributing. Second, there’s no algorithm driving what rises to the top. It’s the community that upvotes the most valuable posts. That’s why you see the most valuable information at the top of any thread. It’s why in the early days, BuzzFeed relied on Reddit to determine what content it was going to publish. Reddit had the nickname “the front page of the internet,” and how you can ignore that eludes me.

If you look at what happened with Omnicom, that’s just one thing it’s useful for: social listening and insight generation. It is also issues management and crisis communication. If these large communities are talking about your industry, company, or product, and you’re not listening, you’re missing what is being discussed more broadly via “sneakernet”—people just talking to each other voice-to-voice or over instant messages where you can’t hear it. This is where you gather that intelligence to help you come up with the next product iteration or address issues important to your stakeholder base.

I use Reddit basically two ways. One, whenever I have a problem with a product, like my Nikon Z6 II camera, there is a community there more than happy to answer my question. While I’m there, I’ll scroll through and see if there’s something I can contribute, because it’s important to give as well as take. The other is monitoring construction subreddits for good intelligence that I can share up in the organization. There are so many other ways to take advantage of Reddit, and now is the time to invest.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I’ve been on Reddit for about 10 years with an account. In those early days, it was very much a geeky place—not really mainstream. But reality, as the Guardian’s analysis outlines, is that you can’t just treat it like that anymore if you’re wearing a business hat. It is showing up in places like Google AI overviews and is heavily surfaced in those search results because of the licensing deal that allows Google to train models on Reddit data.

The UK government is active on Reddit, with departments hosting “Ask Me Anythings” to engage with people. That sort of activity is probably more appropriate for Reddit than LinkedIn, where I’ve seen government activities attract nothing but extreme, politically motivated negativity in the comments. On Reddit, you’re probably going to get a more balanced view.

The Omnicom example was really intriguing. The depth of comment on Reddit told lived experience stories that contrasted sharply with the formal communication from corporate communicators. It was a subject lesson in how not to do this from a corporate point of view. Ignoring it is not an option anymore.

Shel Holtz: You mentioned “Ask Me Anythings.” That is a great opportunity to present your CEO or subject matter experts to build reputation proactively or reactively during a crisis. Siemens did an AMA featuring their engineers and reported strong click-through rates. Novo Nordisk leaned into sensitive topics and reported an “astoundingly positive reception”. Oatly and IBM also reported strong engagement and brand lift through this format. Of course, there are disasters if executives are not well-prepared, as authenticity is highly valued.

Community engagement is another missed opportunity. Wayfair uses discovery tools on Reddit to surface conversations about their service and pops in to answer questions and address issues. You can build relationships with customers, enthusiasts, and even critics. You can also use it for your employer brand to monitor interview processes and culture signals. The CEO of Starbucks explicitly treated a Reddit hiring thread as a signal that a culture shift was taking hold.

Neville Hobson: I think one reason for past failures is that companies brought their old methods of communicating to a place where that just doesn’t work. The Guardian findings show that human experience now outranks polish. If you come to Reddit with all your corporate baggage and structured messaging, it’s not going to work. Users are actively seeking “signals of humanity,” and messiness is becoming a trust cue. It’s an “anti-automation” movement. Lurking is no longer neutral because you are being talked about whether you are present or not.

Shel Holtz: There’s an illusion of control that you get from things like press releases, but get over it—you don’t control the conversation. To be credible in these spaces, you have to stop being polished. “Press release voice” is a trigger on Reddit; plain talk is valued. Make sure you have the right subject matter expert in the right subreddits who can talk in a plain voice. Don’t just do “drive-by” communication when you need something; be a regular contributor.

Neville Hobson: So, human experience-led communications are regaining strategic value. You can’t ignore this.

Shel Holtz: LinkedIn’s value seems to be diminishing as it turns into a combination of Facebook with non-business content and AI-generated posts. If you’re looking for a community to tap into people who care about what you do, Reddit is the best place. You can even use paid amplification—Uber and Oreo have reported brand lift from boosted posts. Don’t dismiss it as hostile; develop a strategy and start doing it.

Neville Hobson: Keep an eye on the resurgence of other networks, too. The new “Digg” is coming, which was a fixture like Reddit in the early days. There is also “Tangle,” a new one from one of the Twitter founders focused on genuine conversation.

Shel Holtz: I’d keep an eye on them, but Reddit already exists with millions of users and tens of thousands of subreddits. Use it. Don’t ignore it. And that’ll be a “30” for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #495: Reddit, AI, and the New Rules of Communication appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In the long-form episode for December 2025, Neville and Shel explore the future of news from two perspectives, including The Washington Post‘s ill-advised launch of a personalized, AI-generated podcast that failed to meet the newsroom’s standards for accuracy, and the shift from journalists to “information stewards” as news sources. Also in this episode:

Links from this episode:

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 26.

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 [email protected].

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. 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:

Neville Hobson Hi everyone, and welcome to the For Immediate Release long-form episode for December 2025. I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz And I’m Shel Holtz.

Neville Hobson And we have six great stories to discuss and share with you that we hope you’ll enjoy listening to during Twixtmas. What is that, you may ask? Well, Twixtmas is the informal name for the relaxed period between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, typically focusing on the 27th to the 30th of December. It’s a time for winding down, enjoying leftovers, watching TV, listening to podcasts, and simply existing without the usual hustle of holidays or work before the new year starts.

The name comes from blending Twixt, an old English word for “between,” and Christmas. It’s a modern term for a timeless lull in the calendar, often called the “festive gap.” That’s probably more information than you wanted, but now you know what it means. So, without further ado, let’s begin the Twixtmas episode with a recap of previous shows since the November long-form one.

Shel Holtz We’ll have to start using that over here.

Neville Hobson That was FIR 489, published on the 17th of November. The story we led with in amplifying the long-form episode across social media was an explosion of “thought leadership slop,” where we riffed on a post by Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute. He identified idea inflation as a growing problem on multiple levels. Other stories in this 101-minute episode included quantum computing, vibe coding, “Is it OK to use an AI-generated photo in your LinkedIn profile?”, Dan York’s tech report, and more. And we have listener comments on this episode.

Shel Holtz We do, starting with Sherilyn Starkey up in Canada:

“I was just listening to the latest episode and you were commenting about a lack of female participation in podcasting. I thought I’d drop in a plug for my latest show, Stark Raving Social. I started it earlier this year and it delivers bite-sized episodes for marcomms pros. I do ‘how-to,’ ‘why you should,’ and ‘have you noticed’ type shows. I’m a hobbyist, so I publish when I have time and feel inspired, but it’s pretty regular. Last year I had a show where I interviewed 50 women over 50. And although the project’s complete, I still get about a thousand downloads monthly. I’ve been podcasting on and off since about 2007 and was—and still am—greatly inspired by FIR and your excellent work. Thank you.”

Thank you for that, Sherilyn, and hope to see you soon. Sherilyn’s terrific.

We have two comments on this episode from Darlene Wilson. She said:

“Enjoyed all of your content in this episode. Wanted to share that my role shifted from a marketing and comms managerial title to ‘Senior Manager, Corporate Brand and Communications’ a few years ago. It combines communication and brand leadership in one portfolio under which are marketing, sponsorship and events, promo, and change management. It’s a great role for a raging generalist. Moving brand and comms together—or brand under the comms umbrella—does signify part of a shift from end-deliverer of the message to a focus on reputation, trust, judgment, and the ability to oversee and connect what a company says and what it does. Given today’s environment, organizations do seem to want leaders, as Neville said, who bring judgment, sensitivity, and crisis literacy. That’s the comms person bringing broad and strategic thinking. Thank you both for your long-term commitment to this valuable profession.”

She added in another comment:

“The ‘every media revolution has slop’ analogy is directionally useful, but it can underweight what is genuinely discontinuous here: 1. Near zero marginal cost at massive scale, 2. Algorithmic distribution optimizing for engagement, and 3. Slop feeding back into training and ranking systems (i.e., model collapse plus search quality). If you treat it as just another cycle, you may miss that the mechanism is now self-reinforcing in ways Gutenberg-era pamphlets were not. The sources above—Google spam policies plus model collapse plus platform case studies—give you the evidence to make the distinction without turning the argument into moral panic.”

Neville Hobson Great comments. Thank you very much for that.

FIR 490 on the 1st of December: We unpacked some AI studies that claim to show what large language models actually read. But the sources shift month to month, and many citations aren’t reliable at all. We have a comment on this episode.

Shel Holtz From our friend, Niall Cook, who says:

“I don’t think anyone should be surprised that different studies report different results. It’s the same in many other research domains, but especially so here when the prompts, the models, the model parameters, and the methods will always produce differences—in the same way that no two users of the same generative AI system will get exactly the same response for the same question. We shouldn’t conflate visibility and citation reliability, though; two different things.”

Neville Hobson FIR 491 on the 8th of December shone a spotlight on big four consulting firm Deloitte, which created costly reports for two governments on opposite sides of the world, each containing fake resources generated by AI. Not only that, but a separate study published by the US Centers for Disease Control also included AI-hallucinated citations and the exact opposite conclusion from the real scientist’s research. We have a number of comments on this one.

Shel Holtz We have four, starting with Monique Zitnik:

“I’ve been nearly caught out with a source pointing to a website. After much digging, I discovered the website was AI-generated, and other websites had quoted this website. It was a myriad of AI-invented rubbish that sounded plausible.”

Mike Klein threw some praise your way, Neville. He said:

“It’s also a business model problem, as Neville pointed out in his excellent article for Strategic.”

That’s the magazine that Mike edits and you contributed to. He provided a link which we will add to the show notes; your article was titled Your Value is Not Your Timesheet.

Steve Lubetkin said:

“AI can be a useful tool, but humans need to review and confirm its output. The fact that they don’t or won’t is troubling.”

And Chris Lee wrote:

“You have both done some great episodes this year around AI. Very useful. Thanks. Keep them coming.”

Neville Hobson That was a great comment. Steve actually says it all: you’ve got to check up on all this stuff before you publish anything or rely on something. I see many more people now talking about it. You’ve got to verify everything all the time. You cannot trust it, whether it’s generated by AI or quoted by AI or linked to by the AI; you’ve got to verify all of that.

Shel Holtz Yeah, and I think we mentioned in one episode that I believe—and I think you do too—that there is likely to be a verification role that will be a new job classification. I’ve seen a little bit more about that since we made that assertion. There are actually companies that are hiring people to verify AI.

Neville Hobson That’s interesting, isn’t it?

In FIR 492 on the 15th of December, we looked at how the story of the untimely Omnicom layoffs in the US unfolded with one official investor-focused narrative and another on LinkedIn and Reddit. We observed that when people have platforms, the press release isn’t the whole story. We have one comment on this?

Shel Holtz Yes, from Roberto Capodici. Apologies if I pronounced that wrong. Roberto says:

“I think what’s really interesting here is how the whole situation highlights the tension between curated corporate narratives and the unpredictability of human experience playing out in public forums like LinkedIn.”

Neville Hobson In FIR 493 on the 22nd of December, we discussed how artificial early engagement can manufacture visibility that algorithms and media treat as significant. The tactics aren’t political; they’re portable and already familiar to communicators. It’s alarmingly easy to do.

And finally, we published an FIR interview on the 10th of December where we enjoyed a great discussion with Josh Bernhoff about his major survey of writers and AI. The deep divide between users and non-users, productivity gains, AI slop, trust, and the real story isn’t replacing people but resorting them. We have a comment or two, think, Shel?

Shel Holtz We have one. There are more on Josh’s repost of this. This one is from Susan Mangiero, PhD:

“I enjoyed your lively discussion about AI. In fact, I stopped the video and repeated several sections. I don’t think you addressed the use of AI for purposes of author marketing, unless I missed it:

What are your thoughts about using AI to help authors and their collaborating ghostwriters market their books?

Given Shel’s work in the area of employee communications, what are your thoughts about using AI for research? (Note: I do a lot of work with financial clients.) Josh, keep up the great work. I enjoy your blog. And the book survey was fascinating.”

Do you want to tackle these? I’m wrapping up work on a book right now. I have a proposal consultant helping me prepare the proposal, and I am thinking heavily about marketing these days. There’s no question that I will use AI as an aid to this in identifying targets to approach and testing language with different stakeholders. Every opportunity I have to use it to improve the marketing output, I will. I’m not going to outsource this to AI, but if AI can play devil’s advocate for me and help me brainstorm and ideate, I will take advantage of that all day long. What do you think?

Neville Hobson Absolutely, it is a natural tool to use. One of the biggest benefits of AI is its ability to literally be your right-hand person, your assistant who will work with you—not just respond to things you ask it, but challenge you on things. It’s the same as having a human being by your side, except this one doesn’t need to eat lunch.

It allows you to identify audiences, figure out what messaging is appropriate for which audience and when and where. It helps you concentrate on the next steps you’re to take.

Shel Holtz In terms of research for internal communication, I don’t see it as any different from research for external communication. It comes back down to the need to verify everything that you get.

I wrapped up a white paper for my company not too long ago on adaptive reuse of buildings. Since COVID, office occupancy has declined, and some large office buildings have defaulted on leases. The immediate thought is converting them to residences, but it’s harder than you think because of plumbing and natural light issues. The white paper explores other opportunities.

This is way outside my expertise, so I relied heavily on internal experts but also did a lot of research using Google’s Gemini Deep Research. I got a lot of great information, but some sources it found didn’t exist. I would have been humiliated if I had put out a white paper with that kind of information. I spent a lot of time verifying every source and every fact. It took less time than doing the research myself, but it was still time-consuming. As Steve Lubetkin noted, it’s disheartening that there are people who are not doing that.

Shel Holtz I want to let everybody know about the most recent Circle of Fellows, which is now available for you to listen to or watch. It was a great conversation about the future of communication in 2026 and beyond. Zora Artis, Bonnie Caver, Adrian Cropley, and Mary Hills were the panelists.

The next Circle of Fellows is coming up on Thursday, January 22, at noon Eastern time. The topic is the impact of mentoring. We have a great panel: Amanda Hamilton-Attwell, Brent Carey, Andrea Greenhous, and Russell Grossman. You can tune in live or watch the replay on the FIR Podcast Network.

Shel Holtz The core currency of a news organization isn’t its reporting; it’s trust. In mid-December, The Washington Post decided to trade that currency for a tech demo when it launched “Your Personal Podcast,” an AI-driven feature that generates audio summaries of the day’s news.

At its core, this doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Nicholas Negroponte suggested this in the 90s with the “Daily Me.” But at the Post, cracks appeared immediately. The AI mispronounced names, invented quotes, and editorialized. In one egregious example, AI announced a discussion on whether people with intellectual disabilities should be executed, stripping away the crucial context regarding a specific legal case.

According to internal documents obtained by Semafor, the product team knew exactly what they were releasing. During testing, between 68% and 84% of the AI-generated scripts failed to meet the newsroom’s own standards. In any other industry, a failure rate approaching 85% would trigger a recall, not a launch.

The Post is chasing a younger demographic that consumes audio, which is a valid goal. But serving them hallucinations doesn’t build a future audience; it alienates them. The Post needs to pull this tool, fix it, and apologize—not just for the errors, but for the decision to treat their subscribers as beta testers for a broken product.

Neville Hobson Extraordinary, truly. I was reading the NPR article you shared. It asks: “Will listeners embrace an AI news podcast?” The podcast is tailored to listeners based on what they’ve read in the Washington Post. That implies the likely listener is someone who spends a lot of time reading the Post, not a casual user.

It’s an intriguing step, but unfortunately, a misstep in terms of how they’ve dealt with it.

Shel Holtz Podcasting has become a staple for newspapers. The New York Times has The Daily and Hard Fork. Nothing is wrong with embracing podcasting. I just have a problem with the decision to launch it the way it was. The Washington Post is a storied institution—Katherine Graham, Ben Bradlee, Watergate, the Pentagon Papers. With this one decision, they have undermined that legacy.

Neville Hobson It symbolizes much of what is not right in the United States at the moment regarding freedom of speech and truth-telling. You mentioned Jeff Bezos owns the Post; where is the independence of journalists?

Shel Holtz We’re rapidly seeing this converted into state media, which is terrifying.

Neville Hobson Let’s talk about Martin Sorrell, the founder of WPP. On December 17th, in a debate on BBC Radio 4’s Today program, he declared the death of PR. Appearing with him was Sarah Waddington, the Chief Executive of the PRCA.

Sorrell made the blunt assertion that public relations is effectively dead and that the world has moved on to scale, reach, and speed—flooding the internet with content. Sarah Waddington pushed back firmly, anchoring PR in enduring purpose: helping organizations explain who they are and building trust.

The exchange was combustible, with Sorrell frequently talking over Waddington. Many felt Waddington was defending a way of thinking about communication that resists reduction to metrics alone.

Shel Holtz Every time Martin Sorrell opens his mouth, I roll my eyes. He once said WPP was more critical than human mortality. Advertising and public relations are not interchangeable. Advertising is about selling stuff; PR is about building relationships.

I always come back to the tuna boycott example. When StarKist addressed dolphin safety in their nets, PR agency Burson-Marsteller brought the parties to the table. The boycott organizers came out saying, “StarKist are the good guys.” Advertising could never have achieved that credibility.

Neville Hobson It feels like he was being provocative to generate headlines. But he seems to genuinely believe that scale, reach, and speed are what matter. If Sorrell thinks flooding the internet with detergent ads is the future, I think he’s crazy. I applaud Sarah Waddington for her calmness in the face of his bullying behavior.

Shel Holtz I challenge Sir Martin to find a client that will outsource their next existential crisis to WPP to handle with advertising. Let’s see how that goes.

Shel Holtz The death of local news has been a consistent drumbeat. A new report from Northwestern University confirms news deserts have hit a record high. But a piece from the Nieman Journalism Lab argues the news hasn’t died; it just relocated to barbershops, church halls, and Facebook groups.

The Press Forward report suggests we look for “Information Stewards”—librarians, civic leaders, admins of neighborhood groups. If you’re a communicator, you can’t pitch a press release to a group chat, but you can provide clarity. Supply these stewards with fact sheets and FAQs. Trust has migrated from institutions to individuals.

Neville Hobson In the UK, local news is declining, though where I live in Somerset, there are three lively local papers. But generally, the commercial scale for local news is difficult. The idea of “Information Stewards” reminds me of the Epic 2015 flash video from years ago, which predicted a similar future.

Shel Holtz Local news is vital for accountability—school boards, zoning commissions. If no one reports on them, officials can do whatever they want. We need to reach these information stewards.

Greetings, Shel and Neville, and all our listeners all around the world. Is Dan York coming at you from a snowy Shelburne, Vermont? And I want to begin this final episode of twenty twenty five, reflecting back on some of the topics and then upcoming changes with some of the things I’ve been talking about over these many episodes. A big one, of course, has been Mastodon and decentralized social media in general, and that had some big changes that have been happening in the past month.

Right around the time where we were recording the November show, there was a change at the the head of Mastodon. Now Mastodon is open source software, been around for ten years. That was created by a gentleman named Eugen Rochko, and he is the founder of this uh, has been based in Germany. And over time the organization evolved to be a German. Well, it tried to be a nonprofit, but then they’re a for profit entity. It’s they’re now in the scope of twenty twenty five. They have been looking to transfer to a, um, to a full non-profit, European based non-profit entity, most likely based in Belgium, according to the latest plans and all that, and they’re going through that process. But in the meantime, in late November twenty twenty five, Eugen announced that he will be stepping down as CEO and taking on a role as an advisor.

Now, this is critical because anybody who’s watched startups, whether they’re companies or whether they’re projects, knows that there’s a critical point when the founder needs to step away and let another management team come in and run the organization and grow. I have seen too many projects, including ones that I’ve led myself, where the founder, including myself, has stayed on too long and it just it dies at some point. Sometimes there are there are certainly cases where it has not, but there’s other times when it needs to move from the founder to others. So huge props to to Eugen and all the masks on folks for taking this step. And so there is a new leadership team. There’s a new executive director, a technical director, a community director, and there’s a team of employees and people who are continuing to evolve. Mastodon as one of the leading properties within the broader Activitypub based space that we call the Fediverse. So look for more to happen.

There’s a greater evolution going on over the scope of twenty twenty six. So cool things happening. I’ll note that this year, too many Mastodon servers just played on this whole wrapped thing, right? So you could get a wrap Staddon for twenty twenty five that wrapped up your most popular posts.

Some of the things you did, the most used hashtags, your archetype, all these different kinds of things. A little bit of fun just in the theme of all of the various different wrap things that are out there, but the fediverse will, I think, see a lot of activity and decentralised activity in general, because you’re seeing that through Mastodon and the other parts of the Fediverse. You’re seeing that with blue Sky and some tremendous work happening within the at, at protocol and some pieces that were there. Tim Chambers, somebody I come to really enjoy his writing over the time around open social items had a whole series of of predictions.

I’ll have the link for the show notes. He included some that were what he considered safe bets like blue Sky will cross sixty million registered users in twenty twenty six. He thinks he thinks the overall Activitypub fediverse outside of threads will cross fifteen million registered users, monthly active users, etc.. Uh, he’ll look at he had some ideas around threads. We’ll pass five hundred million. There’ll be continued federation. Anyway, if you’re looking for quick takes, it’s a good read. It’s some kind of interesting, fun stuff to think about and see where it will go around that.

Now, another story that I’ve been following this whole year has been internet governance kind of issues. And that culminated this month with a meeting at the United Nations called the World Summit on the Information Society. The twenty year review shortcut it has with this plus twenty. The good news coming out of all of that was that the governments of the world continued the path that we’re on, where everybody can be involved in some fashion in shaping the future of the internet, what was called in policy circles, the multi-stakeholder process.

But basically it means everybody has the potential to be involved in some way. It’s how the internet has worked since its origins. But there were some governments that wanted to put a different spin on it, where only governments would be involved and not businesses such as many of those of us listening to this, or universities or Or individual users. Anybody else like that?

So there were some good things that happened here. And something called the Internet Governance Forum, or IGF, has been made permanent rather than being renewed every ten years. It also had some other elements that recognize the the global network of national, regional and youth igfs that are happening all around the world. This is a venue, a way in which people, all of us listening, can be involved in internet governance. So it’s a great move, good step, lots of things. What am I looking at in twenty twenty six? You know, this whole episode is going to be about AI in different forms. I’ll be watching that too, specifically around the AI Agentic platform agents, the different pieces that were there and the different parts.

There’s a good article written by somebody over at the Open Future Foundation around why Wikimedia needs a seat at the Agentic AI Foundation, pointing out the work that happened in December that OpenAI and Anthropic and Block announced the creation of the Agentic AI Foundation, which also had Google, Microsoft, AWS, Bloomberg and Cloudflare joining into it. A lot of the commercial players all doing this. The point of this article was that it needs to have folks like Wikimedia involved and others. But in general, I personally will continue to be watching what’s happening at this agent level.

Agent to agent. Because that’s so much, I think, of what we’re going to be seeing as we increasingly look at AI driven tools and things. You know, that I’ll continue to be talking about decentralized social media, Mastodon, everything else. I’ll continue to be looking at, uh, internet and internet access.

You’ll hear me talk about low Earth orbit satellites, I’m sure, because we’re actually getting into a competitive situation where it’s more than just Starlink out there and also internet and information resilience. And so I want to leave you to a pointer, actually to a long read called landslide semicolon. A ghost story from Aaron Cassin, and I’ll have a link for the notes. But she writes a very long article piece around starting out about earthquakes, but getting into our information ecosystem and where we are, what’s out there, how it’s jumbled.

It’s worth reading and thinking about. Because really, the point is we need to think about how we have stories, how we work with things, how we have resilience in the information that we receive in some different forms. I encourage you to take a read about that. Think about it. Think what we will do in twenty twenty six. And with that, I wish you all a Happy New Year. I look forward to coming back at you in January. That’s all. You can find more of my audio writing at Dan York. Bye for now and back to you. Shel and Neville, Happy New Year.

Neville Hobson In a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “AI is About to Empty Madison Avenue,” Rajiv Kohli of Columbia Business School argues that AI is quietly dismantling the agency model. Google, Meta, and Amazon are using AI to automate the advertising value chain.

While advertisers see efficiency, agencies see an existential threat. Madison Avenue isn’t being disrupted by better ideas, but by better systems. Kohli warns that unless things change, advertising may become a clear example of AI-driven creative hollowing out.

Shel Holtz I recently joined the advisory board for an AI certificate program at the University of San Francisco. The faculty stated they don’t believe AI will take jobs, which made me want to bang my head on the table. It already is.

Organizations need to strategize: what are the risks of outsourcing everything to AI? You can be efficient, but what do you lose? If you outsource everything, you’re going to see advertising overwhelmed with “slop.”

Neville Hobson The focus on speed and efficiency misses the important part: the people. We need to help educate leaders that AI should augment people, not replace them.

Shel Holtz In a capitalist society, leaders feel compelled to maximize ROI. If they can run a company with no employees and produce larger returns, they will. That’s why strategic analysis is vital to show where humans add value.

Shel Holtz Merriam-Webster has crowned “slop” as its Word of the Year for 2025. It defines it as digital content of low quality produced by AI. But a Scientific American article reminds us that every media revolution produces rubbish. The printing press produced libelous pamphlets; desktop publishing produced ransom-note newsletters.

The backlash isn’t a rejection of AI, but of low quality. To stand out in a sea of slop, your content needs to be exceptional.

Neville Hobson That Scientific American piece was great—calling Gutenberg the “ChatGPT of the 1450s.” It isn’t anti-AI; it’s about the sheer volume. If you automate production at scale, that’s flooding the internet, and much of it will be slop.

Shel Holtz You have to stay on top of the research. A study found people liked AI-generated ads more than human ones—until they were told it was AI. That shows an anti-AI bias, but also that the “human in the loop” matters for trust.

Neville Hobson There is a growing confidence that we can tell when something is written by AI. But in the Financial Times, Elaine Moore argues that most “AI tells”—like the use of dashes or words like “delve”—are just normal writing habits. Large Language Models sound human because they are trained on us.

However, Wikipedia has a field guide to spotting AI writing, looking for clusters of signals like vague abstractions. The debate is shifting from “Can we detect AI?” to “How much certainty do we really need?”

Shel Holtz If the writing meets our needs and is accurate, do I care if it was written by a human or a machine? Disclosure is going to be important for trust purposes.

Neville Hobson Trust is becoming ever more important. Finding a source you can trust—someone who verifies and doesn’t hoodwink you—is the key.

Shel Holtz I used Google Gemini to help find sources for my book, but I checked every single one. I saved time, but I kept the human in the loop.

Shel Holtz We hope you enjoy your Twixtmas. Please leave us a comment on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, or Blue Sky. You can email us at fircomments [at] gmail [dot] com or leave a voicemail on the FIR Podcast Network website.

Our next long-form episode will drop on Monday, January 26th. We will resume our short mid-week 30 for This episodes starting next week.

The post FIR #494: Is News’s Future Error-Riddled AI-Generated Podcasts, or “Information Stewards”? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

For somebody who posts on X or other social media platforms to become recognized by the media and other offline institutions as a significant, influential voice worth quoting, it usually takes patience and hard work to build an audience that respects and identifies with them. There is another way to achieve the same kind of reputation with far less work. According to a research report from the Network Contagion Research Institute, American political influencer Nick Fuentes opted for the second approach, a collection of tactics that made it appear like a huge number of people were amplifying his tweets within half an hour of posting them. While Fuentes wields his influence in the political realm, the tactics he employed are portable and available to people looking for the same quick solution in the business world. In this short midweek episode, we’ll break down the steps involved and the warning signs communicators should be on the alert for.

Links from this episode:

Raw Transcript:

Neville Hobson: Hi everybody and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 493. I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz, and today I’m going to wade deep into America’s culture and political wars. I swear to you, I’m not doing this because of any political or social agenda on my part. What I’m going to share with you is not a social or political problem, it’s an influence problem. And in communications, influence and influencers have become top of mind.

We’re going to look at the rise of Nick Fuentes’s significance on the social and political stage. For listeners outside the US, you may not know who Fuentes is. He’s a US-based online political influencer and live stream personality who’s built a following around the “America First” ecosystem and has sought influence within right-of-center audiences, including by positioning himself in opposition to mainstream conservative organizations like Turning Point USA and encouraging supporters to disrupt their events. Tucker Carlson has had him on his show as a guest. President Donald Trump has hosted him at the White House for a dinner.

In a recent report that our friend Eric Schwartzman highlighted on LinkedIn—that’s how I found it—the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) asserts that Fuentes is a fringe figure whose public profile rose to a level of significance by manipulating online systems. The NCRI, by the way, is an advocacy group focusing on hate groups, disinformation, misinformation, and speech across social media platforms. It’s been around since, I think, 2008. And they’ve taken their own fair share of criticism for bias, but this report looked pretty well researched, and there will be a link to it in the show notes.

The techniques that Fuentes used to rise to significance are, and this is the key here: If bad actors can inflate the perceived importance of a fringe political figure, the same mechanics can inflate the perceived importance of a product, a brand, a CEO, a labor dispute, or a crisis narrative.

I’ll share the details right after this.

In modern media ecosystems, visibility is often treated as evidence of significance. Of course, when the system can be tricked into manufacturing visibility, it can be tricked into manufacturing significance. Here’s the playbook. The report focuses heavily on what happens immediately after a post is published, specifically the first 30 minutes. That window matters because platforms like X use early engagement as a signal of relevance. If a post seems to be spreading fast, the algorithm acts like a town crier, showing it to more people.

The researchers compared 20 recent posts from several online figures. Their finding was that Fuentes’s posts regularly generated unusually high retweet velocity in the first 30 minutes, enough to outpace accounts with vastly larger follower bases. It outpaced the account of Elon Musk, for example.

The key detail here isn’t just the volume of retweets, it’s the timing. Rapid, concentrated engagement right after posting creates the illusion that the content is taking off, kicking it into recommendation streams. This is the same basic mechanic behind launch day boosting. You’ve seen this for people who have a new book out and they go out to friends and ask them to boost that new book the day it’s released. If you can create the appearance of immediate traction, you can trigger algorithm distribution that you didn’t earn.

In commerce, this shows up as engagement pods, coordinated employee advocacy swarms, and community groups that behave like a click farm. If your measurement system rewards velocity, someone can and will manufacture velocity.

So who’s responsible for those early retweet bursts? Across the 20 posts studied, 61% of Fuentes’s early tweets came from accounts that repeatedly retweeted multiple posts in the same window. In other words, this wasn’t a crowd. It was a repeatable mechanism, the same actors over and over, hitting the algorithm where it’s most sensitive. In business, you don’t need millions of genuine fans to create the signal of traction. You need a reliable, repeatable set of accounts that behave predictably at the right moment. This is why a relatively small number of coordinated actors can distort what public response appears to be, especially early in a narrative when journalists and internal leaders are trying to interpret what’s happening.

The report describes the amplification network as dominated by accounts that aren’t meaningfully identity-bearing. Among the repeat early retweeters, 92% were anonymous. Furthermore, many of these accounts were essentially single-purpose. They existed solely to boost specific messaging. Now, anonymity is a feature, not a bug in manufactured influence. In a corporate context, we see this as sock puppet commenters flooding a CEO’s LinkedIn post with applause or fake grassroots accounts inflating outrage against a policy change. If you’ve ever seen a comment section where the voices feel oddly similar and oddly committed, you’ve seen the symptom.

Perhaps the most operationally important finding involves outsourced capacity. Before a major inflection point in September, about half of the retweets on Fuentes’s most viral posts came from foreign, non-U.S. accounts. The report highlights concentrations in countries like India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia. There’s no organic reason for these regions to be driving a U.S.-centric fringe political account. These geographies match known patterns associated with low-cost engagement farms.

If you’ve ever dealt with fake reviews or fake webinar attendees, you understand the market for outsourced attention. It’s snake oil. The same infrastructure used to inflate a political persona can inflate a brand narrative, especially when the goal is to trigger secondary effects like investor interest or the internal belief that everyone’s talking about this.

In the report, Fuentes isn’t presented as a passive beneficiary of an algorithm. The report states that he repeatedly issues direct instructions to followers: “Retweet this. Everybody retweet.” Turning amplification into a synchronized act. If you run employee advocacy programs or franchise networks, you’re already sitting on “raid capability.” The ethical version is mobilizing real stakeholders transparently. The unethical version is instructing coordinated networks to simulate stakeholder response specifically to game recommendation systems.

This is where communicators need to be brutally honest. The distance between campaign mobilization and manufactured consensus can be uncomfortably short.

Fuentes’s final move is the flywheel. Once you’ve manufactured signals that look like relevance, institutions treat those signals as real. The report argues that mainstream media coverage increased sharply after major news shocks, while the persistent manufactured engagement helped keep the subject elevated between those shocks. It also reports a 60% increase in high-status framing of the subject in mainstream articles after that inflection point.

This is classic social proof laundering. Once a narrative appears prominent on-platform, it becomes easier to place it off-platform: press mentions, analyst notes, investor chatter. At that point, people stop asking, “Is this real?” And start asking, “How big is this?”

For business communicators, here are three practical takeaways.

First, treat attention as an attack surface. If a narrative is unusually fast, unusually concentrated, or driven by accounts that don’t look like real stakeholders, assume you’re looking at influence operations.

Second, build signal hygiene into your intelligence process. If your team reports on social activity, incorporate basic credibility checks, like repeat actors, anonymity patterns, and geographic anomalies.

And third, audit your own incentives. If your organization celebrates reach metrics without interrogating provenance, you’re teaching everyone—agencies, vendors, and bad actors—that synthetic engagement is rewarded.

This isn’t just a problem that’s “out there.” The PR and marketing industries have plenty of muscle memory around manufacturing perception. The difference is whether we keep that muscle under ethical control or let the algorithm decide what we’re willing to do. Just because you can manufacture influence doesn’t mean you should.

Neville Hobson: That’s quite a story, Shel. I’m wondering how many people in our profession truly understand how this actually works. Your call to action, as it were, was to pay attention to this and pay attention to that. But I think people need to understand why and the deeper picture surrounding it.

So, for instance, the report—some of which you summarized in your narrative—struck me. And indeed, from the summary I asked ChatGPT to create (that saved me reading the whole damn thing), it was very helpful. According to the report, the researchers said that Fuentes consistently generates extraordinary engagement in the first 30 minutes after posting on X. Early retweet velocity outperforms accounts with 10 to 100 times more followers than he’s got. You mentioned Elon Musk; he’s one of them. When normalized by follower count, his engagement is orders of magnitude higher than comparative political influencers.

Why does this matter? This to me is significant to try and get a handle on this. Platform algorithms heavily weight early velocity as a sign of relevance. So once triggered, content is promoted regardless of whether engagement is authentic. Speed, not scale, is a manipulation lever. This is a critical insight for communicators. Algorithms cannot distinguish motivation, only momentum.

So when people talk about—as they do, and I remember using this 10 years ago as a sign that something is working—”Look at how this thing’s taken off!” This is seriously significant: understanding how this works.

Another part of that is, as you mentioned, the foreign origin engagement—the synthetic catalyst, if you like. Half the retweets on Fuentes’s most viral posts came from non-US accounts, and you ran off a list of countries that are the prime originators of large volume. It says there is no plausible ideological or cultural reason for these regions to be organically amplifying a US-centric white nationalist figure. Makes sense, doesn’t it? So why does that matter? Well, these geographies closely match known low-cost engagement farm infrastructures. So foreign engagement appears to act as a spark, creating the illusion of virality.

And it uses phrases that most people won’t know about—I’m only just getting familiar with it myself—like classic “signal laundering.” You’ve heard of money laundering, right? But now signal laundering. It highlights this coordinated amplification, which is not spontaneous engagement. It’s not enthusiasm spreading naturally, it’s coordination masquerading as popularity.

So I think all of us, as communicators trying to grasp something like this to understand the significance of it, are going to have to spend a little extra time understanding how it all works.

There’s one element that came out that I thought, “Wow, yes, you see this.” I can think of two people I follow on LinkedIn who do this. Illustrating Fuentes in this example is not a passive beneficiary; he actively runs it. The evidence includes hundreds of documented instances where he issues real-time commands on live streams like “Retweet this,” “Everyone retweet,” “Quote tweet it now.” I see people doing that even on LinkedIn. There’s one individual I’m not going to mention—because it wouldn’t be right to do that in this way—who has got thousands and thousands of followers. I was looking back through some of his recent posts and they are full of stuff like that. His email newsletter is nothing but that, actually. These directives align precisely with the early velocity spikes observed in the data, according to the report.

Interestingly, X’s own policies say that this behavior qualifies as coordinated inauthentic activity, platform manipulation, and spam amplification, yet the activity persists on X. So to me, the question for everyone listening is: surely you cannot trust a platform like X with your brand messaging, right? So why are you still there in that case?

It means loads more we could dissect in that context, but I think it’s necessary for people to truly understand how this works before you can understand what to do about it.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, and you asked how many people in our business might actually understand this. I think if you look at a department like mine where there’s two of us and we’re mostly focused on internal communications, this doesn’t hit our radar. But if you’re a marketing agency and you are tasked with elevating a brand, you got to figure that if a 25-year-old white nationalist fringe character on the social-political scene can figure this out, the people running digital media for a mid-sized agency can easily figure this out.

I suspect there are probably YouTube videos telling you how to do this. You sign up with one of those farms in one of those countries that has the instruction to amplify every time you tweet, and you’re off to the races. And as you mentioned from the report, the algorithm can’t really tell the difference.

Now, this is something that I think is in large part on the platforms—whether it’s X or any of the others—to improve their processes so they can identify and block this sort of thing. The idea that you can start to get media coverage, that people will start including you in their reporting because you appear significant as a result of this blatant manipulation—when you really wield no influence, when the people retweeting you have accounts that have been set up just to retweet you—that’s on them, I think. But they’re clearly not doing anything about it. Musk wouldn’t do anything about it. I wouldn’t expect him to. Zuckerberg’s not going to do anything about it. I wouldn’t expect him to. I wish he would, but knowing what I know about these people, I wouldn’t expect them to spend time and money becoming more ethical. It’s just not in their DNA.

So it’s on us. And where I can see this being used in the business context most blatantly is by advocacy groups when an organization is having a crisis. Because who speaks first is the one who gets the traction. Everything else is reacting and responding to that. And if you could get that kind of momentum, that kind of velocity, that kind of visibility for your point of view in opposition to the perspective of the organization experiencing the crisis, then you’re going to win in that crisis. It’s going to be very difficult for the organization, even employing the best digital crisis communication practices, to overcome that kind of a process.

So this is why I think we need to be aware of this. From my perspective, I have my own personal views about Fuentes and the fact that he’s doing this, but that’s not what this is about. This is about the fact that if Fuentes can do it, your opposition can. It might be, let’s say, a union if you’re a non-union company and they’re trying to get a foot in the door. It could be a competitor trying to make you look bad and elevate their own organization as an investment or as a provider of goods or services. All of them can take advantage of this process because it’s possible.

And frankly, once you dig into it, while it seems complicated, it really isn’t. It’s just subscribing to these services, getting everything set up, and then you just start tweeting or posting on LinkedIn or wherever it is, and everything just follows.

Neville Hobson:: Yeah, I think I mentioned LinkedIn the way I did, but X is the serious negative platform, right? But I would imagine most other platforms that are used for business purposes are subject to this manipulation. And it makes you think you need to know more about the places that you spend time and populate and share information about your business.

The report goes into—or rather the interpretation I’ve made certainly—implications for communicators and organizations, or the key takeaways, I suppose, to summarize it all. I mean, you’re right, the report is long, and it would benefit from a simplified executive summary. Maybe what we’ve prepared might help people get a better handle on what to look at.

But some of the interesting things that summarize it: “Algorithms amplify speed, not authenticity.” And that’s what I think most people—and I’ve been guilty of this too—where speed is really the important thing here. The velocity of your message getting out there and going viral, as people still use that term, is what it’s all about. Absolutely, that’s not what it’s all about. And in this particular age we’re in now with artificial intelligence, I’m arguing very strongly that it is not about speed at all. It’s about being in the right place at the right time with the right message, not necessarily being the first or the fastest with that message.

Another point: “Anonymous and foreign networks can manufacture legitimacy.” How do you figure that out? Interestingly, and I agree with this very much so, “Mainstream media mistakes visibility for importance.” Absolutely true in my view. So all these tactics are portable.

And the final point, I suppose—there’s like 20 more I’ve got for now anyway—the real issue is not who used the playbook to do this. It’s how easy the playbook is to use. I think it’s absolutely right. And I think many people would succumb to kind of increased pressure to play the game because that’s what everyone else seems to be doing. But also it throws up, I think, a bigger concern. It’s become harder to measure engagement if what you’re measuring is suspect.

So that adds some big questions on how are you going to proceed from this point on. So:

What signals do you treat as evidence of relevance?

How easily could those signals be fabricated?

Are we rewarding momentum over substance? You need to know the difference.

And where does responsibility sit? Platform, media, or practitioner? Or all of the above?

Those are four questions—there’s probably lots more—but that might not be a bad starting point.

Shel Holtz: I don’t think it would. And I think the more practitioners who become aware of this, those that abide by an ethical code, need to raise their voices because I think the more pressure there is on the platforms, the more they will look to change the infrastructure to address this. If nobody complains or if it’s just people on the fringe like us, then nothing’s going to change.

And you’re right, Fuentes started all of this before the AI revolution. And AI is just going to make this worse with the ability to create those posts that get amplified because you have manipulated the system the way Fuentes has. So I’d like to see people kind of raise their voices. Maybe professional associations need to start advocating on behalf of fixing this. You know, AI has led a lot of people to talk about authenticity more than we already were, and we already were a lot. And if authenticity matters, then I really do think we need to raise our voices and demand change from the platforms so that people can’t do this.

Neville Hobson: I agree.

Shel Holtz: And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #493: How to (Unethically) Manufacture Significance and Influence appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.