Leaked audio of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon reveals an executive who has dug in his heels and has no interest in listening to the voice of the employee. In the clip, he essentially tells employees, “My way or the highway.”

While the return-to-office mandates don’t represent a majority of businesses, they have been high-profile, as have employee responses, most of which plead for continued accommodation of remote or hybrid work schedules. Executives, of course, are empowered to make the final decision, but ignoring the voice of the employee comes with high risks, including the loss of top talent and disengagement among those who remain.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that productivity and morale are higher with remote workers, but that ultimately depends on the culture the organization has established to support it. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel listen to Dimon’s rant and offer their thoughts on the state of work in this volatile era.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 24.

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 451 of four immediate release. I’m Shel Holtz.

Neville: And I’m Neville Hobson. Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase made headlines last week when a leaked recording of a staff meeting captured him delivering an expletive filled tirade about remote work. His frustration was clear. He’s had it with hybrid working bureaucracy and what he sees as employees slacking off on Zoom. We’ll dive into his rant next. In his rant, diamond dismissed work from home Fridays as a fast. He claimed Gen Z employees are being left behind due to remote work and accused staff of wasting time in meetings and approvals. He made it clear JP Morgan employees should be in the office or find another job. It is a stark example of the growing divide between corporate leaders trying to enforce [00:01:00] return to office policies and employees who have embraced flexibility the way Diamond delivered.

His message raises bigger questions, not just about the future of work, but about leadership itself. Here’s a clip of the last 20 seconds of diamond’s remarks where he lays into remote work bureaucracy and his expectations for JP Morgan employees. Bear in mind the tone and included expletives, so put your earbuds in if you’re listening in the office.

Jamie Dimon: Now you have a choice. You don’t have to work at JP Morgan. So the people of you who don’t wanna work at the company, that’s fine with me. I’m not, I’m not mad at you. Don’t be mad at me. It’s a free country. You can walk with your feet, you know? But this company’s gonna set our own standards and do it our own way. I. And, and I’ve had it with this kind of stuff and you [00:02:00] know, I, I come in, you know, I’ve been working seven days a goddamn week since Covid, and I come in and I, where’s everybody else? Are they here or there? And the zooms and the zooms don’t show up. And people say they didn’t get stuff. So that’s not how you run a great company. We didn’t build this great company by doing that, by doing the same semi disease shit that everybody else does.

Neville Hobson: Well, that’s quite something. Shell really quite extraordinary. His remarks are a, a high profile example of the ongoing struggle between executives pushing for office returns and employees who value flexibility. His outburst may energize some traditionalists, but at risks alienating younger workers, harming employee morale and reinforcing jps Morgan. Morgan’s image as an inflexible employer, it serves as a strong [00:02:00] example of executive missteps in workplace communication. broader debate on remote work’s future undoubtedly continue, but diamond’s handling of the issue may not win. JP Morgan, the hearts and minds of its workforce. shell, what’s your take on his approach?

Shel Holtz: His approach suck. Is my take on his approach. Yeah. It, it’s, it’s made headlines, but the reality of the workplace tells a, a different story despite all of the skepticism from some executives. And I think it’s worth pointing out that something like 60% of organizations are sticking with their, their hybrid or remote arrangements they, they continue to thrive in this.

Configuration and the data overwhelmingly supports the staying power of, of hybrid and remote work arrangements. You have studies consistently show that nearly one in four active job listings still offer full-time hybrid or remote options. And this aligns with broader trends across [00:03:00] industries. A lot of companies recognize flexibility is a key factor in attracting and retaining talent.

I saw one study very recently that said retention is higher. In organizations that allow remote and hybrid work and, and the cost of replacing employees is high. And we, we see a lot of employees disaffected in the current work environment and even in sectors where leadership is pushing return to office, employees are resisting requests for remote work accommodations have searched, is one of the most sought

Workplace benefits, but the tension between employees and executives just keeps growing. There was a McKinsey report that highlighted the successful return to office strategies, focusing less on rigid policies and more on. Effective workplace practices, companies that force mandates without addressing employee concerns, risk disengagement, and attrition.

Deloitte [00:04:00] EY formerly, formerly Ernst and Young PWC, formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG are all experimenting with different hybrid models. Acknowledging that one size fits all doesn’t work. The firms recognize that employees expect some degree of autonomy in their work arrangements. In fact, autonomy.

And purpose are among the key intrinsic rewards that employees seek in the workplace. And all of this is reinforced by findings in the Washington Post, which point out that businesses rigidly enforcing return to office policies are facing, push pushback, higher turnover, and decreased productivity.

There’s also a major contradiction at play. Many executives are lamenting a lack of in-office collaboration. Yet employees report feeling unheard in workplace decisions. Internal communication best practices emphasize two-way dialogue, yet a lot of leaders out there like Jamie Diamond. Are failing to listen, engage for success.

This is a an [00:05:00] employee engagement initiative over there with you in the uk, Neville, they’ve long identified employee voice as one of the four enablers of engagement. When workers feel like their concerns are being dismissed, whether it’s about work flexibility, productivity measures, or broader company policies, then they disengage.

This recent internal backlash at Meta that we’ve seen is a case in point. Employees questioned leadership decisions only to have internal discussion forums, censored that deepens mistrust. So you have this widening gulf between employees and leaders. I. Interestingly, while Gen Z employees express a desire for more face-to-face interaction, it’s not necessarily about being physically in the office five days a week.

What younger workers want is meaningful connection, mentorship and clear career progression things that aren’t automatically guaranteed just by bringing people into the office. If anything, research shows us that hybrid work when done right, can enhance [00:06:00] collaboration rather than hinder it. There was a report in the magazine nature that underscored how hybrid models improve efficiency while maintaining work-life balance.

And then there’s morale Studies are emerging around hush hybrid. This is a phenomenon where employees pretend to comply with return to office policies while actually working remotely as much as possible. It’s their supervisors who are enabling this. So we get a major disconnect between leaders and employees.

One that can erode trust and weaken workplace culture. Companies like JP Morgan Chase that fail to acknowledge this risk. Alienating their workforce, particularly when there’s clear evidence that hybrid and remote work aren’t just popular, but effective diamond’s, broader fru frustration isn’t just about hybrid work.

His comments about cutting what he calls stupid DEI costs reflect a larger mindset shift among some corporate leaders. But whether it’s workplace flexibility [00:07:00] or diversity initiatives, executives who ignore employee sentiment do so with their own peril. Companies that succeed in this evolving landscape will be the ones that balance leadership priorities with genuine employee engagement.

The world of work has changed whether leaders like it or not, the smartest companies are fighting against. These aren’t fighting against these shifts, they’re adapting to them.

Neville: Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. Listen to what you’re saying. I mean, seen a lot of these surveys too in these reports, and the thing that I just wonder you know, surveys indicate time and time again that workers value flexibility with productivity studies, Showing mixed results on whether remote work hinders or enhances efficiency. many executives are struggling to enforce office attendance post pandemic, leading to tensions between leadership employees, as you point out. But this, this, we, this kind of surfaces with regularity. Every week almost seems to be, there’s another survey saying, here are the benefits, and [00:08:00] yet people like Jamie Diamond Say what they’re saying on one you know, on one level or another, a rant like his edicts about, you’ve gotta come to the office or the unspoken part, find another job. So what is it you think then that is going to, I guess. Make the common sense view as I see it according to the surveys the ascendant in all of this, and not the other way around. Because what I see almost every time I look at a business journal or the business section of the newspaper is another company’s trying to enforce you gotta come back to the office. That’s relentless. So is that, do you think?

Shel Holtz: I think it’s a combination of detachment and arrogance. I think the, these leaders are not close to their workers. They’re not listening. They’ve, they’ve shut down either their own ability to listen or the listening channels. I mean, Facebook meta, I. Has done this by censoring their internal [00:09:00] channels.

So employees can’t talk about this stuff with each other. And I think it was the, was it the CTO? I can’t remember his name, but he was reported at meta telling employees you called it the quiet part. He came right out and said, you don’t have to work here. I think Diamond said the same thing out loud too.

Neville: Oh, a number, a number of times in his rent. Yes.

Shel Holtz: Yeah. And that’s what’s happening in a lot of these return to office initiatives is that the best employees, the, the, the greatest talent in the organization, they’re the ones leaving they value the ability to have greater work-life balance that comes with a hybrid arrangement. And they’d rather work for an organization that appreciates that and accommodates it.

Rather than one that puts its foot down. Yeah. And, and there are some other issues that are emerging out of this as well. I mean, in addition to attrition, I was reading that Amazon, which has required all employees to come back to the office, finds it doesn’t have enough office space for them. So where are they gonna put ’em?

You know, I’ve probably, in [00:10:00] of the US federal government offices that are now

Neville: Well

Shel Holtz: I.

Neville: I was gonna, I was gonna mention that in, in the context of what is happening since Trump took office the firing of thousands of of public sector workers in the us. Is that, do you think I. Emboldening those companies with leaders like Jamie Diamond to really go hard on this. You’ve gotta come back and you can always leave if you don’t like the idea. stimulating, I guess more fear, more panic, more alarm about your own career and your, whether you’re gonna have a job or not. And, and so. The kind of stories that are part and parcel of the reporting, I suppose that people are leaving in droves. The best ones are going and finding work elsewhere.

Are they really? Is, is this perhaps another indicator of the you know, goodbye to the first two decades of this century? That was the golden time really of, of travel everywhere. Easy money, no low interest. Ideas people could start. the idea of [00:11:00] DEI took roots and suddenly that’s all in retreat in the face of this, this literal relentless authoritarianism we’re seeing that the US is certainly promoting and that’s having repercussions elsewhere in Europe, certainly so. Is this the end of, these choices that you better buckle down if you want to keep a job because you will not find it easy to get another one? Is that, is that what we’re looking at? Do you think?

Shel Holtz: At least the pendulum has swung that way for now. eventually swing back again, as it always does. But yeah, I think you have seen this kind of behavior from people like Mark Zuckerberg, who I think I. Initially felt like they needed to accommodate Trump in order to stay out of his crosshairs, and then found that this bro alpha male sort of approach to leadership appealed to him.

This is somebody, of course, who did not go to management school [00:12:00] or work his way up through an organization to learn how cultures work. He built a company from the ground up. He’s always been in charge and doesn’t know any better. He, he used to have Sheryl Sandberg there to sort of moderate him.

Now he’s saying she was the problem, her, her influence, led them to do all of these woke things. But you know, the job market is definitely tightening right now, but the best people will always be able. To find a job and the data that I shared, one in four job listings is either full-time hybrid or full-time remote.

Those people are gonna pick those best who are out looking for companies that accommodate that. And. You’re gonna end up with the companies like JP Morgan Chase are gonna be left with a workforce characterized by mediocrity and who wants to do business with that. I anticipate that if employees listen and say, yeah, I don’t wanna work here.

I can go get a job, I. Where I can have work life balance [00:13:00] and I can be productive and I can do great work, and I will come in when there’s a reason to come in. I, I just wrote about this today, by the way. I think face-to-face is vitally important. You just need to do it. As a mandate when there’s something going on where people are gonna be able to interact, because I gotta tell you, Neville when I am working in an open space I usually have an office with a closed door.

When I go to one of our offices, the other office I, I. Sit out in the open office environment. If I am nose down writing articles or preparing a report or editing video, I have my earbuds in so people won’t bother me. And this is really common in those environments. So bringing people into the office when the work they have to do is individual contributor work doesn’t create collaboration.

It doesn’t create innovation. It just creates frustration and isolation. Let people do that work at home, and I’m, of course I’m talking about [00:14:00] the people who can, there are obviously

many jobs out there that don’t work from home. I, I work in the construction industry. Buildings can’t build themselves with workers working from home and.

What we need to do is acknowledge that hybrid remote is the way of the world these days, and start to train managers to manage hybrid and remote teams so they understand how to do that in a way that doesn’t disenfranchise, disengage Those full-time onsite workers who feel like they don’t get to take advantage of a benefit that other workers do.

This is, this is a consequence of treating it like. It’s an interim solution to a short term problem as opposed to a tectonic shift in the way work is done.

Neville: I think another thing that got me thinking as well, listening to to diamond’s rent [00:15:00] he highlighted things. I see other people talking about other leaders and organizations, the ones who . Argue for a return to work. So Diamond’s example in this case was talking about the, the Zoom and the Zoomers who don’t show up.

I mean, I’m in on a Friday and where is everyone? They’re not here. he talks at the beginning of his rent. And this is where most of the. His expletives come in about people on Zoom calls, who all they do is is chat with each other and, and, and, you know, insult others, of what idiots they are and stuff like that. I, I, I refuse to believe that’s completely common practice in his organization that’s tells me there’s something seriously wrong in that organization. If that is the case.

Shel Holtz: What you’re looking at, there is a, a leader who is trying to force a. In the office culture on a workplace that is now hybrid and the culture has to change to accommodate it. The, the problem here is [00:16:00] not solved by making everybody come back to the office. It’s by implementing policies and building a culture in which people understand that this is the way we do things on Zoom, and this is, is not acceptable.

I mean, there to consequences for that kind of behavior, right?

Neville: Sure. I mean, he, he’s got a wholly different view to that, in which case I would argue just, if this is an example, nothing’s gonna change there at any time soon. As long as he’s the CEO

Shel Holtz: No, I don’t think anything’s gonna change there as long as the CEO is Jamie Diamond and the dinosaurs like him who look up in the sky and, and see the asteroid coming and say things don’t have to change, you know? Let’s see what happens to JP Morgan Chase’s earnings over the next couple of years as he continues alienating his workforce or building a workforce of people who, you know, are content to come into the office every day, and, you know, is that the workforce that’s gonna produce the kind of bottom line results that the shareholders [00:17:00] are looking for?

I doubt it. I, I don’t think so.

Neville: So what’s your, what would you say to communicators in an organization where this, not necessarily the CEO, but senior leadership or people in positions of power have this attitude. What would you say to them?

Shel Holtz: I think we need to as internal communicators serve as a conduit for information to move up. Jamie Diamond’s not listening to his employees beyond the messages that they are sort of inflicting on him petitions and the like. And he has said he doesn’t care. You could do as many petitions you want.

I don’t care Contextualized. By the communications team to say, look, these are the issues. This is what’s happening. Let’s look at the data. Let’s look at our attrition rates. Let, let’s look at who we’re losing and what the pool is like out there of people who are willing to come work for an organization where they can’t be.

Hybrid or, or, or [00:18:00] remote. And, and to present the scenarios that can make all of this work so that he is satisfied. I, he, he began his rant talking about young employees, right? But a young employee being in the office head down with an earbuds, with the earbuds in their ears so that they can focus on their work.

They’re not getting the mentorship. Or the exposure to the culture or the other things, you know, the, the, the clear career paths that, that they crave. And there’s no reason that that has to be . Limited to an in the office experience. I, I am a big believer in face-to-face. I have repeated a line for years I heard at a conference, which is that we we’re hardwired for face-to-face communication.

And anything that isn’t is, is a corruption of face-to-face communication. I mean, this, this goes back to, you know, the days of our lizard brains with fight and flight reactions, right? It’s all face to face. I do think that that’s important and I think . [00:19:00] A corporate or an organizational identity a sense of shared common purpose face-to-face in the real world, not on Zoom.

I is important and I think that organizations should create the opportunities for that. This, you know, you, you might. Chuckle at the idea of the company picnic, but getting everybody together for a casual non-work event where you can have exposure to the leaders of the organization in that kind of, you know, casual setting where you can.

Engage with a lot of people that you don’t see all the time and have a sense, wow, this is, this is the company. It’s not just my team that I interact with and my internal clients that I interact with. I get a sense of this broader team. The same thing with town hall meetings. Get everybody together, have a social hour before that with, with some beverages and, and some hors d’oeuvres, and then let people mingle for an hour after the town hall is over and have this interaction and have [00:20:00] this opportunity.

To see the whole organization or your part of the whole organization together. Bring people into the office when there are big meetings to be had or, or celebrations, or recognitions reasons to have everybody in the same place at the same time. Focus on the reason. For having people work from home or come into the office rather than they need to be here five days a week, or they need to be here three days a week, even if they are gonna jam earbuds into their ears and, you know, focus on their, their single, you know, individual contributor work.

Neville: Yeah. I find it very surprising that that we’re, you know what you just outlined, here we are in 2025. I remember this kind of thing in the mid nineties talking about this town halls, picnics, or get togethers with everyone in an informal setting in the organization. So here we are 25 to 30 years later and we’re still talking about that.

Something’s not right here. It seems to me.

Shel Holtz: [00:21:00] No, I agree. And, and I think it’s intractable leadership that is to blame here. They’re not listening, they’re not engaging, they’re, they’re not collaborating. Something that they’re telling everybody that they’re bent on is, is more collaboration, but they’re not doing it. And, and again, this is a minority of organizations, most are still.

Embracing hybrid and remote. But they’re gonna continue to have conflict. They’re gonna continue to have disaffected, disengaged employees until they wrap their minds around the fact that that hybrid and remote are here to stay. Either that or, you know, they die and are replaced.

Neville: Yeah. Well, it’s a, it’s a huge topic and we’ve touched on something that’s made the news headlines last week. it makes us think about this. And indeed listeners, if you have any thoughts on this topic, any experiences you wanna share, we’d love to hear them. So let us know.

I.

Shel Holtz: We definitely would, and the link to the full rant as it was recorded in a leak will be in the show notes and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of [00:22:00] four immediate release.

The post FIR #451: Return-to-Office-Obsessed Execs Are Minimizing the Employee Voice appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Listen to communicators talk about their impact on their organizations and you would be forgiven for thinking that executives find their communication teams to be indispensable. Recent research says otherwise. As complexities mount in the worlds of business, media, and politics, less than 20 percent of senior executives are confident their communicators and public affairs professionals are up to the task of navigating the current environment. Neville and Shel outline the research results and discuss ways communicators can reverse this troubling trend.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 24.

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone, and welcome to episode four 50 of four immediate release. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shell Holtz. And there’s a very troubling trend emerging one that might be surprising given all the rhetoric we’ve heard about how communications Star Rose during the CO pandemic four years ago. What we’re seeing today is.

Kind of the opposite of that the declining confidence that CEOs have in their communication leaders and teams. This isn’t just an anecdotal observation. There’s a new study from Weber Shandwick and KRC research that finds that only 17% of senior executives have high confidence in their communications and public affairs functions.

That means more than 80% of executives feel that their comms teams aren’t where they need to be. That’s a striking statistic, and it suggests that many CEOs and senior leaders don’t see their communications teams as ready to handle the complex challenges that [00:01:00] those leaders are facing today. We’ll dive into this research right after we try to sell you something.

So what’s driving this lack of confidence among CEOs in their communicators? One factor is the sheer complexity of the business landscape. The environment today is unpredictable. Geopolitical conflicts, economic uncertainty, social movements, misinformation, campaigns, and other things may get harder than ever for companies to.

Consistent and trusted messaging. At the same time, digital transformation and AI driven automation are changing the way companies engage with employees, customers, and the public. Executives who participated in this study ranked delivering economic value as the highest priority. At 41%, functional value came in second at 24%.

Almost half the number of executives who ranked economic value as most important ethical, societal and emotional values ranked significantly lower each with [00:02:00] less than 15% of executives saying they were top priorities. And that says something. It suggests that many leaders are still viewing communications primarily through a financial lens, how comms supports revenue growth, investor confidence, market performance.

While that’s understandable, it also reveals a gap in how communications is valued as a strategic business function. I. Take stakeholder priorities. For example, the study found that while 79% of executives say it’s very important to consider all stakeholders, there’s a big gap in which stakeholders actually get attention.

Customers and shareholders remain the top priority, but only 45% of executives see employees as key stakeholders in decision making, and just 22% consider the communities where their businesses operate to be essential. That’s a problem I. Employee engagement, company culture and corporate reputation are all directly tied to communication effectiveness.

If leaders don’t see employees as central to [00:03:00] the company’s success, they may also fail to recognize how critical internal communications is in shaping workforce alignment, motivation, and retention. This desk this disconnect extends to what CEOs expect from their communications leaders. The research shows that many CEOs are looking for a T-shaped communicator, someone with broad knowledge across multiple areas, but deep expertise in a specific function.

Sustainability. For example, finance or employee engagement. That makes sense given the complexity of moderate business. But it also suggests that communication professionals need to move beyond traditional PR and corporate messaging to embed themselves deeper into business operations, risk management, and strategy.

That’s interesting. In light of the study we reported just a few months ago that found more and more CCOs, chief communication officers are in fact seeing their roles expand beyond communication. Another issue is the rapid rise of AI and automation, [00:04:00] which is reshaping communication workflows, and executives may not be seeing their communication teams leading the charge on these innovations.

If comms leaders aren’t proactively demonstrating how AI and digital transformation can improve corporate storytelling, employee engagement and crisis response, CEOs may assume they’re not adapting fast enough. The study also reveals that in large companies, that’s companies with more than 50,000 employees operating in 20 or more countries, executive confidence and communication teams is even lower.

This suggests that as organizations scale, the ability for communication teams to maintain strategic alignment and influence across global markets becomes much harder. So what should communication professionals be doing to rebuild confidence? First, comms teams need to demonstrate their business value more directly.

That means tying communication outcomes to clear business metrics, whether that’s revenue impact, employee retention, or brand trust. Leaders who speak [00:05:00] the language of business finance risk operational efficiency, we’ll command more credibility in the boardroom. Second, communicators need to play a bigger role in shaping corporate decision making.

The fact that employees and communi communities rank so low as stakeholder priorities suggest that communication leaders need to advocate for a broader view of corporate responsibility. A company’s reputation today is shaped by form, far more than just financial performance. It’s about trust, credibility, and how well an organization engages with its employees, partners, and society at large.

Third communication teams must embrace emerging technologies like AI and automation. If CEOs feel that their comms teams aren’t adapting quickly enough to the modern landscape, that could be another reason for the declining in confidence. Communicators should be at the forefront of leveraging AI for content creation, crisis monitoring, and data-driven audience insights.

And finally, it’s [00:06:00] time for communication teams to prove their ability to navigate uncertainty. Today’s CEOs face unpredictable challenges from regulatory changes and political instability to generative AI disruptions and cybersecurity threats. Communication leaders who can help companies stay ahead of these issues rather than just react to them, will be the ones who earn their seat at the table.

Neville, what did you take away from this report? A lot actually, and you covered most of it. I think your last point is the starting point. I would look on this, and this is reflected in other surveys we’ve commented on, which is agility. It’s being able and willing to go hand in hand to pivot, react, adapt, whatever you might wanna call it, rapidly and confidently.

That means you need to know a lot more than you. Possibly are know about today. And therefore you need to be very proactive to ensure that you do know literally everything possible that is related to what you need to do as a [00:07:00] communicator. That’s probably something many of us are doing now anyway, but if you’re not, you really do need to do that.

It doesn’t surprise me. It’s troubling a lot of this. That headline figure only 17% of senior execs have confidence that their communicators are well prepared to tackle the current volatile environment. And a lot of this relates to the shifts we’ve seen in the last month led in the United States.

By the actions of new President Trump on his second term and the executive orders and all the stuff he has as we see literally almost daily on the TV news. This phenomenal signature on these executive audit documents that he physically signs and weighs ’em at the camera. They’re having repercussions everywhere.

It’s actually quite extraordinary. She, frankly. The Trump effect that is global, that’s taking place every single country is impact or paying attention to wondering what is he going to do next. So this is truly quite extraordinary, I think. So that’s part of the environment. And the tariff wars that are about to [00:08:00] begin by all accounts are definitely gonna have an impact on global business.

We’re already seeing. Effects in the financial markets in stock markets, we’re seeing that in interest rates that are they gonna go up and go down or whatever it might be. And the nervousness that is derived from that, we’re also seeing which is mentioned here a real change in DEI initiatives in organizations.

And in fact, we’re seeing I have to say mostly American companies that are backpedaling like crazy to. Ditch these that’s gonna have a big impact on perceptions. And they we’re not yet seeing exactly what that impact’s gonna be. ’cause it’s only been the last week or so that this is impacting people’s perceptions and opinions and therefore their behaviors perhaps.

But that is part of the landscape. Whether it’s temporary, pardon? That we don’t know. I just was just reading a story literally before we, we got together to record this episode about what Disney. Is decided to do, which is literally pull back completely on [00:09:00] DEI and speculation now about what impacts that can have on their animation studios and therefore perceptions of kids.

You could project this out in a big way. So 17% of senior execs don’t have comp, or only 17 have confidence that communicators are up to it basically. The other thing I think just to mention was. And maybe this goes hand in hand with DEI, I don’t know, but the the metric talking about how employee communication is way down the priority list on the stakeholder total of who you’re paying attention to, customers, et cetera.

Employees aren’t as high as I would’ve thought they should be. So there, there’s lots here that is concerning the provoke media story. Talks about, in fact, it’s not provoked, it’s the exo story talks about. So it’s some interesting things I think that are worth paying attention to.

Particularly their concluding point about no scenario plan is ever gonna survive contact with the amount of volatility that’s out there. And that [00:10:00] again. Be prepared, be make yourself agile, get to know exactly all these various things that are happening and try and understand what they mean. So you need to be paying attention to that.

So 70% according to S’S interpretation of of Weber Sandwick survey, 70% are anticipating heightened volatility in the year ahead, and very few of them feel prepared. That’s not a good. At all? No, as I said at the top troubling and I think DEI is probably an excellent example to elaborate on a little, because as you look at what has happened in just the three weeks since Trump took office and began his executive assault on DEI, what have we seen?

We’ve seen some. Companies, several companies do what Disney has done and many others, especially those in the tech industry although I saw a statistic the other day that said 65% of companies are not changing [00:11:00] their DEI programs, and of those 22% are actually planning to invest more in 2025.

So they’re defiant. But among the companies that have. Scaled back, they’re starting to see blowback from their customers. Take target for example, the retail giant here in the us. Target said that they were going to scale back their DEI in response to the administration’s mandates and customers revolted.

There has been a sell off of their stock. Their share price has. Taken a precipitous drop. There has been a considerable fall off on sales as customers have called for boycotts of the organization, and they have actually reversed themselves as a result of this. So public pressure brought to bear has created a whiplash at Target. Now, how good are their communicators at reading the marketplace and advising leadership on what [00:12:00] stakeholder audiences are saying and thinking in order to help them with their decision making? I would say based on what I’ve seen from Target, not very well. So I think it’s vital that communicators understand the issues that are roiling out there.

In the media space, in social media, in the business world and be doing environmental scanning. This is a term I learned from IABC research Foundation’s excellence study, years and years ago. What was that like 19 86, 87, around then. But environmental scanning means that you are on top of.

What the trends are and what the thinking is and what the sentiment is around these issues. And essentially you’re doing an every morning intelligence briefing like leaders of countries do so that you can let management know what’s going on. I woke up. Some mornings ago to the news that the Trump [00:13:00] administration was going to impose 25% import on all imported steel and aluminum.

I work in the construction industry. We work with a lot of imported steel. We set prices for the buildings that we’re building based on what the price was of steel at the time that those. Deals were made. If those prices go up 25% the building’s gonna cost more. Are we prepared for that? Do our employees know what’s going on?

If they’ve heard about these tariffs, are they worried about our ability to be profitable? We need to tell people. So the first thing I did is fire off a message to one of the senior executives saying, we need to let employees know where we’re at with this. He thought it was a good idea. This is the kind of thing communicators need to do in order to build that confidence at the leadership levels.

You can’t just be reacting to things and reporting what the leaders say. We need to be counselors who are advising them based on our read of what’s going on out there. Yeah, you’re right. And one other [00:14:00] point related to all of this that struck me as well, was the metric in the report that leaders of larger companies and those operating in more than 20 countries are more likely to report a loss in comms and public affairs confidence.

It got me thinking that much of the examples that we might. Discuss or read about or in the us not outside the US yet. I wonder some of these larger global multinationals, whether they’re American or whatever they might be with operations in other countries, what’s the effect gonna be if the US company, the owner, the kind of parent company rolls back on DEI and that meets with fierce resistance in, in, in some of their subsidiaries or associated companies elsewhere around the world, then what?

What are we gonna do about that? I did read, and I don’t have the details in front of me, so I can’t remember the name of the company. One company has already experienced that with employees in Germany, France, and the UK saying, no, we, we refuse to implement this and this big turmoil going on internally in that organization.

So [00:15:00] will we see a lot of that? I would suspect we will. In which case, what’s the impact? Project out what the questions are we need to be asking that if we are communicate is what does this mean? To what do we need to do? What do we need to advise? How do we prepare for this? So that you’ve gotta have that in your planning list.

If you are in that position with a company in that situation. You’ve then got larger Italian companies. What about in the in the Arabic speaking world, out in Asia, et cetera how does this impact those? Is this a ripple effect? We’ll see from DEI. ’cause you are seeing. Again, it’s largely in the US according to Axios, they talk about several CEOs are tripping over themselves to appeal to the new Trump administration.

I call that sucking up like big time. Really, it’s embarrassing seeing some of the behaviors by these CEOs, yet pragmatism, I suppose you might call it the effect on the share price if they’re publicly listed. All these things. Are very distasteful, but this is reality. What do you do [00:16:00] about this?

And what about the values you profess, this is a long discussion. We’ve talked about this before. Yeah. You say these things, we stand by this. And I remember that conversation we had in a recent episode. She, and that particularly did a total reversal and said what we said then is not the case anymore.

We don’t believe in that. So where does all that fit into this overall landscape? So the volatile. Picture is very wide. It’s a very large landscape to look at. Yeah. You, I had not heard about this company that had the the uprising from among employees in other, I’ll see if I can dig out the note on it.

Yeah. Good. But I think one of the things and. Ties directly back to the results of this survey is that A CEO sees this happening in their foreign subsidiaries or affiliates, and they say, our internal communicators aren’t doing their job because they didn’t create alignment around this decision.

Yeah. As opposed to counseling the leadership to say, this is how you’re going to [00:17:00] experience a response from our. Subsidiaries in Germany and France and Italy and the like, based on the fact that we have employee profiles that, that cover our geographic regions and we can project based on, it could even be AI analysis of our employee sentiment data from.

Everything that we’ve done in Teams and Slack and email and the other channels that employees are engaging in, we can come right out and say, this isn’t gonna fly. You’re going to have some unhappy people and that’s gonna affect productivity. Let’s rethink this. That’s the kind of counsel that we need to give, not, oh, yes sir, we will communicate that we’re doing this even though we know you’re gonna run into resistance.

The other thing I’m seeing and this is really interesting and I’m seeing this mostly on LinkedIn, is. Experts in DEI who are providing counsel on the difference between legal and illegal DEI as defined in the Trump administration’s executive orders saying that [00:18:00] basically illegal DEI is anything that elevates somebody.

Because of their protected class or background or what have you, which frankly, that’s not D-E-I-D-E-I does not do that. D that, that’s equality, not equity. Equity is creating a level play playing field that gives everybody the same opportunity and that they’re saying is legal. DEI under the definition, who’s.

Reading all of this and going to their leaders and saying, we can continue to offer DEI that is in compliance with what the Trump administration is asking. If we do A, B, and c based on my reading of what the experts are saying, again, this is proactive rather than reactive, and it’s what we need to be doing.

It is. So a lot to pay attention to with this, I think. And the DEI, I guess is the hot one on everyone’s radar because of the rolling back on it as per an executive order. But all the other [00:19:00] elements, indeed looking at what Axios is interpreting from the port, from the from the survey on the share of CEOs who say they plan to expand specific functions, top of the list marketing and brand building or marketing communication and brand building.

And that I think, does reflect what you said at the very start, that the focus is external on this and employee communication is actually second on that list, but there’s quite a big gap between the numbers. And then all the other functions, investor relations, public relations, crisis, et cetera.

But marketing, communication and brand building is number one. So if you’re a marketing communicator, pay close attention to that one. Absolutely. And of course DEI was just an example. Yeah, there, there are tons of issues out there that could be affecting your organization, that could be challenging your leadership.

You need to know what those are, and you need to be monitoring all of those and providing counsel on how stakeholders will react and what the impact of the business will be from the wrong messaging. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode [00:20:00] of four immediate release.

The post FIR #450: Senior Leaders Doubt Communicators’ Abilities appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Employees everywhere are using AI to save time and be more productive. The thing is, many of them are using tools their employers have not approved and they’re not telling anyone. Companies are benefiting from this stealth approach to using generative AI, but there are plenty of risks, too. Neville and Shel look at the data and discuss approaches companies can take that will benefit both them and their employees.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 24.

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 449 of four immediate release. I’m She Holtz. I’m Neville Hobson. In episode 4 1 9 last July, we explored the concept of shadow AI questioning its potential risks within organizations. Shadow AI refers to the use of unsanctioned artificial intelligence tools and technologies by employees without the knowledge or approval of their company’s IT governance.

This practice can lead to security and vulnerabilities, data breaches and compliance issues as these tools operate outside established protocols. A recent survey by Software Ag highlights the surveillance of this phenomenon revealing that over half of all employees admits to using AI tools that work artificial approval.

The survey underscores the need for organizations to address this growing trend by implementing clear policies and providing sanctioned AI resources to ensure security and compliance. So what does this latest survey add to the topic we [00:01:00] discussed last July? We’ll discuss the picture next.

This week the BBC reported on this latest survey noting that many employees resort to unauthorized AI applications to enhance productivity, especially when official tools are lacking or inadequate. This unauthorized usage shadow AI mirrors the earlier concept of shadow it where employees used unsanctioned software or devices for work purposes.

The report suggests that organizations should proactively engage with employees to understand their needs. And provide appropriate AI tools, thereby reducing the reliance on unsanctioned applications. And we have three good examples of how different organizations are addressing shadow ai. In response to the growing use of unsanctioned AI tools, banking giant JP Morgan Chase develops an internal generative AI assistant called Index GPT for over 60,000 employees.

This tool assists with tasks such as document summarization and problem solving, [00:02:00] ensuring that employees have access to approved AI resources within a secure environment. The Australian Telecommunications Company, Telstra has implemented a rigorous process to assess all AI tools and capabilities within its business.

Telstra maintains a list of approved generative AI tools and provides guidelines on their usage. For instance, while the company has not officially banned the use of Chinese AI model deep seek, it discourages its use and prefers employees to utilize Microsoft’s copilot for which it is rolling out 21,000 licenses.

And US Retail Giant Walmart monitors AI use within the company and prefers in-house tools, but does not strictly prohibit external platforms. This approach allows Walmart to balance innovation with security by providing employees with approved AI resources while maintaining oversight of external tool usage.

So there’s a number of takeaways here. Shell, I think the first one being there’s a prevalence of shadow ai. Over half of employees use [00:03:00] unsanctioned AI tools at work, posing potential risk to organizations. Those risks from using unauthorized AI can lead to security vulnerabilities, data breaches, and compliance issues.

Proactive organization responses play an essential part in addressing this. Companies like JPMorgan Chase, Telstra, and Walmart are proactively engaging with employees who understand their needs and provide appropriate sanctioned AI tools, thereby reducing your reliance on unsanctioned applications.

Your thoughts? I think that, first of all. Organizations that are restricting the use of ai, which is leading employees to practice shadow AI so they can, enjoy the benefits that AI is going to deliver to them. These organizations need to understand what’s happening with these tools, what these employees are using them for.

I don’t know if it was the same survey you were looking at ’cause what I was. Reading didn’t cite the source of this, but it was a recent survey that found that knowledge workers [00:04:00] are using shadow ai. 83% of them say to s save time. 81% to simplify tasks and 71% to increase productivity. Those are just horrible things.

What business would want that? And I think there. Are misconceptions at leadership levels people who really aren’t paying attention to what’s happening that’s preventing the organization from implementing tools that employees could use with permission. . And that’s driving a lot of this.

I think it’s. Got to be more understanding at the most senior levels of the organization of what these tools bring to the table. Then it’s a question of. Education of employees. Employees really need to understand, first of all what the risks are of using unapproved tools. They need to understand the organization’s process.

Where I work, we have gone to great pains to explain the process of identifying, not just ai, but any. [00:05:00] Technology that might be beneficial and how it is evaluated how it moves into testing and then how it moves into common use across the organization so people understand that there’s a process and if there’s a tool that you like, recommend it and.

It will be put into that process. And finally, I think employees need to understand what tools are available to them. For example, today I will be communicating to employees in our organization that the tool they already have access to, which is co-pilot baked into Office 365 now offers. Access to chat GPTs full complete reasoning model.

You have to pay extra for this if you just have the access to, to chat GPT. But Microsoft decided to, to bake it right into co-pilot at no additional cost. So I’m gonna talk to our employees about what a reasoning model is, when you might want [00:06:00] to use it and hey, you can extra cost. No hassle right there within copilot.

So I, there are steps that organizations can take to minimize the use of shadow it shadow ai. I think what’s concerning is that they’re not taking these steps. They’re just worried about it. Yeah I think that’s the key point. She, what I took mostly from those examples for instance, those three companies in different industries and different countries even are doing is the key to this.

Particularly what struck me was, um, Telstra in Australia. I. Who are right on the ball with the latest thing going, which is deep seek the Chinese AI model that they haven’t abandoned at all, but they’re discouraging its use. So what does that tell me? That little bit of information, not the detail of anything, is they’re communicating something that employees might be wondering about.

They’ve read about deep seek and some might be thinking, oh, I’d love to try that, but can I, should I? Now they’ve got some clarity. They’d rather you didn’t, [00:07:00] and presumably they’re giving some reasons why not and so forth. So it’s not quite clear from that example, but it illustrates, jP Morgan Chase has taken a whole new level.

They’re rolling out an internal generative AI tool for 60,000 employees. So they, at that level, that’s way advanced than just simply explaining what AI tools are and whether you can use ’em, not, they’ve embraced that. They’re rolling that out. Then you’ve got the other extreme, which is Walmart, who, don’t who prefer in-house tools, but don’t strictly prohibit external platforms. I think they, I’m assuming therefore that they’ve explained the reasoning behind all of that. But the point is though they’re proactively communicating, which is the exact thing organizations should be doing.

They need to be proactive for a lot of reasons, and not the least of which is the speed with which all of this is advancing. I was listening to a marketing AI podcast just yesterday. Excellent podcast by the way, called the Artificial Intelligence Show. Yeah. And they were talking about the fact that there is this.

Benchmark [00:08:00] that has been introduced recently called Humanity’s Last exam. You’ve probably heard of it, I think it’s 3000 questions that are asked of a new large language model and it evaluates how well they answered the questions and the. First time it was used, and I can’t remember which models were used in which sequence, but one of them scored something like 8%.

Then the next one a new model was released by a different AI company and it scored something like six 16%. And then a new model was released by another AI company and it scored 24%. These are not. Trick questions, but they’re not simple answers where it could go into its training set. It has to reason to get to the answer.

And what was frightening was that the time that last between that first test that did six or 8% and the last one that did 24. Was about two weeks. So that’s how fast all of this is advancing, which leads a lot of people [00:09:00] to think that we’re probably closer to artificial general intelligence than we had thought we were before.

And companies that are sitting on their hands with this are just opening the door to more and more problems. You talked about deep seek. . If you use deep seeq on the web, one of the many interfaces that allow you to play with it. You’re exchanging data with servers in China and that could be proprietary company data.

There is some statistical evidence about the amount of proprietary information that has been shared using shadow ai. I don’t have the number in front of me, but it’s not inconsequential sharing that with. Open ai, sharing that with Google or Anthropic is one thing. Sharing it with the People’s Republic of China is another

Now I’m playing with Deep Seek. I like it. I love R one watching it think the process it goes through and it’s almost like watching a human think with the text. Displaying on the screen, but I’ve installed it on my computer. It’ll run [00:10:00] if I disconnect myself from the internet completely.

That’s the whole idea of these open source models, is that they don’t call out to any servers anywhere, any data centers. It’s all contained right there on your hard drive if you wanna be able to. Let your employees use this thing, consider an implementation behind your firewall that’s completely protected.

But we have to start thinking about how we give these tools to employees so they can be more productive and efficient. The company can do better, and we don’t run the risks associated with employees bringing tools into the organization behind the backs of it. So bottom line effect, essentially it comes down to communication, doesn’t it?

Because everything you’ve outlined, it requires that proactive engagement with employees to help ’em understand why you’re doing it. What is it, how they can take advantage of it, and the pros and cons of all. The point is though clarity that there is no question in the employee’s mind, [00:11:00] can I use this?

Should I, or I better bring my own? And I think one other thing that you need is not just communication to employees, but engagement with them around this. I will share one other thing that we’re doing where I work, we’re establishing an it an AI committee. And we have an open call for membership on this committee.

And I’m. Not responsible for this. It’s out of the IT department. But what they’re looking for is a cross section of the company. They don’t care how well you understand AI or how much you’ve used it or what level in the organization you’re at. They’re looking to get people from all across the organization.

So there is representation from all corners of the company Yeah. In the decisions that are made about this. And that will be thoroughly communicated. So people don’t think this is executives in the ivory tower, or this is the software police in it. These are representatives from our parts of the organization.

That have [00:12:00] looked at the issues. They’ve looked at the risks and they’ve made these decisions. And I think that makes it a lot more understandable and a lot more acceptable. So engage employees in the process. Yeah, I would agree with that. Shell. So we’ll have a link in the show notes to this survey.

To all the references we’ve made here that you can take a look yourself and get up to speed, but there’s some useful stuff to understand here and for employers. Yeah, you build up that proactive engagement with employees on this very topic and you will be, I’m certain, please, with the outcome from that, I would say, and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #449: Employees’ Use of Shadow AI Surges appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Change leadership consultant Caroline Kealey thinks change management is dead. Communication leader Sharon O’Dea thinks Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) is dead.

That’s right: It’s time for another installment of “X is Dead.”

In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel outline the cases these two communication thought leaders make and offer our own thoughts.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 24.

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone and welcome to four immediate release. This is episode 4 4 8. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shell Holtz. And it is time for another segment of our recurring series X is dead. This is X as the algebraic symbol, not former elite Twitter. It’s been a long time, but we do occasionally dedicate some time to arguments that something we’ve been all.

Taken for granted is dead. And in just the last week, I saw two of these both on LinkedIn and both making pretty compelling cases. We’ll discuss both of them right after this.

Let’s start with change management. Carolyn Keeley wrote this one titled 2025, the Year Change Management Died. I’ve known Carolyn for years through IEBC, and she has a global practice in change leadership. A point she makes in the article. She calls it a sobering realization given her work in change management for the last 20 years.[00:01:00]

But she says change management isn’t working. It had been a useful third pillar in the traditional triangle of strategy, project management and change management when deploying planned transformations. She writes, that was then. This is now. Carolyn says, we’re now operating in a fundamentally different world.

The assumption of toggling between periods of change and of business as usual, entrenched in traditional change management now seems quat. She writes a variety of patterns. Account for change, management’s demise, including the dismantling of trust and legitimacy across all sectors. There’s a pervasive AI inspired fear of becoming obsolete.

Employees feel overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time. Silos are calcifying as we retreat to information cocoons and people are in a perpetual state of continuous partial attention. Carolyn is certified in the ADKAR model of change management, but she says that the [00:02:00] thing that. Changing isn’t clear.

The essential quality of organizational today tends to be emergent, not planned, making it hard to progress through a change sequence and the acar model. That’s awareness, desire, knowledgeability and reinforcement falls apart these days at the desire checkpoint. Where we go now, she says, is to clarify the North Star and the fog of chaos.

Many teams have lost the plot. She writes, before introducing a map, focus on the compass. Make sure your teams are crystal clear on which way is north. That is ensure the goal of your goals is well defined. Second, cut out or trim the noise in your organization so your employee’s attention and focus are on the right things.

And third. Cultivates Sturdy leadership. The second piece is from Sharon O’Day, founder of DW Access and Litho Partners, a pair of communication focused firms in the Netherlands. For Sharon, its enterprise social networks That’s dead. [00:03:00] She says she was speaking to a comms leader who was surprised when the hashtag they created for a public launch wasn’t used by anyone other than members of their own team, not a single mention across external social or their internal social channels.

She ascribes the death of enterprise social networks to the shift to short form video as the social networks where we all used to immerse ourselves. Twitter, Facebook have gone bad as public. Social media turns toxic. People have shifted to sharing in small groups or not at all. She writes a phenomenon that you and I have discussed a lot recently, Neville.

It’s no surprise then that we’re all seeing that shift reflected in how people communicate at work. And she says. She’s hearing a lot of that participation in, so enterprise social networks is failing. A lot of companies are shutting them down. She also sees digital fatigue as a contributor. One thing she wrote gave me pause.

She says, Viva, engage, which is what Yammer evolved into, continues to lack [00:04:00] clarity of purpose. A report that looked at data from hundreds of organizations concluded that Veeva Engage has shifted from a collaboration and community tool to a broadcasting platform for communicators. To me that’s blaming the tool for how people use it.

Kind of like blaming PowerPoint for bad presentations. In any case, Neville, change management and enterprise social networks. What do you think? Are they done? They ought to be ? I think when I read Caroline’s piece, it’s a very well written article and it does provoke a lot of thought. Even though I don’t see a lot of

Trenchant discussion going on. It’s a lot of agreement to her points in the comments which is good. But a couple things stuck out to me, like flashing lights almost. Some of the comments she made one is unquestionably a reality of what’s happening now. And this is. Connected directly to what we’ve been talking about recently, the collapse of trust.

So she says, just when we crave institutional stability the most, we are seeing the [00:05:00] dismantling of trust and legitimacy across every sector, politics, business, culture, education, religion. So if you extrapolate that to Edelman’s Trust, which we’ve discussed in two episodes recently that is spot on.

In terms of what’s actually happening collapsing trust, I’d say it’s collapsing as opposed to declining. It’s in serious trouble. People do not trust organizations and the people who lead them. And we’re seeing that played out in reports like this, including the other one we talked about in the last episode from Fleischman Hillard in terms of focus on corporate affairs, so that.

Is a kind of a yes. We need to recognize that, which is part of her argument. But then at the end I think is a is a point as well. So we recognize col trust has collapsed, which is behind a lot of these shifts that are happening. Caroline says in her concluding points, what the world needs now is a forward motion propelled by a new form of leadership.

One that holds the tension between being grounded and [00:06:00] unleashed between head and heart and between fear and hope. The collapse of traditional models is an invitation for the brave to challenge, to reinvent, and to create absolutely spot on in my view. So the old models change management. I see some comments.

Cognize. This is a term and maybe the way it’s been practiced that’s been going for . Two decades and more. I can remember a decade ago when I worked for IBM that was what I was doing was attached to change management programs in the mega enterprise monolithic style. Here’s the Rigid Rule book.

We follow this every step, and there’s absolutely no divergence from this. And so you think that? I, in fact, I now think about it, question, was that really effective back then? I don’t believe that works at all today in this current change in climate. So where are the new leaders then who can nod and say, yep, absolutely.

It’s all changing. So what are you gonna do about it then? So that’s a big point that’s come out of Caroline’s article. Sharon’s article. Is also [00:07:00] great. Is enterprise social over, I would say the way it’s been done for X years ought to be over. We need something different, she says.

Again, this struck out to me, one of the comments she men mentioned anecdotally. She says, I’m seeing more comms Pros report declining participation and engagement. On their ESNs, they’re questioning whether to relaunch them or close them down. I’d say the latter is probably the best route to go if you’re asking this or that.

But I think also people, is it perhaps that there are too many organizations who have these expecting it’s almost like saying if we put it up there, they will come. Use it. If we build it, they will come. They’re not doing that’s the thing. And with the lack of trust, and again, these are very generalized comments I have to say, but we’ve talked about this.

The younger you are, the more questioning you are and the willing less willingness to accept. You must do this simply because [00:08:00] some senior person with a long job title tells you that. Or we’ve done the survey that says this is where we’re gonna go. People want to be I guess schmoozed a lot more, they need to be schoo, that’s the word, not schmoozed, smoothed a lot more to recognize value that.

They provide to the organization. ’cause they’re the future. They’re the future. But it works both ways. You’ve gotta have a bit of give and take Here we’re not seeing that it’s there’s too much. In fact, it’s not even carrot and stick shell, I don’t believe. You don’t, there’s no dynamism in my view, with some of these things.

Yes, all these tools are there expecting miracles to happen. And I think, again, back to my IBM days this rather cool tool at the time, the name of which I can’t recall offhand. It was a a bit like GaggleAMP, that kind of tool, an employee advocacy tool as part of an advocacy program where you have

Pre-written text people would share across social networks. And there was a laity to do this gamification approach to it. You get rewards and there’s peer pressure and competitions, all that. I think those are absolutely [00:09:00] artificial now, frankly. In the sense of. Advocacy in such a controlled manner.

So those are all things that maybe we ought to be questioning how they fit in an enterprise in particular. And so it probably means I’m just glancing through Caroline’s. Sorry, but Sharon’s article, do we need to review the role of ESNs in the channel mix? Yes, we do. I believe, or just accept things change and maybe the time’s just coming to end.

That could be the answer too, but something must replace these things, I would say. So this is therefore the time perhaps. Turmoil again that we haven’t seen in quite a while. The way we’re seeing it, that’s a reflection of what else is going on. So these are all jigsaw pieces in the big puzzle, it seems to me.

But change management, as Caroline writes, I don’t believe that has a future at all in that form. But I can’t tell you ’cause I’m only just reading this, what I think should replace, I don’t know that I think that needs some more conversation. But it’s excellent what both of these have written [00:10:00] because it’s stimulating discussion.

Absolutely. I thought both of them were outstanding pieces. Yeah. And I am in I’m largely in agreement with some caveats. Yeah. With Carolyn’s piece on change management. I, all of the conditions she outlines all of the changes that we’ve gone through, where people are at I and the nature of much of the change organizations are facing these days.

I think she’s right. It is emergent. There is still programmatic change that happens in organizations. There are mergers and acquisitions. There is a change in a core technology that the organization uses and you have to get employees from here to there in a defined period of time. And I think largely the principles of change management up continue to apply in those.

Narrow circumstances in terms of enterprise social networks. I think that and this is based largely on my experience, 21 years as an independent consultant working [00:11:00] with organizations on their digital, internal media, and most of them are introduced to the organization using what I have for years called the Godspeed method, which is, here you go, everybody, Viva, engage.

Godspeed. And what we need is a culture of messaging. It was Pitney Bowes maybe . 23, 24 years ago, I was at a conference and I heard somebody from Pitney Bowes talk about message, mission control. Somebody needs to establish the culture of messaging and reinforce it. This is what this tool is for. Here’s how you use it.

This is what this one’s for. Here’s how you use it. We don’t use it for this, we use it for this. We use this for that. Reinforce that through, among other things, reward and recognition. If you call somebody out for having used a messaging system in support of organizational goals, other employees look at that and go, oh, is that what you get recognized for around [00:12:00] here?

I can do that. And. We need tools that allow employees to share knowledge and information with each other. And Carolyn in, in the change piece talks about calcified silos. And that’s absolutely happening in organizations. We can’t let that happen. That means organization is trapped in those silos and people who need it can’t use it.

Back in 1996, and there were no intranets, there were no. Enterprise Social Networks. Bob Buckman at Buckman Labs started a social network at his company called Kinetics, and it was for one specific reason. It was for people who needed information in order to. Do something work related would post it and everybody was expected to check in daily and if they had the answer, they were expected to share it.

He was not looking to establish enterprise social networks and [00:13:00] make them succeed. He was looking to create a knowledge-based organization rather than one where people kept their knowledge because it was. Power and sharing it should exact some sort of cost which is what happened in a lot of organizations.

And it was wildly successful, largely because he was the most active user. Everybody saw him out there and knew that he would see them sharing or soliciting information. And he would also notice the people who weren’t participating. This is what I mean by establishing a culture. Of messaging.

This wasn’t, Hey, let’s have an enterprise social network and we can throw hashtags out there when we’re launching a program. This is a very well-defined network that had a clear purpose and clear expectations, and everybody could see how it benefited the organization. I. But he was clear. He came right out and said in a memo to employees that if you don’t use this there are opportunities in this organization that are gonna close up to you.

So I think you can have success with [00:14:00] these, and I think we need to find success with these, especially in a world where we have a lot of workers who are remote or hybrid. And we’re not all in the same room at the same time to be able to share knowledge and information. But it needs to be ingrained in the culture, what it’s for, how it’s used, what we use it for, what it’s not for and what the expectations are.

I think I remember one of the conversations we had in an episode within the last six months I think talked about people in organizations, in teams trusting their direct supervisor, the person they report to in the team. And I think that’s where. This needs to focus. So one of the points that Caroline makes in the three step to consider I think this would be very germane to this part of the conversation.

She says, organizations are aching for sturdy leaders, change agents, managers, and executives who have the fortitude, the skill and capabilities to support [00:15:00] and galvanize teams building fit for-purpose, leadership capabilities in leading through change, chaos, and ambiguity is vital. So that stuck with me in, now, in the context of what you’re saying here, that in my view is how you need to galvanize people to participate in knowledge sharing in an organization, not the kind of almost threatening approach.

I see. You are not using the network and. These things are gonna be close to you. If I don’t see you doing this here, that ain’t gonna work today. That worked 30 years ago. And I’m thinking now in many organizations, I’m just reflecting on one in particular that I did some work with last year, that everyone was, looked about 12 years old.

You mean? They’re under 30? Most close to 20. And their whole approach was different, and that, that struck me as an observer. It wasn’t at all in any way negative at all unless you were someone who really had difficulty handling with, [00:16:00] dealing with people younger than you who were utterly different to you.

I think. We’re seeing that more and more. We’ve talked many times about the new wave coming into the workplace, who were born after 2000 who are different. Expectations are different. Our structure’s that different. I’m not in the enterprise loops as much as I used to be working for big organizations.

But what I observe, what I hear anecdotally Sure is you’ve gotta make connections with their younger generation. You are on their mobile phones and all this kind of stuff. If you build an internet, it’s there. They’ll come. They won’t, if they can’t get it on their mobile device in a way that is easy.

User interface, all that. So these are I think elements of the points. Caroline’s making in particular, and the points that Sharon makes too in what she’s saying about enterprise social networks. So it maybe reminded me actually when she talks about Yammer Viva engaged. Now I remember this is about 15, 16 years ago, introducing Yammer to an organization that [00:17:00] I felt this was perfect for this organization and employees with

Alacrity jumped on this before you knew it. 60 people had signed up and we were chatting away and I thought, oh my God, we got an emergency here. Because there was no strategy behind it. There was no guidance on what to do and how to use it. And of course, some significant issues, particularly as some of the senior leaders in the organization didn’t think it was a good idea at all.

Others did. So that. Wasn’t the way to do it. But what struck me about it was an un a kind of a hidden and suddenly emerging desire by people to share things that way that didn’t exist in any shape or form. And they just jumped on it like nobody’s business. It’s often, I’ve often reflected on that as an example of great outcome, but absolutely not the way to aim for it.

So the point I’m making though. Is that it helps you discover, I think preferences of people in ways that are live right in front of your eyes. You can see it. And if you [00:18:00] can somehow embrace that, and that to me means not the CEO or a very remote senior leadership figure, particularly if you’re a big organization, but that small.

Part of the organization you are in and your leader, if you see he or she embracing this, and you trust that person, and that’s becoming more important. Forgotten who it was. Sharon or Catherine talked about cocoons the old silos that we’re talking about getting calcified.

I agree, but they’re still there in many organizations. So silos aren’t necessarily a bad thing if they’re not closed. Silos, in fact, silos, the ventilations. You need small groups of people. That’s more, maybe that’s more in line with what we’re seeing externally. The shift away from centralized social networks to more dynamic niche per, personal interest ones.

How can we replicate that in organizations without the risk of them becoming their own silos that no one’s allowed in ’cause it’s a small niche. Big challenges, I think. So these are great. Aspects or milestones really along that [00:19:00] road to where we’re gonna get to with this chaos all around us, I think.

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. That Bob Bachman’s threat wouldn’t carry much weight today. It was a different generation that was in the company. It was also a group of people who had never experienced any kind of social network before. I, how many of them had been on CompuServe?

Probably very few. So there he needed to use every tool in his toolkit to, to get people. Started with this. But the idea of a network, I think continues to be important. And, Yammer I mean I saw many terrible implementations of Yammer, but I read a report from Deloitte where they worked with a company to launch it.

And what they did was initially have three pilot groups. They identified three groups of employees who were struggling. Largely because they were dispersed different time zones, different geographic locations. Yeah. And it, it was communication the need for asynchronous communication that would improve what they were doing.

And [00:20:00] so they created these three pilot groups and they held their hands through 90 days of using Yammer to help ’em get their work done. One of them was a group of people who used to work in the field. I think the report referred to them as gray beards. And now they had jobs in the offices and these were people who were the least likely to use a social network like a Facebook or a Twitter.

But they became great champions of this because their cycle time, their time to market. Was reduced by 30 or 40% because of their use of Yammer. But they were using it in a strategic way with guidance from a group of people who knew what they were doing. And they were able to take those three pilot groups and tell those stories to the rest of the organization and have the people who participated service champions so that when the rest of the organization adopted it, they adopted it for what it was.

Intended in that organization to do and was very successful. So go figure, if you’re strategic about something, it works better than if you’re not. And I, yeah I think that’s what’s needed here. [00:21:00] I’m not suggesting that, the, the typical enterprise social networks that we have seen over the years, and I’m trying to remember the names of some of them that I have worked with a lot back 10, 15 years ago.

May not be the solution, but channels that allow people to engage and share information when they’re, when some are remote and some are in the office and some are in the field and some are in the off the main office, the headquarters and some are in different time zones in different countries.

I think we still need that. We just need a culture of messaging that provides the guardrails and the. The rationale for why, this is, why using this is part of the way I get my job done. It’s not extracurricular. It’s not something we do for fun. It’s not something we do to build camaraderie.

This is the way we work here. And then they’ll work fine. Yeah. The I love your optimistic view there. Shell really, I do. But I don’t disagree with you. One comment I did like in in Sharon’s LinkedIn piece there’s lots [00:22:00] I liked actually, but this one in particular from Susie Robinson says, I think this is a complex topic that can’t be answered with a binary yes or no, as there are so many variables.

I shared some thoughts, but not exhaustively and honestly think it depends. I agree with that. I love this woman . And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #448: Has Night Fallen on Change Management and Enterprise Social Networks? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer characterized the current communication environment as one infected by grievance. Another commentator claimed that we are living in an age of ubiquitous malignancy. Communicating with a broad audience of stakeholders is especially challenging in this landscape. While the Trust Barometer identifies business as the only one of the four sectors trusted enough to do anything about it, the options at this point are anything but clear. Also in this long-form episode for January: Different AI large language models (LLMs) portray brands differently, making it a new requirement that communicators consider how AI will position them when developing their messaging. Muck Rack’s 2025 survey on how PR professionals are using AI is out, and it contains a few surprises. The state of content marketing is at the heart of a new report from the Content Marketing Institute. It is apparently harder to quit Meta than it is to ditch X, leaving a lot of people sitting on the fence (your co-hosts included). Meanwhile, Bluesky’s growth is surging, and the company is planning to introduce an Instagram competitor as some of the most important voices that had made their home on Twitter have made the transition. In his Tech Report, Dan York explores the tale of two TikTok bans.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 24.

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone and welcome to for immediate release. This is episode 4 4 7 and our long form monthly episode for January, 2025. I’m Neville Hobson in the uk and I’m Shell Holtz in the us. It’s great to be back with a long form monthly episode. Artificial intelligence figures prominently in this episode.

What a surprise. I’m sure you’re all shocked, falling outta your chairs. Ai really, and it’s, it’s interesting timing based on open AI’s announcement yesterday that they have released their first AI agents. You have to have the $200 a month account to use them. Right now. I don’t, I have the 20 bit of a hurdle.

Yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it’s definitely a hurdle. Yeah. But he, he Sam Altman did say it’s coming for the, the regular $20 a month account in the next couple of months. I’m looking forward to that. Okay. We’ll hang on to our hats in that case. No, you’re right. She is it this, there’s this, this topic features large in many of [00:01:00] our.

Topics of discussion today and all from slightly different angles, so we have some useful stuff to share. Before we get into much more, let’s have a look at what we have done since the last month of the episode. We’ve actually done five episodes since then, which is one more I think that we’ve done.

Yeah, we’ve been busy previous. Yeah, I mean, that’s true. So just a quick rundown on all of them. We’ve got some comments on some of ’em too, but a quick rundown. 4, 4 2 on the 26th of December we talked about the it’s still in the news, it’s not, certainly not gone away. The issue between Blake Lively, the actress, and Justin Bald on the movie they were on, whose title escapes me completely as I’m speaking these words.

But it’s all over the news. We discussed. Well topic or the answer, or not the answer, actually the question why PR is a dirty word. Related to that, it’s actually quite interesting, but that, that thing’s still going on. 4, 4 3 on the 3rd of January. So our first episode in [00:02:00] 2025, that was our 20 year anniversary epi episode.

We actually started on the 3rd of January, 2005 with the first episode. So on the, on the 3rd of January, 2025, we marked that anniversary. And we had in your word shell, a bunch of comments to that, a whole bunch of comments. I would guess maybe 30, 35. I’m not gonna read 30 or 35 , but I do have a sampling here.

To share. Terry Flynn communications professor up in Canada says, congrats you’re both pioneers in podcasting when most people never heard or knew of the term. Your FIR podcast has always been one of my go-to sources for information in the PR in comms field. We had a comment from Kevin Trobridge, and interestingly, this was a comment that was left on Blue Sky.

I began listening when I first started teaching public relations in the fall of 2005. It helped me stay connected to the industry and challenged my thinking about how the, how new technology was changing the way we [00:03:00] communicate. It still does. Tom Murphy, who has been listening for a long time left two comments.

One I think was on Facebook and one was on LinkedIn. He said an incredible milestone. Congratulations on the 20th anniversary. It always has been and continues to be recommended listening if you’re working in communications and he. Said basically the same thing in his other post, Donna Papa Acosta, whose voice you hear saying the podcast for communicators right at the beginning of every episode says, I still remember discovering the show in the early days.

You guys are the best Alan Schoenberg like so many of your others. I’m looking forward to listening to this episode. Thank you for having me as a guest more than once and for contributing so much insight and knowledge to the industry. John Cass, who was there in those early days. Yeah, the new communication forum this was a post he left to your.

Post on LinkedIn. He said you and shell are amazing. What a great inspiration to communicators and marketers everywhere. Mark Taylor. [00:04:00] Well done. I remember listening to your first shows before we left Johannesburg. Been in the UK almost as long now. Yeah. Gary Goldhammer says, I remember the beginning and was honored to have earned a few mentions.

Congrats. You both deserve medals for dedication and perseverance. and Philippe Boreman. Congratulations. What a fantastic journey. I remember the start 20 years ago. Thanks for all the great content and conversations. So just a little sampling of what people had to say. Super. Really nice comments.

Thanks everyone. That’s excellent. So then 4, 4, 4 9th of January preparing for Trump 2.0. We talked about that. And that really was looking at the implications for public relations and particular media relations with the advent of, of the new regime coming in at Trump 2.0. And I, I find that actually a really interesting topic discussion that we had.

She really, so then 4, 4, 5 on the 14th of January media relations in the turbulent media [00:05:00] landscape. And that was a kind of a continuity in, in a sense. And we had one comment to that, didn’t we? We did from Shireen Goodman, who is a business coach who said, it’s fascinating how community connections shape news, trust.

Navigating this landscape takes creativity and adaptability. Let’s embrace the change. Yeah, good point. And then 4, 4, 6, the episode prior to this episode on the 20th of January navigating Grievances the title of the Post. And this was one of the insights from the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer that had been published literally the day before.

We recorded that with the usual excellent analysis and reporting of the findings that revealed a global crisis of grievance and eroding trust in societal institutions. The grievance topic was most interesting, I found. She so it’s good that we had the chance to talk about that topic.

High level discussion didn’t drill into a lot of detail [00:06:00] but good. Nevertheless, I thought. Ed, you’ll hear more about that later in or shortly. Today’s episode. Shortly actually. Yeah. Very, very shortly. And also posted over the last month as the latest episode of Circle of Fellows, that monthly panel discussion with usually four IABC fellows.

I tend to moderate those and I moderated this one on sparking creativity. So, so it was a really fun episode with Zora artist Diane GSKi, Andrea Greenhouse, and Martha Mka. Our next episode, if you would like to market in your calendar and participate in real time, be on Monday, February 24th at noon.

And this will deal with communication ethics. Yeah. I wonder if Blake Lively and. Justin Bald will come up in that conversation. Not if we don’t want to be sued by Baldoni. Right? Yeah. Take care. And Diane Gki is coming back for that episode along with Todd Hattori, Jane Mitchell and Carolyn sel. I have one [00:07:00] other quick announcement to make about Circle of Fellows because this is actually pretty exciting.

The IEBC, the International Association of Business Communicators Conference is scheduled for June in Vancouver, and we had this idea of submitting a speaker proposal to do speaker of to do Circle of Fellows there, and it was accepted. Cool. So we will be doing an episode of Circle of Fellows.

It will be on this issue of the Edelman Trust Barometer and communicating in this era of grievance, and it’s gonna use exactly the same format. As Circle of Fellows does routinely, you’ll be able to watch the stream live and participate in with, with comments and observations and the like. It’ll still be available as a, a video replay and a podcast, but it will be recorded live in front of an audience in Vancouver.

So very excited about that. Yeah, definitely. That’s a great, great thing. So we, we did a few of those back in then, didn’t we? Broadcast? [00:08:00] We did one that sticks in my mind certainly was a Reagan conference in Amsterdam where you and I were on stage doing an episode. And there were a few others. You were, you did a few, but we have done that before, but that’s a gap of 15 years or so, I think.

Yeah, I think, I think I mentioned this in the anniversary episode, but there was one where I was speaking to, I think it was an IABC chapter. It might have been in Massachusetts where I brought a sound board and, and multiple microphones and you were. Wherever you were. It was either the UK or the Netherlands.

I don’t remember how long ago this was. I think it’s that the one Philip Boman was doing when he was at IBM. Because there was one. Yeah, I don’t think so. There was one. I I was at that event in, in Belgium. And you dialed in via Skype, if I recall correctly, from the states? No, it it, it could be then.

That might have been the one. Might have been the one, yeah. I dialed in via Skype and Yeah. Took you, we took questions from the audience. I walked around with a handheld mic. That’s cool. And we recorded the episode that way. It was a nightmare to set that up and make sure that it all worked [00:09:00] back in those days.

Now would be easy. It would be very easy today. Yes, it would. We’ve gotta find an event we could get into or do that again. Shell, I think that would be really, that would be fun. We haven’t done that in a long time. We’ve gotten into a rut . So event organizes on PR and related topics. Hello, . Just let us know.

So, we’ve got in the pipeline, a couple of really good interviews. We had you and I talk to Sylvia Cambi just the other day about guess what, AI loomed large in that conversation. Sylvia is someone I’ve known for close to two decades and she is a renowned communicator. She, she’s got a lot of experience and memories to share on.

These topics and others. So that interview we’re looking to publishes in the first week of February and then coming up to have a chat with is our old friend Steve Ruble. Steve was a pioneer 20 odd years ago, and the dawn of blogging, it wasn’t [00:10:00] even called social media back in those days before he went to Edelman.

And he was quite a mentor to a lot of people, me included actually. So we had the opportunity to to book him and have him appear on the show in an FI interview. So that interview is coming up in mid-February and we’re, we’re likely to publish that one at the end of February. If not, it’ll be very early in March, but around, that’s the kind of timeframe we’re looking at.

So we’re looking forward to that. So two in the pipeline and a couple of others pending discussion and cementing. So we’re looking pretty good for really good conversations over the coming months. Great content coming outta the FIR podcast network and we will be back with our reports right after this message.

No worries. I had to, I had to make a time code note here anyway, so that’s [00:11:00] fine.

So as I mentioned, the navigating grievance was a, a primary topic in enablement’s trust barometer. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. And a related topic to it. So we discussed the trust barometer that had just been released. We took a high level journey through the findings of that report, which revealed a global crisis of grievance and eroding trust in societal institutions.

That’s government, business, media, and NGOs. Key topics include the impact of trust inequality, the rise of hostile activism, and the expectations placed on CEOs to address societal issues. And by the way, some of these terms might be new to you but they’re gonna become very familiar over the coming year, years, I reckon, particularly hostile activism.

It’s a very ugly phrase, but it’s an illustration of what’s happening today that would not be thought about even perhaps as recent as five years ago. Definitely 10 years ago, trust inequality. [00:12:00] So, that is a great look at something that’s emerging with it too in, in the context of why I’m introducing it this way is a report from Fleischman Hillard that was published last month on five trends for corporate affairs in 2025.

Each trend addresses a specific theme managing the wave of politics. How geopolitics becomes the day job. Ubiquitous malignancy from misinformation everywhere. New sources of data, new applications, and bigger things are coming as AI moves ahead. So both the Edelman and the Fleischman Hillard reports converge on a critical issue.

That’s the escalating distrust and misinformation, which are eroding societal cohesion, and institutional credibility. Edelman’s findings reveal this global age of grievance driven by economic insecurity, systemic inequality, and political polarization. This leads to a zero sum mindset. They say, where any gain for one group is seen as a loss for another [00:13:00] notably 61%.

Of respondents globally reported moderate or high grievances, feeling that institutions favor the wealthy, while ordinary people struggle. As institutions fail to address these grievances, disillusionment intensifies, manifesting in polarized media narratives and hostile activism. Among other things, young people are particularly disillusioned with over half endorsing hostile activism as a legitimate means of driving change.

Compounding these issues is the trend of ubiquitous malignancy. That’s a magnificent phrase. I think shell or misinformation in everything everywhere, all of the time. To coin a phrase as, as Dave Berry would say, ubiquitous malignancy would be a great name for a rock band . It would, wouldn’t it?

Absolutely. Described by all podcast, perhaps . So that’s described by Fleischman Hillard as a defining challenge for corporate affairs in 2025, where misinformation, DeepFakes and bot driven [00:14:00] content are pervasive. Malignancy in communication now exists in every conversation they say, requiring organizations to assess and manage the balance between authentic and inauthentic narratives.

Organizations face the dual challenge of addressing stakeholder grievances while navigating a fractured communication landscape. Authentic engagement and decisive intervention in the spread of false narratives are crucial to rebuilding trust and mitigating societal divisions. According to Edelman’s report, business emerges as the most capable institution to lead these efforts, but cannot act alone.

Collaborative solutions involving NGOs, governments, and media are essential trust building initiatives. Transparency and communication and ethical leadership can transform grievance into optimism and enable progress in an era where information credibility is paramount in their report, Fleischman Hillard urges communicators to move beyond conventional methods, leveraging behavioral science to understand audience [00:15:00] sentiment and apply channel specific techniques to maintain trust and credibility in a fractured landscape.

So addressing these interconnected challenges requires communicators to remain vigilant, adaptable, and committed to fostering trust across every platform and interaction. Whether it’s reversing the crisis of grievance or addressing ubiquitous malignancy, this applies to everything everywhere, all of the time.

How do you see it show? I see it as a minefield, frankly, right now all of the things that you have posited are, are, are absolutely true. I don’t know what the solutions are. You have people who are mired within their bubbles and the algorithms from the social networks that they engage in are, are feeding them.

Outrage because that’s what keeps them on the platform, which is what makes the platforms money Yeah. Is when they stay and, and see more ads and, and the like. [00:16:00] So I, there’s, there certainly have to be steps, measures that business leaders can take informed by their public relations and communications professionals.

But at this point, I’m not sure what they are. I think authenticity is vital. You’ll hear authenticity is a theme in several of the reports coming up today. And I think that candor is, is important. I think those, those collaborative efforts, those partnerships that you referenced are going to be important when you can see unity among different groups talking authentically and addressing these issues.

Part of it I think is going to be. Not so much trying to talk people out of their grievance as helping them see that either the grievance is unjustified or is is being addressed one way or [00:17:00] another. I’m not quite sure how you do that, especially when the grievance and is, is especially unjustified.

But you know, we got into this pickle in the first place because of algorithms. I mean, it, it wasn’t like this. I mean, people there, there was a left and a right before algorithms took control of, of social media feeds. But what you saw in those feeds was just the most recent posts from your friends and other people you were connected to.

Now it’s gin up outrage because the algorithm has figured out that outrage is what keeps you glued to the network. So as long as that continues, I don’t know how we’re gonna fix this. And the answer might be part of what we’re going to be discussing later in the episode, which is convincing people to leave the algorithm driven networks and, and go to ones that are more organic, where you can have nice conversations about things you’re interested in with, with people you like [00:18:00] conversing with, and, and not be fed this constant stream of.

Outrage. Yeah. It, it, it, it is a huge a huge picture. And I think the way you started your, your comment earlier was, you know, not sure where this is gonna go. I agree. And I’m thinking one thing that comes across from Edelman’s report in particular was some key actions and Fleischman has similar to calls to action for communicators, for, for instance.

These though require you to realize or to, to believe that this is a winnable. Contest, you can win this. And that’s not, therefore the other guy loses which is the Trump approach to things. I think it, it’s win. You win and there’s gotta be a win everywhere. That’s trying to, to, to, I think, establish it in, in a way that most people are willing to consider that approach.

But the real reality I think is this is so big, it’s global, it’s [00:19:00] everywhere. How do you address it? And therein, I think, becomes part of the challenge is you’ve gotta pick something and do something about it. And that, in my view is a leadership issue, but it probably needs the communicators to to stimulate that in a way that a leader can

Grab hold of and do something with. You mentioned authenticity and, and being authentic. Absolutely key. The transparency of it. But there, to me it’s like you could do something in an organization that really does require first a centralized approach from a government typically to really lead the charge.

And we’re not actually seeing that. I don’t think. So does it mean that you then wait for, for the condition to be right, for that to happen? No, you’ve gotta do some of your own organization, in which case you might see repetitive actions taking place and you, you probably wanna share some of it, but not all of what you’re doing.

But at the bottom line I think is if you are the communicator in a large enterprise, typically then you have to . Take a lead in doing something. [00:20:00] So you know, things like, I mean, you mentioned or repeat to the point I made about collaboration across those different sectors, those four institutions of society.

Sure, absolutely. Partner with the government, NGOs and the media to tackle these things. That’s easier said than done because it would’ve been done by now if it were easy. So equip your own teams for the complexity to literally believe, get everyone to believe this is the new normal. This landscape, this the hostile activism, which, which ranges from, you know sharing misinformation online strongly, but also insulting people, attacking them online.

And as Edelman’s report makes very clear indeed, even physical violence in the, in real life that this is alarming, but this is the landscape not everywhere but in some places. So, you know, what, what we’re discussing may be kind of way beyond someone’s interest or understanding if they’re in in a rural community in Central Africa, for example, compared to being in New York City or in London or in [00:21:00] Paris or somewhere like that.

But the reality is that this is the reality. And you know, I, I kind of tongue in cheek using the, the strap line from the movie everything everywhere, all of the time. But that’s exactly how it is. And that’s a point Fleischman Hillard makes quite strongly. So it’s something that. I think that positions communicators as key players in whatever action you take in the organization is something that really, if you are a communicator, you need to grab that, that opportunity and do something.

Yeah. The problem is that I think that there are underlying issues here that I’m not sure business is in any position to influence greatly mm-hmm . Look at the issue of violence in politics. I have read several reports that there are, there is a growing number of people who believe that violence is justified in political causes in the us.

So I, what does business do about that? And [00:22:00] it is my personal belief, and this is based on, seriously, a tremendous amount of, of study. I’ve, I’ve read many, many books and, and listened to a lot of lectures and tried to absorb both sides on this issue. But I think the underlying cause of, of the vast majority of this grievance and, and the ubiquitous malignancy is in the caste system and institutionalized racism.

The remedy for that has been DEI initiatives and we have an administration now that is doing all it can to erase those. You see attacks on leaders. Some have already been fired in the US government claiming that they’re DEI hires. All that means is that they’re not white men. It doesn’t mean that they’re not qualified.

It’s just code for, we want white men in these positions. What does business do beyond. Maintain their DEI [00:23:00] efforts, and many are not, many are, are rolling over because they have government contracts or they just wanna stay out of Donald Trump’s crosshairs as his retribution tour gets underway.

So I I, I wanna think that there are ways that business can deal with this. I imagine that there will be, a lot of creativity employed. I know that there are people out there like Kim Clark holding weekly calls about what we can do to address this. She’s focused specifically on DEI. But the big picture is that this is something I think that we have to get through, do what we can to improve things and, and to address it and to ensure that our stakeholders feel comfortable with us so that we can continue to do business.

But the idea that we can fix this I, I think that’s a bigger thing than Yeah. That what PR people can do and what business can do. We can contribute. Yeah. You know, Edelman’s saying that business isn’t a better position than anybody else [00:24:00] is not a big help, frankly. No. It requires all these elements to be in play as well.

The, the collaborative efforts, et cetera. I think you are right. She, I think I mean, I’m, I’m hopeful that we’ll see pushback more than we’re, we’re seeing some already, but we don’t know the outcome of that yet. I mean, there’s some local I was reading one of the UK newspapers today that there’s an example across the US in various states of state governments not.

Not going to take action according to what Trump’s executive order is on whatever the topic is. How, whether that’s success or not, we don’t know is Trump is he likely to somehow enforce these things? What I do see though, and I hope I’m dreadfully wrong here, is, is a severe dark age approaching in the United States that will have amplification everywhere.

And I think it might be longer than four years, assuming he, he gets he doesn’t get elected. He can’t actually, can he, he can only run to two times. Well, there’s a, there’s a measure that has been introduced in the house. Yeah, I read that would give him a third term. So, yep. But it reminds me of [00:25:00] a, a, a, a headline in The Guardian the other day with an excellent illustration.

Talking about it was an opinion piece showed Trump sitting on a, on a throne with a crown, and it showed this is caricatures really of the three tech bros. Yeah, Zuckerberg Bezos and Musk groveling at his feet. Basically it said something, this is where the dark age comment of mind comes, comes into that Trump is the emperor.

He behaving like an emperor and he sees himself outside the law. And history shows us that when an empress does that, the acolytes also see themselves outside the law. So and the comment was made which I thought was very apt that George Washington would, would understand all this ’cause this is what he wanted to get away from.

And establishing the United States in the revolution that took place. It wasn’t about tea at all. It was about getting rid of this kind of thing. And guess what? You got a modern day emperor in the making. And most people, I think, might think that’s a crazy [00:26:00] thing to say, but. Don’t do that. Pay attention to what’s happening in that regard, because it looks, that’s what it looks like show.

It’s absolutely what it looks like. And you talked about pushback, and I’m not quite sure how we’re gonna go about that effectively. One thing we know, we’ve talked about this on the show before, is that citing facts and statistics doesn’t sway people. No. I’m thinking just for example during the Charlottesville march back during Trump’s first term what they were all shouting was, Jews will not replace us.

Well, Jews represent 0.02% of the world population. 40% of all of the Jews in the world live in Israel. Sorry, we’re not replacing anybody , but citing those facts is not going to sway these people from their views of replacement theory, which is, you know, just one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.

But. They believe it. And, you know, you cite your data, [00:27:00] they’re gonna say, I have my facts. So, so how do you persuade? Maybe you chain them to a chair and make them work with debunk bot. But yeah, it’s no good. It’s, yeah, I, it’s, I think business has limited opportunities here. They should, they should focus on what they’re doing internally.

For the most part, I think, yeah, that makes, that would make sense. You have to do something and it, it doesn’t mean blindly do something. Think about what we said on the calls to action. For instance, what communicators could do. Things like equipping teams for complexity. Have people understand this is the new normal perhaps, and, or, or even if it’s not, but have the discussion and make some plans accordingly.

So you can align some of the things you do and reinforce these messaging. Align with core values. I mean, these are all things that are communication focused that are part of the skillset communicators should have and, and it can now exercise. So that’s, that would be a good place to be. I also think a, a shift to stakeholder [00:28:00] capitalism would be very helpful.

And this is an attitude that a business adopts. It, we, we, we heard it articulated first when the US Business Roundtable said, we’re no longer gonna focus solely on shareholders. But all stakeholders that has evolved into this concept of stakeholder capitalism. It’s still capitalism. It’s still about making money.

It’s just making sure that that money is fairly distributed and that the issues and concerns of all of your stakeholders are factored into the decisions that you make, not just the shareholders. Makes and I think makes sense. That could have some sort of impact on, on grievance although not the key grievance that that has led us to where we are so well.

Let’s talk about artificial intelligence , because it’s, it’s, it’s been grim up to this point. Neville . Yeah. There, there’s been some reporting over the last couple of weeks that that’s worth a quick rundown. Some, some some new [00:29:00] research and, and developments notably around agents and brands. But let me, let me cover a couple of other things first starting with how AI characterizes brands and there is research that finds that AI search platforms portray brands differently.

So perplexity. Tends to emphasize a brand’s positive attributes when somebody queries it about a brand or when a query produces results that include a brand. But Anthropics clawed will tend to bring up past controversies that the brand experienced. Now, this variability is significant. It means the way a brand is described depends on the AI platform that that people are using.

And that adds a layer of complexity to brand management For communicators, this is underscoring the importance of monitoring how AI platforms talk about your brand, position, [00:30:00] your brand, and take proactive steps to shape that narrative by making sure that your messaging is, is consistent and transparent.

Next we have Meta’s end to fact checking. In the US and reliance on community notes has AI related implications that we really haven’t spent a lot of time talking about. Meta’s change of heart is part of a larger convergence of technological advancement, political change, and those evolving media dynamics that we talked about a couple episodes back this is according to a site I found called TV News Check.

I had never heard of it, but it’s got some really interesting content on it. This shift signals a fundamental change in how social media platforms approach truth. For instance, a study by copy leaks found that there was an 8362% increase in AI generated content on the net from November of 2022 to March of 2024.

That’s almost an [00:31:00] 8500% increase in a year and a half. Now, imagine how that’s going to affect the ability to maintain online information integrity with meta doing away with its content moderation. A lot of this AI generated malicious slop is going to be shared on Facebook, and as AI generated content continues to proliferate across the net, we’ll probably say, see information availability, overshadow information quality as we move from paying attention to journalists.

To news, flu news, flus, who’s going to maintain accuracy amid all that slop? But let’s talk about agents. As we mentioned at the top of the show, OpenAI has introduced its first agents. They’re limited in capability. They can’t do anything malicious, but they’re the first shot out of the gate.

And it’s one of the most exciting developments in Gen AI is the rise of agents that can perform tasks on behalf of consumers. Book [00:32:00] flights, order meals, manage your calendar. But what does this mean for brands? For one, AI agents provide an opportunity to streamline and personalize the consumer experience.

When a user asks their AI agent for recommendations, whether it’s for restaurants, hotels, products, the agent pulls from the information available online to make suggestions that puts the onus on brands to ensure that their digital presence is optimized for AI interactions. If your product isn’t well represented in well in ai, searchable databases or reviews, you risk being overlooked.

Brands can enhance these experiences by creating AI friendly content. For example, structured data on your website can help AI agents better understand and recommend your offerings. If a consumer asks an agent for a family friendly hotel near the beach, a brand with properly tagged data about location, amenities and reviews is far more likely to get that recommendation.[00:33:00]

Another strategy is to partner with platforms integrating AI agents. Imagine an airline developing seamless integrations where an AI agent can book flights, select seats, and notify travelers about upgrades in the brand’s voice. Think about a retail brand enabling AI agents to handle returns, answer product questions, and suggest complimentary items based on purchase history.

The real opportunity lies in how brands humanize these interactions. AI agents shouldn’t just execute transactions. They should reflect the brand’s personality. For example, a luxury brand’s AI interactions might emphasize exclusivity and elegance. While a family-oriented brand might focus on warmth and ease of use, these nuanced touches can turn mundane AI-driven interactions into memorable brand experiences.

Finally, brands have to consider accessibility. Agents should enhance, not limit how diverse audiences interact with your brand. [00:34:00] So ensuring your product descriptions and services are available in multiple languages can help AI agents provide more inclusive results. Moving along from agents. Let’s talk about proactive pr.

With platforms like OpenAI and Google analyzing millions of data points to surface trending topics, brands need to be quick on their feet. Reactive PR is not adequate. Communicators can use AI tools to monitor these trends in real time, allowing brand brands to engage in relevant conversations as they unfold.

I have set up a couple of chat GPT tasks that alert me to things that are happening that I’m not finding through the other tools that I have that might incline me to want to get some proactive messaging out. An example might be if a trending topic aligns with your brand’s mission or values, you can craft timely, authentic messaging to join that conversation.

That’s not only keeps your brand visible, but also positions [00:35:00] it as responsive and in touch with the world around it. And finally, brands are tapping into Gen AI to foster creativity and engagement campaigns where consumers use AI to design products or create unique artworks are becoming increasingly popular.

For instance, fashion brands have used generative AI to allow customers to co-create designs, making them feel more personally invested in the brand. This kind of collaboration not only produces highly personalized content, but also deepens the emotional connection between the brand and its audience.

It’s really a win-win. Consumers get a unique experience. Brands gained advocates who are excited to share their creations with their networks. So lots of opportunities for brands emerging in the AI space that, that it really goes beyond having it write content and create images. Yeah, absolutely. It, it got me thinking, listening to what you were saying, particularly about open AI’s operator the the agent they’ve built, and [00:36:00] also this last bit you talked about reactive PR and so forth that, when we talk about the state of pr, and we’ve got a report coming up on that, actually the state of, of AI in pr. It’s still largely focused on the how many since the last time and, and what they’re doing by percentages. And what we’re gonna talk about in a bit is not much different than that, or we’ve got some better views on it.

This though is the sec next level. That we need to be paying close attention to. And it’s easier to do that because now everyone, I mean this is very loosely talking here. Of course, everyone has acquired the knowledge. They’re up to speed on those basics. Now, how many people are using ai? Yeah, I get it.

To write this, I get to review this or summarize that report or whatever. This is now what we need to be paying attention to. And that article you shared for what you were saying from search engine land has a really simple but very clear kind of explainer at the end, knowing when to leverage reactive PR versus proactive pr where [00:37:00] AI plays a significant role.

And this, when, when you read this, you’ll think, oh yeah, that makes sense. But first time I’ve seen this. All together. This way it’s well done. So reactive pr, the example they’re giving is capitalizing on breaking news. So there’s something happening that outside your control, you didn’t instigate it.

Here’s things you can do. Yes, Jackie and proactive, aligning with cyclical news. I mean, these are terrific examples. So, you know, good for you search engine. Putting that post together, it’s really, really useful. I, I think the exciting one though, to me is, is indeed this so open AI agent, the operator and what they, how they explain it in the in the introduction page on their website.

Is exactly what you were saying at the very start of this, of this segment examples of what they could do. So you know, it, it is like, you know, the, they’ll, you’ll give it the, the task, you’ll prompt it. I mean, this is putting it in real simple terms and off it will go to, to fulfill your task and then come back to you.

But then there’s much more it’ll do. It’ll [00:38:00] ask you question that you haven’t prompted. It would even be able to do multitasking whilst it’s doing these things unprompted. So that’s handy. And especially things, the example they give is dead simple. But you know, it’s the way they explained it to open eyes, similar to using multiple tabs in a browser.

So you are, you are having the operators doing multiple tasks simultaneously by creating new conversations. So the example they give whilst it’s making a booking for a holiday on a holiday website, it’s also ordering a personalized enamel mug on Etsy, like the, like the FIR podcast mug. We had, we had those back in the day, didn’t we?

We, we did. Not on Etsy. Not on Etsy. Mind you, no. So these are really good, and it reminds me, again, experience back at IBM with IBM Watson. What they were talking about is this. Except they were linking it to business productivity tools, like equipment of Outlook, for instance. Not just the email, but everything, the calendar, the contact list, and all that, that would manage [00:39:00] your agenda for you, manage your business life for you, meetings and, and accepting requests, all that kind of stuff.

And it’ll do all that, right? Eventually you’ll have an agent that will do all that for you. But this, the way they described this is wider and probably far more exciting to, to a general audience. It’s not just business here. And this is fantastic. So this is where we need to be. I think in, in our journey of, of knowledge of what’s possible with artificial intelligence.

And it’s generally talking, it’s about generative artificial intelligence, but not exclusively in a business sense, and for brands specifically, which is the focus of this conversation. So this is really good. Yeah, IBM had an intranet years and years ago. We talked about it on the show, but I bet it was toward the beginning of our, our work together.

It had a homepage that had a module that would look at your calendar identify what was coming up, and then provide you with resources to [00:40:00] help you with. So if you were doing an interview, it would link you to the interview guide and, and the talent acquisition guide. If you were doing a performance review, it would link you to appropriate resources for that.

You know, I, I work with somebody, I was telling about this and she said, that’s the dream is, is that the intranet helps me through my day. Yeah. Without making me go look for stuff. It knows what I’m doing and, and proactively delivers it. AI agents will do that. Drop dead easy. Yeah. Just set up an agent to do that and house it in a module on the homepage of the intranet so that it is targeted to each individual employee through active directory or what have you.

And, and it’s done. So I, I think that’s coming.

Okay.[00:41:00]

In terms of proactive pr, what strikes me about this concept is, is that there’s nothing new to it. You talked about what’s happening in the news. David Meerman Scott, how long ago did he write the book on Newsjacking? Yeah. It was real popular for a while, but I don’t see much of it anymore. Then we did a report years ago.

This was, I think it was a tequila brand that on Instagram, shared a picture of the tequila bottle and a couple of glasses and some . Coffee beans. And it’s because coffee bean martinis were trending on Google . They saw that in the Google Trends report that you can go look at anytime you want. And they said, wow, look at everybody talking about, let’s jump into this conversation.

So these ideas are not new, but they haven’t been broadly embraced. We continue to lean on the old practices of public relations, which is reacting to something that has happened so that we can [00:42:00] fix it. And that’s gotta change. I, I mean, we can’t stop reacting if something happens. We have to address it.

But we have to balance that with, with proactive pr that helps get our messages across. Yeah. And move the needle, or maybe even move the Overton window if we should be so lucky. Right. I think as more people do this, more knowledge will disseminate and we’ll see an uptick in this, I hope. But this is really interesting stuff, I have to say, Cheryl really is.

So, on that point let’s talk about that survey I mentioned that research about what what’s happening with AI and pr. That is a a survey report from Muck Rec that’s just come out. So this I found quite interesting when I was looking into this about how we’re gonna talk about this, because I thought, okay, let’s just look at some linking here.

So there’s no doubt that developments and AI are moving at quite a pace. I think we agree on that. I said those words back in March, 2023, nearly two years ago in [00:43:00] a blog post about AI and pr I wrote. While hype is at its peak, the time is now for learning more about ai, experimenting with it yourself and discovering how it can be of distinct value to you and your work and in your leisure.

With learning and experimenting comes the confidence to discard the hype as you glean insights that help you focus on what matters and what actually is important, except in a large part in the PR profession. I said at the time, the survey by the PRCA, that’s the Public Relations Consultants Association and the ICCO, that’s the International Communications Consultancy Organization, revealed that 25% of respondents categorically stated they would never use AI tools like chat GPT in their work.

I mean, that’s. That’s come back to haunt him. I tell you, thankfully, we’ve come a long way since then. According to Muck Rec’s latest report on the state of AI and PR for 2025 published this week, three quarters of PR professionals, 75% are now using tools like chat, GPT and [00:44:00] DE to elevate their work. This is substantial progress, I think, according to MuckRack figures, which showed that this is only 28% in 2023 rising to 64% in 2024.

So we’ve seen a clear progression there. It paints the report, paints a fascinating picture of an industry quickly embracing this technology with 93% of users saying it speeds up their work and 78% claiming it improves quality. What’s especially interesting I is how PR pros are using ai, not just for writing and editing, but for brainstorming research, even strategy development.

Yet as exciting as this adoption is, the report raises questions about how well the industry is managing this shift. Fewer than 40% of PR professionals say their organizations have clear AI use policies and fewer than half provide any training. This means many practitioners are navigating this space with little guidance, relying on their own judgment for ethical use and disclosure.[00:45:00]

The report also highlights risks that can’t be ignored. A top concern the next generation of PR professionals may become too dependent on AI neglecting the core skills that underpin the craft. There’s also fear that clients or leadership might see AI as a shortcut for creativity, undervaluing the unique contributions of human practitioners.

So where does all this leave us? We’ve seen how AI can amplify creativity and efficiency, yet its impact on foundational skills and values remains uncertain. Muck Rack’s report offers a powerful snapshot of where we stand, but also challenges us to think about where we’re headed. How do we strike the right balance between innovation and authenticity, between speeding up processes and preserving the craft?

These are critical questions. How can PR professionals use generative AI to create meaningful outcomes while safeguarding the integrity of their work? What steps can the industry take to support ethical and effective use? Big questions. I [00:46:00] think Cheryl, very big questions and even with the strategic development and brainstorming and other uses to which PR practitioners are putting ai, I still think that we are focused on low hanging fruit and not really digging into some of the potential nor I think are we

Examining how we’re going to be able to use it as the agents become available. Anthropic has a demo version of an agent. It doesn’t actually run on your computer. It runs on a virtual machine so that nothing that goes wrong can infect your computer or affect your security or your privacy. But I gave it a, a, a try.

I went ahead and installed what I needed to install on my computer to run the virtual machine, and I ran the agent and I, I produced a video. It’s on LinkedIn and Facebook and on my YouTube channel. But what I used it for was to identify opportunities [00:47:00] in construction related conferences in 2025 that had open calls for speakers or the calls for speakers.

Were going. To come out during the year where the conferences provided us with an opportunity to showcase our subject matter experts in the market sectors where we operate. So my instructions were really clear. I said, first, go to my company’s website and identify our market sectors and our areas of subject matter expertise.

Then find relevant top tier construction related conferences. And I gave it the instructions about calls for speakers. And I said write a document with a strategy for getting into these conferences and create a spreadsheet that lists the top 10 conference. Its date, the URL for the conference when the call for speaker [00:48:00] deadlines.

And I set it off, and you could see in the left hand column it would explain each step. In fact, what it did was it took a screenshot after it had completed each step of the desktop so it could see what it had done and what it had to do next. But I just sat there with my arms folded, well, not quite, because I occasionally would get a message that said, you have reached your rate limit

And I would have to type, please continue. Or it would say, you have to wait one minute and 30 seconds to get a new rate limit. And I go, okay. And then I’d say, please continue. But other than please continue all I did was sit there with my arms folded and watch it do this as it created a document and a spreadsheet.

You, you start to apply this to other work that we do in PR and communications, and it begins to really seem overwhelming. How, how much of our day-to-day activity is going to be taken [00:49:00] over by a well prompted AI agent. I, I think this report is right though in

advising caution because a lot of this work is work that an intern would do. If, if, if I were in a large enough de department that I have, I, I would have an intern. I would have an intern go out and find the conferences. I would probably spend an hour with an intern first. So they understand what our areas of expertise are and what our market sectors are.

then I would turn them loose and they would probably spend a day and a half. Reading about each conference and you know, noting the dates of the call for speakers and what the requirements were. I don’t need an intern for that anymore. An AI agent will be able to do that in three or four minutes without an intern who learns the entry level ropes to begin their progress up the ladder to becoming a partner or becoming a vice president of communications or a chief [00:50:00] Communication officer.

I think this is a serious problem and not enough attention is being paid to it. Yeah. Because there’s so much excitement about what this can take off our plate that we’re not thinking about how the up and coming people in this industry learn the ropes. There’s just seems to me gonna be fewer and fewer ropes to learn.

Yeah, that’s a very good point to emphasize. We are excited about all this and we are being galloping down the road with excitement and this is falling by the wayside. It seems to me. It also seems to me that we need to address this now because the pace is picking up and the, the new outcomes up.

People who talk about are accelerating in, in, in the frequency and the shortening the time between them all. So now is the time to be looking at this. And it could well be that not just in communication. I think the legal profession and many other professions where that sort of description you made of a career path, let’s say, and knowledge [00:51:00] path an insights path in the organization is is well for most organizations I would say it’s important.

But that is, we expressed it well that we, we relying on something that can perform all those tasks in minutes as opposed to days. And we have choices here. What are we gonna do? We’re gonna do the minutes, aren’t we, not the days. And plus we’ll save money on our budget. So that kind of thing. It, it, it definitely needs to be addressed at an organizational level, I would say.

I think if I were the leader of a public relations agency, I would be convening my top leadership and starting the process of rethinking career paths. And I would be doing that in the client side too. Frankly, we know, especially among millennials and Gen Z, how important career development is to them in the jobs that they choose.

They want a company that is going to pay attention to them take their desires to grow seriously and provide them with not just the opportunities to learn, [00:52:00] but a clear path to get to where they want to go with their managers working with them. With AI taking over a lot of these roles what does that career path look like in a lot of jobs?

I mean, you know, I work in construction, so a lot of construction jobs, frankly, aren’t gonna change that much until we have AI empowered robots that can actually go, you know, do a concrete pour or, you know, build rebar form work or, or what have you. Yeah. But. For a lot of jobs how you get from a college degree to wherever it is you wanna end up in your career is going to look very different.

And this is on top of the fact that anybody who thinks that we’re not going to have significant job loss down the road from this just isn’t paying enough attention to, to what’s actually happening. There are gonna be a lot of people outta work at, at some point, and as a society, we need to figure out what to do about this.

I’ve already heard somebody refer [00:53:00] to it. Oh, we’re just creating a big welfare state. And as a perception problem, the idea of a universal basic income when the machines are generating all the wealth is, is not the same as, as a welfare state. Not suggesting that’s the only solution I. Don’t know, that’s for other people to figure out.

But somebody has to start figuring it out because we’re gonna get there sooner than we’re ready for. So what we can do at the business level is start to think about our employees and how we’re gonna accommodate their desires to grow in their careers. In a world where AI is doing 60, 70, 80% of what that job used to do five years ago,

that Dan York Huh? Go down. So give two minutes. I need a pee. I knew that was coming. . Yeah. I thought I’d last, but I had a di a a Coke zero just before we started. [00:54:00] Best product Coke has ever made. I’ll be right back. Okay. Two minutes.[00:55:00] [00:56:00] [00:57:00] [00:58:00]

It’s a dilemma to me. We’ll talk about that. But first, with the tectonic shifts in the media, is content marketing still as viable a practice as it has been? The content Marketing Institute’s 2025 enterprise content marketing research report finds that while content marketing is thriving, the landscape has become more complex for openers, there’s good news.

The report highlights that 71% of enterprise marketers surveyed believe their organization’s content marketing efforts are either moderately or very successful, which is actually a, a slight increase from last year. But success isn’t without its challenges. One key takeaway from the report is the growing pressure to prove return on investment.

With budgets [00:59:00] tightening in many industries, leadership teams are scrutinizing content marketing investments more than ever. Teams that document their strategies are significantly more likely to succeed at this. The report emphasizes that organizations with clear goals, audience personas, which is important and workflows are better equipped to produce the kind of content that delivers measurable ROI, and they’re able to demonstrate that to those leaders who presumably will then leave their budgets alone.

Just a few weeks into 2025, employee generated content is emerging as a powerful tool, particularly for B2B brands. According to an article in Forbes, tapping into the voices of employees enhances authenticity and extends reach. Employees tend to have their own personal networks of family, friends, and colleagues who trust their recommendations, making their content a valuable asset for brand storytelling.

So if you do a video that features one of your employees, it’s not just gonna get shared through your networks, but through their [01:00:00] networks. Take as an example how a B2B SaaS company might encourage sales reps to share tips on LinkedIn about how they use their company’s software. These posts come across as genuine, relatable, and more credible than corporate promotions.

We also in content marketing need to start thinking about Gen Alpha. Much of today’s content marketing targets are millennials and Gen Z, but Gen Alpha, the kids born from 2010 through this past December 31st. You know that right? Anyone born as of January 1st this year is part of generation beta.

But in terms of Gen Alpha, marketing Brew recently spotlighted how brands like Kids Bop are using platforms like Roblox to connect with the alpha demographic kids. Bop partnered with Game Fam to create an interactive experience within Roblox where could kids could engage with the brand through mini games and music.

This matters because [01:01:00] Gen Alpha represents the future of consumer culture. Not to mention that the oldest of them are already 15 and marketing targets. They’re growing up with digital experiences and their expectations for engagement are through the roof. For brands, this means creating content that’s immersive, interactive, and seamlessly integrated to the platforms where they spend their time.

By the way, immersion is something to consider for internal communications too, and this doesn’t mean people putting on VR headsets necessarily. As Monique Nik would put it, putting employees at the center of the communication process, just like the ROBLOX Initiative, put kids at the center of that experience.

So what should we take away from all this? The content marketing landscape in 2025 is shaped by three big factors. Strategy, authenticity, they’re the word again, and adaptability. So document your strategy. The Content Marketing Institute report makes it clear. Organizations with documented strategies [01:02:00] perform better.

This isn’t just about having a plan, it’s creating a roadmap that aligns content with both business goals and audience needs. Finding that point of connection. We need to leverage employee voices because encouraging employees to become content creators. Is going to extend your reach and deepen audience trust.

Doesn’t matter whether it’s sharing their expertise on LinkedIn or contributing to a company blog and experiment with emerging platforms. Keep an eye on how platforms like Roblox evolve. Even if your brand isn’t targeting Gen Alpha today. Understand these environments in order to prepare yourself for tomorrow’s audiences.

Of course, we’re gonna keep an eye on these trends and share any insights. That will help you stay ahead. But Neville, what do you think got content marketing today? Yeah, I thought you were gonna say, by the way, at the end of that last statement you said you are gonna add so you don’t have to . But we don’t say that we [01:03:00] you do have to.

It’s it’s on you as much as it’s on us. Right? Exactly. Right. Exactly. I, I find it intriguing, to be honest. She, in one, one particular area, which is listening to what you were saying and looking at some of the articles that you were referencing, this is stuff I remember being on kind of discussion agendas two decades ago.

Really but we didn’t call it content marketing back then. So I’m thinking, are we still in the, sorry state where we need to remind people these are the things you gotta do in organizations. Is, is that what it looks like to you? ’cause that’s what it seems like to me. Yes, that’s exactly where we are.

And if you look at a lot of the content that’s coming out of organizations today, it’s clear that people have not necessarily embraced the principles of, of content marketing. And, you know, you have the Content Marketing Institute, which does really excellent work in this space. I don’t think enough organizations pay attention to the learning that, that they share.

Yeah. That, okay, I get that. And, and I, I think that sounds reasonable. I’m [01:04:00] just looking at one of the points made in the content Marketing Institute’s report. Nearly half of enterprise marketers do not have a scalable model for content creation. I find that quite extraordinary, isn’t it? Where they talk about Yeah, really.

I mean, they talk about where is it 33% do. 46% do not, but get this 21%. Don’t know if they do. . Imagine that’s an unknown. Unknown. Yeah. Or a known unknown, I guess. Right? And, and they say we, we have a long way to go still. And I think that’s absolutely right. So the, the lack of, there’s many reasons why they give.

And to be fair, I mean, I, I’m making it sound like they, people are are being really silly, but not paying attention to this. There are many reasons why there are difficulties with this. One of them, which is actually the least occurred to me, folks, lack of data skills and, and talent, even the expertise to do this kind of work.

So you’ve got the wrong people you know, on board or not the right people at all. Difficulty tracking customer journeys. [01:05:00] This is in the measurement area. 66% of people say that. So my comment about, you know, isn’t this what we were talking about two decades ago is, is valid and, and. People aren’t paying attention.

Well, they probably are. But these are newer challenges that are, that are impacting them now. And I think this though is quite significant. Some of these kind of alarm bells I’m seeing written being talked about that are still what they were that time ago, except wearing a new suit of clothes probably.

But there is, it seems there’s a lot of work still to do in this area. A tremendous amount of work. I, I suspect a lot of organizations say they’re doing content marketing, but what they’re really doing is just bad marketing. I saw a conversation that was happening on LinkedIn that Steve Czo was involved with the other day, and he was slamming press releases because they always say, we are excited to announce.

Like, yeah, are you really, are you really excited about announcing this ? And I, I. Said, not everybody does [01:06:00] press releases like that. And I, I said he, he was actually slamming press releases in general. Do they actually do any good anymore? Yeah. And I made the case that there are things that press releases can do for you in addition to satisfying regulatory requirements in some cases.

But, you know, for search engine optimization getting a press release out there, you know that there’s gonna be a hundred publications that fill their space with press releases. And that, you know, because Google rewards currency and frequency having your press release, a new release with new content show up in a hundred different places is gonna boost you in that algorithm of.

But yeah. Are the, are the press releases actually any good? So I, I shared one. I said, here’s real news that we actually wanted to get into the hands of, of people. It was the first building ever in the world to be awarded a certification called a true certification. That means the building was built with zero waste, nothing going to [01:07:00] landfills.

Or incinerators. That’s a big deal. Yeah. And it matters to be known as the first to have done something like that. And, and Steve, when he read the release, he came back and he said, and you weren’t excited about it, . So but that’s not content marketing. That’s, that’s, that’s an SEO practice based on work that we have been doing for a hundred years.

So, you know, content marketing is, is different. And yeah, it, it, it takes work. It, we just did a, a relaunch of, of the, the company’s website, and there was a decision made above my pay grade to the news section was just gonna be news. And I gotta be honest, we don’t have that much in a year, maybe five or six real solid news stories.

And I said, what about all of this stuff that talks about our company culture? And, and you know, because we know that a, a good number of the people who come to our website are, are college students wondering where they’re gonna go do their internship or where they’re gonna apply for a job? [01:08:00] And culture matters.

And they said, well, not in the news section. So now we have a blog on the website to handle all of that. So that’s a bit of content marketing, but yeah, it’s, it’s more complicated and it takes work that it seems to me a lot of leaders and organizations aren’t willing to fund. Yeah, in fact, I’m looking at a chart on the the content marketing website in this report, why strategy isn’t effect as effective as it could be.

And this is where it comes down to your point earlier, it’s not bad content, it’s just not, not good marketing generally. ’cause these apply no matter what. Lack of clear goals is the number one reason why strategies aren’t effective. Lack of clear goals not data driven. That’s a modern event.

I’d say not tied to a customer journey. Ineffective research. I mean, this is. I’ve seen all of this as you would’ve done on anything, everything apart from content marketing or including content, it, it is everywhere. that word again, everywhere. So all at once. All at [01:09:00] once. Yeah. It’s unrealistic.

Expectations is a great one. And, and to your point, you’ve the very beginning, poor content quality, that’s the least reason, but that’s on the list. Poor con content quality. So there’s work to be done without a doubt.

Let’s talk about Facebook and Instagram threats, the meta social properties that we touched on earlier. And this is the dilemma that I mentioned. I call it the fence sitting dilemma. Quit or not in light of events recently particularly Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement a few weeks ago now on the killing off of moderation on all the platforms and the, the storm of opinions and, and comments that have resulted consequently link it to Trump’s inauguration and the moves by as I’m getting to learn the terminology now, shell, the tech, the Silicon Valley bros.

And what they’re all doing with all [01:10:00] of this and the, a fear, uncertainty, and doubt everywhere. So I’ve been using this as the example I suppose to illustrate my own dilemma on this. Which is a is a big deal for me. I have to say that I then discovered also for lots of other people. So this dilemma surrounding META’S platforms that I mentioned, has reached a turning point for many people.

Mark Zuckerberg’s announced of a significant polish shift on concept moderation, among other things, has cast an even brighter spotlight on the ethical challenges of engaging with these platforms. It’s a question I’ve wrestled with and judging by the responses to my recent posts. I’m not alone. In a recent blog post, I reflected on my own journey with meta platforms, and I said I’ve enjoyed using threads, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook to connect with others.

But recent revelations have forced me to question whether these platforms align with my values. I did this in 2023, about x formerly Twitter, which I joined in 2006, soon after Twitter’s founding, ultimately issuing posting on that [01:11:00] platform. But stepping away from meta, as I have discovered, is proving far more complex.

I wrote on threads and in a post to friends on Facebook just a few days ago, I said this, I’m still on the fence about deleting Facebook, Instagram, and threads. Spending less time on them is one thing, but it’s proving far more difficult than I imagined letting them go. Especially Facebook, where I have cousins and other family members there as the one place online to connect, as well as a large number of private groups.

How does this fence sitting fit with my values that I’ve talked about? This is a real dilemma. I said, well, that post signif generates significant discussion on Facebook reflecting the complexity of this issue, and people shared what they thought about this. One friend shared their decisive action.

He said, I have made the decision to leave, deleted most of my content already to have no traces there. I read about people who have Trump and Vance as friends without adding them, and when they removed them, they were added again. Also, read [01:12:00] about content algorithm changes in a way that they see Republican stuff and content they’re not interested in others.

However, pointed to the tension between ethics and practicality, a balancing act that resonates deeply. One said we all have to balance personal ethics with reality On a daily basis, Zuckerberg and others have chosen to dance with the devil because otherwise the devil will burn them. But you are in a unique position to do something about it.

Neville, you have considerable personal influence in some very influential context. Together, you could stay within this broken system and influence a change. We need. The idea of leading change from within is quite a compelling one, but so is the argument for stepping away entirely. A different commenter drew from their experience of leaving X.

I’m also on the fence, but I recall how everyone urged me to stay on Twitter. When I chose to leave after Musk took over initially, almost none of my contacts moved. Now they’ve all followed if family and friends aren’t willing to make a little effort to stay in touch, it really makes you question the value of those relationships.

That’s one [01:13:00] perspective. For others, the middle ground gradual disengagement feels like the best path. Said one, slowly backing away is probably the best thing anyway for your own wellbeing. Spend less time and slowly back away. At a certain point, the right path will make itself known. I did like that sentence there, like some something down, coming down from the heavens perhaps.

And then there’s the stark truth about the digital landscape as a whole. According to one friend, think the owner of your internet provider are charming, progressive people. Your modem. It’s like Twitter before Musk. It was in large part owned by Saudi oil. Barretts. Terrible, terrible people, but at least they kept their mouth shut and hands off.

That’s one perspective. So the decision to stay or leave with leave meta platforms is not just a practical one. It’s a profoundly personal and ethical choice. For many, Facebook remains the only online space to connect with family and friends or participate in private groups. For others, stepping away is a statement of principle, a way to reclaim a sense [01:14:00] of alignment with their values.

But is there a middle path? Can those of us who abhor the direction meta is heading, remain engaged while advocating for change from within? Or does our departure speak louder than our presence ever could? These questions have no easy answers, but the discussion they spark reminds us that our choices matter, not just for ourselves, but for the kind of digital world we hope to create.

So I’m still sitting on the fence. Shell, even though this is this and, and a lot of other things have, you’ve given me a lot of help in thinking this through in a way that helps me come to a conclusion and I think there are. Some choices that may not seem apparent to many, which is there isn’t anywhere else like Facebook, a centralized walled garden controlled by a corporation.

There isn’t anywhere like that else, the same, the same way. But there are places that don’t have any of that controlling freakery behind it, or it doesn’t have algorithms that influence everything and [01:15:00] interfere with what you wanna do, could be mastered on. That could be a place for niche networks that are all independent yet connected.

And that’s a top big topic to explore. That’s not for now to explore, but I’m throwing that possibility into the ring requires I think a, a, a shift in thinking from others who might be interested, but realize there’s not a kind of like a ready set place they can go to and just chat. There’s stuff they need to do.

I suspect. In any case, I’m still on the fence. I’m thinking more about this. I wanna thank all my friends who contributed. And by the way, I’ve not named anyone ’cause that was a private post on Facebook. It wasn’t public, but they’re great. And there’s a, there’s others I haven’t mentioned, but thanks to everyone because it’s been very, very helpful.

So what are your thoughts, Cheryl? Well, I’m not on the fence. I’ve made my decision before I, I get to that though. I, I think it’s worth noting that at the inauguration of President Trump, which was moved indoors reportedly because of the weather, although there have been outdoor inaugurations [01:16:00] in colder weather in, in the past governor Greg Abbott of Texas, and governor Rick

I’m sorry. That guy, I’ve got that wrong. I’ve gotta make a time note. Okay.

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, were in an overflow room watching on a screen while up there with Trump. In the room where it was happening were Jeff Bezos, mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. So you can see where the power dynamic is shifting, and if America is sliding into an oligarchy, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk are among the oligarchs that are at the peak of that hierarchy.

And it is not just meta, it is the Yeah. World of big tech. And it’s hard for new players to get in there because they don’t have the resources, especially in the world of ai. They don’t have the resources of a Google [01:17:00] or, or an open AI to build the models that cost billions of dollars to do, so what you see is that the networks that we participate in are now being controlled by America’s oligarchs, and that’s troubling.

Yep. That said. Facebook has 3 billion people as its monthly average monthly users I think it’s 650 million on X. It’s easier to leave X because everyone I engage with is not there and never was. Y did people initially go to Facebook. They went to Facebook because remember, Facebook came along as blogging was big, but blogging required effort, right?

You had to know how to set one up. Mm-hmm. You had to pay a fee for the use of server space and for the, the blogging utility, the stuff wasn’t free. There was a commitment to it. And if I just wanted someplace where I [01:18:00] wanted to go, say something when it occurred to me, or share a picture of my cat or what have you I wasn’t gonna go to that amount of trouble with a blog.

But when Facebook came along. Wow, it’s free and all I have to do is go to this text field and share what I wanna share and I’m done. So that’s what led a lot of people to embrace Facebook and led to 3 billion people using it at least once a month. There is no country that has 3 billion people. It is bigger than any country out there.

And this is why I am able to find cousins that I haven’t talked to in 20 years. In fact the husband of a cousin saw me post that I was going to a concert in Las Vegas, and he wrote, you know, I live in Las Vegas. So we got together with my cousin Elise and her husband Terrence, whom I haven’t seen in, in decades.

This is what Facebook enables because of its sheer size. [01:19:00] And I think there is a legitimate point to one of those comments that you shared about how serious are your family connections about staying in touch. Yeah. But second cousins, it, it’s not routine for those people to stay in touch anyway.

Facebook has enabled connections that we typically lost in life before that. Also, people I went to high school with that I haven’t talked to since then, discovering each other on, on Facebook. There were also the groups but I’ll tell you what I, what really nailed my decision that I’m, I’m not going to leave.

Facebook is the Meta Quest the VR headset that I use for exercise. I saw in the Supernatural Community, supernatural is the name of the workout app that I use, and there’s about 20,000 people in the community on Facebook. Somebody said what other headsets use allow you to use Supernatural?

’cause I wanna leave Meta and that means dumping my Meta [01:20:00] Quest. And the answer is, dude, meta owns Supernatural. It’s their product. The only place you can get it is on the Quest. There’s also not a comparable headset at the price point for the Meta Quest. So you, you look at all of this, the groups, the pages the connections with people that you would lose, and they’re not all gonna go to Blue Sky and deal with that.

You know, what I compare it to is. You have Zuckerberg who has turned to the dark side. Well, the United States is, is now being led by Donald Trump. I’m not leaving that either. I’m not sitting on the fence about whether I’m gonna leave the United States. It’s my home. I’m gonna stay here and I’m gonna fight for what I believe is right in this country.

And I’ve made the decision that Facebook is like that. I’m gonna stay there and fight for what I think is right there. Yeah. And I mean, not lose lose everything I get out of it. I totally hear you. And, and I think this is where it does come down to, you know, each person’s circumstance are, are unique to [01:21:00] that person.

I don’t have that infrastructure. . To, to regret if I didn’t have it. Yes, I’ve got cousins I’m in touch with. But I don’t have, to my knowledge, second cousins, I’ve not seen for 30 years that I will find ’em on Facebook. No. So if, if I had, if I decided to quit entirely, that wouldn’t be such a consequential, momentous decision to have to balance.

I know for instance that most of, most of family members that I, I I connect with, I could connect elsewhere a bit of effort, but I, I could I think though that to some people and a couple of comments that I didn’t mention now I think about it, talked very strongly about that the values area, they’re not prepared to compromise those values.

Being, being part of something. They abhor Totally. They are leaving and they, they the fact they’re gone. So I, I get that. So I’m still sitting on the fence. In terms of. Leave or stay. And if I stay in, what form do I stay? In fact, I joined Facebook in, I think [01:22:00] it was June or April 20th, 2007. I blamed Philip Young.

He invited me, , he told me about it. It’s his fault. So Philip, it’s your fault, . So but you know, the, the climate, the environment back then was totally different. You mentioned you know, it was the dawn of blogging and this was easy ’cause you have to pay. There was actually MySpace at the time I had a MySpace account, and that actually got me thinking that was complicated compared to Facebook.

And you are, you are absolutely right. Facebook. You open an account and immediately you can, you do stuff, you search and boom, there’s 15 of your friends already. More than likely, more often than not, it started out as a useful thing. And I think that was the appeal to a lot of people too. This is exuberance of this.

At the time when all these smart kids in Silicon Valley were doing stuff, all this stuff was coming up and it was a very American product, but it caught on here in the UK very rapidly and indeed across most of Europe as well. So there’s that. And as you said, 3 billion. Yep. There’s a lot. The, the alternatives are not apparent at all.

What they are. And there’s no universal [01:23:00] that like everyone’s gonna migrate over there. No, that doesn’t exist. That kind of place. And you’re right, blue sky. I’ve had this conversation with a number of people examining places like that. They’re not comparable to Facebook, they don’t have private groups, they don’t have, you know, a marketplace that you can sell stuff and buy stuff the way that you can on Facebook.

When we moved here to Somerset, before that, boy was I the heaviest user of Facebook marketplace. Very useful. So there’s that kind of selfish reason perhaps that I get a great deal of personal value outta being there. So should I stay? The, the values thing though is is a, is a big thing for, for most people.

It’s, it’s not that it’s not a big thing for me, it’s not the biggest thing. ’cause one recurring thought I’m having. As it related to that comment, who said stay and you can try and affect change from inside it is that why should I change my whole social environment because of one man who happens to be the man who owns the damn place, but his behavior [01:24:00] should not directly.

Affect my own decisions and therefore my home behavior. That’s part of my thinking. But it’s like you, it’s an interesting analogy where you talk about you, you are in the US and you’re not gonna lead just because Donald Trump got elected. That’s I would argue that’s a wholly different circumstance, a wholly different situation.

We don’t have that here. Not yet anyway. So this is still a dilemma for me, and I’ve not made my mind totally yet. I have to say though, I’m leaning more towards not exiting. There’s other things I might do, but I’ve listened to what people are saying. So I’ve set myself a, a, a deadline at the end of January, which is what I said in my post back at the beginning of January.

In light of Zuckerberg’s announcement, I’ll give him 30 days to, to show that I should stay. So that’s where I’m at currently. So I got a week to go. and I’m changing my behaviors on Facebook. I, one of the things that I’ve always enjoyed about Facebook, and it’s not a Facebook feature, it’s my own decision feature, is that [01:25:00] I don’t friend anybody from work.

On Facebook. It’s the one place where I don’t, I don’t care if it’s the, my colleague in my department or a guy he’s, he’s an engineer there who’s the only other person in the company I know who’s really into jam bands besides me. And we have great conversations. No, he works at the same company. I don’t want anybody who works at the same company connected with me on Facebook so that I can let it rip, right?

And it is the place where I am sharing my political perspectives that I don’t share on other social networks. Although I have started talking about DEI from a business perspective on, on LinkedIn, but on in, you know, in terms of how I feel about Trump or you know, what have you. That’s what I do on Facebook, but I’m going to be using it less.

Yeah, I’m gonna continue to use it for the groups that I’m in where I have tremendous value. I have virtually ended my use of Instagram. The only thing I check there is my daughter’s stories, because I. I need a way to stay in touch with [01:26:00] my daughter . And the way you do that with, you know, the kids these days is online.

I kid, she’s in her thirties, but but yeah, still I, if, if I wanna see pictures of my granddaughter, they’re gonna be in her, her stories. So that’s how I see them. But I’m not sharing anything there, and I’m not commenting or liking anybody else’s posts or looking through photos. And in fact, as you’ll hear in a minute, there’s, there’s a new alternative on the horizon that I think is probably gonna do pretty well.

Yeah. But I’m just, I’m just gonna dial it way back. I’m gonna use it for what I use it for. And yeah, that’s the future of Facebook and me. Yeah, I, I, I’m thinking about behavior change and what I’ve done at the moment is downloaded all my content from all meta properties which I do about once a year.

I hadn’t done Facebook for a while. They’ve got all that. I’ve got all my Instagram pictures. I’m probably not gonna share them anywhere. At least for the foreseeable future, they’re sitting on a, on a solid state drive that’s not connected to anything. They’re all there in little archive. And I’m [01:27:00] okay with that.

There’s still, I haven’t deleted them from any way yet. I might or might not do that. So I, I don’t get much value out of Instagram, actually. I’ve got more weird people following me than, than I know what to do with most of them, you know scantily dressed, busty young women. And where I, where they come from, I have no idea.

So, so it has little value. Threads is new, but I’ve already dialed back on threads mainly because there, there’s, there’s stuff about I’m, I’m not liking anymore, I have to say. And so Blue Sky is my, my preference, but that’s not a com, that’s not an alternative to Facebook at all. I don’t see it that way other than the messaging and, and that I never used Messenger, by the way, for years I’ve not used Messenger.

So Facebook suffers from the consequences, I think, and perception of the various scandals they’ve been involved with in recently years. Notably Cambridge Analytica. They’ve lost trust, certainly and Messenger featured large in one. That’s why I stopped using me. That must be six, seven years ago now, whatever it was.

I can’t remember. So. We’ve got, [01:28:00] we have, I think, parallel views that don’t diverge really. I’m not disagreeing with you about the family and therefore that’s why I’m staying. Not at all. I recognize that’s important and it’s important to me too, but maybe not to the same extent as you. And it’s certainly a smaller group that I’m connected with.

But the dilemma for me is real in terms of this has been a large part of my online experience for. Nearly 20 years and to suddenly stop it is, is the thing, what am I gonna do? My God, all these cat videos. I love watching the, the real scrolling that I do late at night sometimes just catching up with weird stuff going on in the world.

I’ll switch to TikTok for that. Yeah. I get immense pleasure with that. I’ve been on TI don’t like TikTok at all. Truly. I don’t, it’s not my, my scene, it’s not a generational thing. I just don’t like it. Lot too many weird people there. I didn’t want all that kind of stuff. That’s my perception anyway. But there are other things.

Pixel fed, I started up as a potential alternative to Instagram. There’s well you’re gonna talk about in my know, but I mean, there’s other [01:29:00] alternatives are emerging. I’ve still got a flicker account for God’s sake, you know, from 2004. Yeah. And that I’ve not been to, gosh, I’ve not logged in for about five years, so I hope you’re still there.

I don’t even know who owns that anymore, but, so we’re at a, not a crossroads exactly, but we’re at a kind of a, a square with many avenues to go down as to what happens. And judging by the comments that I got to my post 38 or so others are, are, are, are dealing with a similar dilemma. Well, especially those who are looking to flee X more than they’re trying to flee Facebook.

Although certainly people looking to get out of Facebook, you know, people are finding themselves drawn to Blue Sky. Now, of course, we’ve talked about Blue Sky before, but it, it continues to exceed expectations. It’s started attracting the A-listers who were mostly using Twitter to share whatever was on their minds.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen Lizzo, Stephen King, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Times, the Washington Post, a slew of politicians, notably from New York and Pennsylvania, [01:30:00] the Pennsylvania Supreme Court number of National Basketball Association teams, sports journalists. The list just keeps growing.

It’s become common. Just to add, add to that, we, we’ve seen significant numbers of, of people in continental Europe and European Union countries, quitting governments, police forces academic institutions. One case, I think it was Austria, might not be Austria, one European 60 academic institutions quit.

We’ve seen we’ve seen others in in the in public sector organizations across the continent, quitting and going, most of ’em gone to Blue Sky right when you, so some, some have added Blue Sky and are staying on Twitter, but their primary channel is moving to blue Sky. So all that it, it’s actually

Global, I would argue. Yeah. And what you’re seeing is a lot of people in the platform that they were using saying, I’m leaving, here’s my blue sky handle. Sure. And that is really motivating a lot of people to head over and set up an account on Blue Sky, whether they’re planning on leaving [01:31:00] Facebook or X or not.

What started as a niche alternative to traditional social networks has become a compelling option for brands looking to escape the increasing chaos and declining trust in platforms owned by increasingly distasteful corporate giants like Elon Musk and Meta. Well, first, let’s address why Blue Sky is drawing attention.

They’re up to over 27 million users and growing. It’s not just a haven for disillusioned Twitter users. It offers something fundamentally different. We’ve talked about the fact that it is a decentralized platform where users have more control over their data, their feeds, and their overall experience.

This decentralization makes it less vulnerable to the whims of a single owner or entity, which has been a major pain point for communicators, navigating X’S unpredictability or meta as controversial policies. One of Blue Sky’s standout features is its approach to custom feeds. Users can create or subscribe to feeds tailored to specific interests or communities, [01:32:00] whether that’s marketing trends, environmental accidents, or activisms or or niche hobbies.

For brands, this opens up new possibilities to connect directly with highly targeted audience and audiences in a way that feels organic instead of intrusive. Imagine creating a custom feed for your brand’s community. Where you curate not just your own content, but relevant posts from thought leaders and influencers in your space.

It’s a way to position your brand as a trusted source of value, not just another voice clamoring for attention. On the surface, blue Sky resembles early Twitter with a focus on text-based posts and a chronological timeline, but it’s what’s happening under the hood that matters. Blue Sky’s at Protocol. We’ve, we’ve talked about it short for authenticated transfer gives users the ability to own their identities across.

Platforms Now that doesn’t just apply to individual users. Brands can establish a presence that isn’t tied to one specific platform, reducing the risk of being [01:33:00] derailed by a platform’s sudden policy changes or outages. But wait, there’s more. The company has announced the development of Flashes, a photo sharing app that’s being described as a direct competitor to Instagram, which is of course owned by Meta.

This move is a clear bid to attract users and brands who are fed up with meta’s recent decisions to roll back content, moderation. Flashes will focus on visual storytelling, allowing users to post up to four images or short form videos. Why will people embrace flashes? Because they’re already on blue sky and enamored of it, and it’s connected.

Now of course, blue sky isn’t without challenges, it’s rapid growth, partly fueled by high profile. Twitter quitters has led to a significant increase in moderation demands. Reports of harmful content, surged 17 fold in 2024 alone, prompting concerns about whether the platform can scale its governance responsibly.

The company has just 20 full-time employees [01:34:00] and about a hundred contractors serving as content moderators. So this is a critical consideration when venturing into new social spaces. But Blue Sky seems committed to improving its moderation, tools and policies, and community driven. Its community driven approach gives hope that these issues can be addressed collaboratively.

We’ll see. So what should communicators do as they consider Blue Sky? First, don’t dismiss it as just another Twitter clone. Its foundational values of decentralization and user control resonate with a growing segment of your stakeholders who are tired of being at the mercy of algorithms and corporate agendas.

Experimentation is key here. Start by securing your, your brand’s handle and exploring the BLA of the platform’s. Unique features like custom feeds, test the waters with content that aligns with blue sky’s ethos, authentic, conversational, and community focused. Engage with users who are passionate about the same causes or industries that your brand represents and keep an eye on flashes.

[01:35:00] With Instagram becoming increasingly contentious, a fresh, decentralized approach to photo and video sharing could be exactly what brands and users alike have been waiting for. It’s not like there aren’t other alternatives. You mentioned pixel Fed Neville but people who’ve already found a home on Blue Sky, as I say, may be more inclined to opt for flashes.

Frankly, blue Sky’s giving us a much needed opportunity to rethink how we connect with audiences and how we tell our stories in this new media world. Hmm. It, it’s true. And, and whilst I was listening to you talking there, I just looked up on the use account website on Blue Sky. It’s just under 30 million as we speak today.

And so up 3 million from when I grabbed the number, right. So it is actually 29,000,406 2,400, and, and the counter is going up, but as fact at the bottom it says increasing by 2.6 users per second. So it’ll probably hit 30 million in that case by before the end of the weekend. I’d say so. So it’s [01:36:00] on a roll.

I, I think you know, you and I joined at the time of the private beta before it was even public. And it went public right? You needed an an invite. Right, needed an invite and all that. And it was in the low, I think I was in I, I honestly can’t remember offhand now. But it was like the 5000000th or something.

They were actually 500,000 or something. It was very, very low number. So it’s, it’s appealing and in fact, people coming from X will find familiarity with the look and feel of it’s the interface in many, many respects. But you mentioned moderation and that I think is, is, will become increasingly more important than it would’ve been in light, particularly of Meta’s announcement that they’re ditching it entirely and replacing it with this kind of user note stuff that Musk implemented in Twitter, which is useless everywhere I read about it, they say it’s definitely not worth.

Not worth the pixels that they’re written in. So you know, good luck with that. So, but, but they, blue sky are serious about, I believe they have challenges. You mentioned that you touched on that, and I think a big one of course is how are they gonna [01:37:00] sustain themselves financially with this? Ads have just been announced on threads.

A disappointing move, but hey, you, come on, you, you’re not ever gonna find a social network without ads on a meta platform. Believe that. So that’s coming soon on tests in the US and Japan. No sound from Blue skies, whether about advertising, they have floated ideas about a subscription model. I find that appealing.

So, you know, for myself. If I’m on a place I could trust and feel reasonably confident, I’m not gonna encounter too many weird people, and it would cost me XI, I, I, I’d consider that. So it is an alternative, right? Shell, it really is a, a feasible alternative for X users. I’m not sure about Facebook, if you’re looking for the same experience.

It’s not that, but you might find it a better experience as a place to engage with customers and stakeholders or friends. Yeah. Yeah. As well. As opposed to everything else that you can do on Facebook. I have revised my outlook on Blue Sky. I, I think right now it [01:38:00] is the place to be. There are reasons that people are not going.

I mean, threads was seen as one of the great alternatives to X, but now because it’s a, a meta property and right subject to those same content moderation. Guidelines that Zuckerberg has implemented on Facebook. It’s, it’s less appealing and frankly it has deteriorated in my view when I go check the feed over the last month or so.

Whereas Blue Sky is quite engaging and, and welcoming. But yeah, when I see the influx of journalists, I see Jeff Jarvis, for example, is, is posting there all the time now I I, I saw a post there last night during the Senate confirmation vote on Pete Hegseth as, as secretary of Defense from Senator Elizabeth Warren on Blue Sky.

So it, it is gradually e evolving as the place for [01:39:00] thought leaders, opinion leaders, influencers to be sharing their views. That’s what made. Twitter compelling, even if Twitter never got to a billion users before Musk’s acquisition. It’s what was quoted in mainstream media when somebody there said something a government leader or a business leader and that is, is is slowly shifting to blue sky.

Yeah. It’s, it’s picking up, I think the days of watching and waiting are, are over the time to establish presence. I think Twitter has been that, have fulfilled that, and it’s gonna take, I think, something major to suddenly shift that away. But it is gradually, gradually diminishing as the examples I made earlier about organizations moving to Blue Sky, but still keeping Twitter going because people used, seeing them there.

It’ll take something I think quite significant to suddenly shift that, but it will, it will take place, I’m sure. And Blue Sky’s looking appealing. [01:40:00] One of the worries I have about Blue Sky’s appeal is is is advertisers and brands being there and behaving like they do on Twitter? No. Don’t want that.

The beauty of Blue Sky, which is very different to x, is you have a. Block button and a mute button and a report button that you can liberally wield. I’ve been doing that recently, mostly for blocking out political content, us political content. But you can do that with anything. And I think that gives the power to the user in that case, because you don’t have that power on X unless you are paying the money for some of the features that they offer.

I, I think you know, let’s keep a watching eye on this. I think, I mean, I’m looking at the counter again. It is edging up. It’ll hit 30 before the end of the weekend. I bet you. So I think it’s it is an exciting place. I’ve, I’ve FI spend more time there now. I’ve made new friends there, but I’ve con connected with a lot of people who’ve come from X mostly.

I’ve actually not. Encountered someone I know who’s come there saying they’ve left Facebook to come there and not found anyone saying that. [01:41:00] But it’s worth exploring and see if you like it. That’s the thing. Yeah. And I think brands that misbehave which would include behaving the way they have been behaving for decades because it’s part of the ethos at Blue Sky to put the user in control it’s easy to block those brands.

That’s right. That’s right. And they won’t get any traction out of their presence there. The, the brands that figure out the ethos and, and engage authentically create that resource in a community for their customer base, for example. Yeah. They’ll succeed there. I agree with you, and the ones I see there are behaving that way that, that, which is a good thing.

But I’ve got the block button if I need it, and it’s a good thing that it’s there too. Yeah. And that’ll take us to the end of this episode of four immediate release. Our next episode is scheduled to drop on Monday, February 24th, the monthly long form episode. We will be doing our midweek short form episodes in between, so keep an eye out for those.

In the [01:42:00] meantime your comments are so deeply appreciated and we, we, we would love to be able to include them in the next monthly episode in February. You can leave those wherever we share updates of new episodes on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on blue Sky. We look at all of those for your comments in addition to the show notes on.

And threads. And don’t forget, we have a FIR podcast channel on Blue Sky and follow that. It’s FIR podcast as what’s That’s right. You know, we need to put that in the show notes so people can go just find it rather, rather than try to search for it. Right. There’s a, there’s a link on the homepage of the website, but Yeah, it should, we should put that on the show notes.

You’re write. Yep. So you could leave notes in, in the FIR community on Facebook. We do have a community there for our listeners. We do. It’s, it’s, it’s not well populated anymore. , but it’s still there. We even have a page on Facebook for FIR so, you know, wherever you can leave a comment. [01:43:00] You can also send us an email to fir [email protected].

You can attach an audio file, spin ages since we’ve played an audio comment ever since Chris Hanson retired. . Yeah. , I think. But we would love to get some of those. So also your ratings and reviews. Are what helped new listeners find us. So please, wherever you listen to your podcast, drop us a rating and a review.

And until next time, that will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #447: Decisions, Decisions: The Struggle to Communicate in the Age of Ubiquitous Malignancy appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this short midweek episode, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson unpack the findings of the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, revealing a global crisis of grievance and eroding trust in societal institutions—government, business, media, and NGOs. Key topics include the impact of trust inequality, the rise of hostile activism, and the expectations placed on CEOs to address societal issues.

Neville and Shel explore the challenges and opportunities for businesses and communicators, emphasizing the need for empathetic leadership, authentic dialogue, and community engagement. They also discuss the implications of income disparity, the role of stakeholder capitalism, and how communicators can help foster trust through two-way listening and collaboration.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 446 of four immediate release. I’m She Holtz. And I’m Neville. Hobson. We are recording this episode on Monday, the 20th of January, 2025. A memorable day for many in the United States of a public holiday, Martin Luther King Day, but you’ve also got the inauguration of a new president today and Mr.

Donald Trump is coming back for Trump 2.0 his second. Term of office, and it’s kind of, I think, really appropriate that this day is also the day we’re gonna be talking about the latest Edelman Trust Barometer from the Edelman PR firm. This is an annual product. We’ve been reporting on it a lot over the last 25 years, and I actually remember she, I think I was at the first maybe and or the second of these when they were done, 1999 to 2000.

So it’s been with us a long time, but we have reported on this quite significantly. This one though is I think quite different to what we’ve seen [00:01:00] before in a number of areas. It’s a weighty volume. We’re not going to attempt to dissect the whole thing in this short form episode. That just isn’t the time to do that or just to do it.

So, we’ll, we’ll come back to it in our monthly. But we’ve got a few things we have to say about this. So we should get on with this. So. It was actually over the weekend at Davos that Aman unveiled the results of this trust parameter. It’s the latest annual report and public sentiment of trust in governments business, the media and NGOs from a survey of 33,000 people in 28 countries carried out last October.

Overall, the picture is a desperate one, I would say, showing that in Edelman’s words, widespread grievance. Eroding trust across the board. Those with a high sense of grievance, distrust all four institutions, business, government, media, and NGOs. We’ll discuss a report on what the survey findings mean for communicators right after this message.[00:02:00]

We are living in a time of gre grievance says Edelman, CEO, Richard Edelman, defined by a belief that government and business make our lives harder and serve narrow interests, and that wealthy people benefit unfairly from the system while regular people struggle in this age of grievance, disillusionment with societal institutions, that’s government, business, media, and NGOs is pervasive and widespread around the world.

According to the survey, 61% of respondents have a moderate or high sense of grievance. People around the world feel betrayed by leaders and left behind by societal institutions, government, business, media, and NGOs. The erosion of trust is across the board. None of the four key institutions are trusted universally, all face significant distrust among those with high grievance levels.

Trust inequality, particularly among income groups, exacerbates the issue. In addition, aggrieves people distrust [00:03:00] CEOs, as well as innovations like artificial intelligence. For any organization to succeed now and in the years ahead, its leaders cannot ignore grievance. A significant finding is that four in 10 people approve of hostile activism, where radical tactics such as online attacks, disinformation, and even violence, are seen by many as viable ways to address systemic issues.

Hostile activism is most prevalent among respondents aged 18 to 34 with 53% supporting these tactics. Over the last decade, society has devolved from fears to polarization to grievance. As Richard Edelman incumbents in the US, uk, France, Germany, South Korea and Canada were ousted amid voter anger over job losses to globalization and inflation.

He added. We now see a zero sum mindset that legitimizes extreme measures like violence and disinformation as tools for change. Other findings are many. They [00:04:00] include globalization, recession, and technology fears. They’re heightened where the percentage of employees who worry about losing their jobs because of these forces has re risen significantly since last year, free of discrimination surges.

Nearly two thirds of respondents worry about experiencing prejudice, discrimination, or racism up 10 points in the last year, and with significant increases across countries and demographics, including among white respondents in the us. CEOs must take action. They have permission to address a societal issue.

When their business contributed to the problem, it harms their stakeholders. They could have a major positive impact or it would improve their business’s performance. As communicators and leaders, we stand at a critical juncture where trust is in free for grievances are deepening, and the potential for societal instability grows.

This is just a high level snapshot, I, I should add, but clearly there’s major concern about the state of trust and what to do about it. This crisis of grievance surely is [00:05:00] a moment for decisive, empathetic leadership, grounded in action and authenticity shall. It seems that trust is declining precipitously, as you mentioned, it’s across all four institutions.

Mm. A couple glimmers of hope, at least for communicators working in business. First business is still the most trusted institution and the only one above water among the four institutions business. Has the highest trust level at 62%, and it’s viewed both as competent and ethical, but still eroding.

It’s not as high as it has been in previous surveys. Another glimmer of hope is that despite trust challenges, CEOs are expected to address societal issues. So there is an expectation that business is going to do something about this. So I, I think communicators need to take this to heart and use it as at least to inform strategies for communication.

[00:06:00] And, and this would be both internal and external. I think we need to think about what the role of businesses in societal change, and I, I don’t, I, I, I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I know that here in the US businesses retreating from the idea of societal change. Right now with the Trump administration taking power today they are retreating from DEI, for example.

And yet that is one of the things, that a lot of people are looking for and feeling that they’re not getting because of that divide largely between rich and poor. So and, and that’s one that just confounds me here in the US because of, of all of the outpouring of support from business and from large sector of the population for the Trump administration, and yet the people who are going to be leading that administration have a net worth.

It is larger than the gross domestic. Product of most of the countries in the world. Hmm. And so you’re being led by the ultra rich. Some people are already calling it an oligarchy, and yet [00:07:00] it’s this divide of, of wealthy and not wealthy that is driving a lot of this grievance. But we need to be combating misinformation.

We need to be engaging people locally. I think we need to have our CEOs and other leaders, and frankly even our frontline employees more visible in the communities because when you know people, you trust them more, and it’s easier to get a handle on what that the organization that represent is doing in order to address the concerns.

That they have. We, we need to be cognizant of the risks that people perceive with technology and talk about how we’re employing them and why this is perhaps good for the general population. We need to navigate the polarized societal landscape carefully. But mostly there’s opportunities here for CEOs to position themselves as not just thought leaders, but empathetic and action oriented.

People [00:08:00] who can foster trust particularly when they’re addressing pressing issues that matter to people that they have told us matters to them. In this survey issues like inequality, discrimination and environmental challenges. Mm. Yeah, there’s a lot to take in from that. I think shell, you are right.

The lessons for communicators and their clients internally, if you are in that sense or externally, doesn’t really matter on taking a lead and initiative, if you will, for authentic communication that addresses these grievances. I don’t know, as we’re talking what form that might take. I don’t think there’s a single form.

It’ll depend on a lot of things. The flip side of that, I think is the fi, the actual findings of diet distress and negativity across the board in all these key metrics. The one that worries me, in fact many of them do, but let’s pick one. One that worries me quite a bit is the majority of people are convinced that wealthy people take more than their fair share.

So [00:09:00] the metric is quite . Staggering. Two thirds of people believe that they don’t pay their fair share of taxes, and almost two thirds believe that they’re the cause of many problems. And you combine that then with hostile activism, and it’s not hard to see for instance, that that dreadful murder of that health healthcare company’s CEO in New York a month or so back.

Some of what I’ve read subsequently I understand it’s, it’s hard to even say that, but I do understand why that an event like that might happen, particularly in light of some things I’ve read recently, for instance. And of course this is where you then have to pause a bit and say, did I verify all this stuff?

It was in a reputable journal that talked about, there’s evidence that they overcharged patients over a thousand percent. And so there’s a, a prime example. The hostile activism metric. The staggering too. The one I think that’s the least worrying ’cause it doesn’t involve violence, is intentionally spreading disinformation.

A quarter of the respondent said they’re okay with that, [00:10:00] and we are seeing it every single day. I think it’s also combined and this adds to the is part of the grievance certainly, but it adds to the destruction of trust is the way in which leaders. And I’m using that word very loosely including politicians lie.

They absolutely lie. They do not tell the truth. And so no wonder people don’t trust them. And you then have, in my opinion, the egregious display of wealth by some people, and you’ll know who I mean when I talk about those people sending rockets into space and doing all that kind of stuff that flaunt their success and wealth and no wonder.

That’s a, that’s the wrong message sense then political leaders doing the same. And you mentioned Trump, who’s taking office today. He’s gotta be a prime example here, but he is not the only one. So this all adds to this climate of, of this time of, of grievance that translates into this where people feel that they have to take their own actions ’cause they can’t trust anyone.

I. From a business point of view where we’re talking about what [00:11:00] can, what can we do in our for our employers or our clients to help them with this? Well, there’s plenty and you’ve just kind of set the, set the bench on that, I think. But there, there’s a bigger picture at stake here, and I think that would.

All contribute to to to stopping you achieving your goals in advising a CEO to be proactive. So what happens if A CEO addresses a group of employees that people feel empowered to criticize him right there and then indeed insult the CEO? No respect at all. How do you. Navigate that kind of environment.

How do you prepare? So all that is now top of your agenda as opposed to not really a likelihood we need to get with a positive message. This is a tough time for this, I think, in light of stuff like this, don’t you think? Oh, it, it absolutely is. And you know, one of the fascinating dimensions of all of this is the.

Anger that we’re seeing aimed at the ultra rich. I’ve seen [00:12:00] a couple of memes. I’m, I’m just gonna point to two and I, I don’t have them in front of me, so I’m not gonna be able to cite them. Word for word. But what strikes me about these two is, is not that they exist, it’s that they are being shared repeatedly.

I mean, I’m seeing these things. Probably a hundred times on multiple platforms. One of them is a, a graphic of a very long list, and it says, where is the Elon Musk Cancer Clinic? Where is the Elon Musk? Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. And, and then the other one has a photograph of Musk. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg with goofy smiles on their faces.

And it says, how must it feel to go to bed every night knowing that you personally could solve world hunger and homelessness and wake up in the morning and still have enough money that you’ll never be able to spend it all and still not do anything? And I’ve seen that one, probably 75 or a Yeah, or a hundred times.

So this anger at. The ultra [00:13:00] rich, and I’m not going to make the case one way or another that it’s, it’s justified anger. There are people who say, if you work hard and make that kind of money, you deserve it. But that anger is real. And, and, and that’s part of the grievance. And I think it is something that organizations need to think about in terms of their governance of their pay packages.

As, as they consider how customers prospective customers are going to respond to them as this continues to spiral outta control because frankly, I see this getting worse before it gets better. Yeah, totally agree with you. She, and that example you gave is not a new thing at all. I can remember.

Going back 20 plus years a company I worked for at the time and you had company cars and all that and I picked up a a a a Saab 900 Turbo very pokey machine that was outside the realm of what people expect of someone let me in the job I was doing to be driving. They’d expect me to be driving like a Ford or something like that, or a voxel.

I show [00:14:00] up in a, in a Saab beautiful car. It was great. And I remember getting pushback on this comments, snidey comments from people, snarky remarks at the time. And that is still the case now. So you subdue this now. So I think it is a big problem. I don’t believe it will be solved without the help of government, but we don’t trust government.

So where on earth do we go from here with that? In that case? I, it’s, I don’t know , I, I always appreciate people who are able to say, I don’t know, . All I can talk about is what, what business can do and what communicators can do in, in support of that. And I think it’s helping to develop communication strategies that are two-way that engage the local communities and, and engage the communities.

With which organizations interact. But I also think that there needs to be a rethinking of, where the money goes. And I thought this was underway when the US Chamber of Commerce announced that shareholders were [00:15:00] no longer the top priority. But I’m starting to hear people talk more about stakeholder capitalism.

You know, nobody wants to go down the socialism road for obvious reasons. But this idea of stakeholder capitalism making money is good. We just need to make sure that it gets into the hands of the people who played a role in producing that capital, not just the owner of the business behind it.

So it’s, it’s something to consider if, if you. Want to stop the cycle that we see because it’s, it’s, it’s getting bad enough that pretty soon it’s gonna rear up and, and bite business in the ass. Yeah, I, I think it’s, it, it, my kind of conclusive comment on, on all of that really is something that is not new by any means.

It crops up all the time, which is listening. You gotta prioritize listening, genuinely understand the concerns of stakeholders. And I really don’t like the word stakeholders. A catchall word that people dish up a lot, but employees, your customers, your [00:16:00] investors. Families of all of those people, and these are pretty socialist ideas, but they are universal in my opinion, and we don’t do enough of that.

And this must be prioritized. All that listening and addressing them and yeah, this is important. Do you understand them? You, the communicator in, in the sense of aligning with the core values of your organization. You’ve gotta tailor it to that. And so you can present a credible picture to everyone.

So don’t broadcast. You’ve gotta foster meaningful dialogue. So that’s, that’s my conclusion. It’s not a new message at all. I think there needs to be at least two dimensions to, to listening. And now I’m talking about with external communities, not internal communications. Right. But I think surveys are fine, but what we need is face-to-face.

We need to start doing some town halls out there to understand the grievances, to ensure that voices are heard, to make sure that people. Understand that their voices are being heard and, and then we need to [00:17:00] figure out within our stakeholder groups, I’m fine with that word by the way within our stakeholder groups, which groups are affected by the issues driving this GRE grievance?

And then find ways to collaborate with them. We have to. Co-create solutions, and we have to empower these groups to feel like they’re part of a decision making process. I mean, you know, helplessness is what drives a lot of this feeling like you don’t have Yeah. Any way to do anything about it. And if business can provide an entree for people to feel like they, I.

Do have the ability to take part in the decision making process other than going to, you know, vote on election day that that could help. I mean, we’re just scratching the surface. But in, in terms of listening, I really think that listening I. It doesn’t have to be confined to face to face, but I think a lot of it needs to, because we need our people out there engaging.

They need to see who these people are, meet them, kind of get to know them, because those are the people that you end up trusting. It’s, it’s those nameless, faceless [00:18:00] people that are making decisions, you know, on the, on the 72nd floor and, and only come out with their bodyguards to get to their car.

That, that we tend not to trust. Right. Well, we got, we have work to do. I think shell, don’t you? ? Oh, plenty of it. Can’t, can’t, can’t rest on all our laurels at this point. . So I think we’ll probably be talking about this when we get together on Saturday to record our, our monthly long form episode. But until then, that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #446: Navigating Grievance — Insights from the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The media landscape is in turmoil. It may not be exactly the turmoil we hear about, though, based on research release in a new Poynter Institute report. For example, it is taken as gospel that “people don’t trust the media,” but a survey finds that’s not necessarily accurate. Local news reporters, for example, are highly trusted, mainly because they have established relationships in the community. That supports a broader notion: These days, connection matters more than credentials, for better or for worse, leading to the rise of the “newsfluencer,” who can be anybody from an experienced journalist with a Substack newsletter to a citizen journalist with no training to a provocateur who is able to build an audience.

If your job involves getting coverage for your company’s news or brand, what was once a straightforward assignment is now a complex maze full of mines. Should you get your CEO onto a podcast? Elevate a frontline employee with a strong personal brand to help get the word out? Start sharing information in small social communities? Or any of dozens of other options?

Neville and Shel delve into this one aspect of the OnPoynt Report in this short midweek episode.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone, and welcome to for immediate release. This is episode 4, 4 5. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shell Holtz. And we have been reporting here over the last several episodes about the changing media landscape since communicators rely on media to get the word out. , that’s the heart of media relations, right?

It’s an important topic to address the Pointer Institute. Is one of the organizations engaged in research into the massive changes that the media are experiencing. If you haven’t heard of them, the Pointer Institute for Media Studies is a nonprofit journalism school and research organization based in St.

Petersburg, Florida. They own the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact Checking network. Where they operate PolitiFact, they just released their on point. That’s P-O-Y-N-T, of course, because that’s how you spell pointer. The on point report, which sheds light on the evolving landscape of media relations.[00:01:00]

The report offers a lot of useful insights. Into how technology and shifting public perceptions are reshaping the way organizations interact with the media. So we thought we would dive into that today, starting with a look at the changing media landscape On point highlights a significant transformation in the media environment.

Traditional news outlets are contending with declining. Circulation and viewership. While digital platforms and social media have surged as primary news sources, this includes things like substack newsletters, and of course journalists are writing these as a way to reach people, but. Other professionals are too without journalistic training, and so are activists and conspiracy theorists.

Anybody can start one. All you need is a credit card. I read a LinkedIn post by Myra Baez an audience strategist who pointed out that the Washington Post has laid off most of its PR team. They wrote that talent driven journalism is the future of media and personalities [00:02:00] and creators will lead the way.

Myra says that the post is creating a star talent unit and that Al Jazeera plus experimented with this, I guess she used to work there more than a decade ago, intertwining the organization’s brand with journalists’, personal brands for Al Jazeera plus’s, social media oriented journalism. And she said it worked.

We’ve entered the area. We’ve entered the era of news influencers and news creators. She wrote, it’s not just journalism. This trend spills over into other industries. Businesses are replacing traditional PR strategies with regular employees who bring strong personal brands. The era of faceless organizations is ending.

She wrote, and that’s a key point for business communicators, but she also notes. People aren’t differentiating between reporting and influencer content, and she says it doesn’t matter. It’s all about connection over credentials, she says. But , is it really, does the idea of a [00:03:00] professional journalist carry no weight anymore?

Do we really want a news influencer who’s only experience is on TikTok or Instagram to report a complex story? The same way somebody who studied journalism school in school and got experience working for professional editors can now maybe I’m old, but I don’t think so. But that doesn’t mean there’s no value out there with people telling stories in new.

In interesting ways in any case, this shift has led to a more fragmented media landscape where audiences access information from a multitude of channels, each with its own credibility and reach. So before we move on to the issue of trust in media, Neville any thoughts on the shift in the media landscape?

Yeah, I think it’s we quite a few actually, but I think just a couple. This is inevitable. It seems to me, given the state of things that we see all around us, the signals are, there have been for a while that this shift is coming and it’s su not sudden. It’s little by little. It’s gradually been [00:04:00] approaching.

I think it’s interesting that, the shift is it? It’s more a question, generationally based in terms of preferences of where people want to get their news and information from. If that’s not, I. Front and center of the strategies of media organizations. I think they’re gonna be in trouble because this is this is about gi giving people stuff that retains them and engages with them.

And that’s different generationally. Now, as we know you and I are in that that lovely group called the Boomers, right? And you and I actually are utterly not . Like the stereotypical boomer. I certainly am not in terms of the things that interest me, the tools that I use and how I behave online, all that kind of thing.

Yet most people are they’re true to form in that regard. And you’ll find that not just in journalism, but in politics and a ton of other things that will, we may touch on some of that. So I think. This trend is inevitable. It’s already underway. We’re seeing some interesting [00:05:00] things happening.

And indeed the point of report is rich with insights on where this is going. We need to as communicators. Be fully aware of this and not try and not understand it because you have to understand it if you wanna know who your audiences are and where they’re at and how you will reach them.

And the same with the journalists that you need to catch. I was thinking about TikTok reading about that today and what’s going on in the US about, are they gonna be banned from the America and all this kind of stuff, and yet. TikTok, those two words cropping up in news reports daily about a place where this or that is happening, and therefore, does it make sense to ban them?

That’s political drive. I get that. So though you are gonna alienate a lot of your audience if you do that in the United States. But that’s slightly separate topic. But it makes me think of these shifts that are happening and you have to be completely on top of . The developments and pay attention to them.[00:06:00]

So yeah, lot’s happening. Absolutely. And to your point with generations. Yeah, absolutely. I think that boomers are probably still reading print newspapers by and large. Yeah. There is a risk though, in assuming that I. Any cohort is a monolith. I think one of the characterizations we hear of boomers is not very tech savvy.

And yet it was boomers who invented the internet. Let’s not forget that, that people like Bennett surf boomers. And you look at somebody like. James Licklider, who was involved with darpa and the effort to create the packet switching that invented the, he preceded boomers. He was part of that greatest generation that came before, so I think there’s danger in assuming too much about any one cohort, but definitely look at those characteristics and what media they’re using.

I think it’s worth noting, just as sort an aside here to mention that those folks who we see as boomers, Vince s being one, wasn’t a boomer. Meaning he wasn’t gray hair [00:07:00] and white bearded when he did all this stuff. He was quite a young guy. Tim Burners Lee, another one. He was in his thirties when he invented the World Wide Web.

Yep, just a point. So keep in mind the, there are very tech savvy boomers. Yeah. Out there and older. Let’s talk about trust in media because that’s a pivotal focus of the report. Public confidence in media institutions has been waning influenced by factors such as perceived biases. A lot of that is politically driven misinformation and the rapid spread of fake news, which I think we’re at greater risk of because of.

This erosion of trust poses challenges for organizations striving to convey their messages effectively through any media channels. And yet, 83% of people say local news outlets are at least somewhat important to the wellbeing of their local community.

69% say local journalists in their area are mostly in touch with their community, and 71% say local journalists are reporting news accurately. Now, how does that square with the idea that . People don’t trust [00:08:00] the media. And the answer to that is the media is not a monolith. As the on point report notes, people are more likely to trust people they know journalists to news organizations are most trusted when they develop relationships with customers, donors, business partners, and sources.

And there’s a growing number of local news and topic oriented sites. On the us The On Point report says three new ones are launching every month on average. Are we targeting. These with solid content. Neville, your thoughts on trust in media. It’s shifted. The old definitions are changing. What do we mean by trust?

I think that’s a good thing as it evolves, but it’s very interesting the point you mentioned in the pointer report about the word media is too broad and as, as they say, and the word trust is too broad and inexact. And I think that’s absolutely right. Word of this phrase of distrust of media I agree with pointed that it tends to look at a [00:09:00] huge picture, not the local scene.

And you hear this anecdotally a lot, don’t you? And you’ve referenced it even that people may not trust that particular organization, but hey, where I live and how I relate to them, they’re wonderful. And that’s a, that’s. It sums it up really, doesn’t it? So it’s good to see this is, I believe something important to pay attention to and be part of that shift and understand it so that you are able to engage with people as this whole thing shifts.

In terms of trust, yeah I really was taken by this focus on local journalism. I have been, as I don’t know if everybody listening knows that my degree is in journalism way back when print was print, newspapers and radio were the only options available to you. But I have been very concerned about the closing of so many.

Local community newspapers because you need somebody to sit in the school board meeting and report on [00:10:00] that in the zoning commission meeting to report on that. If there’s no public oversight of these institutions, then they can just do whatever they want behind closed doors. So I’m heartened to see these local news sites opening.

I don’t know how rigorous their journalism is, but there’s an opportunity there. There’s that old expression that all politics is local. Maybe all media relations is local too. So I think we need to look at these as opportunities for getting our word out through journalists who are trusted.

By the local community and find the local angles to our stories. And by the way, AI should be able to help with that. If we need to crank out, our, pitches for 50 different geographic regions, that could take a lot of time if you’re trying to do that manually. Yeah I think I would add to that, maybe this is just in the uk, but I suspect not in that the media, local media and this is a very broad observation and [00:11:00] it is just that an opinion observation.

That, what I certainly note is that the online versions of newspapers here tend to be dominated by a handful of very big companies, won a lot of titles, and they are driven by . Ads popups it’s hard to see news stories. And when you go to a website that’s your local newspaper website, you are just overwhelmed with the advertising and the promotional stuff to actually see the story.

So you tend not to go. So I often wonder, when I do go and encounter all this stuff, how can they keep in business for God’s sake? Because surely circulation the really, the, what do you call it, the visitors must be declining, but I guess not. Print the actual print. It’s hard to find newspapers outside of the old traditional news agents.

In the supermarkets. Local ones tend to be free giveaways now, so I don’t think they have the credibility anymore. That’s my own perception. That said where I live in Somerset, in England, the local papers here are actually quite [00:12:00] enjoy, but they’re very good at reporting local news. The only trouble is, so the journalism’s good.

The only trouble is it’s in, is the medium in which that journalism is published with all the ads and the, and it’s not an, not a pleasant user experience, I find. Yeah. I took a look in the on point study. They listed a bunch of these. Relatively new local news sites. Yeah. And it was heartening to see that they weren’t riddled with ads.

These are I’m gathering efforts by people who are passionate Yeah. About getting local news out there and not looking, they’re not media moguls looking to sell a lot of advertising, probably just looking to cover their costs. And, there’s probably a lot of volunteer. Citizen journalists who are saying, yeah, I’ll go to that zoning commission meeting and sit in and write a report.

Again I worry about the quality of journalism people knowing what sources to reach out to how to do an investigation. [00:13:00] I remember when I was working for a daily newspaper I led an investigation. It was into, corruption, the county level. But I had to know how to go to the county office and get the right records and sit there with a ruler and go down every line and take the right notes and document all of this, which is something I learned in journalism school.

You wonder if somebody who says, yeah, I’ll go to the zoning commission meeting, even thinks to do something like that as opposed to just taking the notes and reporting what they heard. But something is better than nothing and it could evolve into something more I suppose. Let’s talk about the implications of all of this for media relations.

That’s the connection to the theme of this podcast. The report underscores a number of implications for media relations professionals. One you already referenced, Neville Diversified outreach. Relying solely on traditional media is no longer adequate. Organizations need to engage with a variety of platforms including digital outlets, blogs, podcasts.

Did I mention [00:14:00] podcasts? . And social media influencers and news influencers. In an. In order to reach their target audiences effectively. And I wonder how many PR agencies, not to mention in-house PR teams are thinking about the need to undergo this transformation. Then there’s authenticity and transparency in an era of skepticism.

Being genuine and transparent is crucial. Audiences are more likely to trust organizations that communicate openly and honestly, acknowledging both successes and challenges. And here again, is an opportunity . Employees who have strong personal brands representing the organization.

Rather than being a faceless organization, we need to build direct relationships. With the rise of social media organizations have the opportunity to establish direct connections with our audiences. This direct engagement can help build trust and foster a sense of. Community and of course embracing technology.

Leveraging technological tools such as data analytics and AI [00:15:00] can enhance the effectiveness of media relations strategies. They can help in understanding audience preferences, predicting trends, and crafting personalized messages. So in terms of media relations, devil thoughts. You’ve nailed it. I think she

I think pointer talks about a pointer which makes sense to me. Media organizations that can adeptly blend compelling narratives with captivating audio and visual elements will emerge as industry leaders shaping news consumption, generating new revenue, and refining the boundaries of journalism.

So they gotta expand their skill sets of their journalists to get there. So it’s not a single thing that needs to happen. There’s quite a bit that needs to happen there. And for communicators to understand this from a media relations point of view, there are changes there too, to be in step with what is happening as pointer mentions.

So it is quite interesting you mentioned podcasts earlier, and one of the trends they talk about is that what. [00:16:00] News publishers are planning to produce more of 47% of them more podcasts. Okay. That’s beaten by newsletters. It’s 52% and video by 64%. But guess what? They’re not planning to produce more of articles, traditional articles.

Yeah. 0%, 0% produce more articles. Yeah. Now, equally interesting just to me to mention this, that pointer sites the data for that, those metrics. It’s global. They talk to media leaders. They say 56 countries. This is for Reuters Institute of Journalism Report last year. The journalism media and technology trends and productions.

Even the ones that are just trends that might happen in six months or whatever it might be. This is a part of the evolution, if you will, of of what’s happening in the overall media landscape. I think there’s so much to. Grapple with this that you need to decide what you’re gonna pay attention on and you need some help with that probably.

So Pointers report is a good place to start I think. Yeah, it is. And in terms of podcasts, I think being able to pitch a media outlet for its podcast is something we’re going to need to start doing, but I. Certainly wouldn’t limit myself to media podcasts. I would look at the podcasts the media are quoting.

This is something we talked about last week, is you’re seeing people quoted from, Zuckerberg was quoted just the other day from his interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Yeah. There are podcasts that have large followings that. [00:18:00] People are appearing on and then being quoted by the Washington Post and the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

So podcasting like TikTok is now becoming a source of news. Used to be Twitter at one point a little less these days and more the podcasts and TikTok. Yeah. And in fact the the 2025 version of that Reuters report that I mentioned talks about that in the context of growth of social media platforms that are gonna get media attention, Twitter or XI should say, is at the bottom, literally blue sky.

TikTok forgotten the other one, the three one. That ones that caught my attention. But Blues scum in particular thread are right up there. No threads. Threads are off. The chart almost is down there with X. Not, they don’t see threads. They don’t see threads as I, I suspect I, my interpretation, they don’t see threads as mattering much in the future.

I was actually grappling to try and find the chart that I referenced, but I can’t lay [00:19:00] my hands on it in a second. But it’s interesting. We are seeing that. Prediction happening, and indeed you can get some indicator of that. The x the media attention on XI saw a story that two days ago that academia generally speaking broadly, 60 academic institutions across Germany and Austria are quit.

Twitter gone. They’re out. Yep. They’re talking about government agencies in Germany leaving XX, not Twitter x. And some media organizations are stepping up their moves elsewhere. So Blue Sky is not the only destination people are going to. We are seeing this. Gaining momentum, I think it seems to me and the influence to a lot of it, of course, is what’s happening in the United States, in the political landscape.

We have a new president taking office formally in a week’s time as we’re recording this on 20th January. So all of that, it’d actually be interesting she to see as a kind of a related side. What media did to pay attention to on the 20th of January. The u the usual suspects, [00:20:00] of course, ’cause they’re not going away the mainstream broadcast media, but you’re gonna see live broadcast coverage coming from all sorts of places that you might not even have thought of.

So you, you will be able to encounter that kinda thing wherever you are online. I’m pretty certain of that. That’s not much different to what’s already been happening, but maybe it’s intensifying. And it could be that . You’ll find influencers and people described that way in the United States certainly will be reposting, stuff like that.

And so you’ll have discussions going on and opinions being shaped and formed and published and quoted upon. So it’s gonna be pretty much a wild west landscape, I would say. It is, and everybody’s going to walk away with a different perception based on confused on what media they’ve consumed. Unlike the old days when everybody watched Walter Cronkite and got the same information.

Yeah. Which leads us to some strategic recommendations and, we’re talking about social media. One of these strategic recommendations is to prepare for the end of public. [00:21:00] Social media, it’s a caveat. This is not something that’s going to happen tomorrow, but Chris Penn mused on LinkedIn that AI slop and bots might take down public social media because as he wrote, the only ones left will be bots talking to each other.

He suggested that you make your plans now for a future where your social networking is out of the public eye in private places where people in your circle. Of trust, provide the support and connection you crave. And if you’re a marketer, prepare for a future where public social media is no longer a driver of any kind of business.

Interesting post from Chris and I don’t disagree with it, but again, I don’t think this is something that’s gonna happen imminently. This is going to happen gradually as those AI bots start yeah. Taking over. But I. A couple of other strategic recommendations. Invest in media literacy educating both internal teams and the public about media literacy can help in discerning credible information from misinformation, thereby fostering a more [00:22:00] informed audience.

Having a robust. Crisis plan is not an option. You have to be prepared to respond quickly and effectively to negative publicity that can come from just about anywhere now. That can, mitigate potential damage. There’s a ton of information and data in this report. There’s a whole section on AI that we didn’t even touch on.

Yeah. But Neville, any concluding thoughts? I was thinking you mentioned about building relationships with journalists. And one thing I started doing is paying attention to media organizations who are publishing a list of journalists active on Blue Sky as part of these new startup packs that Blue Sky enabled.

I’ve seen probably a dozen different media organizations across Europe. Started doing [00:23:00] this and some specialist trade publications, particularly in in the pharma, in healthcare those are available sources. You don’t have to go digging for this kind of stuff, listing all those folks. Now, it’s not to say that you get them and you start spamming them with messages on the social network.

You’ll soon know that’s absolutely not the way to do this. Some probably will though. But there’s a great. Place to gain that. And of course, no one else is doing this in other platforms. So that’s gonna give Bluesky advantage as people start building out their approach to connecting with with journalists and others of interest.

So it’s a useful tool, by the way, and there’s some other tools where you can convert them into actual lists even more valuable. So those are the things you need to take advantage of because it will give you an advantage in doing things that way. Absolutely. The link to the report and to the LinkedIn posts that I referenced, the one from Maya Baez and from Chris Penn are gonna be in the show notes and that will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #445: Media Relations in a Turbulent Media Landscape appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Media outlets around the world — and in particular in the U.S. — are strategizing how to cover the incoming Trump Administration. Some are even planning to shift their focus to more soft news in order to retain readers and avoid drawing the president’s ire. We look at the implications for the media relations industry in this short midweek episode.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 444 4 4 4 of four immediate release. I’m Shell Holtz. And I’m Neville Hobson As we record this episode on the 8th of January. It’s just under two weeks until Donald Trump prepare assumes the US presidency. That’s 20th of January is the inauguration day.

The post FIR #444: Preparing for Trump 2.0 appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

For Immediate Release launched on January 3, 2005. Episode #1 explained what podcasting is, then looked at the role blogs played in the tsunami tragedy in Asia. On our 20th anniversary, Neville and Shel recall FIR’s origins and the many changes the show has undergone in two decades, some significant milestones, memorable moments, some of the challenges we have faced over the years, and other recollections. We will return to our normal programming next week.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone, and welcome to for immediate release. This is episode 4, 4 3. I’m Neville Hobson in the uk. And I’m she Holtz in the us. And if you didn’t recognize the opening the usual opening was not played today to introduce FIR. That’s the opening that we used when we were brand new. And today the day we are dropping this episode, January 3rd, 2025 is the 20th anniversary.

FIR. We launched this podcast on January 3rd, 2005. Neville. At the beginning you mentioned that this is episode 442, and that’s correct. In terms of the renumbering that I started some time ago we did 824 episodes behind before that. So this is actually episode number 1000. [00:01:00] 266, and that does not take into account the FIR interviews, the FIR book reviews, the FIR lives, and some of the other things that we have done, were probably up around I would say 1400 episodes of podcasting altogether in the 20 years.

We’ve been at this, and today what we’re gonna do is take a look back. We wanna just have a chat about what it’s been like these last 20 years and tell you how all of this came about where we’re at and where we’re headed. This all started with a conversation. In November of 2004 you had heard of podcasting Neville.

I had heard of podcasting. And both of us had started blogs because we had heard of them. Assumed that this was going to be something that, would be important in the world of communications and that the best way to learn about it and be responsive to [00:02:00] our clients about it. We were both I was consulting at the time and you were working for an organization out of the Netherlands.

We thought the best way to learn about it would be to do it. And having listened to a lot of podcasts, we thought that we would break the mold and have. Co-hosts rather than one person just going on and on into a microphone. There was one co-hosted podcast at the time. It was the Dawn and Drew show, I think.

I believe they were a husband and wife, and it was meant to be humorous and rude. And we wanted to give something back to the communications industry. So we decided to start. This we posted an MP three test file to make sure the technology would work more on that coming up in December of 2004, and then launched our first episode, which listening to now just makes me cringe on the 3rd of January.

It was cringeworthy 2005. Yeah, it was cringeworthy the audio quality, not too brilliant as we hear it today, but [00:03:00] at the time, not too bad. Yeah. Among other things, I remember the audio artifacts that you would get over Skype, but we’ll talk more about the technology in a bit. Yeah. Over the years, we have changed the frequency.

This is, this has been a very inconsistent podcast as you’ll hear we started off weekly and the more we went along, the longer the episodes got because of the. The number of things there were to talk about and how much there was going on in the world of communication and technology. So then we went bi-weekly and at some point we went back to weekly.

Then when we reinvigorated this podcast not too long ago, we decided that it would be. Monthly. And then we started doing these midweek episodes because there were things we wanted to talk about and not wait for the monthly episode. So this, that’s one of the changes we went through.

There, there were a lot as you noted. I [00:04:00] agree. I think the frequency thing was something we, as you say too, and froze with a lot. We, but we were back in those days and hasn’t really changed a lot I think. Bursting at the seams to talk about topics that interested us quite a bit.

And as you said, when we started I was actually transitioning out of the company I worked for, I was based in Amsterdam at the time that had been acquired by someone else, and my job had gone, so I was looking for. Things to do. I’d picked up some interesting consulting work on blogs at that time, and I was thinking about podcasting quite a bit, but like you said I certainly wasn’t keen in doing a solo thing, much more interest to have someone to talk to.

And then lo and behold, you and I talked. The rest is history, as they say. That was good. That’s right. And I should point out that we knew each other through I-A-E-B-C and had collaborated before on at an IABC conference when online communication was taking place through CompuServe in the PR and marketing forum in the [00:05:00] IEBC hyperspace section of the PR sig.

We. Coordinated a and an effort among all of the IABC members in that space who were at the conference to essentially live log that conference that was a conference in Boston at that time. So that was, that’s right. That was quite, that was a precursor to what was to come that we now know is FIR.

But I think the yeah, that was the first instance I can remember of anybody live talking. Yeah. Yeah, the thinking about the word podcasting, there’s a lot of talk about this. Oh it was invented by so and so back in 1990, whatever. And the first person to use it was X and all that kind of stuff.

What resonated with me, the first reference to business podcasting was by a guy called Rex Hammock, who was a very prominent blogger at the time, A CEO blogger. As it happened, ran his own company. I remember in September of 20 of 2004, he wrote a blog post, and I’ll read the section that he mentioned.

He said talking a bit about executive communication using [00:06:00] social media or blogs. No one had the term social media at that time. He said, I can see a much quicker adoption timeline for CEO podcasting than CEO blogging. Stick a microphone in front of a CEO and say, what would you like to tell your employees today?

You get a much quicker buy-in than sitting a keyboard in front of ’em and saying, blog A messages for the world to read. A word of warning to corporate communicator, type says Rex. Don’t script it for the CEO With podcasting voices, not a metaphor for writing in a conversational, believable fashion, voice is actually voice.

That’s 20 years ago. I think that still resonates today, shall don’t it. It does, although it turns out to only be semi prescient because podcasting certainly has taken off to the point that it’s influential in presidential elections now. But I would say the number of companies doing internal podcasting is still relatively low.

There’s not a lot of CEOs talking into microphones to record a podcast and sharing with their employees what they wanna share that day. [00:07:00] A couple of other changes in format that we went through. One when we started, we were doing interviews within our episodes, and as they got longer and longer, one of our first thoughts was if we started an interview podcast, then our show could just be us and.

The interviews can be in the interview feed. So we split that out and as I mentioned before, that led to book reviews and a feed we used to call speakers and speeches when we were able to record our talks or get permission to share other people’s talks that we thought were relevant to our audience. We also changed the format.

We started off calling it four immediate release but as we started these other shows and calling them FIR book reviews. FIR this and FIR that we decided to change the name of this show to the Hobson and Holtz report which continued up through episode 8 24. But that’s when you took a hiatus.

Work got very busy and I changed the format of the show where I was putting together a panel of communicators. Yeah, every week which [00:08:00] was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. And then you joined me on a couple of those panels and then had a hankering to return to the show. Yeah, we, the hiatus started in 2015 where as you said it was a pretty a pretty busy, extremely challenging time.

And that was not long before I, I packed it all in and joined IBM which is was in the kind of wings as it were. And, but I had a, I did have a hankering, I was a guest on a couple of episodes in early 2017, and then we decided to get back together again. That was a, 2017 was a year I took off my dad had died and there was a lot of stuff going on.

So the timing from this contextual point of view was just right. And so we did that. And here we are. Here we are eight years on, still doing it. Oh one. One other thing to mention before we move on to a another related topic is that we have had a number of correspondence over the year. We. We don’t do that anymore.

But this began because we were getting audio comments from Lee Hopkins out of [00:09:00] Australia. And one day I said, if he keeps sending in these audio comments, we might as well just make him a correspondent. And then we, the next comment we got from him was, this is Lee Hopkins, your correspondent from started doing what was called the Asia report. And then when he wasn’t able to continue doing that, Michael Nestley stepped in and did, yeah. The Asia report. We also had regular reports from folks like Mark Story and David Phillips and Eric Schwartzman. Yeah. From Hollywood. Yeah, Michael Nesty was based in Singapore.

Lee was in, in Adelaide, in, in Australia. David Phillips is based here in the uk. Eric Schwar, as you said. In Hollywood. Mark, I think, was in Washington at that time. He was Eric’s now I believe in New York. I forget to not forget to mention Dan York, who’s the longest. Correspondent in this context, and he’s still with us filing his tech report every month.

He’s in the US East Coast, I think Vermont at the moment. So yeah, pretty global reach with all these guys. And thinking about Lee funnily enough, I remember [00:10:00] the I ident we created for him and you found a guy on one of those services that would create. Jingles and intros and all that kind of stuff to introduce.

Yeah. Today I would just use Suno. Yeah, the one he one, the one this for Lee, that was well done by the guy who recorded it was, put another shrimp on the Barbie. It was so characteristically stereotypically Australian was the point we were trying to get across. And Lee was a really good sport.

He really played to that well. So that was a, that was an interesting branding perspective. It was fun while it lasted. Yep. We’re gonna talk about some of the milestones that we recall from over the years. And Neville, you’re gonna take the lead on that. There are just two I wanted to mention before you do.

One is our interview with Richard Edelman. He agreed to, to speak with us. I believe he was at the gym. And, my, my guess is he was using a payphone at that point and dialing in somewhere. But it was a great interview. It was almost an hour. We covered a lot of ground. And then when was that?

Do you have the [00:11:00] end, the date? I don’t, I can find that out. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, but it was in, and I don’t have a date on, it was in the, it was in the early days. So roughly would’ve been around what, 2006, 2007. That kind of time. Probably, maybe a little later. Okay. I’ll look it up while you’re covering some of the highlights and see if I can put a date on that.

Okay. As well as the other one. And this is one that I continue to reference today. In conversations with people, various contexts, and this was an interview we did with two gentlemen. One of them, I can’t recall his name but he had been an attorney in the trucking industry in the US and now was.

Crossing the United States meeting with hospitals to try to teach them that. Listening to your lawyers and sending doctors who have made a mistake during surgery into their rooms to hide and call their lawyers led to less favorable outcomes [00:12:00] than simply admitting to the family or the patient what had happened, why and how you’re gonna make it right.

The other was Helio Fred Garcia. From the Logos Institute, and I believe he’s at Columbia University. I’ve seen Fred speak oh, four or five times. We’ve had several conversations. I’ve read a couple of his books and that was a, just a spectacular conversation, just a real revelation in terms of the insights that are provided.

Into crisis communication despite everything we, we read and see and study and all the sessions we go to at conferences. You think you’ve heard it all, but this was just loaded with Revelations. It was a great interview. There’s a lot we could have picked to include in this episode to talk about milestones.

But if we’d done ’em all, we’ve been here to rival the two and a half hours episode that we did in 2020. So we haven’t done that. Good ones to mention. It was not easy. But there are quite a few that struck me [00:13:00] as memorable. Back in those very early days. In particular one that come, came to mind was the interview we did with Michael Wiley, who was the, his title at the time, director of New Media at general Motors, GM Communications.

And that was a milestone because General Motors was very active with a blog. Where the chief Blogger was a man called Bob Lutz, who’s big. Figure in the US auto industry. He was blogging about small block engines, the cars, the works, and the bog was called the GM Fast Lane Blog. And they were also experimenting with podcasting.

And so they were very early business adopters of. Blogs and podcasts long time long before we called it social media and indeed Michael’s, Michael Bo title directed New Media. That was a phrase that was in common use at the time. So we had a only a 20 minute conversation with Michael, but it was a kind of a scoop for us to get the huge interest at that [00:14:00] time in what a big corporation like General Motors is doing with new media.

So we had a conversation with Michael. That was a great chat and he told us what the primary goal’s worth for the Fast Lane blog, and that was a kind of a scoop to be able to share that fact publicly. Now, of course, looking back 20 years it was it doesn’t seem such a bigger deal. And indeed, I would say most people have gone through all that since then in, in what they’re trying to do from business point of view.

But he said, just to quote him. To get beyond our old ways of communication with a new direct line of communication to all stakeholders. That’s the primary objective. So unfiltered communication, that was a phrase Bob Lutz used quite a bit direct to the audience, bypassing the middleman, which is the PR firms, the ad agencies, the mainstream media, all that revolutionary notions at the time, not.

Unpopular, but contentious to many typical communications issuing press releases. Said [00:15:00] Michael, talking to the media who repurposed your messages for you, and there’s no way for customers to get their thoughts back to you. We’ve been wanting to create this direct line of communication so that our various stakeholders aren’t going to message boards to talk about us.

They have an opportunity to come and talk directly to us. We’re big into getting feedback from our customers, employees, and others. Taking their comments to become a better company and develop better products. We’re really getting some excellent feedback just about every discussion we have on the Fast Lean blog.

We’ve had an excellent dialogue. That may not sound a big deal, Dave. That was a huge deal back then. A big company like that. A public listed company talking about direct communication with customers and soliciting direct feedback, bypassing all the usual channels. That was revolutionary. So that was really great getting that opportunity to hear all those things.

And Michael told us at length other things too about how they were looking to expand that with other bloggers. But Bob Lutz was the star blogger without any question. He also told us a little bit [00:16:00] about their plans for podcasting. But it was the blog that was the big deal. And we had other things quite a bit too, actually.

We talked a bit about. How communicate, or rather this followed on a couple days later, actually, other communicators who listened to that interview went away and wrote up their opinions about it on their own blocks. Nowadays it’s just social medias. You gotta social networks and do all that kind of thing.

But they gave top marks to, to Michael and to our conversation. So a couple of quotes here. From people who are still around today. Lela Fever, common crafts, he said, I think it’s safe to say that GM is getting it Cluetrain style. This was great to hear from someone at gm. You should really check out the interview and for those listeners of you in the Gen Z arena, you might not have heard of C Cluetrain.

You should pay attention to what that was at the turn of the century. That was huge. The Clue Train Manifesto. Kevin O’Keefe at Lex Blob, he is definitely still around as Kevin, like large law firms. General Motors is learning from its first [00:17:00] blog. He said legal marketing professionals can learn much from GM and their PR blogging efforts.

Philippe Boreman, our friend Philippe in in Belgium and points further south in Northern Africa. He said GM has started to podcast and suddenly you see the topic being discussed everywhere. And Alan Moore Brett here in the uk. I haven’t seen Alan for quite a long time now, but he was pretty prominently active in those days.

He said Gmma being far more expansive in utilizing digital channels to build far more effective communications. With its stakeholders than just a blogging vice chairman. So you’ve got the sign of what others saw and how they felt. This was so important at the time, and I agree. It was pretty important.

So there was that one other one that I wanted to mention, even though it’s in passing, I think because we might have some updates on this, is we were really fortunate to secure, and this was quite a scoop, an interview with Steve Ruble when he was working at. Cooper Katz, a PR firm in New [00:18:00] York.

The prior, before his accelerated rise at Edelman, before he went there and he had a great blog, it was very influential called Microper Persuasion. And longtime listeners will remember that I’m sure I said in the blog posts at the time. These arguably Steve is arguably the most.

Prominent and influential blogger in the PR profession, either side of the Atlantic, and I think he really was Shell, so we had a great chat with him. You asked him and. No, that followed later. This was in March, 2005. The business week article was later than that. You asked him a question about how things are going with the blog and what developments are gonna be with that.

And he said, I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing blogging like a madman. And what I’m trying to do is really, I wanna shake the tree. I think that PR professionals need to really, get what’s going on here and jump on board. And I think that the three of us and the other 97 of us who currently blog in the PR industry, we need to do a better job of talking to the everyday PR man or [00:19:00] woman and what it means to them.

I. ’cause I think a little bit of what we’re doing now is talking amongst ourselves and talking amongst the people who do get it in social media land, actually in mainstream media land as well as, with the different opportunities we get to talk the press. But I think we need to get everyone on board.

I think we’re still having that conversation, Cheryl, don’t you? Although it’s probably 9,700 PR bloggers now. A thousand even. Yeah, exactly. And there’s a lot more ways in which you can communicate. Now I noticed, by the way, just reminding myself he called it, he mentioned social media in that interview.

That was the first reference I remember hearing about what we now commonly call social media. It’s also worth remembering that Steve Ruble and Joe Jaffe started their podcast was it across the pond? Was that what it was called? Across the Sound? Across the sound shortly after we started ours.

And so did oh, it was Terry F and David Jones started inside PR after listening to FIR. Yep, it’s true. [00:20:00] And another milestone episode I felt was episode 100, a hundredth episode that suggested that we might have longevity with this thing that we started in 2005. The hundredth episode was actually on January the fifth, 2006.

So one year on from our first episode, we published a 100th episode. That’s an average. That works out about just under two a week. That’s about right, isn’t it? Yeah. ’cause we started, it wasn’t long before we went biweekly. You are right. And we, in that episode, we talked about a range of topics.

You using a CV as an RSS fees and a podcast. The World Economic Forum was podcasting and blogging, or had planned to at their upcoming event. What are the CEO’s biggest fears about these new media? Dan York’s report was in there and we had listeners, comments, discussion, upcoming interview with the music and all that.

But the comments. Lots of them. I think we’re gonna talk a bit more about comments in a while, aren’t we? That was the 100th episode. So we, we were quite well established then. We looking at the the show notes we [00:21:00] had a section we called from our US northeast correspondent.

That would be Dan, I would say. We had news briefs as we called them at the time, the snippets of information listener comments, discussion where people sent in audio or wrote text comments in the blog, and we discuss those comments and have a conversation about those comments that took up a big chunk of each episode in the show.

We don’t do that anymore. Things have evolved. Commenting is not a big thing, but we’ll talk about comments later on, I think. So that was the 100th episodes. A huge milestone for us in 2007 was the publication of the podcasting book that we collaborated on. And that was something that emerged from a conversation I had back in 2005.

So two years prior with Yvonne Devita, who was how would you describe Yvonne? A book agent doesn’t quite do it. She was more like an editorial publishing guide, had all the contacts in the publishing industry. [00:22:00] Yeah. She worked with people who were self-publishing and helped them get their book into shape.

We put together we planned this book. You and I had a conversation about it. You, at that time were already a well published author. I think you’d done four books at that time, and this is something you were quite well accustomed to. I wasn’t. I had the junior role in here as the, as.

It wasn’t a 50 50 venture. You did most of the writing, but the book was out. It was the second book. Of worth that focused on podcasting from a business perspective. The first was Todd Cochran’s book that he published in late 2005. I think I’m right. I bought it. I remember when it came out. But our book was modestly called How to Do Everything with Podcasting.

The bus, the focus was very much on business and it came out in June, 2007. That was when it was available in the us from Amazon and other online sellers, as well as normal books sellers, and it was made available on Amazon in the UK and July the first of that year. We had great reaction to it.

Shell, didn’t [00:23:00] we had warm reviews everywhere you looked. It was really heartening to see all of that. At least my point of view as the kind of junior author, if you will. Yeah, we got some good feedback on it. Not everybody agreed with everything that was in it. If you read the reviews on Amazon, there’s one person who thought it should have been better Fax checked.

But I couldn’t find any specifics that he was arguing about. No, I would urge you not to read it now. It is woefully out of date, especially in terms of most of the technology. I think the things that are still accurate have to do with types of microphones and the like, everything else. Yeah. Has changed.

Yeah. I think, I guess only thing I would add is about how to do a business podcast is still valid though. Yeah. A bit like Todd’s book, it’s outta date when you talk about the equipment. Yeah. And even the reasons why you’d want to podcast. And the tools available to you. The services are available to you and how you go about it.

Totally changed. I agree. So that is worth bearing in mind. I would say to anyone, yes, go and read it. If you wanna look back at what things were like back in [00:24:00] those days. I would argue though that nevertheless, in the business sector, there are still some valid insights. That still apply today?

Trouble is how do you separate it out from the stuff that doesn’t apply today? That’s the trick. Don’t rely on this, but it was a milestone for us in 2007, two years later, after that first conversation, we published a book. I think we got some more things to talk about that are a little bit later.

But let’s stay with with that period from 2007 up to about 2015. So seven, seven years or so. And some of the things that we were doing during that time, for instance we used to not. I wouldn’t say regularly, as in every year, two or three times. We did quite comprehensive listener surveys.

And remember at that time we had sponsors Reagan report Reagan Communications with the Prime sponsor. You’ll probably remember the others. Chip Griffin, I think, was was the one who started sponsor. Custom scoop chip, and they would do the media monitoring minute, which I think Jen zing pre what a lot of other podcasts ended up doing, which was having [00:25:00] substantive content from their sponsors rather than a pitch.

And Jen Zing enzyme ended up coming in and doing some of those too. She at the time was, she was great of chips. Yeah. We also had Igloo software and there were some others in there that I. I can’t remember that we had as sponsors, right? So that was the kind of the golden age of sponsors paying money to be associated with our podcast.

Not enough to retire on or even take that cruise we talked about back in those days. Shell, but it was nice and it signified. People had a belief that. This was worth supporting and they’re willing to put some money into it. Oh. Yeah. So of course that was another one. It’s worth before. It’s worth mentioning, again, a thanks to all the sponsors at that time because that was the pinnacle from that point of view.

It was good. And we were able to do some of the things that we were, we planned to do with knowing that we had people like Reagan and others who were supporting us in that regard. It’s probably worth now talking about the [00:26:00] technical challenges you mentioned at the beginning of this episode.

How and how we started and I’ll mention just briefly ’cause I know this is gonna come into Mix Miners, but that was a bit later on. But Skype was instrumental. It wasn’t a challenge. Skype was an enabler for us, wasn’t it? Skype was an enabler and a challenge. We would not have been able to do this if Skype had not been around in the early days.

No, because the cost of an international call and the technical requirements for recording to record and international call at the quality levels that were required even in the earliest days for podcasting. Even on the Daily Source code the first podcast, Adam Curry. That Adam Curry, yeah.

Started as he was developing the podcast catcher, which is more that we’ll talk about in terms of the technology was saying that if it’s not listenable, it doesn’t matter how good your content is, people won’t listen. So we knew that the audio quality had to be, it couldn’t be a phone call and Skype, no was the answer.

The problem was that [00:27:00] you couldn’t record both ends of a Skype call and the idea of a double. Which is where we each record locally. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to us, but it hadn’t. But so we came up with this thing involving virtual cables, which was a piece of software that you would install that would allow you to run two instances of Skype simultaneously.

So I would have one running and have that output going to one recording device and the other one running and going to another. Recording device. Initially we were recording on the computer, but that was unreliable at the time. Keep in mind, there was no cloud yet at this point. So we did that for a while and then I would mix them together in, audacity, which was the free audio editing tool that most podcasters were using at the time because nobody wanted to invest in the professional editing software. Podcasting [00:28:00] hadn’t gotten beyond the hobby level at that point. The research I did led me to the mix minus, which allowed me to do this through a single soundboard out to separate recording devices, which worked really well because that way I could use the same audio settings on everything and create a more consistent sounding show.

And now of course, we’re recording on Riverside. There were also times that we were using some other tools that were available out there for some of the stuff that we were doing FIR Live. And I promised I would let you know when the Edelman interview and. The Fred Garcia interview happened, and they both happened on FIR live, not FIR interviews FIR live number 11 15 years ago, 2009 was the one with Richard Edelman.

And the, the one with Helio, Fred Garcia and Jim Golden was the name of that [00:29:00] attorney was number 14 of FIR live on May 26th. And we used a tool for those that was called Blog Talk Radio. And what blog Talk Radio let you do was dial everybody dialed in and had a conversation, like it was a talk radio show.

And that, so they dialed in on, not via Skype or anything, but it was an interface on the web, could use their phone. There was a, an 800 number phone you could give them. I couldn’t remember. That’s cool. And it would show them as waiting and it gave you all the controls that you would have if you were a radio show host.

It was really revolutionary at the time. It’s interesting hearing that, it’s like the hybrid stage from the transition from the analog days of radio. To being digital and indeed now, of course is nothing, is way more advanced now than it ever was back then.

That was that bridge period Skype, as you mentioned. Absolutely. Was. A hu huge disruptor of telecommunications industry globally. I remember when Skype first came out of [00:30:00] 2003, I signed up for it straight away and was using the Skype out feature, which you paid for. It was about the 10th of the cost of doing normal phone calls, so the audio quality wasn’t.

Too bad, but for our point of view, it wasn’t brilliant, but it was better than the phone lines and it was easy. So that was another signal of of where, change was coming from a technological point of view. The challenges that it brought, and I wanna just mention briefly in this. At around that early period was something else that happened that was truly revolutionary, which was apple supporting podcasts in iTunes when they released iTunes 4.9 in June, 2005.

Not long after we started that drove. Immediate interest and awareness in podcasting. And I’m pretty sure we had a ben benefit from that in a very small way because that was aimed mainly at lit by differentiator, let’s call ’em consumer type podcasts that Dawn and Drew show you mentioned. And by the way, I always found them rude.

Not [00:31:00] funny, but that’s ’cause I’m a Brit, not American, I suspect. But I think the the the gates were opened with that, even though now. No, now it’s 15 years on, 20 years on, and it’s 20 years on. It’s taken the market in whole new areas where we hear stories about, the hundreds of thousands of podcast episodes created every week and the millions of podcasts that are out there.

The mind boggles with the numbers. The quality’s improved though, but getting back now to that it’s hard to imagine then what we’re able to do now. The cloud solved a lot of problems. We used Zencaster for a while, although I could never resolve the issue of drift. So our, yeah, two feeds didn’t align and I was having to do a lot of slicing and dicing of Yeah.

A nightmare audio feeds to make them align. And we. Then went to a double lender where we would record locally and you would use a service to send me your file. And that was pretty easy to sync up. I’ve been using Adobe audition for a long time now as opposed to the free audacity. And now we’re on [00:32:00] Riverside fm.

The number of podcast tools that have become available as the size of the podcasting space has grown is. Really impressive. This is everything from hardware, all in one podcasting, hardware tools to software like Riverside. It’s not the only option out there. There are several out there that are available that allow you to do this and factory in the video component.

Since we know that a lot of people listen to their podcast now on YouTube, it’s important to have that video component and we’re able to add that. Now, if you go to the FIR. Channel on YouTube you can watch. Not that there’s anything to see, it’s just two talking heads. But I suspect that most people who find it and listen on YouTube aren’t really watching.

It’s just in the background. Yeah. While they’re doing something else. But yeah, it is important to be there and Riverside is one of the tools that makes that possible. Yeah. Yeah. It is it’s taken the technological development in audio recording in the way we are doing [00:33:00] it right up into the realm of professional radio studios and so forth that do have done this kind of thing for a long time.

It, it had a big impact, I think, on people’s. Willingness to listen to podcasts, where now the expectation is they want the same listening experiences they get when they tune into to DAB radio, for instance, a pristine quality audio. It’s.

They’re accustomed to more and more professional podcasts. Precisely. You look at things like precisely serial, and that’s what they hear. So when they hear something like ours, if it doesn’t measure up in terms of the quality of the audio, yeah, but I’m talking mostly from the listen experience point of view more than anything where back then I.

It was outside the realm, even with kind of, okay, we’ve got tons of money, we could do this, which was never the case. It’s outside the realm of that. Back then, professional quality microphones, the kind of stuff in radio studios. They cost a lot of money. Now I. That cost barrier is gone and both you and I have got equipment and we have purchased equipment over that of recent [00:34:00] years in particular that we couldn’t have probably dreamed of doing back in 2005 or so.

So we’ve got the ability, so I’m in my new garden studio in Somerset, in England. That’s where we moved to in October and built this place. It’s soundproofed. I’ve noticed in recordings I’ve done recently, the quality is. Completely, a hundred percent better than it ever was before with the soundproofing panels.

So decent microphone. The pop filter you can probably see on the video. And other things, the software, Adobe addition that I use as you do. There’s a few other tools I use occasionally, but I always come back to Adobe because it’s so good. And we’re doing this on Riverside, as you say, and that uses a mix of.

Storing the recordings on your hard drive and uploading it in packets as we are going along. So it’s good to have a good internet connection. Most of the times people do have great internet connection, gigabit internet. I had that before we moved. That’s a work in progress still to get it like that in the new place.

It will maybe a [00:35:00] month or so away yet. All those things combine to to provide. A means by which we could pro produce and share content where the quality of the listing experience was really good. And if the content is good, then we’re onto a winner. Now, we don’t hear much from people these days on this.

Maybe we need to ask people directly, so perhaps the time comes into the survey to do. But I think. We are at a point where two decades in, we’ve done we’ve our own experience has been great. The journey’s been fantastic. The challenges and hurdles are all part of the excitements and experience of doing this.

It’s challenging, getting dates in and all that stuff. Sometimes given our time zone difference, which has always been the case. You are in California, I’m in the uk, which is eight hours ahead of you. It was worse when exam.

Yeah twice a year. We’re an hour closer. But but we’ve managed it and it’s, it works out. Okay. I’m just thinking back just a few years. In fact it’s to 20 I. 20. [00:36:00] So the, actually the beginning of 2020 in January, that was the formal start of the COVID-19 pandemic where we did an episode that you put this together.

She and we called it, or I did in my post describing it, maybe the longest single episode of a podcast ever. Two and a half hours this episode. To now that’s a typical episode of. Of this week in Google. And I did just listen to a five and a half hour episode of a podcast. No, that’s, that, that’s a whole different ballgame.

But this week in tech with God, what’s his name? The the John Devore, right? Neil Port. Leo LaPorte, right? This we Tech, yeah. Leo Laport. That’s right. The network. That was the benchmark for long form content. But this one you gathered 17, as we described it, the smartest communicational professionals in the business.

I. For their take on FIR effectively. And let me run off the names here. Christopher Barger contributed. Jeannie Dietrich, chip Griffin, Lee Hopkins. Marshall Kirkpatrick. Sharon McIntosh. Rachel [00:37:00] Miller. Scott Monty Christopher s Penn, Jen Phillips, Eric Schwartzman. Bill Spaniel, David Spark, mark Story, Andrea VAs, Brad Whitworth, and Dan York.

They were all in there. We had Donna Papa Costa, who was a podcaster back in those early days, created our identity, our voice identity, the podcast for communicators in her unique voice, and that was a terrific labeling for us. This is episode under the new naming episode one 1 91 that was published on the 21st of January.

It’s worth a listen to what all these guys have to say. That’s only I. Not long ago, five years ago. And it’s only got better since then, shall I would argue. ’cause we then talked about the we had another kind of note of where we were at back in January of this year. We talked about, two decades of podcasting that was a bit premature. It was in 19 years, but we had something similar. And so we’ve gone that route. That’s [00:38:00] why, one reason why we don’t have any of those testimonials in this episode. ’cause what more is there to say that these guys haven’t that episode though?

January, 2020 is really worth a listen. There’s some very smart comments from all those folks I’ve mentioned, so that was great. So that takes us to today. There’s other things we could talk about too, but there’s so much there. I think, one other thing to mention is we have done, when we have been able to is live recordings together.

When we’ve been at events typically, or. I’ve been over in California, or you’ve been over in the uk The last time we did this, actually face to face shell was when you and Michelle came over and stayed with us in 2022. And we did a, we did an episode in my dining room where we had some difficulties with microphones, but we actually managed it in the ed.

And there’s other examples. There’s a, an infamous one actually of a, when we were at a conference, I think it was in 2006. In in California and there’s some great photos, you and I sitting at a [00:39:00] table and people talking to us in the venue. And it was, we were with headphones on laptops, mixers as well.

The works was there too. You’ve done a couple at conferences and we’ve managed that. We’ve we’ve always been on the leading edge of doing this stuff, haven’t we? We did one where I was speaking, I can’t remember where it was or to whom, but I think it was in or near Boston. And I got everything set up at the conference and brought you in.

And we did an episode in front of everybody. Yeah. And one of the segments was them asking questions and being able to hear you in addition to me. And then that was published as an episode. I’d have to do a little digging to find. That particular episode, but that was that was a technical challenge in those days.

Yeah. And a lot of fun. We’ve also, over the years, had themes that have seeped into many episodes during a. 10, 12 month period. Second, [00:40:00] life was a big one of those. Certainly AI finds its way into every episode now. And by the way, speaking of the technology it should be no surprise to anybody that Riverside fm, that tool that we use for recording has added.

Many AI features that we take advantage of in editing. One of those that I just love is its ability to remove filler words, which is also, by the way, a feature of d script tool that I also use in producing this show. It can also fix the sound. It wasn’t that long ago. I. Neglected to confirm that my good microphone was the one being used to record.

It ended up being the webcam microphone and I, it sounded like I was in a tin can or on a. Landline telephone. And I ran it through magic Sound on Riverside fm and it sounded like I was in a studio talking into an expensive microphone. These technologies are remarkable. Yeah. And they are.

We’ll continue talking about ’em well into the future, I’m [00:41:00] sure. Yeah I agree. I’m sure. It’s funny you mentioned Second Life. That’s a, I’m glad you mentioned that because that was an experiment we did. That was a milestone where we established a presence in Second Life, and we experimented with things that were new at that time, such as being able to.

Pass audio to and fro second life, to outside the virtual world, into the real world. We did a number of episodes in Second Life. We even had a storefront in Second Life, like a place where you could hang out with your virtual avatar and build a community in Second Life. We tried that a bit.

That was a great experiment that we did. I think on that point about. Riverside fm. Yeah, you’re right. These tools are fantastic, what you can now do, and it is something that we’re gonna see a lot more of. So I’m thinking maybe I. Think of the time we’ve got left for this episode. It’s a quick tour over 20 years, and we are linking out to other stuff you might wanna listen to, like that episode with 17 smart professionals in there talking.

Might be worth saying. What’s [00:42:00] next? What’s coming up? Not so much for us, although we might touch on that, is in the industry as a whole everyone’s doing analytics. We’re seeing lots of very interesting. Data being produced and the interpretation of that data to suggest that podcasting, and I’ve been hearing this for years, shell, we have been hearing this for years, that it’s poised to take off.

It’s poised to break into the mainstream in the workplace. I arguably, it’s there, but it’s not mass, but that. That’s okay, because this is not about just getting big numbers. We hear enough about big numbers. We hear there are hundreds of thousands of podcast episodes produced every week. There are millions of podcasts.

Arguably the these are selective choices by people who with content that appeals to niche audiences. That’s one of the beauties. Nevertheless, you also then hear about. Some podcasts that are literally in the realm of broadcast radio in terms of audience reach, the likes of Joe Rogan in America, who’s in the Millions.

There are people making serious money outta [00:43:00] this. Spotify, notably, we’re a niche podcast. We set out the outset to reach professionals in organizational communication around the world with insights on tech developments in communication particularly, and that’s how we’ve continued doing this. Now we do this.

It’s for love, not for money. We don’t have sponsors right now, and we haven’t sought any really. EE even when we did have sponsors we weren’t getting rich. It was covering our costs. Oh, no absolutely. That, that, that was why we weren’t doing it for the kind of enrichment point of view.

It was the joy of doing it and being able to articulate things and engage with like-minded others, but in terms of what’s coming. But our sponsors all came to us too. We never, they did, went out and said, would you like to sponsor our show? You’re absolutely right. They, we’ll have links in the show notes of some of the reports about what’s next for podcasting.

And you can read yourself, there’s a lot of of opinion out there. Some of it is very informed and highly credible. One of my, [00:44:00] what I think is one of the best looks at the future of podcasting is from Riverside itself, Riverside fm, where they talk about nine trends. Coming up in in during this year and well into next year they talk about podcast growth and they segregate or they segment their research into what’s the future look like for individual creators?

What’s it look like for businesses and companies FAQs on the future of podcasting? And I think it is something that our constants I would argue that people talk about. On what is coming next the change that’s coming, they talk about, you mentioned that AI is gonna have a big role. There’s a lot of it already in place and in our experience on Riverside, for instance making podcasts as lives easier, I.

By taking a lot of the heavy lifting out of the of the audio manipulation process. I don’t mean the editing so much, although you could do it for that too. But like you said, taking out the ums and the ahs, for instance optimizing the audio quality, things like that they could speed up [00:45:00] podcasting workflows and applies to.

Every industry. So things like that’s more accessible. Upping expectations through the quality that is good. We use a tool, I discovered this about a year ago, called Crumple Pop. It’s a lovely name, isn’t it? Based in Florida. They produce a suite of tools that do magical things to audio. For instance, you are talking in a room that’s got a lot of echo ’cause there’s no soundproofing or anything.

This tool will eliminate that. No one would. Ever know that you had done this in anything other than the studio. If you are out in the street and there’s a heavy wind blowing and you don’t have a pop filter, or even if you do a wind filter it’ll eliminate all of that and general other things that it could do, some of which are quite technical.

Adobe Audition has tools now in the latest versions that are AI driven. That do things like normalize different audio tracks with literally a couple of clicks before you had to drag little things on the audio waveform and do all that kind of stuff. It’s a lot easier now. And as I said, you are finding that AI is behind much of this.[00:46:00]

Other things that in in Riverside’s predictions they’re talking about content repurposing where AI takes audio and converts it into other formats, such as short form video. And that’s something that we are seeing more and more podcasters doing. We’ve, we are doing it, as you mentioned earlier, she two talking heads and audio as a pod, as a MP four file on YouTube.

Some people like the format. That way it’s not a too heavy lift to do that, to meet that desire. It does mean though that there is further change coming from a technical point of view. We’ve gotta keep on top of that, which we do video. So video’s a big deal for podcasting. I still. Talk about podcasting, meaning audio, although I don’t say audio, podcast.

I say podcasting. And then there’s video podcasting, but that’s just me. They’ll always just podcasting at some point. Voice search optimization is where voice controlled AI assistance, like I. Google, Alexa and Siri that we traditionally used [00:47:00] to will help put your podcast rank highly when a listener searches for yours via their AI assistant.

And we’re already seeing some of the signs of that. And of course the big disruptor in that area is tools like Perplexity, AI and chat, GPT and others who are also jockeying for position to be the preferred search tool. So there’s stuff like this there’s a lot more, and we’ll share the link to their predictions so you can read it.

Private podcasting meaning it’s offering loyal community paying subscribers. We don’t do paying, but I can see that being a big deal. For many short form content. We do some of that. We always struggle on keeping the episodes short and people still talk about, Hey, can’t you cut your 90 minutes down is too long, and you get a bit tired of saying, hit the pause button and listen to the other bit tomorrow, you.

Some people like the long form. I certainly do. So it’s great. So there’s lots of interesting things tips to stay ahead. They point these out, stay on top of the latest, pay [00:48:00] attention to what’s going on record high quality content. We aim to do that, and I think we deliver on that because our quality is quite good.

There’s a lot more to look at and I wonder. Here we are in the beginning of 20, 25, 20 years since our first episode, what the next five years will look like. And I’m not looking 10 years because I think it’s gonna be entirely different. Two indicators of where we’re headed with this, I think first of all, is that you’re now seeing news reports that quote people who said something in a podcast.

Yeah. This could be anything from a report in People magazine about a celebrity trashing a colleague to a. Politician making some revelation that gets reported because they were talking no names mentioned, right in the friendly confines of a podcast that was hosted by somebody who was on the same side of the political fence as them.

So podcasting is now where news is broken. Used to be Twitter now it seems to be podcasts. The other thing. [00:49:00] That I think it’s important to recognize, and I referenced it earlier, is that while in the 2024 presidential campaign here in the us Kamala Harris’ campaign spent over a billion dollars on traditional media.

They spent far less in the Trump campaign, but he appeared on podcasts that appealed to the bro community, Uhhuh, and they turned out. For him. So I think in the post-election analysis, a lot of people had said podcasting is one of those places where politicians are going to have to. Invest time and perhaps even some money down the road because that’s where influence is wielded.

So it’s taken a long time for podcasting to get there. It was a lot of years that people said this is always going to be a hobbyist thing. It’s never gonna go mainstream. And that’s gone mainstream. And partly that’s because of the shift. Technologically from needing pod catching software which Adam Curry developed.

And he had to be fairly [00:50:00] technical savvy to use these things to now just using an app on your phone to get the podcast you want, and listening in your car when it’s. Connected to your car’s entertainment system. Discoverability has changed. It used to be a nightmare. Apple changed some of that.

And now the podcast apps have discoverability features and even algorithms that recommend podcasts to you based on your current listening habits. I think this is all going to continue to accelerate. The momentum continues to build and I think the influence available in podcasting is going to continue to increase.

I also think it’s going to be a space that makes room for everybody. You could be the Joe Rogan with. 40 million listeners, you could be us with, a thousand or so reaching out to the PR community that’s actually interested in staying up on the intersection of communication and technology.

But I don’t [00:51:00] see an end in sight for podcasting. I just see more growth and expansion. Yeah. And influence. I’m with you on that. Indeed. I’m with you on that. Indeed, much of what I’m seeing, people reporting on what they think is coming next is aligned with that sentiment. So exciting times ahead if you’re a podcaster.

If you are not yet a podcaster, think about it. Exciting times ahead await you if you decide to go this route, but like you said, she. We started in the days where you needed a computer and that’s really the only way you could do this. If you are in a generation, a lot younger than we are, you are accustomed li most likely to a mobile device.

Talk, tap, publish. That’s it. No fancy time spent on, on editing and audio and all that kind of business. It’s all, instant. That said I see I listen to a number of podcasts on in the car that are produced that way, that are long form content, 45 minutes plus. And I listen with one ear on what am I hearing quality wise.

I’m wondering how they produce this. [00:52:00] It’s all really remarkable where things have come since those early days. For us, though, we’re available on any device no matter what. And hopefully your listening experience will be great. However you get your f. It has been a lot of fun looking back over the last 20 years.

The next episode will launch our next 20 years. No idea what we’ll be talking about, but it will undoubtedly be next week, and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release. Happy anniversary, Neville. Thank you. She likewise.

The post FIR #443: From RSS to ChatGPT — FIR’s 20-Year Tech Communications Chronicle appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Astroturfing, smear campaigns, social media manipulation, unauthorized release of private information, defamation, character assassination, whisper campaigns, media planting, and gaslighting.

These activities are undertaken by the seamiest, most ethically challenged public relations practitioners. While there are far more PR professionals who abide by ethical codes, the bad actors get all the attention, leading to a sordid reputation for the industry that some believe we will never be able to overcome.

The latest example comes from the agency representing actor/producer/director Justin Baldoni, who responded to accusations of inappropriate behavior by engaging an agency that employed all of the tactics listed above. Initially, the campaign had the desired effect but ultimately backfired as the campaign itself drew more attention than the original allegations.

In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel examine the controversy and address the idea of requiring licensing or certification of all PR practitioners and whether it would weed out those who find codes of ethics to be mere inconveniences to be ignored.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

Raw Transcript:

Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 442 of four immediate release. I’m Shel Holtz. And I’m Neville Hobson. And we are recording this the day after Christmas Day. And this topic is very timely news wise. It’s in the news, but it has depth of distinct interest to communicators. And this is the huge kerfuffle surrounding the actors, Blake Lively and Justin Bald, and the aftermath of the work they did on the film.

It ends with us. It’s become a flashpoint for ethical discussion in the PR and entertainment industries. The incident as covered by many, the B-B-C-C-E-O today, New York Times that I’ve seen today, in fact and many others, showcases a disturbing confluence of workplace misconduct allegations and aggressive reputation management strategies.

With continuing allegations over egregious behaviors by PR pros and agencies, what are the [00:01:00] impacts for practitioners and the profession? We’ll address this question right after this.

The conflict began during the production of It Ends with us where Blake Lively accused Baldon and producer Jamie Heath of boundary violations and inappropriate behavior, prompting the studio Wayfarer to implement safeguards such as hiring an intimacy coordinator. Despite these measures, tensions persisted particularly over creative control.

Lively ultimately won significant input into the film’s final cut and received a producer credit as the film approached its release. Private messages revealed a coordinated effort by Baldon and his crisis PR team, led by Melissa Nathan to damage Lively’s reputation. I. The campaign allegedly involved amplifying negative narratives about Lively online while suppressing stories of b’s.

Alleged misconduct techniques included fostering untraceable social media narratives, leveraging media connections to plant damaging stories, and utilizing [00:02:00] tactics reminiscent of campaigns seen in other high profile cases like that of Johnny Depp and Amber Hurt. Documents disclose that Baldon and his team sought to portray lively as difficult to work with and opportunistic, aiming to shift public focus from his actions to her perceived shortcomings.

This strategy significantly impacted Lively’s career and personal brand resulting in a decline in her haircare product, sales and public backlash against her. The PR tactics used in this case highlight the ethical quandaries surrounding the industry’s role in reputation management. The notion that PR professionals could systematically attempt to bury an individual raises questions about the need for stricter professional standards such as licensing or accreditation for PR practitioners.

Something Shel and I have discussed many times in this podcast. B’S public image has remained relatively intact despite the revelations. While Lively has suffered reputational damage. Critics argue this outcome [00:03:00] underscores the pervasive double standards in how society evaluates men and women in public controversies.

Allegations of harassment and subsequent retaliation illustrate persistent issues within Hollywood’s power dynamics. The case exemplifies how crisis management can ve into ethically dubious territory. Real world consequences for individuals and public discourse. It also strengthens the argument for introducing licensing requirements for PR practitioners to enforce ethical standards and accountability.

A number of PR practitioners have weighed in on this, especially on LinkedIn. Many are highly critical of the alleged egregious behavior and actions of some PR practitioners. But before we look at what others have to say, she, what’s your take on the PR issues arising from all of this? It leads me to re reiterate my belief that we do need licensing or a requirement for certification for people to work in this industry because there are no repercussions to the agency that [00:04:00] engaged in this behavior and this behavior is beyond the pale.

I mean if you look at the codes of ethics of any. Association out there that represents people in the communications industry. P-R-S-A-I-A-B-C-C-P-R-S-C-I-P-R, they have violated several of these truth and accuracy. Uh, is one. They engaged in defamation and they spread falsehoods.

The core of her lawsuit is the accusation. That his team spread these false and damaging stories about her, and that violates code of ethics, which does emphasize. Honesty and accuracy in communications. They misused influence his position. And I think this has come out more strongly since this story has gained the legs that it has.

He has been a prominent advocate for women’s rights. They he’s misusing his influence there to a attack. A woman potentially harm a colleague [00:05:00] is a. Breach of trust. There’s a lack of transparency involved here, which is another PR principle of, fostering open and honest communication.

The smear campaign was conducted covertly. She didn’t know about it. She didn’t have the opportunity to respond to any of these accusations. The harassment and the smear campaign. This is potential abuse of power dynamics in the entertainment industry where I’m really glad that I don’t work.

Uhhuh I should note that my father was in the entertainment industry and I I was exposed to it a lot growing up and determined early on that I really didn’t want anything to do with it. But PR professionals do have a responsibility to ensure that their actions don’t. Enable this kind of abuse.

And I think the thing that disturbs me the most is that there are ways that a PR agency could have taken on this account and handled it well. By prioritizing truth and accuracy, I. I [00:06:00] absolutely advise against defaming the person that is on the other side of this argument facilitating open communication, upholding professional standards, all could have been brought to bear in a strategy.

I. That would have worked. Th this is the easy way out for Balone. And, frankly I think that the people who did this should be ashamed of themselves. I’m sure they’re not, I’m sure they’re very proud of the results of this. Although, to be honest, the more this story grows, the worse it is for bald his reputation.

It was looking pretty good for a while, but the more discussion there is around this, the more it’s backfiring against him because he’s being seen as a guy who hired an agency that did these things. You also, because this has gotten so public, have a lot of people coming to Blake Lively’s defense, including Colleen Hoover.

Who wrote the book that the movie was based on, I don’t know if she wrote the screenplay or was heavily involved in the film, but when you have all of these [00:07:00] people publicly standing behind Lively it’s not going to stand well for Balone. So ultimately, I don’t think this worked out for ’em, but only because it got the amount of attention it did.

This PR agency takes on work like this all the time. I don’t know. If there have been previous instances where they have taken the same approaches and it just hasn’t, gotten the kind of exposure that this assignment did. But in, in a world in which they had to be certified in order to do this kind of work the certifying agency or the licensing agency would be able to revoke it because of the violation of ethics, and they wouldn’t be able to do this work anymore.

That doesn’t happen, as I’ve said a million times. Anyone can hang out a shingle that says public relations on it, and take on clients and behave any way they want. And that’s what happened here. Yeah, it looks that way, doesn’t it? And what’s, what I, what sort of takes me aback a bit too is the strong way in which the agency [00:08:00] defends what they’re doing is just doing their job.

I saw just before we started recording this, an article in. People magazine that was in my feed that I’m following for this, I thought, oh, someone’s mentioning astroturfing finally has it come back again? I don’t think it ever went away. No. In fact, there’s a, the text in the narrative, which I thought was absolutely to the point.

It says, at the core of live’s allegations is astroturfing a strategy designed to manipulate public opinion by creating the illusion of grassroots support. Or backlash. The complaint claims that Baldoni Crisis PR firm, the agency group, let’s tag. T-A-G-P-R coordinated social media efforts to portray her as controlling and difficult during the film’s production.

And it, it notes a paragraph later emphasizing that they were simply doing their job because everyone does this. I think there’s absolute bollocks to use a technical term we have over here in the uk. I can’t believe that for a second. But there are many who do though. And thing I, I wanna point, I wanna mention, just [00:09:00] share really some of the conversation that’s been going on LinkedIn in particular.

Bob Pickard, who’s the name I think you are familiar with Shel. Oh, sure. He wrote just for Christmas, I felt nauseous reading this article. We can bury anyone inside a Hollywood smear machine in the New York Times and that is a really good article I have to say on this kerfuffle, no proper professional communicator with even a similar crim of ethics could ever debase themselves using such gutter tactics of character assassination.

No genuine crisis, public relations expert, quote unquote, could conceive of writing down such slimy nonsense or so lacking in judgment. As we can bury anyone. All too often celebrity publicity does not equal communications professionalism. And there are quite a number of comments to to that post that he made.

There’s also some, another one I want to reference too, which is in the House of Marketing and PR communications group on Facebook. That was posted again just for Christmas Day by Helen Reynolds. And she has an [00:10:00] interesting take here. She starts by saying popular, unpopular possibly a popular unpopular opinion.

I work in comms, not pr, it’s an old debate, but this story about Melissa, Nathan, that’s the the PR person mentioned earlier, has made me embarrassed. I. The popular idea is and always has been, that smearing people and coverups are the job. I don’t want to be associated with pr. She says, ironically, PR as a profession has the worst reputation.

The term is permanently tainted. She says, and she had responses from a number of people who say hang on a minute. You’re tying the whole profession like this. The whole profession’s not like this. That’s I guess, a point of all of this because it is highlighting what negatives in the profession of which.

That’s what’s getting the attention, not the good the profession does. So this debate, no doubt on this angle in particular the professionalism or lack of certain people who work in the PR industry is highlighting this whole point about, wait a minute if this was some kind of. Like doctors, like lawyers and so [00:11:00] forth, where you are ju you are in a sense, judged by others before you get a license.

You have to apply and be verified and all that kind of stuff. You wouldn’t have this you, I think that’s probably a little naive saying you wouldn’t have this you would still, but you’d be able to do something about it if you do. We’ve talked about this lots of times before. Your view is strong on this.

I know. I don’t disagree with you either. I don’t believe this is gonna happen. I hate to say it like that. No this might get lots of debate going such as what we are having in this podcast. What I’m seeing people writing on social networks like LinkedIn, will anything actually happen. It, as Helen mentions, popular, unpopular, or possibly popular un god, a mouthful to get tongue twist, to get you word.

Popular. Popular, possibly unpopular opinion. Because it’s clearly isn’t something front of mind to many in our, in this profession. I, I don’t see a kind of groundswell of people demanding, something must be done about this. I don’t see any of that. I don’t see the professional bodies commenting on this publicly [00:12:00] at all.

So clearly this is not, embarrassing enough to force action. So what’s to be done, do you think? I don’t know what other PR agencies would do if their billings are fine. And as we reported recently talking about the Edelman layoffs and trauma at other agencies billings aren’t fine right now.

So maybe this is the time for some self-reflection in the industry. But I think. One, one of the challenges that you face with the reputation of PR as an industry is that because you have people like this and agencies like this engaging in behaviors like this and that’s what gets the attention and how much attention does it get in the public media when a PR agency has a successful engagement that.

Was done completely ethically that ticked all of the boxes on codes of ethics it never gets talked about. So what does that lead to? It leads to [00:13:00] portrayals of public relations, people in the movies and TV and novels as being more like this individual than the people that you, and I know Bob Picard for example.

Who, who do. Engage in their practice based on a solid foundation of ethics. I, as you mentioned, the problem is that there are no consequences. There’s nothing that’s gonna happen to her. I. She’s looking at all this bad press right now over this, but how many celebrities are looking at this and say, yeah, she’s the one I want in my corner.

Something bad happens. I imagine she’s gonna do rather well as a result of this, sadly. But, by the way I should note my view that licensing or a mandatory certification should be. A requirement is 180 degrees from where I used to be on this issue. When I heard people talk about it, my argument was no, because if you look at the professions that do require this, the [00:14:00] law, accounting, medicine.

Things like that, there’s one right way to do things and in public relations there’s a tremendous amount of creativity and a tremendous amount of flexibility. There’s dozens of ways, hundreds of ways that you could approach any assignment that, that you get in a PR agency. And how do regulate that?

And I have come around based purely on ethics. We’re not going to say there’s one way to do. Something, but there are clearly ethical and unethical ways of doing it, and that’s what the licensing or certification bodies would be looking at in a world where it was required when a complaint was filed that this violated ethics.

We’ll look at it, we’ll investigate and we will determine what the consequences should be. Should it be reprimand should it be. A revocation of the license or the certification. These bodies would have to come up with the committees or groups that would make these assessments.

But I [00:15:00] don’t see it happening anytime soon because I don’t see the motivation out there to do this. And of course it’s not the PR industry that would do this. It would be the business community. It’s not the lawyers who say you have to have. A-A-A-A-A-A license to practice law.

It’s the state in the United States, it’s California. You have to have pass the California bar. So at some level it would have to be a governmental body some kind of a public institution that would need to make the determination that this has gone far enough and we need to start licensing or certifying these people.

Yeah. It’s a, it is a tricky one. I can see that quite clearly. It’s. It’s sad. I think I was thinking when I was thinking about this today organizations many have codes of ethics that they publish. I’m talking about in the profession, not just general businesses, but although some do but mostly you’ll see this in advertising, in pr of course in marketing, where people publicly state, we follow this code of ethics [00:16:00] practice.

I wonder I’ve not none come to mind that I that they quite outstanding and all encompassing and embrace this kind of topic that this is not how we conduct ourselves here. The easy thing perhaps would be to say if you’re a member of a personal body, they have a code of ethics, it’s new, have a code of knew how to publicly support that and.

Many people do that wouldn’t be, none of that is enough. So you are right. It’s not the professional associations, it’s the clients, let’s say who, who might need. But there’s, there is no motivation. I. Yeah, and I think there’s an opportunity for education that you wanna look for an organization with individuals who have the certification from a credible organization like the Global Communication Certification Council.

But one, one other point just to make you brought it up with that people article talking about astroturfing. Yeah. I don’t know why anybody would think it had ever gone away. Astroturfing originally was really difficult to pull off. What you had to have was a network of people [00:17:00] that you could send.

A letter to, and then they would rewrite that letter and sign it and send it to their local newspaper to appear in the letters to the editor. So essentially, you had the same letter in hundreds of local newspapers showing a groundswell of public grassroots support for whatever the issue was in the digital world.

With influencers and social media, it has gotten a lot easier. So there’s more astroturfing, not less taking place today. We see it, although I don’t see people calling it astroturfing so much, but it is what it is. Yeah. I remember in, in, in the current climate IE digital since the turn of the century, I first came across that term in the, you’ll remember this Shel in the early days of blogging global PR week.

Version 1.0 of course that had a lot of people who we know who are still active discussing this whole thing. And I’ve seen others discussion since then, but nothing really, there’s no needless have been moved other than it gets into public [00:18:00] consciousness. Maybe someone might hear what we are talking about and think, okay, let me.

Amplifi this topic that I think would be a good idea if we said to people, look, if you hear this and you are broad agreement with the topic we’re discussing here, please talk about it. Please amplify it to others. Maybe that way someone’s gonna take notice. So don’t write to your member of Parliament and that kind of stuff.

Just talk about it on your networks and raise it with your communities and see what people have to say and will that make a difference. I put my cynicism aside, but only in the sense that, don’t have your expectations set too high, but if enough people start talking about this, it might get subtraction at some point.

Yeah. My expectations are not set very high and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #442: Justin Baldoni’s Attack on Blake Lively Explains Why PR is a Dirty Word appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.