For Immediate Release

By Neville Hobson and Shel HoltzBusiness News Marketing Business News Tech News

For Immediate Release episodes

May 31, 2023 FIR #336: Trust, Likability, and Confirmation Bias
Multiple studies confirm that Americans (like most of the rest of the world) have lost their trust in the media. But people get their news and information from somewhere -- or, as a Gallup/Knight Foundation study finds -- someone. "Public individuals" attract followers who turn to them for news and information based on a number of qualities, ranging from likability to subject matter expertise. Many of these public individuals host shows on mainstream media outlets. What does this mean for PR professionals looking for the right outlet to pitch? Neville and Shel break down the study in this short midweek FIR episode.
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20 min
May 24, 2023 FIR #335: BBC Fires a Shot in the Disinformation War
BBC Verify is the venerable broadcaster's latest effort to combat disinformation. With a staff of 60 journalists, Verify will provide details about the BBC's own reporting and debunk disinformation it finds online (as it has already done with a photo purportedly of a Pentagon bombing that was, in fact, AI-generated). Are there lessons in the BBC's approach that communicators can apply to their companies' online activities? And will other media outlets follow suit, even as they slash budgets and newsrooms?
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19 min
May 22, 2023FIR #334: Employees Really Do Hate Change
The number of change initiatives companies impose upon employees has skyrocketed from two per year in 2016 to 10 in 2022. That has left employees with a serious case of change fatigue, increasing the likelihood that these initiatives will fail. Shel and Neville look at data from Gartner and advice on how to better handle the surge of change programs, many of which companies are undertaking in response to challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Also in this episode:
Web3 has never captured the public's imagination. The lingo of Web3 may be partly to blame.
Over half of public relations practitioners lack confidence in their data literacy skills. That's a problem when the simple but useless AVE metric is no longer the communicator's fall-back metric.
The pandemic influenced the ways companies communicated with employees, leading to a shift in the elements of communication that lift organizations' internal brands.
A quarter of Twitter users don't expect they'll be using the platform within a year.
The uproar over perceived or real copyright violations inherent in the Large Language Models used by generative AI tools is poised to find its way into laws and regulations.
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1 hr 39 min
May 18, 2023 FIR #333: When to Disclose That You’ve Used AI
"Disclosure and transparency are the currency of the internet," wrote journalist and author Evan Osnos. That has proven to be true time and again. It undoubtedly will be true of using generative AI in marketing and communication. But will it be true every time we use AI? Even when we're just using it as a tool, like a calculator? The challenge of establishing guidelines for disclosing the use of AI is the subject of this short midweek episode.
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20 min
May 10, 2023 FIR #332: Wikipedia Editors in Tug-of-War Over AI-Authored Articles
The volunteer editors responsible for Wikipedia content are divided over the role ChatGPT and other generative AI writing tools can or should play in the creation of articles for the online encyclopedia. Their struggle is most likely being repeated in businesses around the globe.
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21 min
May 03, 2023 FIR #331: AI Completes Tasks and Raises Fears
The recent releases of Agent-GPT, AutoGPT, and BabyGPT have taken ChatGPT to a new level. Rather than simply responding to user prompts, these tools identify a series of tasks that must be completed to achieve a goal and then completes them autonomously. It's still early days, but the potential is huge. So is the growing risk of bad actors using these tools for nefarious purposes. We discuss these recent developments in this short mid-week episode.
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21 min
April 28, 2023 FIR #330: Help Wanted. Prompt Engineer.
If your generative AI prompts aren't producing exactly what you want, there's help -- for a fee. You can buy pre-written prompts from prompt marketplaces like PromptBase and Prompt Attack or hire a prompt engineer through services like Fiverr. We dig into this newly-emergent cottage industry in this short midweek episode.
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19 min
April 24, 2023FIR #329: Post Once, Socialize Everywhere
Imagine posting to your favorite social network, the one you want your brand to be associated with, and having it appear for all of your followers in the social networks of their choice. It could be possible if the ActivityPub standard continues to spread the way it has been lately. And that could be an important evolution given the meltdown that Twitter is undergoing. Those are just two of the stories in the April long-form edition of the "For Immediate Release" podcast. Also in this episode...
The "have a go" era of podcasting could be coming to an end, depending on how you interpret the data
LinkedIn is going through some changes that not everyone likes
A coalition of 500-plus ad agencies is taking a stand against fossil fuels
A song reportedly produced using AI imitated the voices of some A-list artists, and the music industry isn't happy
Dan York reports on the demise of Spotify Live, some Twitter news, Wikipedia's one-minute video, and more
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1 hr 37 min
April 14, 2023 FIR #328: What’s In Your Crypto Wallet?
Traditional wallets are stuffed full of cash, credit cards, debit cards, and identification. Crypto wallets have only held public and private keys needed to trade cryptocurrencies. Users are increasingly filling their crypto wallets with NFTs and other digital assets. It won't be long before digital wallets hold crypto, NFTs, digital assets, and your credit cards and identity verification. The only physical wallets you'll see will be in museums. Why communicators and their clients/employers should care is the subject of this short midweek episode.
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16 min
April 11, 2023 FIR #327: Laid Off In The Comfort Of Your Own Home
During the pandemic-related lockdown, with everyone but essential workers working from home, companies had little choice but to inform employees that their employment was being terminated using Zoom, Teams, or other digital channels. Now that people are back in the office, full-time or under a hybrid model, many companies have retained the practice. Some have asked all employees -- even those working in the office -- to stay home during a layoff so those who are being terminated can get the news remotely. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel discuss whether this approach is here for good and, if it is, whether there are implications for companies engaging in the practice.
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20 min