Lead Balloon - Marketing, Public Relations and Strategic Communications Stories

Earlier this month, a new startup announced that they would be using artificial intelligence to churn out thousands of podcast episodes voiced by A.I. podcast hosts.

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Most people get travel information about road closures from Google Maps, Apple Maps or a similar smartphone-based application.

But when a road is closed, most transportation agencies put out a press release.

And this disconnect is not only annoying—it can be a public safety hazard.

So after the recent catastrophic flooding in his Southeast Wisconsin community, Dusty wants to start a conversation about how public officials can modernize the way they communicate about road closures in 2025.

Because, in order to maximize the impact of potentially life-saving information, municipalities and departments of transportation need to take their message to the channels that the public actually uses.

In this episode, we speak with Scott Oppmann, ArcGIS Solutions Director at Esri. Esri's ArcGIS is the leading mapping and spatial analytics software in its field, allowing organizations to leverage location-based digital insights across a wide variety of fields. And Esri’s Community Maps Program and Road Closures solution helps local governments get time-sensitive travel information out to the apps that people actually use when they travel.

We'll discuss the imperative for pushing live travel updates to maps apps, different methods for doing so, and why it's important to have a plan in place BEFORE an emergency strikes.

Learn more about Esri's Community Maps Program and Road Closures Solution.

Contribute to contentpartners.maps.google.com

Support Wisconsin Flood victims: feedingamericawi.org

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Wikipedia readers consume nearly one billion articles per day from the online encyclopedia.

In its 25 years of operation, this compendium of human knowledge has become an integral tool for understanding the world in which we live.

But artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT could threaten Wikipedia's viability over the next 25 years.

And in fact, by diverting fundraising traffic, undermining traditional journalism, and thinning the ranks of Wikipedia editors, large language models (LLMs) could even imperil their own usefulness.

So in this episode, we're talking to a Wikipedia expert about the implications—both for strategic communicators and for society in general.

Bill Beutler is the founder of Beutler Ink, a PR firm that specializes in optimizing brands' presence on Wikipedia.

And together we'll discuss what can be done to preserve Wikipedia as a resource, how communicators should adapt their strategies, and what the future might hold.

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In the world of business, yet again, things looks grim.

A brewing trade war, the uncharted fallout of artificial intelligence, and political upheaval around the world...

All these factors have created an atmosphere of business uncertainty. Marketing jobs and budgets face the specter of the chopping block once again, and many are taking a "batten down the hatches" approach.

But at a time like this, it's important to remember: when everyone else goes quiet, your voice carries that much further.

And so in this episode, we're revisiting a pivotal conversation with Joe Pulizzi from the peak of the Covid lockdowns.

When uncertainty was at its worst, he shared the story of how he raised the multi-million-dollar brand "Content Marketing Institute" from the ashes of an entrepreneurial venture that failed during the Great Recession.

By "going big" on branded media when everyone else went home, that fledgling company changed marketing forever, rebranding the notion of "Content Marketing" and forging a media empire.

Pulizzi would go on to launch the "Content Marketing World" conference, write three best-selling books and co-launch “This Old Marketing” the podcast.

And his advice will come as a breath of fresh air for communications professionals who are uncertain about what comes after 2025.

It certainly did for Dusty in 2020. As he reveals for the first time in this episode, he was close to despair about the future of Podcamp Media when he first had this conversation with Joe.

But the interview forced Dusty to take a deep breath, double down on his podcast content marketing strategy, and dig in on making Podcamp Media succeed.

And here we are today.

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What you see online is not real.

This has long been a reliable axiom for information consumption on the internet.

But social media and SEO marketers have long relied on their engagement metrics as an exception to that rule—critical quantitative data that can't be faked and can be leveraged to demonstrate the value of a campaign or piece of content.

Except in 2025, it's just not reliable any more.

That is because sophisticated operations called "bot farms" have built swarms of networked smart phones designed to mimic the organic engagement that drives social media algorithms.

At a command, these bot farms can create a cascade of authentic-seeming engagement that's nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, catapulting selected posts to the top of social media feeds.

International state actors can wage propaganda wars.

Financial influencers can pump up the value of assets they hold.

And, more and more, global brands can leverage bot activity to drive their messaging to the top of feeds, manufacture social proof, and astro-turf the impression of favorability.

So in this episode, we're talking to digital PR expert Eric Schwartzman, whose firm helps clients with brand management, reputation monitoring, crisis management, and corporate communications.

He also recently published an expose for Fast Company on the rise of bot farms and its implications.

Together, we'll learn how bot farmers manipulate the algorithm, what means are available to detect inauthentic activity, and why social media networks are slow to react.

Plus, we'll explore the moral quandary that social media and SEO marketers increasingly face in this brave new world:

If everyone else is using bots to drive engagement... should you?

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There is a weird, enigmatic old billboard along the interstate in Wisconsin promoting a "Sales & Marketing Tip of the Week."

Without any branding or context, this weathered sign invites thousands of motorists daily to call a mysterious phone number.

And that has been driving Dusty CRAZY because, frankly, nothing about this billboard makes any sense in 2025.

So we're going to SOLVE A MARKETING MYSTERY, folks!

Together with our old pal Kyle Brown, we're going to speculate about WHY this sign exists, how it got there, and what its purpose is.

And THEN, we're actually going to track down the person responsible for the sign and learn the strange-but-true story of the "Sales & Marketing Tip of the Week."

Because it turns out this billboard is a portal back in time to a different era of direct response marketing. We discover that it was built decades ago by Ken Hoffman, a self-proclaimed "ideas man" who gives them away for free, but has trouble getting his own ideas off the ground.

We learn how his career was influenced by the so-called "marketing gurus" of yesteryear, and find lots in common with this endlessly curious polymath.

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After more than a decade of living in an entertainment golden age...

Filled with more and better options, with less advertising, than ever before in human history...

Are the good times over?

Almost every major streaming service has recently begun inserting advertising into its programming.

And it's NOT your imagination... the ads really are more disruptive and obnoxious than traditional television commercials.

So what's driving the sudden advertising stampede in the streaming services that we used to love? How much worse is it going to get?

And who in their right mind still thinks that intrusive advertising, inserted into something we'd rather be watching, is a way to win hearts and minds in the year 2025?

We'll discuss all this and more with world-renowned film and television critic Matt Zoller Seitz, the editor at large of RogerEbert.com (where he authored this barnburner https://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/streaming-ads-worst )

Matt is a Pulitzer finalist who writes as well for New York magazine and Vulture.com. He's the founder of MZS.press, the arts bookstore of the internet, and appears in print in The New York Times, Salon, and Rolling Stone. And he's the author of a handful of New York Times bestsellers, including the Wes Anderson Collection, The Sopranos Sessions, and Mad Men Carousel.

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Three weeks after accepting a new role as an American Airlines spokeswoman in 1995, Jennifer R. Hudson was paged out of bed in the middle of the night.

The worst had happened.

Flight 965 had disappeared in the mountains of Colombia, and Jennifer needed to report to the scene of the crash to coordinate the company's public relations response. Unnerved and uncertain, she had to push aside her doubts and power through what would become one of the most harrowing experiences of her career.

Jennifer would go on to serve as a Vice President of Communications for British Airways, a PR Manager at the Sabre Group, and eventually the head of her own independent agency, Think Beyond PR.

But the experience of immersing herself in a tragedy that cost 159 lives sticks with her to this day, forging a set of PR instincts and resolve that have served her well.

And in the wake of recent air disasters, including the American Eagle 5342 tragedy in Washington, her story offers rare insights into what’s happening behind the scenes right now.

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You can learn more about the crash of Flight 965 in this episode of Mayday.

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At the height of the Cola Wars in the mid-90's, Pepsi committed one of the most notorious PR and marketing fiascos of all-time.

An eye-catching spot promised brand fans that, if they saved up 7 million Pepsi Points, they could win a Harrier fighter jet.

However, no one at Pepsi or their ad agency ever expected anyone to try to claim that prize. And when Washington business school student John Leonard did, they faced a multi-year legal battle and a storm of negative publicity.

Now, almost three decades later, another beverage company has spoofed that infamous campaign—with a twist.

Canned water brand Liquid Death actually bought a jet for one lucky fan to win, and executed a wildly successful promotion to support the contest.

So in this episode, we're talking to Liquid Death VP of Creative Andy Pearson about the logistics of making that happen. We discuss Liquid Death's unique approach to marketing, his creative influences, and why they would even want to try to recreate the publicity stunt that lost Pepsi the Cola Wars.

And with Jeff Beer from Fast Company, we explore the background and takeaway lessons of the Pepsi Harrier Jet fiasco. 

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Earned media has long been the holy grail of public relations.

For decades, getting your client's message in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal has been the gold standard by which PR agencies are judged.

But as we march further into this age of new media, those public opinion gatekeepers in the traditional media are losing their dominance of the American attention span.

And as evidenced by this year's presidential campaign strategy, that means that PR tactics are shifting as well.

Donald Trump's interview on the Joe Rogan podcast is seen as a pivotal moment in the campaign that cemented his electoral victory.

And Kamala Harris's appearance with Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy podcast reached millions of voting age women who were viewed as critical to the Democrat's campaign strategy.

So in this episode of Lead Balloon, we're joined by Colab co-founders Ashley Mann and Lizzy Harris for a post-mortem on the 2024 election in a public relations context.

They discuss why traditional media's influence is waning, how campaigns leveraged podcasts and social media in the run up to the election, and how PR professionals should adapt their strategies.

And they'll touch on the importance of building genuine relationships with members of the new media, navigating influencer marketing, and the challenges of media training in a rapidly changing environment.

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