Public Relations Stories and Strategies

Generic messaging fails for a simple reason. It speaks to everyone, which means it actually speaks to no one. The messages that stick, the ones people repeat, forward, and act on, are never written for "employees" or "stakeholders" or "our valued customers." They are written for one person, with one specific frustration, in one specific moment. 

That’s not a nice idea about storytelling. It’s a framework, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it in every all-staff email that gets ignored and every campaign that gets remembered. 

In this episode we get the five tip framework behind stories that actually stick, from a communicator who has spent her career studying why some messages disappear the moment they’re sent while others get repeated for years.

Listen for:

3:17 The Five-Step Framework for Sticky Stories

7:12 Finding the Frustration: Real Communication Examples

10:34 Break the Fourth Wall to Make Messages Memorable

13:54 The Recipe for Stories People Remember

Guest: Eduvie Martin, FCIPR, Past President of IABC UK and Ireland

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Doug Downs

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Reputation isn’t your shadow anymore. It’s your operating system. 

It’s no longer something you manage. It has already been decided, by AI, based on patterns inside your organization you may not even know exist. Most leaders still think about reputation the old way: crisis plans, issue management, damage control after the fact. But AI now reads every signal a company puts out and connects them across every location and every stakeholder, drawing its own conclusion about who you really are. A bad manager in one city used to stay local. Now it can become your global reputation by tomorrow morning.

There is a scale that runs from head in the sand to full reputation architect, and most organizations are stuck somewhere in the middle, reacting instead of designing. This episode gets into why reputation now functions like a credit score, why one recent report put a seven trillion dollar number on it globally, and why the real work ahead is not protecting your brand but architecting the patterns underneath it, before AI does that job for you.

Listen For

3:35 Why should organizations stop managing reputation and start architecting it?

5:13 How does reputation become operational currency across an organization?

7:48 Why is brand more than a logo or a “cowboy hat”?

10:45 How is AI becoming a stakeholder in your reputation?

16:35 How can leaders tell if they are reacting, managing, or architecting reputation?

Guest: Bonnie Caver, Reputation Lighthouse

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Doug Downs

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What happens when a conference has no keynote, no formal agenda, and no single expert at the front of the room?  

The new IABC International Chair calls this an “unconference” model. And it’s one glimpse of how professional associations can evolve: by creating space for communicators to learn directly from one another. 

Also in this episode – why community, credibility, and connection matter more than ever in a profession being reshaped by AI, shrinking budgets, and rising expectation, the changing role of communicators in the age of AI, and why earned media, credible third-party sources, FAQs, and even the press release may be gaining new relevance in AI search. 

Listen For

4:13 Why was the ABC Designation Considered Tougher than the SCMP?

5:34 How is AI Making Earned Media and Press Releases Valuable Again?

8:09 Why Should Communicators Bring FAQ Pages Back for AI Search?

9:56 Why are Chief Communications Officers Gaining a Stronger Seat at the C-Suite Table?

17:11 How Is IABC Rethinking Chapters With Community Models and Unconferences?

Guest: Richard Kies, Incoming IABC International Chair

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Doug Downs

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As a communications professional you’re operating in the most complex information environment in history. Misinformation. Disinformation. AI generated deepfakes of executives saying things they never said. Audiences who have stopped trusting what organizations tell them. Employees who can't tell what's real. And somewhere in the middle of all of that noise you’re still expected to move people. To make them understand something, feel something, and do something. With the same frameworks you have always used.

Dianne Chase has written a book that argues the profession needs a North Star more than it needs another tactical playbook. She’s the past International Chair of IABC, past Chair of the IABC Southern Region, and current president of IABC Charlotte. Her book is called The Seven C's of the New Communications Compass. And the argument she makes is both simple and urgent: in an era of collapsing trust, the communicators who will matter most are not the ones with the best tools. They’re the ones who remembered to be human.

This episode was recorded on location in Toronto in June 2026 at IABC World Conference

Listen For

3:16 What Are the Seven Cs of the New Communications Compass?

6:16 Why Should Organizations Build Relationships Instead of Transactions?

8:19 How Does Compassion Become Empathy in Action?

13:09 Why Does Community Matter to Purpose-Driven Brands?

17:10 How Should Communicators Measure What Really Matters?

Guest: Dianne Chase, President IABC Charlotte, past International Chair IABC, past Chair IABC Southern Region

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Communications has always been built around a sender mentality. We decide what people need to know, we package it, we push it out. That model came from journalism and broadcasting, three networks, eleven o'clock news, one message for everyone. It made sense then. 

The infrastructure has changed completely since. Audiences have become producers. People choose what they consume, when they consume it, and they unsubscribe from what no longer serves them.

That transformation happened entirely in the outside world. Inside organizations, almost nothing changed. And the question this episode keeps coming back to is a simple and uncomfortable one: why are we still broadcasting when everything outside us has already moved on?

This episode was recorded ON LOCATION at IABC World Conference in Toronto in June 2026.

Listen For

4:34 How did audiences become producers of their own news and information?

6:16 Why does internal communication need to become recipient-driven?

9:33 How can communicators create identity moments that cut through white noise?

11:28 How did opening in Spanish create a powerful diversity and inclusion moment?

16:51 How is AI changing the communicator’s role from creator to prompt strategist?

Guest: Brad Whitworth

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The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication

The IABC Guide for Practical Business Communication: A Global Standard Primer

Doug

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Every communications campaign you have ever built had a choice architecture inside it. The order you sequenced your calls to action. The option you listed first in a petition. The default you set in an employee survey. The way you structured a crisis response. 

You made all of those decisions. Some of them deliberately. Most of them by instinct, habit, or convention. And the difference between those two things, between deliberate design and accidental design, is the difference between a campaign that moves people and one that wonders why nobody moved. 

This episode was recorded live on stage at the IABC World Conference in Toronto on June 14th, 2026, in front of an audience of communications professionals from around the world. 

Listen For

4:20 What Choice Architecture Means

5:52 The Default Effect

6:50 Printer Defaults Example

8:15 Removing Friction from Sign-Ups

9:31 The EAST Framework

Guest: Ann-Marie Blake

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Doug

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Recognized as the most listened-to PR podcast in the World by Podchaser, Goodpods, and data from Rephonic.

Also recognized as one of best Independent Interview podcasts by the Ear Worthy Newsletter

https://storiesandstrategies.ca/podcast/

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“Journalism is dead.” 

You've heard it. You've probably said it. 

And honestly, the evidence seems pretty hard to argue with. 

Newsrooms gutted, trust in tatters, cable news turned into a gladiator sport.  

But what if that story, the one we keep telling about journalism, is itself bad journalism? 

Neil Brown thinks so. He’s a 40-year editor and president of the Poynter Institute, and he is, by his own admission, an optimist about the media. When he tells you why, it might genuinely change how you think about where good information comes from.

Listen For:

04:09 What Makes Someone a Journalist Instead of Just a Publisher?

06:22 Why Does Democracy Need Real Journalism?

12:24 Can Local Journalism Rebuild Public Trust?

13:03 How Did the Baltimore Banner Turn Bus Data Into Accountability?

17:30 What Responsibility Does the Audience Have in Fighting Misinformation?

Guest: Neil Brown, Chairman of the Board and President at Poynter Institute for Media Studies

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Doug Downs

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Every PR professional has sat in a meeting where leaders ask you to “show up in AI”

Here’s the problem. The AEO/GEO industry has built an entire measurement apparatus around citations… the moment an AI visibly names your brand. But the research shows that moment is essentially an echo of a decision that was already made, upstream, in conversations that left no trace. 

Brands have been optimizing for the receipt, when the purchase decision happened days ago.

The deeper irony is that the work which does move the needle in those invisible conversations looks exactly like what PR teams have always done. Original research. Expert voice. Earned credibility. Third-party validation. The toolkit that has historically been the hardest to attribute is, it turns out, the one doing the most work in the AI era. The people who were always right about what good looks like just never had the data to prove it… until now.

Listen For

3:35 Why Does AI Influence Start Before the Conversion Stage?

7:41 Is AEO Really Just Earned Media Strategy in Disguise?

10:09 What Are the Three Levers That Shape AI’s View of a Brand?

13:13 Are “Hey AI” Pages and Schema Tricks Ethical or Effective?

15:49 How Can PR Teams Prove Earned Media Builds AI Influence?

Guest: Tom Rudnai, Founder and CEO Demand-Genius

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Doug

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There is a prayer that crisis communicators have been quoting for decades. 

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

It sounds right. It feels grounding. 

But maybe it’s been pointing us in the wrong direction the whole time. 

The problem is the concept of CONTROL. Because control, in a crisis, is a myth. And every strategy built on the assumption that you can control the outcome of a crisis is a strategy built on sand. 

Let’s replace that idea with INFLUENCE. Doing that replaces an entire philosophy.

Alongside that shift comes something more uncomfortable… the suggestion that when a crisis hits, the quality of your advice has almost nothing to do with your frameworks, your playbook, or your years of experience. It has to do with who you are as a human being. As a parent. As a citizen. As a person who is also living through the same world your client is trying to navigate. 

The professional and the person are not separate. And pretending they are, may be the most dangerous crisis communication strategy of all.

Listen For

3:41 Why Are Global Risks Becoming More Connected and Harder to Manage?

6:09 Is Employee Mental Health a Bigger Business Risk Than AI?

9:32 Why Do Companies Know the Risks but Still Fail to Prepare?

11:20 What Is “Agency” in Crisis Communications and Why Does It Matter?

14:29 How Can Leaders Use Empathy and Understanding to Respond to a Crisis?

Guest: Rod Cartwright, Principal, Rod Cartwright Consulting

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2026 Reputation, Risk, and Resilience Report 

Doug

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Stories and Strategies is the Official Podcast Sponsor of IABC World Conference in Toronto June 14-16, 2026

Click here to check it out https://wc.iabc.com 

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