The Trending Communicator

AI transformation isn't a strategy problem. It's a leadership problem. And until CEOs and boards stop asking for an AI strategy and start asking for a change management strategy, most organizations are going to keep spinning their wheels.

In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle sits down with Bo Breuklander, founder of Breuklander Communications, ProSci-certified change practitioner, and professor of PR and media writing at the University of Tampa. Bo spent 16 years in corporate communications, led digital communications at Jabil, moved into VP-level transformation work, and now runs People First AI workshops that document 100% confidence increases among participants.

Dan and Bo get into why the comfortability gap matters more than the skills gap, what happens when people in the room are too afraid to admit they're already using AI, and why communicators are uniquely positioned to lead organizational AI transformation rather than waiting for IT to hand them a playbook.

Listen in and hear about...

Notable Quotes from Bo Breuklander

"You have to ask people how they feel about it. And you have to listen to what they tell you."

"Your job is not necessarily your value. I think it's really important for students to hear that, for younger professionals, for older professionals, for all of us."

"Slow down enough to get the functional and the foundations right. Clarity is going to beat speed. Judgment is the new advantage."

Resources and Links

Dan Nestle

Bo Breuklander

Timestamps

0:00:00 Introduction: AI Transformation & Leadership Challenges
0:05:48 [Speaker B]'s AI Journey & Focus at Brooklander Communications
0:11:22 Addressing Human Factors in AI Workshops
0:17:22 Individualized Nature of AI Adoption
0:21:22 Students, Employees, and the Hidden Use of AI
0:27:01 Are “AI Natives” Ready? Skills vs. Comfort
0:34:11 Explainability, Critical Thinking, and Fact-Checking in AI Use
0:42:08 Navigating Job Disruption and Entrepreneurial Mindset
0:47:42 Practical Steps for Comms Pros: Quick Wins & Automation
0:53:57 Using Prompting Frameworks and Moving to Advanced AI Use
1:00:16 Investing in AI Learning—No Room for Victimhood
1:07:22 Closing Advice: Slow Down, Clarity and Judgment as Advantages

(Notes co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Castmagic)

About The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator is a podcast about the future of communications and marketing, hosted by Dan Nestle. Each episode is a conversation with a communicator, marketer, author, or technologist about how the work is changing and what that means for the people doing it. The show launched in 2020 as The Dan Nestle Show and has published more than 150 episodes.

About the Host

Dan Nestle (Daniel Nestle) is a communications strategist with more than 25 years of experience, including 16 years in Japan. He is co-founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer of Lilypath, the company behind the patent-pending Authority Intelligence™ platform, and founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Inquisitive Communications, a strategic advisory practice. He received the 2022 Arthur W. Page Society Page Up Innovation Award, was named a PRWeek Dashboard 25 AI Pioneer in 2023 and 2024, and was named one of Propel's 100 Most Influential PR Tech Leaders Worldwide in 2025.

Connect with Dan

The Trending Communicator: https://trendingcommunicator.com
Substack: https://trendingcommunicator.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nestle
Lilypath: https://lilypath.com
Inquisitive Communications: https://be-inquisitive.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/trendingcommunicator

Show notes for The Trending Communicator are co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Fireflies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't roll out AI. It's not an ERP system. And yet most organizations are still treating it like a procurement decision, reaching for governance frameworks and compliance checklists as if the real challenge is containment rather than comprehension.

In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle sits down with Alec Crawford, founder and CEO of Artificial Intelligence Risk Incorporated and host of the AI Risk Reward podcast. Alec built neural networks at Harvard in 1987, spent 30 years on Wall Street as a risk officer managing hundreds of billions, and now builds AI governance, risk, compliance, and cybersecurity platforms.

Alec and Dan dig into what risk actually looks like when every employee has access to intelligence, why the crisis playbook most companies rely on is already obsolete, and how deepfake threats and shadow AI are reshaping the landscape for communicators and executives alike.

Listen in and hear about...

Notable Quotes from Alec Crawford

"Once you understand that, aha, light bulb moment, you can't ask ChatGPT to check its work. Typically, you might go to another model and say, hey, here's what ChatGPT said. What do you think? But you can't ask a model to check its own work."

"The way to fix shadow AI is to give people at your company great AI that's better than they could get at home. The best models, connected to your corporate data, connected to your email, connected to anything you could dream you want to be connected to. Why would I now go use some other AI if I've got access to that?"

"At this point they probably need somewhere between five and 10 seconds of a video like this to create a deep fake where they can say whatever they want and make you say whatever they want."

Resources and Links

Dan Nestle

Alec Crawford

Timestamps

0:00:00 Opening & Introduction to Alec Crawford, AI Transformation Mistakes
0:07:13 AI Hallucinations, Research Pitfalls, and Due Diligence
0:12:35 Importance of Prompting, Domain Expertise & AI Iteration
0:18:32 Alec’s Journey: From Building Neural Nets to Institutional AI
0:24:18 Limits of Large Language Models, Explainability, and AI Sentience
0:29:04 Context Windows, Memory Limits, and AI Conversation Pitfalls
0:35:42 AI Safety, Prompt Injection, and Corporate Guardrails
0:41:09 Beating Shadow AI: Corporate AI Environments & User Adoption
0:45:55 AI Agents, Agentic Workflow, and Financial Services Applications
0:53:26 Crisis Communication in the AI Era: Risks & Recommendations
1:01:30 Future of AI Models, Deepfakes, and Validation Technology
1:05:39 Alec’s Book Announcement & Closing Remarks

About The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator is a podcast about the future of communications and marketing, hosted by Dan Nestle. Each episode is a conversation with a communicator, marketer, author, or technologist about how the work is changing and what that means for the people doing it. The show launched in 2020 as The Dan Nestle Show and has published more than 150 episodes.

About the Host

Dan Nestle (Daniel Nestle) is a communications strategist with more than 25 years of experience, including 16 years in Japan. He is co-founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer of Lilypath, the company behind the patent-pending Authority Intelligence™ platform, and founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Inquisitive Communications, a strategic advisory practice. He received the 2022 Arthur W. Page Society Page Up Innovation Award, was named a PRWeek Dashboard 25 AI Pioneer in 2023 and 2024, and was named one of Propel's 100 Most Influential PR Tech Leaders Worldwide in 2025.

Connect with Dan

The Trending Communicator: https://trendingcommunicator.com
Substack: https://trendingcommunicator.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nestle
Lilypath: https://lilypath.com
Inquisitive Communications: https://be-inquisitive.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/trendingcommunicator

Show notes for The Trending Communicator are co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Fireflies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

People keep writing obituaries for organic content. And every time, communicators chase the paid shortcuts instead of doing the work. Now, as AI-generated content floods every platform, those who abandoned organic are realizing they have nothing to fall back on.

In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle sits down with Dorien Morin-van Dam, owner of More in Media and host of the Strategy Talks podcast, to dig into whether an organic-first philosophy can survive the AI era. With over 15 years of experience in community building and social media strategy—plus an Agile Marketing certification—Dorien has spent her career defending organic content not as nostalgia, but as strategy.

From the early days of Facebook groups in Myrtle Beach to Reddit brand management and the community-first model flipping the old course-then-community approach on its head, Dorien and Dan explore what systematic approaches to content actually look like when everyone has access to the same generative tools. They dig into why brands that leaned too hard on AI are already feeling the reckoning, and why live content may be the last frontier that nobody can fake.

Listen in and hear about...

Notable Quotes from Dorien Morin-van Dam

"Anything that you don't pay for is organic. So if you're still talking to people, organic is not dead."

"If you have a thought in your mind, you wake up at 4am and you think about something in your business—that is a LinkedIn post. That is something that AI can't do."

"Creating something because you think it's a good business opportunity—creating a community around that, it's going to tank because you're not authentic."

"That's the last frontier. You can't copy me live. You can make an AI avatar, but you're not going to have my thoughts live unless I'm there."

"The worst strategic mistake that you can make is trying to be something that you're not. And that's the downfall—we're seeing people using AI improperly, and it's all crumbling down."

Resources and Links

Dan Nestle

Dorien Morin-van Dam

Timestamps

0:00:00 Organic Content’s “Death” and Industry Shifts
0:05:40 Early Days of Community Building and Facebook Groups
0:12:27 Reddit Community Management and Brand Authenticity
0:19:59 Evolution of Community Strategy and Content
0:24:47 Starting and Growing Communities: Goals & Authenticity
0:30:10 Brand Support, Community Catalysts, and Influencer Dynamics
0:36:27 Community vs Followers; PR, Marketing, and Strategy Integration
0:42:20 C-suite Ownership of Origin Story and Business Strategy
0:49:28 Connecting Community Leadership with Target Audience
0:56:08 Life Experience, Conflict Management, and Community Leadership
1:00:28 Human Creativity vs AI; Going Live and Authentic Engagement
1:06:40 Final Advice: Authenticity, Building Sustainable Communities

About The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator is a podcast about the future of communications and marketing, hosted by Dan Nestle. Each episode is a conversation with a communicator, marketer, author, or technologist about how the work is changing and what that means for the people doing it. The show launched in 2020 as The Dan Nestle Show and has published more than 150 episodes.

About the Host

Dan Nestle (Daniel Nestle) is a communications strategist with more than 25 years of experience, including 16 years in Japan. He is co-founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer of Lilypath, the company behind the patent-pending Authority Intelligence™ platform, and founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Inquisitive Communications, a strategic advisory practice. He received the 2022 Arthur W. Page Society Page Up Innovation Award, was named a PRWeek Dashboard 25 AI Pioneer in 2023 and 2024, and was named one of Propel's 100 Most Influential PR Tech Leaders Worldwide in 2025.

Connect with Dan

The Trending Communicator: https://trendingcommunicator.com
Substack: https://trendingcommunicator.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nestle
Lilypath: https://lilypath.com
Inquisitive Communications: https://be-inquisitive.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/trendingcommunicator

Show notes for The Trending Communicator are co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Fireflies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Everyone thinks they can name things. Toss some words around in a brainstorm, pick the one that sounds right, hope it passes trademark. But naming done right is storytelling compressed to its most essential form, and getting it wrong costs more than most organizations want to admit.

In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle reunites with Scott Milano, founder and managing director of Tanj, one of the world's top naming agencies, and the man who has named more than 1,000 brands generating trillions of global impressions. He also built ChatNamer, an AI naming assistant with thousands of monthly users, within months of ChatGPT's arrival, long before most people knew what to do with it.

Dan and Scott explore why naming belongs squarely in the communications conversation, not just the brand or marketing silo. They dig into the mechanics of encoding brand DNA into a single word, what happens when organizations get it catastrophically wrong, and why AI can accelerate the process without ever replacing the judgment that makes a name land.

Listen in and hear about...

Notable Guest Quotes

"It is 100% storytelling. And if you get it right, you're basically encoding the DNA of the brand and like the core message of the brand right in the name." [00:08:52 – 00:09:06]

"The shortest poem is a name... some very deep significance [is] encoded in that word, whether it's a personal name or certainly in our case, a brand name." [00:10:35 – 00:10:56]

"Naming is as much about words as it is about people. It is a people sport." [00:49:59 – 00:50:05]

"The biggest takeaway... is to not underestimate the power of a name. It's fundamental. It's the tip of the spear for any conversation, any message, any communication..." [01:01:26 – 01:01:43]

Resources and Links

Dan Nestle

Scott Milano

Timestamps

00:00 Naming: The Creative Job Everyone Thinks They Can Do

02:01 How Dan Got His Start in Naming (Thanks to Scott)

03:43 What’s Changed in Naming—and What Hasn’t

05:45 The Effort Behind Good Names (and Dan’s Sony “BIONZ” Win)

08:00 Is Naming Just Marketing? Why It’s Actually Storytelling

09:10 The Name as the DNA of Your Brand

11:14 The Psychological and Cultural Power of Names

13:19 When Naming Goes Wrong

15:29 What Customers Really Take Away from a Name

16:19 ExecuTech vs. Apple: Branding Near Misses

18:10 Apple, Nike, and the Stories Baked into Brands

22:22 How Top Agencies Build Brand Narratives

25:40 The Chicken-and-Egg Problem: Does Brand Grow Into Name or Vice Versa?

29:17 When Public Reaction to Names Goes Sideways (Nintendo Wii & More)

31:39 Brand Overhauls: The Jaguar Example

36:27 Brand Loyalty, Employee Buy-in & Naming Success Stories

41:06 Research, Creativity, and AI in the Naming Process

45:55 AI’s True Role: Springboard, Not Storyteller

48:32 Can AI Really Name Your Company? (Spoiler: Probably Not)

55:24 The Power of Good Questions in Naming With AI

58:29 Why Human Judgment Is Non-Negotiable for Brand Names

01:01:26 The Takeaway: Never Underestimate the Power of Naming

01:03:23 Where to Learn More (and Why Naming Experts Still Matter)

(Notes co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Castmagic)

About The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator is a podcast about the future of communications and marketing, hosted by Dan Nestle. Each episode is a conversation with a communicator, marketer, author, or technologist about how the work is changing and what that means for the people doing it. The show launched in 2020 as The Dan Nestle Show and has published more than 150 episodes.

About the Host

Dan Nestle (Daniel Nestle) is a communications strategist with more than 25 years of experience, including 16 years in Japan. He is co-founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer of Lilypath, the company behind the patent-pending Authority Intelligence™ platform, and founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Inquisitive Communications, a strategic advisory practice. He received the 2022 Arthur W. Page Society Page Up Innovation Award, was named a PRWeek Dashboard 25 AI Pioneer in 2023 and 2024, and was named one of Propel's 100 Most Influential PR Tech Leaders Worldwide in 2025.

Connect with Dan

The Trending Communicator: https://trendingcommunicator.com
Substack: https://trendingcommunicator.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nestle
Lilypath: https://lilypath.com
Inquisitive Communications: https://be-inquisitive.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/trendingcommunicator

Show notes for The Trending Communicator are co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Fireflies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if sustainable growth isn't about becoming the biggest player in the market? Agencies triple in size and lose their soul. They chase national footprints and abandon the community relationships that made them valuable. Meanwhile, regional firms with deep roots are building something holding companies can't replicate.

In this episode, host Dan Nestle sits down with Jennifer Kaplan, founder and president of Evolve PR and Marketing—Arizona's largest PR firm. Since 2010, Jen has grown to 28 full-time publicists serving more than 140 clients. She's earned Copper Anvil's 2025 Agency of the Year and PR News' Top Women in PR—but the real story is how she built an agency that's simultaneously deeply local and nationally sophisticated.

Dan and Jen explore why relationship-driven business is becoming a competitive moat in the AI era, the tension between AI efficiency and human authenticity, and what two decades of agency leadership teaches you about leading through chaos without losing what makes you special.

Listen in and hear about...

Notable Quotes from Jennifer Kaplan

"My mom would say that I was born doing pr, and it is something that I love so much because I feel like it's who I am. So when I talk to people, I do say, you know, look at something that isn't just a job." [00:04:07 – 00:04:23]

"With any trend, I feel in any business you have to be on it, you have to be aware, but don't lose your identity and don't let it replace things that it shouldn't replace." [00:11:19 – 00:11:34]

"You have to be in tune with AI, but I wouldn't let it take the place of so many wonderful things that we can offer as individuals and that are afforded us in, in the world." [00:12:45 – 00:13:02]

"Go be you. You know, don't let AI or all the things that are around us take away from who you are and lose who you know what makes you special." [01:04:02 – 01:04:15]

Resources and Links

Dan Nestle

Jennifer Kaplan

Timestamps

0:00:00 Introduction: Rethinking Growth in Communications
0:07:44 Importance of Networking, Building Trust, and Relationships
0:13:09 Navigating AI’s Impact on Communications and Authentic Content
0:18:32 Evolve PR’s Niche Approach and Building Media Relationships
0:24:03 Local vs. National Recognition: Awards, Impact, and Credibility
0:31:17 Challenges of Speed and Building Relationships in PR
0:36:30 Integrating Traditional and Tech Approaches in PR
0:43:38 Measuring Success and the Role of Tools like AI in Agency Work
0:45:49 Purpose-Driven Work and Letting Team Guide Agency Culture
0:51:01 Agency Values: Neutrality, Team Dynamics, and Audience Focus
0:56:12 Leadership Lessons: Don’t Try to Do It All, Embrace Mistakes
1:04:02 Closing Thoughts: “Go Be You” and Staying Authentic

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does PR have Stockholm syndrome? We're held captive by every disruption that promises to kill us—internet, social media, now AI—and what do we do? Fall in love with each threat, scramble to prove relevance, then wait for the next existential crisis.

In this episode, Dan Nestle sits down with Barrie Cohen, founder of Barrie Cohen Public Relations. The real evolution isn't technical—it's structural. While holding companies lay off hundreds, boutique firms are landing top-tier placements and major contracts. The question: do you need 50 people to do what one strategist with AI and the right relationships can accomplish?

Barrie walked away from Philadelphia agency life and built an operation that secured placements big firms couldn't—not by throwing bodies at accounts, but by doing what large agencies forgot: caring deeply and telling clients the truth.

Listen in and hear about...

Notable Quotes from Barrie Cohen

"PR needs to be accessible to everybody. Telling your story is critical no matter the size of your business." [00:22:51 – 00:22:57]

"I could write, and I'm a great communicator, and I know how to talk to people, and I'm honest and transparent. Everything else, like you said, I'll figure it out." [00:15:00 – 00:15:08]

"I am not worried it's going to take my job. No one can do what I—like, AI cannot be at the level with my clients that I am, but can they write me an outline for a three-page article and then I can do the bulk of—yes." [00:49:27 – 00:49:41]

Resources and Links

Dan Nestle

Barrie Cohen

Timestamps

0:00:00 Introduction: PR Industry Disruption, Agency Evolution, and Guest Intro
0:06:31 Denver Airport Metaphor—Is PR Built for Purpose?
0:12:35 Barrie Cohen's Journey: Breaking Away from Agency Traditions
0:18:02 Scaling a Boutique PR Business: Growth, Team, and Challenges
0:22:18 Rethinking the Traditional Agency Model and Flexible Client Engagements
0:28:17 Deep Client Relationships and the Value of Deliverables Over Hourly Billing
0:34:36 The Shift to Podcasts: Earning Attention in Modern Media Relations
0:41:33 Podcast Pitching: Personalized Approaches vs. AI Automation
0:48:12 AI Tools, Content Repurposing, and the Human Advantage in PR
0:54:09 PR: The Long Game—Managing Expectations in a Fast-Paced Tech World
1:00:57 Why Human Connections and Relationships Remain Essential in Communications
1:07:19 Looking Forward: Staying Current, Embracing Podcasts, and the Future of PR

About The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator is a podcast about the future of communications and marketing, hosted by Dan Nestle. Each episode is a conversation with a communicator, marketer, author, or technologist about how the work is changing and what that means for the people doing it. The show launched in 2020 as The Dan Nestle Show and has published more than 150 episodes.

About the Host

Dan Nestle (Daniel Nestle) is a communications strategist with more than 25 years of experience, including 16 years in Japan. He is co-founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer of Lilypath, the company behind the patent-pending Authority Intelligence™ platform, and founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Inquisitive Communications, a strategic advisory practice. He received the 2022 Arthur W. Page Society Page Up Innovation Award, was named a PRWeek Dashboard 25 AI Pioneer in 2023 and 2024, and was named one of Propel's 100 Most Influential PR Tech Leaders Worldwide in 2025.

Connect with Dan

The Trending Communicator: https://trendingcommunicator.com
Substack: https://trendingcommunicator.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nestle
Lilypath: https://lilypath.com
Inquisitive Communications: https://be-inquisitive.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/trendingcommunicator

Show notes for The Trending Communicator are co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Fireflies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Authority-building has entered a new era—visibility hinges on context and credibility, and your expertise must be discoverable not just to humans but to machines.

In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle explores these seismic changes with Stephanie Grober, Marketing and PR Director at the Horowitz Agency and a true trailblazer in legal and professional services PR.

Stephanie has mastered the art (and science) of making experts both visible and quotable, securing more than 200 high-impact media placements in a single year while connecting the dots between traditional PR and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). She was already making her clients discoverable to the machines before most of us had even heard of ChatGPT.

Listen in and hear about:

Notable Quotes

On the rapidly changing news cycle:

"Evergreen stories...there’s no room for them right now. Think about how much news, how much breaking news is coming at us. The news cycle doesn’t even feel like 24 hours. It feels like 24 minutes." [00:12:09 - 00:12:27]

On the human element in PR (and reluctance to let AI take over):

"PR is still very human...We aren’t using it to pitch. And I’ll say that there are some agencies that may be writing their pitches with AI. We are not. And that is a choice. We want to stand out as being authentic and human." [00:19:36 - 00:20:58]

On why traditional PR isn't dead—it's evolving:

"It’s a science and an art is what I like to say. Every time we try to make it a science, it shows us that it is an art and vice versa." [00:27:25 - 00:27:45]

On discoverability in the era of AI:

"We’ve been training the LLMs this entire time without realizing it. So for us, you know, some of the ways our clients have been referred to colloquially, you know, now that’s how they’re being discovered in a generative summary." [00:46:47 - 00:47:14]

Resources and Links

Dan Nestle

Stephanie Grober:

Timestamps

0:00:00 Authority Building’s Evolution & AI’s Role in Visibility

0:06:12 Legal & Accounting PR in a Fast-Moving World

0:12:09 Shifting News Cycles, Pitching for Relevance

0:17:30 Traditional Media Relations: Still Vital?

0:22:35 AI, Authenticity, and Human-Centric PR

0:27:25 Art vs. Science in Media Outreach

0:33:49 GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) Disrupts PR Strategies

0:39:06 Earned Media’s True Influence in GEO

0:44:34 Discoverability, Signal vs. Virality for B2B & Legal

0:50:56 Pivoting Expertise—Challenges in AI Search

0:57:30 Human Relationships, Strategy, and ROI in Legal PR

1:02:00 Supporting Journalists and the Future of Media

(Notes co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Castmagic)

About The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator is a podcast about the future of communications and marketing, hosted by Dan Nestle. Each episode is a conversation with a communicator, marketer, author, or technologist about how the work is changing and what that means for the people doing it. The show launched in 2020 as The Dan Nestle Show and has published more than 150 episodes.

About the Host

Dan Nestle (Daniel Nestle) is a communications strategist with more than 25 years of experience, including 16 years in Japan. He is co-founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer of Lilypath, the company behind the patent-pending Authority Intelligence™ platform, and founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Inquisitive Communications, a strategic advisory practice. He received the 2022 Arthur W. Page Society Page Up Innovation Award, was named a PRWeek Dashboard 25 AI Pioneer in 2023 and 2024, and was named one of Propel's 100 Most Influential PR Tech Leaders Worldwide in 2025.

Connect with Dan

The Trending Communicator: https://trendingcommunicator.com
Substack: https://trendingcommunicator.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nestle
Lilypath: https://lilypath.com
Inquisitive Communications: https://be-inquisitive.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/trendingcommunicator

Show notes for The Trending Communicator are co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Fireflies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

**NotebookLM HAS TAKEN OVER THE TRENDING COMMUNICATOR. AGAIN.**

Generative AI is shaking up the world of communications—and the debate is on. In this special takeover episode of The Trending Communicator, Abel and Iris weigh the promise and pitfalls of AI adoption for comms professionals. Is AI truly a strategic superpower, or does it risk eroding hard-won wisdom and trust?

Our hosts tackle big questions about originality, efficiency, brand voice, and the critical role of human judgment. From allegations of “AI slop” to the growing expectation that professionals must adapt or become obsolete, Iris and Abel challenge each other—and the industry—to find balance between bold innovation and ethical responsibility. Whether you’re in the excitement camp or a skeptic, this episode delivers sharp insights, real-world examples, and a call to lead with empathy and rigor as AI rewrites the rules of communication.

Listen in and hear about:

Timestamps

0:00:00 Podcast Takeover & Introduction
0:00:26 GenAI and the Big Debate in Comms
0:00:38 Does Generative AI Add or Destroy Value?
0:01:06 Risks, Disruption & Trust in AI Adoption
0:01:25 Augmentation vs. Automation—Strategic Value
0:02:13 AI Hype & Human Element Concerns
0:02:39 AI Slop, Trust Issues, and Expertise Erosion
0:03:24 Strategic Upside: AI as Enabler
0:04:05 Human Judgment as the Quality Filter
0:04:40 Speed vs. Quality & Distinctive Human Insight
0:05:03 Changing Roles: Prompting, Critiquing, Synthesizing
0:05:31 Institutional Readiness, Ethics, Trust & Systemic Risks
0:06:43 Empathy & Perspective: Irreplaceable Human Advantages
0:07:06 AI for Reputation Management, Context, & Scale
0:07:32 Ethics vs. Efficiency: Risks in Sensitive Fields
0:08:04 Senior Communicators, AI as Validation & Infrastructure
0:08:41 Broadening Strategic Functions; AI as Audience
0:09:14 Organizational Readiness & Leadership Challenges
0:10:01 Leadership Opportunity: AI as Strategic Sparring Partner
0:10:52 Human Wisdom & Navigating Disruption
0:11:36 Closing Remarks & Podcast Outro

Audio generated by NotebookLM, based on the transcripts from all episodes of The Trending Communicator in 2025. Notes and timestamps generated by Castmagic. Intro and outro music generated by Suno. Outro voice generated with Elevenlabs. Graphic depiction of Abel and Iris generated with Gemini (Nanobanana); any similarity to any individual, living or dead, is unintentional.

About The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator is a podcast about the future of communications and marketing, hosted by Dan Nestle. Each episode is a conversation with a communicator, marketer, author, or technologist about how the work is changing and what that means for the people doing it. The show launched in 2020 as The Dan Nestle Show and has published more than 150 episodes.

About the Host

Dan Nestle (Daniel Nestle) is a communications strategist with more than 25 years of experience, including 16 years in Japan. He is co-founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer of Lilypath, the company behind the patent-pending Authority Intelligence™ platform, and founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Inquisitive Communications, a strategic advisory practice. He received the 2022 Arthur W. Page Society Page Up Innovation Award, was named a PRWeek Dashboard 25 AI Pioneer in 2023 and 2024, and was named one of Propel's 100 Most Influential PR Tech Leaders Worldwide in 2025.

Connect with Dan

The Trending Communicator: https://trendingcommunicator.com
Substack: https://trendingcommunicator.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nestle
Lilypath: https://lilypath.com
Inquisitive Communications: https://be-inquisitive.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/trendingcommunicator

Show notes for The Trending Communicator are co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Fireflies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Companies love to talk about AI transformation. They've created policies, distributed tools, checked boxes. But behind closed doors, overwhelmed employees are phoning it in with AI slop, leaders can't tell the difference, and the workforce is too exhausted to learn anything new. That's not transformation. That's theater.

In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle welcomes back Anne Green, CEO of G&S Integrated Marketing Communications Group and host of the Building Brand Gravity podcast. Anne brings a rare perspective—she's orchestrated one of the industry's most successful agency transformations while navigating this AI identity crisis firsthand. Having built Cooper Katz from startup to acquisition, then taken the helm at G&S and expanded it through strategic acquisitions, she's seen transformation from every angle.

Anne and Dan cut through the AI hype to examine what's really stalling adoption: a workforce stretched too thin to experiment, psychological bandwidth at zero, and the uncomfortable reality that AI doesn't automatically make anyone smarter—we have to fight for it. They explore why agencies may be better positioned to crack this code, what the dot-com bubble can teach us about today's AI valuations, and why the talent pipeline conversation keeps shifting from entry-level to mid-level to senior without anyone knowing who's actually at risk.

Listen in and hear about...

Notable Quotes from Anne Green:

"The biggest thing is from the upskilling side, this is a very complex people transformation moment. And we are really crap in this society at upskilling people. We're not good at it." [00:11:32 – 00:11:49]

"AI doesn’t automatically augment our intelligence. We have to fight for it and we have to build it and we have to embrace it. But it is a journey." [00:18:49 – 00:19:02]

"There is, especially at this moment, a beauty of the beginner’s mind, that person who’s coming in with curiosity and freshness..." [00:57:00 – 00:57:40]

"Hold less tightly, unclench the hands and open up the palms. That’s the last thing I’d offer, folks. Hold less tightly." [01:04:38 – 01:04:47]

Resources and Links

Dan Nestle

Anne Green

Timestamps

0:00:00 AI Transformation Hype and Restrictive Corporate Policies
0:06:43 Corporate Struggles with AI Adoption and Change Management
0:12:26 Bubble vs. Real Change—Comparing Dot-Com Era to AI Revolution
0:19:04 AI-Augmented Skills—Best and Worst Amplified
0:25:56 Human/Machine Symbiosis: How AI Changes Us
0:30:01 Freedom to Innovate: Builders, Use Cases, and Organizational Constraints
0:35:10 Overworked Workforce, Layoffs, and AI’s Impact on Talent Strategy
0:42:11 Talent Displacement, Business Model Evolution, and Pipeline Changes
0:48:25 Rethinking Comms Career Tracks with AI Integration
0:54:02 Entry-Level Realities: Training, Context, and Curiosity
1:01:16 Importance of In-Person Collaboration in the Age of AI
1:04:00 Leading Through Change—Kindness, Grace, and Adaptability
1:05:48 Wrap-Up, Final Thoughts, and Podcast Promotion

About The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator is a podcast about the future of communications and marketing, hosted by Dan Nestle. Each episode is a conversation with a communicator, marketer, author, or technologist about how the work is changing and what that means for the people doing it. The show launched in 2020 as The Dan Nestle Show and has published more than 150 episodes.

About the Host

Dan Nestle (Daniel Nestle) is a communications strategist with more than 25 years of experience, including 16 years in Japan. He is co-founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer of Lilypath, the company behind the patent-pending Authority Intelligence™ platform, and founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Inquisitive Communications, a strategic advisory practice. He received the 2022 Arthur W. Page Society Page Up Innovation Award, was named a PRWeek Dashboard 25 AI Pioneer in 2023 and 2024, and was named one of Propel's 100 Most Influential PR Tech Leaders Worldwide in 2025.

Connect with Dan

The Trending Communicator: https://trendingcommunicator.com
Substack: https://trendingcommunicator.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nestle
Lilypath: https://lilypath.com
Inquisitive Communications: https://be-inquisitive.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/trendingcommunicator

Show notes for The Trending Communicator are co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Fireflies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Companies keep approaching AI the way they approached every other tech rollout: install it, train on it, expect immediate returns. But AI isn't software. It's imperfect by design, doesn't follow a predictable implementation curve, and the gap between what leadership promised the board and what's actually happening is becoming a serious problem.

In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle sits down with Chris Gee, founder of Chris Gee Consulting and strategic advisor to Ragan's Center for AI Strategy. Chris has survived four career reinventions driven by technological disruption—from watching his graphic design degree become obsolete the day he graduated to now helping organizations navigate the shift to agentic AI. His motto, "copilot, not autopilot," frames the entire conversation.

Chris and Dan dig into why AI adoption is stalling—because companies are treating transformation like a switch to flip rather than a capability to build. They explore the parallel to 1993's Internet boom and why the adoption curve is right on schedule despite executive frustration. The conversation gets practical: Chris shares how he built an AI agent named "Alexa Irving" for client onboarding, and they tackle whether doom-and-gloom predictions from AI CEOs are helping or hurting the people who actually need to use these tools.

Listen in and hear about...

Notable Quotes

"My motto is copilot, not autopilot. I wholeheartedly believe that we are going to make the most progress using AI in tandem—where humans focus on the things that we do well and we use AI for the things it does better than we do." — Chris Gee [04:19]

"17 is $17 trillion—that's what the American consumer spends per year. 70 is the percentage of US GDP that represents. And zero is the amount of money that AI chatbots, LLMs, and agents have to spend." — Chris Gee [23:57]

"Your ability was never simply in your ability to string together words and phrases, but to translate experiences or emotions and create connection with other humans." — Chris Gee [36:44]

"It's not thinking and it never will be thinking. So if we understand that, then we understand it won't be thinking like a human." — Chris Gee [1:07:00]

Resources and Links

Dan Nestle

Chris Gee

Timestamps

0:00:00 AI Transformation: Hype vs. Reality in Communications
0:06:00 Human Touch vs. Automation in Service Jobs
0:12:40 Early Career Transformation & Adapting to Technology
0:18:00 AI Adoption Curve: Early Adopters and Laggards
0:23:30 Tech Disruption, Job Fears, and Economic Impact
0:29:10 Prompting and Obstacles to AI Adoption
0:34:45 Redefining Skill Sets & Human Value with AI
0:40:45 Efficiency, Productivity, and Creativity with AI Tools
0:46:20 Rethinking Work: Flexible Schedules & Four-Day Weeks
0:51:39 Practical AI Use Cases: Experiment and Upgrade
0:55:11 Agentic AI: Autonomous Agents and Guardrails
1:01:29 Autonomous Agents: Oversight, Guardrails, and Risks
1:08:15 AI Is Imperfect: Why Human Judgment Remains Essential
1:14:16 AI Quirks, Prompting Challenges, and Adoption Friction
1:19:41 Wrap-Up: Finding Chris Gee & Newsletter/Prompt Suggestions
1:21:18 Final Thoughts & Episode Closing

(Notes co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Castmagic)

About The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator is a podcast about the future of communications and marketing, hosted by Dan Nestle. Each episode is a conversation with a communicator, marketer, author, or technologist about how the work is changing and what that means for the people doing it. The show launched in 2020 as The Dan Nestle Show and has published more than 150 episodes.

About the Host

Dan Nestle (Daniel Nestle) is a communications strategist with more than 25 years of experience, including 16 years in Japan. He is co-founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer of Lilypath, the company behind the patent-pending Authority Intelligence™ platform, and founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Inquisitive Communications, a strategic advisory practice. He received the 2022 Arthur W. Page Society Page Up Innovation Award, was named a PRWeek Dashboard 25 AI Pioneer in 2023 and 2024, and was named one of Propel's 100 Most Influential PR Tech Leaders Worldwide in 2025.

Connect with Dan

The Trending Communicator: https://trendingcommunicator.com
Substack: https://trendingcommunicator.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nestle
Lilypath: https://lilypath.com
Inquisitive Communications: https://be-inquisitive.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/trendingcommunicator

Show notes for The Trending Communicator are co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Fireflies.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.