AI has evolved enough now that one-shotting entire deliverables is tempting, and many people online claim to be doing just that. In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss why that’s a bad idea, and how you can train your AI tool to give you less slop-like content.

Chip is fed up with receiving one too many pieces of material with no human thought applied to them, not in preparation, not in editing, not even in the decision to hit send. His take on the broader one-shotting trend is that when the result is actually good, it’s rarely a true one-shot. The person usually spent months feeding their AI tool context first, the same way a good off-the-cuff article draws on years of accumulated expertise.

Gini suggests treating AI like a capable intern. You wouldn’t send an intern’s first draft straight to a client, so don’t do that with AI either. She describes going back and forth with her tools so much that Claude once asked her to batch her edits instead of making them one at a time. Chip pushes back on the intern comparison, arguing that with enough context and consistent feedback, AI has moved closer to a capable mid-level colleague. That feedback loop is also the focus of Gini’s internal training program, Slack sessions where the team is currently learning to push back, reject, and refine AI output instead of just accepting it.

However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that because it needs your guidance, AI isn’t worth using. Being the human in the loop doesn’t make you the savior of your business. Owners who rely solely on humans without using AI are making as grave of a mistake as people who think they can replace themselves entirely with AI. [read the transcript]

The post ALP 316: Agency owners need to manage AI like employees appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

A Press-Gazette investigation found that dozens of experts quoted in the mainstream media don’t actually exist, and PR agencies are unwittingly sharing them with the press. This poses a credibility issue for the agencies and the media. It requires a layer of verification unlike anything we’ve faced before.

Also in this episode, crisis communication has long been housed in the PR or communications department. Should it be a governance responsibility of the C-suite? That’s the case made in a new report from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the Institute of Directors.

In his Tech Report, Dan York covers an initiative to close the AI language gap, including video moves by YouTube and Bluesky, smart glasses, and enhancements to Threads’ podcast toolkit.

Links from this episode:

• Chartered Institute of Public Relations and Institute of Directors publish Crisis Communication Handbook for Boards
• Executive Reputation: Priced, Prized and Easily Lost
• Kate Winick: This Is a Bad Brand Clapback
• Converse Ad Sparks Controversy Over Racist Imagery
• Virtual Reality: The Widely Quoted Media Experts Who Are Not What They Seem
• Qwoted Bans AI-Generated Expert Profiles as PR Spam Floods Reporters’ Inboxes
• Prominent Art Therapist Quoted by Vice, Forbes and Others Is AI-Generated
• The Rise of Fake AI Experts: A Wake-Up Call for the Community
• The Rise of the Fake Expert: How to Remain Authentic in an Inbox of Fakes

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report:

• Closing AI’s Language Gap: Why the Internet Society Is Joining a Global Commitment
• Bluesky Now Lets You Upload 10-Minute-Long Videos
• What’s New at Made on YouTube 2026?
• New YouTube Live Tools for Fan Funding, Dubbing and More
• Everything Announced at Meta Connect 2026
• Snap Launches $2,195 Specs Smart Glasses
• Threads Expands Podcast Toolkit for Creators and Listeners

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, October 26.

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. 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:

Shel Holtz: Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode 529 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California.

Neville Hobson: And I’m Neville Hobson in Somerset in the UK.

Shel Holtz: Neville, it is wonderful to be back together with you again.

Neville Hobson: It’s been a bit of a strange few weeks because of some health issues I’m working through. They’ve affected my availability to record our midweek shows. I was particularly keen to make sure we could record the topics we’re discussing today. Hopefully, by the time our next monthly episode comes around, I’ll be close to normal again.

Shel Holtz: My fingers are certainly crossed. To accommodate all of this, we’re recording a shortened version of our monthly episode: two topics plus Dan York’s report. We’ll also have a quick recap of the two episodes since our last monthly show.

Neville Hobson: Episode 527 was a particularly interesting long-form show with six topics. Our lead story was about a senior manager who discovered that AI was rejecting job applications within seconds of their arrival. One reason was that applicants had graduated from college before 2010, even though the instruction was to surface candidates who displayed “youthful energy.” What’s worse, the talent acquisition manager saw no liability issue because AI had made the decision. If I recall correctly, she said, “We’re okay. We have no liability because the AI made the decision.” If it weren’t so serious, it would be hilarious.

We also discussed an expert witness who used ChatGPT to prepare a report for a legal case. The prompts he used—not just the AI’s output—were uncovered during discovery and entered into evidence. You have to check these things.

Then, in episode 528, we talked about fandom. We explored the differences among fans, audiences, and communities. A fan’s identity can become tied to a team, artist, product, or other object of passion. It’s no surprise that marketers want their brands to inspire that kind of excitement, but not everything has the potential to develop a fan base. We received a couple of comments about that episode.

Shel Holtz: Brian Kilgore in Toronto wrote, “Good show. In my life, I’ve worn Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy clothes, an MG T-shirt, and a sweatshirt I designed using ASCII code as the hook for CNCP telecommunications. One cap that I’ve lost says ‘Nikon Most Excellent.’” Brian has been a fan of quite a few things.

We also received an audio comment from our tech reporter, Dan York.

Dan York: Hey, Shel and Neville. I had a comment on episode 528. I found myself cringing when I heard marketers talking about how to grow a fandom. You have fans, and marketers should find where those fans are and engage with them. They shouldn’t be trying to build a fandom.

You were right that fandom can be part of someone’s identity. My neighbors across the street are big Mazda Miata owners. They each have one, and they go on rallies and tours with other owners. It’s a community and a group, but being Miata owners is also part of who they are. To its credit, the local Mazda dealership supports that community.

There’s a lot of fandom on Reddit, too. I own a Hyundai Santa Cruz, a little vehicle that’s rather like an SUV with a truck bed on the back. Its subreddit has people sharing photos, asking questions, and talking about what they’re doing with their vehicles. Some are passionate about these little trucks. I’ve seen that with other vehicles as well.

Marketers and communicators, please don’t talk about trying to create a fandom. Find the fans where they are.

Shel Holtz: Thanks, Dan. I couldn’t agree more. If there’s a fan base around something you make or represent, by all means, see how you can support it and become more visible to it. Trying to build a fan base around something that doesn’t naturally inspire one can feel artificial.

I hadn’t thought to look for those communities on Reddit. I have a Ford Mustang Mach-E, and as soon as we’re done recording, I’m going to look for a Mach-E subreddit. I have to believe there is one. I appreciate the comment.

I also want to mention Circle of Fellows. Episode 133, part two of our conversation on AI and the leadership moment for the communication profession, should be available by the time you hear this. Adrian Cropley returned, and we were joined by Mary Hills, Cyrus Mavalwala, and Robin McCasland.

Our next episode is Thursday, October 29, at 6 p.m. Eastern. That hour accommodates Zora Artis, who will be joining us for a discussion of connection and leadership. Three other Fellows will join us as well. You’ll find details on the FIR Podcast Network website.

Neville Hobson: Let’s talk about crisis communication—or, more precisely, governance. When we talk about crisis communication, many of us picture what happens once a crisis is underway: the holding statement, the spokesperson, media response, frantic internal calls, whether the CEO should go public, and how quickly the organization says something. But a new handbook from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ Crisis Communications Network, published with the UK’s Institute of Directors, argues that this way of thinking starts far too late.

The handbook, Crisis Communication for Boards: A Handbook for Good Governance, argues that crisis communication belongs within governance, risk management, and organizational resilience. By the time a crisis breaks, many factors that determine how well an organization responds have already been decided.

Has the board understood the risks? Has it treated reputation as a strategic risk? Are escalation routes in place? Can uncomfortable information move quickly from the front line to senior management and the board? Have stakeholder relationships been built before they’re urgently needed? Has anyone rehearsed making decisions quickly under scrutiny with incomplete or conflicting information?

The handbook’s point is that crisis management begins long before a crisis hits, and boards should own it as part of their responsibility for organizational resilience. Communication runs through crisis management because it shapes how events are understood, how decisions are interpreted, and whether trust is maintained or lost.

One line early in the handbook captures the argument: “You cannot communicate your way out of a crisis that you behaved your way into.” That shifts the communicator’s role. If communications is brought in only after management has made its decisions, when the organization is already under pressure, the communicator starts at a disadvantage. Senior communicators should be involved earlier to help boards understand how decisions may be perceived, where stakeholder concerns are emerging, which assumptions may be wrong, and where the organization’s behavior may be creating reputational risk.

That means treating communications as an intelligence function as well as a messaging function. The handbook emphasizes horizon scanning, stakeholder relationships, and the flow of information throughout the organization. Emerging risks increasingly cross legal, regulatory, HR, operations, technology, and communications boundaries. Communicators can help boards understand what’s happening and what it may mean for trust, legitimacy, and reputation.

The handbook is blunt about the consequences of getting this wrong. Poor or delayed communication can itself become a reputational risk. Minor incidents can escalate, information can become trapped in silos, and boards can lose touch with what employees, customers, and other stakeholders are saying. Once trust is damaged, recovery can take years.

It also addresses AI, cyber risk, misinformation, and the speed at which reputational issues spread. With AI, it asks familiar governance questions: Who decided? Who verified? What accountability was in place? Technology can change the nature and speed of a crisis, but it doesn’t remove the board’s responsibility for decisions.

The handbook goes further, arguing that strategic communication belongs inside the governance structure, with access to the board and potentially representation at board level. A board that waits until a crisis to engage communications has already lost some of the ground on which trust is built.

So, Shel, have we been using the term “crisis communication” too narrowly? Is it about what you say once a crisis happens, or about how the organization is governed before it happens?

Shel Holtz: I think the answer is yes. Communication has to happen during a crisis, but it can’t be the work of a department brought in to clean up afterward. It has to be woven into the organization’s approach to crisis governance. That isn’t solely a communications function.

The question of having a “seat at the table”—a term you know I hate—matters if an organization doesn’t take crisis preparedness seriously. Some leaders think, “We’re fine. We don’t have crises. If one happens, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” If you can’t get access to leadership to make the case for crisis governance, then that lack of access is a problem.

This is timely for me because I’m helping develop a crisis management plan. We’re calling it that rather than a crisis communication plan. I’m not suggesting you can necessarily manage every aspect of a crisis, but the plan needs a name. We’re developing it by committee, and in this case, that’s a strength. Crisis governance requires active participation from several parts of the organization. Communications can’t wave a document when a crisis hits and announce, “Here’s the plan, everybody.” People need to have helped develop it, understood it, and practiced it.

Our committee includes a senior operations leader, our general counsel, our vice president of best practices, and the head of safety. They all have a say in how we approach crisis governance. Horizon scanning falls largely to me in communications, although leadership listens when something comes to us through our monitoring service or another channel.

The plan also identifies who should convene on the crisis team based on the nature of the event. You need different expertise for an operational crisis than for a digital security crisis. Those teams need practice to develop the muscle memory to respond well.

As our friend Philippe Borremans would say, we’re in an era of polycrisis. You may face several dimensions of one crisis at once, or two unrelated crises that begin to intersect. Adversaries can see what’s happening and take advantage of it. I found an example in our industry that started as a safety issue, became a legal issue, then a financial one, and ultimately put the company out of business. The ability to pivot quickly has to be built into both governance and training.

That’s why tabletop exercises matter. Give the team a realistic scenario, put people through their paces, and introduce complications that force them to adapt. Ideally, you would do that four times a year. I don’t know how you build muscle memory if it’s merely an annual exercise people feel obliged to complete.

None of this sits solely within a communications department’s purview. Communications informs the communication dimensions, but leadership and the other functions have to prepare together. It cannot begin with a call to communications saying, “We’ve got a crisis. Help.”

Neville Hobson: Another point that stood out to me is that communicators should challenge decisions, not merely explain them. The handbook presents senior communicators as sources of stakeholder intelligence and constructive challenge. They can help boards anticipate how decisions will be interpreted, spot emerging reputational risks, and counter groupthink. That goes well beyond creating messages.

If the communicator enters the room only after a decision has been made, have we misunderstood the role? Sometimes the most valuable contribution is to say, “You may not want to do this in the first place.”

Shel Holtz: That connects to identifying issues before they become crises. I can’t remember the exact wording, but I recall a thought from the IABC Excellence Study: A crisis is what an organization faces when it fails at issues identification and management. If you see an issue coming and act, you may keep it from becoming a full-blown crisis.

One definition I use for a crisis is that it can become existential. If it spins out of control, it can affect your ability to do business. The organizations that say, “We’ve never had one; things are going great,” may be particularly unprepared when a crisis arrives.

Our plan includes holding statements—not just one, but several for different circumstances—that can be revised and issued quickly. Delay can look evasive. Victims, adversaries, and others may speak first, and that first account can become the version people remember. Then you have to overcome an impression that has already taken hold.

Even if all you can say is, “We’ve just learned of this and are looking into it,” you can tell people when to expect an update. If you don’t have more information at that point, say you’re continuing to investigate and give them another update time. Give people a reason to turn to you for reliable information.

Neville Hobson: The handbook is worth reading rather than skimming. We’ll link to the PDF on the CIPR website in the show notes. It includes case studies and a toolkit that may be useful in your planning. And I’ll repeat that line: “You cannot communicate your way out of a crisis that you behaved your way into.”

Shel Holtz: Self-inflicted crises are among the hardest to handle. In some crises, the organization is a victim too, even if others are harmed along the way.

One last thought: Many crisis plans fail to include employees among the stakeholders they need to communicate with. Employees can be your strongest advocates and supporters during a crisis. If you equip them with accurate information, they may be able to answer questions from clients, vendors, partners, consultants, and others they work with.

Dan York: Greetings, Shel and Neville, and FIR listeners around the world. It’s Dan York on a glorious autumn day in northwest Vermont. I’m drinking warm apple cider and will soon head to an orchard for apple cider doughnuts.

I want to talk about three things happening online. First is an effort announced this past week to close the language gap in AI systems. On September 21, the Gates Foundation announced a five-year commitment with about 60 organizations to make AI services available in more languages.

More than 7,000 languages are spoken worldwide, but most online content is in perhaps seven to 10 languages. AI training data and interfaces are concentrated in even fewer. As part of its Goalkeepers report, the Gates Foundation looked at what’s needed for more people to benefit from AI, and language is a major piece of that.

My employer, the Internet Society, signed on, as did the Coalition on Digital Impact, or CODI, whose board I sit on. CODI is a nonprofit focused on helping people navigate the internet in their own languages. There’s nothing concrete to report yet, but I think this is an exciting development. I’ll share more in the months ahead, including ways people might get involved. Everyone who chooses to use AI should be able to do so in their own language.

My second topic is video. Bluesky now allows uploads of videos up to 10 minutes long. We’ll see whether that encourages more people to make videos there.

YouTube also held its Made on YouTube event on September 23 and announced a range of updates. They include ways to customize the feed on your home page, an Ask YouTube tool for recommendations, more editing tools for Shorts, and features for creating vertical microdramas. YouTube is also adding live-streaming capabilities that appear aimed at competing with Twitch, including new ways for hosts to interact. It says live automatic dubbing into multiple languages is coming by 2027. There’s a lot for creators and communicators who work with video to explore.

I’ve also been following smart glasses. I’m intrigued by their possibilities but concerned about privacy. Cameras built into glasses can be used to record people inappropriately, including women who have not consented. At the same time, I’ve seen how helpful the technology could be for people with disabilities. Someone who is blind, for example, might use smart glasses to navigate a store and learn what’s on the shelves.

That promise comes with difficult questions. You may not know whether the person wearing Ray-Ban smart glasses nearby is livestreaming. Meta has announced more glasses, including a future VR model that sounds closer to goggles than ordinary eyewear. Snap has also announced new augmented-reality Spectacles, with a price around $2,200. Meta has introduced an audio-only option, which may address some concerns about cameras. I’m interested in what these devices can do, but I remain concerned about the privacy implications.

Finally, Threads has announced podcast tools intended to help creators share shows, bring listeners back, and start conversations. They include profile banners, episode link cards, transcript and guest cards, new-episode reminders, and podcast insights. I have a Threads account but don’t use it much anymore. Still, if you’re a podcaster who uses Threads, these tools may be worth a look.

I’ll send it back to you. I need to buy some apple cider doughnuts. Bye for now.

Shel Holtz: Thanks, Dan. I’ve also been following the smart-glasses announcements. Meta’s glasses were around for a while before they developed a stigma, but that stigma has become real. You may remember Google Glass and people being called “Glassholes” for wearing it in public. Something similar seems to be happening with camera-equipped Meta glasses.

A version without cameras strikes me as a smart move. I can see the value of glasses that display turn-by-turn directions or information about what I’m looking at. When I travel internationally and encounter a sign in another language, I pull out my phone and use Google Lens to translate it. Having that translation appear in my glasses would be wonderful. There are many useful things AI glasses could do without intruding on other people.

As for recording, people already use devices such as Plaud and Fieldy. If you ask permission or let people know you’re recording, I don’t see a major issue. I hope AI glasses develop further, though I’m not inclined to buy a pair from Meta.

I’ve also been reading about Meta’s new VR glasses. Initially, I was enthusiastic. I use a Meta Quest 3 mainly to work out with an app called Supernatural. There’s a wonderful story behind Supernatural that we should discuss on the podcast one day. I wanted to know whether my Quest library would work with the new glasses, and apparently it will. I also wondered whether glasses would stay on while I’m jumping around during a workout, and the answer seems to be yes. But then I saw the $1,200 price. People complained that the Quest 3 was expensive at $500. I won’t be rushing out to buy the new device. I’ll see what people say after it’s been out for a while; my Quest 3 works just fine.

Great report, Dan. Thank you.

Dr. Eleni Nicola is described as an art therapist from Cyprus. She has been quoted more than 30 times in recent months: in Forbes on resetting your home office, Vice on what color to paint your walls to calm an anxious dog, Glamour on crying therapy, and Parade on the right way to retire. Different outlets have called her a clinical psychologist, an art therapist, or a creative wellness expert.

The problem is that she doesn’t appear to exist. Press Gazette reported that an image detector rated her profile photo 10 out of 10 for being artificial and her quotes as 100% AI-generated. Her LinkedIn profile was created late last year despite claims of a long career. She isn’t listed by the Art Therapy Credentials Board, which lists thousands of art therapists.

Every one of her online profiles links to the same paint-by-numbers kit retailer, DeVincify, where she is presented as an “expert in residence.” This has become a business model. A quote in Forbes brings a link from a high-authority news site. That can improve search rankings, and rankings can drive sales. SEO operators are building fake personas as part of link-building campaigns. When Press Gazette asked DeVincify to verify her, the company’s statement about taking the matter seriously was itself identified as AI-generated. At the time of publication, her profile was still active.

This is far bigger than one case. Press Gazette has identified more than a thousand articles across outlets including Mail Online, Metro, The Sun, The Mirror, HuffPost UK, Yahoo, and The Independent that relied partly or entirely on fake experts. More than 600 were traced to a single company. One fictitious psychologist was quoted hundreds of times before anyone established that she wasn’t real.

The fakes aren’t limited to sources. Tech sites have pulled articles attributed to finance writers whom Press Gazette couldn’t verify. One claimed a Deloitte career that Deloitte has no record of; another used a headshot that appears to belong to a computer repair technician in the United States.

Dan Simon, who runs the journalist-sourcing platform Qwoted, says the platform handles more than 15 violations a day and blocks about 50 prospective clients from registering each day. As he put it, “AI has just poured petrol on the disinformation fire.” The combinations include real agencies with fake experts, real experts with fake expertise, and fake agencies with fake experts.

David Higgerson at Reach, publisher of The Mirror, said agencies Reach regularly works with had supplied fake experts without realizing it. They had sourced the quotes in good faith. That makes PR both a victim and a vector. If an agency fails to verify the experts it puts forward, it can launder fakes into the news.

These are things we need to catch before publication. A LinkedIn profile is no longer enough to establish that someone is real. Reach has whitelisted hundreds of PR firms, built an AI tool called The Detective to assess whether spokespeople are genuine, and added another layer of verification for people quoted on health or money. Qwoted is introducing video verification. One platform requires responses to be recorded live on camera. Another stopped offering open access because verifying everyone would otherwise have threatened its business.

Simple checks still help. Ask for a five-minute call. Ask the person to respond to a specific photo request. If they claim a professional credential, check the relevant registry. One supposed expert stopped responding when asked for a photo. Another was exposed when an agency checked a WhatsApp profile picture and found that it belonged to a man doing SEO for a recipe blog.

Neville, what else can an honest communicator do to avoid perpetuating quotes from fake experts?

Neville Hobson: I was surprised by how readily fake experts were accepted by major media outlets. I remember a case involving The Telegraph a few months ago. I can’t recall the details, but it published something false, then removed it and apologized. Why wasn’t it checked first?

We make the same argument about people using AI-generated content without checking it, but source verification is even more fundamental. I don’t know precisely how every newsroom chooses and verifies the people it quotes. Clearly, though, something is seriously amiss if this is happening on an industrial scale.

We may need stronger ways to prove digital identity, comparable in some respects to the checks involved in applying for a passport or, in my case as a school governor, undergoing a criminal-records check. Informal methods aren’t working, and manual checks are difficult to scale. The people creating fakes can scale their efforts. We may have to give up some of the casualness with which we’ve approached verification.

Shel Holtz: One detail that struck me was that this involved a paint-by-numbers company. If a company selling paint kits is doing this, who else is? We tend to picture shady crypto operators or other familiar bad actors. But anyone trying to sell something and gain an SEO advantage might be tempted.

A journalist’s credibility is at risk when a quoted expert turns out not to exist. News organizations need a process for vetting sources, and they should tell readers what that process is. PR people need one too. If you use a fake expert’s quote to support a press release or offer that person to a reporter, why would that reporter trust you again after discovering the deception?

This reminds me of a story we discussed years ago about a purported bank robbery in Texas. A local publication reported it, a larger outlet picked it up, wire services followed, and it spread through news sites, television, and radio. The original story was fake. Each outlet assumed the previous one had checked it.

Now the assumption is, “This person has ‘Dr.’ before their name and a LinkedIn profile, so they must be legitimate.” That is woefully inadequate. We need processes to catch these fabrications before we send them into the world.

Neville Hobson: That’s the issue. It doesn’t make much sense for every media outlet to build a different verification process. That won’t scale. There may be a role for independent services whose job is to verify that people are who they claim to be.

Imagine a PR firm with a strong reputation for providing knowledgeable spokespeople. If just one turns out to be fake, doubts could arise about everyone the firm has supplied. Firms need a way to bolster their own credibility and give journalists and clients confidence in the people they put forward. AI will only make this problem worse. It’s unfortunate, but we’ve reached a point where verification is essential.

Shel Holtz: I like the idea of vendors offering verification as a service. It’s also an example of new work arising as AI changes existing jobs. In the meantime, a five-minute video call or a specific photo request can help establish that an individual is real. Those checks may not scale across thousands of sources, but they are steps people can take while better systems are developed.

Ultimately, we need scalable solutions. This affects reputation and trust, particularly if people act on advice that was fabricated simply to sell a paint-by-numbers kit.

Neville Hobson: Amazing.

Shel Holtz: That’s our report for today. We would love to hear your comments. Audio comments are especially welcome—you heard one today. Send us an MP3 of up to three minutes, or record a message directly on the FIR website by clicking the “Send Voicemail” tab on the right side of the page.

You can also comment where we post episode announcements, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon, or leave a comment in the show notes at FIRPodcastNetwork.com. We’ll find it, and you can be part of the conversation.

Ratings and reviews mean a great deal to us, too. Wherever you get your podcasts, we’d be grateful if you would rate and review the show.

We plan to record our next monthly episode on Saturday, October 24.

Neville Hobson: That’s right, and we’ll publish it on Monday.

Shel Holtz: Monday, October 26. As for shorter midweek episodes, we’ll see how Neville is feeling. If you subscribe to the show, new episodes will appear in your feed as soon as they’re available, without your having to wait for an announcement. And that’s a wrap for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #529: Fake Quotes from Fake Experts Find Their Way Into Top-Tier Media appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Last month, a panel of IABC Fellows shared their observations on the results of a recent AI-focused survey conducted by the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (Global Alliance). This month, a fresh panel (with Adrian Cropley returning) will pick up the conversation where the August panel left off, exploring various aspects of the role communication professionals will play as AI continues to evolve, along with the challenges and opportunities it presents to organizations of all kinds.

Joining Adrian and moderator Shel Holtz are Mary Hills, Robin McCasland, and Cyrus Mavalwala.

Catch Part 1 of the discussion.

About the Panel

Adrian Cropley is the founder and director of the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence, a global training and development organization. For over thirty years, Adrian has worked with clients worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, on major change communication initiatives, internal communication reviews and strategies, professional development programs, and executive leadership and coaching. He is a non-executive director on several boards and advises some of the top CEOs and executives globally.

Adrian is a past global chair of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), where he implemented the IABC Career Road Map, kick-started a global ISO certification for the profession, and developed the IABC Academy. Adrian pioneered the Melcrum Internal Communication Black Belt program in Asia Pacific and is a sought-after facilitator, speaker, and thought leader. He has been a keynote speaker and workshop leader on strategic and change communication at international conferences in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore, China, India, Hong Kong, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia. He has received numerous awards, including IABC Gold Quill Awards for communication excellence, and his Agency received Boutique Agency of the Year 6 years running.

Adrian is the Chair of the Industry Advisory Committee for the RMIT School of Media and Communication and a Fellow of the IABC and RSA. In 2017, he was awarded the Medal of Order of Australia for his contribution to the field of communication.

Mary Hills, ABC, IABC Fellow, Six Sigma, FCSCE serves as MBA Faculty in Benedictine University’s Goodwin College of Business, teaching brand and marketing management. Her work in marketing, finance and organizational structure and management naturally brings an interdisciplinary perspective to her students.

Mary’s professional career includes work at large, publicly traded corporations in the financial sector and at closely held, middle-market companies.  Her work includes time at Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Whiteco Advertising, NiSource, Northern Trust, Unilever, and Zebra Technologies. As a member of strategic management teams, her work includes research, risk analysis, and strategic planning for product launches, market expansion, and change and crisis management

Mary’s AI work began in 2012 supporting a start-up’s AI product development at Purdue Technology Center and Research Park of NWI. Most recently, she completed AI Usage and Guidelines in Marketing Research for MBA students in her brand and marketing class.

Robin McCasland, IABC Fellow, SCMP, is Senior Director of Corporate Communications for Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). She leads her department’s CommTech initiative, using AI and emerging technologies to deliver productivity gains and build differentiated communication capabilities that shape business decisions and outcomes. Robin also leads the internal communications team and the employee listening program, demonstrating to senior leaders how employee and executive communication add value to the business’s bottom line. Previously, Robin excelled in leadership roles in communication for Texas Instruments, Dell, Tenet Healthcare, and Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

Robin is a past IABC chairman and has served in numerous association leadership roles for more than 30 years. She was honored in 2023 and 2021 by Ragan Communications/PR Daily as one of the Top Women Leaders in Communication. She’s also received IABC Southern Region and IABC Dallas Communicator of the Year honors. Robin is a frequent presenter at communication and HR conferences. She is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and a Leadership Texas alumnus. Robin resides in Dallas.

Cyrus Mavalwala, ABC, MC, IABC Fellow, is a sought-after communication strategist who leads a team of trusted advisors that executives rely on to capture, own, and sustain mindshare with the people that matter most.

After senior roles at global PR agencies, Cyrus founded Advantis Communications in 2002. Advantis’ proprietary frameworks operationalize AI, elevate social media, and integrate video to advance thought leadership and earn relevance, influence, and trust. These frameworks have been cited in news media, industry, and academia. Cyrus helps communication teams apply AI responsibly to improve workflows, increase effectiveness, and amplify impact.

Through Act Like an Agency™, Cyrus leads ALA faculty to elevate communication teams from tacticians to trusted advisors. An operating system for the modern communication function, Act Like an Agency enables in-house teams to operate with the confidence, discipline, and influence of strategic business partners.

A co-creator of the Digital Strategy and Communications Management Certificate at the University of Toronto, Cyrus brings his strategic perspective and practical frameworks to classrooms, boardrooms, and stages across North America.

Cyrus brings deep governance experience through his service with IABC at the local, regional, and international levels. He has judged industry awards and received more than 30 honors for communication excellence across local, national, and international programs.

The post Circle of Fellows #133: AI and the Communication Leadership Moment, Part 2 appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Employee engagement is often treated as a goal — or worse, as a standalone annual survey score that needs to be nudged upward to placate the CEO. But engagement is not an end in itself. It is a condition that makes employees more likely to flag problems, share knowledge, question bad instructions, help colleagues, and contribute discretionary effort. Measuring it can be valuable, but only if an organization asks the right questions, receives honest answers, and acts on what it learns.

In this episode of “On The Same Page,” Shel Holtz and Mark Dollins examine what employee engagement really means, the limitations of standardized surveys, and why disengagement is a leading indicator while turnover is a lagging one. They also explore the role communicators can play — without assuming responsibility for factors they cannot control — and why equipping managers to listen, provide feedback, and translate organizational messages for their teams may be one of Communication’s most effective contributions.

Links from this episode:

• The Big Shift — A Pivot from “Engaged” to “Effective”
• Employee Engagement Is Not Dead. It Has A Messaging Problem
• Employee Engagement is Toast. What’s Next?

Raw Transcript:

Mark Dollins:
Hey, Shel, how are you doing?

Shel Holtz:
I am doing great. I’m heading out on vacation tomorrow, and I’m ready for it.

Mark Dollins:
I’m right behind you next week, so it’s good that we were able to connect. Something interesting happened in my family that got me thinking about a topic we could cover today. I have a family member who is seriously thinking about getting engaged, and my wife and I are coming up on 40 years since we got engaged. So, let’s talk about engagement, right?

But you and I have a very different orientation to engagement in the world of employee communication, and I thought we could talk about that. I’m going to start with something fundamental that a lot of people struggle with: defining it. There’s a big-picture version of engagement, but for employee communicators, what we need to consider can be very specific to an organization or even to a person within that organization. What is your 30,000-foot view?

Shel Holtz:
I have heard so many definitions of engagement. I’ve heard that engagement is what enables employees to bring their whole selves to work. I’ve also heard pushback on that: Who would want to bring their whole self to work? There are parts of yourself you don’t necessarily want people to see at work.

I’ve also heard that engagement means bringing discretionary effort to the job—going above and beyond. Of all the definitions I’ve heard, one I like is the analogy to a car. If the transmission is engaged, the car is moving. If the transmission is disengaged, it’s idling. How do you want your organization to be moving? You want it going forward, not standing still.

Before we jump into this discussion in more detail, I want to invite everybody watching or listening to share your comments with us. You can do that in the show notes, where there’s a field for comments, or wherever we post updates announcing a new episode. We would love to discuss your comments in an upcoming episode.

Mark Dollins:
That’s how we learn, too, right, Shel? We enjoy talking, but we also enjoy learning from others, so please share your comments.

Moving on to the broader topic of engagement, I think about some of the studies that have been done. Gallup, obviously, spends a lot of time focusing on the details of employee engagement. This year, it released a report saying that about 20% of the global workforce was engaged at work last year. In 2022, its comparison point, the figure was 23%. So it’s starting to fall again toward almost COVID-level territory. Gallup is quite confident in its reporting and says the margin of error is less than 0.1%.

The report makes some interesting points about the value of paying attention to engagement. It says engaged people are 69% less likely to burn out at work, half as likely to be job hunting and 69% more likely to be “thriving” in life, even beyond work. Gallup takes a very holistic approach.

As you noted earlier, Shel, it measures many factors in determining what it means to be engaged: whether employees know what’s expected of them, whether they have the right materials and equipment, whether they are allowed to do what they do best and whether they receive recognition. The list goes on and on. As you think about this big-picture world of capital-E Engagement, what are you finding with your clients and in your own organization?

Shel Holtz:
We conduct an engagement survey every year. We don’t use one of the canned engagement surveys; we have a bespoke survey. After we get the results, we can easily reconfigure the data, batch questions into categories and see where we stand on broader areas that matter to the organization’s leadership.

More importantly, we can identify opportunities to improve and come back to employees to say, “These are the things we’re going to change as a result.” We can also narrow the results down. There may be a very low score in one part of the organization and a much better score elsewhere. That enables us to take action locally and work with the leaders of those groups to make improvements that will lift the rest of the organization.

Mark Dollins:
You’re raising a critical point about how employee communicators should think about engagement: Understand what’s important to your organization. Just as there are different definitions of engagement, what management and executives value will differ from one organization to another.

In my experience working with many organizations, an organizational-health or pulse survey typically has a finite set of perhaps eight to 10 questions that someone—usually the chief people officer—has decided matter most and represent what the organization cares about for engagement.

Here’s where it gets interesting for employee communicators. We want to help, be accountable and deliver results that help employees feel engaged. But then we sign up for things without understanding what we’re responsible for or whether we can influence them. Many questions, for example, are about what a manager does. I can’t control all time and space for every manager. But if we spend time determining which questions reflect outcomes we can influence, that’s where we should focus.

Sometimes we’re behind the eight ball because we don’t have a say in the questions being asked. Some questions are worded so broadly that you could drive a truck through them. Take a question about understanding the company mission. People may interpret that in different ways. Some will think it means the enterprise mission; some, their functional leader’s mission; and others, their team leader’s vision of where the team is going. You end up with a mixture of feedback you can’t meaningfully act on.

There are three lessons here. First, understand what the questions are. Second, choose what you’re able to influence. Third, make sure the questions are worded in a way that can produce actionable information.

Shel Holtz:
I think that’s important. I’m actively involved in developing the questions for our survey every year. Most of them don’t change because we want to conduct longitudinal measurement and see whether we’ve improved or declined from previous years or whether a trend is emerging. But we introduce new questions, and when we identify an issue with the way a question was worded, we fix it for the next survey. I definitely have influence there.

It’s not just Communication that uses the survey. It’s a significant input for Human Resources and for leadership in how they lead the organization. Part of the process is parceling out the data to the people who can act on it, even if Communication can’t.

Mark Dollins:
I love hearing that you have a seat at the table because, in many organizations where I’ve worked or consulted, those questions are sacrosanct. No one touches them, or changing them requires an act of God. That puts a communicator in a difficult position: How can I be accountable for changing an outcome if I have no say in how the question is worded? What did you do to earn that seat at the table and that influence, Shel?

Shel Holtz:
I’ve been involved with our engagement survey since we first launched it. I had experience with engagement surveys before, and that led to my role.

There is an engagement-survey industry, and I think that industry has diminished the perceived value of engagement for many people. A lot of people “study for the test.” It’s engagement-survey time, leadership wants a high engagement score and the boss tells employees how to answer so they won’t get in trouble for contributing to a lower score. That’s not helpful. We need sincere answers. We need people to tell the truth when they respond.

Look at Gallup’s Q12 survey, for example. One question that drives me crazy is, “Do you have a best friend at work?” It’s not one of my favorite engagement questions. I understand the rationale and why it’s there, but I don’t think that really drives engagement. Some people want to come to work, do their jobs and go home. They don’t want to go out for a beer after work or do the axe-throwing team-building activity. That doesn’t mean they aren’t engaged. Other things drive engagement besides wanting to party with your colleagues.

Mark Dollins:
For communicators who aren’t in your position and are trying to navigate the questions being asked and what they’re responsible for, my advice is to keep asking why: Why are we asking this question, and what do we expect to get from it?

Digging deeper with those “why” questions can help communicators understand the thinking. If the questions come from the CHRO or someone else in HR, ask, “Help me understand why we’re asking this. Why do you think it’s so important?” Push a little. Healthy discernment—and sometimes healthy debate—will give us better information for making informed communication decisions.

Shel Holtz:
Absolutely. Part of the problem is that many organizations think engagement is the goal—the outcome they’re seeking—rather than a condition that needs to exist for the organization to achieve its goals and outcomes.

Think about what disengaged people don’t do. They don’t flag a problem early. They don’t help a colleague, share what they know, question a bad instruction or stay late when it matters. These are effectiveness behaviors that don’t show up on a decision-rights audit.

Some people who are critical of engagement as a metric say what we really need is competence. But a competent, disengaged employee is the one updating a résumé. Mike Klein, who has written about his objections to engagement as a metric, says people vote with their feet. He’s absolutely right—but disengagement is the leading indicator. Turnover is the lagging indicator.

Mark Dollins:
Exactly. By the time you get to attrition, it’s costly. It’s better to intercede where possible than to wait for those outcomes, because that doesn’t help anybody.

Shel Holtz:
Communication plays a significant role in engagement. It starts with explaining why we’re asking employees to complete the survey. Then it involves sharing the results, helping people understand what they mean and communicating what the organization will do about them.

Mark, you’ve written two books about communication and engagement. What do you see as Communication’s leading role in driving, supporting or sustaining engagement?

Mark Dollins:
Manager influence on employee behavior is critical. Employee communicators can serve the interests of engagement by working with managers—especially middle managers and frontline managers. That’s where we see higher turnover rates and where professionals often lack the skills or training they need to support stronger engagement on their teams.

We spend a lot of time on general employee communication, but if we don’t focus on and equip and empower leaders—all the way out to the front line—we’re doing our organizations a disservice. That is where the big levers get pulled: in day-to-day interactions.

You’ve heard the expression that employees don’t leave companies; they leave managers. It comes down to that relationship: whether employees feel informed, equipped and empowered, and whether the mission is clear. All of those things are funneled through leaders to the front line. We have to invest time there. I have a couple of chapters in my books about this because I feel so passionately about it. Organizations that do this well typically have lower attrition and higher engagement.

Shel Holtz:
I’m a big fan of Engage for Success, the UK movement working to elevate engagement in UK organizations. David MacLeod, one of the people behind it, and I were both speakers at a conference in Poland probably 13 or 14 years ago.

Engage for Success has four enablers of engagement, and I like that framework better than any other I’ve seen. One of those enablers is engaging managers. It’s absolutely critical to have managers who engage with their people.

My problem with many managers is that they were promoted into the role based on their performance as individual contributors. They hit the top of their pay range, and the way to promote them and give them a higher paycheck is to make them managers. Then they don’t receive the training, resources or help they need to learn how to manage. They are just suddenly in charge of a team.

Mark Dollins:
There’s a corollary for employee communicators: We often don’t get the resources or bandwidth to support managers in those ways. We tend to focus on content: “Let’s give them the message.” We don’t spend enough time asking, “Do you have the skill to deliver this message meaningfully? Let us help you.”

If we’re thinking ahead about where employee communicators can make an impact on engagement, we should consider how we can help managers not just with content, but also with skills. That’s not limited to delivering a message. How do you learn to listen? How do you learn to provide feedback? Those are critical skills for leaders, as well as individual contributors.

As you said, people are often promoted without those skills, which creates a compound problem: They don’t know how to do these things themselves, and now they’re in charge of other people. Supporting them is a worthwhile place to invest time and energy.

Have you worked in organizations on programs that support managers’ team and small-group interpersonal communication skills?

Shel Holtz:
I have, but nowhere more than where I work now. The organization is fully invested in the role of the manager and in adopting a culture of management.

IBM used to have that culture. Business schools would visit IBM to see how its managers managed. The company has lost some of that over the last couple of decades, but my current organization is very serious about it.

We do several things in Communication to support managers. One is a monthly email newsletter called Manager Talking Points. It always starts with three or four things we believe are important enough for managers to share with their teams. The message should come from the manager because we want managers to add the local angle—to translate or interpret what the information means for their teams and the work they’re doing.

The newsletter also includes a couple of articles. One might cover a recent survey or study about management. We also have a managers’ blog where we invite managers to share something small they did that helped. It isn’t a major business-school lesson, just a practical tip others can try.

One manager, for example, invited someone at each monthly team meeting to cook something from their ethnic background and share it with the group. That led to conversations about those backgrounds, helped people get to know one another, was fun and built the team. I love it when people write about those kinds of ideas.

Mark Dollins:
Creative approaches to engaging managers in different ways—I love that. We’re almost at the end of our time. Do you have any closing thoughts on engagement, Shel?

Shel Holtz:
I like the idea of discretionary effort from employees, and I think engaged employees will provide it. But we have to be thoughtful about the mechanisms we use to measure engagement. It should be less about the survey instrument and the survey results and more about what we do with what we learn—and about learning things that matter and can really move the needle.

Engagement is not the end game. It’s a condition we need to achieve, and we need it in concert with other things, such as capability. The best approach is to view engagement as a strategic component of leading an organization rather than saying, “It’s time for the annual engagement exercise. Let’s see if we can move our score up 0.3%.”

Mark Dollins:
Or see whether we can stack the deck a little bit.

At the end of the day, the holy grail for me in employee communication and engagement is behavior change. If something isn’t working, how do we as communicators help change the behavior? That has always been the holy grail in the work I’ve done.

This has been a really engaging conversation, Shel. Thank you for that.

Shel Holtz:
What do employees think, say or do, and how are we trying to influence that? It’s going to be easier to influence those things with an engaged population than with a disengaged one.

Mark Dollins:
Amen to that. We’d love to hear our listeners’ stories about engagement. What do you think?

Shel Holtz:
I’d love to hear them, too. Thanks, Mark. Talk to you next time.

Mark Dollins:
Thank you, Shel. Bye-bye.

Shel Holtz:
Bye.

The post OTSP #8: Employee Engagement Matters. It Is Not the Goal. appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

If you’re screening candidates on experience or technical skills, you may be making a mistake. In this episode, Chip and Gini make the case that curiosity and problem-solving are the two traits that separate great hires from mediocre ones, and neither one can be taught from scratch.

Most agency skills, from writing a press release to running Google Ads to using AI tools, can be picked up on the job. Curiosity and problem-solving are different: people either arrive with some baseline capacity for them, or they don’t. Gini makes it about AI, where ever-evolving tools and audience behavior reward the people who keep asking questions instead of coasting on routine.

The two discuss how to actually screen for these traits in a couple hours of interviewing. Gini leaves 15 to 20 minutes at the end for the candidate’s questions and reads a lot into what they ask, or whether they ask anything at all. Chip changes up the order entirely, opening by asking the candidate what questions they have for him before he’s asked anything himself, and he’ll throw a candidate’s own question right back at them to see how they handle being put on the spot. Both dismiss scenario-based questions and interview theater like “what animal would you be” as close to useless. Gini also flags a habit she’s trying to break on her own team, being “Gini-GPT,” where people default to asking her for the fast answer instead of working through problems themselves. [read the transcript]

The post ALP 315: The top two traits for new agency hires appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

A strategic narrative is a critical asset for any organization. It is the overarching story that explains where an organization came from, what it stands for, where it is going, and why that direction matters. Grounded in the organization’s purpose, values, vision, and strategy, it provides a common foundation for communication and helps employees and other stakeholders understand how they fit into the larger story and why they would want to be part of it. In this episode, Mark and Shel dig into strategic narratives, why they are so important, and why so many organizations seem to dismiss their importance.

Links from this episode

• The Strategic Narrative (from Shel’s blog)
• Strategic Narrative (from Engage for Success)
• How To Build A Strategic Narrative That Inspires And Aligns

Raw Transcript

Shel Holtz: Mark, how are you doing?

Mark Dollins: I’m good, Shel. How are you? Happy Sunday on the West Coast to you.

Shel Holtz: Thanks, and happy Sunday on the East Coast to you.

Mark Dollins: Thank you very much. We’re loving it. We’re getting close to Labor Day.

Shel Holtz: It’s getting there—a day off for us. I find strategic narratives to be a fascinating topic. They’re well established in theory. You can’t pick up a book on communications, internal or external, and not find strategic narratives in there. Engage for Success, the UK employee engagement movement, lists a strategic narrative as one of the four enablers of employee engagement.

And yet, in 21 years of consulting on internal communications, I was never asked to be involved in developing or evolving one, and one was never given to me as part of the package when I was preparing to work with a client. I think the theory is more prevalent than the actual practice. Is that what you’ve found?

Mark Dollins: I think that’s true. In fact, when I’m working with clients, I always ask them, “What is your story?” I could go online and say what I think their story is based on what they’ve put on digitally managed channels, but when I ask them to tell me their story, often there isn’t a lot there.

Pardon the pun, but it’s the North Star. It is the single most important element for any communication because it’s all about purpose and mission. If you can’t make that really clear, it’s hard to tell a story about it.

Shel Holtz: I remember when I was working on the strategic narrative where I work, I had to explain that we weren’t inventing something. We weren’t going to introduce concepts that we’d have to get employees to buy into. We were creating a package containing all of these statements and philosophies: our core values, purpose, mission, vision and strategic plan, all baked into a narrative. Where did we come from? Where are we today? Where are we going? Wouldn’t you like to join us on this journey?

Mark Dollins: Exactly. I did a little research and found that the word “narrative” comes from the Latin narrare, meaning “to relate,” and gnarus, meaning “knowing.” It’s all about attaching meaning to the facts we’re presenting. That’s really important for any kind of North Star narrative because everything comes from that.

Shel Holtz: I thought we would talk about the strategic narrative as an element of communication and the role the internal communicator plays in it. I was surprised in my research to find that sometimes these are delivered fully baked to the internal communicator, who is told to convey the narrative rather than play a part in developing it.

Mark Dollins: Bummer—as if we have nothing to add to it. We’d have to be involved. There’s no question, because we work with internal stakeholders. If the external message doesn’t live up to, inspire or align with the internal experience, we’re wasting a lot of time and energy.

Shel Holtz: Right. It’s particularly important because the narrative gives you the “why” behind everything. You should be able to connect the stories you tell to the narrative. More importantly, as you’re developing those stories, the narrative should be their foundation. They should all be consistent.

What you want to avoid is having your salespeople tell one story while your investor relations team tells another and your CEO delivers a keynote telling a third. These should all be the same story.

Mark Dollins: They absolutely should. You’re raising an important point about the connection between a narrative and a story. Let me give you my framing of it.

I believe the narrative is a never-ending story. It is your North Star. It takes place over time and doesn’t have an ending. It presents the very big picture. It is usually purpose- and vision-driven, and it’s inspirational. It gets to the heart. It gives people a reason not only to understand the “why,” but to ask, “What’s in this for me? Why should I care?” As I said, it really has no end. That’s a narrative in my framing.

A story is a proof point connected to the narrative. It addresses a specific problem, issue or opportunity. You use the traditional elements of storytelling. That may include a hero or a catalyst and an antagonist. You’ve got a conflict, a turning point, a resolution and, importantly, a lesson to be learned. It often highlights the hero’s role, and you can decide whether that’s the company, internal communications, HR or whoever the story is about.

At the end of the day, there’s a hierarchy. It starts at the top with the narrative. Then it gets to what I’m going to call the capital-S Story—the presentation, event or other thing you’re going to communicate. Within that are the proof points: stories with those traditional elements. I often advise clients to think about this connectivity, but it has to start at the top with the narrative.

Shel Holtz: Absolutely. I’ll give you a great example. I work, as you know, for a commercial general contractor, and one of our value propositions is that we’re a client advocate. You won’t find a big commercial contractor that doesn’t say that: “We’re on board with the client. We’re there to help them realize their vision. We’re not going to keep secrets. We’re going to be upfront and fill them in on everything that’s happening. We’re committed to transparency.” Claiming to be a client advocate is not a unique marketing approach.

But if you look at our strategic narrative, you learn from our history that two of our founders were general contractors—and also developers. In other words, the client perspective was represented in the organization’s leadership, rather than being someone you worked with only externally.

When we talk about being a client advocate, we can say it’s in our DNA because two of our founders were clients. We were founded with this philosophy. We’re different. If that finds its way into the interviews the business development team conducts after being shortlisted for a project, it makes a difference. That’s why having the narrative is important, but so is making sure people pay attention to it.

Mark Dollins: I love that. Exactly—it’s got to be real. The other thing about narratives, and I think you’ll agree, Shel, is that they change over time. It doesn’t mean they change fundamentally. The mission and purpose remain the same. But as organizations go through change, they have to evolve the narrative that goes with them.

I’ll give you a quick example. Pittsburgh International Airport launched a $1.8 billion new terminal last November. The narrative the leadership team developed positioned it as more than an airport. They looked at positioning themselves as a leader in aviation and a driver of economic growth for the region. Those words are really important because they stood the test of time.

The airport announced it was going to build the new terminal. Then it entered what I’ll call the narrative’s second chapter: We’ve done all the groundwork, but now we have to start building it and preparing our people. They developed the Smart Plan Forward, a five-year journey with a clear destination: creating a smarter airport. They said they were going to enable, empower and equip their people to innovate and collaborate in the name of change, and that was why they were taking a customer-first approach in everything they did.

It took the original narrative—“We’re building this airport, leading the aviation industry and creating economic growth for the region”—and said, “Now we’re going to do this part of it,” while staying true to the original narrative. The new terminal had a very powerful and successful opening last November. It was fun to watch the airport develop, launch and then update the narrative as part of an overall change in its positioning within the aviation industry.

Shel Holtz: It’s interesting that you bring up change as a catalyst for evolving a narrative. My research indicated that most strategic narratives are actually developed during a time of change, as part of a change communication effort. If we’re going to explain the change, we need to tell the story of where we came from, where we are today and why we’re making this change now. So let’s establish that narrative.

For organizations going through some sort of change—which is everybody—I think it’s a good reason to start.

Mark Dollins: Everybody is going through change. You’re right. The big issue most organizations miss in the narrative—and I didn’t give the whole narrative in this example—is the burning platform. Why the hell are we going through this change? What’s at stake?

There’s a way to engage people in the work they’re doing and the mission, but especially around change, there has to be a reason. What happens to us as a team, institution or organization if we don’t make this change or pivot? What’s at risk? On the other side, what’s the opportunity? How do we position ourselves in a much better, more competitive way?

These are clear things that have to be part of the narrative, and they’re often missing. People love telling stories, but the stories are so independent. They’re proof points of a hierarchical narrative that explains the bigger picture.

Shel Holtz: Absolutely. Something else is that the narrative needs to be packaged, and maybe repackaged, in multiple ways so it’s useful to different people. I think a lot of these are developed with executives in mind, so that when a CEO, CFO or executive vice president communicates with stakeholders, everybody is on the same page and tells the story from the same foundation. But managers need to be able to tell those stories in ways that work for them. If it’s just a polished speech, it isn’t going to work.

Mark Dollins: You’re raising a good point about litmus-testing it—not just with managers, but with the front line, because those employees are going to be your toughest sell. It will pass the sniff test or it won’t. They’ll say, “That’s just BS. It doesn’t match my experience. I don’t believe it. I don’t trust it.”

We’ve worked with clients who did exactly that. They pressure-tested the narrative by asking, “Do you see yourselves in this, and do you believe what we’re saying?” When you go to frontline employees and they say, “That’s it. That makes me want to come to work and reminds me why I go through all the stuff I have to deal with in my job. I’m all in,” you know you’ve got it right.

It does happen when you hit the right tone, words and framing, and frontline employees can say, “I see myself.” You’ve got a winner, as long as you use it in the right ways. But you’re right: It has to pass the sniff test not just for senior executives, but for everybody.

Shel Holtz: It has to pass the sniff test, for sure, but it also has to be adaptable so everybody can use it. Right now, for example, we have employee advocacy programs. We’re asking employees to go out and tout the company to their communities. If they’re telling a different story from the one the talent acquisition team is telling, people can detect that.

Mark Dollins: Right. There’s an opportunity for internal communicators not just to develop the narrative, but to help the organization use it. Usually, when I’m working with clients, step two is getting people in a room and talking about what the narrative is, why we use it and how they can use it in their ongoing communications.

Let’s work through some examples. Let’s look at a presentation you’re making or an email you’re writing. There’s language we want you to use that is consistent with the narrative and helps you position the issue of the day, the priority of the quarter or the strategy of the year within it.

Otherwise, the narrative is left as words on a page: “How nice. I get it. I’m like everybody else.” But you’re not telling people how to engage with and use it. It’s a critical opportunity for employee communicators to say, “Hold on. It’s not just about developing and releasing the story. It’s about making sure people know how to use it.”

Shel Holtz: Exactly, whether you’re a senior executive or a frontline individual contributor. That’s an important point: How does an individual contributor use this, beyond making sure they’re not out of step when posting on a social network?

I think one answer is that they’re going to understand where they fit in the big picture and in the context of where everybody else fits. A good strategic narrative should let you see where you are in the story. If you can see yourself, you can probably also see the vendors you work with, the suppliers, customers and other stakeholders. It should make it easier to relate to their experiences with the organization, too.

Mark Dollins: When I was at DuPont, we were in the process of doing this megamerger with Dow—a $130 billion deal. The plan was to bring together two major companies in the industry, divide the assets and then launch three brand-new companies. It took two years, so we had to develop a really clear master narrative about what we called DowDuPont: Why are we bringing these two together?

Very quickly, to your point, Shel, we had to launch narratives for each of the new spinoff companies so employees could see themselves in what was then DowDuPont, but more importantly, in one or more of the spin companies. People in corporate groups, especially, didn’t know which company they would be spun off to because everybody was working for everybody while the companies were being brought together.

The real point is that you have to be able to see yourself in the narrative. That was one of the questions we asked as an ongoing metric: “Do you see yourself in one of the future companies?” It was a way of assessing engagement during a period of change and transition with a lot of unknowns: “I don’t know which of the three companies I’ll be assigned to, and I have to keep working, but I’m excited about all three—or at least one or two of them—because the vision for why we’re doing this, where it can go and the opportunities for employees are pretty darn exciting.”

It was a critical element and something we measured. It contributed to an important ongoing metric for assessing how engaged our employees were and how communication was helping us.

Shel Holtz: Right. The fact that a strategic narrative encompasses both internal and external stakeholders means that, as an internal communicator, you may think there isn’t one when somebody in marketing has actually created one. It may not be publicly available. It may just be something they’re using.

Mark Dollins: Or somebody has created one without you—or without the company—which happens. That’s what a narrative is. Somebody takes the facts and applies their own interpretation to them. If no one in your company is doing it, trust me, someone else is. It may not be to your liking.

Shel Holtz: Before you set about creating one, ask around to see whether one already exists. I happen to believe it should be right there on the intranet, or whatever platform you’re using to make things accessible to employees. They should have access to it. I think it should be addressed in new-hire orientation so everybody knows what it is, where to find it and when to reference it.

Mark Dollins: This might sound obvious, but communicators also need to be trained to use that narrative. It’s shocking how often communicators don’t know their organization has one or don’t know how to use it because nobody has ever talked to them about it.

That’s another opportunity for internal communication professionals: What does our own function know about how to use this narrative continuously in ways that advance the organization’s cause? There are lots of opportunities beyond the narrative itself for communicators to help their colleagues and the organization use the story.

Shel Holtz: It’s also important to make sure you’re treating this as something strategic, not tactical. Some of what I’ve seen positioned as strategic narratives is really just guidance for message consistency—and that’s not this, right?

Mark Dollins: No, you’re absolutely right. This is foundational. I look at it as the base of any communication strategy you’re building: What is your story, and how does everything you do after that connect to it? Without it, you have an unstable base from which to communicate. Nobody wants that.

Shel Holtz: We’d love to hear about listeners’ experiences with strategic narratives. If you have one, we’d love to see what you’ve got.

I was fascinated when, before getting into the nitty-gritty of our strategic narrative, I spent some time talking with the person on Workday’s communications team who was responsible for developing its strategic narrative. The CEO unveiled it at the company’s big show—its version of Salesforce’s Dreamforce. This was the European edition. I think he said there were 8,000 or 10,000 people in the audience when the CEO said, “This is our strategic narrative.” There was some real investment by the organization.

Mark Dollins: How did it go over? I’m fascinated by that because I always think launching it to everybody is a critical decision. What happened beforehand? Was there alignment with senior leadership? I’m always interested in knowing what took place before a big event with a cast of thousands at which you’re unveiling your story—and, importantly, what happened immediately afterward. I’d love to hear more.

Shel Holtz: I don’t recall what happened immediately afterward, but senior leadership was involved in developing the narrative, so he worked closely with them. He also reached out to rank-and-file employees to make sure it worked.

It’s almost like a vision or mission statement. If you create it in a vacuum, in the rarefied air of senior leadership, and then tell everybody else, “This is our mission,” only to have employees look at it and say, “No, it’s not,” that’s a problem.

Mark Dollins: Right: “What company is that? It’s not mine.”

It sounds like he did a good job of pressure-testing it. I’d love to know more about how it was rolled out beyond that. The hardest work is done beforehand. It’s about getting alignment and making sure you’ve got something that feels right to the organization. Then the question becomes: How do you sustain this effort and make sure people know how to use it?

Think about recruiting. How do you deliver that message to potential employees? How do you onboard them and make sure it’s part of the process? What happens afterward? How is the narrative used in town halls with your CEO or senior executive team? How do you keep it alive and sustain it? Otherwise, like values, it becomes words on a page. Until it’s applied—and applied regularly—the meaning begins to fade.

Shel Holtz: Absolutely. It’s a matter of introducing it well so everybody understands what it’s for and how to use it, and then maintaining it through an ongoing communication cadence.

Mark Dollins: Right. It’s not just an event. Events are fine for introducing it, but the hard work really comes afterward.

Shel Holtz: Absolutely. Thanks, Mark. I look forward to talking with you next time.

Mark Dollins: Thank you, Shel. Always a pleasure.

The post OTSP #7: No Story? No Strategy. appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Fandoms are not synonymous with audiences or communities. The difference: Fans’ identities are tied up with the team, artist, product, or other object of their passion. It’s not surprising that marketers are chasing fandoms, in hopes of turning their brands into something people are genuinely excited about. But not everything is a potential flashpoint for a fan base.

In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel explore what distinguishes fans from members of other audiences or communities, how brands might leverage them, the wisdom of trying to spin up a fan base, and why fandoms might rebel against attempts to use them for marketing purposes.

Links from this episode:

• WTF are fandoms, and why are marketers chasing them?
• Consumers as Brand Fans: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda Using the TCCM Framework
• Social media and fandom
• How community is redefining Media & Creative in 2025

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, September 28.

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. 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:

Neville Hobson: Hi, everyone, and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is Episode 528. I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz.

There is a new word making the rounds in marketing circles these days, and that word is “fandom.” Obviously, fandom isn’t anything new. Beatles fans constitute a fandom. Star Trek fans are a big fandom. Sports teams have had fandoms for as long as sports have been around.

What’s new is the idea that fandom should be a marketing strategy. Marketers are paying attention because a fandom represents something considerably more valuable than an audience. An audience is passively watching you.

That notion led Jay Rosen to write a 2006 post titled “The People Formerly Known as the Audience,” describing the shift away from a one-way mass-media model to a networked model in which people who once passively consumed information can now publish, respond, organize, remix, and distribute it themselves. That’s not always necessarily a good thing, but it is what it is.

A community gathers around a shared interest, but a fandom goes even further. Fans incorporate that interest into their identities. They create things, develop rituals and inside jokes, recruit other people, recommend things to one another, and sometimes defend the object of their fandom with remarkable enthusiasm.

One definition I particularly like comes from an article in Digiday: Fandom is where attention turns into identity.

You can probably understand why marketers find that appealing. Advertising can buy attention. It’s much harder to buy identity. It’s harder to buy belonging, advocacy, or voluntary engagement.

There is some evidence that fandom deserves to be treated as something distinctive. A systematic review published last year examined 38 marketing studies involving brand fans and concluded that fandom has moved from the margins of consumer culture into the mainstream. Brand fans really do behave differently from people who merely buy a product regularly.

There is another reason fandom has suddenly become attractive: The media environment has fragmented spectacularly. People aren’t gathered around the same handful of television networks, newspapers, magazines, and radio stations anymore. They’re scattered among TikTok creators, YouTube channels, Reddit communities, Discord servers, gaming platforms, streaming services, group chats, podcasts, and sports communities. We could keep listing niches all day long.

Instead of asking, “How do we reach women ages 25 to 44?” marketers can potentially find a group of people who are already intensely interested in something relevant to the organization. That changes the communication challenge.

You don’t approach a fandom as an audience waiting to receive your message. You’re entering somebody else’s existing culture. That culture already has leaders, vocabulary, expectations, and history. It has ideas about who belongs and who doesn’t. Increasingly, creators are among the people who have earned credibility within those cultures.

The strategic question isn’t, “Which influencer can deliver the biggest reach?” It becomes, “Who actually has standing with these people, and do we have a legitimate reason to be here?”

That last question is one I think organizations should spend much more time considering, because fandom is in danger of becoming a bandwagon. Whenever marketers discover something people genuinely care about, there’s a temptation to turn it into a technique. Community, authenticity, purpose, and engagement have all become marketing techniques.

Once every agency presentation starts promising to “activate fandom,” that’s probably the time your Spidey sense should start tingling.

You can’t manufacture a fandom just by announcing that you have one. Nor is every organization capable of inspiring fandom. Nobody necessarily wants to build part of their identity around an electric utility, payroll software, an insurance company, or the manufacturer of the toner cartridge in the office printer. How many true HP fans are there, really?

That doesn’t mean those organizations can’t have excellent customer communities. They can create useful resources, cultivate advocates, involve customers in product development, and provide terrific experiences. There are plenty of organizations that do these things well.

But calling every highly engaged customer a fan doesn’t make fandom a meaningful strategic concept. It just gives customer engagement a trendy new name.

There is another danger: Brands may identify an existing fandom and assume its passion is available for rent when it probably isn’t.

Fans can tell when a company has wandered into their community because somebody in marketing spotted a cultural trend. Borrowing the language, memes, or symbols of a fandom without understanding them can make a brand look less relevant, not more. The more intensely people identify with the community, the more protective they may be of it.

After the animated television series Rick and Morty made McDonald’s discontinued Szechuan sauce into a fan obsession, McDonald’s embraced the phenomenon and announced a one-day return. But stores received extremely limited supplies. Fans lined up for hours, and some traveled considerable distances, only to find that no sauce was available. The resulting anger produced protests and the hashtag #GiveUsTheSauce, and McDonald’s ultimately had to apologize.

The mistake wasn’t offensive cultural appropriation. It was a company correctly spotting a fandom but badly misunderstanding its intensity—and failing to deliver the experience it had encouraged.

I like one test suggested by the material I was reading: If the brand disappeared from the activation, would fans still say that what happened made their community better?

That’s a pretty demanding standard. Your contribution might be access, useful information, an experience people couldn’t otherwise have, a genuine role for fans in developing something, or help that enables creators to do better work. Merely inserting your logo probably doesn’t qualify.

It also means fandom isn’t likely to be an especially good short-term campaign strategy. These relationships require cultural fluency and sustained participation. If the budget disappears after the quarter ends or management expects an immediate conversion metric, conventional marketing may be the more sensible choice.

There are plenty of examples of companies getting this right. LEGO supports its AFOLs—Adult Fans of LEGO—and an existing culture rather than pretending it invented that culture.

Harley-Davidson didn’t merely accumulate loyal customers. It helped riders organize around a shared identity by creating the Harley Owners Group, or H.O.G. It provides chapters, rallies, riding challenges, a magazine, events, and other opportunities for motorcycle owners to interact with one another.

Even the pumpkin spice latte gave Starbucks an opportunity to turn a seasonal beverage into a fall ritual. The company created a private Leaf Rakers Society Facebook group for enthusiasts, which grew to more than 26,000 members. Starbucks didn’t invent the pumpkin spice latte ritual or the anticipation surrounding it, but it certainly learned how to play along.

What should communicators do with all of this?

First, don’t begin by asking, “How can we build a fandom?” Start by listening. Find out whether communities already exist around your organization, its products, the problems it solves, or interests adjacent to it.

Second, distinguish an audience from a community and a community from a fandom. Don’t inflate ordinary engagement numbers into evidence that people have incorporated your brand into their identities.

Third, if you enter an existing fandom, learn its culture before trying to influence it. Identify the people who have earned trust there, including creators, and involve them rather than treating them as distribution channels.

Fourth, look for ways to enable participation rather than merely generate impressions. Give people opportunities to contribute, create, influence, and connect with one another.

Finally, measure whether the relationship persists when the campaign stops. Are people coming back? Are they creating things voluntarily? Are they recommending you? Are they talking to one another rather than just talking to you?

Ultimately, fandom isn’t something a communication department creates. It’s something people decide they belong to.

If organizations remember that distinction, fandom could be a genuinely useful way to think about relationships. If they don’t, it may become the next marketing buzzword we spend a couple of years enthusiastically putting into PowerPoint decks before moving on to the next one.

Neville Hobson: You addressed this a bit, but what’s the difference between a community and a fandom? When does one become the other?

Shel Holtz: The key differentiator is that the members of a fandom incorporate the object of their interest into their identities.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me—and probably half the listeners to this show—that I’m a Deadhead. I love the Grateful Dead. Grateful Dead merchandising makes a ton of money, and I buy some of that stuff.

I recently received a scale model of the Wall of Sound, the massive audio system the band toured with in 1974. It’s 3D-printed and even has a little Wi-Fi speaker built into it. It was a birthday present, and I just love looking at it. It’s part of that fandom.

I’ve read an entire book about the Wall of Sound. I’ve probably read 20 books about the Dead. I was listening to a 1985 concert on my drive to the office this morning. I am a fan. That is part of my identity.

The Grateful Dead isn’t just a band I like and whose music I sometimes listen to. I may be part of a community of people who like Elvis Costello, for example, but that doesn’t make me part of an Elvis Costello fandom. I don’t incorporate that particular artist into my identity.

That’s the real differentiator.

Neville Hobson: That’s a good explanation. Identity is the key, based on what I’ve been reading as well.

Are marketers suddenly so interested in fandom because traditional ways of reaching audiences are becoming less effective?

Shel Holtz: That’s my take. Marketers are desperate because some traditional means of reaching and engaging people have vanished, some have transformed, and most have fragmented. They’re looking for magic bullets.

You read one or two articles about how an organization leveraged a fandom, and suddenly the response is, “We’ll turn our customers into a fandom, too.”

But I just can’t see someone becoming a fan of their electric utility. You’re a customer. You may even be an enthusiastic customer for some reason, but I’m never going to incorporate the PG&E brand—Pacific Gas and Electric—into my identity. Ever.

Neville Hobson: Here’s a slightly rhetorical question prompted by your comments about Deadhead fandom: Can a brand genuinely become part of a fandom, or does the relationship become transactional the moment the brand begins mapping and monetizing it?

Shel Holtz: I think both things can be true.

A brand can become part of a fandom if it approaches the opportunity in the right way. First, there has to be a genuine connection to that fandom.

I’m trying to think of something that would connect naturally to the Grateful Dead fandom. It might be a guitar brand or one of the nonprofits affiliated with the band, such as Rock the Vote.

If you listen to the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, the band’s podcast, it has done a deal with Dogfish Head Brewery on the East Coast. The brewery makes Grateful Dead-branded beer. They have thought it through and developed the connection and relationship so they can reach the fandom through the podcast.

That may lead people to flock to the beer and talk about it. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll become fans of the beer. They may become consumers of it, perhaps even regular consumers, but the company is leveraging an existing fandom.

I think there are also opportunities for brands to build fandoms. Some happen naturally. Consider a car brand. There are Mustang fans. They love their Mustangs. They attend Mustang rallies and car shows.

That reminds me of the brouhaha we discussed many years ago, when Ford sent a cease-and-desist letter to a fan who ran a discussion board. It wasn’t about the Mustang, though, was it? It involved a pickup truck.

Neville Hobson: I think it was the pickup—the Ranger.

Shel Holtz: The Ford Ranger, that’s right. The Ranger Station was the name of the site.

Ford sent the cease-and-desist letter, and the site’s owner posted a note saying, “I have to shut this down. I received a cease-and-desist letter from Ford.” The fandom erupted.

This was an organization that had a fandom but didn’t recognize its power. Ford could have been leveraging it to expand the customer base.

There are opportunities to identify existing fandoms that may revolve around your products, services, or company. More often, though, it will be something adjacent to your business that you can tap into.

You need to understand the culture. You need to know who drives it and understand its rituals and jargon. You can’t parachute in and announce, “Here we are. We’re going to tap into this fandom. Aren’t you excited that we’re here?” People will simply say, “No, we’re not. Go away.”

It’s definitely worth considering, but it isn’t a magic bullet. For most organizations, I think it’s ridiculous to assume they can develop a fandom around what they do.

Neville Hobson: I agree. We’re touching the edges of a discussion about a shift from authenticity—which is unquestionably overused in marketing—toward reciprocity.

Does a brand have to earn the right to participate in a fandom? If so, what does it have to give back?

There’s an interesting communication principle underneath that question: Don’t begin by asking what value the community can create for the organization. Ask what value the organization can create for the community. What do you say to that?

Shel Holtz: Absolutely. That’s how you build credibility and relevance within a fandom, unless it’s a built-in fandom involving something like the Ford Ranger or Ford Mustang.

If you have identified an existing fandom that isn’t centered on one of your products but has a genuine connection or relevance to your business, it may be worth investing the time, effort, and money required to ingratiate yourself with that community.

How do you do that? You might make access to the object of the fandom a little easier or give fans access to the right merchandise. Ask what you can do to make their fandom more meaningful or more fun.

Then you may be accepted, and fans may consider doing something for you—which is obviously one reason you became involved in the first place.

You have to be strategic rather than simply jumping in and saying, “We connected the dots. Look at our connection to this fandom. Don’t you want to help us sell our product?”

I fear that’s what will happen with a lot of marketers who read about this and think, “There’s a solution for me. I’m going to jump all over fandoms.”

Neville Hobson: I struggle a bit to see the precise gap between community and fandom. When does one become the other?

I understand the examples you’ve given: the Grateful Dead fandom and The Ranger Station, for instance.

Shel Holtz: And the Adult Fans of LEGO.

Neville Hobson: That one, too. But do these groups actually refer to themselves as fandoms? What do their members call themselves?

Shel Holtz: Well, they call themselves Adult Fans of LEGO. The “F” stands for “fans,” so they do.

Would members of Harley riders’ groups—the H.O.G.s—call themselves a fandom? Probably not. They would probably call themselves H.O.G.s, but they’re definitely a fandom.

I remember working for a company in the early 1990s whose vice president of compensation and benefits was a Harley owner. He rode with his club every weekend and wore a Harley jacket to the office—and this was a pharmaceutical company in the ’90s.

He was a fan. There’s no question about it. He wasn’t merely a member of a Harley community. Being a Harley rider was part of his identity.

Neville Hobson: This is rich territory for marketers to get wrong. Forgive me for beginning with the cynical perspective, because I can also see the opportunities available to organizations that do it well.

But are we trying to manufacture something that doesn’t need to be there? I don’t particularly like the word “fandom,” although I’m not part of a fandom myself. I belong to many communities, but I’m now wondering about the difference for me personally. Do I see any of those groups as part of my identity? Not really. I probably haven’t encountered one that produces that “wow” for me.

Is fandom a manufactured opportunity for marketers, or is it genuinely something worth investing in?

Shel Holtz: Again, I think both things can be true.

We’re going to see a lot of marketers try to manufacture fandom because it’s a buzzword making the rounds. But some organizations will have a lightbulb moment and realize, “We have a fandom. We’re just not leveraging it.”

Imagine if Harley-Davidson had never organized local chapters or created clothing people could wear to express their fandom. What if the company had said, “We sell motorcycles. If our customers want to form clubs and ride around, that’s fine—but they had better not make clothing with our logo because that’s a copyright violation”?

Harley-Davidson probably wouldn’t have the identity it has today if it hadn’t recognized that it had a fan base it could support and leverage.

The same is true of Adult Fans of LEGO. The company produces kits that clearly aren’t intended for little kids snapping together a few bricks. Some contain thousands of pieces and cost hundreds of dollars. Those are definitely products for adult fans.

As long as you listen to fans and nurture the relationship, there can be value in it. Fans have a relationship with the object of their passion. Organizations need to examine that relationship and ask: Are we strengthening it? Are we reinforcing it? Or are we merely trying to exploit it?

Neville Hobson: Exactly.

Shel Holtz: That’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #528: Why Marketers Are Suddenly Obsessed with Fandom appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Last month, a panel of IABC Fellows shared their observations on the results of a recent AI-focused survey conducted by the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (Global Alliance). This month, a fresh panel (with Adrian Cropley returning) will pick up the conversation where the August panel left off, exploring various aspects of the role communication professionals will play as AI continues to evolve, along with the challenges and opportunities it presents to organizations of all kinds.

Joining Adrian and moderator Shel Holtz are Mary Hills, Robin McCasland, and Cyrus Mavalwala. Join us for the broadcast and participate by asking questions and sharing observations using YouTube live chat. If you’re not able to participate in real time, catch the video replay on YouTube or the audio podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Catch Part 1 of the discussion.

About the Panel

Adrian Cropley is the founder and director of the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence, a global training and development organization. For over thirty years, Adrian has worked with clients worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, on major change communication initiatives, internal communication reviews and strategies, professional development programs, and executive leadership and coaching. He is a non-executive director on several boards and advises some of the top CEOs and executives globally.

Adrian is a past global chair of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), where he implemented the IABC Career Road Map, kick-started a global ISO certification for the profession, and developed the IABC Academy. Adrian pioneered the Melcrum Internal Communication Black Belt program in Asia Pacific and is a sought-after facilitator, speaker, and thought leader. He has been a keynote speaker and workshop leader on strategic and change communication at international conferences in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore, China, India, Hong Kong, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia. He has received numerous awards, including IABC Gold Quill Awards for communication excellence, and his Agency received Boutique Agency of the Year 6 years running.

Adrian is the Chair of the Industry Advisory Committee for the RMIT School of Media and Communication and a Fellow of the IABC and RSA. In 2017, he was awarded the Medal of Order of Australia for his contribution to the field of communication.

Mary Hills, ABC, IABC Fellow, Six Sigma, FCSCE serves as MBA Faculty in Benedictine University’s Goodwin College of Business, teaching brand and marketing management. Her work in marketing, finance and organizational structure and management naturally brings an interdisciplinary perspective to her students.

Mary’s professional career includes work at large, publicly traded corporations in the financial sector and at closely held, middle-market companies.  Her work includes time at Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Whiteco Advertising, NiSource, Northern Trust, Unilever, and Zebra Technologies. As a member of strategic management teams, her work includes research, risk analysis, and strategic planning for product launches, market expansion, and change and crisis management

Mary’s AI work began in 2012 supporting a start-up’s AI product development at Purdue Technology Center and Research Park of NWI. Most recently, she completed AI Usage and Guidelines in Marketing Research for MBA students in her brand and marketing class.

Robin McCasland, IABC Fellow, SCMP, is Senior Director of Corporate Communications for Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). She leads her department’s CommTech initiative, using AI and emerging technologies to deliver productivity gains and build differentiated communication capabilities that shape business decisions and outcomes. Robin also leads the internal communications team and the employee listening program, demonstrating to senior leaders how employee and executive communication add value to the business’s bottom line. Previously, Robin excelled in leadership roles in communication for Texas Instruments, Dell, Tenet Healthcare, and Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

Robin is a past IABC chairman and has served in numerous association leadership roles for more than 30 years. She was honored in 2023 and 2021 by Ragan Communications/PR Daily as one of the Top Women Leaders in Communication. She’s also received IABC Southern Region and IABC Dallas Communicator of the Year honors. Robin is a frequent presenter at communication and HR conferences. She is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and a Leadership Texas alumnus. Robin resides in Dallas.

Cyrus Mavalwala, ABC, MC, IABC Fellow, is a sought-after communication strategist who leads a team of trusted advisors that executives rely on to capture, own, and sustain mindshare with the people that matter most.

After senior roles at global PR agencies, Cyrus founded Advantis Communications in 2002. Advantis’ proprietary frameworks operationalize AI, elevate social media, and integrate video to advance thought leadership and earn relevance, influence, and trust. These frameworks have been cited in news media, industry, and academia. Cyrus helps communication teams apply AI responsibly to improve workflows, increase effectiveness, and amplify impact.

Through Act Like an Agency™, Cyrus leads ALA faculty to elevate communication teams from tacticians to trusted advisors. An operating system for the modern communication function, Act Like an Agency enables in-house teams to operate with the confidence, discipline, and influence of strategic business partners.

A co-creator of the Digital Strategy and Communications Management Certificate at the University of Toronto, Cyrus brings his strategic perspective and practical frameworks to classrooms, boardrooms, and stages across North America.

Cyrus brings deep governance experience through his service with IABC at the local, regional, and international levels. He has judged industry awards and received more than 30 honors for communication excellence across local, national, and international programs.

The post September Circle of Fellows Continues the AI Discussion appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Some advisers are telling agency owners they don’t need to know AI all that well themselves. They suggest owners go deep on AI for a month or three, then pass the day-to-day to the team and move on with life. In this episode, Chip and Gini explain why that’s backwards, and how owners who step back from AI are making a mistake.

Chip’s argument is that AI doesn’t fit the usual delegation model because it’s moving too fast and touching too much of the business to hand off after just a few months of study. Gini agrees, noting that advice which made sense six months ago is often stale today. Both connect this to credibility with the team: Chip compares the situation to a non-technical manager overseeing developers, who then gets disrespected because they don’t speak the language. Gini says her own coaching works because she’s in the tools constantly enough to give specific workable advice.

They also describe pushing AI into something closer to a personal operating system than a work tool, from Chip wanting an assistant that catches him contradicting his own past positions, to Gini’s agent that calls her out when she takes on work she said she’d delegate, telling her flatly it’s not the best use of her time. The episode closes with the advice that staying curious personally is what keeps owners sharp enough to lead a team through a tool that keeps rewriting its own rules. [read the transcript]

The post ALP 314: Agency owners need to get their hands dirty with AI appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Episode 132 of IABC’s Circle of Fellows examines what the newly released Reimagining Tomorrow 2026 report from the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management means for the profession. The report surveyed 536 communication professionals across six global regions and found a profession that has embraced AI in practice but not yet claimed AI governance in leadership: 95.9% of organizations now permit AI, yet only 8.6% have communication professionals leading the formal governance structure. One in four organizations discloses AI use to no one at all.

Joining moderator Shel Holtz are Bonnie Caver and Adrian Cropley OAM, both Global Alliance board directors and the research partners behind the survey, as well as Mike Klein. (Theomary Karamanis was scheduled to be a panelist but laryngitis prevented her from participating.)  Together, they dig into what the data means for the profession, what it will take to move from adoption to accountability, and what it takes to be a leader in the AI era.

Links from this episode:

• The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management
• Reimagining Tomorrow 2026: The Report

About the panel

Bonnie Caver, SCMP, is the Founder and CEO of Reputation Lighthouse, a global change management and reputation consultancy with offices in Denver, Colorado, and Austin, Texas. The firm, which is 20 years old, focuses on leading companies to create, accelerate, and protect their corporate value. She has achieved the highest professional certification for a communication professional, the Strategic Communication Management Professional (SCMP), a distinction at the ANSI/ISO level. She is also a certified strategic change management professional (Kellogg School of Management), a certified crisis manager (Institute of Crisis Management). She holds an advanced certification for reputation through the Reputation Institute (now the RepTrak Company). She is a past chair of the global executive board for the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). She currently serves on the board of directors for the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, where she leads the North American Regional Council and is the New Technology Responsibility/AI Director. Caver is the Vice Chair for the Global Communication Certification Council (GCCC) and leads the IABC Change Management Special Interest Group, which has more than 1,300 members. In addition, she is heavily involved in the global conversation around ethical and responsible AI implementation and led the Global Alliance’s efforts in creating Ethical and Responsible AI Guidelines for the global profession.

Adrian Cropley is the founder and director of the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence, a global training and development organization. For over thirty years, Adrian has worked with clients worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, on major change communication initiatives, internal communication reviews and strategies, professional development programs, and executive leadership and coaching. He is a non-executive director on several boards and advises some of the top CEOs and executives globally.

Adrian is a past global chair of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), where he implemented the IABC Career Road Map, kick-started a global ISO certification for the profession, and developed the IABC Academy. Adrian pioneered the Melcrum Internal Communication Black Belt program in Asia Pacific and is a sought-after facilitator, speaker, and thought leader. He has been a keynote speaker and workshop leader on strategic and change communication at international conferences in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore, China, India, Hong Kong, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia. He has received numerous awards, including IABC Gold Quill Awards for communication excellence, and his Agency received Boutique Agency of the Year 6 years running.

Adrian is the Chair of the Industry Advisory Committee for the RMIT School of Media and Communication and a Fellow of the IABC and RSA. In 2017, he was awarded the Medal of Order of Australia for his contribution to the field of communication.

Mike Klein is the Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Magazine, Founder of #WeLeadComms, and a communication consultant specializing in internal and social communication based in Reykjavik, Iceland. A former US political consultant, Mike shifted direction toward internal communication while pursuing his MBA at London Business School.  Since then, Mike has been one of the leading voices for empowering communication professionals, and advocating a focus on internal influence and social connection as drivers of communication, integration and performance. His 2011 book, From Lincoln to LinkedIn remains relevant as organizations recognize that personal credibility and connection are critical to communication success in a world where content volumes are increasing and instability flourishes. Raised in Chicago, Mike has lived and worked in seven different countries, and is also a Fellow of the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence and the Institute of Internal Communication.

Raw transcript

 And we are live. Hi everybody, and welcome to Circle of Fellows. Uh, I am Shel Holtz. I am an IABC fellow. I am here with, uh, three of my IABC fellow colleagues, and we are going to talk about, uh, the leadership moment in artificial intelligence for the communication community. This is the first of two episodes where we will focus on this topic. This is based on the results of a survey that was conducted by the Global Alliance. Uh, both Bonnie and Adrian are heavily involved with the Global Alliance, and I’ll let them tell you how, uh, as we go around the horn and do introductions. Uh, before we get into that, though, I do wanna let everyone know that we hope that you will participate in this conversation by sharing your questions, your observations, your thoughts in the YouTube chat. I can see them right here in this sidebar panel, and we’ll share them on the screen, and we can bring you into the conversation that way. Uh, so let’s do introductions. We’ll go around, uh, clockwise in the order I see you. Uh, and that means we’re starting with you, Adrian. Thanks for that, Shel. It’s always good to be on the Circle of Fellows. Um, I’m Adrian Cropley. I am the co-founder of the Center for Strategic Communication based in Melbourne, Australia, past IABC chair, and now, uh, director on the board of the Global Alliance, and fortunately, um, a partner in the research. Bonnie has- Bonnie and I have done this now for the last couple of years with the, the Global Alliance, so it’s great to be on here sharing a little bit around that, uh, what it’s telling us about that leadership moment. Terrific. Glad to have you with us, Adrian. Bonnie, you’re up. Hi, I’m Bonnie Caver, and I am in Austin, Texas, and I run a company called Reputation Lighthouse, and that’s my day job. Um, of course, I’ve been involved with IABC a long time, and am the past chair of the Global Communication Certification Council and sat on the board of the Global Alliance where, for the last, uh, three years, I’ve been focused on responsible AI and the way our global profession looks at responsible AI. So anytime we have an opportunity to talk about that, uh, it’s very helpful to me as we’re moving forward to Abuja and the World PR Forum, and we’ll be updating the responsible AI guidelines for our profession. Excellent. Looking forward to seeing the outcome of that initiative. And Mike? Hello there. I’m Mike Klein, and I am an IABC fellow. I am also editor-in-chief of Strategic Magazine, which publishes daily content for communication leaders worldwide. And also, I have my own consultancy focused on internal communication and organizational strategy. And my AI bent is less about responsible use of AI and more about strategic use of AI and our strategic positioning within the AI ecosystem, um, with an, with a particular focus on the second-order effects of AI use in organization worldwide Great. And some of you watching this may have seen the promotional materials that went out announcing that this was going to be happening and saw that Thea-Mari Karamalis was also going to be on the panel. Uh, we miss her. Uh, we were looking forward to seeing her here as well, but she let us know the day before yesterday that she has come down with laryngitis. So I, I suppose she could still be here, she just couldn’t say anything. Uh, so she’s opted to take it easy, and we hope that she recovers well and look forward to having her on a future, uh, installment of Circle of Fellows. So let’s jump into this. We have talked about artificial intelligence on Circle of Fellows a couple of times. It’s hard to avoid the topic. If you spend any time on LinkedIn at all, I swear half of the posts there have something to do with AI. I have started following somebody who is talking just about AI in the construction industry on, uh, on LinkedIn. Uh, she posts some really good stuff. She’s not selling anything other than her own consulting services, so, uh, she’s talking about what different companies are doing, and it’s, it’s, it’s really fascinating out there. Um, I personally subscribe to, I think, 12, uh, different AI newsletters, uh, that come by email. And I use AI to summarize all of those because I can’t possibly read 12 daily email newsletters. Uh, but we wanna sort of look at this from more of a, a 40,000 foot, uh, perspective as opposed to the nitty-gritty applications of AI in communication. What does this mean for communication leadership within organizations, uh, and within the communication profession? So, uh, the survey that was conducted by the Global Alliance, uh, I believe, if I remember correctly, I don’t have it in, up in front of me, but I think it was 600 responses or so. Um, so it was a, a, a pretty good representation, a global representation of, of how this is being used. The report, uh, does slice and dice the data so you can see how it all shakes out regionally, for example. But there were some interesting results. Let me just share a couple of, uh, the data points, uh, here. Um, 95.9% of organizations now permit their employees to use AI. That’s up from 91% last year, so incremental growth. Most organizations are letting everybody use it, but only 8.6 of organizations have communication professionals leading formal AI governance. And one in four organizations, uh, specifically 25.4%, um, discloses AI use to no one. There is no disclosure at all. Uh, disclosure is one of my favorite topics because I don’t think it’s an either/or question. But, uh, that’s Interesting data that’s out there. I’ve seen other data from other surveys. We just did one where I work, uh, so I’ve, I’ve, I’ve got that perspective floating around in my head since I joined this call on the heels of a call with my company’s AI committee. So what does that data tell us? Let’s, let’s look at this from, from a governance perspective. What’s missing, uh, when only 8%, 8.6% of us are, are, are leading governance? Uh I, I mean, I presume that somebody’s leading governance in, in these organizations. So what do companies lose when, when communication isn’t engaged? It’s, you know, it’s a really interesting one. I, I might jump in and, and talk about this one first, ’cause when we looked at the, the survey, it, it, it was kind of a worrying statistic because this, this year’s survey, it’s now the second year that this particular survey has been running. So Bonnie and I have, have kind of led that with the Global Alliance. It means now we’ve got that comparative data. Governance really hasn’t shifted in the, the last two years. We can ask a question around what involvement should communication professionals have in governance, should we be leading it, is probably the, the key question there. But if we’re not leading it, are we, are we part of that? Um, so for instance, one of the, the statistics in the, the survey was 57.3% of us are involved in shaping responsible AI guidelines. Um, but only 13.9 are actually leading in that work as well. So it- it’s part of that government s- governance frame, but it’s quite low in the numbers. Now, I guess there’s, there really is that debate around where we should be positioned as communication professionals and there’s, there’s lots of people that say we really shouldn’t be leading it, it should be dedicated AI, um, executives, um, that have a department that looks at, at AI, and I’m, I’m all for that. I think that’s great. But at the absolute minimum, we have a big role in being part of that conversation, and certainly leading it in areas that support communication within the organization. Um, and I might come back to this later, but the, the latest changes within Claude, for instance, is a reaction to… And, and, and what those changes are is, is digital watermarks saying how much of, uh, AI is, is being used, and it automatically discloses for, for us. We’ll talk about disclosure a little bit later, but it’s worrying that decisions are being made without the understanding of the context of communication and, and our input because it’s not black and white, we used AI or we didn’t, it’s to what degree and how much is the human in the loop. And, and, and, and I’m sure Bonnie will talk a lot more about, um, about the, uh, uh, responsible AI and, and the importance of, of that role. But I think we’re in, we’re in a, a place where we actually need to be starting to be part of that conversation, if not leading in that con- that, that area of governance, ’cause it’s a really good role to be given AI is used in content development right across organizations. I was just gonna add in here that, that really and truly where this governance is coming and where it, it impacts us is in that connection to reputation. And because of the way that we are working as organizations, how we’re governing, uh, it, it increases our risk, uh, exposure. Every time we are hiding something is, or it appears that we’re hiding something because we’re not transparent, we’re not dis- dis- disclosing, uh, when people have questions about how we’re using AI, when there’s any sort of doubt, uh, around, of course, we’ve got all of the AI slop. When we don’t have governance, um, it goes to the patterns that are looked at, um, for our organization and how w- it’s, it’s impacting our reputation. And if you look across the board, um, you know, I, I’ve been in the reputation business for a long time. My, my company is, is, uh, 20-plus years old, and we’ve been talking about reputation for a long time. But it’s interesting to me how many comms departments and how many jobs now say reputation is important, how many, um, organizations are talking about it, how many agencies are talking about it. It’s like reputation is the new buzzword, and part of it is because of this lack of AI governance and the ethical challenges and how we’re not communicating that, and we’re not communicating appropriately, uh, and transparently to our stakeholders, and it’s causing, um, reputational risk Mike, any thoughts? I think the, I think the challenge of, of looking at, uh, uh, I think the challenge of looking at AI, you know, uh, this from a reputational lens is that reputation is hugely important. A huge chunk of a company’s value is based, you know, particularly most of a, a company’s intangible value is based on its reputation. But reputation is a fundamentally defensive discipline, and governance is a fundamentally defensive discipline. And the opportunity that communication leaders have isn’t just simply about leading the defense, it’s also about guiding the offense. It’s about finding the opportunities and seeing beyond the, the, the, the current set of risks. Um, AI isn’t just simply making it easier for people to produce on s- you know, produce content without supervision. AI is also transforming the way people work in organizations, and what organizations fundamentally do and how they do that. And as important as AI rep- you know, as AI governance is, it’s also very intense. It’s very time-consuming, and we could very easily find ourselves sidetracked from even these even bigger opportunities on, you know, on the other side of the organization. Mike, I’d like to just talk about that. I th- I love that you say that reputation is defensive, because I’ve just written a whole book about the fact that it’s not. And everything here is about how- Okay. We’re gonna have some flak Here’s some opportunity r- right, to move it from being defensive to how you do things right and take advantage of the opportunities to differentiate yourself and to differentiate yourself from a reputational perspective, how you create reputational currency. And this is an incredible opportunity to do that. While we’re looking at the risk, um, certainly I 100% agree with you. Let’s switch it and let’s look at where the opportunities are for our leadership and, and really reputation should be embedded in those things that we do, um, in, uh, as a daily basis. And so how do we begin to look at it from that perspective and take advantage? I totally agree with you. Um, it’s time to look at the positive and how we lead on a positive level versus being in this total defense mode. And I think there’s, there’s- It’s interesting- If we look at the role of communication professionals o- over years, we, we love a good defense. We love to get involved when the crisis has happened. We love to get involved when, when issues need to be managed within the organization. So do we automatically put ourselves in the defensive role? Is it time now to start looking at being the proactive role and, and, and the attack role, as, as you said, Mike, which I, I totally agree with, is we need to look at our time. So are we saying that things like governance reputation is time-consuming, and it will become even more time-consuming the more we fall off these cliffs because there is not governance and there’s not order in place when it comes to AI, or it’s being defined for us around how we use AI within the organization. So I think there’s… I think it’s actually about turning it into, as Bonnie was saying, the positive of here is the opportunity now for us to step up. Because if we stay in content creation mode and tool mode and, and learning those tools without stepping into a much more leadership role, then I think we’re missing a huge opportunity. One of the things that Bonnie mentioned that I wanted to come back to was the idea that reputation should be embedded in what people are doing and what organizations are doing. I agree that it should be embedded rather than being, you know, a parallel measurement. One of the big problems that we have in the realm of communication, it’s not just around reputation, it’s also particularly strong around employee engagement, putting my own book on as it happens. And we often look at measurement of reputation and measurement of- employee engagement as parallel metrics to organizational performance. And Bonnie is dead right about saying these are embedded, these are part of the picture. Um, we need to think about reputation, but reputation isn’t an end of, an end in itself. When, when I think about governance, uh, I, I come at it from two levels. Uh, one is the role that, uh, communications and particularly internal communications should play, uh, in any governance, whether it’s AI or anything else in the organization, and that is how are employees gonna react to this? Uh, this is, I think, why we wanna be proactive and, and be in the room and have a, a voice in shaping all of this because we know, uh, intrinsically, uh, how employee audiences are going to react to, to certain things, whether they’re gonna be cynical or upset or, uh, skeptical or if they’re gonna like it. Uh, because if this is built in a vacuum and we’re not involved, uh, they’re gonna send it to us and say, “Communicate this,” and, and we’re gonna look at it and go, “This isn’t gonna fly. Uh, this isn’t gonna work.” I mean, I, I’ll give you a great example out, out of my company is, uh, we, in the communication of the survey results, said, uh, one of the things we’re gonna do is revisit the governance policy. And the guy who’s leading this effort for the company said, “We don’t have to do that. I just checked with our general counsel, and he says it’s still good.” And I said, “Well, you know, this is two years old, and agents weren’t even i-in, uh, in the conversation two years ago.” Uh, I had been reading about companies that are worried about having thousands and thousands of agents that have not been cataloged or inventoried. Nobody knows what they’re doing. Employees create them and leave, and they’re still out there looping and burning tokens. Uh, this has to be addressed with governance. Uh, so at one level, we need to have a say, uh, o-o-on any governance, but at the other level, we need to be able to say, “Hey, what about agents? Shouldn’t that be in here?” And for that, the communicator needs to be pretty well informed on all of this. And I don’t believe that all, uh, I, I wouldn’t even hazard that most are completely up to speed, uh, on the issues that would affect AI governance. Uh, so, uh, you know, should they be leading that effort? Probably not. They should just be looking at the impact it’ll have when it’s introduced into the organization. I, I think one of the really important points that you’re talking about is the difference between AI as tool Uh, even when we talk about Claude or ChatGPT or let’s implement, uh, Copilot, you know, we’re looking at it as a tool. But when we start to talk about it, uh, we start to talk about agents, we’re talking about it beginning to be part of our infrastructure, and we ha- we are already behind because we didn’t put in the governance for tools. Now we’re going to look at it, um, as it, it’s embedded into our infrastructure, it’s embedded into our workflows, it’s, uh, you know, part of the way we do business. We’re moving away from it being a trusted, you know, just a, an, um, a, you know, I’m using these tools, this is my, uh, you know, we used to talk about our stack. Well, now we have an AI stack. We’re moving completely away from that, where AI will be embedded in our organization at such a level, um, that we won’t know where it’s looking at data. We might not know when we’re using third-party tools where it is. So if we’ve started out without the right infrastructure, we’ve started out without the right governance, now when it w- when it moves from being an operating system, from being guardrails to an operating system, how far behind are we going to be? The challenge is the, where it’s going in our organizations is moving so much faster than our governance, uh, that we’re gonna have a day of reckoning, exactly as you said, Shel, when somebody creates an agent and, and it’s just out there running, um, and we don’t even know about it. You don’t even know it’s there. The, uh, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make a little parable between- You know what? You know what this- … history and, uh, and where we’re at now. And I know when I started in, in internal communications 25, 30 odd years ago, um, and you’ll remember this Michelle, is there was no understanding of what internal comms was, what was involved, how to manage channels, what was good communication. So we were stepping into organizations where we actually had to say, “We need to take stock of this, put some frameworks around it, put some governance, put some structure.” And then as we’ve evolved, we’ve been able to let go of that because people were trained within the framework of, of how they work. And we’re seeing in the report the confidence levels of, of communication professionals around issues like ethics and understanding ethics. Now we’ve got the knowledge of it, but how are we applying that? ‘Cause that’s only one component of responsible AI. But I think in, in any evolution we’ve got, uh, we’ve got an area where we, we have this, this chaos. Sometimes we have to put some very tight guardrails and governance around it, bring everybody into the understanding then of how to use and what’s good practice and, and those things. It’s an educational process, and then we’re able to let it go. The conversations we seem to be having, certainly from a center point of view with, uh, with our clients at, at the moment, is that they’re, they’re dealing with that exact issue of people generating content within their organizations, sending it to them and going, um, “Can you send this out?” Um, exactly what you were saying before. And it’s because there is no understanding of what good communication is in the AI space. We’ve got this great opportunity not just to govern it, but also to educate people of what that looks like when we’re using AI Sorry, Mike, I think you were going to say something to that Well, I just think the, the b- yeah, I had a, I had a couple of things. I mean, I think the educational role of, of the communication person around things like AI ethics and responsible AI is important, but at the same time, we need to be cautious about the extent to which this is seen as a primary role of ours. Because, you know, there are very few of us in organizations. You know, our, our resources are stretched, our remit is stretched. You know, we’re often in, as you say, defensive mode rather than proactive mode. And certainly AI governance is a largely defensive or proactively defensive approach. But this conversation also reminds me of the intranet conversation that we’re having 5, 10, you know, certainly conversation we were having 25 years ago, where there’s lots of stale content out there, and there’s this idea that comms people should be the ones who colle- who do all the tagging and collect all the metadata and screen all of this stuff out. There aren’t enough of us to chase rogue agents. Um, there aren’t enough of us to chase, um, you know, stuff that was created that’s no longer relevant, that’s consuming resources. You know, maybe we can work with AI so that AI can find its own, you know, its own rogue, um… But, you know, there’s only so much we can do without marginalizing ourselves in that process See, interesting. And, and I, and I absolutely get it. It’s, it’s, to me it’s a little bit around the how much role do you play in, um, facilitating the governance role. I think what we need is a really important in defining the governance role from our point of view. Um, but I don’t think we should be the arms and legs of saying we’re going to be the, the organization police around it. What we do need to be is the facilitator of the knowledge around proper use and responsible use of AI, given that the majority of the work that we’re doing in organizations now is about content, and it is about getting that stuff out there. Disclosure, without kind of flipping us onto another topic, has been the hot topic right now, and there’s tons of conversations being happening around what we disclose, how we disclose and, and so on. And that seems to be the hot button now. And we should, in a way, been ahead of that curve in helping our organizations understand what does this mean for the content that we’re producing and putting out there in terms of disclosure. Yeah, and we’ll talk about disclosure in just a second. I know we need to move on to that. But I, I did want to raise one other issue. I, I really liked what you said, Adrian, about the difference between, uh, influencing what the governance is and actually facilitating it. I think that’s an important distinction. Uh, and yeah, I think it’s important that we be engaged in the definition of the, the governance, uh, because ultimately this is gonna have an impact on communication, and I can, I can think of a couple of levels where this is happening. Uh, one is, uh, work slop, where people are using a, uh, an iffy prompt. They’re getting what looks like a polished document. It sure reads well. Uh, and they’re attaching that to an email or, or copying and pasting it into an email and sending it, and they go, “Wow, I just saved two hours. I didn’t have to do the research and the writing on this.” But that saved time on the part of the person who created that has really just been offloaded onto the person who received it, because they have to read this now and go, “Okay, this, this sure reads well, but I’m not getting any substance out of this. Uh, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.” Uh, it’s, it’s not a good document for people to work with, so that affects communication. And then I was just hearing, in fact, I’m on a popular panel coming up next week, uh, with Jenny Field Uh, that is talking about the fact that there are people who are getting internal comms content, uh, for review and approval, and they’re rewriting it using AI because they think with AI they’re now all internal comms experts. Uh, and the communicators are getting this stuff back and they’re going, “This isn’t what I wrote. This isn’t getting, uh, the intent across.” Uh, and yet they think that this is now perfect because they ran it through Claude or ChatGPT. So, uh, one other interesting bit of data that I’m aware of, and that is that people are less frequently getting in touch with their organization’s subject matter experts because they can just go to ChatGPT and get the answer from the engineering team or the marketing team or the sales team. Uh, I don’t need to actually talk to one of our SMEs, I can just ask Claude. Uh, so we’re communicating less with the people in the organization. The second, the second-order effects of all of this are absolutely brutal. It’s not just simply that the, that the receiver of the message is getting a diluted and perhaps worse message. You know, when multiple people are getting that memo, when multiple people are having meetings to discuss that watered-down memo, then the cascading effects of all of this aren’t just simply, you know, content. These are actual second wor- second-order impacts happening in the organization. And when you talked about the offloading of expertise conversations onto Claude, that is wreaking havoc on the organizational social networks of every organization in the world. It’s wreaking havoc on, um, new employee onboarding. It’s wreaking havoc on, you know, really the ability to do coherent internal communication more broadly. And organizations are not willing to do the, the basic organizational network analysis right now to figure out what their current networks look like, so that when the networks get degraded by this use, you know, they’re not gonna be able to take the right corrective action before things deteriorate further. Now let’s move on to, uh, disclosure. Uh, again, looking at the data from the Global Alliance survey, 60.3% see AI as a reputational opportunity, 56.1% see it as increased reputational risk. And I’m not a mathematician, but to me that means there are people who answered yes to both of those questions. Uh, and one in four organizations disclose to absolutely nobody. I, I mentioned that at the outset. Uh, what, what’s being risked? Uh, w- what are the– what, what’s the fallout from this kind of an approach to AI and disclosure? So w- and if I look at this from a general observation, I, I, I’ve been talking to quite a number of communication departments, particularly in internal comms. Um, and A lot of what’s coming back is they’re just not sure about how to disclose. And, and I know that sounds like a really basic issue, but it, it’s do I just say sweepingly AI was used in the, in the development of this content? And does that then impact the reputation because people believe it’s not you, it’s not your intellect. Um, and what we’re really starting to get our head around as, as, as a world le- uh, working in AI is that at what parts is AI playing the role? And I think this is the big thing around disclosure now is the fear of disclosure if it’s gonna have a, a, a negative impact, um, versus what is it we should be disclosing on. Because you go from a spectrum where you go, “Look-” AI really is, is doing to the world what calculators did to the world in mathematics years ago. Um, should we be disclosing every time we use AI to get an idea or a, a prompt or, or should we be having levels of disclosure? And I think that’s where we’re coming into effect where we need to understand what the landscape of disclosure… So for instance, image, if it’s completely, completely, uh, uh, created in, in AI, we should have a disclosure saying, “This image has been created, um, use, with the use of AI.” But when it comes to content and intellect, it is how much of your intellect versus what AI has done. So if it’s just been used to spell-check and edit, then do we just pop that in, in terms of this is what it’s being used for? And I think there’s a drifting towards that what is it being used for. So I think what we’ve had is, and then why the statistics low, is we’ve had this paralysis in understanding the actual landscape of disclosure. I think something really interesting there is, is to, to add in this conversation to transparency. And all of us know that, that, um, people have a different idea of what transparency is. Um, you know, you want your leaders to tell you absolutely everything they are doing, and we’re going to go through a merger and you’re going to lose your job, or you’re going to get promoted or whatever. We want to know everything in this day and age, and reality is it’s, it’s a need to know transparency. Mm-hmm. Um, and I think when we go to disclosure, it gets at that level as well. We have to think about how does this impact the stakeholders, and when is the right time to tell them, and what does that look like, what that level of disclosure. But we also have to look at it as to how as organizations we’re being judged, and AI has now become part of that judgment process. It’s now how, you know, I’m judging you how you’re using AI. I’m judging you based on the products that are coming out. If I’m looking at a consultancy that I’m going to pay millions of dollars, and they have thrown out some AI slop that doesn’t, wasn’t properly researched, that’s hurting their reputation, so now I’m judging them on how they used AI. I’m judging you on organizations, whether you’re governing AI. I’m judging you on how you’re communicating your use of AI. And then I’m also trying to make some decisions as to whether I’m going to, uh, do business with you because I don’t know how you’re going to use my data and whether, uh, I can trust you. And we can even look at governments and it, govern- publics are now re- wanting to know how are, is my government using AI? And when it gets so embedded in our organizations and we don’t even know how AI is being used, we don’t even know what it’s doing, that becomes an issue. So that’s where I see this disclosure and transparency. Um, we’re really looking at it as being visible corporate behavior, and just as you would talk about anything else in your organization, uh, you need to be talking about your use of AI. And I just want to add to that one too, just to bring in the point that Shel made before. When you’re working in the world of agents now, particularly as we’re looking at autonomous agents where AI is in the loop of checking AI, and then we’re putting stuff out there, disclos- disclosure becomes even more important when there really isn’t the human in the loop apart from kind of the, the, the, the deciding the, the, the process in the first place. So it, it, it is becomes a really tricky landscape, and organizations won’t want to put it out there for the fear of diminished reputation. And, and so the rewards versus benefit is a big conversation here and, and this is why I think there needs to be a lot more guidance to help support organizations’ use of AI. It’s, it’s having conversations with your stakeholders. Mm, absolutely. T- cert- there’s a certain brutality level around all of this. I mean, I’m a small business owner, been working in Europe for the last 20 years, and the recent AI regulations from the EU, which, you know, essentially, you know… And, and it’s not the regulations themselves, which, you know, really focus on public awareness and public, um, information about certain specific topics. But the proactive overcompliance, like what we saw with Claude and their digital watermarks, is absolutely crucifying small business here. You know, I have a, you know, I have my own newslet- you know, I, I, I have my own news magazine, basically, Strategic. You know, there’s two of us working on it, um, you know, on a day-to-day basis. I use AI to generate headline images for the articles that we use. I use Ideogram. It’s excellent. I pay 20 bucks a month for it. If I had to say AI content all over that, you know, that would diminish the credibility of what I’m doing. Which, you know, is, you know, i- it’s an unacceptably high cost just because we need to align ourselves with corporate standards for, um, for disclosure. I mean, you g- you gotta wonder about the whole disclosure thing to begin with. If you’ve got a human who’s accountable for a piece of information that goes out, then why do you need to have disclosure regulations, so long as there’s an identifiable human who’s got some finger on that? I mean, if you’ve got AI feeding directly into information systems, then it’s a different ballgame. But it’s like, why should I have to label my, my headline images as AI generated? You know, I can’t afford to pay a graphic artist or Getty Image for, for every, um, for every article I post, and it would make my, the work that I do impossible if I had to do so. It’s a really good example, Mike, of it’s being done for us because we haven’t given the context to the people that are making these regulations. So are, are we actually talking with, you know, the EU to say, “Right, here, here is the, the, the regulation,” or, “Here is our take on what the regulation should be from a communication perspective.” Because you can’t blanket AI versus non-AI use because it is context. And if we look at, you know, IBC’s, um, global standard, context is one of the key principles here that we bring to the table of value to our, our organizations, but the wider world. So we might be getting our heads around it within organizations, but when we see government starting to regulate things, they go in quite heavily handed. And you’re quite right, it has that negative impact on, on the businesses because you’re now made or mandatory doing it. Same with Claude going, “Right, so we’re solving the problem because everybody’s telling us we need to disclose, so we’re now gonna put the digital watermark in place.” Um- Now thankfully there isn’t the, the, the trackers to just, to see whether that, that watermark is working ’cause they haven’t produced that yet. But the reality is we will see the companies going, “Oh, we now need to comply with a greater regulation that’s been put in or imposed by people that don’t actually understand the landscape of use of AI for content.” Uh, well, and that’s my take on it. Yeah. I think- There’s a, there’s a bigger issue with the Claude watermark, and that is that it will, uh, be a positive if it was processed through AI, not necessarily written. You could have written that whole thing bespoke and run it through AI as a grammar spellcheck, and it’s going to incorporate that watermark and will show as a positive when somebody runs the eventual, uh, check on it, uh, that, that Claude, uh, that Anthropic says they’re going to release. But I, I think, you know, disclosure ultimately has to be a question of individual judgment, and our role, um, in the governance part of this is giving people the context they need in order to make a good judgment. Uh, I know what I need to disclose. Uh, it’s, it’s a bit like that, uh, that US Supreme Court decision on pornography that is like, “I, I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” Um- … it’s, you know, it’s, it’s kinda like that. I mean, I, I can absolutely see the need to disclose that an image was created with, with AI if I think people would feel deceived if they knew that. On the other hand, I just published an article on our intranet where there was n- there were no photos, uh, there was nothing to photograph. Uh, so I had AI create some conceptual commercial graphics. If I had gone out to an artist, you know, um, 20 years ago for this, I wouldn’t have said, “This art was created by commercial artist Don Weller.” Um, it just would’ve been there with the article. Uh, and I don’t see that I need to disclose that I used AI to create this commercial- you know, uh, graphic, uh, either. Uh, I don’t need to disclose, for example, that I used AI, uh, one of the note-taking tools to record an interview, shared the transcript with one of the large language models and said, “Please strip out anything that isn’t about this topic and then organize this in a nat- natural flow, and then use that to actually write the article based on that interview.” It was a tool that I used in the process, and I don’t feel compelled to disclose that. For me, the rule is if anybody would feel deceived if they knew I used AI, then I need to disclose that. But I have the context to make that decision. I’m not sure everyone in the organization does. I think that’s the, the, the big issue is, is really about organizations understanding around this one, and I think this is a really good role for us, not only to, to give the guidelines, but then help people understand how they might apply that because people are actually confused. Um, I run a number of writing courses for, for government here in, in Australia, and they’re not communication professionals. They’re people that just want to learn a, a skill, and they are completely confused around, uh, things like disclosure and when I can use it. But they’re also very confused on how to use the tool to get good content out of the, the writing that they’re, they’re doing. So it is really about the role you take and then what it is that we need to, to, to look at. And, and, and I’m a big advocate that we didn’t disclose when we started using calculators. And I’m, I’m, I’m of the generation when you went to a- an exam when you were younger, you were not allowed to take calculators in because that was cheating. Now it’s, it’s just a given. Um, and I think we’re, we’re there on some of the things where it’s absolutely a no-brainer. It’s just a tool to help you. And if it’s spell-checking or reformatting or putting it into another style, fantastic. But if it is a significant part of the process I think we need to say where we’ve been able to, to use that in our ability to deliver a better outcome, certainly for our clients. And we’re, we’re now looking at statements certainly within the, the center that’s saying, “So what’s our general policy on use of, of AI?” Uh, and their statement’s around the intellect, the input is from the, the, the professionals that understand this and the expertise. AI is helping us as a tool to help format or re- um, re-look at or do research or whatever those moments are, just so you’re… It’s just, it’s there, it’s transparent, and it’s assumed that’s what you would be doing. Yeah. And by the way, I, I get really frustrated when I hear people say that AI should never be used for writing at all. Uh, because I d- I don’t know if any of you have ever read a memo written by an engineer. Uh, but, uh, if, if AI can make their stuff readable, um, God bless it. Uh, I, I, I will take that. But this again gets to- And it’s if- … the need for having that kind of training where they know don’t just throw in a prompt and have it produce something. You have to give it the good information that you want it to polish into a readable document. But if, if AI does that, then we’re all gonna benefit from it. And as we begin to build, um, our infrastructures within our organization and we’re uploading, uh, our brand guidelines and we’re uploading our narrative and our messages and all of these things, people are gonna come in, uh, and, and use that information. So we’re not necessarily the people that are writing. We’re being the narrative. Uh, we’re, we’re creating the narrative. We’re creating the brand. We’re talking about the stories. We’re showcasing the, the proof points. All of those things that we’ve done forever, but we might not be doing the end product. We may just be setting up our Claude workflows. We may be setting up our agents so that the VP of sales can go do their own presentation, can go do their own sales sheet, but they’re not gonna break my rules. They’re doing it anyway today, right? Um, and then you see it a month later and you go, “Oh my gosh, that wording’s not right. That’s not what we talked about. Um, that’s not our brand.” Now you can put all that in place and in, within your work, work teams, uh, whether you’re in ChatGPT or you’re in, um, Claude or whatever tools you’re using, and then they can’t break the rules, and they have to use the storylines and the things that you say. And that is going to be the way our role’s changing because we might not be writing the end products. Um, we may be a little more on that strategy perspective, and other people are gonna take that and build their own content out of it. Yeah, and, and, and that was, I think, a very interesting development that basically perhaps our long-term role was really as part of the, you know, the guidance and programming team rather than the delivery team. Um- Mm-hmm … you know, making sure that there is internal consistency around narratives, internal consistency around brand guidelines. You know, you know, some of the tools that we’re seeing with, um, you know, AI monitoring, AI, um, media monitoring, those tools can do some of the things that can monitor the internal consistency and the internal prevalence of your messaging. Mm-hmm. So I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s an interesting take on where the profession’s headed. Um, but one thing that just struck me about the whole conversation about disclosure is that if everything is AI, nothing is AI. You know, if ev- you know, ultimately every single piece of that text, whether it’s an email that you’re sending from Gmail that suggests the right word at the end of the sentence to a 360-page book written based on 20 interviews that are fed into Claude, um, everything’s gonna be AI. And so, you know, a lot of this blanket disclosure stuff is gonna go out of the window within, you know, within two, three months because everything will be AI. One interesting, uh, observation that I keep hearing is how new this is. We’ve never encountered anything like this before. Uh, and one of the reasons for that is this is a tool that everybody uses differently based on their role, uh, based on their industry, uh, based on their department. Uh, this is not like Workday where everybody gets trained the same way. Uh, that’s actually kind of useless to train everybody exactly the same way. And, uh, for, for a tool that people are going to be using on their own and have an impact on, on the organization, we have been here before. Uh, and the specific tool that I’m thinking of is desktop publishing. Um, because with desktop publishing before that, uh– And, and we’re going way back, uh, with desktop publishing. The, the first one I used was called Ventura Publisher. I think this was around 1985, so absolutely predated, you know, the internet and, and, and the web and, and, uh, certainly social media and things like that. But before desktop publishing, everybody came to communication and say, “I need people to know about this.” Then out- outcomes Ventura Publisher and then of course PageMaker, uh, and every department was producing their own newsletter and sending them to the mail room for distribution to ev- And everybody was getting 30 newsletters in their inboxes. Uh, and yeah, I remember getting a call from leadership saying, “Make this stop.” Uh, you know, the company I was with at the time. This is– Nobody can consume this much content. There’s no gatekeeping going on, and communicators had to figure this out from a governance standpoint, from a technology standpoint. Uh, so we have been here before, haven’t we? We- we’ve been, we’ve been here actually many times. Um, uh, and those significant milestones, the, the one I, I really love and I, I absolutely relate to where you’re at, and in fact, I used to get my copies in a routing envelope. It all came in printed copies, and you had to sign off that you’ve actually read it. Um, so you had a ton of emails or ton of, ton of printed emails to read, um, through the organization. The one that, that I, I use as an example all the time is, is our journey into social media because the … I, I see some of the similarities in behavior. With, with social media, there, there, there was the few that jumped in, the early adopters. We’re, we’re seeing that certainly from a, a comms point of view, people jumping in there early. Um, I like to feel all of us on this call are, are people that are doing that. Um, but there were the people that resist getting into it, and I think social media, because we’d gone through that, that change, and it changed the landscape and we didn’t We kind of resisted that they were channels of communication. It was a fad. All of those, those types of things. But the reality is it became embedded as in part of what we do. We don’t even think about it now. It’s all part of the mix that we do. However, it, it got away from us when it came to, to any behaviors that we would use in social media. So we kind of went, “It’s a platform. Anybody can say anything, and we’ll put it out there.” And then governments started putting in some, some regulations and changes. And here in Australia, and I know the US are looking at this now, uh, about age limits to, to who can, you know- use certain social media platforms because we’ve now learnt the impacts of that. So I think when we, we look at some of those times in histories where we’ve gone through the change, it is, it’s the change journey. We should actually be stepping in, embracing it, and looking at how we can positively use it, understand when it becomes part of the norm, but learn some of those lessons from the past of the bad behaviors, and do we make sure that we’re being proactive to make sure we are educating people on the proper use of this stuff? I think that’s really one of our roles, um, and our opportunities, is to really help organizations, um, operationalize responsible behavior. Uh, that is something that we really miss the opportunity with social media, and we miss that training opportunity to say, “This is where you can gain trust. This is where you can lose trust. This is where you put in the reputational risks.” We lost all of that opportunity. We lost the opportunity for our narratives. Um, it became an influencer environment, which now is, is, is, you know, AI is now our influencers in many cases. We’re moving away from human influencers in many cases. So there’s a lot of opportunities, I think, for us to g- to guide that, um, responsibility of, of what behavior in AI, and then call it out, uh, this misinformation, this disinformation, um, you know, stand up for the things that are happening out there that aren’t, um, you know, aren’t helping organizations and also aren’t helping humans. But you kind of- It’s interesting that you- Oh, sorry, go on, Mike You know, it’s, it’s interesting that you talk about this being a follow-on from social media. I think there’s something f- that’s potentially fundamentally different between AI and social media. And social media was about the decentralization and disintermediation of knowledge sharing to large groups of people, whether inside the organization through social intranets or publicly through Facebook, Twitter, what have you. AI, particularly if organizations focus on having, you know, some degree of an internal AI platform, whether it’s, you know, and this could be where Copilot actually adds value, providing access to a- Uh, various models, but actually centralizing the data on a platform. AI may give us the chance to help recentralize the narratives, recentralize the, the processes, the principles, the practices, the guidelines for responsible use that were completely lost in the social media era. I think you’re right on the internal side, but on the external side, uh, we don’t have control of that. So how do we, uh, how do we look at it from, uh, both perspectives? I love the fact that we can now take back some of that control, um, on the internal side. But the external side is like the Wild West, and it’d be nice to see how we can, uh, take a little bit of control back for that, and I think we’re gonna have to stand for that from an internal perspective. We’re going to have to s- stand for our narratives, and we’re going to have to argue when, uh, our brand is attacked, uh, when people are, uh, you know, when there are AI influencers that are misrepresenting our organization. We’re gonna have to step out and, and, and change that narrative, and that’s where it will be the Wild West is externally When we look at th- those bigger impacts too, to, Bonnie, just build- building on that is the, the state of trust. And we, I think we have to overlay this with, you know, the Edelman Trust Barometer this year talked about, uh, you know, the new role of organizations being the trust broker. Um, because we’ve got this erosion over time in the landscape of communication in society as a whole. And so we’re dealing with this, this whole people disconnecting because they’ll only connect with the things that they engage with. So people will engage with like-minded people, and our algorithm- algorithms s- kind of help put that on steroids, that you’ll only engage with those people. So that polarization is now there, but how do we start rebuilding it? And I think, you know, AI, AI gives us that opportunity to really start looking at how organizations can now change that landscape of, of, uh, trust and engagement back into the organization from both the internal and the exper- external viewpoint. But it does play into that bigger narrative, and it’s one of the things that the, the, the global alliance that we’ve been looking at that we’ve got responsible AI is really, you know, and the work certainly you’ve been doing, Bonnie, with, with, um, with responsible AI and saying, this has to be a living document and what continually evolves as we evolve as a, a society. And now we’re looking at it from a, a, a total perspective of responsible communication because there’s all this stuff that’s happened in the past that we really now need to go, how do we retake some of that control of what we should and shouldn’t be responsible for as a communication professional? Um, and that’s, that’s the stuff we’re now starting to look at as we head towards the World PR Conference in, um, in, in Abuja, in, in Nigeria in November. And I think to your point, uh, that do, say, are is so important. Uh, what we do, uh, versus what we say versus what we are at the heart of our organization, that will be, that disconnect of that alignment will be so exposed, um, in today’s environment. The more AI becomes embedded in, in the way we live, the more w- will those lines of disconnect will be exposed. And, and, and not only will they be exposed, people will take advantage of that. Um, AI will take advantage of that. So it’s really important in organizations that we’re looking at how we do that alignment between what we say and what we do and what we are at the heart of our company, and that is our role. Well, I, I actually had a couple of questions left, but we’re down to less than three minutes, uh, so I’m not gonna ask those questions. But fortunately, we are, uh, pushing this over to next month, part two of this. I think we can just probably pick up where we left off. Um, that will take place, that will be episode 133 of Circle of Fellows on Thursday, September 24th, same bat time, same bat channel. Uh, be, uh, 6:00 PM Eastern, uh, that’s 3:00 PM for me, and Adrian, it’s tomorrow morning for you, uh, coming to us from the future. Uh, Adrian, you’ll be back for the panel next month. Yep. Uh, you and I will be joined next month by Mary Hills, uh, Cyrus Mavawala, who is one of our new fellows, uh, named this year, um, and Robin McCasland. Uh, so that should be a good panel. Um, in the meantime, uh, this will be available as both the YouTube video replay and the audio podcast. For those who are listening, uh, or watching this on YouTube, go to, uh, subscribe to this, and it’ll just show up in your podcast app, uh, every month just, just like magic. Uh, thanks everybody. I think this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate your, your time.

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