FIR #469: Is Internal Communication Failing?

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A growing body of research suggests employees are more disconnected than ever. What are internal communication teams getting wrong? Also in this long-form monthly episode for June 2025:

Buzzstream interviewed over 150 digital PR pros to assess the state of digital PR. It looks a lot like it did five years ago.
Social media has overtaken television as Americans’ primary source of news.
Chief Communication Officers are in a precarious position, expected to anticipate and address political and societal upheaval, often sharing information executives don’t want to hear.
Pope Leo XIV has called for an ethical AI framework in a message to tech execs gathering at the Vatican.

In his Tech Report, Dan York looks at Mastodon’s updated terms prohibiting AI model training, announcements from TwitchCon, and the impact of Texas’s mandatory age verification law on Internet privacy and security.

Links from this episode:

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. 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:

@nevillehobson (00:02)
Hi everyone and welcome to episode 469 of Four Immediate Release, the monthly long form episode for June 2025. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK.

Shel Holtz (00:13)
I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California in the U.S. We’re very happy that you have joined us for our monthly review of what’s going on in the communications slash technology space. And there is always a lot going on, always. And I heard about a lot of it recently. I was at the IABC World Conference in Vancouver, small conference, only about 600 people, I think. There are…

Definitely some challenges facing the world of associations in general and IABC in particular. But as usual, the content at the conference was excellent. There were some really good sessions on things like driving AI adoption in the organization presented by ProSci, the change management research organization with some really revealing data, some very interesting stuff. For example, Neville, the

number one driver of adoption of AI in an organization is the very visible and vocal support from the most senior leadership of the organization. That’s the top factor. And in a lot of organizations, those guys don’t have a clue what this is or how it

@nevillehobson (01:18)
big surprise there.

Opportunity for communicators, would say that signifies Shell.

Shel Holtz (01:29)
It absolutely is. So we have these topics that we are going to jump into here shortly, but Neville, first, why don’t you remind everybody what we have already posted since our last monthly episode.

@nevillehobson (01:43)
Indeed, some good discussion we had on a handful of topics since the last month of show that was 466 on published on May the 26th. And we led in that one gain AI features. No surprise to anyone, I suppose, in every single episode we’ve been doing throughout this year, I think really.

But we started with the topic on AI. Not only are AI chatbots still hallucinating, we said by some accounts it’s getting worse. And we had a conversation about LLMs and hallucinating and so forth also in that episode. A handful of other topics too, including one I’ve been reading even a more about in the past week or so. So Google’s new tool for making AI videos with sound following the one with text, that’s VO3.

these seem to be coming out of the woodwork from a variety of players mid journey, most recently this past few days. So expect to hear us talking about it on FIR during the course of July, I think.

Shel Holtz (02:37)
Yeah, I don’t know if you’re aware, I was hearing about this on another podcast that these VO videos are being strung together with themes and shared on TikTok and they’re going viral. I can’t remember what the themes are, but they’re kind of silly and fun. But yeah, the VO3 has really led to this explosion of these videos being shared.

@nevillehobson (02:51)
Yeah, there’s a of that. A lot of that.

Yeah.

There’s around a dozen such tools currently, according to who was at the verge, if I recall correctly. And I’ve heard of half of them. So new things are appearing left, right and center. The mid journey one just a quick aside, I coughed up some money just so could try it. Blimey, I tell you, this is extraordinary. That you upload a static image and it creates a five second video from that you just prompted a bit.

or not as you as you prefer it’ll do something. And I’ve done a poor about half a dozen of these that I’m going to stretch together into a single video I saw a couple on LinkedIn to people doing similar things. So for 10 bucks a month, it’s worth it to discover what this can do. So expect to see lots of silly stuff out there. But there’s a great learning for what everyone else is doing. So it’s definitely another phase in these tools.

Shel Holtz (03:43)
Yeah.

I have a Mid Journey account. haven’t tried that yet, but you’ve been able to do that on PyCo, which I’ve been paying for for a while. So it’d be interesting to see how it works on Mid Journey. Yeah.

@nevillehobson (03:50)
Give it a shot.

Sure, there are a number of tools that you could do that.

This one I’m seeing in the tech press is saying, wow, over this particular one. So it’s offering something, I suppose. Go and give it a shot. So we also talked in this episode, this is a bit of a kind of a roundabout way to get to what we talked about in the last monthly. We talked about a new global alliance report on lack of strategic leadership about AI’s ethical use. AI again.

Shel Holtz (04:01)
Yeah, I’ll have to go give it a try.

@nevillehobson (04:18)
and a few other topics, plus Dan York’s tech report about a number of services online shutting down and other new ones starting up. So pretty full episode that came in at 104 minutes. No, wait, one hour 43. What’s that? Yeah, 100 and whatever. Anyway, one hour 43. So nearly an hour and three quarters. Yeah. No, it’s not an hour and three quarters almost. So that’s a hefty but good one, Donna. Thank you for that. So

Shel Holtz (04:33)
Yeah. We’re communicators. Math is not our strong suit.

@nevillehobson (04:45)
But that was that one. Since then, we talked in 467, June the 5th, that was Mary Meeker’s Trends Report on AI. Mary Meeker, many of you will know this, venture capitalist, and former Wall Street securities analyst, best known for the annual Internet Trends Reports that she used to publish a decade ago and going back into the 2000s. Serious credibility. But she released a new one.

dedicated entirely to AI, 304 slides, not the most slides she’s had as a deck. One of her internet ones was 600 slides, substantial content. But this is worth a read. We talked about it. She has credibility, as we said in the show, credibility as strong as hers is likely that this report will become the defining source of truth about the state of AI. So it’s definitely worth taking a look at the report and

listen to that episode to get our take in what she had to say. And then finally, 468 published June 17th, new threats to reputation. We said, while a company’s reputation doesn’t appear as a line item on a profit and loss statement on a balance sheet, it is nevertheless a critical intangible asset that significantly influences financial performance and long term success. So in this episode, we looked at some recent research.

and reports to zero in on the newest reputation challenges and how communicators should face them. So you’re up to date now with that little wrap up.

Shel Holtz (06:12)
We also had an interview drop.

@nevillehobson (06:15)
We did. Yes, we did. That was a really good conversation we had with Craig Silverman. We’ve interviewed Craig twice before on this episode, but you’ve got to go back to 2008, 2012 to get those interviews. So well over a decade ago. And here’s Craig. We talked to him about Indicator, his new venture that is all to do with fighting digital deception.

and he explains how he does all that. He explained how indicator came to be the challenge of launching a media startup and what kind of impact he hopes to achieve. He also shares practical insights for communicators facing the growing threat of coordinated inauthentic behavior, fake reviews, and AI generated information very timely. That was a good conversation. Almost three quarters of an hour, we talked to Craig about that and it was some really good insights he shared. So very much worth a listen.

Shel Holtz (07:10)
could have gone on longer. I had questions when we wrapped up. But yeah, Craig is a journalist, trained journalist, and had spent five years at ProPublica reporting on disinformation and misinformation. So was a logical step to move into this independent journalism that he’s doing with his partner. So yeah, definitely worth a listen.

@nevillehobson (07:12)
It could have. Me too.

Right. And you might,

if you know of Craig, you might remember back 15 years ago, he published a website that was called Regret the Error, pointing out errors made in media reporting that led to a book deal. And I’ve got the book. It’s nice, a nice look back in time to see what that was all about. But that was a good conversation we have with Craig, must admit.

Shel Holtz (07:47)
Me too.

Yeah

Also published since last month is episode 117 of Circle of Fellows, the monthly panel discussion with IABC fellows and a moderator, also a fellow, usually me, sometimes Brad Whitworth, talking about a topic of interest to communicators. This one was different. We did this one live at the IABC World Conference. We had…

three of the five new fellows up on stage. The other two weren’t able to make it. And then we had eight fellows in the front row of the audience. So we had a camera aimed at the stage. I was at the lectern and the three fellows in chairs. And then Brad was out in the audience with a microphone and his wife, Peg Champion, was following him around with a camera.

And all of this was feeding into StreamYard, which we used to do Circle of Fellows. And I was able to do the camera switching seamlessly. And this was all questions from the audience. So it wasn’t on a single topic. We went an hour talking about issues that were on the minds of communicators. It’s really interesting episodes. So that’s available both as a podcast and a YouTube video.

We’re also preparing for episode number 118, returning to the usual format. This one’s on communication leadership. The panelists include one of our brand new fellows, Mike Klein, along with Robin McCaslin, Sue Heumann, and Russell Grossman. This will be at noon Eastern time on Thursday, July 17th. So if you’re interested in hearing the perspectives of some senior communicators on leadership and communication,

Tune into that or catch the video or audio replay later. And with that, it’s time to turn to our reports as soon as we pay these bills.

There was a time when digital was something you bolted on to your PR efforts. Neville, you undoubtedly remember those times where should we do something digital? Should we have a website to go with this? I remember when TV commercials had URLs appearing at the bottom and it was, wow, look at that. They’re showing their URL on a TV commercial. PR now is digital. mean, calling it digital PR is almost ridiculous.

It’s just at the center of how we communicate. And BuzzStream’s latest state of digital PR survey is out. And if you’re wondering where the industry is headed, this year’s survey pulled in answers from 150 digital PR pros across the globe. I guess that means there are PR pros who are not digital PR pros, which is a little worrisome, but there’s a lot of food for thought here. So let’s start with the basics.

What’s working in digital PR these days? The clear winners are data-driven hero campaigns and good old fashioned expert commentary. It turns out about 95 % of the professionals out there lean on these two tactics. You need both the big attention grabbing home run campaigns and the steady reliable singles. And Neville, I apologize for the baseball metaphors. I don’t know the equivalence in cricket. ⁓

@nevillehobson (11:14)
No, that’s okay still because I probably don’t either, so that’s fine.

Shel Holtz (11:18)
Okay, I should have gone for football so you could have done rugby, right? It’s always nice though to see that stats back up what so many of us already are doing and just feel intuitively is the approach that works. Almost half of respondents say digital PR is actually more effective than it was a year ago. More links, more visibility, better results. But, there’s always a but.

72 % also say it’s gotten more challenging at the same time. If that feels like a paradox, it is. Blame it on everything from industry layoffs to Google’s never-ending algorithm updates to the growing army of competitors in the digital space. Basically, the pressure cooker has been turned up to 11. Now, what about budgets? It’s not exactly a free-spending landscape. Most digital PR teams are working with less than $10,000 a month and

Only a handful, about 4%, have more than $20,000 to play with. The cost per link, which is how a lot of these teams still measure value, typically stays under $750. Here’s something interesting. A full quarter of respondents are generating 40 or more links per month. If you’re into link building, that’s a pretty solid haul for your money. And interestingly,

link building is still at the heart of most of these digital PR campaigns. So what does success look like in digital PR? It is still all about the links. Not just any links, quality links are more important than they’ve ever been with 87 % of PR pros saying that’s their number one metric. Tools like RF’s domain rating and Moz’s domain authority are the go-to yardsticks for measuring those links.

And when it comes to relevance, two thirds of practitioners say they check the page title when the link appears. Little detail, sure, but one that says a lot about the evolution of the craft. Patience remains a virtue. Around half of those surveyed say it takes three to six months to see meaningful results from a digital PR campaign. For some, it’s even longer, think six to eight months before you really start to notice the uptick in authority or referral traffic. If you’re in a hurry,

Digital PR probably isn’t for you. Follow-up emails deserve a quick mention here. A massive 98 % of respondents say they send at least one follow-up, and the data shows that it pays off. Sending a follow-up boosts your reply rate by 85%. So consider that a best practice. The best results come when you follow up within a day. Open and reply rates both peak right after the first message. Now here’s why all this matters.

Digital PR isn’t just about backlinks anymore. It’s about driving organic traffic, raising brand visibility, sparking social buzz, and even helping organizations weather a crisis. Done right, digital PR delivers a kind of surround sound effect for your organization. One campaign, multiple touch points. The big takeaway in 2025 is that digital PR is harder than ever, but also more rewarding.

It’s also about mixing hero campaigns and expert commentary, following up quickly, measuring what matters and above all, being patient. Because if there’s one thing this year survey makes clear, it’s that digital PR is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. The other thing that occurs to me, Neville, and I think where we’re probably going to end up talking, is it’s all still about referral traffic to drive folks to a website. And we know that’s on the decline because of AI. And I was…

really struck that they’re still talking about success in terms of backlinks and not a word about showing up in AI search results. So Neville, what was your take on this study?

@nevillehobson (15:15)
probably mirrors much of what you’ve said, although I have to say I got really down a rabbit hole at the very start where it’s saying where I’m saying, why are we calling it digital PR, particularly if the definition that I’ve seen all over the place, including an organization called Digital Marketing Institute, that

It’s PR, right? And you talk about digital channels, isn’t that a bit of a misnomer now, because everything’s digital. If it’s defined by the channel, that makes less sense to me, even more so. So I think in the report early on, they asked, they have a little section called expert opinions, a little drop down, where one of the questions at the start was, how does digital PR compare to traditional PR?

And the quote I liked, and you’ll understand why in a second, is from Will Hobson, hi Will, US VP of PR, Rise at Seven. He says, the lines are getting more blurred, but in my opinion, digital PR is just PR. Our activity needs to be brand relevant, but also culturally relevant while being closely tied to business objectives. Now, you can apply that to PR, and I agree. So we haven’t moved on from…

not calling it digital PR, which emerged when all this was kind of new about 15 or so years ago, where we had digital PR. And I always had a problem as well with digital marketing, where you slap the word digital in front of a job description or a job title or some kind of activity, and it sounds super cool and new and fresh and amazing. We need to stop doing that, because if you then look at these definitions, so the Digital Marketing Institute says,

Digital public relations is a strategy used to increase awareness and visibility of your brand using online channels. That’s the first part of it, to which I would say, but isn’t that what PR does? Let’s call it traditional PR for differentiation. Isn’t that what PR does? Digital PR is similar to traditional PR, they say, but it offers the opportunity to reach more people in a measurable and targeted way. I don’t know what that means, but that doesn’t make sense to me either.

I’m not going hang up on this because I’m not, but it just struck me is that we’ve to stop calling it digital PR. I think your point, though, to kind of focus on this major issue is that exact one about links driving traffic to websites and so forth. I did think that they had the report show some interesting aspects related to SEO that are very much in the the dane of

domain of this is how we’ve always been doing this. This is not new. So that makes sense to me. The syndication, no follow, I found interesting. But I guess the main point is, though, if we’re going to call it Digital PR for the purposes of this article, I’m OK with that. When you get into some of the kind of slicing and dicing of what they came up with, which teams do you work with more closely if you’re in Digital PR?

And that I didn’t find surprising that the number one by huge number was SEO, the folks who do SEO, followed by marketing and then PR. So traditional PR is third on your list of people you work closely with. Surprised me a bit to see in this result that strategy was way down the list. And I would have thought that if you’re gonna, know, surely we’re talking about being strategic.

to, well, not to coin a phrase, of course, but I hear that all the time. But I would have thought that would have been higher. And it, you know, I could slice and dice this, but I don’t think that would add to our conversation. I think there are things we can learn from this survey, without doubt. But to me, it was obscured by this thing about digital marketing. And I think things are moving so fast that the kind of feeling I get from some of this

is that this is not on top of these changes that are moving fast. And I’m thinking in particular about what you and I have talked about in a variety of episodes of this podcast over the course of this year on things like Google Overviews, the role of AI in all of this that is going to interfere with all of these traditional sounding plans, it seems to me. So the future, according to this, to my mind, doesn’t look very rosy as changes upon us. And this doesn’t look like it’s addressing change.

Shel Holtz (19:18)
Yeah, I don’t see them making any pivots here to get ahead of this. And one of the things that one of the speakers at the IABC conference said, I mean, it’s an old line. He just sort of changed the words. He said, when change is coming at you, the best companies start running. And you don’t have to be faster than the change. You just have to be faster than your competitors.

The old line being when the bear is coming at you, you run, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other campers, right? ⁓ But as I think about the term digital PR, I guess I can see the distinction in the respect of PR as being a reputation management and relationship building activity.

@nevillehobson (19:47)
Ha ha ha ha.

Shel Holtz (20:06)
I spend a lot of time on the phone with people, which is not digital. There are PR people, chief communication officers, for example, executive communicators who are coaching their leaders to prepare them for delivering testimony before Congress or preparing them to make a pitch to a city council or a zoning board. There’s a lot of PR that goes on that isn’t digital.

I think what we’re talking about with this is outreach, right? And when we’re trying to get our message out, so PR messaging is all digital these days, but there’s a lot of relationship building and reputation building that doesn’t happen online. It happens over the phone, it happens face to face. So I guess we could say that’s the distinction.

@nevillehobson (20:57)
Yeah, but you got to bear in mind one thing. So if you’re a smartphone, which is digital, then this digital PR, okay, digital outreach is what you’re doing. No, I mean, seriously, this one of the numbers here, again, not to belabor this point, because this could be a whole separate discussion all by itself. But the number one tactic in the in the in the report that we’re discussing, which of the following tactics you consider to be part of digital PR?

Shel Holtz (21:03)
Yeah

@nevillehobson (21:21)
The number one, 99.4 % of people said, pitching data-led content. So it got me thinking. But that to me is crazy because whatever you’re doing in public relations, when you slap a word like traditional or digital in front of it, you are invariably going to be pitching data-led content or data-driven content, whatever. You’ve used data, or rather you have data, and you have used tools to extract meaning from that data.

leaves your pitch. So these kind of narrow definitions to me are obscuring the value of these activities and dressing them up with a word that is wholly unnecessary. So Will Hobson’s got my vote where he says he doesn’t think this is, we should not call it that, we just call it PR.

Shel Holtz (22:05)
Yeah,

I don’t disagree. I am thinking back to an old, old case study. This was when, I can’t remember who was behind it, but there was a call to boycott the tuna industry, the canned tuna, because of the inadvertent dolphin catch that was happening. were scooping up dolphins in the nets and dolphins were dying.

@nevillehobson (22:10)
Ha ha ha!

Shel Holtz (22:30)
and they were just throwing them overboard because all they wanted was the tuna. And StarKissed objected, and I think it was Burson Marsteller that they hired. And Burson Marsteller got the StarKissed people together with the people who were behind the boycott. And StarKissed said, look, we’re already doing all kinds of things to prevent dolphins from being caught up.

in the sweep of tuna. Look at our numbers, look at our tactics, the things that we have implemented as procedures to avoid this. And the group came back and said, okay, yeah. And they went out and said, boycott tuna, except StarKiss, they’re already good guys. That was negotiation. That was getting people at the table. So today, communicating the outcome of that would clearly be digital, but the actual effort

@nevillehobson (23:12)
You

Shel Holtz (23:21)
was getting people together at a table to hash things out. That’s still PR.

@nevillehobson (23:27)
So you just defined why we shouldn’t be differentiating it, because that sounds totally confusion to the activity. It’s all just PR, it’s relationship building. These are methods you use to get your message out or engage with someone or whatever it might be. It doesn’t define the activity itself. Indeed, it talks about which channel. it channel if you wanted to say it’s that?

Shel Holtz (23:33)
It’s all just PR.

@nevillehobson (23:51)
But it doesn’t help any at all, in my opinion. I would argue that you could apply the digital advertising, digital marketing, digital whatever. It is not helpful. So I’m we agree on that, Shell. And I thank Will Hobson for prompting this part of our discussion on this podcast. Hope you’re a listener, So let’s see. This is a good digital story, this one, Shell Ethic.

Social media overtakes TV as the main source of news in the US.

Shel Holtz (24:16)
Do we need to call

it social media? It’s all just media. ⁓ just…

@nevillehobson (24:19)
Well, this is another conversation,

right? I I’m as guilty as everyone for calling it social media. Indeed, I often talk about social media marketing. So, is it just marketing? mean, it’s okay. my God. Yes, absolutely. So this story I’m going to share is actually kind of a subset of a huge report from the Reuters Institute, the latest global report that was published actually just literally a week or so ago.

Shel Holtz (24:30)
Every company is a media company.

@nevillehobson (24:47)
in June. But one of the clearest signs of how radically the news ecosystem is changing comes from that report. And that’s a bit I want to talk about. For the first time, social media has overtaken television as the main source of news in the US. And by the way, there we have to use the word social to differentiate it from just general media, right? According to Reuters, 54 % of Americans now get their news from platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

compared to 50 % who still rely on TV. Now, I’ve been hearing for a long time that, you know, more Americans get the news online than anywhere else. This seems to provide clear evidence of that perspective. And it comes from a highly credible source at the Reuters Institute. I found the reporting, which I’m referencing by the Guardian was really good at summarizing the whole thing in a way that helps me discuss it with you rather than all the huge chunks of data that’s in Reuters report.

But this isn’t just a shift in platforms, it’s a shift in power, according to The Guardian. Influencers and podcasters, not journalists, are increasingly shaping what news gets seen and heard. Joe Rogan, the famous American podcaster, alone reached more than a fifth of Americans in the days after Trump’s reelection. mean, a fifth of Americans? That’s got to be in the least, what, close to 100 million, if not more, people.

especially among younger men, a demographic traditional media often fails to reach. That shift brings both opportunities and deep concerns. Trust and transparency are now front and center, as news increasingly comes from personalities rather than publications. AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini are starting to become news sources themselves, particularly among under 35s, yet users are already questioning their accuracy and reliability. There’s also a darker undercurrent.

Globally, news avoidance is rising fast. In the UK, nearly half the population say they sometimes or often avoid the news altogether. And I tell you, I’m in that group. It’s the highest figure in the study, that UK statistic. Many feel overwhelmed by negativity or simply tune out from what they see as repetitive or irrelevant coverage. In my case, it’s both in this context.

So as a center of gravity shifts from institutions to individuals and from owned newsrooms to algorithm driven feeds, what does this mean for trust, for civic awareness and for the role that communicators like us still have to place to play? What do you reckon, Cheryl?

Shel Holtz (27:16)
there

is so much to unpack here. Let’s start with the fact that people are avoiding the news. I just heard an interview Kara Swisher interviewed Nicole Wallace on her podcast, On with Kara Swisher. For those who don’t know Nicole Wallace, she was the press secretary for President George W. Bush. She worked in the upper echelon of the John McCain presidential campaign.

@nevillehobson (27:18)
Mmm. ⁓

Shel Holtz (27:41)
She grew disillusioned with the Republican Party and has voted with the Democrats in the last couple of elections. And she is the host of Deadline White House, which is a two hour Monday through Friday news program on MSNBC. And she told Kara Swisher that she understands why people are avoiding the news. It’s relentless. You watch an hour block.

of news on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, wherever you prefer to go. And it’s an assault of nonstop distressing stuff. She has, Nicole Wallace, started a new podcast through MSNBC. And it’s not 100 % news. It’s interviews with A-listers just about whatever they want to talk about. She said it always…

finds its way to some news, but it’s not news from beginning to end. And people are hungry for that. And that’s one of the reasons they’re turning off the relentless assault of news and opting for either something that has less of it, is more entertaining and soothing and comforting, or presents the news through a filter that is equally comforting in their bubble.

Interestingly, as you mentioned, a fifth of Americans listen to or watch Joe Rogan. I was reading that he is turning away from Trump lately in his commentary in the episodes where he is political because he’s not always, but that’s going to be an interesting thing to watch to see if he wields the kind of influence that can sink the poll numbers even lower than they are.

But you mentioned using AI tools for the news. I do that, not exclusively, but ChatGPT has the ability to set up tasks. And I have set up tasks to get the latest news on trends in elements of the industry where I work. And every day I check and every now and then I find something really, really interesting and good out of that.

@nevillehobson (29:48)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (29:51)
It supplements my other monitoring of the media environment. So it’s just one more source and occasionally it reveals something that I wasn’t aware of. But fundamentally what worries me most about this is the selectivity that people may not be aware they’re being subjected to if they…

go to these other sources for news. And frankly, know, watching MSNBC or CNN or Fox is the same. The only way I find out what’s going on in the rest of the world is to watch the BBC. That’s where I find out what’s going on in the Sudan, for example, or in Colombia, because they don’t cover that on the cable news stations in the US. They’re laser focused on

the four or five stories that are going to gin up the most outrage among the audience right now. So it’s all the current politics and that’s what’s turning people off. And I think if the media wants to maintain an audience, they’ve got to figure out how to bring people back, how to make these more palatable because what’s missing is the gatekeeper. And I understand that people don’t like the idea of the gatekeeper. I can pick for myself what I’m interested in.

But if somebody isn’t saying this is important and you need to know about this, this is what was great about reading a newspaper, the old fashioned newspaper is even if you weren’t that interested in the story, you saw the headline and you knew what was going on. Maybe you read the lead and now you knew what was happening in that part of the world that could have an influence on you and your life at some point in the future. Because when you are curating the news,

by following the TikToker who presents the stuff in a style that entertains you, what aren’t you hearing about that you should be hearing about? And somehow we need to get back to having somebody who can curate what’s important. So at least you have a superficial knowledge of what’s going on beyond what’s in that bubble.

@nevillehobson (31:54)
Yeah, that makes sense. Although I argue you could say that particularly the younger generations who are getting the news at such a TikTok, they it’s like they don’t care what they don’t know. And they don’t want someone telling them you should know this. that that that’s a trend without any doubt. In which case, the way you address that, then, is to find a gatekeeper if you like a source that would be trustworthy enough for them to pay attention to. And that’s what needs to happen.

Shel Holtz (32:07)
And that’s worrisome.

Well, exactly.

@nevillehobson (32:20)
I mean, there’s some other metrics that pop out of the kind of a big picture we’ve just kind of discussed that I think, yeah, we need to be really cognizant of what the changes are that are happening here. So the rise of news influencers, we touched on that. And we’ve talked about this a lot in recent episodes. We podcasts, there’s YouTube, there’s TikTok creators. I hear the word creator a lot, influencer a lot in this context as well, particularly among the younger demographics.

So Joe Rogan, as I mentioned, according to this report, he reached 22 % of Americans that week, as I mentioned after Trump’s inauguration. But I’ve read also separately, he himself has been critical of some of the people out there who are so-called sharing news and stuff like that. So is this a generational thing that I say to myself? I suspect it is largely. But the challenge for

or for all of us, I suppose, are the shifts in the platforms. So there’s some statistics from Reuters, YouTube at 30%, Instagram and WhatsApp at around 20%, TikTok 16 % are major players in news dissemination. X is losing liberal users and gaining right leaning ones. There’s no surprise there. But that again, that that has a big impact on this big picture. The challenges of publishers, according to Reuters,

struggling to adapt to video-driven and personality-led content, struggling to adapt to it, not dismissing it or combating it. They’re really struggling with that. Losing commercial value and visibility on platforms they don’t control. Facing a bypass of scrutiny as populist politicians speak directly to people through influencers. Now, that is definitely something that we’re seeing a lot happening over here in Europe, certainly.

News avoidance, we just discussed that, is rising. 40 % globally, at least sometimes, are avoiding it. That’s up from 29 % in 2017. So in five years, 29 % to 40%. That’s a big rise. So the interesting thing I find about the emerging role of AI, to your point, you mentioned that younger users are turning to chat bots like GPT, chat, GPT, Gemini, forgetting the news, not setting up a program that delivers a news to you.

but actually getting the news from those chatbots. I do that occasionally, but I don’t say, I’m done, I’ve got my newsfeed. No, no, no, I’ll do it for something specific where I want the benefit of either perplexity, which was good at this, or I’m not using that so much anymore. Gemini’s most interesting how it’s doing this is finding stuff that I know enough about my own use of those platforms that generally speaking, and this is a very general comment,

I trust what chat GPD tells me, not blindly. Let me tell you that I check most things, not every single thing. But if I’m getting something that I’m going to make use of in some form, I will double check it myself. And I have encountered recently a couple of things where it’s made a mistake. So what do we call that hallucination or whatever? And I’ve challenged it and said, you’re absolutely right. Thank you for pointing that out. I made a mistake. I get that just like a human being might do. So that’s how I tend to regard it.

But this is something that…

Shel Holtz (35:26)
Well, the data says that these days they’re making

fewer mistakes than humans undertaking the same task would make. They’re not perfect, but they’re better than we are.

@nevillehobson (35:35)
But

well, that’s probably true. So I think that’s a that’s a good way to approach it that many of the critics I see about chat GPT notably don’t seem to do it this way, which is to be literally you think of your AI assistant as a person as a colleague you’re working with, and you’re asking it to do a task as you would a colleague to do or a hired contract or whatever it is that you’re doing. Don’t just say to yourself, this is just a program doing stuff. Think of it that way.

And when you challenge it, don’t worry too much about, you know, working for hours on getting a prompt, talk to it conversationally. I do that all the time. And it works well, I find. But this is, this is a useful report. And the reporting I’ve seen not just in the Guardian, but elsewhere that zero in on particular aspects of this are worth paying attention to. And I think the one thing I would say that

you could argue is not emerging anymore. It’s kind of with us. There’s concerns that persist about the accuracy, trust, and transparency in AI-generated news. And that’s something we need to pay close attention to, not to circumvent it or think, now, no, it’s there. That is part of the landscape. So if the younger users, according to surveys like this one, are turning to this, we’ve got to understand that.

and make changes according to our planning and be part of the changes that are happening and the shifts that we are seeing right in front of our eyes. That’s what we need to do.

Shel Holtz (37:01)
Yeah, so there’s two angles on this. One is the mainstream media, the TV news media needs to figure out a way to bring people back, those who are avoiding the news to make it desirable to want to watch this. I don’t know if it’s changes in formats or what. We as communicators need to understand how to get the news into the heads of the people who we want to hear this.

And that means identifying the influencers, the podcasters, getting stuff on YouTube so that people will find it, making it easier for people to find. And getting into those AI-generated search results. Interestingly, I’ve heard recently that the AI-generated search results, particularly the Gemini overviews or the Google overviews, are heavily dependent on Reddit and Quora.

both of which are other sources that people are going to for news. And these are not places where you can just post your news. You have to go in there and engage. So another opportunity for a strategic shift in the communications department.

@nevillehobson (38:10)
Lots to pay attention to I think.

Shel Holtz (38:12)
Yep. Well, there’s another major shift happening right before our eyes in the role of the chief communication officer, a shift that’s only accelerating as political risk becomes business risk. A new study by United Minds that was reported on Provoke Media shows that CEOs, I’m sorry, CCOs are no longer merely putting out fires, providing executive counsel and developing…

basic PR strategies, they’re expected to anticipate political and cultural turbulence and shape organizational strategy accordingly. The study makes it clear that CCOs are now business drivers, not just messengers. In volatile contexts, think fractured politics, rising cultural tensions, corporate affairs leaders are being brought into the room to offer strategic counsel. They’re expected to flag risk.

convene cross-functional war rooms and guide public positions. As Ben Kalovich from United Mains puts it, with an audience of one in DC that can and will quickly strike, CCOs need to lead their organizations to make the right decisions. That’s a weighty responsibility and one that requires a shift from reactive communications to proactive leadership.

In companies that embrace this new model, the CCO serves as a kind of stabilizing board voice, a steady hand while other leaders overreact to daily political noise. Interestingly, that’s kind of what the Melbourne mandate called for, what, 13 years ago from the Global Alliance. They called for PR to be at the center of maintaining that steady guidance through political turbulence and social turbulence.

Anyway, the organizations set up frameworks, monitoring political signals, introducing decision protocols, and convening diverse teams early. And the result of this is anticipation of contentious issues like DEI or AI regulation and the ability to respond with unity and credibility rather than scrambling under pressure.

Not every organization is embracing this shift, though. In more traditional companies, communications is still seen as downstream messaging. Boards and CEOs may say they want early risk warning, but when the CCO raises a flag, they end up getting marginalized. As Dave Tovar of Grubhub noted, CCOs are caught between expectations, knowing they should warn but lacking authority to influence outcomes. Picture it.

telling the company the winds are shifting but not being allowed to change course. This tension between leadership resistance and expectations creates a double bind. Leaders may resist expanding CCOs remit, preferring to keep them in a PR silo, but then when political or reputational risk escalates, they demand answers. The CCO is stuck, expected to prevent or manage a crisis but without the platform or agency to do it.

That gap undermines both credibility and governance and risks turning strategic warning into a career killer if leadership ignores it. We’ve seen indicators that the pressure on CCOs is rising. A recent Axios survey reported a 10.5 % turnover rate among global CCO roles in 2024. That’s up from 8 % the year before. Why? Because these roles are expanding and not every executive ready or empowered

to lead with that level of complexity. A lot of these folks are hired for the moment and then find themselves lacking when volatility demands broader strategic competence. That signals a growing divide between what companies want and what communicators are equipped or intend or invited to deliver. So for CCOs navigating this evolving role, there are a few paths forward. One, step into the advisory space.

Build political risk frameworks and cross-functional coalitions before these crisis emerge. Second, map your internal networks. Engage peers in legal, government affairs, HR, trust and influence are built pre-crisis. And finally, translate your role. Reframe your value not as PR, but as strategic insight, especially to boards and CEOs. But if none of this sticks, leadership…

both expects and empowers, reducing resistance has got to be an area of focus.

@nevillehobson (42:47)
Yeah, that makes sense. It’s a complicated picture you’ve outlined there, Cheryl, I think. But it makes sense for the Chief Communications Officer, in particular that role, to be truly strategic as a valued advisor, a counselor, more than just the words that we see banded about about what the role of a communication professional is. he’s a counselor or advisor to senior leadership.

This goes much, much deeper than that. And I think it’s not new, the depth of this, but in the context of where we’re at today with all the things that are going on in the world that could, well, not so much could impact us, but that we ought to be paying attention to because this is the world in which we are doing business and living. Political risk is a business, is a valuable…

attribute for somebody to be able to provide guidance and insight to leadership on in a way that they are trusted by those leaders to do that. So if you want to get a seat at that table that we hear about as a trusted advisor, this is a route. But it’s complicated, really is high risk and what you outlined the reality of human behaviors and the ways in which we engage with others in a work environment.

be marginalized, you’ll be sidelined, you will not be supported, you’ll be sabotaged, all that stuff, if you don’t do it right. And that sounds a pretty trite way to say it because it’s wider than that. But you need to have all your ducks lined up. You’ve got to have support. You need to have that network to support you. And you need to show your value in supporting others. I this is a diplomat’s role as well. I think I don’t know anyone. Just going through my mind, I know a number of

people with the CCO title in large corporations as well, but not anyone I could think of who I could say, yeah, this person will be a role model for this kind of role. doesn’t mean to there aren’t any, I just don’t know any at the moment. But I think this is a natural evolutionary step for a CCO in a large enterprise in particular, particularly in a, let’s say controversial to some industry, pharmaceuticals comes to mind, actually armaments comes to mind, although that’s probably a…

a hot one to be in that right now in that you don’t need to try and persuade customers to buy your products. But the way in which you are able to navigate the political risk is key. you know, I couldn’t offer more than what I just said, Shell. I think it is a it is a fascinating topic to be discussing, given the context of where we’re at in the world.

Shel Holtz (45:08)
Yeah, the report didn’t list industries that are struggling with this more or less than others, but I suspect one of the toughest places to be a CCO right now is in big tech because you have CEOs, many of them, I’m not going to say all of them, but many of them now see themselves as entitled to rule the world. And are they going to listen to a CCO who says this particular cultural issue

is going to affect us negatively if we don’t get on the right side of it or if we don’t communicate it effectively with key stakeholder audiences, they’re going to do what they want to do. And I imagine that’s a tough place to want to be strategic in terms of what this report is talking about.

@nevillehobson (45:53)
I agree, to which so that adds even greater urgency to one element of the CCO’s activities, which is building strong alliances with senior people in the organization. So it’s not just he or she alone going to the CEO saying, this is what we need to do. He or she’s got the backing of many people that also have an influence with that CEO. It’s easy to discuss this. And I realize that it probably isn’t easy actually in real life to put this into practice.

But that’s what you’re probably going to have to do, I would say.

Do you to say thanks to Dan? I see, I should just notice he’s uploaded it now to…

Shel Holtz (46:29)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

I’ve already downloaded it, but clearly I haven’t listened to it.

You’re up next. Do you want to say? no, I’ll do it. then then we’ll.

@nevillehobson (46:44)
No, can, you think, Dan, yeah.

Shel Holtz (46:53)
Hang on, just need a time code.

Thanks for that report, And also, Dan, congratulations on your job change. I don’t know, Neville, if you heard about this, but Dan is now the chief of staff to the head of the Internet Society. So just big shout out. That’s a tremendous move and congratulations on that.

@nevillehobson (47:10)
indeed I did. I saw Dan posting about it.

So let’s talk about something unusual and increasingly important that’s happening at the intersection of faith, ethics, and technology. At the second annual Rome conference on AI held last week at the Vatican, attended by executives from Google, OpenAI, Meta, and more, Pope Leo XIV made a bold call. AI must be developed within an ethical framework that upholds human dignity, not just innovation for its own sake.

He’s positioning AI ethics as a signature issue of his papacy, something that’s been widely reported in some of the mainstream media, notably the Wall Street Journal just a few days ago. He’s doing this in the same way Pope Leo XIII, so one number less than what Pope Leo XIV is and some hundred years in between, once defended factory workers during the Industrial Revolution.

But this time it’s not about wages or working hours, it’s about what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines. Crucially, he’s not rejecting technology, he’s confronting its unregulated ambition, warning against the illusion that access to data equals wisdom, and calling attention to the risks to children’s development, justice, and even spiritual well-being. What stands out is how Pope Leo is reframing AI, not as a technical or economic issue, but as a spiritual and societal one.

He’s using the church’s global moral influence to challenge the Silicon Valley narrative, especially the idea that salvation might one day come from code rather than grace. And this brings us as communicators into the frame. As I explored last week in a post on my blog, referencing a deeply analytical report by the Wall Street Journal, we have a strategic role to play here, not just translating complex technologies, but interpreting what they mean for people and society.

We’re often the ones asking the hard questions about trust power and impact inside organizations. So when the Vatican calls for ethical restraint in the face of AI’s rise, it’s not just a headline, it’s a reminder that we too need to help shape the values that drive technological progress. The church is offering one model of how to do that through moral clarity, digital diplomacy, and deep reflection on human dignity. This is not just a church versus tech story.

It’s a lesson in how moral authority, strategic dialogue, and long-term vision can influence how the world adopts powerful technologies. Communicators can draw on this in multiple ways, elevate ethical concerns internally, lead with principles, not just performance, and frame AI not as a product, but as a public conversation about who we are becoming. The Vatican is showing that digital diplomacy doesn’t require dominance. It requires clarity, conviction, and credible values.

Shel Holtz (49:53)
.

@nevillehobson (50:09)
That’s a strategy worth studying, I think.

Shel Holtz (50:12)
It is, and this is going to be an interesting dynamic as Pope Leo makes this the centerpiece of his papacy, at least in the early days, because it is at odds with at least the US government, the current administration’s position on AI, which is all gas, no break. They think that we need to accelerate development and adopt the Zuckerberg philosophy of

@nevillehobson (50:19)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (50:38)
go fast and break things. And it’s troubling. And it’s good to have that voice out there, but then you have JD Vance, the vice president of the United States, who is a Catholic. I believe he’s a convert to Catholicism. And he’s out there saying, go, go. It’s build, build, build. Get this stuff way out ahead of what every other country is able to do.

@nevillehobson (50:52)
Yeah, I read that.

Shel Holtz (51:03)
The Pope interestingly has some allies and it would be interesting to see if the church does ally itself with some other institutions that are promoting the same message. One of these is the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management. This is the umbrella organization. In fact, we’ve mentioned them, I think a couple of times so far in this episode. They’re the organization

that represents the world’s public relations and communications associations. They represent close to 400,000 communicators worldwide. IEBC is a member, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations is a member, most of the world’s associations are members. And they have just released the Venice Pledge, so-called because it was hammered out.

in Venice. In fact, they say it’s result of a collaborative AI symposium workshop session held in Venice, Italy, hosted by the Global Alliances European Regional Council in partnership with Therpy, the Italian Federation of Public Relations as part of the Global Alliances Technology Trends and Communication Transformation Month in May. This was signed by the board, passed by the board in July.

Let me read this just so everybody can understand what they’re saying here and see how it aligns with what Pope Leo is saying. The Global Alliance defines responsible AI as the ethical, transparent, and human-centered development and application of artificial intelligence strategically deployed to support, not replace, human judgment, creativity, and communication. It emphasizes accountability, fairness, and accuracy while minimizing

bias, misinformation, and harm. Responsible AI upholds privacy and data protection, reflects professional and organizational values, and ensures proper attribution, governance, and human oversight to maintain trust, integrity, and societal well-being. The seven responsible AI guiding principles are ethics first, human-led governance, personal and organizational responsibility, awareness, openness, and transparency, education and professional development,

active global voice and human centered AI for the common good. And they are asking communicators to sign the pledge. We will have a link to this in the show notes. And if this is something that you agree with, by all means, give it a click and sign the pledge. It’s fairly benign. I don’t see anything particularly controversial there. It is though, think entirely aligned with what Pope Leo is saying and very much at odds.

with the US government’s approach to AI, along with the approach being taken by most of the big players in the industry.

@nevillehobson (53:52)
So I just want to go back to Leo, actually, because this is not an agenda we’ve got yet. So pledges and so forth, I believe, are way too soon for that kind of thing. But I get what the Global Alliance is doing. What this story is about, really, is about the change that is happening, the way in which the Catholic Church is engaging with

hitherto people who are highly critical of what they are saying. So big tech in particular and continuance of a let’s call it digital diplomacy that started around 2020. So five, five years ago under Pope Francis that has led to meetings with the leaders of all the big tech companies that the big six, I suppose you could argue if not including some others, I’m sure.

And this meeting recently that I mentioned is another step forward in that journey where they’re looking to, I guess, illustrate the value of principle dialogue. Although I think it also highlights the limits of voluntary codes and the need for firm accountable governance. And that’s the bit that I think is going to be the critical one. Can Leo as the head of the Catholic Church?

move the needle on that, where we have a lot of talk around the world about regulation, for want of another word, and various things happening, but that hasn’t really moved any needles yet. But I think Pope Leo is going to be a far more tech savvy, regulation minded voice than his predecessor, who was not.

as informed. Both pontiffs shared a deep concern that I’ve read a lot about that, that innovation without ethics risks eroding the very dignity it promises to enhance, and that’s their starting point. So communicate, as you and me and all the others listening to this can help bridge that gap to increase the understanding of that. But I think the fact that the Vatican is

is taking this, it’s certainly not news headline making everywhere, but increasingly I’m seeing reporting on these steps that the Vatican is taking. So as I mentioned over the past decade, actually, they’ve held private meetings with tech leaders. So Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Brad Smith, Eric Schmidt, and others more recently. Many took place under the umbrella of the Minerva dialogues. That’s another grouping of meetings that took place privately.

convened by a number of very influential voices, senior church leaders in the Vatican, and they’re continuing. And they moved from, reportedly, from enthusiasm about connectivity to deeper concerns about AI. So you’re seeing a convergence meeting of minds on certain aspects of this. So concerns about AI, misinformation, polarization, and this phrase I plucked from a Vatican report, the nature of truth.

I thought, they should get Donald Trump in there then if you want to talk about the nature of truth. Vance would do, I suspect. But the point to me, though, is that I think this is a massive shift in possibilities over this broad topic that everyone in the whole world seems to be struggling with. And yes, we can have pledges. Like you, I think from what you said, I’ve not read it myself, it doesn’t seem to be anything in there that would cause a conflict to anyone.

you’re pledging that you would follow these things and you are likely, in fact, I can’t imagine anyone is going to say no to that. Anyone you’re to take seriously and say, no, I’m not going to follow these things. Of course you are. But that’s not, well, he’s not a person in our circle of conversational focus even. But I think what we’re talking about here is a sea change that is only just emerging into the public space. And it’s

Shel Holtz (57:17)
Elon Musk wouldn’t sign on to that pledge.

@nevillehobson (57:34)
early days yet. mean, Pope Leo has only been in the role for what, two months, less than that even. But we’ve got the moves the Catholic Church make. And the reason why I think it’s so significant is they’re engaging with Silicon Valley on the one hand. They are now promoting quite strongly the ethical frameworks that they have had discussions with various people on. So another one, the Rome call for AI ethics, this body in the Vatican called the Pontifical Academy for Life.

That’s a pledge that Microsoft, IBM and Cisco have signed and that was launched in 2020. That laid out the principles of transparency, inclusion and responsibility. But one thing I found interesting, Charles, Google and OpenAI have not signed it, not yet. So that highlights the unresolved tension between tech autonomy and ethical oversight. So there’s a hurdle to get over at some point. But shaping global discourse.

This is something I remember this Pope Francis, he spoke at the 2024 G7 summit warning of a technological dictatorship and calling for legally binding treaty on AI governance. The 2025 G7 meeting in Canada has just happened. No news about that. But I think Pope Leo undoubtedly is going to carry that mission forward. But here’s the thing. Firmer, more technically informed posture. He’s going to talk like he knows the topic he’s talking about.

So these to me are converging into something quite interesting. Symbolic and narrative power is another one. And this pope is very savvy on all of this. So for instance, referring back, you remember this, I’m sure you will. AI generated image of Pope Francis in a white puffer coat went viral in 2023. It exposed the public’s vulnerability to deep fakes and the church’s symbolic visibility in digital culture. But rather than dismiss it as a joke,

Pope Francis used the moment to amplify concerns about truth, trust, and the limits of data, which is an example of value-led narrative shaping. So all these elements are happening. So I think Pledge is great. And I think it’d be good for other professional bodies to either support this as a single initiative or come out with their own. Where is the harm in doing this? It’s not affecting anything that’s going on here. think it’s, let’s not forget.

This is aimed at a wider societal grouping as opposed to narrow demographics, let’s say. But this to me is a very interesting time and we are seeing the possibility, I believe, and there’s me with my always my glass half full view of a big change happening that can only be a good thing.

Shel Holtz (1:00:10)
Yeah, and I don’t disagree with the thing that you said. I think you asked if this is moving the needle. And my answer is the likelihood of this moving the needle increases with alliances, if you can bring more people into this fold. And I think if you look at what the Global Alliance is doing and put the request to sign the pledge aside, just saying this is our code of ethics when it comes to

@nevillehobson (1:00:13)
Okay.

Shel Holtz (1:00:36)
dealing with AI and we are asking communicators to abide by this. That is entirely consistent with what is, I mean.

@nevillehobson (1:00:42)
So do you remember conversations

we had a year or so back about, we don’t need code of ethics for AI because we’ve got a code of ethics. And I think this illustrates actually why we do need something specific for AI. ⁓ Exactly.

Shel Holtz (1:00:53)
Yeah, I think they’ll come together at some point when AI has become

so routine and is just a part of life. But right now, yeah, I agree, especially because of the risks that we’re seeing. I still in my heart believe that if you read IEBC’s code of ethics, PRSA, CIPRs, it’s all covered there, but it’s not explicit, it’s implicit. And right now what we need is for things to be explicit.

@nevillehobson (1:01:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So there’s lots for communicators to absorb in all of this. So if you’re interested in the devil being in the detail, there’s the we’ll have links or there are links in the show notes for this episode for that Wall Street Journal piece I mentioned, it’s lengthy, extremely deeply analytical. It’s behind a paywall, unfortunately, but there are probably ways you can get into it.

There’s also a linked article I wrote about my blog, which I found rather fascinating. It was from the Catholic Health. I’m not a sudden conversion to reading religious publications, by the way, but in the focus of my interest, I’m encountering these stories. But they had an interesting analysis of transhumanism. Now, I have a number of deeply Catholic friends whose eyes rolled when I told them about this story, because this to me is a major issue for the Pope to grapple.

grapple with where transhumanism, if I understand it correctly, is all about. It’s not salvation you’re going to get from a God when you die. It’s likely to be from computer software and software engineers or the new priests. mean, that’s the take I’m reading from the Catholic Herald’s article. I don’t agree in any shape or form with that. But it’s nevertheless, it’s a point of view. And that’s part of the conversation too. So you got to take care of that. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes if you want to read it. But

Wall Street Journal piece, this piece, CNN article, which is talking about the meeting that just happened this past few days. And then of course, there’s our conversation. there’s a lot to unpack from this. And if you have comments to share, we definitely want to hear what you think.

Shel Holtz (1:02:48)
Yeah, and you know, we’ve been talking about this for years and years, but now it’s coming to pass. I just read in the New York Times about a guy who has about two months left to live and is working with his son to create a digital version of himself that the family can continue to interact with after he’s gone. So, you know, this is something that we anticipated. It’s here. So what does that do to the idea of mortality?

@nevillehobson (1:03:06)
Well, boy.

That’s right. You’re absolutely right.

Shel Holtz (1:03:15)
There’s so many philosophical issues to address. I’m concerned about internal communications. Internal communications is where I spend most of my time. It is what I’m most passionate about in the communication space. And you hear a lot these days about how internal comms star has risen. It was the pandemic that…

@nevillehobson (1:03:16)
Well.

goodness.

Shel Holtz (1:03:39)
It was the catalyst for that as communications became more important to senior leadership. And now we’re more strategic and we have the seat at the table and blah, blah, blah. And all of the data that we’re seeing about problems with connection in the workplace suggest that we’re not doing as good a job as we’re giving ourselves credit for. This growing disconnect inside the work

place is sapping productivity, its undermining culture, and frankly costing companies a lot more than they realize. So let’s talk for a couple of minutes about the hidden costs of internal disconnection and what smart strategic internal comms leaders can do to close these gaps. Let’s start with a stat that jumped out at me from a recent Axios HQ report, a stat that gets right to the heart of one of the biggest problems I see with what internal communicators do every day.

The data says employees lose more than a month of work every year just trying to find information. Clarifying confusing updates or waiting on other people to respond. We’re talking about 41 work days per year per person. Do the math and that’s about $20,000 in lost productivity for every employee. All that time chasing down answers or trying to interpret vague emails adds up.

And let’s be honest, this is not just a minor nuisance. For most organizations, it’s a massive silent drain on resources and much of it’s preventable. So what’s the fix? It starts with clarity and consistency. We need to deliver the right information at the right time in the right way. That might mean tighter, more concise updates. Maybe it’s a centralized digital hub where people know they’ll find what they need.

Maybe it’s just making sure leaders are trained to write and speak with a little more empathy and a lot less jargon. But it also means that internal communicators absolutely must start devoting some of their attention to how communication happens within the organization between other people and between departments and functions, not just the formal messaging between leadership and employees. When was the last time a communicator that you knew did a process audit to see what messages are being sent?

by processes. This ought to become a key area of focus. Now, the same Axios report had another stat that’s alarming. Eight out of 10 employees say the quality of internal communication affects how well they understand company goals. But only about 9%, that’s just one out of every 10, feel they’re fully aligned with those goals. That’s not just an internal comms problem, that’s a business problem.

If people aren’t clear on where the organization is headed or why it matters, how can we expect them to bring their best to the table? And if internal comms isn’t about alignment, I don’t know what it’s about. Here’s where internal communicators can make a real difference. And I’m not talking about an all hands meeting or a CEO memo. Short frequent touch points from leadership, weekly what’s important notes, town halls that actually allow employees to ask questions.

And maybe most important, managers translating those big picture goals into the realities that their teams face every day. Now let’s talk about frontline workers, people in retail, healthcare, logistics. Fast Company shared some eye-opening findings from a WorkVivo study. Nearly half of frontline employees don’t even know who their CEO is. This is just staggering to me, although based on a personal experience, it’s not all that surprising.

When I was running communications at Mattel, we did quarterly CEO town halls, but only for manager and above because we didn’t have a space big enough for everybody. And I convinced leadership that let’s do a second one. And they said, okay, we’ll bring all the people from below manager into the other one. So they weren’t going to be mixed groups, which is what I had in mind. And so they had the second town hall.

The CEO got up, did his dog and pony show, same thing he had done for managers and above. And afterwards, a group of admins walked up to him and they were just so effusive. They said, this is so wonderful. It’s so great to be included. We never get to hear this stuff. We understand so much more of what we’re hearing about. Now we just have one question. Who are you? He didn’t introduce himself. He assumed.

@nevillehobson (1:08:09)
You

Shel Holtz (1:08:15)
Now, I’m the CEO, of course everyone knows who they are. And at the front line, that’s one hell of an assumption. So even more employees in this research say the broader company culture doesn’t really apply to them. And only 9 % are truly satisfied with internal communication. If that doesn’t sound like a crisis for communication, I don’t know what does.

So what can communicators do? Well, for starters, we have to get creative about reaching people who aren’t sitting at a desk all day. More mobile friendly platforms, digital signage, even a quick weekly video from the CEO specifically for the frontline. And crucially, two-way communication channels, places where frontline employees can get, ask questions and get real answers. Now,

Here’s a twist, and I apologize, I know this is a longer report, but there’s a lot of this stuff happening out there. According to a recent piece from the New York Post, Gen Z employees, those just starting their careers, are shying away from office small talk. In fact, three out of four say they struggle to strike up conversations with coworkers. It might be tempting to chalk this up to generational differences or social anxiety. I think it’s deeper than that.

As more work moves online and hybrid, those water cooler moments, as we’ve talked about frequently in the past, aren’t happening organically. And that’s a problem because informal interactions is where trust is built and where silos are broken down. Internal comms can help here too. Can’t force small talk, but we can create spaces for it. Slack channels for non-work chat, virtual coffee breaks or interest groups, let people connect over something other than deadlines.

We just launched a new intranet. It has communities, and I made a point of setting up some communities that are not work related. Share pictures of your pets. We have one that somebody set up about video gaming, and this is where you’re going to have the opportunity for those kinds of interactions and for people to meet. Then there’s the infinite work day. This is a term that came out of Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, and it describes a world where work bleeds into evenings and weekends.

especially for remote and hybrid teams, Gallup reports that millions of employees are stuck with unpredictable schedules, making it hard to find work-life balance or plan family time. Role here for internal communicators too. We can model and promote boundaries, publicly acknowledging that it’s okay to log off at a reasonable hour and celebrating leaders who actually do it.

We can make sure employees know about resources for mental health and wellbeing and check in regularly through pulse surveys or just simple, are you doing moments. And we can recognize how different employees from different generations perceive this issue, especially given the micro targeting of employees that’s increasingly possible with AI. For example, I learned at the IAVC World Conference that Gen Z is not millennial 2.0.

They’re not interested in work-life balance. They’re interested in work-life blend. That seems to me to necessitate a different messaging to millennials than we’re sending to Gen Z. So all of these issues share in common symptoms of disconnection to information, to leadership, to each other, to the mission of the company. That’s why internal comms isn’t just a nice to have and why we have to stop resting on our laurels.

We are the nervous system of the organization and when it breaks down, everything suffers, productivity, culture, retention. So my challenge to communicators who work in the internal comm space, audit your channels and messages, who’s being reached, who isn’t, and what’s getting lost in translation. Design your strategy for real inclusion, not just efficiency.

make it two-way and make sure that the voices of the frontline and Gen Z and everyone in between are actually being heard and measure your impact. It’s not about how many emails you send, it’s about how much time and confusion you save.

@nevillehobson (1:12:27)
quite a story, Here we are in 2025, and you’ve outlined stuff. I remember hearing about all this stuff in the early 90s. And the bit about not knowing who the CEO is is truly staggering, I have to admit. So if that’s a picture that is part of the bigger picture, let’s say, then that doesn’t look good for communicators, I must admit. To throw into this mix,

The question my mind listened to was, OK, fine, this is all great. What do you do? How do you do this in a hybrid workplace? Meaning work from home sometimes, work in the office other times, or as we hear occasionally, there’s some companies where some people don’t go in at all, others where the climate is forcing people to go in, so the environment is not a good place. I read on LinkedIn and I didn’t bookmark the person who posted this, unfortunately.

But Mark Reed, the CEO of WPP, the advertising agency speaking at South by Southwest in London last week, said, he talked about hybrid working in the future of the workforce with AI, blah, blah, essentially said people are happy when they’re in the office. Which, which which I’ve seen people commenting. I’ve seen people commenting on what I mean, are you nuts? Are you stupid? Or what? You know, is it without any any any explainer, as I understand it, nothing to say here’s the data that supports that view.

Shel Holtz (1:13:34)
That’s just not true. The data says that’s not true.

@nevillehobson (1:13:48)
But if you’ve got a CEO saying stuff like that, then that doesn’t look good at all for being able to achieve some of the things you outlined in your call to communicate or call to internal communicators. But it’s right.

Shel Holtz (1:14:02)
It’s another disconnect, those employees in the office going,

what, are you nuts? How’s it possible to align with your CEO when your CEO is making statements like that?

@nevillehobson (1:14:07)
Right.

Yeah, yeah. mean, PR week has a good thing about it. If you subscribe, it’s behind the paywall. And the link in the LinkedIn piece that I saw wasn’t to that. It was to something else, but I’ve not been able to find it. I’ll see if I can. But the fact disconnect is the right word because everything you talked about is about disconnects. And if we sort of know what they are, surely it’s fixable, right?

Shel Holtz (1:14:33)
I would hope, you know, I heard the theme of this year’s IABC conference was connect. And I heard some people making fun of that. Everything is called connect. Hell, my intranet is called connect. But I think it’s an apt theme for this year, considering disconnect is one of the primary issues that we’re dealing with. People are disconnecting from the news. People are disconnecting from their organizations.

They are disconnected from things they want to be connected to because they’re not being provided with the information, the data, the resources to be connected. This is serious connection really needs to be a focus for communicators right now.

@nevillehobson (1:15:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, and that plays into everything we’ve talked about over the last months, particularly starting with Edelman’s trust barometer, trust in organizations, trust in leaders of organizations diminishing. And this adds to that, particularly if, I mean, I can picture it, Shell, a large organization that has people out in the field or in factories or whatever it is, they’re not at a desk, so they’re not going to be exposed to easy communication.

you need to build that in. It reminds me of something I did when I was working at Mercer in the early 90s with a client. It was a company called Marion Merrell Dow that was in the pharma business. They had a sales force who were completely not getting any of communication that employees got. So we developed a kind of radio station for them and recorded stuff that was mailed to them on cassette tapes. Because these are sales guys in cars, they could put the cassette tape in the cassette player in the car.

That’s analog stuff for you. But surprisingly, to me, I recall highly effective communication based on surveys that we did. But that idea was bold at that time for that company, the industry they were in. It requires, in my view, just using that as purely as an illustrative example, requires boldness to change these things in an organization. That to me is something that is squarely within the realm.

of a communicator to do something about it seems to me. there’s, you know, there’s a not a roadmap exactly, but there’s a plan that you could see what you need to do. So why not do it? Easy as pie, right, Shell?

Shel Holtz (1:16:53)
That’s why everybody’s doing it already.

@nevillehobson (1:16:55)
You got it. So let’s talk about AI again, actually. And this story of Anquod interesting in Digiday. They talk about a new way of automation is quietly reshaping how content creators engage with their audiences. That’s forcing communicators and marketers to think differently about trust control and what authentic really means. So Digiday’s report that was published on the 20th of June.

highlights the growing use of agentic AI by influencers. We’ve talked about agentic AI before, but just briefly, agentic AI is AI systems that don’t just respond to prompts, but acts with autonomy, engaging people in comments and DMs using the creators voice tone and even catchphrases related to this particular story. The result is that creators are seeing real gains, less burnout, more responsiveness, and deeper fan engagement. Agentic AI is redefining online interaction.

helping creators stay present without being overwhelmed. But says Digiday, there’s a cost. Advertisers are growing cautious with some now adding clauses to influence a contracts to ban AI generated content altogether. The concern is that AI, no matter how well trained, could undermine the authenticity of the relationship between creator and audience or even misrepresent the creator, especially in sensitive brand context. And then there’s the ethical dimension.

As agentic AI starts to simulate personality and build relationships, how should we think about its role? What happens when fans form connections with a chatbot, even if it sounds just like the person they follow? Despite concerns, creators argue that AI interaction has improved their relationships with fans, made them more responsive and enhanced engagement metrics, qualities brands still value. Still, communicators are now in new territory, navigating contracts, brand trust,

and audience expectations all at once. It’s no longer just about producing content. It’s about managing relationships that may now be co-authored by machines. Which brings us to the larger point. As AI becomes a co-pilot in content and conversation, how do we define authenticity? How should brands and communicators navigate this new hybrid territory? What do you make of that show?

Shel Holtz (1:19:09)
You make sure that there’s still a human in the loop providing that oversight. mean, you tell me whether you think this is an apt analogy, but there was a time when animation was done by hand. Each cell was drawn and painted. There were the people who did the main illustration and then the inkers who filled everything in. My dad worked for Disney. So I used to…

@nevillehobson (1:19:12)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (1:19:33)
get to see some of these. even have some cells. I have a cell from 101 Dalmatians, which was a hand drawn, hand painted motion picture. And then along comes computers and suddenly it’s all coding that’s going into this. You look at anything that Pixar has done and everybody of course sings the praises of the genius of Pixar. And it’s the new way to deliver.

@nevillehobson (1:19:38)
Ha

Shel Holtz (1:19:59)
animation. mean, how much does that take the humanity or the authenticity out of the equation or the creativity? And I got to tell you, Michelle and I, we were feeling like we just needed to turn our brains off. And we saw on one of the streaming channels that there was a full length Looney Tunes movie and it starred Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. And the description

said it was 100 % hand drawn in the old Warner Brothers style, the Fritz Freling, Chuck Jones style of animation. And we said, cool. And we watched it for about a half an hour and we looked at each other and we said, the animation is incredible. It is just like it was in the 40s and the 50s. And it is just amazing. The movie is terrible. It’s not.

funny, it’s stupid, it doesn’t have any of the wit and charm that, or the grown-up humor that you turn to Warner Brothers cartoons for. Does doing it the old way guarantee that it’s going to be authentic and credible? No, I think human creativity exhibits itself in the output, regardless of the tools that you are using.

@nevillehobson (1:21:11)
Thanks

Shel Holtz (1:21:18)
So if you are using agentic AI as a tool, how you use it and the controls that you exercise over it and how you partner with it as opposed to simply abdicating everything to it is going to determine whether the output is authentic and credible and clearly something that was driven by a creator as opposed to, you know, the slop that we’re seeing.

filling TikTok and YouTube these days.

@nevillehobson (1:21:52)
That’s a good, that’s a good argument you’ve made. I’m going to think about that. But I tend to agree with what you’re saying. Add another dimension, which we touched on at the beginning of this show, which is what we’re seeing with these newer tools coming out now with text to video, text to video, literally. The one I mentioned from Mid Journey, to my mind is still spinning with what I did with single photographs of two things in particular. One was a selfie of me.

and the other one was a cartoon, very aimed at young toddlers type of style of a bunny rabbit. And I didn’t really tell it to do much, but I was blown away by what it came back with. So imagine that being employed with something like this. In fact, it’s mind boggling to think that through because that is what’s going to happen actually. So, right.

Shel Holtz (1:22:49)
sure, but it’s just a tool like computerized

@nevillehobson (1:22:52)
Right. Right.

Shel Holtz (1:22:52)
animation that makes it easier for you to realize your human vision.

@nevillehobson (1:22:57)
Right, but you mentioned AI slop. And again, this now does it not come back to the beauty in the eye of beholder? One man’s slop is another man’s art, I would argue. We’re going to see a lot of that.

Shel Holtz (1:23:07)
we absolutely are. But I think we’re going to also see a lot of remarkable creative stuff that where these tools helped the creator achieve their vision. So I don’t care what tools somebody uses if it comes out as what they had envisioned. I want to see what they envisioned, regardless of whether they drew it by hand or used AI agents. I don’t care.

@nevillehobson (1:23:12)
Agree, agree.

Right.

with you 100 % on that. I think exciting times are coming, Shil.

Shel Holtz (1:23:35)
Exciting times are coming indeed. And we’ll have to wait till next month to see what exciting times have transpired between now and then. Actually, we’re going to be doing a few midweek episodes between now and our next episode, which we’re going to record on July 26th. It’ll drop on Monday, July 28th. So look forward to that. Keep an eye out for the…

@nevillehobson (1:23:37)
you

Yeah.

Shel Holtz (1:23:59)
midweek episodes. Also keep an eye out for an interview that we are planning to record this coming Thursday with Richard Bagnell, who is the volunteer head of Amec, that’s the International Association for the Measurement of Public Relations and Communications. And they have just come out with their most recent update to the Barcelona principles. This is essentially a code of ethics for measurement.

I remember the original Barcelona principles, which was the first time we saw an official body say AVEs are bad, no advertising value equivalencies. And that’s something I intend to ask him. Yeah, there are public relations agencies that still offer them. And when I asked the president of one of them, he said, our clients want them.

@nevillehobson (1:24:29)
Yep, we talked about it.

And they’re still with us.

He’s still using it.

Shel Holtz (1:24:49)
So rather than educate the clients about why they’re bad and why they’re better metrics, the clients want it, so we’re going to keep giving it to them, right? One of the questions I will undoubtedly ask. So that’ll be coming up within the next month too. In the meantime, we hope that you’ll leave a comment somewhere about something that you have heard here or something that you would like to share. We had no comments this past month. Send a comment to fircomments at gmail.com, include up to a three minute audio.

@nevillehobson (1:25:06)
That nice.

Shel Holtz (1:25:16)
comment, record that audio comment on our website. Just click the send voicemail link over on the right hand side of the page and you can record up to 90 seconds. You can record as many of those 90 second clips as you want. You can leave comments on the show notes. You can leave comments where we share the announcements that an episode has dropped on LinkedIn, Facebook, threads, Mastodon, Blue Sky. We’re pretty much everywhere except X.

Which is interesting because I have been hearing more and more that the AI community, and I’m talking about the CEOs and the AI engineers and the strategists, they’re mainly on X. Most of the communication between these people is happening on X. And that’s what the AI podcast ends up saying is, know, the CEO of Anthropics said this on X and Sam Altman said that on X.

I may need to go back to X just to be able to stay up to date with what’s happening in AI.

@nevillehobson (1:26:13)
If only you mentioned that just as a quick aside, that’s been going through my mind a lot because some things I’m interested in, mostly from a personal point of view, I tend to, when I’m researching, find links or insights on X more than any other platform. And that feels, gives me a major dilemma because I quit X, we all did. Are I going to go back? I don’t know, but that’s, yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it?

Shel Holtz (1:26:29)
Yeah, it really, really does.

I’m gonna have to

find a way to curate so that what I’m seeing is the AI stuff and avoiding however that algorithm pushes that vile stuff at you. I don’t want that, but I do wanna be where these AI thought leaders are sharing their thoughts. mean, know, Ethan Molyks on LinkedIn, which is great, and Chris Pan and a bunch of other people, but apparently X is the hub for all of this. that…

@nevillehobson (1:26:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shel Holtz (1:27:02)
will be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release.

The post FIR #469: Is Internal Communication Failing? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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