Earned First

Earned First's Cannes podcast series concludes with Omnicom PR CEO Chris Foster, who joins Arun Sudhaman for a wide-ranging conversation about creativity, culture, CCOs and consolidation. Foster reflects on what he sees as a shift in creativity toward influence, and what that means for earned media in an AI-driven landscape. He also examines the growing prominence of CCOs at Cannes, the relationsh...

Craig Buchholz, US CEO of Burson, joins Earned First at Cannes Lions 2026 the day after the agency's Kit Kat Heist campaign won the PR Lions Grand Prix. He discusses what made it work: a crisis reframed as cultural opportunity, bravery as a prerequisite for award-winning ideas, and the "culture up" philosophy that sits at the heart of Burson's earned-first approach. The conversation also covered t...

Recorded at Cannes Lions 2026, We. Communications Asia-Pacific president Nitin Mantri discusses how brands such as Adidas and ITC have built genuine community participation rather than advertising-driven attention, and why measuring community value means tracking behaviour change and outcomes rather than campaign activity. He also addresses why startups in India are especially crisis-prone, the un...

Newly-installed Penta gobal CEO Jim O'Leary joins the Earned First podcast at Cannes to argue that legacy agency models are buckling under client demands they weren't built for, and that most firms are far better at marketing AI than deploying it. He traces the disruption to three converging forces — AI transformation, geopolitical risk, and a fracturing media landscape — and explains why private...

In the first our Cannes podcasts, Zeno global CEO Barby Siegel and chief client impact officer Thomas Bunn examine the firm's Clarity 2030 research, which studies CMO attitudes toward reputation, earned media, and AI discoverability. The duo discuss why marketing leaders acknowledge the value of reputation but struggle to embed it earlier in the growth process, or to fund the earned media strategi...

Tetsuya Honda spent nearly 20 years at Fleishman Hillard before leaving to build Honda Office, a strategy-only consultancy operating without permanent staff or execution mandates. Earlier this year he extended that model across six Southeast Asian markets with the launch of PR Collective Asia, a network of individual specialists serving Japanese companies with regional ambitions. In this conversat...

In this episode, Burson's Asia-Pacific head of intelligence and transformation Red Surtida joins Earned First founding editor Arun Sudhaman and research and insights editor David Blecken to explore the findings of the 'Credibility Paradox', a study that examines how AI answer engines assess and surface brand content. The conversation covers why corporate leadership content is underperforming as a...

Charlotte Mceleny has seen the PR and marketing industry from both sides, through 15 years as a journalist, then inside a holding group at MediaMonks. In this conversation, she and Arun Sudhaman work through what's actually happening to the holding group model, why PR keeps failing the measurement test, what the CMO role is becoming under CFO pressure, and whether Cannes still means what it once d...

Mazen Nahawi, founder and group CEO of CARMA and RAIYN, joins Earned First to assess the communications landscape of the ongoing US-Iran conflict. Drawing on CARMA's media intelligence data, he argues that the largely neutral view of Gulf countries reflects a deficit in terms of incomplete storytelling rather than active hostility, and one that Iran's disciplined communications strategy is effecti...

Christine Fellowes, founder of NINEby9, and Jane Morgan, chief client officer at Ashbury Communications, join Earned First to discuss Nineby9's latest research report, AI and the Future of Women in the Workplace. The conversation covers the exposure women face as AI reshapes the workforce, with women overrepresented in the roles most at risk of displacement and underrepresented in the roles being...

Ramya Chandrasekaran, chief communications officer at QI Group, joins Arun Sudhaman to discuss how AI has moved from experiment to embedded practice inside her team, why geopolitics has fundamentally expanded the scope of the CCO role, and what it takes to build communications that actually land across 17-plus markets. She also shares an honest account of how she won a seat at the table, and why b...

In this episode, Arun Sudhaman speaks with Mary Njoki, founder and CEO of Glass House PR in Nairobi, about the findings of the State of PR in Africa report — a survey of 54 agencies representing over 6,500 professionals across the continent. The discussion covers AI adoption across the industry, the structural training gaps that are shaping how tools are being used, and the growing challenge of al...

Margaret Key, Asia Pacific CEO at Allison Worldwide and executive director at Stagwell, on why she left one of the most successful holding groups in the business, what consolidation is really doing to PR's standing inside holding companies, and why she thinks the next decade will look nothing like the last. She also talks about Korea's underrated role in the regional comms landscape, the unbundlin...

In this episode of the Earned First podcast, Gil Bashe , chair of health and purpose at Finn Partners, argues that healthcare’s most urgent crisis is no longer innovation or access, but institutional credibility. Speaking during a visit to India, Bashe draws on his new book, Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter , to explain how healthcare systems have become optimised for process, compl...

In this episode of the Earned First podcast, Kelly Bennett , founder and managing director of New Zealand's One Plus One, explains how he has built and grown an independent PR firm through a prolonged economic downturn. He details the operating choices behind that performance, including disciplined growth, leadership depth and a strong emphasis on qualitative factors such as curiosity, judgment an...

In this episode of the Earned First podcast, Arun Sudhaman is joined by Iman Issa, co-founder and managing partner of North 75, to unpack the key ideas and tensions that shaped the inaugural PRAXIS MENA summit in Abu Dhabi. The conversation moves beyond surface-level optimism to examine why the Middle East communications market feels structurally different right now — from the centrality of cultur...

Ashbury founder Adam Harper joins the Earned First podcast to reflect on why the Middle East has become one of the world’s most strategically important regions, how Asian and Western capital now meet there, and what communicators must do to navigate this new landscape.

In this episode of the Earned First podcast, Arun Sudhaman speaks with Madan Bahal, co-founder and MD of Adfactors PR, about what it takes to sustain consistent growth in a public relations industry marked by prolonged uncertainty. Reflecting on the pressures facing consultancies, Bahal describes this turbulence as a permanent condition that firms must learn to operate within — a mentality that ha...

Arun Sudhaman sits down in Dubai with The Romans’ MENA lead, Joe Lipscombe, to explore why the Middle East risks becoming a “margin outpost” – and how it can instead become a true centre of creative gravity. They discuss the indie invasion of the Gulf, why clients are “crying out” for bigger, braver ideas, the impact of localisation and the rise of Saudi Arabia, and what it really takes to be cult...

Arun Sudhaman speaks with Aman Gupta, managing partner of SPAG Finn Partners, about the evolution of influencer marketing in regulated sectors — and why credibility, compliance and subject expertise now matter more than reach. Presented in partnership with Finn Partners, the conversation explores how structured scoring models can help brands identify credible voices, counter misinformation, and tu...

Recorded days after PRAXIS Asia-Pacific in Singapore, this special Earned First episode —created in partnership with Finn Partners — explores what mattered and what’s next. Arun Sudhaman is joined by Finn Partners' leaders James Brasher and Joyce Liong to break down: moving comms from reactive “crisis saviour” to proactive strategy partner; the in-house/agency handshake on data fluency, business a...

The Hoffman Agency’s Isabelle Demaude joins Arun Sudhaman to explore why credibility has emerged as a crucial factor in the AI era. Drawing on her PRAXIS Asia-Pacific panel, Demaude discusses how generative AI challenges authorship and trust, why earned media may be regaining influence, and how cultural intelligence is becoming essential for communicators navigating complex, multi-market realities...

Lars Voedisch, founder and CEO of Singapore-based Precious Communications, explains how a startup mindset, regional expansion and a business-first approach to communications built his agency to 100 people across eight markets. We discuss the practical playbook for scaling in Southeast Asia, why global networks are ceding the mid-market, how AI is reshaping the execution/strategy split, and where P...

In this episode Arun Sudhaman speaks with Rochelle Ford, CEO of Page, about the challenges and opportunities facing chief communications officers today. Rochelle explains the Page Navigator — a benchmark and functional framework created by CCOs for CCOs — designed to provide the specific data that leaders need to make stronger cases for resources and structure. They discuss a central tension: remi...

In this episode Arun Sudhaman is joined by Carolyn Devanayagam, head of Weber Advisory for Asia-Pacific and managing director, Singapore at Weber Shandwick. They discuss how geopolitical shifts — from tariff regimes to political rhetoric — are reshaping corporate communications, forcing CEOs and comms teams to take public positions and manage complex stakeholder demands. Devanayagam argues this en...