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Everyone from CEOs to politicians has been talking about the likelihood of AI-related job loss, and several companies have already let people go in anticipation that AI can do their work. Ford Motor Company is the latest to rehire those workers when AI proved inadequate for the job. Elsewhere, many of the managers who have let people go regret their decisions, and some companies are revising their...

Most agency owners will tell you accountability is something they value, but fewer will realize they’re often the biggest obstacle to it. In this episode, Chip and Gini offer suggestions for how to stop being the bottleneck at your agency. Chip tells of his own recent experience where he missed putting out a newsletter after an emergency root canal. Even with Jen repeatedly pinging him, the decisi...

In the long-form FIR episode for June, Neville and Shel consider the causes and implications of surging anti-AI sentiment in the US (which is also growing in other developed countries), as well as the increasing use of “shadow AI” in organizations. Other reports include studies documenting the continued erosion of trust in mainstream news media, the growth of personal branding among co...

Most companies have corporate values. Most companies get them wrong. In episode 4 of “On the Same Page,” Shel and Steve look at what works, what doesn’t, and why, with examples and tales from their own experiences. Transcript: Steve Crescenzo Hey Shel. Shel Holtz Steve, how you doing? Steve Crescenzo Doing good, doing good. We’re doing this on a record I’m doing this...

We have known about media bias effect for decades: the belief that the media is biased against your side of a debate. New research finds that the same belief applies to misinformation. While the research was focused on political issues, the underlying cause applies equally to misinformation about brands, companies, and business issues. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel find that the...

You’re using AI to handle more of the work that your team used to do. That’s exactly why the human side of the business has become a competitive advantage. In this episode, Chip and Gini make the case that as AI slop floods everyone’s inbox and feeds, the bar for genuine human interaction has dropped so low that clearing it will make you stand out. Demonstrating real experience and expertise in co...

The history of public relations over the last 30 years is a litany of one failure after another — failures to recognize and embrace technologies that represented seismic shifts in how people and organizations communicate. The internet. The web. Social media. Smartphones. The video shift. And now, with AI, the industry seems poised to do it again. As many organizations explore how AI will res...

Most agency owners think their clients have it easy. But the gap between how you believe your agency operates and how clients and prospects actually experience it is often wider than you’d expect, and it’s usually the small, everyday frictions that do the most damage. In this episode, Chip and Gini ask if you were on the receiving end of your own agency’s processes, would you be happy? The answer,...

Are employees suffering from survey fatigue? The question is asked often, frequently because someone high up in the organization doesn’t want to hear what employees think. But if employees see change as a result of someone taking their feedback to heart, you can survey them all day long. If you’re sending emails, publishing articles, and posting videos, but not asking employees for the...

First, they were told to use AI. Experiment! Add it to your workflows! Go wild! Then the bills started piling up, and companies realized the cost was not tenable. Now the walk-backs are happening. Usage caps! Caution! Slow down! Among the issues communicators need to address is employees questioning leadership’s judgment. In this short midweek episode, Shel and Neville explore approaches com...

Most owner-led agencies know they should be doing more than media relations. One barrier has always been capability: you can’t execute paid media if nobody on your team knows paid media. AI is removing that barrier, and Chip and Gini dig into exactly how. Gini built a PESO model operating system AI that prompts you instead of you prompting it. Many agencies are strong in one or two media types and...

The Economist has gone public with an experiment: it has created a shadow website featuring an AI-friendly version of its front-of-paywall content. The idea is to improve the odds of this content surfacing in AI answers and responses to AI queries. It’s based on a new standard, llms.txt, which has been described as the robot.txt of AI. What does this mean for communicators? Neville and Shel...

Losing a client is never fun, even when you saw the writing on the wall. The only question is how you choose to handle it. In this episode, Chip and Gini cover the practical and emotional side of client departures, from the moment you get the news to the lessons you take away. Gini points out that there are plenty of reasons a client could terminate the relationship, which may have nothing to do w...

Communicators long for “a seat at the table.” In this episode of “On the Same Page,” the internal communications podcast, Shel and Steve share their perspectives on this age-old aspiration and discuss the real ways to be consequential and wield influence with senior executives. Links from this episode: 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer Reveals Trust...

In the second of our special Circle of Fellows discussions, Brad Whitworth moderated a panel to discuss the remaining three chapters of the book, “ The 7 Cs of the New Communication Compass .” The book’s author and editor, Dianne Chase, joined Brad, along with the IABC Fellows who authored the three chapters: Zora Artis, who wrote the “Cohesion” chapter Cindy Schmieg, author of the “Collaboration”...

The  SAGA Agency AI Survey results  are in, and small agency owners are feeling great about AI. Maybe too great. In this episode, Chip and Gini dig into the numbers and find the gap between how owners think they’re using AI and the reality of what’s happening inside their businesses. The headline figures look impressive: 89% of respondents report regular or widespread AI use, 74% use it daily, and...

Employees at the Pentagon have spun up over 100,000 AI agents. In the private sector, we’re seeing reports of 10,000 or more agents being deployed by employees at a variety of companies. The problem is that most organizations lack governance to address agents, and the problems this explosion of agents operating on employees’ behalf can cause are innumerable. In the long-form FIR episod...

There’s a concept circulating in Platformer, the Reuters Institute, and Nieman Lab: the text-based social networks that defined the last 15 years of public communication may be in irreversible decline. Apptopia reports that Bluesky’s daily users are down 96% from January 2024; Threads has lost users in seven of the past eight months (down 61% from its October 2024 peak); and X has been...

Most agency owners know AI can write a first draft or clean up copy. Far fewer have figured out how to use it as the strategic sounding board they’ve always needed. In this episode, Chip and Gini explore how to use AI tools as a thought partner, not just a content machine. Gini’s example is a client who asked her to map what a PESO model maturity ladder would look like for an organization. She des...

Welcome to the first-ever episode of  On the Same Page , the new employee communication podcast from communication veterans Shel Holtz and Steve Crescenzo. In this first episode, Shel and Steve tell their origin story, recount how this podcast came to be, what listeners can expect, and riff on how to tap into managers to help support communication to their team members. We hope you’ll partic...

Neville and Shel dig into a provocative Harvard Business Review article that argues most marketing teams are structurally unprepared for the speed and scale that agentic AI now enables. The bottleneck, the authors contend, isn’t the technology; it’s the operating model. Neville and Shel connect the piece to conversations FIR has been having for the past year: AI as orchestration rather...

Most agency owners think they’re doing their team a favor when they quietly absorb the painful, tedious, or time-consuming work. They’re likely not. In this episode, Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich look at the sacrifices owners make on behalf of their teams and why those sacrifices often create more problems than they solve. This isn’t about the occasional tactical sacrifice, it’s about the systemi...

In this episode, Chip is joined by  Karen Swim  and  Michelle Kane  of the  That Solo Life Podcast  for part one of a special crossover episode exploring the practical effects of AI on agencies, solos, and the communications industry. Karen and Michelle share their view that AI is no longer optional. Practitioners who resist it risk falling behind, while those who embrace it can dramatically expan...

In this episode, Chip and Gini open with the analogy of Canadian doubles, the tennis format where two players face one. If your team outnumbers the prospect, you don’t project strength, you project awkwardness. But the conversation goes well beyond headcount. A little preparation goes a long way in making sure every seat on your side is justified. You’ll want to match expertise to whoever the pros...

While there’s no evidence that business leaders are outsourcing the most important decisions to AI, there are reports that many executives are relying on AI to make many — in fact, most — of their decisions. The implications for communications could be huge. Links from this episode: AI Is Changing More Than Work, It’s Rewiring Executive Decision-Making Inside the C-suite: H...