A couple of weeks ago I wrote about what’s on the agenda for Ragan’s Future of Communications Conference and what isn’t (namely, any measurement built for people rather than brands). I’ve kept tabs on it since, partly because I’m going and partly because I’m partnering with Ragan this year (full disclosure, again: they’re comping my ticket and I get a referral fee if you register with my code below). In the latest (final?) update, I saw a thread sticking out that begged to be pulled.

The conference opens with a keynote about thinking like a creator. The next morning, a case study presentation posits that discoverability inside AI answers now matters more than reach. The program doesn’t connect the two sessions, but I think they’re the same problem seen from two distinct angles. Most creators, including your humble author, have been working only one of them.

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So you want to think like a creator

I joined a discussion last week on a related topic - influencers vs. creators - and since then I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a creator. I figure anyone reading this doesn’t need my bona fides, so let’s just say I’ve been accused so often of being a creator that I decided to give in and accept my lot in life. But I still have to be comfortable with what the label means.

To wit: a creator is anyone who publishes a consistent body of work under their own name and builds an audience that follows them rather than the platform. The work has to be theirs, with their own point of view. It can live on rented ground (YouTube, Substack, Spotify, a LinkedIn newsletter) but the audience belongs to the person, not the channel.

Creators are bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, writers, illustrators, and plenty of people who are several at once. I’m a podcaster and a writer who has never truly owned up to being a creator (well, until now), which is a polite way of saying I’ve half-assed it, publishing content my way but not following any particular rules.

And the rules are about audience. Subscribers are the metric. YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, blogs - every one of them runs on subscriptions, and every creator I know watches that number more closely than any other (some podcasters would say downloads; I look at subscribers first, because a download is a moment and a subscription is a decision).

Subscribers come out of the audience, and if the work earns its keep they bring more audience in with them. They share, they recommend, they defend you in comment threads and quote you in communities. When a subscriber base reaches critical mass (which varies from creator to creator) the new-subscriber flywheel starts turning on its own.

Flywheels need lift to fly

That flywheel is what “think like a creator” means in practice, and it’s good advice for communicators. I’d give it myself. But there’s a foundational question that creators kind of, sort of, explain away as luck, timing, or, after they’re established, as genius: where does the first audience come from?

Creators work in a crowded and often brutally competitive space. In the professional categories where most of you, my dear Readers, live, they’re competing on expertise. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got room in my day to read, watch, or listen to three or four experts, tops. Let’s say that adds up to a dozen-ish people each week.

I pick them by how much I learn and how much I enjoy learning it. But how did I find them in the first place? A few were recommended. A few followed me first and I checked them out as a courtesy; if they resonated with me, then with my curiosity ignited (and often a touch of envy), I kept reading.

I found most of them the good ol’ fashioned way: by searching you-know-where for help, knowledge, or answers.

Perhaps discovery is what gets the flywheel off the ground. Discovery, which to some degree is interchangeable with search (but clearly not totally swappable, otherwise we might be saying DEO, DEM, and so on) used to run through Google and the specialized engines: YouTube search, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. It still does. But more of it every month runs through AI recommenders inside the platforms (LinkedIn’s, for one), through deep research tools, and through LLM chat interfaces answering questions that begin “who should I be reading on…” or “who are the leading voices in…”. Those systems don’t browse. They retrieve, they weigh, and they hand back a shortlist.

If you’re not on it, the flywheel never gets its first push.

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Machines already adore some of you

This is great news for one kind of creator. If you’ve been publishing a persistent, authoritative body of work for years, the machines already know you. Your site ranks, your name resolves to one person, and your work is cited in enough places that a model can triangulate what you’re about. Some of it is probably in the training data, though I’d put less weight on that than most people do. What gets you into an answer today is being retrievable at the moment the question gets asked, and the channels an established creator built for Google turn out to work fine for the LLMs, too.

For newer creators, or creators-come-lately like me, the picture has more dimensions than it ever had under the Google-centric regime. You were never going to outrank a fifteen-year-old domain for a head term, and if you spent many a frustrating hour trying (I tried), I get it. That’s what reliable sources told us to do.

But an LLM answering a specific expertise question isn’t cranking out ten blue links sorted by domain authority. It’s sending out real-time search queries, pulling a handful of passages that answer the question, and citing whoever wrote them. That’s a contest a smaller creator can enter. It just isn’t a contest most of them know they’re in.

For every contest, there’s a playbook

In this new competition for citations, gaining ground means giving real weight to readers who aren’t people (yes, I mean AI). That changes three things.

1. Topic choice gets strategic. A machine builds its picture of your expertise from the pattern of what you publish, so a body of work that wanders reads as no expertise in particular. Pick the ground you want to be known for and keep coming back to it.

2. Cadence gets consistent, which is not the same as frequent. Quality and resonance are still non-negotiable (better to skip a week than disappoint your subscribers and wallow in regret forever). A creator who publishes something good every two weeks for a year gives a model a far clearer signal than one who posts daily for a month and vanishes.

3. Infrastructure has to be built for machine access, which is the part I suspect most creators haven’t thought much about. I hadn’t, until I started building tools that depend on it.

Infrastructure, you ask? It’s worth explaining that one a bit more, but fair warning: I’m going to veer in a technical direction for a moment, just for a paragraph. If that’s not your bag, soldier through, use AI to translate, do whatever you need to do to understand it, because it’s important:

Your home on the web is being read by crawlers, and a growing share of them aren’t Google’s. Some hosts and content delivery networks (CDNs) now block AI crawlers by default, which means your site can be invisible to the very systems you most need to find you, and nothing in your analytics will say so. If your pages load their content with JavaScript after the fact, a lot of AI crawlers see a blank page. Structured data (the Schema.org markup that tells a machine “this is a person, this is an article, this person wrote it”) helps a model resolve you to one entity instead of guessing (when AI guesses or “infers,” you could easily end up merged with someone else, or suddenly be portrayed as an executive at a world-famous chocolate company. It happens). Add to that a clean heading hierarchy and an author page that says what you do in plain language. Make sure your bio matches itself everywhere it appears.

None of this is glamorous, but all of it is the difference between being retrievable and being a ghost.

Where to start

If you’re a creator, or a comms pro with an executive visibility remit, start with an assessment. Think of it as a fun research project. It’s what I’ve been doing for myself, and what I’ve spent the past several months turning into something more systematic at Lilypath.

• Gather your topics and your positions in one place. Then audit your LinkedIn profile, your website, and every bio and about page you can find (yours, of course), and ask one question of each: does the person described here look like the person who should be talking about these topics?

• Find out how the LLMs are describing you right now. I covered how to do that in my last piece—ICYMI, your own account is the worst place to check.

• At the same time, ask what your subscribers think you’re an expert in. Ask them directly if you can. Then widen the lens: what would someone who has seen your work once or twice say you’re about?

• Then do the analysis. Is the picture coherent? Does the sum of it tell your story?

If it does, AI probably sees it too. If it doesn’t, that’s where you start. When there’s no coherent story, AI will fill the gaps or worse: eliminate you from consideration in the first place.

Packing for Austin

I’m taking this argument to Austin half-finished. I believe the creator playbook and the machine-readable playbook are compatible, and that the creators who matter over the next few years will run both. What I don’t know is whether our profession is ready to treat them as one discipline, or whether “think like a creator” gets taught as audience-building while discoverability is left up to the marketing-heavy GEO/SEO crowd. Both topics are on the agenda, in the same room, but a day apart. I want to hear whether anyone on stage connects them, and if nobody does, I’ll be doing it in the hallway (you’ve been warned).

Hope to see you there. The conference runs November 11–13 at the Hyatt Regency Austin, and there’s still time to get the Early Bird rate. Registration is at na.eventscloud.com/861329, and my code DanN200 takes $200 off through 11:59 p.m. CT on September 4, 2026. Find me there and tell me which playbook you’ve been running.

AI Transparency Note

Written with AI assistance. Claude helped with structure and fact-checking my extensive notes and first (rough) draft; the argument, the position, the details, the evidence, the rewriting, and the errors are mine. I used ChatGPT to create the hero image.

I’ve spent the past couple of days reviewing the agenda for Ragan’s upcoming Future of Communications Conference (I’m going - Ragan asked me to partner with them this year and, full disclosure, they’re comping my ticket and I get a referral fee if you register with my code below), and if what I’m seeing signals where the comms profession is heading, it’s a good start.

Generative engine optimization (GEO) has a pre-conference workshop of its own now. Answer engine optimization (AEO) and LLM visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews is in the mix. There’s a case study about discoverability inside AI answers, and a panel on top-tier media that will explore what happens when earned coverage starts surfacing in AI citations.

Good stuff. Two years ago you would have been hard pressed to find anything like this at a comms conference. Some of us were talking about it. But most of the key conversations were happening in marketing and tech circles.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that Comms is building a deep bench of expertise in this area. I don’t think we’re late to the game. But whenever I attend a conference, I like to think about what’s not on the agenda, and what conversations I can have with attendees and speakers that will add to my experience (and hopefully theirs). Turns out that at the Ragan conference I’ve got something to talk about.

Every session measures an organization

Back to the agenda and the sessions I mentioned. They’re all focused on brands: How LLMs interpret an organization. Whether a brand shows up in a generated answer. Whether earned coverage is being absorbed and cited back. The unit of analysis is the company.

That’s the right first move and I’d have made it too. Comms teams are staffed to build and protect brands, the budget often lives at the brand level, and every tool on the market was built to watch brands. But assuming those teams are also looking after executive positioning and reputation, what happens when somebody tries to apply the same tools and methods for CEOs or any individual? If you think it’s just the same problem at smaller scale and reach for the same instruments, I get it. I’ve been there.

Let me save you untold hours of frustration and heartbreak: it won’t work.

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Why GEO tools break when you point them at a person

Start with how much material AI has at its disposal. A company arrives with its own site, its filings, trade coverage, analyst notes, a Wikipedia entry, and years of accumulated press, most of it cross-referenced and authoritative, so a model has many independent routes to pursue, and bad sources don’t survive verification.

Most executives have nothing of the sort. A single LinkedIn profile (if that), maybe a couple of conference bios, and a leadership page that may or may not be up-to-date and is likely a bit…short on substance.

What about the retrieval side? LLMs do their best (allegedly) to sort out fact from fancy, but there’s not a lot to work with, so they put a lot of weight on a few trusted domains. Profound published research in March showing LinkedIn had become the most-cited domain for professional queries across six AI platforms. Our own analysis at Lilypath, covering more than 15,000 citations for queries about individuals across four models, validates the Profound study: LinkedIn, at 17 percent of everything cited, is the most-cited domain. So if the facts about a person aren’t in their LinkedIn profile or in a handful of other sources, LLMs need to fill in the gaps from training data and sources that are less authoritative and harder to verify.

The deeper problem is that GEO tools were built for products. Product information online is readily available and structurally repetitive, duplicated across retailers, spec sheets, review platforms, and forums. We’ve also studied the consumer buying journey for a century and layered three decades of search data on top of it, so for nearly any category we know how people search for products, what sets a search off, and what tends to follow.

For people, the picture is murky at best. Outside of celebrities and politicians, queries about people aren’t at anything approaching commercial volume, and when we are the subject of a search, it can be for any number of reasons: a client searching for expertise, a hiring manager vetting a candidate, an M&A analyst running due diligence on a target’s leadership team, a parent looking for the best pediatrician in their area. Sometimes it’s just plain curiosity. The point is, there are a multitude of reasons. A single-intent, consumer-focused model can’t cover that spread.

More of these searches are machine-to-machine now. Agents and AI-enabled systems tasked with finding and evaluating people run hundreds or thousands of queries before a shortlist ever reaches a human. So the queries that decide someone’s outcomes happen unseen, often rely on relatively scant information, and no human is involved before the answers hit an inbox.

Executive reputation management is brand management

Let’s add another layer. Questions about your brand or company are increasingly routed through agents that will also ask about your executives. Brand credibility in a particular niche gets answered partly from what’s inferable about the humans whose names are attached to it. When those humans are evaluated by AI, their authority accrues to the brand’s, and so does a lack thereof. A lack of information can show up as hedging, as omission, or maybe the AI will fill in outdated or wrong conclusions.

And when your executive has a common name, or shares a name with a nefarious figure? Reputational risk flags should be flying at full mast. Fold an executive together with a same-named person who has a problem, and the cleanup lands on the comms team.

What can you do about it?

Your instinct at this point is probably to go ask the machines. Open ChatGPT, type your CEO’s name, treat what comes back as a baseline. Do it two or three times over a week and then present your findings.

I’ve seen recommendations from comms pros advising you to do exactly that. But meaning no disrespect to my peers, that’s not great advice. Your own account is the worst place to test this.

Your account isn’t a neutral environment — the models carry context about you, personalize against your history, and read regional and demographic signals into what they return, all of which increases the likelihood of seeing yourself and your associates surfaced in results. Even if you turn off memory, you’re still running into built-in biases.

Go ahead and try it anyway, because anything flatly wrong in the results is worth knowing about. Just don’t build a plan on it or put the results in your report to the CEO. You could find someone with no connection to your company, ideally somewhere else in the country, have them run your prompts, and study the distance between their answer and yours. It’s still not ideal, but better than relying on your own AI bestie. You should also use deep research tools that live outside of your chat and ask for a comprehensive report about your executive, with citations. It’s not the same as how the LLMs respond in search but you might find gaps, inconsistencies, or straight-up misinformation that needs to be addressed.

Measurement fit for people

Everything I just suggested is a workaround at best, not sustainable over time. Workarounds can tell you something’s off. They can’t tell you what to change, whether the change worked, or what to say when your CEO asks if last quarter’s effort moved anything. Try building a program on that.

What’s missing is measurement designed for people from the start. Entity resolution that can tell your CCO apart from the convicted felon with his name (for real, I’m not making this up). Query sets that account for the dozen different reasons somebody gets looked up. Observation from outside anyone’s personalized account. Citation analysis that tells you where bad information comes from. Risk identification and what you can do about it.

Surprise, surprise: I’ve built this. Or rather I’ve built the core, and now I’m making improvements and working with trusted partners to fine tune. But it’s been my singular mission for months (and why you haven’t seen me around here) and I can’t wait to crow about it. More to come on this soon.

What I’m going to Austin to hear

This is the most exciting time I can remember for our profession, and anyone who knows me, or has heard the incredible amazing podcast, The Trending Communicator (ahem) knows that I am a wannabe futurist. So when the conversation is all about the Future of Communications, I’m in.

I’m especially looking forward to the GEO sessions and want to see if anyone on stage moves the unit of analysis from the organization to the person. With any luck there’ll be some pushback, and I want to be there for it.

If you want to be there, it’s November 11–13 at the Hyatt Regency Austin. Registration is at na.eventscloud.com/861329, and my code DanN200 takes $200 off through 11:59 p.m. CT on August 31, 2026. Find me there and argue with me about any of this.

AI Transparency Note

Written with AI assistance. Claude helped with structure and fleshing out my first (rough) draft; the argument, the position, the details, the evidence, the rewriting, and the errors are mine. I used ChatGPT to create the hero image.

While authorities and experts of all stripes are busy with their 2026 predictions, I want to give you all something you can actually use.

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But first, we need to talk about invisibility. Again.

It’s the affliction you can’t see in yourself—ahem—and one that those who can see don’t tell you about. Can you imagine that conversation? “Hey… been meaning to reach out… haven’t seen you anywhere. And I mean anywhere. I’m saying this as a friend… you’re invisible, dude.1”

Nobody has that conversation. But the invisibility is real, and it’s everywhere.

You can’t just resonate anymore. Resonance—that moment when your message connects with someone—2used to be enough. Create something good, put it out there, watch it land with the right people. Done.

Not anymore.

These days, resonance is just the starting point. You need your message to reverberate—to echo across platforms, formats, and audiences over time. One resonant moment disappears too quickly when your audience exists in a dozen different places at once.

This is where most time-pressed experts hit the wall. Even if they’ve done the work—the intellectual archaeology of mining dormant expertise, excavating insights from decades of experience, identifying the patterns nobody else sees—they… what? Write one LinkedIn post? Record one podcast? Create one white paper?

My friend A. Lee Judge, CEO of Content Monsta and a well-known speaker, calls this next step “content transmutation.” I love that term—and I would absolutely steal it if there wasn’t a paper trail and I weren’t an ethical being. But Lee’s onto something important. You need to transform what you’ve excavated into something that travels, adapts, and multiplies across the attention landscape.

Today, let’s get into the how-to zone. Have I got a framework for you…

The REVERB Framework: Six Movements in Content Transformation

Think of REVERB as the methodology for what happens after the excavation. Intellectual archaeology gives you the raw material—the archived expertise, the sleeping insights, the patterns you’ve recognized but never articulated. REVERB is how you transform that material into something that defeats invisibility.

The framework has six components. Each one builds on the last, creating that echo effect that extends the life and reach of your original ideas.

1. REIMAGINE: Seeing What Else This Could Be

Start by analyzing what you’ve got and asking: What else could this be? Not just “how can I repurpose this,” but genuinely reimagining the possibilities.

That 45-minute conversation you had on a podcast—it’s not just audio. It’s a long-form article. It’s six LinkedIn posts exploring different angles. It’s a framework your audience can apply. It’s a checklist. It’s the foundation for a workshop. It’s visual quote cards that travel on Instagram. It’s an email series that builds toward something.

You may think this will stretch and dilute your content, but I’m not talking about breaking it up into pieces or diminishing your insights at all. It’s about recognizing that different audiences need different entry points to reach the same insight. Some people want depth. Some want quick takeaways. Some want to see it visually. Some want to apply it immediately.

The reimagining process forces you to see beyond the original format and identify what makes the content valuable in the first place. What’s the core insight that could take a dozen different forms?

2. ENHANCE: Adding the Context That Creates Depth

Take that core insight and enrich it. Add current research that supports it. Connect it to what’s happening right now in your industry. Expand on the complex ideas that you glossed over in the original. Deepen the narrative.

Enhancement isn’t about making content longer—it’s about making it more valuable (and should absolve you of your worries over dilution). Sometimes that means adding context that changes how people see the problem. Sometimes it means integrating the one data point that reframes everything.

3. VARY: Platform-Specific Adaptation Without Message Dilution

Most people screw this up. They take content from LinkedIn and paste it into an email. They take a blog post and chop it into tweets. That’s not varying—that’s lazy repurposing.

Each platform has its own physics. LinkedIn rewards unique points of view, professional vulnerability, and insight-sharing. Twitter (yes I know it’s X, but it’s also Twitter and will always be Twitter and that’s that), demands compressed thinking and provocative statements. Email needs intimacy and conversation. YouTube requires verbal clarity with visual support.

When you vary effectively, you’re not just reformatting—you’re adapting the content to how people actually consume information on that platform. The core message stays consistent, but the delivery shifts to match the medium.

An insight about executive visibility might be a 1,500-word LinkedIn article exploring the nuance, a 280-character Twitter thread that captures the core provocation, and an email that asks your audience to reflect on where they’re experiencing this problem right now. Same insight. Three completely different executions.

4. ENSURE: The Through-Line That Holds Everything Together

When you create multiple variations, you can inadvertently dilute your message (ok so it can happen) to the point where nobody knows what you actually believe. This is where message discipline matters.

Before you create variations, you need clarity on what absolutely cannot change. What’s the core argument? What’s the perspective that makes this yours? What examples or evidence are essential? What language defines your positioning?

Create what I call a “message integrity document”—basically a one-pager that captures the essential elements that must appear in every variation. It’s not a script. It’s guardrails. It ensures that someone who encounters your content on three different platforms still hears a consistent point of view.

This is also where you catch yourself using corporate-speak on LinkedIn and casual language on Twitter. Voice consistency matters. Your audience should recognize you across platforms, even if the content format is different.

One more important, and for some of you the most important, part of this stage: if you have content guidelines of any kind—messaging/brand guidelines, regulatory requirements, or other compliance criteria—check all of your content variants to make sure you’re checking all the boxes.

5. REFINE: The Feedback Loop That Prevents Mediocrity

Don’t release everything at once and hope for the best. Test. Learn. Improve.

Send that email to ten people first and ask what confused them. Post that LinkedIn article to a small group and see where engagement drops off. Ask three people in your target audience whether the message landed the way you intended.

Find the gaps between what you meant to say and what people actually heard. Those gaps are where you lose your audience.

Refinement is where good content becomes great content. It’s where you discover that your opening paragraph is burying the lead, or that your strongest point is hidden in paragraph seven, or that the example you thought was clear is actually confusing everyone.

Refinement spreads. Feedback from one format improves all the others. Someone points out confusion in your LinkedIn article, and you fix it in your email version before it even goes out.

And don’t forget to bring those compliance criteria back at this point, because you’ll have to check everything again. Just to be sure.

6. BOOST: Strategic Amplification That Extends Reach

You’ve done all this work. Don’t blow it by posting once and moving on.

Boosting isn’t just “share it again in three days.” It’s strategic distribution over time, across channels, with intentional amplification points. It’s coordination. It’s timing. It’s leveraging relationships and communities to extend your reach beyond your immediate network.

This is where you create a 30-day distribution plan instead of a one-day launch. Day one: publish and share on LinkedIn. Day three: email your list with a different angle on the same insight. Day five: post a poll on LinkedIn that engages people with one specific element. Day seven: share a response video addressing the most interesting comments. Day ten: partner with someone who reaches a different audience and cross-promote.

Each touch point is strategic. Each one pulls people back to the core message from a different direction. This is how content reverberates instead of just resonating once and disappearing.

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REVERB in Action: Building the New Career Architecture

Here’s where REVERB moves from framework to practice. Let’s say I’m planning to synthesize three recent Trending Communicator episodes—conversations with Gab Ferree (Episode 38), Sandy Carter (Episode 39), and Megan Noel (Episode 40)—into a comprehensive set of assets that address one of the most critical questions facing our profession: How do we build communications careers that actually matter in the AI age?

The individual conversations are gold on their own. But when you look across all three, patterns emerge that none of the guests could see from their individual vantage points. That’s where content transformation is enmeshed with intellectual archaeology—you’re mining insights that exist between the conversations, not just within them.

Let’s see how it would work.

REIMAGINE: These three episodes aren’t separate conversations—they’re chapters in a larger story about career architecture in communications. Gab revealed the structural gap: we have no real career development path beyond “go to agency, then maybe go in-house.” Sandy addressed the capability gap: 95% of corporate AI implementations are failing, and communicators are using AI in secret because they’re afraid. Megan showed us the opportunity gap: the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer role managing impossibly complex stakeholder ecosystems that traditional CCO positioning never prepared anyone for.

Together, they form a complete narrative: “The communications profession is expanding faster than our ability to develop talent, AI is changing the game while we pretend it isn’t, and the executives who succeed are the ones building new ladders while they climb.”

That synthesis becomes the foundation for everything else.

ENHANCE: I’ll add current labor market data showing the communications skills gap, research on AI adoption rates across industries (not just Gab’s survey or Sandy’s MIT study), and examples of other professions that successfully transformed their career development models. The enhanced version connects their insights to broader trends these guests might not have mentioned—like how legal and accounting professions built systematic career ladders, or how the “learn in public” movement is reshaping professional development.

VARY: The core insight adapts to different platforms and needs:

• Substack article (2,000 words): “Why the Traditional Communications Career Path is a Road to Nowhere—and How AI Makes It Worse (Or Better)” - The full narrative arc with all three perspectives woven together

• LinkedIn posts (5 variations): Each highlighting one specific insight - Gab’s “100% of comms pros use AI but won’t admit it,” Sandy’s “AI First, Human Always” philosophy in practice, Megan’s stakeholder complexity framework

• LinkedIn newsletter: “The Career Development Crisis is Here” - Deeper dive with tactical advice for different career stages

• Email series (3 parts): Week 1: The structural problem. Week 2: The AI accelerant. Week 3: The solution framework. Each email drives to different takeaways from the synthesis

• YouTube/podcast clips: Gab on the agency-to-corporate jump, Sandy on addressing AI fear, Megan on expanding scope

ENSURE: Every variation maintains the core argument: The communications profession needs a new career architecture, AI isn’t optional, and leaders like Gab are building solutions while the rest of us pretend the old models still work. But the LinkedIn article speaks to mid-career professionals seeking validation, the email series speaks to executives considering how to develop their teams, and the social posts speak to people just discovering this perspective. Once the writing is done, I’ll check everything against my own ethical guidelines (I’ve codified them - have you?) to make sure whatever AI I’m using (hint: it’ll be Claude) hasn’t snuck something in that doesn’t belong.

REFINE: Before publishing the full LinkedIn article, I’ll share the core thesis with a small group: “We have three big problems: no career path, secret AI usage, and expanding scope. Which one hits hardest for you?” Their answers shape which insights lead, which examples resonate, and which calls-to-action actually drive behavior.

BOOST: This isn’t a one-week campaign. Week one: publish LinkedIn article and seed initial social posts. Week two: email series launches, referencing but not republishing the article. Week three: individual guest spotlights on LinkedIn, tagging Gab, Sandy, and Megan with specific insights. Week four: synthesis post showing how all three connect, inviting audience to listen to all three episodes. Each touch point pulls from a different angle, and each one drives people back to both the original episodes and the synthesis piece.

To be clear, my goal isn’t to generate volume. It’s to ensure that insights from three 60-minute conversations don’t disappear after one listen. When Gab talks about communications professionals being afraid to admit they need development, and Sandy talks about people using AI in secret, and Megan talks about roles expanding beyond what anyone was trained for—those aren’t isolated observations. They’re symptoms of the same structural problem. REVERB makes that connection visible.

From Invisibility to Inevitability

Invisibility has many causes, and not all of them respond to the same solution.

Some experts and executives (and expert executives) don’t realize that visibility is an option in the first place. They’ve spent careers executing, leading, advising, solving problems, but they genuinely don’t see themselves as thought leaders or creators. They don’t know they have the capacity to shape conversations in their industry. They don’t want to fade away, but they have no idea what to do or how to start. For them, the first step isn’t REVERB—it’s intellectual archaeology: exploring, rediscovering, and unearthing the expertise they don’t even realize they have.

Others chose invisibility deliberately. They never felt they needed to be seen and known. Their work spoke for itself. Their network was strong enough. Their reputation preceded them. That approach worked fine for decades. But the game has changed. The people making decisions about them—boards, investors, potential clients—are asking AI, searching Google, and checking LinkedIn profiles. Invisibility that used to signal gravitas now signals irrelevance. These people are starting to wonder if maybe visibility matters after all.

Then there are the ones who are already doing the work but remain invisible despite their efforts. They’re publishing, speaking, creating content—but something in their value chain is broken. Maybe multiple things. Their ideas might be solid, but their distribution model is obsolete. They’re still chasing traditional media placements while their audience has moved to podcasts and LinkedIn. Or maybe quality control has slipped—they’re producing so much content that nothing stands out, and the signal-to-noise ratio has collapsed. Or they’re operating on bad intel, convinced their thinking matches market demand when the disconnect is obvious to everyone but them. And sometimes it’s darker—ethical violations, platform violations, legal troubles that torched their credibility and made them radioactive.

REVERB doesn’t solve all of these problems. If you’re invisible because you violated trust or broke the law, no content transformation system will fix that. If you’re invisible because your ideas genuinely don’t match what the market needs, REVERB just amplifies the mismatch.

But if you’ve got the raw material—the expertise, the insights, the patterns that come from decades of real work—and you’re willing to do the intellectual archaeology to excavate it, then REVERB transforms how that material travels. It’s the systematic approach that comes after the excavation, the methodology that takes silent expertise and makes it reverberate across platforms, formats, and audiences.

One piece of content becomes six formats. Six formats become thirty distribution moments. Thirty moments become continuous presence. Continuous presence becomes recognition. Recognition becomes authority.

That’s content transformation. And transformation—not just resonance—is what defeats invisibility.

Want to dive deeper into the REVERB, framework for AI-enhanced content strategy? Reach out to me at dan@be-inquisitive.com for workshops and strategic guidance.

NOTES

This post is AI-assisted, but it’s 100% me.

• I’ve created, refined, field-tested, and taught the REVERB Framework. It’s mine, it works, and now I’d like to share it.

• Connecting REVERB to the podcast episodes emerged from my intellectual archaeology process: continuously analyzing episodes of The Trending Communicator through NotebookLM as they’re published, building an accretive knowledge base that reveals patterns, evolution, and opportunities.

• I used my own Executive Influence Engine, built out as a Claude Project. I fed the Dan Engine the insights from The Trending Communicator, REVERB Framework documentation, and extensive notes with additional thoughts on REVERB. Believe me, it was one hell of a prompt. The Engine gave me an incredible draft. I then refined the narrative flow, made necessary adjustments, iterated, and conducted the final edit. The POVs, ideas, and insights are mine – Claude helped me organize and articulate them.

A few months ago, I wrote about the Authority Gap—that frustrating chasm between possessing deep expertise and building the influence you deserve. The piece struck a nerve. Several of you, my Most Admired and Adored Readers, reached out with variations of the same question: "I get that my expertise alone isn't enough, but how can I make it work for me?"

My adventures with obsessive experimentation convinced me that most experts are sitting on mountains of intellectual property they've either forgotten about or dismissed due to fears of obsolescence. But even those who've started digging are accumulating raw materials that still need to be refined. The transformation of that material into consistent, compelling content is what bridges the authority gap.

In our fractured attention economy, the value of invisible expertise is precisely zero.

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The Expertise Paradox

Most seasoned professionals operate under a fundamental misunderstanding about how expertise creates value. We assume that competence leads to recognition, that quality work attracts the right attention.

This made sense in a different era. When industries were smaller, reputations traveled through tighter networks, and word-of-mouth reached the people who mattered.

That world doesn't exist anymore.

We're operating in an environment where everyone claims expertise. Where AI can generate so-called “thought leadership” in seconds. Where your potential clients are drowning in content, connections, and choices. Your expertise, sitting in your portfolio or buried in your archives, competes with louder voices who may have half your experience but twice your reach.

My friend Dr. Michael Netzley, neuroscientist, professor, and communications pro, recently wrote in his excellent Thrive After 45 Substack, "Your brain is your last unfair advantage in the age of AI." Amen to that. Your domain expertise IS your advantage. But only if you activate it through methodical approaches that transform dormant knowledge into visible authority.

Intellectual Archaeology: A Case Study with The Trending Communicator

I developed what I've taken to calling intellectual archaeology through deliberate experimentation with The Trending Communicator. The process started with feeding podcast transcripts into NotebookLM to see what patterns might emerge. What evolved was a methodology that I now apply with every new episode release.

Here's what 38 episodes represent in actual data: Over 40 hours of strategic conversations with industry leaders, approximately 285,000 words of transcribed content (roughly five or six books' worth), and insights from executives, authors, and founders whose combined audiences number in the millions. That's not a podcast archive—it's a proprietary research database that most consultancies would charge six figures to compile.

The intellectual archaeology process is straightforward: Upload transcripts. Apply analytical frameworks. Identify patterns. Extract insights. Build on findings. Repeat.

Through this approach, five meta-themes emerged across all episodes:

• The transformative impact of AI on communications

• The evolution of communicators into strategic business partners

• Building trust in an era of industrial-scale misinformation

• The enduring importance of human skills

• The imperative for adaptability in navigating chaos

But the analysis revealed even more valuable tidbits: 73% of guests independently raised the same three challenges without prompting: talent retention in communications teams, measuring influence versus impressions, and integrating AI without losing authenticity. That convergence isn't coincidence; it's market intelligence.

While individual episodes covered diverse topics, the analysis revealed connective threads that weren't apparent in isolation. Themes that appeared briefly in one conversation would resurface and deepen in another. Questions raised by one guest would be inadvertently answered by another three episodes later. Without this archaeological approach, these connections would have remained invisible.

The gaps were equally revealing. Zero episodes focused on the intersection of AI and crisis communications, despite being mentioned by 12 different guests as a critical concern. The role of intellectual property transformation in building executive influence was touched on but never explored. Addressing these gaps could become a competitive advantage.

Each pattern uncovered became fuel for new frameworks. Each connection sparked fresh content. Every insight became a potential LinkedIn post, every theme evolution suggested a Substack deep-dive, and every gap revealed workshop opportunities.

The ROI is measurable and compound. Patterns identified in early episodes informed questions for later guests. Frameworks that emerged from analysis became lenses for seeing new opportunities. The methodology itself became a differentiator in client conversations.

Why Most Experts Remain Invisible

For most experts, invisibility isn't a choice; they're trapped in patterns that guarantee it:

The Content Factory Trap: We're so busy creating new content that we never see the value in what we've already created. That strategy research from 2019? Those client presentations from last year? The email threads where you solved complex problems? All dormant assets that could inform visible and relevant thought leadership.

The Humility Trap: "My work should speak for itself." Noble sentiment, terrible strategy. In a room where everyone's shouting, whispering your expertise means it won't be heard.

The Platform Confusion Trap: Being everywhere but resonating nowhere. Posting sporadically across every platform without a methodical approach to building recognition. Instead of building visibility, you’re adding to the noise.

The Perfectionist Paralysis: Waiting for the "right" moment, the perfect piece, the ideal platform. Meanwhile, others with half your expertise but twice your consistency are becoming the recognized authorities in your space.

The people who most need to hear your point of view will never find you if you remain invisible.

Your Defense Against Professional Invisibility

The risk of becoming invisible is real. While we've been building careers on deep expertise and hard-won wisdom, our audiences have dispersed across platforms, channels have proliferated beyond counting, and a deluge of AI-generated content has flooded every feed.

We have to do something to make our knowledge stand out and rise above the noise.

These were my thoughts as I worked to mine my own knowledge from The Trending Communicator. What started as curiosity became increasingly methodical. I realized I was developing an approach to synthesizing insights from existing work. This intellectual archaeology taps into your domain expertise—your “last unfair advantage” —and lays the foundation for defending yourself against professional invisibility.

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The process I've developed follows five distinct steps:

1. Audit Your Archives: Not just your published content. Your presentations. Your proposals. Your email threads. Your meeting notes. Your workshop materials. All of it contains your thinking, your writing, and elements of your domain expertise.

2. Extract Core Patterns: What themes keep emerging across your work? What problems do you repeatedly solve? What questions do clients always ask you? These patterns are your unique intellectual signatures.

3. Identify Unique Points of View: What do you see that others miss? What connections do you make that seem obvious to you but revolutionary to others?

4. Create Connection Maps: How do disparate ideas in your expertise connect? What frameworks emerge when you link your various insights? This is where proprietary methodologies are born.

5. Build Your Narrative Architecture: Transform your excavated insights into a coherent story, not random posts. Create a progression that guides your audience from awareness to understanding to trust to action.

Start with last year's work. Use AI tools as exploration equipment before even thinking about generating content. Look for ways to apply what Adele Gambardella and Chip Massey call "forensic listening" opportunities: those moments where you can analyze not just what was said or written, but what was meant, what was feared, what was hoped.

Transform your findings into frameworks. Make your implicit knowledge explicit. Turn your experience into systems others can follow.

The Compound Effect of Visible Expertise

When you unearth and share your intellectual property in a methodical, intentional way, something powerful happens. Each piece of made-visible expertise becomes a building block. Each insight you surface reinforces your authority. Each connection you make public demonstrates thought leadership others can't replicate.

Every day you don't make your expertise visible, you create narrative vulnerability—blind spots in your professional positioning that others fill with their interpretations, their assumptions, their competing narratives. Narrative vulnerability transfers your advantages to others, and your audiences—followers, fans, peers, and potential clients and employers—might just follow along.

That’s why visibility is so important. It may seem obvious that to solve an awareness problem, you should boost awareness. But when that awareness is tied to your domain authority, audiences come back and stick with you. Your visible thought leadership becomes the flag others rally around.

The progression is predictable:

1. Expertise alone = Invisible asset

2. Expertise + Visibility = Recognition

3. Recognition + Consistency = Authority

4. Authority + Community = Influence

Your domain expertise plus intellectual archaeology creates a competitive moat only you can own. Nobody else has your specific combination of experience, insight, and perspective. Nobody else can access your hidden intellectual property.

The best part of all this is that each discovery makes the next more valuable. The patterns you uncover in one dig inform the next. The frameworks you develop reveal new products and services. The insights you find lead to more insights and inspire further exploration.

Pick Up Your Digital Shovel

Every expert faces a choice: struggle to churn out new content while your best insights gather dust, or become the archaeologist of your own expertise.

Intellectual archaeology creates defensible differentiation. Anyone can create new content. Few can dig into decades of experience and knowledge and transform their discoveries into ideas that reshape industries.

Your past work contains untapped potential. The presentations, proposals, strategies, interviews, half-written books, videos, unpublished thought pieces—these dormant assets could be worth more than any new content you might create. What frameworks are hidden in your archives? What patterns would emerge if you analyzed your last five years of work?

Imagine what you will create with what you excavate. Start digging today.

Notes

This post is roughly 75% AI-assisted, but it’s 100% me.

• Ideas for this piece emerged from my intellectual archaeology process: continuously analyzing episodes of The Trending Communicator through NotebookLM as they're published, building an accretive knowledge base that reveals patterns, evolution, and opportunities.

• I used my own Executive Influence Engine, built out as a Claude Project. I fed the Dan Engine the insights from The Trending Communicator, extensive notes with my thoughts on invisible expertise, and precise guidelines. The Engine gave me an incredible draft. I then refined the narrative flow, made necessary adjustments, iterated, and conducted the final edit. The POVs, ideas, and insights are mine – Claude helped me organize and articulate them.

Struggling to be heard? Let’s uncover what’s holding you back with an Authority Assessment—reach out now.

Over the last few days, I lost time.

It happens. Sometimes I'm in The Zone for hours at a time; I forget to eat, my wife yells at me for missing lunch, and if it weren't for my dogs, I'd forget that "outside" even exists.

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This time, what started with some simple housekeeping took me down (and up) a path that led to a complete rehaul and upgrade of my prompting practices.

Here's what I mean by that.

The Great Prompt Roundup

I'd accumulated 79 prompts across various documents – some two sentences, others running 1,500 words. These are the backbone of my Executive Influence Engine, ranging from research prompts to the sophisticated frameworks Claude and I developed for individual and brand positioning. They lived scattered across different files, requiring the tedious dance of opening documents, copying text, switching applications, and pasting. You know the drill.

What happened next turned out to be a textbook example of my PLAY Framework in action.

For those unfamiliar, PLAY stands for Play Without Purpose, Look What Happened, Absolutely Useful, and Yes Let's Do This. It's a framework for discovering business innovation through AI exploration – starting with unfettered experimentation and progressing through documentation, practical application, and formal implementation.

Play Without Purpose: Just Getting Organized

I started with no grand vision. Just thought it would be nice to have everything organized in one place. So I used Claude to extract all the prompts, check them for consistency, and created what I thought was a beautiful, categorized library in Notion. Mission accomplished, right?

Wrong.

Look What Happened: The Real Friction Revealed

That's when the real discovery emerged. As I worked with the new library, I kept thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if I could just call these prompts from within Claude instead of all this cutting and pasting?" The friction was still there – just in a different form.

That "wouldn't it be great if" moment is where things got interesting.

Absolutely Useful: The Client Impact Connection

I realized this wasn't just about my convenience. This was about changing how efficiently I could serve clients. Those longer, more specialized prompts – the ones that might feel too cumbersome to copy and paste repeatedly – could become as accessible as the simple ones. The business value became clear: faster client work and the ability to use the most sophisticated tools in my arsenal.

Yes, Let's Do This: 12 Hours of Productive Obsession

What followed was 12 hours of methodical trial and error that felt like play.

Now before you read on, I want you to understand that coding always scared the hell out of me and I was more than happy I'd never have to do it. I've gone 25+ years without creating a JavaScript file on purpose. I've also survived this long without ever mucking around with my system directories and I can count on one hand how many times I've used a Command Prompt over the past year. Two days ago, I vaguely knew what an MCP was (thank you, Chris Penn), but didn't think I'd ever really need to know how it works.

Oh how things change.

I ditched Notion for Airtable when I realized I needed better API functionality. I built an Airtable MCP (Model Context Protocol) for Claude Desktop from scratch since no pre-built connection existed. I created a simple HTML app that turns any prompt into a one-click copy operation.

Now? I can say "Get me Prompt 25" in Claude Desktop and it pulls from my library. Even better, for complex prompts with placeholders, I can say "Get me prompt 129 and fill in all placeholders with the information in your Project Knowledge" and watch it populate.

The HTML app means I can see a prompt I want and click once – no more select-all, copy, switch applications, paste routine. Click, then Ctrl+V wherever I need it.

Why This Matters Beyond My Workflow

This is the PLAY Framework in its most practical form. What began without purpose – just wanting organized prompts – revealed friction I hadn't acknowledged. Recognizing the business value of eliminating that friction led to building something more sophisticated than I'd originally imagined.

But here's what makes this story relevant for anyone working in communications or leading teams through AI transformation: this wasn't just about making my life easier. Every improvement in my workflow benefits my clients.

Speed + Depth = Competitive Advantage

Speed matters when you're helping executives navigate complex positioning challenges or supporting communications teams racing against deadlines. But depth is equally important. Those longer, more specialized prompts that used to feel too cumbersome to access repeatedly? Now they're as easy to deploy as asking for the weather.

This means I can bring the full power of the Executive Influence Engine to every client interaction, regardless of time pressure. The 1,500-word strategic positioning prompt is now as accessible as the two-sentence research query.

Thinking, Systematically

The fractured landscape we're all navigating requires this kind of systematic thinking. AI isn't just about having tools – it's about creating workflows that amplify your expertise rather than creating new bottlenecks.

What I've learned through 25 years of building communications functions is that the most powerful transformations often begin with simple frustrations. The cutting and pasting that felt like minor friction was a barrier to delivering my best work.

Your Turn to Play

That's the real magic of the PLAY Framework. It starts with curiosity – what would happen if I organized these prompts? It progresses through discovery – wait, there's still friction here. It identifies practical value – this could transform how I work and boost productivity. And it culminates in implementation that exceeds the original vision.

For anyone building their own content creation tools or exploring AI integration in communications work, this experience offers a practical model. Start with the friction you experience daily. Let curiosity guide your initial experiments. Pay attention to what those experiments reveal about larger possibilities. Then build systems that transform those discoveries into sustainable competitive advantages.

The human in the loop isn't just about maintaining authenticity in AI-assisted work. It's about creating workflows where human expertise and AI capabilities amplify each other rather than compete.

What started as prompt organization became a productivity evolution. That's the power of structured play in an AI-augmented world.

Notes

This post is roughly 75% AI-assisted, but it’s 100% me.

Here's how I did it: I used my own Executive Influence Engine, built out as a Claude Project. I gave the Dan Engine the details about my adventure along with the ideas I wanted to cover, and the Engine gave me an incredible draft. I then refined the narrative flow, made adjustments as needed, and did a final edit.

The core experience and insights are mine – Claude helped me organize and articulate them.

Inspired by ’s recent blog post, “My All-Time Best Interviewer was an AI Bot,” I recently prompted Claude, my BFF, to interview me. But in my case, Claude took on the persona of a 1970s-era PR hack who’d just lost a few clients and was too busy kowtowing to newspaper editors to spend time with me. All of the questions are Claude’s. The answers are 100% mine.

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Our veteran PR correspondent – fresh from losing three clients last week and facing a punishing assignment between martini lunches – sat down with Dan Nestle to discuss his transition from corporate communications executive to AI-enabled communications consultant. What started as a begrudging interview turned into a fascinating exploration of authenticity, AI, and the future of executive influence.

Claude: Alright Nestle, you’ve got yourself on some PRWeek lists with this “Executive Influence Engine” business. Back in my day, we called that “making the boss look good,” but I suppose everything needs a fancy title these days. What’s all this really about? And don’t give me the corporate speak – I can smell BS from three martinis away.

Me: Look, I’m helping executives unlock what I call “sleeping assets” – all those speeches, articles, presentations, and insights that are gathering digital dust. Most leaders have decades of valuable thinking locked away in filing cabinets and hard drives. The Engine synthesizes and reimagines that content into fresh, strategic communications that sound authentically like them, but amplified.

Hold on there, sport. So you’re telling me that after 30 years of getting executives quoted in the right places at the right time, we now need a computer to do our jobs? This sounds like repackaged ghostwriting with shinier buzzwords.

Absolutely not. It’s smart repurposing – finding the golden threads that run through a CEO’s body of

work and weaving them into something that sounds fresh but carries all that accumulated authority. The AI acts like a research librarian with a PhD and an uncanny ability to adapt to your personality, voice, and style.

Look, I’ve got exactly 18 minutes before I need to cab it to the Four Seasons for my WSJ lunch. Give me a concrete example that doesn’t sound like every other consultant’s pitch deck. Take some stuffed-shirt CEO – what does this magic transformation actually look like?

Perfect example: I work with a CEO of a boutique management consultancy. She has two decades of acknowledged leadership, dozens of FastCo articles, hundreds of blog posts, video appearances. Strong POV on workplace transformation – and how AI is disrupting all of it. But she has no time and no experience in content strategy to deal with the fracturing of audiences and proliferation of channels.

So I set up the Engine for her. Now she uses it primarily to respond to the bevvy of articles and studies that come out every week in her field, providing her POV and advice on LinkedIn, her newsletter, and her blog. She also uses it to transform her POV into byline submissions and abstracts for publication. It’s working.

But here’s what I want to know, and this is where the rubber meets the road: How do you keep her from sounding like every other AI-assisted executive spouting the same regurgitated wisdom? Because the minute three CEOs start using this system and they all start sounding like variations on the same theme, the jig is up.

She doesn’t sound like any other exec because the engine uses her own content – her words, her frameworks, her conversations – as its foundational and operational sources. The extensive and proprietary frameworks that create system prompts and contextual instructions are filled with her information. It’s as unique as a fingerprint.

But here’s the crucial part: the human prompting AI for those drafts, reviewing them, and iterating until the draft is ready MUST BE a skilled communicator, editor, thinker, and writer. That’s me. I personally make sure the edge, the personality, the humanity is in the output. Then I provide it to my client and she’ll inject more of her own personality as she reviews and edits.

Now we’re cooking with gas, Nestle. You just described every executive’s wet dream – having a personal intellectual archeologist. But here’s my real question, and I can already hear my editor from the Journal calling: Results. Not the feel-good “it’s working” nonsense. Hard numbers. Is this CEO getting more speaking gigs? Better bylines? Is her phone ringing with opportunities that weren’t there before?

I can’t reveal my client’s specific successes yet because this is all so new. But I can tell you she’s rapidly increasing her engagement, increasing her media appearances – including podcast interviews – and her discoverability is sure to follow. The engagement and media appearances are the right leading indicators. Any fool can buy followers or manufacture buzz, but if she’s getting invited to more tables where real conversations happen, that’s the real deal.

Well, I’ll be damned. You just described what we used to call a “ghost with a brain.” So you’re telling me this isn’t some cookie-cutter content mill churning out vanilla executive-speak. This is more like having a research assistant who’s memorized everything your client has ever written, absorbed their thinking frameworks, and can draft in their voice – but you’re still the maestro conducting the orchestra.

Exactly. The secret sauce isn’t the technology – it’s still the human judgment. I’m the one making sure her content sounds like it’s her. Compelling. Edgy. Smart and provocative when it needs to be. Not some generic, written-by-committee, AI slop.

What happens when this goes mainstream? When every Fortune 500 CEO has their own influence engine humming away? Do we end up with better discourse, or just more sophisticated noise?

Every exec already has access to multiple tools and bright people can put something similar together. But it doesn’t really matter because of the uniqueness of the engine for each person. Authenticity is baked in, but it won’t become a commodity because if someone has been inauthentic so far, the Engine won’t make them suddenly authentic.

And I think it’s fair to say that if quality content spreads, that’s good for everyone – better content equals better information equals better decisions.

That’s a refreshingly honest answer. “If someone’s been inauthentic so far, the Engine won’t make them suddenly authentic.” But what about the bigger picture – better discourse or just more sophisticated noise? Because if you’re wrong about this “better content equals better decisions” theory, you might be contributing to the problem instead of solving it.

If this goes mainstream, we get better discourse. But sure, we also get noise. The engine can’t turn years of garbage into a rose garden – it’s not a compost engine – but it can help those execs see that they’ve been peddling crap and now have the chance to offer something real and compelling.

In the end, audiences will decide.

“Audiences will decide” – now THAT’S the oldest truth in this business, wrapped up in new packaging! But let me ask you straight: Are you putting guys like me out of business, or making us more valuable than ever? Because if I’m being honest, this sounds like it could either kill my career or be the best thing that ever happened to it.

More valuable than ever. Because what I’m describing requires exactly what you’ve been doing for decades – understanding what makes compelling content, knowing how to maintain authentic voice, and having the editorial judgment to know when something works and when it doesn’t.

The AI can help us work faster and more systematically, but it can’t replace the strategic thinking and communications expertise that separates professionals from amateurs. If anything, it makes those skills more valuable because now they can operate at scale.

Any final thoughts for communications professionals who are still skeptical about AI?

Start with one AI tool and experiment smartly. Don’t try to replace everything at once. Use the “human in the loop” approach – let AI assist, but maintain your strategic oversight and editorial judgment.

The goal isn’t to automate communications – it’s to amplify the expertise and authenticity you already have. The future belongs to those who can harmonize AI capabilities with uniquely human skills like strategic thinking, authentic storytelling, and ethical judgment.

Curiosity is our greatest superpower in this new landscape. Stay curious, experiment intelligently, and remember – the technology should serve your strategy, not the other way around.

The Executive Influence Engine helps senior executives transform their accumulated expertise into systematic market authority through Dan’s proprietary WAVE System framework. Learn all about it here.

Let me start by beating a long-deceased horse: it's getting harder and harder to reach our fractured audiences. We're spinning (in the overwhelmed sense, not the lying-and-obfuscation sense), exhausted from chasing too many tails.

This reality hits accomplished professionals particularly hard. Decades of experience, proven frameworks, and genuine insights—none of it seems to matter when you can't break through the noise (or, as I recently put it, it's tempting just to lie down and let your career die). Whether you're building your own authority, representing clients, or advancing brand visibility, the challenge and frustration remain the same: deep knowledge that somehow fails to translate into meaningful influence and recognition.

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This isn't about inadequate expertise. The gap lies between possessing knowledge and systematically building authority in an environment where everything shifts constantly—audience behaviors, information consumption patterns, platform algorithms, even basic assumptions about how attention works. Traditional approaches to visibility that worked for years now produce inconsistent results at best.

The professionals who successfully navigate this chaos understand something crucial: expertise alone, no matter how deep or well-documented, isn't going to cut it. They've recognized that the rules of visibility and influence have fundamentally changed, requiring new approaches to convert knowledge into systematic authority.

Before we go any further, I have no doubt many of you, my dear, brilliant, perspicacious Readers, might be thinking that this sounds a lot like building a personal brand. In a way, it is. It's no secret I'm a Mark Schaefer devotee and chum, and he has absolutely influenced and shaped my thinking and approach. I'm about to drive down a more Dan-specific road, though you may hear faint whispers of the Known audiobook (get it, by the way) playing in the background.

Why Earned Attention Isn't Enough

When we talk about Earned Attention in communications, we're addressing a real problem: the shift from meaningless vanity metrics to behavioral indicators that actually demonstrate audience engagement. It's a significant improvement over traditional media relations focused on potential reach rather than actual impact.

But here's what I've learned from working with communications leaders: Earned Attention solves the measurement problem without addressing the bigger strategic challenge. You can successfully earn attention, generate quality engagement, and even drive behavioral responses while still failing to build the systematic authority that creates a lasting competitive advantage.

The issue is that attention, even high-quality, earned attention, is ephemeral. Without a systematic approach to converting that attention into something more durable, you're essentially running on a content creation treadmill: constantly producing new material to maintain visibility without building cumulative influence.

The Expertise Paradox That's Costing You Authority

Let's say you've developed sophisticated frameworks through years of implementation. You've documented case studies that demonstrate proven results. You've gained insights from navigating complex challenges that could genuinely help others avoid costly mistakes.

Yet someone with a fraction of your expertise but a more systematic approach to influence building is becoming the recognized authority in your space.

This happens because most professionals treat their intellectual property as static assets rather than the foundation for dynamic authority building. Your presentations, methodologies, and documented insights represent years of valuable work that could be generating an ongoing competitive advantage, but only if you approach influence-building systematically and methodically.

hit this from a corporate angle in our conversation last year, but the lesson is universal: "If you're writing content that's easily approved by legal, you're going to be gone. You've got to start reaching into more communications that can't be ignored, that cannot be commoditized." The professionals building real authority understand that expertise alone isn't sufficient. You need what Mark calls "grit, a little crazy and a lot of audacity" to break through in today's saturated landscape.

From Attention to Authority: A Strategic Progression

The progression from attention to lasting influence follows a predictable pattern (a WAVE, if you will) that most professionals never fully implement:

Win Attention through insights that are genuinely differentiated from the generic content flooding every platform. This isn't about viral moments; it's about consistently delivering perspectives that people begin to expect and seek out.

Achieve Visibility by building a strategic presence where your target audiences make decisions. This means understanding not just where to publish content, but how to ensure your expertise becomes familiar and trusted in the right circles.

Validate Trust through transparent demonstration of authentic expertise. As Gini Dietrich emphasizes, "You can't spin, you can't lie, you can't be unethical, you have to be extraordinarily transparent and authentic." This means sharing failures alongside successes, admitting when you're uncertain, and consistently delivering what you promise.

Establish Influence by creating authority that shapes industry conversations and influences actual decision-making. This is where your expertise translates into business outcomes: speaking opportunities, strategic partnerships, and premium positioning.

Most professionals get stuck somewhere between attention and visibility, generating engagement without converting it into systematic authority. But as Gini Dietrich notes about strategic communications: "It's not a list of tactics. You can't just pull tactics from each media type and call it the PESO Model. It's really about an integrated model that's measurable, and it's measurable to the things that executives care about."

The Content Intelligence Opportunity

What if instead of constantly creating new content from scratch, you could systematically transform your existing expertise into authority-building assets? What if your accumulated intellectual property — your frameworks, case studies, methodologies, and insights — became the foundation for systematic influence?

Approaching your content as a researcher or data scientist would be a good start. Treating your existing content as a source of insights — a repository that can be mined for data, quotes, proof points, and more — would yield the intelligence you need to fuel transformation.

The reality is your most powerful content already exists. The challenge isn't creating more material but systematically enhancing and deploying what you've developed. And here's where AI becomes genuinely helpful: tools like NotebookLM can analyze patterns across your existing work, identifying themes and insights you might have forgotten, and LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude can help you shape those insights into virtually any content type. But the enhancement and strategic deployment still require human intelligence.

Whether you're a C-suite executive, business owner, founder, department head, consultant, or practice leader, if you've accumulated substantial expertise through your professional experience, odds are that you have intellectual property that could be generating significantly more influence than it currently does.

Authenticity in an AI-Saturated World

Mark Schaefer's warning resonates throughout every industry conversation I have: "Every communicator out there is going to be fighting against this pandemic of dull." In a world increasingly saturated with AI-generated content, authenticity becomes your sustainable competitive advantage.

Park Howell captures this perfectly: "In a world drowning in AI-generated content, being genuinely, unapologetically human might just be your secret weapon." While AI can help enhance and systematize your content creation, the underlying expertise and perspective must remain genuinely yours.

The professionals who understand that using AI can amplify their authentic expertise rather than replace it will capture disproportionate authority in their domains.

Building Authority That Brings People Along

Here's what many professionals miss about building authority: it's not just about demonstrating your expertise; it's about creating a connection with your audience throughout the journey. Kate Bullinger's insight from organizational change applies directly: "Change can't happen if you don't bring the humans along for the journey."

Simply broadcasting your knowledge isn’t enough and won’t build trust with your audience. Systematic authority-building helps you meet audiences where they are, consistently and authentically. Aided by AI but directed and managed by humans, a systematic approach encourages and involves your audience, helping them understand your frameworks, experience your methodologies, and participate in your intellectual development. Your expertise becomes more influential when people feel connected to your thinking process, not just impressed by your conclusions.

Smart Experimentation Over Hope

Systematic influence-building operates on compound principles rather than individual content performance. Each insight you share reinforces your established positioning. Each framework you introduce builds on your documented expertise. Each piece of authentic content advances your specific authority rather than generating random engagement.

This creates a sustainable competitive advantage because while competitors can copy your tactics, they cannot replicate your intellectual DNA or the authentic authority that comes from your actual experience and expertise.

Compare this to the typical content approach, where each piece stands alone, hoping to generate enough engagement to justify the effort without building toward larger strategic objectives.

Practical Implications for Strategic Leaders

If you're serious about converting expertise into systematic authority, consider these strategic questions:

1. Intellectual Property Audit: What frameworks, methodologies, and insights have you developed that could serve as the foundation for systematic authority building? Most professionals have significantly more valuable content than they realize.

2. Authority Assessment: Where do you currently stand in the progression from attention to influence? Are you successfully earning attention but struggling to convert it into lasting authority?

3. Strategic Integration: How could AI tools help you systematically enhance and deploy your existing expertise rather than create generic content that could come from anyone?

4. Influence Objectives: What would systematic authority building look like in your specific domain, and who are the audiences you need to influence to achieve your business objectives?

The Competitive Reality We Can't Ignore

Park Howell's observation cuts to the heart of the strategic choice every professional faces: "Everything is accelerating around us and those that are dragging behind are going to lose out." The professional landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by AI capabilities, changing information consumption patterns, and increasing demand for authentic expertise amid content overload.

Leaders who understand how to convert their expertise into authority will create significant competitive advantages. The question isn't whether you have sufficient expertise to build authority (chances are, you have more valuable intellectual property than you realize). The question is whether you'll continue treating content creation as episodic attention-seeking or begin approaching it as a dynamic, systematic influence-building engine.

What would change if you could activate your accumulated expertise, rather than leaving it archived and gathering digital dust?

The answer might determine whether you capture the influence your expertise has earned or watch others claim the market position that should naturally flow from your knowledge and experience.

From Random Acts of Content to Strategic Authority

You can hope for authority and influence, or you can methodically, systematically, and deliberately build it. The key is to treat your expertise as a holistic body of work that serves as the foundation for creating new, reimagined, and relevant content.

Your frameworks, case studies, methodologies, and insights represent a significant intellectual investment. The strategic question is whether that investment will continue to generate random engagement or start building a systematic competitive advantage.

The choice, and the competitive consequences, are entirely yours.

These observations emerge from working with leaders across industries who are navigating the intersection of expertise, technology, and systematic authority building in an increasingly complex professional landscape. The insights from Mark Schaefer, Kate Bullinger, Park Howell, and Gini Dietrich reflect conversations on The Trending Communicator podcast: a perfect example of how systematic content transformation works. One conversation becomes the foundation for strategic analysis, actionable insights, and ongoing authority building across multiple platforms.

Notes

This post is AI-assisted, and roughly 75% of the content is AI-generated. Here’s how I did it:

• The ideas around operationalizing, or taking a systematic approach, to building authority are 100% mine and based on my work, experience, and previous writings.

• The WAVE Framework is also my creation, although I used Claude and ChatGPT to create the visualization.

• I used Google Notebook LM to pull together quotes and insights from guests of The Trending Communicator to gather insights about building authority with content. All of the quotes in this article are from The Trending Communicator transcripts.

• I used the Dan Nestle Content Engine Project I had already set up in Claude to draft newsletter content and gave it the outputs I had just generated on Notebook LM. I went through multiple iterations, adjusting prompts and adding reference content along the way

• I cut and pasted the text into Substack, edited the copy, added in the hyperlinks, and then generated images using Midjourney.

This morning, my inbox welcomed me with the usual onslaught of newsletters, LinkedIn versions of those newsletters, updates from the dozen or so news outlets that FOMO’d me into signing up over the past two decades, and no less than six messages from fitness gurus informing me I’d better get the latest supplement, without which I would surely wither and decline into a low-energy, overweight, unfocused, achy, and depressed blob.

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I started swiping and tapping. Thumb to the left, tap the garbage pail. Repeat. I usually continue until my unread emails are visible without needing to scroll, or until something diverts me from the task.

Like today, when this little subject-line teaser from the terrific (though often deleted) TLDR Marketing newsletter was powerful enough to stop my thumb mid-descent:

The Attention Equation 👀

Many or most of you, dear readers, have read or heard my musings on the state of media relations and the need for a new, audience-first approach. I wrote that communicators—and their employers—should stop chasing media-hit-highs, and instead focus on connecting with their audiences. I argued that we should bid farewell to “earned media” and say hello to “earned attention.”

So I just had to check out this Attention Equation item. The TLDR Newsletter sent me to a new report from none other than McKinsey, the Finest Collection of Minds the Universe has Ever Known, who, it turns out, have gone ahead and done my work for me in their latest report, The ‘Attention Equation’: Winning the Right Battles for Consumer Attention. Thank you, McKinsey, for coming around.

Allow me to share with you all the highlights of the report and how McKinsey has validated my thinking (and we all know how much I crave validation).

McKinsey, meet Earned Attention. Earned Attention, McKinsey.

A few months ago, I took a swing at the sacred cow of Media Relations, arguing that our profession's obsession with traditional media placements was not just outdated—it was actively harmful to our strategic objectives. The response was... illuminating. Some of you cheered, others threw virtual tomatoes, and many asked the perfectly reasonable question: “OK Dan, but where's the data?”

Now I can say, just ask McKinsey. And frankly, it's remarkable how closely their findings align with what we've been experiencing in the trenches of the communications profession.

To refresh your memory, here's what I argued just a few months ago:

“Earned Attention reflects the current landscape: Media Relations is problematic in part because it’s focused on an increasingly undefinable, fractured, and dying category. Shifting to a broader attention-based approach brings multiple forms and formats of earned content into account.”

And on measurement:

“Attention, however, is about the audience's response and behavior. If we focus on attention, we would measure engagement (clicks, shares, comments, etc.), dwell time (how long someone lingers on the article, watches a video, listens to a podcast, and so on), downloads, and other behavioral metrics.”

McKinsey just spent considerable resources proving exactly these points.

Masters of Strategy Discover What We Already Knew

McKinsey surveyed 7,000 consumers globally and discovered something that will shock absolutely no one in our field: not all attention is created equal. Their “attention equation” reveals that the quality of attention—driven by focus and intent—matters far more than the quantity of time spent consuming media.

Sound familiar? It should. This is exactly what I've been arguing about Earned Attention versus traditional Media Relations metrics.

While McKinsey focused on media monetization, their core insight applies directly to our communications challenges. They found that traditional commercial factors—platform sophistication, consumer value, industry structure—explain only about two-thirds of the variance in attention monetization. The other third? The quality of consumers’ attention, or what they call the “attention quotient.”

This is the missing piece that has eluded Media Relations for decades.

Focus and Intent: The Real Metrics That Matter

McKinsey's research identifies two critical components of valuable attention:

Level of Focus: How actively engaged people are with content. Their findings are fascinating:

• In-person experiences elicit the highest levels of focus

• Books engage audiences at levels comparable to live experiences (81% vs. 71-88%)

• Console and PC gaming is the only digital medium approaching live-event focus levels

• Even within the same medium, focus varies dramatically between platforms

Job to Be Done: Why people consume content, ranging from “to enjoy something I love” to “for background ambience.”

This framework demolishes the foundation of traditional Media Relations metrics. Why care about “potential reach” when we now understand that focused attention correlates directly with audience behavior? McKinsey found that a 10% increase in average focus translates to a 17% increase in consumer spending.

The Fractured Landscape Gets Data

I think I say “fractured landscape” or “fractured audiences” so often that it’s becoming a catchphrase (note to self: stop, find some new words). But I say it because it’s true, and McKinsey provides the numbers to back this up. They document an explosion in content volume—50 times more amateur uploaders than professionals on Spotify, 25,000 times more content produced on YouTube than traditional TV networks—while total consumption time has barely grown.

The result? What they call “the distracted state of consumer attention.” Americans now spend an average of 13 hours a day engaging with media, but much of it is fragmented, multitasking, and low-quality attention.

This fragmentation is exactly why our traditional Media Relations approach has become so ineffective. We’re fighting for scraps of distracted attention in an overcrowded marketplace while missing opportunities for focused, intentional engagement.

As I wrote in October: “Sometimes (I’d argue most of the time), pursuing a traditional Media Relations approach simply doesn’t align with business strategy... With an audience-centric, attention-driven approach, we would choose a variety of high-relevance, high-resonance channels, secure more earned opportunities with less time and money, and make changes on the fly to adjust to changing business needs.”

The Earned Attention Advantage

Here’s where McKinsey’s research validates the Earned Attention approach I've been advocating:

1. Audience-Centric Measurement Works: Their attention equation demonstrates that behavioral metrics—engagement, dwell time, actual audience response—predict success far better than vanity metrics like potential reach or, heaven forbid, AVE. This is precisely what Earned Attention measures.

2. Quality Beats Quantity: McKinsey found that “super users” (high consumption) aren't necessarily “super spenders” (high value). Only one-third of the top 10% of media consumers are in the top 10% of media spenders. But attention quality bridges that gap; focused consumers are significantly more likely to spend.

3. Platform-Agnostic Strategy is Essential: The report reveals huge variations in monetization across media formats, from $32.54 per hour for sporting events to $0.05 for podcasts. But here’s the key: the most successful media companies aren’t wedded to single formats. They optimize for attention quality across multiple channels.

This supports the Earned Attention approach of seeing “the earned media universe as an ever-growing concatenation of audio, video, social, traditional, and TBD channels” —a phrase I wrote months ago that McKinsey would, if they knew I existed, love. Maybe I should add “Futurist” back into my LinkedIn profile.

Three Consumer Segments That Should Reshape Your Strategy

McKinsey identified seven consumer segments, but three stand out as particularly valuable for communications professionals:

Content Lovers (13% of consumers): The entertainment omnivores who spend 2.4x more money and consume 1.7x more content than average. They’re curious, passionate, and love to discover new things. These are your thought leadership audiences.

Interactivity Enthusiasts (16% of consumers): They prefer interactive content over passive consumption, love video games and sports, and despite finding the media landscape confusing, they’re eager consumers. These are your webinar and interactive content audiences.

Community Trendsetters (10% of consumers): Extroverted tastemakers who drive online culture and fandom. They enjoy advertisements more than any other segment and tend to over-index their spending on their interests. These are your social media amplifiers.

Of the three, maybe you’ve got a shot at reaching the Content Lovers through traditional media. But reaching them doesn’t mean they’re paying attention to you. Sure, they might enjoy or hate-read the Times or WSJ every day, but when was the last time a Tier-1 media pitch appealed to their curiosity, passion, and love of discovery?

What This Means for Your Communications Strategy

McKinsey's research provides a roadmap for the Earned Attention approach:

1. Stop Chasing Vanity Metrics: If a 10% increase in focus correlates with 17% more spending, why are we still measuring potential impressions? Start tracking engagement depth, dwell time, and behavioral responses.

2. Invest in High-Attention Channels: The data reveals significant disparities in attention quality across various formats. Books, console gaming, and live events command premium attention. How can you create content that delivers similar focus levels?

3. Understand Your Audience's “Job to Be Done”: Are your stakeholders consuming content “for education and information” (like podcasts and newspapers) or “to enjoy something they love” (like books and live events)? Match your content strategy to their intent.

4. Build Platform-Agnostic Approaches: The most successful media players optimize across multiple channels rather than betting everything on one format. Your Earned Attention strategy should similarly diversify across platforms based on where your audience pays focused attention.

The AI Acceleration Factor

Here’s something McKinsey doesn’t emphasize but we must: AI is accelerating this transition. While they mention AI’s role in content creation, they underestimate how quickly AI will automate the traditional Media Relations process.

As I noted in my original piece, tools like PRophet, Muck Rack, and Agility PR are already handling press release creation, pitch writing, and media monitoring. This automation will only improve, making traditional Media Relations even more commoditized and less valuable.

But AI also creates opportunities for Earned Attention strategies. We can now:

• Analyze attention patterns across platforms in real-time

• Optimize content for focus and engagement using behavioral data

• Personalize content for different audience segments at scale

• Track true ROI through behavioral metrics rather than vanity metrics

The Path Forward: Frameworks for the Attention Economy

McKinsey’s research validates what many of us have been experiencing: the traditional Media Relations playbook is broken. But their data also provides a blueprint for something better.

Earned Attention isn’t just a theoretical framework—it’s a data-driven approach that aligns with how audiences actually behave in our fractured media landscape. It focuses on quality over quantity, behavior over impressions, and strategic alignment over arbitrary placements.

But how do you actually implement this shift? Two frameworks can help guide your transition:

• The PESO Model©: Gini Dietrich’s PESO Model©—integrating Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media—provides the perfect structure for implementing Earned Attention strategies. As I noted in my previous piece, “Earned Attention subsumes Media Relations anyway,” and PESO gives you the framework to orchestrate attention across all channels rather than fixating on traditional earned media placements.

• The REVERB Framework (Coming Soon): I’ve been developing a systematic approach to content transformation that I call REVERB—a methodology for reimagining, enhancing, varying, ensuring consistency, refining, and boosting content across multiple channels to maximize attention value. This framework helps communicators extract maximum attention from every piece of content they create, turning single assets into comprehensive attention-generating campaigns. I’ll be diving deep into REVERB in upcoming posts, but the core principle aligns perfectly with McKinsey’s findings: optimize for attention quality across multiple touchpoints rather than hoping for a single “hit.”

The question isn't whether this transition will happen. McKinsey's research makes clear that attention quality drives real business outcomes, and smart organizations will optimize for it. The question is whether you’ll lead this transformation or get left behind.

As I said before: it’s time to stop the madness and embrace the data. The consultants have finally caught up to what we’ve been living through. Now let’s use their research to build something better.

What do you think? Does McKinsey's research change how you view the Media Relations vs. Earned Attention debate? I'm curious to hear from both the converts and the skeptics. Drop a comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And if you haven't already, subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast for more insights on navigating this chaotic, AI-powered communications landscape.

Notes

This post is roughly 60% human-created and thoroughly AI-assisted. Here's how I did it:

• I used Google NotebookLM to extract and synthesize my previous work on Earned Attention

• I worked with my preset Claude Project (called The Dan Nestle Content Engine, contact me if you want to learn about it) to analyze the McKinsey report, synthesize the findings with my previous work on Earned Attention, and draft the newsletter

• Grammarly chimed in for style and grammar assistance

• The hero image was generated using Midjourney

Want to dive deeper into the ECHO, REVERB, and PLAY frameworks for AI-enhanced content strategy? Reach out to Inquisitive Communications for workshops and strategic guidance.

Let’s reflect for a moment. We’ve been talking about a mindset shift for the better part of two years. Or at least I have. And sure, I’ve seen some forward-thinking leaders get behind the idea that we can’t treat AI like any other technology—we have to change the way we think, forget about traditional “click here, select the seventh dropdown category, enter your case-sensitive 64-character project code in the dialogue box, check those two boxes, make sure to toggle the thingy, then click save” approach to software training.

But so far, not much has changed. We still approach AI like a piece of novel software, a Word upgrade, a solution looking for a problem.

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I know this is true because patterns that could be and should be interrupted still hold so many of us in their clutches. Take planning, for instance.

We all know how communicators and marketers love to plan. Oh, how we strategize. Think things through. You know it’s true—I’ve got a few gigabytes of PowerPoint files to prove it.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if right at this very moment, you’re crafting careful implementation plans for technologies that defy careful implementation. Perhaps you’re demanding case studies for applications that barely exist. Or you’re designing elaborate governance structures for tools that will be obsolete before your policy document makes it through legal review.

Meanwhile, audiences fracture further and further each day. Channels multiply. Trust erodes. The media has forgotten about you. And you're still trying to solve these chaotic new problems with linear, orderly, old thinking.

What if there's a better way? One where we embrace the chaos rather than pretending we can beat it back into order?

When Did You Become So Afraid to Play?

"Having that curiosity at the forefront of everything you do is essential in today's world. Being adaptable and flexible as times change and things shift, not being married to the position you were in five or ten years ago, but being open to new things - that's how you discover breakthrough approaches." — Ashley Dennison

When was the last time you indulged your curiosity and explored without fear? When you tried things just to see what would happen? (Clarification for fellow Gen Xers: I’m talking about work; our personal bona fides are not in question.)

Somewhere along our professional journey, we developed an allergy to exploration. We started demanding certainty before experimentation. We began requiring clarity in an inherently foggy atmosphere. Planning, defining our boundaries and limits, became our signature achievement, imposing order, giving us those warm, cuddly, safe vibes.

But alas, AI parachuted in, outflanking our brilliant strategery. The most valuable AI use cases won't emerge from planning sessions. AI applications and novel solutions come from systematic exploration—from asking “I wonder if we could” rather than declaring “This is how we must.”

Look at how transformation actually happens. Did content marketing emerge from committee planning? Did social media strategy develop through staged implementation? Or did creators experiment, discover possibilities, and then formalize their findings?

They wondered. They chased ideas. They played.

PLAY: A Framework for Structured Exploration

I thought about this for what some might consider an unhealthy amount of time, and decided that what we really need is another framework. Yes, I see the contradiction in proposing yet another structure after I’ve been burning your eyes with an anti-planning screed. But bear with me.

The PLAY framework isn't just another methodology. It's an invitation to rediscover what made us effective: curiosity, exploration, and the courage to discover before others do.

Let's explore the four components that make PLAY such a powerful framework for discovery:

P - Play Without Purpose

This initial stage demands protected space for exploration without deliverables, ROI justifications, or artificial constraints.

"I would say it's really use it. Just play with it and get comfortable with it because the more you use it, the more you understand its value." — Gini Dietrich

This isn't innovation theater - it's recognizing that the most valuable applications of emergent technologies rarely match our preconceived notions. By exploring without immediate purpose, you discover capabilities and connections that goal-directed exploration systematically misses.

And let's be clear: this isn't about having an "innovation lab" where people play with tech demos. It's about giving communicators time to experiment with AI tools against their actual work challenges without demanding immediate practical applications.

L - Look What Happened!

The second stage transforms random exploration into strategic intelligence through systematic documentation and pattern recognition.

"Be an observer… We take in a lot of information. Something that I do a lot is I synthesize that and then I figure out, like, how that information is going to affect decisions that I make." — David Armano

While most organizations rush to implement their first discovery, the PLAY framework privileges observation over immediate application. This builds an intelligence advantage that methodical implementation can't match.

Key questions at this stage:

• What unexpected capabilities emerged during exploration?

• What patterns connect different discoveries?

• Which findings challenge our assumptions about what's possible?

• Where do these capabilities intersect with our communications challenges?

A - Absolutely Useful

The third stage bridges exploration and application by connecting experimental findings to specific communications challenges. This is where strategic assessment determines which discoveries warrant further development.

"Be experimental, but, like, strategically experimental in the sense that in order to solve a problem. Right. So I would say start trying to think of the problems you have and research ways that AI could possibly help you solve them." — Kami Huyse

Critical questions include:

• Which seemingly intractable communications problems might this new capability solve?

• How might this discovery transform our approach to audience engagement?

• What competitive advantage could this create that traditional approaches can't match?

• Which discovery has the highest potential impact relative to implementation difficulty?

Y - Yes, Let's Do This!

"We're all learning alongside ourselves, together, and at the same time building the use cases…across our business services functions, which is inclusive of finance and marketing and comms and human capital, and really learning what was working and what wasn't..." — Megan Noel

The final stage transforms validated discoveries into formalized methodologies, client offerings, or internal processes. This includes:

• Developing implementation frameworks that scale the discovery

• Creating training that enables broader organizational adoption

• Building measurement approaches that demonstrate impact

• Establishing the discovery as a competitive advantage

Imagining PLAY in Action: Potential Communications Breakthroughs

How can communications teams apply the PLAY framework to innovate and invent? While these examples are hypothetical, think of them as the kinds of discoveries that can happen when we shift from implementation to exploration.

The Narrative Vulnerability Detector

Play: Imagine a crisis communications team feeding years of negative media coverage about their industry to various AI systems, experimenting with different prompting approaches without preconceived outcomes.

Look: During exploration, they notice certain AI responses consistently identify potential reputation threats that their human analysts and monitoring tools typically overlook, particularly emerging narrative patterns that haven't yet reached mainstream attention.

Absolutely Useful: This capability could transform crisis preparedness by revealing blind spots in traditional scenario planning and identifying emerging issues before they gain traction.

Yes, Let's Do This: The team could develop a "Narrative Vulnerability Framework" that regularly scans for emerging reputation threats, giving them advance warning of issues that competitors might miss until they've already gained momentum.

The Content Connector

Play: Picture a marketing team experimenting with NotebookLM, feeding disconnected pieces of existing content into the system and asking it to identify non-obvious connections and themes.

Look: Through documentation and pattern recognition, they begin to see how certain prompting approaches reveal thematic connections and content opportunities hidden within their existing assets.

Absolutely Useful: This capability could address the perpetual challenge of generating fresh content while maintaining message consistency across channels.

Yes, Let's Do This: The team could formalize a "Content Archaeology" methodology that systematically uncovers new value in existing content investments, extending their usefulness and strengthening narrative consistency.

The Audience Intelligence Accelerator

Play: Consider a strategy team experimenting with feeding social listening data into Claude, asking it to generate speculative audience personas based on conversation patterns, without any predetermined format or outcome.

Look: Through systematic exploration, they might discover prompting approaches that reveal audience motivations and segments that traditional research methods consistently miss.

Absolutely Useful: This capability could address the fundamental challenge of developing messages that resonate with increasingly fragmented audience segments.

Yes, Let's Do This: The team could develop a "Generative Audience Intelligence" approach that complements traditional research, potentially uncovering insights that lead to more relevant, resonant messaging across channels.

Getting Started Isn’t Hard

"I just, I follow the rabbit holes and that's kind of what I think is the joy of being a human... And the secret is to stay curious." — Emanuel Rose

Chances are, you’re already spending time in play mode. Next time you’re “just messing around” with AI—creating an action figure of yourself, a 3-second video of cats with hats, or trying out Deep Research to see if it knows about you (it does)—pause for a moment. Ask yourself if you’ve learned anything new, and when your answer inevitably comes back in the affirmative, congratulations, you’ve made a great start. But how can you implement PLAY at work?

Start Small but Significant

• Schedule bi-weekly "exploration sessions" (an hour or two) with your team

• Begin with one AI tool and one specific content challenge

• Document findings in a simple, shareable format

• Connect discoveries to existing priorities to demonstrate relevance

Build Your Discovery Infrastructure

• Create a system for capturing and sharing discoveries

• Develop an assessment framework for evaluating potential applications

• Establish pathways to move promising discoveries toward implementation

• Build a case study from your first success to justify expansion

Reframe Your Conversation

• Redefine "efficiency" to include discovery of better approaches

• Position exploration as risk mitigation in a changing environment

• Document innovations that emerged from exploration, not planning

• Calculate the opportunity cost of delayed innovation

Play in the Sandbox, don’t Bury Your Head in it

There's a couple different camps of people. Different camps people typically fall into when they think about the future of our profession. And one of those camps is maybe more of like one that is defined by fear… There's fear of where things are going. There's fear of what AI is going to do. There's fear of the complexity of the world we're living in and what that means for people and companies and brands and those who work for all of them. Then there's another camp. Right. And that, and the defining characteristic of that is more around excitement. Right?… It's excitement about the increasing importance of communications and corporate affairs in the mix… And my one piece of advice to everybody is… Be in the excitement camp. — Jim O’Leary

Your ability to rapidly discover and deploy novel approaches isn't a luxury - it's survival.

Most organizations will continue their baby-steps approach to AI. They'll demand fully vetted use cases before exploration and ROI projections before experimentation. Maybe they’re just being cautious. Or maybe they’re paralyzed by fear of making mistakes, incurring the ire of their legal department, or taking risks that won’t pay off right away.

They'll watch in bewilderment as you develop capabilities they didn't know were possible.

The choice is yours: Lead through systematic discovery? Or keep a low profile and wait around for others to innovate?

The PLAY framework offers your path forward - a structured approach to exploration that bridges curiosity and strategic advantage.

The only question: Are you ready to play?

Is play—unfettered experimentation—part of your AI approach? If so, tell me how. Drop a comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And don't forget to subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast for more insights on navigating this wild, AI-powered world.

Notes

This post is AI-assisted, and roughly 60% of the content is AI-generated. Here’s how I did it:

• The core idea - the PLAY Framework - is 100% mine, and I used Claude to help me flesh out the steps and stages.

• I used Google Notebook LM to pull together quotes and insights from guests of The Trending Communicator to see what they thought about the PLAY Framework. All of the quotes in this article are from The Trending Communicator transcripts.

• I used the Project I had already set up in Claude to draft newsletter content and gave it the outputs I had just generated on Notebook LM. I went through multiple iterations, adjusting prompts and adding reference content along the way

• I cut and pasted the text into Substack, edited the copy, added in the hyperlinks, and then generated the hero image and one additional image using Midjourney.

• I then used ChatGPT to create the image of the PLAY Framework.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I'd get out of the shower, still dripping, and run to my desk in fear of forgetting the brilliant ideas that formed beneath the shampoo. I'd grab a pen and Post-It pad, jot down whatever I could remember, and put the sticky note on my monitor or my keyboard so I'd see it first thing in the morning. Then, in the morning, I'd look at my stroke of genius, and more often than not, I'd move the note aside - "just for now" - because I had serious work to do.

Months later, when I'd purge my desk of detritus, among the refuse would be dozens of sticky notes, long unstuck from wherever I'd put them, mostly forgotten, totally wasted.

Each of those notes started with a thought, an idea that likely began, "Wouldn't it be great if ...." Most faded away or perished because I didn't take the time to pursue them right away. Some just got blown off my desk by a breeze or vacuum cleaner exhaust, and some became convenient bookmarks.

I suppose it was inevitable when, a few months ago, my shower musings went a bit meta; as soon as the shampoo hit the scalp, I wondered, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a quick and painless way to explore my shower ideas or at least find out if they were worth pursuing?”

I repeated the question to myself for the rest of my rinse cycle and while I toweled off. I ran to my desk, still dripping, and instead of reaching for the pen and Post-Its, I clicked on the always-open tab for NotebookLM.

As it turns out, it would, indeed, be great.

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The Curiosity Trigger

I tell the shower idea story because it’s true, but also because we are all too quick to dismiss those seemingly random ideas that pop up when we can’t possibly write them down (most often when we’re in the shower, washing dishes, or driving). But now, with AI and just a few extra minutes, we can lock in some of those ideas and allow them to take root rather than leave them to the whims of 3M adhesive power and competing desk clutter.

"Wouldn't it be great if..." is a trigger for curiosity—a verbal spark that should ignite exploration but, for most professionals, results in nothing but a spectacular misfire. We've become masters of the thought experiment without the experiment—brainstorming transformative ideas in meeting rooms (and showers) only to file them away in favor of what we've always done. It's as if we've collectively decided that the question itself is a frivolous distraction, and we’re better off sticking with what we know.

No wonder we’re frustrated and stressed out. But we have much less reason to be: the barriers that once made experimentation difficult—cost, technical complexity, time constraints—have largely evaporated. AI tools have democratized capabilities that were once the exclusive domain of specialized teams with deep pockets. The excuses—and the conventional wisdom to “stay in your lane”—no longer hold water.

While we congratulate ourselves for our strategic thinking, many communications teams are searching for breakthrough results using approaches that have already yielded their maximum potential. There's rich territory just beyond our comfort zone, waiting to be explored by those bold enough to venture there.

The Experimentation Paradox

Communications professionals live in a fascinating contradiction: we present ourselves as innovation catalysts while often being the most change-resistant function in the organization. We've mastered the art of appearing forward-thinking while maintaining a death grip on approaches that should have been retired years ago. Our professional vocabulary itself reveals this tension—"best practices," "proven approaches," "industry standards"—terms that sound reassuringly strategic but often function as shields against meaningful experimentation.

When was the last time you genuinely questioned whether the content formats, channels, and metrics you've relied on for years still serve their purpose? Most of us are far more comfortable refining existing approaches than reimagining them entirely.

In a recent episode of The Trending Communicator, Martin Waxman offers a particularly insightful diagnosis of our professional psychology when he notes that "PR people, we've always been a little bit more cautious than our marketing counterparts...we often let that skepticism pull back our curiosity." What begins as healthy professional caution can evolve into reflexive resistance. What once protected us from genuinely bad ideas now insulates us from potentially transformative ones.

The skepticism that helped us avoid fleeting trends has become the very quality preventing us from recognizing fundamental shifts. We've become exceptionally good at identifying reasons why new approaches might fail while overlooking mounting evidence that our traditional approaches are already failing.

Martin isn’t alone. Trending Communicators from the frontlines are clear on the imperative for experimentation:

• Mark Schaefer cuts through the conventional wisdom with refreshing candor: "Literally my entire career has been built on just experiments, just pushing it here, pushing it there." This isn't hyperbole—it's a career philosophy that has consistently placed him at the forefront of communication innovation. While many of us refine the same approaches we've used for years, Schaefer has used experimentation as his primary competitive advantage.

• Pete Pachal highlights the transformative impact of AI when noting that it's "essentially altering what you might have done a couple of years ago." This isn't a gentle suggestion for incremental change; it's a recognition that the tools reshaping our profession require fundamentally new approaches. The carefully crafted playbook that served you well in 2022 might be rapidly losing relevance in today's landscape.

• Danny Gaynor offers a particularly insightful observation when noting that "AI can validate our intuition as communicators." Consider the implications: the gut instincts that once differentiated seasoned professionals can now be enhanced, validated, or usefully challenged by data-driven intelligence. This doesn't replace human judgment—it augments it—but only for professionals willing to integrate these new capabilities.

• Lisa Kaplan speaks with practical clarity: "I think it's table stakes to understand technology. It's automating the grunt work of our jobs." Her message is straightforward—time-consuming tasks that once filled your day can now be handled more efficiently through automation, freeing you for higher-value work. If you're still manually performing repetitive tasks that could be automated, you're missing opportunities for more strategic contributions.

The message seems pretty clear to me: adapt through meaningful experimentation or risk professional stagnation. And no, advocating for “AI integration” in meetings while you’ve stalled at using AI to edit your emails isn’t adaptation. It's professional theater that won't move the needle on results. The exciting opportunity before us isn't just survival—it's the chance to reinvent communications in ways that were previously impossible.

The Experimentation Spectrum: Where Do You Land?

Time for some self-assessment. Since everyone seems to love a good framework, I've created one—not to make you feel comfortable, but to help you understand your experimentation tolerance and what it means to your communications career. Consider it a professional development tool with, if I may be so bold, uncanny accuracy:

1. The Traditionalist: Still meticulously crafting press releases and polishing executive quotes while your competitors use AI-driven personalized content delivery systems, and audiences have moved to platforms and formats that demand entirely different approaches. You excel at what worked beautifully a decade ago but might be missing opportunities in channels where your audiences now spend their time. Growth path: Identify one new format or channel each week for purposeful experimentation.

2. The Toe-Dipper: Has dutifully signed up for ChatGPT and occasionally asks it to "make this better" but hasn't yet explored how AI might fundamentally change your content development process. Like someone who buys a digital sous vide cooker only to make your chicken breast more tender, you're using revolutionary tools for evolutionary results. Growth path: Dedicate an hour daily to testing how new tools might reshape your core workflows.

3. The Safe Experimenter: Follows clear guidelines for adopting new approaches but rarely questions the constraints themselves. You're making progress within carefully defined boundaries but might be missing breakthrough opportunities that lie just beyond them. You're innovating within the sandbox but never questioning whether you should be playing on the beach instead. Growth path: Regularly ask, "What if the constraints themselves are the problem?"

4. The Strategic Innovator: Designs purposeful experiments with clear metrics, embraces fast failure, and—crucially—challenges foundational assumptions rather than just refining tactics. Your experiments don't just aim to do the same things better but explore whether you should be doing different things entirely. Growth path: Build systematic processes to scale successes across your organization.

5. The Visionary Disruptor: Embodies Mark Schaefer's trinity of "grit, a little crazy and a lot of audacity." Creates content and approaches "so distinctive that AI can't duplicate it" because they emerge from uniquely human insight and creativity. You don't just experiment within existing paradigms—you periodically reinvent them. Growth path: Mentor others to build a culture of thoughtful experimentation.

Take a moment for honest self-reflection: Where do you fall on this spectrum? And perhaps more importantly—where would you like to be in 12 months? The path from wherever you are to wherever you want to be is paved with purposeful experimentation.

A Professional Pathology

Let's call the condition affecting many communications professionals what it is: experimentation hesitancy. The symptoms include enthusiastic discussions about innovation that rarely translate to action, animated head-bobbing during presentations about emerging technologies followed by business as usual, and the remarkable talent for repackaging conventional approaches as "strategic fundamentals."

The truth is, most of us aren't experimenting enough. I'm not experimenting enough. Our profession has tremendous untapped potential for innovation that remains largely unexplored. But unlike natural limitations, this innovation gap is entirely within our power to close.

Trending Communicators have prescribed treatment protocols that most of us studiously ignore:

• Strategic Experimentation: Kami Huyse advocates for an "Experiment. Experimental mindset." Focus on specific problems that traditional approaches haven't solved rather than aimless exploration. Which persistent communication challenges in your organization would benefit most from fresh approaches?

• Comfort with Ambiguity: Emily York emphasizes that "comfort with ambiguity...is going to be an increasingly important skill and agility." Experimentation requires psychological resilience to function effectively when outcomes aren't guaranteed. Are you deliberately building this muscle?

• Engineer Early Wins: Mark Schaefer offers practical wisdom: "It's not cheating to create a goal that you know you can make. If you create some hurdles that you know you can make with this pilot, then you have a positive story to tell the leaders." Design experiments with achievable early milestones to build credibility for more ambitious exploration.

• Data-Driven Validation: Danny Gaynor notes that AI can "provide that quantitative rationale for our recommendations." The best experiments are designed to measure specific outcomes, not just generate vague insights. Are yours?

• Create the Distinctive: Mark Schaefer challenges communicators to create content "so distinctive that AI can't duplicate it." The most valuable experiments push toward uniquely human insights and creativity rather than competing with algorithms at their own game.

Your Experimentation Activation Plan

The compelling truth isn't that experimentation is simply beneficial—it's becoming essential for continued professional relevance. This isn't a casual suggestion to consider adjustments when convenient—it's an opportunity to proactively shape your career trajectory rather than having it shaped for you.

Here's your experimentation jumpstart kit:

1. Design a Genuinely Different Experiment: Identify a persistent communications challenge and create an approach that feels uncomfortably different from your usual tactics. If your experiment doesn't make you at least slightly nauseated, it's probably not pushing boundaries enough to yield breakthrough insights.

2. Engineer Early Wins: As Mark Schaefer advises: "It's not cheating to create a goal that you know you can make." Build experiments with attainable initial milestones to gain the organizational support needed for more ambitious phases. Strategic planning isn't cheating—it's how you make experimentation sustainable.

3. Document Everything Objectively: The difference between experimentation and random attempts is methodical documentation. Record failures with the same rigor as successes—they often contain the most valuable insights. Analyze why things worked or didn't work rather than simply celebrating wins and burying losses.

4. Make Experimentation Routine: Schedule regular experimentation as deliberately as you do your other business processes. Commit to a consistent cadence—monthly or quarterly—rather than waiting for the perfect moment. Experimentation that depends on "when we have time" rarely happens at all.

Experiment with What You Already Have

Here's a radical thought that most communicators miss entirely: Some of your most valuable experimental material is already sitting in your archives, gathering digital dust.

The typical communications approach treats content like disposable packaging—create it, use it, discard it, repeat. We operate content factories churning out endless new material while ignoring the goldmine of existing assets that could be reimagined, repurposed, and redeployed with far greater ROI than yet another "fresh" blog post saying essentially what we've said before.

AI tools like NotebookLM have fundamentally altered this equation (remember my shower story from many, many paragraphs ago?). They've transformed the economics and possibilities of content archaeology—the systematic excavation, analysis, and revitalization of your existing content assets. This isn't about recycling old ideas; it's about applying new intelligence to discover insights, patterns, and opportunities that weren't visible when the content was originally created.

Consider the possibilities:

• Reimagination: That thought leadership series from 2019 contains kernels of insight that, viewed through today's market context, could spark an entirely new strategic narrative.

• Cross-pollination: Your product marketing content, analyzed alongside your crisis communications, might reveal unexpected messaging synergies that neither team would discover independently.

• Pattern discovery: Five years of quarterly reports, fed into the right analytical framework, might reveal narrative threads and thematic evolution that could inform your next strategic pivot.

• Knowledge maps: Your entire content corpus, properly analyzed, can generate comprehensive knowledge maps that expose gaps, redundancies, and untapped opportunities in your communications strategy.

The most underutilized resource in most communications departments isn't budget, talent, or technology—it's the intellectual equity already generated but never fully leveraged. AI now makes mining this resource not just possible but (after a short learning curve, some testing, and optimization) relatively effortless.

This approach doesn't merely make you more efficient (though it certainly does that). It fundamentally enables more ambitious experimentation because it reduces the perceived cost of innovation. When you can quickly analyze and repurpose what you've already created, you're free to take bigger swings with your new initiatives. The sunk cost of all that previous content creation suddenly becomes an asset rather than a write-off.

Would you rather be a content factory worker or a digital archaeologist? The difference might determine whether your communications function is seen as a strategic asset or a cost center.

(In case you missed it, I wrote about my own walk down the digital archaeology path—how I used NotebookLM to mine my podcast archives to create something entirely new. Check out the case study We Need to Talk About NotebookLM).

Choose Your Camp

It's easy to read something like this, nod in agreement, perhaps share it on LinkedIn with a thoughtful comment about "embracing innovation" (in fact, please go and do that right now, you know how much I appreciate you), and then return to our comfortable routines without changing our approach. The gravitational pull of "what we've always done" isn't just strong—it's woven into the organizational fabric of most communications functions.

But what if today was different? What if this was the inflection point where you decided that meaningful experimentation wasn't just for industry celebrities with personal brands strong enough to survive public failure, but for pragmatic communications professionals with quarterly goals, stakeholder expectations, and ambitions for genuine impact?

Trending Communicator Jim O'Leary frames this moment of choice brilliantly when he observes:

"…People typically fall into [different camps] when they think about the future of our profession. And one of those camps is… defined by fear...There's fear of where things are going. There's fear of what AI is going to do. There's fear of the complexity of the world we're living in and what that means for people and companies and brands and those who work for all of them. Then there's another camp...and the defining characteristic of that is more around excitement...excitement for what, you know, the machines and the robots are going to help enable versus take over... It's excitement about the increasing importance of communications and corporate affairs in the mix...And my one piece of advice to everybody is...Be in the excitement camp."

Next Time You Ask, “Wouldn’t It Be Great If?”

"Wouldn't it be great if" doesn't require funding or access to bleeding-edge technology. It requires the courage to question professional certainties, the humility to risk occasional failure, and the curiosity to test whether what we've always believed is actually true or merely organizational mythology we've inherited.

So here's my challenge: Before you close this newsletter (and give yourself a loving pat on the back for making it all the way to the end), identify one foundational communications certainty you've never questioned—then design an experiment specifically to test it. Your professional growth doesn't just benefit from this kind of experimental thinking—it may increasingly depend on it.

The future of communications belongs to those who see change not as a threat but as the most exciting professional opportunity of our time. Which camp will you choose?

Notes

This post is roughly 70% AI-generated. Here’s how I did it:

• I used Google NotebookLM to first pressure test the idea of experimentation based on a holistic review of The Trending Communicator podcast, then pull together quotes and insights from multiple podcast guests.

• I used the Project I had already set up in Claude to draft newsletter content and gave it the outputs I had just generated on NotebookLM. I instructed Claude to use my recent posts as a style guide and then prompted it to draft the article you see above. I went through 19 iterations, adjusting prompts, adding reference content, and editing within Claude’s environment along the way

• I cut and pasted the text into Substack, edited the copy further, added in the hyperlinks, and then generated the hero image using Midjourney.

  ---

Are you repurposing and reimagining your content with NotebookLM or other AI tools? Do you want to learn how? Drop a comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And don't forget to subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast for more insights on navigating this wild, AI-powered world.

At the end of 2024, when Thought Leaders and Insightful Brands flooded our LinkedIn feeds with 2025 predictions, 2024 Best-Ofs, 2024 Worst-Ofs, and AI-generated LinkedIn Rewinds (which were brilliant, IMO), I was a keystroke away from joining in. I had a draft all ready to roll, and couldn’t wait to regale you, dear Readers, with insights from the first year of The Trending Communicator.

But I stayed my hand. Not because the insights and predictions were stale or dull (although I admit to some snooze-worthy ideas), but because I heard a little voice in my head—let’s call it my inner Mark Schaefer—telling me to be bold. Crazy. Audacious.

I won’t claim that what I ended up doing was any of those things, but it was different. Possibly unique (fact-check me on that, please). In case you missed it, I orchestrated an AI takeover of The Trending Communicator for one episode, wherein the AI hosts discussed some trends shaping the communications profession.

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In their 15-minute repartee, they covered:

• Shifting job descriptions in the evolving communication landscape

• Leveraging AI as a tool to enhance human creativity and efficiency

• Building a strong personal brand through authenticity and storytelling

• Embracing continuous learning to stay ahead in a rapidly changing field

• Honing forensic listening skills to navigate information overload

• Integrating PESO Model© for a well-rounded communication strategy

• Developing "T-shaped" skills to thrive in future communication roles

Kudos to them. But before I sing any more praises for my AI pod-jackers, let’s remember that the reason they did such a good job is that their source content is 20-something hours of human, long-form, unscripted, original conversations with communications and marketing leaders. In other words, they were good because their human input was good.

But even when the original content is stellar, it takes a combination of AI tools and models to make any derivative or repurposed content work. That’s why we have to talk about Google NotebookLM, the star of the show and the core of my content engine.

A NotebookLM Primer

If you don’t know anything about NotebookLM or know about it but aren’t familiar with it, think of it this way: NotebookLM is a generative AI tool that allows you to create personalized, customizable, private chatbots that use only the sources you provide. It’s available to anyone with a personal Google account. If you pay for Gemini Advanced or are on a Google Workspace Business Standard with a Gemini account, NotebookLM Plus is included if your Workspace administrator has deemed it so. Unless stated otherwise, everything I will share here is available in the free version. Here’s a basic overview of what you can do with it1:

• Create your own niche mini-LLM (or SLM - small language model) for anything, any topic you can dream of. In the free version, you can create up to 100 separate Notebooks—that means 100 mini-LLMs. In the plus version, it’s 500.

• Add up to 50 sources per Notebook, and each source can be up to the equivalent of 500,000 words or 200MB of information. So, each of your mini-LLMs can be fueled by up to 25 million words in total. That’s a lot of words. In the plus version, it’s 300 sources per Notebook. At the time of this writing, sources can be in the form of Google Docs, Google Slides, PDFs, .txt files, Markdown files, web pages (add the URL, and NotebookLM grabs the text from that page), public YouTube URLs, audio files, and cut-and-pasted text.

• Use the chat function within the Notebook to deeply analyze the sources you provide and nothing more (it doesn't look for answers beyond the sources in the Notebook).

• Summarize, synthesize, search, and analyze your sources, but don’t ask it to write good prose. You can ask it to write a blog post but it's not really made for that.

• Save chat results you like as Notes, which can then be used as additional sources if you so desire (unlike the LLMs you’re used to, NotebookLM does not save your chat sessions, so you can’t return to a previous chat).

• Generate an “Audio Deep Dive,” a conversation in which two AI voices discuss themes and topics drawn from the Notebook’s sources, with the click of a button. You can customize these to a point.

• Share Notebooks for collaboration (Workspace users are limited to sharing within their organization)

• Use generative AI in a secure and private environment. Google doesn’t use any of your Notebook content for training AI, and your information remains private unless you share it or choose to provide feedback to Google. At least, that’s what they say.

Now that you’ve got an idea of what you can do, you might be thinking, why? Why do I need NotebookLM? Why should I use it? I’ll give you seven reasons, all conveniently starting with R:

Researching: Create a Notebook on a topic you’re interested in or want to learn about or drop in sources you wish to analyze for a project (a book you want to write, for example). Then, dig into the sources with the chatbot to find out what you need to know.

Rethinking: Ever wonder if your past proclamations still make sense? Load up a Notebook with your older content and more recent sources that may or may not support your ideas. Ask the chatbot to help you review and evaluate your points of view and suggest where you might want to make some adjustments.

Rediscovering: Add as much of your original content as possible to a Notebook: podcasts, videos, blog posts, books, whatever you’ve got. Then go exploring. Ask the chatbot to create a briefing document about your content. Tell it to look for ideas you’ve had about topics or themes you want to explore. You’ll find insights from the past and maybe new interpretations you hadn’t considered.

Reviving: Like rediscovering, use your Notebook full of your older content to breathe new life into old words. Hunt through your older work and identify content that can be relevant again.

Remembering: Are you a prolific creator with a body of work so large you can’t possibly remember everything you’ve written or said? A corporate communicator who’s expected to recall what the CEO said in the 2015 annual report? Instead of combing through documents, create a Notebook and throw them all in. Then, ask the chatbot to find what you’re looking for and do your remembering for you.

Repurposing: Take your existing content and transform it into other formats or forms of media. Add your podcasts, white papers, books, technical reports, and/or video scripts into a Notebook and use the chatbot to extract insights and quotes for blog posts, social posts, and more. Combine this with researching, rethinking, rediscovering, refining, and remembering, and you’ll have a powerful content engine at your fingertips.

Reimagining: Or just straight-up imagining. You know those ideas you get in the shower, the ones that start with, “Wouldn’t it be great if”? Run to NotebookLM with your crazy idea and start a new Notebook. Load it with relevant content, get a little woo-woo, and let your mind connect new dots that haven’t appeared to you before. Experiment and play. Chat with the Notebook, ask outlandish or outrageous questions, and see how you start to think of the topic or content in new ways.

I can think of other reasons, and so can you, but I tapped out at seven Rs, so let’s take the win and move on.

Curiosity Unleashed or Gone Awry: A Totally Real Example

OK, I hear you, let me bring you back to ground level and make it all make sense. I wanted to write about NotebookLM because many of you have asked me how I did the NotebookLM takeover of my podcast. Now that you (hopefully) have grasped the basics of NotebookLM, at least in theory (plug time: contact me if you want a demo or tutorial), I am more than happy to pull back the curtain and share my wares. Here’s how it all went down:

The Idea: It started in the shower (of course) when I was struck by a wave of Reimagining. “Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of writing a 2024 roundup or 2025 predictions, I could have AI do it for me? But not writing…what if I could do it as an Audio Deep Dive...that I would then publish…as a PODCAST??”

The Execution: Once I knew I could make it work, I started my workflow with a visit to NotebookLM for some Researching, then went through my usual podcast publishing process with some minor adjustments.

Podcast Audio:

1. In a pique of Reimagining and Repurposing, I generated a customized Audio Deep Dive with the instructions, “You are taking over The Trending Communicator podcast. Talk about the most important trends facing the communications profession, according to guests of the podcast.” I went through four iterations (create the audio, listen, delete, create again) before I got the results I had hoped for.

2. I downloaded the .wav audio file and dropped it into Adobe Audition, added my intro and music.

3. I realized that it would only be proper for the music to also be AI-generated. I headed over to Suno.ai and created a techno-rock theme intro for a podcast; remarkably, I liked the first song it generated (normally, a visit to Suno is an automatic time loss of indeterminate duration). I downloaded the song and added it to my Audition workspace. Then I mixed down the audio and had my podcast content ready.

Episode Artwork:

1. All of my episode graphics feature the guest, so I wanted a photorealistic image of the NotebookLM AI “hosts” of the Audio Deep Dive. I had a description in mind and tried variations of “futuristic middle-aged man and woman of indeterminate age, human-looking, augmented with AI, dressed in sophisticated and modern black clothes” on Midjourney, Dall-E (ChatGPT), and Flux AI. If I told you I spent an hour, I might be lying because I lost track of time. But in the end, I had a few images to choose from and landed on one of the Flux creations2, which you can see in the image above.

2. I dropped the image into my episode graphic template in Canva, found a font that looked creepy and tech-forward, finalized the design, and voila! Artwork done.

Show Notes:

I decided long ago (well, last year) to use AI for my show notes, but I always write the first few paragraphs myself. This time, I went 100% all-in on AI and let the chips fall as they might.

1. I uploaded the completed audio file into two tools I love: Flowsend.ai and Fireflies.ai.

2. I used Flowsend to generate the episode title, main show notes, notable quotes, and a high-level timestamped summary and copy-pasted it into Libsyn, my podcast host and publishing platform. I corrected a few spelling errors but what you see on the episode page is virtually unchanged.

3. In Fireflies, I generated the transcript and episode highlights (I have a soft spot for Fireflies’ emoji bullets). I downloaded the transcript as a .SRT file and added that to the episode assets on Libsyn, and copy-pasted the highlights as above.

Once all of these pieces were in place, I published the episode to all podcast platforms via Libsyn. Once published, Libsyn also exports the podcast to my Podpage podcast website. Podpage automatically posts to Facebook and Twitter/X.

LinkedIn Post and Audiogram:

Someday, I’ll get into video, but for now, I create audiograms to accompany my LinkedIn posts.

1. I cut a 30-second clip from the audio file and dropped it into Wavve.co, a video creation tool I’ve been using for years. In Wavve, I used the episode graphic as a background image, chose a waveform style, added captions, and generated the mp4 audiogram.

2. I went back to Flowsend, grabbed the LinkedIn post it had generated, and copied it into a new LinkedIn post. I added the audiogram to the post, made a few adjustments to the copy, and when I felt I was good and ready, hit the button. Here’s the final audiogram, in case you want to throw 54 seconds of your life away:

Give Me More of the New Stuff

I admit there’s a shiny-new-toy vibe to NotebookLM, and I do tend toward exuberance when I get to play with new toys. Anyone listening at my office door would have heard the occasional cackle, chortle, and giggle while I was bringing the AI podcast takeover concept to life. I wouldn’t blame you for questioning my idea of fun (and sanity). Still, the result is a solid example of what could happen when you let AI-savvy, technophilic, and creative storytellers follow their curiosity: fresh, reimagined, or revived content created quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively and produced end-to-end by one person.

If you read through the play-by-play above, you might doubt my claims of speed and efficiency. Could my workflow have been more efficient? Without a doubt, and if I ever do this again, I’ll get it done in half the time or less. But even so, five minutes ago I’d have needed a writer, a graphic designer, and an A/V specialist (or two) just to create something like this. If this were a project for a client or an employer, I wouldn’t be playing around (ahem, Midjourney and Suno) as much and I would be more directed and focused in my prompting. I’d start with a clear brief, take inventory of my creative assets, map out my workflow, decide which AI tools and software would best fit the task, and knock this out in no time. And each time I do it, I’d find more efficiencies, refine templates and processes, and create quality content in less time.

Takeaways

Let me try to land this plane. Just in case I haven’t made it clear that I’m enamored with NotebookLM and can hardly contain myself, here are a few thoughts to close out this love letter:

• During World War II, Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman invented the Bombe, a machine designed to break the German Enigma codes. The Bombe machine and Turing’s work were arguably the most critical developments in the history of military intelligence and played a significant role in winning the war. To me, NotebookLM is the Bombe machine, decoding the Enigmas of content production. Hyperbole? Me? Never.

• With the right questions and prompts, NotebookLM alone reveals insights and answers that either would have remained hidden or taken untold hours of research and review to find.

• If you’re the curious and creative type, NotebookLM is your imagination’s best friend. You’re only limited by the sources available to you and Google’s massive context window (the amount of data you can use).

• If you can access various LLMs—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.—using them in conjunction with NotebookLM is a creative multiplier. For example, cut and paste Notes you’ve saved into Claude and transform them into a speech or article. Paste multiple notes into a Google Doc or Word doc and use that as a source for a CustomGPT or project knowledge for Claude. Endless possibilities.

• Setting up Notebooks within NotebookLM is simple and requires no technical skill. The availability of sources is your only obstacle to setting up discrete Notebooks for any topic, theme, subject, author, or crazy idea you’re interested in.

• Even though NotebookLM could be the missing ingredient for your special content sauce, it’s only one ingredient. What makes the sauce special is the creative mind behind the recipe (that’s you). Remember, your uniquely human qualities and advantages - curiosity, creativity, craziness, critical thinking, and the ability to take showers - determine the outcomes of your interplay with NotebookLM or any other generative AI tool.

Finally, I want to help you understand NotebookLM not only because it’s Just That Important, but because I am convinced that it will unlock creativity, accelerate innovation, improve the quality and depth of our content, and help us all stay relevant. Let me know what you think in the comments below. And if you want my help making NotebookLM work for you or your organization, let’s talk.

Notes

This post is almost 100% human-written content. Almost.

• The bullet points in the opening section were cut-and-pasted from AI-generated text. Apart from that, I wrote every word.

• Grammarly gave me a helpful nudge here and there.

• I used Midjourney to generate the hero image.

Are you using NotebookLM? Do you want to learn more? Drop a comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And don't forget to subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast for more insights on navigating this wild, AI-powered world.

The Trending Communicator launched in early 2024, and what a year it’s been. I maintain that I’m the luckiest communicator alive—just take a look at the thinkers, influencers, and movers and shakers I’ve had the good fortune to have on the show so far—and my gratitude to you, dear Reader, all my listeners, and my guests, knows no bounds.

I thought about writing a 2024 round-up to share a few slices of the huge pie of knowledge I’ve gained from my guests, and I still might do something to that effect. But seeing as I have an army of analysts and researchers at my beck and call (yes, I mean AI), I decided to go in a slightly different direction. I hunkered down with my trusty Google NotebookLM and huddled up with my buddy Claude, and with my dream team in place, we dug into all 20 episodes of the show to learn what my guests and I had to say about the future.

So let's have a somewhat uncomfortable conversation about where communications is heading in 2025. Not the sanitized version from corporate trend reports, not the breathless AI hype from tech vendors (though I admit I do like a lot of that hype), and certainly not the recycled (and dull) predictions cluttering your feed. It's time to confront some brutal truths about our industry's transformation – and why most of us are woefully unprepared for what's coming.

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The Media Apocalypse Nobody Wants to Discuss

Before we dive into AI, we need to confront an even more fundamental shift: the complete collapse of traditional media consumption patterns. Gini Dietrich puts it bluntly: traditional media is no longer where younger audiences get their news. They're going to non-traditional sources first, rendering our carefully crafted media relations playbooks about as relevant as a fax machine in a WhatsApp world.

Think about that for a moment. While we're still obsessing over press release optimization and media list management, our actual audiences have moved on. They're consuming content in ways that make our traditional approaches all but irrelevant.

It's not just about changing channels. The entire concept of media relations as we know it is becoming obsolete (I make no bones about the bones I have to pick with media relations - read all about that here). Rob Davis nails this when he says, “They don't need to talk about their latest tagline. They don't need to talk about whatever they decided to hype at the quarterly meeting. They need to talk about what is getting typed in that box in the same vernacular that the customer is using.”

While we're crafting perfectly polished corporate messages, our audiences are having entirely different conversations in entirely different spaces. And we're not even in the room.

The Great AI Delusion

2024 was the year everyone played AI dress-up. Communications teams proudly proclaimed their “AI-first” strategies, sprinkled ChatGPT fairy dust on their content, and declared mission accomplished. The result? As Mark Schaefer accurately diagnoses, we're drowning in what he calls “the pandemic of dull” – an ocean of AI-generated content that reads like it was written by algorithms pretending to be humans pretending to be algorithms.

David Armano captures this perfectly when he calls AI “the best intern you’ll ever have…[that’s] really freakin’ good at good enough.” But here's the thing about interns – you don't put them in charge of your entire communication strategy. Yet that's precisely what many organizations are doing, letting AI drive their content creation while human judgment takes a back seat.

The problem isn't just bad content – it's the fundamental misunderstanding of AI's role in communications. Yes, it can and does make grunt work easy; yes, it can write an email for you; yes, it’s a dirt-cheap editor. But too many communicators stop there, thinking they’ve improved efficiency and productivity by 20-30%, and that’s good enough. As Anuneha Mewawalla emphasizes, “AI is going to turbocharge our field. It's going to reimagine communications as we know it.” But turbocharging a broken engine just makes it fail faster.

Consider these uncomfortable questions:

• If your content is indistinguishable from AI-generated text, what value are you really adding?

• If your strategy can be replicated by a prompt, how strategic is it really?

• If your “thought leadership” can be automated, are you actually leading thought?

• If you’re seeing a huge productivity increase, do you think your competitors might just be seeing it, too?

The Trust Apocalypse We Can't Ignore

While we're obsessing over prompt engineering and API integrations, something far more fundamental is unraveling: the fabric of digital trust itself. As Deirdre Breakenridge emphasizes, “you can't have a relationship without feeling.” Yet we're racing to automate the very elements that make communication human.

The numbers should terrify you. Rafi Mendelsohn reveals that “the average conversation across social media has around four to seven percent of fake accounts.” But here's what should keep you up at night: in conversations around specific brands or issues, that percentage can skyrocket. We're rapidly approaching a world where the majority of online discourse about your brand could be artificial.

This isn't just about spam or fake accounts anymore. As Mendelsohn notes, “GenAI is fantastic, but in the hands of malicious actors, it becomes a tool for creating very believable content.” We're talking about sophisticated narrative warfare where the lines between real and artificial become increasingly blurred.

The implications are staggering:

• How do you maintain authenticity in a world where authenticity itself can be automated?

• What happens to trust when every piece of content becomes suspect?

• How do you build relationships when your audience can't tell if they're talking to a human or an algorithm?

The Evolution Revolution

Lisa Kaplan observes that “Communications used to be something that was done from a podium, and now it's something that's a conversation, whether you want it to be or not. It's interactive. It's hearts and minds. It's telling a story.”

This shift from broadcast to conversation isn’t a new idea, but it represents a fundamental change in how communication works. But most communications teams are still operating on the broadcast model, just with fancier tools.

Anne Green points out that “this industry is a really elite profession, in terms of the skill sets required.” The gap between where most teams are and where they need to be isn't just wide – it's widening exponentially. Every day that passes makes it harder to catch up.

It doesn’t help that the weight of conventional thinking holds us back. Let's dissect four dangerous myths that have infiltrated our thinking – heavy chains that prevent forward progress:

Myth #1: Traditional Media Relations Still Drives the Conversation

Traditional media relations isn’t built to deal with disintermediated, disrupted, and distrusted media. Rafi Mendelsohn will tell you that your brand can find itself in a full-blown crisis without a single journalist writing a word about you. Welcome to what Gini Dietrich calls our “post-truth America,” where traditional media gatekeepers have lost their monopoly on credibility, and your carefully cultivated media relationships might as well be written in invisible ink.

While you're measuring media impressions like they're still meaningful, Melanie Samba's research reveals a fascinating shift: audience reach and influence are increasingly driven by conference appearances and peer networks, not media placements. The “prestigious” coverage you're chasing might matter less than the conversations at industry events you've probably dismissed as “nice-to-haves.” Danny Gaynor nails it: we need to combine creative instincts with data literacy to understand actual audience engagement, yet how many of us are still running our media relations playbook like it's 2019?

The reality is that your beautiful feature in that prestigious publication isn't driving the conversation anymore – but commenting on a conversation that's happening somewhere else is. As Ethan McCarty points out, communications teams need to “listen and sense and perceive and synthesize and analyze the world of data and opinions” rather than just “getting the message out.” Traditional media isn't dead – it's just been demoted from king to courtier. Yet how many of us are still treating it like it holds the keys to the kingdom?

Myth #2: AI Makes Communication Easier

Does it? Anuneha Mewawalla tells us that “AI is going to turbocharge our field. It's going to reimagine communications as we know it.” But most teams are using AI like a fancy spell-checker instead of the transformative force it could be.

Consider this: If AI makes mediocre communication easier, doesn't that just mean we're creating more mediocre content more efficiently? As Danny Gaynor notes, “AI can validate our intuition as communicators” – but should we be validating our intuition, or challenging it?

Myth #3: Good Content Can Be Automated

If your content can be entirely automated, it probably shouldn't exist at all. Pinaki Kathiari says it well: “I hope having a machine intellect might help us be more human and treat each other more like humans and not machines, which we've been doing all this time.”

The real question isn’t whether AI can write your content – it's whether that content deserves to exist in the first place. Are you adding value to the conversation or just adding to the noise?

Myth #4: Technical Skills Trump Human Intelligence

In an AI-driven world, human skills become more crucial, not less. Emily York hit this point perfectly: “The soft skills are going to be really important because in this AI future having that ability to build relationships and trust across an organization or from job to job or in your network is going to be a differentiator.”

If technical skills are all that matter, we're all in trouble because AI will eventually do it better. The real value lies in what AI can't replicate: human judgment, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking.

The Critical Thinking Crisis

We’re outsourcing our brains to AI faster than we’re developing the critical thinking skills to manage it. While everyone’s obsessing over which AI tool writes the most human-sounding social posts, we’re witnessing an unprecedented atrophy of our industry's intellectual muscle.

How many of us are actually thinking critically anymore? We’re so busy asking AI to generate “thought leadership” that we've forgotten how to, you know, actually lead thought. We’re letting algorithms make strategic decisions that should require human judgment, discernment, and yes, that increasingly rare commodity – critical thinking.

Just listen to Kami Huyse: “Number one is critical thinking skills... you cannot take everything at face value anymore.” Yet what do we do? We take AI outputs at face value, nod sagely at machine-generated insights, and call it strategic thinking. It's not. It's intellectual outsourcing dressed up in professional jargon.

Here's what real critical thinking looks like in 2025:

• Questioning assumptions (especially your own)

• Being relentlessly curious about the “why” behind the “what”

• Understanding context beyond what AI can scrape from databases

• Recognizing patterns that algorithms miss because they can’t connect non-obvious dots

Dr. Laura McHale argues that “it is one of the reasons that I think it's so important for comms people to really up their game and get much more knowledgeable about psychology and neuroscience.” She's right – but it goes deeper than that. This isn't just about understanding tools or even human behavior. It's about developing the intellectual rigor to question everything, especially our own assumptions about what “good communication” looks like.

Want to build trust with stakeholders? Start by trusting your own capacity to think critically. As David Armano points out, the real power lies in “asking questions to unlock the power of AI.” But first, you need to know which questions to ask. You need to be intellectually curious enough to dig deeper than the first, second, or even third layer of analysis.

The real crisis isn't that AI might replace communicators. It's that too many communicators are in danger of replacing their critical thinking with artificial insights. We've become intellectual outsourcers in an era that desperately needs intellectual leadership.

The 2025 Divergence

Our industry is splitting into two distinct paths, and the gap between them is widening daily:

The Intelligence Amplifiers

These professionals understand what Anuneha Mewawalla means when she says, “The goal isn't just to become AI first. It's to become intelligence amplified.” They're not just using AI – they're fundamentally reimagining what communication means in an AI-augmented world.

They're asking questions like:

• How do we use AI to enhance human connection rather than replace it?

• What does authentic communication look like in a world of artificial intelligence?

• How do we measure real impact in an era of manufactured engagement?

The Complacent Crowd

If you're still treating AI like a fancy spell-checker or debating whether to experiment with generative tools, you're not just behind – you’re actively choosing irrelevance. As I once said on the podcast, “If you're stuck with ‘Oh well, if AI takes this away, what am I going to do?’ then frankly, you probably deserve not to do anything once AI takes your job away.”

As Ethan McCarty points out, while junior professionals are already mastering AI and analytics, what happens to “senior people who are running around with bloated salaries and are relying on gut instinct to advise their clients?” Yet how many communications professionals are still operating on outdated assumptions, measuring success by metrics that stopped mattering years ago, and calling it “strategic communications”? The gap between where most teams are and where they need to be isn't just wide – it's becoming an unbridgeable chasm. And in 2025, there’s no bridge coming to save you.

Three Uncomfortable Truths for 2025

1: Your Media Strategy Is Obsolete

Gini Dietrich points out that the term “misinformation” is itself a kind of misinformation. The entire concept of “truth” in media is being revolutionized. Your traditional approach to media relations isn't just ineffective – it might be actively harmful to your goals.

We need to fundamentally rethink:

• How we define and measure influence

• Where and how we engage with audiences

• What constitutes meaningful communication in a post-truth world

2: Your Metrics Are Lying to You

Danny Gaynor suggests that AI offers “a very rare moment in the history of capitalism where we can develop something that will be industry standard and that will be reputational ROI, that will be quantifying the impact of communications.”

Most of us are still measuring what's easy to measure, not what actually matters. We're counting press clips while our audiences are having conversations we're not even tracking.

3: You Need People Beyond Your Team

Mark Schaefer emphasizes that “you can't do it on your own if you want to be a trending communicator...find a community where you fit and where you thrive to get others to help you do it.”

Communities should be your support system and your go-to for learning and development resources—and broader perspectives. Closing the skills gap isn't just about technical capabilities – it's about fundamental communication competencies in a digitally transformed world.

The Path Forward: Three Strategic Imperatives

1: Redefine Your Relationship with Media and AI

David Armano notes that “AI is not a tool. AI, as some people have said, is talking software.” This isn't semantics – it's a fundamental shift in how we approach communication itself.

We need to stop thinking about AI as a tool and start thinking about it as a collaborator. This means:

• Rethinking our workflows from the ground up

• Developing new frameworks for human-AI collaboration

• Creating new models for authentic communication in an AI-augmented world

2: Invest in Human Intelligence

Deirdre Breakenridge emphasizes that “emotional intelligence and empathy are critical skills in leadership.” We need to cultivate influence skills to adapt to the evolving landscape.

This means investing in:

• Psychological understanding

• Emotional intelligence

• Strategic thinking

• Human connection

3: Build New Trust Frameworks

Ethan McCarty suggests that communications teams need to “listen and sense and perceive and synthesize and analyze the world of data and opinions” rather than just “getting the message out.”

We need new frameworks for:

• Building trust in an AI-mediated world

• Measuring authentic engagement

• Creating genuine connection at scale

The Bottom Line

2025 won’t be just another year of incremental change. As Kami Huyse reminds us, “That strategy piece is huge. It always has been, it always will be. I don't care what kind of technology they throw at you. You have to learn where to spend your time and where your time is not well spent.”

The future belongs to those who can think critically, connect authentically, and use AI as a force multiplier for human intelligence. If that doesn’t sound like you, 2025 will be a great time to make changes. Otherwise, you can be sure you’ll have to play catch-up or resign yourself to watching from the sidelines.

Notes

This post is roughly 80% AI-generated. Here’s how I did it:

• I used Google NotebookLM to analyze all 20 episodes of The Trending Communicator, identify themes, and pull out supporting quotes and insights.

• I used the Project I had already set up in Claude to draft newsletter content and gave it the outputs I had just generated on Notebook LM. I instructed Claude to use my recent posts as a style guide and then prompted it to draft the article you see above. I went through 4 iterations and a dozen or so section revisions, adjusting prompts and adding reference content along the way

• I cut and pasted the text into Substack, edited the copy, added in the hyperlinks, and then generated the hero image using Flux AI Image Generator.

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Are you ready for 2025? Drop a comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And don't forget to subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast for more insights on navigating this wild, AI-powered world.

Today, all of my American friends and colleagues, and I’m sure many worldwide, are purportedly transfixed by some event that may or may not determine the future of civilization as we know it. I’m told that such a state of affairs causes widespread anxiety (welcome to my world), distractibility (again, my world), and not a small amount of fear (not me). I’ve been advised to hold off on publishing anything important until this event blows over.

To which I say two things: 1) what better time than now for a distraction, and 2) importance is a relative term, and who am I to judge.

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Earned Attention by a Landslide

A few weeks ago, I took a swipe at the practice of Media Relations, the over-indexed, underperforming, ineffective, and unaffordable arm of Communications that, for a multitude of reasons, has ensorcelled leaders and organizations. I mean, I get it. A top-tier media hit can deliver a high as potent and addictive as any Schedule 1 narcotic, and once you’ve had it, it’s hard to get the monkey off your back.

Based on the flood of comments and feedback from my comms compadres, I’m cautiously optimistic that the comms profession is ready for rehab. It’s happening already as the Sisyphean reality and questionable ROI of Media Relations work—for most of us, anyway—has led to a sharper focus on audiences and stakeholders and broader perspectives on the meaning of earned media. It’s also led to (or been aided by? Kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario) innovation and rapid advances in CommsTech (communications technology), now supercharged by AI.

It’s fertile ground for a shift to Earned Attention, my take on an approach that includes but de-emphasizes Media Relations. Like so many other concepts and methodologies that have made their way into the Communications profession, Earned Attention comes to us from the marketing sphere. As far as I can tell (and please fact-check me on this), marketer and futurist Greg Verdino was the first to talk about Earned Attention as a marketing goal (albeit in the context of paid vs. earned media) in 2009. 15 years ago. He was on the money then, and he’s on the money now. As he wrote:

Attention is a scarce resource.  Far scarcer these days than media inventory or marketing budgets.  And with scarcity comes value.  Speaking as a consumer (because, of course, we are all consumers before we're marketers): if you want my attention -- even a teeny tiny slice of it, even only for a few moments -- you have got to earn it.  Period.

Does the fact that you have enough money to name a stadium or advertise during prime time get my attention?  If I'm Adweek, yes.  If I'm Joe America, probably not.  Does the fact that your PR person worked hard to get some reporter or another to sit through a briefing that resulted in a newspaper puff piece get my attention?  Not a chance.  So much for earned media.  Right?  [Emphasis mine]

-Greg Verdino, “The problem with paid media isn’t the paid,” April 28, 2009, https://gregverdino.typepad.com/greg_verdinos_blog/2009/04/the-problem-with-paid-media.html

We can quibble about Greg’s conflating of the “newspaper puff piece” with earned media writ large, but you get the idea.

Trending Communicators Advocate for Progress

Greg’s not the only one pointing in this direction. The voices from The Trending Communicator podcast have been hammering this point home from different angles.

Ethan McCarty puts some hard truth to this, noting: "We have maybe over rotated on our investment in chasing headlines with traditional public relations or chasing clicks with traditional advertising, and yet we're sitting in relationship with many thousands of people whose connections probably dwarf the reach of any one article or advertising by orders of magnitude." It's a stark reminder that we might be ignoring more valuable earned attention opportunities while chasing that elusive top-tier placement.

Mark Schaefer takes this a step further, arguing that the future belongs to content that's "so distinctive that AI can't duplicate it." He's pushing for a grittier, more authentic approach to earning attention—one that goes beyond the polished press release and cultivated media relationships that have been our industry's bread and butter.

Rafi Mendelsohn points out the shortcomings of traditional media relations in hyper-accelerated crises, as when a brand is facing a "bot attack" on social media. Instead of resorting to the "classic playbook" of apologies, brands can "present the data and say... actually, 30 something percent of all the conversations around us are driven by fake accounts.” An agile crisis response with Earned Attention at its core would be more effective than traditional approaches.

Melanie Samba reminds us that "you cannot manage what you cannot measure," pushing for a more data-driven approach to measuring earned attention – something that goes well beyond traditional media impressions and advertising value equivalents.

These voices aren't just suggesting tweaks to the media relations playbook – they're confirming what we've all started to suspect: the traditional approach of prioritizing top-tier media placements above all else is a relic of a simpler media age. And that's exactly where Earned Attention comes in.

Earned Attention: It’s Up to Us

For a reminder of my perspective on Earned Attention for Communications, feel free to read my last post about it, but if you want the tl;dr version:

• Earned Attention Reflects the Current Landscape: Today's fragmented media environment demands more than traditional press hits. An attention-based approach capitalizes on all earned opportunities – from social conversations to podcasts – meeting audiences where they actually engage.

• Earned Attention is Audience-Centric: While media relations focuses on vanity metrics like potential reach, Earned Attention measures real impact through engagement metrics, content consumption time, and audience behaviors that demonstrate ROI.

• Earned Attention is More Adaptable to Strategy: Traditional media relations often misaligns with business goals. Earned Attention's flexible approach allows quick pivots based on audience response and supports business objectives rather than chasing arbitrary coverage.

• Earned Attention Subsumes Media Relations Anyway: As AI tools automate traditional PR tasks, Earned Attention elevates professionals from pitch writers to strategic advisors focused on audience insights and business alignment.

• The Bottom Line Speaks: Earned Attention replaces outdated metrics like AVE with clear, behavior-based success indicators, giving communications the credible measurements needed for executive buy-in.

In my view, the key to Earned Attention is a change in our perception of what counts as earned media and where the value comes from. The answer to the latter is in audience impact. As for the former, the sooner we see the earned media universe as an ever-growing concatenation of audio, video, social, traditional, and TBD channels, the better our strategies for reaching audiences will be—and media relations (small m, small r) will remain an important part of that. How large a part will depend on your organization’s firmographics, reputation status, public interest relevance, and a variety of other factors.

I think I’ve made the case for Earned Attention, now all we need to do is codify it, create some models (although Gini Dietrich’s PESO Model incorporates all of this quite nicely), load up some more acronyms, revise every Comms job description in existence… Sounds like something we should be doing as a profession. I’m up for it if you are.

Notes

This post is 80% human-created.

• The “Trending Communicators Advocate for Progress” section is AI-generated, with minor touch-ups:

  • I used Google NotebookLM to extract insights and quotes from my podcasts.

  • I used Claude to transform those insights into the text you see above

• I used Grammarly as my style and grammar assistant while writing.

• Images were generated using Midjourney.

In future editions I’ll return to this topic and keep sharing what I’m hearing from Trending Communicators. In the meantime, I’m sure many of you have strong opinions about the future of Media Relations. Tell me what you think. Drop a comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And don't forget to subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast for more insights on navigating this wild, AI-powered world.

If I could take back all the time and money I spent over the last few decades on all the meetings, pitches, briefings, coordination, corrections, progress reports, and measurement acrobatics performed in the service of Media Relations, I’d end up with a significant amount of cash, months if not years worth of both work and family hours, and at least two fewer anti-anxiety prescriptions.

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According to the Big Book of Conventional Comms Wisdom1 it should all have been worth it. Earned media placements are a typical KPI for our ilk, and securing interviews and bylines is a sure path to success. And I admit, I did get my CEO’s name in print on occasion, and I can’t tell you how many industry trade articles featured my employers and our executives (although, in fairness, it’s not that many).

But what did any of this mean to my employers? Being irritatingly inquisitive, I have to ask myself: A) What did any of it accomplish? B) Did the cumulative spending result in any sales? C) Can I honestly say that our awareness improved? D) Was our reputation strengthened? E) Would the activities we could have done instead have been more effective?

Well, A) Don’t know; B) Don’t think so; C) No; D) No; E) Yes.

Hmm. Strong business case so far. Add to that the undeniable fact that our audiences are running away from traditional media in droves, and for a variety of reasons:

• An ever-expanding, fractured universe of media: Audiences have more channels and content to choose from than ever before, and competition for reader and viewer attention has never been as intense as it is today

• Reporter and journalist turnover: Traditional media companies have been through the wringer and continue to be squeezed by declining profits and M&A trauma, and just like any corporation, they’ve cut salaries and staff, restructured, changed business models…the hits just keep coming. It’s no surprise that reporters don’t stay put for long or leave journalism altogether. The result is inconsistent reporting quality, lack of depth, and further fracturing of the landscape as veteran journalists go independent and flock to platforms like Substack.

• Rise of independent media: One more point about the independent journalists. It’s not just that journalists and reporters have gone solo; writers, analysts, podcasters, and a growing number of “influencers” - YouTubers, TikTok-ers, Tweeters, and more - have organically become a replacement for reporters and media organizations, winning the trust and loyalty of millions of followers. Speaking of trust….

• Trust in media is abysmal: This week, Gallup revealed that Americans’ trust in media is at an all-time low. This chart says it all:

  

The upshot seems clear to me: stop the madness. If we were doctors, and Media Relations were our patient, we’d prescribe palliative care. So why do companies and organizations continue to throw money at this? Why do job descriptions (and thus HR screeners) continue to require senior candidates to have cultivated a network of media contacts? Why, if you’re blazing a path through our profession, would you hitch your wagon to this dead horse?

Like I said, madness.

“But Dan,” you might be saying, “Media Relations is our stock in trade. Ignoring journalists and media is PR malpractice.” Maybe you’re saying or thinking something much more…colorful. So I’ll throw you a few bones. If you’re at an enterprise whose fortunes are inextricably tied to stock performance (Fortune 500, maybe) and your company has a consequential Investor Relations (IR) function, you need strong relationships with traditional and financial media. If you’re in a crisis-prone industry, you need the media to trust you. A traditional Media Relations program makes sense if you’re in a highly regulated industry with significant public interest. Without a doubt, and in my own experience, we still need traditional Media Relations in Japan, Europe, and parts of Asia.

But for the vast majority of businesses, from startups to small shops to mid-market and beyond, you don’t need the headache and can’t afford the medicine.

Instead, we all need to rethink the sanctity of Media Relations and rework our entire approach to earned media.

How We Earn Coverage Must Evolve

But here’s the rub: under no circumstances should we abandon earned media strategy. Investing time and budget in the earned media portion of any communications program is a must.

“But Dan,” you might rightly point out, “didn’t you just spend a few hundred words telling us to euthanize Media Relations?”

I sure did, and there’s a non-zero probability that I’ll meet my maker on the let's-end-traditional-media-relations hill. But we have to replace it with a more effective way to grow awareness, build and defend authority and reputation, inform and educate stakeholders, shape public narratives, attract talent, and accrue trust on the merits of our knowledge, opinions, offerings, products, and deeds. Earned media provides critical third-party validation and makes or breaks our credibility.

If we need non-affiliated people and organizations to agree that we’re the bee’s knees, and traditional Media Relations isn’t doing the job, then what will?

I’ve been playing around with a few ideas, and here’s where I landed.

Earned Attention

That’s it. Anticlimactic? Perhaps. But think about it:

Earned Attention reflects the current landscape.

Media Relations is problematic in part because it’s focused on an increasingly undefinable, fractured, and dying category. Shifting to a broader attention-based approach brings multiple forms and formats of earned content into account.

Earned Attention is audience-centric.

Media Relations success is too often defined in terms of generic reach (how many eyeballs might, potentially, see the coverage), subjective quality (a New York Times hit is better than an Industry Week hit), vanity (at long last, the CEO’s dream of a Wall Street Journal piece has come true), and the dreaded AVE - Advertising Value Equivalent (how much it would cost to run an ad that’s the same size as the article). None of these can tell us anything about the impact of the placement, if we changed any minds or won any hearts, or if there’s any return on the time and money we spent to secure the placement. Attention, however, is about the audience's response and behavior. If we focus on attention, we would measure engagement (clicks, shares, comments, etc.), dwell time (how long someone lingers on the article, watches a video, listens to a podcast, and so on), downloads, and other behavioral metrics. We would do a far better job of connecting placements to outcomes, gain valuable insights, and gauge impact on our business.

Earned Attention is more adaptable to strategy.

Sometimes (I’d argue most of the time), pursuing a traditional Media Relations approach simply doesn’t align with business strategy. I think I’ve overexplained this one above, but I want to re-emphasize the time and cost associated with activities that yield questionable, fleeting, and often disconnected results. With an audience-centric, attention-driven approach, we would choose a variety of high-relevance, high-resonance channels, secure more earned opportunities with less time and money, and make changes on the fly to adjust to changing business needs.

Earned Attention subsumes Media Relations anyway.

Media Relations is just one part of the broader Earned Attention category. And now, generative AI and AI-powered tools such as PRofit, Muck Rack, Qwoted, and Agility PR can cover the entire Media Relations process, from press release to pitch creation to placement and measurement. While this doesn’t bode well for PR professionals who live and die by the media pitch, it’s good news for the able and agile communicator following an Earned Attention approach. Less time spent spinning your Media Relations wheels means more time to move up the value chain and focus on audience knowledge and insights, strategic direction, program and campaign management, and continuous alignment with the business.

Where do we go from here?

Whether you share my soapbox or not, there’s no doubt that we have to evolve as a profession and accept that Media Relations today isn’t what it used to be. Could it bounce back? Could traditional media regain its footing and authority? Long odds, if you ask me.

Clearly, I’m anticipating a sea change in our profession, and I believe the Media Relations pedestal is collapsing. How long will it take for brands, organizations, and agencies to move on? The proliferation of AI and technology-enhanced solutions tells me, not very long.

But I have an inkling that enterprise-level corporate communications will hang on to Media Relations long past its expiration date. And herein lies a conundrum. Or a paradox: Executives and Boards will question the ROI of investing in traditional media coverage, but will continue to use media coverage as a KPI for evaluating their communications teams. They will wonder why the Wall Street Journal isn’t interested in their CEO, and demand that the communications team “do something about that.” As long as the pressure is on from above, Media Relations will maintain its place in communications plans, agency scopes, and job descriptions.

It’s going to be up to us to effect change from within. And that will require building trust, putting the business first, and lots and lots of data. We can do it.

Notes

This post is almost 100% human-created.

• The only AI tool I used in writing this post was Grammarly.

• Images were generated using Midjourney.

In the coming weeks, I’ll return to this topic and share what I’m hearing from Trending Communicators. In the meantime, I’m sure many of you have strong opinions about the future of Media Relations. Tell me what you think. Drop a comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And don't forget to subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast for more insights on navigating this wild, AI-powered world.

With all the talk of AI taking jobs and encroaching into quintessentially human domains, it’s understandable to focus on defense. Circle the wagons, keep watch over the fire, dig moats around the castle…whatever your preferred metaphor, a common theme I’m hearing from colleagues and friends in communications and other professions is that we’ve got to protect what’s ours—what’s human—and prepare for doomsday.

But are dark times really ahead? Listeners of The Trending Communicator and anyone who’s spent more than five minutes with me over the past few years will know that I’ve got a different perspective. Call me optimistic or a glass-half-full-guy, I see a bright future with AI. Sure, its capabilities grow by the hour and as David Armano says, “AI is so freaking good at good enough” that many of the baseline tasks that comprise our jobs are already easily handled by AI.

To which I say: fantastic. I don’t want to be a baseline worker. I want more time to think, create, envision, and dream. I want more time to relate and connect. More time to do precisely the human things that lead to discovery, ideas, innovation, and learning. And when I imagine the thousands or millions of us out there more or less freed up to be even more human, I see limitless opportunity. Abundance. Zero-sum game thinking will get us nowhere fast.

Let’s take a closer look at one area where an abundance mentality will do us all a world of good. As far as I know, AI isn’t capable of leading a team, a project, or any kind of organization of people (before someone reminds me that AI agents can create their own virtual AI teams—we’re talking about leading humans here). But AI can help you be a better leader.

How you get there is the subject of my recent conversation with David Albritton, a seasoned communicator turned commercial leader and executive coach. David’s insights serve as a guide for any leader, or aspiring leader, who wants to be more effective—and human—in the Age of AI.

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Albritton's Vision: AI as a Leadership Enhancer

David Albritton, with his wealth of experience spanning from naval officer to CCO to president of a major defense company, shares this optimistic view of AI's role in leadership. Rather than seeing AI as a threat, Albritton views it as a powerful tool that can augment and enhance human leadership capabilities.

"People still need leaders to show up," Albritton asserts. "Leadership is what you do." This perspective aligns perfectly with our vision of AI freeing up time for more human interactions and strategic thinking. While AI can handle data analysis and routine tasks, it's the human touch in leadership that remains irreplaceable.

Albritton introduces us to ALEX, an AI-driven leadership coaching tool developed by his company, CRA. ALEX, built on Claude, offers personalized coaching based on the study of over 15,000 admired leaders. "ALEX is not designed to be used like a search engine," Albritton explains. "It's designed for you to put in the very specifics of the situation you're in."

This tool exemplifies how AI can enhance our leadership capabilities, providing tailored advice based on proven leadership behaviors. It's not about AI replacing human judgment but about AI giving us more informed insights to make better decisions.

The Evolving Leadership Landscape: More Human, Not Less

While AI is changing the context in which we lead, Albritton emphasizes that the core principles of good leadership remain constant. Leaders still need to excel in delivering and receiving feedback, decision-making, motivating and inspiring people, fostering accountability, and managing change. The difference is that AI can now help leaders perform these tasks more effectively, allowing them to focus on the uniquely human aspects of leadership.

In our increasingly digital and remote work environments, Albritton stresses the critical importance of intentional relationship-building. "If you are 100% remote and you don't really get to engage with colleagues other than through this computer screen... How authentic are the relationships that you're building if you don't intentionally do that?" While AI can facilitate communication, the onus is on us as leaders to foster genuine connections.

Beyond Comms: The AI-Empowered Business Leader

Albritton challenges communications professionals to think beyond their functional expertise in this new era. "If we only think about our value proposition and our offering to whatever organization we're in through the lens of communication, we are failing the organization, and we are truly failing ourselves and our professional growth opportunities."

Here’s where it’s to your advantage to use AI to free up time for more strategic thinking. With AI handling routine tasks, leaders can focus on becoming true business partners who understand how their organization makes money, dive into financial reports, grasp market dynamics, and align communication strategies with overall business objectives.

Insights from Trending Communicators: AI as a Catalyst for Human Excellence

The optimistic view of AI's role in enhancing leadership is echoed and expanded upon by my other guests on The Trending Communicator. Coming from a variety of perspectives, they all touch on how AI can empower leaders to be more effective, strategic, and human in their roles:

Ethan McCarty: The Strategic Intelligence Imperative

McCarty emphasizes the evolving role of communications leaders as strategic thinkers: "You look at the best communications leaders, they're always more... They're the consiglieri. They're the person who sees through the fog of war." He elaborates on this concept, stating, "If your value can extend, particularly, again, into being able to listen and analyze and to your point earlier, be the thinker, the strategy, the intelligence, to have the strategic intelligence, if that's where a lot of your value comes from, that's a different proposition."

All of these things become more achievable when AI frees up your time. As AI handles data processing and routine tasks, leaders can focus on developing a broader strategic vision that extends beyond traditional communication functions. The ability to see the big picture, connect dots, and provide strategic counsel will become even more valuable in an AI-enhanced workplace.

Megan DiSciullo: The Enduring Value of Human Connection

DiSciullo brings attention to the human aspect of leadership that AI can't replicate: "Always be direct, so people know where you stand and there's no misinterpretation. But always be kind, because you never know when you will need people or just, this is a business of teaming." Her insight reminds us that while AI can provide data-driven insights, the ability to build genuine relationships and foster a positive team culture remains a uniquely human skill.

As AI takes over more routine tasks, these interpersonal skills become even more crucial. Leaders who can combine AI-driven insights with emotional intelligence and genuine kindness will have a significant advantage in motivating and inspiring their teams.

Kami Huyse: The Critical Thinking Imperative

Huyse offers a crucial cautionary note about AI: "Critical thinking number one. Right. Critical thinking. Right. Just. Just do not take anything at face value." She shares an anecdote about AI hallucinating information in a transcript, emphasizing the need for human oversight and verification. Her insight serves as a reminder that while AI can process vast amounts of data and generate insights, leaders must maintain a critical eye and not blindly trust AI outputs.

This critical thinking skill will be increasingly important as AI becomes more integrated into decision-making processes. Leaders who can effectively combine AI-generated insights with human judgment and critical analysis will be best positioned to make sound decisions in complex situations.

Mark Schaefer: AI as a Catalyst for Higher-Level Thinking

Schaefer predicts a shift in the nature of creative work: "So we'll just take the easy route and do what we've always done. And the thing we need to think about is that if you're writing that sort of bland content, you're going to lose it to AI."

Schaefer suggests that to remain relevant, leaders must push beyond routine tasks and focus on areas where human creativity and strategic insight add unique value. In an AI-enhanced workplace, the ability to generate novel ideas, think creatively, and provide unique insights will become increasingly valuable.

Rob Davis: The Imperative of Audience Connection

Davis highlights the ongoing challenge of connecting with audiences in meaningful ways: "Yeah, I mean, what keeps me up is wanting to make sure that the people that I work with, my colleagues, my clients, that we are all doing everything we can to maximize the new ways to connect with our audiences." His insight underscores the need for leaders to continually adapt their communication strategies, leveraging new technologies and platforms to maintain authentic connections with stakeholders.

As AI tools become more sophisticated in analyzing audience data and trends, leaders who can translate these insights into authentic, meaningful connections will stand out. The human touch in understanding and responding to audience needs remains crucial, even as AI enhances our ability to gather and analyze data.

Adele Gambardella and Chip Massey: The Power of "Forensic Listening"

Gambardella and Massey introduce the concept of forensic listening, emphasizing the importance of observing non-verbal cues and understanding what's not being said. They share an anecdote about a missing person case where careful observation revealed crucial information that wasn't explicitly stated. This insight reminds leaders that while AI can process verbal and written communication, the human ability to read between the lines, interpret body language, and understand context remains invaluable.

These forensic listening skills may become even more critical for effective leadership in an increasingly digital world. Leaders who can combine AI-driven data analysis with keen observational skills and emotional intelligence will be better equipped to understand the full context of any situation and make more informed decisions.

Matt Abrahams: The Primacy of Audience-Centric Communication

Abrahams emphasizes a fundamental principle of communication that remains relevant in the AI age: "The number one most frequent bit of advice given by communication experts from all over the place, is know your audience...they say it in different ways. It's about you, it's about them. It's not about you be audience centric." This insight underscores that while AI can help analyze audience data and preferences, the human touch in tailoring messages and connecting with audiences on an emotional level remains crucial.

Leaders must use AI as a tool to enhance their understanding of audiences, not as a replacement for genuine audience-centric thinking. The ability to empathize with and truly understand an audience's needs, concerns, and motivations will continue to be a key differentiator for effective leaders in the AI age.

Embracing the AI-Enhanced Future of Leadership

As we navigate this exciting new landscape, it's clear that successful leaders will be those who can harness the power of AI while amplifying their uniquely human skills.

Our Trending Communicators paint a comprehensive picture of leadership in the age of AI. They highlight the exciting possibilities when we view AI not as a threat but as a powerful tool that can enhance our human capabilities. By leveraging AI for data analysis, routine tasks, and insight generation, leaders can free up more time and mental space for the things that truly matter: strategic thinking, creative problem-solving, relationship-building, and authentic communication.

The future of leadership in the age of AI isn't about AI replacing human leaders. It's about AI empowering us to be even better, more effective, and more human leaders. As David Albritton puts it, "Leadership is 360 degrees of influence." In the age of AI, that influence will be amplified by technology but ultimately guided by human wisdom and connection.

The future of leadership in the AI age isn't about becoming more machine-like; it's about becoming more deeply human. It's about using AI to amplify our uniquely human strengths and focusing our energy on the aspects of leadership that require empathy, intuition, and emotional intelligence. As we continue to navigate this AI-enhanced landscape, the leaders who will thrive are those who can strike the perfect balance between leveraging AI's capabilities and honing their irreplaceable human skills.

Notes

This post is roughly 70% AI-generated. Here’s how I did it:

• I used Google Notebook LM to pull together takeaways from David Albritton’s Trending Communicator podcast episode, then extracted insights and quotes from earlier episodes that fit the themes

• I used the Project I had already set up in Claude to draft newsletter content and gave it the outputs I had just generated on Notebook LM. I instructed Claude to use my recent posts as a style guide and then prompted it to draft the article you see above. I went through 5 iterations, adjusting prompts and adding reference content along the way

• I cut and pasted the text into Substack, edited the copy, added in the hyperlinks, and then generated the hero image using Midjourney.

Are you ready to embrace this AI-enhanced future of leadership? Drop a comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And don't forget to subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast for more insights on navigating this wild, AI-powered world.

My weird unicorn of a friend, David Armano, has been on a tear lately. I want to think that my mad interviewing skills and hyper-curiosity during our recent discussion on The Trending Communicator kicked his creativity into overdrive. However, if I’m honest with myself and all of you, David didn’t need the boost. The man is on fire.

So much so that I’d like to take some time here to dig into what we talked about, especially in light of how he’s laid out his thinking since then in his work. Anyone in communications, marketing, or virtually any function in the Knowledge Economy should pay attention because we’re going to peer into the future of work in the age of AI—and I think it’s all starting to make sense.

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The Armano Crystal Ball: Four Forces Reshaping Work

In our episode and a subsequent post in David By Design, David identified four key forces that are turning the world of work upside down:

1. Our Evolving Relationship with Work

Remember when work was just... work? Well, those days are long gone. We're in the midst of a major shift in how we view our careers and what we expect from our employers. As David points out, it's not just about the paycheck anymore.

In fact, a recent Ford Motor Company survey found that "52% of employed people globally would be willing to take a 20% pay cut for better work/life balance." That's right, folks - we're trading cold, hard cash for peace of mind.

But it's not just about balance. In our conversation, David shared some powerful reasons why people are reassessing their relationship with work:

• "We had to prioritize dealing with a mental health issue of one of our kids."

• "I realized I was working too much."

• "I wasn't doing what I truly wanted to be doing."

• "I was spending too much time away from home."

We're all looking for more meaning, balance, and fulfillment in our work lives. And employers better take note.

2. Gen Z and the Multigenerational Workforce

Move over, Millennials - there's a new generation in town. Gen Z is entering the workforce in droves, and they're shaking things up in a big way.

As David notes, "The World Economic Forum estimates that 27% of OECD countries will have GenZ employees joining the ranks of millennials, GenXers, and boomers already entrenched in the workforce."

But Gen Z isn't just another generation. They're the first true digital natives, born and raised in a world of smartphones and social media. And let's not forget that they lived through the pandemic during their formative years. Talk about a unique perspective.

Armano observes that Gen Z has "very different attitudes about work" compared to previous generations. As in, "the number one perk of Gen Z is, do you offer mental health services?" All the ping-pong tables, all-you-can-eat healthy snacks, and bean bag chairs can’t stack up against an in-house therapist.

3. Where and How Work Gets Done

Remember when "going to work" meant going to an actual place to do work? While there’s arguably a rebound from the full-remote fun of the pandemic era, the days of full on-site work are fading fast. We're in what David calls the "gangly, awkward teenage phase" of finding the perfect balance between remote work, hybrid models, and good old-fashioned office life.

But it's not just about where we work; it’s about how we work. As David wrote, "Mobile devices have invaded our personal lives, making it possible to be connected to work as long as they are within our reach." We're always on, always connected, and the lines between work and life are blurrier than ever.

And let's not forget the rise of collaboration tools. Zoom, Teams, and Slack have "reduced the friction of working across decentralized and distributed geographic locations and keep us even more connected to work." It's a brave new world.

4. The Automation/Innovation of Work + AI Integration

Let’s stipulate that AI is here and changing everything.

In our conversation, David pulled no punches when he stated that AI is "really freaking good at good enough" and excels at tasks that would typically be given to new employees. That doesn’t mean entry-level employees should start sweating, but it does mean they have to be better than “good enough.”

But before anyone panics, remember this: AI isn't here to replace us (at least, not entirely). It's here to make us better at what we do. As David puts it, AI "shortens the time" and allows qualified individuals to focus on higher-level tasks that require creativity and insight. Rather than see AI as competition for certain tasks, we should recognize it as an incentive to become strategic, critical thinkers.

Beyond Armano: What Trending Communicators Say

My conversation with David and his ensuing posts helped crystallize these forces or, dare I say, trends. So it should come as no surprise that his thinking also aligns with (or augments) insights I’ve heard from other Trending Communicators.

The AI Revolution in Communication

Rob Davis, Chief Digital Innovation Officer at MSL Global, emphasizes the need for communicators to adapt to the AI-driven changes in our field. On my show, Rob shared a powerful analogy that really puts our current situation into perspective:

"…in the 1790s, if you were a very successful canal company, you didn't realize in 30 years that your industry was going to be virtually kaput because of technology...but I sure do need somebody who can build a locomotive. That I think is the kind of environment that we're in right now."

Rob is highlighting the need for adaptability and foresight in the face of technological change. Just as canal companies needed to adapt to the rise of railroads, communicators need to anticipate how AI will reshape our industry and invest in the skills and talent necessary to thrive in this new landscape.

Megan DiSciullo also spoke about AI in communications and sees it as a powerful ally. In our episode, she said, "GenAI, at least in its current function and form...[is] a productivity and efficiency tool" and we discussed how it’s up to us to figure out the best use cases and get better at our jobs. It's not about replacing us—it's about supercharging our capabilities.

The Human Touch in an AI World

Mark Schaefer, who I sometimes say is a communicator wrapped in a marketer’s clothing, brings a crucial perspective to the table. He emphasizes that "the most human company wins," reminding us that while AI is powerful, it's our humanity that truly sets us apart. Mark advocates for an "audacious" approach to communication in the face of AI disruption, as he said during our discussion:

"We just can't keep doing the same old stuff, because the consumers, when consumers have the accumulated knowledge of the human race in the palm of their hand, they demand something different from marketing and comms."

He goes on to say, "If we're thinking about people who can be gritty, people who aren't worn down... whose souls aren't destroyed by the bland..." This emphasis on authenticity and human connection is more important than ever in our AI-driven world.

Emotional Intelligence and Authenticity

Matt Abrahams, communications expert and Stanford professor, reminds us of the importance of genuine human connection. Way back in the very first episode of The Trending Communicator, he stressed the importance of "connection over perfection" in communication, emphasizing that "anxiety is part of being human." In a world where AI can produce polished content at the click of a button, our vulnerability and authenticity will set us apart.

Data-Driven Communication Strategies

Danny Gaynor, Head of Strategic Solutions at Signal AI’s Insights division, advocates for using AI and data to refine and validate communication strategies. As he put it in our conversation:

"So the real question is like, well, what is the credible evidence base? What are the proof points? What are the operational investments that you have to make?"

Gaynor also shared how his company uses discriminative AI—different than generative AI—for more precise communications strategies:

"What really excited me about using AI and using AI to slice through big data to craft a strategy that lifts reputation was that you could match breadth and depth. We could look across a huge array of entities, aka companies, nonprofit organizations, C suite executives, across a huge array of topics ranging from, yes, big picture things like purpose, but then clicking deeper and deeper into those big picture storylines to have a much more specific sense of where the conversation is shifting."

His approach demonstrates the power of integrating AI strategically into our workflow, allowing us to gain deeper insights and craft more effective communication strategies.

The Art of Listening in the AI Age

Adele Gambardella, co-founder (with Chip Massey) of The Convincing Company, brings attention to the importance of Chip’s "forensic listening" framework in our AI-augmented world. We talked about over-reliance on AI notetakers, and she said that taking notes for forensic listening requires more than AI can detect. For humans it’s about "...being flexible and understanding. Like, you're listening, you're present, and. But you are taking very good notes about the emotions... Like, what are they not buying into? What themes do they consistently repeat..."

Her emphasis on active listening and emotional intelligence reminds us that even as AI becomes more prevalent, our human ability to truly understand and connect with others remains invaluable.

Cautious Optimism and Critical Thinking

Anne Green brings a balanced perspective to the AI conversation. In our episode, she expressed concerns about the limitations of AI, stating that it's not a magic solution:

"I'm trying to also, something you said earlier, project myself forward and say, what is this future state going to look like?... What is it going to look like? What are we doing? What are we not doing? What was hard? What was easy?"

Green's cautious optimism reminds us of the importance of critical thinking and strategic planning as we navigate the integration of AI into our work.

Innovative AI Applications

Melanie Samba shows us how AI can be applied in innovative ways to solve specific challenges in our industry. In our discussion the subject turned to Sproxxy, her AI-powered conference and events intelligence platform, and she underscored the importance of data in conference selection, stating:

"So you will have a data-informed report or data-informed answer back to why you're sending an executive to speak at a conference."

This illustrates the shift towards evidence-based decision-making in communication, where data plays a key role in demonstrating value and justifying strategies.

The Road Ahead: Embracing the AI-Powered Future of Work

So, what does all this mean for us, the trending communicators who have to make sense of what’s coming? Here are a few key takeaways:

1. Anticipate and adapt: As Rob Davis's canal company analogy reminds us, we need to be proactive in adapting to technological changes. Don't wait for disruption to happen - prepare for it.

2. Embrace AI as a productivity tool: As Megan DiSciullo pointed out, AI can supercharge our capabilities. Learn to work with it, not against it.

3. Stay human: Remember Mark Schaefer's words - "the most human company wins." Don't lose sight of the importance of authenticity and emotional connection.

4. Develop your emotional intelligence: Matt Abrahams reminds us that genuine human connection is irreplaceable. Focus on honing these skills.

5. Leverage data and AI for strategic insights: Take a page from Danny Gaynor's book and use AI to gain deeper insights and craft more effective strategies.

6. Master the art of listening: As Adele Gambardella and Chip Massey suggest, practice "forensic listening" to truly understand your audience's needs and emotions.

7. Stay critically engaged: Follow Anne Green's lead and maintain a balanced, thoughtful approach to AI integration.

8. Look for innovative applications: Like Melanie Samba, seek out unique ways to apply AI in your specific niche.

Remember, we're not just passive observers in this transformation - we're active participants. As communicators, we can shape the narrative around AI and the future of work. Let's use that power wisely.

Notes

This post is roughly 70% AI-generated. Here’s how I did it:

• I used Google Notebook LM to pull together David Armano’s recent writings and his Trending Communicator podcast episode, then extracted insights and quotes from earlier episodes that fit the themes

• I used the Project I had already set up in Claude to draft newsletter content and gave it the outputs I had just generated on Notebook LM. I instructed Claude to use my first two posts as a style guide and then prompted it to draft the article you see above. I went through 6 iterations, adjusting prompts and adding reference content along the way

• I cut and pasted the text into Substack, edited the copy, added in the hyperlinks, and then generated the hero image using Midjourney.

What's your take on the future of work in the AI age? Are you excited, nervous, or a little bit of both? Drop a comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And don't forget to subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast for more insights on navigating this wild, AI-powered world.

Today on LinkedIn, Ethan Mollick shared an observation that's been echoing through my conversations on The Trending Communicator:

"The AI labs are great at building smarter and smarter AI systems. They aren't so great at understanding where smart AI systems can be useful."

This leads to what is, in my mind, an indisputable truth:

"A remarkably good investment, at the individual or firm level, is time actively experimenting to find use cases in your area of expertise. If you are waiting for use cases to be given to you, you are going to wait for all of your competitors to squeeze value out of current AI systems - and to be better positioned for the next generation of better AI systems."

Well, Professor Mollick couldn’t be more spot-on or timely. There’s both a challenge and an opportunity for us in the communications field. As AI evolves, it's increasingly clear that we’ve got to experiment and “play” with generative AI to stay ahead of the curve.

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AI: Your Collaborative Partner in Communication

One constant refrain on the show is that AI isn't here to replace us. It's here to make us better at what we do. Megan DiSciullo said it well: "I see GenAI, at least in its current function and form...to be a productivity and efficiency tool."

Danny Gaynor took this idea further: "AI is not a tool. AI, as some people have said, is talking software. And what I think is so exciting for the communications profession is that...it is our job to humanize, to make messaging as relatable, digestible, and emotionally resonant as anything."

The takeaway? AI is shaping up to be a powerful ally in our work. The question is: are we ready to dance with this new partner?

Mastering the Art of the Prompt: Your New Edge

Remember when knowing SEO basics gave you a leg up? Well, welcome to 2024, where your ability to craft the perfect prompt could be your new superpower. In fact, as communicators, you’ve already got the core skills you need to excel at prompting, if you can just wrap your head around what it means to converse with AI.

Rob Davis hit the nail on the head: "If you're working with companies [who] say, we have these systems, we invested in enterprise AI systems, but they're not doing what we want. Well, it's probably because you're not asking it the right way...This idea of canned prompts, to me, hearkens back 15-20 years ago to good interface design...how do you get the most out of the experience? And the way that we get the most out of this experience is understanding how to coax it out."

The message is clear: learning to communicate effectively with AI systems is becoming a crucial skill. It's time to start honing it.

Uncovering Hidden Gems in AI Applications

Obvious use cases for AI in communications—writing press releases (how many times have we heard that one?), summarizing articles, brainstorming key messages, etc.—are just scratching the surface. The real potential lies in unexpected applications.

I recently shared an anecdote about Melanie Samba and her AI-powered conference platform, Sproxxy: "I just bring that up as an example of one of the...channels that we deal with in marketing and communications that is just beginning to see...the connection between the benefits of the information and the quality of information we can get from AI and just the accelerated innovation and accelerated dot-connecting, I suppose, that we can make as practitioners in this field."

The lesson? Don't wait for someone to hand you a playbook. There's value in writing your own through thoughtful experimentation.

Strategy: The Key to Unlocking AI's Potential

Having AI tools is one thing. Knowing how to use them strategically? That's where the magic happens.

Kami Huyse nailed it: "You have to learn where to spend your time and where your time is not well spent."

Danny Gaynor shared how his company, Signal AI, uses "discriminative AI" for more precise communications strategies: "What really excited me about using AI and using AI to slice through big data to craft a strategy that whiffs reputation was that you could match breadth and depth. We could look across a huge array of entities, aka companies, nonprofit organizations, C suite executives, across a huge array of topics ranging from, yes, big picture things like purpose, but then clicking deeper and deeper into those big picture storylines to have a much more specific sense of where the conversation is shifting."

This approach demonstrates the power of integrating AI strategically into our workflow.

The Road Ahead

Ethan Mollick and my guests on The Trending Communicator share this in common: they’re all pointing towards an exciting future where AI amplifies our capabilities as communicators.

Trending Communicators have laid out a few points that can help you shape that future:

1. Carve out time to experiment with AI tools relevant to your work.

2. Practice crafting effective prompts – it's a skill worth developing.

3. Keep an open mind about potential applications in your niche.

4. Think strategically about how AI can enhance your unique strengths.

Remember Mollick's words: "AI is not being built for your use case. It is a general technology to adapt to your use case." The opportunity to innovate is right in front of us.

Notes

This post is roughly 80% AI-generated. Here’s how I did it:

• I used Google Notebook LM to generate a list of responses from my podcast guests to Ethan Mollick’s LinkedIn post

• I set up a Project in Claude to draft newsletter content and gave it the Mollick quote, the response I had just generated on Notebook LM, and my first Substack post. I instructed Claude to use my first post as a style guide and then prompted it to draft the article you see above.

• I cut and pasted the text into Substack, edited and changed a few things, and then generated the hero image using Midjourney.

What's your take on AI experimentation in communications? Are you already diving in, or are you waiting for clearer use cases? Let me know in the comments below or hit me up on LinkedIn. And if you haven't already, subscribe to The Trending Communicator podcast (available wherever you listen to podcasts) for more insights on the future of our field.

Until next time, keep experimenting and stay trending!

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Podcasts go in one ear…

I love hosting The Trending Communicator. If you haven’t heard of or listened to it, it’s a conversational interview show where I talk to leaders in communications, marketing, and tangential professions about the future. Usually, that means we dig into what’s going on right now, what communicators and marketers need to be aware of so that they can handle whatever the future may bring.

For me, every conversation is an adventure into a brilliant mind, and all I have is my curiosity to guide me (and, I suppose, my audience). I don’t like structure, and I admit I don’t do much research, but curiosity hasn’t let me down yet. At the end of a conversation, I always have more than I could have asked for—a brain overflowing with new information and perspectives, a guest who’s become a friend, and a few thousand recorded words of incredible value to me, my guests, my audience, and my profession.

…and out the other

But as my friend (and recent guest) Mark Schaefer pointed out nearly ten years ago, “the value of content not seen or shared is zero.” Don’t get me wrong—The Trending Communicator’s audience is the greatest, most wonderful, smartest, most brilliant collection of humans ever assembled. The podcast is being heard, the audience is growing, and so is the value.

To a point. My gratitude knows no limits, but the podcast does. How much of a podcast episode do listeners retain? Speaking for myself, within a day or two of conducting an interview, I’d be hard-pressed to recall more than 50% of the conversation. Within a week, that number drops like a stone. If the content is as valuable as I know it is, but it evaporates from memory, it stands to reason that the value also drops.

Which is nuts because my guests are giving us gold. Gems. Their insights are exactly what we need to pay our freight into the future and make sense of the changing nature of communications and marketing.

Putting it in writing…

I consider it a crime against communicators and marketers to keep my guests’ insights, wisdom, advice, humor, and brilliance restricted to one medium.

I’m launching Communications Trends to share those insights and perspectives and make them more accessible to my audiences and those who don’t have the time or preference for podcasts.

…and adding more value

Before you think, “Oh joy, podcast summaries,” let me reassure you that the last thing I want is to bore anyone with something I wouldn’t want to read myself.

Each newsletter will supplement and augment the podcast and work as a stand-alone item. Sometimes, I’ll share highlights from the most recent episode; sometimes, I’ll cast a wider net and share ideas from several guests. You’ll see key takeaways that connect the dots from one guest to another. Some editions will be about trends or happenings that haven’t been on the show, but I’ll point back to episodes where guests have offered relevant, poignant, or predictive revelations.

Let’s talk about AI

Transparency is key to ethical communications, so let me put this out there: I will, unabashedly and without one single qualm, be working with generative AI to create each and every newsletter (except for this first installment - the writing in this one is 100% human me; the image, courtesy of Midjourney).

I’ll use Google Notebook LM to extract information from my podcasts. I’ll probably turn to Claude for some of the prose. You can count on Perplexity for additional context and research. ChatGPT may come into play. The images will most likely be from Midjourney. I’ll let you know what tools I use as we go.

We’re in it together

I started The Trending Communicator because I want to help you gear up for a long and healthy career in our profession, and make your professional life better here and now. This newsletter only works if it fulfills the same purpose. Let me know if I’m succeeding. Send me your feedback and ideas. Tell me when you have a contrary point of view. If you’re reading on Substack or LinkedIn, feel free to comment. And please, subscribe and share.