Communications Miscellany | August 7, 2029
In this week's back-to-work edition (#197): Geoeconomic risk & corporate affairs, transparency in a cyber-crisis, the battle for GEO, unofficial channels, the new brand folklore, and much more...
Note: It’s been nearly a month since the last edition, so there’s a lot to catch up on. Here’s a first attempt at bringing some of the most interesting + most recent together. All that to say, jetlag is a beast! We’ll be back to regular Thursday scheduling next week.
Challenges and opportunities for corporate communication and public relations function - “The headline? Our function is becoming more important within management at exactly the moment that AI and underinvestment are eroding its future capability.” (Wadds)
Be the CCO: Communicators on what Taylor Farms should do now - “Taylor Farms recalled iceberg lettuce after it was connected to an outbreak of cyclospora, which can cause intense GI symptoms. Then things got muddy when the FDA announced a false positive — and Taylor Farms’ statement treated it as an exoneration. It wasn’t. Things got confusing. It’s quite the comms mess.” (PRDaily)
Geoeconomics Risk Tops Oxford-GlobeScan Corporate Affairs 2026 Survey Findings - “Geopolitical uncertainty is reshaping the operating environment for businesses worldwide… Against this backdrop, geoeconomic risk has emerged as the leading concern for Corporate Affairs professionals, with 76% of respondents identifying geoeconomic themes as among the biggest risks facing global business over the next two years. Artificial intelligence (AI) ranks second at 44%.” (Oxford-Globescan)
The Hidden Cost of AI-Assisted Creativity - “AI boosts individual creativity but narrows collective idea diversity. Four studies reveal why, and what managers can do about it.” (MITSloan)
When You Can’t Control the Story: Transparency in a Cyber Crisis - “In a cyber crisis, the one thing you cannot decide is whether the information becomes public. That decision has already been made; by the threat actor. The only decision left to you is whether you lead with clarity or spend the next eighteen months reacting to a story someone else finished writing.” (CIPR)
A PR Firm Is Using Fake Publicists With AI-Generated Headshots to Spam Journalists With Pitches for Its Clients - “Why am I getting emails from fake PR reps with AI-generated faces?” (Futurism)
Fans are the new communicators - “AI can generate almost anything on a screen, but it can't re-create what happens when thousands of people gather around something they genuinely care about.” (Axios)
The battle for GEO - “As search becomes a reputation environment, questions about GEO ownership risk diminishing the full communications remit.” (Earned First)
Employees Didn’t Abandon Your Comms Channels. They Replaced Them - “A 2026 survey from Mitel found that when official channels let them down, 66% of desk workers and 89% of frontline workers go around them instead, no hesitation. Oak Engage found something similar: 86% of the HR and internal comms leaders they surveyed believe their own employees are already using unofficial platforms to talk about work as a matter of course.” (Chris McGrath)
Everything Mark Ritson thinks marketers get wrong about AI - “From synthetic data to discounting, Mark Ritson diagnoses all of marketing’s biggest AI-era problems in a rapid-fire clinic. Here are the best quotes.” (The Drum)
The New Brand Folklore - “How does a brand build the meaning it wants to build in this environment? Which brands are built to thrive? What does the discipline of brand positioning and comms planning even look like anymore? It feels like folklore to me, bits of stories passed around, with people and machines adding their own bits to the stories as they go.” (BRXND)
To navigate the fraught AI landscape, we need to shift from debate to dialogue - “Debate asks who is right. Dialogue asks what is true, what matters, and what should we do next.” (Fast Company)
Corporate consistency wins - “Three recent studies converged on two big themes for communicators: Americans are most concerned with practical, pocketbook issues and are looking for consistency from business leaders.” (Axios)
LinkedIn is testing a ‘seems like AI slop’ reporting tool - “LinkedIn is once again trying to get a handle on the vast amounts of AI slop on the platform. To do that, the company is testing a new reporting tool that let users flag potential slop and removing the “rewrite with AI” button it once promoted on every post.” (Engadget) More from LinkedIn’s own Chief Product Officer here.
And finally, the most popular article from the last edition was How AI is changing language from the Guardian.