May 1, 2025
In this week's edition: Why social media is over, why media relations is dying, supercharging your crisis training, AI in comms, from the temple to the garden, and much more...
How to Supercharge Your Crisis Training - “Current training approaches don’t prepare leaders for the unpredictability of today’s crises. Learn 10 ways to improve your organization’s simulations — and leaders’ ability to adapt.” (MITSloan)
Media Relations is Dying and We Should Let It Go - “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?” I’ll agree to disagree, but ouch! (Comms Collectiv)
One Prompt Can Bypass Every Major LLM’s Safeguards - Researchers have uncovered “what they’re calling a universal, transferable bypass technique that can manipulate nearly every major LLM—regardless of vendor, architecture or training pipeline.” (Forbes)
YouTube is everything and everything is YouTube - “20 years in, YouTube is a dominant entertainment force. Now it’s coming for just about every way you spend your time.” (The Verge)
Most consumers will pay 25% more for their favorite brands, survey finds - “Positive customer experiences, consistent product quality and long-term brand familiarity drive greater loyalty, a UserTesting study found.” (Marketing Dive)
Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over - “During testimony at Meta’s antitrust trial, the Facebook founder’s argument was, in so many words, that platforms like his are not what they used to be.” (New Yorker)
The group chats that changed America - “(The influence of group chats) flows through X, Substack, and podcasts, and constitutes a kind of dark matter of American politics and media. The group chats aren’t always primarily a political space, but they are the single most important place in which a stunning realignment toward Donald Trump was shaped and negotiated, and an alliance between Silicon Valley and the new right formed.” (Semafor)
Former Top Pentagon Spokesperson Details ‘Month From Hell’ Inside the Agency - “Once the Signalgate story broke, Hegseth followed horrible crisis-communications advice from his new public affairs team, who somehow convinced him to try to debunk the reporting through a vague, Clinton-esque non-denial denial that ‘nobody was texting war plans.’ This was a violation of PR rule number one — get the bad news out right away.” (Politico)
Researchers study risks and rewards of emerging AI technology in communication organizations - “Ironically, Zhao found that what these communication practitioners were lacking was communication itself. People are hesitant to have the tough discussions about whether their organization's AI use was ethical and being done transparently.” (Phys.org)
Defining Success in Crisis Comms - “Keep perspective. Your voice is one of many, and being overruled isn’t rejection—it’s part of the process. Leaders are making tough calls with inputs you may not see. Stay humble. We’re professionals, not prophets. If things go wrong, resist the urge to spiral or disengage. Stay curious. Stay helpful. That’s how you grow your influence.” (JJFYI)
AI in Comms: Newsroom Lessons for Business and Government - “AI is helping journalists save time on rote tasks, but there’s little evidence that those saved hours are being reinvested in deeper reporting or investigations. That mirrors concerns in corporate comms: time saved with AI doesn’t automatically mean value gained.” (Reputation Matters)
Running great stakeholder interviews for content strategy - “You might be responsible for the content, but they’re responsible for the thing the content is about. And they might have a lot riding on your work.” (LaPope)
From the temple to the garden - “Traditional media’s rigid order has been replaced by mayhem. Conflict supersedes consideration. Speed overwhelms verification.” (Substack Post)
Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2025 - “Political and economic uncertainties, particularly surrounding TikTok, have significantly disrupted the influencer marketing space. Following its potential US ban in 2025, marketers’ investment intentions for TikTok in their influencer campaigns dropped by 17.2%, reflecting a cautious reassessment of platform reliability.” (Influencer Marketing Hub)
And finally, the most popular article from last week was Time Spent With Media Reaches 'Saturation,' Declines First Time Since Great Recession by MediaPost. See you in a couple of weeks.