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  • FIR #529: Fake Quotes from Fake Experts Find Their Way Into Top-Tier Media

    FIR #529: Fake Quotes from Fake Experts Find Their Way Into Top-Tier Media
    2026/09/28
    A Press-Gazette investigation found that dozens of experts quoted in the mainstream media don’t actually exist, and PR agencies are unwittingly sharing them with the press. This poses a credibility issue for the agencies and the media. It requires a layer of verification unlike anything we’ve faced before. Also in this episode, crisis communication has long been housed in the PR or communications department. Should it be a governance responsibility of the C-suite? That’s the case made in a new report from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the Institute of Directors. In his Tech Report, Dan York covers an initiative to close the AI language gap, including video moves by YouTube and Bluesky, smart glasses, and enhancements to Threads’ podcast toolkit. Links from this episode: Chartered Institute of Public Relations and Institute of Directors publish Crisis Communication Handbook for BoardsExecutive Reputation: Priced, Prized and Easily LostKate Winick: This Is a Bad Brand ClapbackConverse Ad Sparks Controversy Over Racist ImageryVirtual Reality: The Widely Quoted Media Experts Who Are Not What They SeemQwoted Bans AI-Generated Expert Profiles as PR Spam Floods Reporters’ InboxesProminent Art Therapist Quoted by Vice, Forbes and Others Is AI-GeneratedThe Rise of Fake AI Experts: A Wake-Up Call for the CommunityThe Rise of the Fake Expert: How to Remain Authentic in an Inbox of Fakes Links from Dan York’s Tech Report: Closing AI’s Language Gap: Why the Internet Society Is Joining a Global CommitmentBluesky Now Lets You Upload 10-Minute-Long VideosWhat’s New at Made on YouTube 2026?New YouTube Live Tools for Fan Funding, Dubbing and MoreEverything Announced at Meta Connect 2026Snap Launches $2,195 Specs Smart GlassesThreads Expands Podcast Toolkit for Creators and Listeners The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, October 26. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Shel Holtz: Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode 529 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California. Neville Hobson: And I’m Neville Hobson in Somerset in the UK. Shel Holtz: Neville, it is wonderful to be back together with you again. Neville Hobson: It’s been a bit of a strange few weeks because of some health issues I’m working through. They’ve affected my availability to record our midweek shows. I was particularly keen to make sure we could record the topics we’re discussing today. Hopefully, by the time our next monthly episode comes around, I’ll be close to normal again. Shel Holtz: My fingers are certainly crossed. To accommodate all of this, we’re recording a shortened version of our monthly episode: two topics plus Dan York’s report. We’ll also have a quick recap of the two episodes since our last monthly show. Neville Hobson: Episode 527 was a particularly interesting long-form show with six topics. Our lead story was about a senior manager who discovered that AI was rejecting job applications within seconds of their arrival. One reason was that applicants had graduated from college before 2010, even though the instruction was to surface candidates who displayed “youthful energy.” What’s worse, the talent acquisition manager saw no liability issue because AI had made the decision. If I recall correctly, she said, “We’re okay. We have no liability because the AI made the decision.” If it weren’t so serious, it would be hilarious. We also discussed an expert witness who used ChatGPT to prepare a report for a legal case. The prompts he used—not just the AI’s output—were uncovered during discovery and entered into evidence. You have to check these things. Then, in episode 528, we talked about fandom. We explored the differences among fans, audiences, and communities. A fan’s identity can become tied to a team, artist, product, or other object of passion. It’s no surprise that marketers want their brands to inspire that kind of excitement, but not everything has the potential to develop a fan base. We received a couple of comments about that episode. Shel Holtz: Brian Kilgore in Toronto wrote, “Good show. In my life, I’ve worn Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy clothes, an MG T-shirt, and a sweatshirt I designed using ASCII code as the hook for CNCP telecommunications. One cap that I’ve lost says ‘Nikon Most Excellent.’” ...
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    50 分
  • ALP 313: The audience has (and always will) matter most for PR and marketing leaders

    ALP 313: The audience has (and always will) matter most for PR and marketing leaders
    2026/08/17

    Times change, but somehow the job hasn’t. In this episode, Chip and Gini dig into what’s stayed constant across their combined decades in PR and marketing, and why chasing the latest platform update is a losing game if you’ve lost sight of the fundamentals underneath it.

    The episode was sparked by a LinkedIn series from Doug Simon, who asked longtime PR pros what has remained constant in their careers. Gini was asked the question of whether the PESO Model still holds up, and her answer is that the four media types haven’t gone anywhere, and earned media’s third-party credibility now matters more to how LLMs learn. Chip extends the logic to SEO and its successors, advising to chase the people, not the algorithm or the platform.

    Other changes may also have less of an impact than you might think. Influencer marketing is the latest version of celebrity TV endorsements, but with a YouTube channel. The agency-client relationship continues to run on the same dynamics it did 70 or 80 years ago. Gini brings up the story about a UK agency reportedly running AI agents to pitch journalists undetected for eight months. Chip’s take is that just like with interns and inexperienced team members, there are well-managed AI agents as well as poorly managed ones. It’s the human factor that matters most. [read the transcript]

    The post ALP 313: The audience has (and always will) matter most for PR and marketing leaders appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
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    19 分
  • FIR #526: Forget Anthropic’s AI Watermark. Can You Defend Every Sentence?

    FIR #526: Forget Anthropic’s AI Watermark. Can You Defend Every Sentence?
    2026/08/17
    Anthropic’s watermark scheme is the focus of so much discussion that you could be excused for thinking there was nothing else to talk about. For many, it’s the solution to identifying all those evil-doers who offload their writing to large language models. But we are wasting far too much time trying to determine whether (and to what degree) AI was involved in creating content. Much more important is determining whether the content was crafted with respect for the reader, and whether the creator can stand by every word. That’s the idea behind the new AI writing policy from the software company Clay, which makes far more sense than trying to detect a watermark. Links from this episode: Clay AI Writing Policy: 4 Guiding PrinciplesHow Claude marks AI-generated contentAnthropic’s watermark survives copy-paste, but not the real dev workflowCan Anthropic’s invisible watermarks curb ‘AI slop’? Researchers remain scepticalAnthropic’s text watermarks signal new front in AI detectionClaude’s new Scarlet Letter watermark is invisible—for nowHow to Build a Responsible AI Writing PolicyHow Claude’s text watermarking worksClaude is now watermarking every response — here’s what that means if you use AI for writingI’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I. The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, August 24. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Neville Hobson: Hi, everyone, and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 526. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz. In the last episode of FIR, we talked about workslop and the implications workslop brings to the workplace. We’re going to continue down that path today. I’m sure you’ve all seen the headlines about Anthropic putting an invisible watermark on anything Claude writes. I want to separate what that actually does from what people have been claiming. First, you won’t see this watermark. It’s not a “written by Claude” tag. It’s machine-readable. It survives copy and paste, and it may even survive some editing. The reason Anthropic came up with this is to comply with the transparency rules under the EU AI Act, and it applies everywhere Claude runs: the app, the API, Claude Code, Cowork, cloud providers — you name it. You can’t paste text into a public detector and expose someone yet. Anthropic says detection tools are coming, but it hasn’t released any of them. Here’s roughly how it works: Every time Claude generates text, it’s choosing between several equally good next words — say, “gray” or “overcast.” Normally, that choice is random. With watermarking, though, a secret cryptographic key nudges that randomness in a consistent way. No single word looks suspicious, but across a couple hundred word choices in an article, the pattern becomes statistically detectable if you have the cryptographic key. That’s completely different from tools like Pangram, which look for writing patterns that seem AI-like — you know, em dashes, overuse of words like “delve” or “tapestry” or “underscore,” constantly grouping things in threes. These are all things real writers do, by the way. The rule of three is nothing unique to AI, nor are em dashes. That’s why I don’t put much stock in these tools. Anthropic’s detector doesn’t guess. It tests whether the text matches the pattern its own cryptographic key would produce. Now, it’s particularly important to understand that a detected watermark means the content was processed by Claude. It doesn’t mean Claude wrote it. You could write something yourself, have Claude clean up the grammar, and it would still carry that watermark. Axios flagged exactly this risk for communications teams that polish a human-written press release with Claude. It also works in reverse, by the way. Heavily edit, paraphrase, translate, or blend the text with other writing, and that watermark can disappear. Short passages may not carry enough signal to be detected at all. So this isn’t a foolproof “Did a human use AI?” detector. Picture a reporter running a company statement through a detector and calling it AI-generated when your team actually wrote it and just had Claude do the final polish. The watermark tells you about processing. It can’t tell you who did the thinking. And that brings me to Clay, the software company, which just rolled out...
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    23 分
  • FIR #527: Delegating Hiring Decisions to AI

    FIR #527: Delegating Hiring Decisions to AI
    2026/08/24
    At one company, a leader discovered by chance that AI was rejecting job candidate applications within seconds of their arrival. One reason: They graduated from college before 2010, which contradicted the instruction to surface candidates who displayed “youthful energy.” What’s worse, the talent acquisition manager didn’t see any liability issues, since AI made the decision. Also in this long-form episode for August 2026: An expert witness used ChatGPT to prepare a report. The prompts he used to generate the report were uncovered during discovery and entered into evidence.Nutrogena parted ways with its spokesperson, Hayden Panetierre, more than a decade ago. Its rationale for that decision has created a crisis for Nutrogena today in the wake of Panetierre’s untimely death.Brands suddenly care about Reddit thanks to its (perceived) role in AI-generated overviews and summaries. Redditors haven’t returned the feeling.Meta is facing a trillion-dollar-plus judgment in its current trial, but even more consequential could be a requirement to strip from its social media platforms the devices that addicted young people, many of which have become standards for social media. Will social media as we know it change in the wake of the verdict?Some companies are compensating employees who join the ranks of influencers and creators sharing content about the companies’ products and services. It sounds like a good idea, until you look at the labor, HR, and legal issues that arise. In his Tech Report, Dan York provides more statistics about the decline in referral traffic thanks to AI overviews and searches via LLMs, Time magazine’s decision to inject ads into markdown files targeting AI agents (and Perplexity’s decision to block them), and LinkedIn’s “Seems Like AI Slop” option — is it working? Links from this episode: ‘Show How 3M Is 0% at Fault:’ Expert Witness Used ChatGPT to Write Report Defending Company in Deadly Explosion LawsuitMan Obliterated When Court Obtains His ChatGPT TranscriptsI Just Ran My Thesis, Written in 2014, Through an AI DetectorHayden Panettiere’s Old Neutrogena Story Resurfaces After Her DeathNeutrogena Faces New Backlash After Hayden Panettiere’s DeathHayden Panettiere Dead: Clip of Star Discussing Neutrogena Dropping Her Over PPD ResurfacesNeutrogena Under Fire Again for Dropping Hayden Panettiere After She Revealed Postpartum Depression StruggleNeutrogena Faces Backlash After Hayden Panettiere’s Death. How Should the Brand Respond?Hayden Panettiere Said Neutrogena Dropped Her Over Postpartum Depression. Now Fans Are BoycottingNeutrogena Faces Backlash Over Hayden Panettiere’s Postpartum Depression ClaimsBrands Suddenly Care About Reddit. Redditors Don’t Return the Feeling.Reddit Fades From ChatGPT CitationsNo More Doom Scrolling or Instagram Stories? A Meta Trial Loss Could End the Social Media We KnowMeta Trial Could Spell the ‘End of Social Media as We Know It’LinkedIn Adds an Option to Report ‘AI Slop’I Just Had a Deeply Alarming 45-Minute Sync With Our Talent Acquisition TeamGap Inc. Opens Creator Program to EmployeesGap Inc. Expands Cross-Brand Creator and Social Advocacy Program to EmployeesEmployee Creators Are a New Brand StrategyInside David’s Bridal’s New Commission-Based Ambassador Program for Creators and EmployeesDavid’s Bridal Ramps Up Its Creator StrategyWhy Starbucks Is Betting on Employees as CreatorsWhy Brands Are Inviting Their Employees to Be CreatorsWhy Major Retailers Are Turning Employees Into Content Creators: BilloShould Brands Build Creator Programs From Their Own Employees? 32 Experts on the Risks and Payoffs Links from Dan York’s Tech Report: Publisher Traffic Falls 33% Globally as AI Overviews Reshape SearchIn 2026, Less Than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a ClickTime Has Started Serving Ads to AI AgentsPerplexity Blocks Time’s Ads Being Served to AI AgentsLinkedIn Adds a Button to Report AI-Generated ‘Slop’LinkedIn Says Its ‘AI Slop’ Button Is Working The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, September 28. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Neville Hobson: Hi everyone, and welcome to the For Immediate Release podcast, long form episode 527 for August 2026. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz, and Neville, you’re back in your office. It’s good to see you back ...
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    1 時間 34 分
  • OTSP #6: One Size Fits Nobody — A Better Way to Communicate Employee News

    OTSP #6: One Size Fits Nobody — A Better Way to Communicate Employee News
    2026/08/25
    Communicating news to employees used to be a straightforward proposition: Publish the company newspaper or magazine, and give everyone the same information at the same time. Today, communicators can target news by audience, location, channel, source, and relevance. But the greater challenge is deciding what qualifies as news and what you hope employees will think, feel, or do after receiving it. In this episode of “On The Same Page,” Shel Holtz and Mark Dollins discuss why employee news cannot be one-size-fits-all — or a one-and-done — and explore the importance of timing, sequencing, trusted voices, employee influence networks, and planning for what happens after the announcement. Raw transcript: Shel Holtz: So, Mark, I don’t know about you, but when I got into this business, communicating news to employees was what employee communication was all about. Was that true for you? Mark Dollins: Yes, exactly right. Often, it was one size fits all: Hit that button, and now everybody knows. It was really simple. Shel Holtz: My first job was with an energy company, ARCO, which doesn’t exist anymore. It was acquired by British Petroleum after I left. An interesting story: One of the people I knew who was still there—Dave Orman, who ran the department—said someone at BP who had been with another company it acquired asked whether he knew how to pronounce his company’s name. I think it was Amoco. Dave said, “No, how do you pronounce it?” He replied, “BP. The Amoco is silent.” Mark Dollins: Clever. I like it. Shel Holtz: Just to give you a heads-up about what it was going to be like. We had a newspaper. Sometimes it was eight pages; sometimes it was 16. Every Friday, it was delivered to all 55,000 employees in the company. Everybody got the news, and everybody got the same news. Today, there are organizations doing internal communication that don’t actually have a news vehicle. They don’t communicate the news. They’ve shifted entirely to a proactive, strategic approach to communication. Mark Dollins: We may have been separated at birth, because my first corporate job was also with an energy company. Our communication to employees was a monthly magazine—anywhere from 32 to 38 pages. To your point, everybody got exactly the same news and information at the same time. There really wasn’t a sense of urgency. Communicating news meant communicating what we decided was news employees needed to know, when we decided they needed to know it. Things have changed considerably with the advent of social media and immediate communication. Of course, there also used to be a wall between internal and external communication. You could get away with some things. That’s not possible anymore. That wall is invisible. Shel Holtz: I remember when I was at ARCO, Dave brought Roger D’Aprix in to speak to us. I believe he was with Xerox at the time. Roger was pushing this whole notion of proactive communication: You communicate to prepare employees for what’s coming, ensure they are aligned, and make sure they know what they need to know to understand and support whatever is about to happen. Everybody on the ARCO staff, with the exception of the graphic designers, had a daily newspaper background. We were all newspaper reporters. That was what they wanted—people who could report the news. There was pushback against what Roger said: “You mean we’re not going to report when the Trans-Alaska Pipeline terminus station blows up and kills three employees?” You do need to report that, but you also need to be proactive. Today, though, let’s talk about news. Mark Dollins: Indeed. How we communicate news today is critical. While one size doesn’t fit all in communicating news, I believe it is important to apply a strategic filter when deciding how to report it. Shel Holtz: Do you want to report absolutely everything that goes on? Even in public journalism, you don’t report everything that happens. There are editorial decisions. What is news? Mark Dollins: That’s the most basic question: What is news? What makes people interested? What is going to produce an “Aha!” rather than a “Ho-hum, I’m not interested”? Shel Holtz: Of course, news in an organizational or internal communication context is not necessarily defined the same way it would be at the Los Angeles Times or The Wall Street Journal. Mark Dollins: Remember all the filters you were supposed to apply in journalism school—proximity, timeliness, relevance, and so forth? Some are applicable here, and some less so. For global companies, proximity may not be geographic. The connection may be that my company’s name is involved. That gives it some relevance. Shel Holtz: But what’s relevant to an employee in Paris working in sales is not necessarily relevant to an employee in Peoria working in a manufacturing facility. When we started—with your monthly magazine and my weekly newspaper—the technology limited what we could do to...
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    23 分
  • Circle of Fellows #132: AI and the Communication Leadership Moment

    Circle of Fellows #132: AI and the Communication Leadership Moment
    2026/08/28
    Episode 132 of IABC’s Circle of Fellows examines what the newly released Reimagining Tomorrow 2026 report from the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management means for the profession. The report surveyed 536 communication professionals across six global regions and found a profession that has embraced AI in practice but not yet claimed AI governance in leadership: 95.9% of organizations now permit AI, yet only 8.6% have communication professionals leading the formal governance structure. One in four organizations discloses AI use to no one at all. Joining moderator Shel Holtz are Bonnie Caver and Adrian Cropley OAM, both Global Alliance board directors and the research partners behind the survey, as well as Mike Klein. (Theomary Karamanis was scheduled to be a panelist but laryngitis prevented her from participating.) Together, they dig into what the data means for the profession, what it will take to move from adoption to accountability, and what it takes to be a leader in the AI era. Links from this episode: The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication ManagementReimagining Tomorrow 2026: The Report About the panel Bonnie Caver, SCMP, is the Founder and CEO of Reputation Lighthouse, a global change management and reputation consultancy with offices in Denver, Colorado, and Austin, Texas. The firm, which is 20 years old, focuses on leading companies to create, accelerate, and protect their corporate value. She has achieved the highest professional certification for a communication professional, the Strategic Communication Management Professional (SCMP), a distinction at the ANSI/ISO level. She is also a certified strategic change management professional (Kellogg School of Management), a certified crisis manager (Institute of Crisis Management). She holds an advanced certification for reputation through the Reputation Institute (now the RepTrak Company). She is a past chair of the global executive board for the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). She currently serves on the board of directors for the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, where she leads the North American Regional Council and is the New Technology Responsibility/AI Director. Caver is the Vice Chair for the Global Communication Certification Council (GCCC) and leads the IABC Change Management Special Interest Group, which has more than 1,300 members. In addition, she is heavily involved in the global conversation around ethical and responsible AI implementation and led the Global Alliance’s efforts in creating Ethical and Responsible AI Guidelines for the global profession. Adrian Cropley is the founder and director of the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence, a global training and development organization. For over thirty years, Adrian has worked with clients worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, on major change communication initiatives, internal communication reviews and strategies, professional development programs, and executive leadership and coaching. He is a non-executive director on several boards and advises some of the top CEOs and executives globally. Adrian is a past global chair of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), where he implemented the IABC Career Road Map, kick-started a global ISO certification for the profession, and developed the IABC Academy. Adrian pioneered the Melcrum Internal Communication Black Belt program in Asia Pacific and is a sought-after facilitator, speaker, and thought leader. He has been a keynote speaker and workshop leader on strategic and change communication at international conferences in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore, China, India, Hong Kong, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia. He has received numerous awards, including IABC Gold Quill Awards for communication excellence, and his Agency received Boutique Agency of the Year 6 years running. Adrian is the Chair of the Industry Advisory Committee for the RMIT School of Media and Communication and a Fellow of the IABC and RSA. In 2017, he was awarded the Medal of Order of Australia for his contribution to the field of communication. Mike Klein is the Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Magazine, Founder of #WeLeadComms, and a communication consultant specializing in internal and social communication based in Reykjavik, Iceland. A former US political consultant, Mike shifted direction toward internal communication while pursuing his MBA at London Business School. Since then, Mike has been one of the leading voices for empowering communication professionals, and advocating a focus on internal influence and social connection as drivers of communication, integration and performance. His 2011 book, From Lincoln to LinkedIn remains relevant as organizations recognize that personal credibility and connection are critical to communication success in a world where content volumes ...
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    57 分
  • ALP 314: Agency owners need to get their hands dirty with AI

    ALP 314: Agency owners need to get their hands dirty with AI
    2026/08/31

    Some advisers are telling agency owners they don’t need to know AI all that well themselves. They suggest owners go deep on AI for a month or three, then pass the day-to-day to the team and move on with life. In this episode, Chip and Gini explain why that’s backwards, and how owners who step back from AI are making a mistake.

    Chip’s argument is that AI doesn’t fit the usual delegation model because it’s moving too fast and touching too much of the business to hand off after just a few months of study. Gini agrees, noting that advice which made sense six months ago is often stale today. Both connect this to credibility with the team: Chip compares the situation to a non-technical manager overseeing developers, who then gets disrespected because they don’t speak the language. Gini says her own coaching works because she’s in the tools constantly enough to give specific workable advice.

    They also describe pushing AI into something closer to a personal operating system than a work tool, from Chip wanting an assistant that catches him contradicting his own past positions, to Gini’s agent that calls her out when she takes on work she said she’d delegate, telling her flatly it’s not the best use of her time. The episode closes with the advice that staying curious personally is what keeps owners sharp enough to lead a team through a tool that keeps rewriting its own rules. [read the transcript]

    The post ALP 314: Agency owners need to get their hands dirty with AI appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
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    21 分
  • FIR #528: Why Marketers Are Suddenly Obsessed with Fandom

    FIR #528: Why Marketers Are Suddenly Obsessed with Fandom
    2026/09/03
    Fandoms are not synonymous with audiences or communities. The difference: Fans’ identities are tied up with the team, artist, product, or other object of their passion. It’s not surprising that marketers are chasing fandoms, in hopes of turning their brands into something people are genuinely excited about. But not everything is a potential flashpoint for a fan base. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel explore what distinguishes fans from members of other audiences or communities, how brands might leverage them, the wisdom of trying to spin up a fan base, and why fandoms might rebel against attempts to use them for marketing purposes. Links from this episode: WTF are fandoms, and why are marketers chasing them?Consumers as Brand Fans: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda Using the TCCM FrameworkSocial media and fandomHow community is redefining Media & Creative in 2025 The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, September 28. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Neville Hobson: Hi, everyone, and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is Episode 528. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz. There is a new word making the rounds in marketing circles these days, and that word is “fandom.” Obviously, fandom isn’t anything new. Beatles fans constitute a fandom. Star Trek fans are a big fandom. Sports teams have had fandoms for as long as sports have been around. What’s new is the idea that fandom should be a marketing strategy. Marketers are paying attention because a fandom represents something considerably more valuable than an audience. An audience is passively watching you. That notion led Jay Rosen to write a 2006 post titled “The People Formerly Known as the Audience,” describing the shift away from a one-way mass-media model to a networked model in which people who once passively consumed information can now publish, respond, organize, remix, and distribute it themselves. That’s not always necessarily a good thing, but it is what it is. A community gathers around a shared interest, but a fandom goes even further. Fans incorporate that interest into their identities. They create things, develop rituals and inside jokes, recruit other people, recommend things to one another, and sometimes defend the object of their fandom with remarkable enthusiasm. One definition I particularly like comes from an article in Digiday: Fandom is where attention turns into identity. You can probably understand why marketers find that appealing. Advertising can buy attention. It’s much harder to buy identity. It’s harder to buy belonging, advocacy, or voluntary engagement. There is some evidence that fandom deserves to be treated as something distinctive. A systematic review published last year examined 38 marketing studies involving brand fans and concluded that fandom has moved from the margins of consumer culture into the mainstream. Brand fans really do behave differently from people who merely buy a product regularly. There is another reason fandom has suddenly become attractive: The media environment has fragmented spectacularly. People aren’t gathered around the same handful of television networks, newspapers, magazines, and radio stations anymore. They’re scattered among TikTok creators, YouTube channels, Reddit communities, Discord servers, gaming platforms, streaming services, group chats, podcasts, and sports communities. We could keep listing niches all day long. Instead of asking, “How do we reach women ages 25 to 44?” marketers can potentially find a group of people who are already intensely interested in something relevant to the organization. That changes the communication challenge. You don’t approach a fandom as an audience waiting to receive your message. You’re entering somebody else’s existing culture. That culture already has leaders, vocabulary, expectations, and history. It has ideas about who belongs and who doesn’t. Increasingly, creators are among the people who have earned credibility within those cultures. The strategic question isn’t, “Which influencer can deliver the biggest reach?” It becomes, “Who actually has standing with these people, and do we have a legitimate reason to be here?” That last question is one I think organizations should spend much more time considering, because fandom is in ...
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    24 分