Public Relations Stories and Strategies

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Every communications campaign you have ever built had a choice architecture inside it. The order you sequenced your calls to action. The option you listed first in a petition. The default you set in an employee survey. The way you structured a crisis response. 

You made all of those decisions. Some of them deliberately. Most of them by instinct, habit, or convention. And the difference between those two things, between deliberate design and accidental design, is the difference between a...

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“Journalism is dead.” 

You've heard it. You've probably said it. 

And honestly, the evidence seems pretty hard to argue with. 

Newsrooms gutted, trust in tatters, cable news turned into a gladiator sport.  

But what if that story, the one we keep telling about journalism, is itself bad journalism? 

Neil Brown thinks so. He’s a 40-year editor and president of the Poynter Institute, and he is, by his own admission, an optimist ab...

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Every PR professional has sat in a meeting where leaders ask you to “show up in AI”

Here’s the problem. The AEO/GEO industry has built an entire measurement apparatus around citations… the moment an AI visibly names your brand. But the research shows that moment is essentially an echo of a decision that was already made, upstream, in conversations that left no trace. 

Brands have been optimizing for the receipt, when the purchase decision happened days ago...

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There is a prayer that crisis communicators have been quoting for decades. 

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

It sounds right. It feels grounding. 

But maybe it’s been pointing us in the wrong direction the whole time. 

The problem is the concept of CONTROL. Because control, in a crisis, is a myth. And every...

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This episode first published in April, 2021

We haven't always seen color the same way.

Pink used to be for men. Blue for women.

People HATED colorful outfits when they first emerged. One aristocrat complained of "loud, swearing colors," because the new bright fabrics distracted him from his reading.

In this episode Carolyn Purnell takes us on a magical journey through the history of color.

Guest Carolyn Purnell, Ph.D.
https...

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This episode first published in July 2024.

Those big networking events. Many of us enjoy those but the repetitive small talk can be exhausting and challenging especially when conversations are frequently interrupted. In this episode we look at strategies for engaging storytelling in brief interactions, making meaningful connections, and ensuring your conversations stand out.  

Listen For
5:06 The Power of Listening
9:13 When You’re an Introvert
13:30 Finding Your Wedge into Group Conversations
20:14 Tailoring You...

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This episode first published in January 2025.

Communication is the most important weapon a Navy SEAL can carry. More vital than physical strength, endurance, or even firepower.

I was in Salt Lake City recently at a conference and saw former Navy SEAL William Branum speak. He served for 26 years with the US Navy and 23 of those years was a Navy SEAL. In his presentation he talked about how clear, concise, and often nonverbal communication plays a critical role...

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This episode was first published in May 2021.

Nudge Theory burst onto the scene in 2008 when Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler published their book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.” The simplest models of economics take preferences as given, but nudge ideas suggest we can be moved, steered, and in some cases manipulated. 

Nudge has influenced politicians around the World. There are “Nudge Units” in government in the UK, US, Germany, Japan, and even Canada. The World Ban...

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You’ve been in that room. Maybe you are in it right now. The table is full, the voices are loud, and somewhere between the agenda and the first agenda item, you go quiet. Not because you don't know what to say. Because something in the room tells you it isn't your turn. You leave and you call it imposter syndrome. You make it about yourself. You wonder what's wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. The room did that.

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Your client is wrong. You know it. They know it, somewhere underneath the certainty. 

And you have two choices. You can tell them they're wrong, which will end the conversation and cost you the relationship. Or you can find the thing they want more than being right and take them there instead.

This is something most communications professionals learn the hard way and never quite put into words. Every difficult client, every resistant leader, every person digging i...

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50 percent. That's how much of the global population now trusts generative AI when searching for information about companies and brands. 

More than Instagram. More than Facebook. More than social media in general. 

And that number climbed 7 points in a single year. 

The data comes from the Page Society's annual Harris Poll study. 14 countries, more than 15,000 people surveyed in December 2025. Consumers aren't just using AI more. They're believing it more. And most of them aren't clicking thr...

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Your Organisation says it's aligned. It probably isn't.

And the problem starts at the top.

Zora Artis and Wayne Aspland have spent 7 years studying the gap between what leadership teams say they're doing and what's actually happening inside organizations. And their findings are uncomfortable. 

In their latest global study, drawing on interviews with 55 CEOs and senior executives across five continents, they found that leaders routinely leave strategy meetings carrying completely different understandings of the direction t...

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Every comms professional knows the playbook. A crisis hits, you move fast. Holding statement, talking points, media plan, stakeholder map. You do it well because you've trained for it. You bring the plan to the CEO expecting alignment and instead you get a polite nod and silence. Not pushback. Not disagreement. Just silence. 

And that silence is worse than any argument because it means the CEO has already stopped listening. Not because your plan was bad, but because it w...

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Every PR firm knows the drill. Client says here's my budget. Firm divides by twelve. Monthly retainer, same amount, January through December, whether the work demands it or not. 

Need a press release? Flat rate. Need ten? Multiply. 

Need an editor or a videographer? That's by the hour, and one minute is one hour. 

The pricing isn't creative. It isn't strategic. It's arithmetic dressed up as a business model.

And it worked fine, unt...

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Most communicators assume that if people reject a message, they must not understand it. Lord David Evans argues the opposite. Backlash often isn’t confusion. It’s threat. When people feel insecure, unheard, or looked down on, they don’t lean in. They shut down. And in that moment, facts don’t persuade, values don’t inspire, and “better messaging” can make things worse.

In this episode Lord David Evans breaks down what political campaigning can teach PR professionals about trust, p...

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Public relations used to be seen as the function that shaped the message after the decisions were made. That is not enough anymore. In a world shaped by geopolitical shocks, cultural division, AI disruption, and rising reputational risk, communications leaders are being pulled closer to the centre of power. They are no longer just storytellers or spokespersons. They are becoming strategic sensemakers: the people expected to read the moment, interpret the pressure, and help leadership decide what to say, what to...

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Communications is often described as a female-led profession, but that label can hide a harder truth. Women may make up much of the industry, yet the balance often shifts when it comes to senior leadership, influence, and decision-making.

So, what’s still standing in the way, and why has progress been slower than it should be? 

Natasha Plowman argues gender equity cannot remain a women-only conversation, yet many men still hold back because they are afraid of say...

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You know that feeling when you look at your own brand and it somehow doesn’t feel like you anymore? The logo is the same, the words are mostly right, and the message is still “on brand”… but the visuals have started to wander. 

A new template here. A new font there. Someone’s “quick” Canva edit. A LinkedIn graphic that looks like it came from a different company. 

None of it is a big mistake. It’s just… a hundred...

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What if the best market research started by IGNORING what people say?

What if, instead, you started modeling them based on proven behaviour?

Right down to the regional level?

And what if political polling was done this way too 

A new term is showing up in research and strategy circles with major implications for communicators: synthetic populations. This is not a cheap AI focus group. It is a data-built population model that reflects h...

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In today’s world, PR leaders need to build and protect their brand’s reputation in an AI-shaped, polarized world, where owned media matters more than ever. 

Reputation is no longer a soft metric but an economic multiplier and an insurance policy. From the difference between brand and reputation to the growing tension between character and competence, this episode explains what actually moves corporate standing up or down in today’s environment.

We also share why owned media n...

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Trust used to flow upward. To experts, institutions, and authority. 

Then it shifted to “people like me.” 

Now even that circle is tightening. 

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals a growing insularity: smaller tribes, hardened perspectives, and a widening mass-class divide driven by whether people believe the system works for them. 

Persuasion is shifting to trust brokerage, and what communicators, leaders, and businesses can do when trust itself has become the battleground.

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