IT’S A PR THING

AI Is Exposing PR's Real Problem And It's Not What You Think If you've been in a room full of PR professionals lately when AI comes up, you already know the conversation is charged.

The discussion about AI and PR is full of fear, defensiveness, resistance, and honestly, a lot of misplaced angst. And that's because the real threat isn't what most people think it is.

In this episode, we're getting into what AI actually exposes abou...

How to Spot a Crisis Before It Happens 

ISSUE MANAGEMENT EXPLAINED 

Most crises are preventable — that's a fact. But they're only preventable if you know what to look for. In Part III of our series on Crisis - Not Everything is a Crisis, we break down how organizational problems develop, why so many get ignored until it's too late, and what PR pros can do to support divisions and leaders in catching them early -- because the best c...

The First Hour of a Flare-Up: Are You Reactive or Deliberate? 

Today we cover Part 2 of our series on crisis — or rather, not everything is a crisis.

This week we talk about when an incident first flares up, and how we as PR pros think, counsel and act in those moments – because that matters. A lot. The mindset we bring, the discipline we apply. It can make the difference between managing a moment and creating a bigger problem.

In ...

McDonald’s CEO Burger-Bite Uproar   Faux Pas vs Crisis — Know the Difference

When did our profession start calling every little flare‑up a crisis? A TikTok trend, a snarky comment thread, a logo people don’t like — suddenly everyone’s acting like the business is melting down. But most of these moments aren’t crises at all. They’re upstream matters that are manageable, or a faux pas with a short life spa...

NEWS UPDATE: FeedSpot named IT'S A PR THING to its list of top PR podcasts in the world again - two years in a row, with IT'S A PR THING moving up four spots in 2026. Read more. 

What Consumers Said. Why the FCC Is Acting on It. 

Today's episode is a case study in the progress that demonstrates why it's important for companies to regulate themselves -- or else they'll invite regulation to be imposed on them.

Consumers have been s...

Brand Backlash: The Cost of Content Overload

Consumers are officially hitting the wall.

Five recent studies all point to the same thing: people are drowning in brand content, tuning out messages, and walking away from companies that won’t give them a break. In this episode, we break down what that overload is doing to the brain—fatigue, anxiety, decision paralysis—and why it’s eroding brand connection instead of strengthening it.

T...

What Customers Are Begging For (and Taco Bell Gets It)

In this episode of IT’S A PR THING, we’re circling back to customer experience — not the buzzword version, but the kind that actually builds relationship capital. Today, we’ll cover a recent customer experience that demonstrates how much it matters when organizations make things easy, give people a way out of technology when they need it, and create moments that become memor...

Stewarding our PR Time -- What Is Your ROTI 

PR pros are always being pulled in different directions. We are expected, as the nature of the job, to be on-call, to be available to respond to breaking news, to crisis, to bend and flex with urgent deadlines, and to spend much of our day in meetings gathering info and intel – and then finding time to get the work done. That’s all on top of res...

Measuring Customer Effort In this episode, we take the next step in the conversation we started last week about boiling customer frustration and what it means in reading the organization’s relationship radar.

Today we focus on Customer Effort Scoring — a practical way to see where people are running into friction and operational hurdles long before they turn into a reputational issue.

CES helps teams see the incremental operationa...

CUSTOMERS ARE FED UP 

The urgent reputation risk PR must face in 2026

In this first episode of 2026, we take a clear look at a growing issue shaping the year ahead for PR professionals: customer frustration has reached a breaking point, and new data from 2025 shows just how widespread the problem has become. Customers are dealing with broken processes, confusing systems, and automated tools that create more work instead of solving ...

Today we tackle my favorite part of the PR work -- measuring success while a campaign is still in motion.

In today’s show, we’ll talk about a framework to help you read the signals stakeholders give off in real time, and how those behaviors reveal whether your strategy is progressing or stalling.

You'll learn clear, actionable ways to measure momentum as it happens, so you can refine your approach and achieve stronger results. And ...

It’s Time to Reframe PR — Go Beyond the Messenger Role

If you’re a PR professional tired of being seen as just the company’s messenger service or the cleanup crew after a crisis, this episode is for you.

PR pros in numbers are crying out to be rightly recognized as strategic-management professionals  — yet too often, we’re left out of the early conversations where our knowledge, experience and insights can make the biggest differen...

Welcome back to IT'S A PR THING, where we help you build relationships that build business.

Today’s episode is straight talk for PR pros who want to do the work better. We’ll cover 10 strategies that help retool your thought process, load you up with practical approaches and transform your PR function into a relationship-building machine!

This is a mini-course – building from the basics while escalating to the more expert skills t...

Welcome back to IT'S A PR THING, where we help you build relationships that build business.

In today's episode we challenge the idea that public relations is about telling your story. Instead, the stories that matter most come from the people you serve.

Today you’ll learn how to shift focus from pushing messages and content to creating experiences that develop and maintain relationships across your organization's stakeholder spect...

NOTE: THIS RECORDING WAS PREVIOUSLY RELEASED ON OCT. 13, 2025. 

THE ISRAEL / GAZA DEAL: A MASTER CLASS IN GLOBAL RELATIONSHIP CAPITAL

The peace deal between Israel and Gaza isn’t just a diplomatic headline—it’s a global master-class in relationship capital. As the remaining 20 living hostages are now released and reuniting with their families, we break down the five ways this moment proves that buil...

For those of us in public relations, Charlie Kirk’s death should ring our bell. Without freedom of speech, there is no PR profession. That’s a fact.

Today’s episode breaks down this point into four key areas where freedom of speech is vital to the existence of our profession – and in how PR is effectively practiced.

We’ll also cover insights from international students studying PR in the United States, and tackle the question about...

So how much does it cost you when your logo flops? And is it the what or the how that brings on the flop? And did our reigning grand champion of logo flops – Cracker Barrel – miss a real opportunity to leverage a branding change?

Join me today as we learn what a logo flop can cost you in hard dollars and cents, the lessons from Cracker Barrel’s recent experience, and most importantly, an alternative approach that could have involve...

Poor customer experience is driving poor mental health -- and that's a PR thing and a brand destroyer. 

Join me today as we hear what studies and experts have to say, and how a U.S. culture of poor customer service and experiences is damaging the public's mental health in several ways. 

As we wave our banners about being compassionate, empathetic, kind and caring -- we as a U.S. business culture across all industries are missing th...

My First PR Teacher -- Thank you, Mamma.

Today we celebrate the upcoming Mother's Day weekend with a tribute to Franny J, the OG relationship builder.

Franny J came from northern Alabama, knew no one of influence in Indianapolis, but her relationship-building skills earned her a client list that included some of the most prominent names in Central Indiana.

And she's my mom. The start-up queen before start ups were a thing!

She sta...