August 21, 2025 • 48 mins
Traffic is tanking. Search is splintering. And what used to count as a “PR win” may no longer be strategic. In a landscape where AI overall and large language models specifically are reshaping discovery, attention is no longer just a side effect of good content—it’s the point. But how do you earn it when the rules keep shifting?
In this week’s episode, Anne Green and Steve Halsey kick things off with a fast-moving conversation about what’s driving urgency and big opportunity around earned media today, from the rise of generative engine optimization (GEO) to AI’s growing appetite for structured, high-authority content that gives third-party credibility renewed weight. Drawing on recent insights from a private gathering of high-level media publishers, advertising and brand leaders, they reflect on what it now takes to stay visible in a “post-traffic” world.
Then, Anne is joined by Dan Nestle, communications strategist, podcaster, and advocate of the “Earned Attention” framework, for a conversation about what really builds influence today. With experience across both corporate and agency roles, Dan challenges communicators and PR pros to revisit long-held assumptions about success in a fragmented, AI-shaped landscape.
Together, they explore what happens when teams prioritize prestige placements over channels that actually impact audience behavior, and how that disconnect can undermine relevance, visibility, and trust. They examine how trade and niche media are regaining strategic value, what today’s audiences actually pay attention to, and why content built for trust and clarity is more likely to be seen by people and platforms alike.
Join us as we explore:
- Why audience behavior is replacing top-tier coverage as the true measure of success
- What GEO (generative engine optimization) means for earned media strategy
- How AI is reshaping discoverability and visibility, sometimes quietly, sometimes radically
- The enduring value of trade and niche media in an authority-driven ecosystem
- What comms leaders can do to earn attention, build trust, and stay strategically visible
In this week’s episode, Anne Green and Steve Halsey kick things off with a fast-moving conversation about what’s driving urgency and big opportunity around earned media today, from the rise of generative engine optimization (GEO) to AI’s growing appetite for structured, high-authority content that gives third-party credibility renewed weight. Drawing on recent insights from a private gathering of high-level media publishers, advertising and brand leaders, they reflect on what it now takes to stay visible in a “post-traffic” world.
Then, Anne is joined by Dan Nestle, communications strategist, podcaster, and advocate of the “Earned Attention” framework, for a conversation about what really builds influence today. With experience across both corporate and agency roles, Dan challenges communicators and PR pros to revisit long-held assumptions about success in a fragmented, AI-shaped landscape.
Together, they explore what happens when teams prioritize prestige placements over channels that actually impact audience behavior, and how that disconnect can undermine relevance, visibility, and trust. They examine how trade and niche media are regaining strategic value, what today’s audiences actually pay attention to, and why content built for trust and clarity is more likely to be seen by people and platforms alike.
Join us as we explore:
- Why audience behavior is replacing top-tier coverage as the true measure of success
- What GEO (generative engine optimization) means for earned media strategy
- How AI is reshaping discoverability and visibility, sometimes quietly, sometimes radically
- The enduring value of trade and niche media in an authority-driven ecosystem
- What comms leaders can do to earn attention, build trust, and stay strategically visible
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The big problem is thinking about we need to get
this into the Times, we need to get this into
the Well Street Journal. We have to get this covered
by the ft. Stop that and think about I need
to reach these stakeholders. What are they reading? I need
to reach these people what are they watching? You're going
to find that they have multiple and dynamic reading and
viewing habits.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hello, and welcome to building brand Gravity. I'm Anne Green's
CEO with the Genis Integrated Marketing Communications Group.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
And I'm Steve Halsey, the chief Growth officer. And and We've
got a lot to talk about today. Two topics that
are not only timely, but I think they're really deeply connected.
Talking about AI's growing impact on discovery traffic and search
behavior and talk about what that means for the future
of earned media. And yes, it is true, pr is
(00:56):
having another moment. It's great to be an indus that
constantly reinvents itself with moments. And just when the critics
are ready yet again to declare the press release dead, surprised.
Turns out large language models kind of like them. I
mean maybe not for click, but definitely for context. So no,
(01:17):
the press release, my friends, is not dead. It's very undead.
It's a corporate zombie quietly writing its own metadata and
as it turns out, and that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's so funny, you know, everything old is new again.
I was telling Steve the other day for our listeners
that I've worked in financial services for years and i
was walking with a colleague past a bank branch that
has a cafe in it. I'm like, well, that was
there twenty years ago and they're doing it again. But
you know, it's interesting. This whole discussion reminds me of
an event I was at last week. We got invited to.
(01:49):
It was an invite only event by some of the
folks from the pe firm Human Ventures, and it was
called Media and Brands in a Post traffic World, and
it was really high level audience. Had CEOs or you know,
leaders from a lot of media brands like Forbes and
Adweek and New York Times. And you also had brands
like Paramount they've been in the news a lot. You
(02:11):
had Meredith dot Dash Meredith, you had a lot of advertisers.
Cloud Flair was there, which was quite interesting because of
some of the work they've been doing lately to help
gate content for dot Dash Meredith, and I think the
whole discussion of the event was really zero click search,
that traffic is going off a cliff, that this future
(02:31):
that many had predicted and prepared for is happening right now,
and it's happening very very, very fast. And this was
a room of very smart people. You could tell a
lot of them had just been a can in France,
and a lot of folks knew each other. And you know,
we were there also as GNS, but Edelman was also there,
so there weren't as many of the integrated comms firms there.
But I think for me, the point of view is
(02:53):
just underscoring how fast this world is changing, which I
think has paired with how fast the dialogue has risen
and intensified around the earn media side of this, which
I think is really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, you know, and I think just you talk about
who was in that room, and it just really reinforces
what a turning point we're at, you know, not just
for how stories are told, but for how they're found, trusted,
reused by both humans and machines. And that's the part
that's different, you know, and what we used to think
of as earned media. You know, placement in a publication,
(03:28):
quote in a story, maybe even a backlink is really
being reframed by how AI basically gathers and synthesizes the information,
and that's really raising the stake for us in COMMS
and PR in a big way. So basically, if, as
I understand it, if an article isn't structured in a
way that makes it machine readable, like clear attribution, topical clarity,
(03:54):
things like that, then it may never make it into
the next AI generated summary or insight somebody sees. And
when Greg Galic was on the podcast a few episode,
he put it really well when he said, the value
of PR isn't just an impressions anymore. It's about compounding credibility,
(04:15):
meaning how earned media actually becomes training data for the
system that shape public perceptions. So a great media hit
today isn't necessarily one that's just a short term win,
but it's one that creates long term brand value by
showing up on knowledge panels. AI generated answers even influence
(04:38):
how search may evolve. So in a lot of ways,
that makes the earned media part of what we do
way more strategic and a lot of ways way more
durable than it was even eighteen months ago.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I couldn't agree more. And I'm glad that you're calling
back to Greg because that two part episode I'm dealing
with AI Enablement was a good listen. If people won't
go check that out, you know, we always encourage people
to go back and see the archives. But a couple
of things, you know, One is AI is sort of
a double edged sword. Obviously for media. That post traffic
environment for media publishers is really problematic, right, So that
(05:15):
was a lot of what the energy in that room
was about. And there's a lot of other stuff happening
with AI, like slop at scale, coming into reporters inboxes
and overwhelming people with marketing messages, also phishing schemes and
at scale. But on the other side, the kind of
energy and optimism and excitement around which entered a bench
(05:36):
and optimization. By the way, in the room, everyone agreed
GEO is winning versus AIO and all the other acronyms.
But so that was good to know. That's one clarity
there for us all in an unclear world. But I
think that the excitement around what this means, let's say,
for trade magazine publishers, these are entities that have been
under a lot of pressure over the years, but they
(05:56):
have tremendous authority and domain knowledge in in their sectors,
whether we work an AG or healthcare. They create events,
they create multimedia, you know, podcasts, video, you know, they're
doing in person events. And the fact that you know,
we can say to our clients now it's going to
be really incumbent upon us to understand how different llms
are gathering their information and indexing it, like you said,
(06:18):
in different ways, and understanding what does that mean for
how our audiences are interacting. Are they on android phones
or mobile phones, like you know, which LLM might be
the dominant one for them. The fact that open AI
uses being I mean, all of this stuff is so
interesting and we really really have to be on top
of it. And one recommendation I'd make for listeners is
(06:39):
PR Council has a great podcast series quick hits called
AI Loves PR and these are you know, thirteen fifteen,
eighteen minute real quick podcasts with different experts who are
very very germane to this conversation. So I definitely recommend
people check it out.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah, so I guess you know, play with the acronym
if you're ce focused on GEO, then the firms going
to win, right at least that's what we're doing here
on GNS and is really force asking us to lean
really deeply into GEO basically as an evolution, not so
much as SEO, but really an evolution just how the
(07:19):
entire media landscape is changing. And again I oversimplify think
so while SEO really focuses on keywords and back links
things like that, GEO is really focused on credibility. It's
on how you structure the story. It's about relevance, It's
all those things that the llms use basically to gauge
(07:39):
and generate generate responses. And for me, the kicker of
all this is that most of that data is earned.
It's how we talk naturally editorial content, trusted media industry blogs.
Because everything I'm seeing is that the large language models
love high authority sources, right, and that has always been
(08:01):
a key part of the earned media was there's a
lot of value in being direct and going direct, having
people know it's coming from you, but having that third
party credibility and having your brand showed up that way
gets it repeated, reference, retrieved, all things that are really
key in terms of the earned media where again, right
(08:21):
now we're starting to see an environment where visibility becomes velocity.
And I know there's a lot of challenges with the
shrinking newsrooms and everything else, but there is so much
power in earned media and making that part of PR
more relevant and more strategic than ever.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, and there's still going to be such a need
for that PASO model where very committed to integration, and
I think we see where paid comes in, where owned
comes in, where earned comes in. But it's just a
new dimension to the conversation. I mean, this is a
great segue unless there's anything else you want to add
before I segue in. To set up our interview for today.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I think that captures it. Press release is not dead,
and you know, for those for those groups that have
gotten away from the value of earned media, it's more
important than ever.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, and that's why I wanted to talk to our guests.
You know, I had a great conversation today. You know
that we're going to cut into right now with Dan Nessel,
who has worked as a commspro for years, and I'll
do more of an introduction when I when I get
with him, but I would flag the fact that we're
talking about earned attention and what does that mean? What's
the quality of attention? And attention as not a commodity,
(09:32):
it's really a precious capital. People like Ezra Kline are
talking about that, people like Chris Hayes have written books
around attention being under pressure, and so the idea of
where we look at the evolution of earned media relative
to attention and what does that mean for the media
landscape as a whole. You know, Dan has some interesting
things to say, so let's uh, let's cut over and
(09:52):
hear that conversation. So my main hope always for this
podcast is to have some really deep conversations, so smart
and fun and interesting people on topics that really matter
to communications and marketers and I would say curious humans
in general. And this conversation is very much motivated by
two trends, which is the evolution of earned media as
(10:13):
a practice and the evolution of media itself, by the way,
and then the rise of what some are calling the
attention economy. And so no surprise, my guest is deep
in these hot topics. I'm thrilled to welcome Dan Nessel,
who excels at the intersection of communications and technology and leadership.
And you are a communications leader and strategist, Dan, I
don't have to tell you this, and a podcaster and
(10:35):
a lot of insights in this field, really deep on AI,
really deep on what we're going to talk about today,
which has earned attention and sort of that evolution of
what we've practiced for a long time, which is earned media.
And you're the founder also of Inquisitive Communications and host
of the Trending Communicator, which I've been honored to be
a guest on and I really encourage people to check
(10:56):
it out. But Dan, welcome to building brand gravity.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Thanks and it is an honor. I'm glad to be here. Gosh.
I mean, last time we had we were behind the
mic with one another was almost exactly a year ago
on my show. And yeah, and it's so amazing to
see how much has changed, how much hasn't And you know,
we're gonna know, we're going to talk about AI. It's
been driving a lot of that change, but it hasn't
(11:20):
been the only driver. And I think that's you know,
there's the people forget that it's a thing. It's not
the thing, and you know, we need to talk about
the attention economy. As you said the the the profession
as a whole, and you know, of course weave in
AI into it, if you know, if that makes sense
to do so, and I think it always does so
(11:41):
well to.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Get us started. I've been thinking a lot about a paradox,
or I'm identifiing as a paradox. You can help me
decide if it is. Which is It feels like in
some ways earned media, due to the media itself being
under tremendous pressure, is under pressure, and the practice is
under a lot of pressure. But at the same time,
there's all this discussion and energy and excitement also related
(12:04):
to AI, about earned media and media itself being on
the brink of a renaissance, and both of these realities
are tied to media fragmentation, but they're also tied to
the proliferation of AI and all its forms. So you know,
you've got the AI content at scale and slop and
crap and zero click search and traffic going off a
cliff and things like that, but you also have the
(12:26):
way that large language models are pulling and organizing information,
serving as the new search and new discovery, really honoring
and pulling from sources that tend to lean more into
the world of earned media and the practices we've done.
So this is a big question, but what's your overall
take on this moment of time and is this a
paradox in your mind?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I think it's it's I agree with you. It is
a paradox of sorts, and I think that paradox lives
mostly in our heads rather than in reality because of
you know, what you normally see when when any industry
is disrupted, you have legacy mindsets and forward thinking mindsets.
(13:08):
And it's not I'm not being judging about it, it's
just that's kind of the way it is, where you know,
the approach to media relations and our and our kind
of inherent ranking of media, you know, like this is
top tier, this is mid tier, this is whatever. And
there you have the trades and you have different categories
and categorizations. Is being turned upside down in a lot
(13:30):
of ways, and it's a lot to cope with. And
there's still a lot of I think, whether it's cognitive
dissonance or whether it's just straight up no, the only
authority is the New York Times, Wall Stree Journal, La Times,
you know, et cetera. Mindset. I don't know what the
answer is. But but I think that that is, you know,
(13:53):
that's sort of our reality now, where's where everything's jumbled,
priorities are jumbled, and there's a very I think there's
a question of what is valuable and what isn't in
terms of the media coverage and in terms of what
counts for earned attention.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
That's really helpful. You've asserted, you know, and I'd love
to hear thoughts on this, that traditional media relations is
in some ways not just outdated, but potentially broken or
kind of even harmful sometimes just the strategic objectives, and
I think that has everything to do with how it's framed.
But when you say that, what are the things you're
(14:29):
seeing that seem wow, this has really counter to what
we're actually trying to achieve potentially for a given organization.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
I think it's it's mostly about entrenched values and attitudes
about what makes good media and what does media coverage
mean on the one hand, right, And on the other hand,
I think it's also about the fracturing of the media
and audience environment. And I have to, like I think
I have to be I have to give full disclosure
(14:56):
and be brutally honest about my own biases here, because
you know, being in corporate comms for twenty something years
and having a stint at at agency in the middle,
it always it was always the case that the executive
teams that I was serving or my or working in
(15:17):
partnership with when I was in corporate, the only real
wins that they understood from their PR teams and from
their comms teams were, Hey, we got the CEO in
the fill in the blank media, right, Oh, the CEO
is going to do There's going to be a feature
on the CEO in the in the New York Times.
(15:38):
There's gonna be a feature from CEO and barons. We
got we lined up all these wonderful interviews for the
CEO visit next week. And here's where we're taking him
by limousine to Bloomberg, to to you know, to the
Wall Street Journal, to wherever, right, And we didn't do
ourselves any favors as in as a profession in pushing
(16:02):
that as c C, we're doing all this great work
for you and these are the results that we have.
And I think that was the case for a long time.
So the pressure never ceased, and I think it still
continues to get that kind of coverage. But also we
didn't resist so much. You know, I think that it
was harder for for PR and comms folks to say, well,
(16:27):
the CEO's taught is going to be here, we have
a day for him or her. Not every CEO is
is like Jensen Wang or Elon Musk or Andy Jasse
or whatever. So you you know, you have to have
a reality check when you're CEO or any high level
executive is in town and really be self aware of
(16:50):
where you stand in the corporate pantheon and whether what
you're saying is newsworthy or not. And sometimes those the
answers those questions are not quite authentic or honest internally
in an organization.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
It's so funny because we're we're going to be talking
quite a bit about the evolution of technology and platforms
and processes that you know are really changing the game there.
But you're speaking about something that's so pervasive over so
many years and is in some ways very analog. It's
that human perception of value. And how is it that
(17:29):
public relations as a practice or in media, whatever we
want to call it, expresses that value? And that was
something I was thinking about and reading one of your
issues you have the trend in Communicator both a podcast
and a newsletter. And the issue before the last, the
one that just came out recently. The one before was
about this question of like building on your prior one
and earned attention. It was it was looking at a
(17:51):
McKinsey study about oh, they've discovered this, you know, the
quality of attention, but before and I want to ask
you about that, and we will get to the technology
of it all, because it's really really germane and it's
changing the thing. But I want to reflect on my
own career where you're right, it's like there is this
hierarchical value judgment and it's not always it's always a qualitative,
(18:12):
subjective conversation. And yes, we have a lot of data
of why The New York Times drives so much, and
that's really really meaningful, and that can be meaningful to
most you know, enterprises, if you're in there. But I
remember back with consumer brands at an earlier decade. You know,
I used to joke about the O word, which is
please don't say oprah to me. You know, this is
(18:32):
before it was fully like, don't use the O word.
But it was these things that we put up on
a pedestal. And the reason that I'm bringing this up
now is I've seen some clients over the past decade
or so start to almost devalue or not recognize on
the executive teams how critical trade media as a category
continues to be, or those young reporters at the trade
(18:55):
media where you have the chance to train them and
inform them and help them, versus I don't have time
to talk to that person. So, you know, I think
what you're saying, Dan, if I'm correct, is that you know,
these old school pressures and tensions and tropes are still
very active today, right, And we've got to look at
that again, I think so.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And and you know, those those tropes or those kind
of belief systems with somebody who had once sent to
me a long time ago in a completely unrelated topic,
that our biggest enemy is not you know, is not externally,
it's our it's our own bs, it's our own belief systems,
you know. And I think that applies to a lot
(19:36):
of a lot of legacy organizations in the profession for sure.
And I know that agencies have been really pushing the
envelope with technology and with kind of you know, with
new developments, but I don't see it always getting getting
through to the to the clock clients, or to potential clients,
or or to certainly to large organizations that that don't
(19:58):
have to worry about things like awareness, right. I mean,
I think we got to be clear that when I say,
and maybe when anybody says that, you know, media relations
is really well my exact words, where it's dying and
we need to let it go. But that you know
that is that's a very little a little polemic about it.
(20:20):
But the I think we just have to understand that
we're talking about the vast majority of practitioners and companies.
We're not talking about you know, your fortune ten or
fifty or one hundred, because they have different needs. They're
already in the awareness game and they have that. You know,
if you have a very heavy financial and you know
(20:42):
investor relations function, and you know you need to be
you're constantly in the media's eye for any move you
make with employment or with you know, with your finances,
et cetera, your media relations need to be really strong.
I don't know if your approach needs would be the
same or should be the same. In fact, I would
I would advocate you want to right out a little
bit more to different outlets, but you do need a
(21:02):
strong media function.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You talked about earned attention, which got my attention because
earned media earned attention. And the reason is before we
get into earned attention specifically, this whole concept of attention
is very of the moment. I feel I'm hearing discussions
about it everywhere, as your client has talked about today's
most valuable capitalist attention. Chris Hayes of MSNBC just published
(21:25):
a book. I love the title, It's the Sirens Call,
How Attention became the world's most endangered resource, So endangered resource,
valuable capital. That title says a lot. So when you
think about attention, and then we'll go to earned attention,
how do you think about the concept of attention to day,
attention as an entity as capital.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Where it's where you're putting your eyeballs. So you know
you have choice, You have more choice than ever before
on where you spend your time for your media consumption
or for your for your entertainment or whatever it is online.
So what is taking your what is attracting your eyeballs
(22:04):
at a particular time. I think I'm sure there are
studies or I would imagine that there are thinkers out
there who are saying, if you attract somebody you know
three times to your website or to your article, then
we can count that as attention. Now, I don't get
that deep about this because I don't know what the
(22:26):
answer is, but I would imagine that you know that
some consistency needs to be there for us to really say, Okay,
we have your attention. You know, we throw up a
crazy advertisement somewhere that's that attracts eyeballs, you know, on
the side of a building or drones in the air. Boy,
(22:48):
are we getting attention? Right? But if that attention is
not attached to a brand or to a person or
to something else, then it's kind of fleeting and it
does sort of sort of meaningless. It's real more about
it's more about, Okay, is our content or our proposition,
or our outdoor activation, even whatever it is, is it
(23:12):
worth someone's time where they come and look at it
and spend a little bit of time on it. And
that's where tension starts. Then they have to make an
association with that and your brand or your person. And
I don't think you can isolate one from the other
because Otherwise it's impressions, and those are you know, that's
(23:33):
kind of meaningless. What we want is somebody comes, they
read your stuff, they look at your at your they
look at you at your video, they watch your video,
they spend a little time with you. So then okay,
we can say all right, we've started. Okay, that's one
type of attention. But the other one is I really
(23:53):
need to learn about something. I really need to understand
about something. It's not any different from from directed search
or something like that, where you you know, you're moving
a little further down the funnel, which may or may
not be outdated.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
You're making me think of that the marketing funnel, as
you were alluding to, and where it still really resonates
and where it translates across disciplines. But in when you
were in your last newsletter when you're talking about McKinsey,
you know, they were talking about attention as well, and
you're reminding me of a separating attention quality from quantity
(24:26):
right driving business outcomes. And you also in that same
newsletter and people should go check it out, we're talking
about that question of what drives intent or behavior. Yeah,
and I think that in the comms world. And you know,
a firm like mine is integrated marketing communications, so we
kind of touch different pieces of it, but we started
as a communications firm. And I think where you start
(24:48):
is in your DNA that question of can we measure
you know, maybe use the marketing language of conversion or
intent or things like that, But what is your thought
about how you know in this new world of earned attention,
how we start to think about quality versus quantity and
quantity could be like size of outlet, but it may
not be the quality. How do you start to parse
(25:09):
that in your own mind?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Dan Well, I think you have to marry the marketing
to the to the communications for that to be understood.
You know, it's that is really where you don't know
whether it's whether it's quality attention. When some when your
target or your customer or your stakeholder first's first grabs
onto your to what you're putting out there, to your content,
(25:30):
you just have to understand that you need consistency in
your content to kind of weed out. Well, there's two functions.
First is of course to present your position and be
more and promote awareness and you know, make sure that
your your message is getting into the channels in front
of the people that it needs to be in front of.
(25:51):
That's your part. But the quality attention part is like
paying attention to how people are interacting with that content
and then seeing, Okay, well this one's resonating, this one isn't.
And that's from one side of the equation. You can
turn up turned down dials and change your message, But
on the other side of the equation you have to think, Okay,
is it resonating because is it not resonating because the
(26:13):
timing is offer because it's in the wrong channel, r
because it's the wrong audience, Or is it not resonating
because it's really part of my language it's crap, right,
I mean you have to you know, you have to
figure it out. And then when it does resonate again,
is it is it hitting for the right reasons? Did's
something like go, well, I hate this phrase? But did
it go viral? Like did it hit hard because you
(26:37):
know you've said something or if you've written something that
is that is worth that that virality? Or did it
go viral because there's something in your content that actually
is completely different than what you intended. Maybe there's a
maybe something funnier or maybe it's a you know, you
start a new meme or who knows what it is,
(26:59):
but you know, is it getting the attention It's getting
for the right reasons. And the only way to really
know that is to look is to best consistent with
your output and start looking at who's coming back over time,
and from those people who are coming back over time,
that's where you're going to see those quality that quality attention,
(27:23):
like the the the audience is that keep coming back,
and then the audience is that that take action based
on what you do now, And that's a whole That's
another kind of point is Okay, are they taking action?
Are they doing something based on what you're putting out there?
That's where the marketing side of everything kind of comes in.
(27:43):
But it should be our It should be also in
the comms in the comms world, to measure that the
reaction the engagement metrics are one thing, but is there
a actual call to action in your in your piece
or in your content that they can follow? Is there
a way to measure that? There always should be, of course,
(28:04):
and that's kind of where the quality part of the
attention comes in. It's more more of the measurable part.
So you know, there's a qualitative there's a qualitative way
to look at quality, quality attention, I suppose, but there's
also quantitative ways and I think we need to grasp
both of those.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, and how we marry that together. I mean, I
feel like all the disciplines of marketing and comms have
moved closer together over time, but there's still different silos there.
It was interesting you were commenting on some of the
audience segmentation. McKinsey was suggesting, Yeah, they had about nine
eight or nine or so, and you picked out a
couple like content lovers, interactivity enthusiasts, and community trendsetters, and
(28:44):
that struck me. And there's you know, as people who've
made up a million names for audience segments over time,
as we do. Yeah, you know they they are made
up and subjective, but they also have reality and research
behind them and power behind them. And I think what
was interesting to me is these seem to be quite
attention based segments. What kind of attention? And you know,
(29:04):
each of us are fans of something, you know, I
have like I've been a fan of Charlock Combs since
I was a child, So all aspects of Sherlock Holmes.
That means I listen to a very niche podcast that
covers the Granada Sherlock Holms series from the eighties with
Jeremy Brett, and I'm just like a person that's.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Into that rather good micro segment.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It is a micro segment, and there's more people out
there than I realized when I discover this podcast. But
you know, how should I don't think we've never thought
in terms of these kinds of segments before, But how
do these attention based segmentation feel fresh to you or
feels like something to be revisited and reflect on.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
I think it's I mean, that's a good question. I'm
fundamentally in favor of breaking down our audiences in any
measurable chunks that we possibly can, because it gives you
the intel and the insight to know which channels you
can use and what kind of content they need. And
it gets it's getting a little crazy because as you know,
there are more and more channels available and there's so
(30:01):
much content out there that you know you're again it's
this word fractured that keeps coming up. And I guarantee
you audience out there who anybody who knows me or
follows me. You keep seeing the word fractured. That is
not an AI thing. That's me. I keep because I
think it's real, Like this whole fractured thing is it
just keeps on shattering and fracturing, and there's no there's
(30:24):
very little binding happening. So if we can find ways
actually to kind of bind that in different segments, that's
actually very helpful. So when McKinzie my whole piece on
mckinzey's really tongue in cheek, and I certainly came down
hard on them a little bit for discovering something that
we already knew. But you know, sometimes they put out
some really good good information. I like the and the
(30:45):
idea of there are consumer segments, you know, content lovers,
interactivity enthusiasts, and community trandssetters. Those are the three that
made it into my review because those are the three
that they also highlighted as worth pursuing. Right when you're
devising your content strategy and if you whatever you're doing,
if you are putting out a story about about turbines
(31:10):
or if you're putting out a story about legal services,
you know, those are two very very different audiences. But
within that audience. Who are the content lovers, Who are
the interactivity enthusiasts? Do they exist? You know? And are
are the community trendsetters part of that group? I mean,
(31:30):
you know, you'd think that if you're corporate and you're
talking about something industrial and it's kind of that, oh man,
this is not going to attract these community trendsetters. You
might be wrong in a big way because you know,
those community people. It exists in every industry, in every vertical,
and we would be really lucky or or fortunate to
(31:58):
figure out how to reach them first and understand get
their attention, which would then kind of turn into a
little bit of a snowball effect because they would get
the attention of others. Kind of a take on influence marketing.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I guess, but you know, it's so aligned with how
our industry, like many of us as practitioners, have woven
influencers as a core part of strategy, and many companies
do a great job with that. But I'm kind of
shocked still in the client service landscape, how many companies
do not see influencers are just part and parcel and
symbiotic with all of their other stakeholders. From a communications
(32:32):
and marketing standpoint. There's some incredible best practices there, and
yet it's still quite siloed, and there's still a lot
of organizations that are just not investing what they should
in that area. And it's that evolution of media. But
I want to move on to the AI of it all,
because the AI of it all is all around us
all the time, and you know, it is a double
(32:53):
edged sword in this area, and the fingerprints here are
all over the evolution of this field. I think one
of the most interesting things that's very germane to what
you're talking about, turning hierarchies on its head and changing
what we think is conventional wisdom about what's a good
media hit. You know, who's the big fish, right, So
(33:15):
there is so much excitement. I think the acronyms have
settled mostly on GEO generative engine optimization, although AIO is
still trying to make a play. But let's say GEO right, sure,
And how it is that large language models and each
of them are a little bit different. The overlap, there's
overlap in how they pull, but they're each a little different.
And how open AI is using being as a crawler,
(33:37):
and you know, and other things like Reddit, but what
they pull from to create those search results that create
that zero click search environment where you get everything on
the page, which is so disrupting publishers, so disrupting media,
so disrupting, like the incumbents of search.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
I think fundamentally we always have to remember that quality
content and engage content and compelling content will always win
in the long term. But it has to be smart content,
and it has to be done in a way that
I think treats AI as another stakeholder rather than as
a rather than as a kind of technical marvel. You
(34:18):
have to think of AI as a stakeholder. How how
does AI like to read what you write? Just in
the same way that one of your customers likes to
read what you write? Right? So I did a little
ectuisice the other day to.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
It took a blog post and I said, okay, now,
and I was using Claude, and I asked it to
just optimize the blog post for search, which, by the way,
people should still be doing because search is still is
not going away. Just you know, the results are going
to be different, but you should still always think about,
you know, writing good content for search. But okay, so
(34:54):
optimize for search, and then I said, okay, can you
optimize this for GEO. The GEO version was so radical,
glee different in structure, a lot of bullet points. They
added an FAQ at the end, there was there were
They added a credibility section, an authority section to establish
the authority of the author and I wouldn't post that
(35:19):
the way it was right, That's not something I would do.
So it's just because you have something this GEO optimized
doesn't mean you should always use it. You know, take
elements maybe, But the lessons there are that AI is
looking for digestible bites of information. It's looking for a
conversational flow. It's looking for content that actually answers questions.
(35:42):
So that's why there's an FAQ in there. And you know,
sometimes you have some stuff in the in the conversational flow,
in the content itself. It's looking for authority, and that's
definitely where media has that kind of light at the
end of the tunnel waiting for them. It's looking for
authority and credibility, and you know, it wants to make
sure that whatever it delivers to the user is is
(36:07):
not hallucination and is real because you know that is
something that even though they still hallucinate and still deliver nonsense,
it's it is something that's that's important to the AI.
So structuring it that way is is what GEO is
looking for. So GEO, you know, and each you'r you right,
Each of the LM's look at things differently, you know,
pulls in pulls in this information. However they pull in information
(36:31):
the other the other part of it that I'm just
really starting to get familiar with. And forgive me if
I get some of this wrong, because I do urge
everybody fact check me on this. But you know, it's
not like search where you're you're going to create a
GEO optimized piece and then it's going to appear or
going to have a good chance of appearing in the
(36:52):
l ll ms the next day. That's not the way
it's going to work. You know. The piece even though
lms have access to the web and they're using web
search to get to find relevant articles and yeah, you're
going to certainly have a chance there, it's still search, right,
They're still using search. So the search results that they're
(37:14):
getting are not any different than the search results you
would get when you go to Google and you look,
in fact, you can watch the reasoning play out in
some of the models. Right. What's happening is your piece,
that content is being used for training and for training
the model. So it's going to be it's going to
be added to the models, and piece by piece it
(37:36):
will raise your authority or will it will kind of
make it into into the model's you know, kind of
repository and be merged into the borg as it were.
Then you know, when you search on topics or when
somebody searches on topics later it will have it in
the training and it will understand the context around which
(37:57):
it will find a website, which then kind of builds
the authority for that website or for that information because
you've handily provided it with all it needs. Authority, conversational
conversational content, answers to questions, Okay, this is legit. This
is where it's going. So it's multi layered, I think,
(38:19):
is what I'm trying to say. So within that, you know,
the media has a this is where there's there's kind
of a real interesting trend going on and I'm not
sure what the truth is here, but I've seen pieces
say that media should be really excited because and you know,
media relations, the focus on top tier media should be
(38:44):
stronger than ever because top tier media is going is
and is always going to be the most authoritative sources
for even for geo. As GEO gets on and and
there's some truth to that, you know, they there is authority.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
I think you run into the paywall issue often though
now with some of those, which is going to be
a challenge here.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
It's going to be a challenge. But you know, there
was a recent thing from cloud Flare. I don't know
if you saw the cloud Flair thing right where absolutely
where they're they're charging for bots, charging bots to crawl content.
You're seeing more and more deals with the media organizations
of the lms, So you know, I think it'll happen more.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, that was in concert with Meredith dot Dash. I
think to try to do some of that gating of content, you.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Know, and that's going to play. But you know, yes,
if you managed to get that high end media hit,
that's not going to really do anything for your for
your geo, at least not in a visible way and
not immediately.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
No, to me, it goes back to the trade magazine piece.
You know, what are those deeper authoritative that have a
whole body of work on a certain area or sector
a topic. By the way, thank you for the star
trek Boord reference. There's never a time in this world
not to bring up the borg because it feels bec
and it's interesting too. What I really liked I want
to pull out what you said is treating AI as
(40:04):
another stakeholder or as you know we've talked about in
terms of AI practices and getting more familiar with generative AI,
encouraging folks to say, imagine this as a young person
or an intern, or you know, you don't want to
anthropomorphize it entirely. You know you have to be careful
about what it is and what it's not. And obviously
this whole emergence of chatbots and therapy chatbots and companion,
(40:27):
that's a whole nother world that we'll do another podcast
on Sunday. Whoever isn't obsessed with talking to their chatbot
and we'll be here to still talk with me. We'll
do a podcast. But I think this question of thinking
of it as a stakeholder that has to be built
with information over time, and we'll find information sources and
synthesize them and bring it up. I think that's really
(40:48):
powerful and I really appreciate. I think it was really
clear the way you talked about some of these aspects
of GEO, which is still developing. You know, we're still
learning it. With SEO, there was a lot of work
to try to under stand and the Google algorithm and
what are the hundreds of factors and Google would release
some and not the other. I think we're in this
similar thing of trying to discern through practice. But the
(41:11):
really interesting thing about this moment in time is you
can also ask the entity, tell me what is GEO
optimize or tell me what is general vention optimized? How
do you communicate? What are you looking for? And one
of the reasons I think it's really an interesting opportunity
for folks who have communications. At the heart of our
(41:33):
skill set as a practice and also literally as communicators
is understanding what different audience needs. An AI is a stakeholder.
We're a multi stakeholder group, Like that's how we look
at stakeholders that way, right, and we understand why would
someone need an FAQ, why would someone need a statement
in context around authority? How do I build that in
(41:54):
a way that that context come through and is understandable.
How do I reframe? I always chow you know with clients,
like I can give it to you as a word document,
a PowerPoint, I can do all this slamp you know,
interpretive dance like whatever format you need, I can recreate
it that way. So I think it does seem to
give some real power to a group that has quite
(42:16):
a broad toolkit in terms of how we communicate with
different stakeholders. And does that resonate for you at all?
Speaker 1 (42:21):
That's straight from my my Hymn book. I mean, there's
there's a there's I've always been saying and I and
I've always been advocating for people with the skills that
communicators have to take the lead in a lot of
this stuff, and we hold back within organizations or we're
stuck in boxes or you know, you it's hard to
move out of your land. There's a billion reasons you
(42:45):
could anger the wrong people and get laid off. It
can happen. That said, who else should write FAQ's? I mean,
who else? Who else is good at writing you know,
conversational content. The the next phase or the current phase
of attention is if you're getting the attention of the AI,
(43:05):
you need to have content that that earns their attention.
And that's exactly what it is, the kind of things
that we do, and it's the same thing that attracts
the attention of our stakeholders and of any audience. People
like conversational content. People want to know answers to their questions.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
And if it's a even you wouldn't necessarily put an faq.
You wouldn't think to put an faq with a feature article.
But maybe you do now, Like maybe you put a
little faq at the end. Maybe you put a little
study guide because you can do that very easily, create
a study guide for that piece, chunk it on and
then you have, all of a sudden something that's a
little bit more geoed and might be a lot more
(43:48):
interesting to your to your readers. There's a million ways
to do this, but it's all comes back to who
knows how to ask the quest ask the right questions.
We do know how to ask the right questions. We
know how to ask the right questions to the lms
as well. So you know, both in the creation side
of things and then in the iteration side of things,
(44:11):
you know we are in we are by nature curious inquisitive. Uh,
we like to interrogate in a positive way, and we
you know, we we like to interview right where interviewers
where media people. Let's play that out and you'll come
up with great content. It's just it's just interesting to
(44:32):
see how that's evolving within our profession. I've gone pretty
I've gone down this huge kind of road and rabbit
hole of building that into really better and better prompts
and better and better kind of you know, contextual operations
within a within the AI. But it just started with
(44:52):
me asking questions, you know, like can you do this?
Can you do better? Can do even better? What's a better
way to do this? And so on, and then builds
out we could do the same thing with anything we
do with AI, and we are the right people, I think,
the communicators.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
I love that thought about it comes from that questioning
nature and from multi stakeholders. As we wrap up today,
what's one thing you wish or hope every communication leader
practitioner will do to think about earned attention in fresh
way or a step you'd love them to take, you know,
any tip that you want to share.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
The number one thing to do is clear your mind
of what good media is and think in a new
way about about what is what is really important for
your message and for your story where does it need
to land. So the answer there is your audience is
and the audience has to come first before you think
(45:51):
about your media. So you know, we didn't exactly say
this explicitly, but fundamentally, I think that's the big problem
is is thinking about we need to get this into
the Times, we need to get this into the Well
Street Journal, we have to get this covered by the ft.
Stop that and think about I need to reach these stakeholders.
(46:14):
What are they reading. I need to reach these people
what are they watching? If that's the ft, then go
for the ft. It's just creating that strategy from the
audience first is critically important. So think about the audiences first.
You're going to find that they have multiple and dynamic
reading and viewing habits. You're going to find that you
(46:36):
might have opportunities to get into and certainly the opportunities
are much easier than top tier media. The trades are fantastic.
They've done such a great job I think over the
last ten years of surviving building out their technology. They're
doing more with podcasts, they're doing more with expert content.
(46:58):
They are certainly ahead of the game with GEO just
by default because they're authoritative and they're very technical and
detailed answer all our questions. So look at them in
a much with a different lens and convince your leadership
that this is good media for us to be on podcasts, videos,
those kinds of things. So think audience first. I think
(47:20):
is the is the thing I would beg people to do.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
It's kind of a return to the very very best
practices that are foundational to this fielding it they get
lost so often. Encourage our listeners and viewers to find
Dan Nessel, find the trending communicator. Check out you know,
subscribe to the substack, listen to the podcast and Dan,
it's always a pleasure. Thank you for being here today,
(47:43):
and you know, thanks for everyone listening to Building Brian Gravity.
Check out our other episodes, find us you know online
on video and give us your feedback. We always welcome it,
so thank you again.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
Thanks An
The big problem is thinking about we need to get
this into the Times, we need to get this into
the Well Street Journal. We have to get this covered
by the ft. Stop that and think about I need
to reach these stakeholders. What are they reading? I need
to reach these people what are they watching? You're going
to find that they have multiple and dynamic reading and
viewing habits.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hello, and welcome to building brand Gravity. I'm Anne Green's
CEO with the Genis Integrated Marketing Communications Group.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
And I'm Steve Halsey, the chief Growth officer. And and We've
got a lot to talk about today. Two topics that
are not only timely, but I think they're really deeply connected.
Talking about AI's growing impact on discovery traffic and search
behavior and talk about what that means for the future
of earned media. And yes, it is true, pr is
(00:56):
having another moment. It's great to be an indus that
constantly reinvents itself with moments. And just when the critics
are ready yet again to declare the press release dead, surprised.
Turns out large language models kind of like them. I
mean maybe not for click, but definitely for context. So no,
(01:17):
the press release, my friends, is not dead. It's very undead.
It's a corporate zombie quietly writing its own metadata and
as it turns out, and that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's so funny, you know, everything old is new again.
I was telling Steve the other day for our listeners
that I've worked in financial services for years and i
was walking with a colleague past a bank branch that
has a cafe in it. I'm like, well, that was
there twenty years ago and they're doing it again. But
you know, it's interesting. This whole discussion reminds me of
an event I was at last week. We got invited to.
(01:49):
It was an invite only event by some of the
folks from the pe firm Human Ventures, and it was
called Media and Brands in a Post traffic World, and
it was really high level audience. Had CEOs or you know,
leaders from a lot of media brands like Forbes and
Adweek and New York Times. And you also had brands
like Paramount they've been in the news a lot. You
(02:11):
had Meredith dot Dash Meredith, you had a lot of advertisers.
Cloud Flair was there, which was quite interesting because of
some of the work they've been doing lately to help
gate content for dot Dash Meredith, and I think the
whole discussion of the event was really zero click search,
that traffic is going off a cliff, that this future
(02:31):
that many had predicted and prepared for is happening right now,
and it's happening very very, very fast. And this was
a room of very smart people. You could tell a
lot of them had just been a can in France,
and a lot of folks knew each other. And you know,
we were there also as GNS, but Edelman was also there,
so there weren't as many of the integrated comms firms there.
But I think for me, the point of view is
(02:53):
just underscoring how fast this world is changing, which I
think has paired with how fast the dialogue has risen
and intensified around the earn media side of this, which
I think is really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, you know, and I think just you talk about
who was in that room, and it just really reinforces
what a turning point we're at, you know, not just
for how stories are told, but for how they're found, trusted,
reused by both humans and machines. And that's the part
that's different, you know, and what we used to think
of as earned media. You know, placement in a publication,
(03:28):
quote in a story, maybe even a backlink is really
being reframed by how AI basically gathers and synthesizes the information,
and that's really raising the stake for us in COMMS
and PR in a big way. So basically, if, as
I understand it, if an article isn't structured in a
way that makes it machine readable, like clear attribution, topical clarity,
(03:54):
things like that, then it may never make it into
the next AI generated summary or insight somebody sees. And
when Greg Galic was on the podcast a few episode,
he put it really well when he said, the value
of PR isn't just an impressions anymore. It's about compounding credibility,
(04:15):
meaning how earned media actually becomes training data for the
system that shape public perceptions. So a great media hit
today isn't necessarily one that's just a short term win,
but it's one that creates long term brand value by
showing up on knowledge panels. AI generated answers even influence
(04:38):
how search may evolve. So in a lot of ways,
that makes the earned media part of what we do
way more strategic and a lot of ways way more
durable than it was even eighteen months ago.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I couldn't agree more. And I'm glad that you're calling
back to Greg because that two part episode I'm dealing
with AI Enablement was a good listen. If people won't
go check that out, you know, we always encourage people
to go back and see the archives. But a couple
of things, you know, One is AI is sort of
a double edged sword. Obviously for media. That post traffic
environment for media publishers is really problematic, right, So that
(05:15):
was a lot of what the energy in that room
was about. And there's a lot of other stuff happening
with AI, like slop at scale, coming into reporters inboxes
and overwhelming people with marketing messages, also phishing schemes and
at scale. But on the other side, the kind of
energy and optimism and excitement around which entered a bench
(05:36):
and optimization. By the way, in the room, everyone agreed
GEO is winning versus AIO and all the other acronyms.
But so that was good to know. That's one clarity
there for us all in an unclear world. But I
think that the excitement around what this means, let's say,
for trade magazine publishers, these are entities that have been
under a lot of pressure over the years, but they
(05:56):
have tremendous authority and domain knowledge in in their sectors,
whether we work an AG or healthcare. They create events,
they create multimedia, you know, podcasts, video, you know, they're
doing in person events. And the fact that you know,
we can say to our clients now it's going to
be really incumbent upon us to understand how different llms
are gathering their information and indexing it, like you said,
(06:18):
in different ways, and understanding what does that mean for
how our audiences are interacting. Are they on android phones
or mobile phones, like you know, which LLM might be
the dominant one for them. The fact that open AI
uses being I mean, all of this stuff is so
interesting and we really really have to be on top
of it. And one recommendation I'd make for listeners is
(06:39):
PR Council has a great podcast series quick hits called
AI Loves PR and these are you know, thirteen fifteen,
eighteen minute real quick podcasts with different experts who are
very very germane to this conversation. So I definitely recommend
people check it out.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah, so I guess you know, play with the acronym
if you're ce focused on GEO, then the firms going
to win, right at least that's what we're doing here
on GNS and is really force asking us to lean
really deeply into GEO basically as an evolution, not so
much as SEO, but really an evolution just how the
(07:19):
entire media landscape is changing. And again I oversimplify think
so while SEO really focuses on keywords and back links
things like that, GEO is really focused on credibility. It's
on how you structure the story. It's about relevance, It's
all those things that the llms use basically to gauge
(07:39):
and generate generate responses. And for me, the kicker of
all this is that most of that data is earned.
It's how we talk naturally editorial content, trusted media industry blogs.
Because everything I'm seeing is that the large language models
love high authority sources, right, and that has always been
(08:01):
a key part of the earned media was there's a
lot of value in being direct and going direct, having
people know it's coming from you, but having that third
party credibility and having your brand showed up that way
gets it repeated, reference, retrieved, all things that are really
key in terms of the earned media where again, right
(08:21):
now we're starting to see an environment where visibility becomes velocity.
And I know there's a lot of challenges with the
shrinking newsrooms and everything else, but there is so much
power in earned media and making that part of PR
more relevant and more strategic than ever.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, and there's still going to be such a need
for that PASO model where very committed to integration, and
I think we see where paid comes in, where owned
comes in, where earned comes in. But it's just a
new dimension to the conversation. I mean, this is a
great segue unless there's anything else you want to add
before I segue in. To set up our interview for today.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I think that captures it. Press release is not dead,
and you know, for those for those groups that have
gotten away from the value of earned media, it's more
important than ever.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, and that's why I wanted to talk to our guests.
You know, I had a great conversation today. You know
that we're going to cut into right now with Dan Nessel,
who has worked as a commspro for years, and I'll
do more of an introduction when I when I get
with him, but I would flag the fact that we're
talking about earned attention and what does that mean? What's
the quality of attention? And attention as not a commodity,
(09:32):
it's really a precious capital. People like Ezra Kline are
talking about that, people like Chris Hayes have written books
around attention being under pressure, and so the idea of
where we look at the evolution of earned media relative
to attention and what does that mean for the media
landscape as a whole. You know, Dan has some interesting
things to say, so let's uh, let's cut over and
(09:52):
hear that conversation. So my main hope always for this
podcast is to have some really deep conversations, so smart
and fun and interesting people on topics that really matter
to communications and marketers and I would say curious humans
in general. And this conversation is very much motivated by
two trends, which is the evolution of earned media as
(10:13):
a practice and the evolution of media itself, by the way,
and then the rise of what some are calling the
attention economy. And so no surprise, my guest is deep
in these hot topics. I'm thrilled to welcome Dan Nessel,
who excels at the intersection of communications and technology and leadership.
And you are a communications leader and strategist, Dan, I
don't have to tell you this, and a podcaster and
(10:35):
a lot of insights in this field, really deep on AI,
really deep on what we're going to talk about today,
which has earned attention and sort of that evolution of
what we've practiced for a long time, which is earned media.
And you're the founder also of Inquisitive Communications and host
of the Trending Communicator, which I've been honored to be
a guest on and I really encourage people to check
(10:56):
it out. But Dan, welcome to building brand gravity.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Thanks and it is an honor. I'm glad to be here. Gosh.
I mean, last time we had we were behind the
mic with one another was almost exactly a year ago
on my show. And yeah, and it's so amazing to
see how much has changed, how much hasn't And you know,
we're gonna know, we're going to talk about AI. It's
been driving a lot of that change, but it hasn't
(11:20):
been the only driver. And I think that's you know,
there's the people forget that it's a thing. It's not
the thing, and you know, we need to talk about
the attention economy. As you said the the the profession
as a whole, and you know, of course weave in
AI into it, if you know, if that makes sense
to do so, and I think it always does so
(11:41):
well to.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Get us started. I've been thinking a lot about a paradox,
or I'm identifiing as a paradox. You can help me
decide if it is. Which is It feels like in
some ways earned media, due to the media itself being
under tremendous pressure, is under pressure, and the practice is
under a lot of pressure. But at the same time,
there's all this discussion and energy and excitement also related
(12:04):
to AI, about earned media and media itself being on
the brink of a renaissance, and both of these realities
are tied to media fragmentation, but they're also tied to
the proliferation of AI and all its forms. So you know,
you've got the AI content at scale and slop and
crap and zero click search and traffic going off a
cliff and things like that, but you also have the
(12:26):
way that large language models are pulling and organizing information,
serving as the new search and new discovery, really honoring
and pulling from sources that tend to lean more into
the world of earned media and the practices we've done.
So this is a big question, but what's your overall
take on this moment of time and is this a
paradox in your mind?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I think it's it's I agree with you. It is
a paradox of sorts, and I think that paradox lives
mostly in our heads rather than in reality because of
you know, what you normally see when when any industry
is disrupted, you have legacy mindsets and forward thinking mindsets.
(13:08):
And it's not I'm not being judging about it, it's
just that's kind of the way it is, where you know,
the approach to media relations and our and our kind
of inherent ranking of media, you know, like this is
top tier, this is mid tier, this is whatever. And
there you have the trades and you have different categories
and categorizations. Is being turned upside down in a lot
(13:30):
of ways, and it's a lot to cope with. And
there's still a lot of I think, whether it's cognitive
dissonance or whether it's just straight up no, the only
authority is the New York Times, Wall Stree Journal, La Times,
you know, et cetera. Mindset. I don't know what the
answer is. But but I think that that is, you know,
(13:53):
that's sort of our reality now, where's where everything's jumbled,
priorities are jumbled, and there's a very I think there's
a question of what is valuable and what isn't in
terms of the media coverage and in terms of what
counts for earned attention.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
That's really helpful. You've asserted, you know, and I'd love
to hear thoughts on this, that traditional media relations is
in some ways not just outdated, but potentially broken or
kind of even harmful sometimes just the strategic objectives, and
I think that has everything to do with how it's framed.
But when you say that, what are the things you're
(14:29):
seeing that seem wow, this has really counter to what
we're actually trying to achieve potentially for a given organization.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
I think it's it's mostly about entrenched values and attitudes
about what makes good media and what does media coverage
mean on the one hand, right, And on the other hand,
I think it's also about the fracturing of the media
and audience environment. And I have to, like I think
I have to be I have to give full disclosure
(14:56):
and be brutally honest about my own biases here, because
you know, being in corporate comms for twenty something years
and having a stint at at agency in the middle,
it always it was always the case that the executive
teams that I was serving or my or working in
(15:17):
partnership with when I was in corporate, the only real
wins that they understood from their PR teams and from
their comms teams were, Hey, we got the CEO in
the fill in the blank media, right, Oh, the CEO
is going to do There's going to be a feature
on the CEO in the in the New York Times.
(15:38):
There's gonna be a feature from CEO and barons. We
got we lined up all these wonderful interviews for the
CEO visit next week. And here's where we're taking him
by limousine to Bloomberg, to to you know, to the
Wall Street Journal, to wherever, right, And we didn't do
ourselves any favors as in as a profession in pushing
(16:02):
that as c C, we're doing all this great work
for you and these are the results that we have.
And I think that was the case for a long time.
So the pressure never ceased, and I think it still
continues to get that kind of coverage. But also we
didn't resist so much. You know, I think that it
was harder for for PR and comms folks to say, well,
(16:27):
the CEO's taught is going to be here, we have
a day for him or her. Not every CEO is
is like Jensen Wang or Elon Musk or Andy Jasse
or whatever. So you you know, you have to have
a reality check when you're CEO or any high level
executive is in town and really be self aware of
(16:50):
where you stand in the corporate pantheon and whether what
you're saying is newsworthy or not. And sometimes those the
answers those questions are not quite authentic or honest internally
in an organization.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
It's so funny because we're we're going to be talking
quite a bit about the evolution of technology and platforms
and processes that you know are really changing the game there.
But you're speaking about something that's so pervasive over so
many years and is in some ways very analog. It's
that human perception of value. And how is it that
(17:29):
public relations as a practice or in media, whatever we
want to call it, expresses that value? And that was
something I was thinking about and reading one of your
issues you have the trend in Communicator both a podcast
and a newsletter. And the issue before the last, the
one that just came out recently. The one before was
about this question of like building on your prior one
and earned attention. It was it was looking at a
(17:51):
McKinsey study about oh, they've discovered this, you know, the
quality of attention, but before and I want to ask
you about that, and we will get to the technology
of it all, because it's really really germane and it's
changing the thing. But I want to reflect on my
own career where you're right, it's like there is this
hierarchical value judgment and it's not always it's always a qualitative,
(18:12):
subjective conversation. And yes, we have a lot of data
of why The New York Times drives so much, and
that's really really meaningful, and that can be meaningful to
most you know, enterprises, if you're in there. But I
remember back with consumer brands at an earlier decade. You know,
I used to joke about the O word, which is
please don't say oprah to me. You know, this is
(18:32):
before it was fully like, don't use the O word.
But it was these things that we put up on
a pedestal. And the reason that I'm bringing this up
now is I've seen some clients over the past decade
or so start to almost devalue or not recognize on
the executive teams how critical trade media as a category
continues to be, or those young reporters at the trade
(18:55):
media where you have the chance to train them and
inform them and help them, versus I don't have time
to talk to that person. So, you know, I think
what you're saying, Dan, if I'm correct, is that you know,
these old school pressures and tensions and tropes are still
very active today, right, And we've got to look at
that again, I think so.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And and you know, those those tropes or those kind
of belief systems with somebody who had once sent to
me a long time ago in a completely unrelated topic,
that our biggest enemy is not you know, is not externally,
it's our it's our own bs, it's our own belief systems,
you know. And I think that applies to a lot
(19:36):
of a lot of legacy organizations in the profession for sure.
And I know that agencies have been really pushing the
envelope with technology and with kind of you know, with
new developments, but I don't see it always getting getting
through to the to the clock clients, or to potential clients,
or or to certainly to large organizations that that don't
(19:58):
have to worry about things like awareness, right. I mean,
I think we got to be clear that when I say,
and maybe when anybody says that, you know, media relations
is really well my exact words, where it's dying and
we need to let it go. But that you know
that is that's a very little a little polemic about it.
(20:20):
But the I think we just have to understand that
we're talking about the vast majority of practitioners and companies.
We're not talking about you know, your fortune ten or
fifty or one hundred, because they have different needs. They're
already in the awareness game and they have that. You know,
if you have a very heavy financial and you know
(20:42):
investor relations function, and you know you need to be
you're constantly in the media's eye for any move you
make with employment or with you know, with your finances,
et cetera, your media relations need to be really strong.
I don't know if your approach needs would be the
same or should be the same. In fact, I would
I would advocate you want to right out a little
bit more to different outlets, but you do need a
(21:02):
strong media function.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You talked about earned attention, which got my attention because
earned media earned attention. And the reason is before we
get into earned attention specifically, this whole concept of attention
is very of the moment. I feel I'm hearing discussions
about it everywhere, as your client has talked about today's
most valuable capitalist attention. Chris Hayes of MSNBC just published
(21:25):
a book. I love the title, It's the Sirens Call,
How Attention became the world's most endangered resource, So endangered resource,
valuable capital. That title says a lot. So when you
think about attention, and then we'll go to earned attention,
how do you think about the concept of attention to day,
attention as an entity as capital.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Where it's where you're putting your eyeballs. So you know
you have choice, You have more choice than ever before
on where you spend your time for your media consumption
or for your for your entertainment or whatever it is online.
So what is taking your what is attracting your eyeballs
(22:04):
at a particular time. I think I'm sure there are
studies or I would imagine that there are thinkers out
there who are saying, if you attract somebody you know
three times to your website or to your article, then
we can count that as attention. Now, I don't get
that deep about this because I don't know what the
(22:26):
answer is, but I would imagine that you know that
some consistency needs to be there for us to really say, Okay,
we have your attention. You know, we throw up a
crazy advertisement somewhere that's that attracts eyeballs, you know, on
the side of a building or drones in the air. Boy,
(22:48):
are we getting attention? Right? But if that attention is
not attached to a brand or to a person or
to something else, then it's kind of fleeting and it
does sort of sort of meaningless. It's real more about
it's more about, Okay, is our content or our proposition,
or our outdoor activation, even whatever it is, is it
(23:12):
worth someone's time where they come and look at it
and spend a little bit of time on it. And
that's where tension starts. Then they have to make an
association with that and your brand or your person. And
I don't think you can isolate one from the other
because Otherwise it's impressions, and those are you know, that's
(23:33):
kind of meaningless. What we want is somebody comes, they
read your stuff, they look at your at your they
look at you at your video, they watch your video,
they spend a little time with you. So then okay,
we can say all right, we've started. Okay, that's one
type of attention. But the other one is I really
(23:53):
need to learn about something. I really need to understand
about something. It's not any different from from directed search
or something like that, where you you know, you're moving
a little further down the funnel, which may or may
not be outdated.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
You're making me think of that the marketing funnel, as
you were alluding to, and where it still really resonates
and where it translates across disciplines. But in when you
were in your last newsletter when you're talking about McKinsey,
you know, they were talking about attention as well, and
you're reminding me of a separating attention quality from quantity
(24:26):
right driving business outcomes. And you also in that same
newsletter and people should go check it out, we're talking
about that question of what drives intent or behavior. Yeah,
and I think that in the comms world. And you know,
a firm like mine is integrated marketing communications, so we
kind of touch different pieces of it, but we started
as a communications firm. And I think where you start
(24:48):
is in your DNA that question of can we measure
you know, maybe use the marketing language of conversion or
intent or things like that, But what is your thought
about how you know in this new world of earned attention,
how we start to think about quality versus quantity and
quantity could be like size of outlet, but it may
not be the quality. How do you start to parse
(25:09):
that in your own mind?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Dan Well, I think you have to marry the marketing
to the to the communications for that to be understood.
You know, it's that is really where you don't know
whether it's whether it's quality attention. When some when your
target or your customer or your stakeholder first's first grabs
onto your to what you're putting out there, to your content,
(25:30):
you just have to understand that you need consistency in
your content to kind of weed out. Well, there's two functions.
First is of course to present your position and be
more and promote awareness and you know, make sure that
your your message is getting into the channels in front
of the people that it needs to be in front of.
(25:51):
That's your part. But the quality attention part is like
paying attention to how people are interacting with that content
and then seeing, Okay, well this one's resonating, this one isn't.
And that's from one side of the equation. You can
turn up turned down dials and change your message, But
on the other side of the equation you have to think, Okay,
is it resonating because is it not resonating because the
(26:13):
timing is offer because it's in the wrong channel, r
because it's the wrong audience, Or is it not resonating
because it's really part of my language it's crap, right,
I mean you have to you know, you have to
figure it out. And then when it does resonate again,
is it is it hitting for the right reasons? Did's
something like go, well, I hate this phrase? But did
it go viral? Like did it hit hard because you
(26:37):
know you've said something or if you've written something that
is that is worth that that virality? Or did it
go viral because there's something in your content that actually
is completely different than what you intended. Maybe there's a
maybe something funnier or maybe it's a you know, you
start a new meme or who knows what it is,
(26:59):
but you know, is it getting the attention It's getting
for the right reasons. And the only way to really
know that is to look is to best consistent with
your output and start looking at who's coming back over time,
and from those people who are coming back over time,
that's where you're going to see those quality that quality attention,
(27:23):
like the the the audience is that keep coming back,
and then the audience is that that take action based
on what you do now, And that's a whole That's
another kind of point is Okay, are they taking action?
Are they doing something based on what you're putting out there?
That's where the marketing side of everything kind of comes in.
(27:43):
But it should be our It should be also in
the comms in the comms world, to measure that the
reaction the engagement metrics are one thing, but is there
a actual call to action in your in your piece
or in your content that they can follow? Is there
a way to measure that? There always should be, of course,
(28:04):
and that's kind of where the quality part of the
attention comes in. It's more more of the measurable part.
So you know, there's a qualitative there's a qualitative way
to look at quality, quality attention, I suppose, but there's
also quantitative ways and I think we need to grasp
both of those.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, and how we marry that together. I mean, I
feel like all the disciplines of marketing and comms have
moved closer together over time, but there's still different silos there.
It was interesting you were commenting on some of the
audience segmentation. McKinsey was suggesting, Yeah, they had about nine
eight or nine or so, and you picked out a
couple like content lovers, interactivity enthusiasts, and community trendsetters, and
(28:44):
that struck me. And there's you know, as people who've
made up a million names for audience segments over time,
as we do. Yeah, you know they they are made
up and subjective, but they also have reality and research
behind them and power behind them. And I think what
was interesting to me is these seem to be quite
attention based segments. What kind of attention? And you know,
(29:04):
each of us are fans of something, you know, I
have like I've been a fan of Charlock Combs since
I was a child, So all aspects of Sherlock Holmes.
That means I listen to a very niche podcast that
covers the Granada Sherlock Holms series from the eighties with
Jeremy Brett, and I'm just like a person that's.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Into that rather good micro segment.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It is a micro segment, and there's more people out
there than I realized when I discover this podcast. But
you know, how should I don't think we've never thought
in terms of these kinds of segments before, But how
do these attention based segmentation feel fresh to you or
feels like something to be revisited and reflect on.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
I think it's I mean, that's a good question. I'm
fundamentally in favor of breaking down our audiences in any
measurable chunks that we possibly can, because it gives you
the intel and the insight to know which channels you
can use and what kind of content they need. And
it gets it's getting a little crazy because as you know,
there are more and more channels available and there's so
(30:01):
much content out there that you know you're again it's
this word fractured that keeps coming up. And I guarantee
you audience out there who anybody who knows me or
follows me. You keep seeing the word fractured. That is
not an AI thing. That's me. I keep because I
think it's real, Like this whole fractured thing is it
just keeps on shattering and fracturing, and there's no there's
(30:24):
very little binding happening. So if we can find ways
actually to kind of bind that in different segments, that's
actually very helpful. So when McKinzie my whole piece on
mckinzey's really tongue in cheek, and I certainly came down
hard on them a little bit for discovering something that
we already knew. But you know, sometimes they put out
some really good good information. I like the and the
(30:45):
idea of there are consumer segments, you know, content lovers,
interactivity enthusiasts, and community trandssetters. Those are the three that
made it into my review because those are the three
that they also highlighted as worth pursuing. Right when you're
devising your content strategy and if you whatever you're doing,
if you are putting out a story about about turbines
(31:10):
or if you're putting out a story about legal services,
you know, those are two very very different audiences. But
within that audience. Who are the content lovers, Who are
the interactivity enthusiasts? Do they exist? You know? And are
are the community trendsetters part of that group? I mean,
(31:30):
you know, you'd think that if you're corporate and you're
talking about something industrial and it's kind of that, oh man,
this is not going to attract these community trendsetters. You
might be wrong in a big way because you know,
those community people. It exists in every industry, in every vertical,
and we would be really lucky or or fortunate to
(31:58):
figure out how to reach them first and understand get
their attention, which would then kind of turn into a
little bit of a snowball effect because they would get
the attention of others. Kind of a take on influence marketing.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I guess, but you know, it's so aligned with how
our industry, like many of us as practitioners, have woven
influencers as a core part of strategy, and many companies
do a great job with that. But I'm kind of
shocked still in the client service landscape, how many companies
do not see influencers are just part and parcel and
symbiotic with all of their other stakeholders. From a communications
(32:32):
and marketing standpoint. There's some incredible best practices there, and
yet it's still quite siloed, and there's still a lot
of organizations that are just not investing what they should
in that area. And it's that evolution of media. But
I want to move on to the AI of it all,
because the AI of it all is all around us
all the time, and you know, it is a double
(32:53):
edged sword in this area, and the fingerprints here are
all over the evolution of this field. I think one
of the most interesting things that's very germane to what
you're talking about, turning hierarchies on its head and changing
what we think is conventional wisdom about what's a good
media hit. You know, who's the big fish, right, So
(33:15):
there is so much excitement. I think the acronyms have
settled mostly on GEO generative engine optimization, although AIO is
still trying to make a play. But let's say GEO right, sure,
And how it is that large language models and each
of them are a little bit different. The overlap, there's
overlap in how they pull, but they're each a little different.
And how open AI is using being as a crawler,
(33:37):
and you know, and other things like Reddit, but what
they pull from to create those search results that create
that zero click search environment where you get everything on
the page, which is so disrupting publishers, so disrupting media,
so disrupting, like the incumbents of search.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
I think fundamentally we always have to remember that quality
content and engage content and compelling content will always win
in the long term. But it has to be smart content,
and it has to be done in a way that
I think treats AI as another stakeholder rather than as
a rather than as a kind of technical marvel. You
(34:18):
have to think of AI as a stakeholder. How how
does AI like to read what you write? Just in
the same way that one of your customers likes to
read what you write? Right? So I did a little
ectuisice the other day to.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
It took a blog post and I said, okay, now,
and I was using Claude, and I asked it to
just optimize the blog post for search, which, by the way,
people should still be doing because search is still is
not going away. Just you know, the results are going
to be different, but you should still always think about,
you know, writing good content for search. But okay, so
(34:54):
optimize for search, and then I said, okay, can you
optimize this for GEO. The GEO version was so radical,
glee different in structure, a lot of bullet points. They
added an FAQ at the end, there was there were
They added a credibility section, an authority section to establish
the authority of the author and I wouldn't post that
(35:19):
the way it was right, That's not something I would do.
So it's just because you have something this GEO optimized
doesn't mean you should always use it. You know, take
elements maybe, But the lessons there are that AI is
looking for digestible bites of information. It's looking for a
conversational flow. It's looking for content that actually answers questions.
(35:42):
So that's why there's an FAQ in there. And you know,
sometimes you have some stuff in the in the conversational flow,
in the content itself. It's looking for authority, and that's
definitely where media has that kind of light at the
end of the tunnel waiting for them. It's looking for
authority and credibility, and you know, it wants to make
sure that whatever it delivers to the user is is
(36:07):
not hallucination and is real because you know that is
something that even though they still hallucinate and still deliver nonsense,
it's it is something that's that's important to the AI.
So structuring it that way is is what GEO is
looking for. So GEO, you know, and each you'r you right,
Each of the LM's look at things differently, you know,
pulls in pulls in this information. However they pull in information
(36:31):
the other the other part of it that I'm just
really starting to get familiar with. And forgive me if
I get some of this wrong, because I do urge
everybody fact check me on this. But you know, it's
not like search where you're you're going to create a
GEO optimized piece and then it's going to appear or
going to have a good chance of appearing in the
(36:52):
l ll ms the next day. That's not the way
it's going to work. You know. The piece even though
lms have access to the web and they're using web
search to get to find relevant articles and yeah, you're
going to certainly have a chance there, it's still search, right,
They're still using search. So the search results that they're
(37:14):
getting are not any different than the search results you
would get when you go to Google and you look,
in fact, you can watch the reasoning play out in
some of the models. Right. What's happening is your piece,
that content is being used for training and for training
the model. So it's going to be it's going to
be added to the models, and piece by piece it
(37:36):
will raise your authority or will it will kind of
make it into into the model's you know, kind of
repository and be merged into the borg as it were.
Then you know, when you search on topics or when
somebody searches on topics later it will have it in
the training and it will understand the context around which
(37:57):
it will find a website, which then kind of builds
the authority for that website or for that information because
you've handily provided it with all it needs. Authority, conversational
conversational content, answers to questions, Okay, this is legit. This
is where it's going. So it's multi layered, I think,
(38:19):
is what I'm trying to say. So within that, you know,
the media has a this is where there's there's kind
of a real interesting trend going on and I'm not
sure what the truth is here, but I've seen pieces
say that media should be really excited because and you know,
media relations, the focus on top tier media should be
(38:44):
stronger than ever because top tier media is going is
and is always going to be the most authoritative sources
for even for geo. As GEO gets on and and
there's some truth to that, you know, they there is authority.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
I think you run into the paywall issue often though
now with some of those, which is going to be
a challenge here.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
It's going to be a challenge. But you know, there
was a recent thing from cloud Flare. I don't know
if you saw the cloud Flair thing right where absolutely
where they're they're charging for bots, charging bots to crawl content.
You're seeing more and more deals with the media organizations
of the lms, So you know, I think it'll happen more.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, that was in concert with Meredith dot Dash. I
think to try to do some of that gating of content, you.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Know, and that's going to play. But you know, yes,
if you managed to get that high end media hit,
that's not going to really do anything for your for
your geo, at least not in a visible way and
not immediately.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
No, to me, it goes back to the trade magazine piece.
You know, what are those deeper authoritative that have a
whole body of work on a certain area or sector
a topic. By the way, thank you for the star
trek Boord reference. There's never a time in this world
not to bring up the borg because it feels bec
and it's interesting too. What I really liked I want
to pull out what you said is treating AI as
(40:04):
another stakeholder or as you know we've talked about in
terms of AI practices and getting more familiar with generative AI,
encouraging folks to say, imagine this as a young person
or an intern, or you know, you don't want to
anthropomorphize it entirely. You know you have to be careful
about what it is and what it's not. And obviously
this whole emergence of chatbots and therapy chatbots and companion,
(40:27):
that's a whole nother world that we'll do another podcast
on Sunday. Whoever isn't obsessed with talking to their chatbot
and we'll be here to still talk with me. We'll
do a podcast. But I think this question of thinking
of it as a stakeholder that has to be built
with information over time, and we'll find information sources and
synthesize them and bring it up. I think that's really
(40:48):
powerful and I really appreciate. I think it was really
clear the way you talked about some of these aspects
of GEO, which is still developing. You know, we're still
learning it. With SEO, there was a lot of work
to try to under stand and the Google algorithm and
what are the hundreds of factors and Google would release
some and not the other. I think we're in this
similar thing of trying to discern through practice. But the
(41:11):
really interesting thing about this moment in time is you
can also ask the entity, tell me what is GEO
optimize or tell me what is general vention optimized? How
do you communicate? What are you looking for? And one
of the reasons I think it's really an interesting opportunity
for folks who have communications. At the heart of our
(41:33):
skill set as a practice and also literally as communicators
is understanding what different audience needs. An AI is a stakeholder.
We're a multi stakeholder group, Like that's how we look
at stakeholders that way, right, and we understand why would
someone need an FAQ, why would someone need a statement
in context around authority? How do I build that in
(41:54):
a way that that context come through and is understandable.
How do I reframe? I always chow you know with clients,
like I can give it to you as a word document,
a PowerPoint, I can do all this slamp you know,
interpretive dance like whatever format you need, I can recreate
it that way. So I think it does seem to
give some real power to a group that has quite
(42:16):
a broad toolkit in terms of how we communicate with
different stakeholders. And does that resonate for you at all?
Speaker 1 (42:21):
That's straight from my my Hymn book. I mean, there's
there's a there's I've always been saying and I and
I've always been advocating for people with the skills that
communicators have to take the lead in a lot of
this stuff, and we hold back within organizations or we're
stuck in boxes or you know, you it's hard to
move out of your land. There's a billion reasons you
(42:45):
could anger the wrong people and get laid off. It
can happen. That said, who else should write FAQ's? I mean,
who else? Who else is good at writing you know,
conversational content. The the next phase or the current phase
of attention is if you're getting the attention of the AI,
(43:05):
you need to have content that that earns their attention.
And that's exactly what it is, the kind of things
that we do, and it's the same thing that attracts
the attention of our stakeholders and of any audience. People
like conversational content. People want to know answers to their questions.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
And if it's a even you wouldn't necessarily put an faq.
You wouldn't think to put an faq with a feature article.
But maybe you do now, Like maybe you put a
little faq at the end. Maybe you put a little
study guide because you can do that very easily, create
a study guide for that piece, chunk it on and
then you have, all of a sudden something that's a
little bit more geoed and might be a lot more
(43:48):
interesting to your to your readers. There's a million ways
to do this, but it's all comes back to who
knows how to ask the quest ask the right questions.
We do know how to ask the right questions. We
know how to ask the right questions to the lms
as well. So you know, both in the creation side
of things and then in the iteration side of things,
(44:11):
you know we are in we are by nature curious inquisitive. Uh,
we like to interrogate in a positive way, and we
you know, we we like to interview right where interviewers
where media people. Let's play that out and you'll come
up with great content. It's just it's just interesting to
(44:32):
see how that's evolving within our profession. I've gone pretty
I've gone down this huge kind of road and rabbit
hole of building that into really better and better prompts
and better and better kind of you know, contextual operations
within a within the AI. But it just started with
(44:52):
me asking questions, you know, like can you do this?
Can you do better? Can do even better? What's a better
way to do this? And so on, and then builds
out we could do the same thing with anything we
do with AI, and we are the right people, I think,
the communicators.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
I love that thought about it comes from that questioning
nature and from multi stakeholders. As we wrap up today,
what's one thing you wish or hope every communication leader
practitioner will do to think about earned attention in fresh
way or a step you'd love them to take, you know,
any tip that you want to share.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
The number one thing to do is clear your mind
of what good media is and think in a new
way about about what is what is really important for
your message and for your story where does it need
to land. So the answer there is your audience is
and the audience has to come first before you think
(45:51):
about your media. So you know, we didn't exactly say
this explicitly, but fundamentally, I think that's the big problem
is is thinking about we need to get this into
the Times, we need to get this into the Well
Street Journal, we have to get this covered by the ft.
Stop that and think about I need to reach these stakeholders.
(46:14):
What are they reading. I need to reach these people
what are they watching? If that's the ft, then go
for the ft. It's just creating that strategy from the
audience first is critically important. So think about the audiences first.
You're going to find that they have multiple and dynamic
reading and viewing habits. You're going to find that you
(46:36):
might have opportunities to get into and certainly the opportunities
are much easier than top tier media. The trades are fantastic.
They've done such a great job I think over the
last ten years of surviving building out their technology. They're
doing more with podcasts, they're doing more with expert content.
(46:58):
They are certainly ahead of the game with GEO just
by default because they're authoritative and they're very technical and
detailed answer all our questions. So look at them in
a much with a different lens and convince your leadership
that this is good media for us to be on podcasts, videos,
those kinds of things. So think audience first. I think
(47:20):
is the is the thing I would beg people to do.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
It's kind of a return to the very very best
practices that are foundational to this fielding it they get
lost so often. Encourage our listeners and viewers to find
Dan Nessel, find the trending communicator. Check out you know,
subscribe to the substack, listen to the podcast and Dan,
it's always a pleasure. Thank you for being here today,
(47:43):
and you know, thanks for everyone listening to Building Brian Gravity.
Check out our other episodes, find us you know online
on video and give us your feedback. We always welcome it,
so thank you again.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
Thanks An
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