Using AI in Public Relations (Without Losing the Human Touch) ft. Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks

speaker-0: Alert. AI advancing, misinformation spreading, brand systems compromised, crisis mode activated. Welcome to Control All PR, a podcast hosted by Eric Grau and Amber Krasinski, where PR, marketing, cybersecurity, and tech finally sit at the same table because most problems happen somewhere in the gaps between them. If you're looking for expert advice on how to handle AI and real conversations about its potential, consider this your hard reset. Welcome back to Control All P. PR where we really break down those weird intersections between technology and culture and communications and how all those things shape the way that brands are gonna show up and sometimes even spiral in public. So if you haven't ⁓ checked in already, my name's Amber Krasinski. And I'm Eric Grown. More than 10 years ago, our guests made a prediction that made traditional publicists ⁓ let's say just deeply uncomfortable. She said that within a decade, public relations, as we knew it, wouldn't exist as a standalone discipline, right? It'd be absorbed into marketing or something, right? Unless it evolves. Fast forward to 2026, we have AI writing copy, algorithms shaping visibility, AI generated images blurring all reality, which really, you know, and let's not even mention the slot. ⁓ and executives asking, why do we even need communication teams at all? Right. It's the big elephant in the room in PR, at least from what I've chatted about, with all the colleagues. Nobody really knows how to fully activate AI. There's a lot of LinkedIn articles that come through, and who do you actually trust? But our guest today is somebody that I really, really have looked up to for a long time. She's the founder of the Spin Sucks podcast and whole ecosystem, the creator of one of the models for modern PR and marketing, the peso model. She's an author, an educator, and whether she actually likes it or not, in my opinion, she is the architect of modern communications as we know it. So I I know I just gassed you up like crazy, Ginny, but like I love your work. And I think what you have for expertise is so amazing. So yeah, today we're gonna be chatting through, you know, the framework that has been taught all around the world, the incredible woman that's behind it, and All the different organizations that she has experienced in her career and what we can take away from things going forward when it comes to this weird AI-driven communications world that we're all trying to navigate together. So, Ginny, thank you for being here. This is great. Amber, we are going to be best friends because that was amazing. I'm just gonna you and I are gonna travel everywhere together. Yes, there we go. So for today, I definitely don't want to just harp on the fact that like We need to figure out how to use the right press releases. I really want us to dig into please no. It drives me it right ew. It gives me the ick. I'm all set. Like I'm more than all set. So like what is it, what does it actually look like to, you know, think about how strategy and trust and visibility are all changing when more and more machines are ch you know, controlling distribution. And we're gonna talk through ideally, you know, how has the peso model shifted over time to help

speaker-2: AI to

speaker-0: you know, with some of the operating systems that people need to have when they try to communicate messages and build buzz and tell stories and get the word out there. So yeah, so that's that's really what I want to dig into today. Love that. What the hell is the peso model? Cause anytime I bring it up with people, they're like they're they're like, is this currency? What is this? You know, especially I was talking with somebody in cybersecurity and they're like, what is this breakdown to? So? So yeah, Jinny, let's let's get some backstory on the amazing model that I have been obsessed with for years and years. That's so funny you say that because when I I talked about it in Spin Sucks the Book, which I published in 2014. And it didn't at the time have a name or a graphic or a framework or any structure. It was just part of the prose that I was writing. You have content marketing and you have social media and you have search engine marketing and you have all of this stuff that's coming at you at once. And a communicator is like at the time was like, I don't know what to do all with all of this. So is writing about the about this process that we were using to sort of figure out how media relations and content and social and search engine marketing all work together. And my publisher came back and said, tell me more about this. piece. And I was like, well, we're just kind of testing it out and it's not really fully baked yet. And she's like, let's fully bake it. And so I mean it's really credit to her ⁓ for pushing me on it because then she she said, let's let's name it. And you know, if I were to put it in in order of importance for media type for a communicator, I would say owned, earned, shared, and paid. But OSP is hard to remember. Like I even have to think about it. ⁓ So we went round and round and round and She said, Well, what about peso? And I was like, Can we call it that since there's a currency? And she she said, Let me do my due diligence. So as Pearson, the publisher, she went out to do the due due diligence. And it was fine from a copyright perspective because it's a completely different thing, right? It's not a currency. And so we were able to call it that. And really it's called peso because it's easy to remember. But We never almost never start with paid, which makes so much sense. And music to my ears 'cause I I know so many folks that they just dive into the the paid first and I'm like, ⁓ huh. ⁓ no. You have to build trust first. People are not going to buy if they don't trust you. You have to build the trust first. At the at the end of the day you're gonna have all these fancy AI things and all this stuff, but if they don't trust you, they're just gonna scroll on or move on or click away or whatever that might be. Yeah. And you've mentioned recently, I guess, it's no longer really a f a framework or a checklist, but now like you said, it's like an operating system. I'm a big I'm a big fan of operating systems, obviously. You know, in the computer world you have apps, but also as an entrepreneur, you have EOS, right? You have entrepreneurs' operating systems. So I like that that that word or analogy moving on to other things other than just technology. First time I ever even heard of Peso was last year, I'll be honest with you. And I was doing my own AI and coming up with the TED ⁓ Or only I bought for the team for the marketing team. And I wanted to have a way that whatever they were producing, it followed some sort of a framework. And that's how I discovered you. So I we have our own internal peso bot that, you know, always adheres to your rules and and and things that I can obviously research and find yeah. And teach it from that's amazing. That's awesome. What that's such a cool story. I gotta use that. That's amazing. Don't you have one? You should have one. You should have it on your website. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have a free one and we have a paid one. Yeah. I gotta compare your free one then with mine and see, you know. Yeah, you should. Yeah. I'll make sure you get a copy of it. yeah, it's funny you say that from a framework versus operating system because a couple of years ago somebody in our Slack community said, Would you call this what would you call it? Would you call it like a learning, a framework? And at the time I was like, I think it's a framework. And we we have evolved and relaunched the Peso Model certification this year. So I've been solely down heads down into developing new content. ⁓ so the more time I spend with have spent with it over the last eighteen months, I would say, and especially with AI baked in, what I came to discover is that a framework is something that you learn, you research, you learn, you implement it once, and then it just works on its own. An operating system evolves, right? So we started to play with that a little bit to understand could we embed this as an operating system and then let the tactics evolve with the industry or with your business goals on top of it. And so that's why we made the transition from framework to operating system because it's a living, breathing thing that continues to evolve. It's not something you learn about once and be done with it. Yeah, no, that makes functional. I take a really like systems level approach when it comes to this too, Jenny. And I think that's why it resonated so well with you know, what I was working on 'cause I didn't grow up in the PR world. I was doing PR for a nonprofit without realizing it. I was like, I gotta hit up Mary Leach at the Billwork a minute, man, 'cause I gotta get butts and seats for programs. And I I learned a couple of years later, I watched Scandal. I'm like, ⁓ wait, that's you watched Scandal.

speaker-1: Dealing with crisis community.

speaker-0: Do you high see you high? I love scandal too. I mean, yes. Yeah. And I was doing like, you know, a little bit of like communications help. Also I would like to have her clothes, but yes. Yes, yes, yeah. I mean that that that's the way I just assumed everyone in PR, you know, dressed and had affairs with the presidents and stuff. Absolutely. That's exactly what happens, yes. That's the thing is like when I when I first started digging into well, how can I like do things differently and do things like more efficiently? And what does it look like to be working with some of these brands and some of these nonprofits that are scrappy and they don't have a full big team? And I think something like your model and the way you think about it more as like an operating system that can adjust and flex and you can introduce new tools very strategically, that resonated with me much more than We're gonna run a PR campaign and hope for the best. And you know, ⁓ UVM, you know, that that doesn't fly with me. I'm like, I wanna see the results. What is the point of doing all this? So so yeah, so I'm curious if you could speak a little bit more to like the newer, and I know you've been talking about it for a while, but like visibility engineer. When you started talking about visibility engineering, that just light bulb. I'm like, it's that that speaks to the idea that you're somebody. And a communicator should be somebody that is helping to orchestrate those systems and all those different signals and those different things. So, you know, what does that look like, especially in the age of AI? And like where did where did that whole concept kind of like evolve from and where do you see it going? You know, I started thinking about this because there was a Muckraq study that was released. It was either super early last year, like January. February 2025, or it was November, December 24, but it was a good year ago. And it talked about where they were seeing that LLMs were getting their information. And it showed significantly that it the LLMs were s were crawling your site and scrubbing your content. And then it was they were comparing that content to what's being surfaced through earned media. So reviews, ⁓ Traditional media, trade media, newsletters, podcasts, all of that, when when it was comparing to your website, was it the same? Was it consistent? And if it was, then it was showing your brand in an AI answer. So when somebody says, tell me the best PR firm in Chicago, like you would show up in those answers, right? ⁓ and so I started to think about that from a a communications perspective. And I was like, that's what we do. So if we can engineer that visibility, why wouldn't we do that? Right. And you know, th there's been all this talk in the last couple of months that PR is dead and big. PR is not dead, right? Exactly. Come on. It's really it's evolved just like everything else. And I think if you have not evolved as a communicator, then you're you're dead. But we have not the industry is not dead. And really, if you think about if you're creating content that Demonstrate your expertise and your experience, which we know Google loves. And you're doing media relations, not just with traditional media, but with new media too, your TikTok news anchor, your podcast host. And though the things that are being surfaced in those interviews are the same as the the the expert thought leadership stuff on your website, you're going to engineer that visibility. You're going to show up in AI answers. That's your job. So If you want to call yourself a visibility engineer, if you want to call yourself a PR professional, if you want to call yourself a communicator, I don't care. But if you do owned and earned media really well, and then you use shared to distribute that and you use paid to amplify it, you're done. It's beautiful. I love it so much. It's so, so good. Yeah. And I mean, so so thinking about the traditional, you know, perceptions, I know we just talked about my girl Olivia and all that, but like it's always about.

speaker-1: The relationships and

speaker-0: We joke around all the time. We the whole school. She's Olivia normally. Off camera, she's Olivia ⁓ Hook, you know. We we should have them on this show. Yeah. You should. Yes. Yeah. Amazing. But yeah, but like you think about it, all of those things are all about, you know, traditionally it's been relationships and execution. And that's how people perceive, you know, anything that's related to PR. But if if AI is now helping to support some of those systems and handling execution at scale, you know, what does that mean for the career ladder? And what does that mean for both folks that are entering into PR and folks that have been here for a minute, you know? I actually, you know, I mean, this is just human beings, human nature, I think it's easier for somebody who's just entering the field because they don't have any preconceived notions and they've already been introduced to AI in their coursework. I think it's easier for them than it is with some than somebody with 10, 15, 20 years of experience because we get set in our ways and we have a certain way of doing things and it's hard. It's hard, right? And usually for human beings, we don't make change unless there's a crisis. Well there's a crisis coming. And AI AI will take your job if you do not evolve. It's not gonna take your job if you do evolve. It's not gonna because you've changed with the times, but there's there's a crisis coming. So it's you need to be thinking about that and and to I mean bas and you know, in a nutshell, it you know, we we keep hearing it, especially in LIT, and it's gonna replace jobs, gonna replace our jobs. Like, listen, sure. If you want it to replace your job, then you're allowing it to. But you need to treat this as a tool. It's a really complex. amazing tool that you know could pose dangers. That's a whole different conversation episode, but it is a tool. Learn how to use it, you know, up your game, ⁓ and and then move on. You know, we we have to keep on evolving. You we've gone very cushy and and this is just through something really massive. And there will be people that will lose their jobs without a doubt. You know, but for sure one could also say they probably would have lost it anyway if things just shifted into a different direction, younger people learned it at college or whatever it might be. You know, like like you said, you know, humans we don't like change so often. But I personally think that humans don't like change, but I think many of us excel when we're forced to do it. At least for me anyway. I'm just a nut job, but you know, fifty seven years old and I'm always trying to find like the next thing that that I can just dive myself into. ⁓ 'cause that's just the way, you know. But I I think it's a good thing. But that's why you're an entrepreneur. You have to be a little bit crazy, I think, to be an entrepreneur. pay next paycheck's gonna come from. It's like that. You have to understand how AI is going to affect your job and what parts of it it will replace because it it has. I mean, I've been using it since twenty two and I'm far more productive. I'm I get far more work done. I no longer s procrastinate because I can just drop drop a prompt into Chat GPT and be like, I'm stuck. Can you just put something on paper for me? And then all of a sudden your wheels are going, right? ⁓ so it It is scary because it, you know, you hear all the scary reports and you hear the ethical reports and things like that. And ⁓ Eric, to your point, that's a different conversation for a different podcast episode. But the there's so much opportunity. And I think if you understand how you can use it in the work that you do every day, you're going to be able to engineer that. You're going to be able to hold an agency responsible for results and One of the things that I love is I'm very, very left-brained, which is highly unusual for someone in our field. ⁓ so I like you, Amber, I love the metrics and I want to know exactly how the work that we're doing is aff affecting business goals. And I can t look at a a spreadsheet and pick the stories out. I can do that. I can put then I take that and I put it into my AI and I ask it. Where did we do really well? Where did we not do so well? What are the stories we should be telling to the executives based on these goals? And it finds stuff I would never see. So use it for that, if only for that, so that you can demonstrate results in a way that you've never been able to do. So I think there's a big, big opportunity here. But like again, don't wait for the crisis to hit before you make the change. Make the change now. Yeah. Absolutely. So when do you think the crisis is gonna hit, Jenny? I'm curious about that because we've all it's it feels like a tidal wave. When when is it gonna hit? Yeah, I don't know. Is it the tipping point? Are we up there? I think we're close and everybody keeps talking about the AI bubble that's going to pop and so I feels close. It feels a lot like the dot com bubble did where, you know, people I mean, had the Super Bowl and all of the commercials were AI driven, all of them. So it's coming. It's coming. I just don't I can't tell you if it's next week or in three months. I don't know. Well, Eric, what do you think? ⁓ You're the tech guy. You've been the one all up in the AI for ages. So yeah. So so we we we dove in about almost three years, yeah, three years ago now. And we started writing a lot of stuff in the back end and just getting to know what is you know LLMs, what's the difference between an LLM and just very complex automation tools. ⁓ which in the beginning, I have to say, there was a lot of that. ⁓ and even to some degree, some AI companies are out there. You know, saying they're fully AI, and then later on you keep pushing and pushing, you find out that it's it's it's 200, you know, engineers in Mumbai that are answered. Who just either I just read an no, don't laugh. This was something I just read like last night or something, that somebody admitted that that no. ⁓ my god, what was this? ⁓ wait a minute, now it's gonna bother me. It was somebody I was like, wow, you don't say and and and it was something they they were said, Yeah, we admit it it you we the engineers handle it, but the AI does some things and and yeah. Who the hell it's gonna bother I I'll come up. I'm not gonna have to look it up 'cause we're yeah, we'll have to look it up. But you know, you you mentioned something, you know, you you you feed it to to your Chat GPT and just to have an idea generator, you know, ⁓ on my iPhone. I got my little button over here. That guy, that's always Chat GPT. Ever since they went vocal. I drive my team insane because I'll lock myself up in a conference room, I'll be on the whiteboard, I'll start talking to to Luna, whatever the hell they call her. And we're just brainstorming for like an hour in there. And can I just tell you, it's amazing. I mean, you gotta go through it, you gotta verify it, it's fluffy. Yeah. If you if you thought we fluffed you up in the beginning of this podcast, ⁓ my god, Chat JPT used to be so much worse. I was ready to divorce my wife. You change the tone. Yes, exactly. You gotta change the tone to Starkey. Yeah. ⁓ always verify. Let's put verify, right? But curious, have you ever tried using Notebook LM with Google? Have. I have, I have, yes. Isn't it amazing? You feel that stuff and you stay contained in that little world. So it has less hallucinations about going other places. And I've been trying to get everybody on that, sorry. But Yes, back to the AI thing yet. I think I think we're getting slowly into a plateau area. Right. AI's changed the game without a doubt. Sure. And I think when I when I say plateau, I don't think plateau phonics two years. I mean plateau phonics month. Because AI is just moving so fast. Like every day or every week it used to be a new feature that, you know, Gemini had or Claude had, or you Anthropic or Open AI. And it keeps moving. I think we're reaching a small plateau of a month, you know. We're gonna see that a little bit. And and just like we're seeing, you know, the images, we can already tell what it is, but honestly, there will be a point where you just can't tell. Like we will not be able to it will keep getting better and better and better. I just read an article that said this generation that's being born now, I can't remember what it's called, they will not know a world where you didn't doubt images and videos, which is astonishing. They were terrifying. I did is this real terrifying. Yes. I was media literacy. Like that's that's literally how all this started, Jenny. Was like I was a I was doing educational services for a T V station and I just went down the rabbit hole of media literacy and like here's what we can do. Like here's how you can bet sources. All of my curriculum. And of last year, I went back and I was looking at it. I'm like, I would never be able to use any of this going forward. ⁓ my gosh. That's crazy. You use everything. I mean, listen. I at fifty seven years old, I worked for hedge funds, I worked for Apple, I've I've been on the road with the Ramones, I you know, I worked in CBGB's at the old Ritz, like you know, I've been everywhere and I've even did some nefarious stuff once when I was in college, you know, but I gotta say, everything combined. You use everything. They're they make you, they make ginny, they make amber, they're all your experiences. We all can go to college for the same thing, but it's ultimately all our ex you know, ⁓ a combined experiences that really Yeah, make us who we are, right? And and we just bring that to the table to where we are today. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Definitely. So thinking about this like the funkiness of the human premium versus, you know, like AI driven environments, I I actually had some pretty aggressive pushback from ⁓ it was a fintech company recently. ⁓ AI can generate the content, it can figure out the journalists, it can pitch, it can do all the outcomes. Why do we need a comps team? Sure. Do it. What what do we say to people like that? Good luck. That's what you say. ⁓ good luck. Be my guest. Not a good client for us. Great. Nope. Nope. Because they won't know. They won't know. They don't know what they don't know. Right. You know, I mean it's yeah, it's been said for so long. They don't know what they don't know. And and that's, you know, that's usually when that human touch really is necessary and probably more obvious after the outcome, right? After the the output has been by them, which is what we call now slop. AI slop is all over the place. You know, the CEO to the company, I don't need to pay for PR. I need to pay for marketing. I just go chat GPT. And all of a sudden it goes on there and like, you know, 15 weeks later you're wondering, I haven't gotten one call. I haven't gotten one thing. I haven't gotten like, yeah, it's because everyone realizes you're using AI and not even very good. Yeah. Yeah. Because you don't know what questions to ask it. You don't know how to appropriate prompt it. You don't know if it's giving you anything that's good or usable. It like you still have to have somebody who knows what they're doing. Unless you have the paid model of peso from your website that they're using to come up with their stuff. You still have to have somebody. Like it's still still there, yeah. Yeah. You have to make sure the inputs are good. A and people will say to me, AI doesn't work and I'm like, it's user error. 'Cause you're not giving it the right inputs. Yep. But it's accurate. All all the all the verticals we we we've discussed here with different guests, it all boils down to your prompting. You really have to know what you're telling. AI is just it's a really smart computer, but it's just gonna babble and give you word salad and and sound like, you know, a a a sound I was gonna say something political, I'm not gonna say it.

speaker-1: Listen.

speaker-0: ⁓ it's just gonna it's just you don't want that word sound. You can with this audience. Exactly. And it's coming up with all these variations of like like a certain narrative. I think that's the problem is like if you don't have the training or understanding of how to vet between, you know, okay, this story, even though AI came up with all these different ideas, what are the ones that are actually gonna hit? Because there's definitely been times where it'll tell me, even if I prompt it properly, this will be perfect for her headline. I'm like, no. That's terrible. Yes. That's terrible. It's trash. Yes. So so if we think of AI as like this kind of spin multiplier where it's just constantly cranking things out, you know, what does that do to trust? And like, where do you think the line is with all this, Jenny? Like that's that's what I'm running into. It's funny. ⁓ I just a couple of weeks ago published an article on LinkedIn about how AI comments on LinkedIn are out of control. And listen, we know that you've done this. We we can tell. We can tell you used AI to summarize the article and write your comments because it's really bad. Well, I use the M-dash. I've also always used the ⁓ dash. I don't anymore. I don't. I but I do. I st I ch every time I type it out, I'm like, mmm, do I really need that M-dash there? Cause I actually wrote this. I don't want to do I replaced it with dot dot dot. I love it. But we can tell. We know.

speaker-1: ⁓

speaker-0: Which I use AI later to just replace all ⁓ dashes with dot dot. And misspell a word. Always misspell one thing in your entire paragraph, but just misspell it. That that's a that's a free challenge. But that's the thing. That's the thing. Yeah, it's it it the people and there there are like three people who do that constantly on my content. And I can tell you right now, if they ever applied for a job with us. they would not get the job they would not get an interview because I know that you that's what you're doing. And so you have already developed that relationship with me that I know I can't trust you. Exactly. Exactly. So then what does it look like to use AI to engineer more clarity instead of spinning out a bunch of slop or nonsense because you're trying to be more productive? Like what does that look like? It's not a final draft, what it gives you. It's a great way to start. It's a great way to get something on paper. It's a great way to start thinking. Like last year, probably mid mid-year, one of the executives at our at our one of our largest clients said to me personally, I really want to understand the peso maturity process. Like, where are we in in the process? And I said, Well, I can tell you exactly where you are. Like we can have that conversation. And he's like, I need a slide that shows me. Level one is this, level five is this. And I was like, huh. And it was a challenge I hadn't thought about yet. And it was I wasn't sure how to start. And so I just started prompting AI to help me with it. Now, what it gave me at at the start was not usable, but it got me thinking, okay. If level one is this and level five is this, what are the the steps in between? And how do we write? So it's not something final. It's it's something that helps you start to think through and start to understand, but you still have to, as the human, you have to to know what you're talking about. You have to know strategically what you're trying to achieve. You have to know what the output is, and you have to know how you can use that information to continue to build trust without violating that. Exactly. see, I love that. And I was just talking with somebody over the weekend. He he owns like a software, you know, engineering firm. And one of the things that he mentioned was the trust recession. You know, the more that we use AI and we don't use it with intention, it just degrades all the rest of the trust and it has such a downstream impact. So yeah, I love I love that approach. I absolutely love that approach. I know I gas you up all the time. But like final. I mean It's not the final. It's not the final. Exactly. No, no. It's like the equivalent of like when I do video, it's like we'll fix it in post. It's like, well, no, don't try and fix it later. Try to get like a solid understanding of what you need now and then make some tweaks, you know? So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I sit on the I sit on the bo on the board of education for our town and you know, as an AI a advocate, you know, I'm always explaining there's always gonna be teachers that say, ⁓ we don't wanna allow any AI. I'm like, No, that's actually the worst approach you can possibly take. What I would say is, especially as AI is evolving on a week by week basis, is why don't you just, you know, grade them on the use of AI? So you're gonna expect it. Yeah. Just just you, they're gonna use it. The question is, how are they using it? ⁓ and and to the point of where it's helping them drive that human conversation or that human element or whatever it might be, you know, and and just bringing that into like, for instance, you know, the whole peso model, like how do How does following the peso model or an evolved peso model, you know, help against weaponizing AI, right? Yeah. ⁓ or or is it just, you know, or or how do we frame the peso model where it becomes the the the strategy and how do you mix the AI side into that, into your evolving of of your own framework? And maybe we'll clue in here with something different. Maybe you never you're gonna tell us some secrets here. Well, I think part of it too is like how does it there's all these bad actors in AI? Like how can Peso help with that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's really I mean, it it goes back to what we've been discussing this whole time, which is we n we know that Google has their each, right? Experience, expertise, authority, and trust. And Google has not gone away. Like we we get the AI summaries at the top, but people still Google things. I think we're probably the exception to the rule where we most of we like most likely go to AI first, right? We've got it on our phones where we just go there. But we're the exception to the rule. We're not the the majority. Most people still use Google. There are lots of people who are slow adopters. ⁓ it's like social media. I remember as a complete side note, when I started speaking many, many years ago, I one of the things that I did is I talked about social media to CEO groups. And I remember this was probably 2012, 2011, somewhere in there, I would have CEOs pull me aside during a break and say, This is never going to hit our business. It's nice that you're speaking about this, but it's just for the kids. And I remember saying, okay, you'll see. Right? That's where I think we are with AI. If you use PESO, one of the things that we teach through the frame through the scientific system is you have to develop your expertise and your experience first. And that is one of the very first things that you work on through the certification is what is that? What are your subject matter experts? experts on, what can they speak to? What can your leadership team speak to? What is the real thought leadership that you have? And then how do you build the foundation based around that so that you continue to build trust and use AI to help accelerate I love that. I love that so much. So what do we do if there's and we'll kind of get into my way a favorite segment. ⁓ what if what if like there's, you know, like like there's a PR pro that's like using AI and they think that they're evolving and growing and it really turns out to be like a really crappy company or something like that, you know, and they're trying to build their expertise and maybe they're learning the inaccurate information, but they don't know, or you know what I mean? Like I'm just I always I'm very skeptical of AI in a lot of ways. And it just comes from my media literacy background. I'm like, well, what's behind the scenes here, you know? So so what what is it what does that look like? Do you think that the PR pro through this process is understanding that the company is bad? Or that the information out there is bad or would like tell me more. Yeah, I would say, well, both would be my favorite, you know, but you know, like like they they see that the company itself with the tool that they're using is bad and you know, maybe the information they're getting is inaccurate. You know, what is it how can a PR pro protect themselves and the brand around some of those, you know, trickier situations? I think that one of the things that we as communicators are going to have to do pretty effectively, pretty fast, is figure out where that misinformation is, when where that inaccurate information is and fix it. ⁓ and one of the things that I talked about a lot last year through the visibility engineer engineering content that I was creating is we have to be searching on AI for our brands and our competitors' brands at at the same time to understand what's being surfaced, because a lot of times It's either hallucinating or it's using outdated information. And if it's using outdated information, where is it getting that? Because it's probably on your website. So your job is to go fix that. So I think there is a huge opportunity there. It's a little bit of busy work, but it's the an opportunity to fix that inconsistent messaging so that a potential customer doesn't find it and go, Well, wait a second. This doesn't make sense. And then we've eroded trust with them. You already know that many Even Microsoft, you know, whatever big companies will come up and some websites either old or a link just went to you know dead. Yeah. There's nothing there, which also affects you know. going back to again with the Google, like where do you searching stuff? We have actually worked a lot on our on our website. So we start coming up ranking in cloud in OpenAI. So when when I look at those metrics in the morning, because I'm also a data geek, I love seeing it that hey, you know, anthropic to use your website as a source for like X amount of like times today. I'm like, I mean, that's pretty cool. I'll be pretty happy about that, you know. Yes, I'd be happy about that too. Yes. And if it and it's it is you you get that little sense of like I did something right for a change. Where you know, normally you do SCO, you have no idea what you're doing because Google just changes it every day. Well, you know, the rules, at least for now, those AI generative, you know, ⁓ SEO. For now, the rules seem to be kind of this is what it is, right? If you wanna rank. You want to make sure that all your information is updated ⁓ on your website because you don't want to give them bad information, plus that's gonna ding you for sure. Also, if you have a bot on your website, you know, like it's pulling information from from your website as well to be able to answer things. So it it definitely would behoove you to to keep all your stuff ⁓ updated. Fresh. This is where this is where the IT and the tech team needs to actually be talking to the communications and marketing swad. You know what I mean? Like a lot of that doesn't It doesn't happen unless it's like we gotta make a you know, we wanna pop a blog post or ⁓ we need to do a website refresh for this campaign or whatever. It's there's not a consistent set of communications and connection happening between these two very important departments. And I I think that there needs to be more overlap there. That's usually my toughest job. Everyone says, Well, of course you're gonna say that. You're IT. I'm like, Yes, no, I'm not just a cost center. Like really, we need to talk. Like every department head, no matter which it is. You need to talk to IT. You need to bring them to the table so they can vet what you're thinking. They can say, hey, that's not possible. Or that's thinking out of the box. Let me work on it or whatever maybe. But usually in my position, I get I get called in at phase four. And then I come as the bad guy saying, ⁓ yeah, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna work. You to change that. Like, ⁓ you're IT, no wonder. I'm like, if you had brought me in phase one, maybe would have, you know, looked it. And saved money and time, but you know. It's applied at the PR crew as well. Honestly, yes. ⁓ And that's actually that's a good moment here because, you know, we have a segment called the ⁓ scenarios. I used to call it the ⁓ shit moments, but that didn't play as well. So I like the ⁓ shit one. She keeps changing. I like the ⁓ shit moment because we're not on ABC. Always a former teacher. I sit on the board of of the education of my t my town. I'm okay with it. Come on. Come on. We know that's gonna age us too. ⁓ I mean, let's just talk about Netscape here and how the World Wide Web and half the companies are no longer around because they thought that was a you know, something was just not gonna make it. Okay. They were wrong. So the segment basically is I give you a crisis comms scenario that has to relate to AI and PR and

speaker-2: Yeah, right.

speaker-0: You basically have to, you know, explain what your thoughts are on it and what you would do in the first 48. So we've been talking a lot about AI and using tools to streamline. I know there's no there's no real wrong. It's it's just scenario planning, Jenny. It's my favorite thing to do. So there's a brand that has some sort of like fast moving issue. It's not anything catastrophic, but there's a little bit of concern and some reputational risk. So the comms team said, all right. Let's nip it in the bud. Let's use an AI tool to help draft a holding statement for right now. And it's, it's technically correct. It's neutral. It aligns with messaging. Leadership approves it. It goes out and it completely lands wrong. It's it's cold. It mirrors language that's used by other brands. You know, the comms team didn't catch it. All these audiences start talking about how it's corporate AI speak. And then a journalist picks it up and starts talking about the implications of leadership leaning too much on AI and suddenly that small thing becomes really, really big. And you have all these teams in the background that are all fighting with each other because humans approved it, but AI did it. Who's at fault? The whole crisis really surrounds the idea that like if AI is drafting that first response in a moment that really requires nuance and judgment and empathy and clarity, who is speaking for the organization and who is at fault with this? So That's your ⁓ scenario. What would you do and what are your thoughts on it? Well, it's always tough when the comms team becomes the story, because you never want to do that ever. ⁓ so that's a problem. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of those situations where you just have to follow on your sword and be like, you know what, we didn't do this correctly, we're sorry. And and then release the correct information but in in your normal voice and you will have a a reputation hit for sure. But I think that's one of those situations where you just have to say, We screwed this up. So it hasn't changed. I mean No. I mean it hasn't changed. It really is about fessing up. That's always been the case. Like I'm always saying like you did wrong, like fess up and move on. Like you're making it worse. You're making it worse. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So, like the question becomes though, if we're using these tools and it technically, you know, from that standpoint hits all those markers and everything, the team said, Okay, I think it's good. Leadership says, Okay, it's good. And for whatever reason it falls flat. For a comms pro that's just starting to get more comfortable using AI as a drafting and a tool. Right. But I mean, it goes back to what we were saying, like it's not your final draft. You still have to you still have to add your your expertise into that. And you

speaker-1: That's terrifying.

speaker-0: In a holding statement, I would hope that an intern is never writing that. And or somebody with only five years of experience should not be writing that. So if you're not going to give it to somebody without any experience, you should not give it to AI. It can absolutely help you draft the first draft. So you have something to work from. But you have to use your expertise to make that better. And if you didn't, you just became the story. And that is definitely what you don't want to have happen. Great advice. Music perfect music to my ears. You handled that like a pro. Crisis comms is one of my niche interests, and that was kind of how I started getting into like love it. Earned media more traditionally. I was like, how how do we make sure that people cover their asses a little bit more efficiently? I'm interested in that. You know? We can't say shit, but we can say ass. Yeah, seriously. That that's that's where you that's where you draw the line, huh, Amber? All right. There's nuance to it. There's nuance to it, Eric. But anyways. Our next section, just like our our ⁓ you know, our ⁓ shit moment is Amber's. This next one is what we call, I guess, the pass it or pass it on, the pass it forward. ⁓ and it's a little homage to ⁓ James Lipton, ⁓ which I'm a big fan of. ⁓ so each guest answers a question left by either a previous guest or our audience or you know, something combination of both. No context, no setup, nobody knows who the next guest is. It's just Left it on there, right? So you ready for your question? Yes. Okay. If you weren't allowed to do what you do today, what what do you think you'd be doing anyway? Like if you weren't being amazing and you don't have peso, like, you know, what would you be doing? Contract negotiations for sports athletes. I did not expect that answer and I am fascinated. Yeah. Wow, why? I have no idea. I just ⁓ just sit it out. No, like I I've always wanted to do it. That's that that was like what I was going to do. And I took a different path. But that yeah. No shit. That's what I would have done. Yeah. So did you take some legal y yeah? Yeah, I was going to go to law school. I did not go to law school. ⁓ because that's what I wanted to do. And my mom got sick my senior year in college. So I was like, I'm gonna take a year off and help her and then I'll go to law school. And I did not go back to school. Yeah. I just got started and my dad got sick when I was in college as well and ⁓ just didn't go back that direction. But yes. I th I could feel it, yeah. Definitely. So thank you. That was that was a good answer. That was a lot quicker than our other guest, Amber. What do you think? Everyone else is usually stunned for it. I was gonna say, yeah, they're like, I guess I would be out hiking. Like people get really thrown by it. Like we've we've asked this like with one other person before and they w they really got thrown for a loop, but contract negotiations for athletes. Okay. What what would it look like? I almost did a law school. Yeah. That's what I was wondering too. What does it actually look like to do that day to day? Real quick and then we'll wrap. I think it's probably like in my in my head, and I don't know if this is how it works, but in my head I work for one of the big agent firms, and that's what I do is negotiate their contracts. So cool. And so happened to Winklander and the crew, like the Pats, they Lord knows they could use your help. And it's a good team. They will be fine in the next couple of years. I they got all the way to the Super Bowl. But how was Bad Bunny? Brad Bunny was so good. That was wicked good. Like everything, the production value, the colors, the people, the message. He l he nailed it. I mean, you know, s you see some halftime shows that the sound is off and it's just not produced well. It was impacted Or wardrobe malfunctions, you know. There's that. If you're old enough to remember those things I am or hair is on fire, you know. Correct. You know. Right. But but yeah, I th I thought it was absolutely wonderful. And I thought, you know, it's funny you mentioned the the message was so spot on. And yet when you look at the comments whether they're AI bots are real, everyone's like, I don't get the message, or you know, it was all about not being America or like, you know, why are there so many flags or you know, like, ⁓ my God. My gosh. Really? Yeah, mess yeah, yeah. there was a Fox News commentary. Seriously. Yeah. We're America. We're a melting pot. You know, we're from everywhere. Yes. Uh-huh. Exactly. Exactly. So, Ginny, so what would be the question that you would like to leave the next guest? I would like to ask the next guest if they were to write the great American novel, what would it be about?

speaker-1: That's a good one.

speaker-0: I like that one. That's good one. And can be a con it could be a contentious one. All right. Well, to wrap things up, the TLDR of all of this, the too long didn't read version, is that technology can scale your messages, but without the right systems and approach, it really it's not gonna go too far and you still need that human judgment. And I think Ginny, I've been looking forward to this interview for so long. I just thank you for the work that you do. You are doing the Lord's work in our field and beyond. Until next time, thank you for joining us on Control AltPR and we'll see you on the flip side, everybody. Thanks for listening to the Control AltPR podcast. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and controlAltPR.com. For more hot takes and resources, check out our LinkedIn and Instagram. See you next time.