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20:39

FIR #508: Inside AI’s Human Raw Material Supply Chain

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/04/08

When workers lose their jobs, many turn to gig work to earn income while waiting for new opportunities. Increasingly, companies that hire gig workers are shifting from delivering food or sharing rides to creating content to train AI systems. This raises various communication and ethical issues. Neville and Shel explain what’s happening and discuss the implications in this short midweek episode.Links from this episode: The jobs AI can’t do – and the young adults doing them Thousands of

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25:37

FIR #507: Should Nobody Really Ever Write with AI?

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2026/03/30

Take a stroll through LinkedIn. You’ll find no shortage of posts stridently deriding the notion that anyone should ever use AI to write for them. While that case isn’t hard to make for professional writers, there are countless professionals in other fields who struggle with writing, never trained to be writers, yet now have to write everything from emails to reports as part of their jobs. Should they really sweat for hours over wording, time they could be devoting to the core areas of

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1:42:41

FIR #506: Battle of the Bots!

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/03/23

In this monthly long-form episode for March, Neville and Shel tackle a trio of interconnected themes reshaping the communications profession in the age of AI. The conversation opens with Anthropic’s top lawyer declaring that AI will destroy the billable hour. That thread leads naturally into JP Morgan’s controversial use of digital monitoring to verify junior bankers’ working hours, where Shel and Neville question whether surveillance technology can substitute for genuine managerial trust and

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21:13

FIR #505: Social Media’s Big Shift

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/03/17

In FIR #505, Neville and Shel dig into Hootsuite’s Social Media Trends 2026 report, which argues that social media is no longer just a communication channel — it’s morphing into a search engine, cultural radar, and real-time research tool. They explore what it means for communicators when younger audiences treat TikTok and Instagram as their primary discovery platforms, and when Google itself starts indexing social content. The conversation also tackles “fastvertising” — the

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15:20

ALP 297: Holding companies discover retainers, call...

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/03/16

S4 Capital has announced a revolutionary new pricing model that will transform how agencies charge for their services: instead of billable hours, they’re moving to… subscriptions. Fixed monthly fees. Annual contracts that auto-renew. All costs absorbed into the price rather than passed through as variables.You know, retainers. The pricing model most independent agencies have used for decades. In this episode (somewhat abbreviated due to Gini’s technical difficulties), Chip and Gini dissect the

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17:20

FIR #503: When Your Boss Throws You Under the Bus

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2026/03/02

The president of the International Olympic Committee didn’t have an answer to a question posed to her at a press conference on the final day of the 2026 Winter Olympics. Or to another question. Or to yet another. Ultimately, she suggested, on camera, that someone on her communications team should be fired. In this short midweek FIR episode, Shel and Neville look at the fallout, what both the president and the head of communications might have done differently, and the possible long-term

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21:38

FIR #499: When Saying Nothing Sends the Wrong Message

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/02/02

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) responded to member requests for a statement about the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota with a letter explaining why the organization would remain silent. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel outline the key points in the letter, where they disagree, and how they might have responded.Links from this episode: An Open Letter to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on

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46:32

AI risk, trust, and preparedness in a polycrisis era

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/01/29

In this FIR Interview, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz speak with crisis and risk communication specialist Philippe Borremans about his new Crisis Communication 2026 Trend Report, based on a survey of senior crisis and communication leaders.The conversation explores how crisis communication is evolving in an era defined by polycrisis, declining trust, and accelerating AI-driven risk – and why many organisations remain dangerously underprepared despite growing awareness of these threats. Drawing on

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20:38

ALP 293: Stop letting your website embarrass you

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/01/26

You built an agency you’re proud of. So why does your website still feature that glowing tribute to someone you wouldn’t recommend today, or explain services you stopped offering three years ago?In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the unsexy but critical task of auditing your agency’s website content. They share practical approaches for identifying what needs updating, what deserves deletion, and how to prioritize your efforts when you’re staring down hundreds (or thousands) of outdated

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1:51:24

FIR #498: Can Business Be a Trust Broker in Today’s...

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/01/26

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer focuses squarely on “a crisis of insularity.” The world’s largest independent PR agency suggests only business is in a position to be a trust broker in this environment. While the Trust Barometer’s data offers valuable insights, Neville and Shel suggest it be viewed through the lens of critical thinking. After all, who is better positioned to counsel businesses on how to be a trust broker than a PR agency? Also in this episode: Research shows

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1:00:03

Circle of Fellows #124: The Impact of Mentoring

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/01/23

The communication profession is currently weathering a perfect storm of tectonic shifts, from the promises of AI to the messy realities of hybrid work, and we are languishing in denial if we think traditional, one-way “career advice” will save us. In the January 2026 Circle of Fellows, our panel will move beyond the clichés to examine mentoring as a pragmatic, strategic tool for institutional knowledge transfer and professional resilience. High-impact mentoring fosters the “trusted advisor” mindset,

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21:30

FIR #497: CEOs Wrest Control of AI

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/01/19

The latest BCG AI Radar survey signals a definitive turning point: AI has graduated from a tech-driven experiment to a CEO-owned strategic mandate. As corporate investments double, a striking “confidence gap” is emerging between optimistic leaders in the corner office and the more skeptical teams tasked with implementation. With the rapid rise of Agentic AI — autonomous systems that execute complex workflows rather than just generating text — the focus is shifting from simple

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20:23

ALP 292: Rediscovering your agency’s founding spark

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/01/19

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of agency owners reflecting on the reasons they started their businesses and how those motivations can inform current strategies. They share personal anecdotes about the challenges and growth experiences in their early days of agency ownership. They emphasize the value of going back to basics, understanding what initially led to success, and aligning business strategies with personal passions and strengths. The duo also highlights the importance

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7:10

FIR 21st Anniversary Celebration

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/01/05

In which Neville and Shel take a few minutes to acknowledge FIR’s 21st birthday.The post FIR 21st Anniversary Celebration appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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26:40

FIR #495: Reddit, AI, and the New Rules of Communication

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2026/01/05

Reddit, the #2 social media site in the US, has surpassed TikTok to become the #4 site in the UK. It has no algorithm that forces you to see what’s most likely to keep you on the site; it just lets users upvote what they think is most interesting, valuable, or relevant. Every topic under the sun has a subreddit. Several organizations, from Starbucks to Uber, have taken advantage of it. So why is it absent from most communicators’ list of social media platforms to pay attention to

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21:50

FIR #493: How to (Unethically) Manufacture...

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2025/12/22

For somebody who posts on X or other social media platforms to become recognized by the media and other offline institutions as a significant, influential voice worth quoting, it usually takes patience and hard work to build an audience that respects and identifies with them. There is another way to achieve the same kind of reputation with far less work. According to a research report from the Network Contagion Research Institute, American political influencer Nick Fuentes opted for the second

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24:27

FIR #487: Beyond the Churn — Slower Publishing,...

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2025/11/05

What happens when the AI conversation turns from a quiet side road into a crowded superhighway? Recently, Martin Waxman -- digital strategist and LinkedIn Learning instructor -- pressed pause on the churn to make room for curiosity, quality, and quiet. He’s not quitting; he’s recalibrating: publishing less often, thinking more deeply, and reminding us not to let AI do the thinking we should be doing ourselves.For communicators, that raises bigger questions: When do we slow down? How do we trade

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21:03

ALP 287: Do agency mission and values statements...

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2025/11/03

In this episode, inspired by a newsletter from David C. Baker, Chip and Gini discuss the authentic motivations and realities behind agency mission statements and values.Continue Reading → The post ALP 287: Do agency mission and values statements matter? And is yours even accurate? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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21:37

ALP 286: Are you ghosting your own agency?

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2025/10/27

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss a Reddit post about an agency leader going MIA and the repercussions for the team.Continue Reading →The post ALP 286: Are you ghosting your own agency? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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1:42:51

FIR #486: Measuring Sentiment Won’t Help You Maintain...

The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed ·

2025/10/27

Sentiment analysis has become a default metric for communicators. If sentiment is positive, trust must be high. But if your company's words are diverging from its actions, trust could be eroding while sentiment remains constant. You won't know until it's too late. The new metric to consider is "trust velocity." Neville and Shel unpack it in this monthly long-form episode for October 2025. Also in this episode: Is rage bait a valid marketing tactic? Lloyd Bank's CEO and executive team are learning

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