Episodes

  • FIR #492: The Authenticity Divide in Omnicom Layoff Communication

    FIR #492: The Authenticity Divide in Omnicom Layoff Communication
    Dec 15 2025
    In this short midweek episode, Shel and Neville dissect the communication fallout from the $13.5 billion Omnicom-IPG merger and the controversial pre-holiday layoff of 4,000 employees. Among the themes they discuss: the stark contrast between the polished corporate narrative aimed at investors and the raw, real-time reality shared by staff on LinkedIn and Reddit, illustrating how organizations have lost control of the narrative. Against the backdrop of a corporate surge in hiring “storytellers,” Neville and Shel discuss the irony of failing to empower the workforce — the brand’s most authentic narrators — and analyze the long-term reputational damage caused by tone-deaf leadership during a crisis. Links from this episode: Another NOT SO HOT TAKE: Omnicom is a communications company. They didn’t forget how to communicate. They chose who to communicate to.Omnicom layoffs—how a communications company created its own crisisThe Omnicom-IPG merger was confirmed this week. 4,000 jobs will be cut by Christmas. The announcement came the week after Thanksgiving. I’ve been here before.Inside Omnicom’s Town Hall: Adamski confronts criticism, outlines new power structure after IPG acquisitionCompanies Are Desperately Seeking ‘Storytellers’ The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 29. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Shel Holtz Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 492 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. Neville Hobson And I’m Neville Hobson. In this episode, we’re going to talk about something that’s been playing out very publicly over the past few weeks in our own industry, i.e. communication. It’s about Omnicom, its merger with IPG, and the layoffs that followed. Following confirmation of the $13.5 billion merger, the company announced that around 4,000 roles would be cut, with many of those job losses happening before Christmas. On the face of it, this is not unusual. Mergers of this scale inevitably create overlap, and redundancies are part of that reality. What makes this different was not simply the decision, but how the story unfolded and where. On one level, there was the official corporate narrative. Omnicom’s public messaging focused on growth, integration, and future capability. It was language clearly written with investors, analysts, and the financial press in mind—not to mention clients. Polished, strategic, and familiar to anyone who has worked around holding companies. At the same time, a very different narrative was emerging elsewhere, particularly on LinkedIn and Reddit, driven by people inside the organization—people who had lost their jobs and people watching colleagues lose theirs. That contrast became the focus of an Ad Age opinion piece by Elizabeth Rosenberg, a communications advisor who had handled large-scale change and layoffs herself. In the piece—which, by the way, Ad Age unlocked so it’s openly available—and later in her own LinkedIn posts, Rosenberg described watching two stories unfold in real time. One told to shareholders and external stakeholders, the other taking shape in comment threads written by the people most directly affected. Her point was not that Omnicom failed to communicate, but that it chose who to communicate to. That observation resonated widely inside the industry. Rosenberg’s LinkedIn post made clear that she was less interested in being provocative than in naming something that many people were already seeing and feeling. She also noted the response she received privately—messages describing her comments as brave—and questioned what it says about our profession if plain speaking about human impact is now treated as courage. As that conversation gathered momentum, another LinkedIn post took the discussion in a slightly different direction. Stephanie Brown, a marketing career coach, wrote about the timing of the layoffs. Her post was grounded in personal experience; she describes being laid off herself in December 2013 and what it meant to lose a job during a period associated with family, financial pressure, and emotional strain. She acknowledged that layoffs are part of corporate life but argued that timing is a choice and that announcing thousands of job losses immediately after Thanksgiving, with cuts landing for Christmas, intensified the impact. That post triggered a large and emotionally ...
    Show more Show less
    19 mins
  • ALP 291: Embracing innovation to survive and thrive in 2026

    ALP 291: Embracing innovation to survive and thrive in 2026
    Dec 15 2025

    In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the importance of strategic planning for 2026. As they near the end of 2025, they emphasize the need for agencies to set themselves apart and adapt to the evolving landscape, particularly through the effective use of AI.

    Despite ongoing economic challenges, they highlight the potential for AI to enhance both efficiency and strategic thinking. Chip and Gini also stress the importance of refining the ideal client profile and taking calculated risks. They share their personal experiences with using AI to assist in planning and decision-making processes, pointing out both the benefits and limitations of current AI technology. [read the transcript]

    The post ALP 291: Embracing innovation to survive and thrive in 2026 appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
    Show more Show less
    23 mins
  • AI and the Writing Profession with Josh Bernoff

    AI and the Writing Profession with Josh Bernoff
    Dec 10 2025
    Josh Bernoff has just completed the largest survey yet of writers and AI – nearly 1,500 respondents across journalism, communication, publishing, and fiction. We interviewed Josh for this podcast in early December 2025. What emerges from both the data and our conversation is not a single, simple story, but a deep divide. Writers who actively use AI increasingly see it as a powerful productivity tool. They research faster, brainstorm more effectively, build outlines more quickly, and free themselves up to focus on the work only humans can do well – judgement, originality, voice, and storytelling. The most advanced users report not only higher output, but improvements in quality and, in many cases, higher income. Non-users experience something very different. For many non-users, AI feels unethical, environmentally harmful, creatively hollow, and a direct threat to their livelihoods. The emotional language used by some respondents in Josh’s survey reflects just how personal and existential these fears have become. And yet, across both camps, there is striking agreement on key risks. Writers on all sides are concerned about hallucinations and factual errors, copyright and training data, and the growing volume of bland, generic “AI slop” that now floods digital channels. In our conversation, Josh argues that the real story is not one of wholesale replacement, but of re-sorting. AI is not eliminating writers outright. It is separating those who adapt from those who resist – and in the process reshaping what it now means to be a trusted communicator, editor, and storyteller. Key Highlights Why hands-on AI users report higher productivity and quality, while non-users feel an existential threatHow AI is now embedded in research, brainstorming, outlining, and verification – not just text generationWhy PR and communications teams are adopting faster than journalistsWhat the rise of “AI slop” means for trust, originality, and attentionWhy the future of writing is not replacement – but re-sorting About our Conversation Partner Josh Bernoff is an expert on business books and how they can propel thinkers to prominence. Books he has written or collaborated on have generated over $20 million for their authors. More than 50 authors have endorsed Josh’s Build a Better Business Book: How to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters, a comprehensive guide for business authors. His other books include Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean and the Business Week bestseller Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. He has contributed to 50 nonfiction book projects. Josh’s mathematical and statistical background includes three years of study in the Ph.D. program in mathematics at MIT. As a Senior Vice President at Forrester Research, he created Technographics, a consumer survey methodology, which is still in use more than 20 years later. Josh has advised, consulted on, and written about more than 20 large-scale consumer surveys. Josh writes and posts daily at Bernoff.com, a blog that has attracted more than 4 million views. He lives in Portland, Maine, with his wife, an artist. Follow Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshbernoff/ Relevant Links https://bernoff.com/https://bernoff.com/blog/ai-writer-survey-results-analyzing-royalties-neuroscientific-sneakers-newsletter-5-november-2025https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/99019-new-report-examines-writers-attitudes-toward-ai.htmlhttps://gothamghostwriters.com/AI-writer Audio Transcript Shel Holtz Hi everybody, and welcome to a For Immediate Release interview. I’m Shel Holtz. Neville Hobson And I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz And we are here today with Josh Bernoff. I’ve known Josh since the early SNCR days. Josh is a prolific author, professional writer, mostly of business material. But Josh, I’m gonna ask you to share some background on yourself. Josh Bernoff Okay, thanks. What people need to know about me, I spent four years in the startup business and 20 years as an analyst at Forrester Research. Since that time, which was in 2015, I have been focused almost exclusively on the needs of authors, professional business authors. So I work with them as a coach, writer, ghostwriter, an editor, and basically anything they need to do to get business books published. The other thing that’s sort of relevant in this case is that while I was at Forrester, I originated their survey methodology, which is called Technographics. And I have a statistics background, a math background, so fielding surveys and analysing them and writing reports about them is a very comfortable and familiar place for me to be. So when the opportunity arose to write about a survey of authors in AI, said, all right, I’m in, let’s do this. Shel Holtz And you’ve also published your own books. I’ve read your most recent one, How to Write a Better Business Book. Josh ...
    Show more Show less
    58 mins
  • FIR #491: Deloitte’s AI Verification Failures

    FIR #491: Deloitte’s AI Verification Failures
    Dec 9 2025
    Big Four consulting firm Deloitte submitted two costly reports to two governments on opposite sides of the globe, each containing fake resources generated by AI. Deloitte isn’t alone. A study published on the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) not only included AI-hallucinated citations but also purported to reach the exact opposite conclusion from the real scientists’ research. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel reiterate the importance of a competent human in the loop to verify every fact produced in any output that leverages generative AI. Links from this episode: Deloitte was caught using AI in $290,000 report to help the Australian government crack down on welfare after a researcher flagged hallucinationsDeloitte allegedly cited AI-generated research in a million-dollar report for a Canadian provincial governmentDeloitte breaks silence on N.L. healthcare reportDeloitte Detected Using Fake AI Citations in $1 Million ReportDeloitte makes ‘AI mistake’ again, this time in report for Canadian government; here’s what went wrongCDC Report on Vaccines and Autism Caught Citing Hallucinated Study That Does Not Exist The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 29. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Neville Hobson: Hi everybody and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 491. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz, and I want to return to a theme we addressed some time ago: the need for organizations, and in particular communication functions, to add professional fact verification to their workflows—even if it means hiring somebody specifically to fill that role. We’ve spent the better part of three years extolling the transformative power of generative AI. We know it can streamline workflows, spark creativity, and summarize mountains of data. But if recent events have taught us anything, it’s that this technology has a dangerous alter ego. For all that AI can do that we value, it is also a very confident liar. When communications professionals, consultants, and government officials hand over the reins to AI without checking its work, the result is embarrassing, sure, but it’s also a direct hit to credibility and, increasingly, the bottom line. Nowhere is this clearer than in the recent stumbles by one of the world’s most prestigious consulting firms. The Big Four accounting firms are often held up as the gold standard for diligence. Yet just a few days ago, news broke that Deloitte Canada delivered a report to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador that was riddled with errors that are characteristic of generative AI. This report, a massive 526-page document advising on the province’s healthcare system, came with a price tag of nearly $1.6 million. It was meant to guide critical decisions on virtual care and nurse retention during a staffing crisis. But when an investigation by The Independent, a progressive news outlet in the province, dug into the footnotes, the veneer of expertise crumbled. The report contained false citations pulled from made-up academic papers. It cited real research on papers they hadn’t worked on. It even listed fictional papers co-authored by researchers who said they had never actually worked together. One adjunct professor, Gail Tomlin Murphy, found herself cited in a paper that doesn’t exist. Her assessment was blunt: “It sounds like if you’re coming up with things like this, they may be pretty heavily using AI to generate work.”Deloitte’s response was to claim that AI wasn’t used to write the report, but was—and this is a quote—”selectively used to support a small number of research citations.” In other words, they let AI do the fact-checking and the AI failed. Amazingly, Deloitte was caught doing something just like this earlier in a government audit for the Australian government. Only months before the Canadian revelation, Deloitte Australia had to issue a humiliating correction to a report on welfare compliance. That report cited court cases that didn’t exist and contained quotes from a federal court judge that had never been spoken. In that instance, Deloitte admitted to using the Azure OpenAI tool to help draft the report. The firm agreed to refund the Australian government nearly $290,000 Australian dollars. This isn’t an isolated incident of a junior copywriter using ...
    Show more Show less
    14 mins
  • ALP 290: Balancing skills and personality when hiring a new team member

    ALP 290: Balancing skills and personality when hiring a new team member
    Dec 8 2025

    In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the complexities of hiring in growing agencies. They highlight the challenges of finding skilled, reliable employees who align with agency values.

    Sharing personal experiences, Gini explains the pitfalls of hasty hiring and the benefits of thorough vetting and cultural fit. They stress the importance of a structured hiring process, including clear job roles, career paths, and appropriate compensation. They also underscore the value of meaningful interviews, proper candidate evaluations, and treating the hiring process as the start of a long-term relationship.

    Lastly, Chip and Gini emphasize learning from past mistakes to improve hiring effectiveness and employee retention. [read the transcript]

    The post ALP 290: Balancing skills and personality when hiring a new team member appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
    Show more Show less
    21 mins
  • FIR #490: What Does AI Read?

    FIR #490: What Does AI Read?
    Dec 1 2025
    Studies purport to identify the sources of information that generative AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude draw on to provide overviews in response to search prompts. The information seems compelling, but different studies produce different results. Complicating matters is the fact that the kinds of sources AI uses one month aren’t necessarily the same the next month. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel look at a couple of these reports and the challenges communicators face relying on them to help guide their content marketing placements. Links from this episode: Webinar: What is AI Reading? (Muck Rack)AI Search Volatility: Why AI Search Results Keep ChangingStudy finds nearly two-thirds of AI-generated citations are fabricated or contain errorsMajor AI conference flooded with peer reviews written fully by AI The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 29. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Shel Holtz Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 490 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. Neville Hobson And I’m Neville Hobson. One of the big questions behind generative AI is also one of the simplest: What is it actually reading? What are these systems drawing on when they answer our questions, summarize a story, or tell us something about our own industry? A new report from Muckrec in October offers one of the clearest snapshots we’ve seen so far. They analyzed more than a million links cited by leading AI tools and discovered something striking. When you switch citations on, the model doesn’t just add footnotes, it changes the answer itself. The sources it chooses shape the narrative, the tone, and even the conclusion. We’ll dive into this next. Those sources are overwhelmingly from earned media. Almost all the links AI sites come from non-paid content, and journalism plays a huge role, especially when the query suggests something recent. In fact, the most commonly cited day for an article is yesterday. It’s a very different ecosystem from SEO, where you can sometimes pay your way to the top. Here, visibility depends much more on what is credible, current, and genuinely covered. So that gives us one part of the picture. AI relies heavily on what is most available and most visible in the public domain. But that leads to another question, a more unsettling one raised by a separate study published in the JMIR Mental Health in November. Researchers examined how well GPT-4.0 performs when asked to generate proper academic citations. And the answer is not well at all. Nearly two thirds of the citations were either wrong or entirely made up. The less familiar the topic, the worse the accuracy became. In other words, when AI doesn’t have enough real sources to draw from, it fills the gaps confidently. When you put these two pieces of research side by side, a bigger story emerges. On the one hand, AI tools are clearly drawing on a recognizable media ecosystem: journalism, corporate blogs, and earned content. On the other hand, when those sources are thin, or when the task shifts from conversational answers to something more formal, like scientific referencing, the system becomes much less reliable. It starts inventing the citations it thinks should exist. We end up with a very modern paradox. AI is reading more than any of us ever could, but not always reliably. It’s influenced by what is published, recent, and visible, yet still perfectly capable of fabricating material when the trail runs cold. There’s another angle to this that’s worth noting. Nature reported last week that more than 20% of peer reviews for a major AI conference were entirely written by AI, many containing hallucinated citations and vague or irrelevant analysis. So if you think about that in the context of the Muckrec findings in particular, it becomes part of a much bigger story. AI tools are reading the public record, but increasing parts of that public record are now being generated by AI itself. The oversight layer that you use to catch errors is starting to automate as well. And that creates a feedback loop where flawed material can slip into the system and later be treated as legitimate source material. For communicators, that’s a reminder that the integrity of what AI reads is just as important as the visibility of what we publish. All this raises fundamental questions. How much has earned media ...
    Show more Show less
    22 mins
  • Circle of Fellows #122: Preparing Communication Professionals for the Future

    Circle of Fellows #122: Preparing Communication Professionals for the Future
    Nov 26 2025
    The forward-looking discussion was joined by five seasoned leaders: two professors shaping the next generation of communicators and three senior practitioners traversing today’s real-world pressures. Together, they bridge campus and workplace, theory and execution, to define what readiness really looks like in a world of constant change. Shel Holtz, SCMP, IABC Fellow, will moderate the session. This episode featured a candid, fast-paced discussion on the skills and mindsets that matter now — and the ones you’ll need next. From AI literacy and data comfort to ethical judgment, change agility, and human-centered storytelling, the panel will share practical frameworks you can apply immediately. You’ll hear how universities are evolving curricula, how employers can cultivate lifelong learning, and how individual pros can future-proof their careers without losing the craft that sets them apart. You’ll get actionable guidance, plenty of examples from classrooms and boardrooms. Whether you lead a team, teach, hire, or are building your own career path, this conversation will help you set priorities for the year ahead. You’ll leave with: A clear, current skills map for modern communicators Practical ways to integrate AI and analytics—without sacrificing trust and creativity Playbooks for continuous upskilling across individuals, teams, and organizations About the panel: Diane Gayeski is recognized as a thought leader in the practice and teaching of business communications. She is Professor of Strategic Communications at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College and provides consulting in communications analysis and strategies through Gayeski Analytics. Diane was recently inducted as an IABC Fellow; she’s been active in IABC for more than 30 years as a featured speaker and think-tank leader at the international conference, the author of 3 editions of the IABC-published book, Managing the Communications Function, and the advisor to Ithaca College’s student chapter. She has led more than 300 client engagements for clients, including the US Navy, Bank of Montreal, Fiat, Sony, Abbott Diagnostics, and Borg-Warner, focusing on assessing and building capacities and implementing new technologies for workplace communications and learning teams. Sue Heuman, SCMP, ABC, MC, IABC Fellow, based in Edmonton, Canada, is an award-winning, accredited authority on organizational communications with more than 40 years of experience. Since co-founding Focus Communications in 2002, Sue has worked with clients to define, understand, and achieve their communications objectives. Sue is a highly sought-after executive advisor, specializing in leading communication audits and strategies for clients across all three sectors. Much of her practice involves a strategic review of the communications function within an organization, analyzing channels and audiences. She creates strategic communication plans and provides expertise to enable their execution. Sue has been a member of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) since 1984, which enables her to both stay current with and contribute to the field of communications practices. In 2016, Sue received the prestigious Rae Hamlin Award from IABC in recognition of her work in promoting global standards for communication. She was also named 2016 IABC Edmonton Chapter Communicator of the Year. In 2018, IABC named Sue a Master Communicator, the Association’s highest honor in Canada. Sue earned the IABC Fellow designation in 2022. Dr. Theomary Karamanis is a multiple award-winning communication professor and consultant with 25 years of global experience. She is currently a full-time senior lecturer in Management Communication at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and regularly delivers executive education programs in leadership communication, crisis communication, and strategic communication. She has held several professional leadership positions, including Chair of the GCCC (Global Communication Certification Council), Chair of the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) Academy, and Chair of the IABC Awards committee. Her academic background includes a PhD in communication studies, a Master of Arts in mass communication, and a postgraduate certificate in telecommunications, all from Northwestern University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business. She also holds professional certifications as a Strategic Communication Management Professional (SCMP), online facilitator, and executive program instructor. She has received 40 professional communication awards, including 12 Platinum MarCom awards, 7 Gold Quill awards, 4 Silver Quill awards, and a Comm Prix award. In 2020, she received the Award for Excellence in Communication Consulting by APCC (Association of Professional Communication Consultants) and ABC (Association for Business ...
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 2 mins
  • ALP 289: Firing underperforming team members

    ALP 289: Firing underperforming team members
    Nov 17 2025

    In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the difficult subject of firing an underperforming and problematic employee. They discuss a real-life scenario where an employee with a bad attitude refuses to do their work, causing frustration among team members.

    They advise against prolonging the inevitable firing decision, suggesting that acting swiftly can alleviate overall team stress. Both hosts share insights on why Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) are largely ineffective, stressing the need for proper documentation and the guidance of an HR advisor during termination processes.

    Additionally, they highlight the importance of showing proactive steps to the remaining team to mitigate the workload burden and maintain morale. The episode emphasizes the critical role of leadership in making tough decisions for the greater good of the team and the business. [read the transcript]

    The post ALP 289: Firing underperforming team members appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
    Show more Show less
    16 mins