Proven Media Solutions explored how AI is altering the media landscape and driving the emergence of a new answer economy across two episodes of Cracking the Comms Code, featuring:

• Five Blocks CEO Sam Michelson, Scale Without Chaos founder Samantha Riel, and Zen Media founder and PR strategist Sarah Evans on AI’s impact on the PR industry.
• Meredith & The Media founder Meredith Klein, Friday Reporter Public Affairs founder and host Lisa Camooso Miller, and Sources of Sources founder Peter Shankman on what’s next in corporate comms. 

Here are the most important takeaways.

Visibility is being rewired

Perhaps the most counterintuitive insight was also the most commercially important. Despite widespread industry assumptions, the sources shaping AI-generated answers are often not traditional earned media.

Practitioners tracking thousands of prompts across major large language models are finding that owned content, such as corporate websites, structured brand information, and even open press releases, shapes responses the most. Earned media still matters, but it is operating more as a reputational validator than the primary informational input.

This distinction changes how communication value should be sold and measured.

If audiences are asking AI tools to synthesize recommendations or explain markets, they may never click through to coverage at all. It might not be enough anymore for an organization to be mentioned in a piece of earned media. Instead, the organization needs to be “front of page” as the answer to the question searchers are asking.

In practical terms, strategy must evolve from media placement to something closer to answer engineering, which means mapping the questions stakeholders ask and ensuring authoritative brand content exists to address them.

Productivity gains are buying back time

AI is making certain work faster and more efficient. What’s good about that is the time communicators now have on their hands to take care of higher-level tasks. But it also means higher expectations.

On the one hand, teams are already using AI to turn live conversations into content pipelines, transform messy strategic thinking into structured plans, and accelerate operational decision-making. On the other hand, an employee who once generated $120K of annual value may soon be expected to deliver multiples of that. 

On both hands, the takeaway is that AI amplifies the need for human judgment. Used well, it gives thinkers and doers the bandwidth to think and do, with good results up and down the company. Used badly, it takes over uniquely human functions and industrializes mediocrity at every level.

The most effective practitioners treat AI like a junior colleague – training it, correcting it, and refining outputs. Organizations expecting one-line prompts to replace expertise may find that AI-hallucinated strategies are simply fancier ways to put themselves at the back of the line.

Corporate crises now burn hotter and faster

Attention cycles in corporate communications are collapsing, meaning crises can erupt and disappear within minutes — or go on a long rampage, and someone has to know which kind we’re dealing with from moment to moment.

In a media environment where a geopolitical conflict, a viral customer complaint, and a celebrity meme can appear in the same social feed, audiences process outrage differently. Often, they move on fast — even before corporate responses clear legal review. This creates a paradoxical new discipline: knowing when not to respond.

Strong organizational values remain the most reliable compass. Companies grounded in consistent messaging and clear principles are better able to weather episodic storms. Preparation is therefore less about predicting specific events and more about stress-testing core positions in advance. 

Clarity is still king — both in how crises are handled and in how organizations present themselves both to outside consumers and inside team members.

Trust is fragmenting – again

Perhaps the most provocative shift involved in the AI answer economy is social rather than technological.

Audiences are increasingly bypassing institutional voices in favor of smaller, more familiar ones: local journalists, niche creators, subject-matter experts, and micro-influencers embedded in real communities.

Research and practitioner experience both suggest that local media retain disproportionately high trust. A recommendation from a neighbor or respected specialist may drive more behavior than a national campaign reaching millions. Meanwhile, mega-influencer credibility has eroded as it’s become harder to hide that the big guys are just trying to sell something.

For communications buyers, this creates a difficult recalibration. It’s cheap to reach the masses but more expensive than ever to persuade them.

The craft is still everything

One important point to remember is that the same skills that drove success in the 20th century remain relevant today. Narrative still matters. So do third-party validation and consistent positioning. What has changed is the mechanism through which these strengths are discovered and acted upon.

AI-mediated discovery will reward organizations that carefully and thoroughly stock their content libraries. Corporate volatility will reward those with pre-agreed value frameworks and faster internal decision pathways. Fragmented trust will reward communicators who cultivate authentic advocates rather than chasing vanity metrics.

Above all, the impact of communications must increasingly be demonstrated in business terms. Board-ready metrics like visibility in AI outputs, influence on purchasing pathways, and contribution to revenue will shape future budgets — so professionals need to be prepared to chase these numbers and prove their achievements. 

A new brief for buyers – and the industry

For organizations investing in communications services, the takeaway is not that PR has become obsolete, but that the definition of effective PR has expanded dramatically. We need more than just coverage, more than just speed, more than just scale.

Buyers should now demand strategies designed for how information actually moves: integrated owned-and-earned ecosystems, measurable visibility in AI discovery, influence rooted in credible voices, and productivity models aligned to real business outcomes.

For communications professionals, the message is sharper still. AI is exposing where the discipline was never applied rigorously enough. The opportunity ahead is enormous, but only for those willing to stop optimizing for impressions and start competing to become the answer.

Dive deeper into the full conversations in the videos below.

Hosted by Proven Media Solutions founder Dustin Siggins, the show featured Erick Woods Erickson, nationally syndicated talk radio host and former Fox News and CNN contributor; Glenn Kessler, longtime Washington Post reporter and former Fact Checker; and Dave Levinthal, senior editor and investigative reporter at NOTUS.  

The headline lesson was simple: “left vs right” is rarely the real problem. The real problem is that comms teams often pitch as if all media work the same way.

They don’t. And the wider the spectrum you’re trying to cross — from local to national, blog to newsroom, talk radio to fact-checkers — the more your success depends on understanding what the outlet is built to do.

Pitching partisan outlets without sounding fake

Partisan media are best understood as audience service. They exist to meet a specific reader’s or listener’s expectations, sticking to values, language, and framing that feel familiar. That doesn’t mean it’s inherently unserious; it means it operates under a strong “audience contract.”

This means two rules apply for PR pros.

First, sound native. If you use language that reads as though it was copied from the other side’s talking points, the pitch comes across as not “balanced,” but manipulative. A conservative outlet receiving a pitch full of progressive-coded phrases will assume you’re either trying to bait it or that you don’t understand its audience. A liberal outlet seeing loaded right-coded phrasing may assume you’re bringing a culture-war fight, not a story.

Second, offer something real. Partisan outlets still reward the same things traditional outlets do: exclusivity, credible sources, hard facts, and specificity. “Here’s an issue” is less valuable than “Here’s a local example, a human story, or documentation that proves this isn’t just an opinion.”

When comms teams struggle here, it’s usually because they treat partisan media as a checkbox: “We need conservative coverage” or “We need progressive coverage.” That mindset produces generic, over-engineered pitches. What works is the opposite: tailored framing, clear relevance, and substance that stands up to scrutiny.

Pitching media styles, not just politics

The most useful way to think about “the spectrum” is as a difference in media format. The same story can be pitched in completely different ways depending on who’s receiving it, because each format has different constraints and incentives.

For instance, investigative editors and reporters want leads, not copy. They’re looking for material that can support reporting, such as documents, patterns, conflicts of interest, wrongdoing, or hypocrisy that can be proved. The strongest pitch to this style of journalist is not a polished narrative. It’s the building blocks of a story with a clear “why now.” 

If you’re pitching an investigative reporter, aim for

• a specific claim that can be tested;
• evidence (documents, filings, credible witnesses);
• a clear conflict or discrepancy; and
• a short explanation of why it matters to the public.

What usually fails is “PR theater”: sweeping statements, big adjectives, or pre-packaged articles. Good investigative journalists don’t want to paste your story. They want to own it, because ownership is what protects credibility.

Talk radio and personality-driven media run on attention

A talk show host is not a newsroom assignment desk. Even when they care about facts, their job is to hold attention. That changes what a successful pitch looks like.

Here, a pitch works when it is

• relevant to the host’s existing interests,
• sharply framed (the hook needs to land fast),
• deliverable in the host’s voice,
• not overly scripted or “campaigny.”

A common mistake is sending talk radio the same thing you’d send a policy reporter: dense, careful, document-heavy material with no immediate spark. A host needs a reason to talk about a topic right now, not a thesis statement. 

This is where relationships become unusually important. Hosts are inundated and operate with ruthless filters. The people they already trust rise to the top.

Reaching traditional reporters 

Reporters are allergic to spin. The easiest way to lose them is to package a pitch as a conclusion rather than a question.

As such, the most effective stance is “Here’s what was said. Here’s what we believe is wrong. Here’s the supporting evidence.”

If you’re pitching a reporter, you’re essentially inviting scrutiny. That’s the point. The reward is credibility. If you’re right, you get powerful validation; if you’re wrong, you learn — perhaps painfully, but quickly. 

Handling negative coverage like a professional

One of the most useful parts of the conversation, especially for PR practitioners, was how political operators respond to negative media. There’s a lesson here that transfers perfectly into corporate comms: don’t take it personally.

What separates strong comms teams from fragile ones isn’t whether they avoid negative stories. It’s whether they can respond without emotion getting in the way of judgment.

Here are some practical takeaways:

• If you’re wrong, correct cleanly and quickly. Don’t litigate.
• If you’re right, don’t gloat. Support your position with evidence and calm repetition.
• Avoid “pleading” with journalists. It reads as insecurity and rarely works.
• Don’t demand friendly language from an outlet whose audience expects different framing. Translate your message without losing its substance.

The deeper point is that the media aren’t there to protect your self-image. They’re there to serve their audience. Once you accept that, pitching becomes less stressful and more strategic.

Relationships matter, no matter the politics

The final takeaway was the oldest one, and still the most ignored: relationships matter.

Not in the cheesy “I know a guy” sense. In the professional sense, the reporters and editors who have learned that you don’t waste their time, you don’t send irrelevant garbage, and you don’t spin them into embarrassment are far more likely to read you when it counts.

That trust is built through

• relevance (you understand what they cover),
• restraint (you don’t spray-and-pray),
• honesty (you don’t hide bad facts), and
• consistency (your tips don’t collapse on inspection).

The era of mass pitching is ending — not because PR people stopped doing it, but because the media environment has become too noisy. Signal, credibility, and attention are scarce.

If you can pitch in a way that respects those constraints — tailored to format, rooted in evidence, framed for the outlet’s audience — you can still land coverage across the spectrum. But you have to stop treating “the spectrum” like a list and start treating it like a set of distinct worlds.

In short: niche press is top-tier press. And in three episodes of Cracking the Comms Code, we tackled how several types of niche media coverage drive value you can prove to even the most resistant client:

• Substack columns, podcasts, and LinkedIn, with guests Shannon Tucker and
  Annie Moore
• Local and regional media, with guests Jacqueline Policastro, Dave Levinthal, and
  Owen Caine
• Trade media, with guests Alex Dudley and Grace Williams

Why Local Media Still Matters

In July, Nieman Lab reported that one in three U.S. counties now have zero journalists. Yet the outlets and journalists that remain play critical roles in informing target audiences of what is happening in their community. Our conversation took place on Election Day and covered how to use local and regional media to spread the word about political, public affairs, and business narratives.

Each panelist brought a unique perspective. Jacqueline built two media shops before becoming Principal of Policastro Communications. Owen Caine is Assistant Vice President of Federal Legislative Affairs for the National Association of Realtors. And Dave Levinthal is a Contributing Editor at NOTUS.

Here are 4 takeaways:

1. Local media remains essential despite newsroom decline. Local outlets still shape elections, influence policy, and impact business visibility because national outlets simply aren’t able to tackle what matters most – like the school board election, a local tax issue, or when a local business makes a new hire.
2. People trust their local news because reporters live in their communities — they show up at schools, parades, and town meetings, fostering credibility that allows them to ask tougher questions and hold leaders accountable.
3. Policy and political outcomes depend on local coverage. Lawmakers and lobbyists pay close attention to what local outlets report because it reflects their constituents’ priorities. National commentary is predictable; local stories influence municipal, county, state, and federal officials.
4. Businesses benefit from local storytelling. National media won’t care if your business opens, closes, or is caught in a scandal. But your customers will. Local and regional media coverage humanizes brands, connects companies to communities, and helps prevent reputational damage by engaging buying audiences early.

Stop Chasing Vanity, Start Winning Trade Media

The trade media discussion ranged from start-ups trying to build a brand to established companies trying to save brand reputation during a crisis. Grace is SVP of Client Relations for PANBlast; Alex is Executive Vice President and Head of Crisis for MikeWorldWide.

The conversation focused heavily on how to take what PR professionals know and turn it into language clients can grasp, such as:

• There are more trade outlets than national media outlets – and they're easier to get into. This is especially important for start-ups that want to quickly create differentiation and reach investor, customer, and other stakeholders.
• Trades want deep dives into important lessons, narratives, and insights. Nerd out to build credibility and drive leads – and to create a strong foundation for credibility with Big Media journalists, editors, and producers. In a crisis, you can often protect credibility with core stakeholders by having a know and trusted spokesperson spread your narrative through trade press
• Trade media drives a ton of LLM and SEO attention and credibility

And here’s the best part of all with trades: a lot of the competition is whiffing with national media. Meanwhile, smart brands are stacking up the trade wins, creating marketing opportunities to drive more value for each placement.

The most niche of all: micro-targeting Substacks, podcasts, and LinkedIn

The final conversation tackled the most niche media of all – the importance of reaching audiences of only a few thousand important stakeholders through niche media like Substack journalists and influencers.

Here are three takeaways:

1. Proving podcasts: Smaller, niche podcasts often outperform national outlets by reaching the exact audience that matters. Shannon, a Vice President at Next PR, pointed to how a client (finally) listened to the niche strategy after it wasn’t the national media that created a direct inquiry – it was the small podcast that mattered to customers.
2. Substack: Substack isn’t just a replacement for op-eds — it’s a platform for direct influence by reaching those who have built tremendous trust with loyal, topic-specific audiences. There is an immediate authenticity with these audiences, as opposed to hoping someone reads a national byline from a reporter they’ve not heard of before.
3. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is powerful but oversaturated. Success comes from being consistent, original, and combining posts into the overall content plan. As Annie, a Senior Director at Dezenhall Resources, put it, “content is king, but distribution is queen.” That’s especially true when repurposing niche placements to reach audiences across multiple platforms – or repurposing posts to become media and newsletter opportunities.

Whether you’re tackling public policy like Annie or broader business challenges like Shannon, the core mission is the same: show clients how micro-placements create sustained influence and impact.

The Proven Perspective

Each panel drove home the single point that every client needs to know: earned media is only valuable when it drives the right outcomes for the right audience. In an era when attention is fragmented, proving value is harder – so we must be prepared to show relevance and impact with every placement.

That’s why it’s critical for communicators to demonstrate forward-looking capabilities and strategic insights long before they apply for a job. Executives are looking for people who can drive business value and fit well into company culture.

Proven Media Solutions recently hosted two panels that tie these issues together. The first featured ITR Economics’ Mike Feuz, KCPartners founder Brooke Kruger, and DHR Corporate Affairs Managing Partner Jessica Bayer, who laid out what job seekers must understand about today’s cautious but growing hiring market. The second panel — with Notably co-founder Carin Warner, executive coach Scott Monty, and Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems Chief Communications Officer Stephanie Roberts — dug into how communicators prove their value once inside the organization, guiding leaders through brand building, crisis response, and major transitions.

The Macro Picture: Growth With Caution

At the macroeconomic level, Feuz pointed out that leading indicators remain strong. Revenue growth is accelerating across sectors, which historically leads to more hiring. Despite tariff-driven uncertainty and a sluggish 2024, the fundamentals are improving.

The mismatch comes from psychology. Professionals compare today’s steady growth to the “sugar rush” after the pandemic — when companies threw money into the economy and hiring exploded. Additionally, people tend to look at lagging indicators like job numbers, even though the long-term trajectory is positive.

Kruger and Bayer described a hiring market defined by caution. Employers know they need communications talent, but they are reluctant to make mistakes. Interviews are longer, reference checks are deeper, and roles often stay open too long as companies wait for the “perfect” candidate.

That caution translates into frustration for applicants. Qualified professionals may go six, twelve, or eighteen months without landing a full-time role, despite deep experience. Hiring managers are also turning to contract-to-hire arrangements to reduce risk. For job seekers, contract work may open the door to a permanent seat.

Four Takeaways for Job Seekers

1. Labor costs are rising. Employers are investing in the right senior staff because retaining employees is cheaper than replacing them. Internal communications is especially valued as companies work to keep teams engaged and loyal. Bring the data to the interview!

2. Comms and government affairs overlap. Political uncertainty and tariff battles have elevated the need for communicators who understand policy. Professionals who can bridge external messaging with public affairs have an edge.

3. Your network matters more than LinkedIn applications. Online postings often attract hundreds of applicants, and resumes vanish into applicant-tracking black holes. Referrals and personal outreach are far more effective. And remember that your network is probably a lot bigger and more impactful than you realize.

4. LinkedIn is for storytelling. Don’t just post updates — use LinkedIn posts to demonstrate how you solve problems and engage thoughtfully on other people’s posts, Your voice, not just your resume, builds credibility.

From the Seat at the Table to Guiding the Table

The first panel showed that communicators are no longer just messengers. They have a seat at the table — influencing strategy, shaping narratives, and guiding leaders through uncertainty. But the real test of leadership comes when the strategy shifts: building the brand itself, navigating a crisis, or steering through executive transitions. That’s where the second panel comes in, showing how communicators translate credibility into influence once they’re inside the room.

Brand Strategy: The Story Behind the Logo

Building a company’s brand today is inseparable from the people who lead it. Roberts explained how guiding a new CEO through cultural and geographic transitions required weaving in personal experiences, not just company values. Monty’s Ford experience underscored the same point: even in a century-old brand, the CEO became the chief storyteller, humanizing Ford in 2008, when the company was facing enormous pressure from Congress. Warner highlighted that founders often struggle to answer a simple but essential question: What do you want to be known for?

Crisis: When Leadership Is the Message

Crises test whether leaders and brands are credible. Monty’s account of Ford’s response during the 2008 financial collapse showed how humanized leadership — from caravan road trips to congressional testimony — reframed the company’s story in the public eye. Roberts shared how in Japan, trust and relatability mattered as much as strategy when explaining tariff impacts. Warner pointed out that sometimes the CEO should not be the spokesperson — especially when their presence risks implying fault. Choosing the right messenger at the right moment can preserve credibility while still showing empathy and action.

Transitions: Balancing Legacy and Change

Perhaps the hardest challenge is guiding leaders through transitions — whether it’s a new CEO, a generational shift in leadership, or a brand refresh. Roberts described how Hitachi’s first non-Japanese CEO required careful storytelling to earn trust internally and externally. Monty emphasized consistency: repeating a clear and compelling vision until it cascades through every level of the organization. Warner pointed to Red Wing Shoes’ new fourth-generation CEO as a rare case where personal passion and company heritage align perfectly, making the leader herself the brand’s most powerful ambassador.

Conclusion: The Roadmap for Communicators in 2025 & 2026

Both panels bring a similar message: communications professionals have to guide long before the strategy is implemented. Bring the data, showcase your expertise, and speak C-Suite. Earn the seat at the table during the interview and even more so after you’ve arrived at it.

But credibility doesn’t happen on its own — it requires curiosity to uncover the story and empathy to make it resonate.

Here’s how two recent Proven Media Solutions panels provided the formula for the future of public relations – using curiosity and empathy to uncover stories that build trust and have long-term impact with AI algorithms.

Advertising’s Strengths, Earned Media’s Staying Power

While advertising can deliver speed and precision – as well as the certainty of paying for access – earned media delivers reputation, trust, and validation from third parties who cannot be bought. And Nicole Tidei of Pinkston, Sarah Groves of Sentir Consulting, and Jennifer Bowcock of RealPage all agreed that the validation is far more important for long-term brand credibility, especially when crises are waiting around every corner.

Advertising’s results are easy to quantify. Earned media’s value can feel harder to capture. That’s why panelists highlighted “talkability” — the cultural impact of being part of the conversation. Bowcock pointed out that Cracker Barrel’s controversial rebranding drove conversation that reignited consumer attention. That spark is hard to measure – and we don’t yet know if it lit a harmful or helpful fire – but being part of the conversation is important.

The rise of AI is blurring the distinction further. Earned placements fuel the datasets behind ChatGPT and Gemini. Paid opportunities increasingly resemble journalism, with sponsored Forbes and Insider “insights.” Inside corporations, communications and marketing roles are merging into single growth functions. The implication is clear: silos are outdated. Campaigns succeed when earned and paid work together.

Clarity is King

At their core, though, campaigns succeed or fail on clarity. What is the single main idea? What is the value proposition? If leaders can’t reduce a message to one sentence and define an audience in three traits, they aren’t ready to spend on the promise they’re making to the world.

And that promise is key. They’re built on uncovering the right words from the right people, and delivering them to target audiences the right way.

In other words: curiosity to pull out the story and empathy to deliver it. Which was the topic of another recent panel, featuring Lizzy Harris of The Colab and consultants Joshua Mansbach and Reid Wegley.

Why Curiosity and Empathy Matter

Empathy begins with people. Every relationship — from hiring to media pitching — depends on understanding motivations, pressures, and goals. A campaign isn’t about what a company wants to say; it’s about what audiences need to hear. That also includes empathy for the journalist. Don’t flood inboxes; carefully select who to contact and why. Help them do their job better in an era when media outlets are slashing budgets and closing doors.

Curiosity is the “data” of communications. Asking “why” and “how” uncovers the insights that shape strategy. It creates deep dives into a story to find the nugget…and the ability to deliver the nugget to the right people the right way. Even when a product or mission isn’t inherently exciting, curiosity uncovers compelling angles. Siggins highlighted a past client whose VP described its product as “boring.” But curiosity revealed that company was providing lifelines to struggling small businesses that wait months for government payments. That reframing, paired with empathy for those clients, created a campaign.

Can They Be Learned?

One major discussion was whether curiosity and empathy are innate or can be developed. Empathy requires vulnerability, something many professionals resist. Yet skills like listening, reflection, and perspective-taking can be taught and refined.

The distinction matters because communications without empathy risks becoming transactional. Listening with intent, making others feel important, and asking questions that show genuine interest turns tactics into trust.

It’s up to communications leaders to train team members on how curiosity and empathy are part of their success. Everyone learns differently, so leaders must apply these principles to the training. The passionate political activist making a professional transition to B2B public relations may not feel excited about lending, but will they be excited to achieve the client’s goal, or the challenge of breaking through the media noise?

And whether it’s with team members, the media, or clients – doing homework, listening, and coming prepared signal respect. And as Albert Einstein put it: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

From advertising to earned media, from strategy to storytelling, the throughline is unmistakable: PR is people-first. Budgets, campaigns, and AI tools may shift the landscape, but credibility, trust, and influence rest on human connection. Advertising accelerates awareness. Earned validates trust. Curiosity uncovers the story. Empathy ensures it resonates.

Or, in the case of AI deepfakes, a brand doesn’t even need to do anything wrong — the deepfake itself does all the work.

Landmines are everywhere, which is why our two recent LinkedIn Live panels featured four crisis communications experts who explained:

• How brands can anticipate potential crises
• How to take the temperature of the potential crisis
• Ways to ensure that no brand lives on the reputation of a single leader
• How to navigate the crisis when it hits

“It’s cheaper to prevent a war than to fight one,” Four Corners’ Drew Kerr told moderator and Proven Media Solutions founder Dustin Siggins. He and Aaron Walker of Big Think described the importance of having data on hand to assess market realities, observing and responding to trends, and anticipating stakeholder responses to both market shifts and overarching trends.

The second panel focused on preventing executives’ personal brands from becoming liabilities to a company’s success. And it’s not always as flashy as a scandal or the executive bombing a media appearance. It can be as seemingly small as a charismatic leader with a huge social media following going to another company — and taking the audience with him.

“With the emergence first of social media and really the ‘TikTok-ification’ of brands, it’s so much about the leader, the person, as the face of the brand. … We trust the visibility of a person rather than a faceless company,” said Ryan Cohn of Sachs Media.

Cohn and Matter Communications’ Julianna Sheridan advised spreading the leadership brand across multiple members of the C-Suite. Several key leaders should be trained to be “faces” of the brand, with messaging that drives their niche portion of the overall brand narrative. 

All four panelists agreed that culture is especially challenging for companies as they navigate matters like DEI. Large organizations especially can be caught in traps as they try to please multiple stakeholder audiences that may volubly — and expensively — disagree.

The key to success here is the same for solving any potential crisis: know what your core stakeholders want and then deliver on that. And only that. Do not get caught up in matters that have nothing to do with your brand, or you risk self-inflicted brand injuries.

Finally, companies need to be prepared and equipped to navigate a crisis when it hits. The communications team’s first job is to help leadership determine the scale of the crisis from 1 to 10, with 1 being a flash in the pan you can ignore and 10 being a potential atom bomb for the company. 

After all, as we’ve said before, public opinion is harsh, but it is often short-lived. Overreacting — on social media, in the press, or even in the company newsletter — can turn a blip into an oncoming asteroid. You don’t want to give trolls any power, so it’s important to assess the relevance and trustworthiness of the source of the potential crisis. 

And no matter the size or scope of the crisis, there are six key steps to take to mitigate its impact:

1. Be as transparent as possible.
2. Share relevant data and, if possible, good news. 
3. Take prompt actions. 
4. Develop and announce concrete next steps.
5. Execute the next steps. 
6. Never stop communicating until the crisis is over — and then some.

A crisis can hit even if companies do everything right. Communications professionals should have a seat at the leadership table long before the crisis hits. Our job shouldn’t just be to pick up the pieces when disaster strikes, but to set the stage for smooth sailing even when the weather is calm. Successfully navigating rough waters when we hit them requires thinking ahead, knowing how to take the temperature of the potential crisis, and ensuring that the right team is in place to quickly lock it down. 

But what about when someone else makes you look bad…completely by accident?

That’s what happened when 10 billion passwords were recently leaked, the largest such leak in history. Cyber News reports that over 4,000 sources were used to provide the passwords, and that the online account that released the passwords previously uncovered passwords from sources as diverse as a college, a gambling website, and a law firm.

Suddenly, every company that uses passwords is at risk of losing consumer trust. How concerned will consumers be about putting their information behind supposedly secure systems at government agencies, educational institutions, and healthcare facilities?

Not every crisis of trust is your fault – but it sometimes becomes your problem. Here’s how communications teams and executives can work together to turn the problem into a consumer trust and education opportunity.

Be proactively transparent with key stakeholders

Without key stakeholders, your company is on shaky ground. You can keep their trust by being transparent about your process – especially if it’s a good one – and identifying and fixing weaknesses.

There are three steps to this process:

• Let stakeholders know that the mistakes which led to other people’s leaks will not happen to your system.
• If you need to fix weaknesses that were exposed by other people’s failures, do so. That way, you can…
• Show why your system is secure, based upon well-established best practices.

Being proactively transparent is a four-way win because you:

• Get in front of stakeholders before their trust diminishes.
• Show off your system and processes without looking like you’re bragging.
• Don’t have to put a lot of communications resources behind the effort – probably a couple of newsletters and perhaps a little social media.
• Prove that you prioritize stakeholders by fixing processes at your cost, to their benefit.

Promote your great process to new prospects

Getting core stakeholders on board is great – you’ve steadied the company’s foundation. You now have a chance to show prospective customers, investors, and other partners why your company is better than the competition in a key area that is now being called into question.

Don’t stint in this area. Use press, social, speaking engagements, CEO letters, and every other tool at your disposal to reach and influence people to start moving down the sales funnel. While the competition is hiding or flailing, your company is becoming an industry leader in the press, on social, and on conference stages and webinars.

Don’t let someone else’s problem become your crisis

It’s easy to think that other people’s problems will never become your own. But tell that to politicians, whose reputations are automatically suspect because other politicians have convinced people that they all lie. Or accounting firms, which saw the Big Four firms get embroiled in cheating scandal after cheating scandal. Or cryptocurrency companies that scrambled after Sam Bankman-Fried went to prison.

At the end of the day, all you can control is what and how you tell your story. Don’t wait to build a trust reservoir, or you may find it empty far faster than you thought possible.

This piece was originally published by Dustin Siggins at American Business Magazine.

Nothing could be scarier for beachgoers – or officials, who suddenly had a crisis on their hands.

How officials dealt with the aftermath of the shark attacks holds several lessons for business executives, whose companies face potential disasters every day:

1. Be as transparent as possible when a shark attack happens. Officials immediately told the public what happened.
2. Share relevant data and, if possible, good news. Officials shared that an injured lifeguard would recover and that no shark attacks had happened in decades.
3. Take prompt actions. The affected beaches were immediately shut down.
4. Develop and announce concrete next steps.
5. Execute the next steps. Extra lifeguards were on the beaches the next day and lifeguards arrived early. They also paddled around the waters and used binoculars from the shore to look for sharks.

As far as we can tell, tourists and area residents quickly returned to the beaches. That’s not because they believed the sharks were gone. It was because they trusted that the beaches were safe. Officials handled the crisis by:

• Reminding everyone that beaches have been safe.
• Taking decisive, trustworthy actions during the crisis.
• Meeting stakeholders’ expectations with post-incident actions.

If trust didn’t exist, no parents would have brought kids to the beach. The same principles hold true for business stakeholders. Consider:

• How much will Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse affect trust in other banks?
• How do bad Yelp reviews impact a restaurant’s grand opening?
• Can PR firms with typso be trusted to build your narrative?
• How can a hacked payroll company assure customers that private information is safe?

It’s hard to build trust during a crisis. Who is the public going to believe when you’re accused of mistakes, lawbreaking, or unethical activity – you or your accuser?

The best way to survive a shark attack is to be ready ahead of time. That’s why Lake Mead and Lake Powell still have over 70% capacity 23 years into regional droughts. Millions of people have plenty of water because the reservoirs were built and filled long before they were needed.

Businesses can build great trust reservoirs by:

• Building relationships with community leaders and other influencers.
• Driving their narratives in the press, on social media, and through webinars and white papers.
• Having excellent customer service and employee relationships.
• Preparing crisis plans which can be pulled off the shelf and quickly executed.

 It’s okay if a shark attack depletes your trust reservoir, as long as the reservoir is deep and you pro-actively refill it.

Last summer, two shark attacks could have cleared beaches across New York. Officials were able to turn a potential mountain of a problem into a molehill by taking advantage of existing trust, being transparent, providing relevant information, and executing a concrete plan.

Can your company survive a shark attack? Sure – if it’s well-prepared. Contact us to build and implement a strategy for success. And feel free to download our free PDF guide to surviving shark attacks.

The selling of user data has brought criticism from privacy advocates, politicians, and regulators. And two of Facebook’s competitors, Apple and Google, have created privacy policies which sharply contrast with Facebook’s policies. Those policies have also elevated them in stakeholders’ eyes, framed them as privacy protectors, and are expected to cut severely into Facebook’s revenues.

Many companies are prepared for crises which reduce trust in the eyes of target markets. These crises can come from disgruntled employees and customers, hackers, corruption, or even just simple market adjustments. They can impact customers, investors, regulators, and any number of other key stakeholders.

But how many organizations are ready for their competition’s trust crises? These are opportunities to gain market share with consumers who may be more open to your message than they were days or weeks ago.

Turn competitors’ crises into your opportunities

Apple and Google are tech giants on their own merits. But each is also a competitor to Meta, Facebook’s parent company. Google is a direct advertising competitor, while Apple’s iMessage app competes against WhatsApp.

But neither company could just jump in to attack Facebook during its crisis; that would have been transparently self-serving. Direct attacks could also hurt their own revenue, since each company is intertwined with each other and Facebook on various platforms.

Instead, they have proactively, and very publicly, developed new privacy policies. The biggest of these changes are new controls on the iOS and Chrome platforms that severely limit 3rd-party tracking. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg has admitted will cost his company billions. While these policies aren’t specifically anti-Facebook, they do take advantage of the target audience’s connection to Facebook’s failings. Furthermore, they frame Apple and Google as pro-consumer and pro-privacy.

Apple didn’t stop with creating its privacy controls; that would be like cutting down a tree in the woods with nobody else around. They also launched ads, intentionally secured positive media coverage, and received influencer support.

A good example of their messaging is in this recent privacy ad. The setting is a young woman watching her online habits be auctioned off, until she chooses Apple’s privacy settings. The message is clear: Apple is the online user’s privacy friend.

Be ready for the competition’s mistakes

Building trust protection is an important part of an overall communications strategy. You can’t wait for disaster to strike before trying to fill the trust reservoir; nor can trust be effectively rebuilt if no plan is in place to refill the reservoir.

But paying too much attention to the competition can also be a distraction from growth. Apple and Google aren’t building their strategy around Facebook’s mistakes. What they have done is incorporate Facebook’s vulnerability into their existing plans.

Competitors’ crises can also become your industry’s — and your company’s — problem

A final reason to take advantage of a competitor’s trust crisis is simple self-interest. Consumers, regulators, influencers and the media who have issues with Facebook also tend to have wider privacy concerns. This means that Apple and Google don’t just need to protect their own interests — they need to protect Big Tech’s overall reputation.

Likewise, the recent Ernst & Young test cheating scandal cost the company $100 million and lots of bad press. However, it didn’t just reflect badly on the company; it could negatively impact its competitors, especially since KPMG had a similar scandal in 2019.

And when payroll company Kronos was hacked last year, the media ran articles about how the incident might change how businesses consider and use outsourced payroll companies. ADP and other Kronos competitors now have to work extra hard to show they can be trusted to secure information and keep payroll running on time.

When others are in crisis, you’re in opportunity

An ethical cliché is, “Don’t kick a man when he’s down.”

But business isn’t about cheap shots. It’s about offering your better product, service or customer experience to more customers/clients, investors/stakeholders and staff/vendors. Apple and Google are simply differentiating themselves from a major competitor.

And in doing so, they are widening the reputation and trust gap to consumers, influencers, and anyone else who cares about digital privacy.

A version of this piece was originally published by Dustin Siggins at PR Daily.