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

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 AI to reimagine the future of banking with generative AI
• A McKinsey report recommends that public affairs teams begin to factor geopolitical issues into their thinking
• When conduct, culture, and context collide: Three crisis case studies reviewed
• German firm launches ad campaign after its lift is used in the Louvre heist

In his Tech Report, Dan York reports on AI browsers and Mastodon’s approach to BlueSky-like starter packs, but in a consent-based manner.

Links from this episode:

• How thirst traps and rage bait affect workers on the clock
• Lloyds to put chief executive and all top bosses through six-month AI course
• Lloyds Banking Group's CEO and top bosses learn AI | Geoff Kates posted on the topic
• Lloyds Bank AI training course criticized as outdated and unnecessary
• Lloyds Banking Group scales adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot to supercharge their AI transformation
• Upgrading corporate affairs for a new geopolitical era
• Q3 Crisis Review: When Conduct, Culture, and Context Collide
• FIR #483: How Tylenol Handled a High-Profile Falsehood
• AI Models Measuring ‘Trust Velocity’
• AI and Reputation: Trust Data You Can Use
• ‘Quiet as a whisper’: German firm launches ad campaign after lift used in Louvre heist
• Louvre heist lift-maker seizes the moment with new ad campaign
• German Company Launches Viral Ad Campaign For Lift Used in Louvre Heist: ‘Quiet as a Whisper’

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The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 27.

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 [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/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.

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Raw Transcript

Neville Hobson: Hi everybody and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 486, the long-form episode, the monthly ones we do for October 2025. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK.

Shel Holtz: I’m Shel Holtz in the U.S. and we have a jam-packed episode for you today. So we’re going to jump right into it. Before we get into anything substantive though, I do want to ask that if you have any comments to share with us, and we always hope that you do, we have a number of comments to share with you today, please leave them on LinkedIn, where we share our posts, on Facebook, where we share our posts. You could even do this on threads or what’s, not WhatsApp, Blue Sky. That’s the one, Blue Sky. Yeah. You can send email to fircomments at gmail.com, attach an audio file. We haven’t had one of those in forever. You can record those audio files on our website at firpodcastnetwork.com. And you can always leave your comments right there on the show posts at firpodcastnetwork.com.

Neville Hobson: Blue sky.

Shel Holtz: And we do appreciate your ratings and reviews as well. So let’s get started with the rundown of our episodes from the last monthly episode in September till now. Before we do that, though, we had a couple of comments come in for some earlier episodes. You know, I was thinking, geez, these aren’t the episodes that we did between the last monthly and now. Then it occurred to me that, it’s a podcast. People can listen whenever they want. And apparently that’s what Sally Getch did. She said, yes, I am months behind listening to episodes, but I can’t believe no one mentioned the public library website is a way to get around paywalls. Contra Costa County Library gives you access to a ton of newspapers and magazines. So if you’re trying to get around a paywall, check out your local library’s website. They may provide access to that. And I have to confess, not something that occurred to me. Then episode 478, we have a comment from Steve Davis in Australia. Steve Davis says, Hi, Shel and Neville. I haven’t heard the term AI doomer before, and I don’t know if it’s right for me or not. We’ve been integrating AI tools for about two years in our practice, but we’re very focused on integrating them in a nuanced way. Maintaining the primacy of the human aspect of our creative and marketing business is key, and it’s what brings a lot of value.

Neville Hobson: Me neither.

Shel Holtz: AI tools and particularly large language models helped me do some grunt work in pulling some of our ideas together, but always on a short leash. Because of the name of our business, we have a great affinity with Oscar Wilde. There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about. So I start every workshop with one of his quotes. However, at a recent one using AI in a thoughtful way, I actually wrote a song for Oscar to sing. You’re welcome to use any or all of this if it helps illustrate an approach to thinking about our charming little robots. I have a couple of thoughts on this before I go to his comment on episode 479. The first is, well, thank you for that little ditty, Steve. And rather than the usual music we use to play out the episode, we’ll play that and we will include a link to your musical channel on YouTube in the show notes. But in terms of P, the Doomer, these are the people who believe that AI is going to end humanity. And P-Doom is the percentage of risk that you think there is around the potential for AI to end the world. And in AI circles, they tend to ask each other, what’s your P-Doom? And everybody knows what that means. Oh, 70%, right? So. That’s what that means. I don’t necessarily subscribe to this concept, although I did listen to a podcast with a guy who’s been working in AI since the 1990s. And he has come around to actually believing very strongly that this is a likely scenario. So it’s always something worth considering.

Neville Hobson: It’s totally new to me. I’ve not heard of that term before.

Shel Holtz: It may be an American term that we bandy around here, although I hear it on podcasts all the time and you can listen to those anywhere, right? For episode 479, Steve writes, hi guys, I’m not sure you get these emails. And that’s because I only check our email once a month before this episode. We don’t do comments during our short form midweek episodes. So Steve, that’s why you didn’t hear us reference it, but.

Neville Hobson: That’s true. You

Shel Holtz: Do appreciate these. says, I’ve just been listening to episode 479 and the noble idea of creating a community site to get authentic content and attract LLMs. The problem is that increasingly people are contributing AI generated content into these places in lieu of actually writing content themselves. LinkedIn has basically become a cesspool. I hold little hope for new communities to thrive unless there is some mindset shift or mechanism to ensure what’s being shared is being communicated directly by humans. If not, these community projects will become yet another source of plastic information. That’s probably not as harsh a reading of the situation as the Oscar Wilde song I sent you last week, but it shares some common ground. And to that, I would only say, I guess your experience on LinkedIn is based on who you follow, because most of the people I follow are definitely still writing their own content, and I’m able to speed through anything that looks disingenuous or as you say, Steve, plastic. But I also think that those communities in some regard are alternatives to being found in search engines. Building the community and having those people engage in conversation I think may find its way into LLMs, but it’s also an alternative for getting your content out to people as opposed to having them go to the 10 blue links on the first Google search engine results page. Just a thought.

Neville Hobson: make sense? Totally. No great comments, Steve and the the song really super I must I enjoyed listening to that good voice singing that’s really super. So let’s look at the few episodes that we’ve done since the last monthly. That was episode 482 we published it on the 29th of September. The lead story in that like all our long form episodes. This has six topics. That’s why they they take long. The lead story in this one, though, was talking about work slop. So it’s kind of like AI slop except in the workplace. So it’s the latest term referring to low quality AI generated content in the workplace that looks professional but lacks real substance. So we explored the sources of this, how big a problem it really is, and what can be done to overcome it. A couple of other topics in that episode, notable to mention, Chris Hewer is at work on a manifesto for the H Corporation. And he had an online session, which I participated in, of people interested in this, which is, in a sense, making organizations human centered. It needs a lengthier narrative to go along with that to help you understand what it is. But he covered that in what we commented on, which was a summary, lengthy summary in a post on the recent online discussion leading up to talking about the H Corporation. So it’s definitely worth listening to that. And then one other.

Shel Holtz: Well, we have a comment actually from… I’m sorry, I’ll make a time code. I thought you were moving on to the next episode and we have a Chris Hewer comment.

Neville Hobson: Okay? Okay? No, no, I was going to mention one of the other topics we talked about. That’s okay. That’s okay. You can have to do a bit of tricking editing here because I’ll just go straight into mention. Okay. And one other topic we talked about, which we’ve talked about a few times on the podcast, communicators everywhere continue to predict the demise of the humble press release. But one PR leader has had a very different experience with that intriguing snippet, you can dive in and take a listen to that. So that was 482.

Shel Holtz: And we had a comment from Chris Hewer, in fact, thanking us for adding so much incredible value to the conversation on H Corp Manifesto. I am truly honored to have had your friendship and support now for almost 20 years, but in this big moment, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Particularly important in our efforts to define the human-centric organization is a point you raised that I hadn’t properly considered. The role of communicators in all this is to ensure that the attention of leadership and stakeholders is placed beyond the short-term efficiency gains and into the impacts of tomorrow. Not only in terms of thinking about the unintended consequences of layoffs, rifts, such as that experienced by Duolingo and Klarna earlier this year, but also in terms of the longer-term consequences of markets losing customers because they don’t have income to buy the organization’s products or services. Maybe we can collaborate on a kit for communicators to lead or host some of these conversations internally. We’ve already created a conversation guide to ethical AI integration stemming from the work Shel and others have done as research fellows of the Team Flow Institute, which we can use to get started. Neville, you replied to that. You said, thanks. Communicators are ideally positioned to frame these discussions in ways that resonate with both leaders, leadership and employees, ensuring the focus isn’t limited to today’s efficiency gains, but also encompasses the longer term human and societal impacts. It’s about helping organizations see beyond immediate cost savings and recognize the broader consequences of their choices for their people, their markets, and their reputations. That perspective feels more important than ever in shaping how AI is integrated into the workplace.

Neville Hobson: I forgot and I left that comment. Thanks for reading it out. Yeah, that was a good comment from Chris, I must admit. So waiting. Yeah, I think I did. You sounded quite eloquent saying all those things. So thanks very much for that comment, Chris. So moving on to the next episode, 483. We published that on October the 9th. This was a very timely one. Again, this is something we’re going to talk about a bit later too, the kind of political consequences of political intervention in topical business issues. And this related to President Trump with the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declaring that the product of Kenview, which is the owner of Tylenol these days, changed hands quite a bit over the years, that this product Tylenol leads to autism in children when taken by mothers during pregnancy. As you probably might expect, the reaction to that almost universally was, don’t be stupid, it doesn’t do that at all. And I’ve noticed some of the commentary here in the medical profession was a little more forthright than they have done in the past, to be very deferential to Trump to not offend him. That was different this time, it seemed to me. So nevertheless, we talked about that, the crisis. made a reference to the big one for them back in the 1980s, with the poison tampering of the products in Chicago that led to a number of deaths, how they recovered from that. Okay, that was then, this is now, but nevertheless, they still did well, as we noted, the stock recovered, it dropped dramatically. After one day, thanks largely, we said, to Tylenol’s Savvy, an almost perfect response to the crisis. So that was pretty good. We don’t have a comment on that one. So let me move on to 484. Yeah, this is kind of interesting one that we talked about the public relations industry, maybe having its Tilly Norwood moment. You might remember it’s not front of mind for everyone these days, but Tilly Norwood is a manufactured AI actress who caused quite a kerfuffle. it was unveiled, uncanny realistic realism was quite extraordinary. So is this the Tilly Norwood moment for the PR industry with the introduction of Olivia Brown, a 100 % AI PR agent that will handle all the steps of producing, distributing and following up on a press release? Is this PR’s future or just part of it, we said? Debate is still going on about that and I believe we have a comment on this one, Joe. Two, okay.

Shel Holtz: We have two, the first from Sally Slater, who says, is so fascinating. I had brief aspirations of trying to automate the whole cycle end to end, but chatted with some journalist friends first. They hell-nodded real quick. Journalists in particular are sensitive to AI disruption. Their jobs are as much as, if not more, at risk as comms and content writing pros. So they really don’t like the idea of dealing with a robot instead of a human. Which is interesting because one of the items that I toyed with making one of my reports today says that the research shows, and this is in the US, that journalists are fine with PR people using AI in their pitches and in their relations with them. By and large, it’s not 100%, but it’s up there. You replied to Sally’s comment, Neville, so you get to hear your words in my voice again. That’s such an insightful point, Sally. It’s easy to frame this as an efficiency debate for communicators. But your comment highlights the other side, the impact on journalists themselves. The erosion of trust isn’t only about what we send, but also about who journalists are dealing with. Once they sense that they’re talking to a robot instead of a human, the relationship changes entirely. And when that robot is reportedly relentless in its follow ups, there’s really no escape from the machine. And then we had a comment from Andy Green who said, I can envisage many. Digital agencies embracing this to cover what they perceive as the PR dimension to a campaign. These people think in numbers, not stories, and not understanding societal issues.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, it’s a big topic. I think the bit that tends to excite people in this particular story was the way in which I’ve seen other people commenting on this, this is an end to end solution in a sense, that you tell the PR, the virtual PR what your campaign is all about, it goes away, plans it, prepares the press release, handles all the follow up and therein lies the interesting bit because… I’ve seen words used to describe it as relentless follow up. It will not stop. And that’s the bit I’ve seen a number of journalists saying, I got to find a way to ditch this damn thing. And that’s not really what they are expecting here. And I can see that offending a lot of people, you know, but is this part of the future? Again, the debate is still ongoing on this. It’s a great topic, though, isn’t it?

Shel Holtz: It is.

Neville Hobson: So then 485 is the last one we did before this monthly episode. We did that one, published it on October the 21st. Is it time to stop trying to go viral? We asked in that one. Crafting content with the intent of going viral has been part of the communication playbook for more than a decade. There was never a guaranteed approach to catching this lightning in a bottle, but there didn’t stop marketers and PR practitioners from trying. So we said this effort is increasingly futile. We talked about how several marketing influencers have suggested that it’s time to move on from the attempt to produce content specifically in the hopes that it will go viral. We talked about, or rather we shared some data points on that and debated whether going viral should remain a communication goal. We disagreed on a number of issues here, but I think we were aligned in the word viral being the kind of confusion point here, because if we take viral out and talk about just the marketing aspect where you’re trying to achieve an outcome from something that is more than just a viral message, but we talked about that some length in this episode. So is it time to stop trying to go viral? We said, yes, basically, didn’t.

Shel Holtz: We did, and Katie Howell agreed in a comment. said, platforms already reward return visits over one off reach and the clever brands are catching up. If your brief says go viral, you’re chasing a metric that won’t help you keep your job. Repeat engagement with the right people is the proper goal. Less glamorous, miles more useful. And another comment from Andy Green, good clarification over strategies, but also need to recognize viral, AKA meme friendly, is at the heart of effective communication. Also greater recognition of the impact of zeitgeist. Check out Steven Pinker’s latest book, When Everyone Knows.

Neville Hobson: Good comments. No question.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, and thanks everybody for your comments. They really contribute a lot to these monthly episodes, so keep them coming.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, we’ve had discussion that is not part of our kind of rundown list of topics. So it’s really good to have this kind of off the cuff stuff entering the discussion.

Shel Holtz: Very quickly, I just want to let everyone know that the latest episode of Circle of Fellows is up on the FIR Podcast Network. This is the monthly panel discussion among fellows of the International Association of Business Communicators. This was a really interesting discussion about the fact that the role of the communicator keeps evolving, but the goal of supporting the business and the business plan remains absolutely fixed. And how do you square that particular circle. had Laurie Dawkins, Mike Klein, Robin McCasland, and Martha Lozichka on this episode. It is up now. We’ve just recorded it this past Thursday. It’s available for your listening pleasure. Episode 122 is on November 20th at 5 p.m. Eastern time. And another interesting topic, it’s about preparing the next generation of communicators. And we will have five fellows in addition to me moderating this episode. It will be Diane Gajewski, Sue Heumann, Theomari Karamanis, Letitia Narvez, and Jennifer Wah. So put that on your calendars, November 20th at 5 p.m. for that conversation. And now we’re ready to jump into our stories for this episode, but first, we’re going to try to sell you something. Social media and the e-tension. E-tension. Everything gets an E in front of it now. Social media and the attention economy are both changing how we communicate externally and how we engage internally. There’s an article I read, a really fascinating article, that asks whether marketers should lean into rage bait, the use of content designed to provoke anger and engagement. The second article that I read on this topic, also very fascinating, looks at how social media content and consuming it, including contentious posts and RageBait style content, is affecting the mood of people at work, how it’s affecting productivity and how organizations might respond. So something here for those of you who are considering using RageBait in your marketing and something here for you who deal with internal communications, all about this issue of RageBait. So let’s start with the external lens. The piece from Morning Brew via their brand strategy column is titled, Should Marketers Lean Into RageBait? makes the basic point that in an era where attention is the scarce commodity, brands are increasingly tempted and some are already experimenting with campaigns designed to provoke outrage. They stir up audience reaction, they polarize conversations, and all of this drives engagement. The article lists examples. Brands like American Eagle, ELF, The Ordinary among them have been accused of or credited with rage baiting in various forms. The proposition is actually compelling. It does drive clicks, it drives shares and visibility. But the caution coming from the article is just as strong. Not all press is good press. Building exclusion or anger into your brand could carry long-term risks to trust, reputation, employee sentiment, and ultimately consumer loyalty. Now, switch to the internal lens. This is an article from HR Dive. It was titled, How Thirst Traps and Rage Bait Affect Workers on the Clock. Reports on research from the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, researchers surveyed workers over two studies, asking them to reflect on the most salient social media posts they saw that day, how it made them feel, and how productive they were. The results? When people saw fit pics or family posts, they felt more self-assured and engaged, but when they consumed contentious content, politics, rage-bait-style posts, They felt anxious, withdrawn from coworkers and less likely to engage productively. The takeaway content that triggers emotional turbulence may carry hidden organizational costs from distracted employees, reduced collaboration, maybe even increased attrition. So what should organizational communicators, that would be all of you, do with this convergence? Let me offer four action points. First, Be intentional about how your external messaging may echo internally. If your brand is experimenting with provocative campaigns, know, calling out norms, stirring up debate, maybe even courting a little outrage, ask yourself, what are the internal ripple effects? An external campaign that invites polarizing reactions may energize some audiences, and I would argue possibly just in the short term, but internally, it could signal to employees, our company is comfortable being controversial. That could boost excitement for some, but raise discomfort for others. Communicators need to work with HR and talent teams to assess sentiment inside the organization. How are employees reacting, especially those who engage on social media during the day? Are we inadvertently creating internal friction or disengagement by the tone we adopt externally? Second, create and enforce thoughtful social media consumption policies and supports. The HR Dive article suggests a practical approach. Treating social media use at work like a smoke break. Designate pause time, especially during heavy project phases because volatile content can hijack someone’s attention. As communicators, you should partner with HR and IT to provide guidance and structure. For example, quiet hours of connectivity, guidelines for personal device usage during high-focus times, and training about the emotional contagion of negative or polarizing social content. Document the rationale. productivity, wellbeing, and team cohesion. Third, align external and internal narratives around emotional tone and brand purpose. If your brand decides that provocative is an acceptable part of your tone, then the story you tell employees must reconcile with culture. Yeah, we provoke debate, but we do so respectfully, grounded in purpose and we value inclusive dialogue. That alignment prevents cognitive dissonance. You know, our brand is edgy externally, but our culture is conservative internally. And it supports trust, which we’ll be talking about in greater detail later. It also gives you a stronger foundation if things go sideways. You’re always defining the why behind your tone and you’ve prepared employees for what that means. And fourth, monitor, measure, and respond, both externally and internally. Externally track engagement metrics, brand sentiment, media coverage, social listening signals after campaigns that lean into controversy. Internally, partner with HR to monitor employee sentiment, surveys, pulse checks, be ways to do this. Collaboration indicators, retention metrics, maybe productivity signals tied to social media exposure. If a campaign triggers backlash, you should have a response plan. How would you communicate internally? How will you support teams to cope with any fallout? How will you pivot? Look, we’re working in a moment of heightened sensitivity. Clearly, socially, culturally, digitally, The attention economy is powerful, but the rule book is not what it used to be. What once was any attention is good attention is not universally true anymore. For external campaigns, building outrage may bring short-term visibility, but a thoughtful internal strategy, may undermine employee morale, productivity, and trust. I just said that wrong and it’s bad enough that I need to reset. For external campaigns, building outrage may bring short-term visibility, but without a thoughtful internal strategy, it may undermine employee morale, productivity, and brand trust. And inside the organization, the invisible cost of consuming polarizing social content is real and measurable. So the role of the organizational communicator becomes as much about internal ecosystem design as external narrative design. You’re not just pitching or broadcasting. You’re orchestrating tone, channel, culture, and consequence. If you lean into controversial creative, do so with your eyes open. Prepare your employees, monitor sentiment, align culture, and build in the feedback loops that show you’re aware of the risk and capable of navigating it.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, interesting. Listen to what you’re saying, Shel. My own thought is I have almost an inbuilt instinct that this is a bad thing, rage bait. And indeed, reading the marketing brew piece you a comment from a TikTok creator called Dulma Altan, who posts about business strategy struck me as probably summarizing the whole thing. If rage bait becomes a widely adopted strategy, she says, she anticipates that audiences might unfollow brands to avoid seeing it. And there to me is a big alarm bell. I recognize the interest many marketers have in provocative kind of content, whether whatever we call it, rage bait, okay. Example, I suspect would be something that’s very topical. is the American Eagle’s controversial Sydney Sweeney campaign for genes. Just one recent example, Marketing Brew says, it got plenty of people talking. Company execs defended the campaign, which drew backlash over the summer for its reference to genetics. And the chief marketing officer, Craig Bromance, told Marketing Brew that the campaign wasn’t designed as intentional rage bait, but instead aimed at sparking a conversation about optimism, confidence. and self expression. You can spin it any way you want, frankly, but he says so far, the company has reported initially positive results. So therefore I could say, okay, basically what you’re saying is the the end justifies the means then right? Is that what you’re saying? Well, you got great results for something that offended and upset a lot of people. Therefore, it’s okay is what I hear your message. I think you’re dead wrong, mate. That’s really not what you should be doing at all. So I wouldn’t support this at all. I don’t see any redeeming feature of this that has honor attached to it at all. you know, there’s other examples we could talk about, but the American Eagle one I did find quite interesting how that played out. And there are other examples too. And it’s interesting the angle you’ve brought into it, on the impact it will have on employees. And I often wonder whether marketers don’t really take that into account when they do some of these things. So this is not good, in my opinion.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, I agree with you. I don’t think marketers consider the impact of any of their campaigns on employees. Employees are not their audience. Although employees are, let’s face it, expected to reinforce and support the message of marketing. So your employer brand could take a hit unintentionally from something like this. But you also referenced from that article that the people who are offended by it could stop following you. What that means is that the people who are still following you are the people who are likely to succumb to this kind of rage and enjoy getting worked up and angry and hurling invectives at other people in the conversation. Is that the market you really want for your product or service? So, yeah, I think there are some long-term consequences of engaging in this kind of marketing that you really have to sit back and consider. It’s a very strategic approach to, it’s a critical thinking approach. to taking on this particular type of marketing activity.

Neville Hobson: Yeah. And again, going back to marketing brews article, they had some interesting comments from people they talked to about this. One in particular struck me from Megan Morris, the co-founder and CEO of a creative agency called Full Fat. She commented, quite interesting, if a brand is intent on courting controversy, she pointed to a Doritos campaign from early this year in which the brand implied it might change its signature triangle. chip shape into a square as exemplary an example for example the campaign drew some backlash and plenty of online chatter but all in good fun that is really nicely done rage bait if there is such a thing morass said megan trust me there is no such thing as nicely done rage bait okay it’s right it’s it’s nothing serious said morass it’s not going to create any emotional or behavioral triggers so

Shel Holtz: It’s faux rage bait. It’s what it is.

Neville Hobson: You could do that. Why would you not do that? Why would you go ahead and do something that seriously offends people, risks damage to your brand and your audiences across social channels and elsewhere who could have dropped you and don’t talk about you except in negative things? Why would you want to do that? This is good. But let’s not call it rage, please, no matter how nicely done it was. So that was a good one, Shel. So let’s talk about AI, actually. We haven’t talked about AI yet. Yeah, I found this a very interesting one. And it’s in the financial services industry. I doubt it’s unique to this particular institution, Lloyd’s Banking Group. But they’re doing something at sending a very public signal about AI, starting at the top.

Shel Holtz: AI, yeah, we should talk a little bit about AI.

Neville Hobson: The CEO Charlie Nunn and the entire executive team are enrolled in a six-month, 80-hour generative AI program designed with educational technology company Cambridge Spark and University of Cambridge experts with hundreds of senior leaders also in scope and more than 110 already through the course. Lloyd says that the program blends hands-on sessions, virtual master classes, and real-world projects with potential future Gen.AI use cases put forward to progress to pilot phase. These include using Gen.AI to support market insights, customer relationship management integration for commercial customers, freeing up time for strategic high-value client engagement, and improving overall customer experience and retention. This sits alongside a group-wide scale-up of Microsoft 365 Copilot. So it’s not training in a vacuum, but part of a platform commitment and an enterprise change program. Reactions unsurprisingly are mixed. Supporters say you cannot lead what you do not understand. Executive fluency creates permission, governance and budget for real change. Critics call it AI theater, a costly slow course in a fast moving field and argue a sharp briefing cadence would beat a six month syllabus. Both can be true. Literacy without delivery is performative. Delivery without literacy is reckless. If this is more than theater, we’ll see it in KPIs, resolution speed, onboarding time, and front-line productivity, not in slide decks. So glancing at some of the reactions on LinkedIn illustrates all of this. One supportive post on the business network said, I think this is a great move by the bank. The only way to understand and gain the full benefit from AI is a full understanding of the benefits and problems from the top downwards. One commenter said, being a little deliberately controversial, I do wonder if some of the staff and directors will return from these courses with a very different view of AI’s potential, not just for good, but for harm too. Other comments included empowering leadership with AI literacy as a foundation of sustainable innovation and bold move and sets a strong message internally and to the industry. But another post is more critical saying that Lloyd’s AI training courses are a waste of time. and money and a weak attempt at demonstrating that they’re staying up to speed on tech developments. What they learn in month one will be mostly obsolete by month six. One commenter on this post said, most AI education is not as good as what you’d get if you just asked the AI to teach you about it. Well, according to Lloyds, their entire executive committee and senior leadership team are expected to complete the program by the end of 2026. The communication question. is whether this becomes a credible narrative of capability and control or raises expectations that the bank cannot possibly meet on customer experience, risk or productivity. Is this smart leadership signaling that builds real execution muscles or a well-packaged promise that will be hard to cash? I do wonder.

Shel Holtz: I think this is a great idea. I am 100 % behind this. We had the conversation on Circle of Fellows day before yesterday. Remember, the theme was that the role of the communicator remains fixed. It is to support organizational objectives and goals. However, the way we do this continues to evolve. And one of the questions that came up was, how do you learn new technologies? When you are a chief communication officer, for example, you’re pretty busy. How do you learn new technologies? And one of the answers was, well, reverse mentoring. I don’t think reverse mentoring is adequate for AI. The implications for business, for your business, are too huge to rely on a young employee saying, here’s how I use it. Isn’t this cool? Look what you can do. I think you need to understand strategic implications here. I think you need to understand how this is going to affect the way your business is managed, the way the work gets done, the way your organization interacts with customers and other stakeholders. How are things going to change? I think, you we’ve talked about a lot of these implications in previous episodes. The fact that there are going to be job displacements. The fact that entry-level jobs are going to change dramatically if 75 % of the work that an entry-level person does, because it tends to be more grunt work. If that can be done by AI, what does that do to entry-level jobs? You have to have entry-level jobs where your future higher-level employees are going to come from, if not from those entry-level jobs. So there’s a lot of thinking that has to be done around this. And what I see in most organizations is training being pushed down to the people who do the work, not the people at the senior level of the organization. They’re the ones endorsing training for everyone else. They’re not learning it themselves. And how can they lead the organization through this kind of change? And let’s be clear, we’ve never seen the kind of change that’s coming before. And I think this is the way to do that. You get your leaders completely immersed in it and trained in all the dimensions that are going to have an impact on your organization. I think it should be a requirement. And I think it’s actually kind of sad. that there’s an article about an organization that’s doing it because that means that most of them are not.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I’m with you on that. And I agree fully that I think this is an extremely good idea, a very good initiative. When I was researching and looking into it, it became clear to me that this was truly immersive up and down the every hierarchical level in the organization. So that at the end of this 80 hour program over a six month period, the leadership team and the whole executive committee are going to know what it is, how it works, what are the impacts in X number of areas in the business throughout the entire business to understand the magnitude of what this means. And it puts them in a very good position, I think, to ask questions, to support it, to debate it. If they don’t want to support it, they don’t think it’s very good, that’ll stimulate further discussion. So it’s kind of like They are on the same level as the folks lower down the organization who doing all that grunt work you mentioned. And they will understand more about the value of that and what support those people need elsewhere in the organization. So it is interesting and it’s totally unsurprising to see some of the criticisms out there that is just illustrative of people’s different opinions. And I think the fact they’ve done this and then the scale up of Microsoft 365 pilot. in parallel with this in a wider part of the organization. They’re taking this extremely, extremely seriously. And I’m sure other institutions in the financial industry are doing similar things, bet, except I saw Lloyd’s writing about it themselves. I saw media reports on what Lloyd’s Lloyd’s press releases about some of the stuff they’re doing were extremely well explained what this is all about. So I think it is something that is worth paying attention to how they’re doing with this. So it’s good that they have shared this information.

Shel Holtz: I’m baffled at the notion that there’s criticism of this. You don’t want the leaders of organization to be up to speed on the technology that’s going to change the entire world. mean, come on. I just don’t get that. These are the people who are going to be guiding the organization through this change. And if they don’t understand it, they’re not going to guide the organization very well.

Neville Hobson: Go figure.

Shel Holtz: Yeah. Well, there’s a new report out from McKinsey. They are a report machine. They are a report factory. So there’s always going to be new reports out from McKinsey. This is a good one, though, and one that as we are so focused on AI and some other issues that organizations face on a daily basis is one that’s sort of bigger. And we may not be seeing the forest for the trees. The role of corporate affairs is being redefined in a world of rising geopolitical and geo economic complexity. If your eyes glaze over, that is probably part of the problem. Because if you work in communications, external affairs or stakeholder relations, this really is something you need to pay attention to. They begin this with something that we all are sensing right now that geopolitics is back and in a big way. After decades of a relatively stable global order, we’re now seeing rising trade policy shifts, export and import controls, sanctions, regulatory fragmentation, and governments using economic tools in strategic ways. These changes are putting new pressure on companies, not just on operations or supply chains, but on how they engage externally, how they structure themselves, and how they tell their story. McKinsey’s research finds something really intriguing. While executives view trade policy change and geopolitical instability as major risks, only 28 % say trade policy change is a top leadership priority and just 15 % say geopolitical instability is. So there’s a gap between risk and attention. That is where we step in. The article lays out a five-point playbook for upgrading the corporate affairs function. I want to walk you through these and then we’ll talk about what you can do in practical terms. Number one is map the world. Which geopolitical trends matter for your business? When you’re exposed, what the value at stake is, who the key stakeholders are. Many companies don’t quantify their exposure. McKinsey says only a small share do rigorous modeling. Find your corner solutions, you know, your best case and worst case, so you know what you need to be prepared for. Next, hone your narrative and strategic offering. Once you know the terrain, you need to refine how you talk about it. McKinsey notes that language matters. For example, the difference between the word advocacy and the word lobbying. And leaders are increasingly expected to act as commercial diplomats. For communications people, this means your story can’t be generic. It needs to reflect the geopolitical context behind the business and tailor the message accordingly. Third, optimize your engagement. It’s not enough to hope that someone will listen. You need to engage proactively with regulators, governments, associations, third parties, and choose the right level and channel. For example, you might find local or state or provincial officials more relevant than national ones, or you might use a trade association forum rather than a press event. It’s about effectiveness, not volume. Fourth, adapt the function’s organizational structure. Corporate affairs can no longer be an above the line support activity. It needs to be embedded in the business units, aligned with key metrics and operationally relevant. For communicators, that means moving from being message makers to being strategy partners with influence on business decisions and operational design. How much do we talk about wanting a seat at the table? Wanna know how to get one? Finally, the article calls for upgrading skills, analytics, geopolitical insight, and even AI. McKinsey notes that while AI and analytics can help, communicators must be paired with these AI tools in order to provide that human judgment. This means getting comfortable with new tools, but also building the strategic thinking around them. So what does this mean for you, the organizational communicator right now? First, advocate for and help lead the map of the world exercise. Partner with your risk operations and strategy folks to identify