They did a survey that said 89 % of the answers
delivered via LLMs are essentially earned media.
That's a watershed moment in the PR industry
in particular, but communications writ large.
Guess who matters now, bitches? Welcome to Under
Embargo, the podcast that says the quiet part
out loud about PR, communications, and the chaos
in between. Hosted by two of LinkedIn's most
connected comms pros, Becca Chambers, a no BS
corporate comms exec with raging ADHD, and Pari
Hedrick, founder of tech PR firm Crackle PR.
This show brings it all. Real talk, sharp insights,
and the kind of industry truths they don't put
in press releases. No fluff, no filters, no f***s
given. This is Under Embargo. Let's get into
it. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the
Under Embargo podcast. I am one half of your
hosting team, Perry Hedrick, founder of Crackle,
which is a tech PR agency. I'm joined, as always,
by the illustrious Becca Chambers, who is CMO
of Scale Venture Partners. And today we're pretty
excited. I'm excited personally to introduce
our guest, who I have known of and been in the
same circles with for a bunch of years, not that
many years, because, of course, we're still very
young and very sprightly. But her name is Ginny
Dietrich, and I'm sure many of you know who I'm
talking about. But I'm going to introduce her
anyway and explain what she does. But I would
guarantee you probably 90 % of the people listening
today already kind of have a sense for where
this is going. So Ginny is a prolific author,
community. owner of spin sucks she is an author
of spin sucks the book she is an agency owner
she is a podcaster she is probably most famously
and most germane to today's discussion the chief
architect really of the peso model which has
been an underpinning at a lot of communications
firms and you know, in the agency world for a
long, long time. And I know that's gone through
some interesting evolutions recently with the
advent of AI. And so we'll get into all that.
But I wanted to say welcome aboard today, Jenny.
Thank you very much. Oh, wow. I'm doing a good
job already. Outstanding. So, Jenny, I think
I want to start with the elephant in the room.
Everybody knows you as the architect of the Peso
model. I actually told my staff today that I
was going to do a podcast with you, and they're
like, ah, Peso model, spin socks, that's awesome.
You're going to have a great time. But for the
two or three people that are going to be listening
to this that aren't familiar yet with what that
model is, would you mind just kind of taking
us back to the beginning and how this formulated?
And then we'll talk a little bit next about where
it is today. Sure. Yeah. It's actually kind of
funny because they say all the time, if I had
known what it was going to do, I would have done
things a lot differently. But I wrote about the
Peso model in Spin Sucks, the book, which was
published in 2014. So I was writing about it
in 2013, right? Yeah. Really, what it was at
that point was, and you'll appreciate this, especially
you, Perry, as a PR firm owner. We did media
relations, crisis, reputation, that kind of some
events, things like that, right? And it was very
traditional PR firm. And we had clients who were
like, this is great whenever we had media coverage.
and then they're like this sucks when there wasn't
and they weren't what i found is that they weren't
super willing to pay for the times that there
wasn't any media coverage even though we needed
that time to prepare for the next round right
and i remember we had this huge event and we
had the wall street journal on the front page
right below the fold we had the front page of
the la times we had harvard business review and
forbes and fortune like the pinnacle of Meteor.
Right. I mean, just like exactly what you want.
And after those stories ran the very next day,
I got a FedEx package from the CEO of the client.
And I thought, oh, well, this is exciting. He's
sending us like a congratulations. This is amazing.
And I opened it up. And in the package is the
New York Times with a post -it note on it that
says, when are we getting in here? And I was
like, oh. Yeah, no good deed goes on. Okay. So
I really kind of that was the, you know, we've
been thinking about things like what is this
blogging thing? And how does social media affect
what we do? You know, we've been thinking about
it. And it was at that point that I said, we
have to fill those valleys of no media coverage
with other things that can actually help a business
move forward. We added in social, we added in
blogging, we added in inbound marketing, you
know, all of the things that we added in so that
by the time I wrote about it, it was really the
idea that you could use, especially as a communicator,
you could use paid, earned, shared and owned
media to be able to have really consistent messaging
across every platform so that no matter where
your customer or your prospect saw you, it was
the same. And that was the catalyst for it. Yeah.
And so this is speaking to me. And I guess I
have stolen from you the idea that whenever we're
talking with prospects about having a PR campaign,
a PR program, I'm always talking about how. the
biggest challenge for the client agency relationship
is to fill in those valleys in between the peaks.
And I very often reference that specific language,
but then talk about how you use things like the
Peso model to be able to ensure that there's
not these sort of like deafening silences in
that you're hitting all the right places at the
right time with the right messaging. But I digress.
All right. So, Becca, do you have any questions
before I go to the next piece, which is what
happened now? Well, no, that was going to be
what I was going to go to, too. So let's do it.
So where are we now? You know, it's funny because
it's been evolved and iterating throughout the
years because a lot of things have changed, especially
since 2014. In 2020, literally February 18th,
2020, we launched the Peso Model Certification
with Syracuse University. Oh, call me. Well,
you know what happened after that. And so that
was our like next big iteration was, you know,
we have the certification and it's available
to schools now. And one of the things that we
found is that we were working really hard to
working extraordinarily hard to help. people
in the industry, and I hope this doesn't come
across the wrong way, but to help people in the
industry understand that this is where things
were going. And we were met with a lot of resistance.
And so we decided that maybe we would create
the groundswell with students so that if they
learned the Peso model and then they went into
the workforce, they would understand that this
is how communications has evolved and changed
and they would help make that change, right?
Can I stop you there? Yes. You talked about resistance.
Yeah, what was the resistance? That was my question
too. I'm just stealing all your questions, Becca.
I know. No one wanted to do it. Everyone was
like, PR is media relations. Like, we can't do
this stuff. Or social media and content and paid
is owned by marketing. And I was like, you guys.
Yeah. It's, we should work together. Let's do
this together. But it was, we were met with a
ton of resistance. People just didn't want to
change. And you know, I mean. Human beings don't
make change unless there's a crisis. And so there
wasn't anything until the pandemic that would
force them to do that. Yeah, we were met with
a lot of resistance. Interesting. So I cut you
off in the middle of your stream of consciousness.
Yeah. So we thought this idea of like the groundswell,
of building the groundswell up. And so we launched
it because of the pandemic and we couldn't, no
one was going to buy an online course at that
point. We went into schools and we offered it
to schools as part of their learning. And I think
now we're in, gosh, I don't even remember, maybe
180. programs marketing advertising communications
programs across the country a few around the
world but mostly and we're talking specifically
colleges yeah yeah yeah yeah mostly like upper
level so junior senior a ton of graduate programs
but some like usc syracuse University of Oregon,
they have it for their juniors and seniors, and
then almost everybody else does graduate. That's
because USC and Syracuse have the best communication
schools in the country. As a USC alum, I had
to make that plug. You are right, though. It's
true. It is the best. I did not see that coming,
Becca. Undergrad and grad. So, yes, I'm going
to pat myself on the back for that. You should.
You should. Now you're LinkedIn famous and you
can pat yourself on the back for that. So let's
suppose I'm in a graduate program at one of the
schools Becca didn't mention. One of the schools.
One of the not so good schools. And I'm in the
program. What am I ultimately taking away? If
I follow assiduously the framework and get really,
really smart, what do I enter the workforce with?
It's a few things. One, you understand that marketing
and communications, that line, you know, we used
to say the line is really blurry and I think
the line is just like dissolved. Now we are one.
You have to work with your colleagues to be able
to create consistent messaging across the platforms
no matter what. And what we find is that when
organizations have silos and they don't talk
to one another. that they do things like a couple
of years ago samsung launched a new phone during
the super bowl and everybody was like oh this
is awesome and they got their phones out and
couldn't find the phone anywhere because the
ad team the paid media team and the advertising
agency didn't tell anybody that's so funny but
it happens all the time all of the time it happens
all the time so they go into the workforce understanding
that we have to work together And PR is not just
media relations. Marketing is not just social
media. You know, it's reputation, it's brand
building, all of the things that work together.
Because as I said earlier, your prospect, your
customer doesn't care if the marketing department
or the communications department created the
message. All they care is if I find something
and I'm interested in it, can I find it where
I get my information? Is it easy to buy? That's
what they care about, right? thinking about it
from that perspective they go into the workforce
under having a really good understanding of that's
what it's about and we should be working together
as an integrated force to be able to help our
our companies achieve the goals they need to
yeah i think that's awesome so uh becca and i
spent a lot of time talking with various guests
about ai as you can imagine and that's fundamentally
changing the game and how there's a little bit
of a problem in corporate America in the sense
that a lot of people are talking about how people
coming out of college aren't necessarily landing
at the places that they used to. And there's
like a five year gap in hiring. Yeah. And we're
hearing that all the time. And I'm positing without
really any sort of empirical data on this, but
that and Becca and I, I think, agree on this,
that there isn't a sufficient level of basic
education about AI tools, how to use it, how
to incorporate it into your life in the. in the
scholastic world so that these you know young
professionals are coming out kind of handicapped
um i guess my question is what do you think of
what i just said and how would you expand on
that i i totally agree with you i mean most of
them are being told they can't use it at all
right they can't you can't use it they're being
told and so stupid it's so stupid because this
is where the world's going i mean it's like telling
people they can't use the internet in the night
i mean they did do that too right i know yeah
i know yes yeah i mean yes you're absolutely
right becca like this is is there a where does
ai fall in the peso model right like and then
is there going to be an evolution again like
i mean we're in the midst of an evolution right
so what's the next iteration Yeah, we actually,
we evolved it last year a little bit to include
AI, but it was very, if I, at the time, I think
it was probably revolutionary. But if I look
at it now, I'm like, oh, not, not quite there.
And we did it like you, it was really how to
use AI to get the outputs from the PASOL model,
from a four -year PASOL model plan is essentially
how it was in 24. The new iteration that I'm
actually working on right now at MIT, I just
had a. a one -to -one with our chief communications
officer. And he's like, so when can we launch
it? I'm like, I'm working on it. But the new
iteration is it's completely ingrained. And,
you know, we're looking at things like visibility
engineering. So as you know, one of the things
that we are finding is LLMs are using owned and
earned media, especially so content. um media
but not just not traditional media but newsletters
sub stack podcasts things like that to get their
information so if you're not cited it's probably
because you're not doing those two things so
we've ingrained ai in that from a visibility
engineering standpoint and we've also ingrained
it from the perspective of one of the things
that in the very beginning with in the 2020 version
of the certification especially we talked about
building your content map around priority keywords
and SEO and making sure that you were optimized
for Google. Well, that's completely changed.
So now it's about how do you optimize both for
Google, because old people are still going there,
and for AI. Do you think SEO is dead or dying
or will be dead? I always hate to say that something's...
dead but i it's definitely changing what's funny
about this is if you had asked me this question
three weeks ago i would have said yes and the
reason i'm not saying yes right now is because
a friend of mine did a linkedin poll last week
and he asked people if they're where they're
getting their information if it's google if it's
ai if it's a combination and then there was a
fourth one the majority of people still said
google and i was like really Yeah, but they're
getting the AI. Right, sure. From Google. But
they're going to Google and Googling it. Yeah.
I wonder how SEO is impacting Google outcome
or AI is impacting the Google SEO algo too, right?
It must be because it is coming from Gemini now.
Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, the whole world
is just really, really crazy. And it's so fast
moving. Remember how press releases were dead?
And I've been screaming from the rooftops for
years. You know, you don't need to put out a
press release when you do a new website or when
you hire a new CCO. They're back, baby! No one
actually gives a shit, but turns out the data
shows that AI does care. And those stupid listicles.
And then you have to sort of structure your press
releases now. So here we are. And yesterday or
two days ago, I think I did a post on LinkedIn
from a muck rack stat, which said they did a
survey that said 89 % of the answers delivered
via LLMs are essentially earned media. That's
a watershed moment in the PR industry in particular,
but communications writ large. Guess who matters
now, bitches? Sorry, I just had to say it. That's
right. By the organization as not a revenue driver.
And I'm like, who's going to get your answers
in LLMs, dude? Yeah, well, Gregory Gallant called
PR a performance channel. Instead of a feel it
in your gut channel. Right. Instead of the vibes,
the vibes crew. The vibes. Yeah. Yeah. So Ginny,
are you encountering folks at your agency who
are coming to you specifically about the AI question
and about the LLMs and where it fits in? Or is
that still kind of here and there? You know,
what's funny is we're not. We're the ones that
are bringing it to them. Yeah. And we're finding
that they kind of are like, oh, that's interesting.
And so they haven't really. thought about it
i was at in march i was at a client event an
internal client event and they had a speaker
who i will not name because it's somebody tech
bro you will know and he stood up there for an
hour and told them that if they didn't learn
ai they would not have jobs in a year i mean
full -on told them that and so they left that
event completely scared um and so we've had to
like calm everybody down and be like, okay, it's
not true. Unless you work at Salesforce and they
just laid off 30 ,000 people for AI, like that's
not true. But we find that we're the ones that
are bringing it to them. And most of our clients
are saying, okay, this is interesting. We work
with mostly Fortune 500. And so they are creating
AI steering committees. And I myself am sitting
on some of the AI steering committees for our
clients to help inform. help them understand
how they how to use it from a marketing and communications
perspective but most are not like they have co
-pilot set up in their teams but you know what
not this is gonna and i i'm sure i talked about
this on another podcast so sorry to our listeners
if you hear me rant about the same thing again
but we aren't giving employees space to learn
this we're not giving them time to dabble yes
that's how you learn that's how all of us are
learning right now anybody who's in expert right
now is because they've spent the time to learn
these new tools and they continue to because
the tools change all the time. So if we want
to expect organizations to become AI forward,
we need to literally build into people's schedule
time to go learn and use and fail and try and
like waste time because I know I don't have time
for this anymore and I need the time to go build
my things. But instead I just default to the.
to the non -ai workflows because that's already
built and i can do it and i don't have to quote
waste time but the wasted time is the learning
time and i'm so frustrated by the fact that we
want organizations to get there but we won't
give them the time space resources to do it yeah
interesting that you'll default to what's already
exists because of time that's interesting i mean
like here's a perfect example i have A lot of
my stuff set up in Notion and there is Notion
is a very powerful tool that I am only now kind
of learning all of the ins and outs of. I need
to go spend like hours and hours and hours to
build the correct workflows in Notion. Instead,
I just have pieces here and there that I then
go back and use my old tools to kind of fill
in the room and could just spend a week. focused
on just this streamlining it the next six months
would save so much time not doing the other things
but i don't have that built -in time to go do
that because you know there's fires burning everywhere
else that i have to put out at all times so there
are what what in comms shut up um so that's what
frustrates me and as managers like we really
should be yes encourage your employees to use
ai and then not only give them the tools, but
give them the time, right? Say block off Thursday
afternoons to go dabble. And if nothing comes
out of it too bad, and if something does great,
share it with the team so we can all learn from
it. You know, what's interesting about this Becca
too, is I think like Perry and I definitely are
old enough for this to remember this, but like
my, my very. first boss. I'll never forget this
as long as I live. She would come into the office
every single day at eight o 'clock and she would
put her fate on her desk and she would read the
newspaper and the trade publications that our
clients would be featured in every day. She spent
an hour, her first hour every single day doing
that. And I remember as a 22 year old young worker,
I was thinking, well, I can't wait until I have
time to spend an hour. You know what? She, she
was so good at her job because of that. We didn't
have to be in the office until nine. She came
in every single day, an hour early, and that's
what she spent her first hour on. So it's kind
of the same thing. Like some people are going
to learn it. Some people are not. But if you
can carve out the first hour of your day or to
your point, Becca, Thursday afternoons or something.
and prove that there are applications for the
business, you're going to be so much further
ahead than you're worth. And it needs to not
be like a one -time training or we're all going
to go to the AI workshop. Today we will teach
you AI. but that's what like it does feel like
there's this we're gonna hire an ai consultant
to come in and train us and then it's like okay
you taught you gave people basic tools and understanding
they still need to learn how to operationalize
it for themselves and then in six months when
everything's different how do they overcome that
gap it's they have to keep perpetually learning
and i just like that is a huge shift for a lot
of people and i think that there is going to
be i mean to your point earlier about tech bros
saying if you don't learn ai you're gonna lose
your job like i don't totally disagree with that
because i think that they're easy like we had
a recruiter on as one of our guests and She said
it's not even that they ask about AI in interviews.
It's expected. Like it is implied. It is implicit
that you know how to bring AI into your role
now because it's 2025 and this is where we're
at. And I know I'm hiring and that's definitely
one of the questions that I ask. And part of
that is because I do want somebody who's going
to bring in their ideas and how they use AI and
help spread it to the team. Just like I'm going
to take the stuff that I've learned and spread
it to the teams. Like that's how we're all learning
from each other and whatever. Yeah, like I kind
of do think if you're not continually learning
on this front, you're going to get left behind
so fast that the that the learning curve to overcome
it is going to be really hard. Yeah, I totally
agree. Perry, you said something earlier about,
you know, we've got this five year gap for kids
coming out of college and into the workforce.
And I think that's exactly right. And it's really
about, you know, how if we're if. If colleges
aren't allowing them to use it right now, which
is ridiculous, how are we helping? Well, first
of all, as parents, my kids are still in middle
school. I think yours is a little bit older.
But how do we as parents encourage the use? But
then how are we as business leaders encouraging
the application of that 22 to 27 -year -old so
that they can come to work? and get different
job experience than I think the three of us got
when we started our careers in using AI and learning
to prompt it and learning to edit it and thinking
more strategically and creatively about it than
to just write a news release. yeah i think it's
an interesting question i think in some ways
things are pretty cyclical you talked about how
people weren't ready for what you brought to
the table with the peso model and integrating
all these various aspects because to your point
pr is like media relations like that's what it
is they weren't willing to expand their mind
their horizons beyond that little piece um and
i vividly remember i was vp marketing at shift
communications uh in san francisco for a bunch
of years back in the early 2000s and i remember
when social media was kind of like popping up
and Not only our company, but many companies
that I knew were saying, like, get the hell off
of these platforms like Twitter. Stop wasting
your time on all these things and focus instead
on Excel spreadsheets. That's still a narrative
in a lot of organizations. Yes. And the more
things change, the more they stay the same. And
I feel like we're there again. And I feel like
there's a difference this time, which is that
many of the people who are my age and your age,
Jenny, like in the early 30s, are just not interested
or willing to do what it takes or to empower
other people to do what it takes to learn the
AI. They just want to pretend it doesn't goddamn
exist. Maybe one or two smart people to come
in and just do the AI. There is nobody in the
middle. Everyone is either on the like, God F
this AI. Like it's just overhyped, whatever,
blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to deal with
it. Or you are frantically learning because you
feel like you're going to get left behind. Like
there is nobody in the middle. You are on one
side of the spectrum of the other. My husband
is on the like, what's Chad GPT side because
he just doesn't need it in his life. And his
key works at a hospital. They are now like bringing
in people to come and like teach them whatever,
whatever. I'm sure. Yeah. My, in my world, I
have nobody teaching me shit, but I am like anxious
about getting left behind. So I'm trying to like
keep up and learn and see who's what online and
what my communities are using and asking my friends
what they're using. Because I, I just, I fear
being, you know, the one who doesn't have the
tool that's going to save the day or whatever.
On the other end of the spectrum from your husband,
Becca. So Jenny, do you know Chris Penn, Christopher
Penn? Oh yeah. Okay, right. Good friend, known
him for years. He used to work at ship back in
the day, blah, blah, blah, blah. He did a blog
post today, I think, or yesterday. Not a blog
post, a LinkedIn post about how people think
that AI is limiting creativity. For him though,
it's been, he's 10X'd his creativity because
he has learned the tools so well that he does
all the mundane. I feel the same way. And he
has been wickedly more creative than he ever
has been, including like designing, you know,
five more pieces of software. I'll tell you why.
i know why the difference is is somebody who
uses ai as a tool and somebody who uses ai as
a replacement for their work and that's the difference
because ai does replace your creativity when
you decide make a slide that explains this thing
and then you just take that slide and use it
because it looks nice and it says what it's supposed
to instead if you use it as a tool for helping
you um like bring to life whatever is in your
brain, then it is a creativity enhancer. And
I just think it's - Part of what he was saying
is that you're either a creator or you're not.
And a lot of people who are not are just deferring
to the tools, but people who can't help but create,
this has been a major boom for them. They've
been so much more prolific in all the things
they want to get to next. They can finally get
to those things instead of wading through the
bullshit. An analogy is like people, we go back
to the early days of the internet. It's when
the difference between somebody using the internet
as a research tool to like learn more stuff and
synthesize information and people who just copy
and paste from Wikipedia and post, put it in
their report, right? That's the difference. And
I do think that there are just some people who
want to use it as a easy button and some people
who see it as a boon to what they already can
do. In the very beginning when I was using it
and kind of, I was like, oh, what is this? And
I'm testing it out. The most valuable thing it
has done for me is stopped my procrastination.
Totally. Because now I'm like, okay, I've got
a big project. I've got to start. And I just
throw it into one of my AI tools. usually chat
GPT first and say, I've got to start this big
project. Can you help break it down into smaller
chunks and like assign it out? And it does it.
And then all of a sudden the project's done and
I don't have to worry. It doesn't sit. Trust
me. I literally move it from day to day to day.
I'm with you. I will literally put in like, I
can't start this project because I'm tired and
I need an idea. yeah and it will give me something
and even if it's not the right idea correct enough
to like get going i totally agree like i always
say it's like an adhd person's best friend because
or you can't organize your thoughts but you have
all of the thoughts like just dump them And then
it will organize them for you. Oh my God. You
know how much time that saves me? Dump my thoughts
and have it organize them into like a way somebody
else can read. Oh my God. Lifesaver. For me,
probably one of the biggest uses that I find
valuable is the connecting the dots between disparate
ideas or related ideas for that matter. So one
of the people that works for me, his name is
James Gerber. He was my first hire at Crackle.
I always say when I'm introducing him, it's kind
of like the same. It's kind of the same spiel,
but it's true, which is there's a lot of PR people
and communications people that have knowledge
about what they do. Like they're knowledgeable
about PR, all that stuff. But precious few people
have wisdom about the ability to connect the
dots and spot the trends and all those types
of things. And you either have that ability innately
or you just kind of don't. You don't really teach
somebody that. And I feel like AI for me has
become. my quicker ability to do what I just
said, which is I'll put in two unrelated ideas
and say, what are the connections between these
two things that I am not seeing? How can I illuminate
this in a way that actually does make sense for
this particular industry? Is there anything there?
And it really has become a thought partner in
that way. I'm not using the writing. I'm not
using word for word. I'm just sparking ideas
and thoughts that I can go off on a tangent with
myself. To your point, Becca, about being ADHD,
I am that too. I need sometimes the help of having
something to ping off of and give me positive
or negative feedback to that idea. And I feel
like that's what's been brilliant for me as an
agency owner and as somebody who's taking higher
level strategy for clients and not like tactical
in the weed stuff. Janine, have you seen any
amazing use cases of AI for comms functions?
One of the things that we launched probably eight
months ago for a client is a compass. And what
it does is it takes all of the social media listening,
all of the media mentions and media listening,
all the analytics every week and pulls it into
a report. through Looker Studio. And then we
put that into AI and we ask it for three things.
What do we need to be worried about? What trend
is happening and what's new? And it gives us
a really nice look. And sometimes it says there's
nothing in one of those categories. Or sometimes
it says here are all the things. There was something
about three months ago that came up that there
was a dark corner of the web talking about something.
And the AI said, this is happening and we think
it's going to explode. And it did. And because
of that, like it was, it was literally a dark
corner of the web. It wasn't something that as
human beings, we would have even paid attention
to. And it started to trickle into the more,
like it started trickling to Reddit. And we were
prepared for that before it became a crisis because
of the AI. So we call it the compass. It comes
out every week. It goes all the way straight
up to the top of the leadership and everybody
sees it. And it's phenomenal. That's really cool.
I want that. Do you sell that to other people
or is that like a proprietary? You keep it in
-house? I mean, I could sell it to other people.
I would like to buy two compasses, please. I
was going to say, everybody hit up Vinny. Vinny's
going to need a lot of business after this airs.
I would like three compasses. Amazing. That's
very, very cool. What do you use to build that
kind of stuff? Like how, how does one do that?
So it does take, so you have, we have the social
media monitoring tool. We have the media monitoring
tool. We have all the analytics. It, it all drives
into look, looker studio. And then the report
comes out. We put that into the copilot instance
that we have inside their firewall. um and you
know we've we've been training it for eight months
now so it's starting it's it can do all those
things without much prompting but in the beginning
we had to do a lot of prompting and training
and making sure that it was getting the right
things but it definitely we it's uh something
in the dark dark corners and we as humans we
never would have seen that we wouldn't have seen
it until it hit reddit that's crazy yeah That
is crazy. So what do you think is the next big
thing coming down the pike with AI that's going
to affect you and your clients' lives? Have you
thought about, I know you're always iterating
and tinkering and changing. Is there any like
sort of looming threat on that? Maybe we should
ask Compass this. What looming threat on the
horizon or opportunity is on the horizon that
you're already keyed into? And if the answer
is you're just kind of living day to day with
this stuff, that's where I'm at. So don't feel
pressured to give a profound answer there. I
was just reading in the Atlantic that they think
an AI bubble is coming. And then I saw that Gartner,
you know, in their hype cycle has put AI in the
trough of disappointment. So I think we're going
to see sort of that, you know, people will stop
investing in AI for a little bit while, you know,
the pet .com of the internet era goes away. And
then it'll start to come back up again. So I
think that that's... what's happening next at
a macro level. So how that affects us is your
tools may change. Some of your favorite tools
may go away. I think, Becca, to your point earlier
where you were talking about, I have to try all
these things. I think it's going to become consolidated
so you don't have to try all the things all the
time. And we've seen that. We saw that with the
internet. We saw it with social media. I think
we'll see it here too. That, I think, in the
next 12 to 18 months is going to be the big thing
where things will some things will die. Some
things will be consolidated and you'll come out
with some. Yeah, we're already hearing about
companies that are beginning to hire back some
of the people they've shed because they're realizing,
hey, you might need a couple of humans here to
run this shit. Right. So that's interesting.
The other thing that you said that was interesting
was Gartner. Oh, my gosh. Gartner putting AI
in the trough of disappointment is a little wacky.
Right. Considering their market cap is tanking
and they are like in the gutter with their stock.
price gee i wonder who they could blame for that
that is i do think that like data in this world
is so interesting because on the one hand somebody
still needs to produce the data right but on
the other hand you don't need the people to synthesize
it so or at least not in the way that a gardener
was doing, but somebody still has to do the research,
you know? So that's where it gets interesting
because then the output is just the data, not
the analysis of the data. Anyway, I just think
this is such an interesting, all of these things
are so interesting as like a turning point in
the way that we do things. So tell us about your
agency a little bit. I don't know a lot about
it because I'm so focused on your spin suck stuff
and the peso model and all that. What is your
agency? Who do you serve? How big is it? We're
a mid -sized agency. We actually, you know, for
the longest time, like I said in the beginning,
we were very traditional PR. And then we added
in paid and shared and owned, of course. In the
last probably, well, since the pandemic, we've
become really Peso model focused. And so we don't
actually do agency work anymore. We go in and
we either do training, implementation, or licensing
of the Peso model with Fortune 500 organizations.
So we do a ton of training, teaching marketers
and communicators what it is, how to use it,
how to implement it, and what we find with big,
big companies. as I'm sure you both have experienced,
that they have a thousand agencies and nobody
talks to one another. And it's really hard to
implement something like this with all of those
silos. And so we go and embed ourselves into
those organizations as Peso integrators and bring
all of them together. And it's been interesting.
And in the beginning, I was like, I don't know
if this will work because having come from a
big agency, I worked for Fleischmann and Hillard
for many years. I know how protective they are,
right? Of their ideas and their content and their
profit margins and all of that. But when you
have the client saying, it's important that you
all work together and here's an outside resource
that's going to help you do that. It's been extremely
effective. So ongoing consultation as well. So
like once you get in with the training, you're
ongoing with the, it's like annual, monthly,
how do you work? it's multi -year i mean we have
one client that just signed a contract through
29 which is amazing um but what we're doing with
them is a center of excellence so we had leaders
nominate people from their team who can spend
50 of their time on peso model learning I would
love to work in an organization that would give
me 50 % of my time to learn anything. To learn
anything. Yeah. They're very, very, very progressive.
So those people will spend all of their year
with us. They'll go through the same training
that my team goes through. They'll sit in all
of the internal training that I do with my team.
So we do three. monthly big trainings for the
entire organization so they'll be part of that
and by the end of next year the idea is that
they'll be the subject matter experts internally
as the center of excellence and then they can
go and fulfill that role the peso integrator
role internally it reminds me of the i think
i mentioned this in a previous podcast too but
it's like what if we spend all that money on
training and our and those people leave but what
if we don't spend any money on training and they
stay that's and you know what the new version
of that is perry linkedin or online social presence
right well we don't want you online doing whatever
because like then people are gonna like poach
you also that's a very positive reflection of
your brand also that is the way that people find
out about your company or that you have a good
culture or whatever whatever so like sit down
anyway yeah 100 i i say this and i mean this
to my to my staff i want them to be as active
on on linkedin as possible sharing smart insights
about the industry because i'm under no illusions
that they will work with me until the end of
time eventually they'll go somewhere else and
when they do It's with my blessing between now
and then you are building a halo effect on your
brand and my brand. And I'm here for it. If you
don't see that, you're not current. You do not
get it. Totally. Totally. All right. I think
it is time for us to segue into my personal favorite
part of every show, which is our rapid fire questions,
which this year or this season, we are bringing
a one unhinged question per episode. perry is
in charge of the unhinged questions i will ask
you sometimes too we'll see how it goes i will
ask you the entertaining questions so you get
to erase one corporate buzzword from existence
what is it impact oh wow why the long hesitation
why it say more because you can't have an impact
on something you can have impacted teeth A plane
can crash on impact, but you cannot have an impact
on something. You can affect something, but you
cannot impact it. Dang. I remember impacted.
This impacted that. It just happened so often.
I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to roll
with it now. Yeah, at this point I did too, but
I hate it. I feel like I need to rethink my word
usage now. I'm shamed. Oh my God. Okay. Next.
See, we learned something new in every episode.
You're about to give a presentation in front
of 50 ,000 people, a keynote style. What's the
song you walk out onto the stage to? I'm going
to say what the first song that popped into my
brain. And this will tell you how my life is
right now. Golden by the K -pop Demon Hunters.
I don't know the song, but I know the K -pop
Demon Hunters very well. I'm sure I know the
song if I heard it, but my kids are equally as
obsessed. I'm sure that's child -related. Deep
breaths. It's the most watched movie ever on
Netflix. Ever. Ever. Ever. They think the reason
is because this is the first time they opened
up the licensing so that you could make your
own memes and things, and the kids just went
wild. They went wild. Amazing. Amazing. Our producer
Brian says almost every song from the soundtrack
was in the top 20. That's crazy. Isn't that nuts?
It's nuts. Amazing. Well, there you go. I guess
everyone will be cheering when you walk out to
that song. Okay. If you had to do a TED Talk
on anything but Peso, communications, whatever,
what would your topic be? The foster care system.
Oh. Say more. We actually were foster parents.
We adopted our 12 -year -old through the foster
care system when she was a baby. And it is the
most broken system. Well, let me rephrase that.
Before January, it was the most broken system
I think our country has. That's not the case
anymore. But it's very, very broken. You know,
when you are a foster parent, your job is to
protect the kids. The law and the foster care
system is set up to protect the parents, the
biological parents, and it's hard to have those
come together. So, you know, parents, biological
parents can screw up massively many, many times
over and still get their kids back whether or
not they deserve it. And it's tough. It's really
tough. Interesting. All right. Well, there you
go. Yeah. Ted talk on foster system. Good on
you for doing what you did. Yeah, I had to stop
though. It's too much for my heart. Too much.
Yeah. All right. You get to use one emoji for
the rest of your life, but only one. Which one?
The poop emoji. I think you're the first one
to say that on this show. Ryan, can you please
edit out that word? Thank you. I said cube on
purpose. We need to have it like drop down like
a graphic. This is a family podcast. Funny. I
love it. All right, Perry, it's your turn. All
right. I'm going to test a new one out and then
we'll see how that goes. I may do another one,
but I may just stop here. So these are always
like a test of like, what do you prioritize?
So Jenny, you can. Accept a check for $20 million
today, tax free. You can do whatever you want
with it until the end of time. But like most
difficult choices, this one means that every
single time from now on, whether you're in a
restaurant, whether you're at a child's recital,
whether you're in a business meeting, every time
you laugh. you will laugh exactly like a donkey.
As loud as a donkey, the hee -haw is going to
be insane. So $20 million. But every time you
laugh from now on, you will laugh exactly like
a very loud jackass. I'm taking the $20 million.
Absolutely. You too. I'm fine with it. One thing
is true. You'll be the toast of every party.
People are like, you've got to invite Ginny because
she is going to make us all laugh our asses off.
Absolutely. 100%. What would you do, Becca? What
would you take the money? I would. I would take
the money and I would laugh my ass off like a
crazy drunken donkey. I'm here for it. It'll
match my big teeth that everybody's always like,
put those things away. And now I can just be
like. As I'm looking at myself laughing here,
I'm like, I already kind of laugh like a donkey
anyway. It's not that big of a stretch. I know.
I mean, you'll be rich. So who cares? All right.
I can tell you, I had a business coach early
on in the business that has the most infectious
laugh. It's loud. It's boisterous. You knew if
Brad was in the room and people loved it. So
fine. I'll take the 20 million bucks. You can
make fun of me. I get to hear you from down the
hallway. That's right. No Jenny's coming. Just
don't invite her to church. Or a funeral, yeah.
Definitely not a funeral. Please not a funeral.
If you cry, does it make the donkey sound too?
Or just laugh? Just laugh. Because I feel like
that would be embarrassing. Every time you laugh
or cry, you sound like a donkey. That was a really
good question. They were all really good questions.
Well, I guess, Ginny, as PR people, we have to
give you the floor for, is there anything you
would like to share with our listeners or direct
them to how to find you, how to get you to build
them their compass? Yeah, I better create a form
so you can order a compass. I'm kind of sad we
don't do this every week. I'm not going to lie.
This is awesome. And people can find us at spinsucks
.com. Awesome. This has been fantastic. I'm so
glad we finally got to meet. Me too. This is
fantastic. Which is nice. And don't be a stranger.
I know I will be reading your stuff as passionately
as I always do. So keep up the good work. This
is the way. Thanks, Jenny. Thanks. Thanks for
having me. Bye -bye.