S9 E3: Results of the 2nd PRGN Influence Insights Survey with Abbie Fink of HMA Public Relations

Adrian McIntyre: 0:00:01

From the Public Relations Global Network, this is PRGN Presents. I’m Adrian McIntyre.

Abbie Fink: 0:00:07

And I’m Abbie Fink, president of HMA Public Relations in Phoenix, Arizona, and a founding member of PRGN. With public relations leaders embedded into the fabric of the communities we serve, clients hire our agencies for the local knowledge, expertise and connections in markets spanning six continents across the world.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:00:28

Our guests on this biweekly podcast series are all members of the Public Relations Global Network. They will discuss such topics as workplace culture, creative compensation and succession planning, the importance of sustainability and environmental, social and governance programs, crisis communications, and outside of the box thinking for growing your business.

Abbie Fink: 0:00:47

For more information about PRGN and our members, please visit PRGN.com. And now let’s meet our guest for this episode.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:00:59

Abbie, regular listeners of this podcast will know you as the co-host, but in today’s episode, you’re sitting in a different seat at the virtual table. You are our featured guest. So why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself from that perspective and let folks know a little bit about you and what you do well.

Abbie Fink: 0:01:20

Hello everyone. I am Abbie Fink, President of HMA Public Relations. We are a full service integrated public relations firm in Arizona. I am also the Marketing Communications chair for the Public Relations Global Network, of which our agency is one of the founding firms. And we are a proud supporter of the network and the work that our agency partners are doing around the world. It’s been my pleasure to host this podcast for the last several years and even more exciting to be a guest for the first time in our podcast history. So I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about our influencer survey.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:02:01

Well, in many ways, you’ve been a driving force behind the scenes as well as the voice of the network on this podcast. And before we get to the survey, I think it’s useful maybe to use the opportunity of having you here in guest mode to just kind of situate your firm within the context of the network. And here’s what I’m thinking. We’re going to talk a lot about how the network mobilized its resources and its global presence.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:02:34

And there are some dynamics to that that I think as an adjacent outsider are kind of interesting. So HMA Public Relations, your firm, the oldest continuously operating PR firm in Arizona, you were, as you said, one of the founding members of PRGN. And there are a range of many different dimensions. There’s a range in this network. Small, large, big clients, small clients, global brands, local brands.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:03:04

Can you kind of give us an overview of the membership, just kind of informally even, and how you view your firm’s position in the broader mix?

Abbie Fink: 0:03:14

Sure. And to set the tone a little bit, the network concept was started probably close to 40 years ago. And one of the larger international agencies that did not have presence in smaller markets across the country brought together independent firms like ours and a few others across the US and said, if we need work in your market, we’d like to have a more formalized relationship. And that worked really well. And it was a time, of course, where we did not have an Internet and we didn’t have a way to communicate really strongly if we didn’t have local presence.

Abbie Fink: 0:03:53

And after a few years, that agency decided that they didn’t want the network concept anymore. But the US based agencies really liked this idea that they had partners in other markets as much for new business development and sharing resources, but also from a colleague to colleague, having someone to share information, bounce ideas off that were also going through the same thing. So that group of individuals actually came to Phoenix and we had a meeting here and said, let’s formalize this relationship. And it became known as the Phoenix Network, in part because it started here in Phoenix and because we kind of rose from the ashes of the other entity …

Adrian McIntyre: 0:04:32

Because everything in Phoenix is on fire.

Abbie Fink: 0:04:35

Correct.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:04:36

It’s like a thousand degrees here.

Abbie Fink: 0:04:37

Yeah. And after a few years, those member agencies realized the value of that and looked to how we could add some additional partners around the US but also outside of us, into other parts of the world. And so as it grew and the opportunity to kind of hop across the world and find partners, Phoenix Network no longer resonated with what we were doing. And that’s the evolution to the public relations global network.

Abbie Fink: 0:05:04

As you said, we are a very diverse group of agencies. One of the principles of the organization is that we are all owner operated and are involved in our agencies. We are not just the figurehead of the firms. We are daily in the business of our business. And so it’s part of the requirements to be a member of PRGN that you are an active member of the community and you are participating with your agency and ultimately with the network itself.

Abbie Fink: 0:05:33

And so there are a variety of different structures to our different agency partners in that some are solely public relations practitioners, others have different divisions that might do digital or graphic design, video production, but their basics, their primary source of their agency’s revenue comes from their public relations clients. And what we are able to do as a network in its original purpose was to be this resource for other members to be boots on the ground, in markets. If we needed to have client support and to do new business development in a way that we can be a bigger agency.

Abbie Fink: 0:06:18

If a potential client says, we have work that needs to be done in the UK, we have work that needs to be done in Africa, wherever that is, we can say here in Arizona, yes, we can do that for you. We have a partner agency that is capable and available to do that work for you. And so over the history of the network, that has been one of our strongest points. And that we have these resources and that I can confidently say to a current client or a prospective client that we can be wherever you need us to be.

Abbie Fink: 0:06:54

And that kind of influence and that kind of staying power, I think, is why the network has advanced as it has and why it has, you know, it’s recognized among the top five networks in the world. We are respected as an entity in part because of the makeup of the individuals and the agencies that call themselves a member of the public relations global network. We are as strong as a network because of the partner agencies that we have around the world.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:07:22

Well, this is really great, and thank you for that. We’ve touched on some of those dynamics in a handful of previous episodes over the years. But. But in the context of this survey, I think it’s helpful to remember that first of all, and I’ll have you say more about the survey design and execution in a minute, kind of how you put this together. This is the second annual Influence Insights survey that the network has produced in partnership with a research firm, Researchscape International.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:07:54

But it’s important to remember who’s gathering the data. And that’s why I wanted you to start there, because we’re not talking about big corporate firms that simply turn to their regional or local offices and say, send us your latest, you know, spreadsheet, you know, from such and such like, this was an active outreach effort to get responses to the survey. And who was doing the outreach were the kind of people, like yourself and other members, who have direct relationships with real people in those markets. And that could sometimes get lost.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:08:29

I’m a social scientist. I tend more on the qualitative side, but I was trained in statistics and research design, and it’s important to know that these were people asking people, “tell us what’s going on for you in your company.” And that’s where this data comes from. So with that said, talk a little bit about the survey itself. So this is the second year. It was quite a significant increase in the number of responses from last year. Before we get into any of the details, just describe at a high level what was the design and the methodology of this. Obviously the research partner executed the mechanics of it, but give people a sense of the shape of this data.

Abbie Fink: 0:09:08

Right. And it was important for the network. When we were talking about what could we do, what could we own out there in the marketplace? And the idea of influence really kept resonating and bubbling to the top. So the development of a survey mechanism to measure what influence means and such was sort of what level set. And everyone said, you know what, that is something that we, first of all, we understand we would benefit from the knowledge and something that we could impact.

Abbie Fink: 0:09:38

And you’re 100% correct. This was a effort that more than 60 PRGN members went out and said, yes, we want to participate in this and we are going to make sure that the respondents from our survey are represented across our entire network. Right. So this was something that, you know, the North American firms and the European firms and our Asia Pacific firms, everyone said, this is important and we are going to go out and collect these insights from colleagues and prospects that are, you know, CEOs and CMOs around the globe. We had about 1800 respondents across all of our regions.

Abbie Fink: 0:10:21

And we, in, in some cases the survey was translated into other languages to make it more user friendly, depending on the marketplace. And so that was about a 50% increase in, in respondents from our first year. And I think in, in large part because the success of the first survey, although it was a smaller group of respondents, demonstrated that the information that was being gathered was worth the time it took to respond to it. It’s a pretty lengthy survey when it, when you, as it. When it comes to surveys, it’s about a 10 to 12 minute survey that’s a bit long for people, but we really wanted…

Adrian McIntyre: 0:11:02

The CEO or CMO, and I was going to say of a large corporation, but truly the small business owners out there perhaps even more strapped for time because they’re wearing six hats instead of three.

Abbie Fink: 0:11:17

Right.But as you said, it was Abbie asking Adrian to answer this survey and not to overuse the word, but my influence over you says, you know what, I want to help Abbie in what they’re doing and I will take that extra few minutes and respond to it. So we felt really strongly about looking this year at the data from last year and how has it changed, if at all, and then if it has, what is impacting that change. And so it required us to ask a few more questions and dig a little bit deeper into certain topics and the world is a different place than it was, you know, 365 days ago. So therefore we had to ask a little bit more. So it really, the, the perspective of the, of the, the planning process was we need to do this deep dive. We need to ask for our respondents to spend a little bit more time so that the value of the information, the data that came out of it was something we could build, build off of. And so it really was … go ahead.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:12:20

Well, before we get into, I, I, you’re, you might have just been putting a period on the end of that eloquent sentence and I stepped on it. I’m sorry about that. But before we get into the data, I do want to say one additional thing about this. And I haven’t looked at the raw data. I haven’t looked at the cross tabs. I haven’t looked at anything. But I can just tell you, as again, an observer, why this is interesting and important.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:12:43

This is not a classic randomized sampling effort. Now the statistical analysis requires a certain sample size and you have to control for effects and things of that nature. We won’t get into any of that at all. But why I think this is interesting is that influence, you said it. Influence is the through line. It was your direct influence on the people you had in your network who said, you know, hey, I want you to take some time to fill out this survey. And then they were answering questions about the importance of influence.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:13:14

So ironically, every sample has sample bias built in. That’s not something you can avoid. It is something you have to be aware of and control for. But I think in this case, it enriches the results because again, these are people who know people who care about these topics and are agreeing to take the time to respond. And with a, with a response of 1800, you can filter out for other, other kinds of things. So without getting into any nitty gritty, nobody wants to hear the nuts and bolts of, of sample design, survey design and whatnot. But I think that’s actually really helpful and really interesting.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:13:47

These are not generic responses from non-, you know, from nobodies, from random people. Look, if you’re trying to make a characterization about buyer behavior, you need a large sample and it needs to be random. This is not that. This is a specialized survey of a very niche group. And so the goal is to get as many of the people in that group to respond as possible. And 1800 responses for a survey that takes 12 minutes is a job well done. So that’s again, a testament to the relationships behind the network. Okay, enough about my soapbox. Let’s get into it. Was there more you wanted to add there at the end of …

Abbie Fink: 0:14:25

Only just to say that, you know, our partner at Researchscape really paid attention to what we wanted to accomplish and helped us craft a survey that would get us to those answers and made sure that we had the language and the dialogue in that influence effort. Right. How we were going to ask for these participants and to take that time with us and where we wanted eventually this data to be able to be beneficial.

Abbie Fink: 0:14:56

How do we craft questions that lead us to valuable information and what is influence? And then equally as important is what do you do with it if you have it and where does it belong? Because those are the kinds of things then. And look, as communications professionals, we’re answering this question every single day. What we are helping our clients influence, you know, those that need to know about them. So how do we do that and what’s, you know, what’s the mechanism where who’s the best person, what’s the best vehicle, et cetera. So the value in this was significant.

Abbie Fink: 0:15:35

And because it was cross industry, cross geography, you know, multiple roles in the communications, you know, marketing, CEO levels, we felt very good about the results that were going to be represented, representative of, you know, the types of individuals that we want to engage with and that we want to participate when and hope will find value in the, in the outcome of the survey.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:16:02

All right, great. So let’s get into it. I see at least three major things we need to talk about. Of course, folks can. There’s more detailed information available on the PRGN website. You can listen to the webinar rolling this out where the research partner actually Researchscape International talks about some of the methodology, et cetera. But I’m trying to frame this for our audience in the sense of, you know, what are the big, high-level takeaways? First of all, what is this data? And so that’s what we’ve been talking about. Where did it come from? And why does it matter? It matters because it’s global. Because the response size was so large and because these are the exact kind of people you, our listener … these are folks, whether you’re a PR practitioner or a business leader, nonprofit leader. The people answering these questions. So that’s interesting.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:16:50

The first thing that jumps off the page when you look at the results is the disconnect between how important executives and other leaders view brand influence as being and their confidence in their execution around this. In fact, this was striking. 90% say influence is critical. I don’t, I’m curious what the other 10% was thinking. But anyway, 90% say influence is critical. 70% say it is growing in importance. Only 17% say they’re confident their organization, their, their approach to it is exceeding their own expectations. In other words, there’s a performance gap. Talk about that.

Abbie Fink: 0:17:34

Right? And, and, and when almost half of our respondents say, yeah, we need to improve on what we’re doing when it comes to influence and the, you know, the importance of it, where does it reside, who is responsible for it, what is the impact of it? And although they, the answers told us, they understand that they, you know, there’s a lot of opportunity for growth, they recognize that it is an important part of a business strategy. It’s not just a nice to have anymore. You have to have influence and you have to know where your influence is going to be the most beneficial to your business and to your, you know, your strategic goals and when you can make it a business priority and not just a metric that your communications team measures, but really across the entire organization.

Abbie Fink: 0:18:28

I think intellectually we understand that we will see it improving and therefore we can raise our expectations for what it should be doing. And maybe that number of 41% that says we need to improve, we’ll start to see that number shifting as we recognize that we know influence matters. But how do we manage it and how do we make it impactful in our organizations?

Adrian McIntyre: 0:18:54

One of the things that I think is a really interesting question, and this was tackled head on in last year’s survey, the inaugural Influence Insights survey. Really defining this question of what is influence and then refining it a bit here. I still think, and I’m okay with this, I still think there’s some slippage in what that term means in different markets, in different places. But I think everyone would agree if we asked them to and we didn’t do this, but if we asked them to write an open-ended response, you know, what does influence mean to you? I think generally people would talk about the fact that this goes beyond perception or awareness, you know, and goes to your ability to get things done right. Can you use your brand’s leverage to drive more sales, to change public opinion, to influence policy at the governmental level through direct or indirect lobbying.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:19:56

It goes to increasing market share, things of that nature. In other words, we’re talking about something, everyone’s talking about something that is in the realm of action. So not, “do people know who you are?” But, “does the fact that people know who you are allow your organization to do the things you want to do?”

Abbie Fink: 0:20:13

Right.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:20:13

That’s what influence fundamentally means. So I’m okay with the fact that it probably means something slightly different in Beijing than it does in Boston, for example.

Abbie Fink: 0:20:22

Well, and it’s something that we should be constantly looking to improve upon. I mean, it is not a static, oh, we achieved influence, move on to the next thing. It is something we should be constantly evaluating and constantly looking at in that as our influence as the noun is making more of an impact. You know, our influence is impactful, but as a verb, our influence needs to continue to be evaluated and modified and changed.

Abbie Fink: 0:20:55

And we need to look within, within our organizations at who can handle and is responsible for influence. It is not just a CEO or a chief marketing officer’s responsibility in their job description is responsible for influence. No, influence is really anyone within the organization that is representing who you are out in the workforce, in the business community, internally, externally. And so it can be communications, it can be the customer experience, it can be your frontline team members. You know, this is where influence starts to get really interesting in the definition of it and the responsibility for it. And if we recognize that it should be distributed across a variety of functions, that means it is constantly evolving and improving as those individuals within those business lines start to feel that they’re making more of an influence because it changes.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:22:00

This is a critical point and this is the second major theme that I wanted to highlight here in our conversation. What we’re talking about goes beyond a communications function. As you said, this is a cross cutting, you know, whole organization phenomenon. And that means that increasing the capabilities to feel like you are accomplishing your goals by increasing your brand influence is a structural problem. It’s an organizational problem. It’s a leadership challenge.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:22:34

It could go even into every department, customer service, research and development, like a product, everything, right. Could have an impact on influence. Because again, as I said, this goes beyond perception and into the realm of action. So what are we learning here? Again, this is going to have to be at a high level. But who needs to step up? Who needs to be thinking about this? This is not just your comms team or your external PR agencies problem, like do a new campaign, get us some more influence. That’s not, that’s not what we’re seeing here.

Abbie Fink: 0:23:11

Right? And again, if we can make some assumptions in that we’re open to the idea that influence lives throughout our organizations, right? That that all of us have an opportunity within an organization to be influential, whether that is a responsibility of yours laid out by the title that you have at the organization, or because you lead in such a way that you create impact. And so what it also means, though, is influence isn’t just happening then in one place.

Abbie Fink: 0:23:45

It is spread across a variety of different things. Now, we can look at and say social media is having the greatest impact on our brand. In fact, our surveys showed about 80% of the people say, yep, social media, that’s it. Greatest impact on brand influence. Okay, terrific. Who’s responsible for social media? Well, certainly there are people within your organization that are. But you know what? So are your customers who are sharing your data and are tagging you in content, and so are other resources that are using what you’re producing on your digital assets to grow and enhance.

Abbie Fink: 0:24:21

So, yes, it may be the responsibility of your social media manager, but other people are impacting your social media as well. Consumer advocacy, Right? Those are the reviews, and those are the people that endorse and say, I really like this product or whatever that is. That’s about 72% say, that’s. That’s it. That’s the greatest thing is consumer advocacy. Okay, great. Who’s responsible for that? Earned media, which is where a lot of us live and breathe, is in the earned media stage. Well, that’s right up there as well.

Abbie Fink: 0:24:51

But paid advertising is influential. Employees are influential. Speaking engagements are influential. This podcast can be influential. Right. It’s really about how many different touch points does an organization have to reach an audience and influence them? And when you understand that we are not a contained system anymore, we are not operating in this bubble, we are a very broad and dynamic entity. Our businesses, the world that we live in, and that this is a constantly evolving process.

Abbie Fink: 0:25:26

And the trade off of that knowledge is we have more opportunity and we have to be okay, that we have a little bit less control over the outcome of it.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:25:39

Yeah, this gets to the heart of an issue, I believe. Something so important and for leaders listening to this podcast, something important you can think deeply about and maybe even a little unsettling for you. And that is, you know, our survey results and our informal experience suggests, you know, that employee advocacy matters a lot. Yet you don’t empower your people. And you know that you don’t because the responses also say this. For example, you know, only 44% are actually leveraging employee advocacy, whereas 67% know that their employees understanding the brand promise is important to this thing we call influence. So you have an internal comms problem. Not problem, opportunity.

Abbie Fink: 0:26:26

Challenge.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:26:27

Challenge. You know, there’s something you can do or there’s some things you can do. But this means getting not just your comms team at the table, they should have been there already, but also your HR folks, your ERG people, your everyone who has influence within the organization, every team leader, manager, department head, every in individual internal employee advocates. You know that that one guy in the, in the shop who has an Instagram account where he actually posts videos of what he’s doing at work and he has a following of his own. There’s 3,000 people that watch this guy welding in the back of your plant. But like, are you talking to him?

Adrian McIntyre: 0:27:10

Are you empowering him? Your social media manager is important. You know that 80% impact on brand influence coming from social media. But is he or she in the room when you’re having high level discussions? Where are they getting information? Are you letting them follow you around with their camera or are you only sending them pictures once they’ve gone through legal, like literally. You have to think and listen. I’m not saying there’s a right answer to these things, but these are the things you’d have to figure out like how are we going to let go enough to let these people run while still maintaining not control, but some guardrails, some cohesive brand voice guidelines, whatever it is that makes sense in your organization. Abbie, you’ve been at this game a long time. What do you think about my little rant?

Abbie Fink: 0:27:54

Well, the first thing that came to my head was I want to sing that song from Frozen. “Let it go. Let it go.” But that’s really it, right? And look, admittedly it’s a hard thing for me to do too, you know, and I trust implicitly my team to represent HMA Public Relations on panels, in bylined articles, with new clients. I mean there’s no question in my mind, but there is a little part of me that double checks and just make sure and I want to be, are you okay?

Abbie Fink: 0:28:26

And look, they are all smart enough to know what is appropriate and what isn’t. And so I really don’t need to worry. But to those of you in large corporations and are thinking about this and you know, yes, of course our employees are the most important part of our organization. We trust them, we’re engaged with them, we want them to be, but they are not the ones responsible. And we’re not always fully leveraging what those individuals are. And so if we look at a comparison from last survey, employees were recognized in the survey last year. As being part of the influence mix.

Abbie Fink: 0:29:09

The survey this year says that we are and should be engaging our employees, but it is still second to some of these other types of influence. And so there’s a definite gap because we do trust our people, but we aren’t activating them in a way that’s going to lead to true influence. And so if trust continues to be difficult to achieve and even more difficult to keep this credible voice, these employees are an important part of establishing and maintaining that trust with those out there that you are trying to influence.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:29:51

All right, there’s a lot more in here that we could talk about, but we would be remiss not to talk about AI. Can you imagine a conversation in 20 26 that does not talk about AI? I would like to, but we’re not there yet. There’s a huge paradox that emerges here. Many of the respondents, almost half, say that they’re happy that AI is enabling more efficient content creation. Look, they can get more stuff done. They can produce a higher volume of content in less time.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:30:24

And maybe, although the token economy is only starting to rear its ugly head, maybe lower cost. That remains to be seen. By the way, however, a third of the respondents recognize that AI is making it harder to stand out. It is harder to be differentiated. Higher volume of content, less differentiation. I personally couldn’t imagine more of a poison pill given the importance of differentiation and distinctiveness.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:30:55

Two concepts that are related, but they’re not the same. So differentiation is, are we seen as meaningfully different from others in our space? Distinctiveness is, are we recognizable as ourselves? Are we distinctive? So when someone sees a piece of content, do they immediately know that’s a Wendy’s post?

Adrian McIntyre: 0:31:19

Kudos—at least a while back—kudos to the Wendy’s social media team because you could definitely tell it was human. Yes. And distinctive. So the greatest threat, in my personal view, this is one man’s opinion. This is not the survey. But the greatest threat to brand leverage is the disappearance of any meaningful differentiation and the loss of all distinctiveness. In other words, you are becoming not just the sea of sameness, but the sea of slop is eroding your brand. A third say it’s hard, harder to stand out. The other two-thirds haven’t figured that out yet. What do you think about this AI conundrum here? More content, less differentiation.

Abbie Fink: 0:32:03

Right. And there’s no question that AI has. AI has influenced everything we’ve done. Right? I mean, it is part of every. I have conversations with my 88-year-old dad about AI. Now, which is an interesting dilemma, but …

Adrian McIntyre: 0:32:19

Well, and there’s a brand perception case study, maybe potentially nefarious, but I digress. Go ahead.

Abbie Fink: 0:32:23

Well, and you know, their concept of AI is the chatbot they have to talk to when they try to get to a human in whatever they’re calling about. But AI is definitely, from an operational standpoint, provides advantage. It gives us a tool to do things quicker and more efficiently. But what it can’t do, and it should never do to your point about distinction and differentiation is remove strategy, creativity and human insight.

Abbie Fink: 0:32:59

Use it, use it carefully and strategically, but put your people back into it in order for it to be truly representative. Because what will happen if we don’t build out? We should already have an authentic voice, but if we allow AI to be our voice, then authenticity has vanished and there is no longer a connection to the, from the brand to our communities. And that is what I think is detrimental to, you know, what AI can, can be doing.

Abbie Fink: 0:33:35

Use it, but it will make differentiator more differentiation, more difficult if you do not put that human component back into it. And you know, the, the, the, the survey and the response. This, this was one of those questions that we touched on a little bit last year, but allowed us to be a little bit more direct because it is much more part of the, our working society now. And so this one will be one of those data points that will be a constant in our survey as we think about what we’re going to put into the third year of the survey.

Abbie Fink: 0:34:07

Where have we improved in this discussion and are we smarter about AI and its implications for the business and its impact on influence and authenticity? And if we don’t see an improvement or a change as communicators in our responsibility, what are we going to be doing about it? Because I do think we have to, to the extent that we can manage where this lies in a business, we have to be the ones to kind of say, look, it’s working for us, but we really need some different kinds of conversations and guardrails around how we’re using it. Otherwise we will just be a sea of slop, as you said.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:34:45

Yeah, for sure. And there’s something we didn’t dig deep into this year that maybe we will explore further in the future, and that is the relationship between differentiation and trust. Everybody agrees that trust is the strongest driver of influence. It’s the most fundamental component. 60% of the responders, again, that’s no matter where in the world you are, nearly two thirds are saying, yep, Trust is the most important factor. Well, what happens to your trust? What happens to your reputation when people start to realize that you’re not really home? That’s just the algorithmic noise.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:35:21

And you’ve decided you’re okay with that? I think there’s a very big downside risk right there. And that, I mean, I know what happens. For me personally, as I’m starting to see, you know, easily detectable AI content. And I’m not talking about em dashes, which by the way are awesome. And everyone who thinks the em dash is the key “tell” obviously never took a literature class or read Emily Dickinson. But I digress.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:35:45

That’s not what I mean. It’s how many times does somebody say, and that’s exactly why this, that the other. There’s a cadence to it. I don’t know. It’s like the famous judge said, “I don’t know how to define it, but I know it when I see it.” Anyway, watch out for this because I think people will start to lose trust if they get the sense that what’s on the other side, like your parents, you know, trying to reach somebody on the phone and they have to talk to this dumb chat bot and it’s “no, I said the pharmacy, not …” Eventually they’re like, “I’m not even calling.”

Adrian McIntyre: 0:36:21

So we’ve got to wrap up. We’ve gone long, but there’s a lot, a lot, a lot here. We didn’t even touch on some of the things related to big global issues like economics and politics, some of the threats there. There’s a lot of rich stuff here, key takeaways. So for our listeners who. Well, first thing they should do is go look at the in-depth analysis. It’s all on the site. We’ll have links to it here. But just to wrap up here, what are some of the PRGN and Abbie Fink takeaways? What would you like folks to pay attention to and maybe go to work on Monday morning when they come back and dig in?

Abbie Fink: 0:36:58

Right. So I think the survey and the data will bear out that influence hasn’t become less important in an organization, but it has become more complex. There are more aspects to what influence is, who is involved with it and what tools do we have to create influence. And for an organization to be successful and to see influence, you have to take your business strategy, how you are going to execute it, how will you know if you’ve accomplished it and then apply it to this larger dynamic of what influence is it is our challenge as business owners and as counselors and advisors to other businesses, to think about influence and what role we should play in it, but is a tremendous opportunity as well to say we have the ability to impact and make changes as an organization because we have harnessed the energy of our teams and those that we trust and that we want to gain trust from. And that, to me, is where the power of influence really lives is in understanding how all of those things will come together to create and sustain influence.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:38:29

Thanks for listening to this episode of PRGN Presents, brought to you by the Public Relations Global Network.

Abbie Fink: 0:38:35

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