Your spokespeople are not volunteers
Somebody at your company is about to be asked for a podcast, a byline or a panel. They will say yes, because they’re a good colleague. They might even be excited for some exposure. After all, this is the first time they’ve been asked to represent the company through an external channel. Let’s say they […]
Before anyone asked: thirty years in Austin tech
Before I share this month’s piece, I need to pause. This newsletter was ready to go out last week, but after the news that Austin lost Joshua Baer, and putting anything else into the world felt wrong while our community was still absorbing it. If you are not in Austin, you may not know the […]
Why website optimization is the easiest part of AI search to implement
An honest look at the website work marketing leaders obsess over, what it actually does for you in AI search, and the far more consequential work it quietly distracts you from. This question has come up in nearly every conversation I’ve had with a marketing leader over the past few months, so it felt like […]
Your PR Agency Is Treating Press Releases as the Finish Line. AI Disagrees.
I want to tell you something that most communications firms don’t have the incentive to say. The press release still matters. We write them. We time them. We place them. Done well, they are a critical part of any high-stakes communications moment. But somewhere along the way, the press release became the entire strategy for […]
I Am Austin Woman: Kathleen Lucente on building Red Fan, leading through the hard moments, and what comes next
Red Fan Communications founder and CEO Kathleen Lucente was named the I AM AUSTIN WOMAN honoree at this month’s Women’s Way Award Celebration by Austin Woman Magazine. We sat down with Kathleen to talk about the journey, the people, and the city that made it possible. Q: Tell us about Red Fan and what makes […]
Why boards keep passing over their best technical leaders
As seen in Forbes I’ve spent 30 years helping engineers, CTOs, and founders of tech companies step into their confident communicator selves—transformations that changed their careers. It started at EDN, where I edited technical articles written by engineers for engineers. That’s where I learned something that’s guided everything since: brilliance nobody understands is brilliance that […]
The question every CEO is asking and why most CMOs still can’t answer it.
As seen in Fast Company. Recently I was in several CMO meetings. The same stat came up each time. By the time we’d talked it through, the conversation had shifted from PR strategy to something much bigger. According to Muck Rack’s “What Is AI Reading?” report, which analyzed more than one million links cited by leading AI models, […]
Three Weeks Isn’t Enough Time For An M&A Communications Strategy
As seen in Forbes. The phone rings. “The deal closes in three weeks.” That’s the whole brief. The lawyers have had months. The bankers have had months. The communications function just learned it has a seat at the table, and the table is already being cleared. Half the time, the chief marketing officer is the […]
Why the Biggest Agency Merger in a Decade Is Happening at the Worst Possible Time
I’ve managed agencies all over the world — running PR across Asia Pacific for JPMorgan Chase, picking partners for LabMorgan spin-offs, managing comms at IBM Research. Every one of those situations had a conventional answer: go with the big name, optimize for scale and prioritize efficiency. But every instinct I’d built told me to look […]